“They’re going to have to be second-line units,” he continued. “Our Volcanos and Saints are all tied up, but we should have enough Lexington carriers and Resolute battleships for you to assemble a force that can take down Roberts.”
Vasek’s flagship, at least, was a Hercules-class battlecruiser. Perseus would be the only modern ship in the Admiral’s fleet, though.
“If we’re facing eleven modern ships with second-line units, we’ll need at least sixteen ships,” Vasek pointed out levelly, earning a mental checkmark of approval. Not many were willing to tell the Marshal of the Rimward Marches what they thought he didn’t want to hear.
“Preferably eighteen,” she continued. “That’s not a Rear Admiral’s command, sir.”
“Scrape together what you can,” he told her. “If we need to use even older ships, we need to use them.”
And James Walkingstick would be ecstatic when the Commonwealth got around to retiring the last of the Paramount-class carriers and the rest of their deathtrap contemporaries.
“As for rank, I’m out of damned Vice Admirals who aren’t tied up, so consider yourself breveted,” he told her. “Roberts is too clever by half, but you will catch him.
“And between that and Tasker and Gabor’s strikes, we might finally manage to cut the Alliance’s numbers down to size for a final attack.”
17
Via Somnia System
14:00 September 12, 2737 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-062 Normandy
Russell joined Captain Herrera and the XO in the small conference room attached to the Captain’s office, wondering just what was going on.
Seventh Fleet had been reinforced again since Admiral Roberts had left, five more ships from the Star Kingdom of Phoenix and four from the Renaissance Trade Factor. That totalled six ships from each of those nations in the Fleet—a quarter of each star nation’s naval strength.
Despite that, they’d been under communications lockdown since Forty-First Fleet had moved out. Even as a carrier’s CAG, Russell hadn’t been allowed to communicate via a live link with anyone.
As soon as he sat down, a virtual conference space took shape around them, linking in to his implants as he found himself in a “room” containing every Captain, XO, and CAG from thirty-eight capital ships, plus Fleet Admiral von Rothenberg and his staff.
“Thank you for making time for this, people,” Rothenberg said quietly. “We haven’t been as busy as we might like, but we’ve been damned busy. We’re about to get a lot busier, but I’ve some ugly news to share first.”
That got everyone’s attention.
“Da Vinci fell last night,” the Admiral said bluntly. He continued as if he hadn’t announced the beginning of the end of the world. “A twenty-two-ship attack fleet led by no less than ten Volcano supercarriers attacked.
“Four Renaissance Trade Factor ships, two Federation ships, and two Imperial ships were destroyed in action, along with approximately thirty-two hundred starfighters from all three nations,” he told them. “Total casualties are unknown, but the Commonwealth is now in control of the star system.
“Ground fighting continues as of our last information, but the Commonwealth has now landed ten divisions with orbital fire support. The Alliance Joint Chiefs have had no choice but to declare the system lost for now.”
The virtual conference was dead silent. The Renaissance Trade Factor only had four star systems, but any of them was richer than three quarters of the systems in the Alliance. If Da Vinci had fallen, the entire tone of the war had just changed.
“What do we do?” Jessica Farrell asked quietly. Captain of the Trade Factor carrier Portage, the pale-skinned redhead looked terrified. “My family is in Da Vinci!”
“The Joint Chiefs are preparing a counter-operation as we speak,” Rothenberg told them. “Given Seventh Fleet’s strength, I offered to take us to Da Vinci immediately. We aren’t the closest fleet, but we are a superior fleet to the one that took Da Vinci and we’re only fourteen days away.”
He paused, then shook his head.
“I was informed that carrying out our mission was a higher priority,” he concluded softly. “As I’m sure everyone here is thinking, I demanded to know just what our mission was.”
Russell had certainly been wondering. Just what was Seventh Fleet supposed to be doing that was more important that retaking a major Alliance homeworld?
“That was when Sky Marshal von Stenger decided that we were close enough to launch time to brief me,” the Admiral told them. “We kick off our portion of what is being called Operation Medusa in thirty-six hours, people.
“We will be the fifth of the Medusa strike forces to move out and will be coordinating our operations and arrival time with fourteen other such strike forces.
“As I’m sure is no surprise, Seventh Fleet is the largest such strike force, but there is a clear reason for that,” Rothenberg concluded, his voice sounding shaky.
“Most of the fleets have a single target, but Seventh Fleet will be hitting three targets in one extremely heavily defended system.”
He smiled grimly.
“Officers, in thirty-six hours, Seventh Fleet will move out towards the Sol System.”
The conference was silent in shocked surprise, and Rothenberg’s grim smile remained.
“We are, of course, one hundred and sixty-four light-years from the home system,” he noted. “I checked. A direct course will deliver us to Sol in just over twenty-six days. Carrying out our mission and returning will take roughly two months.”
Two months. The Joint Chiefs wanted to send their most powerful starship formation deep into enemy territory on a two-month-long mission—and that was assuming that Seventh Fleet didn’t simply collide with the defenses of the Commonwealth’s capital and…cease to exist.
Russell was as shocked as anyone else. Unlike the rest, though, he could see the Stellar Fox’s hand in this—rumor had put the new Vice Admiral in charge of a group tasked to plan a war-ending offensive. A strike at Earth itself?
That read like Roberts’s handiwork.
“Powerful as Seventh Fleet is,” he finally said, the first of the officers to reply, “we don’t have the strength to take and hold Sol. We might be able to defeat the local defense, but the Commonwealth will move heaven and Earth—and a hundred or so capital ships!—to take the system back.”
“Our mission is not to hold the Sol System,” Rothenberg replied, his nod to Russell suggesting that was exactly the question he wanted to hear. “The exact details of our targets will remain classified for the moment, but I can tell you that much.
“We are tasked to attack Sol, defeat the mobile defenders, and destroy specific targets before retreating back to Alliance space. All fifteen attacks are being coordinated via q-com to make sure we arrive simultaneously, leaving the Commonwealth unsure where to send their response.”
“Sol,” someone quipped. “I’m going to guess they’ll send it to Sol!”
Rothenberg chuckled.
“I agree. That, people, is why Seventh Fleet has over thirty capital ships,” he confirmed. “We are going to go directly to Sol and hammer our heads against the most powerful defenses the Commonwealth has assembled.
“Intelligence suggests those defenses are badly out of date and that the mobile forces to back them up are lighter than we might think, but this will still be no easy mission. The Commonwealth Navy will fight to the last ship, the last starfighter, to defend Earth.
“But we will overcome. We will demonstrate, once and for all, that the Commonwealth cannot wage war across the galaxy without consequences!”
18
Castle System
16:00 September 12, 2737 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
New Cardiff
“Third Squadron, adjust your vector seven-point-three degrees left and go to max accel,” Mira ordered. “Close up around Sunset. Captain Mason needs your point defenses.”
Eight of the Gallants moved
as instructed, their more powerful engines wrapping them around the cruiser as the Commonwealth salvo drove home. It was…enough. One of the gunships took a near miss, an antimatter explosion sending the ship reeling away, but the strike cruiser came through intact.
Three more of Mira’s squadrons, twenty-four gunships, swept in the trail of the fighter strike launched by the orbital defense platforms. This was Castle, which meant that there were easily a hundred starfighters for each gunship in the strike, but the Terran force was headlined by a dozen Saint-class battleships.
Her remaining two squadrons joined Sunset, and the other three cruisers left to defend Castle in launching a massive, focused missile salvo. Between the starfighters, the bombers, the gunships and the hundreds of orbiting missile platforms, there were over ten thousand missiles of various capabilities sweeping down on the Commonwealth fleet.
Even Saint-class battleships couldn’t weather that storm. Antimatter explosions marched their way across the Commonwealth fleet, and the handful of ships that survived those succumbed when the starfighters swarmed over them.
Mira leaned against the central display projector in her command center and issued a mental command, ending the simulation.
“Well done, people,” she told her staff and her gunship captains as the big display returned to reality, showing her eight squadrons of gunships orbiting peacefully along with the terrifyingly small remnant of the Federation Home Fleet.
“Not bad at all, Admiral Solace,” her new boss added from Sunset’s flag deck. If Fleet Admiral Aeolus Orman had any bitterness at having two thirds of his strength stripped from him for the new offensives and being relegated to the flag deck of an old strike cruiser, it didn’t show in his voice.
Orman still commanded Home Fleet, after all. He might have fewer starships now, but he still had all of Mira’s gunships and the thousands of starfighters and missile platforms of that command.
“I remain confident,” he continued, “that any force the Commonwealth sends to Castle will regret their decision to stick their noses in the meat grinder.”
The last force to do so, Mira reflected, had managed to destroy most of a Reserve Flotilla before it could be commissioned. That, however, had predated the deployment of the Gallants. Someone could attack the industry around Gawain again, but they wouldn’t find the gas giant as easy prey now.
“My confidence, of course,” Orman said with an audible smile in his voice, “will only be augmented by further exercises to prove it. This next round is going to be based around a worst-case scenario where ground control is lost.
“My apologies, Mira, but you get system-control responsibility for the next hour or so,” he told her on a more private channel. “You’ve done good work with your gunships. Let’s see if they can hold up without you!”
“I hope I am not irreplaceable,” she agreed. “After Da Vinci…”
“After Da Vinci, we must be prepared for every possible incident,” Orman agreed. “So, let us see how your protégés handle.”
“Good luck, sir,” Mira told him.
“Shouldn’t you be saving the luck for your captains?” he asked.
“I trained them. They don’t need it.”
An hour later, Mira was only somewhat eating those words. Admiral Orman, it seemed, had passed command of the Op Force off to Captain Kelly Mason—and Captain Kelly Mason had spent almost as much time working with Kyle as Mira had.
The ensuing arrival of the same eight-battleship, eight-carrier fleet functionally in Castle orbit had resulted in Mira’s gunships going head to head with battleships at point-blank range.
Without any coordination from the ground, every single one of them had ended the simulation as debris…along with four Federation cruisers, several thousand starfighters, dozens of defensive platforms—and the entire Commonwealth attack force.
“Well, that would have been…pyrrhic for us,” Mira noted as the senior officers reconvened. “Mission accomplished, I suppose, but rebuilding the defenses would take years.”
“Fortunately, my experience is that very few Commonwealth officers are students of the Stellar Fox’s patented ‘ride the needle into the bastards’ throats’ school of tactics,” Orman noted. “I certainly wasn’t expecting to see sixteen capital ships attempt to reenact his charge at Tranquility.”
“You told me to do something unexpected, sir,” Captain Mason replied sweetly. “I actually wasn’t sure I’d managed that—after all, everyone knows I was at Tranquility.”
Orman shook his head.
“How close did you come to losing a ship?” he asked.
“The computers were being nice,” Mason said grimly. “Two of the carriers emerged less than five kilometers from each other. A tiny twitch one way or another and they’d have collided.
“There’s a reason that stunt is usually reserved for insane ship captains, not fleet commanders,” she concluded. “I didn’t expect the Gallants to be quite so devastating at close range, though. Easy to forget we built them around battleship-grade beams.”
“Let’s sleep on that,” the Admiral told them. “I doubt we’re going to have the Commonwealth show up tomorrow, but…” He shrugged. “No one was expecting them at Da Vinci.”
“Any word on what the plan is there?” Mira asked.
“Not that I can share,” Orman said. “Too many of our ships are tied up in existing operations, but the Trade Factor doesn’t have enough ships to retake Da Vinci on their own. It’s a giant mess.
“That,” he concluded sharply, “does not leave this conference. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Good. Now, what I want you all plotting for the next round of exercises is some way for us to sneak the Gallants right up to whatever battleships the Terrans bring to the party,” he told them. “Those big guns are far too useful to let go unused!”
At least, having a “command” that she held out of a bunker under New Cardiff meant that Mira Solace and her staff got to go home at night. The apartment felt empty without Kyle in it, however, which occasionally left her considering a dog to have at least one large, warm animal in her home.
Her fiancé probably wouldn’t appreciate the comparison, though, she reflected.
She was spared from deciding between cooking for one or ordering in by an implant message from, of all people, Lisa Kerensky—the mother of Kyle’s son—asking if she was free for supper.
Mira didn’t even waste the time to glance in the refrigerator before responding positively and heading to change.
She doubted Dr. Kerensky would object to her showing up in her day uniform, but if she had the opportunity to wear civvies for once, she was going to take it!
Somehow, Mira wasn’t surprised when Kerensky directed her to Daniel Kellers’s house. The Member of the Federation Assembly for New Cardiff was the neurosurgeon’s boyfriend—and it was quite possible they’d moved in together and no one had told Mira!
Rank had its privileges: among them, Marine bodyguards and access to the Joint Command’s transport pool. Mira’s pair of armed bodyguards greeted Kellers’s armed bodyguards, and the collection of armed individuals promptly did their best to vanish as a hundred and forty centimeters of overexcited preteen swept out of the house to give her a massive hug.
Mira blinked against the unexpected embrace but returned Jacob Kerensky’s embrace gently as she looked through the open door to the suburban house. Daniel Kellers and Lisa Kerensky were standing just inside the door, both grinning broadly as Jacob hugged her.
“Good to see you, too,” she told the kid dryly, detaching herself and returning a significantly-more-expected embrace from Lisa Kerensky. “I appreciate the invitation,” she continued. “Cooking for one is starting to suck.”
Kellers laughed.
“I’m familiar with the feeling,” he said, his face even redder than usual as he tucked Lisa Kerensky’s hand behind his heavyset back. “Lisa and Jacob only moved in a few weeks ago, but I’m already dreading my next w
ork trip.”
So, they had moved in together—and Kyle’s son had gone with them. Mira suspected that Kyle had to have known, but their own communications were heavily curtailed by the lockdown throughout the entire Alliance.
“Come in, come in,” the MFA insisted. “Lisa wanted you to be the first to know. Well”—he paused thoughtfully—“the third to know, but we already told Mrs. Roberts, and communicating with Admiral Roberts is…difficult.”
Mira laughed, delighted by the sheer mundanity of the affair. From that alone, she could guess.
“You may as well stop hiding your hand, then, Lisa,” she instructed the neurosurgeon. Lisa promptly smiled and extended her left hand, showing off the simple yet glittering ring.
“Dan asked me to marry him,” she said, unnecessarily. “I sent a message to Kyle… Do you know when he’ll be able to get back to us?”
She sounded almost worried, which was adorable to the woman Kyle was marrying.
“The entire fleet is under communications lockdown,” Mira warned her. “I’m not sure when he’s getting my messages—and some of those are even work-related.”
“I’m…briefed on Admiral Roberts’s mission,” Kellers admitted slowly, earning him questioning looks from both women, “but it remains classified at the highest levels.”
“I know,” Mira agreed. “I also know he wrote the damn op plan that has the entire fleet on lockdown. Whatever he’s doing, better him than a lot of people, but I’m still allowed to miss him.”
“That we are,” Kellers agreed, glancing over at his fiancée. “We want to wait until he’s back to get married. That…could be a while, though.”
“I know it’s weird,” Lisa Kerensky admitted, “but after all we’ve been through, the only people who absolutely have to be at my wedding are Kyle, Jacob, and Kyle’s mother.”
Operation Medusa Page 12
