So said the Earth histories. So said the Commonwealth histories. And now Jan knew. Didn't guess. Knew.
They lied.
Doma existed still, and it had been rebuilt. Jan had seen the lights of major cities on the night side as the Shiva had approached the planet, and from the shuttle on the way down. She estimated the population must run into the hundreds of millions, perhaps a billion or more. And no one knew it was here.
Jan could guess why. From Earth's point of view, they had bragged they had destroyed the planet and killed everyone on it. Of course, that would be war-time PR. A planet is a very large place. Destroy all the major cities, and lots and lots of people will still survive. And who says the population waited in the cities to be destroyed when the Earth fleet came in? With the primitive ships of the day, it would have taken days to get to the planet from the distant system periphery, days the population had to get out of the cities. To disperse. To hide. But the Earth would maintain forever they had destroyed the planet.
From the planetary government and population's point of view, having Earth believe they had been destroyed was fine with them. There would be no incentive or desire on the part of Earth to come back and finish the job. Or on the part of anyone else, for that matter.
From the Commonwealth's point of view, honoring the planet's desire to remain hidden was understandable as well. The nascent CSF had failed to protect the planet when the chips were down. That would have been a huge admission, and would have tarnished the CSF's reputation forever. "But remember, there was that time..."
Having an entire secret planet was also a big plus. You could have large workforces participate in big projects, without there being any danger of security breaches. With an entire planet's industrial base, you wouldn't have to ship in raw materials or anything like that, a big opening for security breaches. Just bring in the plans. Or, better yet, bring in the technology, and get the plans drawn up here. Jan assumed there would be universities here, and engineering departments, science departments. The whole knowledge infrastructure.
Another realization hit her. Jan knew the CSF had a secret shipyard somewhere. New-build ships just came in to orbit over Jablonka one day, in company with another ship. The yard crews turned the ship over to the Jablonka crews, and then left on the other ship. To where? Back to the shipyard, of course. And that was where? Don't ask those questions, it's a secret.
But Jan knew where it was. And here it was likely no secret at all.
There was probably also another CSF Academy here. She'd be willing to bet money Captain Yang and his crew were Doma natives. That implied a whole parallel service, also the CSF, operating here. Same uniforms, same protocols, same everything.
The enormity of the thing hit her, in a handful of seconds, standing outside the shuttle. Her world spun around, steadied on a new, slightly different axis.
What else that she had always known was true was in fact wrong, or only a part of the story?
"Are you OK?" Durand asked.
"Yes. Yes, I'm fine. Let's go on in."
There were several hours of briefings on the new ships. They were only building one class. They could outrun destroyers, had smaller crew complements than a light cruiser, and could duke it out with battleships, so what was the point in different classes?
The briefers covered in detail all the points Durand had mentioned, and added some more. The Shiva-class ships had battleship-strength shields, and the shield strength had been further increased by about twenty percent. The ships also had weapons racks between the radiators, which allowed them to carry self-propelled drones. The briefers touched on the actual mathematics of the hyperspace transitions, and the stresses the ships could take. The ships had 'automatic' hyperdrive, which allowed them to shift between hyperspace levels under computer control based on real-time gravitational gradient measurements. The hyperspace generator could project the hyperspace bubble either forward of the ship, using the hyperspace projector in the bow, or aft of the ship, using the drive engine as a hyperspace projector, so the ships could shift hyperspace levels whether accelerating or decelerating, without flipping the ship or taking the rougher transition by pushing back into the bubble behind them.
The briefers then covered the drones. They were of three types. All of them could run all the way up into hyperspace-6. They could also make transitions closer in to the system, because they could handle higher stresses than a manned ship. A drone had made the run to Jablonka in just over an hour and a half, less than a third of the time the Shiva had taken.
The first type was a courier drone, which could run on its own between and among the different planets of the Commonwealth as an electronic mail service. They could also be sent out as emergency calls for help from a system under attack.
The second type was a program-and-forget interplanetary missile. It could be set to hyper to another planet, seek out targets matching its programming, and destroy them by impact or warhead.
The final type was a hunter-seeker-killer for use in combat. This drone could be used with a warhead, but someone had had the idea to mount remote control beam mounts in them. Whereas a warhead missile could only kill one target, and was itself destroyed, a half a dozen beam drones could be dispatched into an enemy fleet, kill every ship there, and return to the launching vessel for refueling and re-use.
After lunch, Jan and Durand got a tour of the shop floors in some of the factories. In one, they saw dozens of the engines being assembled. In another, dozens of hyperspace generators. In one more, there were hundreds of drones being turned out on an assembly line.
After a busy day, they were in the shuttle headed back to orbit.
"So what do you think?" Durand asked.
"I think I need a new Fleet Book of Maneuvers," Jan replied.
"Several new chapters, at least. Did you note how much of what they had done was directly from your work?"
"Oh, sure. The multiple hyperspaces were from the work I did on the way back from Calumet. That's the whole point of the exercise."
"Yes, but the drones were from you, too, after Bahay," Durand said
"I thought that note was sealed."
"Oh, it was. They told me about them several years ago, and said it had been your idea in that note. They liked it a lot. Then they built in your use of remote control beam mounts. It looks like it worked out pretty well."
"I'll say. I don't even know how I would defend against something like that. Maybe a defocused beam weapon strike, try to fry the drone on approach," Jan said.
"That might work. If you didn't do that, they would be a bugger to hit."
"And whoever sees them for the first time probably won't live to tell his navy about it, so that little wrinkle needs to stay between you and me."
"Of course," Durand said.
He looked out the window.
"And I have one more thing to show you. Look there," Durand said.
Jan looked out the window and gasped. They were approaching an orbital shipyard. Shiva-class vessels were being built in squadrons. She could see eight ships along one space dock that looked near completion. As they went on, she saw another space dock with eight ships partially completed, the engines and crew cylinders in place, and the radiators and beam weapons being mounted. A further space dock contained eight more ships with engines alone, and crew cylinders being brought up already assembled from the planet by huge cargo shuttles. The final space dock had eight ship frames brought up from the planet in one piece, with the engines being attached to several of them.
"Now that is a pretty sight," Jan finally said. "A very pretty sight indeed."
The shuttle took them to the Shiva. Six hours later she was back on the ground at Sigurdsen. It was noon the day after she had left.
When she left the office that evening, the car swung by the Intelligence Division headquarters to pick up Bill. He got in the back of the car, and the driver pulled away from the curb and headed for the house on The Hill.
"So how was th
e trip?" Bill asked.
"The trip went well. And that's all I'm going to say about it. Ever."
"Good."
Unexpected
Stewart Gillian was now Lieutenant Commander Stuart Miller, Brunswick Space Navy. He had learned it didn't pay to have an alias too much different from your real name, because when someone called your alias, you wouldn't react properly. Worse, if someone called out your real name, you might react without any excuse about the similarity of names. Stuart Miller was just enough different to frustrate searches that might otherwise turn up Stewart Gillian, washout from the Brunswick Military Academy.
His two years at the academy had trained him in all the basics of military customs, so he would not be caught out by improper saluting or failing to recognize rank badges and the like.
On arrival in Jezgra aboard a civilian passenger liner, he took a cab to the embassy and reported in to the ambassador's chief of staff. He was introduced to the outgoing naval attaché, and they had a meeting in a secure conference room in the basement of the embassy.
Lieutenant Commander Ryan Wilson was surprised he was being recalled early, eighteen months into what he had expected to be a two-year stint at the Brunswick Embassy to the Commonwealth.
"I have to say right off that this is unexpected. I've had no prior notice anything was up. I mean, I'm not questioning the orders, mine or yours, it's just sort of out of the blue," Wilson said.
"For me as well. Actually, I had the impression you were wanted back home for some assignment, and they grabbed me for this just as a way to fill the hole," Miller said.
"Interesting. Well, we'll see, I guess. I will tell you this is a nice assignment. Naval attaché is a great billet, and Jezgra is a nice location. Nice weather. Night life. Women. I'll miss that part of it, going home to Brunswick."
"I've got something to look forward to, then. Great. I suppose there's some work to do, though. I mean, it can't all be embassy balls and the like."
"There is. The biggest thing is information collection. We have some intelligence sources here in town, as well as five people inside Sigurdsen Fleet Base itself. Those five are Brunswick natives that became Commonwealth citizens. I guess their families are still back on Brunswick, and one of our predecessors leaned on them pretty hard to turn them. Now they have a stream of payments that ensures their loyalty, because they would be screwed if CSF Intelligence Division ever tweaked to them," Wilson said.
"Are we getting anything from them?"
"We get a little. The occasional juicy bit. I understand our contact in the NOC got burned seven years back or so, after that business in Kodu with Paradiso. That's where we got the CSF Fleet Book of Maneuvers and some hyperspace technology. And we lost another in Tactical Division a couple years back. Good information there as well. Nothing like that since then, though. CSF is a tough nut to crack."
"I see. Well, you should bring me up to speed on who they are and contact information and all that before you go, so I can pick things up from you without falling on my face," Miller said.
"Oh, sure. I'm supposed to stay for two weeks to get you started, introduce you around, before I head back to Brunswick. Which means I get to hang around for the big annual embassy ball. That'll be fun. You'll see."
Miller couldn't believe it. How could the naval attaché at the embassy on Jablonka, arguably Brunswick's most important foreign-deployed intelligence position, be such a lightweight? And his recent predecessors as well. The two really decent inside agents Brunswick had had, in NOC and Tactical, had been burned years ago and never replaced. What did they have now? A forklift operator in a supply warehouse. A cafeteria worker in the enlisted mess. A records clerk in the Legal Division. Unbelievable.
And Brunswick's chief intelligence asset on Brunswick had done nothing to better the situation. It probably would have interfered with his party schedule.
Mill considered killing him on general principles, but he didn't need to stir things up right now. Not in that way at least.
But he might have to do the whole job himself.
Preparations
Jan met with Vice Admiral Tien Jessen in his team's Class 1 secure area in the basement of the Naval Operations Center. His team still had no name, and was simply called "Jessen."
This secure part of the basements was where his team had drawn up the plans for the war with Earth they had suspected was coming. They had also written the new chapters of the Fleet Book of Maneuvers covering fighting against an enemy who had the same flexibility in the use of hyperspace close in to a system that the Commonwealth had enjoyed a monopoly on for the last twenty years.
Jan was early for their meeting. She sat scribbling on a pad when Tien came in.
"I have a new assignment for you, Tien. Intelligence Division tells me the natives are getting restless out there. Durand suspects they're finally starting to team up. So I want you to work up maneuvers and war plans for a war against the Outer Colonies, or some subset of them, for ships with the following capabilities," Jan said.
She slid the pad across the table to him. Her notes were in the capital block-letters for which she was known. Jessen looked at the pad, and, as a he scanned down the page, his eyes widened. Finishing, he whistled.
"Are these for real?" Jessen asked.
"Let's just say it's not a purely academic exercise and leave it at that. Now, it goes without saying the entire CSF fleet of twelve hundred warships could not be replaced in a single stroke or anything close to it. If such ships were to become available, they would likely become available a squadron at a time, with months between squadrons. There might not be any available when they kick off the ball, or there might be only one such squadron available. We need plans we can implement immediately when the ball goes up."
"I understand. And of course, maneuvers utilizing these characteristics to advantage."
"Recommended crews and officers, too. We might need to get these staffed and deployed in a hurry," Jan said.
"Which would depend on which ships we had in orbit or could recall in a timely way. Are we going to have some advance notice if and when these show up? If we do, we could have anybody we want."
"Good point."
"One other thing, just looking at this. Will there be an interstellar missile with a battleship gun on it? If there were, we could send twenty or thirty of them to go clean out a star system, and when they're done, they could just move on to the next," Jessen said.
"I'll ask. Anything else?"
"Not for the moment."
Jessen ran his eye up and down the page again.
"I think we should call these cruiser-destroyers. Hull classification CD. That fits with their crew complement being halfway between a destroyer and a light cruiser, and adds some misdirection. That we're adding new light elements, probably as a destroyer replacement. You know, a way of bulking up our destroyers. The last thing you would think is these are battleship killers," Jessen said.
"I like it. Done. And remember. I'm here for you if you want to brainstorm ideas."
"We're working up tactics now for the new ships, assuming they will come on a squadron at a time. We want to call them cruiser-destroyers, hull classification CD. Throw a little indirection in there. And it's consistent with crew size, so everybody can know about the ships, without knowing what they can do. They'll just assume we're beefing up our destroyers," Jan said.
"I like it," Durand said.
They were in the secure basement of the Intelligence Division headquarters building for their monthly meeting.
"A couple of questions came up. The first one is, Can we have maybe eight, or even better ten, weeks of notice before the first installment gets here? With that much notice, we can pick crews from anywhere in the CSF. Have our pick of the litter for the new ships," Jan said.
"I think so. I'll check. And the other question?"
"Jessen thinks an interstellar missile with a beam mount would really be useful. Send a couple dozen calling around – give them
the grand tour – and clean out a bunch of systems at once. They're on the ship-to-ship drones, so it may not be a big deal if they're doing modular manufacturing."
"That sounds like a good idea. I'll send it along. Anything else?" Durand asked.
"No, that's it on our end. How are our friends doing?"
"Continuing to find new ways to worry us. One is we can't make the numbers work for some of the embassies here."
"The numbers?" Jan asked.
"Yes. The amounts they're spending don't make sense. Sure, it could all be going into the booze budget, but we have other embassies we can check them against. Some embassies are getting much more in funds transfers through the banking system than makes sense given their visible expenditures.
"Which means they're spending it on something else. Like spies, for example."
"Yes. That's one. Another is the number of high-level meetings continues to escalate, and is involving more colonies than before," Durand said.
"Not good."
"No. And the final thing is the number and, more importantly, the complexity of joint military maneuvers is increasing."
"I don't like the sound of any of this. Given that, I think you should urge our friends to move with all due haste," Jan said.
"They've been kept apprised. They've stepped it up, and they're making good time."
"Will it be enough?"
Durand turned to Bill, his chief of staff.
"I can't say. It's going to be close. I think we'll have some stuff, but how much?" Bill shrugged. "Impossible to tell right now.
A Far Broader Horizon
"OK, you two. Time for bed," Jan said.
"Aw, do we have to?" Peggy asked. At age six, she was the spokesman for the pair. Max, age four, was content to mimic her.
"Yeah. Do we have to?" Max said.
CHILDERS_Absurd Proposals Page 3
