“Fair enough,” Harold admitted, shaking his head. “God knows I’d give a good bit to be able to spare my crews what’s coming.”
“Plus, well, I’m an Admiral’s wife,” Ramona said quietly. “Sun gave me a pretty detailed rundown of where we stood, and I don’t care what comes next, Harold Rolfson. If you’re making a suicide stand, I’m right here with you. Nowhere else I’d want to be.”
They entered his quarters and she almost charged into his arms. They held each other silently for a long time.
“Ramona…my mission amounts to ‘die standing,’” he admitted. “We need to buy days. Days. I can give the bastards a bloody nose, but the only way to delay them that long is to get them to take the time to kill us.”
“I know,” his wife said levelly, without letting him go. “And you’ll do your job. But I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. Together, Harold Rolfson. No matter what. No matter where. I won’t let you die alone, hear me?”
He was sure there was something wrong with her argument, but he wasn’t going to fight her. Not tonight.
Rear Admiral Sun saluted as Harold entered the room, the older Chinese officer looking clearly relieved to finally be able to hand his impossible burden to someone else.
If only the burden that was falling to Harold was less impossible.
“How are we doing for supplies and logistics, Admiral?” Harold asked.
“We emptied our logistics ships as soon as we got the warning,” Sun told him. “All of their cargos are in a holding orbit above Isaac. That let us put all of the Militia support personnel and their families aboard the ships and evacuate them to Sol.”
“Makes sense,” Harold agreed. “Do we have an inventory?”
“Of course,” the older officer said sharply. “We have everything flagged and tagged. There are about a dozen containers labeled Gold Dragon that we didn’t open, but otherwise, we know what’s out there: fuel, missiles, food, spare parts, the works.”
“We’ll want to crack open those Gold Dragon containers ASAP,” Harold ordered. “They either contain hyperspace missiles or tachyon scanners, and either of those will come in handy.”
“I take it the secrecy on those protocols is being somewhat relaxed?” Sun asked.
“Bellerophon had a Mesharom escape pod aboard when she went up against a Taljzi super-battleship,” the Vice Admiral replied. “We’ll still try and keep the Gold Dragon gear under wraps, but it was the Mesharom we were worried about—and we’d be derelict in our duty if we didn’t go all out to protect this system, Sun.”
“Agreed. That’s not my call to make, though,” the other Admiral pointed out. “I wasn’t actually cleared for Gold Dragon beyond the tachyon scanners.”
“I saw that those had been deployed into the sensor network,” Harold said. “Good work. Even a few seconds’ reduction in time delay on our data may make all of the difference, especially when we’re firing hyper missiles.”
“We don’t have very many of those.” Sun brought up a list of data on the screens. “I’m hoping the containers have D-HSMs, though S-HSMs would be handy too.”
“Reloads are good, but our alpha strike is going to be the best hit we get,” Harold agreed. “The only Taljzi ships that have met our hyperspace missiles are dead. We have a decent chance of sucker-punching a good chunk of their capital ships before they even realize they should be dodging.”
“That sounds like the best chance we have. Fifteen-to-one odds aren’t my favorite.”
“Oh, I love fifteen-to-one odds. When I have the fifteen,” the senior Admiral said. He stepped over to the screens, bringing up the positions of his ships. Right now, everything was closed in tightly around the planet.
“We’ll hold a flag officers’ planning session in four hours,” Harold continued. “A lot of this is going to come down to whether or not we can make the Taljzi blink. We don’t have the firepower to actually hold them for three days.”
“Any chance for reinforcements before that?” Sun asked.
“Tanaka and Cawl are the only forces remotely close. There’s a new fleet mustering at Sol, but they’re ten to fourteen days away. The next-nearest Kanzi concentration died at Alstroda, and anyone else is weeks and weeks away.”
“The Mesharom?”
“Months,” Harold confirmed. “They’re involved, the Interpreter aboard Bellerophon is why we got here in time, but they’re redirecting from other sectors and the Core itself. They won’t be here soon.”
“So, we hold for Tanaka.”
“We hold for Tanaka. One way or another.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Eighty super-battleships required a lot of safety distance between them. That was before you even factored into play the fact that while the Imperials were trusting the Kanzi enough to bring them along, no one wanted to be the ship right next to their once and future enemies.
Harriet couldn’t even see the entirety of the combined fleet from Justified. Half of the fifty Kanzi capital ships were outside the visibility bubble from Justified’s position at the head of the formation. There were over two hundred starships, a hundred-plus of those capital ships, trailing her super-battleship flagship.
She had no confidence they would arrive in time and kept studying the formation and comparing it to the maps of the Asimov System.
Seventy-Seventh Fleet and her Kanzi allies could probably defeat the Taljzi Return, presuming they hadn’t been reinforced and didn’t have more ships they’d been concealing at Alstroda.
Her math said that they were rapidly approaching the earliest time period the Taljzi might arrive at Asimov, though, and they were still over a day away from the soonest Rolfson and his task force could arrive.
“Sir.”
Harriet looked up, realizing she’d been humming thoughtfully to herself and her A!Tol coms officer had interrupted her.
O!Kan was an A!Tol male, small even for males of his race in that he towered only twenty centimeters or so above Harriet at his full height. He had none of the self-control of older A!Tol and he wore his emotions on his skin without even the slightest filter.
The blueish-pink tinge his skin was currently wearing was a surprise to Harriet, though. That was…relief?
“What is it, Lesser Commander O!Kan?” she asked gently.
“We have a starcom transmission from Sol,” the A!Tol reported. “They’re relaying a hyperfold transmission from Admiral Rolfson.”
There was no way to send a hyperfold transmission from hyperspace. If Rolfson was sending her a message—had sent it over sixteen hours before, if it had already reached Sol for them to relay to her—he’d either failed or somehow pulled off a miracle.
O!Kan’s skin did not suggest that they were too late.
“He got there in time,” she said aloud.
“They got there in time,” O!Kan confirmed. “Details are in the message, but it looks like their Mesharom passenger helped them pull together some kind of hyperspace accelerator. Thanks to Peeah, they know when the Taljzi will arrive.”
That was less reassuring.
“When?”
“Their estimate was twenty hours from when they sent the message.”
“So, four hours or so from now,” Harriet said quietly. “Thank you, O!Kan.”
The A!Tol saluted, manipulator tentacle to central torso, and drifted away from her command seat as she considered the situation.
“Sier.” She gestured the Yin over to her.
“Your orders, Fleet Lord?”
“Rolfson beat the Taljzi to Asimov,” she told him. “They’ll be there in about four hours, though. What can we do?”
The blue-feathered avian winced.
“The currents have been helpful, we’re only two cycles away, but… the Kanzi don’t have sprint modes on their drives, and we can’t sustain sprint on our ships that long.”
“And it would only buy us a few hours,” she said slowly. “But those hours might make all of the difference.”
&nbs
p; “If I thought we could buy them, I would pass the orders myself, Fleet Lord,” Sier told her. “But the attempt would lose us ships…and gain nothing, in the end.”
“See if you can get details on what Rolfson did to Bellerophon,” Harriet finally ordered. “I doubt it’s anything we can duplicate, but at this point I’m grasping at anything.”
“I don’t know if that would be included in the message, and we cannot reply,” her chief of staff pointed out. “I will see what I can find. There must be some wind we can lay beneath our wings for this.”
She nodded and dismissed him with a wave.
There wasn’t. Not really. It was all down to Harold Rolfson and the three terrifyingly capable battleships he commanded.
Chapter Forty-Six
“Well, Commander Casimir, it seems we found some more goodies for you in the logistics orbit,” Captain Vong told Morgan as he stepped back onto the bridge. “Turns out that the Duchess decided to send every spare HSM of both varieties forward to Asimov to resupply us.
“We’ll need you to go through the numbers and coordinate with Engineering,” he continued. “I want every D-HSM in those boxes deployed and ready to launch for our sucker punch.”
“I’ll make it happen,” Morgan promised, only half-looking up from the console where she was laying in fire plans for the task force’s hyperspace missiles. “Who’s running logistics for the fleet base?”
Most of the fleet base personnel had been shipped back to Sol. Despite the limited transportation available, they’d managed to evacuate over two million people.
Of course, that meant there were still over ninety-eight million people left, but it was more than she’d expected.
“Looks like a Commander Karl Rogers,” Vong told her. “We’re running against the clock here, Casimir. What can we pull off your plate?”
“If we’re including new missiles, I need those numbers before I can finalize these firing plans,” she admitted. “I’m working with Herakles’ tactical officer on using our sensor drones to patch the gaps in Asimov Control’s tachyon-scanner coverage, but I think I can push that all onto her.”
“That’s no fairer to Commander Gisarme than it is for us to expect you to handle everything,” Vong told her. “Forward everything you have on that to my console. Masters and I will take it over.”
“Neither of you have slack either,” Morgan pointed out.
“Yes, but we’re the ones in charge, which means we get to make slack,” the Captain replied with a smile. “Regardless of whether or not it’s actually possible.
“Now get on those missiles, Commander. They’re your number one priority.”
The missiles were still locked down under a Gold Dragon security code, so Morgan’s initial attempt to just pull the data from the local systems before she started arranging movement orders came to a short and unsatisfying halt.
With a concealed sigh and a moment of sympathy for Coraniss’s attitude toward talking to people, she linked into the coms systems and reached out to Commander Rogers on the main orbital station.
It took a surprisingly long time for Rogers to respond to her call, given that she was hailing from the flagship of the task force.
When the pasty-faced officer finally appeared on her screen, he seemed unimpressed.
“What is it?” he snapped. “We’re rather busy here.”
“Commander Rogers,” she said politely. “This is Commander Casimir aboard Bellerophon.”
“I know who you are,” he responded. “And I don’t have a great deal of time for you, so why don’t you tell me what you think is so important so I can get back to real work?”
She blinked. She was junior to Commander Rogers, yes, but they now held the same rank and she was the ATO on the flagship, backing up the Admiral’s staff. That was not the response she was expecting.
“Excuse me, Commander, I’m not sure that came out the way you intended,” she said, the temperature of her voice sliding toward freezing. “We have a job to do here.”
“Yes, and it’ll get done better if I’m not coddling the Duchess’s over-promoted daughter, so either get off my screen or tell me what you want,” he barked.
“Well, Commander Rogers,” she told him, her voice hovering somewhere around absolute zero. “I need access to all of the information you have on the Gold Dragon munitions containers you have in orbit of Asimov, and once I’ve confirmed what’s in them, I’m going to need priority time on your cargo-handling teams to make sure their contents are where they need to be.”
“I’ll make a note and get back to you,” he snapped. “You’re not on my priority list, ‘Commander.’”
The air quotes around her rank were audible, and Morgan swallowed her anger again.
“I suggest you check again, under the section listed as ‘the Vice Admiral’s direct orders,’ Commander,” she told him icily. “Or do I need to bring this conversation to both Vice Admiral Rolfson and Rear Admiral Sun’s attention before you, say, do your damned job?”
“Watch yourself, Casimir. You’re talking to a superior officer,” he snapped. “Regardless of what insignia you hang on your collar.”
“I don’t give two shits what your date of rank is, so long as you do your job,” Morgan replied. “Right now, I need to know how many hyperspace missiles we have access to. Whether or not I get those deployed in time will decide whether you and the poor bastards on the planet below get to live through the next twenty-four hours.
“So, either you can give me the authorizations and data I need, or I will take this to Vice Admiral Rolfson. How do charges of ‘impeding the common defense’ sound to your ‘superior officer’ self…sir?”
He was speechless for several seconds, staring at her in shock.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he hissed.
“One hundred million civilians,” Morgan said quietly. “Do you really think I’ll stack your offended sense of propriety against their lives? Are you really going to put that above their lives?”
Her voice had edged back up to somewhere around freezing, but she was holding his gaze now. She didn’t want to ruin the man’s career because he was stressed and overreacting—but she also needed those missiles.
“I’ll…” He coughed, then swallowed. “I’ll have the files on those containers over to you in a couple of minutes and let my tug crews know to expect to hear from you.”
“Thank you, Commander Rogers.” She smiled. “Given the stress we’re all under, I don’t think this needs to be mentioned to anyone, do you?”
The shipment from Earth was better than Morgan had dared hope. It looked like basically every hyperspace weapon that wasn’t currently loaded aboard a warship or defense platform had been stuffed into the sealed containers and shipped to Asimov.
It wasn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things—there was, for example, a single manufacturing line for S-HSMs in the entire Imperium, hidden inside DragonWorks bubble in Jupiter—but it was enough to make a difference.
A full reload for all the battleships’ S-HSM launchers and another two hundred D-HSMs. That was easily four or five times as many weapons as she’d expected.
She sent orders out to the tug crews to open up the containers. The D-HSMs would get added to the floating array of prepared missiles in Isaac orbit, almost doubling the number of the massive missiles they’d deploy in their first salvo.
The S-HSMs were hopefully already in the reload-packs of five that would drop easily into the Bellerophons’ magazines. That would allow them to rearm the battleships in under ten minutes, doubling the Task Force’s sustained long-range fire.
She noted up everything she’d found and forwarded it to the Admiral’s staff, and went back to her fire plans. The Taljzi didn’t know what was waiting for them, and if the humans were very lucky, that might be enough.
She was still updating her primary fire plan when everything went to hell and the battle stations alert went off.
“Hyper portal!” Masters snapped from
the main command seat. “We have multiple hyper portals on the system perimeter. Fleet orders to battle stations!”
Morgan was left hoping the tugs could work quickly as she turned her console to its battle configuration.
They were out of time.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“What am I looking at?” Rolfson demanded as he barged onto his flag bridge.
“Well, I’m pretty sure ‘nothing’ isn’t the right answer,” Ling Yu told him drily. “So, I’m guessing we’re looking at the Taljzi playing clever buggers. We had at least five separate portals opening. None were large enough for significant formations, but all were big enough for a cruiser or battleship to come through.
“And since we can’t see anything, tachyon scanners or no, I’m guessing the buggers have stealth fields.”
“We learned at Xīn Táiwān that their stealth fields suck,” Rolfson replied. “Is that data enough for us to pick them up?”
“We’re working on it,” she replied. “The call is yours, though: do we want to reveal that we can see through their invisibility cloak just yet?”
“That’ll depend on how many damn ships they have in my system, Captain,” he told her. “Find me some Taljzi.”
He settled into his seat, pulling data onto his personal repeaters while he studied the main tactical plot. All five of the hyper portals were flagged on the big hologram, but that didn’t tell them much. Even under stealth, the Taljzi were maneuvering at half the speed of light. The potential area they could be hiding in was growing almost exponentially with each passing second.
“And…there we go,” Ling Yu reported. “Casimir flagged a battleship here. Hold on.” She held up a hand. “Yup, battleship by portal three. Gisarme has dialed in a pair of cruisers by portal five. We’re relaying the data to the other ships; that should help us…”
Eight more red icons appeared on the screen, and Rolfson grunted in satisfaction. Five hyper portals had thrown out two battleships and eight cruisers, reinforcing the theory that only the Taljzi battleships and cruisers had stealth.
Darkness Beyond (Light of Terra: a Duchy of Terra series Book 1) Page 26
