by Terry Mixon
He hadn’t been subtle when moving his ships into the trailing Trojans to look around. The OWA had had to know exactly where he was to give Falcone an opportunity to search without being detected. He had been the decoy. That meant they had someone watching his ships.
Unfortunately, space was big. If there were only a couple of small ships parked a good distance away from his current location, they’d have an idea of his task force’s disposition. If Brad suddenly moved every ship he possessed, they’d know that he’d found something interesting. Someone would go running back to the OWA fleet and let them know.
He could deal with them, but only if he knew exactly where they were and how many of them were watching.
Brad escorted Falcone back to her shuttle but stopped her at the hatch. “We’ve undoubtedly got a couple of OWA ships monitoring us right now. I’d like you to bring some of your drones around us and locate them. Since we know where the main enemy force is at, it’s time to make sure that we don’t give him a warning when we move.”
She nodded. “And once we have them located, how do you plan on dealing with them?”
“I’ll break off a couple of the smaller units from the group that’s coming to join forces with us. If I bring them in from behind where our observers are located, I can trap them against the fleet and crush them.”
Her eyes narrowed and she slowly shook her head. “That’s too chancy. Why not let me take care of it? I can send some standard drones in once the recon versions have located the bad guys. I can take them out before they get even a single peep of warning to their masters.”
He had to admit that he liked her idea, but he wasn’t sure how it would work. “I understand that your recon drones are heavily stealthed, but what about the combat drones? Every time I’ve been involved with fighting them, they haven’t exactly been the most difficult things to see, even when they had been trying.”
“That’s because the people that have been using them have been idiots,” she said bluntly. “They trust that you’re not looking to see them rather than using the hardware to its best advantage. It’s all fine and good to just cruise in from deep space and hope no one notices you, but there are a number of things you can do to decrease the chances of being spotted at all, even without having drones that are more heavily stealthed than normal.
“Which, by the way, my drones are more heavily stealthed than the ones Fleet had provided to the regular units. The whole goal of having an Agency drone carrier was to make sure that no one saw us before we used it. And that included making sure that no witnesses were left behind when we’d finished attacking them.”
“So, how does it work?” he asked. “What kind of maneuvers can you execute to reduce the chances of being spotted?”
She grinned. “The way that they’re going to see any drones coming at them is either through heat signature or the drone blocking a light source. In this case, a star. We’ll come in slow and steady. If the drones are moving directly toward their targets, then they won’t be blocking out stars in an arc of space as they move. Just the ones directly behind them.
“That’s going to take someone very observant to spot them under these circumstances. Also, if you can do something to get their attention at the right moment, they’ll definitely not be looking for what’s about to happen to them”
He nodded. “I think I can work something out.”
“Exactly what are we doing again, Admiral?” Captain Nah asked over the link between the flag bridge and the cruiser’s regular bridge. “It looks as if we’re playing shuffle-the-fleet.”
“Is that a real thing?” Brad asked, raising one eyebrow.
“It can be,” she admitted. “It’s not usually so blatant, however.”
He grinned. “We’ve got some OWA ships monitoring our position. We’re going to take them out before we move to the refueling facility.”
“Don’t you think you should tell me where they are so that we can get ships into position? Or are you planning on using the reinforcements that will be here in a few hours?”
“Neither. We’ve got an unseen ally who’s going to take care of them for us.
“I’m not exactly happy to have an unseen ally at all,” the Fleet captain said. “Don’t you think I should know who all the players are? Or is this something that only the flag officers know?”
He shook his head. “Thus far, I haven’t told anyone. The flag officers do know that we have an ally working behind the scenes, but I haven’t mentioned any specific details to them at this point.
“I’ll be doing so as soon as we start laying out the plan to attack the OWA ships, though. As soon as I do, you’ll be the very next person I tell.”
That didn’t seem to satisfy the Fleet officer, but she apparently knew the futility of arguing with an Admiral. “As you say, sir. When will the attack take place?”
He checked the time. “Everything should go to pieces for the bad guys in just a few more minutes.”
Captain Nah grunted slightly. “Shouldn’t we be seeing something, then? The sensors are still not showing any forces moving to engage the hostile ships you’ve identified. Everdark, we can’t even see them on our sensors.”
“That’s kind of the point. By the time they realize that they’re being stalked, they’ll be dead. We can’t afford to let them get off a warning, or a lot of this starts coming apart.”
His flag captain started to say something, but her attention swiveled to the screen just to the side of her video pickup. “We’re detecting explosions at the points indicated, Admiral. A lot of explosions. Multiple torpedoes seem to have impacted the observers.”
“Dispatch some of the smaller ships to verify the destruction of the enemy ships and pick up any survivors,” he ordered.
“Sir, how can you be so sure that those three ships belonged to the OWA?”
“It’s remotely possible that one of them didn’t,” he admitted. “That said, the odds of that are extremely small.
“If they didn’t belong to the OWA, then they were the stupidest people I’ve met in recent memory. I couldn’t take that chance.”
Nah nodded. “I think you’re right and I’m not going to lose any sleep over them; I just wanted to ask. I’ll see that we get the area searched, but I can already tell you that no one is transmitting from those locations unless they’re very good. Whoever they were, our secret ally took them out before they had a chance to warn the OWA force.”
“Excellent. I’ll get on the line with Commodore Bailey and we’ll start planning what happens when Commodore Nuremberg arrives.”
Once Nuremberg arrived, Brad had the ships of his fleet move away from the area they’d been supposedly searching while the Agency carrier had done the real work of locating the enemy forces.
The final attack plan was relatively straightforward when it came to the OWA ships. Commodore Nuremberg would be the hammer and his ships would be the anvil. The drones from the carrier would be the shiv he stuck in the OWA’s back during the first confused moments of the fight.
Before any of his ships could get into place, he had to pre-position the Marines for their assault. Brad had no idea what kind of defenses the refueling operation had, but if they caught the Marines on their inbound leg, it would get ugly fast.
That meant Brad stopped his forces a bit farther out from the OWA ships than he might have otherwise done. Every Marine they had boarded their assault shuttles and left the fleet on a low-energy course that would see them approach the asteroid from the least active side.
Since the small craft were taking their time, Brad just had to hope that nothing came along to disrupt everything before they arrived. If the OWA ships detected any of his own vessels, the resultant squawking would leave the Marines hanging there in the middle of nowhere.
So, of course, the Marines were about three-quarters of the way to making their final attack run when Brad received a tightbeam message from Falcone. As her carrier was participating in the fight, at least this me
ssage was in real time.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said grimly.
“Why did I know you were going to say that?” Brad said with a sigh. “What’s wrong?”
“One of my outermost recon drones has picked up a group of incoming ships. They don’t look like combatants. In fact, I know they’re not. Some of my people have been nosing around the settlements, and we finally got word about what all the ships that are coming and going from the refueling facility are for.
“The OWA is using skilled locals as slave labor to build and expand the refueling facility. By now, it has to be mostly done, but none of the people they’ve kidnapped have returned home. They’re still down there.”
That made a sick kind of sense. The Cadre had never shied away from keeping their prisoners in a handy location where they could execute them when they were finished using them. Why should he expect that the OWA was any different?
What he wasn’t sure of was how that changed his options.
“Did your people get any idea of how many prisoners they’re holding?” he asked.
“That’s the ugly part. My best guess is that they’ve probably got somewhere between seven hundred and a thousand people down there, not counting the ones that are coming in on these ships.
“Most of them aren’t construction people; they’re friends, relatives, and children to use as hostages against the skilled prisoners. If they don’t do their very best, someone gets spaced as an example.”
Brad rubbed his face. This was exactly the kind of complication that he didn’t need right now.
The tactically smart move would be to continue exactly as they’d planned. That, however, would be a strategic disaster, even if it wasn’t morally reprehensible.
If he threw thousands of innocent people into the meat grinder without even trying to save them, public sentiment about the Commonwealth would go from negative to outright hatred in a single heartbeat.
“Understood,” he said tiredly. “I think I have just enough time to get some amended orders to the Marines. They’re going to have to divert part of their forces to locate and protect the civilians.
“Once the fighting starts, we’re going to have to finish the enemy ships as rapidly as possible and then get down there to help. There’s no way that the forces we sent can successfully execute both missions. They’re going to have to have us backing them up and fast.”
That meant he’d have to take out the OWA ships in the alpha strike or he’d never be able to get the unarmed shuttles down to reinforce the Marines. If that happened, he might lose them all.
He couldn’t fail. He wouldn’t fail.
Chapter Twenty-Six
For once, things worked out almost exactly as he’d planned, at least as far as the space attack went. Brad had gotten his ships into position just in time. Commodore Nuremberg struck from the dark space beyond the refueling facility with no warning, her ships laying down heavy fire right on schedule.
Commodore Bailey had her Bound-class destroyers firing so that their mass-driver rounds would arrive immediately after the attacking force revealed itself. No need to give them early warning or fire after the enemy ships had already started moving.
The OWA ships turned to fire at Commodore Nuremberg’s cruisers only to receive Brad’s torpedoes straight from behind. Caught between the opposing forces, they had no easy way to defend themselves.
That difficulty became much more severe when Falcone’s drones opened fire, completing the surrounding globe of attack. With torpedoes coming from every direction, the enemy coordination disintegrated, and they tried to flee in every direction.
They were unsuccessful.
In fact, their lack of supporting fire for one another resulted in the destruction of each and every enemy ship, and they managed to inflict only slight damage on his ships.
Brad was elated. He’d had to slog through every single fight against the Cadre and the OWA. All too often, they got the edge and he got the shaft. He couldn’t expect this type of good luck every single fight, but with the toughest battle of his life looming in his future, he’d take it this time.
As soon as he was certain that the fighting was over, he got the other flag officers and Falcone on the com. “Commodore Bailey, you’re in charge of search and rescue. If we can find survivors to give us any information about what the OWA has planned, that would be helpful. Commodore Nuremberg, you’re in charge of overwatch. If somebody else comes in looking for a fight, I want you to give it to them.”
Nuremberg nodded. “What about Agent Falcone’s carrier?”
He’d explained exactly who Falcone was as they’d planned this attack. Neither of the Fleet officers had seemed shocked by her appearance, though the carrier had been a welcome surprise.
“She’ll spread her recon drones out beyond where you’re looking to provide an early warning in case someone tries something fancy.
“I’m particularly worried about additional ships carrying prisoners. If they come along, we’re going to have to seize them and liberate the civilians.”
“And the ground assault?” Commodore Bailey asked.
“We’ve gotten word that the Marines landed safely and have launched their attack,” Brad said. “I’d like you to send a few smaller ships toward the facility, Commodore Bailey. The shuttles with our non-Marine fighters will come in behind your shield, and you’ll provide covering fire to make sure they land safely. If anything shoots at them, take it out.”
“You bet your ass I will,” Bailey said. “Agent Falcone already identified the heaviest weapons clusters, so we’ll take them out first. Anything smaller than that, we can handle on the fly.”
“Then let’s get busy,” Brad said. “We don’t want to give them any more time than we must to kill prisoners or destroy information.”
With that, he dropped the Commodores from the feed and turned his attention to Falcone. “At a guess, the Marines have maybe a sixty percent chance of carrying out both of their mission objectives. Maybe a ninety percent chance of winning one of their two fights if they devoted their full force to the objective.
“In any case, that battle is going to be over soon. We have to plan for what happens after we take the refueling facility.”
She nodded. “The next step is freeing the rest of the trailing Trojans. It’s obvious from what Dr. Duvall told us that the OWA has people everywhere to make sure that no one that comes visiting sees something they shouldn’t. We’ve got to dig them out.”
Brad rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly. “We’ll start that as soon as we suppress them here. One way or the other, the fighting here is going to be over too quickly for them to really dig in. That’s not going to be true with the rest of the settlements. They have to know that no matter what they called themselves, we’ll treat them like pirates. They’ll fight to the death.”
“Of course they will,” she said. “Nothing is ever is easy as we’d like, but we’ve got tens of thousands of people to save in the trailing Trojans. A cold-blooded man would say that he had more important things to focus his attention on, with the attack that’s bound to come at Jupiter before much longer. That’s not you, Brad. You care about these people and you’re going to see them freed.”
He didn’t even pretend that that wasn’t true. “You know me too well. I just can’t stand by and watch scum like this hurt innocent people.”
“Well, we’d best get you down to the refueling facility so you can take charge of protecting the people there,” she said. “You know that’s the angle you’re best suited for.”
He smiled at that. “Bailey and Nuremberg aren’t going to be happy about that.”
“Tell them to complain to management. You’re the man in charge, so you get to call the shots. My shuttles should land about the same time as yours, so I’ll see you there. Let’s go kill some Cadre scum.”
As soon as Brad’s shuttle launched, he saw that his hopes of slipping away to fight unnoticed were doomed. His shuttle was i
mmediately bracketed by a pair of frigates. They fell in on either side of him and made no bones about their intent to shield his shuttle all the way in.
The ride in wasn’t nearly as exciting as some of his landings under fire, but that didn’t mean it went without issue. Commodore Bailey’s ships had taken out the large weapons platforms before any of the second wave made it close to the refuelling facility.
Even though the defenders had to know they were coming, the OWA had never planned to stand off a major attack without support ships. Concealment had been their best defense and now it was gone.
Once the primary defensive clusters were destroyed, it was simply a matter of taking out each launcher that revealed itself after that. The defenses fell silent fast, either from destruction or learning the age-old lesson that the nail that stood up was struck down.
The Marines had breached a major ore-loading bay and that was where Brad’s shuttles landed. It was a good thing that the bay was huge, because the assault shuttles took up a lot of the space even before his shuttles landed.
He saw a platoon of heavily armed and armored Marines waiting for his shuttle. They’d known exactly where he was.
Major Papadakis’s voice came over the command circuit as soon as the hatch opened, and the armed Fleet personnel started flowing out under the shouted orders of various Chief Petty Officers.
They all wore unpowered Fleet Marine armor. He had his mercenary armor on but kept his helmet off so that he could see more clearly. Falcone trotted over even as he gave in to the inevitable.
“Don’t think I don’t know where you’re hiding, Admiral,” Papadakis said dryly. “You might as well come out.”
“I’ll have you know that I’m not hiding,” he huffed as he came out, his eyes already taking in the forces in the bay and planning how to get them where they needed to be most effectively. “Who ratted me out? Captain Nah?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” the Marine officer said virtuously. “And before you get set on leading a charge into the teeth of the enemy, let me assure you that I’ll take a court-martial before I let that happen. You might be here to fight, but you’d best have some realistic expectations. Sir.”
