by Terry Mixon
“Their control of the region was built on four pillars. The first was hostages, the same workers they needed to build Warren’s Folly into the station we just took control of. Those hostages are now free and will be acting as our ambassadors to their home stations.
“The second pillar was fear of the squadrons anchored at the Folly,” she continued. “Even a corvette is capable of wrecking most colonies and stations with a solid torpedo salvo. At a minimum, it looks like first the Independence Militia and then the OWN maintained multiple destroyers to cover the Folly.
“They’re gone. No one is going to be bombarding those colonies from space now.”
Falcone waved her hand, and red icons lit up every one of the major colonies and most of the minor ones.
“The red dots mark the third pillar of control, the one that’s still in play. Those are Outer Worlds Alliance regulars. Combat troops, not necessarily equal to the commandos that defended the Folly, but still trained soldiers. Each of those dots marks between a squad and a company of soldiers.
“The biggest problem, however, is their fourth pillar: every damn station and colony in the cluster has been wired with explosives.
“Attached to this report is as much information as we have on the OWA deployment strengths and the location of the explosives. We’re looking at about three thousand troops scattered throughout the cluster.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’ve got about six thousand to send against them,” Saburo said as he rose to take over the briefing.
“The good news to all of this mess is that our Agency friends have confirmed that there is no central control for the explosives. Each station’s bombs are under the control of the senior OWA officers present—and at this point, most of these guys are neither commandos nor Cadre.
“We have a reasonable chance of demanding surrenders and getting them. The problem is that if we demand those surrenders and we misjudge the officer with the button, a lot of people die.”
Saburo paused, letting that sink in.
“So, what’s the plan, General?” Brad asked. “The Fleet is ready to support in any way possible, but this is a ground show—and it’s a Mercenary Guild show.
“It has to be.”
“The biggest thing I need from the Fleet is the mother of all jamming fields,” Saburo told him. “If we can concentrate our forces on a minimum number of targets, this job gets a lot easier. If they can talk to each other, though, then we need to hit them all simultaneously.”
“I think we can manage that,” Brad promised. “If nothing else, we have a small stockpile of OWA gear we can repurpose for just about anything.”
“That helps a lot,” Saburo replied. “If we can keep them cut off, we’ll start with the largest settlements and work our way down. This won’t be fast, people. Station by station. Corridor by corridor. We accept surrenders, we treat them as enemy combatants, but we clear these platforms.
“We have to.” Saburo shook his head. “We can’t trust that the OWA doesn’t have fanatics willing to start pushing buttons.”
Brad had about enough time to order his people to get starting on the jamming field before Falcone arrived in his office.
“Do we have enough repeaters?” he asked Captain Nah, gesturing the Agency operative to a seat.
“We probably would have on our own, but the OWA supplies contained a stash of com buoys,” Nah told him. “We’ll repurpose those as jammers before we dig into our own stockpiles. That’s the advantage of capturing an enemy logistics base, Admiral: no shortages!”
“Well, let’s get on using the OWA’s gear against them. Let me know if you need an Admiral-sized hammer for anything,” Brad said.
“Will do, sir.”
The channel closed and Brad turned his attention on Falcone.
“You’re heading out, Kate?” he asked.
“We are,” she confirmed. “My crew is just finishing up cramming spare drones into every open space aboard Hades.”
He arched an eyebrow at her.
“Folly had two full carrier loads of Javelins,” she explained. “Since the only supply source I know of for those is a factory floating off the Ivory Coast on Earth, I’m not turning down a spare hundred or so fighters.”
“Can you fit them aboard?” Brad asked.
“With difficulty,” she conceded. “Last estimate I saw was that we were going to be able to fit an extra fifty drones, though we’re still going to be limited to deploying thirty at a time.”
“That’s not a bad supply of backups, though. Do you need anything else from me?”
“I’ll take you up on that escort if you’ve got any Invictuses or Warriors to spare,” she admitted. “I want to sneak up on that meteor swarm, so I need modern ships with modern stealth, but something about the situation is making me twitchy.”
Brad pulled up his current fleet order to confirm his initial instinct.
“I only have three Warriors with me, and I need their scanners and weapons for the landing ops,” he told her. “I do have a pair of Invictuses: Defiant and Invaincu. I’ll have orders cut for Commanders Johnson and Naumov to second themselves to your command.”
He paused and considered. He didn’t even know who Hades’s captain was.
“Or should I second them to the carrier CO?” he asked.
“I’ll handle them,” Falcone replied. “The fewer Agency names we admit to, the better.”
“Even if the OWA knows them all already?” Brad said.
“Outer Worlds Intelligence knows most of our key operatives,” she agreed. “But we don’t know which ones and we don’t know how much of that they’ve passed on to the OWN. There is a point to continuing the secrecy, Brad.”
“I know.”
“Speaking of secrecy, I assume your office is secure?” she asked.
“If it’s not, heads will roll, but…” Brad smiled. He’d been a mercenary before he’d been a fleet commander, and for all that he appeared to have given the Commonwealth his life now, he still didn’t fully trust the Fleet.
He pulled a combined jammer and white-noise generator out of his desk. It was hidden inside a nondescript bag that just happened to have enough copper and lead in its design to frustrate sensors.
He checked the telltales, then turned the device on.
“Now nobody knows what’s going on in here,” he concluded.
“Including your own security.” Falcone sighed. “Promise me that you won’t use that for anything else? The more often you use it, whether it’s for meetings with me or meetings with Michelle, the less likely your people are to question your office disappearing off the air.
“That makes you vulnerable.”
Brad nodded his understanding.
“What did you need, Kate?” he asked, his voice serious. If she wanted this completely off the record, he’d take it completely off the record.
“Immortal is still the key to all of this,” she told him. “The mutiny override may be our only hope.”
“And trying to get to it is a suicide mission,” he countered.
“You want to tell me that taking your First Fleet against your brother’s First Fleet won’t be?” Falcone said bluntly. “You both are going to have about a hundred and fifty escorts. You’ve got ten cruisers; best guess is he’ll have five. He’s got at least three carriers; you have two—and that’s assuming Hades gets back in time.
“Most of his escorts and cruisers are more up to date than yours. Everything shakes out slightly in your favor…except that Immortal could obliterate your entire fleet. You need a plan.”
“I need a better plan than trying to infiltrate the Fleet CO and a boarding force onto the enemy flagship in the middle of an open space battle,” Brad pointed out.
“I have an answer for that, at least,” she said. “As everyone keeps reminding you, we can’t risk you. You’re the only thing holding this tentative alliance against the Lord Protector together.
“And you’re the only tool we have
here, so we need to make sure you manage to get there.”
“I’m feeling so much more confident,” he replied. “What have you got?”
“Hades has a long-range stealth insertion ship,” Falcone told him. “It’s a glorified boarding torpedo, and once its heat sinks are used up, they’re gone…but it should suffice to get you and an elite team to Immortal.
“She’s a battleship, Kate,” Brad pointed out. “A ‘team’ isn’t going to cut it. She’ll have a couple hundred Marines aboard.”
“A Fleet battleship would,” she replied. “Our intel says that your brother is being a paranoid bastard. Immortal’s armories are either empty or in hard lockdown. He’s brought a contingent of his elite Praetorians with him, but they’re the only armed troops aboard the ship.”
“Praetorians?” Brad asked. “Really?”
“He picked the name himself,” Falcone confirmed. “I thought he was enough of a history buff to see the problem, but apparently not. Sadly, these Praetorians are pretty resistant to bribery.”
“Let me guess, you tried?”
“The Agency did, at least.” She shrugged. “No dice. The good news, though, is that while there are somewhere between thirty and sixty of Jack Mantruso’s most loyal troops aboard Immortal, they’re it. And there’s only thirty to sixty of them.”
“This is still a damn suicide mission,” Brad replied, but he sighed. “Transfer your boarding torpedo to Incredible. If nothing else, I’m pretty sure we’re carrying the only sets of power armor off of Earth.”
“Yeah, because those suits need a bigger logistics train than tanks,” Falcone pointed out. “Thirty-minute operating life, Brad.”
“That will get us to my brother,” he said. “I’m looking for other plans, Kate, but I’m not ruling yours out. Find out what’s going on at that asteroid cluster and fill me in.
“After that, this is a waiting game. I’m more likely to get reinforcements now than my brother.”
There were ships still being repaired in Mars orbit and new crews being assembled for ships in Earth orbit. Plus, the yards were working overtime to recommission mothballed cruisers and destroyers.
He wasn’t going to see a lot of reinforcements anytime soon, but time was his friend, not the Lord Protector’s.
“Are you sure of that?” Falcone said quietly. “He knew this war was coming. We didn’t. So far, we think all of his ships came from the Inner System yards, but…do we really want to bet the future of the human race on the OWA not having shipyards?”
“Don’t you have a meteor swarm to be investigating?” Brad asked plaintively.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It had been made very clear to Brad that there was no way in Everdark he was going to be participating in these landing actions. Instead, he sat on Incredible’s flag deck and watched thousands of soldiers go into battle on his command…and did nothing.
Four major operations went into action simultaneously, hitting the largest concentrations of OWA troops. Saburo led one op, Papadakis led another. Commodore William Branson of Heimdall’s Raiders led the third operation, and Major Rashmi Boyce of the Commonwealth Marines was in charge of the last.
All were about half-and-half mercenaries and Marines, with the mercs leading the way.
Brad’s own ship was backing up Papadakis, and he watched in silence as two of Incredible’s secondary mass drivers opened fire. The cruiser’s big guns could have ripped Bordeaux Station into tiny pieces, but that was not their goal.
The target for those two guns was an innocuous-looking hydroponics facility near the center of the gangly conglomerate of girders, cargo containers, old ships, and small asteroids that made up the trailing Trojans’ second-largest settlement.
An innocent-enough facility—except for the not-quite-well-enough-concealed radiation signatures that told Brad’s people it contained enough plutonium for at least three fission bombs.
Fission bombs, however, needed to ignite properly—and being scattered across open space by high-velocity solid slugs was nothing of the sort.
“Nukes disabled,” Nah reported. “You are go!”
“Hit them!” Papadakis barked, and new icons lit up on Brad’s screens.
The cruiser had approached under stealth, her systems more than sufficient to hide them from a civilian station’s scanners, and sent the assault shuttles ahead via a ballistic course.
Now that the bombs were supposed to be disabled, the shuttles’ engines were coming to life at maximum power. The small craft were adjusting course to impact the station and slowing down to hit at velocities less than cataclysmic.
“Team Alpha is in,” Papadakis reported. “They’re heading right for the secondary bombs. No resi—”
Gunfire on one of the secondary channels cut her off.
“Team Alpha has hit resistance,” the Marine Major concluded. “Reports are saying the bombs are guarded by commandos, not regulars. Other teams are in; we are deploying through the station.”
There was nothing Brad could do from Incredible’s flag deck. The cruiser’s involvement in this fight was over. He had a thousand people on that station…and if he even twitched towards a shuttle, he was going to end up tied to his chair.
Command sucked.
“Bastille is under our control,” Saburo reported. His message was being relayed through the Warrior-class destroyer Kitchener and then sent by laser directly to Incredible. The other colony was close enough that they could have had a real-time conversation, but a recording was the best option for avoiding confusion and saving time.
“The explosives were under guard by commandos, but once we’d taken them out and secured control of the main life-support facilities, the regulars surrendered in good order.” He shook his head. “The fighting was ugly before that. We’re still assembling our casualty reports. Their regulars might not be fanatics like the commandos, but they’re still frustratingly well trained and equipped.”
With that, Saburo saluted and the recording ended. It seemed that Brad’s Vikings were having better luck than his Marines.
“Papadakis, what’s your status?” he asked over the channel to the Marine commander.
“Half of Team Alpha is dead and most of the rest are wounded,” she told him grimly. “But they pulled it off. I just got confirmation the bombs are disabled. We’re pushing the regulars back across the station, but they’re dug-in and well equipped.”
She paused.
“About the only good news I can see is that they seem to have evacuated civilians before they dug in. This is ugly, urban fighting inside a space station, and they don’t seem inclined to surrender, but they’re at least fighting like soldiers.”
“What about the life support?” Brad asked.
“They control it and they’re trying to fuck with us with it,” she admitted. “I equipped my people for vacuum and it’s saving our butts. I think that might be why they evacuated the civilians. Cadre might have been willing to massacre innocents to hurt us, but these guys are playing by the rules.”
That was the first time since the OWA had been announced that Brad had heard one of his people draw that distinction and really mean it. That was, he supposed, the upside of the Phoenix building a nation and using its resources to fight a war:
Most of the people fighting for that nation weren’t the monsters the Cadre had recruited as a matter of habit.
“Do you need reinforcements?” he asked. “Saburo has secured Bastille; we should be able to—”
“Sir! Scan data from Istantinople.”
Brad turned to catch the main display. The sensor tech that had been shouting for his attention had already loaded the information onto the display, and his heart sank.
He’d known from the moment someone had said scan data instead of message, but it still hurt to watch the bombs go off.
Istantinople had been Branson’s target, and like everywhere else, they’d intended to disable the nukes with fire from the starships. It looked like there had
been a second set of nukes they hadn’t known about, instead of the more conventional explosives used as backups elsewhere.
The third-largest settlement in the trailing Trojan cluster was now an expanding gas cloud, along with a thousand mercenaries and Marines.
“We have the situation here under control,” Papadakis said grimly. “I’m guessing that wasn’t good news.”
“Istantinople is gone,” he told her. “Fifty thousand people…”
“That’s why they have damned commandos here, Admiral,” the Marine told him. “I don’t think most of the regulars would blow the stations…but the commandos are Cadre to the core. Fanatics with nukes.”
“Secure that station, Major,” Brad ordered. “Incredible will move to perform search and rescue at Istantinople. We’ll leave Axiom and Reliant to back you up.”
Those were older destroyers, more than enough to provide space fire support.
“Send me recordings,” Papadakis requested. “If I run that through the station’s emergency alert system, I bet I can get a few surrenders.”
“Done.” Brad shook his head as Incredible started to move. He hadn’t even given Nah orders yet.
The Fleet simply knew that they couldn’t stand by.
By the time they made it to the wreckage of Istantinople, the other primary strikes were over. As Papadakis had suggested, the image of an entire station of fifty thousand people vanishing in a ball of nuclear fire had a salutary effect on the OWA regulars.
Three stations and two hundred thousand people were now in Commonwealth hands. That left two hundred and fifty thousand people spread across ten major and twenty minor platforms—but the vast majority of the remaining troops were regulars.
They’d already met more commandos than Brad had expected. The bombs had been supposed to be under the control of the COs…but it appeared that the commando squads had as much faith in those officers’ willingness to blow the stations as Brad did.
“Papadakis, Saburo, Boyce, I need you to get on questioning your prisoners ASAP,” he told the three ground commanders. “At this point, I’m guessing we can get the regulars to surrender once it’s clear we control the space around the stations and can board them at will, so I need to know where every damn commando in the cluster is.”
