CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TFNS Somaskanda
Bellerophon System
Free Worlds Alliance
January 12, 2553
Admiral Elijah Jorgensen stared at the plot in disbelief.
About him, TFNS Somaskanda’s flag bridge was a silent, stunned mirror of the shock rolling through his own brain. His task group flagship and the Bellerophon Expeditionary Force’s transports had been five light-minutes astern of the fleet flagship, so there’d been no point deploying Heimdallars of his own, since he was receiving the take from Admiral Hathaway’s platforms. He wished now that he had deployed them. Wished he had a better picture of just what the hell had happened in that savage, brutally short engagement. Wished he had a closer look at what was left of the rest of Ninth Fleet and—even more—of the mutineers.
Not that he really wanted “a closer look” at what was probably the worst disaster in the Terran Federation Navy’s history. Still—
“Force estimate?” he made himself ask into the singing silence.
“It—” Commander Linda Zalewska, his Operations Officer, had to stop, clear her throat.
“It looks like all of Admiral Hathaway’s carriers are gone, Sir,” she said then. “We’re reading active transponders on twelve of his parasites, but nine of them are Code Omega. Three of his battleships and battlecruisers…may be combat capable. It’s just impossible to tell from here.”
Jorgensen winced. Hathaway’s FTLCs had entered the system with a hundred and twenty sublight warships, and now three of them might be fit for combat?! That was…that was…
He couldn’t come up with a word for what it was.
“And the mutineers?” His voice was harder and harsher.
“Admiral Hathaway took out six of their carriers,” Zalewska replied. “Hard kills. At least one of the survivors still has her drive fan, but from her emission signature, she got hit hard. The other one looks to have even more damage and there’s no sign of her Fasset drive. I think she has to be counted a complete mission-kill at this point.”
Six enemy FTLCs—seven, if he counted the mission-kill—were a piss-poor exchange for twelve of their own, Jorgensen thought, but he sensed the ripple of savage satisfaction blowing through the flag bridge personnel.
“And their parasites?”
“Admiral Hathaway concentrated his fire on their carriers,” Zalewska said. “It looks like at least three quarters of their sublight platforms are still there. Based on the last tac upload from Dione, CIC is estimating twenty-five to thirty Canadas and six to ten Oceans are probably still combat capable.”
Jorgensen’s jaw tightened. All three of TG 901.3’s FTLCs were Vishnu-class ships with 1,700-foot parasite racks. Ninth Fleet hadn’t wasted any rack space stowing cruisers or destroyers, so that gave him thirty capital ships of his own: fifteen Conqueror-class battleships and fifteen Ocean-class battlecruisers. That was a lot of firepower, but even CIC’s most optimistic estimate gave the mutineers’ parity in total platform numbers. Even though the Canadas were an older, slightly smaller design than his own Conquerors, they were just as heavily armed…and the enemy had twice as many of them. Assuming they were undamaged—which, admittedly, they probably weren’t—he’d be screwed if he went in against them. And even if they were damaged, it was highly unlikely his nine-ship advantage in battlecruisers would even the odds.
Jorgensen glared at the plot, then looked at his astrogator.
“Side vector, Hamish,” he said. “Keep us clear of the bastards.”
“Yes, Sir,” Commander Whitworth acknowledged, and the line indicating TG 901.3’s vector began to bend away from Lauren Carson’s survivors.
Jorgensen watched it for a moment, then swiveled his chair to face his staff.
“Do we have any better idea what the hell they did to us?” he demanded.
“Nothing definite, Sir,” Captain Jesus Romero, TG 901.3’s chief of staff, said grimly. “Best we can do at this point is guess.”
“If you’ve got anything, don’t keep it to yourself,” Jorgensen half snapped.
Romero had been replaying the brutal, point-blank massacre while Zalewska worked on the numbers. Now he turned, anchoring his toe to one of the tactical rating’s bridge chairs in the microgravity, and faced Jorgensen squarely.
“It was obviously missiles,” he said. “All those frigging Hauptman signatures make that much clear. But nobody’s ever thrown that many missiles into someone’s face that way before. Hell, nobody’s ever even tried to, Sir! No way in hell we could’ve expected it or Admiral Hathaway could’ve seen it coming, even if the bastards hadn’t gone for that intercept profile, because nobody ever had that many missiles to throw! But it must’ve been from those ‘drones’ his sensors picked up just before they engaged. That suggests they deployed some sort of missile carrier. The numbers were down on their parasites, so I’m guessing—but it’s only a guess, Sir—that they must’ve loaded the missile drones in cargo pods that displaced some of their sublight platforms.”
“But where did the frigging drones come from, Sir?” Zalewska asked. She shook her head. “I think you nailed what they did. I just can’t see where they got the pods—and all those damned missiles—to do it with.”
“I think it’s pretty obvious ONI’s analysis of what the hell is going on our here was just a bit off,” Jorgensen said bitingly. They looked at him, and he shrugged. “We knew from what that Devinger Lines freighter picked up that Bellerophon planned on joining something called the ‘Free Worlds Alliance,’ but no one had any idea what the hell that was. What it consisted of. Well, I think we just found out.”
“Sir?” Zalewska looked puzzled, and he barked a laugh.
“There’s only one place it could have been, Linda. This has to’ve come out of Concordia. Assuming there’s any truth at all to what ‘Governor Murphy’s’ supposed to’ve done to the Leaguies in New Dublin, those missiles have to be the way he did it, and the only way he could’ve had the pods was if he’d built the damned things in-system. Which means New Dublin has the production lines in place to build still more of them.” He saw Zalewska’s eyes flicker at the thought of what weapons like that meant for systems that went out of compliance. “But the important point right now is that if they’re here now, then Bellerophon’s ‘Free Worlds Alliance’ has to’ve started out in Concordia.”
“Does that mean Murphy is behind this whole thing, Sir?” Romero asked. “Do you think he’s that far gone?”
“I have no idea,” Jurgensen said grimly. “The fact that they’re here already, that they actually beat us here from Sol, suggests Bellerophon must have been in contact with somebody in Concordia before they decided to secede. I wouldn’t have believed any flag officer could have been so far gone as to throw in with a bunch of outright rebels, but we certainly have to consider the possibility, don’t we? And even if he tried to suppress the ‘Free Worlds’ instead of joining them, he sure as hell didn’t succeed! Those friggng pods woouldn’t be here if he had.”
There was silence for a moment and Romero nodded thoughtfully. Then his eyes narrowed.
“Do you think he came in person, Sir? Because if he did—”
“If he did, we may well have just killed him.” Jorgensen nodded. “I’d like to hope something good came out of it, anyway. But whether we did or not, the question now is what kind of hard number we have on how many of the damned things there were. And whether or not they used all they had.”
“Dione never got a hard count on the drones,” Romero replied. “And we don’t have any idea how many birds each drone might have carried. Best estimate from CIC is that they hit us with over ten thousand missiles, though, and at that range and velocity with those numbers, they might as well have been K-guns. They blew right through Admiral Hathaway’s intercept zone, especially with his parasites still in that close.”
Jorgensen nodded again. It was a miracle Hathaway had gotten his parasites away at all, but they’d been given far too little time to provide any proper depth for missile defense.
“Without knowing how many drones they had or even how many missiles each drone carried, there’s no way to realistically estimate if they flushed them all,” Romero continued grimly. “In their place, I’d have been inclined to do just that, especially if they didn’t know we’d come in divided. On the other hand, they probably figured ten thousand missiles at that range would do the job, so if they had still more of the damned things, they might have decided to hang on to them, instead.”
“Agreed. But I don’t have any intention of letting them prove that to us the hard way,” Jorgensen said with a thin smile.
“Excuse me, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Nandy said, “but—”
“Let me guess, Girish.” Jorgensen interrupted his comm officer bleakly. “General Alaimo wants to talk to me.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Of course he does, Jorgensen thought. Not like I have anything else I should be dealing with right this minute, is it?
He’d never met Taskin Alaimo. Their paths had never crossed—for which Jorgensen was grateful—before Ninth Fleet got rushed off to Bellerophon, and he’d been completely happy to let Admiral Hathaway deal with him. Jorgensen knew he wasn’t an especially imaginative man, and some things, like the stories that had come out of Gobelins, made him grateful for that. Unfortunately, he wasn’t totally without imagination, and that meant he already felt sick to his stomach thinking about Bellerophon and the fact that he’d just inherited command of the naval side of what was about to happen.
He was a Heart Worlder, of course. The Oval—and the Five Hundred—wouldn’t have tolerated a flag officer who wasn’t, under the circumstances. And he understood why Bellerophon’s treason couldn’t be allowed to stand. That didn’t mean he had to like what it would take to crush that treason, though. And he knew now that a part of him had been hiding behind Hathaway, hiding behind the fact that he’d only be “following orders” when the time came. The fact that he wasn’t the one who’d be making the decisions the history books would never forget.
But now he was, and he inhaled deeply.
“Put him through, Girish. My number three display.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Jorgensen looked back down as the display by his right knee lit with Taskin Alaimo’s image. He was obviously in one of his transport’s spin sections, since Colonel Rayko Hepner, his slender, fair-haired chief of staff, stood at the far more massive general’s shoulder with what was clearly a comfortable sense of up and down.
Despite which, neither of them looked happy.
“General,” Jorgensen said as calmly and courteously as he could under the circumstances.
“What the hell happened?” Alaimo asked without preamble.
“We’re still trying to put that together,” Jorgensen replied. “We haven’t had much time to look at the data yet,” he added a bit pointedly.
“Captain Saggio says we’re changing course.” Alaimo’s hadn’t raised his voice, and his tone was almost lazy, but something glittered deep in his eyes. “Why are we diverting from Odysseus?”
“We’re not.” Jorgensen looked at him levelly.
“According to Captain Saggio, we are,” Alaimo said almost softly.
Jorgensen considered how to respond to that, and discarded the first two responses that came to mind.
Ernestine Saggio, the senior transport commander, was an experienced, levelheaded officer, who’d suffered the misfortune of having Alaimo for a passenger aboard TFNS Gregor Willmott. She was also a woman of few words, but he was positive she’d never said that they were “diverting from Bellerophon.” Which suggested Alaimo knew even less about naval operations than Jorgensen had feared. And that he wasn’t about to allow ignorance to provoke him into asking the questions that might have enlightened him.
“If that’s what Captain Saggio told you, General, she was mistaken,” he said.
“Are you saying we’re not changing course?” Alaimo demanded in that same soft, lazy tone. “Because if we are, I’m afraid that’s…unacceptable.”
“I didn’t say we weren’t changing course,” Jorgensen replied. “I said we aren’t diverting from Odysseus. And we aren’t. We are changing our approach vector, but under the circumstances, it would be…imprudent not to.”
“Why?”
“Because, General,” Jorgensen said, a bit more sharply than he’d intended to, “I’m pretty sure we just lost somewhere around a hundred thousand Navy men and women and I don’t intend to lose any more.”
“A hundred thousand?” Alaimo repeated, and there was something repellent about his matter-of-fact tone.
“I told you we’re still trying to sort out exactly what happened. But we do know Admiral Hathaway’s entire carrier force has been destroyed. Only a handful of his sublight parasites are still intact. Which means my task group now represents the Navy’s total combat power in the Cyclops Sector.”
“Well, what happened to the traitors?”
“As nearly as we can tell, two of their carriers survived the engagement, but one of them’s lost her Fasset drive. They’re still on their intercept vector, which is why I’ve changed ours. If we’d maintained our original heading and deceleration, we’d have run headlong into them, exactly the way Admiral Hathaway did.”
“Excuse me for asking this, Admiral, but if you have three carriers and they only have two, at least one of which is too badly damaged to maneuver, why aren’t you closing with them, instead?”
The question came out almost idly, and Jorgensen allowed himself to snort.
“Because, General,” he allowed a little deliberate patience to color his own tone, “their carriers may have been hammered—I strongly suspect that Admiral Hathaway concentrated on them deliberately—but something like eighty percent of their sublight warships appear to be combat-capable. That’s twice the effective fighting strength of my own parasite group. I have no intention of engaging against that sort of odds and risking the chance of their getting a shot at the transports.”
“I realize I’m only an Army officer, not an expert on naval tactics, but won’t leaving an intact hostile force in your rear do just that?”
“No, it won’t,” Jorgensen said flatly. Alaimo arched one eyebrow, and the admiral shook his head.
“At the moment, every one of their sublight units is headed for the local Oort Cloud at almost sixty percent of the speed of light, and without Fasset drives of their own, they’ll never be able to kill even a fraction of that velocity. They’re as totally out of the fight here in Bellerophon as if they’d been blown apart with their carriers. So what we’re doing is sidestepping them. General, I don’t care where they go…as long as we don’t run our nose into them. That’s the reason Admiral Hathaway concentrated on killing their carriers.”
“I see.” Alaimo folded his arms and cocked his head, and some of the glitter in his eyes faded. “So you’re not worried about the one carrier they still have operating in your rear?”
“Even assuming that carrier still has all five of her parasite racks—and given the hammering she took, it’s unlikely she does—she can put only ten parasites onto them. We have thirty.” Jorgensen bared his teeth. “I wish they would be stupid enough to engage us at one-to-three odds. But they won’t.”
“I see.” Alaimo cocked his head, his expression thoughtful. “That makes sense. I wish Captain Saggio had bothered to explain it as clearly.”
She probably would have if you’d bothered to ask her about it, Jorgensen thought acidly from behind a calmly attentive expression.
“But I’m still a bit concerned,” the general continued. “I understand the odds you just described are unfavorable, but what happens if another mutinous unit turns up? Joins forces with this batch? Wouldn’t it be better to risk some losses now in order to neutralize the threat we know about?”
“There aren’t any other units to mutiny in Cyclops,” Jorgensen said grimly. “There were only eight carriers deployed to the sector. Apparently, every damn one of them went over to the rebels. And Admiral Hathaway just killed all but two of them.” He shook his head again. “They’ve hurt us worse than I ever thought they could, General, but Admiral Hathaway gutted them in return. There’s nobody else to come sneaking up behind us, and even if there were, we’d pick up their Fasset signatures long before they dropped sublight.”
“I see.” Alaimo considered that for a moment, then smiled. It was a cheerful but somehow ugly smile, and his eyes were bright now.
“I see, indeed,” he repeated. “And I’m sorry to hear about how badly the traitors hurt us. I suppose I’ll just have to make the point of how…unwise that was of them, won’t I?”