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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

TFNS Somaskanda

Bellerophon System

Free Worlds Alliance

January 15, 2553


“Sir, I’m afraid you have a message from General Alaimo.”

Elijah Jorgensen pushed with a toe, turning himself in the microgravity to look at Lieutenant Commander Nandy. He’d arrived on Somaskanda’s flag bridge only five minutes ago, after a somewhat truncated lunch, and there was something about Nandy’s tone. Like the rest of Jorgensen’s staffers, he was appalled by the reports coming up from Odysseus. And, as Jorgensen’s comm officer, he was also the one tasked with monitoring the planetary data channels and news broadcasts. That gave him far too good a look at what was actually happening, including Alaimo’s regular pleas for Odysseus to “see reason” and “return to its loyalty,” which just happened to give him an excuse to “regretfully” report the latest atrocity to which he had been “forced.” Small wonder he hated and despised the general. Even so—

“Really?” The admiral put just an edge of chiding reproof into his tone, then shrugged. “I’ll take it at my station,” he continued, pushing off to his command chair and beckoning for Romero to follow him.

He settled into it, fastened the seatbelt loosely to keep himself there, and nodded to Nandy.

“Ready,” he said, and the surge of distaste he always felt when he was forced to speak to Taskin Alaimo was stronger even than usual when the general appeared on his display. Alaimo wore only fatigue pants and a T-shirt. He looked sweaty, and he held what appeared to be a bloody handkerchief against one ear. Given what he’d heard about Alaimo’s tendency to go…hands-on, Jorgensen was only too certain of what his comm message must have interrupted.

“I’ve received your message, Admiral,” the general said in that lazy, predator’s voice, “and I understand your intent. I do, however, have a few…reservations, shall we say?” He smiled thinly. “While I would never presume to dictate naval tactics to an officer of your experience, as the System Governor of Bellerophon, I believe it would be imprudent to provide any unnecessary information to these people until we’re certain of their identities. Your estimate that they’re friendly units is probably correct, but we can’t know that, now can we? And, frankly, I don’t see any reason the Oval or the Government should have sent a ‘reinforcement’ this powerful to Bellerophon, even if the ships had been immediately available, given that they had no idea of the unfortunately severe losses Admiral Hathaway would suffer. So, as Governor, I’m instructing you to not challenge them immediately. Let’s give them an opportunity to announce their identity before we give them any information about who we are.

“Alaimo, clear.”

“Well, that’s stupid, if you’ll pardon my saying so,” Jesus Romero said, just quietly enough they could both pretend no one else had heard him.

“It’s not the very smartest thing I’ve ever heard,” Jorgensen agreed. “On the other hand, he is the system governor.” He looked up and grimaced at the chief of staff. “At least he’s not telling us we can’t continue to Point Lookout. That’s something.”

“Why do I think you’re trying to make lemonade, Sir?” Romero asked dryly.

“Because you’re such a clever fellow.”

* * *

“Excuse me, Sir,” Commander Zalewska said, fifteen minutes after General Alaimo’s message had arrived. Jorgensen looked at her, and something tightened inside him as her expression registered.

“CIC’s just received an informational update from Captain Sherwood,” she said, and Jorgensen’s stomach twisted even tighter.

Eloise Sherwood commanded TFNS Sentry, the senior battleship survivor of Hathaway’s orphaned parasites. Jorgensen had recovered them and placed them in Odysseus orbit, and Alaimo had used his authority as system governor to detach those ships from TG 901.3’s chain of command. Legally, Jorgensen no longer had any authority over them, but he’d known Sherwood a long time. He was pretty damn certain how she’d felt about the K-strikes her command had been tasked to carry out.

The fact that she’d refused to allow any of the other skippers orbiting Odysseus to execute those strikes said a great deal about her, as well. And he suspected Alaimo would be less than delighted if he discovered she’d been forwarding the details of every one of those strikes in “routine, for your information” transmissions to Somaskanda. It probably wouldn’t matter in the end, but she clearly wanted the Navy to have a complete—and independent—record of what Alaimo had done.

“What sort of update?” he asked after a moment.

Sentry just executed a K-strike on the city of Chios,” Zalewska replied, and Jorgensen’s jaw clenched.

Even leaving aside the hundreds of thousands of deaths Alaimo had already inflicted, any sane commander would have realized what continuing K-strikes on civilian targets would mean for the men and women under his command. Certainly the Odyssian General Tolallis had made that abundantly clear, and Jorgensen didn’t blame him one bit. But Alaimo didn’t care. He was safe from reprisal in their capital city, after all.

“Thank you, Linda,” he said.

“Ah, there was one other thing about Captain Sherwood’s message, Sir,” the ops officer said. Jorgensen cocked an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged. “Apparently, some glitch in the targeting sequence delayed the strike’s execution. I’m not certain what it was, but by the time they straightened it out, the strike went in almost twenty-five minutes late. Although—” there was an undeniable glint of satisfaction in her gray eyes “—Sentry’s fire control lidar had illuminated the target right on schedule. And it seems the point of impact was outside of usual tolerances. It landed on one of the suburbs, not downtown Chios.”

Jorgensen’s lips twitched and he heard Romero snort. Right off the top of his head, the admiral couldn’t think of any reason lidar would have been needed to execute a kinetic strike on a nonmoving target the size of a city. On the other hand, it would have been very easy for the Odyssians to detect.

“She better hope to hell Alaimo doesn’t find out she gave the Odyssians a heads-up,” Romero said very quietly, and Jorgensen nodded.

“Even with twenty-five minutes they won’t have gotten everyone into the shelters,” he replied. “But she just saved a lot of lives, Jesus. And knowing Eloise, she’ll consider that a bargain well-made even if Alaimo does find out.”

* * *

“This is making me a little nervous,” Romero said forty-five minutes later, floating at Jorgensen’s shoulder on Somaskanda’s flag bridge. “If they’re friendlies, why haven’t we heard from them yet?”

That, Jorgensen acknowledged, was an excellent question. One that was causing him more than a few qualms of his own.

The FTL signature they’d been tracking had disappeared from their sensors over two hours ago at an estimated range of 132 LM from the Powell Limit, which was just about right for a least-time profile to Odysseus orbit. But that meant there’d been time for any incoming admiral to identify himself and announce his intentions. So why hadn’t whoever was in command over there done that?

“Fair’s fair, Jesus,” the admiral said now. “Even if they’d sent us something the instant they went sublight, it would only have gotten here a couple of minutes ago. But they’ve had us on their sensors from the get-go, and they haven’t heard from us yet, either, now have they?”

In fact, thanks to Alaimo’s orders, TG 901.3’s carriers weren’t even squawking their transponders. Jorgensen had considered doing just that, despite the stupidity of his “don’t tell them we’re here” orders, since he hadn’t been specifically ordered not to. But in the end, he’d decided—regretfully—against it.

That hadn’t done a single thing to hide their normal emissions, however, and as he’d said to Romero, whoever this was had to have detected them from the moment of his arrival.

Now he and the chief of staff looked at each other, and Jorgensen puffed his lips thoughtfully. Then he shrugged.

“The one thing we do know is that a force this size didn’t just happen by for a port call,” he said. “The only reason these people could be here is because they know Bellerophon’s gone out of compliance. I have no more idea than you do about how they could have found that out, but the truth is, if they are friendly units, there’s only one place they could’ve come from. The cupboard was too bare back home for them to be from Sol, so this has to be coming in from Jalal. But if it is, they must have left Jalal before any courier from Sol got there to tell them we were headed out here. They know we’re here, but they don’t have any better picture of the situation in Bellerophon than we do of who the hell they are. For all they know, we’re a mutinous task force just waiting to attack them.”

His jaw tightened as he remembered the “mutinous task force” that had done just that to Ninth Fleet, but he went on steadily.

“We should be seeing them on light-speed sensors in the next few minutes. At that point—depending on what we see—I think it becomes tactical decision-making time. And, unfortunately, we’re over forty-five light-minutes from Odysseus now, so it won’t be possible to consult with General Alaimo, will it?”

“Pity about that, Sir,” Romero replied.

They fell silent, watching the main plot. Minutes ticked by, and then—

“Unidentified units detected,” Commander Zalewska announced. “Many units. CIC estimates…twelve FTLCs. Range two-seven-point-eight-four light-minutes. Velocity one-four-niner-seven-two-two KPS. Deceleration rate one-seven-point-six-five KPS squared.”

The incoming ships appeared on the plot while she spoke, tagged with type designations and vector information, and Jorgensen frowned.

“Only twelve?” His frown deepened. Twelve carriers weren’t enough to generate the powerful Fasset signature they’d detected. “Where are the rest of them?”

“Like you said, they can’t know what the situation is here in Bellerophon,” Romero replied. “I’ll bet they did the same thing we did. This—” he pointed at the plot with his chin “—is probably their vanguard. If it’s only about half their total force, that would account for the signature’s strength.”

“Point,” Jorgensen acknowledged. “And I think it is that tactical decision-making time.” He looked at Lieutenant Commander Nandy. “Send it,” he said.

“Transmitting now, Sir,” and the prerecorded message Alaimo had prevented Jorgensen from sending sooner went speeding out to meet the strangers.

* * *

“It looks like Captain Romero was right, Admiral,” Zalewska said, and Jorgensen nodded.

Seven and a half minutes after TG 901.3’s light-speed sensors picked up the first incoming carriers, the icons of a second wave—this one fifteen FTLCs strong—blinked into existence on Somaskanda’s main plot. Coming in 7.43 LM behind the first wave, their deceleration would bring them to rest relative to the system primary right on the Powell Limit.

“That’s a smart CO over there, Sir,” Romero said approvingly. “He’s still got time for his lead task group to divert to a fly-by vector outside the Powell Sphere, if he sees something he doesn’t like; he’s got the second task group as a hammer, if he decides he needs one; and if he doesn’t need the hammer, they’ll make their zero-zero right on the limit, where they’ll have their max accel if they need it to chase down anything trying to bug out from inside the sphere.”

“Well, hopefully he’ll know in about—” Jorgensen glanced at the time display “—eleven minutes that he won’t be needing any hammers after all.”

“I imagine that would come under the heading of a Good Thing from everybody’s perspective,” Romero said dryly.

* * *

“Incoming transmission, Sir!” Nandy announced, and Jorgensen looked up from his slate quickly.

His own transmission had reached the newcomers just over thirty-four minutes ago, at a range of 19 LM, and he’d half expected a reply sooner than this. Still, whoever had sent it couldn’t have spent more than two or three minutes thinking about it first.

“My display, Girish.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The wallpaper disappeared from Jorgensen’s display, replaced by a compact, slender man in a vice admiral’s uniform, and the admiral exhaled in relief. The man on his display was a bit taller than he was, with an even darker complexion, and the comm image was tagged “VADM R. THAKORE.”

“Admiral Jorgensen, I’m Rajenda Thakore,” he said. “I apologize for the delay in my response, but given how little information I had, we needed to dig through the intel files. Especially since my latest information had Admiral Hathaway still back home in Sol getting his command organized. Under the circumstances, I felt just a tad of caution was in order.” He bared his teeth. “The good news is, we found you in the files and that Ninth Fleet beat us here. The bad news is that anyone had to come in the first place.

“I’m assuming you’ve picked up my second task group by now. As you can see, they’ll be decelerating to rendezvous with you on the limit. I’m afraid my lead group’s committed to Odysseus orbit, but that may not be a bad thing.”

For just a moment, his dark eyes might have been agates, amd Jorgensen nodded to himself. There was a reason he’d included the name of the new “system governor” in his initial transmission. Obviously, Thakore had only too good an idea of what might have been happening here in Bellerophon, and he clearly didn’t like it. But then he inhaled and gave himself a little shake.

“I realize you don’t know anything more about what TF Eight-Oh-Four’s been up to than I knew about Ninth Fleet,” he continued. “To update you, Admiral Murphy—” His expression twisted ever so slightly, and Jorgensen felt a flicker of sympathy. It couldn’t be pleasant to know his own brother-in-law had gone rogue. “—is in custody and en route to Sol. I’m sure he’ll face charges once he gets there.” Thakore inhaled again, more deeply than before. “I’m afraid he’d moved against Jalal before we got there, but that was a step too far. He’d picked up a couple of additional mutinous carriers, but when Admiral Portier refused to surrender at his demand and he moved to attack the Station, one of the officers whose carrier divisions he’d appropriated in his persona as system governor refused to obey his orders. And when Commodore Tremblay refused, three of the other carrier captains did the same thing in his support. I’m afraid it was ugly, and over half his parasites and three mutinous carriers who’d opened fire on Tremblay’s division were destroyed in the fighting. But it was all over by the time Task Force Eight-Oh-Four got there. Losses are heavier than anyone could have wished but far lighter than they might have been, and at least that’s over.”

He paused, his eyes dark, then shook himself.

“Apparently, however, Murphy’s poison is continuing to spread. A freighter—the Tyonna Ogilvie—came into Jalal from Dordogne with a message from System Governor Gallagher. The governor didn’t have a lot of information, but according to him, Bellerophon had decided to ‘secede’ and wanted all the rest of the sector to go along. So since we’d already dealt with one forest fire, it seemed best to come pour water on this one. And—” he twitched a smile “—to bring plenty of buckets when I did.

“Until you identified yourself, I wasn’t at all sure what we’d be dealing with here, and it seemed wiser to stay incognito until I knew. Needless to say, I’m delighted you seem to have the situation so well in hand.

“Thakore, clear.”

Jorgensen felt the echo of his own vast relief sweeping around his flag bridge, but despite that, his expression tightened. The one thing he wouldn’t call the situation in Bellerophon was “well in hand,” and he wished like hell he could avoid the report he had to give Thakore. But as Ninth Fleet’s senior flag officer—hell, its only surviving flag officer—he couldn’t pass it off to anyone else.

“Relay Vice Admiral Thakore’s message to General Alaimo, Girish,” he said. Odysseus was outside TF 804’s direct transmission path to TG 901.3, so its orbital arrays wouldn’t pick up Thakore’s messages directly. “And then stand by to record a reply to him.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Nandy’s hands were busy for a few seconds, then he looked back up.

“Ready when you are, Admiral.”

“I’m happier to see you than you can possibly imagine, Admiral Thakore,” Jorgensen said into his pickup then. “Like you, I wish neither of us had to be here, but that wasn’t our decision. And, frankly, it’s a very good thing Governor Gallagher got that message to you, because I’m afraid things didn’t go very well when we first arrived. Admiral Hathaway didn’t realize that—”

* * *

“Message from Admiral Thakore, Sir.”

Jorgensen nodded. He’d sent his reply to Thakore’s initial message eighteen minutes ago, and the range to the steadily decelerating TF 804 was down to only a little over six light-minutes now, but he wasn’t surprised it had taken the vice admiral a while to digest what had happened to Ninth Fleet.

“Put it up,” he said.

“Yes, Sir.”

The comm display lit, and Thakore looked out of it, his expression grim.

“I don’t envy your having to make that report, Admiral Jorgensen,” he said without preamble. “I thought what happened at Jalal was bad. This is worse. I can’t fault Admiral Hathaway, given what he knew coming in, though. And you’re right: those missile carriers must have come from New Dublin. Another little present from Murphy, I suppose. God, when I think—”

He chopped himself off and inhaled deeply.

“At any rate, at least the situation seems to be under control. At least for certain values of the word ‘control,’ given how the rest of the sector seems to have reacted. It looks like we’ll have our work cut out for us convincing the rest of these people to see reason.”

His eyes were flinty, and Jorgensen wondered how much of that was truly concern about the rest of the Cyclops Sector and how much of it had to do with Alaimo’s reputation. Despite his naval rank, Thakore would have no legal authority to give a system governor—even an acting system governor—orders, which meant he couldn’t call Alaimo to heel even if he wanted to. But he was senior enough that whatever Alaimo did was going to splash onto him for not calling him to heel.

“It won’t be possible for me to rendezvous with you at your current position,” Thakore continued. “However, Admiral Nakanishi, commanding my second task group, will be able to do that. In the meantime, I suppose, I should be getting in touch with Governor Alaimo.”

From his expression, he wasn’t looking forward to it, Jorgensen thought.

“Thakore, clear.”

* * *

“Now that’s a beautiful sight,” Jesus Romero said.

He floated side by side with Jorgensen, watching not the tactical plot but the visual display, and his tone was one of profound satisfaction as no less than fifteen FTLCs and four FTL freighters decelerated smoothly towards rest. They were actually going to end up about two thousand kilometers short of the limit. That wasn’t perfect, but it also wasn’t that bad, given how tricky plotting an exact emergence from wormhole space could be. Despite the range, the visual pickups made them look as if they were merely at arm’s length, and behind them, Captain Alvin Akram, Rear Admiral Nakanishi Ichibei’s operations officer, looked out from the main holo display, coordinating the final approach with Linda Zalewska.

“No argument from me,” the admiral replied. “And, just between you and me, Jesus, I am totally relieved to hand this ball of snakes over to Vice Admiral Thakore.”

“Can’t say I blame you for that, Sir.”

Romero shook his head, then looked over his shoulder, checking for the proximity of other ears.

“The truth is, Elijah,” he said, then, turning away from the visual display and using the first name he was always careful to avoid on Flag Bridge, “I hope Thakore has enough pull with the Five Hundred to sit on Alaimo. Somebody has to.”

Jorgensen glanced at him, then allowed himself a micrometric nod. Now that he was no longer the senior naval officer present, he could admit that.

To some people, at least.

“Maybe, but—”

“Jesus Christ!”

Jorgensen never found out who the shout had come from, but it snapped his head back around to the visual display, and shock crashed through him as every one of the incoming carriers flushed its parasite racks. A hundred and fifty sublight warships—thirty of them showing Terran League emission signatures—erupted away from their motherships, decelerating at ten gravities on their fusion drives. Their lower decel meant they’d come to rest relative to TG 901.3 still outside the limit but a mere 1,500 KM from Somaskanda, and eight cargo pods deployed from the freighters’ racks, as well. They spilled scores of drones that decelerated at the Hauptman drive’s full 800 gravities, and as they did, the dark-complected Akram disappeared from the holo display and a blond-haired commodore with eyes of gray ice replaced him.

“My name is Pokhla Sherzai,” she said in a steel-hard voice even colder than her eyes, “and I demand your surrender in the name of the Free Worlds Association. Stand down and prepare to be boarded, or we will destroy you.”



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