Echoes of War Box Set, page 88
part #1 of Echoes of War Series
There won’t be a later. At the rate Seville gets new ships, he’ll overwhelm us within a year. “No, sir, we’ll figure it out.”
“I must caution you again, General. We’re running out of time.”
“Yes, sir. We have a scheduled briefing in six hours to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and our two leaders. We’ll be ready.”
“See you are. I’ll warn you right now, there’s a faction in the Joint Chiefs that want to call this off, pull the fleet back, and lick our wounds. I agree with you, the time to strike is right now, and it’ll never be better. Whatever you put together, make sure it can survive having a lot of people trying to poke holes in it. Most of it all, make sure it’ll work to the best of your abilities, General.”
“Aye aye, sir,” David replied crisply.
“Godspeed, General, MacIntosh out.”
A moment later, MacIntosh’s face disappeared from the viewer, and they were all left in silence. Aibek spoke first. “General, perhaps I could convince Saurian high command to send additional resources...”
“No. MacIntosh is right. If we can’t win with what we’ve got, we’d endanger our entire civilization by pulling out our last defensive forces. What sucks about this is it’s a simple math problem. Our resources are finite, his aren’t, and there’s a curve going here that I don’t like. Before too long, he’ll be unstoppable if left to gather strength.” David glanced at the clock on the wall and shook his head. “We’d better get back to it, gentlemen. Colonel Meier, thank you for coming over. Please brief the fleet on our progress, and I’d appreciate it if you could stick around. I’d like you in on our planning meeting later today.”
Calvin cleared his throat. “General, if I may… we need to get additional trigger pullers or we’re not storming Unity.”
“Any thoughts on where we’d get them from?”
“Well, sir, I’d like to ask for volunteers. Lots of ship’s security personnel in the fleet, and there’s more than a few former Marines who’ve transferred to the fleet.”
David nodded his approval. “I like that idea. You may proceed.”
“Thank you, sir,” Calvin replied.
“Any saved rounds, gents?” David asked the room at large; there were no takers. “Alright then, dismissed.” As he stood, so did the rest of those assembled. Walking out of the conference room, he found Calvin right behind him and walking with purpose.
“Mind if I accompany you to the bridge, General?”
“Not in the least,” David replied, though his eyebrow was raised. Calvin typically didn’t go to the bridge unless asked.
“I’d like to use the 1MC to request volunteers.”
“Ah, of course. That would be the best way to reach everyone at the same time.”
Walking together to the nearest gravlift, David tried to engage in a conversation. “How are you holding up?”
“I’ll be fine, sir,” Calvin replied as the doors for the lift slid open.
“Deck one,” David said after they entered the lift and stood back from the doors. “That’s not an answer, Cal.”
Calvin sighed. “I don’t like talking about it. But if you must know, that was the single greatest loss of life under my command I’ve ever endured.”
“I know how it feels,” David began, looking over at him. “It doesn’t get easier.”
“But it gets numb, you know? The daily loss of a life here, a life there. We learn to get over it. It stops affecting us.”
I envy that…it never stopped affecting me. “We have to soldier on,” David replied. “We’re close, Cal. I know we are. This time, we’re taking the station.”
“A lot of Marines are going to die storming that place,” Calvin said with a tinge of regret in his voice.
“A lot of us are going to die, period. But far more will die if we don’t succeed. Right?”
“Damn right, General,” Calvin retorted, and just for a moment, the cocky Marine was back. “We’ll make as many of them die for their country as possible before we start dying for ours.”
David slapped Calvin on the back. “Exactly.” The lift came to a halt, and the doors slid open.
As they walked quickly down the passageway toward the bridge, the two Marines who guarded the door came to attention and saluted; both David and Calvin returned their salutes upon pulling on their covers.
David gestured to the communications station. “Proceed, Colonel.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
David addressed the relief communications officer. “Lieutenant, please patch Colonel Demood into 1MC.”
“Aye aye, sir!” was the prompt reply from the young woman.
Calvin took up position behind the communications station and spoke into the provided microphone. “Attention, all hands, this is Colonel Demood, Terran Coalition Marine Corps. As you may know, the Marines took a lot of casualties in the first attack on Unity Station. As we prepare to assault it again, General Cohen and I have realized our Marine contingent lacks the numbers to have a realistic chance of success. So I come to the men and women of the Lion of Judah, and I challenge anyone who has the courage to put their life on the line to report to cargo bay two at sixteen hundred hours shipboard time today. Regardless of your occupation, rank, or even if you’re a civilian, as long as you’re willing to stand and fight and can operate a standard battle rifle, you won’t be turned away. Do not think this will be easy. Many of us who assault this installation won’t come home, but it’s essential to the success of our mission for us to capture the station. Carry on, Demood out.”
After he finished speaking, Calvin stepped back from the communications station and turned to face David. “Thank you, sir. I hope we’ll have enough volunteers.”
David nodded. “Something tells me, Colonel, there’s no shortage of people on this ship that want a piece of the League, and out of all of the ships in our fleet, we’re uniquely overstaffed, so we can contribute additional personnel.”
“Permission to depart the bridge, sir?”
“Granted, Colonel,” David responded.
Calvin braced to attention before turning on his heel and departing.
David turned toward at the CO’s chair and saw Aibek held the conn. “XO, this is CO. I have the conn,” he invoked formally, walking over to his chair.
“Aye, sir, Colonel Cohen has the conn.” Aibek stood and moved one chair over.
David grinned as he sat down. “Anything to report, XO?”
“We’re doing excellent on the repairs. Ninety-two percent of our ships are now as combat capable as the engineering teams, and contractors feel they can be without drydock time.”
We’re getting there. It’s not perfect, and it won’t be easy, but we’re getting there. Settling back into his seat, he girded himself for the next two hours of watch standing before the next major meeting they had to discuss how to deal with the League’s reinforcements.
20
Three hours later, David was still standing watch on the bridge, watching the various damage reports come in and checking damaged ships off his list as the contractors and engineering staff completed all repairs that they could accomplish in space. Bringing in the Raider tenders had been an inspired idea after all. While it might hurt their ability to take out League resupply freighters, the ships had spare parts and engineering teams that were vital to their efforts. Even better, the tenders had the ability to manufacture parts and entire fighters. This allowed for the repair of large amounts of fighters and bombers that would have otherwise been unusable. So many small craft were now operational, they couldn’t find enough pilots to man them all.
Good problems to have, especially right now. This crazy plan might come together if we could figure out how to overcome Seville’s fleet or get it to move away from the station.
David’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Ruth’s voice. “Conn, TAO!” she shouted. “Wormhole forming, thirty thousand kilometers off the starboard bow!”
Immediately on task, David instinctively sat up straighter in his chair. “TAO, set condition one throughout the ship!”
Per the normal combat evolution, the lights on the bridge immediately dimmed to a dark blue hue, while Ruth continued to report. “Conn, TAO! Condition one set throughout the ship! Sir, wormhole signature confirmed as CDF. New contact, designated as Sierra One… CSV Oxford, sir!”
Aibek exchanged a double-take with David. “What in blazes is the Oxford doing here, sir? She’s a deep space spy ship,” Aibek said.
David smirked. “What in the blazes? Your attempts at sounding more human…”
“Are lacking?”
“Well, unless you’re trying to sound like someone from a holomovie of the late twenty-second century.”
Aibek grinned in the toothy Saurian way. “I’ll try harder.”
David laughed. “I suppose we should find out why they’re here. Communications, signal the Oxford on a tight beam transmission. No leakage.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Taylor replied, and a few moments passed. “Sir, I have Colonel Sinclair for you.”
The monitor above David’s head snapped to life with an image of Sinclair standing in the operations center onboard the Oxford. “General, eh, Cohen? Good to see you again.”
“I wish it was under better circumstances, Colonel Sinclair. What can I do for you? We’re surprised to see you off station.”
“You haven’t been responding to communications attempts. When we contacted CDF command, they informed us you’d gone into EMCON status. So I decided to come to you. We have vital information you need to hear. Permission to come aboard with one of my analysts?”
David glanced at Aibek, taking in his puzzled expression, before turning back to Sinclair’s image on the monitor. “Granted. I’ll get my senior staff together, and we’ll meet in the briefing room as soon as you dock.”
“Excellent, Colonel. We’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”
The screen blinked off, leaving the bridge in silence. David looked to Aibek. “XO, you’re with me. We’ll meet our guests in the deck one conference room.”
“Yes, sir, this should be interesting if for no other reason than to be in the same room as one of your famed intelligence officers,” Aibek replied with a goofy grin.
“Lieutenant Goldberg, you have the conn,” David announced as he stood up from the CO’s chair.
Ruth jumped up from her station and turned to face David. “Aye aye, sir, I have the conn.”
David walked out of the bridge, followed closely by Aibek; he pulled off his cover as he exited the bridge and held it in his hand as they walked the few dozen feet to the conference room just off the passageway from the bridge.
They sat in silence, David lost in his thoughts and again going over the previous battle. His introspection ended when the large frame of a CDF officer walked through the hatch.
The man brought himself to attention. “Colonel Robert Sinclair reports as ordered, sir.”
David quickly stood, as did Aibek. Another young officer walked in behind Sinclair, and he also came to attention. “At ease, gentlemen,” David called out as he walked around the table and extended his hand to Sinclair. “It's nice to finally meet you in the flesh, Colonel Sinclair.”
Sinclair took David’s outstretched hand and gave it a warm shake. “You as well, General. I must say, this ship is… very impressive. I didn’t realize how big it was until it took me ten minutes to walk from the airlock to the gravlift. Allow me to introduce First Lieutenant Alon Tamir.” He gestured toward a younger man who’d walked through the hatch behind him.
“Pleasure to meet you as well, Lieutenant,” David responded, extending his hand to Tamir, who shook it while looking somewhat out of place and shy.
“Please, have a seat. Do either of you need anything in the way of refreshments?”
“No, sir. We had lunch just an hour ago,” Sinclair answered, his eagerness to get going showing on his face.
David and Aibek sat down at the same time as the two intelligence officers, sliding their chairs back up to the table. Staring intently at Sinclair, David began to speak. “Okay, you’ve got our attention, Colonel. What’s going on?”
Sinclair turned his head toward Tamir. “Lieutenant, your find. You get to brief it.”
Tamir visibly gulped, his face turning a touch red.
Watching him, David suppressed a smile. Oh, all those years ago when I was a First Lieutenant. A lifetime ago, he mused to himself.
Tamir stood and faced the rest of the officers. “Sirs, to begin, we deployed stealth drones throughout the battlespace before the engagement between the Alliance fleet and the League. While our drones didn’t detect the mines, they did a fine job of finding enemy ships. In short, Admiral Seville has received nearly two hundred additional ships in reinforcements in the last twenty-four hours. He has over seven hundred vessels at his disposal currently, and we expect to see more arriving within the next three days.”
“I believe the proper human expression is ‘oh shit,’” Aibek interjected, causing laughter to break out in the conference room; even Tamir broke into a smile despite his nervousness.
“That’s the understatement of the century, XO,” David responded with a grin. “Lieutenant, please continue.”
“This next bit is an educated guess, sirs,” Tamir said. “We can break any League code, but some are a lot harder than others for our quantum computers to brute-force the decryption. Typically, the League will use lower levels of encryption on ship-to-ship comms traffic, and save the best they have on what we would call gold-level communications.”
“In other words, the important stuff between senior commanders?”
“Exactly, General,” Tamir replied, beginning to loosen up some. “We caught several that had an immense level of power attached to them. Enough to transmit back to Earth for real-time communications.”
Aibek raised a scale over his eye. “You think they were communicating with League senior command?”
“Actually, sir, I think they were talking with the Social and Public Safety Committee. We intercepted chatter amongst the larger ships in the League fleet talking about wanting to find us and kick our butts. There were references to Admiral Seville not wanting to risk it, and those captains were upset. They got a taste of victory, and now they’d like to finish us off.”
“So put this all together for us, Lieutenant. What’s the full picture?” David asked.
“I believe that Seville is being pressured by the Social and Public Safety Committee to send out his fleet to find us, and then finish off our forces. I’m sure that they need some good news to report; we’ve gotten a lot of information out of the League over the last few months indicating that their news sources are having a hard time covering up the number of ships they’ve lost, and the tens of thousands of causalities suffered. Seville knows his best position is to wait for us to try again, so he wants to sit tight and conserve his strength.”
“That’s a compelling assessment, Lieutenant. Thank you,” David said as he turned his attention back to Sinclair. “Colonel, do you agree with Lieutenant Tamir’s thesis?”
“Tamir, close your ears because I don’t want you to get a big head,” Sinclair said with a slight smirk. “The lieutenant here is one of the best analysts I’ve got. If he gives me his best guess, I’d put money on it all the way to the bank.”
“So Seville thinks we’re coming back, and his government is run by imbeciles who have no idea how to fight a war. I think it’s a good thing for us, if we could somehow force his hand in moving the fleet.”
Tamir cleared his throat. “I’ve got an idea for dealing with that too, sir.”
“Lay it on me, Lieutenant,” David said with a relaxed smile.
“Well, sir, we know the League puts a lot of stock in what the Terran Coalition media has to say about the war and our readiness posture. All media except for Canaan News Network. You have an embedded reporter on board from GNN if I remember correctly? We could plant disinformation with your embed and, in turn, cause the Social and Public Safety Committee to force the issue with Seville.”
“An interesting idea, Lieutenant. Do we consider it might be dishonorable to manipulate the truth, though?” Aibek interjected.
David shook his head. “When dealing with the League? I don’t see it as lying, I see it as deceiving the enemy.”
“I must protest, General Cohen. Lying brings you closer to evil, and lying is wrong by its very definition,” Aibek said, his jaw set.
David closed his eyes for a moment. “XO, I hear you. One of the Ten Commandments is you shall not bear false witness. I get it. But what else would you have us do? I think Lieutenant Tamir is onto something here. It’s simple and brilliant. Deceive the Leaguers and get them to divide their forces. Then we go in and take that station. We do that… the fourteen thousand plus people who died two days ago don’t die in vain. If the price for that is one Jew committing a sin, I’ll beg God for forgiveness and hope it evens out.”
David could tell from the furrowed brow and narrowed eyes on Aibek’s face that he wanted to continue to debate the subject as he began to speak again. “It’s your decision, sir.”
“The ruse will have to be perfect, General,” Sinclair said, changing the subject. “You can’t have her deliver a report like normal. That’ll look and smell fake. We have to go all out; she has to do it under duress and act like she’s breaking the rules. I’d say go so far as to fire blanks and have her tackled by security personnel. Do everything short of shooting her on camera.”
“That’s pretty dark, Colonel,” David responded.
“I’m an intelligence officer, sir. I’m paid to be dark and do the things no one else wants to know about or be responsible for. You could say I’m a sin eater. I do the things that need to be done, and my hands are the ones that get dirty so the rest of you can stay clean.”
David sat back in the chair, considering his options. If this goes wrong, it’s going to be bad. We’ll be walking a very fine line in terms of breaking the law that states CDF personnel cannot knowingly lie to the press. Who am I kidding? We’ll be breaking the law. No, I’ll be breaking the law. It's my command, and the buck stops with me. God help us if we don’t, I don’t see a way to get Seville to divide up his fleet. This might not even work, but I’ve got to try. I owe it those who died for all of this to not have been in vain. “Okay, Colonel Sinclair. You work up a script, I’ll talk to our resident reporter and see if she’s willing to go along.”
