Hero's Return, page 10
Anderson could see that the sudden movement of the Marines had initially startled the Bear officer, causing him to pause in the shuttle’s doorway.
He’s from a different culture, with different rituals. If I were in his place, I wouldn’t understand the Zenkarr arrival ceremony.
And yes, Chuck was certain the Bears had such ceremonies. As arrogant as they were, they had to have them.
Then the alien commander was walking down the ramp, directly toward the three waiting officers. The Bear admiral stopped in front of Anderson, stood straight, and thumped his closed right fist to his chest. Chuck recognized it as the Zenkarr equivalent of a salute.
“Welcome aboard the Federation dreadnought Daring, Fleet Commander Nieqids.”
As he finished speaking, Chuck heard his greeting translated by the device Paul Wheeler had hanging around his neck. He then heard and saw the Teddy Bear say something.
“You honor me with your courtesy, Admiral Anderson.”
Chuck nodded to Paul.
“If you’ll follow us, we’ll go where we can speak more privately.” Paul motioned toward the hatch as the translator worked its magic.
Anderson then motioned for the alien to walk with him and started toward the hatch.
At least I hope he understands. I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing.
When the shorter but bulkier Bear fell in beside him, Chuck was relieved.
The walk down the passageway was barely twenty meters to the hatch leading into the conference room. Being the host, Anderson led the group into what had been a mission planning room for Daring’s embarked Marine detachment. He almost stumbled in surprise as he entered, but quickly recovered.
That would have been the pinnacle of my career, sprawled out on the floor in front of a former enemy, Chuck thought. He fought the urge to look around to see if anyone else had noticed.
The captain of Daring obviously remembered that the Teddy Bears have been aboard before, the admiral realized, seeing two chairs suited to the smaller, wider anatomy of the alien race. Anderson also noticed the captain had ordered the replacement of the large table that the planning room previously boasted, with a much smaller one. Being able to only seat six, it would create a much more personal discussion.
“It seems the ship’s captain located suitable seating for you, Fleet Commander,” Chuck said, waving at the chair at the foot of the table. Instead of the clunky, portable device Paul Wheeler carried around his neck, the translation came out of speakers hidden in the compartment’s overhead.
Paul Wheeler was the only other person to enter the room, shutting the hatch behind him. It surprised Chuck that his chief of staff hadn’t brought at least one of the Marine guards with him. Anderson thought it was the right call to leave them outside.
Time to get down to business, Chuck. Quit wool gathering.
Anderson waved toward the Teddy Bear-style chair. “Please, have a seat, Fleet Commander.”
Chuck remained standing and motioned toward his chief of staff.
“I’d like to introduce my chief of staff, Captain Paul Wheeler,” Anderson said. “I believe you call the position your first advisor. Not only is he my first advisor, he is my friend.”
Chuck waited for the translation to finish and watched as the Bear admiral nodded his understanding before finally taking his seat.
“Now, what brings you so far into Federation space, Fleet Commander?”
“I won’t beat around the tree, Admiral Anderson. It’s the Eesni. They’ve always been a threat to my empire, lurking on our borders with unknown intentions, but the Zenkarr Fleet was able to deter that threat. For generations, each side observed the terms of the boundary agreement between us.”
“But you don’t have that fleet any longer, and the Eesni are taking advantage of it,” Paul said.
While preparing for this meeting, Paul and Chuck had discussed how they’d handle the discussion. They’d decided Paul would do most of the interacting with the alien admiral, while Chuck watched and listened.
“I see that your intelligence resources are as capable as your fleet,” Nieqids stated. “Or is it the Cats providing you with the information? It’s known to us that every one of their trading ships within the Empire has spies aboard.”
“The Pyrassuns are a valued partner of the Federation. And yes, they share their intelligence with us, but we have our own assets, as well.”
Nieqids nodded. “Even though you destroyed much of my fleet, and our intelligence service rebelled against the ruling government, Zenkarr still has a capable network of agents. Some on those same Pyrassun trading ships. For instance,” the Zenkarr commander continued, “we know the Eesni have been poking around in this system.”
Paul and Chuck exchanged glances.
It makes sense, Chuck thought. Nieqids already admitted to having Pyrassuns working as spies for them. You’d have to think at least one of them is part of the colonization effort in this system. And all three fights were clearly visible to everyone in the system.
Anderson started to respond, then thought of something else.
There’s no way they know about the last battle. Not yet. It was only two weeks ago, and that’s not enough time for the information to get to Zenkarr.
Chuck gave his chief of staff a nod to continue.
“You’re correct, Fleet Commander. The Eesni have made appearances here. What we don’t understand is why they’d be interested in this system.”
“Back before humans from Earth began expanding into this region of space, there was a lot of Eesni activity in this area. It was mostly sightings of what we believed were scout ships.”
“Then Earth began colonizing systems. I’m sure that upset them.”
Nieqids waved one of his upper paws dismissively. “Trust me, if they had wanted any of the worlds humans colonized, they would have taken them. Our guess, at the time, was that the area was too far from their nearest base to support a colonization effort.”
The Zenkarr commander pulled out a computer slate and placed it on the table. After he punched in some commands, a holographic display appeared above the device, showing their location in space.
“As you can see, the Zenkarr Empire controls this region of space.” Nieqids highlighted a large, blob-like area in red.
Tapping in more commands, he highlighted a cross-hatched red area in an arc extending away and to coreward from the Zenkarr core systems. “Twelve hundred of our cycles ago, we began expanding into this region, colonizing as we went. This was when we first encountered the Eesni.”
“After a series of very one-sided encounters, the aliens pushed us back and claimed the area. They warned us not to colonize anything in what they claimed was their space.”
“But they left you this section.” Paul used an index finger to trace out a narrow arc in the holograph.
The Zenkarr commander grunted. “Probably because there wasn’t much there. This system—” Nieqids tapped a command, and a star changed to a green color “—Doay is the only habitable world in this sector, and it is only marginally so.
“Habitable planets are not as numerous as you humans believe, and there is a lot of competition for them,” Nieqids continued. “Early on, we developed a colonization strategy of taking control and planting colonies in a sector, walling off the region from other races. Once we established those initial colonies, we would fill in toward our core worlds.”
“And the Eesni abandoned their interest in this area, but now they’re back. What changed?” Wheeler asked.
“We encountered you.”
“And lost most of your fleet,” Chuck Anderson said.
Nieqids slowly nodded. “The Doay System and that section of space formed a defensive barrier against the Eesni. We built up an enormous military presence in the area. Defensive facilities, shipyards, orbital stations, and a nodal fleet. We stationed a second nodal fleet behind the border region to act as a reserve. For eight hundred cycles, we neither heard from nor saw the Eesni.”
“But all those fleets are gone,” Wheeler stated.
“And so is Doay.”
That statement got the attention of both human officers.
“The Eesni destroyed your facilities in the system?” Chuck asked.
“We pulled all of our frontier forces in the feeble attempt to drive you out of our home systems. We would have succeeded if not for a faction within the government that stabbed the government in the back in an attempt to seize power. When the rebel fleet broke away from my main force, it doomed any chance we had. Then the mysterious disappearances began. Freighters and transports went missing. I sent small forces to investigate, and they disappeared, as well.”
“We know about the freighters and your forces,” Paul Wheeler stated. “Our Pyrassun allies informed us of them. We even had a scout of our own hidden in the system one of your forces disappeared in. They watched as someone attacked your force. We have the data, and I’d be willing to share it with you.”
“That violates the peace agreement you have with us,” Nieqids fumed.
Chuck Anderson shrugged his shoulders, then realized the alien probably didn’t understand the gesture.
“Yes, we did. Something was going on inside Zenkarr space, and we believed it might affect us. So, we sent a stealth scout in to take a look,” Anderson said.
The human admiral could see the Bear was still angry, so he continued, “You didn’t come here to merely pass on information, Fleet Commander. Unless I’m wrong, you came here looking for help.”
Bingo, Chuck thought as he saw some of the anger visibly leave the fleet commander’s face. He’s still mad that we violated his territory, or maybe he’s mad that we did it so nonchalantly, but I was right that he wants help.
“Yes,” Nieqids replied. “I came here looking for some kind of help. When Doay went dark, I sent as large a force as I could scrape up to the system. Most of the ships got in and out, but we lost one of my few remaining behemoths.”
“That’s one of your largest ships?” Paul asked.
The Zenkarr fleet commander nodded. “And since your fleets destroyed all our large shipyards, the empire has no way to build more. But the commander of the force sacrificed the ship to get the rest of his ships out of the system with the information we needed. The Eesni didn’t destroy the system. They captured it.”
“What about the Zenkarr who inhabited the system and were on the orbitals?” Wheeler asked.
Anderson saw the Teddy Bear shrug.
I guess the bears do understand the gesture, Anderson thought.
“Now that they have the system to act as a base of operations, I expect them to step up operations in your area. You said they’ve scouted this system.”
Wheeler nodded.
“Then it’s just a matter of time before they come in force,” Nieqids stated.
“They already have,” Anderson informed the Bear. “We defeated a large Eesni force two weeks ago. I think that would be fifteen of your turns ago.”
“You defeated an Eesni force?” Nieqids asked incredulously.
“Not without losses, but yes,” Anderson confirmed.
“But how—” the Bear began to ask, then stopped. “Your other-space missiles.”
“The small defense force we originally had defending this system drove off a second scout and then engaged a three-ship force trying to scout the system. That force suffered heavy losses, but there were missile ships in the force, which destroyed several of the Eesni ships,” Wheeler told the Bear commander. “Feeling things would escalate, Fleet Command sent Admiral Anderson’s much larger force to defend the system.”
“How large a force did you engage?”
“Thirty ships,” Anderson said. “My ships destroyed all but one, which fled before missiles could reach it. But my force paid a price. I lost eight of my missile destroyers.”
Nieqids sat, stunned.
The damned Monkeys did something the Zenkarr Fleet never managed to do again. They defeated the Eesni. How many Bears and ships have we lost over the generations to those alien monsters?
“Unless you take out their base in Doay, they’ll be back. If there’s one thing we’ve learned over generations of dealing with them, it’s that they are tenacious. If they’ve decided they want this system, they’ll take it.”
“Not without a fight,” Anderson stated.
* * *
“What do you think, Chuck?”
Rear Admiral Chuck Anderson, sprawled on the sofa of his quarters, looked at his chief of staff. It had been a long day. Long and frustrating. That he was a fleet officer, not a diplomat or a politician, had made dealing with the Zenkarr fleet commander especially tiring.
“I’m thinking that I’m glad I don’t have to decide what we’re going to do.”
“You know what I mean,” Captain Paul Wheeler, Chuck’s friend and chief of staff, said. “You know as well as I do that Dorothy and Julie will ask your opinion. And they’ll ask not only because you’re the guy who talked with the Bear admiral, but because you’re the guy who will lead the force if we attack.”
“Dorothy could lead the force,” Chuck pointed out. “Julie led the fleet into battle when she was the fleet commander. Deities, Emperor Hazard led the fleet in battle. Neither one of them delegated.”
“The emperor did.”
“Only when he had to be someplace else,” Chuck pointed out, “and he always took back over when he returned. You know why he did that, don’t you?”
“You mean lead the fleet himself?”
Chuck nodded.
“Because he didn’t trust anyone else?”
This time, Chuck shook his head in disagreement. “Because if he was ordering crews into danger, and they died, he would shoulder the blame and carry the guilt of their deaths. The emperor decided—I know, I asked him—that if he’d carry those burdens, he’d place the best person in command.”
“And that was definitely the emperor,” Paul responded. “But you’re evading the question.”
“What Nieqids says made a lot of sense. When the Teddy Bears controlled Doay and kept a major force there, it deterred the Eesni. It might work if we retook the system and defended it.”
“I sense a big ‘but’ in that statement.”
“There’s a lot we don’t know,” Chuck continued. “The data Nieqids’ force collected showed a force of only ten Eesni ships. The question is, was that all there was, or all they detected? We know the Eesni have excellent stealth capability from the data our scout collected.”
“You think there were more than the ten ships the Bears detected?”
“I’d bet on it. Send the data he gave us to our tactical people to go over. Unless they were different ships than what we saw here, ten ships don’t have the throw weight to fire the missile volley we saw.”
Wheeler nodded.
“And that brings up another question,” Anderson continued. “How deep in the gravity well can they use their FTL weapon? Do they have the same limitations as us? The ships the Teddy Bear force detected were in orbit around the habitable planet. We couldn’t launch from there.”
“Based on the Eesni’s action here—” Paul waved an arm, indicating the 61 Cygni A Star System “—the gravity well affects them the same way it does us. Every time we’ve detected them, it’s been about the same distance from the local star. And the Eesni had the opportunity—several times, in fact—to attack ships deeper in the gravity well, but didn’t. That tells me their secret weapon is like our hyper missiles and has the same limitations.”
“That’s a lot of guessing, Paul,” Chuck pointed out, “and you’re asking me to make decisions that put crews’ lives at risk on them.”
Paul snapped his fingers. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?” Anderson asked his chief of staff.
“Haven’t you wondered how a single Bear nodal fleet deterred the Eesni for hundreds of years?”
“I was more worried about our problems than theirs, Paul.”
“Why were we and the Zenkarr at a stalemate for so long in their home system?” Paul asked.
“That’s easy,” Chuck answered. “They kept their fleet in orbit around their home world. We couldn’t engage them without having to face all those damn super-fast missiles, and because they were deep in the gravity well, we couldn’t use our hyper missiles to whittle them down.”
“And the Zenkarr couldn’t come out to play with us because as soon as they cleared the gravity well, we’d cut them to pieces with our hyper missiles,” Paul finished the tactical analysis.
“What if the same situation existed in the Doay System, but this time it was the Eesni instead of us? It would be the same.”
Anderson, finally seeing his friend’s logic, nodded.
“Which means we’ve been defending this system wrong.”
“Damn,” Paul said. “I hadn’t gotten that far in my analysis, but you’re correct.”
“Everyone, including me, fell into the trap of believing in our superior weapons,” Chuck continued. “After we developed our hyper missiles, and with our hyperspace travel advantage, we simply stood out beyond the gravity well and waited for the enemy to come to us.”
Early on in the Empire’s fights against the various alien races of the region, fleet commanders discovered the Empire of Britannia’s fleet forces had a distinct advantage in using hyperspace. Imperial ships were faster in hyperspace, but more importantly, could open portals into and out of a system deeper inside its gravity well.
“And we’re fighting a foe with at least as good an FTL missile as we have,” Paul pointed out.
“Probably better than ours,” Anderson corrected. “And paired with FTL sensors, they have a distinct advantage. Damn. I should have seen that.”
“Which also means we have the wrong force mix,” Wheeler stated. “When command put Strike Fleet together, they organized it for long-range missile attacks. We have our ten supercruisers and fifteen battleships that have weapons effective in engagement at around a light minute distance.”
“And at close range, the missile dreadnoughts are nearly useless now,” Chuck stated. “Sure, they still have their heavy lasers, but we’ve seen how effective they are against the stronger shields of the ships we’ve fought in this sector. And the 5th Missile Dreadnought Squadron’s ships are all second-generation upgrades. They can only fire the Mk III hyper missiles.”
