Hero's Return, page 24
“As you said, Hazard, you were dead.”
“Another failure on my part. I knew who Mason was. More importantly, I knew what he could be, but I let him stay in the fleet. If I’d run him out of the service—which was my gut instinct to do—we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Again, my gut says go to Crux,” Hazard said, “but I need to know more. I need details.”
Snake stood and headed for the door. “That’s what you pay me for. Getting details.”
The spy stopped halfway out the door.
“I’ll have everything worth knowing the day after tomorrow,” Snake said. “Dot said it will take four days to refuel the convoy. We’ll know well before that’s done, so you can plan the next move.”
“That’ll work.”
Snake nodded and then stepped into the corridor. Hazard watched the hatch close behind him.
Contemplating everything he had to do, Hazard remembered something.
“Computer,” he said aloud, “open verbal interface.”
“Verbal interface activated,” the synthesized voice of Constellation’s main computer came out of hidden speakers in the ceiling.
The central computer of a fleet warship was the most advanced processing unit engineers had ever designed. Though not a true AI, it was damn close. Then, computer engineers programmed verbal interfaces into the fleet’s warships nearly forty years ago. Academics and business professionals had been using them for years, and senior fleet officers believed the system would help ship captains and flag officers perform routine work, but it had never caught on. Hazard only occasionally used it himself and knew that many officers didn’t even know the interface existed.
But to learn what he needed to know, the interface was the perfect resource.
“Computer, perform voice recognition. Who am I?”
The response was nearly instantaneous.
“Emperor Hazard I.”
“Computer, what is my command authority?”
This time, there was a slight pause.
“Authorization code required.”
Hazard picked up the computer tablet he’d received earlier in the day and connected to the ship’s network. Then he entered his sixteen-character security code.
“Authorization code accepted. Authorization code confirmed. This computer recognizes Emperor Hazard as having full Imperial authority.”
“Computer, does that authority apply to any other ships?”
“Upon arrival in the Baldor System, this computer linked to the fleet network and upgraded all programs. It is currently as up-to-date as Baldor’s computer network.”
“Well, at least if I have to, everyone in this system will obey me,” he said aloud. “No, that’s not entirely true. They’re obligated to obey me. That doesn’t mean they will.”
Another question popped into Hazard’s head.
“Computer, are any other people authorized to have Imperial-level authority?”
“Searching.”
The thirty-second delay surprised Hazard.
“There are no other Imperial-level authorized individuals in the system.”
“What is Crown Prince Edward Kane’s status?”
“Edward XII is the current emperor, but not having reached a majority, he has no Imperial authority. Empress Regent Hiroko, wife of Emperor Hazard, is the current head of state.”
Hazard nodded. When his mother was empress, she had granted both him and his brother Edward imperial authority, but both of them had been older. Feeling he was too young, Hazard hadn’t done the same for his son, Edward, and he hadn’t thought to do it for Hiroko. Hazard later discovered the system would have granted him the authority upon his coronation as emperor.
I can use this, Hazard thought.
Then he yawned. He’d pushed himself today, but there was still so much to catch up on.
But if you’re tired, you won’t absorb as much, Hazard thought.
“Time for a nap,” Hazard said aloud. “Computer, close the verbal interface program.”
He didn’t pay attention to the computer’s response as he headed for the master bedroom.
“Just an hour, then I’ll get back to it.”
* * *
“I should have run his ass out of the fleet,” Hazard growled.
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Snake responded.
The two men sat across Hazard’s desk from each other. Snake, true to his word to get the information his emperor needed, had returned within a day.
“He was too popular with certain older officers in the fleet,” Snake continued. “If you’d sacked him, it would have caused issues.”
“Bah—” Hazard waved a hand angrily “—keeping him caused even bigger ones. I could have weathered that storm, used up some of the karma gained by winning the war.”
“You put him in a position where he could do little harm. Commander of the Home Fleet is a prestigious position with no true power. As long as Thomas O’Riley was the grand admiral, he kept Mason under control.”
“Till O’Riley wasn’t the grand admiral,” Hazard pointed out.
“Water under the bridge now,” Snake stated. “Mason is dead, and O’Riley is back as the grand admiral.”
“And we have a fleet in rebellion.”
“We have an inconsequential portion of a fleet that’s in rebellion. Gathii Kong, with a force 20 percent its size, has it bottled up. Anyone who served in the Sol Expedition knows that dreadnoughts are dinosaurs that belong in the past. Without the new hyper missiles, they’re useless. And the officers who command and lead them are just as behind the times as their ships.
“We both know Kong could take the entire force,” Snake continued.
“But he doesn’t want to kill all the innocent spacers who are simply following orders,” Hazard finished the thought.
Hazard typed a message into his terminal and hit Send.
“I just sent for Dorothy,” Hazard told Snake.
A raised eyebrow from the spy generated a response.
“We’re not going to Britannia. At least that will not be the next stop.”
Hazard could see his friend wanted to know more, but he raised a hand. “Let’s wait for Dot, so I only have to explain it once.”
Hazard continued to read Snake’s intelligence report, asking additional questions as they waited for the convoy commander.
“Take a seat, Dorothy,” Hazard ordered when the short admiral appeared in the doorway two minutes later.
Hazard waited for his friend to get settled, then got right down to business.
“We can reach Lenin from here without refueling, can’t we?”
“Aiden did when she came through here with the first convoy,” Dorothy responded. “We’ll be running on fumes, but we can make it.”
Hazard nodded. “As far as the convoy’s concerned, we’re still headed for Britannia via the normal refueling stops. But as soon as we enter hyperspace, I want to divert to Lenin. We’ll refuel there.”
“On our way where?” Dorothy asked.
“Crux.”
The young admiral shook her head. “We can’t make that jump.”
“The dreadnoughts and the rest of the escorts can’t make that jump.” Hazard nodded his head in agreement. “Connie can.”
Dorothy pulled out her computer tablet and began crunching numbers.
“Damn, I forgot how much fuel the big-ass girl carries,” Dorothy said with a chuckle. “Gathii has two other battle carriers he could call upon but hasn’t. And in case you didn’t know, Connie barely has four squadrons of fighters on board, flown by the pilots who didn’t want to remain in the Sol Sector.”
“It’s not the Constellation I’m concerned about getting there, Dorothy.”
“Then why are we going?”
“To get me there.”
* * * * *
Chapter 16: Doay
Interstellar Space Near Doay Star System
Zenkarr Empire
Empire Date: July 1049
“Does everyone understand their assignments?” Captain Paul Wheeler asked. The 1st Strike Force’s chief of staff scanned the faces of the senior officers who looked back at him from the wall display.
The strike force was sitting motionless in hyperspace, approximately a day’s travel from the Eesni-controlled former Zenkarr system of Doay. Three days earlier, the force had refueled in the Neddin Star System. Surprising everyone, there had been no incidents, though there had been a couple of close calls.
First, a planetary defense battery had fired projectiles at the 2nd Missile Destroyer Squadron. The nimble destroyers easily avoided the rocks, but only Admiral Anderson’s repeated orders to hold fire had prevented a counterstrike. While the destroyers could maneuver to avoid being struck, the Bear defensive battery, on a moon orbiting the system’s sixth planet, couldn’t. The force could have easily destroyed the target, and there were some angry captains who wanted to, but cooler heads prevailed. The acting system administrator promptly regained control of his forces, but it had nearly been a disaster.
Then, an angry station manager refused to service four dreadnoughts waiting to refuel. He went so far as to sabotage the pumping systems. It took the Bear equivalent of Marines to board the station and take control. Then, human engineers had to repair the damaged systems before the four ships could finally begin fueling. That incident cost the force six hours.
But finally, with anxiety levels still high, the strike force finished topping off their tanks and exited the system.
Now, Admiral Anderson and his staff were going over the attack plan one last time before entering the Doay System.
“Will the plan change when we get the scout reports?” the 2nd Missile Dreadnought Squadron commander asked.
“No,” Chuck Anderson responded. He’d remained silent for most of the briefing, letting his chief of staff review the plan with the rest of the force’s captains and squadron commanders.
“The two scouts will have been in the system for two weeks by the time we arrive,” he continued, “but they could only detect if an Eesni warship arrived or departed during that time. Those of us who’ve already fought these bastards know how hard it is to detect them, and we’ve seen the previous scouting reports. The Eesni like to lie doggo in a system. If there’s a patient commander on their side, he might do that, like a spider patiently waiting for someone to trap itself in its net.”
“When we arrive in the area, we’ll send a probe into the system,” Captain Wheeler continued the review. “It’ll pop in, download the latest information from the scouts and sensor buoys in the system, then jump out to relay the information to us.”
“If nothing’s changed, the 2nd and 3rd Missile Destroyer Squadrons will open portals and enter the system here.” Wheeler highlighted a spot on the map of the Doay System. “That’s ten light minutes from the hyper limit. The two squadrons will head in system, accelerating up to 0.1c.”
“Fifteen minutes later, I lead the second wave in,” the commander of the 2nd Missile Dreadnought Squadron said. “My 2nd MD Squadron, along with the 2nd Superbattleship and 5th Supercruiser Squadrons.”
“And fifteen minutes after that, I’ll lead the 5th Missile Dreadnought and 3rd Superbattleship Squadrons in,” Chuck stated. “That’s when we’ll be the most vulnerable if Eesni forces are hiding in the system. The destroyers and cruisers will have had enough time to recharge their hyper generators, but not the capital ships. If the Eesni are there, everyone will take evasive action and jump out of the system when they can.”
“If our sensors can’t see them, how will we know they’re there?” the commander of the supercruiser squadron asked. His squadron hadn’t been involved in any of the previous fights against the enigmatic alien race.
“You’ll know when your ships start mysteriously exploding,” a captain commanding one of the 5th Missile Dreadnought Squadron’s ships stated. He’d been in the last battle in the 61 Cygni System against the Eesni and had seen the Eesni cruisers in action.
“I know there’s a risk,” Chuck began, “and I know some of you feel as if I’m dangling ships as bait.”
He paused, seeing several of his captains exchanging grim nods with their fellows.
“But we can’t continue to sit and wait for these damn aliens to make the next move. In the last battle, we gave them a bloody nose. Based on what I’ve heard from the spooks, that’s the first time that’s happened. The Bears couldn’t seem to scratch their paint, but we killed twenty cruiser-sized ships.”
“And lost eight missile destroyers,” Chuck heard someone say.
“Yes, we lost ships, but we gave better than we got, and we learned a lot in the process. If we do nothing, we run the risk of the Eesni gathering a fleet large enough to overwhelm us. I’m not going to allow that to happen.”
Chuck made it a point to meet the gaze of every officer. “If there are no further questions, I’ll let you proceed to brief your own crews. Good luck, and good shooting.”
Chuck pushed the End Call button and leaned back in his desk chair, letting out a long breath.
“Such an inspiring speech. It gave me goose bumps,” Paul Wheeler said sarcastically to his boss and friend.
“Fuck you, Captain Wheeler,” Chuck responded. The words were serious. The tone wasn’t. “Give them half an hour, then get us moving again.”
* * *
Doay Star System
Zenkarr Empire
Empire Date: July 1049
“Anything, Tactical?”
Captain Sarah Holdman was leaning forward in her command seat, staring at her tactical display. She knew getting closer to the screen wouldn’t improve her chances of spotting anything, but it made her feel as if it would. It also took her mind off the responsibilities of being in command.
Stop bitching. You wanted the responsibility, Sarah scolded herself.
But the responsibility didn’t stop at Lance’s hull, because Sarah commanded the 3rd Missile Destroyer Squadron in addition to her own ship. So the crews of ten ships were depending on her to make the right calls.
Sarah keyed the mic on the headset she was wearing. It was a direct link to her XO, currently at his battle stations position in the destroyer’s Auxiliary Control Room.
“Remember, Kev, if the shit hits the fan, I need you to con Lance while I look after the rest of the squadron.”
Both officers had been together since the yards had converted the Imperial destroyer into a missile destroyer. In their first battle, Sarah had tried to do everything and quickly found herself overloaded. Afterward, she and her command team had evaluated their performance and how they could do things better. Letting the XO fight the ship while Sarah commanded the squadron was the solution. That was also why she wore a headset tied into a dedicated channel to the executive officer. Sarah could hold private conversations with Lieutenant Commander Kevin Olson in Auxiliary Control.
“Hyper portals opening, Captain,” the tactical officer announced. “It’s the second wave.”
Sarah nodded as she watched twenty-six portals appear on her display.
“Seems they came in right on the mark,” Kevin commented over the link.
“Well, we did launch a comm buoy to mark our location,” Sarah responded. “Even with all that armor surrounding their brains, a battleship or dreadnought driver can still get it right as long as there’s a marker that says, ‘Jump Here.’”
The ships of the second wave had arrived in a stacked formation a mere five light seconds behind the two destroyer squadrons.
“Now the real fun begins,” Sarah said aloud to the rest of her bridge team. She knew if any Eesni ships were lurking in the system, the chance to hit two squadrons of vulnerable capital ships might elicit a response.
But we’re only guessing there are Eesni ships here, she thought.
Sarah looked around the bridge. She could feel and see the tension.
I need to change that, she thought and pushed a call button on the arm of her command chair.
“Could you bring me a cup of tea?” she asked her steward.
Thirty seconds later, the door to the captain’s cabin next to the ship’s bridge opened, and the chief steward appeared, tea cup balanced on a tray he carried. Sarah accepted the cup.
“Thank you.”
“Anything else?” the chief asked. “Maybe a sandwich?”
“Not right now, Chief. Maybe later.”
“Call when you need anything, ma’am.”
Sarah turned to nod at the man. As she did so, she peered over the lip of the cup to look at her bridge team as she took a sip. Sarah could see the tension had eased. Watching their captain calmly drinking tea had done the trick, just as it had calmed her when she’d seen her captain do the same thing just before the battle in the Tarrant System.
Sarah glanced at one of several timers running on one of her private displays. It was the one showing the elapsed time since the second wave of ships had entered the system.
Two minutes.
Fleet Intelligence knew the Eesni had faster-than-light sensors but didn’t know how much faster than light they were. During the third confrontation between the Federation Fleet and a major alien force in the 61 Cygni System, the twenty destroyers of the 1st and 4th Missile Destroyer Squadrons had jumped to within five light minutes of the Eesni force. They’d immediately launched their hyper missiles, then turned and ran. Two minutes after arriving, destroyers started exploding. That was the time gauge Sarah was now using.
“They might not be here,” Ken said over the private channel.
Sarah realized her XO was thinking the same thing she was.
“Or they’re on the other side of the system,” Sarah responded.
“There is that.”
Yeah, there is that, Sarah thought. That was what she saw as the major flaw in Admiral Anderson’s plan.
If it was her, she’d have her ships watching the side of the system that faced toward the 61 Cygni System. If the Federation Fleet was going to attack, that would be the direction they’d come from. Admiral Anderson was betting his fleet could jump into the system, launch a long-range bombardment to knock out the Eesni orbital facilities, then jump out before being attacked.
