Wolf Emperor, page 5
part #1 of The Last Marines 08 Series
An alert pinged on her cybernetic display. A priority alert and travel orders.
Travel orders? The entire Regimental G-2, along with a lot of the regimental command staff, was being recalled to the Musashi for a top-secret briefing. That was interesting. She hadn’t known the SOGS Musashi was in-system. Which was typical. No reason for the cannon fodder infesting the ground of a war zone to know the comings and goings of the supreme war fleet commander, but it usually precluded major incidents and actions. The Musashi was supposed to be deeper in Torag space, planting the banner of the Social Organizational Governance and wiping out the Torag infection. Why it was here did not bode well. Perhaps they were going to open another front on some other Torag planet.
The orbitals of Valakut were frequently contested. Some weeks the Governance controlled them, other weeks the Torag. The people on the ground rarely knew which until the orbital strikes rained down.
It was unusual for the intelligence departments to be called to the Musashi though. It meant something big was about to happen. A new offensive or a retreat? At this point Dallas knew it could go either way, but the Musashi wanted to give the briefing in a few hours which didn’t leave them much time to armor up and get there.
Another message came in, a notification from Guard command. It was a request to send an ODT patrol forward into Torag lines to find out what they were up to. Two other recon patrols had not returned.
She sent Aod a message telling him she loved him and hoped he was well, then she left to gear up for the trip to the Musashi. Hopefully, he would get it.
* * * * *
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Seven: Father
Lojtnant Skadi, VRAEC
Skadi was exhausted when she returned to her quarters. Dealing with bureaucrats who fought with law and keyboard wasn’t as exhausting as physically fighting a foe, but the mental cost was higher. It was more cerebral than physical, but that didn’t make it any less dangerous. People still thought the secretary general was alive, just in seclusion, which she had done occasionally according to reports, mostly when she found a new sex toy. But this was lasting longer than normal, and people were noticing, testing the boundaries and making demands, hoping to inspire some response or recognition from the secretary general.
She had many friends… Well, they were friends on the surface. She had bought their loyalty in one way or another. Skadi also saw how Nadya had kept power for so long. The older a person got, the more comfortable they became with the status quo, especially in a dangerous bureaucracy like the Governance; people feared change. Change was frequently an opportunity but didn’t always benefit the people in charge. Nadya had been a master at manipulating people and controlling that change.
In the past, Skadi had seen the Governance as a monolithic bureaucracy that controlled and manipulated people to keep those in power in their positions. But it was so much worse than that. Nadya had controlled the Governance with a mailed fist. She had not been a public figure like many dictators and despots in the past, but she ruled without mercy. There could be no mistake there.
She had surrounded herself with frightened people, and she had kept them there, feeling scared and in a precarious situation, fighting with others for her favor. She’d had her inner cadre, the Central Committee, but she had ruled them as well. Everyone in the Governance who had authority had a vested interest in supporting and protecting Nadya, the “great Secretary General.” Like pigs at individual troughs, she had fed them and allowed them their vices for their unconditional support, but she’d also made sure they feared losing her favor and their lives. She had bound them to her banner through guilt, greed, and fear. She’d baked it into their very souls over the decades and century. She had mastered the art.
Her absence meant people were frightened. Some saw possibilities, others saw doom. Those who saw possibilities saw power. All the admirals, generals, and senior bureaucrats stood on a cliff’s edge. To reveal to them that Nadya was dead would be to push some of them off, to frighten them into doing something stupid and dangerous. Without constant supervision and manipulation, their world would fall into uncertainty, where they had to think and guess what Prime Minister Mathison wanted.
That doubt and fear was a poison, and part of Skadi’s job was to fight off that fear. She couldn’t be harsh and brutal with the people of the Governance. Nadya had used cortex bombs, InSec, and the military as a threat, but she had also bound people to her with promises.
Skadi knew little of this. Without Loki, she would be lost in a bureaucracy that was rapidly spiraling out of control. Too many people saw the Governance was collapsing and sought to shore up their own power. They did not care about the greater good. To most officials, “the greater good” was nothing more than a tool to bludgeon the lower classes into submission.
Her quarters were nice, having belonged to a member of the Central Committee, luxurious, decadent.
A notification came in. It was her father.
She didn’t want to answer it, but it was tagged “official.”
“Yes?” Skadi asked.
“How are things?” Amiraali Carpenter asked.
“I’m tired, Amiraali,” Skadi said. “It has been a very long day. What do you need?”
Was Admiral Gorlovich demanding he put more distance between Luna and the Republic fleet again?
“I wanted to check on you,” Carpenter said. “Are you getting any time to relax or exercise?”
“No,” Skadi said. Why couldn’t he get to the point? She checked the incoming link tag. It had been official, but then her father seemed to have a problem telling the difference between personal and official calls.
“Maybe you could come up to the Tyr for some R&R?”
That was the last thing she would do because then her father might decide it was time for the Tyr to leave the Sol System in its search for the Home Fleet. She knew he didn’t have a plan, did not know where they had gone. Once the Tyr left Sol, with her aboard, she was pretty sure she would never see Sol again. Her father might not lock her up, but he would ensure she didn’t have transport back.
“No, thank you,” Skadi said.
“What happens when your gunnery sergeant doesn’t need you anymore?”
“Her gunnery sergeant;” her father was being nasty. Not prime minister or anything, just a mere gunnery sergeant.
“That is going to be a long time,” Skadi said. “He needs me.”
“He needs Loki,” Carpenter said. He had been told about her SCBI and was livid about it.
“He needs me,” Skadi said. “Loki helps a lot, but he needs loyalty.”
“What loyalty does he give you?” Carpenter asked.
“What’s your point? I am his executive officer. I don’t doubt his loyalty, and he doesn’t doubt mine. Besides, aren’t you leaving? Off to save the Home Fleet, which is lost somewhere in deep space? Do you have a plan for that yet?”
“No,” Carpenter said. “I have sent out scouts, and I’m still waiting for their reports.”
“Of course.”
“I’ve also dispatched a couple of ships to repair the Heimdal,” Carpenter said. “There are other ships there we may salvage.”
The Heimdal was a battlestar that had been crippled and nearly destroyed after the battle for Zhukov. She remembered her father saying they had left a small detachment to attempt repairs or destroy the ship if it looked like it was about to be captured.
“Have you heard from them?”
“No,” Carpenter said. “We did not abandon them. The Heimdall’s escorts remained.”
Skadi remembered. Each battlestar was usually assigned four destroyers, called busse in Republic circles, and a massive support craft classified as a Knarr, to support them. The Heimdall had been no exception, and since those ships had not been part of Carpenter’s reduced Task Force Ragnarök, she had assumed they had been destroyed. Most of the Tyr’s destroyer escorts had been destroyed during Nasaraf’s attack, and Skadi realized that might be another reason her father was feeling insecure. The Knarrs frequently had several fighter squadrons for protection but were not ships of the wall and spent their time lurking in deep space, mining and building things for the battlestar task force.
“I expect the scouts sent to contact them to return any day,” Carpenter said.
“How long have you been expecting them to return?”
“This is the second week,” Carpenter said. Which wasn’t good. If the captain of the scout was still alive, he or she would not be in Carpenter’s good graces. Vanir prided themselves on precision.
“Did they perhaps fell prey to the vanhat?”
Which would be bad if the vanhat now had a battlestar. Very bad.
“They shouldn’t have. They had Inkeri technology, three destroyers, and their Knarr support craft. Even the SOG would have been cautious attacking them. Furthermore, they are in deep space, incredibly hard to find. Amiraali Hans Koeln survived, and he is a tough old bastard. When we dispersed to share the Inkeri technology with the ghost colonies, I sent a scout to them and that scout returned, reporting they were alive and still conducting repairs.”
“How badly was the Heimdall damaged?”
“Badly. The Golden Horde tried hard to destroy the ship. They failed, but the engines were badly damaged.”
“What if the Golden Horde returned?” Skadi asked.
“Hah. That would have gone badly for them, I’m sure. I don’t think there were enough survivors to seriously threaten the Heimdall.”
“Zen,” Skadi said, rubbing her eyes. She had forgotten the Golden Horde. They were out there somewhere. Had they been slaves of Nasaraf? She remembered seeing none of their ships in his fleet. She would have to check with Jussi if there had been any sightings. He also needed to review the report on which Golden Horde ships had survived the fight near Zhukov.
Dammit. So much going on.
“You need to take a break,” Carpenter said, as if he could see her rubbing her eyes and slouching in her chair.
“Eventually,” she said.
“Why won’t you return to your people?” Carpenter asked.
Changing track again. Damn him. “My people abandoned, betrayed, and tortured me.”
“I didn’t.”
No, but she would not give him a chance. “I’m needed here. Why can’t you see that?”
“I have many crew and officers pressuring me to remain,” Carpenter said, which was news to her. His command staff always seemed united and consistent.
“Why don’t you?”
“Because I don’t trust your gunnery sergeant.”
“Stop calling him a gunnery sergeant. He is the prime minister.”
“A leopard doesn’t change his spots. He is a good man, but I suspect he is beyond his limits, and when he discovers that it will be bloody.”
“You don’t know him.”
“I know his type. An extremely competent staff NCO, but reluctant to make the hard decisions.”
“You really don’t know him. He belongs to a breed of man that has been lost. I’m still learning what it is to be a Marine and an American. You cannot know him. He comes from a different time and a different world.”
“He is still a man, and he is far from perfect.”
How to explain to her father? There was something different about Mathison. He was a fraction of her father’s age, mentally. Was he different because he was not stuck in his ways and more than willing to leave his comfort zone? Or was it something else?
Dealing with SOG bureaucrats who were ancient and stuck in their ways, she could now see that in her father. He had been a battlestar commander since the fall of Asgard and had known nothing else for almost two centuries. He had hated and fought the SOG for longer. Longer than most Governance administrators had held power. He had known his position in the Republic hierarchy. He’d had no chance to grow or expand for centuries; he had been comfortable as a battlestar task force commander.
Was that why the Republic had rarely made any serious advances against the SOG? Because Republic commanders were comfortable with their positions? There was much to be said about younger people pushing from the bottom, young, ambitious, clueless.
The SOG was mired in its ways. Now, with everything changing, people were more afraid than usual. She saw it every day, every time she looked into someone’s eyes. The bodies might be young, but the minds were ancient, and the low-level bureaucrats were struggling to find their way into the upper crust elite where they could get age treatment and immortality.
Skadi hated the SOG, hated the bureaucracy, the stratified society they had built, how they used “the greater good” as a tool of oppression and control.
“The prime minister is doing a better job than anyone I could imagine being in that position,” Skadi said. “He is a good leader, and if anyone can succeed, he can.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Where do you fit in? Where do you see yourself twenty years from now? Ten? Five?”
Skadi didn’t have an answer for that. Did it matter, though? She was too busy living day to day, week to week. The vanhat were coming. There was no doubt about that. Prime Minister Mathison had instilled in her a desire to save as many people as possible, even if they were social fascists, bureaucrats, and oppressive thugs. People couldn’t change if they were dead. They could not find a better life. Right now, Mathison was her only hope of changing the SOG for the better. If the SOG didn’t change, it would have to be destroyed. But that was a problem for next month or next year.
“I must go,” Carpenter said. “Vanhat incursion. I love you, daughter. Please be safe.”
It sounded so final as the link closed. Another link came in from Admiral Ivakina, a priority.
Paska. There would be no rest for the weary.
“This is bad,” Loki reported.
* * * * *
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Eight: Raid
Prime Minister Wolf Mathison, USMC
He had just lain down when Freya alerted him.
“Incursion,” Freya said. “Near Earth.”
“What?”
“A squadron of ships. They—”
Mathison pulled his uniform back on.
“They jumped out. They suffered eighty percent casualties.”
“That’s good?”
“Not exactly. A one hundred percent casualty rate is desirable.”
Mathison sighed. He knew why, but he was sure Freya would tell him.
“The two ships that escaped suffered damage, but they will have a wealth of sensor data to share. All ships released a spread of missiles.”
“Did we suffer any casualties?”
“The dreadnought Bravest Serbin suffered some damage. Not significant. Apparently, half the missiles were lethal, the other half were ferrets.”
Ferrets. SOG’s description for missiles with sensor payloads that scanned and sent their results back to another platform. In this case, it could be out-system. It would take eight hours for any signal to reach outside the Sol System’s defense network, but it could be much longer before the attackers got the data.
“Have them start moving the defense platforms,” Mathison said.
“Not so easy,” Freya said. “Space is vast, but once they have the data they can watch where we move them. Right now, they lurk in deep space, virtually undetectable, but if they move, they can be seen. There is no place for them to hide in deep space and fewer than half have adaptive camouflage.”
“Well, what can we do?”
“Prepare for another attack in eight to twenty hours. They will transition in and launch another volley of missiles at identified targets.”
“That’s going to get expensive for them.”
“Skadi and Admiral Ivakina on a link.”
“Open.”
“Prime Minister,” Skadi said. “We have had an incursion.”
“What is being done about it?”
“We are moving what platforms we can and re-deploying all squadrons. We should be able to adjust the location of the ships easily enough, but the weapon platforms will be problematic.”
“Do your best,” Mathison said.
“The survival of the two ships is a vicious crime against the Governance and the captains in charge of—”
“No. Tell them to do better next time.”
“Initial analysis indicates the two cruiser captains responded rapidly,” Freya reported. “I have access to all data. They did their best. I suspect Admiral Ivakina does not want to be blamed.”
“Incompetence must be punished, Prime Minister,” Ivakina said. “If it is not then—”
“I said no,” Mathison said. “You can investigate and see if they were screwing off, but unless you have evidence they were, no punishment.”
“But sir,” Ivakina said. “We cannot allow such gross—”
“No. This is war. Shit happens. The enemy we are facing is cunning and capable. I’m surprised we got eighty percent of them. Good job.”
Ivakina was silent, and Mathison hid his smile. Neither Skadi nor Ivakina had mentioned eighty percent. Mathison let that sink in, that he knew what was going on before he had been called. Of course, Skadi would know.
“Proper captains would have gotten all of them, Prime Minister,” Ivakina said.
It was hard to scowl at someone through a voice-only communication link.
“I will determine that,” Mathison said.
“The enemy released ferrets which will report the location of numerous platforms.”
“I am aware, Admiral.”
The admiral fell silent, perhaps wondering what was going on.
“Move the platforms that can be moved. Do your best to mask them. You are wasting my time with accusations and excuses.”
“Yes, sir,” Ivakina said.
