The Admiral's Choice, page 1
The Admiral’s Choice
The Terra Prime Series
Book Three
Terry A. Hurlbut
Copyright © 2021 by Terry A. Hurlbut
The Terra Prime Series: The Admiral’s Choice
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.
Neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility or liability whatsoever on behalf of the consumer or reader of this material. Any perceived slight of any individual or organization is purely unintentional.
This book is a work of fiction; while this book references notable figures and events throughout history, names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and events within the story are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Therefore, any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-958700-01-3 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-958700-00-6 (ebook)
Published by Conservative News and Views.
https://www.conservativenewsandviews.com/.
Cover by Andrew Dobell - Creative Edge Studios.
www.creativeedgestudios.co.uk.
Printed in the United States of America.
To Andrea
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Book Four Preview
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
What Did You Think?
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
Jacques-Yves de Grasse turned away from the sun, now setting over le bassin d'Arcachon far away to the west. He faced his visitor squarely. “Would you care to say that again?” he asked. He had unconsciously slipped into a voice he had not used for fifteen years. The last time he’d spoken this way had marked the beginning of his retirement.
No, not retirement. Exile, said a voice in his mind. He ignored it.
Vice-Admiral Ramón Ordoñez-Pizarro USN frostily replied, “I believe you heard me the first time, Rear-Admiral de Grasse. A dangerous revolutionary movement has sprung up, right here on Sol d. And one of your former officers is at the heart of it.”
“I won’t bother asking you why don’t you just say ‘Earth,’ if you still say ‘Sol.’ Instead, I will proceed to the next question: why come to me?”
“For the obvious reason that, if anyone can reach Lieutenant Commander Morrow and persuade him to stand down, you can.”
Sacré salaud, he didn’t say. “You fellows—or at least the Admiralty as then constituted—didn’t seem to want my help fifteen years ago, when it might have mattered,” he said. “They as much as told me, ‘Go back to your family vineyard and be happy. This matter is in the hands of top men.’ Well, obviously, your ‘top men’ have failed you. So now you come to me and say, ‘Amiral-arrière, we need your help!’
“Connerie!” he shouted. He was a vintner, not a rancher, but still a man of the country, and swore like one. “I ought to tell you and your superiors what to do with yourselves,” he went on. “And before you upbraid me for a lack of manners, let me remind you: I am retired. For fifteen years have I been retired, and not by my choice, either. And as it happens, you are standing on the land of my ancestors, which belongs to me by the direct guarantee of les cinq dames themselves. So I don’t have to accord anyone an ounce of respect who has not earned it. And you, mon vice-amiral, have not.”
The Vice-Admiral made a big show of clearing his throat. Then he said, “I read the brief. So I understand how sensitive a subject this is to broach with you. But a moment’s sober reflection—perhaps over a few glasses of the excellent wine for which your vineyard and winery are famous throughout the Galaxy—will, I am sure, convince you of both the urgency of the situation and your value to us in resolving it.”
That part about the fame of his wine struck home. His father had often regaled him with the diary entries of his multi-arrière-grand-père Alain. In them, he described how he obtained the guarantee of which the Vice-Admiral had just spoken, from Mdlles. Francisca Ordoñez-Pizarro, Kanesha Preston, Ruqayya Tamraz, Jawahir Otayf, and, of course, Mdlle. Secrétaire-générale Gunilla Thorsell, their leader. And very lucky had his multiple-great-grandfather been to obtain it nearly four centuries ago. Everyone else forfeited his land, which then underwent le rendu à rétro-sauvage. Now, to look beyond the borders of the De Grasse 400-hectare holding, none could tell that the surrounding lands had ever been anything but wilderness.
Of course, his guest knew all these facts. Best, therefore, not to antagonize him too much.
“Touché, mon vice-amiral,” he said. “By all means, let us continue this dialogue at my house.”
The two walked to where the Vice-Admiral’s magnetically levitating vehicle, his flag lieutenant, and his Marine chauffeur waited.
* * *
Jacques-Yves didn’t have to ride with the Vice-Admiral. After all, he had his own maglev car. But that car, like every car on Earth (very few of which existed), was fully autonomous. So all he had to do was dispatch the car to the garage, where it would find its own stall, at least as well as a horse would. Then he mounted the Vice-Admiral’s vehicle.
Once aboard, he closed the passenger door. Then he took off his hat, revealing his perfectly bald and shiny head. He needed a hat, and a light coat, against the slightly nippy air.
The trip back to the main house took about fifteen minutes. Jacques-Yves spent the time enjoying the scenery. Though actually, the view was less enjoyable now. How forlorn the vineyard looked at this time of year! The wine was long since laid down, and wine that had finished aging had gone out to the nearby town of Cadillac. There, stevedores loaded it onto barges for the trip down the Garonne to Bordeaux, as had happened for centuries. All this had happened two months ago, in the month Vendémiaire, the month of wine-pressing. At least now, he could better appreciate the view than he could have a month earlier. Brumaire, the month of fog, always shrouded his vines.
At last, they arrived at his house. Upon arrival, Jacques-Yves alighted first and acknowledged his butler, Michel. He then snapped rapid-fire orders to draw wine and serve it to him and his guest in the library.
The guest, upon entering the library, immediately fell to scanning the shelves that lined the walls. “Impressive,” he said. “You’re one of the few people in all the United Systems who keeps cloth-bound books. Vice-Admiral Brandon Nelson did the same following his second retirement, from command of Bonaventure III. Why do you do it? Surely you can access even texts like these on the Network.”
“Not all of them. Besides, like wine, a true book is best appreciated when one can hold it in one’s hand and turn its pages.”
“Is that a Christian Bible I see on your shelf?” the Vice-Admiral asked with a faint note of disapproval.
Jacques-Yves ignored it. “Yes,” he said. “A Louis Second edition, translated from the original Authorized Version of the British Royal Commission on Bible Translation, which they issued in … Wait, wait, wait … Em-zhee-day-enn minus nine zero six double zero, give or take a couple hundred.”
“Did you just calculate that?” asked Ordoñez-Pizarro, now sounding impressed.
“Actually, no,” said Jacques-Yves. “I memorized it long since. I’m far more accustomed to converting between MJDN and French Republican. For instance, today is MJDN 204195, is it not?”
“Of course.”
“Well, to my way of thinking, it is Primeday, first day of the Third Decad in the month Frimaire in Year 626 of the French Republic.”
“Why use such a calendar?” his guest asked. “The Gregorian calendar, that I might understand.”
“Not when you reflect on the memories of war that attach to that calendar.”
“But they attach to the Republican Calendar, too, no?”
“Yes, but the French Revolution is more remote. Besides, the month names are ideal for a farmer—or a vine-dresser and winemaker. They tell the seasons of weather or agricultural or horticultural or viticultural activity. And quite accurately, too—as these last fifteen years have confirmed. But all that suffices—and forgive my manners. Please seat yourself.”
The Vice-Admiral sat in one of the two cushioned armchairs in the library. Jacques-Yves took the other. Just then, an underbutler arrived, bearing a wine carafe and two glasses on a silver tray. He set this on the small table betwee
Taking one of the wine glasses, Ordoñez-Pizarro said, “Rear-Admiral, I offer a toast. We can drink to the resumption of your sadly interrupted career.”
Jacques-Yves took his own glass and touched his to his guest’s, but with considerable deliberation. “That’s almost as provocative a statement,” he said, “as your broaching to me that you need my help in quelling revolution.” He paused to sip his wine, then said, “You do realize, I trust, that, thanks to the Admiralty, I have received no briefings since they relieved me of my command, arrested my second officer, scattered my last command from one end of the Quadrant to the other, and even decommissioned my ship. Almost as if they wanted to bury not only Lieutenant Commander Morrow but myself and my command as well. Are you now prepared to tell me why?”
“Why your relief and retirement and the decommissioning and the rest of it, no,” said his guest. “Mainly because I know not these things myself. And by the way, we’re going to be working very closely with one another. Can we not call one another by our first names?”
“Very well … Ramón. And I am called Jacques-Yves.”
“Thank you a thousand times … Jacques-Yves.” Well! Now Jacques-Yves could be impressed. Though they were speaking Standard, Ramón had just used a French idiom. Most Standard speakers would have thanked him a million times, through a misreading of the French phrase.
Taking another sip, he said, “It’s not important. What is important is this ‘revolution’ my former second officer Matthew Morrow is supposed to be making. As I said, I have received no briefing.”
“True,” said Ramón, sipping from his own glass. “That is why I, not some more junior officer, am here. I must emphasize the extreme sensitivity of what I am about to impart to you. I am the eyes, ears—and voice—of the Admiralty and even of the security council and first secretary.”
“More provocative still,” said Jacques-Yves. “Just what has Matthew Morrow done?”
“He has conquered completely the prison and reservation complex of Botany Bay,” said the Vice-Admiral. “In the process, he has gathered to himself not only the prison population but also the entire population of the American Reservation on the western third of that continent.”
“Cinq dames!” Jacques-Yves cried. “The American Reservation—and how quickly that demonym rolled off your tongue. Surely you don’t think I have forgotten that the name America is a name with which to frighten small children. And the American Reservation … the prison of the descendants of the last Americans who refused rehabilitation. You are telling me that Matthew Morrow has recruited them to aid him in his … quest, whatever that might be. Now, just when were you going to brief me about this!?”
“I am doing so now, Rear-Admiral, and that is the important thing.”
“How did he accomplish this feat?”
“He escaped from the Botany Bay Psychiatric Institute in the New South Wales District.”
“And why was he confined there?”
“That’s not important. What is important is that, in the process of that escape, he hijacked an LCG prison transport. Using that, he traversed the Southern Ocean, then attacked the force-field generator at Sharp Point and introduced himself to an American cavalry force—horse cavalry, if you can believe it! —that was reconnoitering that generator at the time. After that, it was a simple matter to recruit the Americans. The Special Security Forces had restricted their technology to pre-electric inventions. How, is unimportant.”
“You seem to regard a great many things as unimportant to which I would assign a great deal of import,” said Jacques-Yves with a tone he almost regretted using.
Ramón seemed to take no notice. “The point is that the Americans had cavalry and mobile artillery. I must observe that the SSF were fearfully lax in this regard. They ought never to have permitted the Americans to reorganize their society as they did. But, tacaños that they always have been, they didn’t want to expend effort building barracks, reformatories, or mess halls, and did not want to mix the Americans in with the regular populations of adult and juvenile inmates in the Victoria and South Australian districts. They insisted on leaving the Americans to their own devices, to fend for themselves. Oh, what can they do? We’ll just raid them once in a while if they ever try to develop electric … ah, sorry. Forget I said that.”
Jacques-Yves smiled thinly. “D’accord,” he said.
“And now see what! The Americans had built an army, and your former second officer recruited them. With them, he swept Botany Bay from Perth to Sidney and every installation in between.”
“A moment, Ramón. How could he do that, given the force fields that, I’m sure, demarcate the various districts of Botany Bay?”
“By creating, almost as if he had done so immediately, a virus program that took down every force-field generator at once.”
Jacques-Yves sighed. “Pray, continue,” he said.
“Worse than that, in the administrative centers in Adelaide, Melbourne, Townsville, and Sydney, he has captured all the ancient aircraft that once belonged to the Royal Australian Air Force, plus a B-52 Stratofortress that once belonged to the United States Air Force. The SSF were conducting research on them, trying to design a gravity generator that would enable one of our pilots to fly them without risking vertigo or blackout from the accelerations attendant on air-to-air combat. But your second officer recruited, if you can believe it, adolescent boys to fly them as they were!
“And fly them they did, to embarrassingly good effect. Those SSF who did not die in action, now languish in the prisons they once guarded. And Matthew Morrow has made sure to confine them the old-fashioned way, with physical bars and fences, not force fields. All the produce from the penal farms and ranches of Queensland is now lost to us. He has set up a ‘capital city’ in the Canberra Administrative Center, and makes regular propaganda broadcasts from, as nearly as we can tell, the ancient Sydney Opera House. Thanks to him, riots have broken out in Mumbai, Rangoon, Phnom Penh, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and lately in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Chunjing, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Seoul, Pyongyang, and Tokyo.”
“Have any riots broken out in France?”
“Not yet, Admiral,” said Ramón. “But the Latin Quarter in Paris is getting restive. I stopped in Bordeaux on my way up the Garonne to see you. No riots yet, but a whispering campaign. My sources also report more whispering at Alise-Ste-Reine. My staff suggested to me that the Five Ladies perhaps ought to have removed the statue of Vercingetorix,” Ramón paused. “Ah, well,” he said, “that is of the past. The present is our most pressing problem.”
“Which could be worse,” said Jacques-Yves. “I take it that’s why you haven’t moved against Matthew in force.”
“You are pleased to joke, Jacques-Yves. We can’t possibly land any troops on Botany Bay. First, that B-52 carried air-launched flying bombs with which he destroyed the spaceports of New Zealand. Matthew Morrow’s rioting gangs have taken over every other spaceport from which you could cross to Botany Bay over water alone. We tried once to drop troops into the American Reservation—and the American militia killed or captured them all. Trying that again would give his revolution more publicity—and more fire-power and transport capability—than the Admiralty would care to risk. And there are other reasons, which I am not authorized to disclose, why the Marines and the Navy are stretched thinly at the moment.”
“Do you mean to say,” said Jacques-Yves, “that we are under attack from The Hive, or the Far-elves, or some such enemy?”
“No,” said Ramón. “At least we have no attacks from those quarters. More than that, I cannot—must not—say.”
“But what you are saying,” said Jacques-Yves, “is that you don’t want to assault Matthew Morrow’s position with main force. I suppose you also hope you don’t have to destroy him. You do know that I know exactly what he is and how formidable he can be. The Five Ladies know how he saved a key mission for me. Two, in fact. Except the second one happened shortly before his arrest.”
“All perfectly true, Jacques-Yves. Believe me; we don’t want to destroy him if we can help it. That’s why we need you. But you need to know more about the arsenal he now appears to have at his command.”
