Hegemony at dalou, p.16
Hegemony at Dalou, page 16
Harbinger of Doom. That much he knew from spies and rumors.
Harbinger of Revolution as well?
VIKING
THIRTY-SIX
DATE OF THE REPUBLIC NOVEMBER 16, 411 RAN VIKING, MEERUT ORBIT
Markus knew that if he wasn’t careful, Phil would end up turning him into a Centurion. On the one hand, better pay in retirement. On the other, he’d have to start acting like management. Didn’t help that the last two weeks he had been doing exactly that.
Not quite a foretaste of hell, but Markus could smell the brimstone from here. It just looked like the Command Centurion’s day office on RAN Viking. And CC Silver didn’t look like the devil. At least most of the time. Just let Markus handle things because First Centurion—1C—had ordered it.
Worse, Markus had organized a third team. Rednecks to weld stuff. Engineers to design better sensor arrays. Scientists coming up with a theory of astrophysics as related to the walls of the Balhee Cluster.
That last group had even tentatively started producing mathematics, but the shit was so far beyond him that Markus was already lost, just looking at the executive summary. CC Silver, however, seemed to think that it worked, so Markus was happy to let the man handle it. As Command Centurion, he was technically senior officer in the system right now.
Even the new governor was keeping quiet, but that man had to build a third government in six months, after the pirates had come in and executed most of the first one, before dying or being arrested the second time by Phil.
“You sure you don’t want to transfer back to Engineering proper, Markus?” CC Silver asked now, looking up from the document that might tell his people how to predict gaps in the stellar wall and all the crap around them. “You’ve done an amazing job with this stuff.”
“Rather not, sir,” Markus replied. “Phil gets better coffee supplies.”
CC Silver laughed. Didn’t argue the point. Might have something to do with Markus being in charge of some of those supplies, and making sure the quartermaster didn’t skimp. Gotta keep the boss happy, you know.
“How soon will your teams be ready to start installing new equipment?” Silver asked now.
“We can move reasonably quickly, sir,” Markus said. “My personal preference on waiting only comes from having to take apart a good chunk of your bow to do things. We can ask the locals to do it in their yard, but they’ll figure out what we’re up to pretty quickly. Ain’t none of them dumb. Just lazy and parochial. If we do it ourselves, you’re offline for at least a week. Do we trust the locals to behave?”
“Good point,” the man replied. “Phil would, but he’s like that. We’ve got a few corvettes to handle search and rescue kinds of tasks, plus the two former enforcers, both of which are repaired now. The crews, however, are all still former pirates at this point.”
“Yeah, but they got nowhere to run to from here, so I expect them to largely behave,” Markus said. “It’s everybody else.”
“Oh?”
“Natural paranoia, CC,” Markus said. “Right about now, the First Centurion is pinning a medal on our boy. That means Urumchi, Morninghawk, and escorts aren’t here. If I was gonna cause somebody grief at Meerut, now would be the time. That’s why I’ve been lagging a little with my teams, before letting you know we might have invented the future when nobody was looking.”
“Truly?” Silver asked.
“Well, CM-507 has the sensor power,” Markus shrugged. “The others have to lose some space forward and aft to rearrange things. Maybe a cabin at each end, but you know how lean they already run, so we sacrifice crew comfort or sailing supplies.”
“What about the locals?” Silver pressed.
“Nobody else in the sound of my voice could do this,” Markus said. “Look at page 143.”
He waited while the man did, then waited for the whistle.
“That is a lot of power,” Silver noted.
“For them, yeah,” Markus agreed. “We’ve got it, because that Corynthian pirate built us this way. Doubt anyone could retrofit anything to do it, but they already know they need to build new hulls once they buy or steal tech from us. This is merely a tweak during the design process. For us, just a new way to build a scout corvette. More likely the locals take a freighter, overload it with enough generators, and slow-sail until they pick out the gaps they’ve been too lazy to locate before now.”
“Assuming they are still secret,” CC Silver replied.
“Yeah, that,” Markus nodded. “Vilahana’s value goes way down fast, if Meerut can access the outside directly. Hell, I could see the boss building a new Citadel just outside, and having purpose-built wall-runners hall cargo inside. Great way to make a lev around here.”
“Gonna retire and become a shop keeper?” Silver grinned.
“Bar owner, maybe,” Markus grinned back.
CC was about to say something when his comm chirped.
“Silver here,” the man said.
“I’m bringing the ship and the squadron to alert, Barnaby,” First Officer Alma said quietly. “Need you on the bridge now.”
Silver was moving, but Markus was used to sudden alerts, so he was already out the hatch and running. Didn’t have anyplace else to be right now, and Silver was in charge, so it would be just like getting Phil coffee.
Forty steps and they were on the bridge. Expeditionary-class. Everyone more or less facing in so they could communicate with faces as well as tones.
Markus found a station out of the way as Aurelius “Auke” Alma moved his giant self out of the command chair. Silver slipped in.
“What have we got?” the CC asked.
“Since we snuck up on the ships at the mouth and bottled them in, standing orders have always been for them to keep a runner ready on zero notice to bring alerts inside,” the man said. “One just did. Haven’t even read the report yet, but it is a good training exercise if nothing else.”
“Alright,” CC said. “You take over Tactical now. I’ll handle the flag. Anybody coming for trouble thinks they have a chance.”
He turned this way and smiled at Markus. Markus was already grinning.
“Good thing our bow is still in one piece, Markus.”
It was, as Markus read the message.
THIRTY-SEVEN
DATE OF THE REPUBLIC NOVEMBER 16, 411 RAN VIKING, MEERUT ORBIT
Barnaby looked around. Folks were piling in and senior officers were displacing juniors to side stations. First-team, with backups.
Auke was settling in here instead of moving aft to the Emergency Bridge like he normally did. The First Centurion had made it clear that he expected officers to rotate through all command spaces routinely, just to keep training sharp and make sure everyone knew everyone else at an unconscious level.
Barnaby still wanted his killers up here.
Expeditionary Survey Cruisers were big beasts, designed to travel alone into hostile territory. No escorts. Nobody lagging out at the edge of the system you could jump to in an emergency.
At the same time, they were built on an Expeditionary-class hull. Lots of power. LOTS. Two Type-4s and a lot of Pulse-Twos. No bubble gun, but that space was filled with cargo capacity, more generators, and the best sensor equipment in the galaxy.
What he missed was the rest of the escorts. CG-505 and CM-507 were better than anything in the system, but they were just two. Pretty much just escorts for a flagship here, because the locals hadn’t had anything like fleet or even adequate squadron training.
And he had a fox sniffing at the hen house.
“Gunner, unlock everything and prepare for battle,” Barnaby called, just in case Centurion Terje Rasmussen hadn’t already. “Pilot, make sure the corvettes are close and know to stay in formation as you move. Let’s not rely on the pirates to cover our asses. They’ll be too busy with their own.”
Centurion Riny Van Akkeren looked up and nodded. She was used to delicate maneuvering, having come up in scouts originally.
Battles were a whole other beast.
“Okay people, look sharp,” Barnaby called. He clicked a few buttons and the scan log from the lagoon appeared on his screen. “This is the scan that got shipped in. What do we know?”
Sunan had been at her station already, she reacted quickly.
“Ewin Principality transponders,” she called. “Three big hulls. Four small ones. Cruisers and frigates, looking at my notes.”
“Armaments?” Barnaby asked.
“Could be anything,” she replied. “Ewin have two versions of every hull. One based on strike fighters like we used to do. The other is a missile platform like Shadowbolt.”
“Seriously?” Riny asked. “Strike fighters?”
“The future has not caught up with the Balhee Cluster,” Barnaby called over the room.
“Hadn’t until today,” Terje laughed rudely. “How friendly are we feeling?”
“That’s up to them,” Barnaby said. He looked over at Markus with a smile. “While you’re there, feel like grabbing us some coffee? Mine’s not as good, but this might be a while.”
Markus laughed and rose. Barnaby turned to Sunan.
“Get me everything, as soon as they emerge,” he said. “We have some time, as folks outside reacted fast enough, and it looks like the raiders are deadsailing around the mouth like we did last time.”
“Would you want to try taking that mess on?” she laughed.
A comm chirped. Auke.
“Got Governor Dexter on the line asking for you, Barnaby,” his first officer said now.
Barnaby switched his screen.
Milose Dexter. Formerly the captain of the resort ship Aggregator. Closest thing to a common leader the pirates had been willing to accept, when Phil gave them the option of a military governor instead. Generally good. Businessman, though, so not really a warrior type.
Lots of the warriors had retired to the ground in the last few months. Those that had survived him and Phil arriving the first time.
“Governor,” Barnaby nodded.
“We’re not really a nation yet, Captain,” Dexter replied. “Pickets and Raiders aren’t warships. What do you expect to happen today?”
“Will know that as soon as our friends arrive,” Barnaby smiled grimly. “Was just having a chat with one of my advisors and owe him because his bet was an attack today from outside the lagoon. If this is it, I will send flag signals to everyone, but I don’t expect them to react as crisply as a trained military. Not yet, anyway. Still expect them to go for the throat if this is an attack. That good enough for now?”
“It is,” Dexter said. “Just getting settled into the governor’s mansion, but the last two guys that held the job both died in office. I’d rather be on a beach somewhere when it happens to me.”
“The force arriving does not appear sufficient to take the place, Governor,” Barnaby replied. “And I have firepower. Tell all your people to follow orders and we should get through this.”
“Understood.”
Barnaby cut the line. Phil did diplomacy. And combat. Barnaby was an old hand who’d come up from the scouting side of things.
Who happened to fly in the most dangerous scout ever built.
Time to make use of it.
“Meerut Squadron, this is Command Centurion Silver,” he announced over the general line. “I have the flag. Everybody come up to combat readiness and stand by to receive incoming missiles from what appears to be an Ewin Principality invasion force. My suggestion is that those of you close to the station move into defensive positions around it. Everyone else cluster into tighter groups where you can overlap your fire defensively. Viking will bring the offense for now. Once we know what they’re about, Tango and Blade of Kunke will lead teams as well. Everyone signal your understanding and readiness.”
He nodded to Sunan. She’d handle that part.
The two Enforcers had new captains, since Utkin had killed Harper Zemke to start their revolution and the few surviving senior staff of Tango had retired to the ground under amnesty after Utkin died in his last duel. The new folks aboard were still getting used to a light cruiser, having come over from a Raider that CB-502 had dismembered so badly it wasn’t worth repairing.
One more Raider wouldn’t have meant much today, but having two Enforcers might.
“Riny, we have the range,” Barnaby said. “Move us to a spot where the Fours can hit someone coming in to a standard landing pattern. Terje, don’t fire until I tell you, even if provoked.”
“Back to First Vilahana?” his Gunner asked.
“That’s right.”
First Vilahana. Tango and a pair of missile platforms throwing spears at Aranyani. Would have worked, but Phil had ordered everyone to intervene. Missiles weren’t worth a shit against First Centurion Whughy’s Pulse-Two. Strike fighters weren’t much better, save that Viking didn’t have any Type-3s or Type-1s. He did have a pair of corvettes.
“Sir, do we want to move to the edge of the gravity well ourselves?” Riny asked now. “If we chase them off, they still have to land and deadsail. We might capture them at that point. Or pound them into submission.”
“Yes, Pilot,” Barnaby ordered. “CG-505, CM-507, stand by to exit the gravity well for combat.”
Just about the opposite of the old days, when a squadron would drop out, organize, and then sail down to fight in high orbit somewhere. When you got high enough, it was possible to go straight to JumpSpace without maneuvering. Assuming you charged your drives.
“Engineering, be ready for a Jump,” Barnaby ordered. “Auke, you have Tactical.”
Auke looked over, then nodded.
Half the reason Barnaby was so successful was his First Officer. Auke was a bear of a man, with the energy of a hummingbird and the brains of any three other officers combined. He’d been the key scientist handling math for Markus Dunklin, once they identified the need.
He was also pretty damned good as a Tactical Officer.
“All hands, enemy force should begin arriving in ninety seconds,” Auke announced.
Barnaby assumed that he’d done the math of flight, jump, and organizing themselves into whatever trouble they thought they might cause while the cat was away. Markus returned with fresh coffee and Barnaby settled in to see what happened next.
THIRTY-EIGHT
DATE OF THE REPUBLIC NOVEMBER 16, 411 RAN VIKING, MEERUT ORBIT
Auke scowled at his screens, as if he could make everyone conform to his needs by sheer force of will. He had Tactical, but that was just inside the hull. Barnaby had the flag. Still, Barnaby listened.
“Flag, have Blade of Kunke shift up eight points and draw those seven ships with them,” Auke said now. “That forces the enemy to shift across or risk being caught in a crossfire before they understand what happened.”
Barnaby listened and relayed the order, without even asking. That was good. Auke wasn’t sure he could express what he saw in words. Everything was numbers when he thought about it like this. Vectors that he could program a screen to display if he had an hour or so to work out the math. Probably a third derivative estimate, but that would shift down the curve as soon as he knew what the enemy commander had brought with him.
Chaos offended Auke. Battles always began as contained chaos, at least until you knew what someone’s opening moves were. Then it became chess.
Iveta Beridze was a warrior. Thinker, but killer first. Auke was a mathematician who liked to play with guns occasionally.
Today, he had to stand in for Junkyard and handle these assholes like she would have.
“Also,” he continued. “Have Tango drift their flank outwards a bit and bring those two Pickets into forward escort positions like we have our corvettes. A missile force shouldn’t be able to overwhelm them while still dealing with us, but the Enforcer lacks the Point Guns to defend themselves. Does anybody around here use strike fighters besides Ewin?”
“Yaumgan is rumored to have something,” the Science Officer spoke up now. “Supposedly looks like the bigger ships, but one- or two-crew biped ships. Likely at least as advanced as what we used to build before Buran.”
Auke nodded. That would be something to see. Li Jing and Zhang Guolao had impressed the hell out of him, because all those moving parts made it a far more complicated set of equations than just welding steel and attaching guns. It needed art. But it needed math more.
“All hands, stand by for enemy emergence,” he called.
Others had a sixth sense for the flow of battle. Beridze was like that. Auke had math on his side. And an expectation of human nature. He didn’t always understand Humans, but that was because they were only predictable up to a point.
Lack of professionalism on their part just made it harder for him. Pissed him off. Trained forces could be predicted.
He waited. Tried not to fidget. Any other maneuver orders had to wait until he was sure. The two Enforcers just anchored portions of his flanks against end-sweeps, because he had Type-4 beams with which to chastise annoying people.
And anyone deadsailing around the guardships was trying to annoy him.
Assuming that they hadn’t seen the messenger fleet and decided to withdraw.
Of course, if they were honest folk, they wouldn’t have brought a war squadron, and would have knocked politely.
“Emergence detected,” Sunan called. “Seven signatures as before. Strike that. I am detecting what we used to call a crash launch from the main vessel. Transponder code Pioneer.”
“Sunan,” Barnaby called. “Hunter-class cruiser?”
“That’s my guess,” she replied. “First time we’ve actually scanned one.”
“Hit him with all sensors then,” Barnaby said cruelly. “I want to know what the captain had for breakfast.”
“Stand by.”
Auke heard the hard ping that played when the Science Officer went to work. CM-507 had adequate sensors as well, and a good parallax. They should be able to count frames on the ships, even at this range.
