Empire in Crisis (19 page)

Hoskins sighed. Clearly Logan wasn’t fully convinced that
Hoskins last message was genuine. He couldn’t really blame the man. If he was
in Logan’s boots, he’d probably be just as careful.

“Okay people, it looks like we’re going to be here for a
while,” he said to the Flag Bridge personnel.

Forty-three minutes later, Logan’s flagship emerged from
the other end of the wormhole into the system designated as AA02. It was also
known as the Alpha Centauri star system and was one wormhole away from AA01,
which was the Solar System and Earth. For two fleets coming from opposite
directions, AA02 was the perfect place to rendezvous. Unfortunately for Logan,
neither the wormhole leading to Earth nor the wormhole through which the 987th
would emerge were within the 107th warp detection radius. He tried to put
himself in Santini’s boots and figure out what Santini would do if his 787th
fleet were here now. The goal of the rendezvous was to move on to Sol, and
therefore it stood to reason that the rebels would want to keep the wormhole
leading to Sol under warp detection. That being the case, the obvious point at
which to meet was halfway in between, and at extreme detection range of the
AA01 wormhole. It didn’t take long to get the 107th moving in that direction.

Unfortunately getting to within warp detection range of
that point did not reveal anything useful. There were no ships moving to or
from the point at warp speed, but that did not mean there were no ships there.
If they were only using their sub-light maneuvering engines, they wouldn’t show
up on the warp detectors, and the 107th was still too far away to use normal
radar. The problem with using normal radar was that if a ship was close enough
to be seen by radar, it was also close enough to fire its beam weapons, and the
radar would give away the detecting ship’s exact position. The answer to that
dilemma was to use recon drones as soon as the 107th dropped out of warp speed.

As it turned out, Logan didn’t need to use them. Before
getting that close, the 107th received an FTL text message with a confidential
classification coming from the rendezvous point. Logan read it on one of the
smaller screens of his Command Station.

[Hiakawa to Santini. Capital Fleet under someone named Hood
is sitting on top of the AA01 wormhole and is demanding that the 987th stand
down. Now that you’re here, we have enough strength to sweep Capital Fleet
aside and end DeChastelaine’s reign. As agreed, I’ll let you take the tactical
lead. Reply by text message. Voice communication would be overheard by some of
the crew. Let’s keep this exchange between us. End of message.]

Logan shook his head in disbelief. Could Corrine Hood
really be commanding Capital Fleet? It did make a weird kind of sense. He had
to find out for sure. He decided that sending Hood a confidential text message
instead of an open voice exchange made sense from their own security stand
point.

Hood nodded as the displayed pinged to announce an incoming
FTL message. So Hiakawa was replying at last.

[Logan to Hood. Corrine, is that you? I’ve just arrived
with the 107th from AA03. Santini has been arrested and the 787th has stood
down. Hiakawa has detected my fleet and thinks I’m Santini. Here’s what I think
we should do…]

Hiakawa patted the armrest of his chair impatiently. What
could be taking Santini so long to reply? With two fleets, they had Hood and
Capital Fleet by the balls, but the longer he and his cousin waited, the more
likely it was that Capital Fleet would get reinforcements from somewhere. He
was about to record another FTL message when the tactical display pinged with
an update. The 787th was slowing down and Capital Fleet was now boosting to
warp speed! Not only that, but the 787th was veering away slightly and so was
Hood’s fleet. He watched with growing incredulity until both fleets started
veering back towards the 987th. Suddenly it all became clear. A quick check of
the estimated time of arrivals confirmed it. Both fleets were trying to pin the
987th between them as they arrived at the rendezvous point from almost opposite
directions at virtually the same time. There was no reason for Santini to do
that, and therefore someone else had to be commanding the 787th now. If that
really was the 787th.

He had to grudgingly admire the maneuver. If Capital Fleet
had started coming at him directly, he could have tried to disengage by
withdrawing to the wormhole that the 987th had emerged from. But with Capital
Fleet now coming at him from an angle, he no longer had that option. The 987th
was trapped in this system. Needing time to figure a way out of this mess, he
started issuing orders.

Logan sighed as the display revealed that the 987th was
trying a desperate escape maneuver by turning away from both approaching fleets
and accelerating as hard as it could. With no wormhole anywhere in its new
path, the only thing that Logan could see was that Hiakawa was playing for
time. Logan wasn’t in a mood to play along. He made arrangements to record an
FTL voice message that would be sent to both the 987th and Capital Fleet at the
same time.

“To officers of the 987
^th
, this is Fleet Group
Admiral Logan commanding the 107th. The 787th will not be coming to the rescue.
Admiral Santini has been arrested. I would prefer not to order a massive
missile barrage from both the 107th and Capital Fleet against officers and
crews who may be loyal but confused subjects of our lawful Emperor, but I will
unless Admiral Hiakawa either steps down from command of the 987th or is placed
under arrest by other officers. I’ll wait a maximum of five minutes and then
we’ll fire. No further warnings will be issued. End of message.”

When almost four minutes had gone by with no change to the
situation, Logan began to think his gambit had failed. Just as he was about to
give the orders to set up the missile barrage, he heard the ping and saw that
the 987th was decelerating. There was an incoming text message too.

[Acting Fleet Commander Lee to Fleet Group Admiral Logan
and Fleet Admiral Hood. Hiakawa is no longer in command. He was shot trying to
resist arrest. The 987th is standing down. Hold your fire! End of message.]

It took over two days to finish the process of neutralizing
the 987th and 787th fleets. By mutual agreement, Hood led the 987th into the
Solar system and into a parking orbit far enough from Earth that direct beam
weapon attacks on the Palace were not practical. The senior officers of every
ship of the 987th were ordered down to Earth where they were carefully vetted
by verifier tests. Willing co-conspirators were arrested; the rest were allowed
to return to their ships. Meanwhile, Logan took the 107th back into AA03 and
shepherded the 787th through AA02 and then into the Solar system where its
officers went through a similar process. With four fleets in Earth orbit,
DeChastelaine and Bishop took advantage of the opportunity to reshulffle many
of the key command positions. Logan was anxious to get back to TE33 and begin
the offensive, but DeChastelaine held him back until Hood assured him that it
was safe to release the 107th.

With the 107th waiting for him, Logan reported for a last
meeting with DeChastelaine. He found Hood already in the Emperor’s private
office. DeChastelaine waved him over to a comfortable chair.

“I know that you’re anxious to get back to TE33, Admiral,
but there are a few things we need to discuss in person first. With the
additional battlecruiser and heavy cruiser squadrons transferred from the two
reserve fleets, the 107th will have ample resources even without the previously
assigned squadrons that are still on their way to TE33. I know that the plan
was to create two strike fleets, with one active while the other is resupplying
and repairing combat damage, but Senior Commander Hood has made a convincing
argument for a different approach. It seems her brief stint as a fleet
commander has given her a new perspective on strategic fleet operations. By the
way, Commander, before you brief Admiral Logan on your strategy, I want you to
know that I didn’t take away your fleet command because of anything you did
wrong. Quite the contrary. I may call on you to command Capital Fleet again,
but for now you’re far more valuable to me leading the Working Group. Admiral
Bishop is still struggling to rebuild the entire command structure, and not
having to worry about the Working Group is one less headache for her and one
more reason why I can sleep easy at night. I also enjoyed seeing the look on
Bishop’s face when I told her that I wanted to implement your idea of
disbanding the 987th and 787th reserve fleets and transferring all their
capital ship squadrons to Capital Fleet. With that said, go ahead and explain
your new strategy to Admiral Logan.”

“Thank you, My Emperor.” Hood shifted in her chair to face
Logan. “When Capital Fleet emerged from the AA02 wormhole, I faced the same
dilemma that you did when the 107th arrived in-system. Long range detection
only works on ships using their warp drives. As it turned out, the 987th was
already in that system and was waiting at the rendezvous point for the 787th. I
was able to confirm the presence of that fleet by using recon drones that
accelerated to very high velocities without using warp drives. And while I was
waiting to hear back from those drones, it occurred to me that being able to
communicate with Earth directly would have offered some nice advantages. As you
know, ships can’t use their FTL equipment to communicate with other star
systems directly because the onboard equipment is limited to a relatively
narrow bandwidth that is impossible to aim accurately over interstellar
distances. Starbases, on the other hand, can send messages over interstellar
distances because they have the much more bulky FTL transmitters that have the
necessary bandwidth. The Empire has looked at incorporating starbase-class FTL
equipment into a mobile platform more than once, but it was never acted upon
because a ship, even a super-dreadnought hull, would lose a significant amount
of offensive and defensive capability in order to make room for the bulkier com
equipment. And since standard doctrine assumed that each fleet would operate as
a concentrated force within the boundaries of the Empire with its network of
starbases, dedicated comships were deemed to be an unnecessary duplication.

“But prosecuting this war across the Rift is a mission that
our pre-war doctrine wasn’t designed for. There are no starbases anywhere
within the Rift, and there won’t be. They take too long to build. Even if we
did manage to build them, we’d have to assign fleets to defend them. But
without them, any strike fleet is going to be on its own without the ability to
call for backup or warn of an incoming enemy attack in a timely manner. The
other complication is the fact that the enemy now has our complete astrogation
database and knows where all our colonies, starbases and fleet staging systems
are. That means they don’t have to come at us at TD39 anymore. They can now
attack anywhere along the edge of the Rift. A strike fleet relying on its own
resources exclusively is going to have a hard time finding the enemy and
forcing battle on them on favorable terms. That’s why I propose that full scale
offensive operations wait until we’ve built a number of comships, the design of
which is already done. I found it in the file archives. A ship devoted
exclusively for interstellar communications with no weapons or defensive
systems can be built with a heavy cruiser hull. We don’t even need to build new
ships from scratch. The design assumed that a standard heavy cruiser would be
gutted and the FTL equipment installed as a modular single piece. A crash
program to build these ships could have the first one ready in less than a
hundred days.”

Before she could continue, Logan interjected. “So what am I
supposed to do during those hundred plus days?”

Hood smiled and nodded. “A fair question. We’ve received a
very preliminary report from the engineers sent to examine the captured
cripples at TE33, did you know that?” Logan shook his head. “They have a pretty
good idea of how the builders of those ships were able to generate the high
warp speeds that those big ships were able to achieve. Work has already begun
on designing a prototype to test out the new warp engine configuration. If it
works as expected, a ship the size of a battlecruiser should be able to reach
4.9C or perhaps even 5.0C. Wouldn’t you rather have a fleet capable of that
kind of speed when you encounter those aliens in the Rift, Admiral?” Logan
nodded. Hood continued. “We’re also making progress on being able to
communicate with the prisoners you sent back here, but we need more time to get
anything useful out of them. To answer your question, there’s unfinished
business in TE33. The engineers aren’t finished learning all of the alien
technical secrets, so defending TE33 will be a high priority. Keeping the bulk
of the battlecruiser squadrons there for the next few months will take care of
that mission. The heavy cruiser squadrons can be employed scouting and mapping
the wormhole connections in the Rift. They will not attempt to engage the enemy
unless they have overwhelming numerical and firepower superiority. Their task
will essentially be to get the lay of the land in the Rift so that when the
107th finally is ready to take the offensive, you’ll have a much better idea of
where the choke points are and where the enemy might be moving through. By
then, you’ll have some comships and some upgraded, faster battlecruisers, with
more coming on line as time goes on.”