Empire in Crisis (4 page)

“I thank my Emperor. Even though the initial
group of alien ships would already be receiving the signals sent out by each
wormhole beacon before my ship had a chance to silence it, it occurred to me
that the hostile ships we detected might be the reconnaissance portion of a
much larger hostile force attempting to cross the Rift to our side. If the
beacons were left intact, that larger force would be able to cross the Rift
much more quickly than if they had to hunt for each wormhole themselves. As
long as the recon force was pursuing my ship, it would not be able to pass on
any navigational data to a follow-on force.”

DeChastelaine heard a murmur from the assembled
flag officers and noticed several nodding their heads in apparent agreement. He
whispered instructions to his console computer to make a note of the names of
the nodding officers.

“I see,” said DeChastelaine in a louder voice.
“To my admittedly inexperienced ears, that sounds like a reasonable precaution
to take under the circumstances. Do we know if there was a follow-on force,
SubCommander?”

“Up until the time I left Tango Delta 39
starbase to come here, no sign of a larger force had been detected, my
Emperor.”

“Which does not mean it wasn’t there,” said
DeChastelaine. “Whether it was there or not is beside the point as far as I’m
concerned. The inconvenience to us of having to rebuild that beacon network
pales in comparison with the seriousness of a major attack at starbase 39 and
possibly additional attacks deeper into the Empire. I’m pleased to see that our
officers have the ability to see the bigger picture even in the heat of battle
and to act accordingly. If you have to face a Board of Inquiry, SubCommander
Logan, I’m sure that they will weigh your actions against the risks you were
able to avoid and approve of your actions. Continue with your presentation,
SubCommander.”

As Logan resumed his presentation, DeChastelaine
looked over at Hiakawa and was pleased by the scowl on his face. Now that the
Emperor had more or less given HIS seal of approval to the SubCommander’s
actions, a Board of Inquiry would be reluctant to conclude otherwise. And if
they were so bold as to censure Logan anyway, DeChastelaine was prepared to
risk a confrontation with Hiakawa to protect Logan too. He had a feeling that
before this war was over, he’d need as much competent strategic advice as he
could get. Having two of the Fearsome Four from his Academy class providing him
that advice would be a good start.

When Logan was finished, DeChastelaine jumped
in before Hiakawa or anyone else could speak. “Thank you, SubCommander Logan. I
have a few questions for you. Did I understand you correctly that these aliens
have a shorter warp detection range than we do?”

“That is correct, my Emperor. From their
reaction times, my officers and I estimate that range to be between seven and
eight light minutes compared to our eleven light-minutes range.”

“And clearly their ships are faster.”

Logan nodded. “By at least zero point two times
the speed of light, my Emperor.”

“What are your impressions of their weapons
capabilities?” asked DeChastelaine.

“Based on the damage that Bird of Prey took, I
would have to say that their beam weapons are at least as powerful as what our
capital ships have. We did not see any sign of missile weapons, but that
doesn’t mean they don’t have the technology. After all, our light cruisers
don’t carry missile weapons, but our capital ships do. I think it would be
prudent to assume that they do too, my Emperor.”

DeChastelaine nodded. “I think it would be
prudent to assume that as well. Now, SubCommander Logan, if you were a member
of the Strategy Board, what recommendations would you want the Board to make?”

That got another surge of murmuring from the
room, especially from those admirals who were members of the Strategy Board.

Logan’s voice reflected his expression. “I,
ah…do not consider myself qualified to tell the Strategy Board what to do—“

“Your humbleness does you credit,
SubCommander,” interrupted DeChastelaine, “but I think the opinions of an
officer who was in the top four of his Academy class in Strategy and Tactics
are worth listening to. I’m interested in hearing your answer.”

The murmuring died down so suddenly that
DeChastelaine almost laughed. He knew for a fact that none of the members of
the Strategy Board had even come close to being in the top four of their
Academy class.

“Yes, well…first of all, I would recommend that
any further exploration of the Rift wormhole network be done by squadrons of at
least heavy cruiser strength. It occurs to me that there may be choke points in
the wormhole network leading between the Empire and the alien star systems. If
we can discover and take control of those choke points, then we may not have to
disperse squadrons over multiple star systems further back. And getting there
first will place the onus on the enemy to push us out instead of the other way
around. Given that defending a wormhole exit is easier than attacking it,
controlling any choke points would give us a significant advantage. And if
there are no choke points, then we should look for wormhole routes that allow
us to flank the enemy’s forward positions.

“In light of their faster warp drive
technology, I would recommend not deploying any squadrons of battleships or
heavier classes to the Rift. Their slow maximum speed would limit the options
available to any Fleet Commander. Therefore we should seriously consider shifting
all of the newer classes of battlecruisers and heavy cruisers to the Rift edge
for duty in the Rift War.”

This time the vocal reaction was more than just
a murmur, and DeChastelaine was surprised to see a few admirals once again
nodding in agreement while the rest were shaking their heads. He again made
sure that his console computer took note of who was agreeing. When it was clear
that Logan wasn’t finished, the background chatter died down.

“One final recommendation would be to commence
crash R&D programs for faster warp drives, more sensitive warp detection
technology and improvements to both our beam and missile weapons technology. If
my light cruiser had had the ability to fire even a few warp capable missiles
with stand-off energy warheads, the hostile ships pursuing us might not have
been able to chase us all the way back to our side of the Rift. I have no more
recommendations at this time, my Emperor.”

“Thank you very much, SubCommander Logan. Your
recommendation concerning R&D is clearly worth taking, and I find your
logic concerning possible choke points to be quite compelling. I hadn’t thought
of that, so I thank you for the intriguing insight. Perhaps your talents are
wasted in commanding a light cruiser. We’re going to need that kind of thinking
here at the Capital. I have no further questions for you at this time,
SubCommander. Perhaps Admiral Hiakawa has some?”

“Not at this time, My Emperor, although since
SubCommander Logan will be remaining here on Earth for a little while, I’ll
have opportunities to question him later. SubCommander, you’re dismissed from
this conference. Make sure my staff knows how to reach you. You’ll be informed
when we need you again.”

When Logan was gone, DeChastelaine quickly
adjourned the meeting, thereby pre-empting any attempt by Hiakawa to use the
meeting for other objectives. He had a lot to discuss with Hood, including
whether Logan should be reassigned to a Palace staff position too. As he walked
out of the room, Dechastelaine smiled at the idea of finding and seizing choke
points before the enemy did. Logan was clearly meant for flag rank
responsibility. Getting him there would be DeChastelaine’s challenge.

Hood was already in his office when
DeChastelaine entered. He waved her back down when she started to get up to
stand at attention.

“For future reference, Commander, if it’s just
the two of us in the room, you can dispense with the usual standing to
attention and saluting. You have the results of your work on 3-star flag
officers ready?”

“Yes, My Emperor.”

“Good! I’ve just had an interesting meeting
with SubCommander Logan and Hiakawa and his lackeys. Show me what you’ve come
up with.”

They both looked at the wall display that now
showed a list of names along with a color code.

“I used the following criteria to sort this
list. I started with ratings from the last year at the Academy for Leadership,
Strategy & Tactics and Logical Reasoning. I developed an algorithm that
converted those ratings into a single mathematical value, which was then
modified by criteria from their current position. For example, how many
officers have asked to join the staffs of these admirals? How many officers
have asked to leave those staffs? I know from personal experience that among us
lesser mortals,” DeChastelaine laughed, “word gets around pretty quickly about
who is or isn’t a good leader. Fleet Admirals are also rated on operational
performance by Admiral Hiakawa’s staff. I looked at overall trends over time on
the theory that declining operational performance since taking over a fleet can
usually be laid at the feet of the Fleet Admiral, with the reverse also true
most of the time. What you’re seeing here is the list sorted from best to
worst. Green indicates a Fleet Command. Yellow indicates a support or
administrative command position. Of the eighty-nine flag officers with 3-star
rank, most on the top half of this list hold fleet commands. Having said that,
I should point out that most of the Fleet Command admirals in the lower half
are assigned to fleets that are at or close to the Rift.”

DeChastelaine shook his head in dismay. The
fleets that would most likely be involved in fighting the Rift War were
commanded by relatively less competent fleet commanders.

“Any idea why that is, Commander?” asked
DeChastelaine.

“The accepted wisdom is, or rather was, that
the Rift Sector is a backwater sector that’s nice and quiet and is therefore
ideal for individuals who are either close to retirement or have not
demonstrated the kinds of skills that are likely to be needed in the more
active sectors, and that mindset was not limited to just Fleet Commanders. From
what I was able to see in terms of operational performance, Rift fleets
generally rate lower on a consistent basis than do fleets in more dynamic sectors.
No one wants to be assigned to a Rift fleet, and above average officers tend to
be placed elsewhere.”

“Wonderful,” said an exasperated DeChastelaine.
“So how did a competent officer like SubCommander Logan end up in a light
cruiser squadron assigned to explore the Rift?”

Hood smiled. “I was curious about that question
myself, My Emperor. Logan comes from Roarke’s Drift, a planet in a star system
that is closer to the Rift than it is to the Capital. He’s one of the
relatively few officers who have requested assignment to Rift Fleet squadrons
because it’s relatively close to home.”

“Hmm. That being the case, he might not want to
accept an assignment here on Earth. I asked him for his strategic
recommendations, and he came up with several rather good ones.” He told her
about Logan’s recommendations. “The possibility of there being choke point star
systems is very intriguing. This should not be interpreted as a reflection on
you, Commander, but I am seriously tempted to bring him in-house to work under
you. What’s your reaction to that?”

Hood took a few seconds to organize her
thoughts. “When I looked at SubCommander Logan’s service and academic records,
I compared his ratings to the comparable numbers of these flag officers. He
scored above average in Leadership and Logical Reasoning. His S & T scores
are so good that if he were a 3-star admiral, he’d be at the top of this list.
All other things being equal, I’m inclined to think that we need someone that
good in the field more than here at HQ, My Emperor.”

DeChastelaine sighed. “I can’t fault your
logic, but there’s a huge gap between SubCommander and Fleet Commander. A Fleet
Commander needs to have the respect and support of his or her subordinates. If
I jump him over the heads of hundreds of officers who are senior to him, how
much respect and support are they going to give him?”

Hood nodded. When it was clear that
DeChastelaine was finished speaking, she cleared her throat and said, “I’ve
given this whole situation a lot of thought in terms of a general approach to
the war. Would My Emperor be interested in hearing my conclusions?”

“Very much so.”

“The first thing I thought about was the
enemy’s superior warp speed. The way we have our fleets organized now is with
dreadnought and super-dreadnought squadrons, all of which are limited to
maximum warp speeds of four point two Cee or less. That’s even worse than
Logan’s light cruiser. The only class of warship that can reach and maintain
four point four Cee and carry warp missiles plus heavy beam weapons are
battlecruisers. Unfortunately, using them to conduct reconnaissance operations
would be counter-productive in my opinion because the fleet’s offensive punch
would be diluted as a result. So recon should be conducted by the next most
powerful class that can keep up with the battlecruisers, and that means—“

“Heavy cruisers,” interrupted DeChastelaine
with a smile. “Logan recommended exactly the same thing earlier today, and you
should have heard the indignant reactions of the admirals.”

Hood laughed. “I should have figured that Logan
would come up with the same idea. If we take that train of thought to its
logical conclusion, we would have at least two what I’ll call Strike Fleets,
composed of a core of battlecruiser squadrons with heavy cruiser support
squadrons. They could take turns alternating between offensive and defensive
operations in order to give each fleet a chance to catch its breath, conduct
repairs and rest its crews. The more orthodox fleets can be used to defend key
wormhole junctions. A super-dreadnought squadron doesn’t have to move fast if
it’s sitting on top of a wormhole exit ready to blast anything that emerges
from it. It’ll be boring duty but perfectly suited to admirals and ship crews
who are capable of following orders but not much else.

“Two strike fleets should be enough to
discourage enemy attempts to penetrate Empire space, but we’re going to need
more than that, I think, if we want to go on the offensive and take control of
the Rift wormhole network in preparation for attacking their star systems.” She
stopped when she saw DeChastelaine raise his eyebrows.

“Are you sure that we’ll have to do that,
assault their side of the Rift I mean? If we control the wormhole network, then
we’ve neutralized the threat, or am I missing something?” he asked.

Hood took her time answering. “Well…the problem
is that we don’t know anything about these aliens’ psychology. Maybe they’ll
realize they’re outmatched if we push them back to their side and call it
quits, but maybe they’ll interpret our halt to further advances as a sign of
weakness. But I was recommending a long-term strategy of striking against the
other side of the Rift for another reason. I was remembering an Academy lecture
on the historical lessons related to military strategy. We were told that no
one has ever won a war by staying on the defensive. If you allow the enemy to
keep the initiative and strike where and when they want, they will eventually
win. Right now they have the initiative; we have to get it back and keep it.

“How we do that in the long run will have to be
a combination of building the right kinds of ships, the right kinds of weapons
and finding the right kinds of field commanders. We’re going to have to design
and build faster ships. I also suspect that warp-capable missiles will play the
deciding role. Energy weapons are just too short-ranged. With warp missiles
that are fast and have lots of range, we’d be able to attack their ships before
they get close enough to our ships or starbases to attack us. The major problem
I see with fielding more missiles is their size. We’ve never really tried to
build smaller and faster missiles, you know. I checked the records. There’ve
been several proposals to do exactly that. Each time, the Old School admirals
got the proposal dropped because they realized that smaller missiles meant that
cruisers could carry them too, and cruisers are faster than super-dreadnoughts,
and therefore missile-armed cruisers would become a serious threat to those
behemoths that 3-star admirals just love to ride in.”

DeChastelaine laughed. “Yes, they certainly do,
don’t they, but there’s another aspect to that scenario that concerns me.
Capital ships have the kind of armor that is needed to mitigate the damage done
by the fusion-pumped x-ray and gamma ray laser warheads that our missiles
carry. That’s the trade-off they make for their reduced speed. A cruiser, even
a heavy cruiser, would suffer a lot of damage from a missile’s laser warhead
that a super-dreadnought might be able to shrug off.”

Hood waited to make sure that her Emperor was
finished speaking and then replied. “Super-dreadnoughts are tough customers.
I’ll grant you that. However, their size makes them easier to hit. Cruisers are
both smaller and more agile, making them harder to hit. I’m not suggesting that
capital ships are obsolete, but if the enemy doesn’t have missiles with
stand-off laser warheads, then we should exploit that advantage for all it’s
worth. One of the previous studies on reducing missile size came up with a concept
called a missile cruiser. It has no beam weapon turrets at all. Its entire
offensive punch is made up of a missile volley that could give a battleship a
run for its money.  Given the amount of resources involved in building a
super-dreadnought, we could get a whole squadron of missile cruisers for the
same input, and shorter building times means we’d get them into the field
faster.”

DeChastelaine snapped his fingers. “THAT’S the
argument that is most important to me. Building capital ships just takes too
damn long. I don’t want to have to wait two or three years to begin our
offensive into enemy territory. Do we have some idea of how long it would take
to build a missile cruiser?”

Hood nodded. “The first one will obviously take
longer, but once they get the bugs worked out of the design, we should be able
to build missile cruisers from start to finish in less than nine months, not
including the time needed to do the detailed design work. It’s not clear if the
new, smaller missile can be designed, tested and put into mass production that
quickly.”

DeChastelaine waved that concern away. “As long
as the missile cruiser design is flexible enough to carry and fire the larger
missile, we can go ahead and start building those ships now, and then we’ll
have them when the new missile is available.” Hood was expecting him to say
more, but when he didn’t, she kept quiet. After what seemed like a long period
of silence, he resumed talking but in a lower voice and more slowly.

“Winning this war the way that you and I think
it can and should be won is not going to sit well with Hiakawa and his
entourage. The scope of the changes that we’ve been discussing could very well
push him into taking drastic action against me. The fact is that I’m not ready
yet to win that kind of confrontation. Actually I’ll rephrase that. If he tried
to engineer a coup now, I might still win, but it would be a roll of the dice.
I’d prefer to wait until the odds are a lot more in my favor, and the problem
is I don’t know how long it will take to get to that point. This war isn’t
going to wait for me to take my time securing my position.”

“May I ask My Emperor what plans are in the
process of being made? I may be able to offer suggestions.”

DeChastelaine gave her an appraising look
before answering. “When I began working on this plan, I decided that only those
individuals with a need to know would be told. Right now, you don’t need to
know. That may change in the future, but for now I’m sticking with my decision,
but…I’m curious to see how your thinking compares with mine. If you were the
Emperor and the only armed force that you could count on to be loyal was the
Imperial Guard, and in my case I’m not even one hundred percent sure of that,
how would you go about planning to defend against a potential coup by the Space
Force and its marine contingent in Capital Fleet?”

Hood was grateful that her Emperor waited
patiently while she gathered her thoughts. “I see two possible threats. The
brute force approach to a coup would be to order a capital ship in orbit to
fire beam weapons directly at the palace. The advantage of that is that it
would be quick and impossible to defend against. The disadvantage is that Space
Force HQ is literally just a few hundred meters away. If I were Hiakawa, I
wouldn’t be sure that the officer entering the target co-ordinates into the
weapon system would follow orders. That officer just might be someone who takes
their oath to their Emperor seriously and consequently might be tempted to
target Space Force HQ instead. So the less risky way would be to order a marine
combat armor battalion to assault the Palace with another battalion defending
SFHQ. If I were Emperor, I’d try to arrange for all marine battalion commanders
either to be loyal to me or at least be bribable. That way they would ignore
whatever orders they got from Hiakawa and would follow my orders instead. The
assault would be on HQ instead of the Palace, and Hiakawa would be the one
arrested.” She noticed that DeChastelaine’s expression became unreadable, almost
what she would describe as a poker face.