Rich Man's War (37 page)

“Sir?” asked one incredulous voice, “
how
many people will have to do this?”

“Everyone bel
ow the rank of chief, I imagine. Senior NCO quarters might go far enough that they’ll all be able to squeeze in together without actually sharing bunks. Same for officers. I don’t know yet. You’d have to ask Lieutenant Meese how the deck department is handling all of that. However, he’s got more than enough on his hands as it is, so let’s not bother him if we don’t have to.

“Like I said, this will obviously be
tough on everyone. People all over the ship will have their watch schedules flipped. We’re looking at cutting showers to two minutes per day. And I don’t want to think about what a nightmare this will be for all those poor bastards who work in the galley.

“As you can imagine, there will be some very unhappy crewmen and marines when this news hits. Plenty of people will bitch and moan in proper military fashion, and that’s fine. But we need to be ready in case someone throws a real tantrum… and that could happen at any time starting in about fifty-three minutes or so. Fortunately, our usual problem children are
already under close eye or locked up in the brig, but I don’t want us caught with our pants down in front of everyone if there’s an issue.”

Again, Jacobson let his gaze sweep the room, either to impress his degree of concern upon them or to search for objections. Tanner didn’t know him well enough yet to know which. “I know this will be stressful and uncomfortable. We can’t let that show, and we
cannot
take our frustrations out on our shipmates. The MA force needs to set an example. We need to
solve
problems, not just put people on report. We will keep order and maintain discipline, but we will also step up and help. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” came the unified response.

“Oh, and one other thing. Admiral Yeoh and a chunk of her staff slipped on board this morning while most of you were at breakfast or just coming off your watch. They’ll be here a while, operating out of the flag bridge. The captain is still in command of the ship, but obviously the whole wardroom will be very conscious of her presence, and that sort of thing rolls downhill. So let’s go over our patrol routes,” he said, turning his eyes to his holocom to call up a few briefing screens.

“Sir?” spoke up one of the junior MAs. Tanner looked up over to MA3 Farina, who seemed a bit pale.

“What is it, Farina?”

“Are we… Sir, that many people coming on board… are we invading Fairhaven or something?”

Tanner wondered how hard Farina would be slammed for speaking out of turn, but Jacobson gave a chuckle and—subtly, but Tanner noticed it—glanced at Lewis and gave the tiniest of waves. He didn’t want anyone coming down on Farina for asking a question like that. Tanner’s respect for him grew.

“I’m not gonna speculate, Farina. They didn’t tell me. But I will say, just between us and with the doors shut and all, that Lt. Meese had an awful lot of the logistics already worked out when I went into
our meeting this morning, so this is something that at least a few people in the wardroom have had planned out for a while now. This will be a pain in the ass, but you don’t need to feel like this is an emergency. For all I know things like this might become an annual event.”

Several of the old salts in the room chuckled. Farina seemed a bit mollified by the r
esponse. Tanner felt no relief from the answer, but the delivery and the general attitude in the room spoke volumes about his new department. As Jacobson noted, the MAs needed to be ready to set an example. Most of them were accustomed to that.

Jacobson instructed everyone to open up several notes on their own holocoms. As Tanner pulled the requisite projections up, Baldwin’s head tilted back and over toward him. “Congratulations,” she murmured.

“Hm?”

“You’re officially the last guy on this boat who had a vacation.”

* * *

“Archangel currently
fields one cruiser, ten destroyers—one more than they are allowed per Union armament treaties, to be precise—a handful of aging frigates and about forty-five corvettes. They also have a couple of orbital naval space stations and decent screening drones.”

Commodore
Eldridge of the NorthStar Security Fleet left the holo projection showing the naval profile sheets up, allowing the vice presidents and board members around the conference table to digest at least a little of the details. His neatly-trimmed dark blond beard combined with his deep, confident voice gave him an almost fatherly demeanor.

“If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is—for a state that encompasses a single star system,”
Eldridge continued. “By comparison, the unified Hashemite Navy was four times that size before their current internal conflict, but they have considerably more real estate to cover.

“Additionally, much of Archangel’s strength in warships comes with caveats. As I said, the frigates are older ships, notably older than anything we’re currently fielding. A good third of those corvettes and destroyers, along with the cruiser
Los Angeles
, are recent acquisitions. Their crews have been together for less than two years. Archangel hasn’t been in a hot conflict in over three decades, so while a number of senior officers and NCOs have combat experience, the vast majority do not.

“That said, we shouldn’t underestimate their capabilities. We saw how good those corvettes can be during the invasion of
Scheherazade. Archangel has always offered one of the better training programs among the Union’s system militias. From what we’ve gathered, I’d say their basic training for new recruits may be the best in the Union. It’s certainly lengthier and more rigorous than ours or the Union Fleet’s program. Archangel doesn’t field a dedicated elite operations force akin to our Rangers—they tend to hand-pick people for sensitive missions—but their average forces are a notch above most Union militias.

“They also have considerable depth in manpower. In fact, they’ve got more people qualified for starship service than they have ships to put them on. Our best estimates hold that they’ve been procuring non-combatant ships to ferry around boarding teams and such in order to plug the holes in their customs and inspection coverage created by our absence. Frankly, left to their own devices, they
will actually do a better job on that score than we did. As on Scheherazade, we can expect at least some of their civilian starship crews to step up if asked. They might not be heavily armed or armored, but they can provide logistical support. ”

“So are you saying
that our fleet will have a hard time with this?” asked Jon Weir, leaning back in his seat and tapping his fingers anxiously against the side of the table.

“I’m saying that if they decide to fight, it’ll cost us,”
Eldridge answered. “I’ll let Ms. Pedroso and the Risk Management team discuss the likelihood of a violent conflict, because that’s a political decision on the part of Archangel’s government. But if they give the order, Archangel’s navy will fight. We will win, but not painlessly. I’ve given my projections on casualties and materiel losses from a military standpoint. It’s up to you whether those losses are acceptable.”

“Best guess,
Hector?” asked Anton Brekhov from the head of the table.

The commodore looked at Maria, who nodded. “Sir
,” he said, “I think the only way to go in is with overwhelming force. We have to make the fight pointless from the start. We cannot do this piecemeal, or they’ll fight and we’ll lose ships and they will only be encouraged to keep fighting. This has to happen all at once. We have to go in with everything we can, sir, and we can’t give them time to consider their options. Our warning shot has to be our fleet crashing right through their screening drones.”

Eldridge
rearranged the holo projections. The naval display floated in the air to one side of the conference table while Eldridge brought back the three-dimensional holographic model of the star system.

“If it’s a fight, they’ll be massed near Raphael waiting for us,” he explained. “If we’re operating with the sort of strength I’ve requested, we’ll meet them with twice as many ships as they have to offer even without our battleships—
and that figure doesn’t convey the massive advantage we have in size and power on a ship-to-ship basis. Still, it’s our battleships that will do the work. The rest are effectively screening ships. Neither their cruiser nor the destroyers will stand up to a battleship. The guns on those corvettes can’t penetrate a battleship’s ES-reinforced hull. Our ships will take damage, we’ll lose people… but we won’t lose the battle.”

“Is that a worst-case scenario?” asked Weir.

Eldridge gave a bit of a shrug. “Depending on how you look at it, you could call it the worst case or the best case. My hope is that their fleet won’t be massed at all because they won’t expect this sort of intervention. Given that this situation is unprecedented, Archangel may expect us to focus only on diplomatic and economic avenues. In that case, they’ll be spread out, conducting the usual patrols and inspections and training exercises. If that happens, there’s a much lower chance of a serious battle. We’ll have their capital and other strategic points before they have a chance to get organized.

“But if Archangel expects trouble, they’ll be massed near Raphael, and there will be a reckoning as soon as we arrive. Either they stand down, or we crush them… and how quickly and efficiently we crush them is a matter of how much of a fleet we bring in.”

“Well, Maria?” asked Brekhov as he looked to his left.

The head of Risk Management stood. “Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, our assessment is in line with the commodore’s. Archangel has
some advantages. The honest truth is that for the past year or more, we have underestimated the abilities of their intelligence network. They had a mole concealed within the top ranks of our company. They knew that the onset of destabilization within Hashem provided them an opportunity to make provocative moves. They may well have known about the financial vulnerabilities of the CDC Corporation and the ripple effect that could have with our own concerns and the rest of the Union economy. Their timing could not have been worse for us.

“Perhaps most worrisome is our inability to establish equally productive intelligence sources within their establishments. We have certainly had our sources in their business sector for years, but we have had little success in penetrating the top levels of government or defense. We’re not blind, but the edge, I have to confess, has gone to them,” she admitted.

She paused for that to sink in. “It’s reasonable to assume that Archangel has a few more tricks up their sleeves. As the commodore points out, they have a significant navy, but it shows the signs of more flash than substance. The militia touts its people as its greatest strength, which is good for PR, but all those people don’t do them much good in a starship battle. You can see much the same angle in their political rhetoric and their economic ideology: lots of reassurance and emphasis placed upon lofty ethics and morals to distract from pragmatic concerns.

“I’ll put this in the simplest of terms, though my position is backed up by considerable research done by my department. The tactics and rhetoric of the Aguirre administration reveals a deep-seated persecution complex. They see themselves—Archangel as a whole—as the victims of protracted bullying. They see us as the primary bullies. As many of us know, the classic thinking with schoolyard bullies
holds that the victim only needs to turn and fight once in order to stop the bullying. The victim doesn’t need to win the fight, although that’s obviously the fantasy. As long as the victim puts up a fight and causes a little bit of pain, the bully will move on to a more vulnerable target.

“Now, let’s look at the timeline
,” Maria continued. “The Aguirre administration has spent the last two years psyching up the populace for that moment where they fight the bully. They waited for us to be distracted and invested in a major operation before making their move. And when they did, they did so with intensity. They caused us multiple problems: PR issues with other systems across the Union, a revenue crunch, even the negotiations themselves were a fake-out to keep us off-balance.

“
The rest is not entirely schoolyard psychology, but it’s still pretty simple. We know that President Aguirre is an adherent of Sun Tzu. This is something he shares with the head of Archangel’s navy, Admiral Yeoh. It’s one of the reasons he appointed her. The philosophy is visible throughout their strategy.”

She raised one finger to point at the display of naval strength still floating in the air off to one side of the table. “Sun Tzu advises a leader to appear strong when he is weak,” she said. “Maximum legal naval strength. A militia with a visible abundance of personnel. Training designed to build up confidence.

“Sun Tzu also says,
‘Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy. Next is to disrupt his alliances. The next best is to attack his army.’
We haven’t seen them do the last, but Archangel has certainly attacked our strategies and our alliances. That brings us to another key point of their strategy:
‘To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.’

“
Archangel punched us as hard as they could in the form of Aguirre’s revelations. In their attempt to disrupt our educational system across the Union, they tried to disrupt our position and to threaten us through implication that they would do worse if we don’t back off. I don’t believe they can. If they could have hit us harder, they would have done that. They’ve taken their best shot. They’re hoping it scares us away.