Rumors of Honor (System States Rebellion Book 2) (20 page)

“Very
good. Stand by, Drake. When I turn control over to P2, your boats will respond
instantly to any and all text message commands, understood?”

“Loud
and clear, Admiral. It’s actually nice to be back in a boat again, except I’d
forgotten how cramped these things are.”

Janicot
laughed. “I’m sure that being in command of 30 boats doesn’t hurt either, eh
Commodore?”

“No,
Sir, it certainly doesn’t, even if it’s only a temporary promotion.”

Janicot
was tempted to tell Drake that if they won the battle and Drake didn’t screw
up, he just might make the temporary field promotion permanent but then decided
now was not the time to convey that information.

“Yes,
well…good luck and good hunting, Drake.”

“Thank
you, Sir.”

Janicot
looked over at the Duty Officer. “How much longer before Palmgren gets the
targeting data?”

The
Duty Officer checked the data tablet in his hand. “Another 55 seconds,
Admiral.”

Janicot
nodded and focused his attention on the main display. The FED fleet, now
designated as Sierra1, was still coasting at low speed. It wasn’t maneuvering,
and as far as they could tell it hadn’t opened fire yet. Until it did start to
do either one, there was no point in handing tactical command of the battle to
P2. Janicot had to wait for the FED Commander to commit his forces in some way.
In the meantime, Drake had 20 missile boats on the ground, ready to lift off at
a moment’s notice, and 10 more boats already in orbit. Janicot heard the main
display ping to announce a status change. The red icon with the number 24
inside it was now showing 20/4. He quickly checked the sidebar data. P2 had
analyzed the formation and calculated a high probability that four of the ships
were transports.

“Drake,
is it possible that four of the ships in orbit around Earth were freighters and
not warships?”

“No,
Sir. The relayed data we received clearly showed that all 24 FED ships fired
missiles. If P2 is right, then the FEDS have left four warships behind. That
means no clean sweep even if we take out all these bogeys.”

“Damn,”
said Janicot in a low voice. P2 was wrong about the FEDs committing their
entire fleet, but the implications for the short term would have to wait until
this battle was over. “D.O.,” The Duty Officer turned to look at Janicot in
response to his call. “I want you to make sure that Commodore Palmgren gets the
updated analysis of the FED fleet composition.”

The
officer checked and nodded. “That new evaluation is already on its way now,
Admiral.”

Janicot
waved his acknowledgement and looked at the display again. Sierra1 still wasn’t
maneuvering or firing, but it was actively scanning now.

“Can
they detect our orbiting boats?” Janicot asked the Duty Officer.

“No,
Sir, not unless their radar arrays are a lot more sensitive than we think.”

Okay,
FED Commander, what are you going to do now?

1st
Fleet Flagship:

Romanov
paced back and forth in front of the main display on the Flag Bridge and grew
more frustrated as he did so. Five minutes had passed since 1st Fleet’s arrival,
and there was still no sign at all that the Spartans were even aware of their
presence. There was no point in even considering firing missiles at the planet
from this distance, because the lack of radar coverage meant that they wouldn’t
know if the missiles hit their target or had been intercepted. Besides which,
1st Fleet’s mission was to conquer Sparta, not destroy it. That’s what the four
freighters and the 50,000 infantry and 500 tanks they were carrying were for.
He kept reviewing his limited options and kept coming back to the same
conclusion. Either take 1st Fleet’s warships down into Sparta’s hyper-zone
until they were close enough to the planet to detect any orbiting ships or
boats OR abort the mission and jump back to Hadley. That last option wasn’t
really an option at all. If he ordered 1st Fleet to run home without testing
Sparta’s defenses, Trojan would have every right to have him court-martialled
for cowardice in the face of the enemy. The Spartans weren’t leaving him with
any real choice. He stopped pacing and walked over to the Astrogation Station,
where the Astrogator quickly made the necessary calculations based on Romanov’s
quick explanation of what he wanted. With the data calculated and disseminated
to all 24 ships, Romanov switched on the fleet-wide com channel again.

“Romanov
to all ships. Your onboard systems have been updated with the necessary
astrogational data for our next move. I’m detaching our troop transports.
They’ll remain at their current altitude and velocity. The rest of 1st Fleet
will approach the planet in a descending spiral in such a way that we’ll be
able to intercept any attempt by Spartan forces to fire on the transports. Once
we get within radar range of the planet, we’ll then know what kind of defenses
we’re facing, and I’ll determine the appropriate steps to take. In the
meantime, we’ll continue active scanning in all directions. Once we’ve
suppressed Spartan defenses, we’ll bring the transports down for the final
phase of the operation. That’s all for now. Romanov out.” Romanov reached down
to touch the virtual button that would tell all 20 warship auto-pilots to begin
their descent while remaining in formation.

Spartan
Space Force HQ:

Janicot
smiled with satisfaction when the display pinged to call attention to a status
change. Sierra1 was breaking up into two groups. The smaller group of what
appeared to be four ships, which was now designated as Sierra2, remained in the
same orbit as before. The 20 ships of Sierra1 were now maneuvering toward the
planet. It took almost a minute for the optical data to reveal the enemy plan.
Sierra1 would spiral down while keeping itself between the planet and Sierra2.
The projected flight path showed that it would take almost five hours before
Sierra1 was close enough for its radars to detect Drake’s 10 orbiting missile
boats. It was time to get their Phase II Oracle involved in this battle.

Janicot
walked quickly over to the console that contained the direct link to the Phase
II Oracle device. Leaning over the technician sitting there, he touched the
screen which showed P2’s status with regards to Sparta’s defenses. The red
‘Command link on Standby’ light switched to the green ‘Command link Activated’
light. In order to make sure that everyone in the Ops Center knew what he had
just done, Janicot said in a loud voice, “P2 now has tactical control of all
Spartan defenses!”

MB001
on the ground:

Drake’s
Command Station screen #1 updated itself to show that the auto-pilot was
receiving maneuvering instructions from P2. At the same time, a text message
scrolled across the bottom of the main display.

ALL
MISSILE BOATS ON ALERT WILL LIFT OFF TO RENDEZVOUS WITH ORBITING MISSILE BOATS.
STAND BY FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

Before
Drake could say anything, the auto-pilot engaged and MB001, along with the
other 19 boats that were on standby alert, left the ground at a moderate 2.5Gs
acceleration. Drake sighed as he realized that for the rest of the battle he
and his crew were essentially observers. P2 had total control over his boats’
maneuvering and fire control. And speaking of fire control, screen #2 showed
that his boat’s missile tubes were being loaded with KE warhead missiles. Drake
wondered if P2 would wait until his boats had broken past Sparta’s atmosphere
before firing.

1st
Fleet Flagship:

Romanov
checked the elapsed time. Twenty-one minutes since emergence from hyper-space
and the main body of 1st Fleet had just crossed into Sparta’s hyper-zone.
Because of the shallow angle of their descent, it wouldn’t take much to veer up
and get back out beyond the zone boundary if they needed to at this point. Even
when they were deeper in the zone, their descent vector would still have a lot
of sideways movement, so pulling up would be easier than if the Fleet had
headed straight down. Still no overt signs that the Spartans had detected them,
but Romanov was sure that they had, probably via optical detection of reflected
sunlight. That was one of the disadvantages of having a perfectly spherical
hull. Regardless of where the local star was in relation to the ship, there was
always some part of the hull that reflected sunlight at just the right angle to
be detected by just about anyone, as long as they were looking in the right
direction with the right equipment.

“Stay
on your toes, everyone,” said Romanov. He was certain that when something did
happen, he wasn’t going to like it. And to make matters worse, he had an itch
that he couldn’t scratch because of the pressure suit he was now wearing.

Spartan
Space Force HQ:

Janicot
realized that he was pacing back and forth in front of the huge display, and he
changed course for the back of the room where his pacing wouldn’t be a
distraction to the men and women manning their Ops Center consoles. Why did
space battles have to take so damned long anyway? It was now almost two hours
since Sierra1 had started its descent. It was almost halfway down to the
planet, in that awkward middle ground where its radar couldn’t see low Sparta
orbit or the four transports of Sierra2, although Janicot was certain that both
groups of ships were in contact via tight-beam com lasers.

“DRAKE’S
BOATS HAVE FIRED!”

Janicot
didn’t see who had spoken and didn’t care. The display was now showing a single
swarm of 240 missiles leaving Drake’s Task Force and accelerating rapidly on a
bearing that would intersect Sierra1’s path by the time the FED ships got
there, although interception was still 21.4 minutes away. The main display
pinged for attention. A new green icon appeared so close to Sierra2’s red icon
that they overlapped. Janicot nodded and smiled with a vicious satisfaction.
Palmgren’s Task Force of five freighters had just emerged from hyper-space
within 100 kilometers of Sierra2’s troop transports. Those five freighters were
each carrying five missile boats attached to the freighter hull externally. The
boats would detach from the freighters, which would then initiate another
micro-jump just about…now. The green icon with the number 5 in it changed to
the number 25. Almost immediately, the display pinged again and zoomed in to
show what was now happening out beyond the zone boundary. Palmgren’s 25 boats
had just fired 200 missiles at the four FED targets. Janicot knew that at that
range, the missiles would intercept their targets in less than three seconds.
Even if the transports had laser missile defense batteries, they wouldn’t be
able to burn them all that quickly, nor was it likely that the Bridge personnel
on those transports could react fast enough to micro-jump away.

He
watched in fascination as Sierra2’s red icon began flashing and then almost
immediately broke up and dissolved. Four transports, almost certainly filled
with troops and tanks, had just been shot to pieces. Janicot made a concerted
effort NOT to think about the thousands of troops and crew who had just been
killed. The battle was not over. Sparta itself was safe from invasion, but who
knew what contingency orders the FED Commander had in case landing troops was
no longer an option. Sierra1 had to be killed too and not just to safeguard
Sparta’s civilians. As long as that fleet remained intact, Sparta’s whole
strategy to even the playing field again was in jeopardy.

Fifteen
seconds after the first missile launch, Palmgren’s Task Force fired again, this
time at Sierra1, or rather at where it was expected to be by the time the
missiles got there. Janicot knew that unlike Drake’s missile volley, this new
wave was not armed with kinetic energy warheads but were armed instead with
fission warheads. They had been launched at just the right time so that Palmgren’s
wave would arrive on target within seconds after Drake’s wave, assuming that
the FED Commander reacted as expected to the loss of communications with his
transports.

1st
Fleet Flagship:

Romanov
jerked with surprise when a panicked voice over the troop transport com channel
yelled out. “We’re under missile f—“ The cut-off voice was replaced with
static.

As
he turned to look at the Communications Station, the technician on duty
returned his gaze and said, “We’ve lost all voice and data transmission from
the transports, Sir.”

Romanov
pounded his chair’s armrest in frustration. How had the Spartans managed to get
that close to the transports without being detected? To the best of his
knowledge, missile boats didn’t have jump drives. The how didn’t matter right
now. Maybe he’d have time to figure it out later. Landing troops was no longer
possible, and therefore his mission was no longer possible. That also meant
that there was no longer any reason to stay in this star system.