Rumors of Honor (System States Rebellion Book 2) (23 page)

Before
Chenko could respond, Masterson spoke in a clearly agitated voice. “I’m
supposed to sit back and let rebel ships bombard and kill hundreds of thousands
of infantry that are undergoing training on Earth so that the Navy can have
some ships to play with sooner rather than later? That’s NOT acceptable,
Commodore!”

Chenko
leaned forward. “It’s not just infantry that’s at risk either, Commodore. Earth
is the commercial and financial hub of the Federation. Hundreds of interstellar
corporations have their headquarters here. If the Union were allowed to gain a
free hand in orbit, they could literally destroy our whole economy by targeting
those corporate centers. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if we lost
all the data stored in those centers? I understand that the war effort will be
delayed if Makassar keeps getting hit, but there’s no way that I can approve of
leaving Earth undefended given what the SSU has already attempted. That task
force stays here, Commodore.”

Romanov
reminded himself to stay calm. He and Trojan had discussed how to respond to
this kind of reaction. “May I point out, Admiral and General, that the seven
ships I’ve brought back with me can be made combat-worthy relatively quickly
compared with building new ships from scratch. Those repaired ships can be
tasked with defending Earth—“

“NO!”
said Masterson in a loud voice. “I’m not taking the risk of leaving my troops
vulnerable for months until those ships are repaired. This isn’t a Goddamned
negotiation for Christsake! Trojan may have three stars on his shoulders, but I
still have four, and he’s not getting that task force! He’ll just have to take
the risk that Makassar will get hit again until we send some of those repaired
ships back to him.”

Romanov
shifted his gaze from Masterson to Chenko. “Well, the disposition of those
repaired ships will be determined by me, but with regards to Stevens’ Task
Force, I’m in complete agreement with General Masterson. Those ships stay here.
Are we clear on that Commodore?”

“Crystal
clear, Admiral.” Romanov’s heart was racing, but he concentrated on keeping his
expression from giving away his inner turmoil. There was far too much at stake
to let these two men jeopardize the whole Plan. Trojan’s orders were quite
clear. Those four ships were to come back to the Franklin system no matter
what. Unfortunately, the Old Man’s pigheadedness meant that Romanov wouldn’t be
able to enjoy very much R&R.

Seven
days later, a surprised Lieutenant scrabbled to greet Romanov as he stepped off
the shuttle in the hangar bay of the task force’s flagship.

“We
weren’t told you were coming, Sir.”

Romanov
smiled and waved the excuse away. “A surprise inspection, Lieutenant. Where is
Commodore Stevens?”

“I
believe Commodore Stevens is in his cabin, Sir. I’ll call him for you.”

“No,
I do not want him to know that I’m here just yet, but you can call the CO and
tell him that I’d like to meet with him on the Bridge,” said Romanov in a calm,
friendly voice.

“Yessir.
If you wait one minute while I call the CO, I can escort you to the Bridge,
Sir.”

Romanov
shook his head. “No need. I know the way. After you notify the CO, I want you
to go to the Commodore’s quarters and stand outside his entrance. Do not let
anyone enter his quarters until you hear from me, understood?”

“Understood,
Sir.”

Romanov
nodded his approval and walked quickly to the exit that led to the Bridge. As
it happened, both he and the ship’s CO arrived at the Bridge at about the same
time. Romanov quickly informed the CO what he wanted done. Seconds later, he
was in direct visual contact with the Commanding Officers of the other three
ships in the Task Force. He was in luck. None of the four ships had more than
one or two crewmen on the ground, and none of those handled critical duties.
With Headquarters now in the middle of the night on the planet, it was the
perfect time to put his plan into effect. All four ship COs had already been
briefed on Trojan’s ultimate plans and were willing to help achieve those
plans. Romanov gave the signal, and the Task Force began to accelerate at
maximum for the hyper-zone boundary.

It
was two hours later when Chenko woke to the sound of an incoming call. He
didn’t know what time it was, but it was clearly still dark outside, and that
meant this was not a routine call. Something was happening.

“Chenko
here. What’s the emergency?” The voice on the other end sounded nervous.

“Sorry
to wake you, Admiral. I’m the Duty Officer at Aerospace Traffic Control.
Something peculiar is going on. Task Force Stevens is accelerating at high
speed for what appears to be a least time trajectory for the zone boundary. No
departure plan was filed with us. Responses to our attempts at contact have
been limited to text messages only, ostensibly from Commodore Stevens. He
claims that he’s acting under your orders, but he refuses to confirm that with
audio or visual communications.”

Chenko
was now wide awake. “I did not give Commodore Stevens or anyone else orders or
permission to leave orbit. You signal those ships to return to low orbit
immediately. I’ll stay on the line while you do that, and I want to know what
their response is, got that?”

“Got
that, Sir. Stand by.”

Chenko
could tell that the line was still open because he could hear faint voices in
the background. After what seemed like a long time, the Duty Officer came back
on the line. “Those ships are not responding to our signals, Admiral. We’ve
tried everything: microwave, lasercom, voice and text messages. They’re
ignoring all of them and continuing to accelerate on an outbound trajectory.”

“DAMMIT!”
Chenko paused to get his temper under control. No sense yelling at the Duty
Officer. This wasn’t his fault. “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Keep
sending those recall messages until those ships jump away. If they start
obeying the recall order, then you let me know. I’m going to head for HQ myself
in a few minutes. Chenko out.” After getting up and arranging for his limo to
pick him up in 10 minutes, Chenko stepped into a hot shower and evaluated the
situation. Romanov wouldn’t have done this on his own initiative. Chenko was
certain of that. Trojan had to be behind this maneuver. Clearly, putting an
Army General in charge as the overall CINC1FAF was a mistake. Even Masterson
had to see that now. The problem was that Chenko didn’t have a suitable Navy Flag
Officer here on Earth to put forward as a replacement. Stevens might have been
up to the job, but he was on his way to Hadley, although Chenko had a strong
suspicion that Trojan would send him right back here as soon as he arrived. He
made up his mind to try to convince Masterson to agree to send a courier to
Hadley relieving Trojan of his command as CINC1FAF, with instructions for
Stevens to take over if he was still there by the time the courier got there.
Trojan had to be reined in. With his mind made up, Chenko felt better as he
finished getting dressed.

Chapter Fourteen:

Day
079/2547

Senior
Lieutenant Angelina Carter woke to the sound of the alert buzzer. Without
bothering to put on any clothes, she quickly got up and walked over to the
Pilot’s Station. She was the only person on this courier, so sleeping and
moving around naked wasn’t a problem. A quick scan of the status board showed
that the courier was picking up faint traces of microwave communications
transmissions coming from a moon orbiting one of the system’s gas giants.
Carter checked her astrogational database. This system was supposed to be
completely uninhabited. Whatever was going on down there on that moon had been
started after the war began. That moon was a prime candidate for the SSU’s new
dedicated shipbuilding complex.

“Bingo,”
said Carter with satisfaction. She sat down in the Pilot’s chair and
manipulated the controls. With the transmissions recorded, it was time to head
back to Hadley. Carter was anxious to get this mission finished. She was
overdue for some down time, and there was a sexy civilian consultant waiting
for her.

Day
099/2547

Major
Foster entered the conference room and saw that both the Secretary for Defense
and Admiral Janicot were already there waiting for her. She felt herself
blushing as she thought of the reason why she was late. Her husband’s ship had
landed two hours ago, and they had made up for lost time after being separated
for over a year. She hoped she wasn’t giving off a glow. That would be a dead giveaway.
Janicot being a man might not notice, but Mandy Sorenson might. She chided
herself for letting her husband talk her into that last session of lovemaking,
but DAMN he looked good without any clothes on!

As
she moved around to the opposite side of the oval table, she saw that Janicot
had a slight scowl on his face. Sorenson was smiling at her though, and it was
the kind of smile that said ‘I know what you’ve been doing.’

“My
apologies for being late. I know it’s no excuse, but I didn’t get much sleep
last night,” said Foster in her best mea culpa voice. Janicot’s reply was
pre-empted by the tiny giggle that Sorenson let slip. His scowl turned to
puzzlement as he turned to look at Sorenson, who was herself now blushing.

Turning
back to Foster, he said, “Try not to make a habit of it, Major.”

“Yessir,”
said Foster meekly.

Satisfied
that he had properly chastised her, Janicot continued. “I understand that some
information about Site X and the shipbuilding project has come in?”

“That’s
correct, Admiral. Site X is ready for the skeleton crew to move in and get it
set up for potential operations. There’s a ship leaving in 72 hours that will
take them there. The shipbuilding complex, which has its own codename
now…Durendal…has received the robotic equipment necessary to begin producing
usable, refined metal in small quantities. That output will be used to expand
capacity.”

Janicot’s
scowl vanished and was replaced with a smile. “Very good, Major. I’m looking
forward to reading your full report. Now, before we switch the subject to a
discussion of our next move, I’d like you to remind Secretary Sorenson and
myself of the status of our mobile forces.”

“Certainly,
Admiral. In terms of captured ships, nine of the ten ships that were left
behind have been recovered, and six of those are in temporary parking orbits
around Sparta. The other three are on the ground being repaired. One of those
three is almost finished. The tenth ship was several astronomical units away by
the time we were able to jury-rig a temporary repair to one engine cluster so
that it could be brought back. That recovery is still ongoing. It won’t be back
in orbit for another five and a half weeks. We now have 61 missile boats, and
we’re expecting one of the new heavy cruisers built on Hekla to arrive here any
day now. The tech boys have told me that they’ve gotten everything possible
from the captured anti-missile laser batteries they’ve examined, and we’re in
the process of assembling our own prototype. We also have some prototype
versions of electronic counter measures equipment that the R&D people on
Zanzibar have come up with. Their latest report also says that the 3rd
Generation AMM is just about ready to test too, although some of my staff think
AMMs will be obsolete if we get the laser defense working. The other R&D
projects haven’t made any breakthroughs yet.”

“Okay,
Major, you can now brief us on the planning group’s recommendations for future
strategic initiatives,” said Janicot.

“Yessir.
Even though our Queen’s Gambit operation wasn’t entirely successful, it still
appears that the level of forces in the short term will be sufficiently
balanced that our shipbuilding programs have a decent chance of keeping up with
the Federation’s. P2 is projecting the following buildup for both sides.” A 3-D
holographic display appeared in front of Janicot and Sorenson. “As you can see,
the red line representing FED warship tonnage starts out below ours, and when
their Makassar site switches over from capacity expansion to shipbuilding,
they’ll overtake us. But when our Durendal site kicks in approximately 3-6
months later, we’ll be able to keep their tonnage advantage from exceeding 1.3
to 1. That marginal level of quantitative superiority is not considered
insurmountable by P2. And, in fact, when we factor in qualitative improvements
that are within sight, P2 comes to the conclusion that, in the long run, both
sides will be more or less evenly matched in terms of overall military
capability.