Empire in Crisis (20 page)

After a pause, Logan turned to DeChastelaine. “I can see
the logic of Commander Hood’s strategy. You appointed me to command the 107th
in spite of my lack of flag rank because you needed someone better qualified
and you needed that someone quickly. Given that offensive operations will be
delayed for months and that the enemy seems to have suffered a major setback,
it seems to me that you now have the time to find someone with Flag Officer
experience who is also qualified in terms of strategy and tactics, My Emperor.”

DeChastelaine smiled and shook his head. “I already have
found that person and he is you, Admiral Logan. Your performance so far has
proven your strategic and tactical skills, and while your promotion to Fleet
Group Admiral is temporary, from now on you will always wear at least one star
on your collar. And speaking of qualified flag officers, defending TE33 will be
your first priority but not the only one. Over the coming months, I want you to
assess, identify and, if possible, develop flag officers with good leadership,
strategic and tactical skills within the 107th. And if someone isn’t performing
to your satisfaction, relieve them of command and find someone better
qualified. I can foresee situations where the 107th might have to send task
forces on specific missions, and since you can only be in one place at a time,
you’ll need subordinates who can be trusted to command task forces wisely.

“I take it that you’re in agreement with
Commander Hood’s recommendations. There’s also another reason for pushing
aggressive moves forward for a few months. Admiral Bishop is having difficulty
finding competent flag officers to step into the vacant administrative
positions that Hiakawa’s bloated command structure was based on. If we’re going
to go on a massive offensive, those fleets have to have the kind of long term logistical
support that only a working command structure can give. I don’t want to send
the 107th out into the Rift and then discover that it courted disaster because
it wasn’t supported logistically when department A thought that department B
was taking care of that task and B thought that A was doing it. Battles and
wars are lost that way, and I don’t understand why Hiakawa allowed the command
structure to get so bloated and rigid. I always suspected that this war was not
going to be won quickly, even with the victories that you’ve given the Empire
so far. Now unless you have any additional questions, comments or concerns, I
think we’re done here.”

Logan was in the middle of taking a shower when he got the
call from the Flag Bridge.

“Logan here. Go ahead.”

“Sorry to interrupt your shower, Admiral, but our comship
had just received a test transmission from TF107.5. The FTL techies report that
the message is a bit garbled but still readable.”

“That’s great news. I’ll be at the FB shortly, Lieutenant.
Clear.” Logan pumped his fist into the air with unrestrained enthusiasm. Great
news indeed. TF107.5 had just successfully sent a direct fleet-to-fleet FTL
message from almost a quarter of the way across the Rift. That was over 10
times further than the average starbase to starbase range. The ability to aim a
longitudinal wave beam accurately over that distance would have been remarkable
even for a starbase, but the fact that a comship had done it was even more
impressive. It also signaled that the last pre-requisite needed before large
scale offensive operations could begin had finally been achieved.

He shook his head in amazement at the fact that six whole
months and a few days had passed since that meeting with Hood and the Emperor.
Hood’s prediction of getting the first comship within 100 days had been too
optimistic. The first one had actually taken 122 days, and it was only within
the last month that deliveries of comships had reached the target rate of two
per week. Fleet Group-R now had the minimum number of comships that Logan had
insisted upon before shifting from a defensive posture to an offensive one. He
thanked the Gods of War that the Emperor had reined him in six months ago when
he’d been chomping at the bit to get the 107th back into action. During the
last six months, 34 heavy cruiser squadrons had been carefully exploring the
Rift’s wormhole network. He now recognized how difficult it would have been
back then to try to find the enemy in that huge three dimensional spider’s web
of wormholes, but it looked like he might be proven right about choke points.
The overall shape of the spider’s web was narrowing the further out from the
local spiral arm it got. If that continued to be the case, then it was just
possible that the network would taper down to just half a dozen points, maybe
even fewer than that. And if his multi-fleet command had enough fleets to cover
all those points, then he could effectively shut out the Gorgons from
threatening the Empire.

That was the other interesting development that had taken
place over the last six months. The Emperor’s specialists had finally learned
how to communicate with the captured aliens. The name Gorgon was a close
phonetic approximation to the word they used to describe themselves. Humans now
knew approximately where they came from and how they managed to get control of
ships that were clearly built by and for another race that just happened to be
much better looking. The concept of almost all members of an entire race
simultaneously evolving to a higher level of consciousness was difficult for
Logan to accept, but he’d been assured by their scientists that the Gorgons
truly believed it. Once most of the Tollarians had literally vanished into thin
air, the Gorgons had explored Tollarian space and found the star system where
the Tollarians had stored their obsolete warships. In their rush to exploit
this windfall, the Gorgon leadership had elected to use as many ships as
possible with smaller crews. The minimal crews, and more importantly minimal
training, had been responsible for the fact that those confiscated ships hadn’t
performed up to their full potential during the battles with Logan’s forces.
The final report on the technical capabilities of the captured cripples had
emphasized that they would have been much more formidable if the Gorgons had
made the effort to learn how to use them properly.

During the previous six months, there had been only minor
incursions of Empire territory, which Logan and Hood were convinced were
careful probes that might also have served as training missions. He had to
assume that the Gorgons were now better trained and far more challenging foes.
And the Tollarians, what few were left on this plane of existence, were a very
enticing potential ally and trading partner. Logan’s mission brief now included
a secondary objective of finding and making contact with the Tollarians, if
that could be accomplished without jeopardizing the main objective of
neutralizing the Gorgon’s ability to project military force across the Rift.

At least Logan no longer had to worry about the risk of
internal upheavals within the Empire. After suppressing the attempted coup by
Hiakawa’s son and nephew, there hadn’t been any serious pushback from Hiakawa’s
other proteges. The monumental task of clearing out the deadwood from 34 fleets
still wasn’t complete, but a lot had been accomplished at the fleet, squadron
and ship commanding officer levels. A new attitude was apparent now. Logan had
seen it himself, even out at the Rift edge, as officers and crew were performing
their tasks with more enthusiasm and attention to detail. DeChastelaine had
promised in a fleet-wide message that promotions would be made only on the
basis of merit from now on, and Admiral Bishop had demonstrated that she was
going to enforce that principle. Logan had tried to do the same thing with
first the 107th and then the other three fleets that he now commanded as part
of Fleet Group-R. He even managed to get the Emperor’s approval for his request
that Akoni Burke, one of the legendary (in their own minds) Fearsome Four from
his Academy days, be promoted to command of a battlecruiser in a squadron that
was part of the 477th fleet under Logan’s overall Fleet Group Command. And as
soon as the first vacant battlecruiser squadron leader’s position opened up in
the 477th, he would give it to Burke along with a field promotion to 1-star
flag rank. Corrine Hood already was at that level, and Logan wished he could
convince the Emperor to cut her loose from SFHQ and let her command at least a
squadron. But the answer had been a firm ‘NO’. As Logan waited for the blasts
of warm air to dry him off, he wondered if DeChastelaine was keeping Hood on
Earth because of some physical or platonic attraction. She and Logan had
briefly explored an intimate but casual relationship during their Academy days,
but it hadn’t lasted long, and they had remained good friends ever since. Maybe
DeChastelaine really did want her there for her strategic skills. She had been
the unofficial leader of the Fearsome Four at the Academy, and her work on
strategic planning, force structure and identifying skilled leaders had proven
how valuable her input at HQ was.

He wished that progress on the new force structure was
going faster. The design for the new heavy missile cruiser was just about ready
to be used by the asteroid shipyard to begin work on finishing the engineering
sections it had already built. Luckily, the prototype of the reverse engineered
warp drive configuration was almost finished with its testing program. It would
be relatively easy to pull the old technology warp drives out of the already
completed engineering sections and replace them with the upgraded warp drive
before adding the rest of the heavy missile cruiser hull sections. Upgrading
existing ships was more problematic, although the good news was that there were
ways to improve warp drive efficiency with relatively minor changes that would
boost maximum warp speed for battlecruisers to 4.55C and smaller ships up to
4.58C. Those minor changes could be done in the field and did not need a
shipyard. Getting the most out of the new technology that would make speeds of
5.0C possible would involve pulling the entire warp drive out of the hull and
replacing it with the new version. That would be a major refit and would need a
shipyard. Work was also progressing on the smaller and faster versions of the
warp missile, although actual delivery of thousands of them might be another
six months away unless Bishop could eliminate a lot of the red tape that
typically accompanied the transition from a pure research program to a mass
produced operationally-ready finished product. Logan suspected that the war
might be over by the time the new missiles were introduced in quantity, but
they were worth pursuing nevertheless.

By the time he got to the Flag Bridge, he had reviewed his
next move and was ready to implement it. But before he did that, he wanted to
review the strategic situation one more time. As it happened, the main display
was already showing the strategic ‘Big Picture’. Green icons represented
friendly fleets, task forces or individual ships along the edge of or in the
Rift itself. Three fleets, the 337th, the 477th, and the 827th, were holding
position along the edge of the local spiral arm. The 107th was back from the edge
at TE33. At the moment, 25 heavy cruiser squadrons were in the Rift either
exploring new wormhole connections or acting as relay stations at key
intersections. Each of them had one comship. The other nine heavy cruiser
squadrons were the reserve, and they were spread out among an equal number of
starbases.

The plan to begin aggressive offensive operations had been
carefully constructed, and everyone knew what their part of the plan entailed.
Phase 1 involved activating the nine reserve heavy cruiser squadrons and
redeploying them ahead of the other three fleets as scouts. Once they were in
place, those three fleets and their scouts would move forward in a carefully
choreographed pattern that would quickly check over 88% of the wormhole
connection points for enemy activity. The other 12% were so indirect that it
was deemed unlikely that the enemy would use them, assuming they even knew
about them. The 107th would maintain its relative position behind the three
fleets while acting as a strategic reserve and mobile HQ. As the fleets moved
forward, the heavy cruiser squadrons already in the Rift would continue to find
new wormholes with their recon drones. As soon as any of those squadrons
detected an enemy formation, Logan would execute Phase 2 and send the nearest
fleet to intercept it.

Logan sat down at his Command Station and
activated one of the smaller displays. He called up the list of prepared FTL
messages and selected the one that would initiate Phase 1. At a touch of the
virtual ‘send’ button, that message was on its way to the nearby comship and
from there to all squadrons, fleets and the Emperor. The hunt was on.

Commander Darwin was chatting with his Astrogator when the
main displayed pinged for attention. The tactical image updated to show a new
wormhole at roughly a third of the way around the rocky planet at the center of
this wormhole nexus. He was about to say something when the display pinged
again. The yellow wormhole icon switched to red and began flashing. That meant
that the recon drone was detecting the kinds of spikes in the magnitude of the
fluctuations that wormholes always generated in the fabric of the space-time
continuum when objects were using them. It indicated that something was
emerging from this new wormhole right now, and that something had to be an
alien ship. Turning to his Comm. Technician, he said, “Sandra, record this
message for transmission to the comship.” When she indicated she was ready to
record, he began speaking.

* * * * *

Logan woke to the insistent sound of the priority buzzer.

“Logan here. Go ahead.”

“Flag Bridge here, Admiral. One of the exploration
squadrons has detected enemy activity from a newly discovered wormhole.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in less than a minute. Clear.” Logan
quickly got up and threw on a robe and stepped into a pair of slippers. This
wouldn’t be the first time the Flag Bridge personnel saw him out of uniform,
and it wouldn’t be the last. He wanted to see the tactical situation on the big
holographic display as quickly as possible.

When he entered the Flag Bridge, he noticed that most of
the personnel were looking at the main display. The Duty Officer came over to
him.

“The readings on the new wormhole were in the range that
normally results from at least one ship emerging from it, but it’s not
conclusive proof, Admiral. It could be nothing.”

Logan nodded. “Zoom in. I want to see the direction this
wormhole is heading.”

The display image changed quickly. It now showed only a
relatively small section of the Rift. The nexus, containing the new wormhole
provisionally designated as RG23, had the squadron icon with the number 525 in
it. Several solid blue lines radiated  from RG23. They were explored wormhole
connections. One dotted yellow line went up at an angle. That was the direction
the new wormhole would take, based on its relative position to the rocky planet
at the center of the nexus. What no one knew yet was how far in that direction
the wormhole would go. The question was potentially important. The exploration
of new wormhole connections had now extended beyond the point where Logan’s
light cruiser had first encountered the Gorgon ships, and the spider’s web had
narrowed down to three points. Could it be that those three points would all
connect to one single nexus? If so, then achieving and maintaining control over
that one choke point would quickly become the whole goal of Phase 2. The other
two nexus points also had heavy cruiser squadrons exploring those systems.
Logan decided to play a hunch. He walked over to the Astrogation Station.

“FAO? I want you to identify the sectors in their
respective nexii that the 635th and the 75th should concentrate their
exploration efforts on, ones containing wormholes that would intersect the new
one found by the 525th.”

The Fleet Astrogation Officer looked at him in surprise.
“You think all three will narrow down to one?”

“I think it’s possible and worth pursuing.”

“I’ll get right on that, Admiral. What about the 525th?”

“You mean will I send a message to them?” The FAO nodded.
“No. If there are Gorgon ships at the new wormhole, they might intercept the
long range FTL beam and know that they’re not alone in that nexus. This is
where standing orders come into play. The 525th will monitor all four wormholes
and hold position until ordered otherwise. Once you’ve identified the likely
search sectors, let those two squadrons know. Zoom the display back out so that
I can see our fleets again.” When that was done, Logan reviewed the locations
of all four fleets he was responsible for. They were stationary now after
having moved up into the Rift. The 107th was about halfway between the Empire
spiral arm and the farthest extent of the spider’s web. The other three fleets
were roughly halfway between the 107th and frontline cruiser squadrons. The
other heavy cruiser squadrons were echeloned back from the 525th, the 635th and
the 75th. With the tapering of the spider’s web of connections, every single
nexus directly behind the front three squadrons had a heavy cruiser squadron
watching it carefully. It was a layered defensive formation that the textbooks
called ‘defense in depth’. If a powerful enemy fleet tried to force its way
through the cruiser squadrons, there’d be enough warning to get at least one,
maybe even two full fleets into position to intercept it. Logan decided that
all four fleets would stay where they were for now.

Twenty-one hours later, the 635th reported discovery of a
wormhole in the specified sector with a trajectory that seemed to intersect the
path of the wormhole discovered in RG23. Logan decided to wait. Unlike the new
discovery at RG23, this wormhole hadn’t shown any signs of Gorgon ships emerging
from it. That didn’t mean they weren’t already there. But the only way to know
for sure would be to send recon drones up close to the wormhole, and that was
something the standing orders didn’t include due to the risk of losing the
element of surprise. He would wait until he heard from the 75th, or until a
reasonable amount of time had passed without any discovery, and then he would
decide what to do.

It only took 11 more hours for the 75th to find a wormhole
that appeared to lead to the exact same point in space as the other two. They
had found a choke point all right, and it was THE choke point. Logan was
elated. He conferred with his astrogation staff and they came up with a plan.
Direct communication with the 525th, the 635th and the 75th was out of the
question due to the risk of tipping off the Gorgons to their presence, so a
message would be sent to the three heavy cruiser squadrons one connection
further back. That message would then be physically couriered to those three
forward squadrons.

The plan was simple in concept but difficult to execute
properly. Each squadron would send one heavy cruiser in a long detour around
the wormhole, making sure to stay well beyond the known limits of Gorgon warp
detection gear. Once that ship was directly behind the wormhole, it would
launch multiple carefully programmed recon drones to use normal maneuvering
engines to approach the wormhole and pass close by it. They would move at slow
speeds in order to detect any stationary Gorgon ships either passively by intercepted
EM transmissions or by noticing stars winking out for a fraction of a second as
a Gorgon ship passed in front if it. If the drones detected anything like that,
they would send a low-powered, narrow beam comlaser to a point where another
squadron ship was waiting. Being limited to the speed of light, that message
would take hours to reach the ship, but it minimized the risk of giving away
their presence to the Gorgons.

Logan was willing to bet that there were one or two Gorgon
sentry ships at all three wormholes. That’s what he would have done if he was
defending the choke point. The entire operation would take upwards of 45-48
hours before any comlaser message could be expected. Waiting was
nerve-wracking, and Logan was tempted several times to order all four fleets to
move forward, just for the satisfaction of doing something, but he held off.
There was no advantage to moving forward until they knew, or at least had some
idea, what they were facing.

It actually took almost 50 hours before Logan received the
first report, which happened to come from the RG23 nexus. Data sent by the
recon drones confirmed that there were at least six Gorgon ships guarding the
entrance to that wormhole. Logan strongly suspected that if they could see six,
there were actually a lot more. The fact that there were a minimum of six ships
suggested strongly that their function was not as sentries, or perhaps not JUST
as sentries. And the only other role he could think of was as a blocking force
to prevent any alien ship entering the wormhole. Because the Gorgons were using
ships equipped with heavy beam weapons and nothing else, the ideal place to
block alien ships was at the other end of the wormhole in an ambush. The
Gorgons had already shown their inexperience with fleet tactics in the past;
this could be another example of that.

Just over 96 minutes later, he received a report from the
squadron checking the second of the three intersecting wormholes, RG24. Their
scan of the wormhole showed eight Gorgon ships directly in front of the
wormhole entrance, just as there had been at RG23. Logan was willing to bet a
year’s pay that the third wormhole in RG25 was also defended by multiple ships.
As it turned out, he would have lost that bet.

Forty-four minutes later, the 107th received the RG25
report: no ships detected at all. Logan was so surprised by the report that he
ordered McKeon to come over to the Flag Bridge. No longer just a commanding
officer of a super-dreadnought, McKeon was now commanding the battlecruiser
that was Logan’s fleet flagship, as well as the flagship of a battlecruiser
squadron. That meant McKeon wore two hats, ship CO and Squadron Leader. Under
the new rank structure developed by Bishop and approved by DeChastelaine,
Squadron Leader McKeon was not a 1-star admiral as was the custom in the
Hiakawa era. He was still a Senior Commander, but the title and collar insignia
didn’t really matter to McKeon. He’d trade command of one slow
super-dreadnought for a squadron of eight fast battlecruisers any day of the
week and twice on Sunday.

“What do think, Commander?” asked Logan, “is this a back
door to the choke point that the Gorgon’s haven’t found yet?”

McKeon shook his head slowly as he stepped up to Logan’s
Command Station. “It certainly looks that way, but maybe there are ships there,
and we just haven’t detected them yet.”

“Maybe,” said Logan softly. He hated not knowing whether
the Gorgons were being amateurish in their tactics or cunning. If they had
placed just one sentry ship at each wormhole entrance, then the odds went way
up that the recon drones would miss it and report all clear as they did in the
case of RG25. But if that’s what the Gorgons were doing in RG25, why did they
deploy at least half a dozen ships in each of the other two? One possible answer
jumped out at him.

“Oh you sneaky bastards,” he said with a smile. McKeon
looked at him with a questioning expression. Logan pointed to RG25 on the main
display. “I have a strong hunch that they’re guarding the other end of that
RG25 wormhole with a huge fleet, hoping that we assume we’ve discovered an
unguarded back door and try to sneak a fleet through it.”

McKeon nodded. “That would be pretty devious of them, but I
think we have to make that presumption, Admiral.” After a pause he said, “we
could send one ship through to take a look.”

Logan was no longer smiling when he looked back at McKeon.
“We could, but I don’t think I’m prepared to throw away an entire crew to
confirm the ambush. If we send anything through that RG25 wormhole, it’ll be at
least two, maybe even three full fleets. The Gorgon ambush will have a tough
time digesting THAT.” Logan switched his gaze back to the display and McKeon
stayed silent. A few seconds later, Logan spoke in a low voice. “The other
possibility is that we send one fleet to sneak up on the ships guarding each of
the wormholes at RG23 and 24 via normal maneuvering drives. As soon as they get
within weapons range, they light up the Gorgon ships with radar and then blast
them out of existence. Then each fleet will pass through the wormhole into the
choke point nexus. FAO, do we have a designation yet for the choke point?”

“Actually we do now, Admiral. RCP01. The letters stand for
Rift Choke Point.”

“Appropriate. However, I was hoping for something more
imaginative or dramatic like, oh I don’t know…Gates of Hell maybe.” Everyone on
the Flag Bridge laughed. Logan waited for the laughter to die down before
continuing. “Do we know what’s at RCP01, FAO?”

“No star, so it has to be a rocky planet that’s stressing
the fabric of space enough to cause the wormholes, Admiral.”

When Logan stayed silent and after McKeon decided he had
waited long enough, he asked. “Have you figured out what you’re going to do,
Admiral?”

Logan looked at him with a quizzical expression. “I’m
curious to see if your logic matches mine, Commander. Let’s assume that you’re
the Gorgon Admiral assigned the task of defending RCP01. You’ve set out sentry
squadrons at the other end of two wormholes and an ambushing fleet at your end
of the third one. What would you do if an drone came through the third
wormhole?”