Federation Reborn 2: Pirate Rage (18 page)

“File it. We can look at it later,” Admiral Rico said. He glanced at his watch. “I've got another meeting after this,” he said.

“And it's nearly lunch,” the General said. “To recap, you believe Fourth Fleet is on its own, but the admiral in charge is hopefully smart enough to get his ass out of the sling he's in. Also, hopefully he'll do it under the enemy's nose, because if they know he's there they will use the ansible to coordinate their forces to run him to ground and destroy or capture his forces,” he said, startling the others.

“In a nutshell, yes.”

“Then don't you think you should light a fire under some yard dog asses to get those ships turned around faster? We might need to get them up to Protodon to break in and relieve Von Berk, right?” the General demanded.

Admiral Cartwright winced and glanced at the war minister. Slowly Admiral Rico nodded. “You've got a point,” he said. “I'll move my schedule around and get on that. You do the same Melwin,” he said, eying the praetor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then we're done here,” the war minister said, rising quickly. The others rose as he headed for the door. “Get on it, or I imagine his majesty will lose his patience and you know what that means,” he said as a parting shot.

“Heads will roll,” the countess finished for him softly.

Chapter 9

Admiral Irons frowned thoughtfully as he toyed with the stylus on his desk. The holo emitter was spooling down, as was the link to the ansible station. Another fun discussion sucking up bandwidth to little purpose. Well, some purpose, they had to get some sort of consensus going despite the chain of command. He needed everyone working from the same playbook.

He'd been in discussions, long discussions with Rear Admiral Phil Subert lately, since his Neochimp counterpart Rear Admiral Amadeus White was tied up in Protodon. Phil had finally gotten him to come around to agreeing to accelerate the promotion list. He'd intended to do it already, but not as aggressively as Phil wanted. He'd have to temper that a bit. Phil did have a point; they had people very junior doing the job of commanders and captains. They also needed to get a handle on the positions within the fleet. Some of the officers were too high in rank to command a destroyer for instance. At least that problem was slowly working itself out as the new construction came into play.

Recently promoted Colonel Jersey Forth was one such problem however. He hadn't been thrilled about the idea, and he had some misgivings about being a brigadier general even more. He shouldn't be. He had been filling the role of a lieutenant general or arguably a major general for some time unless another Marine sleeper, one higher in rank than Jersey, came forward, which was doubtful, Jersey was going to be the commandant of the marines, like it or not.

John smiled slightly to himself. And he knew better than to piss and moan about it. He was a soldier; he'd damn well suck it up like a Marine and do his duty as required. And Phil better accept the consequences of Jersey's promotion too.

Apparently Phil and Jersey were still at odds. Phil was such a stickler for protocol, and Jersey was a hands-on guy who wanted to get the job done. He knew it was much more than that. Phil had pulled rank and continued to do so, but in the end, both were good men trying to do what they thought was right. Defending their turf came into that.

He shook his head. Phil had delivered his implant keys to Jersey as required, but they hadn't hit it off. Nor had some of their … more lively exchanges and territorial contests helped the situation. But most of the clashing had worn off when Protodon had been attacked. There was nothing like a determined enemy to make one concentrate on what was really important.

He'd planned on solidifying the front in order to build up a defensive wall while safeguarding his industrial centers and creating the right sort of hammer needed to destroy the pirates once and for all.

The latest attack on Protodon had changed all that. In a way, he regretted allowing Phil and Amadeus to get him to move in so damned early. They'd exposed themselves, shown the enemy their hand. Shown them that they had a real threat to contend with.

But then again, he'd done that himself in B101a1, so who was he to complain really?

The point of contact was Protodon, and B101a1, so like any good officer he had his troops marching to the sounds of the guns as soon as they and their hardware were ready. Sometimes even sooner, considering the number of engineering casualties that had cropped up recently. They were pushing the pace, and it was only going to get faster and harder when they really did mix it up with a proper Horathian fleet.

For the moment, Amadeus was to stay on the defensive and lick his wounds while using light forces to probe and picket the B95a3 star system. He'd need a big enough force to move into Nuevo Madrid to take on those two battle cruisers. His first battle cruiser division wasn't enough, not with green crews and no intelligence to go in on. Besides, a one-on-one battle wasn't what he wanted anyway. No force commander ever wanted a fair fight. His lips twitched at the very idea. No, he'd have to wait until another division minimum was sent his way.

But those two wounded leviathans had to be dealt with. They were wounded, and he reminded himself, sometimes a wounded predator was even more dangerous. Especially when they had little to lose and were cornered with no expectation of success or survival.

Would they surrender? Something told him that was doubtful. He exhaled slowly. And giving Amadeus time to lick his wounds while both yards sent him reinforcements only allowed the same thing to happen on the enemy's side of the border. Not a comforting thought.

He'd read the report that the First Division had arrived in Kathy's World late last night his time. They were going to go across the star system, transmitting lasers with packets of information before they jumped to Protodon. So far so good though, according to the ansible both ships and their crews were holding up well. He nodded once.

Amadeus would take each of his reinforcements, work them up, integrate them, while shaking down their crews. He'd need to split his forces when he did go back on the offensive, keeping a good portion back to protect his rear.

The admiral shook his head. Then there was Phil. He and Phil had divided their focus between building infrastructure, ships, orbital defenses, supplies to the fleet, and setting up picket forces to the rest of the sector. Setting aside his ambitious plans to go to neighboring sectors, he had two other tasks they needed to achieve soon. Both of them were on Phil and his people too.

First they had to secure the B101a1 star system. That meant taking and
holding
the star system; having just the
North Hampton
class light cruiser
Voyager
there picketing the star system wasn't enough. Phil had dumped a payload of missile pods and weapon platforms into the star system during his last resupply mission to the picket force in B100 omega. Still not enough, barely a drop in the bucket. Unleashing a couple automated tugs and a small factory ship to suck up the remaining resources in the star system to build additional fixed defenses might help though. He made a note to kick the idea to Phil during their next scheduled conference. Hell, they could send a force in to bust a minor moon up if it had the right materials. He didn't care. As long as they got what they needed, that was all that currently mattered.

A subset of that mission was to continue to resupply the forces in B100 omega as well as strengthen the contacts in Hidoshi's World and Richalu, while sending an invasion force to take and hold Destria. A final minor caveat was to picket the empty systems leading up to Kathy's World.

Then there was his second mandate, to send a force to Bek.

He checked the status board. The mission called for a cruiser. A light, fast scout cruiser, something nimble but with the legs to get all the way in to the chain, explore, and handle anything thrown at them … and most importantly, get back out. Maneuvering in through the rapids wouldn't allow them to bring an ansible link with them; it was just too rough on a ship. That meant they would have no idea what transpired with the ship until she returned and reported back.

Phil wanted to send a single ship. Irons agreed in theory, but he'd rather send both of the
North
Hamptons
assigned to B100 omega to replace the
Kittyhawk
that had been stationed there. If he had to choose between the two though, he agreed with Phil,
Caroline
was the ship to send. She had the most workup time and shakedown of the division. She'd need a special navigator though, and that was a problem. He knew of only a handful of selkie, otters, or other hypergenius navigators were in the military. None were currently available, and only two were in the current officer's class. They were both far from graduating as well, and one wasn't even taking nav or helm courses. She wanted to be a medic.

The only other selkie or other qualified navigator was on
Kittyhawk
, and he was a squadron commander. Also a Marine, he noted. And
Kittyhawk
had just passed through Kathy's World in transit to Protodon. There was no way he'd turn her around—not for one person. Destabilizing the squadron was also a questionable action considering they might be going into a combat situation at any given moment.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. Well, they'd have to think of something. Bek was a big question mark, one he needed to put to rest. If they could get their hands on her shipyards …, he inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly as his eyes popped open. Damn it, the risk was worth the reward. Potential reward, he corrected himself.

Now they just had to figure out a way to get it.

---<>))))

Phil anticipated the thrust of Admiral Irons’ next plan easily. It wasn't that hard; the admiral had made a lot of noises about Bek for some time. He'd also put the mission plan in their outline when they had been together in Antigua. He had a copy of that outline. Things had changed a bit, the political situation was fluid, but he knew the basics and had enough initiative to execute them when he thought the time was right.

He had known he was going to be Johnny-on-the-spot now that Amadeus's front has died down a bit. He immediately went to the ready board and selected
Wanda Lu
, the recently commissioned
North Hampton
LC drawn out of mothballs to go to B100 omega to relieve
Caroline
.

His fingers flew as he tapped out orders to have
Caroline
relieved of her duty station to return to Pyrax for resupply and refit before she was sent out on the Bek mission. He tagged the order with an expedite to get the ship in fast and turned around in a timely manner. He scribbled his signature and then flicked it into the outbox. His chief of staff, Lieutenant Commander Saul Garretaj, normally went over it to make certain all the I's were dotted and T's crossed, but he was impatient. Saul, however, was on another fact-finding mission for him and wasn't due back for several days. Could he wait that long? He pursed his lips as he thought about it. Technically it could wait … but he looked at it briefly then flicked it from the outbox to the ansible link for
Caroline
, then copied the order to
Wanda Lu
and other affected commands.

He smiled briefly. That should be a feather in his cap when John read his copy of the order. Or, even better, if the admiral somehow missed it and he got the chance to yank his chain and tell him about it over the ansible. He toyed with the idea of stalling the copy to Antigua but then brushed the idea aside. It was most likely already transmitted, so the idea was moot. Perhaps next time he thought.

Once all hell broke loose in Protodon or wherever, they wouldn't have time to think of side missions and would be scrambling to send every available ship to various postings. They needed to put the matter to rest as quickly as possible so they could concentrate on the next problem.

Now he just needed to figure out a navigational crew for her.

---<>))))

Politics—the bane of his existence was still there, lingering over his head, damning his efforts to bring order to them, Admiral Irons thought as he shook his head. He needed a quorum of the Federation Congress to bring it into session, if only to approve of some of the decisions he'd made in the past several months, let alone the decisions he was going to have to make in the coming years.

But therein was a problem. Many problems actually. He had some political backlash to deal with on his own front as well as in Pyrax and Protodon. The three flag officers were making waves. That was what they did, they dug in and got things done he thought with a shake of his head. Those who thought they'd just go with the status quo needed their head examined; that was obviously not working.

Of course they probably could go about it a bit less like bulls in a china shop he thought with a slight wry twist of his lips. Maybe voice what needed to be done, what was the term? Couch it? Wrap it up in pretty diplomatic language while pretending to consult other people about what you had determined needed to be done? Draw them into the process was lengthy and time consuming—time they may not have.

Still, he'd have to figure something out. They all would actually.

Back to the quorum problem though, they needed all or a minimum of two-thirds of the occupied star systems in each sector of half of the galactic sectors before they could call it. That was a damn near impossible goal since so many had been gutted by the Xenos. They had to be elected representatives and senators as well, each polled from their star system's native population. Another headache.

It got even more complicated when you did the math in Rho sector. There were forty known occupied star systems left in the sector. To top that, twelve were hostile or in hostile hands.

Well, if Bek was still around, it would add another star system. This one with a possible yard. And Bek had a daughter colony on that warp chain, Nuevo. He'd checked; Nuevo had two planets in it that had been lightly settled before the Xeno war. He was curious if they still existed or not.

The wording of that occupied star system requirement was a thing of great debate currently. Apparently some lawyers had left a bit of wiggle room in it. It might prove helpful to him. He rubbed his brow.

Along the way he had to induce the sectors to form their own local governments to manage issues within their territory. Hell, he had to do that on the planetary level! He shook his head in disgust.

He had a handful of representatives on hand. Some star systems had sent one or two, others an entire gaggle of eight or more. None of them were elected to the post of course, but it was a start, a step in the right direction.