IronStar (35 page)

“…and this!” And the view swept
dizzyingly north, down the rivers and across the plains to the edge of the
lake, where another brown patch was revealed as an extension of the first city,
or perhaps a separate city. Buildings and streets surrounded an inlet of the
lake, on which small shapes could be seen,
no, not just shapes
, Luce
realized as her mind performed a double-take behind her straining eyes.
You
are looking down on ships in a harbor
.

“Ah, Lieutenant Maurais, what is
the scale and resolution we’re looking at right now?”

“Er, just a moment…” keys tapped,
figures danced in the corner of the display, then a grid of fine black lines
snapped over the image. “That’s a kilometer grid, there… resolution is about
three meters, the largest of those objects on the water are just about forty to
fifty meters long. Ma’am.” Lucinda looked across the top of the Lieutenant’s
bowed head and locked eyes with her Captain. They stared at one another for a
few seconds, minds running down a hundred different tracks. Then they seemed to
reach the same point at the same time.

“Was there any…”

“There was noth… sorry, Admiral -
you were saying?”

“Was there any word with this
mailtube of later data arriving at Trailway? From the
Arvida-Yee
? When
did this mail leave Trailway?”

“It left three days after we did,
Admiral,” Captain DaCosta replied. “…and there was nothing further from
Arvida-Yee
by that time.” A sanguinary silence filled the space between the officers as
they reflected on life, service and mortality. The Admiral’s eyes hardened, and
the fine lines around her mouth deepened. A muscle on either side of her jaw
bunched and unbunched.

“Anything else?” she asked quietly.
Captain DaCosta replied:

“We have a few more views of
apparent habitation on the planet, Admiral. According to the accompanying
written analysis, best estimate is pre-industrial tech - sailing ships and
cities but no power production. Certainly nothing making large plumes of smoke
or showing up on any EM or neutrino scans, so no power grid and no nuclear
power. And there was a cypherpak for you, from Admiral McBain.” At the
Captain’s nod, the remaining member of their group, a comm yeoman, opened a
sealed wristpack and handed over a standard wafer bearing the black and white
stripes of an official NavInt message, and a red-and-gold ‘eyes only’ icon.

“Let’s see the other images, then
I’ll review the Admiral’s message in my quarters. I’ll want a conference
tomorrow, flag briefing room, all captains and XO’s. When the task force
unTubes for the next nav fix, have our shuttles ready and pass the word for an
immediate personnel transfer. I know this is without warning to the captains’
schedules, but I want this meeting soonest. And schedule a return four hours
later, and get us back upTube as soon as they’re all on board. I want the task
force sub-c as briefly as possible. Continue, Lieutenant Maurais.”

More images, somewhat blurry:
spattered here and there across the same continent, clinging to shorelines and
rivers, half a dozen cities from one to six kilometers in size; a score of
smaller villages and hamlets, some few connected by - at the very limit of
resolution - what might be roads; some obvious agriculture; more ships on the
big inland sea, and one vessel barely visible under the edge of cloud cover in
the ocean far to the east. A few towns in mountain valleys in between, more
possible under the scattered clouds. As far west across the land mass as the
ocean and the sunrise terminator, a scatter of obvious habitation. Lucinda felt
a small sense of awe. Another home for sentience.

“Lieutenant, thank you for your
assistance. If we’ve seen everything you have to show me, would you please
bring up that system schematic again? Thank you, that will be all.”

At a touch from Lieutenant Maurais,
the tank reset to the schematic of the solar system. The small group exchanged
salutes and people went about their various duties. Alone for a few minutes in
the corner of the dim room, Lucinda stared into the tank as though for answers.
What
else
did you run into, Captain Leitch? And where did you go
after you dropped that clever mailtube, and why haven’t we heard from you
since? And where are you now, and your ship and crew?

Fifteen minutes later, Lucinda
settled herself at the command desk in her personal quarters, and inserted the
data wafer into a reader. After a few formalities, the reader and wafer
determined she was indeed Rear Admiral Lucinda Dunning, the intended recipient
of the cypherpak’s contents. On the 3V imager, the gruff, slightly shaggy,
lean-bulldog face of Admiral Sir Josiah McBain, Chief of Naval Operations, CINC
Trailway, looked out at her.

“Luce, if you’re reading this, I
assume you’ve already seen the enhanced scan data from
Arvida-Yee
’s
sensors. I have to tell you, I don’t have a good feeling about this as far as
our scout’s fortunes are concerned. I cannot conceive them missing close-up
what we were able to reconstruct from their remote scans, and I can even less
imagine a Survey captain who found what you’ve just seen, and not notifying us
immediately by followup tube. And yes, the ship status report appended to the
scan data shows seven mailtubes still inventoried.

“This new data changes my mind in
several ways. One, that system is not a want-to-have any more, it’s a
must-have. I’m sending you reinforcements under Rear Admiral Carl Mattison. I
believe you two have served together. He’ll be carrying your field promotion to
Vice Admiral, don’t let it go to your head…” was that a
wink
? “…but
you’re my line commander on this.

“I think you’ll like what he’s
bringing. Carl is almost as good as you are at squeezing blood from a turnip,
and he’s been pretty
enthusiastic
about supporting you in this. So, when
he arrives you’ll have another ‘Wagon, three heavy cruisers and six more
destroyers.” Luce’s eyes widened, and she sat back in her chair, mind racing with
new alternatives. “You’ll find the details in the attached folder. They should
be weighing out in about five days and rendezvous with you just out-system.
Meantime, I’m sending you some options.

“I’m detaching two of our new
Impaler-
class
FTB’s. They’re almost as fast as a Scout and better armed, and the more eyes
you have out there, the better. They’re all on patrol at the moment, we’ll turn
the next two around as soon as they return tomorrow. They’ll catch up about the
day after you get this. We’re also sending three of Carl’s escorts on ahead,
they should find you en-route in about another five or six days. I know that
thins his screen, but knowing the extra tin cans are on the way, you’ll have
the choices I want you to have.

“Luce, your first reaction was to
sprint into this, and I know I opposed it, but now I’m not so sure. That’s why
the three destroyers are joining you early - if you want to send some of your
own escorts ahead, you'll have replacements before your main force gets there.
Your discretion.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to
see about getting some pickets deployed. Those Kruss got out there right past
us, and I’m damned if I’m going to assume that was the first one, or the only
one. If they’re coming through our sector, I
will
know where.” The
Admiral’s gray-green eyes were already on another screen as he spoke, but they
swung back to connect with hers, virtual to flesh.

“Nail this one for me, Admiral.
Good hunting, and Godspeed.” The image flickered off. Luce replayed the
message, then sat silently absorbing the information in the attachments. The
trouble with working for Joe McBain was that he could read her mind with eerie
precision. And had just done so. Again. She didn’t know whether to kiss him or
run in screaming circles.
Three
more destroyers sent early. Perfect… and
two Fast Torpedo Boats. That would make a
big
difference in deployment
once she arrived, and drastically cut the time to scan the system, and allow
much more efficient picket deployment, and…

The next ship-morning, a sober and
slightly harried-looking group of five captains and their executive officers
arrived for the meeting Lucinda had ordered. She waited until the last person
was seated, then filled the viewtank in the center of the conference table with
a view of their destination planet from above its north pole. As she spoke, the
view gradually zoomed down towards the lake. The room became very quiet.

“Ladies and gentlemen, first my
apologies for rousting you all out of your routines with no notice today. But as
you will see, we have a different situation than any of us expected. This intel
arrived with yesterday’s mailtube. Look, you’ll see what I’m talking about.” On
the viewtank, the lake, the harbor, and then the sailing ships were just
swimming into resolution. A few sharp breaths were audible. The view panned
south up the river to the larger city.

“We can’t tell until we get there,
but our best analysis is that we’re looking at a pre-industrial culture, and
based on this scan data, we’re assuming until proven otherwise that it’s a
human
culture. We know the Kruss know about it. We know they had a light cruiser
near the system, because Captain Leitch nailed it. We think they have or had
something
else
in-system, because we haven’t heard anything more from
our Scout. Which we’re now presuming lost to enemy action.

“Trailway NavInt has been giving a
lot of thought to the implications of a ‘lost colony’ this far out, and the
consequences of it becoming a Kruss dependency. Also the possibility that this
planet is somehow peopled with Kruss, or a new sapient species. Determining who
the actual inhabitants are, how they got there, and whom they may be related
to, is not our primary job. Making sure this
is
not, and
does not
become
a Kruss outpost just outside the Regnum’s back door, is. The
strategic consequences of such an outcome would be very …undesirable.” Eyes
shifted uncomfortably at the thought, and her ironic understatement. Lucinda
could almost see the calculations running behind her Captains’ faces…
if we
don’t stop this now, others will have to stop it later, and perhaps at a higher
price in ships and lives than this entire task force.

“Our first priority is to
get
there
. We urgently need to know what assets the Kruss have in-system, how
long they’ve been on-planet, and whether they’ve made any inroads with the
natives. We can now do this with an expendable force, which we know we can
replace from reinforcements before our main group arrives, in case it turns out
the Kruss are there in force. We should arrive with as much as possible as
quickly as possible, and that’s straight line logic to sending our three
destroyers ahead at flank speed. We can cut forty-three days off the trip, and
still leave Admiral Mattison with a sizeable force for follow-up.”

“Excuse me, Admiral, did you say
‘leave Admiral
Mattison
’?”

“Yes I did, Captain Graham. I plan
to travel with the destroyers, with Sandra Wallace aboard the
Argosy
, in
fact.” Uncomfortable shiftings and looks circled the room. “People, look at the
options, tell me what I’m missing:

“One - carrying on as we are, this
task force, designated TT1, travelling at the
Belleville’s
max 1050
cees, will arrive one hundred eleven days after Day Zero, the day we weighed
out.

“Two - if we detach the three
destroyers and move ahead today, call that TT2, we will immediately step up to
1725 cee. That’ll put us - the destroyers - on station in another sixty-two
days. Adding our six days already en route, that will be day sixty-eight, a
full forty-three days early.

“Three - if we wait for the two
FTB’s, they should be here in another day, that delays our arrival one day but
with no benefit, because they can catch up to us in TT2 even if we leave now.

“Four - if we wait for the three
tin cans Admiral McBain was nice enough to send forward, that doubles our
forces but delays us another six days, at a minimum. And the only benefit is
that on arrival we can then deal with any threats six destroyers can handle but
three can’t. Which is a pretty narrow threat range, if I remember my Tac classes.”
Heads nodded reluctantly around the room.

“Nothing I’ve thought of beats
three destroyers and two FTB’s on station at day sixty-eight. Anyone see a
better option, speak up now, or when you think of it, as long as it’s before
thirteen hundred hours today.” More thoughtful looks, and more silence.

“Very well then, here’s how we’ll
proceed. I shall transfer my flag to TT2 aboard the
Argosy
, leaving
Belleville
in command of TT1 under Captain DaCosta. He will proceed to
this
point,”
the viewtank cleared to a schematic of S22041 and surrounding space, “…about a
lightyear, eight hours’ run from the system, and wait for the reinforcements
coming under Admiral Mattison, hereby designated TT3. When you rendezvous, you
will combine forces under the designation TT1 and place yourself under
Mattison’s command. Unless you have good reason to the contrary, you will then
immediately come in-system and signal us. While you’re waiting, you will be
available to assist TT2 in case we need you. I also want you to maintain sensor
watch. You’ll be in a position to intercept gravtrace from Kruss presence a
year ago, and if you see them, I want to know. We’ll set up coordinates for
ballistic exchange of maildrops, but let’s keep it to a minimum, no point
announcing ourselves.

“When the FTB’s arrive tomorrow or
later, send them on ahead, straight to the system. No point having them
rendezvous with us unless they’re carrying new intel. They can be in-system in
another forty-seven days, call it Day Fifty-one or Fifty-two, sixteen days
ahead of us. That will give them time to set up a series of overlapping passive
ballistic fly-throughs with sensor drones, and retrieve them from the other
side of the system. I don’t want any of our Tubedrives active within 30
light-hours of the primary, except in extreme emergency.