Loralynn Kennakris 3: Asylum (16 page)

The tactics that resulted therefore bore more resemblance to the tactics of the ocean-going navies of ancient Earth in the days before space flight than anyone from the space-faring era before modern gravitics were invented might have suspected. This realization had led to renewed interest in ancient naval engagements, which were much studied by enthusiasts and officers with a historical bent. That Joss PrenTalien was the latter was debatable; that he had an excellent grasp of the concepts was not.

The same could be said of his opposite number. Jakob Adenauer was known to be a careful and studious commander, excellent on defense and not apt to blunder at any time. PrenTalien very much doubted he was going to start blundering now.

Neither man had yet had an opportunity to take the other’s measure, and thus far in this war, neither had known defeat. That was all about to change. Technocrats writing policy papers saw these campaigns as contests between systems: physical, like ships, sensors and weapons; and intellectual, such as tactics, training and doctrine. But those who did the fighting and dying knew better. While it was certainly the case that you couldn’t carry much water in a paper bucket, it was equally true that battle, with all its unimaginable chaos twisting under the hard hand of Fate, remained, first and last, a test of wills between commanders: Caesar and Pompey, Grant and Lee, Nimitz and Yamamoto, Kiamura and Falkenhavn.

Now he and Adenauer were about to take their star turn on history’s bloody stage. And the only thing he could assert with confidence was that in the end, someone was going to have a very bad day.

Commodore Tomas Rhimer, commanding officer of TG 15.2 (the
Inshore Squadron
) of Rear Admiral Hollis’s TF 15, blockading the Bannerman fleet at Callindra 69, had the honor of having as his flagship the battlecruiser with perhaps the least enviable name in the CEF Navy: LSS
Effingham
. It was inevitable that she should by known on the lower desks as the LSS
Fuckin’ham
, but what was truly regrettable was that, after eight months on blockade duty, this practice had spread among
Effingham’s
officers, and was now infecting wardrooms throughout the disgruntled squadron. On duty, it manifested itself in a milder form: an emphasis on
Effing
with a slight pause before pronouncing
ham
. It was only off duty and then only
sotto voce
that the virulent full-spectrum symptoms exhibited themselves.

There was little enough Rhimer could do about it. He was aware of the practice, certainly, but posting an order of the day threatening dire consequences against anyone using the offensive name would only make him look ridiculous, which the commodore could ill afford. A short, thick-set, dyspeptic man with an oddly cold, or sometimes overly casual, manner, Rhimer was not well liked. He had a genius for given offense without knowing it, and he inclined to female flag lieutenants: usually attractive, ambitious, and given sycophantic behavior. This did not wear well at any time. On blockade duty (the worst a mariner could draw) it was near intolerable, quickly alienating Rhimer from his officers. Indeed, he was barely on speaking terms with two of his destroyer captains, and there were regrettable tensions among his own staff. If his crews had not disliked the patrician Admiral Hollis even more—him being a martinet who was, by habit, savagely rude to those he felt to be beneath him—the squadron would not have held together at all.

The other thing that united them was a burning desire for the Bannermans to come out from behind their fortifications where they could get at them. Although the Bannermans were, by the list, twice their strength, there was not a man or woman who would not have given their right hand to get the left one on the Bannermans’ collective throat and give vent to their pent-up emotions.

It was into this stew that, at the end of dead watch, the stealth frigate LSS
Araxes
, far off at the northernmost picket station, sent in a report of suspicious and unexplained phase wakes. Roused, the commodore donned his tunic hastily and hurried to CIC, there to be met by Lieutenant Commander Vladimir Kara-Murza, the duty TAO, report in hand.

“Is it the Bannermans?” croaked Rhimer, snatching at the flimsy. Kara-Murza relinquished it, and directed the commodore’s attention to the deep-radar display.

“I’m not sure, sir.
We
aren’t picking up any unusual activity from Callindra.”

Rhimer scanned the report avidly. “Who else could it be?”

“I suppose it could possibly be a Halith squadron.”

“This?” He shook the plaspaper. “The Doms don’t split their forces this way—they concentrate. You know that as well as I. See here.” He underlined the wake amplitudes with an indignant forefinger. “Those aren’t battleships. Can’t be. These signatures—they’re all wrong. Where are their battleships, I say? They don’t deploy without ‘em. No, this must be the Bannermans.”

“Sir,” Kara-Murza began uneasily, “that is a preliminary report. It may not be complete. We don’t have verification from any of the other frigates yet. I sent to
Araxes
for follow-up, but she hasn’t reported back yet. She may have been driven off her station.”

“Has she not? How long has it been?”

“Thirty-five minutes, sir. But if she’s had to go deep, we may not be able to reach her.”

“All the more reason not to dawdle.” Rhimer glared about. “Where’s the officer of the deck? Where is Captain Thwaites? God damn and blast the fellow—he should be here.”

“He’s on his way, sir,” answered the executive officer, Commander Aileen Dierig, as she walked up, eyeing the commodore coldly. Rhimer grunted and looked to the deep-radar console again.

“No change, you said?”—directing the question to the TAO.

“No sir. Not on deep-radar. Not on passive sensors either.”

“Could be decoys then.”

“Yes, possibly—”

“The Doms have no reason to come this way. But the Bannermans surely wish to go to them. They’ve split their force and mean to link up at Novaya Zemlya. Left some ships behind to carry on, along with a bunch of tarted up crates.” By which he meant noncombatants with fitted out with false emissions and drive signatures to maintain the appearance of a fleet on-station.

“That could be, sir. But we should verify it.” Kara-Murza looked at the Commander Dierig, who was standing there rigid and silent.

“Yes, yes. Of course. But
Araxes
was out there to warn us. She’s warned us. It won’t do to sit on our hands here. Wake up Hollis”—this to the Exec. “Tell him I’m contemplating a change of base. Have him come up to mind the store.”

“Sir,” Kara-Murza tried one last time, as the Exec turned away with no more than a nod and a sketchy salute. “We should consider that this might be a Dom maneuver to accomplish exactly that.”

“Exactly what?”

“Pull us off our station, sir.”

“To what purpose? The Doms are after Wogan’s Reef—not this place. They aren’t going to divide their force to come
here
. Those signatures are all wrong! You can see that yourself. It’s a Bannerman flotilla that’s got out. Are we to let them go?”

“Sir, it’s possible the Doms may contemplate a second strike. They may have detached a force to come here and link up with the Bannerman fleet, possibly to attack Outbound. This could be a trap.”

“That is wholly against their doctrine. You expect an officer of my experience to believe it?”

Lieutenant Commander Kara-Murza regarded the flimsy, now crushed in the commodore’s hand, with a forlorn air. “I’m afraid, sir, that my responsibility must end with that report.”

In the middle of his lunch, Joss PrenTalien’s secure line went off with that disturbing tone that meant a priority alert. He answered it, putting down a half-eaten sandwich, and Bolton’s face popped into view the console screen, his expression stony but for its high color. “What is it, Harry? Can I assume the excrement has encountered the turbine?”

“You can.” Bolton’s tone was clipped and snappish. “Rhimer’s been driven off Callindra and Admiral Hollis has had to fall back all the way to Outbound.”

Now PrenTalien’s face went red. “How the hell did that happen?”

“It seems Rhimer got the idea that the Bannermans were dividing their fleet to break out and reinforce Adenauer, so he changed base to where he thought could engage the smaller half. But the Bannermans were
not
dividing their fleet and they caught Rhimer in transit with their whole force. He called on Hollis come up in support, but Hollis thought that would not be prudent and ordered him to hold with what he had. Rhimer was getting pretty well chewed up so he fell back to Outbound, and Hollis of course had to follow him.”

“Shit and fried eggs,” muttered PrenTalien.

“Now Hollis is accusing Rhimer of deserting his station and Rhimer is accusing Hollis of failure to engage in the face of the enemy. And we can expect the Bannerman fleet to drop in on us at damn near anytime.”

“Where exactly are they now? Hollis and Rhimer, I mean.”

“Milling around the junction, just out-system. Hollis has announced his intention to retire all the way to Merope. Should we stop him?”

“No, Harry.” The last thing he needed was to burden his operations with a worn-out, recently mauled task force whose commanders were not on speaking terms. “Let ‘em go. In fact, direct them to clear our space and report to First Fleet—let Hawke deal with it. Notify CNO that we have no further use for either of ‘em in our sector.”

“Will do.” Bolton had his xel out and was already composing the order.

“Who’s most current on all this? Shariati?”

“Yes. She made the first report. She’s been shadowing the Bannermans at extreme range since.”

“Alright, Harry. Whistle up Lo Gai out of Outbound and send Shariati to him with everything we know. Tell him to wait for her so they can consult when she gets there. He’s gonna have to haul ass and take only ships that can keep up with
Nike
. Shariati’s squadron will remain there with the carriers and any slugs that’ll slow Lo Gai down.”

“Aye aye, sir.” But Bolton’s face was troubled. “But we still aren’t sure of the composition of the Bannerman fleet. It’s possible they left enough behind to hit Outbound, and if they reinforce—”

“One thing at a time, Harry. I doubt they will uncover their core systems—not to take a shot at Outbound. But if they do, tell Yasmin she’s not to engage in a hopeless defense. If she can’t hold the station, her orders are to burn hard for Port Calebria and raise unrestricted hell.”

Bolton’s eyes widened a bit. Port Calebria was the Bannerman’s most important commercial port, orbiting Anju-Ri. The bulk of their merchant fleet lay up there and almost half of their industrial capacity was in the immediate vicinity. Callindra 69 was primarily responsible for its defense; the Bannermans’ home fleet was based at the prime world of Sephar. With Callindra 69 stripped of its fleet, only the in-system flotilla would likely be guarding the port. But so far in this war, the CEF had refrained from striking civil installations, even critical ones.

“Okay. But I think we’re taking a hell of a risk.”

PrenTalien was unsure if Bolton was alluding to sacrificing the station or the potential political fallout—or both. But probably the former: Bolton loathed politics. “Not that bad, Harry. We’ll do our best to cover Outbound from here. I think we can manage it in a pinch.”

“Not exactly what I mean,” Bolton replied, now with a smile. “If she doesn’t get a chance to execute orders like those, she’s going to be so pissed off I wouldn’t want to be on the same station with her for a month.”

PrenTalien, caught out in his guess, answered his friend’s smile with his own. “Harry, you may have point. You may, indeed.”

Eleven hours later, the battlecruiser LSS
Artemisia
, with four destroyers and a trio of cruisers as consorts, translated through the Outbound junction and cleared into orbit. While the battlecruiser was still decelerating, her captain’s gig launched and fifteen minutes later out stepped onto
Nike’s
boat deck, not the battlecruiser’s captain, but Commodore Yasmin Shariati. She made her duty to the Blue Peter (the CEF Navy’s particular flag, which commanded the first respects of all who came aboard) and then swept down the ramp to meet Admiral Sabr, who was waiting expectantly for her.

The commodore was as tall and striking as the admiral was short and ugly, which caused a good deal of good-natured ribaldry on the lower decks (where they were complemented Lo Gai’s tag of ‘Demon Gin’ by affectionately referring to his wife as ‘the Devil’s Dancing Girl’). As physically dissimilar as two human beings could well be, they were alike in being fierce, almost to the point of savagery, dedicated, honorable according to their lights, and extremely good at what they did.

She greeted her husband in a high, pure carrying soprano that would have allowed her a fine career in the opera had she not taken out a letter of marque as a privateer instead, before accepting a commission in the CEF as commander of a roving cruiser squadron. Indeed, on less busy evenings, she was known to sing, accompanied by a quartet of her officers, and she did so to great acclaim.

But neither operatic evenings nor even connubial bliss were on their minds tonight. Striding across the deck together, arms about each other companionably—his reaching high, her curving low—and talking rapid and confident tones, there could be no more doubt about what most had guessed the moment Shariati’s battlecruiser first appeared: the rocket had just gone up.

*     *     *

Admiral Sabr and Commodore Shariati foregathered alone on
Nike’s
flag bridge. This meeting was their private consultation; they would assemble their respective staffs later, but it was their habit to hash things out between themselves first. Addressing her husband across the omnisynth, she gestured at the data swirling and dancing through the display.

“Look at this, now. I think they are using a new variety of gravitic shunt to mask their drive wakes.” She highlighted four areas of in the holographic volume. “These are where we obtained the best reads. You can see why Rhimer thought the Bannermans must have slipped out somehow, given his notions, but any way you look at it, it
is
odd. No amount of shunting could disguise battleships under these conditions, and there are none. What we were able to collect of the energy readings doesn’t fit either. But these signatures, however distorted, are certainly destroyers—the numbers are not consistent with a typical Halith task group. And see here—the histogram.” At her command, the omnisynth produced a plot of the estimated mass ratios of the detected drive wakes. It was clearly bimodal. “See what’s missing? Heavy cruisers—or battlecruisers. There ought to be more.”

“What do you make of it?” Sabr was forming his own opinions.

Shariati leaned back from the omnisynth. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a carrier battle group. Perfectly absurd, of course.”

“
Quite
absurd,” her husband agreed, amiably.

The commodore favored her husband with a sidelong look and a familiar smile. “What do you know that you haven’t yet told me,
dear
?”

“Adenauer’s CARDIV I sortied thirty hours before of the main body.”

“Did they indeed?”

“They did. Constance was on the spot. We believed it was to better distribute the mass loading through the node, broadening the available jump windows. To account for the monitor.”

“The monitor—yes. I was informed of
that
.”

Sabr allowed the dig. “This data’s what? Almost thirty-seven hours old?”

“Closer to forty,” his wife replied, “when you account for the lag.”

“Let’s compare then.” Together, they applied themselves to the omnisynth’s controls, and within a minute several timelines and their associated signature data were merged and correlated.

“Ah,” they announced together. “CARDIV I, without a doubt.” It was the commodore who supplied the amplification. “So they used CARDIV I to decoy Rhimer off his station. And then returned together?”

“I just wonder about that,” Sabr commented. “We don’t know if they actually jumped, do we? Shall I mention another factor of which you may not be fully aware?”

“Do.”

The admiral related the story of the fuel caper and the fictitious tanker fleet. “Individual commands are being informed by courier.”

“Of course.” No other ear would have detected the note of semi-apology, but she did not take umbrage. There were professional limits, even between spouses. “So what are you thinking, dear? I know you have a good head for tactics.”

“Destroying our refueling capability would cut off Joss’s retreat. They had to consider that in their plans. The fuel caper was to encourage them in those directions, by way of a red herring.”

“Yes?” his spouse coaxed.

“The logical option was to assign that role to the Bannermans. It’s the sort of mission they’re used to, and Callindra’s the favored place launch from. Keeps thing tidy too—no interoperability issues, that sort thing.”

“But?”—uttered sweetly.

Sabr looked over the traces and scratched the curling beard that grew almost to his eyes. “There is no reason whatever to assume the Doms intend to launch a strike against us with just a carrier force. They never operate carriers groups independently. It’s risky, it’s wholly against their sacred, infallible doctrine, and there hasn’t been a pure carrier battle in this century. Adenauer’s not the sort of man to suddenly be seized by originality.” He gave her a smile that was all edges through his beard. “Therefore, I conclude that is precisely what they are doing.”

“Then this is still a raid. Aimed at destroying that ‘tanker fleet’.”

“Exactly. They cannot hope to take the station with just carriers, though they might destroy the outer works, the fueling plants—make a mess generally. But it also means they don’t view this as an independent op. Trapping Third at Wogan’s Reef is their objective. Novaya Zemlya all over again.”

“Quiet so. And if they have their hearts set on lighting up a tanker fleet, I think we should take pains to provide them with one. I hate to break anyone’s heart.”

“If you can, by all means do so. Of course, if it’s that critical to them, CARDIV I might well be supported by a center force. Fire the magazines, as it were—the station and the fleet. In which case—”

“It will have been nice knowing you, dearest”—giving his shoulder a familiar squeeze.

“Likewise,” he replied in an affectionate growl. “But you have Joss’s orders. If it comes to that, it might be best to order
Trafalgar
back to Merope. She won’t be of great use to you, and the taxpayers would appreciate it.”

The commodore laughed—a bright, ringing sound. “You know how I feel about taxpayers. And Jan RyKirt will mutiny if I so much as breathe any such suggestion.”

“That is true, I suppose.” Lo Gai paused. “And while we are on the subject of potential mutiny, I must you inform that the Admiralty has issued strict orders that under no circumstances is Commander Huron to be risked in any engagement in which the odds are deemed
unfavorable
.”

That elevated the commodore’s eyebrows to a surprising degree. “On what justification?”

“Indications are that Captain Banner was severely wounded—perhaps even killed—at Miranda. In any event, taken out of action.”

“Indeed, I heard something of that. One of your people—an ensign, wasn’t it?”

“Ensign Kennakris, yes.” His inflection seemed to give the name an unusual degree of significance, but he quickly moved on. “SECNAV greatly fears a similar mishap with Huron. There are hints, I am told, that the Doms’ propaganda organs are concocting a scheme to explain what happened to Banner, and should Huron become a fatality, they will surely credit it to him—heroic duel to the death, that sort of thing. Obviously, that would hand them a substantial moral victory and we are ordered to take ‘all necessary steps’ to ensure that no such thing occurs.”

“Has Rafe been informed of these orders?” The question was accompanied with an arch look.

“The occasion has not yet arisen, no.”

“I
see
.” The melodically sarcastic tone eloquently expressed how much she appreciated having this small detail dropped in her lap. She’d rather Lo Gai had handed her a poisonous snake—she was fond of snakes. “Did SECNAV provide any guidance as to how far I am allowed to go in taking ‘all necessary steps’ regarding this matter?”

The admiral considered. “Lethal force is clearly out of the question.” He stroked his jaw through the thick curls. “I believe maiming would be frowned upon.”

“Oh,
that
narrows down my options, doesn’t it?”

He gave her that knife-edged smile. “Well, it is in your hands. Do as you think best.”