Retreat And Adapt (A Galaxy Unknown) (36 page)

"Thanks, Jen," he said. "I could go for a cup." He followed her over to the dispenser and accepted the mug when she held it out to him, then followed her to the informal seating area. Once both were settled, he said, "If I have to go into battle again, I'm glad you're leading the charge."

"This will be the first time we aren't on the front line. The missiles that the Denubbewa use mean we can't expose ourselves as we have in past wars. The scout-destroyers will take the lead, and even they won't be exposing themselves in a traditional sense. Let me explain the offensive strategy we'll be using."

Ten minutes later, Gavin said, "Whew. I'd heard the rumors about a new secret weapon, but this is above and beyond what I ever expected. So if I understand correctly, if the bomb reintegrates into an open area, it will detonate, but if it reintegrates inside a bulkhead or deck, it might not?"

"We don't know what the percentage of detonations would be under those circumstances. It's been speculated that if the bulkhead or deck intruded into the nuclear core, the reaction would be completely nullified, and that makes perfect sense because it wouldn't be able to reach critical mass. It would all depend on where the interruption occurs within the bomb."

"And if it fails to detonate?"

"The scout-destroyer will make another pass and try again. And again and again until we accomplish our goal, which is the complete destruction of the mother ship. My head of Weapons Research and Development, Captain DeWitt, estimates that as many as three out of four bombs could reintegrate inside a bulkhead or deck. But we'll keep at it until their ship looks twice as bad as the
Yenisei
and the
Salado
."

"Do we have enough ordnance for that?"

"The AB increased my modest ordnance request to fifteen thousand devices. I had no way of knowing if the idea was even workable, so I kept the original quantities low. Apparently, the AB had greater confidence in the idea and built enough for a protracted engagement. One thousand have already been loaded into the cradles of the ten bombers, and the other fourteen thousand are securely stored in a hold of the
Ferdinand
."

"I wondered why we were bringing a DS quartermaster transport with us."

"It had just delivered cargo to Quesann. I
appropriated
it temporarily for this campaign. I sent a vidMail to Admiral Ahmed, but since communication with Earth takes almost eighteen days, she hasn't received it yet. I doubt she'll object, given the gravity of the situation."

"I'm sure she won't. Are there really mother ships that are five times the size of the asteroid where Stewart SCB is located?"

"The mother ships are twice the length of the base but many times the width and depth. We have no idea how they're constructed inside, but they definitely have enough size to support hundreds of thousands of beings."

"And there are three of them?"

"That was the count in the last daily reports from the ships tasked to keep an eye on them. What we fear now is that more might be on the way. We have intelligence that says the ships here have reported back that this part of space is ripe for a takeover. They've requested a full contingent of ships to support their play. I assume that means an armada of those ships with tens of thousands of missiles."

Gavin nodded silently as he thought about the ramifications.

"That's the situation we're facing this time, Larry. Not a rosy picture. I'm betting everything we've got on this new weapon."

"That's good enough for me."

"I guess we should get going. We don't want to be late arriving at the party."

Gavin smiled, finished off his coffee and stood up. "Yes, ma'am, Admiral."

As he headed for the door, Jenetta said, "Come on back after we're underway. We have some catching up to do."

Gavin looked back, smiled again, and said, "Yes, ma'am, Admiral."

* * *

Stephen Strauss plopped into his office chair and sighed. He wasn't enjoying the job half as much as he'd expected. Life had become one long series of boring meetings. He'd always been the sort that enjoyed life on the front lines, and now he was just a button pusher. But it would all be worth it when he moved up to the Upper Council. They had four vacant positions to fill now that the four former members were gone. While the Lower Council members worked their tails off keeping the corporation running day to day, the Upper Council met just once a week to set policy and then disappeared back to their luxury existences as wealthy patrons of the arts or whatever.

Activating his computer, he checked his message queue. He was surprised to see one from the Upper Council Chairman. Perhaps this was what he'd been waiting for. He excitedly called the message and leaned in to provide a retinal scan. The DNA Manipulation process was complete for all soft tissues, so his retinal image and finger prints were identical to that of the real Strauss. Or at least identical to what had been the real Strauss before the flesh was melted from his bones and the rest became pet food.

Strauss smiled as the message began to play.

"Arthur," the image of the gorgeous Chairman said, "it's time to fill the vacancies on the Upper Council. We've long been impressed with your managerial capabilities and would love to have you join us— but we just don't have anyone who can fill your shoes. So we’ve decided to double your salary and expense accounts and have you remain where you are. We know the Lower Council will continue to perform at its extraordinary level under your guidance.

"But we still need to promote four top executives, so we've selected Erika Overgaard, Bentley Blosworth, Frederick Kelleher, and Ahil Fazid. It's not necessary that you notify them. We've already taken care of that. They'll join us at the next regularly scheduled meeting. In the meantime, you'll work with them to promote someone from each of their departments to the Lower Council. That's all."

Strauss barely heard the words after being told he wasn't being promoted to the Upper Council. That had been the reason for almost everything he'd done in the past year. It was the reason he became Strauss and stuck himself into this miserable job. And for what? Double pay? He could siphon off more than that every day. Strauss stood up and strode around the office until his anger started to wane. With the Age Regression and Age Prolongation formulas available to the Upper Council members, there would be little chance of positions opening in the near future from natural causes, or possibly at all. So his main task now was to arrange for a few openings on the Upper Council from
unnatural
causes, starting with the job of the current chairman.

* * *

"Hi, Larry," Jenetta said. "Come on in."

Jenetta was on the deck of her living room, combing the thick fur of Cayla as Gavin entered the room. Tayna was on her back next to Jenetta, squirming around on the carpet as if trying to relieve an itch. Jenetta had just finished sending her daily vidMails to family and friends, and it was now time to devote a little attention to her pets. It was playtime and grooming time, and the large cats were enjoying every minute of it.

"You wanted to see me, Jen?"

"Yes. I wanted to inform you that I've received a message from Captain Zakir Singh of the DS destroyer
Duluth
. He says that another mother ship has arrived at the RP. I want your tac officers to be on high alert for anything out of the ordinary. We have no idea how many of these things there are in GA space, but if we encounter any on the way to the RP, we'll stop and engage them. We can't afford to let any of them slip through our fingers."

"We're still forty-eight days from the RP. Do you think the four mother ships will still be there when we arrive?"

"I tasked five SD's, the
Gambia
,
Mekong
,
Nile
,
Rio Grande
, and
Yukon
, plus the DS destroyer
Duluth,
to keep an eye on them. If they leave the RP, our ships have orders to follow them. We'll know where they are at all times. It might be a little easier to take them on if they're still clustered, but we'll pursue and destroy if they're on the move. As far as we know, their top speed is Light-467, so they can't escape from us once we've found them."

"What if they do have Light-9790 capability?"

"One of the ships was first spotted by a Territorial Guard ship. The mother ship was under power and the TG ship correctly followed Standing Orders and avoided contact, but when they filed a report, we deployed two SD's to locate it and verify its reported course. Our ships then returned to the RP, but it took the mother ship months to arrive there. It doesn't make sense that they wouldn't have used Light-9790 if they had the capability."

"There is one possibility." Gavin stopped talking and stared at Jenetta.

"I'm listening."

"With their propulsion system, Light-9790 might consume much more energy than Light-450, and they were in no real hurry to get there since they knew when the mother ships were scheduled to begin their operation."

Jenetta was silent as she thought about the possibility that Gavin was right. They didn't know how the mother ship created its envelope, so it was possible. "You might have a point, Larry. We just won't know until they either use it or we get a chance to examine their ships."

"There's another thing that's been nagging at me since you explained the new weapons system." As before, Gavin stopped and waited for some indication that he should continue.

"I'm listening."

"What if the mother ship is traveling at Light-467 when you attack? Transverse Wave travel relies on having two DATFA envelopes with distinctly different resonances so they don't merge. What if one of the envelopes has the same resonance as the envelope of the mother ship? Will one of the SD envelopes merge with the mother ship envelope? Will the merge cause the collapse of the second envelope of the SD ship? Or might the mother ship develop a second envelope and suddenly be traveling at Light-9790 themselves?"

"Larry, stop, you're giving me a headache."

Gavin smiled. "Sorry. I got carried away. It's just that I haven't been able to stop thinking about these things since our last meeting."

"First, I don't know what will happen in all of those situations. They're some of the 'lingering questions we have about its operational effectiveness' that I mentioned when I described it to you.

"Second, the Transverse Wave dynamic moves the physical object out of phase with the normal three-dimensional dynamic, so it
should
be unaffected by passing through a ship enclosed in a single envelope. We believe that the envelopes won't merge and that the mother ships won’t adopt any of the properties of the dual envelopes enclosing our ships.

"Of course, we won’t know for sure without substantial testing. Your concerns were raised during preparation for this operation, and the scientists in Region One are supposed to be testing, or planning to test, the various situations to learn the answers. Since the Denubbewa may decide to become aggressive any day, we don't believe we can wait for testing to be completed."

"Okay, Jen. I guess we'll learn together what will happen."

"Larry, I wouldn't risk our people if I thought it was likely we'd lose them. There's a risk, but it's one we have to take. Once this enemy gets started, we might not be able to stop them from sweeping through GA space. We have no other viable defense against these aliens."

* * *

"We're coming up on your stop, Trader," Commander Garth Ginsburg of the
Edison
said when Vyx responded to the summons to come to the captain's office. "You'll be about a day from Uthlarigasset."

"Thanks for the ride, Captain," Vyx said.

"My pleasure. It was a nice break from the usual. Say, what do you think will happen now?"

"About what, Captain?"

"About that shipyard we saw?"

"I don't know, sir. We know it's an act of sedition by the Uthlaro, but it's so far outside the GA in unclaimed space that someone at the top will have to make a decision if we'll even take any action. We've done our part by identifying its location. Just between us, I suspect that Admiral Carver will take appropriate action, even if it's something we never hear about. Thank you for saving us more than four years of travel, Commander."

"My pleasure, Trader."

"And uh— you'll forget all about us now, right?"

"You were never here."

"Thanks again, Commander."

* * *

"Good morning," Captain Zakir Singh of the DS destroyer
Duluth
said to the faces of the five captains that appeared on the bulkhead monitor in his office. "I've just received notice that the Battleship
Ares
, a Quartermaster support ship named the
Ferdinand
, and a taskforce of ten SD's are headed to this location. Admiral Carver is aboard the
Ares
."

"The Admiral?" Commander Mojica of the
Nile
said in surprise.

"Yes."

"That has to mean we're finally going to get some payback for the
Yenisei
, the
Salado
, and the people we lost from the
Gambia
while trying to recover the
Salado
." Commander Teffler of the
Gambia
said.

"Perhaps," Captain Singh said.

"It has to be," Commander Fischer of the
Yukon
said. "There couldn't be any other reason for the Admiral to come here."

"Thank you for the benefit of your wisdom, Commander," Captain Singh said.

"Uh— sorry sir. It just seems so obvious. Whenever Jenetta Carver is near a dangerous situation, it ends in battle."

"Yes, well, we'll see about that when she gets here."

"Do we know when she expects to arrive, sir?" Commander Fischer of the
Yukon
asked.

"In thirty-two days."

* * *

"I want to die," PFC Kilburn lamented. "I just want to die. Why won't God let us die, Corporal?"

"God will choose when we die," Corporal Rondara said. "It's not up to us."

"I can't go on like this."

"We have no choice. They feed us through a tube, so we can't starve ourselves, and we have no limbs, so we can't fight back. We just have to pray that God takes us before much longer."