Rumors of Honor (System States Rebellion Book 2) (13 page)

Foster
tried to keep her relief from showing. “Yes, Admiral. The less written down,
the better.”

“Fine.
I’ll present a verbal report to Secretary Shaw. I believe he has the authority
to release those funds. Anything else, Captain?”

“No,
Admiral, that’s all.”

As
Foster walked back to her office, she wondered if she could contain her
excitement until she saw her husband. Operation Chameleon, the unofficial name
she’d come up with for the real Site X/shipyard project, had overcome its first
hurdle.

Two
days later, Janicot surprised Foster by walking into her office, something he
had only done twice since she joined the Union.

“You’ll
be pleased to hear that Secretary Shaw has agreed to authorize the withdrawal
of the amount you requested, Captain, but I have to tell you that it took a lot
of effort on my part to convince him to approve the full amount. He expressed
concern that our people assigned to that project might be tempted to
misappropriate some of it for their own uses.”

Foster
thought fast. “I asked Oracle about that, Admiral. It turns out that Oracle
already took that possibility into consideration when it calculated the
requested amount. Naturally we’ll do our best to keep unauthorized use of those
funds to a minimum, but Oracle is of the opinion that it’s unrealistic to
expect zero misappropriation. And after all, we’re not going to keep detailed
records of where the money went, because that would increase the risk of
exposure.”

“Yes,
I can see how that would be the case. Well, as I said, Frank Shaw will
authorize the withdrawal, and he understands the need for secrecy. This will be
under your supervision, Captain. I hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself
into.”

“I
do, Admiral.”

There’s
something more to this than she’s telling me. I hope my trust in her isn’t
misplaced,
he
thought to himself as he walked away.

Chapter Nine:

Day
335/2545

Jutland’s
Bridge was quieter than usual due to Bridge personnel speaking in low tones.
The tension was palpable. The Task Force was maneuvering in formation to line
up for the last micro-jump, which would take it from five A.U.s out from Earth
to the very edge of Earth’s hyper-zone. For once, Drake was in complete
agreement with Task Force Leader Lee’s strategy. The Task Force would emerge
from hyper-space with a velocity that was high enough to circumnavigate the
Earth in a reasonable amount of time, but not so high that the ships couldn’t
decelerate into a lower orbit if the coast was clear.

Drake
checked the tactical display and saw that the Task Force was just about lined
up on the correct heading. The heading had to be correct down to nine decimal
places if the ships were still going to be in formation when they emerged from
hyper-space. These kinds of multi-ship jumps were tricky. Over interstellar
distances, it was impossible to stay in formation anyway, and therefore jump
accuracy wasn’t as important. Ships would find each other by radar or lidar
after the jump and regroup, but with a micro-jump within a star system,
especially when a planet was to be attacked, jump accuracy was vital to keep
the formation together. Lee’s flagship was the key. All the other ships in the
Task Force were attempting to match their headings with the flagship’s using
low-powered, range-finding lasers. When the range between the flagship and
another ship was absolutely steady down to fractions of a millimeter, then both
ships were lined up on the same heading perfectly.

Drake
looked over to the Helm Station. The Helm Officer was watching his console
intently. No human could adjust a ship’s heading that precisely, so the
auto-pilot was making the necessary course corrections.

It
wasn’t long before the Helm Officer said, “We are lined up for the jump,
Commander.”

Drake
activated the communications channel to the Flagship. “Jutland is ready to
jump.” There was no acknowledgement, nor did Drake expect any. He did hear
other ships report their readiness. When everyone was lined up, Lee finally
responded.

“Very
good. We’ll jump in five seconds on my mark. Five…four…three…two…one…Mar—“

Drake
felt the usual momentary tremor in every molecule of his body and heard the
display ping to draw attention to the fact that they were now in a very high
orbit around Earth. Within less than a second, sixteen green icons appeared on
the display.

Drake
muted his mic so that he could talk to his people privately and said, “Okay
everyone. Stay on your toes, and let’s start scanning our assigned part of the
sky.” That was also something new for Jutland and for the Task Force. If all 16
ships scanned in all directions at the same time, their radars would interfere
with each other, so Vice-Admiral Lee made each ship responsible for scanning a
24 degree arc of the surrounding space. The radar data from each ship was then
copied to the flagship, which put all that data together so that Lee had a
complete 360 degree scan. The flagship then re-transmitted that data to each
ship so that each CO saw exactly the same thing that Lee did.

Drake
looked at the new scan data and saw nothing. There were no ships within the
standard 1.5 million kilometer scanning range. That wasn’t a surprise. Earth’s
hyper-zone extended almost 5.4 million kilometers, equivalent to 18 light
seconds, in all directions and had a circumference of almost 35 million
kilometers. The odds of having another ship within a bubble with a radius of
1.5 million klicks was highly unlikely. The problem that Lee faced now was
determining how many defending warships, if any, were around the edges of or
inside Earth’s hyper-zone. Roughly half a minute later, Earth provided Admiral
Lee with at least a partial answer. The Task Force was hit by a radar beam that
originated in low Earth orbit. For it to reach this far with enough reflected
energy to be detected by something in low orbit meant that the beam had to be a
very powerful one. Drake was willing to bet it was a radar satellite that swept
the sky with powerful beams periodically since it would take over 36 seconds
for it to receive a return signal from an object out beyond the hyper-zone.
Earth now knew that 16 unidentified and presumably hostile ships were 5.5
million klicks away. But the same powerful radar beam that saw the Task Force
also saw and reflected off 21 ships that were in a slightly higher orbit than
the radar satellite, and they were in formation too.

Drake’s
end of the Task Force Command frequency was muted, but Admiral Lee’s end was
not. Drake heard his Task Force Leader curse under his breath, and Drake
understood why. Unarmed transport ships didn’t need to orbit a planet in
formation. The fact that these ships were in formation strongly suggested that
they were armed, and that meant that the Task Force was outnumbered AND it also
suggested, to Drake at least, that the Federation Navy was expecting an SSU
attack. He was willing to bet that Majestic had warned them.

Drake
heard one of the other COs ask Lee what they were going to do now. After a
short pause, Lee answered.

“I’m
not going to risk this Task Force on a battle against superior numbers. My
orders included contingency instructions for just this scenario, and those
instructions are that we return to Sparta asap. Since there’s no need to arrive
at Sparta in formation, all ships are ordered to proceed there independently
after breaking out of formation. Any questions?”

Drake
thought fast. He knew what Lee’s orders said and, more significantly, didn’t
say.  The order to abort the mission and return to Sparta was based on the
assumption that a superior enemy force was close enough to the hyper-zone
boundary to follow close on the Task Force’s heels if they tried to jump to
Makassar or Hadley. And in the case where the enemy force was deep within
Earth’s hyper-zone, which meant that they couldn’t jump for at least an hour,
it was the Task Force Leader’s discretion as to whether the Task Force returned
to Sparta directly or detoured to Makassar to see if it could be attacked
first. Drake waited to see if anyone else suggested jumping to Makassar first,
but no one did. That left it up to him.

“Since
it appears that the bulk of the FED Navy is deep within Earth’s hyper-zone,
we’d have time to check out the orbital defenses near Makassar before those
ships down there could follow us,” said Drake.

Lee
answered quickly. “No dice! We don’t know how many ships the FEDs have now.
They could have just as many defending Makassar. I think it’s unlikely that
they would leave Makassar defenseless. My decision stands. All ships will make
their way back to Sparta independently. Execute now.”

Drake
shook his head in frustration. That was exactly the point. If SSU ships went to
Makassar and took a good look at whatever defenses they did have there, they
could get a more accurate picture of just how many ships the FEDs did or didn’t
have now. He watched as the Task Force formation broke up, with ships veering
off in various directions.

“Helm,
swing us around to a heading for a jump to Sparta,” said Drake. The Helm
Officer acknowledged the order. At the velocity they were traveling, it would
take almost 34 minutes to accomplish that goal. By the time Jutland was lined
up for Sparta, Drake had made up his mind to interpret Lee’s order differently.
Making their way back to Sparta independently was not necessarily the same
thing as making their way back to Sparta directly, although he was certain that
was what Lee meant. He, Drake, would pretend that he understood Lee’s order to
mean that the whole Task Force would not go to Makassar, but that individual
ships could make a detour there on their way back to Sparta if they so choose.
He knew he was stepping out on a narrow limb, but if Jutland stayed out beyond
Makassar’s hyper-zone, the risk of interception by enemy forces was small, and
the intel gathered might be worth a lot. He waited until he saw the flagship
jump away and then ordered the Helm to adjust their heading for a jump to the
Franklin Tri-system.

Day
22/2546

Jutland
emerged from its last micro-jump just outside of Makassar’s hyper-zone at slow
speed. The Bridge was tense and quiet. Drake waited for the tactical display to
update itself with the data gathered by the ship’s passive detection gear. Like
Earth, Makassar had radar satellites in orbit sending out powerful radar pulses
every two minutes. Jutland was detected as expected, but Drake was surprised to
see that no other ship was in orbit around the planet, at least not on
Jutland’s side of the planet. He admitted to himself that it was possible that
ships could just happen to be orbiting the planet on the far side, but that was
very unlikely given that Jutland could have emerged from its micro-jump on any
side of the hyper-zone. If there was at least one enemy ship on the far side,
its orbit should bring it into view fairly quickly.

Drake
wasn’t in any hurry. With a nod to the Astrogator, Jutland began to send out
its own radar beams in all directions. They showed no ships within the beams’
effective range. It looked very much to Drake like all of the FED Navy ships
were guarding Earth and not Makassar. While he couldn’t fault the logic of
giving Earth’s billions first priority, he had to wonder about the wisdom of
keeping the enemy fleet so deep inside Earth’s hyper-zone that it effectively
prevented those ships from being able to jump quickly to protect Makassar.
Unless the industrial centers on Makassar were defended with lots of railguns,
there seemed to be an opportunity here for Jutland to inflict some damage.

Drake
pondered his options. Jutland could fire from beyond the hyper-zone boundary,
but accuracy would suffer. Alternatively, she could move closer to the planet,
but that entailed the risk of being trapped if the FED fleet arrived before
Jutland completed its attack run and made it back out of the zone. In any case,
Drake didn’t want to get too close, because railgun slugs could theoretically
hit Jutland as well as intercept her missiles. He checked the ship’s internal
missile load. Jutland had 64 HE and another 64 KE missiles, not including the
AMMs on external launchers. That meant 16 missile volleys of 8 missiles each if
he decided to use them all.

“Weps,
do we have enough targeting data from our last strike here to be able to
identify the largest industrial center down there?” asked Drake.

The
Weapons Officer responded immediately. “Yessir.”

“What
kind of accuracy could we expect to get if we fired from this distance?”