Rumors of Honor (System States Rebellion Book 2) (26 page)

Foster
looked a little sheepish. “Well ah…my husband was the one who thought of
limiting our purchases to the small stuff, Sir.”

Janicot
laughed. “So it wasn’t anyone from your staff at all. I find the irony very
amusing. Well then, I want you to pass along my thanks to Commander Murphy, and
you can also tell him that he will be getting a medal. I suppose this means
that he’ll have to go back to Midgard for quite a while, won’t it?”

Foster
suddenly realized that Janicot was right. She hadn’t thought through the
implications of this plan. Murphy had played a key role in arranging the
original equipment purchases on Earth. It only made sense that he was the best
qualified person to supervise the additional purchases.

“I
suppose it does, Admiral.”

Janicot
could tell by her tone of voice that she wasn’t thrilled by that prospect, and
he was sympathetic, but sending someone else would increase the risk of making
a mistake that would attract attention. The project was just too important to
risk that. Murphy had to go, and he had to go sooner rather than later.

“I’m
sorry that it has to be that way, but I’m sure you can see why we can’t send
someone else, and why he has to leave soon.” She nodded but said nothing.
“Okay, Major, go home now. Be back here by 1100 hours tomorrow, and this time,
try not to be late, okay?” His tone of voice and his smile told her he was
chiding her in a good-natured way. She also realized that he was giving her
more time to be with her husband. He could have set the meeting to start a lot
earlier.

“Thank
you, Sir, from both of us.” She got up and left so fast that she forgot to
salute. Janicot laughed as the door closed behind her. After a brief pause, he
decided that he was going to go home too, and the unfinished paperwork could
wait until tomorrow. As he exited the building on his way to the waiting
aircar, he realized that he was whistling a cheerful tune, something he hadn’t
done in a long, long time.

Chapter Fifteen:

Day
105/2547

Murphy
and Foster hugged one last time, and then she walked back to the waiting
aircar. He took one last look around the spaceport and headed up the ramp. The
ship was already three days late in leaving, but that delay was necessary to
get the 13 billion in FED credits sorted and packed, as well as to gather the
technical data on the equipment that money would be used to pay for. The ship’s
first stop would be Midgard, itself, in order to drop off the 55 personnel who
would get the Site X offices ready in the new Midgard Industries Tower complex,
which would be finished by the time the ship got there. With that task out of
the way, a small team of engineering and financial specialists would take the
ship to Earth where they would go through the motions of raising more
investment capital before issuing purchase orders for the new batch of
equipment. Murphy would stay on Midgard since the FEDs would know that he was
not a Midgardian citizen. His DNA and retinal scans would give him away no
matter what name he tried to use.

As
Murphy rode the elevator to the Bridge, he recalled what Cate had told him
about the meeting with SecDef and the Chancellor. Sorenson was furious about
being kept in the dark about the real Site X and Durendal. She wanted Cate
court-martialled. Cate had almost cried as she told Murphy how Janicot had
intervened on her behalf by saying that he would not approve any court-martial
or disciplinary action and would resign if Sorenson gave him any such orders.
When Sorenson looked like she would call his bluff, the Chancellor let her know
that he was willing to overlook the Major’s actions and asked Sorenson to do
the same. Her reluctant agreement meant the issue was over, but Cate was sure
that Sorenson would not approve any further promotions for her as a backhanded
way of punishing her.  Murphy had tried to console her with the fact that the
Chancellor had approved of the plan to use more FED currency to expand Midgard
faster. It had taken two more days before she recovered from that traumatic
experience. After being away for more than a year and then together for only a
week, it was hard leaving her again, but they both understood the necessity and
accepted it.

Day
159/2547

Trojan
strode into the Ops Center and saw Carter’s text message, which was still on
the main display.

Voice
and data transmissions recorded coming from target moon. Definitely some kind
of construction activity going on there. Recorded transmission to follow. End
of message.

Trojan
smacked his right fist into his left palm. They found it! That moon was at the
top of the list of candidates for the SSU equivalent of Makassar, and somebody
was mining it. And since the SSU was not short of raw materials, it didn’t make
any economic sense to extract metals there and ship them in bulk somewhere
else. It only made sense if they were using those metals to build ships right
on that moon itself.

“Get
me a channel to Commodore Romanov,” ordered Trojan. Romanov’s Task Force would
be sent to that star system with orders to bombard the complex on that moon
back down to bedrock. While he waited for the com channel to be established,
Trojan made up his mind to send another courier to Earth. Chenko and Masterson
would have already received his message claiming that Romanov exceeded his
authority in bringing those four ships back to Franklin. Stevens could pass on
his personal observation of Trojan chewing Romanov out for doing exactly that,
unaware that Trojan had arranged for that bit of theatre ahead of time. Trojan
chuckled as he remembered how Stevens was already on his way back to Earth by
the time Chenko’s order had arrived telling Stevens to relieve Trojan of
command of CINC1FAF. If Chenko ordered Stevens back here to Hadley as soon as
he arrived on Earth, Trojan would just refuse to relinquish command, but he
doubted that the Navy Chief of Staff would still react that way after receiving
Trojan’s apology over Romanov’s ‘mistake’. Once Chenko learned of the discovery
of the SSU’s secret shipbuilding effort, he’d be glad that Trojan had kept
those four ships in the Franklin Tri-system so that they could be used to smash
that project.

Day
227/2547

Drake
checked the main display, which was showing the tactical situation. His 24
missile boats were just about to move into Makassar’s hyper-zone. That meant
that they were now also within missile range of the orbiting laser satellites,
which were, according to the reflections from the powerful FED radars, the only
things in orbit around Makassar at the moment. He mentally reviewed the plan
that he and Task Force Leader Palmgren had come up with. Palmgren and the two
freighter/carriers Gilbraltor and Black Star were still three light seconds
further out from the planet where they had emerged from hyper-space and where
Drake’s missile boats had launched from. The two carriers were now accelerating
directly away from Makassar at their maximum acceleration of 3.5Gs. The missile
boats were accelerating at their maximum of 5.5Gs towards Makassar on a
trajectory that would let them come in low over the planet’s surface and use
Makassar’s gravity to slingshot around the planet so that they’d be heading
back towards the carriers. Carefully timed acceleration and deceleration by
both groups would enable the missile boats to catch up to the carriers with
precisely the same velocity.

That
was the (relatively) easy part. The hard part was successfully running the
gauntlet of Makassar’s defenses during the low altitude slingshot maneuver,
while at the same time trying to hit the industrial centers with HE and KE
missile strikes. Drake knew from past experience that the defending lasersats
were at a relatively low altitude in order to have overlapping coverage with a
reasonable number of satellites. While those lasersats could theoretically hit
his boats this far out, he doubted very much if the person commanding those
assets would be so foolish as to fire them now because his boats were small, as
ship targets went, and they were maneuvering in an evasive pattern around their
overall trajectory. That meant that after travelling at the speed of light for
almost 18 seconds, the odds of an x-ray laser beam arriving at exactly the
right spot was virtually zero. His boats would have to get a lot closer before
they were in danger from lasersat blasts, but he could still fire missiles at
them, and he intended to do exactly that. With their much higher acceleration,
those missiles would reach their targets in less than 30 minutes. It would take
his missile boats almost four hours to cover that same distance.

“Black
Bird Leader to Black Bird Zero Four and Zero Six. Have you got those lasersats
targeted with HEs?” asked Drake.

“Zero
Four to Leader, affirmative.”

“Zero
Six to Leader, we’re ready to fire.”

“Okay,
Zero Four and Zero Six, you’re cleared to fire,” said Drake.

Drake’s
tactical display showed two new green icons accelerating rapidly away from the
Task Force. Each icon had the number eight in it. Sixteen missiles with high
explosive warheads were headed towards the eight lasersats that would be in the
best position to fire on the boats by the time they got within effective range.
With each missile heading for where its target should be by the time it got
there, augmented by the missile’s own terminal guidance radar, the odds of
hitting it were high but not a hundred percent. Hence the need to fire two
missiles at each target. The chances of both missing were less than one
percent. With the first missile barrage on the way, Drake tried to relax.
Nothing exciting was going to happen any time soon, and the last thing he
needed was to get his adrenaline surging now and then to feel the inevitable
fatigue just when things started to get interesting.

Twenty-eight
minutes later, things started getting interesting. The tactical display pinged
for attention. At first Drake didn’t see anything different, but then he
realized that the numbers inside the two missile volley icons were dropping,
and they were still over two minutes from their targets. As he watched, both
missile groups dropped to zero and the icons disappeared.

“Zero
Six to Leader! What the hell just happened?” Drake thought fast. The lasersats
themselves were still intact, which meant that they hadn’t fired at the
incoming missiles, and with no sign of any counter-missile fire, it had to have
been laser fire from the planet’s surface. P2 had predicted a 55% chance that
the same anti-missile laser technology used to protect FED ships would be
installed on Makassar’s surface. With no atmosphere to attenuate the laser
beams, they’d be just as effective there as on a ship.

“Leader
to Zero Six. I think we have to assume that the planet now has anti-missile
laser capability. They’re using that to protect their anti-ship lasersats.”

“Well
isn’t that just fucking great? That means they can do the same thing when we
fire at the planet too!”

“Take
it easy, Zero Six and the rest of you too. Lasers might be effective against
our HE missiles, but the KEs are going to be harder to stop. A meter long
tungsten rod with its guidance system burned away will still cause a lot of
damage if we aim it right.”

“Zero
Four to Leader. Maybe we should test that theory by firing a KE volley at the
lasersats?”

Drake
was already pondering that very question. The problem with using KEs against
the lasersats was that those satellites were very small targets. His HE missile
warheads had proximity fuses that would detonate the warhead and send out a
wave of shrapnel in all directions if it got close enough to the target, so
even a near miss had a good chance of making the lasersat unusable. But the KE
warheads relied exclusively on hitting the target. A near miss would still be a
miss. On the other hand, one thing his Task Force didn’t have to worry about
was a shortage of missiles, and those lasersats, if aimed carefully enough, did
pose a serious threat to his boats, even with their neutron armor, according to
the engineers back on Sparta. If the x-ray laser pulse could be kept targeted
on one tiny spot, it would burn through the collapsed matter armor with enough
energy to wreak havoc on the missile boat’s interior. Keeping the laser beam
aimed that carefully for the fraction of a second before the lasersat was
destroyed by its own fusion bomb, while taking into consideration the movement
of the target, was difficult but not impossible.

“Leader
to Zero Four and Zero Six, fire a volley of KEs at those same targets. Let’s
see what happens.”

It
only took a few seconds after both boats acknowledged their orders for two more
green icons to appear on his display. Now they had to wait another twenty-some
minutes for this second wave to get close.