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Terranova’s joy at being back on Corona was exceeded only by his joy at no longer being part of the freighter’s crew. The ship had been old, dirty and held together by duct tape and glue, the captain a miserable son of a bitch who seemed to take a sadistic delight in tormenting his crew. And the small cabin that the three of them had to sleep in had been hot and smelly.
When Planetary Customs personnel learned who the freighter’s passengers were, they quickly called the SDF who sent transportation and a welcoming committee to take the group in hand. The transport took the group to a hotel that was isolated but comfortable. The SDF had already booked rooms for everyone and would be picking up the tab for meals as well. Terranova had trouble deciding what to do next: eat his first decent meal in days or scrub the stink and grime off in a shower. He chose the shower on the theory that if he ate first, his own smell might spoil the taste of the food.
Delacor found a note on the table of her room when she arrived. It said, ‘The Director is waiting to speak with you in room 610’. She dropped her luggage and headed for the elevator. She was just about to knock on the door of room 610 when it opened, and she saw Juliani gesture for her to come inside.
“I’m glad to see you made it back, Commander,” said Juliani as he sat down in a comfortable chair near a low table. Delacor sat in the only other chair and sighed.
“If they had only waited another week, even just four days, I might have been able to finish the backdoor.”
“So, it’s not ready.”
“No. I did manage to memorize twenty-one access codes though.”
Juliani shook his head. “They won’t do us much good if we can’t get to them undetected.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Juliani nodded sympathetically. “Not your fault that Chancellor Arranox moved much faster than we expected. We’ll debrief you about the access codes tomorrow. You never know when they might become useful.”
“What will happen to me after that?”
Juliani smiled. “Well, we don’t have any FTL warships, so obviously we can’t make you the XO of one, but we will find a place for you in the SDF as an officer. Just so you know, it’s not up to me to decide your new rank or assignment, and therefore I can’t guarantee that you’ll be given the same rank as you had in the Commonwealth Navy. But don’t be dismayed if you have to start at a lower rank. The SDF is growing fast, and promotion will be rapid. In the meantime, you’ll have a steady source of income that will be made retroactive to the day that you met with the President and myself.”
Delacor was impressed. That’s very generous, Director. Considering that I failed to complete the mission, I kinda feel that it’s more than I deserve. If only there was another way to...” She let the sentence dangle as she stared off into space for a few seconds.
“What is it?” asked Juliani.
She looked at him with eyes open wide. “There just might be a way to hijack at least one ship.”
“Oh?”
Now Delacor was smiling. “Yes. This is how it might work. The Reserve Fleet Base is a station orbiting Neptune’s moon, Triton. The station is in a high, slow orbit. The decommissioned ships are all in lower, faster orbits. That was done deliberately so that every ship would pass underneath the station on a regular basis and would only be hidden behind Triton for a relatively short period of time, twenty-five minutes if I remember correctly. The station runs a constant radar scan of the space that the ships orbit in, but obviously it can only see half the orbit at any one time. When the station is between Triton and Neptune, a ship could sneak in from the other side of Triton in such as way as to keep the moon between it and the station the whole time. That ship would then have twenty-five minutes to match orbits with a target frigate, dock with it and transfer a skeleton crew. Of course, it would have to be one of the twenty-one ships that I have access codes for. The ship would then have to undock and adjust its orbit so that it could stay behind Triton, and as long as it stayed there, it could keep docking with other frigates to transfer crew. Frigates that have skeleton crews and enough supplies to last them for the trip home, by the way, would keep their ships powered down until there were no more skeleton crews left to transfer. When the transfers were done, all crewed frigates and the transport ship would accelerate out of orbit at the same time. It wouldn’t matter then if the station’s radar saw them, because the station isn’t armed, and by the time it called for help, all our ships would be gone.”
“Very ingenious, Commander, but it sounds like it would be a tricky procedure to pull off. Can a transport ship match orbits, dock and transfer a crew in less than twenty-five minutes?”
Delacor nodded. “I’m sure it can be done, but doing it over and over again might take time to set up.”
Juliani pondered that for a few seconds. “Okay, what else could go wrong with this plan?”
Delacor sighed. “Well, each mothballed ship is supposed to be physically checked once a year by an inspection team that comes aboard, partially activates some systems in order to do a status check and physically look for leaks or other signs of damage. That means a shuttle from the station will be docked with a frigate for about three to four hours at a time every six or seven days. There’s no predictable schedule, and I didn’t memorize the schedule before I left because it didn’t seem germane to my mission. So, if we send a ship in there, we won’t know how long we’d have before an inspection team starts moving around with its own radar scanning.
“If we want to minimize the risk of detection, we can do one of two things. Either keep the mission duration to less than a day, which means we probably won’t be able to transfer crews to all twenty-one ships, or”—she hesitated before continuing—“we use the laser batteries on one of the frigates to knock out the communications array of the station so that it can’t call for help.”
That caused Juliani’s eyebrows to rise. “If the station is isolated in terms of communication, then we’d have enough time to hijack all twenty-one frigates?”
Delacor nodded. “Yes sir, and if we then boarded the station with armed personnel, we could find out what the other access codes are and potentially hijack all of them.”
Juliani didn’t respond right away, but Delacor could see the excitement in his eyes. If the SDF could hijack all 55 frigates, it could give the Commonwealth Navy a run for its money.
“That’s a very tempting idea, Commander. Very tempting. I’ll have my people look at it, and if the President decides to go with it, you’ll have a big part to play in the operation.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“No need to thank me. You’ve earned it. What else can you tell me about your time at the Base?”
“Well, if I didn’t have my covert mission to keep me busy, I’d have been bored to death. I’m certain everyone else on that station is too. I remember one incident...”
Juliani was only half listening by now. If he could get Gaviglio’s approval for the kind of hijack operation that Delacor had described, and if it could be pulled off successfully, his influence in the new Confederation government would be considerable, perhaps even enough to make a successful run for the Presidency in the next election. Delacor was the key to the operation. She not only had the smarts to pull it off, he sensed she also had the ambition to do whatever it took to reach her personal goals. It seemed that the Gods of War had given him a priceless asset in the form of Elona Delacor.
It was later that day when Delacor found herself with some free time, and she took advantage of it to take in the view of the SDF spaceport from the Observation level at the top of the SDF Headquarters building. To her surprise, she found Marcus Terranova doing the same thing.
As she came up to stand beside him, she said, “Great minds think alike, eh, Marcus?”
“I guess so, Elona. We’re both interested in getting a better feel for our future, which looks like it’ll be in the SDF for at least a year, probably longer. I doubt if Corona can build FTL ships sooner than that.”
Delacor wondered if she should tell Marcus about the hijack operation. Juliani hadn’t sworn her to secrecy, and she very much doubted if Marcus Terranova was a Solarian spy. Taking Marcus into her confidence now could pay dividends later on when the Confederate Navy was established. Getting a command slot could depend on a friend like Marcus putting in a good word on her behalf with the right person at the right time. And in any event, you could never have too many friends watching out for you.
“We may not have to wait that long.”
“Oh? Why’s that?” He was still looking at the spaceport and the System Defense Boat that looked like it was ready to take off.
She told him about her covert mission to the Reserve Fleet Base and the hijack idea. He did not show the expected enthusiasm, and in fact, if his expression revealed any reaction at all, it was one of skepticism.
“I can see that you’re all fired up about this idea, Elona, but I don’t think we should try to hijack those frigates.”
Delacor was shocked. “You’ve got to be kidding, Marcus. The Confederacy needs FTL ships. These SDBs”—she pointed to the one that was indeed now taking off—“are okay for local defense, but the Confederacy needs to be able to project power, and that means FTL ships.”
“But not those mothballed frigates,” interjected Terranova before she could go on. “They’re obsolete. If we do anything with them at all, it should be to go in there and destroy as many of them as we can so that Arronax can’t get his hands on them.”
“What do you mean, obsolete? I realize that some of them are a few years old, but the basic technology is still okay.”
Terranova shook his head. “The standard frigate wasn’t designed to fight in multi-ship battles. You know that. It was designed to police shipping lanes by enforcing regulations, and it was armed with relatively weak lasers in case it had to disable the engines of a smuggler or pirate every now and then. It has one missile tube with four, count ‘em four, short range missiles armed with fission warheads meant to be used to destroy or deflect hazards to star navigation, such as rogue asteroids. Those missiles don’t have the kind of guidance systems that are needed for ship-to-ship combat.” Delacor opened her mouth to say something but Terranova held his hand up to stop her.
“I understand that missile guidance systems can be upgraded, but that doesn’t change the fact that frigates can only fire one missile at a time and have room for only four missiles in storage. So, what does that leave? It leaves the low-powered lasers that are only effective at short range and only against unarmored targets. Now imagine a battle between the Confederacy and Earth with both sides using frigates. Any missile volleys would be neutralized by the other sides’ lasers operating in an anti-missile role. If both fleets get within laser range of the other, you’ve basically got yourself a knife fight, and all other things being equal, the side with more knives—i.e. lasers—is likely to win.”
“Which is exactly why we need to hijack as many of those frigates as we can. If we can grab all fifty-five—”
Terranova cut her off. “And where are we going to get the crews to man that many ships quickly enough to do any good?”
“Well, ah...the SDF might...” She left the sentence unfinished as she realized that the System Defense Force didn’t have nearly enough trained personnel to crew 55 frigates. Not even 21 if she was honest about it.
Terranova saw the realization in her eyes and waited.
“So, you think we should send in a demolition team to blow all fifty-five frigates to hell?” she asked in a calmer tone.
He turned to face her. “Actually, I think we should hijack a few, maybe six or so, use their lasers to cripple the rest and bring those six back here to use for reconnaissance and courier duty until we have something better. I think the Confederacy can find enough crews for six. But in terms of taking on Earth’s fleet of frigates, we’ll need something bigger and more capable than frigates.”
Delacor sensed that he had already figured out what that something bigger and more capable was, and that intrigued her.
“You sound like you’ve given this a lot of thought,” she said. “What’s the bigger and more capable concept?”
“Well, in the long run, we should build large ships that have lots of armor, can fire lots of missiles simultaneously, with enough missile storage to fire lots of volleys and also have really powerful lasers that can cut through a ship’s hull at considerably longer ranges than we can now. That’s something that will take years to realize. In the short run, imagine a ship that’s a variation of a bulk freighter: large hull with large ports allowing entrance to a lot of internal spaces. Only instead of holding bulk cargo pods, this ship would carry modified versions of SDBs. They’d be able to maneuver easily in deep space, have enough endurance to operate for weeks if necessary and be able to fire more missiles than what these planetary defense versions can carry. The mothership would carry them to the target star system where it would stay outside the sub-light zone in case it needs to bug out fast. The deployed— I guess you’d call them missile boats—would move further into the system, seek out the enemy and attack in force. At that point the mothership could come further in if the plan is to conquer and hold. Otherwise, the missile boats would withdraw to the mothership to be re-armed and re-supplied, maybe with replacement crews too. A ship like that, without armor, could be built relatively quickly since it’s essentially a big hollow tube. And just in case it does get attacked, it’ll have plenty of room for anti-missile lasers and maybe even a few anti-ship weapons too.”
Delacor had been staring off into infinity as he was talking. Her attention returned to the here and now as she spoke. “That all sounds quite logical. I wonder if Corona has the technical capability and the financial resources to build a fleet of motherships like that.”
Terranova shrugged. “I’m pretty sure they have the technology to do it. What they lack right now is the infrastructure, the mining, refining, manufacturing and assembly of the raw materials. That will take time to set up, but how much time depends on a lot of factors. In terms of financial resources, I agree it would be a strain for Corona to carry the load by itself, but if the other members of the Confederation contribute their fair share, it should be doable. The mothership design could be easily tweaked to produce civilian freighters, which the member states are going to need if they don’t want to be at the mercy of Earth-based shipping companies.”
Delacor nodded. Everything Marcus had said made sense. She’d allowed herself to get caught up in the excitement of the hijack-a-fleet idea without thinking it through carefully enough. If Gaviglio kept his word to her about getting an XO slot on the first commissioned FTL ship, then Marcus’ idea of hijacking a few would do just fine.
“The next time I see him, I’ll tell Juliani that I think the operation should be changed from hijacking as many as possible to grabbing a few and crippling the rest. If I’m given the opportunity to select or suggest who should go on the smash and grab mission, do you want in on it?”
Terranova thought about it for a couple of seconds before responding. “What the hell. It sounds like it’ll be fun.”
