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Juliani waited patiently while his boss lit a cigar and settled back in his chair.
“Okay, Angelo, what’s so important and urgent that it couldn’t be sent up through the regular channels?”
“Sorry to wake you up in the middle of the night, Mister President, but I’ve literally just received the latest Intel report from my network on Earth. Their battlecruiser, which they’re calling Dreadnought by the way, is undergoing acceptance trials now, and Chancellor Arronax has ordered the Solarian Navy to prepare an attack that includes the battlecruiser to be launched within fourteen days.”
“That quickly? My God, that’s faster than we thought. How reliable is your source?”
“I consider this source very reliable, Mister President. He has access to the Navy’s top brass, and every piece of information from him has checked out so far. May I make a recommendation that’s beyond the purview of my responsibilities for off-world intelligence?”
“Let’s hear it.”
“If we send in a fleet of frigates right away, we can catch them by surprise and with a little luck destroy the battlecruiser and all their shipyards. That would—” He stopped when he saw Gaviglio hold his hand up in an obvious ‘stop’ signal.
“I might have been willing to consider a pre-emptive strike like that if Earth had not entered into a mutual defense pact with the Republic of New Paris, but not now. You know the old saying, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’?” Juliani nodded. “Well, the reverse of that, ‘The friend of my enemy is also my enemy,’ is not always true. Provoking a formal state of war between Corona and New Paris would be a public relations disaster with regards to how other star nations perceive us, and while I think we could defeat New Paris quite easily now, we don’t have the ground forces available to take and keep control of that planet. The amount of ill will against us that her defeat would generate among her citizens means that New Paris could become a major headache for us for decades to come. I will not trade off our future for a short-term gain. I thank you for bringing this to my attention. Please see to it that a report is disseminated to the appropriate people. I believe we’re done here.”
As Juliani left the President’s residence, he instructed his electronic avatar to request an urgent meeting with Director Brandenburg. President Gaviglio might not have the balls to take action; Contessa Sario Brandenburg just might.
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BRANDENBURG TRIED UNSUCCESSFULLY to stifle a yawn as she read Juliani’s Intel report.
“I presume you’ve already shown this to the President?” she asked.
“Yes. I passed on my recommendation that we take immediate steps to launch a pre-emptive strike to cripple that battlecruiser before they can launch their attack on us. He dismissed the idea out of hand.”
Ah, so that’s why you wanted to meet with me at the crack of dawn in the middle of nowhere. You’re going to ask me to launch the strike on my own initiative. “I think I know why you asked to meet with me here and now, but go ahead and tell me anyway.”
“I think the pre-emptive strike is a necessity. If the President won’t authorize it, then the military should take the initiative.”
“You mean I should take the initiative, don’t you? Risk my position and possibly even jail while you sit back in your office safe from any repercussions? Why should I do that, Director? If the Chancellor sends his battlecruiser and his frigates, I’m convinced we’ll give his fleet a bloody nose and send them home with their tail between their legs.”
“You still believe that, even after reading that Admiral Khegan told the Chancellor that his own simulations showed an overwhelming victory against us?” Juliani’s voice was on the verge of turning shrill.
“Well, let me put it to you this way, Director. I’ve seen our simulations. What you’re telling me is that a spy, who may or may not be reliable or accurate, heard that Admiral Khegan supposedly bragged to the Chancellor about a simulation that can’t be verified. Suppose Khegan lied about the simulation. Suppose the report of his bragging is a lie or exaggeration. Suppose your source embellished the rumor or is maybe a double-agent trying to provoke us into acting rashly with the Solarian Navy maybe waiting on alert to ambush our striking force.” Hell, maybe you’re a double agent! I must have been crazy to agree to meet you alone out here! That thought and the sudden perception of her own vulnerability sent a chill down her back. “I’m not going to order a pre-emptive strike. This conversation is over.” She turned and walked down the hill to her limo. Juliani stood there watching her for a few seconds before he too headed back to his limo. It was too bad she had turned him down. If she had agreed to it, his recording of the conversation would have given him leverage over her in the future. Ah, well, it had been worth a try.
Brandenburg stepped out of her limo and walked up to the very young-looking lieutenant standing beside the main hatch ladder. Recognizing the Head of Space Force, the woman’s eyes opened wide. She snapped to attention and saluted. Brandenburg acknowledged the salute with a nod.
“Please advise Commander Ortega that I’d like to come aboard, Lieutenant.”
“Right away, Director.” The officer spoke into her collar mic. “Bridge, is the CO there?” There was a pause. “Commander, Director Brandenburg is here and would like to come aboard.” Another pause. “Yessir! The Commander says you’re welcome aboard, Director. Do you need a guide to the Bridge?”
“No, thank you. I’ve been on board frigates before, Lieutenant.”
Brandenburg climbed up the metal ladder and stepped through the open hatch into the Coral Sea. Commander Ortega met her halfway to the Bridge.
“Welcome aboard Coral Sea, Director. I was not aware that you were coming; otherwise, I would have instructed Lieutenant Mason to escort you to the Bridge herself rather than request authorization.”
“That’s quite all right, Commander. I’m here to use your com facilities to make a secure and private call to Jutland.”
Ortega needed a couple of seconds to get over his surprise at that request. He decided not to ask why the Head of Space Force would need to use a grounded frigate to communicate with another frigate when the spaceport had excellent communications capabilities deep under the Admin building only a short limo ride away.
“Certainly, Director. You can use my office. Please follow me.”
Minutes later, Brandenburg was looking at Delacor’s image on her com display. “Elona, I need you to set up an encrypted relay between me and Commander Terranova onboard my new freighter Troiano. She should be orbiting the moon by now.”
It took almost ten minutes to establish the secure video connection that had a slight 1.3 second lag each way due to the distance.
“Hello, Director. As you can see, Troiano got here on schedule,” said Terranova with a smile.
“Very good, Captain.” She saw his expression react to the unfamiliar rank. He might be a commander in Space Force, but for the time being he was captain of a privately-owned star-freighter.
“I’ve decided to move up the timetable for offensive operations. The Republic of New Paris is supplying Earth with yttrium, a strategic metal needed to build warships. Troiano will attempt to interdict those shipments. You’re to take her to the New Paris system, wait along the most likely trajectory that a bulk freighter would take to head for Earth and cripple any ship that falls into your trap.”
She waited the three seconds before his reaction became apparent. “Cripple? I thought Troiano was an unarmed freighter. Is there something about her that you haven’t told me, Director?”
“Not about the ship, no. I should have mentioned that you’ll be getting astrogation data at the end of this transmission for a rendezvous where Troiano will take aboard two prototype drones. One has a spinal laser, and the other is designed for covert reconnaissance. You can use the latter to find the New Paris freighters and the former to disable it.”
“What about the crews of those ships?” Terranova’s tone was now not quite so light-hearted.
“By all means, give them a chance to abandon their ships using the life pods. If they refuse to do that, then they’ll only have themselves to blame for any casualties, but their ships have to be stopped whether they abandon them or stay on board. Is that clear?”
“That’s clear, I guess. How long should I keep the ship in their system?”
Brandenburg pondered that question for a bit before answering. “When three months have passed, you’re about to run out of consumables, the drones malfunction or there’s a danger of being intercepted by a warship, whichever one comes first. Actually, I’ll amend that statement. Keeping Troiano undamaged and bringing her back safely is your top priority. If intercepting enemy freighters will put the ship at risk, then abort the mission. Have I made that sufficiently clear?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Any questions?”
“No, Director.”
“In that case, I’ll transmit the astrogational data to you now and sign off. Good luck and good hunting, Captain.” She made sure the data was sent and then shut down the com channel. Ortega was waiting for her outside his office.
“Thank you, Commander. You can have your office and your ship back,” she said with a smile.
“It was a pleasure having you aboard even for a short while, Director.”
Brandenburg smiled. He sounded as though he actually meant it. The Lieutenant at the boarding hatch helped her climb down the ladder and saluted her when she was safely down. Being the civilian head of the organization, she normally did not return salutes, but this time she did, to the officer’s surprise. Once inside her limo, she ordered the auto-pilot to take her back to her office.
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THIRTY-FOUR DAYS LATER:
Terranova stepped into the ship’s command center and noticed once again how much bigger and better equipped it was compared to the frigate he’d command for too short a time. Even for a freighter, Troiano was large, with room to spare for crew amenities and rooms like this one. He walked over to the long-range sensor station.
“Well, what have we got? Anything that looks like a target?” he asked the XO who was standing behind the sensor technician.
The XO shook his head. “Not exactly. The recon drone is picking up the gravity wakes of multiple ships. There are so many that the waves are overlapping, making it impossible to differentiate all of them. The minimum count is thirteen, and from the strength of its wake, one of them has to be considerably larger than the others. There’s one thing though: they’re not heading out from New Paris. They’re heading toward it.”
Terranova didn’t like the sound of that. “Show me on tactical.” The main display activated, showing the New Paris planet in the center, Troiano’s position at roughly the 3 o’clock position, and at 2 o’clock, a cluster of red dots further from the planet than Troiano was.
“Can they detect us?” asked Terranova quickly.
“TacComp says no. We’re coasting without running lights and with zero EM emissions. If those ships are radar scanning, we’re not detecting any of it. It’s a good thing you ordered the ship to move away from the Earth-New Paris shipping trajectory, Captain. If we’d stayed where we were, they’d be on top of us by now.”
Terranova nodded but said nothing. Moving away from the most likely path that a target freighter would take to get to Earth had been a difficult decision. The whole idea of coasting along that path was to be able to confirm the other ship’s destination, then slip in behind it before it could accelerate to FTL velocities. By laying off to one side, he had made interception more difficult, but he had had a gut feeling that it was the right move to make.
“What do you think is going on, Captain?” asked the XO.
“I think that the Chancellor has sent his new battlecruiser and some frigates to subdue New Paris to add to his collection of conquered planets.”
“That makes eight now, right?”
“Right,” answered Terranova. The Chancellor had surprised everyone on Corona when his navy picked off three more relatively low population planets after the initial conquest of four prospective members of the Confederacy. Brandenburg had distributed Juliani’s departmental analysis of the strategy to all her ship COs, including Terranova. The consensus among the analysts was that Arronax was accomplishing two things with this action. Each newly-conquered planet added more food and other resources to a starved Earth and at the same time, reduced the number of nearby potential allies for Corona. Reports from independent shippers had told Juliani’s people that each conquered planet only had one or at most two frigates standing guard. The Chancellor apparently put a lot of faith in the deterrent effect of the mutual defense pact between Earth and New Paris. Which he now seems to have thrown out the window. The XO must have been thinking the same thing.
“If that is the Solarian Navy we’re seeing and this isn’t just a friendly curtesy call on New Paris, then hasn’t Earth just thrown away whatever deterrent their mutual defense pact had as far as Corona is concerned?”
“Ah, but consider the situation, XO. That deterrent is now gone only because we’re here to see them stab their ally in the back. If we weren’t here, we might not find out about this for a long time and assume that the pact was still in force. This kind of gambit only makes sense if an attack on Corona is already being planned. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Chancellor’s senior admiral suggested this operation as a way of conducting a dress rehearsal for their attack on us.”
“Makes sense. What do we do now, Captain?”
“We wait just long enough to confirm that those ships dropped into orbit around New Paris, and then we take this news home, XO. How soon can we get the recon drone back without drawing attention to ourselves?”
The XO checked his chronometer. “The drone is scheduled to re-establish comlaser contact with us in another five and a half hours. We’ll then be able to order it to rendezvous with us. That’ll take another eight or nine hours.”
“Fine. As soon as it’s aboard, we go home. I’ll be in my quarters if you need me. If those ships do anything unexpected, call me immediately.”
