It was still bizarre, seeing a major military installation in the middle of nowhere, but Jessica was finally getting used to the view. Anyplace else and there would be a planet below them, with a warm star in the near distance, but they had built this station so far from the nearest system that its sun only appeared as a slightly-brighter dot on the screens.
Downside, the need to maintain constant vigilance against a Buran warship dropping out of jump right on top of them and opening fire. They could do that anyway, but without any gravity well handy to distort a jump, a shark could get pin-point accuracy.
Upside, Arott could flip the entire station into JumpSpace, something no mere orbital platform could match. But this wasn’t just a platform. This was a super-monitor. Slow, cumbersome, and awkward, but equipped with firepower better than a battleship: an array of Type-4 beams on the corners, and all the old Type-1’s replaced with the new Type-1-Pulse that Moirrey had perfected after watching the so-called Flicker-beams that Buran had used at St. Legier.
Jessica turned from the view out her window as the hatch opened.
“Time?” she asked as Marcelle entered.
The woman nodded silently, and Jessica moved to her desk. She paused just long enough to grab the half-full sippy cup of coffee and her personal slab, and then followed her long-time assistant into the corridor.
Into the future.
That was how she thought of what was coming. Everything over the last year or more had been merely a holding pattern until she was able to come all the way out here, find the enemy, and study them.
For having been at war for generations, however quietly it had been fought until the last decade or so, Fribourg had provided precious little useful intelligence. Granted, she knew everything there probably was to know about Samara, and the capabilities of the colossal Starbase known as Ural, but that seemed to have been the limits of Imperial intelligence.
How to get there. What you would find when you arrive. Everything every commander had tried before now that had failed.
All of which amounted to going back to look for an even bigger hammer when the one you had broke.
Stupid. And counter-productive, as Buran had quietly colonized nearly three dozen planets on this side of the M’Hanii Frontier over the last century. Some, apparently, rather long ago, given how well-established they appeared to Glenn and CP-406, sneaking into the various systems and looking around before committing her petit vandalisms.
Jessica had no doubt that Emmerich would have finally managed to do something meaningful on this border, had he been free to give it his full attention. But he had been wrapped up for the last twenty years slowly strangling Aquitaine, where he was still referred to in equal parts fearful and reverential tones as The Red Admiral, much as she was now assuming that mantle.
But he was stuck at home now, rebuilding from the emotional wreckage wrought by that idiot Dittmar and all of his dead conspirators.
She would have to combat Buran for him.
The hatch to the big conference room opened to a wall of noise. Not quite arguments, but voices were raised and nobody was looking this way.
Jessica caught Enej’s eye across the space and nodded minutely. He smiled and stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled. The alert siren made less noise.
Silence.
She smiled gratefully at him and took her seat next to her long-serving Flag Centurion, now a Senior Centurion, the two of them at the opposite end from Arott. The room was filled to overflowing. All of her command centurions were physically present this morning, along with many of their Executive Officers.
Council of War.
Jessica found Kanda and Elzbet, representing Ballard, with Glenn, CP-406, seated on Elzbet’s right. Her smile to them was appreciative, for all the risks they had taken, scouting for her silently and successfully. None of this would work, if Buran had any foreknowledge of what she had planned.
“Stage Three is now complete,” Jessica announced to the room.
Everyone already knew that, but this was the confirmation they had been awaiting. And probably the source of the raised voices when she entered.
“We have arrived on the farthest shore of the Fribourg Empire,” she continued, checking numbers off on her left hand. “We have established a semi-permanent base in a place where hopefully none of them will ever think to look. We have made our presence known at Trusski, and drawn out a significant portion of Buran’s border fleet to intercept us.”
She paused to study all the faces around her, new and old. Comrades from the very old days, like Robbie Aeliaes and his First Officer, Harden Glenraven, a woman who could pass for Robbie’s younger sister, with the same rich, brown skin and dark curls.
Tomas Kigali and Alber’ d’Maine had been there for The Long Raid.
Others had been added later, at places like Thuringwell, or more recently in the case of the rest of the corvette commanders, for The Expedition, as this mission was coming to be known.
Jessica signaled to Casey on her right and a projection took shape above the center of the conference table, rotating slowly on the horizontal axis.
“This is the vessel Steadfast at Dawn, we believe,” she continued. “What they call a Nightmaster in the old terminology, or a JumpCarrier. Each of those four points around the main bow is a separate warship a step smaller than a Founder-class Heavy Cruiser. They can jump free entering combat, so we would be facing a battleship-equivalent with a four-cruiser escort if we chose to engage.”
Jessica signaled Casey, who pushed a second button. The rear quarter of Steadfast at Dawn turned red in response.
“This is the Energiya module,” Jessica said. “In combat, it will clear the combat area as fast as it can, and hide from everyone else until the fighting is over. Normally, Buran is attacking, so they will group up out a ways from their target planet, detach the Energiya, and then use the short-range drive, what they call the Capriole, to maneuver in close. When Fribourg attacks, they always come out a safe distance beyond the gravity well, which gives Buran time to separate, and the Energiya time to escape.”
Jessica let the moment drag and she took in the faces around her.
“I propose something special, if we can catch them at Trusski on a patrol pass.”
“Do we know they’ll come back to Trusski?” Robbie asked before anyone else could get the words out. “We’ve already hit several other systems. Well, CP-406 has, but that’s us, as far as the locals know.”
“We have not communicated with any other system,” Glenn leaned forward and fixed Robbie with almost a challenging stare. “Except to warn them to evac their station before we blew it up. Only Trusski has had any conversation.”
Jessica nodded. Just so. Glenn was, indeed, becoming a pirate, as Bedrov had foreseen, had warned.
“I expect they will run a patrol pattern to the other systems in the neighborhood,” she said. “And they will see what Glenn and her team did. Hopefully, they come back to Trusski, expecting to encounter us when we come back to get Amala Bhattacharya. It’s the only starting point they have to go on, unless they decide to abandon the sector and fort up at Samara.”
“What happens if they do?” Alber’ asked.
Jessica smiled. Only Alber’ would be disappointed to have forty unarmed planets to conquer. He was born to fight. And Yan Bedrov had given him the ultimate expression of destruction with VI Victrix.
“2218 Svati Prime happens,” she replied. “I would like to entice them to a classical engagement. I’m willing to frighten the colonists nearly to death as an alternative.”
“We could always bomb them,” Kigali offered in a sepulchral voice.
Nobody else at the table would dare voice that opinion with her, but Kigali knew where the boundaries were, when talking tactics and strategy. Practical jokes were one thing, and anyone here would help with creative suggestions. Tomas Kigali would actually go further than Alber’ on that line of reasoning. But Alber’ was merely a berserker. Tomas was a ruthless killer.
“I’d prefer not, until forced into it,” Jessica replied solemnly. “I like the moral high ground we have right now. I can always sacrifice it later if we need to castle.”
Tamara Strnad spoke up at this point.
“What happens if we shatter the Energiya?” she asked, leaning closer to put a finger into the projection. “Intel says the Capriole is short-range only. They could get home to Samara, but how many weeks or months would that take?”
Jessica smiled. Tamara had seen what the rest had apparently missed. The others thought of the combat end of the starship, not the engineering bits.
“We trap a sizeable portion of their border fleet in the middle of nowhere,” Jessica agreed. She turned to Elzbet. “I asked Ballard to pay particular attention to their default settings when they came in to Trusski. Elzbet, what say you?”
If Tomas Kigali was universally recognized as the best navigator in the fleet these days, Elzbet Aukley was possibly the best science officer in the last century. She didn’t command her own scout because she didn’t want the executive duties. One of these days, she would most likely inherit Ballard, when Kanda Lungu finally retired, or she might take up a desk job teaching others the esoteric art.
“Trusski’s star is a little cooler than standard, so the planet is perfectly situated at 0.92 AU. A little closer than most systems, but within parameters,” she began. “Centurion Orn Nwokolo had the station when Steadfast at Dawn arrived, and we had a number of passive sensors listening for anything. We tracked every anomaly, and then deleted bad data later, so we have an amazing baseline of the system. The ship appeared at about ten AU, roughly thirty degrees above the system ecliptic. The Fleet Centurion had put a bullseye on the system, and we nailed Steadfast’s emergence point to within four standard deviations of center. Almost exactly where she thought they would come out.”
“And if they panic, that’s where they’ll bounce?” Tamara had an evil smile on her face.
Jessica shared it.
“They could go anywhere,” Elzbet replied. “But if you don’t have time, you go with what you have programmed into the nav system. We don’t think they realized that anybody was paying attention, so this is our best guess.”
There were a lot of smiles around the table as Jessica took the temperature of the room. Hungry, angry smiles. Shark-like, if she were so bold.
“The plan is to split into two elements,” Jessica picked up the narrative. “Team One strikes hard and fast and forces them to respond. Team Two is sitting out near that emergence point, primed to unleash everything they have into the Energiya module if it drops out. According to Fribourg’s notes, the thing has battlecruiser-level firepower and defense, but I plan to overload it and see if we can score the kill there. If so, we can always abandon the five warships here and retreat, depending the tactical situation. Or we can push.”
“Who is on Team One?” Denis asked, eyes fixed on her from down the table. From the look on his face, he had already guessed the answer, but wanted her confirmation.
“Sorry, Denis,” Jessica said, truly apologetic. Auberon was the only old-style warship present, along with Ballard, while the rest were Expeditionary vessels, as envisioned by Yan Bedrov to specifically go toe to toe with Buran. “This will be a job for the other three troublemakers.”
She looked at them as she spoke. Robbie was phlegmatic. Alber’ nodded.
Tomas Kigali smiled like a God of Death.
“Corvette/Assault,” he turned and murmured to Alber’ triumphantly.
“We’ll see on the bullseye scores,” the berserker replied with hooded eyes.
Jessica let the byplay run, mostly for the benefit of the others. The corvette commanders all knew Kigali’s reputation as a navigator, but she doubted that many of them had studied his actions at First Petron or First Ballard. Especially the latter, where CR-264 had been close enough to an Imperial battlewagon to rake the vessel with her short-range, Type-1 beams.
And walk away unharmed.
Jessica tapped the table now, bringing everyone to utter stillness. She nodded once more to Casey, who brought the presentation forward to the first simulation.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said simply. “Now the war truly begins.”