CHAPTER FIVE
While the various admirals and their adjutants were still silent, Admiral Yoshikuni waved a hand over the center of the table; a holoflat of the local warp network winked into glowing existence. “We have an excellent chance to catch them while they are sorting themselves out in Bug 27. The timing will be close, but we can do it.
“And we’d better. If the Fourteenth Dispersate reaches Bug 26, our problems multiply. That system has a star in it, so any battle fought there would involve maneuvering around its Desai limits. That usually favors defenders.
“It would also mean that any Kaituni who are dispatched from there to inform others of our presence have two ways to escape the system: the warp points to both Bug 24 and Bug 23. So the odds of us keeping them bottled up once they get to Bug 26 are pretty unpromising.
“On the other hand, Bug 27 is a starless system with only two warp points: the one leading to us here in Bug 28, and the one that goes to Bug 26. And if any stragglers get through to Bug 26, we’ll have a free field of maneuver in which to cut them off and hunt them down. And I will reemphasize what Commodore Wethermere has been stressing from the moment we began shadowing the enemy: every time we get into a fight, keeping our existence a secret is every bit as crucial as winning. So, we cannot afford to have our presence revealed by leakers who’d run further down the warp-line to Bug 15 or Bug 17.”
Rrurr’rao leaned back from the table. “I do not wish to contend with the Admiral’s assessment,” he said carefully, “but how do you plan to enter a system that the Fourteenth Dispersate already occupies, yet reach and block the next warp point before their lead elements begin to move through it?”
She nodded to acknowledge the pertinence of the question. “By counting upon their demonstrated apathy when it comes to setting adequate rear-guard patrols in place and by sending in our fastest stealthed ships to reach the far warp point, unnoticed, before they reform their fleet for their next movement down the warp-line.” She waved her hand; a strategic map of the Bug 26 system replaced the warp line diagram. “Admiral Narrok and Least Fang Kiiraathra’ostakjo, along with Commodore Wethermere, have been aiding me in refining the relevant concept of operations for several weeks, now.”
Ossian felt, as much as saw, the resentful glare that Modelo-Vo sent his way. The commander’s exclusion from the planning of this maneuver demonstrated to everyone in the room what had long been suspected: that he remained the Fleet Tactical Officer in name only. His inability to think outside the box of conventional military doctrine had made it necessary to cut him out of a loop that his inclusion would only have weakened.
Jennifer Pietchkov put up a hand. “You’ve been working on a plan for weeks? But you only learned about these changed circumstances today.”
“True, Ms. Pietchkov,” Yoshikuni answered with an abrupt nod, “but the relevant conops were going to be employed eventually because no matter when we had to move aggressively, or where, the problem facing us was going to be the same: to trap the Kaituni in a system before engaging them. Anything else gives them the chance of sending a warning further down the warp line. And that warning could include intelligence on our special tactics or advantages which, as were pointed out earlier, become useless once our enemy has general knowledge of them.” She leaned back. “No. We have to catch them here. And it is our good fortune that the news about the Bugs breaking ranks and leaving them in the lurch apparently caught them off guard. The Kaituni will be busy restructuring their forces, going through an evolution into formations more suitable for the changes in their upcoming warp point transfers.”
“What changes are you referring to, Admiral?” Modelo-Vo asked glumly.
“Mostly, they are having to adopt a more traditional formation. Up until now, they haven’t had to worry about reconnaissance or about breaching strategies if they discover that a warp point is held against them. All those problems had been handled and absorbed by the Bugs. But not anymore. So now the Kaituni have to contemplate which ships they’re willing to pull out of their van and dedicate to those routine operations.”
“Wouldn’t they have contingency plans for that?” Pietchkov wondered.
“No doubt,” Narrok replied. “But a fleet under way is a ponderous beast to control, and must be shaped appropriately for the many tasks it might be called upon to perform with little warning. The Fourteenth Dispersate must now shift into those new formations and run through readiness drills as well. In general, this will both delay them and force them to adopt a more attenuated shape, with advance elements further ahead and the vulnerable logistical tail further behind.”
“Which determines our tactics for the coming engagement,” Yoshikuni explained to the faces around the table. “Our first move will be to retrofit some of the courier drones we captured today to get a positional update on the Kaituni and detect any buoys or automated defenses they might have left behind to watch, or simply monitor traffic, that uses the Bug 28-Bug 27 warp junction. Like the tripwires we encountered before entering this system. If they have such assets in place, we’ll send in our Arduan ship, the Fet’merah, to override those monitoring devices. Just like last time.
“The first actual combat forces we send through will be our fastest, stealthed superdreadnoughts. Their energy output is low enough that they can make almost full speed to the other warp point.”
“They will coordinate their approach vectors by brief selnarmic contacts?” Mretlak asked.
Narrok nodded. “If any deviation is required from their set path, yes. This vanguard will ultimately position itself between the main body of the Fourteenth Dispersate and the warp point to Bug 26. Then we shall bring up the bulk of the fleet behind them.”
Modelo-Vo cross his arms. “And if they see our numbers and turn tail immediately, trying to scoot through the warp point?”
Wethermere nodded. “That worried us, too. So we’re going to keep some of the larger, slower lead elements of the main body stealthed, also. That should make it look like we, too, are attenuated and with less imposing numbers. With any luck, they will think they can take us on, ship to ship, long enough for their error in judgment to prove fatal to them. If not—well, that’s why we’re going to have the cream of our stealthed SDs and SDHs holding the far warp point. Our main body is going to close with theirs as quickly and as hard as possible, and we do have a slight speed advantage. So the battle around the warp point itself could get pretty fierce for a while, but we consider it unlikely that the Kaituni will be able to bring enough weight to bear to slip any of their ships through. And if they do, we’ll have faster ships right on their tail. Which is why we need to hit them while they’re in Bug 27: so we have a whole other system’s worth of space in which to hunt down any who get around the superdreadnoughts and heavy superdreadnoughts with which I’ll be holding the warp point.”
Wethermere, along with Narrok, and Kiiraathra, detected the pronoun Yoshikuni had used a split second before the others; all three of them snapped forward at the same instant. “You’ll be holding the warp point?”
Miharu’s green eyes swiveled to meet his. The almost tortured vulnerability he had often seen in them as they looked down, or up, at him during intimate moments was utterly gone. “Yes, Commodore. That’s my place in this fight.”
“Admiral.” It was Narrok; the tone from his vocoder was extremely level. Extremely careful. “Granted that this is your decision to make—”
“Exactly correct. And it is made.”
Kiiraathra’ostakjo’s slit-irised eyes were wide. “A commander’s place is at the head of the fleet.”
“Admiral, I don’t lecture you on what you already know. Do not presume to lecture me. At the head of the fleet is exactly where I’m going to be. And exactly where I will be needed: where the fighting is going to be the trickiest, the closest, the most unconventional.” She looked around the table; her expression dared any of them to interrupt her. Wethermere was considering how best to do so when she took the initiative once again. “Frankly, none of you have my credentials for this kind of operation. During the war with the Arduans, every major engagement in which I was the ranking or executive fleet commander was one that I fought as an underdog.” She glowered at Wethermere, anticipating the objection he had his mouth open to utter. “And I was commanding a whole fleet while doing it. No one else here has that kind of experience. Admiral Narrok is an excellent strategist and will arguably do a better job than I will wielding the van of our fleet against the main body of the Fourteenth Dispersate—not the least because we’ll be employing special tactics which require a nuanced understanding of what selnarm can and cannot do. Admiral Kiiraathra’ostakjo is among the finest carrier commanders I’ve ever met or heard of—but all his carriers will be with our main van. And with those assignments, we are fresh out of admirals.”
As the horrible logic of her arguments sank in, Yoshikuni’s tone modulated into a more conversational tone. “It’s not as bad as some of you are thinking. Remember, we’ll be able to seed the area in front of the warp point with selnarmic microsensors. Thanks to the Arduan ships in my task force and on my own ships, I’ll have pretargeting on the approaching enemy hulls before they even know we’re there. And if we’re fortunate, they will see Admiral Narrok bring our main van through before they detect me. That means that they won’t all come at me at once, but in penny packets as you push and then break them from behind.”
Narrok’s tentacles were very still. “Even in those ideal circumstances,” he said slowly, “you will still have the weight of steel very much against you.”
Yoshikuni shook her head; her shining black hair described a brief, gleaming wave. “Not if you come in quickly enough. And hit them hard enough.”
Wethermere knew that tone, the one that indicated that Miharu Yoshikuni had made up her mind. It also meant that she was no longer interested in counterarguments. For reasons he had not yet discerned about her, Miharu often reached a point where she seemed to feel that analysis would only serve to undermine her resolve. And the Iron Admiral never let anything undermine her resolve. But she also hated insufficient planning, so—“Admiral, I’d like to suggest adding an additional safeguard to your concept of operations.”
Miharu’s eyes cut back in his direction, wary; she had experienced, both in the wardroom and the bedroom, how Ossian’s willow could often outbend and, so, outmaneuver her oaken stiffness. “Yes, Commodore?” She said it as if she was expecting a trap.
“Admiral, even if the Kaituni don’t have a holding force at the warp point we must enter through, we have to expect that they’ll leave a set of tripwire buoys and automated couriers there as well. At least enough to monitor any proximal activity and transit traffic. Which will alert their main body once we send something through.”
She frowned. “Commodore, we’ve already discussed the contingency for that. We send through a captured courier drone of our own to take a look around. It will register as authorized, since it comes from the enemy ship we just seized.”
“Yes, Admiral. That will tell us what’s just on the other side of the warp point. And approximately where the bulk of the Fourteenth Dispersate is located. And, if we can tap into and control the reporting elements of their tripwire, we can prevent it from reporting the transitions of your stealthed, superdreadnoughts, battleships and smaller vessels.”
“Correct. So what’s the problem?”
“Admiral, what happens if we can’t tap into and control the tripwire they’ve left behind?”
No one answered because the question was clearly rhetorical. The Kaituni would be alerted, and, failing to detect the hulls that triggered the transit alerts from the tripwire system, would no doubt begin suspecting what they had no reason to suspect up until that moment: that they were being followed by foes who possessed a technology which rendered them virtually invisible. The result of that realization—patrol and detection sweeps, alerts sent further down all accessible warp-lines, defense of the further warp point from both the near and far sides—were responses as predictable and inevitable as the falling of dominos. And potentially disastrous to the execution of Yoshikuni’s plan.
The admiral leaned back, her face unreadable. “I don’t see that we have any alternative to that risk, Commodore—here or elsewhere. We might not be able to prevent detection.”
“I agree, Admiral. But perhaps that fact should shape our tactics.”
One of Yoshikuni’s fine eyebrows elevated. “In what way?”
“We send in an unstealthed advance element that will appear to explain all the transits, in case we’re detected.”
Lentsul frowned. “Do you mean to send in a carrier and its fighters?”
Wethermere shook his head. “Unfortunately, that wouldn’t work: something as small as a fighter won’t trigger the warp point. Besides, Bug 28 is starless and therefore, all of its space is suitable for Desai drive. Meaning that fighters lose their speed advantage. However, a small number of medium-sized ships carrying smaller ships within them could be used to mislead the Kaituni.”
Kiiraathra’ostakjo groomed his whiskers briskly. “Yes. If a freighter goes through, it would only create one transit signature. But if it then released five smaller ships—couriers or pinnaces—from its bay, the Kaituni would have no reason to suspect that all those craft came in through a single transit unless they have dedicated very precise monitoring assets to their tripwire.”
Wethermere nodded. “Which we have not observed thus far. So if we bring through that kind of advance group, the Kaituni would see a number of transit-capable hulls that far exceeds the number of transits it took to get them in the system.”
Yoshikuni leaned forward. “And so, my stealthed task force could use that transit deficit to conceal, or rather ‘account for,’ its own entry. The Kaituni would see a number of unstealthed hulls that equal the number of transits. So since the number of visible ships and recorded transits match, they wouldn’t know to look for my stealthed flotilla.”
Wethermere nodded. “That’s the concept, Admiral. You slip in between the elements of that advance group of freighters and quickly race ahead under stealth on preplotted courses, confirmed as clear by the courier drones and the selnarm-capable elements within the group. Then you set up your task force between their main van and the warp point on toward Bug 15.”
Modelo-Vo looked as though he’d swallowed a cup of vinegar. “And if the Kaituni are already most of the way to that warp point? Sending in an unstealthed advance group might chase them out.”
“Not if most of the advance group is comprised of Kaituni—or Arduan—craft and running Kaituni transponder codes. The enemy will tweak to the sham eventually—they always do—but the further away they are, the longer it will take them to do so, and the less concerned they are going to be about activity at the warp point they’ve already left far behind.”
Kiiraathra’ostakjo was nodding in the abrupt fashion of his species. “This additional precaution fits well with the concept of operations we devised earlier. We shall insert the Arduans who will attempt to gain control of the tripwire as the lead element of that first group. If they succeed in commandeering the buoys and alert system so that it will not report transits, all may proceed as in our best-case scenario. However, if they fail, the rest of the advance group will come through, with Admiral Yoshikuni’s task force interspersed among them. Either way, the Kaituni will have no reason to suspect that she is stealthed and making best speed for the other warp point. And that is the crucial advantage we must gain.”
Yoshikuni nodded. “I agree. This gives us a good set of contingencies with which to adapt to different operational outcomes. We will employ them and use the Special Recon Detachment that Commodore Wethermere has assembled to function as that advance group. Now, unless there are any further questions, I want to commence detailed planning with the command staff.” As the nonmilitary personnel rose to leave, Yoshikuni glanced—almost reluctantly, Ossian thought—at him. “Commodore, you will leave with Commander Modelo-Vo and brief him on the operational particulars of the recon detachment immediately. He’ll want some time to settle in with them.”
“I beg your pardon, Admiral?”
Yoshikuni’s glance returned to him as a hard—unnecessarily hard—stare. “Commodore Wethermere, don’t be obtuse. You are being relieved from command of the recon element.”