CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cormag Dewar pulled on his formal uniform jacket and buttoned the front. It was a bit tight around the waistline, he noticed.
“Just a touch of winter weight,” he told himself, looking out the window. A snowstorm had turned the morning sky to a gray abyss, and flakes whipped around the panes and built up near the base. “Ach. Should have prayed for better weather.”
Someone knocked at his office door, and he turned as Patrick MacDowell, his aide, opened it.
“Sir, he’s here!”
Young MacDowell had tawny hair, blue eyes, a pale complexion, and a deceptively weak-looking chin. Dewar knew better than most just how deceptive that chin was, but the young man was paler than usual.
“The President’s here this early?” the general asked, eyebrows raised. “He and I were supposed to meet at the spaceport in—” he double-checked the time “—two hours.”
“No, I mean him him. Governor Murphy.” MacDowell shook his head. “He just showed up and—”
A massively built Marine sergeant major with a Hoplon patch pushed past MacDowell into the office. He was bareheaded and wore only a light fatigue jacket, despite the bits of ice clinging to his eyebrows, and his hard eyes circled the office once, like a tactical sensor drone. Then he sniffed and stepped to one side.
The admiral who entered was taller than Dewar had anticipated. Bit uglier, too. He wore a black greatcoat and beret, both dusted with melting snow, and he stripped off his right glove to extend that hand to the general.
“Governor.” Dewar gripped the offered hand. “Your task force only just arrived and we weren’t expecting you groundside for hours. There’s a fife and drum corps at the spaceport that’s been rehearsing for—”
“And all your hospitality won’t go to waste, I promise,” Murphy said as a red-haired Navy captain followed him into an office which was becoming distinctly crowded. “This is O’Hanraghty, my chief of staff,” the admiral said, waving at the still-shivering captain. “You’re aware of what happened to Inverness?”
“Where’s the bloody heater?” O’Hanraghty muttered, clapping his gloved hands together. He looked around, spotted the heating vent beneath the window, and made a beeline toward it.
“Tea, Patrick,” Dewar said. “Tea!”
MacDowell disappeared, and the general pointed Murphy at the desk and angled one of his office chairs to sit in himself.
Murphy shrugged off his coat and hung it on a rack near the door, then sat…in the chair, not behind the desk.
“This is your office, General Dewar,” he said. “I’ve got my own big chair in the governor’s mansion, correct?”
“You…should,” Dewar said, sinking back into the chair behind his desk. “Though I believe your predecessor packed up a fair amount of the furniture when he left.”
“Governor Babikov is gone?” Murphy raised an eyebrow.
“Two days ago. Something about a family obligation and he was sure you’d understand. That’s not quite how I understood it, but let’s not waste time on rumor.” He jammed a thumb onto the comm key on his desk. “Patrick! Tea!”
“If the previous governor had a reputation, I’d like to know,” Murphy said. “He was here for many years. I’m fairly sure his…performance has created a certain expectation of the new governor. For good or for ill.”
Dewar’s interest piqued. Maybe this man wasn’t here just to mark time after all.
“Babikov had several local hire…secretaries. He decided he’d leave the system with one.” Dewar shrugged. “The others took offense at their exclusion and complained to their clans. I believe a number of their male relatives were planning a visit.”
“He didn’t have a security detail?” the sergeant major asked.
“He did,” Dewar said dryly. “Some of them were the male relatives. Governor Babikov was, ah…not known for his judgment. But what was that you were saying about Inverness?” His eyes narrowed. “Scotia’s only a few weeks away by merchantman, but there’s not much traffic with it. So in answer to your earlier question, Governor, no, I’m not aware of anything that’s happened there.”
“It wasn’t pretty, I’m afraid.” Murphy had an excellent poker face, Dewar thought, but his gray eyes were bleak. “A few weeks ago…” he began, and the general sat back to listen as the admiral laid out the League attack and the rescue effort.
Dewar sat silent until the new governor finished, then shook his head.
“And the system picket didn’t even fire a shot?”
“They did not,” Murphy said. “That decision wasn’t popular with the crews of BatRon Seven-Oh-Two, either, I’m afraid. And such a…passive response isn’t exactly likely to discourage future raids. Which brings me to why I came to you first. The League force that smashed Inverness likely based out of Shanhaiguan, and they’ve had enough time to return to base and receive new orders. I don’t know what those orders will be, but if they’re to launch another attack, New Dublin is the next most likely target and the attack’s likely to be heavier rather than lighter. How prepared is the system to defend against the same force? Or a heavier one, for that matter?”
There was a knock on the door and MacDowell came back in with a silver tea service. He set out cups and saucers and poured.
“Finally, something warm!” O’Hanraghty took his and drank it as fast as he could, then picked up the pot and poured another cup.
“President Tolmach has been calling, Sir,” MacDowell said, looking at Dewar.
“I promise I’ll make my scheduled appearance at the spaceport.” Murphy sipped from his own cup. “Please pass on my apologies for jostling protocol.”
“Right away, Governor.”
MacDowell turned to hurry out, but a meaty palm in the center of his chest stopped him.
“We’re not here,” the sergeant major rumbled.
“Who’s not here?” MacDowell blinked guileless blue eyes, and the Marine grinned.
“You get it,” he said, and slapped the young man on the shoulder as he let him pass.
“New Dublin was attacked nigh ten years ago,” Dewar said. He swiped a finger across a reader and a holo of the system came up.
The system primary was an F7v star, considerably hotter than that of the Sol System, but Crann Bethadh—the third of its eight planets—had an orbital radius of seventeen light-minutes, more than twice that of Old Earth. So despite its toasty warm star, it was a decidedly chilly planet, as the weather outside Dewar’s office window demonstrated. Its next nearest neighbor in, Goibniu, on the other hand, was only about 34,000,000 kilometers farther from the primary than Old Earth from Sol…and hotter than the hinges of hell, so far as habitability went. Despite which, almost a quarter million New Dubliners lived there.
The system possessed an asteroid belt, about 250,000,000 kilometers farther out than Crann Bethadh, followed by a super-Jovian gas giant, Dagda, which fell just short of brown star status, with an orbital radius of 59 LM, and slightly smaller gas giants—Brigit and Cailleach—at 115 and 227 LM, respectively. Bodach and Donn, a useless pair of frozen balls of ice, completed the stellar family at 445 and 869 LM.
“As you can see, we’re a bit more exposed than some, out here at the outer edge of the Goldilocks zone, especially for a star as hot as New Dublin.” Dewar shrugged. “They didn’t drive in too hard, and thank God they didn’t, because we didn’t have a lot on hand to stop them. What we did have was mainly about ten percent of the missiles we really needed, and we only had those because we had half a battle squadron in for its sixty-month maintenance cycle. We sort of…borrowed the missiles they’d off-loaded.”
“Borrowed?” Murphy arched an eyebrow, and Dewar shrugged.
“Stole, really. And Olympia sent us a bill for them, afterward.” His tone was flat and he met Murphy’s eyes levelly. Then he shrugged again. “Choice between seeing your home slagged and pissing off the federal government, and decisions get real simple.”
“I imagine so,” Murphy murmured with a nod. “But if the ships were down for overhaul, how did you launch them?”
“Borrowed our main cargo station’s drone cells,” Dewar said. “The resource availability here in New Dublin helped push the decision to upgrade our yard facilities, and Goibniu—” he gestured at New Dublin’s second planet “—is lousy with metals. One of the reasons we’re a category delta system. It’s cheaper and easier to use mag drivers to launch cargo drones than to use manned ships, and loads of ore don’t mind the acceleration. So Goibniu kicks them off, they use their onboard drives to kill acceleration at the other end, and then they dock. We send them back the same way, except they insert themselves into orbit until the mines dirt-side need them. And it just happens that the mag drives we were able to get hold of were old surplussed Mark 37 drone launchers. So—”
“So,” Murphy said, eyes gleaming suddenly as he glanced at O’Hanraghty, “you used your cargo launchers to fire off all those missiles you ‘borrowed’?”
“Exactly.” Dewar nodded. “And President Tolmach authorized us to use them all in a single launch. So we did, and we seem to have taken ’em by surprise. Don’t think they saw them at all until the fusion drives lit off on final. ’Course, we didn’t have Navy fire control, so they were inaccurate as hell, but we did score a couple of hits. No kills, but I think it scared them, and they didn’t know how many more we might have. Probably scary as hell if they never figured out where they came from. Anyway, they turned and ran for it.”
“Excellent move,” Murphy congratulated him. “I’ve seen something like it used in a combat simulation, and it completely blindsided the other commander.”
“May’ve gotten them to break off,” Dewar said, “but the bastards launched an alpha strike of their own before they vectored out of the system. And maybe it would have been better if they had figured out where they’d come from, because they targeted our largest space station, instead. Four thousand, six hundred and twenty souls lost that day.”
“Alpha strikes are hard to defeat, even with a long time of flight,” Murphy said quietly.
“I know. And, like I said, our orbit makes us more vulnerable than some. But, coupled with the mines on Goibniu and the smelting stations in orbit around Crann Bethadh, it also makes us a logical place for ship repair. Our yards have seen a lot of use repairing Navy ships and merchantmen for a long time—more traffic than Jalal, some years, especially with the upgrades. That’s why we’ve usually got at least one FTLC and its parasite group in-system for local defense.”
“I’m aware.” Murphy nodded.
New Dublin’s population was the next best thing to a hundred million. That was tiny for any Heart World—there were single megaurbs that had populations of well over fifty million—but it was enormous for a system this far out in the Fringe. And, as Dewar had just pointed out, that made it a valuable industrial node, well situated to support the Navy in the Concordia Sector.
It also made what had happened in Scotia even more ominous, and he leaned forward to examine the system holo.
“If the League were to hit New Dublin again, with a force, say, twice as strong as the one that hit Inverness, what would you people have to back up my task force?”
“Governor, I…I haven’t even shown you around the capital and you’re already measuring the system’s drapes. But then there’s Inverness and…I wanted orbital launchers and actual fire control put in years ago.” Dewar narrowed his eyes slightly. “Never had the budget or the trained manpower to make that happen, though, and Olympia—Well, keeping the yards up and running has been the main federal priority.”
His eyes met Murphy’s for a moment, and the admiral nodded ever so slightly. The federal government didn’t much like the notion of allowing Fringe systems the firepower to stand off a League raid. The same weapons might find themselves used against the Federation by a star system far enough “out of compliance.” No wonder they’d been…less than cooperative about building up New Dublin’s defenses.
“Our local defense budget’s always been tight,” Dewar continued, “and after we ‘stole’ the Navy’s missiles, it took us years just to pay for them instead of buying new. I’ve got a few in-system ships to patrol the inner system, and the standing militia as a garrison.”
“How do you manage a ‘standing militia’?” O’Hanraghty asked. “Permanent ground forces are restricted to the federal government. That means the Federation Army.”
“And when was the last time you saw the Army out in the Fringe, Captain?” Dewar asked dryly.
“About the Tenth of Never,” O’Hanraghty conceded with a tight grin. “But how did you sneak a permanent force past the Oval?”
“Didn’t tell them we had one. For that matter, we don’t…technically. We discharge them every three hundred sixty-four days Standard. Then we reenlist the lot two mornings later. I’d advise you not to allow shore leave during that interval. Crann Bethadh gets a bit rowdy.”
“Neatly done,” O’Hanraghty congratulated him with a rather broader grin. “But what are your in-system craft armed with?”
“Basically they’re old Saber-class destroyers we picked up cheap when the Navy decommissioned the last of them,” Dewar said, and O’Hanraghty nodded.
The Sabers had been effective ships—for light combatants, at least—in their day, but that day had ended the better part of two decades ago. They were heavier metal than most Fringe Systems could command, but that didn’t mean they’d count for much against modern designs.
“I’ll need the repair timetables for every warship in your docks,” Murphy said.
“Well, we’ve got most of CruRon Four-Sixty-Nine in for their yearly overhaul, and CruRon Twenty-Six just completed theirs,” Dewar said thoughtfully. “And I suppose you already knew about Patton and Foch?” TFNS Patton and Foch were the other two units of Yance Drebin’s BatRon 702, detached to New Dublin for their regularly scheduled sixty month deep-maintenance overhaul. “They’re due to complete sometime in the next thirty days,” Dewar said. “Don’t imagine there’s much point sending them back to Scotia when they have, though.”
“No, there isn’t,” Murphy agreed grimly.
“We’ve been alerted to expect another task group, en route to Zaragoza. Don’t have an exact movement schedule on them, though. Just an alert that they’re coming through to pick up CruRon Twenty-Six and that we’re to stand by to provide any maintenance they may need.”
Murphy nodded. Given how long messages took to travel across interstellar distances, it wasn’t unusual for ship movement information to be incomplete. Sometimes it was even flatly wrong.
“Aside from that,” Dewar continued, “we do have BatRon Nine-Twelve and BatCruRon Eighty-Four in-system at the moment.”
“We noticed Ninhursag’s and Tiamat’s transponders on our way in,” O’Hanraghty said with a nod. “What’s the story with that?”
“Tiamat kicked up a harmonic in her drive fan. A pretty bad one. Commodore Granger decided to stop off here on her way back to the Heart and see if we couldn’t put it straight. Been working on it for about a week now, and the yards think they’ve found the problem, but we’re having to fabricate some of the components, so they’ll be here a while.”
“Interesting,” O’Hanraghty murmured, darting a quick look at Murphy.
“Governor,” Dewar said, “I know you said you just came from Scotia. But are you aware of an actual imminent threat to New Dublin? Because if there is one, we can mobilize more personnel. An awful lot of the able-bodied—and once able-bodied—adults here on Crann Bethadh. All veterans.”
“I don’t have any actionable intelligence about an imminent threat.” Murphy slapped his palms against his knees. “But we just left a system the League decimated and left to die. Consider me a bit more motivated than usual. Harry, have Ops organize a recon from Drebin’s group. I want a fresh gravity well survey done on every object bigger than Io.”
“Aye, aye. They won’t be happy about it.”
“They need the practice.” Murphy turned back to Dewar. “So we need to beef up Crann Bethadh’s missile power. I have a few thoughts about that. What else do we need?”
The general locked eyes with him again for a moment.
“Governor…perhaps you’d like to unpack your things before we get too far down in the weeds. Then there’s the matter of your welcome ceremony.”
“I appreciate the effort, but every moment we’re not working on the system’s defenses is time given to the League to better prepare for their attack,” Murphy said.
O’Hanraghty cleared his throat, and Murphy glanced at him, then back at the New Dubliner.
“We can talk on the walk back to the spaceport,” he said.
“That’s a far piece to walk,” Dewar replied.
“Exactly what I’m thinking. It will give us time. And besides, Captain O’Hanraghty needs the exercise.”
“Dragging me back out into the cold already,” O’Hanraghty said, rebuttoning the coat he’d never actually taken off. “Thanks, Sir.”
“Fresh, planetside air is good for you, Harry! Especially after all the time we spent breathing that anemic, recycled shipboard stuff.”
O’Hanraghty rolled his eyes, and Dewar chuckled.
“We’ve time to finish tea first, though, Captain,” he told O’Hanraghty, pouring the other man a fresh cup. He topped up his own and then raised an eyebrow at Murphy.
“Yes, please,” the admiral said. “It’s remarkable. Local variety?”
“Came by way of a League supplier.” Dewar chuckled again, louder, at Murphy’s expression. “Smuggler had the wrong excise tax stamps on his crates. Forfeited the goods instead of seeing the magistrate. We’ll see some illegal trade come through on the way to feral worlds beyond the blue line. Couldn’t sell it. Shame to see it go to waste.”
“Shame, indeed.” Murphy sipped. “Talk to me about your militia’s loadout.”