23

Both capital ships hung somewhat protectively over the interned warships as technicians worked to undo the damage that Commodore Rivers had done to the civilian ships.

All thirteen ships, and the defensive shell of five squadrons of nova fighters, gleamed on the holodisplay in Deception’s main conference room as Kira considered the situation.

“Konrad, how long until we can take these people with us to Samuels?” she asked.

“All of them had been working on the lockouts,” he replied. “But we have both hardware and software most civilians would not. We’ll complete nova cooldown in about twelve hours, and we’ll have most of their power cores online by then.

“It’ll be a few more hours after that before anyone is ready to nova. If we want to wait until everyone is ready…thirty-six hours is my outside estimate.”

“There’s no need for us to rush,” Kira told him, glancing around at the CNGs and Captains in the meeting. “It seems pretty clear that this Commodore Rivers isn’t likely to return. We still want to be prepared for some kind of trap, but it seems she decided to play it safe.”

“Not many officers would have the moral courage to order a blockade collapsed on their own authority,” Davidović said quietly. “Even in RRF service, a withdrawal like this would draw a lot of attention.

“It’s the right call, I agree with you, but we’re her enemies. Her superiors may think differently.”

“They might,” Mwangi agreed. “And the Nova Wing will be poorer for it, from the sounds of it. Speaking as someone who expects to fight the Colossus Nova Wing in the future, I rather hope they do relieve her.”

Kira snorted.

“We wish our enemies the worst of the superiors we’ve had ourselves,” she said aloud. A mental command moved the current map of the area to the side, and a hologram of a squat, pale woman with oddly bulging eyes appeared above the table.

“Our intelligence files from Samuels include a surprising amount of information on Commodore Vanessa Rivers,” Kira noted. “She’s sixty-three standard years old and has served in the Colossus Defense Forces since her eighteenth birthday. She was a nova-fighter pilot for twenty-two years, then moved to command first one sublight monitor, then a division of three monitors.

“She then vanished from the records that our employers have access to,” Kira continued. “My guess is that she was slated to command one or both of the converted carriers that became their depot ships.

“My read of the Samuels file on her is that she is probably Colossus’s premier nova-fighter tactician. They cared enough to send their best—and their best was smart enough not to pick a fight she didn’t think she could win.”

“She’ll be back,” Mwangi said, grimly studying the woman’s image. “Somehow, I doubt their first carrier-group commander lacks the political connections to survive whatever fallout will come from her quite rational decision to retreat.”

“I agree,” Davidović said. “They’ve got another carrier, a cruiser, four more destroyers and half a dozen corvettes coming online? We barely dented their true strength, though I doubt they’re feeling that way.”

“They’re almost certainly feeling quite bruised at the moment,” Cartman agreed. “But if most of their nova-qualified officers are former fighter pilots…finding even one willing to retreat is a small miracle.”

“Are you implying something about former fighter pilots?” Kira asked sunnily.

“We both met the type in ASDF service,” her friend pointed out. “And you’re not as out of the target as you’d like to pretend, either. Who was it who tagged along on a destroyer patrol because she was bored?”

“That was me, yes,” Kira conceded. “And I’ve heard the lecture a dozen times.” She shook her head and glanced at the rest of the officers.

“I think we all know what kind of officer Cartman is talking about,” she agreed. “And, yes, I’m of the type myself, though I like to think I’m not senselessly aggressive.

“We need to factor that into our planning. Their ship COs are either ex–fighter squadron COs or ex–monitor COs, after all. Or, like Commodore Rivers…both.”

“That’s a hell of a split personality they’ll have at an organizational level,” Mwangi said. “Monitor commanders who’ve run ship with large crews before but never had access to a nova drive at all, mixed with nova-fighter commanders who’ve only run a formation of maybe two dozen people before and have almost no experience handling enlisted or noncommissioned personnel in the numbers a starship commander has to.”

“Every new nova fleet in the history of mankind has gone through at least one of those,” Kira said. “And all of them survived. I’d worry about the same problem in Samuels, except that Samuels doesn’t have monitors.”

Monitors were heavily armed sublight ships, often assembled from asteroids in a way that lent itself poorly to vessels on a nova-drive scale. The more mobile part of the defenses that made inhabited star systems generally impregnable, they were still far too large to ever nova.

Colossus’s defenses included over a hundred of them, providing a ready reservoir of experienced officers and crews that lacked only nova experience. Samuels, however, had predicated their entire system defense around large, mostly immobile asteroid fortresses.

Kira had never actually seen a star system’s defenses tested, so she had no idea which method made more sense. Certainly, Samuels’s defenses were more limited in the areas they covered—but, on the other hand, no sublight force could move around a system fast enough to provide mobile defense against a nova-drive attacker.

Asteroid fortresses could render sections of the system untouchable, but the general assessment was that you needed nova ships of your own to prevent a so-called “close blockade,” where your enemies started nabbing ships in your star system.

Colossus hadn’t had quite that much nerve yet, probably discouraged by the fact that Samuels did field several hundred nova fighters.

“Samuels will deal with building their fleet on their own,” Kira continued. “Bueller has agreed to help them on a contract basis.” She grinned. “He’s got to be getting used to that!”

“Not what I expected when I defected to a mercenary company, I have to admit,” he replied. “You do remember that I ended up on K79-L because I wanted to get away from a desk job as a design engineer, yes?”

“I have faith in your patience,” she told him. “Building the fleet isn’t really our problem. Protecting Samuels until that fleet is online is.

“We need to make sure that we’re ready and able to deflect any attempt to reimpose the blockade,” she continued. “That also requires intelligence and recon—including of Colossus itself.

“We need a plan for maintaining a defensive perimeter around Samuels and for getting eyes into Colossus, on at least an occasional basis.”

Kira looked around her people.

“I have a few thoughts on both points,” she said. “Standard Apollon tactics, in both cases, call for corvettes for those missions. Since we don’t have any of those, I’m going to open the floor for suggestions.”

OceanofPDF.com