Kira didn’t know much about Samuels or Gorkhali cuisine, but if the food served at dinner was any example, she suspected that Samuels’s Gorkhali population spent a great deal of time with sheep. Much like her own branch of Apollon cultural cuisine, it was focused on turning mutton into something more edible.
And the chefs at the high-quality hotel the SDC had installed in their command fortress were experts at their trade. The food was amazing, and the Commodores and their spouses proved to be excellent company.
Still, everyone was clearly waiting for the end of the meal. When the dessert plates were cleared away and the hotel staff brought out carafes of a harshly brewed black tea Kira was unfamiliar with, it was clear that the real work was about to begin.
“Admiral,” Bachchan addressed her, the Samuels Commodore leaning back in her chair. “I assume everyone has explained to you the politics that resulted in tonight’s particular arrangements?”
“Mr. Tapadia gave me the rundown,” Kira agreed. “Only about half of the people who might end up as the commander of the SDC are in this room, and even you don’t know which of you is going to get the job. Do I have it roughly summarized?”
The three Commodores shared glances, but Bachchan simply nodded.
“For reference, there are eight Commodores and eight Brigadiers in the Samuels Defense Command,” she noted. “While Commodores D’Cruze and Rao are first and foremost the commanding officers of their battle stations, each is also responsible for a division of three other orbital fortresses above Bennet.
“There are three junior commodores who each command a division of two smaller fortresses making up the rest of the Samuels defensive fortifications,” Bachchan continued.
“Two more Commodores, Maus and Horáček, each command a larger division above one of our gas giants. The SDC also hold responsibility for what limited army forces we have, a standing emergency security and support force of eight brigades and approximately sixty thousand uniformed personnel.”
Bachchan spread her hands.
“While there are nova-fighter wings positioned on each orbital fortress, I hold overall authority on our nova-fighter force,” she noted. “General Nibhanupudi and I had an…ongoing discussion over where the nova warships would fall in our existing structures.”
She looked at the other officers and Tapadia.
“Anyone have anything to add to that summary?” she asked.
“Not truly,” D’Cruze replied. “At the end of the day, Admiral Demirci, we are here to answer your questions. Our training, organizational structure, even our resources and equipment, are based around a defense of Samuels that we mostly regarded as theoretical.
“Even with the beginning of a nova fleet, the SDC represents barely one percent of the system domestic product. While the officers of the SDC are hardly pacifists, we serve a culture that holds pacifism as one part of true enlightenment.
“That impacts us,” he conceded. “And more importantly, it impacts the political objectives of the government we serve. The SDC exists to protect Samuels itself from a direct attack. We never expected and were never equipped to secure trade routes that had never come under attack!”
“Hence my people being here,” Kira told them. She considered the people at the table and glanced over at her starship Captains.
“For the mission we face, officers, the only vessels and resources that are relevant are those that are capable of reaching the trade routes,” she noted. “If it can’t nova, it’s not part of the equation. Colossus will never have the strength to challenge Samuels’s defenses.”
Rao and D’Cruze—both tall, dark men who could have passed for cousins, if not brothers—exchanged a long, long look. Then D’Cruze gestured to Bachchan.
“You were right,” he told her. “I was starting to figure that, anyway, but hearing Admiral Demirci put it that way does put it in perspective, doesn’t it?”
He turned back to Kira.
“We need to maintain our defenses to keep that true, but when was the last time you know of that a star system was actually attacked?” he asked.
“The only situation I’m aware of was the mess in Ypres in the Syntactic Cluster,” Kira told them. “And that situation was complicated by the fact that Ypres was internally divided and had significant sublight fleets. A handful of more-modern nova ships were enough to destabilize the balance of power, but the real weight of the battle was expected to be carried by the monitor squadrons.”
In the end, that battle hadn’t happened the way anyone had expected—not least because one of those “more-modern nova ships” had been captured by one Kira Demirci and transformed into Deception.
“In general, strategic and operational doctrine for every nation I am aware of takes the logic that even a small number of asteroid forts of comparable technology level renders a star system impregnable to nova attack,” she said. “While a nova fleet could be in the Samuels System outside the range of the SDC’s fortresses, it would take dozens or even hundreds of nova capital ships to match the firepower of a single fort.
“I have never heard of a star system being attacked and taken,” she concluded. “Maintaining a solid level of home defense when faced with a threat like Colossus is necessary, as you said. But…this conflict, like most I know of, is being fought over trade routes and discharge spots.
“Which means it will be fought by nova ships far beyond the reach of your fortresses.”
“Which means you need to know what nova ships we have,” Rao said. “And that it is more important that you work with our nova-force officers than our fortress commands and ground forces.”
Kira knew that question carried more weight than the immediately obvious and that she was being asked, however indirectly, to comment on the political shenanigans that would decide the next head of the SDC.
But the question wasn’t one she could avoid.
“That is correct, yes,” she confirmed.
Bachchan didn’t say anything, but she looked…vindicated.
“We’ll talk to people tomorrow, Bachchan,” D’Cruze said calmly. “But that does clarify many things and may make this process shorter. For the moment, though…what do you need to know, Admiral Demirci?”
Kira was reasonably sure she’d followed the undertone. It sounded to her like D’Cruze and Rao were going to drop their own campaigns for the leadership of the SDC and throw their influence behind Bachchan, since the Nova Fighter Division CO was the best-qualified officer they had for the task at hand.
It was what Kira would prefer, she suspected, but she did not need to get involved in her employer’s politics.
“I need to know more about what your nova fighters’ capabilities are and how many of them you have,” she told them. “And then I need to know what other nova ships you have and if you have any, say, carrier conversions under discussion.”
“We have at least a twelve-plane squadron of nova fighters on every fortress,” Bachchan said instantly. “Several of the larger fortresses have extra squadrons aboard, and we have several more squadrons located at a base on Bennet’s moon.
“All told, the NFD musters thirty twelve-plane squadrons. Three hundred and sixty nova fighters, all of our own Guardian design.”
Tapadia concealed a cough.
“The Guardian design may…not be quite as home-built as Samuels-Tata Technologies likes to claim,” he murmured. “The current Guardian-Three design is almost entirely unique to us, but the original Guardian was based on an acquired copy of the Apollo Phalanx-Three heavy fighter.”
“Send me the current schematics,” Kira asked. “I am hardly concerned about a thirty-year-old counterintelligence failure on the part of my former government.”
“That is fair,” Tapadia conceded. A gesture tossed her a pair of schematics.
Kira passed them on to her companions and examined them in a virtual space in front of herself. The Guardian-Two and Guardian-Three designs were decent heavy fighters, she concluded. She could see the Phalanx heritage in their design in several places, but they also had a good bit of the Colossus’s Liberator in their DNA.
Big, heavy, expensive planes with dual torpedoes and heavy guns. Designed to be able to perform all roles instead of specializing in one, with the newer fighter generally superior in all ways.
“What’s the split between the -Twos and the -Threes?” she asked. “I’m presuming you have both still in commission?”
Otherwise, she figured they wouldn’t be giving her information on the Guardian-Two at all.
“Two to one,” Bachchan said instantly. “Currently, each squadron has two flight groups of Guardian-Twos and a flight group of Guardian-Threes, usually led by the squadron commander. One hundred twenty Guardian-Threes, two hundred forty Guardian-Twos.
“We have no carrier-style spacecraft,” she continued. “I’m trying to get authorization from the Ministries to make you an offer for the two depot ships you seized from Colossus, but they’re understandably hesitant to buy mediocre ships when we should have real carriers…eventually.”
“You also have the consular packets, which can carry nova fighters, correct?” Kira asked.
“Ah, yes, the Macey Industries ships,” Tapadia confirmed. “None of those are actually in SDC service. Springtime Chorus and Autumn Songs serve as consular ships, as you said. We have used their ability to carry nova fighters in the past to provide escort for diplomatic missions, but they are not regularly available to the SDC.”
“Might be worth having a conversation with the Ministries on that, though,” Kira pointed out. “Each of those three ships can carry the entirety of one of your squadrons of nova fighters.”
“I’m not sure I see the need,” Bachchan replied. “My fighters can make it to the trade routes easily enough. Takes us longer if we’re going farther, but the key blockade points are only a single nova away.”
Kira sighed and resisted the urge to bury her face in her hands.
Systems that were second-tier in their own regions—as opposed to on any kind of interstellar scale, by which standard even Apollo and Brisingr were roughly seventh-tier powers—seemed to fall into two categories of mistakes in her growing experience.
The first group never managed, either through lack of tech or lack of will, to acquire the ability to build class two nova drives. They ran their interstellar security with full-size nova ships and a handful of purchased nova fighters, which left them at a distinct disadvantage when running up against people with proper combined-arms forces.
Samuels, it seemed, fell into the second group. They had nova fighters and were only interested in local security, so they saw no need for carriers.
“The problem with that, Commodore Bachchan, is what happens when your nova fighters make that one jump and engage a Colossus force,” Kira said quietly. “Your people’s drives will still be cooling down for thirty-six hours, whereas the CNW’s fighter will be able to nova every few minutes and fly circles around you.
“You sacrifice your nova fighters’ greatest tactical advantage by using their nova drives for operational mobility. It’s something that shouldn’t be neglected, but the cost of nova fighters jumping long distances on their own is high. Hence, carriers.”
There was a long silence in the room. Her officers fully understood that problem at the kind of bone-deep level that only years of living it could instill.
Very clearly, a military that had never fought a war hadn’t quite absorbed that reality.
“I think I may have to repeat that, word for word, when I next argue for the depot ships,” Bachchan noted. “I was thinking they would be useful—but I now think they may be critical.”
“They will be,” Kira agreed. “Especially if you have no other nova combatants at all.”
“We have a single twelve-ship squadron of gunships that we use for anti-piracy patrols,” D’Cruze noted. “They are…not new.”
“We also bought them from Colossus, so we are currently going over them with a fine-toothed comb,” Bachchan pointed out. “They’re fifty years old, so they’re probably fine, but given the circumstances, I want to be absolutely certain they’re clean before we deploy them against Colossus.”
She sighed.
“Plus, I doubt they’re even worth the fuel to send them out against what the Nova Wing has now,” she admitted.
Gunships were the basic “minimum viable combatant” constructable by anyone with access to the standard colonial database. They were basically a minimum-sized, one-kilocubic Ten-X class one nova drive attached to Harrington coils, antigrav coils and a set of light plasma cannon. Ten thousand cubic meters didn’t go very far and often resulted in a nova “warship” that would lose a one-on-one duel with nova fighters a thirtieth of their size.
“Potentially not,” Kira conceded. “And Mr. Tapadia has promised a new fleet, but from what I have seen, you’re still building yards?”
“Exactly,” Tapadia confirmed. “I believe the First Minister discussed engaging some of your technicians to review our designs before we laid keels? We’ll be commencing some test builds in the civilian yards within the next ten days, but we still have time.”
“I can only really flag the easy problems,” Bueller warned. “There are a number of easy-to-make mistakes I can help you avoid, but bigger issues…are harder to both find and fix.”
“Anything we can do now to save the lives of our people in the future is absolutely critical,” Tapadia told him. “If your skills are available, we will hire them. I will have my people make arrangements.”
“That’s roughly where we’re all at, I think,” Kira said. A hovering pattern of starfighters flickered across her vision as she considered the numbers and capabilities of the SDC.
“Commodore Bachchan and I, plus whoever ends up in charge of the SDC, will need to review a combined patrol-and-scouting schedule,” she continued. “That meeting will need to be more formal than this.
“I know what resources you have now, and that impacts my plans.” They were both better and worse than she’d feared, in many ways. It would be handy if the SDC bought the two captured depot ships into commission, though turning them into even crappy carriers would take time Kira didn’t think they had.
“The next step will be to make the arrangements to lay out that schedule,” she continued. “I’m pleased that we were all able to sit down and get a feel for each other. The next few months appear to promise a chance to fine-tune processes and patterns before the Nova Wing is ready for round two—but also remember that the Nova Wing retains a carrier and two destroyers that are fully functional combatants.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t expect Colossus to come to the negotiating table,” she admitted, “but that is something your government should attempt anyway. Regardless of discussions, though, my next critical piece of intelligence is going to be hard to find.
“Somehow, Commodores, Mr. Tapadia…we need to find out how long it’s going to take for the Nova Wing to get the rest of the Brisingr ships refitted and crewed.”
Because if the Colossus Nova Wing put two carriers, a cruiser and a dozen escorts into the field before the rest of Memorial Force arrived…Kira was going to have to get very clever to fulfill her contract.