July 2251

Tarbos, six weeks later

“Gawd almighty, would you look at that?”  Horace Hamilton gaped at the sight.

The Mountain View’s Pilot Lounge offered a good view of space to the starboard side of the ship, and it was there that the newest ship in the Fleet was coasting slowly into the Fleet’s new orbital spacedock.  The battle cruiser Orleans was the first in its class, fifteen hundred meters of dark metal around a huge Gellar tunnel.  Bumps on the giant cylinder housed particle beam emitters and missile pods.

“Would you look at all those guns?  God, there must be thirty, forty emitters.  And I can see six missile bays just on this side.  What a monster!”

“Settle down, Horse.”

“Angel, you want to make any bets against running a simulated attack on that?”

Lieutenant Commander Andrea Crider looked at her wingman.  “It’s just another ship, Horse.  They’ve all got their weak spots.”

“This one ain’t got very many, Angel.”

“If the Grugell ever come storming in with a fleet, you’d better hope you’re right.”

The Orleans

Admiral Gauss looked up from his desk when the panel door to his Flag stateroom opened.  “Jerry.  Have we docked yet?”

“We’re about to, sir,” Captain Jensen replied.  “I thought you’d want to come watch.”

“I’ll pass.  I’ve seen ships dock before.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What I need you to do, Jerry, is get in contact with the Mountain View, the Reuben James, the Ian Mac Vie, the Robert Pritchard, and the Cairo.  Set up an assembly formation in the Mountain View’s Hangar Bay.  I want ship Captains, XO’s, squadron leaders and XO’s, Chief Engineers, Chief Medical Officers, and whoever else the ship’s Captains think are essential personnel.  Arrange to have the address piped over to all personnel standing watch on the ships.  With the Flag here now, this is officially a Task Group.  Time to let ‘em know what we’re going to be doing.”

“I’ll get to it, sir.  Anything else?”

“Yeah.  Find out where the best place is to get a steak down in Mountain View.  I’ve had my fill of shipboard food.  I bet you have too.”

Captain Jensen chuckled.  “I’ll get right on that, sir.”

“Jerry?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Your wife and kids, have you got them passage from Earth to Tarbos?”

“They’ll be in on the Adirondack in eight weeks, sir.”

“We should be back from exercises by then.  You’ll be here to meet your family, Jerry.”

“Nobody ever said this was supposed to be easy duty, sir.”

The Shade Tree

“Coming out of subspace in three, two, one, out now.”

The Shade Tree lurched slightly as it dropped into normal space.  Dead ahead was the orb of a type G star.

“Running spectrographic analysis now,” Indira Krishnavarna called from Scanning.  “Data confirms that’s New Albion’s sun.  We’re about two days travel standard sublight drive.  No other traffic detected in the area.”

“Good.  Ahead one-third.  Navs, arrange for and plot a standard parking orbit for New Albion as soon as you can pick up the planet.  Anybody remember if New Albion has a Skyhook?”

“One, Captain, about sixty kilometers from the port,” Krishnavarna answered.  “Kinross is the port town, and about two hundred kilometers from that is Glengarry, that’s the capital.”

“Good.  We should let someone down there know that they’re going to have company.  Indira, get that tracking system of yours set up, start scanning for transit tracks.”

“Already doing it, Captain.  There’s nothing showing right now.  I don’t know how long a track will show after a transit, though.”

“Something else we’ll have to find out.”

The Mountain View’s Hangar deck

“Officers and crew of Task Force One.  The Task Force Commander.”

The assembled personnel in the Hangar snapped to attention to the clatter of folding metal chairs.  Rear Admiral Isaac Gauss, the newly arrived Commander in Chief, Task Force One, strode the central aisle of the room to the podium at the front.  “Take your seats,” he barked.

“Before I left Earth,” he began, “Fleet Admiral Kosake charged me – charged us – with the task of securing the frontier.  Now, for those of you who haven’t really thought about that, let me tell you exactly what that means.

“We’ve got eight ships.  The new battle cruiser CSS Orleans, and the carrier Mountain View, both the first and only ships in their classes.  We have the light cruisers Dallas and Settlement, and the frigates Ian Mac Vie, Reuben James, Robert Pritchard and Farragut.  Eight ships, two wings of A-66 attack fighters, and one of A-70 strike fighters.”

Gauss tapped a contact on the podium, and a giant holographic map of the Confederacy swam into view over the assembled officers and crewmembers.  Along one side of Confederate space, outward in the spiral arm, the border was traced in red; this was the Grugell frontier.

“That red line is what concerns me.  On the other side of that red line is a hostile, totalitarian, militarized dictatorship that threatens our very existence.  Our eight ships have been charged with securing this border, which for your information is just over sixty thousand light years by almost a million light years in the plane of the ecliptic. 

“That’s a lot of ground to cover, people.  That’s one hundred and eighty billion square light years of border.  With eight ships.  How are we to guard one hundred and eighty billion light years with eight ships?  We face the same problem Napoleon faced on old Earth – too much border.  Old Bony told his generals ‘you can’t be strong everywhere, so pick one spot and be strong there, and hope it’s the right spot.’  Well, we have a plan for that, and when we leave tomorrow for Fleet exercises in the New Albion system – the system nearest that border – you’ll know what that plan is.  But for today, I want you to know what my thoughts and intentions for the Task Force we are forming here right now.

“What concerns me, people, is what’s going on across that red line.  Back on Earth, we have had all too much historical precedence that tells us what to expect from military dictatorships.  What we can expect is that this dictatorship, this ‘Empire,’ will not be able to co-exist peacefully with a free society.  We can expect a fight, and probably sooner rather than later.  Time works for us, not for them, and they have to know that.

“Which brings me to my next concern.  They know more about us than we do them.  You’ve all seen the briefing data.  The Grugell have cloaked ships, and they’ve routinely run reconnaissance missions into the Confederacy.  They know the locations of our major settled worlds, and they know our traffic lanes.  We know nothing about them.  We need to start an active reconnaissance program to learn their transit lanes, their standard jump points, and their primary settled worlds.

“But most of all, people – most of all, you all have my word, this Task Force will be ready when that fight comes.  Now down there on Tarbos, some of the politicians are nattering about finding some sort of ‘common ground,’ with the Grugell.  They want to ‘negotiate,’ when we’re the ones negotiating from a weaker position.  Well, I’m here to tell you that their position is pure, unadulterated bullshit.”  He paused to let the profanity sink in; most of the assembled audience weren’t used to hearing Flag officers swear in public.  “When the fight comes, and it will come, the only way we’ll achieve a peace is to win that fight.  And we will win it decisively, finally, overwhelmingly.

“It’s going to be hard.  Training for this fight is going to be hard.  We’ll be in space for months at a time.  There will be long nights with no sleep, there will be drills after drills after drills.  We’ll run exercises until we’re about to drop, and then we’ll run them again. 

“Some of you won’t be able to take it.  When that happens, we’ll drop you down there on Tarbos next time we make port; you’ll turn in your uniforms and find yourself some other occupation.  But those of you that do, and by God that will be most of you, we’ll be the finest fighting force in the Galaxy.  And that’s because we’re fighting for something.

“And that’s the biggest thing of all.  Look around you, all of you, to your left and right.  The politicians in the wrangling down there on the surface, they make a lot of noise about freedom and liberty, but that’s a distant thing when you’re boarding an enemy ship with a pistol in your hand, or when you’re dodging particle beam fire in a fighter, trying to get in missile-launch range.  When the fight comes, you’ll be fighting alongside the people around you now, and you’ll be fighting for them, and for the Navy, for the honor and pride of the Navy.  Because without the Navy, there won’t be any Confederacy, and there won’t be any freedom and liberty.  There will only be the smoking ruins of our cities, and the iron fist of an Empire over the Galaxy.  And I swear before you this day, I will fight alongside any one of you myself to prevent that from happening.

“There’s just one thing I want you to remember when this fight comes.  A long time ago, on Earth during the Second World War, a general addressed his troops before a battle just as I’m doing now.  He told them that no battle was ever won by going out to die for your country – battles are won by making the other poor dumb bastards die for their country.  Good words to remember.

“We’ll leave the Tarbos system at eight-hundred local time tomorrow with the Orleans, the Mountain View, the Dallas, and the Ian Mac Vie, Reuben James, and the Farragut.  We’ll be headed for the New Albion system to perform our first Fleet exercise.  The details of that exercise, which we’re calling Prescient Force, are awaiting you in your ship’s Signals sections as I speak.  You – every one of you – will carry out your tasks to the best of your ability.  Either that, or you’ll be finding a new line of work.  I want you to make sure that everyone on every one of your ships out there,” he pointed to the ceiling, “Understands that as well.”

“That is all,” the Admiral concluded.  As he stepped back from the podium and turned to walk down the main aisle out of the hangar, a grizzled Master Chief Petty Officer shouted, “Atten-tion!”

A roar rose from the room as the assembled Navy officers and crew snapped to their feet.  “First Flight, sir!” was the thunderous exhortation, shouted simultaneously by over a thousand people.

Gauss swept down the main aisle between rows of officers standing at rigid attention, his aide following closely.  “You’re responsible for that, aren’t you Jerry?” he asked, sotto voce.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir,” Captain Jensen replied, his expression carefully neutral.

At the rear of the room, a gray-haired, stern-looking man in the green uniform of a Master Chief Petty Officer waited for them.  Service hash marks ran most of the way from his elbow to his wrist, each representing three years of service; the Navy had allowed transfers from the various armed services on Earth to include their former time as time-in-service in the new Confederate force.  Judging by his left sleeve, Gauss estimated that the hoary old Master Chief had seen better than thirty years in uniform.

As Admiral Gauss approached, the gray-haired old Master Chief stepped forward and saluted.

“Admiral Gauss,” he announced, his voice gravelly and rough.  “I’m Master Chief Bosun’s Mate Paul Ortega.  I’m the Division Master Chief.”  That title announced him as the senior non-commissioned officer in the Task Group and its support units.  As such, Master Chief Ortega would be as much the Admiral’s right-hand man as his ubiquitous Chief of Staff.

“Pleased to meet you, Master Chief,” Gauss replied, returning the man’s salute and then shaking his hand.  “This is my Chief of Staff, Captain Jensen.”

“Sir.”  Master Chief Ortega acknowledged the Captain politely.

“What’s on your mind, Master Chief?”

“Just making my welcome, sir.  We’ve got something in common, I understand.  You came to the Navy from the U.S. Air Force, is that right?”

“Yes.  And you did too, right?”

“Yes sir.  I was a Master Sergeant; last posting was at Petersen Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.  I signed up with the Navy the year they opened up offices on Earth.”

“Where’s your office, Master Chief?”

“I’ve been here on the Mountain View, sir.  That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.  I figured you’ll be using the Orleans as your flagship, so I was planning to move my office and staff over there.”

“Of course.  Can you get that done yet today?”

“It’s already happening, sir.”

“Is your family here?”

“Yessir.  We’ve got Base housing, in fact, down in Mountain View.  Bumped a Chief Gunner’s Mate.  He wasn’t too happy about it, but you know what they say about the bricks falling in.”

“I do,” Gauss chuckled at the ancient Service idiom.  “Good.  I’ll see you on board, then, Master Chief.”

The grizzled old NCO rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  “That was a good speech you gave there, sir.  Nice to see an Admiral that really gets what we’re trying to do out here.  Wish you could kick some of that up a little higher.  Well.  I’d best get on back to my office, make sure my people are hustling.  I’ll see you at port call, sir.”

“Very well, Master Chief,” Gauss answered, returning the Master Chief’s salute.

The two officers turned into a branching corridor leading to the carrier’s starboard docking port, where a shuttle waited to take them back to the Orleans. 

“Jerry,” Admiral Gauss said after a few moments of thought, “What do you suppose the Master Chief meant by that last comment?”

“I suppose, sir, that Fleet Admiral Kosake’s reputation precedes him – even out here.”

“His reputation?”

“He’s rumored to be – well, sir, I suppose timid is the word I’d use.”

“I’ve never met him.  I sure hope that’s not true, Jerry – I hope to God that’s not true.  We’ve got no hope if the guy in the top chair doesn’t have it where it counts.”

“Yes, sir.”  Captain Jensen looked doubtful.  Gauss let it drop.

To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.