Fifteen
March 2253

Tarbos – the Confederate Senate

Three times the funding bill for the One Thousand Project had been brought up before the Senate.  Three times it had been filibustered by the Senators from Corinthia and Zed, with the votes of most of the Democratic-Republican members on their side.  Three times Senator Crider had returned to his office in a blind rage; he and the other Libertarian Party members all supported the bill, but lacked the votes to invoke cloture.

Now, it was time for a fourth attempt, this time after a blistering bully-pulpit speech by President Cochet.  Thirty Senators – the full Senate – were seated and prepared to vote on cloture, necessary to end debate on the funding package; then the Senate could vote to approve or decline the bill already approved by the House of Selectmen.  To end debate, eighteen Senators had to vote ‘yes.’

So far, all Senator Crider had been able to swing to his side was seventeen.  Seventeen Senators were convinced that the One Thousand Project – the Navy’s proposed Dreadnought class – was essential to the war effort.  Seventeen ‘yes’ votes were enough to pass the appropriations bill, but not enough to break the filibuster.

Senator Allesandra Catalona, DR-Hecate, would be the key.  The senior Senator from Hecate, she wavered on the edge of ending debate. 

Senator Crider spent most of President Cochet’s speech watching Catalona.  Her face was normally held in careful neutrality, but Mike had certainly seen a flash of doubt when President Cochet had thundered, “the future of the Confederacy is at stake,” and that the Senate should “hold a fair and open vote on this issue once and for all.”

Senator Gordon Blanchett, L-New Albion, stranded here on Tarbos for the duration but still representing the people of that conquered world, opened the issue as part of his role as Senate Majority Leader. 

“Under the previous order,” Blanchett formally intoned, “the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture on S.B. 405-9.”

The Senate clerk, a thin, pale woman whose name Mike could not recall, stood up and read the motion.  “We the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule IX of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Senate Bill 405-9, a bill to enhance security of Confederate Free Planets worlds, to authorize appropriations for the Department of the Navy for Fiscal Year 2253, and for other purposes.”  She read the name of the Senators, and Mike blinked when she announced, “Senator Michael Crider, Forest,” at the beginning of the list.  He blinked harder when the name “Senator Allesandra Catalona, Hecate.”  A grin crossed his face; Senator Catalona’s endorsement added to the motion indicated a change of heart.

“The question is this:  Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on Senate Bill 405-9 shall be brought to a close?”  Senator Blanchett continued.  “The yeas and nays are required under this rule. The clerk will call the roll.”

The vote took nine minutes, and the tension in the room was palpable.

“The yeas and nays resulted–yeas nineteen, nays eleven, as follows,” the clerk finally announced, proceeding through the list of names for the official record.

“On this vote, the yeas are nineteen, the nays are eleven. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.”

A round of applause followed, and the remaining issue – the formal vote to approve or disapprove – was a foregone conclusion. 

As soon as the final vote was concluded, Mike left for his office, to hyperphone Arnold Emory on Earth and let him know his project was a go.

Deep space, near Fortune

The Red Witch was a large ship for a privateer, and heavily armed, but its Captain was a cautious sort.  While he had accounted for one Grugell ship already, Johann Hess was loath to risk his ship without a good chance at success – and a clean escape.

Nevertheless, he had been returning good intelligence from the Fortune system for several months now, lurking at the fringes of the system’s Kuiper belt, moving sunward when necessary, in the shadow of the one big gas giant to evade Grugell scanners.

And now, the intelligence forwarded by the Captain of the big, blood-red armed yacht was bearing fruit.

“That bastard sure is a secretive old shit, isn’t he?”  Admiral Gauss was pleased with the data, less than pleased with the brusque wording of the pulse-transmission message.

“Can’t argue with the results, though.”  The Mountain View’s Captain Thomas Olney was reading over the Admiral’s shoulder.  “Looks like another Occupation ship has moved into the system, but this time they’ve got four cruisers backing them up.  And you can bet there’s a half-dozen of those damn little invisible frigates going back and forth, too.”

“If the Shade Tree really has figured a way to track them in subspace, that ought to help deal with that problem for a while,” Gauss observed, “at least until they figure another counter.  Remember, it didn’t take them long to find a way to hide their dark matter wake.  They’re mean, but they sure aren’t stupid.”

“Are we going to try to hit that Occupation ship?”

Gauss thought about that.  The enormous Grugell Occupation ships were prime targets for several reasons, primary among them that they were the main support for Grugell troops investing a planet. 

“The whole thing smells, doesn’t it?”  Gauss was in one of his rare cautious moods.  “They already lost one Occupation ship at Fortune, and they probably aren’t too sure how they lost another at New Albion.  They know that it was the Navy at Fortune, though; it seems odd that they’d move another one in only a few months later.  How many of them could they have?  Three, four?  The damned things are as big as a good-sized moon,” he exaggerated.

“It’s very likely they’re trying to land troops again, sir,” Captain Jensen answered.  “There hasn’t been any activity that they know of since we hit them six months ago.  It’s a valuable planet.”

“Four cruisers, figure six to eight frigates escorting,” Gauss mused.  “Even with the carrier’s fighter wings, that’s too much for us to take on in a straight fight.”  He sat up and snapped his fingers.  “How is the Red Witch armed?”

Captain Jensen stepped to the CIC Records station and tapped keys for a few moments.  “Sir, they have two particle beam emitters, fore and aft.  There are two bays for Lancers, with stowage for four missiles.  They expended one on that frigate, so figure they’ve got three working weapons.”

“Not enough to do too much.  Too bad they can’t work something like the Shade Tree pulled with that magnetic mine.”

“Not bloody likely,” Captain Olney snorted.  “You can bet they’ve adjusted their scanner’s resolution down to pick up anything larger than a football now.”

“A football?”  Admiral Gauss’ eyebrows went up.

“Yes, sir…”

“A football.”  Gauss leaned back in his chair.  “A football.   I wonder…” The Admiral surprised everyone by leaping to his feet, striding across the compartment to the Astrogation tank.

“Here’s Fortune,” he said, pointing at the holographic image of the Fortune system he’d punched up, “And here’s the big gas giant sixteen AU’s out from Fortune.  The Occupation ships tend to go into a high orbit more or less around the equator, and Fortune’s spin is pretty much in line with the ecliptic, right?  That jibes with what that old pirate Hess has told us.  Now look here,” he continued, and the other officers gathered around.  “See, here’s Fortune’s moon – a little bitty rock, about the size of Phobos.  You’ve all heard about that trick the Shade Tree pulled with the proxy head, right?”  A chorus of nods.  “OK, how many proxies are we carrying in the Task Group?”

“About a hundred and sixty, sir.”

“Good.  How many do we have deployed at once?”

“Each ship in the Task Group is running a standard spread of six.”

“So, we’re carrying plenty of spares.”

Captain Olney was looking increasingly perplexed.  “Yes, sir, because we lose a few of them every now and then.  We started out with what would have been about two hundred, but we’ve had a few malfunction in use, and that one time last May when we had to do an emergency jump to subspace we lost the full spread – no time to recover them.”

“Fine, fine.  So right now, we’ve easily got a hundred proxies we could put up at once?”

“No, sir, not really – each ship only has the capability to control eight or ten.  The frigates can only handle six, in fact, through their CIC suites.  The cruisers can handle eight, and they do when they’re in an inhabited system.  The carrier can run ten.  It mostly has to do with signal bandwidth and processing capacity.”

“But the proxies all have a hands-off recon capacity.  We can program them to make an unpiloted run on a set course, gathering data as they go, and we download the data when we recover them.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you, Admiral.”

“Listen.  Those proxies are a lot smaller than a Lancer, but head-on, the radar cross-section isn’t that much different.  Suppose we launch a wave of proxies into the Fortune system, programmed to run past the planet’s orbit right on the equator – and hide about six Lancers in the formation, programmed to go into hunt-and-kill mode right as they reach high orbit level?  The damned Grugell won’t be able to hit all of them – there’s a good chance at least two or three of the Lancers will get through, and two or three fifty-kiloton nukes will knock that big ship right into next week.  In old Earth football they called it a ‘blitz’ – bury the opposition’s ball carrier under your side’s players.  If we can make this little trick work, we’ll be burying that Occupation ship and its escorts in targets.  Little, fast targets.  Proxies and missiles are supposed to be hard to detect and hit – they’re made that way – and with that many of them to shoot at…”

“You know, sir, you’ve got a nasty, devious mind,” Captain Olney chuckled.

“Great, isn’t it?  Go down and talk to your Technical people, Tom, and see how long it will take to set this up.  One of the cruisers – the Dallas, I think, her skipper’s a nasty, devious sort like me – can drop out of subspace right near Fortune’s moon just long enough to launch the proxies and the Lancers.  That ought to take no more than five or six minutes, and then they can scoot back into subspace before the Grugell can get a bead on them.”

“And bury the Occupation ship in the blitz,” Olney laughed.  “I love it.  I’m on my way down to Engineering now, sir.”

Tarbos

“Senator, Captain Jean Barrett is here to see you.”

The sudden announcement over the inter-office com caught Senator Crider by surprise – he hadn’t even known the Shade Tree was in the Tarbos system.  “Send her right in,” he answered.

His office door slid open, and there stood Jean Barrett, still in her shipboard black fatigue pants and shirt.  Dark circles of weariness showed under her eyes.

“Jean,” Mike breathed.  He stood up and walked around the desk.

“Mike.”  There was nothing else for it; she walked forward and let Mike fold her into his arms.  They stayed like that for some time.

Finally, Mike spoke.  “Are you all right?”

“We took an anti-proton hit off New Albion.  That and a near-miss from a torpedo.  Wrecked my Engineering suite and killed my Chief Engineer.  We got the ship back all right, but repairs are going to take a while.”

“What happened?”

“They ambushed us.  There was a light cruiser, trailing along all by itself, with at least two cloaked frigates a few kilometers behind.  We closed in on the cruiser’s six, launched two Shrikes, and the frigates popped out behind us, just had us dead to rights.  We were lucky to get away at all.  And the Shrikes didn’t do much, either – the Grugell seem to have punched up their shield strength some.”

“We’ll have to see about getting you in to tell Navy Intelligence about all this.”

“Yeah, I thought about that.  Not today, though?”

“No, not today.”  Suddenly self-conscious, Mike released the privateer captain.  “You look like you could use some rest.  How about your crew?”

“About a third of them live here on Tarbos – they’ve gone home.  The rest are berthed in the Navy’s Transient Quarters over on the main base here in Mountain View.  I gave them all five days leave before we have to start thinking about hammering the ship back together again.”

“So, you’ll be here for a few days, then?”

“More like a few weeks.”

“Coffee?”  The Senator indicated the ever-present coffee service set up behind his desk. 

“Please.”  Captain Barrett dropped into one of Mike’s office chairs with an exhausted sigh.  “I haven’t had a decent meal or a cup of coffee in weeks.”

As he poured a cup of rich dark Forestian coffee, Mike wanted to ask where Barrett was staying, but didn’t.  “Could I interest you in another steak at the Road House this evening?”

“You sure could.  What is it now, ten o’clock?  Almost lunchtime, anyway.  I could use a shower and a nap.  How about I meet you there at six?”

“Sounds fine.”

Mike handed her the steaming cup and poured himself one before seating himself at his desk.  “Have you heard anything on the news from Tarbos?”

“Not really.  We just made dock about three hours ago.”

“We finally approved the Navy’s Appropriations bill a few days ago.  We managed to get funding for a new class of ships included.  Of course, it will be a year or so before the first one is ready for space, but the framework’s already being set up in the shipyard on Halifax for the Arcadia.  That’s the first of the One Thousand project ships – the architect that designed them calls them the Dreadnought class.”

“Well, that ought to give the Grugell something to chew on,” Barrett snorted.  She took a sip of the hot coffee and leaned back in the plush chair, eyes closed.  “You know, Mike, they’re damned smart.  They’ve got good tactical sense.  If they’ve got a weakness, it’s logistics – they support their occupations with those giant supply ships.  We’ve taken out two of them, but they’re starting to protect them pretty closely.  It’s not smart to put all your logistical eggs in one basket, though.”

“That’s what Admiral Gauss said.”

Barrett’s eyes went wide.  “You’ve talked to the good Admiral, then?”  Her surprise brought her Irish brogue out more strongly, which made the Senator smile. 

“Regularly – whenever he’s in dock here at Tarbos, anyway.”

“Well, that’s interesting.  He’s about the only commander the Navy has that’s got any guts.”

“He’s doing a pretty fair job of keeping the Grugell guessing, and he’s only got a few light ships and the one carrier to do it with.”

“Aye, he’s done that.  We’ve got one Occupation ship to our credit, too.”

“So I’m told.”

They sat in silence for a time, each sipping at the steaming hot coffee, each contemplating their own thoughts.

“I should be on my way,” Barrett said at last. 

“Six o’clock, then?”

“Aye, Senator,” Barrett said, a slight twinkle showing through the fatigue in her eyes.  “I’ll be there.”  She kissed Mike on the cheek before leaving.

An hour later, the Senator had cause to leave the office for a caucus meeting.  He walked briskly through the office, whistling, a spring in his stride.  His staff exchanged knowing looks as the door slid shut behind him.

“About time,” his Chief of Staff muttered.

New Albion

Jason MacFeeters watched the Grugell scout ship settle gently to the ground next to the stream. 

The team had been waiting in the caves for three days, during which they’d almost concluded that the Grugell were no longer patrolling this watercourse.  MacFeeters had been on the late-afternoon watch when the whine of the scout ship’s drivers had echoed up the canyon from downstream; the teams had barely gotten in place in time.  The three Marines were now hidden in spider holes only a few meters from the grounded ship, while MacFeeters’ guerillas took positions across the shallow river. 

As the guerillas held their collective breath, a panel door swung open and three Grugell stepped out. 

Two clicks came over MacFeeters’ earpiece.  The Marines were ready.  He clicked his push-to-talk switch once in reply.

One of the Grugell drew his holster weapon, walked a meter or two, and looked around.  Holstering his weapon again, he turned to the scout and called out something in a high-pitched, chittering burst of Grugell; a moment later, a fourth appeared.

Three clicks popped over the earpieces.

Sixty meters from MacFeeters, the four Grugell walked to the edge of the stream.  One of them bent to fill a small container of some sort.  The other three sat down on the bank.  Two of them extracted some kind of foodstuff from tunic pockets.

It was MacFeeters’ job to signal the beginning of the ambush.  He did so by sighting carefully through his riflescope, centering the crosshairs on the chest of the one Grugell still standing, and firing a single shot.

Before his target fell face-down in the river, a volley of rifle shots echoed off the walls of the canyon.  The remaining three Grugell hit the ground dead.  Across the river, the Marines sprinted for the grounded, silent ship and ducked inside.  Within a few seconds, Sergeant Tinker Morris’ head popped out of the panel door.

“All clear!” His shout brought the remaining guerillas across the river at a run.  Two of them struggled with a large, heavy titanium container, which was loaded into the ship.  The Grugell bodies were searched, quickly and efficiently, and then abandoned.

Ten minutes later, Sergeant Morris – aided by a crash course in written and spoken Grugell on Earth – lifted the ship off the riverbank.  The guerillas seated themselves in a spacious rear compartment, all of them keeping a wary eye on the nuclear device strapped to the floor in the center of the ship.  The scout’s drivers whined as the silver ship lifted out of the canyon and headed west.

Tarbos – the Road House

An eerie sense of déjà vu notwithstanding, Mike once more had a hard time keeping his eyes from the transformed Jean Barrett.

The gray dress had been replaced with a similar style in deep maroon, but the bright green eyes, the gamin smile, the strawberry-blonde curls were the same as their previous dinner.

Mike looked down at the empty plate in front of him.  “The Road House puts up a good steak, don’t they?”

“They do.”  Barrett looked strangely uncomfortable.

“You still look tired, Jean.”

“I had a good nap, but I’ll admit, I don’t feel much like dancing tonight.”  She took a long pull at her wineglass.  “I’ve never lost a crewmember before, Mike.  I didn’t like it.  Geri was a good engineer, a good sort all-around.  She kept her shop tight, and she got along with everyone – and on a tiny little ship like the Shade Tree, that counts for a lot.  She has a daughter here on Tarbos, in Mountain View University.  I’ll have to go by and see her, I suppose.”

“Jean, I can’t imagine.  I know it’s a war and I know we’ve lost people all over.  The Navy’s lost ships, there have been people killed on New Albion and Fortune.  But it doesn’t make it any easier on you.”

“No.  But you’re right, Mike, it’s a war.  We’ve been awfully lucky to this point.”  She looked up, her eyes shining, and smiled.  “What I’ve got to do now is get my ship put back together, recruit another Chief Engineer and get back out there.  There are quite a few scores to settle.”

“Lots of people feel that way.  Admiral Gauss, for one.”

“Tell me something, Mike.  Why isn’t Admiral Gauss the Fleet Admiral instead of Admiral Kosake?”

“You’d have to ask the President that,” Mike snorted.  “Just between you and I, I’d like to know the answer to that myself.  I do know that Admiral Kosake hasn’t left the Fleet spacedock since this whole thing started.  Admiral Gauss has been out with the Fleet since the word go.”

The privateer captain drained the last of her wine.  “Mike,” she said softly, looking down at her empty plate.  “Mike, I don’t want to be alone tonight.”  She looked up, her eyes glowing green in the dim light of the restaurant.  “I’ve got a really crappy, cheap, shoddy room in the Navy’s Transient Quarters.  I’d really rather not stay down there.”

“Would you rather… That is, if you’d…” Mike’s mouth had suddenly gone dry.

“I would much rather stay with you, Mike.”

“I do have the spare bedroom in my condo, it’s not very far…”

Jean Barrett reached across the table to take Mike’s hand.  “Spare bedroom?  No, Mike.  I said I would rather stay with you.”

“All right…” Mike wasn’t often at a loss for words.

“I’m not usually this forward,” Jean breathed.  Here green eyes glimmered, shining like polished jade in the dim light.  “Maybe it’s because it’s wartime.  Mike, could we leave now?” “Let me get the check,” the Senator replied.

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