Center of Gravity (18 page)

“A compromise? What compromise?”

“This time I’m going to pretend
I
have a secmon. Go back to your carrier and stand by. I may have new orders for you in a couple of days.”

Koenig sighed. “You’re the boss, Admiral.”

“When it comes to the Navy,” Carruthers said, smiling, “Yes. Yes, I am.” He raised his coffee cup toward Koenig.
“Salud.”

Chapter Nine

27 December 2404

Admiral’s Office, TC/USNA CVS
America

Earth Synchorbit, Sol System

1015 hours, TFT

It wasn’t “a couple of days,” in fact, but almost a full week before Koenig received his new orders. Captain Gregory delivered them in person to Koenig in his office on board the
America
.

“So,” he said as she walked into the compartment. “What’s the verdict? Am I on the beach?”

His office was in the outer layer of the carrier’s rotating hab modules, and so enjoyed the relative comfort of a half G of spin gravity. He gestured over a control interface to grow her a chair, and she sank back into it.

“Thank you, sir. No… not the beach. Not this time.”

Koenig’s heart quickened a bit. “Crown Arrow is on, then?”

Gregory made a face. “It is… though you may not like what some of the politicos did to it. Here… you should see the orders for yourself.”

She palmed a contact surface on his desk, transferring the orders. He put his own palm on a contact, and opened them in his mind.

J
OINT
C
HIEFS
OF
S
TAFF

T
ERRAN
C
ONFEDERATION
M
ILITARY
C
OMMAND

0930
HR
27 D
EC
2404

F
ROM:
A
DMIRAL OF THE
F
LEET
J
OHN
C. C
ARRUTHERS

T
O:
A
DMIRAL
A
LEXANDER
K
OENIG,
C
OMMANDER
CBG–18

V
IA:
C
OMM
UPLINK
7892, G
ENEVA

S
ECLAS:
GREEN DIADEM/P
RIORITY
B
RAVO

A
TTACHMENT:
JCS DIR75756: OPPLAN C
ROWN
A
RROW,
R
EVISION
2.6

S
UBJ:
CBG
DEPLOYMENT

1. Y
OU ARE DIRECTED TO ASSEMBLE
CBG–18
AT
F
LEET
R
ENDEZVOUS
P
ERCIVAL ON OR BEFORE 5
J
AN
2405
, OR AS SOON AS PROVISIONING AND RESUPPLY FOR AN EXTENDED VOYAGE OF AT LEAST SEVEN MONTHS IS COMPLETE.

2. Y
OU WILL AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS AT
FR P
ERCIVAL.
A
DDITIONAL FLOTILLAS WILL JOIN YOU AT THE RENDEZVOUS POINT.

3. T
HE REINFORCED BATTLEGROUP WILL BE REDESIGNATED
T
ASK
G
ROUP
Terra.

4. O
N OR BEFORE
9 J
AN
2405, T
ASK
G
ROUP
T
ERRA
WILL INITIATE DEEP-SPACE OPERATIONS AGAINST ENEMY BASES AND VESSELS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF
O
PERATIONS
P
LAN
C
ROWN
A
RROW, AS OUTLINED IN
JCS DIR75756
[ATTACHED].

[SIGNED]

J
OHN
C. C
ARRUTHERS,
A
DMIRAL OF THE
F
LEET

BY ORDER OF

T
HE
C
ONFEDERATION
J
OINT
C
HIEFS OF
S
TAFF

Best we could do, Alex.—J.C.

The personal note appended to the end of the orders startled Koenig. He opened the attachment, and scrolled down through the oplan.

It was not, he decided, as bad as it could have been. Koenig’s original operations plan, as he’d presented it to the JCS, called for a strike force composed of at
least
5 star carriers and their attendant battlegroups… which would have meant a supporting fleet of 20 to 25 cruisers and heavy cruisers; 10 of the faster and more nimble battlecruisers; 5 railgun cruisers or battleships; and at least 50 destroyers, frigates, and escorts. Add to that one Marine Starforce Unit, which would amount to another two light carriers, landing ships of various calibers, and some twelve thousand Marines, and the entire fleet would have numbered over 112 vessels.

Although that had been Koenig’s suggested fleet strength, he’d known that the chances of having those ships given to him were remote in the extreme. The total—112 warships—was very roughly one quarter of the Confederation’s total Navy strength, and roughly half what was normally stationed just within the Sol System. The Senate, he knew, would never allow the Sol System’s defenses to be stripped to that degree.

And, in fact, that had obviously been the case. The JCS and the Military Directorate had scaled back Koenig’s dreamsheet considerably. The task group would be built around just o
ne
carrier battlegroup:
America’
s, reinforced by some 10 additional ships. MSU–17 would join the fleet at Point Percival, adding two light carriers to the force—
Nassau
and
Vera
Cruz
—plus 10 support vessels. It appeared that the task group would include no more than 35 warships altogether.

Thirty-five ships to carry the war to the enemy.

He looked up at Captain Gregory. “Why the worried face, Captain? This looks pretty good.”

“Admiral Carruthers thought you would be… disappointed.”

“Hell, the important thing is that they’ve given us the go-ahead! I was afraid they would insist that we sit here on our asses playing defense.”

She nodded. “Admiral Carruthers said the same thing. He wasn’t sure you’d see it the same way.”

“Thirty ships… or a hundred and thirty. We’re going to be wildly outnumbered no matter how many ships we pull together. I would like to have more fighters along than just
America
’s five squadrons, but we’ll make do with what’s available. We’ll have two strike squadrons with the Marine carriers… and we
might
be able to bring in another naval squadron or two from Oceana. It’ll make
America
’s hangar deck a bit crowded.” He looked up at Gregory. “I assume you have orders to take my response back to Admiral Carruthers?”

“Yes, sir. He… doesn’t trust the comnet channels.”

Koenig frowned at that, then shook his head. “I don’t blame him.” It was a hell of a thing to be hiding from your own government. Koenig’s service with the USNA Star Navy before he’d been asked to volunteer for confederal service had thoroughly indoctrinated him with the idea that the military was subservient to the civilian command authority. And, in theory at least, it was the same for the Confederation Navy.

But Geneva had shown a distressing tendency to micromanage the military to the point where flexibility and decisiveness—both key elements of modern war planning—were lost. The JCS had managed to win a bit of freedom of action for Task Group Terra, but that freedom could be lost at any time. If Eunice Noyer and her clique picked up some aspect of Crown Arrow’s planning they didn’t like… or if they saw a way to yank the figurative rug out from under their opponents in the Military Directorate, they were fully capable of rewriting the rules and changing everything.

The rendezvous point—Fleet Rendezvous Percival—was, he saw, at Pluto, and Koenig was willing to bet that Carruthers had chosen that spot because it was comfortably distant from senatorial oversight. Out of sight, out of mind, as the old saying had it; the obstructive elements of the government would be less likely to cause trouble if the strike force was less immediately visible than it would be in Synchorbit.

It still griped Koenig like hell to have to play games like this with the planetary government.

One entire bulkhead of Koenig’s office was given over to a wallscreen of the view from cameras mounted on the outer hab module, showing, in effect, what they would have seen had that bulkhead been transparent. The steady rotation of the module created the impression that the stars were sweeping past, from deck to overhead, making a complete circuit every twenty-eight seconds. Four times each minute, the structure of the Synchorbit naval facility drifted past, and with it the hab modules of the local Confederation government facility.

The Confederation government seemed to overshadow the ships based here, always watching, always listening. They were lucky that so far the Senate had failed to assign a liaison, a political officer like Quintanilla, to stick with Koenig like a shadow, sitting in on all of his meetings.

Gregory seemed to read his thoughts. “There are times, Admiral, when a military officer
must
have the freedom to do what he thinks best. We subordinate the military to the civilian government because the alternative is to have a military dictatorship… but if the government does more than set policy for the military to follow…”

“I
know
, Captain,” Koenig said, a bit more sharply than he’d intended.

“I’m sorry, Admiral. I only—”

“The less said, the better,” he told her. He did not want her making what amounted to treasonous statements. Everything said in his office was overheard by various AIs, and if there ever
was
a trial for disloyalty, those recordings could be used as evidence.

He looked at her closely. She was young for a captain’s rank—her id gave a birth date of 2363, making her forty-one. Thanks to anagathics or to genetic modification—possibly both—she looked considerably younger… not that her quite pleasant physical appearance had anything to do with the matter. The point was that with anti-aging techniques as they now stood, Diane Gregory could expect to have an active and productive military career, if she chose to, lasting at
least
another two centuries.

“Excuse me, Captain Gregory,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to bite your head off. I just don’t want anything on record that might jeopardize your career.”

She smiled. “I doubt that I’ll be in the service forever, Admiral.”

As human medical technology—genetics and medical nano, especially—continued to advance as they had over the past four centuries, it was possible that her career would be extended across a thousand years or more.

If
the Sh’daar didn’t step in and impose their restrictive views on GRIN technologies on a compliant Humankind.

And, Koenig was forced to admit, assuming the military hierarchy didn’t collapse under the mass of some millions of thousand-year-old senior admirals, all of them unwilling to retire or start a new career. Death, an old saying had it, was just nature’s way of clearing out the deadwood to allow new ideas room to breathe.

“Just so you have the options you choose,” he told her. “The government is often in the business of narrowing a person’s options, cutting back on free choice.”

“Now who’s being seditious, sir?”

“Not me, Captain.” Koenig was already calling up a stellar display on the 3-D projector in front of his workstation. “Let’s go over Crown Arrow as it now stands. Are you recording?”

“Yes, sir.”

A fistful of stars, indicated by colored points of light, winked on above the projector. The field of view zoomed in on one orange-yellow star in particular, expanding until only that star and its planetary system were visible.

“Arcturus?” Gregory asked.

He nodded. “Our first stop.”

“I thought the objective of Crown Arrow was Alphekka.”

“Tactics, Captain. The appearance of that H’rulka vessel in the Sol System the other day means the enemy spotted our ISVR–120 probe. My guess is that they began reinforcing Arcturus as soon as they realized we were interested in it.