Rumors of Honor (System States Rebellion Book 2) (29 page)

Romanov
sighed. He’d been hoping that a false flag attack on Federation citizens
wouldn’t be necessary. “Has Majestic picked a target yet?” he asked.

“Yes,
and a very interesting one too. It’s a relatively small colony, only about a
million people. The planet’s called Midgard. Here’s why I consider it an
interesting choice. Apparently investors on Earth have put up billions of
credits to build  an impressive mining, refining, manufacturing and
shipbuilding complex on Midgard’s moon, which seems to be almost as rich in
industrial metals as Makassar is. This complex has been in operation for over a
year and a half. The fact that its eventual goal is to support First Fleet/Army
Force makes it a legitimate target for the SSU. It gives us the perfect excuse
to conduct Backstep. The population is small enough that 5,000 Guard infantry
supported by a couple of tank companies should have no trouble creating havoc
there. The first stealthy cruiser, Undaunted, will be ready for her shakedown
cruise in a week. Let’s combine those two missions into one. You take Undaunted
plus two light cruisers and two troop transports to the Midgard system. I want
that shipyard complex on Midgard’s moon smashed, along with any partially
completed ships. Then you make sure my troops land safely, and you let them do
their thing. When the Guard Commander says they’re done, you bring them back
here. Any questions, Commodore?”

Romanov
thought fast. He knew from past experience that you had to take just the right
tone with the General if you wanted him to be open-minded about something. “May
I ask what limits, if any, the troops will be given in terms of how they behave
towards the civilians?”

Trojan
leaned back. He suspected he knew what Romanov was leading up to. “The whole
purpose of Operation Backstep is to generate outrage back on Earth. The worse
the attacking troops behave, the greater the outrage. I’m inclined to give my
Guard Unit a blank check on this one. Do you have a problem with that,
Commodore?”

“I
would just point out that I think massive destruction of property with modest
casualties that could be described as collateral damage would probably still
generate sufficient outrage. If we tell those troops that the normal rules
regarding treatment of civilians don’t apply here, how much more difficult will
it be to rein them in later when we use them to conquer Earth and the other
Core planets? That’s one concern I have. The other concern is our…yours and
mine…legacy. Nobody blames a military leader if a few of his troops behave
badly. Even the best military units usually have a few rotten apples, but it’ll
be very hard for historians to overlook the fact that we arranged for a whole
division of supposed elite troops to deliberately commit atrocities on a mass
scale, even if we save billions of others from centuries of anarchy and chaos.
All other things being equal, I’d rather not go down in history as the Butcher
of Midgard, General.”

Trojan
didn’t respond right away. He was disappointed by Romanov’s attack of
conscience. He himself had long ago accepted that he had to give terrible
orders, ones he normally would not even consider giving, in order to achieve
the long term salvation of Humanity, regardless of what the verdict of
historians would be. But maybe there was a less…vicious path that would still
get him to where he wanted to be.

“I’m
willing to consider some limitations on the troops’ behaviour. What did you
have in mind, Commodore?”

Romanov
relaxed just a little. “No rape, no deliberate killing of children.”

After
a slight pause, Trojan nodded. “Okay, I’ll agree to that but only because of your
first argument. If troops get a taste of that kind of thing, they’re more
likely to do it again later, even if I order them not to, and when we attack
Earth, I WILL care about treatment of civilians. Is your conscience satisfied
now, Commodore Romanov?”

Romanov
wanted to say no. But he felt certain that if he asked for more, he’d be
pushing his luck.
At least I tried,
he thought to himself. “Yes,
General.”

Trojan
smiled. “Fine. I’m glad we got that cleared up. Make the necessary preparations
for your ships, and I’ll take care of getting the troops ready. You’re
dismissed, Commodore.”

Chapter Seventeen:

Day
290/2548

Drake
walked into Janicot’s office and stood at attention in front of the CSO’s desk.
Janicot looked up from his data tablet and said, “Stand easy, Commodore. I’m
not going to offer you a chair, because this will be a very short meeting.
What’s the status of your five light carriers?”

“Lexington
is on her shakedown cruise now, Admiral. The other four are ready for
operational missions. Lexington should be back within 72 hours.”

“Good.
When she gets back, I want you to prepare all five to carry 60 boats to
Durendal shipyard for transfer to Coral Sea and Midway. You’ll also be carrying
the crews for all five heavy carriers, so it’ll be a little crowded. Your
orders are to deliver the crews to their new ships and then to conduct training
exercises with the first two carriers somewhere in that star system far enough
from Midgard that the locals won’t see you. Your carriers will take alternate
aggressor and defender roles with half the boats. The other half go to Coral
Sea and Midway. All five carrier crews will take turns operating the first two
carriers during the training. When the other three carriers are ready, you
leave all the boats there and bring your light carriers back here. Commodore
Palmgren will be in command of the heavy carrier force, and he’ll have his own
orders. As far as the training goes, he’s in overall command, so I expect you
to co-operate.”

“Yessir.”
Drake tried to hide his disappointment. He had let Janicot know that he would
gladly trade his Commodore’s rank for command of one of the new heavy carriers,
but the Old Man had apparently decided to reject his request.

Janicot
leaned back and said, “I know you asked for a heavy carrier command. I rejected
your request but not because of any doubts about your command ability. Just the
opposite in fact. I think your combat experience makes you too valuable to be a
mere ship CO. I’m now convinced that you can make a greater contribution to the
war effort as a flag officer. Up to now your rank has been temporary. I’m now
making it permanent.”

“Thank
you, sir. The only thing better than commanding a heavy carrier is commanding
more than one of them at the same time. I still have hopes of doing that
someday.”

“I’d
think there was something wrong with you if you didn’t feel that way, but I
hope you understand that I can’t promise you anything. We’ll just have to wait
and see how things go.”

“Yessir,
I do understand that,” said Drake.

“Fine,
then we’re done here, and you’re dismissed, Commodore.”

Day
005/2549

Romanov
frowned as he checked the 3D tactical display, which had just updated itself
after the Task Force emerged from its final micro-jump. He was puzzled by the
fact that there were military-grade radar emissions coming from Midgard’s moon.
His Task Force was too far away to be detected, but that was beside the point.
The shipyard complex on the moon was a privately-owned, commercial venture. How
the hell had it gotten its hands on military-grade radar equipment, and why
would it need it? He noticed that the radar pulses were reflecting off five
objects clustered together in a high orbit around the moon. A quick check
confirmed two things. Those objects were high enough to be in a stationary
orbit so that they were always above the same spot on the moon, and they seemed
to be rather large.

“Can
we tell what those five objects are yet?” he asked.

His
Weapons Officer replied. “I can’t be certain, Sir, but if they’re ships, they
have a diameter of at least 500 meters.”

“Hmm.
Pretty damn large for transports or freighters wouldn’t you say, Lieutenant?”

The
WO nodded. “Yessir, cargo-carrying ships that large would have trouble landing
on a planet.” After a short pause he said, “They might be warships, sir.”

Romanov’s
first impulse was to dismiss that suggestion out of hand. By decree from the
Federation Council, no less, all warship construction was to be done on
Makassar. Freighters and transports could be built elsewhere. If a
Federation-chartered company was building warships, they were doing it
clandestinely.

“Well,
if those are warships, they’re certainly not ours, and therefore the question
is whose are they?” He contemplated the implications of that thought for a
while and then said, “Romanov to Task Force COs. There’s something unusual
going on around Midgard’s moon, and therefore I’m going to alter our attack
plan. Undaunted will move closer to recon the situation. I want the rest of the
Task Force to hold position here. When I’m confident that the coast is clear,
I’ll give the signal to move in. Romanov out.” With that out of the way, he
turned to the Helm Station and said, “Okay, Sara, give me a parabolic
trajectory that will bring us up behind those five objects to within 100
kilometers of the furthest one back. Are you clear on what I want?”

The
Helm Officer smiled as she started manipulating her controls. “Clear, sir. You
do realize that coming in that slowly will take a while.”

“Yes,
I do, and that’s okay. Let it take a while. That’s the nice thing about having
an invisible ship. We can take our time and get a good look before we unleash
hell.” He heard a few chuckles from some of the Bridge personnel. They had
practiced exactly this kind of maneuver in the simulators, and not having to
worry about the enemy shooting back at them was a lot of fun.

It
actually took almost six more hours before Undaunted was in position. The
ship’s powerful optics were able to give Romanov a good look at the closest of
the five ships.
Son-of-a-bitch! Those are warships alright and damned big
ones too. Six hundred meters diameter with neutron armor. Those things are
Goddamned battleships for Christsake!
No commercial company would be so
stupid as to commit billions of credits to building warships for sale to the
Federation without a guarantee that the Navy would buy them (with the
subsequent risk of having them confiscated instead), and building them for
their own use was an even more bizarre thought.
What the hell have we
stumbled onto here?

“They’re
still scanning, Commodore!” said the Weapons Officer somewhat nervously.
Romanov looked at him and smiled. If Undaunted hadn’t been detected approaching
the moon, which it hadn’t, then there was no reason to suppose that radar would
detect them now. As long as the Helm made sure that the ship’s orientation
would continue to deflect radar energy away from the moon and the planet, the
ship would not show up on anyone’s radar screens, and her jet black exterior
made optical detection also highly unlikely.

“Is
it possible that this is a rebel shipyard operation posing as a
Federation-chartered company, Commodore?” asked the Helm Officer.

“My
God, that has to be it!” Romanov shook his head at the audacity of the SSU
building a Makassar-type operation right in the middle of Federation territory
and right under everyone’s nose. Those five ships had to be destroyed. They
were too close to being completed to leave them in orbit even if he did destroy
the industrial and shipyard complexes on the moon’s surface. For all he knew,
they might already have the capability of maneuvering and hyper-jumping. If he
didn’t take them out first, they might get away to a Union planet to be
completed. The problem was that armor. Undaunted carried a dozen Mark 1
warhead-equipped missiles that had been intended for use on the moon itself.

“Can
our Mark 1s punch through that armor, Weps?” asked Romanov.

The
WO shook his head. “I seriously doubt it, sir. If we can tell from this
distance that those ships have neutron armor, then it’ll be thick enough to
shrug off our Mark 1s. It does appear that they haven’t finished completely
covering the hull with armor. If we swing around so that we can target their
remaining unarmored hull sections, then we should be able to at least cripple
them.”

Romanov
turned back to the Helm Officer. “Let’s do that, Sara. Keep us at least 100
klicks from the nearest ship. As soon as we fire, let’s shift position so that
they don’t track our missile trajectories back to us”

“Roger
that, sir.” It didn’t take long to move to a position over the middle ship.
Romanov looked at his Weapons Officer who nodded, which meant that the five
ships had been targeted with a missile each.

“Fire,”
said Romanov. The tactical display was zoomed in to very close range. Five new
icons representing the five missiles appeared and diverged on different paths.
The nearest target would be hit in less than 10 seconds. The two furthest targets
would be hit in almost 16 seconds. Romanov held his breath. Ships still under
construction typically didn’t have active anti-missile defenses manned by crew,
but if this really was a rebel shipbuilding operation, then they just might
take that precaution. The time from missile launch reached 10 seconds.

Midgard
Industries Tower/Midgard:

Murphy
looked over at the chronometer. He saw that it was almost two hours past
midnight, but he wasn’t even close to feeling he could go to sleep any time
soon. With a sigh of resignation, he got out of bed and shuffled over to the
glass doors leading out to the balcony. It was a pleasantly warm night, and the
sky was cloudless. He looked up at the crescent-shaped moon. He could just
barely make out the lights of the shipyard complex on the dark side. Just as he
was about to look away, he saw a bright light appear off to the side of the
moon. It disappeared quickly to be replaced by another flash and two seconds
later a third flash. Murphy didn’t wait to see if there were any more. Flashes
that could be seen with the naked eye from this distance meant that he had just
witnessed three powerful explosions. He ran back inside to the communications
equipment beside his bed. He activated the unit.

“Murphy
to Ops!”

“Ops
here, sir. Can’t sleep?” The voice of the officer on duty at the Operations
Center  was so calm that Murphy was caught off guard for half a second.

“Are
you in contact with Durendal?”

“Ahh…yessir.
Everything appears to be…hold it! They’re signalling a red alert! HOLY SHIT!
THEY SAY THEY’RE UNDER MISSILE ATTACK!”

“Sound
red alert for the tower! I’ll be in Ops as fast as I can!” Without waiting for
a reply, Murphy shut off the unit and scrambled to put on some clothes. The red
alert tone sounded half a second later. Murphy knew that everyone in the tower
at this time of night was part of the clandestine operation. Off duty SSU
personnel lived in the tower and would hear the alert too. Murphy got dressed
as quickly as he could, but he was confident that he’d have time to get to the
Ops Center deep in the sub-basement. If the FEDs were attacking the moon, it
was unlikely that they would land troops on the planet that quickly. What he
couldn’t understand was how FED ships had gotten close enough to launch a surprise
missile attack without being detected.

Undaunted:

“Fire!”
ordered Romanov. The five missiles fired at the ships did their job to
perfection. All five ships were blown apart as the Mark 1 warheads penetrated
past the unarmored outer hull before exploding. Undaunted was now firing her
remaining seven Mark 1s at the sprawling complex on the moon’s surface. At this
distance, it would take 89 seconds for the missiles to reach the surface. Long
range optical scanning had not revealed any defensive installations. Apparently
the SSU had not considered a FED missile attack a serious risk. With the
missiles now on their way, Romanov turned to his Communications Station.

“Com,
order the rest of the Task Force to head for planetary orbit. Colonel Ericson
can land his troops at his discretion. Tell the cruisers that Undaunted will
rendezvous with them when they make orbit.” A minute and a few seconds later,
he watched enhanced video of the missiles hitting the surface. The complex was
obliterated. Even as the fireballs began to fade, Undaunted was already
accelerating towards Midgard.

Midgard
Industries Tower/Midgard:

Murphy,
now dressed, ran to the private elevator that would take him directly from his
penthouse to the sub-basement level where the Ops Center was. Once inside he
grabbed the hand rails. Even so, he nearly lost his balance as the elevator
dropped at almost freefall speed only to come to a very sudden stop at the
bottom. He ran to the Ops Center and as he entered he yelled out.

“What’s
the situation at Durendal?” The horrified look on the Duty Officer’s face told
him the news was bad.

“We
lost contact a few seconds ago. Radiation sensors on the roof show multiple
detonations on the moon’s surface in the half megaton range. Video surveillance
shows that the complex was hit dead on.”

Murphy’s
stomach threatened to heave, and he knew why. With the shipyard destroyed, the
Union had lost any chance of engineering a military victory that would end the
war. Unless the R&D people on Zanzibar pulled a miracle out of their hats,
the SSU was doomed. He waited until he was confident he wouldn’t throw up
before speaking.

“Okay,
tell all our people to head down to the escape tunnel. There’s no point in
staying here to be captured by the FED troops that are undoubtedly on their
way. When everyone’s ready to leave, you and I are going to set the
self-destruct, and then you can join them.”

The
Duty Officer’s face lost all its color. “Understood, sir.”

Murphy
was glad now that he had taken the initiative to order the robotic equipment
that had been working for the last year to tunnel out and build a maglev rail
line deep below the city. It went all the way to a set of warehouses owned by
Midgard Industries at the edge of the city. Under the warehouses was an emergency
shelter big enough to hold all the Union people with enough supplies to let
them hold out for several months. Once everyone had left the tower complex,
blast doors would seal the tunnel and protect the emergency shelter from the
destructive effects of the 100 kiloton fission device buried at the bottom of
the lowest level under the tower. Engineered to vaporize the tower’s foundation
and cause it to collapse, the device was low-yield enough that collateral
damage to the rest of the city would be minimal.

Murphy
headed down to the lower level where the escape tunnel was located. He would
make sure everyone was accounted for before heading back up to Ops to set the
device. It seemed to take forever before Union personnel started exiting the
elevators. Murphy organized the first group and deputized several of his staff
to check off people from the master list as they arrived. With that task looked
after, he returned to Ops.

“Any
sign of ships or landing shuttles?” he asked the Duty Officer.

The
DO nodded. “We’re monitoring the spaceport Control Tower. They’ve spotted two
ships coming in on a fast approach. They were queried and responded that
they’re SSU ships and that any resistance by Midgard residents would result in
massive retaliation! What the hell is going on, sir?”

Murphy
groaned with sudden understanding. It was bad enough that the FEDs had
destroyed the Durendal complex on the moon, but they also intended to add
insult to injury by making this attack look like the SSU was doing it. He
didn’t like the implications of that. The threat of massive retaliation sounded
like an excuse to commit mass atrocities. He thought fast. By the time the DO
had received word that all Union personnel except for Ops people were accounted
for and waiting on the maglev train, the only idea that Murphy could think of
to undermine the false flag aspect of this attack was to time the self-destruct
so that some of the ‘rebel’ troops would be caught in the blast. Maybe their
bodies or their equipment would then give the game away when the locals picked
up the pieces after the attack. In order to time the explosion correctly,
someone would have to go up to street level with a remote detonator and watch
the tower entrance. Murphy looked at the Duty Officer and the other two Ops Center
staff. They looked scared. He knew them well enough to know that all three had
spouses and at least one child back on Sparta. No, he wasn’t going to ask any
of them to risk capture or death up above. He would take on that mission
himself. He hoped Cate would forgive him for getting killed.