Sol (The Silver Ships Book 5) (34 page)

“Your sentiments are appreciated, Tribune Woo, but perhaps you misunderstand my role as Haraken’s president,” Alex replied. “I serve at the pleasure of my people and on their behalf, not for my pleasure or gain. If I was to tell my people that we’re abandoning Idona’s defense in the face of Portland’s massive fleet to a severely underpowered pro-naval force, they would laugh at me and rightly so. No slight intended, Tribune, but that’s not who we are.”

“So what is your plan, Mr. President?” Chong asked.

“Strategically, defend Idona Station. Tactically, I have no idea, yet. The planet positions are in Portland’s favor. There is a substantial pro-naval fleet at Jupiter, but it can’t reach us in time to help. A small squadron of destroyers at Uranus is on its way.”

“What will you choose to do, Tribune Brennan?” Woo asked.

“If the president is staying, I’m staying,” Brennan blurted defiantly. “I’m tired of hiding behind the mantle of my office. If I can help to save this station in any way, no matter how minor, I intend to do it.”

Alex closed the conference comm and eyed Brennan, who ducked his head in embarrassment over his declaration. Alex extended a hand and Brennan shook it tentatively until Alex said, “Welcome to the fight, Ian,” then Brennan pumped Alex’s hand enthusiastically.

Alex’s team plus others, such as Nikki Fowler and Captain Shimada, spent an entire day without success considering ideas on how to defend Idona from Portland. Finally, Alex called it a night, scheduling the next meeting to start after morning meal.

The next morning, Shimada brought her tray over to Tatia and Sheila’s table. “May I, Admiral?” she asked, motioning to a seat with her tray.

“Be my guest, Captain,” Tatia replied.

The three women ate in companionable silence until the burning questions in Shimada’s mind would wait no longer.

Sheila sent to Tatia, who covered her smile with a meal cloth.

“Pardon me, Admiral … and I don’t mean these questions to sound accusatory, but I could use your help trying to understand the situation,” Shimada began.

“Proceed, Captain,” Tatia said.

“If your people’s purpose in coming to Sol was to find a way to prevent a war with the UE, haven’t you done that?”

“I suppose we have, considering the changes in your governing body and this war to ensure those changes will be enacted,” Tatia replied.

“Then if you’ve succeeded in your mission, why not pull out … save yourselves?”

“Can’t we have more than one purpose, more than one mission?” Sheila asked.

“Yes … you mean Idona Station. But why take on the burden? Our people attacked you and killed many of your pilots without provocation on your part.”

“Do you believe in what you are asking us to do, Captain, or are you just trying to understand us?” Tatia asked.

“I’m not sure anymore. Maybe it’s just my distrust of altruistic motives. The UE might have beaten it out of me.”

“It’s an understandable reaction to the constant social pressure of distrust. Are you wondering whether our commitment stems from our leaders or from our people?” Sheila asked, beginning to understand Shimada’s questions.

“That question had occurred to me,” Shimada admitted.

Sheila sent to Tatia.

Tatia sent back. She stood up and announced to the room, “Please stand.” As one, the room of Harakens stood. “This is a vote and you are asked to vote your conscience, as would be expected of you. Please sit if you think we should abandon Idona Station to Portland’s forces.”

No one moved. Every man and woman stood awaiting the next request.

Tears appeared at the corner of Shimada’s eyes, and she wiped them away. She stood and faced the room, delivering the manner of thanks she had seen the Harakens use in important moments, placing her hand over her heart and bowing her head. Across the room, implants coordinated the Haraken response and heads as one nodded their acceptance of Shimada’s honor for their efforts.

“You’ll excuse me, Admiral, Commodore,” Shimada said immediately afterwards and walked quickly from the room.

“Are we really that hard to understand?” Sheila wondered out loud.

“Or is it that our captain wants to be a believer and doesn’t trust us to be true to the image we present?” Tatia replied.

Tatia and Sheila were the last to join the planning session and arrived in time to hear an unusual suggestion by Cordelia.

“It might mitigate Admiral Portland’s anger if he could believe he won a victory.”

“Pardon our lateness, Alex,” Tatia said. “An important Haraken–UE relationship needed attention. What’s your idea, Cordelia?”

“We pretend to let Portland win by sending our travelers at him unmanned. He destroys them, and we retreat in defeat.”

“How many of our travelers would we have to send?” Sheila asked.

“It would require the majority, Sheila. The admiral is aware of the number he fought before.”

“Can you control your travelers to the extent that their actions in combat would appear realistic?” Shimada asked.

Alex looked over at the SADEs for an answer.

“Negative, Ser. We might have sufficient processing power at this end,” Julien replied, nodding to his fellow SADEs, but our probes couldn’t manage the bandwidth of communications and data transmissions to realistically fly hundreds of travelers in believable attack and evasion patterns.”

“Then Portland won’t buy it,” Shimada declared. “He’ll presume a trick, and, when you pull back, he’ll hit Idona Station to force you to reengage, and, at that point, you’ll be short a lot of travelers.”

“Rather tough to predict the actions of a madman,” Sheila mumbled.

“By the way, congratulations, Commodore,” Alex said, staring at Shimada. “Admiral Chong’s confirmation came this morning. The destroyer squadron is yours.”

“But I don’t have seniority. Is this your doing, Alex?” Shimada asked. She still felt odd with the nature of these intimate meetings, but it would have appeared even odder to be the only one calling Alex, Mr. President.

“The admiral might have asked my opinion, Reiko, but it was his decision,” Alex replied with a slight shrug.

While everyone congratulated Shimada, she was heard to mumble, “Now I only have to live to enjoy it.”

“Okay, people, back to work so that the only ones who will suffer in this fight are Portland’s forces,” Alex said.

Planning proceeded for the next several hours without producing a single viable option. Even the ideas that sounded good ran afoul of the SADEs, whose analyses predicted heavy losses for the Harakens and Shimada’s squadron.

Rêveur
?> Cordelia sent to Julien.

Julien sent back.

Cordelia said.

Julien replied.

Cordelia knew Julien was correct, and if she had allowed herself to calculate the possibilities, she would have realized it too. But her emotional programs were overriding her analyses programs. She had been thinking of the children.

The frustration in the room was growing, not the least for Tatia, who considered herself the master of tactical solutions for the Harakens. “With the numbers we’re facing, Alex, we might just as well be throwing rocks,” Tatia declared.

Alex’s mind produced a silly image of giant rocks flying at Portland’s fleet, and he was suddenly galvanized. “Yes, that’s it. We throw rocks,” Alex declared and grabbed Tatia, planting a huge kiss on her.

“I always wondered if he preferred bigger women,” Renée said, throwing a wink Tatia’s way.

“It’s nice to be appreciated,” Tatia replied with a grin, “but as the admiral, don’t you think I should know why I’m being appreciated?”

Alex pulled up the holo-vid and requested the position of Portland’s fleet, his approach vector to Idona, and the outer asteroid belt. He studied it for an hour while all around him patience was wearing thin, but before anyone could voice their frustration, Alex said, “I’m thinking an asteroid storm is headed Portland’s way … an asteroid storm of big rocks … rocks big enough to hide a traveler.”

“He’ll just move his fleet aside,” Sheila objected.

“I would expect nothing less,” Alex agreed.

“But that would place our traveler squadrons next to him, in the middle of him, or right behind him for an ambush,” Tatia said, grinning hard.

“Now, all we need is an asteroid storm,” Z said drily.

“We make one with the carriers,” Sheila said excitedly. “We launched the travelers outside the Méridien system. Why can’t we do the same thing with these asteroids?”

“I know a bunch of miners and ore haulers who would love to see their livelihood defended against that madman, Portland,” Nikki added.

“Julien,” Alex said, looking at his friend.

“One feasibility study for one asteroid storm coming up, one hopes,” Julien replied.

The SADEs shared the responsibilities for the feasibility study among themselves. From the most recent probe telemetry, Cordelia quickly determined the amount of time they had to implement the plan if it could be determined to be viable. The time period appeared more than adequate, but no one knew what problems were still to be encountered.

Z set about determining the physical characteristics of the asteroids they would use. His initial thought was to consider the lighter ice asteroids, containing frozen water and gases, but this was overruled by Alex and Tatia in case Portland tested the oncoming storm by firing missiles at the asteroids.

Next for consideration was the diameter of the chosen rock asteroids. The larger the rock, the easier to hide the traveler, but the more mass the carrier would be required to accelerate. In the end, Z decided on two key parameters. The first was the minimum and maximum width of the rock. The second was a request that, if workers could be found, the rocks should be heavily carved out on one side to form a thick, parabolic shape — minimizing mass and creating the greatest shield dimensions to hide a traveler. The latter condition would require the carriers to load the rocks in precise positions to allow the travelers to catch and hide behind them.

Julien took Z’s calculations and determined that his fellow SADE’s suggestion of carved-out asteroids was going to be a requirement not an option. Otherwise, the mass would be too great for the carriers to accelerate and return to launch a second barrage within a reasonable period of time. A corollary of his decision was that the staging point for the launch would need to be located far outward of the station. If not, the carriers would be passing inward of the station before launch, exposing them to Portland’s fleet telemetry, and the ruse would be over before it started.

Cordelia was tasked with working out the details of a coordinated launch between each carrier’s barrage of asteroids and travelers, which was proving to be more complicated than imagined. In simple terms, a carrier was capable of launching an asteroid. A traveler was capable of catching the asteroid from behind after its launch. These elemental steps were a given, but Cordelia had to figure out how to coordinate a sub-wing of travelers racing after a barrage of rocks and selecting a rock that no other pilot had selected.

To solve the dilemma, Cordelia decided to tag each asteroid with a transponder, and the SADE tasked Mickey with rounding up hundreds of miner transponders and updating them to communicate with a traveler’s controller. After the carrier’s launch of each barrage, the programmed controller would seek its own rock, thereby preventing a mad scramble for an uncontested hiding place in the short time available before the rocks passed inward of the station.

It was about this time in the planning process that Z halted his primary decision algorithms in mid-calculations and said, “Yes, I apologize.”

Cordelia was searching for the error that Z must have made, but her partner, for some reason, was smiling at her.

“It would be prudent to leave Idona Station in the UE’s hands, although I would have been quite displeased with that decision,” Z said. “Our president has chosen not to do that, which, on evaluation, is an illogical decision, since our forces are woefully inadequate. Then he seeks to counterbalance our weakness by conceiving a strategy to throw rocks at the enemy. I still have much to learn about humans,” Z admitted.

“Especially about this one,” Julien said, smiling at his compatriot.

The SADEs shared their concern with Alex about the visibility of the carriers and travelers during the barrage launches, an exposure necessitated by the longer run time the carriers required to accelerate the considerable mass of the asteroids. To solve the problem, Alex contacted Nikki for help.

“I need a screen, Nikki, a large amount of metal, but something that could be explained away when seen from a distance,” Alex said.

Nikki was stumped by the request, but fortunately, Captain Yun was in her office and Alex was on Nikki’s speaker.

“How about derelict ships, Mr. President?” Yun replied. “There’s a graveyard of older ships at each of the refining stations, waiting processing. The metals and materials of the ships are valuable, but the labor to dismantle them is expensive, so the stations are waiting on lean times when the smelting work of ore shipments from the belt slows.”

“What’s their condition?” Alex asked.

“Some are bare hulks, but others are in fairly decent shape. They would pass as freighters or other ships waiting at the station.”

“Perfect. Nikki, I’ll get back to you.”

Alex decided that a screen of derelict ships would serve his purpose admirably. There was the distinct possibility of accidents, such as strikes of the derelict ships by the asteroids just after release by the carriers, so it would take some careful placement to make an effective screen to minimize impacts. The pilots would require a warning to allow time to abandon their hiding position before impact. It was just another factor for the SADEs to figure into their calculations.