"Make that four, Admiral," The operations officer looked up from her plot.
Sabrina Brown clasped a lock of her long, cherry-brown hair between two
fingers
as Ronald Tsu briskly strode to her station. The forty-eight year old vice
admiral no longer wore the hat of a battlegroup commander, although he still
ran his lights on BatRon 1056's flagship. The command of the newly
jury-rigged
Third Fleet fell on his lap early last year; cobbled together from the few
battlecruiser squadrons and carrier battlegroups that survived the carnage the
Seventh Fleet had endured early in the war, as well as the few Fourth Fleet
units that survived the hellhole over Fagan and Anthela. A long and weary
process, Third Fleet's rapid reactivation had only brought it up to a third of
its required strength. Understandably, the admiral's hair had taken a
premature turn to gray; the silver streak, however, contributed to the vague,
distinguished air that surrounded him.
"Is that so?" Admiral Tsu whistled. "My compliments to Plotting. And
just under--"
"Eight hours, Sir," Brown smiled, her fingers completing the downfeed
routine to Operations with automaton precision. "Took the squadron OWPE
record, I believe."
Nailing the Overall Weapon's Performance Evaluation was no small feat,
especially for the junior staff tracking officer that pulled it off. Tsu
nodded agreeably and turned to the operations center; his S-3 finished
tweaking
the main display just as an ethereal holographic projection cycled up.
"What's
it look like to you, Kyar?"
The intelligence officer stepped up from behind Tsu. By far, he was
the
tallest member of the staff, towering over the admiral by a healthy four
inches. After all, it followed that being the only Mutan on a primarily human
staff elicited a certain degree of visibility. Commander Kyar G'hke cleared
his
throat before keying his memo pad. "I'm not quite sure what to make of it,
sir. The picture's definitely clear, but with all due respect to Plotting, it
shouldn't be this clear. Whatever the contact is doing, he's not going
about it
discreetly."
That much was obvious; the holotank Admiral Tsu, G'hke, and Brown had
gathered around ran a time-compressed simulation of the enemy redeployment
around Rastaban. It had been two years since the Confederation had been pushed
back to Impressio, driving the Giovanni Front into Confederation territory by
nearly fifty-three lightyears. The Empire had taken losses of its own--Ogasho
was now back under Confederation control, and the UPC Navy had forced a
massive
depression into the Arm--retaking Muscida and Tau Aurigae. Even during the
brief cease-fire, however, those victories had been contested by the Empire.
Rastaban's fall had been a bit more permanent. Tsu had come out of Second
Rastaban as the senior surviving officer of the Seventh Fleet; seven levels of
command had been wiped out--admirals, staffs, ships and all--before the
responsibility fell on his lap. If survivor's guilt failed to grip him
completely, knowing he was responsible for abandoning Rastaban's
thirty-million
citizens--men, woman, and children--to the Empire's brutal shock-troops and
occupation forces nearly paralyzed him. However, thirty years of service had
impressed a deep sense of professionalism and duty that pierced through his
understandable despair. He defended the Impressio system, weak on both
planetary defenses and space-borne assets, from a full-scale Western Fleet
attack with a battlecruiser squadron, four carriers and a devastated
superdreadnought division. First Impressio had been the miracle that gave the
Spacy enough time to move up heavier assets that would stop the Corron advance
at Second Impressio.
The war's far from over, Ron, the admiral reminded himself. The
enemy's strategic doctrine had undergone several obvious revisions--no longer
was he concentrating on Rubia or Jarao. Indications suggested the enemy's
Western Fleet intended to shift the conflict's intensity to the Arm and the
rest of the Eastern Giovanni Stretch.
Plotting, however, suggested an entirely different scenario.
"Admiral," G'khe spoke up. "What really worries me is we have no
depth
of scanner intelligence beyond fifty to sixty lightyears beyond the stretch.
Historically, the enemy's maintained an appreciable Reserve to serve as an
interstellar police for in their territory. They've never employed a
strategical doctrine that involved moving those units to their northern
territorial boundaries. If they're doing that now, then we wouldn't even have
the assets in place to pick up on it."
"Can they effectively reinforce their Jarao force while concurrently
turning the heat on Tital and the Arm?"
"They can reinforce, although I can't see how they can do that without
spreading themselves ridiculously thin. There's a heavy force scenario to
consider, moving in their entire--I should underscore entire--Reserve and Home
Fleet. In that case, current deployment patterns suggests they wouldn't be
able
to conduct operations for more than three months."
"A distraction?" Brown raised an eyebrow quizically.
"They're making it obvious enough, although that seems like a lot of
firepower to allocate for a diversion. I'm inclined to say no in this
case--it's simply too fancy." Even the Basic Strategy courses taught at the
Academies looked down on overly complex operations as flamboyant and extremely
risky; in an environment where timing constituted about ninety-percent of a
Fleet's operational concentration, coordinating massive operations over
interstellar distances fell in the realm of the nigh-impossible. Of course,
there were very rare occasions where a particularly briliant commander managed
to pull off such operations.
The Confederation still reeled from the memory of Mika Hw'italni's
stunning Blue Corridor invasion.
"It wouldn't be the first time, Commander." Sabrina Brown noted dryly,
speaking aloud Admiral Tsu's very thoughts. "Admiral, they clearly think this
makes sense--there's no suggestion of hesitation over the redeployment. If
Intelligence is right, then they don't even have the reserve elements
necessary
to pull off a full reinforcement of Jarao while pursuing operations near Tital
and Rubia. That means they have other plans for this force--designate Red
Bravo One; possibly a diversion. We should have sufficient forces to deal
with
any incursion of this type--they haven't move forward their heavy battle-line
units yet, and they haven't positioned any carrier assets within fifty
lightyears of front."
"We should also consider the possibility that the intelligence is
simply wrong." Somone drew in a sharp breath of air, just short of a gasp.
Brown paused momentarily before continuing. "Our estimations on their reserve
capabilities is purely based on our experience with what they've been willing
to commit. Overwhelming numbers, yes, but nothing that our tech-advantage
couldn't offset. That estimation, however, never figured in the political
dynamic of the Empire. I'd like to talk this over with G'khe first, but I
believe that the Reserve deployment system the Empire employs figures in
heavily with the intrafamily relationships that define the Imperial
government. The size of the Reserve, in that case, would depend on the
commitment of `family military assets' that each clan would be compelled to
commit to the Imperial forces."
"Admiral, I partially concur with Commander Brown," G'khe spoke up.
"CIN and NAVINT have both been less than enthusiastic about sharing some of
its
conclusions regarding the enemy's reserve, largely because very few people
considered the factor of intrafamily military politics played in an unlimited
war. In lieu of the events at Rubia and Fagan, they've been even more
reluctant
to consider the possibility that the enemy's reserve may in fact be massive
enough to conduct operations of this magnitude while simultaneously difficult
to call up."
"I'm afraid I'm not following you, Kyar," Tsu presented a puzzled
expression.
"My apologies, Admiral," G'khe scratched the side of his jaw. "This is
a rather obscure way of looking at the situation, but I am considering the
possibility that the Empire may have sufficient reserve strength to conduct
operations we never dreamed possible. If some estimates concurring with this
belief are correct, they may have over 3500% the reserve we estimated."
"That's almost...my God...ten-times larger than their active force!"
Tsu exclaimed
"A full magnitude of order greater, at least," Sabrina Brown whistled.
"Which means they have more than seven times our combined reserve and active
tonnage which they can commit to operations. However, these are raw numbers.
Their deployment patterns, under the most ideal circumstances, suggests they
have to begin active duty deployments no less than three weeks before
launching
operations. This is a historical fact, with--of course--notable exceptions."
Once again, the late General Mika was the exception--the frightening wildcard
in an otherwise uniform deck. "Given the nature of civilian control over
their
reserve--namely, an intra-family confederacy constructed over a
self-contradicting code of obligations--they can't activate more than nine
percent of that reserve in under a year."
"That's still a frightening large number of additional units,
Commander," Tsu noted.
"Yes, Sir," Brown nodded in agreement. "However, there are two
mitigating factors. First, simple reasoning and knowledge of the base
industrial capacity of the Empire suggests that this nine-to-ten percent
recallable reserve can only reinforce their light screening units. Their
disposable tonnage will only increase by seventeen percent, and that assumes
they wait for the activation of their reserve before they consider...revising
their position towards the Confederation."
Like many military officers, Commander Brown took perverse pleasure of
semantically trivializing the surmounting crisis. Nonchalantly, she flipped
through the rest of her report. "Second, we still have a distinct edge with
our tech base, and we can inflict sufficient losses to minimize the impact
those light reinforcements may have for the first few months. Afterwards,
we'll have to rely on building slips and wartime industry to match their
juggernaut."
"G'khe?"
"I agree with Commander Brown's assessment," the intelligence officer
crossed his arms across his chest.
Ronald Tsu ran a finger across his thin mustache. He turned to his
communcations officer, who had remained silent up to now. "Very well, then.
Webb, send a dispatch to Theater Command. Get with G'khe and Brown and
prepare
the briefing packet. Also, attach a hype-state request for urgent comm
priority with CINCWESTGIOV. I suspect he'll want to speak to us directly."
Lieutenant Webb Kelvin belted a quick "aye, sir!" and Tsu's staff went
to work.
* * *
* * *
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