To stand defiant, p.3
To Stand Defiant, page 3
The other pirate wings engaged so far weren’t as good, and it was making his people’s lives a lot easier—but it seemed that Anthony Yamamoto and his companions had been sent the enemy’s best.
Their sync with Alpha-Two-Bravo—Major Zayna Sundström, the executive officer of the second squadron of the first fighter group aboard Krakatoa—allowed him to track the paths of the lasers fired by both fighters, and he took the starfighter through a spiraling semi-random dance, one that Sundström mirrored with her own chaotic flight.
The lasers were carrying the main work of taking down the missiles, but there were moments when the positron lance lined up with a target, and both Anthony and Sundström knew to take the shots. Flashes of antimatter filled the space around the missile salvo, both from the starfighter’s main guns and the destruction of missiles.
The chaotic pattern of radiation that followed as antimatter missiles detonated didn’t help their targeting, but the missiles were leaving most of it behind as they surged toward Anthony’s fighter.
A wordless report from Navarro flashed through the network, confirming that four of the missiles were heading for the decoy. Gunther took a moment longer than Anthony would have preferred to adapt his targeting—but was fast enough that the last missile died five thousand kilometers short of the starfighter wing.
“Decoy down. Deploying second decoy.”
“Targets destroyed,” Gunther responded to Navarro’s report. “Scimitar electronics weren’t up to the task.”
Anthony double-checked the report and smiled coldly. Sixteen missiles against two Katanas were bad odds for his people—the decoy pulling a quarter of the salvo off-target had saved them and that was almost pure luck.
Eight missiles against two Scimitars were better odds for the Scimitars…but not by much, given the older fighters’ inferior electronics. The pirate pilots had been decent, but they hadn’t been good. Veterans, most likely, but ones that hadn’t seen combat.
“Keep your eyes sharp,” he told his people. “Rest of their missiles are still incoming.”
He’d seen more than one fighter destroyed because the crew had unintentionally dropped the threat rating on uncontrolled missiles—but even the relatively small Javelin VIs in a starfighter’s launchers were driven by special-purpose synthetic intelligences capable of finishing their missions, and there were still two salvos of missiles heading toward them.
“Engaging now,” Gunther replied a few seconds later, the lasers once more spitting out energy.
The gunner wasn’t quite up to the standard Anthony Yamamoto would like in his personal crew, but she was getting there. They’d survive this, and that meant the two freighters were screwed.
The pirates might have managed to fit some weapons and deflectors on the starships, but they weren’t going to stand up to twenty modern starfighters.
Anthony was hoping that the inexperience most of the pirate ships were showing would keep his people alive, but the real concern he still had was the starfighters heading for Blackhawk Five.
Right up until the moment all ten of them disappeared.
“Gunther…what did I just miss?” he asked slowly.
“Scanning and analyzing,” the gunner replied, her datafeed mirroring to his interface as they continued to hurtle toward the pirate freighters. “Um. I do believe we all assumed that Blackhawk Five was just going to sit there and be captured.
“The crew disagreed. Those fighters just collided with a field of refinery slag.”
Anthony stared at the sensor data for a few more seconds and then began to chuckle.
“Two things a refinery station complex has, I suppose, are mass and mass drivers,” he conceded. “I’m guessing the slag is usually returned to orbit in the asteroid belt to maintain mass levels?”
“I think so, yes,” his gunner confirmed. “The mass drivers aren’t nearly up to the standard of military mass cannon, but they also fire a lot more mass.”
Military mass cannon had used the same mass manipulators warships used to increase their engine efficiency to fire projectiles very, very quickly. They’d been obsolete for the entirety of Anthony’s career, but he was aware of the concept.
The pirates, it seemed, either weren’t or hadn’t thought about the fact that refinery stations possessed larger and slower versions of the same fundamental system. And it apparently didn’t require much work to take a system designed to put half-million-ton chunks of rock that had been iron ore back into the asteroid belt and turn it into a giant shotgun.
“Make sure we have the vector of that debris cloud nailed down,” Anthony ordered, still chuckling as he spoke. “I wouldn’t want it to hit anyone we like.”
His amusement faded rapidly as he checked in on the rest of his patrol wings. The pirate fighters had definitely lost the dozen small skirmishes they’d courted, but clearing Dakota’s skies had cost him six of his own ships.
Hopefully, some of the eighteen crew aboard those Katanas had managed to eject. The automatic systems were supposed to handle that, but he’d never trusted their reliability.
“Let’s bring up that transmitter again,” he murmured. “Our new friends have very much run themselves out of options and, well, those ships are worth a hell of a lot if we can take them intact.”
Even a freighter with an Alcubierre-Stetson drive had a price tag most easily measured in percentage points of system GDP, after all.
4
Dakota System
08:30 January 31, 2738 ESMDT
“They decided to see sense after losing all of their fighters and realizing they couldn’t engage their drives that close to the Belt,” James reported to Dakota’s new Cabinet.
Not that long before, the twelve politicians on the other end of the virtual conference had been the delegates to the interim governance conference for the Dakota Sector, an attempt to establish a temporary regional government still loyal to Terra and the Commonwealth.
Now, one member of each planet’s elected government had found themselves forming the core of a regional government. In the medium term, a new Confederate Interstellar Congress was planned—but the Confederacy had existed for twenty-two days.
Enough analysts, bureaucrats and politicians had been concentrated on Dakota for the governance conference that a draft constitution was almost ready. Still, the twelve members of the Interim Cabinet—usually plus Abey Todacheeney, standing in for Dakota, as Chapulin needed to be President and not her planet’s voice—were the effective authority over twelve systems and approximately twenty billion human beings.
“What happens to the ships now?” Chandler Leon, the Minister for Desdemona, asked. A slimly built man with pale skin and bright red hair, Leon’s family ran most of Desdemona’s shipping.
“For the moment, the Marines are still securing control of them,” James replied. “My suggestion is that they be brought into Confederacy service directly, to serve as both peacetime government transports and couriers, and wartime military logistics ships.”
“Right now, that means logistics ships,” Sanada Chō pointed out. The absolutely massive Minister for Shogun was the acknowledged deputy president—a powerful presence both literally and figuratively, given that he’d once been Shogun’s planetary champion sumo wrestler.
“Most likely,” James conceded. “Our ships are designed to operate with minimal or no secondary logistics support, but without FTL communications, I am hesitant to pin my ships down for the amount of time necessary for replenishment fabrication.”
He’d made an exception for replacement starfighters, which had kept First Fleet pinned down in Dakota for the last three weeks. If he’d needed to sortie, he’d have done so—but until a few days earlier, he’d have been short on both fighters and missiles.
“Being able to lean on Dakota’s industry to manufacture replacement fighters and missiles and carry those with us aboard noncombatant vessels improves our flexibility,” he told them. “We are still in a very awkward phase, Ministers. As we saw yesterday, we don’t know enough of what’s going on in the sectors around us.
“Meridian has joined us. The Commonwealth has betrayed us. But we know nothing of the fates of the Brillig, Rossiya and Amandine Sectors. We have limited information on the Cossack and Angola Sectors.
“We had all assumed that our main threats were the League and the Commonwealth,” he continued. “And I think that remains true, but we—I appear to have underestimated the extent of our ‘lesser threats.’”
The virtual conference was silent for a few seconds.
“Does this change your recommendations for our strategy and operations?” Chapulin finally asked.
James suspected that if she was truly concerned, she would have pinned him down in private before the meeting. The interim President knew she had permanent access to his coms, after all.
Their friendship and professional relationship had helped get the whole Confederacy to this point, after all.
“In the immediate term, no,” he told them. “In truth, there’s very little we can do in the immediate term beyond what has been planned. Our limitations on communications and hull numbers remain.
“Our military priorities will be heavily shaped by our political priorities,” he noted. “If, for example, one of the twelve systems represented in this call decides not to join the Confederacy, we will need to assess our positions relative to their defense and see if we can work out how to protect them against the League with minimal risk to ourselves.”
Because there was no way in void or earth that James Tecumseh was going to leave anyone to the mercy of the mercenary-admiral-turned-dictator who ran the Stellar League. Kaleb Periklos had forged the loose alliance of system-states that made up the League into something resembling a nation at the point of a battlefleet—and while James could see where the Dictator was coming from, he couldn’t approve.
And he wouldn’t permit the systems he had promised to protect to be annexed into that empire.
“We do not believe that is a major concern,” Chaza’el Papadimitriou told him drily. The Minister for Persephone spoke for the system with the longest communication loop from Dakota—but he also spoke for a system that had been occupied by the Stellar League until James had relieved them.
“I agree,” James said. “But that is a political calculation, and I need to prepare for the possibilities that we do not expect to occur.
“Either way, our immediate military priority is industrial. We have begun the construction of permanent starfighter- and missile-production facilities both here in Dakota orbit and at Base Łáʼtsʼáadah.”
Base Łáʼtsʼáadah had been a covert Commonwealth shipyard. Now, the ships under construction there would guard the Confederacy against the Commonwealth.
Eventually. He’d have a repaired and refitted Hercules-class in June, Ajax, but the earliest he was expecting any new warships was Christmas. In theory, there should have been three more by the following March, but they were using key parts supplied for those ships to build the first one.
Dakota would be able to provide replacement parts. Eventually. But the Class One mass manipulators that were essential for FTL drives were complex, fragile, and on the verge of impossible to build.
A full set of four was two-thirds of the cost of a freighter—and still forty percent of the cost of an FTL warship, even with the additional costs for weapons and electromagnetic deflectors.
Starfighters existed because no one could afford to lose starships.
“What about the other star systems?” Chō asked.
“I am hesitant to ask too much,” James admitted. “It was the demand that we force this sector to become the Commonwealth’s arsenal that led to our secession, after all.”
“There is a difference, Admiral Tecumseh, between the imposition of a distant state, backed by the unquestioned threat of force and the denial of our rights and self-governance…and voluntary contributions to our common defense,” the Shogun Minister told him calmly. “Speaking for myself and my government, we would be horrified to see Dakota bear the entirety of the financial and industrial burden of said defense.”
“Dakota has more spaceborne industry than any other system in the Confederacy,” Patience Abiodun, Minister for Arroyo, pointed out. “But while it is difficult to admit, Arroyo is likely the poorest system in our twelve…and we are entirely capable of producing fighters and missiles if we are provided the necessary schematics.
“First Fleet and Meridian Fleet provide for the security of the Confederacy against major attack by the League or the Commonwealth,” she continued. “But against pirate attacks like this, a battle fleet seems to be overkill.”
“Our sectors are not used to this kind of conflict,” Chapulin warned. “We do not have the preparations and defenses more…traditionally unstable regions possess.”
“There are systems and tools for that mission,” James told them. “Currently, all of our systems except Persephone have at least a small number of guard corvettes and some orbital defenses, improvised or otherwise. Persephone has two of our carriers in orbit to replace the defenses the League destroyed.”
James wasn’t happy to give up those ships, but Persephone needed something—and he wasn’t going to pretend that Paramount-class carriers were going to change much anywhere. They were old and obsolete…but he had three of them and only two more modern carriers.
“The plan to begin mass production of starfighters and missiles in any system that is willing to host and fund the factories will allow us to deploy those fighters and missiles for the defense of those systems,” he told them. “The only addition I would make at this point is to increase our production of Class Two mass manipulators and begin a crash design program for a guardship.
“We have some hundred or so high guard corvettes across the Confederacy, but those vessels do not have missile launchers and are intended entirely for police and antidebris work. Few Commonwealth systems have deployed true guardships.”
The TCN had certainly fought enough guardships over the years that James had a solid idea of what the sublight vessels needed. Most importantly, though, the Class Two mass manipulators that underlay even a starship’s sublight maneuvering were exponentially cheaper and easier to make than Class Ones.
“I am not prepared to scatter the DCN in penny packets across our systems,” he warned. “Our total strength is only seventeen capital ships, already split into three deployments.
“Against a major Commonwealth or League deployment, we may well not have enough warning to concentrate our forces sufficiently to stand against them.”
The members of the Cabinet were all in the same room, allowing a layer of nonverbal communication that James couldn’t follow. Some of it was electronic between neural implants…and some of it was just people who’d learned to know each other very well sitting in the same place.
“We’ll find the money,” Chapulin told him. “I am not an expert in space combat, but it seems that a squadron of guardships backed by a few squadrons of starfighters should suffice against this kind of danger?”
“Not an expert” was doing some serious lifting in Chapulin’s case, James knew. A former Commonwealth Marine Colonel with thirty years of experience, the interim President was only “not an expert” in space combat compared to, say, James Tecumseh himself.
“I agree, which is why I suggested it,” he told them. “My preference is to concentrate the DCN into a maximum of two fleets. Mostly, right now, that requires bringing Champion and Goldwyn from Persephone to rejoin Meridian Fleet—but that requires assembling a sublight defense force for the system.”
James was surprised to realize that Papadimitriou hadn’t even twitched, let alone objected, when he’d suggested stripping Persephone of defenders. Whatever else the Minister for Persephone was thinking, he apparently trusted James.
And the level of trust the entire Cabinet had for him was terrifying. They’d already seen one Commonwealth Admiral attempt to make himself dictator of a new empire in the Meridian Sector. James had chosen a different course—but the influence and trust the civilian leadership were prepared to give him were occasionally worrying.
“From the perspective of growing our overall economy, I see using centralized funds to build Class Two manipulator factories and guardship yards in every star system as a useful approach from several directions,” Abey noted. “Any counter to the inevitable economic disruption of our split from Terra is a good thing.
“We don’t even have an agreed-upon interstellar currency yet.”
Most planets, in James’s experience, had at least a semi-formal local currency. But it was the Terran Commonwealth dollar that had been the medium of interstellar trade for every world in the new Confederacy—and, for the moment, the dollar remained that currency by necessity.
Which meant that, for a while yet, taxes and government investment would be paid in the dollars of a state that they were grimly certain was going to become their enemy.
After the Cabinet had broken up, the ministers leaving to the seemingly infinite tasks of establishing a new state and government, James found himself still in the virtual conference with the two Dakotan women.
“Was there something else?” he asked. “I enjoy speaking with both of you, but we are all extraordinarily busy people.”
“We had another project we wanted to discuss with you yesterday, before we were rudely interrupted by those pirates,” Abey told him with a smile. “And that’s laying aside my personal complaint about the interruption.”
Chapulin melodramatically covered her eyes, and James couldn’t keep from chuckling. He’d been supposed to spend the night planetside, which meant staying over with his girlfriend.
She understood that duty came first—the same was true for her, though her time as First Chief was supposed to be limited. As the Interim First Chief, she wasn’t expected to put together the full ceremonial headdress that Chapulin had worn for the role, but that was the only part of the job she wasn’t handling.
