Surrender demand book 4.., p.1
Surrender Demand: Book 4 of the Halberd Series, page 1
Surrender Demand
(Book 4 of the Halberd Series)
John J. Spearman
Copyright © 2019 John J. Spearman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1077205000
DEDICATION
For Alicia, who has made my life so wonderful.
OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR
Halberd Series
Gallantry in Action
In Harm’s Way
True Allegiance
Surrender Demand
Pike Series
Pike’s Potential
Pike’s Passage
FitzDuncan Series
FitzDuncan
FitzDuncan’s Alchemy
FitzDuncan’s Enlightenment
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to acknowledge my readers. They are the whole reason to do this.
1
Following the public memorial service for Amy, Jonah traveled with her parents and his mother to the planet of Carolina. A small group of friends joined them, including Admiral Pierre Delhomme and his new fiancée Captain Elaine MacLeod, Lord and Lady Thorner, and the foreign secretary Brian Stewart-Crosland and his wife, Joanna. Anne and Mark Davidson, Amy’s parents, prepared a small informal ceremony on the beach near where Amy grew up and on which Amy spent many pleasant hours. They scheduled the ceremony for sunset.
Everyone was casually dressed, even agents Lewis and Sauer. Jonah thought it was the first time he ever saw agent Sauer in a skirt. At the conclusion of the ceremony, just as the sea breeze changed to an offshore breeze and with the tide going out, everyone waded just into the edge of the water and threw a garland of flowers onto the waves. Jonah went last and scattered Amy’s ashes to the wind. They floated into the sea she loved.
The rest of the group returned to the Davidson’s house, but Jonah stayed on the beach, watched at a discrete distance by Lewis and Sauer. He sat on the sand and said his farewells to Amy as twilight deepened into evening. As Amy often advised him, he tried to focus on the joy of the time they had together and not grieve over the time they were forced to spend apart. He wasn’t entirely successful. When he was finished, he stood up, dusted the sand from his pants, and joined the agents who drove him to the Davidson’s home.
Upon his return to Caerleon, Jonah was assigned light duties at the Admiralty’s Bureau of Personnel (BuPers), where he reviewed hundreds of fitness reports. He continued his meetings with Dr. Abramovich. At first, he met with her three times a week. After two weeks, she claimed her appointment calendar was booked solid, and his visits were reduced to one per week. After six more weeks, she pushed his next appointment out to four weeks later, using the excuse that the Thanksgiving holiday was upon them, and she couldn’t meet with him until after. At this point, Jonah realized she was trying to let him know that she felt he moved past the need for regular counseling.
“Instead of four weeks from now, doctor,” Jonah suggested, “why don’t I call you when the next time I need your guidance?”
“That’s an excellent idea, Jonah,” she replied with a slight smile.
“Would you please let Admiral Lothes know I would like to return to regular duty?”
Abramovich smiled more broadly. “I let her know a month ago that you were getting close. It has just been waiting for you to realize it.”
The next day, Tuesday, November 2, Jonah was summoned to Admiral Lothes’s office. After the ritual exchange of salutes, she indicated for him to sit.
“Dr. Abramovich has cleared you for a return to full duty,” she confirmed. “I’ll bet you’re happy to see the last of BuPers for a bit.”
Jonah chuckled in agreement.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like some folks to join us,” she said.
Jonah shrugged his shoulders in acceptance. Director Niven of Advanced Warfare and Director Sweedler of the Office of Naval Intelligence came in moments later. Jonah had not seen Niven since their last meeting in the Twelfth of Never when Jonah took command of Third Fleet, created from superdreadnoughts: ships that had been mothballed a hundred years before, but refurbished and seriously upgraded.
After exchanging greetings, Admiral Lothes explained, “Director Niven is here to give you a comprehensive update on the status of repairs and new construction. Director Sweedler will provide an update on what we know about the Chinese.”
She nodded at Sweedler first. He began, “As expected, the Chinese are nearing completion of ten superdreadnoughts and fifteen battlecruisers. As far as we can tell, they are still due to be commissioned in five-to-eight months. We have no proof but think it extremely likely that the new ships will have some type of enhanced artillery. The reason we think it is extremely likely is that they had ample opportunity to examine sensor data from their ships that survived battles in which our particle burst weapons were used. Using that data, it is reasonable to think that they have reverse-engineered something similar.
“We suspect that it will either not be as powerful as ours or have the range that ours does. This is due to powerplant limitations. As far as we and our allies know, they have not upgraded their powerplants. Their weapon will likely have longer range and more punch than their photon cannons, but how much more we cannot determine at this point. Director Niven will be able to give you a better idea of what is involved.”
“Right,” Niven took up the thread. “You’ll remember, admiral, when you took over Severn, that you and I had a discussion about the enormous power demands of our version of the weapon.”
Jonah nodded. “We needed to add powerplants to be able to use them.”
“Yes,” Niven confirmed. “Not only that, we added new types of powerplants, more efficient ones, so more, and more powerful, reactors.”
Jonah nodded again.
“So far as director Sweedler can determine,” Niven stated, “the Chinese are still using the same powerplants, in the same configuration as before. The ships they are about to commission are the same design as the rest of their SDNs and battlecruisers, with perhaps these new weapons slapped onto their hulls.
“The problem they will face is there is a finite supply of power. The drives need power. Life support needs power. Plasma shields need power. The computer systems, the sensors, the navigational thrusters, the photon cannons—everything that makes a ship more than a lifeless block of metal in space—requires power.
“Ships are built with slightly more power than they would need in order to make everything work all at the same time. That is done in case there is damage to the ship that limits energy output from the reactors. This creates a ‘reserve’ of power if you want to think of it that way. Typical power reserves are no more than ten to fifteen percent of the total power output. When power output is reduced by more than the limited amount of reserve, then trade-offs need to be made.”
“I’ve had to face some of those trade-offs,” Jonah confirmed.
“Exactly,” Niven agreed. “Our particle burst weapons use forty to fifty percent as much power as all the other systems on the ship combined. We know from the Chinese ships we are working on right now that the 527-type SDN with their existing powerplants has a power reserve of just under fourteen percent and the 461-type battlecruiser has a reserve of roughly twelve percent. As a result, in order to utilize this weapon, they will need to make trade-offs.”
“What sort of trade-offs?” Jonah asked.
“Big ones, obviously,” Niven said with some humor. “You have to analyze power requirements during battle conditions. You start with the biggest energy hogs, which would be plasma shielding, life support, photon cannons, and the EM drives. You wouldn’t want to touch your shielding—obviously. But you could bleed off some power from the rest temporarily.”
“For instance?” Jonah asked.
“Well, the trade-offs are situationally-dependent,” Niven explained. “You would need to program the parameters into the system. For instance, outside of photon cannon range, I would take all the power from their systems, but I would still need more. Given that the typical engagement only lasts a few minutes, I would likely shut down life support as well. If I were within photon cannon range and needed to use them, I’d also have to shut down the drives, so I would not be able to accelerate or decelerate while using the weapon.”
Trying to think of the longer-lasting battles he had been in, Jonah asked, “What would be the effect of cutting life support for, say, ten minutes?
“Cold, mostly,” Niven replied. “The areas closest to the hull would cool rapidly. In ten minutes, it would get cold enough to become unpleasant, though not life-threatening.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Jonah stated.
“No,” Niven admitted, “but I haven’t discussed performance yet. The kind of power I’m talking about so far is the amount of power needed to make a basic particle beam weapon function at a fairly minimal level, at least in terms of power, range, and cycle time. We move into the realm of guesswork here because of all the variables. Our PBGs are designed to have fifty percent more range than photon cannons with the maximum amount of punch they can deliver and a reasonably short cycle time. On our Columbia-class refits, we can fire every 30 seconds, and on the Regents, every fifteen seconds.
“Because the Chinese have less power available, they need to make sacrifices. We think the Chinese will want to match the range of our weapon, so they will have to sacrifice punch and cycle time. Our PBG is thr
“Our best guess is that the Chinese will settle for a weapon that delivers a blow fifty to seventy-five percent more powerful than a typical photon cannon. This would mean that a Chinese 527-type would be able to get one shot off every 40 seconds, and a 461-type would have a cycle time of roughly 75 seconds. If they want to reduce the cycle time, they must reduce the effectiveness of the weapon.”
Jonah sat quietly in thought, absorbing the information. “Is there anything else?” he inquired.
“More guesswork than actual knowledge, I’m afraid,” Niven cautioned, “but I’m thinking they are going to have trouble with the power conduits. In our own experience, the powerplant issue was the biggest nut to crack, but once we solved that, it took us quite a few tries to engineer the conduits to be strong enough. We developed the PBG, hooked it up to a power source, and fired it. No problem.
“We thought we had the whole thing licked. Then we decided to test-fire the PBG under simulated battle conditions—firing repeatedly with the shortest cycle times possible. In the beginning, that was 30 seconds. Without getting too technical, the conduits kept, well, melting down is the best way I can describe it. We could get five or six shots off, and then the conduit would fail. We tried a wide variety of different materials and cooling methods before we found the right solution. It took us over six months. I don’t think the Chinese have had that kind of time.”
“What is the status of the repairs to our ships from Avalon?” Jonah asked.
“We have good news and bad news on that front,” Lothes said. “The good news is that the three Chinese SDNs and six battlecruisers that served as the blocking force allowing the rest of the Chinese fleet to escape are nearly ready to be rechristened and commissioned in the Commonwealth navy. Along with those, there are two more SDNs and seven more battlecruisers captured in earlier action that are as far along. Two of the Victory-class SDNs and four of the Dakota-class battlecruisers are also nearly finished. Within the next six to ten weeks, we will restore a total of seven SDNs and seventeen battlecruisers to service. We will be ready to re-establish Fourth Fleet with those ships.”
“That is good news,” Jonah agreed. “What’s the bad news?”
“There’s more good news, but the bad news is that the Roosevelt will take longer to restore to active duty than we hoped,” Lothes informed him. “And we’ve decided Yukon is too far gone to repair. We are also not going to refurbish any of the other Chinese ships, but we will continue repairing our own. That’s another five SDNs and three battlecruisers, plus Roosevelt. They should be restored to service in nine months or less.”
“Hmmm…and the rest of the good news?” Jonah inquired.
“With the new appropriations bill that passed six weeks ago, we received a huge boost to the budget. As you know, we laid the keels for six new Defender-class SDNs and ten new Retribution-class battlecruisers over a year ago. We laid the keels for eight more Defenders and nine more Retributions when Parliament approved them several months back.”
“I thought we had the funding for ten more Defenders and fifteen more Retributions,” Jonah interrupted.
“We do,” Lothes confirmed. “It’s just that we’re not building all of them.”
“Why not?” Jonah asked incredulously.
Lothes held up her hand to calm Jonah. “I didn’t say they weren’t being built. I said that we are not building them.”
“What?”
“One of the many projects your wife completed was a unique arrangement with Edo and the Germans. Both of them had excess shipbuilding capacity in their naval yards. We had none. Two of the Defender hulls are being built at Edo. Six of the Retribution hulls are being built at the German yards at Bavaria. They started as soon as we had the approval from Parliament on the funding. The costs are in line with our own estimates, but the time to completion is far shorter. By the end of January, all eight of those hulls will be completed and towed here to Caerleon for us to finish. We are also bringing with the hulls just under a thousand Edoan and two thousand German yard workers on a contract basis, primarily to work on the frames and hulls of the more-recently begun ships.”
All of a sudden, Jonah realized some of the odd moments he had noticed in conversation months ago with Admiral Niimura. Yoshi must have thought Amy would have told Jonah about the work given to Edo, but she had not. Jonah hadn’t known a thing.
“Edo and the Germans also have excess capacity for smelting and making hull plates and framing. We’ve jobbed quite a bit of work out to them. They have already begun to deliver in sizeable quantities,” Lothes continued.
“The new appropriations bill also gave us the funding to hire civilian shipbuilding companies on a contract basis to help us complete the interior work on the first set of new ships. Director Sweedler and his staff have been extremely busy conducting security reviews of the employees of the civilian contractors. The first of them begin work as of the first of the year.
“The end result of all these gyrations is that we have been able to accelerate the timetable of the new construction quite a bit. A couple of months ago, we were at least two years away from commissioning the new ships. With the new resources, we hope to have the first eight Defenders and sixteen Retributions commissioned and in service by this time next year.
“We also laid keels for fifteen more Defenders and twenty-five more Retributions here and elsewhere. They should be completed in a bit under three years based on our current production pace. Six months from now, we plan to begin another group of fifteen Defenders and twenty-five more Retributions.
“That is outstanding news,” Jonah admitted.
“Here’s the rest,” Lothes added. “I’m putting you in charge of the reconstituted Fourth Fleet. I’m reassigning Hotspur
as your flagship.”
2
Buoyed by this revelation, Jonah was as happy as he had been since learning of Amy’s death. The only thing that offset his happiness was just outside Admiral Lothes’ office when he caught himself thinking that he could hardly wait to tease Amy about keeping secrets from him and also tell her the good news, then remembering instantly that he could not. Weeks before, that realization would have torn open his emotional wounds.
At present, though it did make him hesitate mid-stride to think for a moment, he calmly shook his head with a rueful smile and continued on. He realized he would have many flashes like this in the years to come. Since his father’s death many years ago, he still had those times where he wished he could share a thought or an occasion with his dad. Those moments no longer held any grief or sense of loss, just a wistful yet warm feeling.
He had a little more than a month before he would rejoin Hotspur and take the reins of the newly-reconstituted Fourth Fleet. Since Admiral Lothes already determined the officers and crew for the ships nearing completion of their repairs, he feared Admiral Lothes would assign him back to reviewing files in the bowels of BuPers as a bit of payback. He was relieved to find himself temporarily assigned to Advanced Warfare instead, reporting to Director Niven. He did learn to his dismay that Lieutenant Srp, who served so ably as his flag lieutenant, was transferred to a ‘line’ position—getting her out of the bureaucracy onto a ship as she wanted. Her replacement was not yet chosen.
Jonah’s holiday plans had been set for a few weeks. Geoff and Laura Thorner invited him to stay at their house and invited his mother, Marian, to join them as well. Lord and Lady Thorner became good friends and were able to give Jonah insight into the machinations of government and politics. Captain MacLeod would also be joining them for some of the festivities. Elaine MacLeod and Jonah had enjoyed a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship a few years before. She was high in the chain of command of the Royal Navy’s Office of Public Affairs. Jonah looked forward to hearing more about her recent engagement to his friend Pierre, Admiral Delhomme. With the help of Laura, Jonah purchased suitable small gifts for everyone. Elaine MacLeod helped him pick out something for Laura.
