Max Glebow
Brigadier General. Assault Line
Prologue
I entered the command post of the medium-size reconnaissance ship, which we had specially upgraded for the deep raid on the enemys rear. The ships commander, the Chinese man Yoon Gao, was standing in front of the main projection screen, on which the three-dimensional image of the vast autonomous space dock slowly rotated. The dimensions of the construction were extremely impressive. Through the exterior structures, the skeleton of a giant ship was seen. Its easily recognizable hull outlines disclosed the twin of the super-heavy battleship Titan, captured by us in the Barnards system.
Yoon Gao examined thoughtfully the photograph delivered by the drone from the orbit of the gas giant in the next quarg star system weve visited.
And this is the ninth such dock, said the commander of the ship. The medium-size recon ship command didnt match the Commander rank, he outgrew it, but Yoon Gao heeded my request to participate in the raid.
Judging by the state of readiness of those battleships weve already seen, they were all laid down at about the same time. I dont know how long itll take the quargs to build them up, but Im afraid in a few months, six months at the most, our Fleet will face a very serious problem, and thats considering weʼve certainly havent seen everything they have.
What weve found so far is more than enough, I responded cheerlessly, Im not sure that our combined fleet could defeat even these ships in a frontal collision. We have to go back, Yoon, we cant take any more chances. This information must be delivered to Earth as soon as possible.
Im not sure its correct, though maybe youre right, the commander of the ship shook his head in doubt, but the reconnaissance isnt over yet. The data we have obtained is important, but it is not complete. Were gonna have to fly back here again, and there might be a few more of those docks, or a few dozen of them. A deeper raid is required, but simultaneously in several directions.
Weve only got one ship like this so far, I reminded the scout, May I suggest you lead the next raid, and I have to go to the capital. My duties as the Chairman of the New Equipment and Weapons Commission of the Ministry of Defense have never been taken from me, and in the light of what we saw, I have a lot of new urgent work to do.
* * *
The opportunity to go to a deep reconnaissance raid behind enemy lines arose due to the fact that my scientific and engineering team finally made it to the Fleets ships, specifically the scouts.
Technically, it wasnt really my group anymore. My new position at the Ministry of Defense was utterly incompatible with the position of the head of the weapons company. We had to do everything we could to find a way out, which, on the one hand, would allow me not to lose control of the new developments, and, on the other hand, would not be questioned by numerous anti-corruption fighters, the number of which has grown enormously after the biggest arms scandal in recent years. A lot of people were looking askance at me anyway, but now they didnt seem to have a strong case for direct charges.
Ive arranged with President Tobolsky to nationalize the Lavroff Weapons Company. This has deprived my opponents, who started accusing me of lobbyism immediately after my appointment, of one of their biggest trumps.
The nationalization, however, was carried out in a rather cunning way. The Ministry of Defense bought 100% of the shares of our company from my mother for 1.5 billion rubles, and the LWC was actually worth ten times that price in my humble opinion. Even the wildest reporters in the tabloid press knitted their brows discontentedly to hear the news, for there was not the slightest opportunity to pick on such a deal. Trophy battleship Titan alone was clearly worth at least ten billion, but rather several times more.
But there was a flip side to this deal. First of all, I remained the chairman of the companys board of directors, not as a private person, but as an official of the Ministry of Defense, second, I retained the right to buy back the shares after the war against quargs for the same 1.5 billion. Of course, Ive lost all my profits for years to come, cause all the dividends now went to the Ministry of Defense, but on the other hand, all the assets of the company, which will inevitably increase in the future, will come to me for free after the war, cause its not going to be possible to increase the cost of the buyback.
The battleship captured from the quargs, we sold to the Fleet almost immediately after the nationalization deal was completed. As a result, the company has acquired substantial funds for further developments, and we didnt even have to apply to the Ministry of Defence for funding, although now we had the opportunity as a public company.
As chairman of the board, I insisted on a strategic plan to continue work on ground and space equipment camouflage systems, as well as on improving communication systems. The first result of this activity was the ship in which Yoon Gao and I went on a reconnaissance raid. It had only the hull, engines and, partially, life support systems from a standard medium-size recon ship. All of the vacated sites were taken by our new Electronic Warfare stations and upgraded scanners. As a result, the ships crew was reduced to five men, as opposed to the original twelve.
We tested the new recon ship in orbit around Callisto, above the Ministry of Defense range. I naturally knew what to expect, but two my aides, Lieutenant General Lyapin and Vice Admiral Fernandez, who I did not change after General Barrington resigned as head of the Commission, were knocked into a mild state of shock by what they saw.
Mr Chairman, the voice of the Vice Admiral was tangibly shaking, is Jupiter really seen thru it?
Once the EW equipment was turned on, the ship did have a partial transparency effect in the visible radiation range. Of course, complete invisibility has not been achieved. In fact, even the camouflage fields of my past life did not give the illusion of complete transparency, at least from this distance. Our product was still a long way from the real camouflage field, but the first signs that we were on the right track were clearly there.
I recommend you pay attention to the multi-band scanner readings, gentlemen, I took the members of the Commission out of their brooding state.
And they paid attention, indeed
* * *
My decision, as a Chairman of the New Equipment and Weapons Commission of the Ministry of Defense, to personally lead the combat tests of the novelty displeased the Minister of Defense Fleet Admiral Bronstein, my immediate superior. However, his grumbling at the inappropriateness of such action for a person in such a prominent position in the Ministry, could not outweigh the Supreme Commanders explicit instructions not to obstruct Captain Lavroff in such endeavours, and I shamelessly took advantage of it.
Yoon finally persuaded me to stay in the quarg space a little longer, and maybe hell get a monument for that someday, at least I will certainly support that idea. What we found was not what we went to inspect the other two systems controlled by the quargs for, but this finding would influence the course of the war far more than anything weve discovered before.
We also found another dock with a Titan counterpart under construction. Both quargs and humans had a tendency to build shipyards in the orbit of gas giants. Almost free source of unlimited hydrogen, as well as many satellites, often rich in essential ores, made such places attractive for industrial production. In exactly such a place, in the orbit of the fifth planet of Delta Trianguli, we discovered one of the enemys military industrial centers: a few dozen different-caliber shipyards and a powerful ship repair complex.
Nothing unusual, weve seen it before, but our attention was drawn to a quarg cruiser heading for a planet from somewhere on the edge of the system. We couldnt make out the details yet, but judging by its speed and also by the fact that a number of small escort ships rushed to it just after it got out of hyperspace, the damage to the cruiser was severe.
Yoon, where did this ship come from?
Scanners picked up its emergence from a jump beyond the orbit of the eighth planet about three hours ago. Since then, its been moving slowly to the repair plant. The damage must have affected the propulsion system, otherwise itd have gotten there faster.
Thats not what Im talking about. Why is there a damaged ship HERE? In fact, have you ever wondered why the quargs would want a ship repair complex so deep behind them? Its very expensive to drag a broken ship down here.
Shall we send the probe?
Better two. One to the cruiser, one to the repair complex.
In six hours, having quietly slipped past the intelligence targets, the probes returned to our ship along a wide arc. We did not risk the use of communications and took the probes aboard. When a computer-processed video stream began to appear on the projection screen, we were shocked for a while to remain silent, and then Yoon Gao said with a changed voice:
Well, Mr Chairman of the Commission of the Ministry of Defense, now we really have to go home.
We stood in front of the screen for a long time and looked at the image of the enemy cruiser, which was ulcerated in the bow by a multitude of many, not even breaches, but some uneven cavities and through holes, either melted or or eaten through by a strong acid or something like that. The whole hull around them was covered in a nasty whitish coating. Meanwhile, the strange weapon that corrupted part of the cruisers side seemed to continue to operate, albeit in a severely weakened state. The armored alloy turned into some kind of rags that continued to fall off from the damaged areas. The escort ships released many small repair robots which treated affected areas with streams of some powder, that reacted violently with the whitish coating, producing gases rapidly scattering in the vacuum.
We have to find those who did this, Yoon. The enemies of our enemies may not become our friends, but we have no right not to take that chance.
Chapter 1
As soon as we reached the nearest hyper-beacon, the information packet went through a chain of relays to the Federation capital. I took advantage of my position and sent it directly to the Minister of Defence, so, by the time we arrived, the entire leadership of the Ministry, together with the General Staff and personally the Commander-in-Chief, were on the verge and really excited about this. In fact, we couldnt add anything new to the information, but as it turned out, the follow-up meeting to the intelligence raid was postponed until I arrived, which surprised me.
A ministerial fly-car with a colonel as its escort, in violation of all rules, flopped on the landing strip right in front of the recon ship that just landed on the tarmac. Ten minutes later, I was walking into the conference room on the top floor of the Ministry of Defence building. I took Yoon Gao with me just in case, after all, the personal observations and comments of the professional space recon officer may have helped not to overlook important details. But the commander of our ship was not allowed in the hall, with a polite reference to the closed list of participants in the meeting, and he was asked to wait in the break room for a summons to the hall, if any.
All right, gentlemen, Tobolsky opened the meeting, you are all aware of the results of Captain Lavroffs raid. The information obtained by him and his men has the highest priority of importance, so I asked you to prepare your ideas and proposals for this emergency meeting at such short notice.
Mr Lavroff, the President found me with his eyes, while you were on your way to Earth, we all had ample time to get to know the details of the information you gave us. Do you have anything else youd like to add to the facts that we already know?
Commander Yoon Gao and I have set out all the facts in the information packet to the fullest extent possible, Mr President, I said while rising, The rest are my personal thoughts and conclusions, which will be more appropriately conveyed in the course of the general debate.
Well, then, lets start with you, in accordance with the ancient tradition, as a junior officer here, grinned Tobolsky, Give your thoughts, Mr Lavroff.
I went to the podium next to the presidium table, where were sitting in comfortable seats President Tobolsky, Defence Minister Bronstein, Chief of the General Staff General of the Army Mazilescu, and Minister of Military Production Zwerev, whose position I so brazenly claimed in private with the President. In the hall opposite me sat the senior military commanders of the Federation and the heads of ministries and departments involved in the war and military production.
It was the opportunity to speak to such an audience that I saw as one of my intermediate goals, and not only to speak, but also to make sure that my opinions are listened to. Well, in the long list of steps to complete the task I can tick the next box. Lets get started.
Gentlemen, I will try to put my thoughts as concisely as possible, I threw in the opening phrase,What I saw in the quarg back areas says two things. First, we underestimated the enemys military-industrial potential. In three to six months, the enemy is confronting our Fleet with no less than ten, but rather more, Titan-class ships, which, when used together, will be able to neutralize the defense of any of our star systems, including the Solar System.
The audience was moving and a quiet hum went over it, but I just kept going: That will happen if we do not fundamentally change anything in our military industry and economy, although it is not certain that even if we want to make the necessary changes, we can do it in time.
Second, it can be considered proven that the quargs have another enemy with whom they are waging war. At first glance, this is good news for us, but I have the strong feeling that our potential ally is losing this war, and the tide of war has been reversed recently. How else do you explain that the quargs have been able to afford a sharp increase in fighting in our direction? So, for the foreseeable future, the Earth Federation may face the sad fact, that the enemy will have at its disposal a very large number of troops and fleet units, which will be transferred to our theatre of operations. The combination of these two factors will leave our Army and Fleet with a task that they, with all their heroism and high-quality training, will not be able to accomplish simply because of the overwhelming superiority of the enemy in numbers and power of armaments.
Dont you think youre darkening the picture, Mr Lavroff? The Minister of Defense asked me a question, Because many of your conclusions are predicated solely on your own assumptions, not based on reliable facts.
All Im saying is a negative scenario, Mr Minister, I answered carefully, knowing Bronsteins temper, There, beyond these walls, more than 200 billion lives depend on our decisions, and we must be prepared for any scenario, even one that is pessimistic.
Do you have any specific suggestions, Mr Lavroff? The Minister of Military Production Zwerev asked the question in a small but firm voice, What my ministry could do, for example, if things go your way?