But where did you get the resources, the ships and the production capacity, Captain? This is actually not a combat test, but a major raid on the enemys rear with the involvement of serious fleet forces.
The ships were provided to me by Colonel General Knyazev, with the permission of Fleet Admiral Nelson, as part of the agreement on the testing of new equipment, which has not been rescinded since the name of the FAWC was Lavroff Weapons Company. Minister of Military Production Zwerev agreed to provide me with shipyards for their reequipment. I cant say he did it willingly, but he did it. And as for resources, the FAWC had its own funds after the sale of battleship Titan to the Fleet.
Captain, you are a pure adventurer. You put yourself at risk, you injure me as your immediate superior. Couldnt you have checked with me in advance?
You wouldnt approve of my plan, Mr Minister, if Id informed you beforehand.
Fine, Captain! Just fine! You knew I wouldnt let you do this and you did it without my knowledge, and now you have the audacity to say it looking me in the face.
I always prefer honest answers, Fleet Admiral, Sir, unless a lie is necessary.
Ghm Bronstein choked on another angry tirade,What should I do with you, Captain? I cant sanction this operation, obviously. Im gonna have to deal with what you did, you understand? Youve acted contrary to the decisions taken at the Presidential High Command meeting. No one ordered you to prepare this raid, and youve diverted industrial resources from the repair of ships and the manufacture of equipment that we may very soon need in battle.
It wont help us, Minister, Sir
Silence! Captain, if you dare to challenge the commands decisions again, Ill dismiss you from your functions and send you to command a battalion on Kapteyn, so that you remain in this hole for the rest of the war and not cause any more trouble.
Mr Minister, I answered as calmly as possible, but I have never exceeded my authority anywhere, not once. The development of new weapons and their preparation for testing is my immediate responsibility. My job description doesnt say I cant involve other ministries and agencies. I made a formal request to Minister Zwerev, and he granted it, which means he was able to do so without compromising the Federations defence capability, and his decision in no way affects the Ministry of Defence, headed by you. This is his sole responsibility.
Well, lets just say you are right, Bronstein agreed, cooling off a little, But why is it that the Minister of Defense finds out about the preparation of such an operation two days before it begins, and the General Staff doesnt know about it at all?
Because this is not an operation by the Federation armed forces, but a combat test of a new experimental weapon, Mr Minister, I patiently explained, and it is being conducted under the auspices of the New Equipment and Weapons Commission of the Ministry of Defense, which I have the honour to head. The job description I mentioned earlier says that Im obliged to notify you of the tests, and not to get your agreement for them at the planning stage. You are, of course, free to make any adjustments to the test plan, if it is contrary to the current interests of the General Staff or the Ministry of Defence as a whole, thats what the notification is for, so that I dont accidentally mess things up for you and the General Staff. But somehow I dont think thats the case.
And I think youre a cocky squirt, Captain. I recognize your distinguished combat service, but youre neither politician nor an official, and Im afraid youll never be either. You should be commanding a landing brigade, maybe a division. You want me to write down an order right now, Captain? Thats where youd be.
You have no idea, Mr Minister, how happy I would be to accept this appointment, but being a commanding officer of a Commando Division, it is impossible to resolve the outcome of the war, and I want the Federation to win, and I will pursue it with all the means at my disposal.
Those are beautiful words, Captain. And I can see that youre being sincere. Would you like me to be frank with you? Youve done a very foolish thing by bringing your ideas to the High Command meeting. I didnt just tell you you werent a politician. You shouldnt have done that. In the eyes of respectable generals, you are a boy with the rank of captain, who tries to impose his plans on adults with such stars on their shoulder straps that you have yet to grow up to, and its not like with this attitude, youll ever make it happen. You think I dont understand that there was some merit in your words? Im well aware of that, and at the meeting, I understood that, too. But you should have reported your thoughts to the Chief of Staff first, since your position allows it, then he and his analysts would conduct a comprehensive analysis of these ideas, would make corrections and turn a naked idea into a preliminary plan of operations. And then he would come to me with this plan, and I would also make comments and changes, and only then could we propose it for discussion at the Presidential meeting.
And when would I have done all this, Mr Minister? I was pulled into a meeting right off the tarmac.
Then you shouldnt have said those things at all. You should have brought your idea up later, in the usual way. It would have been more useful.
We dont have time, Mr Minister. I listen to you, and I wonder how the Federation has managed to survive twenty years of fighting such a dangerous enemy with such an approach. Youre Fleet Admiral, Mr Minister, I dont believe you dont understand what would happen if we let the quargs build their battleships
Captain Lavroff, Bronstein abruptly interrupted me, Youre not listening to me at all, and youre not drawing the right conclusions from what Im saying. The only thing that makes me still talk to you is your genuine desire to defeat the quargs, which you have demonstrated many times to all of us, and which you constantly put above any personal interests. Right now, as you drive me mad with your boorishness, youre risking your career, and I think you understand that perfectly well. Why are you doing this, Captain?
I need this operation, Mr Minister, said I with the utmost patience,Weve already spent too much time preparing it. If we allow the quargs to strike our planets with their new weapons, the Federation will not stand. I know that for a fact, Ive seen a ship like that in battle on both sides of the sight. Youre right, now I dont care what happens to my career, but I dont want 200 billion people going into nonexistence because of my inaction. Ive already died once, Mr Minister, but that guy looking down on us gave me a second chance, and now I owe him, because he didnt do it for nothing, and Im used to paying my debts in full.
Asteroid fever? asked Bronstein thoughtfully, I remember, I was told.
Mr Minister, I took the liberty of drafting your order to test new torpedoes. It says you authorize them, but you leave it up to me to select the targets in the enemys rear. If I dont come back from there, itll be my fault, because itll be my decision, and your headaches will go away without me. Well, if this works out, itll be obvious to everyone whose orders I acted on, said I sending the appropriate file to the Ministers tablet.
Bronstein looked me in the eye for 15 seconds and kept silent, and then he looked down at the screen and went into the reading. The Minister frowned and tweaked the text, then he put the tablet down and looked back at me.
Ive signed the order, Captain. The Fifth Strike Fleet will provide you with ships to support the operation. Agree on the number and types of ships with Fleet Admiral Nelson.
Thank you, Mr Minister, I replied getting up.
I was coming out of Bronsteins office when he stopped me by saying.
I think Im going to put up with a headache somehow, Captain. I like the alternative scenarios much less.
Chapter 3
We entered the quarg space in five separate groups. The ships of Admiral Nelson that accompanied our transports were far behind, because they werent equipped with our latest versions of the EW stations. Taking these ships with us to the enemys rear meant only exposing them to an unjustified risk and putting the entire operation on the verge of breakdown.
The autonomous space docks, where the quargs were building their giant ships, were located in five enemy-controlled star systems located quite far apart. We were therefore forced to take our ships to the assault line independently of each other, having agreed only on the exact time of the operation. The simultaneous onset of the attack was required to provide the surprise upon which my plan relied heavily.
Admiral Bronstein was right to call our operation an adventure. It could not have been anything else, given the terrible lack of time and resources we experienced in preparing this operation. RWC and GWI barely made the torpedoes and command planes we needed, and the conversion of the transports into half-recon ships, half-aircraft carriers was so difficult that sometimes I had to stay on the docks 24 hours a day. The result was still something that should have been called sub-recon-sub-aircraft-carriers. The medium-size troop transport is a pretty good carcass. Its not a cruiser, of course, but its much larger than a destroyer, just try to camouflage it We didnt have enough time to make processors for EW stations, let alone set them up and adjust the settings. The outcome was much sadder than I had imagined, but now it was too late to regret it, we were flying into the jaws of the toads, ugh, of the quargs.
Each of our groups included one medium-size recon ship, which had been upgraded in the same way that the ship Yoon Gao and I flew on the reconnaissance raid. The task of these ships was to observe the tests. Whatever happened, they had to come back and report the results of the attack. Two groups consisted of only one transport and a recon ship. Their task was to destroy single autonomous space docks with unfinished battleships. Two other groups consisted of a recon ship and two transports and went to the systems where the quarg shipyards were located in pairs.
I was in the largest group that has been moving toward the most densely populated system weve discovered in the last raid. The four autonomous space docks in it were located in orbit of the sixth planet, which was a gas giant, as was customary.
Our four transports and a recon ship emerged from hyper-space beyond the borders of the system. For two days, we were slowly and cautiously navigating through the asteroid outer belt, probing the space with the best scanners that Engineer Jeff and Professor Stein were able to assemble on the basis of the new processors. Fortunately, we didnt have to go deeper into the central areas of the system where terrestrial planets revolved around the local sun here. It was much easier to run into a quarg patrol or a network of fixed scanners there than on the outskirts of the system, although we had no doubt that the docks would be heavily guarded. We were just counting on the patrol force to relax and grow lazy over the years of quiet service, and their vigilance has faded, albeit a little.
Whether it was true, or whether the new generation of EW stations was successful, but we have gone undetected to the assault line and even with some time left. The transports gently extinguished speed and hovered in emptiness, and the recon ship moved a little closer to the target and launched a compact probe. A few hours later, the probe returned, and we received three-dimensional images of our targets.
I didnt trick the Minister of Defense, we were really almost late. From the looks of the battleships, their preparedness was approaching 80%. Almost all of the outer hull had been installed on the two ships, and now the main-caliber towers were being mounted.
Well, our waiting time has come to an end, and the transports have begun to accelerate toward the targets. An hour later, the doors of the holds went sideways and the catapults pushed the command machines and our new torpedoes from the inside of the ships. We planned to fire 50 torpedoes at each dock. The command planes scattered in different directions, taking ten torpedoes with them, to provide for a simultaneous attack on the dock from multiple directions, and the ships turned aft ahead and proceeded to smooth braking.
Detected by the enemy! reported Bridgetown Transport Commander, Lieutenant Commander Bosworth.
Accelerate immediately and jump out of here! ordered I, watching as the quargs guarding forces regroup and gain speed to attack the detected ship, The machines youve released, well pick them up ourselves.
Permission to raise pursuit planes from Bridgetown, Captain, Sir? Commander Matveev asked me. Nelson assigned him to me as commander of the pursuit planes transferred to us from aircraft carrier Windhoek. Eight planes were based on each of the transports. Just in case, as Nelson explained to me, and I didnt mind, anyway, we didnt have time to make enough torpedoes to fill the ships, and there was still room.
I think its time, I nodded, Let them attempt to bind the enemys corvettes by battle and lead them away.
The problem was that the machines transferred to us from Windhoek had a standard fleet configuration, and in terms of camouflage parameters, they did not compare with the command planes and torpedoes of our manufacture, so the only way to release them was from ships already discovered by the enemy, or they would just disclose us. As a result, only eight pursuit planes entered the battle against the light forces of the quargs, which were pressing hard the transport gathering speed.
Meanwhile, Bridgetowns situation was becoming hopeless. Quarg forces were based not only on the sixth planet, but also at other points in the system, including behind our backs. We bypassed them, hiding behind the camouflage umbrella of EW stations, but the ship that had been discovered could not escape. The unarmed and, by and large, the non-combat ship was unable to counteract the corvettes and destroyers. A bright flare at the place of the transport ended this brief battle. By the time the ship was destroyed, all eight pursuit planes released from it had already been shot down, it turned out to be inevitable because of the major inequality in strength.
Three of our transports, still undetected, hovered in the void, waiting for events to unfold. A wave of torpedoes led by command machines continued to make their way cautiously to the targets, bypassing enemy ships and stationary scanners as far as possible. The pilots of the command pursuit planes were finding it increasingly difficult to do so, because enemy activity around the sixth planet has increased significantly.
The surprise element was lost, but the torpedoes were not far from the target. What are we going to do, Commander, Sir? asked me the transport commander, The probability of our detection is increasing by the minute. The quargs are pulling forces from the entire system.