Читать книгу The Complete Inheritance Trilogy: Star Strike, Galactic Corps, Semper Human - Ian Douglas, Matthew Taylor - Страница 53

General Alexander floated against the backdrop of the Galaxy, surrounded by the icons of the Defense Advisory Council. Despite the naggingly unpleasant presence of Marie Devereaux, it was actually a bit of a relief to be here. “Operation Lafayette,” he told them, “is on sched, with T-for-Translation Day now set for three days from now.”

For days, now, Alexander had been submerged in the minutiae of ops preparation. The actual strategic planning he tended to enjoy, with a sense of roll-up-the-sleeves and get things moving accomplishment. Going over the endless downloaded lists of logistical preparations and supply manifests, however, was sheer torture, and he found he was willing to endure even Devereaux’s acidly uninformed tongue to escape it, even if only for a little while.

“I don’t understand your use of the word ‘translation,’” Devereaux put in. “What does language have to do with it?”

“It has to do with a mathematical concept, Madam Devereaux, not with language,” he replied. “You can download the details here.” He paused, ordering his thoughts. How to explain the inconceivable? “Any point in space can be precisely defined in terms of its local gravitational matrix. If it can be so defined, it can be given a set of detailed spatial coordinates.

“Now, the paraspace plenum we call the Quantum Sea is co-existent with … or, rather, think of it as adjacent to every portion of four-dimensional space-time. Practically speaking, that’s where we draw vacuum energy from … the realm of quantum fluctuations and zero-point energy. If we know the precise special and gravitational coordinates of where we are, and the precise coordinates of where we want to go, we can translate one set of coordinates to another by rotating through paraspace.”

“General, that makes no sense whatsoever.”

He sighed. “In simple terms, Madam Devereaux, the Quantum Sea allows us direct, point to point access through paraspace to any place in the entire universe.”

“This is something naval vessels can do?”

“Not naval vessels, Madam, no. I don’t know the engineering specifics, but in essence the translation requires enormous amounts of energy. Skybase is large enough to accommodate the zero-point energy taps necessary to effect a translation … but nothing smaller could pull down that much power.

“So what we’ve worked out is a kind of shuttle plan. We take on board as many of the 1MIEF heavies as we can … the first load will consist of a Marine fleet strike carrier, a Marine assault transport, and either three destroyers or a destroyer and a light missile cruiser for fire support. We make the first translation from Sol to the Puller system, drop those four or five ships off, then translate immediately back to Sol to take on board the next load of ships, which will be queued up and waiting. It will take, we’re now estimating, a total of sixteen such transitions to get all eighty vessels of 1MIEF shifted out to Puller. Obviously, we can take on more light ships in one load, or fewer heavies. We’re only limited by the docking storage space on Skybase’s main hangar deck.”

“Essentially,” Admiral Orlan Morgan added, explaining, “they intend to use Skybase as an enormous fleet carrier.” His icon grinned. “In the case of a fleet strike carrier like the Chosin, Skybase becomes a carrier-carrier!”

“If you’ll recall,” Alexander continued, “Skybase was designed to reside in paraspace. It’s a fairly simple operation to move out of paraspace and into 4D space at any point of our choosing, if we have the proper field metrics and coordinates to make the transfer.”

“Why weren’t we told this before?” Senator Gannel put in. He sounded irritated. “It seems to me that this represents a significant strategic advantage, not only in war against other human stellar nations, but against the Xul.”

“That’s right,” Senator Kalin put in. “It also means we could send your battlefleet straight to Starwall or to Nova Aquila or wherever we want to go without having to pass through the Puller gate, without trespassing in PanEuropean territory!”

It was an effort not to lose patience with them. “To translate from one point to another,” he told them, “we need extremely exact coordinates for both points. We know the metric throughout Sol-space quite well, of course. We know the Puller system because we’ve had Marines out there for several years, now, and one of the things they’ve been doing, besides watching the Xul on the other side of the Stargate there, is taking gravitometric readings on local space … just in case. The stargates all put a considerable dimple into space-time, thanks to the pair of high-speed black holes each one has racing around inside its structural torus, and we take those measurements as a matter of course so that we can better understand the local matrix.

“We do not, however, have gravitational readings on places like Starwall. We’ve had Marine recon probes out there, but they had other things to keep them busy than flit around taking gravity readings. As for Nova Aquila, we have not yet had any probes out there, either manned or AI. We have absolutely no data on the local matrix out there.

“Does that answer your objections, Senator?”

“Adequately.”

“And have I answered your questions, Madam Devereaux?”

“Yes. You’re saying you can get the fleet to Puller, but not to any place on the other side of the Puller Gate?”

“Exactly. We are fairly confident we can make the translation to Puller, and each successful translation would give us additional data on the metric. We would not even be able to attempt a translation to Nova Aquila, however. We simply don’t have the requisite information.”

“We will be able to use Skybase translations out to both Nova Aquila and to Starwall once we have secured them,” Admiral Morgan added. “We simply need to have the time and equipment out there to make the necessary readings.”

“We think,” Alexander said. “The gravimetric situation at Starwall is pretty complicated. When I say we need exact readings, that’s not a matter of measuring the gravity from the local star and a couple of the closest planets. Starwall is close to the outer fringes of the Galactic Core, and literally millions of nearby stars are affecting the local picture. As for Nova Aquila … well, we’ll know more when we actually get some instrumentation out there. For now, though, it’s first things first. We need to secure the Puller system, and that we can do using Skybase as our transparaspace shuttle. We have the queue orders drawn up and transmitted. According to our current schedule, we will begin loading the first ships on board Skybase later today, using L-3 as our rendezvous point. The first translation to Puller space is now set for 1800 hours GMT, on 0112, three days from now. Operation Lafayette will commence as soon as the first ships are released at the Puller Gate. Any questions?”

“Yes, sir,” General Regin Samuels said. “I note in your plans that this operation will be depending heavily on a Traditionalist Catholic mutiny in the Puller system. Just how reliable is this element, anyway?”

“I believe I can answer that, Regie,” Navin Bergenhal, of the Intelligence Advisory Group, said. “We have good, solid intelligence assets throughout PanEuropean space, including inside both the DST and the DGSE. Those assets, in fact, are how we determined that the French are indeed holding some of our people for questioning.”

Not entirely true, Alexander thought. The initial data had come from Lieutenant Fitzpatrick, still watching and listening quietly from the hidden asteroid base orbiting the Puller stargate. But the Commonwealth’s DCI² had developed that intelligence further, and brought home a lot of data concerning both the political and the military situations inside Republic space.

“From the Marines’ point of view, General Samuels,” Alexander said, “we will welcome help from local forces if it is available. We will not count on it.”

And that was the final decision made after a very long series of discussions and ops planning sessions, including many hours of virtual-reality simulations playing out each aspect of the mission. Most Marine officers, from the MIEF’s platoon commanders up to Alexander himself, felt the possibility of Traditionalist assistance at Puller was going to be more trouble than it was worth. The situation presented endless possibilities for targeting the wrong PE units, for friendly fire incidents, and for outright deception by the Republic’s defensive forces.

“So, are you saying you don’t trust the Catholics, General?” Devereaux asked.

“I’m saying, Madam Devereaux, that the MIEF will have the greatest chance for success if we welcome any help that’s offered, but go in prepared for no help at all. As a matter of fact, our defensive stature will assume that the T.C. mutiny is actually a PanEuropean deception, a trick. We would be foolish to act in any other way, or to lower our guard without very solid reasons to do so.”

“Quite right, General,” Samuels said, and other military officers in the assembled council murmured agreement.

It was impossible to get a feel for what Devereaux actually thought. Her Net persona was well filtered, her icon image emotionlessly bland in affect. When she’d asked if he didn’t trust Catholics, however, it had been impossible not to get the idea that she was fishing for something—a weakness, perhaps, or an opening for an attack. She was, he knew from her public records, from a Traditionalist Catholic family, but he also knew she wasn’t herself a believer … at least not to the extent of going to Mass or accepting the word of the Papess in Rome as law.

What the hell was her game?

He didn’t trust the woman, not after her attempt to shut down the Marine Corps. He still wished he knew what her personal stake was in the Corps—why she seemed to hate it so. Further searches of available public data had turned up nothing more on her background. So far as he could tell, she was simply a political opportunist who saw in the current situation a possible way of making political capital at the Corps’ expense.

That made her no less of a viper, however. She would need to be watched, and carefully, by the few friends the Marines still had within the Senate. He did not think it impossible that she might even be working for the PanEuropeans; the Québecois link, certainly, suggested that possibility. Quebec and France had been in each other’s pockets for centuries, since the First UN War at least, and possibly even well before that.

At least the chances were good that the woman wasn’t working for the Xul. The Xul, Alexander thought with a wry and inward grin, didn’t work with anyone unless they were Xul, and even Madam Devereaux wasn’t capable of bridging a gap like that.

“My ops planning staff has put together an assault plan,” Alexander continued, addressing the group at large. As he spoke, an animated diagram unfolded in the assembled minds of the audience. “The first ships in will act to set up a local defended space into which we can continue to drop ships and men. As you see here, there are two primary centers of interest within the Puller 659 system … here at the stargate, where our covert listening post is still in operation … and far in-system, here, at one of the moons of this lone gas giant. As of our last set of reports from the LP, the French fleet is in orbit around the gas giant. So far they’ve made no move at all to investigate the stargate.

“We will materialize here. …” He indicated an area some 10 light-seconds away from the stargate, and nearly 30 light-minutes from the gas giant’s current orbital position. “With luck, we’ll be able to bring the entire MIEF into position before the PEs even know we’re in-system.”

“Won’t they be aware of your ships when they arrive?” General Samuels asked. “Neutrino emissions from your ships’ reactors.”

Samuels had a valid point. The QPTs or Quantum Power Taps utilized by Commonwealth naval vessels required massive input from conventional antimatter power plants to open the zero-point channels. Once those channels were open and functioning, energy from the zero-point field itself was more than sufficient to keep those channels open and working, but the power-up procedure required a lot of initial seed energy … and they wouldn’t be able to go through the paraspace translation with their power taps on. That, any good QPT engineer knew all too well, was an excellent way to release a very great deal of energy into a small volume of space in an accident—a “casualty,” in naval parlance—that would almost certainly result in the complete vaporization of Skybase.

With a thought, Alexander switched on a doughnut-shaped swath of red light surrounding the glowing point of light that marked the Jovian gas giant. “We hope that the answer to that, General, is ‘no.’ At the moment the PE fleet is deep inside the radiation fields of the Puller Jovian. If their sensors are finely tuned enough, they might pick up our reactor leakage, but they would have to know exactly where to look to have much of a chance of picking us up. We’re hoping that the radiation belts in this area—and their own shields against that radiation—are going to keep them pretty well blind to our approach.”

“Isn’t that a rather slender hope, General?” Devereaux demanded.

“Not at all. According to our LP, the Republic forces have been paying no attention at all to the Gate. Even if they do pick up on what’s happening before our fleet is fully in place and ready to deploy, we anticipate being able to achieve local battlespace superiority in relatively short order. Their current fleet in the system consists of twelve ships. Of those, only two could properly be considered heavies—a monitor and a fleet carrier. The flagship appears to be a fast cruiser, and the rest of the ships are destroyers, escorts, frigates, and three supply-cargo vessels.

“Because we’re trying to rescue our own personnel and because we wish to limit the scale of destruction, we intend to use Marine boarding tactics rather than ship-to-ship combat. That will give us our best chance to capturing the ships, freeing our people, and resolving the situation with relatively low casualties.”

He kept to himself the corollary … that saving the lives of naval personnel on the ships of both sides meant spending the lives of a number of Marines, possibly a large number. The tactical situation, however, demanded it.

“This is one instance where we absolutely need the Marines and their special capability in naval engagements,” he continued. He looked at Devereaux’s icon as he spoke, looking for a reaction, wishing again that he could read the emotion behind that bland, corona-haloed projection. “Modern space warfare is a notoriously all-or-nothing affair. Most missiles mount thermonuclear warheads. Beam weapons are designed to overpower shields and pick off point-defense batteries, so the nukes can get through. When a nuke gets through, usually, only a single one is necessary to obliterate the target vessel and everyone on board. That sort of thing would be very hard on the POWs we hope to rescue, and on the T.C. mutineers if they happen to be in the way. The Marines give us an alternative—the ability to burn our way onboard, capture or knock out the command centers, hijack their AI nets, and force each ship’s surrender.

“We could launch a Marine strike solely with the personnel on board the strike carrier and on the assault transport, the assets that we will be sending through in the first translation. Tactical prudence, however, suggests that we wait until we have sufficient ships in place to provide us with decent fire support.

“With that in mind, we will begin deploying our Marine strike forces immediately upon entry into the Puller system. We will not commit ourselves to the assault, however, until we have a naval force in-system that at least matches the PanEuropean fleet already present … say, a total of two to three translation runs. Are there any questions?”

There were questions … most of them small and nagging and micromanaging bits of annoyance. The council appeared for the most part to have accepted at least the broad outlines of the plan. Technically, they couldn’t dictate strategy or tactics, but technically, also, the President could, in his guise as commander in chief of the Commonwealth’s armed forces. The council sought to understand the plan well enough to give the President decent feedback. And, slowly, thanks in part to the military and ex-military personnel within their number, and to their EA links to the Net, that understanding was forthcoming.

But Alexander had tangled with politicians often enough to know that it was never that simple.

Especially, he thought, when one of those politicians was Marie Devereaux.