The White Fleet (Blood on the Stars Book 7) Read online

  “Very well…I think that’s good for now. You’ve all got enough to keep busy.” A short pause, then: “Jake, I’d like you to stay for a minute.” Jake Stockton had been uncharacteristically silent during the meeting. Barron could see his star pilot had still not adapted to just how highly he’d risen in the chain of command. Stockton was in charge of eight hundred fighters, a massively powerful force under any circumstances, but against an enemy that might be vulnerable to small craft attacks, it was hard to overstate the importance of the fleet’s wings.

  “Yes, sir.” A pause. “Of course.”

  The others rose as a ragged group and moved toward the door. Barron leaned forward to the comm unit in front of him and toggled the flight control channel. “Stara, we just finished the meeting.”

  “Understood, Admiral. I’ll get the shuttles ready for launch.”

  Barron nodded and closed the comm line. His meeting had taken considerable effort to put together, not the least of which was requiring his key officers to shuttle over to Dauntless from their own ships. He knew they could have used the fleetcom instead, even if the variable time lag between ships would have made exchanges slow and cumbersome, but he’d always preferred face to face meetings…especially when the stakes were as high as they were now.

  He waited until the others had left, and then he turned toward Stockton. “Jake…we’re still guessing on whether these…Masters…have any kind of fighters or other small craft. There’s no way to know for sure, but we’ve got to go with our best guess…which is they don’t. We’re outgunned on everything else, so, if we’ve got an edge, we damned sure need to make the most of it.”

  “Yes, sir. I agree.” There was something in Stockton’s voice, a little bit of a hitch.

  “What is it, Jake?”

  Stockton hesitated for a few seconds. “Well, sir…it’s just that those ships didn’t really seem to have any significant weaponry for repelling a fighter attack. But…when we got in close it…”

  “Jake, tell me what you think, even if it’s a wild guess. None of us knows what we’re dealing with, and we need anything we can get. Even guesses.”

  “Well, Admiral, it’s just that, even with their limited armament, toward the end of the fight the effectiveness of their defenses really seemed to ramp up…almost as though…” Stockton paused again. “…as though, their computer or gunners or whatever adapted almost instantly to the threat of our bombers.”

  Barron looked back at his chief pilot. Stockton’s statement poked at something he’d been worried about…how the enemy ships were also able to quickly adapt to nav plans designed to evade incoming fire. Barron had studied the statistics from the battle, and there was no question, at least in his mind. The enemy’s hit ratio declined significantly as each new nav plan was executed…and within half a minute, it started to recover, returning to the original level very quickly. Both that fact, and the situation Stockton had described, suggested the enemy’s AIs were substantially more powerful than the fleet’s. Just one more advantage the Hegemony seemed to possess.

  “We’re going to need more randomness, Jake, abrupt changes that will make it harder for their AIs to adapt. If those ships were able to ramp up their effectiveness against your fighters with so few suitable weapons, we’ve got to worry about the effect if they’ve got other ships with heavier point defense arrays…” Barron let his voice trail off. They both knew what that would mean.

  Stockton nodded. “I agree, sir. I’ll have to develop a series of pre-designed plans, and let the AI issue them. It’s the only way with a force this size. I’d never be able to keep up with eight hundred fighters all in real time.”

  “That all makes sense, Jake. Do it. And whatever else you think might help. Unless I’m very mistaken, we’re going to be dependent on your squadrons if it comes to another fight. Their heavy guns are just too powerful and long-ranged for us to match. You’re people are going to have to hit them before they get into range…and do some serious damage. Or, we’re in big trouble.”

  “I understand, Admiral. I will do my best.”

  “That’s all any of us can do, Jake. And your best is pretty damned good.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Troyus City

  Planet Megara, Olyus III

  Year 315 AC

  Desiree Marieles watched as two of her agents pried the top off the large crate. They were in a cavernous garage attached to one of the buildings she’d rented to house parts of her enterprise that didn’t fit her cover as a high-powered lobbyist and political power broker. She had offices in the most exclusive section of Troyus City’s business district for that, but there were multiple fronts in her war to undermine the Confederation government, many of them far less visible.

  The plastic container was labeled, ‘transport regulators,’ which most definitely was not what she expected it—or the six others like it—to hold. She’d gotten Villieneuve’s message to expect the shipment, sent as most of his others had been, through the Confederation’s own comm networks. The transmissions originated from Plegon, a sparsely-populated and unimportant world just on the Confederation side of the border out in the Periphery, but the actual messages had come from Montmirail. Marieles had no idea how Villieneuve got the communications across the border to Plegon for retransmission, but she’d stopped trying to figure out how the Union’s leader managed to do all he did. She suspected it was partially his own genius, and partially skilled exploitation of the looseness of Confederation oversight.

  She’d scanned it twice, impressed as she always was by the ingeniousness of the code, which read as though it was personal correspondence from some Periphery farmer to distant and more sophisticated relatives on Megara…at least until she introduced the encryption key. Even if the Confederation authorities read one of the communications, it would look like a letter updating a distant cousin on the activities of children, or possibly even poor provincials seeking some kind of assistance from richer family members in the Core…anything but a coded message from a foreign spy agency.

  She heard a cracking sound, and the top of the crate fell to the floor. She looked inside, and she saw a series of neat rows of small devices of some kind, each about fifteen centimeters square. I guess that’s what a ‘transport regulator’ looks like, she thought, worrying for a few seconds that her people had retrieved the wrong packages. But then, one of her agents reached in and pulled out the top tray, setting it aside and revealing the true cargo below. Bars of pure platinum.

  Most financial transactions were electronic, of course, even most illicit ones…and Villieneuve had sent her significant sums through the normal banking networks to fund her activities. But her mission was a complex one, and very dangerous. She had a number of fringe conspirators, nervous parties too scared to accept her normal payoffs. They didn’t trust mysterious bank transfers, and it would be helpful to have utterly untraceable currency-equivalents for bribes. What they perceived as untraceable, at least. She’d have bet her last credit Villieneuve had arranged for some kind of radioactive tagging, or other way to track the metal bars. The Union’s leader didn’t trust anyone as far as she’d ever seen, and certainly not foreign politicians he’d bought and paid for. Any conspirator who took his bribe and betrayed him could expect a visit shortly thereafter…a very unpleasant one.

  She was tense, and she waved for her people to move the crates to the storage area she’d prepared for them. She’d been playing catchup for the past week. The whole Dannith situation, and her need to divert attention to handle it, had set her back on her primary efforts of undermining the Confederation government. It was a difficult job, harder, even, than she’d expected, with a large number of moving parts. There were plenty of willing co-conspirators on Megara, as long as she approached them correctly, with the right propositions. Radical political groups, power-hungry politicians, entrenched government officials, wealthy magnates seeking political favor, they could all be induced to take actions that amounted to plotting ag
ainst the current government…as long as it was presented to them properly.

  She couldn’t exactly go up to the Confeds and say, “Will you help me destabilize the government so the Union can move in?” But she was stunned how receptive different groups were to suggestions about illegal activity—and even downright treason, though they, no doubt, deluded themselves that the actions were justified—to further their own positions or pet agendas. She already had several of the fringe groups in full action now, and for the past week there had been semi-violent demonstrations all across Troyus City…the very best protests money could buy.

  Such activities were just the start. Now, her minions were working the other side, the law and order types, whispering of the need to crack down, to restore peace in the streets. Soon, especially after the protests spread further—she looked over at the platinum, which would greatly assist in that endeavor—and became increasingly violent, she would start suggesting remedies like temporary martial law.

  The magnates would be even easier to co-opt once the scope of her operation spread beyond the capital. Work stoppages on the Iron Belt worlds would trigger harsh reprisals from planetary governments that were largely controlled by the great industrial and merchant families. Such measures had always worked to quell earlier disturbances…but those organic protests hadn’t had the funding her manufactured ones would, nor the professional disruptors and even paid mercenaries to keep things going, and even to turn the government actions into fuel to expand the unrest. A few bodies in the streets would help, especially if she could arrange for a couple children, or other particularly sympathetic cases, to be among the apparent victims of government reprisals.

  On the core worlds, where the government and academic classes were concentrated, the disruptions would move the other way, with groups of radicalized students spreading disorder, and the sympathetic authorities unwilling to take serious action against the rioters, even as the majority of the population became more restive and resentful at those they perceived being behind the troubles. By the time she was done, millions of citizens, even on Megara, would be ready to support a firm hand, one that appeared to step out of nowhere, offering peace and quelling the radicals.

  Marieles had worked around the clock for months now, and she had massive numbers of people on her effective payroll, very few of them, save the several hundred operatives she had in the field, knowing exactly for whom they were working. She’d set up dozens of front groups, organizations ranging all across the political spectrum, in some cases operating against each other, a fencing match she’d orchestrated that served to increase the unrest and tension in Megaran society.

  She was surprised at how much progress she’d made…and at the amount of financial support Villieneuve had managed to send her. Her mission to the Krillians had been conducted on a shoestring, and she’d been forced to substitute lies and theatrics for actual support. The differences she was seeing now were a testament to just how much progress Villieneuve had made in the past two years toward restoring the Union economy, or at least finding new ways to drain resources from it. She knew most of the Union’s systems were still in distress, some deep in outright depressions, but Villieneuve’s skilled propaganda, and things like only being seen in a factory worker’s drab garb, had changed everything. Workers who had risen against a government they hated because they were hungry, grimly and determinably shared the same meager rations as before to support a regime they’d somehow been convinced to believe would make changes, bring them a brighter and more plentiful future.

  She wondered how the people of the Union would react if they knew how much of their precious production was being spent on an operation to destabilize the Confederation, one that, despite the success she’d had so far, could only be described as a wild gamble.

  She was shocked, too, at how naïve the people of the Confederation were, both the politicians, immersed in their corruption, and the people in the streets, complaining about government and social problems while repeatedly sending the same scoundrels back to political office. She was surprised at how very little difference there was at the core between Confederation politicians and those of the old Union, save, perhaps, for the range of opportunities for abuse and personal aggrandizement. The common people, for all their material plenty compared to the wretched workers of the Union, were still ready to believe almost anything if it was told to them skillfully, and to ignore even the blatant excesses of the politicians they sent back to the planetary assemblies and the Senate again and again.

  She hadn’t forgotten what Villieneuve had told her right before she’d left Montmirail. He’d said that the Confeds talked a lot about freedom, but the instant they felt threatened, or even insecure, they would willingly trade liberty for even the vaguest, most unreliable promises of security. He’d seemed so certain about what he was saying, she remembered it clearly. And, though she’d initially found it hard to believe the Confeds could have so little appreciation for how much they had compared to most others, she had largely come to believe it was utterly true.

  By the time she was done, there would be so much chaos, the people—certainly on Megara—would be clamoring for a strong hand. And, she would see they got it. Several actually, all of which would fight each other for dominance. The politicians on Megara were held back by the relative stability of the Confederation, by the fact that they had no realistic chance of getting away with the abuses the privileged had for so long in the Union. But, once she had shattered that stability…

  She would give them that opportunity…and it would be born from the chaos in the streets. And when she was done, the Confederation would be weakened, at least, changed at its core. And, just maybe, she could push the whole thing over, and the shining beacon of liberty and freedom on the Rim would descend into a vicious orgy of civil war and self-destruction.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  CFS Dauntless

  Zed-11 System

  Year 315 AC

  Tyler Barron awoke with a start, as Sonya Eaton tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Sir, I am sorry to disturb you…” Her voice was soft, tentative, but he knew immediately something was wrong. And, as his senses returned, he realized she’d more than tapped him…she’d given him a good hard shake. That meant she’d tried gentler methods, both on the comm and standing next to him, to no avail.

  “What is it, Captain?” he asked, trying hard not to sound as groggy as he felt as he lifted his head from his desk and waited for his eyes to focus. He hadn’t intended to sleep, not really, just to put his head down and close his eyes for a few minutes, but now he caught the chronometer and realized that had been nearly four hours before. He felt a burst of self-recrimination, and he wondered if he’d have allowed himself to fall asleep at his desk when he was younger. He hadn’t realized what the war with the Union had drained from him. The true effects had been hidden by the joy and excitement at the peace. But now, the prospect of a new conflict brought it all back, and he wondered if he could serve as he had, to give all, and to stand by and issue orders as he watched so many of his people die.

  He wondered if his grandfather had experienced something similar. The elder Barron had been a legend, one whose martial brilliance had been almost singlehandedly responsible for bringing the Confederation back from the brink of defeat. But, that had been during the second war with the Union. Barron’s namesake had died in the third war, his ship trapped by a Union strike force and destroyed. Tyler had never considered that his grandfather’s death had been caused to some extent by the old man’s fatigue, by the fact that he hadn’t been able to enter the third war with the energy and determination he’d brought to the first. At least, he’d never considered it until now. A review of the early battles in the war seemed to support that, whatever the elder Barron had been in his first war, by his second, some of that spark seemed to have been gone.

  Barron’s head was heavy, his thoughts still foggy. He’d been trying to hold off taking another stim. He could f
eel the effects of the ones he’d been sucking down like candy over the past few days, and he suspected he was going to need more of them in the near future, but, still, four hours of sleep seemed like an irresponsible decadence.

  “It’s Captain Horace, sir. He sent his cutter back through the transit point with a communique for you.” She paused for a few seconds. “It is designated classified, your eyes only, sir.”

  Barron wondered why Horace would classify a report, but then he remembered what a hardass the old officer was. He could only think of one thing that could be in the transmission, and, if it was what he guessed, the time was on him when he would have to make a final decision. I guess old ‘Ramrod’ Horace figured I’d want to make that myself, or at least get a head start before half the fleet offered opinions.

  “I’ll listen to it here.” He reached out, fumbling around on his desk, still trying to get the sleep out of his head.

  Eaton leaned forward, and tapped at the controls of the comm unit, taking over for his rough efforts. “On your headset, sir?”

  “No, put it on speaker, Captain.” There was no one else in the room but Eaton and himself…and she was doing a damned fine job of filling in for Atara Travis. He’d never have kept anything from Atara, and he wasn’t going to do it from Eaton either. He needed at least one close confidante, an aide—a friend—he could trust to give him an honest opinion. “Sit, Captain. Listen in.” He suspected they both knew what Horace’s transmission would say.

  Barron flipped the switch and activated the comm unit. “Admiral Barron, we have detected enemy forces emerging from this system’s gamma transit point.” Barron wasn’t surprised, but it still hit him that enemy forces were on the way. The last fight had been against a hopelessly outnumbered flotilla, and he hesitated to think of the damage his ships would have suffered even then, if it hadn’t been for Stockton’s fighter assault.