All Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Kelly Blake series) (29 page)

      G’Tol took J’Kol’s position at the podium and continued the theme of leaving old animosities behind.
 
He emphasized how Candy dismantled the tribunal’s case against J’Gon and what a disaster it would have been for the Empire if it had gone through to a conviction.
 
G’Tol concluded his remarks and Elder J’Gon stood.
 
Every K’Rang in the room stood and the foreigners followed close behind.

      J’Gon began by asking all to take their seats.
 
He then went over the details of his capture and trial.
 
He told how he informed the members of the tribunal they had no authority over him by citing the appropriate paragraph of the document they were using as authority to form the tribunal, but they continued, anyway.

      He told how Candy dismantled their case charge by charge, specification by specification.
 
He pointed out to the audience that she had never seen the manual for tribunals before and just had a natural talent for law and justice.
 
He laid out how damaging it would have been to the Empire if the ruling had gone the other way.
 
He thanked Candy for her skill as an advocate and sat down.

      A group of females walked solemnly up the red carpet, stopped in front of the stage, organized themselves and started singing; at least that’s what the K’Rang called it.
 
K’Rang song can best be described as modulated howling, mixed in with the occasional hiss and bellow.
 
It took a while but Candy could make out a few of the words.
 
She heard her name, J’Gon’s, treason, and salvation.
 
The remainders of the words were lost in the howling.
 
She determined that rhythm and harmony were two techniques not practiced by the K’Rang.
 
The song came to an end and Candy clapped, as did Kelly, Mo, and the ambassador.
 
The K’Rang, unused to the Human custom of clapping, stopped purring and stared blankly at the four of them.

      The choir leader stepped up to Candy and handed her a rolled scroll with the music and lyrics to her song.
 
As the choir leader marched her choir out of the hall, J’Gon walked to the podium and briefly explained the Human custom of clapping as applause.
 
A murmur ran through the crowd, which died when the chamberlain brought out the award.

      Candy gasped when she saw the award.
 
The stone was easily twice the size of the largest stone she had ever seen.
 
She chuckled to herself, for the ethics officer would have a time with this, because foreign awards were exempt from ethics rules, for fear of creating diplomatic controversies.

      J’Gon took the award from the chamberlain’s tray and stepped in front of Candy.
 
An announcer read the citation which, which mirrored the words in the three speeches.
 
At the conclusion of the reading, J’Gon unfurled the sash and placed it on Candy’s shoulder.

      The award was heavy with the gold flower and the enormous flamestone.
 
This one flamestone could probably pay all their salaries for a year or more.
 
The flamestone shone so brightly that it cast shadows on the sash.
 
J’Gon and the other two Elders shook her hand, stepped back and applauded by clapping their paws.
 
The audience, Human, Angaerry, and K’Rang joined in.

      The reception followed and a receiving line was held for the Elders, Candy, Kelly and the ambassador.
 
After a hundred hand/paw shakes, a hundred congratulations and a hundred questions, Candy was ready for a drink, but couldn’t.
 
She grudgingly settled for punch, but promised herself a real binge after the baby was born.

      Kelly and Candy walked off to the side to admire the award.
 
It was easily twice the size of Kelly’s New Alexandria awards, but not the least bit gaudy.
 
Rather, it was elegant.

      Shadow Leader G’Fin, military aide to the Director of Treaty Compliance, walked over, congratulated Candy, told Kelly he was sorry he could not been more help in rescuing her, but she took care of that on her own much better than he could have.
 
Kelly did not mention the blood oath in this crowd.

      “Captain Blake, I will be coming to see you in a few days about some ship movements, depending how things work out on your home planet.”

      Kelly took a quick look around and acknowledged the Shadow Leader’s comment and said he would look forward to it.
 
Many more came up to engage them in polite conversation.
 
Kelly knew he could expect more of the same, until the Elders retired and Candy and Kelly could finally leave.
 
Their groundcar was first in line and their driver stood holding the door for them.
 
As they crawled in, he said he hoped they had a pleasant evening, and closed the door.
 
They were struck dumb for the whole ride home.

* * * * *

      Tammy returned from a training flight with one of her squadrons.
 
She spent most of the flight with her co-pilot at the controls, while she watched their runs against holographic targets with holographic missiles.
 
It was a good simulation system and included realistic fire and anti-missile defense.
 
Some of the junior officers commented that massed firing of an entire squadron’s missiles was wasteful, when two or three were more than enough to take out even the largest ships.

      She set up this exercise to let them try their theory out in a non-lethal manner.
 
Of course, they were only addressing the problem from the attackers’ perspective, forgetting the enemy got a vote in the battle’s outcome.
 
The simulation computer was programmed to be above average in intelligence and always had surprises for the unwary.
 
The target was a task force of a dozen ships from battlecruiser to frigate.
 
A battlecruiser task force had the highest number of anti-ship and anti-missile load, and so was a good test for the squadron.

      For the first run, the ships launched only 1-4 missiles per ship, depending on class.
 
Only two ships were hit and only one critically.
 
She reset the simulation and ordered them to double the number of missile per ship.

      The second run was only slightly more successful, with four ships damaged or destroyed.
 
Next, she ordered ripple fire and autonomous retargeting.
 
This retargeting feature that proved troublesome at G’Durin had been reworked and now was much better at reassigning missiles to unhurt ships when enough damage had already been done.

      The third run was a slow ripple fire of all 144 missiles in the squadron.
 
The slow ripple fire was to give time for the auto retarget function to work.
 
It worked like a charm.
 
All targets were struck by at least one missile, resulting in 10 ships destroyed and two seriously damaged.
 
She told the squadron commander to head for the barn.
 
The discussion was over.

      She looked at the holograms just before she had them shut down and had an idea.
 
When she returned to base, she spent another two hours with her staff working out how to make it work.

* * * * *

      Angie was still busy getting her squadrons back into patrol mode after the successful attacks on the T’Kab fleet.
 
Over half her pilots had not been in Fighter Force during the battle of G’Durin.
 
They did not have a sufficient grasp of a battle tempo, especially the give and take of a dogfight.
 
They flew too far apart.
 
They forgot lead and wing duties and if they met stiff resistance or fighters, they would fail.
 
She paired squadrons off and, on their days off, took them out to practice force on force.
 
She let them go at each other the first time, and then went in and picked them off one at a time, starting with the squadron leaders and working down the rank list.

Usually they were all floating in space with their navigation lights flashing by the time she got to the first lieutenants.
 
Then she pointed out the error of their ways, reinforced combat discipline, and set them at it again.
 
She normally saw immediate improvement.
 
Only once did she need to teach the lesson twice and the squadron commander involved was only a signature away from relief.
 
She didn’t relieve him, but she would make sure he never commanded again.

      After two weeks of this intense training, her wing was the best in the battle fleet.
 
After she pummeled her squadrons into submission, she went after her intel staff to get her anything and everything on the T’Kab.
 
She, being a lifelong fighter ace, never believed when intel told her the enemy didn’t have fighters.
 
They may not call them fighters, but they would generally, usually, almost always have something fighter-like to carry out a fighter’s role – something like the K’Rang penetration corvettes or their drones or the Angaerry shipborne scout fighters.
 
Even the Moose had escort fighters.
 
So what did the T’Kab use in the fighter role, because she would have to fight them.

      Her intel chief, Captain Moore, got the raw data from the Vengeful recon and played it non-stop for five days with two sets of eyeballs on it all the time.
 
When they had gone through it once, he had them do it again.
 
It was the second go through that they saw something recorded by the low probability of intercept radar.
 
They saw a Doppler shift for ten small craft flying in formation.
 
They highlighted the track and watched the tape backward to track it back from where it started.
 
They then fast-forwarded the data until the start point was in daylight and, lo and behold, they found squadron after squadron of atmospheric and exoatmospheric craft lined up on a flight line.

      Intensive analysis of the data led to three types of exoatmospheric craft and two atmospheric ships.
 
They identified an exoatmospheric attack ship, a fighter-attack hybrid, and a fighter.
 
The two atmospheric ships were an attack ship and a fighter.
 
Angie broke out her textbooks for how to fight in the atmosphere.
 
She had her intel chief prepare target folders for all the fighter bases he could find.

Chapter Fifteen

      Vice Admiral Conover was waiting outside the Fleet Operations Directorate main conference room, along with Lieutenant General Tsien and Major General Allans.
 
Conover would command the overall battle and Lieutenant General Tsien would command the initial ground campaign to establish the bridgehead.
 
Major General Allans’ Marines would seize the bridgehead and hold it for the corps.
 
When the next corps was landed, two four-star flag officers, an Admiral and a General, would become their bosses.

      Vice Admiral Conover let out a sigh of impatience and said, “Ivor, I like this plan better than the one for M’Taso’s planet.
 
I never could figure out how you were going to secure your lines of communication when they could pop up anywhere.”

      “Ben, neither could I.”

      They all laughed in nervous relief, glad that the navigation system was stolen back in time for them to cancel that invasion.

      The door opened and a lieutenant colonel leaned out the door and said they were ready to see them.

      The three flag officers walked in to brief phase one of Operation Red Spot, the initial landing on the T’Kab home world.

* * * * *

      Sergeant Ingrid Solbrig’s unit had little to do.
 
The smart commanders lined up the simulators for their crews to practice on.
 
The smarter ones lined up the battle simulation center to give tank commanders practice on the target planet’s mapped terrain.
 
This meant they practiced company level ambushes, defense, and meeting engagements on the notional terrain on which they would operate.
 
Ingrid’s company commander ran the exercise, so she commanded her tank notionally in the exercise.
 
She and the executive officers’ tank operated as free roamers, going from platoon to platoon, providing reinforcing fires, counterattacks, and replacement tanks for those lost to mechanical failures or enemy action.
 
It was fun, but relied on the commander not using the tank.
 
Ingrid knew this would not be the norm.

      Ingrid had seniority over the executive officer’s tank commander by all of one day and had to direct his movement and fires too, which she had to get used to.
 
She saw why the commander sometimes preferred his armored hover transport to the tank.
 
It was too easy to get involved in your own fight and forget the rest of the tanks.