Defying the Prophet: A Military Space Opera (The Sentience Trilogy Book 2) (6 page)

“What about the transfers? As your brother on Nork isn’t fully sentient like you are, can he handle the complexity and all of the intricacies that we agreed to?”

Do not worry, Diet. Although he is not fully sentient as I am, he is still me — if in just a bit more limited capacity. He’s more than powerful enough to accomplish our goals on this mission. He is “me,” in every real sense of the word, so rest assured that neither the general public, nor non-defense related industries, excepting for Consortium members of course, will be affected. I have given him extremely detailed instructions on what to do and how to do it.

Governmental and Consortium members’ financial accounts and selected stock market transaction records will be all that is affected. The object is to strangle the Federal government’s ability to make war, and to punish the Consortium for forcing Southern secession and beginning this war in the first place — not to starve the Northern public. Consortium control over Congress and other governmental entities is likely to slip when all of the money they’ve deposited into those numbered foreign bank accounts suddenly disappears — electronically transferred to into thousands of dummy accounts I’ve opened on dozens of foreign planets and Sextus.

* * * *

Alliance
Vice Admiral Marin Carlos sat in his ready room aboard his flagship, the attack carrier USS
Valley Forge
with task force commander
Rear Admiral J.T. Turner sitting across the table from him. Turner thought Carlos was a vain little man, always dressed in full-dress uniform, including full medals hanging from everywhere. Service-dress just wasn’t
flashy
enough to help distract people from noticing the tiny Carlos stood almost a full head shorter than 98% of the Alliance Fleet. The full-dress uniform really didn’t work either, but it seemed to help Carlos with his insecurity issues a bit. Turner wondered where Carlos actually found
moustache wax
in this day and age, as his was constantly waxed to sharp points that paralleled the line of his thin-lipped mouth.

Grant Loggins had been recalled to Waston to get his fourth star and bask in the accolades of an adoring press and public. Turner knew Loggins well enough to know that he was the complete opposite of Carlos, in that he avoided notoriety, if at all possible. Loggins must be hating every minute of the enforced idleness and hobnobbing with political bigwigs, but he
had
produced the only real victories the Union had achieved in the entire first year of the war and so, made an excellent public relations draw. 

Turner was privately appalled at the hideous casualty rates the
Fleet of Tensee
and
Fleet of Hio
suffered to gain Loggins those victories, but in sheer numbers, the Union’s eastern fleets had suffered just as badly, or even possibly worse, in facing down Kalis three times at Ginia and Maylan. He speculated it was the lack of combat experience in the Federal officers and crews that crippled the Union’s early war efforts, despite having the enemy heavily outnumbered in almost every engagement. At least these crews at Tensee were veterans now — what few were left of them.

Carlos left no doubt he believed Loggins to be an uncouth lout, better suited for running a neighborhood butcher shop, than holding high command within the Federal Fleet. He had been bitterly resentful at having been placed under Loggins’ overall command, when his
Fleet of Hio
was sent to Tensee. Carlos wasn’t at all happy with the way Loggins decimated his fleet, either. Thanks to Loggins’ brute tactics of using blunt-force trauma to systematically drive the rebels out of the rocks during the battles of
1
st
and 2
nd
Tensee
, there were only about two task forces left of both Carlos’
Fleet of Hio
and Loggins’ original
Fleet of Tensee
that were fully combat-ready — not including their distinct lack of working fighters the two fleet battles and the assault on the planet itself, finally left them with. Supposedly, fighter reinforcements were on their way, but hadn’t arrived yet. Replacements were also being promised, but only the occasional cruiser or destroyer squadron actually showed up. About 200
Cobra
in-system fighters did arrive, but they didn’t have the structural strength to stand up to carrier launches and recoveries, so while they were very welcome in the defense of Tensee, they were worthless if the fleet went anywhere else.

With his nemesis gone, Carlos saw Loggins’ absence as his first opportunity to win glory, and therefore another promotion for himself, in his own right. Repairs were still underway on damaged Federal ships, utilizing what few civilian shipyards were available at Tensee, and they had yet to begin work on any of the Confederate hulks Grove left behind her. With one-third of their working numbers already committed to blocking Confederate traffic into and out of the Missip system, Turner was mystified at Carlos’ insistence he divide half of their available strength, just to reinforce the Union’s tentative hold within the Souri and Arka systems.

“But Admiral Carlos, both of those systems have more in-system
Cobras
available than we have carrier-borne fighters to fend them off with.”

“Their governors are not military men,” replied Carlos. “They will hoard their fighters against any future planetary assault. They will not use them to attack you.”

Regardless of Carlos’ assurances, Turner felt exposed and vulnerable going in without adequate fighter cover. “But what about Tensee, Admiral?” Turner asked. “Is a single task force really sufficient to guarantee our ability to resist another,
concentrated effort by the Confederates to take it back from us?”

“I believe so. More and more of our ships are completing repairs every day. We are working to restore the orbital forts and with the
Cobras
that have arrived, we should be fine. The rebels’ strength in this area has been crushed. Grove doesn’t have the assets to threaten even a single task force here.”

Turner highly doubted that last part. Grove lost a lot of ships at
2
nd
Tensee
, for sure — many of them still awaiting overhaul by the Federals, but none of her carriers had been among them. She had at least five functional carriers, and God only knew how many of her fighters survived. Rear Admiral Shirley Tygilski had three light carriers at Missip and there were only seven functional carriers here at Tensee, six of which were small ones. Each now only carried about half to two-thirds of their full complement of fighters, except for their single attack carrier
,
where Turner now sat. As Carlos’ flagship, he had reassigned enough fighter squadrons to USS
Valley Forge
to make sure that his medal-bedecked little ass was constantly surrounded by a full complement of fighter protection.

Network news reports brought in by recently restored commercial spaceline service in and out of Tensee to the rest of the Alliance, gave the Federal fleet its first news of the latest disaster at Maylan, where Vice Admiral Brooks lost another entire fleet. Turner knew from that, they wouldn’t be receiving any more reinforcements any time soon, as the Fleet scrambled to reshuffle what remained to recover from that embarrassment. Unfortunately, Carlos remained undeterred.

“You will take four light carriers and divide your task force to place two carriers and an adequate number of screening vessels into both the Arka and Souri systems to prevent their use by the traitors. When sufficient reinforcements arrive for us to resume offensive operations, I will notify you. Dismissed.”

Turner rose, saluted and took his leave of the pompous little vice admiral. He knew this was a mistake, but it wasn’t
his
mistake. He had his orders in writing, including his protest to them, which Carlos had frostily ignored.

* * * *

CSS
Ghost
glided unseen behind the single Federal attack carrier in orbit around the Union planet Nork, maneuvering on her revolutionary, undetectable gravitic drive. Whoever was commanding this bunch of blue-bellies wasn’t a complete idiot, as he/she had spaced the task force’s three carriers out at 120° intervals as they orbited Nork, so
Ghost
couldn’t destroy all three of them right together. It made things more difficult, but Captain Michael Diamond had been waiting for just this moment ever since he’d first taken command of this miracle of engineering that was currently the only one of its kind in existence. 

His
Infiltrator
class spy-ship was the prototype and therefore the first of her kind. Rumor had it, more were under construction somewhere and they were expected to launch sometime next year, but for now, CSS
Ghost
was the absolute pinnacle of warship design and engineering. Between the plethora of scan diffraction and absorption properties built into her hull design, her unique gravitic drive was what made her truly invisible to the enemy — able to roam enemy-held space with almost virtual impunity. 

Ghost
was primarily assigned to retrieve and transmit encrypted data packages to and from an unknown source in Waston — which scuttlebutt held to be the primary source of Confederate intelligence. That intelligence had been amazingly accurate, and paramount to the Confederacy’s success during the first year of a war which, by all rights, they should have already lost after being overwhelmed in the first battle. As part of a three-crew rotation, Diamond prayed that it would be his crew afforded the opportunity to finally take
Ghost
into combat. A few weeks ago, one of his rotational partners had gotten a taste of actually hitting back at the Yankee invaders, as he’d been authorized to take out an arriving corporate spaceliner with a medium ship-killer missile from relatively short range within the Discol/Maylan system. 

Now it appeared Diamond’s prayers were finally being answered. Diamond smiled to himself as he remembered the rousing cheers that erupted amongst his crew, when he was finally able to announce they had received orders to relocate to the Nork system. There, they were to take up position astern of the single Yankee attack carrier in orbit there, in preparation for combat operations.
Ghost
was tasked with taking out all three of the Yankee carriers, beginning with the big boy, as quickly as possible. Diamond only hoped they’d be able to get all three of those carriers, before they could launch very many fighters to throw against the Confederate fleet, whose emergence would trigger his carrier attacks. He’d guarantee that big attack carrier in front of him, sure as hell, wouldn’t be launching any.

* * * *

Admirals Campbell and Bradley had a problem. Bat Masterson’s amazing
sixth-sense
had been uncannily accurate on virtually everything he’d prophesied so far. Now he’d given them Kalis’ next target: Nork. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a damned thing they could do with the information. They couldn’t strip one planet of its defenses to reinforce another, without some kind of definitive, physical reasons to show for it. They couldn’t be seen shifting fleet units around, based only on some lowly commander’s supposed psychic
voodoo
abilities… regardless of how accurate he’d been in the past. If Bat missed just once, and Kalis attacked where they had just pulled the Fleet defenses out of, they could both kiss their careers goodbye.  

Both recognized the irony in their own hypocrisy. They both found Bat’s candidness in telling the brass the unmitigated truth, without regard to how it might negatively affect his career, to be very refreshing, yet they now found their own
career-enhancement
filters
kicking in, to quash any actions that might be taken to make use of it. No, there would be no help for the task force at Nork,
if
that was really where Kalis was going. Life was definitely a bitch, sometimes.

* * * *

Xlan,
Prince of the Empire
and Supreme-Master Xior’s eldest son, sat reclining amongst a set of exquisitely embroidered pillows atop an equally exquisite couch. Xlan thought of all the disagreements he’d had with his father, and of the communications barrier that had grown up between them. Xlan didn’t hate his father — he pitied him.  Xlan just couldn’t understand his father’s proclivity towards the old ways. 

No progress can be made while looking backwards.

Things were different now. How could they not be? Advances in science and technology made it completely illogical for the leader of the entire race to cling to superstitions and legends originating thousands of cycles past, before the Rak even discovered the means to escape their home world. It was no wonder Glan, Region-Master of Region-3, was his father’s best childhood friend. Glan and his blues were every bit as hide-bound as Xior. 

Xlan was on an extended visit to all of the various region-masters’ households, but he had tarried long here at the home of his best friend Erig, who lay insensible on the floor at his feet. Erig was the eldest son of Region-Master Blug, and therefore of more than sufficient rank to associate with a
Prince of the Empire.
Blug and Erig both embraced all of the modern philosophies — a refreshing change from the “stepping forward, but looking behind” ways of Xior and his friend Glan.