The Alexanderov Federation

#2 - Growing Pains

By Robert Huntingdon

Chapter Four - Storms on the horizon

Chirp! Goodman looked up from the piles of paperwork on his desk with relief. He'd already been at this for several hours and had quite a few more to go. "Enter!" he commanded the door. It slid open immediately, revealing Commodore Natovski.

"You wished to see me, Admiral?"

"Yes, come in and have a seat." She did so quickly, and sat at attention. Goodman chuckled lightly. "At ease, Elena Gorskiyeva, this is not what you think."

"But sir, I did allow the Raas to defeat my command."

"You also faced overwhelming odds and did quite respectably despite the disadvantages. You are not in trouble, Commodore. In fact, you are being promoted."

"Sir?"

"We need somebody to head up the newly created Fourth fleet. I'll be leaving behind 20 Sharktooth-class escorts and 10 Dauntless-class beam light cruisers to supplement your forces here. When the new Nimitz's arrive from Tamarian next month with 40 more Sharktooth's, 30 more Dauntless's, and five troopships full of Grendarl marines, you will transfer your flag to the Nimitz and proceed to Taros via Wernog. There you will assist the Psilon in defending their holdings for a few months. We'll send more ships as we can spare them."

"This is completely unexpected, sir. Thank you."

"Don't thank me. This was a decision of the entire Admiralty."

"Who will replace me here?"

"For now, your assistant, Captain Burke, will be made Acting Commodore and take over the defense of this sector. It shouldn't be a demanding task, what with allies between us and most potential routes of approach for any hostiles, but his job of course is to assume he will be attacked soon and to be ready for it."

"Of course. Am I to deliver his orders myself?"

"Yes. You remain in command here until the Nimitz and her sisters and escorts arrive."

"Aye sir."

"Dismissed." He smiled and returned to his paperwork as she stood, saluted, and headed for the door with a bit more bounce to her step. Well getting the news of a promotion rather than the expected news of a court martial does tend to do that to you, he thought. But she definitely deserved it, taking out over half the Raas fleet like that. That was a far greater feat than she realizes. Now if he could only finish out the last of this paperwork, soon he could depart and pay the Raas back for their treachery. The unpleasant part of winning a battle was filling out all the death certificates for those who died under your command. So he'd gotten that out of the way first, and now he was finishing up some performance evaluations for commendations and promotions of those who comported themselves well. He'd have several dozen commendations to hand out at the departure ceremony, to be held next week. Then they could leave and see exactly how tough the Raas defenses were.

"Admiral!" the jaygee saluted and braced stiffly to attention, so startled by the sudden appearance of his Commanding Officer at his workstation that he almost forgot to close the channel on the communication he'd just completed.

"At ease, soldier," Admiral Johannes Bynume said with a smile to the junior communications officer, who was gaining some experience on the bridge during a non-crisis situation. "I'm just here for an update on the progress. When can we depart?"

"Approximately two weeks, sir. We are loading the last of the supplies on the new ships now, but we are waiting for the troopships to arrive from Kitjef."

"How many troops are they sending us?"

He waved his hand at his console. "I just got done talking to one of the troopships, in fact. The unofficial roster he gave me said..." and he paused as he retrieved the file again, just to make sure he got it right, "...Forty units of our best-trained human marines, fourteen newly built armor units, 10 well-trained Grendarl marine units, 15 commandos and 5 mobile command posts, sir!"

"Excellent. Then they did approve my request for additional ground units. I was surprised to not receive an answer personally."

"I forwarded the message to your console myself, sir, two hours ago!"

"What?"

"Well, I don't know the contents since it was Omega-encrypted, sir, but given the timing it would have to have been the official troop status update. You received that communiqué two hours ago and I forwarded it to your console immediately!"

"I never received it. Check your logs."

"Aye sir!" A little shake to his voice now, afraid he'd made a mistake. "Sir, my records show the message was delivered to your console, where it was accessed and played one hour and fifty-five minutes ago."

Admiral Bynume frowned. What's going on here? "Summon Markos to my office immediately."

"Sir, Lieutenant Commander Markos Rajitn left for the planet surface five hours ago and has not yet returned."

"Then send him to my office as soon as he arrives. Tell no one else. I cannot stress that enough. Tell no one!"

"Aye sir!"

Alexanderov looked tiredly over at Fleet Admiral Mulkahey. "The people seem to have accepted the need for war, and indeed they are fired up about the transgressions of the Raas. It's just like the old so-called 'Holy Wars' of old, when religious fanatics would devote their days to nothing but the destruction of their enemies, but I worry as to how long we can sustain that. Our people have not suffered at the hands of the Silicoid or Tachidi, and after we take the Raas I wonder if they will continue to support further war."

"I'm not sure, sir." Mulkahey glanced out the energy-reflective pane windows to the busy square below the President's office on Kitjef. The forcefield blurred the image only ever so slightly. "They are OK with it for now, sir, but you're right, our people do tire of war quickly. We must begin preparing them for the necessity now. You'll have to get out in public more, give speeches on honor and duty and loyalty to friends. If you do they will accept it, though we will have to do all in our power to make sure there is peace afterwards, at least for awhile."

"That will give my security folks heartburn, but you're right, it must be done. How goes the war preparations?"

"Sixth fleet will make it to its destination in about three months. We expect the war on that front to commence quickly, then end quickly. Maybe six months, maybe less. Ninth and seventh will depart this month, though Seventh will reach its target in a matter of days and Ninth will take a full month to reach its target. Fourth will be departing for Psilon territory next month as well. We've got another 250 vessels under construction in the various yards, of all types and sizes, but it'll be at least four months before we can assemble another full fleet."

"Well, that's better than it would have been."

"Definitely. It would have been over a year with the prior military budget."

"Very well. Let's just hope nobody else gets interested in attacking us now. Our border systems are well defended but nothing is impregnable, especially to the New Orions. I hope no other threats appear soon."

"Babcock is worried about what the Evon have up their sleeve, but our spies so far have not met any success in recruiting informants. We hope that will change soon."

"As do I. We do need to know what those devious creatures are plotting. Very well, thank you for coming in. Have a nice day, Admiral."

"You too, Mr. President."

Ten hours later...

"Well, Markos, what did you find?"

Commander Rajitn sighed. "Sir, you are not going to like this. It appears an enemy spy rigged a device into your communication panel and set it up to be able to access any data sent to this panel at will, then retransmit that information without leaving a trace in the communication logs."

Admiral Bynume sat totally still, stunned for a bit. "Are we safe discussing this?"

"Yes, sir. I just swept the room myself. You're clean, now. And I don't expect any recurrence. From where this was installed, well, sir, it had to have been put in when the ship was actually under construction."

"Meaning the spy is not on board?"

"Well, no sir, that's not guaranteed. But the odds are it was installed when the ship was designated as your flagship during the last phase of construction. And considering it transmits the information, there would be no need for the owner to remain on board to get the information."

"Unless they did that to distract us, make us look elsewhere for the spy when he lurked on board the entire time."

"I don't think so, sir. Remember, this is the flagship. The information that passes your console includes positions for all the ships in our fleet. If the Raas could access that information in the middle of the fight..."

"It would make this ship safe for the spy! They would not destroy their information source!"

"Actually, no sir. The Raas would only need to know where we were in order to close to firing range. Once they had done that, their own sensors could take over. If they can't see us when we can see them, then with our new weaponry we have a decisive advantage. But if they can find us quickly, they could overwhelm us by sheer numbers. Besides, given the transmission method, there is no guarantee the Raas would know which ship was transmitting."

"You make a convincing case. OK, what do we do about this?"

"First off, we must assume the Raas have our old attack plans. We must scrap them entirely and build new ones from scratch. Then, we must contact the FCID and have them investigate this. Just in case they have been compromised, we should insist on a live communication with the system director for Kitjef. That will prevent a similar bug in their system from intercepting our message. Simultaneously, I will request a separate meeting with the head of their internal affairs department. The Raas may have turned one of them, but it is unlikely they could have compromised both."

"Very well. Make it happen. Immediately. Can we still depart on time?"

"Aye sir. The troop transports will be here in 12 days, and we can work on the improvised plans en route."

"Good."

Two weeks later...

"Well, Admiral, it looks like this was not the best time to force the war with the Raas after all." Babcock was not smug about it, but she was obviously not happy that the Federation was in such a tight crack.

"No, it probably wasn't the best time. But if we had given the Raas what they wanted, then I see only two possible outcomes. One, their membership proposal would have failed, in which case they would have blamed us and declared war anyway. Or, two, they made it in, and inside of another decade we would be unable to defend ourselves against them. It wasn't the best time, but it had to happen."

"I suppose. Well, we've fought this battle enough already. For what reason did you call me?"

"I discussed the situation in Wasilkoff with the rest of the top Admirals earlier today. We need you to pass a message to our 'trade advisor' in the embassy on Rotan Prime for us."

"You mean that you need me to send a privileged diplomatic communication to hide a message to your FIS station chief."

Mulkahey just rolled his eyes at her.

"OK, fine, I'll do it. What is the message?"

"Cut off Agent Rttangss. He's been doubled."

"Oh, that would be a good thing to let them know about. OK, it will go on the next diplomatic drone. The Raas have been ignoring me, but they are still letting those through, and they have at least listened to our ambassador there. His pleas for peace have fallen on deaf ears, but then, they are a sham anyway."

"Yes, for now. But we must remember there will be an after the war. We will not wish to alienate the Raas. We want them to come around and freely join with us in the future. His work will be invaluable in getting dissidents on their world to support us after the guns fall silent."

"I suppose."

Two days later...

As the Seventh fleet emerged from the wormhole into the Rotan system, the scouts immediately began scanning the system to give an overview of the enemy disposition. The commodores moved their task forces into the system slowly, following the basic dispersal pattern Goodman had outlined and awaiting orders on where to attack first. After a few minutes, the sensor information began to percolate through the command chain to Goodman. He sat in his command post and quickly began scanning the incoming information. "Goodman to bridge."

"Bridge, Riley speaking."

"Signal the fleet. Since both worlds in system seem fairly evenly defended, we will assault Rotan Prime first. Have the fleet assemble in the standard arrow formation for travel and engage at best speed."

"Aye sir," replied Lewis. Then Turley spoke up, since Goodman had called the bridge and not just any one person. "Sir, I can't tell for sure at this range from just mass readings, but I suspect we will be facing lots of missile ships. I don't see lots of small fighter craft launching."

"Keep me informed. If they are departing from the normal Saurian fleet tactics, we may need to rethink our strategy somewhat."

"Aye sir."

"Keep the channel open. I'll get back to you in a minute." Goodman reviewed the new information on the screen. Only four orbitals around Rotan Prime, but 15 missile bases on the surface. With the 1500 system ships the Raas had, this could get interesting. He made his decision. "Goodman to all ships. Prepare to attack. Task Force 77, your primary duty will be scouting and assisting in shooting down enemy fighters and missiles. 71, break formation and move into standard pincer formation. After we launch our first missile wave, close with their ships and begin firing at maximum range. 75, all your salvos go to the planetary defenses. Prepare to kick some stumpy Raas tails!"

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