First Command (25 page)

“I know that there are some treaty limitations to what forces we can deploy here, but can't one of the CRS frigates handle this? We should be looking for that pipeline.”

And the prize money that came with it, Jonathan added mentally.

“No Mr. Halman. The CRS has three ships in the system. The Frigates
Swift
and
Nimble,
and the Search and Rescue Boat
Hope
. None of these vessels are equipped for orbital support. The Navy Engineering Corps doesn't have time to retrofit them either. They're too busy getting the remaining OD orbital assets up, and pushing for the completion of the orbital elevator. So it is up to us, and I know we will not bring any embarrassment to the service, will we?” No more than you already bring by wearing that uniform Jonathan thought privately.

Halman, apparently satisfied that he’d irritated his low class CO sufficiently, nodded.

There were a few other minor issues to attend to related to the on going training schedule and watch schedules, but with those addressed Jonathan called the meeting to a close. Everyone rose and filtered out except William Trendale and Jonathan. Trendale turned to his CO and with a grin asked, “Coffee sir?”

Jonathan nodded, “I could do with one. My cabin?”

Both men rose and strode back to Jonathan's quarters.

The navy wasn't long on luxuries especially for junior COs, but a small coffee bar under the main cabinet was standard for most senior officer’s quarters. Solarians had a veritable fetish for coffee especially the genetically engineered brand that grew in the plantations along the New Borneo coast. It was a thick, strong brew, which was popular with Spacers and other folks whose trade required high intakes of caffeine. Most core worlders found it far too dark and bitter, but Solarians loved the stuff. Jonathan's parents had taken to it once they’d begun trade runs in Solarian space so he’d been raised on the brew. Pouring a cup, Jonathan asked if William wanted cream or sugar. He needed both as did most people. Turning back around, Jonathan saw that Trendale had set up his chessboard on his desk.

“Care for a round sir?”

“Always XO.”

The two men sat in silence for the next half hour sipping coffee and playing chess. There was much they could be doing, but it was unnecessary. Their subordinates had their orders, and part of leadership was to trust your subordinates to carry out their assigned tasks.

After being driven into checkmate, Trendale broke the silence. “Skipper,” it was the first time he’d called Jonathan that, “I wanted to thank you for helping me get my head on straight. The last few months have been rough, but I wanted to assure you that is in the past now.”

Jonathan smiled, “I learned a lot of useful things at Overwatch, as I’m sure you did as well, but I think the lesson that stuck with me the most was Vice Admiral Percival's class on Military History.”

Trendale smiled and quoted, “When it comes down to it, victory belongs to those who have the better will, and if your subordinates lack that just kick their skinny asses up and down the companionway until they're more scared of you than anything else in the universe.”

Jonathan nodded, “You remember.”

“Of course. He gave me a C+. One’s not likely to forget such an honor. What did you make?”

Jonathan blushed a little, “B-.”

Trendale burst out laughing, “The man who flunked half of the Admirals in the Fleet gave you a B-! My god sir, what did you do to deserve that?”

“I bribed him,” Jonathan said. “A first edition, 26th century reprint of the
Influence of Sea Power on History.
I bought it from a Martian Spacer in a bar
.
He almost turned it down, but it was too good to resist.”

They sat and talked like this for hours. The pretense of formality maintained, but underneath a new found fondness and camaraderie. Both men knew that to fully heal the damage caused by their mistakes would take time, but healing the rift between them was a start. Across the mighty warship, there was a buzz of activity. Sensors were checked, ordinance was loaded, and the mighty
Titan
was made ready for war.

New Helsinki System, Solarian Republic

Operation CORNET

February 22nd  841 AE  (2802 AD) 07:00hrs Haggerdam Local Time

Across twelve of New Helsinki’s largest cities, an army roused itself from slumber and began to move. Everywhere the story was the same, acted out on a stage large or small depending on the scale of the settlement. New Helsinki Auxiliaries in their APC and tactical trucks created overlapping cordons around neighborhoods known to harbor or be sympathetic to insurgence. All roadways and boulevards were closed and any mass transit, of which there was little, was shut down. Early rising citizens were told to return to their homes. Today would be a surprise public holiday, one that New Helsinki’s citizens would spend huddling in closets, and under furniture in the hopes that there would be no knock on their door.   In the Itlis Quarter of Haggerdam, Corporal Elliani Lillyhammer of the New Helsinki Provisonal Police hefted his rifle as his squad crept up on to the door of a run down brick building. Elliani was aware that he and the eight men he had with him were just one squad among hundreds across the city, and thousands across the world that would be making arrests today. The Governor’s suspension of home rule removed the protections New Helsinkians had under their own law, and Solarian law against unwarranted search and seizure. Now, instead of a magistrate signing a search warrant, the police could search a premise on any suspicion. Who was sympathetic to the insurgence, and who wasn't was not hard to figure out. The Provisional Police, at the urging of their Solarian trainers, had kept a list of suspected sympathizers who could not be charged for lack of evidence, but when home rule was suspended everyone on that list became subject to arrest. Elliani turned down a darkened alley leading his men toward their target through the warren of crooked streets and twisted alleyways without any map. He knew this district well, because he'd grown up not far from this very alley. This district, like most of Haggerdam’s slums, was sloppily built. It was all brick shanties or poorly constructed concrete tenements. These slums were fewer now than they had been fifteen years ago before the Solarians invaded. People walked freely in the streets without fearing criminal gangs, or Wargs on “Police” raids. New shops had opened and private apartments were being built, nice ones made of quality materials. The Solarian National Police Inspectors, attached to the Interior Troops, kept the new bureaucracy and Provisional Police almost free of corruption. Elliani was proud to be a part of the force. He knew some people resented the Solarian’s presence because they had lost their status with the invasion. Many supported the insurgents out of a misguided sense of nationalistic pride. Elliani had no sympathy for those fools.  While some would cry foul at mass arrest, Elliani was old enough to remember when crying foul about someone's arrest was enough to get you hauled off too. The people arrested today would be detained for 72 hours, at which point they'd be charged or released. If charged, they’d receive a public trial before a panel of judges consisting of one Solarian solicitor, one New Helsinkin magistrate, and one layman chosen via lottery. If they were found guilty, the most likely sentence was hard labor. The Swerjicks had used hard labor as a punishment too, but under their regime it had been as good as a death sentence. Solarians were far too practical for that. Anyone sentenced to hard labor would be handed over to the Solarian Correctional Authority, and transported to the penal colony of Astra Vega where they would work 12-hour days, but be fed, clothed, and paid. The Solarians, for some bizarre reason Elliani could never understand, paid their inmates a set rate of 75% of the minimum wage with the other 25% being deducted for their upkeep. Prisoners couldn't access the money until their release at which point, regardless of the time they spent in hard labor, they had a five-year probationary period in which they could not leave the Astra Vega system. Most chose to settle on Vega, providing the Solarians with a means to develop their resource rich, but inhospitable system while simultaneously removing troublemakers from client states like New Helsinki. Elliani glanced at his watch. The raid was suppose to commence in five minutes, yet he didn’t see how they were going to breach the door without explosives or a ram. Those were in the truck as back up. Back up for what though? At forty-five seconds to go time, a walking mountain came around the corner. At first glance, Elliani thought it was one of those great monsters from stories of old. Instead, after a closer look he saw it was a man or woman Elliani couldn’t tell which covered in the fearsome Testudo armor. The Crag Dragon with Crossed Rifles grasped in its talons bestriding a globe, the symbol of the Solarian Marine Corps was clearly visible on the shoulder with the motto ‘Retreat? Hell!’ written underneath. The Marine stopped in front of the door that Elliani’s squad had been ordered to hit, raised its foot and kicked the door down. ‘Well that’s one way to breach,’ Elliani thought as he followed his comrades through the hole.

Across Haggerdam, the story was repeated by ram, breaching charge, and on a few occasions the great foot of Solarian Testudos. Provisional Police backed by Interior Troopers and a scattering of Solarian Marines, breached over a thousand doors. Half would result in no charges and the owner of the domicile being released, but the other half saw the confiscation of everything from leaflets, to guns, to explosives, and a few even turned up wounded insurgents. Across the planet, all told more than 10,000 insurgents and their sympathizers would be arrested in one day, about nine tenths of the total strength of their urban support network.

High above New Helsinki, the RSNS
Titan
prepared to play her role in the operation. At 07:58 Jonathan rose from his command chair and strode to the tactical console where he and Lt. Commander Gopal each input their authorization code. Orbital strikes against terrestrial targets dated from the Great Pacific War at the end of the 21st century. The concept of using orbit as the ultimate high ground went back even further. The Outer Space Treaty dating from the bygone era of 5 AE had attempted to ban warfare in space, a ban that held for almost a century, but like any other ban on armed conflict it proved to be fruitless. Centuries of treaties and legal precedent later, the rules of engagement for a ship in orbit bombing a planet below had been firmly established. If the planet was defended by an Orbital Defense Network, than it was anything goes; kinetic strikes, nukes, conventional munitions. Of course there was a limit. The extinction level bombardment like the kind unleashed on Hera was highly objectionable as was using densely populated areas as targets for kinetic strikes as the Commonwealth had done during their occupation of Xi. If the planet wasn't defended or there was ground action underway as was the case here, only the use of conventional munitions was acceptable. To that end, RSNS
Titan,
with the proper codes inputted and her sensors fixed on targets, dropped five pods out of her torpedo tubes. The pods were officially designated MK VII Strikers.
Titan
carried 30 of these specifically for orbital support, and each Striker contained six Warhawk cruise missiles armed with a fuel air warhead. Firing a missile at a target from orbit made no sense, as the kinetic force would render the warhead mute. Instead of launching warheads,
Titan
took advantage of her position on the high ground of orbit to successfully drop pods loaded with weapons aimed at targets thousands of miles apart. Each pod would orbit New Helsinki until it reached a predetermined point, where now in range of its target the pod would fire its retro rockets and slow enough to re-enter orbit. Passing through the atmosphere, the Striker pod would deploy its air brakes until it reached 5,000 feet, when its parachutes would deploy to further slow its descent. Once it reached 2,000 feet, the pod opened and each Warhawk, which was no larger than a refrigerator, would be pushed forcefully from their mount. The Warhawks would fall for less than a second before turning toward their targets and firing their engines. In less than a minute, they would be zooming at three times the speed of sound toward their destination.

The 27 New Helsinki insurgence encampments had 30 missiles closing in on them with less than 15 minutes warning. When the Warhawks struck, they unleashed a Thermobaric explosion, which quite literally ignited the oxygen in the air for a square mile and devastated the next two square miles with a shock wave ten times more powerful than a full force hurricane. Receiving confirmation all missiles had detonated, Jonathan ordered Lt. Krishna to signal to the Interior Troops and Auxiliaries they were clear to secure the sites. Within minutes of receiving
Titans
signal, 2,000 Interior Troops supported by 5,000 Auxiliary Forces moved to do just that. Over the next several hours, reports from those forces made their way across the chain of command, and the results were troublesome. Despite 100% of
Titan’s
missiles striking their targets, fully half of the camps destroyed were completely abandoned, and most of the rest had only the remains of a few dozen insurgents and some light ordinance. The end result, which was transmitted to the commanding officers of all Solarian units in the New Helsinki Area of Operation, was that CORNET I the suppression of the insurgents urban presence was a complete success. However, CORNET II the destruction of rurally based insurgent forces was a complete failure.