In Her Name: The Last War (25 page)

But the president did believe it, and she had suffered for her perceived heresy at the hands of the press and from the Terran Congress. After the initial sensation of
Aurora’s
return started to wear off, the public and the congressmen suddenly paid closer attention to exactly what the president was asking for, and it didn’t take them long to start screaming bloody murder. President McKenna had enjoyed an extremely good working relationship with Congress, but the massive appropriations bill her staff had hammered together in an amazingly short time was met with shocked disbelief. The sale of war bonds, tax increases, possible federalization of key industries, and other measures brought a howl of indignation from the public and their elected representatives. The president had invited further attacks with an appeal for a vote to institute a draft that she sent to both houses. The resulting public uproar plunged her popularity into a tailspin. More than one critic had commented that had the Terran democratic institutions been based on a parliamentary system, McKenna would have been kicked out of office in a very one-sided vote of confidence.

On the diplomatic front, the story was equally bleak. The local diplomats were completely unsupportive, and the official government positions, delayed by weeks due to the communications time lag, were the same. 

But there was a ray of hope. The one diplomat who took Hamilton Barca’s entreaties seriously was Ambassador Laurent Navarre from the planet Avignon. Unlike most of the other ambassadors, Navarre was a former naval officer who had seen extensive combat during the St. Petersburg intervention, and he had taken a very keen interest in what had happened with the
Aurora
. After his initial meeting with Barca, he had taken the bold step of asking to speak directly with Sato. At Barca’s request, the Navy had quickly provided a secure vidcom terminal, and Barca sat in Navarre’s office while the French diplomat bombarded Sato, who at the time was still quarantined on
Aurora
, with very pointed questions. Impressed with the young man’s responses, Navarre told Barca that not only would he recommend that his government support Earth’s position, but that he would also recommend that Avignon and the other members of the Francophone Alliance offer to send military assistance to Keran. It was a huge diplomatic victory, particularly since the Francophone Alliance represented a major bloc of the human sphere. But it was the only such victory they had enjoyed.

Now, only six weeks were left before the invasion was to occur. A lot of people were becoming curious again as the day approached, drawing the populace away from the general apathy that had replaced the initial surge of reaction to
Aurora’s
return. “Are they going to be ready in time?”

Sabine shrugged. “They’ll be as ready as we can make them, Madam President,” he told her. “Admiral Tiernan has been running them through a tough training cycle, trying to get the new ships and crews in shape. He’s got a lot of challenges trying to pull everything together, but everyone’s pushing as hard as they can. I think the ground forces are fine, as General Singh decided - wisely, I believe - to take two of our best divisions and tailor them for the deployment. So if we can get them on the ground, they’ll be ready to go.” He sighed. “Part of it is that we just don’t know what we’re going to be facing. For all we know, the Empire could throw a thousand ships at us in the first wave. Aside from the things we see from the crystal ball…”

That’s what everyone had taken to calling the alien artifact showing Keran, which had almost completely transformed into a raging world at war. 

“...we have absolutely no intelligence information to go on.”

“And the Keran government still hasn’t budged?” McKenna asked.

“No, Madam President,” Hamilton Barca sighed. “I’ve done everything I can think of, short of wringing bin Sultan’s princely neck to get them to accept our help, even humanitarian assistance. They simply refuse to allow a Terran military presence in the system, even a single military vessel.” It wasn’t a surprise, of course: part of the reason for Keran’s odd mix of Chinese and Arabic cultures was due to the last round of wars that were fought on Earth before the Diaspora. The old United States, together with India and Russia, had been heavily involved on the “opposite side.” The inhabitants of Keran viewed the Terran Planetary Government, which was largely dominated by constituencies from the old United States, Russia, and India, with a great deal of circumspection, if not outright distrust.

“Then how the devil are we supposed to know if the invasion takes place?”

“That, at least, we have covered,” Barca told her, nodding toward Vladimir Penkovsky.

“We’ve arranged the diplomatic courier shuttle schedule so that there are at least two courier ships in-system at any given time,” Penkovsky explained, “with one in orbit and the other transiting in- or out-system. We’ve equipped all the courier ships with enhanced sensor packages that will augment their normal navigation and collision-avoidance systems to provide us with data on what is happening in local space and on the planet itself.” He held up a hand to forestall the question he saw the president about to ask. “No, Madam President, none of the equipment is classified or in any way compromises the diplomatic integrity of the couriers in the unlikely event one of them should be examined. Everything is off-the-shelf and commercially available. The upgraded systems will not provide information as detailed as we could get from our military systems, but it will be close.”

McKenna nodded, satisfied. The last thing she needed now was a major diplomatic incident with the Keran government. “What about the French?” she asked. 

Barca smiled. When she said
French
, she meant the Francophone Alliance. Like virtually all the major nation-states since the formation of the Terran Planetary Government, the country once known as France still existed as an administrative entity. But in Terran Government circles, “France” referred to the group of worlds settled by refugees from France, Belgium, their former African colonies, and even some of the
Quebecois
from Canada, during the Diaspora. Unlike some of the other worlds that were settled during that period, they had benefitted from amazing luck in colonizing Avignon, La Seyne, and several other planets that were very compatible with humans and were rich in natural resources. Collectively they had become one of the major economic and military forces in the human sphere, and generally shared common interests with Earth. Fortunately, the Francophone Alliance also enjoyed very good relations with Keran that weren’t tainted by unpleasantness from the past. “That’s still our best news,” Barca told her, “although it has its warts, too. The Alliance is preparing to deploy roughly one hundred warships to Keran, along with ten ground divisions. Ambassador Navarre indicated that the only real sticking point was the ground forces: the Keran Government is only going to allow them to deploy a single division planetside until or unless the enemy fleet actually materializes. The Kerans still don’t think there’s anything to worry about, and while they don’t mind having a bunch of French warships in orbit, they don’t want three full heavy corps of troops running amok on the streets.”

“But the French don’t have enough carriers to get their divisions deployed quickly from orbit,” Sabine pointed out, incredulous. “Are they just going to hold the troops on starliners until the attack comes and then shuttle them down?” Barca nodded, shrugging. “Good, God,” Sabine said, rolling his eyes, “they’re going to be sitting ducks!”

“They don’t have any choice,” Barca pointed out. “Believe me, Navarre wasn’t happy with the plan when he heard about it, either. But the Alliance approved it, so that’s what they’re going with.”

“So which division are they allowing the French to land ahead of time?” the president asked.

“They’re deploying the entire combat contingent of the Foreign Legion,” Barca told her, “which is technically a division-plus. They’re sending all twenty field infantry regiments, plus the Legion’s independent armored brigade. Navarre said the decision is already raising hell with peacekeeping operations where they had to pull out some of the regiments, but they did it anyway.”

Sabine grunted. “The Keran government would have been better off letting them deploy the other nine divisions and keep the legionnaires in orbit if they were worried about troops getting wild on the ground,” he said. “On the other hand, they’re a bunch of tough bastards. Good call. But they won’t have any heavy artillery support outside of the armored brigade.”

“So,” the president asked, “what major problems do we have left, aside from the obvious ones.”

“Command and control,” Sabine said immediately. “We’ve been talking to the French about inter-operability, but we’ve gotten an ice-cold shoulder.” The president gave him
the look
, the one where she seemed to promise that she’d rip the heart out of someone’s chest if he or she hadn’t been giving something their all. “Ma’am,” Sabine said, leaning forward to emphasize his point, “we even offered to give them a set of our systems to look over and modify - no questions asked! - to be compatible with theirs so our ships and ground troops can communicate effectively. But they’re so paranoid about their system security that they simply won’t do it. They refused to even take the equipment and software that we offered them, even to just look at it.”

“So when the attack comes and our ships jump in to assist,” she asked him, a look of pained incredulity on her face, “they won’t be able to communicate with the French fleet?”

“No, Madam President,” Sabine told her grimly. “Aside from the normal basic communications that all ships have, we’ll have no way of integrating our battle management capabilities. The ships will be able to talk to each other with normal voice and video, but other than that both fleets will be fighting completely on their own...”

* * *

Aboard the recently commissioned destroyer
TNS Owen D. McClaren
, Lieutenant Ichiro Sato found himself far more worried about the survival of his own ship in the current fleet exercise than the strategic concerns guiding the president’s cabinet discussion. What troubled him wasn’t the complex targeting and maneuvering problems the exercise controllers were throwing at the ships. It was the ship’s captain.

“
Goddammit, Sato!
” Commander Scott Morrison, the ship’s captain, cursed, making half the bridge crew cringe. Glaring at his young tactical officer, he practically sneered, “I ordered you to fire on target Delta with the pulse cannon. Are you deaf or just incompetent?”

“Sir,” Sato said, trying not to grit his teeth, “as I explained to you earlier, the pulse cannon has a thirty second recycle rate under optimal conditions.” The pulse cannon was a highly modified laser that was mounted in the ship’s keel. It could deliver a massive punch, but the entire ship had to be aligned on the target, and it took virtually all of the ship’s energy reserves to fire. It was a powerful weapon, but had some serious tactical drawbacks. The
McClaren
was one of only two of the expeditionary force’s ships that had been built with one. “You had already ordered a laser salvo against targets Alpha and Bravo, which depleted the energy buffers. Every time that happens, the recycle sequence for the pulse cannon resets-”

“Enough,” Morrison snapped, waving his hand dismissively as he turned back to the primary bridge display. “The bottom line is you fucked up.”

“Sir, I-”

“I said that’s enough,” the captain hissed. Getting out of his combat chair, which was strictly prohibited during exercises except for safety reasons, he stalked over to Sato’s position. Pointing a finger in Sato’s face, he went on, “The reason - the
only
reason - you are on this ship, mister, is because you managed to stuff your head up Admiral Tiernan’s ass so far that you could look out his ears. All I ask from you, if it’s not too much, is that you just sit there, keep your bloody mouth shut, and
do your fucking job!
” He paused, staring at Sato and clearly expecting the younger man to cave in. Tall but still gangly even in early middle age, Morrison normally towered over Sato. But now the captain’s face, which could only be described as grossly ordinary, was a mere hand’s breadth from Sato’s nose. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly, captain,” Sato replied stonily, his gaze unwavering, although his hands were digging into his armrests. He wasn’t intimidated; he was disgusted and heartsick that such an awful man had been given command of one of the few ships humanity had to send against what Sato knew must be heading toward Keran even now. And it was an insult that someone like Morrison had been given command of the ship that bore Captain McClaren’s name. 

Sato had only come aboard two weeks earlier as the ship was finishing up her initial space trials, and had been immediately appalled by the state of the crew: sullen and quiet, the various departments of the ship in fierce competition to avoid the captain’s ire. Morrison had effectively cowed all of the officers, including the exec, except for the chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Vedette Pergolesi. But while Pergolesi stood as a human heat shield between the captain and the crewmen of the engineering department, the rest of the crew had to fend for themselves. After having their hides flayed a few times after he’d come aboard, even the senior chiefs stayed out of the path of the captain’s vitriol. Most of them had seen his type before and kept their distance as much as possible. And that, as much as anything else, was devastating for the crew.

“We’ve just been hit by a brace of kinetics,” the XO said in a matter-of-fact voice. While Morrison had been berating Sato, an enemy ship had fired the equivalent of giant shotgun shells at them. Since no one else on the bridge was about to interrupt his tirade to ask for maneuvering orders, or take the initiative to change the ship’s course and avoid the incoming projectiles, the exercise computer declared five hits along the length of the hull. 

“
Goddammit!
” Morrison cried disgustedly, stomping back to his command chair.