He scowled as Keene read through the message. Ysalt hadn’t been particularly important for centuries and he’d counted on that when he’d developed it as a supply base, but the rebels had managed to locate it and destroy the supplies. His ships needed the supply of missiles and spare parts to operate — even though the best efforts of the Wakanda Space Navy had inflicted absolutely no damage whatsoever — and that supply had just been savagely reduced. The rebels had somehow managed to make a fleet train work without supply bases and convoys, but he hadn’t had the time to set up a similar system. It was a weakness, he saw in cold hindsight, that he had believed that they couldn’t take advantage of. He had been wrong.
Keene’s mind was working along similar lines. “They’re forced us to reroute supplies directly from Cottbus,” he said. Admiral Wilhelm nodded. There was no reason why that wasn’t possible, but it would merely add more delay, not least in getting the instructions back to Cottbus to do just that. Worse, they would have to rely on a convoy system… and that would mean diverting escorts from the war front. “That affects our ability to carry out the next stage of the plan.”
Admiral Wilhelm stared at him. “Tell me something I don’t know, please,” he said, unable to keep the slow-building anger out of his voice. “I know the consequences as well as you do, perhaps better.”
His Flag Captain cleared his throat. “We fired off twenty percent of missile stocks on the superdreadnaughts that engaged at Wakanda,” he said, consulting a datapad. That, too, had come back to haunt them. A more restrained approach to the task of trashing the Wakanda Space Navy would have been less spectacular, but more helpful in the long run. Fired missiles didn’t re-materialise out of nowhere, whatever some computer game simulation designers thought. “Two-thirds of the fleet didn’t even enter the system and they still have full missile loads. The fleet’s combat power has not been significantly reduced.”
“Not now,” Admiral Wilhelm agreed, sourly. He appreciated his aide’s attempt to take the best possible view of the debacle, but he was no Family scion, deaf to all, but good news. In a sense, he was entirely correct. A fleet like the one he commanded -according to standard doctrine — couldn’t be broken up by a fleet that wasn’t at least equal in firepower. Pre-war training had assumed that a three-to-one advantage was required to guarantee success, but pre-war analysts had never anticipated arsenal ships. “It will come back to haunt us later.”
He tapped the controls and called up a standard starchart, looking down at the Empire from high above. Tactical icons, representing his forces, glowed brightly, outshining dimmer icons that represented his intelligence crew’s best guess at rebel dispositions. The information could be — probably was — outdated by now, but it looked alarming, on the surface. It was, in fact, still a highly advantageous situation — to him.
But it wouldn’t last. He was operating deep within unfriendly territory — he had no illusions as to how the first-rank worlds would view him — with very limited support. The rebels might not have a force capable of breaking his fleet that they could spare from defence duties, but it hardly mattered. He could turn on the first-rank worlds and wreck havoc, but that would drain his arsenals and give the rebels time to concentrate their forces. The war would go on for years, but once the rebels struck back at Cottbus, the outcome would be certain. After his ambush of the rebel fleet — which, far from being broken, had wrecked his supply bases at Ysalt — he didn’t expect mercy, even if he offered to surrender. His only choice was to continue the war.
And there were only a handful of targets that might prove decisive.
“An interesting problem,” he mused, finally. He stoked his beard while concentrating his thoughts, noting absently that it had been weeks since he had heard anything from Carola, even though the intelligence network he’d ‘inherited’ from Lady Madeline Hohenzollern. He was more worried about her than he cared to admit, although he was fairly sure that the rebels would do nothing to harm her, at least until it was safe to do so. He would wreck a terrible revenge if they hurt one hair on her head. “We have a window of opportunity, so where do we strike?”
A Flag Captain had to be his Admiral’s alter ego, offering advice and caution, whatever the situation. “AlphaCent is heavily defended and actually hard to approach safely,” Keene said, after a moment. The binary star system — with a third companion star far too close for comfort when the flicker drive was concerned — could be dangerous for interstellar starships. “They would certainly have warning of our coming and they wouldn’t allow us to take the shipyards intact.”
“Which would leave us effectively defenceless,” Admiral Wilhelm agreed. The rebel forces massed at AlphaCent, perhaps the second most sensitive location in the Empire, wouldn’t be the pushovers that the Wakanda Space Navy had been. He was confident of a victory, but the cost would be steep… and they wouldn’t be able to replace their missiles quickly. They would have to withdraw almost at once, all the way back to Cottbus itself, just to reload. Who knew what the rebels could get up to in that time? “It would also be pointless destruction.”
He altered the display slightly. “And Earth itself?”
Keene considered it. “Victory, complete victory, if we win,” he said. “The rebel Provisional Government would have to stand and fight. They wouldn’t have a choice, unless they wanted to retreat and leave us with Earth. That leaves us with a more interesting problem — do we have the firepower, with us now, to defeat the rebels in battle above Earth?”
Admiral Wilhelm smiled darkly. Lady Madeline Hohenzollern’s intelligence network was actually fairly good when it came to political matters — although if they had known that Madeline was currently cooling her heels in one of his more unattractive cells, her friends and relatives would probably have been less eager to help — but the network wasn’t so good with military problems. It wouldn’t be able to address specific questions, such as how many starships were deployed to defend Earth, or who was in command of the Shadow Fleet, or anything else that might have been useful for anyone planning an offensive. It might not have mattered. The odds were that he didn’t know anyone who would be in a position of power in the Shadow Fleet. Colin Harper, the rebel leader, had been a mere Commander before the rebellion. The other leaders were equally obscure.
But he knew enough to gamble. “I believe so,” he said, carefully side-stepping the obvious question. The cold hard laws governing interstellar warfare told him that he had no choice, but to seek a quick victory — or accept defeat. The rebels still had control over far more industry and, given time, they could make continuing the war impossible. He recited, slowly, words that Carola had taught him, just before she’d departed for Earth onboard the Victorious.
Keene blinked. “Sir?”
“We have to move on Earth, one final throw of the dice, or accept defeat,” Admiral Wilhelm said. Keene would understand, as well as himself, that the plan had miscarried badly enough to require extreme measures. They hadn’t anticipated the loss of the supply dumps. “So… we move on Earth, and damned be he who first says, hold, enough.”
He cast his gaze back to the display, watching the sway of tactical icons, each one representing a starship or an orbital defence fortress, and smiled. Earth was, in theory, heavily defended, but at the same time, it presented almost unique challenges for the defenders. The sheer level of habitation and industry in the system was staggering to contemplate. Humanity’s birthworld might have been nearly deserted, apart from the Thousand Families, their servants and now the Provisional Government, but the remainder of the system was heavily populated. An attacker who was prepared to be careful had some advantages that would be denied the defenders.