“Still unconscious. No major wounds, but a pretty good gash on the back of his head. Can you walk?”
Trexler accepted a hand and got to his feet. A stretcher with Waverly was already moving toward the stairs. The captain pulled one of Trexler’s arms over his shoulder and motioned ahead. Trexler tried to lift the man’s hand away. “I can walk, Captain. I’m really okay.”
“Yes, sir. I’m just thinking of the stairs. We don’t let admirals fall down the stairs in this command.”
The lobby was in shambles, and they had to carefully work their way around debris. A fighter was touching down when they emerged into the open. The sun was just setting, and it was deathly quiet. An explosion sounded from above, and Trexler looked up to see streamers shooting out from a fireball high in the sky. He didn’t know whose ship it was.
Walters and Stevens came up beside him, Stevens on a stretcher. He seemed perfectly fine to Trexler. “You going with us?” he asked, surprised.
“I guess so, sir. Seems ridiculous to me, but they tell us we’re out of the action, so we might as well go with you. We’ll end up there sooner or later anyway. I feel fine, but I guess the fragment got an artery. It was kind of a mess when they untied my leg. Walters has a lot of fragments to be removed.”
He looked at Walters. “I don’t think you’ll need that assault weapon where you’re going, Sergeant.”
“It’s not mine, sir. It’s yours. I thought you might want it.”
A grin instantly lit Trexler’s face, and he reached for the weapon. “Thanks, Walters.” Then the grin was replaced with a look of horror. “Seeton!” he yelled. He pulled away from the captain and headed back for the building.
“Hold it, sir. What’s the problem?”
“The Sector Commander! He’s in a room on the second level. If he’s still alive, he has to go with us.”
The captain spoke into his microphone, then headed Trexler back to the fighter. “Anyone else we should bring, sir?”
Trexler considered. “No. They’ll have a mess on their hands when this is over. We’d better leave someone here to pick up the pieces.”
His mind turned to space, but he felt confused for a moment. It was almost a wrenching feeling to put the ground battle behind him and shift gears to the coming battle in space. What was going on out there? To Waverly’s captain, he said “Tell whoever’s in charge here that I’m going to need gunners for my ships again.”
“How many? We’re pretty well established here. We can probably break some away right now.”
“No, your job is critical, and I don’t want to slow you down. I’ll get transportation arranged, but it will likely be a few days. I might need all of you. Someone will get back to you.”
He went to the bridge of the fighter and took the first vacant seat he came to, planning to study the situation among the fleet, but moments after sitting down, he was fast asleep. The fighter made the short hop to the port, took more stretchers aboard, and headed up into space.
Chapter Twenty-five
Seeton woke him up. It took him a moment to get his bearings. “We’re here, Ray,” he heard as if from far away.
“Where’s here?” he asked, still shaking himself awake. His foot hurt, a lot.
“Your flagship.”
“Okay.”
Seeton helped him to his feet and to the ramp of the fighter. A small personal transport waited outside on the deck of hangar bay.
The fighter’s captain ran down the ramp, catching them before they left. “You forgot something, sir.” He handed Trexler his assault rifle, and the transport set off.
Seeton gave him a strange look. “I have a lot of catching up to do.”
“I think you can consider the planet yours again, sir. Our focus will be outward now.”
Seeton nodded. “I have the feeling I’ll be calling you sir before we’re done.”
“Look, we really didn’t have much chance to get to know each other.” Trexler stuck out his hand. “Ray Trexler.”
Seeton took the hand in both of his own and shook. “Harry Seeton. You’re pretty beat up, Ray, and what’s with all the dust? You’re coated in it.”
“It’s whatever your building was made of. You won’t be using your headquarters for a while, but your guys are okay, as far as I know. The Chessori never got in. The medic said this foot was going to be a distraction, and he’s right. I’m definitely going to have to do something about it. How are you?”
“The scree is much worse than I ever imagined. Thankfully, you’ll never know.”
Trexler nodded and frowned. “Too many others have been through it, and there will be many more in the upcoming weeks.”
“Weeks. You think it will take that long?”
“We won’t know until we see the big picture. I think we’re about to find out. I’d appreciate it if you’d stick with me during this. We’ll need all the help we can get.”
“Where else would I go?”
“You have a planet that needs your attention.”
“I have a sector that needs it a lot more.”
“And the future of an empire rests in the balance. In my mind, I’ve envisioned a battle here that will defy management. If it develops the way I’ve imagined, we’ll have over a thousand squadrons fighting each other. That’s something like thirteen or fourteen thousand ships.”
“I’ve managed a fleet for a number of years, but this is beyond my reckoning.”
“Let me tell you the first thing we learned when we started working on battles of this scale, Harry. We’ve all managed fleets, but in comparison to what could develop here, we were really only managing individual squadrons, squadrons in which we spent careers. When you think on the level of the squadron, you live and breathe the death and destruction, the tactics of ship against ship, the positioning of ships and their firepower, all of that. That’s all going to take place a thousand times over during the coming weeks, but it’s not our job. We’re not going to focus on individual fights and how frightening and horrible and exhilarating they can be. The squadron and battle group commanders will, but we won’t. Ours is a numbers problem, nothing more. We set the harshness aside. We deal only with capabilities, speed and firepower, positioning. To us, every squadron commander is as good as every other squadron commander, even when they’re not. They’re just numbers, not friends or competitors or strong or weak. They’re pieces of a 3-dimensional puzzle that we will move around to make perfect fits. And some of the fits won’t be perfect. Some will die. Others we’ll pull back. We cannot focus on the suffering and death, only the numbers. Our goal is to achieve a number of zero remaining for the enemy while retaining some positive number for ourselves.”
“That’s pretty harsh. Can you do that?”
“I have to. You have to. Our friends commanding those squadrons are relying on us to do it, and they’re relying on us to be right.”
The vehicle came to a stop. “We’re here, Harry. Let’s get to work.”
Steve Brinson, a senior Terran admiral, turned to greet them as they entered the operations center. “Boy, are you a sight for… what happened to you, Ray?”
“The infantry is what happened to me.” He laid his assault weapon on the deck against the wall where no one would stumble over it. “What’s the situation?”
“You want to dust yourself off first?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s grim, just like we anticipated. Do you want Chandrajuski to brief you?”
“He’s here?”
“In another ship.”
Trexler considered. “No, not yet. You brief me, and don’t neglect whatever else you were doing. I don’t mind interruptions.”
“You want to sit here with me and see the big picture?”
“No. I don’t want to get tied up in details yet, and I will if I look at it. Paint a picture for me, Steve, and use a broad brush.”
“Okay, the enemy first. They started showing up about the time Waverly started his operation. They’ve come in from every direction, sort of like an exploding 4 ^th of July fireworks. They’re still coming in, though the rate is tapering off. My guess is we’ll be up against some 500 Rebel squadrons.”