Beside their respective commanders, there were a handful of officers; carrier commanders, flag lieutenants and one Chinese woman wearing an unmarked uniform. Ted guessed she was the political commissioner, although it was equally possible she was the Captain’s assistant or woman. There were plenty of rumours about the freedom granted to Chinese officers by their government, although those freedoms were offered as bribes to keep them loyal, or so Ted had heard. Or maybe they were just exaggerations. The only place he’d visited where the exaggerations hadn’t been anything of the sort was Sin City.
“Gentlemen,” he said, silently relieved that English was still the official tongue for spacefaring operations. Both Americans and British Commonwealth citizens spoke it and, between them, they made almost a third of the population off-world. The children born on interplanetary and interstellar settlements were taught English along with their mother tongue. “Welcome to Task Force Nelson.”
He paused, trying to gauge their reaction, then continued. “Our mission is both simple and very complex. Simple, because the objective is clear enough; complex, because we are going to be diving into unknown space and attempting to occupy or destroy an alien-held star system behind the front lines. If we succeed, we should knock them back on their heels and buy time for humanity to produce more starships and weapons of war.
“If we lose, it could shorten the war.
“You have all read your briefing packets, I assume,” he said. “Do you have any questions before we proceed?”
“Just one,” the French Captain said. “How sure are we of the data pulled from the alien systems?”
Ted looked over at Lieutenant Phipps, who had been assigned to Ark Royal until the task force actually departed. “We are as sure of it as we can be,” Phipps said. “We considered the possibility of misinformation or misinterpretation, but we believe the probability to be very low. What we have managed to check, through gravimetric surveys, has held water.”
“Right,” Ross said. “Do we know anything about the defences on the far end?”
“Nothing,” Ted said. “We may break through their defence walls and emerge in an undefended region of space or we may discover the star system is heavily defended. There is literally no way to check until we actually reach the system.”
He sighed. Basic theory suggested that the aliens wouldn’t have bothered to fortify their inner systems, but one look at the human sphere disproved that theory. The major settled worlds all had their own defences, while a quite staggering amount of firepower had been gathered around Earth. Even if the aliens didn’t have their own national subgroups, it was unlikely that they’d completely ruled out the prospect of an attack on their homeworld, wherever it was. It was presumably shown on the charts they’d pulled from the alien battlecruiser, but there had been nothing to identify it.
“There is a considerable amount of risk associated with this operation,” he admitted. “But all war is risk.”
There was a long pause. “We will not survive this operation,” he added, “unless we work together. From now until the day we leave, we will run simulations and even live fire exercises, testing ourselves against the best we know the aliens can provide — and worse. We will streamline our procedures for issuing orders, carrying out combat manoeuvres and everything else we need to do to act as a single entity. I expect each and every one of you to work together to ensure we survive this operation.
“I have the authority, granted by your countries, to relieve any of you who proves a barrier to working together,” he warned. “And I will not hesitate to use it, because more is riding on this operation than human pride. If we lose this operation, the human race could very easily lose the war and the fate of New Russia will fall on Earth and all of our settled worlds.”
He took a long breath. He did have such authority, but he knew that using it would kick off a political shitstorm. No matter the justice of his actions, someone would complain and the alliance would stagger. As irritating as the thought was, he might have to help cover it up afterwards rather than let it fester and poison the diplomatic agreements reached by the various governments.
“If any of you have a problem with this,” he concluded, “I’m sorry. But there’s no alternative.”
He waited to see if anyone would speak, but heard nothing. “Good,” he said. he keyed a switch, activating the holographic display. A star chart appeared in front of them, human tramlines in green, alien tramlines in red. He couldn’t help noticing that the aliens had several routes they could take into human space that would allow them to outflank most of the defenders, if they chose to take them. “Our ships have been modified to allow us to use the alien tramlines, which will give us a considerable advantage over the old drives.”
It also ensured that there was no hope of rescue, at least until the rest of humanity’s various fleets were outfitted with the new drive, but he kept that thought to himself. They’d probably have thought of it for themselves in any case. None of them were political appointees, if their files were to be believed. They were all experienced officers. It was impossible to imagine they didn’t know the odds stacked against them.
“We will proceed through the seven star systems marked on the chart,” he continued. “Five of them are largely worthless, we believe, but two of them may well be settled by the aliens and thus they will probably have sensor networks watching over them. Ideally, we will avoid all contact with the aliens as we progress through those systems, but it may be impossible to avoid detection. If we are detected, we will have to fight our way through and hope we successfully prevent the aliens from sending a warning. That will not be easy.”
There were nods. Post-battle analysis of Ark Royal’s escape from New Russia had proved that the aliens stationed courier boats, smaller than anything humanity had been able to produce, near the tramlines. It wasn’t quite a method of sending signals faster than light, Ted knew, but it was alarmingly close to one. Given enough time to prepare, the aliens could intercept the human ships as they came through the tramline, launching missiles and starfighters before the humans even realised they were there.
“I would prefer not to make a fighting entry into our target system,” Ted admitted. “If it is unavoidable, we will — of course — launch the operation if we believe it has a valid chance of success. If not… we will try to survey several other alien systems before we retreat back to human space. However, that runs the risk of being trapped again — and I doubt the aliens will allow us to capture a second starship.”
He smiled at the thought. No one in their right mind would have expected a boarding operation in the middle of interstellar war, but he’d been desperate and it had worked. But the aliens wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. In their place, he’d stand-off and batter the human fleet to pieces with long-range fighter strikes. It would make it harder for the mass drivers to score a hit on the alien ships.
“Once we secure the orbitals, we will land troops,” he concluded, looking over at Ross. “Ideally, we should be able to sweep the surface for anything useful as well as set up defences to make it harder for the aliens to push us back out. However, again, if the situation on the ground is too complex, we will retreat rather than push too far into the system.”
“My men know the score,” Ross informed him, gravely. “We can hold the planet’s surface indefinitely.”
Ted had his doubts about it. Everything they knew about the aliens suggested that water was their normal environment, which raised the question of just why they’d started the war in the first place. If they’d lived in the seas and humanity had claimed the land, there was no reason why the two races couldn’t have shared countless uninhabited worlds. But maybe there was some other reason behind the war.