Post by Lorpius Prime on Jan 18, 2010 1:05:18 GMT -5
Xi Feng tried to calm her breathing as she strapped herself into her seat aboard the personnel shuttle Taffy Eleven. Less than a meter in front of her, CPO Bertram Engels was in the pilot's seat, checking his instruments. Xi Feng didn't think any of the others had noticed her shortness of breath, but it was entirely possible that they were simply too polite—or too cowed—to say anything to the Commodore.
Lieutenant Muyskens cursed softly in the seat next to Xi Feng as she fumbled with her own belts. The young adjutant was still adjusting to movement in microgravity, though she was certainly learning faster than some Xi Feng had seen on their first spaceflights.
She resisted the urge to wipe the sweat from her forehead as it beaded and began to tickle. Nerves! Xi Feng wanted to kick herself. She'd thought that the tension she'd felt in the last few days had been due to her worries over replacing the Douala in time for Task Force One's departure. To her astonishment, however, the Haifa had been transferred over within a day and without the need for any bureaucratic wrangling on her part. It seemed she still didn't quite appreciate the full benefits of leading an operation which was a political priority. Not that Xi Feng thought that was a bad thing; it wouldn't behoove her to become complacent. This assignment would eventually end. When it did, Xi Feng had better still know how to chew through the red tape on her own.
Still, it was nice to have help on occasion. But after Xi Feng had breezed through the acquisition of the Haifa and found no relief for her anxiety, she'd been forced to admit that the cause lay elsewhere.
It was nerves, simple as that. Xi Feng was anxious about the Task Force's departure from Mars. Even as she thought it, she could hear the disciplined, military portion of her personality scoffing at the notion. Didn't she have more composure than that? She'd better have, if she was going to complete this assignment without screwing up. Besides, if the operation failed at this point, it was beyond her control.
Which was the whole reason for her anxiety, of course. Much as Xi Feng wanted to ignore the risks she couldn't affect, much as she would have told her own subordinates to do the same, it was difficult to actually follow that advice. It didn't help that the stakes were so high, either. If the plan didn't work…
Because she was turned towards the front of the shuttle, Xi Feng heard and felt the new presence before she saw it. At first she just assumed it was the shuttle's copilot moving up the aisle. But when the presence sat down in the seat across from her and started tugging on the straps, she realized that she hadn't heard the shuttle's hatch closing yet.
Xi Feng blinked a few times to focus her eyes, and found herself looking at the plump, cheerful face of Pascual Molinas smiling back at her.
"Good morning, Commodore," the Ambassador said.
Xi Feng's worries were forgotten in an instant, replaced by rage.
"Ambassador Molinas," she summoned the iciest voice she could, "why aren't you aboard the Barn Swallow?"
"Well, I'd planned to watch the big Fleet exercise, of course. But someone suggested that the, uh, view would be better from one of the combat vessels. And that it would help to have more experienced officers around to explain what I was seeing." He smiled.
"We aren't here as tour guides, Ambassador."
Molinas chuckled, "Sure you are, Commodore." Xi Feng knew she was glowering now, but it didn't affect his smile. "Oh, I understand that you're all professional soldiers, first and foremost. But it's always been part of a soldiers' job to explain his world to the civilians in government. Otherwise, we'd be utterly clueless about what to do with you, instead of just mostly clueless, wouldn't you say?"
Xi Feng ground her teeth. She was angry enough that her stare could have burned holes in the Ambassador's forehead. But part of that anger was now directed inward at herself.
She had let herself assume that her previous discussion with Molinas had firmly settled the pecking order within Task Force One. Now it was obvious that had been a foolish hope. The Ambassador may be nothing more than a typical politician: slimy and weak, but he still had to be marginally clever and persistent to have attained his office. And here, he had maneuvered Xi Feng quite easily into an unwinnable position.
She wanted to order him off the shuttle immediately. Technically, she did have the authority to do exactly that. But she only exercised that authority so long as her own superiors believed that she was doing so reasonably and effectively. Throwing Molinas off the shuttle right now would be seen as the blatantly political move it was. At best, she would be reprimanded and lose her totally free operating hand in the future.
Still, if she simply allowed Molinas to stay, then that was admitting defeat. It may not be an overt contradiction of her authority, but it would still diminish her standing within her own command. Especially in the Ambassador's mind.
Suck it up, she told herself. And, indeed, Xi Feng drew in a deep breath through tightly clenched teeth.
"Ambassador," she said, now affecting a friendly tone that she hoped obviously held no sincerity, "each of these shuttle flights costs Earth Fleet something like eight thousand euros. In the future, may I ask that you at least give some advance warning if you're going to be needing us to make an extra trip to ferry you back to the Barn Swallow after a sightseeing excursion? If nothing else, I'm sure your uncle's Financial Councilor would appreciate the notice."
"Yeah," Molinas laughed again, "Willy's got enough headaches these days."
Xi Feng smiled so that he wouldn't see her cringing. Even though she'd brought up the cost of the ferry missions as a simple barb, it was frustrating to see how little the Ambassador cared how he spent Earth's money.
At the front of the shuttle, Xi Feng could see the shuttle pilots giving nervous glances back into the passenger compartment. Lieutenant Muyskens still seemed blissfully unaware of the tension between the Commodore and the Ambassador, but even that wouldn't last.
Xi Feng nodded at the shuttle's commander, "If you have clearance, Chief Engels, we're ready to depart."
The pilot swallowed visibly, but turned back to face his controls. "Aye, sir."
By 2073, Earth Fleet commanded an armada of just under 300 spacecraft. Exactly 100 of those were what the Fleet called its "front line" combat vessels: ships designed with the sole purpose of engaging and destroying anything which might present a threat to Earth. Those warships were divided into two loosely defined classes, named destroyers and cruisers after the surface navy vessels which supposedly filled similar roles. In truth, each of Earth Fleet's workhorse Luzon destroyers was larger than the US Navy's supercarrier, the USS Franklin Roosevelt. If the Fleet's behemoth Uruguay class cruisers could land, they would overshadow all of the planet's skyscrapers except Pyotr Velikiy Tower in Moscow.
The firepower on board each of those 100 spacecraft was on a scale more comparable to a national strategic weapons arsenal than a mere battleship. Arming them had required the revitalization of a nuclear weapons industry which had been nearly dead by the time the Montevideo Accords were signed in 2050. Humanity had built more nuclear warheads in the last two decades than in the entire preceding century. More than 90% of those nukes were controlled by Earth Fleet. India, Russia, and the United States still maintained token nuclear arsenals of their own, no other national military bothered.
When Earth Fleet was first established, the United Nations still banned nuclear test explosions both on the planet and in space. A limited repeal of that ban was the subject of much debate before the OES was formed and assumed control of Earth Fleet. Afterwards, when the Fleet's commanders made clear they had no intention of conforming to the ban anyway, the UN quietly wrote an exception into its rules.
For Earth Fleet to use nuclear weapons in a live-fire "training exercise", rather than simply testing the viability of the weapons themselves, would technically violate the terms of the ban. But Earth Fleet and most of the Human world had long since stopped caring about the objections of the United Nations when it came to space policy. And the UN had long since stopped trying to exert any influence over Earth Fleet or the OES. The only complaints about the Fleet exercises came from a few minor functionaries, career employees of the UN bureaucracy.
Their formal protest, signed by almost 100 like-minded colleagues and conscientious members of the public, was still sitting, unopened, on the desk of the Secretary General's personal assistant when 1,102 bombs ranging in yield from 50 to 500 kilotons exploded in orbit above the Earth.
"And you were complaining to me about the cost of a shuttle flight," Pascual teased.
Commodore Lee ignored him; her stony face remained locked on the monitor in front of her chair. Pascual decided that that meant he'd gotten to her, and he allowed himself a small smirk.
On his own monitor—Pascual had been seated at an auxiliary control station at the back of the bridge—the Ambassador watched a magnified video image of the explosions above Earth. The Earth Fleet personnel were mostly looking at various charts and data plots which probably conveyed more actual information about the course of the exercise, but Pascual couldn't make heads or tails of those screens. Not that he'd have probably understood the importance of any of it even if he could. For Pascual, watching the twinkling of lights around the blue circle of his home planet was significant enough.
The Uruguay's intelligence officer, a tall American man seated at a station just in front of Pascual, made a contemplative noise in the back of his throat.
Commodore Lee glanced over her shoulder, "Something bothering you, Commander Donaldson?"
The intelligence officer shrugged, "Looks like all the first phase munitions went off as planned."
"Which is a good thing, Commander," the tactical officer called from the front of the bridge. He repeated himself for emphasis, "A good thing."
Lieutenant Commander Donaldson shrugged again.
Pascual glanced about the bridge, and found he couldn't contain his curiosity.
"Is something wrong?" he asked.
Commodore Lee's gaze hardened as her eyes flicked to Pascual's face for a moment. The Lieutenant Commander, however, didn't seem bothered when he turned around to explain to Pascual.
"It's just a lot of bombs. I expected at least one or two to fail."
The tactical officer was now waving his arms dramatically, "A good thing. We should all be happy they worked!"
Commodore Lee turned her glare towards the tactical officer, and he quickly turned his attention back to his own station. Donaldson rolled his eyes.
"Yes, it's a good thing. Just… statistically improbable." He shrugged a third time then looked back down to his monitor.
"So how long until the second phase stars?" Pascual asked.
It was the tactical officer who responded—Pascual thought he must like the sound of his own voice—though this time without actually turning around. "Well, fifteen minutes ago, sir, but we'll see it in another five."
Pascual nodded, though the gesture went unseen by anyone. The next five minutes passed in near silence, interrupted only by a few status updates coming in from the other ships of Task Force One as they prepared for departure. Pascual shifted in his seat.
"Here go the mines," the chattering tactical officer announced.
The first round of explosions had gone off nearly all at once, forming a brief miniature starfield on the video screen. The second round had more apparent design, but was still impressive. A single line of fire moved westward like a wave covering the sky. Pascual wanted to whistle, but held it in.
"All right, so how about that one, Mr. Statistician?"
"Okay, may have been some fizzles that time. Can't be certain from here."
The tactical officer sighed, "Well, still, they were clearing out the old U-3s, we should be happy they went off at all."
"Right."
"What were we clearing out?" Pascual asked, curious.
"The U-3 line of unmanned defense drones—mines, Ambassador," the Commodore answered.
"Half of them went up before Quito came online," the tactical officer explained. "They didn't have any serious propulsion, and the warheads were still low-yield. Pretty much useless except as fireworks. Which I guess is how we just used them."
"So the replacements are much better?"
Commodore Lee snorted softly, and Pascual saw a few awkward glances among the officers.
"Well, yeah," the tactical officer went on, "if they ever get built. Mars has a decent arsenal of the U-4s, but only a couple dozen of the U-5s and -6s were ever made."
"So what's protecting Earth?"
"First and Fifth Fleets," Commodore Lee said.
The tactical officer shrugged, "It's not so bad. Railguns have more reach than they've ever been able to put into a mine anyway."
"Have you seen the specs on that Tadpole lasing chamber?" Donaldson asked. "Mines could start having some serious kick."
"Well, yeah," the tactical officer acknowledged, "…if they ever get built."
From the far side of the room, the swarthy communications officer interrupted, "NMC Diligence reports that they've got reactors back up to twenty percent. They'll be able to make cruising acceleration."
A few officers cheered softly. Pascual saw that even Commodore Lee seemed to have brightened a bit.
"Excellent," she said. "Signal the Task Force that we'll be departing as planned. Lieutenant Lahiri, are we on target?"
"Yes, sir," pipped the navigation officer.
"Then ready for one-quarter gravity on my order. Commander Wade, inform the crew to prepare for acceleration."
"Aye, sir," came the response from the navigation officer and the XO behind Pascual.
Pascual felt a rising tingle of excitement as he watched Commodore Lee lean back in her chair and nodded approvingly. They were about to leave.
"Engage."
Lieutenant Muyskens cursed softly in the seat next to Xi Feng as she fumbled with her own belts. The young adjutant was still adjusting to movement in microgravity, though she was certainly learning faster than some Xi Feng had seen on their first spaceflights.
She resisted the urge to wipe the sweat from her forehead as it beaded and began to tickle. Nerves! Xi Feng wanted to kick herself. She'd thought that the tension she'd felt in the last few days had been due to her worries over replacing the Douala in time for Task Force One's departure. To her astonishment, however, the Haifa had been transferred over within a day and without the need for any bureaucratic wrangling on her part. It seemed she still didn't quite appreciate the full benefits of leading an operation which was a political priority. Not that Xi Feng thought that was a bad thing; it wouldn't behoove her to become complacent. This assignment would eventually end. When it did, Xi Feng had better still know how to chew through the red tape on her own.
Still, it was nice to have help on occasion. But after Xi Feng had breezed through the acquisition of the Haifa and found no relief for her anxiety, she'd been forced to admit that the cause lay elsewhere.
It was nerves, simple as that. Xi Feng was anxious about the Task Force's departure from Mars. Even as she thought it, she could hear the disciplined, military portion of her personality scoffing at the notion. Didn't she have more composure than that? She'd better have, if she was going to complete this assignment without screwing up. Besides, if the operation failed at this point, it was beyond her control.
Which was the whole reason for her anxiety, of course. Much as Xi Feng wanted to ignore the risks she couldn't affect, much as she would have told her own subordinates to do the same, it was difficult to actually follow that advice. It didn't help that the stakes were so high, either. If the plan didn't work…
Because she was turned towards the front of the shuttle, Xi Feng heard and felt the new presence before she saw it. At first she just assumed it was the shuttle's copilot moving up the aisle. But when the presence sat down in the seat across from her and started tugging on the straps, she realized that she hadn't heard the shuttle's hatch closing yet.
Xi Feng blinked a few times to focus her eyes, and found herself looking at the plump, cheerful face of Pascual Molinas smiling back at her.
"Good morning, Commodore," the Ambassador said.
Xi Feng's worries were forgotten in an instant, replaced by rage.
"Ambassador Molinas," she summoned the iciest voice she could, "why aren't you aboard the Barn Swallow?"
"Well, I'd planned to watch the big Fleet exercise, of course. But someone suggested that the, uh, view would be better from one of the combat vessels. And that it would help to have more experienced officers around to explain what I was seeing." He smiled.
"We aren't here as tour guides, Ambassador."
Molinas chuckled, "Sure you are, Commodore." Xi Feng knew she was glowering now, but it didn't affect his smile. "Oh, I understand that you're all professional soldiers, first and foremost. But it's always been part of a soldiers' job to explain his world to the civilians in government. Otherwise, we'd be utterly clueless about what to do with you, instead of just mostly clueless, wouldn't you say?"
Xi Feng ground her teeth. She was angry enough that her stare could have burned holes in the Ambassador's forehead. But part of that anger was now directed inward at herself.
She had let herself assume that her previous discussion with Molinas had firmly settled the pecking order within Task Force One. Now it was obvious that had been a foolish hope. The Ambassador may be nothing more than a typical politician: slimy and weak, but he still had to be marginally clever and persistent to have attained his office. And here, he had maneuvered Xi Feng quite easily into an unwinnable position.
She wanted to order him off the shuttle immediately. Technically, she did have the authority to do exactly that. But she only exercised that authority so long as her own superiors believed that she was doing so reasonably and effectively. Throwing Molinas off the shuttle right now would be seen as the blatantly political move it was. At best, she would be reprimanded and lose her totally free operating hand in the future.
Still, if she simply allowed Molinas to stay, then that was admitting defeat. It may not be an overt contradiction of her authority, but it would still diminish her standing within her own command. Especially in the Ambassador's mind.
Suck it up, she told herself. And, indeed, Xi Feng drew in a deep breath through tightly clenched teeth.
"Ambassador," she said, now affecting a friendly tone that she hoped obviously held no sincerity, "each of these shuttle flights costs Earth Fleet something like eight thousand euros. In the future, may I ask that you at least give some advance warning if you're going to be needing us to make an extra trip to ferry you back to the Barn Swallow after a sightseeing excursion? If nothing else, I'm sure your uncle's Financial Councilor would appreciate the notice."
"Yeah," Molinas laughed again, "Willy's got enough headaches these days."
Xi Feng smiled so that he wouldn't see her cringing. Even though she'd brought up the cost of the ferry missions as a simple barb, it was frustrating to see how little the Ambassador cared how he spent Earth's money.
At the front of the shuttle, Xi Feng could see the shuttle pilots giving nervous glances back into the passenger compartment. Lieutenant Muyskens still seemed blissfully unaware of the tension between the Commodore and the Ambassador, but even that wouldn't last.
Xi Feng nodded at the shuttle's commander, "If you have clearance, Chief Engels, we're ready to depart."
The pilot swallowed visibly, but turned back to face his controls. "Aye, sir."
* * *
By 2073, Earth Fleet commanded an armada of just under 300 spacecraft. Exactly 100 of those were what the Fleet called its "front line" combat vessels: ships designed with the sole purpose of engaging and destroying anything which might present a threat to Earth. Those warships were divided into two loosely defined classes, named destroyers and cruisers after the surface navy vessels which supposedly filled similar roles. In truth, each of Earth Fleet's workhorse Luzon destroyers was larger than the US Navy's supercarrier, the USS Franklin Roosevelt. If the Fleet's behemoth Uruguay class cruisers could land, they would overshadow all of the planet's skyscrapers except Pyotr Velikiy Tower in Moscow.
The firepower on board each of those 100 spacecraft was on a scale more comparable to a national strategic weapons arsenal than a mere battleship. Arming them had required the revitalization of a nuclear weapons industry which had been nearly dead by the time the Montevideo Accords were signed in 2050. Humanity had built more nuclear warheads in the last two decades than in the entire preceding century. More than 90% of those nukes were controlled by Earth Fleet. India, Russia, and the United States still maintained token nuclear arsenals of their own, no other national military bothered.
When Earth Fleet was first established, the United Nations still banned nuclear test explosions both on the planet and in space. A limited repeal of that ban was the subject of much debate before the OES was formed and assumed control of Earth Fleet. Afterwards, when the Fleet's commanders made clear they had no intention of conforming to the ban anyway, the UN quietly wrote an exception into its rules.
For Earth Fleet to use nuclear weapons in a live-fire "training exercise", rather than simply testing the viability of the weapons themselves, would technically violate the terms of the ban. But Earth Fleet and most of the Human world had long since stopped caring about the objections of the United Nations when it came to space policy. And the UN had long since stopped trying to exert any influence over Earth Fleet or the OES. The only complaints about the Fleet exercises came from a few minor functionaries, career employees of the UN bureaucracy.
Their formal protest, signed by almost 100 like-minded colleagues and conscientious members of the public, was still sitting, unopened, on the desk of the Secretary General's personal assistant when 1,102 bombs ranging in yield from 50 to 500 kilotons exploded in orbit above the Earth.
* * *
"And you were complaining to me about the cost of a shuttle flight," Pascual teased.
Commodore Lee ignored him; her stony face remained locked on the monitor in front of her chair. Pascual decided that that meant he'd gotten to her, and he allowed himself a small smirk.
On his own monitor—Pascual had been seated at an auxiliary control station at the back of the bridge—the Ambassador watched a magnified video image of the explosions above Earth. The Earth Fleet personnel were mostly looking at various charts and data plots which probably conveyed more actual information about the course of the exercise, but Pascual couldn't make heads or tails of those screens. Not that he'd have probably understood the importance of any of it even if he could. For Pascual, watching the twinkling of lights around the blue circle of his home planet was significant enough.
The Uruguay's intelligence officer, a tall American man seated at a station just in front of Pascual, made a contemplative noise in the back of his throat.
Commodore Lee glanced over her shoulder, "Something bothering you, Commander Donaldson?"
The intelligence officer shrugged, "Looks like all the first phase munitions went off as planned."
"Which is a good thing, Commander," the tactical officer called from the front of the bridge. He repeated himself for emphasis, "A good thing."
Lieutenant Commander Donaldson shrugged again.
Pascual glanced about the bridge, and found he couldn't contain his curiosity.
"Is something wrong?" he asked.
Commodore Lee's gaze hardened as her eyes flicked to Pascual's face for a moment. The Lieutenant Commander, however, didn't seem bothered when he turned around to explain to Pascual.
"It's just a lot of bombs. I expected at least one or two to fail."
The tactical officer was now waving his arms dramatically, "A good thing. We should all be happy they worked!"
Commodore Lee turned her glare towards the tactical officer, and he quickly turned his attention back to his own station. Donaldson rolled his eyes.
"Yes, it's a good thing. Just… statistically improbable." He shrugged a third time then looked back down to his monitor.
"So how long until the second phase stars?" Pascual asked.
It was the tactical officer who responded—Pascual thought he must like the sound of his own voice—though this time without actually turning around. "Well, fifteen minutes ago, sir, but we'll see it in another five."
Pascual nodded, though the gesture went unseen by anyone. The next five minutes passed in near silence, interrupted only by a few status updates coming in from the other ships of Task Force One as they prepared for departure. Pascual shifted in his seat.
"Here go the mines," the chattering tactical officer announced.
The first round of explosions had gone off nearly all at once, forming a brief miniature starfield on the video screen. The second round had more apparent design, but was still impressive. A single line of fire moved westward like a wave covering the sky. Pascual wanted to whistle, but held it in.
"All right, so how about that one, Mr. Statistician?"
"Okay, may have been some fizzles that time. Can't be certain from here."
The tactical officer sighed, "Well, still, they were clearing out the old U-3s, we should be happy they went off at all."
"Right."
"What were we clearing out?" Pascual asked, curious.
"The U-3 line of unmanned defense drones—mines, Ambassador," the Commodore answered.
"Half of them went up before Quito came online," the tactical officer explained. "They didn't have any serious propulsion, and the warheads were still low-yield. Pretty much useless except as fireworks. Which I guess is how we just used them."
"So the replacements are much better?"
Commodore Lee snorted softly, and Pascual saw a few awkward glances among the officers.
"Well, yeah," the tactical officer went on, "if they ever get built. Mars has a decent arsenal of the U-4s, but only a couple dozen of the U-5s and -6s were ever made."
"So what's protecting Earth?"
"First and Fifth Fleets," Commodore Lee said.
The tactical officer shrugged, "It's not so bad. Railguns have more reach than they've ever been able to put into a mine anyway."
"Have you seen the specs on that Tadpole lasing chamber?" Donaldson asked. "Mines could start having some serious kick."
"Well, yeah," the tactical officer acknowledged, "…if they ever get built."
From the far side of the room, the swarthy communications officer interrupted, "NMC Diligence reports that they've got reactors back up to twenty percent. They'll be able to make cruising acceleration."
A few officers cheered softly. Pascual saw that even Commodore Lee seemed to have brightened a bit.
"Excellent," she said. "Signal the Task Force that we'll be departing as planned. Lieutenant Lahiri, are we on target?"
"Yes, sir," pipped the navigation officer.
"Then ready for one-quarter gravity on my order. Commander Wade, inform the crew to prepare for acceleration."
"Aye, sir," came the response from the navigation officer and the XO behind Pascual.
Pascual felt a rising tingle of excitement as he watched Commodore Lee lean back in her chair and nodded approvingly. They were about to leave.
"Engage."