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Chapter Forty-Four

Captain Gowan Maddock of the Mesan Alignment Navy looked down at the ornate rings of braid around the cuffs of his Mesa System Navy uniform with remarkably scant favor. He'd always thought the MSN's uniform, with its hectares of braid and its tall caps whose visors dripped old-fashioned "scrambled eggs," looked more like something out of a bad operetta than anything any real navy would have tolerated. Of course, no one had ever wanted anyone to take the MSN seriously, had they? It was supposed to be a pretentious Lilliputian force with delusions of grandeur—exactly what the galaxy would have expected out of a star nation whose government was totally dominated by outlaw, profit-driven transstellars.

And, by the oddest turn of fate, that was precisely what the Mesa System Navy actually was. It would never have done to create a force whose professionalism might inadvertently have given itself away, after all. And so the Mesan Alignment Navy, which until very recently had boasted no more than a handful of carefully hidden destroyers and light cruisers, had been created as a completely separate organization. Unlike the comic opera pretensions and strutting of the "navy" everyone knew about, the MAN was a deadly serious, highly motivated, intensely professional service, and its austere uniforms were in deliberate contrast to those of the MSN.

And the ships we've already got could tear the ass right off the entire MSN without even breaking a sweat, Maddock reflected. The ships we're going to have very shortly could do the same thing to just about anybody else, too.

He took a deep and burning pride in that knowledge, and he looked forward to the rapidly approaching day when everyone else in the galaxy would know what he already knew. When the words "Mesan Navy" would be spoken with respect, even fear, instead of amused contempt.

But that day wasn't here yet, and aside from Commander Jessica Milliken, his own second-in-command, none of the other people filing into the briefing room aboard the battlecruiser Leon Trotsky knew the MAN existed. Which was why Maddock and Milliken wore the uniforms they did.

He waited while the newcomers took their places, standing behind their chairs as he stood behind his own, waiting. A few seconds ticked past, and then the briefing room door opened once again and Citizen Commodore Adrian Luff of the People's Navy in Exile strode through it, flanked by Citizen Commander Millicent Hartman, his chief of staff, and Captain Olivier Vergnier, Leon Trotsky's commanding officer.

If I think my uniform is stupid, Maddock thought sourly, what about the one these lunatics are wearing?

It was a legitimate question, and one which had occurred to him more than once during the endless purgatory of his six-month assignment to his present duty. He'd experienced his share of idiocy during his occasional assignments to provide technical expertise to some operation being mounted by Manpower bureaucrats who knew no more about the truth of the Mesan Alignment than anyone else, but this one took the cake. It wasn't just Manpower loonies this time. Oh, no! This time he got to deal with an entire task force of people who were so far around the bend they wouldn't have been able to see it with a telescope . . . if it had ever so much as crossed their teeny-tiny minds to look back in the first place.

Luff marched to his chair at the head of the conference table and waited while Hartman and Vergnier stood behind their own. Then he seated himself, paused for two carefully counted heartbeats, and nodded regally to the lesser beings clustered about him.

"Be seated," he commanded, and Maddock made himself wait another half-second before he obeyed.

He and Milliken looked conspicuously out of place at that table in their black tunics and charcoal-gray trousers. True, the other uniforms around them sported almost as much braid as theirs did, but those other uniforms' tunics were red, and their trousers were black.

And no one else in the entire galaxy is crazy enough to wear them, either, he thought sourly, and shook his head mentally behind the expressionless façade of his eyes. I wonder, do even they still genuinely believe there's a single chance in hell they'll ever return victoriously to Nouveau Paris and deal with the counterrevolutionary scum whose backstabbing treason brought down the people's paladins of the Committee of Public Safety?

It seemed unlikely to Maddock that anyone could truly be that completely and totally out of touch with reality, but the People's Navy in Exile certainly acted the part. Even the names they'd assigned to the surplus Indefatigable-class battlecruisers Manpower had provided to them reflected that: Leon Trotsky, George Washington, Marquis de Lafayette, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Paine, Mao Tse-tung, Maximilien Robespierre . . . 

Well, I don't really care how far out to lunch they are, he reminded himself. All I care about is that they do what they're supposed to do . . . and that I get the hell off this ship before the button gets punched on Wooden Horse.

"First," Luff said as he surveyed the officers seated around the table, "let me say I'm extremely pleased with how well the most recent exercises have gone. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that this is the best trained, most proficient naval force with which I have ever been associated."

There were murmurs of satisfaction, and Maddock made himself nod in sober agreement with the commodore's assessment. And it was probably accurate, too, he reminded himself. Unlike at least a few of the People's Navy in Exile's ship commanders, Luff himself had never served in the original People's Navy of the People's Republic of Haven. He'd attained his pre-Thesiman rank of captain (the self-granted promotion to "commodore" had come later—purely, of course, as an administrative necessity when he organized the PNE) because of his loyalty and reliability. And his function had been not to fight actual battles but to make certain that no one in the regular navy entertained any thought of resisting the Committee of Public Safety's orders. He'd been the regime's enforcer, not a naval officer, and it was unlikely any members of the regular "naval forces" to which he had been attached during his StateSec career would have considered him one of their "associates," either.

Still, there was some valid basis for Luff's current satisfaction, the Mesan officer reminded himself. Especially given the fact that for all their pretension to the status of warriors of the revolution, the men and women in this briefing room had spent the last six T-years as little better than common, garden-variety pirates. It was amazing to Maddock that they'd managed to hang on to any shared sense of identity, and he supposed their identification of themselves as a "navy in exile," however ludicrous it might be, helped account for it. Well, the fact that Manpower had subsidized the PNE generously enough for them to hold their ships' companies together had something to do with it as well, he imagined.

The consequences of their degeneration into ten-a-credit brigands had been painfully evident when they gathered here to begin drilling for the Verdant Vista operation, though. They'd never been what Maddock would have considered real naval officers, but they'd become even sloppier and more incompetent than he'd expected. Integrating the mercenaries Manpower had been forced to retain to flesh out their crews—especially when the additional SLN units had been added to the PNE's order of battle—had made things even worse. Given the nature of this particular operation, Manpower had prudently avoided the more respectable mercenary outfits. In fact, the bulk of its new hires were basically common thieves, thugs, and murderers with a thin veneer of technical competence. Beating them into a semblance of efficiency had been a daunting task. It was fortunate Luff and his fellows had acquired so much experience in instilling terror-based discipline, he supposed, but even with the aid of Milliken and the other Manpower "advisers" provided by the "Mesa System Navy," it had taken every single day of the endless months spent orbiting this bleak, planetless red dwarf to get them ready.

But they really are ready, he told himself. However hard to believe that may be, they're actually ready to mount the operation. It's still probably a damned good thing they're only going up against a handful of frigates manned by a bunch of semiliterate runaway slaves with maybe a few Erewhonese cruisers in support, but I have to admit, they've worked up to a level of efficiency I never would have believed they'd get to.

"As all of you are aware," Luff continued gravely, "the execution date for Operation Ferret is almost upon us. This was our last exercise, which makes it particularly gratifying that it went so well."

He paused again, briefly, then cleared his throat.

"I'm sure we're all also aware that at least some of our personnel continue to cherish a few . . . reservations about the requirements of the ops plan. Under the circumstances, I suppose that's inevitable."

He glanced briefly at Maddock and Milliken from the corner of his eye, and Maddock blandly pretended not to notice.

"There are two points to bear in mind," the commodore went on after a moment. "First, from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, our obligation to our . . . benefactors requires us to carry out this operation. Not to put too fine a point on it, and without intending offense to anyone," this time he nodded openly to Maddock, "this operation is our payment for the ships and the support the PNE requires to finally mount an organized, sustained offensive against the counterrevolutionaries in Nouveau Paris. I realize that even with the additional hulls we've added to our force, the counterrevolutionaries will substantially outnumber us. However, I also realize, as I'm sure all of you do, that not everyone in Nouveau Paris and elsewhere in the People's Republic has forgotten everything the Committee of Public Safety stood for. There are people in the People's Republic, even in the current Navy, who sympathize with us and are only waiting for an example. For some leadership. We will provide that example and that leadership, and the ships and the advanced weapons with which our benefactors have already supplied us—and promise to continue to supply to us—are what will make that possible."

He gazed around the silent briefing room, and Maddock could almost hear his audience's thoughts. The PNE's "new" ships were effectively SLN castoffs, and he knew Luff and many of his ship commanders had reservations about them. And rightly so, he reflected, given how weak their missile defenses were. The MAN was equally aware of that weakness, although Maddock hadn't admitted anything of the sort to his ex-StateSec pupils, since neither the Solarian League Navy nor the official Mesan System Navy, had any concept of just how outclassed they truly were. The Alignment had seen to it that all of the new battlecruisers had Aegis, the SLN's most recent (and, in Maddock's considered opinion, hopelessly belated) bid to increase counter-missile salvo density, and it had upgraded all of the PNE ships' electronics to current first-line Solarian standards. It was clear from the StateSec holdouts' reactions that they were impressed but not exactly overawed by the capabilities of their new fire control and EW systems, but it was equally clear they remained less than enthralled by the paucity of point defense clusters and counter-missile tubes. Maddock had been privately amused watching them upgrade the software of the vaunted Solarian League Navy's defensive systems. They'd made that their very first priority, and, amused or not, he had to admit that they'd probably enhanced their vessels' missile defenses' efficiency by somewhere around twenty-five percent.

They'd still be dogmeat going up against the Manties, and they know it, he reflected. Fortunately, they're only planning on going up against Havenite hardware. We had to come up with a hell of a lot of ships to get them to sign on for this operation, anyway, of course. And the Cataphracts—let's not forget them! But Luff's probably right about what a swath they'd be able to cut through Theisman's light units.

He suppressed a thin smile at that thought, since ultimately, they weren't going to have the chance to do anything of the sort.

Pity about the ships, he thought. Of course, they're only SLN crap, which means they're all obsolescent—at best—against our own current hardware or the Manties. But at least we're about to get a chance to field test the Cataphracts and see how they work out against a live opponent. Too bad the opponent in question's going to be too outclassed to give us a more meaningful yardstick on their penetration capabilities.

"However . . . distasteful some of us may find the discharge of that obligation to be," Luff told his officers, "Operation Ferret is nothing less than part of the price we must pay to liberate our homeland, and the overriding importance of that must outweigh any other consideration."

He paused yet again, gravely, letting his eyes circle the table, sweep the faces of his audience, then allowed those eyes to harden.

"Second," he resumed, his voice as hard as his eyes, "it would be as well to remember that these are not slaves being liberated from the hold of a slave ship somewhere. I'm sure Captain Maddock's and Commander Milliken's superiors are unlikely to be surprised by the fact that, despite our sincere gratitude for their support, we scarcely see eye to eye with them on the general issue of genetic slavery. In this instance, however, we aren't talking about liberating slaves or freeing the victims of someone else's mistreatment. We're talking about dealing with a terrorist organization. If any of your personnel are having trouble remembering that, I recommend you require your ships' companies to view the HD of the ghastly atrocities these people visited upon their prisoners following the 'liberation' of Verdant Vista. Remind them of that brutality and cruelty, and I think you'll find their reservations manageable."

He smiled very thinly, then turned his own attention to Maddock.

"And now, I understand, Captain Maddock has a few last-minute words for us. Captain?"

"Actually, Commodore," Maddock replied gravely, "I have very little to add to what you've already said. The only thing I'd really stress at this time is that it's important to remember Battle Fleet is only beginning to assess the Cataphract's capabilities. It still isn't operational with the SLN, and it won't be, for quite some time, given how . . . conservative we all know the Sollies are about adopting new hardware."

And especially given the fact that the SLN doesn't even have a clue it exists, I suppose, he added silently, and smiled at the exiled Havenites around the table.

"That's why we have no real body of doctrine for its employment. Our current estimates are that the . . . target will be covered by somewhere between a minimum of four and a maximum of ten of the new frigates the Manties have been supplying to the system. Our tech people's analyses suggest that they're probably pretty damned nasty for anything anyone else would call a 'frigate,' but they wouldn't pose any significant threat to your forces even without the Cataphract. It's also possible, however, that the Erewhonese Navy will have detailed a division of light cruisers or even heavy cruisers to back up those frigates. We don't really expect it, but it's clearly possible, given Erewhon's strong support for the . . . earlier incident in the system. If that should be the case, we're going to be confronting at least some Manty-grade hardware, which could make the entire operation substantially more expensive. With Cataphracts in the tubes, however, we anticipate that you should succeed with zero or at least negligible damage."

He paused, looking around the table, and reflected that everything he'd just told them had the highly unusual status of actually being the truth. Not the whole truth, perhaps, but still the truth.

"That's all I have, Sir," he said, nodding respectfully to Luff.

"I'm sure we'll all bear it in mind, Captain," Luff replied, then waved one hand at Citizen Commander Hartman.

"And now, Millicent, I believe you and the rest of the staff have a few points you wanted to make, as well?"

"Yes, Sir, we do." Hartman looked around the table. "First," she began, "there's the question of—"

 

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