ATLAS NAVAL COMMAND, LUNA
POV: Amelia Waters, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Admiral)
Admiral Amelia Waters looked up from the fresh stack of paperwork on her tablet. It took her half a second to register the face of the man knocking at the open door of her office.
She broke into a wide smile. “Captain Chuck Harris!”
The giant of a man and captain of her previous flagship, the Mississippi, smiled back. “It’s been a minute, Admiral. I still can’t believe they have you doing… this.” He gestured at the office in general. “Waste of talent if you asked me.”
She sighed deeply. “Tell me about it. How goes the galaxy out there?”
“Oh, you know, the same old, same old. Join the Navy. Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual aliens. And kill them.”
She looked down at the mountain of pending reports to file on her tablet. “You know, the way you say that — that sounds really good right now.”
“Yeah… Not a bad posting either…”
Amelia grinned at him conspiratorially. “I hear you’re doing well out there with the Puppers while we’re stuck here fighting our own people. So well, in fact, I hear… they’re thinking of promoting you.”
“Oh no,” he said, wagging his fingers at her wearily.
“Oh, yeeesssss. A nice cushy desk job!”
“No, no, no, no!”
“Right here on Luna. Maybe they’ll give you the office right across from mine.”
“Don’t. They. Dare,” he half-whispered.
“What’s wrong?” she asked innocently. “The O-7 salary raise we got last month was not enough?”
“Mate, they can’t pay me enough to sit behind a desk.”
“Not that I’ve got a choice,” she sighed. “Anyway, how’s the Pupper Sixth Fleet doing?”
“Great, they’re doing great. Their whole northern flank is secure. They’ve finally got permission to do the probing thing we tell them to do. They’re in great shape… I hear.”
“You hear?” Amelia frowned, tapping a few buttons on her tablet. “You’re not going there anymore? Where are you guys posting up—”
“Mostly hanging around McMurdo. It’s not bad, honest. They’ve got a solid setup over there, a decent selection at their food court—”
She raised an eyebrow. “So, who’s on Gruccud—”
“They’ve sent the Amazon to cover the Gruccud axis.”
A screeching alarm started to sound in Amelia’s head. “And the secret squirrels took the Nile.”
He shrugged. “Ah, that’s where they’ve gone. So, who’s covering the Stoers sector now?”
“That… is the billion-credit question,” Amelia said, browsing her tablet, until she saw— “Nobody. We’ve got nobody covering the clowns at Stoers.”
“That seems… not ideal,” Chuck shrugged. “We’re not doing anything important at McMurdo when we go out there, just patrols and exercises.”
“Then why haven’t they sent the Mississippi to Stoers?”
“Above my paygrade. I just go where they send me.”
Amelia dug around some more on her tablet. “My God, what a clusterfuck.”
“What?”
“You are supposed to be at Stoers, but they’ve withheld your deployment funding and orders. Those idiots!”
“I knew something was up—”
Amelia was already heading out the door. She looked back. “Gotta run and see about this. Hey, let’s catch up at lunch tomorrow. Put it on my calendar. In fact, block out my whole afternoon, will you? Don’t want them to stuff another boring meeting in there.”
----------------------------------------
“What can I do for you, Admiral?” Senator Blake Wald said, peering down the top of his glasses at her over a large sheet of paper.
“Is that—” Amelia started to ask.
“Yes, a newspaper. A real newspaper. Atlas Times, paper edition. They do still make these, you know?”
Amelia shook her head lightly. “Alright, that’s… cool. Anyway, I need to talk to you about—”
He continued as if not hearing her. “I can ask my secretary to get them to deliver one of these to your office every morning.”
“Uh… sure. Thanks.”
“I’m glad you can appreciate it. Not many people these days understand the value of real paper. There’s the young Senator from Iceland, sorry, District one-seventy-two, she’s only fifty, about your age, right? The other day, she told me that these were going to disappear once my generation dies off. Can you believe that? They’ve been saying that since the invention of electronics back—”
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“The sky is falling!” Amelia exclaimed abruptly.
“On which planet?”
“It was a figure of speech. I just need a little bit of your attention for an urgent matter. Is the oversight committee micromanaging the war aware that we’re currently completely uncovered in the Stoers direction?”
“You’re talking about the deployment hold on the Mississippi?”
“Yes!”
“Oh, yeah. Naval Command did talk to us about that a couple weeks ago,” he said, shrugging. “But you know how it is, competing priorities, the New Hawks… I’m trying to hold it all together, so some of these things just have to wait—”
“What competing priorities?” Amelia wanted to tear her hair out. “We have an entire axis of the war exposed right now!”
“Hm… I do remember the other admirals saying something like that. But didn’t the Malgeir station two fleets there? I think that was what convinced the committee that we could do without that deployment—”
“No! They have two half-assembled fleets there. Second and Third Fleet are both still gutted from previous losses, and these guys, their fleet commanders, are— has anyone in the committee ever talked to these guys?”
“No,” the Senator said resolutely, “And trust me, that’s for the best. The committee doesn’t need to give Senator Eisson any more ammunition to denigrate our allies in the press.”
“Have you talked to them?”
“No, but however understrength, they have two fleets there. Surely, they can hold a single system, especially if we’re warning them— Ah, I see. We don’t have any ISR over there, either.” the Senator said, slowly nodding in understanding.
“No, we don’t.”
“Can’t we just get them to do their own reconnaissance?”
Amelia sighed. “Look, Senator, I think this will be easier if we just called them. You can see for yourself.”
“Right now?”
“Sure, I’m sure they’re not busy. It’s about… just after noon on their ship.”
Amelia fiddled with her tablet until the face of a serious middle-aged woman came up on screen. She said, “Hello, Interstellar Outbound. This is Admiral Amelia Waters. Are our contacts in Stoers available? This is an emergency.”
The operator looked away for a second. “Fleet Commander Moescei is available. Fleet Commander Peipplust is still out for lunch.”
“Dial Moescei in on the secured line and tell Peipplust to get on when he’s back.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
There was soothing music as she waited impatiently. The Senator said nothing, just sitting back and waited. She muted her tablet and said, “I’ll do the talking, but you’ll see. You can ask them questions at the end.”
“Hello?” the translated voice of the female Malgeir fleet commander came over the tablet. “What do you Grass Eaters want this time?”
Amelia rolled her eyes and unmuted her tablet. The whole Grass Eaters thing was amusing when it started, but the bigotry was starting to get on her nerves, especially when some of the more belligerent commanders were using it to justify ignoring what they were being told to do.
“This is Admiral Amelia Waters. I hope you remember me from our last conversation.”
“Ah yes, Amelia,” she replied. “I remember you. You are the fleet commander coordinating strategy with Sixth Fleet, yes?”
“N— yes. Yes, I was. I have recently been made aware of the status of one of our ships that was supposed to go to your sector—”
“Ah, right, they told me one of your special ships was coming, but it is not here yet. A single ship,” the Malgeir fleet commander said sarcastically, “We miss her presence very much.”
Amelia grinded out, “It’s pretty damn important we have some recon assets over there. Have you been doing some reconnaissance on your own?”
“Recon this, recon that,” Moescei replied airily. “Your other fleet commanders have already told me. And I say the same thing to them as I now say to you: we have been fighting this war for ten years. We know how. I have a ship in Sconcans looking for Grass Eaters. Twenty-four and seven, as you people say.”
“One ship? In Sconcans??” Amelia exclaimed. “You’re kidding right?”
“No? What’s wrong with one ship? The other fleet commander, Peipplust,” she spat his name out in contempt. “He’s got a ship in Sconcans too. But only every other day. He’s skimping on their ship maintenance funds.”
Amelia restrained her urge to scream and accuse Moescei of doing the exact same thing, which — of course she was — the TRO had a whole brief on her secret fuel-for-credits scheme. But her highest-ranking subordinate who would potentially replace her was even more incompetent, and worse, he wasn’t corrupt enough for the TRO to find anything dirty to get rid of him either.
Instead, Amelia politely suggested, “Look, you’re going to need more than one or two ships on reconnaissance. And you can’t just leave them in Sconcans. That’s only one sector out. By the time they see the first enemy ship blinking into their sector, you are a couple days away from an attack. You need to probe the next system over, Pomniot.”
The Malgeir fleet commander looked as if she swallowed some bad sushi. “Are you crazy? The enemy fleet is all up in Pomniot! It’s the most important junction system on the whole front!”
I should kiss whichever one of the other fleet coordinators hammered at least that simple concept into her head right now, Amelia thought. “Yes, and that is precisely why you need to probe the system in force and figure out what they’re up to.”
“No way,” Moescei said, shaking her ears. “Any time we put anything in Pomniot, we lose many ships.”
“That is… an unfortunate reality of war,” Amelia said, struggling to keep her temper in check rather than straight up accusing Moescei of incompetence. How do you screw up and lose ‘many ships’ against the Bunnies in a simple recon mission? “I don’t like losing spacers any more than you do, but not knowing what’s going on will kill even more of them in the long run—”
“No. I won’t do it.”
Amelia looked up helplessly at Senator Wald, gesturing down at her tablet as if saying, see what we’re dealing with here?
The Senator spoke up unexpectedly. “How about a small compromise?”
“Who is that?”
Amelia introduced him. “This is Senator Blake Wald. He’s one of our uh… High Councilors. He is part of the committee that controls funding for our defense assistance to your war.”
“Ah, me and my spacers thank you, Senator Blake Wald,” the Malgeir thanked in an oily voice. It was amazing the nuances a modern translator could convey. “What can we do for you?”
“I am suggesting a compromise. Why don’t you send a few ships into Pomniot— uh something smaller than a probe in force? Admiral? Suggestions?” he asked.
“I guess they can just pop in a few ships and try to do some area recon— like take a few pictures and get out, but what we really need to do is maintain that contact…” Amelia said as she was mulling it over.
“That’s eminently reasonable, is it not?” the Senator asked.
“It is pointless,” Moescei said, rolling her eyes dramatically. “We already know the enemy fleet is in Pomniot. And we are not mounting an offensive in this sector any time soon. Why do we need to know what’s going on over there?”
Senator Wald and Amelia shot each other a look. Amelia spoke again, “We just need you to send a couple ships. The smallest ships you have, those Beagle— Omega-class racing ships. Send a few in, tell them to spend as much time as they can observing — you know what, scratch that, tell them to take pictures of the enemy fleet in the system, and get out before the enemy even starts to chase them down. Surely you can spare a couple ships from your massive battle fleet.”
“Fine. I will consider that request—” she began to say but was interrupted by another video joining the call.
It was Peipplust.
Oh no. I should have told him to wait—