Admiral Sonya Berg

Location: New Washington, United Commonwealth of Colonies

Sonya strode forward with purpose. Other officers, NCOs, and specialists saluted her as she passed, but her eyes were fixed on the door at the end of the hallway. On either side of it were two HI troopers dressed for battle. The one on the right held out his hands as she approached.

“I need…” the soldiers stopped short as Sonya transmitted her GIC code via her IOR. Not many people had the updated internal implant, so if her five golden stripes didn’t do the trick that did.

There were very few people that could walk in on the PM without an appointment, and it was up to these guards and the PM’s chief of staff to stop their boss from being hassled, but the Chief of Naval Intelligence always had a get in free card.

“Thank you, ma’am,” the heavily-reinforced door slid open to admit her.

The conference room the PM had commandeered had half a dozen media holos playing while data chips, hard-copy polyplast documents, and a few PADs lay neatly ordered around the woman in charge. The PM put down a PAD she was perusing and raised an eyebrow at Sonya.

“Admiral?” There was a question in her tone.

“I need a moment of your time, Prime Minister,” Sonya waited for the PM’s nod to take her seat.

“You don’t usually barge in on people, Sonya,” the PM dropped the formality, but her face remained neutral.

“I learned a long time ago to speak my mind if I think something is up. In my line of business it is better to be overly cautious and wrong than let things slide.”

“Ah,” the PM leaned back in her chair and placed her hands in her lap. “You think I’m making a mistake.”

“It’s forty percent of our upgraded combat strength, straight out of their shaken down cruises with untested crews,” agitation flowed out of Sonya. “It’s my job to assess intelligence and present you with threats, and putting this much of our updated fleet into action is going to fuck us in the ass if it goes south,” she tried to recover with a cough, but it was too late. Saying ‘fucked in the ass’ to the leader of the most power interstellar civilization wasn’t something that was done every day…or ever.

“Sure it will,” the PM replied casually enough that Sonya laughed. It was just like their days back on Dauntless. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t take the chance.”

“Ma’am…”

“Let’s speak candidly, Sonya,” the PM cut her off. “You think I’m an infantry grunt about to throw tens of thousands of spacers and billions upon billions of new tech into the fire to win back a planet, which in the grand scheme of things means less than the shit I took this morning.”

“Deja,” Sonya took a long breath, “I think you’re trying to prove a political point with military lives.”

The PM’s face hardened at the comment, but Sonya didn’t back down. After a moment of tense silence, the PM’s face softened a touch.

“I am trying to make a political point. A point to Commonwealth citizens that if you get conquered we are going to do everything in our power to rescue you. A point to the Blockies that they better think twice about acting on our apparent weakness. A point to the Euros that we aren’t forsaking our commitments, and lastly, a point to the Windsor’s that if you fuck with us you’re going to be the one taking it up the ass.” The PM’s fist hit the table with a loud smack. “But you’re right, Sonya, I’m a ground pounder playing a fleet admiral’s game, but that’s why I have Gilmore to fall back on. You’re not exactly one to speak on this subject.

The reprimand stung, but it was true. Like anyone to reach flag rank, Sonya was required to hold certain commands. She’d commanded a cruiser, battleship, and a task force. The cruiser had been a peace time tasking. The battleship had seen minor action against pirates, but no pirate stood a snowball’s chance in hell facing off against a battleship. As a task force commander, she’d gone toe-to-toe with a Blockie force of comparable size in a system dispute. She’d prepared to fight, but the diplomats worked it out.

The PM knew she didn’t have great fleet command under her belt, but that wasn’t her specialty. Her intelligence agents had wormed their ways into every conceivable government, corporation, and organization in human space. She had eyes and ears everywhere. She’d gotten her hands dirty as a junior officer in the shadow war between covert assets throughout the galaxy, so while she might ride a desk now, she knew where a number of bodies were buried.

The two women stared intently at each other before she gave a nod. If the PM could acknowledge her lack of experience, then so could Sonya.

“Gilmore is putting together the battle plan and I’ve got Ward in command. The man is fresh off a victory and wants more blood.” Sonya was glad to hear that the PM had competent naval officers running the show. “But what I do know that you are overlooking is seizing the initiative.” Her voice was stern again. “The Windsor’s have it now and we need to take it back. We need violence of action. We need to hit them when they’re reveling in their victory. The universe is watching us. The Hegemony is judging us, and we need to look good.” The PM had only been in office for a few weeks, but she looked tired. “We can’t afford to lose, which is why I’m putting nearly half our new assets into the field while the other sixty percent make sure we’re secure here and can build more. Hell, we might lose more systems if they counterattack before we’re ready, but in the long game I know we’ll end up ahead if we can bloody their nose here.”

Sonya looked in the PM’s eyes. She was a good judge of when another person was lying or just straight up bullshitting. The PM was doing neither of them, which was why she felt confident saying what she said next. “My daughter is on Harper’s Junction.” She stopped the tears from forming. “And my son’s battlecruiser is slated for part of this task force you’re putting together. If this goes sideways, the rest of my family dies.”

The PM’s face softened again as she reached across the table and took Sonya’s hand. “If this goes sideways a lot of families are going to be torn apart. It is up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen.” She gave it a squeeze and let it go. “I’ve got a meeting in two, so why don’t you go help out Gilmore. Ward is probably driving him up the wall right now. They’re from the same generation, but different schools of thought.”

Sonya chuckled. Ward and Gilmore had been at odds since the academy. To Gilmore, naval warfare was a dance, to Ward, a boxing match where anything goes. Sonya had been caught more than once supplying Intel to rationalize one or the others’ plans.

“I’m on it. Sorry for disturbing you.” Sonya got up to leave.

“Don’t be.” The PM waved away the apology. “If someone can’t come and tell me they think I’m about to screw up then I’m not a good leader.”

was Sonya’s last thought as she stepped out of the room.

“Hello, Admiral Berg,” the man who approached was wearing a visitor’s badge that gave him full clearance.

“Thomas,” Sonya nodded to the titan of industry. “What brings you to the CEOC?”

“I’ve got some concepts I want to run by the PM,” he replied with a smile.

“You mean you’ve got some weapons tests you want to run in the field and the Harper’s Junction operation is the best opportunity you’ve had in a decade,” she stated, and watched his eyes flicker between surprise and suspicion so fast she nearly missed it. “Good luck.” She walked away knowing the CEO would be wondering how she knew what she knew.

It didn’t mean she didn’t disagree with his ideas. In fact, the Commonwealth needed every ace up their sleeve that they would pull in the next week. She’d seen the numbers for the first ships out on their shake down cruises, and those numbers were adequate at best.

We’re in for a hell of a fight, she sighed as she went to check on Ward and Gilmore.

***

Admiral Michael Ward

Location: New Washington, United Commonwealth of Colonies

The Hero of Yangon stood on the flag bridge of his upgraded flagship and watched the replay holo of the latest training simulation. He wasn’t satisfied, but he wasn’t pissed either. Task Force Five Point One had been thrown together on a whim and told to go fight the Commonwealth’s most dangerous enemy practically overnight.

he gave the command chair of his flagship, the refurbished Assault Carrier CWS Agincourt, a meaningful pat.

She’d already been in the yards recovering from the beating at Yangon, and with the new alien tech getting installed she was a prime candidate for upgrade. Then, 5.1 got commissioned and it became a logical choice.

5.1 was an unusual configuration of ships. Not necessarily in the ships themselves, but in how they were going to be deployed in the battle. He didn’t exactly like the changes Gilmore had been selling, but the man was ultimately his boss, and he begrudgingly saw the need to shake things up in this situation.

They’d studied the Windsor’s battle plans from the recent blitz in excruciating detail and contrived a plan to rob them of as many advantages as possible. In the process he was being effectively demoted. Task Force 5.1 might be big, but it wasn’t going to be run by a fleet admiral like usual.

The plan called for the task force to be divided up. Going head on in a traditional battle wall against the Windsor’s superior shields and weapons was suicide. They’d learned that painfully at Queensland with the Aussies. 5.1 had been reorganized along the corporate carrier group model, which was enough to get his hackles up. Corporate security forces were full of people who couldn’t hack it in the fleet, or left for the payday. Either way, he didn’t think highly of them, but in this case, their formations just happened to work better.

5.1 had four assault carriers tasked for the mission, which would be complete overkill in any other situation. On them they’d have their full complement of four brigades, forty thousand marines, to help retake Harper’s Junction when the time came, but more importantly, all four carriers were upgraded with the new gluon power plants, shields, point defense clusters, energy weapons, missiles, and some killer new EW systems. The same could not be said of all their escort ships.

Each carrier had a half dozen battleships, battlecruisers, missiles cruisers, and a number of destroyers to cover their flanks. In total, each carrier formation numbered at least twenty ships. According to the numbers coming from the spy gunboat that had been on station that was sixty percent of the Windsor’s total force projection. The Commonwealth learned long ago you couldn’t project a one-to-one ration against the Windsor’s.

Of the escort ships, a formation was lucky if one third the battleships were upgraded. Aggie’s group was the only one to boast three upgraded battleships and a battlecruiser, and it got those because it was the task force flagship. The second and third formations each had two battleships, with the fourth formation only having one. Ward tried to make up the difference by giving them an upgraded battlecruiser, while the other formations had zero, but everyone knew one battleship was worth a hell of a lot more than a battlecruiser. Still, the intel stated the Windsor’s didn’t have anything bigger than a battlecruiser on station, although, they were big ass ships.

The theory behind the new battle plan was to get the Windsor’s to commit their forces piecemeal to engage each of the carrier formations, which would each use different avenues of approach to advance on the planet. This would cut down on the number of enemy hulls facing the more vulnerable Commonwealth formations. Or, the Windsor’s could take their whole fleet and engage one of the carrier groups. In that case, that group would take evasive maneuvers and stay at the edge of the enemy’s missile envelope, while still continuing to harass the enemy. This would keep the Windsor’s off balance, but would make the fight last longer. Either way, the marines would get on the ground and retake the planet.

He’d been drilling his people hard in these new tactics since receiving command because their lives literally depended on it. Their capabilities might look good on paper, but it took people to fight the ships, and if those people didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground then it didn’t matter what new tech they had at their disposal.

“Sir, I’ve got the Prime Minister on TACCOM,” a nervous-looking communications officer announced.

“Put her on,” he put on his serious face to address the leader of the Commonwealth.

“How’s it looking, Mike?” Simmons’ face popped on the holo and he couldn’t stop a small grin from forming. Once upon a time, he’d been a task force commander and she’d commanded the marines on his ships. They went way back, but his crew didn’t need to know that.

“We’re improving, Madame Prime Minister,” he kept it basic in the hopes she’d read between the lines.

“Are you ready?” She came out and asked him point blank.

“We’re the Commonwealth Fleet, ma’am, the greatest fighting force in the galaxy. We’re always ready for any threat.”

Her calculating eyes studied him before she nodded. “Your deployment orders should be in your inbox now. Godspeed.” She cut the link and a soft ding announced the arrival of the orders followed by a second ding.

He couldn’t help but chuckle as he read the second message. It was a promise of a stiff drink and enlightening conversation about how the Commonwealth Infantry was the greatest fighting force in the galaxy when he made it back victorious.

The deployment orders weren’t as funny. They were to set out immediately for Harper’s Junction, which meant within the next twenty four hours. Because not all of the task force’s ships were upgraded, they’d have to use the Alcubierre Launcher Network and drives to get to the target system. That called for multiple refueling stops after traversing the network and dogging it the last few dozen light years on drives. With Harper’s Junction being almost eight hundred light years away, it was going to take them upwards of ten days to get there.

There was no time to waste.

He passed the orders to the navigators and called for a meeting of his staff and all captains and XOs in two hours. They had a lot of work to do and not enough time to do it in, but that was the Navy.