Chapter 18: Changes

Senior Conference Suite Six

WHSS Nevada, Earth-Mars Transit

Tuesday, January 6, 2150

“Just how bad was the attack, Admiral?” asked Shelley Turner, Senior Adviser to Operation Martian Justice. She was seated behind a table in a conference room off the Flag Bridge on the Nevada, the California-class convoy flagship. Turner was seething with anger. She had been on the bridge of Nevada when the convoy was hit by what seemed to be hundreds of missiles launched by a fleet of invisible Martian warships, warships the WestHem Navy had assured her didn’t exist, and that she had told InfoGroup couldn’t hurt them.

Sitting next to her was Borden Fuller, the other Senior Adviser. He was employed by AgriCorp and ‘advised’ the WestHem Executive Council in all matters that affected his corporation. Turner was similarly employed by InfoGroup to advise the Council in all matters that affected InfoGroup, the largest of the WestHem Internet providers. Fuller had been on Florida, another California, but had shuttled over to Nevada after the battle. He wasn’t so much angry as he was terrified. While he was too smart and well informed to believe the drivel InfoGroup put out, he had believed the briefings he had been given by the Navy.

Admiral James Westover, the Admiral in charge of Convoy Martian Justice was standing in front of the table. He had not been offered a chair; in fact, no chair was even in the room to offer him. The only concession to courtesy the two Senior Advisers offered was that Westover was not standing at attention but was in the slightly more comfortable and informal at-ease position. He looked at Turner and answered, “Bad enough. We lost half a dozen Californias and another fourteen Panamas. We also lost four Seattles, two freighters, and a tanker, but the real damage was the Panamas and the Californias. Along with whatever fighters and attack craft were on the Californias when they were lost, we lost another three wings-worth of fighters when the nukes went off.”

“Well, we certainly aren’t admitting losses like that!” she informed him. “In fact, I’m not even sure we will admit any losses, unless it’s the loss of the commanding admiral who spaced himself in shame.”

“Good luck with that, Senior Adviser. I’m sure you’ll enjoy working with Admiral Jacobs. I can’t wait to hear how he plans to enter Mars orbit.” Entering a hostile orbit was a tricky evolution, not just for the hostile force but for the defenders. It was considerably more difficult to defend against than the deep space interdiction of a convoy. Westover had been involved in the successful planning and execution of the orbital entry in Martian Hammer. Admiral Jacobs, however, had been detailed to Public Affairs at the time, and before that had an excellent career in Supply and Logistics, Recruitment, and Personnel Management. Jacobs was the ultimate naval paper-pusher and had never once held any form of command responsibility.

“Watch your attitude, Westover!”

“It’s going to take a day to sort out this mess and reposition the ships. The only way this could have been worse was if they had hit us two days from now. We would have been flipping ships around to decelerate,” the admiral stated.

“Why didn’t they wait, Admiral?” Fuller asked.

The admiral shrugged. “Turnover could have happened anytime from the day before to three days after. It happens in the middle of the transit, but it’s not something cast in ceramacrete. If they had hit us during turnover the confusion factor would have made it worse.”

“Why did they stop attacking?”

“My bet? They ran out of nuclear torpedoes. To launch that many at us they must have sent every Owl they captured at Triad. We caught glimpses of some of them as they fled the area after launching. Our fighters chased and got most of them.”

“You got them for sure or you got them you think?” demanded Turner.

Westover said, “For sure. The fighters got them with their laser cannons, and they exploded. We even detected radio transmissions from one of them that ended with the destruction of the ship.”

“That is the only good news out of this clusterfuck, that we were able to trade half the fucking fleet for a handful of Owls,” yelled Turner.

“Admiral, how will this affect the invasion?” asked Fuller.

“It should still be successful. We lost fifteen Panamas, leaving us with twenty-five. That’s what we had for Martian Hammer before the Greenies hit that convoy. We’ll also be changing our operational plans. Instead of four landings, we are only going to make two, at New Pittsburgh and Eden, and at half the distance from the main lines as normal. We are not using the flawed plans from the first invasion.”

“Admiral, we have examined the plans for the landings themselves. Neither Senior Adviser Fuller nor I believe you will be able to take both New Pittsburgh and Eden,” said, Turner. We have decided that considering the difficulties you’ve had so far, we are only going to assault Eden. You’ll need to adjust your plans accordingly, but you have a month to do that, don’t you?”

“Eden? Only? New Pittsburgh is an easier approach!”

“Eden. We expect to see an operational plan in a week,” said Fuller, smiling.

Westover nodded, but his mind was going at light speed. Fuller was the property of AgriCorp, which had owned Eden and about half the Martian greenhouses and food industry. The late and unlamented Weston Smith, dead on the Bactrian, had worked for MarsTrans, with a side interest in Alexander Industries, located in New Pittsburgh. Without Smith arguing for New Pittsburgh, Fuller and Turner must have come to an agreement; he would let Turner and InfoGroup run the war if he was seen returning Eden to AgriCorp.

“You are dismissed for now, Admiral, but you are not off the hook. I haven’t decided how we are reporting this yet, but if we decide a few hangings are needed, we know where to find you,” she said.

Westover raised an eyebrow but silently backed a pace and turned around, leaving the conference room. From the conference room he walked to a different conference room, one with a considerably more stringent security package. The room was set up with a variety of workstations and a number of people talking into headsets. At the end was a separate office, which was where Westover went.

Colonel Oliver Whitestone, WestHem Military Intelligence, looked up as Westover entered. Whitestone’s boss was General Wesley Morgan, the WestHem military’s Adjutant to the Chief of Staff. Morgan had assigned Whitestone to Operation Martian Justice in a planning position and had told Westover to listen to what the man had to say. Sitting next to Whitestone was his assistant, Major John Norman, and Westover had been able to find out nothing whatsoever about him; his records were totally sealed. Only after they were on the way to Mars did Whitestone and Wilde explain who John Norman really was. Whitestone asked, “Well, you’re still alive. That’s a good sign, I suppose.”

“There are days I wonder. What do you have for me? How does this debacle affect Martian Justice?” Morgan had told him that Whitestone and Norman were the key to keep Martian Justice from being as big a disaster as Martian Hammer had been. The one thing they couldn’t help with was the transit from Earth. They were military, not naval experts.

“That depends on what all has been lost and what you just told the Senior Advisers,” said Norman.

Westover grabbed a chair and sat down facing them. “I tried to put a positive spin on it, but that is pretty much like putting lipstick on a pig. We still have twenty-five Panamas carrying a half-million Marines. That’s as much as we had in the first invasion before the Martians hit the convoy. I told them that we would concentrate on only two landing zones, New Pittsburgh and Eden; the losses were too much for four landings and Procter and Libby were too easy to defend.”

Major Norman, known also as Major Norman Wilde, disgraced planner of Martian Hammer, said, “They handed us our asses there. The terrain is so bad that Boy Scouts with slingshots could hold those passes.”

Whitestone commented, “It might have been useful to keep the extra two landings as a hedge. It might cause the Greenies to keep their forces split instead of concentrated.”

“It doesn’t matter. They decided to throw everything at Eden. They aren’t even doing New Pittsburgh,” said Westover.

Whitestone muttered, “Oh, shit!”

“Why couldn’t they have selected New Pittsburgh?” asked Norman.

“Rather, ask why Smith had to die instead of Fuller. Smith would have argued for New Pittsburgh. Fuller is owned by AgriCorp, and AgriCorp wants Eden back.”

“As long as their rail network stays intact, they can move their forces around at will, faster and cheaper than we can,” Norman replied. “We need to isolate Eden, and to do that we need to cut their railroads.”

“It won’t be easy to pull that one off. MarsTrans will never allow it,” commented Whitestone.

“Yes, but the Senior Adviser from MarsTrans died on Bactrian, didn’t he?” Norman replied.

“Yeah.” Westover stood up and said, “Begin crafting the orders to handle the satellite problem. I need to call Denver and have them send us some more tankers and freighters. My analysts tell me we killed off most of their Owls and they don’t have any way to stop a second convoy.”

Whitestone didn’t answer other than by glancing at Norman, who simply returned a blank look. The second convoy was probably safe, but more because of orbital mechanics than anything else. Whether the Martian Owls had been destroyed or not, they had shot out their magazines and needed to return to Mars to replenish. They’d never be able to do that and launch back into action before the supply convoy was able to join the main convoy.

They stood and saluted, and Westover left the office suite.

Before Martian Justice was launched, Norman Wilde had worked for Oliver Whitestone under his new identity. General Morgan had been able to provide the fake identification needed to hide Wilde in the system. What Wilde did during his off-hours and with his income neither Whitestone nor Morgan asked. By the time he had some leave, both of his daughters had died.

Wilde had provided a detailed breakdown of the command failures involved in Martian Hammer. There were three levels of planning involved in the war, strategic, operational, and tactical. At all three levels were colossal fuckups. Wilde was ruthless in his discussion of the errors.

At the strategic level the failures doomed the enterprise from the start. Rather than allow the Navy and the Marines the chance to plan and organize the invasion, the Executive Council weighed in, based on the wishes of their corporate sponsors. When the Navy was issuing orders to take down the Martian satellite network, InfoGroup, ICS, and WIV got involved in the decision. They owned the satellites the Navy wanted to destroy so they told their members of the Council to order changes. The orders were changed so late the pilots were already in their fighters when they were stood down. It went like that the entire war. Minutes before the Navy sent fighters and attack craft against the rail network, MarsTrans said no. Alexander Industries refused to allow the bombing of the main armaments factories on the planet.