Chapter 7: Naval Plans

Flag Admiral Office

Triad Naval Base, Mars Orbit

Thursday, July 30, 2150

Matt Belting looked at the others in his office. He was sitting at a round conference table with his senior commanders, along with the Director of Planetary Intelligence, Marcus Slackass. “In case you’re curious, I asked Marcus to sit in on this meeting. What’s the latest on our fleet status and planning? And what’s going on with Earth?” Belting asked. He pointed at a man across from him.

Brett Ingram nodded and said, “Not much has changed since we talked about this a few weeks ago. Our stealth ships consist of eight Improved-Owls, all brought up to the Mod Two spec. We are still using a basic deployment of one I-Owl in Earth orbit running a surveillance mission and one in transit, either deploying to Earth as a replacement or returning from a deployment. The other six are in Mars orbit, training or refitting They will be our attack fleet in case WestHem gets frisky. That’s it. That’s all we have, and if I could find a few more, I’d offer up my firstborn to get them.”

“Any chance of sending a detachment to Rhea?” asked a third man. He was Captain Ron Bales, Commodore, Anti-Stealth, and he was in charge of the fleet of eight Improved-Seattles captured during the Revolution. “I’ve got a couple of ships out there, but an Owl or two would really boost our readiness and training.”

Ingram threw his hands up and shook his head. “Ask Matt but right now the biggest threat that I see is the next Martian Hammer or Martian Justice. For that, I need as many Owls on the line as I can lay my hands on. We send an Owl or two to Saturn, it’s three to four months each way. The next war would be over before they get back.”

Belting looked over at Slackass. “What’s going on with WestHem? How long before they get frisky again? And is there any chance we can calm their fucking asses down and stop this idiocy?”

Slackass shook his head. “Everything we are seeing in our intelligence take shows that the idiocy will continue. We’ve made overtures through the Swiss, even offering food for peace, but they aren’t agreeing to anything. When the stock market collapsed during Martian Justice, the corporations were really pissed off. They just aren’t interested. It doesn’t matter how many ships or Marines we kill. They want Mars back.” He sighed and shook his head before continuing. “The Marines and Navy are still freaking out over what happened in Martian Justice. The Marines are going to have to recruit and train an entire new army. They have lost, either killed or captured, the better part of a million Marines in the last four years. Those were their best divisions. What is left on Earth is a lot lower quality. It is going to take a massive recruitment and training effort to rebuild. Figure a minimum of four or five years.”

There were some grunts around the table and all eyes turned to the senior man in the room. Kevin Jackson was the commanding general of the Martian Planetary Guard, the Martian army and air force. He said, “Even that might not be sufficient to do more than provide us with more targets. It’s more than just numbers and weapons. Napoleon once said something along the lines of ‘the moral is to the physical as three is to one.’ Something like that anyway. What he meant was things like morale, spirit, belief in themselves. You know we don’t fight suicide actions, and we always let people go if it becomes too much. We lost more people in Martian Justice than we did in Martian Hammer, but in the first war we had people who left the line, and in this one nobody left the line. I don’t think they could take us if they sent two million Marines, and they couldn’t do that in ten years, let alone four or five.”

Slackass nodded. “We have intelligence at the high confidence level that the WestHem Marines are aware of the problem. Offensive action in a vacuum is extremely difficult. They know just what their losses would have been if they didn’t go back to Earth. The usage of nuclear weapons against both military and civilian positions was being considered. The civilian leaders, both the elected leaders and their corporate sponsors, were arguing for their usage against our positions in the Jutfield Gap and/or one or more Martian cities. The Navy, on the other hand, refused to carry such orders out, since they suspected we had a ship in orbit with retaliatory capability.”

“Jesus!” muttered Bales. He had heard rumors of the sort, but this was disturbingly explicit. The others looked equally grim.

“It’s one of the reasons I want to keep the Owls here at home,” said Ingram. “With the new Mod Two packages, we could possibly destroy their fleet before they ever got near us.”

“Speaking of which, what intelligence is available regarding the WestHem Navy?” asked Belting.

Slackass shrugged. “Probably nothing you don’t already know or suspect. You guys put a major hurt on them during Martian Justice. They are pulling antiques out of the mothball fleet and building new ships and rebuilding their old ones. They have a massive reconstruction project going on expanding their space docks and bases. Want to make some money? Invest in Ceres Metals. They plan to double capacity this year and then double it again next year, and all that steel and nickel and chromium is going into the new fleet. Ares Incorporated and Halcyon Industries have contracts for everything under the sun. In addition, Ares and Halcyon are under orders to double or triple the anti-torpedo lasers they would normally build into their designs.”

“Interesting,” commented Ingram. “I want to know anything and everything you have on that, now and in the future. Torpedo combat is a numbers game based on probabilities of detection and interception. Right now, we are winning that game, but changing the numbers of laser mounts or their fire control could change that.”

The Director of Planetary Intelligence nodded. “Understood. I’ll put a few analysts on that, see if we can tease out some info for you. We also plan to get what information we can on EastHem capabilities.”

That made the others sit up a bit straighter. Belting said, “I know we are doing another Nutsack mission. Do we have reason to worry about EastHem? I mean, more than the usual interest in what they are doing?”

“I don’t know yet, Admiral. The Earth Relations people aren’t completely sure, but there is some complaining about our gas mine on Rhea. It seems that some people in EastHem thought that when we made the food for gas deal that meant they would get all our gas imports, not just three tankers a month. That’s not realistic; our hydrogen needs are growing, and fast. By next year we are going to need a fourth tanker every other month. The year after, a fourth tanker every month. We are going to need more tankers. Think you can steal any more from WestHem?”

That got some laughter around the table. Two years before, the Martian Navy had sent a pair of Owls to intercept a WestHem tanker convoy, killing the escorts and capturing the tankers. Belting said, “We’ll look into it, Marcus, but in the long run we are looking to convert a few Californias and build some purpose-built tankers. I have a design team working on that.”

“Probably a better idea,” Marcus said, smiling.

“I’ll look into it later today,” said Belting.

Design Office

Phobos Shipyard, Mars Orbit

Thursday, July 30, 2150

“Welcome, Admiral,” said James Rutter. He was a young man, in his late twenties, and large, with a neat beard. He was the son of WestHem parents, born only days after they had arrived at Triad from Earth. He grew up in Triad and New Pittsburgh as a loyal WestHem citizen, but when the Revolution came, he stayed on Mars after his parents went back to Denver. He currently was the senior design engineer with Phobos Shipyard.

“James, it’s good to see you,” said Matt Belting.

Rutter pointed at a pair of armchairs in his office and waited for Belting to sit down. “How can Phobos help you?” Rutter asked.

“I wanted to talk to you about the status of our construction and conversion work. I was in a meeting this morning with some of my department heads, and a few others, and most everybody wants more ships, of all sorts. What can you tell me about that?”

Rutter nodded. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Give me the bad news first.”

“Stealth ships. I know you want more, and that Commodore Ingram can use them. So far, we have been doing upgrades based on designs we found in the computers at TNB. We also have some designers coming up with new upgrades, and those will probably work out well. The problem is in designing the next class of ships. That’s not going to be easy,” said Rutter.

“Any chance that WestHem has some designs we could steal?” asked Belting.