Chapter 2

“Mr Lavroff, what you’re asking is beyond your authority,” informed me gloomily the Minister of Military Production, “Why on earth would I shift the ship repair schedule to reequip your transports? I have the Fleet order approved by the Minister of Defense, and I will be held accountable for failure to meet the deadline.”

Zwerev pronounced all these correct phrases looking me in the eye, but I did not see the answer „no” in his gaze. Something kept the Minister from just telling me to fuck off. Well, I’ll try to find the right words.

“Mr Minister,” I began carefully, “You heard me speaking at the command meeting. If I may ask your opinion, do you also consider me an empty fantasizer?”

Zwerev took his eyes off for a second, but quickly restored the calmness of his face.

“I really thought so,” the Minister confirmed, “until yesterday.”

“So, what changed?”

“I visited the new shipyard where the captured battleship Titan is being repaired.”

“And what made you change your mind?”

“This ship… We won’t be able to build something like this in the next few years. I’m not even sure we’re gonna be able to convert Titan, so that it could be controlled by a human crew. How could you handle it, Mr Lavroff? And you did it in combat, neutralizing the enemy’s resistance, and then you destroyed several enemy battleships. How?”

“The same way, Mr Zwerev, as I’m going to destroy enemy ships under construction: with the help of the latest developments of the Lavroff Weapons Company, now renamed the FAWC, the Federal Advanced Weapons Corporation. But at that time I was able to do myself everything I needed, and now I need your help. Our company has no shipbuilding facilities and all public and private shipyards are full of Fleet orders, and they won’t take my order for any money.”

“Are you so sure you can do what you’re saying? Destroy ten docks behind enemy lines in quarg-occupied systems loaded with their ships?”

“But once I was there and I could come back…”

“Military transport is not a medium-size recon ship, Mr Lavroff. You can’t camouflage it that easily.”

“We’ll get through it. Review the information on Luyten-5 and Barnard-3, which also seemed hopeless. And also try to imagine for a second ten Titan-class battleships coming out of the hyper inside Neptune’s orbit…”

“That’s what I was thinking yesterday, looking at your trophy. That’s why I’m still talking to you, Mr Lavroff, although I should have denied your request outright and write a memo to your immediate superior. And I know about your fights for Luyten and Barnard, as well as about Kapteyn and Gliese, in fact, I was curious about your biography after the meeting at the Ministry of Defence.”

“Will you give me the shipyard, Mr Minister?” I asked a direct question, knowing that all arguments had already been exhausted.

“Yes, I will. But I have a condition.”

“What is it?”

“You will personally lead the attack on the docks of the enemy. Otherwise, I do not believe in success.”

“Where should I take the ships, Mr Minister?”

* * *

Jeff and Stein didn’t make it in two weeks, but I didn’t blame them, although I showed how unhappy I was that they didn’t meet the deadline. I myself have been working on perfecting the structure of the medium-size transport, making infinite modifications in order to convert the troop transport into a kind of aircraft carrier. It took up most of my time, including part of my time at the Academy and my time at the Ministry of Defense. They also needed to be provided by EW stations and powerful computers that could make the stations work in coordination. To do that, I had to take two engineers from Jeff, which also affected his schedule. However, three weeks later, a prototype drone torpedo stood in front of me in the hangar of the aircraft carrier Wellington near the command pursuit plane, designed to control ten such items.

With the permission of the ship’s commander, Captain Clark, I’ve invited representatives of the Russian Weapons Concern and Global Weapon Industries right here, on board the aircraft carrier to be present at the internal tests of the new equipment. The chief engineer and commercial director arrived from RWC, and GWI sent Enrique Cruz whom I knew from the last negotiations, and their chief Fleet technician.

“Mr Lavroff,” told me Cruz after mutual gretings, “The management of our company highly appreciates your invitation and hopes for mutual understanding in the future. I would also like to add that I am very sorry for our conflict and hope that it is now a thing of the past.”

“I don’t know about you, Mr Cruz, but I’m not in the mood for internal conflict right now. I know your company as a powerful enterprise of the military-industrial complex with experience in large-scale production of many types of weapons. That’s what I need you for. If you don’t let me down, I’m willing to put all the past controversy behind me.”

“GWI will do its best to do so, you can rest assured, Mr Chairman of the Commission of the Ministry of Defense,” Cruz told me with a solemn official voice.

“That’s great. Well, gentlemen,” told I the invited persons, “What you’re about to see is a demonstration of our new torpedo, which is fundamentally different from what our fleet is equipped with. At the moment we have only one torpedo, but I’m sure you have the imagination to imagine that there could be dozens, and in order for that to become a reality, I brought you here. Come to the ship’s command post, gentlemen, Captain Clark has graciously allowed us to observe the tests from there.”

We chose as our target the shipyard where the badly damaged battleship New York was being repaired. We have, of course, informed the Dock management and the Metropolitan Fleet Patrol Force in advance that a training attack was planned on the facility under their supervision, and now corvette commanders and shipyard anti-aircraft operators, who have long been bored with no real business, enthusiastically probed space with scanners, waiting for a hypothetical adversary to appear.

We did not yet have a carrier for the command plane and torpedo, so we asked Captain Clark to make the aircraft carrier accelerate in the direction of the shipyard, release our experimental products and change course, gradually slowing down.

Our supposed adversary tracked the aircraft carrier’s maneuver. Of course they’d notice a carcass like Wellington, but as I hoped, the start of our machines went unnoticed. By the terms of the test, the shipyard’s defenders should not have paid attention to the aircraft carrier, since it played a purely auxiliary role, and they didn’t.

And that was where it got interesting. The command pursuit plane, controlled by one of the pilots, who had already had experience with this machine, has carefully diverted its course to the enemy’s unexpected attack vector. The torpedo he controlled was moving just behind the command plane, like a dog on a leash, carefully repeating his maneuvers. The distance to the autonomous space dock was still quite large, and our machines began a cautious acceleration to reach the target at maximum speed. Shipyard scanners and patrol ships still didn’t notice the danger, and the command plane pilot saw the ships, which were larger and more detectable, quite clearly, he was maneuvering, trying to get his machines to the target as far away from them as possible.

10,000 kilometers from the dock, the pursuit plane made a circumspect maneuver, set a course that diverged from its target, and the torpedo turned off the engine and went to the target by inertia, using EW systems to conceal itself from detection.

Now the pursuit plane pilot wasn’t supposed to go unnoticed. He put the torpedo on target, and then it had to operate automatically. Therefore, the pilot of the command plane decided to help his ward by diverting the attention of the defense forces. Having switched the engines into overdrive mode, he drastically changed course and attacked one of the patrol ships. The pursuit plane, virtually, fell out of the void and slightly shocked the commander of the corvette. The distance at which his scanners detected the enemy was completely out of line with his understanding of the capabilities of modern EW means. As a result of the brazen attack, the corvette was hit by a rocket, and the computer displayed a list of conditional damage to the projection screen. The pursuit plane that ran at maximum speed past the corvette went unpunished, despite the fairly heavy fire from the patrol’s anti-aircraft guns. Two more corvettes tried to intercept a single pursuit plane, but their guidance systems were hard-pressed to capture a quick-moving target, and consistently missed it.

Meanwhile, the torpedo continued to approach the autonomous space dock. The idea of a torpedo capable of reaching the enemy ship on its own after leaving an aircraft carrier came to my mind when I watched our torpedo bombers being destroyed, because they were very vulnerable to enemy pursuit planes.

Of course, this ammo turned out to be very expensive. In fact, it was an unmanned pursuit plane, equipped with electronic warfare systems, powerful engines, which provided for high speed and maneuverability, and instead of rockets and cannons it was armed with an internal binary charge of considerable power. But the main advantage of this weapon was its ability to effectively counter the enemy scanners and aim-capturing systems.

Shipyard scanners spotted the threat at the moment when it was already impossible for the anti-aircraft systems to respond to it, furthermore, the high intensity of radiation from the scanners made the torpedo start chaotic maneuvering, that made it difficult for the enemy to point the guns.

The torpedo didn’t hit the dock, after all, it was a combat drill, and no one wanted to lose the only experimental product yet, at the risk of crippling the shipyard. During the next maneuver, the torpedo passed close to the dock structures, signalled by a bright flash the conditional detonation of the warhead and headed back towards the aircraft carrier.

“Target hit,” aircraft’s computer stated, “Industrial object of the hypothetical enemy critically damaged.”

“It was spectacular, Mr Lavroff,” Captain Clark noted with satisfaction, “Congratulations on your success. When can the Fleet expect to see these weapons on our ships?”

“Sooner than you think, Captain, Sir,” I responded smiling, “and thank you for congratulations. Gentlemen,” I turned to the representatives of the weaponry companies, “In a month and a half, I need 500 of these torpedoes and 50 command pursuit planes to control them in battle. The technical documentation for the products is ready and will be handed to you by representatives of the FAWC. You will have unrestricted access to the designs of our engineers required for the serial production of the torpedoes. I’m not gonna do a competition, I just don’t have time for it. The decision to enter into direct contracts with you will be made by me under my own responsibility, based on the prices and schedules you will give us. I expect your offers tomorrow, gentlemen. I can’t give you more time.”

* * *

“What is this, Captain?” The Minister of Defense looked at me in surprise, taking his eyes off his tablet, “Are you doing this again?”

“This is a plan of battle tests for a new type of torpedo, Fleet Admiral, Sir. Since its primary purpose is a covert surprise attack on the enemy’s major ships and space infrastructure, the quarg shipyards where they are currently building their superbattleships have been selected as targets.”

“But where did you get the resources, the ships and the production capacity, Captain? This is actually not a combat test, but a major raid on the enemy’s rear with the involvement of serious fleet forces.”

“The ships were provided to me by Colonel General Knyazev, with the permission of Fleet Admiral Nelson, as part of the agreement on the testing of new equipment, which has not been rescinded since the name of the FAWC was Lavroff Weapons Company. Minister of Military Production Zwerev agreed to provide me with shipyards for their reequipment. I can’t say he did it willingly, but he did it. And as for resources, the FAWC had its own funds after the sale of battleship Titan to the Fleet.”

“Captain, you are a pure adventurer. You put yourself at risk, you injure me as your immediate superior. Couldn’t you have checked with me in advance?”

“You wouldn’t approve of my plan, Mr Minister, if I’d informed you beforehand.”

“Fine, Captain! Just fine! You knew I wouldn’t let you do this and you did it without my knowledge, and now you have the audacity to say it looking me in the face.”

“I always prefer honest answers, Fleet Admiral, Sir, unless a lie is necessary.”

“Ghm…” Bronstein choked on another angry tirade,“What should I do with you, Captain? I can’t sanction this operation, obviously. I’m gonna have to deal with what you did, you understand? You’ve acted contrary to the decisions taken at the Presidential High Command meeting. No one ordered you to prepare this raid, and you’ve diverted industrial resources from the repair of ships and the manufacture of equipment that we may very soon need in battle.”

“It won’t help us, Minister, Sir…”

“Silence! Captain, if you dare to challenge the command’s decisions again, I’ll dismiss you from your functions and send you to command a battalion on Kapteyn, so that you remain in this hole for the rest of the war and not cause any more trouble.”

“Mr Minister,” I answered as calmly as possible, “but I have never exceeded my authority anywhere, not once. The development of new weapons and their preparation for testing is my immediate responsibility. My job description doesn’t say I can’t involve other ministries and agencies. I made a formal request to Minister Zwerev, and he granted it, which means he was able to do so without compromising the Federation’s defence capability, and his decision in no way affects the Ministry of Defence, headed by you. This is his sole responsibility.”

“Well, let’s just say you are right,” Bronstein agreed, cooling off a little, “But why is it that the Minister of Defense finds out about the preparation of such an operation two days before it begins, and the General Staff doesn’t know about it at all?”

“Because this is not an operation by the Federation armed forces, but a combat test of a new experimental weapon, Mr Minister,” I patiently explained, “and it is being conducted under the auspices of the New Equipment and Weapons Commission of the Ministry of Defense, which I have the honour to head. The job description I mentioned earlier says that I’m obliged to notify you of the tests, and not to get your agreement for them at the planning stage. You are, of course, free to make any adjustments to the test plan, if it is contrary to the current interests of the General Staff or the Ministry of Defence as a whole, that’s what the notification is for, so that I don’t accidentally mess things up for you and the General Staff. But somehow I don’t think that’s the case.”

“And I think you’re a cocky squirt, Captain. I recognize your distinguished combat service, but you’re neither politician nor an official, and I’m afraid you’ll never be either. You should be commanding a landing brigade, maybe a division. You want me to write down an order right now, Captain? That’s where you’d be. ”

“You have no idea, Mr Minister, how happy I would be to accept this appointment, but being a commanding officer of a Commando Division, it is impossible to resolve the outcome of the war, and I want the Federation to win, and I will pursue it with all the means at my disposal.”

“Those are beautiful words, Captain. And I can see that you’re being sincere. Would you like me to be frank with you? You’ve done a very foolish thing by bringing your ideas to the High Command meeting. I didn’t just tell you you weren’t a politician. You shouldn’t have done that. In the eyes of respectable generals, you are a boy with the rank of captain, who tries to impose his plans on adults with such stars on their shoulder straps that you have yet to grow up to, and it’s not like with this attitude, you’ll ever make it happen. You think I don’t understand that there was some merit in your words? I’m well aware of that, and at the meeting, I understood that, too. But you should have reported your thoughts to the Chief of Staff first, since your position allows it, then he and his analysts would conduct a comprehensive analysis of these ideas, would make corrections and turn a naked idea into a preliminary plan of operations. And then he would come to me with this plan, and I would also make comments and changes, and only then could we propose it for discussion at the Presidential meeting.”

“And when would I have done all this, Mr Minister? I was pulled into a meeting right off the tarmac.”

“Then you shouldn’t have said those things at all. You should have brought your idea up later, in the usual way. It would have been more useful.”

“We don’t have time, Mr Minister. I listen to you, and I wonder how the Federation has managed to survive twenty years of fighting such a dangerous enemy with such an approach. You’re Fleet Admiral, Mr Minister, I don’t believe you don’t understand what would happen if we let the quargs build their battleships…”

“Captain Lavroff,” Bronstein abruptly interrupted me, “You’re not listening to me at all, and you’re not drawing the right conclusions from what I’m saying. The only thing that makes me still talk to you is your genuine desire to defeat the quargs, which you have demonstrated many times to all of us, and which you constantly put above any personal interests. Right now, as you drive me mad with your boorishness, you’re risking your career, and I think you understand that perfectly well. Why are you doing this, Captain?”

“I need this operation, Mr Minister,” said I with the utmost patience,“We’ve already spent too much time preparing it. If we allow the quargs to strike our planets with their new weapons, the Federation will not stand. I know that for a fact, I’ve seen a ship like that in battle on both sides of the sight. You’re right, now I don’t care what happens to my career, but I don’t want 200 billion people going into nonexistence because of my inaction. I’ve already died once, Mr Minister, but that guy looking down on us gave me a second chance, and now I owe him, because he didn’t do it for nothing, and I’m used to paying my debts in full.”

“Asteroid fever?” asked Bronstein thoughtfully, “I remember, I was told.”

“Mr Minister, I took the liberty of drafting your order to test new torpedoes. It says you authorize them, but you leave it up to me to select the targets in the enemy’s rear. If I don’t come back from there, it’ll be my fault, because it’ll be my decision, and your headaches will go away without me. Well, if this works out, it’ll be obvious to everyone whose orders I acted on,” said I sending the appropriate file to the Minister’s tablet.

Bronstein looked me in the eye for 15 seconds and kept silent, and then he looked down at the screen and went into the reading. The Minister frowned and tweaked the text, then he put the tablet down and looked back at me.

“I’ve signed the order, Captain. The Fifth Strike Fleet will provide you with ships to support the operation. Agree on the number and types of ships with Fleet Admiral Nelson.”

“Thank you, Mr Minister,” I replied getting up.

I was coming out of Bronstein’s office when he stopped me by saying.

“I think I’m going to put up with a headache somehow, Captain. I like the alternative scenarios much less.”