weeks is unrealistic. To throw those ships into an assault on the most heavily defended, the most important target we have ever attacked before they are ready is to invite their destruction. Not that losing ships is the problem”-she paused to look around the room-“but losing them for no good reason certainly is. To go early has no merit. The Hammer plant is not going anywhere. Delay Opera by three months and you will have an operational dreadnought force-thirty properly trained, operationally effective ships-to spearhead the attack. And that means our chances of success will be significantly greater. It’s that simple, sir.”
Michael watched Jaruzelska fight to turn the argument her way. The admiral’s logic was faultless, but he had no doubts where the issue would finish up. The decision to go early had been made; that much was obvious from what Kefu had said, and the politicians among Fleet staff-which, in Michael’s jaundiced view, was all of them-were falling in behind him. The one person who might have swung the issue-the commander in chief, Admiral Shiu-had sided with the “go early” lobby, so go early it was.
Michael tuned out of what fast became an utterly pointless argument, an argument Jaruzelska was never going to win, his mind turning to the pressing issue of how to turn two young and inexperienced officers into effective dreadnought squadron commanders in half the time he needed. Rao and Machar might have been picked after a ruthless selection process that confirmed their innate tactical brilliance, but that did not give him any guarantees that they would hold up under the severe pressure of combat, even with Jaruzelska’s support and guidance.
Considering what he was expected to achieve with his dreadnoughts, Michael was strangely calm. The chances of any of the dreadnoughts surviving Operation Opera were slim-that was obvious-which meant their crews might not survive, either. There was too little time to bring the dreadnoughts up to speed, too little time to plan the operation properly, too little time to simulate the operation often enough to expose the flaws in the operational planning, too little time to rehearse.
In short, there was a good chance that Operation Opera-the one operation that had to be a success if the Federated worlds were to survive-would turn out to be one of the great military disasters of all time.
Why the rush? Michael’s guess-it was only a guess-was that Kefu had allowed himself to be steamrolled by the politicians, the real ones this time, not Fleet’s part-timers, the elected ones who fancied that they actually governed the Worlds. Panicked by the Hammers’ antimatter missiles, they wanted Fleet to make the problem go away. Now!
And who would be responsible for doing that? Vice Admiral Jaruzelska, of course. She was commander of Battle Fleet Lima and would be held to account for the operation’s success or failure. And on whom would she rely to do the hard work to get Opera across the line? Lieutenant Michael Helfort and the ships of the dreadnought force. Who else?
Terrific, he thought, vainly trying to ignore the crushing weight of Jaruzelska’s expectations. For chrissakes, how was he ever going to pull this one off?
Michael pushed back in his seat as the shuttle taking him back to
There was only one problem. Making the complex simple was beyond him; it was an enormous challenge even for a combat-hardened commander such as Jaruzelska. Michael spent hours and hours looking at the Hammer antimatter plant. It sat deep inside Devastation Reef, a convoluted tangle of gravitational rips tens of millions of kilometers across, protected by every warship the Hammers had to spare, backed up by space battle stations, pinchspace jump disrupters, semiautonomous defense platforms, and antistarship minefields. Opera was not an impossible mission, but rushed planning, inadequate training, and-like every operation after the Comdur fiasco-too few ships were beginning to make it look worryingly like one.
Oh, yes, there was one more risk factor, and it was a big one-limited intelligence. The Hammers had picked the site for their antimatter manufacturing plant well. Devastation Reef was such an appalling place for starships that the Feds had never bothered to survey the deepspace around it properly-though he would lay good money down that the Hammers had-so getting in and out safely would be a challenge in itself. To make matters worse, the brass was concerned to the point of near hysteria that the Hammers might get wind of the attack. That meant no infiltration or close surveillance or covert operations assets ahead of the attack; Michael had seen the directive telling Jaruzelska to keep her reconbots well away from the plant and its approaches.
Tipping off the Hammers that an attack was imminent was not a risk she would be allowed to take. Michael understood why; he also knew who would pay the butcher’s bill.
Michael had paid attention during his military history classes at Space College. Poor intelligence had doomed more military operations to failure than he liked to think about. He only hoped that Operation Opera would not be one of them.
Sunday, January 21, 2401, UD
Vice Admiral Jaruzelska was her normal brisk self, bustling in to take her seat. Not for the first time, Michael wondered how she kept going. “Morning, everyone. Seats, please,” she said. “Everyone here?” she asked, turning to her chief of staff.
“Yes, sir,” Captain Tuukkanen replied.
“Let’s get on. Right, Captain. Let’s look at the results of the latest simulations and see what they tell us about our chances of pulling this one off.”
Michael sighed softly. The chances of Operation Opera succeeding? If the sims were right, they were not good, not good at all.
“… so what we’re seeing, Admiral, is consistent. Using multiple task groups to divert the Hammer defenses before the dreadnoughts destroy the plant’s nearspace defenses is the only way to give the assault group-the ships tasked with actually destroying the antimatter plant-a clear run in. Any way we look at it, that is the right way, the best way … I think the only way.”
Captain Tuukkanen paused for a moment. “We cannot assume that the Hammers will leave Assault Group alone,” he continued. “This is one of the best-defended facilities in humanspace. It will be hard to crack its defenses, and anyone heading for the antimatter plant is going to get attacked. That much we know, and that’s why the sims are showing us failing more often than not. But even though they suffer heavy losses, the dreadnoughts leading the attack get through practically every time, while Assault Group does not. That leaves us in control of the space around the antimatter plant but not with the assets to destroy it. All too often, those assets are in an Assault Group that fails to get through. It foll-”
A voice cut Tuukkanen off. It was Perkins. “I cannot agree, Captain. Why should the dreadnoughts get through and Assault Group not? It does not make any sense.” Perkins glanced around the room, a half smile on his face making it clear that what he had said was so obvious that it really did not need any justification.
“Sir, if I may?” Michael said. Jaruzelska waved him to continue. Perkins scowled his disapproval; Michael ignored him. “The dreadnoughts get through because they can survive attacks that a conventional heavy cruiser cannot. That’s been proved not just in endless design reviews but in the sims and in combat. The data cannot be argued with. Therefore, the most likely outcome of Opera is that dreadnoughts make it through when nobody else does. That means they must have the tools to finish the job if Assault Group does not get through.”
When he finished, Michael wondered if he might not have been a tad too firm given that he was arguing with an admiral. Screw it, screw Perkins, he decided. Destroying the Hammer antimatter plant was far too important to worry about the man’s feelings.
“Admiral Perkins?” Jaruzelska said, a faint smile ghosting across her face.
Perkins scowled some more. “I firmly believe, Admiral, that if the dreadnoughts make it, so will Assault Group. That means we can finish the job. I think what we have here is something we’ve all seen before. In the end, simulations are just mathematical models, and we can pretty much make them say what we want. What we have
