'Thank you, Citizen Admiral,' Seth Chernock acknowledged, then paused a moment for effect, letting his frigid eyes sweep over the ship commanders gathered around the table. They were a very mixed lot: four in StateSec's crimson and black, and fourteen, counting the two transports' skippers, in the People's Navy's gray-and- green. His senior ground commanders were also present, for it was important for everyone to understand what was planned, and they were an equally motley mix. Citizen Major General Claude Gisborne was SS, but almost half the total ground force—and two-thirds of its senior officers—were Marines.
It was not, Chernock thought grimly, the most cohesive command team imaginable. Unfortunately, it was the only one he'd been able to scrape together, and it had taken him nine standard days to assemble all his expeditionary force's bits and pieces and get it underway. The good news was that he'd managed to put together an escort of no less than ten battlecruisers (although one of them was one of the old Lion-class) and six heavy cruisers, and the People's Marines had been able to provide two of their Roughneck-class fast attack transports. The bad news was that he'd been able to come up with less than twenty-seven thousand troops to put aboard those transports. Of course, if his warships could secure control of the high orbitals, that should be plenty of ground-based firepower. The prisoners on Hades might outnumber his troops by better than twenty-to-one, but a few kinetic interdiction strikes would take care of that nicely. Perhaps even more to the point, Gisborne was an ex-Marine himself, and he'd gone out of his way to establish a sense of rapport among his subordinates, StateSec and Marine alike. All things considered, Chernock was extremely pleased with the way his ground force command team was shaping up.
He was less enthusiastic about the naval side of things, although that certainly wasn't Yearman's fault. Chernock had drafted the Citizen Rear Admiral because he knew his own limitations. He was primarily an administrator and a planner, and what limited 'combat' experience he had consisted of a dozen or so large-scale intervention efforts. That didn't even come close to qualifying him to command a joint space-ground campaign in his own right, so he'd grabbed Yearman as his official second-in-command and de facto naval commander.
And from all he'd so far seen, Yearman had been an excellent choice. He didn't appear to be an inspired strategist, but he had a firm grasp of the tactical realities, and he'd immediately set out to hammer his mismatched squadron into something like a coherent fighting force.
Nine days, unfortunately, wasn't very long. Chernock suspected that an all-Navy task group could have gotten itself sorted out and drilled to an acceptable standard in that much time, but three of Yearman's battlecruisers—
Personally, Chernock was glad to have the training differential made clear. As far as he knew, this was the first joint Navy—State Security operation to be mounted, and he had taken careful note of his own service's inadequacies. He already knew his post-mission report was going to be scathing, and he intended to send it directly to Citizen Secretary Saint-Just's personal attention. If, in fact, it became necessary for SS units to deal with rebellious ships of the regular Navy, they were going to need either an enormous preponderance in firepower or far better training, and it was his duty to point that out to StateSec's commander.
In the meantime, however, Yearman had to get his mismatched command team into some sort of fighting trim, and he had driven them mercilessly while the ground force was assembled in Danak. He'd made considerable progress, although Chernock knew he was still far from satisfied, and he'd gone on drilling them on the voyage to Cerberus. Unfortunately, that trip was only forty-five light-years long, and the Roughnecks were fast ships for transports. The entire voyage required only eight days base-time, which gave Yearman less than six and a half subjective to get them whipped into shape. After five days of nonstop exercises and tactical problems, even his regulars were heartily sick and tired of it, and the StateSec officers hovered on the brink of rebellion. Yet even Citizen Captain Isler must realize how much they had improved, and Chernock's presence was enough to enforce at least a surface civility.
'I'll keep this brief,' he said finally, his voice very level. 'We represent a hastily assembled force many of whose personnel have never previously worked together. I realize that the intense efforts which have been made to overcome our lack of familiarity with one another's methods have been hard, exhausting, and often irritating. I know there are short tempers around this table, and I understand the reasons for that. Nonetheless, I... will... not... tolerate any display of anger, any hesitation in obeying the orders of a senior officer—regardless of the uniform he or she wears—or any species of insubordination or rivalry. Does anyone require a clearer statement on this issue?'
Several stormy expressions had gone blank as their owners digested the cold, flat, dangerous tone in which he delivered his spaced out warning. He waited several seconds, but no one spoke, and he smiled thinly.
'I hoped that would be the case, citizens, and I am gratified to see my hope was not in vain. And now, Citizen Admiral Yearman, if you please?'
'Yes, Sir. Thank you.' Yearman cleared his throat, looking both pleased and a little nervous at the unequivocal firmness of Chernock's support. He must, the citizen general reflected, be as uncomfortable with this mixed command structure as anyone else, but at least no sign of that showed in his voice.
'Our exercises to date have given me cause to feel some degree of optimism,' he began. 'Our coordination still leaves much to be desired, and I'd be nervous at the thought of going into a conventional engagement without longer to polish our rough edges, but I believe we can handle the current mission. I remind all of you, however, that overconfidence is one of the most deadly enemies known to man.'
He paused to sweep his eyes around the table, and Chernock raised his hand and rubbed his upper lip to hide an involuntary smile as those eyes lingered just a moment longer on Isler than on anyone else.
'The parameters of our problem are relatively straightforward,' Yearman resumed. 'We've all studied the data Citizen General Chernock has been able to provide on the orbital defenses, and I'm sure all of us are aware of the fundamental weakness inherent in their design. Aside from the ground bases on Tartarus, Sheol, and Niflheim, all of their weapons platforms are unprotected by any passive defenses and effectively incapable of movement. In addition, their missile defense capability is much more limited than their offensive firepower. They're short on counter-missile launchers, and they have barely a third of the missile-killer laser platforms I would have built into the defense grid. As such, their weapon systems are extremely vulnerable to proximity soft kills, and we can almost certainly penetrate their defenses without resorting to cee-fractional strikes. We may have to take our lumps from the ground bases, but their ammunition is limited, and we should be able to blow a massive hole in the orbital defenses before we have to enter the ground bases' range.
'Blowing away the defenses is, however, a worst-case scenario. I'm sure all of us hope Citizen General Chernock's worst suspicions are unfounded.' The citizen rear admiral glanced at Chernock as he spoke, and the citizen general nodded. He was a little surprised Yearman had had the guts to say such a thing openly, but he couldn't fault the Navy officer's sentiments. Not that he believed for a moment that his fears were baseless.
'In that happy event,' Yearman went on, 'no attack will be necessary and our force can return to Danak or disperse to other duties. Even if the prisoners have succeeded in taking over Camp Charon and securing control of its com systems, it is still possible that the garrison had time to permanently disable the ground control stations before the prisoners could seize control of the defenses. The odds of that, however, are not great, which is the reason we are all out here.
'Our job, citizens, is to get Citizen General Gisborne and his people safely down to secure control of Styx Island. To this end, I intend to advance with the entire escort, less Citizen Captain Harken's
'Is that really necessary, Citizen Admiral?' It was Citizen Captain Fuhrman, CO of the battlecruiser
