Fall of the Terran Empire - Traci Ganner series book 1

FTE - Ch 15

 “We’re ready to depart, Admiral,” Rear Admiral Charleton announced over his secure communication channel to the flag briefing compartment. The rest of Pearson’s staff, including the newly promoted staff spook, were in attendance. It would be difficult getting by with less reliable intel, but at least it was intel secured the old-fashioned way, and not cooked-up misinformation from an Orion spy.

Still, Pearson couldn’t help but shudder. After receiving the last surviving messages from the late Emperor Eglon, he was now in a very difficult position. Mihialovich was a traitor and branded an outlaw. And in theory, Admiral Pearson was now the heir presumptive. Fortunately, tradition afforded him some time before he was crowned sovereign.

In order for him to become emperor, there was an established process to transfer power from one sovereign to another. The high court of nobles was required to attend and confirm the choice of sovereign. Under normal circumstances, this passed from the emperor to his chosen heir. However, there were historical precedents where one emperor seized power from another, in which case the victor would present himself to the court and declare his sovereignty. The heir apparent would travel to Earth and be crowned in a rather elaborate ceremony, in which he would take oaths of fealty from the nobles themselves.

The navy was another matter altogether. The first space marshal had jurisdiction over the entire admiralty, and by extension, the navy. While the first marshal answered to the emperor, his loyalty must be without question, since he also wielded Home Fleet as an extension of the emperor’s power.

But these were not ordinary times. Even if Pearson wanted to be the next emperor, which he didn’t, as he reminded himself sternly, he couldn’t physically present himself to the noble court on old Earth. He didn’t even know if any had survived.

Dragging his mind back to the here and now, he forced himself to maintain the calm, laid-back countenance everyone had come to expect from him. Be brilliant, so you can prove you should still lead this fleet, he told himself.

“Very well, Admiral,” he said. “Begin the attack.”

Admiral Charleton turned away from the video transmission pickup and issued the necessary orders to get the task force underway.

Operation Fuse Box was simple. Sending in a mobile task force comprised of eight battle cruisers and ten fast heavy cruisers, Charleton would march down the enemy logistics train, through Gamma Hydrae, and attempt to secure the far side of Acamar. If he could not, he was to retreat to the far side of Gamma Hydrae and hold there.

In the meantime, Pearson had his work cut out for him. His minelayers had already sown some seven hundred explosive mines across the open face of the rift. Although he couldn’t define the exact opening, he could sow mines as close as he dared. Some of them drifted into the rift’s spatial field and disappeared. Some reappeared; others remained gone.

His engineering team had also restored partial functionality to the watch station built on the Antarian moon. That gave him back communication and some weapons manufacturing capability for the system, but agricultural and industrial capacity were in shambles. It seemed the Valdi had no interest in taking either the metal fabrication or agricultural processing stations intact. They had simply destroyed them. Perhaps they had a slash-and-burn policy. Somehow Captain McKenzie had been able to find a cavern large enough to hide a heavy cruiser in--impressive that the Valdi didn’t find him.

Pearson watched along with his staff as Charleton’s task force proceeded to the system’s edge and entered hyperspace. He would know if his task force commander survived the transit to Gamma Hydrae in about seven hours. Unfortunately, he was taking nearly one-third of his entire order of battle with him.