Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(13)
CHAPTER 3
I’m still buzzing with adrenaline when Sergeant Fallon and I walk into the ops center a few minutes later. The confrontation down in the Ellipse has turned my mood a bit sour, so I throw myself back into work to get my mind off the event. I sit down in front of the comms console and check our situation overhead while I contact the Indianapolis for a status update. The holographic display comes to life and dutifully displays ship icons and hull numbers.
Up in orbit, the strangest collection of warships I have ever seen is circling frozen little New Svalbard. The fleet overhead is nominally split up into three factions at the moment. There’s the NAC contingent: the carrier Regulus and the battlecruiser Avenger. Then there’s the SRA contingent that came with them: the assault carrier Minsk, the destroyer Shen Yang, the frigates Gomati and Neustrashimyy, and three unarmed supply vessels that are worth their weight in platinum right now. Finally, there’s the sole remaining member of the nascent New Svalbard Territorial Army’s space arm, Colonel Campbell’s little orbital combat ship Indianapolis. On paper, we have force parity between the SRA and NAC units, but the Minsk and her escorts are all thirty years old at least, and I would bet heavily on the Regulus and her bodyguard cruiser in a tussle. Luckily, we’re all one big multinational refugee family now.
“Stores are topped off, but that ain’t saying much,” Colonel Campbell says over the orbital link from the Indy’s CIC. “This boat was never meant for extended deep-space operations. There are only so many ration boxes we can cram into our holds. We’re good for another month of ops, six weeks if we live lean.”
“Anything new on the Midway?” I ask. Next to me, Sergeant Fallon’s expression darkens at the mention of the carrier whose commanding officer decided to make a grab for New Svalbard’s civilian food infrastructure, then tucked tail and ran when it looked like the Lankies were about to wipe us off the ice moon altogether.
“Last we saw them, they were headed into deep space. Got a few long-range infrared blips on the scope over the last few days. I think they’re trying to make a very long dogleg back to the Alcubierre chute and get out of Fomalhaut,” Colonel Campbell replies. “Either way, I’m not terribly consumed with finding them.”
“Be a real fucking blast if they showed up again and started shooting at our new pals,” I say.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t really want ringside seats to that show, even if that one-star in charge of that bucket is a moron,” Sergeant Fallon chimes in. “There are a lot of people on the Midway that don’t need to be turned into stardust.”
“I don’t disagree with you on that one in the least,” Colonel Campbell says. “I wish them the best of luck in finding safe harbor somewhere.”
The ops center is staffed with a near-parity blend of military and civilian personnel. The colony’s regular team of administrators and technical-operations people is supplemented by myself, Master Sergeant Fallon, and one of the staff officers from Sergeant Fallon’s HD battalion, a Major Frederick. The command structure remains tentatively unorthodox—while the major outranks us both, there’s a common understanding that the master sergeant and her inner cadre are in charge down here, and the staff officers of both HD battalions are content to let her run the show in New Longyearbyen. Of course, Sergeant Fallon would rather be dodging bullets and crawling through ChemWar-contaminated mudholes than dealing with the minutiae of everyday military administration for a two-battalion-strong garrison.
“Weather conditions will be good enough for flight ops for maybe another twelve hours,” Major Frederick says. “The puddle jumpers are drop-and-go right now to rotate people in and out from the terraformers. No idea when we’ll get the next decent window in this frozen shit soup.”
“Let’s get as many people shuffled through as possible,” Sergeant Fallon says. “And any orbital business we have, best get it done in the next half day or so.”
There’s a holographic display on the wall that currently displays a slowly rotating sphere representing New Svalbard, the sole moon of Fomalhaut c, third planet in the vast and very empty Fomalhaut system. There are sixty-four evenly spaced icons dotting both hemispheres, each of them a state-of-the-art multibillion-dollar terraforming station, powerful fusion reactors with giant atmospheric exchange units attached. Each of them has a garrison platoon of Homeworld Defense troops assigned to it—partially for security reasons and partially because New Longyearbyen doesn’t have the infrastructure to support two battalions of soldiers. The terraforming stations have energy and space in abundance, but they are extremely isolated and don’t have much in the way of recreational opportunities, so Sergeant Fallon has set up a rotation schedule, which the harsh New Svalbard climate screws up on a regular basis.
“I’m passing along a request from Regulus Actual,” Colonel Campbell says. “The task force skippers want to have a meeting with all the COs to discuss our plans for getting back into the fight.”
“Back into the fight? I could have sworn we’re right in the middle of it,” I say.
“It’s no secret that our supply situation isn’t great. We sure as hell don’t have the resources to winter in this place, let alone spend the next year or two here and wait for the Lankies to come to us. Without a fleet yard for maintenance, half our hulls will be out of commission before too long anyway. Especially those SRA relics. Those people don’t put much emphasis on scheduled service intervals in ideal conditions. I don’t feel like towing one of those overarmed garbage scows to the Alcubierre chute and then back to Earth.”