Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [101]
The General looked as if he were in physical pain. "And seven of my grid admirals. Unless our crewmen managed to scuttle their own ships, we have to assume those battle groups are now controlled by Soldier compies. As far as we know, only Admirals Diente, San Luis, and Pike survived."
Cain did not do a good job at sounding optimistic. "It is possible that a few more are cut off from communications and simply not responding. However, I'd prefer not to have an unrealistically rosy picture of the situation."
"Unrealistically rosy picture?" Basil raised his eyebrows.
Lanyan paced around his chair. "What the bloody hell do the clankers want? What set them off? Are they really controlled by the Klikiss robots?"
Basil took the datapad from Cain, switched to a new screen, and motioned toward the General. "Here is what we're going to do. In the old days, they called it ‘circling the wagons'--a defensive posture adopted in dire times. We need to get every single functional ship into position around this solar system."
"Even small civilian craft, Mr. Chairman?" Cain asked. "That could cause a disproportionate amount of unrest among the public."
"They can do their part, just like everyone else. We know unarmed commercial vessels won't stand a chance against the drogues or our own hijacked EDF ships, but they can sound an alarm if any enemy comes toward Earth. Set them up as picket ships."
"We could establish automatic tripwire satellites, too," Cain suggested. "It'll increase our coverage, improve resolution and response time."
Lanyan said, "Distant early warning? That'll only tell us when to start praying. We don't have much of anything left to fight with. If any significant force comes here, we're toast. Burnt toast."
Suddenly several of the Goliath's bridge stations lit up with a sparkle of alarms. Announcements chattered over the speakers, signals from outlying picket ships. "Incoming vessels, General! Three of them."
"What are they? How big?"
"The size of Manta cruisers, sir. Broadcasting EDF identification signals."
"That doesn't mean a damn thing anymore," Lanyan growled. "Send intercept ships with enough firepower to snuff the intruders if they turn out to be bad guys."
Though seasoned repair techs continued to work, two stations were up and running, displaying a tactical plot of the incoming bogeys and the intercept vessels scrambling from defensive points around the Earth system. To their vast relief, the intercept ships broke off. "They're ours! Three Mantas genuinely piloted by humans. They escaped from Grid 7."
"How can you be sure?" Basil said in a low voice.
"We've spoken to them directly. No doubt about it."
"I didn't doubt Admiral Wu-Lin either," Lanyan said, "and it cost us plenty. Have someone go aboard and verify. Personally. Don't believe it until you see the flesh and blood with your own eyes."
Before long, the announcement was confirmed. "It really is good news! A hell of a slaughter over here, but it looks like the good guys won this round. One Manta has only seven human survivors--including Admiral Willis! They've piloted the ship here after linking their systems to one of the other cruisers."
A new voice came over the comm circuit, a salty, grandmotherly drawl: "Thank heavens for barfing and diarrhea--otherwise none of us would be alive. Food poisoning saved our lives, General. Funny how things work out."
"Please explain, Admiral Willis," Lanyan said.
"Something went wrong with the Jupiter's food-processing systems, and a wave of salmonella knocked an entire shift out of commission. I couldn't afford to have my Juggernaut drastically understaffed, so I drew the bulk of the Soldier compies from the other grid ships for added manpower, primarily to do menial work in the overflow sickbays we set up. Why not let the clankers clean up all the shit and puke, right?
"Anyway, I was over on one of my Mantas inspecting and rearranging the reduced crews when the compies