As Huang finished speaking, he was joined by the other Joint Chiefs and several senators. Hundreds of reporters sat in folding chairs, the way they might have attended the unveiling of the old Earth-bound battleships five hundred years earlier. They would have fit more comfortably in one of the ship’s briefing auditoriums than on the observation deck, but Huang saw a great photo opportunity and had the media sense to take advantage of it.
This was a side of Huang that I had never known about. He stood behind a small podium looking absolutely resplendent in his white uniform with its many medals. He and Halverson had the same number of gold stripes across their shoulder boards—three, but Huang cut a more commanding figure with the gray in his hair and his athletic build. Huang and Halverson were about the same age, but Huang wore it better. Huang looked like a middle-aged man. Halverson looked like a man closing in on his sixties.
Smiling pleasantly, Huang opened the floor for questions, and every hand shot up. Reporters clambered for his attention until he finally selected a man near the front of the audience.
“This is unquestionably an amazing ship. But it is still just one ship. How can it possibly fare against an attack force like the sixty-five ships that sacked New Columbia?”
“Excellent question,” Huang said. “We have arranged a demonstration to address that very point. If you are not satisfied after our demonstration, we can discuss it further.”
Every reporter’s hand went up again. Huang selected a woman from the front row. “Can a ship this size self-broadcast reliably?”
“I think Admiral Klyber struggled a long time with that question,” Huang said. “The engines on this ship are perfectly reliable. We have tested them thoroughly …”
“Didn’t Admiral Klyber die in a broadcast malfunction?” the reporter followed up her own question.
“An unfortunate irony, if you like,” said Huang. “The broadcast equipment in this ship is completely stable.”
The reporters raised their hands. Huang selected his next inquisitor.
“Admiral Klyber was going to command this ship, was he not? Who will command it in his place?”
“Admiral Klyber never intended to command this ship. He was a fleet admiral, you know. You don’t assign a fleet admiral to a single ship. Rear Admiral Robert Thurston was selected to command the Doctrinaire while Klyber commanded the entire fleet.”
“Rear Admiral Thurston?” the reporter asked quickly, before Huang could open the floor for the next question. “The commander of the Scutum-Crux Fleet?”
“Yes,” said Huang. “As you may recall, he commanded our forces to victory at Hubble and Little Man.”
Thurston stepped onto the dais in his whites. A few of the less experienced reporters, the ones who had never seen Thurston, laughed or gasped at his youthful appearance. Short and skinny, with spiky red hair and an adolescent’s face, Robert Thurston always looked out of place in his uniform, especially standing next to a seasoned officer like Huang. The senators at the back of the dais looked like they could have been Thurston’s grandparents.
The questions continued for ten more minutes. The session would have gone on for hours had Huang allowed it, but he had promised a final demonstration.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest you prepare yourselves. We are about to enter a war zone,” said Huang.
Smoky-colored tinting appeared in the glass ceiling and walls of the observation deck turning them opaque. The reporters spoke nervously among themselves as they saw the muted flashes of lightning all around them. It was one thing to sit in some comfortable commuter craft and pass through the Broadcast Network. This was raw. Here they sat on folding chairs on the glass-encased deck of a monolithic battleship while millions of volts of electricity danced on the glass just above their heads.
When the lightning stopped and the tinting cleared, the Doctrinaire was in a battle zone. Looking around the crown of the observation deck, you could see dozens of ships buzzing around it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cygnus Arm. In case it has slipped your attention, this is one of the Confederate Arms. We are forty thousand light years deep in enemy territory.
“What you see flying outside our shields are twenty-five ships from what we in the Navy call the ‘mothball fleet.’ These are vintage ships. These are battleships from 2488 and newer. They are fully functional, space-worthy ships. They were perfectly preserved for just such an occasion as this.
“Who is flying them?” a reporter called out.
“Not to worry,” Huang said, “they are not being manned by live crews.”
Knowing Huang and his disdain for synthetic life, it would not have surprised me to learn that those ships had all-clone crews. But even the cost of raising clones comes out of the budget, so Huang most likely controlled these ships using remotely controlled computers.
Zipping around, weaving in and out and around each other, the old battleships circled around the Doctrinaire from two miles off.
“Before we begin our actual battle,” Huang said, “you should know that the ships around us are using live ammunition. Rear Admiral Thurston, would you direct one of those battleships to attack?”
One of the battleships charged straight at the Doctrinaire and fired. It shot a brilliant burst of bright red laser fire followed by three torpedoes. I could not believe what I saw. This was a full-on assault. A lethal attack. The translucent shields turned milky white where the beam hit. The laser beam was round and red and as thick around as a tree stump, but it stopped dead at the shields. Moments later, the three torpedoes slammed into the shields and burst into puddles of light that dissolved quickly in the vacuum of space.
Most of the reporters gasped and a few screamed.
“As I stated before, the attacking ships are decommissioned U.A. Navy ships. We stopped using these fifteen years ago because their technology was obsolete, surpassed by technologies which are now also considered obsolete. These ships were made twenty years after the ships currently used by the Confederate Arms,” said Huang.
Huang now pulled an old-fashioned analog pocket watch from the podium. He held it up for the reporters to see. “Let the battle begin,” he said.
“Admiral Klyber spared nothing when he designed this ship,” Huang said. “He wanted to make the ship that would end the war …a ship that would terrify enemies into abandoning their Revolution.”
Above Huang’s head, the vacuum of space looked like a thunderstorm. Hundreds of torpedoes pecked at the shields from every angle. They burst and vanished leaving no trace. Laser beams slammed into the canopy creating a crimson light show.
“I think it’s time we teach these marauders a lesson,” Huang said, tensing his thumb over the timer button on the pocket watch. “Admiral Thurston, return fire.” The watch bobbed up and down as he clicked the timer.
Laser bursts fired from the side of the Doctrinaire . I had never seen these cannons tested, so I did not know what to expect. The battleships continued to fire lasers and torpedoes at the Doctrinaire , but nothing penetrated the shields. Seeing these fireworks reminded me of watching a light rain fall through a see-though umbrella.