Down on Terraneau, officers from both the Inner and Central SC Fleets attended meetings as Admiral Klyber created a new command structure. As bits of information trickled in, talk around the platoon was enthusiastic.
Most of the sea-soldiers I spoke with liked the idea of merging with the Inner SC Fleet. The combined fleet would have over a hundred thousand fighting Marines, a force that we believed capable of wiping out any threat.
None of the Marines seemed to care that a new fleet commander had replaced Admiral Absalom Barry. The name Robert Thurston meant nothing; and besides, he was Navy, we were Marines. As long as his boats brought us to the fight on time, we’d do the rest.
That indifference changed on the day that Thurston boarded the Kamehameha. Admiral Klyber took him on a tour of the ship. The last stop on the tour was our deck. A party of officers dressed in whites passed by our barracks, and we all caught a brief glimpse of the little troll.
Robert Thurston looked younger than most of the privates in my platoon. He had thick red hair and pimples; honest to God, pimples all over his face. He cut his hair to regulation length, but it stood in spiky clumps under his cap. I was most taken by his size. Thurston was five-foot-five at best, with a slender, almost effeminate build. Needless to say, talk at the bar was wilder than ever that evening.
“You see that kid? He’s barely out of diapers,” one clone shouted as he entered the bar.
“What do you think of Thurston?” Lee asked me as I found the platoon’s watering spot for the night.
“I wonder if he drinks milk or Scotch,” a private from the platoon joked.
“So he looks a bit green,” I said as I downed half my beer.
“Yeah, he looks a little green,” Lee agreed. “I’d hate to find myself nuked just because somebody’s congressman-daddy pushed his boy up the ranks.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” I said. “From what I hear, Thurston earned his way up the ranks.”
“Is that a fact?” Shannon asked, nosing his way into our crowd.
“That is a fact,” I said.
Shannon, who knew damned well that I had met with Admiral Klyber the day before, considered my words. “That’s good news,” he said as he saluted me with his glass. “Did you all hear that? Harris heard that Thurston pulls his own weight, and Harris has good sources.” Lowering his voice, Shannon added, “The boy must have one hell of a record.”
“And there’s something else,” I said, moving toward Shannon so that no one else would hear me. “He’s out-born.”
I expected Shannon to spit out his beer, but he didn’t. He stood frozen for a moment, then swallowed. “No shit?” he said. “Born off Earth? That little speck-sucker must really know his stuff.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Kamehameha sat listless, while the frigates and fighters that surrounded her remained in constant motion. Nearly a dozen frigates orbited her hull, circling it in odd patterns. They would keep the flagship safe from fighter attacks. Of course, any fighter carrier, even an ancient one like the Kamehameha, had strong shields and powerful cannons.
The Inner and Central Scutum-Crux Fleets hovered along opposite hemispheres of Terraneau. For a moment, the two fleets looked like mirror reflections of each other; then the Central Fleet pulled back from the planet and arrayed itself in battle formation with six carriers launching fighters and six carriers in reserve. Harriers and Tomcats poured out of six carriers at the front of the formation like angry hornets defending their nest. The Harriers moved so quickly that they could not be tracked with the human eye.
Admiral Klyber, commander of the Central Fleet, attacked first. A wave of his Tomcats, fighters made for nonatmospheric conditions with particularly powerful missiles and particle-beam cannons, vanished from radar. When they reappeared, they were approaching the al-Sadat, the flagship fighter carrier of the Inner SC Fleet.
I watched the virtual representation of the battle in real time on a three-dimensional holographic display. Floating in midair, the display looked like a glowing green grid with models of ships. Five meters long and three meters deep, it was large enough to show every detail of the battle.
“Man, that’s fierce,” Lee whispered to me.
“Shhh,” I hissed. Everyone else in the room was silent.
Klyber’s attack made perfect sense. The al-Sadat sat isolated from the other capital ships in the Inner SC Fleet. The nearest frigates were hundreds of miles away and headed in the wrong direction—toward what would likely become the front line of the battle. Klyber’s fighters skirted that line, flanking Robert Thurston’s formation and attacking an unguarded pocket near the rear. It would take a couple of minutes for Thurston’s closest carrier to arrive on the scene.
Thurston commanded his forces from a simulated bridge in one corner of the auditorium. I had a good view of him from my seat.
“Shields,” Thurston said, in a voice that seemed far too calm considering the situation.
“Should we take evasive action, sir?” a crewman asked.
“That will not be necessary,” Thurston said as he paced the deck.
“Shall I signal for frigate support?” the crewman asked.
Admiral Thurston did not have the tactical advantage of watching the battle on a three-dimensional display. From my omniscient seat, I could see every aspect of the battle. I knew that Klyber had already launched a second wave of fighters. Thurston, with nothing more than a battle map that displayed in-ship radar readings, could not know what a forceful assault Admiral Klyber had planned.
“He’s sunk. Klyber’s going to end this fast,” Lee whispered.
“Shhhhh!” I hissed. A few of the people sitting near us gave Lee and me some chilly glares.
On the other side of the room, where the officers sat, a loud cheer erupted. They wanted blood. “Bet the boy never saw anything like this at the Academy,” one overexcited officer blurted in a voice that carried. With that, the officers became silent.
I glanced back at the 3-D display to see what all the cheering was about, but I was more interested in watching Admiral Thurston. He looked too young to command a ship. With his spiky, rust red hair and pimples, he looked like a teenage boy pretending to stand at the helm.
“A very aggressive attack,” Thurston said, cocking a single eyebrow. “Either he intends to win early or he wishes to back us into a…”
I looked back at the full-battle display in the center of the auditorium. Klyber’s fighters were closing in on the al-Sadat. Thurston showed amazing patience for a man whose ship was about to be attacked by 140 armed fighters. Warning lights flared along the ceiling and floor of the mock bridge. The sirens near the helm console blared so loudly that they choked my thoughts.
I doubted Thurston’s grasp of the situation. Just behind that initial wave of fighters, half of the Central SC Fleet was in position for the second wave of the attack. Klyber had an unfair advantage—the Kamehameha, a thirteenth fighter carrier. She might have been old and small by carrier standards, but the Kamehameha still bore a complement of sixty fighter craft.
“Send the Washington and the Grant to sector 14-L. Tell them to launch fighters on my orders and power up shields on my mark,” Thurston said as he studied his battle map.
“Sir, we are undefended,” the crewman said.
“Prepare our pilots,” Thurston said in a voice that made the order sound like a compromise, “but do not give the order to launch.”