“Thank you for coming,” she said. “I wanted to be sure our allies on Mars were entirely up-to-date on the situation with the Free Navy.”
“Prime Minister Richards sends her regrets,” Chen said, taking his seat. “Things are still unsettled back at home, and she didn’t feel comfortable being physically absent from the government building.”
“I understand,” Avasarala said. “And your wife? Michaela? Is she feeling better?”
Chen blinked. “Why … yes. Yes, she’s doing much better. Thank you.”
Avasarala turned to Souther. “Admiral Chen’s wife went to the cooperative school with my daughter Ashanti when they were girls,” she said. Not that Chen remembered that, or had even known. In fairness, the girls hadn’t been particularly close, but you played the angles the universe gave you. She picked up her sandwich, took a bite, and put it back down to give Chen a moment to hide his discomfort.
“I’m going to have to ask your staff to leave,” Avasarala said.
“They can be trusted,” Chen said, nodding as if he’d agreed.
“Not by me, they can’t,” Avasarala said. “We won’t hurt them. But they can’t stay.”
Chen sighed. His secretary and assistant politely gathered up their things, nodded to Souther and Avasarala, and left. Souther lowered his head, waiting for the system to report whether either had left anything behind. It would be sad to come this far and have a bug in the room. A moment later he shook his head.
“Now then,” she said. “Shall we get down to business?”
Chen didn’t object, and Souther pulled up a schematic of the solar system in its present state. The sun and the ring gate as the major axis, and the planets and moons, stations and asteroids, scattered as the laws of orbital mechanics had placed them. As with any tactical map on that scale, the proportionality had suffered a little in favor of visibility. In truth, all of humanity’s children lived on scattered stones smaller than dust on the face of the ocean. They hid the fact with graphics and highlighted lists of ship names and vectors. Had the map matched the territory, there would have been nothing to see. Even the Earth with her suffering billions would have been less than a pixel.
But the Free Navy showed there in yellow. The consolidated fleet in red. Michio Pa’s breakaway ships and their new OPA let’s-call-them-allies in gold. It was rough and ugly. Souther pulled up a pointer, and drew the room’s attention to the ring gate at the system’s edge.
“Our target is Medina Station,” he said in his oddly high-pitched, musical voice. “There are several reasons for that, but critically, it’s the choke point for passage through to the colony systems, including Laconia, where former Martian naval officer Winston Duarte appears to have set up shop. Whoever has possession of Medina and its defenses controls the ring gates and traffic through them. It will reopen trade and colonization ships for us, and cut Inaros’ supply lines from his ally.”
Chen leaned forward, his elbows on the table, eyes glittering with the reflection of the display. He hadn’t reacted at all to Duarte’s name. Good poker face, and he’d expected to hear it. Richards wasn’t trying to deny the Martian Navy’s role in this clusterfuck. That was good. She took another bite of the sandwich and wished she’d thought to bring some pistachios. She didn’t have much appetite right after lifting weights, but when it returned, she was ravenous.
“Inaros’ method of operation up to now has relied on strategic retreat,” Souther continued. “Stripping and abandoning territory rather than trying to hold it and leaving the support of the people left behind to the consolidated fleet. It has served him well in that we have been reluctant to overextend our defensive force, and the Free Navy has been able to carry out raids and attacks of opportunity on both Earth and Martian forces and dissenting factions on their own side.”
“The pirates,” Chen said.
“The pirates,” Avasarala agreed. No need to beat around that particular bush.
“We believe that strategy will fail with Medina,” Souther said. “Its importance is too great to abandon. And if we’re wrong and the Free Navy does abandon it … Well, then we have all the advantages we were hoping for and he looks like a joke.”
“He won’t abandon it,” Avasarala said.
“What about the rail guns?” Chen asked. An interesting move, showing that Mars already knew about the defensive artillery. She wasn’t quite certain what letting her know they knew that was meant to achieve. Souther glanced at her. She nodded. No reason to pretend ignorance.
“Our best intelligence on that comes from the defectors from the Free Navy. Captain Pa of the Connaught was one of Inaros’ inner circle. Our understanding is that the rail guns set up on the alien station are Medina’s first line of defense. The station proper also had PDCs and a supply of torpedoes left by Duarte, but the rail guns are set to defend and destroy any unauthorized ships that pass through the ring gates.”
“That seems like a problem,” Chen said. “Your thoughts on how to overcome that?”
“We’re going to send a shitload of ships through the ring gates,” Avasarala said as Souther shifted from tactical to an image of the Giambattista. It wasn’t a pretty ship: large, boxy, and awkward.
“This is a converted water hauler crewed by the Ostman-Jasinzki faction of the Outer Planets Alliance,” Souther said. “It has been loaded with slightly under four thousand small craft. Breaching pods, small transports, prospecting skiffs. A devil’s brew. We’re calling it our Surinam toad, but the ship’s registered as the Giambattista.”
“That thing has four thousand reactors in it?” Chen said.
“No,” Souther said. “Most of the engines are chemical rockets or compressed-gas thrusters. Many of them are hardly more than environment-suit thrusters welded to a steel box. That is part of the reason they’re being carried to the edge of the ring before they’re ever deployed. These aren’t long-range craft. At a guess, I’d say half of them would be hard-pressed to make the trip from the ring gate to Medina under the best of circumstances. There are also several thousand torpedoes with a mixed but generally low-yield assortment of warheads.”
“So, chaff,” Chen said. “Cannon fodder.”
“We’re not putting people on all of them,” Avasarala said. “Even the OPA’s not that suicidal.”
Souther went on. “A fraction—the best ships—will carry a ground-attack group, whose mission will be to take control, not of Medina but of the rail-gun emplacements themselves. Once our forces control those, we expect Medina Station to capitulate. And since the rail guns were intended to defend Medina from more than thirteen hundred gates, and we’re only going to focus on the Sol and Laconia gates, we have reason to expect a relatively strong defensive position, which we can reinforce not only from Sol but with the colony ships that have already passed through and are willing and able to come to our assistance.”
“All right,” Chen said.
“You sound skeptical,” Avasarala said.
“No offense, ma’am,” Chen said. “But I’m looking at this, and it doesn’t square. If Inaros has been trying to tempt the fleet into overreach—spreading our forces too thin—then this run out to the edge of the system seems like his dream scenario. Unless you’re planning to send it unescorted, in which case you might as well not send it at all.”
“The escort will be a salvaged Martian corvette with a keel-mounted rail gun of its own,” Souther said. “The Rocinante is already burning on an intercept course. It’s going from Tycho Station, so it’s in the neighborhood. Relatively speaking.”
“There are also advantages to having that particular asset in place on Medina when we take it,” Avasarala said.