Trouble In My Day by Gallagher Karl K

Author:Gallagher, Karl K.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kelt Haven Press
Published: 2023-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

***

After a week hovering over Muli, Fleet Admiral Pinoy was ready to go back on the offensive. A squadron had arrived from Monitor Wang, who ruled the District antispinward of Singh’s. Four battleships and twice that many cruisers.

The barbarians sniffing about his fleet were staying well back. Clearly they didn’t have enough force to challenge them. It was making Pinoy impatient. He didn’t want to give them time to build more ships.

In other good news, a handful of Censorate destroyers had arrived. But the squadron of destroyers Pinoy had sent after the barbarian flanking force at Falx hadn’t returned. They should have been back by now. The barbarians must be running wild—or maybe they’d forced a standoff.

Too late to give better orders to the squadron commander now. Hopefully he’d do something smart. Destroyer skippers were better for independent operations, anyway. They hadn’t had all their initiative beaten out of them the way capital ship commanders had.

CNS Order dropped into normal space to pick up a few people from Muli. The staff intelligence officers were combing Muli’s network to pick up what information they could about barbarian operations. Monitor Singh was also coming aboard, with some of his retainers. He wanted to watch the battle.

An observation dome on the ventral hull gave a lovely view of hyperspace. Polite aides would escort Singh there, explaining that he’d see more there than on the flag bridge. If the monitor didn’t like it, he could text Pinoy.

The ship’s two biggest masters-at-arms were standing duty at the hatch of the flag bridge, with orders to keep Singh out. Pinoy had personally lectured them on the chain of command, and how as Fleet Admiral he now reported directly to the Censor, not to the Monitor.

They seemed to enjoy the prospect of physically removing such an important official. Good.

Pinoy was back on the flag bridge when his intelligence chief, Captain Prayut, arrived.

“Good morning, captain. Find anything useful?”

“Yes, sir!” Prayut was grinning. “The enemy’s naval doctrine and training manuals.”

“Excellent!” Pinoy grinned in return. Something to let them predict the smashed barbarians’ behavior was exactly what they needed.

“My people are going through them now. I’m afraid it’ll take a few days to extract anything useful. Only about half my staff has the clearance levels to read proscribed information.”

“Very well. If you have some more who can be trusted we can look at upgrading their clearances.”

Prayut nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

Pinoy turned back to the fleet status display. The last few ships were moving into formation. “Captain Mbambo, begin movement when ready.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” said the ops chief.

It was a boring shift. Pinoy had ten hours left in his shift when the fleet went into motion. The barbarian ships moved rimward as they did, staying out of weapons range.

Some barbarian scouts lagged a bit, or drifted to the side. Commanders of the light squadrons requested permission to attack. Pinoy refused them. Those ships were probably bait, intended to lure the Censorate destroyers and light cruisers out to where they would have to fight without support from the battleships and carriers.

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