Cleanup and Recovery
There were at least five Fishie ships stranded in Sol; three cruisers and two corvettes. The GTVA kept the corvettes and a cruiser, bringing them back to Delta Serpentis. Also back to Delta Serpentis went most of the GTVA’s ships. Only Sirona and her battlegroup, reinforced by a couple of Vasudan corvettes and three cruisers, remained in Sol to reinforce First Fleet’s blockade efforts. Political concerns; the GTVA did not wish to appear to be exerting pressure on Sol now that the immediate threat was past. Sirona and her battlegroup would have returned as well, except First Fleet specifically requested their presence. Too many of its ships were in need of major refit and repair for them to hold the line alone if the Fishies launched another attack rapidly.
A counterattack had to be made. Sol could not accept having the Fishies on her doorstep ready to invade whenever they felt like it, and the GTVA needed a secure flank. GTVA planners were also keen to enforce a negotiated peace rather than current form of Fishie-Human relations; the Fishies could be a useful ally against the Shivans.
The problem was that the outer system node remained impassable, and there was good reason to believe a Knossos would actually cut off the connection to the Fishies. The Fishies had passed it, of course, and with several of their ships and crews in the hands of the First Fleet and Sol there was a good possiblity the mechanism would be figured out eventually.
But the counterattack needed to come swiftly. They had built up momentum here, and surprise. Faustus science cruisers from both groups clustered about the outer-system node, scanning. It registered, if it registered at all, as collapsed. But the Fishies had bridged it. Not with a Knossos either. Plans were made to build a Knossos anyways, just in case a way to traverse the node could not be found.
In the background, the politicians worked. The initial proposal was a modification of BETAC; Sol joined the GTVA, lock, stock, and barrel, with a degree of internal political autonomy much as the Vasudans had. The discussions went on.
Also in the background the engineers and the interrogator-linguists competed to see who could crack the secret of Fishie subspace drives first.
Liasion
On an otherwise ordinary day in Sol, where the Lunar and Martian Yards worked around the clock shifts to refit First Fleet’s ships and turn out new hulls, where many millions went about their business, safe in their knowledge that the Fishies had been repelled a second time, First Fleet appointed its first liasion officer to the GTVA, Commander Wilhem Halder. It was an event that changed everything.
Why? Who was Wilhem Halder?
An officer of German descent, twenty-nine, Halder had served in a variety of posts prior to the Second Invasion. His previous posistion had been as a Lieutenant Commander, gunnery officer aboard the Diana-class Richelieu until that ship’s destruction at the Second Battle of Luna. Senior surviving officer, he had written Richelieu’s last action report. His career speciality was weapons. Able, intelligent, but above all energetic, his temporary assignment to a headquarters staff posistion succeeded in annoying both him and many of the staff officers around him. So he was given a promotion and the liasion post for all the wrong reasons.
The overwhelming impression of the GTVA officers who encountered him was a man of endless energy and inquistive mind. Robert Petrarch expressed the opinion that Halder never actually slept. He liased well enough. He met personally with the captain and senior officers of every GTVA ship in Sol. He brought them up to date on the capablities of First Fleet’s ships, all of which save the Mars-class the GTA had once deployed. He learned everything the GTVA was willing to tell him about its own weapons, tactics, and doctrines, which was quite a bit. Halder traveled out of Sol, the first of her inhabitants to do so in a quarter-century, while heading the honor guard that accompanied the four Vasudan survivors of the operation that destroyed the Lucifer home…and took the opportunity to speak with senior Vasudan commanders and the Emperor.
And in noting the well-developed doctrine the GTVA had somehow acquired for dealing with ship’s of Kraken’s size, Halder learned of the Sathanas. In turn, he informed the GTVA that First Fleet had developed a weapon to deal with such craft. This simple exchange provided the catalyst for much in the way of politics.
But Halder did more than simply his job. He instilled the GTVA’s officers with confidence in First Fleet, in its energy and competence. He badgered his commanders into staging joint exercises and directed them on which of their units were most likely to impress the GTVA, into supplying emergency logistical needs for GTVA forces in Sol despite the drain on their own logistics.
The GTVA’s overall impression of First Fleet was of a capable, professional force, lacking the hardening that recent combat operations provided but well-trained and reasonably well-lead, still ready to fight if needed.
The truth was actually somewhat different. There were large numbers of reservists in First Fleet. Twenty years of peace, no matter how watchful, had allowed deadwood into the ranks and ratings that needed to be cleaned out. The war had helped with this, but there was still a lot of work to be done.
First Fleet’s fighter arm was a broken instrument. They had trained and prepared for the wrong threat, and needed to rebuild their tactics and doctrine from the ground up. Their destroyer aerospace groups had done their primary job, protect the destroyers, but they had taken a beating doing it, fifty percent casualities. The force overall was down by thirty-five percent, most of them reservists. Their only victory of the war was at Second Luna, the only place where the bombers had managed to do their job successfully, and that had been by massive numerical advantage. Confidence, in themselves, in their equipment, in their commanders, was low.
The Diana force was riding high. It always was. They were the weapon of decision, the flashing blade of the fleet. They had taken hard hits but they had expected to. They could point to their victories, Snowbird, Second Luna. They could even point to their defeats; the Fishies had recognized their ships, known their danger, and accorded them the respect they deserved. The other black-water sailors of First Fleet were mostly angry. They had served well. They knew they had, and yet they had lost.
Three months. First Fleet needed three months to reorganize, to retrain, to replace losses, patch up damaged ships and bolster disillusioned people. But the GTVA never knew, thanks to the tireless work of Wilhem Halder. And Sol and First Fleet pled their case from a posistion of strength.
