Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11), стр. 41
He looked up the traffic patterns over the ConFed capital world, the Pillar World from which all power emanated: Miressa Prime. There were the expected things there that never left like the Cardalir Shipyards and T'Acren Base, the massive orbital facility that was home of the ConFed's mighty starfleet. There was also the Miressa Home Defense Force, a fleet of ships that were state of the art…a hundred years ago.
The Miressa System was the seat of power for the ConFed. It was widely considered impregnable for any nation foolish enough to try, and it was the center of the quadrant's political universe for the last half a millennia or so. The HDF was mostly ceremonial. It was there to provide honor guards for incoming dignitaries and consular ships as it was strictly forbidden for any member worlds or visitors to mesh-in to the capital system with ships of war. The rules were always respected because the reprisals from the main battlefleet for such a faux pas would be swift and brutal. The ConFed's main fleet was vast, but it also had to cover a lot of space, and now they'd tied up one of their battlegroups as an occupational force in the Eshquaria System.
While the others babbled on, he tried to put himself into the mind—so to speak—of an insane AI that was trying to rule an empire without anybody seeing who it was behind the curtain. The Machine needed people to respect and fear the Adjudicators, who were now apparently its puppets, as well as the ConFed's military. A sneak attack on an unsuspecting power wasn't enough. It had to crush not only their legend but the hope of the people who thought that the Empire might rise again, to let the death of Eshquaria needed to serve as an object lesson for those who wouldn't bow to the ConFed.
"Holy shit…I know where they're going," Jason said, speaking mostly to himself.
"Would you care to share with the rest of us, Captain?" Mok asked.
13
"Miressa Prime?" Crusher laughed. "You still haven't sobered up, huh?"
"Let's hear him out," Kage said, looking at Jason intently.
"We're looking at this from a strategic standpoint," Jason said. "To understand what the motivation is here, we need to understand what it is the Machine needs."
"Holy shit, get to the point!" Crusher moaned.
"It needs legitimacy, and it needs to solidify the hold it has on the ConFed council. It also needs to make sure the other major players in this quadrant don't get smart and join forces…it needs a display of strength the others won't soon forget," he pushed ahead, flipping Crusher off without looking over.
"What could be more dramatic than forty Eshquarian warships appearing in the ConFed's capital system, the remnants of a mighty superpower, hell bent on revenge? The Miressa Home Defense Force rushes out to meet them, and the whole battle is recorded and broadcast throughout the quadrant as the last gasp of the Empire blows out."
"That's…entirely plausible," Kage said. "The Home Defense Force is an ancient, ceremonial fleet that does more flybys than actual combat drills. The Eshquarian fleet shows up, fires hundreds of ship-to-ship missiles at the defenders, and the older ships easily defeat them because of the inhibitor commands will cause them to fly right into the point defense fire."
"Then the HDF fires its salvo, and the Eshquarian war machine goes down in flames," Mok said. "Everyone knows that the Empire built and fielded the best weapons in the quadrant, so when the ConFed's ceremonial fleet wipes them out easily—"
"It will take the fight out of a lot of independent systems thinking they can resist," Jason finished. "Oh, damn!"
"The crews," Mok finished for him, nodding gravely. "They're there to make sure the forensic after-action teams find the appropriate amount of Eshquarian bio-matter and any DNA they find will be able to be traced back to real crewmembers."
"And it's all being done with expendable contractors that will likely be among the dead when it's all said and done, no witnesses," Crusher said. "You can't help but be impressed. That's a huge, showy display of power that would kill any real dissent happening in the Council."
"This is just a theory so far, right?" Twingo spoke up. "We have no way of knowing if the captain is right or not."
"We can hope the sled's tracker checks in again when the fleet drops from slip-space at their last staging point," Jason said. "Other than that, yeah…this is just a best guess."
"As far as guesses go, it's a damn solid one," Mok said.
"Yeah," Kage said, narrowing his eyes again. "Nice deductive reasoning, Captain."
"Nice job not being a sarcastic douche about it." Jason tossed him a mocking salute. "Mok, we're going to transmit everything we have here to you…we're heading back your way so I'd suggest we meet up again and compare notes then."
"Agreed," Mok said. "For the sake of the lives involved, let's hope you're wrong."
"Let's hope," Jason said.
Scleesz was nearly in a full panic as he struggled to maintain a calm exterior, paranoid that he was always under observation by his omniscient boss. The Machine had managed to infiltrate every security system on Miressa Prime and had eyes everywhere, on everyone.
The Councilman sat in the reception area where visitors would wait until they were received by the Machine's new avatar. It was an obvious holographic projection, meant to look like the person in the office was talking to someone over a Nexus hyperlink or a high-bandwidth slip-com channel. The species that the Machine had picked to shape his new likeness from