Minutegirls Read online

  Minutegirls

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter about George Phillies

  Chapter Samples from “The One World ”

  Introduction

  Minutegirls

  By George Phillies

  Copyright © 2017 by George Phillies

  Discover other books by George Phillies at Smashwords.com

  Second Smashwords Edition

  Cover art by Cedar Sanderson

  All Rights Reserved

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  Chapter 1

  "Article 1. This document governs the cessation of hostilities between the Federal European Union, as represented by its Foreign Minister, and the United States of America, as represented by delegates of its Popular Army. Hereinafter, this document is referred to as 'The Azores Convention'. The Azores Convention is agreed to be equally valid in its English, French, and German versions. The signatories acknowledge that they have not reached an understanding as to whether the cessation of hostilities described herein is temporary or permanent in nature.

  "Article 2. It is agreed that the cessation of hostilities, whichever its nature, will take place on the eleventh minute of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of this year 2054, Gregorian calendar…

  "Article 27. The Signatories agree to specify that American associates of the Federal European Union, including all officials of the former American government and all officers and non-commissioned officers of the former American government's Armed Forces, who did not adhere to the Popular Army, as well as their relatives who did not adhere to the Popular Army, and their movable property, shall without exception be transferred to the territory of the Federal European Union or other agreeable place, at the expense of the Federal European Union, without hindrance by the Popular Army, and that they shall there enjoy pensions, appropriate to their ranks and offices, to be paid by the Federal European Union.

  Treaty of Termination of Hostilities between

  The United States of America and

  The Federal European Union

  ...November 11, 2054

  ARMOURED CRUISER Isandhlwana

  CLARKSBURG WARP POINT

  ALPHA CENTAURI

  April 19, 2174, 3:17 AM Flotilla Nominal Time (FNT)

  The brilliant brass glissando of the Soviet National Anthem rose triumphantly through Pyotr Eustasovitch Kalinin’s bedroom. Every lamp came to maximum brightness. “Bozhe moi!” was his cursory grumble. The tune was utterly out of date, but it still brought him immediately awake, just as it had a century and a half ago, when he’d been a cabin boy in the Far East Russian Republic’s doomed navy. He threw himself out of bed. The brass stopped, replaced instantly with the sharp four-note trumpet of ‘Beat to Quarters!”

  “Fleet General Quarters!” called the annunciator. “Fleet General Quarters! This is an actual event. I say again, this is an actual event!”

  He peeled off his pajamas, all the while staring at the bedroom’s video display. A roil of lines represented gravitic stresses around the warp point. Someone was doing a preliminary scan, preparatory to coming through a warp point they’d never charted. Isandhlwana’s crew would be bringing their ship to battle stations, Senior Captain Allison Wolf would need to get her ship and squadron in hand, and very definitely none of them needed a flag officer staring over their shoulders. He should not arrive on the Command Deck in less than five or ten minutes.

  “Servots,” Kalinin said, “Full shower, then dress uniform.” He stepped into the suite’s master bath, let water and soap and washcloths and towels sweep around him. Four minutes later, his autobutler had combed his hair, trimmed his nails, and dressed him, down to carefully draping his dark green and bronze swallow-tail coat and the copper-bronze stole that marked him a Grand Commodore of the States of Lincoln Self-Defense Fleets.

  He paused to look in the bedroom’s full-length mirrors. Every thread was in proper place, from his coat’s high-swept collar to perfectly polished shoes. Captain Wolfe set her ship’s etiquette for personal weapons; he very much did not regret that his dress sword would stay in its cabinet. The video display continued to show the warp point. Someone was indeed preparing to come through, and far more rapidly than he would have thought possible.

  “Butler?” Kalinin addressed his suite’s fractional AI. “Inquire of Captain Soames if he is ready, and if so if he would join me in the Flag Officers’ Sitting Room?” Senior Vice Captain Gerald Jubilation Soames was the liaison from the American Solar Navy, here to observe and give an opinion if asked. Kalinin walked briskly through his suite’s Great Room, the lushly carpeted floor absorbing the sound of his footsteps. A gesture swept open the cabin airlock doors.

  Soames, a black ghost against white walls in the black and gold-trimmed uniform of the American Solar Navy, stood erect next to the marble fireplace.

  “Commodore,” he said, nodding politely.

  “Captain,” Kalinin answered, giving a similar nod to an officer of another service. “Am I being slow, or are they warming up to pass the warp point rather quickly?”

  “Quickly indeed, for mapping,” Soames answered. “Much slower than if they had a portolan.”

  “Could they have a partial map?” Kalinin asked himself. “But surely they would have been noticed when last they made the scan? We had detectors very soon after Pontefract’s theorem was confirmed, well before anyone had a working warp drive.” He shrugged. “We should be off to the Flight Deck.”

  * * * *

  The last of the massively armored doors protecting Isandhlwana’s commanding officers swished open. Kalinin strode through, Soames in his wake, nodding politely when the Door Guard loudly announced, “Good Morning, Grand Commodore Kalinin”. Kalinin was pleased to note that Isandhlwana’s crew kept with their duties, leaving Senior Captain Wolfe to face her superior.

  ”Good morning, Captain,” Kalinin said. “Good, if a bit early. What do we have?”

  Captain Allison Wolfe was a short, heavyset, dark-haired woman. She raised her eyebrows. “The Clarksburg Warp Point is being scanned. Fleet General Quarters has been set. Sir, Mogadishu and Second Kabul ramping up apace with us -- full power from their gates in two minutes. Institute Pond reports full power now. Second and Third Monitor Divisions need another six minutes. Reconnaissance frigates are at full stealth, full power in four minutes. Lincoln notified by message torpedo as per regulations; minimum return time is pushing an hour.”

  “Very good. We get to wait,” Kalinin said. “Carry on.” Kalinin took his seat on the rear command dais, and gestured Soames into the neighbor
ing position. Kalinin had once served in a wet-water Navy, that of the Republic of Far East Russia just before the Twelve Corner War, and preserved the command style of a professional navy of the early twenty-first century. He was not a martinet, but he had very clear ideas about how chains of command functioned. He would command the flotilla, leaving Wolfe to command her ship and squadron. His opposite number, Grand Commodore Ter-Minassian, was prone to watching small details of operations at lower levels. His questions almost always led to distinct improvements in how operations advanced. However, Wolfe was a career placeholder, fond of every word passing through the proper channels before it was acted upon. After a session with Ter-Minassian overlooking her activities, she tended to be more than a bit crabby, not to mention sensitive to her prerogatives of rank. Kalinin preferred to leave her feathers, as bedraggled as they were, unruffled.

  Kalinin was personally inclined to believe that any serious attack on Lincoln would involve fleets of starships traversing normal space under their faster-than-light rapidity drives. After all, Sol to Lincoln was four light years or six months' cruise time. Only straight-line naked eye navigation would be needed. To reach Lincoln via warp travel would require crossing unimaginable megaparsecs outwards, reversing course in a galaxy distant from the Milky Way, and finding precisely the right combination of warp transitions to return to Alpha Centauri rather than Andromeda. It would also involve traversing large numbers of warp gates without blowing up in the process, a task admittedly far more likely to be accomplished by the probable Federal European Union attackers than by a Lincoln warship.

  Grand Commodore Ter-Minassian maintained that the fleet should be deployed at Lincoln in low orbit, behind the planetary ether screens, where maintenance and retrofit operations would be greatly simplified. He also wanted the Reserve Fleets laid up in ordinary there. His presentations to the Commander-in-Chief dwelt on the advantages of deploying modern ships whose systems were mostly in working order. The States of Lincoln Joint Senates War Committee dwelt instead on defending the choke regions, and decreed that the SLPSDF would deploy on the warp points, ready for immediate action with such ship systems as happened to be functional. Kalinin allowed that the Commander-in-Chief had shown no public sympathy to rumored private complaints, from several Senators, that Ter-Minassian’s real interest was not in improved fleet maintenance but in improving his access to the agreeable young women of Lincoln. That criticism of Ter-Minassian seemed unreasonable. The Grand Commodore spent most of his time on Lincoln piloting a deskcomp. Besides, even ignoring the three stewards allotted each flag officer, it could hardly be claimed that there were no women among the crews of Isandhlwana and her sister ships.

  Alarms shrilled. A bell rang, more and more rapidly. The primary holographic display sprang to life. Geodetic scanners revealed a roiling distortion of the metric all across the warp point. Ship serviles, the nonlinear descendants of twenty-first century artificial intelligences, superposed identifications on the geodetic distortions.

  The ship’s Gravitics Officer made passes over her instrument panel. Kalinin struggled for a half-second before pulling her name to mind. Swenson. Astrid Swenson. Her voice came clipped and fast. "Breakout! Breakout! Multiple breakouts in warp gate main sector, range 310,000 leagues. Breakout patterns correlate as European Union and unknown warpships."

  Wolfe spoke into her own mike. "Speak at me, Electronics. What do we have?" A secondary screen came to life. The display identified the view: Electronic Warfare Deck --- CPO-13 Jesus Jiao MacPherson, On Duty.

  "Electronics. MacPherson here. I have multiple radar and lidar sources at each breakout point. I show 14 ships. Ten match EU patterns. Database is still trying to match others. Anaximander datafeed is down. They lit up their screens in a real hurry."

  Kalinin gave himself a few seconds to think. Anaximander was a Hellenic-class reconnaissance frigate, posted atop the warp point for fast reads on warpship breakouts. Ideally, Anaximander would have had all screens lit up at all times. Budgetary realities meant that Anaximander only lit screens when necessary.

  "Mac, what were their feeds showing before screen ignition killed transmission?" Wolfe asked.

  "No signal, sir," the EW Chief answered. "They had emergency transceiver maintenance -- something broke. Not the best possible time, not on station, but that's budget. Polystatic illumination should be coming up...here we go."

  Kalinin told himself that the Lincoln Fleet was the best in the American Stellar Republic. Postponed maintenance reflected budgetary stringency. You ran systems until they failed, then fixed them when you had a chance. Polystatic scanners frustrated homing attacks. Radar buoys emitting with matched frequencies and phases illuminated the warp point. Radar scattering and an exact knowledge of each buoy's location gave sharp images of the visitors, without revealing where the defense flotilla or its buoys were located.

  "What are the EU ships?" Wolfe asked.

  And what were the unknowns, Kalinin wondered ? Database 'still trying to match', indeed. They must be real unknowns. He recalled a clever superior who had inserted the radar image of an unexpected target into one SLPSDF exercise. In under two seconds, the database servile had correctly identified "Friendly: Frigate, Sail; Armament: Solid Shot Cannon; Maneuverability: nil; Registry: United States Navy Surface Warship Constitution". A match taking many seconds to generate would be all fuzzy logic inference with no resemblance to real data.

  "Sir," MacPherson answered, "I read three battleships---likely DeGaulle class, four large cruisers---likely Firenze class, three picket vessels---likely Prince Edward or Khrushchev class. Unknowns are three picket vessels, one indeterminate large ship. Indeterminate large ship very active on multiple radar and lidar bands."

  Mjojo considered the odds. DeGaulle class battleships ran around 130,000 tons, while Firenze were closer to 30,000. The picket craft were harder to resolve; eight to ten thousand tons was believed correct for a Prince Edward. The EU flotilla faced three Ancestral-Victory-Class armoured cruisers -- Isandhlwana, Second Kabul, and Mogadishu -- each of 1.3 million tons, nine Lake-Class Monitors -- Institute Pond being the lightest at 150,000 tons, and three 40,000-ton Old Republic reconnaissance frigates, plus the Anaximander whose survival as a solid body beyond the next few seconds was uncertain. Even including the unknowns, those were significant but superable odds for the American forces.

  "Anaximander firing up her combat lidars. Anaximander going active with radar and lidar," continued MacPherson. "Anaximander arming torpedoes."

  "Targets going to high-power targeting radar," MacPherson announced. "I count five sources -- all on the unknowns -- in the 20,000 BevaSteinmetz bands. Scans from unknown targets do not, repeat not, match EU profiles. Neutrino profiles of unknowns do not match EU fusactor profiles."

  "What are they targeting?" Wolfe asked. Kalinin allowed that she must be acutely displeased to have this intrusion perturb her regular schedule. One late evening, she and Kalinin had stood the dark watch. She had explained to Kalinin in no uncertain terms what she thought of her future. She planned to serve out a few more terms on station before she retired to the Inactive Reserve. Life extension or not, multiple half-year cycles in the isolation of a warp point overwatch flotilla were taking important sections out of her life. In all the decades she had served, there had never been the least indication that anyone was on the other side of any warp point, let alone the least suggestion that her squadron would ever perform a useful function.

  Could her squadron do something useful? Wolfe had serious reservations. However, the States of Lincoln paid most generously for her nominal services, so the certain knowledge that automation performed critical maintenance tasks, leaving her three dozen crew members to focus on simulation training and private hobbies, gave her confidence that her ship would perform vaguely as designed. Kalinin had been disappointed but not surprised by her attitude towards the SLPSDF. After all, Alpha Centauri's warp points had been picketed for the last eighty years. In all that time, nothing had
appeared through any of them. Robotic probes sent through the points reported that the systems on the far side were deserted. Permanent observatories beyond the points might provide early warning of visitors, but the funds to pay for those observatories were nowhere to be found. Immortality possibly let people occupy the same position until they fossilized and were sold to a museum. Wolfe had taken full advantage of the possibilities.

  Was there something else Wolfe should be doing, Kalinin asked himself? A perfectionist like Grand Commodore Ter-Minassian spent his time running elaborate checks on the Automatic Maintenance System, alternating with gaming scenarios in which hostile starships engaged Isandhlwana and her flotilla. For those with Wolfe’s less demanding personal standards, reading the logs to determine which systems were least badly neglected was entirely adequate. Kalinin had been pleased to note that some of her more junior officers were taking corrective action on maintenance. After all, given enough raw materials, an Armoured Cruiser could eventually fabricate a copy of itself, including the maintenance shops, so there was no reason not to keep the automated maintenance shops in operation 24/7.

  "High resolution images from observation buoy Clinton-seven," reported Swenson. "Definitely three EU deGaulle class battleships, four Firenze class cruisers, three Prince Edward Class Frigates with Agile-Two refits. Four unknown ships, 3 escorts designation Chimera, one larger designation Corvus. Neutrino emissions of unknowns match boron-cycle fusactors."

  MacPherson chimed in. "Ma'am, there is no record of EU forces using boron cycle. This is a first."

  "Radio transmission from Anaximander," Swenson reported. "Anaximander challenging unknowns. Transmission on overhead..."

  "...United States Ship Anaximander. This is the United States Ship Anaximander hailing warpships newly arrived in the Clarksburg Warp Point. This planetary system is fully under the jurisdiction of the United States of America. In the name of the United States of America and the Azores Convention, I order you to identify yourself in full. Unless you are in distress, I order you to withdraw along the path from which you entered the system. I say again, under the Azores Convention I order you to identify yourselves and withdraw from this system. Comply immediately, or I shall be obliged under the Azores Convention to open fire. This is the United States Ship Anaximander..."