Read Online Accord of Mars (Accord Series Book 2) by Kevin McLaughlin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Kevin McLaughlin
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with her for a while. If we all survived this mess, I was going to owe him an apology. I smiled ruefully. It wasn’t every day that I was so completely wrong about someone.
“You’ve screwed this one up by the numbers, haven’t you?” Flynn asked me.
“What?” I was startled. Her question had tracked entirely too close to what I’d been thinking about, and I wasn’t sure what she was referring to at first.
She pointed at the tablet she held. “This data says we’re fucked. Admiral.” She added the last word as an afterthought. But at least she had added it.
“We were pretty sure that we had more time. Something has changed. Some factor we weren’t considering before.” Personally, I thought they’d simply managed to get the experimental cold fusion reactors running much more quickly than anyone had estimated. “But why doesn’t matter. What we should be looking at is what to do with the situation.”
“What we can bring to defend against an attack?” she asked.
“Yes. Worst case - suppose they launch their ships right now. What have we got?” I knew the numbers by heart. I’d been over them a few times in my head already. But it never hurt to get a second person working the problem.
She studied the tablet a few moments. “We have no assets at Mars except my Hawk. Everything else is at the R&D station.”
“Which is only a few hours away. We can bring the ships here long before anything arrives from Earth,” I said.
“The Defender and Excalibur are under refit in the R&D station, and the Constellation is at Mars Station for refit,” she said, ticking off her fingers as she named them off. “They can be ready in a few weeks. But I don’t think we have that long.”
“Which leaves the Hermes,” she said. “And the rest of the Hawks.”
“Yes,” I said, smiling.
“I don’t know why you’re grinning. If they launch tomorrow, we have one ship. Against at least six.”
I noted that she wasn’t underestimating the size of the enemy fleet. They’d let us know there were six ships by buying the six astrogation packages from Stein Industries. That didn’t mean they only had six ships. Rather, it implied they wanted us to think they had six ships. They might have only two, if they were trying to make their fleet seem bigger than it really was. They might have a dozen.
My line of thinking was veering toward the higher end of the scale. They’d attacked Mars Station and tried to kill Thomas when he went to Earth. They were coming at us soon, which meant they felt confident they had enough ships to do the job. Enough to take out the three ships they knew I had, plus whatever else I’d been able to cobble together.
“I’m smiling because you are right. You are dead on target,” I said. “In terms of raw ships, we’re grossly outnumbered. I took a risk when I threw all our production effort into the Hermes instead of concentrating on the other ships first.”
I punched some keys on the desk, and a display lit up. “Look at the graph.”
It showed our production rate - how many combat ready ships Mars could have ready versus how many Earth could prepare, over time. I’d built this graph right after we’d returned home to Mars, when I was still trying to figure out how we were going to keep this fledgling democracy alive.
There was an immediate spike on the Mars side of the graph: three ships, the three we already had, being repaired. And we’d done quick fixes on all three, because we knew some of the pirate vessels had escaped. We had to be ready in case they struck again.
Earth’s line showed no growth at all for three months. Then the line shot upward. A year in, and Earth had a theoretical production of three dozen ships. After two years, they could have as many as three score. In contrast, Mars might have been able to produce a dozen ships in the same time.
“We were always outmatched. There are about eight billion people living on Earth. They can afford to burn more
“You’ve screwed this one up by the numbers, haven’t you?” Flynn asked me.
“What?” I was startled. Her question had tracked entirely too close to what I’d been thinking about, and I wasn’t sure what she was referring to at first.
She pointed at the tablet she held. “This data says we’re fucked. Admiral.” She added the last word as an afterthought. But at least she had added it.
“We were pretty sure that we had more time. Something has changed. Some factor we weren’t considering before.” Personally, I thought they’d simply managed to get the experimental cold fusion reactors running much more quickly than anyone had estimated. “But why doesn’t matter. What we should be looking at is what to do with the situation.”
“What we can bring to defend against an attack?” she asked.
“Yes. Worst case - suppose they launch their ships right now. What have we got?” I knew the numbers by heart. I’d been over them a few times in my head already. But it never hurt to get a second person working the problem.
She studied the tablet a few moments. “We have no assets at Mars except my Hawk. Everything else is at the R&D station.”
“Which is only a few hours away. We can bring the ships here long before anything arrives from Earth,” I said.
“The Defender and Excalibur are under refit in the R&D station, and the Constellation is at Mars Station for refit,” she said, ticking off her fingers as she named them off. “They can be ready in a few weeks. But I don’t think we have that long.”
“Which leaves the Hermes,” she said. “And the rest of the Hawks.”
“Yes,” I said, smiling.
“I don’t know why you’re grinning. If they launch tomorrow, we have one ship. Against at least six.”
I noted that she wasn’t underestimating the size of the enemy fleet. They’d let us know there were six ships by buying the six astrogation packages from Stein Industries. That didn’t mean they only had six ships. Rather, it implied they wanted us to think they had six ships. They might have only two, if they were trying to make their fleet seem bigger than it really was. They might have a dozen.
My line of thinking was veering toward the higher end of the scale. They’d attacked Mars Station and tried to kill Thomas when he went to Earth. They were coming at us soon, which meant they felt confident they had enough ships to do the job. Enough to take out the three ships they knew I had, plus whatever else I’d been able to cobble together.
“I’m smiling because you are right. You are dead on target,” I said. “In terms of raw ships, we’re grossly outnumbered. I took a risk when I threw all our production effort into the Hermes instead of concentrating on the other ships first.”
I punched some keys on the desk, and a display lit up. “Look at the graph.”
It showed our production rate - how many combat ready ships Mars could have ready versus how many Earth could prepare, over time. I’d built this graph right after we’d returned home to Mars, when I was still trying to figure out how we were going to keep this fledgling democracy alive.
There was an immediate spike on the Mars side of the graph: three ships, the three we already had, being repaired. And we’d done quick fixes on all three, because we knew some of the pirate vessels had escaped. We had to be ready in case they struck again.
Earth’s line showed no growth at all for three months. Then the line shot upward. A year in, and Earth had a theoretical production of three dozen ships. After two years, they could have as many as three score. In contrast, Mars might have been able to produce a dozen ships in the same time.
“We were always outmatched. There are about eight billion people living on Earth. They can afford to burn more
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