Free Plague Wars 06: Comes the Destroyer by David VanDyke Page A

be worse,” he grumbled.
    “Ford, you better belay that attitude. I can always arrange a nice dirtside assignment. Fleet liaison to the Antarctic territories, perhaps.”
    “Sorry, sir. Happy to be here, sir.” Ford straightened, and shut up.
    “So Scoggins, you will take charge of this mob. Your orders are in the system, along with a very high priority to requisition resources. Don’t abuse it. You will have spaces on Orion for now, and computers, comms…move your quarters to be close. Put in for whatever other specialist assistants you need, up to a dozen or so – researchers, admin, intel ratings, technicians.”
    “Yes, sir,” Scoggins responded with a wolfish grin.
    “So,” Absen said, standing up, “I’ll leave you to it. You have four weeks until your first report, where you will brief me and the staff on everything you have come up with.”

Chapter 12
    Now that Orion was a station and not a warship, Absen had a lot more freedom to rearrange its internal geometry. No longer would its structure need to withstand high G forces, nor hold thousands of nuclear bombs for propulsion, so he ordered one of the cargo bays converted into a huge ops-intel center sufficient to host over two hundred people as they worked. A large space for combined briefings was ringed by stations, which was in turn surrounded on the outside by a double dozen rooms configurable for almost anything. This first Red Team report would be its initial use.
    The Red Team members sat on a low stage below one of the two enormous main screens that faced each other across the central space. A podium stood off to the left side, Lieutenant Commander Scoggins behind it.
    Admiral Absen walked up onto the stage, waving for silence. The room, packed to capacity with personnel of all ranks and no rank, from every corner of Earth, quieted, to look expectantly at him.
    General Travis Tyler sat in the front row. As newly-appointed EarthFleet J4, Joint Chief of Logistics, the operational insights and decisions here would have a great effect on his efforts to establish the military’s industry in space. With Brigadier General Bill Marshall by his side, he’d already whipped the supply and production chain into shape, ensuring Earth’s enormous groundside effort got put to use effectively and efficiently.
    “Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of Blue Team.” Absen was looking out at the audience when he said this. “Meet Red Team.” He waved toward the nine people behind him.
    A murmur swept through the nearly two hundred on the floor below.
    “And Red Team, meet Blue Team. Before today, you may not have known of each other’s existence. This was deliberate. I wanted to keep the crossflow of information to a minimum, to avoid contaminating the brainstorming process with responses to each other, until now.”
    “Red Team is responsible for coming up with enemy courses of action, or COAs. Blue Team is responsible for coming up with responses and counters to those COAs. That’s why Blue Team is so much larger – you will feed Earth’s nations with your reports and conclusions so that science and industry will be harnessed to your goals, and not waste effort on duplication or unfocused preparation. Every COA will be ranked by likelihood, and every COA will have a response plan developed by Blue Team, and associated resources – technologies, weapons – assigned to it. Ladies and gentlemen,” Absen said heavily, “you have your hands on the tiller. Your conclusions will steer Earth’s entire production capacity. You must do your work with excellence, and you must not fail. If you fail, Earth dies.”
    With that declaration hanging heavily in the silence, Admiral Absen sat front and center of the nearest table, as expected of the most senior officer, and signaled Scoggins for the briefing to begin.
    She took a deep breath, gazing around at the expectant faces. “Good afternoon Admiral, ladies and gentlemen. I am Lieutenant Commander Melissa