Homeworld: A Military Science Fiction Novel by Eric S. Brown, Tony Faville

retreating into Null Space.
    It grated on him that the Republic battle group had managed to destroy five of his Battle Fortresses and one of the Super Dreadnaughts under his command, but the real damage had been inflicted upon his transports.
    The Republic’s ships last, desperate attack had cost him a full quarter of his fighter carriers and ground troop transports. Given the enormous amount of financing and planning that had gone into creating this fleet, he was still certain he retained enough combat effectiveness to accomplish the Coalition’s desired goal, but his margin of error had been drastically reduced.
    Even then, he knew he couldn’t afford a prolonged ground battle on Earth. The strike there, once the ships defending the home world had been swept aside, needed to be a fast and decisive one. If he had to call for reinforcement, it would allow the Earth Republic Fleet the time they so desperately needed to recall the remnants of their fleet scattered through what once was their territory.
    Watkins knew that the Earth Republic ships’ run on his transports had been their primary objective in confronting him at Mars at all. Only a fool would have thought they had any real chance of stopping his armada here. In retrospect, he should have left them with a small battle group to defend them at their last Null Point but he had been overconfident in the abilities of the capital ships of his armada.
    It was also perhaps his tactical error in assuming that the crews of the Earth Republic Fleet would not willingly go to their deaths, by ramming ships of his fleet, to defend their fellow citizens and give their capitol a better chance at resisting him. He had of course heard of such desperate measures taken before in this campaign but they had been few and far between.
    In the future, he would have to ensure that Captain Burman kept a reserve of the one man fighters close in to the most important of his ships in order to destroy any Republic vessel from succeeding in such a suicidal tactic in the future.
    The Earth Republic Fleet had sacrificed some of their ships in order to weaken the amount of his ground forces he could bring to bear by dropping them onto Earth’s surface and in an attempt to allow for the possibility of losing even more ground forces in the battle he was about to win on the surface of Mars as well. With each world he’d taken en route to Earth, he had been forced to leave behind a garrison of troops in order to keep the former citizens of the Earth Republic from revolting. The potential of the losses he could suffer by launching a ground war on the surface of Mars irritated him. If capturing it relatively whole and undamaged would not be such a prize, and better his opportunity for appointment to the Executive Board of the Coalition, he would have simply unleashed a Kinetic Impact Assault and have been done with it.
    So the ground forces would drop as soon as Captain Burman finished assessing the damage to the armada and softened hardened targets with a few Kinetic Impacts. His goal on Mars was simple and twofold: disable the planet’s ability to launch anything else against him, and force a surrender of its provincial government as quickly as possible. He hoped the thought of his men filling the streets of Mars with the blood of innocent civilians would go a long way to a fast surrender. After all, the tactic had proved remarkably successful in the past.
    Admiral Watkins left the details of the attack and occupation to Captain Burman with a dismissive flick of his black gloved hand as the Captain approached him.
    “Just do what needs done and leave me be,” he ordered, leaving the Harrington’s bridge.
    Mars was quite a prize, but it was not Earth and he needed victory at Earth.
    The entire success or failure of his mission rested upon taking the Coalition’s original home world. As long as Earth stood, so did the Republic, and with Earth Republic Command coordinating and rallying the other