by Chris Hechtl
“I'll alert the ships in the fleet train to be ready to resupply you,” the admiral replied. He hated trying to converse over that distance. Even using a tachyon transceiver was a pain in the ass. “Yris'ka'th out.” He turned to the Naga captain. “Move us out, Captain.”
“We're ready to get underway, Admiral. All post jump chores have been finished; all ships are in synch. Moving out now.”
---<>---<>---
They met up with Hecate thirty-nine hours later. As the destroyers came alongside the smaller ship, the frigate's communications lashed out to their receivers to download her carefully gathered intelligence.
The frigate's download and initial synopses grimly confirmed their fears. Four destroyers was stiff opposition. It also gave them an idea of the conditions in Protodon and on the planet. Once Amadeus had digested the report, he held a conference with the captains and senior officers to discuss it and its implications.
“It is going to be tight, odds in their favor, Admiral,” Captain Gruber stated.
“We're navy. They aren't,” Lieutenant Commander Opal, captain of the Cutlass stated diffidently. She was new to her rank and command. She also seemed to resent that the rear admiral had chosen Yris'ka'th as his flagship over her larger ship. True, her ship did have some room to her, but Amadeus hated the ship's basic design. Her midship’s boatbay arrangement made her horribly vulnerable to being split in half.
Amadeus had originally wanted Xavier, but Captain Sampson's inexperience in the hot seat had bothered him. He'd settled on Yris'ka'th because Captain Ssri'allth had the most experience and had a string of good to excellent sims to his record. His sims while in the hot seat of Hecate against Captain Samuels and Maine had been impressive. He'd lost of course. No frigate could handle a battle cruiser, but he'd pulled off several nasty tricks and maneuvers. Enough to earn respect from the admiral and grudging respect from Captain Samuels. She'd had to work to win each battle, and she knew it. Besides, it was his decision; Njet would have to lump it the chimp thought.
“Let's not get too overconfident here. They may not have our skills or all of our hardware, but they have been at this longer than we have,” Lieutenant Commander Waters stated. He pecked his right index finger into the table top. “I know we're good but we've got a long ways to go and we've still got some rough edges. So we need to proceed with caution.” He shot a look at the admiral.
The neochimp frowned. He had to balance being gung ho with an awareness of the risk ratios involved.
Captain Waters was right in some ways but not all. It was a bit ironic to have a cautious captain in charge of an Antelope class destroyer like Viper. Back in his day they'd gone to hard chargers—hard chargers like himself. That made him snort mentally at himself. He realized he'd wool gathered a bit too long. “We can't win if we don't risk. We'll have the advantage in the number of hulls and firepower. They'll have the home field advantage. We'll work on at least two simulations using the new intel before we jump.”
“Just two, sir?” Captain Waters asked with a slight frown.
“Two is all we need I believe,” the Admiral said, looking at him expressionlessly.
The captain nodded as he looked around the room. Despite his warning he could see and read the other officers in the room. They were eager. Eager to finally be on the offensive. “We'll make it work, sir.”
“Yes, we will.”
---<>---<>---
“They had nothing for the ground?” “Major” Gustav asked, shaking his head.
“No. The encrypted chatter is all we have. And we don't have the time or processing ability to decrypt it,” Marshall stated.
“Great,” the marine drawled, looking the tablet in his hands over. “Can you at least give me a location on where the transmissions on the ground were coming from? We're working without dated intel to begin with. Something would be nice,” he said sarcastically.
“I can look into that. The majority of the transmissions came from the area near the listed spaceport and capital city location.”
“Ah.”
“It is logical to assume that the enemy's HQ is located there. The other locations are most likely detachments out taking control of the planet.”
“I hate assumptions,” Gustav murmured as he stared at the map. Protodon was a forest world but one cooling since its terraforming had been aborted. It wasn't quite in the ice age that Kathy's World was in, but it was bad enough. Fighting in the forests and hills was going to be tricky.
“They didn't do a map of the planet I suppose,” he said, looking up. “Too far. We'll have to wait for when we're in orbit to do that I believe.” Which meant they would have precious little time to process it properly before they had to move in. He hated being rushed too.
“Yes, sir.”
“Great. Can you set up a program to compare the terrain from our files with what we see when we get there? Run it on my system if you have to? An overlay? We'll need to see where the old towns were, mines, that sort of thing. Anywhere the enemy is hiding out.”
“I can look into that, sir,” Marshall replied.
“Good. It's something at least,” the major drawled setting the tablet down. “Training is going well. Or at least as well as expected.” Lieutenant Tricia Ebensher had her hands full there.
“Yes, sir. Will there be anything else? I need to cut the connection. Admiral White is getting ready to move the force out soon.”
“Go. Thanks Ensign,” the major stated, waving a hand. The AI cut the connection to the ship.
---<>---<>---
Once Hecate was refueled and rearmed Admiral White ordered her to join his force instead of returning to Antigua with the news as had been in his original orders. “We can use all the help we can get.”
Captain Gruber nodded. He couldn't help but smile in anticipation. “A pleasure to help kick some pirate ass, sir,” Captain Gruber stated, eyes gleaming.
“Good. See you in Protodon. Good hunting, Captain.”
“To all of us, sir,” the captain said with a nod as the admiral cut the connection.
“You know you're going to catch a little flack over the change of orders right, sir?” Marshall asked when the call concluded.
The admiral shrugged and turned to where the AI avatar was projecting himself on his desk. “I doubt it. I'm pretty sure John knew I'd pull something like this. He didn't say I couldn't, so I'm exercising the right of any commanding officer in the field to take forces and use them. He'll see it my way.”
“If you say so, sir.”
“And I do. So let's break for lunch and then get back to it. I want Hecate finished and ready to jump by the end of shift. That goes for the rest of the force.” He had been about to say squadron. He shook his head mentally at the thought. As if! “I want us out of here no later than tomorrow morning.”
“That doesn't give us a lot of time to go over the download, sir,” the AI cautioned. “I am still processing the signal intelligence. The marines will need it.”
“Then you'd best be about it, hadn't you? We'll go over the download further while in flight.” Amadeus was fairly certain the AI wouldn't be able to break the encryption. At least not totally, there was too much of a likelihood of something being missed in the transmission. If it was caught midstream or something occluded the transmission or if Hecate's ears had missed a couple bits, it would be a waste of time to try to delve deeper into it at the moment. Besides, the ground could keep for the moment. He had enough to worry about just securing the orbitals.
“Aye, sir. But we won't be able to coordinate or simulate with the other ships in hyper, sir,” the AI warned.
“They'll do fine. They'll take their lead from us.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
---<>---<>---
Ensign Lovejoy winced when a ball thumped, bounced, and then was caught. The occasional thump bounce was annoying but typical. He and Jamal were off duty so of course they had nothing to do. The regular card game had been canceled. He was tired
of cards anyway.
He looked over the star system and tisked tisked. Protodon was a pretty planet, but he was more interested in the star system itself, which was a bugger. The place had been pretty thoroughly picked over. Apparently a century or so before the Xeno war, the locals had sold off the mining rights to their asteroid belt to a couple mega-corporations to get themselves out of debt. The corporations had sent in mining ships that had picked the belt of anything of value. There were still some scattered rocks; they hadn't taken everything, but close enough. What was left wasn't worth the fuel to pick up. Not when all you got was a meter-sized rock.
That meant everything would have to be shipped in. Shipping was expensive. They had a couple replicators, and of course a couple food replicators on each ship, but just about everything would have to be shipped in from Antigua. That sucked.
He frowned thoughtfully as he looked the ships over. What were they going to do with all the ships? All the cargo? He frowned thoughtfully playing with the zoom on the screen. He had an idea for a new desktop image but couldn't … his distracted thoughts wandered even further afield. What would the admiral do? Admiral Irons, not the new guy … he frowned thoughtfully. They needed shipping to keep the fleet supplied. But they didn't have anywhere to store it, right? So … what would Admiral Irons do?
He frowned thoughtfully and then the simple idea came to him. It was easy; he remembered the stories of the fighters and craft the engineers had built on Maine on their way to Antigua. Why, Irons would build a damn station, right? They didn't need anything special, just a basic platform. Like that gas refinery they had in storage. Something simple they could store the cargo on, tie it all together into bundles … could they use empty crates? He frowned thoughtfully and then nodded. Yeah, he could do that. He and a couple of his pals could look into it as a project. Something fun, something to do other than play cards and watch TV—he winced when Jamal bounced his ball against the bulkhead again—or drive your roommates nuts.
His eyes cut back to the freighters again. He scratched his head and then zoomed out. He didn't like it. He wanted a good shot of the warships, but they were out too far for the camera feed he had hacked. No, wait … he zoomed into Cutlass and then scowled. She looked stupid with all those gunships on her. Not like a proper warship … weren't they supposed to stay with the fleet train anyway?
“Hey watcha looking at?” Jamal asked, rising off his bunk to stretch.
“Just thinking …”
“About?”
“The gunships …”
---<>---<>---
“Are you going to break the ansible out to report in we're ready to attack, sir?” Marshall asked after the admiral's lunch. He was still processing the data dump. Fortunately, there wasn't a lot of movement, but there was a lot of message traffic. Tagging them by origin and destination had been handled by Hecate's bored communication's rating. But decrypting their transmissions and cleaning them up was a problem. The AI had some of the captured decryption keys but apparently they didn't fit right, or they were bogus. Getting that sorted out was an ongoing issue.
He also lacked the processors to crack the decryption the hard way and the necessary skill set to handle the job.
“No,” the admiral said. “I don't want to bollix it up. We'll report our success once we've had time to set up in Protodon.” He knew a major kick to morale was his projection of confidence in them and their ability to handle the upcoming mission. He didn't want to sound too overconfident though.
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Are the ships prepping?”
“Yes, sir. Per your plan we are breaking out the weapon drones, missile pods, and platforms now and attaching them to the hulls of the warships.”
“Good.”
“Are you still considering keeping the gunships back with the fleet train, sir?”
“Yes. But I'll make the final decision in Protodon space.”
“Then, if I may pass on a suggestion,” the AI paused a beat. The admiral nodded. “Thank you, sir. Ensign Lovejoy suggested the gunships be passed over to the freighters now. They could then be detached by them in Protodon and remain with the fleet train giving the other warships the flexibility of moving in right away if you so desired.”
“Interesting,” the admiral murmured, rubbing his jaw. “Lovejoy is …”
“Fresh from his midshipman's cruise and is an engineering ensign, sir, on board. He served briefly on a tender as well as a gunship, sir.”
“Do we have a ship that can take them on? Without effecting their speed in hyper?” That was a concern. Strapping a ship or other device to the outside of a ship's hull could affect its hyperdrive slipstream. Or it could be ripped off the hull by the grav nodes if it was too close to one or more of them.
“I am checking that now, but processing the signal intelligence is eating up most of my processors and memory, sir,” the AI replied. “I can't run a simulation at this time.”
“Unless it involves the ships and message traffic between them, drop the priority of the signal traffic and work on that. Get Lovejoy involved as well. Consider it an extra homework assignment.”
“Yes, sir. Punishment?”
“No, but some people stick their necks out too readily—idle hands and all that. I want this done with time to implement it before my deadline. Understood?” the admiral said, brown eyes locking with virtual ones to show his intent was serious.
“Calculating …” the AI frowned. “Yes, sir,” he finally said with a nod. “It will be tight. I am passing the orders to the ensign. The tactical department is requesting another simulation.”
“And you have some extra processors now so I suppose everyone wants to use them,” the Admiral said with a shake of his head. “Check that first. Farm out some of the other projects to the other ships.”
“Yes, sir. That is an idea,” the AI said.
“Do I have to think of everything?” Amadeus demanded. Before the AI could remind him of his limits, he waved a dismissive hand. “Never mind. Just get to work.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
---<>---<>---
Jamal kept shooting Lovejoy the occasional sour look, but he ignored it. He was happy; he was in his element and damn proud of it. He loved space almost as much as he loved tinkering in engineering.
“Hey, be happy we've only got the four. Can you imagine what it would be like if we had say, twenty?”
“Oh shut up,” Jamal growled as he continued to tack his mounting bracket to the hull of the ship.
“I like it. You can't beat the view,” Lovejoy replied, looking around to the stars and fleet beyond.
“Quit rubbernecking and get back to work,” Jamal complained.
“Spoilsport. Hey, I was thinking about something else. Another project …,” he winced when Jamal's groan over the radio nearly shattered his ear drums. “Well! You don't have to be like that about it!”
---<>---<>---
When the fleet was ready, they formed up for the jump to Protodon. The 5.4 light year journey would take 2.5 weeks in the sixth octave of gamma band. The warships were in a flying wedge formation in the lead with the fleet train in the pocket behind them.
Missile pods, weapon drones, and surveillance gear was strapped to the hulls or hanging inside the boat bays of the destroyers, ready to be kicked out on command. They'd have to do it before an engagement Amadeus reminded himself. Right now the gear was blocking some of their firing arches and sensors.
“We're ready, sir. Ready and eager,” Marshall said, clearly echoing the crew's eagerness. Just about everyone was spoiling for this fight, Amadeus thought. He nodded in approval.
“Follow the plan. Kick the first defense drones out right after jump exit. The same for the recon drones. I'll want a cap patrol the moment the surrounding fold space is safe; let the other ships know to have their fighters on alert just before exit. If the enemy saw Hecate's departure, they could be waiting for us,” he stated.
“Aye aye, sir.”
“And I know I've got opening night jitters,” the admiral said with a wan smile. His large lips puckered then he turned to the captain. “Jump on your order, Captain,” he stated.
“Thank you for the honor, sir.”
“Hyperdrive is spooled up and ready. We are holding steady, sir.”
“Then by all means, jump,” the captain said, waving one of his small hands. “It's time to make history and take our revenge on those who have preyed on us for so long. No longer will we be the hunted. From now on, we are the hunters.”
The bridge crew clapped as the navigator and helmsman jumped the ship into hyperspace.
Chapter 4
Prinz Zir was a small Mirilax class freighter and her Horathian crew was dubious about their arrival in Nuevo Madrid. On the one hand, it was good for the spy ship to be back in home territory but a lot had changed. There was a healthy fear of being the messenger of bad news. And they'd gotten word that their drop on Epsilon Triangula had failed. That was not good for the careers of those involved.
They had been ordered to deliver the infected stasis pods to Antigua to destroy its population and eliminate any resistance in that star system. But when they had heard Admiral Irons had been on Epsilon Triangula busy restoring things and helping the population rebuild, it had been too juicy a target to pass up.
Apparently, that had been their problem; the bastard Irons had somehow taken the Xeno virus out. Prinz Zir had come away from the situation with the intelligence about Antigua Prime but hadn't stuck around to witness the Xeno virus go off. They had bummed around the sector picking up intelligence and then feeding it to raiders in Centennial before they'd headed in to Nuevo Madrid to refresh and pick up their next assignment.
Her captain, Commander Crenis, was ever aware that he was on thin ice when he was ordered to report to Rear Admiral Troy Frost, the naval station chief in the newly conquered star system. The blunt overweight man seemed seriously pissed about something; most likely the news the spy ship carried with them.