by Chris Hechtl
“Such as?” Amadeus asked as he took his seat at the head of the table. All eyes turned to him. “Why don't you start us off,” he said.
“Okay,” Garfield drawled. His eye went to half-mast as his eyes narrowed. After a moment he nodded, and the projector built into the table came to life. The lights dimmed. A hologram was projected, this one of a missile. After a moment it came apart in an exploded view. “This is based on observation and some input from our own engineers. Most of which was drawn from them kicking and screaming I might add,” he said peevishly.
“Well, they are just a tad busy right now,” Kyle said, taking a sip of his own coffee.
“What gets me is, the observation that the Horathians are a blunt instrument. In this case, a lot of people had compared them to a blunt battle axe. Their weight and size were what was dangerous about them.”
“Interesting analogy,” Jojo murmured. She glanced at the admiral. He flicked his fingers as if to say let him continue. She nodded.
“They got their licks in because we were retreating and in doing so, covering our fleet train. We fought a defensive battle with one hand tied behind our back in other words,” the orange cat said, ears slowly rising. “If we hadn't been charging our hyperdrive and on the run, I honestly think we would have won the engagement or at the least beaten them off.”
“As long as we'd stayed outside their energy range,” Kyle added.
Garfield's golden eyes glanced at the OPS officer. He nodded. “That's my point. Our advantage is in missile combat. We've got far better missiles and defensive measures, not to mention tactics, and then they do.”
“And the missile?” Admiral White asked, indicating the diagram as it slowly rotated before them.
“That's what we were working on, why things went the way they did, and of course looking for strengths and weaknesses and what to do about them,” Garfield said. “From what we've learned so far I can safely say things won't happen like that again.”
“The question is, what they learned from us?” Alec stated. He looked at the admiral. “They have to have Fed doctrine in their databases, sir. They might be relying on canned software and substandard equipment, but they want to win as badly as we do.”
“So …,” Jojo glanced from the navigator to the tactical officer.
“So, let's look at their missiles. These are all home grown, and based on what we've seen before, they are evolving at a rapid rate,” the Neocat stated. “They are doing it methodically too; this is the best they can do with off-the-shelf Horathian tech at the time of their deployment,” he said.
“That's an assumption. They might have better missiles,” Admiral White murmured.
“Undoubtedly they do, but they will want to hoard those with the Home Fleet. Some are probably used as templates for their next generation of upgrades.”
The Neocat indicated the image. “Taking this apart, they've made micro-improvements and or leaps closer to our standards.”
“Not a pleasant thought,” Jojo said.
“No, it isn't. The incremental part I understand. They are slowly improving the systems as they manufacture it and learn from their use. Let's start at the business end,” the Neocat said, highlighting the warhead. “We've got a double contact warhead with a penetration assistant made up of a plasma lance. No graser or laser heads, at least not at the moment so they don't have much of a standoff range.”
“Which we can count our blessings for,” Jojo murmured.
“Exactly. But if any do get through, they are deadly. The first warhead is kicked forward and then goes off, breaching the shields if they aren't down.” The image of the missile changed to a simulation of the missile attacking a ship. “Then the secondary warhead, in this case the plasma breach, goes off as it gets close to the hull. It is intended to cut through the armor to allow the final warhead to bore in and detonate inside the enemy ship's hull.” The room was quiet as the simulation played out. “Its old school but with a nice trick with the plasma lance. They've also created a funnel out of one-shot force emitters for the last warhead. They funnel the explosion in the direction you want,” he said, showcasing the warhead going off.”
“Now,” he expanded the image to show the missile's exploded view again. “As we know, their PENAIDS suck—primitive, mostly decoys, jammers, and chaff pods. Their sensors are comparable to our own. Telemetry too, though they are reliant on a whisker laser to communicate with the mother ship instead of encrypted LAN. I believe it's to keep us from hacking their missiles,” he said with a feline smile.
“Most likely,” Alec snorted.
“With just our simulation and observations, this is where things get foggy. Our engineers believe the brains are primitive, very reliant on the mother ship's telemetry for control and coordination.”
Amadeus nodded as the stern of the missile was highlighted. “Based on observed speed, they are at roughly 80 percent our own for drive. They have fixed throttle settings … or may have more flexible options that they haven't shown us.”
“Okay …” Alec said dubiously.
“The warhead is about 50 percent as efficient as one of our own contact nukes. With the force emitters and plasma breacher, I'd bump those numbers up to 70 percent,” Garfield observed. “The missiles are the same size as our own for each class. So, they have comparable munitions numbers that we can calculate.”
“Roughly,” Alec interjected. Garfield turned to him. “After all, we don't know if they have other things in their magazines to take up room.”
“True,” Garfield admitted grudgingly. “But I err on the side of caution.”
“Good,” Amadeus murmured.
“Unfortunately, that is the only new thing I've got. We're still lagging behind on the analysis of the enemy ships. Engineering is …”
“Swamped,” Alec interjected. “Which is to be expected. You don't want the analysis handled by a sailor with little experience, and the people with the most experience are rather busy putting our own ship together for the moment,” he said.
Garfield's ears went flat at the rebuke.
“We have some time. Something tells me that they didn't get their hyperdrives up to our level, and they also have damaged ships to contend with,” Jojo said.
“You don't know that, Lieutenant,” Garfield scolded.
“No, no, she doesn't,” Amadeus stated. “But we're not going to jog the engineer's elbow for the moment. Do what you can with what you've got. We've got what, another two weeks to go?”
“Fifteen days, sir,” Alec replied. “I understand you want the battle cruisers to arrive as a unit, but I still think we should have kicked Freedom loose, sir. She's the least damaged after all. She could get a jump on her repairs like the other ships you sent ahead,” he stated.
Amadeus frowned at the criticism then shook it off. “No, we arrive as a unit. That will allow the fleet train to focus on getting the carriers and screen shipshape. Once we're in B-95a3, their focus will be on us, and the rest will have to wait.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Are we triaging the damaged ships as planned, sir? If you do we're going to lose a third of the fleet. Possibly half,” Kyle warned. “Half when we're up against a foe with a lot more fire power,” he warned.
“We'll cross that bridge when we get there,” Amadeus replied. “Now, logistics …”
:::{)(}:::
After the meeting Amadeus sat and watched the status board. He'd eaten but only because he'd forced himself. It had been tasteless to him; he didn't even remember what it was, just mechanically shoveled it in, chewed, and swallowed. It was a disservice to C'v'll, but the bug would get over it.
He had already worked his way through what he should have done a thousand times. His biggest regret was not detaching a couple tin cans and cruisers to go after the enemy's fleet train. Now that he'd had time to think it through, if he'd been willing to risk them, quite possibly even sacrifice them, then he could have dealt a blow to the enemy fleet and drawn
them away from his main fleet. That would have given him the breathing room he'd needed to jump free and clear … or at least with less damage than they'd sustained.
And perhaps thousands of crew members would still be alive. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. It was done and over with now he knew. He had to deal with it. He rubbed his temples.
“Headache, sir?” a familiar buzzing voice asked quietly.
“No, just trying to get out of my own head. I don't envy Admiral Irons,” he said shaking his head. He looked up to the Veraxin. “How goes things on your end?”
“Supplies are good. Damage to my AO was minimal, sir. I'm more concerned with you, sir.”
“I'll be fine,” the admiral said heavily. “It's what I've been trained for. I just hate setbacks.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But we'll figure it out. Somehow,” he growled.
The Veraxin signaled second-level uncertainty, then changed it to first-level acceptance. “Yes, sir.”
“Damn right we will.”
:::{)(}:::
While the carrier officers argued about who got what the munitions ships managed to get through the last of their hoarded fighter and bomber ordinance. Their crews then worked with the ship's robotic systems to shift their remaining deadly cargos around to get to the missile pods.
Each munitions ship had the same layout and cargo as the other for redundancy purposes. Admiral White had taken on a few missile pods, but he'd left them tucked away in the munitions ships instead of deploying them with his warships. That had been a problem in their last engagement. No longer. Now the crews had time to deploy the missile pods, and they did so gleefully. The light cruisers and destroyers didn't have enough telemetry and tactical computer ability to handle them all however. A conference was called. The tactical teams finally settled on setting the missile pods and weapon drones they had available into a coordinated firing network with a cascade firing sequence. That way any one ship could target one or more targets and that data would be fed to a subnetwork of missile pods and weapon drones.
Once things settled down and Shepard had been unloaded of her excess cargo as well as nearly half of her own spares, Captain Song took her to the nearest set of caches that had been set up in the star system for the picket ships to use. They wouldn't be much, but every little bit helped.
:::{)(}:::
Captain Ian McGuyver knew his time on Bounty was limited and about to expire. He was a commander in charge of a destroyer, and if he didn't give up his beloved first command, he was in danger of being passed over for future promotions.
He couldn't help but regret the situation. He'd received a promotion to commander shortly before the battle of B-97A in the last round of dispatches, with an inquiry from BUPERS asking if he was willing to consider a cruiser or battle cruiser command.
He frowned. Sometimes he regretted not taking them up on the offer. Not that it would have done him any good; he would have agonized over what had happened to Bounty after his departure. Eventually he was going to have to leave the nest though, and leaving it in someone else's hands was always chancy. Especially now, he mused, thinking of the damage to the Arboth class destroyer. She'd taken another beating, but she was still ready to kick ass. Admiral Irons' modifications to her had helped a great deal with her survival in the last engagement. It told him his instincts to keep half the modifications despite BUSHIPS requests to yank them and replace them with stock parts had been valid. The extra armor and more powerful reactor, shield nodes, and sensors cost them a lot of throw weight with their magazines, not to mention fuel capacity, but she also carried a pair of coveted industrial replicators. Military grade ones to boot. They'd used them as much as possible to patch up the ship while in hyper, but the crew had been limited to what material they'd had on hand … and in only having access to the interior of the ship.
Ian still worried about being sent backpacking so he pushed his engineers to go the distance to get her shipshape as much as possible before the flagship returned.
One of his greatest worries was how to deal with morale. It was a major lose, far worse than the drubbings they'd taken in Protodon or ET for that matter. He knew that the sting of getting kicked out of the star system had to hurt. Hell, it bothered him too! But he also knew a partial fix. The hard work of getting the ship repaired kept everyone's mind's occupied. Hopefully the self-pity and crap would change to anger and a hearty desire for revenge.
He knew those feelings already.
:::{)(}:::
Over the course of the following week, ships arrived in ones and twos or drib and drab clusters. Each ship met up with the factory ship and tenders for repairs. The ships coming in spotty meant the fleet train wasn't instantly saturated with work, but it meant they had no idea when a new ship would come in. They were stretched thin and exhausted by the long hours that seemed never-ending.
But they were making progress. In that week they also saw some of their first customers move up to the 80 percent category. Others needed drive or structural repair that was outside their ability. As senior engineering officer, Captain Barundi of the factory ship Ikenga was a bit of a case of a round peg in a round hole. The midnight black-skinned human loved that his ship was named after the Nigerian smith god. It was his ship's job to triage the damaged ships and remain stern but fair with the ship companies involved.
:::{)(}:::
Second Fleet's final arrival came with the six surviving battle cruisers translating down from hyperspace into B-95a3 space. The fact that they'd gotten there ahead of the Horathian fleet was good news and an instant morale boost to the weary crews. To Amadeus it was intense relief, almost orgasmic that they'd gotten there in time. Seeing that the carriers, other warships, and fleet train were there waiting for them and already hard at work redressing their ills helped a bit as well.
He cracked a smile.
“It all seems worth the risk then,” Jojo said.
“Sometimes the gambles pay off. It's knowing when to gamble and how much,” her admiral replied quietly, eying the plot. He caught her sidelong look out of the corner of his eye but didn't respond. “Make sure we are clear of the jump zone quickly. Now that they've had their time, it's our time to get patched up.”
“Hopefully, they haven't sucked the factory ship and tenders dry,” Garfield growled. “I mean, I know they can't with the capital ship missiles but still.”
“Check on that,” the admiral said, turning to the orange cat. He turned to Kyle. “Send our latest SITREP. Order the other ships to do the same. Then get me an ETA on when the first shipments will arrive,” he ordered.
“Aye aye, sir,” Kyle said with a nod. He glanced at the orange cat who flicked his ears then turned away to touch his ear and signal he was talking through his implants. Kyle seemed to settle himself and then get into the job.
Amadeus nodded. They needed to learn that they might have been beaten but they weren't out of the fight. Far from it. They'd suffered a loss to be sure, now it was the true test to pick themselves up and move on.
He was confident that he'd instilled in them enough … support to do so. At least he hoped he had. Some of it was hopefully there before he'd begun. He'd seen them pick themselves up after a vicious drubbing in tactical sims, but this was real life. No resets and no way their lost friends were ever going to come back.
The carriers flew cover OPS as the BCs moved out of the jump zone and to the fleet train. Shuttles and tugs immediately moved out to the ships. A call was placed out to position the ships with the first packets around the fleet train in a globe. A hasty resupply and repair effort from the fleet train got underway as they made adjustments to the SITREPS the ships had broadcast to them.
While that was underway, Admiral White ran a second assessment. Ruthlessly he culled any ship that was below 50 percent in ability. These he dispatched to Protodon within hours of his arrival. Ten ships in all would be making the journey, further weakening his force. The battle cruisers Independence, Vigilance, and
Quenor would be sorely missed. So would the light cruiser Unseen Strike and the six destroyers that would be joining them.
It was particularly vexing to the crew of Unseen Strike. They'd just arrived in B-97A with their division mate a few days before the battle. To have come in only to get banged up and sent with their tail tucked back to port for repairs … but then, that was the breaks in the game of death they played he reminded himself.
And at least they'd survived to head home. Some ships and their crews hadn't been so fortunate.
Losing that many of his ships effectively halved his strength. If the enemy appeared, he would have no recourse but to flee again; there would be no way he could stand up against them, not even in an ambush scenario. So be it he thought.
He had his fingers crossed that Maine and Justice hadn't been recalled all the way back to Antigua for repairs. With any luck they'd stopped in Protodon and would still be available. He made certain to tuck away orders for all the ships to stop and remain in Protodon despite any damage they had.
Before they left the area, shuttles pulled off their ordinance, counter missiles, missiles, ECM, decoys, and volunteer personnel while shuttling loads of stasis pods and walking wounded back to them.
The ships would carry data and fresh orders as well. He intended to strip some of Protodon's defenses, especially Stinging Swarm and T'sunin. Both CEVs had orders to take on oversized compliments of fighters and bombers and to stuff themselves with ordinance. He passed on orders to Commander T'roi to send him both of her destroyer squadrons and any ship larger other than her flagship.
With any luck they'd arrive before the enemy did, he thought moodily.
:::{)(}:::
“Shizouka is still not up to par, Captain,” Commander Offenger stated.
“I know that. But we're getting there. Do give us some credit. We're far better off than some other ships,” Renee wheedled. “And you need us,” she implored. “Especially with them gone, Commander,” she stated.