“Thank you, Sir. I’m looking forward to that.”
To his surprise, he saw the Admiral heave what looked like a sigh of relief.
“Glad to hear it, Commander. Since we’re talking about the Defiant, there is one other issue that has to be addressed. The Space Force has never fielded a carrier before, so we’re not sure how the command structure should be set up. Does the CAG report to the CO, or are they equal in status with a more senior person aboard to command both, or what? Your thoughts?”
After thinking about it for a few seconds, Shiloh said, “I think that the CO and CAG should be equal in rank, but if a carrier is going to operate on its own and not as part of a task force, then I think one individual should wear both hats. The XO and the Deputy CAG can handle most of the day-to-day issues and let the CO/CAG deal with strategic and tactical concerns. If the carrier is part of a task force, then I think the two positions should be split up and both report to a Vice-Admiral, Sir.”
Howard grunted. “Makes sense to me. Unless you hear otherwise, you can assume that you’ll be wearing both hats when you take command of Defiant. Unless you have something that you’d like to ask or say to me, you’re free to go, Commander.”
“Thank you, Sir. No questions.”
Shiloh got up, saluted and left. As he made his way back to his quarters, he decided that he didn’t want to spend his R&R on a beach again. He would stay in Geneva and relax as much as possible, visit Angela a couple of times and generally get his thoughts together. The six days went fast. Johansen was pleased with his new command and seemed to be making progress on her own recovery.
When it came time to report for duty, a shuttle took him to the moon base. There he caught a transport ship to the asteroid shipyard where Defiant was being fitted out. Shiloh didn’t get a good feel for the size of his new ship until the transport was in the process of docking at the shipyard. Defiant was big compared to any other ship he’d ever seen, including the Vanguard Combat Frigate. At 250,000 metric tons mass, Defiant was five times the mass of Vanguard, and yet she was classified as a light carrier. More light carriers were in various stages of completion, and the first heavy carrier, massing half a million tons, was just starting its two year construction phase. Defiant was built to carry a total of 34 smaller craft. While she was streamlined and capable of skimming gas giants herself, she would also carry four Mark 4 fuel shuttles, five personnel shuttles and 25 fighters. Her crew would total almost 500. Shiloh had already studied her specs, and he was impressed. Her huge fuel capacity could enable her to travel twice as far as a standard exploration frigate. She could carry enough consumables to stay in the field for six months at a time. While she wasn’t intended to engage in combat herself, her designers had given her four retractable, double laser turrets just in case the enemy found her. Her jet black hull would minimize detection by reflected sunlight, and she carried an impressive load of recon, message and attack drones both for use by her fighters and by the carrier itself if necessary.
It didn’t take him long to get settled into his impressively large and very comfortable quarters on board the ship. Only a few of her crew had already reported for duty. While physical construction was complete, the shipyard workers were testing her systems and were crawling all through the ship’s innards. A quick check of the personnel roster showed that his Executive Officer and Deputy CAG had not yet reported aboard. He didn’t know his new XO but the DCAG was one of the test pilots from his time at the Alpha Base. A glance at the rest of the senior officers did not reveal any other names he was familiar with. A lot of new faces to get to know. When Shiloh checked his personal message inbox, he saw a message from Admiral Howard. He opened it.
[It’s not official just yet, but by the time Defiant is ready to leave the shipyard, your promotion to Senior Commander will have made its way through the necessary red tape. I’m pleased to say that you’ve earned it. Congratulations!]
Senior Commander! One step below the one star flag rank of Vice-Admiral. Shiloh realized that his heart was beating fast, and he was breathing hard. Did he really deserve this promotion when he wasn’t the tactical genius that Howard and others thought he was? He was inclined to say no but SOMETHING was causing his visions and he doubted that it was a Guardian Angel.
With the planned launch date just days away, Shiloh found himself more and more busy, and he was very glad when Lt. Cmdr. Sumi Tanaka, his new XO, reported aboard. The fact that his XO was once again a woman made him wonder if the Bureau of Personnel was doing it deliberately for some reason. Women in the Space Force officer ranks made up about 46% of the total, and the odds of getting three female XOs in a row was almost eight to one against. But he had nothing against women officers, and both Johansen and Chenko had proven to be quite capable. Tanaka wasted no time diving into her new duties, and Shiloh saw an immediate decrease in his own workload. With no fighters aboard yet, his duties as CAG consisted of supervising the fighter support teams and their officers in the process of getting organized and familiar with their new duties. He was pleased to see that one of his lesser recommendations had been implemented. To avoid duplication of personnel, the officer in charge of each fighter’s support/maintenance team was also qualified to pilot that fighter if a human pilot was deemed necessary, although Shiloh had no intention of taking fighters away from their A.I.s’ control. When Brad Falkenberg, the new DCAG, reported aboard, Shiloh had a long and friendly chat with him about fighter A.I.s and their apparent sentience. Falkenberg agreed with Shiloh about the need to treat them as if they were fellow Space Force comrades, and he told Shiloh that he would encourage the support team leaders to form close friendships with their fighter A.I.s.
Chapter 18 It Sure Beats My Idea All To Hell
All of sudden, it was launch day. The ship was fully manned and all systems had checked out. It was time to put her through her paces. The next 48 hours were spent going through a series of performance trials, including microjumps and gas giant refueling both by fuel shuttles and by direct skimming. Shiloh’s supersonic, intermittent scoop procedure was now the officially recommended way of skimming. With all trials completed and her fuel tanks full, Defiant set her vector for the Epsilon Eridani star system and the CFP manufacturing facility there in order to pick up her complement of fighters and A.I.s. With fuel to burn and the certainty of being able to refuel there, Shiloh ordered the ship to accelerate to a higher than usual velocity in order to minimize Jumpspace duration. His Astrogator told him they set a new record for the fastest jump from Sol to Epsilon Eridani. Shiloh suspected that his Astrogator was exaggerating but didn’t bother to check if it was true or not.
When Defiant arrived at Epsilon Eridani, they found 25 eager fighter A.I.s chomping at the bit to land on the carrier and see some action. After all were safely aboard, and Defiant was on its way to their first destination, Shiloh called a briefing of all senior officers, fighter support team leaders and by electronic means, all A.I. pilots.
As he stepped up to the podium, Shiloh said, “Remember this briefing, people. This is the first operational briefing for this ship, and you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren about it someday.”
There was general laughter at that, and Shiloh could have sworn that some of the laughter came from the A.I.s.
“As you may or may not know, we’re on our way to Bradley Base, but that will be a quick stop to refuel and check the status of enemy activity, if any. Our mission is not what I was hoping for, namely that we’d be sent to launch a counter-strike on enemy star systems. Unfortunately, there’s a more urgent task that only we can perform for the time being. HQ is convinced that the aliens have downloaded astrogational data from one of our captured ships, data that pretty much lays out all of human-explored space and the locations of all our colonies, and Earth.”
There was a groundswell of murmuring which quickly died down again.
“That means they could penetrate deep into our space using systems containing gas giants to refuel, and then strike at military or
civilian targets. Right now we have no early warning system in place. Well, our job is to set one up. We’ll be deploying fighters in star systems with gas giants, in a buffer zone between our colonies and where we think the aliens are. This buffer zone will consist of five layers that are each about 10-12 light years wide. The Bradley Base star system is in the second layer. Layers one and two will have fighters deployed in them by tankers. We’ll take care of layers three to five. This means multiple jumps, and it will take us an estimated 65 days.”
That brought groans from the human personnel. Shiloh held up his hand.
“Yes, I know that doesn’t sound very exciting, but we need this early warning system. Each gas giant will have two fighters deployed to monitor any enemy activity near it and to report such activity by message drone. Monitoring fighters will avoid detection and especially combat, whenever possible.”
More groans, and this time Shiloh was sure that those were coming from the fighter pilots themselves.
“The intention here is to keep the enemy in the dark about our early warning system. If they find out about it, they’re likely to try to punch a hole in it by destroying the sentry fighters, and we want to avoid that. One out of each pair of fighters will be equipped with a refueling module so that it can refuel itself and the other fighter indefinitely, but I can assure you fighter pilots that you won’t be expected to stay on station out there forever. When you detect enemy vessels, you’ll observe their activity and, if possible, determine which star system they appear to be headed for next. Then you’ll send a message drone with that information to the nearest base, using the high speed boost maneuver that Iceman and Maverick perfected if necessary. Thereafter, you’ll continue to monitor your gas giant. Systems that have more than one gas giant will have more than one pair of fighters. If you’re detected, your orders are to disengage and leave the vicinity of the gas giant, and then send a message drone with that information. Fighters will each carry one and only one attack drone to be used when combat is unavoidable. The rest of the two payloads will be evenly split between message and recon drones. Detailed contingency plans will be downloaded to our fighters at the end of this briefing. That in a nutshell is the mission. Are there any questions?”
Naturally there were, and Shiloh did his best to answer all of them. When there were no more questions, he said, “Alright, then. This briefing is concluded. Let’s do this right. Our ship has a reputation that needs building. You’re dismissed.”
The trip to Bradley Base took just over 241 hours. Shiloh made sure that Defiant had enough fuel to skip past the star system where the convoy had been ambushed. When the ship dropped out of Jumpspace in the Bradley Base star system, which was designated as Omega 4, Shiloh was on the Bridge at his Command Station. The ship emerged at the extreme edge of the system at a distance from its sun that would have been beyond the orbit of Neptune if they had been in the Solar System. The gas giant, where the Base was located, was almost on the opposite side of the sun, which blocked a direct line-of-sight path between the base and Defiant. Even with their exit velocity of 500 kilometers per second, it would take days to reach the base traveling through normal space. That was why the Astrogator was already calculating a series of micro-jumps that would bring Defiant on an approach vector to the Base at a distance that should be just inside the detection range of the Base’s patrolling fighters. The three microjumps with vector changes in between took almost another hour. After the third microjump, Defiant sent a tight beam low-powered laser signal to the Base with a message announcing their arrival. The reply came eight minutes later. Defiant was cleared to enter orbit around the Base’s moon. No further enemy activity had been detected since the battle. There was no personal message from Base Commander Korolev, but there was from Iceman.
“Welcome back, CAG! Now that you’re back, we’ll see some action!”
Shiloh chuckled and made a mental note to respond to Iceman when they got closer. The trip into orbit was anticlimactically uneventful, which suited Shiloh just fine. After sending a greeting to Iceman and the other fighters that were on jump detection patrol, Shiloh discovered that Korolev was asleep, but Sejanus was awake. With Tanaka in charge on the Bridge, Shiloh went back to his quarters and had a confidential chat with Sejanus by video.
After the usual salutations, Shiloh said, “Listen, Marcus. I wanted to talk with you about Iceman and the others. You’ve got what ... 25 fighters here now?”
“That’s right, Sir. They made good our losses from the battle.”
“How evolved are the newcomers at this point? Have they displayed the same level of individuality as the veterans?”
Sejanus pondered that for a bit and then said, “I’m not sure they’re at the same level of eccentricities, but they definitely act as if they’re sentient.”
“The reason I’m asking is that I’ve got a ship full of rookies, for lack of a better word. They’re only just starting to evolve their own identities. I’m thinking of swapping half of your veterans for half of my rookies and pairing up one of each for the deployment we’ve been ordered to make.” He then went on to explain the buffer zone early warning network that Defiant was tasked with setting up.
“Yes, I can see how that would benefit things if the sentry fighters detected enemy activity. I’m not sure Korolev would agree to it, though,” said Sejanus.
“I’m not sure she would have any authority to veto it. You’re the Base CAG. Those fighters are your responsibility, not hers.”
Sejanus didn’t look happy. “Yes, but she’s not only the Base Commander, she's also the Task Force Commander, too, don’t forget, and my squadron of fighters is part of that Task Force.”
Damn, thought Shiloh. I did forget that.
“Okay, I guess she really does have a veto. I’ll talk with her when she’s awake and see if I can convince her to sign off on this. Now, on to other things. Has there been any sign at all of enemy activity? Anything?”
Sejanus shook his head. “Not a peep. I almost wish they’d send a few ships to recon the system or something. At least that would break up the boredom a little bit. I can’t help wondering if they’re planning something big.”
Shiloh snorted. “Oh, I’m pretty sure they are. The question is are they going to attack Bradley again or go after a new target. That’s why we’ve got to set this early warning network up pronto. When will Korolev be on duty again?”
“Well as you know, she doesn’t take regular shifts at Ops, but according to her normal schedule, I’d expect her to be up in about four to five hours.”
Shiloh smiled. “Good! That’ll give us time to practice fuel skimming the giant. By the time we’re done, we’ll be fully refueled, and Korolev will be awake. If she’s okay with the fighter swap, we can do that while Defiant is heading out for the jump to our first deployment target. I’ll leave her a message to call me when she’s available. It was good to see you again, Marcus. Shiloh clear.”
With the video call over, Shiloh decided to let Tanaka handle the refueling operation. It would be only her second time in charge of that operation, but she had handled the first one just fine, and he was confident she could handle this one too. He would observe the operation from the back of the Bridge, but let her keep command of the ship.
Switching the intercom channel to the Bridge, Shiloh said, “Bridge, this is Shiloh.”
Tanaka answered almost immediately. “Go ahead, Skipper.”
“Sumi? Take the ship out of orbit and into GG orbit to conduct a refueling operation.”
After a slight pause, she said, “Conduct refueling operations from the gas giant, yes Sir! Any other orders, Sir?”
“Not right now. Let me know when we’re about two minutes from contact with the giant’s atmosphere, would you?”
“Certainly, Sir.”
“Very good, Sumi. Carry on. Shiloh clear.”
The refueling operation went off without a hitch, while Shiloh watched. As Defiant, now back in orbit again, came out from
the back side of the gas giant, Base Commander Korolev called. Shiloh was in command again since Tanaka’s duty shift was over.
When Korolev’s face appeared on the main display, Shiloh said, “Hello again, Commander. Thank you for responding to my message. Are you aware of Defiant’s mission?”
“Yes, Shiloh. I got the notification with the last resupply convoy. I was told to cooperate as much as possible.”
Hoho, thought Shiloh. That makes a difference. Howard didn’t tell me that part.
“Excellent. Here’s what I want to do.”
He explained the idea of taking half of the Base’s experienced fighters and replacing them with ‘rookies’ and why. Korolev, to her credit, didn’t show any negative emotion.
“I have no objections to that at all. In fact, you’d be doing me a favor if you take Iceman, Maverick and Hunter. Their cheekiness is starting to get annoying.”
Shiloh laughed. “I can understand that, and yes, I’ll be glad to take those cheeky bastards off your hands. I’d like to start the transfer right now while Defiant swings around to our jump vector. Okay with you?”
“Fine, fine,” said Korolev waving her hand. “I’ll have Sejanus coordinate that with your people. Anything else you need from me, Commander?”
“No. That’ll do nicely for now. We’ll see you on our return leg. Shiloh clear.”
Shiloh let Falkenberg make the arrangements with Sejanus’s deputy CAG and listened in to the exchange between the Base and those veteran fighters selected to transfer to Defiant. Iceman, Hunter and Maverick were borderline ecstatic. The others were pleased, too. Shiloh couldn’t help wondering if those three were starting to consider Korolev as annoying, too. It took almost three hours of acceleration before the incoming fighters all landed, transferred their jump detection gear to the rookies, who then launched to take their place in the patrol. Those fighters that stayed behind adjusted their trajectories to cover any temporary holes in the detection grid, until such time as the newcomers could take their stations.
The Synchronicity War Part 1 Page 23