She took a sip of something, then continued. “It is probable that these beings are either the losers of a conflict involving only their own species, or they represent the latter stages of that same type of conflict, in which the society has now been completely integrated and is now aggressively extending its reach outward. It has been our experience, by ‘our’ I mean humanity, that that type of society never survived, and almost always destroyed itself in a dramatic and bloody fashion. Unfortunately, there were usually lots of additional victims.” She stood quietly, looking around for hands.
One was raised and she nodded her head. A captain stood up, and asked, “Lieutenant, if what you say is an accurate analysis, and I’m neither saying it is nor isn’t, then their apparent failure to even attempt to communicate with us suggests to me that they will attempt to either subjugate our species or eliminate it. Would you care to speak to this?” He sat down to a room that was no longer laughing. Lieutenant Bjorn-Kornbluth nodded her head and said, “We, that is, Signals department, believe that the arrival of this species represents the single gravest threat to humanity in its entire history.”
The room was now deathly quiet. She sat down and Lieutenant Blumenthal resumed her place. She said, “The floor is now open for discussion of a final goal for whatever process humanity utilizes to answer this threat.” The same captain said from his seat, “There appears to be one and only one goal: the complete destruction of these incursions.”
There were no dissenting opinions; in fact there were no additional comments. Lieutenant Blumenthal continued, “That seems to be the consensus. We have just about run out of time, so I’m going to ask for recommendations concerning our next step. By the term ‘our’, I mean to say, the members of this bull session.” There was no laughter this time.
Commodore Harrelson stood and walked up to stand next to her. He said, “I suggest that there be no further discussion of this by those present. Myself, and one or two others will condense the data and analysis from this meeting into a white paper that will be forwarded to the admiral. We do not anticipate a need for any further sessions such as this, and we will communicate any developments via your pads, should that be necessary, or possible. Thank you, all of you, for your inputs.”
Later that evening, Elian and I met Chief Kana and Carolyn in the Hawk. It was a natural site for us to congregate in, and was quite secure from interruption. Once we were all present and seated in our usual position Carolyn said, “That meeting pretty much terrified me. First, it seems that we must now confront a species that has similar technology and wishes to destroy us. Second, the fact that we had to hold that session in secret flat terrified me.”
Everyone was silent for several moments, then Chief Kana asked, “I’d like to discuss our response. I mean the response of our Hawk team. What can we do?”
In the dense silence that followed his question I saw that everyone was looking at me. The implications of their turning to me for leadership sank home. I said, “First, it is my understanding that we’re going to receive some reinforcements fairly soon. I’ve heard that we’ll get either some new or enhanced weapons. Uh, a replacement, possibly, for our capital missile and a new ER 15. I would guess that whether we get uprated weapons or not, our Hawks are going to be the navy’s primary offensive weapon for the short term. We might receive some additional Hawks, and I suggest that we work on developing new tactics that are based on, say, twenty-four craft. I believe that we will have two separate tasks: the first is obvious; the destruction of the mother ships. Second, even if the mother ships are destroyed, we will have to tackle all those cruisers, destroyers and fighters. Well, on second thought, once the mother ships are destroyed, that will pretty quickly eliminate their fighters. So, we ought to develop tactics to destroy those cruisers and destroyers, because if they put them all together and assault one of our colonies, there is no doubt in my mind that we will lose every single inhabitant. One single ballistic missile, hell, even one large rock, if it were accelerated to a high enough velocity can destroy all life on a planet. For that matter, one destroyer could kamikaze a planet.”
There was silence for a long moment, then the chief asked me, “Lieutenant, I think that the tactics you developed and Carolyn implemented should be expanded. The way you fought the twelve Hawks was tactically both innovative and effective. We were able to fight off twelve fighters, one destroyer and that cruiser without getting touched. I know without a shadow of a doubt that if you simply replaced our Hawks with a cruiser, it would have been an expanding ball of gas shortly after it came into contact with the bugs. What say we spend some time developing this concept?”
Everyone once again nodded their heads and looked at me. I thought they were making a mistake in placing all their trust and confidence in the least intelligent person in the cabin. I said, “Elian, I’d like you to cancel all the simulator exercises we have scheduled for tomorrow. Chief, I want you to talk to, well, whoever you talk to. I want to explore the possibility of stealthing a fast cargo craft. I’m thinking that if we could get that ship in close enough, and if we could figure out a way to just eject forty or so missiles out the cargo hatch and then launch them, we would have a much more powerful offensive potential. Forty capital missiles could possibly equal twenty hits, and if we had two or three stealthed cargo ships, we could launch perhaps three simultaneous assaults, making it harder and much less effective to swamp one. We need to run a lot of scenarios and try to see what would give us the best chance. We could add the Hawks capital missile capability and use the Hawks to defend the cargo vessel. The crew could maybe, after ejecting the missiles, cross over to our Hawks and Carolyn could control it remotely during the egress. That way, we wouldn’t lose a valuable crew if we lost the valuable ship. It’d be mighty crowded, but that’s better than being slightly dead.”
I paused for a moment, then continued, “Elian, I want you to talk to Commodore Harrelson. Give him a rundown on what we’re working on, and see if you can get us some support. Also, find out what’s happening with Captain Dickhead. That man is a shuttle accident and we’re all his passengers. Find out whatever you can about him, and be, um, very tactful. OK?”
Everyone nodded and I stood up, signaling the end of the meeting. We all walked quietly out of the Hawk and went off to our quarters, lost in thought. I was still struggling with the obvious implications of a relatively sudden transformation from an unintelligent, wet-behind-the-ears JG into a leader of some sort. I felt very uncomfortable, but every time I looked around for a leader I could trust to make the right decisions, I found I was looking at a military that had for thel most part lost its mission, lost its warriors and gained in their place bureaucrats.
Early next morning I received a comm from Commodore Harrelson. As soon as I answered he said, “Lieutenant, meet me in my office in ten minutes.” Before I could answer he had terminated the connection.
It took me one minute to check my uniform, which was unfortunately one of my oldest, and stained a bit here and there. I didn’t have enough time to change, and in fact barely made it to his office. In front of his hatch I squared my shoulders and knocked. He said, “Come”, and I opened it and entered. He was at his desk working on something and barely looked up long enough to recognize me and my salute. He nodded and waved at the chair, still looking at whatever he was working on.
I sat for a couple of moments and spent the time trying to figure out why I was there. What had I done? Finally, he looked up at me and smiled tiredly. He said, “Your contribution at last night’s bull session was just about perfect.” I looked back in thought, and couldn’t remember having said much. I must have had a puzzled look on my face because he looked at me with a smile and said, “You kept your mouth shut for most of the evening and didn’t bring any attention to yourself, perhaps a first for you.” I nodded my head, not knowing what to say. God, what did he think of me that my silence was preferable to an actual verbal contribution?
He looked back at his screen and
then said, “I received a report from Lieutenant Turner. He asked about the possibility of using one or more fast cargo vessels as missile platforms. Can you explain?”
I told him “Twelve Hawks can only carry twenty four ship killers. If we had three heavily stealthed fast cargo ships, and developed some way to eject capital missiles out of their holds, we could later launch them on command. Three vessels could release at least one hundred missiles each, which, added to the missiles carried by the Hawks ought to be able to kill a mother ship. Getting back out would be difficult for the cargo ship, but if we were to transfer the crews over to the Hawks we could control it remotely via Carolyn. If it wasn’t fast enough or if we got in too deep trying to cover its egress, we could just abandon it. I believe that fleet would consider the loss of even three fast fleet cargo vessels a good trade for one mother ship. Plus we would have saved the crews, who would be uncomfortable, but, well, not dead.”
He looked at me and nodded his head curtly. I got the sense that he had already figured that out, he just wanted to see how I presented both myself and the idea. He said, “I want you to get your crew together and meet me on hanger deck four at thirteen hundred. We’re going to meet with some engineers, and see if it is possible to effectively stealth a cargo vessel out of available stores. I would suggest that you bring along anyone else from your crews who might be of assistance. Questions?” I thought for a brief moment before shaking my head and he dismissed me. So, not in trouble, not counting the captain, and the bugs.
On my way back to my quarters I commed Elian and asked him to contact our internal missile guru as well as the other Etech who had impressed us during our egress from the bug attack.
I found the chief in his tiny office and we went down the passageway to a small space that may have been used more for card games than other, more military purposes. He introduced me to a couple of other chiefs who had been sitting around a well-worn table. I looked at him and he said, “These two criminals spent some time in a fleet cargo vessel. They know just about everything there is to know about them. I’ve taken the liberty of asking them here so we could investigate your idea of using the ship as a missile carrier. Chief?” He looked at them and said, “In fifty words or less, is it a workable idea? Oh, you can speak in words of greater than two syllables to this JG without fear of his going stupid on you.” I snorted with laughter, made even better by the startled looks on the faces of the two chiefs, who were easily twice my age.
The older of the two, Chief Wing, said, “Sir, the fleet cargo series of transports is small in comparison to most cargo ships, massing less than five hundred thousand tons. It is capable of accelerating at almost nine G’s and because of the greatly increased engine capacity it has less, actually, far less capacity than a cargo vessel of equal size. It should be able to carry approximately one hundred Mark 65’s, but it would be an absolute bitch getting them out of the hold in the middle of nowhere and under the gun, and once out, what would you do with all those missiles?” The other chief said, “Those Mark 65’s come packed in containers of four. It might just be possible to dump the containers out the hold and shoot them right out of the container.”
Chief Kana looked thoughtful and asked, “Can that be done? What about all the controls and safeties they come with in the containers? You know, the ones that are designed specifically to prevent those missiles from igniting or blowing the shit out of your ship?” Chief Wing said, “Well, it might be possible to do what you want, but I don’t know of any way to arm them while still packed in the container. I think it would require an entirely new container.”
I thought about it for a moment and said, “You seem to be saying that right now, there is no way of doing it, but it might be possible to design or modify a container which a large ship could dump out and then fire off in one big salvo?” Chief Wing nodded after a momentary hesitation. I stood up and said, “I’d like for you to put together the basic parameters for a container such as you have described. Send it to my pad and I’ll get it passed on to Commander Harrelson. Can you have it ready by twelve hundred?”
They looked startled and I said “We don’t have a lot of time. We’re meeting with Commander Harrelson today at thirteen hundred to discuss this very topic and I’d like to be prepared as much as possible.”
Chief Kana looked at me with his eyebrows elevated, and I said, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier chief. I just came from the commander’s office. He wants select Hawk people to meet him and some of his people in flight bay four at thirteen hundred. Uh, if you think it might be worthwhile, please invite these two resident experts.” The chief nodded and looked at the other two. They nodded and we all stood up. It seemed to be much easier to work with senior and master chiefs than with captains. Some captains.
At thirteen hundred, I and five additional officers and enlisted entered Bay Four. The two other chiefs were not in attendance, but I had their paper, and it looked reasonably concise and complete.
Waiting for us – I should have come early – were Commander Harrelson and a small gaggle of brass, including, interestingly, the captain I had so impressed just a few hours ago. I saluted for our group and received a snappy salute in return from Commander Harrelson.
He started us off by saying to the gaggle of officers who had been standing around, looking mildly uncomfortable, “Lieutenants Padilla and Turner have presented us with an interesting concept. Their position is that the Hawks are stealthy enough to get in close enough to a bug mother ship to launch their ship killers, but twelve of them are able to launch a maximum of twenty four, and the bugs have routinely killed about fifty percent of every launch to date, meaning that we can hit it with twelve missiles. Frankly, I’m not even sure if that would be enough to kill one of their cruisers, judging by how many ER-15’s they can absorb. Additionally, they maintain that our destroyers and cruisers, while they have the ability to launch sufficient capital missiles to destroy a mother ship, do not have the ability to get within ten million kliks of a mother ship without drawing down on them overwhelming force of numbers. So, we’re here to see if it would be possible to answer two questions: First, can we stealth the Fast Fleet Cargo ships enough so that they could get in relatively close to a bug mother ship. Second, if that is possible, can we figure out a way to eject approximately one hundred or more Mark 65’s out of the cargo hold and launch them?”
I waited, having learned to keep quiet around the captain. On a small hand cue from me, Chief Kana raised his hand slightly and Commodore Harrelson asked, “Yes Master Chief?” Chief Kana held his pad in one hand and said, “Sir, prior to this meeting, Lieutenant Padilla and I met with some senior chiefs who have between them over ten years experience with the FFC’s. They believe that the more difficult task will be the second. We have taken the liberty of putting together a proposal for the development of a missile container, modeled on the traveling container fleet uses for the Mark 65. If we could get fleet to modify that container we believe that we could also modify the FFC to eject them out its hold, possibly even while under way. Each container contains four Mark 65’s. It should be a technically simple task to modify the containers so that the missiles could be launched directly and remotely out of the container. We have put together a proposal that outlines the modifications that would be required. In addition to the modifications to enable a launch from space, we believe that the container itself would require some stealthing. The containers were built to be easy to find in space, so as soon as we begin dumping those things, they’d be spotted immediately unless we can cloak them.”
Commander Harrelson remained quiet through Chief Kana’s presentation, and at the end asked, “You have the proposal with you?” Chief Kana held up his pad and several of the officers made some entries into their own pads, allowing the transfer.
One officer started to ask a question, but was cut off. Captain Yerenkov asked, “Chief, Kana is it? Just exactly how does your rank qualify you to make recommendations for the modification of
fleet vessels and missiles?”
Chief Kana had been standing alertly, but he now subtly came more erect. He calmly said, “Sir, my rank in no way qualifies me to make any such recommendation.”
Commodore Harrelson said, “Sir, this is Master Chief Kana. He would be the Master Chief of any fleet vessel he served on, and has over thirty years experience on virtually every fleet type in our inventory. He received the Medal of Honor at the Battle of York. After that battle, he was offered a promotion to Lieutenant, which was the rank that he effectively filled during the climactic hours of that action. I am sorry to say that he turned that offer down. Recently, as you may know, Chief Kana participated on all of the Hawk attacks against the bugs. We did not lose one single life in those attacks, which resulted in the destruction of multiple destroyers, one cruiser and thirty fighters. Additionally, two bug mother ships were heavily damaged. These attacks by the Hawks have perhaps been the only reason we have not been attacked since that time. Finally, I have examined the merits of this proposal and consider that it deserves further investigating. At this time, we have no way to destroy bug mother ships; in fact, it has been determined that our entire fleet would be nearly completely destroyed in what would be an unsuccessful effort, leaving our planets exposed to whatever fate the bugs meted out. This paper is the single solitary proposal we have that has the possibility of carrying out our mission of destroying these bug fleets.”
Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk) Page 22