The boys smiled.
They entered the media center and the boys introduced the girls to the center specialist who would be administering their placement exams. They settled in for what would turn out to be five hours of exams.
ERETZ - CHAPTER SIX
GREG AND AVI REPORTED to the briefing room as instructed at 1500 hours. A soldier greeted them and requested their identification. After examining their cards and checking their names off a list he opened the door. “Welcome aboard, Captains,” he said as he ushered them inside.
Greg and Avi had changed into civilian business attire and were unprepared for the sea of white uniforms that awaited them in the briefing room. When they entered the room, the people seated around the large boardroom table stood and applauded. Totally at a loss as to what they should do, they took each other’s hand and stood, embarrassed, as the two dozen officers in the room clapped in their honor.
The man at the end of the table signaled for quiet. The soldier closed the door. “Please, come sit here.” He motioned to two empty seats on his right hand. Avi and Greg sat as instructed, and the man said, “Rabbi, please, a prayer.”
The Rabbi offered three prayers. The first was in honor of living to see this day. It was the same prayer used at the beginning of all major holidays. The second was an appeal for wisdom and seeking guidance in the decisions to be made in this meeting, and the third was an extemporaneous prayer for protection from the forces which might seek to do them ill. When he was finished, he quietly left.
The man at the end of the table surveyed the room for a few seconds before starting. “Welcome to Eretz. I wish I could have given you more time to settle in but we have much to do and not enough time in which to do it. We have you at a disadvantage. We know who you are, but you don’t know who we are. I am Admiral Herbert Sherman, Commander of the Eretz Defense Forces. I graduated from the Federation Space Force Academy four years after you did. Myra Myrakova was in some of my classes. My God rest her soul.”
Each of the officers seated at the table introduced themselves. Avi and Greg were pleased to see that women and men were equally represented. Four were former Federation Space Force Officers.
“Now to the business at hand. Under the terms of our contracts with the Federation, active duty Federation Military officers temporarily assigned here are accorded all privileges and prerogatives appropriate to their Federation rank. According to the orders transmitted to me, you are assigned to us as combat trainers and advisers. Therefore, you are authorized to take whatever actions you deem necessary to bring our defense system up to Federation standards including leading our forces into battle in defense of our home planet should that become necessary. First, however, we need to deal with formalities. The Eretz Defense Force is an all-volunteer organization.” Avi raised a dark eyebrow.
“Not in that you work for free,” the Admiral was quick to respond. “Your pay will come from our payroll system, only that you must volunteer to be part of our organization.”
Avi nodded her acknowledgment of the clarification.
“Since we are a planetary defense organization on a duly recognized sovereign state allied with, but not a member of, the Federation, by joining our forces as duly assigned trainers, you maintain your rights as Federation Military officers and as Federation citizens except those that are in keeping with the laws of this sovereign state. Normally, we would insist on formal officer candidate school, but graduates of the Federation Space Force Academy are released from that requirement. Are you voluntarily willing to join us?”
“This is an interesting offer, but why can’t we find a farm somewhere on the frontier and live there quietly for the rest of our natural lives? I am sick of fighting,” Greg said.
The admiral looked at Avi as if to ask for a comment.
“I am not sure about the farm part, but I am definitely tired of fighting. It’s no way to bring up a family,” she responded.
“Speaking of which,” the admiral smiled. “My daughter called me to tell me that she and your daughters have detention tonight. It seems there was something of a fracas at the cafeteria and Rachel threw her knife at someone. Well, not really at someone, but she wanted it to look like she did.”
“I’ll kill her!” Avi sputtered. Greg watched her with obvious concern.
“No need. When Rev Schwartz gets through with them they will wish they were dead. Anything you would do would be redundant.”
“Still, they should be punished,” Greg said attempting to diffuse Avi’s rage. “Although, I’ll bet Rose gets to them first.”
“If she punishes them like she punished me, it may be enough,” Avi commented, her color returning to normal.
“They were provoked. It’s not their fault. Seriously, let Rev Schwartz deal with it. He’s very good and has the advantage of not being one of their parents. All of which brings me to my point. You and your daughters have training that none of us can match. None of us has seen combat. None of us truly understand. Simulators are great as far as they go, but until you push the button for real, you don’t know what it is like. All four of you have done that. Rachel demonstrated today that she could do it again. We think we could.” He motioned around the table. “But we really don’t know. We do know that you trained fifty women who had never seen the inside of a flight deck how to fly and how to survive in combat. We don’t know how you did that, and we need you to do that for us.”
“Only half of them survived,” Avi said quietly with embarrassment. The loss weighed heavily on her.
“ Do not belittle your accomplishment. The fact that any of them survived is a tribute to your skills. A dozen other planets fell to the Swordsmen before they attacked yours. No one survived on those planets, not a single person lived to tell about it. You were the first to stop them. Not only did you stop them, but very few of their force survived. You were the first to inflict casualties of any kind, and you devastated them. You should feel proud of what you did.”
“We don’t,” Greg said. “Only sadness for the friends we lost.”
“I guess for those who have never seen combat, that’s a difficult idea to grasp.”
“So, you want us to teach in your flight school?” Avi asked, changing the subject.
“Yes, that’s part of it.”
“And what’s the rest?” Greg asked.
“We have reverse engineered your simulation games. We have also reverse engineered the Pirate Interdiction Craft. We need your help to assimilate what we have learned and turn it into a battle strategy. The Swordsmen are coming. We need to be ready.”
“When I get back to my ship, I can give you the source code on the simulations,” Greg offered.
“That would be helpful, thank you.”
“And what if we elect not to do this?” Avi asked.
“There is no other place you will be safe and even here there are risks. There is no place you can run or hide that is far enough away where the Swordsmen can't find you. Even if you left at two G and ran in any direction until your reactor failed, the Swordsmen would find you. This is the safest place, and that is our deal. You help us, and we protect you and pay you for your work.”
“What makes you think we will be better off here than somewhere else?” Greg asked.
“Many factors,” Admiral Sherman replied. “Let’s look at your battle against the Swordsmen. By normal rules of battle, you should have been crushingly defeated, but you weren’t. The price of not being defeated is that there will forever be a price on your head, as if there wasn’t already from your pirate interdiction days. You did, however, suffer horrendous losses. You had handicaps that you probably thought were benefits. Your secrecy was both a blessing and a curse. It kept you safe from intruders while you built up your force, and it protected you from assaults by pirates, but it kept you from gaining access to newer technologies which might have reduced your losses. Your fleet was entirely made up of small ships. That dictated a strategy more like your pirate battles than like traditional space batt
les. Your enemy expected you to have capital ships which it would battle in head-to-head duels. Their strategy was not unlike the big naval battles of the late nineteenth century where large ships stood abreast and pounded each other with broadsides until one ran or sank. Your pilots learned their craft capturing renegades who stumbled into your system. They were highly motivated, and their motivation made up for their lack of education. They were far more willing to die for the cause than their opponents. Even with all that, the real key was you, both of you. As a fighting unit, the two of you are a force to be reckoned with. Myra contributed mightily to the effort, but it was your strategy and your tactics that won the battle.”
“Now, let’s look at what we have here,” he continued. “We are backed by strong financial and technological resources. One of the Federation’s most zealously guarded secret weapons research facilities is located down the hall. We have scientists conducting advanced research who are years ahead of their peers. We have sophisticated weapons and the infrastructure to support them. We have the hardware. We have ships. We have sensor arrays. We have defensive systems. We have textbooks and theories written by strategists of past generations. What we lack is the current real life training to use our assets. You can provide the expertise we need and build a protective shell around yourselves here that would be better than what you could build anywhere else.”
Greg and Avi looked at each other, resignedly, suddenly tired. “I agree,” Greg said.
“Avi?” The Admiral asked.
“Yes, I agree.”
“Ensign, please bring the Rabbi back to administer the oath.”
The Rabbi returned and administered the oath of allegiance to the Federation and to Eretz.
“I have taken the liberty of having uniforms delivered to your quarters. Everything you hear in this room for the remainder of this meeting is classified and is not to be discussed with people outside this room except on a strict need to know basis. Having said that, I assume that Rachel and Wendy will be briefed this evening in private. They will need to know what we have discussed. How much you tell Rose is your decision. Everyone please raise your right hand and affirm that you will maintain secrecy on all further business of this meeting.”
There was a murmur of affirmation.
“Science Officer Mendelssohn, please deliver your presentation.”
A slender woman of moderate height with strands of gray in her auburn hair stood and advanced to the podium. She nodded to the Admiral and to Greg and Avi before beginning. “The computer science and space flight systems engineering teams reverse engineered the combat simulator games written by the Captains Solomon and their assistants. We then introduced the short hyper jump as an allowable move in the games. The short hyper jump was not an option in any of the games as originally written. Hyper jumps of shorter than one hundredth of a light year were not allowed. We originally assumed that this was because the Federation did not want the knowledge of the feasibility of the short jump to become general knowledge. Further research determined that our assumption was only partially true. What we did not realize at the time and Federation scientists only recently found out is that only three craft in their entire fleet were capable of the short hyper jump. Captain, may I address you by your first names? Having two of you with the same name and rank is confusing.”
Greg and Avi nodded.
“Avi, what does a short jump feel like?”
“Painful.”
“Does it hurt at the beginning of the jump or the end?”
“At the end.”
“How long and how severe is the pain?”
“Two to three seconds and extremely intense.”
“When you make the jump are your weapons pods extended or retracted?”
“Extended. We only do it in combat. Having the weapons pods extended shortens the time before we can fire after we make the jump. We use it as a combat maneuver. That’s the only time we need to move that fast. I also suspect it’s not healthy for the ship to do it too often although we have no real data to back that up.”
“Excellent. You have confirmed our suspicions. You are correct in that the jump produces a tremendous strain on the reactor and doing it too often would, in fact, lead to early reactor failure. That is part of why so few craft are capable of the short hyper jump. Avi, did you, Greg and the late Lieutenant Myra Myrakova have the same crew chief when you were in the Space Force?”
“Yes, we did. Why?”
“He was the only line crew chief in the entire fleet that figured out how to disable the software limits placed on the reactors. His rationale was that he would rather have a damaged craft come back with its pilot than not come back because it was almost fast enough to get away. We have contacted him in retirement, and while he refuses to leave the tropical island where he now resides with his children and grandchildren, he has been very helpful. He sends both of you his regards. He was truly saddened to learn that Lieutenant Myrakova had died.”
“But he serviced dozens of ships over his career. Why were only ours capable of the short jump?” Greg asked.
“Because of the hundreds of P I ships built, only twenty had the same reactor as yours, and the other seventeen were assigned to other battle groups. Why these twenty ships had this reactor is a story in itself. The Force had the reactors designed for a ship twice as large as its then current destroyer and canceled the project after the reactors were built, but before the keels were laid. Saturn Space Industries was the prime contractor on the project and convinced the Force to allow them to put the reactors in the P I ships it was currently building. These reactors were the most efficient reactor of their type ever designed. In retrospect, we do not understand why more were not built on the same design.”
“What does that have to do with us?” Greg asked.
“You and Avi received your ships right out of the shipyard at the height of the Pirate Interdiction campaign. Little thought was given to thoroughly testing them, and they were sent out under the assumption that they would function the same as all the previous models. With the software limits on the reactors in place that was true. There was no significant difference in the performance of the P I craft with the larger reactor and the ones with the standard reactor. However, your three craft went to the battle group where the crew chief was disabling the limits. Let me ask you a question. Greg, how did you discover that you could make a short jump? Did you in a panic one day push the hyper button and much to your surprise it worked?”
“Pretty much, yes,” he replied.
“Did you tell anyone?”
“Only Avi.”
“Why only her?”
“That’s personal.”
“Fair enough. Avi, did you tell Lieutenant Myrakova?”
“No, she figured it out on her own. We talked about it, but the Force was issuing bulletins about keeping the specifications of our P I ships secret so we kept it to ourselves.”
“Had you tried the short jump in any other ship, you would have died. Not on the entry to jump, but on the exit. Had you tried it with your weapons pods retracted, your ship would have disintegrated. One of the reasons the Force kept the short jump so secret is that it was fatal in every one of their tests. They did not understand how the three of you could do it and survive. When you disappeared they lost all hope of figuring it out.”
“How do you know this?” Greg asked.
“The largest, best trained, most fanatical intelligence operation in the history of mankind with more people in deep cover than all the other current intelligence operations put together,” the Admiral replied proudly.
“That would do it,” Greg commented.
“So, I understand the importance of the big reactor, and I understand the software limits over ride, but I don’t understand the deal with the weapons pods,” Avi said.
“We don’t either, completely. We know that there is an energy wave from the leading edges of the craft. In your simulations you refer to it as the bow wave, but there is
also a wave behind the craft much like the wake from a fast moving boat on the surface of the water. We don’t know much about this wave because it is so hard to measure. It and not the bow wave is what our sensors read when we detect a ship moving in hyper drive. We know it exists, but it moves so fast we can’t quantify it. What we do know is that the extended weapons pods interfere with the movement of this wave so that it never fully develops, and instead of slamming into the craft at full force on exiting hyper drive, it is dissipated, and the force, while painful, is not as destructive as it would be otherwise.”
“All this is wonderful, but so what? Why do I care?” Greg asked.
“Let’s go back to your simulations. In every case, a force with sufficient numbers of P I craft capable of short, undetectable hyper jumps will defeat any enemy currently out there except one with equal or greater number of these ships.”
“Do you intend to build an entire force out of a few P I’s?” Avi asked, incredulously.
Science Officer Mendelssohn smiled. “Not exactly. We are building P I ships on an updated design here on this planet.”
“Who knows this?” Avi asked.
“Fewer than a dozen people in the Space Force and another dozen at Saturn Space Industries. Our parts come through New St Louis. We have regularly scheduled freighters shuttling back and forth. We would like to add your ship to that fleet,” Admiral Sherman answered, “for a substantial rental fee.”
“Who would fly it?” Greg asked.
Admiral Sherman smiled. “We have pilots who can make cargo runs. That’s not an issue. It’s combat pilots we lack.”
After a pause, Science Officer Mendelssohn continued. “We have determined that if we had a hundred short hyper jump capable Pirate Interdiction ships like yours we could defeat the entire Federation Space Force if it attacked us. By the way, the dozen people who know we are building the ships know that within a year should we decide to do so we would be able to defeat any single battle group of the Federation Space Force without compromising our own security, and it concerns them. Our pledge that we will not fire on Federation ships unless fired upon is small comfort. The only reason they have not done anything about it is their hope we can damage the Swordsmen enough in combat that the Federation can come in and mop up afterwords. By supporting us, they hope we and not they, will battle the Swordsmen first.”
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