“I like the enthusiasm, Commander,” I smiled wryly.
“It comes down to whether you trust the Tracto-ans more than the Sector Government,” Laurent observed.
“Is that even a choice?” Spalding snorted.
“I hate to say it...but the Engineer has a point,” Chief Gunner Lesner said unhappily.
“Glad to see that Gunnery is finally ready to see reason,” Spalding declared, prompting Lesner to shake his head.
“It is the Admiral’s decision, not ours,” Hammer pointed out.
“Our job is to advise, not set policy for him,” supported Captain Laurent.
Once again, it was all on me. Was I going to roll the dice, playing a game Governor Isaak and the Sector Assembly were familiar with, or did I throw myself upon the mercy of Tracto and my wife? Alternately, I could just declare it was all mine and cheerfully start down the same path as my…uncle, Jean Luc Montagne.
I shuddered at that particular notion. I was not a pirate and I didn’t aim to ever be one. I started out to save people and stop piracy, not become the very thing I most detested. When you put it all that way, the answer was clear.
I’d rather declare Harpoon a sovereign asteroid nation state and go out on a spree of conquest than kickstart a Jean Luc style black op pirate operation only on a grander scale.
By the same token did I go with the group that tried to stab me in the back or the one than came at me from the front with a sword. At least with the Tracto-an’s I’d always see them coming. I might not always have the cultural background to understand why they were coming, or identify the lead-up, but when things blew up they drew a sword instead of a knife.
I could deal with them.
“We go with the Tracto-an option. The Governator specifically invited us as the Tracto-an SDF, not the Confederation Fleet, and my leadership as a Tracto-an Admiral, not my Confederation hat. It would seem a real pity to disappoint him,” I said finally.
“Darned blasted right!” Spalding shouted.
“It’s a risk, Sir. But one I think we have to take,” Captain Hammer said, showing solidarity.
“I’m glad you approve,” I told the Captain and the rest of my command team.
“I’ll prepare the necessary paperwork,” said Harpsinger.
“Should we combine the Tracto-an option with your previous authority as Sector Commandant, Sir?” Lisa Steiner hazarded as soon as it looked like a decision had been made, but while the question was addressed to me she was looking at Fleet’s Legal adviser.
“An interesting notion,” Harpsinger mused as he considered her idea. He hesitated as if thinking and then looked back at me, “I think rather than your power as Commandant, I’ll use a more roundabout method and instead make sure all the proper briefs and background papers on Tracto-an space and warfare customs have been filed. Specifically, the ones on the traditional powers of Tracto-an Warlords and their methods of apportioning captured equipment and enemy soldiers,” he said after reflection.
I tried to snort and laugh at the same time, causing something to go down the wrong tube. Hacking and coughing, I thumped my chest several time.
“Are you okay, Admiral?” Lieutenant Steiner asked.
“Keep what you can capture and duel for the rest,” I wheezed.
“Sir?” Steiner asked again with concern.
“It’s nothing,” I coughed, clearing my lungs with a deep expulsion of air, “anyway, I’d be more than willing to face their leaders in single combat to decide the proper apportionment of equipment. It’d be nice if the Tracto-an tendency to challenge everything in sight worked in my favor for once in this lifetime.”
Captain Laurent shook his head. “A Confederation Admiral dueling with local Admirals, Planetary Leaders, and Sector Governors over battleships,” Captain Hammer said her voice filled with deep censure, “once word got out it would bring shame upon the entire service.”
“And what was it when the Tracto-ans were trying to attack me left and right, chopped liver?” I asked irritably.
“It’s one thing to be the victim of barbaric practices and have no choice but to fight against them, and another thing entirely to welcome such tactics, court their use, and predicate our entire fleet’s future policy upon,” she said severely.
“Besides, civilized people aren’t used to actually defending their positions like that and those politicians are nothing more than spineless cut-weasels,” Spalding chimed in. “If you go and show the Tracto-ans just how incompetent our Planetary Leaders are when it comes to face-to-face fighting, who knows what might happen. You don’t want a give those Tracto-ans any edge or crazy notions if you can avoid it, lad,” he said sounding like a wise old man giving advice.
“You’re not helping,” Captain Hammer told the old engineer shortly.
“Sorry las-, erm, Captain,” Spalding said raising his hands in surrender, “I was just trying to help.”
“Fine. Fine!” I relented, throwing my hands up in the air, “I won’t make any plans for when our enemies exploit the loopholes in the Tracto-an honor code and be just as surprised as the rest of you and completely off footed when they come for my life with a vibro-blade,” I said with disgust.
“Now that’s the spirit, lad!” Spalding exhorted me. “A civilized man takes it on the chin and then comes back with space marines and turbo-lasers when they throw away thousands of years of rule of law. You just stay fat dumb and happy for the record. Don’t worry, the rest of us will have your back against the moral turpitude of the politicians!” the old engineer finished eagerly, already picking up a data slate and happily tapping away.
“Still not helping, Commander!” Captain Hammer said in a rising voice.
“No, I think the Chief Engineer is onto something here,” Captain Laurent said reluctantly.
Leonora looked betrayed as she turned to glare at him.
“I know it’s not my place to say it,” Chief Lesner said slowly, “but if there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that the leaders of this Sector will do anything and say anything to give us the shaft.”
“Then we’re in agreement. Plausible deniability for the Admiral is a must,” Lieutenant Steiner chimed in making a note on her tablet.
“Hey now! I meant that 'fat dumb and happy' part as a joke, Lieutenant,” I chided, not sure if I should feel proud or betrayed at the way she and my command council were freely managing my future without my input.
“Are you all insane? You’re planning for the elected leaders of this Sector to physically attack an Admiral of the Confederation Fleet? With a premeditated counterattack already in the works?” Ensign Jones finally exploded.
“The plausible deniability angle does makes sense from a legal standpoint,” Harpsinger spoke up, “assuming they decide to go down this route. Although I have a hard time believing they would risk themselves personally.”
Ensign Jones looked nonplussed.
“The lawyer’s right: they wouldn’t risk themselves,” Spalding nodded in agreement, “which gives me the idea. It normally wouldn’t occur to the rest of us but is there some way they could get someone else to fight in their stead?”
“Sending out a champion—of course! Why didn’t I think of that before?” Harpsinger agreed. “I’ve seen it somewhere in the records…” he trailed off before turning back to Ensign Jones, “at this point I think we’re going to need to ask the Admiral to leave the room or table the discussion until later while the rest of us work on this problem. That goes double for you, Ensign,” he turned a stern look on Rick Jones, “several of your statements have been particularly borderline as it concerns the plausible deniability angle.”
“That’s right; listen to Legal, lad,” Spalding urged, “you don’t want to be the one pulling down the whole operation!”
“What are you talking about? These are the leaders of billions of people. They’re not going to get down and brawl in the mud, nor are they likely to send out paid champions to cut the Admiral down with swords lik
e some prehistoric duelists!”
“That’s right! That’s exactly the ticket, boy. And don’t let anyone force you to say anything different,” the old Engineer said with a wink, “remember: you’re MSP Fleet now.”
“We could possibly use a deposition to get that fact from the Ensign. It would help build up a defense when they issue a case in the Sector Courts,” Harpsinger agreed, “I mean, assuming you think you can pass a basic veracity examination?” he looked at Ensign questioningly.
“Perhaps it would be better if the Ensign was not a part of Operation Fat, Dumb and Stupid alongside the Admiral, Lieutenant. Might sell the whole thing better,” Chief Lesner pointed out.
Spalding’s eyes brightened and then promptly clouded over. “But then who's going to run this meeting then?” he demanded. “Because I sure as Murphy is my witness am not going to try to figure out what slides he was about to show the rest of us. Waste of both my time and yours.”
“Then we’ll agree to table this part of the discussion until later,” Harpsinger said, and the others who had been with me since the beginning or close to it all nodded in agreement.
“Captain!” the Ensign turned to Leonora Hammer.
Captain Hammer’s eyes were calculating. “It does no harm for the other members of the Planning Staff to work on contingencies, Ensign. Just stay focused on your job,” she told him.
“That’s fine just so long as you remember your job in any future hearings, Ensign,” Spalding said seriously. “When they ask 'due to past experiences, did you expect the foul perfidy of the Sector government?' you can honestly say you had no blooming idea! 'What past experiences?' you’ll say, followed by 'me and the Admiral were like mushrooms: we sat in the dark knowing nothing and doing nothing.”
“Is 'perfidy' even a word?” Chief Lesner asked.
“Looked it up just this morning,” Spalding replied.
“No leading the witness, Commander,” Harpsinger scolded severely.
Jones looked like a man trying to figure out if he was having his leg pulled or if he really needed to be worried.
“Hey, I just work here,” Spalding said raising his hands in the air, “you’re the expert so we’ll just go with whatever you want.”
“Right, so back to our previous discussion,” Captain Laurent said, trying to drag the group back on task, “I believe we were about to turn from battleships and Sector politics to total warship numbers?”
“Actually—” Jones brightened.
“Yes, that seems like an ideal area to jump into,” I said, taking back control of the conversation now that we were past any kind of potential legal issues our Fleet might have with its leader, you know, actually planning a counterattack. It’s like they say in the old adage: it all started when we hit them back. After my time on trial in front of the Security Council, I was willing to entertain a certain amount of CYA when it came to potential future legal troubles and Harpsinger, as the man who had saved me from a number of attempts by Sir Isaak to use the law to execute me in the past, had my trust.
For a moment Ensign Jones looked mildly disgruntled before turning and restarting his holo-presentation.
A list of ships, broken out by classification, appeared on the screen along with a rotating series of warship images beside each classification. Judging by the varying amount of damage shown on each image, it was almost certain that these were representations of actual ships now here at Gambit.
“Of the fifty warships captured or destroyed during 1st Reclamation, five of which were battleships, the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet and its allies were able to retrieve all of them. Thanks for this feat is mainly due the Constructor on retainer, the Multiplex. Now, of the 45 warships of Cruiser or Destroyer classification retrieved by the constructor,” Jones said, throwing up 3-D images of all forty five ships, I winced as a large number of them looked like they were ships in name only from the various parts and pieces floating on the screen, “half were either destroyed or have been assessed by both the Yard and Engineering as useless for anything more than spare parts. These ships are scheduled to be run through the orbital smelter, to be reprocessed into materials useful for our growing industry in Gambit after they’ve been stripped of anything marked for salvage by the inspection teams.”
“There’s a lot of good tech left on those warships that we can pull out,” the Fleet’s Chief Engineer said with satisfaction.
“A lot of unnecessary salvage, in the yard’s opinion,” Yard Manager Baldwin chimed in, “we could cut the salvage operation by 20-30% and not even notice.”
Spalding bristled. “There’s no reason to throw good money after bad,” he growled, “everything tagged by my teams is good stuff. Tech we can use to get everything up and running again, just like it's supposed to be. It would be a shame to throw a perfectly good light laser system or repairable plasma conduits into the smelters when it would take longer to smelt and rebuild them in the factories than to just yank them out and refurb them.”
“I’d agree except that we have limited manpower reserves and every worker pulled off the yard, factory, or ship repair, for salvage duty just makes us that much slower. I agree with 80% of the picks but the other twenty is dead weight that we could replace just as quickly as your teams could pull them out. That is if we can keep people at their assigned duty stations and let them fully train in now that the factory has been expanded and running at capacity.”
“Cross-training is key if any of these factory and yard workers are ever needed to form emergency ship crews or engineering cadres,” Spalding growled, “besides I thought you said your people could handle anything?”
“And they can, Commander,” Baldwin shot back, “but in my opinion, better an expert at his or her job than a jackanape-of-all-trades who does everything poorly but nothing right—like you want to turn my highly-skilled and specialized workforce into!”
“Jackanapes? That’s rich from a head-smasher like you who thinks applying a wrench to the head when she doesn’t get her way is proper procedure! As for manpower shortages, it's only good practice to cross-train your people but even then it’s hardly like we’ll be pulling more than, say, five to ten percent with most of those replaced by engineering departmental cross-trainers who are confused about their calling and need a little time in the salt mines to help straighten out their perspectives on shipboard duty,” Spalding sneered, throwing his hands in the air and then leveling a finger at her. “Besides, Personnel assures me that we’ll have a recruiting ship with a batch of freshly-recruited greenhorn wrench turners anytime now. That should help offset any manpower losses the factories experiences.”
“You want me to replace trained and seasoned specialists with ham-handed, mudball-trained, sub-par freshies straight out of university?” she demanded incredulously.
“No. I thought I made clear most of those freshies are mine, and I intend to put them straight onto salvage duty. Most of the rotaters will be engineers who think they’ve lost the gleam of a starship in their eye and need a stint on punishment duty in the factory to get their space legs back under them,” Spalding pounded the table once before continuing, “your people should be short-timers on salvage duty. Just enough time to get their feet wet ship-side and to see what a ship has to offer before I send them back to their hum drum—like on an orbital factory where nothing happens and they’re going nowhere fast.”
“I’d almost be insulted if your description of a stint in the yard wasn’t so laughable,” Glenda rolled her eyes.
“Laughable? Why it's the Sweet Saint’s own honest truth and further more-,” Spalding started building up a good head of steam.
“I think that’s all we needed to hear on the Salvage front in order to make an informed decision,” I interrupted the growing spat between Yard and Engineer and turned to Steiner, one of our former recruiters, “what’s the ETA on that batch of new engineers, Lieutenant?”
She rubbed the side of her chin as she pulled up the data on her slate. “Looks like t
he latest batch of recruits landed at Tracto last week. After the security checks and inevitable poaching by Orbital and Fleet there, we should be seeing something over this way in another two to three weeks,” she reported, still looking up information. She turned to me, “Maybe we should hold off on the salvage operation until the new recruits arrive if personnel allocation is going to be an issue?”
“Hold off for three weeks?” Spalding protested.
“Exactly!” exclaimed Baldwin. “Right now much of our schedule is predicated on operating the factory at full capacity—a factory that needs that orbital smelter running full-out if we’re going to meet the…,” she shot a sideways glance at Engineer Spalding, “ambitious build schedule we’ve been handed.”
I suppressed a wince, wondering just what it was I’d rubber stamped when the Commander Spalding’s series of requests and work orders had appeared on my screen which, after taking a look at the first few, I’d just basically rubber stamped the rest. It looked like I really needed a Chief of Staff to help me keep on top of things.
I shot a sideways glance at Lisa Steiner before focusing back on the here and now. “Then we’re just going to have to adjust, adapt and move forward,” I declared with force, and if it was motivated by my own errors in not keeping on top of everything and feeling embarrassed, and not as much a desire to keep this meeting on track as everyone might have assumed…well, no one needed to know that. I knew it, and was about to make some changes as a result. “I want a proposed plan from the two of you by 1600 hours,” I said to Spalding and Baldwin, “in the meantime, please continue, Ensign.”
“Yes, as I was saying before we digressed, of the fifty captured or destroyed warships we managed to retrieve nearly all of them—forty five of them of Cruiser or Destroyer size. Of those, half are unusable for our purposes as anything more than salvage. Of the remaining twenty two warships, ten of them can be put back into service relatively quickly,” he said, pulling up an image the ten proposed warships.
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