First Command kb-2

by Rodney L. Smith

  “Play it back one more time, H’Talli, I don’t see what you are trying to show me.”

  Sensor Lead Technician H’Talli wasn’t sure he could see it either, but he could sense something was there. He ran the file back and ran it forward at slow motion.

  “There, just there. See it, sir? That flash, just there.”

  The captain saw a brief flash, but nothing else. He asked how many times he had seen that flash and was told just this one time.

  “Lead Sensor Technician H’Talli, watch this area. If you see anything more, let me know.”

  Captain S’Kal returned to the bridge and thought to himself that if his lead sensor technician was operating on such a hair trigger, what was it like among the junior crewmen? He would have to advise the med tech to start looking at crew physical well being more closely.

  H’Talli assigned two sensor techs to watch that area, to put fresh eyes on the anomaly.

  Chief Blankenship was first to tumble to what the K’Rang were doing. She correctly assessed that they were practicing movement to contact and quick reaction drills. This gave the analysts on the Golden Eagle an idea. Admiral Minacci called a commander’s conference on his flagship for all involved, including the Baratarian leadership. The conference was to develop a plan of attack for the impending K’Rang incursion.

  Kelly was not asked to attend the conference. He was charged with conducting a high-resolution gravimetric survey of the star cluster.

  The Admiral told him, “Find every gravity eddy, dead end, gravity well, hide spots, and other routes through the star cluster. I am going to tie the K’Rang up in the star cluster like they were in a maze. Map the maze for me.”

  Kelly understood what the Admiral wanted, but asked, “How soon do you want me back with the data?”

  The Admiral put his hand on Kelly’s shoulder and said, “Get me good enough, but I wouldn’t turn down perfect. Just don’t leave any hidden routes that would give the K’Rang a way around behind us.”

  Kelly said, “Aye aye, sir,” and returned to the Vigilant.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Admiral called the meeting to order. Present were Steve Maynard with his senior Undefeated class ship captain, his Torpedo Ship Wing Commander, the Ascetic Bishop-Commander, and the captain of the Leviathan. The Marine Brigade Landing Group Commanders and Group ship captains, with the exception of Kelly, were all present.

  The 3rd ALG Intel Chief briefed the enemy situation. The ops chief briefed the friendly forces. He told the assembled leaders that a cruiser squadron was enroute to reinforce them, but was a week away. They would have to go this one with whatever they had.

  The senior Marine Commander gave the Marines status. They had two light brigades and one heavy brigade with armored hover transports, self-propelled medium plasma artillery, armored hover guns, and the long range air/space defense system capable of firing missiles or plasma bursts into planetary high orbits.

  The logistics officer briefed the supplies status. As the 3rd ALG hadn’t fought yet, supplies were full. All ships were reporting full weapons capability.

  The Admiral asked for a similar report from Steven Maynard. Maynard’s ops chief stood up and ran down their capabilities. “We have six full torpedo ship squadrons and over six thousand torpedoes. We have twelve Undefeated class cutters, and we have the Leviathan. Captain Chang has proposed a unique way to use it in our defense.”

  Captain Chang stood. “Ladies and Gentlemen, as you may not know, the Leviathan is a special ship. It’s the size of a fleet battle carrier. It has a clamshell opening system that can swallow a ship the size of this flagship. It has an EMP weapon that can fry the solid-state circuitry of a modern ship and stop it in its tracks, causing it to drift unpowered in space. It also has four tractor beams. It’s this capability, along with the clamshell, that can be of high utility.”

  “Two years ago, we stopped a freighter convoy traversing outside our entrance. We brought the four freighters in and unloaded the cargo for inspection. We found undeclared military items. There were 5000 autonomous mines, 2000 stealth mines, and 1000 autonomous missile pods. If you come out with a mine plan, I can lay mines at a prodigious rate with four tractor beams.”

  The admiral whispered to his ops chief, then said, “That is wondrous news, Captain. We only have 1000 mines in the entire 3rd ALG. We can give you a detailed mine plan to start to work on and all of our mines. If you give my ops chief the specs on these missile pods, we can work them into the plan, too. Thank you, Captain, you’ve made me feel a lot better.”

  The meeting went on for hours as ideas were advanced, seized upon, or discarded. At the end of the meeting, the skeleton of a plan had been decided upon. Now it was up to the ops staff and the Vigilant.

  A similar meeting took place on board the K’Rang Fleet flagship. Fleet Commander J’Kalt was not happy with the results of his rehearsals. The fleet was still just a collection of ships, not a cohesive unit. He complimented the two Shadow Force Destroyer captains for their aggressiveness and admonished the other captains to emulate them. He chastised them for being slow and cautious, when their very survival may require they throw caution to the wind and charge headlong at a Human force of larger size.

  “We will be going in without the benefit of detailed intelligence on the threat. We have to be ready for any situation. More than likely, we won’t know where the enemy is until we run into them. That is why these drills are so important. We must react faster than the Humans react and overpower them.”

  He ran through the drills on the holographic projector one more time, then sent the captains back to practice them again and again until he was satisfied. Eventually, they caught onto what he was trying to do and started to act more like a fleet and less like individual ships in a crowd. J’Kalt slept well that night.

  Kelly looked for empty sectors in his survey results chart. He had built a 35-degree cone of space with the apex (the pointy end) starting at the Human entrance to the star cluster and the base ending centered on the K’Rang entrance to the cluster. He had divided the cone by fourths down the long axis and divided the length by 20ths, making 80 sectors. As he finished a sector, it went from clear to red. When there were only a few sectors remaining, Kelly decided they were peripheral and not important. Kelly set course for the 3rd ALG at max speed. He had what the Admiral needed.

  Kelly turned his survey results over to the Admiral’s Intel staff and they added magnifying data to the chart. They turned the chart over to the Ops Chief and he gave it to his Mine Warfare Staff Officer. The MWSO drew out avenues of approach and looked for ways to canalize the K’Rang where the Fleet wanted them to go, not where they wanted to go. He planned mine fields at key chokepoints, where adjacent hide locations for torpedo ships or fighters were available, and for autonomous mines to close off pathways behind K’Rang ships. The MWSO then turned his plan over to the Carrier Fighter Wing Commander, who coordinated with the Baratarian leadership and assigned defensive sectors to Fleet and Baratarian units.

  The Admiral had the hardest decision to make. What would he do with the Marines? The K’Rang Fleet was composed of all combatant ships. There were no assault landing forces, therefore no need for ground troops. The Admiral made the hard decision to leave his Marines behind. He knew he would have three very angry Colonels in his office shortly.

  The Marines and Ascetics had the mission to defend Lafitte City. They would move the population to safe areas outside the city and support them. The Marines’ long- range air/space defense system would be networked with the similar Ascetic system to defend the planet. If the K’Rang should defeat the combined 3rd ALG and Baratarian forces, they would be on their own until the cruiser group arrived.

  After hearing the three colonels out, he ordered them to deploy to the planet with their wartime combat loads and carry out their mission. True professionals to the core, they saluted and set off to their respective assault support carriers and the planet’s surface. The 3rd ALG had no Mari
ne general or staff embarked to function as a division commander and HQ, so the decision was made for the three colonels to come under the command of the Bishop-Commander of the Ascetics.

  This left a decision on CDR Milton’s idea for how to use the assault landing carriers. Milton pointed out that when the assault landing carriers had their AS-500s unloaded, they were faster and nimbler than a frigate and the bombardment plasma guns were effective against combat ships at medium and close ranges. CDR Milton proposed to use the carriers as ultra heavy attack fighters.

  The Admiral could ill afford to lose his assault landing carriers, but the firepower would surely come in handy in this fight if used in the right way. If they could use brown dwarfs as cover and pop out to fire, they might take out a few of the frigates or support ships. He ordered the three captains to concentrate on the rear of the K’Rang formation, especially their support ships and escorts. They were to leave the heavy ships for the rest of the group.

  The Marines loaded all their equipment and war supplies on the AS-500s and departed for the planet’s surface. They landed in assembly areas and quickly organized themselves to accomplish their missions. Two battalions of each brigade were assigned to organize the evacuation of the civilians. The remaining battalions built the camp for the evacuees west of the city.

  The heavy Marine brigade deployed its two long-range air/space defense systems along the southern ridge. The Ascetic system deployed on the north ridge. The Ascetic light battalions saw to law and order in the city. The Marine heavy battalions and the Ascetic heavy battalion deployed in the wooded high ground to the east of town. All units dug in and fortified their positions.

  With the AS-500s and Marines on the planet’s surface, Fleet efforts turned to establishing the mine barriers and ambush positions. The CFW commander assigned specific ambush positions to units and ordered them to reconnoiter and establish routes into and out of these positions, minimizing their exposure to enemy fire. This was especially true for the assault carriers.

  The Leviathan was a marvel at placing mines. Its cavernous mouth could hold thousands of mines. Its four tractor beams could precisely place the mines. It placed 2000 mines in one 18-hour day. By the second day, they increased efficiency and doubled the number. By the third, they had completed the mine plan. Now it was up to the K’Rang.

  The Admiral worked with the frigates, the carrier, the replenishment ships, and two of the Baratarian captured freighters. The plasma frigates had long-range bombardment guns and defensive missiles. The carrier had twin pods of defensive missiles. The ALG could fire off 200 defensive missiles before the replenishment ships would need to reload them. They carried five reloads. The Admiral worked with the ships to choreograph their actions in support of the fighters, attack craft, and torpedo ships. By the end of the week, he felt he had created a cohesive team.

  Admiral Minacci called another commander’s conference to receive readiness appraisals from his commanders. All commanders reported fully ready to accomplish their assigned missions. Minacci congratulated them on their hard work, then dispersed the ships to their assembly areas. Minacci called Kelly in last.

  “Kelly I need for you to monitor the enemy for me. Stick to them like glue. I need to know where they are at all times. If they split up, I need to know that. Don’t let them get lost. If we are to survive this, much less win, we need to know what the enemy is up to at all times. If you have a clear opportunity to take out a K’Rang ship, especially their supply ships, do so. This is going to be a campaign over a week or more. They will need to resupply. I want that to be a difficult proposition for them.”

  Kelly returned to the Vigilant and started planning his hide spots, overwatch positions, and firing points.

  Connie spent two watches plotting out all the potential positions Kelly designated. She correlated them to avenues of approach, choke points, and other criteria the Captain determined. When she was done, she had a plan for bringing the Vigilant into a firing position, firing, and moving under cover to the next position along the avenue of approach. She also had locations where sensor pods would be placed to observe K’Rang movements at forks in their path. When she had it all entered into the navigation computer, she called it a day.

  She retired to her quarters to find Alistair lying in his upper bunk. He was wide-awake. She had a question that had been in her head since she found out he was from Archimedes.

  “Alistair, could you tell me about what life was like on Archimedes?”

  Alistair rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. He asked, “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes, I do. Please.”

  “How much do you know about the Great Migration?”

  She replied, “No more than I read about in history class.”

  “The Great Migration was mankind’s first foray into moving beyond Earth and settling ten relatively nearby systems. It was the start of the Galactic Republic. Earth formed ten syndicates that built ten settlement ships each, recruited 100,000 people, and sent them out to the stars with all supplies they would need to create a settlement on these new worlds. One million people were sent out to establish new Earths.”

  “The ships were massive, larger than the largest ships today. They were built to carry 10,000 people, their personal belongings, livestock, supplies, and fabricators that could form anything they needed out of raw minerals and scrap. Each ship was filled with suspended animation compartments for all the living things on board. Everyone was supposed to sleep for the year and a few months the voyage was supposed to take.”

  “I don’t know how much you already know about my world, but the Archimedes settlement was supposed to be the eighth settlement ship to go to Epsilon Eridani 4. It never got there because the senior astrogator went crazy, put the whole crew into suspended animation, and took the ship off course. He left the Captain a long wandering confession and explanation of why he did it, then spaced himself. The ship powered through space for 30 more years, pilotless, before it sensed a class M planet circling a yellow dwarf very similar to Sol and woke the crew. They were horrified to learn they were 30 light years beyond their intended destination and 41 light years from Earth.”

  “The 10,000 settlers considered all options, but in the end had only one available to them. They couldn’t go back. They couldn’t send a rescue message. They were forced to settle the planet and devolve their civilization before their modern capabilities ceased to work.”

  “Not everyone was happy with this outcome. There was the Revolt of Desperation early on, by those not willing to stay and wanting to load back on the ship and return to Epsilon Eridani 4. The ship had neither the energy nor life support to sustain the ship for a return voyage. Nonetheless, they overpowered the settlement ship watch and loaded 367 settlers back onto the ship. They were in the process of powering the ship back up when the ship’s captain led an Ascetic commando raid to disable the ship and subdue the rebels. If they had gone it would have doomed the settlement, because most of the livestock were still onboard in suspended animation.”

  “That led to the establishment of an autocratic form of government. The appointed settlement chief executive, a former Earth State representative, realized he was not qualified to lead a lone settlement through this new desperate and precarious situation. He selected the ship’s captain as the new leader of the settlement and the captain proclaimed himself Duke Carl I. He hand picked nine village leaders and made them all barons, declaring summary judgment in all matters for himself and his barons.”

  “This got the people working toward the common goal of making the settlement a viable community, instead of pining for what would never be. It was a period of innovation, as people tried to devolve the civilization to a sustainable level before the power supplies on their modern equipment died.”

  “They built steel mills, coking plants, mining equipment, and foundries. They built basic infrastructure for a 19th century society, even though they didn’t have the population yet to operate
them all. All the basic building blocks of an early industrial age society were built, piece by piece, using the molecular fabricators that came with the ship. Cotton gins, rolling mills, flourmills, sawmills, and other light and heavy industry were pieced together from fabricated parts. They concentrated on building things that allowed for further capabilities. Boilermaker fabrication equipment was a priority, as the society’s primary power source would be wood fired steam engines.”

  “They had a maximum of 30 years left in the power cells and had to make optimum use of the fabricators before that power ran out. They used the limited sensor capability of the settlement ship to find raw minerals, resources, and the best location for the settlement. They did a pretty good job. The settlement organized itself with the main township, in essence the county seat, in the center of a vast plain with a large river flowing through it. The nine villages were arrayed around it like spokes on a wheel about 200 km away from the county seat. The livestock and seed were distributed to the villages best able to utilize them. Villages along the river valley became farming centers. Villages with fertile grasslands became cattle and horse breeding centers. Villages in the highlands built mills along the creeks and became milling centers. Pigs were distributed equally amongst the villages as they could flourish anywhere. Goats were apportioned to the highland villages where other livestock couldn’t survive. Poultry were apportioned through out the settlement, some even allowed to roam free.

  All in all, the early leaders did a pretty good job. They accomplished all their goals before the power ran out. After 30 years the population had quadrupled, and schools up to a university were built and staffed. Guilds were formed to train people to operate the factories, mills, and other specialized functions. Livestock population grew to where they no longer needed to be isolated to just one settlement. Trade flourished between the town and villages, aided by a unified railway system servicing the town and all villages.”