“Of course. But I don’t know how I can find that out.”
“How are you finding anything out?”
“I’ve got people going through the recordings of former attacks, looking for things like speed and shields.”
“Good. You’re on the right track.”
“There’s not going to be any strategy on the recordings.”
“But it’s still something we need to know. We just have to figure out some clever way to learn these other things.”
“Okay.” His lower jaw jutted out, but he kept his lips together, creating an extended lower lip, a resentful look, pouting, like a little child. Hiranaka smiled to herself. What a jerk.
And Colonel Mehta was such a genius, making improvements to the PIR that were light years beyond what Ramirez had come up with.
What was she going to do with the plans Hiranaka would develop? Trash them. Completely re-write them. It was going to be a blood-bath.
“Next,” Mehta continued, “we want to know what are Species X tactics? How close do they get before they fire? How do they react to our individual tactics?”
“Right.”
“What is the composition of the Species X fleet? How many ships do they have, and in what way do each of the ships operate differently? Do they have different weaknesses, based on previous battle damage?”
The best Ramirez could handle now was a slight nod. He looked like he was going to explode.
“Any questions?”
He shook his head.
Mehta leaned forward. “Then I have one last comment for you. You’d better figure out how to get over whatever’s bothering you, because your deportment is not acceptable. Do I make myself clear?”
He didn’t look at her, eyes straight ahead, narrowed and angry looking. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And I need you to start working on an IPB, using sector 523.”
Ramirez rushed out of the room, then stopped in the hallway and leaned his back against the wall. What was the matter with him? Why was he so angry? These were good ideas, ideas that could save them, the kinds of ideas he would expect his commander to come up with, but all that was wrong. Something was wrong. Damn it. What was wrong?
It didn’t matter. He needed to get back to his real work, finding out about technology. The Mralans were going to get tired of Mehta very soon, and then she and the rest of her team were going to be deposited back on Earth. At that point, Ramirez’ research would be the only thing between them and the Dakh Hhargash.
He returned to the intelligence office, where Ndrem sat at the front desk, and behind him a half a dozen Mralans toiled over their video readers. He handed the PIR to Ndrem.
Ndrem slipped the paper under a translator lens, then nodded, his thinning hair spilling onto his brow. “This is brilliant.”
Diós, he didn’t need to hear any more praise about Mehta. It was starting to make him dizzy. “Okay. Look, I want you to start acting as the head of the intelligence section. The more I do your job, the longer it will take you to learn how to do it.”
Ndrem smiled on one side of his mouth. “You really don’t like Colonel Mehta, do you?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Of course not.” Ndrem let the other side of his mouth join in his smile. “In that case, I want you to work on this PIR.” He pointed to one of the questions Mehta had written out.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s the number one priority, in my mind. Don’t you agree?”
“Well, yes, but…” He really needed to get back to the library. The task Ndrem has assigned him would take him most of the day, stuck in the intelligence area, doing a sergeant’s work, wasting his valuable time.
“And I’ll send you another analyst to work on this one.” His finger slid down the page a little more. “All you have to do is tell her or him how to figure it out.”
“But…” Damn it, he couldn’t think of any reason he should be spared this work. “We also have to prepare an IPB, based on sector 523. I can work on that.”
“A what?”
He sighed. It was so much extra work having to explain everything to these aliens. And the words that comprised the acronym wouldn’t mean anything to a Mralan. “It’s where you research the area and figure out what’s there that will affect the battle.”
“Got it. I can do that.”
Ramirez blinked. This little Mralan was getting a little too cocky. “You’ll have to share that information with Hiranaka, and then be ready to brief it to the commander.”
“Makes sense. Now, I need you to get started.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The first of the tactical training was about to begin, and Colonel Mehta headed to the bridge to observe.
During the previous staff meeting, she had made several appointments, including a nerdish little Mralan named Ndrem to be the ship’s intelligence officer, and Pkrish to be the operations officer. Planning training was one of his new responsibilities, she had told him. They would begin by running drills, and the first drill would be what the Navy called “General Quarters,” the alert that happened as soon as the ship’s officers realized there was a major tactical problem facing them.
She was half-way to the bridge when the klaxon sounded, and Pkrish came over the public-address system. “Alert. Alert. This is an alert. All personnel report to your duty stations.”
Several people coming the other direction looked toward the flashing lights overhead, listened to the instructions, then sauntered on their way. No sense of urgency.
Don’t get all riled up. This is the first time. No one gets it right their first time.
But then, damn, if she couldn’t get her own crew operating efficiently, how was she supposed to get a workable plan to Trin’s ship?
She fast-walked to the bridge, letting the urgency show in both her feelings and actions. She burst onto the bridge and looked around. Everyone there seemed calm and happy.
“Status?” she said to Fmedg.
Fmedg looked puzzled. “I haven’t received any information.”
“Then call them. Ask them what percent of personnel they have assembled.”
“Of course.” He turned back to his station and tapped on his controls.
The other bridge operators looked at her expectantly. She pointed to the woman sitting on Vril’s right, at the sensors and navigation console. “What’s your name?”
“Yagran.”
“And where are your other counterparts? They should be here by now.”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you call them?”
“I guess.”
“Then do it. Call them. Tell them they should have been here five minutes ago.”
“Uh, right.” Yagran turned back to her station and fiddled with things.
Lieutenant Colonel Davis walked onto the bridge, followed by a Mralan with a chart on an easel. He set it up where she could look at it. The chart showed each of the sections and departments on the ship, and the percentage of personnel who had reported. “The current-operations cell,” Davis said. “It’s low tech, but we’ll get it automated soon.”
“The numbers are low.”
“Seems like no one is taking this seriously, ma’am.”
She nodded. Something had to be done, and she could only think of one way to do it. “Get me Ialia.”
The next few minutes were filled with more frustration, having to give the simplest instructions, watching as no one took initiative or even seemed concerned. Didn’t they know how to pretend that there was a problem?
Ialia finally ambled into the room. “What can I help you with?” she asked.
“I need two more people,” Mehta answered.
“What are your requirements?”
“Loyalty, for starters. They have to do whatever I tell them to, and not be bothered when other’s object. They also need to be physically strong and intimidating looking. And they need to be low enough on the empa
th scale that they won’t be overwhelmed if someone else gets upset.”
Ialia nodded, but her brows locked together above her nose. “It sounds like you want enforcers. It sounds like you want to start...” She stopped and looked away. “I’m not comfortable with this.”
Well, yes, it did sound like she was preparing to begin a dictatorship. And in a sense, that was what it was. There just needed to be limits.
“Look,” Mehta said, “everyone on the ship agreed to do the experiment. But not everyone’s cooperating. I need to get them to cooperate, or to get out of our way.”
“I don’t know.”
“And I will make this agreement. If either you or Fmedg believes I’m doing things just for the joy of having power over people, then you can go to Aahliss and tell her to relieve me.”
Her eyes got wide. “We can?”
“Yes. But only under those specified conditions.”
“That you’re abusing your power,” Ialia said. “I understand.”
“Now go get me those enforcers.”
“Yes.” Ialia turned and walked away.
Mehta looked back at the chart, which the lone current operations crewman was updating with information he got from Fmedg. Most of the staff sections had only twenty-five percent of their off-shift people. Engineering was the worst, with fifteen percent. And engineering was probably where they would need the most extra people to do damage control.
She watched for a while longer, and when the numbers stopped moving, she called Opash. “The drill is over. Have all the staff and department heads meet me in the meeting room.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mehta hadn’t thought anything could go worse than the alert, until she ran the after-action review. Everyone seemed to think they had done a good job. They were congratulating each other. It was a damned love fest, and it took her a long time to get them to see what they needed to improve.
No, she realized, it was worse than that. There was learned hopelessness here.
“I guess if they were shooting at us,” Rbemfel said, “there could be things to repair. But repair is time consuming. There might not be any time, in a real situation. I mean, by the time we get to the location of the damaged equipment, the whole ship could be… gone.”
“Good point,” Mehta said, giving him a little crumb of praise so he wouldn’t get too overwhelmed at the criticism she was about to level. “That’s where communications come in. You have to report your equipment and systems status to the bridge, so that the commander can make a decision based on the true status.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“You call the bridge and tell us where each major system is, maintenance-wise. So propulsion might be a hundred percent operational, but port shields are about to fail. That way, we know to change our tactic to something that will take the pressure off those shields, so you have the time to repair them.”
“But we can tell from the bridge if a system has failed,” the power distribution operator said.
“Rbemfel has information that can give us forewarning of a failure,” Mehta said. “We don’t want to wait until a system has failed. We want to prevent breakdowns. And the faster we know what’s going to happen next, the quicker we can react to it.”
Fmedg straightened his back, putting his head—and that parrot-beak nose—just a little higher than normal. “Is this the essence of your new tactic? Just reacting faster?”
“It’s an integral part,” Mehta said. “No tactic will work well if basic operations aren’t the best they can be. Now, back to the engineering status—”
“I don’t see how that will make a difference.”
“Everything that reduces decision-making time will make a difference.”
“If you don’t have something that will enable us to out-shoot their shields—”
Mehta huffed. “You and I can speak about this afterwards.” She turned back to Rbemfel. “By the end of the drill, about seventeen percent of the off-shift in your section had arrived, am I correct?”
“Yes,” he said. “More than enough—” He stopped, his eyes enlarged, blinking. “You said we would have more work—we’ll be repairing systems all over—we’ll need all the crewmembers.”
“You understand.”
“That might not even be enough.”
“Then anyone else who is an extra crew member, who’s not been assigned to the staff, should also report to engineering, or to damage control stations throughout the ship.” She pointed to Rbemfel. “You should designate those stations, and who should be in charge at each one. And make certain there is the necessary equipment there so people can do their job.”
“Right.”
“What about everyone else? Did anyone get one hundred percent of their off-shift to report?”
All around the room, heads shook.
“There’s going to be another drill before the next shift is up.” She looked at Pkrish and he nodded. “I need us to get to 100%. If we don’t get there this drill, we’ll do it again before the end of the next shift. Do you all see where this is going?”
“You’re going to keep doing this?” Ialia squeaked.
“Until we show that we can get it right.”
She saw them looking at each other, and she could see the resolve growing in their minds. “And it’s not just that we need to get to one hundred percent. We need to get there within ten minutes of sounding the alert. Sooner if we can.”
“Ten minutes?” someone in the back said.
“Once we get to ten minutes, we’ll back off to only one drill a week.” People shifted in their seats, but Mehta took that as a sign that they understood the urgency, or at least that they had a motivation for getting it right next time. She turned to Ramirez. “I need you to put together a small OPFOR cell.”
“Excuse me?” Ndrem said. “What’s OPFOR?”
“Opposing forces. They’ll play-act as the bad guys, so we have something to work with when we practice our tactics.”
Ramirez nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, not looking at her. She was going to have to talk to him again. Maybe she could ask one of the ship’s councilors to find out what his issue was. Either way, he couldn’t continue acting this way.
CHAPTER TWENTY
After the meeting, everyone but Fmedg left the room. He stood halfway to the door, staring at her with his imperious demeanor, nose lifted just enough to make his attitude clear.
“I perceive that you are unaware of how negatively the crew is taking your domination,” he said.
She had to blink twice just to take in what he’d said. “Domination?”
“They will not tolerate it much longer.”
This didn’t make sense. The Mralans she worked with seemed to be supportive of all her efforts. Besides, it wasn’t as if the concept of following a leader was completely alien to them. “Trel told me the Spirits left because you didn’t obey them.”
His brows lifted, pulling up the sagging skin over his eyes. “The Spirits have never required us to do something objectionable.”
“If it wasn’t objectionable, then why didn’t you obey?”
Fmedg’s chest rose, his expression indignation. “I am not the one who made that decision. I was but an adolescent when it happened.”
She wanted to chuckle. “I didn’t mean you, personally.”
“Yes, well,” he said, blinking as if to bat away the confusion, “this is a problem with your language, your ambiguous use of the second person. The translator doesn’t know how to render it.”
“I’ll try to be more precise in the future.”
His expression was almost a sneer. “I doubt you will be successful.”
“Nevertheless, I’d like an answer to the question. Why did whoever it was fail to do as the Spirits instructed?”
“It’s a long story.”
Damn, this man was annoying. She wouldn’t be asking the question if some instinct wasn’t telling her it was important. She couldn’t art
iculate why, what she thought she would get out of this knowledge, except a better understanding of how the Mralan mind worked, but she figured it was worth the time. “We have all day.”
Again, he blinked, then sighed, sitting wearily. “I don’t usually like to go over the story. It’s so unpleasant.”
“I understand. It’s also important.”
“Yes. Well.” He cleared his throat. “The government put together a small fleet to do mining operations, since a newly-discovered planet, called ‘A-seven fifty-three,’ had a lot of important minerals, things that were in short supply. The materials we got from there would supply Mral’s needs for generations. It was considered a strategic necessity, if you understand what I mean.”
“Yes. What does ‘A’ stand for?”
“Available. The planet had no sentient life.”
“And when did the Spirits become involved?”
“The Speaker came to the council and told them the Spirits forbade us to mine on that planet.”
“So, don’t tell me. Somebody thought the speaker was making it up?”
He laughed softly. “No. But those who had invested in the mining didn’t want anything to stop it, so they spread rumors that she was too new at the job and didn’t know how to interpret their messages. Among those was Bnarch, the Final Arbiter.”
“Final… what?”
“He is the head of our government.”
“And then the Spirits left?”
“Yes. All the spirit tubes went dark.”
“But the mining went okay, right?”
“No. As soon as we started drilling, we were attacked by strange six-legged creatures. We lost five people, and the remainder escaped in a shuttle. It frightened them so badly that no one was willing to return, even to recover the equipment that had been left behind.”
No Plan Survives (Tales from the Protectorate Book 1) Page 15
