“How is that possible?” Middleton asked in surprise.
“Looks like the stealth suite on this sled is a serious power hog,” Garibaldi explained. “If I’m right, it’s consumed about 90% of the power we’ve sucked outta that thing since we started monitoring a few months ago—which would be enough juice to power a Dreadnaught class for a year of combat deployment. You’ve got one or two more big battles like the last one in this ship before we’ll want to do whatever we can to remove the TC drive—and if that looks undoable then we’ll have to abandon this ship entirely.”
Middleton wanted to sigh bitterly, but he had known this was the likeliest outcome. The Prejudice was a prototype from stem to stern, and in his opinion it was a borderline miracle that Mikey and his people had been able to get as much of it operational as they had. He winced at the thought of just how inefficiently they might have been burning their limited fuel source, but quickly pushed those thoughts from his mind.
“So we’re on a timer,” Middleton forced a shrug. “That’s nothing we didn’t already know. Now that we’ve had a look at the countdown clock, we can adjust our usage accordingly.”
“This ship’s a fine piece of hardware,” Mikey allowed hesitantly, “but it’s nothing without a solid crew aboard her.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” Mikey leaned forward intently, “that morale’s been running on fumes for a while now. Your command style’s not exactly the warm and fuzzy variety, but you’re a winner and so people will follow you in spite of whatever other reservations they might have. This business with the Stalwart, though,” Mikey shook his head grimly, “it’s generated a lot of scuttlebutt—the kind you don’t usually want to hear about.”
Middleton shook his head, “If the crew of this fleet thinks morale is bad now, I would invite them to consider how bad things might have gotten if the Commander’s people had stayed.”
“That’s part of the problem with your kind,” Mikey said with a short-lived sneer, “you think everybody sees the world like you do. Most of us aren’t versed in game theory, Tim—and most of us don’t ever want to be. We’re living our lives the best way we know how, and we trust that our leaders are looking out for us. Most of the time we don’t think twice about a sideways order that comes down the line, even it rubs us in the exact wrong way, but when things look shaky at the top we start to get nervous about everything.”
“Meaning what, exactly?” Middleton asked, suspecting Garibaldi wasn’t here just to complain. He had known Mikey for a long, long time. While his Chief Engineer wasn’t known for his tact, he also wasn’t known for airing grievances unnecessarily.
“Meaning we’ve got a major morale problem bubbling up in this fleet,” Mikey said with an exasperated shrug. “If I was able to find the solution to it, I think I’d have found my way into your chair.”
“It’s not like you to complain, Mikey,” Middleton cocked his head.
“I know,” Mikey rubbed his balding head vigorously. “It’s just…I don’t know, Tim. It feels like we’re in way over our heads, you know?”
“I do,” Middleton agreed, “but if we don’t do this, who will?”
“I hear you, I hear you,” Mikey held up his hands in mock surrender. “On the plus side, it looks like our first prototype fire control module—the ones you wanted us to work up for installing on the fleet’s Corvettes—passed with flying colors.”
“That soon?” Middleton arched an eyebrow. “I wasn’t expecting test results for another week.”
“Yeah, well, you can thank Kongming for that,” Garibaldi said with a chuckle. “I’ve never seen anyone like him; he’s like a machine.”
Middleton shared his friend’s admiration for Kongming’s abilities, but it was clear to Middleton that the youngest member of the Prejudice’s crew—aside from Prichtac, of course—had suffered serious injuries. His wounds were of both the physical and the psychological variety, and it was clear that his commanding officer needed to do a better job protecting him from such.
“Kongming’s abilities and his resolve are impressive,” Middleton said pointedly, “but I think we need to ease up on the loads we’ve placed on his shoulders.”
“He volunteered, Tim—“
“I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong, Mikey,” Middleton assured him, “as CO it’s my responsibility to deploy my people correctly. He’s been through a lot, and I need to take that into consideration when I give him future assignments.”
“You military types,” Garibaldi said sourly, “you don’t ‘deploy’ people, Tim. We’re not parachutes or anchors, for Murphy’s sake.”
Middleton set his jaw, “Thank you for bringing your concerns to my attention, Chief.”
Garibaldi opened his mouth to reply, but promptly closed it and sighed, “Thank you, Captain.”
After Mikey left, Middleton reviewed the fleet breakdown and felt cold comfort at the total number of repairable warships he saw. There were a number of surprises—both good and bad—as he tallied the latest breakdown of the reforming Alliance Gorgonus Fleet. The total number of warships was significantly lower than he had hoped, but he couldn’t keep a grin from spreading across his lips as he read the first and second-to-last entries
7 Battleships (6 Imperial, 1 Prichtac; all salvageable but four (3/1) require extensive repairs—timeline: 6 months)
1 Void Hunter Mothership (fully functional, but main gun has limited remaining power)
1 Prejudice (prototype warship—power plant at approximately 45% remaining)
2 Fighter Carriers (converted bulk freighters; no repairs necessary)
21 Cruisers (15 Imperial, 3 Prichtac, 3 SLL; eleven require extensive repairs: timeline: 6 months)
22 Destroyers (14 Imperial, 4 Prichtac, 4 SLL; twelve require extensive repairs—timeline: 5 months)
48 Corvettes (mixed design; all to be refit with upgraded power plants, engines, and Ancient tech turbo-laser systems using hardware salvaged from scuttled/hulked Imp warships—timeline: 2 months)
32 Cutters (9 SLL, 9 Slavers, 14 Mercy’s End; minor repairs only)
P.S. I know you were hoping for a lot more hulls than this, Tim, but putting more than these back into fighting trim would take more time than the six months you said we’ve got. The rest of the hulls that might be salvaged later on have been put in in high orbit of the fourth planet—which will now be referred to as ‘the bone yard’—and all of their transferrable modules (fusion reactors, weapon systems, etc..) have been stripped to facilitate repairs on the ships outlined above. In all, there are another forty hulks (outlined below) in the bone yard that could be brought online with a year or two of dedicated refits, but only a third of them currently have functional power plants and engines—and none have working hyper drives, which will be a tall order to fill out here on the Rim. The locals can probably work a few up for a local SDF, but they won’t be any good to a mobile force without hyper drives and producing those isn’t possible right now. Rest assured that I’ll stand by the six month timeline on the ships outlined above—you’ll find me dead on the crapper with Void Hunter porn in hand before I miss this deadline.
2 Battleship hulks (Imp tech; non-salvageable with major superstructure damage, but could serve as supply depots, docking stations, missile launching platforms, or fighter bases—still have working hyper drives, but I wouldn’t recommend more than one or two jumps at MOST)
7 Cruisers (3 Imp, 2 Prichtac, 2 local; most could be salvaged, but the modular systems have all been removed and transferred to the yard inventory to get the rest of the fleet back in the black. Cheaper to refit these than build from scratch, but not by much)
23 Destroyers (15 Imp, 2 Prichtac, 6 local; most are in better overall shape than the Cruisers, but still need a major refit job in the making since we removed their weapons and power plants. We’re lucky Gauss’s people are familiar with mono-locsium hull repairs, otherwise these Lupines and the Imp Cruisers would be total losses)
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br /> 8 Corvettes (local tech; power grids are incompatible with the turbo-laser systems, so we’ll gut them and transfer systems to the new Corvettes as needed)
—Chief Garibaldi
Middleton knew that the initial returns looked less than overwhelming. Even with six months of yard time, the total number of hulls he had added to the AG Fleet was underwhelming at best—but, in this particular instance, it was a case of quality over quantity.
The majority of his fleet was now, improbably, of Imperial design. The extra range, durability, and speed of those crystal-hulled warships made this version of the AG Fleet fully twice as potent as the one he had arrived at Mercy’s End leading—even accounting for his ‘unorthodox’ bag of tricks which had included Void Hunter, Stalwart, and Mercy’s End surprises for which the Imperials had been ill-prepared.
The crown jewels of this new fleet were clearly the Battleships, all of which Mikey believed he could put back into service in the time required. Mikey wasn’t the kind to make promises he couldn’t fulfill, nor was he the type to sandbag his estimates. He shot straight in everything he did, which was one of the reasons Middleton called him a friend.
Less clear than the Battleships, however, was the value of those soon-to-be-upgraded Corvettes. The Belters which Kongming had returned with, headed by Mr. Gauss, had nonchalantly declared that refitting the various Corvettes would be a simple task for their Constructor-led industrial base. It was that confidence—which had been validated by an impressive eight day turnaround of the first Corvette to undergo the extensive refit process—which had prompted Middleton to gut a half dozen larger warships for compatible modules that could be transplanted into the Corvettes.
The first tests on the upgraded Corvettes had shown that the Ancient tech targeting systems were (perhaps unsurprisingly) fully compatible with the Imperial weaponry, which meant that it was possible Middleton’s new Corvette swarm would be able to out-range even Imperial Lupines or Battleships. He would need to conduct a series of tests to confirm that theory, but at the very least his Corvettes would have equivalent range to the Imperials’ longest guns.
That meant that while he could no longer count on the Void Hunters’ boarding parties to play such a pivotal part in future battles—nor could he depend on those surprisingly effective Stalwart gunships—he now had yet another ace in the hole. No Imperial Commander worthy of the post would fear patchwork fleet of Corvettes, and Middleton fully intended to make his Imperial adversary pay for that overconfidence in the next battle in—and for—the Gorgon Sectors.
“This should be fun,” Middleton said with a predatory smile.
For the first time since he could remember, he held nearly multiple decisive advantages over his adversary. He had momentum, surprise, and a dozen local worlds which had yet to be approached with the possibility of joining the reformed Alliance Gorgonus. His Fleet could conceivably double in size in the coming months, and if that happened there was a genuine possibility that he could actually win this fight with the Imps.
He allowed his lips to pull back even further in a wolfish grin, “This should be a lot of fun.”
The End
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The Middle Road (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 7) Page 46
