Another Lightning brought in two squadrons from Solidario, but none of the pilots were mages. It docked with Mel’s Ice Boulder.
The last group of pilots turned up in their own fighters, and were assigned to Davis and Edna. I recognized a number of them from Eagle Wing, and they did all have fives. It turned out the rest of them had been serving aboard the carrier titans in a ground support role. Presumably the titans were getting rookie replacements, or retrained recruits. As I later found out, some of my own pilots had been flying drop ships off the titans, but had never been happy in that role, and never good enough for fighters.
I spent the time between arrivals on court matters. The two rogue mage cases which had resulted in previous convictions were identical, with both defendants telling the truth. I confirmed it for the courts involved just by watching the vids, and recommended immediate release. There were also statements from the three husbands who’d chosen to get married, and they were telling the truth as well. All had decided to stay married, although one of them was actually lying about that, and was pretty obviously planning something. I sent that on as well.
They’d sent me dozens of other cases, and I looked at the two with the highest priority, confirming innocence in one, and guilt in the other. The rest I put aside, and started looking at the jackets for each of the new squadron leaders. Most of them at least had some military experience, even though some of them were new to flying. Several had been police officers with decent middle ranks, but again, no space experience. But at least they all knew how to command their own people, if not how to run a squadron.
It was pretty obvious why they’d been sent to us. We’d be teaching the squadron leaders how to run their squadrons, while we ourselves were getting leadership and teaching experience. I wasn’t all that convinced it wasn’t a case of the blind leading the blind, but only time would tell. And what concerned me the most was all the squadron leaders were much older than we were. Mostly. I still didn’t know how old Fina, Dorm, and Metunga were.
In the late afternoon, Judge jumped out with those destroyers’ still needing fighters. This time Corona had enough for what we needed, and it took a while for me to move them all to bays on ships. As each ship completed loading, and took on seats and jump drives, they left. By the time the job was done, they had drones already moving newly completed fighters out to the parking places I’d emptied. Eagle would be getting the rest of his fives very shortly as well by the look of it. But he’d have to bring the pilots there to get them off the ground, and have the jump drives fitted in orbit. Unless they used a move mage up to speed on ground to orbit movement. Not my concern though.
Back with my destroyers, I had all the squadron leaders join me for dinner, while my team ate with their squadrons. They all had co-pilots, but most of them had not yet created an avatar, although they all had faces for console hollos. All the destroyers had the fabricators for avatar bodies, so it wouldn’t be long before they were all walking around. And they’d already taken control of their ships, although I didn’t know how that was done at this distance. Then I remembered all AIs had a primary on their homeworld, and we were only a few rifts away. As such, it wouldn’t have been Leanne and Tamsin creating new AI’s after all.
The way the AIs were multiplying, they’d soon have a society bigger than my own.
Dinner was interesting. Those who’d never eaten food from a different world were surprised by the choices available, and while most of them were not very adventurous, the buffet the butlers prepared allowed them familiar local choices, as well as plenty of unfamiliar ones to sample. I tried a few dishes I hadn't come across so far, fortunately just tasting them first, and found some of the offerings to be quite tasty.
I pinged Leanne about where the food came from, and was told the Lightnings had brought enough for a few days. But we were due a supply shipment shortly, and several months’ food and drink for the newcomers would be coming then.
With dinner over, and us lingering over drinks, I’d asked each of them for a brief introduction of themselves, since none of them had worked together before. As things were about to break up, Tamsin’s voice made us all stop.
“All pilots to your ships. This is not a drill.”
Twenty Five
We appeared above a thirty two ship Rawtenuga fleet.
It was in our protected cluster, and had just done another course change towards a planet. I’d been hoping we’d get some practice sessions in before needing to deal with these remaining fleets, but we all know how that goes. Once again, Trixone militia ships appearing over the planet had triggered the change of course towards it. This time we’d had enough notice we’d intercept them well before the militia ships were in danger.
I’d been thinking about a new way of doing this, but first things first.
“Do the fighter AIs know how to form a wall formation from a jump?” I asked Tamsin.
“They do now. While you were at dinner, we all had a virtual AI meeting. We laid out several sets of grids, so while the pilots might not know what is happening, the fighters will go into the right place.”
“Which grids?”
“Walls with the carrier in the center, and walls where each squadron is separate. Which one do you want here?”
“Squadrons separate, please. Allocate each a target, with the inexperienced squadrons doubling up. Give me a tactical view so I can put rifts in.”
The tactical screen popped up immediately, but we had to wait for all pilots to indicate being ready, before I could tell Tamsin to call the jump out. Response times needed serious work. And of course, none of the pilots knew their quarters were linked to their fighter bay, so they’d all gone the long way, and not all of them running it seemed.
I connected to the local sun, as what I intended doing would take some effort, and I wasn’t totally sure it could be done. By the time I had the intent in my mind, we had a grid of fighter walls in space, with all ships pointing down to where the Rawtenuga ships were oblivious to us.
With a thought, I initiated what I had in my mind, and a rift formed in front of each capital ship, and each squadron, all at the same time. The other ends were against the hulls of the ships below us, and moving with the ships. So far, so good. That had worked better than I’d expected.
“All ships,” I said into the open channel to everyone, “This is Commander Bud. Fire torpedoes and main guns on my command. For those new to the Excalibur Five, you’re firing nine torpedoes at a time, and it should only need one button press for the squadron to deliver enough to destroy the ship. Let’s not be wasting torpedoes when we don’t need to. If any enemy ship needs a second go, orders will be given for it.”
I waited for comments, but there were none.
“Fire.”
Most of the Rawtenuga ships came apart instantly, but the fire from a half dozen squadrons was all over the place across several seconds. It made no difference. I’d aimed each rift at the engine section, and each squadron had delivered eight more torpedoes than the destroyers had.
I was quite surprised there were no second firings, or other oops events, which indicated their simulator time hadn’t been wasted. As far as I knew, everyone had fired, although I’d need to check that.
The rifts vanished with another thought, and I waited now for escape pods to stop launching.
“Everyone home jump, please.”
Some of the squadrons vanished as a group, but most of them blipped out in ones and twos across the next five seconds.
I nodded at Tamsin, and the channel closed.
“Tell the squadron leaders to keep their people in their fighters,” I said to her.
“Are we going to do the other fleet while we’re here?” asked Serena.
“May as well.”
Tamsin said nothing, and now I noticed we didn’t have leader hollos on the console. I made a point of looking at that side of the console until she noticed it, and then they appeared. Most of them looked surprised, to be seeing me o
n their consoles.
“Keep your pilots in their ships,” I said again. “We’ll do that again with the other enemy fleet while we’re here.”
There were nods from some of them. Several looked a bit bewildered. I didn’t blame them. Nothing like being thrown in the deep end of the bay, with no warning.
“Do we have any dinosaurs still left on ships?” I asked Leanne.
“Yes. Give me a moment.”
A moment turned into a minute, then two, before she looked at me again.
“I can’t get into their computers, but I sent a drone into a damaged section, carrying a butler droid. The droid found a functional airlock, and went in, and is now hiding. The flagship has some power, and the fleet admiral is trying to stop ships in the same condition from launching pods. Unsuccessfully I might add. There’s a lot of loud noise going on.”
“I think I can do something about that.”
I pulled up a navmap, shifted it rapidly to my home system, and then zoomed it in to the planet Thorn had used as a penal planet. I chose an uninhabited island I thought a dinosaur might be able to survive on, concentrated on all living beings remaining in the ship hulks, and moved them all to the island.
“And now there’s no-one on the ships,” confirmed Leanne.
With another thought, I moved all the escape pods to nearby the nearest titan transport. Then it was just a matter of rifting the hulks and debris back to next to the previous dump I’d made in my system. There were some exclamations from the hollos on the console as everything vanished. With an afterthought, I brought the drone and the butler back.
“Next time,” I said to Leanne, “just say so, and I’ll move a drone right in there.”
“Oops.”
Serena and Tamsin were grinning. Leanne turned a bright pink colour for a few seconds, and then it vanished.
“We’re jumping to the other enemy fleet now,” I said to the hollos. “Tell your people to stand by to jump out, and we’ll be doing the exact same attack profile again.”
This time I got acknowledgments from the squadron leaders.
The jumps to get to the next fleet took a few minutes, as they were on the other side of the cluster. This time there were forty eight ships. We had forty one firing units, which included each capital ship and each squadron wall as a unit.
I grinned to myself as I had a thought.
Before ordering the fighters to jump out, I concentrated on seven of the ships in the front rank of sixteen, and moved them to an orbit above my home planet, followed by placing everyone on those ships onto the same island as before. A ping to Hubaisha told her she had intact ships to do something with. A female squeal came back to me.
“Same grid jump, please Tamsin.”
A few moments later, all the fighters were out in space again. I let go of the previous sun, and connected to this one. A few moments establishing the intent from the new tactical map, and the rifts came into being.
“Fire.”
Again, not a perfect firing pattern, but marginally better than last time. Same effect though. I removed the rifts.
“Home jump.”
And again rather raggedly, the fighters vanished. I turned to Tamsin.
“Why is jumping out perfect, but jumping in is a dog’s breakfast?”
“You’d like a dog’s breakfast both ways?”
She was grinning at me, and I conceded the joke.
“Perfect both ways, if you please. Let’s do both ways as a fleet wide AI jump, and at least look like professionals to anyone who’s looking.”
Several of the squadron leaders flinched.
“You can stand down your squadrons now. We have a lot of work to do, but that was a good introduction to what we’ll be doing. The bar is open for the next couple of hours, but anyone getting drunk will sleep in a care unit, and not their own beds. We are officially on call, so we could get called out again at any time of the day or night from now on. Make sure your pilots know that. Also make sure they know when training will be in the morning, and where the running track begins. Assuming nothing interrupts us, I’ll have a meeting of squadron leaders after breakfast, here on Judge.”
They all acknowledged, and vanished a few at a time.
“Are we done with escape pod launches?”
“Seem to be,” said Leanne. “There are life signs on quite a few ships though.”
“Not for long.”
The pods moved to where I’d sent the last lot, where there was now a lander doing pickup duty. The dinos left on the hulks appeared on the same island, not far from the others. It freaked all of them out. The hulks and debris formed a third mess in my home system. I looked at my captain hollos.
“Captains, as soon as we get back, you can join your crews in whatever revels they’re now starting. You better make sure they know about training in the morning. Metunga, don’t run your lot around your track at your speed until they learn to negotiate it without smashing their heads into anything with a sharp bend.” He grinned teeth at me. “The other cats need to be told to take the track cautiously until they learn it properly, and then make damned sure they know you might be on it as well, so they don’t mow you down.”
Those without cat pilots laughed. Those with, just smiled.
We arrived back where we’d started from some minutes later, and the hollos all vanished. Down in the pilot’s mess, Serena, Brown, and I found a loud party already in progress. Nothing like blooding new squadrons on the same day they were formed, with no danger of casualties.
There was a shout of “Wing commander on deck” as we entered, causing everyone to come to attention, but Brown cancelled it pretty rapidly with an “As you were”, which had everyone yelling again in seconds. We had tankards of beer pushed into our hands, and the next couple of hours were an education in how pilots actually behaved after a successful mission.
Brown retired to the XO’s suite fairly early, but Serena and I stayed until the bar closed.
Both of us enjoyed bed sport that night.
Twenty Six
The rumour was proved correct.
I woke the next morning to find my status screen included the location of a new station in the system, and the fact all thirteen ships were now docked at it. So was the liner, while Diplomat was now gone. The station had turned up with a complete resupply for each ship, designed for the pilots now on them, and was already completed by the station container moving system, and each ship’s cargo droids.
There was also a surprise for me. A small package was sitting on the bedside table, and when I opened it, I found a Meritorious Service Medal, and a hand written note saying, ‘Well Done. Corona will be joining the Imperium.’ It was signed by David Tollin. I hadn't even known they did paper notes. I shifted into dress uniform, and found the ribbon already there.
I led forty nine pilots into the running track, with Serena bringing up the rear. The track on Judge was wide enough for people to pass easily, but not wide enough to allow two people to run side by side and still have room to pass. I did my normal thing of starting at a sedate pace, and slowly ramping it up lap by lap. This track had three places where the turns were tight, and by the seventh lap I was tapping the spot as I went around, and everyone else was hitting it solidly with their hand. It did have an arrow in each spot, but even with the wider track, there was still a danger for the unwary.
Brown dropped out at five laps, Serena at seven, and she wasn’t the only one. By the time I’d completed lap ten, very few were still following me. Leanne and Tamsin had orders to bully everyone into the training courses the moment they left the track, and I led the last of them in there, where we followed everyone else through a course designed for hitting dinosaurs with sidearms, while running through station corridors.
No sign of the new sidearms yet, but the training was good all the same. Simulated dinos fell to standard stunners, and suits went into protection mode if a dinosaur was actually able to get its teeth into a person. This happened a good dea
l more than I would have liked, but it was good training.
Leanne told me after that the dinosaurs were actually a new model of AI body, designed to be real opponents for training. She’d been running all of them, which was a bit like operating a battalion of combat droids. I wondered when she’d run a battalion of combat droids, but didn’t ask. She was of course quite capable of doing so somewhere else, and I wouldn’t know.
Breakfast with the team kept us laughing to stories from last night’s revelry, and this morning’s training. The AI’s were up on the walls, and showing vids. Not everyone was fit, not everyone had been paying attention to previous training sessions, and some of them badly needed weapons training. Very few of them had ever gone on a long run and then straight into a mock combat situation. Some of the results were quite funny.
Metunga had run his cats around his track quite gently. For one lap. Then he’d upped the pace considerably with each lap, until finally one of his pilots smashed into a wall, and only his suit kept him from being killed. The near misses were also very funny, but the serious accident now meant I was a pilot down until he came out of the care unit, which I now found had been swapped out as part of the resupply, to allow the bigger beings to fit. When I checked, all the ships had received a set of ‘large being’ care units to add to the normal ones. You could curl a cat up in the normal ones, but it was just as well Metunga had never had to try.
Jill had let her cats establish their own speed, while Fina had proved dragons could keep up with her cats, and Dorm had surprised the hell out of the lions by staying with them. I’d had no idea someone so short could move so fast. Woof had looked really surprised, and I was pretty sure he was green under all that facial fur. If they fought a ground action at all, there were going to be some very surprised cats when the Wyvern and dragons shifted, as I had the feeling they didn’t know just what they had for squadron mates.
Lieutenant Commander Spacemage (Imperium Spacemage Book 4) Page 11
