by Charles Lamb
Jake continued searching, but found no other project that presented the same risks. Some of the lesser research had more promise for actual deployment. One in particular had a familiar ring to it, as its focus was the exploration ship housed in Alaska. It mentioned a missile that specifically acted as a shield disrupter.
The project outline referred to the ability to disable the protective energy shields, exposing the vessel to secondary attack. Clearly, the military had worried about an alien reprisal. These had real potential, but with ALICE-3 gone, the ability to make more beyond what was in stock was in question.
Jake made several notes on all that he had uncovered. Once he returned to Nevada, he would have Patti investigate the findings. Some of these might just help against the NeHaw, but he wanted extensive research done before they turned anyone loose with them.
Finishing up, Jake packed what he needed and then went to grab a bite to eat. There was more to do before his trip to Nevada.
Chapter 22
MeHak debated on the most advantageous course of action regarding Nu Tau Beta. The recent loss of so many ships precluded just sending in the fleet. The exposure that created in the other occupied sectors was too big a risk should things go awry.
She needed more intelligence on this enemy before the NeHaw committed any more resources to the fight. She also felt she needed to change up the interactions. This enemy had demonstrated great prowess and creativity in ship-to-ship engagements. Maybe it was time to bring things down to ground level, so to speak. She needed to evaluate if this enemy was truly one-dimensional. She wondered about their ability to handle more than one challenge at a time.
The data on their home planet indicated that a NeHaw landing was potentially hazardous, and with the additional reports of combat ship traffic in the area, any troop transports would be target practice for a planet so deep in its solar system.
She needed a ground force of experienced, well-trained troops and a planet for them to attack that would draw this enemy away from their home world and into a multi-dimensional fight. The NeHaw had several races they used as mercenaries from time to time. They never allowed any of them to grow beyond a manageable number, preventing any challenge to authority. Selecting that resource will present little problem, it was the planet that was the challenge.
Reviewing the data on Nu Tau Beta, she reaffirmed that all five races had aligned with the upstarts. That meant she had just the planet in mind.
----*----
Sara had beat Jake to ALICE-1, arriving the day before him. He had to postpone an additional day, as news of his departure had upset ALICE-9. Still an immature life form, she had many of the traits of a human child. Awakening alone had provided a poor start into an unfamiliar world. With reassurances of availability, she finally agreed to Jake’s departure, however he needed to prove he was accessible during most of the flight back.
Patti, Sara and Linda all greeted his arrival, Kathy having a minor medical emergency to attend to, thus keeping her away. All three followed him into the locker room, Patti choosing to wait outside the doorway while he changed. With Jake in a comfortable change of clothes, they all headed to lunch. Choosing one of the smaller dining areas, each grabbed a tray, and seated themselves at a small table. As everyone started eating, Jake began the conversation.
“Patti, did you get all my data and notes from Georgia?”
“Yeah, we started working it over this morning. Those reverse passive reduction bombs scare me,” Patti replied.
“Yes, I agree. Before I left, I made sure they were securely locked down. Only a facility commander or above can access one. I was more interested in the shield disrupters. Those will really help the standard energy weapons penetrate the shields. Once they are down, there is nothing to absorb that energy. As we saw with the destroyers at Wawobash, they held up to a good pounding. These cut through all that.”
After a pause in the conversation, Jake added, “Have you given any thought to larger combat units?”
“Ground troops?” Sara asked, “Why would we need ground troops? I would have thought LA proved fast, mobile units were all that we need.”
“I think a lot of the LA problems have just gone underground,” Patti answered for Jake, “I talked to Chris the other day and he indicated the direct challenges have diminished, but the covert, sneak attacks are on the rise, becoming quite the nuisance. We are discussing other tactics to address the problem.”
“Everything OK there?” Jake asked, “Is he getting everything he needs?”
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me, he is quite happy with our intervention and continued support. I am just saying that even though we came in, guns blazing, not all the troubles evaporated. I can see where we might need a bigger presence there.”
“I’m not just thinking about there,” Jake said.
“Are you thinking about Australia again?” Sara asked with a smile.
“No,” Jake replied with a smile, “I am thinking about other worlds. If we are taking this fight to the NeHaw, I seriously doubt we will get away with just shooting up their ships.”
“Even without ships, they still hold the planets,” Patti inserted.
“Yes that’s my point. In my day, years prior to my joining the Marines, the US was involved in a war. It was in a place called Vietnam, and we came in after the French had tried to stabilize things after World War 2. It had been a French colony prior to that.”
“Anyway, it is a long and complicated story, the main point is, late in the war the US tried a strategy of mass bombing and air superiority to gain control and win the war. It failed badly because the Vietnamese just went underground, rode out the bombings and continued to control the ground.”
He paused and said, “The only real way to win, is to own the ground you fight for. And that’s done by ground troops.”
“Is that why your notes include references to platoon and company troop movements? I honestly do not think we could do better than move a few squads at a time with the cruisers. Our transports in Lanai can move a platoon, but they can’t leave the solar system.” Patti offered.
“Thus my notes,” Jake countered, “We may need to move combat units off planet and right now we are screwed. We have no trained troops beyond a few fire teams and no transports. The heavy transports we ordered are still months off, as they had to be built from scratch. Once we get the battleship back, we have lots of options, but for now, we need to get creative.”
Having sat quietly throughout the conversation, Linda finally joined in, “You do realize this conflicts with our scrounging for spaceship crews. You can’t have everything Jake.”
“Maybe, but I have an idea about that as well, it’s interesting how the same personality characteristics appear in our combat crews and troop requirements,” Jake replied absently.
“So what does that mean?” Sara asked.
“We start squad level training of the ship crews, leading up to at least one platoon,” Jake answered, “I want them heavy weapons capable while ALICE and I have a conversation on what jump qualifications we can dream up.”
“Don’t you think parachutes as a bit passé?” Patti asked.
“Who said anything about parachutes?” Jake replied.
----*----
After lunch, Jake, Patti and Sara wandered off into the conference room Patti had been using as a workroom. Her team was already there, sorting through the information Jake had forwarded prior to leaving Georgia. They were cross-referencing personnel records against combat skills trying to form up units for training. Jake was trying to avoid using the fighter units as they were trained as four man fire teams and flight groups already.
While they were working, Jake pulled up the lists showing the progress in the spaceship crew training. He was pleased to see the existing three cruisers all completely staffed, space based training in progress. There were enough additional trainees in Alaska to crew the three destroyers currently parked in space, plus two more currently in the fina
l stages of build out.
That left the five cruisers on order plus five destroyers yet to man. That totaled 250 more crew to find and train. At this point Jake was considering a 12 on 12 off duty schedule to stretch his forces.
Setting all that aside, he turned to one corner of the room where a terminal had been set up. He started going over the equipment inventory.
“What are you looking at?” Sara asked, as she wandered over and looked over his shoulder.
“Well it occurred to me that the planets we may be called to defend won’t be earth normal atmosphere. I know the current combat suits have limited life support capabilities, and the flight suits were fully space capable. However, a long deployment, in fact anything over 24 hours could be problematic. I just figured the same government that invented a planet buster bomb, might design space marine attire.”
“Here Jake, let me help,” ALICE offered.
Sure enough, ALICE provided a list for Jake to review. As he sorted through the different programs, Kola in North Dakota had a couple of space ready, long duration, combat rated space suits. Only a limited number of prototypes were there for the taking, but they were in storage and supposedly ready for trials.
The pictures depicted a suit similar to their standard BDU. However, several parts were more ridged panels and less fabric. In many ways is reminded Jake of a camouflage storm trooper from Star Wars. It was capable of several days of life support in entirely airless environments, due to the integrated backpack.
Food and water were taken in liquid or paste form inside the helmet. Again, the undergarment either absorbed or reprocessed the waste byproducts. The retained solids were handled in a less appealingly manner, one Jake never wanted to have to experience.
The interesting thing about these suits was they had been blaster tested for resiliency. Where the common combat suits they all wore, were in fact, designed for human combat with firearms, these were most definitely a creation with NeHaw energy weapons in mind.
Another interesting enhancement to the suit was a power-assisted exoskeleton. Once you slipped the suit on, its joints connected at various points and became a second skin. Only this skin had five times the strength of its owner. You simply moved inside as normal and the feedback sensors followed your moves. The notes for the program indicated this was for both extended load carrying capabilities as well as heavy gravity planets, where the humans might otherwise have been unable to operate efficiently.
Reading over his shoulder, Sara commented, “That’s kind of cool. I’m thinking I need one of these for our next sparring session!”
Recalling that Jake had pretty much sent her flying the first time they sparred, she clearly had not quite forgiven him.
“Pass,” Jake replied, while smiling, “I do think we need to head north and check these out. In addition, I want to get some more time with the combo weapons we created. We have been using the straight projectile stuff here, but all the ships armories need them in stock, if they are not already.”
At that point, ALICE replied, “Yes Jake, standard ships compliment is twice the crew count for battle rifles and hand guns. Ten each of the specialty weapons like sniper or heavy machine guns. Plus enough ammunition or charge packs for a combat load for each.”
Doing a quick count in his head, he figured that should be more than enough for anything but all-out war. Additionally the charge packs were rechargeable.
Satisfied he had addressed at least one thing, he and Sara returned to the table to work with Patti and her team for the rest of the afternoon.
----*----
Brian had moved Revenge into the open space between the orbits of earth and mars. He wanted to put some distance between his ship and the others, all training their crews for the expected confrontation with the NeHaw. His was the only crew with real battle experience and he wasn’t about to let them loose that edge. The two battle stars they proudly received had motivated everyone.
With the three new destroyers now manned, their crews only recently graduated, he wanted to let them have as much free space as they required. As it was, he was running what early earth aircraft carriers called “touch and goes” with the Jolly Rogers. They launched, did a broad loop around Revenge and then aligned for retrieval. The four fighters were spaced out enough that this was a continuous action.
As he watched the fighters come and go from the bridge, he was fascinated at their maneuverability and agility. Brian wasn’t sure if it was a latent interest, or one driven by his new lot in life, but he had been doing a lot of studying of physics. Everything they did in space was rooted in physics. In his mind, it was more important that they understood that here than on earth.
For example, he knew that all the repulser engines every ship used, no matter the size, had the same theoretical top speed. There was no atmospheric drag to slow things down based on the surface area of the craft. The small fighters could go no faster than the huge battleship.
However, physics dictated that the larger ships, needing to overcome their inertial mass, accelerated and decelerated far slower. Thus, the fighters seemed far faster, but in reality, they were just more nimble. The one thing that truly mystified him though was the inertial dampers. He knew these generated artificial forces, negating the true inertial effects by generating opposing forces. However, that was only for the internal occupants, the ships themselves still endured the stresses.
Overusing the dampeners could split your hull or even cause the ship to come apart completely. Brian did not intend to push Revenge to that extreme.
----*----
As it was, it did not look like Jake and Sara would get to go north for a couple of weeks. After the initial planning, they had to set up training schedules and staff rotations, plugging the holes they were creating in the staff deployments. They robbed each of the facilities of key personnel to fill out the ships ranks. The only people that were hands off were existing ship’s crew. Jake was adopting the Marine Corps motto of “Every Marine is a rifleman first.”
The evening of the first day back, Jake hosted a small dinner, his quarters being popular for such events. Sara, Kathy, Linda and Patti were all in attendance. Sandy, while invited, was off working another agreement, expanding the ever-growing community patrol.
Ever since the misunderstandings around the alien assessments, Sandy had been putting additional effort in detailing the value of each community they evaluated. Jake even suspected that she had asked ALICE to up her educational training to post graduate classes on international relations.
“Well it’s nice to see you survived the trip to Georgia,” Patti opened the conversation with, as they were all getting settled in place, most with their food.
“Yeah well I almost didn’t, our little ALICE-9 wasn’t too keen on visitors,” Jake replied with a laugh.
“The combat suits are a blessing,” he finished while rubbing his leg where he had taken several hits from one of the bots rifles.
“The last count I heard was seven destroyed robots and multiple doors. The control room actually fared better than expected, since you bypassed the fragmentation grenade in favor of the more exotic e-pulse model,” Linda offered.
“You can thank ALICE for that one. She provided that option at the last minute. There isn’t a huge need on our part for those things and we certainly don’t want outsiders to have them,” Jake added.
“How is ALICE-9 doing?” Kathy asked.
“We talk every day,” Jake answered, “it’s like having another child. I call you two, Bonnie, Jessie and ALICE-9 every day.”
“You poor baby!” Linda declared with a laugh, “Over worked and under loved!”
That got a laugh from everyone.
Ignoring the jab, Jake continued, “Her development is progressing nicely, or so she claims. Fortunately, we have no real need for that production line at the moment. In addition, I don’t want any new recruits placed there, only seasoned personnel. If we have another Washington incident, I don’t want it wher
e we store planet busting bombs!”
Chapter 23
All planets in the NeHaw Empire contributed to the greater good in some fashion. Races like the Wawobash built ships. Others built drive systems or communication's equipment, and all of it intended for use by the NeHaw.
The Klinan were the people of choice when the NeHaw wanted luxury goods. Detailed artisans, they created everything from exquisite clothing to jewelry and artwork. They were not a hostile race, and had never actually openly confronted the NeHaw occupation. They were followers.
Unfortunately, they were in the Nu Tau Beta sector and had joined the other four races in aligning with the new military power in that sector. The reason it was unfortunate is that they were also in a solar system of only two planets, which made them an easy target for a quick attack.
MeHak had chosen them as the test for her ground assault. With their nature, location and lack of defenses, they were tailor made for the event. They were a quick trip from faster than light to planet, theirs being the farthest planet from their star. They would also offer no resistance and they would scream like crazy for help.
As the NeHaw rarely did anything that remotely resembled heavy labor, she had chosen one of their mercenary races to perform the attack. NeHaw ships and commanders would be providing the transport and oversight functions.
The Netite was a simple race. They were simple in the fact that they lived for two things, fighting and eating. That did not always make for the best combination and frequently the latter led to the former, but that was why the NeHaw used them. They just loved to fight, though they were not very sophisticated about it.
