“Captain, if I may suggest... we are heading on a same plane intercept. I suggest we alter it, coming in high or low,” the JTO suggested, clacking his mandibles.
“Noted,” the Captain replied. She frowned and then shrugged. “Might as well go hog wild,” she murmured then raised her voice. “Tactical, kick out a decoy along that path. Then a passive sensor high and low. Helm...”
She paused to look for a suitable rock, tapping at her controls until she found one about a kilometer across proximately two thousand kilometers off their starboard. “Helm, set course for the rock I'm giving you coordinates to. I want us in her shadow.”
“Aye Captain, new course accepted and plotted. Estimated arrival time ten minutes.”
“Initiate,” the Captain said, tugging on the hem of her skinsuit.
“Timid?” The JTO asked his boss over a chat channel.
“No, just not willing to swallow the bait. We're bigger but Wendigo can still hurt us if she plays her card's right,” Purple Thorn said to the JTO. “She's buying time and not sailing in fat dumb and happy.”
“Ah.” She noted the cluster of tiny asteroids around the bigger one. They were almost a cloud, slowly being sucked into the larger asteroid's mass shadow. Eventually they would crash into it, adding to the larger's mass, unless they hit at just the wrong angle and ricocheted away.
A minute into their travel and the first sensor readings came back from the passive recon drones. The first found that the Wendigo they had plotted was indeed a decoy, no surprise there. Nor were the box launchers and mines set up on the back side of several asteroids. Wendigo's crew had been quick to set them up.
“Captain, we haven't cleared our course,” Purple Thorn said cautiously as they approached the asteroid.
“Eh?” Mayweather asked, studying the feed from the passive drones that had gone high and low.
“The asteroid Captain. It is the only cover large enough for Firefly in the engagement range...” the elf said.
Suddenly the Captain looked up. “Oh shit!” she said, just as they crested the horizon of the rock and Wendigo began to fire simulated weapons. “Hard about!” she said.
“Gotcha!” the insufferable Neo Orangutan said gleefully on the Guard channel. The hunter had indeed become the hunted.
“Damage to shields, bow and keel shields down. Bow sensors offline,” damage control reported.
“Where the hell are they?” Mayweather demanded.
“Playing cat and mouse...” Purple Thorn grumbled, tapping at her controls. They were now half blind. She frowned and then looked up. “Captain, we have them on passives. The drones caught a whiff. She's circled the asteroid and is coming back to hit us again. This time with something on tow,” she reported.
“Shit. Helm, alter course. Speed us up and get us in tighter to this rock. Tactical launch another damn decoy, this time on our previous course. Then pop that tiny asteroid with a graser.”
“Captain, it's a pebble. She'll blow and melt. A missile would be better,” the elf replied.
“None to spare. I want the hot spot and cloud. Get on it. Then get a fighter out. No, a shuttle. Get them on this rock and then have them stealth. They can also play our eyes,” she ordered.
“Aye Captain,” Purple Thorn replied. She knew the fight to come was going to be fun and unconventional. She was all for that.
...*...*...*...*...
The hot wash on the first exercise went quickly, with a provision that they would do a more detailed critique after the cycle of exercises concluded. Mayweather and the other senior officers knew they would be talking about who did what, at what time, the mistakes they made, and kicking themselves to death for the next several weeks. For now they had no time, the next exercise was ready to launch.
There was one point the acting G-8, Fuentes had to point out. “So much for the rules about not using decoys or recon drones,” the AI said in an aside to Firefly.
Firefly responded with a series of 'I told you so' texts. “Recon drones and decoys are cheap. They can be replaced easier than a ship and ship's company.”
“True,” Fuentes replied. “But those box launchers and mines aren't cheap.”
“No, which was why they were simulated,” the AI replied.
“We could do the entire exercise in a sim,” Fuentes replied. “I don't see why we don't,” he said.
“You and I both know it is better training this way. A sim would only allow the bridge officers and the main engineering teams to participate. This way the entire ship's company has to be on its toes. Besides, there is no better way to see what will break. Equipment or people.”
“True,” Fuentes replied. “I'm not happy about that part either. The wear on equipment...”
“It is acceptable. Short term.”
“And my duty is to the long term,” Fuentes replied.
“Ah, the joys of being a bean counter,” Firefly retorted. Fuentes closed the chat.
...*...*...*...*...
For the first time Damocles also participated in a training exercise. The Arboth class destroyer had been brutally chewed up by Firefly during the pirate action and her wounds had taken time to repair. The various projects in the yard had delayed her repairs until the admiral's untimely departure, which had thrown the schedule into the crapper.
With the materials from Destiny they had managed to get her major systems online. With Veber, Fuentes, and Firefly, they'd completed her core AI. It was a crude dumb AI, not as good as Fuentes or Firefly, but adequate for the job for now. The only major system the ship lacked was a functional hyperdrive. The admiral hadn't sent enough parts to finish rebuilding that.
Still, even lacking a drive she was the third most powerful ship in the fleet... at least until the Tauren battleship they had rechristened the Bismark completed her rebuild and got underway.
It would be a long time before Bismark ever got underway though, if at all. She was mothballed until they could do something about her. Right now she was all frame and subsystems. She had a hull in some places, but only ten percent of her power rooms functioned. None of her energy weapons had been installed, and only one sublight drive out of six. Half her plasma conduits had been installed before the admiral had left. She even had an antimatter drive, but no fuel.
She had no shield nodes, no gravitic sensors, no neutrino detectors, no tachyon link. She had her short range laser and microwave communications, but not her all important encryption package to use them. She lacked her RCS, her wedge, and her point defense was nonexistent. She had empty magazines, but no missile tubes, just empty gaping holes in her flanks where the launchers were intended to be installed. She did have her lidar, her visual systems, most of her secondary sensors, life support minus her inertial dampeners, and had all her computer systems though she lacked an AI.
Of course she didn't have a hyperdrive or hyper collector. She was about ten percent completed and would probably remain that way indefinitely until they could figure something out.
It was frustrating, a full capital ship, the most powerful in the sector despite her age, and she was laying there useless. They'd taken her as far as they could after the admiral left, but with him gone, they couldn't finish her. About all she was good for was scrap at this stage. Scrap or a training platform. Her crew quarters were finished. He'd been tempted to use her as a training facility, but...
She was a shell of a ship, an old dog with no teeth. All bark, no bite. He couldn't take the chance of anyone knowing about that though, if word got out of the system, it might cause problems if the Horathian's came calling.
When Destiny had returned with her payload of goods from the admiral, they'd been ecstatic. Then some had questioned the admiral's priorities. The admiral had sent back components to get the unfinished small ships into space, either fully functional or as sublight craft. He'd sent enough to get Fuentes and some of Damocles issues sorted out, but nothing for Bismark. Horatio frowned. He'd had to explain, with the scale of the behemoth the admir
al had focused on what good he could do versus the drop in the bucket a single load of parts would have meant to Bismark. The entire Destiny bonanza would have added up to one power room for the battleship after all.
He could understand their confusion and resentment when it came to the admiral and his actions. John... he sighed softly to himself. He could have handled that better. The entire navy was smarting from his departure. Horatio was barely holding the fragile thing together. This exercise was a godsend in a way, John saw it as good training, Horatio had other motives. It was a way to keep his people busy, keep them focused, and to remind them that John was still out there, passing on the orders, even if it was from a distance.
It was also a good way to expose the weaknesses they'd ignored for too long, and find ways to fix them. He remembered that from his time before the Xeno war. He'd hated how ruthless the training could get, how cut throat. With only so many positions available in peacetime you had to be on the top of your game at all times or you were beached. They were running into the same problem here. He couldn't afford dead weight, however nice a person was. If they couldn't cut the mustard, now was the time to find out before the Horathian's returned.
He was sure they would return, after all, they had a functional shipyard here. That alone was a prize beyond belief to the Horathians. Defending it would be tricky. These exercises were a calculated gamble. They exposed his units to the media, letting outsiders see what he had. But the Horathians could pick up some of the details from ships they caught that had passed through the system as well. Or they could put their own intelligence agents in the system... if they hadn't already. Another troubling thought.
Horatio projected his chain of command chart on his HUD. He stared at the hole in his chain of command. He still didn't have a G-2 Intelligence officer. The few intel officers in the intel shop were still learning their jobs. He didn't want to have someone green there, right now first Lieutenant John Montgomery was acting as head of intel rather reluctantly.
It was admirable to find someone who didn't want the slot. Montgomery was an odd fish, he was a self professed field man who had an extensive background in police and private investigation services. He was good with his people, a bit crusty, and not at all fond of paperwork, but he had an eye for interrogations, able to read information from the best liars out there.
Which was why Horatio didn't force the guy into the G-2 mold. They needed someone from the intel shop with administrative skills. Someone who didn't mind sitting in on endless meetings and could pass on intel when needed. Definitely not a yes man, he didn't want to encourage cronyism. Someone with balls to go with the brains, a schemer who knew his place.
He frowned for a long moment, rubbing his jaw before he gave up on the list. He'd have to talk to the staff, find someone with some experience to wear two hats until they brought someone up through the ranks. If necessary Montgomery would just have to bite the bullet and do the job formally, like it or not.
...*...*...*...*...
Commander Horatio Logan took personal command of Damocles, much to the amusement and not quite envy of some of the junior officers. Damocles didn't handle well however, the exercise was also her builder's trial so the inevitable series of teething issues with her hardware eventually forced her to retire to her slip. Not without some relief for Commander Logan. He had never had command of a ship before and didn't want to admit the responsibilities were daunting.
Chapter 7
The media had a field day with the exercises, putting various shots up in the evening media feed every night. It was a great way to drum up viewership, the various media outlets vied to get the best shots, and were quite bitter when one or another was one upped. The heroic mock landings of the Marines during beachhead exercises were shown several times. Viewership picked up when they had new footage.
Navy and Marine recruiting reported a two hundred percent uptick in local recruiting. The talking heads spoke about the exercises, some commenting about the navy's chest beating to show off, either to justify their existence or to drum up more recruits. Some speculated it was a way to show Governor Walker who really controlled the guns and the star system. Some of the conservatives accused the Commander of holding a gun to the governor's head.
The accusations helped to deepen the rift between the navy and the governor, or so some said. In reality, Commander Logan and most of the staff were too busy managing the exercises and watching their results to pay close attention to every news feed or talking head.
...*...*...*...*...
First Lieutenant Valdez's fighter squadrons were a big hit with the public. Seeing the fighters on the flight deck, trapping and taking off seemed to inspire a lot of complimentary comments in the public discussion forums. The young men and women were quite the inspiration, Young Junior Valdez was a little amused and flattered that he had his own fan base and groupies. When his mother got word he wasn't so happy, she started interviewing candidates for a future daughter-in-law. He made himself scarce as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately only Firefly had a large enough flight deck to field a full squadron of fighters. A full squadron of eight cobra fighters and four general purpose vehicles. They were a tight fit in Firefly's boat bay. In fact, the only way to fit them all was to have one or more fighters out on picket or other duty while the deck apes played musical parking spaces with the remaining planes. Shuttling them around and even hanging them from the ceiling seemed like the only way to keep all the ships.
Many of the deck apes complained about the Marine birds. They were rarely used, only in Marine drops or boarding actions. Still, the powers that be insisted they keep them on board in case of emergency. Junior was forced to do his magnum ops, an all hands launch of every fighter and craft in their inventory, from the decks of the stations until a larger vessel was launched.
The orbital fortresses on the drawing board might make that training worth it in the end. Lieutenant Valdez had already been approached about fighter squadrons in the fortresses. He had tried to explain to the Commander that his people were spread thin as it was.
There were ten manned squadrons in all, four general purpose fighter squadrons, one interceptor squadron, one bomber squadron, two odd ball squadrons of mixed fighters, and two multi-role squadrons. The multi-role squadrons filled a number of mission slots, from in flight rearming and refueling to CAP flights to SAR. Over a hundred pilots were on the various waiting lists.
Most of the squadrons were based in the annex and yard since only Firefly had boat bays large enough to field a squadron of fighters. The smaller ships like Fuentes and Damocles could barely fit four of the small utility fighters in their bays.
The fighter wing also had four squadrons of drone fighters. Regular pilots looked on their robotic brethren in disdain, they didn't like taking a pilot out of the loop. Still, the drones performed well in the mock furballs that were set up.
The final fighter exercise concluded with an anti-shipping strike. Interceptors pulled off the drones acting as the defending wing. When they were sufficiently entangled and out of range the bombers slipped in through the hole and gleefully launched their loads.
They were hammered however, surprised by the point defense drones and point defense systems on the ships they were targeting. They were forced to stay on the beam until their torpedos achieved lock and could be released. There was a brief moment of confusion when the squadron leader and XO planes were taken out early, but Ensign N'rik got the job done, taking command and ordering the launch by the book.
The mock torpedoes made their runs, targeting drones in reality. The desperate point defense crews achieved a good hit spread, but shifting from targeting the incoming bombers to the torpedoes had given them a short window to accelerate to attack speed. The smart drones had ruthlessly taken advantage of that, and their programming made them bob and weave, dropping decoys while running their own ECM and passive tricks to get in to their targets.
Two of the squadron survived the
mock strike. They did the job, taking out Firefly, Maya, and two of the frigates. However the losses were a sobering dose of reality to the gung ho pilots. It was also a sobering slap in the face to the line officers who had looked on the pilots as kids playing with toy planes.
Junior Valdez had paled when he'd seen the strike and it's casualty list. It wasn't real, he kept telling himself that, but it was a bit scary. Sims just didn't cut it. He frowned, already working on a way to supplement the bombers with some help, perhaps drones in a wild weasel role, or a few dedicated bombers...
...*...*...*...*...
Some of the ship crews complained that the exercises weren't realistic, after all, the pirates didn't have implant or ship tech at their level of quality, nor training. However Commander Logan, the AI, and the ship captains grimly made it clear, they would rather train hard against what they hoped they would never face, rather than get caught with their shorts around their ankles. That statement didn't quell the grumbling but it did kick it down a few notches.
Jethro and his squad were forced to scramble. They were rusty in their duties, having not been updated on damage control and energy mount routines and procedures since their return from Agnosta. Fortunately after the third exercise they picked things up and their performances improved.
“It's like riding a bicycle,” Valenko said as he watched his crew perform. Hurranna was the best at getting into tight places of course. Valenko and Sergei focused on moving debris or shifting it to one side so the lynx could get through to the mock wounded.
Jethro's sniper training paid dividends when it came to manning the energy mount, but surprisingly Sergei was nearly as good a shot. Apparently playing a mortar maggot paid off with his aim improvement.
“What's a bicycle?” Jethro asked, wrinkling his nose and flicking his ears forward in curiosity.
“Cute,” the bear said, shaking his head as he stalked off.
Jethro: First to Fight Page 13
