He paused to take a sip of water, then continued, “There are an estimated 200 Dash 4 fighters at twelve different locations. These craft are being modified to increase their offensive and defensive energy weapons, and will be equipped with eight missiles. We estimate these craft will begin returning to fleet within six to eight weeks. We have approximately thirty mothballed destroyers of various classes. We are analyzing their potential for retrofit, but at present no decision has been made. All Hawks are being brought back to readiness, with modifications basically identical to those performed to the twelve Hawks carried on the Essex. It will take time to modify and transport them to Fleet Base Jupiter. We have not been informed if any will be transferred to Seventh Fleet, but that would be the logical thing to do. Whether or not that actually happens is above my pay grade.” His candor was startling.
He paused for a moment and smiled at the scattering of applause that broke out, then continued, “A new class of assault craft has been approved. It is actually an older design that was never constructed. It will be called the Avenger class, will mass slightly less than a frigate, and will be configured with thirty gravity weapons and forty-four energy weapons. It will carry approximately one hundred long-range missiles whose design has not yet been finalized, but which is expected to have approximately one thousand percent the destructive power of the Mark 65 we currently carry. We can expect the design of both the Avenger and the new missiles to be finalized within two months, with construction of the initial unit expected to take a minimum of six to eight months. When you add in the probability of delays into the equation, we will not be seeing that ship in less than one year, and probably longer.”
There were a few groans that the admiral squelched with a look. Commander Khrushchev continued, “During the interim, we will have to make do with what we have now, plus the retrofits which we can expect to begin filtering in to service, um, shortly.”
The commander sat down and the admiral nodded to another officer. She stood up and said, “I am Captain Chan, serving in Intelligence. To date, fleet has been attacked in only this one sector, but that may change, especially if the bugs attack a human occupied system. Our ability to defend against a large assault carried out by fighters has been less than acceptable. In fact, the Essex and all its escorts very narrowly avoided being destroyed. On the other hand, when elements of fleet attacked the bugs, we managed to inflict a great deal of damage, including a number of fighters, destroyers and one cruiser. Two mother ships were damaged as well. Therefore, higher ups have authorized Seventh Fleet to attempt to press home a series of attacks whose purpose will be two-fold: One, to destroy as many of the alien craft as possible without incurring unacceptable losses in the process; and two, to prevent the aliens from launching their own attacks against either our fleet or our home worlds. At present, it is not felt that this species possesses ‘jump’ ability, and we have therefore attempted to keep our possession of that technology a secret. Assuming that they lack supra light ability, their location places three separate human systems in danger of being eventually located and attacked. They are Lubya, New Caracas and Mohgadar. Accordingly, fleet has initiated a buildup of defensive forces in those three systems. Additionally, the Essex will form the nucleus of an offensive force that will be tasked with tracking and attacking the bug forces. Additional units are expected to begin arriving within the next few weeks, and will consist of four fleet carriers with their complements of Dash 6’s, thirty-two destroyers and destroyer escorts, and an unknown number of support craft. We will not be receiving any cruisers, nor do I have any information on additional Hawks, which are being brought back up to readiness in a variety of locations.”
She sat down, rather suddenly, and the admiral looked up again. He stood, finally, and said, “Officers, the events of the last two months represent the largest single threat to our existence that humanity has yet confronted. The Essex, and the ships that will soon join it, has been tasked with maintaining constant surveillance on all known concentrations of alien ships. Additionally, we are to plan and execute a series of attacks on the five known flotillas. Primary target will be the mother ships; any other goal will be secondary. We feel that if we can destroy or seriously damage these five ships, we can prevent the discovery of the three closest systems. It is not felt that we have the resources to stop a determined attack against those planets and the millions who live on them; therefore, it is absolutely imperative that we press home our attacks against the mother ships so that at the minimum they will be placed on the defensive. Failure on our part will result in unimaginable loss of life.”
He paused to look around at the assembled officers. After a long moment he finished, “We will be assigning some of you to a study group which will develop tactics to destroy mother ships with available fleet assets. A second group will be tasked with surveillance duties, while a third group will be convened to refine fleet defensive doctrine. These groups will assemble this afternoon at sixteen hundred hours. You will be notified beforehand. Dismissed.”
He was walking almost as soon as he finished. Elian and I stood and began making our way back to our quarters. We were quiet until the crowd thinned out, then I turned to Elian and said, “Elian, I owe you an apology. I, well, I haven’t handled this pressure all that well. I promise to do better.” Elian looked at me incredulously and asked, “You promise to do better? You idiot! If you would kindly take a look around you please? Pick out all those officers who haven’t had their butt kicked by the bugs or haven’t even fought them. Take your time, in fact, take all the time you want.”
He grinned at me and I looked ostentatiously around the thinning crowd of brass. I turned back and said, “Uh, none?” He poked me in the shoulder, hard, and said, “Wrong again, death breath. There is one and only one officer present who has managed to hurt our newfound neighbors. You, my somewhat less than dim friend, are that one, single officer. So, you were a little cranky on the way home. So what? We got home without one single hang nail, much less an actual injury. I don’t know, but I’m guessing that you are a freak of nature, and personally, I’m delighted that you’re on our side.”
He paused for a breath and continued, “I bet you twenty bucks you are picked to staff that brass heavy cluster fuck of a group tasked with hitting back at the bugs. If they are smart, which is doubtful, you’ll be asked what to do by a bunch of duck billed platypus, ossified, hat wearing dumb-assed officers who couldn’t find their own quarters without an orderly.”
I grinned at my friend and said, “Well, if I am put on that task force, and if I am asked, I’ll recommend that they bring you three criminals in on the planning.” He groaned theatrically and waved his hands in front of him, “No, if you value our friendship, you won’t inflict that on we three saintly beings.”
By now we were walking down the passageway towards our mess deck. Behind us, an officer called, “Lieutenants Padilla and Turner, hold up.”
We turned around and waited as a young, female staff officer came up to us. She returned our salutes and said, a little sternly, “You two are ordered to attend a staff meeting at eighteen hundred hours. Please bring with you the two enlisted who are serving with you on the Hawk.” She looked down at her pad and continued, “That would be Master Chief Kana and, um, Etech4 Kwan.”
I said, “Yes sir. Where is the meeting going to be held?” She was already turning away from us, and said, distractedly, “You’ll be apprised of the location via your pads. Be on time.”
We watched her practically trot away from us. Elian said, “She’s an officer who I would personally prefer to watch walking away from us rather than towards us.” I grinned at his remark and asked, “Is that a comment on her, um, shapely performance, or just her shape?” He grinned back at me as we resumed walking,” Why can’t it be both?” We chuckled.
Elian contacted the chief and Carolyn and we met at the enlisted mess where we got a small table off in a corner. I felt more at home in the enlisted mess than in my own. As
we ate we brought our two comrades up to speed on developments. Elian reached out to touch Carolyn on her hand and said, “Rob here apologized to me, just a few minutes ago. Did he tell you? No, he didn’t ‘apprise’ you of that little piece of information did he? In fact, he apologized to me for being a, um “little touchy” is what I think he said. What could I say? This man has the social skills of a marmoset, and here he was, apologizing for being quiet!”
Carolyn giggled and looked at me through her lashes. She asked, “Sir, has this Lieutenant Junior Grade ever seen a marmoset?” I looked over at Elian and said, “No, and I’m willing to bet he thinks a marmoset is a pair of matched marmos. And, may I apprise you, I do have good social skills. I have great social skills.” I turned to Elian and continued, “If you must know, I am quiet around you so as to help you get over your obvious shyness, most especially around females.”
The chief asked, “That’s the second time you two have used the term ‘apprised’. Did you happen to bump into a dictionary, a heretofore unknown text to you two?” Elian laughed and looked at me inquiringly. I waved at him and he answered, “On the way over here we were stopped by a lieutenant who ‘apprised’ us that we were assigned to some group. I’d be willing to bet she got that staff job by her large, um, vocabulary.”
Carolyn giggled again and asked, her eyes innocently wide, “You say she had a big vocabulary? Did she reveal some of it to you?” Elian grinned and said, “No, I do believe that she saves her, um, vocabulary, for more, shall we say, elevated circumstances.” The chief grinned and asked, “Which is it: you weren’t elevated enough for her, or you couldn’t elevate enough for her?” We all burst into surprised laughter. This was yet another side to the multi-faceted chief.
The chief turned to me and said, “You seem to be feeling better now.” I nodded my head and replied, “Yes, I’ve lost a little weight since I got back.” Elian smirked and asked, “As in, several thousand tons worth?” I nodded my head, a little embarrassed. “Yes, and I’d like to apologize to you two for being a little hard to live with.” Carolyn reached out her hand and touched my wrist lightly, “We all understood the pressure you were under. I think you handled it all wonderfully.” I blushed and looked away. Then, I cursed myself for blushing. And looking away. Mine is not an easy life.
The chief looked at me through his lidded eyes and smiled enigmatically. Elian looked at the time and said, “Well, we four better elevate ourselves up out of these chairs if we want to survive the next few hours.”
We dumped our trays and went in a group to the correct meeting space, courtesy of a last minute message on our pads. I fervently hoped that last minute memo wasn’t an indication of things to come.
The peacetime Fleet had, with the end of wars or battles to fight, fallen on hard times. Our own Seventh Fleet was nearly the only element of it that actually had an opportunity to explore, much less get to use a weapon, and even that had become extremely rare. As a result, achieving rank had become as much a political process as one of achievement. More and more, officers of high rank and zero combat experience were in positions of command, and I greatly feared being assigned to work for someone whose only experience with an attack was via his or her comm pad.
The original complement of the Essex had been wonderful, as most ladder-climbing desk bound arm-chair warriors avoided its lengthy and long distance assignments like the plague, but our brush with death had changed that: we now had lots of new officers aboard and we knew next to nothing about them, which in itself was significant.
We found the proper space, knocked and received permission to enter from the same attractive aide who had summoned us so imperiously. She was actually quite attractive. Inside, we found some familiar faces, as well as a few strangers. Lieutenant Commander Harrelson came over with a big smile to shake our hands. He said, “It’s good to see you, Lieutenants. I see that not only have you survived another bug encounter, you have also managed to survive Chief Kana here. Not everyone has.”
Chief Kana beamed and accepted a handshake with what must have been a bone crushing force. The two men stood for a moment, their faces calm but the muscles of their arms taut with strain. They broke off the shake with big grins. A tie, apparently.
The chief said, “Well, sir, you don’t seem to have lost much, despite your demotion from a pilot’s couch into a desk and chair.” Commander Harrelson beamed and said, “Where did I go wrong? One moment I was a happy, carefree pilot, the next thing I knew, I was piloting a desk and shooting memos. What did I do to deserve that I ask you?”
The chief said, “Since you asked, sir, I would lay your present abominable circumstances to the fact that you failed abjectly to hide your superior abilities from yonder bean counters. Sir.”
Commander Harrelson laughed and said, “You may be correct. I should have mirrored my career on yours. After that last action at York, I was certain that you were going to receive a field promotion to Admiral at least, yet here you are, still a master chief, still off flying around getting shot at.”
My ears perked up at the mention of York. That was the site of a famous action, where a badly outnumbered collection of destroyers and destroyer escorts fought off a numerically larger and much more powerful fleet for over seven hours. Those elderly ships managed to prevent the takeover of a crucial system just long enough for the main federal fleet to arrive. The invading ships found themselves trapped deep in the gravity well of the system and were eventually forced to surrender.
A highly placed admiral who had been promoted far beyond his level of competence had left that system criminally undefended, but those few ships had fought brilliantly and held on long enough to turn a crushing blow that would have turned a small conflict into a regional war, into a victory and the end of an insurrection.
Near the end of their fourth year at the Academy, cadets were assembled in an auditorium and watched an edited video, compiled from both the bridge logs of the defending ships and from the invaders. It was an incredibly moving experience, because we were watching the actions of men and women who fought on, knowing that they were going to die, knowing that they were going to fail. Yet, they fought anyway. In fact, many of them did die, some of them right before our eyes. It was footage that was never shown to the public, only to fourth year students. It was one of the most moving moments in the life of a cadet, for he or she saw that sometimes even in defeat there was honor, and that sometimes nobody would know how you died. Nobody else.
I hadn’t known that my chief had been in that conflict. In fact, the chief was practically a black hole when it came to information about his career. I knew enough not to ask him about it, but I also knew I was going to do some research. Apparently, the chief understood that as well, because he looked at me with that enigmatic smile of his.
We were called to order by an aide, not our pretty one, and sat down to listen to another aide present a long and sometimes inaccurate analysis of the events leading up to the present moment. I squirmed at each factual error, each bad piece of analysis, but a look from Commander Harrelson caused me to sit through it quietly.
At the conclusion of his brief, the captain sat down and invited comments. Commander Harrelson stood up and said, “Thank you sir for your presentation. I appreciate how quickly you gathered the information, from such disparate sources. I note, however, that you have not given a summary of the effectiveness of the fleet elements that were engaged by our as yet unknown assailants. Also, is an analysis of the weapons and tactics used by the bugs to be presented here?” He stood, looking expectantly at the captain, who had been sixty light years away from the recent action, and from any other action at any other time.
Captain Yerenkov stood back up and asked, “What is your name, commander?” Commander Harrelson said, “Commander Harrelson, sir. Presently, I am serving with the newly formed Hawk group, most of which have just returned to the Essex.”
The captain stood, looking a bit put out. “Well, Commander Harrelson, those figures have
not yet been provided to me. We are going to have to do without them.”
Another captain stood up and nodded slightly to Commander Harrelson, who sat down. “Sir, with all due respect, we cannot formulate effective tactics without first having an appreciation of our enemy’s capabilities. Commander Harrelson was on the Essex during the initial engagements and has just returned from an attack against one of the bug flotillas. Is there going to be any opportunity for us to learn about the most recent enemy tactics, what weapons it used, how effective those weapons were, what tactics we utilized and how effective those tactics were?”
Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk) Page 19
