by Brown, Ryk
“Would they be able to refuel and reload on the surface and make it to orbit?” Nathan asked.
“Uh, I suppose so,” Major Prechitt answered. “May I ask why?”
“I intend to bring them aboard,” Nathan explained.
“All of them, sir?”
“Yes, Major, all of them,” Nathan stated. “Have your crews begin converting as many of them as they can to be launched via our launch tubes.”
“That should be easy enough, sir, but they are still only capable of orbital or atmospheric operations, regardless of launch location.”
“We’ll deploy them as appropriate for their configuration, Major. But regardless of their mission profile, they’ll be more flexible and have a greater range if they do not have to climb out of Corinair’s gravity well before engaging the enemy.”
“Yes, sir. I’m just wondering where we’re going to put them all,” Major Prechitt admitted, “especially now that we’re operating with an open deck.”
“Move the remaining cargo out of the cargo bays below,” Nathan ordered. “We’ll need all of that space to operate your fighters.”
“Where are we going to put it?” Cameron asked.
“There’s a thousand nooks and crannies all over this ship,” Nathan pointed out. “Use them. Anything that isn’t essential, we can offload at Karuzara and store there.”
“Yes, sir,” Cameron agreed.
“What about the surviving Corinari?” Jessica asked.
“Let’s bring as many of them as we can aboard as well.”
“We’re already full up, Captain,” Cameron pointed out.
“Then find room for them,” Nathan ordered. “Turn the rec areas into dorms. Set up a hot rack schedule if needed. I have a feeling we’re going to need all the manpower we can get in the next few days.”
“It might be a bit premature,” Mister Dumar began.
“There’s one thing I’m sure of, Mister Dumar;” Nathan stated, cutting him off, “the next battle is not going to take place on Corinair.” Mister Dumar bowed his head in agreement, taking note of Nathan’s insistent tone.
“Bringing all those additional Corinari aboard is going to create additional security problems,” Jessica warned.
“I trust you’ll deal with it appropriately, Lieutenant Commander,” Nathan stated. He no longer had time to micromanage his departments, and if they were going to trust him, he felt he needed to show them that he trusted them as well.
“Yes, sir.”
“What about the Loranoi?” Nathan asked Cameron.
“Mister Willard and his team are going over the Loranoi now to determine what might be of use to us. So far, other than consumables, he has confirmed that there are at least one hundred ship-to-ship missiles on board that we could use. However, we only have room for about a third of them.”
“Move the rest of them to Karuzara as well,” Nathan ordered. “Since their base is well hidden, they should be safe even if the Ta’Akar do return.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Update Mister Willard as to our situation, and have him move anything that he thinks will be of use to us as soon as he discovers it,” Nathan ordered. “Time is short,” he reminded her, “and I want our readiness to improve with every passing hour.”
“Yes, sir,” Cameron answered.
“Meanwhile, we need more detailed information about the enemy’s ships and positions,” Nathan told Jessica and Mister Dumar. “I want to know where every one of the empire’s ships are located. But first, we need another pass at the Avendahl to more accurately assess her estimated time to deployment,” he told Tug.
“I’d like to make contact with Jalea, first,” Tug stated. “She is still in the Savoy system and is unaware of the current situation. She may have useful intelligence as well.”
“Agreed,” Nathan stated. “Go ahead and make contact with her first. But as soon as you get back, we need that second pass at the Avendahl,” Nathan reminded him.
“Yes, Captain,” Tug agreed.
“And start teaching Josh and Loki to run these recon missions,” Nathan ordered. “We need you here, not flying recon.” Nathan smiled. “You are the leader of a nation, remember?”
* * *
Tug’s flight through the Savoy system followed the same basic coast-through flight tactic as his previous recon of the Takaran system. However, since the Savoy system had nothing more than a basic garrison on its sole inhabited world of Ancot, his risk of detection was much lower. He still chose to run with his reactors cold, though, running only minimal systems on battery power alone.
By jumping in behind the system’s gas-giant, he had been able to reduce his drift time to only a few hours. Since he had not taken a shower in nearly thirty-eight hours, he appreciated the short mission time. Despite the urgency of their situation, he would insist on a chance to shower and change before his next recon of Takara, as he did not believe he could withstand his own pungent body odor for an additional thirty hours.
As long as he was drifting through the Savoy system, he used his passive scanners to examine and record all images and comm signals within the system. There would not be anything of interest, of that he was sure, but it would be foolish to make the journey and not avail themselves of the opportunity, just in case.
As he had made his approach to Ancot, he had focused his directional laser communications array on the precise location of the Karuzari transmitter being used by Jalea and her new Karuzari cell in Ancot city. As planned, he had announced his presence in the system, receiving an acknowledgment in the form of an encrypted burst transmission. At the precise moment indicated in the first transmission, he had transmitted his encrypted information packet about the current situation in the Darvano system to the cell on Ancot. At the time, he had been passing the planet, but now, forty-seven minutes later, he was well beyond Ancot and rapidly approaching his jump point in the glare of the Savoy star.
Again, at the precise moment scheduled in the previous transmission, he received another burst transmission from the Ancot cell. As he ran the message through the decryption software, a smile began to form on his lips.
* * *
“We could fit several hundred more people on,” Commander Taylor assured him. “The problem is providing for them. That many extra personnel would put a serious strain on our environmental systems, not to mention food, water, medical care…”
“And security,” Jessica added.
“Of course,” Nathan agreed as he leaned back in his chair behind his desk in the captain’s ready room. “I was just hoping to have more hands in order to better prepare for what’s to come.”
“This ship was designed for a crew of three hundred, sir,” Cameron elaborated. “Adding more personnel isn’t going to make her more efficient. In fact, it will probably have the opposite effect.”
“What about temporary transport accommodations?” he asked. “For example, how many troops could we transport if they were only going to be on board for a few hours?”
“As many as we could line up in the main corridors and cargo bays, I suppose,” Cameron answered, “maybe a couple hundred more.”
“Not exactly an invasion force,” Nathan decided.
“Abby has been working on the idea of doing piggyback jumps,” Cameron said.
“Piggyback jumps?”
“We have plenty of hard points along our hull,” Cameron explained. “She believes that, theoretically, if another smaller ship or even a cargo pod of some sort were attached to us, she might be able to extend the jump field to include the extra piggybacked vessel.”
“Like the way ships sitting on the flight apron are included in the jump,” Nathan surmised.
“Exactly. In fact, that is where she got the idea. However, fighters and shuttles sitting on our flight apron are a bit different. First of all, they are considerably smaller. Second, they were inside the envelope created by the angle from the top of the transfer airlock canopy to the first set of emitters on
the hull just aft of the flight apron.”
“How long before she knows if it can be done?” Nathan asked.
“She’ll know in a few hours if it can be done without having to place additional emitters on the piggybacked vessels themselves. She did warn me, however, that it was just an idea and not to get our hopes up.”
“Still, it would be great if it worked,” Nathan observed. “If we’re going to bring the fight to the Ta’Akar, we’re going to need to move a lot of resources into the area in a hurry.”
“Have you given any thought to how we should go about this?” Cameron asked.
“You mean attack the Takaran homeworld?” Nathan sighed. “Short of slamming every comm-drone we can get our hands on into her and the shipyards, not really.” Nathan turned to Jessica, who was making herself comfortable on the ready room couch as usual. “How about you, Jess?”
“I’ve already got Dumar working on it,” she admitted.
“I’m not so sure the Corinairans’ goals are the same as ours,” Cameron stated.
“I’m not so sure Dumar’s goals are the same as the Corinairans’,” Jessica admitted.
“It’s pretty obvious that he wants Caius gone just as much as Tug. That much is pretty clear,” Nathan stated. “I just don’t see how we can hope to invade their homeworld. Not with one ship and a few hundred troops.”
“It might be safer to just take out the shipyards with comm-drones,” Cameron noted. “At least that way we wouldn’t have to worry about the Avendahl.”
“Perhaps,” Nathan admitted, “but Tug may be right about the repercussions. The last thing we want is to fracture the empire into a bunch of warring houses. That could drag us into a long, drawn out conflict that could make things even worse in the end. I don’t think that qualifies as a viable exit strategy. Besides, I’ve been considering trying to capture the Avendahl in one piece. Can you imagine what we could do if we could fit her ZPED into our power systems?”
“You know, the Loranoi has the new comm-drones in her hold,” Jessica pointed out. “Those have working ZPEDs in them. Maybe we could do something with them.”
“Not from what Abby tells me,” Cameron stated. “The ones in the comm-drones, although powerful, would be quite different than the large scale devices.”
“What about using several small ones together?” Nathan said.
“I already suggested that,” Cameron told him. “Abby thinks that each ZPED would create some type of energy field, sort of like a gravity well, I think. It had something to do with other dimensions and stuff. By that time, she had me completely turned around.”
“Yeah, I had the same feeling when she tried to explain to me how the jump drive actually works,” Nathan said. “That’s when I gave her a standing order to never try to explain the physics of something to me, not even if I ask. What it can and cannot do is mind-boggling enough for me.” Nathan took a breath. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to try to force a regime change, and that means taking out as many ships as possible while an assault force storms the royal palace, or castle, or whatever they call the compound where Caius the Great resides.”
“And how do we do that?” Cameron asked.
“We don’t,” Nathan told her. “That’s probably going to be the job of Tug and the Karuzari. That is what they’ve been fighting for all these years. I suspect the Corinari will back them up. Our job will undoubtedly be to jump about and keep their fleet otherwise occupied.”
“And if the Avendahl somehow manages to join the party?” Cameron wondered.
That was the one thing they did not want to happen. Nathan knew that, as much as he would like to capture the empire’s most powerful battleship intact in order to access her ZPED technology, he could not allow her to leave the shipyards at Pallax. “We’ll park some comm-drones reprogrammed as faster-than-light kinetic kill vehicles outside the system and target the shipyards with them. If the Avendahl so much as twitches, we launch every last one of them and obliterate her. We’ll take out the entire moon if we have to,” he added with conviction.
The discussion was interrupted by the hailing beep of the comm-system.
“Captain, Comms,” Naralena’s voice called over the speaker built into his workstation at Nathan’s desk.
Nathan had come to appreciate the calming effect that Naralena’s voice seemed to have on everyone. She had quickly become somewhat of a linchpin for the entire crew. Throughout the battle of Darvano, her calm demeanor and professionalism had helped to keep them all focused. When questioned about it, she had confided to Nathan that she had simply been trying to do her job as best she could and that she, too, had come close to losing her composure during the battle. Nevertheless, for someone that had only joined the crew a couple months ago when they escaped from Haven, she was performing her duties better than most academy graduates, and for that, she was greatly appreciated by Nathan.
“Go ahead,” he answered.
“Tug is landing, sir. He requests that senior staff meet him in flight ops.”
“Understood,” Nathan answered. “We’re on our way.” Nathan deactivated the comm-panel as he stood. “You should probably have Mister Dumar join us,” he told Jessica.
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
“Captain on deck!” the guard announced as Nathan, Cameron, and Jessica entered the Aurora’s flight operations center. The room was buzzing with activity as a full staff struggled to coordinate the movement of all the additional incoming spacecraft while still maintaining barrier patrols. In addition, Major Prechitt had wisely taken control of the six jump shuttles that Corinari command had been using as an early warning network, maintaining a watch for any incoming FTL ships. The last thing they needed was another Ta’Akar warship wandering in unannounced.
Tug and Mister Dumar were already at the center planning table as Nathan and the others moved toward the center of the room.
“What have you got, Tug?” Nathan asked, noticing the aerial views of a planetary surface that Tug, Dumar, and Major Prechitt were examining.
“It’s the garrison on Ancot,” Tug said. “Jalea has informed me that the garrison has not been at full staffing for several years now.”
“Why is that?” Jessica asked.
“The people of Ancot have a lucrative arrangement with the Ta’Akar to provide them with food,” Mister Dumar explained. “Although they have no love for the Ta’Akar, their lives have improved somewhat since the occupation.”
“For this reason, Ancot has never been a decent recruiting environment for the Karuzari,” Tug added.
“Some years back, as the Karuzari became a greater threat to the empire, the staffing levels at the garrison were probably reduced as the people of Ancot posed little threat,” Dumar continued.
“Jalea reports that, although the garrison is not fully staffed, her armory is still quite full. In addition, there are still more than fifty interceptors based on Ancot, most of which are configured for space combat operations. However, due to the decreased staffing levels, at least half of them are locked down in storage and would be unable to respond to an attack on short notice.”
“So you think we should launch an attack on this garrison?” Nathan surmised.
“Indeed,” Tug stated. “Jalea and her people can take out the power station just east of the garrison. This will leave it without sufficient power to use any of its energy based defenses.”
“No shields and no energy cannons,” Jessica stated.
“Precisely,” Tug confirmed.
“What about the airfield?” Cameron wondered. “There’s still, what, twenty or more interceptors they could scramble? That would put our ships one to one with theirs.”
“Not my favorite odds,” Major Prechitt stated, “but it is better than our last encounter.”
“I may be able to improve those odds somewhat,” Tug offered. “If I can jump into the atmosphere in a position to strike before they detect the Aurora’s arrival, I should be able to destro
y most, if not all, of their ready-line.”
“The airbase has its own reactor,” Dumar warned. “It will only take them seconds to lock onto you with their own defenses, and your interceptor no longer has shields. A single hit from their energy cannons would obliterate you.”
“Then I will only take seconds to deliver my weapons, then jump away.”
“That is not possible,” Dumar objected. “It will take at least five to ten seconds for a Corinairan cruise missile to obtain a target lock. The Ta’Akar did not allow them to have more sophisticated weapons for this very reason.”
“All the more reason for us to take them down and get our hands on better weapons,” Jessica commented.
“Those turrets,” Major Prechitt wondered as he examined the images of the airfield’s defenses, “are they mounted on elevated pedestals?”
“Yes, they are,” Mister Dumar said. “There is a considerable amount of heat generated each time they fire. They elevate them to avoid scorching anyone or anything around them.”
“And they are anti-aircraft batteries?” the major asked.
“Yes.”
“Which means they don’t shoot down, toward the ground, I mean,” Major Prechitt stated.
“No, they do not,” Dumar confirmed. “But they are only elevated by ten meters, twelve at the most.”
“The land is pretty flat there,” Major Prechitt commented. “Maybe you could approach eight meters above the surface, just under their firing lines.”
Tug took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Perhaps, but I do not know that my reflexes are adequate for such a task,” he admitted. “I am not the young man I once was.”
“What about you,” Nathan asked the major, “or one of your pilots?”
“None of us has ever even sat in that cockpit, let alone flown her, sir. It would be no problem in one of our interceptors using the auto-flight tied into the terrain following sensors. But since we can’t jump in, we’d be taken down before we got anywhere near them.”
