Every Last Mother's Child
Page 55
Chapter 8: With the Republican Invasion Fleet
The republican fleet had spent two weeks working up. Most of the fleet’s officers had never worked with their counter parts. All of them had been part of other republican fleets. Some ships and crews had never worked together until the ship had been taken out of mothballs and recently activated reservists reported aboard. The republic had been careful not to activate a large number of reservists from, any one planet or any one community. This included retired personnel of both the army and the navy.
When the fleet commander thought his fleet was ready, they made practice assaults on a world similar to Trena. It had no population, so admirals allowed live fire exercises to simulate an opposed landing. The exercise cost the fleet thirty assault landers and three thousand troopers. The exercise planners had deliberately made the exercise rougher than what they expected to encounter on Trena. They figured most of the Trena militia would have been evacuated by the time they invaded.
The invasion commander requested six thousand more soldiers, and forty five more assault landers. Their next practice would be infiltrating an asteroid belt.
Book 5: Getting Organized