The Gathering Storm

by Chris Hechtl

  That part had earned the respect of her CO who had passed the news on to other captains. She'd been swamped with requests for similar parts within a day. She'd muddled through the list until someone in logistics had gotten wind of it and pitched a snit. Instead of getting a reprimand, she had been transferred to a think tank to figure out how to build parts properly. She had also been given management of some of the yard sectors.

  She bowed to the praetor of the navy. She kept her nervousness at being in his presence sternly in check. He nodded to her, but she was a nonentity in his eyes so he moved on. She felt relief at being ignored by what she thought of as a shark. A big shark she thought, and she was swimming with a lot of them.

  “I took a tour of the latest fighter assembly line. I hear we have you to thank for that,” a Marquis murmured to her.

  “I had some work in it, sir, yes,” she said carefully.

  “I know. My niece is in command of one of the Manta class frigates you built. You do good work,” he said.

  “I had a lot of help, sir. And it helped that you folks in the Gather Fleet provided the hyperdrives and parts we still haven't figured out how to copy just yet,” she murmured.

  He smiled his thanks to her and then moved on.

  :::{)(}:::

  Malwin heard the brief conversation just before he got out of earshot and then nodded mentally. The young woman was familiar. He turned slightly and looked at her again, studying her profile. He made a mental note to look into her later. She was someone to keep an eye on. He'd wondered why someone of such low rank was at a reception like they were attending. She had to be a member of the families, but which one?

  She must be a steady riser, someone who hadn't embarrassed her family. She might be someone they want to marry off too. He hadn't seen a ring on her, though he hadn't had the time to examine her hands.

  :::{)(}:::

  On Monday, Elvira returned to work. She felt good; she hadn't over-indulged and had spent her one off-day playing with various designs on her computer while also catching up on some of her favorite recorded shows.

  Over the past several months, she had tinkered with the various fighter designs. The latest version was a simple Horathian homegrown design that was going into production shortly. The original was a simple fighter craft design, a basic frame and critical components that had been built during the Xeno war. It looked like a mess of truss segments and bits.

  That fighter and the Raptor design currently in production was the first all-home-built production run of a modern fighter craft. She checked the latest status boards but then shook her head. No new discoveries since Friday. Nothing to fill in the voids of those designs. Dang.

  She reflected on the process as she studied her latest attempt at a fighter design. Those that had come before her had been ambitious—perhaps too ambitious. Each had set their greedy eyes on an Emperor or other class of fighter and tried to copy that. The emperor class was one of the pinnacle designs of the old Federation during the Xeno war. It was a marvel of molecular circuitry, energy shields, tight components, incredibly micronized power plants and energy weapons, not to mention sensors and such. But, such technology far exceeded their resources, which was why her predecessors had thrown up their hands eventually and just generated fake reports and skimmed the money for their own partying.

  All that had changed when an audit had come through though.

  She had settled on something more attainable to their grasp and had passed on systems they couldn't replicate. Not that she planned on leaving them out forever. Each of the crafts could be refitted with components later if they became available.

  Her latest design was one of the holy grails of small craft. A modular design, universal fit with universal parts to handle any mission. A long time ago, those in the small craft community had accepted that a generalist was a ship that could do most functions but not any one of them perfectly. A JOAT, a Jack of All Trades, but master of none as the saying went.

  Her idea was a modular design. Everything was a module—the drive, cockpit, weapons, sensors—you name it. All plug and play. The idea was to plug in the right modules and you'd have an interceptor, bomber, fighter, or other craft at your disposal. If something broke, swap the module and repair the old one off the craft in the machine shops or off the ship. It looked a bit like the Raptor in shape. She had selected the basic cylindrical design on purpose because it was easy to fit it into a ship. That was one reason the Raptors were produced in so many numbers.

  She knew though that she had a long way to go before she sprang it on the team. Somehow, she was going to have to finagle serious time on the mainframes to run structural sims and the lot. It wouldn't do after all to pitch the design only to have it blow up in her face.

  The latest version of the Raptor was being built out of the new production lines now that the old one had been phased out. The latest version had an improved frame and over a hundred systems but still lacked shields. A second assembly line had come on line last month. That one had the headache of dealing with parts built on some of the newly conquered colonies of the empire. Even some of the older conquests like Garth and Dead Drop had problems with their shipments. The fit and finish of some of the parts, let alone quality control led a lot to be desired. They would have teething issues with that line for years. She was glad she was only peripherally involved in managing it.

  She frowned as she checked the schedule. When a carrier was pulled into the yard for a refit, her compliment of craft was refitted as well. Some of the craft were relegated to the reserves, but others were rebuilt. They were starting to replace entire wings with Raptors. A few of the old fighters remained of course but not many. They were phasing out the personal craft. It was too much trouble for logistics to keep rare parts for them. There were political headaches involved there since some of the better craft, Emperor and other classes, were personally owned by their pilots and families.

  She frowned and checked on the destroyer design project. Not much progress there, they were still waiting on the latest round of structural simulations. She scanned the cruiser designs, but they were on hold. She shook her head and turned to another project.

  Recently she had started to explore A.I. coding to round out a hole in her education and to fill a gap in the empire's own needs. She was aware that other personnel were doing their own exploring. The coders were the furthest along. They were going to need smarter computers soon. Some of the complex systems needed an A.I. of some sort. As much as some of the dinosaurs in the chain of command liked everything to be analog, a computer did things faster and better more times than naught.

  They had started to phase in basic smarter systems into the refit ships but not without the usual bugs. They were also getting rid of some of the bugs that plagued old equipment while building in some dumb A.I. attributes. She knew the coders were still working on perfecting the system and would be doing so for years to come.

  With the reports of the Federation waging cyber warfare during naval conflicts, it behooved them to do something to find defenses against them while improving their own electronics she thought with a pensive frown as she examined the problem. She pulled up some reports of the known engagements and studied them. Obviously, air-gapping computer systems from the communications systems were the best option, but they still needed to send and receive telemetry. That was a problem she realized. Shifting encryption keys and frequencies was important. Using tight beam whisker lasers as well.

  She made a note to have all encryption keys changed and updated on a regular basis before a fresh insight caught up with her. She sat back and played with her stylus as she examined the thought.

  Most likely, the enemy had gotten such keys from any captured hardware. They had probably gotten other information as well, including the empire's war book and other material. She made a note to research how such cyber warfare was waged and how it was handled in the past as far as programming and hardware. She also made a note to ask about the captured
material and what was being done about that. A further note recommended security measures to destroy such material. The means remained a big question mark however.

  A knock on her open doorframe made her look up in surprise. “Lunch?” a voice asked. She blearily shook her head then looked at the clock. “Come on, Elvira …,” Captain Quin implored.

  “Okay,” she said as her stomach roiled. She saved her work, logged off, and rose from behind her cluttered desk. She caught a model she had almost knocked off.

  “I've loaded the 3D printers with parts for the destroyer. Scale models,” the captain said as she grabbed her jacket. She wouldn't need it. They were on the station, and it was a shirt sleeve environment but having it was habit.

  “Models?”

  “Just plastic. I want to check the fit myself. I still don't trust the computers to get it right.”

  “Ah,” she murmured as they made their way through the bullpen to the elevators. “Don't get carried away. And don't be surprised if your project gets bumped by someone else if they scheduled the time in advance.”

  “I know. They were idle though,” he said with a shrug. “Can we work on something else? I really want to work on larger ships. These small ones suck.”

  “We need to learn to walk before we can run,” she said as she pressed the button to call the car. “You know that,” she scolded.

  “Yeah, I know. I hate having to engineer so many civilian parts into them too. They aren't conforming; many are from one ship or another! Can we do something about that?”

  “Do you want to tell the Gathering Fleet to pick just one type of ship?” she demanded. He shook his head. She snorted as a soft chime went off and the doors began to open. “Yeah, I thought not,” she said as she stepped into the car and turned. “Well? Coming?” she asked impatiently as she hit the ground floor button. He startled and then jumped through the closing doors. He gave her a sheepish look. She shook her head and looked away as the doors closed.

  Chapter 8

  Garth

  Duchess Tucket performed a rough reassessment of the forces in “her” star system once the fresh reinforcements and convoy arrived. The arrival of a draft of personnel to restart the shipyards was a welcome surprise. They didn't have enough. Some of the personnel were to move on to Dead Drop to restart the repair yard there, but with a bit of judicious prodding, she could find additional people from the planet to help fill in the blanks.

  Besides, she had already had the yard going but in a much-reduced capacity, just enough to keep the ships she had in fighting trim. She was therefore gratified by the extra hands and the experience they had, though she was well aware some were less than stellar at their job. No one with any brains parted with their best and brightest if they could help it after all.

  She sipped at her morning tea as she considered her options with the rest carefully. Reluctantly, she decided she had best pass on the other 40 percent to Dead Drop as she had been ordered to do so. Perhaps she should shift around some of the duty assignments beforehand? Skim off the cream for her own yard? No, they wouldn't be in the star system long enough for her to do so. Besides, none of her people knew the players involved and they didn't have the time to find out.

  There were warships in the convoy as well. Her eyes gleamed at the sight of the four battle cruisers and four cruisers in diamond formations in front of the convoy they were escorting. The battle cruisers were mixed classes as were the four cruisers. In fact, there were two light cruisers, one medium, and one heavy cruiser in the group she noted. Her fingers flicked with ticking sounds of her nails on the keyboard as she called up their stats in the war book. Captain Ozman's staff had been their efficient selves and had recently updated it. Based on what they had just downloaded, each of the ships were all fresh from the home yards too. That was a surprise to her. The squadron of destroyers were also nice and fresh she realized as she called them up. Someone had done their homework and had packed them to the deck heads with supplies and replacement personnel too.

  That meant she couldn't delay them for servicing in her yard she thought as she silently let go of that ploy. Pity, she thought with a brief grimace as she took a sip of her tea and then set it down on the china saucer with a soft clink.

  Her fingers itched to call up more information about each of them. Who were their captains? Surely, she could find someone she knew? Someone that owed her family a favor? Someone interested in a trade or a long vacation at one of her resorts on the planet? But, her fingers stilled as she read the orders attached to those ships.

  They all had non-discretionary orders to get to Dead Drop and from there on to meet up with the Retribution Fleet. They would swap out with the worst of the damaged ships and those would retire to Dead Drop or back to the home yards. She might get a few back in Garth if they had the yard up and running by that time, but she wasn't certain she wanted damaged or crippled ships.

  She shook her head as she replayed the audio exchange between Commodore Antuan Rabideau and her Captain Ozman. The commodore was prickly she observed, stiff and formal. He was a by-the-book person and in a hurry, she concluded gloomily. He, undoubtedly, wanted to get to the war front to earn his spurs.

  A quick search in her family's database gave her the answers she wanted. He was indeed a by-the-books sort of character and his brother had been burned by her mother's side once over a decade ago. With disgust, she shook her head and decided to leave off any machinations with the dear commodore. She didn't have anything on him to make him bend to her will, and he'd resent any sort of friendly arm twisting she tried. Any threats could be passed on up the chain of command, and she didn't want any waves or official notice of her activities. She might get some low rankers to pull something off behind his back, but the risk they would engineer would make it prohibitively expensive. She gamed it out and pursed her lips. She might get something nice, but it wouldn't be worth the trouble for a bottle of something or other. Besides, she'd gone through that before. She'd traded for a bottle of 3240 only to find out that someone had slipped a needle through the cork, drained the bottle, and then replaced it with cheap wine. Someone else might have not noticed the difference, but she had.

  Her lips pursed in disfavor as she decided to give up on that scheme as well.

  And the idea of the non-discretionary orders filled her with a little misgiving. Someone in the empire was getting suspicious about her games she realized. She was confident her husband and his position as prime minister would cover for her, but it could get embarrassing to him if it came out into the open. She was also well aware that he'd be the first to throw her to the wolves if his position was in any way threatened.

  :::{)(}:::

  Captain Agnes Ozman smiled as she checked the electronic log of her conversations. Sure enough, someone had accessed the archive file of her conversation with the dear commodore. The duchess no doubt or one of her underlings. She nodded.

  She didn't like the way the war was moving. She had been paying close attention to the reports on the war front and had listened to some of the stories. She wasn't certain who to believe, but from her time at the academy she knew from her history classes that the Feds were no pushover. If they even had half of the equipment that the old Feds had, then eventually Admiral De Gaulte was going to run into something too big to chew or worse, something that bit back.

  “Now there's a nasty thought,” she murmured to herself as she checked on the status of the yard and ships picketing the star system's jump points.

  :::{)(}:::

  Dead Drop

  The arrival of the Sword courier in Dead Drop with news of first battle of Protodon unsettled the captain and officers. Captain Abernly was not at all happy about the news; it had come on the heels of a courier from the Empire detailing fresh reinforcements in the pipeline. He was even less happy about the news that Captain Lovejoy had fallen back to the empty B-97c star system out of a sense of abundant caution. That was a bit excessive in his eyes. If the other captain fell b
ack all the way to Dead Drop, one Magnus Abernly might be out of his cushy job he thought in annoyance. And with that job went all the perks involved in it. His thick, sticky fingers wiped themselves on a linen napkin as he finished his lunch.

  He had seen ships passing through, envious of them and the glory, not to mention the promotions they were earning right up until the next courier had come in bearing the mother of all bad news two days later. The courier had set a new record for getting to him. The first courier was still being serviced when the second brought in news of the Sword's retreat and abandonment of the siege of Protodon.

  “Not good, not good,” he muttered.

  He was initially startled by the news and then fearful. It wasn't damaging to his career—quite the contrary since all the flack was going to fall squarely on Admiral De Gaulte and the officers with him. But, it was horrible news for him since the enemy would most likely come for him and his command next. Admiral De Gaulte had copied his plan to him. According to the report, the admiral planned to fall back on Dead Drop and possibly make his stand there.

  That would mean he personally would be relieved of command of the star system, Magnus thought in disgust. He wasn't certain if that was a good thing or not. Definitely not in that his cushy position would come to an end soon. That meant the small empire he had been building would be torn apart. Not good. But, getting out and away from the war front was also a good thing. He wasn't certain what he could salvage out of the situation. Probably not a lot he thought with a grimace.

  But, first things first. He ordered the courier resupplied and sent on to Garth to call up help and to pass on the news to the Empire. He knew he needed to do that right off. Every moment was now precious.

  He scrubbed his face as he tried to consider what to do. He had only three wounded cruisers, Ma Duece, Brawler, a Resolution class heavy cruiser, Coup de Main, a light cruiser, and a single tin can, the Antelope class Battle of Samar leading the squadron of Manta class frigates and gunships. He was supposed to have left the three alone and allowed them to pass on to Garth and then the empire to be repaired. Instead he'd partially activated the repair yard and had made some minor repairs to each. It wasn't a lot, but he'd been fairly certain Glennis would have backstopped them if he hadn't anyway. Besides, Admiral De Gaulte had taken his two cruisers; he was owed some sort of compensation he thought as his lower lip jutted out in what others would charitably observe as a pout.