FTE - Ch 6

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 “Hand me that field meter, ensign, would you?” Admiral Scott Pearson asked. He had been on his way to see his chief of staff aboard his flagship, the dreadnought Thor, when he noticed a small work team diagnosing a problem with the inertial converters. For once, he was not surrounded by aides, commodores, admirals, and the other senior brass of his fleet command, so he thought he would assist the repair team, if for just a few minutes. In a very short time, he had removed his white and green outer jacket, and found himself on his back with half of his upper torso in the access bay, looking at the circuits. The senior chief and a very nervous ensign were crouched down beside him, reviewing the schematic and sorting through tools that would be needed to replace the circuit the computer diagnostics identified as the most likely cause of the problem. As Chief Kone reached into the compartment to hand him the meter, Commodore Santos walked by and stopped just short of the compartment.

“Admiral Pearson,” the commodore stated with an exasperated tone that simultaneously conveyed his displeasure with the admiral’s conduct and indicated to the senior chief that he should have known better. “Sir, may I remind you we have a briefing at 2300 hours?”

“Come on, Sebastian,” the admiral protested as he measured the sections indicated by the computer analysis and reached for a control knob on the panel’s outer edge. “This just needs a minor adjustment.”

“Yes, sir, by the men trained to make those adjustments, not by the commander of the fleet!” Commodore Santos continued to stand alert as crewmen walked past, showing no sign of approval for the admiral’s whim to “assist” in a ship’s repair. “Besides, if Captain Veiga finds out you have been tinkering with her ship…” He let his voice trail off as might a child who was just about to tell a parent about a particularly naughty activity he had just witnessed.

Admiral Pearson curled his torso until his head was sticking out of the hole, glaring at the man who was now threatening to turn him in. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Begging the admiral’s pardon, but we need to get to briefing five minutes before the rest of the command staff. It wouldn’t do to be late.”

Admiral Pearson handed the meter back to the ensign, who was visibly delighted the admiral would soon be leaving the crew alone to complete their task, and pulled himself upright out of the workspace. As he dusted off his trousers, the chief handed him his outer tunic, which he quickly donned.

“Chief, make sure the stabilizers are tuned in parallel, we don’t want to see any--”

“--any neutral field variance, aye, sir,” the chief finished for him with a wry smile. The admiral patted Chief Kone on the shoulder and began walking down the walkway toward the lift, followed closely by Commodore Santos.

“Sir, it is admirable of you to want to look like part of the crew upon occasion, but it really does more harm than good,” Santos commented, keeping his voice lowered to prevent passing crewmen from overhearing. “Great dragons, sir, you’re admiral of the fleet, not a master chief! There are plenty of people whose job it is to crawl around in tight spaces and make repairs.”

“True, but all I get to do all day is listen to briefings and wade through more paperwork than a man should have to endure in his lifetime.” Admiral Pearson didn’t actually do paperwork; that was what his executive aides were for. But he did have to sign off on everything from fleet supplies to formation drills. “It was a nice change to get to do something I used to do as a junior officer.”

“Yes, sir, but you are not a junior officer. You are the flag. Besides, you scared that poor ensign half to death.”

“Maybe, but the chief appreciated it. Even if I didn’t do a darn thing but get in the way, at least he knows I see what he does and don’t look down my nose at him for it. It’s important to let your crew know you think about them when you make the big decisions.”

The commodore let out an exasperated sigh and stepped into the lift car. This was clearly ground they had hashed out before. He found the briefing room on the ship layout map set in the wall of the lift. He pressed his finger against the room indicated on the map, illuminating it as the lift car began to silently move toward their destination.

“Have you seen the latest reports from Martin’s task group?” the commodore asked, changing the subject. He stood ramrod straight in the lift car with his hands folded behind his back. Pearson thought he almost resembled a toy soldier.

“Last I saw, the new assault tenders are still on exercises in the Capricorn sector,” Pearson said. Rear Admiral Martin’s new task force was originally commissioned as strike carriers, but the term “carrier” was a misnomer in the Imperial Navy. The ships really didn’t resemble a carrier in the conventional sense, since no navy had been able to make something as small as a strike fighter work in space combat operations. One- or two-man ships were typically too small to mount enough engine mass to reach even a tenth of the speed of a cruiser, as well as the inertial dampening to protect the crew from that acceleration.

Instead, the navy had to accept the mass penalties, and operated what were essentially gunboats instead. They were manned by crews of ten and resembled small corvettes or cutters in design. That made sense, because the ship designers simply made ships smaller and smaller until they reached the design limits; hence gunboats. Each gunboat typically had a boat commander, two weapons technicians, a repair crew, and a pilot. The g-boats, or trawler bait, as they were called by their crews, were carried on the outside of the tender in special linkages that required it to lower its shields when docking or undocking its small charges. In that sense, any tender somewhat resembled the flattops of historical navies, in that it was not able to defend itself while the g-boats were launching or docking. To make matter worse, it had to keep its shields down while the g-boats were reloaded with ordinance. Too small to carry torpedoes, they typically had low grade beam weapons and carried external missile load-outs. Their principle job was to swarm enemy vessels, in their anti-shipping role, or spread outside the primary sensor range of their tenders to provide additional scanning capacity for the fleet.

“Yes, they are still there. He did report seeing the sensor ghosts again, and he was still unable to pin them down,” Santos commented. They had had this conversation before. It was frustrating to know that your fleet was being watched by ships that could see you, but you could not engage. It had been rumored for the past several months that the Orions had some kind of cloaking technology, but it was largely unconfirmed. Still, these sensor “ghosts” could be roughly triangulated by the g-boats and investigated. Unfortunately, they must also have passive sensors, because they would shut down their emissions and “go bush” when the g-boats closed in to localize them. This was undoubtedly dangerous for the Orion ships, because shutting down emissions essentially meant turning off their engines. A lucky hit would spell disaster for them. Toward that end, the g-boats would typically saturate the suspected area with energy cannons fired with “best guesses” at their intended targets. So far, they had not gotten lucky enough to score a hit. Still, the law of large numbers implied that if they saturated the area sufficiently each time, they would get a hit eventually. When that happened, they would have conclusive proof of the cloaking technology and, if they were lucky, they might capture one of the bogeys too.

“That reminds me,” Santos said, looking up with a slightly wicked grin. “Have you met your new staff spook yet?”

“No, but I understand she’s a real firecracker, and brilliant to boot,” Pearson remarked.

“That is a matter of opinion,” Santos said sourly. “Six years ago she was on an anti-pirate patrol and ran afoul of two pirate cruisers. They managed to sucker her into a confrontation, and she lost her CL and crew in the battle that ensued.

“Yes, I read that in her dossier. I also know she has performed well above expectations since she transferred to intelligence services,” the admiral retorted. “Her recommendations have led to several findings related to the Orion resistance, including their settlement on Opus Four.”

“Hmm. I don’t doubt her analytical abilities, only her tactical judgment,” Santos responded.

“She does seem to be a bit of a maverick, and she has irritated more than one superior. Still, she suffered what any of us who have fought in this war have,” Pearson said absently. He had also experienced the gnawing guilt of losing the lives of those under his command. When you command others, you are responsible for their lives--and their deaths.

The lift doors opened and the two men walked toward the briefing room. They met Admiral Pirelli, who was also just walking through the briefing room doors, and found their seats around the table. Santos busied himself activating the holo-projector in the center of the table. He fiddled with the controls and brought up the current fleet assignments and positions relative to the Polaris star system, in which they were currently picketing.

Pearson looked up as his new intelligence officer entered the briefing room. Captain Traci Ganner was relatively young for her rank, especially as a woman, but her ability to analyze complex data and discern enemy movement patterns had proven very helpful in the war against the Orion star systems. She took a seat near the end of the table. Pearson noticed absently that the senior officers almost always gravitated toward the head of the table, leaving the end of the table for the more junior officers. He chuckled to himself as he wondered what would happen if he intentionally chose to sit at the far end of the table. Would his officers rearrange themselves to match him? It would be worth trying at a future meeting.

Santos spoke up. “As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, we have positioned elements of Task Force Thirty-seven to cover the area of Epsilon Hydrae Three we captured in our last engagement.” As the admiral spoke, a collection of icons turned green in the holographic projection that glowed brilliantly in the center of the table. The holographic model was transparent enough that each person seated at the table could make out the projections of stars, planets, base stations, and starships, positioned to show their locations in space relative to each other. The display also rotated very slowly, so that each icon could be seen in its spatial relation to the others without obscuring the view.

“Unfortunately, while we were occupied with taking Epsilon Three, we were attacked here, in our rear echelon,” the admiral said. As he continued, he pressed a button and several fleet elements were illuminated in red to indicate the fact that they had been engaged and pushed back from the far reaches to their present position in the Betelgeuse system, where they were reinforced by Task Group Thirty-four.

“Our positions have not received any additional ships beyond the elements of Task Force Thirty-seven, on loan to us from Second Fleet,” Captain Ganner spoke up as she swiveled to face Admiral Pearson. “However, our latest intel indicates that the Orions have been heavily reinforced near the Revati sector.”

“Admiral Pearson, I would like to introduce Captain Traci Ganner, recently assigned to Third Fleet from SECCOM HQ,” Admiral Santos interjected, looking at Captain Ganner in an attempt to hide her small breach of protocol. As a matter of tradition, junior officers, especially new junior officers, attended briefings and were seen and not heard, unless they were directly spoken to. Even if they were addressed, they were expected to show the necessary quaking and obeisance appropriate to their rank among the brass. As a general rule, junior officers were far less informed than their superiors, in terms of breadth of information; thus the conversation normally took place between the senior officers present.

“Welcome to Third Fleet, Captain Ganner,” Pearson said, doing his best to present a warm, friendly smile to the new captain. “I understand you had a brief stint on the staff of the Earl of Sagittarius.”

Captain Ganner flushed slightly as she was exposed to the scrutiny of the high-ranking officers that encircled the oval table. “Yes, sir,” she responded, sitting a little straighter in her chair, “but so did almost a hundred other officers. I was part of his extended staff, working on the Orion problem.”

“Of course,” Pearson said, and cocked his head to one side as he took in the young captain. She was lithe and trim, as officers went, with her strawberry blond hair pulled up tightly behind her neck and tied neatly with a blue ribbon. “What specifically leads you to believe they have been reinforced at Galen?”

“Our latest intelligence packet, couriered in from sector command, contained images taken from merchant vessel sensors that spotted various Orion warships making transit from Epsilon Eridani to its star neighbors. We cataloged the sensor images to known fleet dispositions and found an increase in battleship and dreadnought classes in this sector.”

“You got all that from merchant vessels,” Commodore Santos commented, skeptical. “Their sensors are not known for accuracy.” A chuckle echoed around the table.

“Yes, sir. The imagery was at long range and had to be enhanced through various means, but we were able to pick out drive signatures as well as other indicators that give us a very good guess as to their base classes. We then compared these findings to known dispositions along the Orion front to pick out the new vessels.” Captain Ganner stated, sounding slightly affronted at the questioning her department’s accuracy.

“We certainly need to respond to this new data with a careful analysis of our own dispositions. Sebastian,” the admiral said, turning to his ops officer, “can we reposition one of our battle groups to cover the route from Galen?”

“We could pull in Admiral Channing’s battle group to cover the gap. That would allow us to detach BG-31, perhaps,” Santos responded. “Captain Roselli, I would like you to detach some of your cruisers for a screen…”

The briefing continued for the remainder of two hours before breaking up. As the officers stood to leave, a few of the more senior personnel gathered around Admiral Pearson to discuss operational issues, leaving Captain Ganner an opportunity to steal out of the room unnoticed.

* * *

A lot has happened in the last six years, Traci thought to herself as she made her way back to her duty station. She had learned to tolerate the nightmares of what had happened to her crew in the spatial rift. Most nights, she took tranquilizers or sleep aids to help her sleep deep enough to not dream at all. Still, the dreams sometimes came unbidden. It was best not to dwell on them. Soon, she hoped it would all end. Soon. That is what kept her going, knowing it would all be worth it, finally.

Lost in her own thoughts, she almost bumped into Captain Veiga as she rounded the corner. Traci mumbled an apology and stood aside to let the flag captain pass. Veiga was tasked with overall command of Thor as a vessel of Third Fleet, and was directly attached to Admiral Pearson’s staff, which meant Ganner was not strictly in Veiga’s chain of command. Technically, Traci Ganner had only achieved the rank of captain six months ago, which made her easily the most junior person in admiral country. In spite of the mar on her record for the loss of a ship of the fleet, she had advanced quickly among the ranks of the intelligence branch following her reassignment. Fortunately for her, she had gotten some lucky breaks, and was assigned to the Orion task force, responsible for amassing and analyzing every scrap of data related to the Orion Theater. She had shown a remarkable aptitude for intelligence work, much to the relief of those who had stuck out their necks to get her slotted into the critical department. It was tedious, but rewarding. She had uncovered a number of critical pieces of Orion military operational data that allowed Third Fleet to block aggressive moves and keep the Orion fleets bottled up in their own territory for the most part. It had come to the attention of her superiors that she had a talent for being able to quickly cut through bureaucratic and tactical roadblocks when following a lead on Orion force changes or fleet movements. They soon began to realize that she could be far more effective in the field, so they reluctantly assigned her to Pearson’s staff and attached her permanently to Third Fleet.

As Traci began to let her thoughts slip back to those events and what had become of her crew, she knew she needed something to help her focus.  Fortunately, Thor had an ample gym that would serve that very purpose.

She gathered her things from her cabin and headed directly for the gym locker room.  She took out the sweatpants and shirt and set them aside.  Below those was her gi, the traditional martial arts uniform.  She donned it quickly and tied the belt around her waist.  She considered also putting on the hakama, the black traditional skirt portion, but decided against it.

As she strode out onto the gym floor, she located a section of the spacious arena where mats were already laid out.  She was relieved to find that Corporal Heather Ford was already there, practicing various techniques without a partner.  Traci bowed as she stepped onto the mat and began to warm up using several tai chi stretches and poses.

Once Traci was warmed up, Corporal Ford motioned for Traci to join her.  The corporal was more of a judo person and didn’t really understand why Traci preferred the more sophisticated aikido.  Both were gentler than some of the attack-only styles, which allowed both of them to work on improving their skill in techniques that were similar.  Traci didn’t mind that at all.

They took turns; Ford would touch the part of her uniform top or bottom that she wanted attacked.  Traci would attack at medium speed and allow Ford to throw her to the mat.  Fortunately, learning how to be thrown was part of their initial training.  As Traci got up, she would tap or tell Ford where she expected her to attack, and Ford would patiently allow Traci to work her through a technique that usually ended up with Heather pinned on the mat.

As they continued through the exercise, Traci let her mind flow into each technique, enjoying the slow, decisive purpose of it and completing it as much on subconscious autopilot as possible.  By doing this, she was helping her body commit the techniques to muscle memory, so she would not have to think about them to recall them.  Her body would simply know them.

During one particularly complex move, which involved spinning Ford three times before  finally throwing her to the mat, she heard Sergeant Grimm chuckling from where he was finishing up a series of free weight lifts.  Grimm wasn’t a particularly muscular man, but he had enough bulk to bench press almost half again his mass in single gravity.

Heather stood up and called Grimm over to “have the ladies school you.”  He shrugged and came over to the mat.

“You know,” he said.  “All of that pretty stuff won’t do you a bit of good in a real fight, especially you,” he said, pointing to Traci.  “You have to know how to street fight if you want to really win.”

“Are you adept at

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