Federation Reborn 2: Pirate Rage (58 page)

“I see. And the resentment that they've gotten commands they didn't necessarily earn while others have put in the time and effort working up the line?”

“Who was it who just pointed out putting aside pride and not about being fair?” John asked, smiling thinly. “They'd better get over it.”

“I can go over the chain of command of each ship. See if we can open a hole, do a bit of pruning to get someone transferred. Open up some slots and drop in some veterans to fill the gaps,” Sprite offered.

“They'd still need time to learn their ship and team,” John replied. “Though we may go that route. They haven't gotten to Protodon yet.”

“We're going to need more carriers like you said. I understand why you shifted like that now, though you did it before you knew about
El Dorado
so I'm wondering about the timing there. Prescience …,” she saw his expression and dropped the touchy subject. “We can't go toe-to-toe with their battle line. Not with just
Bismark
,
Maine
, and the crop of battle cruisers we currently have. And escort carriers don't have the numbers. A BC's fighter compliment can match them. And they can carry fighters and interceptors. We'd need bombers to get through the defenses of the capital ship—to get in and survive to fire and get out. And to do that, over and over again, as often as it takes. While also trying to protect their own ship and not run themselves dry of fuel and ammo in the process.”

The admiral nodded. “Yes I realized all that. But if we have multiple CEVs, we can offset that. Stack the deck. And we can make a CEV four times faster than a BC.”

“All about numbers,” Sprite said.

“Something like that. Run the odds, see if someone in the staff can run a few strategic scenarios. Or better yet, farm it out to the academy. Maybe even Harris since he's around here somewhere I think. See how many CEVs it would take to take down a division of BCs.”

“That's starting to sound like a joke,” Sprite replied with a trace of amusement in her voice. “I'm writing the order now.”

“Good.”

“I'll also work on the transfers. We'll have to juggle the transfers and promotions carefully. I think it will help. It will definitely thicken some of the current crop about to graduate from the yards. The new people will have time to integrate into
Maine
and
Taurek Ne Dor
while en route.”

“We'll see. Don't go kicking over ant hills and disrupting their movement too much. I don't need Naomi in here demanding to know why you stole her best navigator or tactical officer while on the eve of her deployment,” Admiral Irons stated, wondering briefly if they were borrowing trouble.

“I'll try to behave. But I'm debating sending her an extra crop of middies to help fill in the blanks.” Sprite mused.

The admiral snorted and got back to work.

---<>))))

Nara eyed the admiral. She could tell he was concerned; he had every right to be. They were moving faster than he'd like …faster than
she
liked. It felt like they were spinning out of control. She wasn't sure what had happened to change things so fast. Protodon? No, she thought.

“So, Nuevo Madrid?” she asked, running her fingertips over the desk as he looked out the wall screen to the view of the yard beyond.

“What about it?”

“Are you serious about punching this out this fast? The ship compliments haven't had a lot of time for working-up exercises let alone yard cruises to get the bugs out. Are you certain it's safe to proceed, Admiral?”

The admiral frowned thoughtfully. He'd briefed Turner about it, but none of the other department heads. Obviously Turner had talked out of turn. He'd have to have a quiet word with him later. “I think it's a gamble. All of war is. I'd like to give our people more time. They'll get it on the cruise to Nuevo Madrid. We're shifting personnel who have been blooded into the new ships to spread their experience, but we're thin. But I don't have a lot of choice. We need to get Horath on the defenses, and do it fast.”

“Shift the momentum to us,” she replied thoughtfully, nodding. “I see. What I don't see is why?”

“I'd love to go in and punch their home star system out, end this in some grand battle, but I'm a realist,” he said as her eyes widened and her mouth opened to object. “I know that's not going to happen. Not with the forces we've got and they have.” He shook his head vehemently no. “We'd lose heavily and the odds of winning are not in our favor. Not when they have the home court advantage with at least a squadron of dreadnaughts and super dreadnaughts to go with the two squadrons of battle cruisers.” He shook his head. “That doesn't include any fortresses either. No, not going to happen. This is the best we can come up with. Distract them while we build the real weapon.”

She frowned thoughtfully, and then decided to turn the problem on its head—to point out what was instantly obvious to her. “Stirring up a hornet's nest you mean?”

He pursed his lips in a slight sour expression. “Something like that. I prefer to think of it as getting them to redeploy defensively. To get them to fight to take back what they'd just conquered.”

“You are sending in …,” her eyes went vacant a moment as she looked at the op plan, “two divisions of battle cruisers, plus at least two escort carriers and supports, against two enemy battle cruisers and spirits of space only know what else in that ungodly star system?”

He frowned thoughtfully.
Lady Liberty
and
Freedom
were the first two Pyrax-built battle cruisers. The division was already in Protodon.
Justice
and her division mate
Quenor
had finished their builder’s trials and had been destined for TF22 as well. Phil had backstopped them to handle the blockade in B452C however.

She most likely knew about
Maine
and Taurek
Ne Dor
he reasoned. So why did she say two divisions? Unless she thought Amadeus was going to go off before the
Justice
division got there? Or leave them behind to hold the store? His frown intensified.

It sucked that they didn't have the capital ships rolling out in Antigua like Pyrax did. Pyrax was about to put their second squadron into space. But then again, Horatio had spent years building hulls, grand blocks, and stockpiling components and then storing them. Antigua had to either take what they could get in trade between the yards whenever the convoys came through … or wait until Commander Sindri and his people finished the first ships. Vestri had managed to finish a squadron, and another was in the works, but he'd tied up a lot of resources repairing Bismark and building
Quirinus
and
Sun Tzu.

“John? The ships?” Nara asked, prodding him to remember where he was.

“Two banged-up battle cruisers with their fighter compliments stripped away,” John reminded her. He shook his head. It would be tight, he didn't even want to think about a normal exchange between the ships, they could get hurt. Would get hurt, there was no doubt about that. But he had to put on a brave face. “I have faith they will be able to handle it.
Newmans
are faster than a
Derfflinger
class. The
Newman
has less weapon mounts and missiles in their magazines, but they've got bigger ones that can cycle faster than a
Derfflinger
. It would have been a tossup with the fighter compliments, A
Derfflinger
has more boat bays, but most of them are small, about the size for an eight-ship fighter squadron with small fighters.”

“Which they no longer have.”

The admiral nodded. “Correct. We're going to send the ships in but keep them at a distance. Be the prize fighter dancing out of range while the fighters and bombers get in and do the dirty work. Wear them down, tear them up. Amadeus has orders to not go in for a brawl. If they run, so be it. We'll catch them later. If not, well, the fighters and bombers will keep them off of him while he pounds them with his missiles and wrecks the rest of the solar system.”

“I see. So you believe it will be easy?”

John snorted. “Hardly. But it should be something Admiral White can handle with what forces we're giving him. The same for the other picket forces.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Right. And when the fleet runs into something bigger and meaner? Something they can't handle? Bite off more than they can chew in other words?” she pressed.

John eyed her and then shrugged. “Then they go on the defense. They fight conservatively. Fall back, fight, and so on. A fighting withdrawal if need be until they get back to our lines.”

“So everything for nothing? All the lives lost, the hardware …”

“Not quite.” He set himself, adjusting his jacket as he got his thoughts in order. “I'm an engineer. We are a conservative bunch. We think infrastructure, and I admit an engineer tends to turtle more often than most. We know we can break an offensive's teeth on our defenses if we've had the time to build them right and get them deployed.” He smiled grimly, remembering a few times in his past he'd done that very thing.

“By taking the fight to them, we're showing them our hole cards; yes, showing them we're not going down easily. We're going to alarm them. Hopefully shake their morale up a bit and encourage civilians under their occupation to step up and fight their juggernaut rather than duck their heads and go along with it. Fighting in their backyard, as I mentioned, will bring us several things. One, advanced intelligence of their abilities, hardware, and their inner defenses. Two,” he held up two fingers, “it'll as I said, keep them on the defense. Three, it'll be in their backyard, not ours.” He smiled grimly. “And four, in fighting there, it will make them take the time to bounce our people out and then get to us. While they are doing that, we'll be putting fresh ships into space. We'll be able to rotate them off the line if necessary and tap their personnel to spread their experience.” If they survived was left unsaid, he thought.

“Weren't you the one who just mentioned turtling?” Nara asked, with a frown as she considered what he had said. She was out of her league and knew it.

“I did. But I know it's bad when it is in your own star system. The system with all your industry,” he said, waving a hand to indicate the view of the yard. “A lot can go wrong there, so we're fighting for depth. To take out their infrastructure. War is about waste and ideology in most cases.”

“The logistics involved? I'm struggling to scrape up enough medics to go with your force as it is. We're spread thin. I can imagine how it is with the other departments. But …,” Nara said. “I'm not happy with having paramedic, nurses, orderlies, and SBAs on capital ships. There should be at least one fully trained doctor, preferably someone with trauma and surgery training,” she mused.

He nodded. That statement might have explained why Turner had talked to her he thought. “Hardware isn't a problem; we can replicate what we need when we need it now. I'm stockpiling what we're not using daily for this offensive. Yes, I know we're going off faster than I'd like. I'm worried about having the transport to keep up with the raiders. The
Liberty
and
Victory
lines are in full production, but we're at a saturation point there.”

“Ah, see?”

John shrugged. “I'm worried about it, but I'm not giving in yet, Nara. For one thing, Horatio has come up with a pretty good design for small freighters based on the corvette and frigate production lines that they've retooled in Pyrax. The
Dora
class he calls it. We can field a lot of them, and we are. And he's used some of my software tools and tricks to make the design modular. So we can take the base hull and turn them into small factory ships, repair ships, transports, and yes, hospital ships just like the
Liberty
and
Victory
classes,” he indicated the doctor. She smiled her thanks. “Or whatever other special purpose platform we need.”

“Good to know,” she allowed with a nod. “But it will take a lot of them to handle resupplying a fleet, right?” She eyed him. He grunted then nodded reluctantly. “Which I see you don't like. Why?”

“Because each requires a crew. Three shifts to handle the day-to-day load, and we, as you mentioned, have a finite supply of personnel at the moment. So everyone we pull for this duty, we pull from somewhere else—like manning a warship. Don't get me wrong; they are necessary, even vital. And they will be accruing seasoning, gaining in experience in a somewhat safe environment. But …”

“Somewhat safe?”

“They will be going behind the lines, behind the fleet in the fleet train. Once the enemy gets wise, they'll go after the supply train. It's war.” He grimaced. “They'll be in a slow ship with short legs, loaded down with a lot of irreplaceable cargo. Unarmed without armor and with weak shields.”

Her eyes widened as she realized the implications there. “Oh. Shit.”

He turned and met her eyes levelly. “Yes. War is not a safe occupation, Nara; you know this.”

She bobbed a grudging nod.

“Many of those kids are going to resent the duty. They joined up for glory on a warship. That's tough. We need them right where they will be. And many,
too
many may lose their lives doing it.” He closed his eyes in pain. “But it has to be done.”