Scout Force (15 page)

      
Kelly followed her down the tunnel and back out into open water.
 
She broke the surface to take a breath and then dove down a meter below the surface, swimming to shore.
 
Kelly did the same.
 
When they reached the shallows, she grabbed his hand and pulled him to the shore.
 
They went over to the blanket and threw themselves down.
 
She passed him a towel so he could dry off.

      
She dried herself off, made a swipe at drying her hair, and wrapped the towel around her head like a turban.
 
She leaned over and kissed him again and drew back.

      
“Kelly, I like you.
 
I like you a lot.
 
I would like to have you as a lover, but only on certain terms.”

      
“Terms?
 
What terms?”

      
“I plan to make a career in the Fleet.
 
I want to see how high I can go on my abilities.
 
I’d like to be an admiral some day.
 
I know I’m only a planetary shuttle pilot now, but this is only my first assignment and I am a pilot.
 
I’ve got a lot of future in front of me.”

      
“I’m telling you this because my plans don’t include a husband and children.
 
We can have a lot of fun together, but I’m not looking for a home and family.”

      
Kelly looked at her for a bit and said, “I understand and support your ambitions, Tammy.
 
I feel the same.
 
I don’t know if I’ll make it to admiral either, but I want the opportunity to try.
 
My own situation as such right now is similar.
 
I’m going to be out on patrol or deployment for weeks to months at a time.
 
I’m not looking for a permanent relationship, either.
 
So, I respect your ambition and support you in your drive.
 
I do have one question.”

      
“What’s your question?”

      
“Does this mean we can’t have sex?”

      
She smiled and said, “Ask me this evening.”
 
She then pushed him down and lay on top of him, giving him a long deep kiss.
 
Things progressed from there.

* * * * *

      
Later, they lay in each other’s arms, luxuriating in the warmth and feel of their bodies.
 
Tammy looked at Kelly and said, “Kelly, if you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll understand.
 
What did you do that got you on General Bugarov’s bad side?
 
Cas has been telling a tale he heard through scuttlebutt.
 
I’d like to hear your side.”

      
Kelly rolled his eyes.
 
“Cas, what a wonderful individual.
 
What has he been saying?”

      
“I don’t believe any of it.
 
He’s been saying that you screwed up on a training exercise and almost got some of your squadron killed.
 
Cas doesn’t like you, so we’re all convinced he’s lying.”

      
“Well, Cas isn’t even close.
 
Quite the opposite happened.
 
I hope you are in the mood for a long story.”

      
She looked up into his eyes and nodded her head.

      
“Tammy, are you familiar with the Wall of Fire tactic?”

      
“Yes, I read about it at the academy, but that’s ancient.
 
Nobody uses that anymore.”

      
“General Bugarov liked it.
 
She thought of herself as the reincarnation of Marshall Ney, Napoleon’s cavalry chief.
 
She was always reading about ancient battles and drawing all the wrong conclusions from them.
 
She thought she had rediscovered the Wall of Fire tactic and saw it as her master stroke.”

      
Kelly rolled away from Tammy, onto his stomach and up on his elbows, “I still feel that General Bugarov’s early experience in the planetary defense forces, where most of her combat training was done in the atmosphere, made her too two-dimensional in her thinking and in the tactics she enforced on her fighter units.
 
I once tried to discuss other tactics with her during a post-drill critique and had my head handed to me.”

      
“Second Lieutenant Blake, when I want your opinion, I will give it to you.
 
As long as I am the Fleet Fighter Commander, we will use the tactics I prescribe.
 
I have spent more time fastening my flight harness than you have in the service.
 
Sit down!”

      
“It was bad enough to be dressed down by the general, it was worse that she did it in front of my entire squadron.
 
The only thing that softened the blow were the sympathetic looks from my squadron mates.”

      
“General Bugarov scheduled a major tactical exercise for the entire 15th Battle Fleet.
 
Our squadron commander briefed us that our wing, and those from the carriers Lincoln and Mandela, were to be the blue force and defend against the red force wings of the Juarez and Gorbachev.
 
The battle damage simulator systems on each fighter would be used to count battle losses.
 
They used setting five, so if you were “killed,” your fighter was automatically disabled, your weapons computer would go offline, and your navigation lights would be turned on.
 
Only limited maneuvering was allowed for safety purposes.”

      
“General Bugarov wanted us to use full squadron formations against the red force to protect the Bolivar and other carriers.
 
Strict formation was to be maintained.
 
We were to use the Wall of Fire tactic against all bandits.”

      
“I remember inwardly groaning when I heard that.”

“The combination of full squadron formations and Wall of Fire made the fighter pilots’ primary function that of just keeping formation, while the fighters’ networked computers did all the combat work.
 
In essence, the combined tactics required the squadron to fly in a strict single-layered, square formation, much like a flying wall.
 
The computers on all the fighters linked together and in concert chose which fighter would engage which targets.
 
The theory is that the computers can apply firepower much quicker than humans and any enemy will face an impenetrable wall of firepower.
 
The reality is that it made you a very predictable target.”

      
“The wall of fire is a stupid waste of manpower.
 
The whole point of having a live pilot in the cockpit is to allow the human mind to be creative.
 
In my eyes, the mind processes information as fast as the shipboard computer can.
 
True, drones can maintain large formations, such as the Wall of Fire, much better than human pilots.
 
Unmanned fighters, however, have been tried before, and although they can turn tighter and accelerate faster than manned fighters, the brain is still smarter than a computer.
 
Computers are only as good as the mind that programmed them.
 
If the computer comes up against a situation it was never programmed for, it doesn’t know what to do.
 
A human can improvise.
 
Computers should only assist the pilot, not replace them.”

      
“When LTC Matthews, my old squadron commander, finished up his briefing, he specifically told me to keep strict formation.
 
He had been instructed to make that point by the general.”

      
“As the briefing broke up, Angie, my lead pilot, came over and walked with me to the ward room.”

      
“She said they don’t even teach Wall of Fire in fighter transition anymore.
 
It was like teaching ground troops to use the phalanx.”

      
“I agreed with Angie, but still felt the earlier sting of General Bugarov’s tongue.
 
I would not complain openly about her orders.
 
I don’t think it’s professional to question a superior’s orders once they are given.
 
My comments at the morning critique were done openly and professionally.
 
It was the general’s reaction that was unprofessional.
 
I was not going to stoop to her level.
 
Whether I agreed with them or not, I would follow her orders to the letter.
 
My squadron commander’s comment was totally unnecessary.”

      
“Angie knew that the Wall of Fire leaves you vulnerable to an enemy that is willing to stack forces and overload the linked computers’ ability to prosecute targets.
 
They could punch right through by concentrating on a single squadron.”

      
“Angie also knew that the way the general had the squadrons arrayed, they couldn’t support each other.
 
She had them orbiting the fleet in equally spaced orbits.
 
If one squadron was attacked suddenly, the momentum of the orbits would cause a significant delay before any other squadron could react and support.”

      
“I could see Angie’s logic.
 
My mind started to work out solutions to the problem.
 
The obvious solution was to layer the orbits so forces could move to block any penetration, but the general’s battle formation contained no such defense in depth.
 
She bet her entire defense on a supposedly impenetrable shield of fighters around the Fleet.
 
I wondered how much freedom of action she had given the Red force commander.”

      
“As the exercise began, the 15th Battle Fleet split into two task forces.
 
The Bolivar Battle Group, along with the Mandela and Lincoln carrier battle groups, moved toward the frontier.
 
We were out there to be as visible as possible, so the K’Rang would know we were there.
 
The admiral positioned the task force parallel to the frontier.
 
He wanted to make sure that any missile radar lock-ons were aimed away from the frontier.
 
He expected that the K’Rang would come to observe the exercise from their side of the frontier and he didn’t want any misunderstandings.”

      
“My squadron launched and we moved out to our position.
 
Our starting position was on the frontier side of the fleet.
 
Even though there was to be no exercise combat on that side, General Bugarov made us practice the all-around defense.
 
As we approached the position to form up into the Wall of Fire formation, my computer malfunctioned.
 
It reacted as if I had been destroyed and shut me down.
 
I was drifting in space with my navigation lights blinking on and off.
 
I tried to recycle the battle damage simulator, but it was locked in position 5.
 
It would not let me do anything but slow speed maneuvering.

      
"I called out to Angie and my flight commander that I was out of action due to a computer malfunction.
 
My squadron commander said to stay where I was and wait for the carrier to send out a recovery craft.
 
I settled in for a long wait.
 
The carrier wouldn’t send out its recovery craft until the combat phase was over.
 
That would be an hour or so.”

      
“I sat there in my cockpit watching the stars and trying to use my limited maneuverability to keep my fighter masked behind the Bolivar.
 
I didn’t want to give away the fleet’s position with my blinking navigation lights.”

      
“It turned out to be a useless gesture.
 
The red force fighter attack pulled all the blue force fighter squadrons in their unwieldy Wall of Fire formations to the front side of the fleet.
 
I was quite alone.”

      
“I tried every trick I knew to get my fighter working again.
 
Nothing worked.
 
I pulled circuit breakers and replaced them.
 
I tried hot and cold system reboots, to no avail.
 
I even tried reasoning with Wanda, my ship’s artificial intelligence.”

      
“I asked Wanda why I couldn’t reset the combat damage simulator.”

      
“She responded that she couldn’t get the simulator to recognize the reset command.
 
It was talking to her, but it wouldn’t reset.”

      
She said that it wouldn’t reset without the proper authentication code.
 
It was not a very sophisticated computer.”

      
I asked what its orders were.

      
She told me the ship is disabled, my weapons computer was offline, and your navigation lights were turned on.
 
Limited maneuvering was allowed for safety purposes only.”