Chapter 7
Subject: Admiral Nilson
“Percheron and Mustang are destroyed, no survivors. Rahvan suffered a direct hit with the beam weapon and lost eighty-four crew confirmed dead, one hundred plus injured. A further thirty-one are missing. Decks one though five are open to vacuum from frames one to twenty eight. The bridge is destroyed and most of the command staff is dead or missing. The ship’s Chief Engineer, a Mister Pruitt, has assumed command and is coordinating damage control out of auxiliary steering. Chief Pruitt reports that the ship is combat ineffective.”
Nilson was in disbelief as the comms officer rattled off the damage report form the battle. They’d come out ahead, incredibly, but he’d lost all of his patrol cruisers, and there were still two of the bastard Adversary ships left. He watched them move about the battle display as they accelerated to insane speeds, way faster than his ace-in-the-hole destroyers could move. They were heading straight for Oasis III, a planet that he’d left defended by three of the worst ships he had at his disposal. They’d be fodder for these things.
“Comms, get me a direct link to Mister Pruitt please,” Nilson asked as an aide handed him a fresh cup of coffee. Davis had wandered off after the battle, probably to shit himself, Nilson figured.
After a brief moment, the video display came to life and a balding man in a set of utility coveralls flashed before him. His face was covered in grease and blood and it looked like he’d been crying. He looked like a sad old man, not a ship’s commanding officer.
“Chief Pruitt I hear you are doing one hell of a job coordinating the disaster on your ship.” Pruitt winced, Nilson continued, “I’m so sorry for the loss of your crew, truly. I’ve lost damn near half of my command this week, and we’ve still got two of those fuckers in our system. We need to catch them.”
A tear ran down Pruitt’s cheek. He wiped it away and stood tall. His voice cracked as he spoke, “aye admiral.”
“Time is critical, but we aren’t going to leave you in the lurch. I need to know, Chief Engineer. Can your crew hold out on that ship? And how can we help in the immediate term?” Nilson prayed Pruitt didn’t ask to abandon ship. Not that he needed half a patrol cruiser, but there was nowhere to put the crew on his ship. His life support couldn’t accommodate several hundred more people breathing in the Bastion’s compartments. And dragging the entire remaining formation back for an evacuation would cost valuable time.
“Admiral, our sickbay is overwhelmed. If we could transfer some of the folks who might make it if we had the room over to you, that’d be a huge load off.” Pruitt plead.
“Done, I’ll dispatch our shuttle and prep our sickbay,” Nilson made eye contact with the operations officer while he talked. The young officer was paying close attention and immediately fell into their work. This would be a great job for an XO, if he had one.
“Use the port docking bay. The others are gone.” Pruitt’s face was grim. Nilson nodded. “Chief Engineer Pruitt out,” and just like that, he was gone. Nilson prayed that crew would still be alive by the time he got back to help them. If he got back to help them.
“Okay Estevez, you and I need to talk. Follow me to my office.” Nilson looked around, seeing if Davis had shown himself yet. He hadn’t. Nilson turned to the next most competent person who wasn’t Estevez, his tactical officer. “Lieutenant Sahr, you have command until I get back. Get the wounded aboard our ship and start a burn down the well in tow with our destroyers.”
“Aye Admiral!” Sahr barked.
Nilson led the way into his office, closing the hatch behind Estevez and pressing the button on his smart link to render the room secure. Not that he was worried about secrets getting out, but Estevez had a tendency to be overly cautious at times, and he wanted her to be comfortable and open right now. He looked at her and waited for her to start the conversation.
“Yeah that was bad,” She said.
“Yeah it was,” Nilson replied. They stood in silence for a moment before Nilson broke it. “Okay, just lay it out there. I know what you’re thinking but I want to hear it from you. Tell me what you’re thinking. Unfiltered.”
“Well,” she started, "they are clearly very advanced and they learn very quickly, but they aren’t invincible, and they aren’t infallible. We proved that when we killed that last one. It had to make a decision when it chose it’s target, and it chose the wrong one.”
“It did, but it killed two cruisers in seconds. We got lucky, I almost had us stay course longer trying to get out of it’s kill zone. If we had been, I don’t know, a minute later on the maneuver to turn it could have killed both cruisers and turned to kill us. We have two more in the system and we can’t risk another engagement like that one.”
“I know, Admiral.” Estevez had her hand on her chin and was clearly lost in thought, probably running simulation after simulation in her mind trying to figure out the perfect piece to the puzzle that left them alive and the enemy dead. “We have at least two engagements left to plan for. Defense of Oasis III with our frigate squadron, and then contact between whatever is left from that and the Bastion with it’s destroyer escort.”
“I should have left the destroyers closer to the planet.” Nilson regretted his words as soon as he said them. A ship’s CO, and he was an admiral no less, shouldn’t openly doubt their own decisions in front of their subordinates. But, Estevez was as close to a confidant as he had.
“No, you shouldn’t have. I can’t see any engagement with this enemy where we win by having our ships sit still. We need to hit them fast and be willing to move before they can get close enough to use their beam weapon. By the way, Admiral, they missed a shot, did you see it?” Estevez’s smile reassured him.
“Yeah, right at the end before we killed the last ship. We shot it and it knocked it off target. Why?” Nilson was sure he was missing something.
“We got the beam on sensors losing coherence. We have a kill zone for the enemy now, and it’s shorter than our railguns.” Estevez smiled wryly.
“Okay, that’s fantastic. We out range them. Between us and the destroyers we’ve got four railguns.” Nilson beamed, “what else?”
“Well, they’re going to get to Oasis III well before we can catch them, and our frigates there are hardly combat capable, but we still need to do something. Who knows what they’ll do to the planet if they’re left unopposed for the time delta.”
Nilson kept Estevez in his office and ran through the options until the conversation lost steam and started circling. He was exhausted, and so was she. Nilson dismissed Estevez and walked back onto the bridge. It wasn’t totally necessary to have that brainstorming session in private, but he preferred for the crew to see him make a decisive decision rather than waffle around in uncertainty.
“Ops, lets bring down the tempo a bit. Shift back to standard hours and lets get everyone rested. Engineering, recharge all of the capacitors please, run the reactors to full power if you need to. Tactical, thank you for standing watch. Please service the guns and double check our munitions count. I’m especially interested to see how many missiles we have left. Comms, make sure the stand down general quarters message gets out to everyone.” Nilson turned to look at the battle display. A chorus of ayes sounding off behind him.
Nilson manipulated the display and brought up the orbit of Oasis III and it’s four moons. The two Adversary ships were racing there at twice the maximum speed of his own ship. There’d be a full day and a half where the only opposition in the system would be a handful of junkyard frigates and the station..
“Wait!” Nilson thought, suddenly realizing a key detail he hadn’t considered. He looked around, everyone was staring at him. Apparently, he’d thought aloud. “Sorry, disregard me,” he said, and turned to his display.
The station in orbit of Oasis III was designed to be a transit hub, cargo transfer station, and light repair space-dock. The ISD colony ships that first settled the Oasis system had been disassembled and incorporated in to the body of the station. He had three junker ships docked to the station, each one out of service for various reasons, but they were still warships.
“Comms, whats the light delay between us and Oasis III’s station?” Nilson asked while playing with the battle display.
“Just over four hours, sir,” comms responded.
“With the current course, what will light delay be when the ships in orbit around Oasis III make contact with the adversary?” Nilson asked again.
“One moment, sir,” the comms officer replied before typing something into his terminal. “Should be one hour and fifteen minutes.” Damn, way too far to give real time commands. Nilson was going to have to lay a trap and cross his fingers that it worked out. By the time the light from the battle reached him, the action would be over. He wouldn’t be able to intervene.
“Alright, thank you comm.” Nilson re-examined the situation and sipped his coffee. Three frigates, each has one coilgun battery. One station. Three broken ships; a patrol cruiser, an e-war light cruiser, and a corvette with an iffy reactor that made everyone nervous to even think about. The system has four moons. We are in an entrenched position with a day to prepare. The enemy will see everything we do. I can’t give orders in time to influence tactical action. Victory is killing the enemy, delaying them until the big ships arrive, or scaring them away from Oasis III.
“Hey Estevez, come here and look at this with me.” Estevez paced over, curious. Nilson continued, “this e-war ship, the Kydoimos, it’s out of service because the engines are shot, but as far as I know, the rest of the systems are fine. Am I remembering that right? This ship has been here longer than me.”
“That’s right,” Estevez said, “the ship is actually relatively modern, but the main drive was damaged during a survey in another system. The crew’s mostly gone and it’s been sitting there with little more than a fire watch on board. What are you thinking?”
“If we fired up the sensors and jammers, could you control those systems from here? With light delay, obviously it wont be very good, but we can program in the projected flight path for the Adversary and buy some cover for the other ships.” Estevez pondered for a second before responding.
“Yes, I think so. But it would be running off station power and the dock power couplings aren’t rated for running starship systems beyond life support, and even that is shared with the station. We’d really be pushing our luck.”
“Okay great,” Nilson didn’t care about power couplings or luck right now. Everything was going to be a long shot. “Coordinate with the station and get that thing powered up. I want you to blast the Adversary with whatever jamming and white noise you can. Light them up. Use whatever personnel you need to help maintain it.”
To Nilson’s surprise, Estevez smiled a cat’s smile. “Aye, admiral.” And she got to work. No push back.
So we have concealment, somewhat. Maybe. Enough to hide the movement of his little ships as they prepped the battlespace. “Logs, how long would it take to run a report on munitions and parts stockpiles back on the station?” Nilson turned to look at the logistics officer. It wasn’t often that he got to test his staff under fire like this, and he doubted his XO kept up with details like ‘spare weapons’ in a system that hadn’t seen more than minor smuggling interdictions in a decade.
“Admiral I have all of that ready to go. Should I send it to your terminal?” The logistician seemed surprised to be called out, and relieved that he was prepared. Nilson was actually proud of the young man for being so prepared. Aside from Estevez, Nilson wasn’t sure how the ship or the fleet would perform in a fight. Now here they were, trading ship-for-ship blows with an unknown enemy, and truly rising to the occasion. Nilson thought of Chief Engineer Pruitt, hands red with the blood of his crew and crying as he tried to save what was left of his ship. Nilson shuddered and drank a long pull from his cup. The familiar warmth and smell grounded him.
“Sir, are you…?” The logistics officer began.
“Sorry, I lost myself for a second there,” Nilson chided himself. Focus, one task at a time. “Give me the total count of spare missiles; ship-to-ship, PD, husks, whatever.”
“Aye sir. Most of the stockpile is munitions that have timed out and been removed for inspection, but we haven’t had a qualified missile scrutineer to work with the munitions loaders…” the logistician said, apologetically.
“It’s fine, a few duds aren’t likely to be a dealbreaker. Give me the whole list, expired or not.”
“Okay sir. Fifty one ship to ship, a hundred and fifteen point defense, and three hundred boosters and shells without payloads. We have an extra assortment of payloads, but they’re listed by pallet load and not individuals. Looks like decoy flares, grapeshot, EM payloads, some HE penetrators, I’ll send the list over.”
Nilson manipulated the display, simulating the movement of ships around the planet, moving his pieces one at a time to see where they’d end up when the Adversary came near. Nilson called out to his staff to contribute, and each person did. Estevez especially. Slowly, a trap started to come together. Each piece useless in a fight against the Adversary, but as a whole, a weapon began to emerge. Within two hours, an actionable plan was drafted and sent to the squadron of outclassed warships.
They’re gonna shit themselves when they see this.
