Lowering the Hammer Snippet 2

 Sitrep: So, Rea got the manuscript back to me early. So, I went through the usual stuff and shot it off to Goodlife. Shelley just said that they'd have it back to me by the weekend or in a week.

So, snippet 2:

 

Atlas XIV

 

“So,where are we on things?” Catherine asked once the Admiralty had assembled.Among the senior leadership was her lover, Rear Admiral Elvira Varbossa. Theassembled officers came to attention politely as protocol dictated.

Catherineglanced at the seat to the right of her that Captain Su was standing in frontof. He wasn’t bad but she keenly missed Countess Newberry from time to time,specifically this time.

“Wehave the latest intel dump in, ma’am. It isn’t good,” the captain stated.

“Oh?”Catherine said as she took her seat at the head of the table. The standingofficers took their seats quickly.

Goingaround the table were Vice Admiral Aden McRaven of Operations; Captain ShermanSu. head of ONI and Imperial Intelligence; Vice Admiral Hyman Preece, head ofBuShips; Vice Admiral Latisha Nuert, head of BuPers; Vice Admiral Hsong Chen,head of Logistics; Vice Admiral Jennifer Post, head of Schools; Captain LornaJustice, head of Medicine, and then Elvira as head of special engineeringoperations aka the battle moon itself.

Manyof the officers around the table held double positions in the civilian cabinet.

Everyonefelt the pressure of their position. But the cutthroat attitude was missing.Catherine was known to be ruthless but she had put an emphasis on quality andon civility. She was pushing professionalism and turning over a new leaf. Afterover a decade as Empress, she was starting to make some headway.

Well,I had been making progress untilthe damn Fed spy had gotten on board and broadcast our location to the galaxyand wrecked a lot of stuff, she thought sourly. May you rot in hell youson of a …. she cut the errant thought off.

“Wehave the latest news intercepts. The war in Tau sector has more or less endedseveral months ago,” Captain Su reported.

“Which?”Admiral Chen asked.

“Excuseme, sir?”

“Isit more or less?” Admiral Chen asked.

“Endedas in they are in a truce and have been undergoing extended peace treatytalks,” Captain Su explained.

“Oh.”

Catherinegrimaced. She had read the précis and wasn’t happy with the news.

“Therehas been a catastrophic change in leadership with the Taurens after the battleof New Tau Metropolis. Once their fleet was run down and destroyed, theirgovernment fell and a new one was elected to replace them. They sued forpeace.”

“Darn,”Catherine said mildly. The distraction was one reason they’d been able tocontinue to operate. Clearly, that was coming to an end. That meant theFederation would be returning its attention to them soon enough.

Notgood, she reminded herself.

“TheSecretary of State Moira Sema is traveling to the sector now to finalize thepeace treaty,” Captain Su reported.

“Howdid the Federation win?” Admiral Preece asked. “I thought they were in troublegiven the distance and weight of metal against them?”

“Well,they managed to fight a rearguard action to delay the enemy, primarily aroundtheir carrier forces. The Taurens left themselves vulnerable to fighter andbomber strikes repeatedly. That delay allowed the Feds to get their wormholeopen,” Captain Su explained. He used his implants to control the view screennearby to show a series of still images and even a short video clip. “They senttwo fleets over which took the Taurens with Fifth Fleet.”

“Oh,”Admiral Preece said. He looked thoughtful.

Lookswere exchanged around the table.

“Thatleads to the second bit of really bad news,” Captain Su stated. The room grewtense. “The Federation has activated the gate here in this sector. They nowhave a straight shot from Rho to here.”

“Twofleets,” Catherine murmured. All eyes turned to her slowly. The admirals werenot happy about the last news. Her eyes flicked back and forth. She’d read itbut it hadn’t sunken in until that moment that the Federation was continuing toexpand and grow. Meanwhile, her people were struggling to make good on whatthey had.

Itjust drove the point home that they were pirates. They had no business standingtoe to toe with the Federation anymore.

“Weneed to accelerate the repairs and get the hell out of here,” Admiral Chen saidfirmly. That earned a few nods around the table.

“I’dlove to but we are still making good on the repairs from the recent sabotage,”Catherine said with a nod to Elvira.

Alleyes shifted to the raven haired admiral. “Yes, well, we have made good on mostof the physical damage. But we do have some issues there. The software is stillan ongoing trial to sort out and fix. The spy was fiendishly clever in puttingviruses everywhere,” Elvira reported.

Afew people grimaced.

“Stopmaking excuses. Can you get us out of here or not?” Admiral Post asked testily.It was a sign of the stress that she was under that he spoke to the Empress’lover in public.

“I’mnot making excuses, I am explaining the situation,” Elvira said before anyonesaid or did anything. Her eyes cut to Catherine briefly to quell Catherinestepping in. She could and would fight her own battles.

“Atthe moment, our risk assessment puts us at a 20 percent chance of success if wejump now.”

“Twenty?”Admiral Post asked. She didn’t look like that she liked that number at all.

Elviranodded grimly and pulled the latest sim up on the main screen. “That iscorrect. The sabotage also slowed our forward progress. We are now getting backon track there.”

“Canwe accelerate it if we raid for parts? The Feds make good stuff I believe,”Admiral Chen stated.

Therewere hopeful and even a few mischievous expressions around the table at thatidea.

“Thatis very true, but …,” Elvira looked to the captain.

“Therisks aren’t worth the exposure I’m afraid,” the captain said with a shake ofhis head.

“Withoutrisk there is no reward,” Admiral Chen said doggedly.

“You’dthink that, but in doing the risk assessment, we noted a few things. First, thecomponents we need are no longer easily accessible here. The only two places wecan source them are in the gate system and in the system capital. Both of whichare heavily guarded by Second Fleet task forces.”

“Andpotentially another fleet by now,” Aden said quietly.

“Anotherproblem is their built-in security and safeguards. Any hardware we catch willcome with those problems that could set us back even further,” Admiral Preecewarned.

Afew people winced.

“Correct.We have become aware of some logistic nodes, but they are no doubt honey trapsarranged for us to send a raiding force to,” the captain stated.

Afew more people winced.

“I’drather not lead them back here or have another raid go bad,” Admiral Post saiddryly.

Morethan one person around the table winced again. Rear Admiral Paul Race, theformer second-in-command of operations, had led a raiding force to take on a convoyof grav emitters destined for the gate system several years prior. Somewherealong the way, his task force had been spotted and ambushed. The Federation haddone an excellent job turning the tables on the raiders.

Afew ships had made it back; the admiral’s flagship had not been among them.

Catherinemissed him for a brief moment. He had been a good fleet commander, solid anddependable. Pity he’d walked into a trap and gotten his fleet torn apart. Shemissed those crews and ships too.

“So,those are out obviously,” Admiral Chen said sourly.

“Correct.The only other known source is the factories which are located in Rho and thusout of our reach,” the captain stated.

“Damn,”Admiral Chen muttered.

Thecaptain nodded. “My sentiments exactly.”

“Therehas been a recent uptick in scouting along the western flank. It is …concerning,” the captain stated with an eye to the head of operations.

AdmiralMcRaven nodded grimly.

“Canwe wake some of the sleepers? See if they could help? I don’t know, isolatethem like before?” Admiral Post asked. She looked over to Latisha and then backto the captain.

Catherinepuckered her lips. She didn’t like the idea and the security risks involved.

“Theproblem is that they know something is off over time. Keeping them distractedwith work and with sex helps, but eventually, they start to wonder. Like whythere are only humans around them. That is a big one.”

“Theyare ticking time bombs,” Admiral Preece muttered. “Not worth the risk.”

“Well,I’d hate to wake a damn bear,” Admiral Post growled.

“Wecan’t. We don’t have any,” Latisha stated as she glanced down at her tablet.Admiral Post turned to her in surprise. “All of the aliens and Neos were turnedover to the gladiator pits or to R&D or um … others. We actually have twohundred thousand humans and light chimera left in stasis.”

“Ithought it was less?”

“Wedid another inventory after the recent incident and lockdown. There was anoriginal crew of civilians and a skeleton crew of naval personnel of onehundred thousand people. Of those, roughly fifteen thousand were human form. Wekept those obviously. Over time we added to the collection with people thatwere found in stasis pods that were brought in from abroad. Some we broughtfrom the homeworld,” Latisha explained.

“Oh.”

Catherinenodded slightly. There had been some rancor about her including them in theevacuation. She didn’t regret the decision, though she didn’t trust thesleepers to help any more. The last bout of sabotage from a sleeper had costthem additional time and resources to set to right.

Thatand seeing the military personnel melt into puddles of goo when they activatedtheir suicide nanites was … horrifying. It also did some damage to people andequipment around them.

“Well,what about the civilians? Can’t they help?” Admiral Chen demanded.

CaptainSu shook his head.

“Whynot?”

“Theydon’t have the requisite keys and tech,” Latisha interjected as the captainopened his mouth to reply. He paused, closed his mouth and then nodded with aglance to the head of BuPers.

“Damnit!” Admiral Chen growled as he clenched his fists.

“We’veflipped a few of the civilians but oh so few. None have what we currently need.They have the general idea but not the specific knowledge that is required,”Captain Su stated. “Most were either low level techs or middle management.”

AdmiralChen turned to Elvira. “Wait, why only 20 percent? I know engineers; you areall conservative and like to think of yourselves as miracle numbers. What isthe real number?” he demanded.

Eyesshifted to Elvira again. Some were amused, a few accusing.

Theraven haired flag officer squared her shoulders slightly. “Twenty percent isthe average from this week’s simulations,” Elvira stated firmly. She flippedher hands slightly in an indication of a shrug and something out of her hands.

“Itwas higher before,” Admiral Post pointed out.

“Beforethe sabotage you mean?” Aden asked mildly.

“No,I mean two weeks ago,” Admiral said, eyes still locked on Elvira.

“Wehad a node fail an inspection. It is currently being swapped out and then wehave to tune the replacement and those around it,” Elvira explained. She hit abutton on her tablet and then swiped the report to the main screen. A windowopened and a node blinked. The cluster then blinked a different color aroundit.

Alleyes turned to the report.

“Oh.Damn.”

“We’llnaturally rebuild the node and use it somewhere else that is less critical. Butthe components are scarce. It will be less … reliable. Scabbing in civilian andmilitary grade components that were not designed for the purpose is … sketchy.Which is why we have a lot of variables to consider.”

Therewas a soft rustle, almost like a sigh of frustration from the assembly.

“Right.As to being conservative, you are correct. Engineers tend to be conservativebecause we do not want to create a situation of disappointment and we do notwant to have a piece of equipment fail under load. Such things depend on a lotof variables that is outside of engineering too, however. The status of thehelm team for one. The status of real world conditions, the engineeringhardware as I mentioned, software, and so on.”

“Realworld?” Admiral Post asked with a puzzled frown.

“Ifwe are under attack or not. If we are rushed or taking damage, the odds ofsurvival drop to single digits rather quickly,” Elvira stated flatly.

“Oh.”Admiral Post scowled. “Shit,” she finally said as she sat back in disgust.

Elviranodded. “My sentiments indeed,” she murmured as she looked around the table.

“Ihate to even suggest this, but what if we pull apart one or more of our capitalwarships? The biggest ones we have are super dreadnoughts. We have thirty-fiveof them, right? And we do have those three monitors but they are in mothballs.”

Therewas an instant look of hope from the assembly. Admiral McRaven didn’t lookhappy at sacrificing a ship or two under his command, but he was curious. Thelooks didn’t last long, however.

AdmiralPreece shook his head in unison with Elvira. Admiral Chen looked from one tothe other and then sat back in disgust. “No? Why not?”

“Itis a matter of scale. The nodes we need are nearly the size of a dreadnought,”Admiral Preece explained patiently.

AdmiralChen blinked and then his lips puckered. “Damn.”

“Yeah.”

Facesfell around the table.

“Yeah,it is a matter of scale, which is a bit off,” Admiral Preece said dryly.

That’swhat she said echoedperversely in Catherine’s mind but was left unsaid. She didn’t want toantagonize anyone. They needed to focus and work together to solve the problem.

“Wecan strip a few ships to make one node. It will have half the power of an all-upnode,” Elvira said. She frowned as she tapped at her tablet until she found therelevant file and then loaded it and then swept up to push it to the mainscreen.

Theylooked at the bastardization of a bunch of nodes from a capital ship clusteredinto a hole on the hull of the battle moon. “We actually have done that on afew points on the hull. But they are notoriously hard to tune and stay tuned.It is also a pain in the ass to modify the mounts and it all sorted out.”

“Damnit!” Admiral Chen snarled. “Spirits, damn it!” he snarled.

“Let’snot tempt infernal retribution any more than we need,” Admiral Preece saiddryly.

“Ihonestly think it is a good idea. We’ve already pulled all of the nodes fromthe monitor and other material in the boneyard,” Elvira stated slowly with alook to Admiral Preece. He nodded. “We’re at the point where we have too fewoptions and manufacturing replacements is clearly out. So, we may need to giveit a shot. If we keep the node clusters together, we would hopefully have aneasier time tuning them. But it would only get us so far. A few extra nodes,maybe parts to rebuild two of the existing nodes to get them operationalagain.”

“But…,” Aden frowned. “What about the crews?”

“Wepull them and distribute them to the other ships that have holes in their shipcompanies until we can find replacement parts of course,” Latisha said. “Thiswould actually help us a bit,” she said with a look to Catherine.

Catherinecocked her head thoughtfully. Most of the ship companies were at 70 percentstrength. The capital ships drew the most manpower. Since they were more orless anchored in place, there was no real call to have them fully manned at alltimes.

“Isuggest we also shut down all construction programs. Finish anything we haveleft of course but then focus the yards on repairs and getting the ship online.We can’t hide here forever,” Admiral Preece offered.

Catherinelooked to the chief engineer in surprise. He shrugged and flapped his hand.

“It’snot like the ships we can produce now can stand a snowball’s chance in Hadesagainst the Fed ships at the moment anyway,” Admiral Preece said sourly.

Catherine’sgaze shifted to the head of operations. Aden had recently been pushing to swapout the old hulls for new. She had thought he was right; the old hulls werejust that, old. No matter how many times they had been rebuilt they’d neverstand up to a modern warship and definitely not to the Fed ships.

Besides,she had recently passed a resolution, backed by the assembly of pirate lords,to not fight stand-up battles with the Feds anymore. The pirate adage of “fightto runaway” was in full force.

“Verywell. Stop production of new hulls but finish those you can. Mothball the rest.You can work on individual ships as resources dictate. Focus everything on Atlas.”

“Yes,Your Highness,” Admiral Preece said with a note of relief in his voice.

“Asto the proposal, pick one super dreadnought with good nodes. One that we canuse easily. Pull her nodes for the ship and then pull components for the otherships. Transfer the crew where you see fit,” the empress said with a nod to thehead of BuPers. Latisha nodded back.

“Theofficers won’t like it,” Aden observed.

“We’llfind a posting for them,” Latisha stated.

“Theyaren’t paid to like it. They are paid to do their duty and serve,” Catherinesaid firmly. That ended the growing dissent. “Get it done. If it works, we’lllook into an additional ship.”

“Shouldn’twe go with ships with the lowest efficiency levels? That way we’re notsacrificing our best?” Aden asked hopefully.

Catherinerecognized the ploy and she empathized with it. She even agreed, but she knewthere had to be a reason for wanting the best hardware. She turned to Elvira.

“Itdoesn’t do us any good if the hardware is subpar,” Elvira pointed out. “Forthis to work, we need good hardware—solid, dependable, and reliable.”

Catherinenodded. “Figure it out and have the final proposal on my desk in two days.”

“Yes,Your Majesty.”

“Movingon,” Catherine said. She looked to Captain Su. “I talking with Latisha and weare frocking you to Commodore, Sherman.”

Thecaptain sat up straight.

“Ifyou continue to do well, we will make the promotion permanent,” the empressstated.

“Thankyou, ma’am. I’ll try my best.”

“Good.We will hold the ceremony in a few days. I’ll let the staff handle the details.Now … next on the agenda …”