Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (13 page)

“And why didn’t you ram the battleship, then?” he asked belligerently.  “Turn chicken?”

“No, I didn’t ram it because another tactic became available and I used that instead.”  Emily’s cheeks were aflame now.  “It cost fewer lives and still left the option of ramming if I needed to.”  She leaned closer to Lior, until she was looking him in the face.  “And now, you dreadful little man, will you get that goddam chip off your shoulder and teach me about gunboats or shall I go find someone else who will?”

Lior looked at her coldly.  “Listen, young lady, I lost my reputation and my career because I dared to tell the Admiralty their precious gunboats are nothing more than suicidal hobby toys, not real warships.  I have been trying to bring reason and rationality to the Coast Guard for fifteen years and it cost me everything I held dear, so don’t give me any crap about having a chip on my shoulder.”

Startled, Emily shot another glance at Hiram, who nodded.  She turned back to Lior.  “Alright, Captain.  But this is what I know:  I just reviewed three battles with the Dominions where the Refuge gunboats were instrumental in driving them back, but with losses that are not sustainable.  And when I say not sustainable, I mean not sustainable in the next few
weeks
, not months or years.  What I can’t understand is why do the Refuge gunboat squadrons fight the way they do?  No formations, no tactics, no mobile resupply…” her voice trailed off.

“They fight that way because that is what they have been taught,” Lior said angrily, slapping the table for emphasis.  “Their military training has taught them that it is manly and bold to simply charge your enemy with no thought of personal safety or survival.  They have been taught that trying to outwit the enemy is simply another name for stalling, and that developing tactics to better your chances of success is nothing but cowardly diffidence when a true warrior would charge his enemy and smite him!  Anyone who does not meet those criteria for ‘bravery’ is removed from full-time active duty and put in the Reserve.  Being in the Reserve is a badge of shame and dishonor.  Those men and women fly enough to keep their skills up, but they are scorned by the active-duty pilots and crews.”

“Wonderful,” Grant Skiffington said dryly.

Well, that certainly explained the high losses, Emily thought.  “But why the ships?  Why haven’t they redesigned the gunboats to give the crews a better shot at reaching the enemy and killing them?”

Lior snorted.  “Oh, come now, my dear Commander, surely Victoria must have some corruption scandals when it comes to military procurement?  Our gunboats were designed by the Refuge Coast Guard decades ago.  When it came time to award the contracts to make the ships, somehow the contract was awarded on a sole source basis to the son-in-law of the Coast Guard Commandant.   Despite the fact that we only needed a few of them, the son-in-law’s contract called for making a thousand!  The Audit Board finally caught on to what was going on, but by that time the Commandant’s daughter’s weasel of a husband had built hundreds and hundreds of the damned things.   We only needed a few, so we stockpiled the rest.  There has been no redesign or no innovation because we have this huge backlog of old ships sitting in warehouses.  And, in fairness, there has been no pressing need.  All the gunboats have been asked to do is ward off pirates, and that they have done admirably.”

“And the Coast Guard Commandant?” Hiram asked, always curious.

Lior chuckled without humor.  “Oh, the military takes care of its own.  He served six months in prison, but then was released on compassionate leave because he had a pimple on his ass or some such thing.  Today, no doubt, he is bouncing his grand kids on his knee and watching the ocean from the lawn of a very expensive villa.”

Grant looked thoughtful.  “Have you thought at all of what changes you would make to the gunboats to make them better?”

Lior glowered.  “Of course I have!  What do you think I have been doing with myself these past fifteen years?”  He took out a data chip.  “I have made complete drawings of what upgrades are needed to dramatically increase the payload and extend their survivability.  It’s all there.”  He passed the data chip across the table to Skiffington, who slipped it into his tablet and began tapping the screen.

“Can you summarize for me what you have recommended?” Emily asked.

“Of course, but it will do no good.  The Refuge Fleet is wedded to the status quo.  The admiral in charge of the Coast Guard gunboat squadron is Admiral Haim Razon.  He came up through the ranks. He made a great reputation for himself fighting pirates and thinks the gunboats as they are now are fine, with no changes necessary.”

“What did you suggest?” Emily prodded gently.

“The current gunboats have three short-range missiles that are little better than anti-missile missiles.  They are not ship-killers.  I propose replacing them with four medium or long range missiles with a much heavier warhead.  Next, I would replace the three inch laser with a ten inch laser and add enough power to recharge it in thirty seconds rather than the current four minutes.  I’d upgrade the engines, adding a second engine that could be dedicated to recharging the laser when need be, or power the gunboat, giving it much better acceleration.”  The retired captain paused for a moment.

“Do you have any idea how long it would take to manufacture one of these gunboats?” Emily asked, thinking glumly about the limited manufacturing capacity available.

Lior smiled slyly.  “Ah, I was wondering when you would get to that.”  His eyes lit mischievously.  “I think as many as twenty five per week, maybe more once Atlas is reprogrammed to build this new design.”  He smiled at Emily’s look of disbelief.  “Refuge has three ship building yards, but they are old, with old manufacturing methods.  Victoria uses a modified molecular print process for manufacturing, correct?”

Emily nodded.  She didn’t understand much of how it worked, but Atlas’ three ship docks used nano technology to print the parts of the ship and assemble them.  It was considerably faster – and higher quality – than the earlier manufacturing methods where the ship was built as one entire unit.

“Well,” Lior said with satisfaction, “I have designed the new gunboats to be built as an assembly of modular units.  There is a plasticrete core module that holds a crew of three and the electronics.  This module flairs in the back to an engine housing. The engines are separate modules, the laser is a separate module and the missiles are separate.  If one of these gets damaged or just won’t work, you unhook the electrical and plumbing connections and then disconnect the module and replace it with a working unit.  This means if you want to turn a missile boat into a laser boat, you swap out the external missile racks for lasers.  Need a second engine, you add it to the engine housing and slot it in.  You can, within limits, redesign the ship for specific tasks and combat environments.”  He sat back, looking very smug.

Grant looked interested.  “Crew?”

“Three,” Lior answered.  “Pilot, engineer/systems operator, and weapons officer.”

“AI?” Grant queried.

Lior shrugged.  “I originally designed it to accommodate your Version 2 of Harriet, but that has been replaced with Mildred, Version 4.”  He shrugged with affected modesty.  “The gunboats are of course capable of computer linkage, so the AI could fly up to ten ships as one unit.”

Emily leaned forward.  “Internal missile storage?”

The fat little man shook his head regretfully.  “No, all four missiles are on external racks.  Once they’ve been fired, the gunboat has to go back to the mother ship to rearm.  But!” he said forcefully, “once the gunboat is in the mother ship, they should be able to rearm it with four missiles and send it back into battle within ten minutes.”

“Legs?”

Lior shrugged again.  “So many variables, but I can tell you that at cruising speed it should be able to go ten million miles on one engine because we can use the spare engine housing for additional fuel.  On two engines, probably no more than six million miles under constant acceleration.  Of course, you can always power down the engines and fly on momentum, but there would obviously not be any further acceleration until you bring the engines up. But again, the gunboat could loiter for many hours, days even, at low power and then spring into action.”

“Life support?”

Another shrug.  “Eight or nine days at normal settings with a crew of three, but I designed an external life support pack that can give you an extra ten days and then be jettisoned.  That would double the useful life of the craft, but it has to mount in one of the missile bays, so you’d only have three missiles instead of four.”  He tapped the table with his finger.  “Don’t try to make this heavy gunboat something it’s not.  It’s not a destroyer, not even a frigate.  It can’t go out on patrol for weeks and months on end like a capital ship.  It is an
attack
craft intended to deliver a punch all out of proportion to its size and then return to its carrier base.”

And that would be its major weakness, Emily thought.  Kill the carrier and you effectively kill all the gunboats it supports.

“How do you defend the carrier?” she asked.  “Without the carrier, all of the gunboats are dead.”

Lior nodded.  “Yes, yes.  Kill the carrier and the gunboats are useless.  So, we defend the carriers three ways, eh?   First, stealth.  When the carriers go somewhere, they go with as few electronic emissions as possible.  Space is vast; the Dominion can’t shoot at what they can’t find. 

“Second, the carrier should have two or three destroyers as escorts at all times.  If attacked, the destroyers have to give the carrier time to escape.”

“Sort of hard on the destroyers,” Grant Skiffington murmured.

Lior shrugged dismissively.  “War is hard.  If you can’t accept that, become a politician; they live in a fairy land.  You could be very happy there.”  Grant looked at him coldly, but Lior ignored him and continued.  “Three, speed.  Actually, not speed, but
acceleration
.  The carriers have four of the largest engines we can build and the most advanced inertia compensators.  They can accelerate faster than any other ship in the Coast Guard.  At the first sign of attack, the carriers should run away.  Unless the Dominions have some new ship designs that I am not aware of, they’ll never overtake our carriers.  If the carrier can get out of missile range, it will be safe.”

Emily spent a moment thinking how she would go about ambushing a carrier, but then set the thought aside.  “How many gunboats could a carrier hold?”

“Oh, depends on the size of the carrier, doesn’t it?” he replied condescendingly.  Emily decided then and there that if he gave her that smug grin one more time she was going to smack him. 

“The carriers are nothing more than freighters,” Lior continued.  “I’ve divided the design into a holding bay, a repair bay and a rearmament bay.  The rearmament bay is largely a computerized assembly line.  The gunboat pulls alongside of the carrier, is tractored into the bay and put into the line.  Modules are robotically removed and replaced, life support is recharged and the ship exits the far side directly into space to rejoin the fight.  A ship should cycle through the entire process in ten minutes or less.  You can even swap out crews if the first crew needs a rest or is injured.  The carriers can handle up to ten gunboats at a time, so once they get going, you’ll have a completely rearmed gunboat coming off the line every minute or so.”

“So how many gunboats will a carrier hold?” Emily asked again.

“An average carrier could hold up to two hundred and fifty.  A large carrier, twice that.  A pocket carrier could hold maybe seventy five or so.”

Last question, Emily thought:  “How long to build the carriers?”

Lior laughed with satisfaction.  “No time at all!  The Coast Guard Commandant’s lucky son-in-law got a contract to build fifteen carriers! He built them, but then we mothballed them when we realized we did not need them for in-system use.  The carriers will have to be reprogrammed and the rearmament bays upgraded, and we’ll want to take a look at the inertia compensators, of course, but that shouldn’t take more than a month.”

Emily nodded slowly and glanced at Hiram, who raised his eyebrows and nodded.

“I see you’ve got more than one type of gunboat in here,” Grant said, flipping through the designs on his tablet. 

“Yes,” Lior confirmed.  “There are three basic types. First, the attack craft; second, the jammers and anti-missile craft; and third, a command craft.  I haven’t worked out yet how many command craft we’ll need for how many attack craft, but I would guess one for every twenty five or so.”

“You know,” Grant said, “we can use Gandalf to model this even before we have the actual gunboats manufactured.  We could build simulators – a lot of them – and play with this until we understand what works and what doesn’t, and use that to create tactical doctrine.  We can do a lot of this even before we have actual ships to fly.”

Emily glanced at her watch.  She had two hours before her meeting with Admiral Douthat, enough time for some food and to think about all of this some more.  Grant and Captain Lior left for the mess hall, still talking about tactical doctrine and Emily turned to Hiram.

“Quite a coincidence, having Captain Lior on board Atlas like this,” she remarked casually.

“Glad it worked out,” Hiram said.

Emily stared at him.  Hiram stared back for a while, then he laughed and shook his head and held up his hands in an ‘I surrender’ gesture.  “Okay,” he said.  “I learned that Admiral Douthat was going to take you off the
New Zealand
and give you the job of somehow making the gunboats less vulnerable during combat.  I did a little research and came across Captain Lior and thought he was someone you should meet.”