Battleship Destroyer (59 page)

Jack only had an hour of his watch left when the word came to form up the fleet for deceleration to the Rock. He quickly brought the ship into its position in the squadron and the long deceleration started with the fleet quickly building up to 300 Gees as not to give the suspected enemy scouts in the region a clue to the new engines capacities if detected. Besides that was all the wounded ships could do. Though Jack suddenly realized that an enemy scout passing close may see that the ships where no longer spewing tons of reactant mass per minute and realize that something was different, Jack turned to the Sensor Station. "Lieutenant, keep a close watch on anything that may be an enemy scout even if it is just sitting there as we pass."

The sensor operator looked around at Jack. "Oh yes sir. We don't want to get ambushed. I always loved
it when we did that in The Game."

The Ensign turned and looked at the sensor operator smiling as did half the bridge crew.

Jack smiled over at the officer as well. "Yes we don't want to get ambushed Lieutenant. Keep your sensors tuned up tight and…"

Thinking for a few seconds as he looked at the navigation tank. "Plot, how far away are the other squadrons?"

"Ah… Roughly a thousand miles away sir." The lieutenant studied the screen as she checked each squadron. "The farthest is 1286 and the closest is 921 sir."

"And the ship spread in the squadrons?"

"Roughly 5 miles sir. Do you want an exact sir?"

"No but thanks." Sitting back Jack drummed his fingers on the arm of the Command Chair for a good minute.

The Ensign turned around in the pilots chair to look at Jack over her shoulder. "Yes Jack. Not optimum or hell, even good.
A thousand miles is hitting off an odd fraction of a wavelength."

"Which means the sensors are missing most of the information coming in from any great distance."
Jack tapped the comm screen. "Captain. This is a Lieutenant Turner. A, Officer of the Conn. I ah."

"Yes Mr. Turner I
know you are Officer of the Conn and yes you have the Conn. How may I help you?" Jack was not sure but he detected a slight slurring of her speech.

"Our sensor
array ships are not at optimum wave reception distances for maximum detection range or sensitivity for an array. We could increase our sensor range by a good factor of four if we redeploy the fleet to the proper grav wave length. Sir."

"You don't say. No, we can't have that now
can we Mr. Turner. We don't need optimum battle formation when we are headed home and looking for any bad guys that are lurking around do we. Well then, tell the Thyme to redeploy the fleet." The Captain took a sip of her drink. "Is there anything else I can help you with Mr. Turner, Officer of the Conn?" She smiled out at Jack.

"Ah. No Captain
Sir. Oh a yes sir. I have been thinking after you said you don't want the enemy knowing we have these new engines. The Ion drive puts out a distinctive signature sir. But I think we can mask it by adding a trickle of reactant mass to the exhaust stream sir. I would like permission to set up a quick group to do that as quickly as possible?"

"Very goo
d Mr. Turner Officer of the Conn. You are doing a smashing job. Keep up the good work. Out." The screen went blank.

Jack looked at the blank screen for a few seconds baffled by the Captain's responses. Then turned to the Navigator
ahead to his right. "Lieutenant, do you know the proper spacing and alignment for a grav wave detection array?"

"
Ah. I think so sir." Not sounding at all sure.

Jack turned to the pilot chair ahead to the left of him. "Ensign, give the navigator the proper spacing and alignment for a gravity wave
array if you please." Turning to the Navigator again. "Send that priority 1, under the Vice Admiral's authority to the Thyme if you please."

A half hour late
r the fleet started redeploying. "It's about time." Jack said to no one.

As more of the ships reached the
ir assigned places with 10,000 miles of space between each group, forming two long lines crossing about a quarter toward one end of each line, the sensor screen started picking up more and more details farther and farther away. A half dozen ships still had not reached the ends of the lines when alarms started flashing.

"Enemy ships detected Sir." Screamed the sensor Officer.

Jack hit the Comm for the Captain. "Captain! Enemy ships detected on a course to intercept our course sir. Intercept in 102 hours sir."

The Captain appeared leaning against
the hatch. "Yes Mr. Turner I see them. What do you think?" The Thyme Captain appeared in the Comm screen.

"Me? Ahh. Well.
Ah... I think they got the message sent that way, but not any way close to sensing us at this range with that formation spread and only 5 ships. I don't think they will be able to detect us until they are only minutes away at most sir. Ahh… We have plenty of time to set up a multipronged attack on them at 300 Gee's sir. Attack plan Echo 5 would be perfect Captain, even if a few more enemy ships show up. With the fleet upgraded with two capacitors on each barrel, we can easily take them out before we start losing guns."

The Captain/Admiral took a step onto the bridge toward Jack and then swayed a little and changed course to grab onto the shoulder of
the Executive Officer sitting at the Damage Control and crew dispatch board. A glass tumbler with large ice rocks tinkling in it as she moved.

"No
Admiral." The Captain of the Thyme said. "We can easily go around them without them being the wiser. We don't have the weapons to take on 5 enemy ships. Yours is the only one that has guns that can even possibly take on those ships. None of the others have finished the needed alterations."

"But Captain." Jack turned around from looking at the Captain of the Thyme talking. "With what we know now about the enemy, our 30 ships can easily take all five out with a coordinated attack."

Waving the tumbler around in front of her at Jack. "Are you forgetting that we have two ships that are badly damaged and I am not about to sacrifice two crews to these things unless I have too. Not to mention the fact that I would rather not advertise the fact that we have up graded our guns just yet or can see them over a full light year ahead. Not to mention that most of our fleets guns don't have extra Capacitors for their turrets until we reach The Rock.  Mr. Turner, how is the gun research going? Is there some way to upgrade our guns without more capacitors or burning out our gun barrel tubes?"

"
We can easily increase the temperature if we squeeze the size of the beam down with the new plasma linings. Ahhh, that is, if we could even make them right now.  But that will take more equipment than what we have in the fleet. Sir... but for now I think we can simply finish cross connecting the capacitors between the pair of guns in each of the turrets on the other ships. That also gives us two capacitors on each gun and the advantage of when one barrel burns out in a turret, they have the other barrel in the turret to fire. And if we are lucky, we will have the shields in place on this ship in a few more hours ready for testing. I think we can put shields on most of the ships before we attack." Jack looked over at the plot tank. "I think we even have enough time to split the force into several attack wings to hit the enemy ships from 3 directions at the same time at high speed allowing at least two of our groups to get a good dozen shots at their asses no matter what direction they turn without having to wait until we are passing them to only get one or two shots at their sides. It would take very good coordination to achieve perfect timing in the assault, but we can take them out with the improved guns in only a few shots at long range up their assess before they can get more than a couple of shots at us."

"You want to attack 5
of those monsters when we had trouble destroying one with over a thousand gun shots and over 600 torpedoes?" The Captain of the Thyme said shocked.

"We know what we are up against now Captain. We still have the odds in our favor." Jack said.
"If we attack with all 6 squadrons from widely different directions at the same time they won't be able to target all their ships on one squadron, we can take them all out with few casualties."

"Ya you saw what one ship with only 2 guns did to one squadron. If those ships have 4 or 6 or 12 guns each they could slaughter all 30 ships
of the fleet." The Captain of the Thyme was almost yelling.

The Captain/Admiral started to stand up
straight but grabbed ahold of the Exec again. "The problem with your plan Jack is that as soon as we break the sensor array to deploy the squadrons, we lose contact with the enemy making it impossible to even come close to coordinating an attack of 6 widely spaced squadrons as you propose. No. We will slide to one side and see if we can sneak around them since they are headed to intercept the course the ship we destroyed reported that we were on and can't actually see us.

In the mean time we can add
cross connects between pairs of turret guns and upgrading the feeds, fleet wide as well as the shields you were talking about if you can get them to work." Turning to the Captain of the Thyme she sloshed her drink and watched it hit the deck shaking her head. "Damn waist."  Looking back up. "I will put together a massage to the Rock.  After we transmit the message that the enemy is sure to pick up confirming our location and are on our way to their intercept point and their ambush, we will start sliding around to one side." The Captain started to take a drink but stopped with it at her lips and looked at the Thyme Captain and then Jack. "Well Gentlemen, you have your orders." Turning to the Exec she was still holding onto. She thrust the still half full glass into his hand and leaned forward to whisper into his ear and then said loud enough for the whole bridge to hear. "Take this damn shit and clean, ah clean out the rest of the booze from both my day cabin and living quarters cabin and lock it up in sickbay. I don’t' want to see another bottle. And send the doc up to give me a shot to sober me up. The least of our worries is a damn boy sitting on the Conn." Then staggered off the bridge.

Jack had seen his father and his brother drunk on the
bridge many times between stars and did not think twice about her condition but was glad of what he had heard. Jack watched the blips on the tactical plot screen as the Captain of the Thyme left his comm on as he talked to the various teams before sending the needed information to the fleet. The fact that Captain or Admiral Halsey was ignoring a ripe juicy easy target, started eating at him.

S
omething just did not seem right as he watched the five enemy ships as they slowed down to stop at the interception point. It just was not right that they were chickening out of an easy kill. The enemy ships would be sitting ducks waiting to ambush the Republic fleet only to get ambushed themselves. He liked the idea of turning their trap back onto them. So what if they were out of contact with the enemy as the squadrons maneuvered to attack. The enemy ships were not going anywhere while they waited to spring their ambush.  But then he realized the more he thought about ambushing the enemy the more he felt he was forgetting something.  But  what could that be? The enemy was right there in front of them. Then as he shook his head telling himself how stupid the Captain of the ship/ Admiral of the fleet, was, a new blip appeared approaching the interception point from the opposite direction from the original enemy squadron.

"Damn. That is
too soon to be the other enemy ship we spotted going the same way we were." Jack shook his head turning his head to look for that other ship and not seeing it. "The sensor array was too focused to see it or this ship before now. Covering such a thin slice of space in front of us." Jack said to himself as he turned back to the comm screen with the Thyme Captain still on it. "Captain we need to start moving the focus of the sensor array to check out a larger area. It will take a little coordination but…"

"Don’t tell me how to shit Lieutenant. I
see the other ship and I am already sending the orders. You just make sure your pilot carries them out properly. Out."

Jack
's watch ended a few minutes later with the discovery of 6 more enemy ships headed for the intercept point as the coverage area started increasing. He was suddenly glad the Captain had not taken him up on his plan. It was looking like they were already out gunned not to mention how many more would show up in the next 4 days.

------------------------

The Ensign walked with Jack as they headed for the Officers mess. "God, I screwed up big time. I could have gotten us all killed. Did you see that mass of ships collecting to ambush us?"

"What are you talking about
Jack? You saved our butts. If not for the array being established when it was, we would be dead meat and everyone knows it and so do you. Just quit being so damn Asteroid headed stubborn."

"But I suggested an attack that would have gotten the fleet slaughtered."

"Maybe, but that is what you are supposed to do. Evaluate the situation and make suggestions according to the information at hand. The Captain did her job surmising what the future possibilities are and making decision accordingly. You do not have the power to do anything that would endanger the ship. So forget about it except remember the lessons. That making suggestions to the Captain is your job." She grabbed his arm as they walked toward the officers’ mess on the other side of the 300 foot wide officer and Command deck.