Hannah Sawyer (Kinsella Universe Book 3), page 11
Commander Sanchez had been in three battles? Hannah rubbed her eyes. How could she manage training, much less the real thing?
It was like he was inside her head when he spoke quietly. “Hannah, fear is something you live with. There may be people in the Fleet who don’t feel fear, but when we find them, we give them the boot. What we do is dangerous, very dangerous. If you aren’t scared, you aren’t going to give what we’re doing the proper attention. For sure the rest of us want your best effort! Being afraid is something you learn to deal with.” He patted her hand. “True, some people can never do it, but they are easy to spot. They can’t do the simplest thing when the going gets tough, not even once. Relax, Hannah, you’re doing fine!”
She bit off a piece of tomato and chewed on it for a minute, then looked back at the lieutenant commander.
“So we’re partners?” he asked and Hannah nodded reluctantly. “Good! I have to run, I need to get a little something of my own to eat before 1300 and the sim briefing. See you!”
Hannah felt a mild disappointment that he hadn’t stayed with her, but she could see him a few minutes later, sandwich in hand, talking to the Rim Runner Commander Donna Merriweather had displaced.
A few minutes before the hour Hannah was in the assigned room, picked a seat and started looking at the computer terminal at her position. Commander Sanchez arrived a moment later and sat down next to her. A few minutes later they were called to attention.
It was Commander Bachman again.
“I want to say a few words to you about training principles,” she said to the two hundred people in the room. “The Federation never contemplated using fighter-type spacecraft. Turbines are large, complicated and expensive, not to mention prone to failure. Putting one in a small interstellar-capable craft made no sense. We put them in large ships with large crews and considerable hardware redundancy so that if there is a problem, there is a chance of repairs. Even so, ships are lost.
“Now we have a situation where it is thought it would be prudent to employ such smaller vessels. We have absolutely no idea of what sort of tactics are appropriate. So, since we do have historical data on how fighters were used in wars on Earth, we will use that information as guidance in our initial planning and tactics. Guidance only, nothing is engraved in stone.
“On Earth, in an aircraft, if you are damaged or suffer a hard malf, you can coast to a landing. Failing that, you can bail out with a reasonable chance of survival. We intend to make fighters impossibly hard to spot on radar, which is what our opponents appear to use. A fighter will be hard to spot on lidar, which we use. If you have a malf or take damage you are going to be very lost. Of course, you could turn on a radio beacon in the middle of a battle and start broadcasting your position.”
There were uncomfortable rustles in the room.
“So, while we will be employing some concepts from times gone by, we’re not going to be rigid about it. One idea we will be using is you going out in pairs, as wingmen.
“Each of you will pick a partner. If you don’t have anyone in particular in mind, we’ll find someone for you. Everyone will be partnered by 0800 tomorrow. You will be able to swap partners until 0800 Friday, 48 hours later. After that, you and your wingman can only be separated by my personal permission. I don’t plan to give it to anyone.
“We will be training you as best we can in the simple mechanics of piloting spacecraft. It is much easier, for instance, than learning to fly an aircraft. You will not be expected to learn the ancient art of the dogfight: that is meaningless in an environment filled with gigaton missiles and where relative velocities will probably be in the dozens of kilometers per second. Exactly how you will engage the enemy is still the subject of discussion, certainly at longish ranges with missiles. Shorter ranges we’re still thinking about. Lasers, probably, in that case.
“Training will consist of a number of exercises you will have to pass. There are a finite number of these exercises; you will treat each and every problem you are given with the same security classification as the most secret weapons project of the Federation. You will discuss these problems with no one except the cadre officer assigned as your tactical officer -- not even your wingman. If you talk to someone who’s not had to work through a particular problem, you will be interfering with their training. Worse, the acquisition of that knowledge might have made the difference between that pilot living or dying at some later time. And the pilot could have been assigned a mission critical to the survival of our race.
“We will treat loose talk about the training, to anyone, as sabotage. Not only will you bilge the course, you’ll spend time in a military prison, and then be assigned someplace extraordinarily unpleasant to finish your enlistment. Most of you enlisted for ‘the duration.’ That could well mean decades.
“One last thing. I have been given no particular quota for the number of pilots I’m supposed to bilge, no quotas on how many we should graduate out of the program. My task is producing highly trained individuals for the mission assigned us by Fleet Aloft: all of you or none of you.
“As currently envisioned, we will be flying off a purpose-built carrier. She’s being built as we speak, and is named the Rome. I will be your wing commander; other officers will be appointed as time goes by. Rome will carry about six hundred strike fighters and about four hundred other models; C3I ships, sensor platforms, refueling tankers -- we are relying heavily on the air war TO and E’s, as I said earlier.”
She paused and cocked her head, looking at her audience. “I can see a few blank stares out there. Take notes. When you hear something you don’t understand, there will be time for questions or you can look the answer up. C3I is Communications, Command, Control and Intelligence. TO and E is the Table of Organization and Equipment -- the organization and equipment a unit is assigned to fulfill it’s mission.
“I will be giving this next assignment to all trainees by the end of the day tomorrow, both those who arrived here able to pilot and those that couldn’t.
“I want an operational analysis of how our carrier and its fighters should be employed in battle. You may team with your wingman. Two teams of wingmen may join together. No more than four people to a group. If you wish, you can go it alone, or in any combination, not to exceed four. You have seven days from now; even if you think you don’t know anything worth contributing, contribute anyway.” She grinned genially. “If you don’t contribute, you bilge.”
She gestured to Commander Huygeens, who’d been standing patiently to one side all the while. “Now, I’ll leave you in Commander Huygeens capable hands. He’s your training officer.”
She left and the Rim Runner looked over the room. “We’re not formal out on the Rim; I don’t have that much experience with the forms and practice of military courtesy as practiced by Fleet Aloft. On the Rim we give jobs to people who’ve demonstrated they can do them well, or who show the capacity to learn them. That is, in fact, how we judge everyone on the Rim: by how competent people are at whatever it is they are given to do.
“So, that’s what I’m comfortable with and until I’m told differently that’s how I’ll run my shop. I’m Leyten Huygeens, called ‘Light’ by everyone except Ulrike.” He laughed. “My wife has her own name for me.” Everyone laughed with him, except his wife, who simply smiled.
“I expect quite simply your best, no matter if it’s the way you dress or the way you comb your hair.” He ran his hand over his bald pate and there was more laughter. “Or how you fly the beasts we give you to fly. Sim or real.
“The Federation has placed a great deal of importance on our mission. We must succeed! We will succeed! We have quite a few people who are simply the best of the best.
“Our training squadron commander is Donna Merriweather.” He held his hand waist high, about as high as Donna stood, Hannah thought. “She’s an Empress, a for real Empress, titular ruler of Campbell’s World. Of course, she was overthrown by her father in a Palace coup a few weeks before she enlisted for the Fleet.
“Ten weeks ago, at the Officer Training School at Maunalua, two men tried to kill her. This is the second or third attempt on her life, depending on whether or not you think her father was serious about his threat to nuke California Base if she wasn’t returned to him.”
He pointed to Commander Sanchez. “Commander Sanchez killed one of the men with a weapon he’d taken after killing the other ninja in hand-to-hand combat. Officer Candidate Merriweather had been napping; he didn’t wake her.” There were titters.
“In case it has escaped your attention, Commander Sanchez was aboard Agrabat at Gandalf, Hastings at Fleet World and on communications duty in California base when Campbell’s World was attacked. He has teamed with Hannah Sawyer, the young woman sitting next to him.
“Ensign Hannah Sawyer currently has the best EVA time, and will almost certainly make Ulrike several hundred dollars richer for having done so.” He grinned. “I’ve been doing EVA since I was four; I went over the course and was eight seconds slower than Ensign Sawyer. There is a woman who knows how to fly!”
He pointed to someone towards the back. “Tommy Mikklejohn, even we on the Rim know the man who’s the best ever soccer forward in the history of the game.” Another gesture, “Michiko Yamata, the pianist. Michiko has played in every major music venue on the planet and on a good few out on the Rim. My ship, the van Leuvenhook, cut two weeks off our mission time so we could catch, live, one of her concerts on Tannenbaum.”
He paused for a moment. “Every last one of you is the best possible person we could pick. So, you will learn to pilot. Piece of cake.” He grinned.
“The way this will work is this: you will be checked out on sim operation. Once you pass that hurdle, you will do forty hours of sims before you strap on a real bird. Then forty hours of multi-instruction on a real bird, then you fly yourself solo to where ever it is we tell you to go. I am told we will have some standard Fleet jitneys and shuttles for that, but, more important, about twenty prototype fighters are due in three weeks.
“We older, wiser, hands will probably hog those for a couple of days. Then training will commence in fighters. By that time, all of us will be training at the same level, there will no longer be any distinction between those of us who already know how to pilot and those of you who don’t today.”
He gestured to someone in the back, and a computer image flashed in front of the class. “This is the main control panel of a Boeing type 42 simulator.” Then he started ticking off the main features.
Later, Hannah returned to her compartment, thinking that for the first time maybe she might just possibly not be as afraid today as she’d been yesterday. The relief was palpable and she spent not a little time enjoying the sensation.
There was a knock, and she got up and found Ernesto Sanchez and Donna Merriweather outside her door. “Want to get together on the big problem?” Donna asked Hannah without preliminary. “I don’t get a wingman, at least not for a while. So it’s either me by myself or something like this.” She grinned at Commander Sanchez. “And there is another thing too: Ernesto actually has had some OJT in carrier operations.”
He shook his head. “You don’t want to know what I know.”
Donna looked at him. “What do you know?”
“I have a copy of Agrabat’s sensor scans from the battle at Gandalf. If you want to be depressed, you can watch them.”
“I read that Hastings blew the other carrier up, during the battle,” Hannah said, curious.
Ernesto nodded emphatically. “Yep, that’s just it. One second there, then...” He made a fist and opened it. “Pffft, gone! Scuttlebutt says our first carrier will have 15,000 people aboard when we go out. God knows how many critters were on theirs when Hastings scored.”
Hannah saw Donna understood what Ernesto was talking about, as did she.
“Most people are going to turn in glowing visions of the future,” Donna mused. “I wonder if we can get away with a contrarian view?”
“Defeatism,” Hannah murmured, something she’d heard on the news.
Ernesto chewed his lip. “I was there, I can get away with it. Donna can probably get away with it. Hannah could have a bad time if it goes wrong.”
Hannah lifted her chin. “Then we will have to see that it goes right,” her voice was quiet and firm, with more confidence than she usually felt. But this was a report; there was no wave coming up behind her. For the first time Hannah realized just how far away Gloria was. It took a great deal of effort not to cry.
“Let me get the data disk from my quarters,” Ernesto said after the quiet had extended for nearly a minute. “I’ll meet you two in the study carrels on Deck 27.”
Donna went to get some materials of her own, leaving Hannah leaning against a bulkhead, trying not to cry. Gloria wouldn’t have heard of it! But Hannah wasn’t Gloria and she wasn’t brave like the others! It was hard!
Shortly afterwards they watched the recording play. The battle against the carrier lasted only a few minutes. Ernesto tapped the screen where the suspected enemy carrier was. Minutes after it had been identified, it was an expanding globe of plasma.
“Again,” Donna said, “only this time, much slower!”
She tapped the screen as Ernesto had. “They are launching eight fighters at a time.” The scene slowly advanced, frame by frame. “The fighters form up and head down towards the planet.” After a minute, she tapped the screen again. “Eight groups of eight, down towards the planet, each group forms up in a V, and fly as a group towards their target. This ninth group, though. It doesn’t form up or head down, instead it gets a little in front and parks, scattered to cover their ship.”
“They didn’t park long,” Ernesto said grimly.
“No, they didn’t,” Donna agreed. “The carrier launches two more groups that are forming up. Eleven groups in less than two minutes.” Again the screen tap. “Here is where Hastings picks up on them, right after the eighth group. They redirect some of their counter-battery fire and almost immediately, those missiles are picked off by group nine. Group nine was on its toes.”
They both looked at Donna, who shrugged and he went on. “Thirty seconds later Jensen decides the little squirts are laser meat, plus he fires a counter-ship salvo as he lasers the squirts.” On the screen the eight specks that had been pacing the bigger ship vanished abruptly, while missiles continued to head towards their target. More of the little ships vanished as they were assembling as Hastings’ lasers continued to fire.
“Hastings was close by then,” Ernesto mused. “Too close, really. It must have been an enormous shock for the bad guys: Jensen was coming right down their throats. Obviously that wasn’t expected.” He took over the description of the action.
“Here the carrier starts to change course and here, twenty seconds later, it’s toast. That was a forty-megaton Fleet standard weapon, dialed to the maximum yield and delivered right to their main hatch. On Agrabat, one of ours exploded close inboard. Less than fifty clicks off. It felt like we’d hit a brick wall. If we used the monsters the bad guys employ, we’d have been plasma.” He grinned. “I don’t know if anyone will ever have the guts to ask Jensen if that’s why he went down their throats. Knowing that their weapons were huge and they wouldn’t want any going off in their faces. If they have faces.”
“The man has stone balls.” Donna giggled, and went on, “To quote my favorite Gunnery Sergeant.”
Ernesto laughed as well.
“Well, one thing I think we can safely say,” Donna said, changing the subject back to the topic at hand, “carrier operations within a light second or two of enemy ships are just plain dangerous.”
Ernesto grinned and tapped the screen again, this time on another blip.
“You have no idea. Here’s something else to think about. Watch.” He gestured at yet another blip, one of the hostiles.
“This ship is almost a twin of the first. Not as large as the carrier we’re building, but nearly a kilometer in diameter, just like their carrier. C3I is the thought. We didn’t see it launch anything, even missiles. And here...” The screen pulsed oddly, obviously a sensor overload, centered on a friendly blip that was one of the other ships coming up from Gandalf. The image of the friendly ship expanded in a globe, like it had taken a big nuclear hit, then a fraction of a second later the indicated enemy ship did the same thing.
When the thermal blooms died away, there was an obvious plasma cloud where the enemy ship had been while the friendly continued as it had been. A few seconds later, the Fleet ship vanished again, followed a fraction of a second later by one of the remaining heavy escorts as it too blossomed. A minute later, the sequence happened a third time.
“Nihon,” Ernesto said after a theatric pause. “No one’s supposed to talk about it, but they be baaaad dudes,” he stretched out the vowel in the one word. “And right now, the man who commanded Nihon at Gandalf is commanding the entire Earth Defense. And what ship did they first consider for his flag? Nihon. Admiral Ito Saito, who was at Tenebra long before he was at Gandalf.”
Again the finger tap on the screen as Ernesto ran the scene back to the explosion of the second large ship. “Note that Nihon is -- distant -- from the targets. Nihon’s weapon’s range is something like eight times the range of a standard Fleet laser and I suspect that right now they are working to raise it that much more. Quite literally, you would not want to let a ship like Nihon get within a million kilometers of a carrier. On the other hand, we’re not supposed to be talking about this at all.”
Hannah suddenly looked at him. “How big are the lasers?”
Ernesto shook his head emphatically no. “This is a subject we’re not supposed to bring up. I’ve already said way too much.”
“Not wattage, the physical size. Is it of a size with current art?” Hannah pressed. This at least, was a subject she was comfortable with, something her father had pounded into her head.
