Federation Reborn 2: Pirate Rage (88 page)

The admiral nodded grimly. “We got that from
Firefly's
report after her dustup with the pirate destroyer in the New Andres jump chain. A check of our files may have a partial answer, during the latter stages of the Xeno war, the Federation altered implants greatly. Look into that when you read the briefing material.” His implants pinged. Protector's avatar came up, and the admiral nodded. Apparently his time was up.

He turned to the commander. “The floor is yours once more, Commander,” he said.

The commander nodded. “Thank you, sir. We'll get it done.”

“Do your best. A lot may be riding on it,” the admiral said as he strode out before the group could finish rising out of their sitting positions.

---<>))))

After the admiral's sudden departure, Commander Sung cleared his throat to get the room's attention once more. “Well, that was fast and unexpected. Now, I just uploaded to you the briefing documents.”

“I see that, sir,” a human lieutenant said, holding up a hand to get his attention. “But, sir, there is little on where the material came from. Some not at all. No appendix.”

“And you won't see it. Unfortunately for you, wiser minds than just mine have concluded that they can't risk source material even with eyes-only classification. So, we make do,” the commander replied frostily.

“But, sir, how are we to evaluate the validity of the data? It's so thin in some cases …”

“Get over it. We're not compromising a source, period. Move on, Lieutenant,” Captain Montgomery said coldly from the side of the stage.

That brought the lieutenant up short as all eyes turned to the captain. The lieutenant nodded instantly, face a mask. “Yes, sir.” He turned to the captain and nodded once. The captain nodded in return, still eying him coldly.

“Good.” The commander nodded once, eying the lieutenant as well, then broadening his focus to the room at large. “
El Dorado
carries a
Deep Blue
classification. Do not speak about it with anyone including those in this room outside a quarantine room or secure room. If this goes public, it could cause a panic. None of us want that. The person or persons responsible will face the harshest measures we can apply to them,” he warned them sternly.

He waited a beat to gauge their reaction before he nodded once more. “We'll break down into subgroups. Some of the data is raw, some have analyses attached, but the person who did it has had their name and location redacted. So, no, you can't talk to them, nor see the raw material in some cases. Get over that. Do what you can with what you have. Any questions? Good, there are some, but we'll address them later. I don't want any pissing contests; this isn't about being right or wrong or career crap. We need the straight view folks, so put your ego in a box and tuck it away for some sporting event. Now, who's leading group A is …”

---<>))))

"Admiral," Captain Montgomery said, nodding to Admiral Irons as he came into the wardroom.

"Captain, Commander, Commanders plural I should say," he said with a smile to Commander Teague and Sprite. "So, what's on your mind?" he asked, taking a seat.

The other officers quickly followed suit. All eyes fell on the captain. "We're still doing an assessment of the intelligence we've gathered from ET as well as Protodon. But it's given us a few technical conclusions we thought we'd bring to your and the navy's attention, sir."

"I see," the admiral said, sitting back. "Go on."

"Our tech assessment is sketchy, and we do not have the look at their vitals like we'd like of course. But we have changed our estimates for their latest encountered hardware."

"Upward I'd imagine," the admiral said.

"Yes, sir. Right now we've crunched the numbers and we're saying it is somewhere between 68 and 70.4 percent of what our current hardware is in efficiency. That is a 30 percent jump in less than two years from our last encounter," Commander Teague stated.

"It is a decisive major jump from our prior look. Of course this isn't across the board. The Gather Fleet is still running the previous numbers, and there are spots where some ships are better off than others. But we're now seeing an effort to refit them as needed."

"I see."

"Fourth Fleet was drawn from the Home Fleet according to our sources. They had a recent refit to get them as deep as they could so quickly. But it wasn't good enough to handle the stress of their return flight, which we can only be grateful."

"Not all of them fell in Protodon. Remember that," Sprite cautioned.

"I stand corrected," the captain said with a nod to her avatar.

"So, you are saying we'll see an eventual upgrade across the board as ships come in to port," Admiral Irons said. "Port as in Horath but possibly other friendly ports?"

"Unfortunately true, sir. We believe they will send techs and equipment to the outlying bases to bring them back up to speed—the mothballed facilities in Dead Drop and Nuevo Madrid for example."

"Damn," the admiral said mildly.

"We now know why they pulled the people from them, or at least think we do," Commander Teague pointed out. All eyes turned to her. "We believe that they pulled the techs to go for retraining as well as reassignment in
El Dorado
."

"Not good."

"No. But it is good in that they had shut down the facilities there, forcing ships to go further inward to get repaired."

"But not anymore."

"Unfortunately … not yet. It hasn't happened, but once they get their feet under them, they will send techs to reopen those facilities. Most likely because their home shipyard will become saturated if they don't."

"And they want to build ships. Of that we're sure of with the introduction of the
Apollo
class corvettes they released for duty," Sprite reminded them.

"True," Admiral Irons said, tapping his fingertips together. "Continue."

"Home Fleet is still their best. There is no sign of new construction of destroyer or greater classes at this time."

"At this time," the admiral echoed. "But distances and time is long here," he cautioned.

"True, sir," the captain replied with a grimace and nod to the human commander.

"Undoubtedly that will change, sir."

"Undoubtedly," he agreed.

"From what we've seen, the hardware is still a mix of civilian hardware, some scavenged, some new. It looks like we're seeing a trend to purely Terran styles in design, but we are only seeing a limited sample set at this time," Commander Teague stated, giving Commander Sprite a slightly exasperated but humorous look.

"Go on."

"Expect older hulls to be withdrawn for refit or mothballed as time goes on. The crews will need only partial retraining on the new equipment and standards but the core training is still there to fall back on."

"Lovely."

"So, they have the advantage in hulls and skilled crews. And our tech edge is evaporating faster than we'd expected," Sprite said.

"I wish we had better news, sir," Commander Teague said quietly.

"It just means we've got our work cut out for us," the admiral said after a long moment. "Quality is going to be paramount," he said.

"The good news is, after looking more closely at ET we noted a trend. Not only did they stuff their ships with destroyer class missiles which sacrificed range and firepower for ease of logistics, but it also made them more sensitive to missile use and magazine space."

"So, we keep them at range and pound them. Good to know."

"But our own offense isn't without limits," the admiral said. "A Federation ship is limited to what missiles it can carry as well."

"True," Sprite agreed. "We are also better at cyber-attacks, though the recent Bismark incident has forced us to rethink that. They used a series of canned viruses to disable Leopold and nearly delete him."

"I should hope a rethink is in order."

"Defensively they are taking primitive but effective means to protect themselves. They are most likely doing what they can to redress the balance there."

"Another pleasant thought," the admiral said sourly. "Back to offense, how they took Leopold out was … hard. Scary."

"I've traced the reasoning behind it," Sprite admitted. "And I am partially at fault." Her admission made the admiral raise an eyebrow in inquiry. "It was unfortunately due to template nature of his matrix … to the same template used by the other A.I. I had little input from other A.I., little source code."

"Which we will need to fix," Commander Teague said, looking from the A.I. officer to the admiral.

"True."

"Back to the big picture," Sprite said. "Our ECM is obviously far better, as is our counter communications. We can break their encryption given enough time and samples. For how long though …" her avatar shrugged.

"They see themselves at a disadvantage they will try to redress the balance more in their favor. Then try to counter it. We'll need to be aware of it and have our own counters on hand. It's an arms race," the admiral said.

"Yes, sir."

"Okay."

"We need to dazzle them with our footwork, blind them with our ECM, and keep them out of reach," Commander Teague said with a smile.

"Got it," the admiral said with a nod as he made a note. "Anything else?"

"Well, obviously our education base is far better, though we're just getting started. Our engineers are better. We can make repairs faster and better than they can. Their engineers have years of experience in some cases however."

"You are just a ray of sunshine," the admiral said dryly. "Our current strategy is to get in, blow through Dead Drop and Garth and then either trap a relief force or resupply and then go back in."

"You are talking about Admiral White, sir?" Commander Teague asked carefully.

"Yes," the admiral said, eyes cutting briefly to her then back to the group. "We're going to make them split off forces if we can from their Home Fleet."

"Attrition them, sir? It could work. But time may not be on our side with
El Dorado
hanging over our heads," the captain reminded him.

"Then you'd better find it," the admiral said. He frowned. "As I was saying, while Amadeus keeps them busy, Admiral Subert is organizing a Sunday punch to come up from the southeast to do much the same, punch out their bases and instillations then meet up and merge with his TF22."

"Sir? What if they bunker up? Turtle?" Protector asked carefully, entering the conversation for the first time.

"That will be what I am expecting. I don't want to tangle with their Home Fleet or home defenses, so if they do we can send in relief forces to clean up our gains and deprive them of them and the manpower in each star system while we resupply Admiral White. It will allow him to consolidate, build up enough of a hammer to get in there and smash everything flat and end them.

"And
El Dorado
, sir? If they recall a fleet?"

"That's the wild card in the deck," the admiral drawled as he rose from his chair. "The one you have the unenviable task in finding so we can deal with it," he said as they hastily rose. "Get on it."

"Aye aye, sir," the officers said in unison as he departed. He nodded once at the door as he looked over his shoulder then went on his way.

"Well! He doesn't ask for much does he? Find the impossible to find a super hidden base the enemy doesn't want anyone to know about let alone find?" Commander Teague asked in dry mocking voice.

"Yup, just another day at the office then," Sprite said. "As the man said, let's get back to work then."

---<>))))

“You're going to have your work cut out for you,” Octavia said, eying the Horathian captain as they stepped out into the morning light. “This isn't just a test for them, I hope you know this,” she warned.

He turned to look at the group. They were trying to form up in some semblance of discipline, but he wished they wouldn't bother. In fact, it was downright dangerous; it would mark them to watching eyes as something of note to tell others. To finish the mission, possibly even survive they would have to blend in.

“I know.” It was strange that he'd bonded with the four armed woman more than any of the others. Perhaps it was her gender; there were few women in the group, not many had survived the pits. Perhaps it was her keen mind? He wasn't certain. He wasn't thrilled about her appearance, her four arms were hideous to his upbringing, but she was … useful.

“Kick ass,” she said with a nod to him. “But don't bother to stick around to take names—in and out fast. Let the media report the dead later,” she said.

He nodded back. “Noted. Good point,” he said as he turned to the group. “Saddle up, people. Try to blend in. We don't want to draw attention to ourselves. We're just a bunch of people going about their daily lives. Remember that and your cover story,” he growled.

Octavia watched them go with hooded eyes. After a moment she felt a presence behind her. “They are gone my lord,” she said mildly.

“Am I that obvious?” a familiar cloaked being asked.