Six
September 2251
Tarbos – Fleet Spacedock
Four ships, the last remnants of a beat-up Task Force, sat smoking and battered in the Tarbos Fleet spacedock. The Orleans was the last to arrive, and the first man off the battered ship was Rear Admiral Isaac Gauss, on his way to brief an unhappy Fleet Admiral.
He had the unhappy feeling that his career was in much the same condition as his flagship.
The Dock debarking level was sixteen decks outward, ‘below’ the Fleet headquarters. Since the Dock still depended on the rotation of the massive main disk to provide gravity, Gauss and his aide had to find a lift to take them up to Deck Four, where the Fleet Headquarters staff worked in a comfortable two-thirds gee. When the lift arrived, Captain Jensen waited for the Admiral to enter, as protocol required, before stepping in and pushing the contact for Deck Four. Both men stood watching the numbers over the door slide slowly upwards towards Four as the lift ascended.
“This isn’t going to be pretty, Jerry.”
“Probably not, sir.”
Admiral Gauss rocked back and forth on his heels, silently, strangely calm, as he had been since shortly after the battle.
“There we are, Deck Four. Ready to face the wolves, Captain Jensen?”
“I’ve got your six, sir. Let’s do it.”
“You’re a good man, Jerry.”
The two officers strode into the Flag office as though they were boarding an enemy ship. Admiral Gauss walked directly to the Chief Petty Officer manning the front desk and announced, “Rear Admiral Gauss and Captain Jensen to see Fleet Admiral Kosake.”
The gray-haired CPO looked up at Gauss’ stern visage and said in a low voice, “Go on in, sir, I’ll buzz you through.”
A tone sounded, and a panel door behind the desk slid open. Gauss strode through the door, followed closely by his aide.
Fleet Admiral Minoru Kosake sat behind an expansive desk of polished Tarbosian blackwood. On the wall behind him was a map of the Confederacy, and on his desk a small, polished metal model of the Orleans. The office was large, but Spartan in its appointments, and with good reason; the office of Fleet Admiral had been created less than a year earlier.
“Rear Admiral Isaac Gauss reports as ordered, sir.” Gauss stood at attention, saluted. Still seated, the Fleet Admiral returned the salute, a little too casually. Gauss’ mouth turned down in a slight frown.
“Sit down, Admiral Gauss. Captain, you too, have a seat.” The two officers sat down. Fleet Admiral Kosake ruffled through some papers, took off his glasses and cleaned them, and stared at his desktop for a moment before speaking again.
“Well, gentlemen. We’ve had a hard time these last few weeks, haven’t we? Yes, a very hard time indeed.” Kosake stood up and turned to face the wall map. Gauss turned to give Captain Jensen a puzzled look; his lips silently traced a question: We?
Jensen just shook his head.
“It would appear that the New Albion system is in some contention,” Admiral Kosake continued. “The presence of our armed ships in the area may have provoked the attack.”
“Provoked, sir?” Admiral Gauss’ mouth hung open.
“Yes, that’s the question at hand. Senator Galloway claims that New Albion is too close to the Grugell border; he thinks we should limit our expansion in that direction, perhaps abandon that colony.”
“Abandon New Albion?”
“Yes, possibly. Unless we can negotiate something with the Grugell. I understand that Senator Galloway is pushing to open diplomatic relations with…”
Gauss came halfway out of his chair, unable to contain himself any longer. “With all due respect, sir, what the fuck are you talking about? Negotiate? Abandon a colony? One of the original thirteen Confederate worlds? I’ll be God-damned if we abandon a colony – we’ve got over five hundred killed and twice that many wounded from an unprovoked attack, and Senator Galloway wants to surrender a planet to those bastards?”
“Admiral Gauss!” Kosake snapped, finally showing a little animation. “Do I have to remind you that we do not make policy? The President and the Congress make policy; we only carry it out. You know that, do you not?”
“I know that, sir, sure as I know that the President listens to her Fleet officers. You most of all, sir. Please don’t tell me you’re buying into this appeasement horseshit?”
“Mind your tone, Admiral. I’m not buying into or advocating anything. I’m merely discussing alternative views. Now, as to the attack on your Task Group, I would hope we have learned some valuable lessons in that engagement. I’ve read your report, but I’d like to hear your impressions directly.”
“Well, sir, my direct impression is that we were not prepared, and we had our asses handed to us. Captain Jensen, if you would?”
Captain Jensen extracted a small silver disk from his jacket pocket and pressed a stud; a holographic display of the deployed Orleans Task Force swam into midair.
“Sir,” Jensen narrated the unfolding display in a monotone, “You can see that here, at the beginning of the exercise, the Orleans was here, escorted by the Ian Mac Vie. The Mountain View and the Farragut were a hundred and eighty kilometers below the flagship’s keel. The Dallas and the Reuben James popped out of subspace here,” he pointed at three new blue symbols beneath the Mountain View, “to simulate an attack. Less than ten seconds later, before the flagship even detected them, four Grugell ships – a heavy cruiser, a light cruiser, and two frigates, from the sizes – popped through above the flagship on this axis.” Four red symbols appeared. “Four more came through to the flagship’s stern, this group with two light cruisers and two frigates. It was this cruiser that fired first on the flagship…” As the hologram unfolded, Captain Jensen calmly explained every detail of the debacle.
Great jumping Christ. The whole thing lasted less than thirty minutes. Gauss had seen the run-through four times, and the same thought occurred to him each time.
“…and the Orleans was the last ship to transit to subspace. That concludes our available data.” He sat down.
“Well.” Admiral Kosake sat down, picked up a piece of paper, stared at it for a moment. “Yes. Well, that was certainly a bad day for the Navy. Admiral Gauss, what recommendations have you to prevent a repeat of this incident?”
“Sir, I’ll tell you exactly what we need to do. First of all, full combat load-outs for all ships. We ran out of missiles too soon in that engagement, and we’ve learned that particle beams aren’t enough when you’re dealing with capital ships. Second, we need to put standing patrols near the border planets, New Albion especially. The Mountain View and at least one other ship should be tasked to that system; we already know that the Grugell are operating in that area, and the one advantage we have is that they don’t seem to be able to track something as small as a strike fighter. That won’t last long, though. They lost one ship to Shrikes launched from the Mountain View’s fighters, and they won’t take long figuring a way to counter that threat.
“Finally, sir, we need more ships. We could use ten more like the Orleans.”
Admiral Kosake sat staring at the ceiling.
Gauss looked at Captain Jensen. Jensen shrugged.
“Thank you for coming in, Admiral Gauss,” the Fleet Admiral said at last. “I’ll review all of the data you’ve provided and speak to you again. I’m sure you’ve got plenty to do, so I won’t keep you any longer. Dismissed.”
In the elevator, bound once more for the Dock levels, Captain Jensen finally broke the silence. “Sir, is it just me, or was that about the strangest ass-chewing I’ve ever sat through?”
“It sure as hell wasn’t what I expected, Jerry, but I only know Admiral Kosake by what little reputation he had in the Japanese Defense Force. I do know one thing – we’ve got another problem that might hurt us as much as the Grugell fleet.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“A damned leadership vacuum, Jerry. A Fleet Admiral that is a complete non-entity. That big chair up there may as well be empty for all the good he’ll do us.”
“That’s what I was thinking, sir, not to disparage a Flag officer, but…” “I know, Jerry. Keep it under your hat for now. Fleet Admiral Kosake seems to be in this Senator Galloway’s pocket, but I know there’s at least one Senator that is on our side.”
To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.
thanks for the story.
Post battle politics, as expected.
I also thank you for the excellent story!
Kosake gets eaten by a Gruegell?
She (the Orleans) was asking for it . . . .
There was no good reason for the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars to field large ships after it became clear they were vulnerable and unnecessary. Same thing for the Empire too.
Visual language works best, so the easiest way to show our monkey brains which side is stronger is to give them more and bigger stuff.
I wonder if the Grugell are going to make their own Death Star.
In nature, size or the illusion of it usually works for intimidation, but not always.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8R50nvv5gc
^safari guide halts charging elephant by standing his ground and waving a stick
You have a fleet already built with large vessels built to serve as combination big-gun capital ships, carriers, and troop transports to project power against sparse and little-patrolled provincial systems, retooling tactical and strategic doctrine on a dime within a few years isn’t something that’s going to happen. The construction timeline for the Death Stars is on the order of decades, so the projects were well underway long before the events of the rebellion getting out of hand.
Most of the rebel fleet were whatever they could scrounge up, so it would have been a case of ‘beggers can’t be choosers’ and a lot of their big ships would be needed to serve as tenders for the smaller vessels, which do have issues with being unfit for long travel in terms of pilot/crew conditions.
OK, I can see the rebels having the philosophy of using whatever they could get their hands on, but real guerilla armies usually go for a swarm of technicals rather than trying to match the enemy tank for tank.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War
***
The Toyota War (Arabic: حرب التويوتا, romanized: Ḥarb al-Tūyūtā, Harb-el-Touyouta, French: Guerre des Toyota), also known as the Great Toyota War,[9] was the last phase of the Chadian–Libyan War which took place in 1987 in Northern Chad and on the Chad–Libya border. It takes its name from the Toyota pickup trucks, primarily the Toyota Hilux and the Toyota Land Cruiser, which were used to provide mobility for Chadian troops as they fought against the Libyans, and as technicals.[10] The 1987 war resulted in a heavy defeat for Libya, which, according to American sources, lost one tenth of its army, with 7,500 men killed and US$1.5 billion worth of military equipment destroyed or captured.[11] Chadian forces suffered 1,000 deaths.[8]
***
And I can see the Empire sticking with the big stuff because of bureaucratic inertia. It’s the same reason so many navies kept fleets of battleships after the airplane and submarine made them obsolete.
The machine gun made mass infantry assaults obsolete for the most part. Surface ships and tanks are mostly obsolete because of much cheaper countermeasures. Manned aircraft are not far behind.
I am a little surprised that computer-aimed machine guns aren’t being mass-produced for anti-drone defense. “Point Defense Cannons” have been a thing in scifi for as long as I can remember.
If you look at the engagements in the oritinal trilogy, the Rebels didn’t go “tank for tank” their offensive actions were attempted surprise raids, and going for targets where they didn’t think the Imperial Navy was. The first Death Star and the evacuation of Hoth were both Defensive actions where they were reacting to an Imperial attack. The fleet battle at Endor was very explicitly unexpected.
@NA – A few years back there was an Israeli anti-RPG system which used computer targetted shotguns.
The current drone war doctrines surprised the bureaucratic industries, but what’s most recently emerged is an anti-drone drone for about $1,200.
A homing projectile also improves the kill ratio, and has a higher ceiling. I’d have to do some research into what altitudes various attack drones operate at, but I’m not sure how well the computer can hit them from the ground.
The B-29 had computer-assisted defensive machine guns in 1944.
***
The General Electric Central Fire Control system on the B-29 directed four remotely controlled turrets armed with two .50 Browning M2 machine guns each.[b] All weapons were aimed optically, with targeting computed by analog electrical instrumentation. There were five interconnected sighting stations located in the nose and tail positions and three Plexiglas blisters in the central fuselage.[c] Five General Electric analog computers (one dedicated to each sight) increased the weapons’ accuracy by compensating for factors such as airspeed, lead, gravity, temperature and humidity. The computers also allowed a single gunner to operate two or more turrets (including tail guns) simultaneously.
***
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress#Defensive_gun_turret_emplacements
I would imagine the issue is with servomotor speed. We know fine control is a solved problem, ’cause remote surgery. There is probably room for improvement in ammunition/caliber design for hitting smaller targets than human-carrying vehicles.
The Empire’s fighters didn’t have hyperdrives, they had to be ferried between systems by carriers.
Big ships can also be mobile bases.
On the flip side, The Culture didn’t really have fighters but they used magic so that doesn’t really count.
Also, think about how long some of the hyperlane travel depicted in the series takes. Imagine doing that in a one-seat fighter. You’re going to have people in pretty bad shape by the time they reach battle without the mobile bases of the carriers.
It’s wild the Empire insisted on using a vastly inferior fighter when one presumes they could capture and reverse engineer rebel technology. A lone Rebel in a fighter with a hyperdrive can pretty much escape to anywhere if Imperial fighters get too close.
On the other hand, the US kept fielding the unreliable M-16 in Vietnam instead just reverse engineering the AK-47 or using cheap, proven WW2 weapons like the M3 “grease gun”. A submachine would be better for jungle combat anyway because most firefights would be at close range.
Eh, the Germans, at Hitler’s insistence, continued to use bolt-action rifles as the standard throughout WW2. Same deal with the War Department’s reluctance to equip the US Army with repeating rifles during the Civil War.
So given all that, the choices of the Rebels and the Empire are somewhat plausible.
EU Lore was “Quantity has a quality all its own”
Sticking to the films, there is a charge-up and calculation time before you can make a jump. There’s a whole sequence in the 1977 film around this delay.
I think you’re overestimating the strategic advantage of long range coffins (which are not tech developed by the rebels) which get swarmed by superior numbers of short-range fighters in every engagement we see.
The Empire is defending a lot of static positions, and doesn’t need to run from piller to post in pursuit after every engagement. It does need shittons of fighters on garrisson.
Eh. The TIE was a good dogfighter, and vastly cheaper than the Rebel fighters, which leads to the “quantity has a quality all of its own” tactic.
Rebel fighters are much better at anti-capital ship warfare than TIEs though. That might be one reason the Empire was relative unprepared for the tactic.
Q for the Author:
Is it Or-leens or Or-lay-ahn?
Oh-Lee-Annes
While you are an author, you’re not the author (in this case).
But yeah, I hadn’t considered that option.
Of course, maybe there’s been another Great Vowel Shift between now and then so it’s pronounced “Uhluns.” English does seem to be converting all vowels into a schwa.
Aww-linz. Source: Cowboy Mouth
No justice, no axles
Nearly 1,000 workers at a Michigan supplier plant that makes parts for General Motors pickup trucks went on strike Monday after not reaching a new contract with the company.
The United Auto Workers union on Monday confirmed workers at an axle and components plant in Three Rivers, Michigan, for Dauch Corp. — formerly known as American Axle and Manufacturing — walked out of the factory and onto picket lines at 12:01 a.m. ET Monday.
The union did not release a full list of demands, but said in a press release Sunday night that workers are still trying to regain wages lost during the Great Recession.
“We’ll stay out on strike until this company comes to its senses,” UAW President Shawn Fain said during a Sunday video announcement. “The full force of the UAW international union will be standing with these workers. So, American Axle, time is up. No contract, no axles.”
Workers of the world, unite.