Inherited War 1: Retribution (28 page)

47

“I was really impressed with the Nixa who piloted that battleship to meet us.  When the AIs captured Hal and took him away from the ship, I had to run the Retribution all by myself.  It wasn’t easy, I never knew how many of the small details Hal took care of in order for me to just fly the ship. I couldn’t imagine how hard flying that battleship would be without an AIs support.  The Nixa Major has done an adequate job of beginning the training routine of his and the Worlders men.  I know little of naval warfare be it on the water or in space, but I do have lots of experience with discipline and training.  I have asked some of the crew for anyone with dog fighting or capitol ship action to meet and come up with some kind of a training system so we can better our odds when we finally make contact with the enemy.” 

The
Retribution
hung motionless in the void of space.  She was finally fully staffed and all her stations were manned.  Cole was connected to the ship and was watching his sides drone fighters wheel and spin in front of him as they sought to engage the Esii fighters.  His pilots were getting the better of the Esii once again.  That was about to change though.  The
Retribution
was fully cloaked and had been in the target area for a while gathering the data that the battleship would need to launch a successful attack against the small colony world of the Esii.  Cole’s ship was doing what she was designed for.  She was the battle field controller.  Cole and his people onboard were painting targets, watching out for changes in enemy tactics or the sudden arrival of reinforcements.  They would only engage the enemy if they were discovered or the outcome was in doubt, then they would be the relief force that would hopefully ride in to the rescue.  Cole had a feeling this time his ship would be needed and needed badly.

The battleship had jumped into local space hours after Cole had arrived and had instantly deployed its drone fighter squadrons piloted by the Worlders on board the battleship.  After dropping the drones
, it had adjusted itself to fighter mode and started to pound the Esii capitol ships in orbit around the planet.  The Esii had deployed three times as many spider fighters to counter the drone fighters in the ship to ship action.  The planet had turned on some kind of planetary based shield system that was protecting the capitol ships in orbit.  It was holding the battleship’s fire at bay for the moment but it couldn’t hold out forever.  That’s why Cole suspected a trap.  The Esii were buying time, trying to hold off the attack for as long as they needed.

Cole was watching his fighters on the HUD. 
His HUD had them designated by color. The four squadrons of twelve drones each had a different color so they could keep track of losses. The Esii spider fighters and capitol ships were an angry bright red. Right now Gold, Blue, Green and White squadrons were deployed in the action with orange held back in reserve.  It was a huge bonus that they never had to risk any of their pilots lives in these dog fights because they were drones, but if a drone got completely destroyed the resulting severing of the link between pilot and ship could incapacitate the pilot for ten minutes to an hour depending on the severity of the disconnect.  They had to have some way to cover them in case of a route, which would be oranges job.  If the battleship was overwhelmed and its fighting drones were destroyed, orange would deploy in a rear guard action to give the battleship time to head out system and jump to safety.

Cole was watching what was going on and had a sinking feeling that orange squadron might be in use for this fight.  “Major Fury, your fighter screen is being drawn off too far from your ship.  If they get much further away they will not be able to give you close support.”  Cole had established a tight beam laser with the battleship as soon as she made it in system so he wasn’t worried about being overheard or discovered by the Esii.

“I know
Commander, I am trying to get them back to the ship.”  The Major responded obviously tweaked by Cole’s stating of the obvious.

“I have a bad feeling about this one
.  Something is coming, I can feel it and it’s not going to be good.”  Cole was desperately watching his HUD for any sign of a secondary enemy attack.  He watched as the counters moved a little on his side.  His forces were starting to take a beating.  They had held up admirably against the overwhelming odds and had cut the spider fighters numbers in half with some help from the battleship’s close support cannons and anti ship missiles.  It wasn’t going to be enough though. 

A bright light flared to life on Cole’s HUD.  Damn it
, he had been right.  “Major, recall your fighters and have them screen for a jump.  That’s three more Esii capitol ships with another one hundred and forty-four spider fighters.  The odds just got way beyond what we can take and expect to live.”  Cole’s orders had barely gone out when another flash lit up his HUD.  Double damn it, another group, this one right on top of the battleship.  Cole watched as his fighters fought to break contact with the remaining spider fighters of the initial force and head back to help their suddenly beleaguered mother ship.  It was too late.  The second and third Esii battle groups deployed their spider fighters, two hundred and eighty-eight in total, and every one of them focused on the battleship.  The six Esii capitol ships reoriented after deploying their fighters and began to hammer the battleships shields.  The three ships that had born the initial brunt of the attack were now free to join in the counter attack so they broke orbit and left the protection of the planetary shields.

They were screwed.  It didn’t take long for the massed fire from the Esii
to break through the battleship’s shielding and began to damage the ship.  Cole watched as a bright plume of fire gushed from the rear of the battleship at the same time gold and blue squadrons’ numbers went to zero.  The pilots onboard had just been killed and the drones were now nothing more than space debris.  Damn it, Cole swore again.  There were just too many of them and even if Cole brought the
Retribution
into the fight it wouldn’t make a difference at this point.

“I call it, fifteen minutes into the attack we lost.  End the simulation Hal.  The area of space that had contained the battle a few minutes ago was replaced by the familiar view of the asteroid field that the crews of the
Retribution
and the battleship had been living in for the past standard month.  “Let's have a debrief in ten minutes in the main conference room, Cole out.”

Cole turned off the all hands net
to ensure he was only connected to Hal.  “Jesus Hal, what the hell was that?  I said make this one a little harder so we have to deploy the relief squadron, not to destroy everyone.” 

After returning from
retrieving the rest of the AIs and getting one installed into the new ship, Cole had sat down with Hal and the volunteers who had done some ship to ship fighting in the past and worked up a fairly realistic simulation program that was going to be vital in training the crew.  So far they had practiced mainly on situations where they were evenly matched or only slightly outnumbered.  Their tech was so much better than the Esii that they could reasonably handle up to three times their number in capitol and small fighter attacks.  Until today they had won all of those engagements and were building a solid core of drone pilots.  Cole had placed the Nixa Major in command of the battleship and while he had no experience with commanding ships, he did have some in commanding troops.  He was learning a lot from these simulations too.  They had run one or two of the simulations every day, for the past month and Cole finally wanted to see how they would react to having to retreat from a fight.  He had left it up to Hal to determine the specifics so he wouldn’t know beforehand.  His men wouldn’t learn anything if he knew what was going to happen before it did and he warned them.

“You had your chance to retreat
, but the Major was too slow in taking it and he allowed his escort drones to be pulled too far away from the main fight.  The opportunity was there for the taking, don’t blame me if you missed it.”  Hal was a little upset it seemed, over Cole’s reaction to the simulation.  “Besides you left it up to me and this is what I chose.”

“Okay, okay
! I am sorry Hal but next time make it slightly more survivable the first time, then gradually progress the difficulty level.  Please.”  With that Cole disconnected from the training simulator on the asteroid base.  He stood up, stretched, and looked around at all the glum faces he saw looking back at him.  On second thought maybe it was a good idea to get their asses handed to them once in a while, to avoid overconfidence that comes from them having the better tech.  His people needed to be reminded that they were not invincible and weight of numbers could eventually take them out.

“On second thought,
” Cole announced through the overhead speakers.  “Let’s take an hour break for lunch and I will meet with squadron leaders, section leaders and the command crew of the battleship in my quarters over lunch.  We will debrief and they will disseminate the information to their sections and squads.”  Cole began walking to the exit nearest his simulation console and met up with the various individuals he had singled out for the debrief.  They fell in behind him as he headed down the hallway to his personal quarters in the base.  Sky was already in the briefing room waiting for the others.  She was his chief medical officer and she was responsible for the training of the medical staff which was only ten personnel right now, but it kept her busy.  As they all filed in they placed their orders and received their food from the dispenser.  They all took seats, with Cole at the head of the table and the Major at the foot.  “That was what we on Earth call a SNAFU.  What happened out there?”  Cole started to eat as he waited for a reply.

“It was my fault
commander, I let it get out of hand.”  Was the Major’s response.

“Yeah
, I know, but how did it get out of hand?  God damn it, all of your drones got sucked away from their assigned positions around the battleship and never seemed to realize it.”  Cole shoveled some food into his mouth, it never failed to amaze him how demanding the simulators were.  “We broke down out there and died because of it.”

The
Worlders held much of the responsibility for the failure since they were the drone pilots, while the Nixa were in charge of the command and control portions of the fight.  Cole looked up waiting for a response from one of his squadron commanders.  Thalo, as leader of the golds finally spoke up.

“We were over
-confident and chased them when we should have stayed close.  We thought we had broken their will for the fight and were trying to kill them all.  When the Major ordered us to return to the ship, that was when most of us noticed we had strayed too far from home.  It is a mistake we will not make again.”  Thalo was genuinely upset over his and the other squadron’s failure to do their jobs.

“Good
.   A straight answer.  Now, let’s move on to the section leaders.”  For the next two hours they broke down the failures of their last mission and came up with contingency plans in case it ever happened again.  They mulled over the battle until finally no one could come up with anything new to say about it.  Cole reviewed the performance of everyone at the table and gave praise as readily as he criticized.  “That’s about as much as we can beat this battle to death, does anyone have anything else?”  Nobody made a sound.  “We will hit it again, now go back and brief your people and prepare for another run at it tomorrow.  Thalo and Major Fury please stay here.”

A quiet conversation started between the crew as they slowly filed out of the briefing room leaving Cole alone with Thalo and the
Major.  “We need a test.”  Cole said short and sweet.  “These simulators are great for training but they are burning us out and starting to make some of us careless.”

“What do you suggest commander?”  The
Major asked him.

“We need a real world target to hit.  We need to find an actual Esii base that has the right numbers to allow us to go live for the first time.  A quick victory and some real fighting will do wonders for their moral and their proficiency in combat.  It may adjust their thinking as to the simulations.  Can either of you suggest a target that comes to mind or one that we could possibly scout for a mission?  I also need some real world time behind the trigger, so to speak.”  Cole leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head.  “We also still need a location on that Sun Eater ship, so a few prisoners would be nice.”

Cole watched both of his friends as they racked their brains for the answer he needed. 
The seconds ticked by and just when Cole was about to speak again, Hal interrupted him.

“System
XX4426.”  Was all he said.

“He might be onto something there
.  Yeah, I completely forgot about that one.”  Thalo said as he tried to dredge up the information he was looking for.

“Don’t leave me hanging
.  What is System XX4426?” Cole asked.

“I have never heard of it personally.”  The
Major said.

“I am not surprised by that.  N
o offense intended but the Nixa are more concerned with internal matters and not external ones.  XX4426 is the designator for a star system close into the core of the galaxy.  Your ancestors surveyed it thousands of years ago but came up with nothing significant enough to warrant a deeper study of the system.  The Esii on the other hand have had a small presence there for a few hundred years and no one knows why.  You could take the
Retribution
in say, a day early, and monitor the system then jump out and decide if it is a worthy target for an attack.  We can hold on station, outside of their best sensor range and jump at a moment’s notice.  I think it might just be the thing we need to get our hands a little dirty.”  Thalo was getting excited and was visibly bouncing in his seat.