AD 2277 A Perfect Storm
June 5
It took some time before the message reached Commadore Frasier from Cmdr. Benson on the Perryvale. However, with over 50 min of transmission delay it was impossible to hold a conversation. Cmdr. Benson's AAR left him with a fairly good idea of what the situation in HIP 51317 was. First he got the message to his staff that no information was to be released on the 3rd Squadron to the general public. He contacted the Prime Minister, the honorable Ronald Getti and after informing him of incidents recommended that the Naval Oversight Commision be called together to meet and discuss the situation this morning. He wanted approval to start construction of replacement ships as soon as possible. He also had his staff arange a meeting with Mr. Buxtdorf for the afternoon.
The NOC chairman was surprised to find the Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Marvin Beauchamp, in attendance. The documentation requiring signatures about disemination of sensitive information raised eyebrows all around the table. Once the relative short briefing was over with and while the committee members were still dealing with the shock of the news, the Prime Minister stated the Government needed time to prepare an official response to both the loss of the Ericson but also the action at the jump point. In response to direct questioning on the possible timing of his announcement Commadore Frasier states that he doubts the situation can be kept under wraps past the arrival of the support group in some 3 days. After some disucssion the NOC agreed to authorize two Terriers and a London. Commadore Frasier promises a full review of the intel on the Perryvale, a pair of inquests and a plan on how to rescue the ships still in HIP 51317. He is blunt about the fact that right now the Navy had only limited information to go on. Commadore Frasier then catches a sub orbital shuttle to Cantebury and meet with Commisioner Buxtdorf. This meeting was far more congenial and he left it with the Commisioner to inform BuSurvey about the loss of the Ericson. He knew it would take some days to organize together with the Navy how the families would be informed, and that delay would fit into the Prime Minister's plans.
June 6
While no practical faster than light communication system exists outside of science fiction, rumors were moving through the navy at near light speed. Something was clearly a foot with the Commadore on the move of a sudden, a simultaneous tightening of overall security and a great many new activities starting up. Queries as to stock levels, requests for new quotes, the mundane fact that many officers were suddenly missing from their usual haunts made even the least observent of the Petty Officers's hair stand upright. A pinnace leaves Earth orbit a max velocity heading for the 2nd Squadron at the jump point to Wolf 359 to collect Cpt. Morganrot.
The office of the Prime Minister is equally busy this day as the PM and his spin-staff try to come up with a way to make this most unpalatable of pills easier to swallow. Unfortunately, during question period that afternoon the Leader of the Opposition, Wyoming de Silva, inquired as to why new naval funding was being allocated without any discussion in the Assembly. This left the Defence Minister scrambling to come up with an answer. He took his three steps and then hurled the ball to the PM who elected to throw the ball with intent to injure rather than score. The Leader of the Opposition refused to say how she knew of the plans, and was actually surprised by the statements of the government side. Unfortunately or fortunately the period ended before either the discussion degenerated into a complete flame war or before anone got satisfactory responses to the original question. It did create a stir in the house that the reporters covering the Assembly didn't miss. The topic was of general interest to most of the members of the Assembly as Naval contracts were generally big money and with an election in the short term future getting a slice of that was good for your prospects of returning to Goose Green.
The political parties were bombarding the Navy with requests for information, and given their status as Members of the Assembly they had some expectation of answers. The PM contacted Commadore Frasier, who could only reply that the ships were still too far out for efficient communications. Since waiting was now potentially costing the PM and his party votes he informes Commadore Frasier that the PM will announce the situation that evening and he requests that Frasier join him for the announcement. Neither BuSurvey nor the Navy had finished the process of aranging for visits to the crew members families. In the case of the Navy the crew of the Dalmatian, Mastiff and Cleveland were officially catagorized as "Missing in Action." This ment the families were going to find out from a news broadcast in most cases. The PM was adament though as he could see his political future was on the line if he stalled much longer and his spin doctors told him to go now while he could be still seen as leading rather than responding.
To say the announcement went over like a lead balloon is an understatement. The loss of a third science vessel, the fact that it mirrored to a high degree the loss of the Hudson, added to that the announcement that Human ships had engaged the Wolvers and must be considered lost, plus the fact there were still 3 ships trapped in the system. One of these could be sugar coated, but not all of them. News agencies went into overdrive and the Navy was in their sights. Protests sprung up on the interweb and the newsies decended on the families of crewmembers looking for the personal touch. Worse to most questions the PM had to respond with "we don't yet know and will not for two more days until the 3rd Squadron Support Group arrives at Earth."
June 7
Some groups had felt cheated by the Morganrot Inquest results and they had enough political acumen to launch a triple assault. The PM and Minister of Defence were bombarded with questions in the Assembly, they also questioned if the NCC was doing its job. Perhaps the Commisioner was too young, too in-experienced to provide proper oversight was their second prong. Lastly the raised the question of "too much autonomy" in the Navy. The Putinites were backing this as they suggested it would be good perhaps to have "government oversight" of the Navy command staff. The last nearly caused the loss of a monitor when Commadore Frasier heard of it, then he stated that perhaps a year and half away from Earth in a cramped ship would give the Putinites some perspective. Crowds formed protesting the Navy's actions in several major centres during the day as shock turned to anger. The Navy went into lock down mode as most personel were suddenly restricted to bases and requests for interviews by the press were largely turned down. The reception of visits by Naval Chaplin's at many households were met with slamed doors.
Then came something no one expected. After the anouncement on the 6th the leaders of the Earth's universities that belonged to the umbrella organization "The University Network" or UN for short gave a press conference. In it they catagorically stated that no more students, post-docs or staff would be seconded to BuSurvey until they had some guarentee's their people would be protected. Survey ships were crewed by Naval personel it is true but survey operations was more often than not performed by UN members. Students ranged from astrophysicists and astronomers to doctorates in engineering, the ships being ideal research platforms for a great many space related science fields. It was good opertunity for young scientists to gain practical knowledge in technical matters and they routinely did the majority of the gravitational analysis. Faculty would take sabaticals on the ships when they were deployed as it gave them time to write papers and pursue their interests free of teaching classes. Dr. Lougheed had been one of the formost researchers in the field of N-dimensional Mathematics for example. This sudden announcement blindside everyone and while not the purpose of the UN played into the hands of rabble rousers.
June 8
The squadron would dock today and the station was in lock down with shore patrol squads deployed to keep the docking section reserved for the 3rd Squadron free of non-essential personel. This was essentially anyone not wearing a navy uniform. By the time the ships passed the lunar orbit several shots of them began appearing on the news. Taken from amature telescopes they were more or less indisint smuges but the ship watchers chat rooms were full of speculation. The Edmonton and the Protecteur classes were very distinct ships due to their functions so even without the Government's statement a few days before the fact this was a support group would have been hard to hide.
The three ships slid into the dock and nothing could disguse that the ships had seen battle from the people watching both from the Dock and from telescopes either on the Earth, a ship or the moon. The Perryvale had a large ablated area on her side with the scorched mark of where the plasma had been deflected by the ships shields trailing to the stern. The Paul Bunyon's stern showed both a plasma ablation crater plus the jury rigging of an engine, where an external truss had been errected to bring in control and coolent around an area that had been turned into a molten blob. The Warder showed no damage but all her launch rail exits were pitted and surrounded by the burn markes of combat launches were missiles went to full power only meters after exiting the hull. Minutes after the last of the ships confirmed hard dock and umbillical attachment the ships began downloading their files to the Naval central computer on the dock. The command staff of the ships were ferried down to Churchill for a debriefing.
The news agencies were stonewalled officially but they were able to get clear pictures of the ships now orbiting Earth and they increased their efforts to pry information out of the Government and the Navy. The Government was finding itself the centre of attention in a way few politico's really like. They were defending their actions and deflecting as much onto Commisioner Buxtdorf as they could. The Commisioner suddenly found himself defending actions that he had not known of from people who were taking extreme satisfaction in making him squirm and at the same time he was trying to re-assure the UN so that he could man BuSurvey ships. Public confidence in the Navy was in Free Fall. The demands for information and re-assurance came both from Earth but also from Luna and Mars.
June 10
Protests now surrounded most Naval facilities with crowds demonstrating against the "infective, incompetent, tin plated, old fashioned navy." You would think that the navy practiced floggings and keel hauling, not to mention child sacrifice the way some political parties raved about their activities. Commadore Frasier had over the last two days added a new acronym to the Navy Lexicon...WNP...not exacly "Weapons of Mass Destruction" this was "Wacho's, Newsies, and Politicians." The three groups of people who now he had to deal with daily. The PM's support for the Navy had been sporatic as clearly he had more important issues than keeping the heat off the navy to deal with. With the Commisioner being hounded the Navy was alone, and the people who set this in motion were licking their lips as they closed in for the kill of their political lives.
Then the Navy called a news conference. The next day the PM's staff would experience a sudden change-over as his press secretary didn't attach much importance to what the Navy might want to say, given the need to deal with the plunging approval ratings and the demands of the back benchers. That approval from the PM's staff was all Frasier needed. He showed up to the conference held in a Naval training room and told the assembled news reporters he had only a few things to tell them. Behind him a sytlized battle display appeared. As he identified the various groups their names flashed. Then the recorded voice of Cpt. Wells filled the room giving his last orders to the Support Group filled the room and killing the hum of conversation dead. "The information he refered to ladies and gentlemen is this." Behind flashed a computer generated image of Wovler Ship Killer Missile with a human being to give it scale. "Thier missiles are more advanced than ours. However, this ladies and gentlemen is a TorAr Goaltender array." The picture changed to a view of the Naval Fort on the moon. "We have run dozens of simulations, in every case we stopped the Wolver missiles. Our worlds are not defenceless." The Goaltender array had until that point in history been considered nothing more than a politcal porkbarrel to give commision money to New Toronto. The company, Toronto Arsenal, saw its stock triple in value overnight. A collage of computer generated pictures rippled past the viewers in each case "ALL MISSILES INTERCEPTED" showed in glowing letters. "This is a wolver ship." A computer enhanced veiw generated from the partial hull map showed up behind him. "This is a concept for our new destroyer class of combat vessels. To scale." They were identical. The Navy was not under any illusions the Hiyru's were the largest Wolver ship but Frasier had ordered this briefing be made as he said it "for fools, idiots and the slowwitted." "I will take five questions from the press, you can decide who asks them." Chum into a shark tank described the effect of that statement. The officers and men who had worked on that presentation for the last 18 hours straight got royally drunk after the Commadore left the room turning the stage over to his PR staff.
The Navy Engineering teams that had analysed the battle recordings were still busy. The next day the inquest into the loss of the SV Leif Ericson convened.
June 15
As the situation was fairly straight forward the Inquest on the SV Leif Ericson's loss was moving quickly. The fact that Cpt. Wells had acknowledged the threat in his orders, and will the full support Cmdr. Stokes but that neither had felt the chance of an encounter given the nature of the system bodies they could see was obvious. Cmdr. Stokes was on record as saying that "in light of the recent events caution seems advised." But it was equally clear that neither felt this system possed a risk to the survey force. Cpt. Wells had even ordered the Battlegroup refueled in prepartion for a probe before canceling it due his ships not having sufficient fuel even after refueling.
Beyond the usual recommendation for improvements to sensor systems the inquest found the following:
Finding 1: The committee finds Cmdr. Elliot Stokes not responsible for the loss of the SV Leif Ericson. The ship was engaged by an ambush it could not detect.
Finding 2: The committee finds no reason for him to have considered this system one with a Wolver presence. Based on all previous encounters with Wolvers a planet at least marginally habitable has been observed. HIP 51317 is largely filled with inhosptiable or at best marginally habitable worlds.
Finding 3: The committee finds that Cpt. Wells had the means to send a single probe vessel to explore the planets of HIP 51317. He should have done so before releaseing the survey vessels. The committee finds the evidence compelling that with their better sensors a Naval vessel operating in EMCON 5 would have been able to avoid triggering contact with the Wolvers.
Recomendation 1: That further survey efforts be relegated to safe already partially surveyed systems until a new generation of science vessel is commissioned.
The fact the Navy did not clear Cpt. Wells completely came as shock. The polls that had been more like a yo-yo shot continoued their overall behavior but suddenly new voices started to be heard. Searches over "The Alamo" and "Custer's Last Stand" began to be associated with Cpt. Wells. As the actions of the Überwachter pinnace and Ensign Standish had come up in this inquest, and even though the Sentinal's mission was the basis of Finding 3, interweb groups formed around sudden fans of the crew. Ensign Standish being voted "the person most likely to get laid next shoreleave" by one group of female fans to the amusment of his class mates who all knew Standish as a good pilot but useless with members of the opposite sex, becomeing tongue tied in their presence.
[ooc]There will be more on this topic later. Its a lot harder to write it up then it is to think it through.[/ooc]
