Captain Lucille Simard sat in the waiting room dressed in her navy blue uniform that would look similar to anyone alive a century earlier. In her hands was a thin tablet that she stared at with interest. The data that she perused was on the new Atlanta class ship design that she was granted command of. It was a massive 19,000 ton jump destroyer escort that carried a maximum of four of the newly designed fighters into battle. It was well armored and surprisingly fast for its size.
Commanding a crew of almost five hundred sailors would be a new experience in her career. Her early years as a freighter commander let her see various comets and eventually Ganymede and Mars become colonized. A promotion saw her travel the stars in the Newfoundland class jump exploration vehicle. It was a strange twist of fate that sent her into an empty system while Commander Pisani traveled into the Teegarden system ultimately claiming her life.
When the probe showed up near Luna and pinged a covert base in Greenland the news sent shockwaves throughout all of humanity. Most of the information was classified from the public but the mere thought of alien warfare scared the bravest of citizens. There was a boost in recruitment so that was good news if things turned worse.
“Captain, the sector governor is ready to see you.” A young man said as he opened the door to the spacious office. An entire wall of windows showed downtown San Diego in all its glory. She stood and walked inside taking a seat opposite the large wooden desk.
“Captain Simard.” Alexander Rosenstein said as he waited for the door to shut leaving the two of them alone.
“Governor.” Lucille responded quickly. She waited for things to be explained to her as she was naturally uncomfortable in situations with politicians. Events that were becoming more common as she progressed up the chain of command.
“I know it has been a hassle to get here but I asked for you in person for a reason. I am assuming you have had time to read the file that I sent you and you have become acquainted to our Atlanta class vessel. You also know of the loss of Commander Pisani. You will now learn of a loss of a second vessel a diplomatic mission that met similar results.” Governor Rosenstein selected a few options that dimmed the windows in the room allowing the wall behind him to display the Teegarden system with the second planet highlighted. “This here is an ocean world with small thin land masses. It is the only logical home of these aliens that refuse to communicate with us unless it’s with their missile technology. This leaves us no choice but a military assault.”
The captain’s expression changed a bit at this. “Are we in a position to do an assault without jeopardizing our defenses?” Her knowledge of the navy didn’t seem to give them hope in defending Naucratis without significant upgrades. Mines and sensor stations would be an expensive endeavor.
“No doubt we are stretched thin but have allotted for a fleet of twenty ships to hit this planet. Our intelligence has five ships there plus whatever installations are built planet side. Once you secure the space, we will send in the ground forces.”
It should not have surprised her that she would be selected to lead this operation, after all why else would they have dragged her to San Diego? It was still a bit unexpected and her thoughts took a bit of time to catch up to the situation. Once they did though, her mind absorbed the information quickly. “This Atlanta class would carry twenty fighters as well as untested missile frigates.”
“Yes,” the governor interrupted, “along with three corvettes, four destroyers and four kinetic gun boats. It is a force with a variety of weapons that should be able to deal with what we expect them to throw your way.”
“How much intelligence have we gathered?” The captain asked as she saw the limited information on the display. Her data pad sat on the desk still displaying the same intel on the Atlanta vessel that she had long since memorized.
“We have thermal scans of the system there is nothing else there.” The governor answered.
Lucille’s thoughts turned to her gathered fleet, the variety of ships and the included fighter craft. “I’ll need six months of training to get this fleet ready for combat.”
Alexander Rosenstein just shook his head negatively. “You will go straight into battle. The fleet has been gathered in orbit and a shuttle craft is ready to take you right away.”
“That is extremely rash. We have never, as far as I am aware, launched and recovered fighters. These ships have never traveled with each other, let alone operated while in combat. Hell, we haven’t even been in combat while in space.” Lucille Simard was beside herself at the governor’s plan.
“I knew you would reject this idea. The people though want results. The public wants action. You will outnumber them, and you have a lot of space to get your commanders combat ready. My mind is made up on this.”
It was twenty days ago when she had that conversation and the denial of a training mission still angered her. The four system jumps passed by quickly, and she knew that too many of these crewmen were green. Still here they were seeing the Teegarden system for themselves in person. “Bring the ships in tightly and take us on a direct path towards the second planet from the sun.”
“Aye, Captain.” The helmsman said as the communications officer relayed the order to the fleet. This style of communication was always a problem in naval combat once battle began but she was hopeful that things would progress easily. It was November fourth, galactic time at eight pm, an idea meaningless in space, when the sensors detected a lone contact. “Goliath class vessel moving towards the designated planet by itself, Captain.” The sensors officer stated. Military intelligence had named each known vessel but had little else to explain about their capabilities.
“Take us in on an arching path in between the remains of our two previous vessels and prepare for combat. Remember your time in the flight simulators and do what you were trained to do” Lucille knew this would be tough on all involved and as the time passed she could sense the fear on her bridge and could only imagine what was going on throughout the rest of the fleet.
“Their sensors are locked on us.”
“Find their missiles.” She ordered awaiting the Turcotte-Bison Active Search Sensor to identify these targets. The technology promised a range of thirty million miles well beyond their own missile ranges of fifteen and seven. For a full minute nothing showed until a red dot appeared, and the bridge turned active. “Missiles, six million miles out.” How did these weapons evade their detection for this long was a question that needed resolved and quickly. “Six contacts moving at thirty-three thousand kilometers a second.”
“Fire the AMM’s” She ordered knowing that this was something the commanders of the UEF Hurricane and Firedrake should already be doing themselves.
On board both ships this order indeed did happen almost simultaneously as targeting control identified this missile salvo and each frigate fired all five of their launchers sending ten missiles towards the incoming six. They struck with ease sending all twenty bridge crews into a quick cheer. “Eighteen size four contacts on sensor screens” Was a sentence stated in various ways across the command bridges. Another salvo of ten AMM’s roared quietly out of their launchers branching out towards the missiles striking eight. The mechanical reloading operation happened automatically but took ten seconds to fully complete before firing another salvo of five missiles from each frigate.
The dance was growing tighter as another salvo of eighteen appeared on sensor scans and ten seconds later another eighteen behind them. Things were growing tense as the two frigates fired off another salvo this time targeting the missile groups further away. It was a complicated game of taking out as many as possible but knowing when to skip over so that the shorter ranged weapon turrets could perform mop up duty. The first of these weapon platforms were the twenty centimeter dual laser turrets of the Rathburne class frigates and they easily trimmed the descending missiles down to three.
Lucille watched this on her bridge and felt good about the results so far. The final layer of defense was the gauss cannons that were spread out across not only her Atlanta class ships but also the specified area defense corvettes of the Chaffinch class. “The Goliath vessel has reached Teegarden A-II and sensors are reading large contacts.” As the sensor officer spoke this sentence his words slowed down considerably. “Five sixty thousand ton, I believe they are space stations.”
As the sensors updated to all twenty bridge crews Lucille spoke up. “Focus on the immediate threat, get that gauss blanket up.” She ordered.
“Aye.” The weapons officer spoke as the three missiles closed to forty thousand kilometers. The dot signifying all three missiles continues to tick closer and closer before vanishing as it reached the fleet. The bridge went into a frantic pace as what exactly just occurred was an unknown. After several seconds the weapons officer spoke up. “Gauss cannons did not fire. The UEF The Sullivans took three direct hits. Armor held.”
“Find out what went wrong and fix it.” The captain said sternly knowing that they did not have time before the next salvo reached them. The AMM’s were having worse odds missing entire groups of missiles completely before running out of fuel. With the screen reading six groups of eighteen missiles each the secondary fire screens needed to work and immediately.
“The Philadelphia was hit with three missiles and the Battleaxe with a further two. The Rathburne frigates can’t fire their laser turrets this quickly.” The weapons officer stated as his hands were a blur across the computer screens attempting to figure out why the various gauss platforms remained silent.
Lucille was furious but remained silent as she watched their AMM’s eliminate a group of ten missiles and the laser cannons took out another three. The five that remained slammed into the fleet striking out at targets in a seemingly random pattern. The sensor screen withered the red dots down to just one reading a group of ten after the first group of AMM’s struck into them. She and her bridge crew had grown accustomed to watching the sensors in a somewhat detached manner until this salvo vanished simultaneously to the entire Atlanta vessel being pushed to its side in a powerful explosion. Whiplash took its effect on her as she yelled. “Damage report.”
“Armor has held, two missile strikes.” The sensors officer said as he checked through a multitude of settings to confirm this.
“Halt the fleet.” Lucille ordered as the inertia wave progressed through the ships. “Set a course two million miles backwards.”
“Aye captain.” Both the helmsman and the communications officer stated.
“We have significant damage on the Battleaxe frigate. She took several hits severing her armor and knocking out her power plant and laser turret. Several dozen crew members are dead or injured.” The communications officer spoke in a state of shock. “Her engines are operational but unless we reach torpedo range she is out of this fight.”
“How many ships have been hit?” She snapped as she moved her hand across the computer pad to her right.
“Eight damaged ships, mostly minor armor impacts. Only the Battleaxe has suffered internal damage.” The officer replied.
“What is going on with our gauss defenses?” The captain screamed towards the weapons officer.
“Gauss telemetry isn’t working.” The officer stated knowing it was rather obvious. All twenty bridge crews were working quickly to figure things out but the information they were getting was not quite solving the problem. Meanwhile deep in the reactor chamber of the Battleaxe repair crews were hard at work to get things operational for their lives depended on it. They needed their laser turret back online for other than the AMM’s it was the only working so far.
“We have mechanical failures to the Firedrakes missile tubes and Battleaxe is out of commission for at least thirty minutes.” The communications officer said quickly.
“Contact screen is empty.” The sensor officer said calmly.
Captain Simard sat still in thought letting a full minute pass by. The enemy had fired everything their way and they only damaged one frigate. Did this mean that they were out of missiles? This planet was small for a colony and might just be short on supply as well. After a bit of time she decided that she still had to be aggressive. “Order the fleet to move at full speed towards the target planet. Open fire with all anti-ship missiles, target Orc class ship.”
Three missile launchers on each of the Vicksburg class frigates launched their size three missiles into space towards the planet before the internal mechanisms began to work the next missile up into the launcher for the following salvo. This process was repeated six times before the fleet’s sensors watched the first group of missiles reach the planet. “Energy impacts indicate none of our missiles have made it through.” The weapons officer on board the UEF Texas told her commander.
“Relay that information.” Commander Honorat Raczka told his communications officer.
On the Atlanta Captain Simard watched all of this unfold trying to figure out how to proceed. As the second and third volley failed to reach their targets it was overtly clear that their missile tech was not up to par with this threat. What exactly were they dealing with though? The enemy was out of missiles and seemingly outnumbered. Lucille looked at this pondering in thought. Would a life form not reach out at this moment? That was answered quickly though as they reached a distance of seven million kilometers from the planet.
“Captain, new contacts. Twenty size five missiles moving fast. Forty size one traveling at almost seventy million kilometers a second.” The sensor officer stated in shock.
“All back full, get us to the jump point.” She had seen enough and was not going to risk this fleet any further. “They trapped us. Weapons officer what is the status on our gauss turrets?”
“Still working on it.” Was the only response.
The missiles moved in quickly as they dodged the countermeasures launched by the two small frigates before striking deep into the fleet. The UEF Philadelphia took three hits before two missiles struck into the stern of the Chaffinch severing the entire front end of the corvette. Further strikes hit into several other ships armor causing minor damage.
Thirty of the forty smaller missiles struck throughout the entire fleet causing further worry to the crews but none of them struck further than armor damage. The weapons officer aboard the Dewey moved through menu after menu digging through him brain to revert to his training. Things seemed to be exactly as they should be, target controls were set, beam fire controls were active, and the quad and single barreled turrets were assigned. Everything was as it should be. Then it struck him the beam fire controls were set to cease fire mode. His had slid and tapped it switching it to read open fire and turning the beam control to orange in color.
Seven of the short ranged enemy anti-ship missiles survived the fire pattern of the laser turrets and targeted the damaged Battleaxe frigate. Sensors were scanning them the entire time sending the quad barreled gauss cannon into automatic motion. The gears churned loudly to those inside as the rapid firing cannons one after another eliminated the missiles in short order.
As the sensors across the entire fleet registered this a data packet reached all weapons officers informing them of this setting error. Finally, as the retreat order had already been given the last line of defense was working.
“Captain gauss is active!” The weapons officer aboard the Atlanta explained with enthusiasm.
“And why did it take till now?” She asked as calmly as she could muster.
“Ahhh, the fire control measures weren’t activated.” He embarrassingly responded with.
“Keep them on and get us home. These creatures won’t be following us.” This was exactly what she warned the governor about almost three weeks earlier. These were the mistakes that could be worked out in military drills. That was why they existed and instead an election ploy was pushed into her lap. This was exactly why she hated politics. Thankfully, she would not have to explain the loss of any ships but still, however many had died on board the Rathburne was one too many in her mind.