WtSG snippet 2

Still in chapter 1

Republic's bridge crew watched as the two destroyers moved out smartly to hunt the small Tauren ships down. The task force had jumped in too close and too quickly for either ship to jump into hyperspace. Within twenty minutes, the destroyers had entered their engagement zones. The fleeing ships hadn't responded to hails to surrender so they had been destroyed in succession.

“Nice,” the XO murmured in appreciation.

The captain glanced at her and then back to the main view screen. “Well, that's that,” the captain murmured with a nod of approval. It meant that not only was the enemy denied any details about Sol but also about the battle that had been fought there. It was a load lifted off of his shoulders. “Log that and my commendation for quick work,” he ordered.

“Aye aye, sir,” Ensign Sam replied.

The captain sat back in his chair and reflected a bit on the turn of events. Two hundred and eighty-seven ships had been destroyed in what the historians were already calling the battle of Sol. Twenty-two ships had survived, but many had been damaged. Only four of that number had been proper warships.

Over forty-one thousand sailors had been killed in the carnage, many of them in the militia ships during Admiral Lewis's last run or in the ships that had stood in the defensive line near Mars. Several of the ships in the defensive line had put themselves into harm's way in a last desperate effort to save a population center.

Out of all of the derelict ships, only 153 people had survived in the air bleeding darkened wrecks long enough to be rescued. The media had been filled with reports of heart-tearing messages from sailors to their loved ones as their air ran out. Some had even sacrificed themselves in order to allow others to live.

Forty-one thousand dead didn't compare to the millions that had died in some of the stations, habitats, and on Mars and Earth. Just one of the strikes had caused a tsunami that had wiped out a good thousand-kilometer stretch of coastline on Earth. Millions were dead or homeless.

He scanned the bridge with an edge of satisfaction in his gaze. There were still a lot of rough edges, but they were getting there. He had a good solid team. The ship had a few teething issues, but the bugs were known. They were knocking the bugs down or minimizing them as time went by.

It was a headache for some of the engineers since they were literally writing the book on the ship and its maintenance. He knew that Commander Tisdale was up to the task. The chief engineer loved to get his hands dirty. He winced internally at the thought of the guy's keyboard though.

His eyes briefly lingered on the holo console where Republic's A.I. stood at parade rest. Ensign Sam, known as Uncle Sam to some of the crew, was one of the first A.I. to join the fleet and was still a question mark to some of the crew. After Ensign Nelson and Central's defense of Mars and Earth went public, the public's perception of A.I. had shifted once more. Like it or not, A.I. were there to stay, virtual citizens of their civilization.

And like many citizens, some had stepped up to offer their services to the growing Confederation Navy. A few on the crew still harbored reservations about the patriotism, but no one was going to question it out loud at the moment. They needed every hand, even the virtual ones. The Ensign's contribution and occupation of the ship's electronic network allowed them to shave ten percent of the crew and run down a lot of the bugs, many of them in the software. That had endeared him to the engineers. His taking on a lot of the paperwork had lifted a lot of the headache off the ship's yeoman and officers, which had gone a long way to make them happy as well.

But the crew was still feeling out his role and how to treat him. Sam seemed easy going with everyone, something Saul appreciated. But he had passed an order to treat the A.I. as an officer.

The A.I. and cyberists were still taking apart the captured alien databases, but one thing had come out right off. The aliens had terrible computer security. There was also tantalizing clues that they lacked A.I. at all. That news had been one of the reasons the starships in the pipeline had been refitted to give them an A.I. computer core. Captain Bao was still getting used to the concept that the ship was Sam's body. He wasn't certain if the entire experiment was going to work out long term or not.

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Ensign Sam made his virtual rounds like clockwork. He first checked the ship's internal network for any problems. There weren't any reported; all of the readings were normal. That took 1.3 seconds to complete. He then switched to check the task force network and status, then updated the log. Once that was accomplished, he checked the crew's health.

Once he had finished the rounds, he had 4.5 seconds to think, a long time for an A.I. without priority processing going on. Inevitably, his thoughts turned to the crew. It looked like he and the crew were settling in. There were still some rough edges. He'd noted a few sour talks about him among a few of the crew, but they were coming along. He had come to realize within his first full cycle of being online that organics took time to process interpersonal relationships.

And to be fair, so did he. He was still learning about his crew and how to deal with the interactions. His databases seemed chaotic on a moment-to-moment basis, something he also needed to learn to deal with.

He checked the camera feed in the bridge and then switched to the feed from the officer's wardroom. He had found that the formal dinners had some rich interactions to study. He made certain the recordings were running so he could scan them at speed and process them with any processors that were currently idle and then went back to making his virtual rounds once more.