TGS snippet 1

Okay, first off, the usual sitrep:
  I sent TGS off to Rea today, so the clock is ticking. How long it will take is anyone's guess. If Tim, Mike, or Tom want to get their input in to me, please do it soon! If I got it, sorry my bad.

  In other news, I'm about to have a nervous breakdown fixing my printers. Both of them refuse to cooperate. I don't know why. They keep falling out of calibration and the nozzle either gets blocked or the printer stops pushing filament out when I try a print. But when I run a "Load Filament" test it comes out like water. GRR.
So, I took a break. :P

  I started the next book, tentatively titled Semper Fidelis on Monday. I am half way through one of the stories. I'm also picking at the other stories, adding ideas as they come to me. (or Wayne suggests them) lol
Dad's back to school today so sanity (what little there is around here) can finally seep back in. To top that off we're having a 'cooler weather' streak. I'm in awe and loving every minute of it. :)

Okay, what you are waiting for, the snippet!:

Act I

Dark clouds

Chapter 1 

B-95a3 Second Fleet

 

Rear Admiral Amadeus White felt like he was drowning in paperwork as he signed off on the last missive. “I swear, some bureaucrat paper pusher needs to go out an airlock. Preferably without a suit. They created all this damn paperwork as punishment for being in a battle,” the Neochimp grumbled.

He couldn't blame them in some ways. Just about every ship in the fleet was damaged to one degree or another. Most of his capital ships were down to fifty percent. All of the paperwork not only for the battle, but also the logistics and repairs after the fact were flowing through his office and staff. Throw on the processing of data, enemy hardware, dealing with their own damaged and destroyed hardware, personnel, requests for new personnel and resources, and the paperwork situation overwhelmed Yeoman Berkowitz.

Eleven weeks had passed since the battle of B-95a3. He had dispatched 2 light cruisers to check the Sword of Retribution Fleet's retreat. The captains had orders to act like they were scouting in prep of an imminent invasion by his force in hopes of driving Admiral De Gaulte further back.

He didn't like having the man turtle, but every star system the man gave up without a fight was one less they had to deal with. It would lengthen his supply lines and shorten the enemy's, and the enemy would have a lot of fixed defenses and industry to rely on, not to mention the repair yard, but so be it.

The fleet train and reinforcements from Protodon had arrived a short time ago. With them was a special transport carrying an Ansible core and platform.

For weeks, they had been dealing with the SAR and POWs. Shipments of POWs had begun to be moved to Protodon on ships returning for one reason or another. That had opened up another can of worms. Second Fleet had only so many Marines and ship police in their crew compliments. Each draft sent back had to have a minimum number of guards per shift. The last thing he wanted to deal with was a ship that had gotten mixed up in a mutiny or hostage situation. Many of the prisoners were dangerous. They were all trained military personnel, and some were near psychotic even before they went through the trauma of capture. He'd heard and read some of the reports. A few of the prisoners had nothing to lose.

If he could he would ship them back in stasis. Unfortunately, they didn't have enough pods to go around. Most were filled with the wounded too injured to be handled by the swamped sickbays.

It was bad enough that he and his staff were still trying to put all the paperwork from the battle to bed. Trying and generally failing on some fronts he thought acidly.

Just about everyone was tired and overworked. Only the engineers could claim to be the worst of the lot. They were working double shifts to try to fix what they could.

He had sent a courier with the news of the battle. It had returned with news of the supply and fleet train en route. That was fine; the damage to Second Fleet meant he was delayed in chasing them down. He needed to let his people make repairs and get their ships back into fighting trim while also allowing more of their reinforcements to catch up with them to make up for their combat losses.

Everyone wanted to be in on the attack, he knew it. Yesterday he had managed to send 3 damaged tin cans, Texas, and a cruiser back to Protodon with the fleet's wounded. Most of the wounded would be traveling back to Protodon in stasis.

The battle cruiser Maine had been towed to the Protodon jump point with Captain Samuels and Lobsterman complaining the entire way. It would take another six weeks or so before the ship was safe enough to jump to Protodon. Traveling in the low hyperbands, she would take months to get to Antigua to heal. At least the healing process had begun, but it was going to be another long road for the ship.

SAR and clean up teams had picked the battle space clean weeks ago. Once the living and dead were dealt with they had then turned their attention on the carcasses and derelict ships. ONI representatives like his staff spook Kelly had insisted they get first crack at everything which had slowed salvage operations to a crawl. He could understand why they wanted to see and process everything, but it put a crimp on the fleet's efforts to get sorted out and repaired in a timely manner.

He tugged on his right ear lobe as he considered his orders. He had to stand down until his fleet was back up to at least eighty percent. He was hanging onto some of the capital ships until replacements arrived. Once they did, he would send back the worst damaged ships to Protodon. If the repair facilities there were saturated then the worst of the damaged ships would have to sail on to Antigua.

He checked the status board and pursed his lips with a puttering sound. He had sent a DD to collect the minelayers in B-94e1. A second DD had been sent to scout to Nuevo Madrid.

Once the scouts in B-97a returned he should be ready to move cautiously forward.

Hopefully, Maybe, he thought. John knew the importance of keeping the enemy running now that they were in that state. They couldn't afford to give the enemy time to react, prepare, and move larger forces in to block him. But, he also knew that John was subject to other pressures as President. Now that the threat was over, plenty of people would want the new Federation to return to business as usual and reprioritize things to match their own needs.

He shook his head and kept his fingers mentally crossed that he'd get the ships he needed to continue the offense... and soon.

The sooner the better.

:::{)(}:::