Shelby 5 Snippet 3

  So, still poking at Shelby 6. Covid is hitting the extended family (mom tested positive this morning), I'm hoping I don't get it. According to last night's news report 90% of the world will eventually get it. That's a sobering thought. Yes I'm vaccinated. :)

Anyway, on to the snippet!

Still in Chapter 2...

Mayweather Station

 

Admiral Broken Tooth scanned the reports and then set them down with a thump. The screen on the tablet fritzed but then recovered. He glanced at it and then away.

His fleet had more or less recovered from the battle 3 months prior. He should by rights go after Commodore Yu's retreating force but after seeing what the carrier wings could do, he didn't want to push his luck. He needed his own carriers to support and defend his battleline.

For the moment he was waiting on Admiral Brewster's force to come in. They should be arriving any day now. Once they did he planned to consolidate them with his own ships and then make decisions on moving forward.

He looked at the bulkhead clock and then to the star map. Inevitably his eyes fell on Minox IV. He knew his reports should be getting to Purple Nights and transmitted on shortly. He wasn't looking forward to the reaction there. His saving grace was that he was months out of contact with them. It was going to take a year or more before they could send an ansible transport in his direction, and then many months before it inevitably caught up to him.

He wasn't looking forward to that. He knew he was in for a royal bollocking over the ansible. The good thing was that they couldn't do much at the moment; Brewster hadn't covered himself in glory either in his first disastrous encounter with this naval station.

He snorted softly to himself. His saving grace was that he had taken the star system and the base. The base though was a big question mark though.

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Lieutenant Commander Purple Nails sighed as he examined the latest report. It was covered with a lot of ass covering language. He scanned it and then sat back in disgust. It didn't say much more than they already knew.

He had a dozen people assigned to him as the chief office of naval intelligence officer in the star system. He was supposed to be evaluating the differences in enemy technology in comparison to their own, as well as try to glean their movements and plans.

A part of that last mission directive meant uncovering the enemy commander, building a bio about them, and building bios about each of her ships. Her, he thought in amusement. They did know that much.

Commodore Janice Yu had left a few calling cards. Confederation Intelligence had confirmed her in command of the naval base before the war had started. He had that much, and some of the information about her including how she had been a civilian who had accepted a commission into the Federation navy, fought in several battles and had risen through the ranks. All while starting out as a mere helm officer.

That was surprising. She'd had no formal training but was now a flag officer. Shocking. She had also done a fair job of defending the jump point, though his people were at odds over that. They were at odds about a lot of things.

According to their reports the commodore had not been at the jump point, she'd been in the base. Which meant she had either exercised command from afar, or had a good canned response ready, or she'd turned over command to a field commander while she retained overall control. The jury was still out on which had happened and why.

They had some names of ships, classes, and some data to work from based on the prior knowledge. They were still trying to match fingerprinted ships with what they had on file though.

That left her intentions, obviously to fight a retreating action, and the tech imbalance.

He sighed softly to himself. The last was the big issue.

He knew that Admiral Broken Tooth was going to do something soon as far as chasing the enemy down. He had briefing material on the next star system in line in his files ready for easy access. It was updated every 2 days just in case. He had time charts on how long ships could get from the capital to there and was trying to keep it up to date... he shook his head. He was just ignoring the elephant in the room.

The tech imbalance. More importantly, the different approaches to naval warfare.

His people had gone into the battle with their own preconceptions and they had been in error. He admitted that, accepted it. They'd undervalued carriers and it had cost them grievously.

It was just one problem among many though.

Based on what had been observed, the enemy's fighters and bombers were beyond their known baseline. He had passed on the raw data and his initial hot-wash to the admiralty, but he didn't know what to make of it. Admiral Broken Tooth and the ship captain's wanted answers, and he didn't have any to give at the moment.

They had recovered some enemy wreckage but it was useless. The electronics and some of the hardware had self-destructed. That had left them to examine what they could of the physical hardware. Most of that was chewed up in some form, so the engineers had been tentative at best with their conclusions.

They also didn't have existing hardware to compare to from the previous baseline. He had wrapped up samples and had them packaged and ready to go on the next tender back to the Confederation for better examination.

Until then he had to figure out something.

He had initiated an overhaul of their software. That was an ongoing process. He'd also gotten the true abilities of the ships from their observations and insisted they be plugged into future strategic sims. Admiral Broken Tooth had agreed.

He scratched at the base of his left horn cluster. He needed something more though.

It would be nice to get a look at more hardware. The enemy had destroyed everything of value in the base but there had to be something around somewhere. It would be nice to pick up one of their satellites or a chip with their codes or something.

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