Shelby 5 Snippet 5

 

Chapter 4

 

Mayweather Station

 

Admiral Brewster took the opportunity to tour Mayweather station. He had been surprised by the name change when he'd heard it, but he quite frankly approved of it. It was far better than the pirate's Harlot's Dream.

The base was massive; it was a hodgepodge of hollowed out asteroids, ships, and station components. He needed a map and guide to make sense of it all. A lieutenant had been assigned to him as a guide. "We're still getting into every nook and cranny, Herd Leader. We're learning a little bit each day," the lieutenant said.

The admiral noted a party examining some equipment and nodded.

"When they pulled out, they destroyed just about everything they could except life support and the hull. Fixtures too I suppose," the lieutenant stated, indicating a seat in an open-air galley. "All of their replicators are flatlined or ripped out."

"Ah. Pity about that," the admiral murmured.

As he inspected the station, he could see how the Federation had been remaking it. The original creation had been a bastard pirate hodgepodge of asteroids, truss segments, and captured material like space station and ship components.

As they made their way through the station, he noted where the enemy had destroyed this or that. It looked like new equipment too. The expense probably sucked.

"How long did they have control of this place?" he asked as they made the rounds in a fusion reactor room. One reactor had been brought online at minimum power. There was fuel in the tanks. Apparently, the enemy had topped off before departing but had left the fuel.

"Over a standard year," the lieutenant replied as he ducked under a set of cables dangling from the bulkhead above. The admiral did so as well.

"That long." He looked at a command station for the reactor. It was new, not jury-rigged. It had scorch marks of course, but it didn't look old. In order to do that, they had to have rewired it. But it wasn't a simple job; they might have even had to run all new wiring. In a base this size, it would be a titanic undertaking.

"Yes, Herd Leader."

"And they did all this? To what amounts to a secondary base?" It wasn't just the complexity; it was the fact that they'd been methodical about it. They could have settled for the basics and made do, but they hadn't.

"Well, they might have prioritized it higher before the war when the dialog began to breakdown," the lieutenant with him suggested.

"True. Do we even know what happened to that diplomatic ship?"

The lieutenant shook his head. "No. The assumption is it was stopped and held."

"Ah." The admiral grimaced. "It'd be nice to find out if it got caught or destroyed."

"Really? Why, Herd Leader? Why would that matter?"

Admiral Brewster cocked his head and then shrugged. "I suppose it might not in the grand scheme of things, but then again, knowing if they caught them might mean they learned something of our tech base early on. Knowing that might tell us what and give us a meterstick for them."

The lieutenant nodded slowly.

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Admiral Broken Tooth had been reading another report about a ghost ship. He put it down and then checked the search of the star system.

He hadn't put many ships to that mission since he'd needed his good ships to guard the others as they underwent field repairs. As a few of those ships came back online, he'd authorized a couple of small ships to try to find the enemy's hidden ansible array.

They had to have one; ONI was certain of that. He was too, though he wasn't certain if they'd kept it online or not. Obviously, the Feds had taken great pains to hide the blasted thing. His people had been looking for months without finding it.

"Sir, arrival at the 80 jump point!" an ensign reported. He blinked and then checked the schedule. That had to be the arrival of the fleet train and carrier force. He felt instant relief. "About time!"

Admiral Broken Tooth knew that he was in trouble politically. He had won the battle, but due to his losses, he was in danger of being recalled and thus losing the war from a personal perspective.

Thus, he wanted to seize on carrier force. His staff was already working on rebuilding his squadrons with undamaged ships or ships that had made good on repairs. He needed to use that and seize the initiative to throw the enemy further back. He had to go into the next system to force the enemy out quickly before they dug in. But after the drubbing he had received, he had to do so cautiously. He needed to conserve his units and fight smart until replacement units reached him.

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