Shelby 5 Snippet 2

   So, why is Hollywood emulating Michael Bay's style of movies? I mean, I get the popcorn fest in theory, but just throwing engineering and physics out the door is just wrong. And blasting music with bits of soft dialog is getting beyond annoying.

  If you are wondering what I'm talking about, it's Godzilla versus Kong. I just watched it on Blu-ray the other night. I've been grappling with the idea of building a dome over an island as large as the main island of Hawai'i. NOT POSSIBLE with present tech. It takes years to build a stadium over a football field...build a dome over a freaking island? The mix of tech, choppers... anti-gravity HEAV??? I swear the director ripped off Hunger Games, Pacific Rim...Land of the Lost... Jurassic World... Then there were all those tunnels... you know what, never mind. Silly Hollywood, why should anything make sense right?

Ugh. It did have some cool fighting though.

   Anyway, I'm poking at Hold the Line, starting to make more forward progress. I am hoping to buckle down and get act 1 done by the end of the weekend, but we'll see.

Here is the latest Juggernaut snippet:

Chapter 2

 

TauR54-93

 

Admiral Ela tucked his hands behind his back and kept squeezing and releasing them. He stared out to the void without really seeing it. He was lost within his own thoughts at the moment.

He had made good on his repairs and resupply. They had recovered the injured and even the dead that could be recovered. All of the dead had been stored for return in one of the empty holds of his supply ships.

He had sent a tanker to TAUG3G7-25 months ago to report in. He was afraid that they might have been forced to go all the way to T-21. That bothered him.

He was tempted to send some of his empty fleet train and his cripples back there. He wasn't certain when he'd get replacements though, which was why he was hesitating.

His orders were to run the enemy down, but they hadn't counted on the ansible network being down. He was supposed to report in first. He grimaced, seeing the grimace in the reflection he turned away.

He was second guessing himself. He knew that, but he couldn't help it. He had lost more ships than anticipated in that brief ambush. He'd held every advantage yet the enemy had torn him up and had managed to escape anyway.

He looked at the butcher's bill and scowled as he flexed his jaw. He had lost 5 heavy cruisers, 1 crippled. He'd lost 3 battle cruisers, with 3 more crippled or damaged. And he'd lost 1 battleship and 1 crippled. Other ships in his fleet had taken a variety of damage along with the usual maintenance gripes, but the losses of the capital ships had shaken him more than he was willing to admit publicly.

He still had 2 monitors, 4 super dreadnoughts, 2 dreadnoughts, 3 battleships, 3 damaged battle cruisers, and 1 heavy cruiser left. Along with 4 tenders and 1 tanker. Supposedly a carrier force of unknown size was coming to support him.

Without the ansible he didn't know where they were. That was so frustrating!

He shook himself as he sat down.

His fleet had drawn down their supplies a lot. He'd gone to the point of allowing his chief of staff to 'requisition' what the fleet needed from the natives in the star system. They could supply food, fuel, and some material for his machine shops, but little else. The pirates had been brutal to their industry. Besides, their parts wouldn't plug into his equipment anyway. Nor would he trust them if they did.

There were also reports that the natives were restless over his fleet taking what they wanted. There were dark comparisons between them and the pirates. Apparently the Feds had traded for what they wanted and had even helped rebuild them after the pirates had passed through. That was annoying.

He sniffed to himself and looked at the plot again. He knew he didn't have a chance in hell of catching the enemy force. They held the speed advantage, though reportedly it was slim. He wasn't so certain. He wasn't certain about a lot of things as of late.

He knew he was second guessing himself a lot lately. He was stuck waiting, that was all he could do. He kept replaying the sims of the battle, wishing for some insight into what had gone wrong. Clearly their own numbers had been off, as had their expectations on what the enemy would do and how they could perform.

His staff was trying to work out what else had gone wrong and plugging that in to patch over holes. But he was pretty certain he had the wrong ships for this sort of war. Funny that, he's spent his entire career wanting to command such a fleet in action, now he didn't want it.

He knew some of his staff wondered if they should have gone after the Feds right away and run them down. He kept reading a passage about a route and running an enemy into the ground. To not give them the time to regroup.

It was true, he knew it. But at the time he'd had to contend with his losses and had known they had the speed advantage. That hadn't changed. Besides, it was too late now.

Well, too late to catch them. He frowned and then pulled a tablet over to him and scanned it again.

He had one cruiser left. It had taken damage but was back to 80 percent. Good enough to scout, not enough to get into combat though. He read the mission that his staff had come up with to scout ahead and then signed off on it with a scribble of the stylus.

He flicked it into the net for processing and then looked at the next proposal. They wanted to send his cripples back to T-21. He'd read that proposal several times over the months and had at the time rejected it each time it had come up.

Honestly, they weren't going to make good on any further repairs. They had hit a plateau. He sighed heavily, waffled, and then indicated the battleship and one of the battle cruisers only. He'd hang onto the 2 remaining battle cruisers for a bit longer.

He indicated the tender carrying the dead and jotted out orders to have them cross transfer any remaining stores to the remaining ships and then sent that ship as well.

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Captain Din received the orders for Red Death to move out and blinked.

His ship was the flagship of the late Crueron. The only ship of the 6 ships to survive the ambush. He snorted bitterly. Only his ship's position at the center of their squadron had allowed her to survive at all. That and apparently the enemy had decided to cripple ships over killing them outright later in the battle.

His engineers had valiantly gotten his ship back up to 80 percent. They were still missing 2 nodes in the starboard flank and one of the bow ones were iffy. He had jury-rigged sensors and patched armor. His weapons on the starboard flank were down by a third, though they might get a point defense laser up if they could figure out a hinky control line that went from the computers and sensors to the weapon station.

He scratched at the scraggly beard under his jaw and vowed to scrub it clean with his shaver later. He needed to look like the professional he was. Besides it itched.

He scanned the mission orders and grunted. He was to move forward into the next system and get a read on the timing of the enemy's movements. If they had left more than two months before his arrival he was authorized to go one system beyond to scout there, but then return with his findings.

He nodded to himself and summoned his XO. They had a mission to plan and last minute fuel and material to requisition before they got underway.

It felt good to be doing something finally.

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