Full Court Press Snippet 2

 Sitrep: I was told we should be seeing FCP by the end of the week. So, it should be published around that time.

I'm finally making good progress on Bootstrap 3 after a bad start. Hopefully it will be an enjoyable read.

On to the Snippet!

Chapter 2

 

In Hyperspace

 

Admiral Ela stared at the status board unseeing. He was too lost in his thoughts, too burning with anger at himself. He'd been overconfident. He'd taken the carriers that the Admiralty had sent him as the pancrea he needed to beat the Federation's carrier force. He'd underestimated the enemy's skills.

The enemy had years of experience in carrier operations, how could he have thought his own people could compete or overcome that skill deficit with scale alone? He shook his head in anger.

Obviously, they hadn't. He had just six ships left of his task force. His two monitors and a handful of other ships, all of which were battered. Only his two monitors were classed as healthy. That didn't mean he intended to put them to the test.

His scowl deepened, and his hands curled in reflexive anger. His nostrils dilated in and out as his breathing picked up with his rage.

Three weeks had passed since the battle. Battle hell, disaster, he thought. He resented having to retreat with his tail tucked between his legs. He was smarting from his losses. He had picked up as many bulls as possible before being forced to run, so each of his surviving ships were crowded.

He technically could have bulled his way forward, but he knew instinctively he would have faced continued harassing attacks across the star system. The Federation would have no doubt bled him over and over, and he would have seen his ships falter as more and more of their systems were torn away.

His eyes stared out blackly at that vision. The visions of seeing ship interiors being blown apart haunted him. He hadn't seen it on his flagship, but he'd overheard others speak of such horrors.

Sure, he'd bled the enemy's bombers white, but according to some of the reports, their fighters could also carry torpedoes. He had no doubt that the enemy commander, the high elf Falling Leaf would have sent in those fighters to swarm him and tear his ships apart.

Of course, his monitors were hardy ships, and they wouldn't have gone down easily. They might not have gone down at all; they'd certainly torn apart the bombers that had dared come after them. His lips curled briefly in a silent resentful smirk over that small victory.

In the end, he could have gotten through and jumped to the Federation naval base … but then what? He was a tactician and a strategist; it was a simple thing to game it out. The enemy had superior speed in hyperspace; they would have raced ahead and then hit him in the next system. And they would had drawn on everything in the system to stop him.

He shook his head. No, it wasn't worth it.

He turned away from the board and stared at the bulkhead. His career was over; he knew it. He'd have to send a ship back to the jump line and eventually on to Admiral Yen. Once it got there, the Admiralty would no doubt send his relief.

So be it he thought in anger. They'd sent him with the wrong ships to do the job; he halted his spiral of resentment and self-pity. He had been one of the bulls who had been certain that carriers were a thing of the past. He'd bought into the institutional arrogance of the battle line. Now his bulls had paid the price for that.

Well, he couldn't change the past. What he could do was claim the territory they'd fought for and paid in blood for up to Deep Rivers. He would find a way to hold what he'd captured and wait for relief. He would only retreat when he was forced to do so.

He scratched under his chin at the errant hairs there. Had Falling Leaf sent her forces ahead of him? It was possible, even probable. You drove an enemy into the ground when they were routed he thought.

Drive them under your hooves and crush them so they can't regroup and come back against you. She had the superior speed …

He shook himself. He'd already cut orders to avoid the jump point. They would come in a full light hour out from it and take as much time as needed to be sure the star system was safe. Only then would he move in to reoccupy it.

He needed to find a way to defend it though; otherwise, Falling Leaf would eventually show up with her hated carriers and drive him out again.

He frowned and put the question to his staff. They too were no doubt lost in their thoughts. Keeping them busy with the tactical exercise should be good for them.

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Purple Nights

 

Commodore Kal grimaced at the order to send as much supplies to 79 as possible. He was a command fortress officer, not a logistics bull. Yet Admiral Wex had left him in command.

Now the Admiralty was expecting him to step up. He was trying, but it was difficult with so little to work with. He was supposed to support each of the fleets in movement. He'd thought that meant Admiral Wex, but now they wanted more since Purple Nights was the closest naval base to the front.

Supplies were a minor issue; he could pull them from the vast stores. Those stores had been built up over the past six years after all. They'd only made a moderate dent in them with the fleet trains that had been sent out.

No, the problem was most of the support ships were already out of his AO. He had a couple of small tramp freighters that had recently trickled in but they were old and independents, not proper fleet colliers. He sent an email back to the Admiralty outlining the problem.

He received a curtly worded email back a few hours later to stop making excuses and figure it out. He shook his head and threw the problem to his staff to see what they came up with.

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