Sitrep:
Lol I think some of those comments were doubles.
Early access program: I thought about that with Amazon and other programs. Amazon bugs me about it monthly. The problem is I have my own style of writing. Ordinarily a write will block out a novel's plot in a rough form then start at the beginning and move forward. I don't. Well, I do the first part, but I also throw scenes in willy nilly as they come to me. I then go and organize them later. When I start writing I start cleaning the mess up and I hit areas that are easy.
As an example, Juggernaut. I don't officially start it until next week. (I am supposed to be resting and working on other projects this week) but I've been poking at it when I'm stuck inside. I have finished chapters 3-4 and 7 so far. We are past 80 pages. (Spread out all over the manuscript with partially completed chapters everywhere)
Several times I started somewhere in the middle, wrote chapters up and down and then got back to the beginning of the book half way through writing.
Lately I've been writing 1 perspective at a time while the characters are fresh. So, Federation chapters, then go back and hit the Confed or other chapters... what can I say, it works for me. :)
So, you see, early access wouldn't work for me. At least, not until I've finished a good chunk of act 1. Usually the betas will point out to something I missed and I have to go back and fix something or other or add some detail. Keeping it all sorted can be a pain.
Okay, Red is terrorizing me with a plastic strip (like any little kid, she'd rather play with a box or scrap than an actual toy!) and I need to get going to run errands.
Here is the snippet, I'll get on to publishing when we get back:
Chapter 2
The following day each department presented what they'd worked on over the evening. Shelby praised them for a good start.
Operations still had issues with fighting a delaying strategy. Trying to use cruisers to delay a full battle line was the equivalent of fighting a wildfire with a garden hose. Worse, they had to do it on multiple fronts.
“We have ruled a few things out like hyper mines. We can't build enough in time to make a difference,” Commodore Brad Gomez said.
“Oh? I'd think you'd want them. They were good for Second Fleet,” Commodore Piercing Gaze said turning a regal look on the Operations officer.
“They were, but it took a lot of production time and ability from the Federation in Rho,” Brad explained. Piercing Gaze nodded in reply. “Building the things is not an easy feat. Placing them is tricky too. Each requires sensors and hyperdrives. They are the equivalent of a corvette each.”
“Ah.”
“More along the lines of a hyper capable gunship,” Shelby said. “That's the engineer in me speaking by the way,” she said when the commodore opened his mouth to object. “Hyper sustain engines are easier to fabricate than an actual hyperdrive,” she said. He nodded. “But the point is they are costly and take too long to make and deploy. It would be interesting to see their reaction.”
“They'd bypass the area,” Brad countered.
“Which would take time. Which is what we want,” Shelby said.
Brad nodded. “But they can bypass them by coming out on a different vector too or jumping short of the minefield.”
“Again, that takes time,” Shelby said. “We need a lot of weapons in a short period of time since we also have to factor in transport to the front.”
“Okay, scratch that off the production list,” Brad said.
“Correction, we have hyper mines or will have them shortly,” Boni interjected.
“Excuse me?” Shelby asked as she turned to Boni's avatar on the table. “Run that past us again?”
“I was going to point it out as well,” Commander Abe 1001010 stated. “But I would hardly call the delivery time short. More like two years,” the A.I. retorted.
“I stand corrected,” Boni said with a curt head nod of her avatar.
“Well, one of you spit it out,” Brad demanded testily, looking from one A.I. to the other.
“I don't have any in inventory,” Commander Dolly Merall, the head of G-8 Logistics, said peevishly, accessing the tablet laying on the table in front of her. Her ears were back, and she clearly wasn't happy at being sandbagged in front of the boss and the rest of the staff.
Shelby's hands were together. “Explain,” Shelby ordered, pointing her index fingers at Abe and not her own A.I.
Abe nodded. “Yes, ma’am. You will have them in your inventory when Task Force 3.5 gets here,” he stated. That earned a surprised look from the group. “Bulk freighter Seven-Zebra-Seven-Four-Echo is on the books as a munitions ship, one of six in the fleet train. She has a full load of hyper mines from Pyrax,” he stated.
Dolly's Neocollie ears perked up as she entered the reference number for the ship and the inventory manifest came up. She looked up and nodded.
“But we don't have them here yet.”
Task Force 3.5 was the shiny lining on an otherwise crappy situation. Well, that and Task Force 3.6. When the storms of possible war had begun to be clear, Shelby had warned Admiral Irons and he, through the auspiciousness of the Admiralty, had dispatched the two task forces several months apart. TF 3.5 had been a scratch force of carriers and cruisers with a large fleet train. They had made it to Airea 3 and jumped shortly before things had come apart.
TF 3.6 had jumped a few days ago. They had a lot more ships and were even slower. But they had gotten orders to split their force and leave the slower ships to lumber on at their own speed.
There were four convoys and the two task forces en route to Tau like a series of freight trains. In fact there was a convoy Rho-28 that had arrived and was halfway to the capital with a load of gate components. She had an escort as did the convoy behind her, but the route to the capital had been declared secure so there were no escorts on the other two convoys coming.
Shelby rather regretted that since it meant less ships for her to strip and hold with her for the use of Fourth Fleet. She was feeling a distinct puckered feeling she didn't like.
There was another issue, a convoy or task force traveled at the speed of their slowest ship. Both task forces were saddled with large fleet trains. The first had been a quick sweep, but the second had been a more thorough fleet train.
She had already planned to have the faster warships split off from the lumbering fleet train and race ahead the moment they got to Tau. But that took time. At the moment, they had eleven to twelve months in hyperspace to get to Tau and then another eleven months to get to the capital.
That was the hard window they had to deal with. Which meant they had to make the best of a bad situation.
“Well, no. But they are on the way,” the A.I. stated firmly.
“Okay, so, we can factor them into our planning when they get into the sector and to a place we can get our hands on them,” Shelby said with a nod. “Though one load …”
“Some are better than none, ma'am,” Boni murmured.
“Correct. I don't know how effective they'd be. As a bluff …,” she considered the problem but then shrugged it aside for the moment.”
“That rules out conventional mines as well. They can be avoided in subspace,” Brad warned. “So far the sims show them only giving us a few weeks at best.”
“True, but we can use them in a one shot, and we can make decoys to force them off least time courses or to employ mine sweeping,” Shelby said as she grappled with the slight change in subject. That earned a few thoughtful looks.
“Mines are munitions with extra sensors. We can turn them out by the shipload,” Commodore Rupert Shakespeare said with a nod. “We have all that antimatter we can skim off of Tortuga to play with.” That earned a few malicious grins. They had already planned on changing most of their ordinance over to antimatter. “But every mine we make is one less missile,” he warned.
“It also means ships will be needed to deploy them to the front,” Dolly warned.
“True. And we can make missile pods and other munition sets to lace into fixed defenses too,” Shelby said as she made a note.
“True,” the BuShips commodore said with a shrug. How they used the weapons was less of a concern to him than the time and material needed to make it and the time to get it to where they needed. Technically, all of that was Logistics' problem not his.
“Pity we can't use more decoys. Seed one for one with the mines or ten to one. Just enough for the other side to have to avoid them or mine sweep,” Commodore Piercing Gaze suggested thoughtfully.
Brad looked up and over to his fellow Bekian and then put on a thoughtful look. “Put that suggestion in our box of ideas,” Shelby said with a nod. The Operations officer blinked and then his A.I. nodded.
“Can we use some stealth? Stealth mines to throw them off their game?” Brad asked suddenly. “That could slow a fleet to a stop, right? And if we couple that with the decoys, it will really give their movement fits.”
Shelby smiled slightly. “Now you are thinking out of the box.”
“We don't have mine layers,” the Neocollie warned.
“No, but we have all of those freighters,” Brad said.
The JAG Commander Sharp Turn made a buzzing sound the equivalent of someone clearing their throat to get the other's attention. “Just as a heads-up, if we employ them that way any civilian freighter that carries war material will make for a legitimate target,” the Delquir said apologetically.
The room was quiet.
“Then we'll have to do our best to make sure they don't come under fire,” Shelby said with a grim nod. “Now … I realize the impulse is to use the mines to defend occupied star systems, but it occurred to me that we can use them more effectively in the destroyed systems that are a bit messy to navigate easily …”
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