Operation Hammerhead - 17. Forward Base

Argus

Sigma Puppis System

Argus sat serenely moored to a long abandoned mining station. Beside her in the next slip was her sister the Phrixus which was loaded with illegally augmented humans— almost all of them twenty-five years old or younger.

It was the next ship over that Mason looked at with dread: the Marine Assault ship Corregidor. At sixty thousand tons, the Cory was many times larger than the freighters. Despite being a forty-year-old veteran of the ConFed War, she was still quite deadly.

Corregidor had a combination of several very deadly attributes. First, she was a troop ship that could move two companies of embarked marines and all of their attached equipment. Second, she was a carrier with enough drop-ships and ground attack craft to land those troops and give them an impressive amount of fire support once they were on the ground. Last, she was literally an assault ship which carried six kinetic projectile launchers that could put a hyper accelerated mass of metal of up to a metric ton in a circle five meters across. Marine run ships were the only combatants in the Alliance military that possessed such capability.

The thought of riding that ship to a populous, developed world like Thrace and devastating it made Mason feel sick.

There was a knock on Mason’s stateroom door, and he said, “Come in.”

Gary and Jerry entered the stateroom and one of them, Mason couldn’t tell which, said, “You asked to see us?”

Gary and Jerry were special among the Gemini soldiers. The Gemini soldiers had an officer caste which turned out to be about one out of every sixteen pair, and all the Geminis seemed to defer to them. They were very intelligent and Mason decided that he liked these two.

Mason said, “Have seat guys. We need to talk.”

They sat in two of the chairs and one of them handed Jeff a computer tablet with “Rooms bugged - we know, Marion has briefed us” typed onto the screen.

Jeff looked up from the tablet, with a surprised glance and asked, “How can I help with the transfer?”

Jerry said, “We’ve already got things started. James and John and our snipes are already aboard Corregidor and getting her systems up. We’ll move everybody off the Argus as soon as we get the word. Phrixus will be fast. It’s just people and luggage. They don’t have any heavy equipment to move.”

Gary said, “It looks like we’re on schedule and can be underway by first thing in the morning. If you want to get your hands dirty, we could use some help to transfer equipment.”

Task Force Hammerhead

Planetary Nebulae NGC-765092

The fleet jumped into the murk of the nebulae well ahead of schedule. Danny had programmed some long jumps for the transit and the fleet was well and truly in hostile space. Their primary objectives Stonegarden and Pacifica were a mere forty-two and thirty-six light years away. The secondary objectives were no further away than fifty-five light years.

Now it was time for the fleet auxiliaries and transports to get to work building the forward operating base. A fleet recon drone had taken position close enough to get a good look at the work and Saratoga was monitoring the feed.

There was a small gas giant the size of Neptune about twenty light minutes from the dying star. It was chosen as the anchor point for the forward operating base (FOB), and the construction began when the transports took up a position in orbit and released a small fleet of construction drones.

When Danny got a good look at those drones he had to do a double take. He said, “Commander Hayes, don’t those remotes look a lot like enemy Bumblebee class drones?”

Hayes replied, “Good catch Mister Sokolsky. We’ve learned a lot about robotics technology from the Toasters. What you are seeing out there is a new generation of construction drones that have merged our existing tech with some tricks the enemy taught us.”

As they watched, the scores of little drones and a few bigger ones began running back and forth between the transports' cargo pods and what was obviously becoming the hub of the station.

Dubois said, “Wow, those things can really move.”

It was an impressive performance. One of the big drones would bring a large component from a cargo pod and hand it off to a few of its worker drones would grab it, spot weld it in place and move on to the next task. The speed, accuracy and quality of work prompted Danny to say, “I’m going to buy some stock in those.”

Argus

Sigma Puppis System

Mason did indeed get his hands dirty. He worked all day getting the equipment stored in Argus’s holds transferred over to the Corregidor.

He found himself in cargo bay three; walked over to a stack of lockers and opened forty-four. There was a big toolbox on rails that would keep it in place in zero-G conditions. He started rifling through it and found what he was looking for. He palmed the data crystal and took three common wrench sizes and put them on his tool belt.

Had anyone been watching on the cameras, all they would have seen would be a worker picking out an assortment of common tools.

Task Force Hammerhead

Planetary Nebulae NGC-765092

The task force settled into a leisurely parking orbit around the gas giant dubbed Smokey due to its gray, smoggy appearance and watched with amazement as the new Forward Operating Base rapidly took shape. The little robotic drones scurried about like an agitated colony of ants on speed and cappuccino. In the few hours since it was started the core of the base was formed and the spokes of the ring were already in place.

Sokolsky spent some quality time in his lab that morning going over his part of the upcoming operation. His neural implants were one of the keys to making it all work. After getting all the ships telescopes with the right firmware slaved together, they formed a powerful array of adaptive optics. The next step was to use that information for targeting. It wasn’t a trivial problem but, he was able to use a macro in his implants so that his own brain was acting as a front end for the fire control systems. If their plan was to be successful, it had to happen fast. This was the best he could do and be ready for showtime.

As he worked, there was a knock on his door and he absently said, “Come in” as he made another tweak to the macro programming to handle the interface.

A Lieutenant entered the lab carrying a notepad computer under his arm. He said, “Commander Sokolsky, I’m Lt. Alanson. I’m with Sara’s Tactical department, and we wanted to run a few things by you before the big show.”

Sokolsky looked up from his terminal and said, “How can I help Lieutenant?”

Alanson said, “I understand that an ERD is going to play a big part in our attack plan and I wanted to go over details, so we can decide which one of our weapons is right for the job.”

Danny asked, “An ERD?”

“ERD stands for an ‘Enhanced Radiation Device’. Some people call them EMP bombs, but that is a misnomer.”

Danny nodded his head and said, “Got it. What are our choices?”

Alanson said, “We have three types aboard. The ERD-70e is the old standard. It’ll fry almost anything without hard shielding out to about 40 kilometers. It sends out a surge of around fifty mega-electron volts on a line of sight decreasing as a square to the distance. We tried these on the Toasters but, they have to get really close to take any damage.”

Danny asked, “What else do we have in the magazines?”

Alanson replied, “We’ve got the ERD-74e which is about twice as powerful. We also have an ERD-70m, but that’s a special microwave bomb meant to disrupt planetary communications.”

Danny said, “How do these bombs work?”

“They are very similar to typical nukes but instead of the typical blast and thermal bloom, the energy release is in a powerful electromagnetic surge that is murder on all things electronic. They used them against the Toasters early in the war, but the enemy adapted to them. That’s why I was so surprised when the TacCo asked me to have a word with you about them.”

Danny reached out with his implants and asked the ship's computer to show him the specifications of the ERD-74e. It displayed a dizzying amount of information but what caught his mind’s eye was the core of the warhead was an exotic mix of Neptunium and several other trans-uranium elements. It was typical of an implosion device, but its energy release was exactly as Alanson had described.

Danny said, “I think we'll use the ERD-74e, and we’re going to use it in jump space. The Toasters are much more vulnerable there. That’s where they do all of their communications, and we can seriously hurt them.”

Alanson asked the obvious question, “How are we going to deliver it?”

“The hyper-space projectors we use to send fighters off on deep patrols. I have a program that merely opens a jump point without opening an exit point. We’ll send the bomb in and close the jump point. It will pretty much lobotomize any toasters within the area of effect.”

“How big will the area of effect be?”

“That’s the big question. I can’t really be sure. Jump space is dimensionless. I have calculated it will deliver a seriously damaging pulse out to a little over five light years. We will need to wait at least ten minutes for the effects to dissipate before we will be able to open a jump point.”

Alanson whistled and said, “That far?”

Danny said, “Maybe a lot farther but, anything as connected to subspace as our enemy is within five light years will fry like bacon.”

Corregidor

Marine Assault Ship

Sigma Puppis System

At some point in the changeover, things got organized enough aboard the Corregidor that the bridge and Combat Information Center were finally manned. Mason had never been aboard a warship and this one was specialized to facilitate Marine operations. Much to his surprise, the crew had put him in tentative political command with Gary and Jerry acting as his military deputies.

Mason had himself situated in the Captain's ready room adjacent to the bridge. From there, he could keep an eye on bridge activities and have some space to work. He had already loaded some software and as soon as they were near a relay or an inhabited system, they would be able to monitor the newsfeeds.

Even though the ship was old and had been mothballed for years, the command areas were powerful and complicated. There was quite a lot of arcane equipment, and it looked like the Gemini soldiers knew how to use all of it.

The loading of their passengers went smoothly. All of them were highly motivated. They were from worlds whose local laws put a great many restrictions on them that had complicated their lives.

The stated plan was to jump into an anchorage where the Alliance had a number of Conestoga class colony ships parked until the Rim War was over, seize one and jump away to deep, unexplored space. Then they would find a world, claim it for their own and live happily ever after.

As much as that thought appealed to Mason, it was the Bishop’s unannounced side trip to Thrace for a kinetic bombardment atrocity that had his stomach tied in knots. Hitting a populated core world with kinetic weapons could easily kill millions of people and leave lasting environmental damage. The Alliance would never stop looking for them.

Gary’s voice interrupted his reverie, “Conn to the Skipper. The Bishop’s ship just jumped into the system and will be docking in an hour.”

Mason replied, “Acknowledged.”

The end game had begun, but in this game the pawns had a mind of their own.

Task Force Hammerhead

Planetary Nebulae NGC-765092

Forward Operating Base (FOB) Delta

It took Danny and the Tactical Section crew six hours to work out all the necessary details to deploy the Enhanced Radiation warheads via the hyperspace projectors on the flight line. The warheads were designed to be mounted on a standard missile chassis so that part was easy. The job might have taken even longer if there hadn’t been some work already done on how to accomplish using the catapults and the long-range projectors to deliver ordnance. Some enterprising officers had suggested doing something very similar while the new fleet carriers were undergoing trials.

It took the machine shop about an hour to fabricate some harnesses that would attach the missiles to the catapult. A harder problem was creating a data bus to upload the missile's programming and control it. Once that was accomplished, they tested it by sending a standard ship killer missile through and worked out a way to get the ordnance up from the magazines, past the flight line and into the service corridors serving the launch tubes in the bow of the ship.

Once all of that had been solved Danny was astonished to find most of the afternoon was just gone.

He got cleaned up and reported to Commander Hayes that their special delivery package was ready for shipment.

Hayes asked him a few questions about the process they had worked out and Danny answered them to the Commander’s satisfaction.

Then Hayes asked, “Danny, could we use the same method to deliver nukes?”

Executive Officers ask awkward questions like that.

Danny and the Tactical section would work long into the night into the night because, when you do something special, someone always wants you to top it.

By midnight local time they had worked out everything necessary to deliver most of the special weapons lockers contents by way of the hyperspace projector from ten kilo-tons up to one hundred fifty megaton variety.

Corregidor

Marine Assault Ship

Sigma Puppis System

Bishop Keilor boarded the Corregidor like a conquering general with several of his personal guards. Sebastian Beck met him at the airlock with an embrace and said, “It’s really about to happen after all these years.”

Keilor smiled broadly and replied, “Yes old friend. We’ve kept our promise, and now; it’s about to all come together.”

Keilor returned the salute of the honor guard of Gemini soldiers. None of them knew Cory was the very ship the Bishop’s company of Marines had dropped into a meat grinder on Pelenor in the last days of the ConFed War.

Jeff and Marion watched the Bishop’s triumphant entry via the ship's security system.

Jeff said, “That smug SOB is taking a victory lap. Marion, I really wish you would stay with us. You have to know what guys like Keilor do to lose ends.”

She watched the Bishop’s hail fellow, well met routine and said, “If there’s any chance to get back together with my family I’ve got to try.”

Jeff gently took her arm and said, “Marion, you know he’s going to kill you.”

Marion grinned and said, “He’ll regret it if he does.”

There was a knock on the door and the twins James and John entered Mason’s ready room. John said, “We’re ready to purge the computer systems. It’ll take some time, but we have everything we need to put them back together after we pull the plug.”

Mason asked, “What about critical systems?”

James said, “We can put them into local control. That’s what happens by default when the main computer fails.”

Marion said, “Whatever we’re forgetting, it’s showtime. We’ve got to get the Bishop off the ship so you guys can get away and scrub your computers.

Task Force Hammerhead

Planetary Nebulae NGC-765092

Forward Operating Base (FOB) Delta

Just before he knocked off for the night, Danny had a look at the progress on the Forward Operating Base. There were still a number of spiders crawling over its external spaces, but it looked like it was nearly finished. One of the fleet munitions carriers, the Thor, was docked and apparently unloading its holds into the base cargo facilities.

He thought of the mysterious Mr. Carter who had come aboard the Raymond T. Burke when this had all started. Let him have his secrets if they all work out this well.

It was well past midnight when Danny dragged himself into his rack. He found Tom Rivers sitting up in his bunk asleep with his computer pad in his lap.

Danny slipped out of his dirty work uniform and got on the top bunk.

As he did, Tom stirred and said, “You back Danny?”

“Yeah. The XO had a brainstorm and gave the Tactical guys and me enough work for a whole extra shift today.”

Tom was quiet for a moment and said, “Are you nervous?”

Danny chuckled and said, “Oh yeah. Everything is riding on some of the things I have worked out. I’m not scared of the battle. I’m terrified something I might have overlooked may bite us on the keester.”

“Same here. Tomorrow before we jump in, a couple of my guys are going to recon the area around Stonegarden in a pair of Ravens. Then, when we hit the enemy fleet, I’m going out as a controller on a Spectra to coordinate the attack.”

Danny said, “Aren’t the Ravens those mat-black spy birds that are made of carbon composites?”

Tom said, “Yeah. They’re pretty cool. They are small enough not to make a huge jump footprint and most sensor suites can’t see them unless they are really close.”

Danny said, “It takes big brass ones to fly into an enemy system armed only with a sporty ride and a camera.”

“Oh yeah, but they aren’t completely unarmed. Each one carried four anti-radiation missiles and a jammer pod. Stealth really is their best defense.”

Danny paused and said, “We’re going to do all right tomorrow.”

“Yeah. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have the jitters.”

Corregidor

Marine Assault Ship

Sigma Puppis System

Mason watched on the ship's security system as the Bishop made his way through the ship and couldn’t help but think damn, this guy is good.

Bishop Keilor was an eloquent and engaging speaker even though Mason knew at least two-thirds of his speeches were half-truths and outright lies. He could glad hand with the best.

Watching the Bishop work the crowd, Mason remembered an old story about a Roman General or Emperor, he couldn’t remember which. He had a slave that would follow him around and say: remember thou art mortal and all glory is fleeting. The Bishop could have used one of them.

Slapping backs and shaking hands, he continued his act as he worked the crowd and made his way to the bridge where Jeff, Marion and the command crew of the Corregidor were waiting.

When the Bishop arrived at the bridge, on seeing Jeff he asked, “Is anything wrong?”

Jeff said, “Loading the ship was a lot of work. We’re all sore and tired.”

The Bishop acknowledged Mason with a curt nod and turned to Marion, “Are you ready to ship out? We’re a jump away from Regency Station where you can catch a ship.”

Marion said, “I’ve got my purse and suitcase, and I’m ready to travel.”

The Bishop smiled, “Good, good. Then we all have a busy day ahead, so we had best get started.”

Once he was sure all was well, Bishop Keilor, Sebastian Beck and Marion Scott left the Corregidor and headed to their own ship.

Argus and Phrixus both disconnected from their berths and began to head outside the gravity well of the Sigma Puppis system. The Bishop’s ship was third in line, but it was smaller and faster than the freighters. It would be the first to jump.

James picked up the bridge mike and said, “Now hear this. The ship is about to depart. Stand by maneuvering.”

When he set the mike down, he gave the order, “Release the docking clamps. Thrusters back one third.”

Slowly the ponderous Corregidor backed away from the old station and began a wide turn to bring her bow around.

Once she was heading bow on and gaining way, John announced, “The ship is in trim and accelerating. We’re two hours away from our jump point.”

Task Force Hammerhead

Planetary Nebulae NGC-765092

It all started while Sokolsky and Rivers were still in their rack. The fleet, less its attached auxiliaries, tankers and transports, began to form up for battle.

Carrier Divisions one through four and the Marine Assault Group formed the core of the formation. They were widely spaced as carriers need room to operate but were still close enough to provide mutual support.

Close in to the carrier divisions, the two divisions of battle cruisers formed up with the carriers to provide close screening. The battle cruisers were armed a lot like battleships, but they lacked the same armored protection and were much faster and nimble. Admiral Stewart’s Kongo and the Dunkerque formed up close aboard the 1^st Carrier Division to cover Yorktown, Saratoga, Enterprise and Lexington. The rest of the battle cruisers attached themselves in pairs to the four Carrier Divisions.

Just in front of the carriers was Battleship Division 1 consisting of the “R” class missile heavy armed battleships: Bassett’s flag Repulse and her sisters Renown, Revenge and Rodney. On the right and left flanks of the carrier formation were BatDiv’s 2 and 3 with BatDiv 4 trailing.

Outside the ring of battleships was a ring consisting of six divisions of cruisers. Each cruiser division consisted of a command cruiser and seven heavy cruisers. This ring was three-dimensional around the core formations.

Finally, outside the ring of cruisers was a screen of eight squadrons of destroyers less the squadron detached to escort the transports back to Alliance space. Each destroyer squadron consisted of a light cruiser as flag and eleven destroyers.

The formation was coordinated by the fleet’s TacCom network connecting all the ships. Every ship's movement, spacing in the formation and weapons were controlled by the fleet’s command staff over TacCom. It even provided for the ships firing arcs and safe transit zones for fighters and shuttles.

By the time Sokolsky and Rivers had breakfast and assumed their stations, the fleet was maneuvering away from the gravity well of the little gas giant to jump.

At seven am fleet time, the speakers on the bridge crackled to life, “Hammerhead Actual to fleet. Set condition one throughout the fleet. This morning we will engage the enemy. Prepare to jump on my next signal.”