Star Man 1: Star Bourne Page 10
Then as I explained all that, another thought occurred to me so I asked, “Captain, do you know if people use mines out here?”
Carlon looked at me for a few seconds, then said to me, “Mines, what are they? How do they work? What do they do?”
I realised I would need to explain the concept to him. I considered how I could do this, trying to translate the little I knew to something he would be likely to understand.
I said, “Mines are something the various militaries and insurgents on Earth use when they are at war against each other. They can be useful as an inexpensive way as making an area into a no go zone. They are usually hidden so whoever passes that way doesn’t know where they are till one explodes, or the mine clearance people find and disarm them. Sometimes, even the threat of a minefield can put a serious crimp in an opponent’s plans. They are a very insidious weapon. Some types of land mines can be buried at a shallow depth, they have a pressure plate that when depressed, detonates the mine. They can stay active continuing to maim or kill people long after the war that caused them to be planted has ended. Others are detonated by trip wires. Another type are sea mines. These may be either magnetically or contact activated, anchored to the sea floor or left to float. These explode when a ship comes close enough to detonate them, either seriously damaging or sinking the ship. I am wondering if there is something similar that is used out here to block jump points for example. I don’t know how they could work in the context of space, given the distances involved but Federation technology is so far ahead of anything we have on Earth that from my point of view, anything is possible. One important thing you need to know is that they are a remote weapon, set and forget. Once you set up your mine field you could probably leave it in place with little interference for an extended period of time. At worst, an enemy would find it and either be forced to find a way around it or to clear it before proceeding. I would think a good place to leave a minefield would be straddling a jump exit corridor. You have a known exit vector and a ship coming through would not be able to detect the mines till it was too late to avoid them completely.”
By the time I finished my explanation, Carlon had a worried look on his face, it was clear he hadn’t thought about this possibility.
“So these mines, could disable the ship if one hit?” he asked.
“I expect that the extent of damage could vary anywhere from none, to total loss. I suppose, it would depend entirely on where the mine hit and what protections you have in place”, I replied.
He said, “I haven’t heard of this type of weapon before, but they may be out there. Do you have any thoughts on how we could combat them?”
I said, “No Sir, not at the moment. I will need to give it a bit of thought first.”
We discussed the implications for a few more minutes before the conversation began to run in circles. At that point, I excused myself to go back to my quarters to think. I lay on my bunk, trying to think the problem through. How would mines be deployed? Would our sensors see them? Would they be stealthy? Could we somehow avoid them? At some point, I must have gone to sleep because I woke with a start as an idea on how to deal with the challenges ahead blossomed into my mind. I checked the time before starting to look to see who was active as it was still very early. I found nearly everyone who could help me was still sleeping so I started referencing the ships database. I looked at what made star-ships move through space, how the jump drives work, how shields work and much more. I started thinking about how we could stop mines from causing us too much trouble. Next, I gave some thought about how we could make these theoretical mines work in our favour. Finally, after perhaps an hour and a half of this analysis, I noticed the Captain was back on duty and in his office, so I put my research on hold before going to see him.
When I entered his office I found the professional officer I’d come to expect sitting at his desk with a thoughtful look on his face. Clearly, he was giving our predicament a lot of thought as well, becoming even more determined to utilize all the resources available to help him solve the problems we faced. As I entered, he waved me to a seat before offering me some refreshment.
When we were both settled, he asked me what I needed to talk to him about. I replied by telling him about the research I had been conducting all morning since I woke, as well as the direction of my thinking. I explained how I came to the conclusion that a minefield in space could only be of use in a small number of situations. Those would be situations such as entry and exit corridors for jump points, perhaps some limited number of orbital slots and possibly some narrow corridors where lots of ships had to follow a narrow path for some reason I couldn’t think of at the moment.
As I continued to relate this to him, a surprised look grew on his face then he asked, “Are you sure you haven’t been here before? I mean, have you ever been in this type of situation before?”
He paused for a second then continued, “You seem to be able to solve tactical problems almost effortlessly. You could see the risks when you were on Zafar, you predicted various dangers we faced and have been making worthwhile suggestions to me for minimising the impact as you have thought of them. You have good insights into a way forward. You have even demonstrated a powerful command presence; you are a powerful leader, even I can feel that. Sometimes, I almost feel like I should be taking orders from you.”
I felt a little embarrassed as I replied, “Sir, solving problems is what I have been doing for my entire working life. As an engineer, that was my job. Leadership is something I have had quite extensive training in throughout my career. I needed to be able to lead to be able to do my old job. This set of problems we are facing now is just another set of problems. I have learned throughout my life, nearly every problem has a solution if we can just find it, and if we have the resources to implement it. We might not like the solution, or for some reason it may not be feasible to implement it at the time, but there is still almost always a solution. As for you taking orders from me, I can only tell you I have never intentionally tried to order you or even to manipulate you into following any particular course of action, I have only advised you to the best of my ability when offering the advice seemed appropriate to me. So far, offering my advice has only happened when you requested it.”
Then another thought struck me so I asked, “Do the pirates have a history of putting large fleets together?”
He replied, “Not really, usually they work on their own, or perhaps with one or two other ships.”
After he finished his reply to my question, he nodded to me then pressed his intercom and called for a number of his officers to come to his office. “Colin”, he said while we are waiting, “your thinking is sound. Right now, these pirates think we are trying to do what deep space explorer vessels always do, run. They are trying to force us in a direction of their choosing. What we need to do is to turn the tables on them, to do something they don’t expect. We need to make them bleed. We need to become the predators instead of the prey.”
“Actually”, I said, “I’ve been thinking, while I agree with you there, we really need to go even further than you’re suggesting, we need to find a way to reduce the odds we’re facing. We need to find a way to make sure we are not fighting three or more of these ships at once, assuming there aren’t that many waiting on the other end of this jump corridor. That means we need to take the two who are currently in this system out of the picture first, not necessarily here in this system, we really don’t want to be fighting both of them at the same time either. We need to find a way to ambush them. We especially don’t want them to push us into a situation where we are up against both these two and whoever is waiting for us in the next system. I only hope they won’t have someone waiting for us when we initially exit the jump point at the other end.”
At this point, three other people arrived in the Captains office. Olin was first, followed soon after by Veragain the tactical officer, and Horlon the master navigator. The new arrivals each nodded to me when they entered then q
uickly took their seats before Captain Carlon began to lay out the facts of our situation as he currently knew them. He did not mention the conversations or conjecture he and I were having before they arrived, I think he felt doing so might only confuse the situation. Once he finished he asked the others if they had any thoughts on the situation.
Olin started by reporting on the state of the preparations the Troopers were already making to defend the ship. He reported they were also working with the engineering staff, identifying and preparing useful locations for caches of food, water and ammunition throughout the ship. They’d also been able to identify a number of good locations where booby traps and other nasty surprises could be placed should an enemy force manage to board FNS Destiny. All the while, we continued our run towards the jump point. Veragain and Horlon looked surprised at Olin’s report. Clearly, up until now, they were not in the loop so didn’t know what steps the Captain had been able to put into motion already. I wondered at that briefly, but I quickly put it down to this simply just being the way these people did things or perhaps that events had been moving too fast. Of course, I already knew it would be inappropriate for me to say anything to the Captain about this, not right now, or for that matter, perhaps not ever.
While Olin was making his report, I noticed Veragain was beginning to look very concerned. I don’t think his concern was related to Olin’s report, or that he was only now being bought into the loop. Instead, I think he’d only now realised just how serious the overall tactical situation was for FNS Destiny. After Olin completed his report, it quickly became clear that neither Veragain or Horlon had given any of this the thought it required yet because they simply didn’t know they needed to. Captain Carlon broke up our meeting to allow Veragain and Horlon to go and give some consideration to the implications of our current situation. The Captain said he would like to bring a few others into the loop and asked that we meet again immediately after lunch.
When we reconvened after lunch, Veragain gave his report. It was immediately clear he’d come to many of the same conclusions as I did. He understood there may be other pirates waiting for us in the next system and that as things then stood, FNS Destiny may not be able to run fast enough or fight her way clear, not without us doing something to even the odds before we were overwhelmed. Once we jumped, we risked running into enemies on arrival at the other end and by then, the door back to Zafar would be very firmly closed. If we tried to change direction, in an attempt to head towards the other jump point, the pursuing vessels would be able to easily run us down before we could reach it. He couldn’t see how we could fight such an action and still escape unscathed or for that matter, even to win.
On the other hand, he did have a number of quite good ideas to contribute on how we could win a fight, even when we were outnumbered but to me, while his thinking seemed to have many good elements, it was really quite unimaginative. At the time I had the impression, perhaps a little unfairly, that the Tangesha, or maybe even the entire Federation Navy relied heavily on ships systems such as shielding for protection or escape. More to the point, it seemed to me that Veragain was really thinking far too defensively, even I could see a defensive strategy wouldn’t work for us, not for very long anyway. To my thinking, a purely defensive strategy could only result in us being overwhelmed sooner or later. For us to be able to successfully return to the Federation, we needed to be much more aggressive, we needed to take the pirates by surprise.
When Veragain concluded his report, the Captain asked him if he’d ever heard of mines. Veragain looked blankly at the Captain so once again, I had to explain what a mine was and how it might be used just as I’d needed to for the Captain. Veragain told us he had never heard of such a weapon before but could see the danger they might present if someone was able to perfect them and make them operational. For my part, I pointed out to the officers one of our pirate captives was from Earth. I told everyone there, if they had one person from there, they may very well have more. If they did have others, one or more of those people may have given them the idea and they may have been able to develop it into a viable weapon. I explained how they could probably be quite inexpensive to produce and very effective if they could be correctly deployed.
By the time I finished, Veragain was looking very uncomfortable. I think he finally realised just what a bind we were in. If the pirates did in fact have some kind of mine, Veragain had no past experience to base a defence on, he didn’t have a starting point. He admitted to me the concept of laying a minefield or something similar in space, had simply never occurred to him. He really couldn’t understand how it might work, not with the huge volumes of space. While he might not have had any idea how to deal with such a threat right then I could see he was clearly already considering the possibilities.
After Veragain finished giving us his report, the Captain asked Horlon to tell us what options we had to escape the trap we appeared to have sailed into. Horlon replied that there were none as far as he could see, at least none that resulted in us simply running away. He explained to us how our pursuers were far closer to our alternate jump point than we were. If we tried to run towards it, they could attack us long before we could possibly arrive there. He agreed with the rest of us about what was most likely waiting for us on the other side of the jump point we were currently headed for. He then told us the only other option open to us was to run into the black and try to fly out of sensor range but he really couldn’t see how that would help us very much.
We only carried limited fuel and food on board so we could never hope to fly to the next system even, at least not if we wanted to be alive when we finally arrived there. Horlon told us he thought we would have to fight these pirates at some point, he could not see any way around that fact. As it happened, I agreed with him, I didn’t need convincing. I asked if we would be able to run till we were well outside sensor range, then circle back and try to ghost into range of the other jump point. If we could lead the pirates away from the jump point, then we might be able to make a run for it at the last second. He replied we could try it but didn’t think it would help much, all the pirates had to do was to wait near the jump point. The others were also very dubious about how doing this could work for the same reasons. For my part, I didn’t know enough to be able to argue either way so I just let the matter drop. The meeting continued for another hour with all participants voicing concerns and ideas about how we should proceed.
Eventually, it became obvious to me we all needed to take a break soon so we could have some refreshment as well as doing some more thinking. By then, I’d already concluded we needed to be aggressive in our approach to the pursuing pirate ships. Even more than that, we needed to take a very aggressive approach while making the pirates think we were doing the opposite, running away as hard as we could just as deep space explorer vessels always do. Misdirection was going to be the key for us to get through this, we just could not afford to let the pirates have the upper hand any longer, we needed to find a way to turn the tables on them and we needed to do it soon. I’d already sketched out the bare bones of a plan to the Captain but it still needed a lot of holes filled.
When we re-convened, the Captain asked me to explain my plan to the others. I started out by asking them all to hear the plan out in its entirety first. I explained that I was already aware of the holes in it. I said once I’d finished telling them the entire plan, we could go over it piece by piece adding to it, filling any holes we identified, and changing it as people contributed their own thoughts. I told them, that was when I wanted them to look for flaws and tell me what those flaws were as well as any resolution to them they could think of. We all knew it would be easy to just shred someone else’s ideas but we needed solutions not just negativity. What we needed most was for them help me try and make my plan truly viable. Of course, I was already fully aware there were a number of flaws in my plan, flaws I thought the others could drive a starship through, but I hoped we, as a team, would be able to find a way to resolve tho
se flaws or at least make them much smaller.
I then started to lay my plan out for the others in the compartment. As I proceeded, I could see the others thinking over the implications of everything I was telling them. During this first run through the plan, none of them commented as I hoped would be the case, they just nodded as they understood what I told them, taking notes as I talked. More than once, I could tell one or the other of them were working with their implants. After I finished the first explanation of my plan, the others in the compartment started asking questions. These questions would often raise yet more questions, forcing us all to consider further possibilities. I quickly realised there were so many areas where I simply didn’t know what I didn’t know, still, I felt proud I was able to give this crew a starting point, a plan they may be able to build on. We continued this process for nearly three hours, asking questions, finding solutions, seeking alternatives, while we gradually hammered out our final plan. We tried to think of as many different ways as possible for events to work out before trying to put a strategy in place to enhance or counter each of them. After another three hours we broke for a rest before reconvening to continue our planning.
Finally, late that ships night, we felt we’d planned as well as we could with our almost total lack of intelligence about what we would actually find on the other side of the jump point. We’d considered a whole range of options and believed we had a good plan of action, one that would indeed make the pirates bleed if they were waiting for us when we exited the jump point. We all hoped that if we died during this operation, we would be taking a lot of pirates with us.
A jump point is simply a point in space where there is a particular convergence of spatial conditions that allows a ship with the correct systems on board to slip into subspace, crudely put, a type of wormhole. Most jump points only link to one or two others. Choosing the destination requires entering on the correct vector and entering at a speed that is between an upper and lower limit. These limits are about 10000 metres per second at the lower end and 100000 metres per second at the upper end. Jumps are not instantaneous; it takes a finite amount of time to transit to the exit point. In our case, the jump point we were steering for only had one known outlet and the transit time in subspace to the exit point was nearly fifteen hours. In addition to this, we would not be able to maneuver or change speed once we entered subspace. Because of all this, we needed to enter the jump point at the correct speed and orientation for our desired exit. The speed of entry into subspace was not directly related to the speed traveled through subspace. So assuming mines at the other end, the slowest we could safely enter (and exit) a jump point was about ten kilometres per second.