Chapter 14: 014 Chasey Chasey Catchy Catchy Killy Killy

Light Cruisers and Destroyers are faster than Carriers and Dreadnoughts.

This is just a simple fact brought about by the square-cubed law.

You could only put so much force over an area of a ship's face before either the thrusters started melting or the ship lost effectiveness. The mass and volume of a body increase cubically while the surface areas are limited to a quadratic rate of increase.

Seeing as Acceleration is a function of Force divided by Mass it would be reasonable to follow that, assuming the rate of force to surface area remained relatively constant across all sizes, a smaller ship will accelerate faster. Dreadnoughts, therefore, were not limited to their size by any structural limitation, but by their maximally efficient acceleration rate.

In comparison to a dreadnought, a fighter moved like lightning. Light cruisers were about 5 times as fast. Even battleships, the next slowest vessel class, tended to be fifty percent faster. Dreadnoughts were a huge limiter to a fleet's movement, they were too expensive to leave behind.

The fleet had a head start, but the chasing force was estimated to catch up within a day. It did not pose a direct threat, they were way too weak in both armor and firepower. What they could do is shadow the fleet and make their positions know to a much larger and more dangerous force.

Unbeknownst to them, Don was doing the exact same thing.

He was stationed a few hundred kilometers to the side, reporting their position. Well within the danger zone of their primary weaponry, the Noah was not appearing on their sensors at all.

Feeling the gentle pull on his body from the acceleration, he noted their persistence.

"Have they not received a damage report from the harbor?"

"I have no doubt they are already aware of the extent of damage we just inflicted on them ARC, they watched it happen."

"Then why do they continue to chase? Surely it would be better to regroup and fortify their position."

ARC failings in the tactical field were starting to show again.

"I'm sure its partially due to feelings of anger and revenge. What's probably egging them on now is the need to keep an eye on a task force that demonstrated the ability to accurately hit targets from well beyond their own range."

He flipped the virtual page on the novel he was reading. Harry Potter was one of the books that had been recommended to him on an attached list, and he was enjoying it thus far.

"I'm sure Admiral Adirondack is thinking up some plan to get rid of them. I see no other reason for us to be here."

He said this, but coming up with a way to deal with a shadow force was easier said than done, especially on the fly. The current circumstances didn't help.

The harsh truth is that Adirondack did not have many cards to play with. The fact that her strike force was working on the peacetime standards of fleet composition once she was ordered to attack meant that she did not have very many ships of any class.

This dearth was especially apparent in the lower displacements.

Large ships, despite their size, have a tendency to be cheaper and easier to maintain. A massive ship like a Battleship had plenty of parts in need of maintenance for sure, but by account of their being expected to take hits those parts tended to be sturdy.

In comparison, a destroyer was expected to remain agile in order to not take big hits. Many small, delicate, and often expensive parts needed to be repaired as they broke through repeated use.

With only a quarter of the escort ships she should have at her disposal, dealing with pursuers was going to be costly. Her current escorts could definitely handle them, but Don couldn't be sure how many would be lost in the process.

If those light cruisers had their ammunition replenished before hand, up to a fifth of the current escorts could be neutralized. They wouldn't necessarily be destroyed, but the damage done to them would leave them either unable to keep up or unable to be useful in a fight.

Without access to a repair yard, they may as well not exist at that point.

With this she was put in a predicament. Don knew she couldn't justify losing a fifth of her already limited light forces, but having this shadow force expose their movements was just as inexcusable.

She can either maintain the element of surprise, or maintain her ability to deal with light forces.

NOT an enviable position to be in.

Don would not hesitate to decide to maintain the element of surprise in this situation, but he was not privy to the full mission orders. He also understood that her men might die unneeded deaths if she did that.

Large ships would be too slow to catch them and small ships were too fragile and few in number to accomplish the task unscathed. She could ill afford to expose her trump card, Don and the Noah, to the enemy, and she couldn't run away.

"A few of the corvettes just left the formation." ARC noticed some of the dots broke off of the back of the blob and started heading back in the direction they came from. "Should we pursue?"

"No. They probably had limited fuel, some damage, or are running low on food materials. Keep in mind they did leave without preparing."

This was something Don had not considered, material insufficiency. If the rest of this shadowing force was suffering similar issues, then fleeing may be an option. This was probably only an issue the frigates and corvettes were fighting with.

With crews numbering in the single digits to high tens and storage spaces to match they had a tendency to be supplied last so their rations would hold for as long as possible.

Light Cruisers and Destroyers would definitely have a stock of a food and fuel to last a few days.

This did open options, but it didn't change the fact that the admiral was going to have to make a choice.

"Let's report this development. I'll request information on what to do next. I know you don't exactly have human needs, but do you have anything you would like to either suggest or request?"

"I will attach my analysis of the situation to the sent file. Put a word about the on-board computer's data report at the end. I believe the admiral to be at least somewhat aware of my existence at this point, but the degree to which she understands I 'exist' is still in question."

"Make it sound like you are just a lifeless machine, got it."

After waiting five minutes for further developments, Don decided the time was ripe to hit the send button.

It had been centuries since anyone used envelopes for personal messages, and yet it was still the indicator for send.

Fatigued from his vigilance, he turned in for the 'night'. He had included notice that he would be asleep at the end of his communication, so he would not be interrupted unless it was urgent.

- - - - -

As Donovan was losing consciousness within sight range of the flock of enemies, Admiral Adirondack was running through her options in search of a way out of this predicament.

Using her carrier's strike craft was out of the question. Those were ships designed with the express purpose of defending against small craft. Few though they may be, they are too effective at their jobs to throw her highly experienced but extremely limited in number pilots at.

The capital ships were just too damn slow. If they tried to close the distance to get a shot on them they would just run away. They had made clear their intention to not engage when she ordered the Ranger to slow down and act as bait.

The heavy cruisers would have nothing to fear from ships of this size, but they were just a tad too slow to catch them off guard.

If she sent in any of the light cruisers, frigates, corvettes, or pickets she would have to send them ALL in. The way their offensive and defensive systems worked required their mutual assistance from one another.

Furthermore, she was tearing her hair out over what to do with Don and his black brick. As far as she had been told, it was fully capable of taking hits from everything the enemy had. But did she want to test that assumption? Did she want to risk exposing its existence this early?

"No. I can't let them start thinking about countermeasures."

She couldn't risk damage to Don and his ship either. She did not have the proper facilities to repair it. As a matter of fact she didn't have the proper facilities to repair anything.

"FUCK!" She slammed her fist on the table, causing the ornamental bird she kept as a decoration to tip over.

"Did I come at a bad time?" Thompson was standing in the doorway to the admiral's quarters, wine bottle in hand. It was the wine Don had been gifted, exchanged for the tablet he was using to read books on. "We just finished our post-flight checks, so I was hoping to pop open a bottle. It tastes better with company."

"...Fine. Tearing myself apart isn't getting me anywhere. Plenty of time to think."

She picked the pair of glasses that sat above the door, the best set she had.

"Really? Taking out those cups? I thought they were just decoration."

"Only two of us. Plus, the goods look to be of exceptional quality this time around. Wine is meant to be drunk, and glasses are meant to be drunk from." She took a seat at the table opposite of the star pilot. "Are you not going to share this bounty with the rest of your squadron."

"They wouldn't be able to appreciate the quality. Of those in the squadrons, I only think Red 3, Yellow 5, Green leader, Green 2, and myself would understand the intricacies. Naturally, I have gifted them all a bottle as props for a job well done."

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"Fair enough, though I imagine I won't understand any of the intricacies either."

"You will find the taste to be better than the norm at the very least. Besides, the Admiral is a little bit different than some random pilot fresh off an adrenaline rush. I imagine you needed something for the nerves?"

She had known him long enough to understand this was him sucking up to her for something. If he fucked up his bomber, she would be pissed. A little bit of a drunken stupor would lessen the blow.

At the same time he was completely right, she was on edge and needed to slow down. Nothing better than some fine wine and company for that.

As Thompson poured the wine, she took note of its color. It was an extremely rich red, somewhere in the range of Maroon and Crimson.

"So what ails ye cap'n?"

There it was. His stupid pirate voice. It had been a while since the last time it appeared, but there was no stopping it once he started.

He had DEFINITELY been drinking prior to this. How Adirondack hadn't noticed that until now was a complete mystery to her.

"We have a tail, and I have no way of cutting it off without bleeding out."

"Have you tried shooting them?" It was a naïve and stupid suggestion, but Adirondack passed it off with a laugh.

"If they were close enough to shoot at we wouldn't have a problem. Even with Beacon's god-like assistance, the fact of the matter is that they are beyond the range of our weapons."

"Then get closer! Just get right up close to em and pop em right in the nose."

"They're too fast for that!"

"Then do it faster! Our heavies can warp can't they? Have Beacon find some good jump coordinates and then send them in. They'll never know what hit them."

It was stupid. Incredibly stupid. Any commander worth their salt would notice the incoming jumps and send in missiles to interrupt the process.

"I might regret this, but how fast were your jump times with Beacon in comparison to your jumps without."

"We dropped from ten seconds to the instant we slapped the big red button." He had a shit eating grin on his face, proud of a feat that was due in no part to his own efforts. "See, how it works is that the computer runs a bunch of very, VERY, complex equations based on the zones we need to jump to in order to find safe spots. Those can take up to eight seconds. After that theres about a two second delay where the computer double and triple checks that we won't be coalescing in front of a big ol space rock. Then BLAM, there we are."

"How fast do you think our Heavy cruisers could make a jump with Beacon's help?"

"I don have a good estimate cuz I don fly a cruiser, but I'd say cutting the whole process down to a hundredth of normal would be a good starting point."

To the best of her knowledge it took a grand total of 5 minutes for a heavy cruiser to do a medium jump. 300 seconds divided by 100 was three. If several thousand tons of materiel could be warped within three seconds then it would be impossible for them to interrupt it. Even 20 seconds was a short enough period of time to rush past a defense.

If this plan worked she would kiss this man on the spot. If it failed she would take the punishment in stride.

Professionals are predictable, but drunk and arrogant jocks do the unthinkable.

- - - - -

'I have a plan.'

The first thing Don read upon exiting his slumber. Normally he would think to himself 'Well I fuckin hope so' or 'How surprising' but he knew well enough that this was probably something completely different than what he thought she had in mind.

No sane Admiral begins official correspondence with 'I have a plan' and then presents some textbook maneuver.

'I need you to find two or three volumes of space clear of debris large enough for heavy cruisers that surround the pursuers. It would be ideal if they surrounded them but it is not required.'

That was it.

The whole message.

It wasn't long but it said more than a detailed explanation could ever.

"She really plans to drop heavy cruisers right on top of them."

It was so unbelievable he had to say it aloud. Warping cruisers around was already dangerous enough, but to do so into an ENEMY?

That was a step beyond the pale.

But the more he thought he thought about it the more he thought it might just work.

First off its unexpected. No rational captain is going to be taking special note of jump-scan radiation while they are pursuing. No servicemember is going to expect something bordering the line of capital ship to jump towards them.

It also provides a golden solution. No escorts are going to have to die, and the heavy cruisers are, well, heavy. They can shrug off almost anything those ships throw at them. Only the light cruisers' bow mounted railguns might cause issues. The rest could be relegated to the secondary and point defense armaments.

"ARC, think you can find some exit points for the cruisers?"

"Not from this position. We need to get in front of them."

"Too much interference?"

"Too far from the opposite side of their formation. If the cruisers are to be in proper flanking positions then we need to be in a spot capable of placing them there."

With a clear goal and an amount of time bordering on the infinite, Don and ARC got to work finding the best locations for an ambush. ARC gave constant updates on where safe spots would be while Donovan chose the ones that gave the best firing arcs and overlapping lanes of fire.

The admiral wanted two or three spots, Don was confident he could give her ten, not that she could use that many with only four heavy cruisers. Timing was going to be the limiting factor.

After an hour of dropping pins and picking them up after the areas they represented became unusable, Don was comfortable with his ability to manage a large number of voluminous jump-points. He had sent a message stating he would need to be the one to issue the jump order and that she should have all four heavy cruisers and a pair of lights ready.

After a few minutes of looking for clearings he was 100% confident in, ARC sent a ready command to the fleet with the positions they had in mind.

Better to let them figure out where they wanted to jump for themselves than for him to order them around and push them past their limits.

6 green checks meant 6 ships ready to move 60,000 km in an instant. Pressing the holographic button which had been ceremoniously provided for him by ARC, he watched his sensors to see them in action.

Unlike Large Cruisers, which are basically just battleships with their armor scaled down, Heavy cruisers are designed to perform multiple roles. The most common among these are strike interruption and escort suppression.

Elements designed for strike interruption do everything that the tin says, interrupt strikes. Much like the destroyer and picket classes, they have to be equipped with a great many point defense systems to accomplish this.

At medium ranges a combination of 'flak' rifles and scattershot from the primary and secondary railguns serve to dissuade enemy strike craft from approaching. At closer ranges lasers and automatic weaponry such as chain guns and swarm missiles knock out incoming ordinance and any craft that get a little too close for comfort.

The role of 'Escort Suppression' basically entails destroying or driving off lighter ships.

The primary railguns are a scaled down version of the capital class, purposefully slower in order to deal heavy damage to the more lightly armored heavy, light, and escort cruisers.

The secondary railguns are the exact same as those found aboard light cruisers, the dreaded variable acceleration railguns. Ideal for taking out light targets at any range thanks to their lower mass and the option to choose what speed the rod will be leaving the barrel at.

When four of these mammoths finished their jump sequence over the course of 2.7 seconds, they found themselves with targets sitting within range of all of their weaponry.

Calling it a bloodbath would be underselling the brutality, execution would only barely be a fit.

Caught with their pants down and surrounded by ships who were practically designed to destroy them, the Oligarchies' formation crumbled before turning to a flaming pile of ash.

The whole ordeal took less than four minutes in total.

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