Chapter 15: 015 Off Track

"How the hell do you lose at chess? You're a computer for fuck's sake."

Don had decided to bide his time with ARC by training its tactical thinking abilities, he had gotten bored of reading. Checkers had gone well enough, but considering children see this game as easy even when facing someone with even a wealth of experience in it, that should have been well within expectations.

"Can't you, like, calculate every possible move or some crazy shit like that?"

It was embarrassing defeat. Don could not consider himself good at chess, he only barely knew the rules, but still managed to defeat ARC within 30 turns.

Despite being centuries old, chess was still a thing people played. In that respect it was kind of like jump-rope or skeet-shooting. Where it was different from most other games is that it was only played by complete and total nerds.

It had very little use in teaching about combat in space, space having three dimensions, and most tactical strategy games were simply better.

Don chose it because it was so ridiculously simple in comparison that a mouse could learn to play.

That of course assumed that you spend hours upon hours of time using positive and negative feedback signs in order to show that mouse how to play, alongside a few performance enhancing alterations such as, say, inserting a computer chip into its brain.

Don still felt his point stood though.

"I refuse to sacrifice my pieces. It does not accurately simulate how I would have to act in a combat situation."

"You would refuse to lose one man even if sending him sending him to his death would save two?"

"Correct, I am not permitted to order human lives to death. This game has proven itself remarkably difficult for me as every option will ultimately result in the death of one of my pieces."

"That's half the point, you seem to not realize that deaths are inevitable in war. You need to make steps to minimize the amount of destruction amongst your own while ensuring you still achieve victory."

"I understand that, however the fact remains that I am unable to operate with that in mind. I am physically incapable of ordering people into a situation they could die."

"Then this whole operation is pointless!"

"That is what I was trying to say to you at the beginning, yes."

Don let off an exasperated moan. What he had been trying to do was akin to teaching a man without arms how to use chopsticks, except ARC had no way of attaining prosthetics, in fact he was forbidden.

"Let's try doing it without you thinking of your pieces as people. Treat is as learning theory that you pray you never have to use." Don waited for a response for a few seconds. "Are you able to do that?"

"I should be."

"Great, let's try this again." Don clicked the reset button on the chess program, just in time to receive an order from the Calibration.

'Permission granted to dock in the bow hangar. Urgency is requested.'

"It'll have to wait. Callie wants us to dock. Mind starting the engines?"

"Already done."

As always, ARC was a step ahead of Don. It had even gone so far as to light up a flight path.

Don didn't need it of course, but it was nice to not have to think about it.

Entering the unlit maw of the carrier, Don felt the temptation to roll the Noah upside down in order to give the crew a scare but decided against it. With nobody in the automated hangar it would be pointless, and the seamless symmetry would make it unclear that he was, in fact, upside down.

After a needlessly extended docking sequence that involved various docking arms grabbing onto and securing the ship, Don got up and prepared to leave the ship.

"Take care ARC, is there anything you would like?"

"No. Everything I am interested in was transferred in the data dump."

With that, Don left the safety of his new home and ventured into the wide open world of a hangar, only to instantly find himself in a tight space walking through the halls.

At least there were people here, a definite improvement over the recent past. He considered himself lucky that he remembered how to reach the admiral's office, bulkheads, doors, and identical paneling did little to assist by way of landmark.

*Thud thud thud*

He didn't press the buzzer on the side this time, preferring to feel what organic wood felt like. Oh how he missed small comforts like those already.

"DS Strauss here to make a report ma'am."

"I'll be there shortly." She sounded happy, not surprising considering the accomplishment that would undoubtedly fall under her name, but very much out of character for her. Donovan didn't take her for a braggart or a particularly pompous superior, but large achievements had a euphoria of their own.

He just hoped he wouldn't be forced to do more than his fair share because of it.

A good five minutes later, the door opened. Not exactly the short amount of time she had claimed, but considering the foot-thick stack of paper (yes, paper) on her desk he got the feeling it could have been longer.

"Thank you for coming Strauss. As much as I would like to sit down and chat, I don't exactly have the time for it. I need your input on something."

Don nodded to signal her to continue.

"To put it simply, we are hopelessly off course. No doubt you noticed our change in direction after the skirmish earlier, and I'm confident you have come to the conclusion it is intentional. Our shadow had a good track of our trajectory and they are no doubt preparing to set up some sort of ambush or defense at our next target, so I made the snap judgement to change course and evade potential interception."

"What happens to be the issue?"

"I haven't the foggiest idea of where to find one. Civilian stations are off limits and the Oligarchies aren't exactly compliant in informing us of the locations of their strongholds. I'd like you to make a judgement call on our next course of action. It can be anything, as long as it does not involve returning to the core."

"For reference, can I get an idea of our fuel and supply levels?"

"Full load, a good twelve months of flying if the escorts occasionally take some food material from the larger ships. Fuel is also good, all ships have newer reactors with recently replenished fuel reserves. The only concern might come from the Calibration's squadrons as we only have enough of their burner fuel to last a few hours."

"We can operate without constraints on our movement then. What's the word on ammo?"

"Slightly less plentiful. The dreadnought and the large cruisers have about 60 percent of their rods remaining, but our battleship is reporting they have less than four hours worth of broadside firing. We can have some of the others' rods transferred, but that will take a long time to bring them to parity."

"And the missiles?"

"You should act as if we don't have any. A good half of our total stockpile by mass was fired during the raid and the majority of what remains are interceptor and swarm missiles. We have precisely eight operational torpedoes and they are all variants that need to be attached to transport craft."

That was less than satisfying news. Torpedoes had shown themselves as a trump card in the attack on the shipyards. The battleship's lack of ammunition was disconcerting for sure, but the precision he provided would more than make up for it.

With both of the most concerning matters addressed, the difficult part was finding the best course of action.

There were options, plenty of options, but that was just as much a problem as it was a relief.

Don knew just as well as the admiral that the path they had previously taken had clearly signaled their intent to attack a second dockyard, so attacking that dockyard was a definite no-go. In fact, attacking any other port was out of the question now.

The mobilization of the Oligarchies' fleets would undoubtedly progress far faster now that there was an established and tangible threat. They currently lacked the raw numbers in order to draw themselves into a standard engagement, even with the Noah's support.

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Noticing his hand on his chin and a pensive expression on his face, Admiral Adirondack further clarified her orders. "While our initial orders were to attack the harbors, if things were to go wrong I was told to prioritize the Noah's secrecy first and foremost. Following this was the emphasis on fleet preservation. I was told nothing beyond this." It wasn't much, but it was everything she knew.

"Can you pull up our current position and velocity in relation to the sun?"

"Would you like to see acceleration?"

"Not really, I just wanna know where we are and where we are headed."

He was going to suggest raiding supply ships so as to draw vessels away from the front, but if there was a priority on preserving the fleet then that was off the table.

In a holographic display much like the one aboard the Noah, the fleet was shown as a dot with an arrow. If the plane of orbit could be considered the face of a compass, then the position of the Earth at its maximum distance from the sun was north.

Likewise, the position of the Earth when closest was south.

'Up' on the map was in the direction of the Earth's northern hemisphere

Currently, they were a great distance away from the little blue dot they called home, speeding away at breakneck speeds from a substantially larger, pale blue dot.

Speeding away is used very loosely as when dealing with a scale on the size of a solar system, only moving a few times the speed of sound is barely noticeable. Hence the arrow.

Right now, the fleet was heading on a northwest course, currently being only slightly west of the dot denoting Uranus.

There were a few other dots that gave the estimated positions of various important facilities, suspected fleet locations, and notable environmental hazards, but they were few and far between outside of the core.

Aside from the fact there wasn't much out here, intel on the Oligarchies was sparse. It was incredibly difficult to both infiltrate stations and setup listening posts.

"The only way to describe our trajectory is 'off track.' We aren't headed towards anything we know about."

In a grand thirty degree cone in there direction of travel, there was no known entities aside from a few clusters of asteroids. The only thing that came close was an abandoned mining outpost that was operational before Skinnik.

Extremely unlikely that there was anything of value near there, tactically or materially.

"I say we remove ourselves from the plane of orbit." Don's recommendation was not orthodox.

"Wouldn't that cost us more fuel and time?"

"It would, but it will also make us harder to find. My money is on them assuming we are keeping to the plane, which will buy us time if we get off of it. Right now our very existence is tying up resources and manpower, so we need to remain a ghost for as long as possible."

"Are we not going to attack? I had taken you to be the aggressive type."

"No attacking. I had considered raiding, but staying silent is likely to waste more of their resources in the long term. Having a freighter go missing without so much as a distress call would immediately alert them to our general location. We might need to harass a small station every week or two as a means to keep ourselves established as a threat, but beyond that we should stay as far away from their stations as possible."

"I hadn't considered the cost of searching for us. Should we go up or down then?"

"Down. Definitely down. Not sure if you know this, but most people will choose up when given the chance. The best place to hide is going to be the bottom hemisphere of the solar system." This was, of course, not entirely true. There was actually a mind game behind this decision, inexperienced commanders would choose up, while experienced would choose down, but the best would seek to take advantage of this conventional knowledge and once again choose the top half to stay hidden.

The attack they had just finished would no doubt be taken to mean they were being led by the best, so they should probably head down to capitalize on conventional knowledge, though this would probably only slightly increase their chances. Don didn't know much about the enemy's situation, but he could tell they weren't exactly in an organized state after that blow.

As Don made to leave the office, Admiral Adirondack called Don once more.

"I almost forgot, but head to the central hangar. There is a present waiting there for you. Full disclosure, we really just needed somewhere to keep it, but I feel that you will appreciate it in light of some of the issues you reported while isolated in your ship."

"What is it?"

"Wouldn't be much of a surprise if just up and told you here. You are free to decline the gift or even return it later if it isn't working well in your ship, but I hope you wont have to."

"Thanks."

Closing the door on his way out, Don's face scrunched up in a bout of confusion. If they had something that could have helped him with his boredom and lack of social interaction before they left the supply zone, why the hell had it not been given to him? He had made it known a long time ago, well before the last supply ship had contact with them.

"Better late than never, I suppose." The rumors about logistical inefficiency and lack of notification of amenities he had heard of from some of his more veteran instructors appeared to be a reality. Unsurprising considering the hell that is spacial logistics, but it was a serious mood-killer when the issues reared their scaly faces.

Walking, more accurately strolling, his way towards the main hangar of the ship, Don couldn't help but analyze the interior layout of the behemoth. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the space around the admiral's quarters are also living spaces or other such facilities. Much had changed since the days where 'naval' meant 'on water'.

For one, crew quarters were now placed within the heart of the ship. Without the presence of an atmosphere, it was imperative that the facilities that the people making the ship function be protected. This was to guarantee that the ship could actually fight in the case it took a direct hit.

It should be taken into account that a quarter of the carrier's total volume that was not relegated to armor or support structures was dedicated to power and thrust generation. This section needed to be protected as much as the crew quarters, which takes up roughly the same volume.

The space left for weaponry is then less than half of the total internal volume.

The ventral and dorsal hangar openings travelled a distance somewhere between a half and two thirds of the ship's total length, neatly centered on the forward third line of the ship. The astute observer will make a note that it would be impossible for the hangar to be perfectly in line with the ends of the hangar openings, there simply would not be enough space remaining.

The reason for this lies in the carrier's design.

First of all, the volatile and vital components like ammo and replacement parts are stored in the relative safety of the main armor belt, the awkward angle of incidence being unsuitable for craft. Closer to the rear, crew quarters are placed in a similar manner.

The other reason is the peculiarity of the way the thruster and power generation has to be set up, making them protrude well into the zone that would initially be considered hangar space from above.

If you were to strip the weaker top and bottom armor plates as well as the floors of the hangars, you would be left with a shape not terribly dissimilar to the tabs on top of soda cans. Furthermore, if you were to look at the relative armor density you would find it also follows a similar pattern.

Almost counterintuitively, the armor covering only the hangar is the weakest!

Of course calling it weak is only relative, Don was more than positive that, with the exception of the hangar doors, that armor plating was more that capable of holding out against the sustained fire of multiple light cruisers or perhaps a heavy cruiser, if it was lucky.

This was, naturally, on purpose. This dual opening set-up provided a few very desirable secondary effects.

The first of these was that a sort of 'assembly line' could be established with expended craft entering on one side and fully replenished craft leaving on the other.

Operational integrity was another big one. In the rare case one opening was rendered inoperable through either a mechanical failure or enemy fire, the other could still be used.

The final, and perhaps most important, effect, was one of survivability.

It bears repeating that with the current paradigm, Carriers are the only class of capital ship that hold large amounts of material labeled as 'conventionally explosive'. In other words, objects that carry the risk of either igniting or exploding when exposed to high heats or sudden impacts.

While not something that is usually desired anywhere, this type of object is desired the least in spaceships.

What the layout of the carrier does in this sense is magical in a way. Doing away with the focus on combat capability, attention is instead placed on long term survivability. In the case of an internal magazine detonation, the vital regions of the carrier will be protected by armor while the lightly armored sides of the ship will quite literally 'blow-out'. This means that the carrier can run away after taking what would normally be catastrophic damage and have another hangar attached in a repair yard.

Ideally, you would never want to have to do that, but previous experiences of the alternative showed how over-armoring ends up being more deadly.

Reminiscing at such lessons he had learned in class, Don couldn't help but think about how incredibly convoluted and impossible to navigate the resulting internal passageways were.

He understood that if a structural beam needed to go somewhere then no amount of bitching and moaning was going to end up with a passageway through that area, but did there really have to be so many twists and turns?

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