Sitrep:

So, Rea sent me back the manuscript. I now need to put the edits in and final pieces and then shoot it off to Goodlifeguide for final formatting.

In other news I've been having fun with the AI. I've animated a few of the covers. Some are wildly cool! I'll be posting them eventually.

Anyway, on to the snippet!

Antigua

Admiral Irons was concerned over theway things were going. They were not anywhere near where he wanted to be. He’dexpected to possibly go up against some remnant of the Xenos at some point,just not so soon, nor so close to Rho sector.

Were they going to be able to fightthem and win? That alone worried him. The alliance between the Xenos and theNecrons … that was terrifying in its own way. It meant the Xenos were not goingto respond as they had before. The psychological modeling and tactics that hadbeen engineered during the Xeno war were now invalid. How do they fight thatcombined threat?

He frowned as he tried to game outthe problem. Nothing really came to him. They needed more information.

<<(O)>>

Commander Protector noted hisprinciple’s concern, fear, and frustration. He also understood the underlyingcauses for them and in many ways agreed with the admiral’s emotional state.

He sent a request to CaptainFletcher to see if the ONI AI had anything new of value to help distract theadmiral. The AI responded with a negative after a few moments.

Pity, the AI thought.

<<(O)>>

Vice Admiral Horatio Logan lookedover the production priorities one more time. Ever since he’d taken command ofBuShips, he’d had to contend with a lot of politics, both internal andexternal, while also trying to deal with anticipating the future needs of the fleet.

Politics were the bane of hisexistence it seemed. At lease he didn’t have as many problems to contend withas Sprite did. They saw both internal politics in the navy and external politicswith Congress, but Sprite was being picked on because she was a handpickedreplacement and nepotism was whispered about her and others constantly. Some ofthose who kept the whisper campaign up did so to undermine her credibility. Alot of the attacks came from Bek.

If it bothered the AI, she didn’tshow it as a mortal would. She just kept plugging away at her job. Apparently,she was another person who pushed that the best way to show off a critic was todo the job right so they had little to complain about and therefore looked likean idiot.

He shook his head and focused on hisown problem children. They were legion it seemed.

Internally he had to find a balancebetween the gun club, the carrier club, and the cruiser patrons. It wassometimes a royal pain in the posterior.

There was a fourth group too ofcourse—the folks like him who were into infrastructure. They included theorbital fortress people for some reason, as well as the recon people over atONI.

How they’d been saddled with thespooks was anyone’s guess. He shook his head in disgust.

“Penny for your thoughts?”Lieutenant Beau, his AI, asked.

“Just trying to do the usual. Findbalance where there seemingly isn’t any.” In front of him was a request formfrom a shipyard lobby to build additional ships in Bek.

“You mean find a way to makeeveryone happy?” she asked.

He snorted harshly. “I’m not that deluded,” he scolded. “No matterhow much you give them they’ll always want more.”

“True.”

He sat back and rocked slightly inhis chair for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. “I think the biggestproblem is that we don’t know what we are up against.”

“I thought we did? Xenos? Necrons?”

“Yes, but what does that combineinto? How far along are they? What sort of navy do they have? Force mix?”

“Xenos were nanite based. They grewtheir ships from cruiser grade to major capital ships.”

“Exactly. How long have they been atit? Are they focused on a balanced fleet or something else? Where do theNecrons play into this?”

“Ah. That is a big unknown. I’veseen the debate in some of the forums.”

“Exactly.” Horatio scratched at hisscalp. He had very thin fuzz on top. After a moment, he dropped his hand. “Weneed more intelligence.”

“Agreed. That is Admiral Subert’sshop. Until we get it, we have to go with our best guess.”

“Yeah, I know. I just hate beingwrong.”

“Then don’t be. Focus on balance asyou said, infrastructure so we can pivot and build rapidly when we need to andall of that as far away from the front lines as possible.”

Horatio nodded slowly. She wasright.

“Of course we can let specialists dotheir thing. But I think we need to consider that we can’t produce largecapital ships in quantity anymore.”

He blinked and then his brows knitin inquiry.

“The gate?” she asked helpfully.

Slowly he nodded. Again, she had atelling point. Nothing larger than a monitor could get through the gate. Theywere also ponderously slow in hyperspace. There was therefore no point pushingfor anything larger than a super dreadnought or fleet carrier.

He began to nod to himself slowly.He was starting to agree with the admiral’s decision on the fleet mix. ViceAdmiral Georgi Pashenkov had also emphasized fleet mixes that could easilytransit the gate as fast reaction forces. There was no point building titanships that were slow and couldn’t get to where they were needed in a timelymanner.

“Okay, so, compromise with the gunclub, no big battle wagons thank you. But we will build smaller ones up tosuper dreadnought class. I don’t think we need anything smaller than acruiser.”

“At the moment, we need more lightcruisers for scouting duties,” Beau warned.

Horatio nodded. She was right; therewas a pressing need to find the other hyper bridge connections. “See if Ops cankick a few tin cans to do light scouting duty in behind the scenes locations. Thatmight free up a few.”

“Patrols too?”

“Exactly. Some of the larger tincans should have the legs.”

“Agreed. Should we convert the tincan production lines to cruisers?”

He frowned. “My knee jerk reactionis yes …,” he said slowly and thoughtfully. “But …?”

“But?”

“I don’t think it is the rightreaction,” he said thoughtfully as he rubbed his chin. “We built Meridianson some destroyer size production lines.”

The Meridian class prowlerwas the largest prowler to date with the longest legs. It had been designed tobe able to make the jump between sectors and to live off the land as it scoutedin enemy territory for extended periods of time. It had an antimatter reactoras well as a fusion reactor.

“They are a bit big for them now.ONI actually had us stop production on the Meridian class in favor ofthe newest line,” Beau warned.

Horatio nodded thoughtfully. The newPoltergeistII class of prowlers were smaller thanthe Meridian but had better stealth, speed, and energy abilities. Theyhad been ordered to go to Sigma and Tau and therefore no longer needed to sailbetween the sectors, burning time in transit. They also had stasis pods tosupplement the crew for long voyages.

Horatio rested his elbows on hisdesk as he leaned forward. His fingers knitted together in front of him.

“Okay, memo to Phil, we need to knowif we should produce more of that class if he has the budget, or fall back onthe Meridian since they’ll need to get to Upsilon and Omicron eventually… or should we kick the two designs to R&D and see if they can come up witha hybrid?”

“Good points. If ONI lost the Busand Ops lost the light cruiser division scouting Omicron, what did the enemylearn? How should we adapt to that breach?”

Horatio blinked and then sighed.“You would bring that up,” he growled as he rubbed his brows.

“Where were you thinking aboutproducing them?” Beau asked as she tried to keep him on task.

“Hmm? Oh, we need to produce them insecure lines obviously. We built them all here …”

“Correct,” she prompted. “You are consideringconverting a destroyer line in Pi and Tau? Or combining all of the destroyerlines in each yard to one prowler line?”

“One line for each at the moment,the rest can stay idle. If I remember, the damn Nova Bombs were big mothers.So, we need to start planning on producing those, plus the carrier craft neededto deploy them,” he growled.

“Now that’s a lovely thought,” Beaumurmured as she took additional notes. “I bet the spirits will just lovethat.”

<<(O)>>