Battleship Destroyer (66 page)

Turning around she watched Jack walk down
the passageway talking with the woman as another officer joined them. Suddenly panicking she realized that she had missed watching them when they were alone and what if the bitch had kissed Jack!  She had to stop herself from becoming enraged at what she could imagine they had secretly talked about or done. She probably asked Jack to come to her cabin and frack her as soon as possible the bitch.

Jack and the group he was talking with stepped
through the main hatch from the birthing compartments and headed for the mess.

"Oh god. What am I doing standing here like a stupid little
girl?" She ran into the mess before slowing slightly to rapidly walk to the front of the short line cutting in front of a Lieutenant that looked at her with shock as she grabbed what she wanted shoveling her plate full then turned around and scrapped half her plate onto the Lieutenant's plate behind her then she rushed to a table with a male lieutenant at it and sat down next to him. "Hi. How are you this morning?"

She
watched Jack and his new friends walking up the passageway over the shoulder of the man at the table with her. Jack was spending more time talking to the man while seeming to be polite to the woman as she kept butting in for attention. Turning to smile at the officer across from her, she realized that she was being childish. All her phycology training yelled at her to quit being stupid. That this was just her jealous hormones doing something stupid.

"Sorry lieutenant. I thought you were someone else. Bye." She got up and moved to an empty table
and sat facing away from the hatch and started playing with her food and using the napkin to clean up her face and wipe away her tears. Then sat fighting with every fiber in her being to keep from turning around to look for Jack. Not even to make sure he entered the mess. She just knew that he was going to forget about her and sit alone with that stupid chick but she dared not show concern about it even if he did. Though she fantasized about shooting the masturbating man stealing bitch with her stun gun set on kill or better yet stunning her on high just when she was climaxing in the throes of passion. The over stimulation would probably stop her from ever getting romantic again even with herself.

A year later even if it was only a few minutes, Jack sat down next to her placing his plate down
as the officers he had been talking to sat down in the other chairs. Bighting the inside of her lip until it bled she waited for Jack to make introductions, (fighting the erg to wrap her arms and legs around him and tell him how sorry she was for being so smothering and tying to stupidly explain why, while she smothered him even more). Taking a deep calming breath she said. “Hello.” With as sweet a smile as she could muster. Digging in to her breakfast finally, she ate like she had not eaten in a week as they talked just for something to do trying to calm her nerves. Jack reached over and placed his hand on her leg when they started talking about their Tramp ships and she melted forgetting what they had been talking about or anything else. Knowing only that she did not want him to take his hand away. But not being able to even think until he did.

Then the female Lieutenant placed her hand on Jack's arm with a big smile
as she leaned closer to him breathing into his face. The ensign's phycology training told her it meant nothing to Jack after wringing everything out of him the night before. She doubted if he had any hormones left at the moment. Though it was an obvious attempt for the woman to seduce him and the Ensign's 19 year old female hormones raging deep inside her took over and would not listen to reason. The Lieutenant did not know what hit her.

-------------------

The Rock was lost in an asteroid and gas cloud the
size of a hundred star systems. In another million years or two the nursery would coalesce into dozens of star systems but for now if you did not know the currents of trillions upon trillions of cubic miles of cloud and placement of trillions of trillions of rocks and planetoids it would take you years to cross it and thousands of years to search it. The Republic had used that fact to keep its main Military's control, storage, and supply and construction base hidden from old colonies and alien empires that thought they should rule all of human space. Especially mother Earth. It was working just as well against this new enemy that did not like not knowing what the Republic had hidden in it but dared not or cared not or was simply not ready to move against it until they were sure or ready. Though they had noticed the new battleships coming out of the cloud after following huge transports into it only to lose them in the maelstrom.

The
Republic fleet had been headed for that rock cloud until it had discovered the enemy fleet blockading it. Now they were on a course to the cloud with the enemy fleet on an intercept course trying to catch up and intercept them before they could reach the cloud.  The new enemy had found out from experience that they simply could not follow a ship into the cloud unless they were within a few hours of its tail and could catch it before it got lost. Not knowing the currents and the ever changing path ways through the boiling cloud always resulted in losing their pray along with severe damage to their ships before they could get back out if more than 12 hours had passed. Not that they could not penetrate the cloud but with no idea where the Republic base was, blundering through all the rocks and dust and billions of mines was not worth the cost. They were having to make do with blockading the cloud.

The
scout ship that had found the cloud had followed a steady stream of transports to find that the Humans had some kind of Military Base hidden in it. The scout was very surprised when the Republic's main Battlefleet with hundreds of ships had left the cloud to head for their frontier and the latest planet taken. Once the main fleet had left there was no longer any doubt that it was the human Empires main military base. The scout’s cryptic message about the enemy stationed had brought the small hundred ship fleet there to keep any reinforcements and supplies from joining the human fleet while trying to starve the base out of the cloud with a blockade if they could not readily destroy it. The enemy commander knew that if the humans did manage to mass a big enough fleet to endanger his fleet, all he had to do was out run the stupid backward humans. But the experienced Commander was not worried about anything the humans could do now they had found their main military base. They would starve it out until a large enough fleet could be dispatched to hunt the base down inside the massive cloud.  He just had to be careful to stay away from any traps. The human’s primitive weapons could still harm their ships in desperate attacks.

T
his human fleet approaching from the front was the first fleet to challenge their blockade. Not un expected, what surprised the enemy commander was that the transmissions from the currier ship that had stumbled across the approaching human fleet showed that it was just a bunch of armed transports and posed no threat to their Blockading fleet even though the humans had somehow managed to destroy the lone currier ship in a surprise attack using primitive weapons. Losing a few ships was just normal anytime they had taken a new empire on and thought nothing of it, except that they were going to get to have some fun and glory destroying the Human Transport Fleet. While they waited for the humans to finally send a worthwhile enemy for them to smash. Then was when he expected to lose a few of his valuable ships. But as long as he lost them to a worthwhile enemy in combat and not in accidents like what happened to the currier or destroyed in ambushes in the cloud he would be at the top of the replacement list when the God’s Iron rich stars were finally found and conquered giving the whole Phalanx of fleets back an industrial production base for their sole surviving Factory Star.

-------------------------

The Captain followed Jack as he walked onto the Bridge with the First Officer sitting in the Command chair. "Ok Number One.  Mr. Turner has a successful attack plan to destroy the enemy and get us into the cloud without losing half the fleet. Turn the Conn over to him if you please."

"What? You have to be kidding Captain. You are going to turn our lives over to this kid?" The First Officer turned around to look at the Captain. "Just how the hell is he going to do that?"

"You would not believe it Number One if I just told you. Hell I did not believe it the first dozen runs through but he consistently does it time after time under different circumstances no matter what the enemy fleet does. He says they have made a mistake you could drop a Nova Star through."

The First Officer
got out of the Command chair. "Here, take Command Lieutenant." Moved over to the science station and turned around and smiled at the Captain. "You already know about the enemy ships along the backside of the cloud moving in our direction that our sensor array has found I hope?"

Jack turned to the back of the Commander.
"Yes First Officer. But could you please do a proper turn over briefing please. I have been in The Game for a very long time and may not be up to date."

The First Officer smiled at Jack
as he turned around. "The fleet is decelerating at the old engine's full thrust of 350 Gee's directly for the cloud. We will make it there an hour ahead of the enemy fleet. Not enough time to disappear without sacrificing half the fleet. Could you tell me what your plans are for the fleet Lieutenant and why?"

"What i
s this an inquisition First Officer?" Jack Smiled back as he took the Command Chair. "Just to make sure I understand what you and the other senior officers have come up with to get us into the cloud. I take it that your plan is to stay on this course and let the enemy fleet catch up to use inside the cloud. Defeat the enemy fleet using the fringe of the cloud as cover allowing our squadrons to surround the enemy fleet getting behind their shields. All without revealing to the remaining enemy ships that we are no longer limited in reaction mass range and no longer require tankers and have up graded our guns. Is that correct?"

"Mr. Turner. We have been running our own simulations as well and yes that offers us the best bet for getting as many ships safely into the cloud as possible. We lose the rear guard but most get home to the Rock. Any other entry point farther around the cloud to the Portside that allows us to out run the enemy fleet approaching from our original course from the Starboard side has us being intercepted by enemy pickets. As many as a dozen before we can even get close to the cloud with the pickets following us into the cloud and delaying us allowing the main fleet to catch up to us and inflect even worse damage to the fleet."

"
Did you get more than half of them back to the Rock in any of your simulations First Officer sir?"

"Yes
. The best was 53% of the fleet. But that is the best we could do. Less than half the fleet left behind as rear guard to give the rest time to disappear inside the cloud just resulted in the rest of the enemy fleet blowing past the rear guard and hitting the main fleet anyway and even more losses as the fleet split up going their own ways deeper into the cloud. Unless we use full thrust from these new engines to enter the cloud a full 12 hours ahead of the fleet so we can disappear deep enough into the cloud before they get to it so they can't follow us into it. So how the hell do you think you can do any better?" The First Officer spoke as he studied the plot tank."

"Sorry First Officer
, Mr. Gagnon sir. You would not believe it if I told you which I don't have time right now but I do need our best pilot on the helm sir. Since the Captain won't let me pilot that leaves you if you please."

The First Officer looked at Jack for several seconds then got up and walked to the Pilot's Chair and the Helm. The Ensign took his place at the Science sensor station.

"Very well Mr. Gagnon sir. I have already entered the plot into the Navigation computer. Please follow the new course plot. Mr. Dewarty, please release a full spread of decoys and emitters from each ship using decoy pattern Alpha.  Fleet will go to silent stealth running as soon as the decoys go active."

The
First Officer turned the fleet away from the closest point of entry to head for the cloud about a quarter of the way around the side but instead of decelerating to stop there plunge toward the cloud, they started accelerating adding velocity while decreasing the thrust to half the old engine's power at some 150 Gees. The enemy fleet had just turned around to start their deceleration at their full 300 Gees as they headed toward the original intercept point directly ahead in the middle and closest point of the cloud, going almost twice as fast as the Republic fleet as they were catching up to it.  But now the Republic fleet was zooming off onto a side vector rapidly increasing their distance from the enemy fleet.

"
Lieutenant, that is a stupid move." The First Officer could not believe what he had just done. "Why head for a section of the cloud that has a squadron of picket ships massing? There are none if you head for the middle where we were going. And then to accelerate. We will be going too fast to stop before we enter the cloud Lieutenant."

The Captain shook her head
taking a seat at the back of the bridge behind Jack. "Ensign, tell us the instant the enemy fleet turns to intercept us please." Then turning to the First Officer. "Yes Number One, it is very stupid since everyone knows that we cannot enter the cloud at the speed we will be going at if we continue on to hit the cloud. Even the enemy Commander must know that but he cannot know for sure. The whole plan depends on the Enemy commander taking the bait and trying to intercepting us anyway. But not too soon."