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Grass Eaters | 45 | Celestria III
🕑 Added 2024-04-15 16:47:01 +0000 UTCMNS Oengro
“Does anyone have any questions about this exercise?” Grionc asked, her gaze sweeping over the squadron leaders and the Oengro’s bridge crew.
Predictably, none came.
This time, Sixth Fleet was raiding a Celestrian shipyard that looked suspiciously like what Naval Intelligence thought a Znosian one would look like. It did not seem like a terribly complex operation, but it did require her to split her fleet into two major battlegroups: one that engages and pins the enemy response fleet, and another that launches the main attack. In her experience, any time the Terrans made them practice splitting up her fleet, things would go horribly wrong; she supposed that was the point of these exercises.
Here goes nothing, Grionc thought, I hope the Terrans know what they’re doing.
“I have decided on a discipline policy change for Sixth Fleet. From now on, all questions are encouraged during the briefing meeting,” she announced. “In fact, if you are unclear on any part of the objective, you are required to ask for clarification.”
She scanned the room again.
More silence. No paws went up around the room.
Mark had warned her this would happen. No surprises there.
Grionc continued, “Very well. I’m glad everyone is intimately familiar with the details of the operation. Loenda, since you are leading Battlegroup 2 against the enemy response fleet, you are responsible for conducting a backbrief of how you plan to command your battlegroup.”
“A backbrief?” the squadron leader repeated the unfamiliar phrase, her puzzled expression matched by several others at the table.
Grionc grinned at her. “Yes, a backbrief. You will put together a briefing, much like the one I just gave you, where you explain to me all aspects of the operation relating to your battlegroup’s responsibilities. Make sure to include contingencies. I’ll give you hmm… half an hour to consult with your subordinates and get the details ready. And to be fair to you, I’ll warn you right now that I plan to have plenty of questions that you should be prepared to answer for me.”
Turning to the other officers in the room, she added, “And all of you should pay attention when she gives the backbrief.”
Grionc saw horror dawning on some of their expressions, like cubs at school caught daydreaming instead of paying attention in class. She continued, “Because you will all also be giving a backbrief of your parts in the mission to her or your superior later.”
---
“What if the enemy response fleet runs away?” Grionc asked, genuinely curious. It was not a contingency she thought about before. It came to her while Loenda was preparing for her backbrief.
“Then we… hmmm,” Loenda stumbled, scratching her snout. “What should we do if they run away, High Fleet Commander?”
Grionc leaned forward, eager. “Let’s work through it. What is the objective of the shipyard attack?”
“Surely it’s to take out their orbital production facilities near Celestria IV?” Loenda tilted her head, thinking.
Grionc nodded. “That’s right. And what is the objective of your battlegroup?”
“Our battlegroup’s objective… it’s to keep the response fleet pinned and busy while your main battlegroup accomplishes that objective?”
“Right again. In that context, what should your battlegroup do if the enemy response fleet starts to flee battle?”
Her mind racing, Loenda thought of how best to reply without making it seem like she had no clue what she was doing.
Speinfoent chimed in to save her, “As we discussed earlier for another contingency, we could keep Battlegroup 2 between the enemy and the shipyard. Then we can take a course to harass them as best we can without committing the battlegroup into any potentially dangerous fight.”
Grionc digested the recommendation and tapped an entry into her datapad. “Not a bad idea, Loenda. The main battlegroup should have a similar contingency too. Vastae, come up with a withdrawal response plan for us too later.”
Loenda said nothing but shot Speinfoent a short nod of appreciation.
Grionc did not let up. “Next question: say your battlegroup loses communication with the rest of the fleet attacking the shipyard, what do you do?”
Loenda furrowed her brow. This had not come up either. She tried to clarify, “How do we notice this loss of communication?”
Grionc looked at her in surprise, raising an eyebrow. “That’s… a good question. Would you notice?”
“I suppose not. I guess our battlegroups should designate a ship to keep constant communication—”
“Yes, we should. Vastae, put that on the to-do list too. Back to the original question, say we haven’t reported in, what is your course of action?”
Loenda replied, “In that case, the worst thing that might have happened is your battlegroup might have failed your objective and gotten destroyed. We should try to figure out what happened. We can observe if there’s a lot of debris near the shipyard.”
“What if all your sensors see are escape pods?”
The squadron leader took her time, but she came to the conclusion that Grionc had hoped she might. “At that point, it seems like the objective of the raid has failed. Given that your battlegroup was more prepared for the shipyard raid and failed anyway, there would be nothing else our battlegroup can do except throw more ships away at an objective we can’t complete. We should pick up the lifepods we can, disengage, and get to the system limit for retreat.”
Grionc smiled. “Good. It’s a shipyard raid, not a cage fight to the death.”
“A cage fight, High Fleet Commander?” Loenda asked, confused.
“It’s a term from a combat sport— Never mind, Loenda. Better if you don’t know.”
---
MNS Trassau
“Keep us on full speed, bearing away from the enemy shipyard and keep up the missile volleys to pressure the enemy,” Loenda ordered as another ship in Squadron 8 took a hit in the engines and fell behind. There was nothing they could do for the disabled ship, and she had to remind herself once again that this was a simulated exercise despite the realistic fidelity of the advanced alien computers.
At least the main attack on the shipyard seemed to be going well. According to the regular reports from the communication station, the attacking battlegroup had taken the two main construction docks and were now clearing the supporting infrastructure of enemy ships hiding in their line-of-sight shadows.
Speinfoent noticed a few dots on the radar chart. Tapping away at his console, he confirmed his suspicions in a few moments. “Squadron Leader, hallway?”
When they’d exited the bridge into the hallway, Loenda asked briskly — but not rudely, “What is it, Gamma Leader?”
“From radar recordings, it looks like several of the enemy logistics ships played dead with the rest of their destroyed shipyard fleet and snuck out from their area of operations. They’re drifting out towards the system limit. I noticed they were making micro adjustments to their flight path, which means they probably still have enough power to blink out when they get there. They are in our missile envelope now and we can wipe them all out if we expend a full volley at them.”
Loenda took a deep breath and looked at him thoughtfully. “Are you sure?”
“I am certain. These adjustments to their trajectory are not random. They are putting as much distance between our two battlegroups as possible,” he asserted, showing her the trajectory calculations on his datapad and putting all his confidence behind his voice.
She looked at it dubiously but relented. “Fine, we’ll do it your way. Radio the High Fleet Commander about the situation and ask for orders.”
“Why can we not just open fire, they are right there in—” Then, looking at her expression, he decided not to push his luck. “Yes, Squadron Leader. Of course we’ll get permission from the High Fleet Commander first.”
Back on the bridge, he relayed the orders to the communications station.
The immediate reply was not helpful. “Sir, the main battlegroup is heavily engaged in battle, and the high fleet commander is not available.”
“Not available?” Speinfoent tried to clarify, “What’s going on over there?”
“It seems like the Oengro was hit, Gamma Leader. She must be busy with damage control.”
“First of all, don’t assume. Ask. And tell them this is urgent. We only have a small window of time before these logistics ships get out of our optimal firing envelope.”
“Yes, Captain.”
It took another ten minutes to find someone who reached Grionc, who got on the radio personally. The communication was spotty. It appeared that the hit damaged the Oengro’s communications array, exactly as the communication officer speculated. “Battlegroup 2… are you still in a position… fire on those ships?”
Speinfoent replied immediately, “High Fleet Commander, they’re at the edge of our missile envelope. Do we have permission to open fire?”
“Fire everything… those drifting ships. We believe… enemy sector governor and VIPs… on board one of those ships. Is that clear?”
“Ten-four.”
Speinfoent looked up at Loenda who, to her credit, did not hesitate a second. “You heard what the high fleet commander ordered,” she bellowed at the tactical officer’s station. “Target those fleeing vermin and fire everything!”
The fleeing enemy “Celestrian” ships saw the incoming missiles, realized their ruse was up, and scattered: they immediately started burning for the system blink limit at full power. Because of the delay, most of them had already drifted past Battlegroup 2’s optimal envelope. Nonetheless, they were still mostly in range, and many were unarmed logistics ships without effective defenses. Battlegroup 2’s missiles found their marks, plucking at least three quarters of the logistics ships off the sensor screen in a single volley before the remainder fled out of range.
A few hours later, the remainder few made it to the system limit and jumped out hastily. Unfortunately, the enemy sector governor and a few of his military advisors made it out on one of those ships: a minor blemish on an otherwise successful exercise.
---
“Gamma Leader, you know these Terrans personally. How do they come up with these nonsensical exercises?” Loenda grumbled at Speinfoent as they sat down for their third exercise in four days.
“They take recordings of our historical battles and try to do better than we did, or some variation of that nature.”
“I’m guessing we didn’t do so well in the history part of it?”
“No, we didn’t. Usually there is Grass Eater trickery involved. But I still haven’t figured out their twist in this next exercise,” he admitted.
“Seems like another standard raid to me. Not much room for complexity — none that we haven’t faced before… right?”
“I’m sure our alien friends have something up their sleeves again. They always do.”
Minutes later, the navigation officer frowned and reported, “Urgent message. This is from the simulation authority… it says: there was a serious case of food poisoning at the command banquet last night. All commanders with the rank of beta leader and up are incapacitated. You have one minute to appoint someone to replace you. After that, remove yourself to the medical bay for the remainder of this exercise. No exceptions.”
“Looks like we’ve just found out what the grass-eating twist is,” Loenda scowled.
Without a second thought, she made her way towards the bridge exit. “Gamma Leader Speinfoent, you are in charge of my battlegroup. Don’t screw this up.”
---
Atlas, Luna
“And what is your opinion? Are they ready?”
Amelia looked up from her notes towards the dais towards the questioner, the elderly Senator Blake Wald, member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and former pacifist. “Are they ready for what, sir?”
“There’s no need to waffle on us now, Vice Admiral. This is a top-secret briefing. Speak your mind.”
She replied, “It depends on what you mean by ready, Senator. No, they are not fully ready. They will never be fully ready, especially when we haven’t trained any of them at the Staff College ourselves. What they are is more ready than they were yesterday but less ready than they would be if they had another day of training and exercises. If the question is whether they are ready enough for War Plan Anaconda to succeed? Are they ready enough for me to put my people’s life in their hands? Yeah. I believe so, and these latest exercises make that clear. We need to double-check their work from time to time, but they perform more or less up to spec.”
“I see,” he said, “We’ve addressed the command issues from the last briefing?”
“Director Mark from the TRO is working with them on site. That’s why he’s not here for this,” she gestured at Kara sitting next to her. “Since Sixth Fleet started the latest round of exercises, we’ve seen far better communication and coordination up and down their chain of command. Cultural changes are hard because they require people to think differently, but with the full buy-in of their fleet commander, what we are seeing is far more rapid than we anticipated at first.”
“This is just the Sixth Fleet, right?”
“Affirmative, Senator. When we started, the initial goal was to train up a smaller fleet capable of offensive action while holding the line everywhere else.”
“And have we done that? Hold the line? Come to think of it, you guys don’t seem to talk a whole lot about the other parts of the war than Sixth Fleet. They’re not losing on the other fronts, are they?”
She shook her head. “Negative, Senator. The Bun— the Znosians have a structured, almost predictable, grand strategy. They invade, taking the systems one by one almost in sequence. Datsot is where our focus is because that is also where their focus is right now. They have launched a couple other raids and smaller scale attacks in other regions of Federation space. There was a bait we warned the Malgeir about last month, and luckily someone over there heeded it. A pessimist would say we are not winning just yet, but I like to think that we’ve stopped the bleeding.”
Senator Wald coughed. “Good, I just want to make sure that… incidents like the one in McMurdo don’t catch us off guard again. The public loves flashy victories, but we can’t take more risks like that, as I’m sure you are aware, Vice Admiral. How are the Znosians responding to that by the way, Operative?”
Kara saw the last question directed at her and spoke up. “There have been a few ships sniffing around in McMurdo, but so far we don’t think they’ve found anything yet. They are taking it more seriously than we initially anticipated; we now assess with high confidence that a State Security agent is involved in the investigation. Her name is Svatken. Our analysts have compiled a dossier for you.”
“State Security, huh?”
“Yes, Senator. That’s what we call the internal security organization responsible for most of their most horrific abuses. The literal translated full name is Head Office for the Directorate of State Security, Ideological Purity, and Population Control.”
Senator Wald winced. “State Security will be fine, Operative.”
“Yes, Senator. The agent we think is investigating the McMurdo Incident has a particularly colorful track record. She specializes in apostasy investigations, which is just their fancy religious way of saying, treason and other high crimes against the state.”
The Senator looked down at the files in front of him. “Yeah, her name is beginning to sound familiar with that context. A real piece of work, I gather. Should we be worried, eh?”
“Not… yet. If they stick around for a while, she might eventually find something interesting in McMurdo, but their attention is mostly focused on Datsot nearby. And if she does get a little too close to the truth… well, she is very close to the frontlines, and accidents happen out here all the time. For now, we believe it’s more convenient to keep her around.”
“Good, good. Seems like if they’re the Big Bad, is there anything else we should be doing to disrupt this State Security organization as a whole?” the Senator looked at Amelia.
The admiral answered with a thin smile, “We are, Senator. We stop the bad guys by winning the war. And we intend to do exactly that.”
---
MNS Oengro
“How do you like chaos now?” Grionc teased Mark in the privacy of his guest suite with saved-up smugness.
“It was crafty,” he admitted. “Your commanders saw right through the Opfor ambush. That was indeed the point of the exercise.”
“We brainstormed that exact contingency in the briefing and Squadron 10 reacted instantly,” she boasted, a hint of pride in her voice. “Without needing my orders or asking permission if I may add. When the Znosians try that trick in battle in the future, they’re not going to live long enough to regret it.”
“They actually have. Tried it, I mean,” Mark revealed.
“They— You mean this is an ambush scenario they’ve pulled—” Grionc rolled her eyes. “Of course, they did. I’m guessing we didn’t react well then?”
“Yeah, one of the Granti’s early war raids. Didn’t end too well for them. We just adopted it for this scenario. As your fleet showed in this exercise, being surprised doesn’t mean you should just turn off your brains and decide to go out in a blaze of glory, which seems to be the typical instinct for your bloodthirsty commanders.”
She grinned at the playful jab. “Ouch. But fair is fair… Grass Eater. I did read your manuals, as did my commanders. As your people say, we can’t afford to be wasteful with our ships and people at this point in the war.”
“Good. Because our next one for you isn’t just an exercise. We know your people are eager for action—”
Grionc’s eyes widened. “Are we doing one for real now?”
“We are soon. We’ve been approved for our first joint-op. The first official one, anyway.”
“What’s our target?”
“Are you aware of a system named Preirsput?”
Grionc racked her brain for a moment before recalling that particular Malgeirish name in her brain. “Actually, I think I might be. That’s a few blinks away from Datsot, right?”
“Three blinks, to be precise. Which is right about the range we want it to be. Anyway, here are the parameters,” Mark said, pulling up the data on his tablet.
“More exercises?” Grionc grinned, reading off the screen.
“Kind of. These are technically not exercises in the nomenclature. These are what we call rehearsals.”
“Rehearsals? Like for a state dinner or ceremony?” she asked.
He nodded. “Exactly like rehearsals for a ceremony. Everyone wears their best dresses and suits. We set up the scenario, and we run it repeatedly with a little variation each time until we get it right every time.”
Grionc skimmed over the summary section. “I’ve been to a lot of those ceremony rehearsals, Mark. This one sounds a lot more fun.”
---
MNS Trassau
“Why don’t you take command of this one, Gamma Leader,” Loenda said. “After all, this is a rehearsal for the real operation we are conducting, and you will be in command of the Trassau then too.”
“I will?!”
“Yes, after all, I should not be distracted from managing the battlegroup, should I?”
Speinfoent pretended not to see the smile on her wrinkled face as he brought up the scenario on his console.
And Loenda pretended not to see the beaming pride on his.
Comments
Spooker
Certainly! I’ve read the first few honorverse books. And yeah this particular arc is probably closest to that. :)
NorkNork
Good stuff. Spooker, has your story been influenced by David Weber's Honor Harrington series?
