Dark Fate, Chapter 81 (Patreon)

Book 8 and Omnibus 2 will be heading to Amazon today. Should be available for sale sometime this weekend.

Chapter 81 – Organization

After my initial recruitment spiel, I was happy to have enough two-man teams for a full squadron of twenty-four torpedo boats, not just the light squadron of twelve I was hoping for. I took them all, because while I only had twelve torpedo boats being built right now, that didn’t mean I had to stop when I was at twelve. If I could get a full squadron of twenty-four of the things in space, that would give me enough firepower to make even the true stellar navies take notice, at least in small engagements. Or, I could have the next twenty-four be fighter pilots, instead of torpedo boat crews.

Each Renegade-class Light Attack Craft was designed for two people, a pilot and a gunner, with room for an engineer to act as a third, to act as an engineer, if necessary, though space would be tight. The crew quarters, including the cockpit, were only barely larger than a studio apartment. But it was set up to be inhabited, allowing for extended patrols, if needed. They weren’t comfortable, by Earth standards, but they beat the hell out of living in a flight suit the whole time, and they had gravity plates, so people wouldn’t be worrying about having to relearn basic tasks in zero g. I was already having them learn enough, after all.

Organizing the squadron was relatively simple, thanks to the help of my new trainer, Kayden Sutton, callsign Reaper. He was a trainer for e-sports organizations back before the Apocalypse, so I put him to work as my go-to guy for training the new crews up, and getting them into fighting shape, as quickly as possible. His first suggestion was to throw everyone into a simulator, and see who had the natural skills.

I liked the idea, so I ordered simulators from the System Shop. The actual rig was taken from some alien entertainment system, that provided full VR experiences. I didn’t pretend to know the magic or science behind it, but I did know that, once you put the helmet on, you actually saw and felt things like you were in the simulation.

The coolest thing was that there was a program already made for this kind of deal. It was a military training program, but had been leaked to the System. All I needed to do was supply ship parameters, and it did the rest. Which was good, because I wanted my crews up to speed now, not once I found someone who could develop the software I needed, and then delivered a couple years down the line.

The initial simulations were ‘battle royale’ style setups, with random partners. There were several rounds of this, with each of the ‘players’ getting a chance to pilot and take the gunner’s chair, and team up with different partners. We didn’t run enough sims so that everyone teamed up with everyone else, of course, because it quickly became apparent that some people were better suited for the pilot’s seat, and some were better off as gunners.

Skill sets also started to become apparent as we moved into the second phase, where six teams of four ships would fight each other. Some players were better dogfighters, and had a knack for coming out of the furball on top. Others were naturals at formation flying, working together to herd their prey. And still others proved to be tricky bastards, using environmental conditions to tilt the battle in their favor.

Through this process, leaders naturally started to emerge. People began to naturally band together with those they deemed the best fit, or who proved their worth. Teams began to form, not just between pilots and gunners, but between flights of torpedo boats.

Two weeks into the training schedule, Ran Samiess, the Starship Designer that had come up with the Renegade-class, offered up a starfighter design. That was good, because while the Renegades were good for system patrol, and dealing with large ships, I was concerned about their ability to deal with fighters. They just didn’t have the speed and maneuverability to outfly a starfighter, and their weapons, other than the torpedoes, were only ‘adequate’ at point defense.

Thankfully, the genius had come up with something that was relatively simple, and with the fabrication of internal components for all twelve Renegades already finished, the manufacturing station could start on that immediately, while the shipyard finished building the Renegades. Of course, that presented me with a problem of selecting who would go where. Which is why Sutton was now in my ‘office’, which was a nice study at the ‘bait house’ where we’d captured the first pirate ship, looking at the schematics with me.

“So, that’s the deal. We have a starfighter design now, but actually building them is going to be a couple months down the road. If we want the pilots even remotely trained, they’re going to have to drop out of the Renegade sims now, and start working on the Hunter sims.”

Sutton frowned as he leaned back in his chair. “I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know anything about spaceship design, but isn’t that a little quick? Not just the design, but the production. This isn’t like the Renegades, which are mostly ‘off the shelf’ components put together on a custom frame, right? This is an entirely new design. Are these things going to be safe?”

I sighed. “Honestly? We won’t know for certain until we have someone do an actual test flight. We’ll try and get everything looking good on paper before that, but sometimes flaws aren’t found until they actually get a stress test, to see what breaks. However, the actual design is based on several existing designs, and the production is fast because, well, magic alien space fabricators. Between the fabricator station and the shipyard, we can have the squadron built in a month, if we can keep them supplied with materials.”

Sutton nodded slowly. He may have been a gamer, but when you play military-themed games, it sometimes pays to know about actual military matters. The idea of being able to build fighters at a rate of just under one a day was astounding, since even with dedicated supply chains and all the might of a major defense contractor, Lockheed only averaged one F-35 every four days. It took 40,000 man hours to make a single one! And here they were talking about twenty-four fighters done in about 36,000 man (or alien) hours!

He took a breath “All right. So, what kind of birds are they? That’ll make a difference in choosing who to tap for the fighters.”

“Single-seat ships. Not exactly stealth-rated, but they’re small. An F-35 clocks in at 15.6 meters long, wingspan of 10.7 meters. These Hunters are 10 meters long, and 5 meters wide. Weapons include quad-linked infinite energy repeaters, which are basically blasters that don’t run out of ammo so long as the ship has power, and an internal weapon bay that can hold two ship-killer torpedoes, or eight anti-fighter missiles. They have some basic shields, which should improve their survivability. Flight time without refueling or external tanks is twenty-four hours, though high-speed maneuvers can drop that time dramatically. At minimal power, life support can run for up to 168 hours.”

Sutton nodded. “With that kind of setup, do they even have FTL?”

“Short-range only. Well, nothing stopping you from going longer, except for fuel concerns. Their FTL is basically a sedate 5c, or five times light-speed. That gets you from the sun to Pluto in a bit over an hour, which is really freaking cool, but it still means getting to Alpha Centauri, the closest star, would take a year. Sure, the ship uses less fuel while in FTL than when flying in ‘realspace’, but still, that’s a long time for someone to be sitting in a cockpit.”

The trainer winced. “Yeah, I can see that. So, their speed and maneuverability, in and out of atmosphere?”

“About Mach 3 in atmosphere. The Blackbird outpaces them, but it also has a turn radius of five hundred feet, rather than one hundred miles, thanks to inertial dampeners and gravitic controls. So, they can pretty much stomp anything on Earth.

“In space? Well, the math says that without FTL they could get from Ceres to Earth in about eighty minutes, putting their top speed at just under .2c, but they’d be redlining the engines the whole way to do that, and I’d hate to see what it would do to their fuel reserves. Not sure about the turn radius or the like, yet.”

Sutton nodded. “Then they sound like interceptors. Even with ship-killers, they’d have to get lucky, like the bomber that sank the Bismarck in WW2, or a flyboy hitting the exhaust port.” He smirked at me.

I smirked back, as I looked at the proposed design, with its two wings that separated into four when it was ready to attack. “You noticed it, too, huh? I probably shouldn’t have let the designers watch human sci-fi, but it seemed like a great way to inspire them to design something humans would recognize as their own. They were a little on the nose, I think.”

“And the AI to run basic repairs and navigational computations? You can call them ‘Hunters’ all you like, but there isn’t anyone, especially in this group, that will call them that, I assure you.”

I laughed at that. Honestly, I had a hard time calling them Hunters, too. “Fine, officially, they will be the Mk 1 Hunter, X-Pattern starfighter. If people call them X-wings, that’s beyond my control.”

Sutton laughed, but quickly settled back down. “All right. So, we have to separate the two groups somehow. My first inclination is to sort by personality type. The Renegades are effectively bombers, and need to work as a team to be effective. The X-wings are fighters, and can be deadly on their own, or as part of a team, but aren’t likely to be dangerous against ships, not directly.”

“Pretty much.”

“In that case, I’d say we sort the hotshots into the fighter squadron, and the team players into the bombers. We can pair hotshots who have worked well with certain partners as wingmen, since they already have that kind of communication.”

“Right,” I nodded. “That just leaves the issue of command, doesn’t it?”

“That issue is easy enough to solve. You have two tournaments, one for the bombers, and one for the fighters. They’re gamers, that’s something they can easily understand, and respect. So, top pilot in both groups is the squadron leader, runner up is their XO.”

“Just the pilots? What about the gunners on the bombers?”

“Yeah, just the pilots. Gunners are a big part of success to the bomber pilot, but in the end, it still all relies on the pilot. They’re the ones everyone else is going to credit, or blame, at the end of the day.”

“Fair enough. Hopefully, by the time the fighters are ready, the Ceres base will be operational. I have to go talk to some people about recruiting staff, especially techs to keep the fighters and bombers flying.”

“I’m afraid going to gamers won’t work, there.”

“Hah! Yeah, I’m sure. No, I was actually thinking about something a little different. I’m going to go check and see if any ex-military guys are looking for action. Carrier guys, especially, or Marine and Air Force ground crews. People who have actual experience running fighter operations from the tech side.”

“You do know that if you go around asking those types of people questions like that, eventually SOMEONE in the Alphabet Soup is going to notice, and then they’re going to send people in black vans to ‘invite’ you to answer some questions of their own, right?”

“Well, that would make things a bit inconvenient, sure. But it isn’t anything I can’t handle. The authority of the ABC mafia only extends to their little slice of the Earth. Once we’re able to move things to Ceres, well, things get a lot simpler. And even on Earth, well, they’re welcome to try and taking my homes, but that isn’t going to go well for them, unless they bring a literal army. Black bag boys aren’t the only ones who can make people disappear.”

Sutton blinked, surprised, and then understanding dawned on him. “The dungeon, right?”

I grinned. “Yeah, that dungeon I’ve had all of you run through, to try and get you some experience and make sure you all aren’t going to freeze up the first time that things get real. Does a great job of getting rid of unwanted bodies.”

“You really are like some kind of dark lord, aren’t you?”

Offering a simple shrug, I said, “I am what this new world has made me.” Looking back at him, I said, “But let’s talk about the tournament.”