Tales from the Service: The Fear of Rookies

2953-08-13 – Tales from the Service: The Fear of Rookies 

Isha Nagarkar spent a few pleasurable minutes reminiscing about EVA jaunts with her father and his employees. She’d helped him pull valuable parts off hulls on the scrap-line from the age of eight until the day she’d departed for the Naval Academy. Her mother had kept an eye on them and the other employees from inside a utility runabout, ready to swoop in to grab an escaping component or a tumbling salvage worker in an instant. They were probably still at it, breaking up superannuated hulks for the few worthwhile components they contained, then sending the rest off to the smelters. 

Her suit’s HUD began winking an alert – her homing beacon had woken up and begun to broadcast, receiving a broadcast from one of Trafalgar’s recovery launches. It seemed too early still to be picked up, but perhaps the carrier’s officers had sensed disaster and launched the rescue units early in the action, so they’d be on scene sooner than normal. 

A few moments later, a flat-text message appeared on her HUD: “PICKUP ETA 01:05:15:00.” This, when she compared it to the chronometer on the other side of the display, turned out to be about ten minutes in the future. Isha sighed. Break time was almost over. Next time, she didn’t intend on having her ride shot out from under her so easily. Incarnation Coronachs were more nimble than she’d expected, but next time, she’d be ready. 

Isha turned back up her radio volume, only to find her gunners already talking. “... going to get us soon, Blackwood.” Rios was saying, frustration mixed with worry in his voice. “Calm down, take a deep breath.” 

“I’ll make it. I’ll make it.” Blackwood’s voice had gone up an octave. “Just a few minutes.” 

Isha turned on her microphone. “It’s just a bit of agoraphobia, Blackwood. You’ll be fine. The suit has a sedative dispenser, if you just-” 

Blackwood wasn’t listening, though. He started to ramble off, apparently to himself, about the various safety interlocks of his pressure-sealed flight suit, as if reminding himself that he was not dying.  

Isha, checking his suit’s status panel, assured herself that Blackwood wasn’t actually trying to meddle with the seals or the air system as he rambled on, then paid him no mind. He’d be out of commission for days after this, and it would be a miracle if he passed the psych eval to be re-certified for flight duty. The squadron would have to promote one of the reserve crew into his place, at least temporarily. 

“That recovery ship can’t get here soon enough.” Rios, evidently having muted Blackwood on his end, grumbled. 

“We’re all alive and nobody’s bleeding into his suit.” Isha reminded her colleague. “As rig losses go, it could be far worse.” 

“Aye.” Rios nearly snarled the word. “But I’d prefer to have lost a leg over Blackwood losing his mind.” 

Isha winced, and switched her radio to transmit only to Rios. “He’ll be fine after the medicos are done with him. But they’ll probably send him home.” 

Rios only grunted. Most likely he’d come to the same conclusion. 

The recovery launch arrived on scene almost a full minute ahead of schedule. Because of its angle of approach, Isha was the first to receive notice of her imminent pickup. That was far from ideal, but she didn’t complain. She could help Blackwood calm down – he was still babbling to nobody on an open channel – when he was picked up a minute or so later. 

A moving star grew in Isha’s view into a slate-gray box ablaze on all sides with light. At first, it approached worryingly fast, but it slowed down until it was about to pass her at only a few meters per second. A  web of hooked cables swung outward  on both sides of its rectangular hull. Isha used most of her suit thrusters’ remaining reaction mass to orient herself for the most comfortable pickup possible, then exhaled just as she’d been trained as the net caught her. 

Already, the launch was accelerating; Isha pulled herself along the net until she reached the airlock alcove, but waited there. “Rios, Blackwood, I’ve been picked up. See you both in a few.” 

Blackwood, fortunately, got his turn next. The gunner’s voice had petered out into a wordless, high pitched whining by this point, and he made no attempt to cooperate with his own recovery. The net caught him almost head-on, and as the launch accelerated, he twisted in it until he was hopelessly stuck. Only then did he begin to flail and thrash against it. Isha, with a groan, attached herself to one of the lifelines next to the airlock, then clambered out along the net to reach her. The recovery crew would probably prefer to leave him there until they’d made all their pickups, and she simply couldn’t allow that. 

“Blackwood. Calm down.” Isha tried to sound soothing as she approached him. “We’re in the recovery net. You’re safe.” 

His thrashing slowed somewhat. “It’s a bad dream, Nagarkar.” He whimpered. "Tell me it’s a bad dream.” 

“It isn’t.” Isha inched closer to him, trying to get within his helmet’s line of sight. “But it’s almost over. Let me help you get to the airlock.” 

Blackwood twisted feebly as if to comply, but by this time he was so tangled in the lines and so disoriented that he could hardly move. Isha hesitantly got within arm’s reach and started to uncoil him. 

While it is uncommon among lifelong spacers, agoraphobia is a real threat to the safety of Navy personnel of all stations, especially those assigned to strike operations. Normally, extensive testing to detect this tendency in all enlistees prevents any serious incidents, but in rare cases, combat stress can trigger the reaction that would not be present.  

Most likely, throwing rookies into deadly combat was an extreme stress for the individual in this account, and my quick research indicates that he was withdrawn from launch duties and reassigned to shipboard duties after recovering from this episode. 

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Tales from the Service: The Bad Luck of Rookies

2953-08-06 – Tales from the Service: The Bad Luck of Rookies 

While it is only too common military suspicion that the greenest member of any unit is usually the first to get hit, it is a lesser known but also widely belived pseudo-certainty that the missions that go wrong the most often are those described as the most routine. 

These are, statistically speaking, only artifacts of human confirmation bias, but such superstitions have plagued military service across the centuries. 

One of our recent submissions is at the critical nexus of both of these beliefs – the greenest squadron in the fleet being sent to cut their teeth on the most routine live-fire mission anyone could think of. The results – abject disaster – will be predictable to every Navy officer and rating in the fleet. Statistically speaking, this sort of surprise is uncommon. Most green units are put through several low intensity live fire missions before they are trusted with properly dangerous work. 

Unfortunately, statistics only go so far. When you spin the randomizer enough times, it’s going to come up with the improbable values once in a while. This is the story of a few strike crew who happened to be there when the improbable but widely anticipated result happened. 

Isha Nagarkar’s first combat operation was supposed to be routine. It wasn’t supposed to be the sort of op likely to result in gunship losses. Unfortunately, that hadn’t proved to be the case. 

She should have been concerned when the briefing materials had stressed the simplicity and low anticipated opposition of the mission. Most of her freshly formed squadron, was totally green, except for the officers, so command had put them on low intensity in-system patrols at Sagittarius Gate to get comfortable with their brand-new off the line Magpie 2-E gunships. 

They’d been familiarizing only a couple weeks when transfer orders had their whole outfit moved off their home orbital installation and onto Trafalgar, replacing a veteran squadron that had been in the line so long they were still using Magpie 1-Bs. The carrier was a prestigious posting for a new squadron, even though its decades-old hangar was barely large enough to operate Magpies. With that ship, they were certain to meet the enemy soon. 

Soon had turned out to be a little less than a month into operating from Trafalgar. There had been several readiness alerts before that, hours and hours of nervous waiting or fitful dozing in the ready-room waiting to be scrambled. When the real thing came, though, it was a simple hit and run raid on a small listening post in a nameless, planet-less star system a few dozen ly from Sagittarius Gate. 

Such outposts, unmanned or manned by only a handful of spacers, were, at least according to the briefing, rarely well defended; there was no point in investing valuable point defense batteries, big guns, targeting systems, squadrons, and all the personnel to crew them into such posts which could never be reinforced or relieved in time. Stealth and rapidity of deployment was the main shield of the enemy’s forward listening posts; for every one Seventh Fleet detected and extirpated, two or three went undetected, quietly monitoring star drive activity in the area and even deploying star-drive equipped scout drones to monitor activity in Sagittarius Gate itself. 

Unfortunately, this one had been somewhat better defended than usual. Point defense lasers had flashed out as soon as the squadron was committed to its first strafing run, and a half-dozen Coronach interceptors had appeared out of nowhere as they circled around for another pass, two of their number already damaged. 

A full squadron of  twelve new Magpies, even with the greenest of crews, would have normally been able to fend off such a weak counterattack relatively easily, but almost the moment the turret railguns had begun buzzing, one of the damaged Magpies had exploded, when the Coronachs were still not close enough to use their plasma lances. 

Isha never heard their other attacker identified. Its second shot cripped another Magpie, and its third had torn the guts out of hers. There had been a shriek of tearing metal, then a flash, and then the gunship had ejected its three crew. Rather than exploding, it tumbled powerless, its shattered innards glowing cherry red. Isha had a good view of it for several minutes before it dwindled into the darkness. 

The battle moved past the trio rather quickly, leaving them in silence. Their flight suit radios had the range to talk to each other, and enough of both computing power and thruster reaction mass to keep them from drifting apart, but beyond that, all they could do was leave their beacons on and hope one of the rescue cutters from Trafalgar would be along to get them shortly. They’d all heard the veterans muttering about Incarnation ships also knowing how to follow these beacons to pick up stranded pilots, but hopefully there wasn’t much chance of that in a battle for such a remote outpost. 

Theoretically, every strike crewman was tested for agoraphobia. Isha, who’d spent her young adulthood before the war in and out of an EVA suit working for her father’s shipbreaking firm, was not particularly unnerved by the cold black in all directions, but Blackwood, her portside gunner, was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and his increasingly frantic tone over the comms circuit were beginning to grate on Isha’s nerves, and on the nerves of the starboard gunner, Rios. 

“Are you sure we’ve got two days of air?” Blackwood’s voice quavered. “I've only got one spare atmo cartridge. Aren’t I supposed to have two?” 

“Blackwood, the new suits use a larger cartridge. Each one is good for 24 hours.” Rios’s low bass carried a warning tone. “So you have one in the slot, and one spare in your ejection harness.” 

“But what if one of them is bad? Sometimes they aren’t-” 

“Then you still have at least one full day. And if we’re going to be picked up, it’ll be a lot sooner than that.” Isha sighed, though after disengaging her pickup, trying to remember that not everyone had been a spacer before joining the service. “Just relax and enjoy the view. You’ll never see the stars better, unless we lose another ship.” 

 The big black was, in its own way, beautiful. Isha still remembered what it had been like to go out with her father that first time, at only six years old, to drift to the end of their tether and stargaze. The starfield had lost some of its wonder for her since then, but none of its primeval beauty. Every moment, her eyes seemed to pick out a colorful cluster or a haze of nebula she hadn’t seen before, fading in dimmer and dimmer ranks back into the vast distances of the Sagittarius Arm. 

“What if we aren’t picked up?” 

“Then all that hyperventilating you’re doing is going to ensure you’re the first one of us to suffocate.”  

Rios’s observation, though technically true, was rather unkind, and he probably knew that when he said it. Blackwood’s voice went up an octave, and he started rambling on about how unreasonable it was to expect pilots to just sit and wait to be picked up, and how the Navy really should have a better solution for the crew of destroyed strike rigs that didn’t leave so much to chance. 

What exactly the engineers could do to make someone like Blackstone comfortable with ejecting from a stricken craft, was not explained. Isha didn’t bother to speculate, since it was clear her compatriot wasn’t actually thinking, he was just whining. With a sigh, she used a puff of her suit thrusters to rotate herself a little bit to see a new swath of stars, and then turned down the radio volume. 

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Tales from the Service: A View From Headquarters, Part 14

2953-07-30 – Tales from the Service: A View From Headquarters, Part 14 

This is another excerpt of the interview conducted in-person aboard the battleship Philadelphia in the Sagittarius Gate system on 19 July. 

D.L.C. - Duncan Chaudhri is a junior editor and wartime head field reporter for Cosmic Background.       

N.T.B. - Nojus Brand is a long-time explorer, datasphere personality, and wartime field reporter for Cosmic Background.      

K.T.K. - Captain Kenneth Kempf is the Naval Intelligence attaché to Seventh Fleet commander Admiral Shun Abarca.    

S.R.A. - Admiral Shun R. Abarca is the commander of Seventh Fleet. 

[D.L.C.] - Late last year we discussed what is known about the Incarnation home front with one of your staff analysts. Do you think the condition on their worlds is appreciably changing because of Force 73’s achievements? 

[S.R.A.] - Yes, I do recall your interview with Lieutenant Reid. She would be a better person to ask, and of course she is free to meet with your team if you would like to have regular briefings on the subject, but I can share a few things we hope are being achieved. 

[K.T.K.] - Whether they are being achieved, we generally do not know yet. Our best intelligence about Incarnation home worlds comes from prisoner interrogations, and we have not taken any significant groups of prisoners in recent months. 

[N.T.B.] - What about Fifth Fleet’s victory on Montani? Surely many prisoners were taken there. 

[K.T.K.] - Fifth Fleet shares intelligence with us when possible, but I am not aware of anything useful they have learned along that line. Most likely, the personnel devoted to the Montani operation by our foes had not been back to the Incarnation home region in more than a year, excepting a few senior officers perhaps. 

[D.L.C.] - You said you can speak about what you hope to achieve? 

[S.R.A.] - Obviously, the most ideal outcome is a collapse of the Incarnation regime and its replacement by some less fanatical government that is willing to end this conflict. It should be noted that they initiated it, and it cannot end until they say so, whatever we want. 

[N.T.B.] - Not much chance of that, given how cybernetics and monitoring software is used to enforce orthodoxy. 

[K.T.K.] - That is widely discussed in civilian channels, but we are still unsure how widespread that system is. It certainly is used within military chains of command, and it does wonders for the combat cohesion of Incarnation formations, but there is no reason to assume it is as widely used in civilian administration, given how expensive it must be for each person who gets the implants. 

[S.R.A.] - We have to assume the fanaticism of their highest policy makers is mostly genuine. It is only too likely that such zealotry is sought out and rewarded. 

[D.L.C.] - If we are not likely to see a government change bringing them to the negotiating table, what are some more realistic things you hope Bosch will achieve? 

[S.R.A.] - We already discussed reducing their supply of interstellar haulers. This has immediate strategic implications, but it also will likely have an impact on their civilian economy, such as it is. As best we can tell, their inter-system cargo routes are operated by semi-militarized transport services that use the same types of equipment as the military resupply system, with the same supply chain. 

[D.L.C.] - I see. You are hoping the transport shortage will make their economy feel the pain, too. 

[K.T.K.] - Their supply runs across the Gap can’t be slowed down without abandoning entire systems they took from Fifth Fleet in the opening years of this war. The only obvious place to take those haulers from, if they can’t make enough, is the civilian economy.  

[N.T.B.] - All the same, you have to feel bad for the poor people whose livelihoods are going to go to ash over all this. 

[S.R.A.] - I feel badly enough for all the Confederated businessmen and colonists who staked their lives and fortunes on the Sagittarius Frontier and had it all taken away from them in the opening weeks of this conflict. Their machines, raw materials, and even ships are unfortunately part of our foes’ war machine. Increasingly I am convinced that the goal of our foe was to entice Confederated interests to move resources to this side of the Gap for them to be easily mopped up in the opening phase of the conflict. 

[D.L.C.] - I had almost forgotten about all of that. Most people probably think Bosch saved or destroyed anything useful during his Lost Squadrons campaign, but that can’t possibly be true. 

[S.R.A.] - Unfortunately, less than a quarter of the heavy industrial equipment that had been moved to this side of the Gap before the initial attack is accounted for by the work of Bosch and others. It could have been much worse, of course; they could have waited longer and captured more. 

[N.T.B.] - Surely much of that will be burnt out now, if they’ve been using it non-stop for years, without the proper parts replacement chain. 

[K.T.K.] - Some of it, yes. But given how much was captured, including the machinery and tooling to fabricate new production machines, they could well have set up an entire factory complex building things our way, if they had spare manpower. 

[N.T.B.] - Why don’t we see that stuff on the battlefield, then?  

[S.R.A.] - We aren’t sure. Lieutenant Reid’s theory, which is the best so far, is that the product of this manufacturing, if any, has been focused on their civilian economic needs, freeing up their normal production capability for war materiel. Still, we’d have expected minor things like uniforms and rations made with our machinery to appear on some battlefields by now, and they have not. 

[D.L.C.] - It’s strange to think their civilians might be subsisting on wartime rations created by some of our own food-fab machines. 

[S.R.A.] - At least in part, they probably are, but we can’t know for sure until we’ve got boots on the ground of one of those worlds. 

[D.L.C.] - Do you think it affects morale? 

[S.R.A.] - It must, if for no other reason than these people have lived for generations on their own supplies, food, clothing, and materials. Having things that are different – and probably, in the eyes of the average person, inferior because it isn’t what is familiar – must be an indication that the war isn’t going very well. 

[N.T.B.] - Unless they’re told all that stuff is a stream of war booty from conquered worlds. 

[K.T.K.] - Yes, we’d considered that possibility as well, but that charade would be hard to keep up for long, and they would have to keep making things exactly the way we would, just for the charade. 

[D.L.C.] - Do you think the quality of life of the average Incarnation citizen is suffering from the conflict yet? 

[S.R.A.] - Probably not, at least, not much. They don’t seem to do much trading we can interdict, and they don’t seem to harvest many resources outside their home region either. Really, until our forces start putting pressure on their core worlds, and cutting them off from the outlying systems they need for resource harvesting, I don’t think their average family man is going to have much sense the war is going badly. 

[N.T.B.] - I suppose he could hear it on the newsfeeds, or whatever a cybernetic counter-human uses for media sources. 

[S.R.A.] - Captured soldiers we interview have shockingly low understanding of the war situation. We have to assume their civilians are kept even more in the dark than their troops. Most likely, they know there’s a war on, and most of them think their forces are winning, or at least not slowly losing. 

[N.T.B.] - They’re in for a rude awakening soon, then. 

[S.R.A.] - Inevitably, yes. 

While the interview we conducted with Admiral Abarca is longer than these two excerpts, we will return this text feed to stories sent in by our readers next week, rather than continue to post transcript excerpts. This embed team once again thanks Seventh Fleet staff for being open with the media and being willing to sit down with us in person as often as they do. 

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Tales from the Service: A View From Headquarters, Part 13

2953-07-23 – Tales from the Service: A View From Headquarters, Part 13 

At long last we have finally gotten another chance to talk with Admiral Abarca and his Intelligence advisor in person. Portions of the interview will, as usual, be presented here as a transcript, and the full interview recording will be available on the main datasphere hub. 

This interview was conducted in-person aboard the battleship Philadelphia in the Sagittarius Gate system on 19 July.

D.L.C. - Duncan Chaudhri is a junior editor and wartime head field reporter for Cosmic Background.       

N.T.B. - Nojus Brand is a long-time explorer, datasphere personality, and wartime field reporter for Cosmic Background.      

K.T.K. - Captain Kenneth Kempf is the Naval Intelligence attaché to Seventh Fleet commander Admiral Shun Abarca.    

S.R.A. - Admiral Shun R. Abarca is the commander of Seventh Fleet. 

[D.L.C.] - Admiral Abarca, it’s been too long. 

[S.R.A.] - Almost six months, yes. We have both been quite busy, but I had still hoped to sit down with your team before now. 

[N.T.B.] - We take up enough of your time and the time of your staff with all our queries, I figure. 

[K.T.K.] - We would usually prefer the queries, Mr. Brand. It means we have an opportunity to correct the record before an incorrect story is published. I’m afriad not all outlets query us as often as yours. 

[D.L.C.] - Well, I was hoping we could avoid talking about the Spike Wire story. I have other questions- 

[S.R.A.] - And we will get to them. I find that matter distasteful as well, and its timing is unfortunate. 

[N.T.B.] - They thought they had the scoop of a lifetime, and they just made everyone involved look bad, themselves most of all. 

[K.T.K.] - Indeed. I am honestly surprised that this is the first time it has happened in this fleet’s jurisdiction, given the remoteness of our theater and the relative isolation of the various press teams operating here. 

[S.R.A.] - In general, the press embeds and unassociated media outfits who report on this front for the people back home are fairly respectable people. I have had previous good interactions with the Spike Wire embed team, but chasing fame can make fools of us all. 

[D.L.C.] - It will indeed. I would much rather talk about Force 73, as my messages to your team leading up to this interview indicated. 

[S.R.A.] - A much less distasteful subject, Mr. Chaudhri. Indeed, I am so far quite satisfied with the performance of Captain Bosch and his force. 

[N.T.B.] - We’ve run stories about the struggle to get them supplies. Obviously this was an anticipated issue, but how much has their campaign been hindered by resource limitations? 

[S.R.A.] - A bit. I will be vague, as you probably expected, in my answer. 

[D.L.C.] - Of course. 

[S.R.A.] - It was, as you say, a problem we had anticipated, and it has not been quite as bad as we feared it would be. Progress in liberating the Kyaroh worlds on which resistance is still significant proceeds apace. 

[D.L.C.] - Yes. How many worlds is it now? Four? 

[S.R.A.] - Yes, but only two are of strategic significance enough to have had significant Incarnation presence when our task force arrived. There have been a few naval skirmishes unconnected with the conflict on any given Kyaroh world as well, most of which have been quite inconclusive. 

[D.L.C.] - You don’t sound disappointed by that. 

[S.R.A.] - I am not. Engagements which do not reduce Force 73’s striking power are the sort we can afford best, even if they also don’t reduce enemy forces in the region. A costly victory would end the campaign just as definitely as a costly defeat. 

[N.T.B.] - Makes sense. In the terms sim-game players might use, Bosch needs to play the objective, not beat his opposite number. 

[D.L.C.] - You play sim games? 

[N.T.B.] - No, my nephew does. He just placed in the semi-final round of a planetary tournament on Madurai last month. I’ve been catching up on his matches. 

I am honestly surprised that this is the first time it has happened in this fleet’s jurisdiction, given the remoteness of our theater and the relative isolation of the various press teams operating here. 

[K.T.K.] - Really? Quite the achievement. Which sim-game does he play? 

[N.T.B.] - War Titans. I hadn’t heard of it before he and my sister told me about it. 

[N.T.B.] - Ah, yes. I know of this one. A gang of Marine veterans of Brushfire put it together. Not very realistic, but complex and hard to master. 

[S.R.A.] - The youths who master these games and rank highly on their world often earn Academy slots. Even in my own Academy class, there were two such. Your nephew may be sitting in my chair in thirty-five years. 

[N.T.B.] - I’ll warn him it isn’t so easy when real lives are at stake, then. He’ll be overjoyed to know he came up in this conversation, Admiral. 

[S.R.A.] - Returning to your analogy, though: yes, that is a decent summary. Bosch needs to focus on planets, not fleets. The less Kyaroh worlds that are sending resources and cargo hulls to the Incarnation home worlds, the less war materiel they can produce. Intelligence suggests they have been chronically short of haulers for the entire conflict, and the long runs around Sagittarius Gate to resupply their holdings on the Coreward Frontier are only making this worse. 

[K.T.K.] - I will expand on this, if that is all right. Their haulers are mostly Kyaroh designs, often built in Kyaroh shipyards, and refitted with more efficient Incarnation star drives in Incarnation home space. These vessels are capable of the Gap crossing, but they don’t have facilities at scale to service all of them on the other side, so they need to make the crossing twice and travel across wide swaths of more forgiving space as well before they can reach a proper service yard. Their equipment is burning out, and without the yards in Kyaroh space, they’ll struggle to replace it. 

[D.L.C.] - And they could replace Kyaroh production only by turning over yards that are currently building warships? 

[S.R.A.] - It’s more likely they turn over yards that are currently refitting haulers to building new ones. What we have learned of their industrial base suggests almost all their yards are dual use. This would be little better. They know all this better than we do, and I think our foes will probably devote a large force to protecting or retaking the next Kyaroh system Bosch attacks with a significant orbital shipyard facility. 

[D.L.C.] - If Bosch is... Playing the objective, he will avoid a pitched battle. But will he just retreat? 

[N.T.B.] - From what we know of the man, I doubt it. 

[S.R.A.] - I had a long conference with him before he left, including some brief scenario simulations. I have some idea what he’ll do, but of course I cannot say it publicly. 

[D.L.C.] - Ah, of course. I understand. 

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