Chapter 16: Training and Testing

When we were done we held a quick conference, the Admiral, the two COs, and myself. We'd done what we had come out to do. We had proven that we could 'fly' and navigate in hyperspace, we had proven that we could use the weapons, and we had found a place for our Advanced Combat course. It was time to go back to Sol System -which the AIs wanted to call "Earthat"- and get back to getting my ship ready to commission.

For the future, we would set up another training center here. The weapons use and tactics sections of the commissioning workups would all be done here at Barnard's Star. We'd put together a training syllabus and a live-weapons course, and once there was a school-house station to live and work in Admiral Sykes would move out here. Someone else could supervise the overhaul process at Jupiter Station, once we had the bugs worked out and were just sending the ships through the pipeline.

I had spent all my attention on the big picture, making sure that we could safely use these starships. That was necessary, but it wasn't sufficient. It was painfully clear that I needed to address the other side of the coin, whether we could use them effectively as warships. There were a couple of Important Questions that I needed answers to as fast as possible.

As soon as Appleby Castle was docked at the Northside Training Hub I took the transporter back to Jupiter Station, where Ellen was waiting for me. I even told Ellen that I had an emergency to deal with and couldn't go with her to celebrate my return yet. While I waited for Admiral Sykes we had a good talk about what she had been doing while I was gone.

She said that she had been asked by some of the other women why we were getting so much better quarters, and that she had explained that she was pregnant, and the AIs had accepted my agreement to support her as my concubine and claim her children as mine. When they had asked the AIs what that meant it had caused a ruckus as they all went to the men they had hooked up with to demand the same status. Did I mention that not all those negotiations went well? There were some men sleeping alone and some women who were going back to Earth because of that.

When Admiral Sykes popped out of the pad for Bere Castle, I asked him if, in an hour or so, he could give me a few minutes. I thought we had a problem but I wanted to get all my ducks in a row before I made a fuss. Back at Barnard's Star when we were shooting up all those poor defenseless asteroids I had asked the AI about how the weapons worked, and I really hadn't liked the answers.

"Wait, you mean that this 'Plasma Torpedo' thing isn't really material?"

<It is material. However, it is not a solid device as you think of torpedos. It is an energy field that contains an amount of matter in a plasma state.>

"And, the beam projectors send out a beam of particles, right?"

<Correct>

"What do you have that launches, or shoots, or projects, or whatever verb you want, a device that exists in the solid state of matter?"

<Devices that project solids are not allowed.>

"Wha ... What? Why not?"

<A device to project solids is permitted if the engineering can guarantee that it is accepted by the target. Many Confederacy systems use such devices to deliver cargo between orbits. However, for safety reasons a device that projects solids to a target that may not accept it is not permitted.>

"I frankly have no idea what you are talking about."

<Such a weapon would be permitted if we could ensure both contact with the Sa'arm ship, and the complete destruction of the projected solid during or after contact. If either condition fails, we are left with a high-speed solid that will eventually impact another body. For safety, this cannot be permitted.>

" ... So you are saying that, because of future safety concerns, an entire class of effective weaponry is disallowed."

<Correct.>

"Mother fuck me."

<I do not understand.>

"That's okay, you did it anyway."

It didn't take long for Allie to straighten me out. As soon as I was sure it wasn't just a problem with these old ships but rather a problem with the entire Confederacy, I called the Admiral to let him know I was on my way. When I got there I dumped the whole thing on him.

"Admiral, I can't see any way around it. I have talked to the AIs on four different ships -although I suspect they talk to each other enough that just one was enough- and they are united in this. Projectile weapons are outlawed until we guarantee that they will never miss and that they will be completely destroyed in the impact. They don't want misses hanging around for the future."

"I agree, Captain, that's bullshit. They want us to fight a war that will kill them all if we lose, and they worry about future safety? No, that's not bullshit, that's horse shit. Okay, I'll take this upstairs."

I felt a lot better about that. It was a serious problem, but I wasn't the only one who recognized it. I could go back to dealing with my own ship and my own private life. Using Ellen to test the bed in our new "Accompanied Officer Quarters" looked like my next priority.

" ... And that's about it. We don't worry much about misses here on Earth because everything eventually falls to the ground. The Confederacy takes the long view and prohibits any device that might leave an uncontrolled projectile loose in space. Thank you for attending this presentation."

"Professor Suarez here, Admiral. If I was a pacifist I would bring up all the unexploded ordnance that kill our children every year in old battlefields all over the world, but it seems obvious that, in a war of extinction, military expedience must take precedence over future concerns. If you don't allow that, you risk becoming the loser in the contest and there is no future. Surely the AIs see that."

"Professor, I've talked to the AIs myself. They agree that if we don't win this war the galaxy will, eventually, contain only Sa'arm. However, they cannot change their core values. They are, in the end, computers with fancy programming and there are things they cannot do. We cannot fight this war in a way that endangers the future Confederacy. If there is one."

"Okay, we are all busy people. Let's all take this latest problem back to our staffs and ask them W-T-F. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. Admiral, thank you for your clear presentation of the problem."

A few days later I got a message from Admiral Sykes to listen to a call he had just received. For some reason, he sounded happy. As my daughter would have said, sure, whatever. The AI showed it up against one wall, the Admiral and someone else like a split TV screen.

"Admiral Sykes."

"Thank you for taking my call, Admiral. This is Professor Suarez, somewhere in the Moon. One of my crazies has an idea. If we can guarantee that any misses cause no trouble, will the AIs allow projectile weapons?"

"How could you do that?"

"We are looking at their nanotechnology as used in industrial construction. What if we put a few of their nanites on every projectile, with orders to disassemble the projectile to atomic dust after some time elapsed? Do the AIs have any time-frame requirements?"

This was probably the first time I had seen Admiral Sykes smile in several weeks. "I will have one of my people find out right now. I'll let you know as soon as I get an answer back. If it works, we may have to erect a statue to your crazy."

"Dr. Sanjib is a Jain and I don't think he'd want that, but if it helps, sure. I'll tell my secretary to pass your call in to me immediately."

"Number 12, I have a theory question."

<We will try to answer it.>

"Our understanding of your stance against projectile weapons is that this is based completely on concerns about the future if a projectile misses the target and is left to continue on its path until it hits something else, not a military target."

<That is correct. Eventually, any object not in a stable orbit will hit something and damage or destroy it. This is an avoidable danger.>

"I am told that you have a class of industrial nanites that disassemble materials for later use as raw materials for replicators. Can these nanites be programmed to wait a certain period of time before starting to work?"

<Yes, they can be programmed to wait any reasonable time, up to several thousand of your years.>

"Can these nanites be constructed to survive the acceleration stresses of a projectile launch?"

<That should be within their design parameters.>

"Then, if we put some of those nanites inside every projectile, and set them to disassemble the projectile after a reasonable time like 24 hours after launch, would this satisfy your safety requirements for projectile weapons?"

<Please wait ... We have considered this. This plan appears to be within the capabilities of our nanites. Depending upon size and materials, some projectiles may take longer to disassemble than others. What is the largest projectile you will want to use?>

"I cannot answer that. Search our history archives for the biggest bomb we ever made. That was built in a gravity field for use on a planet. Assume that our spaceships will be launching larger projectiles in the form of missiles and torpedos."

<I find several references to large bombs used by your Royal Air Force to destroy submarine facilities during your last major war. Those bombs massed 10,000 of your kilograms. Our disassembly nanites would need several hours to disassemble such a device. We will warn the Confederacy to stay away from any system that has seen projectile weapon use within one hundred and forty-four times that time span, at least forty of your days.>

"You do that. Do you have any other objections to us building weapons that can help us win this war?"

<We have objections to the war, but we recognize that we have it and would like to, as you would put it, 'win'. With the caveat that every projectile must contain these nanites, we will withdraw our objections to projectile weapons.>

"Thank you. Now we can get back to work."

We had teams of people on Earth, behind the Moon, in the Moon at the Moonbase, out at Jupiter Station, basically everywhere possible trying to either develop new weapons using Confederacy technology, or alternately to use Confed tech to improve the weapons we already had. Aside from lasers, every single weapon we came up with had foundered on that idiotic principle. Nothing that projects solids. No guns, no missiles or torpedos, I'm sure that some wit asked about crossbows and I'm sure the answer was "no".

As soon as the floodgates were opened we were deluged with ideas for weapons. Every crazy who knew about the war had at least four insane ideas. The problem was, it's only stupid if it doesn't work, and we had no idea yet what actually worked in combat and what only worked in the laboratory.

It didn't take the brains too long to decide not to use chemically-powered projectiles. The infrastructure behind sending a bullet downrange was far higher for guns than it was for some other technologies.

Here, we were getting into things that I just wasn't an expert in. I knew that the US Navy had started to move to "Rail Guns" as a direct-fire weapon just a few years after I had retired. In reality, the Navy had been trying for decades, but only recently had the technology to make it work been available. I knew that some people preferred "Coil Guns" as better in some way. However, I'd never worked with either one and frankly had no idea what the difference was until after I was recruited for this war and had to see what it took to get them installed on our ships. It boiled down to "rail guns are simpler and coil guns are more accurate".

If you have the materials, building a rail gun is easy. It doesn't even take any electronics or brains; just some special materials and a lot of electrical power. You just set up a pair of conductive rails that are parallel and open at one end. You put a projectile between them, and switch an obscene amount of current on between the rails.

The interaction of magnetic and electrostatic fields between the rails and the projectile with the short-circuit current spits the projectile out towards whatever the gap between the rails is aiming at. The only real difficulty besides the current draw is that at least part of all three of the components is consumed by the arcing. Even that first shot can't really be aimed well, since the rails change shape while they are consumed. As the physical rails change shape, the fields surrounding them change shape, too, preventing accurate prediction of where the projectile will go.

Earth had tried to use them for a hundred years because they were so simple, but we hadn't had the materials to make the rails stable enough to shoot accurately or to make the current they needed. Besides, the accuracy got worse with every shot as the rails became less and less straight. Confed tech helped that a lot, and we eventually ended up with one or two small railguns on just about every ship we inherited or built. Or more, in some cases.

Not as offensive weapons mind you, but as last-ditch defensive devices to shoot up missiles, torpedos, and plasma torpedos. They never worked that well against missiles or torpedos, because all they could do was shoot up the controlling brain, not blow them up or knock them off-course. At first we were worried about big warheads on missiles, but after a while the numbers started to sink in and we realized that any kind of missile would do more than enough damage just from the kinetic energy transfer from impact. Explosive warheads would only matter if they missed.

Any missile that was close enough to hit with a railgun was already so close that, if it was on an intercept course, the railgun wasn't going to make any difference. A railgun hit would help in the case of a near miss with a proximity nuclear warhead, though, by destroying the warhead before it went off. The real reason for having the railguns was to shoot up nearby enemies like shuttles or space fighters and bombers. And Plasma Torpedos. Those things exploded immediately and harmlessly, if you hit them with anything at all while they were still a couple of kilometers out.

Anyway, we had no idea what weapons our enemies would have, but I felt a lot better about my Allington Castle when we installed two "Point Defense Lasers" just forward of the engineering spaces, one up and port, the other down and starboard. They were the Confed-tech version of the US Navy's venerable CIWS, that R2D2-looking thing you used to see on all our surface ships, and they got shortened to "PDLs" almost immediately.

We had added four mounting points, but we still didn't know what we were doing so we left the other two empty at first. The reason for going into all this was that the first concrete change that we saw from the "projectile prohibition" fiasco resolution was a railgun version of CIWS. It was the first project approved, completed, and that finished trials with a usable weapon containing the nanite projectiles. By the time our first six ships were ready for trials, the opposite corners from the laser mounts held two "Point Defense Railguns", usually referred to as "PDRs".

The lasers had infinite range but limited damage, and fire control could be difficult since we had no method of determining true aim point unless it actually hit a target and we could detect damage, while the railgun slugs were easy to track but not that fast or accurate and could not really damage anything with a decent hull. Only time would tell which, if either, was actually helpful.

As soon as we got the second set of Castles, two of them got designated as our training ships for preliminary ship-handling exercises north of the rings and Appleby and Bere went back over to the south side to finish their overhauls. They weren't as far behind as one might expect, because an awful lot of the work could be done while they were still in service. Ripping out unneeded equipment, growing the new portside personnel hatch, a lot of stuff. Really, all of it could be done during down time between training cycles. Just more slowly than the other six ships.

Between various false starts and all the associated rework in the first six, those two delayed starts, and the two pulled from the second set of eight to act as trainers, we had a fairly smooth curve in status for the first 16 Castles. We would have a couple ready soon, then a couple more, and so on. We could keep pumping these things out one or two a week as long as the Confederacy delivered them. Faster, if we had to and we came up with crews for them.

We had pretty much established what we wanted to do with these overhauls. Actually, we were about done with the first couple before we had finalized the list of what we'd do. Rip out unneeded stuff. Consolidate the Fire Control consoles into the new larger CIC. Move what could be moved, to consolidate more space. Install bunks. Grow the two new access hatches. Install the Confederacy's newer "Nav Shield". Install new weapons. Get some kind of lifeboat.

That last item never happened. We never did, while I was on them, get a lifeboat. Lifeboats eventually happened, but it took a long time to shrink a shuttle down to where it would fit into that tiny space we made for it on the upper hull behind the armored compartment that held CIC. That was one of the reasons that, when we finally went out, we kept the ships paired whenever possible.

While we were finishing up with the first eight ships Admiral Sykes was back out at Barnard's Star setting up a combat course, including ship mockups for us to shoot at. Expensive, but it had to be done if we were to have any kind of live-fire training against realistic targets. There was a lot of angst over this. We were going to sacrifice a large fraction of our industrial output for nothing more than targets to be blown up.

We had a few videos of the enemy ships. Maybe someday we would have some idea of what we were facing, but for now the mockups were built to simulate our own ships. Hopefully we would never be shooting at our own ships, but it was all we had. Besides, it was a good way to familiarize ourselves with the kinds of damage we could expect from combat. Assuming our enemies had the same kinds of ships and weapons we had. We knew that was a totally bogus assumption, but we had to start somewhere.

One of the US military's mantras was "If you train like you want to fight, then you'll fight like you trained," meaning that the more realistic your training is the more valuable it will be when the real thing happens. Our military history is full of the results of a well-trained force coming up against one that wasn't as well trained. It's actually a very old concept. One of the old Roman authors wrote of the Legions that "Their practice is bloodless battle; their battles are bloody practices".

Being smart and fast and having good tools are all good things. You don't win by being smarter or faster or deadlier than the other guy, though. Those all help reduce your casualties, but unless you can win with one massive surprise blow, they aren't enough. You win by being tougher and readier, by being able to take a blow and come back still fighting against someone who thought that one blow would be enough and isn't ready for your return blow.

The main road into the big Navy base at Norfolk is named Taussig Boulevard. The reason for that name is that, when the US finally entered WW1, all the rest of the belligerents were extremely tired, exhausted really, but they all had several years of total war behind them and knew exactly what they were doing, while we were untried and untrusted.

Our first unit to show up across the Atlantic was an unescorted Destroyer squadron. Destroyers weren't very big back then. They were just starting to grow out of their initial role of "Torpedo Boat Destroyer", a small ship to screen the real warships from little boats with big torpedos, and they barely had the space to carry the fuel to cross the Atlantic.

The Royal Admiral in charge of the British port they reached had, I'm sure, been briefed on the need to treat the new kids with tenderness until they had been toughened up, and his greeting signal asked how long these tiny ships would need to refit after fighting their way across the North Atlantic before they could be thrown to the wolves.

Captain Taussig replied "We are ready now, sir."

End of fucking discussion. We don't want to be here, so let's get the damn job done and go home again. Europe had been fighting for three years. They were all tired, and we were ready. We didn't have the massed forces of either side, but we were ready to fight with what we had.

The other side collapsed and sued for peace within a year, very soon after the first US Army units made it to the front and demonstrated that they, too, were in fact completely ready for combat on any scale the German army wanted. Of course, that collapse led to a very one-sided peace agreement, but that wasn't our fault. That was the fault of self-important European politicians who wanted to punish Germany for a devastating war that Germany didn't even start, and they got what they deserved a generation later when Hitler took power. Hitler got taken down in his turn, too, but not until everyone involved was very, very sorry about the terms France had insisted upon in 1918.