Chapter 33

With the approval of the USN, "Sundowner" was allowed the free run of PRD 67 which was located over a large volume of space on the Galactic centre side of the Solar system. Along one side of the volume ran the approach and departure lanes for traffic in and out of the New London orbitals and those lanes were the reference point for that PRD which held a position constant to Old Earth.

Charles and Clare conned "Sundowner" while TJ, Morg and Cedric controlled the Lone Rangers as the limits of the shields were tested.

Running silent with minimal acceleration, the Lone Rangers could not detect "Sundowner" passively until the range was so short Morg claimed you could read the maker's plate on her hull (if she had had one).

With impellors rigged within the shield, passive detection was easier depending upon the acceleration. At low accelerations, the Lone Rangers had to approach to extreme PD maser range to detect "Sundowner"; at full 'military' power however the ship emitted like a Chencon new year fireworks display detectable out to twenty kilo clicks — put into perspective however, a 'standard merchie' without a care in the world was detectable out to fifty times that distance; so Charles and Clare were satisfied. The pod design of the impellors minimised detectable emissions

With "Dune" operative, the picture changed back again; it was only at full 'military' power that "Sundowner" became detectable again. TJ and Morg both could find her by looking at what wasn't there on the screens and spent some frustrating hours explaining the phenomenon to the others until they 'got it'.

Once the defensive shield was deployed however, "Sundowner" was detectable out to the limits of the Lone Ranger's detection equipment. It was even worse if either PD or bow masers were fired — the defensive shield picked up energy and positively glowed. Charles was not too concerned as he pointed out that if defensive shields were deployed, an opponent had already acquired "Sundowner" somehow.

A piece of space debris was found floating in the PRD and Morg used a Lone Ranger to track it over several watches before closing to fifty centimetre maser range and destroyed it using the LR's bow maser. The destruction was duly reported to New London approach who passed it on.

In the breaks between exercises, TJ and Cedric had been chewing over a point which both had been niggling at ever since "Tulip" days. When the Harbourians had been actively 'pinging' for "Tulip", the position of the searching ships was known and TJ had manoeuvred "Tulip" so she remained out of return signal range. Both had toyed with the idea of tuning a ship's shield to both cosmic radiation and to the frequency of the probing beam. Their thought was based on the knowledge that search lidars and radars punched out a clean single frequency depending upon the manufacture; this meant that in any Navy, there were only a very limited number of frequencies in play at a given moment for active search. They dragged Morg and Orville into a discussion which eventually led to a four party EVA to 'get at' one of the scout's active system and programme it to search using four different frequencies on command. Flicking frequencies were considered unusable as it would have been extremely difficult to tune the return signal receiver to each frequency.

Charles and Clare had been party to the end discussion and conducted another sortie to test the system. TJ and Cedric changed to defenders and Morg and Clare to attackers. It worked — with limits. When the LR approached on active, TJ and Cedric were able to tune the shield out before return signal range was reached. If Morg brought the LR inside the return signal limit and either activated an active or changed the active frequency, the "Dune" system couldn't tune out the search frequency before one or two returns. As Charles, as referee, pointed out, return signal limit was way beyond energy weapon range and "Sundowner" would have been taking active measures by then.

Morg raised the objection that assumption rested upon the detection of the enemy and to date, "Sundowner" had not had spectacular success in detecting the Lone Ranger scouts. That little observation brought the discussion to a crashing halt. A further 'company' round table conference was intense but fruitless. For the time being, too hard basket and hope an enemy does not have scouts as effective. The one positive aspect of the discussion was that the scout would have to call up a bigger boy to engage "Sundowner". "Hold that thought" Colin muttered sourly.

Cedric went 'dreamy' again and Morg restrained himself, instead

"What this time, Cedric?"

The pair were in the clean room, more for the peace and quiet than privacy, as they further refined the defensive triple shield inner layer programme maths.

"I have been reading too many ancient books. We have a potential humungous hole in our defensive systems."

"Oh!?"

""Sundowner" is weaponed as a man o' war and while spacing is going to be a rather large bite for anything to take down; we could probably take on a BC — not that I'd choose to do that, I'd rather be somewhere else, but ... In the role of convention ship however we are going to be tied up alongside something — a berth or a buoy out in the orbitals for long periods — and a berthed ship is virtually defenceless. So if I wanted to take this ship, I think I'd wait until she tied up somewhere and try a cutting out expedition I think it's called. Small boats loaded with armed armoured spacers with our main armament useless. If we stationed the Lone Rangers around us as sentries and perimeter defence we would still have large holes in weapon coverage — we've only got four of the things and while we can cover the sphere as early warning, the scout bow masers wont cover the space with weapons. The PDs would do a lot of damage but probably wouldn't get them all and besides there would be a delay in coming to action stations..."

"Cedric, how often do you suffer with headaches? Your brain has to be twisting itself into a pretzel — remind me to look up what a pretzel is will you. Officer call, I think" and used his PDA to make the announcement "in the lounge. I want to be physically comfortable at least while I squirm mentally. C'mon Cedric, let's upset our superiors."

Cedric did. Charles as a merchantman hadn't considered it and the ex-Tulips hadn't either, as spacers let the Base Squadrons worry about harbour defence. It quickly sank in that "Sundowner" had to look to its own harbour defence as 'neutrals' mounted only local police presence.

TJ started to go blank, attracting the attention of the others — Charles, who didn't know him as well as the others thought TJ was just exhausted from servicing his harem (Clare could have told him that was malarky as it had taken the five Windsor Women as a group two days to reduce TJ to a hollow husk and they weren't doing that again.) The others recognised TJ's brain was in overdrive.

"Defensive screens are concentrations of cosmic particles attracted and aggregated into a physical barrier — that's why slow moving objects can pierce them — and result from a focussed concentration of energy from special generators. The focus is preset to each set of generators but can be adjusted by the crew to where they want it focussed. Morg, call up the specs for the generators and check the maths to see how closely we can bring the defensive shields to the hull?"

As Morg began extracting the information from his PDA — using the link to the Generic main battle 'puter, Cedric sat bolt upright,

"And don't forget, I've got four of them in place and that will allow the focus to come right down ... to about ... three hundred metres. Crikey, that's close."

"Three fifteen to be exact" Morg advised "but at that distance it would be rather tenuous. You'd have to expand the focus dragging particles with the expanding sphere out to five thirty five metres to have a decent physical barrier — the middle electronic spoiler layer would be at full strength from the start; but a collision between say a pinnace and the expanding layers beyond five hundred metres — ouch."

"I'm going back to my quarters; coming Clare?" and in reply to the looks from the others, TJ went on with only the slightest exasperation, "Cedric, put a 'rheo' on the seats' control of the defensive shield, set distance to minimum, and at full the layer is at your kay kilo. The duty watch in the seats get a close proximity alarm, activate the defensive shield, twist the rheo and any thing close in gets impacted; better make it so that the rheo resets to close in when the shield is deactivated — also leave the bridge console EW position switch at full distance — you can work out the circuitry." Pulling Clare to him as he exited "where were we when these fellows called for help?"

"Well, Dell was just..." Clare's voice tailed off as they departed.

Charles made a mental note, and then put it on his Soyn, to get with Clare to establish the procedure to deal with a cutting out expedition — his brain began to hurt so he put it aside for the nonce and rejoined Eva Porter and Emily Jones who distracted him for the rest of the dark watches.

(Morg [and Cedric] had the most annoying habit of not appreciating natural light and dark. Something was probably wrong with their circadian cycles.)

Some days later "Sundowner" was joined by a pair of DDs, USN "Navajho" and USN "Cree" in the PRD. The DDs, acting as 'escort' for merchantmen using the New London lanes, were to keep "Sundowner" out of a simulated convoy. Using the Lone Rangers as both scout and decoy enabled "Sundowner" to score at will. After several days, two very brassed captains accompanied by a collection of junior officers and senior NCOs, were invited over to "Sundowner" for a smorgasbord luncheon laid on by Morg as chef with assistance from the other potential chefs (and that meant all of them — even Clare had progressed beyond burning boiling water). The stunned reaction of the visitors to be met by Julie and daughters as hostesses, was continued with the quality of the food and then to be taken step by step through the exercises pointing out where their errors lay and how "Sundowner" might have been detected — mainly during full power dashes to gain position. The 'technical' people were then taken to the clean room and exposed to circuit boards which would transform an energy torpedo weapon into a scouting UVA; only the USN duty watches returned to their ships for the dark watches while the others continued with lectures and demonstrations. The limiting factor for the USN was the lack of detection equipment in the torpedos but there were some very hoary spacers in that crowd who were already at their PDAs replacing explosive with some 'lashed up' gear which could do the job — just.

The exercises continued with "Sundowner" again 'clearing the boards' but the USN crews made it considerably harder for her.

The DDs returned to their flotilla and the captains rather timidly handed in a joint report and then scurried for cover — as well they might as several USN brass made pointed remarks about tribal customs smoking mind turning concoctions.

Admiral Strathlawn and Captain Gantry were stretched to keep some brass from descending upon the DDs and flaying certain officers alive.

The situation finally settled when a confrontation occurred between Commodore Eugene Thorogh and his old friend Senior Warrant Telegraphist Llewellyn Jones; this became part of the folklore of the USN. The two men had joined USN "Newark" on the same day, Thorogh as a 'middy' doing his 'cruise' and Jones as Ordinary Telegraphist. They had maintained a proper relationship throughout the years but had remained in contact and the families had established a long friendship. Jones' avid fascination with 'coms' had been instrumental in Thorogh's specialising in signals. Thorogh had burst into "Cree's" CIC abusing all and sundry at their pitiful efforts against a "Mere Merchantman — it was a disgrace etcetera."

"Finished, 'Gene? Good! Now shut up and listen for a change" interrupted Jones. "Take a look at these tapes; they are the result of six hours 'puter work on our original tapes during the exercise. Now if you look closely you can just see a faint trail just there — that is "Sundowner" at full chat making position. Now have a look at this tape — it is real time from "Sundowner's" battle 'puter and don't ask how they got it as they don't discuss that but we don't have anything as modern in USN. I only know of two others and they are in Noramcon ships presently fitting out in Philly. They have split screens from their own receivers and those on their scouts and you can see "Navajho" and "Cree" standing out like country outhouses — our every move is known to them before we even make it. They faked us out of position so many times the boss didn't bother chasing the shadows at the end. We got one visual of a decoy and if that's not a fifty centimetre maser in the bow, I'm wearing a full bonnet sitting cross-legged in front of a tepee smoking a full bowl.