Chapter 5

Darjee-crewed ships began to arrive in Earth orbit. There was conflict over who had responsibility for what part of the use of these ships, especially the Aurora transports. Earth personnel would train on Auroras at first, with simulators for the Castles and Minuits. Admiral Kent told Terry, "I'm seeing immediate turf wars in the initial Central Command, and don't expect those to resolve immediately."

"What's the impact on us?"

"It's going to be a while until there are useful intelligence and force development shops in Central Command. In the meantime, I'm going to set up a skunk works under you, in the form of your Team 2. Tell us coarse requirements for sensors and weapons, under your best guess on tactical requirements."

"So far, however, we've been at a senior officer briefing level -- no real detail. It's time for your Team 2 to get started. Mac and I think you can start defining requirements while DNO and DECO argue about staff organization."

Terry called the first meeting together. "Welcome to everyone. Some of us have been colleagues and friends for quite a while, and I hope to have that kind of partnership with those that I'm just starting to know. The team is an interim one, to fill gaps while the official Central Command gets organized.

"We have the odd role of dealing both with our new allies in the Confederacy, but also the enemy, the Sa'arm. Information on the Sa'arm comes from the Confederacy for now, but you'll start defining our independent collection requirements. Karen, with whom I've worked a great deal and know as having an incredible ability to pull materials from libraries old and new, is key in retrieving things from the Confederacy data bases." He gestured at Karen, whose worried expression did not improve what, in simple terms, was physical ugliness. Tall and slender, her hair was interestingly long, but was the exact "agouti" that the biologists called the color of a field mouse. Her chin receded below stained and crooked teeth; she had premature crows' feet around her eyes, and a blotchy complexion. She wore nondescript stretch pants that actually suggested some grace, in a pale pastel that might have matched her blouse, or might not -- the colors were not strong enough to clash.:

"Let me suggest an initial set of study areas. Have Karen coordinate the Confederacy data requests -- she is likely to see connections seen by no one else.

"If I simplify combat to find 'em, fix 'em, and kill 'em, we get sensors, tactics, and weapons. Catherine, Yuri, and Kim will address sensors and electronic warfare but also the Confederacy and Sa'arm deflectors. If you want to use science fiction terms, the deflectors are shields. One thing not addressed in my first look at the database is whether sensors are fully capable through shields.

"Vic and Shiro will look at tactics. Shiro, I'm probably overloading you, but for now, you're the missile expert, perhaps with guidance help from Catherine and Kim.

"Ludmilla, Denise, and Beatrice will consider weapons. Denise can help on ground tactics, but she is our WMD expert. It's not clear if we can use WMD or if they are a threat.

Catherine gave the first briefing. At 5'10", she was tall and slender, not busty but with a tiny waist. One's gaze, however, quickly shifted to her hair and face. Her hair was an unusual strawberry blonde, pinned up, complemented by even more unusual eyes in a beautiful face. It was hard to describe the color of her eyes, which seemed to wander, catlike, between green and gold. Sometimes, she seemed distracted, but it soon became evident that she could drift into concentration, and sometimes a near mystic thought process.

"Kim, could you pick up on sensors in your area? For the moment, you're our electro-optical as well as geophysical person."

Kim might have stepped from a fashion magazine cover. Far taller than most Asians, her skin mixed gold and rose tones. Taller than Catherine, at 6'0" but even slimmer and with waist-length black hair, she wore shiny black pumps not quite up to Dolores' height standards, but club wear for most women. Her tan suit was a little lighter than her skin and, with a blue oxford shirt, accentuated her skin tones. Her makeup was the kind that probably took a long time to apply, but accentuated without being obvious.

"Terry, I'll start with the area where the Confederacy has the most technology that we do not: gravity-based. Space-to-space and aerospace-to-ground are distinct types. In space, the detectors are passive, very long range, and not extremely precise as to position. They detect both large masses, and transitions in and out of supraluminal space.

"Gravitics aimed at the ground can detect and map buried structures, and, for that matter, areas that have mass significantly different than their surroundings. From the Confederacy database, it appears that they can map at least 500 meters deep, as a rule of thumb in typical terrain. While their underground gravity mapping is better than ours, I think we might complement it with our multispectral scanners, especially for heat.

"There's a third category that maps planetary gravity fields, and works with GPS and such in geospatial intelligence -- the placing of images and scan areas precisely on a planetary surface. This is the area where we'll be merging the most technology with theirs.

"What do the Sa'arm have in these areas? There's not much that the database can tell us. The Confederacy hasn't captured a Sa'arm vessel.

"Our imaging and non-imaging electro-optical things may, in some cases, be ahead of theirs. They haven't had a need to do things like detect and track multiple missiles. Without enemies, they haven't needed to get the signature of rocket motors and the like -- they just needed to track their own things."

"Here," Karen said, "we have less information than on sensors, since sensors have peaceful purposes. Since the Confederacy races don't make war, they obviously don't have any tactics. They were, however, able to give us some fragmentary recordings of Sa'arm attacks. The examples in space came from ships where the Sa'arm broke off their attack, while the ground examples ended when the Sa'arm overran the remote camera or transmitter. Beatrice, will you take over on the space side?"

Major Beatrice Oonk, while an attractive, platinum-haired woman, was fully credible as a Dutch Marine. As tall as Catherine, she was far wider, but in a solid Amazonian way. "I'm going to talk about what we can extrapolate about up-close-and-personal operations by the enemy. We do know that the Sa'arm would englobe and board Confederacy vessels. Capturing equipment seemed as high, or higher, a priority than killing and harvesting the crew. Don't assume that this is their most lethal form of attack. In fact, we have to assume it's the least lethal, because there were survivors, or at least recoverable recordings.

"Some recorded data suggests that the Sa'arm may have retreated because their ship was in danger, probably from an accident. Sets of images, which show part of a ship, revealed a flare of light just before the attack ended.

"Kim was able to do limited spectroscopic analysis on some of those flares, and they were consistent with burning aluminum and magnesium.

"My recommendation is that each ship, as much as possible, needs a Marine detachment capable of repelling boarders, as well as close-in weapons than what we normally assume as final missile defense. Think, at least, about the way warships here have had to add automatic weapons and other ways of protecting against suicide boats and speedboats with short-range weapons.

"That's not to say that long-range defense isn't needed, and, for that, I'll hand this over to Shiro."

"For those of you who don't know me, I'm both an operational combat systems officer and a systems engineer for AEGIS-controlled weapons aboard ship. I've also done some work on land missile defense, especially land-based Standard SM-3 missiles integrated with PATRIOT and THAAD.

"Nothing we have gotten from the data base firmly suggests that the Sa'arm use true missiles. Since, though, their ships would exit from supraluminal space, and move toward us at high speed, the long-range engagement of those ships would be much like long-range engagement of inbound ballistic missiles. Remember that our first warning, now, of such missiles is the heat energy of their launch, as caught by nonimaging infrared scans from satellites, the first generations of which can't track the flight path. This may be analogous to the gravitic signature of someone entering supraluminal space, although we really haven't yet assessed the relative range and precision of gravitics versus our passive electro-optical. My guess is that the two will complement one another.

"We don't know if the Sa'arm detect radar and react to it. In either event, we're better off staying passive at the longest ranges. On Earth, we now have lower-orbit STSS tracking satellites. Remember that passive tracking doesn't give us away, and a single passive observation comes to us in half the round-trip time of round-trip radar and lidar."

"There's no reason that gravitic detection can't be an additional input to AEGIS ballistic missile defense. If we can put out multiple gravitic detectors, we can infer a course and speed, from the time of arrival difference of the signal at various distributed sensors."

Terry raised his hand. "So right now, our assumption is that we are going to track at long range, possibly use our own missiles, but the final fight will be Star Trek or Napoleonic broadside combat? No fighters and possibly no missiles from the enemy?"

"Sir, I can't assume otherwise. At the same time, it would be unwise, I think, to assume they don't have any missiles. Remember, the reports we have are from the Confederacy ships that survived.

"If they drop into subluminal space and come straight at us, I'd tend to think that they aren't highly maneuverable. Information in the database suggests they don't have the same lateral acceleration as our faster ships -- maybe less efficient inertial compensators?"

The next speaker arose, wearing Royal Australian Navy uniform. His red hair and beard did suggest a bit of berserker. Vic Crutchley, the most experienced ship handler, spoke next. "We are certain that both the Sa'arm and the Confederacy have beam weapons that they use against navigational hazards. There are also some accelerators for abrasive particles, as well as railguns. While a navigational hazard target can be moving, it wouldn't be maneuvering, so Confederacy tracking is limited. We don't know if the Sa'arm ever dealt with counterattacking forces, so we don't know if they can deal with maneuver and countermeasures.

While he was of an old Australian Navy family, he wasn't above replaying some American cliches. "I look forward, some day, to saying to those monsters," as he slipped into an exaggerated Crocodile Dundee voice, "that's not a tricky tactic. This is a tricky tactic -- the last you'll ever see."

"Being serious again, the Confederacy has had no requirements for missiles, although they do have a few scientific probes that might be useful. It's far more likely, though, that they have propulsion components that can be adapted to our missiles, and, eventually, small spacecraft.

"No one really knows if the Sa'arm have faced a space-to-space capable enemy, for whom they would have developed missiles. There's slight evidence that they have space- or air-to-ground bombs or missiles. Let me turn this over to Beatrice, who is qualified in both Marine ground and air."

"Apropos of small spacecraft, they have various shuttles and pod tenders, some of which might be adaptable for ground support and possibly some space combat. It shouldn't be hard for us to put both hardpoints, and winglets for mounting hardpoints, onto their craft. Essentially, we'll use our existing US/NATO weapons interfaces for weapons meant to go onto aircraft. For larger weapons, Shiro is our authority on wet navy combat systems. We really do need a bomber expert, but he has some insight there."

Shiro rose again. "It's not unreasonable to assume that we could adapt the Standard SM-3 anti-ballistic missile, or the SM-6 long-range antiaircraft missile. In this context, though, our idea of long range may be quite different from that seen in space. Still, for SM-3 engagement, we do tend to have a track in the hundreds or low thousands of kilometers, as the missile comes in ballistic. Remember, we haven't seen much lateral maneuvering, at high speed, in the Confederacy data base.

"At lower speed, we have more of a problem such as the SM-6 addresses. The SM-6 uses the AIM-120 AMRAAM radar for terminal guidance, and can accept midcourse data link information from AWACS or the ship. Our space vessels should also be able to give midcourse guidance, but from additional sensors including gravitic and passive electro-optical.

"We just don't know if those Sa'arm vessels' shields -- derived from navigational debris barriers -- or their intrinsic defense against falling objects -- will work well against missiles. If we can substitute or supplement our rocket motors with Confederacy drive technology, all the better. If we have to engage at thousands of kilometers, we'd have to have some ballistic coast in our trajectories.