She answered, “Yes. So, it works just like that?”
I replied, “Mostly. There might not be anyone following you, but you’ll have the knowledge that you’re not doing anything wrong when you break formation to give us a better advantage in a battle. If the ships following you do stay with you, then it gives us additional opportunities to try out some other things. For now, we’re going to try to keep everything simple. We’ll do charges, scrambles from the planet surface, test firings, battle station drills, and so forth. I’m on the Valhalla. When you pick the light cruiser you want to work on, send the captain of that ship over to see me. I’ll explain what’s going on so he or she won’t feel threatened.”
Majel kissed me lightly on the cheek before she walked off with her pilots and a few gunners behind her.
We went into space the morning of the day after Majel arrived. It just barely gave her time to learn everything she could about her light cruiser and the men and women aboard it. I finished plotting out where I wanted the ships to land when we returned and gave a copy to each ship’s captain before launch. The new landing positions would minimize the running distance for everyone when we started scrambling exercises.
We arrived in space where I had each ship start running battle stations drills. With twenty ships, it took all morning to finish. Then we spent the afternoon practicing the charge. I made note of which ships were slow to respond.
That night about one in the morning, we held our first scramble. The time wasn’t as good as I wanted, but the men and women knew one thing for sure. When I said for them to run as they were, they ran as they were. A lot of them forgot to even grab more than their stinger and gun belt. I didn’t say a word as long as they were present. When we got into space, we immediately went into formation and went through battle stations drills again before practicing how to charge as a squadron some more.
We returned slightly after noon that day. That gave the men and women a chance to grab their clothing and get dressed before we worked on the ships again to locate more deficiencies, now becoming apparent.
The next scramble saw a few less people naked on board after we launched. Most of them wisely put a set of clothes on board and didn’t worry about trying to find their clothes in the dark. Again, I didn’t say a word when almost all of the men and women came running to the ships in only their mesh undies or naked. Their time was significantly better. Each time we went out into space, I made it a habit for every ship to conduct a battle stations drill and test fire their weapons.
The next scramble was in the daytime and proved to be just as difficult for them. They expected to be scrambled during the night and fell into it as a routine. Their time wasn’t as good as it should have been for getting the ships off during the day.
The fourth scramble was for real when an enemy scout managed to get by the border patrol and began checking out the bases on Echo. One crewman was killed when we lifted off to meet and destroy the scout. I didn’t have to make my point anymore about what I would do in a real emergency, especially since the crewman was from my ship. I even knew we were short one man when we lifted off. It was the crewman’s misfortune to be late and too near the ship’s engines when we lifted off and went into our first combat.
The first combat with the scout wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be. The squadron managed to attack immediately although it consisted of only a few ships in position at that moment. Regardless, the rest of the ships’ officers and crews were able to observe those of us who were in position move without hesitation towards the enemy to blast him out of space. While we were in space, I still required every ship to go through its battle stations drills and conduct a mock charge before we returned to port.
Because of the one death, we moved my ship, which would always try to launch first with or without me, to a location a little farther away so that anyone not on board the other nineteen ships would have some warning to get the hell out of the way. That was our only change because of the loss of the one crewman.
A week later, I asked for a patrol sector to take my squadron to for more practice and hopefully the chance to have an actual engagement with the enemy. Headquarters gave us a sector where there was a chance of an engagement, but where there hadn’t been much activity during the war. I accepted it and returned to the squadron. I started them off by giving them a morning scramble to the space ships. Then I followed up with a quick battle stations drill and mock charge before we left Echo and went to our sector.
It was a complete surprise to everyone that we were actually on patrol for a week. We moved about the sector in formation with complete communications silence. In doing so, we surprised another scout the following day who was trying to slip into the area around Echo to gather information. The enemy scout was surprised to see twenty ships facing him and tried to turn away as he broadcast what he found in a previously unoccupied sector.
Since our location was known, I broadcast a quick warning to the ships’ captains about what might happen in the next two days.
Majel’s gunners managed to have an impact on the gunners in the rest of the squadron. By the time we went to this sector, nearly every gunner was sleeping near a gun station to lessen his or her reaction time. By then, most of the crew members knew that there were certain things that I didn’t care about as long as they were performing their duty. During my inspections of my own cruiser, I even found one woman naked while manning her weapon. I discovered that the only time she even bothered to get dressed was when she left to relieve herself or get a meal. I remembered a moment later that she was originally from Echo, a planet in the Union with legalized public nudity and the same planet we were stationed on. About all I could do was shrug my shoulders and cut her a little slack, especially since she was the second best gunner on board. Compared to her, I was third.
A day and a half later, the enemy squadron I expected was picked up at the far edge of our sensors. There were roughly as many of them as my own squadron. I was a little happy about that. So far, two scouts weren’t much of an accomplishment. We moving forward toward the enemy to get our heavy weapons into range first, then I shouted charge over the lightbeam radio. Then I turned the radio over to the Communications officer to broadcast the outcome of the battle as it happened.
For once, every ship responded almost at the right time in the right direction. The Berserker Squadron moved out at top speed with our guns blazing whether a particular gun was in range of the enemy or not. Our Mark IV quads began getting hits almost immediately. The constant practice had helped a number of the gunners get used to firing them. Now they were seeing hits. The enemy suddenly turned and ran before we could destroy any of them. I thought for a moment about stopping the charge and decided not to. They were still in range and in our sector. As long as those two conditions existed, we would show them that we weren’t going to back down for any other reason. Because they had to execute a turn, the distance between them and us shrank almost to where the Mark III guns could have some effect. We managed to concentrate enough firepower on one trailing enemy ship and destroy it before I called back to Headquarters to determine if pursuit was permitted. I liked my new Fleet Admiral even more when he answered back, “Go get them!”