you. We have to rewrite the Fighting Instructions from the ground up.”
Inwardly, Michael groaned. Sims! Why was he not surprised?
It was the end of a long day.
Michael still could not believe it all, and for good reason. What he had been told was close to heresy-no, it was heresy. Baker’s proposal not only overturned the most sacred of all of Fleet’s sacred cows, it had kicked it to death before chucking it out the window.
Michael shook his head.
Jaruzelska had told him only the half of it. He had discovered that Baker was not a man who thought small. Oh, no. Baker’s plans for him went far beyond command of a converted heavy cruiser. For each manned ship, he planned to deploy between four and nine unmanned cruisers-“dreadnoughts” he insisted they be called-operating under the manned cruiser’s direct control. In Baker’s view, the dreadnoughts would be so tough that they would be able to drive into the heart of any Hammer formation and rip it to shreds, antimatter missiles or not. Provided that he did not screw up in the sims, Michael would take the First Dreadnought Squadron into action when-not if, Michael noted with interest-negotiations with the Hammers collapsed.
The turnaround was incredible. Since its inception, Fleet policy had consistently favored manned warships to the point where the policy was so entrenched in Fleet thinking that to challenge it was a career-threatening move. To be fair, there never had been an AI-commanded warship capable of taking on and beating a manned warship. Endless sims had proved that. Humans made better decisions under the stress and confusion of space war than AIs could; it was as simple as that. Despite the billions of FedMarks invested in AI research and development, FedWorld AI technology, good though it was, had never been able to replicate the human brain.
And there things would have stayed if the Comdur Disaster had not left the Fleet with many more ships than it could find crews for and the Hammers with a weapon those ships could not defeat.
So here he was, Michael thought. Fate had put him at the tip of the sword intended for the Hammer’s heart, and he meant to be there when the chance to drive it home came. It would come; he was sure of that. The Hammers wanted much too much and were too sure that they had such an advantage over the Federation that they would not have to make concessions to get it. Well, he might be only a newly promoted lieutenant, but he agreed with Baker: It was only a matter of time before the negotiations collapsed and the Fourth Hammer War started.
He prayed for that day to come-the Hammer had debts to pay.