stepped to his side. “What’s on your mind, Ray?”
“We need to slow them down. I’d like to throw a little confusion at them when the fighting starts.”
“How?”
“We don’t want to display our fast ship capabilities if we can avoid it. I’m not sure we can, but what if we have all of our fast ships flank their formation? Their beacons are off, so the Rebels probably won’t even know they’re here. They might notice our drive signatures, but not until we close in on them. What do you think?”
M’Coda’s upper hands moved to his antennae as he considered. “Those four squadrons in front of the Rebels are in for a bad time. Four against 37, it’s unthinkable. They need any help we can provide. Your plan will improve their numbers, though 10 against 37 is still unacceptable.”
“It’s the best we can do. Their job will be to slow down the attackers until our trailing squadrons catch-up. Then it will be barely more than two against one, very acceptable odds. I only hesitate because I hate to keep throwing changes at our guys. It makes us look like we don’t know what we’re doing.”
“Don’t worry. Chandrajuski is a master at this. Besides, we really don’t know what we’re doing. Battles on this scale have never been fought, and our men know it. They’ll see the power of this tactic and welcome it.”
A tightbeam transmission came to them from near the planet and was patched through to Trexler. Reba’s face filled the display. “Hey, what’s going on up there? Are you guys abandoning us?”
“Hi, Reba. How’s it going down there?”
“The city and space port are secure. We’re investigating other cities and ports to see if any Chessori remain. You can’t strand us, Ray.”
“I won’t. We’re just repositioning.”
She considered his words. “Oh. Sorry. The odds are pretty bad, ten against thirty-seven. I thought you might have decided to retreat.”
“You can’t see the whole picture from where you are. The odds are bad, but not that bad unless more Rebels show up. I’ll let you know if you need to leave in a hurry. Are you prepared to do that?”
“If we have to. We’d rather stay and fight. I’m preparing a reserve force here in case any of them make it past you.”
“Uh, say again?”
“Well, Korban has seven operational squadrons, and I have a lot of infantry guys that are excellent shots. It won’t take them all that long to get up to speed on the guns. I’m the only real pilot, but we’re cobbling some trainees together. We’re just manning the cruisers, not the smaller ships. It’s the best use of our resources.”
Trexler stared into her eyes for a time as his mind calculated. “You’re training Waverly’s guys to fly?”
“We are. It won’t be pretty, and it’s only a last ditch effort. We’re assigning three Rangers to act as one pilot. I’ll take one ship by myself.”
“How good are the gunners?”
“Fair, and getting better. They’re naturals for the job. And the port defenses are fully manned by our guys. They’ve already taken out two Chessori.”
Trexler pursed his lips and shook his head. “I should have given you a ship back on Earth. You’d earned it. I just wasn’t ready to give you up yet.”
Her dazzling smile lit up her face. “I’ll keep the seven I have if that’s okay with you.”
“Sorry, but I might take them away from you.” Her smile disappeared. Trexler leaned into the pick-up. “Reba, I have pilots, lots and lots of pilots. I can pull them from the fighters. I’d trade seven small fighters for seven cruisers any day.”
Her eyes widened. “Of course you can. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You have full Empire crews on board, right?”
“Yes… well… no. Three squadrons were pretty devastated internally when we cleared them of Chessori. The Chessori didn’t hesitate to kill regular crewmembers once the fighting started.”
“Are they operational?”
“Not against an Empire crew. Against a Chessori crew, they’ll be acceptable.”
“Get your ships started this way while I figure out what we’re going to do with them.”
“I sort of like the idea of a last line of defense, Ray.”
“So do I. We might turn you back, but there’s plenty of time for that. I need to slow these guys down, Reba. My ships that turned around are just repositioning. Do you understand my meaning?”
It didn’t take her long to figure it out. “I’ve just manned the cruisers. I have ten frigates. Do you want them?”
“If you can provide gunners, I’ll take a frigate over a fighter any day.”
“I’ll check with Waverly.”
“Don’t spread him too thin. You know about the second battle that’s coming up. All the ships here came from Seeton, and we’re making that obvious. We want the Rebels to know who their next target is. We’re going to pull the enemy to him.”
She nodded grimly and cut the connection.
He turned to find Chandrajuski staring at him in amazement. M’Coda’s upper hands had moved to his antennae, and they were working overtime. “Where do you people come up with these ideas?” Chandrajuski asked.
“Hey, we’re new to all this. We don’t know the rules, so we make them up as we go. Got any ideas on how we’re going to use unattached cruisers and frigates?”
M’Coda answered, his upper hands still as he considered. “We assign one of Reba’s cruisers to each of our four inner squadrons. The additional cruiser will be treated as a frigate since the crews are not fully trained. With three of Reba’s squadrons remaining, we will pair two of them together, and the third will remain unattached, held in reserve.” His upper hands resumed a rapid preening of his two antennae. “This will be interesting, two cruisers paired together. No one knows their capabilities. We’ll call them super squadrons, eh?”
On paper, Trexler’s forces had increased from his original 16 cruisers to 23, but until they could study the performance of the newcomers, Reba’s cruisers would be treated as frigates. They were up against 37 fully functional Rebel squadrons. According to their simulations, the odds were very acceptable. There were no indications of Rebel reinforcements, but they could, of course, show up any time.
Trexler altered their normal tactics, but he considered it a minor change. His fleet’s sole focus would be Rebel cruisers. Enemy frigates would have to be addressed, but only minimally, and enemy fighters would be ignored until the cruisers had been dealt with. They were largely ineffective against his cruisers anyway.
He had no way of knowing if the Rebels had focused as intently on fleet tactics as his men had, but he suspected they had not. The Rebels’ secret weapon was the Chessori.
Reba’s ragged fleet of seven cruisers approached Trexler’s inner four squadrons, and a fighter came aboard each of her ships. Aboard Reba’s cruiser, the fighter disgorged a pilot, a gunner, an engineer, and thirty Empire crewmembers, most of them fairly senior. It had been standing room only on the fighter, but it had been a short flight for them.
Reba smiled when the new pilot joined her on the net. “They must be scraping the bottom of the barrel,” she said.
“Commander Sara Eaton reporting, My Lady.”
Reba remembered her from the interview process on Earth “So you have your own ship, a fighter?”
“No, I just borrowed this one. I’m a pilot on a cruiser.”
Reba blinked, figuratively. “Well! At least someone will know what’s going on here.”
“I’m not the only expert,” Sara replied. “We were told your ship had been through an internal battle, a culling, so I brought some senior Empire crewmembers. I also brought a Terran gunnery officer and an engineer. You’ll be as ship-shape as you can be in short order.”
Reba turned the ship over to Sara and went hunting through the net. The first person she found was Lieutenant Jerry Strauss, her new gunnery officer. He was already running simulations with the Raiders she had brought from Orion III.
She next found the engineer Sara had brought, Lieutenant Chuck Thoms. He was hard at work doing a
