In Harm's Way (Halberd Book 2) by Spearman John

Author:Spearman, John [Spearman, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

23

Achates continued to speed deeper into the Juno system, leaving the broken and battered Federation ships behind. “We’ve got a few hours, Mel,” Jonah suggested, “why don’t we get the after-action report done?”

“Sounds good, skip,” Mel replied genially. “Give me a few minutes. I want to visit the tactical center and get their feedback.”

“Mr. Donan, you have the bridge,” Jonah ordered.

Jonah went to his ready room, and when Mellon joined him a half-hour later, he activated the holographic display, replaying the battle in detail and slowing down the view at critical points. At one point, Mellon stopped the display and pointed out, “Swordfish even killed the missiles that went astray, skip.”

He highlighted what he meant on the display. “There were eight of their birds that went off track,” he said, brightening their tracks to highlight them. He advanced the display again, saying, “Swordfish didn’t take any chances,” as the display showed the Swordfish missiles intercepting them.

The two men examined the strikes that the sensors recorded on the Federation ships. They completed their assessments and Jonah transmitted the files with the sensor logs back to Admiral Lothes at the Admiralty. “How did things go in tactical?” Jonah asked.

“Fairly well, for a first time,” Mellon reported. “We missed some opportunities. We’re still learning everything the system can do. We need to a more thorough job of loading in targeting parameters because the system wanted and could have made use of more information.”

Jonah pointed at the finished report and said, “You know, Niven is probably waiting on pins and needles for this.”

Mel chuckled, then, looking at the console, he said, “The Sevastopol is waking up, skip. Sensors show they’ve lit up the first of the four cold reactors.”

“How long did it take them?” Jonah inquired.

“Two hours, twenty-nine minutes,” Mel responded.

“Plug that in,” he requested. “Use two hours for the other three, then plot its course out to us at 500G.”

Mellon entered the information on the console. “Estimate shows ten hours and a few minutes. It will become more accurate as we proceed. As we see the other reactors come online, we’ll adjust. Normally, I’d tweak the duty rosters to line up with our intercept, but with so many variables in play, I think we should leave them alone.”

Jonah nodded his agreement and Mellon left. Jonah sat back and allowed his mind to try to absorb what he had just experienced in the battle. He’d never made it through a conflict of this scale with his ship remaining completely unscathed. It was almost too good to be true, he thought and seemed to him almost unfair. He shook his head as if to shake those thoughts away. He knew none of his enemies would hesitate at all to take full advantage of any tactical edge they were given.

He then began to wonder what he could do in command of a force of three ships like Achates . The Admiralty had already begun work on Achates’ sister ships, Pallas and Euryalus , and Admiral Lothes

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