Out of the Ashes (Rise of the Empire Book 3) by Ivan Kal

Author:Ivan Kal [Kal, Ivan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Ivan Kal
Published: 2015-04-26T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Sanctuary

Fleets Master Laura Reiss stood on the command deck of the station/shipyard orbiting Thanatos, one of Sanctuary’s moons. The station was finished just a month ago, and was a part of a major expansion of the Fleet. Even now they were building habitats on the moon that would serve as Fleet Headquarters and the Academy. It will be another couple of months for them to finish those.

Now she was overseeing a live test of the new drones. They have already built one squadron, ten drones of the ‘light’ variant. And with the breakthrough in FTL comm, they could now control them from light hours or even light years away. The drones were a bit smaller than the light cruiser ships, being one hundred meters long compared to the one hundred and twenty meters that was the length of the light cruiser ships. The drones had around 30% increase in firepower, and 20% thicker hull. They had no need for many things that a manned ship needed to have. And their only purpose was for battle, they only had a few access tunnels, for the purpose of repairs. There was no life support, no atmosphere. For all those reasons they managed to make the drones much more durable. Their hull was thicker, their drives bigger and stronger, and their weapons more powerful than those of the light cruisers.

And Laura was very pleased with how they performed. Each drone was controlled by a drone team consisting of four people, one in charge of the drones maneuvering, two in charge of the weapons, and one managing the sensory data from the drone and reading the orders sent from the overall commander via command boards. Each drone squadron had ten drones, and all were commanded from a drone command room on board a command ship, a battleship or a dreadnought. Each drone squadron would be commanded by a Drone Leader, who will oversee the execution of the Fleet Commander’s orders.

Laura looked as a team of ten drones maneuvered into position to attack their designated targets. Almost as one they opened fire and within minutes the slabs of metal that served as target practice were destroyed.

“It looks like the test is a success.” Commander of Fleets Oswald Mein said. He was second in command of the Fleet, Laura’s second.

“Yes.” Laura agreed.

“Did you decide who will be given the command of the Home Fleet?” Oswald asked.

“I’m leaning towards Force Leader Bethany Jones.” Laura said. The Third Fleet or rather Home Fleet still didn’t have an overall commander. They were waiting to see if the drone program would work out, and now she needed to decide who would be in command. The decision was between the two dreadnought commanders. Bethany Jones of the Prideful and Nair Hakeem of the Salahuddin. But in the end Bethany Jones was a better fit. She had experience, she was the High Prime on the Athena under Adrian during their encounter with Concordis ships back in Sol. And her scores were at the top of the fleet.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.