Planning It Forward

Posted on Fri May 8th, 2015 @ 9:41pm by Major Patrick Smith & Major David Lorenz

Mission: Breaking New Ground
Location: Hangar Deck
Timeline: takes place before Jim Holbridge is knifed by Anaar

Leaving Tom Franklin in charge of the office, Dave decided to pay a visit to the aviators' domain. As a ground Marine that occasionally flew in the shotgun seat of a command landing transport, Dave was fascinated by the fighter pilots and their incredible guts. It was a half-starved, crazy flyboy that saved his bacon back in the War; not only had the crazy Holbridge organized and executed the daring escape, the 15 survivors had managed to steal a prototype Cardassian warship and fly it back to Federation-held space where they were nearly shot up until Dave got the communications working enough to confirm that they weren't suicide raiders. God, I was insane! Dave thought as he entered the hangar deck.

Dave strolled past the rows of gleaming Gryphon-class fighters, admiring their sleek lines. The fighters seemed to be moving, even when on the ground. Dave remembered leading his platoon in one firefight and seeing the screaming fighters, driven by some of the craziest bastards in service, dive on their targets and rain death on the poor fools at the other end of the storm of fire. Jim Holbridge had been that kind of flier, and Dave wondered why the man refused to climb back in the saddle....

A familiar face approached him, and Dave grinned at the man. "Hey Lucky!" he greeted Major Smith.

Patrick had spent the last while trying to get inventories and training programmes sorted out for the barrage of new gear he had been sent. With more options it was allowing him to specialize craft he had into roles rather than expecting one type of fight to do everything. Hearing Dave had come for a rare visit he went to meet him and was greeted by the man grinning, "Lucky. Right. You guys get new guns and all you have to do is point and shoot. I have to rebuild training, squadrons the whole lot!" Smith exclaimed smiling all the while.

"No seriously though Lorenz this stuff is fantastic. I'm glad Jim was able to get this early shipment here for us to try before the main ones arrive. Gives us the time we need to adjust to not having to treat out fighters like a newborn child," he added painfully aware of landing gears breaking on landing recently. "How are things with you guys?"

Dave looked at Patrick, noting the lines that had creased his face. "Can't complain, hoss. You should send a wire to the shipyard, and I am sure Bouncer, Jim, will send you some yard goons to help rebuild your ships. In the meantime, my XO came up with an ideer I wanna run by you. Got someplace where we can have a conversation?"

SMITH'S OFFICE
FIVE MINUTES LATER

The accommodations for Patrick's office were plush, by Marine standards. His I-love-me wall had mementos from his various postings, including several medals and unit citations. "Nice digs." Dave said as he took a slurp of coffee from the offered mug. "I'll get down to it, our forward positioning sucks ass. We are depending on the station's sensors to warn us of incoming danger, and that is a good way to get every man-jack in the unit killed."

Dave took a chip out of his duty vest and stuck it into the desk receptacle, and a hologram of the space surrounding the station leaped into the air. There were several small asteroids in the nearby regions, some of which were former mining hangars for Holbridge Mining before they closed. "Jim still owns these bits of floating rock and they make good sites for forward bases. I am proposing that we garrison them with two platoons of ground-pounders and a flight of fighters and gunabouts each. We rotate the troops and fliers every thirty days so no one gets bored, and voila, new defenses!"

Pat sat and watched Daves outlined proposal quietly. "Sounds interesting. Though I will say you got something wrong," he said tapping in some information to his console. On the hologram several hidden fighters appeared, Valkyries with advanced sensor packages. "I've had ships out extending the range for a long time, acting as an early warning net. Unfortunately pilots don't like being in a cockpit for 12 hour stints so it's been a once a week gig for pilots in rotation limiting what we can do."

He rotated the hologram about a bit. "I like the idea. The problem I have with it however is that we wouldn't own the facilities, and, don't get me wrong, I doubt Jim will pull them from under us, but I would like it more if we were able to place our own infrastructure. To that end I have something to show you." Again he accessed his console and this time replaced the hologram of the map with one of a new ship. "Meet the Serenity Modular Transport and Dropship. It's not a replacement for our troop transports as it's much too large, but it is essentially a pop-up base kit."

Dave studied the tech drawings, liking the overall design. "It has all the shit we'd need, that is for sure," David nodded. "Have you chopped this to Colonel Harris yet? If not, I can put my John Henry on this as an endorsement and then we can run it up the flagpole. As for your Valkyrie-class idea, I would think that a sensor-loaded gunabout would be more comfortable. There's several Arrow-class variants available and our budgets are chock full o' credits!"

"No not yet. Him and Thompson are dropping down later. We are doing a simulated fight against the Ascension class, although since the Ptolemy left we have to use a transport with holo emitters now." He flicked back to the area map. "If we find a few moons near these sites it'd give us somewhere stable to set up using these Serenity transports. Throw in a few gunboats and Valkyries for recon and we have a good early warning net."

David shut down the hologram. "I am sure those Serenity-class boats would work, but these are not going to be temporary structures; if they were I would say let's use the ships and be done with it. But the thing is, we are going to put up hard buildings and some robust landing structures, gun emplacements, and the whole ball of wax! This will save the transports for transporting in hot and heavy times without a lengthy retasking. In answer to your earlier statement, the moons are under Jim's flag because no one else wanted them, and he won't yank them from Starfleet. Besides I think your airedales would appreciate having real hangars to work in and rearm the birds in, not being out in clunky EVA suits because we didn't build proper facilities. The general said we needed to improve the garrison so let's spend the old man's creds while we have them!" david shook his coffee cup and swallowed the last drops. "Good java, Pat!"

"Very true Dave. I'll order some in and get them stations at Jim's bases for just such occasions. Although. We have people to arm the ships for us," he added slyly.

"Brag about it, why don't you?" Dave grinned. "don't forget to keep the head shed apprised of what we're spending their credits on!" Lorenz rose to his feet, then looked back at Patrick. "Good idea on themValkyries, a short-term stop-gap plan that worked. The gun emplacements we have on order will be ready in afew days....coming in on the supply run off the Atlanta. Big ol' photonic cannons and pulse cannons, even a rotary-barrel micro-torpedo launcher emplacement on each corner! See ya!" Dave scampered out of the office before Patrick could see the flour bomb he'd left in his chair.....

"....3....2....1...Now!" a puff of air sounded, followed by some very muffled cursing. another prank well-planned and executed. The Bulldog was back!

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Major David Lorenz
Planning Prankster

&

Major Patrick Smith
I got somebody for that... and that... and that...