It hadn’t taken more than a few days for order to be given to recall Edward and a select few others back to Earth. All for an emergency general meeting of the admiralty and for a full fleet maintenance along with several other fleets.
It was the first time he’d been in an admiralty meeting for Edward, and it wasn’t quite the sort of one he’d expected to be in. He’d thought it’d be one that was a bit less… urgent.
“Everyone, I hope you are all well aware of the concerning first meeting with the newly discovered “Awakened Directorate of Humanity” and their less than homely attitude towards us.”
The coarse voiced middle-aged admiral Carter Baxter flicked a switch on their table mounted console, releasing a set of files onto the other admiral’s consoles. Each of them around the table lighting up with the new notification.
“Intelligence on this new, and possibly hostile nation is limited. We currently have five ships classified that I will be covering later. For now, all you need to know is that we’re walking around in the dark. We don’t even know where most of their systems are other than their capital world.”
“If I may ask sir,” asked a slender faced rear admiral, “how do we know that?”
Carter’s grey eyes slipped over to them, “As they are one of our lost fleets. Everyone here should now have clearance to that file, but the information is on a need-to-know basis for all ranks lower than OF-7.”
“Got it sir.”
The admiral nodded, “So, henceforth, our strategy will be changing. The board of senior admirals will be meeting tomorrow to discuss the paper that will be sent to the ministry of defence for funding approval. The dossier here is to illustrate this plan to you, less senior admirals, explain your new assignments and to gather your inputs into this new strategy. The government has finally relented into continuing near wartime spending in the face of this threat and with this the fleet will see a large expansion. Any, better timed, questions?”
Silence. Just like a classroom…
“Excellent. Then, first of all, we are shifting production towards the construction of several new frontline fleets made up of battle carriers, heavy and light cruisers, destroyers and various supply vessels, all focused on long ranged offensive and defensive actions on the frontier. I want a list of new ships that you might request for your own fleets drawn up by the end of next week as it will be now or never for them. We need our construction plans drawn up soon and there will be very little room for adjustment after that. Questions?”
“What sort of vessels are within our permit to request sir?” Edward asked.
“Mostly smaller ships that fit within your fleet’s designated role. This is mainly to help with organising orders for auxiliary vessels and escorts.”
“Got it sir.”
“Is the board accepting any new designs?” Asked a vice admiral, her keen eyes betraying her excitement at the possibility.
Shame it’s probably rather misplaced…
“No, vice admiral Diaz. The designs have already been selected as part of the third-generation program. Any new ones would disrupt the supply chain and production to unacceptable levels.”
“Sorry sir.”
“No more then?” Carter asked.
Silence.
“Excellent. I hope you can all keep your peace. Now, to illustrate the threat to our combined forces I would like to refer to that earlier document. First of all, we have a destroyer class that has been given the designation of the Flanker Class. It seems to have an array of VLS point defence missile tubes arrayed along its two side hulls along with possible launching bays for drones. We are not sure yet if it has any railguns, but the surface of the hull seems to indicate that it may have some concealed weapons hidden under hatches.”
Edward brought the image of it up on the screen and sure enough, it was the destroyer he’d sighted. In fact, it was from the exact footage that Vanguard took herself.
“We then have what seems to be a light support cruiser design of theirs. This one has distinct, but small railgun turrets on its central hull, but then has missiles and parasite craft attached to its side hulls. It’s unknown if these may be fighters, scout craft or EWAR craft at this moment. If they are EWAR craft that’ll be concerning given our lack of dedicated EWAR vessels, which this class might be specialised towards. Hence its name as the Trojan Class.”
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Another picture taken by Vanguard. I seem to be on a roll here…
“Then, are the two capital vessels. One battleship classified as the Hurricane Class and a superheavy battleship classified as the Dawn Class due to its name. It’s a long winded one and certainly one that projects the mentality of our opponents. Hopefully that will manifest in their strategy and tactics. Especially since the Dawn Class features twelve heavy railgun turrets and two very large spinal railguns. Even if they only have one of them it’s a very intimidating ship, if luckily also a large target.”
“Sir, do we have anything to counter it?” The slender rear admiral butted in again.
“Our brains Rear Admiral Halsey. Brains and nuclear weapons. All of us here should be able to figure out a way to deliver heavy spinal railgun rounds and nuclear warheads onto that thing. Yamato died, Hood died, and Bismarck died, all monsters can be killed.”
“Yes sir!”
An inspiring statement… Shame that applies to Vanguard too, given how flying into a shot from an improvised coilgun was able to cut into its armour…
“Now, back on topic, I would like to point out a fatal flaw in the general design in all of these vessels. The only part holding the two side hulls which seem to hold most of the armament, engines and radiators of the ships are only held together by the much shorter central hull. If I was to guess, they have decided on a fleet based on heavily armed, but not so heavily armoured warships with the ability for modular design. This may suggest that they will outnumber us. I hope you are all prepared to fight that sort of war, I know in the last one it was the other way around for us. Questions?”
Edward swallowed, “Do we have any hunter killer groups made up of our Erebus class stealth ships organised sir?”
Carter looked over with his lethargic eyes, “I believe Admiral Asai has been rather keen on that idea, I will pass your motion of support over to them. They would also like a report on your experience with Vanguard so far as well. Though I doubt he will be getting all he would want out of it.”
Admiral Asai… He thought he might have heard of them before… Ah! They were the main proponent of the large stealth ship program. So that’s who pushed to get Vanguard made…
“Now any others?”
Silence.
“Excellent… So, since you were just speaking rear admiral Fletcher, I will get your assignment out of the way first. The Second Expeditionary Fleet will be in for a few months of repairs and minor overhauls. After that you will set your fleet up in a defensive position in system B-10349 and to escort any incursions by Directorate fleets out while being on call for the First Expeditionary Fleet. Further details will be given to you closer to your departure.”
“Got it sir.”
“Speaking of, vice admiral, in two weeks’ time you will be departing with the First Expeditionary Fleet to scout which systems have been occupied by the Directorate. As I have said you have the authority to call on the Second Expeditionary Fleet but only if you need the firepower. Your full briefing will be on Wednesday."
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“Have you… Though about what might happen if they attack us and we-“
“Lose?” Edward finished, “Well Elliot, I think I would be dead already by then.”
“How so?”
Edward sighed, “Because there is no way I’d be surrendering to them and as long as there are enough loyal people to crew one ship to fight against them I would be on it.”
The wind gently blew through the two’s hair as they faced each other, the only sound left being the rustling of hair and the distant rumble of cars.
If it was any other time he’d be thinking more about the garden of the new house he was sitting in, or when him and Elliot would next meet up. Rather than counting down the days till he’d have to go back to base and what he would do to prepare himself before the fleet departed again. To go back to the time before the war…
“Then I’d be with you too then… I’m not sure what I’d do but I don’t think I’d want to surrender to them either.”
“D-Does that mean?”
“Yes,” Elliot said, “I’m staying with you as your attaché even if I might end up in the middle of a war. Anyway, it might save me from being sent to “negotiate” with them.” He chuckled.
He sniffed, “You could just say the cheesy romantic part out loud.”
“What bit?”
“That’d you’d rather die together with me in one final moment than live in a world-“
“Oh, shut up!” Elliot laughed, nudging Edward in the shoulder as he brought himself nice and close, “Save that for the foreplay.”
Edward’s face reddened, his eyes flicking around as he tried not to make contact with his boyfriend’s joy filled counterparts, “I-I’m not sure i-if I’d ever-“
“Because that’s more my thing~?”
“Yes…”
Elliot lips curled into a smirk, “And I thought the bossy admiral would be the one leading things when I first-”
“I should get you some pistol training! You know, self-defence! We don’t know if the ship might get boarded or not!”
“Trying to become the suave instructor now? I like it, but you still tried to dodge me there and I’m not going to forget that tonight… Not that you’re gonna mind I think~”
“How can you so easily turn around a conversation like this…”
“You’re just that easy to tease, that’s all, you should know that all too well. You should really assert yourself a bit more if you want to get on top of me more…”
“Da- Uh-!”
“Again, too easy. I didn’t even mean it in that way, but your mind did all the work needed.” He shook his head tutting, “But you do have an opportunity with the pistol training.”
“I- I’ll try to stick to actually talking about the- you know, how to shoot part then rather than rambling off on the technical details of the pistols themselves.”
“Oh, you don’t need to do that, it’s cute when you do that!”
“Well, I’ll make sure to talk all about them till it makes you wish you never said that!”
“Oh, you can try. But it’ll only show how much of an adorable dork you are.”
“Who uses the word dork these days!?”
“I do and it fits you!”
They both laughed as Elliot’s arm wrapped around Edward, the two of them collapsing into a bench overlooking the garden. The green, brown of the foliage and menagerie of flowers was just so… beautiful…
“Edward…” Elliot mumbled.
“What is it?”
“I want to just stay here for a bit and- And I want to keep my mind off of the Directorate stuff for how every many weeks or months we can.”
“Me too.”