This is my first fanfic, please review with any sort of constructive criticism. I would Like some Ideas on how well the characters are developing and would appreciate any help or tips that you can supply. Thanks and Enjoy.
Obligatory Legal Stuff and Disclamer: While the most of the material from this is mine, any place, character, or ship mentioned in cannon, belongs to David Weber.
ATC Tactical Simulators
Saganami Island Naval Academy
Manticore
September 1930 P.D.
Ensign Catherine Mozak winced as yet another of the battlecruisers leading her defense force disappeared from the display in a silent ball of fury. In a real battle, that would have meant the loss of nearly five hundred uniformed men and women, yet, as this was just a simulation, all it meant was that her task force had been reduced to just fifteen battlecruisers while the aggressor's still had its full complement of 24. She had started with only 18, yet she was nearly at her acceptable loss limit of five BC's and seven of the screen.
Then, as Catherine typed a command into her console, six hundred of the pods deployed behind the rapidly accelerating 'enemy ships' belched out 5,400 missiles. At the same time, each of her battlecruisers launched a full broadside of missiles along with those in their attached pods. Almost 11,000 ship-killers were in that onslaught of impeller signatures. More than 450 targeted each of the attacking vessels. "Only" 4,800 of those missiles made it past the exquisitely timed and executed counter-missile launches, however, every single one of those missiles made it past the last-ditch defenses of the laser point-defense clusters that should have killed at least half of them. Two hundred laser-heads pumped X-rays into each of the aggressor fleet's ships.
Every one of the 24 crimson marks on Catherine's display vanished. Two of them were replaced by the purple crosses denoting wrecks that still might 'have' life on them. The other twenty-two of them had vanished in the maelstrom of destruction that had ravaged through those ships. Most likely, they had blown up when one of their fusion plants had failed and let the small star inside it free. No less than thirty seconds later, two hundred white diamonds representing missiles appeared from within one hundred thousand kilometers of Catherine's 'flagship' and flew towards it at nearly 5,000 gravities higher an acceleration than her missiles could pull. Given their low starting velocity, her only counter-missile launch killed nearly three-quarters of them and the one laser launch, fired at the last possible moment, killed 30 more. Compared to the tidal wave of her launch, the salvo that sped towards Catherine's command was barely even a ripple, yet 20 missiles managed to get within the 25 thousand kilometer range necessary for the missiles to have effect. Only one-sixth of the lasers fired by the missiles managed to hit their target, but it was enough.
Catherine could only watch in horror as the damage reports flooded her display. How could those missiles hit their targets when in ballistic for that long, she thought, bewildered. Less than a second later, she, scolding herself for her momentary lapse, forced herself to truly pay due attention to those reports. The damage wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. Only one 'fatality' had been reported, and the computer had determined that only six crewmembers were wounded in the attack. However, her flagship would not be able to "return home" until "extensive repairs" were completed.
The sim had lasted for 100 minutes, 22.54 seconds, Catherine's losses were less than one-sixth that of her opponent, who had been at ATC for nearly a whole semester longer than she, a lieutenant-commander nearly twice her age, already with hyper capable command under his belt. To be fair, he wasn't exactly a tactical genius. He was good, but he was not innovative and his numerical advantage was not large enough to be decisive, causing his tactics to be largely ineffective against her superior tech.
Catherine stepped away from her simulator and walked into the debriefing room. Now to spend fifteen minutes watching the battle, and nearly two hours picking it apart by an officer who has been an Admiral longer than I've been alive, she thought, what fun!
...
"So, Cathy, how did that sim go?"
Lieutenant Kevin Anderson was an assistant to one of the instructors at the Saganami Island Main Campus, and was due to take the ATC at the start of the next term. At just a shade under 2 meters tall, the San Martino was a giant. Born on a world with one of the strongest gravity wells of an inhabited planet, there wasn't a milligram of excess weight on him, his blue eyes and blonde hair was uncommon for one from San Martin, yet, it only added to his already powerful appearance.
Catherine looked down into her mug, replying only with, "Be thankful I'm not defending the Sollies."
The whole table of junior officers did a double take at that statement, Ensign Catherine Mozak never said anything remotely resembling humor, and it was rare that she would even crack a smile, so why would she joke about something as serious as an ATC simulation, thought Anderson. She's a peculiar one, that's a definite. A couple of seconds later, she elaborated, "I lost just over fifteen hundred people, and they did not have a single survivor. I could have scaled that up without to many more casualties for up to twice as many opponents. But that's not even the best part, apparently I was up against that idiot Berkley, not Matteson, and it was her final exam!"
Now Lieutenant Anderson understood: Lady Harriet Berkley was the daughter of the Duke of Manchyr Bay, one of the few members of the old Liberal Party left in the House of Lords. Berkley had gotten into ATC by pure patronage and somehow thought that her lack of talent made her superior to every other student on Saganami. "If patronage can put her into the ATC, then I think that our ensign here has demonstrated that it sure as hell won't get her through it," he said.
Humor was not out of place for the Lieutenant, and neither was vulgarity, and everybody laughed, except for one Ensign Catherine Mozak, who only let the barest of smiles show through her normal mask of a face.
"She's good, I'll grant you that. I don't regret breaking nearly every precedent for this from the past 20 years and putting her in ATC this early, but I don't believe that she is ready to move on yet. Yes, she blasted damn near twenty-five battlecruisers out of the sky; however, she was only a couple of missile hits away from hitting her acceptable loss limit."
Admiral Hamish Alexander-Harrington, Earl of White Haven and Commandant of Saganami Island Advanced Tactical Course, was referring to the young ensign who had just soundly defeated the forces of an officer nearly twice her age, and with about that amount more experience. He was responding to his wife's suggestion that she take a break from the ATC to do a cruise with a certain officer who had recently acquired flag rank. "I know that being Tremaine's flag lieutenant would do her good, but she is really young. She might take the transfer badly."
"So, you're saying that she would think that, because she was transferred out of the ATC, she had flunked out. I see where you are coming from, but what if she proves that she isn't up to the challenge of 'The Crusher?'"
"Then we'll have a whole lot of issues on our hands. The first of which will be that some force of nature has kept one of the most qualified tactical officers the RMN has from ever gaining the command of a starship, and that that force of nature needs to be dealt with. Second, that same officer will be unable to contribute to the war effort to her upmost, and we, as two of the Navy's most senior officers will have to contend with that fact. And," Lord White Haven said, "Neither of us will let that happen. If she has to stay an extra semester or two, so what! It's not uncommon, especially for the more junior students, so it shouldn't be a problem."
At 180 centimeters, Catherine Mozak was about average height. However, that was just about the only average thing about her: her eyes were grey, but with the gleam of cold steel, her rich auburn hair reached only halfway to her shoulders, she was extraordinarily slim, but she seemed to emanate supernatural strength. She was demonstrating her near-demonic reflexes on the Grayson-style fencing salle. She was sparring with a muscular Marine in Grayson uniform, and his reflexes were those of decades of training and natural skill. However, Catherine's reflexes, while not supernatural, were not merely human: she was genetically engineered to have the most efficient muscle mass, the fastest reflexes and the most powerful metabolism that Manpower, Incorporated could put into a human body.
To a casual observer, it may have looked as if each of the fencers had landed dozens of blows upon one another. However, the reality was that neither one had been able to score a touch upon the other for nearly ten minutes, and that the blades had only come close to hitting their target before they were deflected or blocked. One flurry of blows later, the tip of Catherine's blade was touching her partner's neck. The cool touch of steel caused the Marine to take a step back and bow to his opponent, conceding the victory. Funny, Catherine thought, I'm an officer in the most modern armed force in the galaxy and I spend my time practicing with weapons that are nearly three millennia out of date. I guess that is because of the way I was raised.
Catherine had been the 'prototype' of the new genotype for Manpower, and they used her as the guinea pig for a number of experimental techniques. Her body wasn't the twenty-two T-years that it appeared to be, even considering prolong. It had only existed for just over six and a half years. However, her consciousness had existed on first century ante-diaspora Earth for a sixteen-year universe simulation that ended at the precise moment that her body looked sixteen in a society with prolong. Well, she thought, I guess that they called it 2012 C.E. not 90 Ante-Diaspora back then. Her mind and memories were then transferred into the body that she now inhabited. Apparently, the plan was that she would be used by Mesa and Manpower as some sort of super weapon, but she had not stayed long enough to be informed of exactly what she was a weapon of when she jumped on the first ship heading out of Mesa to Manticore that she could find. Upon reaching Manticore, she applied for asylum, citizenship, and for admittance into the Royal Manticoran Naval Academy. She had gotten all three. She had calculated her birthday to follow with her recollection of her age. Upon graduating from the Academy, she had served as a junior officer aboard the Super-dreadnought HMS Inconceivable at the Third Battle of Spindle, which had gone similarly to the other two. Following which, she had been the tactical officer aboard the Destroyer HMS Squire; that stint was not anywhere near as eventful as the one aboard Inconceivable, Catherine thought, continuing her reflection on how she ended up where she was.
After serving on the Squire, Catherine had entered ATC, leapfrogging over dozens of other, more senior, officers in the process and stepping on almost as many toes. She knew the age differential would cause jealousy, even dislike, yet she was not even remotely prepared for the actual reality that seemed to face her every day at the ATC campus. There were those who did not share the other officer's distaste, nonetheless, deep inside, even they mirrored that same resentment. My, aren't you taking a depressing look on reality today! Catherine scolded herself; I really should work on my missile doctrine paper, seeing as I am editing it with Helen and Robin in about sixteen hours. Catherine looked up, realizing that her thoughts had carried her to the center of the campus, almost a whole kilometer from her dorm complex.
That was when she heard the shill wail of alarm sirens. Pure instinct, hard earned by dozens, if not hundreds of drills, launched every student lounging about into a dead run for the nearest emergency shelters.
Every student except for one Ensign Catherine Mozak.