Colonial Thunder
Sequel to 7 Points
By Chaoseternus
Chapter 34: Fleet Rebirth
Commodore Peters half smiled as she glanced out the massive bay window of her office, her eyes following four ships as they sortied one by one out of the stations slips, the slips themselves blocked from view by the curve of the station but the ships, each one had to pass within sight of her window as they drifted on thrusters out of Thundersdawn's small construction and repair bays.
For the first time in years, the fleet was at full strength, not a single commissioned vessel under repair or missing. It made a refreshing change, but it didn't change one simple fact.
Full strength was still not strength enough, not for the task ahead.
Not for defeating the System Lords, the Cylons and anyone else who dared to think they could rule by force of arms or misguided worship.
But for the task at hand, survival, it was proving to be strength enough.
Just.
And today, not only did the four vessels crippled at Edonia, two Dauntless class, two Prometheus class rejoin the fleet but today, the fleet would grow.
Dawn of Honour.
Dawn of Justice.
Two Ha'taks refitted and repaired at Ravenbright station to be equivalent in capabilities to the bulk of Maktenos's warships.
889 Squadron, the first operational Attack squadron using Mark I Strikers.
Defender, Guardian the first two units of the Alpha Site patrol; constructed wherever the hell the SGC had placed that base. That information was being kept from the RSS Chain Of Command, the SGC's own Ace in the Hole.
That so many ships were being shifted to the Available lists this day had caused some comment but the reason was simple.
The latest classes at the scattered RSS and SGC training facilities had graduated yesterday and the ships had been forced to wait, in most cases an acceptable week or less, for the rooks to make up their numbers.
In the case of 889, they had been waiting on reinforcements to bring their support staff up to strength, for all practical purposes they had been operational a full nine days.
With the replacements required across the rest of the fleet and base facilities that left no-one from the latest graduating classes spare, to be assigned a paperwork backlog to deal with until a loss or injury elsewhere or even new construction demanded their reassignment.
No easy pool of spare personnel to tap into for three months.
Again.
Peters grimaced, that was nothing new but still, she waited with eager anticipation for the day when, just like Earth-bound militaries, she had a pool of people available for emergency reassignment. It would make things a lot easier.
A bleep sounded on her desk and she glanced at it, wincing slightly as she noticed the file size on the already downloaded document that was the final confirmation of Orders for this quarter.
The file was too small; no-body had the resources available to order ships.
Too much had happened, too much budget had been used early in the year and everyone was very much feeling the pinch.
She doubted she would find anything larger than an MTB on the Orders list.
Better face the music she glanced out the window as the Gettysburg, last ship to drift from the construction slips moved firmly out of view and sighed, turning back to her desk and her paperwork.
A few quick taps and a voice print confirm later, Peters was looking shocked at a mass MTB order.
The note at the end that said Monies had finally been released from seized NID assets explained a lot but somebody was definitely feeling a little free with the readies.
Okay, so the six Blastboat type MTB's and three MGB's cost about as much as a single Prometheus to produce so it explained why the sudden interest in bringing the MTB squadrons up to full strength instead of their current, rather anaemic status instead of allocating the money to another capital ship, an order she could definitely get behind by why so many of the MGB's?
The Prototype wasn't even complete yet!
Ah, another note. They were changing the standard composition of an MTB squadron, Four MTB's and two MGB's.
Four Motor Torpedo Boats and Two Motor Gunboats.
Made sense, the MGB's had more stamina in a battle then the MTB's and had a far more capable set of sensors, they would support and complement the Blastboat type MTB's currently in service well.
And considering how fast they could be built and how eager the MTB yards were for work, they would be finished just as the next class graduated from the training facilities. Peters smiled, grimly amused.
Well, with no major hulls ordered, she would get her pool of spare personnel, for a while at least before the bulk of them skipped off to Edonia. The small fry didn't take many crew and their support personnel were at full strength even if the Squadrons themselves weren't, they had too much specialised training to just use them to fill gaps in the fleet unless it got real desperate.
They had managed to avoid that, just.
Having more of the NID money available would be a help, last report placed the total money they had squirreled away as equivalent to every penny spent by the SGC up till the very first RSS craft left atmosphere all those years ago.
Peters shuddered suddenly, maybe not such a good idea. If all that money suddenly became available then she would have to deal with massed ship orders and finding crew for all those would be a joke and a half.
It would be bad enough when the Sentinels started arriving from the Colonials for refit.
Speaking of which, she had Five empty slips and the resources to start the Sentinel refits had been put aside
Might as well talk to Thompson, Hammond and Adama about starting them now, neither RSS or SGC commands would be placing capital ship orders for a while after all and the refit blueprints were almost complete.
Peters tapped the intercom and began preparing a secured conference call.