Alpha One - Chris Burton [78]
Penance opened the briefing with a short explanation of the reasons for the ‘special briefing’ and went on to confirm that normal daily briefings would commence the next day. He then introduced Commander Schneider.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I have called this special briefing today to outline the progress made in the first twenty-four hours of this offensive. I shall now provide details of the number of sorties, the number of casualties and the weapons used, and I will summarize progress made as a conclusion. I shall take ten minutes of questions following my briefing. I am taking onboard the normal daily briefing issues within my communication. This will revert to Lieutenant Commander Penance tomorrow and thereafter.”
Schneider shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He knew that this was going to be a rough half hour. He began by detailing a summary of the day’s events, but expertly and deliberately stayed clear of any reference to the sub-space weapons. That was to come.
“As you know the Sentinels launched a successful atomic attack on the Alpha Fleet less than twelve hours into the conflict and I have already detailed losses from this attack. In the enforced ceasefire period following the Sentinel nuclear attack, the fleet commanders met and decided on an appropriate response. Alpha needed to regain the initiative in order to quickly put into place the fleet’s primary battle plans. This meant we needed to consider all of our potential weaponry capabilities.”
He paused briefly again and then began his explanation of the existence and usage of sub-space weapons.
“Alpha made a collective decision, twenty-five years ago, that the development of the sub-space warhead should continue, following the loss of the S.S. Mauritius. This was done legitimately and within Alpha’s constitutional memorandum, but was achieved outside of specific ECG funding.” Schneider omitted the fact that funding for the development was sourced elsewhere as this would open up a whole new discussion. No doubt someone would bring that subject up today…
“Ten years ago, Alpha released a limited number of sub-space charges into the command of high ranking officers serving on A Class ships of the line. The brief was that the missiles should only ever be used in an absolute emergency. Restrictive controls were put in place to ensure that their usage must be verified by both executive officers aboard a specific ship, or in the case of fleet command by all members of the executive fleet command team. These weapons have not been used until now..”
The pause allowed several members of the press gang to shout out their questions, but Schneider ignored them. He was a long way from being finished.
“Taking into consideration the vast potential power and the environmental questions that arose from the Kuiper Belt testing twenty-five years ago, Alpha’s stance on the use of these weapons is that they should never be used in an environment which would impact on the local biosphere.”
Again he paused and again the quiet of the room was disturbed by a flurry of angry questions. The atmosphere was becoming heated, but Schneider was here before and he calmly asserted himself on the gathering.
“The Fleet Command, under Admiral Rose’s request, began to discuss an appropriate response to the Sentinel Atomic attack. We ruled out our own battlefield nuclear weapons because we would not have been able to accurately deliver them to the target without them being destroyed. Remember that we do not have the remarkable dark ship technology that the Sentinels have, and our jump ships would not have been able to get close enough to make this form of attack count. We looked at the local environment and elected to use six low-yield sub-space charges, encased within short range ballistic Tiger missiles. The missiles were delivered at the first opportunity, on the clearing of the gas cloud, via three Sabre jump ships from Admiral Shenke’s fleet, followed by three missiles from