MD9 CAG TIC Training

Posted on Sunday 4 December 2016 @ 07:58 by Commander Save'ena (Sav) Tillatix & Lieutenant JG Martin Landau

Mission: Old, New Ship
Location: USS Merlin, Deck 4 TIC
Timeline: MD9 Early Afternoon
1987 words - 4 OF Standard Post Measure

ON:

==== Deck 4, TIC upper level ====

Entering TIC upper level, Sav smiled to Brenda and then looked around for Lt. Landau. She remembered how it went for the last session, so she hoped Marin had had a chance to study up on the tactical simulator. If not, well, Sav would dive in and see what the Strategy Ops guys were working on. "Well, I don't see him, yet. What say we go to the main holosimulator and give it another go?"

"Sure thing." Brenda relplied with a faint smile. The weight of the unlock module felt like she was dragging around a warpcore on her hip.

As they threaded through the equipment and people, Sav paid attention to looks at her and Brenda. Several people noticed the fingerless gloves, but nobody said anything as she also had on a Duty Sashe, part of an L'Tandrey duty uniform and not Federation. Sav churred gently hoping that they were figuring the gloves were part of the uniform like the Sashe. And, it made her feel less self-conscious about wearing the claw blockers. They arrived at the holosimulator, which was not being used right now and was in default current tracking. Sav turned to Brenda, "What do you think? First come, first serve?"

"At least until someone shows up and kicks us out." Brenda chuckled. "In which case we can challenge them to a drinking contest and stay here forever."

Sav churr-laughed at Brenda's joke and began manipulating the controls. She searched for and found the fighter formation and Romulan interaction storage files. She activated them and began watching over the scenario being played back. There were her fighters in their defensive patterns around Dashit, and there was the Merlin and the Romulan Warship. The fighters were augmented by the two Talos Scout shuttles for extra ECM/ECCM and sensor data. "Say, Brenda, what do you think? See any holes?"

Brenda studied the holosimulator and the formations for a short while before shaking her head. "I'm afraid this kind of thing is way over my head. Unless it's close quarters I can't really help with dealing with Romulans."

Sav held a hand up to the ships, "Not a problem. Don't think of it as Romulans, but as a chess board. How to protect while confusing the enemy kind of thing." Sav returned to moving the holograph around, looking for the best angle to figure out better ways of what she had been doing during the actual exercise.

Martin was getting odd looks from crew members as he rounded the corner towards TIC and was wondering why when a member of his department commented on why he wasn't in full uniform and only half. He walked down the corridor and entered the door to the TIC wondering if senior staff would notice him wearing half a uniform

Sav, in working the controls, noticed movement out of the corner of her eye. She glanced that way and saw Martin heading their way. She also noticed he was missing his uniform shirt. Well, he was Strat Ops, so, he could say what was duty uniform and what wasn't. Still, it was strange.

When he came up to Brenda and her, Sav churred out, "Hey Lt. Landau, Crewman Aumento and I are here for our afternoon TIC training. As the holosimulator wasn't being used, I wanted to bring up the recorded fighter sequence from two days ago and see what I could do to improve on it. Anything you want to note about before I ramble a bit on what I think could be improved upon?"

"Hey Sav" Martin replied and noticed the odd expression like why is he in half a uniform but shrugged it off and continued the conversation "Go ahead Lieutenant by all means start the ball rolling" He mentioned walking over to the table in the center

Sav showed the groupings of the fighters as they circled Dashit. "Well, I had a very good perimeter up, supposedly not penetrable. We caught a group coming in, but missed another. In this scenario, I find three areas that are up for improvement. First, I led the Romulans right to where the find was. If you notice, my perimeter has Dashit at the center. While standard ops, and what the Captain asked for, I fell down. A better scenario would be to center the fighters around just a base rock and have the actual find offset by 20 to 50 kklicks. Then anyone searching with sensors and small craft won't find what they wanted in the exact center as it isn't, giving us more time to do our ground ops. Comments?"

"Kind of like protecting the wrong target... just to confuse them." Brenda muttered, still somewhat unsure of what was going on or how she could really contribute.

Landau spoke "Have you tried playing dead I found this a great tactic when our diplomatic shuttle entered dangerous space and the ship you bump into on sensors can pulverize you. You make it look like your dead or in your case make it look like your fighters are dead but keep a sort of formation and the enemy ship or fighter scans and then moves past allowing you to escape or pounce its all in the element of surprise"

Sav's tail moved over to brush up against Brenda to show support. "Yippers, wrong target assumption for the enemy, hopefully." She smiled to Martin, "Yeah, normally that would work. But, it has been used to many times by fighter pilots. Now fighters blast seemingly dead ones to make sure their dead, and to cause loss of resources to the owning ship. Doesn't behoove one side to leave easily scavenged and reusable resources for the other side."

Sav brought up Dashit, "Second improvement. I had a fighter stashed on Dashit for shield coverage of the find as well as support. However, the other team came around the asteroid, meaning they had managed to approach through the asteroid field, not being seen by the Talos Special Sensor scouts, or picked up by any fighters in the perimeter. A sensor drone, with telemetry, planted on the opposite side of Dashit, would have given warning and helped bring the close in fighters to bear and would have mostly alleviated the ground fight from the second wave Romulan Shuttle and shock troops. Comments?"

She'd read the short report that Lieutenant Scarlet had made on the incident, the ground forces were mostly taken unawares and had to make a hasty retreat. Any warning would have helped. "Instead of sneaking and everything... why not paint it as the target?" She expected the confused looks, so she just continued. "No passive sensors, or random probes. A good rule of thumb is that if you send out a single probe, you're going to lose it. Redundancy. Send out multiple. That way anyone coming in would have to take out multiple probes at the same time because as soon as one goes down, we're going to know something is up. As well... sometimes a show of force will deter most opponents from making such a brazen assault."

A broad beam of a smile crossed Sav's face. "Good ideas, there Aumento, Good ideas. We shift the perimeter, put a false target onto the new center, and then have several redundancies for the sensor net for the actual target zone. Nice."

"If you hide in the craters powered down nobody would know someone is there then you pounce when they get close enough. Its a bit like a civilian ship posing as something there not then they unleash all hell or stashing fighters in a container and then sending in the civilians to then pounce and release your fighters. Are you thinking of the situation Archer faced when confronted trying to reach the sphere builders home and finding the sensor network painstakingly linked together so if they destroyed one another covered for it as a tactic" Martin explained

Sav nodded, "Yes, I agree, and we were doing that on Dashit and a Romulan force still snuck in and went right to where we are hiding. I even had a supporting broadsword fighter on planet, with two fighters in nearby orbit, and it still didn't stop what happened. And, speaking of which.."

Sav showed two incoming courses the second Romulan shuttle could have taken. "Third, a Romulan attack force made it to Dashis. Either A) cloaking device small enough for a shuttle, which is supposedly impossible, and this flight course to bypass sensors and fighters or B) the Romulans had an exact knowledge of the asteroids flight paths in the Hayes Proving Grounds and used this second path to use cover of those same asteroids to get to Dashit." She looked at Martin, "I am inclined to think B, which would mean intelligence information was missing or lacking, besides nobody thinking about it as this is Federation space, or... do you have another possible scenario in explanation?"

Martin searched his brain for answers but was still in sad mode but found a small but plausible answer " Maybe a mole aboard the Merlin leaked information to the Romulans to allow them to know our every move or something along those lines of leaked info somehow"

Sav winced. She had not thought about that possibility. She thought about it for a second, then added, "Or, as the Merlin is new and about, Romulan intelligence has some of the shipyard codes for communications for the ships and was piggybacking onto some of our communications or telemetry. It has happened before." She sighed, "However, newly refitted ship, new crew, a mole easily could be on board." She performed a light curtsy, "And, that is where Strat Ops comes in. You guys are the think tank and what-if generator. If there is a high probable what if, you're to inform the command staff and put into place procedures to alleviate the 'what-if'."

"I guess so" Martin replied

Sav churred and winked to Brenda, "One of the most decorated L'Tandrey-Federation exhcange officers is Commander Ashata Chen Shrin. Commander Ashata is Strat Ops for the USS Alicorn in the Reyea sector, and yes, Ashata is his last name. L'Tandrey names are similar to Japanese, but with a twist. First name is last, second name is acquaintance, and third is close friend. Anyways, he was always afraid of getting on the crews bad side because he always made multiple what ifs for the Captain and XO for them to use what they knew of the mission to pick the most probable and act on them."

"Sounds like Lieutenant Scarlet. He would put us through the weirdest 'what if' training simulations." Brenda replied casually,thinking back to the infamous 'attack of the killer tribbles' simulation.

Sav smiled to Martin, "Strat Ops is a dance of information to fit possible scenarios and help find the most likely ones. I don't envy you, Lt. Landau, such is not for me, I love flying starships. But, I do admire you and what you do for the ship. So, thanks."

"Cheers look forward to doing it again sometime" Landau explained

Sav curtsied to Martin,"Thank you Sir, we also. We have three more days of training before I switch to the flight deck. I can only hope Crewman Aumento is still assigned to me at that time."

She turned to Brenda, "Alright, I'm back to the CAG office and you can get in your break. Catch you later, Crewman Aumento."

"Thank you for the instruction sir. When I get my report written up I'll be sure to send a copy for your review." Brenda smiled a bit and then did a short attention stance before turning and walking back out of the TIC.

OFF:

Lieutenant Save'ena A. Tillatix
CAG / Uroboros Squadron Leader
Bridge Command Specialist
USS Merlin

Lieutenant JG Martin Landau
Chief Strategic Operations Officer
USS Merlin

Crewman Brenda Aumento
Security Specialist
USS Merlin