The Fall of Earth (Chapter 6 first half)

[Gerald Tarrant]

Sorry about the long delay, as always any comments or criticisms are appreciated.




Chapter 6

Delta Pavonis III

“Excuse me Jennifer, but why was that important? Nothing happened.”

“I believe I mentioned that not much happened. One of the things you need to understand about Earth at the time is the makeup of her space forces. Until the passage of the President’s Space Defense Initiative, Earth had no space forces. Even after the passage of the bill, only four American ships were planned. The second battle of the Solar System involved twenty-six ships only nine of which were purpose built warships with military crews. The other ships were hastily retrofitted civilian freighters, or mining ships. The crews of those ships were civilians in all but name. So the attitudes and behaviors of the civilians would carry over into the attitudes and behaviors of Earth’s Defensive forces, at least until adequate training could be effected.”

Several students winced, and one groan was audible.

“Yes? Was there a question?”

“Well we’re all taking basic astrogation…” Was the tentative reply .

Jennifer smiled at the boy. “So you noticed the navigational difficulties. Would you care to comment on them?”

“Well the last time I had to do a flight simulation, my estimates were off by 200 kilometers.” He grinned ruefully. “I made a mistake with the clock and it showed up in all the rest of my plotting.”

“What was the instructor’s response?”

The student’s cheeks turned red, but his voice was steady. “He said that the scale of my errors would have been unacceptable for the pilot of a garbage scow. He didn’t say as to what would have happened to a military astrogator who made the same scale of mistakes, and I didn’t ask.”

“Ahh, so you hopefully see the problems. The lax attitudes among civilians were mostly due navigational systems that were available. In similar situations, Earth military forces have preferred redundancy to single point failure systems. This difference in attitudes had predictable military results. Ships that were crewed primarily by civilians were put out of action faster, and were less effective in all other aspects.”

Don’t misunderstand, the “civilians” who engaged in the second battle of the Solar System knew they were unprepared and outclassed; they fought despite their well known handicaps. Which brings me to one of the lessons that I hope you’ll learn. Sometimes courage is all you have, and it can be its own weapon. The second lesson I hope you’ll learn is this: courage coupled with training is a better weapon.” //Revise include summaries of After Action reports

This brings us to the next thing I’d like you to hear. We’ve gotten a brief look at the general attitudes of the civilians approaching first contact. We’re next going to look at the military preparedness prior to contact. We’ll be listening to the reports of two naval incidents, and that will hopefully acquaint you with the military mindset which prevailed at the time of contact.”

8° 37' 60.00" N, +111° 55' 0.00" E

[Phantasee]

Good stuff, as usual. I fell behind in my readings, but I'm catching up again. Good to know you're still updating.