Chapter 4 -- In unknown space
Duchess, Unknown System
"The general who wins the battle study before the battle is fought."
The general who loses do not."
From the Holy Book of War
Possibilities
For the most part, the rest of the day was remarkably peaceful, as the engineers went over our ships to check everything while Master Engineer Gacith and Engineer Keller worked on solving the problem with repairing the life support system on Last Chance.
At some point, I would have to talk with the people onboard the two slave-ships, but as they were still out cold, that would have to wait and as usual, I spent the time doing research. This time on the Imperial Battlegroups in the graveyard outside.
As a naval officer, I had spent a lot of time going over past battles and I knew most of the older ships from those battles. The age of the ships also meant that most of the statistics were common knowledge and the database on the Duchess had extensive files on them, while the data on the newer ships had to be imported from the database on the Fury.
Normally, I study in my office, but Duchess had a small pool in the lounge of the passenger area, and I took advantage of that, as I relaxed in the warm water with the data on the wall screen. It wasn't exactly how it was normally done, but it had been a hectic time and I enjoyed feeling as the warm water eased some of the tension out of my body.
I knew the composition of the Imperial battle group had been standard in its day, but to me, it was an odd mix of ships. Despite its unusual look with the split hull, the Interdictor-class was a well-designed warship and probably the best overall warship of the period, though it was underarmed for its size and in need of a serious armor and shield upgrade compared to modern ships. It was also famous or infamous for being equipped with gravity well projectors, and according to the database, it had a complement of 48 Sith starfighters, along with three thousand troops, and it took a crew of more than five thousand people to operate it.
The thought stopped me for a moment before I mumbled a heartfelt "Hallelujah!"
"Excuse me, sir?" Said Resa from the other side of the room, where she was relaxing, partly hidden by one of the room's large plants. "I didn't quite get that."
"Never mind, Resa." I chuckled. Like Keller had said, the android had just needed a recharge to get back on her feet, which was a relief. With the loss of the transport with everybody inside it, we had already lost enough people. "I just realized that the ships here had once carried people and since at least some of the food used on navy spaceships are dry-freezed and made to last indefinitely, we can salvage it from the ships out there, solving our food problem."
"Good idea, sir. I'll make an estimate on the food stocks of the nearest ships."
"Thank you."
She fell silent and I got back to the ships.
While the large Interdictor-class most likely carried the most food, they were last on my list as a source of food. There were rumours and stories about powerful Force users haunting the place where they were killed and an Imperial battlegroup of that size, would almost certainly have been commanded by a Sith Lord.
All in all, I had no intention of entering a potentially lethal place, if I could avoid it. At the very least I would have to check it out with force senses before sending anyone in there.
Aside from the Interdictors, there were the Derriphan-class battleships, which was a well-armed frigate. Being an even older design than the rest, it came from a time where shields weren't as effective as they are now and for that reason, the designers had decided to not bother with shields at all, instead fitting the ship with thicker armor.
While that might have been a good choice centuries ago, it was rather suicidal even 300 years ago and the Sith would be the only ones to use ships like that. With its missile launchers it was still able to pack quite a punch and the heavy armor could take quite a beating, but the return fire would cause massive casualties among the crew and unless you had people to spare, it was a bad choice for modern naval combat.
That brought me to the newer ships, which were relatively unknown to me, due to the sheer distance from the Empire to Chiss space.
Fortunately, some of them were in the Fury's database, which had enabled us to identify the twelve smaller unknown ships as being Drake-class Frigates, which was basically the Imperial counterpart to the Chiss Frigate.
With a length of 265 meters, the wedge-shaped Frigate was compact, rugged and a little longer than the Phoenix that had fought with us at Alpha Viga and like the Phoenix, the builders had managed to cram six starfighters and the same number of scouts into it.
It had room for two hundred passengers and a crew of a hundred persons, but as usual, that was without gunners and flight crew.
The Drake-class Frigates were also well armed and armored, making me wonder why I had never heard about it before. Then again, with the vastness of the Empire, they could have scores of ship types that never reached the Unknown Regions.
I was starting on the next ship class, the Delta-class carrier, when I heard Elise Samko ask, "Is there room for one more?"
Looking over, I discovered that she was standing at the entrance, wearing a towel. Apparently, she had gotten the same idea as I had.
With a smile, I nodded. "Yes, if you don't mind looking at ship data on the screen."
"Oh, the Imperial fleet out there?" She said, as she walked over to the pool, where she dropped the towel and walked down the steps towards me. "The newer one, I mean."
Instead of answering right away, I enjoyed the view of her well-shaped body, as she slowly descended into the water.
Almost automatically I reached into the Force and read her emotions. She was curious about the ships, but mostly horny, and she enjoyed the way I looked at her.
"Yes." I finally said. "The knowledge might come in handy."
Elise settled down next to me and looked up at the screen, where the Delta-class carrier was shown in all its glory. "Yes... though those are some big ships." She blinked as a number caught her eyes. "A crew of nine hundred! That's a lot!"
"What do you mean by 'a lot'?" I said absently, looking at how the water ran down the naked skin of her shoulder. "That's rather common for a warship that size."
"Oh... Compared to a commercial vessel, it seems... insanely over-crewed. I never really thought about it, but why does it take so many people to staff military vessels?"
Tearing my eyes away from her skin, I looked at the screen, which gave me two surprises. The first one was that the ship did indeed have a crew of nine hundred. The second surprise was the ship's configuration. I had expected it to be a starfighter carrier, but instead it was a heavy transport with two dozen Interceptors for protection, besides the ten medium turbolasers and various other weapon systems.
With a cargo capacity of nine thousand metric tons and room for three thousand three hundred troops, it really was a superheavy troop transport, designed to transport two battalions along with all their support equipment, like artillery, walkers, barracks and whatever else they needed.
"Nine hundred is surprisingly few people for a ship that big and on military ships, gunners and flight crew are not included in crew numbers." I said slowly, studying the warship, as my hand almost by itself reached out to caress her neck. "If you had a large freighter, how would you crew it? How many people?"
"Seven." She answered without hesitation. "For a four-hundred-meter long Rimma-class heavy freighter, you'll need two pilots, a captain, an engineer, an astrogator and two spacers. That's all, so I don't know how you get to nine hundred."
"Well, if you want to know how many people it really takes to fly it, start with the grand total. That's nine hundred regular crew, a hundred gunners and a flight crew of about a hundred."
"So, eleven hundred." Samko stated.
I nodded. "Yes. Now deduct twenty percent of that from the regular crew. That's the percentage of the crew that administers or tends to the rest of the crew... Pursers, doctors, stewards, chefs and so on."
Elise smiled and tilted her head a bit, giving me better access to her neck. "Okay, ten percent is one hundred and ten, so twenty percent is two hundred and twenty..." She paused for a moment as my hand trailed her neck up to her ear, gently teasing her earlobe. In return, she moved a hand under the water to caress my leg. "Eight hundred and eighty left."
"Good. Now deduct the flight crew."
"Seven hundred and eighty left."
"Unlike civilian ships, many warships don't stand down, have constant watches on systems civilian ships don't have and there have to be enough people for three watches of eight hours per day." My hand moved down her neck as I spoke, gently sliding over her warm wet skin. "Also, since they're made to go to war, they're overstaffed in case of casualties. So, you have to divide the number by six."
Elise exhaled with another shiver. "Can't do math right now. Too turned on."
"We're down to about hundred and thirty jobs." I said with a smile as my hand reached her breasts, caressing first one and then the other.
"That's not bad." She shivered under my touch, before she reached out and dragged me into a kiss, whispering. "We can talk about this later, Thalen. To be honest, I'm scared to the bone and afraid that we're going to die here."
I opened my mouth to reassure her, but a quick kiss silenced me. "Don't say anything. I want to feel alive; I want to be held and kissed, and I want to feel you inside me."
She kissed me again, this time hungrily, opening her mouth to let our tongues duel.
My hands found her firm breasts almost by themselves and while they overflowed my hands, they didn't spill over. Elise grunted lustily into my mouth as my fingers found her nipples and gently squeezed them.
