Federation Geological Survey and Mining Services(19)
Federation Provost Corps(25)
Federation Diplomatic Service(8)
Federation Interstellar Trade Agency(14)
The Colonial Development Assistance Corporation(15)
Federation Naval Patrol(22)
Federation Science Council(2)
Fields gazed at the padd as he sat with his 2IC and two team leaders. They were going over the plan for their portion of the joint exercises. Simply put, they would be in charge of the force that would be sent to support, defend, and if needed, extract the ‘besieged’ civilian outpost that was built and manned by the 105 personnel from the various Federation Agencies he had just read.
There would be five various training serials conducted during the phase, with two of them occurring before he and his teams arrived, one would occur right as they inserted that was being referred as the ‘hot landing drill’. The final two training serials would be conducted after they reinforced the civilian defenders, where they would be tasked with holding the austere outpost against the Red teams ground assualts.
“So, there will be 105 civilians, plus, a maximum of 90 reinforcements, well 90 including the 25 of us? And we’ll be facing a force of roughly 350 veteran Klingon warriors?” Chief Syyrna, one of the SMUs team leaders, asked with a raised eyebrow.
Fields looked up from his padd, “23 of us actually, since this is a tactical drill without any conceivable avenue for negotiation, we’ll be leaving our two diplomats behind to make room for more shooters. But yeah, that’s the basics. Now, even though the 105 folks building and operating the outpost are classified as civilians, a little less then half of them are either trained law enforcement, peace officers, designated security guards or members of close protection details, several with prior service in Starfleet sprinkled throughout.”
“And it’ll be us and contingents from the various ships involved. We’ll still be outnumbered by more then two to one, but we’ll be on defense so we actually have the advantage.” LCdr Benae added.
“I dunno about how much of an advantage, our opponents are Klingons after all.” Syyrna placed the padd down on the table in their makeshift Unit House. The ships Wing Commander Ingram had graciously offered them the use of Auxiliary Hangar Storage Room Two, which was conveniently located on deck 14 one floor below the massive main hangar in the middle of ship, and Fields had eagerly accepted.
“Syyrna I want you to have one of your squads ready to move up to this dig site as soon as we land. It’s on high ground, close enough to stay in contact with the main outpost. We could use it as an overwatch and support by fire position.”
“Copy that. I’ll send Buuva’s team, most of them have been through mountain and austere operations training.”
“Mountain Ops? The dig site is only 300 metres away from the outpost.” Fields noted.
“And like 100 of those metres are vertical, and its fairly rough rocky terrain. It might only be 300 metres but it’ll be pretty auterr up there…what if we did a drop and go as we come in? One of the runabouts makes a pit stop at that dig site, drops off Buuva’s team and a couple marksman and enough supplies to keep em going. Beats having them have them go up on with what they carry.” Syyrna nodded.
“I like it,” he turned to Benae, “Put it in the plan.”
On the small, nearby, rocky world of Hydra Uridinae II, the group of Federation civilians were nearly finished constructing their 200 square metre outpost. To save on building one of the walls, they had chosen to have the small planetside base back onto a tall cliff face spur that linked two hills.
Inspector Julian Thompson and the Trade Envoy Sajjan met at the mid point of the ‘path’ that led from the little outpost the could see down in the distance to their left, and dig site where they were busy recovering several thousand pounds of Carbonacious Frunzite, which was extremely rare and used for various scientific and industrial applications. In fact Sajjan was on his way to inspect a shipment before calling for the transport in orbit to come and pick it up.
“Decent idea, I’ll give the bean counters in Paris that. Pairing this mining endeavor with the construction of a outpost for future use, and then pairing all of that with a joint exercize with some of the ships and crews that we’ll be deploying with is efficient for a change.” Thompson said. He was the leader of the Federation Provost Corps contingent that was being send to bolster the beleguered detachment on the El Doradia colony.
“Its likely that this is being done in haste out of neccesity, due to months of the Council dithering and holding Committee meetings and arguing back and forth with the Starfleet leadership judging by the communiques I’ve been privvy to. We should have been doing this training a few months back. Now we’ll be playing catch-up.” The prim and proper, purple scaled Aquan replied. Sajjan himself was slated to be leader of the Federation Interstellar Trade Agency mission to the Hodian Belt.
Thompson had walked down from the dig site and met Aquan bureaucrat halfway when he heard the Envoy was en route, “is the Magistrate still layed up his tent with his illness,’ he spat out the last word, not thinking very highly of the Magistrate, a Deltan man name Terril.
“He is. He does not seem to have much fortitude of constitution.” Sajjan replied indifferently as he took a deep breath, obviously recovering from the climb, still he motioned for the Inspector to lead on.
Thompson smiled at another one of Sajjan frequent poetic phrases and reminded himself to steal fortitude of constitution and use it to train his cops, “Well when we get to the Belt, if he is still stonewalling on decisions we may have to act with out his blessing. You and I can carry any votes that need to happen.”
“The tri-partite leadership situation could certainly be an irritant. Though I understand that the Federation Civil Service is trying to project the idea of the three pillars of their response plan in the form of having you, I and the Magistrate as co-leaders of the mission. Sometimes a decision simply needs to be made especially with the remote and increasingly chaotic region we are headed to.”
“Well said, I’m glad you and I are seeing eye to eye on that. I’ll be honest, even with this new fandangled Squadron we’re deploying with, I give it 6 months and we’ll all be recalled and the mission will be shuttered. The Kzinti, Ferengi and the Orion Syndicate are already getting established in the three systems we haven’t laid claim to. They aren’t going to just let us extend our claim to the whole Belt and push them out just by sending a few ships and the 200 of us being deployed on this ‘Security, Trade and Colonial Developement Stabilization Mission’…fuck, remember what I said about the Fed Council doing something efficient?” Thompson realized there was no need to give credit where none was due.
“Mmm?”
“Forget a I even mentioned it.” Thompson snickered to himself and climbed over a boulder.
