John Ringo - Islands of Rage and Hope

“Your guys got some time on their hands?” Sophia asked.

“Too much,” LeRoy replied.

“Faith has been assigned to determine better and worse targets for possible clearance in Eastern Caribbean. We’ve come up with a matrix of size and population density with known max/mins. Think your guys could refine it down a bit for us?”

“Cheating on your homework, again, Ensign?” LeRoy said, smiling.

“ Cross-check , Chief,” Sophia said. “And something for your guys to do. Besides, we’re officers. We’re supposed to buff our nails while enlisted do all the work.”

“Shoot the rough over,” the chief said, clearly trying not to break his expression. “I’ll make sure you’re on the right track, ma’am.”

“Thanks, Chief,” Sophia said, closing the connection.

“You cheat ?” Faith asked.

“If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’,” Sophia said. “The point, Sis, is first let computers do as much of the work for you as you can get them to do, and don’t hesitate to reach out to people who a.) have time on their hands and b.) are going to be much better than either of us at doing this. You need to know how to do it, don’t get me wrong. But wasting your time crunching numbers that the sub crews can crunch isn’t, in fact, what an officer is supposed to be doing with her time. You figured out, basically, what is and is not doable. The model. Nevis is doable, St. Martin isn’t. That’s what you know and they don’t and you put it in a form that gives them an outline. Now let them work inside those parameters to pick out possible targets and you refine that down. Because the next step is figuring out how much ammo and materials we’re going to need.”

“Aaagh,” Faith said, clutching her head. “I hate logistics! No, I take it back. If you’ve got enough ammo, you’re good. You just steal the rest.”

“Oh, good God, Sis,” Sophia said. “It’s not that hard.”

“Sophia,” Faith said carefully. “Seriously. First of all, you’ve always been the brain. I admit that, okay. Just like you’d admit I can kick your ass, right?”

“You’ve done it enough times,” Sophia said, frowning.

“Second, you were in high school . I was barely working with fractions and they still give me a headache.”

“You want to be an officer or not?” Sophia asked. “Serious question.”

Faith thought about it for a long few seconds.

“Yes,” Faith said. “I’d sort of like to be a grunt and there’s… Yes. So I guess you’re saying I’ve got to get smarter?”

“Just willing to learn, Faith,” Sophia said. “I know you get headaches with this stuff. Pain is…”

“Weakness leaving the body,” Faith said. “So how do we figure out how much stuff we need?”

“Fortunately, we have the Canaries to draw on as an example,” Sophia said, going into the server and hunting through files. “This is it. This is all the ammo and material we used in the Canaries by operation. Okay, I’m not going to do this for you. How do we use this stuff to figure out how much we’re going to need?”

Faith just looked at her for a second. Sophia hated that look.

“Is this a word problem?” Faith said. “I hate word problems.”

“Yes, this is a word problem,” Sophia said, trying not to sigh. “ Life is a word problem. Okay, okay, hint. How big is Charlestown?”

“You mean in Nevis?” Faith said, starting to look it up then pausing. “Oh, Walker knew that. Fifteen hundred or so. How did he know that, you know?”

“Just… Let’s skip the subject of Walker for right now,” Sophia said uncomfortably. “Okay, fifteen hundred. What was the population of, say, San Sebastian de la Gomera?”

“I have no idea,” Faith said.

“Faith, I’m not going to hold your hand the whole time,” Sophia said. “Try to think.”

“I don’t remember ever seeing it,” Faith said.

“So…”

“I don’t have an internet to look it up, Sophia!” Faith snapped. “You know where I can get an atlas that would have it?”

“Oh, good God, Faith!” Sophia said. “Do you mean you haven’t been accessing the Hole?”

“We can access the Hole ?” Faith asked.

“They’ve got a massive database which is accessible to all military personnel,” Sophia said, shaking her head. “I mean, a bunch of it’s classified of course… Okay, type in your network password….”

“Don’t look,” Faith said, shifting her shoulder. She slowly typed in a long password.

“Maybe you should go for enlisted,” Sophia said, shaking her head.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Faith snapped.

“‘I love Gregory Januscheitis’ is not what you call the most secure password,” Sophia said. “Not to mention kind of being an issue since you’re an officer and he’s enlisted.”

“Hah, if that’s all you know!” Faith said. “It’s got a 1 for the I and two dashes.”

“How in the hell did we come from the same parents?” Sophia asked. “I swear you have to be adopted. Okay, click on the link that says… What?”

“What?” Faith said, looking at a series of named buttons.

“What are we looking for?” Sophia asked.

“I don’t…Wait…Population of…Gomera.”

“Pre-Plague, mind you, although…I wonder if the secure areas might have infected populations, that would be useful…So, what is population data in terms of those icons?”

Faith searched through the buttons.

“Oh,” Faith said, clicking one. “Human geography.”

“Got it,” Sophia said.

“I don’t see Canary Islands…”

“Try Spain,” Sophia said, trying not to sigh.

“Oh, yeah,” Faith said. “Spain…Canary Islands…Gomera…San Sebastian de la Gomera…about eight thousand.”

“How much ammo did we use?” Sophia asked.

She got the look again but Faith flipped over and checked the other sheet.

“Holy cow,” Faith said. “We used thirty-five thousand rounds of fifty-cal in Gomera ?”

“And you guys used another nine thousand rounds of seven-six-two and six thousand of five-five-six,” Sophia pointed out. “For about eight thousand residents before the Plague.”

“I start to get Gunny’s whole thing about one shot, one kill,” Faith said, poking around the data. “I thought so. We only use an average of ten rounds to the population of a liner…Some of that, not much, was on the Bo… .”

“Most of the ‘inhabitants’ of a liner are, sorry, dead,” Sophia pointed out. “And it’s real short range. But you’re on the right track. To figure out how many rounds we’re going to need for the operation…”

“How many rounds of each caliber per kill?” Faith said.

“Per population of the town before the Plague which is the only hard data we’ve got,” Sophia corrected. “And it’s different, like you said. Liners are different but the towns are different, too.”

“So…averages,” Faith said. “Figure out how many rounds we used per pre-plague citizen of the towns at each town and then figure it out for the towns and islands we’re going to take. Agh. Spreadsheets and spreadsheets…”

“But you’ve figured out what we need in terms of data, right?” Sophia said.

“Yeah,” Faith said.

“Can you write it out as an equation?” Sophia asked.

“I think so,” Faith said. “I’m not sure about the right, you know, notification or whatever. But it’s like rounds used by type versus the pre-Plague populations and then get an average?”

“Okay, what we do is we write that up and we get the subs to do it,” Sophia said.