The rest of the first couple of days was spend integrating our people into Lord Alexanders camp and getting a feel for the organisational structure that was already in place. His Lordships camp was divided into combat groups and our own people slotted into the various groups according to their skills. What amazed us was the training facilities that the camp offered. Outside the walls were gun ranges for both small and heavy arms as well as test ranges for armoured and robotic units. Half a mile outside the camp there was a line of scrap armoured vehicles set up in convoy formation that had clearly been used to practice assault drills and raids, and it was as we were looking at this that we began to learn about just how valuable we could be.
“Right, I’ve already given you a rough outline of how our alliance is distributed across our territory, but the big problem that we have right now is logistics. You can see that we have a lot of equipment, ammunition and weapons here but when we try to distribute it to our outlying ally camps we have to devote so many support resources to defending it that it leaves us terribly vulnerable here. What we need to do is effectively disrupt the Red Maw supply lines so that they are less effective at hampering ours.”
Sirius looked thoughtful for a moment and replied “How well do you know the Red Maw setup? When we had our problems with them we found that they had an autonomous cell structure of small groups of five to ten operatives acting independently within a defined region and consequently their need for logistical support was far less than ours giving them an advantage. We overcame this by focusing on each cell rather than the links between.”
“It is a similar situation here, but we know that although each small group operates in isolation we also know that they have a series of major supply routes that allow the groups to meet with a delivery of supplies. The problem we have is that there are perhaps twenty routes that they can use and we can’t cover all of them well enough to give us time to intercept the convoy once they have chosen a specific route. Here let me show you what I mean”
Lord Alexander swept an area of wall top clear of obstructions and pulled from his backpack a rather tattered large scale map of the area. On the map were marks for approximate positions of enemy units as well as a complex network of lines showing the potential routes for supply deliveries. The problem became clear as we looked at the map. The area was just too large and by the time you had established with route was being used it would be too late to do anything about it.
I stared at the map and as I did so something began to nag at the back of my mind. It seemed so simple that I was amazed that no-one had spotted it. Surely they had?
“Look here” I started “If you look at the way that these routes traverse the region you can see that there is something wrong. You have the supply shipments starting from here” I pointed at a point on the map “and here, and here and here” pointing out the many start points of the convoys “but that can’t be right. These shipments must be coming from a limited number of stores, otherwise it makes no sense. Now look at how all of these routes to the East seem to intersect at a nexus point here, and the Western routes intersect here. Now if I’m right these routes are just too random to have any efficiency so these points must be where the convoys are picking up supplys before moving on. It’s a clever ruse but I reckon that if we could get a team into either this area in the East or this area in the West we would be able to monitor the traffic and establish a pattern that would give us the edge we need.”
The rest of the group looked at the map and the points I had highlighted and I could see them trying to find flaws with the logic. Slowly each face turned from cynicism to surprise, to a grim determination.
“Can you put together a team to get out to these locations and establish a secure forward camp? We can supply you with everything you will need in terms of equipment, but you will need to have complete faith in your team to operate this successfully.”
“I have a team in mind already, but I’m going to need a specialist tracker and I don’t have one from our people who understands your terrain well enough, can you recommend one of your own people?”
Lord Alexander didn’t even hesitate “I know just the person, come with me and I’ll introduce you…..”
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