The ensign compounded Howell’s problems by letting his hero-worship of the admiral get in the way of his attention to his duties. He was already far too-pleased to have been assigned to Andrew More’s ship. Stewart, like just about everyone else in Halifax considered him the Republic’s greatest living hero. Howell shared in some of that heroic aura too. As the only person to be aboard Cordelia as she began her death ride to glory, Stewart treated Howell with some of the same awed respect that More received. That wasn’t such a bad thing, in that Stewart would unhesitatingly obey whatever order Howell gave him. It was just that he had a habit of asking question after question of the harried chief engineer.
Stewart was at it again. His inquiries centered on Howell’s experiences of working on the great ships of the fleet, and in particular, his time aboard Morrigan.
“What was it like to hold pieces of equipment in your hands that had been manufactured tens of thousands of years ago?” the wide-eyed ensign asked. “Was it like holding history?”
Howell smiled thinly, giving Stewart a power coil to clean while they talked. “It was a lot like what you’ve got there now, but the parts were manufactured to finer tolerances. Much of what we had to put into Cordelia and Lady of the Lake were newly-made copies of what we found aboard them. If we could repair and reuse what we already had on hand, we would. Our copies were never quite as efficient as the original equipment. Both ships had been made using nanomanufacturing techniques that we haven’t been able to replicate. So the old stuff tended to be lighter, stronger, more durable, and more efficient. We could also make those replacements in sufficient numbers to keep the ships running no matter what happened. A lot of the Navy’s functioning revolves around logistics. If you don’t have the right parts you will find yourself in a lot of trouble. As an engineer, much of your job will consist of using what you have on hand, no matter how limited, to keep your ship moving.”
Stewart gave about three seconds of thought to that and then pressed on. “Were you scared when Cordelia began her attack? I mean, not that you were terrified or anything like that, but were you a little worried, that, you know, you might not make it back?”
Howell had been asked this question many times. Stewart was not the only curious one. Howell himself wondered why his own experience should be considered any different than those of the other men and women who served in the RHN and risked their lives on a regular basis. It was probably the romanticism of his situation, all alone aboard an ancient ship lost in time. He’d read a few of the fevered articles that had been written about him in the Halifaxian media once the story had gotten out. All had told his story in a garbled if not completely inaccurate form. They’d all been sensationalized. Their chief error was that they failed to ascribe any feeling of fear to him.
“I was scared for the whole episode,” Howell admitted. He had never been one for even a small bit of posturing. He didn’t have any ego when it came to his own storehouse of courage, and no need to be thought fearless. There was no point in pretending to be so. “It was not fun.”
Stewart nodded quickly. “When I entered Cold Bay, I wanted to have my own command, it didn’t matter how small the ship was. I was going to head out into the black void and face down the enemies of the Republic, on my own if I had to. You did that. You were there, all by yourself as the Cordelia swooped in to wreck the Armada.”
Howell shrugged. “I was along for the ride. Cordelia did all of the heavy lifting.”
“True,” Stewart acknowledged with a happy grin. “But you were also instrumental in making the strike a success. You kept her systems functioning so that she could do what she did. You were working on her until the very end. That’s what I read.”
“I was. And I did keep her powerplant and DP drive in combat-ready condition.” It was still classified that Cordelia had been so hellbent on getting into the war that she had been burning out power coils at an alarming rate just to shave a day or two off of the journey to the Dora system to join the 34th Strike Squadron.
Cordelia had changed in some fundamental way. She had grown more resigned to her own end, as if she could see her own demise on the horizon, and had accepted her fate. Howell suspected that it had something to do with the appearance of Morrigan that had spurred her in an unhealthy direction. Cordelia, a sophisticated AI like Morrigan, had surmised that older ship’s troubles were psychological in nature, not mechanical, and that she might very well suffer from some sort of mental breakdown too. Howell had not seen this as inevitable, but then again, what did he know about ancient artificial intelligences and their multi-millennial trajectories?
“I think that you are being modest,” Stewart said. “The bravest are often like that. They don’t accept the credit they deserve.”
Howell thought that he might possibly get used to such unalloyed worship, in time. No, can’t let that kind of thing continue. It will go to my head. I’ll become an insufferable boor.
“Why don’t we take a look at the DP drive and see what we can do to improve its line-keeping?” he said, seeking to deflect any further questions.
“Yes, of course,” Stewart said, brushing a holo upward from his wristcomp so that both men could view it. “I have something to show you about that. If you look at this, you’ll notice that the DP’s standby power consumption is higher than what we would normally see on a milspec drive of similar output. It’s sucking in more power even at rest. And look here.” Stewart swiped a list into being that catalogued the drive’s output during every jump the Albacore had made since leaving Halifax. “The power we’ve had to feed it has gone up a few percent every time per astronomical unit traveled. That’s a sure indicator of drive fatigue.”
“I’ve seen the numbers,” Howell said. “No surprise that there’s been a loss of efficiency over time.”
“Right. I think we can slow that down.”
“By doing what?”
“What I think we should do, and I have run a few sims about this, is throttle back on the energy we’re feeding to it during displacement.”
Howell’s brows knit. “Won’t that decrease the accuracy of the jump? We’ll be letting the ship wander off-course if we don’t give it the juice it requires to keep the line in hyperspace?”
“It would, but only if we didn’t make a course correction before we emerged. I’ve been thinking about what you told me, about how this is a commercial drive, not a military one. I’ve kept that mind. This unit here was never intended to run this hot or make such accurate jumps. It is fine for a merchantman to displace here or there. A poor jump as the Navy understands it would only add a few hours to a civilian ship's transit time once it reached its destination system. We’re feeding it a lot of power so that we can come out in a tight bunch the way the Navy wants us to. That is a very smart thing if we are jumping into a combat situation. However, most of the displacements we are making are not combat jumps. We’re just going from here to there. But we’re constantly trying to make this drive do what it had never been meant to do in the first place, which is make Navy-precise jumps. If we could accept lower accuracy in our exits from hyperspace on routine displacements, and the extra time they would cost, we’d slow the drop in drive efficiency substantially.”
Howell considered Stewart’s idea. “No commander wants his ships to dump out several hours away from his flagship, combat displacement or not.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Stewart agreed. “So we try a hack that some civilian captains use. We make one major hyperspace course correction with a power boost at the very end, right before we are ready to exit, instead of making many smaller ones during the transit. We should limit the temporal spray around the target jump point to less than an hour at regular hyperspatial velocities. Merchant shipmasters do it to save wear and tear on their DP units. They still get where they have to go, and they don’t lose too much time in the process. We can do the same, and still pop back into normal space with a reasonable dispersion.”
Howell had not spent much t
ime on civilian ships and knew very little of their day-to-day operation. Cardiff Yard produced hulls for the military, and did almost no commercial work.
"This is a real thing?"
Stewart nodded happily. "It is. It's all about operating costs in the shipping world. Faster and more accurate is preferred, to be sure, but not if it's too expensive for the shipper. So they keep their costs down by easing up on the DP over the course of the jump, but then, at the end, will do one major course correction to come out close enough to the initial aim spot."
"This is a commercial drive," Howell mused aloud. “And the degradation of a unit isn’t just a matter of how many jumps it’s performed. It’s how fast you’re going, distance moved, and how much power you're putting into the drive too.”
"If you're willing to accept a slight diminishment in displacement accuracy, you will spare the DP drive some, reduce the maintenance you need to perform on it, and extend its service life."
"That does sound appealing," Howell admitted. Captain More had been running Albacore as if she were an ordinary destroyer, built entirely to military specs. She’d been made to be an escort, and not have her DP drive used so frequently. It was adding to Howell's burden, trying to keep the drive up and running with the repeated pounding it was taking. "I'll run it by the admiral and Captain Kim."
“I hope they agree with me. If we're not pushing the drive hard again and again just so we can come out in a keyhole package at the other end, we'll spend less time replacing burned out coils later."
Howell folded his arms. "So how did you gain so much knowledge about commercial shipping?"
Stewart wore a curious expression. “The Stewart family has big holdings in several carriers. Hansson Cargo, Ozawa Freight Lines, and Quadstar Commerce are the largest. There are others."
"Ah, so you are one of those Stewarts." The Stewart family was one of the wealthiest in the Republic. It dawned on Howell that Ensign Gregorio Stewart could probably have purchased the Albacore with his birthday money. What was he doing here? Why had he attended Cold Bay?
"Yeah, one of those,” Stewart said with an uncomfortable smile. His expression quickly turned serious. “I wish I could have been there with you. When I heard about it last year, I was still knee-deep in my studies at the Academy. It sounded so much more exciting than doing simulations of reactor meltdowns and maintenance exercises. It gave me a glimpse of the kind of future I wanted for myself."
Howell chuckled. "Don't let the steely exterior you see before you fool you. I thought I was going to die."
“Cordelia made you get off before she sacrificed herself. That was thoughtful of her."
"Yes, it was."
Howell gestured to the coil in Stewart’s grip.
Stewart looked down. “Oh, right.”
Having forgotten to prep it all the while he and Howell had discussed the trick of the merchant skipper’s trade, the ensign hurriedly rubbed the component down with a synthetic fiber cloth. He handed the polished coil back to Howell, smiling sheepishly.
Howell snapped it into place inside the DP drive coil ring. "It ought to fit snugly. Not too tight, which could indicate a manufacturing defect, or too loose, which could mean a worn receptor. It will probably be the former more often than the latter, but both are possibilities. Quality control at the subcontractors who make the coils and other drive components usually catches anything that isn't perfect, but something always gets through the inspection process."
Howell handed Stewart another coil for prepping. "So let's say you've got a brand-new coil that has some sort of flaw. Maybe the fit is less than ideal. You have to make a decision. Use it or swap it for another? Your choice will have to take into account several things. Unless it’s so badly defective that it won't function at all, the coil will probably work well enough, it's just that there will be a slight loss of drive power and efficiency. Under ordinary circumstances, I'd prefer that you put the best stuff inside the DP drive and set any suboptimal components aside for later use. Having a reserve of components, even ones that aren’t in the best shape, will let you swap in working ones for those that are completely shot. Apart from power coils, the parts that are most likely to go are the field emitters and the displacement particle shedders. All three are dealing with large amounts of raw energy and that wears them out fast. It’s important that you maintain enough of a cushion for all of them, just in case. Jumping is treated as something routine, and it is generally very safe, but that’s because there’s a huge margin for error and malfunction built-in to the entire DP operating regime. Most of that margin comes in the form of having more than you actually need already installed to shoulder the load if something goes wrong with a bank of components all at once.”
“Multiple redundancies at all levels,” Stewart responded. “That’s one of the things that my family’s holding company has always insisted on before we take a stake in a shipping company. Their ships all have to have close to spotless safety records. Safety means the cargoes get where they have to go, on schedule, and that means bigger profits in the end. Unethical shippers might not be as stringent, and score a few extra credits here and there, but it comes back to bite them in the long run.”
“That’s good to hear, that safety is good for business. I wasn’t sure if that mattered.”
“It does,” Stewart said. “We don’t run any company directly anymore, not for close to fifty years. It’s a simpler thing to have others deal with the day-to-day hassles, and let our money work for us. We have to know very well what we’re invested in, however. If a firm we’ve put a lot of money into gets into trouble because of bad practices, the Stewarts could see a huge chunk of the family fortune evaporate overnight. Technical mishaps tend not to be isolated occurrences. They usually come in strings. We insist that our companies root out problems before they metastasize and someone gets killed.”
“More companies should have you as investors then. Keep them on their toes.”
“The smart families do the same things we do. No one wants to see anyone lose their lives because we were turning a blind eye to corporate shenanigans.”
“I think that’s why the government trusts us,” Stewart continued. “We’re a steadying hand inside other corporations, and the firms we own outright, such as Vinci Technologies and MedWell, have very good reputations, so they win contracts more easily.”
Howell knew of Vinci Technologies. It was a subcontractor to Cardiff Yard, one of several companies supplying it with field emitters for the hyperspatial shields they installed on their ships. He knew less about MedWell, only that it was focused on the health care sector.
Stewart grinned. “In any case, if you don’t mind, I don’t want my family’s money to be the talk of the ship. You’re one of the few people here who knows about my background. Being a rich kid is never comfortable. Not that I’m complaining, but it makes things difficult sometimes. Not as difficult as running for your life when a ship turns murderous, but unpleasant, yes.”
Howell froze. “What do you mean by ‘murderous,’ exactly.”
Stewart’s face was empty of guile. “Umm, you know, Morrigan, she was trying to kill you at the end. Right?”
Yes, but how do you know that Gregorio Stewart? Howell did his best to keep a straight face.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Oh, it’s part of the scuttlebutt,” the ensign said placidly. “People talk. You see, Vinci Tech gets contracts from the Navy, and some of those involved the technologies recovered from Morrigan. Very ancient stuff that’s being pried open and studied so we can reproduce it. Vinci has a few projects underway. I can’t talk about what they are. I’ve probably said too much already. Nothing having to do with engines. Mostly shields and related stuff. I talk to some of the engineers, and they talk to me. That’s the story they have. That Morrigan’s AI was in a very bad way when you found her, and that she got worse, and tried to off you.”
“Is that so?”
Stewart nodded, looking a bit
worried. “That’s about it. I don’t have any other details except that it got very dangerous for you at the end.”
Dangerous is one word for it. “Without confirming or denying anything, the Morrigan mission is highly classified. You shouldn’t know any of this.”
“I’m aware of that and I shouldn’t have run off my mouth the way I did,” Stewart apologized. “I was too eager to talk about things with you. It’s a big problem, trying to maintain security over an operation that involved so many people. I have a privileged position, being linked with Vinci Tech, so I get to speak with people who know people. None of Vinci’s employees were near Morrigan, okay, but they do work closely with some of the crew who were there. They were needed to explain what everything was that they removed from that ship. Those people talked, and Vinci’s engineers can’t unhear what they’re told.”
What Howell heard made sense. In his own position at Cardiff Yard, and notwithstanding his security clearance, Howell had learned of more super-classified stuff than he had any right to. It was impossible to ensure that people’s tongues didn’t wag. It was human nature to spill secrets. It need not have taken many people to unload what they had seen for the basic contours of the Morrigan incident to get out.
Nonetheless, he felt a deep dismay that some of the most important aspects of the mission, the ones that the Navy had issued dire threats to its servicemembers about to keep them quiet, were known to an ensign fresh out of the Academy. That Stewart had a unique position at the center of a giant conglomerate that gave him access to the advanced tech programs that the Navy had doled out to make Morrigan’s tech available to its modern ships explained much, but it made Howell no less uneasy. If Gregorio Stewart knew, who else knew? Tartarus had spies everywhere, and if they learned of the tech that Halifaxian defense contractors were working on, they could try to penetrate them and steal the tech, and save themselves huge development costs. Simply knowing the general outlines of the research that Halifax’s companies were engaged in could point in fruitful directions. Howell had consoled himself that, even though they had lost the Morrigan, her recovered tech would give the Republic a leg up on her enemies for decades or more to come. Now he was not sure that would be true. He could at least ensure that Stewart stopped his tongue from wagging.
The Ajax Incursion Page 14
