by Kali Altsoba
From the start of the war, but especially after Constance made her “neither victory nor death” speech, security around the Shipyard was tighter than an off-duty sailor. It’s even tighter now. Four of the seven warships are still undergoing final repairs, while the two confiscated liners are being stripped down almost to their interior hulls and refitted as auxiliary troopships.
Workers clamor over them like ants in an elephant graveyard as General Constance, Captain Aklyan, and Chief of All Engineers Owoye Azazi tour the dry docks. It’s not the first time they’ve done it. It is the last. The general and captain are here because they’re worried that the Alpha refit is falling behind schedule. Azazi assures them that it isn’t, and won’t.
He’s a little dazed because he’s just been told that he’ll be leaving on the Exodus ships he’s worked so hard on, as Chief Engineer on Aklyan’s flagship Resolve. And that his family will be staying behind. He has a wife and three children, all under age ten. It’s a real blow, but the urgency of the moment means neither Constance nor Aklyan can give him the privacy or time he needs to absorb it. Truth may be the first casualty of war, but decency is the second.
“Chief, you were supposed to pull all civilian luxuries out of these troopships.”
“I know, general. We’re making progress on it.”
He’s barely hearing her.
‘How can I tell my children that I’ll never see them again?’
He’s also being far too modest. Every imaginable luxury is already eliminated in favor of spartan military functionality, and the job is nearly done. All that’s left is to add certain items basic to the function of any and every troopship: sleeping units.
“We started with the four artificial gravity swimming pools.”
Expunged of water during the forced landing, all four sunken chambers, two on each liner, are refurbished as triage and emergency surgeries. Drained reserve tanks have been cut open and deroofed, turned into infirmaries and medical supply storage rooms. It’s a neat fit.
“Glad to hear it chief. What else is finished?”
“Well captain, we ripped out...”
Azazi is assigned to the flagship because Magda knows he’s well-respected across the whole Genève squadron and Toruń Shipyard, and that he can be relied on.
‘There’s not a better man to do the job with Alpha in all Toruń, maybe in all Krevo.’
Short and too wide for his grubby uniform, he’s as shy as a new butterfly and as black-skinned as carbon-fiber. Even cleaned up on full dress occasions he smells of machine oils and grease cleansers. He’s not cleaned up today. He’s been working too long and hard. The odor of the shipyard is all over him, fitting into the clang! of machines and glare of heavy laser welders overhead. He has a glint of ultrasteel shavings that caught in his hair in the machine tool room.
‘There’s something else, some new smell about him that I can’t quite place. Got it! He smells like a sawmill. He never smelled this sweet before. Oh, of course! That’s why!’
There’s no time to manufacture carbon-fiber beds or fittings and fixtures. That’s not the way they do things on Genève in any case, not on a world that takes such pride in its wood. So hastily-cut and quickly-planed pallets of lumber have been hauled aboard each ship to make new bunks. Rough-hewn planks two meters long are reeved with cables to every vertical plane. Over 140,000 in the two fat troopships, combined. More are added to every possible space on the escorts. All nine ships reek of wood and sap, of hewn tree strands and rooted local pride.
Games courts, grand dining halls, baggage storage rooms, all become prime barracks areas. Next to go is each small neglected nook, cranny and corridor, every space bunks can be vertically stacked. Except for key engine and command modules. Even lazarets between decks and aerated cofferdams betwixt narrow bulkheads are crammed with raw, naked-wood bunks.
Absolutely necessary open areas are left untouched, but even those become standing-room-only, no seats or furniture allowed. So many Exodus fighters will be crammed into each ship that only half those taking passage can be allowed to move about at any given time. The other half will be required to lie prone in a designated bunk until their turn comes to take a two-hour exercise shift, to stiffly stand, stretch and walk. As for liftoff, well, it’ll be two per bunk.
Finely-paneled suites built for off-world tourist couples are emptied of lucullan furniture, stripped down to essentials and outfitted with 20 rough bunks each, or more. Every raw doss that goes in leaks sap and smells fresh cut. For so it is, just days ago from mighty lake trees brought down inside the city’s central parks. Tossed upon the funeral pyre of war are great gold-boughed deciduous methuselahs and silver-haired benjamins, all much loved and tended by generations of Toruńites. All the sad carpenters played under the great trees in summertime as children, or saw their own children run along the thick lower branches and leaves under gray autumn skies, or stood beneath to watch happy skaters on nearby lakes in peaceful winters past.
The lumber smells of green wounds from oozing oak or maple or teak or pine, of black ash and birch. It smells of oily sawmills from whence arrive great stacks of rare lumber worth a planetary ransom in the rich prewar markets of the Imperium or Calmar Union. It’s laid in bare, still bleeding sap and scent. Two folded blankets are left neatly at the foot of every bunk. Itchy and woolen, they’re about the only contribution poor Southland makes, from warehouses filled with wool from the last sheep sheering in the last spring before the war. Yet there’s real pride in the rough woven blankets, so carefully folded and placed exactly so. Two by two by two.
“Godsdamn, ken ya smell dat?! Is jus’ like Toruń Wood bafore da fiya.”
It’s a saw miller, proudly finishing the bunk refit on Wilhelm Rex. In his worker’s pride he doesn’t notice, or he doesn’t care, that he’s speaking to a general, the flotilla captain, and the Shipyard’s chief of all engineers. All three smile but say nothing as together they try to slip past and leave him to his necessary work. He won’t have it.
“If dese buuties ain’t Toruń ships, dunno whad ships eva could be!”
His judgment raises a chorus of approval from workmates and several members of the ship’s crew, who suddenly snap to attention and throw salutes at the general and captain. It’s only then that the proud carpenter realizes who they are, and blushes remarkably red for a man of his years. Like a schoolboy caught with his hand in a candy jar.
“At ease, sailors. Everybody else carry on. The clock is running down.”
Bunks are mounted in two-position swivels, to brace for takeoff from Genève then to shift flat under artificial gravity for the long voyage to sanctuary. Assuming that Alpha can escape the Kaigun picket line and slip out the system’s backdoor bohr-zone. The ships also might have to land on some as-yet-unknown planet or moon that lacks an elevator. To make a voyage with no elevator on either end would be an extraordinarily rare thing in Orion. Depart a world lacking such a basic, commonplace, 2,000 year-old tek? Then to arrive at another world similarly deprived? Never! Yet Constance advises that nothing can be assumed in time of war.
“We never expected to lose our elevator, which we’ve taken for granted since the founding generation laid down its base and raised the asteroid anchor and great ribbon. Who thought we’d again use powered lift-off in our lifetimes? Yet, historians say many worlds lost elevators during the Second Orion War, and even more during the Third. They rebuilt the ‘God Lifts’ each time. And each time we forgot about earlier losses. So make all ships ready to land.”
Toruń hosted the system flotilla before the war so it has excellent yards, repair pens, naval supplies, and prefab parts of every sort. So the ‘troopship’ superstructures are easily if lightly armored with a layer of superceramic plate then sprayed with graphene aerogel. Ersatz armor won’t stand up to plasma, not even from a Zerstörer, but it might protect against glancing hits by older lasers. The problem is the weak structural integrity of the civilian hulls beneath.
“Even old-
fashioned, close action kinetics are a real danger,” Azazi tells Aklyan and Constance as they tour the liner dry docks. “Especially around the plasma drives.”
“So weld some basic plate armor back here. Pad their asses,” says Magda.
“I agree,” adds Constance. “Any armor is better than nothing.”
“Yes sir and ma’am, we can do that. I’ll get right on it.” Actually, he’s far from sure there’s enough time left.
“Top priority, chief. Even over the destroyers. This is the truly precious cargo, on the two troopships. We have to protect them. Put everyone you can spare on it, anyone who knows anything about plate or graphene armor. Just get some protection laid in around the engines.”
Azazi speaks into his headset and in minutes ten 50-man crews drop the last minor repairs to the outer hulls of Asimov and Resolve and move over to the two troopship docks.
“Just in case none of the escorts make it through the first jump,” Constance adds, with a hard glance at Aklyan, “I want forward-firing plasma-cannon added to each liner.
“Or at least a ship-to-ship medium laser,” Magda corrects. “Might be all they can take.”
“That’s gonna be harder to do than basic armor, ma’am. The firing controls alone...”
“Just do whatever you can, as fast as you can, Chief Engineer. Give them something to fight back with. Anything.” Constance is as firm as can be. She’s deeply worried about Alpha.
There’s no arguing with the order, so once again Azazi speaks into his coms and more crews leave Resolute and Triomphant. They hurry with real urgency to the troopships while senior engineers head for the Shipyard Armory to see what might be jury-rigged to one or both.
Constance and Aklyan thank Azazi for his time and leave him to it. They know he’s the hardest working and most burdened man in Toruń at this critical moment. And that the KRN ground crews in the Shipyard will work flat out and to the last minute on the countdown clock.
Partings
The front-mounted guns that Azazi and his best engineers decide on are basic, limited to manual fire-control because automatics just can’t be set up in the short time available. Not in the absence of military targeting computers on the former passenger liners. But he’s inspired to suggest adding a destroyer-caliber, kinetic rail ice-cannon as an aft gun to Wilhelm Rex.
Or rather, to the KRN Warsaw. The two liners are no longer tourist boats. They’ll rise off-world from Genève shed of all Grün Imperium markings and their old names. Wilhelm Rex and Meiji are no more. Former ships of monarchy and of farfolk empire will boost and fly from now on under solidly Krevan Republican names, as the troopships KRN Warsaw and Jutlandia.
“I checked out Warsaw personally, ma’am. She’s got a much stronger central beam than I figured.” Azazi says it hopefully to Magda Aklyan when he hurriedly presents his idea to her.
“Good news for once, chief.”
“She’ll hold the rails well enough. She can handle the inertial kicking.”
“Will it affect how she turns or how tight she flies?”
“No ma’am, well, not so much as it would matter at the range her captain would fire an ice-sabot, if she wanted to. And it could make it just warm enough ... umm ... I mean risky enough, for a real close pursuer that Warsaw can gain time to maybe jump. Get clear away.”
“Excellent, chief. Well thought out. Make it happen.”
“Right, ma’am. Umm, I already moved the sabot to her dry dock. We’ll start laser welds to the underside hull in ‘bout two hours, then reeve, then rig fire control. We’ll beat the clock.”
“Jumped the gun, did you?”
“So to speak, ma’am.”
“Well done, chief. Really.”
“Thank you ma’am. And sorry, ‘bout that.”
“No apology, chief. Just tell me, can you do the same thing for Jutlandia?”
“No ma’am, sorry ‘bout that, too. She’s don’t have the hull integrity to support the kinda bucking a rail gun would give her. The big ones got a real kick, ya know.”
‘Probably will come to nothing anyway,’ Magda thinks. ‘If one of the troopships has to engage even so small a warship as a frigate, then things for Alpha must be going badly indeed. Still, any weapon at all onboard the liners is better than none, if it won’t impede handling.’
Speed’s another issue. No one’s used metallic-hydrogen rockets in centuries, except as emergency back-ups. Yet these one-time ground-lifters are attached to outer hulls of the two remade troopships. Indeed, they’re on all the Alpha ships, rigged to drop upon reaching orbit like some bad history lesson falling back to Toruń. Magda has high hopes for the ancient tek.
Two post-orbit fusion boosters were imported from Argos a year earlier, before some officious Calmari bureaucrat at the Ministry of Defense on Caspia blocked end-user permits for military supplies to Krevo, to appease Pyotr. The boosters were meant for routine light cruiser refits of ships in Genève Squadron, but there are no cruisers left. Since boosters are universally designed to fit all modern ships, they’re easily buckled underneath each liner and tied into main engines. This was a mission-critical task and got highest priority. They went on the hulls first.
The refit work is done with four days to spare, with only the ice-sabot and last weapons hurriedly completed on the two liners and more bunks squeezed in here and there after a final inspection of the warships. Constance thanks shipyard workers and managers then orders heavy demolition charges laid all around the naval yards and inside all storehouses and warehouses.
“I’ll be at the berm, but I’ll leave tight orders to blow everything apart after Alpha lifts off. Kaigun ships and admirals will inherit nothing of use to them when Toruń Shipyard falls.”
“That’s good, general.”
Magda carefully ignores what it means that her collaborator in the Exodus plan will “be at the berm” when Alpha pulls away from Genève. She shifts topic.
“I must say, though, it saddens me greatly to hear it. I spent a lot of years in and around that old Shipyard as an ensign and lieutenant on a now-lost frigate, later as Resolve’s captain.”
“Losing the yards is not as sad as losing all the old lake trees,” Constance corrects, exhibiting a rare and even surprising local sentimentality. “Dry docks can be rebuilt, one day.”
“Yes, that’s the worst of it. Losing the trees at the center of Toruń. Although part of me is glad that Alpha will carry them with us into exile.”
“I concur. All is come to ruin in Toruń and on Genève. Our only hope, our past as well as our future, lies out there with you. Gods speed Alpha to reach and join the Exodus fleet.”
“It’s a good plan, Amiya. You’ve done all that you can. We’ll make it work.”
“I believe that you will, Magda.”
The two most powerful women on Genève slip into personal address, setting rank and service aside for a simple human moment. For Magda Aklyan and Amiya Constance share above all else the burden of command. They know that whatever they decide, however they choose, whichever path they take or order they give, droves of young men and women will die.
***
Only a minority of fighters attached to the garrison can make the run on so few ships, even with more raw wood bunks bolted inside the seven escorts wherever doing so doesn’t interfere with jacks and jennies ‘fighting the ships’ in the coming actions against the Kaigun.
Constance makes all the hard personnel choices. No one objects. She has respect and support from all those who are leaving, and most of those who will remain. She doesn’t have to do it, but she relents in the last three days and orders a lottery for the final 4,000 Alpha berths.
“Active duty military only in the lottery. No family, period.”
It’s her flintiest order yet.
There’s no trouble. Every fighter accepts the logic of their division from civilians. The real issue is that too many fighters want to pull their names out of the lottery, to stay and fight and die with their brave ge
neral, their comrades-in-arms, and their families. Constance orders all unassigned names into the draw. There’s a limit to what she’ll allow, even to uphold morale.
The garrison will follow Constance out to do battle with the RIK in front of the berm Gate just before Alpha launches. They’ll charge the lines, cut through blackened forest stumps and piled ash to kill and hurt as many of the despised enemy as possible. Only escape by Alpha can make so much terrible sacrifice at the berm pyrrhic, not obscene and useless. Fighters in the ships and their doomed comrades below are linked in life and death no matter what happens.
The diversion might distract, hold down tactical sky assets so they don’t rise to stop the launch. Or perhaps not. Either way, Alpha will aim to escape through a tunnel of fire from Shipyard batteries, with rotating perimeter shooting from its own escort destroyers and frigates. Then the whole flotilla must charge for the outer Lagrange area, the oval bohr-zone made by the slight elliptical orbit of the cold blue giant held captive by Genève’s sun as it endlessly plunges through the system, restrained by the parent star like a gaucho’s whirling bola.
