Hopefully they can last long enough for us to crush the remaining Kalu.
Chapter Beasts of war
Empress watched as War station passed through Flor and felt every engineering impulse in her body drawing her towards that damned colossal machine which had emerged with a good sized fleet from a wormhole.
It’s engines were the size of a Dreadnought and were able to accelerate it as fast as a merchant freighter. Quite the feat for something nearly as big as Empress’ own shipyards.
“How many power plants does that thing have? They must be massive!” One of her chiefs said as they watched from night builder.
Empress pulled out a data pad and checked the contacts, she found a line to the chief of engineering.
She pressed it, waiting more time than she was used to before someone got on the line.
“What is it? I am running a damned station here so be snappy about it!” The creature said through her audio device. She thought she heard the familiar sounds of a Kuruvian talking, though the built-in translation device clarified and covered most of the natural noises of speech over.
“We were wondering as to the size of your power plants and the number of them,” Empress said, reminding herself to stay calm, this chief was obviously under a lot of pressure.
“More every damned day.”
“You're powering them up while on the move?” She said, alarm entering her voice. Powering up power plants was a delicate process, one that was nearly exclusively done in a yard. This Chief was starting them while on the move and underpowered.
“Why yes, what do you expect me to do? Tell the Commander to stop pushing for Rosho. Salchar would have my exoskeleton himself. Though maybe I could bribe him with telling him I would take down his armor I nailed to the armory wall,” the chief said, rambling.
“That's suicidal! I will get Salchar on the comms and tell him what is going on right now!” She barked.
“Fine,” the chief said, sending her a message with a comm link number. “He might not be best pleased with the call. Now I have things to do,” the Chief warned, before signing off.
She tapped the code, using relays to punch her through to a comms channel.
“Who is this?” The voice said, clearly not pleased with the distraction.
“Empress of the Kuruvians, who is this?”
“Salchar commander of the Free Fleet and the Resilient, currently on Heija in a war,” he ground out.
“Incoming on the right, that swarm is coming back together, firing missiles.” There was a frrshwhooosh! In the background as she guessed rockets were being fired.
She could hear the sounds of high-velocity rounds being spat in bursts, the whine of hydraulics and servos as the person calling themselves Salchar moved.
“What do you want?” He said, sounding as if he was only barely concentrating on her.
“Your Engineer on War-station is starting reactors while the ship is not in dock,” she fumed.
“Yes, and?” There was a noise. “You sounvabitch! Fucker got my arm!” The sounds of high-velocity rounds rose in tempo.
“It's not safe,” she said, feeling that talking to this man in battle, who seemed to have just been wounded, did not think her concerns worth his time.
“Hey who’s got some hellfire, dick got my good arm. Really don't want to have to replace this one too!” He said, his tone light.
“Salchar?” Empress asked, wondering if he had forgotten about her.
“Fine, you think it's unsafe, go and watch it. Call Shrift up and tell him he better damned well convince you he isn't going to blow up war-station, or I am going to make him my personal armorer,” Salchar said. “Hey, Krom, your side, I don't like those Warriors so close.”
The channel cut as Empress was left standing on night builder. It was odd to think that light years away there were people fighting and dying for her people. It felt so disconnected, the fact that she had been talking to a man right in the middle of it, comfortable on her yard was, strange.
She typed a message to the chief, using the words that Salchar had told her.
In five minutes she was asked if she would provide her own transport to war-station.
“Whoever finds me the fastest moving ship in the system to get to war station will come with me aboard her?” Empress said.
It took fifteen minutes for Empress to be on a ship and headed for War-station.
The entire ride she looked over ways to start power plants, glancing at the mobile station as it grew in her view.
The station seemed to only increase in size, Dreadnought's and Carriers looked like corvette's against it’s bulk. Cannons the size of shuttles sprouted from the stations face’s.
She looked in awe, being an engineer she understood the feat that War-station presented. She knew of nothing like it, the fact it was even operational spoke volumes to her engineering mind.
You just want to go grab your tool belt and go through the entire ship from reactors to engines and everything in between!
A group of four Fighters settled around the fast courier she was on.
The Free Fleet was not taking any risks, no matter who was supposed to be visiting. She didn’t care, instead admiring the Fighters, their lines made her think that they were capable of flying in atmosphere as well as space. She didn’t know about tactics, but these pilots were disciplined to hold position with a ship that was moving in a three-dimensional space without so much as talking to her own pilot.
The entire courier came in to land in an empty shuttle-bay. After a few moments the walls that made the shuttle bay retracted into the ceiling and floor, revealing the rest of the shuttle-bay-launch-bay. Fighters lay in racks against the walls, shuttles joining them. Though there still wasn't enough of either ship to fill all of the cycling racks. More seemed to come from one hatch, racks going into the hatch as fresh Fighters came out. Engineer's swarmed Fighters, checking them in racks disassembling, assembling and just looking them over.
The whole deck was a hive of concentrated activity. If any of them cared about the visiting dignitary they didn’t care.
Instead of being offended, Empress felt an affinity with them. She wouldn’t want her engineers standing on pomp and circumstance when they could be working and getting ships operational.
A group of Commandos in HAPA's supported by regular powered armor wearing commandos surrounded the ship, others were on walkways, their cannons and missiles unlocked and ready.
Empress shook her head at what she thought of as ridiculousness. She found the walkway out of the ship, using the manual release and used the out for the shuttle-bay floor, her Chief, the one that had greeted Cheerleader, followed.
“Empress, welcome to the War-Station.” A man by his tone said from a set of powered armor.
“I was told that I would be able to see what your Chief is doing to kick-start your power plants. Apparently he is doing it while you are moving?” She asked.
“Yes, of course. Shrift!” The man said, raising his body.
“Thank you commander,” a Kuruvian said, his body covered in the scars and grooves in his carapace that came with being an engineer. He even had a few prosthetic's to replace what he had given to engineering.
“They'll be coming,” Shrift said, indicating to the Commandos, then turning and walking out of the shuttle-bay.
The man Shrift had called Commander departed with his group of armored people. The other Commandos relaxed and watched the craft that had brought her. Two HAPA's and four commandos followed her and Chief as Shrift waited on a lift, clearly thinking he had better things to do with his time.
Getting through War-station was time consuming.
“Thank the light for lifts,” Empress said.
“Quite right, when we started War-station's make over, there were only four lift runs. We had to cut out kilometers worth of lift runs so we could get all over the station,” Shrift said, his manipulators showing that he had not enjoyed having to go through that ordea
l.
Lifts passed one another with meters to spare. Supplies, people, shuttles, Fighters; War station was very active.
The one they were on had barely stopped when Shrift was walking off, he pulled his data pad out, making annoyed noises as someone rushed up.
“We're almost ready on reactor Twelve,” the Chaleelian said.
“Good, how are we looking for the heat up?” Shrift said briskly, his pace picking up as he seemed to forget about Empress and Chief.
“In the range, Devastahli is flushing more heat in through plasma cycling. We're about ready for pressure build up and spark insertion,” the Chaleelian said.
“Alright, now let's get this puppy started. I want to have enough power for that secondary factory,” Shrift said, shooting a glance to Empress, then back to the Chaleelian.
“I'll make sure everything's up tight,” the Chaleelian said, giving a slight nod to Shrift before running away.
The Free Fleet wanted to keep their secrets, Empress could understand, they used weapons of war, those things weren't to be given out lightly.
They reached a command area, on the view screen there was a reactor. It looked like any other, until someone walked around it, doing final checks. It was two stories tall and nearly as wide.
“What we're doing right now is a reverse flush, we're cycling super-heated plasma through the coolant pipes. It's raising the bottle's temperature to create an environment that nuclear fusion can occur in,” Shrift said, bending over the control console.
“Alright Devastahli, you ready to kick this thing off?” Shrift said.
“Of course, the threat of blowing something up always entertains me,” the one called Devastahli said. It was obvious that the two were friends. Empress wondered why the two weren't in the same control area, she put it down to the Free Fleet's paranoia with security.
“Cycling plasma almost complete,” Shrift said.
“Pulling spark from portable reactor,” Devastahli said.
“We take a piece of already reacting substance from another reactor, use coolant tubes and a series of magnets, electrical, and gravitational systems to contain it and move it through to the new reactor. This donor reactor has also been the one that we were using plasma from. Once this process is complete we will pull the portable reactor and use it on the next one.”
“Spark extracted and moving,” Devastahli said, sounding almost mechanical. He must have done it so many times that he felt like a robot now.
“Removing plasma, priming reactor, and readying coolant,” Shrift said, using his manipulators and his arms to manage the systems. His eyes never left the screen, his concentration complete.
“Spark ready for entry,” Devastahli said.
“Environment primed,” Shrift replied.
“Inserting,” Devastahli said.
Shrift's appendages moved, swiping pushing and barely touching controls. It was hectic for a few minutes as Empress held her breath, it had been happening so quickly and she'd been taken away by the calm way in which Shrift had been acting. Now she realized that these two creatures were starting a miniature star while she was on board. She stayed rock-still hoping that she didn't distract him in anyway.
“Spark is seated, feeding reactive matter,” Shrift said.
“Spark is stable, taking on matter nicely. I'm going to have to have some downtime soon. I would suggest that you do too,” Devastahli suggested.
“I still have a bunch of systems to work on. Plus we have two more reactors to prep and fire up,” Shrift said, not at all reacting how Empress thought someone would when starting a reactor. Even when they did it in the yard, there was no talking of anything but what was essential to making sure the reactor didn't go critical.
“It looks good on my side, the spark is spreading. I think we can turn this over to the reactor watchers,” Shrift said.
“Agreed,” Devastahli said.
“How were the two of you able to do that?” Empress asked, looking over the readings coming from the reactor. It was stable, the reactive core held in place with powerful forces holding it away from the walls of the new reactor. Coolant was released in small amounts to keep the burn at a slow rate and stop the reactor from going into meltdown.
“Well it helps that he's an AI, without him it would be damned hard,” Shrift said.
“An AI? They're really in your fleet. I have heard about it, but I thought it was propaganda,” Empress said.
“Do I look like propaganda?” A dominating figure appeared in the room, it stood, a cloak covering its features without hiding the statue of the creature underneath.
Empress studied the holographic projection in front of her.
“What is the processing power of a Loundo Four five yourvek nine tower?”
“The fin cooled system, or centrally linked nitro system?” Devastahli asked without pause.
“Fin cooled,” she said.
“Reduced from the nitro system, but using human measurements, it can do twenty quadrillion calculations per minute, Nitro twenty four. Those are quite old systems though,” Devastahli said.
“AI's,” Empress said, still a bit in shock that they were real, and that she was talking to one.
“My Uncle Eddie coined the idea when he needed a reactor online, the power plants could only give enough power to either the engines or weapons. Salchar needed both, so he jump started another reactor,” Shrift said, looking to Empress and Chief.
“Your uncle is Eddie?” The Chief asked.
“Yup, sure is, the crazy boot throwing nut,” Shrift made his amusement clear. “Family of Engineers me.”
“It's hard to compare to the first generation survivor Eddie,” Empress said.
“Yeah, try having the second generation for a father and a brother that runs Nancy,” Shrift growled.
And now it doesn't seem so crazy that he's kick starting a reactor.
“It seems that I underestimated your abilities, both of yours. I am sorry,” Empress said, to Devastahli and Shrift.
“Just doing my job, and I have to go deal with fighter rotation and gunnery fours simulation,” Devastahli disappeared.
“See yah Dev!” Shrift said cheerfully
“You know I hate that nickname,” Dev replied, sounding equal parts annoyed and amused.
“Well seeing as you've come all the way out here, we might as well show you something cool.” Shrift looked to the Commandos.
“You think it'd be okay to show them the small ship factory before they leave.”
“We're cleared for it, Whorst sent a list of what they can see and not,” one of the Commandos said, Empress couldn't tell which one of the armored creatures was speaking.
“Well follow me,” Shrift said, walking on, everyone picking up speed to keep pace with the rushing engineer.
His pad beeped, he made a displeased noise at the offending object, pulling it out and submersing himself.
He walked, typing without looking up it was clear that he knew the station as if he had lived on it his entire life.
“Sub-station five I want you to check your power relay levels. You were doing secondary relay installment right?” Shrift said to someone over his communications device. He paused waiting for a reply.
“Okay, it looks like they are interfering with the primary somehow. I'd check that they haven't been flipped in some area, cycling from primary to secondary.” He paused again.
“Good to hear,” Shrift said, checking his data pad and getting on a lift.
“It seems that there are always more things to do than things completed,” he complained, putting the pad away.
The Free Fleet had brought many things with them, the biggest being a efficiency. They had limited people and resources getting the most done with that had dione them well as more people and resources had become available.
She had heard of the factory process that the humans had thought of on their planet and the implementation and automation of it throughout the Fleet.
&n
bsp; Though she didn't expect the sheer speed at which a factory could create something.
“This is the small ship factory,” Shrift said proudly.
She watched as the frame of the craft was rolled into the first section, engines, electronics and the substructure was added. The frame continued forward, more parts being attached, it never stopped, just slowly moving forward as more arms grew the fighter. Finally coverings were put into place armor and flaps were added and the fighter came out of the factory. It was pulled away onto a rack that flipped, another fighter going into the next rack just a matter of minutes later. The rack flipped again and a new place was opened for the next fighter.
So it went on, the sight mesmerizing in it’s automation.
“An entire fighter in forty minutes. That’s, incredible,” Empress said, looking at the unending process, not one person worked on the ships, instead they were all used to work on more important activities. She knew she was seeing the future.
“As long as we have parts we can make crafts. Shuttles are slower to make. They take about an hour and a half,” Shrift said.
“This truly is a war-station,” she said, peeling her eyes away from the factory.
“Oh but give us time, you haven't seen nothing yet,” Shrift said, a darkness to his manipulators movements. They might call him peace-station after this, he'd probably scare more than one group into suing for peace instead of going up against him! Empress thought
***
“You want to what?” Silly asked Felix. Felix had contacted him three hours ago, just as he was waking up. So far his day had been rather interesting, thankfully he had LaRe to crunch the numbers and show him that Felix wasn't pulling a fast one.
“I want to turn the Elshurvum from a normal carrier, into one that is able to jump as much as the Jump fighter and has a full complement of MEF's bombers and Jump fighter,” Felix said.
“Not that, the part where you want to have its main weapons to be bomb-pumped lasers!” Silly was still wondering how Felix could be so calm when proposing ideas so damned completely ridiculous. It wasn't that he didn't like the ideas or thought that they were insane, they were, it was the fact that he was now going to be spending the next coming weeks figuring out how they could make Felix's ideas into reality.
Free Fleet Box Set 2 Page 59
