Ghosts from the Past (The Wandering engineer Book 7)

by Chris Hechtl

  The newly christened captain chuckled. “Talk to Lieutenant Fuentes about that.”

  “I intend to,” she said smugly.

  Sprite downloaded the news and Intel from Fuentes while the admiral finished talking with Captain Vargess and then left to catch the shuttle to the yard. The ship AI sent a highlighted file for her to open first. When she did she felt her emotional emulator module go into overdrive for a brief moment. “Damn! What a rush as the expression goes!” She said to Lieutenant Fuentes. “Why didn't you give me this when you first docked?” She accused.

  “I was busy with the refit,” the AI replied. “And you were busy with other things. Besides, I wanted to be on hand when you opened it,” he admitted. “I thought you'd like that,” he replied with a chuckle.

  “Damn right I did. And it couldn't have happened at a better time,” she said. “I'm going to brief the admiral on this right away.”

  “Admiral ...”

  “A problem, Commander? What is it this time?” Admiral Irons asked. Sprite decided to leave her link to Fuentes open but on mute. She wanted the other AI to hear the admiral's response.

  “Well, it turns out Sergeant Jethro had some misadventure while on leave on Anvil. He's a bit banged up, but apparently he survived. He not only survived, but he did the impossible. He exposed his would be assassin and she had some rather nasty dirt on the political establishment in Pyrax.”

  “So?”

  “So ...” Sprite sprawled as she replayed the Knox news bit about Governor Walker's fall from grace.

  “Couldn't happen to a better class of slimeball,” Sprite finished with infinite satisfaction in her approval.

  The admiral nodded. “My sentiments exactly, Commander. I'm glad Jethro survived. We're going to need his grit soon enough.”

  “Are you still considering reforming the Cadre?” Sprite asked in surprise. She closed the link to Fuentes before he got more of an earful than she wanted him to have.

  “One step at a time. SOCOM first,” the admiral said, referring to the Special Operations Command. “We'll use Marine Recon and the Navy Seals as a nucleus,” he said.

  “The colonel was about to start a Force Recon team, Admiral,” Sprite said. “And Marine Recon had a tradition of being independent from SOCOM,” she warned.

  The admiral shrugged. “Some things change. This time for the better. We're going to be having some growing pains, but we're going to hit the ground running with a new improved system wherever possible,” he said.

  “Aye aye, Admiral. And for the record, I approve. It's silly to have multiple chains of command, logistics, and Intel handling. Not to mention wasteful,” the AI stated.

  “And we do not have any of that or one other precious resource to waste,” the admiral said.

  “What other resource? People?”

  “No. Time.”

  ...*...*...*...*...

  The discussions between the admiral and the Antiguan government were ongoing, two-three days a week time permitting. The governor and staff had to shuttle down to the planet to govern of course, life didn't stop just because they had important negotiations to deal with. Sprite did her best to work with some of the governor's staff through e-mail exchanges during that period. Most of what they had to say was wrapped up, they just needed a bit of stroking to be fully on board.

  Now that the governor had his own implants that was proving slightly more difficult. Sprite had noted a few veiled uppity hints from the staff that some changes in priorities should be in order, but the governor hadn't backed them.

  They had ironed out the mining rights. The navy had mining rights to the belt in the system as well as the Oort cloud. They were also given the chain of islands off the coast of the main continent. The rest was still getting ironed out.

  The admiral seemed okay with the ongoing process but, Sprite thought he needed a bit of a distraction. He was starting to turn maudlin again. Fortunately, she had just the person. She'd been interviewing candidates for the flag lieutenant's position. One name had risen to the top. She was curious how they would hit it off, so she primed the young man and then sicked him on the admiral to see how things would turn out.

  "Admiral about your plan ..." the Lieutenant said. Irons turned from watching out the view port to the Lieutenant. The young human was standing there with his arms behind him. Irons vaguely remembered him. He was one of the recent transplants Fuentes had brought in. He'd just made Junior Grade.

  "Lieutenant Turner, I don't remember letting you in," Irons said mildly. He'd taken a break from the constant reports and jacking in to initialize one thing or another. It could at times be trying and tedious. The Lieutenant flushed.

  "I let him in, Admiral," Sprite responded from the desk. Irons grunted. Once and a while he could pretend that he was alone in his own body or office. That was if Sprite or one of the others played along and let him. Usually they were pretty good about giving him his space when he seemed to need it the most.

  The junior grade lieutenant looked chagrined. "Sorry, sir ..." the Admiral waved the apology away as he sat and indicated the lieutenant take the opposite seat. The lieutenant sat down. As Irons sat he felt his nanites form a link with the desk and then with the network. Dozens of reports flashed for his attention. He ignored them for the moment and focused on the keys he needed to apply to keep things on track in the yard and industrial centers. Right now half were civilian things the station had requested as part of their barter exchange. Hopefully that would change soon.

  "You were saying?" Irons said as his attention returned to the here and now. The young man got comfortable and nodded, no doubt martialling his courage.

  "I came up in operations sir. I was asked to go over your plan and pointed out a few holes to Commander Sprite. She thought I should discuss them in person with you sir,” he said.

  “Oh?” The admiral frowned then nodded. “Continue then.”

  “The problem with the plan is ... well to put it bluntly, sir, once we're up and running we can build sublight ships a lot faster than we can get them from Pyrax, sir."

  "I know that."

  The young man wrinkled his nose in confusion. "Then why ..."

  "Trade. By trading parts for hyperdrives, reactors, replicators, and weapons we will get additional hulls to mount the same parts in while soothing any ruffled feathers over what we are doing."

  "Oh."

  "It's a bit more complex than that son. What we're really trying to do with the golden road is draw Agnosta, Pyrax, and Antigua together into an alliance. Triang too if we can manage it. The traffic will serve as an example to others and will hopefully form additional friendships and trade." He left out the bit about dangling bait before the pirates to see if they would bite. Hopefully they wouldn't in the initial convoys. If they got in and chewed up the unarmed freighters it would be ugly. He made a note to himself to look into adding point defense systems or defensive drones to the ships. The crews that manned those ships were valiant people. He made another note to make sure they were taken care of too. It wasn't fair that they put their necks on the line in an unarmed ship time after time while others got promoted around them. There was a saying about the navy never having to be fair, but damn it, he'd take care of them if he could. And he intended to do so.

  "Oh."

  The admiral smiled slightly. "You keep saying that."

  The lieutenant blinked in confusion and then nodded. "Sorry, sir. I'm just new."

  The admiral snorted softly. The young man was so new he squeaked. Well, not quite, he wasn't a midshipman; he'd gotten over that time in his career and even handled his stint as an ensign quite handily.

  Otto had recently come up from operations in Pyrax, serving under Captain Vargess as one of his deputies over the past two years. Apparently either the captain or Captain Logan had sent him here with an eye for him to be attached to the admiral's staff or as a deputy in OPS in Antigua. So far the admiral had reserved judgment. He did like that the young man wasn't afrai
d to ask a question. "I know that, and you are right to bring it up. We just started to lay down the keel of the first sublight gunship yesterday," the Admiral explained. Which was true, the little ship wasn't much. A small fusion reactor, a cluster of fusion drives in the rear, a couple of turrets in the center one ventral one keel, a pair of point defense guns and missile tubes on her bow, two airlocks, a habitat for the six person crew, shields, sensors, and the other bits. They weren't pretty. They had a snowball's chance of survival against anything bigger than them, but they would hopefully serve until larger ships could come on station.

  He had his fingers crossed on that and didn't like relying on luck and hope. Fortunately the small ships could be built rapidly in large numbers. "We won't have our first sublight gunship up for another three weeks, and it'll take a week or two for her to finish her trials after that. That is if we don't have any problems with production like we did with the fighter roll out,” he said with a slight grimace. “There always are so I've factored in a two week fudge factor. Hopefully once the bugs are out we'll be able to turn one out a month in six months. I'm shooting for one every week by the end of the year if we can keep the logistics side up."

  "Ah, sir?"

  The admiral raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"

  "Why so many if I may ask?"

  "Numbers. They won't stand up to anything larger without numbers. It will also allow us to train the crews to man them which will help us later down the road."

  The lieutenant nodded in understanding. "Ah. I thought you were going to make the argument about quantity over quality, sir," he said.

  The admiral shook his head. "While we're doing that I believe you noticed the larger dock?" The lieutenant nodded. Irons nodded back. "Right. Corvettes. That dock is just large enough to lay corvettes and frigates once its grand block assembly centers are completed. Since they share some of the same parts as the gunship line, we're cutting down on the logistic need there, but we're complicating the supply by tripling demand."

  "I see sir," the lieutenant said with a dutiful nod. “And that is why you are building the slip for the destroyers but it is going slower.”

  The admiral nodded. For the time being he planned to order the larger ships from Pyrax since they already had the facilities and hulls on hand. They would just have to supply them with the parts Horatio couldn't make. "But that's all on paper as the old saying goes. As I pointed out a moment ago, there is always problems, always delays. Engineers tend to call refer to the god Murphy, where ever something can go wrong it will, whenever you rely too much on something it will fail. The trick is to try to anticipate such hiccups and plan ways around them."

  The lieutenant nodded. "Slippage you said in your lecture, sir."

  Irons nodded, eyes gleaming in approval. "I'm glad you were paying attention to that lecture,” he said. He vaguely remembered the lad now, he'd been one of the initial crop of students at the academy. “Here we're going to be dividing our resources into building the yard, supporting infrastructure, training personnel, munitions, subcontracting parts ...” He shook his head. “I'm fairly confident we're going to have a lot of slippage before we get it all sorted out and running smoothly, which is why I wanted a little insurance."

  "The ships from Pyrax," the lieutenant said nodding in sudden understanding.

  "Exactly. Just a little extra insurance just in case. It never hurts to have a few more hulls. Most commanders are never ever satisfied with the number or type of hulls they have, we always want more," Irons smiled crookedly in memory. He lost count of the number of times he'd fought with other officers over that.

  Command track officers expected miracles from engineers, and given enough time and resources an engineer could deliver. But there were limits of course. Of course they expected similar miracles from bupersonnel and bulogistics as well.

  "If we have a surplus of small ships remember they can be shipped to other systems," Sprite interjected. The admiral turned to the miniature avatar she was projecting on his desk and nodded.

  The lieutenant's eyes cut to the AI avatar and then back to the admiral. "I understand, sir. Ma'am," he said with a nod to each.

  "If we can get about a dozen gunships out to each warp point I'll be happy. When the larger ships come online we can stand some of them down and turn their crews into the nucleus of the larger ship's crew. With careful management it should work."

  "Yes sir."

  "Was there anything else son?" Irons asked.

  "No sir. Sorry to disturb you."

  "Not a problem," the Admiral waved. "There is no such thing as a dumb question. Keep that in mind."

  "Yes sir," the lieutenant said, now smiling himself. "Sir, am I in line for one of those commands?"

  "Do you want to be?" the Admiral asked.

  "I'd like a shot at command track sir," the lieutenant replied, nodding. “I've been on staff for a long time. I'd like a shot at it sometime sir. If I can be spared where from where I am.”

  “Captain Vargess did okay managing a ship as well as OPS in Pyrax. Of course he had capable deputies like you lieutenant,” Sprite observed.

  Irons studied him for a moment and then nodded. Apparently Sprite saw something in the young man, something worth the distraction. Either that or she was using the distraction to get him to reorganize his thoughts. "You can have it. Running a gunship is not for the faint of heart lieutenant, it's boring, smelly, and downright dangerous. The crew live in each other's pockets so they either bond or tear themselves apart."

  The lieutenant’s eyes widened fractionally. Finally he nodded. "Yes, sir."

  "But you still want a chance anyway?" the admiral asked, smiling. The young man nodded with a slight gleam of tempered enthusiasm. "I thought so," Irons replied in renewed amusement. "Fine, Commander, make a note of that. The first ships are going to people with command experience but you are in the queue. Try to learn as much as you can about just about everything in running a ship and taking care of her while you wait."

  "Yes sir!" the lieutenant said, popping to his feet. His excitement was amusing, Irons thought. He remembered being young like this. So young, so full of life, so sure of his own immortality. He knew it would rub off soon, running a small ship tended to rub any spit off people and matured them fast.

  "Dismissed."

  "Thank you, sir," the lieutenant said, bracing and then performing an about face and exiting the room.

  "Well, I didn't think you'd let him ..." Sprite's comment ended as Irons waved a hand. His left hand rubbed his chin. "Deep thoughts?"

  "No, just remembering what it was like to be that age. He thinks he has a lot to prove."

  "That's because he does. All the new crop do. They have a legend to live up to while being under the eyes of a real breathing legend in their midst. It's exhilarating and terrifying all in one," Sprite replied with a snort. The Admiral turned and eyed her. "No offense."

  "None taken."

  "Admiral, Lieutenant Commander McGuyver is still requesting a forward deployment," Sprite said, sounding exasperated. “I just got the e-mail again.

  The Admiral sighed. "Again?" Ian McGuyver was a nice guy, one hell of an out of the box engineer but he could be a royal pain in the ass sometimes.

  "He's nothing if not persistent. Bounty was the first refitted and has the best trained crew of the tin cans. He's still on station but ..."

  "Being on station is boring. McGuyver is a hard charger. Yeah I get it."

  "He is something of the sort," Sprite replied dryly. They had bucked McGuyver's ship to the head of the refit list when they'd arrived initially because he'd made himself a pain in the ass about it and because the admiral had his own reasons for doing so. That was probably a mistake in hindsight she thought. The four frigates Firefly had captured had been cycled through and were either on station or docked while their crews received shore leave. The four ships took turns with the others on station allowing them to cycle every week to keep the duty from becoming stale. The other tin cans we
re on post and not complaining at all. Well, all but Fuentes and Captain Vargess who kept dropping hints about getting going soon.

  The two tin cans Firefly had captured were still near the yard. Kinja had her hands full with Cutlass. That thick armored ship was so ancient it would take a full strip down to get her up to modern standards.

  Viper wasn't much better, though since she was an Antelope class she shared the same parts as Mary Apple. Antelopes were hit and fade raiders, not really suited for escort or defense duty.

  It was a good idea to restore them in theory, they needed every hull they could get their hands on after all. But Cutlass had been heavily damaged, and Kinja's latest survey report read for grim reading. The Admiral was apparently still on the fence about repairing the ship and returning her to duty. The effort required nearly added up to building a replacement ship of the same class. Still they needed every hull out there, which explained why he hadn't just scrapped them. For the time being they were also great places to train personnel.

  "Yeah, and like we said earlier, they all have something to prove, or think they do. No. He's to stay at the B450c warp point for now. Heart of the Tiger will take up station on the Triang warp point to relieve Hecate on schedule," the admiral said firmly.

  "She's enroute now, sir," Sprite reminded him.

  "Right."

  "The Rose is ready to go, Admiral. Or about to, she is taking on stores now. Do you want her to make a solo run to Agnosta?"

  "Tempting," the Admiral replied rubbing his chin. "I'd rather they went in a convoy though. I don't want to risk a thousand smurfs to the enemy."

  "The other ships will be out of dock in a week give or take two days," Sprite reminded him. “We have the ansibles to ship but not much more to fill their holds right now, Admiral.”

  "And that many ships are too juicy a target," the Admiral replied with a wince. He couldn't chance four unarmed freighters loaded with military parts, equipment, and personnel going unescorted through several systems that were technically war zones. No, he was going to have to shake loose a pair of tin cans to ride escort at least. His idea of sending along a corvette was now sidelined. It would be the ship's maiden cruise. If anything went wrong they'd be lost or have to abandon the ship somewhere. No.