Badger

by Kindal Debenham

  The rush of opportunities had nearly swept Jacob away, along with the relief he felt at avoiding disciplinary action. Yet even then a sudden possibility loomed in Jacob’s mind, one he couldn’t ignore. “Yes, sir. I’m glad to be of use.” Jacob hesitated. “Sir, may I make a request before you send me out?”

  There was a pause as the commander in chief and the head of state looked him over. He held his breath and tried to look confident. By their expressions, Jacob had no idea if he succeeded. Then Nivrosky answered, his words slow and deliberate. “Perhaps, Captain Hull.” A rare smile cracked his lips for a heartbeat. “After all, you did defend me at court martial.”

  Jacob let his breath out and tried to word his response carefully. “While the nearest yards—the Graveston Docks, I think—have very capable facilities and are convenient, there might be a more suitable place for this project.”

  “Oh?” Nivrosky glanced at Smithson, his expression unreadable. “And where might this alternative place be found?”

  “Reefhome Station, sir.” Surprise flashed across Nivrosky’s face for a moment, but Jacob continued. “The technicians there are the ones who managed the initial modifications to Wolfhound, sir, and they might be able to help me adapt them to standard Navy designs. The Station is farther away from Celostia, so the media will have a more difficult time tracking my movements, and if the new designs need to be rushed to the front, they will already be on the border and in position.”

  “Interesting.” Smithson leaned back in his chair and interlaced his fingers in front of him. “You think this project will be completed so quickly, Captain Hull?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” Jacob smiled, his thoughts turning to a very particular ship moored at those docks and waiting for him. “There are at least four ships probably listed for decommissioning that I could use for test beds, or possibly even prototype warships. Given the history behind them, I think the population of Reefhome would be more than ready to help.”

  Recognition dawned on both men’s faces, and Smithson gave him a broad smile. He rocked in his chair a moment before he answered. “Very well, Captain Hull. You can have those ships and, with Admiral Nivrosky’s agreement, you’ll depart for Reefhome Station in the morning.” He glanced at the admiral, and Nivrosky seemed to think it over for a moment before he sighed.

  “I don’t see why not. There’s not much harm we can do in trying to resurrect those ships, and if he wants to be on the edge of things again, at least he will be off the front lines.” Admiral Nivrosky fixed Jacob with a stern look. “And I expect you to stay off them, Jacob. You are not to commandeer the defense force they have there, not even if Odurans jump into the system. Let Commander Miguel do his job. You focus on yours until I change your assignment. Am I clear, Captain?”

  “Perfectly, sir.” Jacob tried not to beam as he came to his feet. He saluted. “Perfectly.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The trip back to Reefhome seemed eerily short compared to the agonizing crawl back to Celostia. Jacob knew part of the difference was a matter of practical limits. After all, a military force with crippled ships could only move as fast as those ships between destinations. Another difference was the fact that instead of a medical deck or a bunch of shell-shocked crewmen, Jacob traveled with a group of civilians onboard a registered passenger craft. Side by side with families and businessmen, the journey was far less bland.

  Mostly, however, he knew the difference was in what waited for him at the end. His return to Celostia had promised him only the sure humiliation of a court martial and the agony of dealing with the aftermath of a stunning loss. Now he looked forward to a future where he could possibly restore the ship that had given birth to his career in the Celostian Navy. The nightmares of his losses didn’t vanish overnight, nor did his guilt fade completely, but the opportunity to be active, to be doing something, even if it wasn’t on a warship somewhere, made the gloom and despair more bearable.

  Of course, he was under no illusions Central Command believed his current task would yield anything useful. High Seat Smithson had admitted as much when he had sent Jacob here, though he had gracefully provided funding for what was now being termed the Plowshare Project. Jacob supposed even that money was worth the opportunity to shuffle him off to somewhere he couldn’t make trouble, and that was fine with him. Their lack of expectations meant he would have the opportunity to surprise them yet again.

  His return to Reefhome was far less spectacular than his earlier arrival had been. This time he riftjumped into the system with none of the previous fanfare or spectacular greetings provided by the members of the Reefhome military. There was a frigate lingering near the commercial riftjump area. It was typical of most systems with heavy traffic to patrol those areas, since pirates often would jump in and strike at arriving or departing merchants. Jacob adjusted the view the shuttle’s sensors provided him and managed to spot ships at some of the other officially designated jump sites as well. Apparently Miguel had put them on high alert since the operation at Wayward, and Jacob approved. Any system on the border would be a good target for the enemy, but Reefhome would surely be a prize for the Odurans to present to their new, piratical allies on Telos.

  There was no sign of Oduran or Telosian activity, however, and the remainder of Jacob’s journey to the Station was relatively peaceful. He waited patiently as the other members of the shuttle made their way through the hatch before he followed them out. The docking bay where he disembarked held nothing like the welcoming chaos of the Gregon Spaceport, but there were still families embracing loved ones and visiting tourists chattering as they started their exploration of the Station.

  Jacob, for his part, began to look for the escort he had been assigned by the Navy. Commander Miguel had been hazy on the details, but he had promised to have the naval liaison to the project as well as the chief officer of the contractors hired by the fleet there. At the very least there should have been a few Marines to provide security, but so far he had not picked out any of their battle armored forms in the milling crowd.

  As he continued his search he heard an all-too familiar curse and stopped short. He turned toward the voice and heard a second familiar one join it. “Look, Lieutenant, you can’t keep cursing out senior officers. You’re an officer yourself now. You should act more responsibly!”

  Jacob blinked. If he wasn’t mistaken, the voice had sounded remarkably like Mr. Yorkshire, the man who had helped create the idea for Wolfhound’s new armor.

  “Oh shove it, Yorky. I sure as hell don’t need your complaints while I try to find my damn new commanding officer.” There were a few more muttered curses before the man continued. “Where is he? Don’t these damn people have somewhere to be?”

  Jacob started to smile. The cursing alone gave the man’s identity away. Apparently the Naval Board had found shipping former petty officer Turley out to Reefhome had helped solve more than one problem. The man had been promoted into the commissioned officer corps in the fountain of goodwill after the battle of Reefhome, and Jacob had no doubt Turley had been giving them headaches ever since.

  Yorkshire responded in a rather terse tone. “You know, you’re not going to make a very good impression. For all you know he could already be here, listening to you carry on.”

  Turley snorted. “A good impression? Not much of a damn chance of that.” He paused for a moment. “Ah, to hell with this. Let’s start a fight or something and the dashing new officer in command will probably step up to stop it.”

  “You can’t just—”

  Eager to intercept the men before they could do anything hasty, Jacob made his way through the crowd. He found them, heads together, still arguing. He stalked up behind them, debated how to introduce his presence for a moment, and then settled on a mildly obtrusive cough. “Um, excuse me.”

  Yorkshire turned towards him automatically, his expression conciliatory. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir, we were…” His words trailed off, and he stared at Jacob with a dawning expressio
n of astonishment. Turley looked in surprise at his friend, and then glanced in the same direction. For a moment the man’s bearded face went blank, and then a warm grin creased his lips.

  “Well it’s about damn time, Jacob! We’ve been waiting almost half an hour!”

  Jacob threw up his hands as if in surrender, and laughed.

  “Sorry Petty Officer—oh, I’m sorry, Lieutenant Turley. I got a little held up by the crowds.” He saluted. “Captain Jacob Hull, reporting for duty.”

  Turley returned the salute, a gesture that almost surprised him as much as it did Jacob. “Glad to have you back, Jacob.” Yorkshire nudged him with an elbow and earned Turley’s momentary glare. “I mean, sir. We have your quarters ready for you and a shuttle to take us out to the yards. We figured there isn’t an officer in the fleet who wouldn’t want to look over his new damn command right away.”

  Yorkshire gave Turley a despairing look. “Would you behave yourself for a minute?” Turley rolled his eyes in response, and the engineer threw up his hands. “They gave him a promotion, and he still talks like this no matter what I do. I’ve been expecting a court martial to head his way any day now.”

  “Well don’t worry so much, Mr. Yorkshire. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to endure Lieutenant Turley’s wrath, and I’ve become pretty used to it.” He gave the engineer a grin. “That’s not to say he won’t get in trouble, but I’ll try to keep him from bashing your head in with a wrench this time. Sound good?”

  Turley went red at the reference to the first meeting with his civilian counterpart, and he muttered a few choice words under his breath. Out loud, his complaints weren’t much cleaner. “Make one damn mistake and your ex-CO lords it over you the rest of your life. Why the hell was I so happy to see you again?” He shook his head and looked to the ceiling as if pleading for divine help. “Please, let me get through this without flushing either of them out an airlock. Even when they damn well deserve it and know they do.”

  Jacob laughed, and he was surprised by how good it felt. Somehow, with the Reefhome engineer fussing on one side, and the coarse lieutenant on the other, it felt like he was coming home. After so long, it was more than nice. It was wonderful.

  “…So that’s the summary on the resources we have available.” Miguel shrugged; the gesture was more helpless than nonchalant. “That’s more or less it, but the funding from the Navy might help us make a few of them operational again. The real question is going to be what shape they’re in once we’re done.”

  Jacob frowned, but he kept his eyes glued to the statistics and reports the Commander had given him. From what he understood of the figures, the reconstruction of his ships might be more difficult than he had originally thought. He looked up, feeling a weight settle on his shoulders. “So we don’t have enough of the components for railgun mounts? Is that right?”

  Yorkshire shifted in his seat. “Basically, yes, sir.” Jacob shifted his attention to him, and the engineer squirmed. “Reefhome has a lot of basic resources, but we lack several industrial supplies. Those tend to be more expensive than the others, and if we tried to buy the railguns needed to outfit the entire squadron the way they used to be, we’d run out of funding for other critical supplies.” Yorkshire fidgeted in his seat again and avoided Jacob’s eyes. “Apparently the House and the Council are dragging their feet in approving more funding for us, and Central Command has told us not to expect any more soon.”

  Jacob grunted in response. He had no doubt the politicians were finding all sorts of ways to justify their lack of support, from the uncertainty about the new ship designs to the concerns about an imminent invasion, but he had a good idea what they were actually worried about. Al-shira had warned him he wouldn’t earn any friends by wrecking the trial, and sure enough his enemies were already starting to make things hard for him.

  Trying to shake off the discouragement, he turned his screen back to a description of the damaged his ships had endured. Wolfhound still had her full complement of railgun mounts, but the other three destroyers in the Reefhome docks had not fared as well. Feist had been crippled in a battle near Yewen, with both of the heavy gun decks on her sides gutted by enemy shells. Setter had fared little better, with the upper gun deck in ruin and shrapnel damage all throughout the other heavy guns. Beagle had not been damaged quite as badly, but her electronic warfare suite had been brutally savaged, leaving a gaping hole in her southern arm above the long-range guns. If new railgun mounts couldn’t be found, Jacob’s ships would be heavily armored only at the cost of the firepower they would need in battle.

  Jacob sighed. “All right, so what other bad news do we have?”

  Turley grunted. “Plenty. We’ve got major structural damage on Wolfhound, Feist and Beagle. There’re holes in Wolfhound, Setter, and Beagle that will be hard to patch without leaving weak spots. Wolfhound, Setter and Feist have all taken some form of Capistan damage—though Wolfhound is missing the whole damn thing, of course.” He shook his head. “If we tried to pull them apart and cobble them back together, we maybe—maybe—might get one functional ship, but as it is, I’m pretty doubtful.”

  “That’s not to mention the other little problem we have, sir.” Jacob turned his attention back to Miguel, who gave him a grim look. “You still haven’t figured out a way to adapt the new pattern of armor without ripping the entire riftjump mechanism apart. Unless you’re planning on sailing your little destroyers around Reefhome and nowhere else, that’s got to be a priority, Captain.”

  Jacob set his reader down on the table and sighed. “That would be a pretty long list of problems, wouldn’t it?” He sighed as the other three nodded, their expressions ranging from grim to stubbornly optimistic. The guilt from the Terrier began to reach for him, and he shook his head forcefully. “It’s not any worse than what we were facing when Dianton was on his way here. We have to make it work.” Jacob turned to Yorkshire. “Have you made any headway in developing new ways of installing the armor?”

  Yorkshire brightened. “Yes! We’ve actually managed to develop a specific type of internal armor. It’s not quite as thick as the exterior cerrafiber plating, but the truth is we don’t need it to be as thick. Not when the outer armor will have slowed the projectile and fragments down to a fraction of their velocity.” Yorkshire pulled up a display on his own reader and twisted it around in his hands to show the others. “Look, we’ve managed to bring the number of layers down to two thin sheets. That prevents some of the heat buildup, and the addition of specifically designed heat shunts instead of jury rigged ones can help with the heat transfer.”

  He shut down the screen and leaned back, his face unhappy. “Unfortunately, the most we can reduce it to is about twice the normal heat generated by the chambers we’ve armored. We still need a more substantial cooling mechanism than what we’ve got, or at least the same kind of heat sink arrangement we worked out with Wolfhound.”

  Wheels started to turn in Jacob’s mind. He furrowed his brow in thought. “So…wait. You don’t necessarily need to eliminate the riftjump generators entirely. If they were smaller it would work?”

  Yorkshire nodded slowly, his eyes fixed on Jacob. “Yes, sir. Perhaps. But to be honest, there would be very few designs that would allow the destroyer to have a functioning Capistan and jump generator. If we cut the size of the Capistan too far, it will take far longer to charge for each jump, and the size of the generator relates to the size of the bubble it jumps. Neither can sacrifice much before we would have to cut the size of the ship down too.”

  Turley broke in. “Which would be a little disappointing, Jacob. The fleet’s going to want armored destroyers, not frigates or corvettes, and they’re going to want them with the ability to riftjump fast, not ten times slower than normal.”

  Jacob nodded. “True, but it’s progress. And there may be something I can do about it after all.” He made a note in his reader and turned to Turley. “So where are we in terms of the personnel support the Navy has been offering? Do we know if
there will be crews ready for the ships once they are repaired, or are we going to have to scavenge them at the last minute?”

  Turley grunted. “Well, the Navy’s already got a batch of officers working on simulations of the new ships, but their models aren’t going to be very accurate until we have the ships working. The command staff at the very least will probably be selected at the last minute, since experience at screwing things up in the higher ranks is easier to emulate in a different ship.” He gave Jacob a too-smooth grin. “Other than that, they’re providing the funds they said they would, and are actually cooperating rather well with everything. It’s been a surprise so far, let me tell you.”

  “Glad to hear it, Turley.” Jacob turned his attention back to Miguel. “How is security going? Will we need to hide what we’re doing at the docks, or will you be able to discourage any locals who get too curious?”

  Miguel shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, sir. I’ve got my defense forces patrolling every planned jump point, but you know as well as I do how easy it can be to hide a ship in this place. The broad details of your construction project will probably leak out—as they would anywhere, really—but the real problems you’re going to have are with the personnel themselves.”

  Yorkshire made a noise of protest and half came out of his seat. “Commander Salazar! You of all people should know how dedicated the citizens of Reefhome are to the Union, especially my workers. Every single one of us is proud to be involved with this project, and not one of us would risk it in any way.”

  Miguel studied the irate engineer with a jaded eye. “I know you’re all pretty loyal to the Union, Yorkshire, but in some ways that’s part of the problem. If we let ourselves get too wrapped up in a sense of security, the Telosians or the Odurans may get the opportunity to slip an agent into the mix. After all, they’ve gotten to these ships once before, and I don’t think the Celostian Naval Yards in New Vermont were any less secure than here.”