Commander

by Richard F. Weyand

  “What are you gonna do, Chief?”

  “I’m gonna sit here and watch, Kowalski. That’s my job.”

  The bots fanned out over the ship. From a distance, crawling around on the big ship, they looked like ants on a picnic table.

  Fordham did sit and watch, but with the added ability to select the camera feed from any of the bots on the ship. He dropped into the camera feed of various people, seeing what they saw as they went about the inspection.

  “Connors, did you check the scheduled recalibration date on that modulator?” Fordham asked.

  “Sure, Chief.”

  “What was it?”

  “Uhhhh....”

  “Yeah, like I figured. Come on, everybody. Inspection. You all know what that means, right? Let’s find the problems now, not later.”

  After two hours out on the ship, Chief Fordham’s crew headed back to the ramp up to the HARPER container and the charging racks.

  An hour later, the fast-charge batteries of the bots being topped off, Chief Petty Officer Lance Winters took his crew out on the ship.

  The six converted Imperial Fleet battleships lined up on one of the Osaka hypergates. One by one they passed through the hypergate and into hyperspace. They were once again bound for Nagoya, just three days’ spacing – one hundred and sixty light-years – away.

  Once again there wasn’t anyone aboard any of the ships. The difference this time was that the HARPER units were.

  HMS Eagle had an engineering failure on arrival in the Nagoya system. The primary engine reaction-mass controller had failed and the ship had fallen back on the secondary system. The HARPER units were used to replace the failed controller with a swap-out from the spares store. The new module was initiated and took back control from the secondary system. The six battleships lined up on the Nagoya hypergate and one by one disappeared on the second leg of their cruise.

  Two days later, the general quarters alarm sounded in the HMS Raptor building on Imperial Fleet Base Osaka. The ships would be emerging from hyperspace in the Niigata system shortly. Crewmen ran for their bunks and logged into VR. When the ship dropped out of hyperspace, they achieved connection to their consoles.

  “All right, let’s get our diagnostics under way,” Chief Fordham said. “Whatta we got?”

  “Navigation sensors are up. Tactical sensors are initiating.”

  The initial navigation display deepened and clarified. They could see the other ships in the system and their velocity and maneuvering cones.

  “Tactical sensors are up. Targeting is available.”

  “Chief, we have a failure in one of those new, redundant comparator units.”

  “The widget that failed on Peregrine last go-round?”

  “Well, kinda. It’s one of the new ones. Infant mortality. We dropped out of hyperspace because the redundant unit resolved the translation time correctly.”

  “Wouldn’t you know. New box fails first. All right. Norton, grab a couple guys and go swap out the unit.”

  “All right, Chief. Connors, Kmetz, you’re with me.”

  The three electronics techs opened a new VR channel into the three HARPER units closest to the door on one side of the HARPER container. Norton pushed the ‘Door Open’ icon for the container in VR and the door rolled up. The three bots motored down the ramp on their magnetic treads, and out across the surface of the ship.

  “Conners, go get the spare while Kmetz and I pull the unit.”

  “I’m on it,” Connors said.

  One of the three bots angled towards the door of the spares bay while the other two continued on to the door of the electronics bay. When they arrived at the door, Norton pushed the ‘Door Open’ icon for the electronics bay door. The door rolled up and his bot motored inside, followed by the second bot.

  “Kmetz, check the status on other units while I pull this thing.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Norton went over to the navigation rack, and his camera pod with the stereo cameras and lights scanned up and down the rack as he raised and lowered his ‘head’ in the VR. A red indicator glowed brightly among the soft greens, on a module labeled ‘Redundant Comparator Module CM-23.’

  “Here it is,” Norton muttered.

  He unscrewed the four captive thumb-screws holding the unit into the rack by grabbing them and rotating his wrist several full revolutions on each. He then grabbed the module handles on each side and pulled, but the module didn’t budge. Instead, his bot leaned closer to the panel.

  “Hey, Kmetz.”

  The camera module on the other bot swiveled toward him as Kmets rotated his head in VR. Norton waved him over in VR, and saw the bot’s arm wave.

  “C’mere and gimme a hand with this.”

  Kmetz’s bot swiveled on its treads and motored over. His camera pod swiveled up and down as he surveyed the situation.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “The unit is high enough in the rack I can’t get any good leverage on it. The bot moves instead.”

  “Yeah, I see that.”

  Kmetz’s camera pod swiveled around the bay, then up and down.

  “I think I can get a better grab from the other side.”

  Kmetz’s bot walked over to the side wall of the bay until the front of the treads contacted it, then made the corner, until it stuck straight out from the wall. It walked up the wall to the ceiling, and made the corner again, and came back over to the navigation rack. Kmetz’s bot ended up directly above Norton’s bot, upside down, with about a foot between them. Norton’s camera pod swiveled up.

  “You look ridiculous hanging from the ceiling like that,” Norton said.

  “Yeah, but I can get a better grab. Get ready to catch this thing.”

  The failed module was right in front of Kmetz’s bot, so he didn’t have to reach up to get it. He grabbed the module and pulled, and it came free from the rack and started to slide out.

  “You ready, Norton?”

  “Yeah, I got it. Go ahead.”

  Kmetz slid the unit the rest of the way out and lowered it into Norton’s hands.

  “Got it,” Norton said.

  “OK, I’m coming down.”

  Kmetz’s bot motored over to the wall, made the corner, motored down the wall, made the corner again, and came back to the navigation rack.

  “The hardest part is not feeling nauseous when the view is upside down,” Kmetz said.

  “We probably ought to practice that, now we know it’s useful.”

  Connors came into the bay with the replacement unit.

  “Ah, you got the unit out. Good. Here’s the spare.”

  “Is that a CM-23?”

  “Yep.”

  “OK.”

  Norton swapped units with Connors.

  “I’ll go back to spares and put this in the ‘Failed’ rack.”

  “All right.”

  Norton lifted the new unit up to the opening in the rack, lined it up, and slid it in. It stopped about two inches short, and when he pushed harder, the bot leaned away from the rack.

  “You need me to go back up there again?” Kmetz asked.

  “I don’t think so. Just buck me from behind.”

  Kmetz moved around behind Norton’s bot and up against it. Norton pushed again and the unit slid into place.

  “Nice. Thanks.”

  Norton grabbed the four captive thumb-screws one at a time and spun them down into place. He initiated the unit with the front-panel pushbutton. The unit went through its start-up procedure, and then the soft green light of operational status came on.

  “Job done. OK, back to the barn.”

  The two bots left the electronics bay, closed the door, and headed back out across the surface of the ship toward the HARPER container. Kmetz’s camera pod was swiveling around as they went.

  “It really is pretty out here, ya know?”

  Niigata was only a dozen or so light-years from a nebula, which dominated the sky in one direction.

  Norton lo
oked over at the nebula.

  “Yeah? Look at the nebula in UV.”

  Kmetz shifted his camera frequency into UV, then let out a low whistle.

  “Damn. That’s somethin’.”

  Connors was waiting at the foot of the ramp into the HARPER container. He hadn’t had to wait through the initialization of the new module.

  “We come up green?” Connors asked.

  “Yeah, we’re good,” Norton said, and waved up the ramp to the container.

  The three bots motored up the ramp into the container and plugged in their charging lines, and the door of the container closed.

  “OK, that was pretty sharp the way you went up and around onto the ceiling, Kmetz. Good thinking.”

  “Thanks, Chief. It was in the training videos we could do that, something about the way they negate just the right magnets at the right time. When I saw it, I thought they were just fooling around, but it worked.”

  “Yeah. Nice job. All three of you guys. Nice work.”

  “Thanks, Chief,” Norton said. “You know, I been thinking. You know what would have helped out there? Jack screws on the back of the hands. I coulda grabbed the handles, and then used the screws to push on the rack.”

  “That’s a good idea, Norton. You wanna write that up? We’re supposed to let them know if we need other capabilities.”

  “Sure, Chief.”

  “Include the camera feeds, so they can see what the issue is.”

  “No problem, Chief.”

  All six converted battleships arrived back in the Osaka system combat-capable, despite three module failures during their cruise. Bob Fielding was already testing a HARPER unit with jack screws on the hands by the time they arrived.

  Release To Production

  Vice Admiral Cory Dillon read the report of the second test cruise of the converted crewless battleships with satisfaction. Three module failures as before, but all repaired by the crews through the use of the HARPER system. Further, one failure had been of one of the new redundant comparator units, but the redundant unit brought the ship out of hyperspace properly, and in the right place. It hadn’t been a runaway ship, as HMS Peregrine had been on the first test cruise.

  He would have no problems presenting this report to the Naval Operations Board of the Imperial Navy. He would need no excuses, make no arguments about fixes pending.

  First, though, he owed someone a hearty congratulations. He placed a call to Fred Dunlop in VR.

  Fred Dunlop was having the best day of his life. First he had received the report on the successful second test cruise of the converted crewless battleships. Then Vice Admiral Dillon had called to congratulate him personally. And now, after all the long months, his analysis crew had determined the recently submitted detail designs on the new generation of warships were serious efforts to faithfully implement the high-level design, and either would be acceptable for construction.

  He considered what his recommendation on the new warships should be. He had two vendors who had come up with workable detail designs, and he had dozens of shipbuilders screaming for work. How did he chose between them?

  Then his thinking shifted. Why choose between them? Maybe the best course was to let contracts for both detailed designs in each ship class, say ten thousand vessels to each shipbuilder. That would still only be a couple of percent of the overall build of twenty million ships anticipated by the Emperor.

  Yes, there was no sense choosing between the designs or the shipbuilders at this stage. Give every shipbuilder some of the business, build equal numbers of the two sets of detail designs in each class, and let the Imperial Navy evaluate them in service. That evaluation would steer the rest of the acquisition. Dunlop’s job was not to decide in advance, but to evaluate after the fact.

  There was also a recommendation to be made with regard to the conversion of existing conventional warships to crewless warships. With the successful testing of the first squadron of conversions, his recommendation would be to begin converting warships as fast as spacedock time allowed. For the conversions, the spacedocks weren’t required to be the full-up ones needed for laying down new ships, so there should be capacity to carry out the conversions even as new warship construction got into high gear.

  The final recommendation, with regard to the HARPER system, was easiest. The system had proved its worth in the testing of the converted battleships. Of course, there would be modifications and enhanced capabilities going forward, but Jared Denny and his people had stuck to their modular design style. They had implemented the system as a single container and charging center for the HARPER units on a ship. That meant that, whenever a ship came in for service, the upgrade to a new HARPER system would be simple: disconnect the existing container – including the bots – from ship’s power, remove it, and replace it with a different container that had the new bots. The old container would be taken down to the planet and the bots rebuilt, reconditioned, and upgraded economically in a ground facility, usually the Imperial Fleet Base of the planet where the ship was being serviced.

  Dunlop set about writing his recommendations.

  “All right, gentlemen, new business first,” Dunham said. “Admiral Leicester, you sent a note that you had an item.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. The ship acquisition department has released its recommendations for the new warships, the conversion of existing warships, and the use of the HARPER system.”

  “Excellent, Admiral Leicester. Are they recommendations we can act on?”

  “Yes, Sire. They recommend letting cost-plus contracts on both designs of each warship to every shipbuilder – about two percent of the total ships planned – to get things under way while they solicit bids for construction of the remaining number.”

  “Both sets of designs are acceptable, Admiral Leicester?”

  “Yes, Sire. They want to evaluate Imperial Navy experience of the ship designs in service rather than make the decision from behind a desk based on paperwork alone.”

  “That makes a lot of sense to me, Admiral Leicester.”

  “To me as well, Sire. Some of my colleagues groused about them not making the decision, but I disagree. Experience with the designs will be the best teacher. Perhaps the best thing will be some combination of both.”

  “And the conversions, Admiral Leicester?”

  “They recommend proceeding with them as well, Sire, at whatever pace can be maintained by the spacedock facilities capable of the work but which are not suitable for laying down new ships.”

  “Again, that seems sensible to me, Admiral Leicester. And the HARPER system?”

  “They recommend proceeding with that as well, Sire. Those are all to be built groundside, as the system is self contained within a powered container. They can be easily swapped out and reworked groundside as the system matures, but right now it is already a huge improvement to readiness.”

  “Has Budgets approved all of this, Admiral Leicester?”

  “Yes, Sire. It has been nearly two years since we stopped warship construction. The new construction budget money has sort of piled up. So they’ve already signed off on everything. I just wanted your input, Sire, before giving the go-ahead.”

  “It’s your call, Admiral Leicester. If you want my advice, I will say it all sounds reasonable to me. But it is your decision to make, not mine.”

  “Yes, Sire. Very good, Sire. Then we are going to proceed on all three fronts.”

  Gunther Kaube, the sector vice president for Imperial Bank in the Baden Sector, placed a VR call to Otto Stauss, the CEO of Stauss Interstellar Freight Services and Stauss Freighter Leasing.

  “Stauss here.”

  “Gunther Kaube, Mr. Stauss.”

  “Ah, Mr. Kaube. What can I do for you today?”

  “I wanted to let you know, sir, our shipbuilder clients have told us the freighters currently in their production queues will be the last ones laid down for a while. The Imperial Navy has just released a flood of new contracts for new ship construction
and existing ship refitting. The Imperial Navy has locked up all available spacedock facilities in the Empire for the foreseeable future.”

  “What an unexpected development, Mr. Kaube. Who would have guessed?”

  “Actually, you did, Mr. Stauss.”

  “Why, yes. Yes, I did. And how many new long-haul freighters will I have purchased by the time their production queues flush out, Mr. Kaube?”

  “One hundred and fifty three thousand three hundred and some, Mr. Stauss. I don’t have the final number yet.”

  “Incredible. Well, Mr. Kaube, I would like you to tell your shipbuilder clients when they receive inquiries about new freighter construction, they don’t have to disappoint their customers. They can send them to Stauss Freighter Leasing, and we can meet their customers’ needs, either purchase or lease, for new ships.”

  “We have already done that, Mr. Stauss. Don’t forget the bank has a considerable investment in seeing you be successful in this venture. And the due date of your first interest payment on the first tranche of the loan is only six months out.”

  “I love it when we’re all on the same side, Mr. Kaube.”

  Jared Denny called a meeting of the full staff of Sintar Specialty Services. Bob Stewart and Ilia Sobol also attended.

  “The department of ship acquisition has just let cost-plus contracts for the first four hundred thousand ships of the new designs. They also are gobbling up all the remaining spacedock time for conversion of existing battleships.”

  “Wow,” Vipin Narang said. “Which designs did they choose?”

  “Neither. It will be half of one and half of the other, for each ship type. Further acquisitions will be made on the basis of experience in service.”

  “Smart,” Liu Jiang said.

  “Yeah, but that’s not the biggest news. They let us a cost-plus contract for one million HARPER systems to be delivered over the next year.”

  “Excuse me?” Narang said.