by Chris Hechtl
Aleck nodded on support. “What he said sir,” he said, pointing to the A.I.'s avatar.
“Good. Keep me posted on that,” the admiral ordered.
“Understood, sir.”
“Good. Now …”
~~~^~~~
Nate Haskins could feel the excitement in the air. It was almost like a fine wine, much better than the stink of sweat and fear. The ball was going up, and for many it was about time.
But then word had come that they still had to wait. The admiral was playing it cautious, waiting until the reinforcements came from Antigua to move. Some thought it smart and prudent; others thought it was wasting a possible opening.
Either way, it was something to talk about. Not that he did much of that. He was still having issues fitting in. He had learned to keep his counsel and just listen.
It was annoying that the doc had him on double rations. Some people resented it he knew. He did; he had trouble eating that much. They were also replicator crap not fresh food. Most of the ships had run out of fresh food weeks ago of course.
His duties with DCC and engineering were going well. Chief Sinclair had him working out to improve his hand-eye coordination as well as studying for the next exams. The homework sucked, but it was an order.
What he'd love to do was rack out for an entire shift. Just sleep and listen to tunes. But, that wasn't an option. Even on his one day off a week he had to do laundry and basic chores.
Speaking of which he thought as his implants pinged a reminder. He needed to get his homework going he thought absently as he bused his tray and then headed for his rack. Hopefully, Bob was gone, and the sheets were dry. Man could that guy sweat when he slept! He shook his head. Maybe it would be nice to be a noncom, get his own space, or hell, go rack out in one of the alternate places in the ship.
But no, he'd stick it out for this tour he thought, changing his mind as he made his way through the gangways to his rack.
~~~^~~~
A week after Glorious Slasher's arrival Admiral White ordered CruRon 1 into Dead Drop. As flagship of the squadron, Skale took the lead and command. They would escort a single Liberty class ship loaded with a mix of supplies and fuel for the ships there. Nate wanted to do cartwheels with the rest of the crew until he realized most of the fleet wouldn't be going along for the ride.
Until the fleet got there, they'd be on their own. It wasn't a pleasant thought. Nor was the idea of the possibility of the Horathians coming over the hyper wall from Garth with blood in their eye.
Chapter 43
Antigua
“Okay, so, let's talk,” Admiral Irons said as the two Bekians entered the room. Admiral Creator of Things paused behind the CNO but then continued when the Neowolf flicked an ear his way.
“Sorry, sir?” the CNO asked politely. He was still feeling out his relationship with the flag officer. He had gotten over his hero worship on the flight to Antigua, but the admiral's command style took some getting used to.
“I noted you two on my schedule when Protector showed it to me this morning. You two obviously have something in mind given you are operations and he's BuShips,” he said pointing to the T'clock. “So, my deductive reasoning tells me it has to do with the yard. Am I right?” He indicated they should take a seat.
Admiral Pashenkov flicked an ear but shook his head as the admiral offered refreshments from the cart nearby.
The bug sat in his seat which morphed into a saddle to conform to his body. He buzzed happily when it began to warm him up a little. “Ah, the simple comforts,” he murmured.
Admiral Irons flicked a look to him, so did Admiral Pashenkov. “Okay, this is your show,” Admiral Pashenkov stated.
“I see I'm being tossed by the wolf right away,” the T'clock said, indicating amusement.
“That's tossed to the wolves actually, but I won't quibble,” Admiral Irons stated. “What's up?”
“I was hoping you reconsidered your position on capital ships. We are about to go through another growth phase in the yard, and I'd like you to reconsider the idea of building bigger and better ships,” the T'clock stated, putting a flash chip on the admiral's desk.
The admiral slowly took the proposal and slipped it into a reader on his desk. He frowned slightly as he scanned it. “No, I haven't changed my mind actually. I know circumstances have changed on the war front, but that doesn't mean we have the time to build force multipliers like you are proposing. It takes time to lay in the infrastructure and build the ships, train the crews ….” He shook his head.
The T'clock waved his antenna as Admiral Irons put the idea down again. “The logistics involved in building a monitor or hell, a battle moon are outrageous. There comes a time that the tradeoff isn't worth it,” Admiral Irons finished.
“But you are building battle moons here and in Pyrax …”
“Those are orbital bases, not full battle moons. They are sublight, no way am I planning on taking them into hyper. They'd never structurally hold up!” the admiral said with a shake of his head. “They are bases and defensive instillations only,” he stressed.
“Oh.”
Admiral Irons' eyes narrowed as he focused on the alien. “Why did you think that?”
“Because you were producing antimatter. I thought it was a long-range goal, shock and awe,” the T'clock stated.
Admiral Irons shook his head. “Sorry to disappoint, but no. A battle moon isn't maneuverable. Sure, it'll crush the enemy's offense and defense, if they can get either into range! I've never been a proponent of such things.”
“Oh.”
“Why aren't you into monitors and super monitors? The same problem?” Admiral Pashenkov asked, cocking his head at them.
“We can build two divisions of super dreadnoughts for the cost of a single monitor. That four pack has more tactical and strategic flexibility than the single ship. Sure, the single ship has much more concentrated firepower, but it is a single target,” Admiral Irons explained. The Neowolf nodded. After seeing the reports of antimatter weapons, he didn't like the odds of survival of any ship against them. It did nasty things to his thoughts of the survival of ships in Bek if they'd gone up against such hell weapons. “And with the larger ships comes the long lead time for construction—years. I didn't want to lay down dreadnoughts and SDs until I found out what the Horathians had in their home fleet. I honestly didn't expect that we'd be facing them so soon though. I thought we'd have time to build up a force, train the personnel, and then get them into place for the end game.”
“Weren't you the one who kept pointing out give me anything but time. Admiral?” Admiral Pashenkov asked with an ear flick.
“Touché,” Admiral Irons murmured.
“You know, I didn't spend a lot of time with your R&D folks, and that was for good reason,” Admiral Irons said mildly. “You had no antimatter, very little gravity research. Most of your tech was dead-ended because you refused to get into nanotech or A.I. Your industrial centers and R&D was hemmed in. In the seven centuries since I left Bek, there was no innovation whatsoever. None,” Admiral Irons. “It had been stifled, despite vast budgets to the contrary. Everything had been paper studies; some had been a rehash of the same thing or outright plagiarism. I made certain to point that out to the powers that be. Money was being shifted about before we left.”
Admiral Pashenkov winced. He intimately knew the pork involved in R&D and other things. There were probably quite a few people who were pissed—powerful people. There were also quite a few people who were out of work.
Given that as the admiral said, they were generating useless paper studies, he didn't feel all too much sympathy for them. The colleges had turned them out in droves. Would they have to rethink? To get back to basics and come up with new things?
Something told him his homeland was going to be going through a rough phase for a while.
“I know, sir. But …,” the T'clock buzzed, waving his antenna.
Admiral Irons studied him and then his eyes cut
to the Neowolf. Clearly the Bekians were nettled by the criticism.
“We thought we had it covered with quantity. Like you just mentioned with the argument against larger ships and battle moons,” the engineering bug stated stiffly.
“Understandable, but you wouldn't last a couple of days against a prepared Xeno force. You had no cyber intrusion systems, no A.I. to speak of, and that is a major weakness.”
“We had guillotines to cut off infested systems,” Admiral Creator of Things stated. “We had systems in place to detect them and deal with them.”
“Which can be bypassed or shut off. And that would cut you off from each other, forcing your finely coordinated nets into smaller nets,” Admiral Irons stated flatly. “Each ship would be vulnerable to intrusion or cut off from the fleet. You would therefore not be a fleet but a mob.”
“I'd like to think we'd do better,” Admiral Pashenkov stated stiffly.
Admiral Irons shook his head as he studied the duo. “Keep dreaming. No nanotech defenses. Xenos are all nanotech. A single drop …” Admiral Irons stuck his index finger in his water glass, held it up and let the drop hang under his finger before falling off. “Just one could infect and doom a ship. They could spray your ships, defenses, or planet like rain. You wouldn't be able to stop them all.”
Both Bekians seemed disturbed by that. Admiral Irons nodded once. “I've seen it.”
“Damn,” Admiral Pashenkov stated softly. He was clearly shaken by the idea.
“You have to use all the tools in your toolbox, not ignore some because you don't like them,” Admiral Irons said as a parting shot.
~~~^~~~
“He really knows how to rub a person the wrong way,” Admiral Pashenkov said with a shake of his head as they left.
“Who, oh, Admiral Irons?” Admiral Creator of Things asked, pausing to turn and bob his antenna at the CNO. “He's not wrong. We did stifle creativity in Bek.”
“Says the T'clock with Creator in his name,” the Neowolf stated.
“I … that doesn't matter. What matters now is how we deal with it and go from here and what it means for the future. I for one am enjoying this creativity. I am wary of things coming from Lemnos, but I appreciate the new tech. I've seen some of the prototypes.”
“Yeah, how is retooling going? Hasn't it mucked up the build schedule?” the Neowolf asked as they walked through the outer administration ring.
“Not as much as you'd think. We are leaving some production lines alone and basically setting up the new lines we were building and putting into production to produce the new parts. That way there is a smooth transition, and we can still stockpile components for older ships. Everything is as plug and play as we can make it, another thing I like, the modular adaptability of the hardware. We'll make the transition to the new hardware and eventually warehouse the remaining parts. Over time we'll call older ships in for refit and change them over as well. We'll also send out spares that can plug in. The software changes are the easiest to implement.”
“I see,” the Neowolf stated.
“The biggest headache is coordinating the production centers. Since it is so much data, we have to send them by courier. Pyrax and the other centers will get their updates if they haven't already. But places that aren't up to producing the new parts or aren't growing are going to have to wait and continue to build the old parts.”
“Which seems like a waste.”
“It does, but this is war. We need all the parts and equipment we can get if we're going to win this.”
“Well, that's certainly true enough,” the wolf growled.
~~~^~~~
Vestri Sindri liked to occasionally visit the BuShips design bureau. It was coming along, filling in with up and coming engineers and ship architects. Most of the time they handled problems in the ships under production, but there were a few who had their minds on other things. Most of the group were busy with that or dealing with the gigs of ideas Proteus and Admiral Irons had dumped on them. But, he had one person in particular in mind he wanted to visit as he strode through the hallways to his destination.
When he got to where he wanted to be, he checked and cheerfully noted that Commander Gray was indeed in his office, toiling away at his desk. When he stepped inside, he noted Jory was staring at a holographic image and muttering darkly about something or other.
“Problem?” Vestri asked as he entered and knocked a second time.
“I can't …”
“Maybe a second head can help,” Vestri said, instantly interested in the project. It was a new design, one he'd never seen before.
“He has that,” a disembodied voice replied.
“Ah, Proteus?” Vestri asked, wrinkling his broad nose.
“No, Mercury,” the A.I. replied. “Proteus is checking in periodically but has other duties.”
“I see,” Vestri drawled.
Jory finally woke to who his visitor was. He blinked in confusion and turned to the dwarf. “Ah, sir!” he said, surprised.
“Chill,” the dwarf chuckled, rumbling as he studied the ship design. It was new, a compact design. Based on the scale, it was a cruiser. Based on the level of armor, it was a heavy cruiser or battle cruiser.
“What gives?”
“I know we're building stock designs, and I know Admiral Irons dumped on all sorts of patches and refit ideas from his recent trip, but I'm trying an exercise with an eye to the future. I know we can really get more out of the Lemnos data if we apply it to new space frames. The problem is … well, this,” he said, indicating the design.
The ship was a long rectangular tube with layers of armor jutting out, some like fins. It had turrets and the standard sensors and systems he was used to. In fact, he recognized a lot of the hardware as off the shelf. The base design was vaguely familiar. It reminded him of something Admiral Irons had made recently. “I'm glad to see you aren't playing with tin cans anymore,” Vestri rumbled, rubbing his chin. “What seems to be the problem?”
“Well, it's this,” Jory said, indicating the armor. “Every time I think I've got all the angles figured out I either have a structural problem, angle, or mass. Or I run into a firing or sensor arc issue.”
The dwarf shook his head. “No system is completely foolproof kid. It's all about trade-offs,” Vestri stated. He'd learned enough of that as he'd studied the design blueprints of the ships they had in production.
“See, this one I had to add structural support and now I've got too much mass. It puts stress on the frame here and here during extreme maneuvers,” Jory grumbled, pointing to red spots on the hologram.
“You are using gussets I see,” Vestri observed.
“Yeah. See, the idea is for these armor cowlings to be modular. The same for all the systems. The systems are on pallets or racks. That way they can be pulled off for service or ejected and replaced easily.”
“Ah,” Vestri replied nodding thoughtfully.
“The space between them and the hull gives the impact time to spread out and be better absorbed by the secondary armor underneath,” Jory went on to explain. "It spreads out the impact to the secondary armor underneath, so it can better deflect or absorb it."
“I see that. And you've done a remarkable job of covering the vitals.”
“Yeah, except this,” Jory said, selecting a pair of turrets and then swiveling them. Vestri wondered what the kid was getting at until Jory brought up the turret's firing arcs and showcased them. Red zones indicated where they were interrupted by the hull.
“I see,” he said slowly with a nod.
“I'm about out of ideas,” Jory said with a shake of his head.
“Okay, I've got a couple,” Vestri said, dredging up some of the things he'd seen. “I noticed you didn't use curves …”
“They are a bitch to make you said. Harder than straight metal or angled. Also, angles have better thickness.”
“Glad you remembered that,” Vestri continued on. “Notch this panel, angle it in a little, and extend this on
e a little. Add a notch and then undercut the armor under it to save mass,” he said, using his stubby fingers to indicate a couple of sections covering the vital areas of the ship, the reactors, hyperdrive, and engines.
“What will …?” Jory frowned as his fingers flashed through the corrections. He modified the panels in a separate modeler program and then dumped them into the main layout and tried them out. He frowned. “Tweaking the angle …,” he altered the angle slightly and then tried the turret again. The red zone was halved.
“See? You aren't going to get it perfect. The crew can maneuver the ship to get a better angle,” Vestri reminded him.
Jory scratched his head as he realized that. “Oh,” he said stupidly.
Vestri smiled and slapped the young man hard enough on the back to make him wince. Jory's fingers flicked to check the mass and coverage of the vital zones. They weren't perfect, but they were better. And notching the hull and cutting it like that reduced the number of supports needed. He pulled the excess ones out and checked again. It was closer.
“Better,” he said grudgingly.
“I know you want a tight compact design. But what we've got works. You were supposed to adapt the Lemnos stuff to the old designs and freshen them up.”
“Oh, I did that. And we tested the armor; it works,” Jory said absently as he set the mainframe up to run simulations on damage and structural engineering defects while under power. “I think this solves the sensor arch problem too,” he muttered.
“Good.”
“I thought you were supposed to be out of here? On your way to bigger and better things?” Jory asked absently.
“Well, shit happens,” Vestri replied. “No one told me what they had in mind, but I could guess. I got the promotion but the war front sort of screwed things up. So, I'm here cooling my heels. It's not all bad; I can cover for Admiral Creator of Things while he catches up on his training groundside or at Antigua Prime.”
“Ah, well, there is that,” Jory murmured.
Vestri shook his head. All work and no play … come to think of it; there was an easy answer to that. “Come on, kid, I'll buy you a beer and we'll call it a day,” he said, resting a massive hand on the young man's shoulder.
