Echo of Tomorrow: Book Two (The Drake Chronicles)

by Rob Buckman

  “Nasty, but yes, but I forgot the fourth element there for a moment,” Air Marshal Beal replied.

  “As we, New Zealand that is, doesn’t have a government to answer to, Air Vice-Marshall Beal, is there any problem in amalgamating your air force with ours?” Scott asked.

  “No, Admiral. I’ve been given carte blanche by the King, and the PM, as to the disposition of my forces. Who would be my liaison?”

  “That would be Group Captain Moore.” Scott didn’t add thank god she was out of the cockpit and on the ground now that she officially pregnant. “She will be your liaison. She isn’t here right now, but you can begin drawing up plans to unify the two forces.” It was male arrogance he knew, but having Kat in harm’s way was bad enough; having Kat and their child in harm’s way was a little too much. For him and most men, it was always women and children first.

  Beal nodded in agreement. “Very good, Admiral.”

  “As of this moment, you gentlemen will act as our general staff.” That made all of them sit up and take notice.

  “Up until now, we, or I should say I, have been trying to run everything, and consequently forgot many of the important details.” Scott paused when Admiral Rawlings put his hand up.

  “You realize that we,” Rawlings indicated the others sitting around him, “have little or no knowledge of space operations, or real combat for that matter.”

  “That’s my point, none of us have. What you do have is a background in organizing your respective arms of a military organization, small as it is.” He saw them nod. “It makes no difference that we’re building starships and transatmospheric fighters and such, the principle is the same. Someone has to take charge of the building, supplying, maintaining, and providing the training for the new crews we will need, and you do have that.” They all nodded.

  “Bit of a hot potato you’re dropping in our laps, lad,” Vice Air-Marshal Beal said, rubbing his chin.

  “True, but you, like us, will have to do the best you can and learn as you go.”

  “Bit of a tall order.”

  “Not really. It’s just a question of expanding on what you already know, and using your manpower to its utmost.”

  “I suppose it really doesn’t make much difference whether we’re building surface ships or space ships, the infrastructure for building them remains the same, including the training, supplying, and refitting. But what about the cost?”

  “Cost?” Scott asked, looking blank.

  “Yes. Who and how do we decide what to buy, how much to pay for it, and so on?”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “Well, how do you pay for your ships now? And how did you set the pay scale for your men?” That bought a round of laughter from Scott’s people in the room.

  “We haven’t been paid a penny since this all started, nor do we expect to.”

  “Good heavens! But you must pay for the material you use.”

  “No. We do pay the owners of the manufacturing equipment we use, or we used to. We own a lot of them ourselves now thanks to a very bright young woman on my staff. But most of the raw material comes from the asteroid belt or the moon, so it’s virtually free. And the byproducts such as gold, silver, platinum, and H3, that’s tritium, are used to offset the cost.”

  “So everything you use is free?”

  “Yes, everything, and that’s the way I want it to stay if possible. The days when the military had to worry about convincing the government to pay for something are gone. We want the best equipment that we can design and build, no matter how much it costs. In fact, the word itself will be irrelevant. We will need to heavily fund our R&D to stay ahead in weapons and ship design, not to mention all the other war-fighting equipment we will need.”

  “So, how do we decide what to buy—excuse me, to procure and build, then?”

  “You’ll have to rely on the designer to a large degree, and set up some sort of review board to assign resources to each project.” He gave them a lopsided grin. “To me, that’s going to be the major headache, and the one thing that’s been giving them to me. We have so many great ideas from everything under the sun, it’s hard to decide what to build first.”

  “So, what are our priorities?”

  “Ships, weapons, engines, and crews,” Scott replied.

  “Hump! That very helpful,” Admiral Rawlings grumped with a smile.

  “I know. Devon Hawking is a great designer, and with some of the new inventions we have, he’s going to come up with a fantastic warship in the very near future. The first item is to build as many of them as we can, and supply and crew them.”

  “So, it seems our first order of business is to concentrate on the training,” General Mackenzie commented.

  Both Brock and Scott agreed.

  “You are going to need everything from admirals to cooks to bottle washers and cuckoo valve cleaners,” Admiral Rawlings added.

  “True, but much of the functions have, or will be automated. Maintenance would be high in the list of training, but I want everyone, including admirals, to have a hand in that.”

  “That brings up the question of man-power. We don’t have sufficient people for what you are talking about, even drawing on available resources from England and Japan.”

  “Good point, and I think I might have a solution.” Scott paused a moment, marshaling his thoughts. This was going to be a difficult sell. “I checked last night, and there are three hundred detention facilities, or reeducation centers, scattered around the globe.” He could see the surprise on their faces but pressed ahead. “Each of those … facilities houses from seven to ten thousand people each, both men and woman.”

  “You are suggesting we, um … recruit these people?” Vice Air-Marshal Beal exclaimed.

  “With restrictions, yes.”

  “Ye gods! I know these people were sent there because they showed attitudes inconsistent with the current political and social outlook, but …”

  “Some are social deviants in other areas, and we need to weed them out.”

  “I should bloody well hope so,” the vice air-marshal muttered.

  “With that in mind, I contacted our doctor, and Dr. Kessler, to see if they had a solution.”

  “And the ones that are, shall we say, unacceptable?” General Mackenzie asked. That was a tough one, but Scott had thought about it a lot so he had an answer ready.

  “We can either try to send them back, which I think might be difficult, or if Kessler and Chase can’t come up with anything to help, or save them, we either dump them on some uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific and forget about them, or execute them.”

  The brought a stunned silence from the visitors, but several of his people nodded in agreement. Wasting precious recourses on a killer or child molester just wasn’t cost effective or sensible from their twenty-first century thinking. The legal system they’d left was at the breaking point with overcrowded prisons full of people who should be dead and in the ground.

  “I’ll leave the moral dilemma that poses for you until later, after I’ve seen if Kessler and Chase can come up with an alternate solution. Unless England or Japan is willing to take and house the worst of them?” That brought a guarded look from his visitors, seeing the “NIMBY” look in their eyes. It was okay if the worst remained in New Zealand, but “not in my backyard, thank you very much” was the message Scott got.

  After that, the meeting turned into a skull session, as everyone started making lists and throwing out suggestions. It didn’t take long before the sheer size of the undertaking became apparent. They were trying to recreate something that in most countries had taken several hundred years to develop. In this case, they knew they didn’t have the luxury of time. Mistakes were going to be made, no matter what they did, and everyone accepted that from the outset. The case of the defective star-fighters was a case in point. Some sort of check-and-balance had to be implemented to ensure that didn’t happen again. The main thing they had going for them: they didn
’t have to keep referring back to a government before proceeding, or wait for some damn bureaucrat to make up his tiny mind.

  After three hours, they took a break, each getting onto their respective second-in-commands and relaying a string of instructions to start the ball rolling. After the break, he had Karl take them on a tour of the base, with instructions to show them the armory.

  “As you’ll see,” Karl told them, “most of the weapons systems are based on what you’re familiar with in the look and purpose, so it shouldn’t be hard to train the instructors in their use.”

  They passed the weapons racks, stopping here and there when someone had a question. “That looks like a six-inch mortar,” Mackenzie said.

  “That’s right, General. However, we’ve modified and updated it. This is more of a mass driver, or rail gun, in that there is no explosive charge to drive it out the barrel.”

  Karl let Sergeant Mack explain the rotating loading table and the auto-alignment feature. “In many ways, it’s similar to the World War II German trench mortar, just small and easier to load and handle.”

  General Mackenzie looked over the unit, at one point hefting one edge to see how much it weighed. “How does it work?”

  “You don’t drop the round down the tube like the old ones. You simply load the rounds into the rotating table as an empty slot comes around. After that, each round is electronically fired as the table rotates to bring the round into alignment for firing.”

  “Yes, I see. The loader doesn’t need to duck as he places each round into position.”

  “Correct, General. That means it has a much higher cyclic rate and puts more rounds downrange where you need them,” Mack said with a shark-like grin. The general smiled back, understanding the thought behind the smile—the round would put a world of hurt on anyone on the receiving end.

  “Multi-range and type of warheads?”

  “Frag, HE, WP, sir, as well as bouncing Betties and fléchette airburst.”

  “Bloodthirsty lot these marines,” the air vice-marshal laughed as he spoke, feeling a slight shiver run up his back. As a warrior, Beal intellectually understood the need to do as much damage to the enemy as possible, in the shortest amount of time. Never having experienced real war, he had difficulty in resigning the two, especially with someone who’d actually been there. During this visit, it soon became apparent to all that going home, except for a visit, was out of the question. New Zealand was where the action was, and here they would stay. Scott stayed with them until he was sure they had a good handle of what they were doing, and left them to it. He didn’t believe in looking over people’s shoulders; either they could do the job or they couldn’t.

  When Scott walked out of the last meeting, it felt as if a heavy load had been lifted from his shoulders and he could breathe again. His headache was gone. Now he was nothing more than a lowly fleet admiral, with only that to worry him.

  His first stop was the moon, but even with the rings installed, he still had to go through five separate security checks before they let him step through. It reminded him of going through the airport security checks they all once knew. Even so, Janet and her team came with him. No way was she going to let him out of her sight again. From there, he took a short ten-minute shuttle ride out to the fitting yard to look at his new ship.

  Much to his surprise, he found that it was much smaller than the old New Zealand. Devon had opted to use the same V-shaped hull as he did with the other ships, so it still had the look and feel of an old-style surface battleship. A pass around the rakish bow showed one major difference to the old New Zealand, and that was a series of holes piercing the hull on each side of the bow, something like the torpedo tubes once seen on WWII vintage submarines. They were grouped in pairs, but the two at the top were four times as large as the others. In all, ten holes could be seen, and Scott had a sneaking suspicion that’s exactly what they were, torpedo tubes. He was wrong, as he found out when he boarded. Inside was a mess, the sound level deafening while the dockworkers welded, hammered, and riveted the various components into place. The air was foul with obnoxious smells of one sort or another, and he hoped they’d clean it out before he officially came aboard. Devon met him in the new CIC, or bridge, looking like a freight train as he came down the main passageway puffing on his pipe.

  “Well? What do you think?” Devon asked as he ducked through the hatchway.

  “Smaller, that’s for sure.”

  “Right. This is a stripped-down version of the old bridge. I’ve removed all functions not associated directly with fighting the ship.” He puffed a cloud of smoke, adding to the smell level and threatening to set off the environmental monitors. “All of the environmental, damage, power, and communication elements have been moved to a remote CIC under minimum human control. The ship’s computer will take over many of the normal ship-running functions.”

  “That makes sense,” Scott replied, looking around the spartan bridge.

  “All you’ll have in here is helm, weapons, navigation, and direct communications to all ships through the gateway comm system. Much of the remainder are now under the control of the ship’s computer, similar to the one Kat and the other pilots have. That way you have a minimum of incoming verbal information to deal with, and less crosstalk.”

  “Hummm, a bit lean isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but that was the recommendation of your senior staff.”

  “Where do I fit into all this?”

  “Right here,” Devon said, patting the captain’s chair.

  “And the captain?”

  “No captain, you are it. The first officer will deal with the day-to-day administration and running of the ship. In battle, you don’t have to relay your orders, there isn’t time.”

  It made sense to Scott, if in an odd way. He would have direct control of all functions of the ship, and the fleet.

  “What about communications?” he asked, thinking about relaying messages to other units.

  “The communication will be directly linked now that we have the means. Each ship’s captain will hear your orders directly as needed.”

  Now that was an improvement. He could instantly order ships into action in real time, as he saw fit, without having to transmit them through the communication officer and wait for a reply, if one was needed. In a wide-area space battle, the time lag, even a few seconds’ worth, could make all the difference.

  “We have updated the battle tank,” Devon continued. “Now it will be updated with information from all the ships of the fleet, right down to the fighters. Two decks down is a monster of a supercomputer, about the size of this room, that will process all that incoming information.”

  “Have you tried it yet?” Scott asked, feeling a bit dubious about it.

  “Oh, yes. We ran countless simulations, and it works great.”

  “What about protection for it? Seems to me that’s the most vulnerable part of this setup.” He saw Devon smile.

  “The computer is one giant block of memory crystal, buried behind fifty feet of an assortment of materials on all sides. It would take the combined impact of three twenty-megaton nuclear weapons to penetrate, if then.” His smile widened.

  For Scott, it was startling to think that he’d be receiving real-time sensor information through the ring gates of what was going on around him at all times in the whole sphere of the solar systems, with none of the associated delays in the old radio-wave communication and sensor input. He added a note to himself to make sure they had sensor platforms located at strategic points. That also brought up their safety. The one thing he didn’t want was for the lizards to get their sticky craws on one of them. A self-destruct if tampered with seemed the best way, he told Devon.

  “If the worst happened, the whole ship would be lost anyway,” Devon continued, and Scott nodded, knowing what he meant. He stood looking around his new domain, thinking of the possibilities. Although only actual combat would prove if the system worked or not.

  “That passagew
ay looks to be a point of vulnerability to me,” he said at last.

  “Oh, that. Not to worry. This time we made sure this part of the ship was completely protected. That’s wasn’t an ordinary hatchway you came through, but a transfer ring,” Devon said with a smile.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, the computer checked your ID against its database of authorized personnel when you boarded, and knew where you wanted to go when you said you wanted to see the bridge. And here you are.”

  “Wow! I didn’t even notice. But what if it hadn’t ID’d me?”

  “Then it would have notified security, shut down the gate and stunned you if you tried to escape. Not that there’s anywhere to escape to.”