I smiled and inclined my head slightly. “Take your men off the prize ships and prepare to follow the Clover into hyperspace as soon as our engines have recharged. My Navigator will relay the hyperspace coordinates.”
“So we’re abandoning the pirate vessels then,” Captain Stood asked dryly.
“No," I said, trying to hide my elation. "We’ll be taking them with us.”
The Captain shook his head. “The merchant conversion can make the transfer without too much trouble. The heavy cruiser, on the other hand, is a mess from top to bottom. Those pirates never performed any system maintenance they could avoid, and while the star drive is still intact, the main dish was completely blown to pieces. She can make the strange particles but there’s no way she can form a hyper field of her own.” Obviously Stood had been doing a thorough job examining the ships and their status.
I ground my molars, and then gave a wave of my hand. “I’ll have our Chief Engineer take a look, I’m sure he can come up with something. That ship is coming with us.”
“There’s no way that’s going to happen unless you’ve got a spare main deflector,” Stood made a chopping motion to emphasize the impossibility of what I was suggesting.
I narrowed my eyes. “We’ll see,” was all I could manage before I gave the order to cut the connection. I turned to First Officer Tremblay. “You had something you wanted to say?” I asked.
“I didn’t think you could pull it off,” Tremblay said. He shook himself, “What I meant to say is that most of our weaponry was upgraded Imperial issue.”
I shrugged, oblivious to what he seemed to be implying.
Tremblay’s mouth tightened. “Meaning Admiral Janeski and the Imps took it with them when they left.”
I nearly leapt out of my seat, and couldn't control my shock when I rather unprofessionally blurted “What!"
“In several cases they took out the turret along with the laser itself. Essentially, we’re unarmed,” said Tremblay with a note of finality.
I closed my eyes. I’d known that threatening two medium cruisers, when we had barely half a crew (and an untrained one, at that) was risky business. I sighed. Thankfully, I hadn’t known just how helpless we were when I made my threats.
The First Officer continued, “On top of that, gunnery was raided almost as badly as the tactical section. Even if we had the main guns, we don’t have enough trained men to crew them.”
“Better and better,” I opened my eyes and looked over at my First Officer. “I suppose it's too much to hope that we kept any of the old beam guns after the… upgrade,” I said, more of a pleading note in my tone than I had intended.
“I’ll check into it first thing,” said Tremblay, his lack of confidence easily betrayed by his voice.
“That’s just great. Not only are we unarmed, but even if by some miracle we manage to rearm, we don’t have enough men to fire the blasted weapons.” Being thrust into command of a Dreadnaught class battleship was bad enough, but finding out that essentially all of the weaponry had been stripped added a measure of stress to the equation that I hadn't considered possible.
“That’s about the long and the short of it,” Tremblay said.
I struggled to find a response that wouldn't give away just how hopeless I found the situation. Fortunately, I remembered how I dealt with this type of problem just yesterday. “Look into starting a training program for the proper manning of whatever gun turrets we have remaining, Officer Tremblay. I also want an inventory of our remaining tactical assets. And I do mean immediately.”
“What we need to do is head straight to a proper naval base so we can refit for the voyage home,” said Tremblay.
I turned my hardest steely stare at the Lieutenant until he dropped his gaze and turned away. I turned to address the communications station, since I was still unfamiliar with the names of the crew manning it. “Get me the Chief Engineer, even if you have to roust him from the deepest, darkest pit in this ship and fetch him a set of clothes."
Chapter 11: ‘Tis a Minerale’
He was the very model of an ancient, outdated Space Engineer:
Chief Engineer Spalding was, as usual, quite animated as he protested my order to bring the pirate heavy cruiser with the other ships. “It’s a miracle her Star Drive’s as intact as it is after the pounding our Clover gave her the last go-round. It’d take another Miracle entirely to get that ship through a point transfer without a proper dish, Admiral!”
“I don’t care how you do it, Lieutenant Spalding," I said, my tone light, yet unyielding. "Tow her behind us with bucking cables if you have to, but one thing’s for sure and certain: I’m not going to be the one to tell eight thousand angry crewmen we just abandoned most of their prize money because our Chief Engineer couldn’t figure out how to fix a deflector dish!”
“You can’t just tow something into hyperspace behind you," protested Lieutenant Spalding. "Each ship creates its own unique hyper field bubble. What we need is a new deflector dish, properly sized for a vessel her dimensions.”
“We’re not leaving that ship behind. By hook or by crook, she’s coming with us. So either you figure out how to tow her along for our next point transfer, or this ship will soon be short one Chief Engineer! As well as however many other men it takes to stay behind and make that heavy cruiser hyper capable. The rest of us will just have to carry on as best we can without you!” I couldn't help but recall a naked and unconscious Chief Engineer sprawled out in the middle of the ship corridor. If he couldn’t even fix a heavy cruiser with nothing wrong with her but a stupid dish, what good was he?
“You can’t do that, Admiral,” Spalding said, trying to sound reasonable but coming off more irate than anything else. “The ship will fall apart without a steady hand in Engineering. The whole department’s riddled with nothing but greenhorns and slackers!”
“You have until the end of our twelve hour star drive recharge cycle to figure out how to get that cruiser into hyperspace," I said commandingly and cut the signal before he could protest further.
****************************
The Chief Engineer stomped and stormed around main engineering, barking orders until he calmed down.
Towing a ship through a point transfer, what poppycock. Captains always demanded the impossible, and it appeared Admirals were even worse than captains with their high handed demands. He threw his hands in the air. The strange particle generators made it so a ship survived the jump through hyperspace, but it didn’t actually do anything to get you through the blasted stuff. So it didn’t matter that the pirate cruisers’ generator was still functional. Each ship generated its own hyperspace bubble. Without a main deflector dish, how was that pirate cruiser supposed to form a stable bubble?
A monolith repair ship, now that was the only practical way to carry something the size of a cruiser. The monolith class was essentially just a giant hollowed out skeleton that encompassed the damaged ship and carried it inside itself, and hence inside the monolith’s warp bubble.
For a standard ship type to tow another ship through hyperspace you’d need a huge ship with a big oblong bubble to- wait a minute, he thought. He pulled up the specs on the Clover’s main dish. The Clover had a larger than average hyper foot print, even for her size. This was part of the reason why it took her so long to cycle her hyper engines. He’d been meaning to get the ship resized with a proper dish now that he was the Chief Engineer, but obviously hadn't quite gotten around to it. The Imperials had some fine equipment that they’d brought on board with them and he’d used that to guesstimate the size they needed. According to those calculations, a smaller, more properly shaped dish should cut hyper-bubble formation time in half and put less of a load on the fusion generators as well.
On the other hand, he thought, what if you could generate a large enough hyper bubble and somehow include the former pirate cruiser in it? Refit ships sometimes used their own oversized hyper bubble and strange particle generators to safely transport battle dama
ged or otherwise stricken starships. Of course, they were much smaller than a nearly six hundred meter battleship…
Spalding shook his head. It was impossible. Even if the Clover could generate a large enough bubble to somehow haul another ship, one nearly as large as she was into hyperspace, tests had shown when starships inside a refit vessel used their own strange particle generators during a point transfer, they tended not to return from hyperspace.
Besides, the Clover just didn’t have enough power to form a huge bubble and also pump strange particles into the other ship at the same time. Not any longer. Blasted Imperials had installed two high powered fusion generators when they refitted the ship prior to the patrol mission. Unfortunately, when the Imps left for Gorgon space they activated the emergency release feature, intended for instances of extreme battle damage, to eject both fusion plants out into cold space where they could be picked up and taken onboard the command ship.
Idly, he pulled up the specs on the Clover’s deflector dish and ran a few figures though the DI (distributed intelligence) network. “Only a damned fool would try to include a ship nearly as large the Clover in her hyper bubble. Especially when the other ship was using her own particle generator at the same time we were using ours,” he muttered to himself.
“Alright you bunch of slack jawed idiots!” Spalding roared to the engineering deck crew. “This is where we separate the men from the boys!”
The deck crew stood there wide eyed, just looking at the Chief Engineer.
“I said get in your heavy load suits, you bunch of would be slackers. That means now,” he cried, lighting his plasma torch. Most of the crew ran for the load suits. A few wild waves of his plasma torch in the direction of the remaining slackers put them into motion also.
“More likely we’ll just sort the fools from the merely insane,” someone muttered behind the Chief Engineer.
Spalding whirled around as fast as his old bones would let him. “Don’t think for a minute that I’ve forgotten the man that tried to get all of three deck killed because he was too busy swilling back an illegal, off brand substance to pay attention to his monitoring boards. That means you, Castwell! I may be old, but my memory works just fine,” said the old engineer, tapping his head with a gnarled finger. The rating turned red and looked away.
The Chief Engineer grumbled in satisfaction. “You just busy yourself with thinkin' about those bucking cables and that blasted big ship we’re bringing up next to us. Because if you scratch so much as the paint on my fine ship, I’ll have your guts for garters,” the Engineer said, raising high his still active plasma torch.
Deciding everyone looked properly cowed, he turned back to watch the men in heavy load suits as they exited the deck one at a time. He deactivated the plasma torch.
“You’d have to be both foolish and insane to pull a stunt like this,” he muttered under his breath and cursed Captains and Flag Officers everywhere.
Castwell might be a no good sort as far as being a sailor went but he knew how work the bucking cables. There were only two minor bumps getting the pirate cruiser mated to the side of the Clover. For all his glowering when it happened, Spalding had to admit things were going better than expected.
Smoke poured through the engineering deck and men ran screaming from a now sparking power core. Cutout breakers burned up one by one with a series of loud pops. “Turn it off! Turn it off,” screamed the Chief Engineer, waving his hands wildly as he jumped off the walkway onto the main deck.
He felt something snap like a dry twig as he landed, soon followed by an incredible bolt of pain. He hobbled and rolled his way to a control station and tried to ignore a leg bent underneath him like a broken tooth pick. He gritted his teeth and grabbed onto the console to pull himself upright. Fingers flying, he leaned against the console and shut down the Lucky Clover’s strange particle generator.
“I said place our generator on inactive standby, not turn the bloody thing on full blast while we’re running a direct link to the pirate cruiser’s generator,” he screamed. “Do I have to do everything myself?!” He was ignored as crewmen stumbled away from the still smoking strange particle generator.
“Blast it,” he said and took a step toward the generator, only to fall to the ground as his broken leg bent and twisted beneath him. Pulling himself up off the ground by way of the same engineering console he’d just used, he accepted that there was no way he was walking under his own power in his current condition.
He flipped a few switches to activate an external line out of engineering to the rest of the ship. Selecting medical, he easily opened a connection. He didn’t understand why the younger crew always complained about being unable to get the DI to perform even the simplest of tasks for them. He never had any problems getting the distributed intelligence to do what it was supposed to. It was actually a relief having the old system running again.
Now, if they’d been complaining about the Imperial system, he’d have understood where they were coming from. That new fangled system was buggier than a monkey with a wrench.
The head of station medical came on the line and scowled. “You told me that you would have a work crew over here to check my connection to the main power grid over four hours ago.”
“No time for that,” Spalding barked. “I need a medical team to engineering. Some fool turned on the strange particle generator before we were ready. A few of the men might need stretchers. Busted my own leg up pretty good,” he remarked, looking down and seeing his foot sticking out at an unfamiliar and unnatural angle.
“Don’t think I’ve forgot how you still owe me that work party,” the Doctor said, signing off brusquely.
A half hour later, Spalding walked out of the Ship’s Infirmary under his own power. It still hurt with every step he took, but the brace the medic had put on his leg made him mobile again. He winced as he gimped over to the lift. It was no coincidence they’d placed him on the only bed with a flickering power supply and jacked his leg full of Combat Heal, instead of the usual Quick Heal. Combat Heal burned like a son of a gun. It was faster than quick heal, but all he’d said was he needed to be up and back in engineering as fast as possible.
Clearly the Doc was still ticked about his missing work crew. Well, he’d have get over it. Spalding would have sent a team over if he had a full trained crew, or if a certain Admiral (who shall remain nameless) hadn’t instructed him to do the impossible or face involuntary exile from the Clover!
Main Engineering was a sight of complete confusion when its Chief Engineer returned. It took almost as long as he’d been gone to sort it out. When the various chickens masquerading as his engineering crew had stopped flapping around aimlessly, he sent a crew of greenhorns along with one of his few trained slackers to go get a new set of cut out breakers for the strange particle generator.
They didn’t have time to replace them all before the ship transited the system, but so long as the generator wasn’t completely fried by the overload they should be able to replace the breakers after the point transfer.
He pulled himself over to the most important piece of the Star Drive. As far as he was concerned, the part that kept the ship and crew alive during a point transfer was it. He ran a hand through his wild hair and performed a diagnostic. In the end, he was scowling but decided it was still theoretically do-able. Cables and workarounds sprouted as he rerouted around the burnt out cutouts and tricked the DI into giving the generator the green light by fooling its sensors. It was an unholy mess to look at, but nothing important had been broken inside the generator itself.
“Alright, let’s try this again,” he shouted and then gave the order for the away party onboard the pirate cruiser to turn on its strange particle generator.
He grunted with dissatisfaction as he measured the particles streaming from the other cruiser into the clover. The particle counts were different from what the Clover put out, and in his book different was generally not a good sign when it came to his Lucky Clover. Unfortunately, this w
as an expected occurrence, and the count would just have to do for the mean time. But as soon as humanly possible he was going to unhook this ungodly contraption. Setting the strange particle generator on the pirate ship so that it worked on overload, charging both ships with strange particles, was bad enough. Mating the pirate cruiser to their hull for the point transfer was even worse. All so the two ships would fit inside the ugliest, most unstable hyper-bubble the Clover had ever formed. He had to be crazy or desperate even to dream a notion like this… To actually go through with it, perhaps he was both.
But the Admiral had given him no choice.
Chapter 12: Distress Call
“The Chief Engineer reports the ship is ready to point transfer whenever you are, Admiral,” Lieutenant Tremblay reported, then bit his lip. “He’s calling it a miracle of engineering, but it should get the job done. I have to say I’ve never seen or heard of a successful point transfer involving two ships of the same weight within one hyperspace bubble, Admiral. As far as I know, not even the Imperials have tried something like this. As the ship’s XO I’d like to go on record and point out that this could be a very serious mistake, sir.”
Admiral Who? (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Page 11
