Setosha - the Beating Heart
Copyright© 2010 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 16
Fleet Engineering Office, New Republic
Captain Pagadan leaned across Admiral Smaethe’s desk to tap a button and highlight a line of figures on the data viewer’s current page. “Instead of upgrading the sensors, if we replace them altogether with a Mark XIV system like on the Altair Class, we can run Fire Control off of them as well as Scan. This will appear to be redundant to some, but we both know error-trapping routines and cross-checking will help us refine our target solutions. I’ve run some trials, and this will increase the effective range of our missiles and antimissiles by 30%, but take advantage of the Scan as a Fire Control system. As you can see, the mass and computer needs are compatible with what we already have available in the Pegasus Class and all later vessels.”
Admiral Smaethe nodded. “Close enough. I see you’ve estimated the dockyard time, Captain. That’s well within the upgrade budget for your squadron for the coming year. Excellent proposal. I suppose I can’t tempt you off that cruiser with a job in my office? I could use a man who can make budgets appear out of nowhere.”
“An officer can find money in the damnedest places if he looks hard enough,” Captain Pagadan said. “But I’d rather stay where I am.”
A voice was suddenly raised loudly in the Admiral’s outer office. “ ... don’t care if he’s in conference with the King! I have to see him, and I have to see him now!”
The Captain and the Admiral looked at each other, and then at the Admiral’s closed office door. “Somebody’s excited,” Admiral Smaethe said, shrugged, and returned to the proposed refit schedule on his dataviewer. He was a tall man with a ruddy complexion, curly white hair, and thick fingers that clutched pens as if they were trying to escape his grip. His touch and skill with delicate machinery were legendary in the PSK Navy’s repair depots. It went hand in hand with his well-known intolerance for fools regardless of their rank. In many ways, it was a miracle he’d done as well as he had in the Navy.
Admiral Smaethe cocked an ear as a new outburst rattled his door. “I do believe that’s my Commander Jackson.”
“I can’t let you go in there, sir,” said a younger male voice firmly.
“If you don’t, he’ll have your kidneys for breakfast,” said the first voice, even more loudly than before. “After he sees what I have to show him, he’ll roast you for not letting me in sooner.”
“Your Secretary’s defenses appear to be crumbling,” Captain Pagadan said quietly.
Admiral Smaethe nodded. “I give him about 10 more seconds. His ECM pattern has been diagnosed, and his antimissiles are being overwhelmed. It won’t be long now.”
Right on cue, the office door burst open. Commander Jackson, breathing hard, charged into the room. “Sir ... sir, you’ve got to come with me. You’ve got to see this.”
Admiral Smaethe waved off the indignant aide following Commander Jackson. The secretary saluted with some decorum and closed the Admiral’s door on his way out.
Admiral Smaethe sighed, wondering how long this secretary was going to last. Someday, the Navy’s Bureau of Staffing would think to assign Engineering Officers to the office of the Navy’s Chief Engineer. On that day, Admiral Smaethe had no doubt the world would rotate in the opposite direction.
“And what is it this time, Commander? Last time you wanted me to charge off with you, it was to see the field test of a new impeller design.”
Reminded of his rank, Commander Jackson drew himself up to attention and sketched a hasty salute. “Uh, sir, yes sir, I mean, it’s the Ladies’ ships, sir. They’re modular.”
“Of course they are, Commander,” Admiral Smaethe assured the excited young officer in a calm voice. “So are ours. If the component fails, you replace it.”
Commander Jackson’s face crinkled into a worried smile. “Uh, yes sir. But, sir, you see, the Ladies have taken that idea to another level. When they take damage, well, sir, they treat their ships just like damaged modules. Sir, you’ve got to see this.”
“I do have other work, Commander,” Admiral Smaethe reminded him gently. “Captain Pagadan and I were going over his refit schedule. What he’s shown me can shorten the refit schedule for several classes of ships and improve our efficiency in combat by a small but measurable amount.”
“My requests can wait,” Captain Pagadan murmured. He had heard of Commander Jackson. Personally, he approved of the young man, though he felt the younger officer needed to learn a little more tact when presenting his ideas to the Navy’s most senior officers.
Commander Jackson was adamant. “Sir, this will ... this will change the way we design and build ships. This will change everything we do.”
“It will?” Admiral Smaethe seemed amused.
“Trust me on this, sir. This will win the war.”
Admiral Smaethe sighed. “Commander Jackson, I see an average of four war-winning ideas every day, usually two of them before breakfast. Is this something I can deal with here, in my office, at a later date?”
Commander Jackson shook his head. “No, sir. You have got to see this with your own eyes. I heard about it, but I didn’t believe it. Sofia--I mean Captain Andarushka--she told me about it. Every one of the Ladies I’ve been involved with in this cruiser design project talked about it, but I didn’t understand until I saw it for myself.”
“Just to satisfy my own curiosity,” Captain Pagadan asked, “where is it you want us to go?” He inserted himself into the discussion without the slightest twinge of guilt. There was something invigorating about Commander Jackson’s enthusiasm. Tony Pagadan decided he could afford a few hours to assist in the development of a fellow officer.
“Some of the Ladies’ ships came in with battle damage, sir,” Commander Jackson said eagerly. “When we allied with the Ladies, we assigned them Cameron’s L5 orbital slot for refueling, refitting, and repairs. That’s where we’re going, sir.”
“It would do you good to get out of the office, Admiral,” Captain Pagadan murmured quietly. “My pinnace is available.”
Admiral Smaethe looked at the stack of datachips overflowing his in-basket. “I’m going to regret this,” he muttered, but there was the merest hint of a smile on his face. Grabbing his coat, he shrugged it on and winked at Captain Pagadan. “I’d rather look at hardware any day. Shall we go see what has Commander Jackson so excited?”
Cameron was the next planet out from New Republic. Fortunately, its L5 point was currently close to New Republic, so their trip only required a little more than three hours. Commander Jackson was bouncing off the bulkheads by the time they cleared New Republic’s atmosphere, so Admiral Smaethe banished him to the control deck. This provided the Admiral with the luxury of several uninterrupted hours to devote to his reports. Captain Pagadan reluctantly spent similar quality time with his own backlog.
“What are we looking for?” Admiral Smaethe asked as they finally decelerated at Cameron’s L5 point.
By then, Commander Jackson had been rescued from the pinnace’s pilot, who had only been prevented from introducing Commander Jackson to a personal inspection of the outside of the airlock when Captain Pagadan casually mentioned the paperwork involved. Others might not have been deterred, but the pinnace pilot was, at least temporarily.
Commander Jackson pointed at the passenger compartment’s viewscreen. “We’re going to see the Ladies Repair ship Fix-it, sir, and their Supply ship Provider,” he added. “Alongside are three of the Ladies Cruisers, Anabuki, Lukkanen, and Castano, also two of their Escorts, Buffalo and Gladiator. The Provider is supplying their ships with munitions while the Fix-it is repairing battle damage.”
“Fix-it?” Admiral Smaethe asked in an amused tone. He looked at Captain Pagadan and smiled. “It would seem the Ladies have a sense of humor, gentlemen. From the stories I had heard, I thought they were fairly serious about most things.”
“There are some things they are deadly serious about, sir,” Captain Pagadan said. “About the rest, they can be fairly light-hearted. Their sense of humor crops up at the oddest moments.” He remembered an impromptu water fight that had erupted during a meeting outside his basement office on Home. After he had quietly retired so they wouldn’t accidentally hit him with water and “harm” a man, a dozen senior intelligence analysts had reduced themselves to a laughing, squealing, soaking wet mess in seconds.
“All right, Commander,” Admiral Smaethe ordered, “show me what it is we’re here to see. Which ship is which?” In the viewscreen, they could see five warships, two merchants, and a larger vessel that seemed more extraneous angles than anything else.
“The largest one is the Fix-it,” Commander Jackson told them. “Next to it is the Lukkanen. That’s what I wanted you to see, sir.” He adjusted the zoom on their screen until both ships filled the frame.
The damage to Lukkanen was obvious. One entire section of the hull was blackened and warped with several plates missing. As they watched, space-suited repair crews cut out and removed two entire sections of Lukkanen’s hull. Both hull sections showed extensive damage. Once free of Lukkanen, the crews gave these damaged sections a slight vector toward the waiting merchants.
“Now watch this, sir,” Commander Jackson said breathlessly. While one repair crew had been removing damaged sections from the cruiser, two entirely new hull sections had been removed from one of the merchants. Commander Jackson needlessly pointed them out to the now spellbound Admiral Smaethe.
“Those objects are brand new sections of hull, sir, complete with all connections, equipment, and armaments. They’ll be plugged into Lukkanen in place of the sections that were damaged. As I understand it, sir, the damaged sections will be returned to some facility where they’ll be repaired and made ready for some other ship.”
He glanced at a time display. “The Lukkanen will undergo a brief testing period, and then will be ready for active duty 45 hours after entering our system. I already saw them do the same thing with Buffalo and Castano, sir. Then I came for you as fast as I could. I’m afraid I lost one of the Ladies Marines somewhere in the process. I’m sure she’ll have something to say when she catches up with me.”
“I’ve watched them reloading their missile magazines,” Captain Pagadan said, pointing at Provider and Anabuki. “They simply pull out the old magazine and shove in a new one. Sort of like putting a reload into a pistol.”
Admiral Smaethe was so focused on the activities around Fix-it and Lukkanen that it appeared as if he hadn’t heard them. After several minutes, he looked up. “Modular,” he whispered, then laughed. “Modular. Of course! That’s what they mean by modular. It’s their ships that are modular, not just the equipment in them.” He looked back at the screen. “Do you suppose I could go over there?” Both men could hear the longing in his voice.
Commander Jackson shook his head. “I already tried, sir. The Ladies know who I am and why I’m here, but they made it very clear that I was getting in their way. There weren’t any secrets involved; I was just hampering them in their work.”
“The ladies get awfully nervous about the safety of any man around them, in space or on the ground,” Captain Pagadan said. He could picture how much it would take to hold back even Commander Jackson. “It’s an automatic reaction with them.”
“As soon as Lukkanen is taken care of, we can meet with the Captain of Fix-it.” Commander Jackson smiled eagerly in anticipation. “I think you’ll enjoy meeting Second Officer Stanope, sir. When we were approaching the L5 point a little while ago, I contacted her, and she agreed to give us some of her time, but only after she was done with Lukkanen.”
The Lukkanen moved away under its own power an hour later. By then, the damaged sections were being stored in a cargo pod. A few minutes after that, the pinnace docked with Fix-it. Captain Pagadan stayed close, more out of curiosity than anything else.
Second Officer Stanope was tall and heavy-set. She seemed coolly guarded when Commander Jackson introduced the Admiral.
“Yes, Admiral?” she asked. “You had questions about the way we repair our ships?”
“Do you use the same modules on all classes of ships?” Admiral Smaethe asked. “What about upgrades? Is it easier for you to repair the sections or scrap them completely?”
“Depends on the damage,” she replied slowly. “And of course, we try to use the same modules.”
“We’ve been building each ship as a single unit,” the Admiral said. “It takes us at least a year to build a ship from backbone to commissioning. Your methods probably take, what, two months?”
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