Chapter 6

One. More. Day. One more day and the ship would be completed and ready. When I woke up, still wrapped in Susan’s arms I had a hard choice to make about charging into the day, or taking advantage of the gorgeous, naked creature laying half on top of me that I loved so much.

All I had planned on for most of that morning was some sleep training anyways, so I kissed her awake and gave into my baser instincts for a while. I think it was the right call.

I made the mistake of checking my data pad for messages after breakfast, and of course got sucked into administrative minutiae for about an hour before I got to my sleep training. At least the directive on making sure we had current wills in place for the disposition of our concubines and dependents was worth the time. I forwarded that on to the crew with orders they should all do the same. As for the inquiry from the local Navy commander about departures from uniform regulations, I ignored it figuring that since he wasn’t in my chain of command I could conveniently lack the opportunity to read and respond to his message, with all that’s going on. Ignorance can be a convenient excuse.

I’d set up an officer’s meeting for lunch and we actually got together at a brothel, of all things. The Civil Service operated a rather nice restaurant and could accommodate a small gathering pretty easily, and the food was good enough for us to wonder whether it was actually the product of replicators. They seemed to pride themselves on the quality of service, and without a doubt the beautiful women were extremely helpful and friendly.

Now that I’d seen more of what Sub-Decurion Flores was up to, maybe the Civil Service wasn’t as bad a thing as I’d thought. They’d made one of my crewmen insanely happy, and now I found a really pleasant place to socialize or have an event.

We didn’t have a whole lot to go over, and this was just more of an opportunity to make sure nobody needed help with anything. We went over what we’d want to do on the Demeter to Earth run and back since the operations in the local Poseidon system had been easy to arrange. This would be an opportunity to exercise the FTL drive as well as give us a familiar sensor target to work on.

Since most of us had a lot of experience with amateur radio, we’d actually done a lot of signals intercepts of radio communications on that planet as we looked for other people to talk to, so we knew what we should be able to find. Others had done military signal interception and had a good idea on what we could harvest in those bands as well.

It was a little longer of a jaunt than what I’d have liked, but with a familiar target that was certain to have all sorts of radiation coming out of it, this was a perfect way to evaluate the capabilities of our systems against a target that we were in many ways quite intimately familiar with.

As we broke up the hostess asked if we would like to take advantage of the other services the facility had to offer. Everyone laughed at my reaction to being solicited for extramarital sex as I struggled to nervously, and politely decline her generous offer. Our waitress seemed amused as well, and left us with a “come on back y’all” encouragement, which even I took to heart. This was a good place.

The afternoon rushed right by with a series of sleep module trainings, including the deferred “Psychodynamic Reflectivity” course I hadn’t gotten to. It was all about how energy could bounce off of exotic particles, and what would happen to those particles if you pushed energy at them. I wasn’t sure I’d make much use of it and a bunch of the particles were things I hadn’t heard of before -- seemingly they were part of prerequisite courses I hadn’t tackled yet. Still, it was another arrow in my quiver of knowledge, and maybe I’d find a need to grab for it someday.

I had a quiet dinner at home with Susan instead of going to the mess hall. It was nice to just spend some alone time with her and not feel like I had to divide my attention.

The next day I met the crew at 0800 at the transporter room at Demeter so we could go up to the orbital shipyard where the Oxford was finally ready. Everyone was clearly excited.

When I stepped off the transporter pad at the shipyard the facility was much calmer than I expected. Instead of shipwrights bustling all over the place there was simply a smiling Colonel there to greet me along with a single enlisted man. “Welcome to Demeter shipyard, Captain. I’m Colonel Wilson and I’m here to show you to your new ship.” I got the impression that he didn’t need to be the one doing this duty, but the twinkle in his eye made me feel he wouldn’t give up the opportunity unless ordered to. “If you all will follow me...” and he led off down the passageway with his Sergeant trailing us, perhaps to make sure none of us got lost.

Colonel Wilson soon arrived at an airlock with the inscription “C-O3.” Above the hatch was a display that read “CSS Oxford AGTR-1.” Below it a line read “Captain LT Carl Jones.” With a flourish he told the AI to open the hatch and it parted revealing a well lit passageway about ten meters long that led to a much more subdued space, that was presumably the interior of the ship. “Welcome to your new ship. I’ll leave you to it, and if you need anything please don’t hesitate to ask the AI.” With a simple handshake he and his Sergeant left.

I took the lead and headed down the passageway and had to remember to breathe. The ship’s exterior hatch was open, revealing a perpendicular passageway that ran along the length of the ship. It didn’t take but a second for me to orient myself, and I turned towards the left to head forward on the ship where I knew I’d find what I was most interested in seeing, first.

Before I could start, an AI spoke. <I identify you as Lieutenant Carl Jones. Is this correct?>

“Yes, I am Lieutenant Carl Jones” I answered.

<You are identified as the assigned captain of this vessel. Do you accept command?>

“I do.”

<You are now recorded as the Captain of the CSS Oxford, hull designation AGTR dash One. Fair winds and following seas, Captain.>

I turned to Ensign Todd Williams. “Well, if that was supposed to be a change of command ceremony, it was the shortest one on record. We didn’t even have to call anyone to attention!”

Todd laughed “If only they could all be this easy!”

I knew that the docking port was amidships, and if I went forward from that I’d first find the sensor stations. The room looked a lot narrower than I’d expected, but since the sensor stations were along the starboard side and the port side was filled with equipment cabinets it was just the passageway being narrow that gave such an idea.

Each of the sensor stations, which were powered down, had identical blank displays and touchscreens along with a few physical controls. Each of them could be configured in a multitude of ways, and any of them could do the job of the other. That flexibility would make it a lot easier for us to optimize crew operations for the variety of missions we would encounter.

The sensor technicians each grabbed one of the seats and started playing with the darkened displays like they were little kids.

Just forward the space opened up with a station for the Sensors Officer, which had a wrap-around workstation that had displays that would duplicate what the sensor operators were seeing. While the sensor technician stations were on the starboard side, his was on the port side and it gave him a decent view of each of the operators. He had some additional consoles that were dedicated to deploying antenna masts and other systems, so his station was rather different from his technicians.

Immediately forward was a small room that hosted the drone deployment systems. Four launch tubes were on the port side of the room, with racks for spare drones on the starboard side along with a replicator that could fabricate more. Below the launch tubes was the recovery lock, where drones would re-dock once they finished whatever we wanted them to do. All of the storage racks were empty, but would soon accommodate the complement of the fifteen centimeter cylindrical drones we’d soon be building, while leaving a few extra so we’d have space to store whatever other drone types we felt were needed that we could make on the fly.

Forward of that was the “conn” where I would fly the ship, along with a simple workstation for the XO who probably wouldn’t be in it much. My pilot station had only a few controls, such as a joystick, T-bar throttles and a few touchscreens, and of course a bunch of display screens. When I’d be flying there was a VR headset that would give me the ability to see the space around me, with an overlay of threat data, navigational information, the location of friendly ships, and such. Most of the time I wouldn’t be using it, but if operating in close proximity to structures, or other ships, or in combat it would probably be pretty useful.

Forward of that was the wardroom, which was where the crew could eat and relax when off duty. Next was the head on one side and a small shower on the other. At the very front were the enlisted berths. There were spaces for two additional people just in case we had mission specialists or passengers. Putting them in the front of the ship, the most likely place we’d get hit seemed a little cold, but if we were in combat that space would be empty, and if we lost it yes the enlisted men might lose some comfort, but the ship would survive without it. I’m pretty sure they’d be in favor of the design decision.

In between all these spaces were of course airtight hatches, but they were all retracted and locked.

Walking my way aft as the enlisted men continued their exploration forward, I found my cabin just aft of the docking hatch that we’d used to enter the ship. It was pretty spartan, with the bed doubling as a place to sit when I was using the desk. Compared to the bunks the enlisted men were going to be using, this was still pretty luxurious, though.

Immediately aft were identical quarters for the rest of the officers. One of the changes I had made was to ensure my quarters were no different from theirs, which gave me a little room to beef up their space while I stole from mine. I know it’s tradition to have the captain’s quarters be the most luxurious on the ship, but I didn’t need private space any more than they did, and I liked the message it sent. If I was going to get respect, I wasn’t going to get it just because I could dictate nice digs on the ship. I’d have to earn it, and to me that meant I shared hardships just like the rest of them. They’d notice. The troops always do.

Behind the officer’s quarters was a medical station with a pod, some storage lockers, and then the engineering spaces. There was a lot of space in there, because the engines, FTL drive and other systems were all back there, but the passageways in between all that equipment were tight and all the equipment was enclosed. It sure wasn’t anything like the sci-fi movies we saw on earth where engineering spaces were light filled, open and airy artistic masterpieces, but had just enough space to access everything without leaving any additional. Wasted space on a ship meant unnecessary mass and volume, and any of that required power, propulsion and size. We wanted to be small, unnoticeable, and efficient.

“OK” I called out. “Everyone to the wardroom!”

When they all arrived, I addressed them. “The first thing you do when you buy a car is kick the tires, right?” Nods all around. “We’re going to do that now. Push and pull on everything. If it’s not supposed to move, and it does, I want to know. If it is supposed to move and it doesn’t, I want to know. Open every door, hatch and opening. Make sure it opens cleanly and shuts tight. Turn every knob, flick every switch, try everything out.”

I looked at Ensign Chandler, my Engineer. “Of course this doesn’t quite apply to you, as I don’t want you launching weapons while we’re docked or anything. I see that there’s no power to anything forward of Engineering other than lights, so have the AI enable things like the replicator, hatchway controls, any HVAC systems that aren’t on and other essential systems. Do not turn on power to anything else in sensors or conn. Check your equipment, but don’t start anything up yet. Got it?”

“Sure thing Pappy. Let’s go kick some tires!”

For the next half hour we pulled and twisted on everything. We identified no problems at all. On one hand I’d hoped being this diligent would have uncovered something, even if it was minor. It would have proved my caution warranted. On the other hand, if everything else was this good maybe we were going to be OK. At least we cleared the first item on my checklist, and in the process didn’t add anything else to it.

As the men finished, and had wandered elsewhere to play with things when they were done with their own spaces, they wandered back into the wardroom where I had been conversing with the AI. Apparently the crew training modules were all completed and ready for the men.

“OK, we’re done here for the day. Head home and you’ll find the sleep training modules you need for the ship are already available in your quarters. Report back here at 0800 tomorrow and we’ll start powering up systems for the rest of our checkout before we shake this thing down. XO, I want to start keeping watch stations aboard until we depart, so assign a watch schedule among the crew. One man watch, four hours. I’ll take the first watch.”

“Aye captain” Ensign Williams replied. He gathered the other officers together and they sorted out the watch schedule pretty quickly. With that, everyone left me to be alone on my ship.

Well, it was the Confederacy’s ship. They just gave me the responsibility to put it to good use for a while.

I spent the time wandering around, getting a feel for everything. One thing that immediately came to mind was that I wanted the ship’s crest somewhere. Right next to the docking hatch seemed like a good open space for it, and you’d see it right as you came in, as well as whenever you passed midships. There was a place on the opposite bulkhead from where the crest should go which was identically empty. I thought for that a minute, staring at the blank wall and thought about what I needed from that space.

Our crew was going to be away from their families for weeks, maybe months at a time. Since we were going to be as invisible as we could, it’s not like the crewmembers could make phone calls home like we’d been able to do during Air Force Reserve annual training. We were incommunicado when on a mission, and the crew would miss their families. I’d sure as hell miss Susan. We needed something for families here, so when someone was missing home they could come here to get that connection again, but it would have to be something well thought out. A cheesy set of pictures posted up on the wall wouldn’t be any different than the sorts of pictures servicemen have always carried around in their wallets, which data pads would now replace.

It was something to think about.

I went and sat in my chair in the conn and thought about this responsibility that I’d been saddled with. Was I good enough? Would I do a good job leading my men? Would we survive all this?

Before I could dive too deep down that rabbit hole of doubt, the AI informed me that Private Gordon Smith was arriving to relieve me. I stood up and did the normal protocol of relief and only noticed afterwards that Smith had shown up thirty minutes early. I guess he was anxious to get a chance to be on his ship so he could poke around. Good. The more the crew did that, the better we’d be.

It was a little after lunchtime when I got back to my quarters, and Susan made me tell her everything about the ship before she let me go to the sleep training pod to do not only my module, but the modules for all the other crewmembers. My XO was going to do the same. I’d seen too many times what happens when an enlisted man knows his job and the officer commanding him had no idea what the enlisted man did, which was an open invitation for the officer to get hoodwinked to no end by his subordinate. We were going to display technical and tactical excellence from bottom to top.

Susan and I met with my XO, Ensign Todd Williams and his family, along with Ensign Chris Chandler the Engineer and his family, for dinner. We were all getting pretty close and the conversation was amiable as it seemed Susan wanted to make sure I got a chance to get to know Chris’ family, which consisted of the wife he had on Earth, Tammy, his concubine Grace who had been a longtime family friend, and their children Billy and Bobby, who were six and four years old, respectively. The kids were fun and a complete handful, and got great joy out of having a contest with me about who could make the best animal noises. By the end of dinner I think Tammy was considering hiring me as a babysitter.

After dinner I asked Susan if I could visit some of my men and she readily agreed. Off I went to Orange 2-329 and the Sheep Pen.

I was ushered into the male refuge by Rita, Sergeant White’s concubine that I hadn’t had a chance to get to know yet. She was a lovely Latina who seemed more than happy to play hostess while Sergeant White’s other concubine Angela was happy with waitress duties. Between the two of them everyone in the Sheep Pen were well taken care of.

The guys were busy at a poker table and I waved hello as I was escorted in. Happy shouts of “Hey Pappy!” made me feel welcome. I settled in behind the players as they played and joked with each other. Since Sergeant White was in charge and had military experience, he knew not to invite me to the game as officers gambling with their enlisted men was a big no-no where we came from. Maybe the Confederacy was more lax about this, but old habits and all, you know.

“Hey Pappy, what’s your story?” Private Tim Wilson piped up.

“Oh, my life has been positively boring compared to the exploits of you reprobates” I started. “I was just an unemployed engineer in sleepy Idaho who was in the Air Force Reserve at Mountain Home Air Force Base where I managed the maintenance of the electronics systems on the aircraft stationed there. I’ve had more jobs than I care to admit to and a bunch of old bosses who think I’m one of the worst employees they’ve ever had. Then a Marine showed up and dragged me into a transporter while I was on duty, and I figured that was a hell of a lot better than going broke and serving no other purpose in life than serving as a warning demonstration to others about what personal failure looks like.”

“I met Susan about a year ago, and even though I wasn’t doing well in having a steady job, she stuck by me. I had been planning to marry her once I got settled into my next job and knew I could provide for her. Once I got picked up, they went back down to her and she agreed to be extracted as soon as she was told what was going on. It was like she didn’t even have to think about it.”

“When I got up here I got dragged in front of Commander Wilcox, who runs the special projects office for the Naval Auxiliary. He said I was the guy he wanted for this little experiment even though I told him I wasn’t at all qualified for this. He picked all you guys out, I guess figuring that we might be a good team for this, and here we are ready to take on the universe.”

Private Douglas, who seemed remarkably normal for being the guy who so recently was distracted puppy love incarnate, shouted “Victoria!” and raised his glass. The rest echoed him and we all took a drink. I guess we had a team toast, now.

The game resumed, and it seemed like Private Wilson was pulling ahead of the pack. Playing poker against a math guy was a dangerous proposition which was being proven out tonight. He couldn’t bluff worth a damn, but he was steady and made smart choices about betting and discards, and while he didn’t try to play up big pots, he won a lot of those that he decided to play. It was interesting watching his conservative play. If he were a better player he could clean out a table pretty quick, but he seemed comfortable with a slow and steady pace that drained the opposition without them even really realizing that they were losing to him. About two hours after I had arrived everyone but him had bowed out.

“Dang, Wilson you did it again. How do you do that?” Sergeant White lamented.

“I just play the cards I’m dealt, Sarge.”

“Aw, bullshit. You know somethin” White shot back.

At this point Private Smith excused himself as he had to go on watch next, and handed in his remaining chips to be tallied. That broke up the discussion and thankfully turned attention away from where this might have gone, but since the stakes weren’t money, no matter what might have happened I doubt it would have gotten ugly. Playing for money makes games like this uncomfortably personal, which is why I usually avoid them.

The rest of the guys gathered around the bar and got new drinks from Angela, who just went to the replicator behind the bar and got them rather than pouring them from bottles. Sure, replicator beverages weren’t the same as the real stuff, but it was close enough for this crowd to keep them happy.

The guys had a lot of questions about our ship and our mission, which didn’t surprise me one bit. I didn’t know a lot of the answers since we didn’t have orders yet and haven’t even had a chance to fire up the engines. I tried to nudge the discussion away from the ‘what we were going to do’ that I didn’t know, and towards the ‘why we need to do it.’ These guys needed to internalize the importance of our efforts so they’d be dedicated to succeeding, and the more we talked the more the discussion turned philosophical.

“Why do they need us to spy on the dickheads like this if the war is going so well already?” asked Private Wilson.

I sighed. “I know you hear the same stuff as I do about how the war is going so well, and I’m sure the Navy and Marines out there are doing a great job. But them asking us to do this is one of those cases where you can read between the lines and figure that the war isn’t us just kicking butt all over the place. They’re having trouble out there. We are losing good people in fights when we shouldn’t. The dickheads can breed an unlimited amount of soldiers it seems, and we can’t, so we have to fight smarter and harder so every life we trade for results in a huge pile of lives they can’t afford to spend.”

“What we can do might help turn the tide. If we can figure out what they’re doing before it happens, it’ll be like the folks that broke the Japanese codes in World War Two and made it possible for the victory like at the Battle of Midway. We broke the back of the German U-Boat attacks with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and cracking the Enigma Code. The entire course of World War Two changed when Britain and the US got into the electronic warfare game, and right now we’re out here fighting the Swarm and we’ve never even sailed a strategic ISR ship until now. We could make a huge difference and save a ton of lives.”

That rocked each of them back a bit. They had just seen this as a job to do up until now. Tonight, they understood that our little effort could possibly change everything, and that their contribution to the war effort might be a lot more important than they’d thought.

“Do any of you know what ‘Victoria per scientiam’ means, that thing you’re wearing on your sleeves?

I got some sheepish looks in response.

“It means ‘Victory Through Knowledge.’ That’s not just some important sounding thing that makes us seem special somehow. It’s what we do. It’s our mission. If we bring back knowledge, the right knowledge, it can lead the Confederacy to winning this war just like the same idea helped the Allies win the Second World War. We are the descendants of the code breakers, the signal interceptors, and the technical spies of generations past, and we have finally arrived at this war. Maybe later than we should have, but we’re here now.”

I figured after that little diatribe I should head back to my quarters. With calls of “Good night, Pappy” I headed out the door, glad that I had spent some time with the enlisted guys and started building a relationship with them. When I was in the Air Force I’d seen too many officers who treated their enlisted guys like disposable slaves, and not too surprisingly, those disposable slaves didn’t do a darned thing to help that unit succeed. I’d learned that if I spent the time to build relationships with the enlisted guys who worked for me, they’d move mountains to do what I wanted. Help them understand why we do what we do, make sure they know what to do, and then get out of their way. It’s worked for me before, and it would probably work again.

Susan was happy to see me return and brought me into the bedroom for an evening filled with tender loving. I’d never get tired of looking into her eyes as I made love to her. She was that one person who I could share this kind of intimate connection with, and it just filled my heart with joy to see how happy I made her, and how amazing she made me feel.

I gave Susan a kiss and got out of bed eager for a day with the new ship. Today was going to be a big day as we were going to do static tests and start powering things up. Normally in the Confederacy they just rushed through this whole process, but it wasn’t normal to have an actual engineer in charge of a ship that was a new design, so I had a bit of leeway in how I wanted to proceed, courtesy of Commander Wilcox.

After a bit of breakfast I headed out, telling Susan I wasn’t sure when I’d be back but that I’d let her know if I was going to be later than dinnertime. I got to the transport station about fifteen minutes early and headed to the ship to find Ensign Chris Chandler, my Engineer, standing watch.

“Oh, man, Pappy, this thing is wonderful” he gushed. “I spent my watch duty taking the covers off the equipment in the engine room to see how things were done underneath, and the cabling is nice and neat, the connections are solid, and everything seems to be done right. Half the time I see stuff that has covers on it, it’s to hide some mess or stupidity underneath. This time it’s all good. It even smells good!”

I chuckled. Given his excitement I knew the answer to this, but I had to ask anyways. “You get your sleep training modules in?”

“Yup, did that first thing. Then I had the AI recommend several others too, since I couldn’t make heads or tails out of much other than the metallurgy ones on the list. I’m qualified now to run any engine in the fleet smaller than those big ones on the freighters, and can probably design engines for all of them that would work better, too. About the only thing I couldn’t find was practical stuff on FTL, although I did all the theoretical stuff I could get my hands on.”

Back on Earth Ensign Chandler was the guy who thought a great way to relax was to bang on swords he was making in the forge he built in his back yard. I wasn’t surprised that his hobbies helped drive what courses he was taking, and pleased that the intellectual curiosity I expected from a former college professor was fully there.

“So you think we’re ready to start powering things up?” I asked.

“Not much else left to do, sir. I have stores available for us after 1000 hours and we can either have the internal stores brought here in a cart, or we can try out the transporter pad if you’d like.”

Testing a transporter pad seemed a little anal, but the rigor of the exercise definitely felt consistent with how we were going to handle things. Literally everything would be tested that could be tested before we left the dock this way, and even if we were doing some testing that would normally be considered useless, it meant that we wouldn’t miss anything.

“Sure, let’s do that. How about external stores, fueling, gases and liquids?”

Ensign Chandler replied “well, a lot of that is already onboard. All the coolant tanks are already full as is the emergency oxygen. The lubricants are all topped off. We’ve got about a quarter of the reaction mass we can hold, but that’ll be plenty for in-system and we don’t need to be running around the first outing with full tanks anyways. About all we need for external stores are our defensive missiles, and we’re getting some practice rounds put in place by a maintenance bot sometime this afternoon. We’re in pretty good shape there.”

“Sounds like you’re on top of everything. Thanks, Chris.”

“No problem, Pappy. I can’t wait to take this baby out and see what it can do!”

“Well, I wouldn’t get too excited there. This isn’t a sportscar, so don’t let your hopes get dashed if we can’t make the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs!”

We both shared a laugh at the reference to the old earth movie, where the scriptwriters didn’t even know the difference between a measurement of distance and a measurement of elapsed time. That quote had been the source of derisive jokes in the engineering community for ages, and never seemed to get old.

By that time other members of the crew started arriving and we all headed to the wardroom.

“Good morning!” I started. “Today we start to have some fun. Just to reiterate, we’re going to start powering up everything other than main engines and external emitters and testing them as much as we can. Since we can’t deploy our antenna masts in dock, those systems that depend on them are going to have to wait, too. If we can safely check something out here while we’re in dock, we will. Report any discrepancies you notice to the XO, or if you aren’t sure if something is working right or have a question, come find me. Before you do anything, you make sure it’s safe to do so before you do it. I don’t want to see anyone hurt, cause any damage to the ship, or to the shipyard. Everyone clear here?”