Chapter 1: The Grand Tour

Admiral Bernard "Battling" Bickerson leaned to his aide. "How old is she again?"

"Thirteen, Sir," Lieutenant Yohko Tanaka responded, her face a mask. She knew who this child was, as she'd had sense to subvocally ask the AI. Bickerson clearly had not, and this particular AI clearly had a sense of humour. It didn't bother telling Bickerson who the person was who had greeted them.

Admiral Bickerson turned back to the fresh-faced, tiny girl in Confederacy Navy black and smiled politely. Her mother must be humouring her by letting her wear that outfit. He'd have a word with Commander Marcie Haywood later about allowing minors to misuse official Confederacy uniforms. "Thank you for meeting us, young lady. Would your mother, Commander Marcie Haywood, be around?"

"I am Marcie Haywood. Commander, Confederacy Navy. The AI will be glad to confirm my identity. My mother is Colonel Marianne Haywood, Chief of Medical Training." Marcie was grim-faced, used to the confusion but still annoyed by it all.

Admiral Bickerson blinked. A 13-year-old, running the newest, hottest, most successful experimental warship project so far?

"No, I'm not yet an MIT graduate, but my professors have assured me it's a mere formality, a matter of setting a date for the mortarboard ceremony. As far as they're concerned, I should be wearing the Brass Rat already. In the meantime, would you like a tour of the new vessel?"

Unable to trust himself to speak coherently, the Admiral nodded, and Marcie turned to the ensign manning the transporter nexus. "The Archerfish, Mr. James."

"Yes, Sir. Link set, Archerfish standing by."

Marcie went into pedant mode. "The Archerfish is of a new type of ship designed to carry a supply of anti-ship missiles stealthily — or at least stealthily in terms of the Sa'arm sensors and organic inputs. They're small — a crew of twelve, plus twelve concubines — but pack a powerful punch. The missiles are the latest from Azahar's brain trust, a super-large dual-charge round based on the shaped-charge methodology of Earth tanks' HEAT rounds, launched from a missile tube and capable of homing in on the enemy. The ship's design is simple, elegant and can be mass-produced in prodigious quantities, just what we need against something as fecund as the Sa'arm. It's simply four pods in tandem in front of a pair of engines, within an armoured shield that includes a coating that absorbs all radiation in the spectrum covered by the Sa'arm's optics."

She pointed to a schematic that the AI had placed on the wall. "The first pod contains the Missile Module, which has six tubes facing forward and space for 48 missiles in storage. The second pod is the Command Module, with the CIC, CO's ready room and chart room on the upper deck and workshops on the lower. The third module is the Accommodations Module, which has staterooms for all personnel. The fourth is fuel storage. Tanks between the inner and outer hulls contain raw materials for the replicators."

"It looks like a submarine without the conning tower, sort of like those very early pre-World War I Holland type subs," the Admiral observed.

"That's no accident. It needs to be fairly rounded to ensure it doesn't give a large sensor footprint, and we really don't need a conning tower or tall periscope. The CIC handles the job just fine. Shall we go?" Marcie politely gestured to the nexus.

On boarding the ship, the Admiral heard, "Officer on deck!" and crew and concubines came to attention. He found himself in the lower level of the Command Module, surrounded by men in Navy daily uniform and women in grey concubine shifts. "Carry on," he yelled, and the room erupted into noise.

"This way, Sir." She waved him forward. "This is the Missile Module."

The ship was tight. The only hatches were the seven in the Missile Module forward (six for the tubes and one for missile loading), one for remote sensors, one for message drones and eight hatches for inflatable lifeboat deployment split between the Command and Accommodations modules. The lifeboat hatches just held an inflatable lifeboat, with no access from inside; the lifeboat was designed to inflate after deployment and held a nexus that would be used to evacuate everyone on board. Even the best-sealed hatch could leak, and they wanted to keep the potential for telltale traces of atmosphere down to the barest minimum.

His first impression of the Archerfish was one of claustrophobia. The cabins were tiny, the corridors were narrow and the overhead was low. Being petite helped Marcie scramble through with relative ease, but nobody with a standard Marine package could walk upright anywhere. The Admiral noted that neither crew nor concubines had particularly large physiques.

The missiles looked long and lethal. Their size was slightly larger than the US Navy's Mark 48 torpedo and the shape similar, but with a thin probe-type head and an ionic engine and manoeuvring thrusters rather than propeller and fins. "How many crew man this compartment during normal and combat operations?" he quizzed.

"Nobody. The automatic loaders are strictly mechanical to help the AI isolate itself from the actual firing of the weapon, and as a result can mindlessly try to load a crewman who accidentally got in the way, an easy thing to happen in this cramped space." She grinned mirthlessly. "The Soviets had a similar problem with the autoloaders on their tanks loading the gunner instead of the shell. This module is actually only accessible when not at battle stations, so we can perform routine maintenance. To avoid accidental decompression, this entire module is sealed from the rest of the ship during combat operations."

A decidedly low-tech ladder led to the door to the upper half of the Command Module. Marcie scrambled up the steps with the grace of a macaque, whereas Admiral Bickerson was a trifle more ponderous, closer to a three-toed sloth. His bulk was closer to the Marine standard, after all.

They entered the forward upper deck of the command module, which housed work stations for weapons, navigation and sensors. A female sailor was sitting at the primary weapons station tuning one device with the help of the AI and an oscilloscope, a male concubine assisting. Large lockout keys with yellow "Do Not Remove" tags on them decorated the second weapons station, indicating that the hatch to the Missile Module was open and preventing any attempt to load the launch tubes.

Marcie then led the Admiral into the CIC. Every millimetre of the CIC's walls, ceiling and floor displayed a Virtual Reality view of the scene outside the ship. The Admiral glanced around in wonder — he'd heard it described before but seeing it was still amazing — and appreciated the technological wonder that he was seeing. It was as if the Captain would be sitting in a chair with no ship around him — just him, two helmsmen and his executive officer all floating in formation in space. The compartment, for the nonce, was empty. Marcie invited him to sit in the command chair.