Chapter 19: Back in Business

Well, like all good times, dat shit had to end. I got the call that my ship was ready. I cleaned up, packed up, dressed in clean clothes and headed for the Navy base. They let me in, more fools them. I pulled up to the doc, got out and stood there with my hands on my hips, looking her over. She looked good. The changes looked natural. I was then prepared to be happy. I grabbed my gear and headed up the gangway. The hatch was unlocked, but there was a marine standing there with a rifle at port arms.

I stomped up to him and gave him 'the hairy eyeball'.

You gonna give me any shit, son?

"No Sir! Nosiree. Ain't my job. No, Sir."

I patted his shoulder and walked throught the hatch. I had a load with me, so I called the elevator and took it all to the bridge deck. I walked into the wheelhouse, where three guys stood around grinning at me.

One of them said "Well, try it."

I looked at him then at the expanded fire control array.

I sat down at the main consosle.

I gave it a whack and said, "Well, give me a status, dammit."

"Situation nominal, captain.

I stared. I face-palmed. I about shit a brick. The guys were giggling hysterically.

"Okay, I walked into that one. Which one of you morons added a voder to the system, and how the hell did it know (a) that I was the captain, and (b) what to say?"

The guy with the thickest glassess raised his hand and wavedit aound a bit. "It was a set-up job, Captain. We installed a vibration sensor, then linked it to a status read-out on the screen and a voder."

"You're an idiot. An intelligent idiot, but an idiot. Nice gag, now disable it. During a shitstorm nobody needs distractions. Do any of you know what a shitstorm is?" I got a lot of blank looks and shaking heads. "It's a situation wherein if you lose your concentration for just a flash, you're probably going to be room temperature in short order."

We went through the major features of the instllation including a 'hands-on' control that worked by drawing and tapping on the CIC touch-sensitive screen. Radar settings, weapons status and CIC online status were obvious and easy to confirm. The controls were remarkably easy to use. The lower-level typed commands were at times counter-intuitive but I'd picked that up from the binders. I'd need some play tme to get a feel for it.

"Okay, let's take a tour. Show me below decks, to see wht's changed: and the lower dek where it all comes out to play. Then let's fool around with the plsed stealth mode to get a harbor picture, enhance it and do some target acquisition exercises. Let's give this horse some exercise, gentlemen!"

W were missing some ship's stores cubic for the rocket magazine. We had two hundred SAMs in the magazine and another two hundred in the armory. One chain gun ammo locker sat above the steering gearbox and the other took up a wall in the engine bay. The ammo cans of linked rounds were lined up nicely and a newly-installed cage would keep them from trying to polka across the deck in high seas. They'd done a fine job adding the deck bracing fore and aft. It looked like original equipment.

Two stingers had been moved to the lifeboat and two moved to the motor launch. There were four stingers now in the top deck "captain's locker" along with my deck chair. They had to move 'em to make room for all the Starstreaks!

The launchers each had eight missiles ready to fire and twelve more in automatic reloading racks.

The miniguns were configured for a slower rate of fire--of just--two hundred forty rounds per minute, well below the rate that produced the chainsaw "RRRRRIIIIPPP" noise like tearing canvas that made them--famous--. They could fire all day at that rate, and with their thousand round magazines, they damned near COULD fire all day. The CIC was programmed for burst fire. Three second bursts would fire roughly twelve rounds per burst at two-hundred forty rounds per minute:--four per second.