by Rob Buckman
“Oh right, thanks for the vote of confidence, Chief.” From anyone else, Mike would have taken that for a criticism, but from what he knew of Conner, it was more of a joke than anything else.
“It also looks to me as if someone is trying to revive a long forgotten project.”
“That’s the conclusion I came to, but what?”
“That’s hard to say right now, sir.”
“There is no ship under construction, no engines, no weapons, and just about nothing else except a few rusting hull on the slips.”
“True, sir, but everything comes to he who waits.” Mike cocked an eyebrow at him.
“That’s what the strange man at Admiralty Supply said.”
“Who was he?”
“Some civilian in charge of requisition, purchasing and supply. I was told to call him, and that was his answer to my question about the this job.”
“Then I’d say take his advice.”
“And what am I supposed to do in the mean time, twiddle my thumbs?”
“First, sir, we get to the yard Superintendent to put a full crew on refurbishing your office.”
“Already had one dance with her, God! She reminds me of that woman in a Wagnerian Opera, big, loud, and obnoxious.”
“So, if shouting won’t work, charm the pants off her.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“If you can tame that little vixen Lady, what was her name, oh yes, Lady Ann, this one should be a breeze.” Mike looked stunned for a moment.
Conner obviously knew more about what went on between him and the Lady Ann than he realized. Then he roared with laughter, bringing several thumps on the ceiling and floor, as the tenants above and below pounded on their respective surfaced. He calmed down, and tried not to laugh again at the expression on the Chief’s face.
“Conner, you don’t know the half of it. I had to put the little vixen across my lap and spank the living daylights out of her.” He chuckled again. “I just can’t see myself doing that to the Yard Super, I probably end up getting spanked myself.” This time it was Conner’s turn to laugh, bringing the resulting thumping.
“Stop pounding on the bloody floor and ceiling and go to sleep, both of you!” He roared in his best parade ground voice. The thumping stopped and silence descended again.
“Navy types obviously, and that should take care of further interruption.” Mike observed. He shook his head to try to get the ringing sound from Conner’s shout out of his ears.
“So, you will have to do the verbal equivalent of it, sir.”
“Hummm, all right,” he grinning, looking skeptical, “I’ll work on the yard Super, what next. We still need office equipment and god knows what else.”
“I’ll bet you a month's pay she has enough material around that yard to build a battleship.” Conner Blake sent the night, sleeping on the couch, but he was the first one up and had coffee ready before Mike even opened a bloodshot eye.
“Morning, sir, coffee ready.” Mike growled like a grumpy bear coming out of hibernation, looking at the Chief's smiling face suspiciously. He accepted the steaming hot cup, sipping the reviving brew.
“How come you are looking so damn chipper this morning?”
“Because I didn’t stay up till five o’clock in the morning reading, sir.”
“Huh, I didn’t stay up all night reading, I was working on something.” He had, he was working on H.M.S. KISS again, for the first time in a long while.
“Oh, and what might that be, sir.”
“Oh nothing, just a ship I’m designing. Know anything about engineering, Chief?”
“No, sir, I don’t need to, I’m just a Chief Petty Officer, thanks to you. I’ll leave all that engineering stuff to others.” He chuckled and opened the wardrobe and pulled out Mike’s number two dress uniform.
“By the way, sir. I took the liberty of moving into one of the spare bedrooms.”
“Good, that will give us time to get to know one another.” He grinned.
Braving the elements, they made their way to the yard thought rain mixed with snow, having to stop several times to clear the accumulated ice from the windscreen. An hour later they pulled up in front of the yard Super’s office just as she was entering, following her into her office. Mike placed a large flask of coffee in a self-heating container and a box of donuts on her desk as she sat down.
“What’s this Leftenant.” She asked suspiciously, eyeing the two items on her desk.
“Thought you might like some hot coffee and donuts to start your day off right, that’s all.” He answered, blowing smoky breath into cold hands.
“Heat up to 78 degrees.” She yelled at the wall. A moment later, the AC unit began pumping warm air into the room. “Sorry for shouting, the AC sensor is a bit hard of hearing.” The heavyset woman looked at him a moment, then poured herself a mug of coffee. She ran an eye over the selection of donut, and Mike could see her mouth watering.
“I shouldn’t, you know, I have to watch my weight.” Conner hid a smile behind his hand, and Mike managed to keep a blank face.
“I won’t tell, if you won’t.” He smiled, thinking that a whole hover truck of donuts would make much difference to her weight.
“So, what can I do for you, Leftenant, now that I’ve accepted your bribe.” She looked at him, her eyes twinkling.
“Bride! Me! I wouldn’t dream of trying to bribe the Superintendent of His Majesties Naval shipyard.”
“In a pig’s eye you wouldn’t, so tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you if I can give it to you.”
“Oh, nothing much,” he said, looking at the name plate on her desk, “may I call you Cynthia?”
“Call me anything you want as long as it's polite.” She smiled.
“Cynthia, I just need a full crew to start work on refurbishing my office.” Her booming laughter filled the room before he’d even finished speaking.
“You don’t want much for a mug of coffee and a few donuts, do you.” Her body shook with mirth. “Which office is it, and what’s your claim to fame?”
“It's the naval inspector’s office, and I’m the new on site naval inspector.” He answered, pulling his orders out and passing them to her. Cynthia looked at them a moment with a critical eye before placing them on her desk. Her large frame still quaking with mirth.
“Oh my lord, did they drop you into a shithole job!” Mike had the grace to blush.
“Yes, my sentiments exactly.”
“But what’s this about completing,” She looked at his orders again, “...in additional, you will complete all necessary work on any outstanding Naval vessel currently under this command and prepare the said vessels for space trials...”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“This is a repair yard, not a bloody ship building yard. Hasn’t been for a number of years now.” Her brow creased into a frown. Then her eyes narrow and her face took on a thoughtful look. “I wonder!” She muttered.
“What?” Mike and Conner said in unison.
“It might be nothing, but when I was a girl and just starting out here, one of the jobs I was working on...” Her chair creaked as she swiveled it around and hit her keyboard. Well, I’ll be damned, it’s still here.”
“What is?”
“Hull number 696.”
“And that is?”
“Probably nothing but a pile of rust by now.”
“How come?” Conner asked.
“As I said, I worked on her when I just started here, and that was... well, let’s just say, a long time ago and leave it at that, shall we.” She smiled.
“What sort of ship was she?” Was Mike’s question.
“That’s hard to say, as it was kept secret.”
“But, you must have some idea how big she was.”
“Oh yes, but nothing that fitted in with the then or current specifications.” Both looked blank as Cynthia helped herself to another donut. “She was way too big for a destroyer and too small to be a Crui
ser, how that.”
“Something in between then.”
“Yes, I’d guess at a new class of warship, but when you have to ask whoever designed her.”
“Doubt he or she is still alive now.”
“I know this, whatever she is, she’s nothing but a rust bucket now and will probably have to be rebuilt from scratch.” She placed a finger again her lips, brushing sugar away, looking pensive, as if deep in thought, munching another donut.
“Yes, I agree, but how soon could you start work on her?” That brought another laugh from the yard Superintendent.
“Do you have any idea how many ships I have in here for refit, refurbishing, up-grading, or repairing?” She sat back and looked at him, her chair creaking ominously. Whatever she was thinking about pushed to the back of her mind for the moment.
“Not really, no.” Mike looked at Conner for help, getting a shrug in return.
“I shouldn’t tell you, you’d probably faint. I have Fleet Admirals, Admirals, Rear and front Admirals, Captains, Commodores, Commander, Leftenant Commander and Leftenant all screaming at me over the comm to get their particular ship ready before the other.” She sat forward in her worn chair, and Mike heard it groan in protest.
“Ouch! That bad, huh?”
“Yes, ouch is right, but do you also know something?” She paused, then smiled.
“No, what?”
“Not one of those aforementioned officers thought to come here in person and ask me nicely, nor thoughtful enough to bring donuts and coffee for a poor hard working girl like me.” She smiled at him and pushed the box over.
“Does that mean I get a crew?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “I’m just a natural born sucker for a man in uniform.” Her eye twinkled and her warm laughter filled the office. “Especially if he comes in with donuts and coffee.” They munched donuts and sipped coffee for a while as Cynthia made some calls.
As they left, Conner smiled, looking pleased with himself, but just raised an eyebrow when Mike gave him a questioning look. Privately, the meeting confirmed Conner’s estimation of Mike, yet he couldn’t explain it. Somehow, someway this young man had the innate ability to do the right thing at the right time. Any other officer, no matter what rank who’d walked in and asked for what he just had, donuts or no donuts, Cynthia would have tossed them out on their ear and told them to get in line. So what was it? On the surface, he seemed nothing more than a brash young officer, full of piss and vinegar, as they say, yet, it went deeper than that. In one way, Mike was full of self-doubt, yet on the other hand, he couldn’t see the effect his personality had on people, small things that in themselves didn’t mean much. His natural flair for command, his compassion, tolerance, and respect of all, no matter what his rank had its effect. He shrugged off the thought. Given time, he’d work it out.
They spend the rest of the day chasing down one dead end lead after the other, looking for the original engines and weapons for the mystery vessel to no avail. They had long since gone to other ships, but Cynthia was as good as her word, and at dawn the following morning, she arrived at the office with a full crew. As they started work on his office, Mike and Conner followed her through the yard and out into the salt marshes. At one time this place was full of slips building ship for the Royal Navy, as it had done for hundreds of years. Now the marsh had reclaimed its own, and except for an overgrown roadway, there was little to see of the construction yards. Mike was glad he was following Cynthia, otherwise he never would have found the slipway.
“So this is your new command.” She stood at the head of the slip with a cold, wet wind blowing her hair and jacket around, gratefully accepted the flagon of coffee Mike handed her.
“Yes, you know her?”
“Oh yes, I’ll say, I remember working on her when I was a crew Chief. We worked like the devil to get her finished, then before we knew it, someone pulled the plug and scrapped the project.”
“You have any idea why or who?”
“You’ve got me, whoever came up with the idea was a genius, but I guess just a little bit too ahead of their time.”
“How so.” Cynthia looked at him to see if he was pulling her legs, but the expression on his face said no.
“You know,” she turned back to look at the hull on the slipway, “the anti-gravity field effect lifts over a broad area.” Mike and Conner nodded.
“This in turn is spread out to the rest of the hull not equipment with the AG plates through the hull’s main frame, something like a group of hands pushing at different point at the same time.”
“Yes, I understand that, and that the lift isn’t uniform over the whole hull.”
“Right, and in a hard turn, this puts tremendous stress on the hull members, inertia being what it is, and despite the inertial compensators.”
“Yes, side strain.”
“Right. If you exceed the stress level you get hull buckling and plate separation.”
“That’s why the helm control is preset to the amount of G stress you can place on the hull.” Conner added, seeing Cynthia nodded in agreement.
“But what if you could double or triple the stress level, what then?”
“You are able to turn a lot faster and tighter without damaging the hull.” Mike supplied the obvious answer.
“Exactly, and that’s what this ship was supposed to do. These cobalt-iridium-boron composite main frames wouldn’t look out of place on a Battleship.”
“I see.” He did see, as clear as day. How much faster they could turn was an unknown, and something they’d have to find out. Mike remembered the lecture at the Naval Academy.
“Do you know, that over half of the repairs I do is to ship that tried to turn hard and fast?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Not many people do.”
“Can you save her?”
“Let take a walk and have a look.” For two hours, they walked around the hull, with three other people, all men. They poked and prodded, muttering between themselves, some shaking their heads with Doctor’s over a sick patient.
These were the crew chiefs responsible for various structural works, hull members, inner hull, and outer hull, ship's systems, weapons and so on. In the end, they all came to the same dismal conclusion that all the hull plates would have to come off again and scrapped, as time and the elements had taken their toll. The good news was the main frame was in perfect condition.
“Thank god for that.”
“As I said,” Cynthia slapped a frame member, “these wouldn’t look out of place on a Battleship and made of anti-corrosion materials to boot. But we have a problem.”
“What’s that?” Mike felt his heart drop.
“Without a set of working specification and drawings, I’m dead in the water.”
“Specs?”
“Yes. I checked, and the original specification for this ship have long since been deleted from the mainframe.”
“Naval archives?”
“Checked that, no luck there either. It’s as if this ship never even existed.
“So what can we do. I’ll take what you can get to work right now.”
“No, Mike,” Cynthia looked at him, her face dead serious, “if we are going to do this again, we do it right or not at all.” She looked round at the crew chiefs. “Right?”
“Yes, Boss.” They grinned back at her. They knew when they could cut corners and get away with it, knowing she’d turn a blind eye if need be. But, not on this one, if she said she wanted it done right that’s what she meant.
“The good thing about taking those plates off is, that we won’t have to cut to fit and paint to match. Besides, the newer armor hull plates are a lot tougher than the old ones.”
“Oh!”
“Or I should say, the ones we are going to put on her will be.” She winked at him and smiled. “The best we can do at the moment, is to clean up the slip, and right the hull on the ways.” She pursed her lips.
“Removing the old hull plate
s is no problem, so, until you can get me a new set of specification that will keep us busy.” As she spoke a convoy of vehicles came over a slight rise, disgorging men and women who immediately began unloading ladders and scaffolding. It didn’t take long for the crew chiefs to get them sorted out, and soon the place became a beehive of activity as more men and equipment arrived. The yard crew swarmed over her and within an hour, the hammering and shrill whine of plasma cutter filled the air. This upset the seabirds in the surrounding salt marshes no end, and they rose into the air, screaming in protest, adding a few more white splashes to the hull.