by Chris Hechtl
Commodore Horatio Logan admired his last stop before his departure from the capital ship line. He wasn't looking forward to getting back to his office and the mountains of paperwork waiting there... nor the scowling yeoman whose job was to keep him on task.
He couldn't help but grin slightly like an errant boy playing hookey. Okay, maybe a few more minutes he thought as he looked over to Commander Hsu Tong. Tong was a good slip supervisor and construction manager. He had to be, otherwise he would have never risen through the ranks to his present position, Horatio thought.
And like the Commodore, the Commander liked to get his hands dirty. One of the things that endeared him to the Commodore. But he was also busy, and it seemed engaged with a thorny problem. As tempting as it was to sit in and listen or be helpful, Horatio restrained himself and instead did a bit of wool gathering and checking out the Navy's newest toy.
His visits to the slips helped his morale. It made him feel like all the paperwork he was drowning in was worth the sacrifice of his true love, getting his hands dirty. He did his best to check on the progress of each ship at least once or twice a week, schedule permitting. Lately he'd lost more and more of his time to the evil yeoman so he'd been forced to settle into checking on those almost ready to launch. He'd felt a bit guilty, but he understood he couldn't be everywhere. Besides, when he did get into the ship block construction areas he invariably forgot all sense of time. Since he had an appointment he couldn't avoid, he had to at least try to pretend to try to keep his schedule in mind.
He smiled briefly at the thought as his eyes covetously caressed the massive ship in front of him. Here and there he could still see work crews doing a spot of last minute work, but to his eyes she was worthy of the fresh smart paint robots were touching up... and the hull markings someone was working on programming into either side of the flanks just behind the bow as tradition dictated.
The work on Argus, their first Fleet Carrier was finishing up he judged. On budget and on schedule. Slightly ahead he noted with a mental check. In a day or so she would leave her building slip for the last time and head over to the fitting slips. They only had a few pieces left in her grand blocks to connect and some trouble spots to run down. Teams of robots and suited figures could be seen working on all sides of her hull. Occasionally he could see the spark and flare of welds going on as the tacked together outer hull received it's finished welds.
As a Fleet Carrier, Argus would be the largest carrier in their inventory to date, surpassing even Spirit of America. Take that Vestri, Horatio thought with pride. Pyrax was turning into a carrier yard much to the amusement of people like himself... and the annoyance of the battle fleet types that populated the rest of the Navy.
He didn't care, a ship was a ship. Every one of them was needed. It made sense to produce carriers considering the force mix they were up against. A carrier with the right compliment and armament could take down multiple ships well outside her class under the right circumstances. At the least they could push the sensor envelope of a fleet out... and do attritional damage to an enemy task force or fleet.
Their sensor coverage and flexibility allowed them to fill a lot of roles. And one carrier task force could cover an entire star system if properly employed. The crew of Spirit of America could attest to that.
Argus was massive, a 3 kilometer long, 700 meter wide, 400 meter wide tall blocky rectangle with odd shapes sticking out from her keel, dorsal, and flanks. 2 of the offset towers on her dorsal midships were her Flying Bridge and Primary Flight Ops. The one on her keel was her back up Prifly.
She had multiple flight decks, 1 on each face to allow her compliment to come on and off quickly. The dorsal and keel decks were complimented by large flat stretches of hull to aid landing and launches. Long catapult tracks cut the deck like seems in the hull. The forward facing bays served as 2 of her 3 primary flight decks. The bow flight deck had clusters of sensors and grav emitters around it. She had 1 pass through flight deck in her flank, something considered a liability in her design by the ship architects since it had called for massive structural engineering to redirect forces around the open bay.
There was also a lot of misgivings about the Broadway in the ship's interior, and the large elevators and maintenance bays. Having massive locks to connect Broadway to each of the bays was an engineering hassle in a half. He'd already read a few memos about the hatches getting stuck by debris. He didn't envy the crew when it came time to keep them in working order.
On either side of the midships bay opening her flanks were studded with hexagonal hatches for the small interceptors to launch on a moment's notice without having to go through the carrier's normal flight deck.
Near her stern there were 6 nacelles with engine pods to allow her sublight propulsion. The 2 on the flanks were the largest, with double the number of pods as those on tucked in between on her dorsal and keel stern.
Here and there he could see small point defense phaser turrets and sensor pods, along with half egg shaped grav pods. The defense turrets were a sop to the crew. They would serve as a last ditch effort to protect the ship from incoming fire but could only interdict some of it. Energy weapons were their Achilles’s heel. Hopefully the shields were pretty powerful with redundant systems he mused. And plenty of heat sinks, he thought, trying to wrestle the thought train aside with difficulty.
A light carrier like Illustrious had a compliment of 120 craft. That was, if she didn't have to have guests on board. The compliment was usually mixed in squadrons, fighters, interceptors, bombers, and support craft, though a carrier's compliment could be tailored to a specific mission if necessary. He remembered reading carriers that had been outfitted with shuttles to evacuate people during the Xeno war. It had been an appalling wasted use of a warship since even with a compliment of sky whale shuttles they wouldn't have made much of a dent in a population.
A straight carrier like Spirit of America had a compliment of 240 craft. An assault carrier, a heavily armored vessel they weren't building could handle 300 craft but was slow on the helm and the same size as a Fleet Carrier which Argus was.
Argus would have a balanced wing of 360 craft when she was fully loaded. Each squadron was made up of 8 to 12 craft. The general use fighters would hold the most slots since they were multi-role. Most likely there would be a dozen squadrons of GP craft. Call it 144 total. Then another 6 squadrons of interceptor craft for another 72. The same number of squadrons of bombers, and 8 squadrons of 8 support craft like tankers, Eyes craft, SAR shuttles, and lighters.
If he remembered correctly each ship would carry about a dozen spare craft to fill in if a bird was down checked... a couple of those would be reserved for personal use by the CAG as well.
At least for the time being the carrier community was keeping it simple, he thought. They weren't pushing for stealth fighters or other craft. Nor specialists like recon fighters, the eyes craft did that role much better than a fighter even if it wasn't as fast and had a much larger crew on board.
Most likely somewhere at some time they'd fit in weapon drones of various sorts. At least he hoped so.
He hadn't much experience with the carrier side of the fleet, so every exposure to them brought something new to his education. Like the various rooms in Prifly and the double bridge assemblies. One wasn't just a CIC with the other being a maneuvering bridge.
Apparently the ship ran as almost two independent entities, with the bridge crew and ship crew running the ship while the pilots and support staff running the space craft. They had to coordinate of course, but... he shook his head.
There was something to be said about a man couldn't have two masters. And that there shouldn't be two captains on one ship he mused. But it wasn't his problem. Besides, it had worked for ages, so obviously they knew how to get along.
It took an entire team to run a plane, not just the pilot. The pilot, sometimes a copilot and specialist or 2 depending on the class of the craft. Each plane had a plane captain, a noncom who was in
charge of the craft's maintenance, loading, fuel, and care. Then there were specialists who stepped in to handle certain tasks like avionics repair, software, munitions, that sort of thing. Somewhere in all that the dumb A.I. had to fit in there he was sure.
No wonder a carrier had a large compliment, even the CEV's had a lot of manpower tied up in them he thought. And no wonder why they ran through so much fuel, parts, and munitions. The extra personnel tied up into each bird explained why the CEV's were having so much fits with the extra compliment they had on board. And why they sucked the logistics down on any tender that came along side them.
He envied their machine shops, now that he'd had a chance to look them over. He'd seen plenty in his day, but the capital ships he'd been on didn't have those! A plane could be torn down to the frame and rebuilt with them. He looked around the compartment with the robot remote as he waited. He felt a tug as another user tapped on it. He relinquished control and got back to the here and now.
He wondered as he patiently waited for commander Tong to finish up a conversation if the shipyard in Bek was producing carriers on the level of America and Argus. Hopefully. Hopefully the carriers would be the easiest to convert to starships too. Or, if they couldn't be converted, hopefully they'd serve as platforms to train the men and women who would serve on the starships to come he reminded himself.
Horatio rode as a guest in a remote flying along the ship's flank, then when it turned into a bay he jumped from it to another bot as it went down Broadway. The remote stayed near the center of the massive passage. Like the flight II CEV's, both the floor and ceiling were being used to move traffic in an efficient manner, though it seemed odd to have the crew on the ceiling upside down to those on the floor. He shook his head and flipped his feed into another remote, but it went up to the dorsal deck so he pulled out of the feed and then back into an external remote once more.
A carrier he knew was a projection of force, either used for offense or defense. The carrier itself was virtually defenseless, one of the reasons he'd always disdained flying on one. But he'd taken Junior's advice and pushed through with the Kittyhawk class and he was glad now that he had. The CEV's had come in handy and had proven themselves.
But the war was getting serious and far more dangerous. The CEV's lacked the punch to handle a fleet engagement, hence the need for the larger carriers like America and Argus. They would need fleet trains and escorts to look after them he knew, but they were going to do a lot to shift the balance in the reborn Federation's favor.
At least, he hoped so. The ships and crews had a lot to prove he mused.
“Sorry about that sir,” Hsu said as he came over to the Commodore.
“No problem. I was touring the ship remotely,” Horatio said as he unjacked. “Got it covered?”
“I think so. I'll check in an hour or so to be sure of course,” Hsu replied with a confident shrug.
Horatio sized up his confidence and then nodded slowly. “It's always the fiddly bits that slow a project up. Getting the bugs out, the fine tuning... that sort of thing,” Horatio said, shaking his head.
“Yes sir,” Hsu replied dutifully. He was the project manager in charge of the ship, the first of her class. He was writing the book on how to build the ship class. Fortunately he'd just come off work on the light carrier line and was organized enough to keep up with the demand despite the need for so many assistants, both organic and electronic. “I'd just as soon see the back side of her sir.”
“And get started on the next project?” Horatio teased, shooting the Hsu an amused look.
“Oh, we're already on our way with Righteous Swarm sir. We're going to need the slip in another day or so,” Hsu admitted. “I don't want to stall her if Argus runs into a problem here,” he said.
Horatio nodded. Such things sometimes happened but it was a manager's job to keep it from happening as much as possible. Back ups tended to stall an entire production line with negative consequences for all involved.
“So much for shifting some of your people over to help finish Collective Destiny,” the Commodore teased. Collective Destiny was Argus's sister ship currently nearing completion in a neighboring building slip. Hsu shot him a horrified look. “What? Something I said?”
“Sir, you know damn well C'll'n'kk doesn't play nice with others. Every time I let her borrow something, or in this case someone, she doesn't return them! I have to beg or steal it back!”
Horatio chuckled. “I was planning on heading over there next if I've got the time. I'll tell her you said that,” he teased wickedly.
“You would,” Hsu said in mock disgust as he shook a fist at his boss. “Frack, she'll be unbearable,” he said, shaking his head as he let his fist drop to his side. “And she's bad enough as it is.”
“Yeah yeah,” Horatio said, waving such considerations off. “Something tells me she's not going to be too much of a pain in the ass. Didn't I hear through the grapevine that the two of you had some sort of bet going on?” he asked slyly. Betting between the slips was common these days he thought. There were 2 major shipyard slips in the Pyrax yard, and each was filled with a Fleet Carrier at the moment. Both groups had pulled out all the stops to get their ship out of the dock and into the hands of the fitting yard first.
But they damn well knew they had to do it right or their crappy work would come back to haunt them. No cutting corners, no dangerous overlooked steps or loose ends. Get it right the first time or there would be hell to pay. Admiral Subert and Horatio had made certain they'd all known that. And they'd kept the inspection teams going to drive home the point.
“Why do you ask sir?” Hsu asked cautiously.
Horatio snorted. He noted there was no evasion in the question, just a stall tactic. Typical of Hsu. He liked to keep his tricks close to the vest. “Oh, just wondering what you promised your people if you won. Beyond bragging rights of course.”
“As it happens,” Hsu swelled with mock dignity. “An open bar tap at O'shay's was on the line. I... might have let that slip to a supervisor or two. I don't know how it got around to the rank and file though,” he said virtuously.
“Heavy and expensive with this crew... wow,” Horatio said, shaking his head. “High stakes indeed knowing some of the hollow legs here,” he said. Hsu grinned impishly. “She's going to regret not cracking the whip harder,” he said thoughtfully.
“To be honest she did the best she could given the circumstances. I spotted her three days since we had that much of a lead on her.”
“Generous of you,” Horatio said with a grin. “Since by that time your people had hit their stride and knew what they were doing and she was just starting out,” he said. “And I think she didn't poach as many people from you as she'd liked to have. You had a lot more experienced people, given they've all had a hand in building smaller carriers.”
Hsu spread his hands in supplication. “Not my fault sir. She didn't get all green horns. We just have different ways of doing the same job I think.” He didn't want to admit that he'd almost let the bug talk him into doubling down with a barbeque. He'd been tempted, but a few hiccups had made him think twice. He was now glad he'd bowed out, even if she'd ribbed him a bit about it.
Horatio snorted. “Well, don't be too surprised when she sends her spies around to figure out how many corners you are cutting so she can replicate it. And she'll want to double down,” he said.
It was Hsu's turn to grin. His eyes twinkled. “She's welcome to try sir, but I know we'll still kick her ass. I've got a good crew.”
“I see that,” Horatio said with a nod.
He didn't have much long to wait before the Commander cleared his throat. “Um, sir, Argus will be ready to fly in two days right? I mean, at least go out on builders trials?” he asked plaintively. “I've got the timing down to the minute...” he paused when Horatio's chuckles interrupted him. “What? What's so funny sir?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Horatio said, waving the other man off. “So, we're waiting on her shi
pment of fighters and other craft to fill out her compliment I understand. The powers that be are polling the fortresses and other ships for veteran pilots to fill in her upper ranks, but they are all starting with new ships.”
Hsu grimaced. “That means they'll have to break them in,” he mused. After a moment of thinking that sort of problem over he shrugged. “Hell, not my problem.”
“Well, it will be someones. The shipment is arriving on the next scheduled convoy I believe. Which,” Horatio frowned as he checked his implants. “Should be jumping in by the end of this shift. So, we'll see them in three days. Just in time for her launch I think.”
“A day or so after. She'll be in the fitting slip by then,” Hsu replied. “Not my problem,” he said with another smile.
“Right. And neither is finding her crew. And her skipper. I'm still working on that,” Horatio admitted.
“Wait, I thought that was Bupers problem?” Hsu asked.
“It is. But I dabble,” Horatio admitted. He had settled on one candidate after thinking about the options. He'd settled on Junior Valdez for a variety of reasons. Getting it past Bupers shouldn't be a problem he thought. Selling it to both Junior and Subert though.... He decided Junior would be easier.
“Meddling you mean,” Hsu snorted, bringing him back into the conversation again. “Be careful boss, they might want you over there,” he said, shaking a finger at Horatio.
“Perish the thought,” Horatio retorted.
“Anything about our Bek friends?” Hsu asked, clearly anxious.
Horatio shrugged. “They are still being debriefed by the powers that be I believe. We'll see them eventually. I'll give them a tour.”
“You would just to get out of doing paperwork,” Hsu replied in amusement. “You know most people have aides and such for niggling things like that boss,” he said.
Horatio snorted. “Yeah, but as you said, I get to get out and look around,” he said as his implants pinged.