The Flight Operations Deck was still being configured, a task that Lieutenant Commander Stephanie Vega took upon herself. She wanted to know everything about the operation of the ship, and was studying at a break neck pace. As one of the people in charge of the Flight Operations Deck, where fighters and other ships from the Revenge would be directed, she would be one of the top experts on its operation when it was finished. The new opportunities and workload that came with being Jake’s First Officer seemed to ignite something in her, and he couldn’t wait until he could see what she could do as a commander on his ship.
He was sitting on the bridge, running through the status of their new thrusters when he got the call he was expecting. “Admiral McPatrick for you sir, on secure laser link,” Liara announced.
“I’ll take it in my quarters, you have command Minh-Chu,” he said.
Minh-Chu got up from one of the consoles in front of him that he’d rigged for temporary flight operations and took the command seat. “Not much going on with everything strapped up in our bays anyway.”
Jake passed from the bridge, across one of the main corridors where two heavily armoured guards saluted him, and into the Officer’s quarters. A few more steps, and he was in his quarters. They were furnished with a half table against one wall with cupboards above, a bench that served as more storage space against one side, his double bed, which he’d already come to call his ‘barely double’ bed, double locker between the door and the table against the wall, and a soft easy chair. He pulled the easy chair a few centimetres closer to the table and gave up on trying to get it right in front of the middle, settling for slightly off-centre. “Display holographic data there,” he pointed to the table.
He opened the cupboard door over his bed and retrieved a cup.
“Jake,” Oz said. “Congratulations.”
Captain Valent filled his cup with a thick brown nutrient drink. The mini-kitchen unit displayed it as a Chocolate Nutriment Beverage, and offered it in hot or cold temperatures. He tasted it and immediately wondered if it would be better hot. “Thank you,” he said. “But I think there may be something wrong with my mini-kitchen. The drink mixer says this is supposed to taste like chocolate, but all I’m getting is chalk. Forma and chalk.” He took another sip anyway. The last few days had run him ragged, he could use something fortifying.
“So, you know what this is about,” Oz said. “You got Agameg, Finn, and Lieutenant Commander Erron. Not to mention, Governor Anderson hand picked your new medical staff.”
“You mean those four bots and three medical technicians?” Jake said, sitting in the easy chair. It was just wide enough, if the arms were any closer together, they’d pinch his hips too much.
“Hey, picked by the Governor, they’ve gotta be something special,” Oz replied. “But back to your two Chief Engineers and Lieutenant Commander Erron.”
“You saw the enlistment files. One maintains the ship and keeps operations running smoothly, the other monitors and continues to develop the systems. Very different jobs.”
“Yeah, but Agameg could continue developing your systems from the Triton.”
“That doesn’t make sense from where I’m sitting,” Jake objected with a wince that was mostly from braving another gulp of his nutrient drink. “What if something goes wrong? Developing new tech can be dangerous. We both know the Triton is the ship we can’t afford to lose.”
“All right, but Lieutenant Commander Erron? Liara is probably the top communications and legal officer in the fleet,” Oz said. “The Triton will be taking the lead in diplomacy, we need her here.”
Jake smirked at the small hologram of Oz on the table. “Should I tell her your first tactic in negotiating to get her back was to understate her talents? We both know the only reason she’s a Lieutenant Commander is because she’s still under Order Agent watch. As soon as we’re sure she’s not spying for the other side, she gets Commander rank. She can run hacks and get through information faster than anyone I’ve seen, and she doesn’t have problems running a brain-bud. Even with a direct connection to the ship, she doesn’t show any signs of data addiction disorder, hell, she doesn’t even seem mildly distracted.”
“Kadri,” Oz said. “You have your own genius in communications, she’s just as amazing as Liara.”
“She’s wasted on communications. Kadri doesn’t have the legal training, and she has a science background. On the Warlord she was playing double duty – communications and scanning officer – but on the Revenge, there’s no way I could stretch her. I need her as our eyes, and I need Liara as our ears. Don’t worry, I’ll pair ensigns with them so new communication and scanning officers will be in training. Besides, you have three lawyers aboard the Triton, and I hear you’ve got five new scanning officers in training, all with experience. I read staff updates too.”
“Where you find the time, I’ll never know,” Oz replied.
“What can I say? I don’t miss my direct connection with the ship because I like reading,” Jake replied. “One of the many things I’m discovering about myself on this journey of self-rediscovery. I’m afraid you’ll have to do with the great big crew you’ve got over there.”
“I could pull rank,” Oz said.
“I’ll make you look bad,” Jake said nonchalantly. “Everyone will know Admiral McPatrick always has to have the bigger pile. Whether it’s getting the nicer ship, or the bigger space superiority wing, or the most well known people, they’ll know you just have to have the nicer toys and that’s all there is to it.”
“You wouldn’t,” Oz replied.
“You outrank me now, squarely, so the only thing I could do is get some scuttlebutt going about overcompensation.”
“You’re going to go on every acquisition run we have on this trip,” Oz said, shaking his head. “There’s no winning at the bargaining table with you.”
“I’ve been doing it a long time,” Jake said, happy that his friend was dropping it. “You let me pick my crew, so I did. Besides, you have people over there that were trained by Agameg and that shiny artificial intelligence you have running that ship. I still want a copy.”
“We’ll go into that later,” Oz said. “For now, I’m wondering what we’re going to do about the ships the British Alliance assigned to us. I’ve already sent a message telling them that they’re no longer necessary. They said we should be grateful to have them along.”
“I was wondering why you were calling on a secure connection,” Jake said.
“No point in trusting them with anything when they’re watching us like we’re the lesser experienced, lesser armed on this excursion. They scan us every three minutes to the second, from bow to stern, and I received a brief introduction from each Captain, no more. When I requested a strategy meeting and orientation session for our command staff with them, they put me on the schedule for day after tomorrow. I wouldn’t mind being put in my place if they could pull their weight.”
Jake couldn’t help but smile a little. The idea of the British Alliance captains putting the Triton and the Revenge commanders in their place was more than a little amusing. “They pack a third the firepower and a quarter of the shielding as the Revenge. They’re going to have trouble keeping up with our thrust power outside of a wormhole,” Jake said. “Those ships are old, even by our standards.”
“I know we could learn a thing or two from the Captains aboard those ships,” Oz said. “But technically, they’re support at best.”
“And the Captains think they’re chaperones, and bad ones,” Jake said. “I should have paid more attention, looked more closely at the ships the British were sending with us.”
“Hey, as part of a defensive screen around Tamber, they’re great, those commanders have service jackets that I could roll out the door, but those ships?”
“Hey,” Jake said, putting the mug down. “They’ve got really thick armour.”
“If that were enough,” Oz replied. “Even if they had the power and speed, they don’t have dimensio
n drives, and I’m not comfortable showing them the technology. When we get that working, the game changes, but not if we have three millstones around our necks slowing us down.”
“Agreed. It’s too soon to share the technology,” Jake said. “Everyone in the known galaxy is going to be after these if we can get them working.”
“Mine’s going to be ready to go in eight hours or less, I have an Ayan in engineering. She tells me the corrections from Lorander will be easy to implement using technology we already have.”
“Show off,” Jake said. “I’ll be ready sometime after oh nine hundred tomorrow. I can’t get it done any faster. Checks on the regular systems are going to run through the night.”
“Considering the time we’re going to save in transit, I don’t think a few hours are going to make a difference. So, about these British ships,” Oz said. “If I exercise my rights as Admiral of the Triton Fleet and order them back to assist with defence, you would support me?”
“Best choice you’ve made all day,” Jake replied.
“So it’s the Triton and the Revenge. Are we opening a wormhole, or are you doing the honours?”
“Our wormhole generator just got a full overhaul, and all our computers just got replaced, we’ve got to test those systems,” he said with a shrug.
“Good idea. You start plotting, I’ll tell the British to bugger off,” Oz said.
“Oh, and tell Ayan I can’t wait for her to be back aboard,” Jake said
“Maybe I should have tried trading her.”
“Tell her she’s the horse in a horse trade,” Jake said with a laugh. “I dare you.”
“Excellent point,” Oz replied.
“Besides, she transfers back as soon as she’s finished there,” Jake said. “I get the feeling she’ll stick around for a while too.”
“Until she gets tired of the food and the trademark hard rock Regent Galactic mattresses.” The hologram blinked off and Jake picked up his mug. For a moment he thought he may have sloshed a bit over the side, but he discovered that it was too viscous to easily spill. “That can’t be right.” He muttered as he left his quarters, handed his mug to a Crewman’s Mate in white and continued on to the bridge. Minh-Chu was out of his seat in time for him to sit down without breaking his stride. “Told you I’d be able to keep all three crewmembers,” he told him.
“No,” Minh-Chu said. “How?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Jake replied. “Helm, set best course wormhole for the Iron Head nebula, hard jump, quarter distance. Wide enough for the Triton to follow alongside.”
“You mean, high compression?” Minh-Chu whispered, looking up front where Ashley was running the helm.
“She knows, watch,” Jake said, confident in Ashley’s knowledge and abilities.
“Yeah, but I don’t know,” Minh-Chu whispered. “What is a ‘hard jump?’”
“It’s a wormhole that crosses great distance in as short a space as our generator can manage without giving much care for how gradual the threshold changes space.”
“Oh, so like taking a staircase five steps at a time on that first step,” Liara said from communications.
“Good analogy,” Jake replied.
“Okay, so I knew what that was,” Minh-Chu said. “I just didn’t know there was a term for it.”
“It’s in the new Fleet manual,” Jake whispered. “We have a lot of reading to do over the next few days.”
“You mean, you haven’t finished reading it either?” Minh-Chu asked quietly.
“I think the only people who’ve finished reading it are our Communications Officer and my First Officer.”
“You mean, Executive Officer,” Minh-Chu said. “So many things are changing, glad I have my fighter squadrons. The squadron may be changing, but the rules are the same.”
“Yes, that’s because you were smart enough to start your fighter wing using real military regulations and organization,” Jake said. “I should have taken your lead on that one with the Warlord.”
“Do you want me to forward our helm data to the Triton and the British Alliance ships?” Liara asked.
“Just the Triton, the rest aren’t coming,” Jake replied.
“No?” asked Finn from his right.
“Why?” asked Agameg, standing beside him.
“When you look at their ship specifications, now that they’ve been released to us, you’ll know why. Helm, how long until that wormhole opens?” Jake asked.
“Forty-nine seconds, Sir,” replied Ensingn Clara Ramone, one of the few navigators who Ashley trained aboard the Triton and the Warlord.
“The Triton is signalling a go,” Liara said. “And Triton Fleet Command reports that the British Alliance destroyers are slowing. They are off the mission, awaiting orders from British Alliance Fleet.”
Minh-Chu looked up at him uneasily.
“Don’t worry, it’ll all make sense tomorrow on our jog,” Jake whispered to him. He sat back and waited for the wormhole to appear in front of their ships.
The crewman he handed his mug to in the hall came through the bridge hatch and presented it to him. It had been washed, Jake’s name and rank were freshly printed on one side with the ship insignia on the other. It was three quarters full with the cold nutriment drink. “Sir, I didn’t know what you wanted me to do with it, so I put proper insignia on it, and refilled it from the galley, Sir.”
Jake was as impressed as he was surprised. It looked like the young man had run extremely hard to have it all done in a handful of minutes. “Thank you so much, Crewman’s Mate…” Jake trailed off.
“Viken, Sir. From maintenance, Sir,” he said, gulping air.
“Well, thank you,” Jake said taking a generous gulp. It was less chalky, but the pasty characteristic of a forma beverage was unmistakable. “Please, return to duty.”
“Sir, yes, Sir,” he said.
“Where did we find him?” Jake said when he was out of earshot.
“Haven Shore, Sir,” Liara answered, to Jake’s surprise. “He was an apprentice in the manufacturing shop.”
“You don’t have to answer every question, you know,” Jake said as he pantomimed the act of looking for a place to put his mug. “Knew we missed something. Every command seat should come with a cup holder.”
“Checking wormhole for viability and verifying trajectory,” Ashley announced. “All checks passed, transitioning.”
The ship rumbled slightly as it crossed the threshold into the wormhole’s space. Jake checked his tactical screen and saw that the Triton was right behind them. Over the next few minutes they would carefully navigate so they were right alongside, making it difficult for a scanning officer on another ship to clearly see either of them.
Agameg stepped up to the Captain’s seat, pressed a button on its arm and a cup holder popped out from the front. “We forgot nothing,” he said.
“Thank you,” Jake said, putting his mug down. He watched Agameg return to the engineering department where they were busy reviewing the ship’s systems. He took a moment to look the bridge over and to enjoy the feeling of being on a military ship. The Revenge was the kind of ship he wanted to grow into. A little more leg room would have been nice, but it was the beast of burden they needed to win major engagements.
Every engagement while Captaining the Warlord was undertaken with a hull much thinner than a proper warship. The Revenge was what he needed, his crew would be properly protected, and properly equipped. Even still, he felt as though he had been killed as one man only weeks before, and woke up as another man. A man of military means and military methods who enjoyed life more than the previous one ever knew how to.
The view from the front of the ship appeared across the entire front wall of the bridge, and he couldn’t help but smile. The space outside the wormhole appeared blurred, as usual, but somehow the reassurance that all the work they’d put in over the last few days was paying off made him feel extremely confident in his crew, even though there were over three hundred C
rewman’s Mates who were there for training.
He brought up a holographic schematic of the ship so he could take a closer look at it in the Captain’s seat. The main body of the ship was at the rear, a thick V with the widest side facing front. A broad neck extended from the middle. The old bridge was at the head of the squared off forward section that connected to the rest of the ship in a neck of armour. To the port and starboard sides of the forward section were rectangular armoured rotary thrusters. They located just far enough forward along the neck of the ship’s fore so they didn’t scorch the hull, but they could turn two hundred and seventy degrees to fore and aft, and sixty three degrees to port or starboard. A railgun turret featuring three four hundred and twenty millimetre barrels sat directly behind the old bridge on top of the front of the ship’s neck. On the bottom of the same section was one of the directed electromagnetic pulse beam weapons, capable of firing at anything beneath or in front of the ship through a low profile protective dome. The main launch bay door was located behind that, and the enclosed hangar ran the length of the ship along the bottom, connecting to the two additional hangars, which were sandwiched between heavy armour wings.
The extra armour plating that was added to the ship covered half the neck in a widening V shape, with the widest section at the rear. The whole of the neck section was only seven decks thick, with extra power and weapon systems adding to the thickness. The main section of the ship thickened to fourteen decks, not including armour. At each stage another main railgun turret with triple four hundred twenty millimetre guns were mounted, and two more were mounted at the broadest points of the port and starboard sides of the ship, making for a total of five deadly turrets.
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