“It only looks that way. On the ragged edge of chaos, but there is a method and rhythm to it,” Irons said nodding to Logan. He nodded back turning to his daughter.
“See, we've got ships under refit on one side of the station, while this side has the new construction. The refit side has its own traffic patterns, most of it is bringing stores in to resupply the ships.”
“And here you've got everything going in,” she said smiling.
“Well, not exactly. Here we've got a series of chambers. Each chamber builds a sub assembly then passes it along to the main dock to assemble together into the vessel. Once she's got her basics done we move her to another docking slip to do her final fitting out, testing and debugging while this one builds the next ship.”
“Oh,” Shelby blinked.
“It's efficient. Much more efficient than trying to build it all one piece at a time in one space. Believe me,” Irons smiled. “Back in the old days when humans were on earth they built ships on beaches one piece at a time. It took months and people tripped over each other constantly. There were no decent plans, limited coordination...” he shook his head. “It was a mess.”
“Later as industry took root shipyards turned into dry docks. They would build ships in the traditional methods, but in box like enclosures that they could later fill with water,” Logan took up the narrative. He noted they were getting a bit of a crowd. Others off duty or drawn by the Admiral were coming in to listen.
“In the second world war of Earth they started building ships differently. They hit upon the idea of building ships in sections, all in factories then put the pieces together in the dry dock. The idea continued to this day,” Irons finished.
“I see,” Shelby said, clearly amused. “How soon will these ships be finished?”
“Well, if we hit a good stride, and there are no bottlenecks, I'd say we could finish each of them in about eight months to a year. Once the crew learns the ropes and gets their space legs we'll see that time line shorten,” Irons replied. Logan nodded.
“Shouldn't we keep the ships here though, to expand what we have faster?” someone in the back asked. They looked to her. She was a crewman first class, young. She stiffened to attention under their amused gaze.
“No. You see, in about a year we'll have saturated our resource collection and manufacturing abilities. That means we'll have to expand them before we can fully use the factory ship or go through another expansion level with the yard,” Irons waved.
“So what we're going to do is share the wealth. We're going to send this ship with proper escorts out to Agnosta behind Destiny to help them recover faster... and to put in some early warning and defense systems in case the pirates come back.”
“I thought we killed them all?” a voice said in the back.
Logan sighed. “That's the problem with pirates. No matter how many of the cockroaches you kill, there are plenty more in the shadows. Space is really dark so there are a lot of shadows for them to crawl out of son.”
“Oh.”
“From what we have been seeing in our Intel dump from the pirates they were working for the Horath Empire. They were sent out to raid nearby colonies, disrupting their recovery efforts and sending their ill gotten gains back to Horath to help them expand faster. We know they captured other ships. Those ships can be converted into other pirates.”
“Oh,” the face frowned. Others looked around uncertain.
“That wasn't the only pirate fleet. We're pretty sure of that now. At least one other went out, moving up the jump lines in a different direction,” Logan said grimacing. “I really want to clean their clocks if we can.”
“Which is why we're building up our defenses here while helping our neighbors do the same.”
“Good fences make good neighbors,” Logan said nodding. The Admiral looked amused. Logan shrugged to the crowd. “Sorry, old saying but it fits. Sort of.”
“Yeah, sort of. I can just imagine picket fences in space dad,” Shelby murmured.
“Hush,” he said shaking his head. “But if we can get some warning of more raiders...”
“Then we can go out and stomp on them. Or better yet, build up enough forces and we can go out and stomp on the source,” Irons growled.
The group cheered at that.
“Heard about the foundry Admiral?” Sprite asked Irons as he entered the shower. He paused in the doorway.
“What Foundry?” he asked, then continued what he had been doing before being rudely interrupted. His shift started in a half hour.
“Apparently there was a foundry ship in system. Sub light thing, little more than an industrial station with engines. Someone turned it back into a station. It grew into quite am industrial node just after the Xeno war, but then her reactor bottle failed.”
He winced. “Neutrinos?”
“Right. They were using straight Deuterium, no Helium 3. So it irradiated the entire engineering deck. Fried her life support about five centuries ago.”
“So? What about it?” he finished cleaning and turned on the massager.
“So, a group of civilians got together, formed a cooperative, and decided to salvage her.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Most are former Anvil engineers by the way. They set up a limited corporation, got capital and hired the Gutierrez family to transport them and their gear there,” Sprite seemed amused. “The Valdez and Gutierrez families are a part of their financial backing. They've heavily invested in the project. I heard they only charged for the fuel to get them there. The rest they took as company shares.”
“Um...” Irons wasn't sure about the plan. Going into a heavily contaminated structure without the right gear was suicide.
“Oh, they brought along some decontamination robots and hardened EVA suits as well.”
“Good to know,” Irons said nodding.
“They aren't totally stupid. From the looks of their plan they will do okay.”
“Plan?” he asked. He finished the shower and got out. He stretched and then got dressed.
“Yes, they bounced it off of commander Shelby and commander Logan before they left. I just found a copy in their files.”
He sighed. “I told you about snooping where you don't belong.”
“It was an accident admiral, honest. I heard about their mission and did a search. It popped up.”
“Huh,” he grunted letting that drop for now. “Odds of success?” he asked. She fed him the plans outline. He scanned through it and nodded.
“Ambitious. They won’t get far without replicator support though.”
“Think we should lend them a hand?” the AI asked.
“It's something to keep in mind. Did you make any more headway on the captured databases?”
“Unfortunately no Admiral. Most of the data we collected were from the civilian prizes. The Yacht suffered the cascade overload which fried her electronics, so nothing there. Little came from that Clydesdale that was destroyed. It seems they kept pretty good security. Compartmentalized.”
“Or they were just lazy. Transferring data would have been a hassle,” Irons replied. “Why bother giving them data when the warships are the only ones who need it?”
“True. Never underestimate an organic's ability to try to get out of a little work,” Sprite replied sounding amused.
“Cute,” Irons said dryly. He finished buttoning his jacket then adjusted the hem.
“Present company excluded of course Admiral.”
“It'd better be,” he snorted. “So, little from the surviving databases from the ships?”
“A couple terabytes here and there. A lot of it is old. Real old. Centuries out of date. It does help with deep background though. I'm still dealing with a rabbit virus from one of the databases. We thought we had quite the find when we found the hard drive isolated and powered down. It turns out the pirates accidentally infected it and cut it out of the net.”
“Great.”
“We have confirmed that Damocles w
as part of the Horath Empire's defensive fleet up until thirty years ago. Then she was sent out as a pirate.”
“Alone?”
“Unknown. I'm getting this third hand from a crewman's journal. The log didn't survive.”
“Okay. Any mention of other ships? Plans?”
“No. Other than the dreadnaught which is confirmed. Two of them are referred to in the journal by the writer. One is mentioned in passing. The Teddy Roosevelt.”
“And that is?”
“According to the war book it is a Republic class super dreadnaught.”
“Oh lovely.”
“She's the precursor to the Leviathan and Brahma class.”
“I know what she is,” Irons said shaking his head. “How is this mentioned?” he asked, suddenly curious.
“Correspondence between the crewman and a lover on the Roosevelt. There is a snippet of an e-mail, some poetry I'll pass on reading and this,” she paused. “I don't know why they came to Horath, Benjamin, but I'm glad they did. She's a sorry sight, but now that we've gotten her power plants overhauled, we're doing much better. If we can get CIC sorted out we'll be on track,” Sprite paused again. “The rest is lost to data corruption.”
“Crap,” Irons grumbled.
“I have Firefly and Io11's data Admiral. Roosevelt was in the core system reserve. There is mention of her in an attack fleet.”
“And somehow she limped to Horath after the war?”
“Probability estimated at over ninety percent,” Sprite responded. “Based on available data she was pretty severely damaged however. The mention of CIC being damaged leads me to conclude that her flag staff and possibly most of her officer core were wiped out.”
“Huh,” Irons grunted. Plausible.
“Take that with the actions of the Federation in the latter stages of the war, recruiting untrained, under equipped people into ship crews and you have a recipe for breakage.”
“Meaning...”
“Meaning that her survivors set up shop in Horath. They kept Roosevelt as insurance. But over time they lost the ability to access key systems to keep her up to date.”
“Until now. Until the raiding.”
“Exactly. They must have brought back something that let them use a replicator. A code key or something. A functional military replicator.”
“That doesn't explain how they could use it.”
“Come on Admiral. No system is fool proof. If they set up the proper interface they could spoof the AI. At least to get around the lower level lock outs. After all, it's been done before.”
Irons grimaced. Many a pirate or even a megacorp had gotten around the built in provisions by creating an avatar for the replicators to interface with. As long as they were careful they could build all sorts of things they weren't legally supposed to have access to. He'd seen it a few times, and had to clean up the mess they usually caused.
He frowned as a sudden thought got to him. He didn't like it at all. “Sleeper,” he said softly.
“That... That hadn't actually occurred to me until now Admiral. The possibility exists,” Sprite replied.
“The other ships?” he asked, changing the subject. It was useless to speculate further without any hard data. They would just go around in circles and not get anywhere.
“One Arrow class, an old Federation Cruiser Carrier.”
“She's a relic.”
“But still better then a tramp freighter Admiral,” Sprite responded. “The other capital ship mentioned is a battleship. Again, old Federation era. She was a museum ship before the war. Apparently they are in the process of returning her to service as a last desperate defense.”
“I'm surprised they didn't before. Where did you get this information?”
“Crew transfer request. From Damocles to the battleship. Apparently they had decided to change the name but hadn't gotten around to picking one yet,” she snorted in disgust.
“If they are transferring crew to her they must have gotten some of her systems online,” he grimaced. “Not good, even if she's a relic.”
“What we have so far does support the statements of the pirate survivors though,” Sprite continued. “Horath is acting as a rogue system. At war with the rest of the Federation. She's got the firepower to take over a lot of systems unless she can be stopped.”
“It looks that way,” he grimaced. “Anything more on that engagement?”
“Um...” Sprite paused. “Do you mean that mock battle frigate two was in three years ago?”
“So it was a mock battle?” he asked.
“I am ninety nine percent sure it was Admiral. Not one round hit either ship. The nuclear weapons that were used went off thousands of kilometers away from each ship.”
“Training exercise?” Firefly asked, coming into the conversation.
Irons sat, putting his boots on. “No...”
“A live fire exercise?” Sprite asked.
“No. The Admiral is right. That is not logical. Why have it outside Horath space.”
“Unless they wanted that space to become part of their empire,” Irons said, thinking furiously.
“Ah Admiral...”
“Wait, he's thinking,” Sprite responded.
“Have either of you heard the... no, wait, um...” He thought for a moment. “Okay, have either of you heard of a fireman who starts his own fires?”
“The analogy is in...” Sprite paused. “Are you drawing a comparison between a pyromaniac and this situation?”
“I believe he is. Or at least the latter part of that statement. A pyromaniac is obsessed with fire, while a fireman puts it out. Ergo...”
“Crap,” Sprite muttered. “A political angle, I should have picked that one up admiral. That devious.”
“Care to share?” Firefly asked, sounding slightly exasperated.
“You obviously weren't stuck with many politicians in your time,” Sprite said dryly. “Trying to figure out how their minds work is like trying to navigate a black hole.”
Irons sat up and snorted. “What the Admiral in his finite wisdom has pointed out as a possibility is that the pirates come in, terrorize the people, then the Horath send in a ship to rescue them,” Sprite explained.
“And the mock battle..”
“Is just that. A light show for the population. The Horathian's drive off the evil pirates, putting the colonists in debt to them. They can even set up some sort of tribute system to have the people pay for security.”
“And since they don't want to get raided again, they will fall all over themselves to pay. Neatly sweeping the system into their corner. They don't have to invade and subjugate the world, no guerrilla warfare, the people will be happy for them to be there.”
“Exactly,” Sprite said.
“This also ties in with the rumors we picked up on Io 11,” Irons replied.
“How do you figure?” Sprite asked.
“Remember the Talasians the crew mentioned? They were fleeing a hate group.”
“Hate group. Accessing log,” Sprite paused. She accessed the files and then squirted a copy to Firefly.
“Your saying that someone is driving out non Terrans?”
“What better way to unite the population? Hate, paranoia, and fear are powerful emotions. Throw a scare at people, then tell them their misery is someone's fault, and you better get them before they get you and...”
“And you have a recipe for the Nazi's all over again,” Sprite finished. “So that's the other half of the political angle. Carrot and stick.”
“That we know of. There may be more. What bothers me is what started this? There had to be something in their past,” Irons said rubbing his chin.
“And we're not going to get much from the pirate prisoners. None of them were officers, and all claim to have a three monkey approach to life.”
“Three monkey...” Firefly asked, sounding amused.
“Don't hear anything, Don't see anything, Don't speak anything. Deaf, dumb, and blind to all that goe
s around you that isn't related to your own little universe.”
“I am pretty sure that is not completely true. But the analogy is acceptable,” Firefly responded. “I wish we had more information. We need Intel.”
“But we're not getting anything beyond that from the prisoners or the databases,” Irons sighed. “And they aren't being exactly forthcoming.”
“No more than they have to be. I believe the expression is 'like pulling teeth'?”
“Close enough,” Irons grimaced. “We're going to have to lean on them harder then. Shoot a memo to the intel shop to do so. Anyway, I believe we've got an appointment though?”
“Right you are Admiral. The assembly has finally got it's collective butt together and that dog and pony conference is back on. Which we are or at least will be headed out to now. Hopefully. Unless of course they change their minds again. But in the mean time, you've got an oh six thirty appointment with chief Wallace to go over the flag deck, then...”
Dan shouldered his bag as he entered the lock. The marine guard gave him a look. He opened his ID access. "Aren't you on the wrong ship Commander?" she asked.
"No, Maya is down to rebuild her drive and inertials for a week. I'm tagging along to get some more practice in on Firefly's tac systems," Dan replied.
"Right. Whatever," the marine said, checking his Id then waving him in. "Your funeral if you get caught playing hooky I guess," she muttered.
"Not really, Not when I plan on kicking the captain's butt in the sims," Dan replied with a laugh.
"Yeah right," the marine muttered watching him move off. "In your dreams," she said softly.
Chapter 33
“Admiral, I'm just getting word of a secret session of the legislature.” Irons looked up confused.
“What the hell? Rumor again?” he asked.
“No, this one sounds legit Admiral. Something is rotten in the State of Denmark,” Sprite said, sounding worried. He grimaced. Something was definitely going on, Sprite had been onto it for some time. Unfortunately since they were almost at the conference site they couldn't investigate it in person. He'd have to wait until he got with Judge Farley on Anvil to find out the skinny.
Fool's Gold (The Wandering Engineer) Page 70