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The meeting went on for another
hour and then Park was up most of the night, working out the Fleet schedules.
It turned out to be more difficult than he expected since most of the ships
were used for transportation and various space industries. Working out patrols
meant
 
pulling them off their regular
runs, but with Marisea and Iris to help, they finally worked out a rotating
schedule that did everything Park wanted and did not reduce the other usages
for the ships. It meant less ground time per ship, however.

“I’d better run this past Ronnie
before I give it to Arn,” Park commented. “She’ll know if we can keep up the
maintenance schedules. Maybe I should call her now.”

“Park, it’s Three AM,” Iris told
him tiredly. “At least wait until breakfast time. Arn doesn’t need this until
mid-morning.”

“We need to get into space,” Park
replied, “and get Dannet to Dennsee.”

“
Tawatir
isn’t ready yet and won’t be for ten hours,” Marisea
informed him. “Even Dannet is prepared to wait until dinner time to launch.”

“That’s bound to ruin his
digestion,” Park commented.

“Silly!” Marisea laughed. “I
meant that he realizes we can’t just take off at first light and that he’ll be
happy so long as we get going sometime today.”

“Same here,” Park nodded. “Maybe
I should run down to the port.”

“At three in the morning?” Iris
asked. “Whatever for? You want to get in the way of the team prepping to get us
up to the space dock? Park. Go to sleep. Now.”

“Three ships?” Park demanded from
Arn later that morning. “That’s all? They expect me to fight off a fleet of
Dark Ships with only three ships of our own?”

It was later in the day than they
normally met on the hill that covered the original Van Winkle Base, but Arn had
invited Park to meet him up there during his morning coffee break. Below them
the city was alive with activity, but Park’s eye kept straying to the
aerospaceport where the spaceship
Yellowstone
was waiting to take him and his crew up to
Tawatir.

“No, they expect you not to go
into battle,” Arn replied. “You are on a mission of mercy taking Prince Dannet
to see his father, remember?”

“And to lend our support
 
to the fleet of the Alliance,” Park added.

“You are free to do so, but with
only three ships for now,” Arn replied.

“Do those three ships include
Tawatir
or not?” Park asked.

“I do believe no one ever
mentioned
Tawatir
,” Arn chuckled.
“You do realize she has not been officially commissioned yet, right?”

“And you didn’t tell them about
her,” Park added, grinning.

“It never came up,” Arn
dead-panned. “Besides, only a complete raving lunatic would take an untested
ship into a war.”

“Admiral Lunatic at your
service,” Park replied. “So we’re cleared to launch?”

“You are,” Arn nodded. Park
immediately started getting to his feet. “Whoa! Hold it. Your launch window
doesn’t open for another three hours.”

“I ought to start packing,” Park
replied.

“You’re not already packed,
Park?” Arn laughed. “I know you better than that. Relax. I would also be
shocked if you had not already chosen a crew and have them all ready to board
by now as well. Besides, Ronnie is still getting her stuff out of the Batcave
downstairs. You weren’t planning to leave without her, were you?”

“Of course not,” Park shook his
head. “I feel the need to get going now. It takes almost a full week to get
beyond the Stierdach Limit, you know. I just wish we had a way to make that
trip faster.”

“No you don’t,” Arn corrected
him, “and neither do I. The fact incoming ships can’t get closer to us than
Saturn’s orbit means we can see our enemies coming.”

“Unless they come directly out of
the sun,” Park pointed out.

“Not even then,” Arn corrected
him. “That’s another change since you went to Owatino. I had Ronnie design
sensors platforms to sit at the L4 and L5 points, sixty degrees in front and
behind Earth’s orbital position around Sol. With perspective like that, there’s
no direction they can come at us from without us seeing them days in advance.”

“Good idea,” Park admitted.
“Yours?”

“In part,” Arn admitted. “I told
Ronnie I needed a way to see Dark Ships even when they were in the sun and did
ask if orbital satellites would do the trick. She told me even watching from
the Moon wouldn’t do what I wanted, but when she mentioned Lagrange points, I
told her to see what she could do.”

“I imagine they must improve deep
space communications as well,” Park nodded. “They should make good relay
stations.”

“I don’t think any of us considered
of that,” Arn admitted. “It would probably take another pair of satellites.”

“Depends on what frequencies
Ronnie used,” Park replied, “but at worst you can probably just add an antenna
or two and an extra comm package. Ask her.”

“No time before you take her off
again,” Arn told him.

“Ronnie’s not the only engineer
on Earth,” Park pointed out. “I’m sure Iris could handle the job too and there
are three or four other engineers from the original Van Winkle project.”

“None with Ronnie’s talent,” Arn
pointed out.

“You don’t need a creative genius
to build a radio, Arn,” Park told him. “We used to have toy kits that taught
kids how to do it. For that matter, there are plenty of engineers among the
Mers who can do the job. There’s no need to toss that sort of job at Ronnie.
She would probably just farm it out anyway. Now about those three ships. Are
they by my choice?”

“They are,” Arn confirmed, “But I
assume you’re going to want to take three ships that are currently sitting on
the ground. We don’t want to disrupt the regularly scheduled flights.”

“Far from it,” Park agreed.
“Actually if I’m only getting three, I’ll take them all from Collins Base. We
have twelve up there that rotate patrol duty that could be accomplished by six
anyway.”

“Then why keep them stationed on
Luna?” Arn asked.

“They can be launched more
efficiently than from Earth,” Park replied, “and would be faster to respond to
an invasion force.”

“Good thinking taking the three
from there,” Arn told him. “I could tell all the Primes were worried you’d
steal away their private space yachts.”

“Is that how they see them?” Park
asked, a note of annoyance in his voice.

“Afraid so,” Arn nodded. “Most
never use them, but those ships you insist stay on standby at the ports are a
status symbol for some of the more petty-minded Primes. Some of them like to
arrive in the cities of their fellows in them.”

“What happened to their private
jets?” Park countered. “I know we used one to get to Terrimi in a hurry, but we
didn’t have a jet to travel in. Well, I’m afraid they’re all going to lose
their toys anyway. Last night we doubled our patrol patterns. No ships are
going to be sitting for long at any port and certainly none of them are going
to have a regular homeport for the duration. Those ships are primarily for
Earth’s defenses and that’s what I’m using them for.”

“I can get behind that,” Arn
nodded. “We cannot afford another ambush. Last time they handed us our very own
Pearl Harbor. If the Dark Ship aliens want to shoot at our fleet, let’s give
them moving targets.”

“That’s the idea,” Park nodded.
“Oh and I ordered a private jet for you.”

“Me?” Arn asked.

“I can’t steal away the Primes’
toy spaceships and leave one behind for you,” Park pointed out.

“I’ve only ridden in a spaceship
twice,” Arn pointed out.

“Then you won’t miss it.” Park told
him, “but I also don’t want you stuck here if the Primes are having one of
their convocations, which they do every time there’s an emergency.”

“I’ve been suggesting we meet by
holographic video conference,” Arn told him. “It saves a lot of time and nobody
gets left out. The problem is, most of those old boys enjoy getting out of
town. It’s like a paid vacation for them.”

“Tell them they must sacrifice
during war time,” Park replied. “Well, your new jet should be here in a few
days, I hope you like pink.”

“Pink?”

A few hours later, Park stepped
aboard the
Yellowstone
and managed to
relax for the first time in days. He declined to sit on the bridge during the
flight and instead napped in one of the passenger seats on the lower deck.

The new spacedock had been placed
in geostationary orbit directly above the vast inland ocean known as the Sink,
but under constant acceleration and deceleration,
Yellowstone
rendezvoused just three hours later. “I thought of
placing it at one of the lunar Langrangian points,” Ronnie explained as the
ship’s pilot completed the docking maneuver, “but this location is much closer
to Earth
 
so it’s more efficient and
cheaper to get here.”

“Faster too,” Park commented.

“About half the time,” Iris
estimated. “Makes sense to me.”

Marisea had been looking out a
viewport. “I had expected something larger. This is really not much more than a
frame.”

“The whole installation is
potentially disposable,” Ronnie told her. “In fact, we had originally planned
it to be used only once, but I decided that was wasteful. We can use the
assembly frame for a few years at least, so we added a habitat module instead
of assuming assemble crews would live on an attending ship. It’s not much and
no one will call it home, but I had the place outfitted to be as comfortable as
possible, not that we’ll be here very long.”

“When do the five fighters dock
with the mothership.” Iris asked

Ronnie led the way into the
habitat as she replied, “Our fighter crews flew those up here directly a few
hours ago. By now they’ve refueled and will dock with the carrier shortly after
we launch her.”

They made their way to the other
side of the habitat module where an open airlock gave them entry to the waiting
spaceship. “Commence final check lists,” Park ordered once everyone had found
their stations.

The bridge of the ship was only
slightly larger than those on other Earth-build ships, but it looked, to Park,
suspiciously like something that might have been used on a starship named
Enterprise
. The bridges on the other ships
Park had commanded had vaguely trapezoidal in shape, although the wider
front-facing section was bowed out slightly.
Tawatir’s
bridge was almost perfectly circular. From the plans, he
knew this had been done in order to fit in a greater number of controls and
control stations. Everything had a redundant backup station except for Iris’
gunnery officer’s station, although that was nearly twice as large as any Park
had seen to date.

Park had questioned why that
rather essential station had no redundancy, but Iris had laughed, explaining,
“This whole battle board is redundant. I could be back with the other weapons
techs and communicate with the bridge via intercom rather than the other way
around.”

“Have you had any practice with
the new controls?” Park asked her while the other officers were running down
their checklists.

“Not yet,” Iris admitted. “I
consulted on the actual design, but we never had time to build a simulator. I
should have plenty of time to drill during the voyage to Dennsee, though and
the individual gunner stations are the same as we’ve always had.”

Finally the pre-flight checks
were completed and Marisea, at her Communications Officer’s station, relayed
Park’s request to launch to the spacedock’s Controller. “Permission granted,”
Control responded. “Safe journey,
Tawatir
.”

The Bridge had view screens that
afforded the crew a full panorama of the space around them. As they watched,
the frame that had been cradling the ship since the components had been shipped
up from Earth, began to split apart like a giant skeletonized clamshell. Park
had expected the two halves to retain their shape as they opened, but instead
they straightened up until the entire frame was flat and below the ship.

“Of course the frame is flexible
or rather it is adjustable,” Ronnie laughed when he asked about it. If it were
completely rigid and fixed it would only be usable for this one design of ship
and I wouldn’t have a lot of leeway for modifications either. This way the
frame can be made to fit most any shape. Not only that, but it is modular. We
can add to it for larger ships, assuming we ever build a larger ship. However,
the real reason it opens completely up is that I wanted to be certain we
wouldn’t hit it as we began the voyage. I’d hate to scratch the paint job
before we even left the dock.”

“Good point,” Park admitted, “and
opening like this allows the fighters to dock before we actually start moving.
Speaking of which, Marisea are all five fighters secured?”

“Four are,” Marisea replied, “no,
the fifth just finished the maneuver.”

“Excellent,” Park replied
“Tragackack, ease us out, please.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral sir!” Trag
replied as his four upper limbs worked the controls of the big ship.

“Where are our other ships?” Park
wondered.

“I just heard from Independent,”
Marisea reported. “They are leaving Luna and will rendezvous with us just this
side of Jupiter before we use it as a gravity sling.”

“All right,” Park nodded, “Let
Tina and the other captains know I’ll meet with them via holo-conference in two
hours. Trag, set a course for Jupiter.” After fifteen minutes of flight,
however, Park began to yawn uncontrollably.

“Park,” Iris observed, “you
haven’t had much sleep these last two days. Maybe you should take a nap before
your meeting?”

“Good idea,” Park admitted. He
looked around the bridge and saw only his own officers on duty. “Where’s Dannet
and Sartena?”