Yorktown: Katana Krieger #1 (3 page)

The 22 year old is the calm, quiet one, her hand scratching her chin. "We don't know what happened. What if someone's established a secret forward base? It's not far from the Hwang boundary. What if there's a large group of small ships? We need to maximize our flexibility."
"How many...," he was probably about to say something about her inexperience, or age, but smartly caught himself. I get the credit, but everyone knows her brain is half the luck behind my victory on Kentucky. I may have been the one who spotted the trap, but she suggested the irrational course that put us in the perfect slot. I get the credit because I was the one who said go.
"How many forward bases are better suited to attack by a MIRV than a big warhead? If there is one, it's likely to be a single, hard point. If we come across a ship our lasers can't handle, would one 30 megaton hit be better than a bunch of little warheads?"
I let them argue for another five minutes, watch the First try unsuccessfully to eek out a compromise, then decide to be the captain.
"I think I have everyone's opinion. Let's move on. Mr. Ayala get into every Minimum Equipment List and make sure we have a lot more than the MEL on board. Grab all the help you need, get back to me by 1530 with our deficiencies. Mr. McAdams, find your team, I want a system search plan and your most likely scenarios on pad by 0700. Meet me here at 0800 to go over them. Dismissed."
They salute and shoot for the exit. I think for a second there's going to be a rumble, but McAdams timed her move better and beat him to the hatch. I turn back to my remaining staff.
"Emily, are we ready?" I try to sound like I am genuinely asking a question.
"You know the answer to that, Skipper. Not one major system on board has been through a live test outside of dry dock. Everything's pretty standard, except for the missile launchers and the upgrades on the engines, but there's literally a million things that can go wrong." No hint of nervousness in her voice, but a lot of frustration.
"I know, I just had to hear it again. I need a test plan from you. Assume no coast and probably 4G's to the first jump, but then intermittent coast time once we arrive. Let me know what you need in a systematic way that RISTA and the pilots can work around"
"Skipper, we're really going to drive an untested ship 140 million kilometers at four gees, then jump into potentially hostile space?" She's scratching her shaved head as she speaks. No engineer floats through that crowded equipment space with exposed body parts like long hair that might get sucked into the works and get them killed, so it's almost automatic that they visit the flight surgeon and get themselves made permanently bald. Shaved on a career officer means she has upwardly mobile plans. Part of why I picked her.
I give her my best laughing voice. "Adventure, Lieutenant, that's what we signed up for. On your way now, keep me informed."
While Emily flies off to get to work, I float over to the facilities and get rid of all the accumulated tea in my system, then grab my bottle out of its wall holder and put some fresh iced tea into me. Given how the systems on ship work, what's in my bottle is likely something I gave back in the relief tube yesterday, and tomorrow's bottle is probably floating down the pipes into recycle right now, but better not to think about such things.
Also, if I'm making this sound like there's a lot of room in my room, ignore that thought. My entire ready room is barely 10 by 10 feet, and the "bathroom" is another three foot square. On a warship, that's golf course sized space.
Shel has been working while I was relieving, and I get back to find her examining the list of all available local corvettes. A corvette in our fleet is a 50 foot diameter sphere (crew of 2 to 8 depending on mission), a couple windows marking the bow, and four engine outputs the stern. They come in four varieties, convoy escorts like
Bainbridge
which are both armed and jump capable, planetary defense (armed, no jump engines), assault (lightly armed, not jump capable), and landing (neither armed, nor jumpable).
The sphere is the most effective platform for a warship (but don't tell an officer of the Royal Navy that, all of their ships are old school designs like
Yorktown
), in large part because jump engines generate a spherical field, so a spherical ship maximizes the cubic volume of ship that fits within the field. The spherical 190,000 ton
Jackson
class cruisers we fly use the same jump engines as our 8,000 ton
Yorktown
.
For
Yorktown
, and the other frigates and destroyers, keeping the old shape means empty pockets within the field which we take advantage of by having attachment points for corvettes, destroyers have two, the new frigates have four. We can add four corvettes and create our own little battle group once we're on scene.
"Suggestions?" I ask Shel, more to see if she agrees with me than because I am unsure what I want to do.
"Two landers and probably one assault, but I'd dearly love to take a couple escorts as well. Can we figure out some way to hang five off her?"
"We've got the sloop," I say, "can we substitute that for a lander?" Unlike the destroyers,
Yorktown
has a 12 person lifting body on its boat deck, in addition to two two-person ships and a couple short range pods that are standard for a destroyer. We sacrifice a lot of guns on that side of the ship to make it happen.
She thinks for a minute.
"LS-3-boat-252 is a brand new third generation landing craft.
Richard
and
Congress
," she points at the screen, "are due in at 1900, good captains, plenty of time to rearm and refuel if they are willing, and there's six ZR-1's to choose from for the assault ship."
"Done. I'll requisition the 252 boat,
Richard
and
Congress
. We'll have Palmer pick the ZR-1 he wants when he gets back from his CO, if he hasn't lined it up already. " Then I give instructions.
"Go find Garcia and her team and have them run every system diagnostic you can think of, plus every one you can't, then put them together with Ayala to make sure we get an accurate inventory of everything that comes aboard."
"Aye. We really going to pull this off, Skipper?" She thinks she knows what I'm going to say, but she makes me say it anyway. I don't say what she expects.
"Adventure, commander, that's what we signed up for, adventure into the unknown."
She laughs, then floats away to take care of her business. I send my first official message from USS
Yorktown
to FRIGCOM, listing our food demands, and requesting the three boats, plus letting them know we'll be asking for a fourth.
Then I shut down the ready room systems, and take my business back out onto the bridge.
Sixteen acceleration couches attached to the ceiling and floor mark the work stations of a frigate bridge. Spider webs of metal from the back, padded on the front with lots of attachment points and a set of adjustable arms set 90 degrees from the body with finger tip buttons and a pointing device, all designed to allow control with minimal effort under high gee acceleration.
The six in the middle are the active stations, double touchscreens and large overhead panels on each, all adjustable to the height of the occupants. The 10 outside stations each have a single screen and are able to provide backup in case of emergency or workload overload during combat.
Front two stations belong to the pilot and co-pilot, middle stations to engineering, and rear to the captain and RISTA. Three shifts means generally only the active stations occupied, everyone else off being busy or being asleep.
Frigate crew complement is 25. Six pilots, six engineers, three RISTA's, three senior officers, four maintenance crew for the boat deck (and anywhere else as needed), a doctor, and two ship's Marines, there for security. Other than the senior officers, only the chief pilot, engineer, and RISTA are required to be commissioned officers, though others may be, and the doctor typically is as well, just not part of the chain of command. Gives us three shifts on watch and plenty of backup.
Yorktown
is the size of a 20th century
Los Angeles
class attack submarine, but with one-sixth the operating crew, not counting our Marines. They could make their own oxygen and drinking water and were never more than a couple days from help. We have to be a lot more efficient.
I float to the captain's station, turn on my double screens and attach my pad. Left screen goes to a map of Gamma Omicron, on the right I use the scribble pad to think through various missile configurations. When I think I have the right one, I message it to Commander Perez for her input. Five minutes later she makes one small suggestion, which I accept, then send my second message to FRIGCOM. Eighteen single warhead ship to ship missiles, six other flavors: one multiple warhead air to ground, one single warhead air to ground, one multiple nuclear warhead ship to ship, one single ballistic warhead ship to ship, two mine layers with two different kinds of mines. I like hammers.
At 1530, I get a sizeable equipment list from Ayala, which I scan briefly, add a little to in spots, and then message to FRIGCOM. This time I get an acknowledgment, plus notice that the food should start arriving in about 15 minutes, full load of six months, and the missile and boat orders were confirmed. Missile loading to begin at 1230, meaning we have to be ready to leave the dry dock by 1200 hours. I forward the message to the First and Second, plus RISTA, so they know what's coming, like it or not.
Lt. Garcia and three of her staff are locked in an argument at her station, so I quietly detach my pad and float down, no interjecting until noticed.
"It's not going to work that way."
"We can fix it
en route
."
"Not at four gees."
"Captain, what can we do for you?" My chief pilot saw me first and ended the discussion. Her short dark hair floats loose, forming a helmet around her head, adding to the frazzled look on her face.
"Problem, lieutenant?"
"None of the backup stations work properly, sir, there's a wiring flaw somewhere in the system." Her voice is plenty frazzled too.
"Solution?"
"Pull new wires, Skipper, but that's a multiple person, multiple hour job. The software tests are more important to finish before we sail in my book."
"Agreed. Let me see what I can do to help."
Good way to check and see if I have any sudden increase in authority around here, I message Carl Worth, project manager for the civilian contractor building
Yorktown
. While I wait for an answer, I have the pilot staff show me what they're doing. It's not a long wait til the pad beeps. I am a happy woman.
"Electric Boat Company will have a crew here in under an hour to redo the wiring. Will that be acceptable, Mr. Garcia?"
"Yes, sir!"
"We're a team ladies and gentlemen," I try to address the whole crew on the bridge, "the only thing that gets us into trouble is not communicating."
"Aye, sir." I get that in quiet multi-part harmony.
Spend the next 15 minutes floating happily around the bridge, chatting as best a captain can with her too busy crew, until at precisely 1600 I get a formal message from FRIGCOM listing everything we're going to get (which appears to be everything we've asked for), plus a note that they've notified all six assault ships they need to be ready to move once we decide.
Then a second message. They're setting up the closest thing to a weightless hot food buffet up on the Marine's section of deck 2, and the crew of
Constitution
, seven months behind us one dry dock above, are headed down to help.
Fine first two hours. If you don't think about what's yet to come.
The one missing piece of my puzzle, Lt. Tony Palmer, Marine commander, messages to say he'll be arriving at 1800. I send back, let him know I need a recommendation on a ZR-1 corvette, tell him to meet me in
Yorktown
's gym upon his arrival.
I get Shelby back to the bridge, and together we schedule each of our crew who needs it an hour to get their belongings off the station and onto the ship, me first, since I'm probably the most useless person on
Yorktown
right now. Invite her to join me later for our mandatory daily zero gee workout.
Takes me 45 minutes to float, hop and flip to my former quarters on the station, pack everything I own into one duffle bag, and get it stuffed securely into my new digs on board. The captain and the two command officers get their own spaces, mine at 10 by 10 is the biggest. When you sleep vertically, footprint is less important than volume anyway, and command spaces are designed with wall mounted sleeping bags. The only one with issues is Shelby, whose head is illegally close to the not quite seven foot ceilings.
Everyone else of extra height actually has it better, the rest of the crew is in clusters of four bunks, each three feet high and eight feet long, horizontal, sleeping the old school way. If floating six inches above your mattress counts as old school.
At 1800 I put Palmer on the middle treadmill, Shelby and I flanking him, and get every bit of information out of him we can. The Marines know less than we do, it turns out, which is hard to do when you basically know nothing, but they are bringing some extra gear on board just in case. And, he recommends ZR-1-slash-S134, a battle scarred assault ship with a crew of old friends he trusts.
We don't know him very well, the Marines training while we were building, but I like the fact that every time I up the speed on my treadmill, he sets his even faster. I'm not sure if there's a record for floating sweat in a warship gym, but Shelby, Palmer and I probably just broke it.
When we complete our workout and set the room environmental controls to suck the sweat over to recycle, I message FRIGCOM with the S134 request, then do three hours of management by floating around. Every deck, every compartment, every person gets a visit from the captain (who did shower first, I am not sharing my aromas). The boat deck crew is in engineering, helping out. Our two Marines are doing gun inspections, laser cannon by laser cannon, with help from the
Constitution
detachment. Two of the engineers are inspecting every missile tube, making sure they'll be ready for the morning delivery.
Yorktown
's Marine detachment, 25 strong, has battle suits and their other gear spread across the deck (or floating above it), going through assembly and check out procedures, while eating the buffet as if it's their last meal. The food is surprisingly good, a variety of hot pasta dishes with vegetables, sort of pureed.