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Yorktown: Katana Krieger #1 Page 3
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"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 rea
dy 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.
The funniest group on board is RISTA, McAdams and her two person team floating in their berthing area, each one holding a pad, another eight or ten pads in free float around them, and four monitors live on the wall. She picked an interesting team. Her number two, Lieutenant Bass, out ranks her by two grades and 10 years, outsizes her by 120 pounds. Rare for a senior person to volunteer to serve under a 23 year old ensign, rarer for the 23 year old to be comfortable commanding a superior officer.
And her third is 18 year old probationary Seaman Juan Manuel, four months in the service, who got one of the highest scores ever on the spacial acuity test they give to new recruits. She told me that the Academy only trains people in battle group maneuvers, she wanted someone she could train from scratch to think about single ship operations. He's been with us less than a week, probably now wondering if he should have asked for other duty.
It looks more like a slumber party with a college student, her uncle, and younger brother, than a military planning exercise, but who am I to argue. At least as long as I like the plan in the morning.
At 2200, I issue a general order to the crew. Sleep. Everyone in their rack by 2330, and no one out before 0600, unless they get permission from me personally. Much pretend moaning and groaning, but tomorrow will not be a day for the tired.
The Constitution crew is doing the grunt work, helping Ayala load and inventory a couple thousand containers of supplies, they request to keep working and I am happy to oblige. As do the Marines from Constitution, who want every gun shiny before we go.
I make sure to revisit the slumber party, and give them an extra hour to get me their report if they'll get some rack time. Not sure they didn't sneak back out as soon as mom left the room. Another oddity of the ship, they are the only mixed group, officers and enlisted bunking in the same quad.
Then I take my own orders, except that I head to the bridge, strap myself into my command couch, and fall quickly asleep.
Chapter 2
FRIGCOM delivers hot breakfast at 0630, something else I have not seen in 11 years of active duty, an admiral voluntarily serving pancakes (or what would be pancakes if you didn't have to eat them out of a tube) to the crew. Clearly not reconstituted pancakes either, these have that scent of fresh cinnamon and a real stove.
Constitution's folks are still there, done with inventory and gun cleaning, yet looking for more to do. We set them to wandering the ship, cleaning and doing a pre-flight inspection to make sure (or as sure as we can be), that we'll at least make it out of the dry dock without killing ourselves. Even with two dozen of them, it will still take a couple hours.
The captains of Congress and Richard are there as well, more than eager to go with us, Lt. Paul Summerlin and Lt. Angie Springs. Both are experienced captains, Summerlin a typical corvette commander, thin, wiry, mid-30s, Springs looks like a smaller version of Shelby, all muscles and darkness, except her hair is quite a bit longer. I wouldn't want to meet either of them in the proverbial dark alley, but they are exactly what I want with me now. I need to give Commander Perez a well done.
They join Shelby, Captain Weaver of Constitution, and me to meet with McAdams and her group at 0900, who walk us through a set of probability based search grids using Yorktown, Congress, and Richard to hit high probability targets, shifting to lower probability space if necessary.
It's a solid plan given how much we don't know, I just wish I understood better how they assigned the probabilities they did. The two corvette captains download the data to their pads, and, grabbing a slew of pancakes, float off to oversee the final re-outfitting of their boats. I get rid of everyone else and spend an hour picking Weaver's brain. The two of us are going to write "the Book" on frigate ops, the other ships at least a year behind us, and I want all the ideas I can get.
At 1100, Shelby and I float onto the bridge, make our way to the captain's station, and call up the signals menu. There's a big button on the screen labeled "Clear the Decks." My index finger lingers over it for just a couple seconds, then slides down.
Three tones, then a pre-recorded voice, "Attention. Attention. The ship is preparing to depart. All ashore."
I push a button on the arm of my couch and speak into my collar mic, my voice echoing throughout the ship. "This is Captain Krieger. On behalf of the crew of Yorktown, our deepest thanks to the Constitution crew. We would not be ready if not for your help."
Our Marines have the unenviable duty of making sure everyone is off, and making sure every hatch is sealed and ready for departure. My lead crew is back on the bridge within a minute of my signing off, except for Mr. Powell, who rightfully thinks the boss should physically be in engineering just in case. Two petty officers are at the bridge stations. We all strap into our couches, regulation in case something really bad happens.
I have my left screen set to the hatch menu, which shows a black outline of Yorktown, broken at every open hatch with a 45 degree mark. One by one, they turn from red to green, and shift to blend into the body.
Ensign Marcos, the second to Garcia and normally not paired with her is at the co-pilot's station. His voice rings through the bridge. "Green board."
I switch the left screen to a rotating set of engineering system indicators, the right to a rotating set of exterior camera images.
"Engineering, switch to internal power." I would cross my fingers, but someone might see. Nothing happens for a minute, then the change hits my screen.
"Yorktown on internal power. Reactor status nominal." Petty Officer Jordan makes my day. For the first time, my ship is standing on its own two feet.
I knew, or my rear end knew, every sensation that Ayacucho made, from the smallest pump engaging to the constant low hiss of her life support systems and vibration of the engines. I could tell which thruster was firing without looking at my panel. I'm looking forward to learning the idiosyncracies for my new command.
"Go or no go on ship status. Helm?" I try to keep my voice calm.
A decidedly non-calm Garcia. "Go."
"Engineering?"
A calm Powell on the intercom. "Go."
"RISTA?"
A joyful McAdams. "Go."
"Marines?"
Lt. Palmer way too serious with a somewhat un-Marinelike "Go" via intercom.
"Mr. Ayala?"
"Go."
"Mr. Perez?"
"Go."
"Mr. Garcia, inform dock control to disengage moorings and open dock seals."
"Affirmative." I have us all on the speaker so everyone can listen in across the ship. I watch as the pilot's hands fly across her screen, activating the comm channels.
"Dock Control, Yorktown, requesting moorings release and evacuation clearance." Garcia has a completely different business voice.
"Yorktown, Armstrong Station, moorings disconnected, standby for evac clearance." The dock controller is as excited as we are.
"Yorktown standing by."
Everybody with the right camera access, which is pretty much everybody on the ship who wants to, can see the vast doors of the dock open. The controller comes back and states the obvious.
"Yorktown, cleared to evac dock three. Maintain egress position at 300 meters."
"300 meters. Cleared to evac." Garcia forgot to use her business voice on that one.
I give the order. "Mr. Garcia, take us out."
"Aye, Skipper."
Yorktown is floating free in the bay, and Garcia gives her the tiniest of nudges from the rear thrusters. She and Marcos spend the next three minutes correcting even the smallest deviation from course. A mistake now could cost us the ship, and/or the entire station. Not to mention I'd be back home by next week, farming.
I don't breathe again until we hear Marcos' voice.
"Yorktown is cleared the dock."
I'll forgive him his slight grammatical faux pas.
We settle in at 300 meters, waiting, 24 mostly nuclear tipped missiles to load, not something that has been tried before on a ship this size to my knowledge. Actually, we know the Dynastic Navy has done it, but they aren't talking to us.
Six tugs appear, pushing a dull metal framework that they guide into place outside the starboard side of my ship, a giant steel insect maybe about to sting us. All the tube doors are on that side, some designer's decision that the ship captains don't understand, but why would they ask us?
"Mr. Jordan, open outer doors, all tubes."