First Command (6 page)

      
Candy smiled at them, “Okay, as I said before, you don’t need to pack much in the way of clothing when you visit me.
 
Let me take you upstairs and let you get settled in.
 
Then I expect you to change into these new outfits and wear them or nothing else while you are here.
 
Gather your bags and follow me.”

      
They went upstairs, and each went to one of three guest rooms on the second floor.
 
Kelly remarked, “Candy, I thought you were only going to have three bedrooms.”

      
Candy smiled and replied, “Living this far out, I realized that visitors would be staying the night.
 
So, I had them redesign it to have four bedrooms.
 
In a pinch, the library and music room downstairs can be set up as spare bedrooms.”
 
Candy pointed Kelly into his room and she went into her master bedroom.

      
Kelly changed into his new outfit and checked his visage in the mirror.
 
The thin silk didn’t leave much to the imagination.
 
Kelly remembered what they said in Fighter Force, “No guts, no glory.”
 
He headed downstairs.
 
As he went by her door, Candy called out for him to open a bottle of wine.

      
The kitchen was so similar to her former rented house that Kelly had no problem finding the wine, the opener, and four glasses.
 
He poured four glasses, put them on a tray, and went out to the pool.
 
As he looked down at his attire, it occurred to him that it was the perfect color for spilling wine upon.

      
The three ladies came downstairs together and out to the pool.
 
Kelly’s jaw dropped.
 
They were all ravishing in their pajamas.
 
Candy was obviously comfortable in hers, but the other two were slightly self-conscious.
 
Kelly looked on with a big grin on his face and Tammy and Angie smiled back.

      
Angie spoke first.
 
“Well, it’s not like we’re showing anything you haven’t seen before or we haven’t seen ourselves.”

      
At that point they all broke into laughter.
 
The ice had been broken.
 
They all relaxed around each other and spent the rest of the weekend thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.

* * * * *

      
Valeri Yestepkin looked around at his laboratory.
 
It was sparse and a far cry from what he enjoyed when he worked for the Blakes, but was sufficient to his needs.
 
A non-competition clause in his previous contract with the Blakes prohibited him from working on projects using the same or similar technology as the Blakes developed, but he was content to be working on his own.

      
Valeri had an idea for a weapon, an idea he had gotten when working for the Blakes, but did not use their technology.
 
It was a weapon that did what the transporter gate did in disassembling the molecules of an object, but it had no ability to put them together again.
 
It was, in effect, a disrupter beam.

      
He had applied for and received a government research grant that paid for his laboratory and two assistants here on Shepard.
 
He had already produced a prototype demonstration weapon, per the grant requirements.
 
A team at Fleet Ordnance had his weapon prototype and was testing it to determine its efficacy and suitability.

      
Valeri was now working on scaling his system to different sizes.
 
He worked with a computer assisted design program to bring the size down to that of a hand weapon.
 
If he could get it that small, he could easily scale it up to an assault rifle-sized weapon.
 
Valeri thought it would make a replacement for the heavy M57 blast rifles that assault troops currently carried.
 
If his calculations were correct, the disrupter rifle would be half the weight of the M57 and shoot twice as far.

      
Scaling up beyond personal weapon size was a bit of a challenge, because the power requirements expanded faster than the size increased.
 
A weapon scaled up to be a cruiser’s main armament would require its own engine for power.
 
There was a way to make it more energy efficient, but it eluded him at the moment.
 
Until he figured it out, he would work on the personal weapon design.

      
Cindy Matthews, one of his research assistants, came back from lunch.
 
She was a very pretty woman, several years younger than Valeri.
 
She was tall, well built, and usually favored skirts or dresses that showed off her long legs, her best feature.
 
Today she wore a light white blouse and a short blue skirt with braid-like piping along the hem.
 
She pulled him away from the terminal and handed him a pastrami and Swiss on rye sandwich, his favorite.

      
“Eat, damn it!
 
Valeri, you’re no good to us unconscious from lack of food.”

      
He saved what he was working on and turned to eat his sandwich at the workbench.
 
Cindy poured a cup of coffee and fixed it for him, then set it down next to the sandwich and left the room.
 
She came back in a few moments, wearing her lab coat.

      
He asked, “Where is Ron?
 
Shouldn’t he be back from lunch now?”

      
“Ron took the afternoon off to take care of some personal matter.
 
You said he could have the time off.
 
Don’t you remember?”

      
“Oh, yes, something to do with his taxes as I recall.”

      
She went over to the work outline board and stood staring at it for a while.
 
Valeri finished his sandwich and his coffee.

      
He asked, “What, no dessert?”

      
This brought a laugh from Cindy.
 
She turned around, holding open her lab coat, revealing only her.
 
Her blouse and skirt must have been left in the other room.
 
She walked toward him, dropping the coat off her shoulders as she approached.
 
She sat on his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.

      
She stared into his eyes as she said, “How’s this for dessert?
 
I’ve been waiting for us to be alone for a long time, you workaholic.”

      
Later, Cindy lay against his side on his office couch, her left leg draped over his.
 
Her head rested upon his chest and she twirled the hairs there.

      
“Valeri, I hate to talk shop, but you can’t keep working on that old terminal.
 
You’ll make yourself blind.
 
It’s so slow.
 
If you’d gotten that bonus for working on the Blake’s invention, you could have afforded a new one.
 
Just how hard did they push for you to be included?”

      
Cindy had been unhappy about Valeri’s failure to get the bonus for the transporter rings that all the other workers on the team received.
 
She kept harping on how much he contributed to the project for nothing.
 
He’d been gone less than a month when they announced the bonuses.
 
One would think they could make an exception.
 
Moira Blake told him they had pushed hard to get him included in the bonus fund, but the finance bureaucrats said no.
 
Moira even offered to give him her bonus, but he couldn’t accept.
 
Besides, Fleet owed him the bonus, not Moira.

      
Cindy kept bugging him about it as if there was anything more he could do.
 
Even now, after this unexpectedly memorable lunch, she couldn’t leave it alone.
 
He wondered if this was just a set up to make him go back and tilt at the bureaucratic windmill…again.
 
He smiled, because if it was a set up, it was one he could get used to.

* * * * *

      
Friedrich Debran was impressed with Irina Bugarov.
 
She carried herself well, and was knowledgeable about Debran Industries holdings and recent company activities.
 
She had done her homework.
 
She also had a pretty good idea of what her job would entail, and had several ideas she offered freely to improve the company’s exposure in the defense market.
 
There were changes and upgrades needed to Fighter Force aircraft that could be marketed to her former colleagues, if they could be simultaneously marketed to key members of the GR Assembly.

      
He liked her sense of duty, commitment and political manipulation.
 
She freely told him that she had no romantic, family, or other commitments, and could devote however many hours the job required to ensure it was done right.

      
His mind was made up.
 
He offered her the job at a reasonable salary, by private sector standards, but significantly more than a two-star general made.
 
He enjoyed giving Flag Officers low initial salaries, as it fueled his sense of superiority.
 
She accepted.

* * * * *

      
LTJG Cortez pushed the engine modifications through in record time.
 
A big incentive was the fact that she couldn’t leave for her new assignment as the Vigilant’s XO until she had the modifications installed and tested.
 
In a week and a half, the modifications were fitted to the Vigilant and ready for live testing.

      
Half of Connie’s team from the Repair and Refit Directorate embarked on the Vigilant for the in-space trial.
 
There were wires run everywhere to connect all the instrumentation that had been brought aboard.

      
Kelly truly took actual command of his ship for the first time, when he requested permission to take off for the test.
 
Upon approval, he gave the order to lift off and experienced almost an electric rush of excitement as the ship, his ship, rose into the air.
 
They quickly left the atmosphere and moved out of the system.

      
Connie was afforded the use of the XO’s position on the bridge for test monitoring purposes, although technically she was not yet the XO.
 
Her boss, LT Roger Dahlens, who Kelly had met his first day on Armstrong, was the senior engineering officer on board and in charge of the test.

      
Kelly watched their progress through the system and ordered them to FTL Power 1 as they crossed the last orbital plane, leaving the red giant Antares behind.
 
Chief Blankenship sent the helm a transit course though dark space, the ship smoothly speeding up to light speed.
 
Kelly asked for a status check from the engine room.
 
Everything was operating well within tolerances.
 
LT Dahlens nodded at this information and turned to Kelly, “Captain, would you increase speed to FTL Power 3, at your discretion?”

      
Kelly gave the order and the ship smoothly accelerated to many times the speed of light.
 
He called back to engineering and got a report that all was still well within tolerances.

      
LT Dahlens acknowledged the report and gave clearance for a full speed test.
 
Kelly gave the order and watched the FTL meter on his display climb to FTL Power 4, FTL Power 5, and then to FTL Power 6.
 
It felt no different than FTL Power 1.
 
The indicator continued to climb slowly until it stopped at FTL Power 6.6.

      
Kelly called for a status check from engineering and a jubilant Chief Miller came back, “Sir, she’s purring like a kitten.
 
There was not so much as a spike while she climbed through the numbers.
 
I believe we just set a speed record for a Fleet ship, Captain.”

      
Kelly let the ship run for 30 minutes and said, “ Helm, bring us down to 0.9
c
.”

      
The helmsman backed off the speed control and the Vigilant smoothly coasted down to just below light speed.
 
He answered, “We are below light speed at 0.9
c
, sir.”

      
Kelly looked at his display and ordered, “Helm, all stop.
 
Sensors, report all contacts.
 
Engineering, report status.”

      
Helm answered, “All stop, sir.”

      
Sensors answered, “Conducting a sweep, sir.
 
Sensors report all clear, sir.”