Warpath (40 page)

“I could pull rank,”
Oz said.

“I’ll make you look
bad,” Jake said nonchalantly. “Everyone will know Admiral
McPatrick always has to have the bigger pile. Whether it’s getting
the nicer ship, or the bigger space superiority wing, or the most
well known people, they’ll know you just have to have the nicer
toys and that’s all there is to it.”

“You wouldn’t,”
Oz replied.

“You outrank me now,
squarely, so the only thing I could do is get some scuttlebutt going
about overcompensation.”

“You’re going to go
on every acquisition run we have on this trip,” Oz said, shaking
his head. “There’s no winning at the bargaining table with you.”

“I’ve been doing it
a long time,” Jake said, happy that his friend was dropping it.
“You let me pick my crew, so I did. Besides, you have people over
there that were trained by Agameg and that shiny artificial
intelligence you have running that ship. I still want a copy.”

“We’ll go into that
later,” Oz said. “For now, I’m wondering what we’re going to
do about the ships the British Alliance assigned to us. I’ve
already sent a message telling them that they’re no longer
necessary. They said we should be grateful to have them along.”

“I was wondering why
you were calling on a secure connection,” Jake said.

“No point in trusting
them with anything when they’re watching us like we’re the lesser
experienced, lesser armed on this excursion. They scan us every three
minutes to the second, from bow to stern, and I received a brief
introduction from each Captain, no more. When I requested a strategy
meeting and orientation session for our command staff with them, they
put me on the schedule for day after tomorrow. I wouldn’t mind
being put in my place if they could pull their weight.”

Jake couldn’t help
but smile a little. The idea of the British Alliance captains putting
the Triton and the Revenge commanders in their place was more than a
little amusing. “They pack a third the firepower and a quarter of
the shielding as the Revenge. They’re going to have trouble keeping
up with our thrust power outside of a wormhole,” Jake said. “Those
ships are old, even by our standards.”

“I know we could
learn a thing or two from the Captains aboard those ships,” Oz
said. “But technically, they’re support at best.”

“And the Captains
think they’re chaperones, and bad ones,” Jake said. “I should
have paid more attention, looked more closely at the ships the
British were sending with us.”

“Hey, as part of a
defensive screen around Tamber, they’re great, those commanders
have service jackets that I could roll out the door, but those
ships?”

“Hey,” Jake said,
putting the mug down. “They’ve got really thick armour.”

“If that were
enough,” Oz replied. “Even if they had the power and speed, they
don’t have dimension drives, and I’m not comfortable showing them
the technology. When we get that working, the game changes, but not
if we have three millstones around our necks slowing us down.”

“Agreed. It’s too
soon to share the technology,” Jake said. “Everyone in the known
galaxy is going to be after these if we can get them working.”

“Mine’s going to be
ready to go in eight hours or less, I have an Ayan in engineering.
She tells me the corrections from Lorander will be easy to implement
using technology we already have.”

“Show off,” Jake
said. “I’ll be ready sometime after oh nine hundred tomorrow. I
can’t get it done any faster. Checks on the regular systems are
going to run through the night.”

“Considering the time
we’re going to save in transit, I don’t think a few hours are
going to make a difference. So, about these British ships,” Oz
said. “If I exercise my rights as Admiral of the Triton Fleet and
order them back to assist with defence, you would support me?”

“Best choice you’ve
made all day,” Jake replied.

“So it’s the Triton
and the Revenge. Are we opening a wormhole, or are you doing the
honours?”

“Our wormhole
generator just got a full overhaul, and all our computers just got
replaced, we’ve got to test those systems,” he said with a shrug.

“Good idea. You start
plotting, I’ll tell the British to bugger off,” Oz said.

“Oh, and tell Ayan I
can’t wait for her to be back aboard,” Jake said

“Maybe I should have
tried trading her.”

“Tell her she’s the
horse in a horse trade,” Jake said with a laugh. “I dare you.”

“Excellent point,”
Oz replied.

“Besides, she
transfers back as soon as she’s finished there,” Jake said. “I
get the feeling she’ll stick around for a while too.”

“Until she gets tired
of the food and the trademark hard rock Regent Galactic mattresses.”
The hologram blinked off and Jake picked up his mug. For a moment he
thought he may have sloshed a bit over the side, but he discovered
that it was too viscous to easily spill. “That can’t be right.”
He muttered as he left his quarters, handed his mug to a Crewman’s
Mate in white and continued on to the bridge. Minh-Chu was out of his
seat in time for him to sit down without breaking his stride. “Told
you I’d be able to keep all three crewmembers,” he told him.

“No,” Minh-Chu
said. “How?”

“I’ll tell you
later,” Jake replied. “Helm, set best course wormhole for the
Iron Head nebula, hard jump, quarter distance. Wide enough for the
Triton to follow alongside.”

“You mean, high
compression?” Minh-Chu whispered, looking up front where Ashley was
running the helm.

“She knows, watch,”
Jake said, confident in Ashley’s knowledge and abilities.

“Yeah, but I don’t
know,” Minh-Chu whispered. “What is a ‘hard jump?’”

“It’s a wormhole
that crosses great distance in as short a space as our generator can
manage without giving much care for how gradual the threshold changes
space.”

“Oh, so like taking a
staircase five steps at a time on that first step,” Liara said from
communications.

“Good analogy,”
Jake replied.

“Okay, so I knew what
that was,” Minh-Chu said. “I just didn’t know there was a term
for it.”

“It’s in the new
Fleet manual,” Jake whispered. “We have a lot of reading to do
over the next few days.”

“You mean, you
haven’t finished reading it either?” Minh-Chu asked quietly.

“I think the only
people who’ve finished reading it are our Communications Officer
and my First Officer.”

“You mean, Executive
Officer,” Minh-Chu said. “So many things are changing, glad I
have my fighter squadrons. The squadron may be changing, but the
rules are the same.”

“Yes, that’s
because you were smart enough to start your fighter wing using real
military regulations and organization,” Jake said. “I should have
taken your lead on that one with the Warlord.”

“Do you want me to
forward our helm data to the Triton and the British Alliance ships?”
Liara asked.

“Just the Triton, the
rest aren’t coming,” Jake replied.

“No?” asked Finn
from his right.

“Why?” asked
Agameg, standing beside him.

“When you look at
their ship specifications, now that they’ve been released to us,
you’ll know why. Helm, how long until that wormhole opens?” Jake
asked.

“Forty-nine seconds,
Sir,” replied Ensingn Clara Ramone, one of the few navigators who
Ashley trained aboard the Triton and the Warlord.

“The Triton is
signalling a go,” Liara said. “And Triton Fleet Command reports
that the British Alliance destroyers are slowing. They are off the
mission, awaiting orders from British Alliance Fleet.”

Minh-Chu looked up at
him uneasily.

“Don’t worry, it’ll
all make sense tomorrow on our jog,” Jake whispered to him. He sat
back and waited for the wormhole to appear in front of their ships.

The crewman he handed
his mug to in the hall came through the bridge hatch and presented it
to him. It had been washed, Jake’s name and rank were freshly
printed on one side with the ship insignia on the other. It was three
quarters full with the cold nutriment drink. “Sir, I didn’t know
what you wanted me to do with it, so I put proper insignia on it, and
refilled it from the galley, Sir.”

Jake was as impressed
as he was surprised. It looked like the young man had run extremely
hard to have it all done in a handful of minutes. “Thank you so
much, Crewman’s Mate…” Jake trailed off.

“Viken, Sir. From
maintenance, Sir,” he said, gulping air.

“Well, thank you,”
Jake said taking a generous gulp. It was less chalky, but the pasty
characteristic of a forma beverage was unmistakable. “Please,
return to duty.”

“Sir, yes, Sir,” he
said.

“Where did we find
him?” Jake said when he was out of earshot.

“Haven Shore, Sir,”
Liara answered, to Jake’s surprise. “He was an apprentice in the
manufacturing shop.”

“You don’t have to
answer every question, you know,” Jake said as he pantomimed the
act of looking for a place to put his mug. “Knew we missed
something. Every command seat should come with a cup holder.”

“Checking wormhole
for viability and verifying trajectory,” Ashley announced. “All
checks passed, transitioning.”

The ship rumbled
slightly as it crossed the threshold into the wormhole’s space.
Jake checked his tactical screen and saw that the Triton was right
behind them. Over the next few minutes they would carefully navigate
so they were right alongside, making it difficult for a scanning
officer on another ship to clearly see either of them.

Agameg stepped up to
the Captain’s seat, pressed a button on its arm and a cup holder
popped out from the front. “We forgot nothing,” he said.

“Thank you,” Jake
said, putting his mug down. He watched Agameg return to the
engineering department where they were busy reviewing the ship’s
systems. He took a moment to look the bridge over and to enjoy the
feeling of being on a military ship. The Revenge was the kind of ship
he wanted to grow into. A little more leg room would have been nice,
but it was the beast of burden they needed to win major engagements.

Every engagement while
Captaining the Warlord was undertaken with a hull much thinner than a
proper warship. The Revenge was what he needed, his crew would be
properly protected, and properly equipped. Even still, he felt as
though he had been killed as one man only weeks before, and woke up
as another man. A man of military means and military methods who
enjoyed life more than the previous one ever knew how to.

The view from the front
of the ship appeared across the entire front wall of the bridge, and
he couldn’t help but smile. The space outside the wormhole appeared
blurred, as usual, but somehow the reassurance that all the work
they’d put in over the last few days was paying off made him feel
extremely confident in his crew, even though there were over three
hundred Crewman’s Mates who were there for training.

He brought up a
holographic schematic of the ship so he could take a closer look at
it in the Captain’s seat. The main body of the ship was at the
rear, a thick V with the widest side facing front. A broad neck
extended from the middle. The old bridge was at the head of the
squared off forward section that connected to the rest of the ship in
a neck of armour. To the port and starboard sides of the forward
section were rectangular armoured rotary thrusters. They located just
far enough forward along the neck of the ship’s fore so they didn’t
scorch the hull, but they could turn two hundred and seventy degrees
to fore and aft, and sixty three degrees to port or starboard. A
railgun turret featuring three four hundred and twenty millimetre
barrels sat directly behind the old bridge on top of the front of the
ship’s neck. On the bottom of the same section was one of the
directed electromagnetic pulse beam weapons, capable of firing at
anything beneath or in front of the ship through a low profile
protective dome. The main launch bay door was located behind that,
and the enclosed hangar ran the length of the ship along the bottom,
connecting to the two additional hangars, which were sandwiched
between heavy armour wings.

The extra armour
plating that was added to the ship covered half the neck in a
widening V shape, with the widest section at the rear. The whole of
the neck section was only seven decks thick, with extra power and
weapon systems adding to the thickness. The main section of the ship
thickened to fourteen decks, not including armour. At each stage
another main railgun turret with triple four hundred twenty
millimetre guns were mounted, and two more were mounted at the
broadest points of the port and starboard sides of the ship, making
for a total of five deadly turrets.

Several other standard
anti-fighter and countermeasure turrets were built into the hull,
some were computer controlled, while others were manned, but none of
them were railgun systems. The purely mechanical turrets used a
variable shell system, where the guns could dumb-fire if the power in
the ship went out, and the shells could still serve many different
purposes.

The other directed
electromagnetic pulse beam dome was on the bottom of the ship’s
main section, along with torpedo and missile systems that required
crewmembers to man stations between the launch decks of the hangars
and the outer hull. The rear thrusters were spread across the aft
section of the hull, above the hangars, and the new rectangular
rotary thrusters sat above and behind them. They were heavily
armoured, but also had their own shield emitters that assisted the
rest of the ship, and a pair of automated point defence guns. They
also enjoyed a little coverage from the armoured communications
section that was designed to look like another bridge built off the
rearmost portion of the dorsal section of the hull. There was a
secondary communications system inside the neck of the vessel as
well.