Sparks Snippet 3

 Still in chapter 2... this should get some attention...

Rear Admiral John Henry Irons sat back with a sigh once the commander was out of his office. The young man looked a little dazed, probably a good thing. He rubbed his temples. “Where do they get them?” he muttered.

“Problems, sir?” his yeoman asked, coming in and setting a tablet down along with a couple of memory chips. Data was in the network for easy access, but sometimes you had to get someone's attention by physically handing them a copy to remind them of its importance. especially when they got bombarded with so much information hourly.

He sometimes wondered if his half-ass Trinity project might be the way to go. Having some sort of A.I. personal assistant assigned to a flag officer seemed like a smart move. Even just a class 1 dumb A.I. like the one in the office might work.

“Only the usual. Anything of importance?”

“Only the usual,” she replied with a smile. “The ones on top are the priority, sir.”

“Ah,” he said with a nod. “Let me guess, crap from BUPERS and GI on safety and stuff?”

“Some of that. There is one message about delays in production.”

He grimaced. There had been a lot of that lately, most of it from a couple of suppliers who were having trouble shipping components in. They should have built up a reserve, but they hadn't. Either that or they'd blown throw it during some recent downtime due to factory damage.

He nodded. “I'll check those out,” he said. “I don't want the yard to get thrown into chaos,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” she said as she withdrew.

He turned to look out at the yard he was managing. Really, it was just one part of the massive yard that spanned millions of kilometers of cubic space. He also oversaw some R&D, but his primary duty was to manage the capital ship lines. Or, to clarify, manage the supervisors and slip managers who managed the yard components, plus the managers and so on who handled the logistics.

In other words, he was a cog in the wheel, a glorified paper pusher. He rather missed getting his hands dirty. He liked the rank but missed getting into the nitty gritty.

It still beat his last job setting up redoubts in the southern half of the sector. The redoubt program was a classified project “just in case” something happened to civilization. The best site he had picked and set up had been Bek. Bek and Nuevo in the Rho sector were in an isolated pocket of space. In order to get there, you had to go through hyperspace rapids or a long dangerous jump from B-107.

The pocket of space had become increasingly isolated since the Hyperspace Guild had decided to charge double or sometimes triple rate to navigate a ship in and out of the pocket. They had become increasingly isolated, and the retirees who largely made up the populations on the various worlds seemed to like it.

By building a small repair yard and reactivating some of the military personnel as reservists, he'd given them a renewed sense of purpose. He hoped it all worked out for them. Personally, he was glad to be back in a real shipyard.

The Norfolk Naval Shipyard built everything from battle cruisers to Leviathan Mark II class super dreadnoughts to monitors and super monitors for the surrounding three sector fleets. There was a repair yard nearby that dealt with refits and repairs as well as one in each of the sectors. He even had a battle moon and an Olympus class battle planet under construction.

He grimaced ever so slightly at the thought of the duo. He had inherited the big boys, the “Death Stars” as the media called them. He'd had a light hand in designing the Olympus class as a commodore on the Weapons Development Board. Since he'd written a dissenting opinion and offended a few people, his stay on the WDB had been brief.

His eyes scanned the half-constructed behemoths. He still thought of them as insane wastes; the scale of the things was just stupid crazy. And the fuel use! He shook his head. They could send an entire battle fleet for the fuel to run one of those things. They were there to inspire fear, to cow fleets into submission.

Oh, there was a solid bit about being a mobile base. He understood and agreed with that part. A battle moon or battle planet could hold a fleet within its titan hangars. Each had a repair yard, something necessary when they were operating in the boonies without support. Not that any of the big titans did anything like that. They were too precious to go anywhere except the core worlds where they were seen regularly. They were a comforting presence for the people there.

The pair he was currently working on would be the second set for the sector and was destined for the neighboring capital of New Alexandria when they were done—well, one there and one at a naval base to deter pirates. He wasn't sure which one. The priority would shift about. They had time to figure it out; the battle moon would take another three years to complete.

He snorted to himself. Like any self-respecting pirate would come within a hundred light years of such a thing!

He pulled up the chip with the logistics issues and then began to read it, focusing on his work of finding ways to keep the yard running smoothly.

<(((@)))>

Near end of the day John received a call from Admiral Bismark. His boss. Admiral Leon Bismark had helped his career. He was also considered a personal friend. “Sir? How has your day been going?”

“Well, it was going fair to middling until I got a certain call about someone's precious baby boy who you crushed earlier in the day. Eating junior officers for breakfast again, John?”

Admiral Irons snorted. Typical, he had expected the call, just not so soon. “Hardly. I take it the political network got word of the crushing defeat of his proposal?”

“Pretty much. What did he do to piss you off?”

“He didn't so much as piss me off as annoy me for not doing his homework with his half-ass proposal,” Admiral Irons replied with a shake of his head. “Did you see his pitch?”

“No, that was curiously left out.”

“Yeah. Well, he ripped it from a video game. No background, just a vague idea all eagerly wrapped up in a bundle. A high schooler could have done better work.”

“Ah … are you serious?”

“As a heart attack. I've actually played the game a long time ago. He redressed it with a mod, but it's the same thing.”

“Oh, that's … lovely. If word of that got out …”

“Yeah, I know. Which was why I was saving it for later if the political powers that be got too uppity.”

“Ah,” Admiral Bismark nodded slowly. “Playing with fire by jousting with politicians you know.”

“The ones in uniform should know better than to play with engineers,” Admiral Irons stated. “Can you believe he didn't even do an engineering study? Or research into his project?”

The other admiral smiled. “Ah, you are a bit pissed.”

“Annoyed,” Admiral Irons argued. “We, and by we I mean the navy, has been doing this for centuries. You'd think we would have tried just about every design by now. You'd think he'd realize that and look into it. He didn't. He launched into a spiel about how it would save weight, fuel, and be one heck of a ship …”

“Dazzled by the fantasy and you popped his balloon?”

“More or less. I ordered him to do an actual engineering study. If he's smart, he'll replay our conversation, pick up on my hints about real world experience and how things fail, and maybe do some historical research too.”

“From your tone you sound like you doubt it.”

“Pretty much. He's a skater. He was stuck here to round out his education and get an engineering tab in his jacket while someone else thought of something bigger and brighter for him to do to advance his career and the family's. This project has nothing to do with his actual assignment. If he doesn't complete that too, I'm going to land on him for it too.”

Admiral Bismark snorted.

“Well, I do wish you'd pick and choose your battles a little more carefully, John,” the admiral stated with a nod. “We'll see how this goes and if they want to push it.”

“I think if the family is smart they'll look before they leap. If they don't, then they don't belong in the navy anyway.”

“True,” Admiral Bismark said. “But you and I both know that hasn't stopped them before.”

“True.”

“He really pitched a gimble pontoon drive though? From a video game?”

“Yup.”

“We're so past that.”

“Oh, I don't know, mechanical if it is simple and robust. This design isn't no matter how he dresses it up. The Marines still use something similar in some of their shuttles. Army too for that matter. I'm not interested in it in a starship however.”

Admiral Bismark nodded. “Well, have a good evening,” he said with a cock of his head.

“Yes, sir, I'll do my best,” Admiral Irons said.

Admiral Bismark frowned. “Trouble on the home front?”

Admiral Irons sighed. “No more than usual. What can I say, teenagers. And teenage daughters should be kept in a barrel until they turn twenty-one.”

Admiral Bismark laughed and cut the channel.

<(((@)))>