The Pi Effect Snippet 5

 Sitrep:

  The video project hit a snag, I goofed on placement of a prop and had to go back and reshoot 20 frames. That was annoying, but at least I caught it early.

  I am working on other elements and kicking myself because I didn't take advantage of the sales Daz3D had going. There are 3 figures I want for this video and they had been half off... and now are not. My bad. I guess it can wait a bit longer. I'm no where near that part anyway. :P

 

On to the snippet! Still in chapter 4:

 

~~(O)~~

Commodore Vestri Sindri nodded as he read the reports. So far so good. The first of the heavy cruisers was nearing completion. They'd had a few delays but nothing serious. Once they had her out of the finishing slip, the yard dogs would move into full swing to produce her sisters.

They had opted to build heavy cruisers over light cruisers because of the pirates. Light cruisers were good for scouting but that was being handled by the prowlers and other ships. Heavy cruisers were the true workhorses of the fleet.

There were four production runs of heavy cruisers planned and then he could switch to other ship designs. He was sure that many thought he was going to produce light cruisers next or even shoot for battle cruisers, but that wasn't his plan. He wanted escort and light carriers.

He was pretty sure Admiral Caine would sign off on the switch once he saw it. The cruiser yard wouldn't have much of a problem retooling to produce the line after all and he would welcome the additional firepower. Building the carriers would be tricky though.

At the moment, they didn't have a fighter factory. There was the one small production line of small craft, but it was currently churning out tugs and shuttles and would be doing so for the foreseable future. The fighters for the cruisers were going to be imported from Rho.

That had to change though in time. They needed local pilots, and they needed a source of fighters. The problem was where to get them?

Another issue was local sector politics. Word was getting around about New Cornwall's good fortune and some other star systems, most notably Tir Na Nog were up in arms over it. Even though they had scored a full naval hospital and the Marine base and training centers.

He shook his head.

Some people were not happy even when you gave them a lot of shit. They just put their hand out for more without so much as a thank you. He grimaced.

He had, he checked the schedule, another three weeks on site before he was supposed to ship back to Port Royal. Along the way, he was supposed to do a bit of check-ins and surprise inspections with the civilian contractors producing components in PB1-68 and Ganwon-do. If all was good as anticipated there, he would be in Port Royal for a few months and then back on the road to New Cornwall with a fresh set of keys from Admiral Logan.

He shook his head. Someone should send the damn things by secure courier, not make him burn the time to go back and forth. He'd complained to Horatio and even John over the ansible, but they'd just shrugged it off. He knew that they wanted his face time with the natives in PB1-68 and Ganwon-do to cement the Federation’s interests in the star systems, but geesh!

The good news was that he didn't have to travel by one of the freighters that was carrying cargo to Port Royal. He had a courier he could snag and use. It was due in a week. The crew would take three days to get to port and then would have the rest of the time up to their scheduled departure date as time off or time to resupply their ship.

He hoped they had improved their spades skills. The last run had been hopeless and boring. A fresh electronic library update would be nice too.

~~(O)~~