"You don't like the limelight much, do you."

  I shrugged.

  "Never been in it before."

  "And no training," he laughed. "Yeah, I know that feeling. They dropped me in the deep end as well. You'll get used to it." He paused, looking at the top of my head. "Nice cap."

  "Thanks. I asked Jane to use one of my armbands in the shape of a cap, to see if it could be done, and as a better way of using them than armbands."

  His glance went down the table to Jane, and flicked back to me.

  "Hmm. It hasn’t come up to me yet, but it's not a bad idea. What else did you come up with?"

  "Combat helmets, underwear, sun protection hats, that sort of thing."

  "Underwear?"

  "Yeah. Most people are accustomed to putting on underwear under their suit, so dressing is a normal part of getting going in the morning. If the extra suits are put on as clothing, even if as a shirt and shorts over actual underwear, with socks and cap, that's five extra suits which are not going to be forgotten by accident. Then the ladies can wear earrings or hair ribbons, or whatever to add a couple more. Jane's looking into it."

  "I'll add it to my list of things to do. Thanks for the suggestions. I have to admit the armbands detract from the look of the new uniforms, so your idea could be a good one if it's possible to do."

  "I thought so, once Jane had made this mask and a set of glasses for me."

  "I wasn’t going to mention the mask. I did hear a few people referring to it as a hero mask being worn by a hero, but I can't officially hear such comments. It does look better matching your skin tones, but it is a little freaky still. All the same, I'm glad Jane was able to help you. I'm also sorry it took so long. Had I known when you disembarked on Haven, I’d have seen what could be done back then."

  "I appreciate it, but things are working out just fine."

  Desserts were put down in front of us. Almost identical crumbles, except his was apricot and mine was apple. I noticed him eyeing the butlers.

  "I'm not sure introducing Jeeves to Kat was a good idea."

  I couldn’t help but chuckle.

  "I've asked Jane about Kat picking his own wardrobe."

  "I'll add that to my list as well. Never allow yourself to be made an interstellar despot. The paperwork is murder."

  Laughter broke out along the table, and I found myself joining in.

  "I'm not even going to pretend to understand that, err Jon."

  "Don’t worry about it. You do know corvettes allow for an AI avatar?"

  "Sorry, what?"

  "An avatar. Droid body with a suit used to make a person. I know Jane is running your ship at the moment, but she can clone you a Dreamwalker AI, or if you prefer, she can upgrade Kat to a ship AI level, who can make a proper avatar, and run your butlers for you. Said avatar can be male, female, or even animal. So if Kat wants a cat shape, he can have one."

  "Kat was an Aunt Susan joke. I'm not sure he associates with actual cats."

  "As a ship level AI, he can decide that for himself. Give it some thought. But ship AI's can run multiple ships. Your Cobra will fit in the hanger of a destroyer, and the same AI can run both at the same time. And ship names can be changed. Crusader is currently controlled by Jane, so hasn’t had its own AI before."

  "Sounds interesting, but Kat should have a say in it."

  "All you'll get is 'whatever you want sir'."

  We both chuckled. And dug into our deserts.

  Forty

  Grace was in my bed when I woke the next morning.

  She hadn't been when I’d gone to sleep. But there she was now, still asleep, and naked. With training time almost upon us, I opted to let her sleep, and padded into the shower. Where I learned a few things about masks and glasses.

  Glasses when wet distort your vision. Hero masks prevent your eyes from being washed. So I ended up blind again for the length of time it took to wash my eyes properly, especially since they hadn't been for several days now. Wet glasses shifted into a mask go clean and dry, as long as you don’t have your face under the water as you try to put the mask back on. Several shifts later, and I was seeing properly again.

  Grace padded in, still naked, and joined me. She was yawning prodigiously.

  "Did I wake you up?"

  "No. Late night, and not enough sleep."

  "Why are you here?"

  "Where else would I be?"

  "Your quarters?"

  She laughed.

  "And miss out on this?"

  This, involved a hand in a delicate place. I pretended to ignore it, while at the same time, activating the override so nothing came up.

  "How did you even get in?"

  "Jane let me in."

  "Jane knows what we've been up to?"

  She laughed outright this time.

  "Jane's been watching what we've been up to."

  I think I was shocked. Certainly was unable to speak for a few moments.

  "Huh?"

  "She's an AI. She sees everything. Orion probably does as well."

  "That's not right," I finally blurted out.

  "You get used to it."

  I just looked at her, dumbfounded. With both of us soapy, in spite of my hands not actually doing anything, I pulled myself together.

  "Why the late night?"

  "I had to take Fearless back to the planet to collect all the combat droids. Took me three trips, and I didn’t get back until after two."

  "So why aren't you sleeping in?"

  "I am. Just seeing you off first."

  At this point, I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on here. Nor did I have the guts to ask. And I was already late.

  "Got to go. Training. BA will kill me if I'm late."

  "I already pinged her I was making you late."

  "So she knows you're with me?"

  "The whole ship does."

  I sighed. Of course everyone knew. The only thing faster than the speed of light in normal space was the speed of gossip on a warship.

  "How did she react?"

  "She said start running, and you better make a serious attempt to catch up."

  I sighed again, made an attempt to get all the soap off, removed her hand from my low down appendage, and stepped out to dry myself off. Back in my flight suit, I paused to watch her hands running over her very wet naked body.

  "Did you say something about being late?" she laughed.

  "Lunch?"

  "If possible, yes. I'll ping you."

  I dragged my eyes away, shuffled back into the bedroom, donned cap and armbands, and headed for the door. As it closed behind me, there was the sound of a body hitting the bed quite solidly.

  The travel car took me where I needed to be, and I started running, knowing I had no chance of even finishing the required laps, let alone catching anyone up.

  BA interrupted me a tad short of collapsing, put me through the gun ranges again, and pushed me into the first of the marine courses. Needless to say, in spite of the bad guys being distinctive plants, I managed to shoot a lot of innocent trees, and even a few friendly 'marines'. For a first attempt, I thought I'd done well, but BA seemed to be taking the dead marines personally.

  After a drink, breakfast, and much lowering of my pulse rate, the arrow directed me to the 266 simulator room. The squadron were still out on the dawn patrol, although due in shortly, but even then wouldn’t be here until after they'd debriefed and had breakfast.

  I settled into my simulator, closed up, and powered up. And froze.

  "What the hell is this?"

  The HUD was different again.

  "This is Crusader," said Jane.

  "Of course it is," I muttered. "What the hell is a Crusader?"

  "The CAG's destroyer. The Imperator told you that last night. Well technically it's no longer the CAG's, and it's actually in the shipyard with the rest of the destroyers being upgraded to this spec. The Imperator has been wondering what to do with them, and after seeing what you did in a corvette yesterday, he merged a lot of ideas into an upgrade package, and had all six destroyers moved to the shipyard last night. He suggested you might like to have a play with the spec now, so you can tweak things if necessary before they come out."

  "Of course he did." I paused. "Why do you call him that?"

  "It's his rank. What do you think I should be calling him? Brother dearest?"

  "Of course not, but since you brought it up, how does he have an AI sister?"

  "I was adopted by his parents."

  Well duh.

  "Sorry, stupid question."

  "No problems. You want to play a bit before the squadron arrives?"

  "What happens when they do?"

  "I'll tell you then."

  For the next hour, I played around on my own against the simulator AI, tweaking the HUD layout, and getting used to having much more firepower. The first thing to grapple with was having eight four barrel quick fire destroyer turrets, two front, two back, top and bottom, all of which could fire independently as point defense, or be linked up to the main guns firing forward. All of them were on the same mounts as I’d seen on Orion, so every turret could fire forward, or aft, at the same time, through the use of extendable mounts so the rear ones could fire over the ones in front, and over the bridge superstructure.

  The main guns were also like Orions, being a circle of ten cruiser guns. There was also fifty torpedo launchers, and ten anti-fighter missile launchers. They could be linked up any way you wanted, so one button press could fire one torpedo, or the whole fifty, with ninety nine more still in each magazine.

  Around the outside edge of the front of the ship were eighty capital ship missile launchers, thirty down each side, and ten across the top and bottom.

  At the rear of the ship, around the engine nozzles, there were another ten anti-fighter missile launchers.

  The secondary armament included heavy corvette and point defense turrets, and some frigate turrets, with two full sized mosquito launchers on both sides. These were easily the largest mounts on the ship, firing one hundred mosquitoes at a time, and being controlled by their own mid-level AI's, supervised by the ship AI.

  The bridge was on the top in the central superstructure, and the hanger was in the same place on the bottom. The specs said the hanger could fit two corvettes, a Lightning courier, and a captain's gig. According to the notes, most of the accommodation was being completely gutted, to make way for a pilot's suite only. This was being redesigned as a large fighter, and there was only going to be one person on board.

  All in all, as a ship now designed as an anti-fighter platform, it was quite insane.

  And yet, it handled identically to the Cobra, with the same defect I'd noticed in the corvette classes, as the arse end was the slowest part to get out of the way of anything serious forcing the ship to dodge violently. I mentioned it to Jane to pass on, to see if the shipyard could boost the maneuvering thrusters in the rear end, so doing down, or in any other sudden direction, didn’t leave your arse flapping in the breeze.

  As it was, with all the turrets set on auto-fire, and only the front and back guns and launchers manually controlled, I waded through a cloud of tree fighters like a tornado through a forest. The worst thing was shielding though. Those tree cruiser guns did take a toll, and the larger ship was simply a larger target, and no matter how much you threw it around, they still hit you regularly when they had numbers.

  I had Jane suggest boosting the shields by however much gutting other stuff would allow. The spec included a cargo deck, and I told her to suggest they use it for extra ordnance, and more power generators for shields. If the space wasn’t being used, then it should be rededicated to shielding if possible.

  She'd just sent off the suggestion, when my squadron mates started logging in. I took the opportunity to have a quick break, and started in on a bottle of water. The last one in was Vulture.

  "I hear we're doing a test for the Imperator. Any idea what?"

  "I can guess."

  "Guess away."

  I told him what I’d been flying, and what the Imperator had suggested last night about having a destroyer act as both missile protection, and serious firepower to support a squadron.

  "Is that why we all launched in Excaliburs this morning?"

  "You did?"

  "Yes. Rockmonster just about wet herself I think. Not sure if it was excitement, or feeling out of her depth. Mind you, she wasn’t the only one. Several of the male rookies reacted the same way."

  "The latter I think. Better tell her today is experimenting, and she can still choose to launch in a Brawler for the next combat."

  "All the same, I'll make sure she gets extra time today in the Excalibur, in case we are going to be officially redesignated Excaliburs only. Probably leaves the ship short of spares though, so maybe they won't."

  "Or we get replacements for what we've lost."

  "That too."

  He headed for the simulator room, and after emptying the bottle, I followed.

  Forty One

  Oops.

  The first attempt to put a destroyer in the middle of a fighter squadron was a disaster. Within a couple of minutes, just my throwing the destroyer around the way I had the Cobra, resulted in me wiping out the whole squadron by colliding with them.

  Take two. We went into an empty space, and I spun the destroyer around its axis until we figured out how close was safe close. And it wasn’t any real sort of close. Although with the destroyer in the center, and the flights spread out above, below, behind, and to each side, the squadron covered a good area all at once, and was still within the range of mosquitoes.

  Take three was once again against a small forest, and the AI was predicting as long as the destroyer was present, most of the cruiser pulses were going to be aimed at it. And we prevailed with only a few losses, three of which were Rockmonster and the other two rookies still trying to come to grips with the Excalibur.

  As we stepped it up, so too did we finish with more lost ships and less shielding all around. Until we reached the stage where no-one survived at all, with me going first. We could handle the fighters of about six tree battleships, but beyond that, survival deteriorated rapidly. The other problem was, six battleships was normally three full fleets, and even if we did manage to take out the fighters, we had no hope of surviving the fleets themselves.

  I had Jane push another suggestion up the pipeline, to the effect that only having accommodation for the pilot meant there would be no magician available to save pilots who had their ships destroyed around them.

  And that didn’t take into account what happened to all the pilots if the destroyer was destroyed as well. Without a bigger ship to pick pilots up, the squadron really was at risk if it had to go against a target out of our weight range. Effectively this meant a standard fleet with two battleships was a good target, but three of them was too much just in terms of fighters, without any ability to also hit the capital ships.

  Maybe it meant this sort of independent fighter force needed to consist of two or even three squadrons in a single wing, with two or three destroyers. Or the Excaliburs needed to be based off a Scimitar, so there would be twenty four Excaliburs, two destroyers, and a battlecarrier.

  After we called it a session, I looked up the specs for the Scimitars. Much more capable of handling a single fleet, but the destroyers were getting much more concentrated point defense against fighters. Added to which the Scimitar couldn’t launch an Excalibur through its tubes. There was a modified version which could, but it couldn’t launch a whole squadron at once, let alone two.

  Thinking about the Excalibur, I looked it up as well. The history notes said the Imperator had taken an existing privateer ship, and made it bigger to be able to add in the extra features he'd wanted. Like extra turrets, speed, and shielding. But the privateer class was designed as a long distance fighter, which had no need of a carrier to base on.

  I knew something of the privateers, but they were after my time on Ark Royal, and except for the American space force, had replaced carriers completely. The thing which caught my eye though, was all the accommodation space, allowing a pilot to spend weeks in space, and still live comfortably.

  We needed all that wasted space. With Excaliburs being launched from carriers, the living space was completely redundant. The specs were interesting, especially the recent upgrades to the power systems, with some kind of crystal. What we needed were better shields, and more spare magazines. Maybe keep the fresher, and food and water supplies, but the rest of the space might allow for another power crystal, and a stack of magazines. In fact, if everything but the cockpit was reworked, it might even be possible to get more capital ship missiles on the bomber version.

  The more I thought about things, the more I was convinced we needed a short range fighter/bomber version of the Excalibur, and the Brawler should be relegated to recon in the same way the light fighters mainly did recon back in Ark Royal days. Or police forces inside a system.

  I sent more observations to Jane, and headed for lunch.

  Grace was waiting for me in a mess which was otherwise unused.

  "You look tired," she said.

  "Long morning. BA put me through the entire wringer, I was dumped into a destroyer design which is still in a shipyard somewhere, and has issues, and the squadron went through a series of simulations to find out where we all got chewed up."

  I looked at her for a moment, and she waited.

  "Is the Imperator always like that?"

  "Like what?"

  "A dog with a bone. Show him something new, and he runs with it before thinking it out first."

  She laughed.

  "You're seeing what you want to see."

  "How so?"

  "Jon comes up with ideas, or takes other people's ideas, and pushes them off to those who can think them out properly. That's why you did what you did this morning. He knew if anyone could figure out what might be wrong with using destroyers that way, you would."

  I sighed.

  "If he bases war decisions on what I say, we're all screwed."

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22