Battleship Destroyer (31 page)

The engine finished materializing and then broke in half down the center length ways, showing tank deck gravcoils installed down the center. "The engine we have now is virtually one step below a Black Hole engine when it comes to the drive coils and would soon lead to developing a Black Hole drive in a few years even if I had not come along. Though you did say my grandfather was trying to do just that when someone kicked him out of whatever they kicked him out of. Oh and what anomaly?" Jack looked up frowned and shrugged then went back to work. “But that would only give us parody with them. Actually Engines that fit our ships would not be equal to theirs in power but at least have unlimited range. Besides a quick calculation showed that the Black hole drive is limited in how fast it can be pushed velocity wise because of the limit in the distance behind the ship you can push the Blackhole before releasing it. Not to mention that the closer you get to the speed of gravity the harder it is to push against and therefor limiting its maximum speed to a small fraction of the speed of gravity in fact. Maybe only as much as 5 percent. Luckily we have just the opportunity to skip a generation. Create an engine that can make our ships able to fly rings around theirs according to my initial calculations with no limit in max velocity. Ah unless you count the speed of Gravity but then I can’t even imagine going that fast." Jack shuddered.

The Admiral's eyes narrowed. "Is this some kind of joke boy? I am getting ready to to
ss you out the airlock with my own hands."

"No sir. I am talking about measuring thrust in billions of TONS and not just billions of POUNDS. While a clean screen engine would produce the best results. The gravcoils we use in the tanks of this ship and all the Dwarfs are about the perfect size to fit down the center of our existing Battleship engines. By combining the engines mass acceleration coils with the ship's tank deck gravity coils acting together, we can create artificial gravity black holes the size of atoms that we can use to accelerate Ions many times the velocity ever dreamed of sir. Fact is, by accelerating ions instead of molecules, the exhaust should be able to get all the way up to the speed of gravity barrier to virtually push against before being converted to gravity waves before exiting the engine on the advanced models in the future. I just checked and we have enough spare coils to convert about half of the new Battleships in the fleet to the new engines I think."

The Captain smiled. "Admiral
, with that much power on our Battleships. You will be able to catch the enemy in that trap you have planned without them escaping or escape when you find out our weapons are useless against them. "

The Admiral
sat there for several minutes as he watched Jack working on the engine calculations as it took shape over their head before finally nodding. "We are two days from fleet rendezvous. You have until then to convert one ship as a test. If it works, we will hold off the attack until as many ships as possible are converted. If you can't, I want this imposter and his Ensign in the brig and executed shortly after." The Admiral left the compartment.

"Ok. How the hell are we supposed to convert a ship while under
drive? Not like we have a mobile repair dock." Jack said to no one in particular as he worked.

The
Engineering Chief came around as Jack's fingers flew over the keys and slapped him on the back. "What! You don't know everything? Come on, I will show you one of the ship's Airdocks Our own repair dock for the fleet. We can get dinner on the way."

"Sor
ry Sir, but I have hours of work to finish up the details of the conversion."

"You have done enough work for now. It is going to take a day just to get a Battleship into the lock and we have plenty of work to do before then. Besides the engineering deck has a
Printer, Fabrication and Production control station that has a much better imaging and simulation suit than this hole." Turning to the Captain as Jack continued to work loosing himself again. "How about sending one currier off after we see how the conversion goes sir? Just in case the FTL Transmission does not get through."

"Very well
Chief."  The Captain tented her hands in front of her. "Chief; what do you think of this engine conversion? Will it work?" Watching Jack work, his hands flying over the and around him.

"The Blackhole
drive is pure Genius Captain. Though I would not have believed a word of it even with the Triple X doing it if the damn calculations and its approval if the Blackhole engine had not matched perfectly with what we can see on the sensor screen from that last recon ship. You need to give them a medal for getting it. They probably have doubled our chances of winning this thing.  As far as the engine upgrade to this Ion Warp drive? The only clue except for him coming up with the Blackhole drive and making it work, is the numbers I have seen for this Warp drive that make sense, but the boy has yet to finish his work and we won't know for sure until he does finish and the Triple X gives its approval. Except from what I see, we don't have a choice. If this does not work the human race is doomed unless you can talk Admiral Binghamton into at least changing his tactics for this battle and accepting the loss of his family."

"Yes it is obvious now that we do not stand a chance thanks to that recon crew. It is a shame they were run down by the enemy even though they had a full light day
head start on the enemy ship chasing them. They had the fastest ship in the fleet especially built for speed to out run the enemy which they were doing right up until they ran out of reaction mass. I will have to insist they all get medals posthumously. You make sure this engine works if it is even remotely possible." The Captain left the conference room glancing at the Ensign as she stared at the First Class with hate in her eyes. Stopping at the hatch as she remembered the red flag on the boys file. "Ensign, I don't know what your beef is with him but you don't let him out of your sight. I don’t need him harming himself or you taking out whatever your problems are on him." She thought about replacing the Ensign but she did have that psych degree and was from the same ship as the boy. She should know him well enough, include his moods allowing her to cut him off at the pass before he could harm himself or someone else. At least until he finished the engine. Though she had watched the Ensign start to stun him with unbelievable hate in her eyes only to stun herself when checking to make sure the rating was doing what she wanted him to. Now she was wondered what could have happened to make the ensign hate him so much. She would have to ask her when she got the time.

Jack walked out onto the ramp and looked
over the rail and down the full length of the lock and the Transport/Tanker ship in it. It was not just a big boat like he had thought it was looking at the damage control schematic on the bridge. He was still having a hard time coming to grips with the enormity of the ship he had been stationed in for almost a year.

The Chief slapped
him on the back almost throwing him over the rail. "Welcome to one of Red Dwarf’s 6 mobile repair locks. The Battle Transport you see before you is just a Battleship without all the armor coming in at less than half the gross tonnage. It only has a half dozen of the heavy gun turrets at the aft end mostly for show against raiders on or off planet, though it still has its point weapons for basic self-defense against torpedoes and fighters. Even though it only has two engines it still can keep up with the fleet because of its light tonnage. With full tanks it can go a quarter of the way across the Republic without re-massing but its primary job is transferring Reaction Mass and supplies from the mother Dwarf to the fleet while underway. Her second job is shuttling as many as 50,000 refugees in the 10 refugee decks in the forward section where the main armament was located on the BBs and a million tons of cargo containers in its empty mass tanks to the Red Dwarf. Because she is carried by the Red Dwarf most of the time, she has a minimum crew of only 75 for refueling operations plus specialists when needed to help with refugee security and cargo handling if the need arises. Daily maintenance is taken care of by the Red Dwarf Repair docks. Give them something to keep them busy between battles. Though a few of the other Dwarf captains have assigned permanent 150 man skeleton crews to their shuttle ships, I talked Captain Halsey into keeping the maintenance crews lumped into one Battleship Maintenance Department able to do a better, faster job on damaged Battleships as well the transports. The larger central crew is better equipped and manned to take care of all the problems including battle damage on the Fleet Battleships as well as the shuttles between their short deployments, actively shuttling to or from the Dwarf mother with just a Shuttleship crew Chief to keep track of what needs to be done on them when they are in dock. The flight director has done the same with the flight crews which is why it will take a few hours to get the crew aboard and the ship rechecked for flight since this is a last minute assignment."

"
We will drop down to the lock’s slide deck to take a look at the engines to give you some idea how big a job we have doing your upgrade. It has the same engines as the Battleships but as I said, only two of them. As soon as this ship gets crewed up and leaves tomorrow, a Battleship will take its place for us to do your magic on." The Chief walked over onto a platform next to the locks bulkhead just off the ramp leading out to the bridge navigation section at the bow of the ship. Rings of auto point defense 30mm, 3inch and 5 inch turrets covered the upper part of the bow. Rings of small portholes stretched around the hull marking the refugee decks every 10 feet down the side of the ship for some 160 feet. As the platform started to descend, Jack could see the closely packed rows of acceleration chairs in the large barracks sized transit compartments behind each port.  Where he had seen the rings of big gun turrets on the BBs at The Rock's Ship yards almost a year ago. Then he noticed the lowest two deck rings of main gun turrets just above the top of the mass tanks was missing port holes with large plates covering the 30 foot diameter turret mounting rings where 16 inch twin gunned turrets should have been on the ship. Ok why didn't they just make those gun decks into more refugee decks as well? Jack thought. Did they change their minds about leaving a couple rings of turrets aboard the ship" Glancing down, he could not miss the single lower ring of turrets around the lower part of the hull below the reaction mass tanks just above the landing /cooling fins. Yet more rings of ports circled the ship just above the lower turrets. He smiled at the big gun barrel tubes reaching up toward him from each turret sitting on top of a short tower. "At least this thing has some teeth Commander. You would think the Red Dwarf would have some kind of defensive armament."

The Commander smiled. "It does Turner. We have a dozen
big Orbital Fort guns in flush mounted tubes running down the side of the upper mass tanks and a hundred fighters and bombers in the flight bay making up part of the gun deck. The fighter and bomber pilots are serving as shuttle pilots right now because we are short on pilots. We have room for a thousand fighters and shuttles in the flight bay by the way. But it is a waste if you don't have pilots for them."

As the platform dropped down the side of the
repair lock, Jack started wondering what he had gotten himself into. It was one thing coming up with the plan in the small conference compartment with a bunch of pictures and plans that had no obvious scale of reference to them and another thing once he saw the enormity of the ship up close and not just sitting at a graving dock in the distance at the bottom of a craves on a moon. It only took them a few minutes to descend the two thousand feet to the bottom of the lock but it seemed to take forever to Jack.

On the way down
he noticed vague outlines of 20 foot round cornered square hatches ringing the ship every 50 feet down the side marking the individual tanks on each of the decks. Jack counted 23 tank decks before they reached the lower rings of portholes and then the big 16 inch twin gun turrets. Jack wished he could stop the platform to study the guns and turrets only feet away as they passed them a couple hundred feet up from the stern. Though the quick look at them puzzled him at first as he looked at a much too large short tube sticking out a short distance around the base of the 16 inch gun barrels until he remembered the turret was originally supposed to have 24 inch guns and not the 16’s. Well at least they would only have to slide the larger gun barrel tubes in once they got them. He still could not believe the Admiral being so dead set on rushing to battle even with all the fleets’ short comings.

Jack
finally looked down away from the turrets after getting a kink in his neck and got a big surprise as he saw the huge open hatch next to one of the ships cooling landing fins into a horizontal landing dock running through the center of the ship.  The landing and launching bay took up the entire deck on that side of the ship straddling the ships core hull and the two engine trunks. The lock seemed to be full of decent sized landing/transfer boats chained to the deck in rows. Hatches large enough to slide shuttles through, lined the opposite side from the core down the long bay. He could not see through the Landing/cooling fin but knew there had to be another hatch just around the ship on the other side of the fin to another boat lock that covered the other a half of that deck with the two engines and ships core hull separating them. They passed the hatch opened down to make a landing ramp with a dozen crewmen and their equipment working to replace the seal around the 20 by 40 foot hatch opening in the hull. Empty buckets of cleaner and grease littered the ramp around the hatch. Jack shook his head. He had helped do that nasty dirty job on the Turner Joy more times than he wanted to remember and on a main hatch as big as that, it was not a job for a skeleton maintenance crew of only around 75 crewmen for all the disciplines needed to maintain such a large ship even a transport. No, a skeleton crew would only have had a hull maintenance crew of 4 or 5 crewmen doing the hatch seal instead of the 15 he could see and probably would not have had access to the heavy equipment not normally carried by ships he saw doing most of the work. Looking around the huge lock, Jack realized he could see the lift rails far up on the overhead as well as equipment and hatches to equipment he knew a yard lock had to have to do major maintenance on a ship. Jack was impressed with the equipment he could see around the lock that was not normally in most civilian dockyards.