“That’s just peachy,” Edmund said. “And I suppose their XOs are in their usual place?”
“Oh, yes,” Chang replied. “If they were around. Trahn, now, the second guy in Logistics, is a pretty good guy. I don’t know if he knows diddly about logistics, though.”
“We’ll see,” Edmund replied. “I’ll admit that they are good at moving food and spares. But we have to teach them to fight. Did you know there wasn’t an at-sea commander? That each of the carrier skippers was in charge of their own battle-group and Draskovich was in command of the fleet?”
“Well, he’s the fleet commander, isn’t he?” Shar asked.
“No, he’s the North Atlantis commander,” Edmund said. “Was. He’s not supposed to oversee the entire battle. That’s what a fleet commander is for. And the skippers of the carriers are the skippers of the carriers. They’re not there to run a battle group. It’s like the entire concept of chain of command is gibberish to them. Micromanagement raised to the nth degree.”
“Is that what you called me up here for?” Chang said, motioning with his head at the new stars. “To be the ‘at-sea commander.’ ”
“Fleet commander,” Edmund corrected. “And to pick your brain. But you’re no more prepared for it than any of the rest of the captains. So what you’re going to be doing, in your munificent free time, is read. There’s a library here and from what I’ve been told by one of my ensigns, it’s brimming with good biographies. I want you to cram every biography of every fighting admiral you can read over the next week or so. And I mean every waking moment that you’re not working on something more important. I’d give you a list, but I don’t know what they have. Halsey, Nelson and Provock at the very least. Oh, and Ensign Van Krief has Slim’s biography. He’s a soldier, not a sailor, but I think you can learn some things from him. You up to it?”
“Reading biographies has never been at the top of my choice of how to spend my free time,” Chang said with a shrug. “But if you think it will help.”
“Immensely,” Edmund replied. “Now, I want to pick your brain. Not about the battle, but about managing the fleet. First of all, do we have to feed everyone salt beef? We’ve been starting to can stuff at Raven’s Mill and the legions are going in the direction of all canned materials. It’s coming on to harvest time; if we can set up a canning facility we should be able to can just about anything we want.”
“Well, canning for vegetables would be a good idea,” Shar replied. “But on the Hazhir we’ve got even better for meats; we’ve got a sub-zero freezer.”
“A freezer?” Edmund said. “Doesn’t that require electricity? And doesn’t the Net just suck it off?”
“No electricity involved,” Shar grinned. “Refrigeration just involves compressing gasses. All you need for that is pumps and piping. Evan found a good source for the pumps, right up the Gem River, and the piping is coming out of factories in quantity. Refitting the ships isn’t even particularly hard. You just insulate two holds and, presto, you’ve got refrigeration. Keeps meat for a treat. Even for the dragons.”
“Which reduces the volume of material they need,” Edmund said, nodding. “And you can keep your beer cold.”
“That too,” Chang grinned.
“What else?”
“You remember the flamethrowers we had on the Richard?” Shar asked.
“I was never there when they were used,” Edmund said, -shrugging.
“Well, wooden boats are a fire trap,” Shar replied, shuddering. “When that jellied gasoline gets started, its almost impossible to stop. Evan developed an automated extinguishing system that uses a foam that puts the fire right out. Also hooks to the fire-fighting pumps. The Hazhir also has underwater ‘wings’ mounted on it. It’s an old racing trick; it keeps your ship from drifting to leeward. We’ve redesigned the catapult so the dragons actually take off faster but don’t have so much of a jolt at the start. And we’ve got a new arrester system so they can land better. Natural gas stoves so we can have fires during a storm and don’t have to eat cold food, bleed-off vents from the refrigerators that help keep the quarters cooler in the heat, plenty of little innovations that make the ship work, and fight, better.”
“Why don’t all the carriers, hell, all the ships, have some of that?” Edmund asked.
“Buships hasn’t ‘approved’ the changes,” Shar snarled. “In fact, when we sent them reports on what we were doing, they told us to rip them all out as ‘unauthorized modifications.’ ”
“I take it you told them to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine,” Edmund grinned.
“No, we told them there was currently a lack of dockyard space and as soon as we could schedule the work we’d remove all the ‘unauthorized modifications.’ Of course, the Blackbeard dockyards can’t even handle a carrier and we could have done it all with the crew. Which they pointed out. So I sent another excuse. And they found fault with that one. So I sent another memo. And so on and so on.”
“Well, I’ll send the next one,” Edmund replied. “Telling them that I intend to ‘upgrade’ all the carriers presently here to match the Hazhir. If we have time.”
“Will we?”
“I don’t know,” Edmund sighed. “You think the Hazhir can take on six carriers?”
“No,” Shar said, sighing. “Even with me in command.”
“Well, you might have to find out,” Talbot replied. “The Hazhir is going to be the only carrier we have for a while. The Hazhir should be here in no more than three more days. When it gets in I want Evan to get with the guys over at the dockyard and start setting up to convert the fleet carriers to the Hazhir’s configuration.”
“You’re going to get a lot of complaints,” Chang pointed out.
“Let ’em,” Edmund replied. “As long as they do it. And if they don’t, well, we need workers in the yards. We may convert these ‘dreadnoughts’ in the meantime. Or we might use them for something else.”
“You’ve got that look in your eye,” Shar said, chuckling. “How much time do you spend thinking about how to mess with New Destiny?”
“How much time does a teenage boy spend thinking about sex?” Edmund replied with a grin.
“You summoned me, O mightiness,” Herzer said, walking in Edmund’s tent. “By the way, you look awful. How much sleep are you getting?”
“I can sleep when I’m dead,” Edmund growled. “Why are you so chipper? Finally laid Van Krief?”
“No,” Herzer said. “But I have been working with the marines. You know they don’t have any formal training facility?”
“Yes, I do,” Edmund replied. “That’s what I wanted to see you about. There’s not a single training facility in the entire navy.”
“None at all?” Herzer asked. “How do they learn their jobs? I mean, how do the officers learn anything?”
“By and large, they haven’t.” Edmund sighed, throwing his pen down on the desk where it promptly squirted ink all over the papers. “Shit. I barely know where to start with this damned place. Incompetents are mixed in with really good people. Trahn in G-4 is sharp as hell, but of course his boss was an idiot. I talked with Babak the G-3. You are hereby frocked major and appointed G-3 schools. One of the mostly completed dreadnoughts is being permanently moored for the time being; you can use that for skills training. We’ve got personnel that want to be sailors, they just don’t know what they fuck they are doing and all the training so far has been on-the-job. Find some facilities. Right now all I’ve got for you is the dreadnought, but scrounge up some trainers. Start a basic training facility for the seamen. Military lifestyle, basic seamanship, fire-fighting, water survival at a minimum. By the time they’re trained in basics you’ll need to have found advanced instructors. G-1 has a list of ‘specialties.’ You’ll have to find trainers for those schools as well. For the time being, from here on out, anyone who wants to be an officer has to have served at least one deployment with the fleet or have prior experience. Verifiable prior experience. And then they go to O course where they learn everything about being an officer on a ship. I have no idea what that means, but figure it out.”