“Your first time aboard a CVE?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, what do you think of her?”
The captain looked up at him almost as if seeking some approval.
“I haven’t had a chance to form an opinion yet, sir, I just came aboard.”
“Well, let’s go have a look at my ship then.”
Going to the back of his office, Thaddeus opened another door and motioned for Jason to follow as they started down a short corridor.
“Had a hand in the design of her, I did,” O’Brian announced, his pride evident.
“Oh really, sir?”
“Yes indeed, I was with transport ship design and helped in the change over of this model to light escort carrier configuration. Since I knew transports inside and out, the Admiralty office decided to give this one to me.”
“Transport ship design?”
“Not much excitement, oh no,” O’Brian said, his voice suddenly cold. “Captained transports for twenty years before being sent into the office back at Earth. But without us, you fly-boy heroes wouldn’t have been able to get past the airlock. We’re the ones who kept you going with weapons, food, everything that a fleet needs and little thanks we got, precious little thanks.”
Jason noticed the tone of bitterness in O’Brian’s voice. The rivalry between those who were at the cutting edge of the war and those in the rear was nothing new to him; he knew it was as old as war itself and he had experienced it often enough while on leave. At times it could get so intense that those at the front and those at the rear could hate each other even more than the common enemy.
“Here’s our bridge,” O’Brian announced, leading Jason into the semi-darkened room.
It was located near the topside of the ship, just forward of the jump drive room. A small crew of deck officers and non-coms manned the various banks of displays and instruments.
“They’re almost all new people, a bit slow, but someday they’ll get the hang of it,” O’Brian announced.
Jason looked around and saw more than one of the crew members hunch over with the captain’s sarcastic words.
“When Admiralty finalized the design concept for the light escort carrier they saw four roles,” O’Brian announced.
“The mission design calls for it to serve as a transport for fighter, recon, and bomber spacecraft to keep the heavy carriers freshly stocked. We haul them out, and then they fly straight in to their new homes ready for action.”
“We were running short more than once,” Jason replied, “it’s a good idea, better than having to uncrate them from the transports and spend several hundred man-hours of work with reassembly and testing.”
“Why? Did you have a problem with how our transports delivered them to you?”
Jason looked around the room and saw several of the watch officers look over at him curiously, as if wondering how he would respond.
“No, sir, it was just a question of time, that’s all.”
O’Brian smiled expansively.
“Come on, let’s see the rest of the ship.”
Leaving the bridge, they headed down to the lower level and moved to the stern. Jason stopped for a moment to check one of the particle cannon firing ports. The firing system and targeting unit were located inside the ship, rather than projected out on a hull nacelle. The positioning limited the ability of the gun to fire on a line flush with the hull. If a Kilrathi fighter should ever realize that, he could come in close and hug the ship, protected by the blind spot.
He was disappointed as well not to see one of the new gatling missile mounts, finding instead the standard single tube launch array. He was tempted to comment, but from the way his captain bubbled on about the design he realized it was best to say nothing.
“I think I was telling you about the potential missions for this class of ship, wasn’t I?”
Jason nodded, realizing that O’Brian had been jumping from one topic to the next and that it was getting increasingly difficult to get a fix on what the man was leading to from one moment to the next.
“Did I mention the part about serving as a transport?”
“You did, sir,” Jason replied quietly.
“Oh yes indeed, I suppose I did. So many things to remember, don’t you know.”
Jason said nothing.
“We’re also to serve on convoy duty, which is the mission we’re hooking up to now, covering nine marine transport ships as they move up to the Uruk Sector for a planet assault training exercise. We’ve been losing too many ships to the occasional Kilrathi raider, pirates and such. There’s no sense in tying up one of our precious fleet carriers for such an operation, and the one or two exterior mounted fighters that we were strapping on to the transports took forever to launch and recover.”
Jason found that he had to agree with that point. There was a constant and annoying wastage of transports to such raids. They had tried the idea of simply strapping a fighter to the outside of a ship and launching when needed. It was a nightmare and a suicide job. A pilot had to suit up, go EVA along with his launch crew. If they were in the middle of a fight and the transport did any maneuver while they were outside, they were dumped off and lost.
“Next we’re to serve as ground support for secondary operations and landings, hence the names of the ships in this class, all for amphibious operations.”
“Any chance for that type of action?” Jason asked, feeling a quick tug of hope for himself, tempered by anxiety for his squadrons. He’d been in on several such operations, and the transition from space flight, to atmosphere combat, and then back to space was challenging stuff, and deadly on new pilots without the experience.
“You fly boys are always eager for blood, aren’t you?”
“We’re trained to do a job, if that’s what you mean, sir,” Jason replied coldly.
“Well, I doubt it,” O’Brian said, “we’ve just got orders to guard the convoy and nothing else. It’ll be milk runs for this ship and nothing more. I got the inside word on that one, so trust me on it,” and Jason detected a note of relief in O’Brian’s voice.
Reaching the stern of the ship O’Brian led the way into the engine core area. At the moment they were coasting along at a leisurely one hundred KPS and the drag scoops were raking in the stray atoms of hydrogen found out in deep space which would then serve as fuel. Jason quickly scanned the engine controls and nodded.
“Well, I’ll be damned, a Gilgamesh class engine system,” he said.
A ship’s engineer turned to look at Jason and smiled.
“Top grade design this engine is, sir,” and she came to attention and saluted.
“Ship’s propulsion engineer, Mashumi.”
“You’ve got a good-looking system here, Mashumi.”
“We pulled the Mark 33 transport engines out and put one of these hot machines in,” Mashumi announced. “We’ve been able to click her up to just over 247KPS, with scoops full open. Shut the scoops down, get her to streamlined configuration and we can crank up a ten gee acceleration and have you up to over ten thousand KPS in thirty minutes.”
“Well, I’ll be damned, something is looking good here after all,” Jason said, and instantly he cursed himself. It was a trait that had gotten him into hot water more than once—not thinking about who was listening before he spoke.
O’Brian, who had not even bothered to look at Mashumi, turned to Jason.
“The Mark 33 served well enough.”
“Sir, if we get into any tight spots, this engine can double what a transport ship’s engine can kick up. The way I see it we can get in fast, and if need be get out fast. We can even give a Ralatha-class destroyer a run for its money.”