Force Majeure
Part 2
Away from FMS Force, Captain Francis Yates remembered he’d been served a decent meal, but couldn’t remember what it was. The conference was in the first space inside Sleipnir’s docking port.
“So how do we have this handy base in interstellar space?” he asked.
Kacito explained, “A survey located it four years back, while doing phase drive tests. We, meaning the military specifically, sent a recon and study mission, determined it had potential for this, and flagged it. It was triple sealed and has been basically word of mouth only.”
That was brilliant. “And without phase drive, it’s unreachable.”
“Unless we were to sit still and let them build a jump point, yes.”
“As amazing as that is, it’s not a glamorous superweapon that will win the war for us,” he noted, politely probing for more information.
“No. But it’s all we have. It was pretty much left alone, except for one supply mission of construction gear. We’re rotating crews through to assemble it.”
“We worked on something similar in-system, heavily stealthed.”
“Yes. As to the war…we fight. That’s our duty and our orders. Commo is largely through contact, days out of date. We just got that update ourselves from a stealth boat Matahourua recovered from in-system.”
“So what do we have left?”
“Two carriers—us and Matahourua, two cruisers—Malahayati and Jack Churchill, one factory ship—you. Two replenishment. Several gun and stealth boats. A handful of Reserve transports.”
“That’s all?”
Even her strong featured face softened. “As near as we can tell, everything else was destroyed, captured in-system, seized in dock, or sabotaged in lieu.”
Firmly, he said, “I will fight this war. I agree with our duty, orders, and moral position. Though I have little hope for what a noncombatant support ship with a half load of material can possibly do.”
Kacito acknowledged, “We’re running dry ourselves. Without a material source, or a raw source and enough power, we can’t do much more. We’ve got a list if you can scavenge. We have some gases, some silicates, a little metal, and damaged ship parts and waste.”
“We’ll take it.”
Fabrication went on full shift rotation, producing parts for repair, spares, and support. Sleipnir had some wear and tear. The cruiser Malahayati arrived and was fitted out for the maximum stealth a ship of that class could manage, including nozzles for chilling the hull with liquid helium. She was bound for Earth space to wreak havoc. Churchill got much of the same, and a full complement of weapons. He—Jack Churchill’s crew always referred to the ship as “he”—would go back in-system and attempt to damage as much as possible, then rearm at the remote base in the Halo. Each of the gunboats and the stealths were brought to blueprint, then the engineers made whatever mods possible to push their design envelopes.
Yates had little command responsibility at this point. The ship was docked, as functional and provisioned as possible. Other than routine housekeeping, all the duty was under Fabrication Mission Commander Tirza Karanov. She kept him in the loop, but there was nothing he could offer for help, other than the use of space crew as needed.
She gave him the daily progress, noted materials used and power consumption, even though that was from carrier umbilicus, and status.
She told him, “We’re taking time to find the absolute most efficient methods possible—material conversion and generation, minimal waste on all processes, because recycling takes energy.”
“Yes. Fuel’s the point source failure risk for everything here. They’re trying to acquire more.”
Looking at her notes, she said, “We can operate at this rate for another month. We can manage reduced for another month. We’ll need the third month to get somewhere we can resupply and refuel.”
“I’ll chart that,” he said. “Please give me a periodic correction to it.”
“Right. Also, I’d like permission to consolidate the messes and gut NCO and officer sections for materials.”
“Will that little mass matter?”
“It’s not just mass. It’s also energy usage and material. We’ll pull conduit and reuse the cabling and controls. It reduces our maneuvering mass and consumption at your end.”
“And if that’s not enough, we’ll all have to consolidate even more and go somewhere for asylum or surrender,” he admitted. “Permission granted.”
She looked determined as she said, “Especially as food beyond basic flavored glop will run short, as will minerals.”
Gods, it was a depressing subject.
On the positive side, every ship here was full to capacity on everything except fuel, and tuned to the highest specs possible. They were also outnumbered at least ten to one.
The station had little to recommend it other than a circumferential path one could run around for exercise, and some larger spaces for functions. Yates rotated the crew through to let them have what R&R was possible. Under these conditions, even that was a welcome break. Duty slacked off once everything was to spec and beyond. The cruisers departed.