Mage commander patreon e.., p.17
Mage-Commander Patreon Edition, page 17
part #11 of Starship's Mage Series
Jakab had been both a teacher and a student of Damien Montgomery, after all, and she doubted any of the Prince-Chancellor’s mentors or protégés would ever do less than they promised.
Roslyn Chambers, however, was also a student of the School of Montgomery. She squared her shoulders to the task ahead and gave her commanding officer her most confident smile.
“Voice of the Forgotten and all her crew are prepared to do their duty, sir,” she promised.
He chuckled.
“I never doubted that for a moment, Mage-Commander,” he assured her. “But an Admiral must always consider the most effective use of resources. If you were not ready for independent operations, sending you on one might well be setting you up for failure.
“On the other hand, I very much need Voice’s sensors along the frontier,” he admitted in a serious tone. “You’ll be one of three ships headed toward the UnArcana Worlds.”
He gestured at an astrographic chart into space.
“We’ll run through a group briefing with all five Captains, but your basic course will be this,” he told her. “You’ll hit the Erewhonwen System, then the Rhodes System, and then enter UnArcana space at Mercedes.
“I’ll be honest, Chambers: this is still going to keep you away from the edge of the Fringe and what I regard as the most threatened areas,” he confessed. “But those systems still need to be swept, and I’m eyeing Mercedes as a potential point for the pirates disposing of their loot—they’re an industrial MidWorld, only forty-two light-years away and an UnArcana World.
“Ex-Republic pirates could expect to find friends there. And since someone needs to check out Mercedes, Erewhonwen and Rhodes are on the way and also need to be swept for signs of trouble.”
He gestured at the three stars, forming a rough line from Condesa through the Fringe into UnArcana space.
“You’ll check in with local patrols and Governors as you pass and look for any evidence of trouble,” he told her. “Like I said, we’ll have a briefing with all five Captains, but if you have any questions you’d be nervous to ask amongst your peers, now is the time.”
Roslyn looked at the map.
“Erewhonwen and Rhodes are Fringe Systems, and neither is UnArcana, right?” she asked. “But…Rhodes looks like it was in the path of the Republic’s opening offensive?”
“Yes, yes…and yes,” Jakab confirmed. “Rhodes was occupied by the Republic for six months before we could free a task group to kick them out. Eight hundred and twenty-six Mages were transferred to Prometheus facility, and only three hundred and fifty-five came home.”
Roslyn winced.
“The Rhodesians fucking hate the Republic right now,” he half whispered. “So, I’m worried there may be some retaliation going on for their own actions.”
“We’ll find the bastards if they’re there, sir,” Roslyn promised. “Rules of engagement will be in the briefing?”
“We’ll go into more detail, yeah,” he confirmed. “But the ROE is simple, Mage-Commander Chambers. Every Republic warship should have been interned and scrapped to destroy their Prometheus Interfaces.
“Any RIN ship still operating is to be regarded as a pirate and given one chance to surrender.” He snorted. “That said, I do not expect destroyers to take any major ex-RIN capital ships.
“You’re my eyes and ears, Chambers. You’ll find these pirates—and Dramatis and the cruisers will finish them.”
31
Back aboard Voice of the Forgotten, Roslyn pinged her senior officers for an urgent meeting. They’d been expecting to stay in Condesa for at least a few days, and now her orders had them moving out along the Fringe within twenty-four hours.
Claes was first to report. The tactical officer had the watch and had seen Roslyn heading into her office. Since the Captain’s office and the attached breakout room were next to the bridge, his largest delay had likely been finding someone to take over the watch—and he’d likely started when he saw her come through.
“Lieutenant Andrews has the watch,” he told Roslyn before she could say anything. Lee Andrews was Claes’s senior assistant, one of the most junior qualified watch-standers on the ship.
It was unusual, in Roslyn’s mind, that neither the tactical officer nor assistant tactical officer were Mages aboard Voice of the Forgotten. It wasn’t a requirement to be a Mage to be tactical officer the way it was to be the navigator and Ship’s Mage—but Tactical was often considered a superior track toward ship Captain, and over ninety percent of the Protectorate’s starship captains were Mages.
Rohit Mac Thaidhg’s arrival interrupted her thoughts, the executive officer saluting crisply as he carefully maneuvered a tray of coffees through the door with his other hand.
“I was in the mess,” he announced. His cheery brightness felt forced to Roslyn, but showing up with coffee was definitely an improvement!
“Claes, help him out,” Roslyn ordered.
The younger tactical officer hadn’t quite managed to get into his seat, and he leapt to assist the XO. A gesture from Roslyn saw a flicker of magic take over holding the door open, clearing some maneuvering room for the two men and a half dozen coffee cups.
“I’m just going to wait here,” Salucci said drily from outside the room. “Commander Zahradnik?”
“That seems sensible to me, Lieutenant,” the navigator agreed, both clearly barely avoiding laughter at the difficulties.
It took only a few seconds to resolve the chaos and deliver the mess tray—six large coffees, carafes with cream and more coffee, a sugar bowl and a small stack of pastries—safely to the table. The last three members of the meeting followed it in and took their seats as Roslyn swallowed a sharp response to the final arrival.
She’d sent the meeting request to Lieutenant Commander Dresdner but there, once again, was Lieutenant Merlyn Kumar. From his sheepish look as he met Roslyn’s gaze, she’d shown more of her initial reaction than she’d meant to.
Roslyn very much needed to work on her “Captain’s mask” if the Lieutenant had caught her flash of irritation. On the other hand…
“Where is Lieutenant Commander Dresdner?” she asked softly.
“She was in the middle of a maintenance cycle that couldn’t be suspended, sir,” Kumar replied. “She ordered me to attend and summarize for her.”
“I see.” Roslyn let the words sink into the room like a falling blade, trying to work out how best to address this.
“Lieutenant, how long have you worked with the Lieutenant Commander?” Mac Thaidhg asked while Roslyn was thinking.
“Engineering moved aboard Voice of the Forgotten first, sir,” Kumar said crisply. “We assembled the department three months ago, sir.”
“How many of the Commander’s meetings have you attended for her since?” the XO asked softly, glancing over at Roslyn for permission to carry on the questioning.
“I’d have to check my schedules, sir,” Kumar admitted, glancing from XO to Captain and back repeatedly. “But…most.”
“Understood,” Roslyn said crisply, shaking her head slightly at Mac Thaidhg. He was trying to work with her and help—and he had helped. Now, however, it was time to let this go.
With Lieutenant Kumar, at least. It seemed that one Mage-Commander Roslyn Chambers needed to spend a bit more time in Engineering.
“That maintenance cycle is probably more important than anyone realized,” she continued. “I know we were all expecting a settling-down period while we were incorporated into the formal structure of Battle Group Pax Dramatis.
“That will not be happening,” she said calmly.
“Salucci. We left Corinthian fully stocked and haven’t even done a live-fire exercise.” She smiled. “How long will it take to fully resupply?”
“Everything we need can fit on a single heavy-lift shuttle, assuming the battle group has one with the modular fuel tanks,” the logistics officer said instantly. “I’ve got the list and can touch base with the Admiral’s staff to arrange it. Shouldn’t be more than… Well, the actual resupply should take less than an hour; depends on where the supplies need to come from and transport availability.”
“We’ll want to get on that ASAP,” Roslyn ordered. She turned to the navigator. “Zahradnik.”
“Where am I plotting courses to, Skipper?” the navigator asked.
“Mercedes, via the Erewhonwen and Rhodes Systems,” Roslyn told her. “We’ll want to sweep the most common jump points around each system, so I’ll want you to sit down with Claes and ID the six-ninety for each system.”
Humans tended toward cardinal points versus the ecliptic plane of a star system. Between that and the locations of the nearest neighboring systems, up to ninety percent of the traffic toward a system would stop at around six locations one jump away.
That was the “six-ninety.” It was rarely exactly ninety percent or even six jump points, but there would be a manageable number of jump points that would cover ninety percent of the shipping to each system.
“Understood, Skipper,” Zahradnik replied. “Eyeball numbers say seven days, maybe seven and a half, to Mercedes.”
“That’s about what I expected,” Roslyn agreed. “We’re authorized eighteen days to sweep out to Mercedes and back. We’re to scan all jump points and the systems themselves for signs of pirate activity, and check in with local authorities with regards to missing ships or sighting of ex-Republic warships.
“The ship that harassed Condesa has moved on, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t hitting somewhere else we haven’t heard from yet or that she doesn’t have friends.”
“If we find them, what do we do?” Mac Thaidhg asked carefully.
“We stay out of their range and we call in Pax Dramatis,” Roslyn told him. “If we can keep an eye on them or even lure them into chasing us, that’s a win, but we are not expected to engage ex-RIN cruisers.”
Her smile thinned and she picked up one of the cups of coffee.
“If, of course, we run into the more normal run of pirate in refitted freighters and jump-couriers, well, that is what the Honor-class destroyers like Voice were designed to handle.”
The junior officers filtered out, leaving Roslyn alone with Mage-Lieutenant Commander Mac Thaidhg and the leftover pastries. The XO scooped the largest of those—a spiced chocolate donut, Roslyn thought—and took a thoughtful bite.
“I’m still learning my XO,” Roslyn observed. “But I think you think there’s a problem.”
“There’s a problem,” he agreed. “And this time, it isn’t me.”
He took another bite of the donut while Roslyn chuckled.
Mac Thaidhg didn’t necessarily look comfortable trying to support her with the problem, but that seemed to be the point of the donut.
She took a miniature strawberry Danish and swallowed it in half the recommended number of bites, waiting for the executive officer to sort out his thoughts.
“I reported aboard Voice eleven days before you did,” he finally said. “The first time I met Evelia Dresdner was…day three, I think? I went down to Engineering to make sure I met all of the officers. She came out of her office for about five minutes, and I think she spent most of the time looking at my shoes.
“The second time I saw her was when we pulled all the department heads together for your greeting party,” he admitted. “I haven’t seen her since. I’ve been aboard this ship now for eighteen days as her executive officer, and I have seen the chief engineer twice.”
“She did about the same when I did my walkabout of the ship on the second day,” Roslyn admitted. “So, I have been this ship’s Captain for seven days, and I have seen the chief engineer twice. Despite daily department head meetings.”
“Kumar is a good officer, but he’s stuck in a hard place,” Mac Thaidhg said. “From what I can tell, he likes and respects Dresdner and so does the rest of Engineering.”
“Which seems strange, given the tone she’s taken with the rest of the command staff,” Roslyn said. “I never encountered anyone like her when I was an XO, XO, so I’m open to suggestions.”
He finished the donut and took a swallow of coffee, the same thoughtful expression on his face.
“I have to admit, Skipper, this one is new on me as well.” He sounded almost pained to admit that he didn’t have the experience to fix a problem where Roslyn was admitting her own inexperience. “Not quite sure what’s even going on there.”
“The RMN has accommodations and structures in place for a lot of types of people,” Roslyn noted. “The fact that she’s made it to Lieutenant Commander and has the respect of her people tells me we’re missing something, XO.”
“Anything in her file?” he asked.
“Not that I noticed, but I guess I need to take another read-through,” she told him. “And then I need to spend a bit more time down in Engineering.”
There was a long silence as Mac Thaidhg finished his coffee. He set the cup down, staring at it for a few more seconds, then visibly swallowed and met Roslyn’s gaze.
“How do I best help, Skipper?”
“For now, let’s keep you out of it,” Roslyn told him. “I’ll see if I can get Dresdner to talk to me, just us girls.”
“Might make more sense to start with the XO.”
“It might, but I think that I have a better chance of getting through to her,” Roslyn said. “I’ll poke and see what I see. We’ll see where we go from there, Mac Thaidhg. Take it as a team?”
“Yes, sir.”
She gave her XO a reassuring smile. She knew part of him was looking for ways she was screwing up, but he was trying to do his job.
What more could she really ask for?
32
The Engineering sections of a Royal Martian Navy destroyer were arranged in a series of ten-meter cubes at the “base” of the pyramid. Those forty-nine compartments were separated by a complex network of baffles and airlocks and bulkheads, minimizing the likelihood of a catastrophe spilling over to another part of the ship, and surrounded by some of the heaviest armor on the ship.
Each cube was theoretically spacious, but in practice they were packed full of machinery and equipment. Some systems, like the main engines, were serviced by multiple Engineering sections, but the subdivisions still helped reduce the risk of secondary explosions and other issues.
Roslyn had gone through the entirety of the Engineering working areas on a quick self-guided tour on her second day. She’d gone through the whole ship in the limited time between assuming command and heading out toward Condesa.
Now she was making the same kind of tour, looking for something specific. She didn’t know what that something was. It was an “I’ll know it when I see it” type of search.
And yet…everything in her Engineering department seemed almost perfect. The teams were busy but not overloaded. The spots that needed to be clean were clean—and so were the spots that didn’t need to be clean.
No one liked a dirty ship, but given the near-invisibility of her chief engineer, Roslyn had worried.
Her worries brought her to the beating heart of the starship. If the bridge and the simulacrum there were the magical brain of her ship, the hexagonal arrangement of fusion power plants wrapped around the engines were Voice’s heart and guts.
The thrum of power ringing through the space was hard to miss. Much of the destroyer was relatively quiet, though never silent, in normal operations. The fusion plants were no such thing. High-energy plasma and the conduits that carried massive amounts of power away from the generators had their own specific hums.
“Kumar, on me,” she heard an unfamiliar voice snap through the space of Fusion Four’s compartment.
It didn’t seem like anyone had noticed her, so Roslyn tucked herself next to a bulkhead and watched as Dresdner walked into the compartment. Apparently, the woman at least left her office, even if she didn’t attend meetings.
Lieutenant Kumar left the working party he’d been supervising and approached the chief engineer. He saluted, but Roslyn wasn’t sure why—Dresdner’s attention was on her wrist-comp instead of her feet, but she still couldn’t see him.
“Commander?” Kumar asked.
“We need a working party on plasma conduit Six-B-Five-K,” the chief engineer said briskly, with no preamble whatsoever. “Drone D-D-Three-Six-Nine-X-B did a swing-by, and the audio is wrong. Did a self-check on the drone and the mic isn’t the problem, so Six-B-Five-K is off its harmonic.”
“I’ll grab a team, sir,” Kumar replied. “We were doing power-output review on Fusion Four.”
“Book lets us suspend that review if output is over ninety-four percent,” Dresdner snapped. “Four is operating at one-oh-two efficiency, but we’re losing point-six-three percent before it hits the main grid.
“Six-B-Five-K is my culprit. Harmonic is out, and we’re losing power before it hits the grid, which means we have an ion leak,” the chief engineer continued. “We need to find it and seal it before it starts arcing at anything. Or anyone.”
“We’re on it, sir,” Kumar said. “PO Cech, bring your party. We’ve got a conduit to scan.”
Roslyn, meanwhile, stayed leaning on her bulkhead watching as her chief engineer led the working party confidently into a maze of cables and conduits that was utterly unintelligible to the Mage-Commander.
An hour later, Roslyn buzzed for admittance to Lieutenant Commander Dresdner’s office. The ship’s systems were happy to inform her that the chief engineer was there—and to open the door for her when there was no response for sixty seconds.
“Lieutenant Commander,” Roslyn greeted her subordinate, stepping into an office that looked like a tornado had swept through it. Disks and papers were scattered everywhere, with multiple shelves and chairs serving as homes to piles of data.
At least eight miniature holographic projectors were showing schematics in the corners where they’d been tossed. The entire room looked like a chaotic disaster—and that was ignoring the entirely nonregulation folding cot stuffed in the corner.
