Fool's Gold (The Wandering Engineer) (101 page)

“Oh,”
Shelby blinked.

“It's
efficient. Much more efficient than trying to build it all one piece at a time
in one space. Believe me,” Irons smiled. “Back in the old days when humans were
on earth they built ships on beaches one piece at a time. It took months and
people tripped over each other constantly. There were no decent plans, limited
coordination...” he shook his head. “It was a mess.”

“Later
as industry took root shipyards turned into dry docks. They would build ships
in the traditional methods, but in box like enclosures that they could later
fill with water,” Logan took up the narrative. He noted they were getting a bit
of a crowd. Others off duty or drawn by the Admiral were coming in to listen.

“In
the second world war of Earth they started building ships differently. They hit
upon the idea of building ships in sections, all in factories then put the
pieces together in the dry dock. The idea continued to this day,” Irons
finished.

“I
see,” Shelby said, clearly amused. “How soon will these ships be finished?”

“Well,
if we hit a good stride, and there are no bottlenecks, I'd say we could finish
each of them in about eight months to a year. Once the crew learns the ropes
and gets their space legs we'll see that time line shorten,” Irons replied.
Logan nodded.

“Shouldn't
we keep the ships here though, to expand what we have faster?” someone in the
back asked. They looked to her. She was a crewman first class, young. She
stiffened to attention under their amused gaze.

“No.
You see, in about a year we'll have saturated our resource collection and
manufacturing abilities. That means we'll have to expand them before we can
fully use the factory ship or go through another expansion level with the
yard,” Irons waved.

“So
what we're going to do is share the wealth. We're going to send this ship with
proper escorts out to Agnosta behind Destiny to help them recover faster... and
to put in some early warning and defense systems in case the pirates come
back.”

“I
thought we killed them all?” a voice said in the back.

Logan
sighed. “That's the problem with pirates. No matter how many of the cockroaches
you kill, there are plenty more in the shadows. Space is really dark so there
are a lot of shadows for them to crawl out of son.”

“Oh.”

“From
what we have been seeing in our Intel dump from the pirates they were working
for the Horath Empire. They were sent out to raid nearby colonies, disrupting
their recovery efforts and sending their ill gotten gains back to Horath to
help them expand faster. We know they captured other ships. Those ships can be
converted into other pirates.”

“Oh,”
the face frowned. Others looked around uncertain.

“That
wasn't the only pirate fleet. We're pretty sure of that now. At least one other
went out, moving up the jump lines in a different direction,” Logan said
grimacing. “I really want to clean their clocks if we can.”

“Which
is why we're building up our defenses here while helping our neighbors do the
same.”

“Good
fences make good neighbors,” Logan said nodding. The Admiral looked amused.
Logan shrugged to the crowd. “Sorry, old saying but it fits. Sort of.”

“Yeah,
sort of. I can just imagine picket fences in space dad,” Shelby murmured.

“Hush,”
he said shaking his head. “But if we can get some warning of more raiders...”

“Then
we can go out and stomp on them. Or better yet, build up enough forces and we
can go out and stomp on the source,” Irons growled.

The
group cheered at that.

“Heard
about the foundry Admiral?” Sprite asked Irons as he entered the shower. He
paused in the doorway.

“What
Foundry?” he asked, then continued what he had been doing before being rudely
interrupted. His shift started in a half hour.

“Apparently
there was a foundry ship in system. Sub light thing, little more than an
industrial station with engines. Someone turned it back into a station. It grew
into quite am industrial node just after the Xeno war, but then her reactor
bottle failed.”

He
winced. “Neutrinos?”

“Right.
They were using straight Deuterium, no Helium 3. So it irradiated the entire
engineering deck. Fried her life support about five centuries ago.”

“So?
What about it?” he finished cleaning and turned on the massager.

“So,
a group of civilians got together, formed a cooperative, and decided to salvage
her.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.
Most are former Anvil engineers by the way. They set up a limited corporation,
got capital and hired the Gutierrez family to transport them and their gear
there,” Sprite seemed amused. “The Valdez and Gutierrez families are a part of
their financial backing. They've heavily invested in the project. I heard they
only charged for the fuel to get them there. The rest they took as company
shares.”

“Um...”
Irons wasn't sure about the plan. Going into a heavily contaminated structure
without the right gear was suicide.

“Oh,
they brought along some decontamination robots and hardened EVA suits as well.”

“Good
to know,” Irons said nodding.

“They
aren't totally stupid. From the looks of their plan they will do okay.”

“Plan?”
he asked. He finished the shower and got out. He stretched and then got
dressed.

“Yes,
they bounced it off of commander Shelby and commander Logan before they left. I
just found a copy in their files.”

He
sighed. “I told you about snooping where you don't belong.”

“It
was an accident admiral, honest. I heard about their mission and did a search.
It popped up.”

“Huh,”
he grunted letting that drop for now. “Odds of success?” he asked. She fed him
the plans outline. He scanned through it and nodded.

“Ambitious.
They won’t get far without replicator support though.”

“Think
we should lend them a hand?” the AI asked.

“It's
something to keep in mind. Did you make any more headway on the captured
databases?”

“Unfortunately
no Admiral. Most of the data we collected were from the civilian prizes. The
Yacht suffered the cascade overload which fried her electronics, so nothing
there. Little came from that Clydesdale that was destroyed. It seems they kept
pretty good security. Compartmentalized.”

“Or
they were just lazy. Transferring data would have been a hassle,” Irons
replied. “Why bother giving them data when the warships are the only ones who
need it?”

“True.
Never underestimate an organic's ability to try to get out of a little work,”
Sprite replied sounding amused.

“Cute,”
Irons said dryly. He finished buttoning his jacket then adjusted the hem.

“Present
company excluded of course Admiral.”

“It'd
better be,” he snorted. “So, little from the surviving databases from the
ships?”

“A
couple terabytes here and there. A lot of it is old. Real old. Centuries out of
date. It does help with deep background though. I'm still dealing with a rabbit
virus from one of the databases. We thought we had quite the find when we found
the hard drive isolated and powered down. It turns out the pirates accidentally
infected it and cut it out of the net.”

“Great.”

“We
have confirmed that Damocles was part of the Horath Empire's defensive fleet up
until thirty years ago. Then she was sent out as a pirate.”

“Alone?”

“Unknown.
I'm getting this third hand from a crewman's journal. The log didn't survive.”

“Okay.
Any mention of other ships? Plans?”

“No.
Other than the dreadnaught which is confirmed. Two of them are referred to in
the journal by the writer. One is mentioned in passing. The Teddy Roosevelt.”

“And
that is?”

“According
to the war book it is a Republic class super dreadnaught.”

“Oh
lovely.”

“She's
the precursor to the Leviathan and Brahma class.”

“I
know what she is,” Irons said shaking his head. “How is this mentioned?” he
asked, suddenly curious.

“Correspondence
between the crewman and a lover on the Roosevelt. There is a snippet of an
e-mail, some poetry I'll pass on reading and this,” she paused. “I don't know
why they came to Horath, Benjamin, but I'm glad they did. She's a sorry sight,
but now that we've gotten her power plants overhauled, we're doing much better.
If we can get CIC sorted out we'll be on track,” Sprite paused again. “The rest
is lost to data corruption.”

“Crap,”
Irons grumbled.

“I
have Firefly and Io11's  data Admiral. Roosevelt was in the core system
reserve. There is mention of her in an attack fleet.”

“And
somehow she limped to Horath after the war?”

“Probability
estimated at over ninety percent,” Sprite responded. “Based on available data
she was pretty severely damaged however. The mention of CIC being damaged leads
me to conclude that her flag staff and possibly most of her officer core were
wiped out.”

“Huh,”
Irons grunted. Plausible.

“Take
that with the actions of the Federation in the latter stages of the war,
recruiting untrained, under equipped people into ship crews and you have a
recipe for breakage.”

“Meaning...”

“Meaning
that her survivors set up shop in Horath. They kept Roosevelt as insurance. But
over time they lost the ability to access key systems to keep her up to date.”

“Until
now. Until the raiding.”

“Exactly.
They must have brought back something that let them use a replicator. A code
key or something. A functional military replicator.”

“That
doesn't explain how they could use it.”

“Come
on Admiral. No system is fool proof. If they set up the proper interface they
could spoof the AI. At least to get around the lower level lock outs. After
all, it's been done before.”

Irons
grimaced. Many a pirate or even a megacorp had gotten around the built in
provisions by creating an avatar for the replicators to interface with. As long
as they were careful they could build all sorts of things they weren't legally
supposed to have access to. He'd seen it a few times, and had to clean up the mess
they usually caused.

He
frowned as a sudden thought got to him. He didn't like it at all. “Sleeper,” he
said softly.

“That...
That hadn't actually occurred to me until now Admiral. The possibility exists,”
Sprite replied.

“The
other ships?” he asked, changing the subject. It was useless to speculate
further without any hard data. They would just go around in circles and not get
anywhere.

“One
Arrow class, an old Federation Cruiser Carrier.”

“She's
a relic.”

“But
still better then a tramp freighter Admiral,” Sprite responded. “The other
capital ship mentioned is a battleship. Again, old Federation era. She was a
museum ship before the war. Apparently they are in the process of returning her
to service as a last desperate defense.”

“I'm
surprised they didn't before. Where did you get this information?”

“Crew
transfer request. From Damocles to the battleship. Apparently they had decided
to change the name but hadn't gotten around to picking one yet,” she snorted in
disgust.

“If
they are transferring crew to her they must have gotten some of her systems
online,” he grimaced. “Not good, even if she's a relic.”

“What
we have so far does support the statements of the pirate survivors though,”
Sprite continued. “Horath is acting as a rogue system. At war with the rest of
the Federation. She's got the firepower to take over a lot of systems unless
she can be stopped.”

“It
looks that way,” he grimaced. “Anything more on that engagement?”

“Um...”
Sprite paused. “Do you mean that mock battle frigate two was in three years
ago?”

“So
it was a mock battle?” he asked.

“I
am ninety nine percent sure it was Admiral. Not one round hit either ship. The
nuclear weapons that were used went off thousands of kilometers away from each
ship.”

“Training
exercise?” Firefly asked, coming into the conversation.

Irons
sat, putting his boots on. “No...”

“A
live fire exercise?” Sprite asked.

“No.
The Admiral is right. That is not logical. Why have it outside Horath space.”

“Unless
they wanted that space to become part of their empire,” Irons said, thinking
furiously.

“Ah
Admiral...”

“Wait,
he's thinking,” Sprite responded.

“Have
either of you heard the... no, wait, um...” He thought for a moment. “Okay,
have either of you heard of a fireman who starts his own fires?”