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Chapter Thirteen


Spin One


Bowden smiled at his staff, who’d responded to his summons to meet met him in the assembly bay. “I couldn’t tell you until the ink was dry, but the SpinDogs and RockHounds both decided our plan was the best and decided to put it into action.”

“Really?” Burg Hrensku’s eyes widened. “I have to admit to being surprised that they agreed. On anything. So, what happens, now?”

Kevin nodded toward a pair of large delta shapes filling the cavernous space before them. “The hulls of the first two corvettes have been replicated and they’re going through the outfitting process. In a few days, we should know if there are still basic interoperability issues or if we’re ready to kick the autofabbing process into high gear. That said, we still have to figure out how best to equip them. We also need to start gathering the people who are going to be flying the ships.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And then we have to train them on our combat doctrines and their roles within it.”

Hrensku chuckled. “Is this going to be like how you trained us to fly together to assault the transmitter on the planet?”

“Just like that, yes.”

Hrensku smiled. “You know then, not everyone will like it or want to do it your way.”

“I’m aware.” Herding all those cats is totally going to suck. Bowden smiled. “I’m also aware that my strategy was successful in destroying that transmitter—against pretty long odds—and that I was put in charge of this assault by the heads of the Families, so the ship captains had better listen to me.”

It was Raptis’s turn to chuckle. “You have been around the RockHounds long enough to know the likelihood of that.”

“Okay, so it isn’t actually ‘likely.’ Still, we will have to convince them—or as your primae like to say, ‘bend them to our will.’” Bowden nodded. “I’m counting on you to tell them that I usually know what I’m doing.”

“Sometimes,” Fiezel said.

Bowden frowned. “You’re not helping.”

“Didn’t say I was trying to.” He nodded to the Hound-Dogs. “They know you well enough by now to know that you’re full of shit, sometimes, too.”

“He is correct,” Raptis said with a nod.

“Okay, well, if you’re done giving me a hard time, make sure you save some of that spirit for your actual enemy. There’s a big fleet of ships coming, crewed by people who’d like to see us dead, and we all have jobs to do. Burg?”

“I am going to go round up the pilots, or at least as many of them as I can.”

“Dave?”

“I’m going to see what we can put together for a simulator, such as it might exist in a culture that doesn’t value computers.”

“We value computers,” Hrensku said.

Bowden chuckled. “You do? For what?”

“They help hold papers in place on our desk when there is a breeze!”

The group laughed while Bowden shook his head. “Shouldn’t you go be about that, then?”

The two men walked off, still laughing.

“And what is my job?” Raptis asked.

“I’d like to go over some of the tactical maneuvering with you again. I think I understand how it works, but I want to be sure I’m not missing anything.”

“Can we get something to eat while we do so?” Raptis asked.

“Yeah, I’m starving.” Bowden started walking across the assembly bay in the direction of the refectory, but stopped suddenly as he came abreast of them.

“What’s wrong?” Raptis asked.

“Those corvettes,” Bowden said, pointing at the first output of the Otlethes Family’s considerable replication facilities.

“What about them?”

“Do you notice anything about them?”

Raptis shrugged. “They are new and shiny, as they ought to be, having just been fabbed?”

Bowden shook his head. “They’re new and shiny, and different!”

“Different?” Raptis shrugged. “They are not exactly the same, but they are far more alike than they are different. They are very strange to look at. For RockHound craft, they are too similar; they have no personality. You can’t tell whose craft it is or what they are doing.”

“But they’re not supposed to be similar; they are supposed to be exactly the same.” He pointed at the closest one: a pair of small sensor booms emerged from the lower fuselage, just behind either side of the cockpit. But remember to call it the “bridge.”

Raptis made a sour face as if the concept was not merely distasteful but alien. “Why is it important that they be exact?”

“Because we got the best technology I could convince the Families to give to model them from. Either there is additional technology we didn’t incorporate—which would have made the model better—or one of them is intentionally inferior.” He sighed. “Or, more likely, both.”

Raptis pursed her lips in thought. “I see what you are saying. The thought—the concept you are articulating—is . . . foreign for us, but I suspect you are right. The answer probably is ‘both.’ I suspect—as we warned you—that the Families will reserve some of their own best technology for the ships their members will be flying, while providing the ‘average’ technology for the ones they donate to the general fleet.”

“Even if it means we lose to the Kulsians?”

Raptis shrugged and motioned to the corvettes as evidence that the instinct she was articulating ran very deep indeed. And if the Otlethes would do it that way, everyone else was bound to, as well. Still, Bowden had to know, so he strode over to a technician who was connecting wires under the wing of one of the craft. “Excuse me?” Bowden asked.

The tech looked up. “Yes?”

“I was just curious,” Bowden said pleasantly. “I notice that, while similar, these ships aren’t exactly alike. I thought they would be.”

The tech lifted an eyebrow as he smiled and nodded at the ship he was working on. “This one is for our family.” He pointed at the other. “That one will be used by . . . I don’t know. It is one for the fleet.”

“I see,” Bowden said, nodding. “So, this one has some additional capabilities that the other doesn’t?”

“Of course. This one has a much better radar system and optics package.”

Bowden turned to Raptis. “We were right. It is both.”

* * *

Bowden walked into the anteroom outside Murphy’s office. Makarov looked up and Bowden indicated the door behind him with his chin. “Boss busy?”

“Is that Bowden?” a voice called from within the other office.

“Yes, sir,” Bowden replied.

“Come on in.”

Murphy nodded to the chair in front of his desk as Bowden walked in. “Sit. I’ve got two minutes before my next meeting. What’s up?”

Bowden fell into the chair. “I found out why we can’t have nice things.”

One of Murphy’s eyebrows rose. “You what?”

“I found out why we can’t have nice things. I was just in one of the hangar bays. There were two corvettes fresh out of one of the Otlethes’ fabbers.”

“And . . . ?”

“One had a better radar and optical search system; the other had the systems that are included in the template we created.”

Murphy shook his head. “Disappointing.” Then he chuckled. “Not surprising, but certainly disappointing. I take it that they were holding back their best technology from us when you finalized the design package?”

“It seems so.”

Murphy cocked his head. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“If I’m going to fight all these ships, I need to know what exactly I’m commanding. Therefore, with your permission—and as much as I hate doing so—Dave Fiezel and I are going to drop what we’re doing, and walk through all the various fabbers on and around Spin One to see what we really are dealing with when it comes to configuration control. We don’t have the time to do it . . . but we don’t have the time not to, either.” He sighed. “For good or bad.”

“What do you need from me?”

“Permission to go see the Otlethes’ autofabbers. None of the Families are going to want me to see what they’re doing; up until now, I have been banned from seeing anything that deals with the process. If you can get Primus Anseker to let me see theirs, though—which I know has a problem—then I ought to be able to get the others to let me do so. Hopefully.”

“If you think one necessarily leads to the other, you haven’t been paying attention to how things are done around here.”

“I know.” Bowden sighed. “But it’s a place to start. Once Anseker shows me theirs, I’m hoping he’ll lean on the others to do so, too.”

Murphy smiled in commiseration. “Hope is a pretty poor plan of action.”

“It is, but I doubt you’ll allow me to threaten to shoot anyone.”

“Despite the fact that I’ve wanted to do so myself, many times, no. I will not.”

“Will you at least talk to Anseker? We have to nip this in the bud, or we’re going to have a fleet of ships with specs so different that we won’t be able to depend on them.”

Murphy stared at him a moment and then nodded slowly. “It won’t be easy, but I’ll give it a shot.” He grimaced. “Not like I don’t already have enough on my plate. Well, desk.”

Bowden smiled as he frowned at the stacks of folders and binders. “I’ve gotta ask, sir . . . what is all this anyway?” And why the hell is it keeping you from being a hundred and ten percent involved with building our own fleet?

Murphy rubbed his eyes. “Everything that needs to be in place for our planetside operations.”

Bowden stared. “Our what?”

“Our ground campaign. To take R’Bak.”

“Sir, I thought that was something we’d do after defeating the Harvesters.”

“Yes, but it has to be relatively soon after. If we give them more than a few weeks’ breathing space, the surveyors will try to collapse back on Downport. So that means we don’t just need to interdict it, but take it. And R’Bak Island.

“The only way to do that is to know where the surveyors have staged to and so, where they’ll be folding back from. Problem is, they’re in small groups scattered to hell and gone. So that means combing through accounts of the places they’ve routinely visited in the past. Not just towns and regions, but anchorages and rivers, too. Because those aren’t just watercourses for the surveyors; they’re landing fields. They’ve got a lot of seaplanes and even amphibian and triphibian vehicles.

“Then there are all their ships, mostly freighters. If they were all moving, and we weren’t already over-tasking the Dornaani microsats, it might not take a lot of effort to locate them all. But at this point, they spend most of their time in ports, waiting for the surveyors to come back with news of trade commitments and soon, caravans of local goods. So once again, we have to get ahead of the challenge by picking through whatever local reports or rumors or chronicles might contain references to not just the regular ports but the secret or temporary ones that are only used during the Searing. And then we have to build a recon target list for the microsats to cycle through to watch for changes.”

Only when Murphy finished was Kevin aware that he was holding his breath. “Yeah, but what about the surveyors who can’t fall back on the Downport? There have got to be a lot of them in the outback.”

Murphy nodded grimly. “And now you’re starting to see why this pile is so big.” He rubbed a hand down the length of his face. “Same process, except harder. While you were flying around down there, I’m sure you saw that there are barely any roads worthy of the name.”

Bowden’s only reply was a grim chortle.

“My feelings exactly. So all we can do is watch choke points—fords, passes, oases, river junctures—and work out a signaling system with the indigs that does not require regular radio transmission or reception. And again, the only way to get ahead of the surveyors’ movements is to sift through any accounts for paths they’ve routinely used in the past when they scatter out to drag in cargos for the Harvesters.”

Bowden knew it was cruel to ask, but he couldn’t resist it. “And do you have plans for the rest of R’Bak, sir?”

Murphy rubbed his eyes savagely. “Don’t even, Major. This is why I get headaches.” He chuckled, which struck Bowden as strange because it didn’t sound entirely like he was joking. “Plans? Yes. Resources? No. Which is why the plans remain pretty vague. The single biggest problem is that anything beyond our current theater of operations requires replication of additional standard equipment—which is presently and indefinitely sidelined until your fleet no longer needs one hundred and ten percent of the total autofabbing capacity of the Hound-Dogs.

“But there are some preparatory initiatives I’m setting in motion. Mapping the tunnels that run under the entirety of the Hamain and beyond. Outreach to communities at the periphery of our present AO, both for intel and finding staging sites into whatever lies beyond. And tracking whinaalanis.”

“Tracking whinnies, sir?”

“Yes, Major, because they seem to have a better knowledge of both the tunnels and remote water sources than the indigs do. Now: any other questions about my minute-to-minute nightmares?”

“Uh, how do you prioritize it, sir?”

“Simple. Everything is top priority.” Once again, Murphy didn’t sound like he was entirely joking. “Next question?”

“When do you sleep, sir?”

Murphy chuckled. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead, Kevin. Now get out of here. We both have way too much work to do before either one of us can afford the luxury of dying.”


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