“You’ve said it for all of us,” Kris said. “Now then, we need to get all this started real fast if we’re going to make a difference real quick. I see Smart Metal as the only way to do that. With a big chunk of the boffins dirtside, it’s time to roll up their space. Jack, if we deploy a major part of your Marines, could we roll up their space?”
“I thought you wanted to go lightly on the ground with guns?” Jack said.
“If you’re a fisherman, and a Marine takes out something that’s been robbing you, hook, line, and sinker as well as fish, is that Marine a problem or a friend.”
“A friend,” Jack said. “A real buddy.”
“And maybe you invite him home to dinner and give him a place to bed down by the fire. If that gets more Smart Metal off the frigates, and into leviathan-hunting, trawling, and transporting nitrates to Haven for both fertilizer and ammo for elephant guns, we’re eating.”
Here Kris turned to Penny. “I know I’m asking you for a gallon of your life blood, but how much armor can a frigate give up and still have some sort of fighting chance?”
“I knew that question was coming,” Penny said. “You’ll have to fight your skippers, but I’d say three to five thousand tons each, maybe ten if you don’t mind a skeleton ship. That’s beside what you can off-load with the Hellburners, Marines, and boffins. I’m assuming that we’d get that back if the early-warning system went off, and the bastards started moving on us.”
“I expect that assumption to be valid,” Kris said.
“So I can maybe get a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty thousand tons of metal to build fishing boats, freighters, aircraft, and a whole lot of trucks to bring in whatever food we find in all the out-of-the-way places.”
“Is that enough Smart Metal?” Kris asked.
“It will have to be,” the old Navy man said. “We haven’t even begun looking at what the industrial folks can add to this. I hear we located a crater on the moon way up north. If what I read was right, it’s got a lot of water mixed in with its dust, and its regolith is rich in iron. They can build a stone wall around it, top it off with an iron or steel roof, get a decent magnetic field going to protect the workers, then leach most of the Smart Metal out of the plants.”
He stared at the overhead. “That could add twenty or thirty thousand more tons, but what I really want is steel from that crater. Steel for guns. Steel for boats. Steel to make trucks.”
Then he eyed Kris. “Of course, batteries and power would come in handy, too.”
“Have we got anyone to skipper and crew a fishing boat?” Amanda asked.
“Nelly?” Kris asked.
“There are several people in the fleet who worked summers as deckhands on fishing boats both on Musashi and Wardhaven. Hey, we got lucky. There’s a chief, called back from retirement, who spent his last five years skippering a fishing boat up in the northern waters of North Continent, Kris. He’s on the Connie.”
“Nelly, send to Captain Sampson, request release of this chief immediately to Navy yard. Make that soonest.”
“Sent, Kris. Received on the Constellation. Ah, Kris, Sampson sends back, ‘Why are you transferring him from my command?’”
Jack whistled. The admiral’s eyes got wide. Penny shook her head. “She sounds kind of like a young woman I know,” she said.
“I did not respond to my first order with a question. Not even half of my orders.”
“Yes,” Jack agreed, clearly lying manfully like a husband should.
“Kris, there may be a problem here,” Nelly said. “The chief has sent you a Private and Personal e-mail requesting reassignment from the Constellation. It’s one of about a hundred that I’ve been sitting on because I don’t know what to do with them officially.”
Now it was Kris’s turn to whistle. A hundred requests amounted to a quarter of the frigate’s crew when you included Marines and scientists.
“Admiral, any suggestions?” Kris said.
“You talking to this civilian?” the older man said, not suppressing a grin. “I strongly suspect this was what my king meant when he told me that I was a contractor, not a Navy officer this cruise.”
He paused, started to say something. Paused again, then did open his mouth. “It seems to me that Lieutenant Commander Sampson has a leadership challenge facing her. It also seems to me, as an old ship driver and fleet management type, that you, Commodore, have a leadership challenge facing you. Actually, several, since I walked in here, but you know what I mean.”
“I think I do,” Kris said and reflected on her choices. “Admiral, will you be needing the chief to help you design your fishing fleet between now and oh, 1400 tomorrow?”
“I got plenty of irons in my fires. No.”
“Then I’ll kick my leadership challenge down the road until then.”
“Kick. I like that idea,” the admiral said, and stood. “If you don’t mind, I got business to attend to.”
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Benson. Have a good evening,” Kris said, formally.
Once he was gone, she added, “Poor guy,” and turned to Jack.
“Do you need to be talking to some of your Marines?”
“That looks to be where I’m headed next. I want to drop a squad or two down with the beach fisherman at o’dark-early tomorrow morning. We kill a few of their problems, and it’s a visible start. I also need to talk to Captain Hayakawa. His company had just completed a six-week jungle-training rotation when they got assigned to you. Someone must have thought it was a jungle around you,” Jack deadpanned.
He got his laugh from all present, except Kris.
“I think his best jungle troopers would be the ones to use to make first contact,” Jack said. “Jacques, it would also be nice if you could come along with us.”
“Yes,” Amanda said, “he’s the anthropologist, and I’m just an economist.”
Kris could see heart’s blood pouring all over the deck of her office. “I’m sorry, Amanda,” Kris said.
“I can open a door between your quarters,” Nelly said helpfully.
“No need to,” Jacques jumped to say.
“Oh, yes, right,” Nelly actually stuttered. Kris suspected her computer had just checked and found the door already there.
“Jack, you go handle your drop operations. Amanda, you and Jacques enjoy what time you have together. Jack, leave a message for when you need Jacques tomorrow but don’t have his computer tell him until an hour before you need him.”
“You think that will give him enough time to prepare?” Jack asked.
“I’m a field man, Colonel, I’ve always got a bag packed. And besides, there’s not much to prepare for with these people. We either won’t see them, or they’ll hit us with poison darts, or they’ll let us talk to them. It’s a simple die roll.”
All three left, leaving just Penny and Masao with Kris. “I assume,” Penny said, “that because Amanda didn’t need a door opened by Nelly, there’s already a door.”
“Yes,” Nelly admitted.
“That is another one of my leadership challenges,” Kris said with a sigh. “I strongly suspect that contracts, scientists, and some Sailors have paired up their quarters and made doors,” Kris admitted. “After I hunt for the Hornet, I’ll have to do something about it. For now, it’s every captain for him- or herself.”
“Kris, Sampson is the one exception to the door thing,” Nelly said. “She has most of her enlisted personnel living sixteen to a bay. Chiefs and officers are four to a room. Men and women to separate quarters. Only she and three officers have private quarters. Sampson maintains her ship at Condition Baker. It’s the only one in the fleet.”
“And a quarter of her crew want off,” Penny said.
“Problems, problems, problems,” Kris said, rubbing her eyes and failing to suppress a yawn. “I’m sure you two have better places to be.” Kris stood. “Nelly, vanish the door from my night quarters to the main passageway. Tell Abby if she wants to see me, she either opens a door or takes the long walk through my day quarters.”