There were times when lies served their purposes.
''You have your orders,'' the Captain finished. ''Commander, assign your officers to their ships. Chiefs, dismiss your sailors to work details.''
Chiefs began shouting orders, though Kris was none too sure just what they were. Being an officer, she didn't have to bother herself about that. Chiefs ran the Navy, and the officers just rode along. She joined the yard superintendent.
''How's your part of the job going?''
Roy shook his head. ''I have no idea. I spent all night poring over the schematics of the yachts and those MK XII decoys. The yachts fall into two main classes, but every one of them is a bit different. None have the internal space to absorb everything inside the MK 12.''
''So we weld the decoys on as some kind of figurehead.''
''Yeah. But that's gonna look as out of place as a yacht in a battle line as soon as those battlewagons get in visual range.''
''My Grampa Al would say you're telling me all your problems. You're not telling me my solution.'' Kris said. She tried to soften it with a smile.
''Yeah, I've heard the yard super quote me that, and I've quoted it down the line. Here's what we're going to do. We'll plate over this loose collection of junk into what looks to all the world like a real, live warship. By the way, what do you want? Why settle for light cruiser? Why not go for battleship?''
''Slow down, you lost me.''
''By noon today, we'll have all six yachts in air docks. In with them will be six MK XII decoys and six power barges. Those barges we usually put alongside ships that need to shut their reactors down but we don't have pier space for. This way, the yachts can use their reactors to go full bore on their engines, and the barges' reactors will feed internal power and the four-inch lasers. Maybe even those twelve-inch pulse lasers for a last gasp something. Who knows?
''Anywho. We're going to put all of this inside a false hull using up all the sheet metal I can lay my hands on. Van Horn says he has some spare lying around. Says I can have it.
''So, in say two days, we're gonna have six of the ugliest-looking ships in space, able to do God himself only knows what, with decoys aboard that may or may not mask the whole thing.''
''Good Lord,'' Kris said, ''and you came up with all this last night while I was getting a good night's sleep?''
''Sleep. You slept!''
''Yeah, it's that stuff you do in between gulping down caffeine,'' Kris said. Then something funny struck her. ''You're going to make an awful lot of changes to those yachts. I don't imagine they're going to handle anything like they used to.''
''No way in hell. Driving them will be like carrying an elephant on a skateboard while crossing an iced-over river.''
''But those merchie skippers insisted they had to keep command of their boats because they knew how to handle them.''
''Yeah.''
''Had you told them about all this rework on their boats?''
''Yeah, before you got here.''
''Van Horn knew about it?''
''Yep, that's why he started that song and dance about the Navy would be crewing the boats.''
Kris raised her eyes to the ceiling of the yard hundreds of meters above her. Had she just been had? Had they just let her paint them out of a corner they'd wanted out of?
Am I a princess or a pawn? Do I really want an answer?
''Roy, you need me for anything more?''
''Nope, don't see anymore crises on the horizon for, oh, five … ten minutes.''
She turned to Jack. ''Sir knight, would you please drive me to the 109. I need a few quiet moments getting my hands dirty.''
There was no one standing guard at the brow of the 109. No surprise there. With a crew of fourteen, everyone would be doing real work.
''I'll hang here,'' Jack said, staying in the runabout. ''If I see any MPs, I'll holler.''
''You do that,'' Kris said and boarded the elevator for the short ride down to the quarterdeck. No one there, either. She climbed the central ladder to the bridge.
Kris was wrong. There weren't fourteen in the crew. Penny was at the intel station, frowning at it as it did something. ''That didn't load right,'' she muttered, then spotted Kris. ''Captain on the bridge,'' she said.
''As you were,'' Kris said, to stop the other enlisted woman on the bridge from coming to attention, even though she was under the command console, then Kris added, ''And not really,'' to correct any misperceptions. ''Tom has the ship. Where is he?'' she asked, looking around and missing his lopsided smile.
''Aft, trying to figure out what went haywire with the damn motor,'' Penny said. ''I'd be helping him, but between him and the chief and Tononi's crew, they've maxed the engine room's space. Fintch is smaller than me, so she's with them. Me, I'm trying to make sure this mismatched collection of databases can talk to each other. Data, data everywhere, but not a bit of it will hook to anything. Oh, and getting the sensor feed to patch in. I'll be an old woman with grandkids before they talk to each other.''
''Grandkids?''
''No chance of that yet. Tommy and I have hardly managed to sleep, much less sleep together. You Longknifes sure know how to throw a honeymoon.''
''About as good as the wedding receptions you Liens throw,'' Kris said, heading aft for the engine room and uncomfortably aware that what for her was a crisis was for her friends a crisis with bloody inconvenient timing.
Now Kris climbed down the ladder. On the quarterdeck, she had to zig, open a hatch in the bulkhead that divided the tiny boat into two airtight compartments, and start down a ladder offset to one side. In the motor compartment, the matter-antimatter motor occupied center place. It also dominated the smell. In the rest of the boat, the faint hint of ozone and electronics accented the human sweat that processing could never quite get out of the air. Here, ozone and electronics blasted the nose. Today, however, human sweat dominated all.
''Damn it, that should have shown us something,'' didn't sound like her usual Tom. Maybe there was more than one reason Tom didn't want his bride down here?
''I got it where you wanted it Mr. Lien,'' sounded like a very contrite Fintch.
''She does, sir,'' was a protective Chief Stan.
''How's it going?'' Kris said, entering into the maze that passed for a PF's power plant. ''And as you were,'' she added.
''Good to see you, ma'am,'' the Chief said.
''Good to see all of you. Tom. You need a break?''
''Yeah. Chief, give everyone five. Make that ten. Can you scrounge me up a cup of coffee that's not older than I am?''
''Yes, sir. One for you too, ma'am?''
Kris didn't need more caffeine, but it hadn't taken her long to learn that, in the Navy, the exchange of coffee cups was a sacred ritual. ''Yes, thank you, Chief.''
The others left them alone. Kris took the only real chair at the motor mech's station. Tommy, no lopsided grin in sight, settled carefully on a thick bar of metal arching in a guard over a magnetohydrodynamics generator. He flipped a black box of his own design absently over and over in his hand.
Born in the asteroid belt of Santa Maria into a successful mining family, he'd learned early not to trust air, gravity, or any of the other things that mud hens like Kris took for granted. Still, Tom was the first friend Kris had made at Officer Candidate School. They'd fought their first firefight together, and he'd backed her up when she did the unthinkable on the Typhoon. And on Turantic.
And all the time, he'd always had that lopsided grin.
Not today.
''What's wrong, Tom?''
He didn't look at her. He looked everywhere but at her. Finally he scowled and looked her in the eye. ''I can't get the damn motor going. The 109 should be your flagship, and she's gonna spend the fight tied up to the pier, and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we can't afford to be even one ship down.''