1310 hours CST, June 18th, 2673; the Skate

The boat’s constant one-G acceleration toward the sun gave the crew a chance to recover from the exercise. While the distance from Clearwater Prime was relatively short, in interstellar terms, it would still take days for the torpedo boat to get into position to make the interstellar trip.

All stellar space travel was a voyage of acceleration to the midpoint, followed by a flip of the vessel end for end, finally decelerating to the destination. Most ships accelerated at one G to give passengers a reasonable simulation of gravity. With this sort of trip in mind, Lieutenants Murphy and Bell plotted a course that would take three days and sixteen hours to get into position.

With the laws of physics working for the crew now, instead of against them, the constant acceleration was simulating the effects of walking on the surface of the average world. Newton’s first law of physics, stated simply, was that an object will continue with the same direction and speed unless forced to change. The humans onboard the Skate, like every other object, were constantly being pushed into the aft bulkhead by the engines.

The acceleration was not exactly like gravity; but it did give all the objects onboard a down direction to fall. This made everyone more comfortable for the trip and provided everyone with a stable orientation. With a job that often brought them into weightless conditions, people did not last long in the navy if they had problems with nausea or space sickness.

There were still some serious disadvantages of using acceleration as a good simulation of gravity. The chief one was that simulated gravity was not the result of gravity waves, or the curvature of space. Antigravity plates did not work against the forces that drove a body to the aft of the ship, and so acceleration had to be limited to what a body could withstand.

The engines were constantly running, which was another disadvantage. With the constant run, a low and continuous vibration ran through the ship and could be heard and felt all the time. This was one of the biggest gripes of the crew members. The design had been desperate, created to give a new and expensive weapons system a chance for a sneak attack. The engineering and design efforts went into giving the boats the smallest sensor profile possible, both visually and electronically.

When it was running quiet, the Skate’s black hull had a small radar signature; its liquid hydrogen fuel helped bring the skin temperature down so that it was closer to the temperature of background space. Even the exhaust was cooled to help reduce its thermal characteristics. The design just did not put any effort into audio stealth, and the engines were loud.

Sound does not transmit well in space. It is one of the most common assumptions: In space no one can hear you scream. Sound needed molecules and atoms to vibrate to produce a sound, and space is known to be a vacuum. While this is mostly true, an active star was constantly blowing gasses and other particles out into its solar system, and these clouds of gas became thicker as a vessel got closer to the sun.

Most encounters in space happened on the edge of the area where a curve drive could be engaged, which was right next to a system’s sun. The gases that were being pushed away from the sun provided an atmosphere. The atmosphere was thick enough that an entire class of propulsion was based on it, the solar sail. Vibrations from vessels were transmitted to the particles being blasted outward from the sun, and those vibrations could be detected if the detectors were sensitive enough. Despite the efforts put into the electronic and visual stealth, the loud engines hurt the boat’s capabilities where it was most likely to have an encounter.

The mechanics onboard the boat hated the engines the most. Unlike previous generations of torpedo boats, the Rake class torpedo boat had a tri-drive. Most boats had antigravity plates, and some sort of reaction drive for acceleration inside the stellar boundary of a system. A tri-drive combined the reaction drive and the interstellar curve drive with an experimental gravity drive. This single drive made up more than two-thirds of the boat’s mass and over a third of its volume.

The drives were complicated, and like most complicated machinery, they were temperamental. The Skate’s drive required a chief engineering officer, but good engineers were hard to find for the boats. They were small boats, and obsolete. They remained that way since the admiralty did not see them as ships and worth their effort.

The boats were used by the downsizing navy till they broke, and then they used them some more. Since the boats were used to push junior officers out of the navy, no qualified engineering officer would touch them. The Skate made do with a master and two journeymen-rated mechanics.

The master mechanic onboard the Skate was Petty Officer First Class Walt Butler. Apart from the commanding officer, he was one of two combat veterans from the war onboard. Junior Lieutenant Ridgard had served during the war but was still undergoing advanced training when the truce was signed.

PO Butler made sure he fit the image of the stereotypical ship engineers of legend. He was a good scrounger and probably had some sort of leverage on someone higher up in the chain of command. Some of the stunts he had pulled during the war should have landed him in the brig, with a dishonourable discharge afterward, but he was able to avoid any serious consequences.

Butler walked confidently toward the front of the boat. Walking to the front of a long and thin boat like the Skate was more like climbing a fifteen-story building without elevators. It was over two hundred metres long, with the engine room being right at the centre of mass. The senior officer’s cabin was below the bridge. The chief engineer only walked confidently when there were other crew members present; his ten years serving on battle cruisers in combat lent to his acting skills. When no one was watching, he raised his hand and knocked on Murphy’s door with some trepidation.

“Enter.”

He stepped through the door and hoped his acting skills were still good. His new commanding officer was not like the past several who ran the boat. This one was not as disenchanted or as interested in marking time till he left the navy. Walt could not help but look at the covers of the ship’s manuals on the shelf above the desk. Their spines were cracked; they had not been the last time he had been in the compartment.

“At ease, PO,” Murphy said before he had a chance to come to full attention. “Have a seat. We have to have a talk.” That was never a good start for a commanding officer to talk to one of the senior NCOs on the boat.

“Yes sir,” he said, letting the R roll.

“There are a few things about the performance of engineering that I am concerned about.” Lieutenant Murphy’s voice was level, firm, and unreadable.

“What concerns do you have, sir?”

“Initial launch of the boat took forty-five minutes to commence. That was mainly due to the general crew readiness, but the engines were not fully ready for launch either. The curve drive was not ready with the rest of the drives.”

Walt almost sighed with relief; maybe the CO had not read those manuals after all. “Well, ye see, sir, the drives have a limited life-span, and it’s best no’ to run them if they need no’ be run.”

The senior officer made no comment, and he made no movements at all. It seemed that Walt had to keep talking, and like many politicians and others who did not tell the whole truth, he hid behind a thick, incomprehensible accent. Murphy kept watch as Butler continued his explanations. He became more comfortable and confident as he continued to hide the issues behind techno-jargon that no one outside of engineering could understand.

“That has got to be the biggest piece of horse drippings I’ve ever heard, Petty Officer. The tri-drive is a single piece of machinery. Having the interstellar portion of it ready will not wear it out. The belts and other linkages have to run in some fashion while the rest of the tri-drive is operational. If you don’t run all three portions, the wear of the components won’t be consistent, and the pieces won’t be able to compensate for one another when they have to. And you have to do more maintenance between operations.”

“Well, that may be—”

“And another thing, PO,” the senior officer said. “Drop the accent. I saw the show. You’re from Rosswood, and they’re not noted to have a large Gaelic community.”

“Show, sir?”

Murphy’s sigh made the chief engineer wince. The lieutenant looked at him.

“Yes; now, shall we have a go at it again from the top, PO? The accent doesn’t impress me. You’re not doing it right; it may have impressed your past COs, but it doesn’t impress me. Just to bring things level for you, I served the second half of my advanced training on TBC-433 in the engineering compartment.”

The rest of the meeting went a little better for Butler when he dropped the accent and spoke normally. He had gotten so used to pulling the wool over the eyes of a distracted CO with the accent that he was out of practise dealing with a commanding officer who would not put up with it.

* * *

The meals were more relaxed in the boat during the transit to the sun, at least for those who preferred to be able to feel the back of their seats without being strapped to them. The seats’ belts hung loose to the floor, only shifting slightly as the crew members came and went with their meals.

The crew ate in shifts, usually with the crew just getting off watch filling the first shift, and the others who were already off watching filling up the second. Two of the junior officers usually ate during the last shift through the mess, while the third was on duty on the bridge.

Hillary’s watch had just completed, and she was taking the opportunity to get a meal. The helm was one of the positions that was always manned, so there were another two boat drivers onboard. She was the lead helmsman and had to make sure the other two were doing their duties up to the standards she set; fortunately, that did not take up much of her off-watch time.

Unlike the other two helmsmen on the boat, she was certified as a high-powered small craft operator. Most helmsmen on torpedo boats were only certified small craft operators. Like the others she did not have her interstellar certificate, but she was still the most qualified pilot onboard. She saw it as her duty to mentor the other two pilots.

The first task she had set for herself had nothing to do with the other two helmsmen. It was to fill her stomach. She was pleasantly surprised that the meal was something more like what you found on Clearwater Prime than on a torpedo boat. Today’s lunch had some selection: macaroni with cheese sauce, some meat pies, and pastries. A boat like the Skate had to have meals for forty-six fit and active men and women, three times a day, and had to be provisioned for at least two weeks. This was close to two thousand individual meals. Crews were generally lucky to get a sandwich and coffee for the midday meal.

She decided on the meat pies and tomato soup, and to finish it off with some pastries. Since she was just getting off shift, she decided on the generic red fruit drink instead of coffee. Her attention was not as sharp as it was on watch as she found a seat at the table and focused on her meal.

“Hey, Hill! How’s the new suit?”

Hillary looked up and saw Janice, wearing her normal shipboard uniform. The camera operator’s simple jumpsuit was made of thick denim, the type of outfit that could be dirtied up and no one would care till they got back to port.

“Oh, it takes a bit to get used to,” Hillary said. “Though that reminds me, I really should chew my food completely and keep away from the heavy solids and take some of those fibre supplements. If I’m stuck with this suit for two weeks, I do not want to find myself having the sort of problems that might come up. If you know what I mean, Janice.”

Hillary could not keep the smile from her face as she looked over at her friend.

The camera operator flushed as she remembered the lectures during basic training, and then the experience she had when most of the newly enlisted personnel ignored the lectures before their first extended training with the skin suits they wore.

“Perhaps you’re right, but I mean about the feel of it.”

“Everyone seems to ask that. I don’t even feel it right now—well, at least not the suit that is right on the skin. If I sit wrong or too suddenly, then I feel it. If it weren’t for the thermal stocking and the jumpsuit, I would probably feel naked right now.”

“Oh, I don’t think that would be very comfortable at all.”

“Well, they did come from the porn industry.”

“They what?!?” Janice asked, quickly trying to hide her outburst. Hillary took the opportunity to eat some more of the meat pies she had selected, and so that she could play the innocent to Janice’s embarrassing outburst.

“You can’t be serious,” Janice said, much quieter.

“Well, they may not have come from the porn industry, but we went to an adult movie studio to get them. Seems that the proprietor knows our CO, and was actually at the Academy with him.”

“Really? Does that mean she was an officer in the last war?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t talk much about that. We were busy trying to get through the procedures to put these suits on. It does sound like the suits and equipment to put them on are being fitted into the newest ships. I hadn’t even heard of them, so it might still be classified or you’d see it in the Navy News. But Darli Hughes knew of them.”

“Darli Hughes? You mean you saw her?”

“Don’t tell me you know her too. Gunner Harris seemed to be a fan, but he was embarrassed about it.” Hillary focused her eyes on Janice, looking very closely at her friend.

“Well yes, uh, you see, she was one of the more popular actresses in that line of work. At least to the men I’ve been dating. They were disappointed when she retired and became a recluse.”

“Really, must be the airheaded bimbo aspect,” Hillary said, her voice containing a slight tone of secrecy.

“I thought so too, but you said she went to the Academy. I didn’t think an airhead could get through, so it must have been someone else.”

Hillary smiled and then shrugged her shoulders. “You’re probably right, Jan. Better eat up. You never know when our new CO is going to call another drill.”

“What? You think he’s going to call another one? He’s only been on the job for two days, and we’ve already had two of them.”

“He’s different than Williams; he actually seems to care about crew performance.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Oh, Hill, did you hear the rumours?”

“Which ones?”

“Oh, just that Petty Butler was seen coming out of Lieutenant Murphy’s office looking a bit shaken. At least that’s what Jerry said.”

“Really? I wonder why. He served ten years on the front lines during the last war; I didn’t think anything could shake him. I wonder…”

“Well, don’t go spreading this around, but Miss Hughes did wonder if Lieutenant Murphy was the same one she was at the Academy with. She described him fairly well, but the last thing she said was, ‘Doesn’t like women.’”

“No, really? You don’t think that’s why the petty was so shaken?”

“Oh, I don’t think that at all. Get your mind out of the gutter.”