Chapter 14 - Overhaul and Development

Ellen was waiting for me when I stepped off the pad at Jupiter Station. "Hi, Ellen, what are you doing here?"

"Captain Edelmann, your crew ratted you out. They told me that you would probably be free tonight and looking for company. I didn't want you to have to look too hard." With that she gave me a hug. It was a good one, the kind you give men you expect to be in bed with within a few minutes.

This was a good deal more cheerful a lady than I had met coming off the shuttle just a few days earlier. "Honey, I'm delighted that you cut short your vacation to come greet me, but I have to go see Admiral Sykes before I do anything else."

"That's okay. Can I go with you and wait outside his office?"

"I don't see why not. So, tell me as we walk what made you so cheerful today?"

"I like having children. I like being pregnant. It means I'm going to have a family again. Even if I'm just your concubine. I had the AIs explain what that meant. It fits. I'm not your wife, but I'm not just a whore, either. I'm your publicly acknowledged mistress, part of your family, and you'll admit that my children are yours, too."

Pregnant? ?????? Even if I came back from this war, I'd never have any peace again if Diana, Ginger, and Ellen were all pregnant at the same time. I stopped walking and pulled her to me. "I like children, too, as long as I can hand them back to their mother when I'm tired of them. Are you a good mommy?"

"I'm a GREAT mommy. You'll see. But, we'll need more room than just that little compartment."

I didn't do much more thinking for a while. Ellen had worn her 'naughty schoolgirl' outfit again, the one with the too-short skirt. It was clear that she was still losing weight, but she felt very good. I hope she didn't mind being on display while I held her, because it appeared that she still didn't have any underwear. "I hope being pregnant doesn't ruin your sex drive."

"No, Captain. I can still work and do my job."

"And your job is...?"

"Keeping you happy, according to Diana, and having lots of children, according to Ginger. I can combine the two, can't I?"

"Yes... yes, I think you can combine those jobs just fine. However, you're trying to keep me from my duty. You aren't an alien spy, are you, trying to derail our secret plans for winning this war?"

"Well, I'm a woman. I know a lot of men consider us to be aliens."

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. No shit. I'd about sworn off long-term relationships with the aliens from Venus when I'd met Diana. She was worth trying to connect with the aliens again. Not sure what she'd seen in me, beyond the steady job and the uniform.

We got to the Admiral's office and I left Ellen in the waiting room while we went into a conference room with his aide and several of the other COs. Seven of them, in fact. The gist of that discussion was that we were much farther down our PERT chart to operational status than we had expected to be. Suddenly having the sleep-trainer modules was a great windfall that we hadn't expected.

I still didn't know why we hadn't been able to get that training before, but my first impression was that it looked like paranoia on the part of the ships' AIs, which of course we had to lay at the feet -or whatever they used- of their builders.

Whatever they had must be pretty close to our feet and legs, though. Hands and arms, too, since Allington Castle had both ladders and stairways.

It was traditional in all the maritime services that used English to not be able to differentiate between the two, but that was senseless, just traditionalism for its own sake. Whether you were a day-sailor or a professional seaman, something that you would call a stairway in your home somehow became a 'ladder' if it was installed on something that floated.

Precision has value. Intentionally mislabeling something just because your ancestors did was a bad idea. Allington Castle had five ladders leading from the main deck up to the upper deck and down to the lower deck, devices that could only be safely negotiated if you had at least two feet and one hand free.

The ship also had three stairways. There was no valid reason to call those stairways 'ladders' today, just because King Alfred's sailors did so a thousand years ago. When someone suggested that we admit that stairs were called 'stairs' in this new service there was some grumbling, but if you knew the people you could predict who would say 'sure, whatever' and who would fight it tooth and nail.

To Master Chief Boggart, that wide stairway leading from the main deck to the control compartment, that two men could climb at the same time without using their hands no matter what direction "down" was, would always be a ladder. If he lived in a two-story house he probably called the staircase in his home a ladder, too.

Admiral Sykes abstained, saying it wasn't his decision. All the freighters had were ramps, anyway. Well, ramps and transporter pads and force-field elevators. Admiral Andrews agreed that perhaps it might be time to allow our vocabulary to enter the modern era. Admiral Kennedy said we were all going to hell for it, but he wasn't going to stand in our way. All the Army guys said "It's about time!"

The motion passed with a majority of abstentions, a clear group of "Ayes", and a small but very vocal group of "Nays".

Since Admiral Sykes had his live feed all day, he already knew what we had done. He just wanted to discuss why, and plan for tomorrow. If all eight ships were identical, and we were assured of this, then we only needed four men per ship or 28 total but there was no reason to throw away a live training opportunity. He wanted all seven ships to be fully manned with all 18 couches in use. He wanted both myself and my XO to be on two of the ships for oversight, and he referred to me throughout the conference as Commodore Edelmann.

Of course Dickie and I only had about two hours of underway time in these things, but that was still infinitely more time than all the others. We were, for better or worse, humanity's experts on alien warships. Still, while I had been concentrating on navigation and memorizing the ship's layout, and Dickie had been making sure all of our people were where they needed to be and were doing what they needed to be doing, Billy and Chief Gaillard had been studying the power and propulsion plants and the environmental systems. I asked if I could include my ChEng and his environmental tech in this 'good deal' and that was granted, so three of the COs needed to bring 17 of their people and four of them only needed to bring 16 besides themselves.

If any of the ships' minor equipment had trouble, we would just live without it. If any of those three main systems gave us trouble, though, I wanted the human race's most qualified experts there with us. If they weren't on the ship that had the problem, they would at least be on an identical ship that was boosting right beside the one with the problem. It was the best I could do to stack the deck in our favor.

With that established, I asked the AI to, on my authority, get Ensign James back out to Allington Castle and relieve the XO as OOD. With me, Dickie, and ChEng all going out for the rest of the ships tomorrow, he and the COB were the only ones left who could stand OOD and I wanted my XO and ChEng to get some sleep tonight in case they needed to be alert tomorrow. The Master Chief could stand OOD tomorrow.

The conference continued on to deal with details. 7 times 18 was 126 men, or four shuttles' worth of transportation with two seats left over. The Admiral told his aide that he wanted the shuttles loaded tonight with three days of supplies -packaged food and water- for each ship in case something went wrong, but that could be staged in the shuttle cargo bays before being dumped in each ship's mess room. Further, in light of our experience, he wanted each man to carry his helmet onto the shuttles but once the ship had been verified to have good air they could leave the helmets on the shuttles.

One thing I got was that we already had a long list of proposed ship's names. All we had to do was decide which ship got which name, and that was tied in with our boarding process. We would board the nearest first, and that one would become DE-002 Alnwick Castle. The one we had gotten this morning, Allington Castle, was DE-001, of course. The next one would be DE-003 Alton Castle, and so on. Each passage crew included the assigned CO and core assigned crew, and the CO would be the first to board each ship to formally assume command as I had earlier.

We talked some about milestones in the evolution, and the Admiral ordered the COs to all follow my example - heading due "up" or "out" from Jupiter, test the engines at 2%, 5%, and 10% for one minute each before turning control over to the AI to follow the previously drawn course, limiting acceleration to 20% power for this trial run.

I said that we were not going to try squadron maneuvers on this trip. It was a simple berth-shifting movement. In order to minimize track-crossing concerns we would all get underway at the same time, and all increase acceleration at the same times, but when it came to turn on course for Jupiter Station we would not even try to synchronize that.

The ship nearest to Jupiter Station -which should still be Alnwick Castle- would turn on course first, then each other in turn at one minute intervals. We'd have time to practice synchronized maneuvers later, once we knew what we were doing. Meanwhile, each CO and Navigator was to monitor the drive tracks for the ships which had turned earlier to ensure they didn't cross a drive exhaust too close. That shouldn't be a problem; at 20% power or 6 g's a one-minute wait should provide plenty of space between ships.

Then, just before we were done, the Admiral changed his mind. There was no need for my gang to be on those ships micromanaging the crew. Each shuttle had three seats up front, for pilot, co-pilot, and an undefined third support position that we thought of variously as the stewardess, flight engineer, or cargomaster depending upon what the shuttle was doing. Me and my three 'experts' could ride up front with the pilots of the four shuttles and stay on the shuttles, and all seven ships could have their full crews of 18 men.

Looked at that way, we had six free seats. I suggested that, unless every passage crew included a doctor, all four shuttles carry at least one ship's doctor or IDC so that they could help certify the air. They could return to the shuttle before it undocked to head for the next ship. I graciously volunteered Doc Smith for one of the four. I was sure he'd thank me later.

Eventually we ran out of things to plan and talk about and the Admiral dismissed us all. Except me. "Hold on a minute, Roger."

"Yes, sir. Just a second, I have to check on my escort here." I poked my head out into the waiting room to tell Ellen I would be a few more minutes.

She pouted. "Captain, are you always busy like this?"

"Well, today I'm a hero and this is my 15 minutes of fame. And it's 'Commodore', at least for today and tomorrow."

"Is that a promotion?"

"I think so, honey. I think so."

"You aren't sure? Is it better or worse?"

"It's more authority, which is always good, but it's more responsibility, too, and that's always bad. It depends upon what you want from life. Today I commanded a ship. Tomorrow I'm commanding a squadron of 7 ships."

"Only 7? I heard we got eight."

"You heard right, but we went and got MY ship today. Tomorrow, we're going out and getting the other 7. Anyway, honey, I gotta get back in there. I'll be out soon."

There was no one left in the conference room except Admiral Sykes and his aide. "Okay, Roger, summarize the good and bad points of these ships as you know them."

"Well, to start with, they are tiny in comparison to the freighters. They have three times the acceleration but have very little free space and apparently power is also an issue. They do not have the freighters' Nav Shields, and that means that they are in danger from others' engines if they get too close. The AI said we could install the shields but they would use up all the slack in the power plant. To fight, power the shield, and use the main engines at full power would keep the power plant at max. If that's all we need I don't see the concern. However, the AI seemed to think that we would also want other upgrades that would not be possible to power at the same time as the shields, but we don't know yet what we might want. I certainly can't imagine anything that might be more important than the shields."

"For bad points, they seem intended for local use only, with a small crew that has no extra men for damage control or to replace personnel who are killed, wounded, exhausted, or even just need to use the bathroom. Every acceleration couch will be in use in combat. There's nowhere to put extra people for watch reliefs or DC. The big hit from my point of view is that there seems to be no provision for crew evacuation or escape if the ship is hit and cannot evade incoming weapons. There's only the one access hatch, and there are no lifeboats at all."

"And you don't know what else is wrong, yet. Right. Okay, we're looking at those drawings to try to determine what spaces can be re-purposed for berthing. That's going to take some time and a closer look. That's for later, though. You need to take your girlfriend home and get some sleep, if she lets you. Dismissed."

"Aye, aye, sir."

I got out of there. We didn't even know what we didn't know. He was right, though. We needed to go through the entire ships, space by space and widget by widget and determine what they all did, whether that was important or not, and where we could find room to shoehorn more people in.

I convinced Ellen that I really did need sleep, and she let me be in charge and just work on getting mine. She got hers, too, but that night it was all about me so I could sleep.

Ellen got up with me this time, saying that she could always go back to bed after I left and she needed to see me off. We proved that the shower just wasn't large enough for two people unless they were very good friends. Proving that was fun, but I had places to be and as the Commodore for the whole movement force I had to be ready early.

We were using the Station's main transporter waiting room as a mustering station again. By the time I got there the others were beginning to collect. I was able to get a report that all four shuttles were ready, and that they had been filled with the supplies the Admiral had ordered. Good, no problems -so far- with our transport out.

Before long the seven COs were coming to me to report that their passage crews were assembled and standing by. As each one reported that, I had them report to their shuttles. Unfortunately, only the first four crews for ships #002 through #005 could fit in a single shuttle. The others, the crews for #006 through #008, were scattered among the shuttles.

We had discussed that last night, and the Admiral had promised that before we got the next set we would have enough shuttles for each crew to get its own. For now, we had put one full crew and all but four of a second, in each shuttle. That left four men from three crews all in the last shuttle. I had their COs put the weapons guys there, as the least-needed if there was a problem and we needed to move before they had all been disembarked.

Billy showed up to our mustering point carrying a big cardboard carton. Inside were forty of the air monitors I had described, mounted on something with velcro fasteners. Yes, I grabbed one and so did each of the ship's doctors. Billy swore that the AIs had assured him that they did not need an AI to run; if the ship had a problem and the AI was unavailable these things would keep running for months. Certainly, longer than we would last if we were stuck in our suits.

I strapped one on my left forearm, and it told me the station's air pressure, O2 partial pressure, CO2 partial pressure, and concentration in parts per million for CO and flammable gases. He handed the rest of them out to COs, XOs, ChEngs, and the next-senior engineering guy for each ship.

Getting the right crews on the right ships wasn't a problem, with AIs helping us avoid stupid mistakes. Even the shuttles' marginal AIs could help with that. The four shuttles each docked at the closest four ships, and the COs assumed command with the ship's AI accepting him the same way I had before embarking his crew. After that shuttle's assigned doctor had verified that his armband agreed with the environmental console in the upper engineroom, each crew took their helmets off and passed them back into the shuttle before the shuttle undocked with the doctor.

After that, the first three shuttles moved to the last three ships to disembark most of their crews, then after they had done the same checks for air quality they undocked and the last shuttle docked with each of those last three ships in turn with the rest of their crews.

We gave each ship all the time they needed to get everyone where they needed to be. Not a problem, I passed the time looking at the deck layout drawings I'd gotten yesterday. With the shuttle's AI acting as a communications clearinghouse, I was in constant contact with all seven COs, Admiral Sykes, and Allie herself.

And my people. Whenever there was a lull in the action I, Dickie, Billy, and Chief Gaillard would all ask Allie to explain what this device did, or what that space was for. There were some items that we simply didn't need. The Confederacy had gotten a lot better at most things than when these ships were built. As long as the replicators worked and they had the materials they needed, we didn't need a lot of the food storage space or food preparation equipment.

For that matter, as long as we had the replicators we didn't need a lot of the spare parts storage, either. On the other hand, if they were willing to put space-conformal lockers in the engineroom, we could carry a lot of stuff anyway, and completely do away with most of the storage in the rest of the ship.

Okay, you've never been on a submarine. Have you ever been on a passenger jet? Did you notice all the little lockers in every corner of the stewardess area? The luggage bins in the overhead? The place to slide your man-purse under the seat? That's what I mean by conformal storage. The engineroom had a lot of wasted space. Turn all that into lockers, and you don't need the storerooms in the rest of the ship.

For other things, the Confederacy had developed smaller or more powerful versions that worked better than the original. Some of that stuff had already been upgraded. Other stuff would get upgraded by us, while still more could be done by the ship itself once we cleared out the old version and we decided where we wanted things.

That was an ongoing conversation that took weeks to finish while we got to know the ships and what was available. For now, though, it was just something to occupy the time while we waited for each ship to get ready to move. The first four ships were ready long before the last three were. The seventh ship had to wait for one crew to be unloaded on an earlier ship, then most of its crew to be unloaded, then for the last shuttle to drop off the final four men on the other two ships before it had a complete crew. This would have gone much more smoothly if we'd had enough shuttles.

Once everyone was onboard their ships, getting ready to move was quick. Everyone had had their sleep-training, and they all had reviewed what we had done the day before so there was little confusion.

With the AIs running the ships, all seven ships started accelerating at the same time. In the same direction, too. That was another thing. Without the AIs it would have been madness to ask seven green crews to all get underway at once without hitting each other even if they did all start several kilometers apart.

Our navigation plot showed immediately that they were not all moving at the same speed, but the AIs also talked among themselves and within seconds they were all moving together. After a minute, we saw the same thing again when they increased power to 5%, but the AIs caught it even faster, and when they upped it to 10% power we couldn't see any differences in our plots.

We got our first indication of trouble when it came time for the first ship -the one named Alnwick Castle- to peel off and turn towards Jupiter Station. The ship turned and increased power to 6g acceleration, and within seconds I was getting a report from her skipper that one of her acceleration couches appeared to be stuck. It had yet to move, but the guy in it had been preoccupied and hadn't noticed until the power increased to 20% and he realized that the increased gravity was pulling him back instead of down.

He was in the Fire Control Center and the other two men could visually verify that their couches had shifted, but his couch had not moved at all. That CO checked around and reported that all other couches were operating properly.

I had the other COs check their crews before anyone else turned back towards Jupiter, and we found a total of four other couches, two on one ship, that had not yet moved. Doc Smith was on one of the other shuttles, but we were able to easily have conversations without any trouble at all. The AIs were very good at that. I asked him what physiological effects we could expect of this equipment failure, and he said that increased blood pressure to the head would be a long-term issue, but at this level it was more like having a tension headache than anything dangerous.

He went on to answer my next question before I got it out, If the ship went to full power of 30g and he felt the 10% or 3g in that position, we could expect to start seeing fatal cranial embolisms within a few minutes. Our circulatory system was designed to pump blood back up from the feet against gravity, not down from the brain. And, even if no one died from that, we could expect tissue damage from lack of blood flow in the lower extremities within half an hour.

He was more than willing to give me a full lesson on what could be expected, but at the time all I wanted to know was whether it was going to kill our people. At full power the answer was yes, but at this level of thrust, the answer was a firm no, if the people were healthy, and the med-tubes had already ensured that.

I passed that on to the COs for dissemination to their crews. If we went to full power and these couches failed, we should expect the crew to start dying within minutes. I asked Allie if she had the ability to monitor these couches, and either stop the engines or at least warn the crew if a couch had problems. She told me that she could do any or all. Further, a quick check of her own equipment showed that during our movement one of her couches had never left the 'normal' position. One of my gunners' couches had had this same problem, and we hadn't even noticed.

I passed this all on to Admiral Sykes. I didn't have to provide any commentary. He heard it anyway, without me saying a word. If we had taken Allington Castle to full power the day before, we'd have arrived with a dead crewman and no idea why. By the time we went to check on him we would have found everything looking normal, aside from the man who had bled to death from every possible opening in his head.

Okay, Doc corrected me on that. He wouldn't have died from blood loss so much as from the sudden drop in blood pressure, which apparently was needed to do something I didn't understand about nutrients and the blood-brain barrier.

Meanwhile, I told that first ship that as long as the crewman was fine, they may as well stay at 20% power and get the trip over with. However, I told the other ships to stay at 10% power if they had any couches that weren't right, then once we had all reassured ourselves that this was survivable even if we missed one, I authorized the second ship to turn for Jupiter Station. It was one of the 10%-power ships, and it was fine for the rest of the trip.

I had all the reduced-power ships turn first, then last the remaining two that were able to go up to 20% power. They would still beat the slowpokes by a wide margin. Last, us spectators in the shuttles stayed out, one with each slowpoke, until they reached Jupiter Station.

Somewhere in all this it occurred to me that Billy's armband "Atmospheric Analyzer" should really be an "Environmental Analyzer" with a readout for gravity, or acceleration, or whatever it could sense. I passed that thought on to Billy. It may have started as my idea but he was the one who ran with it and made it actually happen. It was his baby.

Immediately after I said that I had to refrain from telling him that I wanted one of his babies. That wouldn't have sounded good, at all. I ended up telling him that I wanted my own copy of whatever improvements he came up with.

One blessing in this evolution was that, not long after each ship reached turnover at the halfway point, they came in transporter range of the Station. I ordered each ship to activate their pad so that, if necessary, personnel could be quickly transferred on or off the ship without delay. Thankfully, though, we didn't need them. Those couches were the only things that went wrong on that movement.

And, right there was something that these ships couldn't have, because of power concerns. The freighters had the spare power to run a transporter system that included stand-alone pads on other ships. These ships, the Castles, could carry a stand-alone pad but could not run a network themselves. The pad they carried would only work when they got close to a ship with a 'powered nexus' which is what they ended up calling it.

Where we were, out beyond Ganymede, if one of the ships had a problem those pads were useless unless we got one of the freighters out there. We started working on emergency procedures for that, and we kept one of the freighters ready to move as a sort of 'Guardship'. It was usually F12, since it was functional and wasn't doing anything else important, but sometimes they rotated one of the other ships through that job for a few days. That was so that the Darjee crew could have a weekend off was the rumor.

Just like the day before, the shuttles had needed less than an hour to get to the ships. We spent an hour or so getting everyone where they needed to be, and the 20% ships made it back to the Station in two hours. The 10% ships, however, took much longer. We were out there most of the day. Of course I had to stay with the stragglers. While I was still out there babysitting the last couple of slowpokes, the shuttle's AI told me to stand by for a private message from Admiral Kennedy, back behind the Moon.

"Roger, I just got done talking to Vice-Admiral Andrews. I think he understands a little better why I had you sent out there. You know what you don't know. If you weren't such a paranoid freak, he would be explaining to me how he had six or seven dead sailors and he didn't know why. Well done, sailor! Carry on."

Okay, there's a bright side to this. I don't think we should be like the aliens, riding around in ships they don't understand and trusting the AIs to get everything right. We should understand everything in these ships. If we don't understand how it works, how are we supposed to be able to tell if it's working right or not, or repair it when it's broken? Or even shot up?

Without understanding how something worked, we couldn't even make a meaningful decision about whether it was better to repair or replace something. In a ship that had been shot up and had a hundred different things that didn't work, it could be critical to be able to make the correct decision on what to repair in place, what to replace, and what to ignore for higher priorities. Making the wrong choices could lead to loss of the ship with everyone in it.

The chain of command would support my desire to take everything possible apart for inspection and test everything that we don't take apart. If it hasn't been used in 800,000 years, it's possible that it doesn't want to be used now. Before we take these ships out for their first hyperspace jump, we should test and verify proper operation, or test, repair, and then verify every piece of equipment on the ship.

Everything. After that scare, there wouldn't be any argument at all. Except for the hyperspace bubble generator, I guess. If it doesn't work, that's okay. We'll still be here in Sol space, right?

We could even activate the hyperspace bubble generator for short tests inside the system if we wanted, just to prove it worked. Before we left the system, though, I really wanted some kind of lifeboat. We've got no business taking these old relics out of the system without a backup plan of some kind.

The next couple of weeks were hurried -almost frantic- overhauls of six of the eight ships. The AIs accepted our displeasure that 6 out of 144 examples of a particular piece of equipment installed specifically for crew safety had failed in their very first test use, and were very helpful in testing everything.

I didn't get to participate in that as much as I wanted because I was management and just didn't have time to get my hands dirty as often as I'd like. Of course, everywhere I'd ever been the junior mechanics actually ripping broken things apart would say they'd love to be in my position, pushing papers and supervising instead of getting filthy cleaning lube oil purifiers.

Some of us took equipment apart to ensure that we understood it and could repair it if necessary. While they were doing that, others of us ripped out everything we didn't think we needed. The ships themselves could remove anything we wanted, but that would happen slowly, over hours or days or weeks as their nanites disassembled the items atom by atom. We didn't want to waste that kind of time for that.

Instead, we had the ships make us cutting torches and grinders and we cut stuff out by hand. That got ugly, but the ship could smooth over rough cuts behind the worker and that was a lot faster. Down on Earth the guy with the grinder or torch had to take the time to make the cuts smooth and safe so that no one got injured when they rubbed against them. Having the ship's repair nanites do that for us saved us a lot of time. We spent a lot of time with our hoods on so that we didn't have to breathe the dust and smoke, and the ship's support in this was an immense help.

A lot of stuff wasn't needed for our purposes. A lot of stuff could be replaced with newer and smaller equivalents. A lot of stuff could be moved to different places, like the Engineroom.

We were throwing a lot of stuff out, stuff that could be removed faster if we cut the hull open, but we couldn't do that ourselves. We had to let the ship do that itself, once we decided where we wanted the hull openings. That was a series of conferences on F12 and the Station with the COs, the XOs, the ChEngs, and Admiral Sykes attending as referee. The eight ships' AIs took part in the planning, and we ended up with three new openings in the hulls.

One of them, on the port side aft on the main deck, would be turned into a second personnel hatch. In order to save space, this hatch was built without an airlock. If the ship was docked to a larger station or a shuttle, we wouldn't need an airlock. If the ship wasn't docked to anything, that hatch wouldn't normally get used and it got the same pressure-differential safety interlock that the normal hatches had. However, it gave us a second path out of the ship if we had to evacuate, and in that case whether there was any air on the other side was of lesser concern. The interlock was easily disengaged, but it DID force the person using it to either get the AI's approval first, or manually disengage it if the AI was unavailable.

At least these ships' AIs understood when we said 'unavailable'. The Darjee AIs didn't think that was possible. These AIs understood that no system, no matter how important and critical, was immune to combat damage.

Every crewman should be wearing his space-rated suit at all times anyway, unless he was showering. One of the suit upgrades we had received included the main seam that could be opened all the way around our crotches to the small of our backs, and that let us do everything we might want to do while wearing our suits, from peeing to pooping to having sex.

If there was an emergency that made us seal up when we were on the pot, all we had to do was pinch it off, wipe up, and stand -and if the air goes away unexpectedly I may not take the time to wipe. The suit would close that seam itself while we were fumbling with our hoods. Personally, I figured that if there was a decompression accident most of our casualties would come from people who were right in the middle of getting a nut and refused to stop just because they couldn't breathe.

The second opening, back aft and above the ship, would eventually become a larger hatch that served as the entry point for our ship's boat when we figured out what we were using for that. Part of that mod was enough structure to hold the boat safely in place while the ship was accelerating, maneuvering, or getting shot up.

The third opening was a temporary cut over the Fire Control Room. That room was going away. We were going to expand the CIC some to include a single Fire Control Station, and we were using the rest of that space for berthing. The temporary opening made it a lot faster to remove large items that we didn't need any more, as well as installing large items we did want.

The overhaul became the same sort of jigsaw puzzle we were used to with submarine overhauls back on Earth. If you wanted to replace something big, it wasn't enough to just cut a hole in the hull. You also had to remove everything between your problem equipment and that hole. A lot of the time removing and then when you were done re-installing all the "interference" was a bigger chore than the original project was. It was important to get everything re-installed in the reverse order of removal, but we had AIs keeping us out of trouble over that. EVERYTHING was easier with AI support!

To save time, we just left the CIC/FCR area open to space while we worked on it. That part of the upper deck was already a separate airtight compartment with a single stairway going down to the main deck, and that accessway had a hatch in it. As long as we had the temporary hole in the roof, that hatch had to stay shut to protect the rest of the ship. Anyone who wanted to leave the main deck and work in CIC had to go out the airlock, climb the hull to the cut, and climb down the temporary ladder.

We welded a guide rail, basically just a length of quarter-inch barstock, to the hull so that you could hook on before you left the airlock. If you had any sense at all you stayed tethered while you worked, only releasing your hook when you were done and safely back in the airlock. If you drifted off very far at all, you would exit the ion shield and Jupiter's radiation field would cook you in short order.

The cut allowed us to simply remove the Fire Control Room's acceleration couches in one piece, then remove the bulkhead behind them, remove the couches in CIC, and do the work needed to combine the rooms. When we were done, we re-installed five couches in the new expanded CIC, put up a bulkhead, and used what was left of the old FCR space to build a pair of two-man staterooms.

We made a point of making every crewman spend some time on the CIC project, treating it as practical experience in emergency damage control practices. If we ever had to do emergency repairs, everyone onboard would already have done the spacewalk and repair thing and the stress level would be a lot lower than if we sent out people who had never experienced vacuum.

I understand that, after we left, they built a set of cofferdams that fit over the hull cut, had enough room to store parts and materials, and had both personnel and cargo airlocks. This made the conversion work go a good deal faster and safer, but they didn't get that much use. We only got sixty of these ships from the Confederacy. Once we had converted them all to our needs, we built another 2000 or so from scratch, and those had our improvements already installed when they were built.

No, they weren't all identical. As we started learning lessons from actual use, we changed a few things for the ships built afterwards. For instance, in the upper level we took out a storeroom that we didn't need. The armored bulkhead along the back of CIC got moved back some more, absorbing that space. CIC didn't get bigger, we just moved it aft by that much, and it gave us some more room in front of it for berthing.

I still catch myself calling those bulkheads 'watertight', because that's how I think of them. It's very similar to the way your house is built. Your home's outer wall is built to withstand weather, climate, and burglars, while the inner walls between bedrooms are much lighter partitions that may not be as strong. For ships, the outer hull is built as strong as practical with the materials, time, labor, and cost budgeted for it, and most interior partitions are far weaker to save on those same materials, time, labor, and cost where they aren't needed. Getting those decisions right is why good Naval Architects are so valuable.

However, some interior partitions are built almost as strong as the hull for damage control. You don't want to waste space, weight, and above all scarce building dollars on something you don't need, but you also don't want to lose the whole ship the way the Titanic et al were lost, because a minor leak turned into progressive flooding when the interior partitions weren't up to the simple task of keeping air on one side and keeping water on the other side. Not every interior partition is built water-tight, but every so often the builders install bulkheads that are strong enough to prevent progressive flooding.

Of course, it's not the builders' fault -even though survivors will try to blame them- if the owners don't MAINTAIN that compartmentation and watertight integrity. When I was growing up it seemed that every other year some cruise ship, yacht, or ferry was lost with all hands because of some minor hull damage that let water into a small space. From that small space that didn't affect stability or even total buoyancy, the water then went everywhere else too because of poor interior compartmentation and eventually the weight of the steel ship would exceed the remaining buoyancy and the whole ship would go down. Taking hundreds of innocent passengers with it, usually.

In addition to compartmentation, most warships have some strengthening around critical spaces and equipment, up to and including armor. For our purposes, you can substitute 'space' for 'water' in the above, and we needed the same thing. We didn't worry about sinking, but many of the principles were the same.

Most of the equipment was built to keep working in vacuum and with our suits we should be okay also for short periods, so letting in the 'space' wasn't our major concern. We were more worried about getting holes in us or our machinery. Our worry was how to prevent a lucky shot from punching through the shield, the hull, and then the equipment or people.

CIC was surrounded on all sides by armor, with significantly more in front than any other side. In fact, since the senior officer cabins were built out of the old Fire Control Center, my bunk was behind that armored bulkhead, too. Back aft, there was a major bulkhead separating Engineering from the rest of the ship. Up forward, there was another one separating the Bridge, the Plasma Torpedo Launcher, its equipment room (that we started calling the "magazine" before we realized that the PTL didn't need one), and some of the other stuff all the way forward, from the rest of the ship.

Both of the Particle Beam Projectors, their turrets, and some more support equipment were isolated by what was effectively a second hull. On most of the ones we built ourselves the turrets were on a sort of sideways elevator so they could be tucked in for safety when not in use, and pushed out for a better view of the target when in combat. Of course ours didn't have that elevator, but even so those things stuck out the sides of the ship.

The original Castles had turrets mounted halfway outside the hull. The turrets were the most likely things to get hit and destroyed, whether we were talking about enemy fire, random asteroid strikes, or even a parking accident. And, of course, there were the two armored conduits connecting each one to the power plant on that side.

Don't ask what was in the conduit. Yes, power to run the turret, but also that weird particle that the projector sent out. Those things got generated on the spot on our newer ships, making the whole assembly much larger, but on these tiny ships they came from the power plants.

We're pretty sure that doing it this way was why the Castles had, on their small frame, three completely separate power plants. There was a small auxiliary power generator in the middle that aviators would call an APU, and sailors would think of as "the emergency diesel"; all it did was provide power to run the hotel loads when the main plants weren't running. On either side of that, there were a pair of larger plants that drove the main engines, powered the three weapon systems, and provided those weird particles that needed those armored conduits.

For normal cruising, the two main plants were online and providing power to everything. Once we added the Confederacy's Nav Shield, though, we couldn't use full engine power, run the shield, and fire all three weapons at once unless we had the Aux Plant up also.

Some of the older ships got updated, some didn't. They were all similar enough that anyone could look at them and say "That's a Castle". Only the real experts could look at one on the outside and tell if any particular Castle was an original, a copy, or one of the improved versions that they called Ainsworths.

My time was split between being the commanding officer of a warship in dock, determined to get the best overhaul possible, and being Admiral Sykes' assistant, effectively his deputy. He had an aide, someone whose job it was to make sure that anything he needed he got, but Lt Commander Colonna was more suited to maintaining the Admiral's appointment and meeting schedules than ensuring that every ship had at least one completely qualified watch team.

If I had any say in it Eddie Colonna would never command a warship on independent duty. He wasn't willing to take responsibility for his own actions, much less a subordinate's. He was a politician, not an officer. Anything he did started with the priority of avoiding blame, not getting the job done. He was out here and we were stuck with him, but if he hadn't gotten sent out here first the AIs would never have accepted him under the new rules.

Meanwhile, while I was getting run ragged with two full-time jobs, Ellen was setting up living quarters for four adults and three children. She'd gotten the AIs to accept our relationship as a formal contract. I had to promise that I would accept her children as mine and guarantee her a safe place to live and raise the children, and she had to promise to take care of me and all of the children, whether hers or those of my two wives. Nothing was said about her having to do anything for Diana or Ginger. The contract was just between the two of us. The agreement used traditional English terms from the feudal era. I was her "Lord" and she was my "Concubine".

Again there was no fixed time limit and it didn't say 'forever', just as long as we both wanted. Either of us could opt out without much trouble. She could leave any time she wanted, but the kids got to stay with me, and I was under no obligation to support her if she left. For my part, I could kick her out any time I could demonstrate that she was not taking care of me and the kids or that she was causing more trouble than she was easing, and that she had been warned.

Since I had two pregnant wives plus a contract-protected pregnant concubine, the AIs and the housing people considered my family stable enough to deserve dedicated quarters. Jupiter station was still growing, and Ellen's request for married quarters was added to those of several others and became part of the push behind a section of berthing for accompanied officers. Actually, it was a section of corridor with a bunch of the freighters' cargo pods, each set up for individual families. The other officers got their own pods if they were willing to make formal contracts with their companions. Some would, some wouldn't. Some lasted, some didn't. Some used titles like "Wife" or "Companion" or our own "Concubine", while others used titles that sounded a good deal less respectful. Everybody's different.

The hookers wanted promises of support for life, but most of the men had been through that trap before. The AIs seemed to be all about mutually-agreed contracts, and most of the men weren't willing to promise to support a whore for any period more definite than "as long as she fucks and sucks, cooks and cleans". A couple of the men had families that they wanted to bring up, but the AIs were being obstinate. Either the wives met the AIs' standards for trustworthiness or they came up as contract hookers. Children apparently had to stay with their primary care-giver, which was almost always their mother.

Ginger got the list of desired wives and checked them out. A few of them actually passed the test and, if they acted like they missed their dead husband, were invited to participate in a UN project, and, oh, hell, bring the kids too.

Those were the very first of our children out at Jupiter, and having them around forced some changes in the way we did things. We all wanted them to grow up as normal as they could, and that meant that we had to let the hookers wear a bit more than us men had previously approved. In my case, I had to let Ellen wear panties when she left our cabin in a skirt. I drew the line at wearing a bra, though. I claimed that it would be wrong to tie those things up where they couldn't breathe, and no one argued with me.

The other wives? The ones that couldn't pass the test? Rather than bring them up as general-service hookers, they were just never told about the deal. We didn't need them. Ginger had an endless supply of hookers.

Ginger also jumped on that 'concubine' deal. I'm not sure if she heard about it from the AIs, the grapevine, or even emails from Ellen, but when she found out that the AIs were supporting contracted relationships she added that to her sales presentation. When the women heard about it, she really did have an endless supply of hookers who wanted to work for her. Only one man? Free health care for them and their kids? Clean housing? Always good weather? No beatings? She heard a lot of "Where do I sign up?"

Before long Ginger's people were having trouble with those whose livelihood was being endangered by all this. How was a self-respecting pimp going to make his living if all his girls left him for some UN bitch? That was easy. Ginger started having her security people visit the ones involved, providing the same incentive to the pimps to behave that the pimps had given their girls to stay where they belonged. Beaten up? Black eye? Broken arm? Stabbed a few times? Hey, if it's good for the girls it's good for the pimp.

Ginger had to expand her security staff a lot for this. That got Ginger involved in hiring aggressive young men who had recently left various military services. I think just about any healthy young man would volunteer for a job that included beating up pimps. Think of the fringe benefits, man! She said it was common for the boys leaving a place to have a few girls stuck to them, like velcro or something.

Getting health upgrades that ensured that they'd always win a fistfight just made it fun. Add in those stunners, Confederacy-produced body armor under their clothes, and the knowledge that they would recover from getting wounded anywhere except maybe the head or neck, and Ginger's people were willing to take on any gang in any town.

And, apparently, there were rumors that the UN was getting involved with prostitution. It was legal in some countries, and the girls in those places got health care, clean housing, and good working conditions. Maybe the UN wanted to provide the same things to all working girls everywhere? Word on the street was that pimps who mistreated their string were finding themselves mistreated the same way by UN inspectors who took care of things themselves, on the spot.

Of course there was an organized crime side to this. The people on the street weren't the worst-behaved at all. They may have been thugs for the most part, but anything that left their women unable to work was bad for their profits. The worst abuse was by people -usually men but occasionally women- who thought that they were too far removed from the business to be held responsible. The problem with that was that invariably they would get fingered by their employees who didn't want to get hurt worse.

Ginger could tell endless stories of important businesspeople with lily-white hands getting their fat asses sent to the hospital by people who just showed up out of nowhere, beat them up, gave them some sound business advice like "the next time you order someone to abuse a prostitute will be the last time you ever give an order at all", and left.

Ginger said that her boys had strict orders to not kill anyone, but sometimes accidents happened. Whenever she lost one of her boys to a lucky shot or an unusually good fighter, the accidents somehow happened to every man in the building. She would swear up and down that she didn't order anything like that, but boys will be boys and, besides, these were all ex-soldiers who didn't mind escalating things to the next level if that's what the pimps wanted.

"We're killin' people here? Sure Sarge, they started it. Squad 3! Squad 2 lost a man. Clean sweep!"

If families later told police that their Fred was just a customer, he never hurt anyone and why did the gangs kill him, well, he should have been home with his wife, now, shouldn't he?

They always took all the women with them, when that happened.

While we were working on our ships and the girls were working on getting us more girls, Admirals Sykes and Andrews made sure that the AIs had the next set of ships coming, since we had cleared out the Confederacy's parking area. We needed to set up an assembly line for all of our mods, but we needed delivery as quickly as possible so that we could get all 60 of these warships run through the assembly line when we had it working. They put a priority on getting more shuttles built, but they were told that this was unnecessary at the moment since our next delivery would be only four ships.

It turned out that our next delivery would not be more of these warships, but rather our first four of the freighters that could land, the ones that we were thinking about using as troopships. Well, sure, we need them too, but we don't have any troops ready, yet. I thanked God that someone else was dealing with that problem. I had my hands full with the Castles.