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not doing the write-ups."
"When I get one, I'll use it," Herzer pointed out. "Nobody thought to check
what sort of casualties there were in the staff. Most of these are requests
for personnel. I'm doing it until I get a facilities commander;Carson was
handling both loads but he had time to set it up."
"Noted," Edmund said. "I'll make sure you get what you ask for. Don't just
ask for what you need, okay?"
"Got it," Herzer said, grimacing. "Boss, can you try to get me areal command
some day? No this harum-scarum, thrown into the breach bullshit? I'm getting
really tired of being the forlorn hope, you know?"
"I know," Edmund said, sitting down wearily. "I'd intended to move you to
Second Legion pretty soon. There are a dozen places I'd like you, but I
figured you deserved a real command for a while. Not exactly a vacation, but
better than this shit. Hell, why am I abusing you about all work and no play.
I'm the one here when I should be safe in the arms of Morpheus."
"Rack out here," Herzer suggested. "Or, maybe not. The facilities suck. The
food sucks. The training is going to really suck. Morale is going to be a
bitch to maintain, especially since everybody thinks they're going to die."
"Do you think it's that bad?" Edmund asked.
"No," Herzer admitted. "Unless New Destiny has the same plan. I'm going to
try to avoid direct conflict as much as possible and build forces as much as
possible. At the same time, I don't want more people up there than we can evac
if we have to. Twenty five at a time is the max,if we don't lose a pilot.
Sixteen to twenty hour turn time. If we take heavy casualties, I'm pulling
back to two ships and riding it out."
* * *
"Oh, how fascinating," Geo said, looking at the hand-printed schematic. "They
use Tammen field sequencers!"
The various teams had broken out into their specialties for a week and having
completed the first block of training on shuttle-board systems the engineers
were looking over the ship-board systems. And finding various quaint equipment
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that had them chuckling at all hours.
"I don't even know what a Tammen field sequencer is," Linda admitted, leaning
over his shoulder to read the specifications of the system. "Oh, my, it's only
rated to one gigawatt! I'm not sure that could eventurn the ship except in
geologic time."
The engineering team had been given the ground floor of one of the wooden
buildings and it was now scattered with various bits and pieces of equipment.
Some of it was original equipment used in the Excelsior that had been found
around Norau, but most of it was plastic and wood mock-ups created by the
previous team. The walls were covered in blackboards that had diagrams and
equations on them and down the middle were several tables. The entire
engineering team was gathered around, watching Geo cluck over the ship's
antiquated systems.
"The Tammen didn't use intermediate field generators," Evan said, chuckling.
"It was a late addition to the ship, anyway, used for reactionless vector
control. They were additional thrusters, in other words, for fine attitude
control. They've got a fraction of the output of the ion drive or the lat
thrusters."
"They don't have to, though," Geo said, shaking his head. "I always liked the
Tammen design; it was very robust. And with some tinkering it's capable of
much higher output. I wrote a paper about it that I don't think I ever
published."
"How?" Evan asked. The Tammen field generators were a secondary system whose
primary control node actually ran through engineering. Assuming they captured
engineering, that would give them latitude control. Especially if Geo could
"soup them up."
"The reason Tammens didn't use intermediate generators was that the theory
didn't work for them in the 24thcentury," Geo said, looking over at Linda.
"Why?"
"I'm not..." Linda said then frowned. "Ah, the tertiary chaos equations of
field junctions weren't worked out until...2679 by...by..."
"Izakaiah Romanov," Evan said, grinning. Geo was always playing the
"professor" game with the two.
"You're so far beyond me," Paul Satyat said, shaking his head. Satyat was the
designated engineering tech for Team Van Krief, a short, stocky brunette with
burly hands and shoulders. He had studied various forms of engineering [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]