Sentience 1: Storm Clouds Gathering (27 page)

Beginning with the carriers, skeleton crews were placed aboard and provisioning began. Within another couple of hours, the reactors on the
Independence, Lexington
and
Ticonderoga
had all been brought up into standby mode and continuity and system integrity tests were initiated. Generators from a tender tied up to the
Independence
provided power to get the ship’s onboard systems functioning and Stillman accompanied Admiral Rawley out to her, aboard one of the construction shuttles brought in by a transport. Stillman was always a bit staggered by the sheer size of an attack carrier. Ship’s complement for an attack carrier was just under 6,000 officers and crew. He’d seen cities on Socar he’d swear were smaller
.

Stillman turned and looked as the main view screen on the
Independence
bridge was activated and he marveled at the frenzied activity going on within his facility from an entirely new perspective from that normally seen from the station.
Looks like somebody kicked over an ant’s nest.
There was movement and activity everywhere. But from within the seeming chaos, he could begin to see an underlying order begin to emerge, like a highly choreographed dance troupe of hundreds. Ben was amazed by the intricate detail in which this operation had been laid out. The efficiency and speed at which Admiral Rawley’s men worked reminded him a of a gigantic pit crew at the land cruiser races Socarians loved so much.
Incredible.

Within the hour, Rawley’s
Raptor
arrived and was successfully captured as though the big starship hadn’t been a stone-cold, abandoned hulk just hours earlier. Refueling ops were underway as the pilot grabbed a meal and some well-deserved downtime. Stillman noted that drop tanks were being fitted to extend the
Raptor’s
range for the return trip.
Must be planning to go straight to Waston from here.
That made sense, as the last Ben had heard, Admiral Rawley was currently working at the Heptagon.

“Ben?”

Stillman turned away from the view screen towards the voice and saw Admiral Rawley approaching with a rather thin, youngish looking captain at his side. “Yes, Admiral?”

“Ben, I’d like to introduce you to Captain Richard Bonhoeffer.”

“Nice to meet you, Captain,” said Ben, as he extended his hand.

“And you as well, Captain Stillman,” replied Bonhoeffer, grasping Ben’s hand in a firm, but not overpowering grip.
A man’s handshake, neither a limp fish, nor a hand crusher.
Stillman decided he liked the young captain already, just from the way he shook hands.

“Rich will be acting as interim captain of the
Indy,
when she’s ready to head out under her own power.” Stillman nodded his understanding. “We’ll soon be getting a tug to reorient the bow just a bit, so the catapult can launch my
Raptor
without splattering it… and me, all over that cruiser parked across the way,” said Admiral Rawley.

“Yes, I can see how something like that might ruin your whole day,” replied Stillman, deadpan. Bonhoeffer smiled greatly at Ben’s comment, indicating he had a sense of humor, making Ben’s opinion of the young captain rise yet another notch.

“Speaking of which, hadn’t you better begin getting into your flight-suit pretty soon, Admiral?” Bonhoeffer inquired.

Rawley turned to look at the ships chronometer and replied, “Yes, I guess it is getting about that time, isn’t it?” Rawley looked at the two captains with a look of resignation on his face. “First I’m packed into that tug like a sardine and now I get to spend a few hours crammed into the cockpit of a
Raptor
. When this ‘supposed’ vacation is over, I’m gonna
need
a fishing trip out in the wilds of Oreg.”

After Admiral Rawley left to go change, Stillman turned to Bonhoeffer and asked, “So where are you from, Captain?”

“Floda sir,” answered Bonhoeffer. “I was a Fleet brat, born at Pensacota Station. My father was a Master-Chief Petty Officer, stationed there for his last tour before he retired. He’d been an unrepentant bachelor his entire life, but I guess the beach environment must have rejuvenated the old man and made him a bit randy, as he shocked all of his friends and inexplicably married a local girl. I came along almost exactly nine months later.”

Stillman laughed, “So he settled down there after he retired, I take it?”

“Yeah, my mom grew up there and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Dad opened his own spaceplane engine repair business, renewed his clearance through the base security officer and ended up doing a lot of overflow work for the Fleet.”

“I noticed you’re wearing an academy ring. I’m a bit jealous. If you don’t mind my asking, how’d you manage to swing that?”

Bonhoeffer grinned, “Not at all sir, lucked into it, I guess. During my senior year of high school, a new rear admiral rotated in to take over command of the station and he remembered my dad from when they had served together aboard the old carrier
Shangri-La
. The admiral had been a squadron leader and dad had been his flight mechanic. Anyway, as Dad was a civilian contractor to the base by this time, the admiral invited him out and after reminiscing over dinner, it came out that Dad wanted to get me into the academy, but didn’t have the political connections to swing it. Turned out that this rear admiral just happened to have a congressman for a brother... well, like I said, I lucked out.”

“On such coincidences turns the fate of nations and kings, Captain,” laughed Stillman.

About twenty minutes later, Admiral Rawley came back onto the bridge wearing a flight suit, with a flight helmet with three stars on the front held in the crook his left arm. He held out his hand to Stillman as he approached and Ben took it with a smile.

“Well Ben, it looks like I’m out of here. I’m counting on you to see that the rest of these beauties on the list get gone, ASAP.”

“Will do, Admiral. You know that you can count on me,” replied Stillman as they finished shaking hands.

“I know that, Ben. That’s exactly
why
I called in a favor from a guy I know at BuPers to get you assigned here for your short retirement tour.”

Ben’s mouth dropped open in surprise, as Vice Admiral Christopher Rawley turned on his heel and headed for his
Raptor
.

“It would appear,” mused Bonhoeffer, “that you have more than just a passing acquaintance with Admiral Rawley.”

“Other than commanding my own destroyer, pitiful old thing that she was,” replied Stillman, “the best duty of my entire career was serving as Rawley’s executive officer, when he was captain of the battleship
Defiant.

“Defiant?” asked Bonhoeffer. “Isn’t she here?”

For the moment,
Stillman thought as he nodded,
only for the moment... I wonder if the Admiral looked her over for old times' sake? I know I certainly have.

Just after midnight, station time, Capt. Benjamin Stillman watched as the
Independence
cast off her lines, only half-hearing Chief Manning’s returning the routine ship-to-station communications all Fleet vessels engaged in while undocking for departure. Normally she would have negotiated her way out of dock under her own maneuvering thrusters, but the docking bays at Haven were built long before Fleet had any ships as large as the
Indy
class carriers, so multiple tugs were needed to slowly and safely pull the oversized cork from the undersized bottle. The way the tugs worked together as a team to maneuver objects hundreds of times their size was another thing Ben always found amazing.
Like worker ants moving the queen.

The elderly design of the Haven Facility had, by modern standards, a relatively narrow central navigation channel. Virtually as soon as the tugs pulled the big ship forward enough to clear her stern, the
Indy
tapped her reverse thrusters just enough to bring her to a dead stop in space. While most of the tugs kept the big girl positioned, a couple of them released and reattached to her starboard bow so they could begin to swing her nose around towards the center of the channel. Between the tugs pulling the starboard bow and light nudges from
Indy’s
port-side bow thrusters, she slowly and majestically came around until at 20°, the port-side and stern tugs released and the great ship gently tapped her forward thrusters to give her just a bit of forward momentum as she smoothly moved into the dead center of the channel where she could maneuver on her own.

The only tug-maneuvering ballet Stillman had ever seen that topped today’s performance had occurred just a few short weeks earlier, when they had to stuff that big bitch into that tiny docking bay in the first place.

“Haven,
Independence
is ready for departure.”

“Clearance for departure is granted,
Independence
,” responded Chief Manning.

“Haven, Capt. Bonhoeffer wishes to deliver a personal message to Capt. Stillman, if he’s available.”

Manning turned to Stillman and handed him the auxiliary comm gear. “Stillman here,
Independence
.”

“Capt. Stillman,” came Bonhoeffer’s voice over the comm. “Admiral Rawley asked me to tell you he is looking forward to his next appointment with
Doctor
Stillman, and he hopes you’ll see fit to refill his last prescription... whatever that means, sir.”

Stillman laughed and responded, “Message received and understood, Capt. Bonhoeffer. If you see Admiral Rawley before I do, please tell him I’ll make sure the pharmacy is open for just that purpose.”

“Wilco, Capt. Stillman.
Independence
now departing Haven.”

“Good luck, God’s speed and good hunting,
Independence
,” Stillman replied as he gave the Fleet’s traditional departure message for warships heading out into the blackness of interstellar space.

Indy
was the first of almost 200 Fleet ships that would be leaving Haven over the next few weeks. Despite Stillman’s highly developed appreciation of irony, it never once occurred to him the ship’s very name might imply some subtly veiled meaning.

True to the admiral’s word, more and more transports carrying thousands of Fleet personnel and tons of materials arrived bearing the code-phrase “Spring Harvest,” followed by even more tankers, two more tenders and four more tugs. Transports and tankers departed singly as their holds and tanks were emptied, some to return yet again, others not.

One by one, the other five attack carriers were revived, and they too departed Haven under their own power. Then came the twelve light carriers, the battlecruisers, heavy cruisers, light cruisers and frigates. Nonstop and around the clock, Rawley’s crews worked themselves to the brink of exhaustion. Reinitializing and bringing the reactors of the major heavies back online had been slowed by the limited number of tenders available to provide power to them, as Haven’s long-neglected dock-power generators sat useless.

Unbelievably, after two-and-a-half weeks the pace at which ships were revived actually accelerated when they started on the destroyers. Instead of departing immediately when ready, as the heavies had done, the newly revived destroyers were small enough to tie up and act as power sources to yet other destroyers through cables, jury-rigged together by the tender crews. Only three weeks after Rawley’s mysterious arrival, the last vessel capable of moving under its own power departed, and Stillman watched soberly as the tugs tied up to the big battleships, and the tenders went to work on a battlecruiser and a light cruiser whose engines had failed continuity testing and wouldn’t relight.

Stillman pondered Rawley’s taking the battleships. The last nine Fleet battleships had all been decommissioned and sent to Haven between 3849 and 3851. Even vacuum didn’t stop all materials from deteriorating with age, and Stillman knew they’d all need extensive work in a major shipyard if they were ever to sortie into space again.

Later, Stillman watched as the first of the old warhorses was moved down the central channel with her four tug suitors nudging and pulling at her.

“Haven, Tug Group-152 Alpha is ready to depart with
USS Vengeance
in tow,” crackled on the speakers in the station’s CMC.

“Roger, 152 Alpha. Departure permission is granted.” replied Manning’s relief, Chief Lawson. “Good luck and God’s speed.”

“God, I hope they’re not moving these old gals just to use them as targets for gunnery practice,” Stillman groused. “I used to be the exec on the
Defiant
. I think I’d rather see her melted down to make something new than to think of her ending up just blasted into drifting hunks of space junk.”

“Beats me, sir. The guys wearing all the gold braid don’t consult with me very often so I just go where they send me,” replied Lawson.

Stillman chuckled. “Yes, that sounds like a comprehensive synopsis of my entire career, Chief.”

Three days later, the tugs with
Defiant
in tow departed, the last of the nine big battleships to leave. Stillman felt there was something extremely poignant about that particular battleship being the very last to leave.
Either someone with an overdeveloped flair for the dramatic planned this, or God has a really warped sense of humor.

Manning smiled to see Stillman snap to attention and render a salute as the ship passed by on the station view screen. Although Manning could never be sure, for just a moment it appeared that something shiny glistened on Stillman’s cheeks as the tugs pulled
Defiant
out of the yard.

It took another week and a half for the tenders to get the two balky cruiser’s engines repaired and balanced. Finally, Chief Manning and the rest of the remaining Fleet personnel embarked on the last remaining transport. At the hatch, Chief Manning turned and handed Stillman a data cube.

“The admiral asked me to give you this, just as we were departing, Captain,” Manning said.

“Thank you, Chief.” Stillman took the cube from him. “It’s been a hell of a ride this past month, but it was an absolute pleasure working with you.”

“And you as well, Capt. Stillman,” Manning replied. Manning snapped to attention and as they exchanged salutes and said, “Enjoy your retirement, sir. I think you’ve earned it.”