The Ship: The New Frontiers Series, Book One Read online

  “I’ll pass this on to my contract supervisor, and I’ll also let the crew here know what they’re facing. Should we consider increasing the number of guards on site? We also provide a security escort for Mr. Fuqua on occasion, not always, but when he asks for an escort we provide someone. If you’re willing to authorize it, we can add protection for your other people to the contract. We have the assets to do that.”

  “If you think you need more people on site, clear it with Mr. Fuqua. For that matter, you might ask him whether he wants to authorize personal protection for others. For now, I think you’ve got enough people. You know that Mr. Fuqua has other employees outside the fence who keep their eyes open, don’t you?”

  “Right, and we’ve got a set of passwords we use when we talk to them, depending on the day of the week. We rarely see the cowboys, though. As long as they stay away from the graded area around the outer fence, there’s no reason for us to contact them. They have radios to alert us if they discover a problem, and we keep one of our radios tuned to their frequency. If they call in a contact, we’ll talk about it. So far, that hasn’t happened.”

  “Sounds good. How many people are on your shift?”

  “I’ve got six, two assigned to the gate, the rest circulating around the campus. When the plant goes into full operation, that number will likely double. We’ll need more people to deal with the projected number of employees. Right now, I’m running three shifts of two. Each shift works four on, eight off, and this repeats once during the duty day. They man the gate in pairs for four hours, then they’re off for four hours except for routine foot patrols every two hours unless there’s an emergency. They can play cards, video games, watch a movie if they want. If they choose to sleep, that’s okay too, but they’re required to respond within thirty seconds if called. Breaking their shift into four hours, then giving them a break, minimizes the fatigue factor.”

  “Sounds very professional.”

  “It is, Chuck. We hire mostly military veterans. The ones who haven’t deployed to the Sandbox or the Rockpile are ex-cops, so all of our people are experienced. We’ve got enough applicants that we don’t need to hire rookies. The vets also know when not to shoot, that’s important when you’re dealing with civilians. You don’t want the adverse publicity and neither do we.”

  “Good. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you. You might see a few more people inside the fence. They’ll be moving in and around the various buildings, so don’t get alarmed.”

  “I won’t. We’ll be going to a badge ID system as soon as your other employees start working. We can begin using that now if you think it’s necessary.”

  “I don’t. The factory employees recognize each other by sight, and we’re not likely to interact with your people. As for the later badge system, how will you handle that?” Chuck asked.

  “I’ve been told that your people will commute from Roswell and Clovis by bus. Before they board the bus, they’ll sign in, get their ID’s checked, and be issued their badges. When they arrive, no one gets off the bus without a badge. We’ll have an agent waiting with a scanner when the bus pulls in, to check the badges and compare numbers. Once they’re inside the fence, the badge color will tell security who’s allowed to go where. Limiting access to sensitive areas is standard security doctrine. I imagine you’ll be getting one of the blue all-access-anytime badges, but your company decides who gets what color badge. We just administer those decisions.”

  “Makes sense. Did Mr. Fuqua come up with this plan?”

  “No. That came from a Mr. Jindae. According to our list, he’s the plant’s personnel director.”

  “That sounds about right, although titles keep changing. Okay, I’ll leave you to your job. It’s time for me to go earn my keep.” Chuck smiled and left the office.

  Maddy opened a laptop computer and began composing an email, then stopped. It would be better to update the guards first. The email to her directors could wait.

  #

  Frenchy left the site Monday morning and remained away during the rest of the week. He drove in late Sunday, just after dark, and parked outside the main building. The site appeared deserted, except for the guards manning the gate. He telephoned Lina to tell her he’d arrived, then walked through the moonlight toward the hangar. Moments later, a whirring noise announced that he was being met. The faint glow of a chemlight guided him to the rear seat of the Bedstead.

  “Climb aboard, Dad. I’ll have you inside the hangar in a moment.”

  Frenchy eased into the seat and wondered if he needed a safety belt to hold himself in place. He decided that the seat was enough and settled in. Prudently, he gripped the seat with both hands as Lina smoothly brought the Bedstead up, stopping as soon as it was high enough to clear the fence. She flew ahead, slowing as she approached the building, then eased the craft inside the darkened hangar. The door rolled down behind the machine and moments later, the lights were switched on.

  “Welcome, Frenchy. Sorry about sending our rookie pilot to pick you up, but she insisted.”

  “Well, the flight was a bit rough, but they say any landing you can walk away from is a good one, right?”

  “You two can just kiss my ass! I’m already as good a pilot as you are, Chuck. Mel said so!”

  “He only said that because he was feeling miffed that I asked him to change the batteries after my last flight. Still, it’s fair to say you’re as good as me, since neither one of us has crashed yet.”

  “Setting a low standard, Chuck?” teased Frenchy.

  “I wouldn’t say that. She’s taken over the Bedstead test flights, running that course I laid out. That gave us time to work on the replacement. It’s a good thing Mel and I are almost done modifying the King; otherwise, I doubt she’d ever let us fly again!”

  “How’s that going, Chuck?”

  “All we need now is the impellers, and they should be ready within a week or so. The computers are in, but I can’t do a final calibration until the impellers are installed. The extra batteries came in last Wednesday, so we charged them up and installed them in the King. We’ve got cargo tie-downs on the rear deck and mounts for two seats, side by side. The windshields are part of the seat assemblies now, so all we have to do is put one in place and turn the cam-locks to hold it. It takes less than five minutes to install or remove a seat.”

  “Sounds good. Something else has also been going well. You know I detached a crew to work on the marine systems, right?”

  “I’d forgotten about that. You say it’s going well?”

  “That’s why I’m here. We’ve got a unit ready for testing, and I thought Morty should get to do it. You can come too, if you want. We can leave as soon as you and Morty are ready. We’ll be running the test out in Lake Michigan, a few miles from Chicago. We’ve got two working service boats, but since there’s only one impeller for each boat and they run on battery power the crews have already given them a good workout. They’re even simpler than the Bedstead and they work fine. But the big craft has multiple heavy impellers, a large generator, and more sophisticated controls than the boats. That’s why I thought of Morty; we’re getting close to what he had in mind for that other kind of ship.”

  “So what kind of hull did they mount this system in, Frenchy? One of those small freighters? I don’t know that we’re ready to put impellers on a passenger craft yet. People would wonder if they noticed there was no propeller.”

  “It’s not a freighter. Actually, we leased a...”

  #

  “A barge? You mounted the system in one of those big flat-bottomed cargo haulers?” Morty looked doubtful.

  “Yep. Why not? You can add an impeller to anything you need to move. Leasing this one was cheap. I think it might have been i on its way to be scrapped, but it floats, so it will work for us. We didn’t even have to do a lot of modification. There was no propulsion system to be removed and no steering gear to deal with. All our crew needed to do was weld brackets on the sidewalls for the impellers and
add a bottom support for the generator. That’s mounted midway between the bow and stern to keep the barge trimmed level. We’re using the generator’s frame-mounted tank, so we only have about two hours worth of fuel if we’re running the generator at full power. The impeller brackets have swivel mounts that can be tilted up or down electrically, so they can be controlled locally using their own panel or remotely from the bridge. That’s what we’re calling the pilot’s station, although it doesn’t look much like a bridge. It’s on the deck, a bit forward of amidships, but everything else is below in what we’ve been calling the engine room. It’s really just a big open space. The generator’s in the middle, battery packs behind it, walkways along the sides where the engineer can access the impellers if he needs to, but it’s still mostly open space. We had to cut two holes in the upper deck, though. We mounted the fan in one, the other is the exhaust opening. There’s only a lattice of expanded-steel over that. We found out quick that when the generator is running it’s hot down there, and you also get fumes. I guess the exhaust pipe isn’t sealed as tight as it should be, but the fan clears all that stuff out. We’ve run tests on everything, we just haven’t taken her out yet.”

  “What about lights? We’ll need running lights.”

  “We thought of that. We also installed a small radar. The antenna’s on a mast behind the pilot’s chair and the display is located by the control panel. It doesn’t have much range, but it should be enough.”

  “I guess I’ll see what it looks like when we get there. But a barge? You’re testing the heavy-duty impellers on a barge? What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking it was available. It’s beat up already, so we can cut out the brackets, patch the holes in the deck, and return it to the owners after the test. But mainly, we chose it because it was available and cheap.”

  #

  They arrived late on Monday, tired, but there was no time to rest; Morty wanted to inspect the barge before he took it out into the lake. He spent the rest of the afternoon checking out the controls and talking to the men who’d installed the system.

  “We’ve only got about two hours of fuel, Sven. That might be a problem.”

  “We’ve got twenty gallons more in plastic fuel containers, plus we’ve got the battery pack. We’ve also got a towboat to take us out into the lake, and that’ll save fuel. There was already more curiosity around the dock than we wanted, and moving a barge under it’s own power would have attracted way too much attention. We’ve also got the two service boats on the barge if they’re needed. They’re mounted in blocks on the forward deck. I hope we don’t run into a nosy Coast Guard boat, but we should be okay if we do. They may think we’re crazy, out in the lake on a barge, but we’re legal. Mostly.”

  “I wonder what the towboat crew will think?”

  “They think we’re hauling drugs. One of the crewmen asked me if I could fix him up with something. I gave him the fish-eyed stare and told him he didn’t want to mess with the people who had chartered the barge. He didn’t get curious after that.”

  “That looks like the towboat heading toward us. Get everyone on board and we’ll get this show on the road. Or on the water, anyway.”

  #

  “Cast off the tow!”

  The towboat backed water as Sven moved up to the bow. The barge slowed, inertia moving it closer to the tow vessel. Using the slack produced by the maneuver, Sven knocked loose the ratchet holding the towline. The two wing wires had already been taken in, so with the ratchet released, the barge was no longer under the boat’s control. Sven took in the line and began flaking it down as the towboat drifted ahead.

  “You sure, Morty?”

  “We won’t need the tow. I’ve run quick tests on each impeller, the computers are on-line, and as far as I can tell, everything is ready. We’ve got all the power we need, at least for a couple of hours, and if something happens to the generator we’ve got enough battery reserve to make it back to port. Jim and Sven can operate the individual impellers using local control if something goes wrong with the computer, but this test is mostly about using just the joystick and the control panel. The only thing different from what we did with the Bedstead is that this is our first centralized-control full-power test using multiple heavy-duty impellers. I don’t expect trouble, but if we find a problem, we’ve still got the two service boats. They use the smaller impellers, and we know those work just fine.”

  Sven finished securing the line and went down the ladder into the engine room. Jim, the power plant engineer, thumbed the intercom.

  “We’re ready. The generator is at idle and impellers are ready to answer the helm. Or the joystick. Whatever.”

  “We can call it the helm, Jim. We’ll save joystick for the Bedstead and the airplane, when we get one. Release control to the bridge.”

  “Control to the bridge, aye. You have control.”

  A bank of green lights lit in front of Morty’s seat. He buckled his seat belt, then swiveled the display until it was beside the small radar screen, leaving him with an unobstructed view forward. The radar sweep painted the shoreline north of Chicago, which showed up as a blur eight miles aft and to port. There were no vessel contacts nearby.

  “Check your seat belts. Life jackets on?” A glance confirmed that the passengers were ready. “Impeller swivels are set to five degrees rise, switch is for forward impulse, I’m engaging the impellers--now.”

  For a moment, nothing happened. The whining noise from the ‘engine room’ rose in pitch, noticeable despite the diesel generator’s muffled roar. A sloshing noise replaced the slap of Lake Michigan chop against the barge’s sides.

  “We’re moving, Morty.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised, Frenchy. You had a ride in the service boat, you’ve flown on the Bedstead. The only thing different is that this time we’re using ten heavy-duty impellers. I’ve got a lot more thrust available.”

  “I can’t help it, Morty. This thing is huge! And there’s no propeller, no jet exhaust, nothing but green lights on a monitor and a guy with a video-game joystick!”

  “You’ll get used to it, Frenchy. You’re still intending to pull this power plant after we finish today’s test, right? You also mentioned during the flight that you’ve bought a small ship. How much longer to pull the original power plant and fair over the holes in the hull?”

  “Should be finished in another week. I hired workers at the port to gut the hull, except for the decks, bulkheads, and the ballast tank. The rudder and control mechanisms are gone, the prop shafts too. Getting that big diesel engine out is the only thing left. Jim ran the calculations regarding weight distribution, the brackets for the main components of the impeller drive system are ready, so maybe a month from now we’ll be ready for our first sea trials. We might have to rebalance the hull when everything is installed, but I doubt there’ll be a problem. We might not even need to ballast the ship. The accelerometers and inclinometers are sensitive enough, but it remains to be seen whether the autopilot program can adjust the impeller gimbals fast enough to counter wind and wave. If it works as expected, we can increase the hull’s load factor by at least ten percent. She won’t flex as much either, because the impellers distribute the load more evenly. That’s probably just as well; she’s an old ship, ready for salvage when I bought her.”

  “Frenchy, you don’t plan on going public after the sea trials, do you?”

  “Not unless the secret leaks out. I won’t turn the ship over to the new master until he’s familiar with the power system, plus we’ve got to certify engineers and mechanics. At some point, we’ll need to talk to the Coast Guard.”

  “Put it off as long as you can, Frenchy. We’re a long way from letting people know what we’re doing.”

  “OK, we’ll register MV Tesla in Liberia. No inspection problems!”

  “You’re in charge of that, Frenchy. Just be careful.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Morty. You just make sure the system works!”

  “
Speaking of which, in case you haven’t noticed we’re up to five knots. I’m going to increase power now.”

  Morty eased the joystick forward, then adjusted another control that was mounted on the control panel at his side. For a moment, nothing happened. The readouts on the screen changed from five degrees up-angle, forward orientation, to eight degrees up. Pushing the joystick forward caused the muted diesel noise to increase as the generator responded to the additional load. The swishing noise from the barge’s bluff bow grew louder, then quieted.

  “Impellers coming up to eighty percent forward impulse,” Morty said, then paused.

  “We’re showing six degrees up-angle on the deck, Frenchy. I think we’re on plane.”

  “Morty, I think you just made history. For the first time in history, you’ve managed to bring a raked barge, all one hundred and ninety five feet of it, up on plane! And without a jet exhaust or a propeller of any sort!”

  “Told you it would work. It’s on plane because the impellers are lifting the bow. But this thing is not very maneuverable, not like a regular hull. I’m going to bring her back down to five knots, level the deck, then we’ll try doing a few turns. Still nothing showing on the radar scope, so I think we’re safe.”

  “Make it so, Captain Morty.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral Frenchy!” Both laughed aloud at the exchange.

  Easing back on the joystick, Morty watched the readouts as the barge’s bow settled into the water. Gently he moved the thumbwheel until the swivel readouts moved back to their earlier orientation.

  “Stand by for maneuvering. We’ll do a turn to port, followed by a turn to starboard, then we’ll try to spin in place.”

  Selecting the starboard impellers only, he gently eased the joystick forward. Obediently the big barge swung to port. A moment’s pause while he pressed buttons, and Morty again moved the joystick forward. The barge’s hull turned to starboard. Behind them, the wake described a shallow ‘S’ shape.