His breath misted the inside of his visor for a split-second before the ventilation and reclamation system of his suit absorbed the carbon dioxide and water he was expelling, and Shawn Bellamy reached out a hand to stabilise himself against the fire-red railing. He took in the sight of the partially exposed skeleton of the steel-grey leviathan that filled his vision, and felt his chest puff a little with pride as he saw the tiny orange and white shapes of his work crews light up as their plasma welders lit them up against the backdrop of the titanium they were fusing, and the black beyond. He grabbed a hold of the scaffolding and swung himself around, his suit’s thrusters gently pushing him along the massive flank of the unfinished warship. Space and microgravity was thoroughly uncaring for the human mind’s perception of such silly notions as “up” and “down”, and mercilessly bombarded the arrogant creatures who dared venture out into the realm of physics with reminders that space was indeed wholly three-dimensional. In arrogant defiance, decades of experience as a shipyard worker had taught Bellamy to mentally shove that aside whenever he put on his protected zero-gee suit, and pushed out into the ether, giving the laws of nature the finger. It was, however, the largest single hurdle for new yard-hands; that, and looking into the literal infinity of the black beyond, knowing that only your tether line to the scaffolding and your suit’s thrusters kept you from disappearing into that dark maw of nothingness. Well, that’s what Bellamy liked to tell the new farts to scare them into being careful anyway; there was a myriad of security measures in place in modern shipyards, not limited to rescue drones, emergency skips on standby, and tractor beam emitters.

“New farts, eh…” he mumbled, his hush-mic not picking it up. That was the problem these days, wasn’t it? Shawn Bellamy had worked in the orbital shipyards for forty-six years, practically his entire adult life, thirty-two of them at Royal Harrow, had been promoted to shift chief a decade ago, and was now senior deck chief. In his humble opinion, you could hardly ask for a better employer than Royal Harrow; the pay was excellent, even by the admittedly high Auroran standards, security and insurance policies were among the best and most flexible in the business, and the voracious appetite of the Royal Navy for more warships meant that there was always enough work to go around for any hands willing to spend significant time in orbit. Royal Harrow Yards was the Kingdom of Aurora’s primary capital ship dockyard, specialising in making the largest men-of-war known to humanity to the very specific instructions of the Admiralty’s Departments of Research and Ships.

The medium and high orbit of Aurora was a patchwork of orbital stations, warehouses, orbital tether platforms, yards, foundries, freight platforms, maintenance slips, shuttle docks, automated defensive forts, transit hubs, solar energy satellites, and of course the immense bulk of His Majesty’s Space Station Trafalgar, the logistical and administrative nucleus of the Royal Navy in the homeworld’s orbit. And in the veritable shadow of that titanic interlocked structure with its dozens of concentric rings, was the enormous Royal Harrow Yards, with scores of thousands of square metre quadratic berths that held their embryonic vessels of mass destruction. Bellamy let go of the scaffolding and intentionally pushed himself hard out into the void of the berth his crew was working in. She was far enough along that her entire arrow-head forward section was finished, as was most of her hull clear all the way to about two-thirds astern, while the engineering/reactor/engine section was still a bare skeleton covered by scaffolding; and where her gargantuan triple railcannon turrets were supposed to go –three in front of her tall bridge superstructure and sensor suite towers, two to the rear, and two on each elongated flank– were only gaping holes into her unfinished interior. But his dedicated yard dogs had already taken the opportunity to christen the 2,279-metre long battleship with her proper pennant number and name; BA-315, HMS Thunderer. In the next slip over to her “right”, was her sister, Temeraire, to the “left”, St George, and above, Lysithea. All of the Royal Navy’s eighteen brand new Vanguard class battleships were under construction at Royal Harrow, a contract worth literally hundreds of billions of pounds when all the costs of materials, crew pay, docking rights, transportation, berth rent, and a myriad of other expenses had been accumulated. In addition to the Vanguards were also the six new Courageous class battlecruisers, and the last flight of the County class heavy cruisers; all told thirty-eight hulls in excess of two million tonnes each in normal G simultaneously being constructed by Royal Harrow. Which worried senior hands like Bellamy no end.

“Oi, Clarkson,” he said clearly into his hush-mic, which picked up his voice this time around and bounced it around the internal comms net of his work crew, “ease up on the sticks of the plate collier, that bitch handles like a skittish debutante at her first ball, but instead of being about buck-eight stone, that one is loaded with a quarter million tonnes of Grade-A titanium in normal gee.”

“Sorry, gov’,” the voice of the youthful pilot of the hauler that kept feeding Bellamy and his welding crew with the titanium hull plates that was Thunderer’s armoured skin, came over the feed, “I’m still getting used to the stick-feel in actual upper gravity compared to the simulations.”

And there was the crux of the problem, Bellamy thought with more than a tinge of bitterness. Just like the Royal Navy that they were busting their chops building these immense warships for, the shipbuilding industry was having trouble recruiting enough people. Senior Deck Chief Bellamy knew from first-hand experience that drones filled some of the gap, and large industrial-style ones the size of cars were being employed in larger and larger numbers by the major shipyards, including Royal Harrow, but there was only so much a drone could do. No drone, even the advanced SAI ones, could determine construction priorities properly, fine-tune the artificial gravity emitters, make adjustments to the design schematics when running into snags, or evaluate safety risks in a non-Boolean manner. That’s why you needed physical human beings like Bellamy and his crew, and the fact is that they were being stretched awfully thin these days across too many hulls, and their replacements like the young collier pilot, were woefully in need of more training before being let loose on massive hulls containing the most advanced military systems known to humanity.

“Stockton,” he said into the mic again, “I want you to start with the wiring in Causeway MC-18 next rotation. Take six lads with you, and roll out the electrical and coolant wiring, but hold off on the power generator feeds until we hear back from Miranda and her engineering team.”

“Understood, boss, we’ll get on it right away, we’re just about done with the polarisation plates anyway,” came the reply from one of his shift chiefs, and tiny pinpricks of orange and white on the flank hull detached from their scaffolding moorings and started to make their way inside the exposed “ribs” of Thunderer.

A bright yellow drone carrying parts for one of the fusion reactors flew past Bellamy where he hovered, trying to get an overall view of the ship and what the work gangs were doing. Modern capital ships were so ridiculously large that it was practically impossible to get a good look at the whole thing when working on it, and you sort of got lost in your own little world of steel-grey when out in zero-gee and plodding away at a hull. Because Bellamy had pushed off and was trying to get a good look at how his people were faring, he was also the first one to notice what was about to unfold. The first human at least, for several of the perimeter security drones had also noticed the errant course of the titanium hull plate collier, and their first response was to flood the pilot’s interface with warning messages. Thomas Clarkson, the same pilot Bellamy had been talking to earlier, was twenty years old and had been an employee at Royal Harrow for nine weeks. The drones’ messages did not help his rising levels of panic as he tried to correct the course of the collier, as the hauler’s own internal navigation system blared its own warnings at him. Bellamy saw as the collier, carrying close to two-hundred thousand tonnes of titanium battle plate, veered off course as it tried to accommodate for the shift in mass after a poorly timed burst from its twin engines.

“Clarkson, pull up now!” he shouted into his mic, while fumbling with his suit’s wrist-computer, desperately looking for the “Emergency” button that would send evacuation orders to his entire work crew. “Clarkson, for the love of God, pull the collier up!”

Later investigations by both the Auroran Orbital Police Service and the Naval Intelligence Division would come to the conclusion that the accident had been due to human error, and that the pilot had failed to account for the shift of mass following depositing thirty hull plate sections, and had applied too much thrust, sending the still formidably heavy vehicle into a drift when trying to overcorrect his heading. Shawn Bellamy could have told them that as he watched the massive hauler in real time veer heavily, favouring its starboard side as the plates it was carrying its maw shifting its weight, and it slammed heavily into Thunderer’s top amidships, all two-hundred and thirty-thousand tonnes of combined weight in normal gee.

Luckily, the middle part of Thunderer was all but completed apart from her weaponry and interior, and the tops and bottoms of Auroran warships were, due to their design philosophy to maximise their railcannon turrets’ broadsides, the most heavily armoured part of the ship. Ironically, cruelly so, Thomas Clarkson had been the one to ferry the titanium plates that made up the wall of metal that now rose up to meet him as he completely lost control of his vehicle.

Thunderer and the Vanguard class were Lady Ashwike’s brainchild, and a major part of their defensive design was the double-walled armoured exterior, creating a secondary level of protection between the outer hull and the honey-combed interior armoured shell. That was what saved the warship from basically snapping in two, considering the overall structural frailty of the unfinished battleship. It also killed Thomas Clarkson immediately on impact, as the collier and its cargo smashed hard into the armour, the vessel’s front crumbling like paper when met with armour designed to withstand railgun warheads with energy measured in the megatons. But while the outer hull held, the unfinished inner sections weren’t as lucky, as the potential energy of the impact turned into kinetic energy that carried through the ship. It smashed bulkheads, hallways, causeways; and turned Shift Chief Donald Stockton and his impromptu wiring crew of six into fine red paste as the causeway they had been working in was wrapped around itself several times over. Other work parties were just as unlucky, for while the collier didn’t explode, bits and pieces of cargo vessel and battle plating was sent flying in every which direction as the ship came apart. Razor-sharp debris cut through the open parts of the ship, as well as along the railing and scaffolding, cutting lines connected to mobile power buses for the plasma cutters, slashing through security tethering, chopped apart drones, and eviscerated madly scrambling dockyard workers trying to get clear. Euryphaessa’s light made the crystallised blood a magnificent lightshow of reflected crimson that danced around Thunderer’s hull like a shroud.

Linton Sciacca, Marquess of Howeland, stepped into the familial dining room of the New Ontario country manor, feeling the warm rays Euryphaessa was generous enough to shine down through the wide windows looking out over the gardens. His short curly brown hair was still tussled after a good night’s sleep, and his blue eyes slightly unfocused, but he wore a content half-smile on his rather handsome face. His butler pulled out the argentwood chair for him, and he nodded his thanks as he sat down at the table, still wearing his black dressing gown, and two footmen in blue and silver livery started to set the table with various breakfast foods, and the butler filled his engraved porcelain cup with tea. Lord Howeland was a seasonal breakfast man, as in, only when Parliament was on holiday or in recess for some reason, did he actually have time to sit down and enjoy a morning meal. Being the chair of Parliament’s Naval Affairs Committee as well as a card-carrying member of the House of Lords for the Royalists didn’t leave a lot of time in the morning, including weekends. The door opened and his wife, also wearing in a dressing gown, but longer and more flowing, walked in. Isobel Sciacca, née Greco, tucked her long black hair behind her ears, stooped down and kissed her husband on the cheek.

“Good morning, dear,” she purred hoarsely, still not completely awake, and Linton replied with a fond smile, before pouring some cream into his tea. Lady Howeland was seated as well (nodding her thanks to the butler), and opted for coffee instead of tea.

“Pray tell,” Linton asked after a sip of his tea and finding it a bit too hot still, “when do you assume we’ll be joined by our adoring children for breakfast?”

“We have adoring children?” Isobel asked in a mock-incredulous tone, “Are you sure you’re not talking about someone else’s offspring? I can’t seem to recollect bringing someone who fits that description into the world.”

“Very funny, Mother,” Beatrice Sciacca said as she entered the dining room, dressed in a cream long-sleeved summer dress, the black hair she had inherited from her mother tied in a messy bun, “and if the description fits, then it is only because of the incessant bombardment of such inane jokes that has made us thus.”

She waited for one of the footmen to pull out a chair for her, and mouthed her thanks as she sat down, and started to heap her plate with bacon, fried mushrooms, toast, and scrambled eggs.

“Horace,” she said after a moment, “won’t be joining us until dinner, by the way, he has already taken off to meet with Lord Scarlet Point and Lady Wraith; something about heading into the Banton foothills.”

“I’d really wish,” Lady Howeland said, her smile at her daughter’s arrival congealing, “that Horace would stop associating with Evelyn Delafontaine, the Wraiths have been of ill-repute since the old Earl Wraith gambled away most of his fortune, and they had to go a-beggar to the Duke and Duchess of New Brabant.”

“That’s hardly Evelyn’s fault, Mother,” Beatrice protested after swallowing a bite of toast, “and the New Brabants are their cousins, so it all stayed within the family. Plus, Countess Marisa Delafontaine’s investments in the Monckton Yards paid off when they won the bid for the Navy’s contract for the new Warrior battleships.”

Beatrice cast a quick glance at the footmen standing unobtrusively in the corners of the familial dining room before continuing, her tone more confrontational.

“Besides, it’s not like our family doesn’t have a black sheep of our own.”

“Don’t talk about your brother like that,” Lord Howeland said testily, “Valerio is still our flesh and blood, my child as much as you and Horace are, and I won’t have you talking ill of him.”

“He still won’t have anything to do with us though,” Beatrice countered, “even rescinding his claim to the Howeland title as third in line of succession, but apparently doesn’t have any qualms taking your and Mama’s money.”

“That’s quite enough, dear,” Lady Howeland said, her tone clearly conveying that this conversation was over, “I have just woken up, haven’t had my breakfast yet, and it is a wonderful summer day, so this gloomy topic is to be shelved for a different occasion. Do I make myself clear, young lady?”

Her daughter looked like she wanted to protest, but instead Beatrice silently nodded and took another bite of eggs and bacon. A third footman entered with a freshly cooked poached egg with hollandaise sauce on a scone for Lord Howeland, his favourite, and the butler moved to plate up Lady Howeland as soon as she finished her coffee cup –she never ate breakfast before having coffee–, but as they were about to start eating, a melodic bleep came from Linton’s gown pocket, and he frowned because the specific sound had the notification that an e-letter had arrived in his work inbox, not his private one. Lady Howeland made a disapproving sniffing sound.

“Really, Linton, you ought to have turned that off. Parliament is in recess, and we’re on our holiday at the country estate, you should prioritise your family since we barely see you the rest of the year.”

“I had turned it off,” her husband answered in a surprised tone, “so whatever the topic of this e-letter, it was flagged as important enough to wake my handcom up.”

He fished out the small plate of electronics, let the tiny camera scan his iris, and skimmed through the content of the e-letter.

“Papa, what is wrong?”

Lord Howeland put the handcom down on the tabletop, colour draining from his face, and he snapped his fingers.

“Gregory,” he said as the butler came up to him, “I need a suit prepared, and a skycar to take me to Providence House in the capital, as soon as practicable. No, wait, Admiralty House, and tell my secretary to send a missive to Sir Hugh Donegal that I must see him at his earliest convenience.”

“What’s wrong, dear?” Isobel asked, starting to rise from her chair, but Linton waved her down.

“There’s been a serious accident in orbit in the Royal Harrow Yards, and I need to talk to the Admiralty and get the details before informing the Naval Affairs Committee. You just enjoy the rest of the day, hopefully I’ll be back for dinner, but don’t wait up if I need to spend the night in Cordelia.”

“Thirty-eight dead and ninety wounded,” Lord Howeland said in a low tone and sank down in the upholstered chair in the Admiralty House day room, “how the hell does that happen? I thought Royal Harrow was the best in the business when it came to security measures in their drydocks?”

He was dressed in a formal three-piece navy suit now, his hair slicked back and visually a far cry from the languid figure he had cut at breakfast four hours earlier. Sir Hugh Donegal, Lady Ashwike, and Sir Morgan Mizushima were dressed in their gold-and-black day uniforms, but it was clear Lady Valentina had been unexpectedly roused from a lazy morning, for her long wavy blonde hair was tied into a “damage control” ponytail, her uniform tunic and ankle-length skirts were scrunched, and her peaked cap was nowhere to be seen.

“Adrienne,” Donegal said, running a hand through his beard, “has her NID people from Trafalgar already onsite to answer that precise question.”

“But preliminary reports,” Sir Morgan cut in, “favours the theory that it was in all likelihood a result of human error; the pilot of the transport collier that was the cause of the accident had been on the job for barely two months, and it was an unfortunate coincidence that large numbers of yard hands were working on that exact part of Thunderer. Royal Harrow has suspended construction work for the time being to re-evaluate their internal security guidelines and routines.”

“It will unfortunately push back the expected delivery of the Thunderer by a few months,” Lady Ashwike said, looking at a datapad, “and depending on the length of the cessation of work, the Vanguard class as a whole is more likely to be postponed by a month, perhaps six-seven weeks. While not a huge difference, it does create problems for the planned Inflexible battlecruisers, which are going to be based on the Vanguards, and the construction-delay carryover could create problems when…”

“Lady Ashwike,” Howeland said in a stern tone, “men and women are dead, the postponement of launching these battleships are of a secondary concern.”

“Ah, yes,” she replied, slightly flushed, and toyed with her ponytail, “that is certainly most distressing and tragic, I was only thinking out loud as regards to the engineering situation.”

“It does beg the question though,” Donegal said, “why the head of the Naval Affairs Committee is the first to respond to this, and not the Secretary of Defence or the Secretary of the Home Department?”

“Because, Beckett is not on planet,” Howeland said through gritted teeth and rested his elbows on his knees, “he’s on holiday on Amaranth, and Sir Thomas Tedenby is probably back in his constituency and deaf to anything not regarding the upcoming elections. Thank God Leslie Beckett is retiring from politics, the man has to have been the most ineffectual Defence Secretary of the century.”

“Not that you heard this from me,” Sir Morgan said as he walked over to a window and looked out at Admiralty Park, “but I think a large part of His Majesty’s Armed Forces will be very pleased when you take over the Defence Department after the elections, My Lord.”

Sciacca smiled wearily, but quickly sobered.

“This information will become public news in just a few hours, Royal Harrow can only sit on it for so long; they owe it to the victim’s families to be forthright with this. Ergo, I advise –unofficially of course, I am still only the head of NAC– that the Navy press department creates a statement where you express great regret and heartfelt sympathies with the victims and the ones affected by this horrible accident, and that it happened while working on your warships. And then something about supporting the proper authorities in their investigation, and that you will address the matter in more detail when the final report is ready.”

“I’ve had Mueller in the Press Division already start on crafting a draft,” Sir Morgan said, “and I’ve told him to include basically what you said, but I’ll go over it before we publish it.”

“How could this happen though?” Lady Ashwike asked, her face noticeably paler as she skimmed the initial report from orbit, “we haven’t had such a horrific industrial accident for many decades, and never from such a respected and serious company as Harrow. There is a bit in here how they had to scrape what remained of some poor souls from the walls in order to get enough samples to DNA identify them, and there are body parts hovering around the berth still unaccounted for.” She put her hand up to her mouth for a moment, and Howeland felt a pang of sympathy. Ashwike had never seen action during her brief spaceship tours, while Donegal and Mizushima both had experience from the brushfire wars in the Pegasii Region, and the Midwinter Collapse. Hell, Sciacca had been a major in the Royal Marines, and been sent to help suppress the Three Sisters when they rebelled against the Neuhansa Sternbund. He was, unfortunately, all too aware how human anatomy reacted to different types of force and energy.

Donegal sighed and crossed his arms.

“It is because the shortage of manpower that we feel in the Navy is just as bad in the orbital industries, and if you just think about it for a second, you’ll see how logical it is. The Royal Navy is ordering ships at an unprecedented rate, and that is even with significant pushback from His Majesty’s Opposition in both the Commons and Lords, and ideally we would like to have even more ships in construction. You know this better than anyone, Lady Ashwike, your people are working on five-six different designs, all of which would in an ideal world already been under construction. But the harsh truth is that we can’t properly crew the ships we’re already commissioning, and the new capital ships are going to require literally hundreds of thousands of enlisted and officers, not only to crew them, but also to support them with logistics, maintenance, basing, and a myriad of other tasks. And then they’re going to need Royal Marine complements, and leatherneck recruitment isn’t where we want it to be either. And then take into consideration that the shipyards are going to have to recruit even more workers to help keeping these new ships in fighting shape, to refit them when the time comes, and in general keep them in pristine condition.

And that is the core of the problem, because the orbital industries are basically recruiting from the same demographic that the Royal Navy and Royal Marines are recruiting from; technically skilled and educated youths who are willing to spend significant time in space, who aren’t already employed in other cornerstone industries, like metallurgy, high-tech manufacturing, or electronics.”

“There are plans,” Sciacca continued, “to create exchange programmes with other Union worlds that will see their nationals trained in our military shore establishments and King William Academy, and seconded to our navy for an yet not agreed upon time period. That is a medium-term solution, and it’s a bit inelegant, but it’s the best we can come up with at the time being.”

“Surely,” Lady Ashwike shot in, “the threat of conflict with the Alliance would be something that would drive up recruitment numbers?”

“Well, yes,” Sir Morgan answered, “but while that is something that the public is genuinely worried about, it is merely a theoretical spectre at this point. Ironically, the high trust among the populace in the Royal Navy leads many to assume that we will win a shooting war handily. Certainly, there is nothing in the Service’s history to suggest otherwise, but then we’ve never fought a star-nation as large and capable as the ISA. And even if war broke out tomorrow, and people thronged to the recruitment offices so to speak, it would still be years before those who signed up will be ready for service. Remember, it takes four years for an officer cadet to complete their education at King William, and two for enlisted at New Saxony and Cumberland.”

It looked like he wanted to say something more, but his handcom beeped, and he frowned.

“It seems Muller was quicker with the draft than I anticipated, and he has it ready right now. Since you’re already here, My Lord, would you like to help me with the final wording of the statement before we publish?”

Sciacca nodded in agreement, took out his own handcom and winced at the number of messages and e-letters in his inboxes. He quickly wrote a message to his wife as Mizushima called down to the Press Division.

Don’t wait up for me, Dear, I regrettably have to stay a few days at our Cordelia apartment. Tell Horace and Beatrice that I promise to return in time for the derby on Sunday. Love you all.