We now had at least some information about the enemy. Even if only the codenames of their agents in the 15 biggest cities of the USA.

However, there it ended for now. Even using the armada of quantum computing units that Warden had at her disposal, it would take days, maybe weeks before we would manage to break the encryption on the first of the other crystals.

While it was not the newest encryption scheme, from what we could tell it was very good.

One of the techs had the brilliant idea of tracing the physical network, as it was literal fiber optic cables running from point to point.

To that extent, a Clotho would, barely, fit through the conduit the cable was running through. Until it hit the NBC protection. Another dead end, this time literally.

In the end, I saw no point in sitting on tenterhooks in the security office waiting for Warden to finish, and I was not the only one. Ramon and Enrique were busy tailoring the Mk. VI for Ramon, while most of the other personnel here were working with Calliope to improve our firewalls and ICE.

To be fair, I had Calliope, running on one of Warden’s hidden super Grendels, going over all of my personal toys. By then, I had already given most of my utilities over to our cybersecurity. Except for the big hitters.

Balrog, Enola Gay, Tsar, Newton, and The Lamb remained in my private collection. Mostly. Considering that Warden was essentially our chief of cybersecurity we naturally had them available to defend our networks and computers. At least in theory. In practice, only the Balrog was even considered for that, for obvious reasons.

That left me without an obvious task again, and I spent the rest of Tuesday, as well as all of Wednesday ruling out another few quantum fields. I was by now at 16 fields at least basically explained, and the numbers were rising.

On Thursday, I was ready at 8 in the morning and met virtually with Michael and Naveen.

In the VR, Michael greeted me effusively, hugging me, much to my irritation.

“Ok, what’s wrong? Why do you act this way?”

I might be bad at reading people, and here in VR any cues might be muted even more, but it was clear to see that Michael was… embarrassed.

Naveen, who was his usual calm, collected self, sighed and rolled his eyes.

“He is trying to butter you up so that you don’t explode when we are talking to the design team?”

I frowned and looked back at Michael.

“Why?”

“Well, you know… it is…”

Naveen blew out a sharp breath and threw up his arms.

“For god’s sake, it is not the end of the world. And it is my fault anyway. So yes, Michael and I have hired who we think will be the commander of our navy, when it is built.

He is a brilliant ship tactician, a bit down on his luck as he is an old mercenary and not the easiest person to get along with.

And he will question you being in the meeting.”

I raised an eyebrow and looked at Naveen.

“So… business as usual?”

“What do you mean business as usual?”

“My presence is almost always questioned. Heck, Ralcon demanded I be there, and then questioned my presence. So nothing new here.”

Another sigh, this time from both of them, and then Naveen answered:

“The problem is that Captain Murdock is an ageist and sexist.”

I cocked my head. It had to be pretty bad for them to explicitly warn me of his attitude. Worse than anybody else I met. And that list included exalted persons like ‘Dr.’ Harrold Symmonds or William Henderson. Murdock had to be in a league of his own.

“In other words, you hired somebody who will most likely dismiss anything and everything I say?”

When he nodded, I blinked a few times.

“Why the frick did you do that?”

Naveen sighed. Again.

“Because he is good. There are not that many mercenaries with warship experience that are also honorable and willing to hire on for a corporation.”

“Was he the only one?”

“No, but he was the best.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head softly.

“Do you think he will not work with me?”

“I think he will dismiss you at first. After that… I can’t say.”

I looked at Michael, and then back at Naveen.

“If he is so good, why is he willing to work for us? We are just starting out.”

Naveen shrugged.

“The Royal Oak, his ship, got an unlucky hit in the Senegalese rebellion. Broke her spine.”

The Senegalese rebellion was one of the semipermanent war zones, where the people of the Senegal province rebelled against the UNAN. I was aware enough to know that it was a situation that provided much employment for mercenaries. On both sides as the rebels were ‘generously’ supported by several corporations.

That alone did not allow me to estimate how this Captain Murdock was as a person.

I honestly, did not know enough about warships to gauge the significance of that broken spine though.

Thus my next question:

“And this spine is not repairable?”

“It is, but not economical. The Royal Oak is an old Peregrine class destroyer.”

When I looked at him expectantly, he elaborated:

“She is nearly 100 years old. Fuck, most modern corvettes are stronger. It was only Murdock’s ability that made his work viable at all. But it would cost more to repair her than she would be worth in full working condition.”

So he had lost his ship.

“And if he is that good, how could it happen that she was hit so badly?”

“As I said, unlucky hit. A meter to either side and it would have been negligible damage. But it was a deflected shot that hit a spot where a previous hit by a cruiser removed the armor.”

That, I understod. Sometimes things just happened.

“Well, I for sure hope that he can overcome his ageism and sexism.”

It took a moment, from our accelerated perspective, to set up the connection, but moments later, we each connected to one of the Incarnates we were using.

Unlike the meeting with Mr. Sharpes, who by the way still had not sent anything useful, the integrated holoprojector showed my real face on the robot body.

I found my consciousness in a room with eight people. And two other Incarnates.

There was a clear divide into three distinct groupings.

On the end of the table, opposite from us, was what clearly was the administration team of the yard. Headed by a middle-aged Asian man, in a smart, if for my taste way too modern, business suit, flanked by a small woman of Mediterranean descent on one side, and a big, almost hulking, black man with a shaved head. And glasses. Absurdly small glasses.

On the from my perspective left side of the table was a group that simply screamed tech. Three men of indiscernible ancestry, most likely spacers.

Likely the engineers and naval architects.

Yes, they were in some sort of suites, but they were ill-fitting, crumbled, and very cheap. They had each of them a portable computer, some tablets, and heaps of plasfilm in front on the table.

On the other side, we had two men, one with red and white hair that could only be described as… wild, with an equally colored, and equally wild beard, wearing something that could be, with some fantasy, described as a uniform.

The base of it was, I think, royal blue, though it was hard to be sure. There were so many gold and white accessories and ornaments, that it was possible for the base color to be white or gold either.

It was, in general, what I thought a fantasy version of an 18th-century grand admiral would wear.

The other man looked as if he was of Southeast Asian descent. Somewhat dark-skinned, but not enough to be labeled as black, with visible epicanthic folds. And neon blue hair, hanging down in several braids. Though his uniform was… even wilder. Yes, the base of it was probably based on what his companion was wearing. But it also sported trimmings in all the colors of the rainbow.

Both of them were openly carrying pistols attached to their belts and a sword of a sort.

In front of the redheaded man, on the table, was a hat. No, that is not quite right. This thing was to a hat as is the Taj Mahal to a housing project. It probably had started out as a tricorn. Again in royal blue. Its rim was furred, and three enormous feathers were sticking out of it, all of them in pink.

Oh, and one can’t forget the gold insignia.

The Asian man instead was ‘just’ wearing a rainbow bandanna.

I had the vague feeling that I was looking at Captain Murdock and his first officer. No idea where I got that from.

The Asian man at the head of the table, well, or better the other side, as the table was nearly square, stood up and made a small bow.

“Welcome to the Limawan yard. I am Hoàng Chí Khang, director of this esteemed station. We are greeting our honorable guests.”

I heard Michael sigh and I felt some irritation from him, despite the Incarnate not having much expression.

Fortunately, he did not have to say anything.

“Chí, they are not guests. They are the owners. Kemit is no longer the owner, and Bai ran the yard into the ground. Accept it already!”

The woman at Chí’s side looked thoroughly annoyed, and her hand made some movements as if to slap her boss, but then balled into a fist while she closed her eyes to calm down.

Then she turned to us.

“Forgive him. He is a friend of the previous owner, Limawan Kemit. Yes, it is nepotism, but he mostly did a well enough job, until Kemit’s son Bai… he got into Sunburn.”

Sunburn was one of the things that made me glad that as a Pure, I had nearly no drugs that could affect me.

Sunburn had been a Panacea project. Like so often. One that they kept secret of course. It was extremely addictive, for Mongrels. At first, it created a sort of euphoria that no other drug could compete with. The side effects were that it slowly burned out the receptors it docked with, making increasingly higher doses necessary. Along with that, it reduced impulse control and long-term planning.

And if one tried to get off it… not a pleasurable sight. If I remember correctly, only about 2% of those who even tried made it. Another 40% or so gave up when the pain got too bad. The rest… they died.

That explained why the yard was for sale. Panacea had probably made millions from this poor son.

While all that shot through my mind, Michael nodded.

“I understand, but it is time that he gets on with it. This is now the Enki yard.”

She nodded slowly.

“We all know that sir, but Chí… he is a bit stubborn in that regard.”

“Whitiver, can we git oan wi' it?”

It took me a moment to decipher what the redheaded man had said. It was certainly a barely understandable dialect of standard English.

Still, he was right.

“I would welcome that as well.”

The black man looked clearly confused from the probably Captain to me and back, and a short look into the round told me that he was not the only one.

Thus I sighed and translated:

“He said ‘Whatever, can we get on with it?’.”

That in turn made the two military men look surprised, and the Asian man asked astonished:

“You can understand him? Just like that?”

I shrugged.

“It took a bit, but yes.”

“I'm fair scunnered aboot that, lassie.”

I rolled my eyes.

“You can’t tell me that you use that dialect when you are commanding in a battle.”

“And whit maks ye hink that?”

It took me a tiny bit longer to get it this time, but the context made it possible.

“Because in battle seconds count. And whatever you are talking, not many others do it.”

He grinned from ear to ear, and answered in understandable, albeit heavily accented English:

“You got that right, lass. But, what does a little one like you here in this meeting?”

I was prevented from answering by Michael taking charge of the meeting.

“How about instead we introduce each other? If that does not clear up what anybody does here, you can ask again. Now, Mr. Hoàng, if you would introduce your staff, please?”

The redhead's eye twitched for a bit before he grinned and nodded. The director though looked as if Michael had slapped him.

To be fair, he did that since Michael had insisted on calling this the Enki yards.

But after a few seconds, he sulkingly complied.

“As you wish. On my right, we have Samira Rouhani, our operations manager. She runs the day-to-day operations of the yard. What there is of it right now.”

The last was said accusingly, and both of his friends rolled their eyes, while Mr. Hoàng continued:

“On my left, we have Abou Hama. Despite what he looks like, he is the head of the technical staff. Engineers, workers, and so on.”

Both Samira and Abou nodded politely.

Then Mr. Hoàng gestured towards the techies.

“Here we have Mr. Victor Botont, the leader of our ship designers, Mr. Lemar Crombie, and Mr. Joaquim al-Jamal.”

Michael nodded.

“Pleasure to meet you. I am Michael Walker, CEO of Enki, the corporation that bought this yard with its station. To my left, we have Colonel Naveen Upreti, our chief security officer, and commander of our military, and to my right is Dr. Vivian DuClare, our resident genius and chief technological officer.”

He made a small pause.

“Also the majority owner of Enki.”

He then nodded toward the… military men and the redhead nodded back.

“I am Captain Travis Murdock, late of the Royal Oak. I have been hired to organize the navy for this new corporation. On my side is my first officer, Commander Aang Mao.”

Commander Aang nodded at that, and Mr. Hoàng tried to wrest control of the meeting back to himself.

“Now, we are here to…”

Only to be interrupted by Captain Murdock.

“I still want to know why the little one is here.”

When Michael opened his mouth, I lifted my hand to take this over.

“There are multiple facets of that.

First, as Michael, Mr. Walker, said, I am considered a genius. Everything Enki produces is based on my inventions. And a few things we don’t sell as well.

Second, my apparent age is not quite correct. I had a jack since I was 15. Since then, I spent the majority of my days in an accelerated frame of consciousness. So while I am biologically what you call a little one, mentally, and from experience, I am the oldest person at this table.”

Commander Aang frowned.

“Accelerated frame of consciousness?”

“Virtual reality accelerates the thinking processes. It is a complicated thing that we still do not fully understand, but it generally depends on the native intelligence, the quality of the interface, and the quality of the computer.

The averagely intelligent human with the most basic jack and a cheap computer can experience a compression of around 20:1. They experience 20 hours for every hour in real-time.”

I smiled widely.

“I think it is obvious that I am not averagely intelligent, and I have the very best interface and computer available.”

He looked at me for a moment and then nodded.

“Ok, that explains that. But what I don’t get is why this meeting at all.”

Michael asked pointedly:

“What do you not understand about it?”

“Don’t get me wrong, but there are tons of warship designs out there. We could just license an ABAS or Kawamoto design and be done with it.”

Michael slowly nodded.

“We could do that. But we shouldn’t. And we won’t. Tell me Commander, what is the strongest ship weapon existing?”

Aang frowned, but answered:

“That is easy. The Type 72 12cm naval rail gun.”

Michael continued:

“The best secondary ship weapon?”

“That would be the ABAS Mk. 133 6cm rail guns.”

“Point defense?”

Aang thought for a moment and then shrugged:

“Here it is a bit complicated. That depends on what you defend against. Most would say the Kawamoto Type 98 15mm CIWS, others say it is the Vandermeer Mk. 17 12mm Gauss. Personally, I think the Burgmeister Laser-Flak 32 2cm PDLC is the best.”

Michael nodded.

“Yes, that is what nearly everybody tells me. You are wrong though. In all cases. The best ship weapon is the Enki Mk. 1 medium grav gun. The best secondary weapon is the Enki Mk. 1 Proton lance. And the best point defense weapon is the Enki Mk. 1 light PD grav gun.”

Murdock snorted.

“That is easy to say. But harder to convince.”

As an answer, Michael turned to Naveen.

“Have all of them been vetted by your counterintelligence team?”

Meaning his psionics, but we tended not to say it so bluntly.

“They have. Unfortunately, Mr. Hoàng did not pass fully.”

“Why that?”

“He still… is loyal to his deceased friend and previous owner of this yard.”

For a few moments, everything was silent, and then Michael nodded abruptly.

“I understand. That is unfortunate. Mr. Hoàng, I have to ask you to leave this room.”

That, understandably, did not sit well with Mr. Hoàng.

“What? Why? That is an outrage.”

“The why is simple, Mr. Hoàng. We can not trust you to keep our secrets. That means we can’t let you know them. But we have to discuss some of those secrets now. So again, please leave the room!”

It was clear that it was not a request, and after some sulking and grumbling, Mr. Hoàng stood up and slowly left the room. As soon as the door was closed, Naveen took over.

“We will publish the specifications of those weapons in a few months, but the published specs won’t be the real ones. I am sure that you agree with us that it is good to keep some aces in reserve, Captain.

For the medium grav gun, the published specs say that it can accelerate a three-ton projectile to 3988 m/s.”

That made both Murdock and Aang recoil in surprise.

“That is… hardcore.” The exclamation of Aang was a tiny bit funny.

“The point here is that it is a three-ton projectile because we decided to use lead. It is a gun that works with gravity, so the speed of the projectile is not impacted by the mass of it.

We could use tungsten for eight times the cost and get a five-ton projectile. Or osmium for 13 times the cost to get nearly six tons.

But compare that to the 750kg projectile of the Type 72 accelerated to 3372 m/s. The grav gun delivers nearly 48 giga Joule of energy or nearly 11.5 tons of TNT. The Type 72 on the other hand only delivers 8.5 giga Joule. That alone makes the Mk. 1 5.5 times stronger than the Type 72.

But there is more. The Mk. 1 can fire every 11 seconds, while the Type 72 can fire only every 26 seconds. In other words, for every shot the Type 72 fires, the Mk. 1 fires 2.6. Together that gives the Mk. 1 13.3 times the throw weight over time compared to the Type 72.”

Both the navy men were shocked silent, but Naveen was not done.

“Remember, that will be the official specs. The real specs are a bit… different. The mass of the projectile stays the same. There is no need to fiddle with that. But the speed… is something different. At full power, the grav gun accelerates the projectile to 9465 m/s.

That makes it a 268.75 giga Joule projectile. Or 5.6 times the official strength. Or 31.5 times the strength of the Type 72. Per shot. It retains the 2.6 times higher cadence. I am sure you can imagine what 64 tons of TNT of kinetic energy can do with an enemy ship. A ship only designed to withstand two tons of TNT.”

It was silent for a moment before Murdock slowly nodded, and Naveen continued:

“The proton lance is a particle beam weapon. It is a continuous stream of energy. 3.8 giga Joules per second. Or 3.8 giga Watt. In other words, a single proton lance, a secondary weapon, delivers as much energy into the target every two seconds as the Type 72 every 26.

Finally, the light PD grav gun uses a 500g projectile and accelerates it officially to 3608 m/s, but in reality can reach the same 9465 m/s as the medium grav gun. Only it is optimized to shoot a veritable stream of projectiles. Its cadence is 201808 shots per minute or more than 3350 shots per second.”

Aang let out a soft whistle before he spoke.

“Are those numbers real?”

I nodded.

“They are. We need to use special munition to use the full speed for the grav guns in the atmosphere, and that increases the price tag by around .6% for the medium gun, and by 37% for the light gun.”

Murdock stroked his beard.

“How long can these proton lances fire continuously?”

Naveen answered before I could.

“That depends on the infrastructure delivering the energy. As long as the couplings don’t overheat, it can fire.”

To which Michael added:

“Which is another reason why we will have to design our own ships. No ship currently available can support those demands, and frankly, the munitions handling system is just not up to par for what we need. If we were going that route, even if we put our weapons on the hulls designed by somebody else, we could get short bursts of intense firepower and then need to wait for the ready magazines to be refilled.”

“I see. Yes, that is a good reason.”

Michael then continued:

“There are other reasons. For example, an average destroyer has around 12000 kilometers of optical fibers installed. Each runs in a conduit that a diameter of 7.5mm. That alone is nearly 530 m³ of space. Then there are another 1500 m³ of accessways, hatches, and all the rest of the infrastructure needed for it. More than 2000 m³ that can be completely eliminated by using Q-links.

Or the new grav coils. They are 400 times stronger than the old ones. An average destroyer has around 6000 m³ of grav coils. If we decide to use five times the strength of coils than what is usual today, we can cut that back to 75m³. And those are not all of our tricks.

We estimate that with the technology we already have available, and Vivian here is working on new stuff all the time, we can save around 5.7% of the volume on any warship. 5.7% we can use for other things.”

“Bugger me sideways, ah'm pure gobsmacked” Even I could not fully decipher what Murdock had said, but from his tone, he was amazed.

Abou cleared his throat.

“That explains why you need to design new ship classes. But the yard is far from operational. Why this meeting now?”

Naveen snorted.

“Honestly, mostly to provide Vivian with the framework to work on the ships for real. Even if only the most basic framework.”

“Yer puttin' that much trust in this lassie?”

I sighed.

“English please, and obviously they do. And this is only the first meeting. Getting to know the principal people of the team, and getting the basics cleared.”

“Fine. What do you know about warships then?”

I shrugged.

“Frankly, not much. I know they have more fusactors, armor, and weapons, but it is not my usual area of interest.”

Murdock and Aang were not the only ones who frowned.

The techie team did as well. But then Murdock sighed.

“Well, at least you’re honest about it. So, let’s start then.”

He thought for a moment.

“I think we best begin with ship types. You know the difference between a ship class and a ship type?”

I had to smile at that.

“I am not that far removed from it, so yes. A ship class is the specific design and some of its variations. The type is the general group of ships. Like destroyer is a ship type while, if I got that right, the Royal Oak was a Peregrine, with Peregrine the class. Which denotes the ship's design.”

Murdock nodded.

“Yup, got that right. Now then, what do you know about ship types?”

“Mostly just the names, and that corvettes are smaller than destroyers, which are smaller than cruisers, which in turn are smaller than battleships. Somewhere in there are frigates, but I have no clue where.”

Aang rolled his eyes, but Murdock nodded.

“You are right, but that is an extremely limited overview.”

He shook his head.

“So let’s start at the beginning. First, a ship is anything with a fusactor, and/or fusion reactor if it is interplanetary.

Anything smaller is a boat, shuttle, or skimmer, depending on what’s its planned use.

The sizes go from smallest to biggest:

Corvette, frigate, destroyer, light cruiser, heavy cruiser, battle cruiser, and finally battleship.

Don’t worry about the battle cruiser. It is at this moment purely theoretical.

Now corvettes are short-range specialist warships. Short-range means that it is designed to be no more than two to four weeks away from resupply. Be that a base or a collier.”

I frowned, and he quickly added.

“A collier is a freighter set up to resupply warships on the move.”

I nodded and he continued:

“Specialist means that their design is concentrated on doing one thing, and ignoring most other things while putting the remaining objectives as secondary.

For example, a recon or scout corvette is optimized as a sensor carrier. Most of its volume is used for sensors and computers to interpret the gain from those sensors. It has enough weapons to defend itself from missiles or a couple of gunboats, but that’s it.

A com-corvette on the other hand is set up as the information hub of a formation. Most of its volume is com equipment, while its sensors are just enough to keep it alive within the squadron or fleet.

There are numerous purposes that a corvette can be designed for, and we can go into it later.

A frigate is for all purposes a long-range corvette. Theoretically, that means that it is set up to operate for a few months without resupply. Practically that means that frigates are the interplanetary version of corvettes.

They have ion drives and large fusion torches, as well as at least one fusion reactor. They have a bit larger crew compared to a corvette to give more redundancy.

The rest is like the corvette though.

A destroyer is a short-range multi-purpose warship. They have two or more purposes that they emphasize. Otherwise, they are just larger, heavier-armed, and armored corvettes. Most are optimized for direct combat and sensors so that they can operate independently of any formation.

But that is not always the case. Some are combat and point defense, or sensors and communication. I am sure you get the gist here.”

I nodded. So far it was not that hard to understand.

“Light cruisers are to the destroyer what the frigate is to the corvette, so nothing new here. The heavy cruiser is the universalist of the navies. It can do everything. Not everything equally well, but it is capable of doing any task that a corvette might do. Though in many positions it would be a waste to use a heavy cruiser.

They could do it though. They are also designed to operate independently from any formation, but they are often the core of them if formations are set up.

Battle cruisers, as I said, are theoretical. Nobody has ever made one. They are the long-range version of the heavy cruiser.

That leaves the battleships. While they can also do everything a warship might have to do, they are ruthlessly optimized for the slugfest. Dishing out damage and receiving it without going down.”

Ok, that was a logical progression. I thought the use of battle cruiser for a long-range version of the heavy cruiser was a bit strained, but whatever.

It was at this moment that Lemar Crombie interjected:

“You forgot the carrier.”

Murdock sighed.

“Those folks want to set up a navy, not an invasion force. They don’t need any assault carriers.”

That though did nothing to deter Crombie.

“I did not mean assault carriers, I meant carriers. For fighter crafts. Single-seaters, or maybe two-seaters.”

My “No!” came out at the same time as Murdock’s: “Are you daft?”

We looked at each other, and he gestured towards me:

“Ladies first.”

Honestly, I was wondering why Naveen had warned me of Murdock. So far, he had questioned my age but accepted the explanation without comments, and did not seem to mind that I was female either.

“As Captain Murdock just stated, anything smaller than a corvette has no fusactor. I don’t know that much about warships, but I know that weapons take an immense amount of energy to operate for a given measure of time.”

Murdock snorted.

“Hell, I have not even thought about that. My point is that in the old wet navies, aircraft carriers worked because their fighters operated in another dimension and were an order of magnitude faster than the ships.

With grav ships, they operate in the same number of dimensions and are not an iota faster. Additionally, the point defense systems designed to intercept rail gun slugs make short work with fighters.

Nope, a fighter is just an expensive coffin.”