First Casualty by Mike Moscoe Page B

tour. He followed the woman of medium height, medium age and medium Asian appearance, wondering if it had all been issued to her. The Margarita de Silva y Rodriguez Sheffield, Maggie to him, Sheffield to the Navy, was big, one hundred meters at her widest. Plenty of room for fuel tanks and weapons—and redundancies. The Navy was big on redundancy.
    And people. He now commanded two doctors. Abdul still ran the galley, though a freckle-faced ensign was in charge. All told, the crew was five hundred strong in dozens of specialties, though four hundred were green as hydroponic goo. The balance was an equal number of old hands from the Maggie and Navy types.
    Yes, the XO showed him a lot. Fuel storage, food storage, people quarters—everything about running a ship. Nothing about running a warship. Interesting.
    “Let's drop down to engineering,” Mattim suggested.
    “It's about time to knock off for chow, sir.”
    “Ivan was never first in line. Let's see.”
    Reluctantly, the exec led off. The power plants for the merchant cruisers were still a fleet-wide problem. Until somebody figured it out, the converted cruisers were more of a danger to themselves than the colonials and Mattim commanded nothing but an oversize hotel hitched to a space station.
    As Mattim expected, Ivan was at his console. From the rumpled state of his uniform, he might have been there all night. “There.” Ivan stabbed at his board. “There. That's what killed Ramsey's Pride of Tulsa. A damn spike. These dirtside generators throw spikes!”
    “Then how come we're still here?” the exec asked as if every day she was greeted with the announcement she should be dead.
    “ 'Cause I'm keeping that piece of shit on its own circuits. The Maggie’s power plant can generate enough to handle both plasma containment bottles. The juice from that mud-ball power plant can feed the guns. They got those huge capacitors anyway. A spike or two won't faze them.”
    Ding rubbed her chin. “Staff want the plants crossfed so damage to one won't bring down any system,” she said slowly.
    Ivan shook his head violently and tapped his board. “That's the last telemetry out of the Tulsa 's engine room. That's what I just got from our own plant. Dirtside, they hitch four or eight reactors together. They can swallow a spike and not lose their magnetic fields around the plasma. With just two here, the hit's too hard. The field comes down and the demon's out of the bottle. How many Tulsas do those idiots want? Just 'cause General Fusion's got a war contract for a couple of thousand of 'em is no reason for me and mine to get blown to bits.”
    The exec looked at Mattim. “I can pass it along to squadron staff, sir. In a month we may get something back.”
    “In the meantime, those poor damn marines keep getting pulverized,” Ivan rumbled.
    “Let's talk with the chief of gunnery over dinner.”
    “The other engineers wanted to know how my tests went.” Ivan grinned. “I've been passing them my results live. Bet this talk happens on a lot of ships.”
    A gray-haired wisp of a commander with Howard on his name tag entered the wardroom as they did. “Afternoon, Captain,” he said, extending his hand. “I'm Guns.”
    “Got a question for you,” and the XO launched into Ivan's idea. Ivan hovered, listening, nodding his agreement. His wife Sandy, Mattim's Jump Master from the old Maggie , joined them.
    Guns stared at the ceiling as Ding finished. It was a long minute before he nodded. “I like redundancy, but I can see why you don't want to crossfeed the second power plant into the containment loop. No power is better than wild plasma. If you set up a feed from the first plant to my guns, I'd be happy.”
    “Let's think about this before we pass it along to the admiral's staff.” Mattim concluded the discussion. “I want to make sure you're all one hundred percent behind it.”
    “Speaking of staff,” the XO put in, “we have an invitation to dinner from the chief