“Keep up, Exec! You’ll have to get used to this pace with me. I’m not in my twenties any more and I need to exercise to keep myself from turning into a butterball, especially as much as I like to eat. We spend a lot of time in space and there is no room for jogging on the Vigilant. Treadmills bore me. So I push myself while planet- side.”
They walked along for about a mile to reach the gate to the shipyards. Kelly was breathing heavily by this point. He was only slightly amused to see that LCDR Timmons was, too. At the gate they presented their ID cards to the guard and were admitted. They walked by a row of six warehouses, dodged a few man-lifts moving about, and reached the dock holding the Vigilant.
They opened the dock door and stepped in. As formidable looking as the Vigilant had been from the office window, she was immensely more impressive in person. She was matte black, with no shine at all. She looked, no, she was deadly. She was 30 meters tall and 100 meters long. The semi-triangular shape was evident from this angle just outward of the forward landing gear. The port turret with the dual particle cannons looked particularly lethal. Kelly could see this ship as home.
“Come on. Let’s go see Chief Miller.”
They moved aft of the forward landing gear and up the gangway into the ship. The ship’s interior could best be described as utter chaos. Workmen were everywhere. Major ship components were strewn about. Packing material and stray bits of wiring occupied almost every other remaining space. There was only a small pathway through the clutter, so Kelly followed close behind LCDR Timmons. Chief Watson joined them there.
“This area is fire control, or at least it will be once they get all this stuff installed. That gray box there is one of the new gun control servers. It will increase target acquisition and speed up slew rate on the turrets. This way.”
They moved aft through the fire control area and into an area of small cubicle-like spaces.
“This is the sensor control center. As you can see from the lack of clutter, these systems are pretty much installed. Our sensor operators work from these cubicles. Our old sensor suite was pretty good, but these new sensors are even better. We have the normal assortment of spectral receivers, magnetic anomaly detectors, infrared sensors, electro-optical sensors, chemical sniffers, and also the new mass optical array. It will give us a real advantage out in dark space where, sometimes, the only indication of another ship is when it passes in front of a star.”
“We had something like that on the F-53.”
”Right, it’s the same principle, but this one extends over the entire skin of the ship. The resolution is supposed to be unreal. The Vigilant will be the first ship equipped with it. It wasn’t ready for installation on the Valiant during their last refit. We get to test it for Fleet. That means we’ll have several specialists on board for our first patrol. They will run the tests while we conduct our normal patrol. At various points along our patrol path, other ships will be positioned to test the system’s sensitivity and resolution. Come on, let’s go see Engineering.”
They continued aft, through what were obviously crew spaces, up to a large iris hatch. It opened as they approached and they entered a completely orderly space. The components were arrayed neatly next to the spaces they would occupy once installed. There was no packing material anywhere. The floor was immaculate. It almost looked polished. In the rear of the space was a Chief Petty Officer watching two shipyard workers moving a component into its place.
“Now don’t go banging it against the sides as you slide it in. Watch out for those connectors! That’s better. Keep it coming. Keep it coming. Good, now plug it in and lock it down.”
He looked over at the two of them and said, “Hello, Captain, this is the new engine synchronizer. No more manual balancing of thrust. This device does it all automatically.”
LCDR Timmons smiled and said, “But Chief, it was always so entertaining to hear you curse the engines. What will we do for amusement now? Ensign Blake, this is Chief Machinist Mate Miller.”
Kelly extended his hand, “Glad to meet you, Chief.”
Chief Miller wiped his hands on a rag and took Blake’s handshake. “Glad to have you onboard, sir. Welcome to the Vigilant.”
LCDR Timmons said, “Chief, you’ve done a great job in here organizing the engineering spaces. When are you going to do the same for the rest of the ship? It’s a mess out there.”
“Captain, Engineering is the most important space on the ship. If the engines don’t work properly, nothing else on board happens. I’ll get around to the rest of the spaces as soon as I get this area finalized.”
“Come on, Exec. Let me show you the rest of the ship.”
Kelly said, “Good to meet you Chief,” then had to hurry to catch up with LCDR Timmons. Chief Miller chuckled to himself as he watched Kelly almost run after Timmons.
They moved forward past storage compartments, through the crew quarters, the galley, past sensor control, all the clutter in weapons control, and into chiefs’ country. Each chief had a small suite with a sleeping area and a small desk space. Each cabin was equipped with a fixed bed and a drop-down bed that opened out from the wall above. Kelly’s quarters would have the same arrangement. Only Chief Watson’s and the captain’s sleeping areas were singles. Chief Watson’s space also had a small conference room attached.
A common head would divide the chiefs’ country from the two officers’ quarters. At the moment, though, there were no officers’ quarters, only a space where they would be. Both captain and executive officer spaces were missing, while several shipyard workers installed pipes and cable raceways. The captain’s stateroom would be on the port side and the exec’s to starboard.
As he remembered from the diagrams, the captain’s stateroom also had a conference room as well as sleeping area, private head, and office space. The exec’s was smaller by the lack of a conference room, but was incredibly spacious in comparison to his quarters on the Bolivar. It would be pretty classy if they ever got it re- installed.
They moved forward through another large iris hatch and onto the bridge. The bridge was in pretty good shape. Most of the major components were installed. Several smaller components still needed to be installed. Even though there was a lot still to be done, Blake could get a feel for the layout. It was wedge shaped, with the pointed end of the wedge forward. There were two positions forward and two steps down. Helm was to starboard and, he assumed, navigation was to port. The positions looked like two fighter cockpits side by side. Aft and one step up from those two positions were weapons control, sensor control, and engineering. Blake remembered from his research that the whole ship could be controlled from the bridge. Each position had an integral seat with four-point harness.
Aft and one step up from these three positions were three more. The center position was the captain’s. The port side position belonged to the senior chief, Chief Watson. Kelly’s position was to starboard. Each position had a multipurpose workstation, capable of controlling any function of the specialized consoles. Kelly was especially happy to see full flight controls and weapon controls at his workstation.
The captain asked, “What do you think of the bridge?”
“It’s pretty roomy, compared to an F-53 cockpit. It will take me a bit to get used to it. I like the layout. It’s logical and I like the redundancy in the three command positions. I like the way that the three position sets are terraced. Each level has an unobstructed view out front, to the sides, and above. Coming from fighters, I appreciate having a glass view screen.”
“This is a slightly different layout than we had before refit. They implemented some of the recommendations we made based on our patrol experiences. Before, only the captain’s position had a multifunction terminal and flight controls. Because there is a traditional hesitance to sit in the captain’s chair, that position was wasted during all watches that I wasn’t present for. Our solution was to make all three positions identical. That way we have redundancy on top of redundancy.”
“Now let’s get out of here before the yard chief gets on our butts for keeping his crews from working.”
Chief Watson spoke up. “Sir, I’m going to stay here and see what Chief Miller is doing in engineering. There were a few things back there not quite in accordance with the schematics. You know how he likes to tinker. I’d better go see what he connived out of the yard crew.”
LCDR Timmons headed down the gangway and back into the dock. “Come on, let’s take a walk around.”
Kelly trailed Timmons as he pointed out various components on the ship’s exterior.
“This is our new dual particle cannon turret. Each cannon has a rate of fire of one blast per second. The cannons are set to fire consecutively. That gives each turret an effective rate of fire of 120 blasts per minute. Come
