Haze Gray 114
"Helmut Kohl. No, are you stupid?" The girl looked down at her chest, then up at the crewman in the fifty foot rib. The crewman sighed and rolled her eyes. 'Hallo hallo hallo.'
"Phhttt. Tradition. I'm a submarine aircraft carrier, if these plans are right. I can put a twenty aircraft strike package up out of my silos, a squadron sized cap as well, and RAST them back into their silos for maintenance. You girls better be flexible. I mean working on those in there? Not only that but I can put a cap of DASH up to cover recovery operations then RAST them back into those stern silos to get them serviced. I can shoot the long range drones from these two tubes in the conning tower, which land on land but the tubes are breach loading and you girls load them from inside the pressure hull, and get the drones through the portal if we shoot the hundred and fifty I carry. Or you will when I ship. Which, by the way, can be launched from a hundred meters depth. Seriously? I might go for Willie, like in Willy Brandt, he hated commies too, but kids are bastards.
"Anyway, what tradition? Plus, this design is pure American. Well maybe some Swedish influence. Hmm Canada, Korea, and Japan as well. Meh, American, Turbines and Sterlings! Pure overkill right there. I'm a muscle sub. A hundred thousand horsepower more than I need if we run all my engines. I could probably hurdle the Golden Gate at war emergency."
'Hallo.'
"Yes, so we are German. I still don't care, I'm not having a boys name. Especially not Helmut. He was a dick."
'Hallo.'
"Schawnz then. You girls have to get with the program and learn American."
'Hallo.'
She rolled her eyes "No one is denigrating your service, or anything else, maybe your politicians, they have, historically, been a bit mad though. Your culture either. I am not wearing that dirndl though. Well, OK, but only once in a while.
"Tammi doesn't wear it, she wears BDU's and she was a neo nazi for god's sake!"
'Hallo."
She laughed "Got im Himmel donnersturm. OK, that's funny, but you better trot out more than that. You are sailors! Those Yeomen are going to eat your pretty little lunches."
The crewman sighed and looked down at her own chest. A U boot crewman, emphasis on the man, to a crewman on a submarine aircraft carrier. A neo panamax submarine aircraft carrier whose pressure hull was a tube of high strength alloy a hundred feet in diameter and six hundred feet long with a ten deck deep square of special treatment steel in it. The rounded portions of that assembly used for storage of pressure sensitive material and equipment, and then all the fairings and some ballast tanks stuck onto that. The damn boat was enormous. Every crewperson including the pilots had three or four jobs to do. Admittedly the pilots involved their aircraft but still. Good thing there were over twenty of them. They could pack up and work the maintenance and refit task off quickly. The extra ones not driving a cap, and strike package, drove the DASH and worked on them. Well, sort of sent instructions over the streamed antenna to the Dash. Those things were scary. Much better than having to take a turn in the kite though.
A lot of the space was taken up by the hangar and launch tubes fore and aft so it was still cramped. Not as bad as a type XXI but not a giant Russian sub with a swimming pool either.
Or it would be when she, she not he, and don't get it wrong, The Fraulein was touchy about it. Anyway, when she finished shipping. Probably in a week. Now that they had a set of plans that actually fit her. Rather than these two pressure hull plans they had been using, or rather trying to adapt.
She looked out over the dock at the building fleet of submarines and destroyers. Where were the capitol ships? This Navy operated in task groups like the US Navy, except these odd one offs like the Fraulein. There were enough submarines and destroyers here for two task groups. Or a small wolfpack. Hmmm, maybe there was another like the Fraulein? Fletchers, Gearings and a Benham, no two Benhams. A bit sad, the Kreigsmarine had fielded some decent destroyers. No where near the gun power and torpedo volume of these, but still good ships the sailors on them had said.
Also sad, none of the great German capitol ships with their turtle backs and fabulous guns. Ah well, back to work. She leaned over the console and activated the spreader doing a slow circle around her ship spreading the specialized mix in the water. Rubber? Synthetic even. Anechoic tiles apparently. Who knew?
Haze Gray
Taylor evaluated the gunnery results as she fired her own course. The Admirals staff did? Something. It was pretty good shooting. Even against the new stealthy DASH the geniuses and yard had come up with with the tinker cells help. Poor Leet. Tess had finally cracked and told them the reward scheme Bakuda had worked out for herself. Over and above the official reward scheme. And Eww! Well… of course they were young and human but still. The frequency was pretty high. Plus, no birth control? Even explody birth control? But Leet? Uber was right there and had apparently not been tied up like Sherrel had him now. Women could be a bit strange sometimes.
Although Leet, shaved, sexercised to hell and back and socialized, at least tinker socialized, didn't even need a hobgoblin defense. Not that he didn't have one, he was brilliant, when his tinker wasn't trying to kill him. Maybe if she got pregnant, he would need it? Maybe he would go back to his video game stuff then and be bad with the kids or something.
OK, back to work, what the hell was wrong with this new squadron of Juggernauts? They were sub ninety five percent.
Haze Gray
Juggernaut herself was studying the new squadron she had picked up. She had been watching that last engagement from right nest to hem. Out od the side of her eye she had caught the flinch. She grinned "OK, I got it now. We are going to do a mad minute to show you girls recoil doesn't hurt." Oddly enough though her class some of these girls had never fired their guns in anger, in any life. Weird. Also weird was them being like super religious and stuff. Which made her question the staffs sanity a bit. These girls were like Amish then Tay and her miracles barged into their lives.
Of course, that guy having to get one of their dads to stick an axe in his neck when he had taken them hostage in that school probably didn't help but their had been a dock ship with its well flooded down with water from the home port docks close and they had all been put in there. Of course, then, Bam! DE squadron. Big cornfed Amish DE squadron. Wearing black hooded cowls? Robes? Whatever, that had huge crucifix on knotted rope belts, for modesty. Maybe Mennonite? Religious somehow. Not pacifist though. At least not anymore. They had jumped in with both feet and bad aim in the last days of the Vory operation.
Of course the Russian girls had been all Leroy Jenkins! By then. So instead of shooting they just walked through buildings. With scythes they materialized from somewhere. Terrifying.
So anyway, they were joining Tay's close squadron. Which guess who was the boss of? One good thing. No need to worry about speed. All of these babies had back and lots of it. Olympic speed skater levels of butt and thighs without exception. Bilge keels reset, horsepower doubled, pumpjets of course, and freshly sharkskinned, speed would not be a problem no matter how hard Tay was driving.
All the sensor improvements applied. Communications as well. So that was move and communicate. Now if they could just pick up a couple points on their squadron gunnery average, they would have the third leg of the holy trinity, shoot.
"All right ladies, rapid fire, try to stay on target but don't let up until the magazine is empty, follow me! Juggernaut took off. Lucy and the girls obliged her text request with what was called a target rich environment.
Haze Gray
Taylor looked over and sighed at the squadron of grim reapers who had run out of ammo and the scythes had appeared in their hands and they were skidding through the target array reaping what Lucy and company had sown.
She watched as a reaper, appearing comparatively tiny, opened a King George class for five hundred feet right at the water line with her scythe. "Uh, Lucy?"
On the ship they were using as a mobile base, a neo panamax mixed container ship, the first one built in the US, the Yard in Brockton had assembled it in sections as they pushed it out in the water four hundred feet every few days to a couple of weeks, Lucy blinked and looked at her instruments. "Uh, that's righteous data? I think we need to get the Reapers in for another test. She just cut right through the belt. At least according to the sensors she would have. How the hell did that not pinch that blade and seize it up in the cut? The metal in there is at welding temperature as the blade passes. Wait, how does she keep going? Look at these force numbers!"
"So your target died of surprise? That was above the water line, she could have kept fighting." Taylor sighed "Powers are such bullshit. Upside they were getting the same hit percentage even going rapid fire. Damn good shooting actually, better than their sustained rate.
"Juggernaut line them back up and have them do it again. I'll send a replenishment flight, they can practice that too."
Juggernaut replied "I already got it moving. The K DASH are coming in now. We'll circle back around El Cheapo II and come in again. Going to unrep hot as we can. Not much swell so speed will have to be our tough realism for today."
Taylor nodded and moved on to other groups in their separate training areas. Who had all paused and were reviewing the video on Reaper 3's attack. They saw her looking and jerked into motion or turned back to thier lanes scanning for targets.
Haze Gray
Gary looked at the video and winced as the scythe came out. "We will have to get the PAO on that."
His deputy grinned at him "All those grim reapers on uniform patches. Little different when it comes at five five with blond hair, freckles, and looks like that Aleph actress Ellen Muth. Much better legs though." Gary stared at him, he shrugged "Granddaughters love that show. Grandsons love the actresses. I thought it was a little derivative. They could have taken that so many directions. Other than what they did that killed it anyway." Gary stared some more.
Haze Gray
Jack looked at Maggie and shrugged helplessly after watching the video "No idea, we are still working on the torpedoes of holding. Which, as it turns out, are making Danny a millionaire as well as he came up with the battery array. Simplest thing in the world. Normally open solenoids on a sea water pipe for the batteries. Except the first one which is normally closed. That's why the things have to be kept hooked to ships power in the launcher and ready storage.
"The Mod K 1's have portals and little generators along with engines designed to go thousands of hours. Essentially mobile mines. If they ever get the depth thing sorted out they will rule the oceans more effectively than we or the British ever did."
Maggie snorted "Not if Taylor has anything to say about it. She has better things to do than rule anything."
Admiral Painter spoke up startling them both "For which we should all be thankful. Jacks right. Just with the torpedoes, although they only manufacture a few K 1s a week, she has complete dominance of the ocean, or will. The K 1s have secondary batteries as well and can just drift until called. Plus, that fuel tank of holding concept can be applied to the warhead. They have industrial processes producing nitrates as by products. Right now, they are using them as fertilizer. But what is ammonium nitrate after all?" Jack and Maggie winced, the admiral nodded "And in a few years when she gets the organic matter and tilth of her farms up she will back off on the nitrate use. Our farmers are going to have to come to her methods to compete with her.
"Or rather more of them are. She learned those methods from some of our farmers after all. Amazingly, the ones that owe the banks the least money."
Maggie blinked "Maybe that's how Seawolf finds them? The farms to buy I mean."
Jack nodded "Easy pickings and cheap. A foreclosed farm the bank has been holding? They would sell it for as little as they could to recover their investment. Or at least as much as they could. Plus, they have to pay the taxes on it."
The admiral nodded and called up a design on the monitor. Jack and Maggie gaped at it silently, then Jack whistled. "Pogos. K mods of course. Wow, we could have done that. Technology has advanced a lot since nineteen fifty."
"Nineteen fifty-four, the contract was awarded in fifty one. It wasn't even complicated, better engines, their propfans, rearview camera." Admiral Painter shrugged "The boys over in air warfare pointed out the rotary cannon. Looks like it would use the same ammunition as the mark forty four mounts on the ships and boats. Three barrels, probably a weight issue. Also note the ATAS rather than say, a Sidewinder."
"Makes it even more likely a weight issue, but that is a lot of missiles." Maggie agreed.
Jack shook his head "Look at the launch facility. They are shooting them out of the vertical tubes and using a RAST system to land them. It's a space issue, even though the boat is neo panama.
"I wonder if they are building her or if she triggered."
Maggi blinked "A whole new class?"
Admiral Painter chuckled "The dream of every major navy in the world. They will have to consider that naming her. Or she will in naming herself."
Jack was examining the design blown up to its maximum "She is going to be damn stealthy too. Ohio at least. Probably Sodermanland. She could sneak in anywhere and launch a strike."
Maggie nodded "And these aircraft, mostly composites, probably have the radar cross section of a mosquito. That is if a mosquito had a measurable radar cross section. Probably only see the engines, or some of the engines, is this a composite casing?" Three heads leaned closer to another monitor.
Haze Gray
The fleet was in and San Francisco was loving life. Some of it. By now crew had been in every business in the Bay area and the ones that were crew approved were packed day and as far in the night as the owners could get their people to work. Not just with crew either. If crew visited a place twice civilians started coming.
It didn't really matter what kind of business either, corner stores, Mom and Pop hardware stores, green grocers, butchers, bakeries, coffee shops, boutique clothing shops, tailors, barbers, hairdressers, every kind of retail business.
Several meat, fish, and produce markets as well.
Nancy looked at the crowds and sneered, none of those were places she would frequent. No personalized service at all not a red door in sight. Certainly not hand selected organic produce.
Her opponent, well, the one the primary was drilling down to, ran one of the grocers, an Asian grocery. The one selling spices and specialty items in barrels and crates off the loading dock, that was covered in customers three shifts a day. She had good contacts in the local and widespread diaspora of Asia and was making everyone a fortune. Her store had already had a reputation of being the go to for Asian spices and now it handled middle eastern specialty items too.
That her store was three customers deep on five registers twenty for hours a day and she ran one of the registers and chattered away with her customers sixteen hours a day while tending to her children was her campaign strategy. And it was working.
Nancy running her traditional kiss ass on deep pockets democrat donors and rail against the injustice of the system was helping her too. Especially as people were pointing out that Nancy was the system and had been for a lot of years. Plus, she was from Delaware, Rhode Island? Somewhere, Baltimore! A carpet bagger for sure, or so the rumor went. She was definitely a last generation machine politician trading on favors and 'social' contacts. And she had moved to wherever there was a majority white population to get elected. The 12th was no longer a majority white district.
Finally having a full field of candidates of the majority in the district, in other words not rich, silver spoon in mouth since birth, private school educated, white, carpet baggers from back east, was changing politics. Oh, it was still a solidly democratic district not in any danger of falling to a republican, god or goddess of your choice forbid, but now it had viable candidates. Lots of them. Nancy had done great work making paths to citizenship for Asians and most of them had used those paths as fast as they could run down them, while running businesses of every kind. Song Li would feel bad about it, but generations change, and it was time. After all Nancy's parents were first generation or immigrants themselves a hundred and ten years ago. Wow, Nancy was seventy-one or two! She had kept well, most days.
Haze Gray
Barrack listened to Michelle cackling over the news and sighed. Michelle looked at him and snorted "Don't try to act put upon. Its not like we are going to lose the district Mr. party chairman."
Barack thought about it a minute then nodded. The republican candidate was even more out of touch than Nancy. Plus, he had met Song Li. Taylor liked her too. Song Li's girls ran around in the pack around Taylor every time she was ashore in San Francisco. He changed the subject "Fishing?"
Michelle rolled her eyes "You lost that bet. Negotiation, whatever. We have our boat. Plus, it will be riding on the deck of the command ship if it gets rough. Or dangerous. You did do something about the pirates right?"
"Yes, well, Gary and his folks are cooperating with Taylor's folks so they will have them all found soon and as long as they don't do anything foolish Taylor won't kill them all. Probably."
"More worried about the reapers, those are some strange little girls." Michelle replied.
"I thought we had that under control, or it was getting better. What the hell could have triggered them, so they are like that? And six of them? People are so bad." Barack sighed.
"Come on Babe don't lose that hope thing. Leave all that real world stuff to Taylor and I."
Barack arched a brow "Amy and you, you mean. Along with Rebecca. She still has those teams running around. It's a parahuman police state."
Michelle laughed out loud "Don't do anything to attract their attention and they won't beat the crap out of you. Rebecca isn't sending them after jay walkers. Plus, we have looked at most of the laws. Now we are crafting a bill to fix or repeal the most egregiously discriminatory ones. You just push it through when we get it proposed.
Haze Gray
Taylor put her tablet to sleep after signing the plan and looked at Amy "Who you scheming with now?"
"I don't scheme."
"Do I have to get the shoes?"
Amy's tablet flew across the cabin to the desk bolted on the bulkhead "Yes please."
Taylor chuckled. Then laughed at the pout and got up to get the shoes, the new ones that had arrived today.