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Star Trek Enterprise

Here We Stand

Chapter 19:

The Refit

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(A Brief note I do not own Star Trek or its associated products. Also please forgive any grammar and spelling errors I am Dyslexic and even with a spell checker it is difficult for me to see them.)

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Horatio sat in a shuttle headed for the United States of America this had been one of the few times he had the opportunity to leave his command office of the San Francisco fleet yards. His workload had gotten a little heavy and he was mentally exhausted, but this trip would hopefully be the last one he needed to make this week.

He had a hexagonal metallic tube that was locked with a self-destruct that would activate if it was forced open, It was the refit blueprints for the NX class and warp delta, the reason for the added security was because of the news headed out of Vulcan.

It had taken a month to get from Vulcan after the incident and the High Command was in the midst of a major investigation, they had been infiltrated so successfully that the head of the High Command a Vulcan trusted by all to protect and lead the Vulcan people had been a Romulan spy.

For a logical people, the Vulcans were utterly ruthless when it came to betrayal, they had unleashed the proverbial hounds and were, like the Spanish inquisition of old, digging through everything, every friend, family member, political ally, lobbyist, and every single donor they were leaving no stone unturned, and the results were shocking.

The High Command had taken the action to pull back and find out how badly they had been infiltrated and what secrets had been handed over to their erstwhile cousins. what was revealed was that around a third of the Command were Romulan sympathisers with a number being Romulan themselves, those who were sympathisers had been since the original Raptors were forced off the planet after Unification under Surak, some only paying lip service to the path of Logic he had forged.

What this had meant was that Earth no longer had a leash, or a minder, as the Vulcans had their own house to clean up. This had led to calls to Militarise Star Fleet so we would be better prepared for the Klingons, or anyone else, to Expand the Colonial territories by force if necessary, and a hundred other things that were mostly unfeasible at Earth's current state of technology and the lean economy we were dealing with.

Earth's Trade fleet was almost constantly under threat of attack by Pirates, Raiders, Corsairs and Privateers. That's why the Warp Delta was first designed. Star Fleet needed fast ships that could help the merchant fleets faster than any Earth ship before it, nowadays Warp two wasn't any great speed but as long as they were in Earth Controlled space, they could be there quickly but the farther out the core Earth Territories that you got the less protection you had.

The Vulcan fleet augmented Earth's Star Fleet for that purpose and with them no longer able to act in that capacity the United Earth Government had ordered Star Fleet to sort this issue out. That meant potentially costly upgrades to the fleet something that the Gov couldn't afford for the whole fleet, they needed upgrades that were low-cost and effective.

So, a simple job of refitting the Damaged Enterprise had now become a full refit to a portion of the Star Fleet and as the officer who had fixed the NX issue in the face of a major political snafu early and underbudget he had been tapped for the task.

After the Romulan debacle in Vulcan Space, he had been promoted by Admiral Forest and placed in charge of the refit of the Enterprise, something Horatio had already planned out meticulously before the ship had left the dock, and with his known administrative abilities being lauded by the upper ranks of the fleet he had been tossed this football and told to run.

Thus, he was now being called into meeting after meeting about the Refit to the Warp Deltas, something that annoyed him greatly because Admiral Collins's office was not on the station nor was it one of the three shipyards in orbit.

The Admiral preferred to be on the planet rather than on station he had served on one of the original Warp One ships as a younger man and after being injured severely in a raid in his later carrier he found the bleak walls of the station too oppressive so had recycled an office in Colorado.

The office was once made for the US Navy's Space Branch and was situated on top of the mountains opposite the one made up of the US Air Force's NORAD base. The exact office could only be reached by shuttle, unlike NORAD, and its view of the vast plane of trees was well worth the trip.

The new building itself was very early 21st century modernist but its bright white walls fit in the vast sea of green of the Woodland plains the main part of the base was still under the mountain. It felt very much like the base of a bond villain would have planned the takeover of the world.

The shuttle gracefully, for a box with wings, landed in the main hanger where the newly gazetted Captain Smith proudly walked out his yellow striped shoulders and four silver pips catching the eye of a few lower ranked officers who stood at attention as he passed them.

This was the third time he had been here in as many days, and he had gotten the lay of the land pretty quickly. Horatio had kept the blueprints to hand never taking his eyes off them after all the chain of Custody would always end with him, so he took that responsibility seriously.

Admiral Collins's office had a view that most billionaires would have killed for, and he appreciated it a lot, but that view was behind him so whenever you entered the room his chair would turn around dramatically like Darth Vader in Empire and with as much speed.

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As the chair turned the door to the main office closed with a muted whoosh and he was greeted by the wide smile of Admiral Collins. Collins was a jovial man, compared to every other Admiral in the fleet, and always had been.

He was a rail-thin and tall man practically tailor-made to play basketball, his dark braided hair cascaded down his back like an obsidian wave, his dark skin marred on his face by a gnarled patch of skin stretching from his lower right jaw up to his bright brown eye.

"Captain Smith." he smiled his Californian accent dancing out of him openly like the bold steps of a swing-spinning tango. "it's good to see you again."

"It's good to be back sir." in comparison to the Admiral's shining joviality the very much demurer and more reserved Horatio was like a dark cloud in the shining summer sun. "I have the plans finalised and the schedule sketched out sir." he said handing over the metallic case. "as always it's up for review and subject to change."

Admiral Collins took out the plans setting aside the NX plans and unfurling the Ganges class more commonly referred to as the Warp Delta. He had included the full list of upgrades and their costs along with estimates of the time it would take to refit it.

"Walk me through it, Captain," he ordered leaning back on his chair closing his eyes and interlocking his fingers, a position that Horatio had been familiar with from the Nero Wolfe series. the titular character would sit in that same position and with his formidable mind solve complex murders never leaving the comfort of his brownstone.

"Aye, Aye sir," he replied before beginning. "Given the financial restraints that we're working with I have taken the opportunity to standardise as much as possible with the NX class," he said Admiral Collins nodded gently his eyes remaining closed.

"We can change out the primary impulse drives with those currently under construction for the NX and Poseidon fleets." he said as he took a pad out of his bicep pocket and pressed the button gently scrolling down. "this will cut the maintenance cost by 2.3 percent across the fleet."

Again, a gentle nod and silence.

"Next is changing the Nacelles and power systems," he informed the Admiral as the pad chirped with Horatio's button press because he couldn't mute them. "If we change the Nacelles to the NX type, we increase warp field stability by 10 percent and in turn lower fuel costs by 1.1 across the fleet and once we change out the Warp core for the new Warp six cores the delta will be able to pick up the slack we are now experiencing without the Vulcans."

Again, a gentle nod and silence.

"The power systems are the costliest to the fleet, and the most difficult to do, but will give us much greater long-term viability once we upgrade their reactor packages and power distribution cabling." he said as he scrolled down the pad. "we're future-proofing the design for a few more years and allowing the option to upgrade them again and again."

"and tactical systems?" the Admiral asked gently his eyes remaining closed, but he could feel the man's laser focussed attention.

"the full weapons package has been approved, four forward-facing fast-firing phaser cannons in single turret mounts." he said indicating to the paper blueprint and the computer screen, he hadn't noticed the Admiral's eyes opening and locking onto the screen. "two dorsal and two ventral and another four in the rear again two dorsal and two ventral."

It took a moment for Horatio to notice that the admiral's eyes were open, he was looking at the blueprints, his eyes dancing over them like he was reading a book.

"and finally, a forward and aft multi-ordinance torpedo launcher." he said, "the schedule I've sketched out should have the refit of the first ship complete in three months." he put the pad on top of the Admiral's desk "but that is just because of parts shortages that are being fixed as we speak, once that bottleneck is overcome we should be knocking them out in around a month maybe faster once the lads get into the swing of things."

"It's a fine plan and the schedule is very well thought out," he said now sitting forward and looking at the schematics "The new hull plating is sound and thanks to your Klingon Adventure we have been devouring the photonic torpedoes, disrupters and shields schematics you ripped from their computers." he smiled again picking up the pad and pressing some buttons before inserting it into a slot on his desk bringing the list up onto his tabletop computer. "we should have working prototypes of the shields in a few months."

"that will be a welcome change we can keep the polarisation field as a secondary defensive measure once the shields are down." The Admiral nodded.

"we'll be using one of the Ganges class here to test them out if they're viable we'll be installing them fleet-wide in the next refit, as soon as the prototype is ready, I want you to make sure it does what it says on the tin."

"I'll be happy too sir." he stood straighter at attention.

"good, after that debacle with the hull plating, I know you'll get the job done." he said as he brought up the next set of plans on his screen "Shall we move on to the NX and the Columbia subclass I know you've been very involved with Enterprise so I want you to fully detail out any upgrades, changes or workarounds that will help the rest of the class before they launch."

"Aye, Sir."

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The meeting with Admiral Collins had been one of the longest meetings in his career so far. He had gone over logs and tactical data they had gone over every one of Trip's workarounds and engine hot-rodding that had pushed the Engines but not damaged them.

They had even worked in his deflector array trick for warp one using the impulse drives into the manual of the NX class. That and the others would become required reading for engineering staff and mechanics at the academy.

Horatio's first job back was fishing the NX-02 Columbia refit, they were still having problems twinning the two engine cores and making sure the reactors were working well together, it was mostly a software issue but was resolved when Horatio had wiped the computer and uploaded the new operating systems that would be close the back door that had been exploited by Star Fleet's nepotism and this time they got every subroutine so the gravitation weapon effect wouldn't be anywhere near as effective.

With the replacement parts on the way the two NX class ships would be launching together in a month, the Ganges class will have its refit underway and be finished a few weeks later. Horatio stretched his back as sat before he got up and walked to his large panoramic window he was now finished for the day.

Tomorrow, they would be opening the hull for the first replacement struts, but he had an idea that he wanted to test out and the NX-04 was in a state where he could test it there and if it worked it would revolutionise the way ship construction was done and allow Star Fleet to leapfrog the bottleneck of materials that were currently slowing down all projects in Star Fleet.

But if it failed then it wouldn't matter the NX-04's construction schedule could allow for a few delays and at this point, it wouldn't damage its launch timetable any worse than any other delay in construction.

He ran a clammy hand through his equally sweaty hair and pondered to himself as he looked out of one of the larger panoramic windows in his office.

"But where could I get a Mark Two cargo transporter, a fission reactor a work pod with a tractor beam and half a tonne of rock at this hour of the day, night?" he looked at his watch "Tomorrow" he sighed resigned it was five past midnight and a schedule to keep and he would be no good to man or beast if he was too tired to work.

As he turned to his desk, he picked up his swagger stick tucked it under his right armpit securely and walked out at a much more sedate pace than what he was used to making, he was too tired to march and when he got to his privet cabin, he placed this swagger stick on its perch on the bedside table kicked his boots off and crashed onto his bed face down too tired to even take his uniform off.