Annihilation (Star Force Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

fighters aren’t able to bombard a world themselves, sir. They lack heavy weapons.”
    “Yeah, I know. That’s the whole bloody point of a fighter.”
    We both stared at the designs for another minute in silence. I knew I had some hard decisions to make, and Miklos wasn’t going to like them. I figured that was just too bad.
    “All right,” I said. “We’ll keep your designs—for later. When we have the time and resources to build a showboat. But for now, I’m going to make a copy of this whole thing and do some serious editing for the first prototype ship.”
    I closed the project file and tapped at the screen. I copied the entire folder of data and renamed the new copy: “Showboat”. Then I brought up the original file and began deleting things.
    The first thing I did was tear out generators. Big ships the size of a Macro cruiser normally had three generators, two to run the engines and one to run the weapons batteries. Miklos had no less than six power systems in his design, overkill in my opinion. I deleted all but two.
    Miklos looked physically ill. “Colonel,” he protested, “the vessel can’t possibly—”
    “Hold on, I’m not done,” I said. I brought up the forward batteries and removed all the heavy railguns and laser turrets. I left only six small point-defense lasers. At each of these scattered emplacements, I added a garbage-can sized generator. I did this by dragging and dropping components with my fingers.
    “See?” I said. “Those power-consumption meters are already out of the red and into the yellow.”
    “The ship won’t have the capacity for most mission assignments with these changes. And the power usage is still overloaded.”
    “That’s because I’m not done editing yet,” I said.
    He looked horrified.
    “Look,” I said, “I’ve taken into consideration your concern about missiles. These little turrets are the only armament this ship is going to have, but they’ll stop a mild missile assault. With independent power for all the PD turrets, they can’t be knocked out at once. Even if the ship’s main power is gone, they’ll still function.”
    “But the engines, sir. Two primary generators won’t carry the load.”
    I swiped the screen rapidly, paging through the decks until I had the engine rooms displayed. There were three primary engines. I removed one.
    “That’ll fix it.”
    “She’ll be slow. She won’t be able to keep up with the rest of the fleet.”
    “Yes,” I agreed. “She’ll be slow. Remember the design goals: this vessel is a strategic platform. We’ll only move it into regions we consider to be safe. Once it gets into position, it will set up camp. It’s not designed to fly into battle as a front line ship. And I know how I can speed it up even more.”
    I brought up the hull specifications next, and began thinning down the outer shielding. Miklos tugged at his beard in distress, but said nothing. By the time I was done, the ship looked something like what I’d envisioned when Miklos had originally sold me on this idea.
    I saved the design and mailed him a copy. Then I turned to him.
    “Two days,” I told him.
    “What, sir?”
    “To build this thing from scratch would take six days,” I said, tapping the indicated estimate at the upper left corner of the design screen. “But you don’t have six days. You’ve got two. That’s all.”
    Miklos looked at me in bewilderment. I turned to face him and straightened my spine. He did the same. All my people understood the body language and the look I gave him next. They knew when they saw that stare, I meant business. In this case, Miklos knew he was about to get an order he didn’t like. He wasn’t wrong about that.
    “You have two days to build this thing, Commodore,” I said, jabbing my finger at the image on the screen. “After that, I’m flying out to see what’s heating up Yale’s oceans. I don’t care if the Lobsters answer us or not in the meantime. I don’t care if your