Yorktown: Katana Krieger #1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

not a long wait til the pad beeps. I am a happy woman.

"Electric Boat Company will have a crew here in under an hour to redo the wiring. Will that be acceptable, Mr. Garcia?"

"Yes, sir!"

"We're a team ladies and gentlemen," I try to address the whole crew on the bridge, "the only thing that gets us into trouble is not communicating."

"Aye, sir." I get that in quiet multi-part harmony.

Spend the next 15 minutes floating happily around the bridge, chatting as best a captain can with her too busy crew, until at precisely 1600 I get a formal message from FRIGCOM listing everything we're going to get (which appears to be everything we've asked for), plus a note that they've notified all six assault ships they need to be ready to move once we decide.

Then a second message. They're setting up the closest thing to a weightless hot food buffet up on the Marine's section of deck 2, and the crew of Constitution , seven months behind us one dry dock above, are headed down to help.

Fine first two hours. If you don't think about what's yet to come.

The one missing piece of my puzzle, Lt. Tony Palmer, Marine commander, messages to say he'll be arriving at 1800. I send back, let him know I need a recommendation on a ZR-1 corvette, tell him to meet me in Yorktown 's gym upon his arrival.

I get Shelby back to the bridge, and together we schedule each of our crew who needs it an hour to get their belongings off the station and onto the ship, me first, since I'm probably the most useless person on Yorktown right now. Invite her to join me later for our mandatory daily zero gee workout.

Takes me 45 minutes to float, hop and flip to my former quarters on the station, pack everything I own into one duffle bag, and get it stuffed securely into my new digs on board. The captain and the two command officers get their own spaces, mine at 10 by 10 is the biggest. When you sleep vertically, footprint is less important than volume anyway, and command spaces are designed with wall mounted sleeping bags. The only one with issues is Shelby, whose head is illegally close to the not quite seven foot ceilings.

Everyone else of extra height actually has it better, the rest of the crew is in clusters of four bunks, each three feet high and eight feet long, horizontal, sleeping the old school way. If floating six inches above your mattress counts as old school.

At 1800 I put Palmer on the middle treadmill, Shelby and I flanking him, and get every bit of information out of him we can. The Marines know less than we do, it turns out, which is hard to do when you basically know nothing, but they are bringing some extra gear on board just in case. And, he recommends ZR-1-slash-S134, a battle scarred assault ship with a crew of old friends he trusts.

We don't know him very well, the Marines training while we were building, but I like the fact that every time I up the speed on my treadmill, he sets his even faster. I'm not sure if there's a record for floating sweat in a warship gym, but Shelby, Palmer and I probably just broke it.

When we complete our workout and set the room environmental controls to suck the sweat over to recycle, I message FRIGCOM with the S134 request, then do three hours of management by floating around. Every deck, every compartment, every person gets a visit from the captain (who did shower first, I am not sharing my aromas). The boat deck crew is in engineering, helping out. Our two Marines are doing gun inspections, laser cannon by laser cannon, with help from the Constitution detachment. Two of the engineers are inspecting every missile tube, making sure they'll be ready for the morning delivery.

Yorktown 's Marine detachment, 25 strong, has battle suits and their other gear spread across the deck (or floating above it), going through assembly and check out procedures, while eating the buffet as if it's their last meal. The food is surprisingly good, a variety of hot pasta dishes with vegetables, sort of pureed.

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