Yorktown: Katana Krieger #1 Read Online Free PDF

group on board is RISTA, McAdams and her two person team floating in their berthing area, each one holding a pad, another eight or ten pads in free float around them, and four monitors live on the wall. She picked an interesting team. Her number two, Lieutenant Bass, out ranks her by two grades and 10 years, outsizes her by 120 pounds. Rare for a senior person to volunteer to serve under a 23 year old ensign, rarer for the 23 year old to be comfortable commanding a superior officer.

And her third is 18 year old probationary Seaman Juan Manuel, four months in the service, who got one of the highest scores ever on the spacial acuity test they give to new recruits. She told me that the Academy only trains people in battle group maneuvers, she wanted someone she could train from scratch to think about single ship operations. He's been with us less than a week, probably now wondering if he should have asked for other duty.

It looks more like a slumber party with a college student, her uncle, and younger brother, than a military planning exercise, but who am I to argue. At least as long as I like the plan in the morning.

At 2200, I issue a general order to the crew. Sleep. Everyone in their rack by 2330, and no one out before 0600, unless they get permission from me personally. Much pretend moaning and groaning, but tomorrow will not be a day for the tired.

The Constitution crew is doing the grunt work, helping Ayala load and inventory a couple thousand containers of supplies, they request to keep working and I am happy to oblige. As do the Marines from Constitution , who want every gun shiny before we go.

I make sure to revisit the slumber party, and give them an extra hour to get me their report if they'll get some rack time. Not sure they didn't sneak back out as soon as mom left the room. Another oddity of the ship, they are the only mixed group, officers and enlisted bunking in the same quad.

Then I take my own orders, except that I head to the bridge, strap myself into my command couch, and fall quickly asleep.

Chapter 2
     
     
     
    FRIGCOM delivers hot breakfast at 0630, something else I have not seen in 11 years of active duty, an admiral voluntarily serving pancakes (or what would be pancakes if you didn't have to eat them out of a tube) to the crew. Clearly not reconstituted pancakes either, these have that scent of fresh cinnamon and a real stove.

Constitution 's folks are still there, done with inventory and gun cleaning, yet looking for more to do. We set them to wandering the ship, cleaning and doing a pre-flight inspection to make sure (or as sure as we can be), that we'll at least make it out of the dry dock without killing ourselves. Even with two dozen of them, it will still take a couple hours.

The captains of Congress and Richard are there as well, more than eager to go with us, Lt. Paul Summerlin and Lt. Angie Springs. Both are experienced captains, Summerlin a typical corvette commander, thin, wiry, mid-30s, Springs looks like a smaller version of Shelby, all muscles and darkness, except her hair is quite a bit longer. I wouldn't want to meet either of them in the proverbial dark alley, but they are exactly what I want with me now. I need to give Commander Perez a well done.

They join Shelby, Captain Weaver of Constitution , and me to meet with McAdams and her group at 0900, who walk us through a set of probability based search grids using Yorktown , Congress , and Richard to hit high probability targets, shifting to lower probability space if necessary.

It's a solid plan given how much we don't know, I just wish I understood better how they assigned the probabilities they did. The two corvette captains download the data to their pads, and, grabbing a slew of pancakes, float off to oversee the final re-outfitting of their boats. I get rid of everyone else and spend an hour picking Weaver's brain. The two of us are going to write "the Book" on frigate ops, the other ships at least a year behind us,