"Good day, sir. Please wait for scanning."
"Of course. Good to see you not letting me in simply because I outrank you by an order of magnitude." Admiral Bartholomew smiled at his own joke.
"It's normal procedure, sir." While one of the guards held up an iris scanner and fingerprint plate, the other six stayed back at various distances, well spread out to avoid a rush.
No sense of humour, thought Bartholomew, but good discipline.
Positive test. Enter key.
"If you'd be so kind, sir..."
"Yes, I know." Bartholomew took the device and punched in a short key. "Here you go."
"Thank you, sir." The guard punched in another key.
Verification positive: Pistache Bartholomew.
"Go on in, sir. Take this with you." The guard handed him a small slip that came out of the device.
"Very good, very good." Now to see how my ship is coming along.
After the guardpost, Bartholomew walked towards a towering hangar-cum-construction site. He noted approvingly the missile batteries dotting the flat ground that stretched for some distance around the site. This place wasn't defended with secrecy, but with dire warnings. Admiral, eh... still fun to think of.
"Good day, sir. Admiral Bartholomew, I presume?"
"You are correct, soldier." Bartholomew presented the chip from the guard post. "I would like to see my ship."
"Good. We're here to escort you. Normal entrance to the area is by the red door over here."
"Lead on, then." Everything's changed so much - far more human guards than I remember. When I was in the Fleet, we were under scanning instead of guard. Now, let's see...
Red-hot iron, white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, and iron smell, and a Babel of iron sounds. (Charles Dickens)
The PS Macheas was gigantic, larger even than one would have thought from seeing the construction area from the outside. With the outer hull not in place yet, it consisted at the moment of a roughly rectangular habitat and crew area surrounded in all dimensions by shield generators (large, clunky things - but they scaled decently), fusion motors in the same pattern suggested by Erwin Macheas some time ago, and the new weapon systems, so intimately linked to the motors, but placed so far apart, due to their volatility - the [redacted] missiles. The launchers protruded at odd angles and places, no ammunition or supply for them in place. The whole impression was that of a metallic soliton or zeolite with a nervous system in its interior.
So I will be commanding a behemoth. Admiral Bartholomew, trailed by his escort, walked around the battleship-to-be several times, listening to conversations and getting a sense of progress.
"Boss sent me to check. Three percent bonus if we keep the purity above nine hundred ninety seven?"
"Affirmative, and another three percent above nine hundred ninety eight."
"Dayamn, thank you ma'am. Can't be surprised that you're demanding above industrial grade, but it's nice to hear what you're offering for it..."
"Two and a half hours until the next batch of elerium arrives. I suppose you can wait that long?"
"Sure, we can wait for eight hours, but we need an actual batch."
"It's out of my control and you know that."
"I know, but you can tell the shippers, and whoever managing them, that if we can't finish these engine tests, it'll be a week behind schedule."
"Which is a bad idea. I know. Anything else I can do?"
"Maybe - see if you get a message off to Stevski. He might be able to influence it."
Bartholomew stopped to interrupt someone. "Pardon me. Am I disturbing anything?"
"Admiral! No, sir, of course not."
"Wrong answer. You're supposed to be working, though I appreciate the politeness. Now, what am I disturbing and what are you working on?"
"Habitat module food systems sir!" gulped the man furiously. "Currently designing organonitrates for the ecosystem and waiting for mister Evlo to return with test results!" He calmed down. "Sir, admiral, sir, you really aren't disturbing anything, since we're technically working voluntary overtime. There's an eight percent bonus if we have the ecosystem in place in a module within eighty days, so the crew can start getting used to the food early, reducing to six percent after a hundred days."
"Paying you to be done early? And why doesn't this incentivise you to cut corners."
"Sir! I do have pride in my work, sir, and that's offensive! As a matter of fact, we get paid the normal amount even if we finish early, and the rest will be paid something like thirty days later, after it's been rigorously tested. If we're found to have been sloppy, we have to fix it out of our own pocket."
"So it's fast, cheap, good - did they pick fast and good?"
"More or less."
"And this has raised your morale."
"Certainly, sir! Not that we need it of course, oh no, sir, the PS Razor will be the pride of us Emergents, and it's an honor to work on it, morale is high, but yes you might say that people are happy to be paid extra on something so prestigious."
"As you were, then." Bartholomew turned to his escort. "What's the size of the work force?"
"Sixteen hundred direct workers, sir. About two hundred are on facility at any given time."
"Most of them waiting around for results and analyses and bacteria tanks?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. No use having them idling here." Bartholomew continued to walk.
"Batch of missiles here, sir."
"Aren't those supposed to arrive a week from now?"
"They were expected to arrive a week from now. The deliverer is ahead of schedule. The driver is saying something about a performance bonus."
"Oh. Vack it, I thought he wouldn't be able to, so I docked the money. Tell him to come up to my office and I'll meet him there. I have to undock the payment."
"Sorry, but he pre-empted that. He insists that you come out to the delivery area, not necessarily in person. Holosim will be fine."
"He has one in the vehicle?"
"Yup. Must be rich. I suspect he's gotten a few performance bonuses already.
"Bonii, not bonuses."
A hundred metres along the floor, a woman with a sort of trolley wheeled in a stack of metal plates, deposited them on another trolley, wheeled her trolley over to a plasticrate, picked that up, and exited again. A person of somewhat indiscernable gender walked over to the second trolley, waved an arcane gizmo at them, and punched something into the trolley's datapad, before also exiting the area. Bartholomew went over to have a look and found that the plates were all ridged. He turned to his escort. "Is it possible for me to have a look aboard ship?"
"No, sir. And the crew isn't here either. Apart from you, none of those present will be aboard the Razor when it launches for good."
.
