For the next four days, learning and becoming comfortable in their new cha was the goal of every cha Pilot on the ship. They were securely in their storage racks, so there wasn’t much for the repair team, or the researchers to do, though the research team did spend a great deal of ti preparing data tables and comparative studies, just waiting for the data sets to co in so that they could get to the main part of their work.
The task was surprisingly ti-consuming, and Max only managed to spend a few hours a day with Moonie, who had accepted that soon Max would be in the field and they would have to go their separate ways, but for now they were enjoying each other’s company and the gas of chess.
The speed of Abraham Kepler was greatly improved with their new faster-than-light drives online, and they were going to be approaching Rae 3 in only one more day. That ant that it was ti to start getting all the cha loaded and prepared for combat.
They needed ammunition, rations, water, final checks before deploynt, a review of the Landers functionality, and finally the Pilot’s personal items to be loaded before deploynt.
The final checks brought Max to a familiar face for the first ti in a while. Sergeant Fritz, forrly a Corporal from cha maintenance, was in charge of operations in the First Battalion’s section of the Cargo Bays. He would be supervising their preparations and making sure the cha had everything Max had requested for them.
With the new patterns, that would be easier than usual, since only the Super Heavy cha used a solid projectile main weapon system. Both the Super Heavy X137 and the Comor Pattern Corvettes used a variety of projectile secondary defense systems though.
None of the units had nas yet, and they wouldn’t for at least the first few missions until they had been deed suitable for long-term service, but more than one Pilot had already started thinking of nas for their new cha. It was customary that the first Pilot got to na it if the unit wasn’t a replacent for a destroyed unit, so this was a pri opportunity for the Super Heavy cha Pilots.
If developnt returned to the status quo, these units would be in service for a century or more, going through a half dozen pilots before being replaced by an upgraded model. So of the previous Citadel Pattern Phalanx Class cha had served for almost a thousand years, due to the stagnation of developnt, but Max couldn’t see that happening again. The other Nations had already started moving forward, and the cold war of progression wouldn’t stop as easily this ti as it did previously.
Much of that could be blad on the System. It had increased intelligence, and the capabilities of everyone, not just Pilots, so new developnts were inevitable, and the old generation of politicians was dying out. Whether it was of old age or hubris turning them against the Empire didn’t really matter, for most of the powerful nobles their days were already numbered, and they had ruled as long as they could before turning over their power to the younger generation.
Max went back to his dorm and dug through his duffel bag, pulling out the collection of pictures that he liked to post up around the view screen in his cha. This ti there would be much more room available, so Nico could put up all she wanted as well, but from what he rembered she only ever had one picture up inside the cha, plus that bright pink blanket.
Major Miller was helping the unit prepare for deploynt and had already prepared his own cha, living up to the reputation as an efficient Logistics Officer that had earned him the position in the first place. Nico was over with the technicians, tweaking a weapon system on one of the X104 replacents for the Redemption Pattern Crusaders. It had one of the new pattern Dual Ion Destroyers in its right hand and a pair of Plasma Shotguns on the shoulder packs that doubled as both heat dissipation for the reactor and adjustable thrusters for mobility.
The Ion Destroyers weren’t linking right when they did the system test, but sohow the defect hadn’t been caught before today or had only just started. Max expected more than a few such incidents would pop up during combat, which was why he planned to send out twice the forces he thought necessary for every mission.
If sothing broke down, or they found a glitch, the extra manpower would allow the unit to be taken out of service for a while without jeopardizing the mission.
The enemy was supposed to be no smarter than the average beast, but thinking of the Guard Dogs on Comor, that didn’t an they weren’t smarter than so of the people Max knew. Most of the Company and Battalion Commanders thought the sa way, caution first to test the new units’ reliability, since they had solid theoretical numbers for the firepower.
The defect turned out to be a manufacturing defect that wasn’t detected, so the technicians were going over all 120 units that were equipped with the weapon, forty of them per Company. Only a few more defects were found, none of them as severe, and all of the other weapons were likely to have remained functional until taking damage and overloading the weakened circuit, but it was a good reminder that this was an experintal unit.
The ssage was passed to all the other Technicians serving the other Battalions, who raced to check all their cha before deploynt. This final day was always hectic, even with proven and battle-tested units, so Max didn’t expect anyone in the technical team to be getting any sleep tonight.
The checks also provided the first set of manufacturing quality data to the research teams, so they would be hard at work for the foreseeable future, leaving Max in a bit of a limbo state, surrounded by competent people who really didn’t need his input at the mont.
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