Starship Vengeance

Chapter 30

I found myself trapped inside a room with the Council once more. This time, I was there as a consultant instead of an incompetent leader. I was seated in the back along with Admiral Rodriguez and a host of other experts. The meeting had been called a planning meeting, though it appeared that most everything had been worked out before the meeting. How I hated bureaucracies. I found myself wonder, and not for the first time, whether restoring the Council had been a wise choice.

It was impossible to focus on the current topic. They were discussing the exciting world of crop production and storage. I stifled a yawn and glanced at Admiral Rodriguez. He had his head propped up and was snoring softly. I did my best to suppress a mischievous smile and nudged his foot. His eyes popped open and looked at me. I urgently indicated the front of the room and bolted upright and cleared his throat loudly. The room was silent as everyone regarded him with confused and irritated expressions. Admiral Rodriguez apologized and quickly took his seat. He glared at me and it took every ounce of self-control not burst out laughing.

My tablet vibrated with a notification and I pulled up the private message from Admiral Rodriguez. "It's on!" were the only words in the message. I sent a witty reply and watched as he tried to keep his expression neutral. Thus we managed to keep ourselves entertained during the dry parts of the meeting. I would receive glares from Lisa on occasion, but there was no way she knew what was going on.

Finally, something of relevance was brought up: our conflict with the Zrynt. Admiral Rodriguez and I put away our tablets and listened intently. A civilian took the stand and began lecturing about the concentration of Zrynt forces around the galaxy. He took what should have been an exciting topic and ruined it. I fought to stay focused, but I often found my attention wavering. I did glean a few useful tidbits. It appeared that the Zrynt were slowly massing their forces. They also seemed to be doing the bulk of it without our knowledge, so we still had no idea of the true size of their forces.

Another civilian took the stand. I found myself staring at the tall, beautiful blonde. You could see every male in the room perk up once they saw her. I suddenly found the meeting very engaging. She introduced herself as Naomi, and held the title of Chief Technology Integrator at Dr. Thompson's lab turned university. Basically, her job was to find a way to integrate new technology gained from our allies into existing platforms. She began by listing off upgrades that the Unity was due for. I was surprised to see there were so many. It had only been a few months since the last round of upgrades.

The bulk of the upgrades were to the defenses. They were going to integrate the new regenerative armor, but to do so they would need to increase the hull thickness by twenty percent. Our energy weapons were going to be replaced with more efficient and powerful models. The weapons themselves were going to be placed on special gimbals that would give them the ability to be raised out of the weapon ports, resulting in a much greater angle of fire. Our shields, jump drives and sublight drives were being upgraded as well. With the help of the Nyth'La'Kell, they were able to overcome the problem of transferring the energy from the shields to other systems. The whole process was going to take an estimated six weeks. Now that the Wolf Pack was complete, they had the full resources of the shipyards at their disposal.

The Unity wasn't the only ship being upgraded. The battleships were going to be getting some massive improvements. The fighters and cruisers would be scrapped and new ships constructed. The Vengeance was also getting a few modifications. Naomi's team had just finished testing the new Galactum cannons and would be integrating those into the Vengeance and its destroyers. There were a few minor system upgrades as well, but they were minor and could be completed in a day or two.

It was decided that the Unity would sent to the shipyards first, leaving the Vengeance to train and be available in the event the Zrynt decide to launch an offensive. Naomi stepped down and Lisa dismissed everyone. I tried to make my escape, but was waylaid by Lisa.