Escort Carrier Omake
Foreman Lucas Ossmand wiped his brow as the Australian sun beat down on him as he looked down into the dock at the Chaser, one of the newest escorts in the GDI Navy and grimaced. The merchant hull in question was originally going to be a new container ship that had been ordered by a Japanese company before everything kicked off, so they didn't have to do much with her since she was a fairly open layout. Which he thanked God for, especially with some of the horror stories he was getting from the other foremen. Heck, they had a dodgy as hell containership hull that had been towed here, the Providence, that was being built for use in the South American Blue Zone, and they had found a mess in her layout as well as substandard practices in her design.
His expression darkened at that, the way Sherrell had been cursing up a storm when they had finally gotten a look at the layout of her cooling systems and the design of shaft seals would have blistered steel. Seriously whoever had been in charge of the ship's design must have cooked their damned brian. Even if it was meant to run on the Yellow Zone margins, it would be amazing if the bloody thing wouldn't have a major technical casualty in the first month of its initially intended role, like heck how the fuck sets up an air compressor so the crew can't even get at it to strip. Sorting out the whole mess from the initial design had set that entire project back by months along with other issues they had found.
As he looked down at the Chaser, he was pleased he got her, the biggest problem they had with her was moving in the additional generators, but that had been a slight hiccup. Right now, they were in the process of fitting the new switchboards as well as the additional machinery they would need for her to operate as a carrier. He smiled slightly with all projections being what they were. They were ahead of the curve for once, which was a nice change of pace, even if they did have that unfortunate accident where someone had put their drill through a cable that hadn't been marked on any of the ship's technical drawings still, though the man had lived and would be back to work in a few weeks if he was lucky.
He sighed, he'd best hunt down the Navy officer that had been assigned to him, they needed to go over a few things since they were getting some deliveries today that they needed her and her boys to help with.
Lucas moved towards the gangway heading down onto the flight deck and glanced down as he saw the sparks of welding sets as he saw one of the crews patching the side of the hull where they cut a hole so they could run some cables to power their equipment when they were putting in the additional generators.
As he made it to the partially assembled flight deck, he saw another crew going over the welds while others worked on putting the flight deck together aside from the points where the CIWS would be going in. He carefully skirted around them and made his way to the bridge and entered through the open hatch, and made his way up to the bridge.
As he entered the new bridge, it was still bare-bones construction aside from the electronic chart table which was covered in various pads and technical drawings. Around the bridge, people were working on fitting various consoles and electronics. He saw Commander Lisa Brown, the Navy officer who was attached to the project, giving orders to one of her people. He leant to one side and waited for her to finish before he came over.
"Commander," he said as he approached.
"Ossmand," she said as she turned to him, "any news on the CWIS? I know they were delayed in getting here."
"Yeah, good news there," he said, propping himself against the table, "they should be arriving today. There was some delay in getting them here since they found an electronics fault in one of them, which they managed to correct."
"That's good," she said, cracking a knuckle and nodding at a small table in the corner, "coffee?"
"Yeah, that would be great," he said, "Though I have to go and check down on the engineering side in about half an hour."
"Yeah, heard everything is going well in that section," she said as she walked over and poured them two cups and offered him one, "though I heard we have been having some issues with the automation?"
"Yeah," he said, taking the cup and having a sip, "my computer guys are playing a game of patch the problem and test, which is driving them batty. So far, we are keeping on top of it on the technical side. Though where we are getting the biggest issues with the automation is from the logistics side."
Lisa grimaced as she took a swig of her own and said, "Yeah, I know; I had warrant officers Yi and Barlow seeing if they can do anything to help your guys, but we are retrofitting a lot of systems into a merchant hull there are going to be issues."
"Yeah, I heard about that," he said, "thanks, they were able to get the maintenance systems in the aircraft workshop set up in record time, though we are still testing them. They also did the majority of work on where the munitions feeds for the hanger will be. We've cut down time there too."
"I'm sensing a 'but' there though," Lisa said.
"Yeah," Lucas said with a sigh, "we may fall behind due to the messed up delivery for the radar and sensor arrays."
"What," Lisa said, her voice flat and angry.
"Yes, and don't give me that look commander, this blindsided me as well," he said pinching the bridge of his nose, "damned thing was mishandled when they were in the process of loading and damaged some critical components."
"Oh for fuck sakes," she said, glaring out of the window, "that will set Chaser back, though at least we aren't having the same troubles as Archer or Providence, it's still going to damned sting not getting the array in time."
"Yeah tell me about it. My sparkies were cursing up a storm when we got word of this as well," he said while looking out at the bright day, "it's going to burn up the time we saved on the other matters. Heck, the technical spaces are almost complete in terms of installation and we've made good progress on the other sections. The delays are mainly coming from the sensor suite, the automation, and the logistics systems, the fact is we are dealing with a merchant hull."
"I know," Lisa said with a sigh, "anyways, we are probably going to need these escort carriers, the fleet is screaming out for these even more now to free up the fleet carriers and some of the escorts for offensive operations."
"Yeah," He said, rubbing his neck and finishing his coffee, "nothing affecting the construction effort, but stores are still concerned we may start facing shortages."
"Yeah," Lisa said, "I've heard the same from BuShips as well from some of the other teams."
He grimaced and then said, "we will have to wait and see though at least we should have the Chaser done on time, though I need to get going to check on Engineering."
"Sure," Lisa said, "I need to look at some of the flight ops systems."
Both moved off toward their respective jobs contemplating how much still needed to be done.
