As diverse as these ships were, one still stood out. The Joint Re- search Vessel Nagoya was a purpose-built leviathan, con- structed around the frame of an eighty-thousand-tonne liquid
natural gas carrier. Her keel had been laid down in Korea, with the fit-out split between San Francisco and Tokyo, reflecting the multinational nature of her funding. She fit in with the sleek warships of the Multinational Force the way a hippo would with a school of swordfish.
Her presence was a function of the speed with which the cri- sis in Jakarta had developed. The USS Leyte Gulf, a stealth cruiser from the Clinton’s battle group, had been riding shotgun over the Nagoya’s sea trials in the benign waters off Western Australia. When the orders came down that the carrier and her battle group were to move immediately into the Wetar Strait the Nagoya had been left with no choice but to tag along until an es- cort could be assigned to shepherd her safely back to Hawaii. It was a situation nobody liked, least of all Professor Manning Pope, the leader of the Nagoya team.
Crouched over a console in his private quarters, Pope mut- tered under his breath as he hammered out yet another enraged e-mail directly to Admiral Tony Kevin, commander in chief, U.S. Pacific Command. It was the ninth such e-mail he had sent in forty-eight hours. Each had elicited a standardized reply, not from the admiral himself mind you, but from some trained monkey on his personal staff.
Pope typed, stabbing at the keys:
Need I remind you of the support this Project elicits at THE VERY HIGHEST LEVELS OF GOVERN- MENT. I would not wish to be in your shoes, Ad- miral Kevin, when I explain to your superiors that we have gone over budget while being dragged into this pointless fiasco. The NAGOYA is a research vessel, not a warship, and we should have been allowed to continue our trials unmo- lested in the perfectly safe testing range off Perth. As small as they are, the Australian navy are more than capable of fending off any drunken fishermen who might have strayed too close.
Therefore I DEMAND that we be freed from this two-penny opera and allowed to return to our test schedule as originally planned. I await your earliest reply. And that means YOURS, Admi- ral Kevin. Not some junior baboon!
That’ll put a rocket under his fat ass, thought Pope. Bureau- crats hate it when you threaten to go over their heads. It means they might actually have to stagger to their feet and do some- thing for a change.
Spleen vented for the moment, he keyed into the vidlink that connected him with the Project control room. A Japanese man with a shock of unruly, thick black hair answered the hail.
“How do we look for a power-up this morning, Yoshi?” Pope asked. “I’m anxious to get back on schedule.”
Standing at a long, curving bank of flatscreens Professor Yoshi Murayama, an unusually tall cosmic string theorist from Honshu, blew out his cheeks and shrugged. “I can’t see why not from this end. We’re just about finished entering the new data sets. We’re good to go, except youknow that Kolhammer won’t like it.”
“Kolhammer’s a chickenshit,” Pope said somewhat mourn- fully. “I really don’t care what he thinks. He’s not qualified to tell us what we can and cannot do. You are.”
“Like I said,” the Japanese Nobel winner responded. “I don’t see a problem. Just a beautiful set of numbers.”
“Of course.” Pope nodded. “Everyone else feel the same?” he asked, raising his voice so that it projected into the room beyond Murayama. The space was surprisingly small for such a mo- mentous undertaking, no bigger than a suburban living room really. Large glowing monitors shared the area with half a dozen senior Project researchers, each staffing a workstation.
His question caught them off-guard. Their boss enjoyed a hard-won reputation as a thoroughly unpleasant little prick with an amazingly rigid pole up his ass. A couple of them exchanged quick glances, but nobody said anything for a few moments un- til Barnes, their magnetic ram technician, ventured a reply.
“Well, it’s not our fault we fell behind. But you can bet we’ll get blamed if we don’t hustle to catch up.”
“Exactly!” Pope replied. “Let’s prepare for a test run at point- zero-one efficiency. That should be enough to confirm a stabi- lized effect with the new figures. Are we all agreed?”
They were.
natural gas carrier. Her keel had been laid down in Korea, with the fit-out split between San Francisco and Tokyo, reflecting the multinational nature of her funding. She fit in with the sleek warships of the Multinational Force the way a hippo would with a school of swordfish.
Her presence was a function of the speed with which the cri- sis in Jakarta had developed. The USS Leyte Gulf, a stealth cruiser from the Clinton’s battle group, had been riding shotgun over the Nagoya’s sea trials in the benign waters off Western Australia. When the orders came down that the carrier and her battle group were to move immediately into the Wetar Strait the Nagoya had been left with no choice but to tag along until an es- cort could be assigned to shepherd her safely back to Hawaii. It was a situation nobody liked, least of all Professor Manning Pope, the leader of the Nagoya team.
Crouched over a console in his private quarters, Pope mut- tered under his breath as he hammered out yet another enraged e-mail directly to Admiral Tony Kevin, commander in chief, U.S. Pacific Command. It was the ninth such e-mail he had sent in forty-eight hours. Each had elicited a standardized reply, not from the admiral himself mind you, but from some trained monkey on his personal staff.
Pope typed, stabbing at the keys:
Need I remind you of the support this Project elicits at THE VERY HIGHEST LEVELS OF GOVERN- MENT. I would not wish to be in your shoes, Ad- miral Kevin, when I explain to your superiors that we have gone over budget while being dragged into this pointless fiasco. The NAGOYA is a research vessel, not a warship, and we should have been allowed to continue our trials unmo- lested in the perfectly safe testing range off Perth. As small as they are, the Australian navy are more than capable of fending off any drunken fishermen who might have strayed too close.
Therefore I DEMAND that we be freed from this two-penny opera and allowed to return to our test schedule as originally planned. I await your earliest reply. And that means YOURS, Admi- ral Kevin. Not some junior baboon!
That’ll put a rocket under his fat ass, thought Pope. Bureau- crats hate it when you threaten to go over their heads. It means they might actually have to stagger to their feet and do some- thing for a change.
Spleen vented for the moment, he keyed into the vidlink that connected him with the Project control room. A Japanese man with a shock of unruly, thick black hair answered the hail.
“How do we look for a power-up this morning, Yoshi?” Pope asked. “I’m anxious to get back on schedule.”
Standing at a long, curving bank of flatscreens Professor Yoshi Murayama, an unusually tall cosmic string theorist from Honshu, blew out his cheeks and shrugged. “I can’t see why not from this end. We’re just about finished entering the new data sets. We’re good to go, except youknow that Kolhammer won’t like it.”
“Kolhammer’s a chickenshit,” Pope said somewhat mourn- fully. “I really don’t care what he thinks. He’s not qualified to tell us what we can and cannot do. You are.”
“Like I said,” the Japanese Nobel winner responded. “I don’t see a problem. Just a beautiful set of numbers.”
“Of course.” Pope nodded. “Everyone else feel the same?” he asked, raising his voice so that it projected into the room beyond Murayama. The space was surprisingly small for such a mo- mentous undertaking, no bigger than a suburban living room really. Large glowing monitors shared the area with half a dozen senior Project researchers, each staffing a workstation.
His question caught them off-guard. Their boss enjoyed a hard-won reputation as a thoroughly unpleasant little prick with an amazingly rigid pole up his ass. A couple of them exchanged quick glances, but nobody said anything for a few moments un- til Barnes, their magnetic ram technician, ventured a reply.
“Well, it’s not our fault we fell behind. But you can bet we’ll get blamed if we don’t hustle to catch up.”
“Exactly!” Pope replied. “Let’s prepare for a test run at point- zero-one efficiency. That should be enough to confirm a stabi- lized effect with the new figures. Are we all agreed?”
They were.
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