Chapter 63 - Important People[]
LCN Shipyard Gibbs
Space Dock 41
Gibbs Star System
Lyran Commonwealth
January, 3098
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Mjolnir Class Battlecruiser
Dock 41 was 'home' to the former LAS (now LCS) Mjolnir, the prototype for the class of vessels contracted under Katherine Steiner-Davion. Built under Nondi Steiner's regency, and ridiculously outdone by dint of being helmed by officers whose chief asset wasn't skill at naval operations, but instead loyalty to the Kathrinist regime and Nondi Steiner. The Iggy (Yggsdrasill) had fallen in the civil war, the Fylgia in the Jihad's opening salvos, and the Molly had been here since the first B level flight. An orphan stranded by a perfect storm of manufacturing defects, engineering change implementation, budget cuts, and having been outright replaced early on by the Frederick Steiner class battleships at the upper end, and the Landmark class destroyers at the lower.
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Landmark Class Destroyer (Side view)
Too complete and large to simply scrap, and too crippled and vulnerable to deploy, she rode on the lists mostly as a decommissioned hulk and receiving ship for the yard.
Well, that all was true until someone blew up battleship row at Tharkad.
Gary Silber-Cohen didn't see what most of his peers did. That being a boondoggle that swallowed maintenance funding and served mainly as an object lesson in hasty, poor decision making combined with shoddy engineering.
He also didn't see what many of the politicians saw: A pile of resources left to rot on a siding.
Then, he was born in the rocks, and had served as chief engineer on three classes of vessel through his career. Beginning with Coast Guard Sampan II's, then the series leader of the Landmark class, and ended his active duty as chief engineer on the Battleship Hermann Steiner.
To Gary, the Molly was a damaged child, one that he alone had the skills and vision to heal.
The contract was with the Duran offices of Semier Data-Tron, the prime contractor for the Freds, and his firm was a subcontractor.
In this case, hired to do the work that the prime contractors would otherwise have to risk default by not doing: the repair and refit of the sole remaining Mjolnir class vessel.
The initial contract had been let to make her a museum ship, but that was superseded by the Archon's directive: the LCN needed ships, any ships, and while the yards were already working on new Landmarks, and new Freds. This was a core and an engine package that worked (mostly) on a hull that was extensively compromised, but included lots and lots of lovely ferro-carbide heavy plating.
He drifted into position, and brought the first workframe over the join seam at section 424, rib 900.
The refit was horrifyingly expensive you could build two equivalent vessels for the cost, but the LCN didn't have a good mid-sized combatant and wouldn't until the design protocols for the Marsden III class medium protected cruisers could be finalized. Then, it would take years to get the yards spun up and tooling in place to build them.
Parts for the Mjolnir class, on the other hand, could be turned out in weeks. Provided the rebuild on the Molly herself proved out, and the prototype would again serve as a prototype. In this case, integrating new technologies on the Molly, which would be used on the follow-ons whose spines were already in the forging process at Duran, here at Gibbs, and at Buena and Winter.
His company had thirty six months to get her peeled, her frames updated, repaired, or replaced, and put her back together. A task of herculean scale, but the Zilber-Cohen shipfitters hadn't gone into business because there was a surplus of easy, low effort, long lead time jobs that could be done in comfortable surroundings.
He was here because he was bold enough to bid, with enough skilled manpower and capital to make the attempt.
"Let's get to work lads and ladies."