Conrad's Last Campaign by Leo A Frankowski & Rodger Olsen & Chris Ciulla

Author:Leo A Frankowski & Rodger Olsen & Chris Ciulla [Frankowski, Leo A & Olsen, Rodger & Ciulla, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781495910302
Amazon: 149591030X
Barnesnoble: 149591030X
Publisher: Createspace
Published: 2014-01-31T17:00:00+00:00

Letter home from Captain William Orbitz

January 12, 1264

Dearest

I may not be home for several more weeks, but with military secrecy the way it is, I may be reading this to you myself.

I am still getting used to working with a mixed crew. It was decided that the common crewmen should come from the Tall Ships. This thing is more of a ship than a plane and it needs crew used to handling a nine-hundred foot long craft. Our pilots are knights from the air force but they answer to a first officer who is from a cargo ship. The radio operator who got your job is also from the air force, but the rest of the crew is pure navy.

We anticipate some problems convincing the pilots that they will fly the way the first officer orders rather than by the seat of their pants. The pilots have never flown on a craft so big that they had their commanding officer sitting behind them.

The ship will be almost empty for the first flight. In addition to the regular crew, we’ll have twenty technicians with their tools and spare parts, hydrogen tanks, tanks of sulfuric acid and crates of iron filings. Baring unforeseen trouble, it was decided to make the shakedown cruise the first operational cruise. We’ll fly to a seaport (I don’t know which yet), pick up cargo and head out into the wilds on our first real trip.

You know it took three days to fill the balloons the first time, with technicians hanging everywhere looking for leaks and tightening up connections. You would have loved the controlled chaos. There must have been two hundred workers here at one time, testing control cables, running the engines, erecting partitions in the crew quarters. It reminded me of an ant heap that had been stirred with a stick.

You’ve seen the flight deck or course. It still looks roomy even with the five flight officers and all the equipment in it. I finally convinced the engineers that we were NOT going to literally stand watch for twelve hours a day and they welded tall stools at most of the stations, then the pilots had another argument about seat belts. They finally convinced the engineers that even though they weren’t going to do loop the loop, a firm seat is important even in a swaying boat.

The crew quarters are about the same as you saw them three weeks ago. A few partitions, some light weight tables bolted to the deck, some posts for hammocks, and no galley. It was decided that the first ship would go with cold sandwiches and canned food. The galley, if you can call it that, consists of a gas-powered samovar for hot tea and a couple of trays of hot water that you can heat cans of food in.

I have the only private cabin, a spacious eight foot cubical with a bolted down bed, a bolted down table, two chairs and a sink – with a water bottle over it and a bucket under it.

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