Read Online A Planned Improvisation by Jonathan Edward Feinstein - Free Book Online Page A

computer models. The improvements were her ideas.” Velvet Blair had been a computer techie back in the Twenty-first century, but had been working closely with Ronnie at the shipyard in Questo on ship and weapons designs. Park suspected the two women were a couple, but they had never openly displayed such a relationship and he had been too polite to ask. “She also gets the credit for our new targeting computers. I think you’re going to like this. I still haven’t managed to crack the problem of our stasis shielding putting the whole ship into stasis, not just the outer skin, but now that won’t be as much of a liability.
    “The new computers are programed to calculate our ship trajectory under stasis, including all the rolling and pitching we go through as we are shoved across the sky,” Ronnie announced, “and can also track whatever they were targeting at the moment stasis began during those microsecond pauses in stasis. So now all we have to do is choose our targets before the stasis plating activates and the computers will keep shooting when they have a chance even if we don’t have the time to react ourselves. We believe it will work much better with missiles rather than beam weapons, since the beams will be chopped up into very short bursts, but the real test will be in battle conditions.”
    “No matter what,” Park replied, “it will be better than not shooting at all. We do have safeguards against shooting allies, don’t we?”
    “That’s a little iffy,” Ronnie admitted. “The missiles will go where we shoot them as always, the beams might splash allied ships as the computer resynchs with the target. We thought of placing transponders on all Earthly ships, but we decided it would be too easy for an enemy to fake the signal and if we encrypted, it would take longer to analyze the signal than the computer has while out of stasis. However, while untested, I’m fairly sure we will cause more damage to an opponent than to an ally.”
    “What special training will I and my gunners need for this new system?” Iris asked. “Had I known, I would have had a full crew of gunners this trip for the practice.”
    “No special training will be necessary,” Ronnie assured her. “You’re already using the computer for assigning targets to your gunners and for aiming. The machine will continue to aim at your intended targets until they are destroyed or you counter the instructions.”
    “I can’t do that while we’re in stasis,” Iris pointed out.
    “If we’re in stasis we are still under attack,” Ronnie told her. “Also if the programmed target is destroyed, the computer will pick any other hostile ship firing at us.”
    “It sounds good,” Iris admitted. “We’ll have to see how well it works in practice.”
    Vel and I have another surprise for you,” Ronnie went on. “We’ve creased the range of our induced stasis effect from ten feet to over one mile. That’s still fairly close in space terms but a vast improvement. A stasis missile will be able to go to work well before impact. Also I’ve built some misslies with engines that can be throttled back and even coast a while. The result is the flight will be slower, but can be fired off from longer rang, giving us the first shot if we get into a battle like three years ago. The guidance systems on all missiles had been improved for greater accuracy as well.”
    “I haven’t had many accuracy problems,” Iris pointed out, “but that’s good to know. Anything else?”
    “What do you want?” Ronnie laughed. “Miracles?”
    “We can always use a miracle or two,” Park smiled, “but I’ll settle for a working star drive.”
    Saturn was on the other side of the Sun, so there was nothing of interest in the screens by the time they reached Saturnian orbit. “Just the way I like it,” Ronnie told them, sitting at a special console on the bridge. She had just finished the EVA during which she and two helpers had manually removed the