"Fifteen minutes, twenty seconds." Another voice stated calmly. This time it was his Executive Officer (XO), one Commander Irene Hayes.
He hadn't exactly needed to ask how long it had took. The timer in front showed him, and everyone else on the command deck, plainly enough. It was the act of hearing the words that he wanted to sink into the crew. He sighed.
"Bloody hell, that was two minutes longer than last time!" The officer exclaimed, the frustration in his words clear enough for all to hear. He attempted to compose himself before continuing. "Mister Blevins, what happened?"
The young Lieutenant turned to meet his gaze, a look of shame washing over the mans lightly tanned, young and clean shaven face. His dark brown hair was short cut and neat. The finely defined lines only just visible under his duty cap.
"I'm sorry Captain," Blevins said with a hint of annoyance in his voice. "The system crashed on me during the reboot, so I had to reboot it again."
Captain Hugh Llewellyn sighed again and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. An old habit.
"It's not your fault Leftenant, you did everything by the book." Captain Llewellyn admitted, ceasing the rubbing of his nose and dropping his hands back to the sides. "I just wish the MoD would test these things before they send them out."
"With respect, sir, I'm sure they did." Commander Haynes spoke up. "But the Battleaxe isn't exactly a top of the line ship. We're a forty some year old gen one destroyer. The architecture's old. It's not surprising that we're going to have some issues getting new software to play nice."
Captain Llewellyn sat back in his command console chair and stretched out. Haynes was right. The HMS Battleaxe was an old ship. One of the first commissioned by the British Commonwealth Navy in 2130 as part of the first generation of deep space capable warships that the nations of Earth had ever created. Only a spare couple years after Humanity's First Contact with intelligent and extra-solar life. Which, by association, made the ship only younger than him by about fifteen years. But that didn't mean he had to like it. The Battleaxe was his first real command.
Sure he had commanded patrol skiffs and such, but those were always changing hands. New command officers were always given them to test their worthiness of a coveted captaincy. They had always been in preparation for this, for the Battleaxe. This was a real ship. A true black sky command. Llewellyn loved every minute of it.
"I suppose you're right Commander." Llewellyn agreed and turned to face the younger Lieutenant once more. "Leftenant, get with the engineering team. See if we can't find a way to make this software work. At the very least I want to have a way to switch back to the old OS if things end up going pear-shaped on us."
The Lieutenant stood up and gave a crisp salute with a 'Sir!' and quickly made his way to one of the bridges access points. Llewellyn sunk back in his chair, the support gel hugging him ever so slightly as he did.. Just a few short days ago they had received the the newest and latest upgrade from the British Commonwealth Naval Command (courtesy of the Ministry of Defense) to the primary operating system that all Commonwealth ships used.
The OS controlled everything from the flight controls and target acquisition right down to the ships internal communications system and lighting. It was essentially the brain (or probably more accurate the consciousness, as the physical 'brain' would be the memory banks in the computer core) of the whole ship. Without it they were pretty much floating in a vacuum tight air bubble in space.
These upgrades weren't terribly uncommon. The MoD would have their tech labs cook up a new one every few years or so. This was the first update that Captain Llewellyn had the pleasure of putting HMS Battleaxe through himself. Some of the more senior staff that had been around for the last upgrade had made sure to inform the new Captain that his new ship was starting to become a little finicky in her old age when it came to new computer systems, or really any new systems in general.
The Battleaxe had at one point been a state of the art warship, the envy of its numerous other human counterparts. That time, however, had passed. Now she was a relic of a past age. Refitted time and time again with newer and more incompatible and complex parts. The only reason she was still in service was because the Crown had yet to authorize funding for the building of newer, more advanced ships.
Besides, they needed something to stick in the ass end of nowhere to show the public that the Commonwealth wasn't leaving their new colonies completely undefended. And that was definitely where they were, nowhere. New Holland was a large ball of mainly rock and snow with an ecosystem that was not unlike the taigas of northern Europe. The equator was fairly temperate with an average seasonal temperature of about fifteen degrees Celsius. It had trees, rivers and lakes for as far as the eye could see, not to mention it's share of cold hardy critters.
As far as anyone with any kind of knowledge could tell, the planet seemed to be going through some kind of ice age brought on by what they thought was a major global cataclysmic event some 3000 years previous. The generally accepted theory was a large asteroid collision had caused the orbit of the planet to shift slightly, along with throwing ash and dust into the atmosphere causing a 'nuclear winter' of sorts. That theory seemed to be backed up by a massive collection of rare earth metals and other valuable elements in a fairly tight grouping in the planets southern hemisphere.
And hence the desire to stage a colony here. The mineral wealth of the planet was incredible and the oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere (just a little thinner than Earth's, but not unbearable) was just an added bonus. It was much easier to attract miners if you could guarantee them that they would have a solid 1.2 G's under their feet and breathable air around their head. It had become almost a constant in the news hearing about asteroid mining accidents. While it was a very lucrative career, the statistics didn't lie.
Since it's inception in the later 21st century, it had quickly overtaken all others as the most deadly profession in Human history. At least on New Holland if shit went sideways, you could still breath. There was however one other issue however that seemed to cause a bit of concern from future and potential colonists/employees. It was simply that they were at the very edge of Human explored and inhabited space. What laid beyond Hew Holland's seven planet solar system was a general unknown to most people. The wild frontier as it were.
That was in part the reason why Captain Llewellyn had insisted on running tests of the new ship OS in the first place. While Humanity in general wasn't in any kind of active hostilities with any of its galactic neighbors, Llewellyn wanted just to be sure that if it did ever come down to it, they would be able to defend themselves from whatever threat may be posed to them. Running a drill for the possibility that their ships computer system failed was what they were practicing today.
The computer would be shut down in different ways simulating an electronic attack on their system. It was up to the engineering teams to diagnose the issue and get the computer back up and running before the ship became nothing more than a slowly expanding ball of debris and ionized gases. Their new OS however seemed to be fighting them every step of the way. Perhaps the MoD had left some kind of error in the core programming before they sent it out. Or perhaps it was just the age of the Battleaxe showing itself.
In any case it would most certainly be another day or so before they could know for sure. In the mean time the Captain didn't enjoy the idea of being defenseless for 15 minutes while their computer decided whether or not it wanted to come back online. Hopefully the young Lieutenant Blevins and the engineering team would be able to work out some kind of solution. Just in case. Letting the thought stew in his mind, Llewellyn started halfheartedly tapping away at his terminal's keyboard.
He had about a dozen or so department reports to review before the next shift change. Operational reports, inventory lists, new department duty rosters... Nothing terribly interesting. He supposed he could go to his office and read them, but the bridge was as good a place as any. Besides, the tapping of keyboards and the low chatter of his crew was kind of relaxing. It was those little sounds of life that he couldn't get locked in his office. He was scanning over some long range telemetry report when his thoughts were interrupted.
"Captain Llewellyn?" He could hear a voice call to him.
Llewellyn looked up from his screen to see Sub-Lieutenant Rodger Sheppard turned around in his seat, his deep brown eyes looking intently at him. Sheppard was the ships junior communications officer. A pleasant enough young man if not a little quiet some times. Captain Llewellyn shifted himself straighter and acknowledged the young officer.