After showering and putting on a fresh uniform I left my quarters. As I walked down the passageway, I thought about how I always seemed to be exhausted after periods of high stress ended. As I thought through this, I realised Anne was right when she told me I needed to take a step back and relax for a while. Still, whether I wanted to be or not, I was in command of FNS Destiny, at least for a while. I was responsible for the safety and the wellbeing of both the ship and her crew till I could hand over to the authorities in Cotoni system. I headed towards the Captains office to update the logs and some other paperwork. On the way, I felt a need to check with the bridge to see how things were going. When I arrived on the bridge, Anne was already there sitting in her chair, holding down the fort. As soon as I entered the bridge, I asked her two questions. First, I asked if she had slept since she put me to bed and then I asked her how the ship was going. As it turned out, she’d slept and the ship was fine so I simply relieved her and told her to go relax for a while. She rose from the chair, snapped off a very smart salute towards me and quietly left the bridge. I hadn’t specified a time for her to return because I already knew she wouldn’t be gone for too long, she was far too good an officer to neglect her duties.
As I sat at the Captains Station, I idly wondered what the mistake she made was that cost her a shot at command track and relegated her to being a protocol officer. After mulling this over for a short while, I realized my mind was drifting and quickly put my thoughts about Anne’s past aside till another time when it might be more relevant. Once again, I thought about how nearly all of the people I’d come into contact with since I woke in FNS Destiny’s medical bay were reacting to me. These people seemed to want to listen to me. They were looking to me to save them, while protecting me and taking care of me in the background. I really could never understand it, not then. In all honesty, I do understand it much better now though, but only because quite a number of people within the Federation have taken the time to walk me through the whole thing, explaining the reasons why. As it turned out, being able to influence these people the way I had so far, ultimately saved all of our lives including my own. I checked the current date and remembered I’d agreed to take a step back for a couple of days so right now, I should be effectively relaxing. Instead of thinking too hard about what we’d be doing next, I decided to confine myself to checking on the ships status and monitoring the crew’s morale.
On previous occasions, Eri in particular told me the crew took their que on how hard to work from me. It seemed they watched me to see what I was doing and how hard I was working, then they would try to keep up. This effectively meant, for me to get them to take a break, I needed to do the same otherwise they would just keep working. I decided we would have one more day of reduced activity now, then we would work hard to adequately prepare the ship for a potential battle after we down jumped. Once these preparations were completed, we should I hoped, be able to have a couple more days of reduced activity just before returning to real space in the Cotoni System. I wanted everyone well rested by then because once we returned to real space, we would need to maintain a heightened state of readiness, till we knew the pirate was done with us or destroyed, or we at least had the Federation Navy between him and us.
Another thing I wanted to do was to have the crew scrub FNS Destiny up as much as possible before we entered the next system. This was to demonstrate pride in the ship and show we had not allowed our standards to slip. Up until the final battle with the boarders took place, FNS Destiny was a clean tidy ship with nothing out of place. We’d done quite a lot to clean her up since then but were still reeling from one crisis to the next, never quite getting on top of the situations we found ourselves in. After a while, I realised thinking about these mundane matters really was quite relaxing, certainly, it was much easier than making life and death decisions all the time.
A while later, I was sitting quietly in my chair on the bridge, thinking peaceful thoughts, when Anne came back into the compartment. She approached me before quietly asking me if I would please come with her. When I asked where too, she would not say where, or why we were going, instead, she just repeated the request and walked a few paces toward the door before turning towards me again and beckoning for me to follow. After looking at her for a couple of seconds, I rose from my chair before handing over control to the senior rating then followed her off the bridge. As I departed, I thought I caught a hint of a smirk on the ratings face but couldn’t be absolutely sure. As we made our way through the ship, I found myself wondering where we were going, not to mention when we would arrive. Finally, Anne turned into a reasonable sized compartment and I followed close behind. Inside, were all the people, other than Hersi and the four pirates we’d captured, who we’d rescued from the pirate ship. I looked around and noticed a buffet with food and drinks was set up to one side of the compartment. As I entered, they all began clapping their hands or stamping their feet, all of them with big smiles on their faces. When everyone quietened down, Lady Conti, now every inch the Lady, stepped to the front and started speaking.
She said, “Soon, we will all be safely back within the Federation of Sentient Peoples. We all understand we are not home yet. We all understand we might still die before we arrive there. However, nobody would argue that we could have made it this far without the crew of this ship, FNS Destiny, led by this man, this Captain, Colin Gordon. Under his leadership, this ship has achieved the seemingly impossible and under his leadership we are now only about fifteen days from the Federation and safety. That is only fifteen days before the Federation will know what has happened to us.”
She turned to face be then continued, “Colin Gordon, we know that soon you will be busy making this ship ready for her arrival in the Cotoni system. We will almost certainly not have an opportunity to do this after now so we all agreed we would like to thank you for everything you have done for us so far and what you are trying to do to make sure we all have a future. Thank you Colin, you have done so much for those of us here that we will never be able to adequately repay you, we will all be forever in your debt.”
What could I do, but accept their thank you on behalf of the crew. Of course, I would make sure I passed this thank you on to the crew as well, especially the Troopers. Conti had arranged some light refreshments for everyone. Once the formalities were over, I stayed for a while, chatting with the people who were there, asking how their recovery was going, generally saying nothing much at all but simply making idle chat, trying to include everyone I could in the conversations. When they thanked me I simply commented that thanks were not necessary, being able to see them safe and happy was reward enough, and it was.
I noticed one man, a human, looking to be perhaps my age, who seemed to be observing and evaluating me. I did not have any sense of threat from him, just that he was observing and appraising me. If there was any threat, I didn’t detect it, certainly there was no sense of physical threat. I found out later his name is Jack Lanning. Jack is a man with a lot of influence within the Federation Navy who eventually became a close friend and adviser to me. Conti knew who he was but did not tell me, or for that matter, anybody else at the time. He was not on her ship when she was captured but on a small freighter taken by the pirates a few days earlier. I did not know it yet, but by the time I was taken into custody after our arrival in the Cotoni system, I would have some good heavyweight support working for me in the background. Some of that support came from quarters I could not even begin to imagine right then.
In the end, I stayed at Conti’s little get together long enough to be able to make sure I spoke to everyone who was there including Jack Lanning. He asked me how I was coping but his words seemed to be more supportive of my efforts than anything else. He didn’t try to give me advice, he told me later that as far as he could see I didn’t need it, I was doing fine as it was. Honestly, If I’d known who and what he was at the time, I would have tried to offer him command of the ship. He told me later he would not have accepted it simply
because it would have been too disruptive to the crew, the same reason Anne gave me. As it turns out, he thought I was doing as well or better than he could do anyway. Except for the people there saying thank you, nothing of consequence was said, not really, but these people needed to do this and I did not have the heart to deny it to them. I suppose in different ways, we had all been to hell and back over the last few months so the feeling of relief currently running through the ship was completely understandable.
When Conti’s little get together had run its course, I excused myself so I could walk around the ship showing my face to the crew and extending Conti’s thank you to them as I met them. Anne decided to accompany me, I think to see what I had to say about the surprise but there was really nothing to say to her, she was just looking after me. As I moved about the ship, observing the crew, they all seemed happier, more relaxed. There were a lot of smiles as I passed people in the passageways and saw them in various compartments. Not all the smiles were from the crew either, some were even from our prisoners, at least the ones who we were allowing to work around the ship. Of course, the ones we had in the brig, especially those who were involved in the mutiny were all likely to end up dead once the authorities decided their fate, they were certainly not smiling.
Eventually, we made our way back to the bridge. Of course, everything was still fine there because usually, not much went wrong in Jump Space, and if it did, I would have probably known before the bridge told me. By now, I realised it was time for me to think about getting myself back into the game. I thought to myself we were going to need every bit of the time between now and our final confrontation after we down jumped into Cotoni system. We needed the available time to prepare for what was to come. Even at this stage, I wasn’t really thinking about my own safety or future, really it was on hold, instead, I was thinking about the safety of the crew and passengers aboard FNS Destiny. If I could help them to reach home safely, then I had something to be truly proud of no matter what else happened.
THE LAST FLIGHT
After we’d rested for the two days I’d allocated, FNS Destiny’s crew were bright eyed and ready to do all the tasks we needed them to do. I arranged for our working prisoners to clean up within the ship while the repair crews continued work sealing as much of the exterior as they could with the limited fabricator feedstock and other materials they still had available. By this time, all the external hull plating we were able to fabricate was fitted but we still needed to complete some of the final sealing. This left a single hole in the external hull needing to be closed at some point when materials were once again available. The hull would look like a patchwork mess because of all the repairs we’d done since leaving the Zafar system but she was still able to sail proudly through the cosmos, looking more like a starship than a refugee from the scrap-yard.
This crew were entirely responsible for this achievement, they’d worked miracles under difficult and trying conditions and I wanted them to be proud of everything they’d achieved. If I was given the opportunity, I wanted them to be given some kind of unit award for their efforts. My understanding of human nature suggested to me that presenting this ship to the authorities in the best shape we reasonably could would impress them. I wanted to present those same authorities with a ship that was clearly a Federation Naval Service ship, perhaps a little beaten up, but never broken. I hoped the Federation viewed these things in the same way they would have back home.
In parallel to this, I also wanted to take the time to consider what options we may have available to us when we eventually entered the Cotoni system. I called a meeting of the senior people from the various departments, beginning with Navigation. I started with the Navigation department because I had some vague ideas of how we might be able to park the ship somewhere reasonably close to Cotoni Station or perhaps the ship yard, I didn’t really care which. My first thought was perhaps we could use some kind of slingshot manoeuvre for braking to try to minimise our usage of the available reaction mass. I didn’t think we would know where the various planets were in the system till sometime after we actually down jumped. Still, I hoped discussing the option with the Navigation department would at least start them thinking about our options. They listened to my ideas then told me they would like to give the matter a little thought before giving me an answer.
After I finished with Navigation, I called the Communications people in to talk about how we would be able to transmit as much information as possible, as quickly as we could when we dropped back into real space in the Cotoni System. I asked questions like, could I be talking to someone on one channel while data was being transmitted on another. I hoped to be able to transmit the ships logs to the appropriate people as quickly as possible while simultaneously yelling for help and being able to talk to people if the need arose. As I hoped and expected, this was indeed all possible because the ship had a sophisticated communications system with multiple radios, laser communications nodes and even a subspace communications system that could be used for faster than light communications within a single system. They suggested to me that we should dedicate a single laser comms channel to the download of the ships logs while using standard radio for the requests for help and the subspace system as well to allow near real time communications with other people within the system.
I was very happy with the options our communications technicians presented to me so asked them to put together a series of files with timestamps so whoever decided to look at them could tell what went on. The first block I wanted sent was one beginning from the time we bought the freed captives to FNS Destiny from the pirate ship up to us entering jump space for our transit into the Cotoni system. This was to be followed up by a series of files covering the time starting when we entered the Zafar System till the beginning of the previous block, then from the arrival in Earth space till entry into the Zafar System and finally, after that, everything else.
Now the Communications technicians understood my requirements, I sent them off to begin work on the task of putting all the necessary data into the correct order ready to be sent as soon as we down jumped into the Cotoni System. In addition to the larger data packets, I also had the com-techs prepare a number of much smaller ones that could, I hoped be used as supporting evidence for the way I intended to answer some of the harder questions I expected would be asked after we established communications with the authorities. For example, one of these smaller data packets detailed the efforts some members of the crew had put into convincing me to take command and also the oath I took when I finally did. Another simply detailed the meeting I’d had with the crew when they were given the chance to reject me as their leader.
After I finished giving my instructions to the com-techs, I made my way to Engineering to find out how much reaction mass remained. They told me we only had enough for about one hour on full burn. I hoped and expected this would be more than enough for our purposes. In fact, I hoped to only need reaction mass for some maneuvering and for a few short burns of the main engines to drop our speed down to a stage where we would be able to safely enter a parking orbit, hopefully not too far from Cotoni Station. I also wanted to retain enough reaction mass when we finally stopped to be able to use the maneuvering thrusters in case we needed to dodge something while we were waiting to dock at the Station. Of course, the amount of reaction mass we would need to expend depended very heavily on what the people from Navigation were able to tell me after we exited jump in the Cotoni System. At the moment though, we really did not even know if it was possible to make it to the station, at least not without some help.
From the Engineering perspective, it turned out that FNS Destiny was in far better shape than any of us had any right to expect. This was particularly true when we considered the beating she had been subjected to over the last two months. When we looked at why this would be the case, we realised that many of the repairs Engineering had been required to carry out had, as a side effect, resolved issues that would normally have been dealt with d
uring the ships post cruise refit. By anybody’s standards, Engineering had done a remarkable job of keeping the ship running and repairing the damage she sustained along the way, particularly over the last few months. They’d even been able to adapt the air scrubbers we’d salvaged from the pirate ship so they would work in Destiny’s air recycling system. Meetings just like these, continued throughout the rest of the day and on into the following days as we continued identifying, then working the issues and planning ways of dealing with currently unknown conditions at our destination.
The days dragged on till we reached a point only two days before our scheduled down jump into Cotoni System. At this point, I felt we had planned the situation to death so I called a halt to all but the essential work needed to keep the ship running safely. I hoped to give everyone an opportunity to relax before we were once again required to be on our toes with a pirate pursuing us. I wanted everybody as rested and ready for whatever was to come as we could manage before we made our down jump. Somehow, I expected we would not have very much time for rest between entering Cotoni system, and when we reached Cotoni Station. I also suspected we, or at least the crew, probably would not have much rest even then. During this time, people were somewhat more subdued than was the case during the previous stand down. They all knew this time we were in the end game. If the pirate continued to pursue us into Cotoni system, we expected him to do everything in his power to either destroy us or capture us before the Federation Navy could intervene. All we could hope for was that the Federation Navy, or at least elements of it were close enough to help us if he followed us through the jump and decided to press his attack.
Star Man 1: Star Bourne Page 39
