I am told the Codai are considering options for making the planet habitable but so far, the magnitude of the required investment to achieve this has defeated them. In any case, right now I was happy there was no one below who could be hurt if things went badly for us. Just before our slingshot maneuver commenced, our escorting Patrol boat stood off a little to give us space. While he would still perform his own slingshot maneuver, he had no need to do the aero-braking part of it simply because he had plenty of reaction mass to achieve the remainder of his mission and still dock at the station. His slingshot maneuver was only intended to allow him to keep us in view.
As we dipped more deeply into the atmosphere, the buffeting increased and I must confess I felt a little apprehension but as I glanced around the bridge and saw the calm manner the bridge crew went about their duties, I found myself strangely calmed. When I looked at her, Anne seemed to be enjoying the experience with a huge grin plastered across her face. In hindsight, I’m not really surprised, since we’d rescued her, she was living a dream, she was part of the command staff on a starship and had actually seen action, defending the ship against a pirate menace.
I asked her, “Are you enjoying this Ensign Fraser?”
Her reply surprised me a little as she said, “Oh yes Sir, I am. It is not very often that someone does this. This will be in the news media right across the Federation. Whether you like it or not, we will all be quite famous, with everyone wanting an interview, everyone wanting to meet us.”
As she said all this, I just buried my face in my hands, hiding from the world. Anne saw this and quietly chuckled at my reaction as she asked, “What, you don’t want to be famous?”
I replied, “No I don’t.”
Anne’s face took on a more serious look and she told me she would a chance to talk to me in what she called ‘my office’ after we had completed this maneuver. I agreed and we sat to wait in silence Anne, still smiling at the adventure, me wondering about what being famous in this society might mean and how much trouble I was in with the Ensign. Unknown to us at the time, the Patrol boat was standing off as we swung around the planet, recording the entire thing. Eventually, the video record of our maneuver did in fact, effectively go viral, playing on all the Federation media, along with still images and the story of FNS Destiny’s adventures with the pirates and my part in the whole thing. For now, though, we began to rise out of the atmosphere, the buffeting lessening as we did so till finally it stopped altogether when we completed our slingshot on a course towards a point in space near where Cotoni Station would be when we arrived there in about fifteen hours’ time. Once we completed our maneuver, Anne rose from her seat and headed towards the bridge hatch. I took the hint and after handing over control to the most senior rating, exited to follow Anne to the Captains office.
When we were inside with the door closed, Anne turned towards me and with a serious look on her face said, “Sir, while the public don’t know it yet, you are already famous. Not because of that maneuver but because of everything you have done since FNS Destiny arrived at Zafar. Everyone who knows you also knows you are no glory hound. You’ve not sought to make yourself look important, you are one of the humblest people I ever met but whether you like it or not, you are famous, or soon will be. I want you to know that as long as they will allow me, I will have your back. I will do my best to protect you from the vultures just as you have done your best to protect the rest of us from the pirates. Please don’t be angry about this, it is just how things are. You are a hero, I have never met a more selfless man in my life and you are very good at what you’ve been doing. If they will allow it, when this is over I would be honoured if you will allow me to take you to Cambridge to introduce you to some of my family. Many of them have served, or are currently serving in the Federation Navy so I feel certain they would like to meet you especially since you, or at least FNS Destiny’s crew under your command rescued me from that pirate ship.”
“OK,” I said, “I understand what you are saying and will try to make the best of things. In the short term though, I have to deal with whatever the authorities throw my way. There is still the small matter of me being classified as a pirate under Federation law. Please forgive me if I have seemed angry recently, I am just tired and ratty and when I am like that sometimes inappropriate words come out of my mouth before I can put my brain into gear.”
She just smiled before informing me we should go to the mess. She also told me that after we’d eaten, I should rest for a while, at least four or five hours, preferably more, then she would do the same. She said she thought we should both try to be reasonably fresh when we arrived at Cotoni Station because we were very likely to have a few long days once we arrived. As it happened, I had to agree with her because, honestly, the most difficult part of our journey was over and I really was beginning to come down from the stress I’d been under over the last month and honestly it was easier than arguing. My expectation was that once they put me in the brig on the station, I would crash and burn, probably for days. I think the only thing keeping me going at this particular point in time was the fact that in the back of my mind, I was worrying about what was going to happen to me when we eventually arrived and docked at the Station. At least for now, I could relax a little when it came to the crew’s safety, I’d done as I promised and bought them safely back to the Federation, at least the ones who weren’t victims during the mutiny. After I finished eating I took Anne’s advice and went to my quarters so I could try to sleep.
Sleep took a while to come, with my future weighing down my mind but eventually I managed to drop off. I slept for a little over five hours before waking, feeling surprisingly refreshed. I wondered why that was before having a mental shrug and readying myself for what was to come. I only had a few hours to go before I needed to pay the piper for my actions so I made myself as presentable as I was able before leaving my quarters to make my way to the bridge. When I arrived on the bridge, Anne studied me for a moment before smiling and telling me I was early. I have to admit I like Anne’s smiles, her entire face lights up, even her eyes smile. This doesn’t mean I ever had an interest in hitting on her or having that type of relationship with her, just that the smile was a pleasure to observe. Since I met Katherine I have been an unwavering one-woman man. That is still the case and would remain so as long as I had some hope of earning her forgiveness. I simply smiled back at her then told her to go have some rest as well.
I checked with Navigation and Helm about our progress but everything was exactly as we expected. The final braking burn was now only about five hours away. We were still slowing as we approached our final orbit and were in no danger of any collisions. I told both Navigation and Helm they’d done a fine job, especially considering that much of our current positional accuracy was a direct result of decisions they made something like three or four days ago and millions of kilometres from our current location. They’d only needed to make extremely minor course corrections along the way. The time we spent waiting to make our final orbital insertion maneuvers was quite dull really, but time continued to pass till Anne reappeared on the bridge.
I said to her, “We should eat while we have the chance, I think we will be quite busy shortly and I for one, am not sure when I will have a chance to eat again.”
Once again, her eyes smiled as she turned with me to go for food. I found myself hoping she knew something good about my future that I didn’t. As it turned out, she did have some suspicions but she also knew things were likely to get worse for me before they improved. After we’d eaten, we returned to the bridge to watch as Helm and Navigation prepared to place FNS Destiny into her orbit near Cotoni Station. The time approached then the mains started, with occasional bursts of the maneuvering thrusters to adjust attitude while the ship slid towards her final orbital position. Finally, the engines were shut down. We were not in a stationary orbit relative to Cotoni Station yet but the crew, in conjunction with the station’s management and with my full concurrence, d
ecided to maintain a small amount of reaction mass in reserve in case FNS Destiny needed to do any short term maneuvering before we could be docked to the station. Now, we needed to wait while the tugs came out to retrieve us, latched on to our hull then began to drag us back towards the station for final docking.
After the tugs were latched on we slowly moved towards the station, till finally, FNS Destiny was resting only about a metre from one of the docking ports. Various tubes and cables extended from the port and latched onto purpose built points around the main airlock. Between them, these would allow personnel and materials to be transferred backwards and forwards between the ship and the station as required. Grapples locked onto various points along the hull. Once these grapples latched on, FNS Destiny was drawn in slowly till the locks gently kissed with barely a bump. At this point, the locking mechanisms locked into place and FNS Destiny was firmly docked to Cotoni Station. Anne had already posted a leave roster for the crew but none of them could leave the ship till we had clearance from the station. Arrangements were already being made for the prisoners we had in custody to be transferred to the station but I’d heard nothing about what would be happening with me, not yet.
COTONI STATION
As we sat docked to Cotoni Station, I heard various new noises in the ship as equipment automatically plugged various hoses and feeds into external ports. These are intended to replenish her reserves of air, water, reaction mass and fuel, as well as remove liquid and gaseous wastes. For now, we were all restricted to the ship, as we hadn’t received permission for anyone to leave her yet. I asked the Troopers to post a couple of guards at the lock to maintain security and waited, hoping we would have some movement soon. By now, we’d uploaded all the available information the station authorities would need to be able to choose their next course of action. This included the ships logs, records from our prisoner interrogations, sensor records, everything. I’d already been informed I would be contacted when they decided on what they wanted to do next.
A while after we docked, I was contacted by station security who wanted to discuss how we could best ready our high security prisoners for transfer to the station and how to implement the transfer when it was time to do so. We worked through all the risks we could collectively identify. I made a number of suggestions I hoped would improve the overall security till all of the prisoners were successfully transferred. Station security told me there were some security leaks and other issues on the station recently so the officers in charge were quite happy to take most of my suggestions on board. Apparently, the Federation’s version of Naval Intelligence wanted to interrogate all of our prisoners themselves. They told us there were some questions we hadn’t thought to ask. Our high security prisoners were to be moved first. The station felt these people should be transferred to its high security brig, one at a time. We expected this to take quite a lot of time so we immediately began to make preparations for the transfer.
When we were ready, the station sent a contingent of guards to pick up a number of the prisoners. For these high security prisoners, we decided to assign four guards to each prisoner for the transfer. We made sure there was a slight delay between each prisoner and his or her four guards departing. The delay was timed so each group of guards could give mutual support to the teams forward and behind them if one of the groups was to be ambushed. I didn’t know it at the time, but the Troopers we’d previously sent ahead to the station from FNS Destiny, were operating in the background, ready to intervene at any time if any security issues arose during the transfers. In addition to that, the prisoners were all dressed in identical clothing. That clothing was designed to hide distinguishing features such as general build, colour and such, though we could not do anything to disguise their height.
The escorting guards were never told, and never had an opportunity to see who they were transferring so they simply took whichever prisoner they were assigned before heading towards the brig. The prisoners were also sedated, at least enough to make them docile, hooded and gagged so it would, we hoped, have been quite difficult for an outsider to identify any of the people who were being moved. Neither the Troopers who were performing the transfer, nor the station authorities, were told who was being escorted at any specific time. Even when they entered the station’s brig, the escorting guards simply handed a hooded and secured prisoner over before leaving. The prisoners were simply identified by a random number we on FNS Destiny assigned to them and the hoods were not removed till the prisoners finally reached their holding cells. Everyone, including the brig guards, was kept locked down and cut off from all communications with the outside world till the last, high security prisoner transfer was finally completed. Only then did we send details of the prisoner’s names corresponding to their assigned numbers so station security knew who they had in custody. All these precautions meant that although the prisoner transfer took nearly a full day, security was successfully maintained throughout the exercise. When we completed the transfer of the high security prisoners, we made the decision not to commence transfers of the remaining prisoners till the beginning of the next shift.
The lower security prisoners were transferred in batches of five. Each batch was still escorted by four guards but this was considered to be relatively low risk because these prisoners were little more than slaves when we captured them and knew behaving themselves was in their own best interest. These prisoners were taken to a different, lower security brig than the previous batch because they simply didn’t warrant the higher level of security their former masters required. In the past, more than one high value pirate had either escaped or been killed while in custody. Once again, the groups departed FNS Destiny close enough together for the guards to be able to offer each other a level of mutual support. Once again, some of the Troopers from FNS Destiny were hidden along the way to add additional support as well if it was needed, though I still didn’t know about their deployment at the time. Once again, the transfers took place without any issues whatsoever.
When all the prisoners were finally off the ship, we began making plans to transfer the injured officers and crew who were still in stasis pods to the station’s medical facilities for evaluation and treatment. Because of our high profile arrival, we, along with the station authorities, came to the conclusion that the patient transfers would also require a heightened level of security. This time, once the necessary arrangements were made, we did not wait to make the transfer. The station supplied Troopers for security to protect our wounded as we moved each stasis pod to the station medical facilities. This was the last time for quite a while before I would be able to see any of them again. I had already been told their treatment would take at least as long as mine had so I expected to be somewhere else long before they even woke up. Eri left with the wounded to assist with their treatment so I did not expect to see her for a while either. Really, in my heart, I didn’t expect to see any of them till the trial I still expected to be subjected to.
Again, there was a delay, this time a little longer, while we waited for the station authorities to issue their next set of instructions. Normally, when a Naval vessel docked at a station, the Captain was able to allow the crew leave so they could exit the ship, stretch their legs and relax. At the time, I thought that in our case, everything about the situation was so novel the station authorities didn’t know quite how to deal with it. Later, I was told they were waiting till they were able to interrogate a sampling of the prisoners we handed over to them. While I waited, I decided to make an attempt to arrange to hand myself over to the authorities as I promised, but was politely told to stay where I was for the present.
While we waited, I largely stood the ship’s crew down, which was a little dangerous in itself because in my experience, bored people can be very good at finding ways to make trouble for themselves and those around them. I discussed the issue with Anne and we worked out a rotation that included some make work around the ship, games, and general leisure in the hope we could keep the crew busy an
d occupied enough to protect them from boredom. We hoped these measures would stop, or at least reduce the likelihood of the crew doing things like playing silly practical jokes on each other, or worse, fighting. I’d suffered too much stress and worry already, guiding them this far so the last thing I needed then was to have them begin hurting each other. I explained to them how I was not responsible for them being confined to the ship just so they knew I had no say in the matter. They grumbled a little about being confined but didn’t seem to blame me and in the end, took the situation in reasonably good humour.
Nearly a day and a half later the station management contacted me to tell me that I could allow the refugees from Zafar to leave now. Management told me accommodations were arranged for them and they would be repatriated to anywhere they wished within the Federation as soon as practical.
So now, all I had left to worry about was the crew’s well-being. As the refugees prepared to leave I noticed the crew seemed to be genuinely happy for them, there were signs of affection, especially towards the children. Seeing the destruction and death of the colony on Zafar was gut wrenching for all of us. Saving these few colonists had given a big boost to the crew who responded by taking the best care of them they could in the circumstances. This crew had even put together a little money to help the refugees buy themselves a few things that would not be provided for them otherwise. For their part, the colonists, even the young ones had all done whatever they could to help us during the voyage back to the Federation and as far as we were concerned, deserved all the happiness they could have.
Star Man 1: Star Bourne Page 42
