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As Valerie Mitchum waited for breakfast she watched the activity around the space ship.
“What’s going on Stan,” Valerie Mitchum asked the firefighter as he set a plate of bacon and eggs before her in the fire house’s kitchen.
“The evacuation command has ordered the evacuation of nursing homes,” the firefighter replied. “The empire is providing us with the means to do this.”
“When did this all come about?” Mitch asked.
“Over the weekend,” the fireman answered. “The empire is going to transport all of our nursing home patients to hospitals in the empire. All of our nursing home residents will be taken to the empire with their familyparents. They’ll be split between several worlds.”
“Oh,” Mitch commented, “are they taking any of their things?”
“Just clothing,” The firefighter answered, “The Queen is giving them a grant of a thousand crowns.”
As she was talking Mitch continue to eat. This wasn’t the first time in the last couple of weeks since she had ran away from the shelter, that the firefighter of eight’s, had treated her to a meal. As she thought of the reason she had to leave the shelter she shuddered. It had been early one morning while she was taking a shower when three girls surrounded her and had proceeded to assault her, the last thing remembered was one of the girls was on top of her as she felt fingers of one of the girl’s exploring between her legs she passed out as the fingers were replaced by something she couldn’t quite figure out what. When she awoke alone in the shower room, she was sore and feeling strange, especially between her legs, she hesitantly showered praying no one else would walk in on her. Once showered and dressed, she quickly took some of her clothing and her guitar and left the shelter. She was too embarrassed to go to the shelter’s manager.
As Sshe ate her meal she wondered why the fire fighters always had a meal for her. She had seen them do that for a couple of other street kids. She was walking by the fire house one day and saw the fire fighters handing out some sandwiches to the kids playing ball on the back ramp of the fire house. She was turning away when Stan gave her a sandwich. After they had all ate their sandwiches, Stan had them wash their battalion chief’s car. So for the last two weeks she wandered pass the fire station. Often they weren’t there; but when Stan was,n’t he always gave her something to eat. She wasn’t certain why he did that. certain if they suspected that she was living on the streets or not but they always seemed to have a meal for her when she wandered by the fire house. She wondered if he knew what happened to her. As Sshe listened to him wondering what he knew of her situation, she never took her eyes off the activity. As she watched she saw the side of the landing craft shimmer and a man materialized where she had seen the shimmer.
“I wonder if he knows that his cammie cape is malfunctioning,” the firefighter commented. As they watched several others materialized. “I guess it is not malfunctioning!”
All of them were wearing a midnight black uniform with no insignia. Their side arms were the same color as their uniforms and were so subdued she could hardly see them.
“They’re Black Guardsmen,” Stan commented refilling her glass. “They are the empire’s top elite special forces unit.”
“Why are they here?” Mitch asked.
“Any time the IRS lands a rescue team the Black Guard lands a protection force to secure the landing site and team.” The fire fighter replied. As they watched the guardsmen took up positions around the landing site. Mitch suspected there were more about the fire station; but were out of sight.
As she ate the meal that the fire fighter had given her she continued to ponder her fate.
She wondered how she could get onto the landing craft and get off Trena. She had been by her father’s home thinking it she could be with them until she got to some place safe. Even if her step mother tried to molest her again it would get her off Trena. When she got home she had found out that her parents had left for the empire months ago. The neighbor woman was surprised to see her. She was supposedly visiting her grandparents in the empire. She didn’t know how she was going to get off Trena. She knew she should just go back to the shelter hoping that there wouldn’t be a repeat of the assault. She was very afraid of that happening again.authorities and turn herself in. She was afraid to do that afraid they would ship her to her parents in the empire. If she could avoid that she would be just as happy. Then it dawned on her Sshe was looking at a way to get off Trena.nother choice. She wondered how she could get aboard the landing craft that was parked in front of the fire station. As she put her dishes in the sink she saw the first of the big treaded vehicles return to the fire station.
She watched the ambulance nose up to the front loading ramp of the ground to orbit vessel. The ramp had been lifted so it was at the same height of its cargo deck. She was awed when the vessel lowered itself a foot or so.
“Why did they do that Stan?” she asked.
Stan heard the rumble of the armored ambulance approaching and replied “Watch!”
She watched as the front of the big treaded vehicle lowered a ramp. The ramp was not lowered to the ground but remained about waist high until the big vehicle nosed up to the space ship. There it lowered its ramp so that it overlapped the space ship’s cargo ramp. As soon as the big vehicle was parked the marines began unloading its passengers.
Mitch left the kitchen and went closer to the vehicles to see what was going on. She poked her head into the ground to orbit vehicle. The big open deck of the vessel was now ready to receive passengers. The floor of the landing craft had been converted from a flat cargo deck to passenger seating that filled half of the deck. The rest of the space now had some racks hanging from the ceiling. Mitch wondered what they were for until she saw the medics and marines load stretchers onto them. There was no way they could reload the equipment she had seen come off it now.
“Stan,” she turned to the firefighter standing beside her and pointed to the second large treaded vehicle as it pulled up beside the first one, “What are those?”
“They’re an armored ambulance,” The man answered, “The empire uses them in place of soft skinned vehicles. They can carry about twenty ambulatory and maybe forty on stretchers. They are an intensive care ward on treads.”
Mitch watched as a girl her age on crutches walked from the ambulance onto the vessel. As the girl walked onto the vessel she dropped a stuffed animal dropped from the bag she was carrying. It rolled onto the ground. Without thinking Mitch walked over to where the toy had fallen and picked it up. She clambered up onto the ramp and walked into the landing craft. She found the girl and sat down next to her, “You dropped this!”
“Oh,” The girl looked first into Mitch’s face and saw a girl her own age with startling black hair that that fell below the girl’sher shoulders, then she saw then what was in Mitch’s her hands. “Bunny just doesn’t want to leave Trena! Ii wish I didn’t have to leave either. I guess we’re lucky; my family is being evacuated because I am in a nursing home. My cousins aren’t.”
Mitch didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t certain she should say anything. The girl was plainly upset at leaving Trena. The girl spokeaid,, “i“If I hadn’t gotten hurt and had to have my legs rebuilt and had have PT, I wouldn’t be here.”
“PT,” Mitch asked.
“Yes physical therapy.” The girl replied, “I needed some intense PT after my legs grew back. I still have several weeks to go before I can go back to school. So the Queen’s people said my family and I would be evacuated. Grandma and granddad couldn’t come with us. The evacuation command said only immediate family. They will try to follow us later. The evacuation command has promised to send them to us at their first opportunity. But we don’t know where we’re going!”
Mitch didn’t know what to say. She sat with the girl until her family showed up. They each carried a small bag. The older girl struggled to her feet an
d let her family hug her. A small child no more than ten carrying a small overnight bag emblazoned with a popular kid’s cartoon on it ran up to the girl, “Halie!”
“Hello sprout!” Halie ruffled the girl’s hair. “Hi mom, dad, any knews on whether grandma and granddad can join us?”
“No!” a short muscular man replied. He looked to Mitch and asked, “Who’s this?”
“I don’t know!” Halie replied.
“I am Valerie Mitchum,” Mitch spoke up.
“Are you leaving with us?” Spout asked.
“No,” Mitch replied, her conscience getting the better of her. She had thought about stowing away on the vessel. But after hearing that the girl’s grandparents couldn’t go with them, she couldn’t do it. “No I saw her drop her bunny and brought it aboard. I best get off before they close up and take me with them.”
She got off the vessel and walked to where her friend was standing. She stood there and watched the rest of loading.
It took several ambulance loads for the nursing home to be emptied. The last two ambulance loads were not taken to the Galaxy Lifter, but were taken directly to the meadow were the 1052nd Evacuation Hospital had been set up to receive them. All these were expectant patients, those who were not expected to live much more than a few weeks.
As they became loaded, the Galaxy Lifters began the process of lifting ship for orbit. It wasn’t until they began the process of buttoning up and checking their cargo that the Nightingale flights found out their designations.
“Evac South This is Nightingale 1 we are light on gear requesting permission to lift. Requesting destination and routing.” The pilot called.
“Nightingale 1 permission granted.” The controller called, “State souls on board?”
“Evac South,” The load master called, “We have three hundred souls on board, 200 ambulatory, 100 serious.”
“Copy 300 souls, 200 ambulatory, 100 serious,” The controller called back, “Nightingale 1 go to button 5 and contact Mother Theresa flight control. Good day.”
“Thank you,” The pilot keyed button 5. The button had been pre set up for the mission to keep communications simple. It was virtual button on the screen between the two pilots. He called as the copilot lifted the landing craft off the deck, “Mother Theresa Flight Control this is Nightingale 1 with trade for your good people.”
“Nightingale 1 you are number ten to dock.” the flight controller on the Mother Theresa replied. She had ten landing craft in her pattern. All were lifting almost simultaneously from the planet. The Mother T had four docking bays. Each bay was isolated from the others so if something happened in one of the bays the other three wouldn’t be harmed. She touched a stud on her panel and called, “Attention we now have ten in bounds with three thousand souls between themon board. I am up loading the manifests to triage.”
The Hospital Patrol Ship Mother Theresa was a 3100 bed space going hospital. One of several hundred ships that was used by the empire’s space going coastguard service, the Interstellar Rescue Service, to protect and defend the empire’s citizens in the space ways from themselves and criminal elements. The Mother Theresa or Mother T to her crew was completely empty. She had just finished a short yard period to update her systems, and repair some minor maintenance gripes. She had left the yards in route her patrol area when she had been redirected to Trena. She had barely made orbit about Trenamade orbit when the landing craft started lifting from Trena. She barely had enough time to launch her landing craft before the landing craft from the Majestic began calling. Now all of her doctors, nurses, EMTs and rescue personnel were going to their mass casualty stations to receive the thousands of critically sick nursing home patients en route to them from the planet.
The first to dock, was a light load of critical patients, some on life support, others had just been stepped down from full life support all of them expected to be down graded to serious in a week or so. It was organized chaos at the docking ports. The Mother T’s crew was not quite ready to deal with the massive inrush of critical patients. The head nurse finally lost it.
“Good damn it people!” He bellowed, “Look we got ten birds either docked or docking with us. Now everybody slow the fuck down. Every one of those patients has their complete medical records with them so we don’t need to triage them as we normally would. Just identify your patient and move them appropriately. Get them off the Elsy and then move them in to hospital.”
Slowly order returned to the landing bay. Patients moved from the landing craft through the bay to the triage center. There a Chief Petty officer directed each patient to a ward. Keeping track of which ward was getting what patients trying not to over load any one ward with too many patients. In his thirty years aboard the hospital ships, this was the first time he had routed so many patients in so short of time, in less than four hours they had docked ten landing craft and off loaded and transferred 3000 patients. As soon as the last landing craft had broken its docking, the captain called for deep space stations.
Twelve hours after the first landing craft had landed the first of the Trena Evacuees were on their way to safety.
Through it all Junior the back up deep space surveillance AI had recorded the capabilities of the landing craft operation. His buddy at the Republic’s embassy had asked him to share the information. When he asked why, his buddy said they wanted to compare them to their own observations. He didn’t think it was that big a deal so he went and did it.
Every Last Mother's Child Page 38