"Krieger, this is Benson." The boss answering his own phone, another in a long list of things I've never heard or seen before.
"Admiral, good to hear your voice, sir." I cut in over Shelby, who was smart enough to look my way before responding.
"Likewise. ChiNO and I are coming aboard as soon as you dock. Keep your crew on board until we get there. Over."
"Wilco, Admiral, see you in a few minutes. Yorktown out."
What's that all about?
Garcia parks us like we're a compact car in an RV space, whatever that means. Another expression from the past we still use but don't get. "Whole nine yards." "Phat party." One of those.
Ten minutes later, my boss and his boss float onto the bridge in their dress uniforms looking like the day, 31 days ago, we left. They left their aides somewhere else. Benson only accepts my salute before he plugs into the speaker.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Admiral Benson, FRIGCOM. A few days ago, CSS Packard jumped into the yard with video of a battle between Yorktown and a behemoth. Within a day, their captain had sold that video without our knowledge to every news outlet in 40 systems. He is now rich, and you, the crew of the USS Yorktown, are the new heroes of the Union and the pride of the Navy."
"You have done more good for the Navy in the past few days than you can possibly imagine, but we need you to be careful. Say as little as possible, be polite, be professional, represent the Navy. And, again, thank you. You've done us all proud."
Shelby and I exchange worried glances. There has to be a back story here too, or they would have waited for us.
"We've reserved space for each of you in a quiet section of officer's quarters, they will be a little nicer than some of you are used to. My office staff is waiting at the bottom of the egress tunnel with keys. Make sure you finish your work on ship before you go, and get permission from your chain of command. I know many of you have been planning to take leave, and go visit family, go to your home systems. That isn't possible now, we need Yorktown and her crew available to us on station. Expect two or three weeks debrief before we let you go. Report back aboard at 0900 tomorrow for orders. Benson, out."
He catches my eye, tilts his head toward my ready room. I take care of some business before I go.
"Lt. Ayala, you have the con, make sure we shut down by the book, turn them loose when they're ready. Commander Perez, with me." The four of us float to my room, close the door.
"I don't need your final report until tomorrow," ChiNO dispenses with any formality, "and I've read your log a half dozen times. Your opinion, three ships out there, still armed and dangerous?"
"No question, sirs," I respond, "We need at least one battle group in each the three affected Gamma systems, and we need it soon." I try to emphasize the word "soon."
"Yorktown is to be ready to sail in 72 hours, you're going back. We tried to retask the cruisers, but with your victory, the administration assured the public that the threat is ended. The battle groups are appearing at Founding Day celebrations in two dozen systems, and we are not permitted to interfere with the schedule, it being an election year."
"Admiral...." I want to use language even I can't use in front of the boss.
"I know, you can't be ready. We will have a crew of 300 plus here in the morning. Yorktown will be like brand new before you go. Your crew is Navy, they'll understand."
"I don't really Admiral, we'll do our best, but even Yorktown can't be in three systems at the same time."
"We know that," he says, "we'll get you at least one more corvette, and Congress is going back with you."
I want to remind him that two of the three corvettes that have gotten to see those 42 inchers are dead, and the third is here in dock only because we were in between it and the guns, but he's a smart and competent officer, he knows it just as well as I do. Up to me to protect my task force better this time.
"There's something else," I change the subject and message him the data from McAdams. "One of these three put the defective parts on our engines. There's a traitor on this list."
"You sure?"
"One hundred percent, sir, computer correlated the data, we confirmed by hand. Had to be. If these folks are coming over tomorrow morning to help, the corrective action would be a shot in the head."
"If they aren't in custody by tomorrow morning, I'll do it myself, Captain." ChiNO is a good man. "Dinner on board, night before you leave, FRIGCOM and I with you and your lieutenants."
"Aye, sir." He starts to leave, then stops.
"You are going to be asked to do a lot of interviews in the next two days. Tell them you are going back out to do engine tests. No mention of ships still out there. My advice, stay away from the media as best you can."
"Thank you, sir. Is this really that big a deal?"
"You have no idea, Captain. You not only saved the frigate fleet, there's talk of building more beyond our original six. A Navy ship took on an enemy 30 times its size to save a bunch of civilians. Looks, sounds, and is heroic, Katana. Been a long time since so many people knew the name of a ship captain."
"Just doing what we were sent to do, sir."
"Yep. Doesn't make it any less exciting. Nineteen hundred two days from now. Stay out of trouble til then."
"Aye, aye." They really do leave this time.
Shelby and I stare at each other for a couple minutes, then just float back out to see what's what. The ground crew has appeared, and Ayala has already given just about everyone the chance to go. Powell refused, I send Shel to deal with that. McAdams is floating, looks like she's about to head out. Otherwise, the bridge is full of brown shirted station staff and red shirted Electric Boat staff only.
"Mr. Ayala, you're relieved. Back on board, 0800 hours tomorrow, staff meeting."
"Aye, sir." And he's gone.
"Ensign, get on your way too."
"Aye, sir." But I get that feeling in my butt.
"Courtney?"
She looks at me like she wants to say something, but isn't sure, looks around to see if anyone can hear. Finally, she decides.
"0.0001, sir." She turns and zips off before I can respond. Not that I can make my mouth move right now.
Chapter 8
By 1600, I have everyone off the ship. Had to threaten to have the Marines carry Lt. Powell out, but otherwise, easy. Shelby volunteered to stay, but when Palmer showed up to "chat," I knew her heart wasn't in it, and I sent them off as well. There are 40 to 50 dock workers swarming over every inch of the interior of the ship, resetting systems, removing the garbage, restocking the supplies, cleaning. I made their boss promise not to touch the engines until Emily is back on board in the morning.
On my screen I can see an even bigger crowd outside working on patching the holes, and cleaning off whatever debris is attached to my ship. She'll soon be shiny and new again.
I go to my cabin, the only place I can expect some privacy, and turn on the screen, figuring I should be able to find something on Yorktown if I search long enough. I'm getting stupid in my 30s. I hit the button to switch the display to external broadcasts, and the first station on has a live picture of Yorktown in it's docking bay, with a slider across the bottom that announces the heroes have returned, and that I am still on board.
It's the network that spans all 47 inhabited star systems, UnionOne. There's no live broadcast across all of them, of course, but every four hours a squadron of drones, loaded with the last four hours of news, sports, weather, and entertainment, jumps into each system and broadcasts (and downloads the news from that system for when it returns to Earth). The picture I am seeing now will be accessible to everyone in every system by midnight.
Then my face replaces Yorktown. Bad picture from several years ago, my hair is obviously not regulation, and my eyes have huge brown bags under them. Looks like the mug shot from the time I was arrested on Canada 3, but that's another story. The charges were dropped, after all, and the bartender healed just fine. I turn on the sound, but missed whatever they sai
d about me.
Three seconds of ugly me, then the screen clears, and an obviously computer enhanced video shows up. Big white ship, little tiny black one, Yorktown, looking a whole lot smaller than one-third the height and one-third the length. And I hear myself threatening them, then we're blowing them out of the sky. Admiral's right, it looks mighty impressive and gives no hint to how close we came to buying ourselves the proverbial farm.
The announcer then promises an interview with me as soon as possible. Let's hope it's next year.
I spend time flipping to the Earth channels. There are a dozen space stations in Earth orbit, the four Navy facilities, two civilian shipyards, and six commercial depots, places where businesses operate, cargos are exchanged, and deals are made. Means roughly a 100,000 people in orbit here, and another quarter million on the surface of Mars, in orbit around Jupiter, and on the back side of Mercury, some in residence, some passing through.
They need entertainment and there are three Earth only television (yes, we still use that word) stations providing it. Yorktown is on all three as I thumb past. It's the identical picture on each, the Navy must have provided access to an internal camera feed. Each station has different commentators sitting out there somewhere, small inset boxes cut into the video with their faces.
I listen for 10 minutes to four different people get the story wrong. Sad. Worst part is them talking over the removal of the body containers from the ship. They should have more respect. My door suddenly wants my attention, ringing.
"Come." Benson's aide is floating there, looking at me.
"Captain, I am under orders not to leave until all 50 of you have left the ship and are on their way to officer's country. You are the last, and I would like to get out of here." He's a captain as well, but staff officer, the belly and the flabby exterior, red cheeks, medium hair tell me he's not been in high gee for a while, and not keeping up on his zero gee exercises.
He looks around my quarters. "There's a constant flow shower in the quarters you've been assigned, they are not even Navy quarters, they are where we put political dignitaries. I am sure you will find them more comfortable than this."
I don't say exactly what I'm thinking, but I can't let that pass. "A captain's ship is always the place they are the most comfortable, but I will let you show me the way, so you can be on yours."
It takes me a couple minutes to pack, then point to the door, he leads and I follow. We get out of the ship through a fixed tunnel this time, a benefit of being in the larger dock, which lets us off next to the transport system for the station. No elevators or other contrivances, the station has long open tunnels with strong air flow that lets one float without expending energy from one end of the station to the other, you just have to be careful to get in the right one to go the direction you want. Takes no time at all for us to reach the 30th floor, and exit into the corridor.
The lights are blinding, then people start yelling my name, a couple seconds to adjust and focus before I know for sure that it's television cameras, and reporters with questions. Benson's aide touches my shoulder to move me along while he addresses the reporters by name and tells them that I will not be answering any questions yet. Yet. Definitely heard him say yet.
"Sorry about that," he tells me, "the only way we'll get rid of them is for you to schedule a time to sit and answer questions. If you'd like, I'll set it up and help you through it."
I think for a minute. "That would be fine. After your boss meets with the crew in the morning?"
"I'll take care of it. Here's your quarters." He hands me the key card. "Pad me if you need anything before then."
I give him a thank you, a hand shake and an I'll see you tomorrow. Then I float into a room unlike anything I've ever seen on a station. Seems to be bigger than an entire deck on a frigate, though I know its not, dark brown colors mostly with hints of just about everything, soft fabric walls and well placed zero gee accouterments. Must be the Navy's way of making its political friends comfy.
I find the shower and discover that I can indeed stand under the hot water for as long as I want. How long since I've been able to do that? A year? Two? Vacation on San Paolo, Brazil system, how long ago was that? Can't even remember.
Get dried off and discover a horizontal sleeping system, silk sheets inside of what is just a very large three person sleeping bag and a restraint system to keep you from floating away, but warm and wonderful against my skin just the same. No time for thinking before sleep takes me.
Don't need an alarm clock, my brain wakes my body at 0600 every morning, regardless of whether I need to be somewhere or not. Take another loonngg shower and float back over to my ship, the hair a floor or so behind me all the way. Between 0800 and 0900 Shelby, Ayala, and I float around my ready room, lamenting our fate and discussing what we want in the way of armaments before we go back out.
We've got four empty missile tubes, and we're going for multiple warhead air to air nukes, plus one mine layer. If we assume that the other three ships out there have the same laser configuration as Orion, a multiheaded missile could possibly take them out by overwhelming their defenses. Possibly. Maybe. At minimum, should make McAdams happy.
At 0900, the Admirals reappear, and depress the entire crew. Short message. You are going back out. You are ordered to say nothing except it's an engine test, the cover story is Constitution is at the point of engine installation, and we need to make sure what happened to Yorktown does not happen to her sister. On leave today, enjoy yourselves, back here at 0800 tomorrow to help with departure preparations.
No question and answer session, they simply float away after the message to my ready room, and I follow, assuming that's what they want. I catch Shelby's eye and drag her along. I can see everyone else starting to float to the exits, body language not happy.
The next two hours we go over the mission, the loss of Richard, the destruction of Orion. To their credit, neither wants to second guess me, they want to talk strategy variations for when we find the others. We all agree that the first thing next time is to test our missile launchers before we're even in laser range.
When they start asking about my theories of the anomalies we've encountered, I give them every one I have, every one except 0.0001 that is. Finally, they update us on the analysis they are doing, and on the search for our saboteurs, while is 10 seconds long. Nothing yet.
ChiNO and his aide head out after that, while we go over our weapons requests with Admiral Benson, plus talk about whether or not it makes sense to bring more corvettes with us than can dock with Yorktown. A mini-battle group of four or five of them might be effective, at least at preventing a confrontation.
Then Benson looks at me. "I understand you have your first interview scheduled."
"First and only," I try to make the burden of my life clear.
He looks at me. "I wish you had put your dress blues on, and maybe cut your hair."
"Honestly, sir," I try for respectful, "I completely forgot about the interview when I got up this morning. I'll see if I can tidy up before we find them."
His aide is working on his pad. "They are on their way up, Captain."
"Then I'll leave you to it," Benson speaks and salutes at the same time. All three of us return it, and watch him float out. His aide stays with us.
In what is obviously meant to be a conspiratorial voice, he leans toward me and says, "I think the media will eat you up in that outfit. Good choice."
I'm thinking about how to answer when the door chimes at me again, and we let the film crew in. It's a female reporter, looks to be about my age, and an older gentleman with a camera.
They ignore us, and huddle together for a few moments, then the cameraman moves to a spot, looks back, and the reporter nods at him. Then she turns to me.
"Can you put something technical looking up on the monitors?"
I answer by reaching out to the console, and touching a couple spots. It puts the nav display on one screen and the hatch screen on the other. Mu
st be good enough, because she floats over to stick a microphone onto my uniform, and then motions me to float over in front of the panels.
"Please relax," she says. "This isn't going out live, you can start over on an answer and we'll just edit out the bad parts. Take your time if you need to think about your answer, we'll edit out the pauses. Okay?"
"You may fire when ready, Gridley."
The light on top of the camera comes to life, close to blinding, making it difficult for me to make out the reporter, and impossible to see Shelby or the cameraman. I'll put up with it if it gives them a better picture of me than the one they are using. Then she starts talking.
"Good morning. We're here with Captain Katana Krieger of the Union frigate Yorktown who has kindly agreed to this exclusive interview with the UnionOne Television Network. I'm Miley Langston, and we're lucky enough to be floating in the captain's personal office aboard Yorktown herself. Thank you for letting us come aboard, Captain."
Yorktown: Katana Krieger #1 Page 13
