by Rolf Nelson
“Hello, Maurice. Yes, I’m fine. Sorry about that. My life is sometimes a little… complicated,” she said somewhat flirtatiously.
“Oh, I’m so very glad to hear that, but what was that all about?” He looked confused, and sounded nervous.
“The man who sat down with us?” Allonia asked, seeing if he remembered Skelton at all. Maurice nodded. “Some of his business associates got mixed up with the wrong sort on accident. When he’d wanted to go to the police to get things straightened out they got a little bent, and when I found more problems with their accounts it started getting scary, and I’m trying to get away from it, someplace safe.… Anyway, I had to take care of things as best I could once he was shot. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay and chat. Maybe sometime I can legally fill in a few details. Like I said… complicated.”
Thus reassured, Maurice perked up a bit. “You look lovely! Do you have plans for tonight? Or any time soon?” He asked with growing eagerness. “I’m sure I could cancel tomorrow afternoon’s meetings if that’s better.”
“Things are a little tight at the moment. But I was wondering if your offer for the concert on Gamma was still on?”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, those were for two days ago,” he apologized earnestly. “And right now Gamma travel is restricted. But I have seats at the-”
“But I thought that you had a private shuttle?”
“Well, yes, we can use the company craft for some… unofficial but important flights.”
“Flights might be limited, but life goes on. I happened to have a dozen tickets to the Coliseum concert tomorrow, and my friends can’t quite use them all.” At that point, Sharon and two of Skelton’s more flashily-dressed female employees moved in behind her so they appeared on Maurice’s screen.
“Please, we’d really like to go!” they wheedled charmingly.
“Ah, well, now, it’s very short notice, and-”
“Oh, you can do it! It’ll be a great show, and I’ve never been on a private shuttle before,” said the blond one.
“It’s the weekend! Fly over Friday, come back Saturday afternoon… maybe Sunday,” implored the redhead, while Sharon smiled at him, before Allonia shooed them away impishly, then just looked at him awaiting a reply.
“I don’t know, it’s restricted airspace…” He looked at her, his eyes casting about as if hoping to get a view of the others once again. “But I suppose I can see, maybe if I could pull a few strings… A dozen tickets you say?” Allonia nodded. “For tomorrow?” Another nod and smile. “Ah, well… OK, I’ll do my best and-”
“You’ll do fine, I’m sure,” Allonia reassured him. “It’ll be a memorable trip, I promise. See you at the space port tomorrow afternoon!”
She cut the connection and sat back.
“You did great! Had him wrapped around your finger, you did,” said Skelton. “Guy thinks he’s on a party-flight with a dozen hot babes for the weekend.”
“So who’s the hot guys going with us?” the redhead asked.
Roy raised his hand to the surprise and amusement of the two. “I guess you’re kinda hot for an old guy. Old guys tire easy.”
Roy smiled calmly. “You may be surprised. There will others with us. But I’ll be escorting Ms Sharon here, and will be the chaperon.”
“Don’t need one of those. Might need a priest if this guy is rich enough, though,” the blond chimed in cheerfully. “Mind if we take your date?”
“Be my guest. And if you do need officiating, I’m sure Brother Libra could…” he shot Allonia a look, “try to talk you out of it.” She rubbed her face tiredly. “I don’t like lying to him. He’s nice enough, just…”
“A pathetic weenie with less spine than a vat of protein?” the blond finished. Allonia frowned, shrugged, and nodded. “World’s full of guys like that. I hope that’s not news to you, girlfriend. Get what you can while they do the same. Never get far if you are too honest with them; they can’t handle it.”
That drew chuckles from the men and Allonia. “Some can, I think… Some can.”
Court Martial
Admiral Flicker checked her uniform reflexively in an available mirror before she left the ready-room aboard her carrier and headed for the Fleet Annex aboard the station, a station that had recently been moved much deeper into the gravity well of Geminorum. Hopefully it was far enough. She had expected to be called over as soon as she arrived, being senior surviving officer of such a debacle. Her uniform’s condition would not make any material difference in the outcome of the investigation, but women were always judged more on looks and dress orderliness than men. It wasn’t really right or wrong, it just was, and she knew that setting a good example never hurt in any case.
Leaving the airlock on the station side, she was met by more than the expected escort; not just a Lieutenant, unexpectedly wearing a light station-side pressure suit and bearing a sidearm, but also two marines kitted out in light space armor with compact rifles and helmets sporting a full field com setup. Either Whitehall was over-the-edge paranoid or something major had developed in the weeks since she left.
“Right this way, Ma’am” the lieutenant said with proper formality, saluting and leading her down the well-known path to the HQ unit on the station. The marines walked behind in near silence. Everyone she passed was in lightweight p-suits, which were not really enough for a long time in hard vacuum, but sufficient to keep a body alive until it could find a pressurized compartment with power if the station got holed. Situation screens in the corridor were more heavily censored than usual, with very little military data being displayed. Command must be trying to keep a tight lid on things, even though they knew word would spread. Censoring news reports of a bunch of civilian dead on a remote system when there was a massive military blockade was easy. Hiding the destruction of two carriers and most of their cruisers, interceptors, and personnel would be a lot harder as families of the dead were told.
When she finally arrived at the station commander’s office she was met at the door and waved in informally by a commander she didn’t recognize. “Please take a seat, Admiral. Admiral Noatak will be here shortly.” Left alone in the office, she noted that it hadn’t changed at all in the last five years since Noatak was promoted. Same pictures, same plants, same gaudy and barely functional coffee machine. He even had the big picture of the previous Chancellor still up, not the current one…
When her senior came in, she rose and saluted crisply. “Reporting, Sir.”
Noatak, soft and pallid looking under his naturally swarthy skin, didn’t look like much, but behind his deceptively soft exterior was a devious mind with more connections than anyone wanted to guess about. In his light p-suit he looked almost comical. He made the barest suggestion of a salute as he passed her and said nothing.
After taking a seat, he looked at her steadily, eyes searching her face and uniform for any sign of nervousness or defect. Eventually, seeing none, he exhaled heavily. “This is a mess. I can’t see how it could be worse.”
“I certainly can, Sir. Another four thousand servicemen would like to think getting back was rather a good thing after the way it all started.”
“Hmmm…. Yes, good for them, no doubt. But it puts the Fleet, and the Chancellor, in rather a bind.”
“Loss of two carriers and most of their complement is a significant blow, no doubt, but I’d think that getting solid leads on saboteurs in the Fleet, and destroying such a dangerous ship, must be good things.”
“How sure are you, really, that it was Tajemnica?”
“I didn’t think Lag would hide deep in the gravity well, and we got hit far out-system. The tactics used were excellent, the skips near perfectly done. The drive-field readings were not an exact match, but the flux strength from a six-core system was unlike anything else we know of in existence. There was no detected exit transition field. It doesn’t quite feel right to me, but the sensor techs are absolutely convinced of it, and there are no other known ships it could have been, Sir. Spectral
analysis confirms the cruiser absolutely vaporized something that transitioned in where nothing else could be.”
Naotak steepled his fingers and stared at the ceiling for a moment. “You do realize that yours is the eighth report of destroying her, don’t you?” Surprised, her expression told him the answer without words. “Holed and lost deep in a gas giant. Crashed into a sea under an umbrella of nukes. Nuked at long range in a system by a lone armed scout in a system about to get buried in a class six swirl. None of the others have the confirming evidence you have, but still… nothing can be taken at face value. For example, I think it is very convenient that you had a list with virtually all the repairs the rest of the fleet needed to do.”
“I… explained that in my report, Sir,” she replied cautiously.
“Hmm, yes, so you say. You conveniently managed to find them before you lost anyone in an accident. And you just happened to notice the attack pattern in another fleet group before anyone else. And most of the assumed saboteurs happened to be women, supposedly pregnant, who got off just before the fleets left. And you managed to find a way to safely deal with a myriad of weapons safety issues without losing any of your own people. Then, the moment the Commodore is out of action, you apparently had just the right order to issue to save the day. And you are, just coincidentally, a longtime friend with a highly strategic man working with, perhaps even controlling, an enemy ship of extreme lethality, a man you met long ago as a very junior and very single officer, just before an only vaguely explained two month medical leave.”
“Sir! I must protest your implications!”
“Protest away, Admiral. There are just a few too many coincidences for my liking in this whole thing, and the Chancellor doesn’t like it. No one in Whitehall likes it. A board of inquiry and a court martial will get to the bottom of it all, I’m sure. Until then, given the nature of the enemy we face, I must confine you to solitary in the brig until it’s all sorted out.”
“But Sir!-“
“Stow it, Jan. You’ve had your run, clawing for senior command for a long time, giving up everything else to achieve flag rank, and you’ll get a chance to speak your piece. But there are not many people who will back you up around here, you know. You haven’t played nicely, stepping on toes without giving anything back. If you are lucky, you might get nothing more than a dishonorable discharge and loss of pension. Your name would likely go down in history more favorably if you’d died out there with your fleet.”
Landing
Helton, Harbin, and Kaminski sat strapped into the command chairs of the conscript ship, with Nesbit and one of his tech squad strapped in nearby.
“Here goes nothing.” Nesbit tapped in a command at his console, and most of the controls lit up, eliciting approving nods from the Plataeans. A few more commands and the rest of the screens and controls came to life. Helton examined the configurations and settings, making a few minor adjustments. The background sounds changed subtly as the power flows started to ramp up in preparation for drive engagement.
Harbin crossed himself, drawing an amused chuckle from Helton. “Guru’s don’t seem to have much luck keeping me out of crashes with you. Thought I’d have a word with your God instead.”
Nesbit looked at them wearing a suddenly worried expression. “C-crashes?”
“Eh. You get used to it after a while,” Kaminski replied.
“…oh.”
A screen lit up with the AI avatar of a handsome young lieutenant. “How may I assist you, RCL thirty two?”
“No assistance needed, thanks. Situation normal.”
“Landing and flight profile alterations should be done by remote control. How may I assist you?”
“No assistance. Just going to land on manual.”
“Manual landing is not recommended. I have no record of a manual landing authorization. I have no record of landing qualified personnel aboard RCL thirty two. I have no record of a change in programmed automated landing sequence. Please stand by.” The avatar froze, looking at them with its slightly creepy mechanical AI smile.
“That went well,” Kaminski commented, “but I like Taj better.”
“It’s just an answering AI, not a fair comparison to a human,” said Nesbit. “At least we know the coms work… but if we shouldn’t be here, should we be putting our ugly mugs on camera?” A quick exchange of glances and Kaminski scrambled to retrieve a roll of duct tape, which he and Nesbit’s sidekick quickly placed over every camera lens they could see, while Helton and Harbin took stock of their newly available imagery and status readouts.
“Sanjay said they will be fully staffed in about four hours, soooo… two orbits puts us about there.” Helton points to the map near a city. “That’s sigma just down the coast. Great. Just flippin’ great. It’s hot, now. At least it is close enough to walk to if we have to.”
“Chaos is cover. If you are the one making it, that’s good.”
“We’ll be creating chaos, all right. But I hope it’s not the shoot down everything in the sky sort of thing.”
“Th-they could do that?” Nesbit asked nervously.
“Not likely. Depends on the contract limits. We know orbital conscript transports are allowed. Usually they don’t allow shooting unarmed troop ships… Usually.” Tapping on the screens, Harbin tried to bring up any data on the limits of the landing zone and contract areas, finally being rewarded with an overlay covering a rough rectangle nearly a hundred kilometers down the coast in each direction and fifty inland. As more options become enabled he manages to bring up planned landing targets and what appeared to be current troop positions.
After all the visible camera pickups were covered, Kaminski and the other soldier returned to their seats, then sat and waited while listening to Harbin and Helton confirm strategy.
A somewhat rumpled-looking major’s image popped up on a screen, staring out at them for a moment as those on the bridge fell silent. He reached out and adjusted his controls, then looked to the side. “This thing on?” A sergeant leaned in to view, fiddled with controls and voiced a soft affirmative. Looking back into his own camera pickup the major asked “Can you see me?” Harbin held up a finger to his lips to keep silent any thought of conversation. The major stared out at them awaiting a response for a long minute, then waved the tech sergeant in to try to figure it out. The sergeant appeared to rapidly confirm what the major had looked at, then shrugged his shoulders and moved away. The major scratched his chin, sipped from a cup of coffee speculatively, and tried several things before resuming his monologue.
“RCL thirty two, we are receiving a lot of unusual telemetry. In case of a camera or com malfunction, please confirm there are humans at the controls by lowering power output by five percent.” He then typed the same request as a text message, which appeared on one of the side screens. Helton got a thoughtful expression for a moment, tapped his fingers on the armrest, and smiled, before he resumed silently examining the maps and data before him. The major waited patiently another long minute before he leaned back, ran his fingers through his thinning hair, still looking puzzled. He drained his cup and handed it to the tech sergeant before he started tapping the keyboard at his command station, ignoring the camera.
A minute later the sergeant returned to hand him a fresh cup of coffee, which he took with a polite thank-you. Helton adjusted the power down slightly. Sipping noisily at his cup, the Major returned his eyes back the bank of screens, scanning for something, anything, to indicate what the source of the problem was. When his eyes get to the power readout, he froze. “Great googly-moogly…. Sergeant!”
The next hour was spent in a low-bandwidth game of twenty questions, the major trying to narrow down who they were and what they were up to, and then typing in the next question as text. Helton sometimes gave contradictory answers, or replied by changing things other than what the major asked for, such as increasing power when asked to lower it, or activating the landing lights instead. The major was doing a yeoman job at trying to not lose an
y more hair and elicit useful information from them, but didn’t get a lot, while giving up a great deal by conversing with those that were gathered around him. A virtual committee discussed the perfect next question for three minutes, while trying to understand Helton’s sort-of yes/no answer to the previous inquiry. They gave out a lot of information because they don’t know the camera and mic were hot.
Eventually RCL32 got close to the orbital position Helton and Harbin had agreed to in earlier strategy sessions. It was time to start their descent one orbit early.
Making rapid adjustments, Helton started altering the ship’s trajectory. From the ground-control screen there was an explosion of confusion and concern among the officers watching, ordering him to get his hands off the controls, to cease and desist, to re-enable the remote controls or the preprogrammed flight path, all amidst freely expressed concerns about how it would change the battle plans and possible outcomes, comments about informing the media and repositioning cameras, and what other elements might be available to cover for the unexpected change in plans.
When their talk turned to cutting the unknowns and shooting them down, Helton finally broke radio silence. “Hey, there, ground control. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The uniforms on the screen froze momentarily, then scattered, leaving the lone major on-screen.
“You can hear us?” he asked, surprised.
“We can now, yes.”
“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing!”
“Calm down, Major. Everything is under control. Our control, but that’s OK. No big reactor leaks or anything. Let us professionals take care of things from here.”
“Who. The. HELL. Are you?” the major demanded angrily.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Call me Major Tom. Do you want to win the battle or not?”
“That’s beside the point! I demand-”
“Not to a load of recent civilians it isn’t.”
“I mean it is a point, but we can’t win if you hijack our ship and land God knows where!”
