Swordsman soldiers came down from their battlements and surrendered. It was over.
GENERATIONS - CHAPTER ELEVEN
WITH THE END OF THE BATTLE, Rachel released the Commodore who had started all this from the brig. She took him and his staff to the surface and delivered them to Commander Erickson. Erickson assured her that he knew how to deal with such people.
The Commodore swore he would see Rachel hanged for this and Commander Erickson threatened to push the man outside without a space suit. While he would not instantly decompress like in the vacuum of space, the planet’s atmosphere was too thin to support human life without a pressure suit and he would slowly asphyxiate which was a particularly gruesome way to die. The Commodore quit his protestations as Rachel abandoned him.
The trip back to Homestead was uneventful, but by the time they arrived, they were running low on food. The welcome at Homestead was less than cordial. A flotilla of five pirate vessels was preparing to raid the remains of the planet’s freight depot.
As soon as Wren realized what was happening, he commanded, “Hawk Squadron, engage!”
They had done this drill a hundred times in simulations, but they were six ships short of the team that had practiced anti-pirate maneuvers. Still, pirate interdiction was the designed purpose of the Pirate Interdiction warship. Rachel’s mother, Avi, referred to it as “one of the coolest, meanest, nastiest, toughest, most heavily armed little warships ever built. We could take on a warship a hundred times our size and beat it.” The pirates, who had never seen a PI ship in the hands of properly trained pilots let alone sentient PI ships in the hands of properly trained pilots with equally well trained fire control officers turned to attack Hawk Squadron.
Kim and Huntress drew first blood. It was almost like a game to them. They attacked the pirate cruiser with only their lasers. The cruiser was over ten times their size, but only boasted four times the armament. “Only four times...” Kim had crowed after she killed it. Its size made it less maneuverable and Kim had used that to her advantage flitting around the ship like a crazed bumble-bee. After half an hour of harassing the ship’s weapons operators, she punched a hole in the reactor cooling panels and the reactors overheated destroying the ship.
Wren had chosen the pirate’s cargo ship for his target. It was reasonably well defended, but he had to wait until he could draw it away from the depot before destroying it. Had he destroyed it too close to the depot, it would have rendered the depot completely useless. As it was, the depot was damaged from the previous battles but still functioning.
Hawk three and four teamed up on a destroyer. It defended itself ably, but careful to conserve their missiles, the Hawks brought it down with two well placed heat seekers.
The two remaining pirate ships, little more than scout explorers, fled. The rest of Hawk Squadron chased them to ensure that according to pirate lore “Dead men tell no tales” and there would be no warning that Wren and his fleet were hunting pirates. Hawk Five and Seven claimed the kills when they returned to the tender.
As a result of the first Swordsman assault on this planet when Rachel was a teen, the inhabitants had learned how to hide their food and marketable goods from an invader. The planet’s prime export, now that it had gotten out of the pornographic propaganda business, was frozen food. Homestead was known for the quality of its individually packaged meals for flight crews and for its bulk frozen foods. They had developed an ingenious scheme for hiding their products from the random pirates who wandered through and invaders like the Swordsmen. The freight containers, ready for shipment, were placed on glaciers or on the polar ice cap. A single snowfall hid them and a second or third made them impossible to find without a map.
When the convoy with the refugees had arrived, the refugees were traded for the containers of food. Since Stellar Interstellar was one of Homestead’s biggest and most loyal customers, delivering as many food containers as the freighters could carry was simply good business. The convoy had departed three days earlier bound for the nearest Stellar freight depot. The shipment would be gratefully accepted. The escorts and the cargo ship that had carried the mercenaries’ equipment would return to regular service from there. The cargo modules that had been attached to the Queen Elizabeth would be serviced and then attached to one of the super sized freighters and would also return to regular service. In the interest of secrecy and due to a fear that spies might still live inside the Stellar organization, no courier missile was sent ahead to alert headquarters of their plans.
While at Homestead, Wren and Rachel decided to combine their forces. They transferred Wren’s personnel and supplies to the Queen Elizabeth. They sent the tender with the two most heavily damaged PI ships and such personnel as wanted to go to the nearest Stellar depot with as much frozen food as they could carry. The tender would return to regular service since Stellar had a shortage of ships following the attacks and the Queen Elizabeth was more than capable of supporting the remains of Hawk squadron as well as her own compliment of personnel.
They stayed in orbit around Homestead for a month. A convoy from Stellar arrived with a squadron of light in-system interceptors and their support staff to defend the system. Hawk Squadron and the Queen Elizabeth were free to go.
While the Queen Elizabeth was preparing to depart, Rashi came to Rachel and said, “You know, all the years we’ve traveled together, I always wanted to see the place where you and Wendy grew up. It sounds like a glorious place to live.”
“There’s not much left of the house except the foundation,” Rachel said. “The Swordsmen burned it in the first attack.”
“I feel I would be missing something if I left here without at least walking the places you walked,” Rashi said.
“If you insist, we can go down. The runway is kind of rough, be we should be able to land on it.”
Wren insisted on piloting Rachel’s personal launch for the “field trip” to the surface. Kim took the copilot’s chair. Rachel’s entire “battle group” plus Matilda made the trip. The runway was rougher than Rachel expected, but Wren brought the launch safely to a landing. They exited the ship and Rachel began the tour. She pointed out where the meeting hall that also served as the church had been. She described the meeting where they planned their defense against the first Swordsman assault. They took off their shoes and waded in the lake where she and Wendy had sailed and swam. They stood at the two small concrete blocks that marked the remains of the bridge Grandma Rose had hidden under before she shot the Swordsman soldier who was the father of the man who would later torture many of the people present. They walked to the bases of the foundations that had been the house where Rachel and Wendy had grown up. They had not been here since they left to attack the planet they had just come from the first time. They were not prepared for how overgrown the area had become. They could barely make out the remains of the corrals where they had kept their horses, but the deep ruts left by the PI ships, Buddy and Daisy, could still plainly be seen where they had rolled in from the lake.
Rachel and Wendy sat at the edge of the lake on the concrete bench that was all that remained of their home and cried. A lifetime of fighting other people’s battles had come full circle. They had finally returned home, but it wasn’t home anymore.
When Rachel and Wendy had stopped crying, Rashi revealed why he had insisted on coming to the surface. “I am staying here. I am not going with you. I am old and ill and my time has come. I wish to die here in peace. You may stay or leave as you wish, but my life’s work is done. Matilda and my children have what they need to carry on.”
Rashi sat in the soft grass near where the stream emptied into the lake and laid back. He smiled, crossed his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. Occasionally he would open his eyes and stare at the clouds skidding across the sky. Eventually he went to sleep and within the hour he had died. Isaac certified his death. Suwanee carried him to his final resting place. The smile on his face had never faded.
They buried Rashi in the so
ft ground between the houses and placed a marker. David said the appropriate prayers and everyone gave last respects. In some ways, Rashi’s death gave the rest hope. Perhaps, they too could die in their own time in the manner of their choosing, in peace rather than in violence.
In silence, they returned to the Queen Elizabeth to decide where they were needed next. They headed for the depot closest to what had been New St. Louis before that outpost had been destroyed by the Swordsmen in revenge for being the hub of the refugee railroad that took so many abused Swordsman women and children to far flung colonies. Upon arrival, they were informed that while most of the planets had reported in at least once, a few had not. Their new mission was to determine if these planets were safe for Stellar to resume their regular freight runs and report on the conditions of the spaceports and freight yards.
The staff at the freight depot was duly appreciative of having been sent the frozen food. Stellar had purchased the entire shipment for their own use and had sent back a large order for more. The food order guaranteed that the refugees would be rapidly assimilated since they would be needed to fulfill the order. The Queen Elizabeth was re-provisioned and rearmed as much as possible before departing for the closest planet on the list.
Several of the Queen Elizabeth’s crew elected to leave the ship to return to “normal lives” and caught rides on freighters headed to scattered parts all over the galaxy. They had accomplished the mission they had volunteered for and it was time to head home. When Elizabeth left port she carried eight PI ships and three hundred people, half of whom were medical staff. It was the smallest population she had carried in a very long time. Still, a battleship of Elizabeth's capabilities even without the three large cargo pods was not to be trifled with.
While they were still in port, Kim realized she was pregnant, a fact that surprised everyone but Wren. With one of the most experienced medical teams in the galaxy living right down the hall and not a lot for them to do, she got excellent care.
The first planet Elizabeth visited was the planet of the dinosaurs. The glass drones sent ahead reported no activity. They found no sources of energy other than what could be explained by volcanoes and other natural phenomena. There were no radio signals. There were no power plants. They would have spotted a camp fire if there had been one. The glass drones did not even detect the dinosaurs.
The Queen Elizabeth settled into a parking orbit and deployed sophisticated sensor satellites. The satellites detected the dinosaurs. There were fewer of them than expected. Since they were cold blooded, their body temperature was only a few degrees warmer than the ambient and they were as difficult to detect as they had been the first time Elizabeth and crew had been here.
It was only after the visible light sensing satellites returned images that anyone figured out what had happened. Wreckage was strewn across the planet. The Swordsmen had attacked. The Creighton Society had been unable to fend them off. The wreckage of their flagship was scattered over a hundred kilometers of desert. The reactor section had apparently landed in the ocean which was why it was not detected earlier. The Swordsmen had landed and the dinosaurs had attacked them. Thousands of sun-bleached dinosaur skeletons littered what must have been horrific battle sites. The Swordsmen had been overcome and the surviving dinosaurs left the carcases to provide feasts for the smaller animals.
What had happened to the ships that brought the Swordsmen was not known, but they apparently did not stay to hold the planet. After a few days of attempting to glean what information there was to collect, a courier missile was sent to the Stellar depot with the recordings and observations for examination by Stellar’s intelligence service.
The next destination was the planet where human slaves were being used as prey for sport hunters. When Elizabeth had last left there, a large Federation convoy had arrived to defend the planet against other Federation forces intent on their “sport” being allowed to continue.
The glass drones found the space near the planet littered with wreckage. The spaceports and airports were largely destroyed although enough of some of the runways remained intact that a med-ship could use them. Many of the ground-based missile and laser batteries appeared functional. Rather than risk approaching the planet and being blasted out of the sky, Rachel broadcast a request to approach on as many frequencies as possible.
They orbited the planet for two days until, as dawn broke over one of the airports, they saw letters that had been painted on one of the runways. The letters, as high as the runway was wide, read simply, “WELCOME RACHEL.”
After considerable discussion, aware of who might still be alive on the surface of the planet, Rachel agreed with Suwanee’s suggestion that Suwannee and Dustin should go first with one of the med ships under cover of the PI ships and the armed drones.
They landed on the runway that had been painted with the greeting and rolled to the remains of the hangars near the end of the runway. A large solitary black man in ragged clothes walked toward them. He leaned on a cane as he walked. Dustin opened the hatch and Suwanee climbed out. She walked slowly toward the man with her hands clearly visible by her sides. The ship’s camera relayed the scene to the Queen Elizabeth. One of the drones whistled by overhead and the man looked up. The drone carried Stellar’s battle markings. He looked at Suwanee and smiled. He held his arms wide and Suwanee ran for him enveloping him in a hug. They stood, locked in the embrace, for a minute or longer.
When they released from the hug she took his head in both of her hands and looked at him as if not believing her eyes. She kissed him once, briefly, on the lips.
The man was covered with scars. His hair was almost completely gray. His beard was white. He held himself tall and proud, but he had been injured too many times and too many of those recently to be completely upright.
Rachel watched the scene on her monitor. “Lionel?”
“I think so,” Faye Anne replied.
“Amazing,” Reuben said as he finally recognized their friend from long ago.
“Isaac, prepare to deploy medical personnel,” Rachel ordered.
Lionel turned to face the hangar. He waved his arm and a stream of wounded emerged from between the buildings. Dustin opened the med ship’s loading door and Lionel brought the people onto the ship. Once the ship was full and Lionel had briefed Dustin, Dustin took the ship back to the Queen Elizabeth. While in transit, Dustin informed Rachel that Lionel thought the wounded would be better served by transporting them to the hospital aboard the Queen Elizabeth rather than bringing the medical personnel to the surface. There were still Swordsman soldiers on the surface, but they were contained in isolated pockets and had reached a stand-off with the local population.
Suwanee stayed on the surface to assess the quantities and condition of people needing attention. She managed the flow of patients to and from the med ships. For the first month the Queen Elizabeth was on site, the medical suites and operating rooms ran full-time saving the lives and limbs of those that they could.
All the pilots except Kim and Wren ran in rotation to keep the med ships operating to transport as many people as possible. Well aware of the potential hazards of weightlessness to a fetus, Isaac had ordered both Kim and Wren to the surface where they took over air traffic control duties and moved from one surviving airport to another marshaling the flow of the med ships to the Queen Elizabeth. The PI ships, without human crews, under Tracker’s leadership, maintained defensive patrol. A few pirates wandered by, but after being greeted by the PI ships did not stay long.
After a month on site, the most severely injured had been treated. It was time to start rebuilding. The Queen Elizabeth’s engineering teams descended to the surface under Reuben’s leadership. David and his legal team followed them to negotiate the surrender of the remaining Swordsmen soldiers. Reuben’s first priority was the farm equipment that would be needed to bring in the harvest ripening in the northern hemisphere.
Stellar headquarters had been informed of the planet’s status and had repl
ied that the Queen Elizabeth should stay on station as long as they felt that their presence was of value. Stellar would send a convoy after the harvest was in. The convoy would include Colony Service staff who would help rebuild the destroyed infrastructure. In keeping with Colony Service policies, those members of the Queen Elizabeth’s crew who wished to stay would be compensated and assimilated into the community.
After four months on site, the harvest began. Large machines, often driven by combat pilots or engineers, brought in the crops. As would be expected with inexperienced operators, accidents happened frequently. In one of these accidents one of the engineers had become trapped under the machine. Reuben and others on site extricated the engineer but the exertion proved to be too much for Reuben. He sat down adjacent to where the medics were tending to the engineer. A blood vessel to his heart had burst and he died sitting next to one of the machines he had lovingly resurrected after the damage it had suffered in the battle. The injured engineer had been sent off before anyone realized Reuben had died.
Suwanee send a courier informing her children that their father had died. Delmar replied, “Mama, come home. There’s babies and their parents that miss you and your loving touch.”
The Stellar convoy arrived after the harvest had been processed and brought a contingent of Colony Service personnel. The convoy picked up the products intended for market. Suwanee left with the convoy for the long ride home to her children and grandchildren.
Colony service requested and Stellar agreed that four of the PI ships should stay on station with their crews to defend against pirates or further Swordsman activity. Since the PI ships could operate in space and take off or land from a normal runway, they made the most sense to be included in the planet’s defense network. The two PI ships that had been sent home for repair had been repaired and assigned escort duty. They would travel attached to a freighter which visited planets whose need was too small for a full convoy and were therefore serviced by a single freighter. There were those in the Stellar Security Service for whom this was their favorite type of duty.
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