"That will be great. Thank you, Captain."
"You're welcome, Ensign. By the way, the doctor tells me that you're the new galactic record holder for survival in a stasis chamber. We'll have to notify the folks at Guinness Galactic when we reach Vinnia."
"It's a distinction that I could happily have lived without, sir. Do you know anything about my ship, the Hokyuu?"
"Just what I read in the news dispatches. Lost in 2256, cause was eventually blamed on a flawed vacuum restrictor in the anti-matter flow. All hands were recovered except one." Lentz paused and smiled. "Correction, all hands have been recovered. Hokyuu is a funny name for a supply ship. Someone must have had a belly laugh over that one."
"What do you mean, sir?"
"I'm pretty sure that Hokyuu means supply in Japanese. So that made you a crewmember of the supply ship ‘Supply.'" He chuckled to himself. "As soon as you're fit, I'll arrange a ship's tour, if you wish it?"
"I'd like that very much," Jenetta said smiling.
"Okay, you've got it. I'll see you when you're better."
"Goodnight, Captain."
Jenetta lowered the mattress so that her head was elevated barely higher than her feet, and relaxed as she considered all the implications of what she had just heard. It seemed impossible that Space Command could have lost control of the territory the way that Captain Lenz had said, but for now she would accept that it was true. And the utter vastness of GA space might make it impossible for Space Command to ever regain control if they couldn't locate the bases from which the Raiders operated.
* * *
In two more days, Jenetta was sitting up in bed, and in four she took her first steps, with the aid of a walker frame to help support her weight while her legs strengthened. She fell a number of times as she pushed her recovery along at a faster rate than might appear judicious, and always refused assistance from the doctor in getting back on her feet.
In seven days she was walking without the walker's support, although some might have described it more as lurching, and in eleven days she jogged, albeit slowly, for the first time since leaving the Hokyuu. Each step on the road of physical recovery was accompanied by great pain as atrophied muscles were stretched, flexed, twisted, and strengthened. Jenetta consistently pushed herself to the limits of her endurance and beyond.
On the twelfth day following her rescue, Jenetta was officially released from the sickbay and assigned quarters on the bridge deck. Of the eight staterooms located in that section, only four were occupied. Having four to choose from, she selected the one closest to the occupied rooms without even looking at the others.
Painted in the same neutral, off-white color as her room aboard the Hokyuu, as were the crew quarters in most of the Space Command fleet, her new quarters were spacious and comfortable. Where her quarters aboard the Hokyuu had consisted of a tiny bedroom and miniscule bath, her new quarters were almost the size of the bedroom and bath she'd had at her parent's home on Earth. And she had a moderately-sized sitting room of her own as well. She felt like she had just been promoted to Lt. Commander.
Jenetta's GSC uniform had been found in the pod following her recovery. Taken to the Vordoth's supply room, it was scanned by the ship's tailoring computer and the data stored. New clothing was then prepared, including four new uniform tunics bearing a narrow gold bar on each epaulet, still the standard rank insignia of an ensign. Made from a comfortable stretchy fabric comparable to the one used by Space Command, the white blouses fit perfectly, or at least would once she filled out a little. The hip-length tunics and trousers, made from a muted-black synthetic fabric almost identical to that used by Space Command, were nearly impossible to distinguish from original SC issue without a close-up inspection. The sixteen brass buttons on each tunic, representing the sixteen planets who were signatories of the original Galactic Alliance Articles, provided the only indication that the uniforms were not military issue. And one had to closely examine the two rows of bas-relief buttons on the front of each new tunic to even recognize the difference. Since the tailoring computer didn't have the proper die setups to stamp out the strictly decorative adornments with the Space Command logo, the merchant services logo had been used. The number of buttons also immediately distinguished her uniforms from those of the Merchant Service officers on board because their tunics included just a single row of six functional buttons. After cleaning, her Space Command issued uniform was placed into an airtight garment bag, to be saved for use when she left the ship. It was her intention to be in ‘proper' uniform when she reported back for duty.
* * *
At 0545 the following morning, Jenetta took breakfast in the officer's mess for the first time, completing her return to a diet of mainly solid foods. A single white-laminate table, capable of seating twelve officers, occupied the center of the spotlessly clean room. If you weren't awake before entering the large white wardroom, you certainly would be afterwards. The overpowering brightness reflecting off the white laminate walls seemed powerful enough to force itself in through one's pores.
The officer's mess attendant, who identified himself as Anthony, informed her that the first officer was still on duty and that the captain rarely ate breakfast. Jenetta smiled and requested orange juice, corn flakes with milk, sugar, and strawberry or banana slices, and a mug of coffee.
Gaunt in the extreme, Anthony didn't much look like your typical mess attendant, but the five-foot seven-inch young man with sandy hair knew his business and his way around his mess kitchen. He brought the juice and coffee first, and Jenetta hadn't even finished her first cup of Colombian before Anthony produced a large bowl of corn flakes with both strawberry and banana slices. Of course the fruit was synthesized, and so had the usual wafer-like appearance, but it was the right color, had the proper texture, and most importantly it tasted like the real thing.
At 0608 the first officer, Lieutenant Gloria Sabella, who had been relieved by the captain at 0600 hours, stopped into the mess for a light breakfast. She extended her hand across the table as she said, "Good morning, Ensign, and welcome aboard. It's good to see you up and about. Doc tells me that you're making remarkable progress with your recovery."
Jenetta stood and shook the proffered hand, saying, "Thank you, ma'am. I'm very happy to be aboard, and it's good to be almost fit again."
"You can drop the ‘ma'am.' We may wear uniforms similar to Space Command's, but we're a lot more informal in the merchant service than you military folks. Call me Gloria. Only the captain is always referred to by rank. The Doctor answers to Doctor, Doc, or Rebecca, rather than Lieutenant Commander, and the chief engineer would probably slug me if I called him Lieutenant." With a wide smile and a definite twinkle in her eyes, she added, "He prefers Charley."
Jenetta liked the five-foot nine-inch brunette immediately. Gloria had an athletically trim body, an easy way of carrying herself, and a wonderful smile. It was her smile that made her average face glow, motivating people to redefine their initial impression of her to ‘pretty.' She estimated Gloria's age at between thirty and thirty-two, just a little younger than her own real age, but she couldn't know if Gloria had undergone any stasis sleeps. She just chuckled and said, "Thanks. Call me Jen."
"Okay, Jen. Congratulations on surviving the explosion of the Hokyuu— but how— in the hell— did you get all the way out here? We picked you up billions of kilometers from where your ship reportedly exploded."
"I got a heck of a boost when the ship went up. Then the retrorocket on the pod wouldn't fire so I just kept traveling after the main rocket cut out."
"Damn government contractors," Gloria said angrily. "Buying by the lowest bid should be outlawed on life saving equipment like emergency pods. Government contractors are almost as bad as the damn freight company owners. We shouldn't be out here without a convoy or a private escort."
"I thought this duty was voluntary, with double pay."
"Voluntary? Hah— that's a laugh. In exchange for an astronomical fee, the company committed
to an outrageous delivery date on some construction supplies and equipment. Failure to deliver on time imposes a penalty larger than the total fee, so they threatened to fire anyone who refused to go, and for the first time in memory, they were true to their word. Most of the senior staff was turned out. They're probably blacklisted as well, so they'll have trouble getting another decent berth. Charley and Rebecca are the only officers from the original group. The Captain is a new hire, and I was brought over from the Vordoth's sister ship, the Kleist. I was offered my choice between a seat on the bridge, or a seat in the unemployment section of the union hall. The damn union rep sided with the ‘effing' company. I've only been with this hauler for four years but I'd have had to start over with another freight operation. There have been a dozen times when I wished I told them where they could shove this ‘effing' job, but there's no guarantee that I wouldn't wind up out here anyway if I went to another operation. So here we are, praying that we'll live long enough to collect our bonuses."
"Speaking strictly selfishly, I'm glad you're here. The captain told me that my pod's power cells were almost dead."
Gloria frowned and nodded sadly. "Too true. Even when equipped with stasis chambers, pods are only designed to last for five to seven years. If you're not picked up in that time, they figure you're space dust anyway. The power cells couldn't have lasted more than another year without a chem recharge."
Jenetta shrugged. "When I climbed into the stasis chamber, I thought my number was up. I knew that I'd been too far away from the other pods when the rescue ship arrived, and I decided that I'd rather die peacefully in my sleep than go crazy from the isolation, or starve to death when the emergency food packs ran out. I feel like I've returned from the dead— or more aptly as if I've been reborn when you consider that I've had to practically learn to move and walk again over the past two weeks. I'm looking upon this as my second life."
"Well," Gloria said, holding up what remained of her orange juice as a toast and smiling widely, "here's to second lives. May we all be forgiven for the inapt missteps of our past, and presented with new opportunities to accomplish the things that we've dreamed of doing."
Jenetta looked at Gloria strangely for a second, wondering if she knew of Jenetta's difficulties at the Academy. But she immediately realized that wasn't possible, and shook herself mentally. Grinning, she raised her coffee mug in unison and said, "Second lives," before taking a sip. After both women shared a chuckle, Jenetta said, "The captain said that I might have a tour of the ship."
"Yep, he asked me to show you around. I have to score some rack time right now, but how about 1600 hours? I'll come to your quarters."
"Great," Jenetta said enthusiastically.
"If you're looking for something to do between now and then, why don't you visit the bridge? I'm sure the captain will show you around there, not that you need showing around a bridge. I'm sure your NHSA training included everything that you're likely to find aboard the Vordoth."
"Thanks Gloria, I'll head there after breakfast."
"Okay, I'll see you at 1600, Jen."
"Til then."
A few minutes before 0700 hours Ensign Jenetta Carver entered the Vordoth's bridge, walked to the command chair, and came to attention. Captain Lentz looked up from the report he was reading on one of the chair's attached viewscreens and smiled benignly.
"Good morning, Ensign," he said. "Stand easy. How are you feeling?"
"Much better, sir," Jenetta said as she relaxed slightly. "Most of the effects of the prolonged sleep are gone. I still need some improvement in my stamina, but it's coming along."
"Good. Very good. What can I do for you today?"
"I'd like permission to look around the bridge, sir," Jenetta said, as she glanced around. The room was about ten-meters across by ten-meters deep. Three independent operator consoles towards the front of the bridge, spaced a meter apart, faced a large wall-mounted viewscreen, but only the center console was presently manned. The command chair was in the rear half of the room, and located directly behind the center console. On the larboard side of the command chair was a huge workstation in the shape of a semicircle. Several large viewscreens hung above that occupied station. A similar semicircular workstation, located on the starboard side of the bridge, was also occupied. On the rear bulkhead, facing away from the front viewscreen, were two consoles that Jen immediately recognized as fire control stations. Each had a large viewscreen of its own. The Captain was seated far enough back that he could see everyone except the weapons gunners simply by turning his head. "I'd also like to volunteer to help out in any way that I can. I thought that an extra pair of trained eyes might be of use while we're traversing this area of space."
"Your help and training would be appreciated, Ensign." Using his hands to gesture, Lentz said, "This Bridge has the standard freighter configuration. That's helm control at the center front of the bridge, with the astrogator's console to its left, and the science station console to its right. Communication is there on my right. Those two consoles behind me are the weapons stations for the phased array laser weapons; and this station to my immediate left is security. The security station is what you would call the tactical station on a warship, but since we don't plot attacks against other ships, our sensors are only used to keep our perimeter secure."
"Is your astrogator on break, sir?"
"No, we're a bit short-handed on this run; but we don't need that station manned most of the time anyway. Once my first or I lay in the course, the computer keeps us there unless it spots something in our path. The helmsman has a readout that shows any deviation from plotted course. We're not very militarily oriented here. We're basically just truck drivers," he said, smiling.
Jenetta smiled back before saying, "With a truck that's more than six kilometers long, weighing billions of tons, traveling trillions of kilometers at faster then light speeds, unprotected, through hostile territory."
"That makes it a little more— challenging, to be sure. Well— pick your poison, Ensign. Our security station is already being used to search space around us. Would you prefer to watch from the astrogator's console or the science station?"
"I'd prefer the science station for looking around. I think the sensor readouts would be better suited to spotting anything unusual."
The captain smiled and nodded. "That would be my choice as well. Carry on, Ensign," he said as he returned to the report he had been reading.
"Yes sir."
Jenetta took several minutes to wander around the bridge, glancing at the layouts of the various consoles before taking her seat at the science station. Everything looked fairly common, except that the security console included a weapons targeting module. Jenetta decided that it must be set up to function as a backup weapons station if one of the two fire control consoles against the rear bulkhead was damaged.
Like the helmsman, the crewman manning the security station only wore the rank insignia of petty officer. On a Space Command vessel, the tactical, helm, and astrogation stations would always be manned by a commissioned officer. SC vessels made no provision for a science station on the bridge, using that location for an engineering monitoring console. The science function, as defined in the Space Command operations manual, was far too complex to be properly handled by a few bridge instruments, so the science officer would perform all of his or her work duties only in a fully equipped Astrophysics Lab. The communications station on the Vordoth was likewise manned by a petty officer, while on SC ships, that post was always manned by two chief petty officers, or by a petty officer with a chief looking over his or her shoulder during the entire duty watch.
She hadn't announced it, or let her excitement show, but this was her first time on the bridge of a ship in space. She had, of course, spent innumerable hours in the bridge simulators at the Academy during command and control exercises, but this was the real deal and it took all her self-control to project a perfectly placid composure. In her three months aboard the Hokyuu, she hadn't once been
invited even to tour the bridge, despite several hints to Lt. Coster and the other bridge officers that had been so obvious as to border on being formal requests. Aboard quartermaster ships, science officers are considered about as useful as screen doors for the airlocks.
Over the next five hours, Jenetta used the knowledge and skills acquired at the Academy to search space for anything out of the ordinary. The ship's ACS, or anti-collision system, had the potential to ‘see' another vessel that was hours away, even when both ships were proceeding at top speed towards one another, if both vessels were transmitting a proper AutoTect code, or at least by minutes when only the DeTect grid was active.
* * *
Chapter Seven
~ June 24th, 2267 ~
A collision between two fully loaded passenger ships has the potential to kill tens of thousands, and, despite the vastness of space, several deadly collisions actually occurred in the decades following the development of faster than light travel. It became necessary to restrict ships to specific flight routes, times, and speeds, but as the volume of FTL travel grew, it was recognized that the system would eventually become overburdened and impossible to manage effectively. The Galactic Alliance decided that an alternate method for travel safety had to be found. Their solution was to inaugurate a multi-decade R&D project whose mission it was to discover a means of identifying other vessels that presented a danger to FTL spacefarers. The mechanics of DATFA didn't offer any solutions to the problem, so other avenues were explored. An old discipline was gloriously resurrected when physicists discovered a way to access hyperspace, although only with communication signals.
A Galaxy Unknown Page 7
