What must be done, will be done, and you don't have to like just how. This is the story of our heroine and what happened to destroy and save humanity in the dark days of the system wars.
Theide
...The cool green hills had gone the way of the Dodo. Now what was left was scrapping over the rest of the solar system, killing each other for the mineral bearing rocks of the Belt, fighting over ice for the volatiles needed to sustain life.
No, the cool green hills had gone the way of the Dodo. Now what was left was scrapping over the rest of the solar system, killing each other for the mineral bearing rocks of the Belt, fighting over ice for the volatiles needed to sustain life.
And perhaps the worst thing was that she was responsible for much of it. It had been her hand that had launched the last horrible assault on the Ozarks, had commanded the devastation that brought the last forces planetside to their knees. But there had been no choice. She told herself that again and again, and she wished fervently to believe it. Still, the lost souls of her husband and her child cried out to her from that blasted ruin.
Yet there was nothing to do but carry on, and that she did with every fiber of her being. There wasn’t really anything else to do, after all. She commanded 5,000 lives, was their mistress after god, their captain, and it was her responsibility to make sure they lived or at least gave their lives in some manner worthy of the sacred honor they had pledged themselves to as Fleet Marines. It wasn’t a job she wanted, it wasn’t even a job she had ever desired, but it was hers, and nothing could take that last little bit of solace from her.
It was all that was left. That and a small naval yard, orbiting the frigid rings of Uranus. And that was under attack by a ragtag batch of Belters. God only knew what they hoped to achieve, but those folks were hers, and be damned if she was going to let them go down on her watch! So it was maximum boost, hell bent for leather, every hand struggling under 3 gravities, and broken bones were the order of the day.
It was a weary crew that arrived after 5 months of hard gravity, broken in body, damn near broken in spirit. They were all vastly stronger in body, but their minds had taken a terrible beating, news of disaster after holocaust after genocide beating in upon minds already numbed by the horrific physical toll their environment had taken upon them.
There wasn’t really much to say when they finally arrived at Heaphestus Naval Yard to find a blasted, looted ruin, a few straggling survivors holding together the last of the environmental support systems deep in the bowels of the yard, protecting the few dependents who had been gathered there.
It was no hardship to take those few aboard, to shelter those last lost souls in the welcoming warmth of the last bit of civilization around. Some of the crew had to double up, but there were a bare 500 or so survivors and most of them were children. Lost bewildered children who spent their days wandering around with an odd determined look in their eyes and their nights fighting of dreams of horror. The thing that bothered her the most was that almost none of them ever cried.
She tried to befriend some of them, and knew that many of her crew had made the same effort, but these children were unlike any she had ever met. They all seemed to share a bond, that much she could tell, but none of them would open up to any of the adults, none of them would share with them just what horror haunted their cold flat gaze. That was the other thing they all shared, the cold, burn you to the soul and pin you to the deck gaze that she had seen in many veterans of close combat, the thing they called the thousand yard stare.
You could look into the eyes of these children and see what they had been through, but it gave no insight into who they were or how they felt. It was like they just looked through you , through the ship itself and into the depths of space, and nothing would ever interrupt that terrible regard. It was really a little creepy.
Someone was trying to escape the remains of the shipyard, someone her dedicated and very thorough crew had not found, maybe a pirate, maybe a survivor, but definitely someone who could build something space worthy out the wreckage, for all she saw was what looked like attitude jets, not the flare of boosters, just the puff of ice crystals from thrusters.
They could exist almost indefinitely as a floating rock, atmosphere could be recycled and refreshed for almost 20 years, but there was only so much to be had in the way of fuel, and that was the limit. 4 years, and her ship became a rock. That wasn’t an option.
On the long bone crushing, agonizing trip out here, she had decided that no matter what, she would do her best to establish some kind of civilization out here, or she and her crew would die trying. Someone had to do something, and it seemed to her as though her ship was just possibly humanity’s last hope to build something worthwhile out of the ashes of this war.
She leaned back in her chair, studying the vista spread before her eyes, the ghostly rings of the gas giant they orbited bisecting the seen and unseen halves of the planet, partly lit by the now faint light of Sol, partly in permanent shadow, and took a thoughtful sip of her coffee. It was lonely out here, and the weight of a solar system was on her shoulders.
It wasn’t fair. Even Atlas had only had to bear the weight of Earth, and here she was with all of humanity riding on what she did or didn’t do in the coming years. She took just a moment to engage in self pity, to long for the simple days before all of this started, before Mars decided to declare independence and the Earth tried to assert it’s dominance, her happy days at the Academy, before the PWA and all of that insanity overwhelmed everything.
The moment of peace was interrupted by a brief spark of light. She wouldn’t have caught it if not for her steady gaze into the vasty black deep. Someone was trying to escape the remains of the shipyard, someone her dedicated and very thorough crew had not found, maybe a pirate, maybe a survivor, but definitely someone who could build something space worthy out the wreckage, for all she saw was what looked like attitude jets, not the flare of boosters, just the puff of ice crystals from thrusters. She watched in horror as what looked like a small section of the habitat area began to spin out of control, even though it looked like it was maintaining a steady vector toward the planet. To her practiced eye, something was wrong with this picture.
The thruster pulses seemed to time with the rotation of the habitat, producing what looked like a smooth trajectory, even though agonizingly slow. She bolted out of her chair and spun for the bridge, coffee forgotten.
He had cobbled together enough fuel cells to hold for almost a year, and careful rationing would give enough food and water for nine months. After that, he would starve, freeze, or suffocate. It didn’t really matter, any way he cut it, he was dead if he didn’t make some kind of movement.
It had been almost six months since the desperate message from his father had reached him, telling him to hide. There would have been more to the message, but it cut off suddenly as the entire yard rang like a bell with what he now knew were the opening volleys of the assault on the facility. After that, everything had deteriorated into a nightmarish confusion of weapons fire and mad scrambling to find a compartment that wasn’t venting atmosphere.
He had finally gotten trapped in a storage area, locked off on all sides by vacuum, unable to leave or make contact. The saving grace for him had been the very fact that it was a storage area. A careful search found enough resources to build a CO2 scrubber, oxygen to replenish what he breathed, and some food. Given those things, and the miraculous fact that power from the station was somehow still available, he had been able to eke out continued existence, bare and bleak though it was.
He had cobbled together enough fuel cells to hold for almost a year, and careful rationing would give enough food and water for nine months. After that, he would starve, freeze, or suffocate. It didn’t really matter, any way he cut it, he was dead if he didn’t make some kind of movement. After many careful calculations, he had decided to cut loose from the tattered remnants of the yard and head for one of the smaller retrograde moons. He would be able to land there, barely.
There were enough volatiles to be harvested for fuel and the mass of the moon was low enough to enable him to take off again and plot a course for Saturn, where hopefully he would be able to find a way to attract the attention of one of the ice miners and gain some measure of safety.
There was an emergency spacesuit in the compartment and he had been able to use that to attach makeshift thrusters to the outside of his compartment. Not much, and definitely not pretty, but enough to do the job, enough to get him where he wanted to go. Then that huge ship had shown up and the station’s framework shuddered to the tempo of spacesuited, booted feet. He knew they were searching through the wreckage, and the thought of being found by Earthers made his blood run icy in his veins. So he hid again, turned his power draw down to a trickle, and made ready to sneak away.
The moment had finally come. Traffic from the ship had dwindled to a few small craft at rare intervals and it seemed like it might just be possible to depart unobserved, so with a tremor of trepidation, he cut his last connection to the power feed and cast off.
It took just a bare instant for the pulse of coherent light to bridge the distance, neatly severing the link between the cobbled together ship and a thruster which went flying away, thrown by the forces it had helped to generate. Sarah bent intently over her readouts, feverishly calculating the results. Her face grew a little grim as she got a result she didn’t like, fingers blurring on controls as she sought a solution.
Suddenly she became aware that something was not as it should be. She had carefully plotted the locations of all of the major debris resulting from the attack on the station, but something out there was not behaving the way it should be! Quick fingers punched up an assessment, and she realized that something out there was behaving like a ship, even though its sensor profile bore no resemblance to one.
Sarah was just lifting a hand to relay her report to Lt. Commander Solingen, the officer of the watch, when the captain came slamming out of her ready room. She hesitated for a bare moment as the captain flowed smoothly into her chair and fastened her shockframe around herself. “Sensors, do a sweep for anomalous motion in the debris field!”
“Captain, one anomalous report, what appears to be a small craft, er… What the fuck? One moment Captain, I have no ID on the craft and I’m not exactly sure what it’s trajectory is, the d… well, maam, the thing seems to be under some kind of control, but I show it steering directly for the planet!” The young ensign who was on duty at Sensors worked feverishly at her console for a moment before she spoke again.
“Maam, the best I can figure, it looks like this a fragment of the station outfitted with some low level thrusters. Trajectory as I initially saw it looked like it was headed for one of the smaller moons, but right now it looks like the thruster timings are out of sequence with the rotation, and it’s getting worse.”
“Maam, whoever is in there won’t survive the trip, it’s up to 4 gees in there now and getting worse! I read one life form and that one appears to be in serious trouble!”
Helen thought for a moment. Someone who had the engineering skills necessary to turn a derelict chunk of space station into a ship would be an asset she could not stand to lose. “Bay 1, Prep salvage unit for launch, priority alpha!” She settled back to wait, for there was nothing else she could do at the moment. Even at priority Alpha, it would take 5 minutes for the recovery craft to launch, and maybe another 15 minutes for the craft to come within range of the steadily accelerating station fragment.
“Ensign, feed recovery craft all data on the fragment! Do you have any data on why the rate of spin is so high?”
‘Data indicates that one or more thrusters have failed and the others are compensating, maam! The living person I’ve detected there is not moving and the readings suggest that he or she is out of it! On the plus side, I’ve got some better data on the trajectory, and it looks like it was originally a slingshot designed to intersect with one of the smaller moons!”
Helen thought furiously for a moment. It certainly didn’t look like a move one of the belters would make. It had to be something else. The big problem was how to kill the increase in the thing’s spin so that a recovery craft could latch onto it. She was banging the problem around in her head when she became aware that there was a hushed conversation going on between the sensor station and Fire Control. She was just about to open her mouth to find out what it was all about when Lieutenant JG Bosphors, who was manning Fire Control, spoke up.
“Maam, Sarah and I think, if I’m super careful, we can knock off one of the thrusters and stop the increase in the rate of spin. It’s gotta be done just right though, or I’ll hole the bulkheads. I’d like to try.” His usual mournful face had taken on somewhat of a hangdog look as he continued. “Maam, if I don’t try, the internal gees in that whatever it is are going to be up over fifteen by the time the recovery ship gets there, and I don’t see any way it’s gonna be able to catch it with that rate of spin, not that it’ll matter, whoever’s in there is gonna be dead before it can get there.”
It didn’t take very long for her to make a decision. “Do it.” Fingers flew over keypads and data flowed between stations as Bosphors set up his firing solution, pausing just a moment with his finger over the small illuminated square on his control board which would initiate the sequence. He looked over to the captain and she gave just the slightest nod.
It took just a bare instant for the pulse of coherent light to bridge the distance, neatly severing the link between the cobbled together ship and a thruster which went flying away, thrown by the forces it had helped to generate. Sarah bent intently over her readouts, feverishly calculating the results. Her face grew a little grim as she got a result she didn’t like, fingers blurring on controls as she sought a solution.
“Maam, we’ve got to try to knock the other thrusters off. Whoever is over there must have set up some kind of dynamic control system and now the thrusters are even further out of sequence. Its gotta be over 5 gees in there and going up fast!” She fed data over to Bosphor’s board as she spoke. He was just as busily setting up firing solutions. If not for the lack of music, you could be forgiven for thinking there was some sort of mad duel between keyboard artists going on. Another quick look over at the captains face, another nod of assent, and he almost caressed the key which would set his program in motion.
Quick lances of light did their work with eerie efficiency. One last thruster flew away and all that was left was a madly whirling piece of debris, still careening on its deadly course.
“Captain, recovery craft ready for launch. Launching now.”
Helen sat back and allowed herself a small glow of pride in her crew. Her bridge crew was phenomenal, but the rest of them were just as remarkable in their own way. Previous best record for prep and launch of a recovery craft had been just over 5 minutes and here they were launching in half of that.
Just a moment later they were passing the backboard back out, a pale waiflike form strapped to it. “Don’t wait for us to get out, get that kid to sickbay ASAP!” The medic was less than halfway back through the hole when the gurney the backboard had been placed on vanished through the hatch. Jeff would have loved to follow it, but he had to take care of his ship first, and that was that.
It was so frustrating, because he knew what had gone wrong, he just couldn’t reach the control station to fix it. Another breath, drawn with effort and agony of broken ribs. “Just breathe” he thought to himself, “Just breathe and enjoy the air, cause soon one of the bulkheads is going to give way and there isn’t going to be any more air.”
He was just beginning to fade into a sort of grey reverie when a sickening lurch and a change of spin in the craft sent him sliding across the bulkhead in the direction of his control station, almost touching it. “One of the thrusters must have cut loose!” was his first exultant thought. He strained to reach up with his unbroken arm, to get to his controls, but his arm was so heavy he could just barely get it off the deck, and the hopelessness of his task seemed to sap even more energy from him. Even the simple effort of breathing was almost more than he could do, but he kept struggling to do that because it was the only thing left that he could do.
That grey dreamy state began to overtake him again, and as much as he fought it, it didn’t seem like there was anything he could do about it. Even the pain of bones grating against each other didn’t seem to matter anymore, and there was no true conscious thought in his mind as the mounting pressure crushed him flat.
“Recovery 1 to Hermes, we’ve reached the um, thing and are beginning to damp its motion” Jeff mentally kicked himself as he carefully manipulated the gravitic lasso, slowing the spin of what he could now tell was a piece of the station. *Way to impress the captain, dumbass! Just go out there and sound like a blithering idiot!*
“Hermes, we’ve got the spin stopped now, but there is no way to get whoever is in there out. I’m gonna have to bring it into the bay with us.”
“Understood, Recovery 1. Proceed.”
Jeff began the delicate job of nudging the station fragment back toward the open boat bay, being exquisitely careful to avoid sharp accelerations. Even so, he was in a hurry, knowing that whoever was inside had to be in pretty bad shape. By the time he maneuvered his own craft into it’s boat bay behind his charge, he was sweating and more than a little tense.
It was good to feel gravity return slowly to the decksole under his feet as he extracted himself from his ungainly looking craft, but there was only one thought in his mind. He hurried over to the lopsided, battered looking piece of debris, whistling in amazement as he got closer How the hell did that thing hold together?
Almost instantly it seemed like he was surrounded by deck crew. Ratings huddled in a gaggle around the thing, looking for a way in. There was an airtight door, but it seemed to be jammed, so out came the cutting torches. An intense few moments of activity yielded a large enough hole to get a light pipe inside.
Jeff was relegated to the outside of the beehive of activity, but he heard clearly enough. “Chief, that kids in pretty bad shape. We gotta get in there and fast.” The activity that had been intense now ramped up to something near frantic, with four cutting torches working on a single man sized hole. Shortly the section of bulkhead was almost free and a pry bar was inserted to ensure it fell outward when the final cut was made.
All activity but the hiss of one torch went silent. The clang of the metal as it fell onto the deck seemed like a signal, as thermal barrier foam was quickly applied to the still red hot metal edges of the hole, a medic waiting impatiently for the few seconds it took to set, then practically throwing himself through the opening. Another followed, then a backboard was passed in.
Jeff could hear the two muttering. Just a moment later they were passing the backboard back out, a pale waiflike form strapped to it. “Don’t wait for us to get out, get that kid to sickbay ASAP!” The medic was less than halfway back through the hole when the gurney the backboard had been placed on vanished through the hatch. Jeff would have loved to follow it, but he had to take care of his ship first, and that was that.
*I must be dead. I’ll be damned, the religious types were right, there is some kind of afterlife.* Stacy could hear voices around him, but he couldn’t seem to move or feel his body, or even see anything. Well not in terms of sensation anyway, but there was an immense feeling of relief at not being in pain. The voices didn’t make any sense, though.
“Well, what’s the dope, Bones?”
“Mostly neomorpha right now, Maam, but I’m easing the kid off of that as quickly as possible… oh. The kids gonna be ok, but I’ve got to say I’m a little puzzled by his, I mean her, or whatever…. I’m really puzzled by the kids physiology, maam. There was a punctured lung, some broken ribs, a broken leg, a broken arm and anoxia, but in the process, we found something else out.”
“Well, out with it doctor, what’s the deal?” That clear contralto took on a sharper edge than it had held before.
“Well maam, I think this is the most complete case of Bilateral Hermaphroditism I’ve ever seen. The kid has both sets of equipment, gonads, the whole thing. That’s not the unusual bit. Normally when this happens, the male end of things suffers, but in this case both sets of equipment seem to be functioning and developing perfectly normally. Other than the injuries we’ve treated, the only thing wrong with the kid is a bit of malnutrition.”
*Well, that answers that question. I’m not dead. Wait a minute, what was that he said?* Before he could pursue the line of thought any further, he found himself drifting back into unconsciousness.
There she was, drifting in front of him in microgravity, her burgeoning breasts teasing him, her hips undulating with the minor effort required to keep her in place, in the middle of the cabin. He felt an almost overwhelming lust for her, but knew somehow that to lunge for her and seek sexual completion was the very thing that would scare her away, so he held and watched her dance for him, a shy nymph, wanting him but frightened by the visible evidence of his manhood, standing proud, straight and twitching with desire before him.
On his way there, he heard voices, one of which he knew was the Captain, the other took a minute to penetrate his focused state of awareness. “Cap’n, that’s the damndest rig I ever saw. If it hadn’t been for that one damaged circuit board, it would have worked.”
“So you are telling me that that kid almost cobbled together a workable ship out of some door control panels and a storage compartment on a station?”
“Yep, that’s exactly what I’m sayin.” That raspy bass the chief engineer seemed to project resonated within the passageway. “I saw what Nav projected as the most likely destination, and the control programming confirmed it. Looks like he was headed for one of the smaller moons to replenish volatiles for fuel. The only reachable destination from there was the Saturn system. I’m guessing the kid was headed for neutral territory, hoping to find some kind of refuge with the ice miners. Damn smart of the little bastard, and he probably would have made it if not for that one fault in the circuitry. The fucked up thing is that that board failed QC for higher level control functions so it was bumped down to general maintenance and they used it for a bloody hatch controller. It was fine for that, but one of the higher level logic controllers was fucked beyond any hope of repair, and with the equipment the kid had, there was no way to know it.”
“Well Master Chief, thanks for the briefing, if I have any more questions, I’ll be sure to let you know. Good evening” Jeff could almost hear the normally slovenly Master Chief come to attention and salute his captain as she left him standing at the entry hatch to Sickbay.
He waited for a few moments, hidden in a maintenance alcove until he saw the captain stride past on her way back out. He admired her confidence, the way she seemed to just be beyond all question, perfectly in command of both herself and her ship, not to mention all who served aboard her. True, there was a brief surge of jealousy, but he had never thought himself to be suited for command on her level. In truth, he didn’t want that kind of responsibility. Perfection for him was the delicate ballet of his ship and himself in counterpoint to gravitation and whatever he had been sent to retrieve. The fact that he had to perform complex mathematics dealing with the relative motions of several different objects being influenced by varying gravitational fields never occurred to him, it was about as natural to him as breathing.
A few moments later, he found himself in the doctor’s office. “Doc, is she gonna live? Is she gonna be ok?”
The doctor looked at him steadily for a moment before replying. There was something in that gaze he couldn’t quite fathom, something between humor and sympathy, something he didn’t understand. “Well,” another pause fraught with meaning he didn’t get, “Yeah, EllTee, the patient is gonna be ok. It’s gonna be a few more hours still, you know Neomorpha takes a while to wear off, and I can’t really say when the patient will be ready for visitors.” He pulled a pipe out of a pouch around his waist and lit it, puffing fragrant streams of blue smoke into the air of the cramped cabin. “You just go get some sack time and I’ll let you know what’s up, ok?’
Jeff agreed and let his instincts draw him to his berth. He strapped himself into his bunk and drifted into a sort of semiconscious state.
There she was, drifting in front of him in microgravity, her burgeoning breasts teasing him, her hips undulating with the minor effort required to keep her in place, in the middle of the cabin. He felt an almost overwhelming lust for her, but knew somehow that to lunge for her and seek sexual completion was the very thing that would scare her away, so he held himself in check and watched her dance for him, a shy nymph, wanting him but frightened by the visible evidence of his manhood, standing proud, straight and twitching with desire before him.
His very being was consumed with desire for this marvelous woman before him, but he dared not approach. It was only then that he realized there was something more to her. Yes, there were pink glistening lips, swollen with desire, but mounted above them was…
He fought the straps, awakening to realize he had been dreaming and collapsed back into the damp and cum stained sheets to enter true sleep.
What was she going to do? The captain who had brought an effective end to the largest war humanity had ever fought by inflicting the greatest slaughter ever committed posed this question to herself as she sat finishing her red beans and rice, grimacing at the taste. This youngster they had just rescued could be one of the more promising engineering geniuses of the past century, but she had no idea how to even approach the child.
Beans and rice were food, but they just didn’t fulfill the carnivorous need. Indeed, something within her rebelled at the idea, but what was offered was what there was, and she had to be happy with that or just choose not to eat. Somehow, the idea of eating, even red beans and rice, seemed more than just attractive to her now.
She had figured out a kind of dodge for this. Just take a bite of beans and rice and imagine she was munching on the most delicious, juicy steak she had ever eaten. It wasn’t working. Somewhere in between pretending to eat the thing she actually wanted and thinking about her shift at work, there was a disconnect. Her thoughts kept returning to the child they had rescued earlier that day. She had watched from her station as the crew in the boat bay frantically made a hole in the bulkhead to extract the youngster and it almost made her sick to think of that poor frail child so crushed and battered. She couldn’t keep the image out of her head, that foamy little trickle of blood running from the corner of the child’s mouth and the intense need she felt to run and comfort her.
James Bosphors was equally unhappy with the food, but that wasn’t what was bothering him. He sat about halfway across the mess hall from Ensign Sarah Masters, watching as a frown creased her forehead. It wasn’t right of him to be so attracted to her, to want her so badly, and the thought that something was making her unhappy made him want to just go over and comfort her in a way that the notions of propriety in the chain of command made impossible. He had watched as she monitored the progress of the rescue, had seen how she almost cried when the child was taken from the makeshift craft alive but seriously injured, and managed to mostly conceal his own feelings of relief and anxiety at the child’s welfare.
He still didn’t understand his own emotions. Nothing made sense to him anymore, and he didn’t think anything ever would. The numb part of him accepted the fact that his parents and his sister had died in the kinetic strike on Armstrong City and nothing could change that. The simple notion that 2 million souls had perished in that single act of vicious retribution just didn’t register in his heart though. In many ways, he was just too wounded to accept the hurt, too close to emotionally dead to face reality.
Still, there was that need within him to reach out, to comfort his crewmates, to make some sort of connection. He had nothing and no one left, just his crewmates and the burning desire to survive, and that was the thing that made him keep chewing and swallowing, the knowledge that the deaths of all those he had held dear meant nothing if he didn’t survive to go on. It was a truly bitter pill, one he had no idea how to swallow.
He did have just one thing left within himself, the almost transcendent bond between himself and the weapons he commanded. That thin thread, that one thing, kept him from going to pieces even as within himself he knew he had personally killed more people than any single human being had ever done. No matter that the captain had ordered the strikes; his was still the final human link in the chain of command, his finger the one which had stroked the trigger. There was no recovery possible from that.
What was she going to do? The captain who had brought an effective end to the largest war humanity had ever fought by inflicting the greatest slaughter ever committed posed this question to herself as she sat finishing her red beans and rice, grimacing at the taste. This youngster they had just rescued could be one of the more promising engineering geniuses of the past century, but she had no idea how to even approach the child.
*Be truthful* she thought to herself, *You weren’t a very good parent even before you killed your own child*. That left a very bitter taste in her mouth but it was the truth. She had spent her life pursuing her career even at the expense of her own family, her relationship with her husband and worst of all, at the expense of watching her child grow to adulthood. The fact that she kicked herself for that now meant nothing. The opportunity to change things had flown past on the wings of an almighty dying, and that bird could never be captured within her soul again.
So it was back to the infernal beans and rice. Damned if she was going to be the sort of captain who dined well when her crew ate slop.
Their usual lack of chatter drew the loneliness of the vacuum about them as they soared through the deep, far off sunlight turning them half golden with glinting, unbearable brightness, obscuring the other half of each of them in blackest night. It was a sight to bewitch lesser souls, that dichotomy of light and absolute dark they each portrayed. An observer might even have said that it was a true vision of their being, but there was no one there to see it.
Chapter 8
Mikhail was bored. Not just a little bored, it was the sort of mind numbing lack of something to do that ate at the mind, that encouraged thoughts of doing something, anything just to break the monotony. It didn’t help that he had no friends here, but he didn’t really think he was lonely, for after all he had never really known any other way of being. He had shuffled from one set of emotionally distant foster parents to another his entire childhood, never really attaining any sort of closeness. It only seemed natural for him to join the Marines when he finished school early at 17, and even there the air of aloofness he seemed to project kept others from approaching him.
He had read of friendships and thought that he might like to try one, but he was so socially inept that he never seemed to be able to connect with anyone other than on a very casual basis. It wasn’t that he was an uncaring person, it was just that he had no way to compare what other people cared about to his own interests. There were others like him in his unit, just as insular and distant as he. They worked well together, the only chatter over the coms related to the task at hand, which at the moment was waiting. Waiting to be told where to go, which particular piece of the ruined station’s hardware to remove for transport back to the ship.
None of them spoke, simply floating in position, variously absorbed in their own thoughts or gazing at the panorama of the Uranian system. There was beauty to be seen here, but only a few of them saw it and even those only saw what their own experience and enthusiasm lead them to see. Cairns saw the rings, to him it was a delicate gravitational dance, doomed to blur into something less distinct, to eventually dissipate. Stevens focused on the atmospheric storms which had persisted since before humankind had made the first tentative leaps off the home planet, and mourned for the fact that they too would die within just a few more centuries.
They each had their own unique view of what was spread out in front of them, and none of them had the ability to share that with the others who shared their units, their danger, their odd form of bravery which all of them simply considered normal, for none of them knew any other way to react or to share what they saw and felt. They had one thing in common. They all took pride in a job well done, and after a fashion, they all cared for each other, though not a single one of them knew how to put what they felt into words.
They all took pride in being Fleet Marines, and especially, they took pride in being Mikhail’s Misfits, the most decorated unit in what was left of a once proud military organization. None of them were quite aware that they were considered an elite unit, they simply didn’t communicate with others outside the unit enough to have ever been told this. They didn’t understand that others tried to emulate them, tried to be as cold and efficient as they appeared to the rest of the detachment of marines aboard Hermes. They were truly misfits, if not quite the sociopaths they might appear to be.
A sudden burst of chatter broke through Mikhail’s consciousness, rousing him from his state of comfortable sameness. The voice had clipped British overtones to it. “Lieutenant Moscovitch, you are directed to proceed to sector 17 delta and prepare for evacuation of personnel from sealed compartment 17 alpha Zed 14. Be advised that there are no personnel in this compartment with pressure suits, pressure docking components and transport are en route. Your mission is to secure and assist. Appropriate facilities are en route now, ETA, 5 minutes. Do not, repeat Do not breach containment in any way. Acknowledge instructions.”
Mikhail sent off a quick acknowledgement. An equally terse command to his team sped in its heels. “New orders, follow”. He didn’t even bother to check behind him, certain in the knowledge that his team was fast on his heels, coasting through the blackness. Their usual lack of chatter drew the loneliness of the vacuum about them as they soared through the deep, far off sunlight turning them half golden with glinting, unbearable brightness, obscuring the other half of each of them in blackest night. It was a sight to bewitch lesser souls, that dichotomy of light and absolute dark they each portrayed. An observer might even have said that it was a true vision of their being, but there was no one there to see it. They were all too absorbed in considering the mission.
An intolerable time later, checking the seals of the emergency airlock, shepherding the occupants of the compartment to safety, their shift ended. Still with no comment among themselves, they headed for the airlock that would allow them entrance to the world they had no way to cope with, the place that they all viewed as alien. It was time to eat.
There was some comfort in the action of eating for Mikhail, but it was not the idea of eating or even the flavors so much as the notion that when he had finished this necessary task he could go and lose himself for a while in the lush environs of the ships gardens. That had been his retreat since he was a small boy. No matter where he went, there were always gardens, and that was something that filled his soul with contentment. The plants never judged, they simply repaid kindness with enthusiastic growth. He was comfortable there.
He was wandering among the lush greenery, lost in his own thoughts, when suddenly the alarms broke into his reverie. “All hands, brace for acceleration, repeat, all hands, brace for acceleration.” There was nothing to hold on to, no handholds, so when the sudden acceleration hit, he was thrown into the air and slammed against a bulkhead, the unyielding hardness crushing him. Darkness began to overtake him as he strained to reach for some sort of safety. The acceleration ceased, but he still could not bring himself to move through the pain. There was something wrong with him and he had enough sense to simply wait for medics to reach him. A long, agonizing, foggy time later, they did, and he felt himself being carried to what he knew had to be sickbay. There he received blessed relief, fogging his mind and allowing him to accept the sickening pain the doctors inflicted on him as they set his broken bones. It did not, however, keep him from the odd sensation of grating and popping as they manipulated him back into shape. He wondered why they didn’t just put him under for that. Still, despite the moans of pain, he did not complain. He was after all, a Fleet Marine, and Marines did not bitch about a little broken bone here and there. No matter how much his toes hurt.
When he was finally able to think straight, he took a look around. To his right was a severely injured sailor, casts all over his body and traction gear appended to him. He felt a momentary flash of relief that he was not wounded as badly as the poor sailor. Looking to the other side, he was astonished to find what appeared to be a young teenage girl wrapped up in casts and bandages from the chest down. He would have readjusted himself, but the casts on his own limbs kept him from acting on the impulse.
He found himself staring at her face. She was so beautiful and innocent looking, laying there asleep. He was uncomfortable in his arousal and longing. He wanted her, and at the same time he knew there was no way a woman as beautiful as her would ever even look twice at him. A sort of despair overtook him, and he lapsed back into sleep. A part of his separation from others meant that he never knew that he was truly attractive to women, and more than a few men. His trim physique, a face that was just a little too angular to be called handsome and a great beak of a nose had been enough to keep him within himself. He never knew that many of his classmates at the Academy had considered him just the wrong side of attainable.
The errant hunk of rock had been avoided at minimal cost and the entire crew breathed a sigh of relief. One more disaster avoided through the quick action of one Ensign Sarah Masters. It was her voice that had warned everyone to brace, even as she overrode the control lockouts to maneuver the ship in a way it had never been meant to move, against the direct orders of her captain. Right now she was literally shaking in her boots as she awaited her captain’s displeasure in the captain’s very own ready room.
Chapter 9
Pandemonium ruled for a brief instant before the crew drew themselves together to deal with some new unknown emergency. Despite the careful plotting of every hunk of orbital debris, something had sneaked through the systems and the alert attention of the Sensors officer to throw an unexpected missile at the Hermes and some fairly extreme evasion maneuvers had been required at the last moment to prevent serious damage to the ship. It was only through the greatest stoke of luck that the serious casualty list was limited to 2, one very unlucky sailor who had been in the process of unsuiting and one marine who had been wandering around in the gardens.
The errant hunk of rock had been avoided at minimal cost and the entire crew breathed a sigh of relief. One more disaster avoided through the quick action of one Ensign Sarah Masters. It was her voice that had warned everyone to brace, even as she overrode the control lockouts to maneuver the ship in a way it had never been meant to move, against the direct orders of her captain. Right now she was literally shaking in her boots as she awaited her captain’s displeasure in the captain’s very own ready room.
She was literally so scared she was about to piss herself waiting, but in any case, the nearest head would be a welcome sight. Her attempt at iron self control nearly gave way when the hatch slid open and she was confronted with the person of the Captain herself.
“Lieutenant Masters, please take a seat” . By this time her fear had magnified many times and she was literally about to piss on the floor, but somehow, the statement of rank penetrated through her state of terror.
“Maam, I hate to correct you, but my rank is Ensign and I really need to use the bloody head before I piss on your nice carpet.”
“Of course Lieutenant, it’s over there”. She gestured toward the facilities, which were labeled, as was protocol aboard any ship. She waited for a moment while the youngster did her toilet, a wry smile crossing her face as she remembered her own first posting fresh out of the academy and how she had herself been terrified of her captain. She adjusted her face back to a stern countenance before the young officer came out of the head. She was wasted at Sensors, she should truly have been Tactical Officer, especially given her delicate maneuvering of the ship to avoid that incoming bolide. She doubted that she herself could have done as delicate a job at evasive maneuvers.
She reappeared, adjusting her uniform hurriedly, a worried expression on her face. “Maam, I know I failed in my duty, there was a piece of rock I just didn’t see and I nearly cost the entire ship because of my stupidity, I know I must have caused some casualties, but I had to move the ship, it was either that or allow it to hit us and that would have been so much worse. I will put myself on report and confine myself to quarters until you can decide on the proper disciplinary action maam.”
By this time Helen was trying to decide whether she should be amused or irritated. She settled on amused. “Lieutenant Masters, please take a seat.” The bewildered young woman found a seat through her fog of tears, still convinced she was as deep in trouble as it was possible to get. The repeated use of Lieutenant as her rank had not quite penetrated her conscious mind. She still did not quite understand when she found the captain standing over her pinning new badges of rank on her collar.
“Maam, I don’t get it, I’m just an ensign who overstepped her bounds, what the hell is this bit?”
“No young lady, you are just an officer who did what had to be done to save this ship. That you had the courage to do so without orders and without needing to ask for permission makes you an officer I want on my bridge and one I hope will make better decisions than some of the monkeyfuck jobs I’ve made of things the past few months. You deserve this promotion and I won’t allow you to refuse it. Wear those silver bars with pride, young lady. You have earned them, Lieutenant Masters.”
With that, she straightened and saluted the woman she hoped would follow her in command rank. Sarah stood and gave a still somewhat teary salute back to her before she squared her shoulders and marched out of the Captain’s cabin, so overcome with emotion and pride she couldn’t see where she was walking.
The inevitable result of this was that she wound up marching straight into an unyielding mountain of muscle that called himself James Bosphors. The collision wasn’t exactly spectacular, but the corridor echoed to the sound of her bouncing off his bulk and suddenly sitting down on the deck with a little yelp.
James hadn’t seen her in time to react, so bound up in his own thoughts that he only noticed her presence after she bounced off of him. Ironically, his thoughts had been of her. He had been enchanted by her beauty and competence. He was fairly sure he was falling in love with her and had no idea what to do about it. She never even seemed to notice him unless they had to interact on shift and then she was professional and crisp, the only emotion in evidence going to her control boards. The only time he’d ever seen anything crack that cold, efficient veneer was when the strikes had been launched and when she was watching the rescue of that poor child.
Yet here she was, sitting on the deck in front of him, crying. He wanted so desperately to gather her in his arms and hold her, to soothe whatever hurt she was feeling. Instead, he offered his hand to her to help her up, his face burning with embarrassment. It was his curse, to be this great oversized mass of a man who couldn’t ever seem to connect with anything other than his console.
It was one of those things that had become a shipboard legend. They both longed for the other and it was obvious to all those around them, but neither of them had a clue. There was actually a standing bet among their crewmates as to when or even if they would get together. She took the offered hand, pulling herself up and blushing as she thought of what she wanted those great mitts to do to her. In her mind, he had scooped her up off the deck and hugged her while she wrapped herself around his bulk, but in reality, she simply accepted the hand up and scurried on down the passageway, blushing furiously and rubbing her sore posterior. He watched her until she went out of sight, wishing it was his hand that was rubbing that magnificent bottom.
Still, there was the fact that if given the same choice, confronted with the same circumstances, she would still have done the same thing. It was a burden none should have to bear and it was something she was stuck with. All that was left to her was to find some way to redeem herself in her own eyes, some way to counter the debt she owed to humanity.
Jeff was unable to sleep. His thoughts kept running back to the youngster he’d rescued from her makeshift spacecraft, worrying about her, obsessed with her. He’d done his part and was now stuck with the aftermath. It was something he found himself unable to handle. He found himself tossing and turning in his bunk, running down abandoned corridors in the night, trying to exercise himself to exhaustion. The tiredness came, but sleep remained elusive.
Mikhail had slept off the drugs and now found himself chafing at the fact that he was stuck in a damned hospital bed. Perhaps the worst part of things was the fact that he itched! Not just a small itch, it was the sort of itching that nearly drove him crazy, made him want to just scratch until the skin under his casts was abraded raw. The worst part was that he could do nothing about it. He knew that it was a symptom of the drugs that speeded his healing but it was truly maddening!
What was even worse was looking over at the young beauty who shared this cramped cubicle with him. He knew that she was awake part of the time but he could not manage to speak to her. He would have been astonished to know that the occupant of the other bed longed to speak to him, to speak to anyone, but he felt so alone in his bed, strung up with traction gear. He was lost, wondering who and what he was.
Stacy had never known what it was that was so different about him, what his father had hidden with such determination. Now he was beginning to get an idea, and it terrified him. He had heard the doctor tell the captain he was an hermaphrodite just before the drugs took consciousness from him. What did that mean?
He had always regarded himself as a male, but to find out now that he was on both sides of the battle of the sexes was a blow to his very idea of self. According to what the doctor had said, he was just as much male as he was female. Did that mean he could get pregnant? Just to think that to him(her?)self was terrifying. What was even more maddening at the moment though was the fact that he itched abominably and had no way to scratch.
Helen had a rare moment to herself, a bit of time to think and reflect on just what she was doing out here. There was the determination to make something new out of the dog’s breakfast she had been handed, to give something back to humanity after she herself had been the one responsible for such devastation, so much bloodshed. She didn’t have dreams like most people did, she had screaming bloody horrific nightmares with the faces of her child and husband figured foremost in them. There was no way to be sure, but she knew full well she had ordered their deaths along with the deaths of at least 1 Billion human beings, and the guilt threatened to grind her soul to dust. She was the butcher of Earth and nothing would ever change that. It was her voice that had given the order to launch the horrible strikes that had ended the war and no one else’s.
Still, there was the fact that if given the same choice, confronted with the same circumstances, she would still have done the same thing. It was a burden none should have to bear and it was something she was stuck with. All that was left to her was to find some way to redeem herself in her own eyes, some way to counter the debt she owed to humanity.
So the nightmares continued and she found some kind of odd solace in them. If she could still feel the horrible guilt, perhaps all was not lost. Maybe, just maybe, there was hope in the midst of despair and ruin, maybe there was something she could do to repair the damage she had caused. Maybe there was hope for humanity.
This thought alone kept her from just deciding to end it all. Somehow she would find a way to make things better, to build something worthwhile from the ashes. It was all that was left to her and she clung to it with a fierce determination, a will born of fire and destruction.
He had an evasion course programmed, and he found himself holding his breath as the clock ticked downward, holding a single finger supported by the others, ready to stab the button which would cause his ship to engage in fairly violent maneuvers. He nervously checked his harness with the other hand as the numbers on his boards dwindled toward zero.
“Holy shit, it’s a ship!” He worked frantically for another moment while he muttered to himself. “Crap, it’s not just a ship, that’s a goddamned Fleet Strike Carrier! What the flying fuck is a big ass fucking ship like that doing out here?!” Luckily for him, his sensors were still on passive mode, so the only thing his tiny craft was emitting was a very minor IR signature, just the heat required to keep his environment livable radiating into the cosmos, and it would take more than just an alert Sensors Op to detect him, it would take a freakin miracle. The problem was, they were on a collision course, and unless that big assed hunk of metal moved, he was gonna be a little cloud of impact debris in just a little under 3 minutes. “I can’t make any kind of move, not even to avoid smashin into that big motherfucker, or they’ll know I’m a ship and I’m toast!”
It was almost another full minute until he came up with an alternative to maneuvering, but it was chancy at best and he knew it. Still, it was either that or take a chance on almost certainly getting captured by that carrier, and the best thing he could do was just hope against hope that his ruse would work and that whoever was over there on sensors would be able to see and avoid what to them would appear to be a random bolide on an incoming course.
His fingers didn’t dance across the controls, they practically scorched a path into the surfaces as he frantically keyed in commands to his EM shield array. At 1 minute to impact, he forced himself to lean back and watch, knowing that his ship now appeared to be just a highly metallic ball of rock to anyone looking. He’d pulled almost this same trick before while prospecting for metals among the rings and knew that it worked even against military grade sensors. The only question in his mind now was whether the sensor watch on the other ship was alert enough to detect him and avoid collision.
He had an evasion course programmed, and he found himself holding his breath as the clock ticked downward, holding a single finger supported by the others, ready to stab the button which would cause his ship to engage in fairly violent maneuvers. He nervously checked his harness with the other hand as the numbers on his boards dwindled toward zero.
50 seconds until collision. He didn’t want to die just because he had to take a nap! Suddenly the passive sensors of the other ship switched over to full active and he knew he had been spotted! It was another dreadful wait of almost 10 seconds before he saw the other ship start to maneuver, but not the way he expected it to. Somebody over there was far better than he had even considered possible, and as the countdown continued, he had to almost go into a meditative trance to keep from activating his evasion sequence. Only when it was clear to him that he would miss the other ship by a bare few meters could he force himself to relax just a bit. When he raised his finger from the boards, he was shaking so badly that he almost missed the majestic sight of the carrier’s hull whizzing by just an arms length away from the transparent windows of his command station.
He would never admit it to another soul, but he very nearly shit his pants. Unfortunately, not all sphincters are the same and what applied to his anal muscular control didn’t seem to apply to other areas. Right at that moment, he didn’t care, but when the adrenaline had ebbed just a bit, he decided that he had to change into a fresh shipsuit and mop out his command chair, for both were completely soaked with urine. By this time, he was comfortable in the belief that the carrier had not seen him as anything other than an errant hunk of rock.
After cleaning up and changing into a clean shipsuit, he relaxed enough to treat himself to a carefully hoarded few hits from his vaporizer. As he breathed in the vapor and held each lungfull for as long as he could, he reflected on the irony of what he was doing. One of the plants that provided the very air he breathed also gave him one of the few things that helped to make being a solo spacer tolerable. It didn’t hurt anything that he had been able to get off of the heavy synthetic meds that made him incapable of independent function. Without that, the phantom pain from his missing legs would surely have driven him mad long ago, not that he was sure he hadn’t crossed that particular line anyway.
The hatch that had severed his legs 3 years before had also saved his life, for if it hadn’t closed with such finality, he would surely have died, either from being sucked out into the cold vacuum or just from explosive decompression. The irony of that was not lost on him, and in truth he considered himself lucky that the hatch had not closed just a second sooner because then he might have been rendered sexless as well as legless (If he had survived). It was only by the quick action of his crewmate who had applied tourniquets to the stumps of his legs and hit the emergency atmospheric flood in the compartment that he had survived at all. That wasn’t much comfort to him in those early days. The company paid for his medical treatment and it paid well, but the cold hard fact was that he would never work for another rockjack outfit again, not with his disability.
He had seen before him the end of his days as a spacer, but the company had paid him off just well enough that he was able to buy a small prospecting ship out of his settlement. He could have chosen to spend the rest of his days in some nice safe environment, being pitied by everyone he encountered and using either a grav chair or crutches to get around, but he chose instead to buy the Wanderer. Its grav generators were running at something far below maximum efficiency and it would not have been economical to bring it up to par, but he didn’t mind spending most of his time in microgravity. For most other spacers it would not have been an attractive purchase but for him, it was about as close to perfect as he could get.
Within a year, he had managed to completely repay his mortgage on the ship and even pay for some new components for the grav system. It wasn’t that he wanted to spend his time in a grav heavy environment, but the plants did need it to grow properly and he wanted more than anything to be self sufficient. So he spent almost every moment that wasn’t occupied with mining reengineering the ship. Another 3 months saw his ship rebuilt almost completely to his liking, micrograv everywhere except in the aeroponics bays.
By that time, he had become so accustomed to the increased agility of his body in microgravity due to his lack of legs that it seemed like a major imposition to him to spend time tending the ship’s greenery, even though it provided most of his food and almost all of his air. The ease of movement conferred upon him by his more compact body seemed almost like a blessing until the pain came back, pain from limbs he no longer had. He hated the way the pain meds made him feel, all fuzzy and unable to think properly, so he began to wean himself off of them.
Eventually his research gave him an answer, albeit one that was unsatisfactory to him. After some experimentation, he decided that he had his solution. It was satisfactory in more than one way. It turned out the plant that produced a drug he could take without noticeably impairing his functionality also had an extraordinarily high CO2 to O2 conversion ratio in its vegetative state, so he could effectively kill 2 birds with one stone. The thing about it was that the plant had to go into budding stage to produce the drug he needed to enable him to tolerate the pain and in that state it produced far less oxygen.
For him by himself, that wasn’t a huge issue. He could devote almost half of the ship’s ag areas to growing his pet plant and let the rest produce food and extra oxygen for him. Since the ship had been designed to support a crew of 3, it was more than ample. He actually made side money selling fresh produce to the crews of the refinery ships he docked with to sell his ore. That ended with the war and suddenly things became more difficult. He had to adjust to grow more and different food to replace what he could no longer be certain he would be able to purchase and alter his production of the drug to compensate. It meant that he had less of the drug and that meant he had to ration it carefully and just deal with the pain. That state of affairs would ease somewhat when the marine protein sources he was growing in his water recycling tanks reached maturity and helped to supplement the food supply.
That didn’t mean he had to be happy about eating some of the things he would have to eat to be truly self-sufficient, though. He’d never been a big lover of seafood and though shrimp were delicious, some of the other things he was growing made him almost sick to think about. He thought with longing about the last 10 pounds of beef he had been able to buy at exorbitant cost just before things went over the edge into full blown war.
“Oh well,” he mused, “at least I was able to buy the stuff to be able to start this marine ecosystem. Pain in the ass keeping it all balanced though.” As difficult as it may have been to maintain, that ecosystem allowed him the possibility of long term self reliance, the ability to live almost indefinitely without having to have contact with any other human beings. It was a lonely life, but at least it was a life and the only option that he could bring himself to contemplate. Anything else would have left him marooned out in the vastness of space, slowly dying of malnutrition as the materials he needed to sustain life were depleted without any possibility of replenishment.
His ship continued off on it’s orbit as he lost himself in monitoring his systems and making minute adjustments to nutrient levels, the carrier vanishing slowly into the distance behind him, not quite forgotten but no longer truly relevant to him.
Sarah Masters found herself unable to sleep. There was something nibbling at the back of her mind, something about the sensor readings she had gotten from that hunk of rock she’d had to dodge earlier. It was subtly wrong and like a loose tooth, she couldn’t resist wiggling it with her tongue, over and over. She finally gave up on the attempt at sleep and pulled up the sensor logs from that encounter, going over them carefully, and gnawing a little at her bottom lip in concentration.
Suddenly, the answer practically leaped off the screen at her and she stared at the readout in shock. She fretted about waking the captain, but this was important enough to risk one of her legendary ass chewings so she keyed the combination for her private com. She was surprised to see the captain’s face fill her screen in only a few seconds. “Lieutenant Masters, I assume you have a good reason for this call?” It wasn’t quite a question.
“Maam, I was going over the sensor logs from earlier and I found what was bothering me about it.” She took a deep breath to calm her nerves. “The temperature of that object that almost hit us was too far above ambient to be a result of anything natural. It has to have been a ship, just very heavily stealthed. Everything else said rock, but that temperature profile fits a small prospecting ship.”
Helen carefully held her face impassive as she listened.
“Maam, whoever it is was either in trouble or just scared stiff of us and I didn’t see any evidence of radiation leakage or anything like that, so I’d go with scared. Gotta give em credit for brass balls though, depending on our maneuvering out of their way like that.” Her face flushed as she realized what she had just said to the captain.
Helen thought about this for a moment, turning this new information over in her mind. This could be a godsend if Sarah’s theory was correct. Her ship had many things, but the equipment to properly engage in prospecting and mining was not among them. The decision almost made itself for her. “Lieutenant, report to your duty station in five minutes.” She broke the connection and unhurriedly donned her uniform, fully aware that the young woman who had called was doing the same.
The young woman in question was setting new records for speed in dressing and scrambled out of her cabin in just over a minute, still pulling her blonde mane into a tidy looking knot at the back of her head as she sprinted toward the bridge. She arrived at the hatch just a bit out of breath and paused a moment to settle her beret into place and slow her breathing before she entered. She was relieved to note that the captain had not yet arrived as she relieved the officer on duty at sensors and slid into place before her displays, calling up the data she had just been poring over in her cabin and beginning course calculations for an intercept of the other ship.
Helen deliberately waited until the five minutes was up before she cycled the hatch and strode onto the bridge, unsurprised to find a feverishly working young lieutenant at sensors. She allowed herself an instant of pride as she settled into her own station, leaving the shockframe unfastened. “What have you got for me, Sensors?”
Sarah jerked out of her intense focus at the sound of the warm contralto. “Relaying to your displays now, maam. Looks like he’s still pretending to be a rock, no change in trajectory. I was able to get a little refinement on emissions signature and it is definitely a prospecting ship.”
“Very well, thank you lieutenant. I see you’ve already computed an intercept course, but I really don’t think we need to take the entire ship just to bring in a stray rockjack, do you?” She was pleased to notice new courses for not just one but two intercept options flash onto her displays almost as soon as she was finished speaking. She considered them for a moment. “You said you saw no sign of damage to the ship, correct?”
Sarah glanced back at her readouts before replying. “No maam, no radiation leakage, nothing that would indicate anything other than a really good job of hiding. Even the temperature anomaly that got my attention is just barely detectable. I’d say whoever it is has done this before.”
Helen allowed herself a small smile. “Well Lieutenant, I think it’s about time we gave him back a little of the scare he gave us, wouldn’t you?” She couldn’t see the grin on Sarah’s face, but her tone of voice gave her away.
“Oh, yes maam, I do think that would be very appropriate!” It was all she could do not to giggle in anticipation as she heard the captain order 3 fighters to launch on a least time course to intercept. Less than five minutes later, the smaller craft were on the way.
“Captain Honore, this is Captain Helen Hunt of the Fleet Strike Carrier Hermes. That would be the “Giant piece of shit we choose to call a ship”. I would appreciate your company in my ready room ASAP. I think we have some items of mutual interest to discuss. When do you think I can expect the pleasure of your company?”
Chapter 12
Ted had managed to lose himself in the peaceful tedium of caring for his plants for a time, the soothing business of trimming and pruning taking the place of the terror from earlier. He was certain he had escaped detection until he was startled from his reverie by the sound of his com system coming from the cockpit.
“Unidentified craft, respond.” That certainly got his attention and he awkwardly walked on his hands out of the ag area into the microgravity which held sway in the rest of his ship. As he launched his body toward the cockpit, he heard the voice again. “Unidentified craft, unless you respond we will disable your engines and tow you back home. You have 3 minutes to acknowledge.”
He was frantically flinging himself into his seat and enabling two way communication with barely five seconds left. “This is Captain Ted Honore of the Wanderer, who the hell are you? What do you mean threatening me like that? What the fuck is your problem, you misbegotten sons of bitches!?” At this point he was hanging on to one arm of his chair and using the other hand to draw him closer to the audio pickup so he could scream more loudly into the mike.
“Captain, I suggest you take a look at your sensors. We are fighter craft from the Fleet Strike Carrier Hermes. We have orders to escort you to our mother ship whether you like it or not, so I would recommend following our instructions. You might remember our mother ship, the big ass thing that moved out of your way while you were pretending to be a rock?”
Ted’s anger was replaced with a sudden dry feeling in his mouth and a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Aw, crap! Why can’t you people just let me go? It’s not like I was attacking you, I was just trying not to be noticed!” He thought furiously for a moment, seeing no way out of this fix. “Alright, fine, I’ll come with you, just give me a few moments to figure a course. I don’t exactly have fuel to burn, you know!” He shut off his own audio feed, still uttering imprecations under his breath and furiously punching at his control boards with one hand as he strapped himself down into his seat with the other. In another moment, he had his solution and jabbed at his audio pickups.
“Alright, you assholes. I’m engaging engines now on a course back to that giant piece of shit you call a ship. Do me the kindness of not shooting at me, huh?”
The dry voice which responded did nothing to help his mood or calm his fears. “Roger that, Wanderer. Transmit details of your intended course to us and we will maintain overwatch.”
Ted did as instructed and waited until the first scheduled burn sent him toward a slingshot around one of the moons and back in the direction from which he had come. At this point he retrieved his vaporizer and sat taking hit after hit from it until the retro burn began, slowing his ship into a parking orbit relative to the huge bulk of the carrier. He triggered his com again. “Alright, boys, I did what you said, what the fuck do you want now!?”
The voice that came back to him was different, a warm contralto that made him think of what he hadn’t had for at least a year now.
“Captain Honore, this is Captain Helen Hunt of the Fleet Strike Carrier Hermes. That would be the “Giant piece of shit we choose to call a ship”. I would appreciate your company in my ready room ASAP. I think we have some items of mutual interest to discuss. When do you think I can expect the pleasure of your company?”
The sound of her voice made him flush all over and he shifted his position in his seat, unconsciously try to hide his reaction to her voice. “Maam, I’m a singleton here and I don’t want to leave my ship hanging out there by herself. Is there any possibility you could join me over here?” He knew that wasn’t likely to happen, but the sound of her voice and the feelings it awakened within his loins suddenly made him feel ashamed of his body, of the painful emptiness where his legs used to be. He had problems admitting it, even to himself, but the truth was he felt as much unmanned by the lack of his legs as he would have if that lock had shut a second sooner and emasculated him.
“No, there is no possibility of that, but if you’ll follow the beacon and dock in our number three boat bay, I’m sure your ship will be safe in its berth and I will sign a statement to that effect. I will also sign a letter of safe conduct for you. Will that do for you, Captain Honore?”
He thought frantically for a moment. He still had no indication of just what navy she was a part of, but a letter of safe conduct signed by the captain of a warship was the next best thing to law. Her offer left him with no real choice but accept. He finally toggled his mike. “Captain Hunt, I will accept your gracious offer. I have a lock on the beacon and will be in your number 3 bay within 15 minutes. Wanderer out.”
The next few minutes were consumed with maneuvering his craft and worrying about how exactly he was going to present himself. 2 minutes in the shower to wash the stink off, followed by dressing in a fresh shipsuit(The last one he had). He put his vaporisor away after a last deep toke from the device, trying to calm his desperately racing heart. He was just finished with strapping his prosthetic legs on when his sensors told him that pressure had equalized outside the airlock and he was free to disembark.
A last twitch of his pantlegs to ensure that they fell as naturally as he could manage, and he triggered the outer airlock door, stepping through to the twitter of a bosun’s pipe. He braced to attention as best he could and managed to say, in a mostly calm and clear tone of voice, “Captain Honore of the Wanderer. Permission to board?” A young looking ensign snapped off a salute to him.
“Permission granted, Captain. Here is your letter of safe conduct, signed by the Captain. Please follow me.” She turned in a militarily precise about face and marched off down a line only she could see, directly toward a hatch which yawned before him. He stumped along in her wake, cursing the clumsiness of his ersatz appendages. He wondered what was to become of him, having noticed that the uniform she wore was that of the Earther Navy, but his train of thought derailed when he noticed the Martian starburst set above her insignia of rank.
He knew full well that no one in the Earth navy would be allowed to flaunt that badge and it sent his eyes looking around at the insignia of the personnel in the boat bay. He saw Martians, Loonies, Venusians, the emblem of the Jupiter Union, Belter’s splashes, just about every mark of nationality he could think of. By the time the doors of the lift closed and cut off the view of the bay, he was beyond confused.
So it was that he marched stiffly into the captain’s ready room, ready to explode with questions. The woman who stood from behind his desk to shake his hand blew all of them out of his mind.
“I’m Captain Hunt, and you, I presume, are Captain Honore?” The warmth of her voice sent shivers down his spine and made the stumps of his legs hurt. He was aware that he was hardening in his pants as her gaze took him in. “Have a seat, Captain. Do you like Scotch?” She gestured at him with a bottle he knew full well to be at least 80 years old and aged for 30 years before that. “I’ve got a nice single malt here that I think you just might appreciate. I’m pretty sure it’s the last bottle left. I think something like this calls for civilized discussion, don’t you?”
“Well, to be honest Captain, I don’t have anything to compare with that, but I do have my latest hybrid buds. I’m sorry to say that the prospect of your boys shooting at me depleted my supply considerably anyway, but if you’ll take what I’ve got, I’ll be glad to accept your generous offer, There’s no way I’m just going to take your generosity without giving something, even though it may not be of equal worth.” He withdrew a small package from his pocket and tossed it on the desk between them.
She was busily pouring two fingers each out of the bottle into rocks glasses. “Captain Honore, I won’t beat around the bush here.” That turn of phrase was unfortunate as it caused his groin to throb and twitch to the point he was sure she could see. “I need what you have, and I think you need what I have. It strikes me that we could come to some sort of agreement that could be of benefit to us both. What do you think?”
That was an even more unfortunate statement that the previous one and he nearly doubled over, glad to have the distraction of accepting the glass from her as he held his arm angled in such a way as to obscure his throbbing erection. He couldn’t come up with anything to say that wouldn’t just sound incredibly stupid, so he took a moment to think, just long enough for him to get his more animal instincts under control. That didn’t exactly work.
“Maam, I’d be willing to talk about it, but I don’t know what the hell I might have that you could want, you being Earth Navy and all that. Uh, Maam, just so you know, I have my fusion plant set to overload in about 5 minutes, faster than your folks can get her out of your bay. I don’t know what you have in mind, but I do know damn well that I can take your ship out of space right now. The way I see it, I’m sitting in the catbird seat at the moment. The question is more like what do you have that I want?”
He watched her hand inch toward a control on her desk. “Captain, I wouldn’t do that. I’ve got about 20 kilos of high explosive packed inside my legs here. Any attempt to remove them or to kill me will set them off, killing you in the process.” He hefted one of his legs onto her desktop, knocking on it with his knuckle and producing a dull clunking sound. “If I were you, I’d be real careful what buttons my fingers touch from here on in, Captain Hunt.”
She froze, an expression of disbelief on her face, before she burst into laughter. It was almost a full minute before she managed to restrain herself, to the bemusement of her erstwhile companion. “Captain Honore, you must understand that I am not your captor. I am not offering you terms of surrender, I am offering a mutually beneficial arrangement. There is no more Earth Navy, hell, there pretty much is no more Earth, or Mars, or anything else. All that bullshit has gone the way of the Dodo. Oh, and by the way, my crew can have your ship out of number 3 bay in under a minute.” She leaned forward, her amusement fading into well worn lines of sorrow. “All that you knew, all that I knew, all that anyone knew, is dead, gone, kaput. There is no more Earth Navy, no more Martian Solidarity, no more Jupiter Union, no more anything but those few of us who managed to survive the last battles. I’d be astonished if there are 50 million humans left alive in the entire solar system.”
She paused for a moment, a shadow of grief crossing her face. “Captain, I’m going to reach into my desk drawer now. I have a vaporizer in there and as soon as you accept a sip of my scotch, I’ll take a toke of your weed. Oh, by the way, could you disable your overloads please? I would hate to waste your ship and have nothing to show for it.”
Oddly enough, the pressure in his groin had not decreased as she spoke. If anything, he was more aroused, but that feeling had taken on another dimension, one that years of only having prostitutes and bar whores to satisfy his appetites had made him unfamiliar with. His voice was just a little tight as he replied. “Hey, I got no death wish. I’ve spent more energy staying alive than anybody I know.” He thought for a moment. “Well maybe other than you. If you can give me some kind of reason to keep on doing that, I can’t say it would exactly hurt my feelings.”
She favored him with a warm smile over the edge of her glass and at that moment, he realized the last thing in the universe he wanted to do was harm this woman. He played a quick sequence on the control surfaces hidden in his fake thighs and disabled the self destruct sequence on his ship.
“Ma’am, go ahead and get out your vaporizer. I’d be honored to accept a wee dram and I’m ashamed I have nothing better to offer you.” He raised the glass to his lips and took a tiny sip, tossing the burning fluid to the back of his mouth and swishing it around his tongue, savoring the flavor until it faded into a pleasant aftertaste. “Holy shit that’s good. I don’t think I’ve had a better sip in my life, ever. My great grandfather would kill me if he knew I was enjoying this more than a fine cognac.” He tossed a rueful expression at her as he took another tiny sip and couldn’t help but utter a little moaning exclamation.
He looked “I gotta tell you that you can’t just bribe me with good liquor and expect me to fold. You want me to sign on with your outfit, I have to know something about what kind of person you are.
She leaned back and took a deep drink from her glass before speaking. “When the orders were given to obliterate the cities on Mars, I went renegade. With the help of some belters and some others from the Jupiter Union and the Martian Confederation, we launched massive bolides at Earth. I wish there would have been a better solution, but at that time the Earth Navy was focused on destroying all other settlements in the solar system and we just couldn’t allow that to happen.”
“I didn’t know what else to do. They were preparing a fleet of ships that would have ensured the dominance of Earth over the entire solar system as far into the future as we could see. We took the only action we could. I killed my own family to keep that from happening. We are out here alone, with no hope of relief, no option but to try and make something better out of the dog’s breakfast we have been handed. I will admit I’m a bit angry at the way you tried to escape our notice. I’ve got two members of my crew in sickbay with fairly severe injuries right now because of the way we had to maneuver to avoid what we thought was a rock!”
She leaned toward him, her face set in harsh lines and painful patterns. “I’m pissed at you, but I need what you have to offer. You have the ability to find ores and materials we will need in the future if we’re going to rebuild some kind of civilization. I, on the other hand, can offer you a degree of safety you could never find on your own. You see, I think we each have things the other can make use of, things that just might be essential to our mutual survival and to maybe one day getting beyond just surviving.”
“Well,” he leaned back in his chair and took another sip of his scotch, this time not even tasting it, “You know, I thought I had it pretty bad, but I gotta say, you pretty much got me beat. I think maybe we should put this liquor away and you should get your vaporizer out. The only thing I can taste right now is ashes. You got any slash, or maybe just some bug juice?”
She simply stared at him, astonished. “You know what?” He stood on his clumsy explosive laden fake legs and took her glass from her frozen hand. He grasped the bottle on her desk and carefully poured the liquor back into the bottle, ramming the authentic cork stopper back into its neck when he was finished. “Let’s save this for when we have something to really celebrate, something worthwhile, ok?
“Captain Hunt?” He snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Um, captain? I’m gonna go ahead and get your steward, ok?” She still sat frozen in front of him. “Ok, well, I’ll be back in a minute. You just sit tight.” He spun on a poorly balanced heel and clumped his way toward the hatch.
He was brought to an abrupt halt by the sound of her voice, as cool and calm as the first time she had ever spoken to him over the coms. “Captain Honore, please sit down. I think we have each vastly underestimated the other and I would like to remedy that situation.” He found himself having to deal with as powerful a sexual response as he had ever experienced. Something about her voice and the way she spoke to him made him instantly regain the heightened sense of arousal he had experienced when he first came into her presence. He was, for the first time, grateful that he could hide his rampant erection from her with the clumsy gait caused by his ersatz legs. He didn’t want her to know how powerfully she affected him because he was still dealing with what he saw as the shame of his lack of legs.
“I’ll agree with you that perhaps we should save this fine liquor for another occasion, but right now, I feel the need for a drink. I know you asked for slash, but it turns out that some of my officers are just a bit more resourceful than that. We happen to have some rather tasty potato vodka available.” Her nipples tightened almost painfully as she leaned toward him, every nerve ending in her body singing. Things she hadn’t felt, even in her dreams, not since the war went into full swing and she was forced to become the demon lady slaughterer of billions thrilled down her nerve endings. She realized with a sudden shock that she was aroused by this half destroyed man, to an extent that even her (presumably) late husband had not caused her to feel.
The tension between them did not abate as he sat facing her across the desk, him grateful that he could hide himself in the folds of his clothes and her equally grateful the she had chosen to wear a bra with some padding so her erect nipples were not quite as visible through her uniform as they would have been in her normal sports bra. Neither set of clothing stopped the scent each gave off.
“Captain Honore, I think some vodka would be quite suitable. Unfortunately, I don’t have any caviar to accompany it.” She was almost squirming in her seat with her own arousal.
H was close to squirming in his own chair for much the same reason. “Ah, well then we are perhaps most fortunate. It just so happens that I have possibly one of the very last tins of Beluga caviar in the entire solar system on my ship. I would say I have been saving it for a more important occasion, but right offhand, I can’t think of one. Madame Hunt, would you care to share an ancient Russian delicacy with me? I can’t think of a better time to have it, or a better person to share it with. As someone once said, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die!”
It was barely a quarter of an hour later that the steward delivered the promised caviar and they sat across the desk from each other doing shots of peppered vodka with ersatz sour crá¨me and slices of boiled egg on actual authentic wheat crackers. The constant hits of Ted’s truly excellent weed only served to enhance their appetites(Not just the ones for food!)Any Russians aboard ship would have given their eyeteeth for such a feast, but by the time the two sank teeth into the first bite, everyone aboard knew what was happening and none of them resented it. In truth, the only care they had was maintaining security overwatch on the ship. The simple knowledge that their captain had pulled out of her murderous depression was enough for them. If they had known how the rest of the evening went, they would have thrown her a sympathy party.
They woke the next morning, cuddled in each other’s arms. He was hugging her from behind, tweaking one of her nipples in their mutual sleep “Hey, what the fuck do you think you’re doing!” He moaned in a semi awake state.
“Er, jeeze, I’m like so totally sorry. Please don’t be mad at me, I wanted you so much! I guess it must have been the vodka!”
She twisted away from him in the microgravity environment of her bed, shoving herself out into the full gravity field she maintained as a courtesy to others. The result was that she fell almost a full four feet onto the floor of her cabin. The sudden jolt awakened her and she ran for the head, only to realize that she was actually wearing panties and had to pull them down to relieve herself.
It took her just a moment to realize what that meant. Her realization was confirmed when she peeked out of the head the see that Honore was still wearing his underwear as well. She took a moment to explore herself and review the video records before she realized what had truly happened. This man had slept with her and had not taken advantage of her even though both of them were very drunk. More than that, he had even apologized for playing with her nipples while they were in something close to the most compromising position possible.
“Hey, you awake?” She was answered with a heavy inhalation which would have likely been a snore in a full gravity environment. She walked over and poked him in the shoulder, sending him drifting into the bulkhead on the inside of the bunk. “Hey, you motherfucker, wake up!” She poked him harder.
He bounced off the inner wall of the bunk and encountered the full gravity field, slamming to the floor with a whiff of air expelled from his lungs. “What the fuck?” He looked up into her eyes for a moment before consciousness returned. “Uh, Captain Hunt?!” He scrabbled around for a moment, looking for his pants, then reality sank in and he began to look more pitiable than astonished. “Um, Captain, could you please hand me my legs? They’re over there in the corner, with my shipsuit”
“Hey”, she answered playfully “You know they have perfectly functional antigravity setups for that kind of thing?” She took a moment to undulate her seminude form in front of him, taking pleasure in the undeniable reaction it drew from him. “You know, I don’t really remember what happened last night, but I’m pretty sure it was hot as hell!”
“Captain, I can’t even tell you it wasn’t that way because I don’t remember, but I promise I will never ever touch you again in any way that isn’t appropriate in your eyes. Believe me, the last thing I would ever do is take a woman against her will! If that happened between us last night and you didn’t want it, I would willingly kill myself! Oh god, just give me a knife and I’ll deal with it! You can have my ship and everything!”
To his astonishment, she stepped off the gravity field of the floor and drifted into the bed with him, cradling him into her bosom. ”Hey stupid, nothing happened. The video records tell me we went to bed and you cuddled me, and that’s all.” She thought to herself for a moment, replaying the video in her mind.
“Ok, that’s not all. I did everything I could to seduce you into making love to me and you just refused. I don’t know exactly why, but you kept insisting you weren’t enough man for me” She cuddled him into her ample breasts for another moment and felt his manhood rising in response. “I don’t know exactly why you feel that way but I have to tell you, I want you more than I have ever wanted any man in my life. More to the point, I want you right now.”
She spun him around in her arms and sank herself onto his willing shaft. The next few hours were spent discovering the delights and difficulties of sex in microgravity.
“Like it or not, you are our only hope. I just thank my lucky stars you aren’t as homely as Obi-Wan Kenobi.” If they hadn’t both been so exhausted, that would have triggered another round of sex. As it was, they snuggled into each other’s embrace and fell fast asleep, not without some giggling.
Ted awoke feeling as though he had run a marathon on his hands. He didn’t have a single muscle in his body that didn’t ache with overuse and his stumps were throbbing even worse than his head. One thing made up for all that though, and that was the woman he held in his arms. He gazed wonderingly at her face as she drooled on his chest, her snore something fit to wake the dead.
She didn’t care about his legs! He was lost in his gratitude for that fact as he stared at her and she gradually awoke. To his amazement, she opened her eyes and looked straight into his face before snuggling up even more closely into his embrace. “You know, in Micro-g, I think sex is actually better without legs, at least on the guy.”
He looked into her bloodshot eyes, astonished. “Er, what?”
“Well, it was really good, and I think we actually managed a few positions that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. That spinning thing was just incredible!” She stretched, bringing her erect nipples almost up to his eye level and causing his body to react independently of his intellect.
“If you don’t stop that, I’m gonna get all hot and bothered again!”
“Well you can get as bothered as you want to, but I get first use of the head!” She disengaged herself from their embrace and launched out of the bunk on a trajectory that gave her a lead on a backspring toward the aforementioned head. By the time she was done, he had discovered the frustration of not being able to do the bathroom dance.
She burst out in laughter as he streaked past her through the opened door, running on his hands at record speed. The sounds coming from the facilities only made her laugh harder. She was still indulging herself in fits of laughter when he appeared through the door, a somewhat sheepish expression on his face.
“OK, sneaking up on me with fighters was damned distressing, but at least I knew what was happening! Springing a goddamned surprise bidet attack was just a little beyond the pale! I damn near knocked myself out on the opposite wall of the cubicle when that fucking thing attacked me!” She let him fume for a moment before she interjected.
“Um, it’s set up for a lady’s needs. I didn’t exactly figure on having a gentleman friend use it.” At that point she completely lost it again and collapsed onto the bunk in a major giggle fit. “Gods I wish I’d been watching!”
She was still giggling madly as he boosted himself into the micrograv field of the bunk and wrapped himself around her. “Hey, you can laugh all you want, but the way that one jet was aimed and this little tube of lube I found tell me I sorta missed something last night and if you don’t mind, I think I’m gonna make up for that oversight.” She giggled right up until her shrieks of laughter turned into moans of pleasure.
“Alright, captain, I think you and I need to have a serious discussion about our relationship.” She looked into his sleepy eyes.
The best thing he could come up with was “Er, relationship?”
“Yeah, relationship, dumbass.” She kissed him until they were both breathless and rubbed herself along his length. “Like how the hell are we going to handle this?”
“Handle what?”
“Well, the fact that we’ve had sex, and the fact that I think I just might be falling in love with you.”
“Um, you what?” He jerked up, holding her in his arms and looking back into her eyes. “I mean, did I just hear what I thought I heard? Not the sex part, I mean it’s not like I can deny that, but the love thing!?”
“Hey, you think it freaks you out, you oughta spend a day or two in my shoes. Here I am, the greatest butcher the human race has ever known, and I’m telling a man I have feelings for him. That’s just pretty damn strange.” She gazed back into his hazel orbs. “Strange or not, it is true. I’m not sure if you feel the same way, but for right now, I’d like to pretend you do.”
His mind raced as parts of him throbbed with arousal and yet other parts delivered twinges of pain almost too intense for him to deal with. “Er, you know I’m pretty much damaged goods? I mean, I’m literally like half a man!”
”So? I’m less than half a woman! I slaughtered my own family because I thought my ideals were worth more than a few billion lives. You just got your legs chopped off in an accident, I made the choice to kill a whole hell of a lot of other people and slaughter my family in the bargain! You wanna talk damaged goods buddy, I think I’ve pretty much got you on that score!”
He tightened his arms around her. “Um, look, I had no idea you had it that bad. I mean I knew you were some kinda badass, but that’s way beyond anything I ever thought about. I can’t even begin to imagine how much guilt you feel.” She twisted away from him, tears prickling at her eyelids.
“Look, I‘m the last person in the universe to judge you for anything like that! I don’t care if you were the Angel of Death!” She collapsed into his arms, sobbing. “Oh my god, you were! Do you know that the inhabitants of the rest of the solar system call you that?”
She sobbed into his shoulder as he held her close. “I’m both things, and neither, and something even more terrible than any name they can ever give me. I’ve personally killed more human beings than anyone ever in the history of mankind.” She wept piteously as he rocked her in his arms. “I’m a monster! I don’t even know what to call myself, I’m so horrible!”
He held her in his arms and cradled her in his embrace, shocked by her revelations but totally aware of the sort of person he had spent the previous night in bed with. In his mind, there was no real way to square the one persona with the other, even though he knew they were the same woman. “Look, I’m pretty sure you just did what the circumstances dictated. In fact, in your position, I probably would have done the same thing, that is, if I’d had the balls to do it. I just wouldn’t have a family on earth to feel guilty about.”
He squeezed her even more tightly, nuzzling into her shoulder and shedding his tears on her. “I don’t blame you for a damn thing you did, those bastards were going to turn the rest of us into outright slaves! You saved all of humanity! And yes,” He held her closer as her sobs turned into something that would have shaken the entire solar system with the power of her grief. “You destroyed what needed destroying. By your actions, you have saved the very soul of humanity!”
She pushed him away from her, looking him in the eyes, her steely gray gaze holding his hazel regard. She wiped her tears away and stared into the depths of his soul. “So you are trying to tell me that I needed to kill close on 7 billion people just to have a moral victory?”
It took him a moment to think it through, to recall the things he had said, but in the end, the truth was inescapable. “Um, yeah, pretty much.”
“So what the fuck do we do now?” He looked deeply into her eyes again and stroked the part of her hair that seemed determined to obscure his vision of her face.
“Well, you know, I think you made a pretty good start just yesterday. You got a little bit of a recovery effort going, even though you had to scare the shit out of me to do it. My ship is just the first piece of the puzzle. You’ve got damn near 250 yard dogs on your hands. With that kind of manpower and the resources available, we could have a fleet of about 20 smaller ships available within two years. That’s counting in the time it would take to train crew to run them and time to build armaments for them. It just depends on how you want to run the mix, military versus civilian ships. I’d say for right now, the best bet would be to focus on miners.”
“Wow, you’ve really given this some thought, haven’t you?” She started rubbing some very sensitive parts of his anatomy.
He captured her errant hand and tried his best to be very serious. “Yes, Madame President, I certainly have given it some thought.” She jerked her hand out of his grasp.
“What the fuck did you just call me?”
“Madame President, I called you what you are right now, nothing less, nothing more. If you don’t like the title, perhaps you shouldn’t have done the things necessary to earn it. I mean, if you wanted to, you could call yourself a queen, although I rather think the Belters would object. At this moment, you hold in your hand the most powerful military force available to all of humanity. You also hold the only decent prospect of building any kind of military force, in the name of Hephaestus station. It might be wrecked at the moment, but it is the best base for an industrial and military center left in the entire system.”
“Like it or not, you are our only hope. I just thank my lucky stars you aren’t as homely as Obi-Wan Kenobi.” If they hadn’t both been so exhausted, that would have triggered another round of sex. As it was, they snuggled into each other’s embrace and fell fast asleep, not without some giggling.
Almost directly across the solar system, in the orbit of Neptune, the exact opposite was happening. “Ok, we’ve got a shipyard and vessels to provide materials to build more fighter craft and more dreadnoughts.” Admiral O’Shaughnessy held court on the bridge of his flagship. “The question is, should we focus on building a force which can defeat anything else out there, or should we focus on building an effective civilian economy?”
His flag officers looked at each other, reluctant to voice their opinions. Grant was the first to speak up, hesitant though he sounded. “Sir, I think the fact that some of the prewar navy has survived and some of it has admittedly gone rogue suggests we should focus our efforts on a military buildup. I think if we went civilian at his point we would be inviting defeat in detail, sir!”
The admiral agreed, although he couldn’t help but wish that he had something better than sycophants commanding the other ships of his squadron. “What about food and other basics?”
“Well, we have about a five month reserve of protein sources in our freezers, sir. Beyond that its pretty much beans and rice, sir. If we limit it to only senior command staff, you could pretty much have a steak dinner every night for 2 years, sir” the steward who answered had an almost cringing quality about him, as though he was afraid of being struck at any moment. “After that, we just might have some lobsters big enough to eat, sir.”
“That’s the best you can give me?” O’Shaughnessy’s face was almost purple with rage. “Fucking seabugs?!”
“No sir, I might be able to provide you with cloned beef tissue, but it will consume almost 20 crewmen worth of nutrients. Not an ideal use of crew or supplies, sir.”
“As long as I don’t have to eat a fuckin bug, you’ve got a job. Now let’s get on with how the hell we’re going to crush that bitch!” If any of his subordinates had felt differently, they would likely have spoken, but none of them did. The men who ruled the complements of 12 Terran ships of the line were simply glad they were alive.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. As of 2 hours from now, we will depart for the Uranian System. We will proceed to locate and destroy the Hermes. At that point, the only thing left capable of challenging us will be small craft and none of them can even begin to think about standing up to the level of force we can apply. Gentlemen, we have the entire solar system in our hands!”
A tiny ship hid in the shadow of one of the smaller moons, watching as the ponderous bulk of O’Shaughnessy’s fleet boosted out of orbit. An almost miniscule amount of its occupant’s attention was dedicated to monitoring her sensors because the rest of her rather impressive intellect was occupied with deciding whether she should risk revealing herself by trying to warn the Hermes. As so many things had in this war, it came down to a moral decision and Nimashet Bismadi felt herself woefully inadequate to the task of making one of those. Nonetheless, she took a bit of solace in the fact that her carnivorous tendencies had been distinctly curbed toward the vegetarian end of things by sheer necessity and though she enjoyed a good steak, she wasn’t craven enough to think that her personal enjoyment was worth more than the survival of her entire species.
Little personal moral satisfactions aside though, she had to admit to herself that the cretinous little cowards who had helped spark off the war and then hidden themselves safely away from the maelstrom weren’t exactly the people she wanted to see determining the future of humanity.
With that thought, she realized she had made her decision all over again, the same judgment call she had made before the conflict even began. The voice of her sensei came drifting through the halls of memory.
“Remember, you are small and weak. The time for you to strike is when others have weakened each other with fighting. Your brain is your best weapon, you must use it!. Hide if you have to, wait until the time is right for you to strike. This way, your victory will be assured.”
“Well, I don’t know about assured,” she thought wryly to herself “but it just may be that I can give the good guys a fighting chance!” Her fingers played over the keypads in front of her, setting up a complex burn sequence that would take advantage of every gravitational slingshot she could find. When she finally settled back into her chair to await the first burn, she noted with satisfaction that her trajectory would put her in the Uranian system almost a full month ahead of the fleet. She didn’t believe in prayer, but at that moment she found herself uttering one.
“Please, let it be enough time, and just let it be enough!”
This story has had a rather long hiatus but i'm finally back to work on it. Sorry for the short chapter but it seemed appropriate.
Abby
Previously ---
“Remember, you are small and weak. The time for you to strike is when others have weakened each other with fighting. Your brain is your best weapon, you must use it!. Hide if you have to, wait until the time is right for you to strike. This way, your victory will be assured.”
“Well, I don’t know about assured,” she thought wryly to herself “but it just may be that I can give the good guys a fighting chance!” Her fingers played over the keypads in front of her, setting up a complex burn sequence that would take advantage of every gravitational slingshot she could find. When she finally settled back into her chair to await the first burn, she noted with satisfaction that her trajectory would put her in the Uranian system almost a full month ahead of the fleet. She didn’t believe in prayer, but at that moment she found herself uttering one.
“Please, let it be enough time, and just let it be enough!”
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James Bosphors sat in the mess hall casting glances at the newly minted Lieutenant Masters as she made a little moue of distaste with every spoonful of rice and beans before chewing and swallowing with a look of determination. He was glad to see the new air of self-confidence she was beginning to display but it made him feel even more hopeless. She was now his superior officer and no matter how much he wanted to approach her that had been made even less possible than before. He jerked his eyes away, suddenly afraid she would catch him looking at her and bolted down the remainder of his food before making his way out of the mess hall as quickly as possible.
He had a particular spot he liked to go to think, hidden behind one of the massive structural beams which held the giant ship rigid. There are always spaces on a ship which for some reason are unused and seldom if ever visited by anything other than maintenance bots and they are usually only known to a very few. He had been there for a very confusing half hour, thinking through every angle and coming repeatedly to the conclusion that he had no way to move forward. He would simply have to love from afar, unrequited…
The hand that came down on his shoulder very nearly caused him to scream from shock. He looked up and his shock deepened to see his captain standing there, proffering a handkerchief to wipe the tears he had been unaware were spilling from his eyes. He took it gratefully and went to stand but Captain Hunt sat beside him instead. For a moment she just wrapped an arm around his shoulders and let him get himself together.
“A matter has come to my attention James, and I need your help to resolve it.”
“With all due respect ma’am, I think you’ve come to the wrong person. I suck at issue resolution. Why me?” The disbelief was as plain in his voice as on his face.
Helen settled back against an intersecting support beam and adopted a look of relaxation, subtly inducing Bosphors to follow suit. “I find myself with an issue… not one that was unexpected, not one that hasn’t been considered by every military and corporation for centuries now. I’m sure I don’t have to quote the rules about fraternization to you of all people…”
“Ma’am I haven’t, wouldn’t… couldn’t even…” James realized he was crying again and the tears felt like burning shame to him.
“I know that James. You and I have served together for a very long time now and I know you to be a man of such honor that you took a demotion that rightly should have been handed to your worthless shit of a subordinate. I remember the young man who spoke at his classes’ commencement at the academy, standing in a downpour that could have drowned a frog and doing his duty nonetheless.” She put her arm back around his shoulders and drew him closer, feeling his slight resistance give way after a moment.
“I was proud of that kid and I’m proud of the man you have become but that still leaves me with a problem and its not just about you and Masters. Everything has changed James, and we have to change with it. We can’t just put you in separate command structures and deal with the issue that way because there aren’t any other commands.”
Helen continued before he could protest his honor again. ”I’m not telling you not to have a relationship with Sarah. At this point that would be a net negative for both of your productivity and overall usefulness at your posts, which have remained in both your cases beyond exemplary. I’m actually going to do the opposite and not just for you. The rules on that level have to change for everyone to adapt to reality.”
“I’m not used to feeling stupid Ma’am but I feel pretty stupid right now. What do you mean?”
Helen rose from her resting position, knelt in front of the still seated Bosphors and reached toward his collar before he could react, fiddling for a moment and coming away with his symbols of rank in her hands. He stared at them in disbelief. Had he just been demoted, or even worse separated from service?
Her words took a moment to penetrate his mental haze. “Look in the mirror Lieutenant.”
His gaze travelled upward to the small mirror she held in her hand and jerked to his collar where two silver bars sat. It was almost a full minute before he was able to process the image and realize what she’d said to him.
“I don’t deserve this ma’am. If this is just to clear the way for Sarah and me then I’d like my old insignia back please.”
She laughed at him and pocketed both mirror and insignia. “Gods you’re a stiff one. Just like your uncle. This isn’t to clear the way for you two, although you do have my blessing and that’s a part of what I mean about having to change the rules about that sort of thing. This is about me undoing an injustice I couldn’t do anything about at the time and giving you back something that is yours by right. Your rank and so much more was taken from you by your own sense of honor and the blind idiocy of a command structure too overloaded with power hungry assholes.”
She sighed and sagged a little to rest on her heels, still kneeling. “It is beyond my power to do anything about the rest of what they did to you but this one small act of atonement… this I can offer. For the rest, I need your help.”
“Ma’am I…”
“Please stop calling me ma’am in private James… Jimmy. I changed your diapers when you were a baby. When its just us, I’m Helen, or Aunt Helen if you feel like being all formal about it. I wish I knew what happened that bubbly boy I hugged goodbye when I went off to the academy.”
James shook his head. “He grew almost 3 feet taller and 300 pounds heavier in a little over 2 years. I was this size by the time I hit 13 and as uncoordinated as a spastic octopus. I broke things just moving around, hurt people without intending to… so I withdrew. Mom helped some, she taught me to dance before she died. Mother took over after that, taught me martial arts and fencing and I learned to not just randomly destroy everything around me but… Mom dying destroyed Mother. It was years before she finally came out of it and even that was only because Elissa came back into her life. By that time I was at the Academy so saw very little of either of them in person since Mother and Steph had moved to Mars to be with Elissa and her family in Hale city.”
“Then the war happened and…” he shook his head. “I had my duty and it kept me alive.”
“And now you’re becoming a little more alive, learning to have feelings again and you don’t know how to handle it, right?”
“Yes ma... Helen. I’ve never had a relationship before and I don’t have the beginnings of a clue how to go about it. I’m too scared to even talk to her when we’re not on shift together. I’m afraid I’ll do something wrong, frighten her, maybe hurt her by mistake. I might be better coordinated but I’m still… This…” he gestured at his own bulk.
“Just… go talk to her. We’ll deal with rewriting the rules later but for now there’s no rule on this ship against you two having a relationship. There’s so little happiness left in this world Jimmy… we have to hold every scrap of it dear. “
Previously
“Yes ma... Helen. I’ve never had a relationship before and I don’t have the beginnings of a clue how to go about it. I’m too scared to even talk to her when we’re not on shift together. I’m afraid I’ll do something wrong, frighten her, maybe hurt her by mistake. I might be better coordinated but I’m still… This…” he gestured at his own bulk.
“Just… go talk to her. We’ll deal with rewriting the rules later but for now there’s no rule on this ship against you two having a relationship. There’s so little happiness left in this world Jimmy… we have to hold every scrap of it dear. “
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And now…
Mikhail lay there trying to take his mind off the maddening itching but the only distraction he could find was the other occupant of his ward. He tried not to stare at their face, so innocent, beautiful and wide eyed, even beneath the rapidly yellowing bruises. He had heard the doctors and nurses discussing the tests they were running on the person he now knew was named Stacy and had enough medical knowledge to understand what they were talking about. He was also intensely aware that to his mind and quite obviously to his physiology the gender status of this person mattered not even a little. Discovering that they were actually 19 had eased his conscience quite a bit though, he was beginning to wonder if he was one of those people who were attracted to children.
He was unaware that Stacy was sneaking quick glances at him and trying to figure out why she(he?) found his face so fascinating. She tried to memorize the planes and angles that made up the image which draw her eyes and made her pulse quicken. As she lay there with her eyes closed she suddenly had a realization. Her father had always told her she(He?) was a boy and having no real reference she had taken it at face value… after all she did have the parts boys were supposed to have.
She could no longer think of herself as a boy, as a male. She wasn’t quite sure when or how that had happened but maybe it was the fact that she finally admitted she also had all the parts girls were supposed to have. She didn’t resent her body for being both things, had no desire to change it… but within her own mind and soul she was female and she was suddenly quite clear about that. With that realization came another… That what she was feeling toward Mikhail was attraction, sexual attraction.
It was another of those things she had no personal reference point for, never having actually experienced it. She had been waiting for him to say something but he still had not spoken to her, nor her to him. With a sudden surge of determination she broke the verbal stalemate.
“I would scratch that itch for you if I could Mikhail but I’m afraid we are in the same boat on that level. The doctor said it should only be another day before we can switch to removable braces.” She waited for a response. “I would like to be able to see your face better” she paused and then forged ahead “I find it a quite attractive face.” She was sure her blushing would catch the sheets afire.
“You need to get your eyes checked.”
“Ah, finally the mystery Marine speaks! Tell me, Mikhail, if I said I saw a face that was just a bit too angular to be called classically handsome and a nose that belongs on a man half again his size, would you deny I am looking at you?”
Mikhail had to take a moment to decide whether or not he should pretend to be insulted but truth won out. “No, that is a fair description. I cannot fathom why someone as beautiful as you could consider such a face attractive though.”
“Because you have lovely lips and a kindness that shows in those astonishing eyes. Maybe I have no real idea why. Does it matter?”
“I don’t suppose it does, no. How are you dealing with… finding out about yourself?” Mikhail winced, sure he’d been rude.
“Its ok to ask. Do you mind if I call you Misha?”
“Not at all. My sister called me that when we were little. It has… very pleasant memories attached to it. In fact I think I would prefer if you called me by that name.”
“Misha, then. Its ok to ask, I have been thinking about it a lot. My father raised me to be a boy and I never thought any different until now but its like the rest of me is here now somehow. I was less than half a person and now I think I am becoming whole…”
“Do you have a preference of pronoun?”
“She/her, etc… In my mind I am and I think always have been female but I have no desire to change my body. I am apparently both, and that thought doesn’t bother me. I am afraid it will cause some difficulty in finding someone to love however.”
“If I am any guide, I do not think that will be a problem.”
Stacy didn’t reply to that and they both fell into silence.
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Sarah Masters had just finished eating and made her way back to her quarters. She took a quick shower and was just toweling her hair off while dressed in a comfortable warm robe, enjoying the time to relax for a few minutes. She poured herself a double shot of ship’s vodka and settled in to review some specs on her proposed upgrades to the weapons systems when the admittance chime from her hatch rang through the compartment.
“Enter.” She responded to it without thinking and the hatch slid aside to reveal James Bosphors standing there with a Ficus tree which had been exquisitely bonsaied and woven around itself. She motioned him inside, admiring his gift and exclaiming about the time and effort it must have taken to coax it into such beautiful simplicity. It wasn’t until she was staring at how his smile made the corners of his eyes crinkle that her gaze fell on his collar and she noticed the new insignia.
“You finally got your proper rank back! I’m so happy for you James… everyone thought it was so unfair, the way you were treated because of that worthless little piece of shit admiral’s son.”
He stared at her in surprise, still unable to bring himself to speak.
“I was only a year behind you at the Academy James. We all knew you got fucked over for saving Reynaud’s life and yet you still covered for him. We all knew why you did it and admired you for it… But no one grieved when his helmet popped open on an EVA.”
“I did.” James thought about just leaving those words out there but from the expression on Sarah’s face he felt he needed to explain. “He should never have been at the academy in the first place. Oliver was an artist, with the soul of an artist, being forced into a military mold he wasn’t suited for. He was brilliant but not in the ways that being a naval officer requires. Remember he was in sickbay for a week after that little incident?”
Sarah nodded, amazed at the depth of emotion in the large man’s voice. “It wasn’t the incident that did that, it was his father. The man beat him unmercifully for failing to live up to his own standards of absolute perfection. Came all the way down from the Octagon to do it… and it wasn’t the first time. He was absolutely miserable so it wasn’t a surprise that he decided to end it one day. I might have done the same in his shoes.”
“So I grieved for him, and felt guilty because I should have been able to help him and I couldn’t. I was his squad leader and he was my responsibility… I failed him. I understand why everyone felt the way they did but I couldn’t say anything… he’d begged me not to. Best I could do was fudge the report and make it look like the sealant collar was faulty… save a little bit of honor for him.”
James hadn’t realized he was crying until he felt a finger wipe the tear from beneath his eye. The tender gesture was followed by a surprisingly strong hug from the much smaller woman.
“I feel guilty now, that I thought of him the way I did…”
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault. His father poisoned that well long before we came through those gates. The only guilt there is his father’s for doing that to him and mine for not being able to save him.”
“I don’t think any of that guilt belongs to you James. His father was a monster. Now come sit, and tell me what you came here to talk about.” She led him over to a loveseat that barely managed to contain both of them and busied herself pouring him a drink while refreshing her own.
When she handed him the glass he just held it, looking at it like it contained the answers to the universe. It was a long moment before he was able to speak. “I’ve been dealing with this problem for the last while now. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about the rules around fraternization and that sort of thing… but I have fallen in love with you Sarah.” She tried to speak and he hushed her.
“You know me well enough to know that I could never do anything about it… but that has changed now. The captain spoke to me a while ago, said the rules have to change… and she ordered me to come tell you this, how I feel, and that if you want to we can…”
His words were cut off as a pair of lips met his own with a gentle touch. “Stop talking James. If you’re still in that uniform in 30 seconds I’m getting a pair of scissors!”
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Jeff was, as had become his normal routine, running through the ship, trying to tire himself out enough to sleep. His mind was a whirl of thoughts, conflicting emotions. He couldn’t seem to sleep without dreaming of the girl he had helped to rescue, the girl he had learned to his immense relief was 19 rather than the… much younger.. she had looked in his brief glimpses of her. The other things, the rumors that he heard… maybe they were the reason why in his dreams she wasn’t only female, why she was more. None of it explained to him why he found those ideas so bewitching. Sure he’d had girlfriends, once or twice, even had a relationship with a woman and another man so it wasn’t like he was hung up on his sexuality or anything. He realized as he became aware of his surroundings that he was approaching sickbay and slowed, taking a few moments to slow his breathing and wipe the worst of the sweat off with a towel. Before he realized it he was standing at the entrance to the ward she was in and staring at her face. Before he could move she spoke to him.
“You are the one who went out to bring me back. Thank you. May I know your name?”
He found himself walking inside as she spoke. “Its Jeff, ma’am. I’m just glad we were able to get you back in, it was a close-run thing. How are you feeling?”
“A little less like a martini thanks to you!”
She laughed at his blank look, wincing a little at a twinge of pain from her ribs. “You know, shaken, not stirred?”
He still looked lost. “Don’t worry about it, it’s a line from some old spy movies. The hero spy guy always ordered his martinis that way. I shouldn’t have teased you like that, I’m sorry.” She looked genuinely contrite.
“You can tease me anytime you like, I don’t mind.” Jeff felt his face heat as soon as he realized what he’d said and turned on his heel, vanishing down the corridor without hearing Stacy’s soft reply.
“Wait…”
Hours later Stacy lay awake, listening to the sounds of breathing and machines around her and trying to understand her own reactions. She had found herself almost as powerfully drawn to Jeff as she had to Misha and it left her confused. She hadn’t reacted that way to the other men she had met since coming here so why these two? Why was she attracted to anyone at all? She knew they both knew about her dual nature and wondered if that was why they seemed drawn to her. Was she simply some sort of novelty or fetish to them? Would that always be what she had to deal with? Those and other questions were still running through her mind as she finally found comfort in the arms of Morpheus.
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Ted and Helen sat in her quarters sharing what had quickly become a regular time of discussion and a burgeoning friendship. In many ways he was the only one she could talk to about things because he wasn’t in her chain of command. Their agreement had made the clear distinction between military and civilian and even though he was serving in a quasi-military status as was his ship, it still left him as the only other ship’s captain around.
“I talked to Jimmy today. Hopefully he took what I said to heart and won’t leave Sarah’s quarters till morning…” She smiled over her glass at him.
“Jimmy? I take it there’s history between you and Bosphors then? Seems a bit young for you.” His tone made it clear he was teasing.
“Only a little bit. When we were younger he was almost like my little brother. I changed his diapers when he was little and hugged a cute bubbly kid goodbye when I went off to the academy. We hadn’t really had a chance to talk, just as friends… as much as that can be possible right now anyway… I hadn’t realized he’d had such a hard time of it. I didn’t even know his family was in Hale city when the war started.” A tear made its way down her cheek unnoticed.
“I hate this so much, that I have to be the one who has to be strong for everyone, that I can’t even grieve for people as dear to me as my own family was…”
“I seem to recall a little rant last night about how things have to change. You started that change today by helping someone who is dear to you. Did it compromise you as a Captain in any way? Do you think you will get less respect from either of them? Your crew would follow you into the bowels of hell itself if you simply asked them but just like you worry about them, they worry about you. It is clear to anyone who knows how to look that you are under tremendous pressure and you refuse to share any of it.”
“So now I’m a micromanager?”
“That’s not the right word and you know it Helen. You said it yourself, things have to change and the ways in which command responsibilities are shared has to be one of those changes. I’m not saying it has to be the sort of madhouse rockjack outfits can become but your crew are all stakeholders in this whole thing. Their efforts determine success or failure and they feel it as keenly as you. Just… acknowledge that more openly, interact with your crew more. I know you try but you have a tendency to wrap yourself in a little isolation bubble without even trying so people don’t approach you and it feeds the perception that you don’t want to be social.”
“I know I do that. I always have. I got into the habit of being alone at the academy and I suppose I never really learned how not to be again. That’s a part of what I meant about how things have to change. I was isolated because that’s the culture that was fostered there, each of us an island. I never thought that was the right way to run anything, much less a Navy… and now I have not just the opportunity but the obligation to fix that.”
“Not you, Madame President. Right now, you, as Captain, yes… but in the long run this is something so important to the future of human society that it should be decided upon by all of us. Once this war is over it all has to be rebuilt, an entire society, systems of self-government, all of it. We have the Mother of our new Solarian Republic or whatever we decide to call the thing but that’s it right now. Constitutional assemblies, elections, politics… all of it lies in the future.”
“That’s the key though Ted… it all lies in the future but right now I’ve got 2 of my bridge crew in a relationship and its right for them… but the old rules for navies do still have relevance. It has to be a balancing act and I have no idea where the balance lies.”
“Now you come to what I meant.” Ted grinned at her and shifted in his seat, enjoying the now fairly rare pleasure of not wearing his ersatz legs.
“Can’t you ever just say what you mean?” Helen returned his grin.
“Now what would be the fun in that? I’d be depriving myself of the pleasure of watching one of the finest minds I know pick a puzzle apart and figure out why she doesn’t have to solve it. Besides, I did say exactly what I meant, if you recall.” His grin had turned teasing.
“You are one seriously exasperating man, you know that?”
“One of my better qualities or so I’m told…”
“Just now I can think of another quality I’d prefer to take advantage of…” She leaned across to kiss him.
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Nimashet sat in her small cabin meditating upon the freight of knowledge she bore. Within her mind lay a terrible idea, one that would forever change warfare as humanity knew it. Like every advance in destructive technology before it was simply the next logical step, putting two things together to make one far more effective thing.
Hidden in the equations that made the limited artificial gravity technology available possible was the key to greatly amplifying it even though it came at a tremendous power cost. She had been preparing her paper for publication before the shadows of war began to loom over all of their lives and made such things… less important. When it became clear war was inevitable she felt justified in her decision to withhold her discovery even though she had secretly been certain someone else would follow the same apparently blind mathematical alley she had, make the same discovery.
That sense of justification had become seriously battered as she watched everything come apart while en route to another of her seemingly endless negotiations, had watched the reports of the horrific death toll and nearly lost herself in grief when she learned of the obliteration of her family in Hale City. Once she was able to be aware of anything but her loss she began to shadow the fleet which lay inert within the Saturnian system while the war raged on and ruin overtook humanity. Her carefully designed spying tools(For she was a very particular sort of diplomat) meant that she was aware of events aboard the ships, especially the “Flagship”.
What she learned sickened her on so many levels. The crews were being treated as little better than slaves, used for sexual gratification by their superiors and abused in unimaginable ways. Her patient observation had given her the determination to ensure their eventual destruction even though she quailed when she thought of the loss of innocent life that would entail. The majority of the crews were no more guilty of atrocities than she herself, possibly even less so for none of the deaths which had swept humanity nearly from existence were on their hands… their ships had never fired a shot in anger.
During that time she had taken her innocuous discovery and turned it into a monster. The energy provided by a multimegaton-yield explosion would do very little to a warship unless it was extremely close so battles in space had largely been fought with kinetic weapons and the very occasional missile that could penetrate the defensive fire created by those weapons. She created an array that could power itself from a thermonuclear explosion and generate intense fields of focused gravity, turning the bomb into a giant multidirectional Gamma ray laser(Graser). The energy transfer a ship would take from the impact of just one of those grasers should be enough to damage it, possibly severely. It still had to be fairly close, within 750,000 kilometers… but that was much more achievable than the 7,500 kilometers a simple bomb would require.
It would be enough to turn the tables, just barely. It might not ensure victory for the Hermes but it would ensure defeat for the traitors and that would have to be enough. If only her ship had a little more power available she could have used her discovery to greatly shorten the transit time to the Uranian system and thereby significantly improve the odds of something worthwhile surviving but the Universe loves irony and she had specifically chosen this ship for its low energy emissions which had required a smaller powerplant. So she meditated and worked on ways to improve on her designs so they could be put into production as quickly as possible and be as effective as she could make them. When she could no longer do either of those things she worked out, driving herself physically until exhaustion made her sleep.
Sleep was not welcome, however much she needed it. It always came with phantasms, images of Marta and their children as the bolide which destroyed Hale City stripped their flesh from their bones before their very bones crumbled and all that was left were the ghosts, begging her to tell them why she left them to die.
Previously…
Sleep was not welcome, however much she needed it. It always came with phantasms, images of Marta and their children as the bolide which destroyed Hale City stripped their flesh from their bones before their very bones crumbled and all that was left were the ghosts, begging her to tell them why she left them to die.
And Now
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Carolina curled into herself while she tried to stifle the sobbing. She had witnessed many horrible events in her time hiding in the crawlspaces and ventilation shafts of this hell that called itself a flagship but the gang rape and killing of a young male rating right there in the mess hall with cheering onlookers shouting suggestions had almost been enough to overcome her sense of self preservation and draw her out to try making a difference. In the end, as it always did, fear won out and she cowered in place, unable to even move from her vantage point for the hours it had taken.
Afterward she crawled to one of her hiding places in the ventilation system before the paralysis of fear overtook her again and cried for what seemed like days. She liked… had liked Alvin. He was one of the ones who left food and other things for her and he had kept her existence to himself until he gurgled out his last breath through a crushed throat.
In the past months she had seen her share of horrors, after all her own rape and attempted imprisonment had been the impetus for her to fake her own death by ejecting the body of a dead crewman from an airlock with smears of her own blood all around the inner side of the lock hatch. For some reason though, this one shook her especially hard. Alvin had been in what turned out to be the last graduating class of the Academy, one year before her. Tears turned to memories of her time in the Academy and she wondered just what sort of luck had drawn this particular ship for her middie cruise.
On the one hand, she had seen and experienced things that no one should have to and was not at all certain that she would see the end of any given day. On the other hand, had she been assigned to any but one of these 12 or the Hermes she wouldn’t be alive to worry about it. In another few months it might not matter anyway. Still, she could plan and do little things that might help tip the balance when the time came even if she wasn’t still alive to act.
With that thought she went back to her latest project, patiently tapping the control runs from the bridge and from engineering and putting her own cutovers in place. She was careful to monitor her perimeter to avoid being surprised and to conceal her alterations in ways that would ensure they remained undetected unless someone physically followed a control run completely from end to end… a job that would almost never be even attempted outside of a dock during refit. Even then it might go unrecognized, so nearly invisible were her alterations. She might have been going through the Academy and entering the ranks of officers but her parents had both been yard dogs and she knew tricks borne of their combined decades of experience.
One way or another, the madman who had styled himself an “Admiral” and instituted the reign of terror that resulted in her current predicament would die with the madness he helped generate. She would make sure of that.
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Ravi had always thought of his small size as a disadvantage but the past few months had taught him other truths. Had he been any larger he wouldn’t be curled up in this comfortable little nest behind a false bulkhead in the ventilation system, as safe as he could manage to make it. He wondered about the compartment’s other occupant as she slept, for they always slept in shifts and monitored their surroundings, one ready to wake the other for a fast escape if needed. Their lives were not comfortable by any means but at least they weren’t being brutalized and enslaved like the majority of the lower ranking personnel aboard ship… those that were still alive anyway.
Siobhan seemed to have resented him bitterly in the beginning, afraid that he would inadvertently reveal her presence and get them both caught to suffer an all too imaginable fate. Ravi thought he understood her fear and for the first 3 months they had studiously avoided the other until she finally admitted that she needed help when he found her injured in a ventilation crawlway. Fortunately it had only been a severe sprain and a little tape and TLC sufficed to treat it but for several days she relied on him for most things and her antipathy began to ease. It had taken time and cooperation to buff off some of the rough edges and she could still flay him verbally for the simplest things but they had come to depend on each other.
If he were charitably inclined Ravi might be tempted to think of it as some bizarre version of friendship but the truth was that he didn’t like her very much either. They tolerated the other’s presence, even needed it in many ways but he knew as little about her as she did about him on a personal level. That was just… out of bounds. He knew it was a defensive mechanism on both their parts but her defenses were barbed and vicious where his were more passive and hidden beneath a layer of calm fearlessness he’d learned to assume when he was young. Beneath of course, he was anything but calm or fearless. He didn’t remember a moment since the whole thing began that he hadn’t been either terrified half out of his mind or on the ragged edge of bursting into tears. He didn’t like what he thought that said about him and the sort of man he was, though an observer might have disagreed with his opinions.
He was planning their next series of alterations to the control runs while she slept, waiting for her to wake so they could get to work. This work period they were to install a series of essential cutovers that would deprive anyone else of access to the ship’s control systems. He’d been raised by his family who were all yard dogs and the men of the family were uniformly rather imposing, hard men with hard lives and a hard edged view of the world. She was a genius with computers and control systems and between them they had succeeded in making alterations that were almost undetectable even with close examination.
Once they had the cutovers done they could install filters that would allow them access to the comms systems aboard ship and allow them to filter what incoming traffic was seen by the actual crew. It was their hope that at least one of the other ships had “rats in the plumbing” like them who had similar ideas and intentions and that they would be able to make contact, coordinate their activities when the time came and thereby maximize the damage they could inflict. That would require even more caution and they had time as long as they remained free but in the event they were captured today’s work would ensure that their existing plans went forward without further action required on their part.
Either way they both expected to die and oddly enough it was the one thing neither of them thought to protest, even in their own minds. They hadn’t talked about it but he had wondered just why he was so fearless in the face of the ultimate terror when he was always frightened of everything else. It didn’t make sense to his rational mind but emotionally he was quite clear about it.
Siobhan’s eyes snapped open and darted around the compartment before she moved. She always awoke that way and Ravi wondered just what sort of horror had occupied her dreams to make the normally angry and aggressive woman look just as frightened as he usually felt.
“Good morning Siobhan.” They might not have been friends but politeness was a deeply ingrained part of who he was and it had tempered her responses to a degree.
His reward was a frosty “Ravi.” before she made her way to the corner of the compartment that held their toilet arrangements and he tried not to listen to her morning eliminations. There was nothing to be done about the even more unpleasant than normal smell the food concentrate gave to their excretions though. He was glad he’d already eaten before she woke as the smell certainly would have deadened his appetite otherwise. She ate on a similar schedule for the same reason but all the shortcomings of their food were overcome by the simple fact of its existence. They eked out enough to keep them both healthy but were very careful about their pilfering, keeping it as close to random as possible to avoid detection
Once she finished she hastily sealed the waste container for later disposal and readied herself for the day’s work, joining him outside the shelter where he had retreated to wait out the siege. As was usual, she simply set off in the direction of their work without so much as a word or even a glance of recognition. Her eyes flicked past him like he was part of the bulkhead rather than another person and he carefully restrained his sigh to make it simply seem like a long exhalation before following in her wake.
They were halfway through their self-appointed tasks and making their way from one site to another when Siobhan uttered the second word of her day as she sat and pulled a ration cube from her pouch. “Lunch” she said with an air of profound disdain before nibbling at the edges of the cube in a way that reminded him of a rabid chipmunk. He followed suit and nibbled in a similar way. The nutrient cubes were dense enough to make it the only practical way to eat them short of rehydration and the taste wasn’t terrible…
It was, he mused, a good deal like Siobhan. Barely palatable but indispensable. He didn’t expect her to speak to him again unless she had a biting comment but those had eased a great deal as both of them realized how well their talents integrated into a more effective unit and they learned from each other. Ravi had always been a quiet sort even as a child but his family was garrulous and loud and he’d found a sort of comfort in that. Sometimes Siobhan’s silence felt like a living thing all its own, eating the things he might have wanted to say and leaving bitter ashes in his mouth.
Any way he felt about it, talking would only get him shut down so he had given up trying aside from bidding her good night and good morning. That at least won him a word or two each day and that simple thing… a word from another human that didn’t make him want to flee in terror… most days anyway… it helped stave off the crushing loneliness. Ravi’s musing made him smile slightly and he caught the barest eyeflick of notice from her. That was expected, Siobhan didn’t miss much if anything but neither did he and he noted the second, longer glance she took too.
Neither of them actually belonged aboard this ship, having been aboard as contractors rather than crew since the last refit had been rushed. Their lack of official presence was the only thing that enabled them to vanish into the innards of the ship in the way that both had done. Other contractors hadn’t been quite so lucky and had vanished in other, less survivable ways at the hands of the crew or in at least 2 cases he knew of at their own hand. Ravi hadn’t been any closer to any of them than work required and Siobhan and he almost never had to work together directly but he didn’t recall her having been so hostile and silent before.
‘There isn’t much point in wondering about it.’ Ravi thought. ‘Its not like she’s going to tell me anything anyway. I wish I was stronger like she is. I’m so damned lonely…’ He went back to nibbling on his ration cube, too engrossed in his own thoughts this time to notice her sidelong observation of his face and the dour expression he now wore.
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Siobhan awoke with her usual sudden alertness, swept the area visually to ensure there were no threats and responded to Ravi’s polite greeting with her own frosty acknowledgement before making her way to their makeshift toilet arrangements to relieve herself of the noisome remains of the hated food-cubes. She’d tried mouth breathing and even just breathing the stink in and going for olfactory fatigue but it never seemed to kick in so it was just suffer through it and close it up as quickly as possible afterward. When she emerged she discovered that Ravi had absented himself from their hiding space entirely to avoid the stench, an altogether sensible precaution.
Without thinking further of it she set off down the passage toward their first piece of work for the day and he followed. She was able to lose herself in the work once they began but during their passages from one place to another there was nothing to do except be alert and think. A part of her was perfectly happy to stick to practical matters and planning but there was another part that hated the progress she’d lost. So much time trying to overcome her social issues, learning to respond in the ways people expected and make human contact… all seemingly vanished overnight along with her world.
In some ways she was actually worse off than before because when she did venture to speak it never came out the way she meant it. The warmest tone she seemed to be able to manage was frosty and the words that came first to her tongue were at best biting, at worst abusive. She didn’t want to further alienate Ravi, he was her lifeline even if he didn’t realize it. The end result was that she said almost nothing to him and he gradually stopped trying to draw her out at all. She wanted it to be different but who would be able to understand why she was the way she was and put up with it?
Siobhan stopped and sat, breaking out a ration cube. She examined it closely as she always did with her food, making certain there were no signs of spoilage or tampering. Once assured that it was undamaged she tried to find some merit in it aside from survival value and failed as she always did. She ventured her second word of the day at that point and immediately regretted it. Had she let too much of her dissatisfaction with the fare show through in her tone? Ravi did more of the pilfering because he was simply better at it and she didn’t want him to think she was ungrateful for the food.
She tried to focus her thoughts back on the tasks ahead as she nibbled at the cube but found herself casting quick glances over at Ravi as he followed suit, looking for some sign of his disapproval. She noticed a small smile and thought how much happier he looked that way but by the time she looked over again his face had settled into a dour expression.
They sat there together yet not and Siobhan wished again that she was able to recapture some of her lost social skills. Alas, they seemed just as dead as most of humanity.
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As the Earther fleet made its way out of the Saturn system and was irrevocably committed to a course that would keep them away for quite a long while signs of activity returned to the rings and moons. Saturn was still far enough out to have attracted far less settlement activity than Jupiter and so had only a fraction of the larger planet’s habitants even though it had escaped the devastation of the war largely untouched. The 2 small shipyards hadn’t really merited any attention from the fleet since they were both in very inconvenient positions to attack and thus were unmarred and none of the settlers or miners wished to attract attention.
Activity did continue of course, it had to. Volatiles had to be extracted, foods had to be grown, air regenerated… all of the myriad things that made life in space possible. Most communications had shifted to whisker laser rather than radio when possible and radio signals were deliberately as low powered as practical. People and cargo moved about, although with much more attention paid to stealth and much longer transit times than might have been the case otherwise.
With the departure of the fleet the need for stealth had passed and activity resumed at a frenetic pace. The Saturnians hadn’t been idle while hiding, far from it. They’d spent the time stockpiling raw materials, creating components and even prefabricating portions of ships, hiding them amongst the endless clutter of the giant’s influence until the time came to assemble them. Their original plans had not included the fortuitous departure of the Earth fleet and they found themselves taking up the slack they created fairly quickly. A month after they boosted out a new shipyard began assembly of the first of a new class of ship.
The Fleet Strike Carriers of the Earth Navy were impressive ships but had their flaws, one of them being their lack of power relative to their mass. The new class was much more heavily armored and armed and hence more massive but mounted engines many times more powerful so more than made up that deficit. The craft they would carry would follow the same design principles, lessons hard won through frontier life and the lives of untold spacers slaughtered in the war. These craft would in turn have their own flaws but for now they were a vast improvement on the previous state of the art.
The initial construction estimate meant they could actually get two ships out to the Uranus system faster than the Earther fleet to lend aid to the Hermes and her crew. Activity was frantic in all quarters as along with the carriers all of their attendant craft had to be built. Once the activity was in full swing for the week a reassessment was done and it was decided that the fighters and other craft would largely be assembled en route and the resources for that diverted to carrier construction. That would allow double the fleet size although there would be a pulse effect which meant the following ships would become available at a reduced but far more sustainable rate of construction.
Crewing them would be a bit more problematic but there were many refugee spacers who were more than happy to sign up for a chance to support a fight for something they actually believed in. Many of them had been adrift in important ways and they now found their moral compass pointed in directions they had been taught were soft and effete, to be scorned and hated. The hard lessons of survival taught them that a pure social Darwinist view of the world was a good way to die a rather unpleasant and lonely death and they adopted the frontier way of living with enthusiasm.
One determination common to all was that the Saturnian system never be subject to a foreign power again. Set against the might of prewar Earth it would have been laughable but now everything was different and they would be in a position of power within just a year or two. They even found themselves able to lend aid to the Uranian system in a significant way and that would help to establish 2 power centers. Beyond that the Belters would recover quickly and add to the mix but the balance of power as things stood meant that Earth was no longer in the ascendant.
No one really had a clue how many survived the last days of the war and observation from outside wasn’t practical with the entire planet wrapped in a layer of cloud laced with ash and soot that obscured the sun just as effectively as it hid the ground from their instruments. Estimates ranged from 2 billion down to a few million though the consensus was somewhere in the middle. There wasn’t a great deal that could be done to help them just yet partly due to distance and partly due to a relative ignorance of conditions or population loci. At this point drops of food and medicine with other survival gear were the sole aid that could be rendered and those were sent from all over the solar system as various populations reorganized themselves and a degree of functional society was re-established. It would be some time before they would begin to arrive but for anyone remaining alive on Earth they would be welcomed.
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Chandra made his way through the dimly lit tunnels of Low Delhi, trying his best to look unhurried and calm while his mind raced with speculation about why his mother had called him to attend her audience. The food reports were better than they had been a month ago and they were back to making some of the most basic medicines but the power project was moving more slowly than he’d hoped it would. Still, there was good news on that front as well so what could it be?
The checkpoint procedures occupied his mind for a moment, as did a bit of pleasant chat with the lovely young woman who checked his ID chit before handing it back with a smile and a sweep of her eyes down his lanky frame. Sometimes he resented those assessing looks from women and not a few men but this was definitely not one of those times. That was good since it eased his frame of mind a bit for the next checkpoint which was never any fun. Rajit would be there with his perennial glares of disapproval and a rough hand with the pat down for his “pretty boy” little brother who he considered “unmanly” for choosing the life of an academic over that of a soldier.
He was surprised when not only was Rajit not at the checkpoint but the pat down was even… well less painful than normal anyway. Still another checkpoint later and he was ushered into her office by a smiling young woman who made an effort to hide her glances at him as she ducked out and left the two of them alone in the room.
“Hello mother.” Chandra couldn’t think what else to say so he stopped there and the pause drew into a silence between them while she studied his face.
“Rajit is dead.” The words fell into the silence and were consumed by the roaring in his ears as she sat and he watched her normally stern expression soften. He didn’t realize he’d followed suit until the young woman came back in and offered both of them tea before leaving again. He couldn’t think of anything to say in return so they sat there for a time sipping rapidly cooling tea.
“He led a coup attempt against me… the last of the old guard trying to reimpose military rule. They said they couldn’t trust our nation to a woman who was voted in by the weak…” She paused long enough to make him wonder if she was going to say anything more. “I’m making you Minister of the Interior”.
That was enough to penetrate the stunned haze surrounding his thoughts. “Mother, you know I don’t like to be in a public role. Why are you doing this?”
“Chandrasekhar, you are my only surviving son. You have been project engineer for six months now and we have food enough for all, are beginning to make medicines… you know the list better than I do but I am informed you even have good news on the power project, yes?” She barely waited for his affirmative nod before plunging on. “The people trust you Chandra, more than they do me. I was simply the highest ranked official left in the chain of succession when it all came crashing down but you are the one who has been the driving force behind what we have achieved.”
“You have to get over it my son. You are beautiful, more than I ever was. Women desire you and men are jealous of you and none of them realize how much a curse you consider it. If this were a different time you would be deluged with offers to be a model or movie star or something like that but I for one am glad that your mind is even more beautiful than your appearance.”
“But…” he groped for words “ I hate being in public…”
“I know you do Chandra but this isn’t about your likes and dislikes or mine. You are the right person for the job and I am not giving you the option of turning it down. I need you looking your best for the swearing in ceremony later this afternoon but as of now you are acting Minister.” She rose and crossed over to caress the side of his face. “I love you Chandra and I would not set you a task if I did not have full faith in your ability to do it as well as it can be done. Now come and have some lunch before you go prepare and I will answer your questions as I can.”
Previously
“But…” he groped for words “ I hate being in public…”
“I know you do Chandra but this isn’t about your likes and dislikes or mine. You are the right person for the job and I am not giving you the option of turning it down. I need you looking your best for the swearing in ceremony later this afternoon but as of now you are acting Minister.” She rose and crossed over to caress the side of his face. “I love you Chandra and I would not set you a task if I did not have full faith in your ability to do it as well as it can be done. Now come and have some lunch before you go prepare and I will answer your questions as I can.”
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And Now
“Higalik, respond.” She jerked her mind away from the task at hand to answer the latest demand for her attention.
“What do you want now, father? Can’t you tell I’m busy with this section?”
“Yes daughter, I know you are busy. I also know your brother has been calling you to come in for dinner for nearly an hour now and you are being disrespectful to him by not coming to eat. You are already ahead of schedule on that segment and it will be there once you’ve eaten and slept. Now stow your tools and come inside.”
Higalik thought about disregarding his words for a moment but she realized she really was exhausted and merely sighed while stowing her tools and securing her work area. Once finished she made her slow deliberate way toward the rock her family called home and the increasingly attractive prospect of a meal cooked by her brother. During the long slow drift of the ½ kilometer that separated her workspace from home she ran over the specs for the day’s work in her mind, checking off each task she had completed and verified. Her father was correct, she was nearly a full workday ahead of her schedule for the week even with double and triple checking every step in the process.
She wasn’t competing with anyone else, only with her self-imposed deadlines and she consistently came in under her time target. Her family could supply her with subassemblies faster than she could manage to use them if they worked flat out but they had a sense of each other’s pace and there was usually a 2 day supply ready to go at any point. Their parents used the time to do other essential chores around the habitat but her brother spent most of his free time growing and preparing an amazing variety of foods which made mealtimes one of the true pleasures in the entire family’s day. She was glad her father was there to help her shed her suit and inspect it minutely while cleaning it before charging all consumables to maximum in preparation for the next day.
It would be reinspected before its next use of course, that much was basic safety procedure and something not even a young child would forego unless there was no choice. The relatively fast but painstaking process gave her ample time to savor the aromas of her brother’s cooking and the quick shower only sharpened her anticipation. She could tell that part of it involved fish but that much was almost a given with the limited protein sources available so no surprises there but he did strange and exotic things to the foods he grew or traded for and every meal was a delightful surprise to the senses.
Once they made their way into the dining area the food was already being served and they greeted the night’s guests while taking their seats. Once everyone was served her father signaled for attention by rapping lightly on his glass and rose.
“We welcome travelers and friends to share our bounty and the talents of our chef, my son. Kunik, could you let everyone know what we’re eating tonight?”
Her brother launched into his description of the foods and how he’d prepared them but as usual Higalik’s mind wandered and she found herself contemplating things to come. Within a few weeks it would be time for her to depart for her shipboard posting on an as yet unnamed ship and it was a daunting prospect. She wasn’t worried about her technical skills but living together with that many people was a complete unknown to her. She didn’t have the easy way of communication her brother enjoyed and even though she functioned well as part of a team in that context she had never been very good at making friends.
Kunik had the advantage over her in that way, before the war he’d gone off to culinary school in Valley City with its 20 million inhabitants and gotten more exposure to other people and cultural backgrounds than she had during her own stay in engineering school at Archangelsky University with its population of researchers and students. The isolated university was home to just over 50,000 people at any one time but it was so large that one could literally go for days without seeing another person if they wanted to and all in shirtsleeve comfort in the giant caverns. She missed the University and the student life but even there she had been fairly isolated by the demands of her course of study and the way she pushed herself to complete her degree.
Soon she would embark on a ship that carried over 4 thousand crew and spend months in close quarters with others assembling fighters, bombers and all the various craft that made a carrier into the formidable ship it would be when completed. Her family would remain here building subassemblies for later ships and sending them off to the next habitat for final component assembly while Kunik took students in and taught them the finer points of the culinary arts. The new habitat section for the students and the restaurant they would staff had already been finished before the war but had remained unused until now even though it would likely be by far the most profitable of the family’s business ventures to date.
“Chef Kunik, how did you manage to make this? I know it is fish but the texture and the undertones are earthy and yet still so light I almost expect it to run away from my fork! This is the best thing I’ve tasted in ages!” The older gentleman whose name she hadn’t retained was gesticulating with his silverware as he spoke. “Ilya told me about your cooking when you were in school together but this is so far beyond what I imagined!”
“Your daughter is one of the finest minds I’ve ever met Mr. Zherinski and I am honored to have you both at my table. I must admit I harbored some faint hope that she would survive the recent unpleasantness and perhaps remember who I was one day but to have the whole family here and intact was beyond my dreams! All of you are welcome at my family’s table and in our hearts for as long as you wish to remain and please, I am just Kunik.”
“Then I am just Valery. The welcome you extend to such poor expatriates as ourselves humbles me and on behalf of my family I thank you and your family. I understand you will be opening the hotel and restaurant as soon as the first wave of ships depart, yes?”
Kunik frowned and paused for a moment before replying. “The added rooms are intended as quarters for students who will also staff the restaurant. I wouldn’t know how to run a hotel sir, um Valery… its not something I’d considered. Perhaps at some point in the future, once I have acquired sufficient funding for such a venture, I would be willing to think about collaborating with someone experienced in the field.”
“And what would you say if the funding and expertise became available now?” Valery was leaning forward with eagerness, food almost forgotten.
“I…” Kunik stopped and stared at his plate, eyes flicking up at each of his family members in turn. “I would say I have to examine any such proposal and discuss it with my family. If the proposal was suitable and the family agreed that we all wished to move forward we would most likely accept.”
“Your caution and concern for your family is commendable Kunik. Since this is to be a family decision perhaps we can all discuss the details once we have finished your superb meal, yes?” Valery leaned back into his seat and refocused on the food in front of him, making noises of appreciation as he ate.
The previously quiet conversation became more animated as the night grew older and dish after dish was served to the noisy acclaim of the gathered diners. The other guests got into the conversation and by the time they all sat sipping an after-dinner cordial the mood was quite convivial. The other diners took their leave and departed for their various craft to sleep off the meal before departing the following morning and the two families collaborated to make the cleanup a breeze, settling in at the now-cleared table for discussion.
Higalik watched the conversation and contributed as she was able but the whole thing was at a remove for her in many ways. She would not be present for any of the things they were discussing past the initial construction stages and she would have very little input past the design stage anyway. She saw the interaction between Kunik and Ilya and was sure that they had been far more than friends during his years in Valley City. She was glad for him but wondered why she had never managed to make that sort of connection with anyone.
She gave her assent to the proposal when the details were hammered out and sat there sharing a celebratory drink with the families, now business partners and quickly becoming friends as well. She was preoccupied through a large part of it, musing on what her future might hold. Once the war was finished there was really nothing other than people to tie her to this place and though she loved her family dearly and the prospect of being away for extended periods was daunting she found herself wondering if a naval career might suit her. One thing was certain, there would be navies and the political units which fielded them would ensure a more equal balance of power amongst the various governments by virtue of strong militaries.
She’d shared her thoughts with her family before volunteering and they were lukewarm about the idea, wanting her to come home once the war ended but in the end they did admit that whatever career she chose would be stunted if she remained. They understood her reasons for wanting to volunteer in the first place since they had all done so when the war began but when the selection committees published their results only she had been chosen. It was amazing to think such a small nation could be choosy about whom they accepted to serve but it made sense when everything else was considered. She’d spent quite a great deal of time trying to determine the logic behind the decisions but it finally congealed into an unpleasant truth.
They were essential to continued production and social function while she was… expendable. That didn’t mean her life was without value, far from it. If anything her life was put at a premium by comparison and if spent she had had every confidence the price would be quite dear to an opponent. Once she truly understood she decided that the decision had been correct. She was the one who was best equipped emotionally, by training and inclination and in practically every other way, to go and do what needed doing. Higalik wasn’t sure how she felt about it exactly, it was very strange to think that she might be killing and possibly dying in the not too distant future but for some reason the idea held no particular fear for her. The idea of leaving her family behind to grieve upset her more but even that simply reinforced her determination to give her absolute best at all times.
If her family was to mourn her it would be in a place of honor.
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Kunik watched his sister during and after the meal and saw how she reacted, or more appropriately didn’t react to the conversation and the changes it heralded. He’d watched her change from the happy younger sister he remembered into the serious and studious workaholic she’d become and hoped that university would help her to open up some. When it came she chose Archangelsky University which was the best university for physics and engineering off of Earth but was also relatively isolated even from the smaller Hale City, much less the metropolis of Valley City he had enjoyed during their time on Mars.
Their parents had shared his hopes but were a little more realistic in their expectations so it was no real surprise to them when she continued as she had before, glued to her lessons and whatever project she was immersed in outside of that. They even realized, more than he had before now, just how much this was a part of her nature and how unlikely it was to change. Still, it felt to Kunik as though he had somehow let his sister down, especially since he was sitting right across the table from the woman he’d fallen in love with then, unexpectedly alive and with her entire family safe as well! He stole another glance at Ilya, their eyes meeting as they had done all evening and he felt again the warmth they shared even without physical contact.
Her father’s proposal was exciting and meant among other things that Ilya and he would have the chance to explore their relationship more deeply since the family would be occupying the space intended for students and staff until their own quarters could be made ready. They’d made light of it in the conversation but it was clear that the small ship had been far too cramped for the length of journey they had undertaken to get here and the family would be truly grateful for the opportunity to have privacy and space again. Kunik wondered again if he should invite Ilya to share his rooms and was still dithering when the two families left the table over the course of a few minutes, leaving just the three of them together.
Kunik tried to divine what he should do, his eyes darting from his sister to Ilya and back, one face almost grim under accustomed expressionlessness, the other calmly waiting, unhurried. His decision was made for him when Ilya rose, leaned over the table and kissed him soundly.
“Take some time, talk to your sister. I need a shower and I will see you when you’re finished, ok?” She straightened up and made her way out of the room, headed for the docking area to retrieve whatever she needed from the family’s ship.
Kunik watched her go, fighting with himself about how he should feel. He was elated that Ilya evidently intended to share his quarters yet felt guilty that his sister had no one to share that part of her emotional life. They’d shared almost everything growing up so he knew his sister was no prude but neither was she one to look for someone else, preferring to spend her time working.
“You don’t have to feel badly for me because you have someone.” Her words broke into his thoughts with her usual incisiveness, straight to the heart of the matter.
“I don’t know quite how to feel. I thought Ilya was dead, killed in the bombardment in Valley City and suddenly here she is with her family and they want to help us build something more than I’d ever considered and she still wants… I don’t know what she wants…” He looked back down at his hands.
Higalik remained silent and allowed him time to work through it for a moment. “The thing is I do feel badly for you… like somehow its my fault that you…” he trailed off again.
“That I’m a workaholic ice queen?” She smiled when his eyes jerked up to her face. “I’m not like you that way, we both know that. You make connections with people easily and I… well, I don’t, as much as I wish I did sometimes. That’s not your fault, not our parents fault. There is no fault in it at all, I’m just different in that way. I want you to be happy and if your happiness lies with Ilya then I am glad for you.”
“I just… feel selfish I guess. You’re getting ready to go away to war and I might never see you again and it doesn’t seem right, that I should have all this and you face that. I know better than to feel guilt over that part, we all volunteered and honestly, what could I offer a warship that someone else could not do better? Including someone like me would be a bad decision as long as there are better choices and not doing everything they could to get you would be a sin of omission.” Kunik ventured a smile of his own.
“I guess its just all really hitting home for me. I grieved for her when Mars was bombarded but it was buried amongst the emotional shock of so many people dying and it just kept going and then Earth and so much more… and then those evil bastards left to try to finish the Hermes. Suddenly there was room to breathe, to think about what I’d lost but I couldn’t…. There wasn’t room in my heart for anyone but the three of you….”
He sighed and wiped a tear from his cheek. “And then I discovered that one little portion, one selfish little portion, of my world was suddenly and inexplicably back and I’m so torn I don’t know whether to laugh or cry because I want to do both. It doesn’t feel right for me to so happy while you …”
Higalik broke in. “I am not unhappy brother. I don’t want you thinking that or feeling that your happiness is somehow at the expense of mine. I might not show my happiness in the same ways that you do but you have to realize that I find different joys in life. You know I would not have stayed here for very long if the war hadn’t come, we talked about this a few months after I got back from Mars and I told you I was considering signing up for one of the exploration ships.”
“I don’t think it ever occurred to me that you were less happy being home…” Kunik wasn’t sure how he should feel about that.
“I’m not unhappy brother, I told you that already.” Higalik paused and thought for a moment. “I love my family and my home, and I will no doubt come to love Ilya and her family but I need more than I can find or have here to be complete. I didn’t fully realize it until I forced myself to sit and seriously think about why all of my ambitions had me going elsewhere. I don’t know what I need yet but there’s no way I’m going to find out sitting here wondering about it, not that I could do that the way things are now anyway.”
Kunik thought about what she’d said for a few moments and realized she was right and more, that he knew it just as surely as she did. “Sometimes I wish I were more like you…” slipped out before he realized it. “I mean…”
“I know what you mean and I understand. Sometimes I wish I were more like you too. If nothing else it’d lower my chances of death from malnutrition…” she laughed and he felt the warmth of it in his bones.
“You know if you ever want to talk, I’m here, right?” Kunik searched his sister’s face for a response and was gratified to see a small smile.
“The same goes for you. Now enough talk, go join Ilya. You two have a lot of catching up to do and I don’t think she’d look kindly on me keeping you from it.” Kunik was surprised when she kissed his cheek lightly and murmured into his ear “Have fun brother…” before vanishing through the entryway with her usual quick, precise steps.
Kunik stared after her for a moment, trying to decide how he felt and unable to decipher the swirl of emotions fighting each other for dominance. With no clear answer in sight he let it go for the moment and rose, increasingly eager as he approached the entry to his rooms knowing Ilya would be there waiting for him and almost breathless with anticipation.
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Ilya exited the refresher with a glide in her step and almost purring with the pleasure of the first real shower she’d had in over 8 months. Sonic showers supposedly got you just as clean but there was nothing that could compare with the sybaritic pleasure of a cubicle pouring needle sprays of water as hot as she could stand it. A soak in a tub might have come close but there wasn’t time for that just now, not if she wanted to give Kunik a proper greeting instead of finding him asleep when she finished.
Her timing proved to be near-perfect as Kunik had just closed the hatch behind himself before turning to see her standing there in the refresher entrance in only a towel. She had to catch herself, she wanted to preen a little when she saw the raw desire smoldering in his eyes and it brought the banked coals of her own passion back to full, roaring flame. Somehow they had met in the middle of the room and his mouth was on hers…
Ilya woke to the sound of soft snores and the light scratching of chest hair against her face, taking a moment to savor the sensations before reluctantly moving to go to the refresher. Examining her reflection as she washed her hands she decided another shower was in order and was about halfway through when the door to the cubicle opened and Kunik joined her. They took the time to enjoy each other as well as the shower and by the time they were toweling each other off hunger made its presence known as her stomach rumbled, causing them both to laugh and focus on getting ready for the day. They both had quite a lot to do getting ready for future work, prepping new hab modules for installation once the design was finalized and making sure production didn’t slack.
Ilya wondered at the improbable stroke of fortune or foresight which had brought them to this point. Her father had gathered the family, even her older sister’s husband and actually tricked them into celebrating aboard his newly reconditioned ship. None of them realized they were underway rather than docked at Phobos Station until their trajectory was established and they were committed, without sufficient fuel to take any other realistic course. There had been screaming and crying and much in the way of recriminations until the sudden bombardment of Mars destroyed nearly everything they had held dear.
It took time to deal with it, to process all of the death and destruction and sometimes Ilya wondered if they truly had, if they weren’t in some odd form of functional denial that allowed them to survive without truly living. Whatever the truth was on that score she was thankful that of all the possible escape routes her father could have chosen this had been the one. He’d never said a word to her about their destination, only that it was in the Saturnian system. It was not until they arrived and she joined the family for the meal after a quick freshening up aboard ship that she saw Kunik’s face and her father’s smirk at her expression of shock.
The lingering gazes between them as they ate left no doubt that the fire between them was as hot as ever and by the time he made his way to what had suddenly become their quarters they were both more than ready to pick up a relationship they never wanted to break off in the first place. Kunik had been gentle as though he was afraid to touch her for fear of causing her pain until she took charge and put an end to any pretense at anything other than passionate, loving and even a little angry lust pent up for years and expressing itself in almost animalistic coupling. They’d both wanted so much to talk after but sleep borne upon the emotional exhaustion of such a long separation claimed them first.
Now they were both awake and alert and for the moment able to refrain from going directly back to bed and the time had come to speak of their future explicitly, not in the assumptions they had used previously. Ilya was just about to bring the topic up when a still naked Kunik turned around to face her and dropped to his knees with a ring box held open in his hand, facing her. Her pulse thundered in her ears such that she could barely hear his words and she had to sit suddenly, her legs having decided they would no longer bear her weight. Fortunately she sat back onto the bed rather than falling and after a moment she was able to hear Kunik’s words of concern. She assured him she was alright and fixed him with a stare, her eyes flicking back and forth between his face and the ring-box.
There were so many things she wanted to say but what came out was “Why now?”
Kunik grasped both her hands in one of his and looked into her eyes. “Because I was too stupid to ask you to marry me back on Mars. I had the ring, everything… but I was afraid. Afraid that your family would not accept a poor homesteader’s son, afraid that I was not good enough for you… afraid that you would say no. I lost my nerve, packed the ring in my things and was lifting for Phobos Station within an hour of the commencement ceremony. I am sorry I hurt you but then I thought it was for the best…”
Ilya was beyond angry at this point and her tone made him wince and lower his gaze. “For the best?! You thought it was for the best!?!?!? Who the fuck do you think you are to tell me what is best for me?! You go and leave me without a word, nothing! All this time I just thought you didn’t want me, didn’t want to be with me…” Anger gave way to tears. “And now this, to find out it wasn’t even that, just you not having enough faith in me to know that I loved you and none of that mattered…”
“I am so sorry Ilya but please try to see it from my perspective. Your parents and their parents are born of money and power. You have never known anything but wealth and privilege and I… I am nothing, a servant to prepare food for such as they, for such as you…” Tears were streaming down his face and despite her hurt and anger she felt her compassion and love grow. “What could I offer to you? My family is poor, we have nothing but this rock we live in and what we can make or grow for ourselves. I could never ask you to leave all of that and come to live with a poor Inuit family in the middle of nowhere so I saved us both the pain that trying and failing would create. You deserved… deserve… better than me but I will not be so stupid as to again miss an opportunity to ask the woman I love to marry me. To forgive me.”
He was so pitiable at the start, talking about how he felt unworthy but as he continued she saw the strength he rarely showed and truly understood that he had taken a path of heartbreak for himself in order to clear the way for her to have the sort of life he thought she should. Ilya reached out and cupped his cheek in her palm, bringing him close to kiss him lightly.
“I want to marry you Kunik. I wanted to marry you then… When you left I thought I had been just a foolish girl and after I cried for a few months I tried to get out there, maybe try to find someone… But none of them were you and I realized that even if I was just a foolish girl I was still in love, heart and soul. I stopped looking, thinking that maybe one day it would stop hurting, that I could move on…” She kissed him again, lingering over the touch for a moment.
“And then everything went to hell and home wasn’t there anymore but somehow Daddy got us out and we were alive and headed for Saturn and none of it mattered anyway because I thought… I don’t even know what I thought really… I slept for most of 2 months because I couldn’t face any of it, couldn’t face that every single person I could think of who wasn’t family was either dead or on the other side of the sun. I faced it finally and decided that I would live for all those who would never have the chance but never, ever, in my wildest dreams did I think that I would find you and find… that I’d been so wrong about everything.”
Their eyes met and held. “I am the one who should be sorry Kunik. I never considered how any of my life would affect you, never understood because I wasn’t raised to regard people in that way… as servants or masters or any of that. To me you were just the dear boy I fell in love with who has grown into the man I am still in love with. The man I wish to spend the rest of my life with.”
When they finally did leave their quarters hours later she proudly wore his ring.
Previously
Their eyes met and held. “I am the one who should be sorry Kunik. I never considered how any of my life would affect you, never understood because I wasn’t raised to regard people in that way… as servants or masters or any of that. To me you were just the dear boy I fell in love with who has grown into the man I am still in love with. The man I wish to spend the rest of my life with.”
When they finally did leave their quarters hours later she proudly wore his ring.
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And Now
Ken woke in the shelter he’d rebuilt from the mostly intact remnants of an aircraft hangar. A few miles away there was still ocean but the ice was becoming increasingly difficult to cut through in order to fish and he knew he would have to make the long trek south soon. The preserved food he’d managed to salvage from the wreckage that had been left after the tsunamis destroyed everything wouldn’t last forever and he had no desire to starve to death in a frozen wasteland. He’d often wondered if he was the only human left on earth, as preposterous as the idea seemed. It had been almost a year since everything ended and everything he ever knew was wiped from the face of the world as though it had never existed. He had no idea how he’d survived, waking half drowned in a landscape he didn’t recognize but miraculously unhurt aside from some fairly extreme bruising.
It was a good thing the cold had descended so rapidly after the strikes, the vast numbers of bodies left when the waters receded had frozen and did not present the danger of disease they might have otherwise. Occasionally he would find signs that some scavenger had been worrying at a frozen corpse but lately even that small sign of life had ceased. Fortunately there was no shortage of wood to burn for warmth and he’d been able to salvage enough parts from various mangled vehicles to build himself a respectable traveling rig. An airbase, even one so thoroughly destroyed as this one had been, held a great many treasures for the mechanically resourceful and if Ken was anything it was resourceful. He was really surprised at himself when it came to it, he’d been a fishing bum who tinkered with building monster trucks when he wasn’t working a charter or upgrading his beloved boat(a neverending process according to his partner Matt).
It had taken a great deal of time but he’d had little else to do once he’d scavenged as much food and fuel as he could manage to store and safe. His fishing expeditions gave him more time and lent variety to his diet but he knew that he could not reasonably expect to continue those for long, the ice as far out as 30 miles was already 8 feet thick and growing. He knew the only way to survive was to seek the equatorial belt where it was possible barely habitable conditions persisted and had driven himself to learn in a way that he never had before. It turned out the technical manuals and the other texts that allowed him to understand how they actually applied in the real world were almost as interesting to read as the science fiction that had been his private addiction from childhood.
The result had been almost a year of concentrated study with very few breaks. He had focused on every possible survival method but aware that improvisation often meant survival he read and kept everything he could find, even keeping an antique chest he’d found that had a number of equally antique texts contained therein. Those things had given him primitive methods which meshed well with the more advanced chemistry and technology he had available to outfit the craft that would be his home for the foreseeable future. He had no idea how far south the frozen zone stretched but judging by what he’d seen at this point it was likely he’d have to travel something over four thousand kilometers to reach anyplace he could survive outside without at least light winter clothing.
He’d tried to anticipate possible troubles ahead of time and prepare himself with tools and methods to counter them but he would still be venturing into a complete unknown in just about every way. There was no shortage of light armored vehicles to choose from and he’d assembled a respectable little land-train which should allow him to make up to 200 km of progress per day but he thought 100 was a more realistic goal. He’d considered going over the ice as it would greatly shorten the distances but the train was extremely heavy and the risk of breaking through was too high so the more difficult overland route won out. He’d finally worked the kinks out of the control systems he’d had to kludge together to allow him to maneuver the train since he wasn’t just dragging a series of trailers, each module was independently powered and controlled to make the whole assembly possible to maneuver through what he expected to be some very difficult terrain.
The weakest link he was able to find in the whole assemblage was the track conversions he’d made to the formerly wheeled vehicles and he’d overbuilt those quite heavily, willing to take the weight penalty to avoid potential breakage and retain the ability to convert the vehicles back to a wheeled configuration fairly quickly. Hopefully there would be terrain where that might actually be more efficient but in these frigid conditions tracks were definitely more functional even with the added complexity and possibility of breakdown. One module was dedicated entirely to hauling spares for the track systems and half of another was filled as well. There was enough to rebuild every track system at least twice and he’d deliberately added entire extra vehicles to the train so that he could if needed abandon all but two of the modules and not seriously impact his long term ability to survive and move forward.
He was perfectly aware that he’d never be able to anticipate every eventuality but he’d spent a great deal of time and energy trying to do so and his last defensive preparation had just tested properly. Of all the things he hoped he didn’t have to confront, armed humans trying to cause him harm was at the top of the list but he was a realist and that was a large part of the reason he’d chosen armored vehicles to start with. They gave him significant defensive capability and medium-heavy firepower but he’d enhanced the armor in a few ways that would hopefully make his train near impregnable once it snaked into a circle with the module he occupied tucked inside and still attached. Once in place extra panels deployed and formed a solid wall of slightly overlapping armor to the ground and above the turrets of each module with firing ports that could snap open or closed in a few milliseconds.
It was essentially the old technique of “circling the wagons” with technology used to take it to a new level, becoming a mobile fortress in a way that wagon trains had never been able to do. 3 of the newest M8-B2 Abrams heavy tanks rode on modules he’d converted to flatbeds and reinforced for the duty even though they triggered an uncomfortable claustrophobic feeling when he sat in the cockpit. If the threat was sufficient the tanks were capable of demounting from the modules and sheltering behind them in a hull-down configuration able to pop up just enough to provide direct fire if needed and indirect fire while fully sheltered otherwise. At the absolute worst one of them could serve as an escape vehicle for him and he could control the other 2 remotely from there. There was very little short of another tank like it that could actually kill one of them and they made a decent backup plan for total disaster although if things were ever that desperate it was unlikely he’d be able to find a place he could survive any length of time outside the tank itself.
All of the technical end of things, the construction, the studying… had allowed him to distract himself from a duty he knew he had to carry out. He’d found Matt’s body on one of his scavenging expeditions, torn almost in half from the violence of the waves and had abandoned the expedition so overcome with emotion that he could only manage to wrap his partner’s body in a tarp and bring it back to his base to store him in a smaller building he’d secured. He’d known Matt’s wishes were to be cremated and it was finally time to carry out the promise he’d made so long ago when they were both just gangly boys figuring out their own sexuality in the sun and salt of the LowCountry marshes and such things were unthinkable eventualities discussed with the gravity of youthful love.
He didn’t suppose it mattered anymore that they had never married but neither felt the need and it had not seemed like a ceremony would make any difference in their devotion to each other. They had literally always known each other, even as infants when their mothers were friends and always at each other’s homes sharing the lot of Navy wives through the ages, of husbands being gone for months and years on end, more apart than together even in a loving marriage that lasted, which both of theirs had. Both their fathers had been assigned to the Hermes just before the war and he assumed that ship had met with the same end as the others must have to allow attacks like the orbital bombardment to succeed. In a way, the cremation of Matt’s body would have to stand proxy for the memorialization of all of both their families and that made it so much more significant… and so much worse emotionally.
Still, it had to be done and he set about the preparations, carefully stacking wood he’d selected specifically for this task, the remnants of the Angel Oak which had been the oldest tree known in this area of the world and a minor local celebrity in its own right. It had long ago been given status as a person for legal protective purposes and in using this wood he was also doing his duty for the entire region by honoring its eldest resident. It was the most significant gesture he could think of that even came close to expressing his feelings and yet it was woefully inadequate. This was the task he’d saved for last, to be done the night before leaving because the smoke it generated would be a beacon in the daytime sky and he refused to travel at night if he could avoid it.
By the time he had the wood and kindling arranged the way he wanted it was almost dusk and time for the most difficult thing he’d done since he found himself alive. The incessant heavy labor had greatly enhanced his physical strength in the past year but as he picked up the rolled tarp that contained Matt’s body he found the weight almost too much to bear, staggering through the stinging sharpness of windblown ice to the area prepared. When he entered the shelter of the broken walls that enclosed the ceremonial bier he realized he’d let his hood fall away from his head and cursed himself briefly for the moment of inattention. That was exactly the sort of carelessness that would have him joining Matt in death all too soon but he took the time to carefully unroll his partner’s body from the tarp and arrange him as well as he could before covering him with a white cotton sheet then finally trudging back to his hangar to warm up and prepare.
He forced himself to eat some of the fish stew he’d prepared the night before although he had no real appetite. He carefully stowed everything before extracting an extravagantly bottled bourbon that would have cost a great deal before and was now literally priceless from its protective wrapping and cradling it to him as he went back out, even more heavily dressed than before. He’d set up a shelter that would allow him to sit in relative comfort as he watched the flames and he carefully sat the bottle down, taking a moment to steel himself. He lit the torch he had waiting there and stood just outside the shelter before picking the bottle back up and working the cork out with a pop, taking care to pocket it before going out to the pile with a bottle in one hand and a torch in the other. He carefully walked around the bier pouring out a sip from the bottle onto the wood in each of the four cardinal directions before pouring an additional sip directly onto Matt’s body. He made his way around again, touching the torch to each of the spots he’d doused and causing them to burst into flame.
Flame spread rapidly to the kindling and licked at the large pieces of split oak like a hungry living thing all its own, eager to grow and flower against the harshness of the brutal cold. The old oak resisted for a time but finally caught, springing into a devouring inferno of wood and flesh. Ken sat back in the shelter after standing as close to the fire as he dared for some time drinking steadily from the bottle. He sat there for several more hours, watching as the flame devoured all and collapsed into a pile of charcoal with dim flickers chased around the outside by wind. He’d finished the entire bottle by this time and still didn’t feel drunk until he stood up to make his way back to his hangar and found that the wind gusts made him stagger a little. He sealed it up and began to finally relax a little as the warmth inside seeped into his extremities and he realized just how dangerously chilled he’d gotten. It wasn’t the best thing but this was the last time he expected to have the luxury of a warm, well-fortified space like this and he’d decided ahead of time that he would take as much time as he could to enjoy the space. He wouldn’t leave tomorrow as he had enough experience drinking to know that he wouldn’t be at his best and he needed to be for the trek ahead. There was also a last desperate hope that his funeral rite had been seen by another living human in the area although he was fairly certain he’d have found traces if there had been, he knew he left tracks aplenty although the blowing snow and ice obscured them fairly quickly.
With those thoughts in mind he brought up an old sitcom he’d enjoyed on a tablet and whiled away a few more hours finishing another bottle, this one far less expensive although his taste buds were so numb he barely noticed. He’d scavenged and stored large quantities of high quality booze from wherever he could find it and much larger stocks of lower quality stuff. If he did encounter other people something like that might well make excellent trade goods and if not he’d have as long as the food and booze lasted to cry about it.
He was pondering that eventuality when a rhythmic rapping sounded against the wall of his shelter, one chunk of concrete being smacked into the concrete wall of the hangar from the sound of it. He immediately paused the playback on his tablet and strained to follow the tapping rhythm until it dawned on him that he was hearing Morse code and followed the letters again though the rhythm of them was the first thing most who learned the old cipher memorized. SOS, then a repetition in an old distress signal known amongst a few aficionados, more than a few former or current military and quite a few of their dependents.
Ken’s sobriety was returning with a rush of adrenaline as the implications came home to him. There was someone out there, someone who knew the old code and made themselves known to him in a way that allowed him to make himself ready rather than surprising him. That showed at the very least an abundance of caution although it seemed like a crazy risk to him. Whoever this was had no way of knowing that it was only him in this structure so they were either trying something or were desperate. Now the question was how he should respond. Options flashed through his mind and he knew it was foolish but he’d been so lonely for the past months even a pet would have been a wonderful discovery. He took a moment to don full body armor and thermals before going over to unbar the entry and conceal himself in a corner behind some sheets of armor plate he hadn’t used, weapon at the ready and a few others beside him.
“I can hear you!” he hadn’t talked in so long his voice seemed foreign in his ears. “The door is open! Come in slow with your hands empty!”
A moment later the door swung slowly inward and a stick protruded through the opening with a small scrap of white cloth tied to it. The stick twitched up and down for a moment as if to emphasize its presence before a voice sounded from the other side of the door. “I’m coming in slowly. I have my weapons on me but my hands empty. I’m not leaving my gear!”
The last part of that was said in a tone that sounded almost argumentative and brought Matt back to his mind with a stab of grief. He managed a response through the sudden thickness in his throat. “Alright, come on, slowly!”
The stick moved forward and was followed by a thickly gloved hand and a grunt as its owner shoved against the door. “I don’t think I could do it fast if I tried. This door is heavy! I gotta put this stick down.” With that the stick dropped inside the doorway and the hand withdrew. Further grunting and muffled cursing yielded movement and the opening widened enough to allow a slight figure to slide through with before they leaned back against the door in the other direction, pushing it closed with their full weight and effort. They turned and he still could not see a face, just a cold weather mask set deep inside a parka hood. A hand pointed at the bar lying on the floor, really more of a major structural member than anything else.
“If you want the door barred you’re gonna have to do it yourself. There’s no way I can lift that thing. Mind if I put my pack down?” They shrugged off one of the pack straps and caught the other as the weight swung around front, catching it on one knee and easing the weight down their leg to the floor with obvious effort.
“Ok, move over there.” Matt indicated an empty corner and watched them move before carefully sliding around the wall with his weapon at the ready. He picked up one end of the beam and dragged it into place before lifting that end into the door brackets with one hand, repeating the action on the other side with his eyes glued to the slight figure standing pensively against the opposite wall.
Once the door was barred he relaxed a little, still unsure what to make of this new arrival. He decided he should probably be a little more welcoming than he had been so he lowered his weapon and strode back over to the area he’d set aside as his living space. When he’d assembled the space he’d included a second chair and he gestured toward it as he sat where he had been. “Come on over and take a load off, that pack looks heavy. You hungry?”
It took a moment for them to approach, the weight of their pack dragging them to one side. They finally arrived and sat carefully before responding. “No thanks, I’ve got MRE’s enough. How…” they waved around “How did you find all this? Is there anyone else?”
“I didn’t think so until you showed up. I assume you’re alone?” Ken tried to control his excitement at speaking to another human after so long.
They sagged under the weight of his words. “Fuck…” The quiet expletive hung in the air between them. “Yes, I’m alone. Have been since the strikes hit. I’ve made my way down this far from Truro and haven’t seen a living soul.”
“Nova Scotia? I’m seriously impressed. You know where you are, right? Have you been traveling on foot the whole way?”
“I walked from home to here but I did have to camp for a while before I could make it over the ice to go south. Its… its way worse a little inland, I guess the water took a lot of the debris and bodies with it going back out. I’ve been able to scavenge a lot more than I thought I would for food so I’ve still got about half what I started out with. Lucky thing too or I’d have run out of food a few hundred miles back…” they trailed off as Ken opened the top on the still hot fish stew from earlier and drew in a deep sniff of air.
Ken there listening in growing amazement at the endurance of the newcomer. “You sure you don’t want anything? The stew is pretty decent given what I didn’t have to work with. I’m Ken by the way. You can feel free to take a load off, I will. Clean bowl over there, spoon right beside it. Have as much as you want.” He suited action to words by rising and beginning to shed his outer layers, stacking each item neatly to don them quickly if needed. He sat and picked the bottle back up, then paused for a moment and reached behind himself for 2 tumblers. “Care for some mid-grade bourbon to go with it?” He raised the empty glass with in query.
They’d sat there watching him intently and seemed to be fascinated. They pushed back their hood and gave a quick nod before taking off the facemask and balaklava to reveal a fine boned face and a mass of dark hair which tumbled down almost as far as the chair where they sat. “Oh gods that feels good… “ they scratched their head vigorously for a moment.
Ken watched in fascination as the long parka came off then an artic coverall, then another, then 3 layers of underclothing, each layer progressively lighter. What was left was a pair of heavy piezoelectric powered thermal underwear much like his own but containing a figure which was clearly female with a hard masculine edge. She’d folded and stacked each article in the same way that he had but he noticed the lack of body armor and decided to mention it. “You don’t wear any body armor?”
“Yeah well I’m Canadian, we aren’t quite as gun-happy as you Southernors. Its pretty heavy stuff too and I figured if it came to shooting stealth was my only real option. It kinda looks like you made the opposite decision “ She gestured around at his traveling rig. “Mind you, if I had the skill to do that sort of stuff I might’ve done the same but I don’t. I can make computers do just about anything but that doesn’t count much when there’s nothing to do with them that can make a difference.”
“I tried to think of everything and it sorta got away from me… its why I’m still here… that and the hope that someone else would show up and they would be friendly. You have no idea how glad I am to see another human being…” Ken tried to continue but found that his throat was too tight to form words. He felt tears spilling from the corners of his eyes and down his cheeks and drew a ragged breath. “I’m sorry, you probly think I’m some sort of whacko.”
“I watched your ceremony. Who was he?” She picked up the glass he’d sat down on the floor between them and took a tentative sip, rolling the fiery liquid around on her tongue before swallowing.
Ken had to think for a moment. She’d watched him that long? What should he say? “His name was Matt He was my partner and he died in the strikes along with… well until just few minutes ago I thought everyone else. I was…” How could he tell her what it all meant to him? “ I used the wood from the oldest tree in the region as a way to have a funeral for our parents and everyone… I tried to make it as meaningful as I could even though it was just for me… or so I thought.”
“I... I did something like that with my parents and my sister. We were all in the same house, I don’t know how they died and I didn’t… but they were still there in the remains of the house. It was a few miles away from where it belonged but Daddy built well and it was still intact… they just drowned. By the time I’d found them it was dried up pretty well so I got a few cans of gas, doused the whole house inside and out and set it aflame. I… I couldn’t bring myself to come out of hiding when I saw you yesterday, I was so afraid I’d found some sort of military camp or something and I couldn’t…”
“I understand… I would have done the same but I don’t think I would have been brave enough to approach someone as heavily armed as I am…” Ken trailed off, uncertain what to say.
“Oh I wasn’t. It was only when I watched long enough to realize what was going on that I thought… I thought about how I felt so lonely after and I wanted to help. It still took me a couple of hours to get up the nerve but I remembered my brother taught me that old code so I took a chance.” She stood and went over to the stew pot, lifting the lid and sniffing deeply with appreciation. “Oh wow this smells…. This is the best thing I’ve smelled since…” She fell silent, taking a deep breath and picking up one of the 2 bowls he kept clean and ready.
Ken watched as she ladled the thick chunky stew into her bowl, replaced the lid and sat back down. The smell was getting to him and he’d made plenty of stew so he decided he’d have another helping, sitting back with his bowl and looking over to see her observing him intently. Her gaze made him embarrassed a little and he picked his glass up to take a sip, glad of the burn as it made its way down his throat. “There’s more booze, water and some more glasses over there if you want. The water is safe, I’ve got a triple-filtration rig I use after I distill it a few times. Plenty of everything so eat and drink your fill.”
They watched each other eat until both were scraping spoons along the bowl to get the last bit of liquid. He sighed, full for now, then settled back and refilled both of their glasses with bourbon. As tense as their initial meeting had been, in this short time he felt comfortable with her there and realized just how truly lonely he’d been as he blinked the pricklings of tears away from his eyes.
She took a sip, rolling it around her mouth to catch the flavor before allowing it to trickle down her throat. “I’m Sean.” She said nothing more, waiting for his reply.
“Ken. You said your brother taught you that code. He was military?”
“Navy. He was posted on the Hermes so I guess he’s as dead as everyone else…” She took another sip and turned the tables. “How do you know all this stuff? You some survivalist or something?”
Ken had to think about that one for a moment before he replied. “I suppose I am now. I was just a fishing bum who played around with monster trucks for fun before everything happened. Both our dads were navy, on the Hermes in fact. We were born a few days apart and have literally always been together except for a month or two here and there… I was so lost I think I went a little insane with things but I had lots of time on my hands and I couldn’t make myself leave. Speaking of survivalists, you must be one yourself to be here now. I’m impressed and a little intimidated.”
“My mom was a big outdoors type of person. I learned a lot of stuff just following her around when I was little. I used to like the peace of being out in nature alone… Now it just feels like being alone. Look,” she gestured at him “I went a little nuts too, I think. There’s a little time period before I could leave that is… well I know I ran around and cursed at the universe and cried a lot but I don’t remember much else. Then it was either get my shit together or die and I wanted to live so… here I am.”
“Sounds pretty familiar. Look, I’ve had enough of being alone and I’ve got… well honestly I’ve got enough for myself to live for several years without any effort at all. I’d planned to leave in two days to make sure I was in top shape for traveling.… I had that ceremony because I figured if it did attract any unfriendly attention I’d be gone by the time anyone could get here from any sort of distance and I’ve pretty well searched the immediate area. I haven’t changed my mind about that but you’re welcome to come along. Either way, staying here is probably not a good idea.”
“Ya think? The light reflected off the cloud cover in a big way, far more than I would have expected. I’d be amazed if you couldn’t see it 100 kilometers away, maybe more. You know a land train like that is going to leave a hell of a trail, right?” She’d finished her glass and he refilled both of theirs, clinking the two together before taking a sip and watching as she did the same slow savor she’d done before.
“Well the thing is that I realized anything other than being on foot would leave enough of a trail to make finding me easy for anyone who stumbled across it. That’s why I spent so long building all of this, I wanted to make sure that if anyone unfriendly did find me I’d be prepared to handle whatever it was. One armored vehicle turned into 3, then 10, then it grew to its current size before I got into adding the extra armor and… well if the ice wasn’t getting as thick as it is I might not have actually left, just kept building.” Ken waited for her to call him a fool but she simply sat and waited for him to continue.
“Hopefully we’ll never need any of the armor or weapons or… anything I guess but if it doesn’t work that way I’ve managed to put together enough force to survive.” This time he was the one waiting for her and she drew it out, looking around at the vehicles with a careful eye.
“Mind if I take a look at your control systems? I don’t know enough about the vehicles to really have an opinion but that is entirely within my expertise.”
Ken realized something as he started to reply and had to stop to make sure he had it right before he could continue. “Look, I’m not calling anything mine here. I’m not asking the same of you but if we join forces it is equally ours. Everything, all of the supplies, vehicles, the whole bit. If you’ve got ideas for improving the control systems that’s awesome because I’ve learned most of what I know in the process of putting all this together and I’m sure it can be done better. I just gave myself as many backups and redundancies as possible for everything I could think of that might break or fry or whatever and then I included multiple replacements for all of it.”
Sean seemed a little excited but she too had to think for a moment to consider what Ken had said. A long moment stretched between them as she carefully considered her response. “I’d like to stay another day or two so I can really get into it. Even with the risk it’d be better to get an issue sorted out ahead of time in comfort to have to deal with it out there but the danger might be less than you think. Even the hilly country around here is pretty low so the waves went really far inland, maybe 200 kilometers. That debris field is… I don’t even know how to describe it. Anything that wants to get through that mess will take a while to do it even with serious heavy machinery. I don’t know about inland but its hard to imagine a lot survived in the flood zone…”
“You’ve seen more of it than I have so I don’t see why not if you’re that confident. That’ll give me time for another fishing trip so we can have a little more variety to our diet down the road. Umm… I’ve never had to actually think about this before but do you know how to drive any of this stuff, or use the weapons?”
“I can figure it out. Before all this happened, had you ever been ice-fishing? I could teach you a few tricks with that if you’ll teach me the other stuff…”
“No. Ice isn’t exactly something that happened outside a refrigerator around here. I know a lot about fishing without the ice in the way though and I’ve done ok but I’m sure I could do better. One good thing about all of this, marine life has gotten a massive boost so there’s no shortage of things to catch! I’ve got squid and octopus, all sorts of fish and an amazing amount of seaweed, all of it in both frozen and dehydrated form. Haven’t seen much of the seaweed for a while now though. Shame, some of it is seriously tasty… “ Ken realized he’d wandered off track and brought himself back to the point.
“Look, it might be less risk than I thought but I’d feel really shitty leaving you here by yourself in case something did happen. How about we both take tomorrow to chill and do as little as possible, then we head out the next morning to fish? I had tomorrow planned out as a “Be useless” day anyway because I knew I was going to sit here and drink myself stupid after… After I kept my promise.” Ken could barely finish that last part as tears blurred his vision and he felt them begin to leak from the corners of his eyes and down his cheeks to lose themselves in his scruffy beard.
It was some time before he was able to really have a coherent thought after that but when he did manage to dry his eyes he looked up to see Sean holding his glass out to him, freshly refilled with amber liquid. He accepted with a grateful look and drank greedily, taking half the liquid in a couple of swallows before he sat back to gasp a little with the potency of it burning into his stomach.
“Thank you. I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was going to do that.” He felt embarrassed at the look she gave him, all kindness and understanding.
“I get it. Sometimes I can’t stop myself from crying either and the liquor probably isn’t helping but its ok to let yourself grieve. It’s the only way to move forward and the way things are now… its either move forward or stop moving entirely and I’m not ready to lie down and die yet. You take time when you need to, cry it out, keep going.”
“Yeah… keep going…” Ken was lost for a moment in his thoughts. “Going toward what though? I’ve been sitting here paralyzed for all this time and you’ve been walking, doing something… moving toward something…”
“I didn’t have any choice” Sean interrupted. “I had to move or die, the same thing you were finally facing after preparing as thoroughly as you could imagine. You had a luxury I didn’t, knowledge I don’t. Your situation and mine were almost nothing alike so comparing them, especially as a way to run yourself down… That’s just stupid.”
Sean thought for a moment and added “Besides, with all that you’ve done both our chances of survival are greatly increased. You haven’t been moving in terms of location but you have definitely been making progress toward a well thought out goal. Tell me, did you run yourself down this way, um… before?”
Ken didn’t know how to reply, taking a few long minutes to sip at his drink while the silence stretched between them. “Matt told me I did, yeah. Its just that… I’m never quite good enough, you know? My dad was this naval hero, my mom was this famous doctor… Matt was so far above me mentally I felt stupid by comparison. I’m just bright enough to tinker with a few mechanical things and take people fishing but no more than that. I don’t see it as running myself down, I see it as dealing with reality. I’m not smart, I’m not decisive… I’m none of the things that my family or friends were. If I wound up making things better it was pure coincidence.”
“Wow, that’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve heard in quite a while. All this stuff in here, this stuff you built? I wouldn’t even have the beginnings of a clue how to do that stuff. On top of that you learned about complex feedback limiting control systems and implemented a workable solution for something like this which is… well I’m pretty sure that’s never been done in that way. I think you’re absolutely brilliant.”
Ken felt his face heating and knew his blush showed where the beard didn’t cover. He didn’t know how to reply so he just sat there and sipped at his drink.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you… its just that I see this awesome guy who does stuff I would have expected 10 people to have done and I think that’s pretty special. All I did was survive and keep running, you built something that will mean survival for both of us and possibly for others we meet along the way. More than just survival, you built or brought almost everything needed to restart civilization. You think you’re not decisive and yet you’ve spent almost a year working on a plan that had to have been in your mind from practically the start and you’ve stuck to it despite all the seemingly insurmountable obstacles you’ve had to overcome. All of this entirely on your own and mourning the loss of your world. You are an incredibly strong and resourceful man, Ken, I just wish you knew that.”
She broke off, noticing that he was crying again. On impulse she walked over and hugged him from the side, her arms barely reaching around his shoulders. They could both feel the warmth of the other’s skin against their cheeks and for a very long moment they held that posture until she finally let go and wiped the tears from his cheeks with her fingers.
She sat and refilled both of their glasses, both of them drinking in silence for a minute. “We’re animals Ken, social animals that need touch from other humans. We’ve both been without that for too long and it has driven us a little insane. You know that as much as I do.”
“So what, you’re proposing we sleep together?” Ken’s tone was incredulous.
“Yes. Not in a sexual way although I do find you very attractive… but I very much need to be held and I can tell you do too.” Sean was privately very nervous about that, afraid she might inadvertently reveal her secret but willing to take the risk. After all, if he reacted to her like others had she could at least take her things and leave…
Ken took a very long time to think that over without speaking, making his way through another entire glass of bourbon. When he finally did speak it was a single word. “OK.”
He couldn’t properly admit to himself that he needed touch just as badly as she did but by rationalizing it as helping someone in need he could manage to do it. They mostly drank together in silence afterward with the exception of him helping her to the toilet facilities as they readied for bed. He had lucked out one day and found a king sized mattress and box spring, still shrink wrapped and perfectly dry. He’d used some of the Angel Oak wood to build a beadstead for it, a truly massive thing with huge limbs at each corner propping up a frame draped with a red and gold paisley cloth he’d turned into an extremely heavy quilt that draped all the way down to puddle on the ground all around.
Sean gaped when he pointed it out to her, stunned at how massive it looked. When she peeled aside the opening flap in the drapes to look inside she was greeted with equal splendor. With an entire city to scavenge he had chosen only the best of bedclothes, high thread count cottons, again in a paisley design but this time forest green and metallic silver, so soft to the touch it felt like cloud. When she stripped off the final layer of thermals and was down to bra and panties she climbed inside and under the covers, delighted to discover that there was not only a heated underpad but a heated blanket as well. She was faced away so didn’t notice when he slipped under the covers and got a shock when she discovered he had undressed completely.
He wasn’t being pushy about it but she could feel the fine hairs on his buttcheeks tickling at her own cotton covered rear as they instinctively touched for the sheer comfort of touching and being touched. They lay that way for a time, each of them wanting more but unable to move until she finally decided to take action. She stripped her underwear off and left it atop the covers for easy retrieval, then turned over and carefully tucking herself between her legs snuggled up to his back, uncaring that her breasts were pressing into him.
His response was a sleepy mumble as he pressed himself backward into her embrace and they went off to sleep that way both comforted in a simple and yet elemental level so sorely needed.
When Matt awoke with the usual physical evidence of his need to urinate he was embarrassed to find that his member had ridden up her back and between her cheeks as she was held in his embrace. He quickly rolled over and out of bed, hopping frantically for a moment on the cold floor before he found his slippers and made his hasty way to the toilet facilities. He sat there with his head pounding, on the edge of retching as fluids made their way from both of his other orifices and he shivered violently. He’d experienced hangovers before, some of them pretty severe… but this one was something in a league of its own.
Eventually the smell of the partially digested fish stew overcame his gag reflex inhibition and he made use of the garbage can as well. That only made things worse and for a time he was extremely and loudly vocal about his misery. When he thought he was finally done he began to clean himself up only to have another round of the same but when that was finished he felt somewhat better. He still couldn’t decide if he was sweating or freezing to death or both and the shivering made it difficult for him to manipulate the temperature controls on his makeshift shower stall.
He went from scalding to freezing and finally settled on a temperature that felt as though it was just on the edge of cooking him alive, as hot as he could manage to tolerate. He stood there leaning against the shower wall, letting the warmth ease the ache in his head and soothe the muscles in his back and shoulders, loosening knots caused by his paroxysms of grief the night before.
He didn’t know how to react when Sean joined him moving behind him so that she could reach up and help the water soothe his aches, even rubbing spots on his skull he hadn’t realized were tender with her surprisingly strong fingers. She worked her way down his shoulders, even out onto his arms and them down the broadness of his back, all the way to the very small of his back where she suddenly stopped and turned away from him so that when he returned the favor he was only able to see her from the rear.
He was as gentle and firm as he knew how to be, teasing out knots of tension that had taken up residence long before, painful little kernels that gave up only reluctantly and with much gentle soothing. Despite her small stature relative to his own she was impressively muscled from her journeys and he found himself inexplicably attracted to her. He’d never been attracted to women before, why was this woman causing a reflex that he could no longer blame on a need to urinate? Whatever the reason there it was, traitorously standing proudly away from his groin at full readiness for… what?
Whatever thoughts were running through his mind were abruptly derailed as she turned to face him. Given the difference in their height his gaze naturally travelled downward and he noted a very well formed and he supposed rather attractive pair of breasts. They seemed to be appropriate for her size, whatever that meant. As his eyes moved downward everything else about her screamed female until he reached her groin and noticed a marginally smaller version of his own erection.
Ken’s mind took a short vacation at that moment, unable to properly assimilate what he was seeing. He’d known of transgender people of course, seen plenty of photos, even a fair amount of porn but nothing had prepared him for the reality in front of him and the sudden sexual hunger he felt for her. His image of himself had always been that of a gay man, never having had the slightest interest in women sexually even though he’d tried once or twice just to make sure.
Maybe he was just lonely and sex-starved, maybe there was just enough of the masculine about her to flip the mental switches that signaled arousal but when she tilted her face up to him he couldn’t resist bending down to taste her lips. It was only a brief moment but the tingling he felt ran from his lips all the way to the tips of his toes and caused goosebumps to raise all over his body despite the heated water cascading over them. He noticed a similar reaction from her and tried to withdraw, afraid that he had overstepped, made an unwanted advance.
She made it clear that was not the case by moving closer and rubbing her body on his while reaching up to kiss him with something like animal desperation. He was overcome and responded in kind and for a long time they stood there simply kissing and touching and yes, fondling each other’s genitals. He was amazed to discover as his fingers explored that under her penis was what felt like a vagina and it caused him to falter a moment until she grabbed his hand and guided a finger into the waiting orifice. They explored each other for some time, wordless and barely able to breathe.
Finally she reached around him and turned the water off, allowing it to drip from both of them, taking a moment to wring the excess water out of her luxuriant and now much longer looking hair, resting midway down her buttocks in wet strands. Ken handed her a towel and she used it to gently wipe the moisture from his skin, paying special attention to his genitals and rear. He handed her a towel which she used to wrap her hair then proceeded to return the favor, drying her off and paying especially tender attention to her breasts and nether regions in return.
Once they had both finished drying the other she removed the towel from her hair, allowing it to flow freely down her back as she combed her fingers through it to remove any tangles. The enclosed area which contained the bathroom arrangements and the sleeping area was deliberately kept at skin temperature as Ken hated sleeping in clothing or under heavy blankets so neither of them dressed, each taking a seat facing the other with a low coffee table between them. Rather than venture back out into the cooler area Ken reached under the table and pulled out a tray with a crystal decanter full of amber liquid and 2 rocks glasses of equal quality.
He poured them each a generous 4 fingers of room temperature whiskey before settling back and taking a sip, crossing one knee over the other in an unsuccessful attempt to partially conceal his persistent erection. Sean crossed her legs in a more ladylike fashion and effectively concealed that particular evidence of her own arousal but her erect nipples and puffy aureoles were on full display, distracting Ken in ways he couldn’t understand.
When Sean took a sip a smile crossed her face, chased quickly by a shadow of pain. She took a moment to savor it before taking another and rolling it around her tongue and making sure she got every last note of peat, smoke and barley. It was another moment before she said anything, her tone almost wooden with suppressed emotion. “50 year Ardbeg Kidalton. My father’s favorite dram in all the world and I thought there was none left, that I’d never smell or taste that memory again. I can’t think of anything in all this horrible world that could have any more meaning. Thank you Ken.” By the time she finished speaking the woodenness of her tone had given way to quiet crying.
Ken had no idea how to react but he put his own glass down, took hers from her nearly nerveless fingers and set it aside before reaching under her to pick her up and carry her over to the bed where he lay beside her and held her as she wept for her world. All thought of sex or arousal was gone from his mind, he simply wanted to comfort this woman who suddenly meant so much to him that her unhappiness made his heart want to burst with the pain of it.
After a long time her sobs subsided and she got out of the bed, making her way to the bathroom for a moment before returning to sit where she had before, taking up her glass and gesturing for him to do the same. Before he could say anything she began. “First, I want to thank you. I apparently needed a good cry for a long time and your response was perfect, giving exactly the comfort I needed without attempting to take it any further. You showed that you are a true gentleman.”
“I find myself with an unexpected problem. Maybe a part of it is simply the fact that we are the only two people we can be sure are alive on Earth but I find myself extremely attracted to you. I wanted to make love to you right there in the shower but I couldn’t manage to get past my own self-image and I expect you had a bit of the same issue.” Sean fell silent, waiting for Ken to understand what she meant.
It took a moment but he puzzled part of it out. “So you’re essentially lesbian and I’m a gay man. The whole thing with you having a penis though… That one throws me a bit. Unless I was sadly mistaken it felt like there was another set of equipment going on there too…”
“You were not mistaken. I’m a bit of a unicorn I suppose.” She paused to regard him over the rim of her glass as she sipped.
Ken snorted in amusement. “Unicorns are mythical and I’m pretty damn sure you’re not a myth. What exactly is the deal, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“In scientific terms? I’m what you’d call a fully functional bilateral hermaphrodite although the term “Intersexed” tends to see more use, incorrect though it is in my case. In most intersexed persons one side or the other does not reach full reproductive maturity and in many cases it is both, resulting in an infertile person. I am different in that both sets of organs are fully functional. I can both impregnate another person and bear a child to term myself. My father was the same, although he was considerably larger than I am, tending more toward a masculine appearance and demeanor.”
Ken was astounded. “I’ve never heard of anything like that. I mean yeah, I knew about intersexed people and how in the past they would be arbitrarily assigned to one gender or another at birth, often not successfully… but this… I don’t even know what to say. This is some next step evolutionary stuff here and to think that society mutilated people who may have been whole in both ways… I’m horrified. How did that not happen to your family?”
Sean’s face took on a grim cast as she took a deeper sip than before, swallowing it quickly and breathing out harshly from the vapor. “It did. 3 generations of us were mutilated at birth. My grandmother was the first to escape that fate because she grew up so far away from any doctor that she had already found another like her and they married. They discovered that the trait bred true, my father and his siblings are all the same although their appearance is all over the scale. Two of them went out to space, one of my uncles went to Uranus to work on Hephaestus station and my aunt married a lovely and very wealthy gentleman who lives… lived I suppose… In Valley City on Mars. They have… had… a very lovely and brilliant daughter who inherited the same trait so apparently it is dominant.”
Ken took a moment to digest that. “I wish I knew what to say… it sounds so… so much worse than what it used to mean to simply be gay. You seem... well you seem pretty happy with yourself and well-adjusted and um… comfortable with your body…” He blushed and tried to cover by taking a sip.
She laughed at him and blushed herself. “I don’t know exactly how comfortable with myself I am. I find both men and women attractive but the whole “having a penis” thing tends to turn off guys I might find interesting or attract some real wierdos so I’ve always pretty much thought my best luck at finding someone was to be with another woman…”She took another deep sip. “So I’ve been the femmy dyke with the dick. It hasn’t worked out very well for me.”
Ken was genuinely puzzled. “Are you kidding? You’re one of the most incredible and resourceful people I’ve ever met. I am literally in awe of what you’ve accomplished simply getting here. I mean, I’m gay and I want you, how could any lesbian in her right mind not feel the same way?” He realized what he’d said immediately after it slipped out of his mouth and gulped.
“Please, understand I’m not trying to be creepy or even come on to you but... I’m pretty freaked out right now by the fact that I find you attractive when you are so… so… female…” He trailed off into silence, staring into his now empty glass.
Sean gently reached over, took his glass from him and refilled it along with her own before handing it back. “I find you incredibly attractive Ken, and not just physically. Physically you are very much a prime specimen of the male of the species and yet I see this other part of you that is as soft, as female if you will… as the rest of you is hard. Its almost like you’re the other side of my coin in some strange way.”
“Now that you put it that way…” Ken took another sip “I realize that I feel the same way about you. I’ve always seen beauty I women but it never really registered on a sexual level, I think because Matt and I have… had… been in love since before either of us could remember and thee was just never room for anyone else. I honestly don’t know if I’m even attracted to your body or just the one part of it… OK, two if you count your penis. He said that last part with a straight face and it took a moment for it to register.
“And the first part would be?” She demanded archly.
He chuckled at having gotten a rise out of her. “Well it’s a twofer actually… your stunning intelligence and your absolute determination to survive. I think that’s a pretty great place to start and I’d like to be able to think of you as a friend and ally. Now if you happened to want to try a sexual component to that relationship I don’t think I’d be opposed but no pressure, ok?”
“You don’t find my body different, strange? I realize I’m not what you’re used to…” Sean was looking down, unsure if she wanted to try pushing forward if she made him uncomfortable.
“Both of those things, yes. “ He leaned forward to look into her eyes. But that only makes me want to explore with you and find out how we can make things work…” he looked down “I’m sorry, I’m being too direct. I’ve never been very good at talking about this sort of thing because I never needed to… Matt was always the one who took the lead in that way.”
“Then we both have to learn together I expect, if you want to try. I don’t want to push you into anything but I don’t feel like very much pushing would be required…” she arched an eyebrow at him and smiled a slow, lazy smile with an almost predatory gleam in her eyes.
They sat there and drank, light banter laced with innuendo and outright sexual promise until they retired to the huge bed, closing the curtains and spending a very long time discovering new things about each other and about themselves. When sleep finally did come they lay entangled in each other without energy to even move into more comfortable positions.
They sat there and drank, light banter laced with innuendo and outright sexual promise until they retired to the huge bed, closing the curtains and spending a very long time discovering new things about each other and about themselves. When sleep finally did come they lay entangled in each other without energy to even move into more comfortable positions
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And Now
Stacy was out in the garden areas with Mikhail, each of them laughing at the other’s clumsiness in the powered exoskeletons they were using for rehab. The suits kept them from exerting excessive pressure on their breaks but allowed as much loading as possible to promote quick healing and they were just getting used to moving about after being effectively immobilized for over a week. It turned out Stacy was as addicted to green spaces as he so when they finally got to leave sickbay this was the place they’d come and it had been good for their morale as the laughter attested.
“Dammit, I’m used to powered armor but this thing won’t let me move properly!” Mikhail was trying his best to get up from where he’d managed to fall into soft vegetation.
Stacy laughed at him for a moment before carefully reaching out to help him up, the exoskeleton making light work of the task and balancing itself against his sudden surging pull to gain his feet. “How did you even manage to fall over anyway? This thing is supposed to make that pretty well impossible!”
“The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer” he replied in lofty tones with a smile.
“Hah! You’re no engineer!” Her smile matched his, they were both enjoying the banter.
“Well Marines have the same saying… it just goes in opposite directions. You build the indestructible thing, we figure out how to destroy it. Perfect symmetry!”
“Perfect indeed…” Stacy’s tone was different now and she found herself looking at Mikhail with the same fascination as before, the angles and planes of his face so… not perfect in any conventional sort of way but perfect for him. Her face heated as she realized he was studying her with equal intensity and they both stood for a long moment looking into each other’s faces until she finally realized that all she could see was his eyes and his lips barely brushing hers. She didn’t pull back though, enjoying the softness of them and the gentle pressure that demanded nothing more than what she was willing to give.
It wasn’t a lengthy kiss but when they both drew back slightly she found herself staring into his eyes and wondering at just how many shades of grey could exist in the tiny space around his enlarged pupils. She could tell that his feelings mirrored her own, down to the uncertainty that caused him to look away from her gaze and drop his head a little. For some reason it made sense to her, that it wasn’t dislike or anything negative… he just didn’t know if he’d done the right thing, if she would reject him for his advance, however tentative.
Stacy saw those emotions and fears as though his face were reflecting her inner turmoil and self-doubt and knew that she had to be the one to move even though she was as deeply uncertain as he. As she opened her mouth to speak another truth came to her and it was that which came out of her mouth instead in a single word.
“Jeff…”
She regretted it instantly, expecting him to react … well she wasn’t exactly sure but weren’t people supposed to be jealous in this kind of situation? Instead she saw his face soften in a way that spoke to her of some other emotion she didn’t understand.
“He’s a good pilot. He’s pretty easy on the eyes too…”
“You…” She couldn’t finish the thought.
“Am willing to enter a plural relationship, yes. Will anything happen between Jeff and me? I have no idea… honestly I’ve never really had any sort of relationship worthy of the term with anyone. Being who… what… I am… it doesn’t lend itself to learning that kind of thing. I don’t know what it will be like going forward but before the war I spent a great deal of time deployed. It wrecks relationships, the loneliness, the waiting...”
“I don’t understand…”
“That’s fine… I don’t understand either but we’ll figure it out. Now… I really think there’s another person that should be present for this conversation, don’t you? I know his com code and he’s been off duty for about an hour and before you ask yes, I checked him out…”
“You…?”
“Planned this? No.” he smiled a little at the expression she must have shown.
“I’m trained to stay alive by being hyperaware. I don’t know how to turn it off… sometimes its not a good thing. I saw… I don’t even know what I saw but I realized that if there was to be a path forward it would somehow mean that we three had to interact… good, bad, whatever…” he took a moment to catch his breath and gather his thoughts.
“I want it to be good. I want to create happiness, build something, be a part of something… something that isn’t focused on destruction. I need this in my life and I think you do and Jeff does… I just think for some reason or maybe no reason… I want to make sure that it all adds up, nothing subtracts and this way makes sense to me… if its what you want. If its what he wants.”
“Call him before I lose my nerve…” Stacy was desperately afraid that somehow she would lose both of them but she realized that what he’d said was true… and if they could make it work… then maybe…?
She couldn’t help giggling a little as Mikhail tried to key in the com code and hit the wrong numbers several times. He muttered under his breath in some language she didn’t know although his tone made it clear he was cursing the awkward movements his time in sickbay and the exoskeleton imposed on him.
He finally got it right and flashed her a triumphant grin before hitting the connect button, waiting for her assent which she gave with a slight nod and an upthrust of her chin as though to say she was ready for whatever the universe might throw at her. He hit the key and the connection chime sounded for a moment before a voice that had occupied her thoughts for the past week at least sounded.
“Yeah?”
“You know who this is?”
“Yeah…”
“I expect you’re hungry just about now. I think the three of us should have dinner, and perhaps a few drinks?”
“What the fuck are you up to man?” Jeff’s tone was querulous but a little worried as well. “Stacy better be ok!”
“I’m ok…. just… he’s right, we all need to talk and dinner sounds good about now. Can you meet us at the park though? These damned exoskeletons aren’t the easiest things to move around in…” Stacy spoke up, touched by Jeff’s immediate concern for her well-being.
“I’ll be there in 5.” The connection closed and Stacy shared a small smile with Mikhail, uncertain of the future but ready to proceed. She wondered just when she had become so decisive, so strangely confident in herself in ways that she never had been before all this horror visited itself upon her sheltered life.
They stood there, neither of them speaking, just waiting and enjoying the greenery. It felt right that they wait before proceeding and the silence between them felt oddly comfortable. Jeff arrived a minute early, strolling into the area where they waited.
“Stacy… Mikhail…” He nodded to them in turn.
“Jeff. Look… There’s an issue here and its something we all need to deal with. I’ve got a few things squirreled away in my quarters and there’s room enough for us to eat there if you like?” Mikhail took the lead before Stacy had a chance to respond.
“You gonna be able to cook in that thing? I think my quarters are likely a little better suited and I wouldn’t mind a chance to show off a little.” Jeff ventured a tentative smile and Stacy began to feel as though it just might all work out.
“I think we both need a bit of a rest so that sounds good.” This time it was Stacy taking the lead, making the decision and it felt right, the way it should be. “It might take a little longer than 5 minutes to get there though.”
“Got something against riding a maintenance skip?” Jeff pointed over to the entrance he’d used.
“That’s perfect, thank you Jeff. I wasn’t looking forward to that walk at all. This whole being wounded thing is exhausting. I’m pretty sure Stacy feels worse, she got banged up a bit more than I did.”
“I don’t know if I feel worse than you or not but I will admit to being a little exhausted. Thank you for the thoughtfulness Jeff.” She tried to link arms with both of them and discovered that it was a much more complicated process than she’d imagined and after a little fumbling and laughing they managed it before she looked up into both smiling faces. “Shall we go gentlemen?”
The process of walking and then disentangling themselves once they got to the skip was the cause of considerably more levity but shortly they were proceeding through maintenance passageways only rarely used by anything other than automated skips like the one that delivered them in a little under 3 minutes to a hatch that looked like many others in pilot’s country.
Jeff ushered them into a space that was larger than the standard singleton’s quarters and was decorated with an interesting assortment of plants and furniture including a comfortable overstuffed sofa which he helped them both to settle into before making his way over to one wall and triggering the kitchen appliances and surfaces to fold or slide out of the walls. He had obviously tinkered with the appliances, making upgrades and additions to the standard equipment and while it folded itself out he went over to a screen, made a few selections and the sounds of a chamber ensemble filled the room at a volume just sufficient to be clearly heard without getting in the way of conversation.
He busied himself in the kitchen and soon appetizing smells began to waft in their direction as he used a wok over a juiced up thermal projector. Whatever he was making contained the usual staple of rice but he picked things from many of the plants to add into the dish and finally plated it all, putting his utensils and containers into the washing cubicle before triggering the kitchen to retract and a table to extrude itself from the floor along with chairs. He took a few moments to set the table properly before going over to help both of them up and then back down.
For some reason they had all remained quiet during the preparation process and Stacy found herself wondering just what that might mean. It didn’t seem like an uncomfortable sort of silence and she’d been pretty well exhausted despite her claims to the contrary so it felt good to just sit and watch, letting the music fill the space.
When he uncovered the first of the dishes in front of them there was a fragrant clear soup in a small bowl. Stacy tried to lean over to smell it, then gave up as the exoskeleton resisted her movements and used the overly deep looking spoon to inhale the scented steam.
“Wow… this smells really good…. like flowers almost except its food…” She took a cautious sip, then another and simply let the flavors roll around her tongue. It was utterly unlike anything she’d tasted before… salty, a little sour and with a bitter tang but it was a bitterness that served to enhance everything else with the the floral fragrance as another distinct layer of taste. “It tastes so different to the smell! Really awesome in a whole different way... I can’t wait for the rest!”
“She’s right, this is fantastic!” Mikhail chimed in between spoonfuls.
“I’m glad you both like it….” Jeff seemed to glow a bit from the praise as he watched and listened to their reactions. The soup was finished in near silence if you didn’t count enthusiastic slurping and little moans of pleasure. The main course was unveiled next and Stacy and Mikhail simply stared for a moment, dumbstruck by the beauty of the plating arrangement and the relative unfamiliarity of so much color in their food.
Mikhail was the first to speak, in almost reverent tones. “This is almost too beautiful to eat…”
“I’ve never thought of food as art before but this shows me what it can be. Do you mind if I take a picture before we eat? I want to see how this looked when I remember the taste…” Stacy was a little less reverent in her approach but no less heartfelt. At a smile and affirmative nod from Jeff she proceeded to take multiple shots of the dish from different angles, turning it back the way it had been set and looking to the others. Jeff took a pitcher and filled each of their glasses with a darkly colored fluid that seemed to catch the light in the room and amplify it, almost glowing an odd blue color. That required even more pictures of the filled glass, both by itself and with the plate in frame.
Once she’d finished Jeff held his glass and gestured for them to join him.
“I’d like to offer a toast to the best company I could ask for and the pleasure of dining together. May it be only the first of many meals shared between us.” Mikhail and Stacy voiced their agreement and traded a glance as the rim of each glass clinked against both of the others. “I hope you both like the taste as much as the view!”
Stacy had to fight to keep from grinning as Jeff realized what he’d said and turned a shade darker as he looked down at his plate. Mikhail managed a creditable poker face but he colored slightly as well and they turned their attention to the food to avoid the topic they were clearly all thinking about.
“Oh wow… beautiful, delicious sacrilege… first food as visual art, then food as texture and taste and smell and its just as awesome! I’m so weirdly conflicted between eating it and looking at it…” Stacy took another bite and made enthusiastic noises while chewing slowly, swallowing and taking another sip of the… whatever it was which sent another burst of flavor over the taste buds before leaving a clean taste. “Conflict over! I’m definitely on the eating side of that one!”
They both laughed and agreed before digging back into their own meals and soon they had finished with surprisingly little conversation beyond noises of appreciation and compliments to the chef which he accepted with lessening evidence of embarrassment. He cleared away the dishes quickly once they had finished and they all moved over to more comfortable seating with Mikhail and Stacy back on the sofa and Jeff ensconced in a comfortable chair facing them after making certain they all had a full drink within easy reach.
Mikhail and Stacy looked at each other, then over at Jeff at the same time and both opened their mouths to speak but Jeff beat them to it.
“I didn’t want to say anything because I figured out, I think, what we all need to talk about and why. I hadn’t even considered… well… anything really but I needed a little time to process it and just in case I was wrong I wanted to have the memory of the dinner with both of you.” He made a point of stressing the word both so that they would be clear about his meaning. “Now… We’re here to talk about the 3 of us, a plural relationship.”
Jeff paused while both of them nodded, Stacy having a thrill of emotion at his words. “If you both want this, then I am very much willing to try, to make it work. I know what the life of a pilot is and I’m pretty sure that of a Marine is even less fun in terms of relationship dynamics. Stacy, whatever you wind up doing may well be just as difficult as either of our choices but none of us can ask the others to change who they are… what they are… nor should we. This way of doing things… of finding and keeping love and family… is fairly common among Marines, a little less so with regular Navy but in civilian life is much more uncommon.”
“I don’t really know what is normal… I’ve always been pretty isolated. I didn’t even realize I was any different from other kids until I heard the doctor talking and it took me a while to process it but when I did it made so much sense of… things my dad taught me… like how there wasn’t really any difference between being male or female, really… I think he must have been like me, or maybe my mom was… maybe he was my mom… I don’t guess I’ll ever know now.” Stacy had to take a moment to get back on track.
“Anyway, I don’t really have any sort of reference for what is or isn’t normal with other people and I don’t much care. I know it seems fast and maybe it is but somehow I’ve managed to develop feelings for both of you. You’ve both let me know of your willingness to give this a try and I… I can’t see another way forward that wouldn’t hurt at least 2 out of 3 of us. If this dinner, this moment, is anything to go by then I think we will all be better and happier for it.”
It took a few seconds for both men to digest all she’d said but the smiles slowly spreading on each face mirrored her own and at that moment, she knew that this would be her future, her family even if she never found any other.
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The once spacious caverns of Archangelsky University’s campus had become a buzzing hive of humanity filled with refugees who’d fled there from the nearby cities for survival, far more of them than anyone expected given the bombardment that had been a part of the war’s beginning. Even with nearly 1 million souls spread out amongst various homesteads and production centers the university’s population had swollen to nearly 5 million from it’s previous 50 thousand and what had been largely empty caverns sealed off to give ample room for experiments and simple roaming were now fully utilized, crops growing everywhere people were not and most of the places they were too. The effect was deceptively beautiful, green and vibrant with activity everywhere masking just how desperate things had been in the early days and how precarious they still were.
“Lissa, can you bring me that spanner? I can’t manage to put this thing down just now…” the young woman balanced a large chunk of unidentifiable machinery on a work table in a precarious position and used an elbow to point at the tool in question. Her stepmother didn’t react for a moment before she pulled her attention from the screen and reached over to supply the spanner.
“Steph, you need to get to a stopping point soon. I want you cleaned up when Shan gets home. I have something very important to share with the whole family and we’re going to want to go out after, ok? That means scrub under your nails and put on a clean shipsuit…” The older woman thought about asking for more but if she got a clean(ish) young woman she’d be happy. She wondered if she should have told them immediately but this was just too important to not have the entire family together and she managed to hold her own excitement down to a bare simmer, focusing on getting her own work done so she could be free.
She was pulled back out of her work focus by a head blocking her view before planting a quick kiss on her lips and moving into the next room. “What is so important you had to get us all together Liss? I had to shuffle bioengineering 508 off to Ben and you know him, he’ll want some sort of favor in return. How that stuffy old git manages to retain a teaching position with his attitude is beyond me but I guess it takes all kinds… and he is a talented researcher.”
If Elissa had responded her wife wouldn’t have heard it as she was off into another room already. She knew Shannon would take 10 minutes or so to clean up and change which gave her 5 to finish her work and another 15 before all the kids arrived. Preparations were mostly completed, not that there was much to do but she wanted to keep herself busy so Shannon didn’t have time to question her as she was certain she’d let the secret slip before time if she didn’t have a ready misdirection. Work of some sort sufficed and trying to get her stepdaughter to give cleaning and dressing more than a lick and a promise definitely qualified as work!
She was back into her work when she felt a gentle kiss on her cheek and heard a murmured “I know what you’re doing…” but before she managed to turn around Shannon had disappeared again and she smiled wryly to herself. If she’d had any idea, Shannon wouldn’t be so willing to wait but her news was still highly secret so she was confident only 4 others at the University knew. It would all be public in another 4 days but her family could be trusted to hold information for much longer than that and even Steph had sufficient clearance to hear if there was need. This might be slightly a liberal interpretation of need but no one questioned her when she made her intentions clear earlier and she was fairly certain no one would think to do so later.
By the time Elissa had finished her work, managed to find something more presentable than just a clean shipsuit for Steph and cajoled her into wearing it by mentioning a certain boy they’d likely see later in the evening it was time and Shannon had everyone else sitting in the common area enjoying their intoxicant of choice. She joined them and took a sip of her own drink, welcoming that first burn as she readied herself.
“You all know the Hermes was thought to have survived. Today we received a communication from an intelligence source telling us that not only did she survive but her own casualties were fairly light. We don’t have a crew roster yet but there is a very high degree of confidence that James and most of his crewmates are alive and well out near Hephaestus Station.” Elissa paused and shared in the moment of warm hugs and happy almost-tears.
“There’s more. Phobos Station has determined that the fleet which boosted from Saturn orbit is bound for Neptune. We still don’t have a clear ID on them but expect clarification on that soon from the locals. We’re assuming they are a hostile Earther fleet and its just possible we may be able to get 3 of the new ships completed in time enough to have them ready to lend aid to the Hermes if we really hustle. This has to be an all hands operation once it passes a vote of the Council so there will be some reassignments going forward. Eric, you’ll likely get a CAG slot given your experience and we have every confidence you’ll do as well as anyone possibly could.”
Beth looked a little sad at that. It was something close to a miracle Eric had survived the bombardments and the battle surrounding them and she dreaded her husband going back out to make war almost as much as his mother did. Dread did not, however, equal unwillingness and that was as clearly illustrated as possible by the dark haired young man who sat just a little apart, stiff in a uniform and way of life that was new to him but to which he’d sworn himself when his wife, Elissa’s daughter, was killed in the same battle. There would be private tears but none of them would even think to ask either young man not to go, not in this room at least.
“Rod, your scores from training will likely give you a wing leader spot. This next training phase will be crucial so you’re going to have to stop trying to hide amongst your peers. You’re far and away the best of them and you know it as well as they do but you’ve made it clear to everyone that you don’t want promotion. In the process you’ve proven just how thoroughly you’re suited for command and its time for you to step up.” Elissa tried to hide her smile of pride as the young man who had become an adoptive son to her gulped a little, then managed to look even stiffer than before, this time with a slightly constipated expression.
“What about me? I’m an ace technician and I can be ground crew even if they won’t let me fly yet!” Steph looked like she was about to vibrate out of her chair with excitement. “Can’t you make some kind of waiver or something?”
That broke the tension and drew a general laugh. The girl had been agitating to follow her brother into service since he’d gone off to the Academy when she was in her first year of school and she’d become even more focused since the war began. No one who knew her had any question that when the time came she would serve with distinction but it wasn’t quite time for that yet.
“You know full well there’s no sort of waiver that will let a 15 year old join up. You’re lucky they let you into JROTC a year early and even that required massaging a few rules. You focus on your studies and if you can finish your degree by your 17th birthday your mother and I will talk about it. Sound ok to you?”
Elissa shot her a mock glare and the younger woman glared right back. “Do I have a choice?”
“Not even a little bit of one young lady. Liss is right and I’m not too certain I’ll sign that waiver even then. All of this depends on how you do between here and there so stop demanding something you know we can’t give.” Shannon’s tone belied her words and the whole scenario drew another laugh from the assembled family as Steph stuck her tongue out at her mother. “Now just to be evenhanded about it we will let you work limited hours in one of development shops so you’ll get some hands on experience and make a contribution now, when its most needed. Foggy agreed to keep an eye on you so… Oomph”
Her words were cut off by her daughter trying to hug her to death while jumping up and down at the same time. “You’re welcome now let go before you break a rib or something! Geez you’re strong!”
“Sorry momma… I’m just… so happy and excited and a little scared and… I’m just so glad Jamie’s ship made it and I hope he did and…” she trailed off, uncertain how to talk about her feelings. “I’m just a little overwhelmed, I guess. I’m not handling myself very well, am I?”
Shannon pulled her daughter back into a tight hug of her own. “You’re doing just fine honey. Better than I would have at your age, with all this. You’re stronger than me that way, more like your brother and your mom. Now go change out of those work boots and put some casual shoes on so we can all go have dinner, ok?”
“But these boots are soooo comfortable!”
“And soooo… not right with that outfit. Green flats, black piping, it ties in with the overall color scheme and works with your eyes. The silver infinity necklace and the earrings to go with it. Go on, you know you like everything I mentioned!”
The last was addressed to Steph’s back as she clomped out of the room. The wait was a bit longer than expected but when she came back in it was obvious she’d taken the time to make more of an effort, even adding a little makeup which was rarer than getting her out of a shipsuit or uniform.
“Well I can see we have a little protecting to do whenever our little sister decides to take an interest in something other than books or engines! You look very nice Stephie!” Her oldest brother complimented, to agreement from the others.
“Thanks Eric…” Elissa smiled as Steph looked down. She knew full well the awkward stage the girl was in right now, having seemingly sprouted in every direction at once and not yet used to the way she’d changed in the past 2 years, not yet comfortable with her own attractiveness.
“Massetti’s or Nguyen’s?” Her question deflected attention from Steph and allowed her to recover herself for a moment while the subject was roundly debated and the die cast in favor of French-Viet cuisine. They set off happily chattering amongst themselves with Elissa bringing up the rear, hand in hand with her wife.
“She’s growing up so fast… I swear it seems like it took longer with Jamie.”
“Its always too fast, love. Never enough time in all the world to love them.” Elissa squeezed Shannon’s hand and gave her a quick kiss. The two women followed their brood of children, content for the moment to savor the togetherness, to make memories to carry them through what may yet come.
“Massetti’s or Nguyen’s?” Her question deflected attention from Steph and allowed her to recover herself for a moment while the subject was roundly debated and the die cast in favor of French-Viet cuisine. They set off happily chattering amongst themselves with Elissa bringing up the rear, hand in hand with her wife.
“She’s growing up so fast… I swear it seems like it took longer with Jamie.”
“Its always too fast, love. Never enough time in all the world to love them.” Elissa squeezed Shannon’s hand and gave her a quick kiss. The two women followed their brood of children, content for the moment to savor the togetherness, to make memories to carry them through what may yet come.
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And now…
Sean looked up from her work to watch Ken dropping the girder into place in the brackets, closing the doors against bitter cold and whatever else might be out there. He started shedding clothing almost immediately but still took a little time before he was down to his thermals and had everything stacked in his careful methodical way.
“So we’re not leaving this morning?” She asked, glad that he had his back turned and couldn’t see her half-smirk.
“I don’t think we’re leaving anytime soon… its been like this for 2 days now and I don’t see any sign of it letting up. On the plus side, it’s a fair bet that nothing else is moving in this either and it has pretty thoroughly camouflaged any track either of us may have left. The last storm like this lasted almost 3 weeks and the winds were over 200 KPH. Its basically not survivable outside of a really decent shelter…” He paused for a moment. “Did you run into any storms like this on the way down here?”
“4 of them. I had to find shelter and just stay in place until it let up but I don’t recall any of them lasting 3 weeks. Maybe the storms aren’t as nasty farther north?” She started closing her work down, verifying each segment of code before shifting it to her semifinal working file.
“I guess that makes sense… there’s more heat transfer going on in more southern latitudes although if I had to guess it seems like the major ocean currents haven’t been disrupted totally. I think the ice gets thinner out where we were because of the warm water from the Gulf Stream but even that doesn’t keep it clear. There’s a zone about 10 miles further out where the ice is still pretty thick but its all broken up and I wasn’t willing to go any further out on it.”
“That was likely a good call, Ice like that can open up under you with no warning. On the plus side, this means we can be fairly certain even deep rivers will be fully frozen over and not present serious obstacles.” She laughed at his bemused expression. “You can’t tell me you didn’t take that into account. I’ve been through the inventory.”
“I did” he admitted, a little grudgingly. “But I didn’t count on it, that’s why I sealed them up the way I did. In an emergency there’s enough juice stored to run fully submerged for up to a week but that all depends on surviving a fall through the ice with an intact vehicle. Not a chance I want to take if I can avoid it but the further south we get the more likely something like that is. That’s one of the functions of the tanks, to test ice and terrain if needed. Their weight puts more point loading on the ground than anything else and if the surface can stand one of those running over it the greater weight distribution of the train as a whole won’t be a problem. At the very worst we lose a tank but its pretty likely those will survive if they fall through and be able to make it back out under its own power.”
Sean finished closing out her work and stood, stretching to get the kinks out from the long period sitting in one position. “That’s pretty amazing. I can’t say I would have ever considered a submarine tank but it totally works!”
Ken blushed behind his beard and she grinned at him, arching her back a little as she stretched. “I can’t say it hurts my feelings to sit here in comfort for a while. I didn’t realize how worn down I was at first but a couple of days without the constant routine of traveling brought it home pretty solidly. Even the fishing trip was more fun than I’d had in ages… outside of bed that is.” She felt her face heat as she thought about the time they’d spent entwined in each other.
Ken moved over to the kitchen area and lifted the lid on a pot, tasting the contents and replacing the lid. “Maybe another hour till its ready. We’re going to be a little heavy on the canned seafood right now because a lot of that stuff expires within the next year and I hate the thought of wasting it.”
“That’s ok, I’m eager to try a few of the things you’ve described. You must have spent quite a bit of time assembling these meal plans from the level of detail I saw?”
“More than a little bit I’m afraid. The imagination tends to run away a bit when you’re so utterly alone… thinking about food is an easy way to lose yourself in memories. Everything there is ranked by expiration dates, that kind of thing.” Ken grinned at her and she felt his mirth. “I went a little food-mad when I discovered a mostly intact supermarket a while back. For a while there I dreamed about food every night, thought about it constantly while I was working or whatever. I gained a lot of weight just then but I was working really hard so not much of it went to fat and when I stopped doing so much heavy physical work I had to deliberately reduce my intake. That was when I sat down and planned everything out. I built in allowances for fresh catch, that sort of thing... I guess it all needs rebalancing now but I built the spreadsheet out so that it could handle just plugging the foods in and letting it recalculate for an altered caloric load so its easily enough done. It can be weighted by food preferences too… I just couldn’t think of anything I wanted to favor that way.”
“Luckily MRE’s last practically forever so I can put them at the bottom of the list… If I never have to eat another it’ll be too soon!” Sean made a show of shuddering. “I took a look at the kitchen you installed. The way you put that together is really something. You can definitely tell you’ve had a lot of experience with cramming loads of stuff into very small spaces.”
“Comes from messing around with boats since forever and loving to cook. I’ve had a lot of time over the years to refine my idea of what a galley should be and how it should be built. I’ll still be sorry to leave this kitchen though… it might be a little spare but it has space and that’s the one thing I couldn’t build in.” He shrugged and came to sit across from her, reaching down and sharing a quick kiss on the way.
Sean reached up and traced a fingertip over her lips lightly, unaware she’d done it until after. “I’m glad you’re back in. It feels safe and solid in here, with you… I haven’t felt any of that in so long.”
Ken leaned over and took her hand. “I’m the one who has been here and fairly safe while you were out there by yourself but you being here makes me feel safer too. Its like I’m slowly waking up from a very long nightmare and realizing half of it was real… and yet, even in the middle of all of that there’s this bright spot… there’s you.”
They kissed again and both leaned back, content to be in each other’s company for the moment and secure in the warmth of what had quickly become more than just a shelter.
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Nimashet woke to an alarm from a monitoring station indicating the sudden termination of communications with one of her stealthy remote arrays. She made her way over to her primary workstation and brought up the logs for that and the others in close proximity, poring over them until it became clear that someone had located and deactivated it. She pondered for a few moments, certain this meant the loss of her eyes and ears on at least one ship, the one she least wanted to lose. Oddly enough another array which was very close was still active even though it had apparently been examined and put back into place.
There wasn’t anything to be done about any of it at this point though. She triggered a full sensor dump from the still active neighboring array and went back to her interrupted sleep, aware that the download would take at least an hour or two to complete. She was tired enough to fall back into sleep almost immediately and came back to awareness to the barely audible ping indicating a completed download. Rather than rushing into the work that awaited her she took a careful 30 minutes to prepare and eat a meal before sitting back at the workstation with a cup of hot tea in hand.
Another 30 minutes later she sat back and took a sip of her now cool tea, barely noticing in her excitement. The download revealed irregular movement in a spot which should see no traffic at all in normal circumstances. It was too random to be truly random and she recognized the signs of someone doing their best to be deliberately unpredictable. It was barely possible this was the result of an extremely well executed deception but there wasn’t enough information to decide. She sent out another query, this time more targeted toward other areas she had under observation and surrounding the times when movement showed in her existing data.
This data grab would take a significant time, several more hours but she was willing to take her time. Even if one of her bugs was discovered she was fairly certain their method of communication would remain a mystery to the finder since it did not use any form of radiation to avoid any betraying emissions. Instead they used a tiny gravity generator on a chip she’d designed to send micropulses of gravitational disturbance calculated to induce a harmonic in the ship’s gravity generators. This was small enough to remain unnoticed unless you were looking for it with the exquisitely sensitive detectors she had designed to complement them and gave her another bonus.
Gravitational pulses did not obey the same speed limit as light since they propagated through the fabric of spacetime itself. It wasn’t instant communication by any means but it was so much faster than any other form available that a distance measured in light-minutes only incurred a second or two lag time in communications. The downside was low bandwidth, hence the hours-long download times she had to deal with. Given the circumstance and the fact that literally no one else had this technology it was an acceptable limitation for the degree of stealth it enabled.
Nimashet spent the next several hours waiting, working on a new encoding scheme she’d designed in the past weeks which promised to yield a significant increase in bandwidth with the side benefit of another layer of encryption due to the compression method she’d devised. When her downloads were all complete she set started a search routine designed to pull out the patterns of movement and plot pathways. It took a few minutes but when she saw the result she felt her lips pulling upwards in a way that had become unfamiliar for her. It took a moment to realize that what she was feeling was a savage and predatory sort of joy.
She had her rats in the plumbing and they were apparently very stealthy rats too… now to see just how many of the other Earther ships had the same problem…
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Higalik performed her final check on the module she’d just finished, verifying for the 4th time that everything was within the tight tolerances she set for herself. The modules were designed to allow a certain amount of imprecision but her work ethic demanded she do the best she could with the tools and materials she had available. She almost started another check then mentally scolded herself for malingering.
This was the last of her work here and though she was excited at the prospect of the odyssey in store she was also a little afraid. Not afraid for her own life, not really… more that she would fail in some way and cause someone else to lose their life. That was the thing that caused her to obsessively check and recheck her work while continually driving herself to move faster without sacrificing quality even the tiniest bit.
There was a very real fear for her family and everyone else she know in the Saturn system, that if they failed in defeating the Earther fleet there would be reprisals but that fear also served to drive her determination to be the best she possibly could be. Along with that there was the uncertainty of all the interpersonal interactions shipboard life would require. She’d been away to university and mostly spent the trip there and back in her quarters or in the engineering spaces learning everything she could but those were small ships and her new home would have a crew of several thousand. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for that sort of thing.
She made her way back home , working through the usual unsuit and check routine automatically. Ilya greeted her warmly as she entered the common area and the 2 shared an embrace.
“So, tomorrow is the day, yes?” the other woman’s expression was solemn.
“Tomorrow is the day…” Higalik exhaled, almost a sigh “The day I go off to war.”
“I hope you know that we all support you. Look” Ilya pointed over to the main wall where family portraits hung. Sitting in front of the wall was a beautifully bonsaied dwarf oak with a yellow ribbon tied around its main trunk. “It is an old tradition from the North American Union dating back to the World Wars of the 20th century. It symbolizes our love for you and our hope for your safe return from the war. Mother brought the tree with her to Mars and brought it along when we escaped so I can’t think of any better way to express how we all feel about you.”
Higalik found her vision blurring with tears and had to swallow a few times to get the lump in her throat to relax. Her voice was still husky with emotion as she managed to get out her thanks and then had to hug her friend tightly while they both cried. “I’m going to miss you so much Ilya… You’ve become the sister I never knew I wanted or needed. I promise you this right now… If I am not killed in action I will be back and I will help untie that ribbon. When next I leave, it will hopefully be to do something other than make war. Exploring, construction… I don’t know.”
“I understand your destiny is out amongst the stars Higgy… I knew that the moment I met you. I’d thought maybe your brother had exaggerated that part of your being but being around you these past months has made it more clear than ever that you are not like us, not like settlers, people who are content to build a life in one place. Your very nature is to seek the unknown, to defend those who cannot defend themselves. It’s a good thing… Our universe demands your sort of person or the rest of us would now languish under the tyranny of a few.”
“Ilya, you give me too much credit. I’m no hero, no savior. I’m just a woman who sees what needs to be done and has the skills to do it. Nothing more.”
“You are wrong, sister. You are the cream which will rise to the top simply because it is where you belong. I watched the way you bossed the shipping crews and it was impressive. There was no doubt you were in charge but you never even gave an order, never a harsh word when someone screwed up, you just got right in there and helped unscrew it. Everything was phrased as a polite request and they were more than eager to do your bidding, to get your approval… and they got it. I have to say it was pretty amazing to watch grown men and women act that way toward someone their junior in both age and rank.”
“That’s as it may be Ilya but I won’t be bossing around transport crews shipboard. I don’t even know what I’ll be doing yet although I sincerely hope it isn’t kitchen duty. I don’t need “Poisoning half the ship” on my permanent record…”
“Have you seen your simulator scores? I know you’ve been spending at least 6 hours a day on it…”
Higalik frowned. “Why would I look at my scores? I keep losing scenarios and each time I win I lose the next level, over and over… it seems like I never make any progress…”
Ilya snatched up a tablet and poked about for a moment, bring up Higalik’s cumulative scores, split out by challenge-levels. The first thing she noted was the scoring system and that her scores were rated in the high 90th percentile at the very lowest.
“See? I haven’t gotten anything above a 98th percentile grade when everything went perfectly. Every percentage point off represents a casualty… its not good enough. I can’t go out there knowing I’ll lose at least one or two every single time. These scores make me not wing commander material, barely even EWO on a bomber. I’m afraid I won’t be good enough and because of it people will die.”
“You know, for such a brilliant woman you sure are a moron. If you’d bothered looking you’d notice that your scores are the highest amongst both the new recruits and the old experienced pilots. Your cumulative score is 96.99%, literally the highest scoring ever. The next closest is at 89.3% and he has 20 years experience on you. I don’t want you to get full of yourself or anything but you’re quite literally the best Saturn has to offer.”
“Then we’re in even deeper shit than I thought…” Higalik was interrupted by another hug, this one from her brother.
“Listen to her, little sister. It is not just our family that has faith in you, it is the entire planetary system. I know you bury yourself in your work and studies so you haven’t seen any of the gossip but you are being admired by most and practically celebrated by some. You have a fan club even!”
Higalik freed herself from his embrace. “Stop teasing me brother. No one knows who I am, why should they? I sit here and I make modules and in between I study and train. There’s nothing special about me at all.”
“Good, keep that attitude. It will serve you well Lieutenant.” Higalik looked over toward the voice and tried to hide behind her brother, finally giving it up as a bad deal and standing at attention to salute.
“Admiral! I had no idea you would be here tonight! Welcome to our humble home sir. Has anyone gotten you a drink?”
“We’re both in mufti here Lieutenant, no saluting necessary. I came to visit the most promising young officer in our incoming class. So much so that you have been given the rank of Lieutenant to begin with. If your testing and aptitude scores are any reflection of the performance I can expect you will rise in rank very quickly.” He held up a finger to forestall the protest he saw coming.
“This isn’t special treatment or favoritism. This is simply a case of identifying an outstanding talent and making the best possible use of her. For us to do otherwise would constitute dereliction of duty and that’s all I intend to say on the subject. Understood?” He grinned at her to take the sting out of his tone.
“You’re going to start out bossing an assembly and testing crew but once we’ve got the first full wing flightworthy you will be out there training and practicing as our first operational Wing Commander. You need to understand that you’ll be training the rest of the best, the people who will become the other Wing Commanders. You’ll have 3 months to create an effective fighter component before we arrive and another month to drill in coordination with the Hermes’ contingents. If our intel is correct there will also be a couple of Martian ships coming to render assistance as well as a sizable contingent of smaller Belter craft.”
“That’s… I have no idea how to do that, sir. I think you’re putting way too much confidence in testing scores here.” Higalik privately wondered just what sort of rabbit-hole she’d wandered down and whether she was dreaming all of this.
“Its not just your testing scores Lieutenant. It is your entire educational and work history, psychological profiles… literally every yardstick we have available to measure command talent puts you at the very top of the ratings. You’re not just suited for command, you’re born to it. It is as instinctive to you as breathing. Others recognize that in you and it gives them confidence, helps them to reach their own potential. We desperately need that… we’re starting out with a bunch of hotshot pilots who need someone to chase, to emulate… and you are her. Get used to it.”
“I’ll do my best, sir…”
“That’s all anyone can ever ask. Now, since we’re here in an informal setting, please call me Rob. May I call you Higalik?” he offered his hand in a clear gesture of personal greeting.
Higalik stared at it for a moment before remembering to respond, the turmoil of her thoughts causing the hesitation. Recovering quickly, she took his hand a grasped it firmly. “Yes, s… I mean Rob.”
“Good. Now I understand your brother has been slaving away in a hot kitchen for our dining pleasure but I am well informed that it will be another 45 minutes before he is ready to present the final product of his labors. I for one would like a cocktail and I’d be most flattered if a certain promising junior officer would join me for a private conversation?”
It was phrased as an oblique request but Higalik knew it to be more along the lines of an order so she led him over to a secluded area after pouring them both a healthy glass of whisky.
“Higalik…”
“Higgy please, if we are to be on a first name basis in this setting.”
“Higgy then. I wanted to make sure you understand something but it isn’t the sort of thing that can be known amongst the command crew. You are going to be my eyes and ears. In a lot of ways I’m out of the loop when it comes to the crew. Its good because it means people are doing their jobs but it also means I might not be aware of issues that need my attention until they become actual problems. If you see an issue and can handle it or cause it to be handled, well and good but if not I want to know about it.”
“Sir... Rob… that sounds an awful lot like being a spy and I have to tell you I’m not at all comfortable with that. I’m no snitch and if that’s what you want me to be I’ll tell you right upfront you won’t get shit from me, ever… and that includes my respect!” Higalik’s glare could have scorched holes in steel.
“Whoah there Lieutenant.” The admiral made a quelling gesture. “I’d never ask you to do anything like that and if you’d offered to do it I’d have lost any respect for you as well. I’m just asking you to do the same thing every junior officer is expected to do… but you’re not going to be a junior officer for very long and I want you be able to hit the ground running and in the process enhance our overall effectiveness. I will never ask you to betray a confidence that does not have direct bearing on the combat effectiveness of ship or crew but if its something you need help getting sorted I want you to come to me. Can you accept that?”
“I couldn’t accept anything less. Thank you for that si… Rob.” She was aware her feelings of relief showed on her face and for once she was glad of it.
“I’m glad we put that to rest. In fact, I’m glad you confronted me the way you did. It shows a strength of character we will sorely need in days to come and enhances my already high opinion of you. Now there’s only so much I can say until we get underway but I think you’ll find your duties will be… rather far afield from the expectations you’ve been given. You will be making far greater use of your studies than any of us had imagined.” His face was impassive as stone.
“I’m not sure I understand?”
“Just enjoy that for a little while. Soon enough you will understand far more than you ever wished. For now, let us enjoy this excellent whiskey and speak of more pleasant things, yes?” He waited for her slight nod of agreement. “I understand your family has a rather happy occasion tomorrow, one which I feel privileged to witness. I have known Ilya literally from the moment she was born and I could not think of a finer mate for her than your brother. It warms this old heart to see love blossom in the middle of…”
He stopped himself. “Happy thoughts, yes?”
They sat together in silence until the summons to dinner came.
“I’m not sure I understand?”
“Just enjoy that for a little while. Soon enough you will understand far more than you ever wished. For now, let us enjoy this excellent whiskey and speak of more pleasant things, yes?” He waited for her slight nod of agreement. “I understand your family has a rather happy occasion tomorrow, one which I feel privileged to witness. I have known Ilya literally from the moment she was born and I could not think of a finer mate for her than your brother. It warms this old heart to see love blossom in the middle of…”
He stopped himself. “Happy thoughts, yes?”
They sat together in silence until the summons to dinner came.
********************************************************************************************************************************
And Now
Carolina focused on the device she’d been working on for the past several days. She’d found several others like it and from what she could tell of the one she examined they were definitely monitoring devices of some type but how they passed their data on she had no clue, at least at first. It was only when she dissected the controlling code and examined its most basic components that she realized the routines she was looking at had been designed to damp flutter in gravitational fields. From there it was a very short leap to the realization that this was a communications device using that very gravitational flutter to convey information.
When the realization hit her she’d sat there staring into space for at least 30 minutes, pondering the implications. Clearly someone out there had an interest in both knowing what was happening aboard this ship and keeping that fact secret but why monitor the spaces she was using? They had to be on the lookout for someone like her hiding in the innards of the ship but to what end? Was this a threat or a possible helping hand and how would she be able to know before it was too late?
In the end she was left with a fairly simple binary decision. She’d decoded enough of how the device worked to be able to use it for a very simple message, just 3 letters. Once she made the final connection she realized she’d actually made her decision days before when she started working and there was nothing for it but to send. She would die, no matter what. The only question would be how many she took with her.
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Nimashet stared at her display, elated and puzzled. Once she’d worked out the encoding the message was clear and at the same time incomprehensible. It was just 3 letters… “IFF”.
She forced herself to put it out of her mind for the moment, parsing the newest data she had. Her hopes of finding “rats in the plumbing” on the other ships was bearing fruit on at least one other ship and possibly on yet a third. The second ship was intriguing because there appeared to be 2 of them although they were very stealthy indeed. Whatever they were doing had them very near essential control runs but in extremely inaccessible spaces and suggested they were hiding their work, whatever that may be. After several hours she leaned back and allowed herself a cup of tea, sitting there staring out at the stars in the main bridge display. Her thoughts turned to classifications of stars and suddenly the answer was there, blazing in her mind’s eye.
“IFF”… It was an old acronym for systems that allowed combatants to recognize who was who… “Identification: Friend or Foe”.
Her “rat” was asking if she was a friend or an enemy! How should she respond? The encoding had to be equally simple and unmistakable but nothing seemed to be both short and clear enough. In truth she was neither friend nor foe but she was something possibly more important and that answered the question. She would send a single letter, as clear as she could make it and as truthful as she absolutely had to be.
So her reply went out, repeating every 30 seconds for a 10 minute cycle, pausing for 3 hours, then repeating.
“A”
For while it may be true that she could not be a friend, neither of them needed friends just now. Allies… that was the most important thing they could be to each other.
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Chandra eyed the closing door with relief. His last meeting for the day had gone better than expected but sometimes these things could be incredibly tedious and he couldn’t manage to keep the pressure from knotting up his neck and shoulder muscles. It would be some time before he could properly relax though, so he contented himself with a few head rolls and a little stretching which helped some. Distractions out of the way, he picked up his tablet and began to plow through the ever increasing number of approvals and sign-offs required of him each day. His own sense of duty required that he read each one thoroughly to ensure it was as it should be which meant at least another 2 hours before he could go to his quarters and eat something he’d pick up at one of the kitchens on the way.
His new routine was decidedly different to that of a project engineer, even one of such a massive and all-encompassing project as building a new subterranean city under very nearly the worst conditions possible. This at least had the benefit of regular hours though he sorely missed the time hashing out details with his teams until all hours of the night. Those meetings had a camaraderie that was lacking in the life of a government minister although he had gained a new appreciation for the long hours his mother worked as he grew up.
Some while later he came to the end of the day’s paperwork and shut his tablet down, stretching again and taking a moment to simply lean back and relax before rising to exit his office. He made his way through the security checkpoints with a minimum of fuss, taking a few moments to engage in pleasantries before making his way to the kitchen closest to the route between his office and quarters. The fare on offer was greatly improved from a few months ago and he’d just made up a container to carry back to his quarters when a voice interrupted his musing.
“I thought I would be glad to eat alone after so long eating in cafeterias but I find that once the gladness has gone only the alone part remains.” It wasn’t the sort of voice you find in advertisements but there was something about it that made him turn to face the woman who’d spoken.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” He grinned at her moue of distaste. “I was thinking something along the same lines when I saw you here yesterday. I’m Chandra and you are?”
“Annoushka but call me Anna please.”
“Would you care to share a meal with me?”
“Here?”
“If you like. I do have a favorite place I like to go occasionally if you prefer a better setting.”
“I’m up for it. Lead on!” Anna finished assembling her container and sealed it up, running through checkout right behind him. There wasn’t any actual money exchanged, just deductions from their personal dietary allowances but those had to be monitored to ensure there was enough for all.
They walked through the largely empty corridors side by side until Chandra led her into a maintenance accessway. This passage was considerably narrower so they walked single file until he opened another hatch to lead her onto a walkway overlooking one of the recreation spaces that had been completed recently. It was a lush green space surrounding a huge salt water pool, due to open the following week along with several similar spaces but uninhabited at this point.
“Wow…” she breathed, taking it all in. “I knew these places were almost ready to open but this is… so much more than the picture I had in mind!”
Chandra grinned happily. “I’m very happy with the way they’ve turned out. I wish I could take you down there to have a proper picnic but right now the grass is a no traffic zone.”
Anna turned to him with a smile “I’m just so glad to see green growing things. Not that I’m complaining but its so… dreary…”
“That’s putting it mildly. We’ve worked so hard to survive, all of us… now that we’ve accomplished the basics we have time for spaces like this. In another 4 or 5 years a lot of the dust will have cleared and the surface will be habitable again so spaces like this won’t be as important but for now they are our only way to remember what should be. Spacers build green spaces into their ships and stations for the same reason.”
“I never realized that…” Anna mused. “I just assumed it was part of the air recycling.”
“Oh it serves some of that function“ Chandra was warming to the subject “but its not terribly efficient. Most of the air cycling work is done in algae tanks or the aeroponics bays. Spaces like this are almost purely for the animal in us.”
“I can see that. Just being in this space has helped somehow, released some of a weight I didn’t even realize I was carrying. This was your idea?”
“No, I was too busy trying to get the basics going to even think about anything else. It was actually something my mother put on my plate, then overruled me when I tried to delay it as wasteful. I’m afraid the only credit I can take was having the sense to say ‘Yes, Mother’ when I was clearly outmatched.” Chandra grinned and opened his container, sniffing appreciatively at the rising steam.
“Smart boy!” Anna returned his grin and followed suit, inhaling the aromas of her own meal. “Has there been any contact from outside yet?”
“Depends on what you mean by contact.” She arched an eyebrow at him in question. “We’ve had some spotty radio contact with Saturn and Mars but the atmospheric interference is too much to get a decent signal through without the new equipment. We’ve gotten a few transmissions that seem to be from earth but there’s no way to tell where. The way atmospheric skip plays with radio signals getting anything reliable or even intelligible for more than a few seconds is almost impossible.”
“You’re so sure we’re not the only ones?”
“I don’t see how we could be. Our models say the southern parts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu should be habitable but there’s a great deal more heat exchange going on near the oceans and to the south so the weather is likely pretty bad at times. North of us? We don’t have the beginnings of a clue. We know it’s a great deal colder than here but you have to add in the massive earthquakes the impact caused. We had a couple of 8.8 or 8.9 tremors and they devastated the city but the truly major quakes were further north and east.”
“How much worse than what we got can it get? That was… absolutely the most terrified I have ever been and it just went on and on… I can’t see how anything could survive worse.” Anna realized she was unconsciously hunching her shoulders with the stress of memory and made an effort to relax.
“We got the tail end of it. One series of big strikes in China were right along the fault lines and everything cut loose in a chain all the way across the mountains and the surrounding regions. Between that and the entire Pacific Rim going off all at once nowhere in China got under a 9.5 magnitude quake. Right before our equipment was destroyed we recorded an 11.5 magnitude in Tibet and that has been the accepted theoretical maximum.” Chandra shrugged. “I can’t imagine it myself.”
“It seems a little insane that even we survived and have rebuilt as much as we have so far. I credit your mother and you for that.”
“I don’t.”
She gave him an incredulous look. “Ok, I get that you deflect from yourself, you seem like the kind of guy who would do that but your mother? She is an inspiration to us all! This exists because of her leadership!”
“Had she not been here to take up that position by default it would have fallen to someone else just as well qualified who would likely have made largely the same decisions.”
“Someone like your brother you mean?” Anna instantly regretted her words as Chandra frowned and took a bite of his food, chewing thoughtfully.
“Ok I take your point. I just don’t understand people like him. I do think Mother has done a great job… Its just that I think we have many talented administrators who could have performed the task equally well.”
It was Anna’s turn to chew in silence for a moment. “I’m not arguing that. She was the right person at the right time. Just enough public recognition for people to be aware of her spotless reputation without being someone who was divisive in any major ways so most voters who were thinking of something besides themselves saw her as the best choice. At the time having your brother on her side was a positive in people’s eyes, more so than you were.”
“Really?” he examined her face, smiling a little as she flashed him a grin. “I guess I’ve just been so buried in work I’ve never looked up to see things like that…”
“That is one of the things people admire about you. They see you working all hours of the day and night because you’re dedicated to getting it right instead of just getting it done. You have a reputation too, for being unswervingly honest and direct. You say what exactly what you mean, no embellishments, no appeal to ego, no guile whatsoever, no matter who you’re talking to. Before all of this that got you in trouble but now others push themselves to be better because of your example… even me.”
“That’s just so weird…” Chandra shook his head. “I can’t imagine anyone looking up to someone like me.”
“Someone like you? What do you mean by that?”
“A semifunctional autistic.” Chandra felt himself starting to withdraw emotionally and mashed his thumbnail into the side of his index finger, letting the brief flare of pain steady him.
“Semifunctional? What sort of mean spirited asshole put that into your head?” Anna had to clamp down on the hot little spike of anger that snuck into her words.
“Its true. I had to go to a special school for people like me until I went to University. I didn’t fit well with the other students because I didn’t understand the things they said. I don’t understand emotional cues like other people.”
“So?” Her tone was sharp, almost argumentative and she immediately regretted it. “Just because people aren’t clear about what they mean doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.”
“If only it were that simple. People deliberately try to obscure what they mean or make you think they are saying something different to what they are actually saying. I can usually spot an outright lie but sometimes I have to sit and think about less direct forms of untruthfulness. It’s a part of why I love what I do because there’s no room for any of that. Numbers can’t lie.”
Annoushka thought for a moment before she replied. She knew this conversation was terribly important even though she didn’t fully understand why and that knowledge made it clear what she had to do and say to avoid hurting the man she had seen as stoic and now understood was just as human as she.
“I can’t tell you I will never lie to you in any way because there are times when obscuring or smoothing something over will help work toward getting an objective accomplished.”
Chandra thought about that for a moment. Only his mother and one treasured friend had ever understood him enough to make their promises clear. “Fair enough. I’m sure there is more to be done before we understand each other but can you please tell me…” He trailed off, uncertain how to say what he felt.
“What my intentions are?”
He looked up from staring at his hand where it rested on his leg and trembled ever so slightly from the tension. “Please?”
“I don’t know yet. I find you fascinating and alluring and… sexually attractive.” She smiled at him and watched how tense his expression was.
“I can’t…”
“Neither can I. I have to have feelings for someone to be able to do things like that.”
Chandra had to stop and think about what she’d said. “I… Um… do you think?”
Annoushka couldn’t help smiling. “Yes, I think. I think I would like to date, spend time together, learn about you and you learn about me. Right now I am very attracted to you… emotionally and sexually.”
“I… um… I can’t…. um…” Chandra was trying to get to his feet, the impulse to flee almost overwhelming when he felt the hand on his arm. So gentle… no pressure at all yet she kept him from getting up, kept him rooted to the spot where he couldn’t get away and somehow instead of feeling like an attack he could tell it was done out of genuine concern.
“I’m not going to pressure you Chandra. I have been honest about what I would like to happen and I don’t want you to agree because its what I want. Take your time, ok?”
Chandra eased himself back into a sitting position and sat there with his legs crossed and his hands resting on his knees. He breathed deeply for a moment, feeling some level of calm seep back into him. “I’m sorry…” he finally said. “I’ve never done that before. I was overwhelmed for a moment and a flight response kicked in. Thank you for stopping me.”
“I’m glad you stopped.”
“I do want. To get to know you, to date… maybe more. I’ve never done anything like that though so I don’t know what to do and I don’t want to try stupid things out of books. I will likely make a great many mistakes.”
Anna rested her hand on his arm again. “I’d say you did pretty well for a first date. Don’t worry about it so much though. If I object to something I’ll let you know about it clearly and the same if I like something, ok?”
“You’re making this far less terrifying than I had envisioned.”
“Less terrifying huh? I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone say that but it’s a good place to start.” Anna took both of their now emptied containers and nestled them together to make them easier to carry. “I am tired and need to sleep and I expect you do too. Would you like to meet back here tomorrow after work?”
“I would, very much” Chandra was surprised at the depth of feeling behind his response.
Rhysling’s Rue - Chapter 22
“Clyde, get your ass over here and help with this thing!” Roy glared over at his brother who was finishing a cut with his usual careful slowness.
“Then grow a fuckin brain cell and put it down till I’m done! I’m not gonna rush just cause you want to go moon over a woman who doesn’t even know you exist!” Clyde carefully inspected the edges of his finished cut, taking a trimmer and making a minute adjustment before nodding to himself in approval.
“She does too, I saw her lookin at me just yesterday!”
“Have you looked at your shipsuit lately Roy? She was probly tryin not to ralf on ya.” He helped his brother fit the panel that had started the discussion into place before triggering the molecular welds. “Besides, I don’t think she has any time for that sort of thing and certainly not for the likes of us. Maria likes you, why not go talk to her? Still out of your league but no harm in tryin, yeah?”
“Wiseass.” They spent a moment checking the welds. “You really think she likes me?”
“She bought you a drink dumbass. Yes, I think she likes you. Now go, take some time off. I’ve got a meeting for a new project.”
“Better you than me, brother. That shit makes my brain hurt.” Roy sauntered off, making his way out of the bay toward the dorms.
Clyde took a few more moments to stow tools and lock everything down before heading to officer’s country to get into proper uniform. It bothered him that officers got private quarters where enlisted were in barracks. Still, having the space and the private refresher was nice, even if his quarters were little more than a cubicle that reconfigured for his desired use and was just large enough to lie down in comfortably.
It took both a sonic shower and a water shower before he felt clean enough to put on his Undress Mess uniform and settle the maroon beret just so over his curly mop of blonde hair. Once satisfied every crease was sharp enough to shave with he made his way to the designated meeting room, deep within the most secure sections of R&D.
The room itself was unremarkable but the assemblage of top brass and legislators which occupied it made him fairly certain why he was there. Before he had time to get much further a voice cut through the low babble.
“Now that Commander Barrow has seen fit to join us we can begin.” Clyde blushed to his toes as all eyes turned to look at him. “Oh don’t worry yourself son, we weren’t really waiting on you. Get yourself a drink and lets all get settled cause we’re gonna be here for a bit. Food over on the sideboard if anybody gets peckish.”
The President of the Belter’s Confederation led by example, seating his powerful frame in a chair which seemed almost inadequate for his bulk. “We have further word from the Saturnians. As of yesterday they have launched not 2 but 4 of their new class of Strike Carrier! They should arrive well ahead of the Earther fleet at Uranus so there is a bit more hope. The Martians are on track for 3, possibly 4 of their own but launch windows are beginning to close. We all know Jupiter was hit quite badly and they have barely enough to survive but they are still sending a frigate…”
That news hit harder than he’d expected. That a nation as powerful as Jupiter had been before the war could only field a frigate? It felt cruel to ask even that but it would have dishonored the offer if they didn’t accept.
“Harlow… Can’t we like, sell em a ship on credit or something? I know they won’t accept a gift but they want to contribute and if those men are gonna die with us I’d like to make it count for something, do em a proper honor ya know?”
“Eloise… If any of us can figure a way you’ve got my full backing and I’m assuming the rest of you concur?”
There were nods and murmurs of agreement from all in the room, Clyde included. He still wasn’t used to being an elected official, it seemed just as odd a hat to wear as that of officer but he could see the sense in it and so agreed.
“Now Legislator Barrow, I believe you have some news for us?” Harlow Thompson steepled his giant fingers and regarded Clyde down the length of the table..
Clyde rose self-consciously, resisting the urge to straighten his uniform. “Your statement a moment ago brought my news an added dimension. I’ve managed to pull some whisker laser transmissions out of what we thought was random noise and discovered something quite astonishing. It’s a mathematical formula which will enable us to build immensely destructive weapons, ones that can take down a capital ship with just a few solid hits!”
He cleared his throat. “The problem is these things require quite a lot of fairly complex gravitics technology and building it is going to take time. Jupiter can furnish crew… I say we give them our entire capital fleet.”
The room erupted in pandemonium, finally silenced by the bellowing of the President. “Goddammit, sit down and shut up!” After everyone had found their seats again and order reigned he glared down the table at Clyde again.
“Son, I think you should explain yourself. You’re suggesting just giving our entire warfighting capability away to a nation that has been less than an ally at best?”
“No sir. I’m suggesting we give them our old generation of craft. Our production programs have better than tripled initial targets in the outlying production centers. With the new weapons we will go to battle with a fleet ten times as strong as we give away and still be seen as altruistic for giving our poor brethren in need a way to fight.” Clyde unconsciously squared his shoulders as he spoke.
“Damn, boy. You musta read Machiavelli young!”
“I think that mighta been Sun Tzu, maybe even Mitchell.”
“Hey, Pete and RePete, can we talk literary derivations later?” Harlow’s tone was teasing and the two Petes blushed as they settled back into their chairs.
“Last I heard those new ships were still 3 months in the pipeline. What the hell happened?”
“Skilled labor sir, and lots of it, mostly bringing heavy construction equipment with them. 10 new fabs came online just this week and each of them can pump out a Dreadnought in under a month, in time to make it for the battle.”
“Clyde, what the hell are you talking about? Dreadnoughts? The damn things are next to useless even if you build em around a giant cannon!”
The babble in the room continued along those lines before another bellow brought silence.
“I’m getting a little tired of sayin this, but son, you better explain yourself.” The glare and steepled fingers were back although Clyde thought he detected a glint of amusement. He was actually enjoying the show!
“Ok… its this simple. Fighters as we know them are now a liability.” It took another moment of babble before he could continue. “These new weapons are standoff capital ship killers and they aren’t small. They need a fairly large ship to carry enough of them and enough countermeasures to be an effective force. The most effective way to make that happen was to dust off some of the old Dreadnought designs and then modify the hell out of them. Lots more armor, firepower, massively overpowered engines and shields.”
“Fighters, in that environment? It’d be sending people on useless suicide missions. Even our new dreadnoughts will be vulnerable. Space warfare… all warfare I guess… has just changed completely. Carriers still have their uses but not in this sort of space battle.”
Clyde sat down, having said his piece.
“Mbotu, you’re the Admiral. What do you think.”
“Harlow… Mr President… Sir…”
“Dammit, just come out with it!”
“Do it. Every bit of it, and put everything we have into it. I’ve seen the weapons data sir and it is even more revolutionary than my young protégé suggests. More than that, share it in ways that can’t be intercepted by the Terrans. We can’t hold this for ourselves sir. The belt cannot be a new dictator!” His shoulder slumped. “Besides, we’ve been here before. The simple knowledge that it is possible will lead someone to the mathematics and…” he shrugged.
There was a long period of silence in the room before the President spoke.
“Ready to vote?”
No one responded.
“There being no further debate desired by the committee, I move we accept the recommendations of the Commander. Seconded?”
Both Petes raised their hands “Seconded” “And thirded”.
“Ok, lets see the nays.” No hands moved.
“The Ayes?” All hands raised.
“Then in my capacity as President of the Belters Confederation I certify this vote. Lets be about it folks.”
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Katerina paced back and forth in her quarters, following a line she’d walked often enough to imagine even the hard decksole showed some residual mark. It had taken months for them to cobble together even just this tiny frigate that was all they had to offer and now she wasn’t even being allowed to launch! The frustration ate at her until she finally forced herself to sit and start reviewing the schematics she knew by heart.
She’d managed to allow it to occupy almost her full attention so the chime of her com was almost jarring. She slapped the com to open the link. “Chen.”
“Captain, your presence is requested in the Senate chambers at 28:10.” She recognized the voice as the Prime Minister’s secretary and was on the verge of asking why when the connection terminated with a little double beep.
She almost resumed her pacing but checked the time and realized she just had time to make it if she hurried. A quick change to full-dress uniform and she hurried to the shuttle bay, her pinnace closing up and moving even as she found her seat. Europa was a fast trip and soon she found herself descending through a seemingly endless lift which deposited her in a grand entrance area. She was quickly pulled to the side and into one of the doors which led to the Senate floor directly.
No one seemed to be interested in telling her anything about what was going on so when led to stand beside and in front of the dais she did so with a mixture of curiosity and dread. The gallery was as full as it could be with a quarter of the Senators dead or missing and she heard the commotion behind her which she assumed was the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the Senate taking their places.
The gavel confirmed it and the crier sounded the traditional convocation. With that the senate was in session.
“I’ll get right to the point here since we don’t have a lot of time.” The Prime Minister’s clear soprano dominated the room. “We have done our best to offer something to the war effort and we all know the best has been a single frigate. As doughty as the Prince Andrew is and stout of heart as we know her crew to be we all know it is a gesture made for honor, not for any real help we can lend.”
She waiting for the susurration of voices to subside. “We all knew this to be true but until now have not dared to speak it in this chamber. We all know why… none of us wanted to be the first to say we were beaten. That our nation wasn’t even on its knees anymore but lying prostrate, awaiting only the coup de grace.”
“Madam Prime minister…” the thickset middle-aged man who rose to speak twisted his hat into shapelessness in his hands. “We all know this. I don’t think any of us need to be told just how badly fucked we all are. Whats the point of all this?”
“Senator Sarko…” She paused… “Fyodor. You’re right, none of you need to hear how bad things were…” She paused for another moment to see the use of the past tense register on each face. “We have been offered a gift horse, ladies and gentlemen. The Belter’s Confederation has offered their entire order of battle to us, no strings. We have the trained personnel to crew them and I have accepted on our collective behalf.”
It took over 10 minutes for the general hubbub to die down enough to allow Speaker Molotov to re-establish order.
“We will abide by rules of order in this chamber!” his attempt at a stentorian bellow left much to be desired and was instead relayed by the sound system as a reedy whine. It had its desired effect however as the various Senators resumed their seats, almost every light lit as a request to speak.
“I know you have questions. I do too and this office is most definitely looking this particular gift horse in the mouth. They have openly admitted they are building an entirely new fleet which they expect to be ready in time to meet the Terrans at Uranus. There are new weapons designs that surpass anything we’ve ever even imagined and we’ll be working on how to integrate them into the existing ships we’re being given.”
“Here’s where it turns out we can actually make a real contribution to not just the war effort but the long term balance of power we all know needs to be established to end this war. We happen to have quite a bit of advanced gravitics research and fabrication capability and that’s one thing the Belters and Martians lack. These new weapons depend on those components and if we can make enough to outfit the combined fleets, even just partially… Then we stand a chance. A chance to fight our way to peace.”
One by one the lights signifying requests to speak had winked out until none were left.
“Until now, we could only offer our most decorated and senior naval officer the captaincy of a single ship. As of now, I submit to the Senate a request for her confirmation in the rank of Admiral, her duties to command the refit and the combat duties of the Jupiter Navy.”
The voting lights lit, every one of them blue in approval.
“Katerina Svoboda Chen, by unanimous approval of the Senate of the Jupiter Union you are promoted to the rank of Admiral and are now in command of the Jupiter Navy. May your actions bring honor to our ancestors!”
There were shouts of acclaim but Katerina had no time. She had to find out just what sort of Trojan Horse she’d been given and what the hell she could make out if it in time enough to make any difference at all. She strode out of the senate chamber, finding herself back in her pinnace before she quite realized it and was soon in her ready room just off the bridge going over the truly staggering amount of information from the Belter’s gift, noting they had already boosted harder than would have been possible with human crew… at least given the gravitics technology that had been state of the art.
Given the stated intent to provide the ships without crew she presumed that was precisely what the Belters were doing and it made perfect sense, even shaving more than 2 weeks transit time from previous estimates. She made an attempt at understanding the technology behind the new weapon and grasped the basics but got the data immediately to her science and engineering teams to see what they could manage to do with it.
One thing she was sure of, fighters had to be designed out of the equation and that made her ships useful in a somewhat limited way. All that space devoted to fighters and crew could be devoted to armaments instead although they wouldn’t have any way to retrofit anything like a launcher, at least not internally.
She backed off for a moment from the problem, let her mind wander back to old atmospheric fighters and bombers, even surface navies and suddenly the solution presented itself. She spent a few minutes speccing out a preliminary design and sent it over to her head of engineering, waiting for the incredulous response. When it hadn’t come after several minutes she was beginning to worry until suddenly her door slid aside to reveal a short balding man in a state of either anger or high excitement, she couldn’t quite tell which.
“Ok Pavel, out with it. What do you really think?” She quirked an eyebrow.
“Of all the goddamned misbegotten downright fucking insane things you’ve asked me to do over the years this has got to top the list! Do you have any idea how many man-hours are gonna have to go into building that fuckin feed system alone? You, Admiral, are straight up fuckin nuts.”
“So you can get it done in the timeline I need?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. What in hell possessed you to turn those things into torpedo boats?” Pavel scuffed at an imaginary spot on the decksole with his toe.
“Hey if you can think of a way to make them more combat effective with the new weapons I’m all for it. I got the idea from the old Earth surface navy in the first world wars. This way we can add a linear gravitic launcher and get almost the same effect as a launch tube. It should make for a nasty little surprise when they read us as transports and discount us to focus on the Belter Dreadnoughts.”
After another moment she softened her expression. “Now come give your grandmother a kiss and go get things moving, ok?”
Pavel crossed the room and brushed a very young-looking cheek with his lips.
“You know you can do it Pavel. We’re all depending on you.”
“Gee thanks Gran. No pressure there…” he muttered as the hatch closed behind him.
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“How’d the test go?” Ted sighed with relief as he detached his legs, wiggling the stumps in freedom.
“We deliberately went for low yield and still got more than enough to punch a hole right through the Hermes. The energy transfer would be enough to rip the rest of the ship in half. The gravitics tech Jupiter shared was a hell of a boost!” Helen seemed both elated and a little subdued.
“So now you’re thinking you’re a dinosaur just waiting for the big rock?”
“Feels a little like that, yeah” she admitted, arching her back into her knuckles and stretching as she removed her own shipsuit.
“I’ve been thinking about it… Barrow was right when he said fighters were obsolete but this ship isn’t limited to just fighters. He was wrong about carriers being obsolete… he just didn’t think quite far enough outside the box. Chen had the beginnings of it when she thought to convert the smaller carriers the Confederation provided into gunboats.”
He waited for a response and got an expectant eyebrow cocked in his direction. “Carriers have always been standoff weapons platforms by necessity and I don’t think we should abandon that role at all. In fact we need to stand off a bit further, outside the active sphere of combat entirely if possible. We have to abandon fighters in the old sense, absolutely… but we can field a purpose-built gunboat, faster and better armed than the converted carriers. R&D has come up with some interesting designs we can build out quickly enough to be able to hot-berth a double complement… 120 craft in all with the design they like best.”
“And the pilots?”
“Well those that have seen it were half impressed, half scared so I’d guess its just about right. Pete thinks it’s a dream to fly…” He realized he’d let slip a bit more than he’d intended.
“So they’ve already built one behind my back then?” her tone wasn’t angry, more teasing.
Ted blushed a little. “3 actually, although the last is the one that should go into production. Pete loved em all but the first one would have been a deathtrap for anyone but him and the second… well they tried to overcompensate and it flew like a brick. I took a run in Shiva 3 and she’s a sweet ship but definitely built for war.”
“So which particular bright soul in R&D came up with this gem?” Helen grunted a little as she eased herself into another yoga position, the stress of the day leaving gradually.
“Stacy of course. The girl is… I don’t even know how to describe her. She’s like this whirlwind of ideas and they come so fast she can barely get one out before she’s on to the next and the rest of her group is sitting there wondering what the hell happened. They’ve literally got 3 teams just viewing recordings of her and everything she’s doing and they still have to go back over some of it several times.”
“Why am I not surprised? I’ll admit I can’t even begin to keep up with her mentally, she’s so far ahead of me I feel like a kindergartner talking to a college professor. I do worry about her emotionally though…” Helen breathed rhythmically for a moment before continuing. “She’s decided to take on not one but two mates and so young…”
“I wouldn’t worry about her. She went in with clear eyes and an open heart and the three of them together is a thing of beauty… they belong. They each fill each other’s missing parts.” Ted paused in his own workout, puffing with exertion. “They are an odd triplet, that’s for sure, but no stranger than you and I.”
“So about these gunboats… with everything working flat out how many can we build and supply 2 full torpedo loadouts to? Take the Hermes out of the picture entirely and its 120 with it.” Helen was warming down now, feeling limber and more relaxed.
“Maybe another 300 but I have no idea where we’d find crew for them. The gunboats take a 4 person crew and that’s with everything automated that can be. Hermes’ flight crews are just enough for her 120.”
“You’re still inside the box there, teddy boy…” she tickled just under his ribcage when he was looking the other direction drawing squirming laughter.
“Not just yet but that can be remedied!” he drew her in for a kiss and they savored for a moment before separating. “I think we both need a shower.”
An hour or two later when the shower and its associated activities had concluded and they both lay there, lazing in the microgravity of their bed Ted finally asked.
“Ok, so what am I missing here? Where do you plan to conjure up qualified fighter pilots that can be trained up for gunboats?” He tickled a nipple and watched it crinkle in response.
She tickled a similarly sensitive spot and watch the response in turn. “Well, there’s this whole navy which has given up on smallcraft entirely and is retooling for dreadnoughts… and all those poor fighter jocks left out in the cold…”
He laughed in response and shortly she joined him in his mirth.
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“Hey, you remember Ted? Guy who lost his legs and went out on his own after?”
The tall woman turned to her shorter and much stockier companion. “Yeah. I wonder what happened to him after all this shit…” she gestured around at nothing in particular.
“Well wonder no more cause it turns out he’s one of the big muckety-mucks out at Hephaestus and word is he and Hunt are an item.” Dubois grunted a laugh.
“Well I can’t fault him for taste…” Markham replied. “Beauty and brains, whats not to like?” she grinned at her shorter companion.
“Any idea what our new assignment is?” Vladic interjected.
“Not a peep. As of 3 hours ago we’re black-boxed. I can tell you we’re heading to Uranus but we already knew that. Now take your meds and make sure there’s no wrinkles under you cause we go to 5 gees in 10 minutes. You do not want to wake up on the other side of this with a strip dug out of your hide.”
Within 5 minutes they had each verified all was as it should be and the meds were kicking in so that they were mercifully unconscious when the full burn hit, machines forcing air and blood to circulate rather than pool.
When they awoke technicians were helping them out of their couches, guiding their steps until they regained a sense of balance and could walk on their own. They were escorted to quarters in what appeared to be newly built portions of the presumably wrecked station and given the time to freshen up, shower and etc before dressing in the new uniforms they’d been provided. When they met in the common area there was some debate over the insignia they each bore. It was a stylized representation of the solar system and beneath was the familiar splash of the Belter’s Confederation.
They all turned to face the pair who walked in, their postures casual in a way that most navies would never have accepted but for Belters it was the equivalent of standing at attention.
“Welcome” came the warm contralto of the sharply uniformed woman who stood at ease, the Sol Navy emblem unaccompanied by any other “To the Sol Navy. As you can see by your insignia, even though we are unified we retain our identities, the differences that make us more than the sum of our parts. None of us want to see a repeat of what Earth tried to become and we all know the threat is still quite real. Between us we should be able to defeat the Earther fleet but it will take every one of us pulling together or all will be lost.”
The silence that filled her pause was deafening until the man who stood beside her filled the void. “Ok, now that you’ve had your chance to be all awestruck at our August Commander” the capitalization was obvious in his emphasis “here’s the lowdown. I know you lot were looking at being a bunch of out of work fighter jocks who’d lost their taste for prospecting and wondering what the hell you were gonna be doing.”
There was a general rumble of agreement. “Well as it turns out, we happen to have need of more pilots to man these nifty gunboats that are gonna be a bit more like attack torpedo bombers than anything else and we figured there was only one batch batshit crazy enough to fly em.”
“Hey it ain’t like you got room to talk Ted!” came from the back of the crowd.
“Markham, you know damn well I’m my own special brand o crazy…”
A ripple of laughter spread through the room when Hunt nodded and grinned. “Oh he’s special alright…” she waited just long enough “Bless his heart…” That brought gales of laughter and a mock wounded expression from Honore.
“Now I’m going to turn you over to the tender mercies of your new instructor. Commander Von Richthofen, do us proud.” Honore stepped back to let the man who’d just entered in a sharply creased shipsuit take center stage.
“OK, first things first. Yes my name is Manfred Von Richthofen and yes my I’m not sure how many greats grandfather was the “Red Baron”. Just call me Manny in person, my call sign is Red. Got it?”
“You lot who saluted, knock that shit off. It looks sloppy and just… wrong on a Belter anyway. We might be Sol Navy but we’re Belters before we’re anything else and asking for that kind of subservient bullshit won’t fly anyway so why bother, right?”
“Aye sir!” came a general if somewhat ragged response and he facepalmed in response. “Smartasses…”
They laughed. “Ok, here’s the drill. You’re gonna be running rotating sims and classes until we have enough craft operational to have actual exercises. You’ll be split up in crews of 2 with 2 support crew as well. They won’t be Belters so do your best to make things smooth, ok?
“You mean we’re gonna be workin with Terrans don’t you?” the tone was almost accusatory.
“There isn’t really such a thing as a Terran in the old sense except on that fleet. Their whole planet is effectively wiped out, however many might actually manage to survive in that frozen hell. They are refugees, Solarians in the truest sense with no planet to call home… yet they choose to stand and fight with the rest of us for freedom. We have lost much… but they have lost all and yet here they are with none but a Sol Navy patch on their uniforms. Let me make myself clear. The first one of you that casts aspersions at one of these brave crew for their origins gets cashiered on the spot.”
There was a nervous shuffling of feet and a good many glances at the floor in shame.
“Good. Now you’re going to be flying something like you’ve never even thought of. Its essentially a gravitic launcher for rotating single use torpedo magazines coupled with about 10 times as much power as you should ever need. As an afterthought somebody strapped a crew compartment onto it cause why not…”
He waited for the laughter to die down. “Your threat environment is going to be heavy and because we had to focus on primary armaments your defensive capabilities are going to be a little unusual. Each ship has 2 pilots because 1 of them will be flying a swarm of defensive drones for each ship. 2 EWOs for the same reason. This might be risky as hell but I have no intention of allowing it to become a suicide mission. Make no mistake, we will lose people… but if we lose the war who is to care?”
“Now on another note, I’m sure many of you have noticed that there’s only the one carrier just yet and he already has a double complement. Our area of operations will be distinct from the Hermes and we will be operating without a carrier support structure. Instead each of your craft will be assigned to one of several repair/reprovision craft. Now all of this will be evolving over the next couple of months because everyone is retooling and rebuilding to accommodate the new weaponry. We don’t know whether the Terrans have managed to find out about it but we have to assume they have and are working to get up to speed on it as quickly as we are.”
“What about Saturn and Mars and the Belter fleet… Jupiter even? Are we just counting them out? You make it sound like this is all going to be on us.”
“Mazrin, right?” the young lieutenant nodded, her flaming red hair wrapped in a painful looking bun. “When you get a chance do a search for “Murphy’s Law”. There’s a lot to it but the basic idea is that whatever can go wrong, will, and at the worst possible moment. When you’re fighting a war you have to plan for the absolute worst case scenario and then make it ten times as bad… and generally that way any surprises are good ones.”
“So you’re saying we have to act like its all on us no matter what?”
“No lieutenant, I’m saying its all on you” he pointed at her, then next to her “and you” and again “and you, on me just the same. Yes its on us as a unit but its on each of us individually just as much. Yours might be the golden BB that wins the war… or you might perish saving someone else who does but for each of you, you are a missile, straight and true at the heart of our would be enslavers. Each of you can be the one that makes the difference, for good or ill.”
Mazrin nodded her understanding as did several of those in the crowd.
“Now, each of you have 23 hours to recover from your time in high G and I expect just about now you’re getting hungry. You’ll each find your quarters assignments and full maps of the station on your wristcomps so you’re all dismissed. See you in 23 hours.”
Manny chuckled to himself as he read the list of personnel needing release from the brig. It was a fairly even split between Terrans and Belters with the odd Martian and even one or two of the original yard dogs. There didn’t appear to be any serious injuries and a lot of simmering tension had been released so overall he considered it a good result although many officers would have been more than a little unhappy about it.
Harry would be getting them whipped into shape and getting the first rounds of physical conditioning underway. The massively overpowered ships required crew in top physical shape simply to remain conscious during extreme maneuvers just like fighters did and he intended his crews to be the best they could possibly be. 2 weeks of sims and conditioning and they would have 20 of the new craft available to start shakedown cruises and do some limited wargaming in physical space to get a real feel for how it felt to fight the ships. There was a pause of a few days built into the construction phase to allow functional feedback to be incorporated into the design and it promised to be a much more potent weapon that its size suggested.
Meanwhile he had some very tongue in cheek shouting to do and he found himself rather looking forward to it.
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“Commander your presence is requested in briefing 3-Alpha.”
“Acknowledged.” Higalik terminated her connection and squirmed her way out of the cockpit, swearing at the awkwardness of the layout. There were definitely going to be some design changes made when she got back from whatever this latest meeting was about.
She arrived to find a crowded room and what seemed at first glance like pandemonium but with a little observation resolved into very enthusiastic working groups. For a time no one took notice of her presence until she suddenly found a hand on her elbow, pulling her into the middle of a discussion.
“So the commander here is the one who needs to be helping us design these things, its her people that will be flying them after all!” The speaker shoved a hand through the errant hair that kept falling into his eyes.
“What the hell are you on about, Chief?” She regained possession of her elbow. “I thought our fighter designs were mostly settled?”
“They were but we can’t build fighters anymore… like, at all!”
“Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” A tablet was shoved into her hand and as she looked through the schematics and absorbed the ideas she began to understand the excitement. When she finally looked up she realized the hubbub had ceased and all eyes were on her.
“OK… so the chief is right. We can’t build the kind of fighters we had planned but he’s wrong that we can’t build fighters. We just have to rethink what a fighter actually is, specifically how big it is. We need to be able to carry enough of the new torpedoes to make it worthwhile and with our current resources that says single use launch cartridges. If we built the same basic configuration but about the size of a small corvette we could mount 8 10 torpedo racks externally on each one. They’d have to be mag-launched though because all the gravitics tech we can manage to make will be needed for warheads.”
She’d been sketching while she was talking and her designs were projected onto one wall. The babble of noise was beginning to rise again when she thought to add one more thing. “By the way, whoever is designing the cockpit layout… stick Freddy here in there and see if he can manage to move around. That abomination you lot had prototyped this morning needs to go on the junk heap. Took me 2 minutes just to get the hell out!”
The next 20 hours were spent in endless meetings and design sessions but by the time she collapsed into her bunk still clothed the beginnings of a complete redesign had taken shape. Even the ships themselves had to be rebuilt to a degree and all while in flight but when it was finished what had started out as a formidable force would be orders of magnitude more effective. They had a chance to shift the balance, to ensure the Terran fleet’s destruction where before it had been accepted that even a stalemate would be a good result.
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Carolina checked and rechecked to make sure she’d filtered the faint whisker-laser transmission out of the information-stream that made its way to the various ship’s stations and swore to herself. There hadn’t been any leakage at all and yet somehow they had the data!
It made her hidden role all the more important as the new weapons were being manufactured by every ship in the fleet now and she had to ensure her cutovers went unnoticed. When the time came, she intended to redirect the fire of the flagship at the others and do as much damage as possible before return fire obliterated it. There had been very limited contact between herself and the mysterious outsider, enough to make clear they were the originator of this technology but this contact had ceased since she’d informed them that the Terran fleet had somehow learned of the new weapons and were manufacturing them as quickly as possible.
The terror that had been her constant companion since the war’s beginning had somehow mutated, become anger and a fierce determination to bring this horror to an end on her own terms. As far as she knew they were the only terms on offer.