Kellie Alyse saluted Veronica and put her hand on Mattingly’s back, between his manacled arms, and guided him back through the airlock.
Veronica grinned at Captain Fox’s portrait. “Hope you’re proud, Sir.”
Epilogue
8th of 2nd Month, 343
It was rare that a smuggler would have the poor luck to come nose to nose with a carrier of the Interstellar Navy, let alone to do so at the paltry range of a few kilometers. At that range, the eight hundred meter behemoth of SV Avenger was all too perfectly visible hanging in space, her surface blazing with light.
Two King Cobra drop gunships were now docked to the Arrant Knave in addition to the victorious corvettes, ominous hard-edged shadows on her hull as she floated in space. Their Marine teams had boarded in strength and swept the entire ship, taking the sullenly compliant crew into custody. A dark, slashing score on her hull marked the spot where Dog Two-oh-Seven (now blooded and therefore traditionally entitled to an officially unofficial name— the crew had settled on Licentious Drive), had tagged her with a nuclear blast; another, almost invisible, marked where eight men had died in a horrible accident. A bloom of multiple-weave hull patch fabric marked where Kellie had pinned a crewman to the wall with a well-placed cluster of gunshots.
Jonah Ress was an utterly broken man when he was finally taken from his ship. Forced by inactivity to confront the things he’d done in trying to take control of his vessel back from the boarders, he’d confessed and promised to plead guilty. Not that this changed the opinions of anyone about him, and when his crew had finally discovered his last-ditch plan to eliminate the Naval crew members (and its implications for their own survival), the looks they had given him had been murderous enough to force his separation into a different row of the brig.
Veronica Gray stood in the flight deck gallery as the marines and their captives returned to the carrier; Arrant Knave would be lashed to Avenger’s hull for the return to Starbase 144 for debriefing and arraignment. A three-week journey would provide those looking for it with ample opportunity to reflect on their fate–not that she thought anyone would want to.
Her eyes were not on Arrant Knave at all now, but on Licentious Drive, and the heroism and professionalism of her crew members. She was proud of this team–of her team. Louis Bowman was looking greener and healthier with every passing day. The purple wound stripe on his sleeve, he said, would make a nice conversation starter when people asked when and how he’d served with the great Captain Gray. Veronica thought privately that the Jardinian probably just liked to see baseline humans turn red, because she knew that her cheeks and the tips of her ears had done so. Bowman was due for promotion to Gunner’s Mate 3rd Class by time in grade, and Veronica had the paperwork to do so sitting on her desk, waiting for her final signature–which she intended to do as soon as Bowman was out of the infirmary.
Astronaut Second Class Natasha Leblanc was still a bit too early for a below-the-zone promotion to Astronaut First Class. She’d get it soon, though, and in the meantime Veronica thought that her Bronze Star would suit her nicely. She hadn’t gotten to pin the medal on to Natasha’s service dress uniform herself (which had been as slick as Veronica imagined it), but standing next to Captain Baldwin when he had done so was close. So had been the entirely unusual but entirely welcomed hug she’d gotten from Leblanc after the end of the ceremony.
Master Chief Petty Officer Kellie Alyse had tried to modestly refuse any commendation, insisting that she had only done her job and hadn’t been in any real danger to boot. Veronica still didn’t understand why the ex-instructor was so resistant to awards, but had cheerfully agreed to “only” recommend a Meritorious Service Medal in return for Kellie finally submitting an OCS application.
While she had previously felt the wariness of the pilots and aircrews of her squadron, now Veronica could feel that she was truly part of the family, not just someone who had been invited into their home. It was a change she could never have put into words, exactly, but the last of the testing reserve toward her had evaporated.
Belonging to this team felt right. She would forever be part of this squadron, even after moving on.
Baldwin put his forearm up on the window frame, and Veronica steeled herself against her own jump. “Penny for your thoughts, Lieutenant,” he asked.
She struggled for a moment, but finally spoke the doubt that had plagued her since Licentious Drive’s return to Avenger, “Sir, I just wonder. I was about to completely dismiss Arrant Knave as just another dime a dozen tramp trawler and go on my business. How many times do we ignore our duty like that in the course of a career?”
“It’s not ignoring your duty, Lieutenant. It’s doing it. You paid her exactly as much attention as you thought you needed to; smugglers like Ress count on that. We can’t get everyone, only provide a chance that everyone be gotten. And you have to apply your judgment and your discretion in looking at which tramps need a closer look and which ones can go on with a simple manifest interrogation.
“You’ll probably get a few hundred ‘rule number ones’ from well-meaning COs before you get your own ship, Gray, so let me give you mine: Rule number one–every good commander makes the judgment call that works best with the information he or she has at the time it’s made. Some of those judgment calls will turn out to be wrong. That doesn’t mean you screwed up.”
Veronica nodded, “Yes Sir.”
“The judgments you made were the best one you had to you, Lieutenant, and I’m proud to have that kind of woman on my wing.”
“Duke Ifrit is someone with the kind of scratch to ship the next-best thing to a quarter million kilos of drugs halfway across the galaxy, and the sovereign immunity to completely ignore prosecution for it. He doesn’t sound like someone to cross lightly to me,” mused Veronica.
The nobleman had promised a full investigation into the ‘unauthorized dealings’ of his factors, but Veronica Gray knew too much to suspect that justice would ever touch anyone in the household of a neo-feudal lord of one of the poorly-organized worlds on the frontiers of the galaxy. The diplomatic protests at the interruption of supposedly legitimate trade on the rim of the Orion arm were a usual fact of life out here. The shipping magnates of the outer rim considered everything their legitimate business; and the business of their rivals to be fair game for the navies of the galaxy. Veronica didn’t mind that part so much.
“Life’s too short to worry about enemies of the personal kind! We’re pretty well-stocked with hostile aliens, human adversaries, and pretty much every type of problem child God saw fit to grace the galaxy with.”
Veronica laughed softly at that, then looked past Baldwin to see Kellie and Yeboah.
Yeboah smiled back to her. “Lieutenant,” she said, “Sickbay’s going to clear Bowman to return to duty in about an hour, Chief Alyse and I thought it would be a positive gesture for all of us to come and collect him when they do. Leblanc’s already there with him.”
Veronica said, “By your leave, CAG?” and saluted.
Jack Baldwin returned her salute. “Go get your crew member, Lieutenant Gray. Remember, it’s not about you anymore, Skipper. It’s about your team and your people and your ship.”
“I’ll remember, CAG. Thanks for the pep talk.”
Yeboah grinned. “Done moping in the gallery, Skip?”
“What, was I really that bad?”
“Very, Very, Quite Contrary. You were worse.”
Veronica buried her face for a moment in her hand. “I’m sorry, Alyssa.”
“Stop that, lady! A little mope is good for the soul now and again, but you have to know when to give it a rest. But you know, you’re going to have to share your ship with another Lieutenant.” She flashed her sleeve showing the two rings of braid now equally wide.
“Does this mean we’re going to have a wetting-down when we make starfall at the base, Lieutenant Yeboah? I think it does, in fact!”
Alyssa Yeboah grinned and rubbed Veronica’s hair. “I think this
deserves a double wetting-down, Ms. Gray, since it occurs to me that you didn’t throw one when you were promoted to Lieutenant. Six months and nothing? Skip, you are seriously pushing our friendship!”
“A double it is. I bear no responsibility for what happens afterward!”
“Don’t feel like explaining drunken, naked roller derby to the base commandant?”
Veronica laughed and shoved her executive officer. “Not on your life, Lieutenant Yeboah! I’ll buy.”
Appendix: Galactic Timekeeping
Independent Flight begins on the 18th of First Month, 343 Star Era, and ends on the 8th of Second Month in the same year. This translates to beginning on June 11th, 2529 CE, and ending on June 22nd.
“Year Zero, Star Era” is equal to the year 2178 CE, when the Treaty of Galactic Alliance was signed, forming the common Star Era calendar. Years before the Star Era began are kept in local time.
The galactic year is 9,000 hours in length, exactly 10 days longer than Earth’s year of 8,760 hours, which means that the current year of 343 SE is 2529/30 CE, and that the galactic year started on 24 May, 2529. It is divided into 12 equal-length months of 750 hours for timekeeping purposes. Those months are subdivided into thirty twenty-five hour days. Months are ordinally numbered, although Humans tend to refer to them by the traditional Julian month names.
The most common planetary calendar is “After Landing” (“Anno Humanis” on many human-colonized planets), which is almost always calculated to the planetary year, not the standard year. 1 AL on Terra was 2120 CE, and the present year on Terra is 402 AH.
(Adapted from http://artemisflightbooks.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/galactic-timekeeping/)
Appendix: Spacecraft
F12F Tomcat Corvette
(From IAS Fighting Ships of the Galaxy, 341-2 edition)
The F12F-1 Tomcat corvette was the first Alliance corvette built as a heavy fighter rather than as a light warship. It has roughly one-fourth both the mass and crew complement of previous corvettes, but maintains substantially the same fighting capability as the preceding Perseus-class corvette.
Corvettes in the Interstellar Navy are not given official names; their hull numbers are supplemented by crew-nominated names subject to censorship for appropriateness; it is not unheard-of for corvettes in separate commands to possess the same name.
F12F-1 Tomcat
Role: Heavy Space Superiority
Dimensions: 62x20x8 meters (40 meters wingspan)
Mass: 260 tons
Crew: 5 (2 officers, 3 enlisted)
Military Acceleration: 1,500g
Protection: Twin hull with full interpenetrated deflector shield
Armament: 2 250mm lasers, 4 2x25mm laser + 30mm auto cannon point defense cluster, 40 round cylinder missile launcher
I16A Wasp Interceptor
(From IAS Galactic Aerospace, 341-2 edition)
The I16A-4 Wasp Interceptor is a light, fast, highly maneuverable point-defense spacecraft with the primary purpose of attacking enemy fighters and corvettes before they punch through a carrier or base’s final approach vectors. The Wasp’s primary weapon is four twelve-round swarm missile launchers, these are backed up by a single axial laser cannon. The Wasp’s primary missile, the AIM-159 Stinger, uses a relativistic kill warhead rather than thermonuclear; this is deemed acceptable under operational doctrine in order to maximize salvo density on a small craft. The AIM-159 is superficially similar to the RIM-180 point defense starship missile, but has a drive lens tuned to interact with the lower-powered drives of fighters.
I16A-4 Wasp
Role: Bomber Interceptor
Dimensions: 35x10x5 meters
Mass: 87 tons
Crew: 2
Military Acceleration: 2,250g
Protection: Single hull with projected deflector shield
Armament: 1 150mm laser, 4 “swarm” missile launchers containing 12 AIM-159 Stinger relativistic kill missiles each.
D-42 Douglas Medium Haul Freighter
(From IAS Ships of the Galaxy, 341-2 edition)
The D-42 Douglas, produced between 228 and 240 with a production run of over 1,000,000 ships including the military McConnell-class fleet resupply ship. It is one of the most common medium-haulers in the Orion Arm, with four cargo bay directly under the skin for ease of access.
The D-42 design is easily modified, and with a more modern engine than its relatively weak stock Babcock 400X, it can easily pull twice the design’s base acceleration. Additionally, in many regions of the galaxy owners arm them with after-market weapon systems to defend themselves against piracy (or to engage in illegal trade of their own).
Interstellar Horizons D-42 Douglas
Role: Medium Freighter
Dimensions: 140 x 70 x 70 meters
Mass: 50,300 tons
Crew: 25
Standard Acceleration: 300g
Protection: Twin hull with navigational deflector shield
Armament: None stock
Independent Flight (Aquarius Ascendant) Page 10