by Chris Hechtl
“Pass it on to the CEV so they have something to work off of, Portia,” Shelby replied with a nod.
“Aye aye, Commodore,” the panda replied.
]][#]]]{OO}===}==>
Intense relief was felt throughout the convoy and especially from Phoebe and the other passengers once the convoy passed into subspace properly. She grinned as she saw stars around them once more. She looked over to her husband and son, rubbing her hands together gleefully. “Get ready for some shopping!”
Fred shook his head. “It's going to be a couple days before we get to the nearest planet, honey,” he warned.
“Damn,” she muttered as she looked over to their son.
“Mom, where are you going to put it all?” Ayumu demanded. “We're only allowed so much room …” he indicated the space around them. He'd seen some of the compartments where people had stuff in netting attached to the walls and ceiling. He didn't want to see that in his quarters; it was claustrophobic already.
His mother waved a dismissive hand. “Oh poo. Your father has rank. With rank comes some privileges,” she said.
“We have to get down first. And we have to negotiate a means to transfer money, honey,” Fred said as he came up behind her and kissed her on the ear as she turned to him. He wrapped one long arm around her waist as he looked at the image on the tablet in her hands. “We don't even know if they'll give us the right to land,” he said.
“Why wouldn't they?” she asked, eying him.
“It depends on their society and what they think of outsiders,” Fred said. “We know this cluster is very much into capitalism. The rate of exchange might be more than we're willing to give up,” he said.
She grimaced at that news.
“Way to spoil the mood, Dad,” Ayumu stage whispered.
]][#]]]{OO}===}==>
Resupply shuttles started a complex dance between the ships. Vlad finally came over for a captains' meeting. He lucked out in not seeing Cynthia at all, which quietly disappointed him.
Cynthia waited until he was finished the meeting before she caught him. “Hi,” he said softly, wiggling his hand to her.
“Hi, yourself,” she said. “I'll walk you to your shuttle,” she said.
“I … okay,” he said. She waited until they were mostly alone before she punched him hard in the left arm. “Owe!” he said, rubbing the sore bicep. “What'd I do? I said I'd get over here again …”
She punched him again. “You know damn well what you did. I was the laughing stock of the ship for a while; your damn bite got infected. I had to go to sickbay,” Cynthia growled, punching him again as he tried to fend her off.
“Okay, okay, sorry,” he said, chuckling as he backed away. “Damn that hurt,” he said chuckling, laughing as he rubbed his aching shoulder. “Okay, I forgot. I'm sorry.”
“No, you were hoping I'd forget,” Cynthia accused, glowering at him. He just smirked at her. “And you are not as sorry as you are going to be when I'm through with you,” she growled just as the bosun came by. She schooled her expression into more suitable lines as he scanned the two officers in passing. “Carry on,” she growled as CPO Williams paused to look at them. The bosun nodded once and then continued on his way.
“Does that mean what I think it means?” Vlad asked innocently but hopefully.
“I'd ask your place or mine, but since you are already here and it's been, damn it, a year and a half …” They practically raced to her quarters, snickering whenever they were certain no one was looking.
]][#]]]{OO}===}==>
Shelby took a moment to look at the big picture as CIC added their sensor readings to the plot. Some of the imagery of the plot had been projected from their files, active sensors would take time to get out and then have a return signal. Their gravitational sensors were also sublight unfortunately, but there was enough mass around the star system to plot basic items in their range. So far there hadn't been any surprises.
In a way, she was glad the Admiralty had agreed to her request to not have to sit in the cluster until Beta convoy arrived. That cautionary approach would have taken years. She wasn't certain if a force was required to keep their foot in the door. It would be nice to have a secure line of retreat should one be required … but she didn't want to split her force and open herself up to defeat in detail.
One of the main reasons that they had decided against building their first base in the cluster was due to the leadership and government of the cluster. The Trajin cluster was very capitalistic, to the point where they believed in survival of the fittest even during natural disasters. If you were hit by a storm, you had to pay for help or suffer. Hoarding was common according to what ONI had been able to dig up. So was cheating the buyer. Buyer beware was a way of life in the cluster.
It sounded way too much like Epsilon Triangula for her tastes, though of course ONI could be wrong. They could have taken the extreme view on things based on the limited information they'd had available.
One thing the natives of Tau had passed on through Cog, the freighter that had jumped to Airea 3, was that they were interested in joining the Federation. How interested after the length of time that had just passed was a big question. Their ardor might have cooled in that time period.
She glanced at the plot to check on the status of the underway replenishment operations. The ships with the lowest fuel levels had lined up on either side of the tankers. The two tankers had deployed boom masts on either side as messenger lines were sent across the void to the waiting thirsty ships. Blinking beacons were on the tips of the messenger lines; she knew that the crew who tossed them liked to think of themselves as fishermen and ran bets on who could make the best cast.
Once the messenger lines were received by the receiving ship, a cable would be pulled over by it, then a hose would be attached to the cable and brought over. After that, it was just a matter of a robotic arm or suited crew member taking the probe on the tip of the hose and attaching it to the valve on the side of the ship and then the tanker turning their pumps on.
They could refuel eight ships at a time if necessary, but they were wisely sticking to just four each. That was fine with her; it wasn't like they were in a hurry. She turned her attention to the freighters.
The freighters could mate up directly with a ship to transfer goods if necessary, though it was dangerous to bring two hyperdrives too close together unless one or both were stepped down fully.
Fortunately, that wasn't necessary. They could and did utilize shuttles, but they could again, like the tankers, shoot messenger lines across to the waiting ships, followed by a cable, then tightly-wrapped ship packets were sent across that way. She checked the status board. There were a lot of requests for fresh food and to replenish the food replicators and life support. Understandable, especially in the smaller ships.
Normally waste that couldn't be recycled was jettisoned in hyperspace or sent in a stream on a trajectory to the nearest star. Some ships used it as reactive fuel for their sublight engines … though that could be risky. The material had to be very fine to pass through some of the fuel injectors or it would clog them up. And some material was acidic enough to wear components quickly. The convoy had been forced to recycle its waste over and over again for over a year. Undoubtedly some of it was past viability.
She grimaced and then checked CIC's latest on the cluster. The map looked good, they were still filling in small hits from the radar returns, but that was fine. So far no surprises.
The cluster was made up of four stars, two G type and two red dwarfs. Two of the stars were binary with a shared set of planets around them. There were multiple planets around each of the other two stars. The other stars were only a few light weeks away. There were five inhabited planets in the cluster, all of them terraformed before the Xeno war. Most likely they were regressing back to their previous states over time.
She checked the fine return and then nodded. All the planets were accounted for in the star system they were sitting outside of. T
hat was a relief. There was no asteroid field though, and according to their records, there were none in the rest of the cluster either. Another reason she had no interest in setting up shop in the cluster, there were no conveniently placed sources of raw material to use.
“Refueling of the small ships complete, ma'am. None of the remaining ships are below 30 percent. Do you wish to top them off now …?” Lieutenant L'n'v'll asked, breaking Shelby out of her thoughts.
“No. We can do something about them in orbit. Nav, do we have a course yet?” she asked, turning to Portia.
“Aye, Commodore,” the Neopanda said. She took the liberty of putting it up on the main plot. “I generated three of them since I wasn't certain if you wanted a least time or the most fuel economical,” she stated.
“Well, given we've got a lot of people who want to stretch their legs I'd go with the least time,” Cynthia said. “But it's not up to me,” she said as she turned to the commodore. “Your orders, ma'am?”
“We don't know about fuel arrangements,” Shelby said, frowning thoughtfully. There were several gas giants in the cluster, but she wasn't certain if they'd get the rights to mine them or not. “Pick the middle road, Portia. Get us moving.”
“Aye aye, ma’am,” the Neopanda replied as she turned back to her station and started to issue the course to her command and then to Lieutenant Jardin to pass it on to the other ships in the convoy.
“Now we can finally get cooking,” Lieutenant Jardin murmured as he had one of his ratings in the comm shack pass the course on to the fleet.
“You think. Some of the jumps in this sector are long too. Not as long as between here and Airea 3, but long anyway,” Portia said with a shake of her head.
“You are a wet blanket, you know that?” the human lieutenant accused, eying her.
“Sorry for spoiling your moment,” Portia chuckled.
“Ready a beacon with our log as planned,” Cynthia ordered, turning to Ops. “I want a list from the ships in the fleet that need repairs within the hour. Anything we can't draw from stores we'll have to work on. If we can't find the raw materials, we might have to stand the equipment down, pull the component, and then rebuild it. Look into that,” she ordered.
“Aye aye, ma’am,” Lieutenant Sulistyo replied.
Shelby turned in surprise at his voice. She frowned when she noticed it was coming from a vid screen near her XO. She nodded, expression clearing.
“Course plotted and set, ma'am,” Portia stated.
“Get us underway then,” Shelby replied as she sat back in her chair. Portia nodded and turned to the helm. After a moment, Shelby looked up to the plot. She could see the sublight drives come alive, waking with power.
“Sublight burn complete. Wedge coming up … now. Four days until we reach orbit, ma'am,” Portia reported.
“Very good,” Shelby replied with a nod.
“I'm going to be working my people on tearing down some of the life support to overhaul it. The same for work we've put off. Obviously, nothing on the exterior until we are in orbit,” the chief engineer said.
“Be careful about anything stinky, Chief; we don't want to stink us out of house and home like on the trip a couple months ago,” Cynthia warned.
“Believe me, ma'am, been there, done that, don't ever wanna do it again. If they are working on something that bad, I'll have that section blocked off,” the chief said firmly. The enlisted sailors who had been the culprits of that fiasco had both been brought before a captain's mast after the air had been cleared. More than one of their fellows had wanted their hides.
“Good. See to it then. I'll come around to spot-check you in a couple hours.”
“We'll keep an eye out then,” the Neoorangutan said with a nod. “Interested in getting your hands dirty?” he asked.
Cynthia snorted. “Maybe. We'll see,” she said.
“Someone's in a good mood,” Shelby texted to Cynthia. “I take it you got some?” she asked slyly.
Cynthia didn't answer verbally, but it was clear from her blush and sidelong look that she had indeed. Shelby hid a smile of her own as she returned to overseeing the ship's functions.
]][#]]]{OO}===}==>
Once the resupply issue was settled, Shelby ordered the beacon to be left behind at the jump point for Beta convoy to pick up. She had the convoy logs uploaded into its database. Her intent was to leave identical beacons behind like breadcrumbs to keep the convoys up-to-date and to tell Beta where to go.
While she had been meeting with the captains, the quartermasters had been busy exchanging fuel and supplies, Ensign Slattery had been busy overseeing the various communication and sensor watches on the ship to gather as much information about each of the planets in the cluster as possible.
There was no space traffic in the star system they were in, nor any satellites or platforms they could conveniently plug into. Which meant they had to rely on picking up transmissions from the planet. Lieutenant Jardin's department quickly determined that there were no data transmissions, just audio. The radio signals were faint; some shows but a lot of advertisements.
According to what they picked up as well as their limited information in their database, the planets had a corporate leadership structure. The leaders essentially bid to get the job, and when they got it, they parsed out contracts and other jobs in a complex arrangement.
As they listened, a psychological profile began to form. Everything seemed about how to profit from things. What's in it for us, what does it really cost, buyer beware, and those themes seemed to motivate the population. If the so-called experts were right, it meant they weren't just capitalistic but also highly cynical. Some regions had a sheriff, but many had instant summary justice from the population itself. That sometimes sparked vendettas between families or groups that could flare into full wars. “No wonder they can't pull themselves out. Can you imagine being in that and being innocent? Someone level a false allegation …,” Lieutenant Jardin shook his head as he made his report.
“I'm guessing trust is in short supply,” the Naga tactical officer said.
“I'll say,” the lieutenant said dryly.
“We haven't seen any shipping between the planets in the cluster, ma'am,” Cynthia said, turning to the commodore. “It seems the only trade between planets is by visiting starship. They don't see any profit in it.”
“Ouch. So trading with them will be interesting. A little too much like Airea 3?” Lieutenant Sulistyo said.
“Ouch indeed. I take it there is little or no charity?” the commodore asked, looking at the communication's head. He shook his head. “I'd hate to be sick or elderly on this planet,” she said. Lieutenant Jardin wasn't the only one to wince at that thought.
“But it works for them. We can't judge them for being shaped by their environment and history,” the Naga said.
“Yeah, that's right; you are a member of the predatory alliance. You believe in euthanasia and eugenics,” Lieutenant Jardin said with a sniff.
The Naga turned his torso so all six eyes were leveled on the human. “Lieutenant, don't put generalities on me and my species, and I'll refrain from doing the same about yours.”
That made Lieutenant Jardin blink and stare at the Naga until he saw the sharp teeth. That made him gulp and look away.
“Do they know we are here?” Shelby asked.
“Ah, um, yes, ma'am. They saw the pulses. We haven't received any radio transmissions other than advertisements, ma'am,” Lieutenant Jardin reported.
“Advertisements?” she asked.
“They are trying to sell anything. And I do mean anything,” he said.
“Well, at least we know the stuff we may want is available,” Shelby said with a nod. “What else do we know?”
“Well, we know that the natives of the cluster have found out about Irons a year prior to Belfast and Puglia's arrival. They'd gotten the news of his wakening and some of the events in Pyrax from a freighter but it was garbled,” the lieutenant reported. “Th
e light cruisers did their best to set the story straight I believe.”
“Yeah, I bet they tried. We'll see,” Lieutenant Sulistyo said.
“Try to get someone in the government to respond. We need to talk to someone. Has anyone mentioned port fees?”
“Not yet, ma'am. We may need to negotiate when we get into orbit. The signals are rather weak, and they seem to be stepping on each other,” he warned. Shelby grimaced but then nodded.
]][#]]]{OO}===}==>
They arrived in orbit at their first stop five days and twenty-two hours after entering the star system. “Such a lovely planet,” Ensign Slattery murmured. The planet was a lovely shade of blue with the usual clouds and land masses. It was early on in its development though, with just the one Pangaea style continent.
She zoomed in to see the sparkle of abandoned cities, some overgrown, and some partially under water from the planet's shifting climate and tectonic plates. It seemed that the occasional earthquake ravaged the cities on the west coast; she could see some toppled high-rise buildings.
“There is a hurricane,” Lieutenant Jardin said, pointing to something on his screen and then moving it to a window on the main plot.
The ensign frowned and then walked over to it. She used her hands to expand the window, and then ran a track. Based on the direction, it looked like the hurricane had formed somewhere along the equator, which made sense since they started in warm water and was currently over a series of islands, most of which looked deserted. According to the sensor watch, they projected the hurricane to work its way up the eastern coastline, then curve back out to sea. It would undoubtedly lay waste to the small seaside towns and villages there.
“Where …,” she frowned and then zoomed the image out. She overlaid the thermal imagery, then got a better idea and checked the night side of the planet. That gave her pinpoints of lights which were sure signs of towns and such. Based on what she was seeing, the majority of the natives on the planet were living inland, away from the devastation on the coasts and away from the old cities. She went back to the current view and zoomed in tight. She got to the point where she could just make out shaggy Taurens out in the fields toiling away or living in villages surrounded by forests.