Jethro: First to Fight

by Hechtl, Chris

  “Okay,” Mayweather said nodding.

  “When we're certain it is cleared Corporal Deja will short jump us.”

  “That's what I'm trying to say. Even if he did it in alpha it's suicide to take a straight path. We'd...”

  “We're not going to take a straight path,” Firefly explained patiently.

  Janice paused and blinked in consternation. “Wait we're not?”

  “No. What your people are going to do, specifically Ensign Chemwa, you and myself are going to do is plot a series of way points around the peripheral of the system dodging the major mass objects we know about. Short cutting through it only if there is nothing near. We can run a rough sim of that while CIC checks the system for trouble.”

  “Ah...”

  “The Corporal will fly us in the tank. He was a professional with over a decade of experience as a hyper navigator and pilot.”

  “It's still a long hop.”

  “It's about ten to fourteen hours depending on each system. I'm betting once he gets back into the seat he'll shave that time.”

  “Oh.”

  “He'll get us to the next jump point. From there he hands it over to you and your crew and they take us on the next leg. He can then recover.”

  “Simple,” Janice said.

  “Even the simplest things are the hardest to pull off,” Mayweather said.

  Firefly looked at the Captain. Every once and a while she came up with references like that. “True. I believe we can make this work Captain. With your permission of course.”

  “Don't let me stop you,” Mayweather said with a smile and an airy hand wave.

  “You're just itching for a fight,” Janice teased with an answering smile.

  “You know it.”

  “So, we can what? Do Delta?” Janice asked.

  “Upper octaves of Delta easily. I'd like to hit Epsilon but I'm not sure you're up for it,” Firefly said.

  “So what are we talking about?” Mayweather asked. “Time wise I mean.”

  “In Delta we can cut transit time down to three weeks or less depending on the length of the jump. If we can get to Epsilon and stay there we can shave that number by thirty to forty percent.”

  “Wow.”

  “Unfortunately it still gives the pirates plenty of time to get to Antigua.”

  “There's no doubt then?”

  “None in my book Captain. Based on Lieandra's readings the pirates were heading to the other jump point in Protodon. That one leads to two empty systems and then Antigua. I'm actually betting they won't be in any of the other systems. There isn't any way to get to them except by going first to Antigua and then moving on to Triang and the others.”

  “But we have to check just in case,” Mayweather said scowling. “How are we with the crew? Moral? Are the Marines settling in?”

  “Moral is fine Captain, the crew is a little nervous but eager to blow up some pirates,” Firefly said, seeing the feral gleam in the Captain's eyes. “As are you apparently.” She gave a small smile and nod.

  “We've got the Marines bunked everywhere we could stash them. We've even stashed a few in stasis pods in the life pods for later decanting.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “They are taking bets on who has the loudest snore.”

  “Put me down for twenty on the bear,” Mayweather said with an amused smirk.

  “You're on,” Janice said making a note on her tablet. “My money's on the liger.”

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Clive had a brief and emotional good bye with his pregnant wife on the flight line. The squad gave them as much privacy as they could. Families of the Marines lined the chain link fence, saying their tearful good byes. For some, it was a heart wrenching moment. For the single people, they felt sympathy for their friends, but it really didn't hurt them as much. You had to be in love to understand that loss and helpless anger at such a separation.

  Clive went forehead to forehead with his wife briefly, holding her fingers with one hand tightly while the fingers of his left hand gently stroked her swollen belly. They whispered for a moment, then kissed through the fence. Then he nodded and stepped back, releasing her fingers.

  She touched a locket around her neck, smiled, eyes tearing. He put his cover on properly and nodded to her. She mouthed the words I love you to him. He returned them.

  “Come on Bret, we've got to move,” Harley urged. Bret looked over to her and then back to his wife briefly. She waved for him to go. He nodded, moving out.

  His wife turned away, crying softly. A friend patted and rubbed her shoulder.

  Clive climbed on board. “Sometimes this job sucks,” he said simply. They all knew he would miss the birth of his child. He may not even live long enough to see the kid. Who lived or died in the next six months was up in the air for all of them. None knew what the future would bring.

  “Yeah,” Jethro said nodding as the ramp closed. He saw Clive's eyes clinging to the sight of his love until the hatch closed and latched. “Yeah, sometimes it does indeed.”

  ...*...*...*...*...

  The Marines sucked it up, packing the ship to the deck heads with gear and bodies. They triple bunked in every nook and crannie of the ship including in the shuttles they would be using in any possible boarding or landing actions. Firefly had offloaded her Prejudice shuttles and exchanged them for Warhawks. The Warhawk was better suited for combat ops in space. It was also smaller, allowing them to tuck two extra shuttles in.

  The shuttle boat bays were packed and stacked. Marine Warhawk assault shuttles hung from the ceiling over the fighters, shuttles, and tugs on the deck. Each had a grav tractor holding them to the ceiling hard points, as well as plenty of cables.

  Gear was stacked everywhere in the ship, in some companionways a person had to turn sideways to move through it. Torpedoes and other weapons were even left on the wings of the birds instead of in the packed magazines of the ship. They had no room and the Captain wanted the extra ammunition. She accepted the safety violation filed in protest by her deck officer and Firefly without comment.

  Mayweather had stuffed the ship's magazines as much as possible as well. Not only her magazines but her stores for equipment and raw materials. They had already been over ten percent over establishment, her people had squeezed in another fifteen somehow. She'd also had them strap a dozen missile pods and one orbital weapons platform to the hull of the ship. It was a dangerous gamble, the pods and the weapons platform were inside the ship's shield but if a shot got through it could detonate the warheads sitting directly on the ship's hull. Purple Thorn vowed to jettison the pods before they came under fire.

  Even the bunks in the brig were used. The Marines joked about being locked in. They didn't joke about the tight quarters and hot bunking however.

  A few of the ratings joked about sleeping on top of missiles or in the missile tubes. They were a little dismayed and put out when the Chief of the boat actually made them do so.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Jethro woke up with nightmare, panting heavily, shaking like a leaf. Despite the night lights, the dark of the bay and his rack had his hind brain in a fright for a moment. He felt his heart hammering in his chest. Something was there, lurking in his mind as well. A virtual lip curled, he wasn't sure if the ghost was real. After a moment it was gone.

  If he'd been human he would have been drenched, in his case he was panting almost to the point of hyperventilation. The damn dream again, getting worse. Ever since that drop it had haunted him when ever he had too much free time on his hands. Today they'd talked about possible drops on Antigua in the contingency planning. That might have triggered it.

  Slowly he forced himself to calm down, trying to meditate. When the mediation failed to achieve immediate results he hit his pharmacopeia for a relaxant. Gusterson and Doctor Standish would be alerted later, but he'd deal with it then.

  He felt his body relax. He closed his eyes for a long moment.

  "Bad one?" a familiar ch
itter asked softly. He opened his eyes and turned his head, then looked up to see Panache's four eyes looking at him. He couldn't tell if the bug was concerned or not, but he imagined so.

  "Something like that."

  "Heh, I had one as well. You need to talk about it."

  "It... it's not combat related," Jethro said, trying to put it out of his mind. He needed to remained focused, they had combat coming up.

  "No, but it can be," the Veraxin said softly.

  "It's not."

  "What's it about?" Panache asked. His ears flicked as she climbed out of her rack and then clicked her spike like legs over to his rack. The click click on the metal deck made his fur stand on end a bit. Finally she settled down beside him.

  He turned to look at her. "You aren't going to let this go are you?"

  "No."

  He chuffed a half amused, half exasperated sigh. He snorted at Sergei's loud snore. The Veraxin used her upper claw arm to move the liger over onto his side. The move prompted him to open his airway more and stop the snoring.

  "Sergeant, if you don't want to talk about it, it's not like I can force you."

  "It's fine. Look, when I had that drop recently it... brought back some things. When I was in F platoon Gunny got a bit ambitious and tried a orbital drop sim. It... didn't go well. Even Deja had issues."

  "Oh."

  "Yeah. Just about the entire platoon, including the gunny ended up in the infirmary."

  "It was a sim!" They stopped when someone down the row grunted, got up from their rack, then muzzily made their way to the head. Panache waited until the guy was back in his rack before poking Jethro.

  "Tell that to your hind brain,” Jethro said with a sigh, picking up the conversation where she had left off. “You don't get smell or taste, but you get touch, sound, vision, and well, motion. That was the kicker. Throw in your imagination and it does the rest. A lot of us had no idea how to deal with the inertia so they barfed into their helmets and breathers. Which..."

  Panache's mandibles clacked softly, her people's version of a sigh. "Was bad for you. You breathed it in."

  "Yes. Couple that with mental trauma and well..." He shrugged. He had received training on how to recognize and deal with mental trauma. Tricks and ways to minimize it. He realized, he did need to talk about it, that did help. Facing his fear was another way to put it to rest. He now understood the little Veraxin a little better. She hadn't taken the easy way out, she hadn't run the bell and quit. She was here, facing her fear every day. He chuffed and then returned to the conversation. "At least we got bed rest for a day."

  "Oh."

  "We got right back into the swing of things right off. We learned some important lessons, ones that the gunny hadn't intended, that he too is fallible. They had us talk to the shinks briefly, but I blew it off. I've learned since then that it's not good to show fear or mistakes to boots."

  "I remember."

  "Right. But we learned that shit can go wrong. We weren't prepared. We learned the importance of being prepared. It's not all having the right gear, you've got to have the right mindset going in, know what to expect. I haven't taken the sim again yet, I'm not planning on it anytime soon, but that little sled right sort of brought it back."

  "Oh."

  "Yeah. I'll be okay. I just need to get my subconsciousness in order."

  "Easier said than done Sergeant, trust me on this. It's been... hard."

  "I know," Jethro said softly. He turned, looking at her. His green eyes stared at her for a long moment. Slowly her head fell and her eyes swiveled away. "I know. I'm glad you stuck with us. You had no training going in."

  "But now I do. And I'm glad I am here too. Most of the time." She grimaced as Fonz let loose some trapped gas.

  Jethro chuckled.

  Chapter 30

  Purple Thorn worked with Janice to calculate the least time and max time for when the pirates would hit Antigua. There was a lot of guess work involved, a lot of variables and questions they just didn't have answers for. But based on their numbers, Antigua was in for a storm.

  If they were lucky Firefly would beat the pirate fleet there by a day, but they knew luck may not be on their side. They still had over eight weeks to get to Antigua once they exited hyper in Triang and skipped through the system.

  “Captain, we're going to be on fumes and overloaded when we get there too,” Janice said. “Which is a problem.”

  “No helping it,” the Captain replied, shaking her head as she went over their report. It was a very wide window. She was glad they kept it wide, she didn't want to go in fat dumb and happy.

  “Ma'am, if we go in we'll have enough fuel for one jump. That is if we don't do any maneuvering or fighting in the system. Our bunkerage is that low.”

  The Captain looked up as Shelby sucked in a breath. The Captain carefully set her tablet down. “So you are telling me this is an all or nothing shot Janice?” she asked.

  Janice slowly nodded, eyes locked on her Captain. “Yes skipper. Once we maneuver off the jump point that's it, we're committed. There will be no turning back, we'll have to refuel in the system or be stuck there.”

  “Great.”

  “We tried to conserve as much fuel as we could, using the hyper collectors. Deja is quite good for the skips. He's even taken a hand at the normal jumps as well ma'am. He's a natural.”

  “He's a Selkie, of course he is,” Shelby replied with a nod. She'd seen how incredible the Selkie piloted her ship. He'd shaved a good two weeks off their journey in hyper, not just when he skipped through a system. There was no wasted effort with the Selkie, every move had a purpose.

  “I know. Once I was over my... trouble with having someone I didn't know manning the helm, we worked together to find the greatest pockets of electrons we could find,” Janice said, nodding to Rator'll the Veraxin sensor officer. The Veraxin waved his true hands.

  “Finding pockets of gravitational flux has aided the hyper-collectors Captain,” the Veraxin Ensign chittered.

  “I see.”

  “It is a differential ability we hadn't considered until the Chief engineer asked that we try it. See we used the gravitational differential much like you would a thermal differential with Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10 does. The interaction generates electrons that we siphoned...” the Veraxin stopped his diatribe and then signaled first level apology when he recognized his Captain's facial expression.

  “Thank you Ensign, we don't need to go into quite that level of detail. And for the record, I do remember when the Chief proposed the idea sometime ago.”

  “Oh. Sorry skipper,” the chagrined Veraxin replied.

  “What bothers me the most, is based on these numbers the pirates will have at least two weeks, perhaps as much as three with free reign in the system. There is no telling what they could do, the destruction they will unleash,” the XO said softly.

  The Captain nodded. “And unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about it. We can't change it, we can just do the best we can with what we've got. It's a crap shoot, we don't know they're there for sure.”

  “And if they are? They'll hold the system Captain. We'll be outnumbered and low on fuel.”

  “They may have us by numbers, but we've got a navy crew here. A cruiser, not a tin can, and we've got a lot of highly trained, highly motivated Marines thoroughly sick of being housed in every nook and cranny of my ship.” She looked at Captain Pendeckle who nodded wryly. “And anything the pirates do will just be motivation for us to avenge,” the Captain finished, eyes hard and cold.

  Grimly the others officers nodded in return.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  At Triang Firefly made break out on the edge of the system in record time, two and a half weeks out from Briev. They didn't pause, just reoriented for the skip across the system. The sensor and communication's officers siphoned off as much radio information as they could.

  They reported that the planet's occupants were okay, there was no sign of pirate activity, not that they exp
ected any. The pirates had gone through the empty jump line from Protodon to Antigua, bypassing the Triang system altogether.

  They fired off a message drone to check the planet and system over and let them know they were there. The Admiral had left a series of micro-satellites in orbit. They sent a signal stripping one just before Janice finished her calculations for a hop. When no new intel was found in the stream the Captain ordered them to ignore it and make the skip jump. They had a date with destiny in Antigua.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  Captain Daj Maul came into the bridge and frowned ever so slightly. The admiral was there, no surprise. Fortunately he was alone, his staff was most likely haunting CIC or stuffed in one of their cabins. He didn't care, as long as they weren't here, cluttering up his bridge.

  He wasn't sure about the wisdom of having a rear admiral in charge of a fleet task force like this. This was the first time outside of Horath that they've tried it, so far he'd had mixed feeling about the whole thing.

  For one thing it was a bit foolish to have a flag officer, complete with staff on a destroyer like HMSS Cutlass. They just didn't have the room. There were no flag quarters, and he resented losing his Captain's quarters to the admiral and his pair of mistresses.

  Secondly, he'd dispatched one ship, just one with two platoons worth of fighters to take their secondary objective, Kathy's World. That bothered him.

  “Looking over the prize sir?” Captain Maul asked.

  The admiral turned slightly from the main display. He for once wasn't seated in the Captain's chair, he was standing in his favorite pose with his hands clenched behind his back. He had his monocle in though, the gold chain that attached it to his pocket glittered in the light of the bridge. So did the archaic blade the admiral insisted on carrying with him. He twitched his stubby mustache, making Maul refocus on the admiral's face.

  “It's a little early to crow over the spoils and count our shares,” the admiral said. He frowned. Rear Admiral Cartwright of the Horathian Navy was old school, he'd come up through the ranks and had not attained his present position through favors. Or so he'd like his subordinates to believe. In truth he'd gotten to flag rank by stabbing anyone in the back he could, then climbing over them to either take their position or something better.