I added, “Don’t you owe me story?”
She made a face, “A PG one sir?”
I knew she was kidding, but I said, “Yes lieutenant, that might be for the best.”
She rolled her eyes, “That might not be easy.”
She laughed at the face I made.
“Seriously, what stories could I share. He made me feel safe, and loved. We shared quarters there at the end, unofficially. We talked a lot and made plans for the future, but on a brick flying across the void there wasn’t a whole lot to do but that and… other stuff.”
I was feeling distinctly uncomfortable, depressed, and perversely a little bit aroused. I felt guilty for my attraction considering the subject matter, and didn’t know how to turn it off. She made a ship suit look good, and I know it wasn’t just me, she drew a lot of eyes in the room, and not all of them men. It was also painfully obvious to me it was a one-way thing, the woman was in mourning for goodness sake.
“I’ll give you a pass on that one then,” I said, and gratefully took my new beer and drank down a few swallows.
She swallowed a sip of her own, and said, “Do you think we can keep in touch? Is that strange sir?”
I shook my head, “Not strange, you’re trying to hold on to a piece of him, and I was his best friend. I get that, and to a lesser extent feel the same way about you. And yes, but only if you call me Michael when we’re off duty.”
She arched an eyebrow, “More than that, but you’re right. How about Mike?”
I said, “Not if you want me to answer.”
She mock pouted, it was adorable instead of annoying, she pulled it off well somehow despite being in her mid-twenties. Very cute actually, since she had naturally pouty lips and mischievousness in her eyes, but I really hated my name in its shortened form. So, I manfully ignored it, and took another sip of beer.
“Fine, Michael.”
I smiled in victory which made her roll her eyes.
We had our A.I.s exchange our private contact message accounts. They were meant for non-military related correspondence, basically family and friends, and were private to an extent. Except, if my A.I. thought I was violating rules or regulations in some way, or leaking mission information, they’d get forwarded to intelligence for review, which in the end, didn’t make a difference in this situation.
“Family?”
She nodded, “Younger step brother and parents, birth mom I haven’t met, though I’ve met my grandparents a few times. They were looking forward to meeting Tim. We were going to get married on the beach you know, in the Caribbean. He was going to invite you, Anne, and Elizabeth of course, but he wanted to do it in person on the first night of leave over a beer, and not in a message, opposite shifts and all.”
Huh, as she rattled off my mother’s and sister’s names, I just realized she probably knew a lot more about me than I did about her, and I wondered what else exactly Timothy had told her about us. I was touched too, I knew we’d thought of him as an adopted brother of sorts in the family, but obviously he’d been proud to be a part of us as well.
She smiled at me, “He was worried you know, that he’d lose you as a friend when you were promoted over him and all.”
I nodded, “Yeah, we had a bit of a rough patch, but we were in a good place I thought when…” I trailed off.
She sighed, “You were. Anyway, I’d love to monopolize the first officer all night, but I think the captain wants her chair back.”
She got up and gave me another of those private smiles that both made my heart beat faster, and made me feel like an ass because of it. She was too stunningly gorgeous for her own good, at least she was in my opinion. And that was in a ship suit, I couldn’t even imagine the devastation she could wreak among men in a dress.
It was more than her looks though, it was her vibe, presence, and the way she left others who made contact with her even peripherally in a better mood. That was the true draw.
“Night Katy.”
The rest of the night I chatted with the captain about various things, a few other officers from the ship stopped by to pay respects to my loss, but didn’t stay longer than a few seconds. The rest seemed content to keep the professional distance and that was fine with me. I’d take Katy and Sam as new friends from this last year and call it a win. Who knew, maybe she’d be my captain again on the next mission, although I doubted it. Still, I didn’t see this second mission coming either.
I think I had two more beers that night, but it might have been three. Either way, I managed to both find my bed and make it to the rear landing bay by zero nine hundred hours the next morning without incident…
Chapter Fifteen
“Captain.”
“Commander,” Samantha replied.
I looked around and our crew was here, according to Amy they’d open the airlock in a couple of minutes… but I didn’t see the admiral, or the scientists.
“Any clue where our guests are maam?”
Sam smirked, “Loaded with the equipment, full operational security, we’re not allowed to talk to them, and have no need to know who they are. The admiral sent me orders last night, which is why it’s going to take a whole week to… finish the job.”
Chief Marilyn Hanson looked over at us, “About that captain, I don’t think it’s a good idea…” she trailed off when the captain held up her hand.
“I understand your reluctance, but you’re to clear everyone out of engineering, including yourself, when requested, is that understood?”
The chief looked mutinous, but she nodded sharply and walked off. I couldn’t say I blamed her, the scientists would be messing around in engineering without the chief’s knowledge or understanding. I wasn’t sure if I was comfortable or not with that idea, I trusted Marilyn, how could I trust scientists I wasn’t allowed to meet? And how the hell was towing a restricted technology?
In hindsight, I should’ve grabbed a coffee.
“Anything else I should know Captain?”
She grinned, “The admiral had an extra chair put in the bridge.”
Oh great, my morning was now complete.
Katy was chatting with the other two lieutenants, when she smiled over at me in greeting, and I couldn’t help but smile and nod back. Worse, I wasn’t feeling nearly as dour as I had a second ago, and chose not to examine why too closely. Not that I wanted to feel dour, I just didn’t want the complication of coming to truly care for Katy. It would never work. I shared a nod with Cindy as well, and almost laughed as George pretended not to see me. Typical, and the feeling was mutual.
They opened up the airlock, and we boarded Armstrong. She was identical to Columbus, and like most scout ships, she was named after a famous explorer or scout from history. Armstrong gleamed though, and I got the idea she was a new ship straight off the line. Well, almost identical, as we passed through the landing bay I saw the new shuttle which was supposed to be some new kind of tug. Plus, an extra chair on the bridge for a nosy admiral.
Was it wrong of me to hope the Admiral chose to sit with the captain during her shifts? Who knew, maybe he wouldn’t be that bad, but I had a feeling he would be. An Admiral in charge of an above top secret mission and base? He had to be even more paranoid than I was.
The captain had first shift, but I’d just slept seven hours and wasn’t tired at all, so I just stopped at my assigned quarters, secured my bag so it wouldn’t go anywhere during gravity maneuvers, and headed up to the bridge. I supposed I could have read, or found something else to do, but it just felt right to be on the bridge when leaving Mars.
I headed up to the bridge, and they were already preparing for departure as I slipped into the first officer’s chair.
“Katy, verify all outer airlocks are closed, disengage from the station and request authorization to depart.”
Katy replied, “Aye captain,” and a few moments later, “Verified, disengaged, and we have departure authorization at one tenth gravity until we leave local traffic.”
The captain used her console to activate the maneuvering jets, which shot us backwards and then tilted us. She waited for engine clearance, and then activated a tenth of a G acceleration. Weighing eighteen pounds was kind of fun, but as commander of the ship I couldn’t jump around, decorum and all that.
Fortunately, I was able to resist those kinds of urges.
It was really damned quiet on the bridge, usually someone was talking in a low voice, or something. I resisted the urge to turn my neck and look at the admiral, of course everyone was on their best behavior with an admiral lurking about, even just a one star admiral could easily break any of our careers.
Katy reported, “We’ve cleared local traffic, and have authorization for a burn at our discretion maam.”
The captain didn’t wait, I heard the alarm for a one G burn, and ten seconds later the ship jumped forward and increased acceleration by a tenth of a G every two seconds until we were burning a full gravity, which was a ramp up in speed twice as slow as usual, and I wondered if she did it for the admiral’s benefit.
Cindy reported, “Six days, four hours, and twenty-six minutes until transition.”
This would be a long week…
The trip wasn’t actually that bad, I think I was just annoyed that first day because after the yearlong mission I’d expected some off time, plus the death of my best friend and all, I’d also expected to deliver some bad news in person to my mother and sister. I did like what I did though, and before we were past Saturn my sense of duty had kicked in.
On the face of it, the mission was simple enough, deliver scientists, and a week or two later drag the ship somewhere. Then go home. Three to four weeks, in and out. The subtext of course, was to defend ourselves, the scientists, and perhaps most importantly, the alien ship we planned to have our scientists start reverse engineering, in case the aliens crashed our party.
To that end, we were having a strategy session on the bridge during shift turnover. On a normal ship, there were three shifts, and more than enough people capable of temporary command to do that sort of thing in a conference room, but with two shifts and one man short it was the best way to accommodate everyone on ship.
The captain said, “The aliens, whatever they’re called, most likely won’t react at all. They didn’t last time, when we sent in that sensor missile, and explored with the probe. But it is possible we stirred up the nest so to speak, and that they’ll be more vigilant farther out this time. The wreck is only a few light hours outside of their solar system, and we’ll be there for a week. Which means we need to come up with a defense that has a chance of working, and can be deployed in less than three hours. Hopefully, they won’t have seeded a sensor with FTL comms out there as a trap of sorts.”
Katy bit her lip obviously trying to hold back a laugh, “We can call them Virgins captain.”
It took me a second or two, and it was kind of funny on a puerile level.
The captain pressed her lips together, and I had a feeling she was trying not to laugh too. She probably would have if the admiral didn’t look shocked and scandalized.
“The system may be 61-Virginis Katy, but we will not be calling the Aliens… that.”
Katy nodded in mock innocence, “Of course, captain.”
I asked, “Where is the bar set in case of attack? I know we need the alien ship, but if they attack we can’t take on their entire space Navy. I’d suggest we set up an ambush of some kind, and then collect the scientists and transition out. Even if we can take out the first ship, I expect a lot more would follow within minutes.”
The admiral said, “Failure isn’t an option. We need that ship.”
I nodded, “I understand admiral, but that doesn’t change the facts. If we stay and try to take on their whole navy we’ll lose the ship anyway, along with our lives and all the sensor data.”
The admiral asked, “Sensor data?”
I said, “When we set up the probe, we had it go straight to engineering to look for a weakness, which we definitely found, but before we even entered the alien system we ordered the probe to go room to room and scan everything on the ship from bow to stern. It’s been over two weeks, I imagine the probe has plenty of information, maybe even targeting data for the front of their ships that will help, like the bridge location or something that would cause secondary explosions. We could send the data home immediately via messenger missile when we arrived, but as its been classified above top secret and messenger missiles aren’t approved for that level of security…” I trailed off.
The captain interjected, “I agree, throwing away our lives will prove nothing, and we’ll still lose the derelict. Pulling out if our party is crashed, with the data and scientists, is a tactical decision and I’m the captain of this ship. That said, let’s work on the ambush end of things, hopefully it won’t be necessary at all, but the UEDF doesn’t live on hope.”
The admiral looked like he wanted to argue, but to my relief, he didn’t. I couldn’t help but wonder though, if the captain and I hadn’t just put a spike into our careers.
The captain said, “I had the missiles made transferred over here, and the last couple of days Marilyn has been upgrading the missile warheads assigned to this ship. We have over a hundred of them right now.”
I said, “With an assault shuttle, we could seed about twenty of them around us, in four groups of five? That gives an attack an extra missile in case they manage to take one out. It won’t be a blind shot like the last time I did something like this, Armstrong can control and even activate just one of the groups at a time, and if necessary self-destruct one.”
The captain nodded, “Let’s go with double that, eight groups of five. Any other ideas?”
Katy said, “We should review the data when we get there, see if the probe found a landing bay on that ship, and if it had an alien version of a shuttle. I imagine they don’t land those one mile ships on planets. A shuttle probably won’t have all of the technology, like an FTL drive, but I bet they’d have most of the other technologies like AG, inertial dampening, scanning tech, and impulse drives. They might even have those energy shields and a smaller gravity weapon.
“Anyway, if they do we should tuck one in our landing bay as quickly as we can, so if we wind up needing to retreat we at least won’t be empty handed. We can always return it to the alien ship once we drop off the admiral and the goods in Sigma Draconis. In the end, it might even turn out to be more useful.”
The admiral frowned, “Why would you say that?”
Katy said, “Well, they might have some weird social or societal reason for abandoning the ship to drift away, but would we just let the thing float off? My guess is there’s something seriously wrong with that ship, or the attackers would have claimed it and fixed it.”
I said, “Even then, wouldn’t they have scuttled it? It could be their enemies ambushed that ship, and then moved on, and were subsequently destroyed. That ship could just be one of their lost ships. It was a stroke of luck that we ran across it at all, space is big.”
Katy replied, “That does sound like a likely scenario, but we shouldn’t rule out that their systems may be broken beyond repair, better to work on a nice safe shuttle rather than power up that monster and accidentally eat one of the moons in Sigma Draconis.”
I was about to respond to that when…
The captain cleared her throat, “We’re getting off topic. Good idea on the shuttle, unless the admiral objects, and if it exists, we’ll take that course of action just in case we’re detected and we have to abort. Admiral?”
I managed not to blush at the gentle rebuke, Katy had totally sucked me into that argument.
The admiral nodded, “I don’t have a problem with that, and it’s a sound idea, but if we do, the alien ship will be quarantined from the crew, no access except to load and unload.”
The captain asked, “Any other suggestions?”
When no one did she said, “Standing orders are to have a random acceleration course correction p
rogrammed in the helm board at all times. If or when an enemy ship shows up it will be activated by the helm without further orders. The first five seconds will be limited to one to two gravities, and then three to five after that, so I suggest if you hear the alarm you’ll make it to a chair or bed quickly. I imagine if it does happen, it will most likely happen in the first six hours. Admiral, how long will the last step take, when we connect to the alien ship. We’ll be mostly helpless at that point.”
The admiral said, “Once all the Chavez-Teller emitters have been set up, we’ll turn our head toward the back of the ship and dock. We’ll actually be pushing it. Securing the ships together, and running the power lines to the emitters, and the reprogramming of the drive should take six hours.”
The captain looked thoughtful for a moment, “Well if they don’t respond in the first six or seven days, we should be fine. Regardless, we’ll leave the missiles out there until the last minute, and use the self-destruct right before we transition. I almost forgot, Cindy and Ally, if the enemy does show up at any time, you’re to fire the closest group of five missiles at them immediately. Any more questions?”
No one did.
“Very well, Michael, you have the bridge.”
The captain and lieutenants filed off the bridge, and to my relief so did the admiral. Admirals made me nervous for some reason, especially the intelligence and secret lab running type…
Chapter Sixteen
Amy said, “You have a personal message.”
I’d just gotten off shift and was in my quarters getting ready to be unconscious for a while. How the hell did I have a personal message?
“From who?”
She replied, “Lieutenant Katy Daniels left it ten hours ago, I’ve held it until you were off duty.”
Scout Ship: Rise of the Empyrean Empire: Novel 01 Page 11