by Chris Hechtl
Corporal Or'og their Gashg was another consummate professional. He was the poster child of a stern squared away Marine. His professionalism marked him as a career Marine.
“Sir, why are we here? Still on Firefly?” Valenko asked Major Pendeckle when they were held over. Most of the troop bay was filled with refugees. The former slaves were being cycled through the infirmary and mess, and then given their first chance at a decent shower and rest. Some took it well, others had problems. The Marines had given up sleeping in the bay.
“Didn't you know? Orders,” the Major replied, sounding distracted.
“Um, yes, that's what I was wondering,” Valenko asked. “Why?”
“Not my orders,” the human replied. “The Admiral's. Specifically you and your original squad. Apparently he didn't get word of the promotions and changes. I'm trying to fix that now. Until then, well, enjoy the peace and quiet while you can.”
Valenko looked at the group around him. “Peace and quiet he says?” he snorted. One little girl was in his lap, wrapped around his left arm. She was asleep with her thumb firmly planted in her mouth. He snorted softly. The cub thought he was the world's biggest teddy bear.
“Sir, any ideas?” Jethro asked after the Major had disconnected.
“It seems the Admiral wants us here for a reason,” the bear said. He scratched at an itch on his right ear. “Ours is not to reason why...but hell. Any ideas?” The bear asked, tugging on his ear.
“I think I may have something to do with it,” Jethro admitted.
“You?” the bear asked. He frowned thoughtfully. He schooled his features into calm when he noted more than one refugee flinch. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Why you?” he asked in a text after a moment.
Jethro thrashed his tail and then shrugged. “I've been told it's a classified issue, but well...I asked him for help about my situation and my armor.”
The bear slowly nodded. He knew Jethro was having some issues. He'd been glad he hadn't had to cut the cat any slack. Apparently the hard training had kept whatever was going on at bay. “Any issues I need to know about?”
Jethro's tail thrashed briefly, a sure sign of annoyance. He kept his ears from flattening though, just barely. “No, but I want answers. Commander Firefly said I had to go to the Admiral. I did. He told me he'd give me what he could.”
“So, he's nailed your foot, hell, my foot to the floor so we stay put. Great, just great,” Valenko sighed. He nodded as a group of refugees came in carrying food trays. They smiled tentatively. He saluted them in an off-handed way. That apparently did them some good. They handed out some of the energy bars.
“We're here, so I think we've got another duty in mind,” Valenko said softly. Jethro nodded, sobered. As he stood there he received a new order in an e-mail. He didn't doubt that the Lieutenant was getting the same one as well. They were tasked with one other duty on Firefly before they could return to the fleet.
“Any ideas on when?”
“No, but soon. A shift or two. Can't put it off too long.”
“What about the people?”
“Some will be here. We don't have room for everyone though. Those that can help and want to are being allowed to go to work on some of the ships. We'll see. You know how it is; we need all the hands we can get,” Valenko said.
“Yeah. I'm just glad we're not on the DCC teams right now.”
“Yeah, you and me both. Though I'd hardly fit in some of the tight places they have to go,” the bear rumbled softly.
Damage control teams had the grim task of recovering the dead and then handing them over to the medics for autopsy before the planned funeral and final burial. Once the medics had the thousands of injured crew and refugees under control, they finally got around to the task of identifying the dead. It was a grim task, and the Glenns were particularly hard hit with the dead on their ship. Doctor Standish felt fortunate that he had few on Firefly, but his people were tasked with not only the continued care of the 1,219 refugees still recovering or in stasis on the reefer ship; plus the navy and marine injured, and to top that all off, also identifying the dead from all the ships. After two days the grisly task was complete. He gratefully informed the admiral as he passed on his records to the intelligence teams.
---( | ) --- ( | )---
The night the final body had been identified the Admiral sent out a memo declaring a day of rest the following day. Since Commander Sprite was working with the other AI to sift through the captured databases and make software repairs on the ships they intended to salvage, he quickly jotted out another memo to the officers on each ship.
Each ship would send a small party to represent their ship at a mass funeral to be held on Firefly in her number one boat bay. Firefly's boat bays had been kept busy swarming with shuttles and vessels, so the dead had been stored in a refrigerated hold. That evening the Admiral ordered each party to replicate dress uniforms as well, and then transferred himself to Carnegie to replicate dozens of caskets.
Jethro flew back to Firefly in one of the shuttles. It was quiet as a tomb on the ship with the caskets stacked in the center of the shuttle's hold. He did his best to catch up on sleep while he could.
---( | ) --- ( | )---
Commander Firefly worked with the other AIs and the scratch intelligence teams to sift through the computer records. They attempted to put an index together on the fly, but the best they could do was to index information from a source ship for the moment.
Some of the files were corrupted or damaged, others were encrypted. Apparently only the warships had security software in place. The civilian ships pressed into service lacked the software, but the AIs and computer techs quickly determined that they also lacked anything of critical value.
Once a ship's memory was cloned she was designated for repair. Commander Sprite and Lieutenant Bounty shared with the other AI bots they had created to scour the ship's net and repair its software. Firefly used his own bots as well as the new ones. The ship AI had considered taking the downtime to perform his scheduled update but had instead declined. There was just too much work to do.
The civilian ship designated Carnegie was one of the first ships they cleared and for good reason. She was immediately pressed into service with the repairs. The second was the Oasis of Space. She was rather carefully gone over several times by the Admiral's security AI Defender. That AI seemed paranoid, but he did have a point about looking for hidden software doors that would allow the Horathian prisoners to regain control of the ship. It was a possible threat.
They passed any software repairs they couldn't do on the fly to Lieutenant J.G. Jessica Ball. She was a forties-something software tech who had recently graduated from the Anvil college. She had a family on one of the colonies but had insisted on signing up as a reservist to further her education and fulfill her desire to protect her family. She had been activated when Firefly had entered the system to replace her previous computer nerd.
Firefly appreciated the help, even if she was a meat bag.
The plan was to index the material later. A short millisecond discussion amongst the AIs brought them up to speed with Commander Sprite's bullet point plan. She intended to spin off bots and dumb AIs when she could to further aide in the intelligence gathering and cross referencing. Spider bots were indexing where they could, and another bot had been spun off to monitor the intelligence gathered from the dead. But still, it was a herculean task.
---( | ) --- ( | )---
The evening of the rest day all hands were ordered assembled. Those that could not attend watched through camera bots.
The Horathian dead were sent off in a quick, quiet ceremony, and then it was Fleet's turn. The occasion was formal, in dress uniform with all the crews mixed. Some like Firefly's crew seemed to hold themselves apart. Jethro wondered about that, wondered why they had even bothered with a ceremony for the pirates as well. But then he refocused on the Admiral as he moved through the group to the podium set up nearby.
Irons was stern
as he looked on the assembly. The officers were arrayed in the back rows as tradition dictated. In front of them were the enlisted sailors. Firefly's officers were clustered together. He realized it wasn't any sort of stigmatization; it was the simple fact that the others had been burned, while Firefly had yet to feel the flames fully. He hoped for their sake they never did.
A temporary lock had been formed with a launcher. The air sparkled with the force field. It was quite beautiful, the stark beauty of the starry void just on the other side of that thin wall of energy. It had taken a day to set up the lock and launcher.
Marines held their weapons at reverse arms, standing at attention. One had a bugle at port arms, ready to use it when called for.
A chaplain came forward and passed a blessing. He did so twice, one of the crew from Romeo had been Jewish and required a different method.
When he was finished the Admiral stepped up. Behind him were the rows of flag-draped caskets containing the dead. Five from Romeo, one from Phoenix, twenty from Lassie, and nineteen from Bounty to add to the dozen Marine caskets. Too many, he thought with a pang, but for those looking back through hind sight, probably a cheap price. He knew intellectually that was true; they'd rescued thousands of former slaves, taken dozens of ships, and prevented the Horathian's from taking Pyrax. Still, the death toll bothered him. “We've sacrificed a lot to get where we are today. We've been burned. We've seen what war can do; we know its cost.”
“To those of us here and those listening on the other ships, never has so much been accomplished with the cost of so many friends and shipmates. The price for victory here was heavy.” He remembered death of some of the crew; faces that would never be seen again except in his nightmares. Mary Apple's drifted in his vision briefly. He inhaled and then let it out slowly. “Many of our friends lost their lives giving their all to accomplish this victory. We who treasure freedom and democracy thank them for their sacrifice. They are heroes, as are each of you.” There was an uncomfortable shuffle but not a word was spoken.
“It sounds trite really,” he said frowning in the silence. “To some, just words. We've heard that before. Until now, some hadn't really felt their importance, realized their reality. They pale in comparison to what we experienced. It feels wrong somehow to survive. It's a false guilt, but one all of us share in this time.”
He waited a bit, letting them absorb that. “But as you know, the war is far from over. We have seen the face of the enemy; we know what they are capable of now. We have a lot to do. Tonight we mourn our friends and comrades. We must keep them in our hearts until space gives back her dead.”
The pallbearers took charge; all but two were from Firefly's company. They smartly came to attention, folding the flags as a row of Marines snapped off three blank shots into the air. More than one person flinched at the bark of thunder in the compartment, but no one complained.
Each of the flags of the Federation were folded carefully and neatly into a triangle, and then those that could were presented to surviving friends or family members of the deceased. The few that remained were taken by the commanding officers of the ships that had deceased crew members.
When the last was presented Sprite signaled the bugler through his implants. He stepped forward smartly and brought the shiny brass bugle to his lips. The Admiral saluted and held the salute. The assembly did as well.
Saluting with the company, they watched, some tearfully as the bugler played Taps. Then the pallbearers took up positions along side each casket and marched them in lock step unison to the waiting launcher. One by one they passed through the temporary lock and were fed out in a steady stream into the void. Air and water degassed from around each, in a glittering temporary shroud that sparkled when sunlight hit it. After a few moments the caskets were gone, claimed by the darkness.
---( | ) --- ( | )---
Renee watched the ceremony with the other officers in the back row. Roughly 45 percent of the crew on the two corvettes and Bounty had paid in blood for the freedom of the slaves rescued here in this system. Fortunately, only nineteen had had lost their lives.
The former slaves were grateful she knew, she'd heard about it, but did they really understand? Some obviously did, four hundred had signed on, and hundreds more still too sick or weak had indicated they wanted to join as well. Bounty and the crews of Phoenix, Lassie, Echo, and Romeo had paid in blood indeed, but it was a price they were willing to pay. She couldn't fault them on that—them or the Admiral.
She'd finally gotten the whole story and had been amazed and astonished by his audacity. It had been quite the adventure to take a pirate ship from the inside. She still had a hard time coming to grips with it. She knew the pirates who had survived the experience probably did as well. Apparently the Admiral had sent them with a recaptured ship to Hoshi's World. She briefly wondered if any survived. Then she shrugged mentally, looking at Lieutenant Commander Ian McGuyver and Sindri. Both men were stiff in their formal uniform, still recovering, but grimly determined. It wasn't like she cared about the comfort of the pirates, she thought darkly. These people, her new colleagues, they'd suffered incredibly under the bastards’ care. If a few Horathians were roughed up a bit, or hell, spaced, she wasn't going to cry any crocodile tears. She returned her attention to the here and now as people presented themselves to her to shake hands and give thanks. She smiled politely and as warmly as she could.
---( | ) --- ( | )---
Jethro attended the funeral as a Marine honor guard. “This is happening entirely too often,” a Marine said. Jethro didn't recognize the human. He had been wounded, his skin was shiny on the right side of his face and he was missing an ear. Most of the hair on that side was gone. His right shoulder was bandaged under his uniform.
“Such is war,” Jethro said in an aside. “People die in war. I agree though; I'll never get used to it,” he said softly.
The new Marine shot him a sidelong look. Jethro flicked his ears. “Think of it this way. Yes, we lost some good people, but the enemy lost a lot more. I'm still not okay with it, but at least they killed a lot of the bastards before they died.”
The other Marine nodded and then settled down at his post.
Chapter 15
“Admiral, a word?” Jethro asked coming up to the Admiral.
Irons turned and then smiled slightly at the panther. “Well, look at you, a Sergeant. Sergeant McLintock. I'm proud of you,” he said.
Jethro felt a thrill at that. He came to attention.
“I still haven't caught up on what's been going on in Pyrax. I did catch the part about setting up the base on Agnosta though.”
“Yes, sir. I was a Drill Instructor there briefly.”
“I see. And Gunny Schultz is there now?” Jethro nodded. “Good.”
“Sir,...I've had some issues—medical and well, classified issues. Commander Firefly stated I needed to speak to you about them.”
“Me,” the Admiral mused thoughtfully. “About?”
“Sir, I... I recovered my ancestor Tobias's suit. I...know what it is. I know some things about it, and I've guessed its link to me. However, there are some health issues.” He frowned and rubbed the small of his back. “Sometimes painful ones.”
Sprite linked to the Sergeant's implants and interrogated the system to recover his health files. However much to her ire Defender intervened and blocked her. He redacted everything except the Sergeant's basic vital signs.
“Really? Why did you do that?” Sprite demanded.
“He's doing what he is supposed to, Commander,” Irons replied. He pinged the Sergeant and then blinked when an echo returned. He pursed his lips thoughtfully. The echo was definitely an AI, a cadre AI.
“Is...what was that?” Sprite demanded.
“Classified,” Irons replied curtly. “Even beyond your level, Commander,” he said sternly.
“Seriously?” Sprite asked, surprised and a bit taken aback.
“Yes,” Irons replied. He turned outward to Jethro. “Sergeant, I
can't explain now. I'm not certain what I am allowed to tell you,” he said, noting Defender's red eyes.
“It's cadre sir. I know that. Synthetic biology. A biological computer of some sorts growing inside me and linked to the armor,” Jethro said. “It's primitive. It's taken control of the suit on its own.”
Irons felt his lips pucker slightly in a smile. “It seems you've guessed the broad strokes. You want me to fill in the blanks?”
“If you can, sir. I'd also like to know if it was why I was allowed to become a Marine, sir,” he said with just a hint of curiosity and resentment.
The Admiral pondered that as he received a report from Firefly. It was encrypted. He set it aside; he'd read it later. “You impressed me young man, even before I knew your heritage. I showed you the door, you came through it on your own, and you've done well. I'm a bit busy, but I can block some time out on the transit back.”
“Back?”
“I'm not ready for that to be brooded about. I can transfer you to Maine, and we can discuss it.”
“Sir,...what about my squad?” Jethro asked warily.
“Just you. Your squad is needed to cover the prisoners and help run the captured ships,” Irons replied, studying the young man. He knew he had just put the young cat in an unenviable place, torn between curiosity and concern about his own body and his friends and comrades. Duty.
“Sir,...my place is with my squad. We were hammered in Antigua, and I've got some really green rookies still.”
“I understand. Well, there will be other times, Sergeant. I will make certain of that,” Irons replied with a nod.
“Thank you, sir. That's all I ask, honesty,” Jethro said, coming to attention and saluting.
The Admiral returned the salute and then broke it. “Dismissed,” he said softly. Jethro nodded once and then returned to his post.
---( | ) --- ( | )---
A week after the battle four hundred of the twelve hundred former slaves were sufficiently rested and recovered enough to demand a return to duty or even to enlist in the military. The Admiral had anticipated the interest and had set up recruiters with the AI to interview candidates. They worked closely with the medics, who were not at all certain most of the people would be ready to serve.