One of Reuben’s electronics experts was a mathematician who had recently graduated from Federation Institute of Technology. Joshua had recruited him for munitions, but Reuben had “stolen” him to work on the navigation systems. The man had a real name, but everyone knew him as “J T” because he would answer to little else. He had a speech impediment as a result of his jaw being broken by an abusive father and spoke in cryptic phrases when he spoke at all. His ability to communicate in written media was excellent and more than made up for any deficiency in his speech. Reuben had elected to give up his seat on the bridge to J T since J T had done the hard work of developing software that calculated the mechanics of the comet diversion flights.
Almost holding their collective breaths, they watched as the comet’s leading edge passed exactly where the calculations said it would go. They could see meteors hitting the atmosphere and burning out before they hit the ground. Too early to breathe a sigh of relief, they hoped they had done the job and saved the planet. In the silence of subdued breathing and slow movements, J T said, “No geosync this side.”
“Is that a question or a statement?” Reuben asked.
“Question. Strange readings. Geosync over prison.”
Everyone on the bridge focused their attention to an eddy J T highlighted with his cursor on the display. “Disturbance here. Geosync.”
Suddenly Faye Anne screamed. Everyone turned to her. “There’s a geosynchronous monitoring satellite over the prison. It’s so heavily stealthed we never spotted it and I forgot about it.”
“Where exactly?” Rachel shouted at Faye Anne.
“Here.” J T pointed at a bright flash on the display that was probably the satellite’s reactor detonating. “Gone now. Pieces.”
As the ship’s crew watched horrified, the debris from the head-on collision between the satellite and what J T estimated to be a rock a thousand meters across and the subsequent detonation of the satellite’s fission reactor cascaded through the comet. Other pieces of rock collided with the debris from the initial collision and slowed enough to be caught in the planet’s gravitational field. In a matter of a few minutes, a torrent of debris was arcing its way spiraling downward to the planet’s surface. What had appeared to be a near miss only a few moments ago was now a certain catastrophe.
“Warn them!” Rachel shouted.
“Settlements grave danger!” J T shouted.
The comm officer called to his counterpart on the surface alerting him to what had happened.
“All ships prepare to launch!” Rachel called.
“What do we do with the prisoners?” Faye Anne asked.
“They’ll have to be part of the rescue.”
“Are you sure?”
“We can’t afford to leave personnel here to guard them and they could take the ship if we leave the guard short handed. They come with us.”
“Are you going?” Faye Anne asked.
“And you’re coming with me.”
“I suppose you’re right about the prisoners. Aren’t you afraid they’ll escape?”
“We have bigger problems to deal with than a hundred prisoners. We’ll move them in small groups and supervise them with as many of our people as we can.” Rachel ordered a courier sent to Eretz asking for help.
As soon as the rain of debris from the comet abated, the rescue ships headed for the surface. They had watched pieces fall from the sky and seen the impacts, but nothing prepared them for what they found on the surface. A rock J T estimated to be three hundred meters across as it fell through the atmosphere landed in the bay around which the planet’s biggest settlement was built. It had hit the surface at a shallow angle and the damage was much more severe on one side of the bay than the other. The water rushing out from the impact leveled everything within a kilometer of the shore. Everything was covered with deep mud. The council building which had sat on a spit of land in the bay was completely gone. Pieces of the building were strewn as far as ten kilometers away. The tiny piece of ground where it had sat was submerged. The walls of the prison where Curra had been held could only be seen as shadows beneath the murky water.
Rachel and Faye Anne were in one of the first ships to unload onto the muddy shore. The level of devastation took their breaths away. They surveyed the barren landscape and divided the P A F ship’s crew who were her prisoners into teams to look for survivors. Rachel and Faye Anne took one team and headed inland. At the edge of the wall of mud they found intact buildings pushed off their foundations. They found a few survivors who had been in the upper floors of their houses when the wave struck and had managed to ride out the torrent.
As they approached one house, they heard screaming. Expecting to see someone mortally injured, they rounded the corner to see a man on his knees holding a woman’s body. His wails of anguish could be heard from quite a distance. As they approached, they could see through the mud that the woman’s arm had been ripped off along with flesh that extended to her waist. Water flowed around them on its drive to return to the bay carrying blood and body parts as it passed.
Beyond the man and woman was the body of a young boy broken in half around a tree. His head was submerged in the swirling water.
Rachel turned to Faye Anne and said, “You did this. This is your fault.”
Rachel leaned to comfort the man when one of the prisoners said, “Captain, don’t. When he’s done grieving and decides he wants to live, he’ll find us. Better if we don’t interrupt him.”
They spent the remainder of the daylight pulling bodies out of the mud. The few survivors they found were in little better shape than the man wailing in anguish in the mud. After darkness fell, they continued to search by the pale light of the moon until even that was not enough to continue. Exhausted, they gathered at a prearranged meeting place and fell asleep on the ground.
Rachel had left three communications officers on the ship. All other personnel were deployed to the surface. The largest settlement had suffered the most damage and the suffering there was greater than the ship’s personnel could handle. They made no attempt to spread their attentions beyond the single largest settlement. The medical suites were designed to detach from the ship and be carried down in shuttles. The shuttles made several trips ferrying down the medical facilities and personnel. The flat area by the bay where they set up quickly took on the look of a combat mobile hospital.
Their progress was hampered by the smoke from the fires that blanketed the planet. The precious trees that were their main export product burned ferociously. The oils that made them so lustrous also made them extremely flammable. Some of the meteors had landed in the forests and had ignited immense conflagrations. The smoke from the fires, coupled with the steam from the meteors that had landed in the water, produced torrential rains that drenched the planet and made supply trips back to the ship treacherous.
As the first week progressed, survivors from inland descended the mountains to help recover their friends who lived closer to the shore. Captain Bozak appeared three days after the initial strike with news that the majority of the mountain villages had escaped unscathed. There had been some damage, but no loss of life as far as he was aware. The other two large settlements had also suffered minor damage and some loss of life, but they had not been hit nearly as hard as the one central settlement that had held the seat of government.
Rachel was in frequent communication with the ship. The prison had survived intact although there was no communication with it. Scans from space showed that the other areas that had been hit were beginning recovery efforts on their own. By the end of the first week, the ship’s sensors reported that the snow melt due to the fires at the edge of the ice sheets was starting to inundate the mountain rivers and streams. Some of the mountain lakes were in danger of overflowing their banks. Rachel alerted Captain Bozak of the emerging situation and he moved his family and those who were near lakes and streams to higher ground.
Fifty kilometers above the flood plain on which the prison had been
built a natural dam that held a mountain lake in place broke suddenly releasing the water from the lake into the rivers below. The lake had been twenty kilometers long by ten kilometers wide. As the water rushed through the break, it widened and deepened the channel. Within an hour of the break’s initial occurrence a wall of water and debris fifty meters high slammed through the valleys and canyons that had been carved by the stream over eons of geological time. As the water picked up speed, it carried with it rocks, soil, trees and detritus of millennia of undisturbed geography.
The communications technicians remaining on the ship attempted to warn the prison, but it did not respond to their calls. As they watched the juggernaut of wet debris careen downhill toward the prison, they realized that even if they had attempted to evacuate the prison, there was no way anyone could have gone far enough away to avoid the fate that befell them. The face of the deluge hit the prison walls with enough force to lift the entire prison off its foundation and topple it over. Like a child’s beach bucket left to the incoming tide, the water tossed the building and crushed it beneath the weight of its advance.
When the water receded, no trace of the prison could be seen. All that was left was a smear of mud extending well out into the ocean.
Rather than allow an accumulation of water like the one that destroyed the prison to occur in the lakes above the settlements, the engineers arranged an array of pipes and hoses to siphon the water out beyond the obstructions and control the flow. They decided that destroying the obstructions would weaken them the point that they would cause exactly the type of catastrophe they were trying to prevent. Water rushed through the pipes drained the lakes faster than the snow run off filled them and they stayed ahead of other potential disasters.
Other lakes in unpopulated areas overflowed and dumped their contents into the oceans. The oceans became clogged with silt. The air across the planet was dark and difficult to breathe due to the number of fires raging unabated through the forests of trees that had grown like weeds.
As the second week ended and the third began, Rachel wondered if they had been abandoned and help would never arrive. She sat on the ground eating the M R E Elvira had thoughtfully brought her when one of the prisoners who had been on her detail the first day sat beside her.
“Captain?”
“Yes?”
“Captain, please look over there.” He pointed at a man sitting on a piece of what had once been a concrete column. He was helping a little girl eat. She was desperately clinging to him as they sat together. “Captain, recognize him? I helped them bury the woman and the boy.”
“Thank you.” The sadness in her eyes was plainly obvious to anyone who cared to look.
“Captain, don’t blame yourself. You did what you could. Nobody I know could’a done better.” He stood and wandered off.
Rachel looked around. This had once been a nice place to live. Maybe someday it would be again, but everything smelled of oily smoke, mud and death. She had failed to prevent the disaster.
Three weeks after the impact, the communications technicians on the ship, who were as exhausted as she was, called to alert Rachel that Federation ships were entering the system. They identified the ships by name and type and stated that the ships had followed proper protocol entering a system not known to be friendly, but not known to be hostile either. The news had a sour taste.
Rachel sought out Captain Bozak to tell him of the impending arrivals. He was no happier about the situation than she was. He quietly left in search of something or someone.
Admiral Sherman arrived with his entourage decked out in their highly polished combat armor. They were greeted by an elderly man in a Federation Admiral’s dress uniform.
“Admiral Sherman, I am Admiral Dimitri Eleftherakis. As the ranking Federation officer on the planet, I am in command of the planet’s military.” Captain Bozak and a platoon of military personnel in combat armor stood behind him.
“Admiral, it is my pleasure to meet you,” Admiral Sherman smiled condescendingly.
“As such,” Admiral Eleftherakis continued. “It is my duty to inform you that your military personnel are not welcome on this planet, however your civilian medical and relief personnel are not only welcome, but we will be prepared to offer citizenship to any civilian who wishes to stay and help complete our recovery. We will recover from this disaster of your making Admiral Sherman.”
“You can’t do this! You have no right!” Admiral Sherman sputtered.
“I can. I do and I am,” Admiral Eleftherakis asserted.
“I am here to collect the prisoners. You will hand them over to me.” He glared at Rachel.
“There are no prisoners here. There are people who are alive. There are people who are dead and there are people who are injured. Many of them may not survive. If you wish to help us with our recovery, your civilians are welcome. The military detachment that came with you is authorized to return the portable medical facilities assigned to the Albert Schweitzer only to the extent that you replace them with like or better facilities until such time as we have procured such facilities on our own or no longer need them. Do we understand each other?”
“Admiral, you are making a grave mistake. These are dangerous criminals you are harboring.”
“Wyatt Earp was little better than a hired gunslinger and is thought of as one of the best law enforcement officers of American History. Admiral, be a good little boy and toddle off. Oh, before I forget, I will be recommending Captain Solomon-Cohen’s entire crew, military and civilian for commendations and medals. Any of them who wish to stay, including their military personnel, will be granted citizenship as soon as we have a government in place to do so.”
The old man turned to Rachel. “Captain Solomon, Captain Bozak has told me about you. Please do not think of the ten thousand who died. Think of the forty thousand who lived. For without your efforts and those of your crew, we all would have died.”
Rachel cast her eyes down. “Thank you, sir. You are most kind.”
DEPLOYMENT - CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
OVER HALF OF THE CIVILIANS who had shipped out on the Albert Schweitzer elected to stay behind and continue with the planet’s recovery.
Admiral Sherman warned the military personnel that if their enlistment contracts were not due to expire and they elected to stay, they would be treated as deserters.
Admiral Sherman’s people assisted with the return of the operating suites and medical facilities to the Albert Schweitzer. They replaced the portable units with more permanent facilities better suited to the conditions on the planet’s surface. Relations between the two crews were frigid at best although both sides maintained professional demeanor. The restoration of the facilities to the ship proceeded without incident. When the task was complete, Admiral Sherman and his military personnel left. His civilian detachment remained to assist with the relief effort.
Within hours of Admiral Sherman’s departure, a fresh contingent of relief personnel arrived in the form of a fleet of “Sisters of Mercy” ships. Operating with the financial backing of the Catholic Church and supported with the full political weight of the Pope in Rome, the Sisters were one of the few relief organizations who were welcome wherever they landed. The nun who, what seemed like forever ago, had arrived on the Swordsman installation that the Solomon family had attacked as part of another rescue mission, led the current operation. She greeted Rachel like a friend she had not seen in a very long time. Rachel extended the nuns the courtesy of a complete briefing by her staff, an honor she had not offered Admiral Sherman.
When Rachel and her crew prepared to leave a few days later, a contingent of nuns requested a short meeting with Rachel and her command staff. When they had gathered in the galley, the head nun addressed the group.
“Charity spans religions and cultures. Those who could help those in need have done so throughout history. We too seldom recognize the importance of the strong helping the weak. Therefore, in recognition of your service to the people of t
he planet Everest, the Pope has requested that I send you his personal gratitude. He and the Cardinals will offer prayers for your safety and the continuation of your successes. By order of the Pope, I present you these letters of appreciation.”
She presented each of them a scroll wrapped with a golden ribbon. “You have worked hard and deserve rest on your journey home. May blessings follow you all of your days.”
Rachel lingered another day before getting under way. The Sisters were the most experienced disaster recovery team in the Federation and took leadership of the activities on the planet’s surface. When Rachel was sure her team was no longer needed, she “raised the anchor” and headed out.
The trip home took longer than the trip out because instead of running at one G of acceleration, they coasted home at a relaxed three quarters of a G in order to minimize the stress on the ship’s damaged parts. In spite of the glowing words from the nuns, nothing anyone could do could lift Rachel out of the gloom that settled over her once the ship jumped into hyper drive. The crew took to avoiding her. Even the bridge crew and the people Rachel considered her “core group”, Isaac, Wendy, Joshua, Reuben, Suwanee, Rashi, Esther and Mimi, many of whom had known her as a teenager, stayed out of her way. Two days before they were due to arrive at Eretz, Rachel pulled Faye Anne aside.
“Faye Anne. Find out for sure where the slavers took my cousins. I told you what we think about where they are, but I want you to verify it. When we get home, find them.”
“But…”
“Faye Anne, that is an order. It is a lawful order by a lawfully appointed officer. I want a specific piece of information. What I do with that information is none of your business.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Thank you.”
No welcoming committee greeted them at Eretz. The ship docked as before and as many of the crew as could be spared were given shore leave on the planet’s surface. The people that Rachel considered her “core group” stayed with the ship to tend to its re-supply and repairs.
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