by Chris Hechtl
“Surviving families are helpful to reconnect and for volunteers. It's a bit overwhelming to think about the scale of this … if your people hadn't been here …,” the guide shook his head.
“I know. We're glad to help. Any sign of genetic damage?”
“That's something of a relief; we've done multiple studies … or I should say your people did. Viruses tend to change the survivor's DNA, but they managed to set up screens for genetic damage. We're still working on it, but we're confident that the mental scars won't be passed on to the next generation.”
“Well, I guess that's some relief,” Helen replied with a nod as she tucked her hands into her smock pockets.
“Moving on …”
<()>^<()>
One week and an hour later the ships broke orbit. One of the couriers put on more speed; she would arrive at the jump point six hours ahead of the rest of the ships and jump out on her own. She was destined to bring news of their arrival to the capital … that was, if they didn't get the news early when the Beta convoy ever showed up.
Commodore Richards had surprised him by insisting a courier be sent to alert the other friendly forces and ultimately the capital of their arrival. He had to agree with her. And the messenger buoy system, though crude and slow, would hopefully keep them apprised of news.
At least until they got a courier back he reminded himself.
Captain Rogers winced slightly at the sunburn on his back and shoulders. He'd had a good time, especially on the beach. It had been a bit cold but the surfing had been nice. So had a lady friend he'd hooked up with in the bar. And they'd both spent a grand evening massaging aloe oil into their mutual sunburns.
“Time to get this show on the road,” he sighed.
To his surprise it hadn't taken long to get who was staying behind squared away. All it had taken was an offhand mention that the cluster was far from secured and that the pirates didn't know that. They might even get more action than the raiders would.
That had shifted the winds and tides of protests almost instantly, which had let up the pressure. After he'd made the selections, he hadn't had to deal with any protests either. He had been forced to sign off on both cruisers getting a healthy dollop of support from the factory ships in the form of spares before they'd left though.
<()>^<()>
Commodore Richards was torn over the departure. They'd made some headway, and she was confident her people had a handle on how to treat the plagues. It was the aftermath that bothered her. Nanotech could only do so much, but it wasn't a cure-all.
The people on the planet would have generations to heal from the scars that had been wrought on them. Some would never fully recover.
But, Captain Rogers was right, they needed to get moving. The suffering was being dealt with in this cluster but the plagues were still spreading. Somehow they needed to get ahead of it. Not only treat the afflicted but cut off the spread. Killing the bastards who were spreading it she'd leave in the hands of Commodore Logan. But she could and would find a way to vaccinate everyone. She'd made sure the local medics had plenty of vaccines and that they'd use them to vaccinate the next generation. They'd assured her that the burnt hand definitely taught best in this case.
Once the ships were underway again, she looked into adapting her active nanotech immune system into something that could be used as a broadband preventive measure and damn the politics involved.
Chapter 7
Tau-1252 Naval Base
Commodore Shelby Logan panted as she finished the last stretch of her workout. She sat up from the bike as she entered the cool-down phase. One hand wiped at her brow with the towel around her neck. The fans just didn't do enough to cool her off, not when she did the Rushmore route.
She appreciated the thoughtful files loaded into the exercise equipment. Having a virtual course was more entertaining than staring at the wall. She just wasn't into the ground routes. Her favorites tended to her spacer roots, like the Rushmore Mobius Route.
The route was as torturous as a hill or mountain route. But the simulation was inside a space colony, complete with some nice space vistas overhead. She liked the nebula one; it was pretty. She had no problems with agoraphobia. A spacer brat through and through, she got a kick out of getting her heart rate up to some good tunes and a beautiful spacescape.
She wiped under her chin and shoulders and stretched her arms a bit. She wasn't stiff, just warm. The last part of the route had been steep requiring her to use the hand pedals as well as the foot pedals.
She looked around the exercise room. There were a few others in at the early hour, not many. Most were jarheads or pilots. Both groups tended to keep fit and not rely on their implants to do the work for them. Which was smart she thought as she got off the bike.
She took a swig of water from her water bottle and then ran the towel over her brow and face again before rubbing some of the sweat out of her hair. She kept the Mobius strips down to just once a week. Rainbow road was even worse than Rushmore. Rushmore was more peaceful and had lest distractions. Who ever thought of having little carts with cartoon characters on a VR track anyway? And the fireworks? Why?
She shook her head as she put the distracting thoughts aside. Whoever had created the scenario was long since dead, so it wasn't like she had anyone to ask anyway.
She continued to stretch and sip her water as she headed to the showers. It only took her a moment to navigate through to the female side. She tossed her dirty hand towel in a bin and then grabbed a fluffy blue towel and the robe hanging from the hook on her locker door and went to shower.
As she finished up showering, she checked herself over. Not bad for a spacer. She knew her looks were only a small part of the reason many of the men and even some of the women in the star system had started to hit on her anytime she went into a civilian port. It had been surprising, and she admitted just a little flattering. Not so much anymore.
She shook her head, spraying water to either side as she thought about her last leave. Men! They think because she's a hero and single that she'd swoon at their feet. Drinking rotgut to get up the courage to ask her out didn't help.
Well, for a few it had helped with their breath. Did they forget dentists existed in their star system? She grimaced at the memory of the flash of one man's teeth. He hadn't taken care of himself and or he'd been in too many bar fights. She'd tried to let him down easy. He'd been like a cute ugly puppy, but it had gone a bit south when he'd gotten a little too persistent for his own good.
Hopefully, after the bruises healed, he'd learned his lesson. Hopefully, though she doubted it.
She washed her hair and then rinsed off and then shut the shower off. A quick spurt with the blowers got the majority of the water off of her and helped to dry her off. The fluffy towel did the rest.
She put her robe on just as a petty officer came in. She smiled politely and padded back to her locker with her soiled outfit under one arm. She dropped it in the dirty laundry with the towel and then went to change.
She'd only been in the civilian port because of the ceremony. Governor Adrienne had been keen to get her opinion about the new asteroid city. It was the first in a series of asteroid clustering in the star system.
She sniffed. City hell. Three rocks that had been towed together and then connected by space struts and transfer tubes wasn't a city. The population topped out under a thousand. Nice sentiment but they had a long ways to go before they were officially a city.
But, Mister Muggs had asked her to put in an appearance for diplomacy sake. She'd agreed since he'd kept the civilians at bay for so long.
Well, mostly at bay she thought as she opened her locker and started to pull her clothes out to get dressed.
“In for a bout, Ma'am?” a soft contralto of an SP asked.
She looked around the locker to Lieutenant Carter and smiled but shook her head. “I just finished up forty-five of cardio. I'm going to go ruin that with something sweet and then hit the hay.”
&n
bsp; “Ah. Well, maybe another time,” the lieutenant said as she started to shuck her uniform. The woman was trim and definitely fit Shelby thought as she returned to her own outfit. “Tired of picking on the jarheads?” she asked.
A chuckle and loud snort answered her.
“I heard that,” someone called from the other side of the lockers. Both women smirked slightly.
Once she was back in her quarters, she ordered a bowl of chocolate ice cream from the food replicator and then curled up on the cushions covering her window bench.
That was something she was getting used to. The window bench had an incredible view of the growing shipyard complex. She adored the view. It was different every day as the ships moved around and the yard returned to its program of expansion. They were setting it up as an inverted Christmas tree, with the spine serving as an anchor point and trunk to run personnel, logistics, and equipment. The point and bulbs at the tip were the fusion reactors and fuel. Then above that, the one lone spoke for the repair and refit slip. Above that, the frigate turned destroyer line. And above that, the much larger cruiser production slip that had just finished construction two weeks ago. It was still being outfitted but the first slip had the first block under construction.
Redesigning the yard and growing it had been a major undertaking once they'd kicked Frigate 6 clear. They were nowhere near finished the new design. Tugs, robots, factory ships, and suited work crews were working on additional lines for each, plus all the infrastructure that supported each line. But it was going to take time before they came into fruition. Each of the production lines had one ship under construction at a time, though she was hoping for more. She also had the missile pod construction center, and the weapon platform construction center in full swing.
Now, if she could just get a handle on the academy she thought in annoyance.
The need for an academy was going to become acute as her force grew; she knew that. It was stupid for her to stop at setting up an OCS course. She needed kids trained from the get-go to be officers. And trained in the proper environment. And she needed proper advanced courses too. It was damn silly and wasteful to ship cadets all the way to Pyrax or Antigua in Rho sector, a journey of over seventeen months one way. Getting them back was just as tortuously long. No, if they were going to continue to grow and expand they needed an academy.
And not just the navy—the Marines too. Plus all of the other training facilities.
But, she had a couple DIs and trainers and that was it. They were barely keeping up with the enlisted training center and the OCS courses at the college. Everyone else was busy.
Granted, at the moment she didn't have a lot of cadets on hand to begin with. The main problem was priorities. She had downgraded the need for the academy in favor of rebuilding and building the weapon to go on the offense.
Which was ironic and put her in a catch 22 position. In order to have the ships, she needed to shift priorities away from the academy. But, in order to man those same ships, she needed the academy opened up soon.
The college that she'd set up was extremely popular with the natives. They were eating it up. Each semester more and more signed up for the various classes.
“Do you need anything else, ma'am?” a familiar soft voice asked.
She broke out of her woolgathering to turn to her steward. She shook her head and silently indicated the ice cream. She withdrew after a moment with a brief nod.
If she'd been trying to burn calories and build muscle, eating a bowl of ice cream wasn't helping. But her implants did a good job of dealing with excess calories anyway. She just liked to keep her muscles and mind in shape by doing regular exercise. Besides, it was a good way to get away from the job and burn off stress she thought with a mental shrug.
She pursed her lips about the number of people she'd seen in the exercise center. She might need to do some judicious prodding to remind her people to keep themselves in shape. They had to occasionally deal with high G activities, not to mention stress. And everyone had to keep up their PT.
She thought about firing off a memo but then gave it up as too much effort for the moment. It would also mean she'd get a response, and then go back and forth creating a lot of fuss over what amounted to a lot of nothing at the moment. Besides, she was supposed to be done with paperwork for the evening anyway.
There was some risk in putting a picket directly in Tortuga. She'd wrestled with the decision and risks involved for a solid week before she'd issued the final orders. She'd had a couple sleepless nights worrying about Demon Chaser but apparently for naught. The pirates had some ships in Tortuga, but apparently, they'd taken their best to come after her. They had ships straggling in and they were working to make repairs to the two ships that had escaped but most of the rest were prize ships or light combatants. Only a handful were heavy cruiser grade.
And none of the ships were up to modern standards she thought. Not that she had any intention of underestimating Ishmael and his ilk. Not if she could help it at any rate.
Now that it was confirmed that the enemy couldn't run her picket down, she was going to settle into cycling a destroyer or light cruiser through to picket Tortuga every three months or so. Demon Chaser had brought back the report of nuclear explosions tearing the primary base apart a week after her arrival in the star system. Her people had cheered at that, but she'd been puzzled. She'd just released the encrypted radio chatter the destroyer had picked up in order to get it broken faster.
On the one hand, she was surprised by the act of self-immolation. She wasn't ready to go after the base, at least not yet. That was why she'd sent in only a tin can to scout; she'd wanted Ishmael to underestimate what she had available. He had overreacted.
It had to be an overreaction. You don't abandon a base like that. You didn't burn it down and salt the ground after you, not at the first sign of an enemy scout. There had been little sign of an evacuation too, which troubled her. It had seemed like an act of spite, but if it had been, it had backfired.
Cut your nose off to spite your face indeed, Ishmael, she thought with a shake of her head. The well-worn rut of what are you up to? Followed that.
It bothered the hell out of her when she wondered about how many slaves had died in that fire. How many prisoners? Did they pull them out and her people just didn't see it? Was she to blame for it by choosing to picket the system? That had given her a couple of sleepless nights. The idea of seeing a frightened child's face being consumed by fire … at least it had been quick.
That thought was cold comfort indeed.
Of course, there might have been a mass exodus prior to the destruction of the base. Somehow she doubted it though. Something just didn't feel right.
Demon Chaser had noted six additional ship arrivals while on station; four of them had been prize ships unfortunately. She didn't want to think about what was happening to any of the survivors on those ships, if any.
Two of the prize ships had departed on the northern exit for parts unknown. Given the jump point they'd used, there was speculation that the two ships were headed to another base that ONI thought was nearby. No doubt they'd loaded up on what they could carry from the base. The warships were still in the system; Black Death was hovering like a crow over the small shipyard and large boneyard.
A lot of sublight traffic had been noted going to and from the yards and orbital warehouses. Even a few of the rocks in the area. No doubt they were pulling what they could in to make repairs and quite possibly reactivate a few of the ship's they'd stockpiled in their bone yard.
Her hot wash indicated she could theoretically bounce them out of the star system. There were no fixed defenses. But she was unsure if there was a BC or another large warship lurking in the star system. Or what Ishmael could activate in the window between her last intel report and the arrival of an offensive force.
After the last battle, she was being cautious. Perhaps too cautious, but you didn't play footsy with a battlecruiser unless you didn't mind losing a few
toes in the process. She wasn't quite there yet. That meant she couldn't send her forces out lightly.
Which made her sometimes regret sending Mahoney, the two converted Liberty hospital ships, two support ships, Janice's Captain Zlanka and Sybil Harper west to deal with the plagues in that direction. Losing the two cruisers had put a dent in her inventory. Regaining Xiphos and Herd Culler when Mercy missions 1 and 2 had returned from Kingdom Come and beyond had helped only slightly to recoup the loss.
Hell, who was she kidding? As if two tin cans and a pair of converted hospital ships were an even trade for two cruisers, even if the cruisers were light cruisers. She shook her head. One of her biggest fears was for Admiral Ishmael to come over the hyper wall with a fleet and blood in his eye.
But, at least Demon Chaser's report had alleviated that concern a little. Also, since Rho Mercy mission 1 was on its way here, they didn't have to worry about outbreaks along their previous line of march. Just in areas they hadn't yet visited.
She'd love to send the ships but didn't want to risk them without at least a cruiser to support them. Shrill Kill's report of her incident proved they needed the firepower to stay safe. And she just couldn't spare it at the moment. So, the two hospital ships could cool their heels and train while they waited on the yard or one of the relief convoys to show up.
She turned her attention to other news. Like the arrival of three couriers with news from home.
Home, she thought moodily. Home had become a bit complicated lately. She wasn't sure if she'd ever see Rho again let alone Pyrax. Not for at least a decade or more. But, she'd known that before she'd taken on the mission. She had no regrets there.
One of the couriers had passed the ansible convoy. They were only a few months out and still on schedule. The other courier had been from the medical convoy with news that Commodore Richards had brought a one-two punch to deal with the plagues. That was intensely welcome on many levels. The commodore was reportedly aboard the second convoy. The second larger convoy, which had absorbed Gamma Convoy, was due in to the Trajin Cluster at any time.