Shiver Me Timbers

by Chris Hechtl

  “Ah. Just like that tin can reportedly escorting their hospital ships. The bitch shouldn't have sent them out with so little escort,” he said with a shake of his head. He grinned suddenly. It wasn't a particularly nice grin. “We'll just have to educate her on that error,” he said.

  There was a soft guttural chuckle from the bridge watch.

  <()>^<()>

  Three days later the cruiser had fallen into the trap. The squadron and CEVs had set up a kill basket with the cruiser in the center. No matter which directions he broke they'd have at least two ships to be able to engage her.

  When the captain recognized that it was time to end the game, he called the cruiser with an offer to parlay. He was quite frankly surprised that the enemy captain responded. “This is Captain Obadiah Rogers of the Federation Navy to incoming hostile ship. I'm ordering you to heave to and surrender.”

  Captain Fitzgerald heard the recording and snorted. His people had set up an air gap on his communications per the admiral's orders so there was a minor delay. His people had confirmed a hacking attempt. He shook his head and then decided to have a bit of fun with the enemy ship.

  “You're a pissant corvette! I don't care what you've got on board that ship; you're toast! I want you to heave to and surrender, or I'll blow your ship and then take my time with the rest! I only need one,” he growled, pounding one meaty fist into the other meaningfully. “If I were you, I'd be the one surrendering or running.”

  “Who said anything about just having a corvette?” Captain Rogers asked whimsically as the rest of the warships cut their stealth. “The cards seem to have changed in my favor, Captain. Funny how that sort of thing happens,” he said maliciously.

  The Neogorilla pirate captain blinked and then instantly cut the channel and ordered an abrupt course change.

  “Sir, the signal has been cut,” the ship's A.I. reported. “No joy on the cyberattack.”

  “They are running,” CIC warned. “Course is directly away from us and back to the Mykonos jump point. They'll be in extreme range in seven minutes.”

  “No surprise there. Well, they had their chance. Guns, on your call. Take them out,” Captain Rogers ordered.

  <()>^<()>

  Helen read the after action report and smiled in satisfaction. The cruiser had been destroyed; there hadn't been any survivors. There was little wreckage of the ship to sort through.

  Pity about that.

  “They tried to run, couldn't. They tried to fight and couldn't do that well either. The quote goes that you feel sorry for them in the end, but I honestly can't say that. They are fleas and parasites, so it was like stepping on a cockroach,” Captain Rogers stated. The convoys were returning to the planet while the warships wrapped up their SAR duties.

  “And one less cockroach to deal with,” the commodore agreed with a nod. “But, it does open up a can of worms. A corvette isn't enough to defend this system.”

  “No, ma'am. The ansible alone is a big prize.”

  “That it is. So, I think we're going to detach a cruiser. Didn't I hear that there is a pirate jump line to Tau-1929 too?”

  “Yes, ma'am?”

  “Well, I'd love for you to deploy a ship there too, but I think we should order the corvette to deploy there. That way Delos and Samos has some coverage.”

  “Ma'am, shouldn't we run this up the flagpole with Commodore Logan?”

  “I'll square it with her, don't worry. Just remember, the last order from a senior officer applies.”

  “Aye aye, ma’am.”

  “Make it a light cruiser if you can, Obadiah,” the commodore stated. “I think that Shelby will be counting on your heavy hitters.”

  “Aye, ma'am.”

  <()>^<()>

  Tau-9SC441

  Captain Naomi Vasper checked the status board, and then the log. They hadn't had the time or ability to outfit Félicité with an A.I. like she'd hoped so her crew had to make do. At best the prize ship had a basic smart system. Her software had been cleared of viruses, but it wasn't very impressive. The lack of an A.I. was probably for the best given that the ship was going to eventually be rebuilt. No doubt her computer hardware would be yanked and given to ONI to play with while a new one was grafted in.

  But that was a problem for another time. For the moment she had to deal with her prize ship's slow speed. They hadn't been able to make many repairs on top of the basic work to get the ship functional again. They hadn't touched the hyperdrive at all, just confirmed it was functioning and then left it alone. Which was one reason she was barely pushing the mid-alpha octaves.

  Which meant the cruiser was going to toddle along in the wake of the convoys at her best speed. There was no point risking her by pushing her beyond her limits. And her crew was having all they could do to keep up with her day-to-day operations and maintenance. There was no way they could pull a rabbit out of the hat and find something to tweak to squeeze a bit more speed out of the old girl.

  But, they'd get there eventually. And, she didn't have to stop for prolonged layovers to help with the people on the planet. She might even be able to catch up to the convoy if they stopped somewhere long enough.

  <()>^<()>

  Sparkling Seas

  Janice shook her head as she read the status report. The return of Sybil Harper had pushed her into moving on. Sybil Harper's report had emphasized that someone had carried the plague to Purple Skies. Sybil Harper's medics had given them the data on how to make the cures and as much medical material as the ship could handle before they'd left.

  She'd also received a courier with an update from the capital. Shelby had left orders for the courier to remain with her convoy until she needed to contact the capital. In her dispatches she'd stated that she intended to send a follow-up mission, probably a smaller one when one or both of the Rho Mercy Missions got to the capital.

  She checked the countdown clock—five more minutes. Five more minutes and it would be her ship's turn to take the lead. She was taking Captain Zlanka on ahead as point after receiving Loni's report. The Neochimp skipper had emphasized that the people needed help, far more help than his cruiser could handle. She'd agreed. She'd even considered taking one of the hospital ships with her but had stepped on the impulse firmly. Her ship could squeeze a few more octaves out than the Liberty class. Hell, an entire band if she pushed her people. She just might do that. The need of the people on that world was strong.

  It was also why she'd had her ship loaded up heavily with as much medical supplies as they could carry. Also stun weapons since Loni had reported that many of the afflicted natives had gone primal. There was something of a war going on along with the medical crisis.

  The good news was whoever had taken the plague to the planet had moved on south with it. More than likely they were dead in hyper, but she'd have to check. The bad news was that the rest of the mission would be at least a week behind her. She'd be all on her own for at least ten days before they got to her and were in orbit and in a position to help effectively.

  Chapter 21

  Harlot's Dream

  Commodore Gena Drufeather doubled over in a coughing fit as the crud in her lungs threatened to drown her. When she could finally breathe again, she sat back up, exhausted. Too exhausted to even get a drink.

  The crud had hit everyone hard. She'd been one of the last afflicted with whatever the hell it was. She'd been forced to barricade herself into her office on her own life support in order to avoid exposure with anyone else while the entire base tore itself apart. Madness had stalked the halls; people who weren't sick had been going insane. In some parts of the base if you even looked sick, they spaced you.

  And then there were the ships. The ships had fled when they'd realized the base was cursed with the crud. No doubt they were spreading it further, if they even survived to get out of hyper. She wasn't sure if she could wish them luck or not. She felt the tickle in her chest, the pain of her abused and tortured muscles. She laid back, every fiber of her being aching
.

  She didn't care. Not really.

  Everyone who could run had done so by now. She'd realized there weren't any functional ships left. Even a few of the prize ships in prize row had been jacked by desperate idiots. She wasn't sure where they'd end up if at all.

  Those that remained were the poor, the stupid, or the terrified. Some were human but not all. The humans and some apes tried to keep things running but it was getting harder to do every damn day. Her watch bills were wrecked. She sometimes had no one covering the power plant for an entire shift. The same for life support. They could only go on for so long before something bad really bit them in the ass.

  She shook her head wearily but then stopped herself when the room spun. She fought the urge to vomit, pushing the nausea down. As usual she lost the fight. Luckily she'd gotten the trash can in time.

  When she was finished, she rinsed it out to get rid of the smell and then took a long drink. It helped clear the taste. Surprisingly every time she barfed she felt better for a brief period.

  Damn whoever had brought the crud to her doorstep. Damn them to hell and back. Only sheer cussed willpower was keeping her alive. If they didn't figure something out soon, she might as well eat her own pulser and get it over with.

  Her eyes turned longingly to the bottom drawer in her room. It was tempting, very tempting. More tempting every night. She knew she was running low on food. The water had cut out last night. She had a couple jugs stored and her liquor cabinet, but eventually …

  She shook her head. She just needed to survive it. Get through it, whatever it was, and her immune system would have a way to stop it from hitting her again.

  But oh how she'd love to get her hands on the bastards who'd brought it to her!

  <()>^<()>

  Dead Man's Hand

  Lieutenant Chuck Ubber shook his head as he logged the latest inventory. He was fully aware that many of the senior officers were in various states of despair and frustration over being trapped. He was too. They were drawing down on the ship's ability to pay for goods and services. Dangerously so. Based on his last estimate, they could remain in port another six months before they had to leave.

  Had to leave. But where they could go was anyone's guess. The skipper refused to re-write his orders to leave the damn crippled pig of a Tauren freighter behind.

  He did know one thing; he needed to stay as far out of the skipper's sights as possible. The skipper was beyond being in a foul mood. Scuttlebutt said he was handing out harsher and harsher punishments for minor transgressions the crew got in trouble for.

  He shook his head. The captain wasn't the only one frustrated; the crew was too. They were trapped on the ship. Booty'licious had her crew going into port, but the captain was holding his crew back. And they were beginning to act out. His landing down on them hard was only burying the resentment not facing it.

  And everyone knew he was taking some of his frustration out on them, which just ramped up the frustration and resentment even more.

  He'd been forced to cut the ration of alcohol last week. The ship's still was down, so that wasn't the helping the situation. Nor was the crappy food he could afford to trade for.

  Something needed to break and soon in his estimation.

  <()>^<()>

  Captain Fisher kept her ears erect with a professional expression even though she was grinning inside.

  She could taste the human captain's intense frustration over the situation she'd engineered. She had no intention of letting him know of course; she was still playing it out.

  “So, no progress at all?”

  “No. My people aren't coders, nor do we have the proper rig to test a node. You and I both know that.”

  “Damn it …,” the human ran a hand through his hair. She could see enough of the background behind him to realize he was in his office bedroom not on the bridge. “What about a swap?”

  “Which node? The nodes are tuned to each other. If I try to swap them, it will mess them up. If we reset them to default, we lose everything the computer had built up to fine tune them.”

  “Can't you copy those files and reinstall them if you put the nodes back?” he demanded.

  “Again, which nodes? We can't even figure out which nodes are the culprits. We know they are in the bow, port side, but not the specific ones. We've narrowed it down to four. But, when we tried taking them out of the loop and bypassing them, we had instability elsewhere,” she said.

  “Damn it!” he snarled.

  “You know how it is, Captain; these things are tricky. Nodes have to be balanced properly. Change one variable and it throws everything else down the line off. I'm afraid we need a specialist and special rig to get this sorted out. Sorry.”

  <()>^<()>

  Captain Chen fumed silently as the connection was terminated. At least he'd chosen to hold the call in his office rather than on the bridge where there would be witnesses.

  He wanted to throw something in frustration but didn't. He'd done that before, and it might have helped him vent but hadn't done the picture frame any good, nor had it mattered in the end.

  Seydlitz was stuck. He was beyond exasperated. He'd sent his best engineers over to Booty'licious; none of them had come up with a fix.

  He scrubbed his temples and then tried to figure something else out. The base was useless; the few techs they'd brought over had even less of an education on force emitters and hyperdrives than his own people. The only thing his people had said consistently was to try taking a node out and swapping it to see if it narrowed down the problem. But they'd have to do it more or less at random, and a node swap wasn't easy. First, you had to have the parts. Tuning the new node was also a headache, but they had to pass the first hurdle.

  And since the ship was Tauren, they needed a Tauren node. None were in the inventory of the suppliers on the base, so he had to find it elsewhere or trade for it. Unfortunately, the quartermasters had tried to trade for it with the few ships in port but all had come up empty.

  So, the place of last resort was the boneyard again. He went back to the list hunting for a compatible ship. Unfortunately, the list was far from complete and had been picked over several times by the engineers.

  When he thought he'd found something, he came out and hunted a tech down. The chief was busy overseeing maintenance, so the captain ran his idea past CIC to at least find the ship and see if it was of the right type.

  “Sir, they've most likely picked it ….” A glare shut the rating up. “Aye, sir,” she said, coughing into her fist. “We'll get right on that,” she said, poking her techs into action.

  He'd noted that most of the warships had already been picked over, the few that had been there in the first place. Most had been salvaged and restored or transferred to Tortuga. The best prizes had slowly worked their way to Tortuga.

  There were pieces of ships. There wasn't much bigger than a battlecruiser though. They only had one battlecruiser in the boneyard, and she was off limits per the admiral's standing orders. The Tauren ship had already been stripped, no doubt for parts to keep the admiral's personal yacht moving he thought with a nod.

  “Sir, I think we've found what you are after. She's about a hundred thousand tons under Booty'licious's dry weight,” the sensor chief stated, turning to him.

  He leaned over the sensor tech's shoulder to see what she was talking about.

  They didn't have a clean image of the ship; it was obscured by ships nearby.

  He knew it was a shot in the dark. Most likely the nodes were gone. They were rare and therefore highly prized. But he had to try something.

  “Get me a shuttle. Find someone who knows something about nodes, and we'll take another look. Maybe someone left something behind,” the captain said.

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  <()>^<()>

  Tau-G946 Long Sands

  Captain Gutt shook his head in disgust at the gaggle of ships. He was riding shepherd on twenty-eight bumbling prize ships, all loaded with precious
material and people. His beloved Black Corsage was the only warship too, something he hadn't questioned when they'd initially set out.

  They were barely keeping up with him; that bothered him. But they were past the halfway point; if the Feds had wanted to come after him, they would have hit him by now. Which meant he was most likely going to get to the base intact.

  But damn it was taking a long time!

  <()>^<()>

  Doctor Tegan Perez scowled as she tried to squeeze blood from a turnip. The captain and Captain Gutt didn't understand what was involved. That was both good and bad. Their breathing down her neck to demand reports on her progress wasn't helping any. She'd carefully laid out the problem and her needs, but they weren't interested in “excuses” just “results.”

  She didn't have much to work with, just the data from the late Doctor Sho and whatever they had on hand—oh, and the data from Saladin, which was reportedly from the Fed files. She had scads of data. She had data coming out of her ears.

  But, she'd found out that the data wasn't enough.

  First, she had to keep the Fed files and hardware from interfacing with the ship's systems. In fact, the engineers had isolated her entire system. Good in theory but she had only so much processor power.

  Second, she needed to have her people diagnose each plague so they could treat it. She'd laboriously copied that over to a fresh tablet and then distributed it to the medics in the fleet. They now knew what to look for, how to identify some of the plagues, and how to begin the initial treatments.

  Unfortunately, all too many were terminal, which meant they had to give the patient mercy. That brought her back to what the admiral had done in Tortuga. He'd done the right thing in some ways.

  Some ways but not all for those who had been immune she thought with a spat of anger.

  It had surprised her that the population of Long Sands hadn't been infected by the Seydlitz mission. Apparently, the two ships hadn't visited. That was a good sign but frustrating since again she had no samples of the plagues to use.