Safety, Chapter 3/9

Chapter 3

11 15 Saturday 14 October 2299.

Monarch Sector, disputed zone, USCS Rolling Thunder, deck #15, security.



“Captain on the deck!” a crewman says as several in the garb of the security staff stop to stand and salute, only because of the unexpected nature of the visit. Blue returns it casually, and the crewmen, cautiously, return to their duties.

Blue navigates the score or so of cubicles and desks built into the bulkheads and deckplates, following the path leading to the Chief’s office at the very back, directly across from the brig, perpendicular to the entrance of the deck. He requests entry to the Chief’s windowless office, and is allowed in after a pause.

“Captain,” Henry says, leaning over his desk, as the others around him stand and salute. Blue again returns it. “These are the people working with me on this case: senior chief Jocelyn Goldberg, second lieutenant Casey Jones, and master at arms first class Saria Hirohito,” Henry says, gesturing to his crew, all of whom are armed. “They know about what’s going on.”

“Then you all know about the technology in use on board,” Blue says as he sits.

“Yes, Sir,” says Jones, a man with a face that makes him look like he should be manning the engine of a locomotive, regulation mustache and clean trimmed hair. “Frankly, it’s amazing. I never thought that I’d live to see it.”

“Me either,” Blue replies. “Henry, did Kennison give you the sensor logs?”

“Yessir. We were just going over them, and here’s what we got:” Henry says, punching some commands into a console on his desk, turning one of the walls in his office into a display, showing the screen he was just leaning over. “Visible light, IR and UV spectra show pretty much as normal at the time in question,” he says, displaying the same on an overlay of the entire ship, appearing as colors indicating intensity, “but in the higher energy spectra, x- and gamma rays, we have this, right before the incident,” he says, changing the chart. The chart is nearly blank, save for reports of trace radiation along the outer bulkhead walls, and a series of intermittent, widely spaced dots that could be construed as a line, made of combined wavelengths of high energy readings. The line seems to originate from an outer area of the port side of the ship, toward the aft, making a beeline to the epicenter of the damage.

“Huh,” is all Blue can voice. “Where does that ray originate from?”

Hirohito, a young woman actually of Western European descent, replies. “I investigated it myself, Sir, and it seems to be just a corridor in the forward areas of deck ten.”

“Well, what do the personnel logs say about that?” Blue asks.

“That’s the thing, Sir,” Henry comments, bringing up another diagram, showing hundreds of dots all across the habitable areas of the ship. “This overlay shows the scanned positions of everyone with a tracer in them. Since that’s everyone… well… just look at it.” The ‘it’ to which Henry is referring is the fact that while the X-rays originate from what appears to be a corridor, no one is logged as being there at the time.

“Damn,” Blue says, observing the hard facts. “So there was a shot fired by someone the Fleet hasn’t tagged.”

“Well, according to the IR,” Henry says as he produces the corresponding overlay, “…here, no one was even near that place at the time in question.”

“Could these documents have been falsified?”

Henry looks directly to his chief cryptological analyst for the answer. “Casey?” He asks.

Jones responds in his thick, deep cadence: “In theory, yes. In practice, not a chance. Falsifying hundreds of threads of constantly measured sensor records would be a Herculean task to say the least, and to me, all these look to be in perfect order. Yes, it is possible to falsify such things, but in this case, and in such short time, it did happen the way you see it here.”

“Okay,” Blue continues, and pauses to think. “Well, it couldn’t be a Yvellian,” he concludes. While they may be cold-blooded, the clothing they wear is designed to provide them with exothermic energy, normally through electric or chemical heaters. In effect, the normal, cold-blooded, clothed Yvellian radiates more heat than your average human.

“Unless…” Hirohito begins, speaking for the first time. “Could he be using an IR masking heat suit?”

“Nah,” Henry replies. “Too much bulk. With their build and the necessary equipment for that system…” he shakes his head. “…he’d never be mobile enough. Besides, have a look at this,” he says, pulling up the motion sensor overlay, setting it into motion for the three frames per second before, during, and after the shot was fired. The aft area reveals a great deal of motion, up into the red levels, then sensory cutoffs, but absolutely nothing in the corridor. “No one was there.”

“One more thing; our intel was very specific on what they’re capable of with the teleporters, that they can’t yet send anything much larger than an ammo box, let alone anything alive,” Blue adds. “If he was Yvellian, then he’s very good. So good, in fact, that he can evade discovery of an entire destroyer crew and her computers, and yet, a soldier that his handlers would want floating inside a debris field. It has to be someone from Bernhard’s Pass. Speaking of which, I count eighty-nine persons from BP not on your security staff, which I know is solid.”

“Yes, we’ve come up with the same list, Sir,” Hirohito says after idly smoothing her regulation-length blonde hair, neatly tied at the back of her head. “We’ve only managed to account for the whereabouts of fifteen of them so far, Sir,” she says, then sighs audibly, betraying her exhaustion.

“Is there a problem, crewman?” Blue asks, somewhat offended at her demeanor, his keen sense of observation easily identifying Hirohito’s weariness. For her part, Hirohito perks up.

“Nosir. Sorry, Sir.”

Henry speaks out on her behalf, before Blue can say anything else: “We’ve all been exasperated by this thing, cap’n. The discussion came up about those top-of-the-line internal sensors installed on all the newer destroyers;” he says. “They can immediately differentiate from among all the tracers on the ship, and attach a number to each individual call signal, not just the location beacons. Did you know that the individual signals get massed under our system, too?”

“Was that supposed to be a feature?”

“No Sir. When a couple of tracers get too close, their signals disappear into one large blob on the scanners. During the time frame, we’re missing a count of thirty, but all of them could have been in one area or the other. It’d really be so much easier on all of us if we could account for everyone at once, to see who is where they’re supposed to be.”

“I sympathize with you,” Blue says to them, “but we can’t let ourselves to fall prey to our frailties. We have to maintain security on this investigation, for the safety of this ship, and security requires the utmost attentiveness. One breach of protocol, and we’re all as good as dead,” Blue says in as deep, morose a voice as he can muster. “Is that clear?”

Assents from all four assembled.

“Good. Saria, how long have you been on shift?”

“Sixteen hours, Sir. Since before the shot.”

“You’re relieved,” Blue commands.

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Just get some rest, sailor,” Blue says, the sympathy barely palpable in his meaning, but present. “Be back on shift in eight hours, clear?”

“Aye, aye,” she says, saluting. Blue returns, and she slinks out.

“How about the rest of you?”

Henry answers for all of them. “We’ll be fine, Sir.”

“Exhaustion does no good,” Blue says, quoting a proverb from his mentor, “so, try to keep on your sleep shifts, okay? Now, have we figured out what happened to the shields?”

“I talked to commander Wright; he’s got two engineers with another of my staff rooting through the aft defense control systems. He told me that the power readings indicate that something was draining the systems at the time, but they have yet to find a problem related to the generator crystals,” Henry says. A ship of the Fleet generates added defense by charging extremely large, flat crystalline structures grafted on to her wings with vast amounts of power from storage capacitors located across the ship, spaced to prevent a cascade failure. The charged crystals generate EM fields designed to repulse, deactivate and destroy inbound objects and to dampen inbound energy.

“Make sure they keep at it.

“Aye Sir.”

“How many of us are on the in with this thing?”

“The people in this room, Saria, commander Tharsis, commander Wright, chief Kennison, and five of my men are out there, doing interviews. That’s thirteen total. Wright’s men don’t know anything more than that they’re looking for something that could interrupt shielding.”

Thirteens, Blue thinks. Sportsmen of all sorts are often superstitious, and Blue really isn’t much of an exception. Sabotage on Friday the thirteenth. Thirteen people investigating. I don’t like this omen. Too many people; Command would have my head for this, he realizes. He can’t possibly allow himself another participant to make it an even fourteen, not for a superstition. That’s another possible leak, another opportunity for things to go wrong, and he sure as hell can’t take anyone out of the presence of this pandora’s box. “Let’s keep it at thirteen.”

“Aye Sir.”

“Is there anything else?”

Henry thinks a moment, still leaning over his desk. Finally, he shakes his head. “I don’t believe so, Sir.”

“Keep me updated,” Blue says. “Carry on.”

“Sir!” They say, saluting. Blue again returns the salutes, exiting the office.

Safety, Chapter 2/9

Chapter 2
10 44 Saturday 14 October 2299.
Monarch Sector, disputed zone, USCS Rolling Thunder, deck #10, conn.

Blue returns to the conn, bathed in pulsing Klaxon noise. He stands next to the digital map table, and watches the main viewer.

“Status report, and kill that noise,” he commands, calmly.

“Hull integrity is moderately compromised in the upper aft sectors,” the eighteen-year-old prodigy of a Corps Chief Tactical Officer, lieutenant Philip Vaughn, reports. “The shields are at full charge capacity and cyclically discharging. Scope is clear and baffles report no unusual activity.”

“General quarters in effect. Weapons operable, computer systems online, engines, life support, damping fields, and ZPMF all nominal, reactors are at seventy-five percent of capacity, and aft sensors have just completed calibration procedures. Hull maintenance reports severe collateral damage in aft sectors L, M and N, decks four, five and six. Temporary repairs to be effected in twenty-eight hours,” Roger Kahn, the graying, middle-aged, full lieutenant Chief of Operations reports.

“Two-zero-decimal-six-one-niner AU to waypoint five, all ahead flank,” the chief at Helm, Roger Fox, says. “Thirty-four minutes, twelve seconds to turn… mark.”

“Radio and gravimetric communication silence in effect. All communications weaponry appears to be operating within normal perameters. Nothing to report, no contacts,” reports senior chief Henry White. Though a younger gentleman, his life revolves around audio of all kinds, so much so that he managed to attain his post and rank as Chief Communications Officer through a batch of degrees, tests, and written requests presented to Command.

Blue stands over the map table in the center of the Conn as Tharsis takes a position between the four other officers on deck, preparing to enforce the Captain’s orders. “Get me one-hundred percent on the reactor,” Blue says calmly to no one in particular. Of course, this is a direct order to his first officer.

Tharsis picks the hotline to engineering out from the equipment hanging over the map table and activates the receiver, speaking into it. “Engineering, Conn: go to one-hundred percent on the reactor.”

“Engineering, Aye,” the voice on the other side, Chief Engineer lieutenant commander Gordon Wright reports. Tharsis switches off.

“Recompute time to waypoint,” Blue says.

“Helm, time to waypoint,” Tharsis calls.

“At flank speed and one-hundred percent on the reactor,” Fox reports, reading from a calculator on his console, “time to waypoint is twenty-one minutes, fifty-six seconds… mark.”

“Good. Steady as she goes. Ops, you have the conn. Tharsis, you’re with me,” Blue says as he walks to his office, Tharsis in tow.


“Something to drink, Del?” Blue asks after the door slides closed.

“I think I’m going to need either several seriously Irish coffees, or one heck of a brandy.”

“Brandy for you,” Blue agrees, heading to his wet bar. “Scotch for me.”

Tharsis takes the chair closest to his captain’s desk. “A mole. A goddamn mole!” he laments, jumping to the obvious conclusion.

“Hit the secure switch on my console before you start shouting state secrets,” Blue orders. Tharsis immediately leans over the desk and taps in a short sequence of keys, securing the room. Blue returns with an old-fashioned glass in each hand, both containing large amounts of brown liquids. Triples; straight, no chaser.

“You got my number, captain,” Tharsis says, taking the glass from his CO, draining an ounce from it immediately. “Ahh,” he heaves, a sigh of burning pain mixed with relief.

Blue, now sitting behind his desk, opens the crew roster on his console, sipping his huge glass of whiskey as he scrolls through the list of names, faces, and dates, looking for something. “The planning for this mission began right after we got the intel on Gelenk’rt’s little project.”

“We ought to just declare war on those damn lizards and blow Gelenk’rt straight into her sun,” Tharsis says almost casually, leaning back in his chair, balancing his glass between two digits above his eyes, glaring through the substances to the ceiling, allowing the liquor to work its way into his body. He looks down suddenly, bringing the glass down to chest level. “Who was the one that acquired it, again?”

“The background said it was one of the local turncoats, no name provided, the intel middlemanned by an agent working as a merchant trader. Typical…” Blue says, pulling up the dossier, reading the screen. “Fred Smith. Heh, must be the eightieth one by that name.”

“He’s gotta be making money hand over fist, being on two lucrative payrolls at the same time. What’s your take on this whole thing?”

“It looks to me that this whole damn thing was compromised from the beginning. I mean, look at it in sequence: we get info that the Yvellians are experimenting with teleportation technology, and have had some limited success with small inanimates, which is more than our scientists can say. Intel confirms this, and Command creates the mission outline, which Mission Ops refines and hands to my battle group commander, with orders to give it to me and not to look at the contents. We do a standard crew rotation in port at Bernhard’s Pass, we come here, and are attacked twice, once from within. That’s… four months… twelve days from start to now. ‘At what point was the project compromised?,’ that’s the question.”

“Well, here’s another one: who’s in on this, on both sides…”

“Right.”

“Seems to me that we have at least one, possibly two Fleet personnel and any number of Yvellians in on this.”

“Maybe. Another question that I have will wait until Frank can be here.”

“Do you think he can be trusted?”

“Can you be trusted?” Blue asks with bravado. “Can I? He’s been here, for the time concerned, just as long as either of us have. I think it’s safe to say that we can trust him.”

“Sure. Hell, if it was him, would we ever figure it out?”

“Damnit, I hope that we could. Computer, contact Chief of Security Henry,” his request followed by a beep from the PA systems, followed by the short pause necessary to inform Henry of an incoming call.

“Henry here, Sir, go ahead.”

“Frank, drop whatever you’re doing and join me in my office, please.”

“Aye aye.”

“Out,” Blue says, closing the channel. The two senior officers sit in silence, draining their drinks quickly, half out of necessity created by the stress of a compromised op, half out of courtesy to the inbound, sober-living, recovering alcoholic Chief of Security. While neither voice it, both men hope that the third won’t detect the alcohol on their breath.

Finished, Blue returns the glasses to the wet bar just as the lieutenant requests ingress, causing the portal to chime. Blue actuates the door from his console, allowing the lieutenant inside. “Have a seat.”

“I think I know what this’s about,” Henry says, when the room is again secure. “We have a mole, meaning that the mission was compromised before we even got word.”

“That’s our conclusion so far,” Tharsis comments.

Henry continues: “Now, because of the Yvellian skirmish, and the observations of the Chief of Salvage, it’s apparent that any cover we may have had is in jeopardy.”

“Correct. Now, we have three questions to ask. First,” Blue says, counting off on his fingers, “when was the operation compromised, second, who, on both sides, could be in on this, and third, what could have possibly motivated such an attack?”

“Huh,” Tharsis responds. “How do you mean?”

“What do you think our gunman had to gain through an attack of a force field in the single damaged area of the hull?” Blue asks.
They pause for a moment, and Henry replies: “It could only be the destruction of the ship.”

Blue nods. “The sixteen guys that died were all crewman grade ranks; they were experienced men, hard workers, but not one was so important that anyone couldn’t have gunned him down at Bernhard’s Pass without so much as a minor JAG investigation. I have to think that that shot was meant to cause a shipwide explosive decompression.”

“If that’s the case, they damn near succeeded,” Tharsis replies. “It was only the new alert condition protocols sent out last week that called for the lockdown of all closed bulkhead doors after general quarters has been called.”

“So this mole has to be suicidal,” Blue continues. “But, why not just fire a shot directly into an antimatter systems regulator? There are plenty of them around, and it’d be an easy enough explosion to start a chain reaction to destroy the ship.”

“Theory dictates, cap’n,” Tharsis retorts, “that teleportation technology won’t be able to pass through some EM fields. Hell, you remember Kennison’s recollection of that battle: they waited after our shields dropped, fired again after they went back up, then went home. Seems to me that they had to wait until our shields went down before planting the gun. Could explain why the reactor core wasn’t shot; all those retaining fields wreak havoc with electronics as it is. No telling what they’d do to a teleporter ray.”

“Hull stabilization fields generally aren’t up when the hull isn’t damaged. Could we bypass that, put em up? Maybe buy us some margin of safety?”
Henry replies: “It’d be risky, Sir. Those things get fickle after prolonged use; they end up getting static and objects inside ‘em can polarize and sometimes shatter if struck. Besides, that didn’t help the field generator that was hit.”

“Wait a minute,” Blue interjects. “We only got hit there because of a massive systems failure. Do we even know why our shields dropped?”
Silence.

“We were winning that battle, skip. Those Marauders weren’t a match for us; the failure was labeled a systemic problem. That’s when the aft quarter was hit, with a shot already inbound, and that must’ve been when they planted the weapon!” Tharsis says, triumphantly.

“It’s safe to assume that this technology can’t work within a strong EM field,” Blue says, ending the topic. “But what I want to know is how far this conspiracy goes. How much do you think the lizards know?”

“We have to assume that their Command knows everything, I think,” Henry replies.

“Are you familiar with their system of government, Frank?” Blue asks.

“I know that they’re a constitutional monarchy, with a matrilineal…”

“Not even close,” Blue interjects, cutting him off.

“Sir?”

“Are you familiar with the Abjaufek Syndicate?”

“Supposedly an organized crime system using Yvellian businesses as fronts.”

“Not just supposedly. They are a massive organized crime association, composed of dozens of paranoid, militant families, operating under the cover of their puppet government. This means, in order to maintain control and to stem assassinations of what would be the actual leadership, that they’re heavily factionalized into a collaboration of families. Intel reports that if it weren’t for the constant council of the heads of the families, they’d collapse into groups of bickering tribes, and eventually splinter into a whole bunch of proto-governments.”

“So, how does this keep their High Command out of the loop?”

“Their High Command, Frank, was never in the loop to begin with. All they do is decide large-scale tactical deployments, recruiting from planetary militias that have commanders sworn to allied families, when they need to attack either us or the Tourellians. They’re given authority by the family council to do these things, so their government at least appears legitimate. The thing is that it’s their custom to withhold all technology from distribution until it’s completed, and when it is given away, it’s used in a sort of monetary or barter system among the families, good for organized rights to skirmishes with the unaligned systems, territory grabs, bounties on rogues, and prize moneys.

“Chances are that the project we know that they’re working on is only known to the lizards on the planet, our agents, our Intel, and us. Hell, the ships that hit us were probably only from Gelenk’rt, sent out to patrol our possible avenues of approach, each of them with only maybe one officer from the project that knew what was going on.

“Our orders indicated that we were to go to Gelenk’rt to capture any technology and, after that, to terminate the operation of the developmental facilities there. No dispatch from Command at any time said anything about teleportation.”

Tharsis speaks up: “I’m thinking the same thing you are, cap’n.”

Blue grins slightly and nods. “They intercepted our orders only after Mission Ops dispatched them to Bernhard,” he announces. Being the focal point of the Monarch sector, a heavily disputed tract of space between the Yvellian Union and the Fleet, Bernhard’s Pass remains the only known direct navigable tract of interstellar space between the two nations; the rest of the Monarch sector north and south of Bernhard’s Pass is composed of dark dust nebulae with crushed planetary debris, Oort clouds, uncharted systems and various ill-defined gravity wells scattered within it. The primary system of Bernhard’s Pass is the single largest port system within the Monarch sector, a hub for local and international trade and a free port open to practically anyone who isn’t intent on a battle. Currently occupied by the Fleet, it remains as both a fortress protecting the interests of the USC and a staging point for patrols of disputed territory and probes into enemy space, when the cease-fire agreements with the Yvellian Union invariably expire. “Their intelligence sharing may be backwards, but their Early Warning Intelligence Networks sure are up-to-date. Since it took only that day for me to get our orders, we’ve gotten it narrowed down to a span of about twenty hours.”

“So, if it was compromised at Command, there’d be a hot war right now, because they’d have the info on the teleporters,” Henry ascertains. “But, as far as they know, we’re ignorant. Gelenk’rt wants us to think that they have nothing of any real importance, so they’re not opposing us with strength or in force, instead confronting us with a small force to attack us and plant a weapon that they’ve somehow persuaded a mole aboard to use. They’re playing the hunch that we’re unaware of exactly what technology they’re working on. Therefore, because war hasn’t broken out yet, the leak did not occur earlier than before the orders were issued, and because of the radio silence, not later than when you read the orders yourself,” Henry concludes.

“That’s right.”

“Well, whatever the case,” Henry says as he stands, “the statutes are clear; I must issue the order for all concerned personnel to equip side arms, as per regulations. This includes the senior staff and all security personnel.”

“Pistols? What if we’re just handing another gun to our boy?”

“Seems to me, Sir, that the mole is among those acquired from Bernhard’s Pass, not my staff, and no one who’s been with us for any length of time,” Henry says directly. “That aside, ‘our boy’ is already armed with possibly the most powerful firearm known in the galaxy. I don’t see how giving him a pistol would make the slightest difference.”

A pause, then Blue acquiesces: “Well, you have your duty,” he says, opening a drawer behind his desk, removing two pistols and holsters. He pushes Tharsis’ set, a shoulder harness packing a 9mm with an extended clip and two extra magazines, across his desk, attaching his, another 9mm of a different design, to his thigh. “Frank, this is your investigation now. Include your best, most trusted people only. We don’t want any leaks. Dismissed.”

“Sir,” Henry, a soldier of the old style, says as he salutes.

Blue returns it, and opens the portal for him.

Tharsis continues, when the door closes: “He’s from Bernhard, eh? How many does that eliminate?”

“Besides us, we’ve a crew of thirty-seven officers and two-hundred seventy-six enlisted personnel,” Blue says, rubbing his face, squinting, “one third of which just rotated back from shore duty. The ones that were killed were here since USC space. That’s one-hundred three men and women who are still under suspicion, minus the fourteen secure personnel under Frank.”

“Eighty-nine people who we need to do background checks on, under radio silence, on the q.t., under threat of a hypothetical sniper with a shipwide view,” Tharsis concludes. He pauses momentarily. “Is it too late to switch sides, cap’n?”

“Yes,” Blue says steadily as he stands, entering the unlock key sequence for the room.

“Damn,” Tharsis retorts. They return to the conn, Blue standing toward the center, Tharsis respectfully off to his right.

“We’ve reached the waypoint, Sir,” Fox reports to his captain. “Awaiting orders for FTL.”

“Kahn,” Blue says, still standing, circumventing Tharsis’ interpretation, “what’s the status on our cargo?”

“ADS bay crews report that the ships are ready for launch, and up to specs. They’re just waiting for the correct transponder codes, Sir,” he replies. Destroyers, like the Lakota-class mark II Rolling Thunder, normally carry two ‘Assault-Drop Ship’ type, Lenin-class gunboats for planetary deployment of Marines, transfer of materiel or cargo, or for just the supporting role they can play alongside fightercraft as gun ships. For this mission, however, the standard compliment of two Lenin-class ADS have been replaced with two older ADS-class boats, gutted and converted to appear as merchant ships, while possessing both retrofit, upgraded engines and top-of-the-line orbital bombardment systems, each with the payload and launch capacity of one round of low-yeild, antimatter-based ammunition.

“Vaughn,” Blue asks of his cocky, young, Chief Tactical Officer, “What’s the word?”

“We have one-twenty-six of one-thirty concussion missiles, full load of forty antimatter torps, and enough chaff and flares to last us to entropy, Sir,” he responds.

“Good,” Blue says, and continues. “Let’s spare no ceremony; helm, give us maximum speed to the jump point.”

“Helm aye!” Fox calls. Planetside, on his home of Venus, Fox owns one of the fastest commercially produced and privately upgraded endo/exo-atmospheric vehicles around, and uses it constantly, breaking all sorts of speed limits, but somehow never getting into trouble. It’s no secret: any way you slice it, and however inconsequential it is in interstellar space, Fox is in this line of work for the joy of speed, and is right now applying for transfer to OCS to train as a fighter pilot.

As the zero-point mass field generators fire up, the rays of light coming into the sensory receptors begin to be effected by the change into absolute masslessness relative to the world outside the effective radii of the fields. The incoming light, much like everything else within the fields, has now become nearly massless with reference to that which is beyond the field. Effectively, a fourteen-point-three-million tonne ship such as Thunder now only has about as much measurable mass as a small, vacuum-capable fightercraft. By lowering an object’s apparent mass, or mass signature, while retaining the full physical mass, the ‘cosmic speed limit,’ as it’s called, is raised.

The visual effect of altering the meager mass of light is that main viewer distorts and glimmers as the light bends before reaching the receptors. As the ZPM fields reach full strength and optimum radius, the picture blurs until the stars appear as large, overlapping, shuddering dark grey spots of light on the screen.

The gravity drive engines, housed safely within the destroyer’s engine housing nacelles, far away from anything important in the main body they’re attached to, begin the process of readjusting the gravitational intensity gradients around themselves, more or less ‘tugging’ on the gravitational lines strung across the galaxy, creating a virtual gravity well just in front of the ship, causing her to fall, fast, in whatever direction is necessary. Combined with a ship that has virtually no mass with respect to the rest of the universe and additional fields to nullify virtually all inertial variation, one can travel faster than light with no time distortion.

“Operations,” Blue says, “do you have anything for me?”

“Operations reports nothing new.”

“Good. Comm?”

“Nothing intercepted, nothing on scope.”

“Tactical?”

“Tactical clear, Sir.”

“Tharsis,” Blue says suddenly, to the slight surprise of all in the conn. They know what’s to follow, and that’s for their CO to leave them, but for what reason? “You have the conn.”

“Aye, Sir,” Tharsis says.

Blue opens the portal to the traversing corridor, and starts in the direction of a lift, leaving the conn in the capable hands of his XO.

Safety, Chapter 1

 

"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."
–Ernest Hemingway, ‘Notes on the Next War: a Serious Topical Letter’, Esquire; Sep. 1935


Chapter 1
10 24 Saturday 14 October 2299.
Monarch Sector, disputed zone, USCS Rolling Thunder, deck #10, situation room.

“How could this have happened?” he asks while holding the object and rapidly repeating the same question in his head. All things considered, a lesser man would be well past the verge of panic.

“Quite simply, cap’n… it can’t. Those ablative rods are designed to sustain an equivalent of five tonnes of pressure per field square centimeter before failing. In addition to that,” the Salvage and Recovery officer, chief petty officer Toby Kennison, tells his captain, “no rod has ever, in the history of research, development, testing and actual field use, been broken in that manner.”

“Then how the fuck did it happen?!” the captain, commander Julius Blue, shouts. He believes that he has a right to be angry; because of that failed platinum-molybdenum rod, the force field maintaining a section of damaged hull in the stern had failed, causing a small hull breach to become an explosive decompression, killing sixteen crewmen after the inner hull they were bunked against gave way to the explosion one deck above them. They were killed, mercifully, in their sleep, the concussive force of the explosive decompression ending their lives near instantly. So quickly, in fact, that their nervous systems couldn’t possibly have been able to process any sensation before their deaths. For Blue, however, this offers no solace.

“Sir,” the first officer, lieutenant commander Delman Tharsis says, “I do believe that there will be a rational explanation for this.”

“I want it ten minutes ago! Let me hear conjecture, now!” he says in the calmest possible voice allowed, fingering the split metal rod, the inanimate object blamed for causing the death of his crewmen.

“May I speak frankly, Sir?” Kennison asks.

“Yes,” Blue says, his patience wearing down.

“Take a look at that rod,” Kennison bravely speaks up. “Tell me what you see.”

He took twenty seconds to analyze what he was holding. He saw, among other things, a two centimeter by four millimeter rod, split lengthwise about five percent off-center.

It would have been so much better for him, Blue thought when he saw the responsible machinery face-to-face, if the rod had not borne the serial number ‘M5DGA115.’ That dread identification seemed to taunt him, graphically. Had the rod been blank, he thought, it could tell him nothing that his mind could interpret as a form of communication. But that alphanumeric code, split through the middle of the characters, just seemed to taunt all that can see it. “I see a particularly murderous and remorseless piece of machinery, Chief.”

“Anything about the detail that you think would be relevant?”

“What's your point, Chief?!” Blue snaps.

“There should be a slot in the negative end, Sir.”

“Looks like a manufacturing defect to me,” he says, looking at the rude, three-millimeter square slot in the negative end. “The whole fucking thing is split right down the middle from this.”

“Sir, defects as blatant as this are impossible. That would be like a car floating off of an assembly line without a lift system! This is definitely not a defect.”

“Are you saying that this was sabotage?” Blue asks, calming down significantly in the hope that there was someone connected to this loss of life that he could personally rend limb from limb.

“More heinous than sabotage, Sir. In my opinion, this was the result of a precisely planned and coordinated attack.”

“So someone opened up the field emitter ‘box,’ and split this thing in half?”

“No, Sir. The ‘box’ was sealed shut, almost completely intact, factory sealed, whole with the exception of the failed rod and some damaged components.”

“Then what did happen!?”

“If one were to shoot an Yvellian micro plate from a highly calibrated MP rifle at the negative end of statically charged ablative absorption rod that was, at the time, part of a closed circuit, one would get that as a result.”

“That’s impossible. A rod in a closed circuit cannot have its polar ends accessed in any way without first opening the circuit,” lieutenant Francis Henry, Chief of Security, states, speaking up for the first time.

“That’s right, Sir. Hell, if it weren’t for the uranium residue found on shards of the field generator and that rod, I’d be forced to agree. Though the rod itself was split, the ‘box’ survived well, and shows no evidence whatsoever that an Yvellian bullet passed through it. Even I have to admit: this does seem impossible.”

“Then how can it have happened!?” Blue inquires for what seemed to him to be the fifteenth time.

“I try to keep up with the rumor mills these days, Sir. Among the things currently being written about is a revival of the field of teleportation theory.”

The short silence that ensued was broken by the words elicited by a few menacing stares. The current mission of USCS Rolling Thunder, a Lakota-class destroyer, was known only to three people aboard, all of them being in this room, and a few privileged people at Command and Intel. The mission involves surveillance of a Yvellian planet called Gelenk’rt, known to be experimenting with the very technology Kennison named.

Currently aboard Thunder are a pair of small Fleet craft converted to appear to be common freighter ships. Two matching Yvellian national freighters, traversing the Monarch Sector, are slated for interdiction for this mission, to be replaced by the doppelgängers aboard Thunder. Cargo from their external bays will be delivered via the planet’s merchant satellite network, but the weapons that will be used to destroy the facilities that produce the technology will use a more direct method: gravity. The goal is simple: capture any technology if possible, then, captured or not, destroy the subterranean labs with low-yeild tactical nuclear weapons.

Blue knows of this technology simply because he was charged with this mission.

Tharsis knows of this because the man whom he is expected to replace is aware of it.

Henry knows of this in order to take certain precautions against the spread of this information about the ship.

But should the chief petty officer in charge of Salvage and Recovery need to know this? they wonder.

“Toby,” Blue says, breaking the silence, “…I’m going to tell him, Del,” he says at his first officer, responding to a very direct stare. “Toby, our current mission is to launch several craft to reconnoiter a planet in Yvellian space that’s experimenting with teleportation technology.”

“I assumed as much, but now that I know what we’re about, it makes everything a whole lot clearer, Sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that battle we had getting here, Sir; I remember reading the logs when I was working on the recovery. When our shield systems went down, the Yvellian ships ceased fire. According to the logs, they paused, fired a few times after shield power was restored, then left.”

“What are you saying?” Henry asks.

“I believe, Sir, that there’s a mole incorporated in this plan at the Fleet Command level, and a spy on this ship who has and knows how to use an MP rifle equipped with a very capable teleportation device,” Kennison says.

Silence ensues, broken only by the commands of the captain.

“Del, sound general quarters, plot a speed course to bring us to the next waypoint,” Blue says, not bothering to look in Tharsis’ direction.

Tharsis leaves the conference room immediately, after responding with: “Aye.”

The door of the conference room closes to the sound of Tharsis shouting commands to the crew of the conn.

Blue continues, calmly, as the room reverberates with the sound of the Klaxons: “Henry, I want the whole ship searched from bow to stern for an MP rifle, but do it discreetly. Use the internal sensors if you have to.”

To which Henry replies: “Aye Sir,” as he stands to leave.

“What about me, Sir?” The chief asks.
The captain brings the Chief up to speed on the plans ahead. A good two minutes of operational information, with only the most secret details left out. “…You will assist us on these plans from this point on as an advisor, and you are to tell no one, understood?”

“Sir, yes, Sir,” the chief responds, aware that his captain had just given him a field promotion to Intel Branch.

“Head to security with a copy of the sensor readouts for the last fourteen hours, and tell the lieutenant I said to look for any odd activity.”

“Aye Sir,” he says as he stands and leaves.

Blue examines the pieces of the platinum alloy rod in his hands one last time, and returns them inside the clear silver antistatic 'EVIDENCE' envelope, throwing the package back on the table. He stands, calmly, and walks to the large wall-mounted computer console on the far side of the conference room. He thinks of the crew he lost in the attack.

Knowing that someone out there could be held responsible for this attack turns his rage into a ball of black light in the pit of his stomach.



Once upon a time, just ten years after the fall of the Federated Earth Space Armada and the formation of the United Space Command, seven years after the armistice and the alliance with Arctau’rus, many years before he’d even so much as heard of the Fleet, Julius Benjamin Blue was a poor orphan child on the mean streets of Los Angeles on Terra, living day-to-day, stealing what he needed to survive.

One day, while scrounging for food money, his hand unknowingly slipped into the back pocket belonging to perhaps the greatest middleweight in the history of the Allied territories, Grand Middleweight Champion Maxwell ‘Junior’ Harding.

Junior used his lightning fast jab, an asset which almost single-handedly made him one of the greatest fighters ever to carry the title, to grab the wrist of the fourteen-year-old imp trying to lift his wallet. Blue, frightened beyond reason and struggling against the powerful grasp of the veteran fighter, did the only thing he could think of at the time: he struck the Old Pug in the face with a hard left, breaking his nose.

Junior, amazed at the spunk and power of the kid in his hand, was unfazed by the hit, which, by this point in his life, was a minor wound to him; his nose had already been broken no less than fifteen times, but never by anyone so young. His mind was not on the pain of the cracked bridge or the hot, wet feel of blood as it ran down his face and chin onto his two hundred credit dress shirt. His mind was now on the potential Galactic Welterweight Champion in his hands.

Junior dragged the screaming and sobbing form of Julius Blue, who was begging for mercy and swearing the whole way, to the gym he owned with his mentor, Gordon ‘Hoplite’ Perry. Instead of being cut from chin to groin, getting hung on a hook to bleed dry, and having his liver cut out and used as bait, like Blue thought would happen, Junior instead taped up Blue's wrists, put gloves and boots on him, and forced him to show his power on the heavybag to Hoplite.

Words such as ‘impressive,’ ‘unprecedented,’ and ‘meteoric’ don’t begin to describe Blue’s rise in the world of junior boxing. The fact that he started, impoverished, with a chance encounter with the middleweight champion of the known galaxy, would have put him in the boxing history books, had he made a career of it.

But, by the time Blue graduated four years later from the high school he never dreamed he’d attend, Junior had turned the street urchin smelling of joint and month-old clothes into the reigning Three Time Terran Junior Welterweight Champion, and a straight 'A' student on his way to the Fleet Officer's Academy in Portland, Oregon.

It broke Junior’s heart to learn that his star pupil would not be pursuing the Galactic belts of Boxing, but Junior’s tears of disappointment turned to tears of joy when he realized that Blue wouldn't have to take the long, hard road that he did to achieve success.


Blue, a boxer at heart, glances one last time at the bag on the table. The words of his mentor concerning a broken nose, the advice given to him in his corner after the third round in a fight against a boy called “Full House,” who just gave Blue the affliction for the first time, come to mind only now: “Just hit back! Don't miss a beat, because that’s what that bum over there wants most!”

Blue, standing off to the side of the conference room table, begins to imagine a humanoid face. The face appears as an amalgam of all the fighters he had ever faced up to that point, combined with the emotions of malice and hatred, motivated by a feeling of vengeance. Indeed, it is a disturbingly ugly visage.

Blue, the air surrounding him seeping with noise, faces the wall opposite his seat at the head of the table, concentrating on that face, using it to represent the man that killed sixteen of his most experienced enlisted officers.

The hole his fist leaves in the wall next to the primary console of the conference room would need two days of work to effect repairs. The viewer itself, on the other hand, would never again display as clear or sharp as it did before.