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Tag: creative writing

“Can you feel it? That static buzzing in the air?”

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The man is positively vibrating with energy, he is so excited. People under duress tend to fall into one of three categories, all out terror, unbridled excitement, or total apathy. My friend here is a category two, I’m more of a three who swings into a category one when I’m trying to get any sleep.  My man Encino here is an adrenaline junkie, and he’s so excited to go kill some ‘bad guys’ that he seems to be able to walk on air he is so elated. Big dude, but didn’t quite hit the mark to pilot his own walking tanker unit. So he balked at the chance to be a Fire Team leader while sulking, and instead is our squads heavy. In size and savagery. You need a jar, or a chest cavity opened, he’s your boy. Not an ounce of fat on him, and no self doubt either. He’s a real menace when the Mississippi leg hound in him takes full effect. He doesn’t have many close friends, let’s put it that way, but he’s a hulking, useful idiot. My role, unofficially that is, is to guide his worst, yet most squad beneficial tendencies towards our targets and goals. Wind him up, point him in the direction where his carnage suits our needs, then collect him afterwards.

“That’s the static charge coming off of the rail guns, if I have my ship board weapons load out correct. We’re placed directly behind the port side battery, and there’s a slug loader located directly underneath our dormitory. That lump, dump, bap bap bap, we here is them testing the auto loader, and switching between round types. The heavier the slug the harder we feel the spring loaded arms collapse into place.” I said, knowing full well that Encino isn’t really listening to me.

He’s staring out the view port from our common room lounge watching the welders doing EVA’s while attaching additional guns and armor plating to the hull. The shielded torches they are using spew white phosphorus out a ceramic nozzle, and occasionally sputters and splatters of weld material pop off and float around like angry fire flies. The wash of the phosphorus lights up the hull for several meters even in the inky blackness, and you start to get a sense of just how massive some of The Company’s vessels really are. Those brilliantly bright spots are scattered all over the hull, at least from our vantage point. The scale is immense, and terrifying. This ship, The Dirty Starling is humongous. A real behemoth of man made ingenuity. Encino is standing with his broad nose pressed firmly against the clear concrete glass, his breath shooting waves of condensation radiating out from his face every few seconds. He is visibly excited, and bumping the glass with every breath he takes. Flecks of spittle splash the glass each time he talks.

“Could you imagine being a pilot?” Encino says, his voice muffled due to his face being pressed against the glass. “The big ships aren’t all that much fun to pilot, the navigators do all the heavy lifting anyway.” I say, now that I’m comfortable in my own lounge chair, and I can tell that Encino is here to stay for a while. No need to stand needlessly while I babysit him. Taking my seat I look around the room to make sure we won’t get any surprise visitors.

I occasionally have to wave off both men and women that swing by from other squads or departments who come to look at him when he isn’t paying attention. Sure he’s handsome. But, he’s big, mean and not what you’d call a gentle lover. That big dumb grin of his seems to pull anyone not using their brain into his orbit of any sexual orientation you can imagine, and then I have hours of paper work to file on his behalf. I’ve made it known he’d be more inclined to enjoy fucking a raging bull moose than a typical human, but that grin, and his muscles lure them in anyway. I can only unfurl so many human pretzels in my life time. The only acknowledgement from Encino on the matter was a surprise “I really hurt him.” He said, once, over breakfast when reaching for an apple.

Outside in the vacuum the welders are walking over the kilometers of hull plates looking for any signs of weakness and damage. As the flotilla wide count down clocks draw nearer to zero, the pace of the work increases. Tiny single person vehicles scuttle about, holding weapons, or beams or instrumentation clutched in their extendable arms. The pilots have one hand in a haptic glove which allows them to perform some very minute actions with the claws, or other tools on the end of the arm. Imagine a tuna can flying fat sides forward and back, with a torso sized bubble out the front, and a massive multi tiered arm mounted below it. The back is all thruster cones and a rack for spare tooling for the arms. Cameras and lights fill the rest of the space on the small squat crab unit. That’s our boy Encino’s dream vehicle. To mill about space in a rickety old crab unit, fixing stuff and exploring the exterior of any large vessel. All the while dressed for EVA, because those crab units don’t have any life support in them. Step in and go! Handy if you’re rated for the appropriate exterior working gear. I mean, you could potentially use out fight suits in it, but you couldn’t weld anything as that 5000 degree phosphorus would bleed right through the material in seconds. All of the low level pilots onboard the Dirty Starling have their welders guild licences. Those orange and black tuna cans are pretty nimble when they want to be. I think they are ugly as all get out, but to Encino, that shit’s The Tits.

The PA system crackles to life drawing me out of my reverie. “This is a flotilla wide announcement. We have T-Minus six hours until we commence Operation Scouring Pad. Please meet at your designated muster stations when we reach T-Minus two hours. Your station chiefs will see that you are prepped, dressed and loaded into the appropriate transports, based on waves, and objectives. This message will repeat…”

The crackle dies down as the volume of the message drops a few percent after each repetition. A large flashing blue and orange light let’s us know that we can still tune in to the flotilla wide communications channel directly from our wrist biometrics to hear the message or read it if need be. The machine shop guys usually need to read them while the shop is so uncomfortably loud.

“You know what the favourite part of my day is.” Encino asks me as we walk side by side to our muster station together. “That brief second when I catch the smell of my neck ring going over my head. It smells like the beach near where I grew up.” He smiles at this. He doesn’t follow it up with anything else. All I can think about is how after three months the battle is only a few hours away, and I need to take a shit.

Part Thirty Eight: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

When you stop and think about it,

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Knowing all twelve of the largest space faring vessels that have ever been constructed by humans are now gathered together here, waiting to attack a secret base built into a dwarf planet come over sized asteroid, you might think it would look pretty remarkable. You would think so, but you would be wrong. These ships are arranged at about one to three kilometers apart, the visual to the naked eye is less than stellar. Now on the radar screens and the HUD on the bridge, when you have name plates, and trajectory over lays, and drive ploom signatures and the specs of each ship associated with its distinct silhouette, now you get something approaching a spectacle. But all the average person sees is a slight glint in the far reaching blackness, that moves against a field of stars. It’s nothing to write home about, believe you me.

I could do without all of the proximity alarms going off randomly all day and all night, as the manoeuvring thrusters keep us in place relative to one another. The one kilometer distance is perfect for non disrupted communications, but hell on the ships warning systems. The targeting computers are likely to fry themselves unless their sensitivity is turned right down. Which makes a sneak attack a real threat, so the watches are set with greater overlap, and at no point is it ever allowed for more than forty five percent of the active crew to be asleep. Even less so for the infantrymen and the pilots. They rest in shifts with just one third asleep at any time.

Tensions are high, and oh boy!, there goes that fucking alarm again. The blaring klaxons, and whining targeting alarms grate on all of our nerves. Every shift we meet at our muster stations prior to doing anything, and those that will be fighting as boots on the ground are running their training exercises daily to remain razor sharp. All we do is train, prepare and wait while the clocks count down to armageddon. Sleep comes in fitful spurts and tempers are fraying at the edges. Discipline onboard the ships is tight, with no wiggle room whatsoever.

The walking corpse corps are ever ready day or night. They have been cordoned off in a cargo bay, along with the decanted walking tankers. The armorers swarming them like ants making all of the last minute fixes or upgrades requested by the – assets, let’s call them. The shedding of their humanity was this whole thing, that nobody speaks about now that it’s all over. Some people found it hard to adjust. A few marriages and families were served a pretty harsh reality when they woke up to find their loved ones are now a human imitation made up of microscopic machines working in tandem. Memories, futures, love lives all poured down the toilet, along with spoiled lungs, kidneys and the intestines themselves. It… was unpleasant.

Now that we are finally here, or there abouts, a flurry of inter flotilla activity has taken hold. With a week left roughly before the Jolene Roger shows up, the Dirty Starling and the Righteous Chord are all hosting different strategic planning sessions with Admiral Garneau, or his esteemed advisor Gerald at the helm. The traffic between the larger vessels is rather heavy, with the smaller away ships currying personnel and materials between vessels in the fleet. Last minute repairs to sensor arrays and hull plating to add extra armor taking priority above all else. It’s a good gig if you’re a low level pilot, scurrying about doing deliveries and interacting with other crews from around The Company’s interstellar interests.

As the long tense days wear on the largest vessels in the fleet disgorge their contingent of smaller, fast flying personnel carriers and the even more maneuverable fighter craft. Tugs and their single driver counter parts with extendable arms and working claws litter the field of view as they build all new protective measures onto the hulls of the behemoths in the flotilla.

News has spread throughout the flotilla that the Jolene Roger has a new toy to add into the mix for the war ahead. Lots of talk about what it could be. The admiral has been close lipped, refusing to address the gathered soldiers and crew until the last possible moments prior to the attack. This has caused a few minor incidents, but nothing that a few hours of extra labour, or a night or two in the brig couldn’t cure.

There were a few moments of panic as a slew of smaller meteors made it past the turned down sensitivity of the proximity alarms, which stunted the targeting lasers too. But the vibration of the rat-at-at-tat and the following pings of dust ricocheting off the hull brought about an even higher resolve with the radar watchers, and the sentry programs. It broke the tension, in a fashion, and let them know that they were protected even when they weren’t looking. Something, that should not have been possible.

– – – –

In a tiny office buried in the back of the physical paper archives, a tall beautiful woman named Gemma is rifling through deeply redacted coffee stained, dust covered reports from centuries prior. Her boss, and in some form or another, the head of her family, from fifth cousins by marriage, had pointed her in the direction of a secret stash of files that probably hadn’t seen the light of day in a couple hundred years. Spending a few days buried in the room looking through bankers box after bankers box of manilla folders, she finally found a stack that dealt with the horrific incident involving Margot’s Fever. A tragic event that killed hundreds, involved insurgents, as well as a tragic misfire by a potentially incredible new engine type, which was to bring us closer to the stars. We spent a whole month on it in school, and they teach entire courses on it in university. The memorial deck on Torus Station is pretty touching. Eerie but moving all the same.

If she thought it took her a long time to find this group of boxes, it’ll take her a week more just to dig up the psychiatric interviews with Margot’s Fever’s former captain. A man who claimed that the vessels witnessed split second phase out of our reality and then back again, had actually taken ten years on the far side of time in our solar system, and in which time he met, befriended, and was educated on the specifics of never before seen technology by a metal box of navigation goo, which he said called itself ‘K’ and then later on Kelvin. All of which was hidden from the public, and was provided in the exact same format as the files which helped to create the Fore E’s engine in the first place. An interesting pickle. Or so Gemma thought.

Part Thirty Seven: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

“Any news on the war front?”

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Asks the grizzled old man seated at a comically large desk empty of anything except a pen and a few sheets of multi coloured paper. The office secreted in the depths of Torus Station, is well adorned with rich fabrics and expensive artifacts, if sparse. The tall and slender woman standing before him is watching him through cold slate grey eyes. “Yes – sir. And what we know so far is not encouraging. It seems that The Company having let that old bastard Garneau lead a personal war over a vendetta is working about as well as we had come to expect from a guy who spends seventy five to ninety percent of his time in stasis, so that he could try to bring a sense of peace, calm and continuity to humanity. The ego on this guy. Fuck me.” She spits in disgust.

“Yes, yes, Gemma my dear girl, I am well aware of your feelings toward my youngest son. He wanted glory and to command from a place of visibility, while we chose to live in the shadows, and the comfort of anonymity.  He’s a fool, but I can’t have him killed. So we let him run afoul of that demented doctor to test his mettle. If he comes back we can control him since we know so much about his goings on within the flotilla. And if he dies. Well then. He’s dead, and we can moved passed this debacle finally, with our hands clean.” He harrumphs in his typically gruff manner.

“Yes sir.” She smiles warmly at the old man. “Now you said you have news. Spill it, I’m rather busy Gemma.” He leans back into his over stuffed leather wing backed chair. The springs creaking under his movement. “Long story, short version then, yes? Right. The nanotech integrated soldiers, mainly the heavy weapons Fire Teams and all of the Walking Tank units caught some kind of brain bug that gave them all irreparable brain damage, and they thought they were all lost. To which your son’s best friend decided to convert them to 100% nanobot automatons, and they woke up, and are now operational, but are no longer human. They don’t eat, or sleep, or communicate verbally anymore. I guess using all of the same batch of nano bots to repair every single one of them created this hive mind between them. Scary good as a fighting force, fearless, and savage. But not human, and the rest of the crew has noticed the shift.

Also – side note. Due to the 100% uptake in the nanobots they have taken to horrific displays of shedding their biological materials. Talk of them shitting out shriveled and wasted organs. The stench is a thick all encompassing miasma aboard each ship until the last one is finished. They do it wherever they are, at any time. I hear it’s a total horror show to behold. The scrubbers and recyclers are being over loaded, and a few regular crew have gotten sick from the decaying body matter. Morale is not high.” She says while wiping her forehead, and tucking a loose strange of her dark hair behind an ear.

“Secondly, the admiral had lost faith in the nanotech integrated teams and almost immediately called on captain Morgan to jump start her Jackal Protocol. Those massive Bison drones she’s so proud of. Anyway – she purportedly had almost sixty crew members injured on purpose to fill the ranks of her fighting force, and they are taking to it slowly. Promising results from the subconscious training regimen, but less so when entirely awake, though I have reports that it’s starting to gel. Oh, also – the captain is suspected of having her more perceptive crew murdered for piecing two and two together.” To this the older man raises his hands to rest fingers interlocked on top of his head. “Did she now. I knew she had ambition, but that’s a bit much.” He coughs out the words. “Hm. Yes, a bit much.” She repeats in response.

“Also, our intelligence suggests that they have picked up a new Ghost Crew member during the resupply at the Mars Six Sub-Orbital Aerial base, but have not updated their HR directory to say who it is. Which seems odd? Do I need to notify anyone of this? That seems rather widely outside the norm.” She smirks with a raised eyebrow. “No, no, you know what, let it stand. Keep an eye on it. Let’s see if we can trace it back before anything comes of it.” He laughs conspiratorially. “Yes sir.” She says.

“Lastly, our spies at UB313 have said that this will likely be a blood bath, as the, as you said, demented doctor has a fair few surprises in store for the admiral and his fleet. Whom are due to arrive at their rendezvous point in a matter of hours from now.” She finishes her statement and cracks her knuckles, and rolls her shoulders. “Mm… well, keep watching. Find out what you can about our mystery Ghost. And let me know when the fighting starts. Is there anything else?” He says while stifling a yawn.

“Actually yes there is. We’ve noticed a signal from out beyond Pluto and Charon that has a encrypted message in it. It appears vaguely human in origin. But something seems off about it. From what we can tell two names repeat a lot. Just the letter ‘K’ and the name Kelvin.” She says. The man freezes in his spot. “Did you say Kelvin?” He sputters. “Yes, it’s here on the report sir.” She pulls a sheet of paper out of a group and softly lays it down on the desk infront of the older man. Looking down at the paper the man’s face drains of colour. “Well fuck me. He was telling the truth.”

Part Thirty Six : Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

Let me tell you what kind of person I am.

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I’m the kind of person who hates having an appointment in the middle of my day, because I can feel it looming over me. So I don’t like to start anything prior to the appointment in case I forget about it, or turn up late. So in most instances I sit and wait, minute by minute until the appointment arrives. I hate that. So today I forced myself to run some errands, which took 45 minutes, possibly 50 to complete, that on any other day, I would have had to rush to complete after my appointment was done. But now those three things are done, and I have a full hour left to sit and wait. The waiting always makes things worse. I wasn’t nervous about it all week, or last night, or this morning when I woke up, but now it’s filling me with anxiety and bubble guts. Argh! Hate that. Oh well c’est la vie.

So day 100! Woohoo! Milestone for sure. Did you catch yesterday’s back to back chapter entries for the interconnected series Ghost of the Dirty Starling? Fun stuff. Those Bison drones sound gnarly, and a tad volatile. Hmmm… foreshadowing perhaps? Or just another side trip I can make later on if need be? Good to give yourself off ramps occasionally, I believe. I was going to do something funny with Norman and Gerty, but changed my mind. I like the self serving killer for hire in a tutu. I also liked the fact she knew enough about murder to do her gloating afterwards too. None of this providing your captive with extra precious seconds or minutes to formulate a plan or escape out of sheer luck. No sir! Gun’em and then gloat. Like a good little hitman – hired gun, contract killer etc etc..

I might be fortunate enough to pick up some bakery bagel display unit design work today or in the near future. Which is great. I kept in touch, once every six months since Jan 2020, with all of the folks I freelance for, and recently those connections have become active again, as people feel as though the pandemic is coming to an end. I have thoughts on that, but I am also a huge fan of the work coming in as well. Work in, and invoices out, this is good for business.

Had my oldest child help me with some cleaning in the garage. I had to tear down some tables and stands I had for equipment. I have a larger table saw now, so I need to recover some space by placing my jointer and my planer together on a low lying wheeled cart, so it can be tucked under the rails of my hybrid saw. I can’t have that space go to waste anymore. I have completed projects eating up space, which I need people to collect, or accept delivery of. It’s all bought and paid for, and I knew I would have to hold on to it all, but now it’s getting on a bit, four plus months later, and I would like to not have to maneuver around it any more. It’s not a huge deal, but it aggravates me. I’m not working with 40,000 square feet here people. Think, tall single car garage stuffed to the gills with house hold stuff, Christmas  lights, bikes and wood working tools. Not a pretty sight to behold.

If I had the money, and paid work, I would use a dedicated dust collection system, and air cleaner, rather than my ShopVac. But it’s nice and compact, and I can store it under tables and shelves with ease. But the dust means you have to work in a mask at all times. Not a real problem,  since I use a fair bit of Walnut, and you want a mask for that stuff anyway. I have my eye on a hickory slab waterfall coffee table I want to make later this Spring/Summer/Fall. Could be a real looker if I take my time with it. I have the angle iron I need for a rigid router sled to flatten the slabs. I am looking forward to it a lot! I will also venture to build adjustable leveling saw horses to hold said router sled. So those will be fun to build too.

“Come on shit birds, let’s take it from the top… again”

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Roars the captain of the Jolene Roger into her microphone. Captain Morgan is sweating profusely under the strain of her training regimen. Teaching sixty newly haptic integrated soldiers to use her patented Bison drones is taking more time, effort and patience than she is willing to fork over. “For fuck sake people, formations, remember the formations. If you collide those fusion reactor cores will lose their magnetic seal and you’ll all go up in a cascading failure. We’ve been over this every day for seven weeks now. Stop trying to drive it, and become it. The Bison drone should feel like an extension of yourself, it’s not a fucking demolition derby car.” She shrieks, her earphones ringing with feedback from the over taxed mic.

The sixty member group are not living up to her dreams and there is significant resistance to the haptic systems link to the soldiers neural networks. Namely, they don’t use nanotech to a high enough degree for her liking. Her original plans only required an eight percent uptake in nanotech to fill in the gaps between stimulus and reaction time, but she may have been too conservative. She is resisting upping the limit as her spies on board the Righteous Chord and The Dirty Starling are sharing some horrific news regarding the Fire Teams and Tanker crews. So they’ll have to get better on their own, as she can’t risk losing her team to some unknown nano sickness, and thus risk losing her favoured spot with Admiral Garneau.

At the back of the war room commanding officer Gonzalez is over seeing the technological side of things. Keeping an eye on the engine spec’s, and watching that no one crosses over into another’s engine ploom, and melts themselves in six thousand degree Celsius plasma jetting out of the rear rocket booster packets located at the aft of each drone. Her thick black hair now streaked through with grey, and her once plump face now sallow and ashen. Except for the deep purple black puffy bags under her eyes. She is as mystified by the lack of progress as her captain is. All sixty souls scored so well in the subconscious training program. Reaching the required ninety percent efficacy with the gear to be able to go live with the actual physical drone. Every single person has seen at least a twenty percent drop in proficiency with the Bison drones. As a massive glob of sweat clings to her eye ball, she toggles the direct comm’s to captain Morgan.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere. We have to think about putting them back inside the tanks again. We’re missing something important. Some crucial step that the tank offers, and reality lacks.” Croaks Gonzalez with a grimace  knowing her captain is not going to take her repeated suggestions with the tone they are meant. “Say that again and I will float you out of this cargo hold, along with the old man you’re so sweet on. Get me?” Captain Morgan hisses through her headset. “Yes ma’am.” Chirps Gonzalez meekly. “We don’t have enough tanks for all sixty drone pilots as it is. We don’t have the time, nor the resources to build more anyway. We’ll be at the rendezvous point in two weeks time. This HAS to work as intended. A waking, remotely operating fighting force that doesn’t rely too heavily on nanotech.” Captain Morgan growls through gritted teeth.

Out along the port side of the ship the teams of Bison drones are running their attack patterns, and tossing around asteroid chunks like a giant game of robot hot potato. Every so often two or more Bison drones get too close together and the proximity klaxons blare inside the war room, and the pilots all grimace and swear and lose track of their formations, and then paint jobs get singed, and sensor arrays get ruined as drive plooms turn everything to slag.

The saving grace of captain Morgan’s patented design are all of the plug and play off the shelf pieces that can be pulled off and replaced in mere minutes and not days. The onboard armory dry dock for the Bison drones looks like a massive barn full of cattle head stocks.

With the fifth near miss that could detonate the whole fleet of Bison drones captain Morgan calls in to CO Gonzalez and has her direct them in to the maintenance docks. A lengthy debrief is slated for an hour after the last of the drones has docked, and the pilots logged out of their remote command station. With a weary smile CO Gonzalez walks over to the pilots to chat with them. Ushering them into the showers and then following them to the cafeteria for a hot meal. The conversation is light, and the morale is low among the pilots. In the middle of her meal a soft ping emanates from her wrist communicator. A private message addressed to captain Morgan from someone named Gertrude from the Sanitation Department. As the message notification flashes with a tiny red flag, Gonzalez clicks on the message to read it. The captain has just forgotten to turn off her message forwarding while instructing the Bison drone pilots. Not uncommon for Gonzalez to read and respond to high priority messages for the captain. Being next in line, there isn’t much that she isn’t privy too. A moment later the message prompt turns green and Gonzalez can read the message in full, and toggle through the attachments. The message itself was short, it just stated that the priority trash was taken care of. There were six attachments, each one an identical image of a wrist communicator. No, not quite identical, the registration numbers, singular to each unit was different. “What the fuck is this?” Gonzalez whispers to herself. A moment later a response from the captain comes through, along with a transaction id number. “Is this what I think it is?” Gonzalez says with a sinking queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Part Thirty Five: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

Standing alone in the bowels of the sanitation department

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Gertrude is talking away animatedly to a closed bay door to the Jolene Roger’s tertiary recycler as a soft puff of acrid smoke drifts by up towards the whirling air scrubbers. The sub basement to the vessel is where only a select few ever bother to tread. Although the department is among the cleanest aboard, the distaste people have towards waste water treatment and the recycling of all other materials on board makes the brown jumpsuit wearers somewhat of a pariah among the crew. Once Gertrude took off her tutu, and started to prowl the ship with her trash cart she might as well have been invisible, with all of the non-attention she could attract. Hence her being rather chipper about outsmarting the three would be attackers from the ship’s largest bar and dance club. Feeling rather smug about how well her drunk girl passed out on the floor of the bar by the toilets on the last night in port had worked. She managed to engage her target in one swift motion to knock him out, and roll on top of him to provide them both cover. The moaning and gyrating had been a last second decision that really paid off, a stroke of genius really, Gertrude would have to remember that if she makes it back from UB313 alive.

Looking at the stainless steel doors polished to a high sheen, Gertrude is leaning now against the door running her fingers lazily up and down the frame while chatting amicably. “You should have seen me Norman, it was straight out of a Hollywood block buster. I see the three guys watching you, so I set my trap, right? Yeah – I wait for my moment and then pounce! Bam. Dude, you should have seen your head go. Crunch – right into the space between the floor and the bottom of the pillar. I didn’t mean to tug you down so hard. But I had to subdue you for it to work. My plan that is. Ha. If your drunk ass had of done anything except lie there under me those goons would have discovered my ruse for sure! My ruse? My scheme? My master plan. No wait, scratch that, none of this is cool, let me start over again…” hops Gertrude from the door at the tell tale sound of approaching footsteps on the open grate flooring. “Gerty! You down here again? – you and your dramatic monologues eh? Is there a show coming up that I don’t know about Gerty? I do love your stage plays. A Street Car Named Deserea was my favourite!” The older man says. “Desire.” Gertrude responds. “I’m sorry?” Repeats the older gentleman in his own immaculate brown jumpsuit. “The street car is Desire, not Deserea.” She smirks at the older man. “Oh yeah. Ha! What a goof I am. Is there a show Gerty ?” He half begs half pleads with a huge smile on his face. Gertrude loves to see her fans, especially when it’s one of her bosses boss. “I’m just practicing right now, but you’ll be the first to know when we reengage with entertainment again Jules.” She smiles sweetly at him through her giant brown eyes, her white toothy grin shining brilliantly. “That’s the ticket.” He snaps his fingers, and points at Gertrude. “Oh – right. The reason I came down here. There seems to be a puddle of medical waste in the hall. I guess the med tech’s aren’t double bagging their stuff again. If you can clear that up and just dump it straight into the recycler, you can take the rest of your shift off to work your monologue. I liked ruse, it felt authentic, and ‘of the moment’ as you like to say.” Quips Jules over his shoulder as he walks back out of the way from the recycler input doors. “Not a problem Jules!” She shouts in a sing song fashion.

Taking a beat to make sure the foot steps are receding into the background Gertrude takes a good long look at the polished doors. After a pause she says. “Ha. Norman, you almost had me there! Sneaking blood onto the floors, nice try.” Walking to her cart she grabs a mop and a thick yellow bag and some absorbent pads. Wiping up the bulk of the puddle, placing the soiled pads in the bag, and then mopping up the glistening pink spot on the floors she whispers to herself. “Almost got me Norman. Almost.”

Taking the cart and the mushy plastic bag back to where she was recounting her story to Norman she opens up the bay doors again. The interior is totally empty. Reaching half way in she plops the yellow bag of blood and soiled pads into the center of the chamber. Leaning out and closing the safety doors she pushes the green button beside the floor station terminal and with a whisper soft whir the unit drops its load into the incinerator. A minute puff of acrid black smoke drifts by Gertrude’s face as it hangs lazily in the air, like a grey haze. Only to be pulled softly towards the softly whirling air scrubbers above.

Gertrude sighs to herself and says. “That’s why I do my monologues after the fact Norman. Those three goons were lazy thugs, they were tactless. I have style and grace. Captain Morgan will pay me handsomely for disposing of you after asking too many questions.” Smiling daintily to herself Gertrude takes her cart back to her allocated storage space, and wanders off into the upper decks of the Jolene Roger. The engines have kicked on, and she can feel the added weight pulling on her through the soles of her feet from the thrust of the boosters.

Part Thirty Four: Ghost of the Dirty Starling

“Does anyone else think it’s weird that…

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Both Gurinder and Bennet Jr got hurt in exactly the right ways to be placed directly into the captain’s new drone program immediately after getting seriously injured?” Drawls the very drunk interim supply clerk and dock worker Norman Chan a little too loudly. His friends at the hip high bar table all look at Norm sideways over their drinks. “Not this again!” The chorus goes up from the group around Norm. “Come on man, we leave port tomorrow afternoon, let’s just get drunk, fuck and forget about shit for a few hours, man! Just let it go. People are starting to stare.” Slurs a particularly drunk Bennet Sr. His hair a messy tussle of greasy grey. “He’s my son – right? Right. So, so… I’m just glad they had the spinal column haptics that gives him full mobility again ok. That container mishap crushed a good portion of his back. He could, he, he could have died man. Be happy he isn’t dead!” Shouts Bennet Sr over the din of the music blaring in the crowded bar. “I know, I know!” Norm waves his hands, palms out. “It just seems suspicious is all I’m saying.” Norm takes another long pull from his mixed drink. Bennet Sr leans over to rest on his shoulder and says. “Oh hey, that smells good, what is that Norman?” He slurs cheerily, his momentary lapse of melancholy driven away by drink. “Sex on the beach.” Norm says. “What!?!” Shouts back Bennet Sr. “I said Sex on The Beach!” Norman bellows, just as the music goes quiet waiting for the beat to drop. A huge portion of the crowd turns to look at the now flushed and thoroughly embarrassed Norman. The beat comes crashing back in and the crowd cheers! “YEAH!” Norman turns away from his group of friends and winds his way through the packed dance floor of the bar, away from the bar top he was using to steady himself between drinks. Working his way back towards the men’s room at the farthest reaches of the narrow room. The long interior wall is one long bar with mirrors behind it making you feel like the space was wider than it was, in the middle were lengths of bar top between pillars and a few free standing tables, mostly faux wood finishes dominated the bar. Then a walk way, and several day bed like couches under the floor to ceiling cement glass windows that looked out into space. But now caught the glinting sight of the Mars Six Sub-Orbital Aerial Base where the Jolene Roger was docked for Resupply before shipping out to Pluto for an offensive against the Insurgency, and their black ops base stationed at UB313. Passing by the hot and sweaty crowd Norman fails to notice as a few heads turn to follow him as he walks through the crowd. The three men in a triangle formation watch as Norman walks between them and on to the toilets at the back of the room. The smallest of the three watchers types quickly on his wrist communicator without looking down at it. He is smiling and being social with a few women at his slab of the bar. Within moments the three gentleman get a return notification, and slowly they peel away from their gatherings and walk nonchalantly to the men’s room.

Norman passes the last part of the bar and reaches up to grasp the pillar just out away from the wall before nearly falling over a drunk woman legs. How he missed the bright pink tutu is anybody’s guess. Leaning down, gingerly he asks if the young woman needs any help regaining her feet. Instead she pulls him head first by his collar into the space where the pillar meets the floor and he blacks out. Crawling onto Norman’s body she begins to writhe around and shriek incoherently. The gathered crowd turns their backs in an attempt to ignore the weird behavior. With the crew on edge with war looming nobody is willing to get in the middle of anyone’s business tonight. A brief moment later and three men bolt into the bathroom locking the doors behind them. Their shouts, and the sounds of gun shots are muffled by the music and the heavy doors. From the floor the woman rolls of Norman, and fireman carries him out of the club. No one gives them a second look.

Several paces outside the bar the woman sets Norman’s unconscious body against the wall to slump into a crumple of limbs. She removes her dark wig to reveal her bright green, close cropped hair. Ditching her ruffled tutu, and knee high boots and stockings to unfurl her brown jumpsuit that was tied off at the waist and appear like an on duty custodial staff member. She pulls a cleaning cart out of a hidden compartment in the hallway wall and pushes Norman’s body into the over-sized garbage bin. She proceeds to take him down into the sanitation decks well below.

Part Thirty Three : Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

“I have some… interesting news.”

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Commanding Officer Monica Gonzalez says to her captain. The captain, a stern looking woman of about fifty years of age. Her hair a closely cropped buzz cut on one side of her part, and jaw length grey bob on the other. “Do tell.” Yawns the captain from her chair in the officers lounge. “The admiral responded, well, no. Not responded. He sent us a message that came in thirty hours after we sent out ours.” Quips the CO. “Like two ships passing in the night.” Barks the captain with a slight hiccup. Her brandy sloshing around in her snifter, the ice cubes clinking with the motion. “Yes, just so. He needs us to activate the Jackal Protocol. I assume you know what that means? I looked in the hand book, and through our active duty archives but came up with nothing.” Shrugs Gonzalez. With a blank stare the captain has gone motionless, and the pink flush of the alcohol slowly gives way to an ashen green grey colour. “Did he now.” A long pregnant pause follows, as the chatter of the lounge falls in to fill the silence between them at their private table. After a few deep breaths the captain toggles her wrist communicator down to medical and cycles through some tabs and alternate screens that Gonzalez had never seen before. “Meet me in the aft cargo hold at 0:200 hours, and bring coffee, and protein bars, lots of it too.” Standing up abruptly the captain nearly runs for the door to her private office aboard the bridge. “But why ma’am” Gonzalez asks stunned. “The admiral has just lost confidence in the integrated Fire Teams and his Nanotech boosted walking Tankers. We need to get my pet project off the ground and fully operational – now!” The shout from the usually stone cold captain brings the rest of the officers in the lounge up short. Eyes wander between the captain and the CO, blank looks on their faces during the seemingly heated exchange. With a flurry the captain exits the room, and the CO heads down to the commissary to gather the required food stuffs.

“Jes-us fuck-ing Key-rist! What happened to you out there today Gurinder?” Exclaims a bed ridden man in the med bay. Gurinder, a solidly built man of about forty says “I was de-gloved, if you can fucking believe it. Don’t look that up by the way.” He snarls. “How did that happen?” The bed ridden man says. “I’m always so careful, so fucking careful. The CO even told us repeatedly how dangerous resupply can be here at Mars Six Sub-Orbital Aerial Base, and I still got frostbite during the transfer of the LOX, that I went directly to the baths afterwards in shock – apparently, to soak the bone chilling cold out of me. I got turned around in the process and tried to thaw my hands in a plasma stream, and scalded them instead. Sloughed the skin off in one bubbling mass of wet tissue. The frostbite had killed the nerves so I didn’t notice until I dropped both of my hands into the pool.” Gurinder drawls looking down at his feet in the infirmary. “Bright side is, the doctors said I could try those swanky new haptic gloves. You know the ones we all had to try on before shipping out?” Says Gurinder. “Yeah – yeah, the ones that were always too fucking tight.” Offers the bed ridden man. “Yeah, second skin, what they called it. Turns out once you lose your first skin they fit like a charm. But putting them on.” Gurinder pauses here, for a lengthy bit of awed silence. “Not uh, not fun. Leave it at that. But check it out, no seams. The Nanotech integration filled in the gaps and I can touch and feel again. Also, I might add, no nerve pain.” He grins dopishly. “Noice!” Whoops the man from his bed. “So what do they do?” Replies the man from his bed. “I’m actually en route to the testing facility in the aft of the ship. I knew the Jolene Roger had something up her skirt for us in this fight!” Bellows Gurinder. “Keep it down out there!” Shouted an orderly. “We’ve got an influx of wounded people in here.” The orderly shrieks again. “It’s the worst one day record for onsite injuries ever!” Shouted the orderly to the whole room. “What the fuck is going on here today?” A med tech barks in retort.

“You’re not going to like this Gonzalez, but drastic times calls for drastic measures. I need these haptic nerve drones manned, and I couldn’t wait for specimens, so I took some extraordinary steps.” The captain crooned in a melodic whisper. “A couple of manufactured accidents here and there, one or two key personnel have their equipment tampered with, and a few happy coincidences due to the planned misfortune of others.” The captain chuckles warmly. “Chin up. The admiral needs results, The Company needs results, and my Bison drones are going to lead the way. Don’t worry, no one suspects you of anything, and your name isn’t even associated with my patented Bison drones. Look, here come the first batch of pilots now.” Pointing down along the enormous cargo hold to the group of men and women filtering into the huge space as a clump. All in all about fifteen people, some with dark metallic hands, and others with long black snakes running the length of their spines. After a few minutes the crowd had walked the full length of the room to stand infront of the captain and CO Gonzalez. Standing in a semi circle near a grouping of med pod suspension tanks. The captain clears her throat and steps away from CO Gonzalez and addresses the room. “Ladies and Gentlemen welcome. You are looking at your new home for the foreseeable future. Over the next ten days you will be fully immersed in running your new Bison drones to get up to fighting speed. So, without further ado, find a suitable tank. Haptic gloves in the standing tanks, and spinal columns into the ones laying down please. No need to talk. You’ll understand soon enough. The subconscious training will teach you everything you need to know, and once you all pass the training, you’ll be able to watch your Bison drones from the safety of our newest war room. Quick – quick. Hop in. Time is wasting people.” The captain’s smile fades quickly as the gathered group doesn’t move. “Get in the fucking tanks before I float you all out of the cargo airlock.” She barks. There is a series of squeaks and scrapes as the gathered wounded climb half heartedly into their icy cold suspension tanks. The clunks of the safety seals locking into place echoes in the cavernous room.

Walking back to her spot near the center of the tanks, the captain hits a series of buttons and watches the group begin the first moments of their ten days of subconscious training. CO Gonzales stands at attention beside the captain, her mind racing, her stomach doing flips.

Part Thirty Two: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

“Did you pass along the request to Admiral Garneau?”

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Asks the formally dressed captain of the Jolene Roger without looking up from her computer screen. Tapping away quickly, the clicking a loud steady beat in the silence of the stately ready room just off of the bridge. “Yes – ma’am. I put in our request to stop off at the Mars Six Sub-Orbital Aerial Base for resupply, and to pick up a few new crew members. It was flagged to your attention as an Omega level code Orange personnel transfer for one person in particular. A Ghost crew member, not sure of the name though, as it wasn’t listed in the memo.” Responds the commanding officer firmly. “Yeah – I saw that too. Strange timing. But then again, none of us are privy to the admirals thinking on the matter of war, or the timing of it being advantageous for all parties concerned. We were scheduled to resupply smack dab in the middle of this scrum, so I felt pushing that ahead, and only being six days late for the flotilla rendezvous was acceptable, to me at least. By the time Admiral Garneau signs off on it, and responds we’ll be away from port, and enroute.” A shuffling of papers and the click of a pen. The soft whir of the air scrubbers can be heard purring quietly in the sound proofed office. The captain leans back in her chair to look at her CO. “The Ghost Crew is most unexpected. I didn’t realize we rated one, being the smallest of the vessels heading to battle.” Quips the stern featured captain. “You are correct ma’am, we don’t rate one. He’s to be taken over to the Righteous Chord or any other massive Erlon class battle ship in the fleet. We can’t keep him, I’m afraid.” Answers the CO somberly. “Be that as it may, we can still use – him? Was it. Yes. Nameless as far as I’m concerned. Feed him, get him settled, and then run him through our highest priority matters before we get into position with the rest of the fleet. We’ve got the next nine weeks before we make ‘landfall’ at UB313, so make the best of it please. I trust you and engineering can put together a comprehensive list of tasks he can accomplish given the time crunch, and the impending battle. Lord knows what that fucking doctor has planned. I shudder to think about it.” The captain grimaces, and a slight shiver makes her quiver in her seat. With a flush of goose flesh herself the CO says. “Ugh! Right? If you’re done with those forms I can take them down with me to HR, on my way by the engineering decks.” Says the CO. “Did you perchance pass a rather fat fellow on the way in here? If you see him, send him in.” The captain extends her arm out with some papers clutched in her left hand to the CO. “Yes, I did in fact see him. I think the quat sanitizer we use in the air is giving him grief, as he looked terrible. Common trait among those not used to long haul vessel life. He must be a grounder from Earth proper or Mars.” With a look of disgust the captain says. “Thanks, I’ll take the note under advisement. No hand shakes, and I’ll keep my distance. As you were Austenmire.” Smirks the captain. “Don’t do that ma’am, my older sister is CO Austenmire. I prefer Gonzalez, after my mother – ma’am”. With a chuckle the captain rights her clothes before sitting down again. “Yes – right. Gonzalez then. By my leave.” With a soft ping the doors to the ready room whoosh open and CO Gonzalez leaves soundlessly.

“Hey Gonzalez, what’s hanging ba-bee!” Shouts a grey, hunched older man covered from head to toe in a thick inky grease. Strewn around him are the disassembled parts of a SIP hydroptic-6 jib borer. “Jesus Bennet, respect the rank, you silly toothless old fuck!” She barks tapping the stripes on her shoulder, and then the prominent emblems on her collar. “Yeah – yeah, baby doll. Once you get me some help round here, I’ll show you the respect you deserve.” He rasps like a heavy smoker, with half his throat a cancerous sore. “As a matter of fact, we’ll have a Ghost Crew member for nine weeks, so I need a prioritized list of doable jobs in my inbox asafp!” Gonzalez shouts over the din of the machinery running beside the old man Bennet. The old borer making a hell of a racket in the background. “Sounds like you have a serious chatter issue with that line borer Bennet. You might need a bigger collar, or thicker tooling.” He shouts back. “That’s my girl!” The toothless grin spreads even wider on the dirty old man’s face.

Walking further through the small engineering decks Gonzalez stops to talk with a few other high ranking engineers and technicians, trying to get a sense of how much work they can safely cram into the nine weeks they have with the Ghost before reaching the rendezvous point in system. Likely less time than that, as they have to let him transfer to another vessel prior to reaching battle stations, and active combat duty. Taking her time to make some small talk, and get an inside tack on the largest of the priority projects, she stands idle, and watches the machine shop in full swing. “What’s Bennet’s deal, you don’t look short staffed here?” She enquired to a man of modest size lounging on a bench munching on a sandwich. With a slightly puzzled look the man swallows hard, with an audible gulp. “Wars coming, the old bastard just wants everything 100%, so no body dies cause he missed something that could be of consequence.” He burps mid sentence, then stops himself, realizing he’s talking to the ships CO. “Ma’am!” He stammers suddenly. “Aren’t we all.” She says quietly, more to herself than to the man. His foot slips from his perch on the desk and he sits up straighter. “Gonzalez, ma’am, I’m being buzzed. Someone in HR, is looking for you, ma’am.” He squirms awkwardly under her glare. “If they ping you again tell them I’m on my way presently.” With a last glance around the shop she marches off to the large environmental doors, and walks the ships main artery to find a lift back up to the HR decks nearer the bridge.

The yellow walls in the hall are a stark contrast to the dull matte greys of the rest of the Jolene Roger. “Commanding Officer! Gonzalez!” Shouts a petite woman dressed in a matching yellow jumpsuit. “I thought you’d get here about an hour ago, but I’m now late for my next stop. Walk with me if you would be so kind.” Shrieks the petite woman down the wide yellow hall. “As you well know we have a VIP crew member to deliver to the admiral. I am most excited! Follow me, we’ll take the Express elevators over to the receiving decks to grab him.” She hardly stops talking long enough to draw a breath before she starts in on all the details, gossip and news about the new crew coming aboard. The pressure change in the ears can be felt as the elevator rockets around the ship in a convoluted manner, avoiding major portions of infrastructure inside the guts of the vessel. After several tense seconds as their weight, and gravity swapped positions relative to how they boarded the lift, they came to rest at a wide open floor, with stacks of crates, luggage, and fresh food stuffs in waxed boxes. Standing alone in the center of the room is a man in a beige jumpsuit, with tools and harness glinting in the harsh light of the scanners and sensors that litter the room. “Here he is!” The little woman squeals excitedly. Running off ahead out of the lift towards the man. Gonzalez watches in disbelief as the petite woman runs ahead leaving her standing alone in the lift. Walking over to the two the CO extends a crisp salute, and offers her hand in welcoming. “Welcome aboard Ghost.” She says stiffly. “Oh don’t be silly, let me introduce you!” She vibrates in her excitement. “No need for the fuss.” The man in beige says. “Ma’am.” He salutes back with a rigorous audible snap to his elbow, palm and fingers. “I’m Mark Garneau, at your service.” He bows extravagantly.

Part Thirty One: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

“Do you honestly believe me to be stupid?”

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Roars doctor Jang furiously into the receiver. His voice reverberates off of the hewn rock walls of the hidden comm’s alcove. “I’m not that fucking dense you bastards. I have ample defenses, both here on the base, with our trained tactical operatives, even the regular administrative staff of UB313 have combat training. I have my private special forces, plus something extra I had been working on concurrently with my genetics program. So no Mr Jones, I am not going to run this operation into the ground. I have The Company right where I expect them to be, and in so doing, am pushing ahead with a rather important expansion that will take us towards my goal of interstellar travel.” He growls through gritted teeth, his tone a seething hiss full of poison and skin rotting venom. To the uninitiated he would look nonplussed, to those who know him well, they would be running for the closest air lock to escape his wrath, and punitive tendencies.

“Well, good doctor, need I not remind you how many billions we have wrapped up in your projects, and our exoplanet colonization goals. Don’t fuck this up, or I’ll have you eating your own body parts in a universally broadcast cooking show, for my pleasure.” With an audible click the line goes dead. Not just disconnected but dead – dead. The thick glass of the orange yellow bulb is fizzling with smoke, as the whole terminal is fried at doctor Jang’s feet. The long range communications terminal now a molten slag pile which is now untraceable, and entirely unusable. Pulling the receiver from his ear he slams it repeatedly against the now blisteringly hot and oozing slag pile. The only thing connecting doctor Jang to his black market sources of credit will now be nearly impossible to recover even if the base becomes over run, or briefly gets taken by the forces of The Company. All of the internal memory, chips and sensors have been scorched beyond recognition. The base, and by extension Doctor Jang and his people are cut off and alone. A simple gesture which says “you’re on your own.”

“I didn’t come out all this fucking way, so some oligarch prick could second guess my every move and question my genius. Fuck you Jones!, and fuck you good.” Jang bellows. “When everything comes together you shall not get anything from me. Cock sucking fucking mother-fucker!” He shouts, adding emphasis with finger pointing and fist pumps in the air. Straightening his clothes, and fixing his glasses in place on his face, he readies himself to leave the sound proof alcove hidden on the UB313 bridge facility. Stepping out of the alcove with a whisper of smoke and the smell of burnt wiring doctor Jang walks along a short hall that is obscured from the bridge by a cut through made from hewn rock. If you were to look right at it from the center of the bridge, it appears to be an unbroken wall of grey yellow rock. But once you step through it you briefly interrupt the illusion of a straight wall.

Much of UB313 is built this way. With twists and turns, dead ends, and stairs that lead nowhere. Unless you are well worn being aboard you don’t venture out to no places without planning on dying. It helps to curtail snooping, spying and people generally being nosy. On more than one occasion the doctor has gone on a walk about only to stumble over a dehydrated and mostly frozen corpse of someone who likely got turned around and lost in the maze of tunnels, stair walls and hidden passages. Orientation here leads through the medical bay and directly to where you will work. Being an untrusting sociopath with psychotic tendencies he likes his staff to remain silo’d into separate cells. No one knows everything, and there are few friends intermingled between departments. Life here is full on tension and suffering, just the way he likes it. People give him their best work or they disappear. Very few threads left behind in the black ops insurgency that doctor Jang heads up on UB313.

“One can only surmise from the flurry of activity from our benefactors that something, or someone is on there way here. This is it, ladies and gentlemen of UB313. The fight has come to us, as expected. Though we do not, as of yet have the asset under our control, I assume it will only be a matter of time before it is. So sound the alarm! We are to move to pre-battle ready schedules. No exterior sorties unless authorized, no R&R leaves, and turn up the sensitivity on all of our sensor arrays, antennas and scopes. They should be about two to three weeks of high velocity travel distance from us by now. Turn on the sentries if you would, please.” Croons the now giddy and flushed red doctor. “Uh, sir? The sentries? What are those sir?” Asks a man whose face is obscured by a low hanging monitor. “Oh right! I forget just how much I do around here myself. It’s a bit of a surprise really.” Laughs the doctor heartily.

Part Thirty: Ghost of the Dirty Starling