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Tag: Space Navy

“Marshala my main man, listen I have a real squeaker on the docket, think you can make a quick run for me?”

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Shouts a fat man from further down the hall. His gut hanging out of the door from the supply chain command post. “I got this Ghost fella that needs to be run over to The Righteous Chord,  via an extra stop off to pick up some fuel cell rods from The Dirty Starling. Take you forty minutes tops, man. You up for it?” The fat man is chewing on a tobacco roll, like an unlit cigar, but still stinks, turns your finger tips and lips yellow, and is generally considered to be really unhealthy.  Marshala stops in his tracks, not yet to his berth, so still just outside the threshold to the change rooms, and thus nearly free from any extra duties. “Countdown clock reads an hour. That’s cutting things close Rodario.” Marshala counters. “Come on man, this one got handed to me last minute, this is a VIP transfer, and a pick up. They’ll have a crab unit ready and waiting to handle the fuel rods. You drive by, grab the rods, put this Ghost down in his new digs and high tail it home. What do you say?” He smiles, a yellow gap toothed smile. The stench from the tobacco roll oozes from his every pore. “Not buying it Rodario. You forgot about it, now you want to make it my problem. Clocks ticking Rody.” The pilot grins, shifting his helmet from one arm to the crook of the other. “Fuck, fine. Triple time pay, plus the VIP bonus.” He sneers. “And?” Retorts Marshala. “What? Fuck me, and. And nothing.” Rodario snaps, his smile fading quickly. “Tick-tock, tick-tock” answers Marshala in a mocking sing song voice. “Christ almighty in heaven, fine. You can have the fuel rod danger pay stipend aswell. But only a portion, as it’s a quarter load only.” He says, reaching his arm out of his office to hand the bill of lading forms to Marshala. “You got it boss.” Marshala takes the papers and bolts back up the hall at full tilt towards his run about. Coming around the side he unsnaps the fueling lines, and toggles through the warm up check list, the dial indicators showing that the ship hasn’t completely cooled down yet from his previous trip. Strapping himself in he clicks his helmet into place feeling the coolness of his neck ring bite at his finger tips. Feeling the thunk of the latch catching, he gets an all clear from the central command tower, almost immediately after typing in his ID code and supply chain docket number. Rodario must have had him moved up in the queue in order to get this last minute trip done. Checking his wrist biometric unit, Marshala sees the clocks down to forty three minutes. Going to be a tight one he thinks, as the thrusters push him hard against his restraints as he backs the run about out of its housing.

The run about is a great little eight seater ship for taking small groups of people between larger ships, or transporting goods to another vessels dry docks, or cargo hold. Nimble, reliable, and most importantly, not orange and black like every other fucking thing build by The Company aeronautics people. Marshala’s run about is sky blue with a hint of yellow mixed in. The interior is a faux white leather, that is well worn, but in good condition. That’s why he gets to do the baby sitting tour guide trips with Company VIP’s.  His ship The Renaissance, also has a wet bar, though no one ever seems inclined to drink when vertigo can strike at any time. Marshala loves in inspire his VIP’s by approaching the larger vessels in the flotilla at 90 degree angles to what they felt was up or down, and see them gasp once it dawns on them. A bit of pilot humor. 

Looking at his bill of lading, the Jolene Roger will be a straight shot three kilometers starboard to collect his Ghost crew guest. Then an about face, drop  90 degrees for one kilometer to grab the fuel rods from The Dirty Starling and then book it to the reception desk at The Righteous Chord to drop off his passenger, and then a mad scramble back to The Lark Song, before they jump into battle stations where he has several hours before his fourth wave gets called into action. Nothing special, just tight timelines care of the fat bastard himself Rodario. Though he had to admit holding out for all the added bonuses, stipends and overtime was a stroke of genius. Rodario really must have dropped that ball to accept all of those charges this late in the game, but who was Marshala to turn down nearly eleven thousand credits for one forty minute run.

The jaunt from The Lark Song to the Jolene Roger, was uneventful. Black, bleak and boring. Taking Marshala less than three minutes to cover the distance. He was guided to his pick up point by an automated bouy that towed him in the last five hundred meters, and a shadowy figure clinked and thunked his way through the airlock at the top of the run about. The medium sized man in a bizarrely harnessed beige jumpsuit floated in nonchalantly and buckled himself down two rows back. Close enough to talk, but not too close. Akin to taking the second urinal over in the men’s room, if you will. Without looking back Marshala says “Get comfortable but don’t take your helmet off ok.” After a brief, yet agonizing pause Marshala was given the go ahead to flop into a dive, relative to the Roger’s position, and head for the Dirty Starling’s cargo hold. The run about peeled away with an audible gasp from the Ghost crew, who followed it up with both a hoot, and a holler. Marshala was zipping now, he had an open lane in front of him, as everyone else was packing it in, and heading back to their berths for the flotilla’s jump into battle.

A proximity alarm sounds causing Marshala to have to produce some evasive maneuvers to avoid a field of shrapnel. Somebody must have lit off a couple of fuel rods and not lived to tell the tale, as the shipping lanes weren’t marked, or rerouted yet. Looking at the countdown Marshala has a full twenty five minutes left. As the Renaissance shoots across the void the automated buoys have been recalled and Marshala has to find his own way to the tiny crab unit that is supposed to be waiting for him, in order to load his fuel rods. The running lights on the Dirty Starling are off in preparation for the jump, so Marshala has to call in manually. All taking precious minutes. Toggling switches on his dash he sees his own wrist communicator is pinging him with an urgent message from Rodario. The radio crackles with static. “Nice of you to arrive Renaissance. Crab unit ninety one is on it’s way. Be there in four minutes.” The radio clicks off. Countdown clock reads seventeen minutes left. “Still good. Still good.” He whispers. Just as foretold the crab unit floats by and racks the fuel rods in one fluid motion, and Marshala rockets off without waiting for the all clear. Shaving off seconds of delays is a matter of life and death at this point.

Turning to look over his shoulder Marshala says “I can’t come in with you, so be ready and waiting in the air lock. I’ll give you a wee push, and you go in. I’m not going to stop, so be ready. And be careful.” A gulp and the sound of a buckle unclasping answers him. Toggling the intercom Marshala shouts over the sounds of the air pumps. “I’m not going to pump out all of the air. I need some to help propel you to the airlock doors. I’ll wait as long as I can to see you go in, but otherwise you’re on your own.” The loud banging of the pumps makes Marshala’s seat vibrate. “Oh, ok… I guess. Thank you?” The Ghost offers from inside the air lock. The red digits of the countdown clock on his dash shows eleven minutes. In moments The Righteous Chord looms large in the cabin windows and Marshala comes screaming in over the hull as he dives into a roll over towards the aft cargo bay. Orienting his air lock door to the main cargo hold Marshala brings the run about The Renaissance down to a crawl. “On my mark – mark!” He shouts, as a beige projectile fires out of the air lock with an icy puff of grey. Sitting with both hands on his joy sticks, one eye on the Ghost Crew and his other eye on the slowly counting down clock Marshala just breaths. His sensor array shows the Ghost approaching at a fast, but survivable speed. Three hundred meters, 10 minutes, two hundred seventy five meters, nine minutes forty seconds, two hundred fifty meters, nine minutes twenty, on and on, as both the countdown clock and the distance go down in tandem. With a triple click over the comm’s, a standard call for all clear, Marshala watches as the cargo bay doors creep open, and the beige body slips safely inside.

Like a canon ball Marshala pushes his run about to the near red line as he careens back towards the Lark Song, from the under belly of The Righteous Chord. His arms pinned to his arm rests, and breathing hard in the haut-haut, chest compression chant he was trained to use to keep his blood pumping under pressure, he races back to the homing beacon emanating from his dry dock berth. As the coordinates draw near, and the count down clock still registers three minutes and fourteen seconds he eases back on the throttle, only to notice that his fuel gauge is on empty. With only his attitude adjustment thrusters available to him now Marshala begins to sweat. A trickle beads up on his brow, and rolls slowly towards his eye. Within moments the Renaissance goes dead stick in his hands, and the craft begins to tumble on all three axis. The g forces are too much to handle, Marshala blacks out.

From out of the darkness a previously recalled bouy reboots, and bursts free from its holding station. It connects blindly to a tumbling blue run about, and brings it in for docking, using every ounce of fuel reserves to steady the ships tumble. The pilot is unconscious, but within seconds of locking in place in the berth aboard the large vessel, The Lark Song jumps into battle.

Part Thirty Nine: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

“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.