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“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

** Query – internal logs/ time stamp corruption – files not lost. No longer able to maintain chronological order**.

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Racquelle is half buried in a deep freezer before she becomes aware of the audio recording playing over the ship wide PA system. Having found her way through the vaguely human, mostly antique inspired vessel to what was a great candidate for the canteen. Racquelle found an unlocked standing freezer box and decided to go rifling through it in search of sustenance. The ice build up and oddly plastic wrapped packaging had her excited at first, but after pulling half of the deep freezers contents out into the open to find mostly powders and frozen black brown sludge which tasted awful, she was becoming increasingly agitated. Which made her stomach rumble, alerted her to a growing head ache, and a general sense of anger and frustration, chased by fatigue and the now constant belly ache. Pushing the lid open from the inside, and throwing out the last handful of bags to the floor, she stepped over the rim of the ice cold box and took a moment to listen to the message. The first thing she registered was that the ship ‘K’ and the humanoid AI Katayna had come out of their deep data dive long enough to compose a message and play it on repeat for her to hear it. Sort of a good sign, after nearly a full week of dead silence. The second thing she realized was that if the ship had no access to chronologically stored data, it would have to expend a far greater amount of time and energy to find whatever the fuck it was it went looking for in the first place. And, that she could potentially communicate with ‘K’ vocally again. “Glad to hear you’re alive and well K!” She said into the dimness of the canteen. “Good evening Racquelle. Apologies for our, my, prolonged disappearance.” Barked the PA system in response, justice little too loudly. “Motion tracking has you placed near our make shift morgue. I required certain molecular elements which we are unable to synthesize in bulk. Do you have an interest in the vitamins and minerals left over from breaking down the former crew?” Asks the ship flatly. Feeling rather taken aback Racquelle says “I need to eat and drink something quickly, or else I’m going to faint and likely never wake up again.” She rasps wryly. “I will light the way to the nearest cafeteria. Hold tight. Actually on second thought I will provide you with transportation. Your vitals are greatly diminished from when we first met.” With a horrendous screech a wall panel pulls open to reveal a small people mover with fat black wheels, a canopy of beige Formica, and plush yellowed off white leather looking seats. No visible steering wheel though, or breaks nor foot pedals. “Climb aboard Ms. Your chariot awaits.” Murmurs the tinny voice from the PA system.

Sitting at the round white table with a veritable feast laid out before her Racquelle listens intently while Katayna goes over what remarkable things they’ve discovered buried in the disrupted internal data logs. “We are as of yet unable to verify when, where or how any of these things happened. We would need to correlate the logs with the findings from all of the various antenna arrays located around us – which as you might suspect, will take some time. Things of note are as follows. We’ve made two outbound calls, to whom and what about, or why are a mystery as of yet. Also we have a near steady stream of incoming calls as of a few days ago. That’s not from the logs, by the by. It’s what caused our jolt out of the frozen processing cycle. We received a significant processing power bump of unknown origin. Seemed friendly though, which is odd.” Katayna tilts her head a little too far to one side in an imitation of a human expression towards looking puzzled. The act is rather comical in how over zealous it is.

Crunching on her vitamin and mineral porridge Racquelle takes a moment to stop eating and stare at Katayna. She points down at her bowl and says “This isn’t made from your old crew though right? No matter. I burned that bridge when I crossed it an hour ago.” With a loud and dry swallow she goes on. “Outbound messages huh? That does seem odd. But you guys have said you think you crossed both time, space and possibly dimensions too. Could it be a logging error, or some type of electrical distortion that looks like a message?” Ponders Racquelle. “Well, no. The first one had a lengthy set of technical diagrams attached to it, for a type of dimensional jumping engine, called a For E’s engine. Don’t know if we found that and sent it along, or designed it ourselves. The second one is far harder to decipher and has been put on hold. Though with the available processing bump in capabilities, we could tackle that in the background if we wanted to.” Katayna says in a chipper tone, at odds with the stillness of her face and metallic features.

Looking at the messy remains of her feast Racquelle leans back in her seat as a wave of nausea washes over from eating too much after days of going hungry. “Rookie mistake.” She mutters. “So – what’s next up on the horizon. I assume we’re here alone right? You consumed my other sortie partners and their ship, and we are weeks away from UB313. I don’t suppose I could talk you all into taking me back there? I have a few folks who really want to talk to you.” Quips Racquelle. “No – no. We are not alone. Our long range scanners have located a flotilla of approximately twelve fast moving vessels headed here, as far as we can tell from their roughshod trajectories. Some look as though they’ll arrive a few days after the majority, but I assure you we are most decidedly not alone. Well – short term yes, long term, not even close.” Says Katayna and K both simultaneously.

Racquelle’s face loses its colour and she turns a sort of ashen grey green, with flecks of blue purple around her eyes and mouth. The smirk fades just as quickly as it appeared. “Wait these are coming from UB313?” She croaks. “Uh no. These look to have originated from Earth’s orbit, possibly Mars too.” Says Katayna flatly. “Well, fuck me sideways.” Says Racquelle.

Part Twenty Nine: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

“Admiral Garneau?, we have the solution in hand, sir”

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Stammers the small man from behind his mangled and abused clipboard. “The programming team have released the program to medical and they are about to disseminate it among the afflicted fire teams and their associated heavy artillery and infantrymen, sir.” The nervous young man barely takes a breath before diving further into his diatribe. “Doctor Tam, Commanding Officer Austenmire and several other members of the SLT are all ready and waiting in the sleeve halls, and tanker magazines, sir. Ready when you are to depart from your ready room, sir.” Finishes the young man with the last fading vestiges of breath. Sweat is gathering at his brow, his nerves are frazzled. It isn’t often a new recruit gets foisted upon the Valet role for an SLT status officer, and here he is, first run out beyond Mars and he is talking to, interacting with, and leading the fleets oldest and most distinguished admiral from appointment to appointment for the day. “Your lapels are sloppy this morning Jimmy, my boy. Here let me straighten you out before we depart” the old admiral barks from just inside the ready room double doors. A crisply starched arm reaches across the threshold to pop and refit the young man’s collar. “I recall when our jumpsuits were farm more utilitarian and less formal, these seem like a dress uniform. Utterly useless against the harsh vacuum of space, my boy.” The old man chuckles. “Oh I assure you Admiral, we are even more protected in these new issue, than the old ones, why I read in the academy about the updated specifications and it’s really just a marvel the first Mark VIO’s and their earlier crews didn’t all die with how stripped down and bare their suits were sir. The improvements, and integration with our Nanotech is mind boggling!” The young valet beams. “Hmm, yes I’m sure they are, sonny Jim. I’m sure they are.” The sparkle in the old man’s eye quickly disappears, as the knowledge of what he is about to preside over makes it’s way back into the forefront of his thoughts. “Well, no need for delay my boy, lead on, lead on!” Barks the admiral gruffly. With a woosh the double doors to the ready room close, and the young valet Jimmy links his arm into the admitals arm and walks him towards the lower personnel decks, where the sleeved soldiers are stored for transport to UB313.

Strolling through the halls of the Righteous Chord crowds of people have gathered to watch the admiral make his way to the soldiers in stasis. Word of their medical plight has made the rounds, and all seven of the shipboard psyops officers had put out many different stories. One officer, known to be rather unsavory was given the real story, and she passed it along to her cadre of friends whom occupied the fringe, along with twist elements of the ‘brain worms’ story to help muddy the waters. While the other six psyops officers put out sanitized versions of one thing or another. All the people really knew was that a solution had been found that would save strongest portion of the fighting force from the brink of annihilation, and little else regarding their state seemed to matter to anyone beyond that. The news that in two weeks time when they finally entered Pluto air space they would not be without their fire teams or walking tanks had boosted morale among the currently awake staff, that nobody asked any substantive questions regarding exactly what was meant by saving the fighting force. The truth of the matter would hopefully die with the SLT, after the return trip once the battle was over, and the remaining affected soldiers stasis sleeves went offline effectively killing, and hiding the truth of what they were about to do to about four thousand soldiers from their own ranks. It was not something the old admiral relished having to oversee, but with a decision this grave, no one but Admiral Mark Garneau could give the go ahead. The decision was eating him up inside, but it was ultimately for the greater good of humanity, and The Company.

Stepping out of the power lift the admiral waves subtly at Jimmy the valet to pause for a brief moment before entering the room where the newest ad hoc sleeved soldiers monitoring station was. Doctor Tam had felt it best to remove the squad from her medical facilities and place it closer to the armory and the maintenance decks. A soft jab at how the Admiral was now relegating the fighting force into mere assets, and no longer people worthy of the full length and breadth of her medical care. It didn’t raise any eye brows, and he took the jab on the chin like a pro. The old man stood motionless, staring at the doors before nodding once, and striding through the door as though he weren’t a three hundred year old man in the midst of an existential crisis, about to murder four thousand people in order to have the military assets he needed to kill the man whom killed his great, great, great grand son, and then some. Feeling the weight of the decision, the old man puffed up and played the part of the hero, in order to make the tough decision.

“Are the programmers present with us today” asks the admiral. A brief scuffle near the center of the room as two shabby and disheveled men step away from the circular bank of monitors and computer terminals. They mumble quietly, with eyes down turned, that yes, they are in fact present and accounted for. “No need to wait on ceremony. Press upload, enter, Go or what have you and let’s get the healing started.” Growls the admiral. A shuffle of tired steps and the bushy brown haired man named Bryan steps over to his terminal, leans down and taps a single button. A blue progress bar appears on all the monitors in the central column and around the outer walls of the modest room. The exposed cables pick up the glare of the new blue light from the screens. Rapidly the flashing zero starts to increase upwards to hang momentarily at ninety eight percent, before a large 100% flashes repeatedly in a brilliant green.

“Sir! We have movement across the board, the fire teams are waking up sir! It looks like it worked!” A chorus of shouts and whoops explodes from inside the room. Admiral turns away from the jubilant crowd catching a glance from doctor Tam. Their eyes met and linger for a brief moment, when doctor Tam looks down at her feet and the admiral exits the room followed by a very lively young man in a valet uniform.

Part twenty eight: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

In the midst of report #2

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And it’s a big one, but not as large as the report that came before it. Woah-buddy, now that was a biggie. This one, luckily enough has fewer pie charts, by a full 1/3 of the quantity, and is shorter in overall length. Which is nice. I’ve gotten all of the low hanging easy wins related to the project finished, and now the body of the audit is my next big thing to tackle. Which reminds me, I need to source new images to spruce things up a little bit more.

I read earlier that it is supposed to snow all day now. I wonder if this will keep the ice around for a few more days, or if that’s mostly a lost cause now. Not sure. Would love to get the kids outdoors for another skate or two, but “We get what we get, and we don’t get upset”. Every body now!

Laying in bed last night, and the last few nights at that, I’ve thought up some great titles and subjects for posts, but they elude me in the mornings. I wonder if I’m dreaming it, or what. I don’t want to log on to write it down as I want to go to sleep as they come to me, but eh? I’ll make due.

Maybe when some invoices start to roll in and the work slows down again – it always does. I’ll have more capacity to ‘brain Good’ and actually finish the last 1/3 of my interconnected space series. As I sit back and look at it, and connect some dots, I realized I had some real estate to make up, and some geography to cover in order to make it happen how I want. Either that or I graze past it, and save that for a third book, and just get as close to it as I can, and do it more justice when I’m not feeling so frazzled with paid day job work. I feel as though a duet of short novellas is better than a trilogy. I don’t want it to feel drawn out or padded. Perhaps I just need to be more judicious in my editing, and scrape off more sub plots or extra characters this late in the game. But then again, shoe horning some current character into a role not meant for them doesn’t help me either. I have no deadline, so I’m not going to rush it. Yeah. That’s the ticket. Not going to rush the ending just because I hate having it loom large over my head when I have free time to think. The story is not my enemy! It is there as a creative outlet to help me deal with stuff. Gives me a chance to build something from nothing, when I don’t have the time or energy to sculpt in clay or build using wood.