It was Polk’s intention that there would be nothing left to challenge his authority by the time order was fully restored. If it took an ocean of blood and hordes of fatherless families for that goal to be achieved, that was the price that McNair and the planet of Commitment would have to pay.
Chief Councillor Polk was here to stay.
Thursday, November 26, 2398, UD
Space Battle Station 1, in Orbit around Terranova Planet
If Fleet protocol was any guide, it wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did.
Throughout the vast bulk of Space Battle Station 1, work rapidly ground to a halt as word got around, the news spreading like wildfire. In a matter of only minutes, every holovid had been switched over to watch the incoming ship as it decelerated slowly in-system.
Now every living soul on SBS-1, from the commodore in command down to the lowliest spacer, was focused on the tiny flares of ionized driver mass as 387 dropped in toward the station, safely secured fore and aft by the salvage tugs that had rescued her shattered hull after it had dropped, spinning uncontrollably, out of pinchspace.
It seemed to take a lifetime, but finally, the tugs’ main engines shut off and 387 was in position for her final approach.
Slowly, the tugs began to roll 387 to line up her main hangar door for berthing. As they did, a shocked gasp swept through the station as the damage to the ship’s hull became obvious. The white-gray patches of emergency foamsteel repairs stood out starkly against the deep blackness of the scout’s hull; everywhere gashes and gouges had been torn, ripped, and punched into the ceramsteel armor. Then, as 387 made its final approach, the massive foamsteel-filled hole that seemed to take up almost all of the ship’s starboard bow came into view.
“Holy Mother of God,” breathed Commodore Perec, his morning staff meeting in ruins around him, the chairs around the conference room table pushed back as his staff unconsciously moved to stand in front of the holovid. Perec had been through the last war and had seen some pretty badly cut-up ships, but the only time he’d seen them this bad, they’d been complete write-offs.
Perec turned to his senior engineer, a tall gray-haired captain. “I don’t believe it, Marta,” he said. “How did they survive that?”
“By good engineering design, I’d say, Commodore,” she replied, shaking her head in amazement. “She’s been hit right above Weapons Power Charlie. Looks like the blast venting really does work.”
Perec nodded. “Well, after all the ships we lost last time around from poorly contained fusion plants going up, they had to do something, and it’s good to see that it really does work.” He turned to the rest of his staff.
“This meeting’s canceled. I’m going down to meet them.”
As Perec strode from the room, nobody even noticed the fact that he was doing something unheard of. Commodores in command of space battle stations never met ships as small and insignificant as a light scout. They just didn’t.
After a short pause as 387’s cruelly torn lander was off-loaded into the care of the station’s cargobots, the salvage tugs started 387’s slow move in to berth. Her brilliant orange anticollision lights were the only signs that the scout was a operational warship and not just some battered and abandoned hulk.
Michael had received two vidmails that mattered.
One was from Anna, who, miracle of miracles, was already berthed and somehow had wrangled leave from Damishqui from 18:00. The second was from his father, reporting the imminent arrival home of his mother and Sam.
Michael sat in his makeshift combat information center bathed in a wonderfully warm glow of happiness. Surrounded by his scratch command team sitting incongruously on the cheerfully patterned chairs of the wardroom, Michael watched as the bulkhead-mounted holovid showed the meters running off as 387 made her final approach. As instructed by Chief Kemble and in no uncertain terms, Michael had his foot up as he tried hard not to keep thinking about Anna, though with little success.
None of them had much to do except keep an eye on things as the salvage tugs slowly and with infinite care maneuvered 387 alongside and then into one of the station’s berthing stations. Hydraulic locking arms reached out from SBS-1 to hold the ship firmly on the pad that would frame and seal its entire hangar door.
“Command, Mother. Berthed.”
“Command, roger. All stations, this is command. Hands fall out from berthing stations. Revert to harbor stations, ship state 4, airtight integrity condition zulu.”
“Command, Mother.”
“Yes, Mother?”
“Message from the station, Commodore Perec is on his way down.”
Michael went pale. Somehow it had never occurred to him that anyone apart from the station’s engineers would be interested in poor old 387. “What? The commodore? Oh, shit. Tell the XO. We’ll-”
Mother interrupted Michael’s moment of panic at the thought of having to organize the ceremony that normally accompanied a commodore’s visit, the scale of the crisis magnified in Michael’s mind by a complete lack of notice and magnified again by Space Fleet’s enduring love of and abiding commitment to ceremony.
“Command,” Mother said patiently, “the commodore has specifically instructed that there be no ceremony, and he’ll wait until the medevac teams have gotten all the regen tanks off.”
Michael whistled with relief. “Oh, ah. Right. Okay. Thank God for that. Warn Chief Harris anyway and get him to meet me down in the hangar. Oh, and by the way, enough of the ‘command’ stuff. We’re alongside now, so it’s Michael. Just Michael please.”
“Yes, Michael.”
Michael got painfully to his feet. By Christ, he was sore all over, and his leg was worse today. There was no use comming painkillers, as the drugbots had run out the previous night and he hadn’t gotten around to getting more from Chief Kemble; that probably was the least smart thing he’d done all week. Add that to the list of things to do, he thought ruefully, still amazed at how much the captain of a ship had to stay on top of even with all the help that Mother provided.
Not that the routine things bothered him, not at all.
In fact, he quite enjoyed them. They could be listed, prioritized, and dealt with, each humdrum task a small reminder that there was an ordinary world out there somewhere.
No, it was the painful task of putting together the personal vidmails to the families of 387’s lost crew. Every one had hurt more than he had ever thought possible, and though Michael did his best, working and reworking each one for hours, he never felt that they were right. In the end, sheer exhaustion, the million and one other things he had to attend to, and the stress of running a ship badly shorthanded had forced him to finish the job, well or poorly. With the forlorn hope that they might in fact be at least all right, he had commed them through to the station’s next of kin support team and prayed for the best.
Michael finally made it to the hangar, white-faced and glistening with sweat from the pain of dragging an increasingly aching leg past the shattered wreck that had once been 387’s combat information center and down two sets of ladders into the hangar. Without the lander, the huge space was echoingly empty, its deck a buzz of activity as station work crews carefully maneuvered the heavy and awkward regen tanks through the forward air lock door, down to the hangar deck, and out across the grav interface; the whole process was managed by a spiderweb of AI-controlled winches and lines.