Setosha - the Beating Heart
Copyright© 2010 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 30
Setosha, Families Carrier Oldendorf
Corey checked the in-basket on the end of her desk. Three more ships to go, then she still had messages from Fleet Headquarters to read. This was going to take her at least another hour, and then there would be her mandatory exercise period, dinner, and, finally, bed.
Six days after the battle, she’d transferred back to Oldendorf. It didn’t make any difference. The paperwork followed her, as relentless as a barracuda cortex homing in on a target. She’d tried sending it back to Karin, only to have it all come back. She might not be an Eldest, but everyone assumed she was.
It wasn’t all bad. Admiral Bridges would approve whatever she said when it came to the Battle Group, only taking a few minutes here and there to explain if she encountered something thorny. Fortunately, most of what she saw as straightforward.
“Another late night,” she muttered to herself. “If only the students at Command & Staff knew how much paperwork is required to run a fleet.” She stretched slowly. “We need classes in paper shuffling as well as bean counting.” She stared at the stack and blessed it with a wry smile.
She initialed the report in front of her before tossing it into her out-basket. She reached for the next official message and hesitated. Below it, she could see a letter with her name on it, addressed in Heather’s handwriting. It had been a long day, and she could use a little break. She pulled out that envelope and opened it.
Dear Corey,
Congratulations to the big hero! The news reports are that you were in command of our Fleet at Setosha. So I guess congratulations are in order.
There, all done with that. You’ve probably received a lot of messages like that. Aunts Alexa and Carol send their love and hope you’ll be home soon, which is what Sonia and I want to know, too. When are you coming home? The Empire is defeated, the galaxy is saved, and you’re a hero. Time to come home, Corey, time to come home, and you know why.
All right, now for the news. Eldest Cris and Aunt Alexa ganged up on me. They caught me in one of the lounges and talked. And talked. And talked. It seemed like they talked forever! And I couldn’t get away from them! Every time I tried to, they found some reason to keep me there. I didn’t realize what was going on until they finally stopped. I was so frantic I practically ran over both of them to get back to our rooms. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought someone was going to hurt my babies. I know that sounds foolish, but I wasn’t convinced. But when I got back, there was Cousin Patty standing guard in the hall with the biggest, meanest rifle I’ve ever seen. Two of our Rangers were inside, Della and Vicki Andersen, and both of them had enough guns to take on an entire Idenex raiding party.
It’s a good thing none of them got in my way. I ran straight into the babies’ room and you’ll never guess what I found. The kids were asleep, of course, and there were three coyotes lying in a ring around the crib. Eldest Cris followed me back to the apartment. She asked me if there was enough protection. Yes, I almost went to check out the window for a warship hovering on standby. Almost! Did I finally realize that the Family was going to protect my little ones?
Huh! I guess I’ve been a little overprotective, haven’t I? I don’t like leaving them any more than I have to, but Sonia says I’m better now than I was. Of course, now that she’s expecting again (she doesn’t know I know), she’s a little more tolerant of the way I’ve been. But when I think how close we came to losing them, I still get the shakes.
Between Eldest Cris and Cousin Reanne, that therapist Sonia hired for where she works, they talked her into getting pregnant again. I saw the test results when I was meeting with Eldest Cris, and she’s two tendays along.
That brings me to my other news. You’ll like this. I saw the Family Eugenicist, that’s Great Aunt Serena Nicols, now, in case you didn’t know. Anyway, I showed her Captain Young’s genome chart, and she liked what she saw. And so then I talked to Eldest Cris about it (which is why I met with her). So when you come home from saving the galaxy so you can have babies, you have all the approval you’ll need to use Captain Young’s genome. In fact, I think Great Aunt Serena would be upset if you didn’t. You do NOT want to see someone her age crooning with delight as she reads the chart.
So, hurry home, Corey. We miss you terribly, we’re very, very proud of you, and we love you very much.
Love, Heather
Corey ran her fingers over the letter, feeling the crispness of the paper. She lifted it and sniffed, catching a faint trace of lilacs. Returning the letter to its envelope, she set it to one side. Go home and have kids? She’d thought about that a lot lately. There was work still to be done here, but she didn’t have to be the one to do it. Why not have kids? She’d earned them.
She touched the control on her vidscreen, and the image of Setosha appeared. It was free. There wasn’t a single armed Imperial ship or soldier in the entire system. And there wasn’t likely to be, either. Fleet still had to go on to Boabdil, and they still had to take apart the Empire, but the war could go on without her for a while.
Humming a half-remembered fragment of an old planting song she had learned in school, Corey pulled a sheet of paper out of the drawer. She smiled and began to write.
To: Admiral Leah Bridges, Commander and Eldest, Families Fleet at Setosha
From: Captain Corey Andersen, Tactical Commander, Phormio Battle Group
Subject: Reassignment
Admiral, I am requesting reassignment to duty that will allow me to bear children.
There, brief and to the point. She signed it, tucked it into an envelope, and dropped it in the out-basket. Better see Leah first and talk this over with her. She didn’t want to catch her by surprise. Let’s see, if both she and Leah left, who would that put in command? She tried to think of who she would appoint to command at Setosha if it were up to her. Certainly, it wouldn’t be Koralee Lorenson. She didn’t think Leah wanted her in command of anything bigger than an escort after what she had done in the battle. It would probably come down to Kelly Poole or Edith Hays. Both were sensible. They were both good commanders, and they would each relish the chance.
She’d sensed a change in Admiral Bridges in the days after the battle. It was as if the Admiral had seen something in her, something she approved of. Suddenly there were more times when it was just the two of them, more times when it was Leah and Corey dropping in on each other, teacher and pupil, older friend and younger friend, and the formalities of rank vanished.
That visit in her cabin the day after the battle was only the first meeting. At others they’d talked for hours, first about Leah’s past, about creating the Navy, and about learning to deal with the Idenex. But soon they were talking of other things, their siblings, their families, what they liked, what they didn’t like. In many ways talking with Leah was like talking with Sonia and Heather. There was an understanding there, one that Corey didn’t find with the other officers. It was as if the heat of the battle had bonded them in some mysterious way.
It hadn’t all been fun and idle talk. They’d gone over the entire battle twice, using every image, every communication record they had. The first time had been one of the regular debriefings Leah had subjected her to during the months before the battle. Every surviving Squadron Lead and Ship Commander had participated. For some it had been a wasted two days. They didn’t grasp what had happened, didn’t grasp what Corey had seen during the fight, and didn’t grasp why she had issued the orders she did. Fortunately they were in a minority.
For a few officers it had been like lifting a veil. They saw what had happened, and more important, why. Josie Davenport was the best example of that. Josie had spent most of one morning quizzing her closely about details of the fight. Corey had returned the favor, grilling Josie incessantly about the cruiser fight, and two other actions the woman had fought. Corey knew Josie was going to be an Admiral, and every commander in her squadron, the one she’d nicknamed “The Unappreciated’s” was going to do well out of this.
The second debriefing had lasted four days and had been just she and Leah. They had periodically stopped the battle and looked at it from the Imperial Commander’s point of view, using information gleaned from the Emperor Michael Triumphant, trying to see what his plan was and how he had tried to implement it.
“I think he believed he was winning up until the moment the missiles from the fighters struck,” Corey had concluded at the end of the second debriefing.
“His actions and communications are certainly consistent with that,” Leah said. She’d pushed her gray hair back from her face. They were both tired, but it was a happy tired. Leah looked forward to sessions like this with the young Captain. She’d searched for her for 30 years and felt the same satisfaction that she had when she’d first seen her granddaughters. She glanced at the picture of the captured Imperial battleship that graced one wall of the conference room. “If we can get some help with that hulk, maybe we’ll have a complete record of his communications, not the partial one we have now, and then we’ll know for sure.”
“Ma’am, Leah, there were times when I thought he must have something going for him that I wasn’t seeing. I didn’t think ... I thought for sure he saw what I was doing.”
“The evidence from the surviving officers and men is that he discounted our fighters. If it means anything, I knew what you intended, splitting apart his layers of defense so his battleships were unprotected, and I didn’t see it, not until near the end. I’ll always wonder if he realized what you’d done before he died.”
“I don’t think that record survived. I just don’t understand what convinced him we would close with his battleships. After what happened with Edita Macquarrie, we had every incentive to keep our distance.”
Leah smiled. “I think you answered your own question. The cruiser fight did that. He saw you commit the carriers because the situation demanded it. He expected you to do it again when he appeared with his battleships. He couldn’t know that our fighters’ antimatter missiles would change the situation so dramatically.”
“Do you think we would have won without them?” There had been thousands of imploder warheads in every carrier’s magazines. Of course, to do any good, they had to be delivered. Both the carriers and the fighters had been getting pretty tattered towards the end of the battle.
Leah shook her head. “I truly don’t know the answer to that. I like to think we would have, but I don’t know.” She smiled again, a tired smile that told how much work these last few days had been. “Of course, there are people who will tell us that they knew all along we were going to win.”
“There were times it didn’t look that way from the Bridge of Phormio.”
“There were times it didn’t look that way from the Bridge of Oldendorf, either,” Leah said, “but we won, and things will never be the same again.” She sighed. “Now we’ll have some time for personal things: me getting to know my grandchildren, and babies for you.” She patted Corey’s hand. “That had better be the next thing on your list of things to do.”
Corey looked at the note she’d written. Go home and be a mother. She liked the idea. She would be at Red Ridges for years. Could she stand it? Well, there was only one way to find out. She pulled out the repair report from the escort Buffalo and settled back to read it.
An hour later, she had just the two official notices left to read. Her stomach rumbling, Corey picked the thicker of the two. It was the usual spate of forms to assign replacements to her ships. Most of this could be handled by her Senior. Corey set them to one side to give to Senior Hays in the morning.
She opened the other envelope and was surprised to see another envelope inside it marked “Personal and Private”. She slit it open and extracted the two sheets of paper inside. The first was a notice that the following was transcribed at the United Families Embassy on New Republic and was dated two months before. As she read the other note, she felt a cold, twisted knot form in her stomach.
Dear Captain Andersen,
It is with the greatest sorrow that I must tell you that Captain Alan Young is listed as one of those killed in a recent attack by an Imperial Direct Action Team on his hospital. If it is any comfort, his murderers were killed during the fighting. Words cannot express how it pains me to tell you this. I will miss Alan, as I know you will, too. He was a good friend, and the world is a sadder place without him.
Anthony Pagadan
Corey stared at the letter. The words blurred. She felt all hollow and cold inside, as if her emotions were frozen and time itself was somehow warped around her. He couldn’t be dead. She put the sheet down carefully. It seemed unreal. This had to be a mistake of some kind.
She read the letter again. There was no mistake. Things like this happen, she thought. You knew there was always a chance you would never see him again. It might just as easily have been him reading a letter like this about her.
She read the letter a third time.
Numbly, she picked it up, picked up Heather’s letter and her request for reassignment. She walked the short distance down the corridor to Leah’s quarters.
“Yes?” Admiral Bridges asked, looking up from her own desk and paperwork.
Corey handed her the two opened letters. When Admiral Bridges looked up, concern etching her face, Corey handed her the reassignment request.
“It’s time for me to go home,” she said. “There’s no more need for me out here. I have things I have to do.”
Admiral Bridges read the official request and then glanced at the two letters in front of her. “Request approved.” She initialed the form. “I’ll start the paperwork. Corey, I’m sorry. I wish it could have been under happier circumstances.”
“Aye, ma’am,” Corey said. She thought of Alan as she had seen him last, smiling at her from his hospital bed. “So do I.”
Above Mountain Home Navy Base, Home
Another homecoming, Corey thought as she looked at the white clouds of Home stretched out below her. She touched the orders assigning her to the faculty of the Command & Staff School. It seems like I was just there, she thought. I never did find out what assignment they were going to give me after my last tour as a teacher. I wonder what happened to my students? Did any of them ship out to Setosha? If so, how many came back?
“Landing in five minutes, ma’am.” The Senior continued down the aisle of the shuttle, speaking quietly to the other passengers.
“Thank you.” Corey shuffled her papers back into their folders and tucked them into her shoulder bag. As Tactical Commander of the Phormio Battle Group, she rated the use of a shuttle. Until she officially reported to a naval base on Home, she was still Tactical Commander, and the shuttle was hers to use. She smiled. Instead of letting the shuttle go straight to the Base at First Landing, she had ordered her pilot to set her down at Mountain Home Naval Base, the one closest to Red Ridges.
The shuttle dropped through a break in the clouds, and for a few seconds, Corey saw the mountains that surrounded her family home. In the early morning light, the red granite peaks were visible as long, deep red folds in the rugged terrain below. For just a second, she thought she could see the white buildings of the Red Ridges Family Home itself, and then they were turning again, dropping into more clouds. The view of the mountains was replaced with a wispy gray mist broken only by an occasional flash of green from the coastal plains and forested foothills.
They would be landing in the early morning, local time. In her last message to Sonia and Heather, she’d told them she would be home in the late afternoon. She had a lot of work to finish today, and as much as she wanted to be with her sibs, she needed to get certain things done. There were her official duties, checking in, processing her orders, filing her official report on the Battle of Setosha, the things the Navy’s clerks loved. But also, today, she was to be fitted with a new clunker.
It seemed like it had taken forever for the nerves in her arm to finally heal enough for her to get a new prosthetic. She wasn’t going to miss the hook at all.
The shuttle made one more turn right above the base before settling on the landing pad with a slight bump. Corey was uncomfortably pressed down in the seat as the boat’s internal gravity field surged slightly, then abruptly shut down without the smooth transition to local gravity that she would normally expect. She made a mental note to tell Karin about it. The shuttle crew needed more practice. A landing like this one could be hard on any wounded who were on board.
She struggled briefly with the fasteners of her seat belt. That was one more thing she didn’t like about her hook. Somebody should come up with a better design. She really ought to visit Robbie Sinclair. She wanted to thank her for the missiles and cortexes they’d used at Setosha, but she’d also ask her if her researchers could come up with a better artificial hand.
But all of that was for later. She picked up her shoulderbag full of reports and carefully made her way aft.
“Good to be home,” the Senior said politely as she opened the lock.
Corey smiled, drawing a deep breath of unfiltered air. “Aye, that it is.” She blinked, her eyes adjusting quickly to the brightness of the early morning sunlight. It was just like the day when she, Sonia, and Heather had visited with Alan in that park before he went home to the PSK. That was one of a whole series of pleasant memories about him she wanted to keep tucked away in her heart.
“Is your family here on Home?”
“Aye, ma’am. I have 20 days to spend with them starting tomorrow.” The Senior grinned. “I have almost a year of doings in the family to catch up on.” She laughed softly. “I’ll probably have to come back to Fleet just to get some rest. And you, ma’am?”
“I’m being reassigned,” Corey admitted. “I’ve got my official orders to teach at Command & Staff.”
“Aye, ma’am, so I’ve heard, and unofficial orders to have kids, I expect. There’s a lot of stuff like that on the grapevine. Lots of gals your age are being reassigned for that reason. Good idea. Best way I can think of to celebrate what we did at Setosha. Truth to tell, ma’am, we’ll miss you. Have healthy ones.”
“I hope so,” Corey said. She looked down. The exit ramp had locked into place. She returned the Senior’s salute and strode across the vitreous to the base Administration Offices.
The front desk clerk’s eyes widened when she recognized the officer standing in front of her. “Captain Corey Jolene Andersen,” Corey identified herself, “Serial Number 58303005, on Reassignment Orders and reporting for medical treatment today.”
“Good morning, Captain Andersen,” the girl said, visibly nervous. She swung her ledger around on the counter. “Please sign here, ma’am.”
Corey did so, steadying the ledger with her hook. With that signature, she was officially separated from Phormio. The girl stared at the hook, blushing bright pink when Corey looked up.
Corey grinned reassuringly. “I hope that’s the last time I need to sign something that way. I have an appointment to get fitted with my new prosthetic. Who do I see, and where do I find her?”
“The Clinic, ma’am,” the clerk answered promptly. She pointed down the hall. “Go out the door at the end of the hall and bear left, second building. It’s marked, so it should be easy to find.”
Corey nodded, her thanks. Three hours later, she lifted her new prosthetic hand out of its cradle and tried making a fist. The hand trembled, and slowly the fingers folded down. She closed her eyes and repeated that simple exercise twice more.
“It’ll be nice having fingers again,” she said as she held the fist closed.
“Try not to get this one shot off,” the doctor said. “I don’t like repeat customers.”
Corey laughed. “I’ll see what I can do about that. It’s a habit I’d really like to break. I’m being reassigned to teach. Last I heard, that’s not combat duty, at least not yet. What about...?” The doctor glanced down at Corey’s file, flipped back to the day’s appointments page, and smiled. She dropped her hand onto a contact pad for a moment.
“Attaching the prosthetic won’t affect you, Captain, and all your other tests are positive. You need to see Dr. White.” She hesitated, and then surprised Corey with a brief hug.
“Captain, I just got back from Setosha. Words ... words ... it was just hideous, ma’am. There are no words for what I saw. I’ll go back again next month, and probably every other month for a year or two. Thank you for what you did, ma’am.”
“It wasn’t just me,” Corey said, “there were a whole lot of other girls in that fight, too.”
The doctor visibly controlled herself and smiled faintly. “Dr. White is the best we have, ma’am. She was busier than I was on the Clara last month. She’s down the hall at the end. I’ve told her to expect you.”
“Does she have what I requested?”
“She told me she had everything ready just like you asked, ma’am. It came in yesterday. When you’re finished there, go upstairs to Room 26. I’ve scheduled you for your first rehabilitation session for your prosthetic.”
Corey nodded. Carefully, she reached out with her new clunker and tried picking up the folder full of her medical records. She overcompensated and applied too much pressure, bending the folder’s metal hanger strip nearly in half.
“Not bad,” the doctor said as Corey shifted the folder to her real hand. “The last patient I had in for a refit tried to open the door and crumpled the latch instead. It took two hours for Reception to find a locksmith and get us out of here.”
Corey laughed. “I’m trying not to consciously squeeze with it. It’s difficult, but I know I’ll get better with practice. I’ve done this before.”
“On your way, then,” the doctor told her. “And Captain? Good luck with your new assignment. I hope it’s a peaceful one.”
Corey waved her thanks and went to find Dr. White. Two hours later, she returned to the Administration Offices. “I have some reports to file,” she told the clerk at the front counter. “I will need an office for a few hours.”
“Aye, ma’am, I’ve set one aside for you per instructions from the Phormio Battle Group’s Tactical Commander. Just down the hall, there, Number 4.” Her eyes twinkled. “Any objection, you’ll have to take it up with her.”
“Don’t you just love the Navy,” Corey said. Both of them knew Corey had issued those instructions, but it was one of the little ‘games’ that got played in the Navy. After all, there were Regulations to follow.
“Oh, and ma’am?” The clerk held out a large envelope. “I have something here from Captain Boone of Phormio. She said you’d probably want to see it.”
Corey nodded and headed for Number 4. She dropped her shoulderbag on the chair and looked at the envelope. Finally, she shrugged and opened it. Inside was a pair of pictures. The first was of Corey, on the Flag Bridge with her staff visible behind her. Corey decided it must have been taken when that squadron of Impie battlecruisers had jumped in to Setosha ten days after the battle. Phormio and Agrippa had caught them, and with the help of Josie Davenport’s cruisers, they’d blown them to wreckage. The other...
“How did she do this?” Corey asked herself. The picture was of the entire crew of Phormio, including all of its pilots and Marines. She looked at the picture, picking out faces and feeling something catch in her throat.
Thank you, Karin, she thought. She wondered where Karin had found room to take the picture. She didn’t know there was that much empty space on the ship.