Part 6: TABERNACLE 12

The Seneca was a mess. Whatever had hit her took out much of engineering and had ripped a big hole in her side exposing three decks and the framing underneath the armor plating. Technicians and engineers of the Michigan crawled all over measuring, repairing and canning. Everyone was wearing space suits, not the emergency kind but real Standard Issue Multi Purpose suits, fully flight capable, with a variety of sensors, tools and powerful lights. It took me a while to get my bearings. I had crossed the distance from the Scorpion to the damaged explorer vessel flying the suit. While I was not as panic stricken as I had been on Daniel Station, I still could not shake my unexplained fear being in space with just a suit. Even the smallest ship had some sort of artificial gravity giving me a sense of up and down. Even swimming or being weightless inside a ship or pool was no problem, but being in deep space, with nothing beneath my feet than endless darkness was as nerve wrecking as it always had been. I didn’t really feel weightless, it was a sensation of falling, but not in any direction my mind could determine and perhaps that was the reason for this phobia. Zezzazz had ordered me over to the Seneca mostly to watch and learn I guess and also to secure whatever cargo we were supposed to take over.

I was greeted by an armed officer, featuring a double barrel shoulder gun. His helmet plate was completely dark, but his rank insignia made him a Lt. Commander.” Identify yourself, Cadet.”

I did and after he scanned my CITI his tone turned a little less hostile.” You are as much a Cadet as I am a Lt Commander, not with that kind of clearance” He chuckled,” I bet this is the first time the Kermac lost a T class Raider fighting a Cadet in a shuttle.|” Each word he underlined with pantomimed quotation marks.”

I didn’t think it was my place to educate him or tell him that I really was just a Cadet. He used a tight focused index finger light to point at the ragged edges of the hole.”Those False Beard whities might not have Translocators but their Matter disintegrators and Line cannons are no joke either. It takes one hell of a weapon to tear such a hole,. While the Seneca did not have not the latest Ultronit armor of course but Saresii Ceramiplate instead as you can see, virtually indestructible by thermo based energies.”

He gave me a nice and quite interesting lecture on union ship materials and Kermac weapon design and then simply let me stand where I was and floated up to two other men taking material scans. I wandered deeper in the former engineering section and swallowed hard as I saw a Garbini frozen stiff attached with one tentacle at a hand hold, the furry beings uniform identified him as a member of the Seneca engineering crew.

I wondered how many of of the Seneca had died from this unprovoked attack by a Kermac ship operating deep in Union space. Instesd of keeping this incident secret, there should be a news crew taking images and transmitting them to the Assembly. What right did the Kermac have to commit a clear act of war? What right did NAVINT have to prevent Union Citizens and the Assembly to know about it? How many such incidents happened and how many citizens died without the guilty being held responsible?

While prejudging an entire speciee was something a Union officer should not do, I decided I did not like Kermac one bit. I remembered the two cadets that died on the Yakuta world. It seemed this happened all the time. The Kermac pulled the tigers tail and we did nothing to stop them. The Lt.Commader who had not given me his name interrupted my train of thought.

“Cadet, we have cleared a way to the cargo bay. Your package is undamaged and ready to be transferred.” The man with the shoulder cannons pointed with his light finger down the dark corridor of the Seneca, while two robots carried twisted debris out.

With the help of the Michigan engineers I floated an eight by eight by twelve standard fleet container from the damaged Explorer Ship and loaded it into the Scorpion’s small cargo bay. I noticed that while I was doing something and was able to keep my mind occupied I was able to handle the cramping feeling of fear in my stomach, at least somewhat. The Container was bare of any markings, but I noticed the dark graphite shimmer and the fine hexagon pattern of the material. This standard container was made of the finest and strongest armor material known to Union tech, Molecule compacted Ultronit. Ferrous atoms encapsulated in a buckyball lattice woven in super dense carbon fibers. It would take the strongest TKU at the highest setting to even scratch it. Something very valuable or very dangerous was inside that box.

After securing the box and changing back into Uniform Zezzaz ordered me to plot a course to Tabernacle 12, avoiding major traffic routes. It took me a little longer to plot that course as it took us more or less 4000 light years across the Upward sector to the fringes of the Sagittarius arm and across the main region of Union space.

It would take us over 21 days to get there since we could not fly as fast as we could. I had to calculate our trip to the very limits of our small crafts fuel and conserving it by flying slower was the only way. We would arrive with nothing more than a few grams of molecular compacted hydrogen to spare.

The fact that we were in Union space and plenty of places we could refuel meant nothing because our orders specifically prohibited contact under any circumstance.

Zezz and I rotated in the pilot seat every six hours. He stressed scanner observation to see if we were followed, intercepted or otherwise trailed.

It was near the end of my fourth shift when he came from the back, entering the little bridge and snarled “Report.”

“Sensors show eighteen contacts in range but none of them changed course to to intercept us. Sixteen are identified as civilian craft and two are Fleet Units.”

“Did you check on possible mini or micro signatures? Indicating something camouflaged or running suppressed?”

“Yes Sir, as you instructed me. I added a subroutine to the scanner programs depressing any filter activity so everything is displayed and calibrated them to the max. There are no such signatures in scanner range.”

“Very well. Go get something to eat and then get some rest.”

“Aye Sir.”

I got up and he sat down.” Say Ensign, how is it the Fleet Admiral knows you personally. I serve this fleet for 35 years and only meet him twice in all that time. Most officers never see him at all.”

“There was a mission during my first week at the Academy when I met him first, and then there was an incident at Basic training that got him involved again.”

“And I thought Larson and I caused some trouble. To get Elligott involved that must have been one hell of an incident.”

“An incident that got me arrested, tortured and whipped at the post.”

Even though he had an alien lizard face I could see the surprise in his eyes.” Whipped? I know it’s on the books but I never heard it actually done.”

I more or less told him what happened, leaving out just a few details and he listened without interrupting and when I was done he inhaled air with a sharp sound.” I sure comment you for staying. Everybody knows about the Worm but I had no idea it went that far up the ladder.”

“What actually is the Worm?”

He lowered his voice. It is an open secret Ensign. No one officially will confirm its existence of course and if you ask most Fleet personnel they think it’s just a bogey story, but the Worm exists. The United Stars Navy is so big and spread over such a large area, it is hard to police and really control it all. Secret societies and fraternity groups develop within the Navy. Some are just founded by Officers with no other intend as hang out and have a reason to party and drink. Others are less harmless and seek Terran, Saran, Pan Saran or Ult dominance over the entire Union space, to overthrow the Union and make it an Empire with one dictator or Emperor on top. One of these organizations is called the Worm and is a criminal organization dealing with illegal Mil Tech, Drugs and most vile of all sentient beings, you know Slaves. It is called the worm because is wiggled its way into the niches and crevices of our organisation while being soft and malleable, shapeless and easily overlooked.”

“And the Navy isn’t doing anything about that?” I asked astounded by that information.

“Oh it does. Your incident is a prime example. I bet Elligott is personally chasing down leads and weeding out what he can. He is an immortal but he is only one man and he can do only so much. Of course there is Internal Affairs and the PSI-Corps and they all try to weed out those organizations which are by the way highly illegal. If you want to join a fraternal organization, become associated with an official one. There are plenty with all kinds of flavors and agendas and you get the approved list right from Navy HQ.”