Chapter 8

When I got to the ship the next morning I stood in shock looking at what changes had been made by the families the evening before. The fore bulkhead right at the entry hatchway had our ship’s crest painted on it as I had asked, and Sally, Ensign Williams’ concubine had done an absolutely wonderful job. That wasn’t the surprise, though.

Opposite, on the aft bulkhead, were red lip prints like a whole bunch of women had gone to town kissing the ship. Underneath each one was the hand-painted name of the woman who had made her mark. Below all those were pink and blue hand prints of all the children of the crew, with their names painted by them, with the exception of four year-old Bobby, whose mom Tammy (Ensign Chandler’s concubine) most likely had helped out. Just in case we hadn’t gotten the message, below it all was painted “We Love Our Black Sheep!”

It was even better than I had hoped. You could just stare at this piece of simple art for hours, looking at all the kisses and taking in the way everyone had painted their names, just soaking in how much love had been poured into this. The families had made their mark on the ship, that’s for sure. They had taken possession of the ship in an emotional and personal way, connected themselves to it, to all of us. And now when any crewman on the ship was missing home, maybe wondering if the love their families had for them might be withering with time and distance, they could just look at this and know their bonds could never be weakened, that their families still passionately loved them, and that they would be there for them when we all returned.

“Hey, Pappy!” Private Gordon Smith greeted me. He was the crewmember on watch and had noticed me. “Whaddya think?”

“It’s perfect. Just what we needed here. What about you?”

“It’s pretty cool, I suppose. Naked pictures would be better though.”

I chuckled. “You can keep your naked pictures of your family in your quarters if you want. There’s no way I’m putting a naked picture of my wife up here so you jerks can drool over it.”

I shook my head as I thought about the idea. That’s probably what any other ship out there would have done in our position, though. Crass and empty seemed to be a theme out here in the Confederacy, and despite every advancement we’d made in the short time since we’d met the Darjee, we appeared to have lost a lot of what made humanity so special.

So far on Demeter I hadn’t seen a single piece of art, heard any music other than recorded pop dreck, or watched anyone perform. Maybe we were just preoccupied by the war, but that never stopped people like Paul Nash, who seemed to pour out his soul with paintbrushes during his wartime experience not in spite of the emotions of the time, but because of them. Walt Whitman didn’t stop writing poetry during the US Civil War, some of his finest work came as a result of his connection with the horrors of it.

Perhaps I was just being overly critical, or hadn’t made the effort to find these things because I was so busy and they were actually out there. Yet in the back of my head was this nagging concern that our culture was being torn away. Most of the guys like Private Smith wouldn’t notice the lack of what they hadn’t really known before, and didn’t even know to miss it.

Someday, too soon, the Art Institute of Chicago would become an ugly pile of ash and rubble, mindless hordes of dickheads would be demolishing Falling Waters to convert into sustenance for their disgusting bodies, and the great hall of the Kennedy Center would fall into an eternal silence with the deaths of all who would ever perform there. And so many wouldn’t even realize what that loss would really mean.

“You OK, Sir?” Private Smith interrupted my thoughts, showing some concern that maybe he had upset me.

“Sorry, just woolgathering.” If this simple piece was making me so thoughtful, someday it should probably be on display in a Confederacy art museum, if anyone ever bothered to make one of course.

“You ever been to a museum?” I asked.

“There’s this science and technology museum in Columbus I really liked. They had all sorts of cool stuff there. My parents took me there when I was, like, eight.”

“No, I mean like an art museum.”

“Oh, we had a school trip once to an art museum in Madison.” he offered.

“Remember anything about it?”

“Not really. I think I was more interested trying to get Sally Jennings to hold my hand. She was in school with me back then.”

I would have been amused by this if it wasn’t so saddening. The creative masters of humanity had poured out their souls for the benefit of a boy who hadn’t bothered to more than glance at it as he was fixated on a piece of preteen ass. That priceless opportunity was now forever gone.

“You ready to go on a cruise?” I asked, violently derailing the train my thoughts had been racing down.

“You bet, Pappy. I want to get out there so we can kick some dickhead ass!”

I couldn’t fix our culture today, but at least we were making progress in trying to win the war.

We left the docks and joined up with a small transport that was on its way to Earth, which could also babysit us during our first FTL run. Once we were clear of Demeter traffic we headed out so we could be far enough from the gravity well so we could safely go to FTL. The convoy plan was that we would lead, and our partner the Expediter would follow us a bit so that if we ran into trouble they could assist, although once either of us were in FTL we would be out of contact completely.

“1MC.” Beep. “All stations set condition Zebra throughout the ship.” I ordered.

Hatches were shut and red “Z” levers were turned.

“All stations report condition Zebra, captain” the XO announced.

“Engineering, this is conn. You are GO for FTL engine start.” Beep Beep.

“Aye captain, FTL engine start.” Ensign Chandler responded.

“Engaging FTL drive coolant pumps. Field generator to standby. FTL safety interlock disengaged. Main engine shutdown. Conn, FTL is standby.” Beep.

“AI, confirm exclusion zone clearance” I said.

<The ship is outside of the hyperspace exclusion zone.>

“Secure from FTL engine start.” Beep beep.

“AI, lay in our FTL course for Earth and transmit telemetry to the Expediter.”

<Course laid in and telemetry has been sent.>

I was switched to ship comms. “Expediter, this is Oxford. We are GO for our FTL run.”

“Roger that Oxford. We have your data and are ready whenever you are. Good luck. Expediter out.”

“XO, are we GO?” I asked Todd.

“Captain we are green across the board. We are GO.”

“1MC.” Beep. “All stations prepare for FTL engage.” As I hit the control for the FTL drive and said “engaging.”

A mildly weird feeling washed over me as we exited normal space and started to shoot through hyperspace.

“All stations report” I ordered.

“Conn, Engineering. All systems are GO.”

“Conn, Sensors. We have LOS on all contacts. All systems are GO.”

Apparently this system worked without a problem too. I was pleased.

“All stations set condition Yoke Foxtrot. Secure from FTL insertion.” Beep beep.

“One more off the checklist, Pappy” Ensign Williams noted.

“Now we’ve got two weeks of boring travel, and it’s up to us to imagine ways to keep them all occupied. Give them about a half hour and run one of the drills.”

“Will do, sir.”

During FTL there’s just about nothing to do on a ship other than sit around and watch pretty much nothing happen. To keep everyone occupied and improve our skills we were going to exercise all of our drills for firefighting, casualty management, hull breaches, hazardous materials release and so on at random times. We would be at condition Yoke Foxtrot, with only the conn consistently manned and one other watchstander rotating between other stations doing periodic checks, which is what we’d use when in FTL. Of course the AI was monitoring everything anyways so our contribution to monitoring the ship was pretty minimal at best, but this was good practice.

“Todd, I’ll keep the conn and you can roam so we can let everyone settle in. Set up the watch schedule.”

“Sure thing, Pappy.” He worked at his console for a few minutes to work up the schedule before he headed aft. The AI would inform everyone when they had duty.

Crewmen slowly filtered towards the wardroom, passing through the conn. It was a mildly annoying design decision to have the conn in such a high traffic area, but there wasn’t really a much better way to lay things out. Ensign Chandler stopped by to chat for a few minutes to reassure me that everything seemed to be going fine in the engine room before joining the rest. The only people aft of the wardroom now was myself in the conn, and Ensign Williams somewhere aft of me.

I could hear the beginning of a poker game starting up in the wardroom. Soon the sort of conversation was rolling about who was going to win, how someone won or lost last time, and other tidbits that is the typical opening banter as familiar players postured among each other. They played a couple of hands until all hell broke loose.

Red lights flashed, a horn blared, and the AI made a sickening announcement.

<Hull breach in Officer Quarters two. Medical assistance needed in Officer Quarters two.>

Crewmen exploded out of the hatch, falling over themselves and tying each other up as they all raced each other through the conn towards the aft of the ship. While they were stumbling past they tore at the emergency hoods on their coveralls and tried to fish gloves out of their thigh pocket so they could survive a space with no atmosphere. It was complete chaos. I calmly “suited up” as I sat at my station and watched the chaos unfold.

I waited for the casualty report and the initial damage assessment report. And waited. Finally I heard Ensign Chandler’s voice in my implant.

“Captain, one casualty, the XO. He’s being put in the med tube. He’s in stable condition.” That apparently woke up the other guys and soon I got the other report I was expecting. “Captain, this is Sergeant White. Minor hull damage in Officer Quarters two. Patch is in place.” OK, so they finally got their acts together.

“1MC.” Beep. “All stations secure from drill.” Beep beep.

I took off my hood and gloves and waited until the XO arrived. He led the crew and told me “I can handle this, captain.” I nodded, and he brought them all back to the wardroom. I was glad the hatchway was open so I could hear the ass chewing he was about to deliver, and glad that he was the one taking on that role of taskmaster. I hated yelling at my people. I wasn’t that good at it and for me it never was as motivating as a quiet word with someone.

“What THE FUCK did I just see back there? I’m sure the Captain was real happy to see that giant clusterfuck parading past him as you managed to demonstrate precisely how incompetent you all are. You’ve all had sleep training on this, so you should know what to do. Just in case you skipped it, let’s go over how you’re supposed to do this so the next time you won’t so thoroughly embarrass the ship with your completely substandard performance. Smith, what is your job during damage control?”

“Uh, I’m secondary on damage control, so I don’t have a job unless the first team can’t handle it, sir.”

“And just what did you do during this drill?” Williams asked.

“I ran to assist in damage control, sir.”

“What should you have been doing?” he continued.

“Um, I guess I should have just stayed out of the way.”

“PRE-FUCKING-CISELY!” the XO roared. “If you are not first team, you keep your ass out of the way so the people who are supposed to be doing their job don’t have to fight their way past you to do it. You all KNOW this.”

“Private Douglas, what is the first thing you do when you arrive in a space with an emergency?”

“Um, you report to the senior man on watch what the situation is.”

“Why is that?” he continued.

“So they know what the problem is and can plan what to do, sir.”

“And?”

“Um, I don’t know, sir.”

“Private Douglas, when responding to battle damage, that report also lets the senior man on watch know that the response team has arrived and that he can then put the ship in condition Zebra, so the rest of us don’t all fucking DIE. Let’s see a show of hands here, how many of you thought to close any of the hatchways after you cleared them? Nobody? Who opened the door to my quarters, which was supposedly a vacuum, without making sure that he wasn’t going to cause the entire atmosphere of the ship to be sucked out into space?”

“That would be me, sir.” I recognized Sergeant White’s voice.

“Completely un-fucking acceptable, Sergeant” the XO continued. “Now last, when we have a report of a hull breach or a HAZMAT release, what’s the first thing you’re supposed to do? Anyone?”

“Um, we put on our hoods and gloves.” It sounded like Ensign Hendricks.

“Yes. Now that you’ve tried running down a corridor while trying at the same time to put on your hood, perhaps you realize just how completely stupid that is. You put that shit on FIRST. If you become a casualty because you’re trying to do two things at once and haven’t protected yourself first, you’re not only of no use to anybody, but a new liability for us all. FUCKING SUIT UP FIRST. Got it?”

A chorus of “Yes sir’s” answered.

“Now we’re going to do these drills over and over again until you get them right. Then we’re going to keep doing them over and over again until you actually get GOOD. We’re never going to stop, because obviously you losers need practice. Now stand down and go through your head what you’re supposed to be doing during any emergency so you don’t make such fools of yourselves the next time. That was a total NO GO and that is NOT going to happen again on this ship.”

Ensign Williams walked into the conn while the wardroom stayed quiet. I motioned him over so we could have a quiet conversation.

“Well done, Todd. You used that as a teaching moment and not just as a chance to yell at them. I like how you asked ‘why’ questions to make them think not only about what they should be doing, but why they’re doing it. I couldn’t have done any better myself.”

“Well, they actually did about as well as I would have expected of them. I found some videos of what happens out in the fleet when a crew starts drills for the first time, and it’s always a mess. Sometimes they’re pretty entertaining. Having the crew fail now will make them motivated to take these drills seriously, though, so this is probably the best outcome we could have hoped for. If they had done well, they wouldn’t see the value in continuing to do this and would eventually get complacent.”

“You’re probably right about that,” I responded. “Let’s give them a few hours to decompress before we hit them again. Mix it up and keep them guessing. I’m going to leave this all in your hands for awhile so I can get my stuff together as well, and then later on you can be the one getting surprised, OK?”

“Sure thing, Pappy. I’ll keep them from getting bored.”

The rest of the journey was spent waiting around, rotations through sleep training modules using the medtube, and jumping out of our skins every time the lights flashed and the horn sounded for a drill. We practiced getting to battle stations, and the time it took us dropped pretty rapidly.

We exercised all sorts of battle damage situations, and when we got pretty good at them we started changing up and killing all the lighting and doing them in darkness. We did them with the AI blasting noise at us so we couldn’t hear each other except through our implants. Todd and I dreamed up every scenario we could to make the drills harder, and it seemed to become a competition with the crew to see what we could throw at them and how they would overcome it so they could feel they’d gotten one up on the XO and I.

One ‘evening’ I even got the ship’s nanites to weld together fake debris that I had the replicator create in a passageway so the crew would have to cut through it in order to deal with a drill in the engine room. The crew thought that was a fun challenge. Yes, they actually referred to that drill as “fun.”

The drills also taught us about the importance of having emergency equipment available throughout the ship. The cramped design had included a few storage lockers forward of engineering, but if we couldn’t get to them we’d be in real trouble. I cut deeply into the supply of spare raw materials for the replicators in order to make sure cutting torches, flashlights, medical supplies and patching materials were available just about anywhere in the ship, and we had to find creative ways to store it all.

Pretty soon the interior of the ship was just as ugly as the exterior, as every spare inch of bulkhead space ended up getting covered with things like spare crowbars, first aid kits, and patching materials. If we found during a drill that it would have been easier to deal with the problem if we just had something closer at hand, we had it fabricated and mounted to a bulkhead somewhere. More locker space would have been ideal, as the lockers were all filled as much as we could fill them.

There were only two spots on the ship that were sacrosanct. They would never be covered. Everything else was fair game.

By the time we were ready to drop out of FTL I think we were all ready for a change of pace.

“1MC.” Beep. “All stations, prepare to drop from FTL. Set condition Zebra throughout the ship.”

We’d done this so many times by now that it took no time for all the closures to be made.

“Ship is at condition Zebra, captain” the XO reported a moment later.

The AI was going to control us exiting hyperspace so we emerged precisely at the right time and in the right place. All I did was watch the countdown.

“All stations, FTL drop in five. Four. Three. Two. One. FTL disengaged.”

A slight disorientation passed over me and a bunch of the screens that had been darkened on my console for the past two weeks now came to life.

“Engineering, conn. FTL shutdown, main engine start.”

Since we were a little underpowered we had to power down the main engines during FTL transit, but we obviously wouldn’t be using them during transit anyways. A lot of other ships would leave the main engines on standby during FTL since they had the available power, but we had to choose one drive or the other. Now we had to bring the main engines back online so we could maneuver, but we had some residual inertia from when we entered FTL so we weren’t sitting dead in space before they spun up.

Engineering called out their checklist and the main engines came back to life.

“All stations report.”

“Conn, engineering, all systems GO, green across the board.”

“Conn, sensors. Multiple new contacts, all identified friendly. No hazards.” Sensors was making sure we knew that we hadn’t appeared right in front of some sort of navigation hazard that would require us to perform some wild maneuver in order to avoid it. The AIs were so far perfect in making sure that didn’t happen, but redundancy in our safety measures was something I wanted whenever possible.

“XO, how do we look?” I asked.

“All systems are GO, captain.”

“All stations, secure from FTL drop. Set Condition Yoke.” Beep beep. The 1MC had disconnected.

“All stations report condition Yoke, captain” the XO said.

I put on my VR headset to see what the sensors were coming up with, and as I expected traffic near Earth was pretty busy. We dropped out of FTL quite a ways off, but we were picking up a bunch of ships, Earth satellites and even some random space junk that had been reflecting solar radiation.

A couple of kilometers away a ship dropped out of FTL, and it was close enough that the optical sensors could actually provide me with an image in the VR. It was immediately apparent this was our convoy mate the Expediter.

“Conn, sensors. New close contact. The Expediter has arrived.” Apparently the Sensor crew was fully back in the game after the long trip.

I keyed up the ship-to-ship comms, or rather the AI did that for me. “Expediter, this is Oxford. Welcome back to Earth, and thanks for the company on the trip, over.”

“Oxford, Expediter. Glad to see you made it in one piece. Have any trouble, over?”

“Negative Expediter. It was a smooth voyage, over.”

“Oxford, glad to hear that. We’ll be on our way to our next stop. Fair winds and following seas, out.”

With that the Expediter turned and started a burn towards somewhere in Earth’s orbit where they were needed. It was nice to have them as a safety backup, since they’d notice earlier than anyone else if we had missed our arrival window and the extra warning could have gotten a ship to us if we needed it much, much quicker than otherwise.

If we hadn’t arrived, Earth wouldn’t have known that we had disappeared somewhere out there until the next ship from our origin arrived, and that ship synchronized data with the local traffic control, which was an automatic process. That would then show a mismatch between what was supposed to show up and what actually did, and start the process of a rescue effort if that was possible along the light years of space the missing ship had intended to travel.

If something weird happened in space during FTL that would have caused the FTL to crap out, since the Expediter would be pretty much following the same path as us it would probably suffer the same problem, and end up somewhere near where we would be. With two ships together if we had problems it was more likely we could work through them together than if either one of us was out there alone. Having no alternative but to hope that someday maybe someone might stumble across your dead ship in the middle of nowhere was an awful plan, as anyone who might be relatively close to you would almost certainly be sensor-blinded by FTL. In the vast emptiness of interstellar space, that was incredibly unlikely.

As I turned us towards Earth as well I had the AI switch me over to AM radio so we could contact the Earth traffic control sector that we would enter in a little bit. Earth having a lot more traffic than a place like Demeter meant they had to divide things up in order to not overload controllers or have people stepping all over each other on the traffic control frequencies. It was all handled by the CNS Victory, which was in orbit, but different operators were responsible for different sectors.

“Earth traffic BOGAN this is Oxford, arriving from Demeter. Requesting clearance to enter orbit level three, equatorial, over.”

What I was asking for was permission for a high orbit in the zone between 30 and 40 thousand kilometers above ground level, or AGL, which would be just below geostationary orbit, and align with the direction of the equator. This was a common orbital position for ships waiting around for something. It was well clear of orbital stations, which were much closer to the planet, and not in the way of the important geostationary systems that managed communications and such. Since it wasn’t very attractive a place to be in Earthat space, we shouldn’t be in anyone’s way.

A moment later a weak, but readable signal came back. “Oxford, this is BOGAN. You are cleared for orbital insertion at three point two, east-west and zero latitude. Local traffic is WAGON. Transponders are mandatory over.” We were going to be 32,000 kilometers AGL, and traveling from east to west directly above the equator. When we wanted to move somewhere else, traffic control WAGON would process our request and the AI would know the frequencies we needed for that. Our speed would of course be governed by what was needed in order to maintain a stable orbital position. The last part was a reminder that all ships in the area were required to have active transponders to help traffic control in tracking everyone and help ships see each other easily. Normally a warship had those transponders turned off, but this was one of those situations where they were used.

“BOGAN this is Oxford. Understood level three point two, east-west and zero latitude, over.

“Oxford, BOGAN. That’s a good copy. Enjoy your stay. Out.”

I flipped the transponder to active and had the AI plot how we’d accomplish the insertion efficiently and set it to work. I then got out of my chair and handed the conn to the XO so I could head aft and see what the crew in the Sensor bay were doing.

They had plenty to work on with the relatively crowded planet space, and had prioritized tracking and identifying all spacecraft in the area as they were supposed to. Since everyone had an active transponder broadcasting their identity is was stupidly easy. They were busily trying to figure out what everything was that didn’t have an active transponder, which was mostly the disturbing quantity of “space junk” that was in orbit, along with a bunch of satellites, some of which were not supposed to be seen.

I watched them work for a while and noticed just how full the spectral waterfall displays looked. These were displays that showed what frequencies were active over time, and they were amazingly crowded with RF signals all over the spectrum. I’d used these with radio systems on earth before, but always on the ground where terrain, weather, and conditions in the ionosphere did a good job frustrating your efforts. Here we had a plethora of antennas, tremendously sensitive receiver modules, and systems to help filter out radio frequency interference from the sun and stars that no one on earth had ever seen before.

We also had a lot of sensors outside of RF, and they were giving us a ton of data as well, but since we were in the outer Van Allen belt they were getting hit with a bunch of weird radiation that was blinding the particle detectors in particular. If we hadn’t been hardened for the sort of assault we were getting from everything from gamma rays to ultra relativistic particles we wouldn’t want to be hanging out here for long, but parking in such an inhospitable spot was an intentional decision on my part that other ships wouldn’t normally make. I didn’t want to make it easy.

I motioned Ensign Hendricks over. “Hey Jeff, we’re going to be here for three days, so you can rotate these guys off duty once they have a handle on things. I know after two weeks of not being able to play they’re going to be eager, but don’t let them get burned out. Make sure to deploy any additional systems you want to try out, as this is a great opportunity to see what they can do.”

“Sure thing, Pappy.” he replied.

I went forward to the wardroom and pulled out my data pad. Since we were within communications of earth systems I was now getting messages, but none from Demeter yet since they would have had to FTL a message drone to earth to do so, and I wasn’t sure if they could get here any faster than we did. Besides, I got the impression that Demeter wasn’t all that interested in talking to anyone on earth and that message drones only came here when absolutely necessary.

The message traffic in the earth area was a lot different to what I’d been seeing at Demeter. It seemed like a lot of people loved to broadcast general distribution messages. I was amused by some of them. No, I likely wasn’t the one who had parked in the Commanding General’s designated parking space at Travis AFB yesterday, but I apparently needed to know that wasn’t allowed.

The special menu selections of the day at the best restaurant at the finest moon base ever established sounded wonderful, though. I replied to the message asking if I could place a delivery order, and attached our telemetry. If they could manage to get it to us I thought the crew would be quite appreciative, although tipping the delivery boy would be dicey, seeing as I was broke. How that message ended up on a military comms network was beyond me. Maybe the place was inside a military base.

One message was actually intended for us, and routed to the ship’s general inbox, which of course went to me. We had checked in on arrival, so people could find out that we were here in orbit if they were interested in that. It was a request that the ship’s commanding officer transport to a space station to meet the station’s commanding officer. I was supremely reluctant to even reply, but the officer was in the Confederacy Navy and the polite invitation had the feeling it was a command, not a request. I replied that I would be available at his convenience any time over the next several days, subject to us being in transporter range.

With that depressing interaction completed, I shut down my data pad. Ensign Chris Chandler was looking at me across the table.

“Chris, I ordered dinner. I hope the seafood special is OK with you.”

“What?” he answered in surprise.

“Delivery order. Not sure how long it’s going to take to get here from the moon, but the place says they’re the best.” I deadpanned.

“You placed a delivery order to a restaurant on the moon?” he asked incredulously.

“Yup. I wonder if I should have included breadsticks, though. I kinda like those things, especially if they’re fresh.”