Chapter 1

"Hello? The AI says there is somebody out there in range..."

Fleet Auxiliary Sergeant (Petty Officer on anything but an official document -- and Tom wasn't the 'official' type) Tom Foster eyed the comm console. "What the fuck?"

"Hello? If you can hear me, I'm in trouble down here..."

"Who the Hell is that?" Tom demanded of his ship's AI. "Where is that noise coming from?"

<The communication is coming from the vicinity of the manufacturing platform on the moon Rhea, > the AI replied.

"Shit!" The plant was Tom's destination -- he was headed there to pick up cluster mines. Tom was a 'positioner' -- every three weeks, he picked up a dozen cluster mines -- sensor platforms carrying six hyperdrive missiles, each with a small tactical nuke aboard -- and then he would locate them in space as a part of a net to be used to protect Earth from the Swarm, transporting them with his hyperdrive-capable tug, the Mississippi Queen. It had been decided that they would be more difficult to detect if the clusters didn't have their own propulsion system -- they just had passive sensors and IFF -- so they had to be positioned exactly, so they maintained their position relative to Sol -- or Earthat, if you will.

As it was, Tom was placing them such that their orbits would move them into the cone that defined the expected trajectory of the first anticipated Sa'arm incursion about a year and a half hence; luckily, Fleet had discovered a Sa'arm colony that had just launched a hive ship. We were forewarned -- the scout vessel that made the discovery was unable to go toe-to-toe with the ship or its escorts, so it got away into hyperdrive with the news. Just as fortunately, Sa'arm hyperdrive was about eight generations behind what the Confederacy had bequeathed to the Fleet, so it took them several times as long to get where they were going. The depleted planet that was the launch point for the excursion was just over six hundred light-years away, and a Hive ship lumbers along at just a tad less than a light-year a day (escorts did four or five times that), so we had some warning, given the fact that the message drone from the scout covered the distance to Earthat in twelve days. Whether the minefield -- which was going to be about the size of a postage stamp on a weather balloon against the total volume of the sphere around the Sol system -- would be effective was anybody's guess. If the Sa'arm came in very far outside its boundaries for some reason, it was going to be a waste of time.

But it was deemed worthwhile to dedicate a certain amount -- a SMALL amount -- of resources to the effort, and Fleet Auxiliary took it on. Tom was one of only a dozen positioners; the plant on Rhea (a moon of Saturn) created the missiles, using replicators feeding on the raw ice and rock of the moon as raw materials and cranking out about two hundred mines a month. Tom had been at this almost from the first -- five runs worth -- but had yet to actually have to TALK to anyone at the manufacturing plant; the AI had handled communications and Tom liked it that way. Now, it looked like that was going to have to change...

"Can you get me a visual?" Tom asked, thinking, 'I'm not gonna spend the next three hours chewing the fat with some empty-headed concubine... '

The screen lit above Tom's console displaying, well, booty. Seriously plush, naked, milk chocolate booty! Tom snorted a laugh. "Hey, I'm back here! Hyperdrive tug Mississippi Queen, Tom Foster commanding."

"Huh?" The black girl looked back over her shoulder. "Yeah, well, okay, but the transmitter is over there..." She turned around, displaying a nice set of conical milk jugs, only mildly deformed by gravity. "It took the AI and nanites two days to put it back together. Besides, things are kinda canted. You're more or less on the floor at this point."

"So what's going on?" Tom asked.

"Something happened," the woman said. "Two and a half days ago or so. The AI thinks maybe it was a meteor strike. Don and Barbara were out checking the feed chutes for the missile replicator, and whatever happened, it happened over near the manufacturing plant." The woman looked sad. "I haven't heard from them."

"What happened there?" Tom asked.

"It was like something picked up the pod and threw it up in the air and it came down on the airlock end. It's standing up at about a sixty-degree angle, it seems like. You're looking at me from the comm console by the door. The AI has the transmitter more or less welded to what used to be the floor."

"Why?"

"I think it said something like it had to use a floor strut for an antenna. The old one was broken and it's stuck in the ground, anyway."

"Oh." Tom mused a bit. "So it's just you?"

"Yeah, there were just the three of us. Barb was gonna have her first in about three months." Suddenly, the woman lost it, bursting into tears.

"Uh, hey, hey..." Tom muttered. He had NO tools for THIS situation. "Look, I know it's bad, but you need to hold it together until I understand EVERYTHING! Come on -- buck up! What's your name?"

"Tania." The woman made a visible effort.

"Okay, Tania. Why don't you, um, lay on the floor or something so I'm not looking at your..."

"OH!" Tania knelt on the floor, which covered this and that from Tom's angle. "I can't even get at clothes! They're in the bedrooms..." She pointed basically upward.

"Why didn't you have the AI make you stairs or something?" Tom asked. "Ladder impressions in the deck..."

Tania covered her face. "I didn't think of it -- but it probably can't. We're on emergency power. The AI is only operating at maybe thirty-percent capacity so we could save energy in the emergency systems for the nanites to work on the radio. We're disconnected from the power core and the environmental plant and..."

"How long do you have?" Tom erupted.

Tania looked at a display beside the console. "About two and a half days of air and water and such -- but if I lose power before that, I'll be an ice cube in no time. The AI says the emergency systems took a serious hit."

"I'll be in synchronous orbit in about ten minutes," Tom advised. "I'll get a visual and sensor sweep from up here and put it in a drone for Earthat Command and shoot it to Moonbase. Then I'll come down and see what I can do for you."

"Thanks," Tania muttered. "I was afraid that I wasn't going to see another face or hear another voice..."

"Hang in there -- Mississippi Queen out." Tom cut the connection before the woman could lose it again.

Ten minutes later, he was looking at the devastation. Tania wasn't exactly correct -- the manufacturing plant was only a little closer to the impact site, but it hadn't fared as well as the pod the trio had been living in. The impact had apparently made some kind of ground ripple; things looked like everything had been on a blanket on the ground and then giant hands had viciously snapped the ends up and down. The missile pods, usually neatly lined up in rows for collection by the tugs, were tossed about like broken toys. There were two replicators -- one was on its side, a few meters from its original site, and the other was in pieces -- and, yes, there were pieces of a couple of EVA exoskeletons lying about. Part of one looked like it had been fed to the replicator before it shut down. There was a boiling lake about a kilometer away -- the meteor probably hadn't been so much massive as it was fast, or maybe the other way around. In either case, it hadn't been both. Tania had been lucky that the energy release hadn't been further up the scale toward the megaton range -- apparently, there was only enough energy to rip the pod from its foundations and lean it against one of the little ridges they'd probably placed it between for protection. Tom took a full sensor sweep and fired off the drone, then set up the tug for a landing. Meteor impacts weren't exactly news on Rhea -- it was one of the most heavily cratered bodies in the Earthat system. "Maybe somebody should have given a little more thought to protection," Tom muttered to himself, "This mess is gonna put us months behind." But they HAD been in a rush, after all...

The Mississippi Queen settled to the surface and Tom got back on the comm. "What does the AI say about structural integrity of the pod?" he asked, while taxiing the tug on its surface-effect thrusters. "Can I pick it up and put it back where it belongs without it coming apart?"

"It isn't sure..." Tania replied, sounding worried.

"Okay, we'll do things the hard way," Tom gusted. This was tug business; he sidled up to one side of the pod and cradled it in tractor and pressor beams, then pressed the tug's docking collar against the side of the pod.

One issue that Confederacy equipment seldom had was bad seals -- if you put some nanites to work on things, they would weld the two pieces together -- and the docking collar had plenty of welding and cutting nanites in it. Five minutes later, the Mississippi Queen was sealed to the side of the pod and a hatch was being cut in the side of the pod inside the docking ring. Two minutes later, with the cooperation of the pod damage control nanites, the hole opened.

The opening was still nearly five meters from the 'floor' of the pod; Tom stuck his head through the hatch and looked down at Tania. "Well, we're getting closer..."

"Yes..." Tania stood looking at the gap.

<Power transfer to pod in process, > Mississippi Queen's AI reported. <Ladder design transmitted.> A series of divots appeared in the bulkhead leading up to the hatch, one by one, along with a pair of extrusions that looked somewhat like railroad rails for Tania to hang onto.

"Come on up," Tom invited. "The pod is on ship's power. We'll have a repair estimate in a couple of minutes -- for this, anyway. The facility is a mess."

"Ummm," Tania muttered as she climbed. "Don and Barbara?"

"I saw a couple of exos -- in pieces. Sorry."

Tania sighed as she negotiated the hatch. "I figured as much, but I'd hoped..."

"It would have been nice, but after a couple of days, it wasn't likely." Tania moved forward and Tom found himself hugging a naked female. He squeezed her clumsily, feeling embarrassed. "Sorry."

"Mmmmm." Tania sniffled into his neck drawing comfort from Tom despite the fact that she recognized that he wasn't comfortable himself. She sobbed a couple of times and got control of herself. "What now?"

"I dunno. The habitat pod is drawing power from the Mississippi Queen's power plant, so we will be able to reposition it soon. The pod AI is up and communicating with the Queen's. But there is a bunch of work to be done. Let's get you a shift..."

"Oh, sorry!" Tania replied. "I'm used to this. I almost don't even think about it. Ugh -- I don't have a sponsor now, do I?"

<Recommend that you take the female on as a concubine, > the Queen's AI fed Tom, privately.

Tom stiffened. 'I don't do women!'

<You are not homosexual.>

'I mean I don't keep them. They yammer all the time and... '

<Still, she would be a convenience. You can always trade her in at Moonbase.>

'A convenience... ' Tom shook his head. 'I was thinking INconvenience!'

<You do not have to claim her -- you could have ignored her situation. As it is, you have time and effort invested in her. Why not benefit? It has been several weeks... >

'No shit, Sherlock!' Tom usually went out twice before shooting for a weekend of R & R on the Moon. He was at what would have been the mid-point of a deployment, so Tania was the first woman he'd been close to in three weeks. He rubbed his face, thinking about it, then told Tania, "Look, I'm a loner. I don't do women. Uh, scratch that -- I DO do women -- I just don't keep them afterward, you know? Cash and carry or the CS brothel -- no bullshit entanglements -- that's how I do things. I'm not likely to fall in love with you or anything..." He paused. "In order to make the AIs happy and keep things moving, I'm, um, willing to offer to take you on until we return to the moon. By then, you'll be fed up with me, anyway -- and vice-versa."