Chapter 8: Gifts From the Sky

Thule's day was shorter than Earth's, but because everyone lived in domed settlements, the colonists kept to Earth time. As a result, on this Saturday morning Thule's star was dipping below the horizon.

This Parade was special, even for a Promotion Parade. To Samantha's astonishment, she was advanced in grade to Decurion – the youngest in the Confederacy. To her amusement, she still outranked her father – promoted to Sergeant-Major and made Company Sergeant-Major of the First Company, 1204^th Armoured. The Old Man was now officially Brigadier General Michael Deschenes, commander of the 12^th Division, which consisted now of the 121^st, 122^nd and 123^rd Brigades. Plenty of other officers and NCO's found themselves promoted as well. Sergeant-Major Blondell was now the Divisional Sergeant-Major, and when he returned from extraction duty, Kowalski would take her place as the 121^st Brigade Sergeant-Major. Each brigade would consist of a third of the original 12^th Brigade, and receive a third of the draft coming in next month.

Unfortunately, that would mean that the core of the 123^rd would not even be on Thule. They were off garrisoning Hesperus.

Cadet Sergeant Daniel Bachelor marched smartly away from the just-concluded ceremony and toward the trio of people standing at the side of the parade square, near the cenotaph lined with an ever-changing list of names of those who had paid the ultimate price for survival of the species. He hoped to take the younger of the two naked females there to lunch, with the permission of the uniformed male standing with them.

"Sergeant Bachelor!" came a call from behind him. Inwardly he groaned, but he halted, yelled "SIR!", and gave an about-face to discover that the unknown individual was newly-promoted Colonel Charles Desrochers, newly appointed commanding officer of the 121^st Brigade.

"I just got the call that the CSS Sir Francis Drake has some cargo for us. Seeing as that ship is assigned to the Targeted Extractions Task Group, that means the cargo is likely organic, and probably either a sponsor or concubine."

"Sir?" Danny couldn't see how anything regarding Targeted Extractions could involve him.

"They specifically requested you and your father attend the offloading."

"Sir, yes, Sir." So much for that luncheon with Miss Deschenes.

"The General is going to be there as well, if you're interested in escorting his daughter to the Nexus Room."

Danny didn't need to be bashed over the head by a clue-by-four. Saluting Colonel Desrochers, he quickened his pace toward the trio at the edge of the parade square. Through the Bluetooth-like headpiece that all Cadets had been recently issued, he contacted his father to find that Batch was already on his way over with one of his two concubines and would meet the young man in the Nexus Room.

A few paces later found Danny saluting the august form of the Old Man himself. "Sir, I understand we are both to report to the Nexus Room as soon as possible?"

"Oh, they'll wait for me," Michael advised amusedly. "Still, we don't want to keep them waiting too long, do we?"

"Sir, no Sir." Danny paused before asking the critical question. "Permission to escort your daughter to the Nexus Room?" A trickle of sweat began to make its way down his spine.

Michael regarded his daughter as if contemplating the question. The naked preteen crossed her arms and glared at her father. "Stop teasing!" Diana growled.

"Civilians," he snorted, turning to Danny. "If she's amenable."

"She's amenable," Diana replied for Danny, her voice dangerously even.

Swallowing a chuckle, Danny extended his left elbow. Diana tucked her hand under his arm.

Penny did the same with Michael, and the two couples walked arm-in-arm to the Nexus Room in the Headquarters Building.

When the Deschenes party arrived, the Nexus Room held, besides the duty corporal and a private learning the ropes, Batch and one of his two concubines, two other red-coated figures who Danny recognized as having commanded the Primary Defence Line and the Shackleton Defence Line, the two cadets' fathers plus a single concubine escort apiece, medical corpsman Corporal Sheena James and Decurion Redburn. The only females in the room wearing anything, Danny noted, were Decurion Redburn, the corpsman and the duty corporal – all three of whom were also the only female members of the Armed Forces of the Confederacy in the room.

The nexus controller had been talking to her young assistant, and turned to Samantha. "How do you pronounce the name of your home town?" she challenged the teen.

"The way it's spelt. 'Barrie'," replied a mystified Samantha.

"Oh ... I thought you were from Ontario's capital. How do you pronounce that?"

"The way it's spelt, too," advised Samantha, still unsure as to where the conversation was going. "'Tronna'."

"The way it's spelt..." pondered an amused private. "Funny spelling you Canucks have."

Samantha reddened as she realized her Ontario accent had betrayed her.

At that point, the board before them beeped.

"The Captain of the CSS Sir Francis Drake is requesting permission to land passengers, Sir," reported the duty corporal to the General.

"Permission granted. The Captain is invited to join us for a visit, if he so chooses."

"Aye aye, Sir." She touched buttons on the control in front of her, and a second later a tall black man dressed in the uniform of a Fleet Auxiliary Commander emerged from the nexus.

"Captain Mark Danielson reporting, Sir." He saluted the General, not as sharp as a marine would have but smartly enough, and handed the corporal a chip bearing the ship's manifest.

"Welcome to Thule, Captain Danielson," Michael responded, returning the salute. "I understand you bring goodies courtesy of the Office of Targeted Extractions?"

"Yes, Sir, and I trust you'll find these to your liking."

"As long as they aren't more damned rabbits."

The look on the Captain's face grew a trifle uncertain. "All humans, Sir." He turned to Samantha. "Ah, Decurion Redburn? I've been told we had to do a bit of work to find your gift, but she's something the entire planet can appreciate."

"Oh, goody," Samantha exclaimed happily, clapping her hands in girlish delight. "She's a slut!"

With that, the Captain turned to the nexus operator. "The first of our little gifts, please."

First out of the nexus was a brunette in a wheelchair-like hover chair, escorted by a Fleet Auxiliary corporal whose uniform bore a caduceus. Both Bachelors, pere and fils, recognized the shift-clad woman immediately.

"Aunt Teresa!" Danny called, amazed. He'd seen some wondrous things from Confederacy medical technology, but still this was amazing. His aunt, paralysed from the neck down and bedridden since he was four, was not only breathing on her own, but sitting up too.

"She'll need another night in a med tube before she's completely recovered, and the nanites will need her to consume a high-protein diet for another three or four days so that they can continue their magic, but she's well on her way toward walking," the Fleet Auxiliary corpsman pushing her chair advised. He handed over a chip to Sheena with Teresa's medical records. "She can actually walk now for a few steps with someone steadying her, but she has absolutely no sense of balance yet, and we weren't able to give her enough time in a med tube to restore muscle tone properly. K'Treel Explorer ships aren't colony ships, and as a result we don't have a large number of med tubes on board this trip. Plus we shipped here at flank speed, which limited both the power to the med tubes and the time we could throw at her case."

Sheena nodded and took over operation of the hover chair.

Teresa gave her brother-in-law and nephew a dubious look – each had an attractive and quite naked female clutching his arm. Batch himself was almost unrecognizable, thanks to his Marine-standard enhanced body which made him look over a decade younger than she remembered, and even Danny looked far more mature with his red tunic and matte-white swagger stick – smaller than his father's pace stick, but still impressive. "Roger?" the formerly paralysed woman asked dubiously.

"It's me," Batch assured her gently. "Tuned up, with the dents bashed out and the paint job buffed to a high gloss, but it's still me." He smiled at her affectionately. "I missed you. How is everything back home?"

"It was rough. There was only Mom and Dad, and they're getting so on in years. And the nursing home staff, of course."

"I didn't know you had a CAP card, Teresa," Batch said, grasping for something to say.

"I didn't," she responded to his surprise. "In the middle of the night, this sub-decurion from the Office of Targeted Extractions took me to orbit, where they gave me a screening. They took all the patients and even all the staff at the facility, got four or five volunteers out of the deal. My CAP's a 4.2, and they tell me my mothering scores are great, and the average can only go up."