Chapter 63

Dear Willow and family,

Okay sis, you can laugh at me for adding the Ensign to my rank. But in some ways I feel like I'm earning it more than I did my rank as Signifer. I get two days out of seven that are officially off from my official assignment with the Civil Service. On those days I go out and work at sharpening my aim and learning to lead forty men (though most of them are women) who are older than me so that they become an effective combat unit. That I'm earning with blood, (yes real blood from my own body) sweat and tears. Being a Signifer almost feels like it was handed to me. Oh I know I work for it and at it, but the human diaspora is so desperate for Civil Service Officers that I think I could have only shown a slight interest in the work and still have gotten it if I had volunteered. Ensign (even in the PSDF for Atlantis-at) was a position I actually had to qualify for. Oh I may have had a small step up on others with my designation as an officer of the Confederacy Armed Services, but since I was considered (and still am to a certain extent) a noncombatant that step up was less than you might imagine.

I looked over my technical drawings. I'm embarrassed! I did use part (Okay too much) of your escape hatch in one instance. However if you have a Confederacy power pack in your tank you should still have the spaces that I've left highlighted in green available. Now I'm glad that the infantry is innovating with my bombs. That is what we need. That is people at the front line who see something and make it work better. I still think mine should have a lot of potential. Remember that they were intended to replace grenades (either the smoke variety or the explosive variety) and even the best launcher that humans had could only lob those a couple of thousand meters. Now I know that is better than a mile and a half, but then they fell and were dead. Mine aren't. As long as they get even a bit of light (even firelight) they will pick up enough of a charge to be pinged and to move to new locations. In sunlight they should have a better range than a couple of miles, but I bow to the battlefield expertise that you have. I'm trying to make them fifty percent heavier than they are now and put most of that weight into propulsion systems while keeping them able to be launched with any standard grenade launcher.

I'm not sure I succeeded but I hope so. I've managed to cadge a type of explosive from the Confederacy that should increase their yield by about fifty percent as well. It really can't be modern 'cause I found it in an archive that isn't even very well organized. Since I don't have a lot of time right now, due to my commitment to not spend more than two hours a night to my 'hobby' and my commitment to the PSDF I don't have a clue of what else might be hidden in that archive. I did send a couple of things over to Marissa for consideration, they seem to be more sophisticated computer designs than what humans were using when the Confederacy made contact with us. If I'm right they could be a step in the direction we want to go, both to wean ourselves from Confederacy tech and to have guidance systems that permit us to navigate the stars and use hyperspace to do it...

I know that people else where are laughing at us for thinking that we have pirates here, but the Arctic Princess just called in here for shore leave and to deliver a few more 'pegs' for our various shaped holes. She had burns and said that she had been fired on by something or someone that wasn't the Sa'arm when she exited hyperspace at the system limit.

We don't have enough observation hardware out there to have gotten film of the event but the replicator that we fed the ship's panels to said that whatever hit them is not a Sa'arm weapon, unless they have started using something entirely different. Luckily the 'hits' were glancing (at least, the AI that is analyzing the panels thinks so) and did very little more than cause some ugly burns. Still that is just one more reason for us to add in system pilots. Someone needs to place hundreds and thousands of sensors around the system ... We've started with what you might call the anchor points for common hyperspace jumps. They're different for each destination. You can't jump to Borneo from the same set of jump coordinates that you use to jump to Earth for example. The only jump point that should be common knowledge is the one to and from Earth. Basically everyone knows that we definitely make straight jumps from here to there and back. I shan't say where else we jump to, just that we do carry on some commerce with other human colonies that are 'near' us.

What are we trading? Plants, people, and animals for the most part. We don't have a lot of unique goods, though someone suggested that we attempt to acquire a small herd of sheep or alpacas so that we'd have real, rather than ersatz, wool to spin. Sure people can replicate wool or yarn or even tapestries with replicators I expect. But the Darjee do have a system of patents and trademarks that will not allow something to be replicated without compensating its original creator. How are we trading people? Well some people just aren't suited for life in a domed city at the bottom of the ocean. So they request transfer. Since the Governor ordered the Autocar built it can carry a sponsor to another colony. Right now Marcie is working on expanding the Stagecoach class ship to carry the cubic capacity of three unexpanded pods. Normally the ship wouldn't carry actual pods. But she is working on a variant that will carry three pods in a linear fashion. We haven't decided on a classification or naming regime for these ships but they should make it easier to transfer a family or two without asking a regular run to pick them up and come here as the Dawn Princess did with us.