"The Admiral will see you now, ladies, Commander, First Sergeant."
As colorful a group as people were walking into Admiral Cistern's office were, the trio waiting in that office were plenty colorful in their own right. First and foremost of course was the Admiral himself. Cistern as always cut a resplendent figure, and gave the impression of being larger than life... even if he wasn't the tallest person in the room by well over two feet.
Next to him was a woman that Jerry recognized as Ambassador Nikti Tal of the world of Bruel, soon to be the site of one of humanity's first off world colonies... and the Admiral's... girlfriend?
Frankly Jerry had thought the man would be a permanent bachelor after his harpy of an ex-wife had torn into him, but apparently the petite green woman with her tribal jewelry over a well fit business suit had managed to charm the Admiral and return a little love to the man's life.
It made Jerry wonder who was going to try her hand next at seducing the most powerful human off Terra. The long odds in the arms rooms of the special forces teams said Lady Ticanped, Speaker of the Council, but no one even knew if the pretentious woman was even single. More likely to Jerry seemed to be a political marriage with a member of the Apuk Imperial household. If the Apuk were as 'old school' as he'd heard, then few things solidified an alliance quite like blood ties.
Rounding out the trio awaiting them was the ever present Sir Philip, already moving around and asking if anyone wanted some tea, or freshening up the Admiral's cup of coffee, earning a wrinkle of the nose from Ambassador Tal before her own cup was topped off with a floral tea.
Of course, the group Jerry had brought with him was no less color than the group receiving him. He himself was pretty interesting to anyone who could read his uniform. The Marine Raider dagger on his right breast, and the new Undaunted Commando dagger on his left, the command star glinting on his right pocket, spoke to his accomplishments, as did the Kukri on his belt. His wives had all worn professional attire, and all looked... interesting to say the least.
Syl's attire was professional, but she'd dressed it up with a shawl that made her look more like a queen than the CEO and geneticist she was. Nadi was wearing a lab coat over her suit. Eymali had opted for her huntsmistress leathers, complete with the Yauya honor blades on her wrists. Jaruna... was Jaruna, and Cannidor stand out whether they're in fatigues, a suit, a dress or nude. She had however selected a surprisingly snazzy business suit. Something she'd bought for bodyguard gigs apparently, and it was loaded with low profile armor, which was apparently standard for Cannidor fashion.
Top Gurung stood just to the side in his duty fatigues, a smile on his face, and his kukri on his belt. His own insignia marking him out as a master warrior that had to be seen to be believed.
Then there was the puppy Mikasa, already up to around twelve pounds and growing rapidly, the friendly little pup had immediately won over Nikti Tal, and was cute enough to draw a rare smile from the taciturn Admiral Cistern. The puppy busied herself with exploring the Admiral’s office, occasionally sneaking under the Admiral's desk and giving his leg a friendly nuzzle before romping back to Jerry and Syl to hide in the Volpir woman’s tail.
“Well Commander, I understand congratulations are in order. Several times. On several subjects.”
Jerry blushes and grins sheepishly. “I admit I wasn’t expecting to get married in such rapid succession... finding out Syl’s carrying six as well...”
Admiral Cistern’s eyes widen for a moment before he regains control of himself. “Well, that’s ah. Six. Good god. Yes. Congratulations indeed. However, this meeting was about business. So let’s get down to business. Sir Philip has told me about your cloning operation, and from the animals I see in the corridors, and this cute little beastie that’s roaming around my office, I assume the pet business is booming. From my dinner the night before, I can also assume your efforts to produce Earth meats in the lab are... exceptionally successful to say the least.”
“It absolutely is, sir. We have a proposal that will both massively increase our now rapidly growing business, our value to the Undaunted, and open a new tactical capability for our forces in the field. We have a lot of flexibility with the EFL, but they are just pirates, and frankly the men who volunteered to go with them are not special forces personnel. They’re doing a bang up job regardless, but for some tasks we will need more than just wild improvising.”
Jerry reaches forward and places a tri d viewer on the Admiral’s desk, which brings up an image of a large ship.
“This is the Crimson Tear, she's a Volxtara class mass conveyor originally set up as a colony ship designed to move a population of up to twelve thousand people. We signed the paperwork for her this morning, so she’s entirely our ship, and has successfully been rechristened. Our plan is to take our cloning business mobile, to better support the Undaunted and our colonies and outposts. At this scale we’ll be able to do all manner of mobile trading, both in our specific field and in others. However the scale of the ship and her facilities give us some rather unique opportunities for developing and field trialing equipment while also placing special forces teams into the field.”
The visual changes to a blueprint view of the ship, which highlights its extensive hangar facilities, then shifts to a close in view of the hangars at the aft of the ship.
“These hangars are isolated and have extensive room for strike craft of varying sizes. Both gunships for defensive use if needed, or for providing support to teams in contact, and a variety of ships for moving troops or intelligence operatives into and out of position under the cover of commercial traffic. Provided we purchase predominantly alien produced vessels for this work, no one will even notice our teams moving in and out of an area of operations. I also specifically think this would represent an optimal deployment to the new Huscarl class gunships we currently have in development.”
The images switch to the internal deck by deck breakdown of the vessel.
“While a few decks would be dedicated to our cloning operation and to our crew, along with other civilian forward missions such as trade, we have plenty of room to do everything from setting up an intelligence hub, and a special forces base, as well as specialist development labs for whatever we want, alongside extensive training facilities. Initially I’d like to propose we move to develop power armor for our elite troops, with Jaruna taking the lead with a commission as a Warrant Officer in the Undaunted, providing both her expertise as a power armored infantry woman with many decades experience, and maintaining and caring for her own armor. She’s also an expert on the weaknesses of power armor, so we could potentially build our suits for our special operations troops and other high risk units to a higher standard. We’d also want a further two dozen officers, NCOs and technicians who would return to the Dauntless and stand up more power armored units.”
Another shift back to an outer view of the ship with a text labeling it as “proposed modifications”. The hull is now decently armored, and there’s blisters that shift to reveal naval grade weapons, ranging from lasers and plasma to missiles of varying sizes, along with a mix of point defense weapons.
“We’d also propose arming this ship with a few naval grade weapons and some defenses. We’ll normally be running an commercial IFF and registration, but just doing business with humanity will make us a ship of interest to pirates and the like. I’d also like something of an EFL identity and deal... we’re an independent, private vessel, but also very much part of the Undaunted, more so than our friends in the EFL. It’s complicated, but there’s no laws against it in Galactic space, or under our charter of rights and responsibilities. Crew wise we’d want a mix of EFL girls who want to go legit and are willing to formally enlist in the Undaunted military, civilian staff both from Earth and not to handle things like the cloning labs, and my special operations company. I would stand as both owner operator and captain, civilian, as well as captain, martial. I’m not asking for a promotion, but I wouldn’t say no as the commander of an independent vessel.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The image changes again to an ancient merchantman flying the red ensign of the British Merchant Marine. The ship’s name was clearly visible, the Rawalpindi. The image then changes to a submarine schematic labeled as the Seawolf class, a nuclear powered attack submarine that had been heavily modified to support some special ways to deploy special forces troops with a wide variety of equipment.
“Our inspiration is somewhere between the old Q ships and the American Seawolf class submarines from the late twentieth century. We’d mostly do support, besides getting intelligence officers and spec ops teams where they need to go quietly, but if we needed to go hot with orbital naval gunfire support or similar needs of a team we would be able to provide it while running our military IFF... it might compromise us, but I believe we’d be able to get away with it most of the time, especially when operating in deep space. We could also provide support with things like stealth missiles, once we develop some, which would be even harder to trace back to our humble merchantman.”
Jerry takes a breath, and steps back. “That’s the gist of it Admiral. This is of course a significant opportunity for my family, but also a significant opportunity for the Undaunted as a whole. We stand to gain quite a bit in the immediate term, and the benefit will only increase as we gain more and more colonies and worlds that can use our kind of cloning support. We’ve already got orders or inquiries about all kinds of services, ranging from cattle for the human colony being built on Bruel from the new Undaunted colonial authority, to Vucsa 5’s new government asking about rapid domestication services for a local avian that’s apparently quite tasty. Syl?”
Sylindra steps forward and changes the display to a proposed navigation route.
“As my husband was saying Admiral, rather than build independent facilities on all these planets, we can serve them better by staying mobile, as well as being flexible enough to make visitations to new Undaunted claims as they go up in the galaxy. Once they start growing big enough that there’s consistent demand, we’ll invest in a permanent facility and staff to serve the local community. We’ll be leaving a permanent facility here on Centris for example, we have long term contracts for provisions to meet for the Dauntless, and our new facilities on Zalwore just to start. The Centris facility will also fulfill the desires of the Dauntless’s crew for pets in the short term, and in the long term service the gourmet market on Centris, which promises to be quite profitable. Lots of people like meat, and exotic meat from Cruel Space is all kinds of interesting to a wide variety of aliens.”
Jaruna grins. “You should sell some of them cows straight to the Cannidor homeworld, or send a gift of a small herd, once they get their teeth into them you’d have some new friends for sure... or we’d have some steady customers at the very least. That beef stuff’s amazing! Lanrak is good but some of the flavors...”
Cistern strokes his beard as he considers. "Hmmm. Well it's certainly a bold plan, but not without precedent. The risk is fairly well managed... and it makes you a moving target Commander Bridger considering your habit getting in gun fights, getting you off Centris certainly seems like a good idea." Cistern looks up with a chuckle. "Though considering you keep meeting wives in those situations, perhaps that's just your preferred method of courtship? No matter, I think we’ll need to iron out some details, and your ship will need further modifications to bring it up to the point that I’m comfortable having it as what amounts to a naval auxiliary and merchant marine member, but all of that frankly sounds excellent Captain Bridger, and I’d be a fool to stop you doing it.”
Jerry raises an eyebrow. “Sir, I’m not a captain yet."
Cistern matches him with a bit of a smirk. “You’re a Captain when I damn well say you are son, and as the commanding officer of a naval vessel you very much rate the promotion. We’ll have to put you through an abbreviated command and staff college while your ship is being modified. When you take possession, transfer her to a 'dry' dock near the Dauntless. We’ll make the arrangements. Then we’ll get started on the modifications on our end.”
Bridger beams with pride as he snaps to and salutes sharply. “With pleasure Admiral.”
“So... for the rest of you, Madame Bridger... err, Sylindra, do you and your fellow wives have plans for how you want your positions to be? I’m happy to confirm Jaruna as a warrant officer but I’m not quite sure what to do with you.”
“We’ll remain as private citizens, or civilians rather, though we shall gladly be in service to the Undaunted. You have quite a few scientists in that status... and as long as our family’s kept together with our ship, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I’ll stand with humanity Admiral, not just as my husband’s wife, but as myself. I think I speak for Nadi and Eymali as well. We’ve plenty to offer without putting a uniform on.”
Nadi and Eymali nod vigorously, a habit picked up from Jerry, and more or less confirming what Syl was saying. They didn’t need to be in the military to do what they did best for their family and their theoretical new nation.
Eymali steps forward. “I’ll be offering my services as a consultant to the intelligence and special forces units aboard. I’m a recently qualified huntsmistress, and an expert in stealth, with and without axiom, tracking, survival, trapping, and hunting, both animals and sapient life forms, and a variety of other skills that your soldiers might find valuable.”
Nadi is next. “Admiral, I’ll continue my services as a genetics specialist. I'm also arranging to finish my schooling for genetic medical science, so eventually I’ll be one of the ship’s medical doctors. I have all the training and more experience than many such specialists, so really I just need to write a thesis and send it to my university of choice.”
Cistern nods, and makes a few notes. “Right, my office will forward all the appropriate paperwork for you all to review and sign... and we can do the oath of the Undaunted at a later date. Further, since you’ll now be under my direct purview Captain I want you to provide my secretary a leave request. I can’t give you four months of honeymoon leave, but I can certainly ensure you take a proper honeymoon with your wives. The Crimson Tear will be in dry dock for some time, so even with your own command and staff college course and OCS for Warrant Officer Jaruna, I think we can afford a month or two off for you before you assume your spaceborne duties.”
Jerry looks to his wives, consulting with them briefly without a word then turned back and said. “Thank you sir, I’ll be sure to do that. Maybe we’ll visit Serbow or the Yauya homeworld. The former’s a newly minted ally, and I expect the Yauya and Dzedin will soon follow in that category.”
“Much as I appreciate the efforts of Vernon Shay Captain, and while I certainly won’t restrict you from going anywhere... I will discourage you from conducting diplomacy with the Yauya on your honeymoon. Leave is to relax. Something I suspect will require intense mental conditioning to convince the Nerd Squad to accept.” Cistern chuckles. “Unless there’s anything else, I have other business to attend to. Captain, warrant officer, first sergeant, ladies.”
Jerry steps forward with a far more relaxed smile. “Actually Admiral we have one more bit of business to conduct, a delivery for Ambassador Tal.”
Nikti grins widely, seems Cistern hadn’t figured her out, nor had Philip tipped the Admiral off. Jerry had wondered when the special order came in from the Ambassador’s office.
“Warrant Officer, if you’d please...”
Jaruna pulls the box off her back. It had been perfectly hidden by her bulk. It’s less of a box, more of a kennel with some built in storage. The small size suggests a terrier sized animal.
“Admiral, with your permission... it is your office after all.”
The Admiral clearly knows something’s up now, looking to Nikti with a slightly bemused look just reaching his eyes. He waves for Jaruna to continue, and the kennel is placed on the Admiral’s desk by Nikti’s chair.
Nikti can’t keep the glee off her face as she opens the kennel and releases the occupant, a small Cesky terrier puppy. The little creature immediately romps out and begins to lick and nuzzle Nikti’s hands.
“I thought you might like one. I know you miss... many things from Cruel Space, and I know your dogs are one of them. I can’t help with the other things, not yet anyway, but I can help with this.”
The tone of the conversation is surprisingly heavy. Jerry had known that the Admiral had left his family in Cruel Space, not of his own accord, but because of his ex-wife destroying his life. It was common enough knowledge, hell that had been reported on the galactic news! Jerry had also heard that she’d poisoned Cistern’s own sons against him, a tragically common practice by a certain kind of human woman. Quickly, not wanting to impact the couple’s privacy, he begins to usher his family and top out of the Admiral’s office with a respectful salute from himself, Jaruna and Top.