9. Moving Day

Cohen stood behind the Conn and looked out over the detection array. The ferry ship and cargo module were about 15 minutes out and decelerating hard, or as hard as the EM drive could pull. The SAR and personnel ferries were moving back and forth between the two vessels in a fire ant chain of lights. It was around 1400 T-standard, and the entire recovery operation went off in around 9 hours. Cohen decided to be impressed. It was clear that Muschivk hadn’t lost his touch. His personnel selection and 'arrangements' always resulted in an improbable but desirable outcome. Cohen was well aware his current success owed much to Muschivk's murky maneuvering.

Cohen might disagree with some of the man’s methods, but the Master Chief’s only love was the Navy. He moved people around to try and ensure talent at all levels and to combat some of InSystems worst excesses. Reagan was an example, the man was impossibly incompetent as an officer, yet managed to make full Lieutenant. He didn’t seem to be stupid. After that little stunt with the Captain’s Mast, Cohen’s first impulse had been to charge the man with anything and everything he could think of, and it was a lot, and send him off to quadrant command. Muschivk talked him out of it, the plan being they could kill two birds with one stone. Reagan's personality was so cartoonish that there almost had to be something wrong with him so the CO agreed. If they could fix the Lt. completely that would give him an extra officer, and an extra pilot. After the fact, according to the ship's doctor, he had been infected with some pretty serious malicious nano wetware, and she had disabled it and they were growing him a new system copied from the Special Forces template. This would allow him to connect directly to a battlesuit and and therefore the new craft. He looked to be off the injured list in about 4 hours.

Perez's serious phobia about authority had hindered his career (from OutSystems standpoint and the CO's perspective, not personally. Personally he seemed chill about the whole no promotion thing) and pretty much defined his life. Making him personally responsible for Reagan was a good trick by the COB, but Cohen had another up his sleeve. Cohen chuckled evilly to himself, nearly rubbing his hands together in glee. Perez really leaned on him in Special Operations school, and here was his chance to return the favor and get a little of his own back at the same time.

“Bridge, this is the Yeoman," the sounder whistled then spoke up with the Yeoman's voice.

The Bridge intercom was on the Conn, a slightly raised pedestal with a matrix looking chair atop it, sitting between the Helm and the Nav stations. The two pods were sealed while in Battlestations (Battlestations is the starship full alert level, all sections manned, personnel in suits, weapons live and all damage control stations ready), and self shielded. A starship bridge looked more like an air traffic control station than a pilot's cockpit. The bridge (a sphere) reoriented in ship mode such that it was facing the normal direction of travel, that is, straight up and down the spindle. A continuous chain of suits and modules danced back and forth between the drive module and the ferry cargo container and the outpost itself. Displayed on the local globe right in front of the Conn, while the captain sat up and at the back with a direct view of the strategic holo. It looked like a big fuzzy football. Some effort had been made to reprogram the display to accommodate the new range parameters so it looked clearer than before. The bridge was pretty empty, when usually it is a busy hub of activity. All the normal players were out doing real work.

“Bridge, OOD.” said LCDR Kosnar, "Current ship's alert level is Amber, shields down."

“Is the Captain on the Bridge,” asked YN1 Ashe, the ships Yeoman. "Thanks."

“Yep, Yeoman, he’s here. Captain Cohen, Ashe for you,” said the OOD, turning.

“Cohen here, what’s the problem?” asked Cohen.

“I need the ship’s name. You said we probably aren’t going back to outpost mode,” said Ashe.

“That’s right," said the CO, "Not probably... we aren't. Probably not ever."

“Well, I don’t know her name. Does she even have a name? Outpost 127a can’t fly around the galaxy causing mayhem and destruction,” said Ashe.

“I always suspected you were a closet romantic, Ashe,” said Cohen, chucking, “She has a name. Relax. It's even painted on the hull.”

“Well, what is it? I have tons of ships info to update and I don’t know what to put for Ship name,” said Ashe.

“Check the commissioning logs, Ashe. I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you,” said Cohen.

“Captain,” he wailed, “I don’t have time for this.”

“Seriously, Ashe,” said the Captain, “Cut it out. Go check the logs.”

“Yeoman, out,” said Ashe petulantly.

Cohen looked over at Kosnar, “Damn good thing he’s a quality Yeoman. If I had to do all that paperwork, I’d go nuts, but he’s really annoying sometimes.”

“His PIM does most of it, while he works out,” said Kosnar.

“I know that,” said Cohen.

“When do you want to start the transition,” said Kosnar, "Since we're chatting."

“Soon as the XO can get back here to relieve you. Which means I have to accept command from her, which means we have to dock the ferry, then you go get to relieve Perez as Engineer,” said Cohen, "And take your engines back."

“This is complicated,” said Kosnar.

“Nah. It’s not. We’re doing pretty good. As long as we can get moving by 1800 or so, we’ll be fine.”

“For what values of fine!” said Kosnar.

“I’m doing a sitrep in about an hour as soon as everything is updated. Muschivk is going to tell you most of the evil plan, I’m going to tell you how we are going to transition and move, and hopefully the XO is going to spring her little surprise on Perez.”

“Perez... I need Perez. You’d better not take him away from me,” said Kosnar, "How am I going to get your little fleet of killers built if I don't have him? And how do I do all this and run the ship's power plant?"

“It’s a surprise, and Perez is not your personal chew toy. What he’s doing for you is more in the way of Muschivk indulging Perez’s hobby. Perez is the deadliest hand to hand and tactical fighter in the Armed Forces, Marines included; so, you don’t get him to do your job while you laze around and watch 3Dramas, ” said Cohen, “In other news, I need you and some of your mechanics to figure a way to hook the cargo module up to this contraption and take it with us. We need to modify it to store, repair, launch and recover those small craft that your boyos cooked up. We can’t leave them in space, they don’t carry subspace drives, and we have to be able to fix them and take them with us, rearm them, things like that.”

“Would be easier if we had a separate ship,” said Kosnar.

“Wouldn’t it be, though!” exclaimed Cohen throwing his hands up in the air, dramatically, then he turned and looked directly at the younger officer, "On a separate note, I've noticed you taking it easy because your current crew is so experienced. Don't let it become a habit. Get your feet off your desk and your brain in gear. You are here because of your ability, not because OutSystem punted you away from any trouble."

“You’re turning this thing into an escort carrier,” said Kosnar.

“Yep. No choice,” said Cohen, "Cool though!"

“Can we requisition a real freighter or something and turn that into a carrier?” asked Kosnar.

“Sure. Can you get it here by tomorrow around noon,” asked Cohen.

“Ah, no,” said Kosnar.

“Well, that’s about the time the excrement hits the rotating turbines,” said the CO.

"Hey, what if the little fighters did have subspace coils? We could bounce them across a couple of A.U's in a hurry. They couldn't hold an immergence, but we could recover them faster. Subspace coils are pretty small. we could put them under the cockpit," said the Engineer.

"That's the kind of thinking I'm talking about. Where's the power come from though?" asked the CO.

"Honestly, I think we could drain the weapons capacitor into an immergence coil that would zap a small craft. It wouldn't work right here in the flat spot, but it would work where you could immerge normally, yeah, that would work, they are really close to the same levels of energy, " said the Engineer, "I'm going to buzz Perez right now."

"That's the ticket," said Cohen.

* * *

The XO and Acting Captain asked the OOD, “How’s the approach looking.”

“Ma’am, you can stop asking me that, it looks fine... I’ll tell you if there is a problem and it’s only been 2 minutes since the last time you asked,” said Master Chief Wamamere, the current OOD, growled.

She shrugged disarmingly, and said in a small voice, “It’s just so embarrassing when you slam into the side of an outpost, you know? I could never live it down.”

“You wouldn’t have to, because if I screwed up that bad we’d all be dead.”

“But you don’t know that. We’re in suits. We can survive pretty much anything.”

They got a break from the suits for about an hour after Engineering restored the air mix; however, they suited back up for the approach. Without reaction mass for the fusion thrusters, the approach was much slower than normal, and had the EM drive match relative velocities at about five hundred meters. They would ‘cable and spring’ it in from that point on. The drive unit connected directly to the lower hub as if the propulsion and power section was a cargo cannister. The Bridge of the drive unit ended up across the corridor from AuxControl on the station and connected directly into Fusion One and Two levels further aft. The cable and spring setup, a dual winch and hydraulic hose that both brought large objects closer and applied braking friction at the same time. The winch rolled up the hose and cable and increased the pressure. The fluid left through an orifice which controlled the rate of the approach. Simple as beans. The Engine Order Telegraph pointed to Back Full. This allowed the gravity compensation unit to get about 30 seconds to pre-adjust.

It was a fairly complicated maneuver. The station and the drive each massed some 15000 metric tons, and they were approaching perpendicular to each other, with the drive unit coming in on the galactic plane and the ship normal to it. The maneuver, practiced hundreds of times in sims and virtually never in real life, was, quite frankly, a bitch. The drive had to match velocity, swivel, and join the station. The station had to stop the ring spinning, align with the approach vector of the drive unit and spin 90 degrees. It was enough to give handling officers the wibbles, not to mention the potential for mayhem had the AI's all in a tizzy.

"15 minutes to full stop, ma'am," said the OOD.

"Sir, it looks like we're going to be a little short. Recommend cutting back on the decel a bit, " said Scatora, the SAR pilot who relieved Rhodes on the helm. He didn't look particularly happy to be there.

"Helm, All Back 2/3's," said the OOD.

"That should do it," said Scatora. He waited about 15 seconds then moved the pointer to Back 2/3 on the remote transmitter for the thing called the Engine Order Telegraph. The face color went red, and then about 30 seconds later went green as the Engine Room answered the bell.

"Engines answering All Back 2/3's, sir," said Scatora.

"Scatora, 530 meters rather than 500 is fine," snorted the COB.

"Yes, Master Chief," Scatora said, ignoring him.

"OOD, do we have enough crew aboard to handle connecting the tube and the winch," asked Sevrinofsky.

"We do, Captain," said Master Chief Wamamere.

"Master Chief, this is the Captain," said Sevrinofsky over the ship’s comm link.

"Yes, ma'am," said Muschivk.

"Can you deploy one of your squads of bad boys to hook up the winch and the tube? This thing is too big to dock, so we're just going to connect it now. I know the SOP doesn't allow for that, but Perez and Kosnar agree it will work at 500 meters."

"I know, ma'am. I talked to the Outpost about an hour ago. Squad Two is on the way. Just give me the word and they'll be outside," said Muschivk.

"Very good, Master Chief, should be about 10 minutes," said Sevrinofsky, and cut the channel, then she looked at the OOD, “Did the Captain say something about spinning the hub?”

“Yes, ma’am. When we winch in the cable connections will turn the spindle, so we don’t have to try and orbit the station with no reaction thrusters, the rotation protocol is in place there for the main docking bay and really big ships...” said the OOD slowly, "It's just a little dangerous. They spin it by counter braking against the ring. They've got to stop the ring for transition anyway."

"Translation, really fricken stupid," said Severinofsky.

* * *

"We are coming up on Match Point, Engineer, about 30 seconds, " said Lin, “The tube is connected, and personnel are coming across now. Ship is at 600-ish meters moving at .3 m/s, decel .05 m/s”

"Will you knock that off," said Perez.

"Acting Captain says you are the Engineer, that's what you are, I'm not arguing with her," said Lin.

"Oh, shut up," said Perez.

"Everything is looking good, no problems," said Rhodes.

"I don't like the fuel reserve, but there's damn all we can do about that," said Jones.

"I have a plan," said Perez.

"Oh, do ya," said Jones.

"Kosnar says the detection boys found some ice over by that rogue planet about a LY corewards. We just never needed it before. We always got reaction mass deliveries via supply and for docking fees. Traffic is so low, station is running low on mass as well," said Perez, "We are planning on getting a SAR and cutting the ice in chunks and bringing them back. They can probably bring 100 tons of ice per trip."

"Fusion One," Perez called over the link.

"Fusion One, Fusion Control Officer," said Eagles.

"Eagles, don't secure the plant immediately, I think they want to connect right away. We can secure once we interlock and we can get station power through the main connections. We want to switch to the shielded generators just before the move. I think we want to leave both plants in hot standby."

"Aye, Engineer," said Eagles.

“Why does everybody do that,” said Perez.

“Randy, I think you are in for a couple of surprises in the next few hours. Don’t skip officer’s call,” said Eagles, "The Skipper called an officer's call for about 20 minutes after we dock."

“I’m not an officer, why would I go to officer’s call,” asked Perez.

“Oh, but you are an officer. You are the third ranking officer on this tub until you are relieved in about a half an hour, that means you've got to give a status report at officer’s call. I don’t think you’re getting out of this one,” said ENS Eagles.

“Why does everyone think they can have fun at my expense,” complained Perez.

“I really don’t want to hear your complaints, Mr. Engineer; my adult given name is ‘Runs with Eagles’,” said Runs with Eagles.

“What was your childhood given name,” asked Perez, taking the bait.

“Limps with Chickens. Runs with Eagles was a step up,” said Eagles.

“I think you’re full of crap!” said Perez.

“Of course I am. Don’t miss officer call, Randy,” said Eagles.

“Shit!” said the Engineer.

* * *

Muschivk and Wamamere sat in the CPO quarters in the drive modules living spaces and tried to put together some manpower and situation planning estimates, but they kept coming up short of bodies. They were about 15 minutes away from interlocking the drive to the station and wanted to get ahead of the curve for once. It was just shy of 1400 T-standard, and the rest of the day looked to be very, very busy.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“It’s those stupid fighters of Randy’s. Each one takes an assault troop, and those troops are mostly from Engineering,” said the COB.

“Do you agree with the CO’s plan for Perez”, said Muschivk.

“Oh yes, and Reagan will be his assistant or something. With any luck we’ll fix Perez’s little disability. If we get Reagan back on track, it’ll be better than busting him down to Seaman Recruit, and it saves us a body,” said the COB.

“Fireman Recruit. He’s in Engineering, besides, he came around pretty quick. I think he was 'adjusted'. He has all the symptoms,” said Muschivk.

“Is that why you set up that elaborate charade?” said Wamamere.

“Yeah,” said Muschivk, "I need an excuse to render him unconscious, and busy his internals so his monitoring system wouldn't notice. It's one of the ways listed in the Counter Intelligence docs for disabling nano."

“I think we’re gonna pull this off. Win or lose the next fight, we can pull the fighters out if they look outnumbered and all we lose is the ability to ambush them a second time,” said the COB.

“I don’t like these makeshift plans. We are assuming they have the same motivations, logic processes and responses as we do. I don’t think that’s true, and that means we can’t plan anything. We can’t even drop bait,” said Muschivk, ”That’s why Sevrinofsky’s attitude irritates me so much. How can you do anything but react if you don’t know the objective of the enemy.”

“We are the bait. You knew that,” said the COB.

“Course I do. It was my idea in the first place,” said Muschivk.

“We know that they have ships and their drives aren’t all that different,” said the COB.

“Sure. But they can travel through subspace without ships. Why do they need them,” said Muschivk.

“No clue, but they must for something. Maybe to carry more food,” said COB.

“That dead bug is in the Supply Aft Hangar bay, right,” said Muschivk.

“Yep. That’s where you told them to put it. The thingy Barnes and MacFadden rigged up measures the mass field as well as generating an EM shield, to make sure the thing stays put,” said the COB.

"Maybe I can get Tunney to dissect it," said Muschivk.

"You ask her. I'm not asking," said the COB.

"You know what she's gonna say, she watches the same shows Perez does," said Muschivk.

"Dammit Joe, I'm a Doctor," mimicked Wamamere in a strangely accurate and incongruous DeForrest Kelley imitation.

"You can blame Barbara for that, too," said Muschivk.

"Not out loud, I'm not," said Wamamere.

“Perez says the Cobras will be setup the same as the battlesuits, so the same motion will, instead of moving the suit, move the little ship. That’s more or less how the EVA module works. So, Squads One and Two, should get the first 20 of the things. They’ve got twelve modules or four Cobra’s assembled. By the end of the day, they should get another four, and with the printer on board here, we can start getting double the amount. At 1800, we can have eight cobras ready to go. But we don't have enough pilots.

The first flight will probably be Perez and his merry band of killers. We don’t know how this is going to work, but he’s got the fastest reactions of any of us. My guess is the first couple of battles will be easy, because the buggies don’t have any idea that we can resist them. They are measuring our combat capability by the civvies they eat. Then they’ll start sending tougher types. By then we should have some really nasty surprises for them. I’ve got some worries about how we keep them from knowing where the station hangs out, if they can move through subspace like that,” said Muschivk.

“You said the thing looked like an ant,” said Wamamere.

“An ant from an 3Danime horror movie, sure,” said Muschivk.

“So, will they act like insects,” asked Wamamere.

“No clue. Ask me after a couple more engagements. Those weren’t soldier type insects, though, they just ate stuff. Soldier ants and soldier termites are much more aggressive,” said Muschivk, "I hope they do think like insects. I don't think opposing ant and termite colonies use decoys. Though I could be wrong."

* * *

"Perez, this is Graham, "I've been a working on your little fighter ship, whaddyacallit, the Cobra. I've got aideer," said Graham in his long slow Ukraine accent. Graham was a MM1, attached to Fusion Two.

"Like what," said Perez, "I love ideas. Any idea you think of, I don't have to."

“We are taking the reaction mass and food storage and welding them to the inside of the habitable ring on the hangers there, right,” asked Graham.

“Right, Kalid, did you want to do something else with the tanks?”

“No, Perez, I want the rack. I bet we can put that cobbled up living module on it and a SAR subspace drive. Then we can use it as a nasty delivery system. It could hold 20 of them.”

“Man, that is a stroke of genius. Let me call Kosnar... I think you just came up with the mousetrap we needed. It’s been bugging me how we get the interceptors back there tomorrow during that projected furball. If we don’t protect the dummy relay, what’s the point of the trap,” said Perez, “Oh, I love it. That’s just… evil.”

“We’ll need to leave one tank. Gotta refuel your toys.”

“Okay. Sally call Kosnar and send him and email and a transcript of the conversation. Make sure to credit Graham. Graham, I’m putting you in for a commendation and a bonus. Grab a couple of guys, bring the tanks over early and cable them or stretch cord them or weld them in place and bring that rack into the aft Hangar Bay. I’ll be down there as soon as I get relieved here,” said Perez, and his helmet display blinked twice as Sally complied.

“Oh, yeah, I’m putting hooks on the thing. Both the rack and the Cobra,” said Graham.

“Hooks?”

“You dunno what a hook is? Roundy curved piece of metal, you attach things to it, hang them, that kind of thing.”

“I know what a hook is, you jerk, why do you need them,” Perez said.

“Your coating thingie is awesome, really tough, dead black and also keeps magnetic stress field lines within the two layers. Guess what. Magnets don’t work. And the EM shields are working but again, trapped between the two layers, mag grapples just don’t work. How did you plan on moving them around and holding them in place?” asked Graham.

“Uuuuuuh. Wow, I'm a dumbass. Another thing I never thought of, but should have. Okay. Hooks. Does that mean the mag docking field won’t work? Of course, it does. We need an arrestor cable and a tail hook on the fighters and Seekers. The Wanderers or Scout or whatever I called it should never really make a high speed docking maneuver. I hope,” said Perez.

“We need to cobble up a drive, small living module for 22 or so people, suit recharge, fusion batteries for it, until we can get a small ship size fusion plant, control module. What’s a tail hook,” asked Graham.

“A big long thingie sticking out the back that will hook a loop and let us slow the silly beast down,” said Perez.

“Hey, that’s cute. Did you think of that?” asked Graham.

“No, they were standard on aircraft carriers and military airfields to stop landing planes in a short distance,” said Perez, “They called it the wire.”

"Wow, that's great. What's an aircraft... and why did you need to carry them?" asked Graham.

* * *

The two ships cabled together and were about to become one ship, the drive systems forward control bridge was directly physically linked to the ex-outpost, now frigate. The helm and nav stations on the local control went dead, relieving all the watchstanders and releasing them back to crew.

Lieutenant Commander Kosnar made his way into the drive module engine control space, after begin relieved by the XO, and wandered over to the main status display. Perez turned around and said, "Welcome aboard, Mr. Kosnar. have you completed your tour?"

"Not yet. I've gotta hit the operating fusion plant and the drive space. I did go through the Bridge and the living quarters. Captain thinks we might move down here and stay in the quarters here, and use the transit to get to control while we are in ship mode. Oh, right... you are the Engineer here, right now. Request permission to enter and tour?"

Perez gave him a hard look and said, "Permission granted, Mr. Kosnar. Status: I am Randall Perez, currently the Engineering Officer of the Watch, designated acting Engineer, with the engine room hot. We are currently interlocked with the main station, Fusion One is now designated as Fusion Three, with ENS Eagles in charge. . Fusion Three is generating power and supplying spindle loads at about 30%, as well as local loads such as lights and power. The subspace drive is idle in hot standby. All systems are green, but we are very short on reaction mass in the drive module tanks, and are hooking up to refill from the station tanks. Shields are nominal, and at anti-material level, and we are supplying the field for the spindle.

Once we fill; however, this leaves us below fifty in the station reserve. Currently the plan is to bring the reserve reaction tanks and bolt them to the inner side of the ring. The station engineering AI's have taken control of the scheduling and power plant emergency functions, and the main control busses are connected directly to the engineering busses. Master Chief Takeashi in AuxCon is directing this from the station side, in conjunction with the ENG AI and the AuxCon AI. They aren't happy about it, so be prepared for some passive aggressive complaining from the systems. It's more that this module has civilian hardware and it slows them down. They say it's like having the village idiot drive your bus.

We sent off a couple of the SAR’s to go collect that floating ice you found, assuming it’s water ice, that would be great. If it’s methane or ammonia it’ll take about a half hour more, as we crack it. We should have about 10000 tons in 4 or 5 hours, which will put it at 75% when we move the station. All the maintenance is deferred until we move the ship and all the records are gone anyway. We found a data block containing drawings and the procedures and instructions for the plant and drive, however, no records yet. My recommendation in the logs when I assumed as Engineer is to perform all annuals, starting next month, as if the ship left drydock. The Aux control software is a very slim library of junk routines running in a simple scheduler, so all we have running is lights and air. Gravity is powered from the ship, and as the main umbilical is connected the ships AI will take over from our cobbled up junk software, in about 10 minutes.

The current ships readiness level is ‘Elevated’, and will go to Amber when the umbilical is connected. Do you have any questions?”

Kosnar said, jotting stuff down on his PIM, “No questions, yet. I have to go tour. You didn’t talk about manning.”

“Fusion Three has a single section, all assault troopies. Eagles is in charge over there. You can get the manning from her. I assume we will redo the watch list and relieve them. The drive was secured and the watchstanders winched the ship in,” said Perez.

Perez looked at Kosnar and grinned, "Off the record, the AI’s say they don't trust Civilian AI for anything anyway, and they figure on retaining control. Who thought discrimination would be a problem in AI. They were snarking on how much easier it is to just take control of the system busses rather than issue commands."

Kosnar said, "It's really amazing what you guys pulled off in a couple of hours. I'm impressed. Let me finish my tour and I'll relieve you. Officer's call is in twenty minutes and we both have to be there. Oh, I love your fighter delivery system.”

“Not mine. Graham came up with that one. He works in M-Div.”

“I wonder if you could insert the thing from subspace. That would be evil,” said Kosnar.

“I don’t see why not, and that’s what I thought.” said Perez, "Your trick with the coils is genius. Do you think we could just put springs on the Cobras so they just snap out when the dropship or whatever surfaces?"

Kosnar held out his fist and they bumped, "Dude, I like the way you think."

* * *

Officer call, held in the Wardroom conference room at 1500, was mandatory for all officers on the ship, plus any senior enlisted holding officer billets. Everybody was talking, not quite quietly, trying to figure out what was coming. Perez was sitting on the counter in the corner where the coffee pot usually sat, trying to look invisible. Perez didn’t have time to change out, and was still in the suit. Wouldn’t fit in the chair, and had to lower the apparent gravity not to break the counter but his helmet wasn’t deployed and he had removed the armor plating and left it in the XO’s stateroom at the XO’s request (order), “You’re not going to officer’s call looking like a Neaderthal killer,” she said.

“Everybody here,” asked Cohen.

“Yep, except Reagan, Perez hasn’t checked him out of Sickbay yet,” said Sevrinofsky, “Do you want me to do the briefing, it’s my job.”

“No, no… I’ll do this one. I have a present for you this afternoon, Barbara. Pay attention and enjoy it.”

Cohen cleared his throat and slotted his PIM in the table. A display popped up showing the station with the drive module attached, another display off to the side of the sector showing the blue speckles of detection that so disconcerted Lt. Reagan, and in that a set of icons showing the ferry ships route, the station and the nearest system, a ternary. Cohen waved his hand and the display spun, showing it from the other side. The audience quieted and settled down in the chairs.

“I’m assuming that everyone knows our current status and orders, as in we are Outpost 127a, a service and repair center command for sector 127 assigned by OutSystem command, blah blah. I suppose I should back up about a year.

A year ago, OutSystem Intelligence noticed a dramatic falling off of metals and resources flowing in from the four or five sectors on this edge of the Vega cluster, and started doing investigating. They discovered that losses in prospectors and private mining companies had reached 30%, as in about a third of miners and resource hunters simply weren’t coming back. Something like 17 ships and stations to date. Disappeared. Missing. Gone. Intelligence found this disconcerting. Subspace accidents happen and space is really big, but ships are usually found, eventually, because the salvage rates are so high. Not to mention subspace travel is very safe, ridiculously safe.

After a couple of months of looking and finding no trace of anything either InSystem or OutSystem, they decided it wasn’t internal to the Galactic Republic, but had no other candidates either. InSystem Intel is convinced that some terror group is messing with shipments, OutSystem Intel responded that the OutSystems were even more affected. Most of the Republics heavy metal come from this sector. Some analysis put this station right in the center of the activity, but no ships, cargo or messages or anything else affected this point.

The disappearances were slowly increasing in frequency and with no trace of a solution on the horizon, the Master Chief there decided to take over this station with his own personal band of merry killers. Don’t shake your head, Joe, that’s what you did. Anyhoo... OutSystem command sped up replacements, using the former MCPON suggestions and recommendations,” and Cohen made a dramatic wave, and said, “Including myself, the XO, COB, NAV. The Engineer was borrowed from a research facility and since he requested more active duty, no one commented.”

“The former commander had been overcharging for docking and repair fees and pocketing the difference. He’d been doing it for three years, but apparently no one cared until Muschivk needed an excuse to replace the command. In retrospect, it was probably the continual consistency that drew the antagonists to this sector. By homing here as a beach-head, they could detect any changes in the station schedule of transmission, and in delivery routes,” Cohen continued.

Muschivk murmered to Sevrinofsky, “He still talks a lot.”

“Hush. A lot of people aren’t as up to the minute as you are, because they don’t pull the strings,” said the XO.

“A couple of you were here when the auditing team descended on the station and arrested the CO, his Yeoman, the Hangar Bay officer and his Chief, I was not. I was ordered here about a month after that. We started upping the frequency of the sector surveys slowly, looking for wreckage and incidents, using SAR’s and altering the approach path of normal supply ships. All was going according to plan, until 30 hours or so ago, when one of my officers with a personal grudge against one of my Chiefs, got creative with the MilPersManual in order to get him busted out of the Navy and off this ship. Using that particular section of the legal code against a crew member triggers the ship control AI to send a specific, single subspace transmission to quadrant command.”

“That’s why he was the negotiator, “ Muschivk noted, “He could get us cheaper hotel rooms, anywhere.”

“Will you stop that,” she said, giggling.

“There is no overriding this, and this behavior is required if the Captain is incapacitated, the station is damaged to the point of losing functionality, loss of power more than 24 hours, or if Battle Stations without being under EMCON protocol. This means that the ship will send a second transmission to quadrant, right after the first at 1800, or about 3 hours from now. We believe this will trigger investigatory behavior from the baddies, and I’d rather not leave this unarmed and undefended station here while that happens,” said the Captain.

“So we are transitioning the station to ship mode, and moving it about 2.3 light years west to that ternary system over thataway.” Cohen waved his hands thataway.

Cohen continued, ”We were always planning on moving the station and creating a decoy relay; however, things moved quite a bit faster than we expected. We did not expect the bad guys to move quite so quickly, either. A brief summary of today’s events, by Master Chief ‘Many Hats’ here,” and he nodded to Muschivk.

Muschivk stood up and said, “Perez, you turned over to Kosnar?”

Perez jumped to attention, “Yes, Master Chief, Captain. Mr. Kosnar is now the Engineer, and the drive module is interlocked to the ship, and under ships control systems. The software is still home grown, but the Bridge AI is confident, and is copying modules from the internal plants on an emergency basis.”

“Very good, Chief. Thank you,” said the Captain.

“Perez, go change and be back here in 10 minutes. Uniform, not worksuit,” said Muschivk, "Now."

“Who are you right now, Joe,” said Perez.

“Sector Intelligence Officer,” said Muschivk.

“Yes, sir, “ said Perez, and he turned and left the conference room.

“Well, now... the Captain’s excellent lead in,” he rumbled, he turned and said, “Maybe we should pipe this throughout the station.”

“Already done, Joe. I’ve known you too long,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Thanks. All right. So, we took back the ferry ship, if that’s the right word for that thing, from the hostile force that occupied it, with no losses and no real trouble. That’s because they weren’t a hostile force in the true sense. OutSystem Intel now believes, after the latest interchange, the boarders are a sort of feeding bio-robot like an ant or termite colony worker. The reason the civilian's ships have trouble dealing with them is the difference in equipment. Civilians have laser-based weapons and vac-suits and these low energy systems have no effect. The workers are strong enough to bust through a door and appear to be able to travel in subspace. My guess is that civilian weaponry, guns, knives, rifles just won’t work. Military weaponry is designed to penetrate the battlesuit, and goes right through the alien armor.

I sent a data packet squeezed into the normal status update. I'm guessing the bugs can't listen in on our comms, but they can hear them, and by hear I mean they have antenna.

We aren’t sure if the attacks are directed or not, but they capture ships with no shields easily. We think this is a new alien species, and the first spacefaring race we have encountered. My guess is that the specific attacks are not directed, at any specific long term objective.” said Muschivk.

“InSystem still maintains that this is somehow the work of terrorists or something who have built these biorobots and used them to attack shipping. This is a problem because of the lack of sophistication of the workers (just like real bugs), and their ability to travel in subspace unhindered by the lack of a ship. In any event, I think InSystem is full of crap.

So we have a dead bug in storage in the hangar bay, but no time to do any research. Our original estimates were assuming we would have several months still to make plans and set up traps. My guess is that the increase in ship losses is simply due to the increase in alien worker concentration, and not any change in plans in their part. I think they will investigate the second transmission when it fires, which means activity around 2 hours after the transmission. When we destroy that party, then we should see a bit of your and their true power and be more able to plan stuff,” said Muschivk.

“We can’t leave the station, mostly unshielded as it is, anywhere close to the vicinity of any action, so we have to move it, and hide it. Since the Bad Guys (to steal the Captain’s term) have to have similar tech capabilities we can assume they have some kind of MDI in their kit bag, and so we move it to a place where there is a lot junk laying around. So after we move it, then we eliminate their search team, then they come back at us in force. I think. I’m guessing about 18 hours for them to turn their thinking around and come back in force.”

"I haven't looked at the analysis from OutSystem in depth, because I haven't had time, but the insect analogy seems apt to me."

Muschivk waved a new slide, “We are way short on time to learn how to handle the new stuff that Perez and his merry band of killers have given us, but the Captain has a timetable and a plan, and I think we can make the next couple of days come back with a big win,” Muschivk waved his display off and sat back down.

“Thank you, Master Chief,” said Cohen, ”Perez, come up here.”

Perez had just got back from changing and came up in front of the table.

Cohen looked hard at Perez and said, “Because of the bizarre nature of this event, we are separating the ships complement into two groups, Flight and Ship, with two separate chains, both reporting to me. No more games. You are now the Flight Engineer until I come up with a better title. I read the same books you do. You are also now given a warrant of commission to CWO2. Congratulations, Chief Warrant.”

He reached out and pulled off the anchor collar tab and replaced it with a set of crossed anchors, pulled from the history books. The GalPub Navy hadn’t had a warrant officer in a hundred years, but the rank existed, just for situations like this one, “Just so you know, CWO2 ranks with full Lieutenant and I did some looking in the books and while you are not a regular officer, you are pretty much untouchable in your specialty, Engineer. You have a presence in the chain of command, and as such have all the responsibilities of one. ”

Everybody in the room looked happy and clapped, except Perez. He looked pissed, looked over at Sevrinofsky, “This your doing?”

“Nope,” she said, “Nothing to do with it.”

“It’s my doing, Randy,” said Cohen, “We were friends before and we're friends now. Every one of your evals recommends you for Officer Candidate School up until about 10 years ago, when your resistance made them give up. You can't resist now, or I'll shoot your ass. Suck it, buttercup, I need you to take that pile of crap down in the docking bay and give me some offensive capability and I need it now, and I need you to have the rank to do it. Reagan is now your assistant.”

“Well, now,” said Sevrinofksy.

Cohen turned and looked at Barbara Sevrinofsky, “Don’t get above yourself, Sevrinofsky, you are now Wing Commander. You are suit qualified, small unit tactics qualified and you can pound twenty or thirty guys into a set of squadrons in no time at all. Assuming you live through the next day. You are now Perez's direct supervisor.”

“Wing Commander,” said Sevrinofsky, she said, smiling. Then she shook her head, looked at Perez, smiled again and said, “Better get hot, Mister Flight Engineer, I’m not gonna be a Wing Commander without a wing. Whatever the heck a wing is.”

“Shit,” said Perez, "This sucks."