14. Uncle Joe wants You

“Perez. Perez! You shithead... wake up!” said a very loud voice in his ear.

He kind of felt all floaty. A lot of disassociated thoughts came and went drifting in an empty black space. His arms and legs weren’t really connected, it seemed they were wandering around in a grey...

“Randy, wake up! Cindy, what’s his problem?”

“Onee-chan, stop shaking him! He took a severe blow to the lower back and the head. He should be dead by anybody's expectation. Calm down! If he wasn’t made of bailing wire and carbon fiber he’d been crushed. I’ve just had Eemu reduce the anesthetic and apply a reverser.” said a voice with a cool Japanese accent he knew really well but couldn’t place.

“We have to get him out of that suit!” said a really familiar voice.

“Onee-chan, calm down! He’s going to be okay.” said that other voice, with the Japanese accent that he knew but couldn’t place.

“He’s not going to be okay; I’m going to kill him. He took that hit from that stupid piece of debris for me, again! I told him I didn’t need his help anymore!”

Perez realized he should be interested in that conversation, but he couldn’t focus.

“Onee-chan, don’t make me call the Captain, please... I can’t handle you and Onii-chan both and if you don’t calm down, I’m going to have to sedate you,” said Tunney in Japanese.

Sevrinofsky took a deep breath, closed her eyes and said in the same language, “Go-men, Go-men, Cindy-kun, I’m a little upset. What can I do to help?”

“No worries, Barbara-chan, you can access his suit and help me get him out of the fighter. If the suit mobility is uncompromised, it might be easier to have Sally walk him out of it,” said Tunney.

“Salome hasn’t responded to me at all. I think she shut down when the power module was hit,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Can we jumper it?” asked Tunney looking it over.

The fighter was completely wrecked. The wings curled up, the main spine was broken, and there was a huge spike of unknown material jammed through the craft from back to front, and it pushed the suit rack out of its way pinning the suit against the front of the cockpit.

“You’re thinking of powering up the suit and having it rip him out of there?” said Ortiz jogging up behind her in his engineering armor.

“Yeah Chief, seems pretty simple,” said Tunney, her accent switching back to standard.

“Stick to working on people, Doc. Leave the engineering to us. We’ll cut him out of there with the anti-plasma cutters. If the AI shut down, that means that some, or all, of the neurocircuitry is damaged. It could rip his limbs off, not move, who knows. Give me fifteen minutes and we’ll have him on a gurney.”

“In that case, I’m going to sedate him again,” said Tunney, and she reached in and messed with the med panel and Perez’s world went all black and squishy.

Ortiz touched the comm on his engineering suit and called a team leader, and within about two minutes the docking bay had another ten people with an entire workshop of equipment working on the little fighter. They placed light gravity over the bay and hoisted the craft out of the SAR into the main bay. Scatora took the SAR back out to give them more room to work, and to team up with the Third. The Third was checking the civilian craft for stragglers, survivors and bugs. SAR’s One and Two were the two that engineering shielded so far.

The team cut the Cobra apart at the junctions where the EVA modules were joined, then tried to cut the big spike of junk impaling the craft and got nowhere.

“What the hell is this stuff? Anti-plasma isn’t touching it,” said one of the sailors working on it.

“No idea, but for now, let’s cut the ship around it. Run the cutter up that other seam and put a line on that chunk there,” said Ortiz.

The crew worked like mad for about 20 minutes, suspending the splinter of weirdness in the low gravity and cutting the fighter apart around it. Finally, it fell apart allowing them access to pull the suit support frame out backward.

“Man, I’m pissed off, Perez is really hard on equipment,” said Ortiz.

Sevrinofsky turned around, reached out a lightning hand and picked up the Senior Chief by the utility belt of his armor and said, ”Excuse me, you said something?”

“Onee-chan, he didn’t mean it that way, please don’t hurt him. I have to fix him then,” said Tunney, putting her gauntlet on Sevrinofsky’s shoulder.

“Sorry, Wing Commander. I was just mentioning that Chief Warrant Officer Perez goes through equipment faster than anyone else, it’s probably because of his mission assignments, Ma’am,” blurted Ortiz quickly.

“Ah... I had hoped, for your sake, that’s what you meant,” said Sevrinofsky, setting him down.

Muschivk rumbled from behind her as he came across the hangar “, Anger management problems, Commander?”

“Nope. Just making sure he’s clear about the way this works, Master Chief.” said Sevrinofsky.

“That's nice. How is Perez?” asked Muschivk, looking at Tunney.

“Joe, I don’t know. Once we get him out of there, I can tell you, but right now that damn spear nailed him good. I think it crushed most of the back of the suit. We can’t contact his PIM, so the only info I can get are the front panel telltales, which are green. He’s got vitals and the anesthetic works,” said Tunney.

“How’d he get hurt?” asked Muschivk.

“The motherships at the center exploded, and the debris field expanded right through the back of his ship and most of his suit,” said Sevrinofsky.

"Look alive," said Muschivk, as reached over the head of Ortiz and the other engineering techs and pushed a button on the front panel of the suit, locking the joints in place, then grabbed the frame in both hands and hauled it straight back out of the cockpit with snapping and creaking sounds in accompaniment,shouldering the debris spike out of the way. He set the frame and the suit down on the hangar deck and stepped back.

“Thanks, Master Chief, now we can cut the support locks away now, I was going to use a grappler,” said Ortiz.

A couple of minutes later Perez and his suit were on his way to Sickbay.

“Onee-chan, I will call you in thirty or so minutes. Till then, you can’t come in, do you hear me?” asked Tunney.

“I know, Cindy-chan, you tell me the same thing every time he gets hurt,” said Sevrinofsky.

“You need to be more careful, Onee-chan. Talk to you later,” and Tunney ran across the deck and into the transit with the transport gurney.

“Barbara, you alright?” asked Muschivk.

“Yeah, he’s going to be okay. If it didn’t kill him outright, he always recovers,” said Sevrinofsky, “and then I’ll kill him.”

“He’s going to need a few days of down time. What say we replace him in your wing with Mei-Lu? She wants to try Cobras, and that way he can work on making you guys even more dangerous, cleaning up that Carrier thing, and all that other stuff you got planned. I think we’re in for a small respite,” said Muschivk.

“Mei-Lu wants to be a pilot? That’s fine, but as far as I know she doesn’t have any suit or combat training atall... What are you doing here? I thought you were on that base?” asked Sevrinofsky.

“Ortiz is designing a flight suit, it’s like a battlesuit but without combat augmentation, but with acceleration compensation. Easier to learn to use... Just got back. They aren’t stupid at all, and they are eager to help. We brought about forty techs back, and we all have to sit down and decide what to do with them and have a little discussion about what’s going on for your planning,” said Muschivk.

“We need armed recon. Perez’s toy is going to need some modification,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Have they built any recons ships yet? I wouldn’t have thought so,” asked Muschivk.

“Not yet, Master Chief,” said Sevrinofsky, “I hope you’re right about that respite. We need that time desperately. Perez needs to get back on his feet, we need to train more pilots, train gunship operators, rescue pilots, fix up that carrier. If we keep waiting for them to attack, we eliminate any chance of us ever stopping them permanently. We’ve been allowing them to set the pace of combat and that plays to their advantage. We can't ever win that way!”

“I think things are about to change radically. It’s only been three days since this all started, and we’ve been stuck with a bunch of random repetitive attacks... I have no intention of turning this into some kind of last-stand and ceding this sector to a bunch of bugs,” said Muschivk.

“I gotta go, Joe,” said Sevrinofsky.

“You can’t see him for another twenty-six minutes. Let’s go talk to Cohen, and the base representatives,” said Muschivk.

“See who?” said Sevrinofsky.

Muschivk just looked at her.

“Okay, let’s go.” said Sevrinofsky.

Ortiz was left standing in the boat bay with a huge spike of ‘something’ and a pile of rubble that use to be a fighter craft. He looked around and sighed. Cleaning this crap up was going to take a little while, and he motioned to his crew chief and started explaining what he wanted done, then he realized he was Engineering Duty Chief and sighed and commed the Engineering Duty Officer to let him know his location.

* * *

Steven Rainwater stepped off the military pinnace into the boat bay platform and looked around. The bay was huge, a huge cylindrical cavernous space, with three pie slices dividing the space where the entrances were. There were huge triangular chunks of steel hanging from the ceiling he found puzzling, and a huge pile of black stuff in the center of the next bay with a bunch of suited techs scurrying around.

“Blast shields,” said the huge black man behind him on the ladder in the photochromic combat suit.

“Blast shields?” asked Rainwater, an average size, slightly overweight scientist type.

“Wa..ma..mere”, thought Rainwater, wondering how he remembered it. The man was particularly frightening when he moved.

“Shake a leg now, Mr. Rainwater,” said Wamamere, “We have to get you up to see the Captain. They just commed me and this is a good time to get everyone together. They are blast shields. This is a really large space with lots of explosive materials stored both in the craft and around in lockers and tanks. This is a warship. It’s not much of a warship, but it is one and it’s getting nastier all the time.

“Shake a leg, what?” asked Rainwater, looking at his leg, still hung up on the blast shields.

Wamamere sighed, a noisy explosive sound. He said, “It’s a military expression for ‘move quickly please, we have a lot to do’”

Wamamere had a fairly incongruous British accent that didn’t go with his demeanor at all, it made him ‘more scarier’. Rainwater winced internally at his poor mental grammar, but that’s how he felt. He still had no idea how he ended up volunteering for the Navy, except they asked him about his hobby. It wasn’t that unusual for a propulsion engineer to be an xeno-entymologist, right? He pushed his glasses back up on his face and hopped down the ladder. Then he realized there was a ‘down’ and he stopped again.

“Mr. Rainwater,“ said Wamamere severely, “let’s go. The artificial gravity speeds up movement and repairs and justifies the power expense. We have lots of power. Please move your butt before I have one of these kind gentlemen here stuff you in the transit tube for me.”

“Oh sorry, I’m just...” said Rainwater.

“I get it, Mr. Rainwater, we’ll train that out of you. Get moving,” said Wamamere, waving toward the central spindle, a tube about 30 meters in diameter.

Rainwater, even more scared, started trotting toward the hatch, his vacuum suit adjusting automatically to his movements.

“All civilians ask the same two questions: one is what are the big chunks of metal for; and the other is gravity in the docking bay,” said the enormous petty officer in a disconcertingly smooth tenor voice (he thought that’s what the big guy called him) next to him, “that’s how he knew what you were thinking. He’s been in the Navy so long he doesn’t remember being a newbie.”

“Yes, I do, Petty Officer Banner, and neither am I deaf,” said Wamamere.

“Sorry, Master Chief, uh, Chief Warrant...” said Banner, clearly not sorry.

“Shut up, Hulk, I’ll deal with you tomorrow at practice,” said Wamamere.

“Why did he call you Hulk?” asked Rainwater as they arrived at the hatch and processed through into the central tube. The central tube had two side by side vertical tubes in it. Each with a hatch in it, but one tube was colored blue, one yellow. They got in the yellow side and They all piled in the transit car. The capsule hatch hissed shut and dogged itself.

“It’s my callsign, sort of a nickname. Rhodes gave it to me,” said Hulk, “please hop in the tube car, Mr. Rainwater. The Warrant’s callsign there is Warrior. It’s on the front shoulder of his suit, see? Mine is on my suit, it’s just above your eye level.”

Rainwater jumped as the car turned sideways, but then he realized that the car didn’t turn sideways, the gravity did. He was in a ship so big that it had an internal train. Working on the moon base, keeping the lights on and the ships running looked easy compared to maintaining all this. The tube capsule flashed forward for a couple of minutes and skated to a stop, the hatch undogged itself and opened to a fairly large space with a bunch of hatches. After about a seconds he realized that the Navy guys must know their way around the ship pretty well, but he didn’t see any maps or direction symbols anywhere, and his AI wasn’t overlaying the helmet displays with any direction information.

“Um... Petty Officer Hulk why aren’t I getting direction info from the ships systems?” asked Rainwater.

“You have a civvie AI. It can’t connect, and it is ‘Petty Officer Banner’. If you call me Hulk, there’s no rank. My front name is Andrew... you can call me Drew, and we’re really not that bad, Mr. Rainwater,” said Hulk.

“What do you mean by ‘can’t connect’ uh... Drew,” said Rainwater as they stepped through the hatch into a longish connection tube.

“He means, Mr. Rainwater, that your AI isn’t trusted by the ship’s central system, so it cannot connect. The normal systems on civilian stations and worlds are disabled. Until three days ago, we supported civilian systems, at least a subset, and then the bugs attacked our supply ship, so all that’s disabled,” said Wamamere.

“Oh... can I ask you a question,” asked Rainwater.

“You just did,” said Wamamere as they made a couple of turns and arrived in a reasonably large room with a table that obviously had slots and tablets for PIM’s.

“Mr. Rainwater, welcome to the Wanderlust, I hope you can help us, and by extension, yourself,” said a voice behind him.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Rainwater, we are delighted to see you, “ a smooth contralto voice added.

Rainwater spun around and looked at the man and woman standing behind him. He jumped back startled, slamming into a huge wall of bulk behind him.

“Whoa, there, Mr. Rainwater, no one’s going to hurt you here,” said Hulk putting his gauntleted hand on the scientist's shoulder.

The two new officers were unsuited and in the standard ship uniform, a kind of strange looking tunic and pants rather than a simple shipsuit. The woman was almost petite and very attractive, the man was midsized, a little bigger than himself, but very wide.

“If you want to change clothes, I’ve had the wardroom steward put a standard uniform in the visiting stateroom, and he’ll show you the way. Hulk, what are you doing next?” said Cohen.

The steward gestured and the little scientist followed him out the door that headed down the officer’s country corridor.

“Dunno, Captain, I’m attached to Wamamere’s squad till he tells me to do something else.”

“We’re going to try to get closer to a regular watchstanding schedule in the next couple of days, but would you mind sort of babysitting Rainwater there. He’s a subspace engineer and so are you, so at least you could show him around and sort of acclimate him. He seems to trust you and I think he’s going to be very important in the next several weeks,” said Cohen.

Hulk shrugged massively and said, ”No problem. Do you want him to join us for morning sessions? He sure looks like he could use it.”

“That’s an excellent idea, but he’s a civilian, and gets an actual choice instead of the fake polite choice I just gave you, so we’ll ask him,” said Cohen, ”Go rack your suit and come on back for the meeting. Muschivk will be here in a few minutes. XO, you too. Go rack your suit and come on back. I am going to ask him if he wants to join up. He’ll say no, though. At first. Then, he’ll say yes.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Yessir.”

“Certainly, Captain. Should I see Mr. Kosnar first?” said Wamamere.

“Naw. Take care of that after. He’ll be in here as well,” said the Captain.

Rainwater let the steward rack his suit and stuff him into a set of undergarments that were amazingly comfortable, a tunic and work pants that fit him exactly, and a belt that held his PIM and some other pockets. He turned and looked in the mirror, and realized he probably needed a haircut.

Ten minutes later the room was full of very fit people, some very large, and Rainwater. They gave him a uniform the same as they were wearing, but with no insignia, all the way down to the underwear and monitor. He thought they would take his PIM, but they didn’t. There was a conversation going on between the lovely dark-haired woman and the big Russian looking guy next to him at the table that was almost incomprehensible.

“How’s Perez,” asked the big guy.

“Still unconscious, Cindy’s keeping him that way,” she woman said, her voice breaking a little, ”That spike damaged his lower spine, she’s not sure how much, but you know how he regenerates, so he won’t be down for too long. It’s very painful though.”

“He’s tougher than he looks. From the recordings, he kept you alive, Barbara,” said the big guy.

“I didn’t ask him to do that. I can take care of myself,” said Barbara.

“Lieutenant Commander Sevrinofsky, you put him on your wing. What did you think he was going to do? Every single time in the last quarter century he’s been seriously wounded it’s because he throws himself in front of you. I think you need to be more careful,” said the huge man.

“That’s not fair, Joe,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Maybe not, but it’s still true. Tunney would tell you the same. I talked to her earlier by comm, and she gave me some details. That spike cut open his suit and left some residue and she said it was a pain getting it out, but the spine itself is fine. The self-repair on the suit worked correctly, but it took the last of the main power. He’s got a bunch of muscle damage and some nerve spinal connection damage. She said in an emergency she could have him ambulatory in about a day, but she’d rather put him in a walker after forty-eight and keep him in it till a week or so,” said Joe.

“Master Chief, why didn’t she tell me that,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Because she didn’t want you hovering around Perez and getting all excited, and maybe getting in trouble over it,” said Master Chief Joe, “We’ve spent too much time building you guys up to lose any of you now.”

“All right, folks, we’re here to discuss what happens next. Mr. Rainwater here is the closest thing to a bug expert we’ve been able to find in the sector and will introduce himself and his thinking in a minute, and we have reps from both major bases with us, Mr. Antony and Ms. Javke. Right now, Mr. Kosnar is sort of acting as a tactical aide, well, squadron chief of staff here, I suppose, and will present the current situation.”

Kosnar stood up and slotted his PIM, and said, “Hey Sirius, wake up.”

A small head appeared over the conference table and nodded, “Good afternoon, Matthew, how are you.”

“Display presentation, and I’m fine thank you,” said Kosnar.

“What is it with you engineering types and the squirrely PIM’s,” said Muschivk.

“We allow them more freedom, because it lets us be lazy,” said Cohen.

“Agreed, Captain,” said the AI and the head went away and 4 large graphics appeared: One was a picture of the two systems and what looked like little ships running around; the next was a periodicity table starting about 70 hours ago; the third was a list of what looked like ships and people; and the fourth was a weird project chart with lines like 'Carrier modifications' and stuff. Very confusing. Rainwater looked around and the room was full of unfamiliar bodies in the same uniform. He'd never had much if anything to do with the military, never even thought about it.

Kosnar started in, "Well, about 70 hours this started (recapping here) with the supply ferry and ship modules emerging at the galactic east navigation buoy and simply sitting there. It made no normal responses and did not respond to hails. So, by some amazing coincidence no one can explain, we have the Republic's premier assault team just hanging out doing regular Navy work, with no one the wiser, including all their equipment, but no shuttles."

"Oh, stop it," said Sevrinofsky with a drawl, "it was supposed to be a vacation. That's what the Master Chief said, 'at sunny outpost 127.'"

"Cut it out, Wing," said Cohen, "Let the man have his fun."

"Sorry," she said.

"We couldn't justify the assault shuttles. We tried. No planets here. InSystem wouldn't release them, and it would have saved a lot of trouble day before yesterday," rumbled Muschivk, " and in the end it worked out better, anyway. But we didn't know who was causing the losses, remember. We thought it might be another ‘arrangement’ the former CO had with persons unknown..."

Kosnar continued, "So we cobbled up transportation for the Special Ops group and delivered them in four teams to the ferry. There they found a bunch of blood and gore, two survivors and a bunch of bugs. They exterminated the bugs, brought the ferry back, and completely turned everything we know about the universe upside down or topsy-turvy if you will. We are not the only intelligent race in the galaxy and the one that just found us wants to eat us all. The two survivors are on ice because we are afraid of damaging them from waking them up.

They've attacked twice more every eighteen hours or so... and we've beaten them handily thanks to Chief Warrant Perez and his bag of new tricks. The fighters and the cannon he invented, plus the improvements in propulsion are making all the difference. The aliens have the ability to induce terror in their 'victims' and travel unaided through subspace. We have no idea how they do this. We know the terror can be communicated across a direct neural interface, though we have no idea how they do this either."

Kosnar looked around, "Quick summation. Any questions or problems?"

Silence. No one cared enough to argue, but Rainwater raised his hand, "Excuse me, Mr.... Kosnar? Did you say they can travel through subspace unaided? What keeps them out of the ship and off our base? You said bugs? You have evidence of this?"

Kosnar stared at the little engineer, “Right. And in other news, we have the ostrich, a bird which buries its head because it thinks that if it can’t see you, you can’t see it.”

“Mr. Kosnar, that’s not really fair. He’s from Grasberg Base and they really haven’t had any contact with the aliens. All they know is that their shipments in and out and every service ship in the system simply bailed, and this particular specimen of ostrich is so disliked by his comrades that they practically threw him on my ship,” said the XO.

The big dude next to him turned his head and looked down and said, “One of the reasons we asked for an etymologist is the dead bug we have sealed in a weapon transit tube in the Hangar bay. We were hoping you would cut it up for us. I think we can get you some more if you like.”

Rainwater blinked and said, ”You have a sample? Can I have it?”

“Mr. Rainwater, yes, you can have it. Right now, we need you to concentrate,” said Cohen, “and as for traveling through subspace, we have energy recordings, visuals and analysis. They also have ships.”

“They have ships?”

“Mr. Rainwater, did you view any of the material I sent you?” asked Wamamere.

“What? No, I thought that was just spam from some military servers,” said Rainwater, “Why would you guys send me info?”

“Mr. Steven Rainwater, there is a certain point at which ignorance becomes negligence,” rumbled the really large guy,” And we are really close here. As of now, you will shut up and pay attention. Your life depends on it.”

“Are you threatening me?” asked Rainwater before his brain engaged.

The little woman, Sevrinofsky was sitting next to the big guy, and somehowan instant later he was slammed up against the wall upside down and the woman’s face was right in his and she said in this strangely smooth deadly voice, “Steven. I hope you don’t mind if I call you that; Master Chief Muschivk isn’t threatening you, I am. You will do your very best to help us figure out a way to get rid of these aliens or I will personally feed you to one of them. That way you can examine them from the inside.”

“You’re really strong,” said Rainwater, he didn’t seem to be afraid, or more likely he was so afraid that it just didn’t matter anymore, “I wasn’t declining to help you. I seem to be completely at sea here. Nobody told me anything about what I was supposed to be doing for you. By the way, if you want to hurt me, I can’t stop you. I’ve never been able to stop any of the guys who’ve wanted to hurt me.”

“We’re going to fix that for you, Steven. From now on, you work for me. I am Barbara Sevrinofsky, and I am the Wing Commander of the fighter squadron, and second in command in this sector. We are buying your contract from your mining concern, and you are now a member of my squad, Specialist Rainwater. Congratulations. Assuming no further alien incursions in the next twenty-four hours, all Special Ops members muster at 0600 on the gym deck for PT. You will be there. You will also shut up and pay attention right now, and you will upgrade your PIM to military software. You will also review all the material we have collected on the aliens and then discuss a summary with me and Captain Cohen and the Master Chief after training tomorrow. We are going to make you the nastiest bug guy in the galaxy. Do you read me?”

“Ummm, yes,” said Rainwater.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Welcome to the Navy, Specialist. Work hard and stay alive because we need you.”

“No one’s ever needed me for anything, before.”

“Ma’am.”

“Sorry, No one’s ever needed me for anything, before, Ma’am.”

“Ahem... Barbara, are you finished? We can try more of the true Muschivk training method later. Right now, Mr. Kosnar needs to finish his briefing,” said the Captain.

Barbara Sevrinofsky pulled the scientist of the wall and plunked him in his chair right side up, then smoothly stepped around the huge Master Chief and sat down and straightened her tunic, then sat down and crossed her legs.

“Well done,” rumbled Muschivk.

She just looked over at him and sniffed.

“He’s going to be fine.”

“I don’t care about Rainwater.”

“I wasn’t talking about Rainwater, Barbara,” said Muschvik.

Kosnar started up again, “Right. Sorry, Mr. Rainwater, no... um, Specialist. I didn’t know they raised fungus1 in the civilian companies as well as in the Navy. To explain, no... there is no time, to sum up...”

“Kosnar...” murmured the Captain, severely.

“Ahem... For the last several years there has been an ever increasing loss of shipping and life in these three sectors,” and his PIM changed the graphics to a star map with the current and adjoining sectors highlighted, “and the ship and crew of this station was modified to look-for and eliminate the causes of those losses. As it turns out, the cause seems to be an unknown alien race that seems to resemble Terran termites in both behavior and in form. They can move themselves and their craft in and out of subspace and can survive in absence of atmosphere. Their configuration seems to imply that they evolved in a gravity field because their legs and hands (manipulating digits) all point down, but where they live now is anybody's guess. They are randomly seeking out shipping and invading this system and the LaGrange point complex every eighteen hours or so, or they did until about three hours ago. They haven’t hit the LaGrange Point either and we have no idea why, but since we have no idea why they do anything they do, I guess that’s not surprising.”

Kosnar continued, ”Due to some fairly inspired improvisations, we, and thus all of you have managed to survive the first several incursions. What is clear: is that they are not the last. These aliens do not attempt to communicate, they simply attack and collect all the organic material in an area and leave. It makes me wonder if there’s not a second wave of technical bugs that comes behind and checks out the site later... Anyway...”

“They have similar weapons capability to our craft, as far as we can tell. They don’t seem to use missiles at all, or any kind of projectile weaponry, but they do have a charged particle energy weapon that can damage our fighters and ships. It also destroys the aliens as well. The aliens in the fighter craft will mow down any number of unshielded bugs to get a shot at one of ours,” continued Kosnar, “In any event, there was no incursion at either point three hours ago, and so we are talking about shifting back to a recovery mode, where we go back to normal watchstanding, rest up and build some scouts in order to figure out what they’re up to.”

“We’ve contacted both bases and are now scouting the system for survivors and resources. We’ve commandeered the ore carrier and several mining craft for a fleet carrier and fighter and marine delivery vehicles/gunships and gotten about three dozen volunteers from the bases. As we find survivors, we expect they will join us. And that’s about where we are right now from a situational standpoint. Materiel wise, we are much better off. We have a fleet carrier with eighteen, umm no... seventeen fighters and one injured, we have three mobile gunships and three hard mounted force cannons in this system and three defending the Lagrange Point and the relay that can hold off an alien force of several motherships and large swarms of fighters. The four SAR’s are functioning as fighter tugs and command ships, and we need to fix that because we need the SAR’s in their original role. One of them did have an anti-matter cannon on it, but that was supposed to be fixed, I don’t have that status yet. Captain Morgan, you’re next,” said Kosnar.

Kosnar pulled his PIM out of the table and Morgan slotted hers, and she started talking immediately, at the same time a picture of what appeared to be an ore carrier, cleaned up and with some weird ports on the side, “Good morning, it’s good to see everyone here. Since the Captain there gave me the dubious honor of commanding Phoenix, we’ve managed to rip out all of the mining and hauling systems and replaced them with fighter launching rails, holding and repair docks and another construction printer. Next is Wing and pilot quarters, a ready room, sickbay, and last is that Light Attack Craft that Perez designed, we built two using this small boat thing that some of the miners used to extract ore from moons. We are thinking about magazine storage outside the hull... never mind... Anyway, things are coming along, but we are still short two normal space engines. The final capacity of this first carrier will be seven squadrons of Cobras, that’s forty-two fighters, and two LAC’s, and one SAR. It’s just that big. Once we get that done, we are considering attaching two of the shorter-range recon craft, the Seekers? The two module EVA craft, in pods to the outside of the hull, as Perez designed.”

She continued, “We’ve moved the ship a few times, launched fighters from subspace, but have yet to try the carrier's internal weapons, and yet to recover fighters launched. We’ve brought the fighters aboard by matching velocities and pulling them in the ore loading hatch. Stupid system. Those systems aren’t installed yet, because the fighters are invisible to magnetic grapples and tractors. I’ve got Jones and some of the other Engineering guys doing the internal mods, but I really need those engines. The gravity generators are currently only good for about three g’s and we need more than twice that to meet the tactical specs, and to equal the observed speeds of those motherships. Did I mention I need those engines?”

She stopped for minute and then said, “Oh, we cheated for crew’s quarters, we snagged some civilian sleeping pods off the docking bay on the civilian side. The crew’s been snatching naps in those. We’ve got spaces mapped out for a galley, heads, crew’s quarters, rec space and some other stuff. All we need is time and hands. We want to put missiles on the fighters, and bigger missiles on the LAC’s and gunships.”

Morgan looked around, “I didn’t bring any rum, sorry. Any questions?”

Cohen looked up and said, “How long till you can be operational solo? Supporting some kind of long-range recon mission?”

“Couple of weeks, probably. Some of this stuff is so new that we don’t understand how it works, much less how it breaks,” said Morgan.

“Good work, Captain,” said Cohen, “XO, you’re next.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Wamamere smoothly, and he slotted his PIM and brought up two lists, “Here is a summary of the losses so far, and the gains. Our losses stem from the various expansions of responsibility in shifting from the messenger outpost role to the sector defense role. We have fought four, perhaps five, engagements against the aliens and suffered exactly one casualty. That casualty was incurred due to lack of familiarity with the new weapons systems so is unlikely to occur in that way again. We have no idea or way of determining the enemy's response posture or resources, so it is not possible to build a table of projections either. Their command of subspace also prevents us from creating fortifications or strongpoints. “

Wamamere continued, “Our gains come from personnel joining from the bases, and probably personnel found in hiding around the system as soon as we get better sensors into the recon craft. We have about forty of those and they seem competent at their jobs, in propulsion, various pilots, admin, engineers and Mr. Rainwater here. They aren’t very useful yet, because we can’t basic them or give them the various schools they need so we are going to use them for simple watchstanding and engineering chores, same ones as in their old billets.We are missing some very important slots and no way to fill them. ”

"Give me a few weeks and I can institute a training regimen but that won’t show any results for months, , however for now, we are either going to have to promote a few more chief petty officers or simply do without."

Cohen nodded and said, "Promote some, do without others, we can deal with that in a..."

"Captain to the Bridge..." The PIMs and the conference room table formed a 3D head and blared an alarm.

"Crap," said Cohen, "Connect me, Bridge this is the Captain, status?"

"Captain this is Kumar, OOD, we have an alert from the Squad 3 CAP. They've found survivors outside the radiation belts, but they are under attack by hostiles. We need an assault team and fire support immediately."

"How far?"

"Asteroid belt, other side of the sun, 360 mklickssir, two subspace jumps, or about a day normal space, and they say they can't hold out that long."

"Do we have a beacon in the area?" asked Cohen.

"Yessir, just reached, it's about a mklick out," said Kumar, "That's when the Mayday came in. We replied. They don't sound very good, they say they've got about six hours of power. We'd go anyway, but this way they might still be alive when we get there."

Cohen looked at Muschivk then at Rainwater then Morgan, "Take the carrier, and use that gunship thing as an assault boat with Team One. Use Banner instead of Perez. Mr. Rainwater, are you willing to give the bugs a look in real time? It could be very dangerous."

Rainwater stuttered a bit and said, "Yes, s..s..sir."

"Good man," said Cohen, "PPD, Hulk. Don't let him get kilted on us."

"No problem, sir," said Banner and he looked at Rainwater, "Welcome to Special Ops, Rainwater, I think you'll like it. Let's get you a suit and upgrade your PIM. We don't have a lot of time so we'll have to do a bunch on the way. Follow me."

Banner ran out of the room lightly for such a large dude without a look back. Rainwater slide the chair back, got up and ran after. After he entered the corridor and caught up with Banner he asked, "What's PPD?"

"Personal protective detail. We've got a lot to do and not alot of time, so let's move. Can you run?"

"Yeah, I've got lots of experience with running," said Rainwater, "I thought this was running."

"Nope. Let's move," and he lengthened his stride to the point where they were nearly flying down the corridor, and hit the transit tube. Banner hit the button and jumped in the the green car right away.

The next twenty or so minutes went by and Rainwater had no idea what happened except his PIM had some hardware and software added, and he got sized and stuffed into a skintight vacuum suit with hard plastic coverings they called armor. This guy Ortiz told him the 'augmentation' was set to minimum, but not to bonk himself in the head. Banner reappeared in his suit, green instead of silver, and said, "We gotta go. You got a callsign, by the way, I just set your PIM. Bugguy."

"Why do I need a callsign," said Rainwater.

"Cause ‘they is three Steve's in special ops just on this ship," said Ortiz jauntily.

"Are you a suit warrior?" asked Rainwater.

"Nope. Engineer. I've got the minimum combat training, but I much prefer putting things together rather than ripping them apart."

"Oh. I thought everybody was," said Rainwater.

"Nope. Let's go, Bugguy, we got a ship to catch," said Hulk.

They left Engineering and headed back to the same shuttle thing they just left, except this time there were about twenty men and women with green combat suits and large weapons hopping into the ship.

"Bugguy," said Muschivk, "Here."

The big sailor handed him a broad bladed ax, looked like something off a medieval set. He took it, and realized he could hold it.

"Hulk's gonna give you some lessons on the way over. Pay attention. I'm not letting you have an HVW yet and you need some way of defending yourself. Most likely we'll run into workers, and we'll use a subspace mine and disrupt their internal 'comms' or whatever but they're extremely dangerous."

"You've fought them?" asked Rainwater.

"Yep," said Hulk.

"Bugs that big shouldn't be able to move. Were they fast?" asked Rainwater.

"Yep. Not as fast as me. But they can immerge and emerge into and out of subspace right in front of you. And they have these weird mandible things that snip off limbs and anything else which the bug then eats, " said Banner.

“Do you have DNI, Specialist,” said Muschvick.

“No, sir,” said Rainwater, “I could never afford it, and the company wasn’t springing for it. ”

“You catch on quick, Rainwater, but I’m a Master Chief Petty Officer, you do not call me sir. It’s Master Chief,” said Muschivk.

“Sorry, Master Chief,” said Rainwater.

“The reason I asked is because when they are in subspace and congruent in co-ordinates, they inspire unreasoning terror. We think this explains why your whole entire company just packed up and left. DNI communicates the terror directly towards your PIM and reinforces the depressions. Civvie PIMs and other AI commit suicide at that point.”

The shuttle collapsed its support legs and 180’ed in the hangar bay and blasted out of the dock under both reaction thrusters and hall effect. Rainwater wasn’t ready for it and he slammed into Banners extended arm just before he would have fallen the length of the passenger hold. The shuttle left the ships docking bay and activated its own gravity. Rainwater took a breath and felt better as the ground stabilized.

“Easy there,“ said Banner.

The little ship rocketed across the open gulf between the two ships and spun the drive housing for deceleration. They were in moving in to a docking port on the rear of the huge former ore carrier, lined up and entered the open port. The pilot, with some amazing skill, turned rotated and flipped the little bus shaped ship and planted the shuttle dead center on the far-left landing pad and locked the landing legs into the retaining sockets. The shuttle bay was still open and two more landing craft stormed in and landed just like the first one did. Rainwater realized that his helmet let him see through the hull of the shuttle and was displaying a tactical bubble diagram.

He asked, “PIM do you remember me?”

The PIM hummed a bit and said, “All of your data is in long term storage, Steven. This PIM is functioning normally. The upgrade has changed some of the personality settings, but I am monitoring your vitals. You are dangerously stimulated, Steven, we need to calm you down.”

“I am terrified. I’ve never fought anything before and now they want me to fight monsters,” said Rainwater, shocked that a Personal Information Manager would make suggestions. “That must be quite an upgrade,” he thought.

“Steven, I don’t believe that’s the case. They want you to see them up close and in person, and they want your opinion on how to predict what they do. They don’t want you to fight them. If you fight them, you’ll probably get killed and then they can’t ask you questions. Panic symptoms detected. Initiating calming protocols, in accordance with the suit’s guidance,” said the PIM.

A rainbow shower of goodness flowed in from everywhere, like an old childrens holo episode, followed by a cold wave of calm and he could think and breathe. Breathe slowly, especially when full. Rainwater’s head cleared of the fog. He shook his head and sat down. He looked up at Banner and said, “I think I’ve been afraid my whole life. Maybe not that afraid, but afraid. What the heck is wrong with me?”

“Nothing. Everybody is afraid. The fear wakes you up, makes you move. Come on, we’re going to go over some stuff with the axe. It’s not really an axe but that’s okay. Muschivk calls it an axe.”

“Why isn’t it an axe? It looks like an axe. I’ve never seen an axe in person, of course, but it looks like one,”askedRainwater.

“It can be used as an axe, but it’s a shield. We don’t have much time, but I’ll show you,” said Banner.