Destiny's Choice (The Wandering Engineer) (54 page)

“I
was shit on from the first day, not just the usual hazing to see if you can
hack it, but also because of that black mark. It took two cruises before I was
out from under that cloud, two years,” he sighed shaking his head.

“So
how did you become an officer?” she asked.

He
shrugged. “Chief engineer Sherman took a long hard look at my record when I
signed on to the Derringer. He noted the mark, started to do the usual lecture
on it, but stopped when he noticed the captain who reported it.” He smiled a
little. “It seems he had a third cousin who had experienced the same problem
from captain Bligh. He took a longer look into my service history, then into my
training,” he snorted.

“I'd
kept up on classes despite being in the doghouse. I'd finished my third masters
and a doctorate on engineering and was well on my way to a second,” he said,
shaking his head. “I'd about given up on a naval career, I had managed to
convince myself I hadn't wanted it in the first place. What I had wanted was my
original dream, a chief engineer's berth.”

“So
you were going to get out of the navy?” she asked amused.

“Yeah.”

“How
would history have turned out had that happened?” Sprite asked. He shrugged.

“Glad
we didn't have to find out,” April said with a smile. “Go on, you were saying?”

“Yeah,”
he cleared his throat. “He checked into my hobbies and saw that I was doing a
lot of studying and design work. When he asked why I wasn't an officer, I told
him I was blackballed. He sicked the bosun on me and the exec.”

He
snorted. “They even  got the ship AI to wake me up in the middle of the night
to ask stupid engineering and command questions once or twice a week. I would
answer them, then explain the procedures step by step. When a CPO was
reassigned to another posting they stuck me in his slot. The crew thought I'd
be above my head and crying for help but I'd done it all before. By that time
the crew knew I knew what I was doing.” He laughs. “Even some of them were in
on the testing after a while.”

She
smiled politely at that.

“When
we had an impeller failure, I was near and pulled four injured crew out and to
safety before the hull breach widened despite the fact that I  was injured
myself. I even refused medical treatment to help the DCC crew contain the
damage. The skipper gave me a commendation and a brevet promotion for
initiative.”

“Really?”

“Yes.
After that he got into the act. I started getting peppered with tactical
problems on my off time as homework. At first I didn't know that they were from
the academy manual. The OCS application tests,” he said shaking his head.

“But
eventually you figured it out?” she asked. He nodded.

“See,
a crew is constantly training. We're always running sims, taking classes, or
doing a project or rebuild or something. It's not just to keep busy, it's to
keep our skills up and to keep from going stir crazy.”

“After
being in this ship I can believe it. I wish they'd do something here,” April
said dryly.

“You're
a passenger, you normally don't count. You can take classes, and the emergency
drills, but the rest is for the crew. They need to keep sharp at all times.”

“Spoilsport.”

He
snorted. “Anyway, By the time we got back in port the skipper, exec, and chief
engineer had all endorsed my 20-03c to be mustanged in OCS. I felt shanghaied
all over again. I told the bosun I just wanted to play with my spanners, she
just laughed and laughed.” He shook his head smiling a little. “First time I'd
even heard her laugh. Up until then everyone on the ship thought she'd had a
sick black humor that only came out when someone was in deep pucky. To this day
I'm not sure if I qualified or not,” his lips puckered as he said that. Sprite
giggled a little and April smiled.

“What
happened to Bligh? Did you ever hear anything?” April asked.

He
shrugged. “He got another tramp freighter and ran a few crappy runs before  he
was boarded by Xerax pirates. He tried to get the crew to fight, they turned on
him and handed him over to the pirates. It didn't help, they all ended up dead
anyway.” he sighed.

“Ouch.”

“Well,
this concludes this portion of the background of Admiral Irons. Tune in for
more tomorrow.” April said, looking into the camera and then touching the
control on her tablet. The red light winked off and the camera remote bobbed
and then settled to the table top gently. “I don't know about you, but I'm
thirsty!” she said.

He
chuckled softly, getting up to get them drinks.

“Your
turn,” he said lying next to her later that evening.

“My
turn?” she asked amused. She gave him a lazy smile, relaxing next to him. She
had known something like this was coming. He had been laying it all on the line
for her, it was time she paid some of it back. Of course her life hadn't been
nearly as interesting and exciting as his. She felt a little embarrassed by it.

“I
gave up some of my history, how about yours?” he asked, caressing an arm.

She
laughed softly. “There really isn't much to tell, it's not nearly as lively and
thrilling as yours,” she said smiling, eyes twinkling.

“So?
I still want to know,” he said softly.

“You
do?” she asked, eyes surprised.

“Of
course I do.”

“Well,
then,” she smiled at him.

“I...
My ancestors came to Pyrax in a refugee ship when their home world was
evacuated early in the war. They were trying to pass through but a courier ship
brought word that the refugee system they had been going to had been torn apart
by a nanite virus.”

He
winced at that and then nodded.

“I
heard that if it hadn't been for Admiral Cutlage and rear Admiral Nuguma-so no
one would have gotten out of the area. They chased the Xenos out of the sector.
Not that there was much left to defend.”

“Yes.
That's true,” he nodded.

“They,
well, they decided to get off at Pyrax and stay away from refugee centers. A
few other people joined them. I'm not sure what happened to the ship after that
though,” she shrugged.

“I
was there,” he said quietly after a moment. She turned in his arms to stare at
him.

“You....”

“Oh
no, no not at the planet's destruction, I was there for the aftermath. The
fleet....” he grimaced. “When he chased the Xenos out, Cultage backstopped his
entire compliment of ships in the area to try to get as many civilians off that
refugee center as he could. He started with the orbital habs that hadn't been
infected. He dumped them on every colony in the area then tried to hyper out
more people, stuffing them in every place he could on a ship.”

“It
was bad?”

“Very.
Two week transit time? There is no way to get enough out. Sure a warship has a
deep life support ability, we have to since we need the redundancy in case of
combat damage, but there is only so much room inside a ship. Running the ships
flat out like that without any safety margin...” he looked bleak. “Several
ships bought it. There was nothing anyone could do. We couldn't find them, they
were lost in hyper. We didn't even have the resources to find them. The
system's ansible was gone. So we couldn't call for more help.”

“Oh.”

“But
that's not the worst of it.”

“Oh?”

“Remember
that Xeno fleet Cutlage chased out? They didn't stop at Pyrax,” he said softly.

“Oh,”
she blinked then paled. “How many other worlds...”

“Nine,”
he said, face bleak once more. “Nine other systems were trashed before they
were stopped. Oh sure, they only rock bombed Agnosta and Briev, Triang and
Antigua, but Senka was smashed. It had a civilian yard and about a billion
people on it,” he looked away. “Yeah, they stopped them on their way out, but
even then it was a Pyrrhic victory.”

“Oh.
Who stopped them in the end?”

“I
did.” She looked at him in surprise. “I was setting up another navy base in Bek
when we got word from a courier that got to the ansible on Antigua.” She stared
at him. “I grabbed every ship I could, civilian, militia, or warship. We
cobbled together system defense platforms, graser platforms from parts from the
orbital warehouses, and mines from stripped down missile heads. It was enough
to tear them apart when they exited hyper,” he said grimly.

“Oh,”
she blinked at him. “What would you have done if you'd been there? On Pyrax I
mean.”

“I
would have kept going after them. I would have left my damaged ships and
support ships behind and told them to build emergency shelters, quarantined
every infected site, nuked them if necessary and instituted strict check ups.
Cutlage overlooked that.”

“Oh.”

“I
was dispatched to lend aide to the Crellis system, that's the system they hit
before Pyrax,” he said. “Actually I was backstopping ships and emptying them of
cargo there and creating orbital depots before sending them on to Crellis full
of food, water, and emergency shelters even before then. The reassignment just
made it official.”

“Oh.
that's... I wish they had done that in Pyrax,” she said.

“We
did. later. But the humanitarian effort for so many systems overwhelmed us,” he
shook his head grimacing. “Paco was supposed to take the Xeno fleet out. Don't
stop, keep fighting until they are pinned down. Keep them from hitting another
system.”

“Ouch,”
she winced. “Paco?” she asked.

“Admiral
Cutridge.”

“Oh.”
Her hands stroked his chest and shoulders. Slowly his tension eased. “You
stopped them though. In the end,” she said softly.

“Yeah,
after nine systems,” he grimaced. “I was in Bex. It was actually on their way
out of the system. They used planet busters where they could then pounded the
minor colonies as they passed.”

“I
was wondering why some planets were hardly touched.”

“Oh
they were. Pounded with rocks, nukes, antimatter, or scorched with capital ship
beams. “

“Why?
What about nanites? I thought that was what they used before the Nova bomb. Or
planet busters? What about them?”

“They
didn't for a simple reason. Because they wanted to come back and use the real
estate. The lightly populated worlds offered little resistance so they only
used enough resources to reduce them and then moved on. They could come around
and suppress their populations before colonizing them later.”

“But
instead they became refugee centers.”

“For
a while. and that too may have been part of their plan. Intel was never sure I
think,” he shrugged. She looked at him curiously. “It's easy to see a plan or a
plan within a plan, but all the different permutations for different scenarios,
all the variables...”

“It
even gives us smart AIs fits. All the variables,” Sprite said.

“Right,”
he nodded. “For instance, what about the systems that they destroyed planets
in?”

"What
about them?" she asked curious.

"Well,
it wouldn't take much to set up an automated yard there. They snuck a couple of
ships into the area, and dropped off some platforms. The platforms were mostly
automated. One built another and so on."

"What
did this do?" she asked.

"Well,
the end result was probably to build more war machines. Some were used as
resupply centers. That's actually how we tripped onto the practice. Admiral
Quig'lly figured out that a group was going back and forth to one particular
system. Once we had an idea we sent out a scout to find out for sure."

"And
they did. And once we knew the Navy sent tin cans out to search out each of
these systems and trash anything there," Sprite said with a smile in her
voice. "It didn't take much to do it. They had apparently relied too much
on secrecy keeping them safe and didn't have any defensive plans in
place."

"Oh."

"But
you stopped them? In the end?" she asked. "The Xenos who blew
Pyrax."

“Yes,”
he said. “It took everything we had and then some. I... we swamped the jump
point with cheaply built mines, platforms, rocks, anything and everything.”

“So
they walked into it.”

“Yes.
Wave after wave of defenses hammered them. They couldn't stop at first, you
can't just stop in space. Newton's laws have to have their day,” he smiled
bitterly at that. “They broke off and I sent the mobile forces in to finish the
job.”

“Good,”
she whispered, rubbing his back. “Glad they didn’t escape.”

“Not
one. I couldn't do much to undo what they did. Damn little actually, but I was
damn well not going to let them get away with what they did. Not again.” His
jaw tightened. “Never again,” he whispered, eyes closed.

“Hey,”
she said softly, hand on his arm.

“Huh?”
he looked at her in surprise.

She
smiled. “Worlds away.”