“If Fleet had the same decision to make all over again, they'd do it the same way.”
“And under most circumstances they'd be right. I'm just glad all artificial intelligences on Freeground and the colony will be erased by the end of the day.”
The Warpig came into view then, from underfoot it sped towards a wormhole none of the onlookers could see. A rough, hardy looking ship with large, blocky engines and a patchwork hull, no one suspected where it could be going, what its purpose was. All Fleet Command knew was that someone aboard was opening a wormhole that would send the old ship towards the outer galaxy faster than most high priority missions were permitted to go.
The amount of power sent to the spear like wormhole emitters jutting out from the side of the station segment caused the tips to turn white hot, waves of spacial distortion made the stars in the distance waver like candle flames. “Do you think she'll be back?” asked Jessica.
“She's your daughter, what do you think?”
She just watched the ship disappear into the wormhole and smiled. “She is our daughter, isn't she?”
“Uniquely and certainly.” Doctor Anderson replied with a smile matching that of his ex-wife's.
“Did you tell her you were her father?”
“No, I'm respecting your wishes, just like last time.”
“Thank you,” Jessica looked at Doctor Anderson then, her expression soft and pleasant for the first time in years. Over sixty five years to him. “This time I'd like you to tell her, whenever you can, however you like. She should know.”
“I will, but I don't think she'll be surprised.”
Jessica Rice turned and started towards the doors that would lead her to the Command Deck.
“Where to now, Admiral?”
“My office for a little damage control. I'm going to reactivate your Fleet rank. I may as well put you on the bridge of a ship while your research and intelligence privileges are suspended. We'll need you in a command chair before the month is out and you're not getting off that easy.”
“So much for my vacation.”
A Night Out
The Pilot's Den was quiet that night. As Finn walked in and spotted Frost at the bar he second guessed his choice to meet Price there. He made his way around a group of simulation hologram spectators and was relieved that the gruff Chief didn't notice him. He was just getting off from an extended shift in engineering while Price was on his night off and after meeting several friends in Oota Galoona, he was going to make the trip down a few decks and to the fore to see the Pilot's Den for himself.
It was a sight. The whole front of the observation deck had been opened up to reveal the transparent hull and view beyond. To each side was a long bar but only one had been opened. The rationing of intoxicants limited the demand and with the help of a few materializers off to the side one bar was more than enough.
At the rear of the observation deck, or pub as a lot of the gunnery and lower deck crews had come to call it, there were four large holoprojectors that sat in the middle of several rows of thickly padded chairs. Most of the seats looked old and well worn but in good repair and they all reclined just enough to simulate cockpit seating. Pilots and wannabe pilots lounged there with simulation visors on, engaged in one of the many visual and tactile combat simulations available.
The four hologram projectors focused on the top pilots and tactical representations of whatever simulation was running. Three of the projectors were focused on squad play, where a pair of squads fought within a massive field of shifting, colliding asteroids and wrecked hulls. The other hologram projector focused on a ship to ship battle called The Battle For Manchester Port. It was a simulation made for a crew of thirty three who would man a large gunship named The Intrepid.
He'd participated as part of the eight man damage control team the simulation demanded before as one of two people aboard the digital vessel who was actually qualified enough to do the job in real life at the time and thanks to the high difficulty of the simulation they lasted only nine and a half minutes before the ship and all hands were lost.
All the simulations had been set to an increasing difficulty. As the crew became better at the scenarios, running the in-sim systems were becoming more and more like doing the real thing. Some of the deck and engineering crew had already started putting in requests to perform qualifiers as pilots and out of over a dozen applicants who had completed the qualifier, only one had passed.
Finn was glad it was hard. He'd done a shift on the flight deck and assisted the repair crews there. When a pilot who had been trained mostly in a simulator returned from their patrol you could always tell. The fighters were hardy, difficult to damage, but a pilot with few real flight hours always landed too hard or took too long to make a vertical landing and often left the cockpit without resetting the controls to their defaults. Everything was logged and whoever was running the Space Superiority Group at the time would often have a very long chat with the new pilots daily and that was often accompanied by a basic tutorial on how to care for their fighters. He had seen one administered by Alice and in the course of the tutorial an impatient pilot was grounded because of his know-it-all attitude. She didn't have any patience for people who weren't willing to learn, nor should she. A bad pilot could kill not only himself but many members of the crew with just one moment of negligence or poor judgement. Watching her inform the pilot that he was no longer welcome in a cockpit until he re-qualified then sending him to report for maintenance duty was like watching Captain Valance put someone in their place. The similarities between the two could be eerie at times.
Finn had no desire to be a pilot, however. The hangar deck was a place he'd volunteer occasionally. Not to do any seriously detailed work, he'd need more training for that, but to do knuckle dragger's work until he was trained on servicing the fighters. To him, the hangars were the most exciting places on the ship. Too exhausting to transfer there permanently, and he enjoyed his work in ship engineering as well as representing the engineering department on the bridge, but helping in the hangar deck was a great place for a change of pace.
He was glad to know his place on the ship. Chief Grady often assigned him to represent the Engineering Department on the bridge because he was forming a solid understanding of the ships systems very quickly, and when there was something new or interesting taking place he was always involved somehow. Learning about the Sol System Vessel was exciting; all that high technology was beyond anything he'd seen and under the direction of Liam Grady the Engineering Staff worked exceedingly well together. There was still some personal drama but that was to be expected in any large crew.
Of all the things he was happy to avoid, the gunnery deck was certainly at the top of his list. If Chief Grady ordered him to assist there he wouldn't refuse, but serving on the most dangerous and accident likely section of the ship sent a shiver down his spine. Being under the command of Gunnery Chief Frost would be no picnic either, he was certain. He had the reputation of being the most harsh, unforgiving commander on the ship. Someone quit his staff every day, and most of them wound up as a knuckle draggers in the hangars or assigned to an unspecialised maintenance team if they were qualified. The non-specialists, the lowest of the maintenance workers took care of the dirty work; everything from cleaning out sewage recyclers to pulling cable through crawl spaces when the bots were down and since all artificial intelligences had been deleted most of them were. It was a respectable occupation, but at the bottom of the pecking order.
He'd rather do that than serve on the gunnery deck, however, but considering the condition of the Gunnery Chief when he walked into the Pilot's Den he wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall the next morning. Just after a few seconds Finn could tell that Frost was in for an epic hangover the next day, and being a man of pride, the Gunnery Chief probably wouldn't go to medical to request a recovery treatment.