EPILOGUE
“I don’t see repairing this ship,” Lurca said, looking at the Blade. “It is so damaged as to be useful for nothing but scrap metal.”
“Hey, the engine still works,” Spectre argued. “If we could figure out how to survive in suits for thirty days, we could fly it home.”
“Where it would be scrapped,” the XO pointed out.
“Well…” Spectre said. “But it’s a good ship!”
“It is a most excellent ship,” Lurca said. “But it would be better to make you a new one.”
“You’ve got supply problems,” Spectre said. “I know you’ve got good fabricators, but…”
“The food you supplied to the visitors,” Lurca said, “could you get more to us within a year?”
“A year?” the CO said. “We could probably get more to you in a couple of weeks. How much?”
“As many tons as possible,” Lurca said. “But we would need it in no more than a year. But if I have the food supplies, all the rest is easily enough gathered. If you can promise us resupply, I will take you at your word and rouse our full engineering force. Using our repair fabricators, we can build a ship of this size, much more robust and with more of the small chaos generators, in no more than one of your months. But I take you at your promise that you will return with food. Otherwise my crews will starve.”
“Done,” Spectre promised. “Food for a ship? Oh, yeah. I’ll take that trade any day.”
“We will get started on a new ship immediately,” Lurca said. “We’ll need to get your technical people involved in design. I understand they are getting on well with my engineers…”
“That is grapping cool,” Gants said, pulling the machined piece out of the Hexosehr device.
He’d taken a metal blank and put it through the wringer. The Hexosehr device cut metal in ways that should have been impossible, actually cutting inside of the outer face if so ordered. He’d started with a square blank of metal and ended up with something that looked like a seriously intercut medallion, with bits of metal lingering in the cut-out sections.
“Nice,” Red said, slapping his right thigh. “Nearly as nice as this leg. And they built it in a few minutes from design up.”
“I wonder if there’s some way to buy in on this before anybody knows,” Gants said, sucking his teeth. “This is going to change… everything.”
“Yeah, except for one little item,” Red said. “The Dreen are coming.”
“Hell, we took out one of their battleships,” Gants said, shrugging.
“And as far as we can tell, lost all the Marines that did it.”
“Found you,” the first sergeant said, walking onto the bridge.
“Figured you would sooner or later,” Berg said. He was leaning back against the viewscreen, looking at the shriveled body of the Mreee. He’d been there for several hours, wondering when his air would run out. “I mean, how hard was it going to be?”
“Until we found those blinking lights, pretty damned hard,” Miller opined. “Every hatch on this ship is open.”
“I figured I should give plenty of time for any of the fungus that got in odd places to die,” Berg said, lurching to his feet and returning to the damage control console. When he hit the buttons again, he could feel hatches throughout the ship closing. As the hatch on the bridge closed, air began to flood the compartment.
“Hmmm…” Miller said. “O2 levels are good, pressure’s good. I wonder what it smells like?”
“I figure we’ll find out in about fifteen minutes,” Berg replied. “Unless you brought any spare O2. I’m getting pretty low.”
“It certainly appears dead,” the tactical specialist said.
“We shall be cautious,” the corvette master ordered. “If it becomes live, we will quickly die.”
“Corvette Master,” the commo tech said. “We are receiving broadcast in human method and speech from the ship.”
“Put it on.”
“…this net, this is Bravo Company Marines. We have captured the Dreen dreadnought. All Dreen onboard are dead, as is the sentient. We’re nearly out of air. Request assistance. Any station this net, this is Bravo Company Marines. We have captured the Dreen dreadnought. All Dreen…”
“Contact the humans,” the corvette master said. “Tell them we have found their lost fighters.”
“Sir, you might want to take a look at this.”
The duty officer for the Space Command Central Watch Post walked over to the long-range sensor controls and looked over the staff sergeant’s shoulder.
“Is that the Blade?” the colonel asked. “About damned time. They’re nearly thirty days beyond where anyone thought they could survive.”
“I’m not sure, sir,” the sergeant said. “Some of its emissions are the same as the Blade. Others aren’t. More neutrino output, more meson. More output, period.”
“Sir,” the visuals tech said. “That is negative on the Blade, sir.”
“What?” the colonel asked, striding over. “Sound alarm. Send a Flash message that we have an unknown—”
“Incoming message, sir,” Communications interjected. “It has the Blade’s coding on it.” The printer started to clatter and the tech ripped it off, handing it to a signal runner.
“Belay that alarm,” the colonel said. “But wake up Admiral Granger.”
He took the message form and frowned.
“Yeah, definitely wake up Admiral Granger.”
“No, seriously, sir, it’s us,” Spectre said patiently.
“That is not the ship you left in, Captain,” the admiral said doggedly. “And if you get any closer to the planet you’re going to get engaged.”
“Yes, sir, I understand that protocol,” Spectre replied as soon as he got the lagging reply. Per doctrine, the Blade II was standing off at lunar orbit to await clearance. “I’m sending my full mission report. Read it over and make your decision. But, be aware, you’re going to have a hard time shooting the Blade Two out of the sky. Among other things, the antimissile systems on this baby are awesome. The bad news is we’re going to need a lot more ships. A lot more ships.”
“Welcome to the Oval Office, gentlemen and ma’am,” the President said, shaking hands. “Sit, please. Glenda, coffee, please. Commander Weaver, my predecessor spoke highly of you. How do you like your new job?”
“I like it very well, Mr. President,” Bill said, taking the proffered cup of coffee.
“I feel I ought to offer you all something stronger, but since you’re officially on duty… But Miss Moon? You, as a civilian…”
“I’m allergic, Mr. President,” the linguist said.
“Then that settles that,” the President said. “Coffee all around. Captain Blankemeier, I was given an executive summary of your report. Then I asked for a more detailed summary. Then I made the mistake of taking your full report and logs with me for bedtime reading, for which I paid the next day.”
“Sorry about that, Mr. President,” Spectre replied.
“You have a gift for turn of phrase, Captain. You would make a good speech writer. But you’ve certainly dropped an enormous… something probably obscene in my lap.”
“Sorry about that, also, Mr. President,” the CO said. “But we were sent out to find out what happened to the colony and then it got a little complicated.”