Occam's razor might lead one to think that, Mr. President. But, it also might lead to election posturing. The money trail should help make this clearer. Are Mrs. Chi's strings being pulled by anybody else?
Get to work on that, Abigail. Moore scratched his chin, unsure of what exactly to do next. He needed to take action. But what action?
He would get to the bottom of the situation. After all, he was still the president of the United States of America, and he had called in some favors. An investigation into the complete membership of the Tau Ceti Commission was being conducted—an investigation that nobody in the public knew about—and soon he would have some answers.
Mr. President, Captain Adam "HeeHaw" Elliot and Lieutenant Delilah "Jawbone" Strong are here for your five o'clock. They are the two Marine mecha pilots from Orlando, sir.
Right, send them in, Abigail.
Chapter 26
November 1, 2388 AD
Oort Cloud
Sunday, 1:35 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
"We've got nine more!" Lieutenant Junior Grade Seri "Vulcan" Cobbs shouted as the ramp to her SH-102 Starhawk dropped to the deck of the hangar. The search and rescue pilot waved at the hangar deck medics as they rushed up the ramp to transport the wounded. "Move it, two of them are critical."
Seri turned back into the transport, grabbing the end of a gurney rack and popping the switch to release it from the electromagnetic gripper. The gurney gripper light went from red to green and snapped open, dropping gently to the deck and extending the wheels as it hit. Seri tapped the console monitor at the head of the thing to make certain that it was still working correctly under its own power. The very weak vitals of the wounded pilot continued to graph across the screen in reds, yellows, and greens. Only a few of them were in the green.
"I've got this one, ma'am," the Navy corpsman nodded and grabbed the handles of the gurney and ran with it down the ramp and to the triage area at the end of the Madira's largest hangar deck.
Three of the wounded pilots were missing arms and were able to walk themselves down the ramp with some help from deck crew. They were led to the staging area for the noncritical casualties. The remaining four were stable but couldn't walk either because their legs were gone or broken, or they were paralyzed or unconscious. Seri pulled the other critical patient from the rack. She popped the gripper, and the gurney slid down from the rack release. She tried not to grimace at the sight of the mangled pilot. Her left arm was missing, including the shoulder. There was a gaping hole in her left side, and she was missng most of her right leg. There were other tears throughout her g-suit that had sealed off. There was no telling how much damage the poor pilot had sustained. And it had taken the SARs more than a day to get to her. Seri had been flying for thirty hours straight, collecting wounded from the most critical to the least in the order prioritized by the SAR logistics AICs. It was just nothing short of a miracle that this woman was still alive. A miracle.
"Poser? You still with me, girl?" She shined a flashlight at the pilot's face.
"I'm here, Vulcan," Poser replied so faintly that she could barely hear her.
Seri checked the "goodie bag" sitting on Poser's chest and noted that the pilot had already absorbed more than half a liter of the trauma cocktail in her IV. Poser had been as near death as a human could get when Vulcan had found her floating almost lifelessly in space; the trauma cocktail was beginning to improve her vitals. But from the scanners, Seri could tell that Poser's liver was damaged, and she was missing her kidneys, most of a lung, and some of her digestive tract. The bones and muscle tissue could be easily repaired if the doctors could fix the missing vital parts. She would have been given up for dead just a few decades prior, but medical technology continued to improve, and apparently Poser had a will to live, because her heart kept on beating.
Had it not been for the immunoboost that her suit had administered, she would have first bled to death, then she would be in serious trouble from septic issues. But her suit organogel and the drugs had done their jobs as well as could be expected. Her abdomen had been flooded with the psuedogel from the organogel layer until it filled the wounds from the massive trauma of the enemy cannon rounds, sealing off the arteries. Her wound was right on the edge of being too large for the seal layer to compensate for, but it had.
"You hold on, Wendy. The docs will fix you up." She pushed her along the deck, waving away another corpsman who offered to take her. Vulcan knew Wendy as a friend and wanted to make sure some emergency room waiting error didn't cost her friend's life.
She pushed the gurney through the sea of wounded until she reached the sealed-off triage room at the forward section of the hangar bay. Seri buzzed the door several times until a nurse covered in blood from head to toe opened the hatch.
"This one is marked as first priority critical," Seri said haggardly.
"Right. Most of them are." The nurse looked down at the mangled body of the pilot and then at the DTM wireless data transmitted to her about the patient. "I've got three more just like her, but you got here first. I'll take her from here."
"Thanks."
"Are there many more out there?" The nurse meant still to be recovered and brought in.
"This is hopefully the last run of criticals. But there are still wounded spread across the battlescape."
"Captain Jefferson, sublight and hyperspace systems are back online," the CHENG said. "Though, if we can wait a while about firing them up, I'd like to get some of our structural damage repaired and reinforced. We're still a good twelve hours from having all the SIFs back online."
"So I have propulsion, but you don't want me to use it, Benny?"
"Uh, yes sir. But you can in a pinch."
"Don't really need it right now anyway," Captain Jefferson said. "How about that big gaping hole in my ship?" He had been down to see it once, and the three-dimensional views of it just didn't do it justice. The hole was huge. It was so big that he was certain you could navigate a Starhawk through it and have room for a fighter escort. It had been plenty big enough for that mass driver sabot to go through to take out the Seppy battle cruiser hiding beneath them.
"Well, sir. There just isn't a lot we can do in the short term. We can seal it off and repair some of the damage with onboard resources, and maybe we can scavenge some materials from the facility below, but I'd rather wait and let the teams on the Lunar Far Side shipyards do it right. For now, I recommend that we find enough plating to cover the holes on the above and below hulls and leave it be. A wounded AEM told me that he saw mountains of girders just lying around in scrap heaps down there. Maybe we could get a couple Starhawks and a team to go down and load some of them up?"
"Make a list of what you could use and do it. I'll notify the air boss to get you a couple lifters and pilots."
"Good, sir."
"We may have to set up temporary shelters in the hangar decks for any displaced troops." Jefferson rubbed at the day-old growth on his face. He was tired and needed to shave. Five decks that housed soldiers had been obliterated by that damned Seppy railgun, and the Madira was a three-month ride from Earth at top hyperspace jaunt speed. It would be a long, uncomfortable ride home. "Get somebody working on that."