Here we go with #3. I'll probably do 1 more and then stop the teasing and publish the manuscript. :)
New Tau Metropolis
Vice
Admiral Shelby Logan played with a stylus as she listened to a report from a
courier that had recently arrived at the Cenarius star system and their newly-installed
ansible. She nodded at the news that the pirates had fled.
“Boni,
pass on this report to all ships and star systems in the area. Make sure they
are on the alert for the pirates.”
“Yes,
ma’am,” Lieutenant Bonbibi, aka Boni replied. Boni was the admiral's personal
A.I. embedded in her implants. She acted as the admiral's virtual chief of
staff and clerk.
“And
let the Admiralty know with their own copy.”
“Yes,
ma’am.
“And,
once you are done with that, and since it will probably make its way to the
media eventually anyway, run it past operations and then release it to the
Public Affairs Department to release to the media. We could use a spot of good
news.”
“Yes,
ma’am,” the A.I. replied.
Vice
Admiral she thought with a rueful shake of
her head. She had always wanted flag rank. Well, no, that wasn't quite true.
From a child, she'd wanted to succeed her father as chief engineer of Anvil,
their space station home.
Despite
it falling apart at the time.
Admiral
Irons had reawakened the dream of the Federation. She'd always thought about
it, dreamed it would come back, but he'd shown her and others that in order to
see such dreams come true they had to make them happen.
They
had. Through the blood, sweat, and tears they'd made it happen. She'd lost good
friends along the way. Too many she thought with a pang before gently
setting that thought aside. She ran a hand through her shoulder length brown
hair. She needed a trim. She could have Boni do it, but she liked the time out
of her busy schedule it took to see a barber and get pampered. The same for her
nails.
When
Admiral Irons had pitched the idea of Prometheus over a decade ago,
she'd been eager to take it up. In order to get there, she had moved from the chief
engineer slot on Firefly to the executive officer slot under Renee
Mayweather's tutelage. She'd thought she had lost the opportunity when Admiral
Irons had been driven out of Pyrax. But he'd held onto the dream and he'd
slipped keys and tech to her dad in order to build Prometheus piece by
piece.
She had
eventually managed to get her delayed command when Admiral Irons had settled in
Antigua and begun the serious process of rebuilding and finding a way to combat
the Horathian pirate threat. She had taken the Cabeiri class factory
tender around one loop in the south of Rho, helping to rebuild those worlds she
had stopped at and coincidentally get them interested in joining the Federation
again. After that she had been given a new mission, Tau sector.
Her Tau
mission had come with its share of surprises. Like her frocked promotion to commodore
and all the implants and keys that had gone with it. Boni had come from that
process.
Finding
plagues rampaging across Tau had forced her to revise her mission plan from the
moment they arrived. She'd adapted, and her people had risen to the unexpected
challenge valiantly. They'd cleared out a lot of the pirates in the process.
Sometime
after they had settled in Tau-1952, she had been promoted to rear admiral and
the star system had been renamed New Tau Metropolis by the natives. They had
settled in to become the Federation capital of the sector.
She had
just gotten the yard up and running and started turning things around when
they'd received word that a pirate fleet was coming up their wake. The battle
in the capital had been costly but her people had prevailed, driving the
pirates off.
From
there they'd gone on the offensive to first drive the pirates out of their own
capital, Tortuga, one jump away, and then chased them out of their northern
base of Dead Man's Hand four years ago.
To say
that finding out that the pirates were largely made up of non-humans had come
as something of a shock to her and probably to the Horathians that had preceded
her. Those same Horathians had brought the plague to sow and had initially
tricked the pirates into doing their dirty work. Their foolishness had allowed
their own people to be infected, first in Tortuga and then in Harlot's Dream.
She had no clue on the number of ships that had been infected by the plagues
and lost in hyperspace. She shivered ever so slightly.
Relief
from Rho sector in the form of mercy convoys of hospital ships had helped
alleviate the suffering in the sector. But just when she had thought they were
finally on top of things again, Murphy had put in an appearance to throw her
one hell of a curve ball.
The
first was in her mission order change. The second had been with finding out
some dark secrets about their neighbor to the west, the Tauren Confederation. A
third had hit a short time later with the battle of Horath.
Her
people had been full of pride and happy that the admiral was finally cutting
off the head of the snake. Their pride had turned into horror when word came back
through the ansible of the nova bomb and the tens of thousands of Federation
lives lost—not to mention the billions of Horathians.
The
impact on the fleet had been profound. Second Fleet had been slashed in half.
The navy was still rebuilding, but it had put a damper on her mission. She had
received only two convoys in the three years since the battle, one containing
another draft of ten thousand personnel, and a second being the fourth and
final medical convoy from Rho.
That
meant they were on their own.
Politicians
were still trying to capitalize on the fiasco and tear Admiral Irons down but
he refused to yield. Things were still rocky, but he still had a firm hand on
the tiller.
There
was not much word on the chase in Sigma. The last report had said they had
narrowed the search field to under one hundred light years, but it was still
like looking for a needle in an awfully big and black haystack.
She
shook her head.
“Ma'am,
your next appointment is two minutes early,” Boni said quietly, apparently aware
of her woolgathering.
“Okay.
Give me a thumbnail brief for a refresher and then let Nancy know to show them
in.”
“Aye
aye, ma'am.”
“~~^V^~~”
Fred
Muggs adjusted his suit and then nodded to himself in the mirror. Despite all
appearances of confidence, he was still worried about his mission.
In the
past four years, his branch of the State Department had grown exponentially.
Lots of people had been added, some from Rho fresh out of college but many were
natives without proper training.
It kept
him from getting a swelled head; he left that to Phoebe and her machinations as
a kingmaker.
His
lips pursed fondly in memory of his wife. She was working, but he was fairly
confident that she'd come up with something to make up for their time apart.
Probably something kinky given her current mindset.
He
snorted ever so softly as he cracked his knuckles.
Nearly
half of the sector had fallen into their orbit and had joined the Federation or
were considering doing so. At the moment, he had only a handful of blots on his
record. He couldn't do much about Rolling Meadows or Kingdom Come. In fact,
their stubborn refusal to join the Federation and maintain their neutrality and
sovereignty was a blessing in some ways. The government's gentle acknowledgment
of their status had been used as an example for others. In some cases, it had
been used as a subtle stick—a way of showing that, yes, they would respect
their sovereignty but they would also more or less ignore them. Both worlds
were being passed by in trade and other things, unable to benefit as their
neighboring star systems had.
The
Neochimp chuffed softly to himself. They might not like it, but they couldn't
complain either.
Well,
they did anyway, but they knew they didn't have a leg to stand on. No one could
make them trade with others and the reverse was true. Nor was the Federation
interested in extending the introduction packages to them to benefit from if
they weren't willing to join up.
He
examined his face critically. He had some muttonchops going; he might need a
trim. He used the trimmer to remove a couple of errant ear and nose hairs. He
winced at the pain of a hair getting yanked out of his left nostril but
otherwise remained silent.
His
biggest test was yet to come. The Tauren Confederation in the form of an envoy
ship was on its way to the capital for final talks. Things were going to get
interesting he thought. He was also going to be the head of those talks. Well,
Admiral Logan would be there as military governor of the sector, but he knew
who would ultimately have to do most of the talking and heavy lifting.
He
paused as he remembered the time a ship had waited patiently in the Stunning
Sunsets star system. The Confeds occasionally came to trade with the natives.
They had to wait there; they couldn't risk jumping into their space and
creating an incident or worse, getting blown apart. There was also no set
schedule for the freighters to arrive.
It had
been a gamble to sit there, out of contact for so long. His people had made the
most of it, negotiating with the natives. They hadn't been interested in
joining the Federation since they were on good terms with the Confederation and
didn't want to be caught in the middle. Not that they had much choice.
But
steady pressure had eroded them a bit and they'd thawed. They had been the
neutral party needed to make the introductions. His gamble had worked.
It had
taken time, but they'd made contact and the Confeds were on the way to the
capital. He had already got the basics orders from Secretary Sema. They were to
extend an olive branch, and the Federation would guarantee that the prickly
Taurens would keep their borders and sovereignty. They would open the door to
trade. He had a lot on the table and a lot riding on getting a treaty. Phoebe
already saw it as a way to get him out of Tau and on to bigger and better
things.
If she
only knew what he did he thought with a pang as he finished his morning
absolutions.
Commodore
Yu had brought back troubling intelligence from her trip in the south. He was
still keeping the data under wraps and holding it at arm's length. If even half
of it was true, then the Confederation had a lot to answer for.
Unfortunately,
there was little confirmation of it or any other data for that matter. The
intelligence community was still getting set up, so he hoped they got sorted
out soon. He needed all of the intelligence he could in his back pocket. He
didn't like going into the talks blind. He was fairly certain the navy was
prejudiced by the gorilla's data and testimony. Handling Admiral Logan might
prove tricky.
“~~^V^~~”
