ISOP Snippet 1

Okay, first up, a sitrep:

1: No surgery. I went to the Orthopedic Surgeon (who is now keenly interested in my books and writing is own!) yesterday, and he diagnosed I have a "Frozen Shoulder" due to the previous injury. No surgery required, so that is a relief.

2: I sent ISOP off to Rea the other day. I'm shooting for it to be published the first week of May.

3: I watched The Last Jedi last night. (Yes I'm slow, I don't do theaters) I... wasn't thrilled with it. Definitely a dirge. There were a lot of technical mistakes (like air flowing into the ship from a vacuum when Leia gets back into the ship!)
   ...But the 1 thing that really caught my eye was the Vice Admiral's sacrifice. It's not a mistake, but it is tactically and possibly strategically important. Possibly even vital. Did anyone think about the implications of that? I hope so. Can you imagine what sort of weapon that is? Load a missile the size of a shuttle or small ship with mass, point it at a target ship and have it jump to light speed. (hyperspace) It then tears through any ship in front of it, plus sprays the area with debris which causes a chain reaction to destroy neighboring ships! Dang! That would make capital ships obsolete! You'd need to maneuver your capital ships big time to keep from getting hit!

  I will admit I liked Thor Ragnarok a lot more. I definitely finally like Led Zepplin's Immigrant Song. It finally fit into something right!

4: I am near the halfway point of Pi Fight.

5: The spider tank diorama is finished. More on that in another post. I'm also making small progress steps on other backburner projects.

Anyway, on to the snippet: WOOPS! I almost posted Pi Fight! Okay, let's get this right...

Act I

Chapter 1

P35d4409 star system

The North Hampton class light cruiser Chic'ch'll was on the return journey of her loop into Pi when the captain decided a delay was in order. The ship was low on supplies but the place he picked to stop had little in the way of easily attainable materials.

"This looks like a good place to set up shop," Captain Eddie Sejong said, surveying the star system with approval. It was on the road north from the enemy's Daikoku base that was reportedly nearby. He wanted to get in closer, hell, he'd love to set up shop one jump closer but he also wanted a healthy reserve of fuel in case it did come to a battle.

By setting up an ambush in the star system and laying in wait they might bag them a pirate. If the enemy did pick them up they'd think they were their own kind. Not that he expected the pirates to be on guard. They were probably not expecting someone to be hunting them.

At least, not as long as word didn't get around about them. And the best way to do that was to knock the bastards out once and for all to make sure word didn't get around.

"Sir, is this wise?" the XO asked softly.

The captain turned in surprise to his XO. "You have a problem Shannon?"

"It's just; we're supposed to be headed home. Vampiring a prize is possible, but we don't know if and when one will come around. We are expending resources here sir," First Lieutenant Shannon Minaj stated.

"Understood. We'll give it a week and then I'll reevaluate the situation then. Do give it a little time."

"Yes sir."

It was a little frustrating that they hadn't gotten as far north as they'd hoped. That honor had fallen to Meridian. But they had an excuse, they'd been ordered to set up caches of fuel and material for other naval ships to use in the future. They had also blazed a trail for others like Meridian to follow.

It had been something of a bit of a chagrin moment to find out the extended range prowler had indeed confirmed Daikoku's presence. Their report was intensely studied by the officers. The TAO had gone so far as to load the files into the tactical computers to find a way for Chic'ch'll to try to take the pirate nest out. So far he hadn't found a single way of doing it safely.

According to the report the orbital hotel had been turned into a small resupply base. There were weapons platforms protecting it. Meridian hadn't seen any ships in port, but they had seen enough troubling firepower for him to hesitate on pulling the trigger. If any of those missiles got into the inner star system, it wouldn't be good for anyone on the receiving end.

Which just meant they'd have to get back to Tir na Nog, resupply, and then whistle up some help, Captain Sejong thought. He was pretty sure the navy would be intensely interested in taking the pirate base out and thus denying the enemy a port so close to the Federation's expanding northern border. He was pretty sure he'd have no end of volunteers to go along for the ride. It would suck if someone came along who out-ranked him and took it over and thus the credit, but that hadn't happened.

Not yet at any rate.

"Find a nice place to set up shop and then we'll wait and watch and see what comes by," he said cracking his knuckles.

{#}^{#}

Io 11

After breakfast the captain took a stint on the bridge. She took the captain's chair and pulled out a tablet. It only took a moment to go through the ship's logs and status report. Not that she expected to see anything there, if anything untoward would have happened she would have been informed.

Still, it was good practice to check. Once she did that, she turned her eyes outward and checked the status of Fortuity. Lessa had stepped up as captain, much to her surprise. She was grateful, and she had to admit, the young woman had done an excellent job there.

Meeting up with the ship in Senka had been something of a rare once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Anytime two ships met, they would meet up and perform a trade. Along the way, they had found out from Io's electronic hack into the other ship's electronic network that they'd been hijacked by pirates.

Emily had led a boarding party under the guise of a trade. They'd taken the ship with little bloodshed. There had been few of the surviving crew, not nearly enough to man her.

So, the captain had taken charge in her usual way and taken over the ship. She'd shuffled the postings around to allow them to man all of the ships. Io had taken up some of the slack on Io 11.

Since the ship didn't have an A.I., she'd sicced Jedzia and some techs over to her to clear her computers and to do something about that. The girls had learned a lot in their fields, but they were still a ways away from replicating Io and her core programming, if that was even possible. But they were trying to approximate something to alleviate the load.

The capture of Fortuity, rebuilding her, and manning her had given the girls another project, another ship to rebuild. But it had also shown them that they didn't need three ships. She'd been tempted to leave the new ship in Rho sector. She almost had; she'd even worked with Vanessa on plans to send the ship to their secret B448c shipyard to be rebuilt.

But instead, Faith, Clarissa, and the others had come to her with the proposal that Molly stay behind. And she'd agreed.

Sometimes she regretted that, and not just because Fortuity was so slow and in constant need of work of some sort. They'd overhauled the ship three times, but it still wasn't enough. But no, that wasn't her only problem. She missed the girls on that ship and Molly from time to time.

“One loop,” she muttered. They were going to do one loop, up and around Pi and then back again to Rho. Hopefully along the way, Admiral Irons and his navy would make some headway and on the return journey they would run into an ansible so they could check in. She knew Faith. Undoubtedly, they'd gotten up to some mischief in the absence of her keen eye. She was looking forward to hearing all about it.

At least, she thought so. Sometimes she wasn't so sure. She did know one thing; they couldn't rely on her to dig them out of any trouble they got into!

{#}^{#}