Jethro 8 Snippet 5

 

Chapter 5

 

SG3R211-94 Sigma Sector Capital

 

Suqi noted her family was in transit so there was a natural delay on emails. That sucked. It was coming to an end though; they would be hitting their homeworld soon.

On her next ground-side leave, she had four days off because it was a holiday weekend. She wished Hurranna was around, but the cat had been stuck in a training exercise and her carrier was on the other side of the star system for the holiday. That sucked.

The star system had been pirate controlled until it had been liberated. When the Federation had come in, the massive habitats had been restored and additional space stations built. There was even a dedicated ONI station called Delphi.

The natives had consolidated on a moon colony that had massive domes on it. Inside it didn’t look at all like you were indoors. The designers had done their best to make it as large and impressive as possible. It was helped with the fact that the moon had an ocean, near 1G gravitational field, and a molten core which spun and generated its own magnetic field. There were some talks among the natives about possibly terraforming the moon into a habitat like her homeworld Kathy’s World.

She ended up getting dragged to a recently opened theme park by a group of Marines, one was Blainey, an old friend from boot. She hadn’t interacted with “The B Blainey” much in boot but apparently Blainey fondly remembered her however, the “cat.”

Blainey was a husky human woman, not a heavy worlder, but she definitely worked out. She had a chiseled face and had a reputation of being in bar fights. She had been masted twice and nearly lost a stripe after one altercation. Her nose was just a little out of position due to a couple lucky hits.

They got through the lines to get in relatively quickly. They traveled in their civies, and she thought everything was fine. There were an inordinate amount of humans in the group, but the planetary population had been hit by the plagues as well as pirate genocidal hunts for years before it was liberated by the Federation.

One of the first rides they got on was a Ferris wheel. It was giant and hollow core. It was driven by massive wheels on the ground. The hollow center allowed two roller coaster tracks to pass through it. The passengers on the Ferris wheel rode in cars that moved in and out as the wheel rotated.

When they went up, she found out it was timed so the cars would tip and then rush towards a coaster just as it came through the hollow and then the car would swing up and away in the nick of time. It was a scary experience but exciting and fun once she realized it had all been carefully engineered for the fright experience.

The second pass, the rush and tip of the car were expected. The roller coaster was on its way back and that track corkscrewed in a wild maneuver.

“We are so going to try that coaster next,” Blainey gushed girlishly.

Suqi sighed internally but nodded.

 >>*<<

Hurranna had some idle time since it was a holiday weekend. She hated that they were stuck on the other side of the star system, but she wouldn’t have missed the flight time with the training operation for anything in the galaxy.

She couldn’t get actual time with Deja, so a video conference was the next best thing. They were doing it under the pretense of debriefing after the previous exercise. The talk quickly shifted to Jethro and Ox’s survival though.

“To have survived that,” Deja said as he shook his bullet-shaped head. As a selkie, he could cut through the water or space with incredible ease.

“Yeah. I bet if they’d had you along, they would have been back in half the time,” Hurranna said.

“Maybe,” Deja said thoughtfully. He still had a chip on his shoulder about being dragged into a helm position. Fortunately, the Federation navy now had plenty of people like him who could do it now.

“No ifs, ands, or maybes about it,” Hurranna said with a snort and ear flick.

“Maybe,” Deja said again and then wiggled his whiskers as the lynx shot him a reproving look. “Like I said, maybe. Too many variables,” he said with a slight shrug.

She cocked her head but let that one go.

“Heard anything from them?” Deja asked.

“I got the email from Jethro. Short and sweet and to the point, a thanks and yup, still kicking,” she said. They both looked at each other in amusement. “Ox … nothing. Then again, word is he is in terrible shape.”

Deja nodded and looked concerned. “I thought they had AI and nanites and stuff to keep them alive?” he asked.

“Yeah, I heard the same thing. It is probably why they are alive,” Hurranna said. Deja looked at her and then nodded slowly.