Beyond Pi Snippet 1

 So I sent the manuscript off to Rea. 

Chapter 1

 

Port Royal

Vice Admiral Horatio Logan stared at the schedule. So far so good but they were hanging in there by the skin of their teeth and tips of their fingernails.

He snorted at his thought. He had started the project with the factory ships Ptah, Io 11, and the engineering spaces on the various ships in the Hero's Rise flotilla. Oh, and the mountain of material that had come in from Rho. Building the industry to build the Dyson shell and the industry to build the gate had been a bitch. But there was a reason he'd released Io 11 and Ptah to other duties; they were no longer needed. The industry was self-sustaining at this point.

Well, with a bit of help from shipments from Rho of course. Like the convoy that had recently come in. Six more large and eighteen smaller force emitters had arrived. They were halfway to building the gate at this point and he was happy.

It had only cost them a half a dozen moons, an unknown number of asteroids, and a couple of dwarf planets, not to mention a lot of the stockpiled material the pirates had stolen and hoarded to get there on his end.

He checked the latest news. Beau would of course highlight anything relevant to his command or to the sector. There were a couple of dozen entries; the couriers had picked up news along the route to him but nothing about Port Royal or the gate. That was a relief.

One damn leak was all it had taken to ruin his day almost five years ago he thought blackly. He didn't want another—hence, the additional security at the jump points.

Ships now unloaded at the jump point, transferring their contents to orbital warehouses under the guns of the picket and orbital fortresses there. The orbital forts were Mulberry class affairs, one command fort at each jump point that controlled an array of mines and weapon platforms.

He wanted, nay, craved more, and he'd get it in time, but for the moment he was stuck with what he had. The other forts had been redirected to New Cornwall. He had the State Department and Admiral Irons signing off on it to thank for that.

Politics he thought in annoyance.

"My, you are in a mood," Lieutenant Beau, his A.I., observed in a soft contralto in his ear.

"A little."

"Why? Aren't you happy we aren't in the news?"

"No news is not necessarily good news. But in this case, I'll take what I can get I suppose. At least our people are taking the security classification seriously. Finally," he growled.

It had only taken a couple of court-martials and captain's masts to get the point across. Most of the leakers had acccepted NJP or Non-Judicial-Punishment and a removal of their security clearance for the leak. Forfetier of pay, reduction in rank—none of that would get the secrecy of the star system back.

At least they'd gotten the media to censor the information from feeds that were sent to nonincorporated worlds. ONI and SIS were keeping an eye on them to make sure of it.

It wouldn't be forever. He knew it, and they knew it. But until they took down the pirates in his Area of Operations it was technically still classed as a war zone. Hence, the legality of the censorship.

He shook his head as he rocked his chair a little. "Just moody I guess. It started with annoyance over the leak and then went to politics."

"Ah. So, situation normal?"

He snorted. "Something along those lines. I'd like to get a handle on state. Or better still, get someone to sit on them and or duct tape their mouths shut so they will stop dipping into our toy box. I don't have the ships to deploy in endless supply like they seem to think," he growled.

"Agreed and understood, sir," Beau said in a sympathetic tone of voice.

"In other words, preaching to the choir and you've heard it all before. Sorry."

"That's what I'm here for, sir, sounding board among other job descriptions," Beau replied with a smile in her voice. He knew it was designed to get him to buck up a little. It did help.

His command had its share of mixed luck over the past five years, but he had to admit it was better than what was going on in Rho and Sigma.

Rho had suffered the battle of Horath and the seeming end of the Horathian threat. To him and other naval personnel, it was a painful thing; they'd lost a lot of good freinds in the nova bomb. A lot were still classified as missing in action too, though hopes of any of them turning up five years later were dim at best.

Admiral Irons had weathered the political storm from it but it hadn't been easy. It had left a lot of scars, but the admiral was hanging in there, grimly determined to see it through. It being the reestablishment of the Federation as a galactic government and civilization, the end of the pirates, and a few other things along the way.

One of which was his project for his sins.

He was a sleeper like the admiral, having grown up during the golden age of the Federation over seven centuries ago. He'd fought in the Xeno war and had been lost in an escape pod when his ship had fallen short of getting to safety in Pyrax. He'd drifted for centuries in sleep. When he'd awoken, it had been over a century prior. He'd been a borderline slave, chief engineer of the mining station Anvil.

He'd had been lonely and nearly driven insane by his implants wanting him to suicide. But he'd doggedly persisted in what he percieved as his duty to keep the lights on in the station. He'd met and married a beautiful woman, had a daughter, mourned his wife, and had been nearly killed trying to keep things together just before Admiral Irons had shown up to save the day.

He'd reenlisted when the pirates had threatened to attack. They'd salvaged ships like Firefly, built a task force that had captured the enemy task force, then used their resources to build a growing shipyard and naval complex before Admiral Irons had been forced out of the star system.

He'd been stuck in command for years until Admiral Irons had set up a capital in Antigua. Then he'd had a series of misadventures in Bek, another last minute save by Admiral Irons, and then he'd been sent here.

Where he was still trying to hang onto things.

Sigma on the other hand was a mess. Fifth and what was left of Second Fleet were out there somewhere, hunting for “Catherine Ramichov, pirate empress” and her fleet as well as her salvaged battle moon. So far, no such luck finding either.

Her father had started a course of genocide, unleashing plagues first in Rho, then Tau, Sigma, Pi, and quite possibly beyond. Rho had stamped out the plagues, but the other sectors were still struggling.

Well, he had it out and most of the populations vaccinated in Federation controlled space. Unincorporated space and neutral star systems were a different story.

He held command on his space station Command One. From here he could see and direct the progress on the two titanic projects under his control. But he had another mission too, one that had so far failed utterly.

He had been tasked with clearing his Area of Operations of pirates. That had turned out to be easier said than done. Part of it had been due to bad luck, another to a lack of resources, and a third reason was the meddlings of politics.

Four years ago, he had felt confident enough to reform the Hero's Rise task force and dispatch the ships to Tortuga. Unfortunately, they hadn't gotten far and had been brought back due to a collision with a rogue grav wave. The escort carrier and several other ships had hit it and suffered engineering casualties onboard. There had been twenty-six deaths, and thirty-nine injured on Hero's Rise alone. Murphy, the spirit of mischief, chaos, and bad luck, had certainly put in an appearance that day.

They had nearly lost the ships; they'd lost grav nodes and had suffered hull and internal damage. The task force had dropped out of hyperspace to make what repairs they could. They had limped back to Port Royal at low octaves of Alpha nearly a year later.

It had been another black eye for the navy to handle right after Horath. The media had gone into a bit of a feeding frenzy over it.

He hadn't been able to follow the attack up with a proper one since. The attempts to scout Tortuga with prowlers had so far failed. He'd finally signed off on a long shot to try it from another angle.

It was going to be months before they got there and months more before the intel got back to him. Only then would he allow another mission to be planned and launched.

It bothered him to let the pirates have all that free time. They had a mothball yard and plenty of motivation to do something about it. But for the moment, his hands were tied.

"Just … moody I guess," he said again.

~~(O)~~

Lieutenant Beau monitored her principle's vital signs and realized she wasn't going to be able to cajole him any further at the moment. She searched for a bit of good news, but there wasn't anything there for the moment. Not even a letter from Shelby, the admiral's daughter. Pity about that.

She had been grown within the admiral's implants when he'd upgraded to flag officer. She'd become a smart A.I. after the events in Bek. She wished she'd been more sentient then; she could have and would have helped him in some capacity to endure his captivity better. At least, she liked to think she could have done something.

At the moment, she was realizing that helpless “feeling” again. She hoped it wouldn't last and that Horatio would see the glass as half full again soon.

~~(O)~~