End of Worlds
Chapter 3
Officers’ Lounge
TCS Absolution
Lieutenant Colonel Zollern stared at a large monitor that passed for a window. Despite having real-time access to what transpired beyond the bulkheads, it was not the same as a true window. Of course, only a fool would put a plate of glass into the hull of a warship in space. Durasteel at least had a chance to absorb damage; glass did not. Aside from monitors, various paintings and pictures decorated the otherwise bleak Officers’ Lounge. The largest was a picture taken of the Absolution’s commissioning ceremony. Despite being taken back when his grandparents were younger than he was now, the picture appeared as new as any other portrait or landscape in the room.
Zollern leaned against the bar. It was not useful for much else. With alcohol banned onboard Abby, there was not a whole lot one could drink at a bar. Sure, he could take fruit juice, water or a number of other drinks, but some days clearly called for a shot or three of rum. He could not even complain about that, since there was nobody behind the bar to take orders. In fact, the only thing behind the bar was the Confederation flag hanging on the wall. “Not much use for a bartender if the strongest drink onboard was lemonade.” Zollern muttered. For the moment, there was no one else in the lounge to give him fishy stares.
Most of the crew, the naval crew that is, were busy preparing Abby for planetary insertion. The ship was short enough handed that plenty of off-duty personnel were assisting in the preparations. In space, flying was simple and there was ample room to maneuver. Inside the atmosphere, any atmosphere, it was not so forgiving. Zollern did not know a whole lot about the process, but had sense enough to know that it would be a very bad day if, say, not all the anti-ship missiles were secured when the Absolution hit a pocket of turbulence.
Being the middle of the ‘daytime’ shift did not help the lounge’s popularity one bit. Zollern knew he had plenty of items to keep himself busy, but could get no better view of what lay ahead of him than the lounge’s large monitor. On it, a gibbous pale-orange orb stood out against the blackness of the eternal night. Granita V was no an impressive planet. Large, sure, almost as big as Luyten IV, though far less mesmerizing without several bands of rings orbiting it.
Zollern was enjoying the view in silence when the front door slide open with a hiss. On most ships he served upon, the hiss would be barely audible. Few things on the Absolution qualified as barely audible. He glanced over at the newcomer, unsurprised to see a fellow Marine. She was strongly built, a body that has seen years of war, though not as many as Zollern. Nor has her face seen the business end of a Cat up close and personal. She was a plain-faced woman with her hair cut almost as short as his own.
Zollern sighed as he saw his own second-in-command. “Don’t tell me that another of our crew has opted for early retirement, Captain Sanders.”
Sanders shook her head. “No sir, I am pleased to report nobody’s blown out their brains today.” She glanced over at the external monitor, pausing for a moment. “Almost reminds me of Saturn.”
Zollern could see the comparison between Granita V and a ringless Saturn. His first thoughts were of the gas planets in his own system, but did not expect anyone else to share his opinion. However, he did expect an explanation from Sanders as to why she was bothering him. “I assume you’re here for more than the view.” She had better be; Zollern was not about to tolerate an on-duty officer not at her station.
Sanders nodded. “Yes sir. Captain Powers has been trying to reach you for the past half-hour–“
Zollern held up his hand. “I’m off-duty. I turned off communications. He can chew me out when my shift starts.”
“Sir?” Sanders failed to grasp why the Chief of Security would avoid the ship’s Captain. Duty was duty, no matter what time of the day. After all the war has consumed, often times, duty was all that remained.
Zollern pointed to the monitor. “We should be entering the atmosphere in a couple of hours. It’s a rather dangerous part of any ship’s existence, scooping out fuel from a gas giant.”
“Yes sir, quite.” She waited for her superior to come to a point.
Zollern continued, more fatalistic than any person would dream of being during peace time. Or even last year. “Too many people die, never knowing what hit them. If the worst should happen, I want to meet Death, face-to-face. Rest assured, I’ll deal with Powers after we’re inside the atmosphere.” That was his cue for Sanders to get lost. When she did not respond quick enough, he glared at her. “Dismissed.”
Sanders saluted and managed a sharp about-face. Zollern paid her little more attention, focusing instead on the world slowly growing in size before his eyes. –And should things go terribly wrong, at least he would be saved hearing Powers go off on another rant. Life was already short, and he loathed to waste any second unnecessarily listening to an angry CO. Besides, for all Zollern knew, this may be the last time he could see such a sight. With morale as low as it was, he decided it wise not to point it out to his underling.
Main Engineering
TCS Absolution
Granita V
Commander Francis Draaken was always tense during these maneuvers. The most dangerous move any warship could ever undertake was the one Captain Powers had recently ordered. His eyes were glued to the reactor’s sensor gages as he barked orders to his whole engineering staff. As chief engineer, if anything happened during refueling, he would have to explain it to the captain. Draaken smiled at the thought– if anything went wrong while scooping hydrogen off the top of a gas giant, the whole crew would likely be too dead to care about the details.
Abby had problems enough just flying in a straight line through space. She certainly protested to having her ungainly form dragged through an atmosphere. Draaken kept a white-knuckled grip upon nearby rails. The pilots upstairs are not helping any. Obviously they want to avoid every pressure front, storm, and clouds in general. Under normal circumstances, refueling should take twenty minutes. However, all this dodging about is preventing the magnetic scoops from getting a good pull.
“Commander,” called out Ensign Morrison, standing next to the reactor’s fuel controls.
Like most of his staff, Morrison looked too young to don the uniform of the Terran Confederation Navy. Likewise, most of his staff thought Draaken long past retirement, though he was only forty years of age. In the Kilrathi War, that made him an old man indeed. He was a legend among his crew. Heck, he could even remember a time before the war. The kid was another one of the dark-skinned Brazilians. Now that was a place the pale-skinned Martian could never visit, not without pulling most of his muscles as well as burning his own skin.
“Status?” Draaken asked. Ten minutes into the maneuver and they should be half-way full. That would be by the books, but somebody in the past seventy years forgot to read the books to theAbsolution.
“Forty-two percent full,” Morrison said, his voice apologetic.
“Forty-two percent!” exploded Draaken. The ensign flinched at the outburst, deciding it was in his best interest to be elsewhere. This was intolerable. They were eight percent behind schedule. Scooping hydrogen was dangerous enough under ideal conditions, but this far behind the Cats’ lines was far from ideal. Those accursed navigators were such tenderfeet inside the atmosphere.
As if that was not enough to get his blood pressure climbing, communication chimes went off at his own station. From here, Draaken could monitor the general condition of fusion reactors, space drive and the rest of the systems. His staff was broken up and assigned specific tasks to watch, and hopefully fix it before he noticed the system slipping from the green.
“Engineering,” Draaken said as he tapped the icon on his console’s touchscreen. Even before he tapped the screen, he knew who was calling. Sure enough, Captain Powers was back to breathing down his next.
“We’re eight percent behind,” Powers pointed out, as if Draaken did not know the status of his own ship. “I hope you have a good excuse for this.”
Draaken fought to maintain his temper, and was almost as successful as his fusion reactors. “Captain, if the pilots would quit flying all over the sky, we’d be on schedule.”
Other engineers overheard Draaken talking back to the Captain. It was not good for morale, but Draaken was in no mood for Powers’s power trips. No matter how much he barked, he could not change engineering or physical principles. Engineering was one of the darker places on board Abby, with half of its overhead lights nonfunctional. This was partly due to lack of spare parts and partly because Draaken did not consider full illumination a high priority. The backlighting of a hundred monitors and touch screens was more than sufficient. If Abby lived long enough to see a dock ever again, he would make sure the lights were replaced and wiring repaired. Until then, they would have to make due squinting through the darkness.
The ceiling was not much better, with pipes and conduits exposed to the air. The walls still sported a few scorch marks from an earlier explosion. Miss-matched patches of various shades of gray covered up holes that should have been properly welded months ago. Draaken’s heart was heavy– his whole body was heavy each time he stepped on board a Confed ship– just looking at the patchwork structure of engineering. He was a clean and orderly man; all Martians were by nature. It pained him to see his ship in anything less that ship-shape, and his inability to fix her reflected poorly upon him.
None of this was of any interest to Powers, who was just as annoyed now as he was a minute ago. As far as Draaken was concerned, Powers was always annoyed, so one more of the little things should not phase him. That, however, proved wrong. “Commander! You had better get my ship back on schedule, and you better do it fast.”
Draaken gritted his teeth. He was not about to go in on a lecture of scooping fuel. For one thing, it would take too long. For another, Powers would not listen anyway. As for ‘his ship’, if the Captain felt that way, perhaps he should come down here and run the fuel intake himself. Instead, Draaken simply replied, “Yes sir,” before breaking the link without authorization. He shook his head and muttered. If the war did not kill him outright, then the stress of the job would.
He looked away from his console at the rest of his crew. They looked uncertain, forcing Draaken to become the voice of experience. “You heard the man,” he said, pausing for a second. “Open the magnetic scoop to one hundred twenty percent.” That should compensate for sloppy flying.
“Commander, that will cause some serious drag,” replied a lieutenant from Proxima system.
Draaken shot the young woman an fierce glare. “Then the pilots will just have to speed up or crash.” The lieutenant meekly backed down and turned her attention back towards her station. He knew it would cause some drag, and he knew Powers would be on his case for it. At the moment, he just did not care. If the enemy did not kill him, then his own kind would. Either way, he did not expect to live to see his family again, or 2670 for that matter.
Draaken was one of the luckier ones on board. All the Terrans– that is Earth-born– have lost family in the Battle of Earth. Draaken had not seen his family since the False Peace, and the Cats ignored the partially terraformed dustbowl known as Mars, so they were still alive and safe. He doubted the Kilrathi could have even bombed his world with the Life-Eater. The near total lack of oxygen in the thin carbon dioxide rich atmosphere would cause the virus to run smack into millions of environmental suits.
It was a strange world; rusty ground, green seas and a one hundred millibar atmosphere. It was thick enough to stop cosmic rays, but not so thick as to eliminate the need for E-suits. After centuries of effort trying to terraform the Red Planet, the project ground to a halt after the first jump points were discovered. Why waste half the GPP to transform a world when you could just up and fly to an already habitable planet? Thus, most of the effort on Mars was spent keeping the atmosphere from freezing out and the oceans from evaporating, and freezing, all at the same time.
Draaken gripped the side of his console as the Absolution swerved, clearly avoiding obstacles only the pilots could see. The chief engineer cursed the pilots in every language he knew. After finishing with those hapless souls, he turned his rage upon his own machine. The inertial dampers should have squashed any such jerk. True, the ship would have lurched, but every molecule inside would have lurched equally. “Ronsoon!” Draaken barked.
One of his more senior engineers, one old enough to remember a time in the war when soldiers asked each other what they planned to do after the war, walked towards Draaken. Boy, were those not the good old days. Draaken can not remember the last time that question was asked of him; probably back in his early career, at the tail end of the Vega Sector Campaign. Most of the people he knew back then were already dead.
“What’s up, boss?” Ronsoon asked. He was a fair skinned man, though with more wrinkles than he would care to admit. He was from the other side of the Confederation, some planet in the back of beyond in the Avalon Sector.
Draaken still glared from the jolt. “Check the dampers.”
Ronsoon looked back at him blankly. “I just checked those things a few hours ago. They’re fine.”
Draaken gestured to the whole of engineering. “Am I the only one who felt that last kick? Humor me! I’ll sleep better at nights.” And, he would not get the chance to sleep if the dampers failed during acceleration, reducing the ship’s compliment to pulp. That was the sort of thing to really ruin a man’s week.
“Yes sir,” Ronsoon complied, though disagreed. Nonetheless, one can never be too careful when it came to offsetting inertia. He could only hope that the increase in drag was responsible for it instead.
Draaken turned his attention back to his own readouts. Fuel intake was increased, but was still far from complete. When fifty percent was called out a few minutes later, Draaken grumbled. It was turning into another one of those days.
Chapter 3
Officers’ Lounge
TCS Absolution
Lieutenant Colonel Zollern stared at a large monitor that passed for a window. Despite having real-time access to what transpired beyond the bulkheads, it was not the same as a true window. Of course, only a fool would put a plate of glass into the hull of a warship in space. Durasteel at least had a chance to absorb damage; glass did not. Aside from monitors, various paintings and pictures decorated the otherwise bleak Officers’ Lounge. The largest was a picture taken of the Absolution’s commissioning ceremony. Despite being taken back when his grandparents were younger than he was now, the picture appeared as new as any other portrait or landscape in the room.
Zollern leaned against the bar. It was not useful for much else. With alcohol banned onboard Abby, there was not a whole lot one could drink at a bar. Sure, he could take fruit juice, water or a number of other drinks, but some days clearly called for a shot or three of rum. He could not even complain about that, since there was nobody behind the bar to take orders. In fact, the only thing behind the bar was the Confederation flag hanging on the wall. “Not much use for a bartender if the strongest drink onboard was lemonade.” Zollern muttered. For the moment, there was no one else in the lounge to give him fishy stares.
Most of the crew, the naval crew that is, were busy preparing Abby for planetary insertion. The ship was short enough handed that plenty of off-duty personnel were assisting in the preparations. In space, flying was simple and there was ample room to maneuver. Inside the atmosphere, any atmosphere, it was not so forgiving. Zollern did not know a whole lot about the process, but had sense enough to know that it would be a very bad day if, say, not all the anti-ship missiles were secured when the Absolution hit a pocket of turbulence.
Being the middle of the ‘daytime’ shift did not help the lounge’s popularity one bit. Zollern knew he had plenty of items to keep himself busy, but could get no better view of what lay ahead of him than the lounge’s large monitor. On it, a gibbous pale-orange orb stood out against the blackness of the eternal night. Granita V was no an impressive planet. Large, sure, almost as big as Luyten IV, though far less mesmerizing without several bands of rings orbiting it.
Zollern was enjoying the view in silence when the front door slide open with a hiss. On most ships he served upon, the hiss would be barely audible. Few things on the Absolution qualified as barely audible. He glanced over at the newcomer, unsurprised to see a fellow Marine. She was strongly built, a body that has seen years of war, though not as many as Zollern. Nor has her face seen the business end of a Cat up close and personal. She was a plain-faced woman with her hair cut almost as short as his own.
Zollern sighed as he saw his own second-in-command. “Don’t tell me that another of our crew has opted for early retirement, Captain Sanders.”
Sanders shook her head. “No sir, I am pleased to report nobody’s blown out their brains today.” She glanced over at the external monitor, pausing for a moment. “Almost reminds me of Saturn.”
Zollern could see the comparison between Granita V and a ringless Saturn. His first thoughts were of the gas planets in his own system, but did not expect anyone else to share his opinion. However, he did expect an explanation from Sanders as to why she was bothering him. “I assume you’re here for more than the view.” She had better be; Zollern was not about to tolerate an on-duty officer not at her station.
Sanders nodded. “Yes sir. Captain Powers has been trying to reach you for the past half-hour–“
Zollern held up his hand. “I’m off-duty. I turned off communications. He can chew me out when my shift starts.”
“Sir?” Sanders failed to grasp why the Chief of Security would avoid the ship’s Captain. Duty was duty, no matter what time of the day. After all the war has consumed, often times, duty was all that remained.
Zollern pointed to the monitor. “We should be entering the atmosphere in a couple of hours. It’s a rather dangerous part of any ship’s existence, scooping out fuel from a gas giant.”
“Yes sir, quite.” She waited for her superior to come to a point.
Zollern continued, more fatalistic than any person would dream of being during peace time. Or even last year. “Too many people die, never knowing what hit them. If the worst should happen, I want to meet Death, face-to-face. Rest assured, I’ll deal with Powers after we’re inside the atmosphere.” That was his cue for Sanders to get lost. When she did not respond quick enough, he glared at her. “Dismissed.”
Sanders saluted and managed a sharp about-face. Zollern paid her little more attention, focusing instead on the world slowly growing in size before his eyes. –And should things go terribly wrong, at least he would be saved hearing Powers go off on another rant. Life was already short, and he loathed to waste any second unnecessarily listening to an angry CO. Besides, for all Zollern knew, this may be the last time he could see such a sight. With morale as low as it was, he decided it wise not to point it out to his underling.
Main Engineering
TCS Absolution
Granita V
Commander Francis Draaken was always tense during these maneuvers. The most dangerous move any warship could ever undertake was the one Captain Powers had recently ordered. His eyes were glued to the reactor’s sensor gages as he barked orders to his whole engineering staff. As chief engineer, if anything happened during refueling, he would have to explain it to the captain. Draaken smiled at the thought– if anything went wrong while scooping hydrogen off the top of a gas giant, the whole crew would likely be too dead to care about the details.
Abby had problems enough just flying in a straight line through space. She certainly protested to having her ungainly form dragged through an atmosphere. Draaken kept a white-knuckled grip upon nearby rails. The pilots upstairs are not helping any. Obviously they want to avoid every pressure front, storm, and clouds in general. Under normal circumstances, refueling should take twenty minutes. However, all this dodging about is preventing the magnetic scoops from getting a good pull.
“Commander,” called out Ensign Morrison, standing next to the reactor’s fuel controls.
Like most of his staff, Morrison looked too young to don the uniform of the Terran Confederation Navy. Likewise, most of his staff thought Draaken long past retirement, though he was only forty years of age. In the Kilrathi War, that made him an old man indeed. He was a legend among his crew. Heck, he could even remember a time before the war. The kid was another one of the dark-skinned Brazilians. Now that was a place the pale-skinned Martian could never visit, not without pulling most of his muscles as well as burning his own skin.
“Status?” Draaken asked. Ten minutes into the maneuver and they should be half-way full. That would be by the books, but somebody in the past seventy years forgot to read the books to theAbsolution.
“Forty-two percent full,” Morrison said, his voice apologetic.
“Forty-two percent!” exploded Draaken. The ensign flinched at the outburst, deciding it was in his best interest to be elsewhere. This was intolerable. They were eight percent behind schedule. Scooping hydrogen was dangerous enough under ideal conditions, but this far behind the Cats’ lines was far from ideal. Those accursed navigators were such tenderfeet inside the atmosphere.
As if that was not enough to get his blood pressure climbing, communication chimes went off at his own station. From here, Draaken could monitor the general condition of fusion reactors, space drive and the rest of the systems. His staff was broken up and assigned specific tasks to watch, and hopefully fix it before he noticed the system slipping from the green.
“Engineering,” Draaken said as he tapped the icon on his console’s touchscreen. Even before he tapped the screen, he knew who was calling. Sure enough, Captain Powers was back to breathing down his next.
“We’re eight percent behind,” Powers pointed out, as if Draaken did not know the status of his own ship. “I hope you have a good excuse for this.”
Draaken fought to maintain his temper, and was almost as successful as his fusion reactors. “Captain, if the pilots would quit flying all over the sky, we’d be on schedule.”
Other engineers overheard Draaken talking back to the Captain. It was not good for morale, but Draaken was in no mood for Powers’s power trips. No matter how much he barked, he could not change engineering or physical principles. Engineering was one of the darker places on board Abby, with half of its overhead lights nonfunctional. This was partly due to lack of spare parts and partly because Draaken did not consider full illumination a high priority. The backlighting of a hundred monitors and touch screens was more than sufficient. If Abby lived long enough to see a dock ever again, he would make sure the lights were replaced and wiring repaired. Until then, they would have to make due squinting through the darkness.
The ceiling was not much better, with pipes and conduits exposed to the air. The walls still sported a few scorch marks from an earlier explosion. Miss-matched patches of various shades of gray covered up holes that should have been properly welded months ago. Draaken’s heart was heavy– his whole body was heavy each time he stepped on board a Confed ship– just looking at the patchwork structure of engineering. He was a clean and orderly man; all Martians were by nature. It pained him to see his ship in anything less that ship-shape, and his inability to fix her reflected poorly upon him.
None of this was of any interest to Powers, who was just as annoyed now as he was a minute ago. As far as Draaken was concerned, Powers was always annoyed, so one more of the little things should not phase him. That, however, proved wrong. “Commander! You had better get my ship back on schedule, and you better do it fast.”
Draaken gritted his teeth. He was not about to go in on a lecture of scooping fuel. For one thing, it would take too long. For another, Powers would not listen anyway. As for ‘his ship’, if the Captain felt that way, perhaps he should come down here and run the fuel intake himself. Instead, Draaken simply replied, “Yes sir,” before breaking the link without authorization. He shook his head and muttered. If the war did not kill him outright, then the stress of the job would.
He looked away from his console at the rest of his crew. They looked uncertain, forcing Draaken to become the voice of experience. “You heard the man,” he said, pausing for a second. “Open the magnetic scoop to one hundred twenty percent.” That should compensate for sloppy flying.
“Commander, that will cause some serious drag,” replied a lieutenant from Proxima system.
Draaken shot the young woman an fierce glare. “Then the pilots will just have to speed up or crash.” The lieutenant meekly backed down and turned her attention back towards her station. He knew it would cause some drag, and he knew Powers would be on his case for it. At the moment, he just did not care. If the enemy did not kill him, then his own kind would. Either way, he did not expect to live to see his family again, or 2670 for that matter.
Draaken was one of the luckier ones on board. All the Terrans– that is Earth-born– have lost family in the Battle of Earth. Draaken had not seen his family since the False Peace, and the Cats ignored the partially terraformed dustbowl known as Mars, so they were still alive and safe. He doubted the Kilrathi could have even bombed his world with the Life-Eater. The near total lack of oxygen in the thin carbon dioxide rich atmosphere would cause the virus to run smack into millions of environmental suits.
It was a strange world; rusty ground, green seas and a one hundred millibar atmosphere. It was thick enough to stop cosmic rays, but not so thick as to eliminate the need for E-suits. After centuries of effort trying to terraform the Red Planet, the project ground to a halt after the first jump points were discovered. Why waste half the GPP to transform a world when you could just up and fly to an already habitable planet? Thus, most of the effort on Mars was spent keeping the atmosphere from freezing out and the oceans from evaporating, and freezing, all at the same time.
Draaken gripped the side of his console as the Absolution swerved, clearly avoiding obstacles only the pilots could see. The chief engineer cursed the pilots in every language he knew. After finishing with those hapless souls, he turned his rage upon his own machine. The inertial dampers should have squashed any such jerk. True, the ship would have lurched, but every molecule inside would have lurched equally. “Ronsoon!” Draaken barked.
One of his more senior engineers, one old enough to remember a time in the war when soldiers asked each other what they planned to do after the war, walked towards Draaken. Boy, were those not the good old days. Draaken can not remember the last time that question was asked of him; probably back in his early career, at the tail end of the Vega Sector Campaign. Most of the people he knew back then were already dead.
“What’s up, boss?” Ronsoon asked. He was a fair skinned man, though with more wrinkles than he would care to admit. He was from the other side of the Confederation, some planet in the back of beyond in the Avalon Sector.
Draaken still glared from the jolt. “Check the dampers.”
Ronsoon looked back at him blankly. “I just checked those things a few hours ago. They’re fine.”
Draaken gestured to the whole of engineering. “Am I the only one who felt that last kick? Humor me! I’ll sleep better at nights.” And, he would not get the chance to sleep if the dampers failed during acceleration, reducing the ship’s compliment to pulp. That was the sort of thing to really ruin a man’s week.
“Yes sir,” Ronsoon complied, though disagreed. Nonetheless, one can never be too careful when it came to offsetting inertia. He could only hope that the increase in drag was responsible for it instead.
Draaken turned his attention back to his own readouts. Fuel intake was increased, but was still far from complete. When fifty percent was called out a few minutes later, Draaken grumbled. It was turning into another one of those days.