CHAPTER 6 – HOLIDAY

DATE POINT: DECEMBER 25th, 6 A.U. (AFTER UNIFICATION)

LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, ABOARD UTRN SPECIAL DELIVERY, NEARING SATURN

LIEUTENANT PAUL KARST

Paul watched Ariana, who watched Henry and Chantal cuddled together as the whole crew sat under blankets watching a Christmas movie marathon. Chantal had insisted they celebrate the holiday, even baking rudimentary cookies with a set of ingredient replacements that boggled Paul’s mind. At least they tasted good though. He nudged a little closer to his sister, in an attempt to cheer her up.

“Don’t you even dare say anything.” She warned in an icy whisper.

“Fuck you too, then. See if I deign to care when you want to talk about it later.” Paul replied, a little miffed at her attitude, even if he understood where it came from.

“I won’t. I can’t wait to get off this boat and back into the field.”

“Look, just because he chose her…” A scowl formed on her face as she cut him off.

“Is that what you think this is about?! Henry and I were nothing, I was toying with him to gauge his reactions and character just the same as you, just in my own way. Plus, Chantal has had her eyes on him since she first saw his file. That poor girl is so pent up. In her job there is nobody that she can open up to like that or that she could remotely trust and let in. Not when she is surrounded by secrets and compartmentalization the way she is. I am happy for them, truly. I am glad she worked up the courage to act. You don’t need any explanation as to why my priorities are different than hers.”

Paul decided to drop the subject, knowing all too well the depths of the abyss they danced atop the edge of. Even after so many years free from the horrors of the Ascension Project, he knew that they would never be free from the oppressive grip it held on to their psyche. She had it far worse than he ever did, for which he was selfishly thankful, though not nearly as much as he was thankful that they were both now free. Well, relatively free, as much as one could be when trapped in the middle of the largest intelligence coup in human history.

“Right, I am sorry I minimized you like that, I should know better.” Paul said, attempting to buy peace. “So, what is bothering you then?”

“I have a bad feeling about this mission, embarrassing as it is to admit. I am afraid to go. I must be losing my edge.” She said.

“Nonsense, I think you are just struggling like I am to wrap your head around a battle you cannot actually fight and a threat that you cannot directly face.” Paul replied.

“Damn you, you need to stop profiling everyone, Paul. Fine, let’s say that you are at least a little right, how would you handle it then? What happens if the FTL system fails us and we get trapped, or it just blows up and we all die? I actually have begun to feel attached to my life. At least when I am fighting a real enemy I know what to do. Against this? There is nothing I can do. I hate this feeling, I never wanted to feel like that again.” Ariana spat out the words like they were poison.

“Well, a wise man once told me that in this kind of scenario, the best you can hope to do is have a rock-solid faith in your fellow sailors, and in the paranoia and redundancy built into human engineering.” Paul replied drily. Ariana scoffed, but had a small smile hidden underneath anyway.

“Yeah, that’s the problem, I have precisely zero faith in my fellow humans, and even less in the illusion of safety. Only strength can guarantee any real world measure of safety, and my personal strength means nothing against this.” Ariana said with a scowl.

“Our job is to save Henry from his own idealism and to eliminate threats on the ground when they present themselves. We will have plenty of opportunities to do so between now and whenever it is our time to die. If that happens in an instant in the void between star systems or by a bullet from the soldier that you never saw makes no difference. I know you will sort it all out well before it becomes an issue, sis.” Paul said with as much confidence as he could muster. Ariana simply stared forwards into the bulkhead.

“Thank you for caring.” She said numbly. “Don’t worry about me, I will be fine.” She then followed up with, noticeably perked up.

Paul said nothing to that and stared at the wall display that had been set to the direction of Saturn, enjoying the sublime beauty of the gem of the solar system over the Christmas movie playing over the other view screen. He had grown up without Christmas and had never understood it, but that came with the territory of his training from childhood, and he had come to terms with that long before. Three more days of deceleration and they would be able to dock at S33, he couldn’t wait to get out of this tin can and stretch his legs properly.

The days passed in a blur as the anticipation grew. Soon enough, they caught view of the partially hollowed out dwarf planet that was chosen for S33. Inside, behind huge doors cut from the surface of the rock sat the most powerful warship yet constructed by humankind. Paul smiled, knowing just how close they truly were to making history and reaching their goals.

“S33 STC just cleared us to land, taking us in now.” The speakers behind his acceleration couch crackled as they relayed the message.

The planetoid now dominated the view screen as they curved lazily and decelerated ever more before coming to a perfect hover, settling down on their landing gear in the prepared landing bay. Paul jumped up and caught Henry’s attention by slapping the side of his acceleration couch.

“Alright, so many sections of this station are still under construction, so make sure you follow me and my instructions to the letter. You will have free access to any level with a yellow or green band, you will be supplied with a badge, and you will be given biometric access to most of the facilities, with the exception of the red doors and red banded corridors. Does that make sense?”

Henry nodded, listening intently so Paul continued.

“Tomorrow at oh-six-hundred you need to be ready so we can have your formal introduction to your officers and get a tour of the ship. Only a few crew have been delayed so far, so we expect you to have a full complement for the shakedown run and her space trials in three days. I assume you have been keeping yourself occupied planning out how you intend to keep your crews busy and how to get them trained?”

“I have read over the officer dossiers, and it seems you picked well, but I have concerns about just how many inexperienced crewmen we have filling the more standard posts. That's a lot of non-usefuI bodies running around to train up. I'll have to see how we can shuffle some personnel around, see who is cross trained in enough systems that they can help, in their off shifts, at least in the primary areas of concern. On paper, this crew leaves a lot to be desired.” Henry replied, with his eyes narrowed.

“Remember that we cannot just yank a bunch of veterans that will be missed all at the same time, so we have been reassigning as many experienced crew members as we can over the course of the last two years. Unfortunately, at least half of them are brand new, just with promising educational or technical backgrounds. You have the best people that we could reasonably get for you, bottom line.”

“How the hell are you all funding this is beyond me. This place is massive!” Henry said as Chantal caught up with them and affectionately held onto Henry’s arm.

“Most of us get paid a lot less than you would expect, hon, but we accept it because the mission is so important. Plus, most of the raw materials have been mined out here and are getting processed out here. The superstructure is made from mostly locally processed steel instead of anything too fancy, and the advanced components are simply siphoned off the top from what the NAU has been stockpiling in advance of mass production of fleet carriers at Liberty Station when that finally comes online, so it’s not really suspicious. We also have a few reverse engineered carbon bio printers on site too, so we can make TK drive cores and null barrier cores on site. Just don’t let Quan-Tech industries know that we cracked their security protocols.” Chantal added with a smile.

“Plus, the NAUDF is the inheritor of the Pentagon’s mastery of financial wizardry to hide special access programs. We all know they aren’t really buying hundred dollar toilet seats or spending fifty bucks on a hammer.” Ariana added in, grinning, as she grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

“Fair enough, so how sure are we that all of this is actually a secret? I'm sure the feds have to have some idea.” Henry said.

“We aren’t, but we are taking every precaution and acting like it's still secret anyway. Certainly, nobody has called us out on any of this yet, so at least we know that is likely still a secret. S33 is likely to remain a secret no matter what though, as the general plan is to release information on S37 first and only after they perfect warp gate tech. S33 is very much devoted to our specific mission and to work on the Indomitable Will.”

“I think I got it, so where am I supposed to bunk for the night?” Henry asked.

“I know where, I’ll show you right to it.” Chantal said with a predatory smile as she took his hand and dragged him off the ship, with Henry nearly dropping his duffel bags in the process.

“Good luck!” Paul shouted down the gangplank after them. “You’re going to need it.” Paul smirked until he got slapped on the back of the head.

“Pervert.” Ariana scolded. Paul rubbed his head and grinned sheepishly, knowing he was caught red handed. Without wasting time, he grabbed his bags and began to head to his own rack space, ready to sleep in a proper bed again after so long sleeping and working in his acceleration couch.

When he finally got to his room, he allowed himself a moment to relax before he opened the Q-Comm link that he had wired to his terminal to give his next report on Henry to send up the chain. He then switched the screen to view into Henry’s room, only to see that someone, Chantal probably, had blocked the camera with something, sound was muffled too. Oh well, Paul thought, probably for the best, as he had an idea of what the couple were up to anyway.

Suddenly finding himself with a racing mind and nothing to do, Paul went for a walk to the closest window into the dry docks and stared appreciatively at the pitch-black form of the Indomitable Will. She had yet to have her refrigerated, vacuum-gapped outer hull applied when last he had seen her months prior. Instead of a awkwardly shaped steel potato covered in gantries, she now had the sleek look of a predator. The dual front bulges under her prow and the way they extended the front outwards slightly reminded him of the hood of a cobra, or some exotic shark.

Something clicked in his head, staring at her now completed form, and his anxiety over the coming mission felt somehow lightened. Paul returned to his room feeling rather free, and with little effort was able to get himself to bed for the most restful sleep he had had in ages. It would be a long time before he would have such restful sleep again.

MEANWHILE…

DATE POINT: DECEMBER 28th, 6 A.U. (AFTER UNIFICATION)

LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, S33

FIREMAN APPRENTICE ANDREW REESE

Patience, Andrew... Just gotta think it through. the answers will come.

When the urge to think overtook him like this, he had to walk, so Andrew left the men’s dormitory and walked up spin to the observation deck. Ed Greene, whom he had carefully vetted on the flight in, had turned out to be everything he had hoped for and more. Shockingly, Sarah and Tanya had turned him down, probably due to his lack of a plan, and the looming threat of extreme punishment for defiance. Even with such setbacks, the past few days around the station had shown it wasn't a hopeless cause to find more people who were discontented and looking to do something about it. The problem was they were looking to him for all the answers as to what exactly to do about it. Without such answers, their excitement invariably withered and died.

At least I can come back to them when I think of something... hopefully.

Andrew passed by some prick Lieutenant walking away from the best window wearing some dopey smile. What's that prick got to smile about? He's just as trapped in this suicide run as we are...

Through the window, the well-lit bulk of the Indomitable Will was visible in her dry dock. To his eyes, she was ugly, a terrible mash up of the symmetrical figure eight shape of the Presidential class drone carrier and the semi ovoid shape of a Victory class Battlecruiser. Scuttlebutt said that she was the prototype for the drone fighter system found in the drone carrier, though she only had one of the flat hexagonal drone bays that was welded to a rear body where the crew was to live and her marine complement would be stationed. Another rumor had it that the ship had a working fusion plasma weapon included in a pair of unsightly ridges attached underneath the drone bay, but his vantage point had them hidden from view. If that was true, it was just one more system that could just as easily fail in a spectacular way and kill them all. Flying around with a barely tested set of fusion bombs waiting to blow the ship up with a single accident only made the dire reality of the situation clearer to him.

We have to put a stop this insane mission, no matter the costs, but how?! There will be thousands of crew, so turning a few, even a few dozen will be meaningless... Even if we did, there are five hundred marines on board whose job is to repel boarders and put boots on the ground where needed. Can't take the ship by force... that's as suicidal as the mission itself, if not more so... The leadership seems committed, and even if we got the Captain on our side, there's no way the powers that be would give the order to cancel the mission. There's way too much invested in this already... Unless we make it clear that the ship itself isn't ready, or they come to believe they're in imminent danger of losing their investment...

Bingo.

A slow smile spread across his face as the beginnings of a plan took shape. He rushed off to find Ed, they were going to have to get busy if this was to work, for time was not on their side.