The Black Eyed Dragon

By Allen W. Hedrick

In life, the only constant, besides the passage of time, is change.

2 Sept. 796 AD
North Sea

Thorgier, who is this raiding parties chief navigator, was counting

silently to himself to mark the time when the Star, he knew as the Sister,
would rise in the north, northeast hemisphere. The last star, he knew as
Limping Bear, he had used to navigate by, was now up over 15 degrees of
arch and he could not steer by it anymore. Once the Sister was on the
horizon Thorgier would keep the star on the port quarter and the wave swell
aft. He did this because he knew that when the Sister reached 15 degrees of
arc, the start of daybreak would blacken the sky, so that he would not see
any stars. At day light the coast of what we call Denmark would or should be
in sight on the starboard quarter.
Thorgier looked off to his left and he could see the luminescent glow
from the bow wakes of the two other drakkar, Viking dragon ships. He swore
under his breath, only three left out of six due to that bastard Odo, if it had
not been for Trorgier and five warriors left to guard the ships, none of them
would have gotten out of Ireland alive. What really pissed him off was all
they had to show for it was 22 women, 7 little girls and some silver. To top it
all off Odo, the clan chief, killed one of the young girls after rapping her, he
was hung over from drinking so much before the battle, and the girl was hurt
from the rape and crying. Odo, miserably hung over, cut her throat and
threw her over board.
Thorgier looked off to his right and what he saw about 5 miles off was
starting to bother him. In his 17 years at sea he had never seen a cloud
formation with that kind of lightning before. It was not warm enough nor was
there enough wind for a cloud formation like this one and the lightning was
ball shaped, green in color, and moving in a manner he had never seen
before. He was starting to think that he should wake Odo, but that hung
over bastard would either try to kill him or he would piss over the side and
tell Thorgier to go fuck himself. Well one thing Thorgier promised himself
was that as soon as they were back in Jutland, he would settle with Odo in
the holmganga, a duel to the death, because he would not bring his need to
get even with Odo before the “Thing”, a Viking assembly.
When he saw the Sister rise on the horizon he steered to the course he
wanted, he looked to his left to make sure that the other two drakkar were
steering to his new course. When he was certain they had followed the
course change he looked back to his right and damn near pissed himself over
what he saw. The ships were now heading for that strange cloud formation
and it was now moving against the wind. He yelled for Odo to wake up,
watching Odo to make sure he was not going to try to kill him.
“What the Hell is wrong with you, to many hours of playing with
yourself again?” Odo asked as he stepped to the side, and started to piss.
Thorgier kept his eyes on Odo and pointed with his right arm toward
the cloud formation, when he saw the look of shock on Odo’s face. Thorgier
looked down and to his right to see that his ship was floating 15 feet off the
waters surface, quickly glancing left he saw the other two ships were also
floating off the water. Looking back to his right he saw an object, giving off
a green light, up in the sky and it was moving up fast to the his ship and then
nothing seemed to matter to him any more.

Yellow Star Med., TIGN Blue 2, Third Planet, and Hemisphere toward the
Yellow star
Galactic Genetic Library Ship
 The GGLS was a galactic explorer, it searched for life, it stored all the
information on were the life forms came from, its DNA signature, their
habitat, niche, place in the food chain and breeding habits. The GGLS also
stored specimens in all of the life cycles of each life form, from one-cell
organisms to monsters, such as the 10 pairs of what we now call sperm
whales, it already had onboard. Also the genetic and reproductive material
of each encountered life form was placed in storage, if one of the acquired
life forms should expire in storage it could be replicated. The GGLS was a
space craft built around a huge biological lab, cryogenic and type
environment storage facility, and an immense computer. The GGLS had no
living members of its builders on board; although the computer system was
intelligent it was by no means self-aware. It was programmed by the
builders, but it could change its own programming as the need came upon it,
or if it learned something from a mistake it had made. The GGLS used
thousands of robots to do the collecting, storage and information gathering.
As each different life form was encountered the GGLS would restructure the
robots to fit the needs of gathering. These robots could be very small, to do
nano engineering on molecular structure, or as large as needed to collect a
life form.
The GGLS was suppose to try and leave all sentient life forms alone.
The reason for this was that the builders of the GGLS, who were know as the
Inheritors, were also once a minor intelligent life form. The Inheritors were
sentient life forms, which were accidentally stumbled on by a race of super
beings know as the “Combined Intellect” or CI. The CI were the creators of a
super-luminary transport system known as “The Tandem Intergalactic
Gateway Network”, TIGN. The CI manipulated the genetic code of the
Inheritors and raised the intelligence of the Inheritors three orders of
magnitude. The CI race is now extinct, due to their own apathy and a little
help from the Inheritors, who are call such because they inherited the TIGN.
So because the Inheritors knew that they could not keep their own from
thinking, “what if we did this?”, the GGLS was to try and leave all sentient life
forms to their own destiny. Being so programmed, but left to its own ways of
dealing with any new situation, it knew that history does have away of
repeating itself.
The GGLS had come into the area of this star system, through the Blue
3, TIGN, 4.97 standard light years away from this star system. It took the
GGLS 32.67 standard years to reach this planet, and the GGLS had just spent
8.93 SY under the surface of this planet’s oceans collecting all manner of the
myriad of life forms. The GGLS had only started surface recon for the last
0.23 SY, and now already it had bumped into what it called smart life.
Because of the caution that the Inheritors had preprogrammed into the
GGLS, on sentient life, it reach the closest thing possible that it could to the
emotion of distress, when the robot LFSAR 11.47 reported that 129 sentient
life forms on three wind/manual powered hydro-surface tension vehicles,
were caught in the anti-gravity field of the GGLS.

Far Side, Project SETI IX

13 Feb. 2237 AD

Jason “Jay” Hamid sat at the multi-antenna control panel ready to give
the “Variable Aperture Multi-Antennae Large Bandwidth Array” receivers and
antennas the commands to change its search coordinates. He had now been
on this project just over 8 years and was starting to think he should change
his field of research and get the fuck off this dirt ball. Far Side was a moon in
orbit around the fourth planet in the Alpha Centauri System. The dark side of
this moon had, installed on it, 100 Km antenna field of 90 RF antennas on a
rail system. This installation was completed 36 years and 17 days ago, a
continuation of a project that started over 230 years ago on Earth. As the
men/women from Earth moved out into the stars they took with them the
feeling that they were not alone in the universe.
 Jay, as he was known by his 7 other inmates of Far Side, was getting
bored to tears, and starting to wonder if he wasn’t wasting his time, or
spinning his wheels as Jojo, a coworker would say. He started a radar search
to see if the VAMALAB antenna field was going to get hit again by any
meteorites, which was one of the few diversions he and the other inmates
had, going up and out on the surface to supervise the robots doing the repair
work on any damage to the VAMALAB antenna field.
Jay noted that although the dark side of Far Side was going to get
pelted the antenna field would not get hit. He started up the mass data
recording devices, gave the command to move the search area, and
therefore the antennas. It would take 33 minutes for the antennas to move
on the rails and then realign to the new azimuth, elevation, wavelength and
aperture settings for the new search coordinates. Jay got some tea in a low
gravity container, leaned back and started to dream about Jojo, the picture,
in his mind, of that great ass of hers started to give him a hard on. Thirty-
three minutes later the anomaly alarm went off. Jay jumped over to the
broadband digital spectrum analyzer, what was being displayed on it seem
beyond his wildest dreams. There in the Ku band was a signal that could not
be anything other then a transmitted source. The next shock to seep into his
mind was that the signal was phase modulated, and that it was coming from
an area of space where the closest star was 22 light years away from Far
Side.

Far Side, PROJECT SETI IX

18 Sept. 2258 AD

The internal COM 1 link alarm had just woke Jay up; he was 51 years
old now and had been on this project since he was 21. Ever since they had
started recording the alien RF source, which now totaled over 100 trillion
Mega Bytes of recorded data. They had cracked some of the audio but not
all of it and none of the video binary code. To date the language experts still
have not interpreted what was being heard on these recordings. Jay always
had the opinion that if this audio data were to be declassified, and released
to the public, some fucking amateur pain in the ass would crack it. Jay sat
up and said aloud “this is Jay, what is it?”
“Sir, we have just lost the alien signal.” an inmate, who he did not recognize
said.
“Your sure that there is not an equipment failure?”
“Yes sir, your wife, Jojo, says to get your fat ass over here now, sir.”
All Jay could think of to say was “SHIT!” He got up and started up to
the control area and said to himself “I always did want to get off of this dirt
ball, now maybe I can.”

Far Side, PROJECT SETI IX

10 Mar. 2260 AD

The SETI IX Project Director, Dr. John McRoberts, and his staff of five
experts in various hardware, software, and communication fields had arrived
at Far Side two days ago. They had concluded that Jay and the others were
correct, there was no equipment failure, the alien transmitter was no longer
sending in this direction.
“Jay you can continue with the search procedures set up 30 SY ago.”
John said as he was looking at the diagnostic reports. “Also in two hours I
want a meeting with everyone here that is not on duty, lets have it in the
mess hall” he said as he walked out with his staff following him.
“OK people you heard the man, arm yourself with all the cover your ass
paper work you can think of and meet ‘Dr. Mac ‘and his dick heads in the
mess hall” Jay said as he looked at Jojo and told her to start the new search
coordinates.
As everyone settled into his or her sets around the table in the mess
hall the Director said, “Jay, can you tell us what you know about this lost
alien signal.”
 “Sure, as most of you know, it was a phase modulated, pulse coded
signal, and in the Ku band, with about 100,000 MHz in bandwidth per time
frame. It is a line of sight telephonic type digital communication signal made
up of 256 frames of 64 bits per frame. The first and last frame is frame
alignment signals, alarms and clock sync. The middle two frames are used
for E&M type telephonic signaling. All but 10 of the rest of the frames are en
cryptic signals, which to date no one has decoded. The other 10 are voice
telephonic type audio frames, but we are only receiving one side of the
conversation. The linguistic experts are having one hell of a time
interpreting this language because we are only hearing one half of the
conversation and there is approximately three-day delay from one side to the
other. So far what they tell me is that the conversations may deal with
technical logistics, but that is a guess I think.” Jay paused and looked
directly at the Projector Director, “maybe if we could get the government to
declassify these audio recordings someone else may have more luck.”
“I will take that under advisement, and see if the military will relent on
keeping this information classified, mean while keep up the good work, if that
is it, we will be leaving in ten minutes, I have to make my report. Good bye
everyone.” Jay shook his head, and the Director and his staff filed out to
head for home.
“Yeah right” Jay said under his breath, “and fuck you to.”

Oxford University II, Secondary London City, Earth

0105 Local Time
11 Jan. 2711 AD

Earth was a much different place now that 100 SY have past since the
wars with the break away planets, known as “The Free Space Society” had
struck Earth with nuclear weapons. The nuclear winter had ended over 60
SY ago and the population of Earth was now up to two and a half billion
people and holding steady. The Earth’s infrastructure was rebuilt and there
was now time for other academic study, other than just technical studies. In
the office of the Director of the archeology department Dr. Oleg Valdimir was
getting very excited. Three weeks ago he was given a set of audio
recordings made over 450 SY ago. These recordings were captured on the
third planet of the Alpha Centauri system by the New Space Navy. The thing
that was so exciting to Oleg was that he could understand about 50 to 70 %
of the conversations even though he was only hearing one side of it. The
language was archaic Norse, which had not been spoken on Earth since
around 1100 AD.
Oleg said aloud, “computer where is Commander Elizabeth Entabe”.
“The commander is asleep in her quarters, would you like a comm. link
established with her doctor.”
“Yes, make the link priority and secure.”
She had a strange since of love for this huge white male, it had to be
love other wise why would they both be naked and engaging in oral sex.
Now he was seated on the floor with the largest erection she had ever seen.
She stood up straddling him, and as she squatted down she reach between
her legs grasping the erection to guide it into her --- BEEP --- BEEP --- BEEP ---
BEEP.
As she awoke “yes. I’m awake, what is it?”
“There is a secure priority communication for you Commander, will you take
it now or shall it be recorded for you?” This voice of the computer seemed to
be coming from everywhere.
What the hell now, did another war break out, “who is it from?”
“This message is from Dr. Oleg Valdimir.”
“Yes computer establish the commo link, but voice only.”
“Liz, sorry to wake you up, but I have some remarkable news for you. Those
recordings you brought to me, I can interpret most of the words used in
them. Amazing really, that language, it is archaic Norse, the language of the
Vikings; it has not been spoken on Earth in over 1500 years. Liz, are you
there?”
“Are you drunk doctor?” she heard herself say, while she was thinking what
sort of bullshit is this.

Naval Space Station “Domain”

In orbit around the 3rd Planet of the Alpha Centauri System
2 June 2747 AD

It had taken 32 years for the New Space Navy Ship, Admiral Rostov, to
reach the Space Station Domain from Earth orbit. The thing that Liz really
liked about inter stellar space travel was that after the ship cleared the Solar
system and all systems plus redundant systems were found operational, the
whole crew was then placed into suspended animation sleep. When they
arrived just out side of their designated star system the ships computer
would awaken all of them. If anything went wrong during the trip they would
never know it, and when they arrived it would seem to the crew as if they
had just went to sleep a few minutes ago even though it had been 30 SY
since they were put under. The Admiral Rostov was now on station about
10,000 KM from the space station Domain. Liz was up in the front of the
cockpit area at her duty station, and the new commanding officer had just
reported on board. She knew Captain Pat Lim, the new CO, from the days of
the war with the Free Space Society, he was a good tactician and fair leader,
which was the most probable reason he had never made Admiral, just to
close to those who served under him.
She was just finishing her approval of tomorrow’s Plan Of The Day
when her comm. panel chirped alerting her to a secure message coming in
from the Domain. Since this was a text message and not a video link with
Wong himself, she knew that it would deal with the change of command of
Rostov, and not something very pressing. She placed her right hand on a
scanner and looked straight ahead, and a very low intensity infra red laser
then examined her right palm and both retinas of her eyes to verify that it
was her that was going to receive and read the following secure message.
The computer displayed for her two options, one to have the message
displayed on the matrix in front of her and the other choice was for the
computer to read the message to her over the Ear and Mouth headset that
she wore. Through the E&M headset she asked the computer to display the
message on her active color matrix display. The message then displayed for
her read as follows;

Date/Time Group:02062747:1921
From: ACIC New Space Navy
Vice Admiral M. S. Wong
NSNS Domain SS-2

TO: Comdr. E. Entabe, MSN; C81-82-77

Acting CO NSNS Admiral Rostov AKLVC-12

1. You are hereby ordered to turn command of the NSNS Admiral Rostov
AKLVC-12 over to Capt. P. Lim, MSN; C17-22-26, you are further ordered to
assume the duties of Executive Officer on board the NSNS Admiral Rostov
AKLVC-12 effective immediately upon acknowledgment of this message.

2. The CO, XO and Ops officers of the NSNS Admiral Rostov AKLVC-12 are to
report to the ACIC NSN on board NSNS Domain SS-2 at 1015Z time on date
03062747 to receive orders on up coming mission orders of the NSNS
Admiral Rostov AKLVC-12.

3. Your authentication code of this message is AAZX 183 1886 1864 738
QAAA.

4. Comdr.. E. Entabe, you are here by commended for your performance in

the deciphering of the alien transmission recordings while performing your
other duties while on planet Earth and as acting Commander of the NSNS
Rsotov AKLVC-12.

5. End message, nothing follows.

MW/an

“Computer, acknowledge receipt of this message and transfer command of

this ship to Capt. Pat Lim and log that he is now the commanding officer of
this ship, and that I am now this ships XO.”
“Done, all physical recognition’s of Capt. Lim are now archived as CO, yours
are now archived as XO, done on authorization code of this message and
your authority as acting CO.”
“Computer, inform all members of the crew, the embarked Marine Corp.
members and members of the embarked science staff of the change of
command and my status as this ships XO.”
“Done.”
“Computer, record the following verbal order in the ships log, Officer of the
Deck I stand relived as commanding officer.”
“Aye Aye Sir” responded the OOD from his station off to her right, “done”
responded the computer.
“Computer, have a shuttle craft ready for the CO, Major Albert Pedroza and
myself and alert all, the CO, Ops and myself, of the shuttles departure time
to arrive NSNS Domain 30 minutes before scheduled meeting stated in
message just received.”
“Done” responded the computer, and so ends a long tour as CO of the
Rostov, to bad most of it was spent dreaming of getting laid, she was
thinking when the CO chirped her comm., “Liz, report to my in port quarters
ASAP”.
“Aye Aye Captain” and she got out of her seat, made sure her shoes stuck to
the Velcro floor and headed aft.
She floated past the hatch into the rotating section of the ship, this
was the low gravity section of the ship, she bounced onto its floor and turned
to her left heading for officers country and the COs quarters.
“Yo Liz, hold up a sec” she turned to see Maj. Al Pedroza running up toward
her.
“I can’t hang around Al I’ve got to report to the new CO.”
“OK if I walk with Ya, I’ve been talking with some of the egg heads on board
this bucket and I’m starting to get a bit concerned, what with them and that
commo you sent to me to report to ACIC on the Domain tomorrow” he said
as he naturally fell into step with her. She look at him out of the corner of
her eyes and said, “Al, you mean to tell me that some REMFs have gotten a
big bad Jyreen with your gooney bird stare spooked.” He laughed and said,
“Speaking of the 1000 meter stare, how is your mind hanging these days?”
They were both referring to the amount of combat action that they had seen
in the war with the Free Space Society.
“Nothing but sweet dreams for the last 32 standard years” she smiled and
wonder just who the fuck was that white boy she kept dreaming about and if
she would ever meet up with that dream guy.
“Yeah right, tell you what commander, I’ll catch up with you later, I’ve got to
get back aft with the grunts for weapons and vehicle inspection.”
“OK, see you a little later Al.” Al stopped and watched her walk on, damn
but she was one outstanding looking mama he thought and he turned around
and headed aft.
Liz knocked twice on the COs door, she heard Lim yell “Enter”, she
opened the door, stepped inside, close the door behind her and in a clear
calm voice said “Commander Entabe ships XO reporting as ordered sir.”
With out looking up from the data file on his screen Lim said “park it Liz, we
got allot to go over before the meeting with ACIC tomorrow. Just what the
hell did you and this Valdimir fellow find in these recordings that were made
almost 500 SY ago?”
“Well sir, they are in an archaic Earth language called Norse, which was used
about 2000 SY ago by a sea faring warrior people called Vikings. There was
a lot of it dealing with the transfer of personal and material for some massive
engineering project that was going on. Very little of it was of a personal
nature and most dealt with long inventory lists, most of which the words
were not known, but what Dr. Oleg thought were made up, to cover technical
terms that were not required when this language was earth bound.” “Wait a
minute” Lim interrupted “your telling me that this language was Earth bound
and also the reports say that these are recordings of a signal coming from an
area of space where the nearest star is 22 light years from here, just how the
hell do you explain that XO?”
“I don’t sir, there is a lot of speculation from the science staff, but if I can
continue, sir, it may shed some light on that.” Liz waited looking at her CO
and hoping that he wasn’t thinking that she was telling him a ghost story.
“OK XO continue, but I’m warning you, if you’re jacking me off I’ll fry your ass
and serve it to the ships company for dinner.” She could see that this was
not the greatest way to start out with her new CO, all she could do was hope
that she would not lose too much credibility with Lim.
Liz cleared her throat and continued, “It was the last two standard weeks of
the recordings that were the most informative about these people. It seems
that there were three other groups of people or beings involved, the group
called the Yellow Star Coalition, the group call the Inheritors and a group
called the Sheen. A call was made by this group of Norse or Vikings from the
Yellow Star Coalition, the part we have recorded was from this coalition
stating that they knew that the video links from the Inheritors had been
dropped and that they did not know why, and yes they would keep sending
the computer files for the gateway and that they were trying to get the
crypto key for that start up program to them. Then the second to the last
recording was from a group of Norse/Vikings, that are recorded, saying that
the Yellow Star Coalition had left, and saying that the Sheen had introduced a
virus on the Inheritors home planet some how and that the Inheritors were
dying by the thousands every day. The last recording was a panic call from a
group of Nose that was recorded, telling the group we could not hear to take
the Engineering Maintenance Library ship and leave the gateway. They were
also told to head for a place called Runic Futhark and not to go near Jelling or
Dragon Thingvellir, that these two planets were under attack by the Sheen,
and then there was no more.” Liz paused to get her breath, then said
“Valdimir thinks that either one of the other three groups came to Earth
sometime between 650 and 1100 AD and abducted several Vikings of both
sexes.”
“Good Lord” Lim exclaimed, while looking up at her, “I’ve now got the feeling
that tomorrow’s meeting is going to send the Rostov right into the middle of
someone else’s war, or what is left of it. At least I can hope that their war
would be over, since it has been 500 SY almost since it started. That would
explain the Navies using an Attack Cargo and Landing Vehicle Carrier, like
the Rostov, here, with two companies of veteran Marines and a science staff
on board, waiting on orders,“ Pat was thinking out loud. “Do you have any
idea what a gateway that they referred to is, or the Library ship?”
“No, only the obvious, and some speculation, out side of that we know
almost nothing at all,” Liz replied.
“OK, lets start our turn over tour with an inspection of the engineering
spaces aft and work our way foreword.” They both stood up and she
followed him out the door heading aft to the Main Propulsion spaces.
The CO and Liz left the rotating section, where the ships company
lived, and entered the immense hanger bay. They both floated through the
hatchway and grabbed onto one of several railings. Using the railing to pull
themselves down to the Velcro on the floor where they made their shoes
stick to the it and then they started a strange shuffling type of walk aft. In
this hanger and the cargo storage bay aft of it was the reason for Rostovs
existence. Here in this hanger were 32 Armored Assault Landing Craft,
LCAAs, and 10 Multiple Purpose Landing Craft, LCMPs. The LCAAs each
would carry 15 Marine Infantry Troops plus a pilot and copilot. The pilots
were addressed as Gunner; this was because they were Warrant Officers who
came up through the ranks, and not Commissioned Officers. The LCAAs were
designed to leave the hanger, with the troops onboard, and then drop
through the plants atmosphere, if it had one, like a rock. It would then level
out at 25 meters above the objectives surface and drop one container with a
Marine in it every 5 Km in what was called a stick, a line of troops. The
container would hit the surface and blow out a foxhole, then part to let the
Marine out, who would then report in and start fighting. After the stick was
in place the LCAAs could then provide air support for the ground troops or air
superiority to keep enemy aircraft from attacking the ground troops. If anti
aircraft fire was so heavy that loses of the LCAAs was deemed to great, the
LCAAs would ground themselves and provide the Infantry troops with armor
support, artillery support, anti aircraft support fire or armored personal
carrier ability to rapidly interdict the enemy lines of communication. Each
LCAA could also act as a command and control center for up to a full Division
of Marines.
The LCMPs were used to re supply the troops on the surface, just aft in
the cargo bay, was stored the Landing Force Operations Material and Ammo
or LFOMA. The LCMP had a pilot, copilot and cargo chief assigned to it who
were Navy Sailors and not Marines. Also each LCMP could also be rapidly
converted into a field hospital. All the craft were massive and stacked, 6
stacks of 7 landing craft each, and tied down on top of each other with the
LCMPs in the bottom center of the stacks. The landing craft exited the
Rostov through hanger doors that opened above the top of the stacks of the
landing craft.
In each LCAA the Marines stored their personal weapons and the other
personal equipment that the standard combat tactical outfit, SCTO-52, called
out, this was the type of equipment for each of them to be issued, due to the
type of combat that they were assigned to perform within the squad
formation. As Pat and Liz were walking aft they could see the Marines and
Sailors performing maintenance on the landing craft and weapons. It
reminded Liz of when she was a little girl and use to play with ants, these
stacks of landing craft looked like ant hills with all the Marines and Sailors
crawling over the landing craft looking like the ants.
Pat and Liz approach the after end of the hanger bay and stepped up
on one of 4 of the cargo conveyors that lead into the cargo storage area and
continued aft. From this point aft, the after interior spaces of the ship were
wrapped in a water storage tank, which is used to store the water which was
then used to produce the deuterium or the fuel for the deuterium-deuterium
fusion reactor that power the Rostov. A cold fusion reactor and steam
generator system is used to power the startup of the fusion reactor and also
the startup of the magnetic field that contained the small star in the
deuterium-deuterium fusion reactor. Electrical power generation was done
by a mass thermocouple and photoelectric device that surrounded the fusion
plasma on all sides except the after end. This end was were the magnetic
containment field allowed the photons, protons and waste helium to eject,
which were use as Rostov’s drive, known as Rostov’s solar wind by the crew.
They past though the cargo bay and arrived at the Engineering Log
Room and Damage Control Center. Here in the log room they were met by
the ships Chief Engineer, LCDR. Mike Kelly, the Reactor officer, Main
Propulsion Assistant officer, Electrical officer, Damage Control Assistant
officer and the two of the junior officers that were on watch. The Captain
was not here for an inspection of the equipment, but of the log records,
training records, historical problem reports, preventive maintenance reports
and a review of the status of the system. The one thing that was of concern
to Pat was the engineering Departments ability to manufacture any and all of
the equipment components used on board the Rostov. The engineers had
machine shops on board where they could manufacture any part, from
microelectronics to the magnetic field generators, which contained the small,
star that power Rostov. Pat was most concerned about this due to Rostov’s
years spent in space, traveling from one star system to another, and the
technology changing such that components that the ship required were no
longer being manufactured. Lim reviewed the records and was assured that
the sailors had the training, qualifications, raw stock and the equipment to
perform the required tasks of re manufacturing any failed components. The
only problem area as of now was a slip ring assembly between the rotating
section of the ship and the forward cockpit part of the ship. Kelly reported
that a working party was performing maintenance on the assembly now and
that the leading PO, petty officer, reported that the problem was found and
being repaired.
As the Captain and accompanied officers finished a quick tour of the
engineering spaces Capt. Lim said, “Great job Mike, everything looks ship
shape, and how is your departments manning level?”
“We are down three, but Domain is transferring three over to us tomorrow,
one qualled environmental PO and two recruits.”
“Good, carry on” he said as he headed forward with Liz following him.
Pat and Liz enter the main stores office of the cargo area; here they
were briefed by the supply officer on the status of the LFOMA and other ship
stores. Liz stood back and watch the supply officer talking to the Captain
and remembered how this small, rather non heroic looking, women who is
the supply officer had taken a repaired LCMP full of ammo down to the
planet, that Rostov and Domain were now in orbit around, during the war.
The Battalion Landing Team 2/5 had gotten cut off and was fighting off a
counter attack, they called into the Admiral Mendoza AKLVC-9 screaming for
support and ammo, and there were no crews left to go down in a recently
repaired LCMP, which was the only LCMP on board the Mendoza at the time.
This little woman volunteered herself and a supply clerk to take the
LCMP down to the surface of the planet. After stuffing the LCMP with 230
mm mortar rounds for an LCAA’s artillery support mortar that was built into
each LCAA and gas propellant projectile rounds for the BLTs infantrymen, she
took off and headed down. When she had piloted the LCAA onto the grid
coordinates she looked over at the supply clerk and asked “have you ever
landed one of these things on a hot LZ before?” “No sir” the clerk said with
a look of terror on his face, “well it can’t be that hard, we’ll just learn as we
do it” she said and gave him a reassuring smile.
She brought the LCMP in much too fast, which was good in the way
that the enemy anti-aircraft fire wasn’t accurate, but bad because they hit
the surface so hard the LCMP cracked open throwing the ammo all over the
Marines, and killing the supply clerk. The Marines thought she had come in
so fast and hard on purpose to avoid getting blown out of the sky. With the
ammo she brought in the Marines were able to beat off the enemies three re
enforced battalions and connect back up with the other BLTs. Because of
what she had done for the Marines, she was given almost reverent respect
by them. Even with the Marines on board Rostov you could see her first
name, Linda, tattooed on their fore arms, and if they heard anyone say a bad
word against her the Marines would make sure that person would live in a
world of shit.
During this battle Liz was also assigned to the Mendoza as Navigator
and Communications officer. She was forward in the ships cockpit area
maintaining comm. with the Marines below on the surface and maintaining
Mendoza’s evasive orbit around the planet. About the time the supply officer
was crashing on the surface of the planet the Free Space Society’s combat
spacecraft launched an attack on the New Space Navy ships involved in the
attack on the planet. The New Space Navy’s space combat cruisers beat off
most of the attacking Free Space Society’s ships, but two enemy spacecraft
leaked through the perimeter and fired on the Mendoza before one was
destroyed and the other managed to get away. The Mendoza’s after reactor-
engineering spaces were blown off and all 12 crewmen at these GQ stations
in the reactor spaces were lost, also there were haul ruptures running
forward to the hanger deck space. The thing that saved the rest of the crew
was the light suit that they wore during General Quarters. It was SOP to
depressurize a ship when GQ was ordered. This would keep a haul rupture
from becoming an explosion, and due to the lack of oxygen in the ship, when
there was battle damage a fire would not spread and could be extinguished
fast. The light suit was a small-scale space suit; it could maintain life support
of the average crewman for 60 hours. Oxygen could be replenished readily it
was food, water and the clean out of waste material that required the
crewman to get out of the suit. On the Mendoza the crew set up an air lock
system between the living quarters and the hanger deck to facilitate the
crew removing their suits in shifts of ten hours. The crew work feverishly to
regain power with emergency backup batteries and solar collectors, they had
accomplished this but not before the Mendoza’s orbit had decayed and the
remaining crew members had to be evacuated, from the Mendoza. As the
ship entered the planets atmosphere it started to burn up. The members of
Mendoza’s crew, officers and sailors alike, were then sent to the surface as
replacements for the Marines fighting on the planet’s surface below. Liz
became a copilot on a LCAA, and during a bomb run on an enemy held ridge
that LCAA was shot down injuring the pilot. She got the pilot, Gunner Jim
“Blacky” Blackwell, herself and a gas propellant projectile weapon out of the
burning LCAA and into a hole. In this make shift fox hole she kept the
Gunner alive and held out for two days until the BLT pushed forward into the
area where they were, and meda-vaced both of them to the rear.
During this battle Pat Lim was also a participant of conflict that was
ensuing. During the time that the battle was engaged, Pat was a Luetenent
Commander, serving as the Main Porpulsion Officer on the Admiral Pie-Lei,
which was also part of this assault group. He was at his general quarters
station aft of the log room in the reactor control area. During the initial
assault his E&M headset was linked, audio wise, to the Damage Control
Assistant, he and all the others in what was now Damage Control Party 5,
were unaware of the space battle going on around them. They were more
interested in keeping themselves, and the Pie-Lei in the battle, and getting
all the Marines and their equipment, down to the surface fight.
The Attack Commander’s intelligence team had seriously under rated
the Free Space Societies’ “Surface To Space” defense capability of the planet
below. This miscalculation would cost them most of their space to surface
ordinance, in the suppression of the FSS’s ability to knock out the space to
surface attack force. The fire on the space forces was so intense it had
caused this change in tactic; which would have severe implications for the
ground forces, those marines who would make it down to the surface to fight.
Pat’s ship, the Pie-Lei was hit twice from the surface fire, first in the
cockpit area and then again in the rotating section of the ship. The Pie-Lei
was to badly damaged to save, and therefore after a valiant effort of about
two hours by the crew, the Captain of the Pie-Lei order an evacuation of the
ship by all hands. Again, as with the Mendoza, all Navy crewman were order
to act as replacements for the Marine Forces on the surface of the planet,
who had also been severely depleted by the surface to space fire.
After Pat’s arrival to the surface, he was assigned as the battalion
commander of the 1st battalion of the 35th regiment. This was done because
he was one of a very few senior officers that had been made available to the
Marine Forces by the Navy as a replacement. Also the 35th and its battalions
were the first to hit dirt side, they were also the first to suffer the largest
combat causalities. The First Battalion had lost all of its officers during the
first eight hours of combat, and accordingly was highest on the priority short
list for officer replacement. So much for clean living and being an upright
person, the 35th was a correctional outfit with most of its members being
found guilty of everything from insubordination under fire, to first-degree
murder.
The original Marine Officers were assigned to the 35th, because a
superior officer had found these Marine Officers lacking in some ability or
quality, which was thought that the officer in question, should have. The
Officers could redeem themselves by performing well in leading those
assigned to the 35th in combat. The NCOs of the regiment were assigned
because they had committed some minor infraction and instead of reducing
the NCO in rank they were reassigned to the 35th. This was how the
temporary acting Battalion Commander, and Hotel Company Commander,
Gunny Joe “Alf” Albert had come to be assigned to this Regiment.
 Pat found the Battalion by accident, he remembered reading what an
American Civil War General had told one of his unit commanders, “follow
along toward the sound of gun fire, when you get to where you can smell the
horse shit and gun smoke you will probably be in the right spot, if not, the
folks there will need your help anyhow.” In a modern sense this is what Pat
had done. When he checked in, Gunny Albert then told him not to worry
about the fighting, he and the other boys and girls, in what was left of the
battalion, would take care the fighting and tactical end of the running of the
battalion. All Albert wanted Pat to do was interface with regiment and take
care of any admin tasks. Pat, being a smart man did just what the Gunny
wanted, which if the truth were know probably saved Pat’s life.
“Lets continue with our tour, XO” Pat said and woke her out of the
daydream of the war. Pat and Liz continued forward into the hanger deck
where they stop in at the hanger deck control and launch control office, here
they were briefed by Maj. Pedroza as to the status of the landing craft and
hanger deck equipment. The Capt. reviewed the maintenance records for all
of the assigned equipment and landing craft with the Job Control Officer. The
Job Control Officer also informed Pat that an Electronics Systems Engineering
1st class petty officer was in transit on the Domain waiting to report on board
the Rostov. This ESE1 would round out the operations electronics
department and all the work centers would then be at full manning levels.
After being told that three landing craft were down and that engineering was
manufacturing the repair parts the Capt., Liz and Al took a quick tour of the
hanger deck area and the landing craft. Along the two outside, port and
starboard, walls, or bulkheads, the Marines stored their combat suits. As Pat
was walking by the racks of combat suits when he asked Maj. Pedroza “ Al
how do you know if these suits are operational or not?”
“Well sir, there is a diagnostic that monitors the suit when it is stored on the
rack and plug into ships power” the Maj. answered.
“Yes I know, but how do you know that the suits are operational?” asked Pat.
“Sir, each start of the normal work day the Marine who owns the suit runs a
check on it, also if a malfunction is determined by the diagnostic it is report
to the owner and the JCO right then and owner reports the status of his suit
both daily and if there is a failure to his Squad Leader.” explained the Maj.,
perplexed as to why the Capt. was asking when Al already knew that the
Captain knew this.
“Yes right” said Pat as he reached over to the nearest suit and unplugged the
ships power from it, and started watching the time.
Over on the second stack, away from the Captain, and the third landing
craft from the top, Sgt. James “Jimmy” Wood’s E&M headset notified him of
the loss of power to his suit. He and two other sergeants were working on
the particle beam gun system, which was the main armament of the LCAA.
Damn, he thought to himself, for he knew better than to say anything out
loud, the E&M would put it out to anyone who cared to listen, I was sure that
piece of shit was plugged in OK. “I got go check out my suit Bros, I’ll be back
in a flash” he said and left by the LCAAs rear hatch. He lofted himself up, in
the zero gravity, did a flip and kicked off the hanger bay door heading down
over the landing craft stack between him and his suit. As he came toward
the suit rack he grabbed the rack frame and pushed himself toward his suit.
He then spotted the three officers waiting for him in front of his suit. Ah shit,
he thought, why did these pricks pick me to fuck with. “Excuse me sir,” he
said as he pulled off his glove and slapped his palm on the suit ID plate
where it recognized him and now would allow maintenance to be done on it,
the suit. Jimmy reached over and plugged his suit back into ships power
then ran a quick check on his suit. When he was satisfied that the suit was
operational he reported in to the JCO and his squad leader, the fact that his
suit was OK.
“Very good, you can return to your duties” Pat told Jimmy.
“ Aye Aye sir” said Jimmy and he headed back toward the LCAA that he was
working on.
“Al, I see that the Marines on board are well trained, it took that kid only two
and a half minutes to get here and that was an impressive flip he did off the
hanger doors, please pass on my well done to him for me.” said Pat and he
motioned for Liz to follow him into the rotating section of the ship and they
both headed forward.
“Aye Aye captain” and Al turned and headed for the Hanger deck control
office, as he walk aft he passed on the captains well done to sergeant Wood
over the E&M. Jimmy acknowledged the commo from the Major and to
himself he was thinking, yeah right and if something had fucked up in the
system it would have been my ass and not yours, asshole.
Pat and Liz passed through the hatch into the rotating section of the
ship, they bounced on to the floor turned to their left and headed for the Sick
Bay. In the sick bay area the embarked science staff had set up a laboratory
and office area. As Pat and Liz entered the sick bay area they interrupted a
conversation going on between the ships doctor and two members of the
science staff. “Good day Captain, I was not expecting you so soon” the ships
doctor, Dr. Don Guyton said, “I would like to introduce you to a couple of the
members of the science staff, this Dr. Susan Jones and Dr. Oleg Valdimir.
Susan is the biologist and also a medical doctor and Oleg is the linguist and
the interpreter of the alien recordings.”
Dr. Jones reach out her hand to shake both Pat’s and Liz’s hand saying,
“please to meet both of you, I was just discussing with Dr. Guyton how it
must feel for the crew of a ship like this. I mean that the average life span
for a human is now about 250 SY, but people who crew these ships will live
so much longer and see so much more due to the time that all of you are in
the sleep phase of traveling. I know that there is a down side to that, but in
some way it interests me, you know the thought that when we get back so
much will have changed do to the time we will have spent in sleep.”
“Yes Dr. Jones there is a big down side to it especially for the young
crew members who report on board just before a space journey. If they are
lucky some of their family members are still alive when they return. Then
they also face the fact that they have given up their reproductive material.
They may have offspring but they will probably never know them.” Liz said
with a small amount of anger at the stupid thing this woman was saying.
“And that reminds me Don, have the science staff been sterilized for this trip
and signed all the proper documentation?” asked Pat as he tried not to look
at Dr. Jones.
“Yes sir, Captain, they all have agreed even before I gave them the speech
about cosmic radiation encountered on long space voyages and the genetic
damage that it causes.” replied Doctor Guyton.
“Good, how is the crews health status as of now?”
The doctor turned and looked at his display and said “only one problem right
now, we have one Marine who broke his arm in close combat training.”
“Very well,” and Pat looked over at the two members of the science staff “I
know that sharing this sick bay area with the doctor here is cramped but it is
the best we can do for you what with the Navy ordering a full compliment of
Marines on board, I hope that all of you can make do here.”
“Oh yes captain, this will work out fine, we can all do our work on these
terminals that have been installed for us just fine.” replied Dr. Oleg Valdimir.
After the CO and XO had left the sick bay and headed forward Susan
looked at Oleg and said, “what do you mean that this is fine, it sucks big
time. We don’t have enough room to turn around.”
“Now now Susan we are guests here on board the Rostov, and frankly we are
lucky that they didn’t put us aft in the waste reprocessing area.”
He raised his eyebrows and nodded his head toward Dr. Guyton, meaning
anything that they said would get back to the CO and they could end up
worse off.
Pat and Liz did a quick tour of the sleep tanks, as they were called,
and Pat stop at two to see if the systems were operating correctly. After
satisfying himself with the status indications on the two random ones he
chose, he and Liz continued on forward to the cockpit area. As they both
enter the OOD said out loud to the others on watch “Captain on the bridge.”
“Carry on, OOD you have the Conn” replied Pat
“Aye aye sir,” responded the OOD.
 Pat went over to his duty station and sat down to sign over the ship to
himself and then had Liz sign all the same electronic documents turning the
ship over to Captain Lim. He then started to read his message status display.
When he was through he looked over at Liz and said “well that does it Liz, it’s
my baby now.”
“Aye aye sir, if there is nothing else I would like to catch a few winks before
we go to the Domain in 9 hours.” and she expected to hear some request
from the CO that would require her to work the next 9 hours.
“OK Liz I’ll see you on the hanger deck then, sleep well.”
“Thank you Captain, and I’ll see you then” she said and turned around and
headed aft.

NSNS Admiral Ruston AKLVC-12

Hanger Deck Three
0945 3 June 2747

Liz and Maj. Pedroza were waiting on the rear hatch of an LCAA at the
top of a middle stack, which was to take them to the Domain, for the CO to
arrive. Al looked inside to see that the pilots were on board, already going
through their pre flight checks, and Sgt. Wood was on board also. He turned
back to Liz saying to her “You know Liz I don’t have a real good feeling about
what might be coming up for us. I mean every other mission I have been on
I always felt that what ever happens so be it. I think the thing that has me
worry about this mission is all the unknowns. When we were fighting the
Free Space Society I at least had a good idea about what they could throw at
us, but with this mission we could be going into a real grinder if these people
or beings are as advanced as the egg heads say they could be.”
“I know what you mean Al, if it had not been for the war we would have been
way ahead of where we are now” Liz said as she was looking down.
“Right now I am told that we are about 700 SY behind in our technology due
to those idiots and their damn society. The staff physicist says that we
should have been able to do energy to matter replication by now, instead all
the people working on this died when the society attacked the Earth with
nuclear weapons.” Liz then spotted the CO floating up to the LCAA, “here
comes the Captain now Al, so put a lid on it until some other time.”
“Good morning, and I am sorry for the delay, it seems that Doctor Jones is
not a very happy camper when it comes to her working area in the sick bay.
Major when we get back from the Domain I want you to keep that women
away from me, I don’t have time for that kind of horse shit. Now lets get
going before we are late and Wong skins all of us for being so” and he and
the other two officers went inside the LCAA.
Sgt. Wood checked that the three officers were seated and secured
properly and that their light suits were correct and connected to the landing
craft’s air supply, his real reason for being on board the LCAA was to make
sure no one messed with his squad’s weapons while at the Domain. After
making his checks he reported to the pilot his and the embarked officers
status. Blacky acknowledged Sgt. Wood and then checked in with hanger
deck control on comm. link 3B, where the launch control officer told Blacky
that the hanger was depressurized and the hangar doors were opened and
locked. Blacky released the magnetic tie downs and tap his thrusters for an
up direction and the LCAA floated out of Rostov. When the LCAA had
reached a distance of two kilometers from the hull of the Rostov he was
given a cleared signal from the Rostov’s OOD. Once clear of the Rostov for
full drive conditions, Blacky kicked in the drive and vectored toward the
Domain. As the LCAA approached the space station Domain, Blacky angled
the LCAA toward the non-rotating section of the space station. This was the
area where the hanger deck for the Domain was located. Blacky called into
the Domain to tell the hanger deck control officer that he was on approach.
Blacky then said into his E&M headset “Lilly Pad this is Tango Two Five, I am
on approach and need landing instructions, over”
“Tango Two Five you are clear to land on pad three, slow your approach
speed to 250 and call the ball, over.”
“Roger Lilly Pad I have the ball, over”
“Roger, Tango Two Five switch on comm. link X-ray Three and report status of
computer link, over.”
“Roger Lilly Pad, I have the link 5 by 5, turning control of approach over to
the computer, out.” The landing of the LCAA was now under the automatic
control of the Domain’s computer. Blacky and his copilot watch the status on
the approach and the optical landing system called the Ball. The LCAA
started to rotate slightly as the computer aligned the craft with the station.
Blacky was watching intently to make sure that the comm. link did not drop
and that the iris doors of the Domain’s hanger deck were opened. The LCAA
then slipped through the hanger doors of the Domain, he always got a weak
feeling in the pit of his stomach when his LCAA swept through the doors like
this. The speed that the LCAA came through the doors always seemed so
fast after being in space and then having something to visually gauge his
speed by. The LCAA came to a stop and Blacky engaged the magnetic tie
downs, when he felt the LCAA bump onto the deck of the Domain he shut
down the drive system of the LCAA. He was given and all clear over his head
set, and he then opened the rear hatch of the LCAA.
The CO, Liz and Major Pedroza got out of their seats and headed to the
rear of the LACC, they then pushed off the LCAA’s rear hatch and they
floated toward the air lock at the aft section of the hanger deck three of the
Domain. As the three officers locked the door to the air lock that they had
just come through, Liz activated the re-pressurization switch. A green light
came on in the overhead alerting them the air locks pressure was now
equalized with the rest of the interior of the Domain.
The door into the Domain then opened and the three officers from the
Rostov were meet there by Admiral Wong’s junior staff officer, Lt. Glenn
Nagami. Glenn stuck out his hand to Captain Lim and said “welcome to the
Domain sir, Admiral Wong has been notified of your early arrival and has
instructed me to escort you and your officers to the Admirals conference
room.” Nagami shook hands with the other two officers saying, “If all of you
would please follow me, the Admiral is anxiously awaiting all of you for this
conference. You can remove your light suits and store them here,” as he
waved at a suit storage rack. As Pat and the other officers were removing
their suits they heard the Domain’s 1MC give out two loud bell bongs
followed by the stations duty petty officer announcing “ Rostov Arriving.”
After Pat, Liz and Al had removed their suits and stored them, Pat turned and
looked at the staff Lt. “Please lead on Mr. Nagami, and we will follow you”
Lim said wondering just how deep in the shit he and his crew were.
As Pat and the other three officers were making their way up to the
Admiral’s conference, Blacky told Sgt. Wood, that he and the copilot would
standby the LCAA while Sgt. Wood went to go find the four replacement crew
members that were going back to the Rostov with them, when they left the
Domain. Sgt. Wood lit out for the hanger deck control office to see if they
knew where these crewmen for the Rostov were and to round them up and
get them on board the LCAA standing by for the return trip. He did not want
the Captain waiting on them when he, the Captain, returned.

NSNS Domain SS-2

Admiral Wong’s Conference Room

The Staff Lt. Nagami knocked on the Admiral’s conference room door,
hearing some one inside say enter, he opened the door and let the Rostov’s
officers enter the conference room and then he closed the door while he took
up a position out side and closed the door. Lt. Nagami would intercept
anyone who tried to gain access to the conference room. The three officers
of the Rostov entered the conference room where the Admiral was awaiting
them with the rest of his staff. All three officers came to attention and Pat
said “Captain Patrick Lim, commanding officer of the NSNS Admiral Rostov
reporting as ordered sir.”
“Very well, please be seated and will get this meeting under way.” Wong
said, and when the three officers from the Rostov were seated. Wong look
over at the Rostov’s officers and said, “You are here to find out your orders
for an upcoming mission that the politicians want to take place. The reason
that Rostov has been chosen is because she is the closest one of four AKLVCs
still operational. That ladies and gentlemen is Top Secret, out of 500 such
ships all but 4 were lost during the war with the Free Space Society, along
with the AKLVC loses there were about 175,000 combat KIA casualties in the
Marine Force ranks, and four times that in WIAs, and about half the Marine
Force number in Navy crewman casualties. As most of you know, we damn
near lost the battle for the planet that we are now in orbit around. We had
no idea just how many of the Army and Air/Space Forces had mutinied, but it
now is apparent that almost all of these forces that were not assigned to
Earth, Mars, Venus and these planets’ moons went over to the Free Space
Society, and that is why only those of the rank of Captain and below, who
had mutinied, and later surrendered/captured, were allowed into the Navy
and Marine Corp. ranks, and this is also the reason for the disbanding of
those forces. So, here we are with some recently interpreted/captured alien
recordings that indicate that they, the aliens, also are embroiled in a war of
their own, and that is why the politicians and so worried. If these aliens, who
are obviously war like, since they seem to be engaged in their own war,
decide to come over here in our area of space, we don’t stand a chance. I
believe the thing that has really got the politicians shitting in their pants is
that one of these groups of beings are Vikings, the most war like people in
the history of Earth, until now that is.” Wong paused, rubbed his face with
both hands, exhaled loudly and look back up at his assembled officers. “Now
I am going to turn this meeting over to my staff operations officer who will
brief all of you on this upcoming mission, I know that you will have a million
questions, to keep this meeting short, the answer to all of these questions
are ‘WE DON’T KNOW.’ The written orders are now being sent to the
Rostov’s computer,” and he then looked over at the Captain who was the
staff operations officer and nodded.
The staff officer stood up and walked over to the center of the room
where everyone would be able to see him. “Ladies and gentlemen this
upcoming mission for the Rostov is known in part by all of you, but not in its
entirety by any of you so please bear with me if I am covering something
that you may already know. The Rostov has embarked on board two
companies of Marines, which is BLT 3/11. Also there are four scientists, one
astronomer, one biologist, one physicist, and one archeologist on board. The
science staff is limited due to the space available on board the Rostov, but
the ships company will augment this staff, such as the ships engineering
department and medical department. This science staff has no say in what
is done during this mission, they are only there to make observations and
advise the ships CO. The Marines will also provide manpower when need by
this science staff with the approval of the ships CO. The ships company and
the Marines are now or soon will be at full compliment before the Rostov
leaves on this mission.” The staff operations officer looked down at the
display in front of him, and then back up at the assembly.
“There have been two modifications made to the Rostov for this
mission. They are the addition of a Multiple Mirror Telescope, MMT, and a
Particle Bombardment Spectrometer, PBS. These two modifications should
add greatly to the passive sensors of the Rostov.” He paused again to review
his display and looking back up said, “the Rostov is to try to avoid making
contact with any of the alien groups that may be encountered. If contact is
unavoidably made it is at the discretion of the Rostov’s CO as to how to
proceed with this mission. Okay, you are now all wondering just what the
orders are for this mission, besides avoiding contact if possible, The Rostov is
to collect as much data as its computers can hold on these alien beings and
then leave the area and return here to the Domain, undetected if possible.”
The staff operations officer then looked up at Admiral Wong and said, “That
concludes my briefing sir.” He then walked back to his seat and sat down.
Pat then said, “ excuse me Admiral, I know you don’t really want us to
ask any questions, but it is really bothering me that if this is a stealth
mission, why are we sending in a behemoth like the Rostov and not a combat
space cruiser which is just a small fraction of the size of the Rostov?”
Admiral Wong looked over at Pat, and after a second of thinking about
Pat’s question he replied, “That is a fair question, and since you are going to
be on the pointy end of the spear, it deserves a concise answer. All the
space combat cruisers are on patrol in the Earth’s solar system, from the
asteroid belt out to the far side of Jupiter, along with them are the other
three AKLVCs and the majority of our Marine Forces. They are there because
the Interstellar conglomerates are having to use the former independent
mining and shipping companies personal to run those industries out in that
area, and the politicians do not want a chance of those people reforming the
Free Space Society, or some form of it, again. So you guys and the Rostov
are all that is left for this mission, I don’t like this either, I am sorry, but there
it is.”
Wong then looked up at Pat, with a concerned look on his face, and
added, “Don’t come back here if you have them chasing you, I do not need a
bunch of pissed off Vikings on my hands, come back just so far as to transmit
your collected data and then lead them off away from here. We can do with
out you guys Pat, but we can’t fight another war for quite awhile. So the
Rostov will get under way ASAP, and that ladies and gentlemen concludes
this meeting, good luck to all of you on board the Rostov.”
Liz got up to leave and she was thinking, ‘Fucked again, but at least Pat
had the balls to ask the question that will be on every member of the
Rostov’s mind. “Why us?”’

NSNS Domain SS-2

Petty Officers and Sergeants Open Mess

Joe Albert ESE1 was sitting at the bar having, what he believed, was a
well-deserved beer. He had now been in transit status for three years
assigned to the Domain, while awaiting transit to his next duty station the
Rostov. While on the Domain his duty assignment was salvage, recovery and
repair of the landing craft severely damaged and left for junk on the planet
below. He and his crew of fifteen were able to fully repair 1 out of 4 landing
craft, the rest were salvaged for parts and or smelting, which recovered the
metals use in a landing craft, and then these metals could be reused in the
production of new landing craft. It wasn’t the greatest job, but it did keep
him busy.
Joe is what is called a retread, a former Marine who was too severely
wounded to continue on as a Marine and therefore transferred to the Navy as
a crewman. He now has a high tech left leg and a left hip, all courtesy of the
Free Space Society. He is one of two left from the fight on Mars, who were in
the fight from start to finish. Joe also was a veteran of the 35th Correctional
Regiment, where he saw combat in every battle fought in Earth’s solar
system and also on the planet below. Both the wounds and the memories of
those days still did cause him some suffering and pain.
Joe mentally shook himself, so that he would not start reminiscing
about the bad times and also start feeling sorry for himself. This would only
lead to him getting drunk and in trouble. Just as he was telling himself it was
time to move on out of the bar before he got shit faced, his E&M head set
alerted him to report to hangar deck three for transfer to the Rostov. He
downed his beer and headed for his locker to grab his stuff. Along the way
he checked on the status of his modified space combat suit.
Just as Joe finished his on/in suit diagnostic he got a call from the JOOD
at the air lock of the hangar deck, pad three, asking him for his ETA at the air
lock, and also telling him to report to a Sgt, Wood, after signing out with the
JOOD at the air lock.
About four minutes later Joe reported to the JOOD at hanger deck, pad
three, air lock to have his orders verified, and while the Chief Petty Officer
was doing this he spotted a Marine Sergeant just inside the air lock with
three Navy crewmen in Light Suits. Joe could tell by the Marine’s combat suit
that this guy had been around the block a few times also. All the tell tail
signs of repair to burns and scaring due to shrapnel and other chunks of
metal designed to kill someone were there to see on his suit, to the
experienced observer.
The JOOD cleared Joe’s orders with the Domain’s computer; time
stamped him out and released him from the Domain. The chief then looked
at Joe and told he had cleared out processing and had permission to leave
the space station. Joe then walked into the air lock and reported to the
sergeant that he was assigned to the Rostov and that if the sergeant was
from the Rostov and by the name of Wood, that he, Joe, was part of the
sergeant’s detail. Jimmy looked at this 1st class PO in the modified combat
suit and could guess the kind of hell it and the user had been through by the
beat up look of the suit.
“If you are Albert ESE1, then I’m your man,” Jimmy said, and with out waiting
for a reply, “OK, listen up people, everyone button up and cross check each
other, when your suit is secure give the thumbs up signal, when everyone
has a thumb up in the air I’ll cycle the air lock. Then in single file follow me,
each one of you holding onto the person in front of you, to the LCAA. Once
on the LCAA I’ll show each of you where to park. Then take a nap or shoot
the shit, but don’t fuck with any of the equipment on the landing craft. It
may be awhile before we depart, we are waiting on the CO, XO and Ops,
when these officers enter the landing craft stay put in your seats. When we
arrive on the Rostov stay put until I give you the signal to leave the craft.
Once you are out of the LCAA report to the JCO office for further orders, it’s
located port side amidships in the hangar bay.
Jimmy checked that all four crewman had a thumb up in the air, he
cycled the air lock, when the overhead light changed color from green to red
he open the lock’s hatch into the hangar deck and headed for the landing
craft. He glanced back to see if the crewman were following him, and
spotted the former Marine in the drag position, like Jimmy, once a Marine
always a Marine. Jimmy entered the LCAA and as each crewman entered he
placed them up forward by the cockpit and plugged each one into the LCAA
air supply and comm. Link. When all four were settled in he moved to the
rear of the LCAA and reported in to the pilot that the four enlisted transfer
crewman were on board and secure.
Out of curiosity, Jimmy was looking the ESE1 over, he saw that the first
class rank insignia was placed over faded Gunny stripes, and just above Joe’s
right thumb was the emblem of the 35th. It was a trident surrounded by the
words “35th Correctional Regiment, Always On Point.” In a box shape, above
the emblem, were 23 stars representing the number of space combat drops.
“Good God,” Jimmy whispered to himself, “this is the legendary ‘Joseph “Alf”
Albert,’ one of the most decorated Marines since Chesty Puller.”
Joe moved around slightly to get his left hip and ass in a comfortable
position. On the comm. Link 2B, he could over hear the other three
crewman, two women strikers and one male 3rd class PO, chattering on about
some mindless bullshit. He qued his heads up display for comm., and
commanded the volume down to almost nothing and then went to sleep.

NSNS Admiral Rostov AKLVC-12, Communication & Main Processor Space

2 June 2747
1642 Local Time

Joe had just entered the area, this is one of his assigned areas of
responsibility, and he started entering the computer code to allow his PC
access to the Primary LAN on the ships main data terminal. His PC was a
small block of plastic that would present him a holographic and virtual
keyboard and display and would now connect to the Rostov’s primary LAN
anywhere within 200 meters of the space ship or anywhere inside the ship.
The PC’s display now show the emblem of the Rostov in the background, and
in a large Font it said “Welcome to the Admiral Rostov’s Primary LAN,” please
enter your user name and password. Joe typed in his user name; Albert, Alf,
and his password; time heals all wounds, and then the PC displayed a
schematic diagram of all the Rostov’s systems, and search categories of the
entire computer’s databases. “All right, that seems to work, now I want to
look at some real data,” Joe said out loud. He then highlighted and doubled
clicked the box in the diagram that was labeled ‘Main Sensor, NM/SPS-32 v.8
& Communications Suit, NM/ URT-42 v.12,’ and then another schematic
diagram of the radar & communications system was displayed. On this
diagram Joe highlighted and double clicked the box labeled ‘Conformal
Variable Adaptive Aperture Antenna Array.’ The PC then displayed another
very detailed schematic diagram using the color red for known hard faults,
yellow for alarms, and green for known operational components of the array
system, all of the data came from the on-line fault monitoring software and
hardware. Below the diagram there was three lines of text, the first stated
‘% Probability,’ the next said, ‘% Probability of detecting a 10 meter square
target at max range; %99.011; spec = %98.5,’ and the last line stated, ‘%
Probability of maintaining max number of stable digital communications
links; %99.051; spec = %98.5. Joe looked at this and wondered how this was
calculated. He had not worked on the v.8/v.12 version of this
radar/communications system and so he was not familiar with this read out
and wanted to see how the math model was set up. He paged back to the
main page and entered a database query on the radar/communications
system on-line fault diagnostic program. As he looked at the software code
he recognized that the first subroutine was a Hypergeometric Distribution,
the second subroutine was a proportion distribution, these subroutines
outputs were used to feed a subroutine that built a data table. The last
subroutine did two things, the first was an ANOVA of the data table and the
test that ‘F’ = 1.01 ±0.01; if this condition was met the lines of displayed
data of the probability were stable, if not the lines would flash. There was
also a REM statement that was displayed when the lines were flashing to
check the data collection hardware and that the collect cycle words were
#52 through #105, data bits 0 – 31 of all these words. The second part did a
test of the probabilities and also a matrix comparison on where the array
faults were located with a correlation of a density matrix to determine
degradation of the array aperture due to faults being so located as to make
an area of the array unusable.
Joe logged off the LAN and then called up his ‘things to do ‘ list on his
PC and made an entry to write a subroutine math model that would collect
the  random error calculation from the ANOVA subroutine and continuously
add this factor on a random basis to his model. Then plot a standard
distribution plot while also doing the statistical calculations. He just had to
think how large he wanted the sample and how many samples to incorporate
into this model per a given time period. Then he would archive the plots and
calculations, along with the raw data for more detailed analysis, as Joe was
pondering this he heard someone say, “Hi, you must be Joe Albert.”
Joe turned toward the voice and saw the most stunning women of his
life. Most of the human population looked somewhat oriental, with very light
brown skin, black hair, epicanthic eye folds, and a broad nose.
This woman was a phenotype throw back to her German racial heritage. She
was ‘drop dead gorgeous’ with blond hair and blue eyes. “Ah, yes I am, and
you are?” He stammered.
“Oh, sorry I’m Jane Maurer ESE2, nicknamed PJ, which is short for Plain Jane,”
she laughed.
Joe smiled as he was thinking that this woman was anything but plain, which
is why she probably had the nickname. “So you were the division LPO before
I arrived?”
“Yes, and am I happy to see you handsome, I was in over my head trying to
run this work center.” She said this with a very sincere look on her face.
“Well I am sorry to take the job away from you, but it wasn’t my choice,” said
Joe as he was thinking that the only other woman in his life to call him
handsome was his mother. Most people called him butt ugly, he was just
5’10” and weighed in at about 195 lbs., but he had the upper body of a body
builder, which came from the time he spent in a wheel chair and on crutches
after he was wounded. His face was scared from a shattered face plate when
he caught a round in it on Mars, and he had burn scars on his left hand and
arm from a suit breach due to the passage of a FSS round through his
combat space suit in a vacuum environment on the asteroid mining site
called Golden Venture. He knew that his looks scared the shit out of some of
the younger crewman that he worked with on the Domain, but he was
pleased that she was not frightened by his looks.
“No, I am serious, there is a lot of this junk that I do not have a clue about,
but with you here I can now at least learn something about that junk, and
how to fix it.” Jane smiled again and was thinking that this guy was so ugly
that he was cute. She also knew that he had the courage of a lion with all
the combat decorations to prove it. “Anyway,” she continued with her face
screwed up in thought, “there are now eight of us in the division, with you
being senior, me as a second class the next in line, there are four third class
petty officers and two strikers.” A striker was a Navy crewman training in a
specific rate or profession. Once they had completed the job skills
requirements, the written courses for leadership and profession, with the
recommendation of the department head they then could take the exam for
third class in the ratting. “You and I, with the two strikers, will be on first
shift, which is 8 hours on and 4 hours on call. The 4 thirds will have the
alternate shift, and I might add that I am the only female in this work
center.”
“Ah, damn the bad luck, I was hopping for a division full of female
beauties, I guess I’ll get by with just one,” Joe said with a great big smile on
his face.
“Yes I think you will get by,” she answered thinking that this guy may really
like her, “and how many females were in your last work center?”
“Ah, well as I recall. None,” he responded. “Anyhow; can you give me an
update on the equipment status?” Joe could have got this information from
the JCO JCD database, but he liked talking to Jane, which was odd for him, he
usually just kept to himself.
“Sure, there is one comm. transmitter tripping off line and two of the boys
are working on that. There are six array modules that are hard faulted and
need to be replaced, and all preventive maintenance is up to date.”
“Good job PJ, have you ever replaced an array module while the ship is
underway?” asked Joe.
“No, but I am sure that you are going to teach me,” she said with a raised
eyebrow.
“You bet, lets round up the tools, replacement parts, and acrylic material,
then when we have everything we need for the job, I’ll schedule a time with
the OOD to do the work.” Joe said. Then added “if you can req. the parts and
round up the tools, I’ll go check on the guys working the transmitter fault,
and see if they need any help.” Joe did not wait for a reply he pocketed his
PC and went off to look at the faulted transmitter.
Jane logged into the terminal to check on part numbers and then order
the parts from supply. The tools she already knew were sitting on the deck
behind her. While she was typing in the req. she realized that she was really
starting to like this guy Joe, and it was not like her to fall so fast for any man.

NSNS Admiral Rostov AKLVC-12

3 June 2747
1245 Local Time

Pat and Liz were at their stations in the cockpit area, both were
receiving reports from the Rostov’s various departments on the ship’s
readiness for getting under way.
“Sir, all departments report ready to get under way,” Liz said into her E&M
set to Pat.
“Very well, OOD ahead one third. XO report in to the Domain our away
status also have the medical team put the BLT under sleep,” Pat replied as
he was watching the reactor status on his display. Both the OOD and Liz
acknowledged the CO with an “Aye sir.”
Liz was listening to Dr. Guyton on her E&M telling her that the Marines
were complaining that it was to early for a nap. “I don’t have time for your
levity right now doctor,” Liz responded with a little irritation in her voice. Liz
also thought it was too soon to start putting any part of the ships company
into sleep, but she knew better than to say so. Liz reviewed the course
setting that the navigator had gave to the Rostov’s computer, the Rostov
was heading for the last planet in this system and was going to use that
planet’s gravitational pull to sling shot the Rostov on to the course heading
for the objective star system.
Pat informed Liz of his plan to have an on call rotating watch section
that was up and awake during the long transit to the objective star system.
The reason for this he told her was the length of time that the Rostov would
travel, about 45 SY, to this objective star, and over eight months to clear this
star’s system. Also he wanted her to get with the battalion commander and
set up a schedule to have the Marines brought out of sleep mode every two
to three years for six months of intensive physical training. Liz concurred
and had the computer set up the watch section, and have the section rotated
every five standard years, she contacted the Marine Commander and
informed her of the CO’s requirement for the Marines during the transit. Also
she informed all those involved in this schedule. Now that the crew and the
Marines were informed of the watch and training schedule, the ship settled
down to a routine that would take almost nine months to transit to the last
planet. Pat ordered all other non-essential crewmembers and the science
staff to be put into sleep mode, as soon as the ship was out of the
gravitational effect of the last planet.
The transit to the last planet was very routine, once they were out of
its gravitational effects of the last planet, the Captain would order that the
watch section take over and that every one else be put into sleep mode.

NSNS Admiral Rostov

22 June 2747
In Transit to Alpha Centauri 12

PJ and Alf were headed aft to the engineering log room on a priority
one, trouble call out, from the JCO. It seems that the log room’s computer
terminals had stopped communicating with the ship’s main computer. When
the two ESEs arrived at the log room it reminded Joe of an old time Keystone
Cop movie he once saw, on the Domain’s video archives. It seemed as if
everyone was running back and forth yelling that they could not
communicate with the main computer from some particular terminal, using a
variety of terminal resident application programs. Joe spotted the watch
officer and said, “Sir, we are here to repair your problem….’ “Thank God,”
Lt. Wizlowski said, “I am terrified that the system has crashed, and we have
lost all our data.”
“Sir, I do not believe that will be the case, each terminal has eight gigabyte
of on board memory, so unless someone has shut down, or done a hard
restart on all the terminals, your data is still there.” “Oh, OK, then what
should we do?” asked the Lt.. “Just work as normal, PJ and I will start to
investigate and repair the problem right now,” answered Joe. “That is great,
have at it, and if you need anything just ask me or one of the people here on
watch, and we will give any support we can.”
Joe smiled, this is good, at least this guy is going to try to help, “thank
you Sir, PJ find the Ethernet switch/router and lets tie into to it with the test
equipment for LANs, and force a soft switch over to the Alternate
Communication LAN, to see if that gets this system back on line, because it
looks to me like these terminals all see each other on the HUB,” said Joe as
he was looking at a diagnostic program on the nearest terminal to him. PJ
called up the drawings on a PC she now had, that was exactly like the one
Joe used, she logged in and displayed the communication
layout/interconnect drawing for the log room, and then the location on the
network, the unit reference designator (URD), and physical location of the
infrared/radio frequency switch/router on the mechanical drawings. She then
located it under a floor panel next to the forward bulkhead and connected
her test equipment to the switch/router. She noticed that the alarm LEDs
were lit and that it had not automatically switched to any of the other three
available LAN connections. PJ then soft commanded a switch to the
Alternate Communications LAN, the alarm LEDs went out, the status LED
went green, and the transmit and receive LEDs started flashing. Joe spotted
this data transmission/reception on the terminal, and that the terminal was
now talking to the ship’s main computer system, and that a massive data
transfer was taking place. He moved over to where PJ was, and looked over
at the LAN test set, “looks like there is more then one problem, connect to
the Primary LAN and see if you can ping back to the main terminal server PJ.”
As the two ESEs were working on this they heard a whoop, and several ‘way
to go guys’ from the log room watch personnel, they were now back on line
and very relived. “Yes there is a least two problems, and this switch/router is
one of the problems,” she said, as she disconnected the Primary LAN fiber
from the switch/router and connected it to the LAN test equipment, this
showed only units tied in aft of the log room and nothing forward.
“OK, what would you like to work on first, the LAN connection or the
switch/router?”
“The LAN connection, that is the system problem, we can always just replace
the switch/router, but the LAN is going to be the headache,” PJ speculated.
“Yeah, your right about the LAN, where is the next place we can tie in the
test equipment and ping the circuit located?” Joe asked as he thought, ‘smart
girl, she knows right off which is going to be the tough one to fix, and what
should have priority.’
PJ called up the drawing for the Primary LAN on her PC, paged over to
the log room, noted the cable number for the fiber cable and then followed it
on the drawing to the next spot forward that they could easily tie the test
equipment into the Primary LAN. The fiber terminated into the wireless
network just forward of the log room and the next easy place to tie into the
LAN on a fiber was a router and this was located in the supply office. She
pointed it out on the drawing to Joe as she then disconnected the test
equipment and reconnected the fiber to the switch/router. “OK, Joe lets
meander smartly down the yellow brick road to the supply office,” PJ said
with a slight smile on her face.
“Lets go take a look PJ, we might get this fixed today,” replied Joe.
Joe entered the supply office with PJ right behind him, he saw two
supply clerks over at a terminal, “Hello, are you the supply LPO,” asked Joe of
the First Class Petty Officer.
“Yeah,” responded the 1st class, “what do you two want?”
This was SK1 Edward “Fatty” Stark; he had done everything he could
think of to stay off the Rostov. During the war he had kiss more ass then was
imaginable to not only make rank, but to also stay in the rear away from any
of the fighting. Now it seemed that he would not make chief petty officer
because he had no combat decorations, and there was no way he could fake
his way into getting one because during the war he was always way back in
the rear. Now his ratting was so top heavy that he would have to score in the
top 2% score range of those taking the exam for chief, and this ate on him
because he also knew that he would never score a mark of 98% or higher.
Stark also had political influence through his sister, who had fucked her way
up into some mid-management position in the government. His sister was
able to keep him out of the fighting areas, but when it came to his
assignment to the Rostov, she did not have the pull to keep him off the ship.
Try as he might, Stark had thought that he was out of the assignment when
he got a call from Vice Admirals Chu’s Chief of Staff telling him to knock it
off, there were only two possible course of action that Stark could take, (1)
go on the Rostov as a 1st class, or (2) go on the Rostov as a 3rd class petty
officer. When Stark called his sister about this she would not take the call,
her secretary kept telling him she was not available. So, here he was, a
small person, or as they call someone like this in the Navy “Chicken Shit”,
and he did not like it one bit on the Rostov.
Stark eyed Joe up and down and thought, ‘if this ugly fuck thinks he
can intimidate me because he a decorated vet., he has got another thing
coming.’
“Well, we have a problem with the Primary LAN and we need to switch …. “
Joe started to explain, when Stark held up his hand and interrupted him,
“sorry Albert, but we are in the middle of an inventory audit and I don’t have
the time for any interference.”
Joe knew about people like this but he seldom had to deal with this
type of jerk. Joe clenched his left hand to keep a grip on himself and not lose
his temper with Stark. As he was thinking on how to go about reasoning with
SK1 Stark, he started to say, “there won’t be any interruptions in your
work…” Stark interrupted him again by saying, “look Albert I am in charge of
this space and all the equipment in it, and if I say no then that’s it, no.”
Jane notice Joe’s clenched fist, a tell-tail sign that Joe was getting
angry, she also had a lot of experience in dealing with people like Stark on
the other two ships she had served on. She called the JCO and told the
Senior Chief on watch what was going on, on her E&M headset. The chief
told her to hang tight and he would take care of it right now by talking to the
supply officer. Jane walked up behind Joe and leaned up against him and
wrapped her arm around him. She then whispered in his ear, “hang tight Joe
and watch.” At just about that time Stark got a surprised look on his face,
and after several yes sirs into his E&M he looked at the two ESEs and said,
“OK, you can go ahead and do your work, ah, I got to go into the holding area
and do some work there,” and Stark bumped his way out of the supply office.
Joe sat down at the terminal next to the other supply clerk, SK3 William
“Billy” Herndon. Joe looked over at Billy and said, “OK, I am going to soft
switch your LAN connection to the ALT LAN, you will not notice a thing in your
data flow, then we will do our test and soft switch your connection back to
the Primary LAN.” After the switch was made and Joe was sure the
everything was correct with the switch over he told PJ to go ahead and
connect the test equipment to the Primary LAN and start the ping from that
point aft.