Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer) (123 page)

Hir'ruk:
Veraxin Chief logistics officer

M'Runi
: Veraxin communications tech.

Blur:
Telerite purser

Q’Bert:
Naga security officer

Numiria:
Neo jackal doctor. Husband is chief of sanitation Neo
Hyena
Lobo.

Lieandra:

Captain
Yen ‘Kelly:
Veraxin captain. Old,
past his prime but eager to help in order to improve his ship and unload some
of his excess passengers.

Antigua Prime:

Cybers:

Yan
Fu + wife Hishina Fu:
Leaders of the
pacifist and old guard parties.

Kenny
Kennet:
Lawyer, follower of the Fu's.

Averies:
Dilettante and self taught programmer
of cybers.

Sid
and Emily Berkheart:
Directors of
Human resources.

Doctor
Megan Trask:
Head of the medical
department.

Ron
and Rachael Steward
: Neo bears, 1
grizzly, 1 half human half black bear. Life Support managers. They like Averies
trained themselves to run and repair what they could after the station went
dark. They usually give their council proxy to the Fu's to vote since they are
so busy.

Doctor
Templeton Myers:
Head of science and
R&D.

Ribber:
Gashg gardener. Signed over his proxy to Yan Fu
before resigning from the council. He is a pacifist, preferring to attend to
his garden over dealing with people.

The
Warners, 1
^st
Lt Taylor Warner and ensign Rasha Warner:
Sleepers awakened over 100 years ago. Their son is
the exec of Kiev 221. Both have been placed in the reserves and are currently
the system naval commanders.

AI:

The
muses:
all class one dumb AI

Clio:
historian/researcher. repurposed to
manage the first fusion reactor.

Euterpe
and Terpsichore:
Music and Dance: air
heads, entertainment coordinators and directors

Thalia:
Muse of comedy: recovered. Rebuilt.

Urania:
Astronomy: science. Found and
recovered. Brought online.
Assistant to doctor Myers in science and
teaching.

Mnemosyne:
Memory computer management Smart AI. Took a lot of
her higher functions down to keep system running. Did permanent damage to
herself. She has to be reintegrated as each fragment is recovered. She is an
experimental civilian AI.

Tribal leaders:

Romeo:
Terran male.

Y'ru:
Veraxin, old but wise.

Juliet:
Terran female. Genie descendant.

Sheriff
Derrango:
Curly handle bar mustache,
old, silver hair, beady eyes. Laid back attitude. Has a wife, kids, and grand
kids.

Deputy
Barney Fife:
Nervous gangly 1
^st
deputy. Terrible shot, very by the book person. The Sheriff frequently uses him
as a foil to get others to accept his directives.

General Staff On the station:

Savo
and Petunia:
Primate neo chimp
security officer and Neo gorilla space worker. Transferred from Kiev 221

Howi
and Shari:
Tribal members. Neo
chimps. Both have become welders on the station.

Sparks
and Regina:
40's something couple
transferred from Kiev 221. Sparks is an electrician, Regina is a SBA training
to be a nurse.

Mr.
Freeze and Ezri:
Freeze is a lifetime
friend of Sparks. Partner, HAC tech. Ezri is his wife; she is a RN and surgical
nurse. 1 adult child left on Kiev 221.

Ralphie
and Alice:
50's couple bartenders
from Kiev 221. Adult son left in charge of bar on Kiev 221. Own Ralphie's bar
and grill and Alice's nail salon.

Gwen,
Riff, and Torg:
Tauren engineers who
transferred to the station from Kiev 221.

Doctor
Kraft:
Sleeper from Kiev,
specializing in implant surgeries. Dr. Kraft is old, a former teacher of
implant tech.

Antiguans:

Governor
elect mayor Jeff Randall and his wife Sandra
: Politically charismatic couple set on changing their world. 2
daughters, Ramona/Kylie, age six and four.

My bog:

http://cyberforge3d.blogspot.com/

Interesting web comics:

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/

http://www.vexxarr.com/Index.php

http://www.sluggy.com/

And I can't forget my friend Mechmaster's Dalek comic:

http://www.mechmaster.co.uk/cg-lair/daleks_page1.htm

My cousin's blog:

http://bossymoksie.wordpress.com/

Some of the material references I used:

http://anthro-glamour.deviantart.com/gallery/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracellular_matrix

http://www.google.com/patents/US5489304

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-dimensional_chess

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_exoskeleton

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_proverbs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus-Eaters

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon#Exile_on_Saint_Helena

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0881991.html

Here is an sneak peek at the upcoming sequel to
Jethro
goes to war
titled “
Jethro, First to Fight
.” Expect it late 2013 or
early 2014 if not sooner! I'm a quarter done writing it already!

The next day Valenko's team
participated in a practice extraction op. The squad they were covering was on
its way across a variety of terrain, most of it forest. First lieutenant Myers
was a prickly human, by the book and not experienced in ground combat. The
squad has a few wounded and it's a tricky op to participate in. Their
coordination has to be spot on, and the bear is pretty sure the other platoons
were more interested in pounding his team flat rather than winning the
scenario.

It's a complex scenario, one he's
pretty sure will tax all the systems and people involved before it is done. To
make it interesting he decided right off to change a few things. Time to teach
a few people about not only thinking outside the box but staying the hell out
of the box all together.

The dropship was a heavy marine
ascraft, one designed for planetary ops. They didn't have many in the inventory
just yet but it was on their TOE so they trained for it until their squadron
could be delivered some, hopefully next week. She was a Prejudice class VTOL, a
manta shaped beast painted in smart camo that adapted to the forest colors. Her
wingtips had nacelle engine pods that swiveled down as she went into a hover,
or horizontal for normal flight. She could handle reentry but she was small.

A prejudice class ascraft was a
utilitarian bird; she had clamps on her underside that held a pod or a military
vehicle. Right now she had a pod that could hold two squads of lightly armed
marines... if they were friendly. In the case of the Neo's currently on
board... very friendly.

There was a door leading to the
cockpit pod on one end and the boarding ramp on the other. The dropship had a
crew of four, two pilots, a crew chief and an engineer. The engineer sometimes
doubled as a door gunner if things got to hot.

She was definitely different than
the birds they rode in during boot. Those birds had been ancient civilian
conscripts the navy had picked up. Only one craft had been a military bird, one
from Fuentes that Major Forth had tapped as his personal craft.

He was of two minds about the
prejudice. It lacked the size and legs to really move gear, but it's ability to
multitask was both an asset and a burden. Her ability to multitask was probably
why the powers that be were focused on using her design. She couldn't do every
job perfectly but she could haul freight, people, or vehicles and do a fast
turnaround to another task. She shared a lot of common parts with other similar
craft and had a reputation as a hardy craft that was easy to maintain. She
could also refuel in flight which was great.

Of course if you didn't have the
right pod the people she carried would be just a bit put out over how they'd be
carried. You couldn't change missions on the fly either. He didn't picture
hanging onto the underside of the thing as a good idea.

Right from the beginning he
dropped his snipers in to cover the extraction before moving in with the
dropship. Jethro and his two apprentice snipers were dropped several kilometers
out from the extraction point, they rappelled down to the tree canopy rapid
fire in under ten seconds. It would be a short walk for them to the LZ, in this
case an open meadow in the middle of a virtual poplar and spruce forest. The
opposing force would be looking and listening for the dropship, not for a group
of people on the ground. The dropship would hold off, backing off to move in an
orbit around the primary LZ and wait.

A second prejudice was orbiting
in a figure eight in a staging pattern one hundred clicks out. He was tempted
to pull the ship, to have it go orbital and then drop on the site but that
would light it up like a spot light to any thermal sensors on the ground.

He was fairly certain that the
second bird was a flying coffin. Who ever had set this up had probably set it
up with the idea of trapping the team on the ground in order to force their
hand, to grind them down with no escape. The best way to deal with that was to
one change the canned flight path of the prejudice holding, and two fight on
their own battlefield. He put a call in to the second prejudice as the plan
formed in his mind. It would be tricky to execute but he was fairly certain it
would work.

The lion private Kovu was still
coming along when it came to moving quietly in the bush

Jethro thought as they creeped
forward. He had taken the time to put on camo paint on the flight out like all
the others. His short cut black mane was greased with brown and green, as they
walked he occasionally snatched twigs and small branches off trees and bushes
and added them to his camouflage. He'd picked that up in his training with
Jethro.

Jethro nodded in approval. Fonz
was smaller than Kovu but he looked like he was doing okay as their rear guard.
They were running light so hopefully he’d be able to keep up, Jethro thought
darkly. Hell, hopefully his two fellow snipers wouldn’t get too excited and pop
off before they were ready! They knew the consequences of that, Valenko would
tear strips out of them, at least he hoped they realized that. Hell better know
that the Neobear would only get what was left after them when he was finished
with them! But his ass was riding right along with them right now so they
better not frack up.