The Unscheduled Mission (13 page)

“Damn it!” Arn was swearing. “One of those murderers got away.”

“If that was Jance’s ship, I swear I’ll track him down across the galaxy,” Park vowed.

“I’ll go with you,” Dannet added, surprising Park. “He has dishonored the entire
Alliance,” Dannet explained.

“Right now I’m more concerned with the people here,” Arn replied. “Let’s get to the spaceport. There’s a lot of work to be done.”

The spaceport was in ruins. Not a single building had survived the attack. “Five people were killed when the Control building went up,” Park reported grimly some hours later when he and Arn were finally forced by the others to take a break. “The other twenty-four who were on duty are in the hospital, but I hear they are expected to recover.”

“Twenty-four miracles,” Arn nodded. “What hit them?”

“Ronnie thinks it was an X-Ray phaser,” Park replied. “It was certainly some sort of energy weapon. She wants to go over those two ships with a fine toothed comb to see what she can learn. I told her, ‘Happy Birthday.’ Maybe she can figure out how some of their weapons work.”

Arn looked over at the two still-smoking hulks that had destroyed the runway when they crashed. “More power to her if she can get anything out of them. Our own guns did a job on those ships. Too bad one got away.”

“Jance didn’t,” Park replied. “The one over there was his command ship. No survivors.”

“I still want to eat his liver,” Arn growled.

“That’s disgusting,” Park opined. “Oh. I felt the same way last night, but you know, thinking about it, I’d rather have him alive to stand trial. It’s what he wanted for me.”

“Not that he knew it,” Arn pointed out.

“He demanded my surrender to him,” Park recalled.

“He demanded we surrender ‘Black Captain McArrgh.’” Arn corrected Park. “Jance never knew that was you. That stupid joke of yours might have saved lives, come to think of it.”

“How do you figure that?” Park asked.

“He brought three large warships, right?” Arn replied. “Dannet says they generally carry two to four hundred troops on such ships and we are fairly certain they weren’t empty. Furthermore, every such ship has a small team of elite commandos. I seriously think he was hoping to have Captain McArrgh in the negotiations so he could order your arrest one night.”

“Maybe,” Park allowed, “We already know he was a treacherous bastard. How does that save lives?”

“When Dannet told me about the commandos, I had a couple teams of my own on duty,” Arn replied. “I had them watching those ships in case anyone left other than to come to the talks.”

“Like the scientists?” Park suggested.

“We cleared the scientists quickly enough,” Arn admitted. “There were only a handful of them and they’re all on their own projects. Besides we assigned our own people to help them.
 
Had there be anything suspicious I would have known, but I was concerned about those elite troops Dannet assured me would be on the ships. So had they tried a search and grab op on you, I had men ready to stop them.”

Park thought about that. “I didn’t like the fact that we had so many military types in the colony. It seemed like a waste of talent, but I guess they proved as useful as our farmers. Oh, I see. So you figure that if they tried and failed to grab me, they might have tried sending out the troops in force?”

“That’s a possibility,” Arn nodded. “I wasn’t thinking like that at the time though. I was just concerned about those special forces on board. Now I figure that any so-called diplomat that would order an attack while under a flag of truce would do just about anything. We can’t just accept this either, you know. We’re going to have to take this fight back to those bastards.”

“And what sort of ship should I command next?” Park asked sardonically. “A rowboat? They got
Trenisi
with their first shot and
Phoenix Child
is still in the shipyard.”

“And none of our ships is armed like yours was,” Terius added, as he hop-stepped up behind them. “I’m thinking now I have been too trusting of the flag of truce.”

“Yeah,” Park nodded. “I’m going to send Ronnie Sheetz over to the Quetso Shipyard and see if she can do something to speed up the production of
Phoenix Child
. Two months is a long time to wait. While she’s there, I’m sure she’ll be glad to help your boys and girls arm the rest of your fleet.”

“Good,” Terius nodded. “We need to be able to fight back.”

“You know we lost another two men in the fires last night,” Arn added to Park, “and five more injured.”

“Add it to the
Alliance tab,” Park advised. “I plan to present the bill personally. Terius, how long before we can get another three ships built?”

“Three ships?” Terius asked, astonished.

“Yes, I’m getting tired of having all my fire power in a single vessel,” Park replied. “It leaves us vulnerable to attacks like this. If we had other ships, we could have gone after the one that got away and then made a retaliatory strike on Luna.”

“The Quetso Shipyard has been hiring more workers and although I would have to check, my guess is that it would be a year at least,” Terius replied. “Three ships? Really?”

“At least,” Park nodded. “We need to be able to have them in orbit, ready to defend the world. We both know this is not over. The
Alliance is going to send more ships and I would prefer to meet them before they land.”

“We sure can’t afford any more incidents like this,” Arn agreed.

“I won’t tolerate any more like this,” Park told him.

Veronica Sheetz was eager to go to the shipyard and oversee the building of the new ship. “I’d like to take Velvet with me,” she told Park. “I know the hardware, but she’s a wiz on the computer systems and we work together well.”

“Good,” Park agreed. “Maybe the two of you can find a way to get those ships built faster.”

“It shouldn’t take much,” Ronnie laughed. “The Mer spaceships are all hand-crafted. They don’t build enough to bother with assembly line techniques, I guess. Now that we’re ordering three of them, however, well, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Park told her. “Arn tells me that Terius is ordering another eight ships as well, so any speed that does not sacrifice safety is a good thing.”

“Oh these will be safer than the
Hudson
or
Trenisi
in any case,” Ronnie assured him. “For starters our magnetic shielding is now an integral part of the design. It should increase efficiency by fifty percent, freeing up power for the weapons systems.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Park commented. “What was that beam of light you shot at the
Alliance ships?”

“That?” Ronnie laughed. “It was just a phaser. They don’t work so well in atmosphere. The beam fuzzes out fairly rapidly and you just don’t have much range. And they ionize the air something wicked, but we got one of those bastards with it.”

“That you did,” Park agreed. “Did you learn anything from the wreckage?”

“Nothing useful,” Ronnie admitted. “I could swear they built their weapons to break.”

“Maybe they did,” Park conjectured. “All the better for keeping military secrets.”

“Keeping them from whom?” Ronnie asked. “Not us. Until last year they didn’t even know we existed and the Mer never fought back.”

“If Earth were their only military concern, they wouldn’t have such a variety of weapons,” Park replied. “There’s another enemy to the
Alliance. Dannet told me that much, but even he doesn’t know anything about them. It’s kept top secret and the
Alliance pretends it doesn’t exist – fluffs them off as a conspiracy theory.”

“I heard there were worlds outside the
Alliance,” Ronnie added. “That doesn’t seem to be a secret.”

“Yes, but the
Alliance doesn’t admit to being at odds with any of them,” Park told her. “Dannet has been amazingly forthcoming about that sort of thing. He volunteers that sort of information without my having to ask.”

“He’s just a kid, you know,” Ronnie pointed out.

“He’s an adult,” Park corrected her, “and he’s trained not to divulge military secrets. It’s just that the stuff he tells me isn’t considered a secret. The
Alliance’s priorities are different from ours. That’s to be expected, especially since their society, or societies, are different from anything we’ve known. So stuff we would keep secret is out in the open and vice versa. Not a lot, of course – they aren’t that different, but every so often I get surprised. Well, good luck with the shipyard.”

“Oh this will be fun,” Ronnie laughed. “I have a few more ideas for weapons and our defenses, I intend to try out.”

“And make sure the internal design has cabins and bunks for long trips,” Park reminded her. “And more than just two compartments.
Phoenix Child
represents a new larger class of ship and it will be silly if we keep everything off the bridge in one big room.”

“I’ve already discussed that with Iris,” Ronnie told him. “
Phoenix Child
will have three decks. The lowest is the weapons and storage deck, similar to what we had on the
Hudson
and
Trenisi
. The main deck will have compartments for Engineering, mission-specific stuff and sleeping quarters, although the walls and bunks will have to be fold-out. It’s more efficient that way. Then on the upper deck you’ll have the bridge and command cabins as well as a special cabin for the weapons specialists. We’ll all have a bit of room to move around and I’m trying to keep all systems accessible while we’re in space.”

“Weapons consoles aren’t on the bridge?” Park asked.

“No reason they need to be, Iris says.”

“I wish she had said that to me,” Park commented.

“We’re going to have more weapons systems on the new ships than we did and two or three weapons officers will be more efficient than one in that case. Iris, or whoever is in charge when you go up, will still be on the bridge with her master console, but she’ll be relaying orders to the specialists in the back.”

“But won’t that slow response time down if she has to repeat everything the captain says?” Park asked.

“If she had to verbally, it might,” Ronnie admitted, but a lot of that will be done via her console. The weapons seat on the bridge will have the master controls. From there she can take over all systems if she has to, but more likely she’ll be able to assign targets to the specialists in back. She feels that will be less distracting to Command.”

“We’ll see,” Park decided. “Neither of us are military, so we’ll just have to figure it out as we go along.”

“I’d been meaning to mention that to you,” Iris admitted that evening, “but other things kept coming up. I’ve been training six others in our weapons systems and they’re coming along nicely. Velvet worked up a simulator for me to try out the multiple stations and it seems to work well in practice at least. There was a major lag in our response time at first, but, with the override controls in the master console, we worked that out easily enough.”

“What? So you just start doing all the shooting?” Park asked.

“I could,” Iris admitted, “but not really. We worked out that in cases when we are facing more than one enemy ship, I could assign targets from the master console and that would automatically be assigned to one of the others in the weapons room. However, situations change rapidly so while each of the other three consoles can only fire at the assigned targets, the master can fire at anything and in a case where two consoles are trying to operate the same system, the master wins.”

“That could run into problems too,” Park commented.

“We had a bit of trouble coordinating at first,” Iris admitted. “The officer at the master console has to learn when to guide and when to try to do everything, but it doesn’t take too long to figure that out and I’ve been having them all take turns at the master console, so anyone can sit there on a shift.”

There was the sound of an opening door and Marisea hop-stepped into the house. “Hi, Park, Iris,” she greeted them as she flopped into the chair across from the couch Park and Iris were sitting on, flipping her dolphin-like tail
 
out from under her as she fell. “Long day!”

“What have you been doing?” Park asked.

“Working with the kids as usual,” Marisea replied.

“The Atackack students?” Park asked to clarify.

“Of course,” Marisea laughed. “They learn fast, you know. I think most of them will be ready for University next year, maybe even a class or two each this next semester.”

“Oh?” Iris asked. “Are you planning to take them with you to Marto Lesta?”

“No, didn’t you know?” Marisea asked. “The University is coming here. They are setting up a campus in Van Winkle Town and have assigned me here for the next year.”

“That wasn’t scheduled for another three years,” Park remarked.

“They pushed the schedule up,” Marisea told him.

“Why haven’t I heard about it?” Park asked.

“I just heard an hour ago,” Marisea admitted.

The Comm set rang. “Answer.” Park spoke the command without getting out of his chair. Nearby, a screen lit up with Arn’s face in it. “Park, we heard from the University today.”

“They’re opening the local campus here next month, right?” Park commented.

“You already heard?” Arn asked.

“I have my sources,” Park chuckled. “Did they say why?”

“It seems a lot of their students want to come here and they are bowing to the pressure,” Arn replied. “It will only be a small campus at first, somewhat limited curriculum, but everything first year students will need along with a few advanced classes.”

“Did you happen to mention we don’t currently have an airport here?” Park asked. “And there aren’t any roads between here and any Mer city.”

“I know,” Arn nodded. “That‘s really why I was calling. I was hoping to convince you to oversee the work on a new runway, so we can start getting supplies in.”