This Corner of the Universe (5 page)

“No
ships within immediate range, one ship transponder detected twenty light-minutes
starboard, near the edge of Beta Field.  The transponder signal is green and identifies
herself as Renard Ore Extractor Thirteen.  The mining station’s lighthouse
shows green as well but I get no response from the Narvi navigation buoy to our
ping, Captain,” Ensign Jack Truesworth informed and set about to reattempt
contact with the buoy.

Heskan
sat back into his captain’s chair and muttered, “Things sure seem to break a
lot in Durmont’s corner of the universe.”  Indeed, the navigation beacon inside
the Narvi system positioned by the Skathi tunnel point had also been nonfunctional
when they dove into t-space toward Skathi.  Right before the dive, Heskan sent
a burst communication back toward Hulda for Lieutenant Durmont, informing him
that Heskan was keeping his two fleet buoys stored in
Anelace’s
hanger
in case he needed them in Skathi and that another corvette would have to travel
out to replace the failed one at the Skathi tunnel point.  He had not waited
for a reply since it would not have come for several hours, as comm messages
traveled across space at “only” the speed of light.

Glad
I didn’t wait since Durmont would have undoubtedly told me to replace the buoy
in Narvi.  Using that one there and now this one here would mean I’d be
completely out before my mission even started.

“Jack,
once we detach from RT Seventeen, we’ll have to get a buoy up and functioning
near the tunnel point,” Heskan told his sensor officer.  Turning toward the ship’s
navigator, Heskan ordered, “Ensign Selvaggio, please start calculating a course
through the Beta Field to the RALF.”

“Aye,
sir,” Diane Selvaggio answered softly, her olive complexion and brown eyes
revealing familial ties to the New Roma star system.

Heskan
had toured the ship and met the entire crew during the four-day tunnel dive to
Skathi.  He had made special effort to be introduced to his six officers and he
had been impressed with each of them.  As a whole, the crew was certainly young
but each seemed to be interested in their respective jobs and happy to serve,
if even on a “lowly” corvette.  Heskan had taken every opportunity to make
clear that being on a smaller ship meant more opportunities to shine and that
the increased duties meant a much more rounded experience than serving on the
larger ships.  “You bloom where you’re planted,” Heskan had preached.  The old
expression had survived from the days of purely terrestrial militaries.

“RT
Seventeen is hailing us.  She says her speed is now zero light.  I confirm,
sir, we are at relative rest in space.” Truesworth’s voice snapped Heskan’s
attention back to the present.

“Very
well.  Send my regards to the mining station manager and patch me through to
Captain Darmer, please.”

A
nod from Truesworth and Heskan spoke, “Captain Darmer, we’re prepared to be
detached.  Please inform us when your crew is finished and thanks for the
ride.”

RT-17
confirmed and several hours later, the corvette was free from her bonds.  After
more pleasantries, the lumbering tug came about and dove back into the tunnel
point, headed once again toward Narvi. 
Anelace
floated alone at the
tunnel point that was now inaccessible to her.

“Jack,
who’s deploying the buoy?” questioned Heskan.

“Petty
Officer Davis and Spaceman Ford.”

“Okay,
can you locate the dead buoy and send those coordinates down to Davis?”  Heskan
rose from his command chair and moved toward the bridge door.  “I’m going to
observe, it will give me a chance to tour the shuttle bay again.  Lieutenant
Vernay, you have the bridge.”

The petite
blonde responded, “Aye, sir, WEPS has the bridge.”

Lieutenant,
junior grade, Stacy Vernay was proof that good things came in small packages. 
Graduating from the Brevic Naval Academy near the top of her class, she had demonstrated
near savant qualities when it came to weapons operations.  Her personnel file
indicated two weeks before her commissioning to ensign, her assignment drop scheduled
her to deploy to a command cruiser.  Aghast, she begged her academy instructors
to pull strings to get her reassigned to something smaller.  Vernay didn’t want
to be one of dozens of ensigns lost in the shuffle of a large ship.  She wanted
bridge experience and leadership opportunities.  In a rare act of capitulation,
Brevic Personnel Center relented and after serving only two years on the
command cruiser
Brazen
, Ensign Vernay transferred to
Anelace
.  Close
to two more years and one promotion later, Lieutenant Vernay had almost four
thousand hours of logged bridge experience as the head of
Anelace’s
weapons section and hundreds of hours of command experience as the ship’s third
officer. 

In three
months, Vernay was due for promotion to full lieutenant and transfer from
Anelace
. 
She was excited for the increase in rank but still very aware that promotion to
lieutenant was but a modest accomplishment and only slightly more difficult
than the one to lieutenant, junior grade.  She had once sarcastically explained
the requirements to Ensigns Selvaggio and Truesworth, both rapidly approaching
promotion to lieutenant, jg.  “You just have to have a pulse to make jay-gee,”
she had said, “but you have to have a pulse
and
be able to fog a mirror
with your breath for full lieutenant.”  Vernay knew this was an exaggeration
but she also knew that future promotions past lieutenant would be much more
competitive.  Her next assignment would be flowing from Brevic Personnel Center
any week, and, although she looked forward to greater responsibility, she was sad
to leave the
Anelace
family.  In typical fashion, BPC had yet to assign her
replacement.

Vernay,
along with first officer Mike Riedel, Diane Selvaggio manning navigation and
Jack Truesworth at sensors, comprised the entirety of Heskan’s bridge officers. 
Though there were separate chairs for the captain and first officer and while
they would both be on the bridge during emergencies, each normally took a different
watch for routine operations. 
Anelace’s
remaining two officers were the
ship’s engineers who generally stayed in the engineering compartments located
near the aft of the ship.  It was the single largest compartment both in size
and in numbers with Lieutenant Brandon Jackamore as Chief Engineer supervising twenty
enlisted personnel and Ensign Elena Antipova, the junior engineering officer.  With
their hands full keeping power and propulsion systems running smoothly, neither
officer had much opportunity or desire to stand a watch on the bridge. 
Jackamore,
Anelace’s
second officer by virtue of his rank, had never
commanded the bridge in all his time on board.

Compared
to Engineering, the other organizational sections were small.  Navigation,
under Selvaggio, and Sensors, under Truesworth, had but three enlisted crewmembers
in each.  Only the crews in Weapons and Operations could come close to rivaling
Engineering’s number.  Vernay supervised eight enlisted personnel spread out among
Anelace’s
single mass driver and her four pulse lasers while Operations,
under Chief Brown, had eight junior enlisted personnel to cover day-to-day
operations and to act as damage control men and medics in the event of combat. 
The crew of Operations would also act as a marine contingent if the need to
board a freighter arose.

Together,
these forty-three enlisted crewmembers and seven officers comprised the family
that was
BRS
Anelace
.  If
Anelace
was a living thing,
these fifty souls were the life’s blood that flowed through the ship.  The
average age was twenty-two and, Captain Heskan notwithstanding, each crewmember
had been on
Anelace
for at least sixteen months.  “Ana’s a good ship,”
Lieutenant Riedel had told Heskan his first night aboard. 
He was right
,
thought Heskan as he moved quickly down the lower deck toward the ladder
descending to the shuttle bay.  After his descent, Heskan ensured the hanger’s
airlock status indicator was a friendly green and entered.

Anelace’s
shuttle bay was the second
largest ship compartment after Engineering.  Designed to hold a Class C
atmospheric shuttlecraft for general-purpose use, the shuttle bay also acted as
a makeshift hold for large items.  Currently, the bay held two fleet navigation
buoys that
Anelace
had been stocked with prior to her attachment to
RT-17.

Standing
just over six meters, the buoy not only acted as an easily located beacon to
mark where a tunnel drive could safely initiate a dive, it also sequenced ships
into an orderly traffic pattern to ensure safe jumps for each starship when
conditions around a tunnel point were crowded.  More valuable to the sporadic
Skathi traffic, the buoy also could act as a repeater and amplifier for
communication signals, helping punch data streams through the Beta Field
distortion.

Next
to the buoy were two men outfitted in EMUs, Extravehicular Maneuvering Units. 
The EMU attached to the standard Brevic naval spacesuit and allowed for
spacewalks.  Alongside the two suited figures, a third crewman, Sensorman Third
Class Deveraux, helped them make last minute adjustments in preparing the buoy
for deployment.

“PO
Davis, how goes the prep?” Heskan queried.

The sensorman
second class raised the faceplate of his suit.  “We’re nearly ready, sir. 
Spaceman Ford and I will have it operational within a couple hours.”

“That’s
fine, we have plenty of time so there’s no rush,” Heskan replied. “The way these
buoys break in this system, let’s take our time and have a nice, smooth
deployment.” 
We only have one more so we can’t afford anything but that
,
he thought.  “One more thing, Davis, Ensign Truesworth will send you the
location of the dead buoy.  Do you think you can retrieve it?” Heskan asked.

Davis
arched an eyebrow.  “We could, sir, but we really don’t have the necessary
equipment or the spare parts to repair it.  We’d have to cannibalize from the
other functional buoy in the hanger.  Brevic command kind of treats these
things as disposable anyway.” He lightly kicked the side of the buoy.

Heskan
smiled and nodded while waiting for the petty officer to finish his sentence.  “I
don’t want to fix her but I would like to know why she broke.”

Once
the preparation of the new buoy was complete, Heskan and Deveraux retreated
from the shuttle bay to its control room.  From the safety of the control room,
Deveraux’s practiced hands danced over the console’s controls and removed
gravity and atmosphere from the bay.  The entire floor of the aft end of the hanger
opened and Heskan could see infinite space past the bottom hull of
Anelace
. 
He watched as Davis and Ford floated up slightly with the buoy and then over
and down through the aperture.

The
EMU operation took three hours, two hours to deploy the new buoy and test its
functions and one hour to “walk” to the failed buoy, capture it and stow it
inside the hanger.  By the time gravity and air were restored in the shuttle
bay, both sensormen were drenched in perspiration.  Heskan had long since
returned to the bridge to better monitor the spacewalk but kept his comments to
himself.  The operation was Ensign Truesworth’s show to run and Heskan knew
that if he stepped over the young ensign to try and dictate the process, he
would not only show he didn’t trust him but also would garner his resentment. 

With
the mission finished successfully, Heskan leaned back and smiled.  “That was
excellent work, Jack.”  The ensign beamed.  “Make sure you pass along my
compliments to your whole section.”  All three men had been involved: Davis,
Deveraux and Ford.  “Also, I’d like you to begin a forensic analysis of the
dead buoy.  If we can figure out why it died, maybe we can fortify our
remaining buoy.”

“Yes,
sir.  I’d bet it’s a case of radiation exposure but we’ll start from scratch so
we don’t overlook anything.”  Truesworth pressed a button on his console and
started talking to his section.

Heskan
activated his own console on the left arm of his chair to bring up an image of
the Skathi system chart.  Far across the chart from their current position lay
the system’s second tunnel point. 
The Skoll tunnel point and the mining
station are a long way apart.  I want to check on  that other buoy by the Skoll
tunnel point but I suppose we should go meet the station manager first.
  He
closed the system chart and looked to Selvaggio, “Navigation, set course for
the RALF.  ETA?”

Ensign
Selvaggio answered immediately, “Four hours, thirty minutes to reach the
station, sir.”  The time spent traveling through the Beta Field at reduced
speed added an extra hour and a half to the trip but it was still faster than
skirting the asteroid field by moving out of the system’s elliptical plane.

Heh,
she must have been continuously updating the course to answer that quickly
, Heskan smiled inwardly
.  I’m
starting to love this crew
.  Six Allison T-22 drives lit off in unison and
Anelace
spun like a ballerina to point toward the Beta Field, some 20
lm
distant. 

Renard
Number Three Refining and Loading Facility was twenty times larger than
Anelace
. 
Although much of that space was dedicated to the storage and refinement of ore,
it still had roughly twice the livable space than the corvette despite the fact
that it only housed twenty-five technicians.  The RALF had two large docks that
enabled the loading of semi-refined ore onto freighters that would then
transport the resources to whichever planet would process them. 
Anelace
had docked in the auxiliary location as the primary dock was hosting a 500,000
cubic meter HandyMax bulk freighter. 

The orbital
station manager was a short and robust man with greying hair.  His face was
marked with the lines of a man who had seen more than his fair share of stress
and as Heskan entered the station manager’s office, he assumed such was the
case now.  The manager nodded curtly toward Heskan but continued to talk in heavily
Russian-accented English to the freighter captain in the room.  “Further, I
don’t understand why you people bring less than full loads of supplies.  Is difficult
enough to be operating in the frontier but doing it without full allotment of
supplies makes it much worse!”  The station manager looked exasperatedly around
the room before finishing angrily, “It doesn’t even make sense, where is
economic—” he struggled to find the right word, “—fortune in coming all way out
here without full load?  Renard pays by tonnage, not by trip.”

The
freighter captain shrugged helplessly, “We took on what we had room for in our
holds but this tiny station isn’t the only stop we made.  We were full when we
departed Novyah Dom.”  He placed his hands on his hips and cocked his head to one
side.  “If you want a full load maybe you can tell Renard to pay us more to
carry supplies to you.  If not for the money I’ll make on the return trip, I
wouldn’t even bother coming out here.  Skathi is two dives away from the normal
shipping lanes.”

The
grey-haired manager sighed in resignation, “Well, I can’t help things out of my
control but I guess I can’t blame you for optimizing your profits.”  He quickly
checked his desk console.  “It looks like your ship will be full in next hour. 
I’ll enter your disembarking clearance for any time up to Oh-nine hundred.  If
you’re still here after that, contact station tower and they can update.  See
you on next run, Captain.”  The men shook hands and the freighter captain left.

After
taking a few more moments with his desk console, he looked up and said,
“Captain Heskan, I presume?”

Heskan
stepped forward and shook the station manager’s hand.  “That’s correct.  Please
call me Garrett, Mister…?”

“Demyen
Timofei but call me Demyen.  We are pleased to welcome you to Skathi.  Station
crew will relax now that you are here,” Timofei said.  After a slight pause, he
asked, “Where is other ship?  I was told two ships were coming?”

Heskan
suppressed a frown and said, “My station commander informed me that matters had
changed in Narvi and he required the other ship to stay in that system.  I’m
afraid we’re all you’ve got.”

A scowl
appeared on the stout man and the stress lines on his face deepened.  “Your
ship can do everything that is required here?” Timofei asked dubiously.

Heskan
sighed as he shook his head.  “Probably not, Demyen, but we’ll do our best.  I
figure the best position for Anelace is shepherding the freighters between the
Narvi tunnel point and this station.  When there aren’t any freighters, we’ll
stay close to the Beta Field so we can keep an eye on your ore extractors and
help out if they run into trouble.”

The
station manager nodded, “Da.  We notice you have replaced navigation buoy at
tunnel point.  This is a good thing.  Our mineral storage and refining capacity
here is good but our communications ability limited.  Buoy gives us much
clearer transmission—” he paused once more as he searched for the correct
word—“ah, capability.”

Seeing
the Russian descendent struggle for English words, Heskan commented, “Your English
is excellent, Demyen.  Are the others on your station fluent as well?”

“All
who work for Renard Enterprises must be fluent.  So job descriptions say.”  He
smiled.  “Reality is different.  Station crew is mostly from Novyah Zemya and
use Russian.  As result, they lose their English words.  Crew in station tower
speaks very good English.  This is a problem?”

The station tower acted in a
fashion similar to any of the space and air traffic control centers at
planet-side airports.  They directed traffic in and out of the station traffic
lanes.  Heskan thought for a moment and replied, “I don’t think it will be. 
Worst case scenario is we use onboard translators
.”  I wonder if Ensign
Truesworth speaks Russian.

*  *  *

Anelace
spent the day docked to the
RALF.  Her crew off-loaded supplies and began to settle in for the six-month
deployment.  In the mess hall, Heskan loaded up his tray with flat strands of pasta
bathed in a thick, red sauce before walking up to Chief Brown. 

“Boats,”
Heskan said, using the typical moniker for a boatswain.  “Mind if I join you?” 
Always a good idea to show some deference to the ship’s senior enlisted man
,
Heskan thought.

“Of
course, Skipper,” the chief replied easily.  “What’s on your mind?”

Use
tact
, Heskan
thought.  “Chief, I’ve been impressed with Operations since we started out from
Narvi and I know that you guys are stretched thin with everything you do on
Anelace.”  Nearly six years ago, Heskan had started a similar conversation with
his problem petty officer second class but used the words “for
Fearless
”
instead of “on
Fearless
.”  The PO2 had then gone behind his back and up
the chain of command to complain about how Heskan was intentionally driving the
morale down in her section by implying that her people weren’t truly part of the
Fearless
crew.  The ridiculous distortion was just one of many footnotes
in a long list of slights the petty officer had compiled against Heskan.  Since
then, Heskan tried to parse his words more carefully even though he thought it
ludicrous that military officers had to worry about such things.  It was a
simple truth that the Brevic military, like all militaries, mirrored its
society.

Brown
shoveled his dinner of pasta into his mouth and grunted.

“However,
I have to put a little more on your plate.”  This drew a glance from the
greying enlisted man.  “At some point, I think we’re going to have to board
some of the incoming and outgoing freighters.  Whether it’s an emergency on an
ore hauler or just a routine inspection, I’m going to want to put some navy
folks on those freighters.  I know your guys have their hands full…”  Brown
waved him off.

“No
problem, Capt’n.  Operations traditionally acts as marines on these ‘vettes.  I
keep everyone trained up fer boardin’ operations an’ once a month we do
exercise inspections in the shuttle bay.”

Heskan
sighed with visible relief. 
God, I love senior chiefs.

Brown
continued, “I go over with ‘em sometimes though, Capt’n.  Our last skipper
didn’t like that but I can’t ask my folks to do what I’m not willin’ to do
myself.”  Brown looked up from his tray at Heskan before adding, “I hope you
can understand that.”

“I
wouldn’t expect anything less, Chief.  Plus, I don’t plan on inspecting every
freighter that enters the system.  In fact, I want to wait a bit so word gets
out Anelace isn’t conducting inspections.  Once the freighter captains get back
into a routine, then I want to surprise them.  I doubt we’ll find anything but,
if we’re out here, we might as well be useful.”  Heskan took the first bites of
his food and was pleasantly surprised.  The pasta was quite good and the sauce
had just enough zest to keep it interesting.

“What
about inspectin’ the RALF itself, Skipper?”

Heskan
thought about that.  “Not right away.  I don’t want Mr. Timofei getting the
wrong impression.  He’s already lost some station crew in ore extractor
accidents and we’re here to help him, not police him.  However, once we get to
know each other a little better, I’d like to conduct a base inspection at some
point with his blessing.”

The
chief looked off into the bulkhead for a few seconds.  “You could just make ‘em. 
There are regulations that’ll allow fer that.”

Heskan
agreed, “Yes, but I think we won’t have to resort to that.  If I get proof that
there’s something on that station that is hurting his mining operations, I’d
bet Demyen would request a surprise inspection himself.  I hope I haven’t
misread him but I think he’s on our side.”

Navy
ship captains were powerful animals.  Even the captains of tiny corvettes had far-reaching
leeway with naval regulations that afforded them a substantial amount of
power.  The navy, back when Bree was still part of the Solarian Federation, had
learned that restricting ship captains who were hundreds of light-years and
weeks away from higher authority was a recipe for disaster.  Ship captains were
often expected to act boldly and handcuffing them with regulations and strict
oversight prevented that.  Consequently, regulations had been carefully crafted
to give a ship captain as much flexibility as possible when dealing with “situations.” 
They were designed to help bolster the image that a ship captain always had the
authority to do what was needed, at least in front of the captain’s
subordinates.  The crew of any ship depended on believing that their captain
had the moral high ground and the law on his side.  Uncertainty around the crew
could harm morale as badly as an enemy’s broadside. 

That
doesn’t necessarily apply in front of your boatswain,
Heskan thought. 
This man has
almost thirty years in service, which is nearly three times as much as I have. 
He knows this is my first command and he’s probably more surprised that I’m
willing to confide some doubt with him rather than acting as if I already have
all the answers.  I hope that’s the case, at least.
 

The
silence while the two men ate was not an uncomfortable one.  The conversation
had ended and neither man felt the need to fill the gap with meaningless
chatter.  As Heskan was finishing up, second shift ended and Ensign Selvaggio
walked up to the table with a tray full of some kind of fish.  “May I join you
gentlemen?” she asked.

“Of
course,” Heskan smiled.  The raven-haired woman sat across the table from
Heskan and reached for one of the most precious of all naval provisions, the
salt.  “Diane, Anelace detaches from the RALF in about an hour.  After we clear
her, I’d like to travel over to the Skoll tunnel point to see if we can locate
and inspect that other buoy.  It still hasn’t responded to any of our pings”

Selvaggio
smiled, pointed at her full mouth and chewed quickly.  After a dramatic swallow
she said, “Yes, sir.  I have Navigator Second Class Ball calculating the
course, which I’ll check after supper.”

She
took a long drink from her glass before adding, “I think Jack has his sensor
crew sweeping the tunnel point for the buoy but he’s having no luck locating it
this far out.”

“That’s
understandable, given the buoy ain’t emittin’ an’ we’re five an’ a half light-hours
away,” the chief added.  Selvaggio nodded and opened her mouth to speak but a
chime sounded on Heskan’s datapad.

The sound
of a young man’s voice asked, “Captain Heskan?”  Heskan reached over to his
datapad and answered the comm query from the bridge to see Sensorman Third
Class Deveraux’s face. 

“Sir,
we have a tunnel drive disturbance at the Narvi point and now we’re receiving a
freighter’s beacon thirty-five light-minutes distant.  Her beacon is green and
IDs her as an ore hauler named Nomad.  Sensors confirm a ship but we’re too far
out to make the type,” he said.

“Very
well, Deveraux.”  Heskan punched the connection closed and looked up to
Selvaggio and Brown.  “Our first customer.  Let’s scrap the plans about Skoll
and move out to escort Nomad to the station.  Once it’s docked, we can then
press on to the Skoll tunnel point and find that buoy.”

Heskan
excused himself and proceeded to his cabin.  It was spacious compared to any of
the other quarters but still cramped.  There was room for little more than a
bed and a desk with a chair, although the cabin also had a small, attached bathroom
with a sanitary shower.  The sanitary shower was a dry shower that used ultrasonic
waves to kill the bacteria on his body.  While a person was technically clean
after a sani-shower, he still did not feel clean because none of the sweat or
bacteria was removed.  The ship also had two water showers, which were used
extensively.  Adjacent to Heskan’s private bathroom was a smaller closet he
used to store his clothes and other personal items.  The small quarters didn’t
bother Heskan, who was used to living a spartan lifestyle.  He had no pictures
on his desk, no military plaques from other assignments adorning his walls or anything
that could be considered the “I love me” walls officers typically displayed in
their offices. 

He
supposed that at some point in his career he would have one, even if he didn’t
display all the medals he had been awarded—one in particular came to mind.  For
now, all he cared about was the lessons he learned during his past assignments,
not the physical possessions he had garnered from them. 
That’s all that
matters
, he thought,
learn from the mistakes, like on Derringer, and
pray that they aren’t repeated.