Beyond Pi Snippet 1

 So I sent the manuscript off to Rea. 

 

Port Royal

Vice AdmiralHoratio Logan stared at the schedule. So far so good but they were hanging inthere by the skin of their teeth and tips of their fingernails.

He snorted at histhought. He had started the project with the factory ships Ptah, Io11, and the engineering spaces on the various ships in the Hero's Riseflotilla. Oh, and the mountain of material that had come in from Rho. Buildingthe industry to build the Dyson shell and the industry to build the gate hadbeen a bitch. But there was a reason he'd released Io 11 and Ptahto other duties; they were no longer needed. The industry wasself-sustaining at this point.

Well, with a bitof help from shipments from Rho of course. Like the convoy that had recentlycome in. Six more large and eighteen smaller force emitters had arrived. Theywere halfway to building the gate at this point and he was happy.

It had only costthem a half a dozen moons, an unknown number of asteroids, and a couple ofdwarf planets, not to mention a lot of the stockpiled material the pirates hadstolen and hoarded to get there on his end.

He checked thelatest news. Beau would of course highlight anything relevant to his command orto the sector. There were a couple of dozen entries; the couriers had picked up news along the route to him butnothing about Port Royal or the gate. That was a relief.

One damn leak wasall it had taken to ruin his day almost five years ago he thoughtblackly. He didn't want another—hence, the additional security at the jump points.

Ships nowunloaded at the jump point, transferring their contents to orbital warehousesunder the guns of the picket and orbital fortresses there. The orbital fortswere Mulberry class affairs, one command fort at each jump point thatcontrolled an array of mines and weapon platforms.

He wanted, nay,craved more, and he'd get it in time, but for the moment he was stuck with whathe had. The other forts had been redirected to New Cornwall. He had the StateDepartment and Admiral Irons signing off on it to thank for that.

Politics he thought inannoyance.

"My, you arein a mood," Lieutenant Beau, his A.I., observed in asoft contralto in his ear.

"Alittle."

"Why? Aren'tyou happy we aren't in the news?"

"No news isnot necessarily good news. But in this case, I'll take what Ican get I suppose. At least our people are taking the security classificationseriously. Finally," he growled.

It had only takena couple of court-martials and captain's masts to get the point across. Most ofthe leakers had acccepted NJP or Non-Judicial-Punishment and a removal of their security clearance for the leak. Forfetier of pay, reduction inrank—none of that would get the secrecy of the star system back.

At least they'dgotten the media to censor the information from feeds that were sent tononincorporated worlds. ONI and SIS were keeping an eye on them to make sure ofit.

It wouldn't beforever. He knew it, and they knew it. But until they took down the pirates in hisArea of Operations it was technically still classed as a war zone. Hence, the legality of the censorship.

He shook his headas he rocked his chair a little. "Just moody I guess. It started withannoyance over the leak and then went to politics."

"Ah. So,situation normal?"

He snorted."Something along those lines. I'd like to get a handle on state. Or betterstill, get someone to sit on them and or duct tape their mouths shut so theywill stop dipping into our toy box. I don't have the ships to deploy in endlesssupply like they seem to think," he growled.

"Agreed andunderstood, sir," Beau said in a sympathetic tone ofvoice.

"In otherwords, preaching to the choir and you've heard it all before. Sorry."

"That's whatI'm here for, sir, sounding board among other jobdescriptions," Beau replied with a smile in her voice. He knew it wasdesigned to get him to buck up a little. It did help.

His command hadits share of mixed luck over the past five years, but he had toadmit it was better than what was going on in Rho and Sigma.

Rho had sufferedthe battle of Horath and the seeming end of the Horathian threat. To him andother naval personnel, it was a painful thing; they'd lost a lot of good freinds in the nova bomb. A lot werestill classified as missing in action too, though hopes of any of them turningup five years later were dim at best.

Admiral Irons hadweathered the political storm from it but it hadn't been easy. It had left alot of scars, but the admiral was hanging in there, grimlydetermined to see it through. It being the reestablishment of the Federation asa galactic government and civilization, the end of the pirates, and a few otherthings along the way.

One of which washis project for his sins.

He was a sleeperlike the admiral, having grown up during the golden age of the Federation over sevencenturies ago. He'd fought in the Xeno war and had been lost in an escape podwhen his ship had fallen short of getting to safety in Pyrax. He'd drifted forcenturies in sleep. When he'd awoken, it had been overa century prior. He'd been a borderline slave, chief engineer of the miningstation Anvil.

He'd had beenlonely and nearly driven insane by his implants wanting him to suicide. Buthe'd doggedly persisted in what he percieved as his duty to keep the lights onin the station. He'd met and married a beautiful woman, had a daughter, mournedhis wife, and had been nearly killed trying to keep things together just beforeAdmiral Irons had shown up to save the day.

He'd reenlistedwhen the pirates had threatened to attack. They'd salvaged ships like Firefly,built a task force that had captured the enemy task force, then used theirresources to build a growing shipyard and naval complex before Admiral Ironshad been forced out of the star system.

He'd been stuckin command for years until Admiral Irons had set up a capital in Antigua. Thenhe'd had a series of misadventures in Bek, another last minute save by AdmiralIrons, and then he'd been sent here.

Where he wasstill trying to hang onto things.

Sigma on theother hand was a mess. Fifth and what was left of Second Fleet were out theresomewhere, hunting for “Catherine Ramichov, pirate empress” and her fleet aswell as her salvaged battle moon. So far, no such luck finding either.

Her father hadstarted a course of genocide, unleashing plagues first in Rho, then Tau, Sigma,Pi, and quite possibly beyond. Rho had stamped out the plagues, but the other sectors were still struggling.

Well, he had itout and most of the populations vaccinated in Federation controlled space.Unincorporated space and neutral star systems were a different story.

He held commandon his space station Command One. From here he could see and direct theprogress on the two titanic projects under his control. But he had anothermission too, one that had so far failed utterly.

He had beentasked with clearing his Area of Operations of pirates. That had turned out tobe easier said than done. Part of it had been due to bad luck, another to alack of resources, and a third reason was the meddlings of politics.

Four years ago, he had felt confident enough to reform the Hero's Risetask force and dispatch the ships to Tortuga. Unfortunately, they hadn't gottenfar and had been brought back due to a collision with a rogue grav wave. Theescort carrier and several other ships had hit it and suffered engineeringcasualties onboard. There had been twenty-six deaths, and thirty-nine injuredon Hero's Rise alone. Murphy, the spirit of mischief, chaos, and badluck, had certainly put in an appearance that day.

They had nearlylost the ships; they'd lost grav nodes and had suffered hulland internal damage. The task force had dropped out of hyperspace to make whatrepairs they could. They had limped back to Port Royal at low octaves of Alphanearly a year later.

It had beenanother black eye for the navy to handle right after Horath. The media had goneinto a bit of a feeding frenzy over it.

He hadn't beenable to follow the attack up with a proper one since. The attempts to scoutTortuga with prowlers had so far failed. He'd finally signed off on a long shotto try it from another angle.

It was going tobe months before they got there and months more before the intel got back tohim. Only then would he allow another mission to be planned and launched.

It bothered himto let the pirates have all that free time. They had a mothball yard and plentyof motivation to do something about it. But for the moment, his hands were tied.

"Just …moody I guess," he said again.

~~(O)~~

Lieutenant Beaumonitored her principle's vital signs and realized she wasn't going to be ableto cajole him any further at the moment. She searched for a bit of good news, but there wasn't anything there for the moment. Not even a letterfrom Shelby, the admiral's daughter. Pity about that.

She had beengrown within the admiral's implants when he'd upgraded to flag officer. She'dbecome a smart A.I. after the events in Bek. She wished she'd been moresentient then; she could have and would have helped him insome capacity to endure his captivity better. At least, she liked to think shecould have done something.

At the moment, she was realizing that helpless “feeling” again. She hoped it wouldn't last and that Horatio would see theglass as half full again soon.

~~(O)~~