Frozen Soul, and other works: Chapter 136

(Yokosaki Spaceport, Nuevo Edo)

Doctor Wellington Ehyu looked around the spaceport as he stepped off the Starlight Raven, and nodded slowly to himself. “I see you went with one of the standard spaceport profiles when setting this place up. What about the walls? There any animals I should know about?”

I laughed at that, and said, “Well, only if you count the legions of sex-starved women, Doctor. Until recently, this planet was over 80% female. Men were in such small numbers that they literally had to keep them in government ‘breeding centers’ in protective custody so that certain groups wouldn’t assume control of the colony by controlling all the men. There were some legitimate concerns about being able to control traffic to the spaceport so that there wouldn’t be any… incidents. Even with the controls, there were enough women that they were wearing my poor Marines out.”

Ehyu laughed, and said, “Well, that certainly sounds like a lovely problem to have. Still, the mad rush must have slowed down a bit by now, right? I’m not old, but I’m no young marine, either!”

“Oh, don’t worry. Once the local government got trade deals going, and were opened up for immigration, the urgency of snagging one of the few men went down substantially. So you’ll still be a hot commodity, but not exactly at the level where you’ll be needing protection just to walk down the street.”

Ehyu nodded appreciatively. “Good, good. And what about work? It was part of our deal that you’d help me get set up, after all.”

“Well, as you know, I’m fairly visible here, so engaging in anything against the local laws is something I’d have to avoid. However, I have done two things for you. First, I had Raven send out a few discrete messages that you were someone with contacts elsewhere in the galaxy that may or may not have always been on the shady side of the law. So you may be contacted by the local groups to see what you can offer them.”

“Good idea, that. This way, it will allow me to reveal as much or as little as I choose, without having to compare to whatever lies or information you might have told about me.”

I laughed, and said, “A wise man once said to keep your lies as simple and consistent as possible. The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”

Ehyu smiled. “Truer words were never spoken. And what is the second thing you’ve done?”

“Ah, well, your tablet will have a listing for a decent building where you could start a private practice as a doctor, with living quarters attached. If you register at the spaceport as both a male and a doctor who is experienced with treating multiple species, then you’ll find yourself with quite a bit of work in short order.”

“What, these people don’t have doctors?”

I shrugged, and said, “Oh sure, they have them, but the tech they’ve been using is about a hundred years old, which puts it at slightly better than the general level you’d have on kisArra, but still not good compared to the rest of the universe. They’ve also spent their whole lives only treating humans. While that’s fine for, say, a broken bone, when dealing with more complicated matters, that can be problematic, since they don’t know what to look for. So if you set up with tech from Known Space, and a knowledge of how to treat aliens, you’ll be in line to make a good bit of money.” Then I leaned in, and said, “Plus, you know as well as I do that there are some people that would rather have a man as their doctor than a woman, especially when talking about certain ‘sensitive’ topics.”

Ehyu grunted. “Had more than my share of those talks on kisArra, thank you very much. Why people don’t learn to take the preventative measures before sleeping with the spaceport whore, I will never know. Still, it will allow me to get established, and that will be fine enough. Thank you, Captain, and I hope to see you again, under equally pleasant circumstances.”

I shook the doctor’s offered hand. “Happy to be of service, Doc. Just remember Black Star if you ever have a wish for items from home, hmm?” It was good to have some business that ended pleasantly for everyone involved.

(BSS Mewtwo, Nuevo Edo Orbit)

I stepped onto the Mewtwo with Cali and the person I wanted my latest crew to meet, and was greeted by the slave crew waiting on me just inside the airlock. They all looked better now that they’d been fed up a bit, and were in jobs where they weren’t basically being that asshole’s sex pets.

“Captain Crowley, good. I promised you that I would provide you a pilot, and I make good on my promises. This is the Nomad, Samantha Michaels, and she was formerly the slave pilot of a freighter with the unfortunate name of Precious Harlot. The ship was attacked and damaged by the X’thari during a scouting mission, and the rest of her crew was killed. The Harlot was salvaged by Black Star, and the rest of its property sold off, along with the ship, which the new owner then paid us to repair and bring into service. However, I retained ownership of Samantha here, until I had a ship to put her on again.”

I then looked at Samantha, and said, “This is Captain Crowley and her crew. You’ll be included in their arrangement of splitting pay for jobs. Should you pay one hundred thousand credits to me, then you will be freed, and the ship will be on the fifths pay scale, with you as part of the crew.”

When she nodded, I looked back at Lorna, and said, “While I know Myriam is a solid engineer, you may consider talking with Samantha about any upgrades to your gear or seeing what tech you might be able to add in. She was trained as a pilot, but she was originally in Gauz space learning to be a technician of sorts. I don’t care what side businesses you get up to, so long as it doesn’t impact me or the company, and the pay is split same as the ‘official’ runs.”

Everyone seemed happy that they were on a ship where they could work their way free. Sam was happy that she was with a group that weren’t going to treat her like shit, and the other girls were happy that they had a good pilot. I decided that it would be a good idea to leave them some gifts, and let them get on their way. At my nod, Cali pulled out five sets of gear, and distributed them to the women.

Looking at the ladies, I said, “What you have here is the standard kit for Black Star freighter crews. Skinsuit, weapons, armor, and some other basic supplies. Anything you want above and beyond that? It is on you to buy and maintain it. Captain Crowley, the tablet in your gear has information on a couple jobs you and your crew can take on, headed into Imperial Space. And with that, I’ll leave you ladies to start getting acquainted, and figure out what you need to do. Good luck, ladies.”

(Black Star Shipyards, Nuevo Edo System)

It had now been almost four months since the Battle of Nuevo Edo, as some were calling it. The shipyards had been working with three shifts, nonstop since the battle, trying to get the surviving ships repaired and refit so that they’d be available to defend the planet if the X’thari came calling again. I hated to do it, but it was time to pull some of the project leaders away from their work so I could get an update on everything that had been going on.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I know you’ve all been busy as hell, and I want to pass on to all your people my thanks for their hard work. The Navy may get most of the recognition, but you better believe that those who know, know that your groups are just as important to our success as they are. Now, I’m sure you all know Elduin Fatoris, head of shipyard operations on the Nightforge, and Yao Da, head of the Nuevo Edo shipyard. What is the status of the yards?”

Da spoke up first, the little Chinese woman who I’d poached from the more… restrictive environment of the Dimiya commercial shipyards. She’d been rather vocal about her thoughts on the male (specifically knelfi male) dominated leadership of the yards, and so had jumped at the chance I’d given her to do more. When we came to Nuevo Edo, she was the one I put in charge of the permanent yards, just as soon as they were under construction.

“Well, the good news is that we’ve cycled the damaged gunboats through the yards pretty quickly. Because of their size, anything that really damaged them was almost certain to destroy them, so they’ve been easy to get fixed. Because of that, and new builds, the gunboats of Third Group and the NEN are back to where they were, pre-battle.”

I nodded, “And the larger ships?”

Fatoris sighed, and said, “Well, taking First Group back to Dimiya to be worked on there was a big help, since the Assassins were able to take more damage without being destroyed. That means they need more yard time to be brought up to pre-battle conditions. The three surviving NEN Assassins have been repaired and returned to service, and we’ve been rushing to repair and refit Second Group’s ships. With the help we’ve been getting from the Navy’s engineers and crews helping out with the labor, we should be able to have Second Group back to full pre-battle strength in another two weeks.”

I looked over to Fothak Smelttoe, the Gauz who was in charge of our manufacturing site. “What about replacement fighters and gear for new recruits?”

Fothak nodded smartly. “Factories have already produced enough gear for all troops, and replacements for lost gear, guarded by standard protocol. Fighters and bombers have been produced to replace losses from the battle, including the NEN losses. We’re now starting on increasing the numbers, so there are replacement fighters ready for pilots who manage to eject, or are Nomads.”

I turned, and addressed Doctor Raphaëlle Bazalgette, who I’d poached from the Mars research labs the moment we’d managed to confirm that the X’thari carrier wasn’t going to blow up in our faces. “Doctor Bazalgette, what are the reports from the research on the X’thari carrier and fighters?”

The researcher was practically giddy to discuss the topic, “Well, the initial research from the—” she made some weird kind of chittering noise that I was sure would be the X’thari name of the carrier, and I held up a hand to stop her right there.

“We’re going to get along badly if you keep chittering at me like that, Doctor. I’m not even going to try and make sense of those sounds. Does that noise have an approximate translation in English?”

The doctor sighed, and said, “Fine, yes, it translates as the Defiant Bringer of Glorious Death to Inferior Beings and Many Wounding Biters to Worthy Prey. That is a very approximate translation, of course, as there are concepts in X’thari that don’t translate exactly into human languages.”

I nodded. “Right. In that case, we are officially renaming the carrier to be called the Defiant, so we can discuss it without my ears bleeding, without ignoring the Doctor’s work on translating it. Anyone have a problem with that?” The only one who looked like she objected was the doctor, but she at least was mollified by my using part of the ‘true’ name in the ship’s new name, so didn’t make a big deal out of it. Seeing no objections, I said, “All right, so what are we learning from the Defiant, doctor?”

“Well, we can reproduce their weapons easily enough. Their fighter lance weapons are effective against small craft, or even frigates or a light cruiser, but the only advantage they have over the Dragon bombers is extended ammunition capacity. The torpedoes the Dragons carry are far superior in destructive potential and range. Reviewing battle footage, when they’re in a tarpit and have to advance at sublight speeds to get to their targets, they are far easier to take down than our fighters.”

“However, there are some exciting prospects that we’ve considered for our heavier ships, adapting X’thari lance technology to our systems. They represent a good ‘middle ground’ between the typical secondary weapons present on Assassin-class corvettes and Reaper-class cruisers and the primary weapons. We could modify the Gunboats to carry them in place of their primaries. They’d suffer a range decrease of 45%, but an increase in damage of 30% with a 15% increased rate of fire.”

I shook my head, and said, “No, that won’t do at all. The little ships are fragile enough that they need something to hit at range with, especially when we’re in tarpits. What if we scaled the tech up? Could a cruiser like Breath of Hades use it?”

Bazalgette shook her head. “Too much of the Reapers are given over to the primary weapons. However, one of the ship designers on my team came up with an idea for something new…”