Dry, No Lube Ch. 09: Invasion

Wonderful.

The ship was still alive, though, backing her battered self out from the hole she'd made. Pixy felt the engines dig, whining, and she did not even need to answer Perfaxon's vox to know things were dire back there. "Keep it going," she urged, floating around to check on her blinking officers as they struggled with damage control; there was nothing else she could do right now. "One problem at a time!"

Tirving came free with one final, convulsive lurch, shedding chunks of pelding and Organic Armor which left the bridge hull transparent to the view of the floating skeleton crew. "Holy shit," someone muttered, staring inside the Cathos ship at shattered corridors, shredded doorways, and a debris field almost as big as the entire P/E ship herself. "Look at that..."

Pixy nodded. "Don't look for long." She pushed off the wall, propelling herself back to her chair, where she'd shunted the master torpedo control. "Strap in. I'm going to launch the last of our shit right into that hole, and I think it's safe to expect some backblast."

People were trading excited glances as they obeyed. They'd survived something nobody had a right to survive, and now they were about to fuck their enemy up the ass dry, no lube. Pixy tried to still her racing heart, glaring at the radian marks at the overworked plotting board, waiting until Perfaxon's laboring engines could give her the four or five kilometers' standoff she'd need before she unloaded the last ten percent of her ordnance.

She judged her moment and pressed the button.

The Tirving's last barrage slammed home with a single rumbling, percussive wave of impact, her torpedoes and arc-mortars lancing deep into the vitals of the Cathos Vremein command ship. They watched, stupefied, as the interior they'd just pierced took on the vivid, flaming appearance of bonfire coals, or a lava field on some moon somewhere. On the far side of the ship, pieces were already falling off, drifting away, the enemy crew in for a long, hard day of damage control.

Slowly, grinning with sweaty relief, Pixy's little band looked at each other and realized they weren't merely survivors, but victors. All around them the Cathos Vremein hovered motionless, stunned, or at least awaiting orders. "Well," Pixy spoke into the charged, smelly silence, "that seemed to work. Let's get our shunts out of the way and try to recover." She glanced over her shoulder and saw nothing but space. "Continue retrofire, ten percent power. Get that link restored, Commander Malavongsy; I need to be able to control the engines up here, without worrying about Mr Perfaxon or Ms Legette."

"Aye aye, ma'am. Working on it!"

"Very well." Pixy's limbs tingled, her mind riding a drunken wave of euphoria; she could not believe what her ship had done. As if in confirmation, Tomasu spoke up as he floated at his station.

"The trap-batteries are swatting at near targets, ma'am."

"Well. Nice of them to join the war." Pixy smiled at the savage growl that replied from her assembled crew. This was not really a true victory, and it was not going to be one: Main Plot still haltingly showed 238 separate Cathos Vremein contacts. But she had located and incapacitated two of the most critical ships, and that was worth a pat on the back. She frowned at the Plot and yawned, on the verge of deciding her day was over: a quick trip to the backside of Fulvius Rock would probably guarantee that the great armada would ignore them as it swept by.

She was taking a deep breath and wishing for tea when Luzhenka, down in Targeting, got her attention. "What's going on out there?"

At the same time, Verily nearly bumped his head on the phonic unit as he swung around. "Increasing signal density from Contact Number 4!" he announced.

"Yeah," Pixy sighed, focusing on the Main Plot as Luzhenka began highlighting contacts. "Report, Ms Luzhenka."

"They're re-forming," she blurted, her face pale beneath singed hair. "Back into their original formation."

"That other ship. Contact 4." Pixy bowed her head. Had she not done enough? Two enemy command ships seriously damaged, and her own incapactited, on half its vanes and with nothing but Lerbal power? Couldn't she stop now? Off to the left, missiles corkscrewed pathetically up from the batteries at the Rock: how feeble they seemed as the Cathos Vremein cut their losses and prepared to move on toward the Hearth, following orders from... "That's their flagship," Pixy breathed.

"That," Malavongsy replied dryly, "is fourteen thousand kilometers away, ma'am."

"And we've got no sublight power, Captain," Nevsky added.

"And no more torpedoes either." Luzhenka shrugged. "Ma'am? Might we be better off falling back to Fulvius?"

Pixy grimaced, her duty pulling at her. "We would definitely be better off falling back to fucking Fulvius," she nodded, exhausted, "but that's not where the enemy is." Why, she asked herself, had she taken the Pulver in against two Flasbard dreadnoughts almost seven years ago? That fight had been none of her business, and yet she hadn't hesitated. So why had she fucking well done it?

Her leg shook.

Same reason you're doing this now, she barked at herself in disgust, looking around at 22 eyes staring back at her. "So you people are going to fall back to Fulvius," she told them heavily. "Two shuttles left. Take one and go. All of you. And don't forget our two engineers." The decision made, she ignored their protests and caught Perfaxon once more on the vox. "Full lightspace power, Mr Perfaxon. Enable it and make sure it's controllable from here."

"Ma'am?"

"Then come up here, you and Ms Legette, and get into one of the shuttles." She glanced at what little crew she had left. Malavongsy was senior, the ship's First Officer. "Report to CommanderMalavongsy there. He'll get you to safety. Do it now, please." More protests erupted over the vox, but she ignored that too with a decisive slap of the paddle.

"What the fuck, captain?" Luzhenka looked wild-eyed up at her.

"You know what the fuck," Pixy snapped. "Everybody off. Take charge, Commander Malavongsy." She glared across the assembling ships, the flagship twinkling far off. It would take about forty-seven seconds to get there at lightspace, Pixy's implant pondered, which just might be time enough for her to get into the last shuttle and release the pylon; as long as she was off the Tirving, in the Tunnel, the ship should just accelerate away from her, and after that she'd just need to dodge the Lerbal field... "Do it!" she ordered savagely, snapping her fingers. "They're forming to jump right now. I want to be underway in three minutes. No point in waiting."

"This is suicide, Captain," Malavongsy ventured.

"This is necessary, Subcommander," Pixy snarled. "I'll get off in the last shuttle after setting the wirelock. You guys are going to have to maneuver an overloaded shuttle through a debris field; all I have to do is press a damn button." She made herself smile. "Trade ya." They all bobbed there in the zero-g, amid emergency lighting and auxiliary alerts, the stench still suffocating. "Go. Now. All of you. That's not a fucking request."

She watched as they filed out, batting themselves slowly through the weightless bridge, most of them avoiding her glance as they passed, until she found herself face to face with Elon Malavongsy. "Captain..." he began, but she shut him firmly down.

"Go. Follow my orders." She took a deep breath. "And tell Commander Jatsupa to be prepared to send out a search party. If I die in a collision, great. But if not? I'd kinda like to be found someday."

"Yes, ma'am." He glanced aft, to where the rest were floating toward the shuttle pylons. Pixy could not help but notice that the rat drifted with them. "Um. Watch the Lerbal field."

"You watch the Lerbal field." She made herself smile. "Take care."

And then it was just her, strapping herself into the helmsman's seat of a dying ship with all the lightspace power she could ever need and a clear target ahead of her. She tested her control once Malavongsy's shuttle passed Blue Point, trying burns, clobbet-turns, and other sundry motion, until she was reasonably sure the ship would fly. Then she unbuckled herself and drifted into the navigation pit, peering at the star plot.

It had been years since Pixy had programmed a course herself, but the skills had never left her: her fingers flew through the input field, shooting the azimuth toward the enemy flagship and then searching for a distant destination along that line. The computer thought about it, then spat out two possibilities: Tullius B-VII, in the Weathervane Nebula, or a shoddy old Fleet outpost on the Slavutych Spiral.

She chose whichever one her hand got to first. It didn't matter. Tirving would never make it to either destination. The ship only had to go about fourteen thousand kilometers.

She flew back to the helm and strapped in again, the navigation system ramping up whatever guidance streams it still could, thinking about how all this was so much easier when it was just her, alone, handling everything without having to worry about anyone else.

* * *

Ira Bermudo, his neck craned back so that he could watch a sky full of twinkling lights, all spread across space like a hundred new stars in an ordered, martial formation, squinted as he tried to make out which one was Tirving. All around him came the hoarse shouts of the Army, digging in, or of Jatsupa, trying to get his people fed and housed, but he wasn't really thinking about any of that. He was thinking about his captain, up there among the lights.

One of which, with a suddenness that took his breath away, suddenly elongated, stretching into a brilliant silver filament before it disappeared deep into space, leaving nothing but the scattered bright flash of a distant collision in its wake. "Well," he mused to himself, "that probably wasn't good."

"What's that, Rabbi?" a passing sailor had heard him and glanced over. Bermudo recognized her as one of the gunners from Short Rocket Battery 15.

"Nothing." Up above, the twinkling lights were already drifting back out of formation, lost and wild. "Nothing at all."

* * *

Epilogue: The Rabbi's Report

File #3455JPP [CONFIDENTIAL]

(Appended to Flag Staff Update 34)

My capacity as Chaplain-General on Admiral Amisuul's staff also makes me de facto Chief Rabbi for the entire fleet, in which capacity my responsibilities include monitoring and inventorying certain foodstuffs shipped intergalactically. One of these is the Jewish ceremonial bread, commonly known as matzoh. For some time, a small but steady amount of matzoh had been going missing on monthly inventories, diverted under a secret Army program.

In keeping with my duty to safeguard Fleet supplies, I investigated the missing matzoh using the Army requisition number (AR2277-S). Several contacts with Army Command followed, which soon indicated to me that AR2277-S constituted a special Army program which disbursed funds and supplies outside the oversight of Federal authority. Attempts to directly contact the head of this program, one Field-Marshal Schwick Rennels, proved impossible; I did discover that the shipments had been arranged and administered by a female warrant officer, though her name was redacted.

However, I was able to uncover the destination of these matzoh shipments, whereupon I applied for Admiral Amisuul's permission to travel there. The terminus of these shipments was a small space station orbiting a former Fleet Hub near the Slavutych Spiral, since blighted by the Second Cathos Vremein Invasion (Suborbital Phase). The station was privately owned, purchased out of the Service some years before by a business concern headed by a marketing agent called A. Valladay. His purchase of the station had been approved by a retired admiral, Cheyra Thajk, through the authority of Chajk's chief of staff, a commodore named J. Klonmyre.

Neither officer was available to be interviewed, and Mr Valladay has since sought other employment.

Given that the security situation in that sector has now been stable since the Armistice, the Admiral granted his permission for travel on humanitarian grounds. I brought with me a small group comprising one of my Lead Chaplains, Father Mariosz Hayashida, and three of his own staff officers. With us came a security team consisting of four Stellar Marines, the force being kept small because we anticipated nothing more severe than a hatch entry against (at worst) a criminally liable black-market matzoh syndicate.

This did not frighten us.

We also shipped certain humanitarian supplies. As you know, Fleet has unfortunate and recent experience in delivering such supplies to abandoned human populations within the newly established Cathos Transition Zone, and I had brought a standard comfort module containing a complete load of Type III life-support staples.

At length, we approached the abandoned orbital station. Our pilot attempted to establish communications, but received no reply; an approach toward the station's shuttle docking ring, however, indicated signs of frequent airlock maintenance which led us to the expected conclusion that someone was alive aboard the station. Thus, in addition to my legal duties to the stolen matzoh, I assumed an immediate duty of pastoral care to whomever was aboard: the smoking planet below remained, nominally, Federal property, making it probable that a Federal citizen was aboard.

On an impulse, I instructed the pilot to mention my name and my pastoral qualifications over the mid-beam in an attempt to establish bona fides which might induce the soul[s] aboard to let us dock and enter without Marine intervention. I was quite pleased when the docking light went green, indicating that we could leave Blue Point and approach safely.

I told the Marines to stand by. Father Hayashida and I decided we should go aboard first with the Marine sergeant, then call forward whatever assistance I needed. No sooner had the shuttle achieved docking than the airlock began to cycle, revealing nothing inside but a bare vestibule. We were just equalizing our breathable air when a voice came from the vox box on the far wall.

"Only the rabbi," the voice said, "nobody else."

The voice was distorted by bad connections and what sounded like a faulty speaker field, but it was female and sounded human. I nodded at Father Hayashida and my companions, then stepped into the airlock. I still felt no fear: a Fleet career trains us to listen to our instincts where threats are concerned, and I felt nothing but curiosity. "I'm here," I announced toward the vid in the corner by the vox box, and at once the hatch slammed shut behind me and separated me from the shuttle.

The interior hatch relaxed, then slid aside to show a slight woman with short, spiky hair. She looked about 40, but her eyes appeared far older. I nodded, for I thought I had known this woman once. "Hello there," I smiled. I did not want to harm or alarm her, but I could not trust my own memory to dredge up what might be a wrong name; if this was the woman I'd known, she'd been declared dead at the start of the First Cathos Vremein Invasion, around the time of the Federation Coup d'Etat. "Remember me?"

She glanced at the rank stripes on my cape. "Wow. You're a fucking commodore now."

"Only by courtesy," I laughed, "just because I'm the Chief Rabbi. I only get paid as a captain." I hesitated, searching her eyes and finding them steady. "And so do you."

She shrugged. "Yeah. I heard they promoted me posthumously. Gave me a medal, too."

"A big medal," I went on softly, hoping she would tell me more: I'd seen her die twice now. I burned with curiosity to learn what had happened to her. They'd only ever given out fourteen Galactic Medals of Valor With Palms, and she'd gotten one. "And a few planets gave you honorary peerages, too. I think you're a duchess or something on Garmon III."

"Garmon III," she shrugged, "a shelled-out wasteland for the past ten years." She sighed. "I get news here, Rabbi."

"You get matzoh here too, Captain." I held up the crinkle paper containing my Federal warrant. "All that matzoh is pilfered. You're in possession of stolen property," I laughed. "I brought some Marines to arrest you."

"What if I don't want to be arrested?" she asked quietly, and for the first time I noticed she had a pistol slung low on her right thigh.

"I'd settle for an apology," I shrugged, "and maybe the name of the person who sends it to you."

"The person who sends it to me," she replied evenly, her head cocked, "is part of a secret Army program that does not exist. So she does not exist." She looked away, out a port, smiling faintly at the innumerable stars. "But she's always taken very good care of me."

"And I'd imagine she'd stab me in the kidney if I went to track her down?" I suggested lightly. My crime was solved, but I knew I'd do nothing about it.

"Maybe not," Pixy considered. "She always liked you."

I followed her gaze out the port. "That's a nice view." Pixy Pfeiffer had never enjoyed anything more than being out in space. "Do you need any help? I've brought a few things, some supplies and such."

"I'm all right." She had not moved. She made no effort to invite me into the station, nor to make me feel any more welcome than she already had. "Leave what you want, Rabbi, but please just leave. You're looking good. I'm glad you're not dead," she went on, smiling at last, "but I am. I'd prefer to stay that way this time."

I paused, but I couldn't stop myself from asking her. "How did you survive, Captain?" I breathed. "It looked like the whole ship was gone."

"The whole ship was gone," she nodded simply, "but fortunately for me? I still had a shuttle. It got caught in the Lerbal field and swept away, but I'm a pretty good shuttle pilot, especially when flying through debris fields." I smiled. "I've had a lot of practice," she pointed out, "but when I figured out where I was, I had no way back."

I nodded, knowing this was all I was going to get. "I'm glad you made it."

"I couldn't stop the invasion," she shrugged, "but I was never going to be able to."

"You saved lives," I told her firmly, hoping she'd understand how important that was, "and that's what matters."

She nodded, staring out at her stars, letting the silence stretch. "Thank you for coming, Rabbi. It was good to see you." She hesitated. "Did your family survive the war?"

"Yes, thankfully," I smiled, "and so did yours. Your parents are still alive, on Aries IX."

"I know." She turned to go. "You can see yourself out, Rabbi. There's no reason for you to tell anyone I'm here, you know."

"You sure?" I smiled. "That's a lot of back pay."

She smiled back. "There's nothing to buy out here. Put it in my account."

"I'll have to tell my boss," I warned her. "Rocky Amisuul. You remember him."

"You do your duty, Rabbi," she nodded, now speaking over her shoulder. "Take care, now."

"Goodbye, Captain." I watched her pass through the interior hatch, after which I unloaded our humanitarian pallet and prepared my alternative report (see File #3455J-GYF-43, unclassified) in order to protect the greater interests of a Fleet officer who is, after all, a GMV recipient and a distinguished warrior duly declared dead.