Station III - The Neolyte Station

Martial Law

by Michael G. Crawford

Colonel Ken Collins looked at the brief with more than just a jaundiced eye. Hell he was downright ugly about the whole thing. It showed too, as his secretary, young Lt. Carl Lipson suddenly made himself scarce. The good ones knew when trouble was brewing...it was kind of a survival art.

Collins shook his head, sighed, and stepped through the thin door, the ancient frosted glass with his named stuck in a 2 inch by 8 inch regulation name holder. The Lt., having just sat down, now sprang up with a stoic but detectable worried look seeping from his pores.

"Sir!"

"Oh can it Carl. It's not you. Let the General's office know I'm coming in. It's urgent and it can't wait."

And he stepped through the outer office door into the D ring, heading for the E ring where the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence resided. It was going to be a mess, and he figured he might as well let the old man know about it now...later would mean he'd get his ass chewed for sure.

Senator Jim Wackston was just returning from the head, when the Marine guarding the inner sanctum of the Intelligence Committee hallway cleared his throat and nodded back down the corridor, with THAT look on his face. Wackston groaned and turned back to look at his friend Ken Collins who was approaching at THAT clip that spoke of serious trouble.

"Oh Shit" said the Senator and started toward the SCF (pronounced SKIFF, for Secure Conference Facility).

Sitting down in the chair he seemed to spend a lot of time in, Wackston gave his friend the "come on" signal with his hands, and Colonel Collins began a lecture that Wackston just knew was going to be filled with bad news.

As Collins finished, Senator Wackston sighed. "Okay, let me see if I have it all. An explosion on Station III, the Captain is injured, a young officer is in critical condition, and it is clear it was sabotage, no accident this time?

"Yep".

"Hell, Ken. What's goin' on up there? This is a damn serious escalation. You know SGI is about to pull out of the whole deal?

"Well, yeah..."

"And Silicon Valley is screaming cuz they can't get anybody to go up there now to man their fab facilities. We have a $400 million dollar suit threatened by Intel, and if the press gets wind of that, you can kiss this station goodbye too!

"Yes Sir."

"Don't you Sir me, Ken Collins. I want some answers!"

"But Senator..." began Collins, but as the Senator gave a waving gesture, he corrected, "...Jim. This is not some anti-war nut, environmentalist, or right to lifer. This has to be a military threat. The passageway will be reported as one leading into the Rec area, but Sir, it is also the only passage that just so happens to lead to where Globular One is moored. Effectively, our entryway into the station from Globular One is gone. Our power is down, and more critical than that, we nearly had a PR disaster when a young Lt. tried to raise the yield on our little toy so that the Globular stayed online. If the Major up there....ahhh, Kiely I think...hadn't stopped that little effort, the Pakistani monitors would have gone off the scale. We had to put a billion dollar project on a portable generator for Chrissakes. They're running some cabling over, but we nearly lost a month's work in there. And screw Intel, they were the ones that said they'd be happy to use our covert power supply. And if they say anything, I'll hit Jean Claude with a General Order Three seal and he can sit in a Federal Holding Cell."

"Yeah Right. As if the dissappearance of the President of Intel isn't going to be noticed. Get real, Ken."

"Okay, so I'll send in a fixer to have a nice long talk with him. Point is, Jim, is that we aren't powerless here. And I read this as a National Security matter. And, hey if SGI wants to sign over the rights to their headgear, then fine, we'll let one of the other contenders take over the SIM projects. It's all to well known and entrenched in all the work up there for their pulling out to mean a tinker's damn. In fact, I'd almost welcome it...they are such a pain in the ass."

"And you're such a nice guy, too!" said Wackston, a short lived grin on his face being chewed up by the worry about the situation. "Tell you what. Find out if the gay pilots are willing to make some fast trips. We could make a special "emergency space lift" or some such. That way, the stuff that is still good can be saved. I mean really, Ken, this is not brain surgery here. We can save a goodly portion of the product. At least enough to make the next production requirement. Hell we are already on a tight allocation, let's just make it tighter. For instance, the guys at Lewis can just wait. Groom Lake has the priority and that's it."

"Yes Sir."

"Well I'll get the senior committee members in here and brief them. But I want to know what General Davies is going to do about all this and soon. I don't want to be standing here with my pecker in my hand. This shit has got to stop and I mean like now, Colonel."

"Yes Sir."

"Scat."

"Yes Sir, oh mighty intelligent lord."

"Fuck you, Collins."

"Thank you very much, Sir." and Ken left with a grin on his face, but he too allowed the grin to dissappear before closing the door on the SCF. "What a cluster fuck" he mumbled to himself, and was surprised to hear the Marine guarding the door, murmer in agreement, "Aye Aye, Sir", a general agreement he guessed.

Commander Tenson was stressed. And rightly so. He looked down at the sleeping form of Trang, the tubes and sensors locked down against the zero gravity by velcro fasteners making him appear to be in an embalming station. And it had been a close thing.

The Captain wasn't all that much better. Her only words had been for her aide, saying "Trang" before passing out. Tenson had not been able to tell her his condition, nor could he really do so now, even if she were awake. What a mess. He frowned and expelled a huff of breath, his patience with the entire situation at an end. It was about time he started to do something about it and now, not soon.

Hell the airwaves were hot with the messages flowing from planetside. In two hours, he had to fire off a report to both the WSC as well as a Col. Collins who, oddly, had suddenly taken over the official US communications with the station executives. What was ominous, is that the young baby faced officer had no title. Every ranking officer he had dealt with planetside had some title, SPACECOM-CINC, FORCECOM-DEF, or BUPERS for instance. But not this guy. His secure-fax messages had no such moniker tied to them, only "THE PENTAGON". And if that wasn't alarming enough, when this guy started transmitting, all the rest of the shit from Terra just got real quiet. As if everyone else knew who was talking. So why didn't HE know who the asshole was. This was getting downright frustrating.

"Simms, hear anything yet" he asked a young Ensign standing at a respectful distance from he and the young man laying on the medbed.

"No Sir. Not anything official. But I did hear we were close to getting Globular One off the backup shit and onto some real power. Also, it's scuttlebutt...."

"Yeah go ahead, around here it's usually pretty good info..."

"Yes Sir. The word is that SPACECOM is sending a RAPIDMOUNT up with a 100MW fuel cell on board to hook into Globular One."

"Yeah right. " To himself, he thought, "Fuel Cell my ass. Dollar says its a bloody Grazer. Those guys are gonna arm that Globular and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. Shit things are getting tense up here." He felt so over his head. Suddenly he yearned for even the unknown quantity of the new Captain to bounce ideas off. Despite his sorrow over the injuries to the young man lieing before him, he really hoped more for the Captain's rapid recovery. With that in mind, he moved away from the Ensign's bed and headed through the lock to the next bed where the Captain was being looked after by the Station doctor. He noticed that his very own Ensign was following him at a discreet distance, and it made him ponder for second whether, by assigning the young man to him, he had just as callously placed a death sentence on the young kid. His guilt struck for a moment and he gritted his teeth to keep from turning to look once again at Ensign Trang. "Enough!" he told himself, and he continued over to the Doctor.

"No news, Commander. The Captain is still unconcious. The major damage is controlled, but her body is healing now. The coma could last for hours yet, or she could sit up and start in giving orders. You're guess is as good as mine."

Tenson noticed that the Doctor had defended her position with just the right amount of bristle, certainly hoping to forestall any sort of argument.

"Fine. I want to be clear here, Doctor. This is a military matter as of right when the incident occurred. Therefore, a little scarring is not at issue. I need the Captain capable as soon as humanly possible. If that means you put a patch on her eye, and save surgery for another hour that's fine."

"...but..."

"No", he said, holding up a hand and ducking his head to the side, "...there is no questioning this directive. It comes from my government, for who Captain Presinden truly works for, as well as from the WSC. We need some answers. Only herself and Trang may have the answers we need, and as you've already said, Trang may never come out of his coma. So at this point, I want you to consider forcing her out with any means possible. If for only a few minutes. However, I...we, are not ogres. Her life is important, so if you can't do this without truly threatening her life, than so be it, we'll wait til that danger passes. But as soon as the threat to life goes away, we want her brought out."

"Nobody can give you that kind of assurance..."

"I didn't ask for assurances, just action. Look at it this way, Doctor. If in five hours, you can't get the Captain up and talking, an Air Force Doctor from over on Globular One will come in here and use some stimulants and shit and really screw your patient up. Hell, doc. This is not just a case of national security, it has worldwide repercussions. You're enough of a political savant to know the situation on Terra, and your position in all this. So if you don't want to wind up planetside, you'd better figure out a non-life threatening means for me to interview the Captain...and quick."

The look the Exec received from the Doctor was withering, but gladly, as he watched, he saw the old service training begin to set in. It was indeed fortunate the WSC had thought to include some old war vets in their medical corps, and this one appeared to have the guts needed for this particular job. He liked the thought that she fought the orders like a champ, but when all was said and done, she realized the importance, weighing the comfort and degree of healing with the necessities of the remaining living souls on the station.

"Okay, Commander. I get the message. I want to log a protest however...I know, do it later, don't expect me not too. But I'll see what I can do. Now get out of here, and let me get to work. If I think I'm getting anywhere, I'll let you know."

He nodded with a stern look on his face, and pivoted, almost running into the lurking Ensign. "Damn it, man, let's try to keep out from under foot" he muttered just below the Doctor's hearing level, but just loud enough to make the young officer blanch.

The two of them rocketed out of the med facility, heading back into where they hoped gravity to be restored in a few hours.

Waiting for Tenson to return, Lt. Commander Sarah Winston reviewed the telemetry from the Pakistani Astrophysics lab. It clearly showed a big jump in power consumption on the main bus, a certain sign someone had tried to mask the explosion with some kind of electrical incident. However, the piece of support tubing removed from Trang's back had traces of semtec embedded in it, the poorly manufactured, or possibly over-aged batch failing to explode with the rest of the bomb. Space was hell to gather evidence in, with pieces already on their way into God knows what orbit and certainly at a phenomenal distance from the station. Also blasts in space tended not to spread debris on the remaining pieces, the heat only covering short distances in a vacuum.

The current theory was that the bomb had heated before exploding, yet another reason to believe it was old shit. The heat in turn had severed some nearby electrical conduits, and in turn started a small but effective leak in the tubeway. This leak probably saved the Captain's life, as it was obvious she had stepped back to seal the shaft at her end, and Trang had gone across the tube to seal the other end. In fact, if Trang had been a second earlier, the debris that nearly punched his ticket permanently would have hit the lock door. Seconds. All her life things had come down to seconds. It never ceased to amaze her.

The next entry in the Pakistani log showd the tremor of the explosion being reflected in the aiming motors compensation for the huge lens array of the big scope. This device, a 100 fold Hubble Array, measured minute vibrations from the station and compensated. It was fortunate that the array had not been on its tether as it usually was for long reach scanning missions. The fact that the Pakistani's were in test mode, gave her one of the most sensitive sensors on the station, even if it was pointed away at Vega.

As she scanned the log, she noticed an energy surge well after the explosion, wondering just what that signified. It piqued her curiousity, but it was such an insignificant event compared to the explosion, and so long after, that it just didn't seem relevant. She made a mental note to come back to it sometime later, if she ever had any extra time.

She felt and heard the approach from someone down the corridor and braced herself for what she assumed would be a very angry Commander Tenson. She fully expected to find that Terra had relieved her and was sending up a pro to take over in the light of this obvious sabotage attempt. Shit. Nice piece to go on her record.

She chided herself for that thought, knowing it was a nervous reaction. She cared more about Ensing Trang and the Captain. In fact, a piece of heart was already numb with the expectation of hearing any moment that either of them would no longer be enjoying the comforts of the station. She promised herself not to get all weepy...that would just be great. Tenson would just love that!