Redemption

One moment, Francis Dollaryde was at his station under the eagle eyes of Lt JG Sawyer. The next he was on the deck, and air was screaming out of the shattered forward bulkhead. Gasping desperately, he found his helmet somehow, and locked into the ring on his skin suit. But the air didn't make him feel much better. Vacuum lung he thought. It was caused by being dumped suddenly into an atmosphere closer to standing atop Mt Everest than sea level, but the person was still trying to breathe.

Must get to my station. He told himself, trying to roll to his feet, but slamming down now face up. He looked down. Both legs had been ripped free below his knees. Oh, that's why I can't stand, he though muzzily. He sat up, and saw the lurid red lights on his panel. The others in the compartment were down, possibly dead. It was up to him.

Forward about a hundred meters, Midshipman Krueger staggered to his feet. Damage Control party 41, 'his' DC party were staggering to their feet as well, snugging down their helmets. He could see the shattered decking and bulkheads, and knew immediately that parts store 17 was a write off. "Fuentes, take two, check Main Hyper. The rest of you, with me!"

It had taken every second of the time since the Dollaryde incident to convince the crewmen that he wasn't a total waste of space, and the alacrity with which they moved was a testament to his efforts. They ran down the companionway, and three of the eight men broke off to enter Main Hyper. It was less than twenty meters further to Fusion 2, and Krueger slid to a stop in horror. There had been eighteen people in this compartment. They would need DNA testing to even know who had died here. No, one form, truncated by having half it's legs gone was crawling toward one of the control panels. He leaped to the body, turning it over. It was Dollaryde, but his skin color told the young officer that he wasn't getting enough air.

"Don't worry, Francis, we'll get you to-"

Dollaryde reached up, hand closing behind the officer's helmet, and slammed it down to contact his own. "The... bottle..."

Krueger looked up, and blanched. The entire panel before him was awash in red lights, and that meant they only had seconds. "Cole!" Get Dollaryde out of here! Order emergency blast bulkheads seven and eight closed. Fuentes, get back past bulkhead seven. RUN!" He thrust the body into the rating's hands. "Move!"

The young man staggered out with Dollaryde, and Krueger ran to the main panel. It was worse from here. The software that kept the bottle stable was gone, fried by a power surge. Pressure had spiked once already up to 105%, and he knew it wouldn't take much more of this. He hit the emergency dump, but it merely flashed at him angrily. He leaped across the room to the manual emergency dump and pulled it down hard. Since her power needs were greater, Witch Maiden had two fusion rooms, and Fusion 2 was buried deeper in her hull. He couldn't jettison it, he only had to hope he would dump it in time

There were two ways to shutdown a bottle that was out of control if it can't be jettisoned as would a small warship or merchantman. The first used the software to dump the plasma in a fully controlled manner through pipes composed of a carbon-tungsten-osmium alloy rated to almost 6300 degrees and then through the vents in the skin of the ship. A controlled dump removed perhaps a centimeter thickness from the pipes. After repairing the damage to the fusion room, the bottle could be reinstated, but at no more than 40%.

The second way was like using a ram press to shove a cantaloupe completely through a length of 5 centimeter pipe in less than a second.

The searing hot plasma was forced into the pipes, reaming them out as if someone had used aqua regia to clean their metal plumbing pipes, gnawing almost half way through them before the end. There wasn't enough of them left to even think about reactivating the bottle without a full replacement.

Krueger was just breathing a sigh of relief when the bottle let go. Less than five percent of the plasma remained, and it was down to almost 1600 C. But that is hotter than a crematorium oven.

He was wrong about how they would identify the dead, because there was nothing left. The plasma consumed everyone in the compartment, including the other two who still survived, blew into the passageway, and was only stopped by the blast doors that sheltered the remainder of his team.

Rebecca looked at the flashing damage markers, and her mood was as dark as those now destroyed compartments. You should have considered this might happen, her thoughts told her over and over. Remember the legend of the Sgian Dubh? Most considered the 12.5 centimeter blade a hold over from ancient times, merely part of your dress when you wore a kilt instead of trousers. But it had a deeper meaning for the Scots she was descended from. It was a last gasp weapon, when a gloating enemy thought he had won, and you were on your knees before him. A chance to ram that small blade into his stomach, and hope that even as you died, he would join you in hell soon enough.

They worked for slavers. They knew they'd get little or no mercy. Yet you sent over 200 men and women to their deaths blindly assuming the hope of mercy would stay their hand.

"Captain?" Abbie was looking at her, the entire bridge crew was looking at her, expecting her to pull a miracle out of her ass.

"Call down to DC central; I need a damage report. We are wounded, but we're not dead yet." She was amazed how calm she sounded as she spoke. "Did any of our boarding parties survive?"

"Black Cat survived." Sela told her. "Chief Styles and a crew of four with five marines." She turned back to her panel. "He's hailing us now."

"Put him through."

"Black Cat to Witch Maiden. What do you want us to do, ma'am?"

"Continue your mission, chief. Once you've taken custody of the dispatch boat, drop as few marines as you need there to back up Chief Dollaryde, and take the Sollie boat next. We'll find someone to help you as soon as we get a handle on how badly we've been mauled."

"Continue mission aye, ma'am. Black Cat out."

"Call down to Cargo 2. Have Mr. Kyle ready to send out what little we have left."

"Aye, ma'am." Sela turned back to her panel.

Styles had expected that the unknown dispatch boat might have dumped their computers before he arrived. Instead he boarded her to find the captain of that boat; MSNS Jesse Owens beaten to death by his own exec. Her frantic attempts to explain why were more from the fact that it was a Mesan dispatch boat, and none of the crew expected even scant mercy after St Kitt's treacherous attack. When the captain had started the purging process, the woman had used his own helmet to beat him until he stopped moving.

Cao Mei told him she could work by herself, so he had the remainder of the boat's crew transferred to the cutter, binding them into seats, leaving their helmets aboard the boat, and had his crew seal their helmets. The run to the Sollie boat was somber. The initial casualty report had made the survivors of the marine contingent furious.

The marines went across, Styles following into a screaming argument. The woman commanding the boat was siting international law at the top of her lungs as the chief came aboard.

"-that bitch commanding your ship is refusing to talk to me, and your entire operation is illegal! This is Solarian space, and you have no authority to-"

Private Ryan picked the woman up by her throat, slamming her into the bulkhead. She gasped around the iron grip, clawing at his hand. "Ryan." Chief Styles said, and the marine slowly stepped back as Styles walked over to face her. "Lieutenant, for once, you are going to listen." Style said mildly. "You are in Solarian space, consorting with slavers, and that Mesan ship blew us to hell before she died. Of our marine contingent, these are all that remains. Whether you are party to a violation of the Cherwell Protocols or not hasn't been proven. So if I hear another word out of any of you that hasn't been solicited, I will have Private Ryan deal with you."

"I'll just put her in her skinsuit and helmet, and send her on a Dutchman."

"You wouldn't dare." She challenged.

Ryan looked at her, and she instinctively took a step back. "After losing 200 friends? Try me. Better yet, seeing is believing." He grabbed her by the arms. "Deke, bring me her suit and helmet." As Private Robert Deacon turned to go, the woman screamed, fighting to break free. The others stood there horrified. Ryan roared, 'Silence!" Shocking her into quiet. "Believe me now?" She nodded frantically. "Then shut the hell up until spoken to, Lieutenant, sir."

"We can't take you all on this run, so I'll be leaving Ryan and Deacon here, Ma'am. Just so you know we haven't forgotten you, we will have some people out to help us shortly, so I expect it to be quiet when they get here." He looked at the ashen faces, "Though I am still not sure how many of you will be here when they do."

Styles returned to his command pilot's seat. "With only three of us, what do you want to do now?" Lance Corporal LeBeau asked.

"We're going to take the prison."

"Three of us?" He asked in disbelief."

Styles chuckled, waving at the three LACs that were lashing the prison with their radar and lidar. "Would you be stupid enough to shoot after what happened?"

The next hours were heartrending as report after report came in. Of the over 100 Sidemore maintenance personnel that had been aboard, only fifty were still alive, but to a man they all volunteered to bolster Chief Styles' forlorn hope. Everyone on the ship was helping with finding the wounded and bringing them in or surveying damage. The entire midsection of the ship had been ravaged, and four of her longitudinal beams were shattered. Even if they got the forward impeller room back on line, it might not be safe to move her at all.

Rebecca sat on the bridge, staring at the casualty list. 225 of crew dead. And 14 injured on the ship alone. Counting the three man crew of each cutter shuttle and pinnace, and the marines, half of her crew dead in a second.

"Skipper." She looked up at the cup of tea in front of her, then at Abbie's face. "We can handle it from here, ma'am."

She took the tea, and she waited until her hand stopped shaking before taking a sip. She'd lost more than this at Chantilly when HMS Loki had died. Why was this hitting her this hard? Everyone was busy, except for her. Finally she stood. "I'm going down to my quarters to change. Who is senior in Engineering after this-" she waved her hand sharply. "-abortion?"

"Ensign Reese, ma'am." Saya reported.

God, I had over a hundred men in the engineering department only a few hours ago. A lieutenant commander, two lieutenants, three JGs. Now we only have ensigns left? She walked from the compartment to the lift. It was out of service, so she went down the ladder beside it, deck by deck, nightmare by nightmare. She reached her cabin, and though her mind noticed the absent and dead Marine that would have been standing there, she ignored it as best she could.

The hatch snapped open, and she stepped in, leaning against the hatch as it closed behind her. Such nice work, Captain! She snarled inwardly. You just killed off half of your crew and trapped the rest in a system they can't leave! Oh well done! She paced across to the desk, sitting in her chair. A moment later Irene was in her lap, meowing plaintively. She hugged the monster to her, and tears ran down her cheeks. There was a light click, and she looked at the plate in front of her. A pastrami sandwich. She glanced up as Os poured a shot of whiskey into a glass. "You need to eat, ma'am. And something to soothe your nerves."

She stripped off a piece of the meat, feeding it to Irene as she ate. It was probably as good as anything Os had served, but with the thought of her dead, it was ashes in her mouth.

The hatch snapped open as she was reaching for the shot of whiskey. De Frees. She considered, then suggested he do something physiologically impossible in her mind as she completed the move, throwing the shot down her throat. "Pardon the mess, commander. My sentry seems to have gotten himself killed." She rang the buzzer, and Os was back with the whiskey again, pouring. "I know why you're here. We're trapped, unable to move, and you of course have to hurry back to your admiral with proof that I'm a complete incompetent. Well as soon as I can gather a crew for one of the dispatch boats, you can be on your merry way."

He stood there looking... diffident? Then he walked over, setting some chip folders before her. "The reports have to go back, yes. But I wanted to know if you can use my team aboard."

"For what?" She downed the second shot. It was the good Gryphon single malt, and she was treating it like rotgut. Maybe it was the company. "I am sure there is someone aboard you can arrest. But other than that, I don't think so."

He visibly took hold of himself. "We're one of the special teams your late father created during his tenure. Too often an officer would be judged by people who know nothing about the systems they have to handle, and your father felt a special team of people who have served aboard ship might limit that. Master Chief Lithgow had worked in JAG his entire career, and knows the Regs front to back. He's also one of the best computer technicians I have ever seen. He's quite a hacker in all honesty, and can crack any computer code if given enough time. Senior Chief Conway and Lieutenant Murray are both engineers by rating, and what they don't know about it can be written on a credit card with a heavy laundry marker." He shrugged. "They can help you try to get this ship up and running again."

She leaned back, looking up at him. "You said the team. What is your specialty, commander?"

He looked at her for a long moment. "I was the senior surviving tactical officer of HMS Blackstone when she died at Solon. I was captured there and repatriated right before Second Manticore."

She looked at him for a long moment. "Then what are you doing in JAG?"

"Light duty. Conway and Murray were from HMS Star Knight at the same battle. I only got out of Bassingford eight months ago."

She looked at him until he started fidgeting. "And that would make you my senior tactical officer if I accepted you."

"No, ma'am. I don't know a thing about pod launching warships. You're Ms Carruthers might not have time to get me up to speed with them, so I would gladly serve as her second."

"Oh you're not getting off that easily, mister." She said, standing. "So let's see how you handle being my Number One."

"I-"

"Can it. My senior officers all have their duties, and the only place for you is as my exec. Think you can handle it?"

"I don't know, ma'am." He seemed to shrink under her regard.

"That, Number One, is the smartest thing I have heard you say since I have met you." She stood. "Come along, and get your skin suit. We have to walk around and let the crew see us doing something."

It was a somber walk. There was no way to walk from end to end through the ship without passing through an area that had been smashed in that attack. Everywhere crewmen were working to try to repair what they could. But the battered Witch Maiden was a merchantman. Her hull and decks were titanium and steel, and she had very little armor beyond her vitals. Even that had not stopped some of the carnage they paced through.

They ended the walk in sickbay. She walked down the aisle, looking at the ones that had survived. Fourteen had survived the attack, but only eleven were still alive. She came up to one of the beds, looking down at the woman with black hair sitting beside it. The body was truncated; both legs had been torn away below the knee. There were hoses and sensors connected as if the torn body were a sacrifice to medical science.

"Fengniao." The woman looked up, then her hand rose, touching the captain.

"He doesn't regen, Kapitain. He will need a transplant to replace his lungs even to breath normally again. His legs... Mein Gott, his legs." She spun, clutching the captain to her as she sobbed.

"We'll send him in one of the dispatch boats. I don't know how good Torch's medical establishment is, but it's only a couple of weeks to Manticore, and Bassingford is one of the best in the galaxy."

Dollaryde's hand reached up, his lips forming words, but his lungs were too badly damaged for him to speak. She leaned forward.

"Please... don't send me away... captain."

"But you need better care than we can give you." She protested.

"Won't leave... until all of us get home... together."

She took his hand. "All right, Francis. With our shield, or on it. We will go home together."

The quiet talk after their walk around segued into work, and it was surprising how well they worked together. De Frees had been on the short list for command, and if he hadn't been sent to JAG as a temporary light duty assignment, he would have already been looking at his own destroyer command.

"So you've been using the LACs as a command link to your missile salvos?" He asked.

"Yes. Abbie and Phil worked it out on our last cruise. You know about Moriarty, don't you?"

"After the fact, yeah." It had been Shannon Foraker's Moriarty system that had allowed the Republic to maul Admiral Harrington's task group at Solon.

"Well by using their technique of frequency hopping controls, we found that each LAC can handle a full sixty missile salvo. Between them, Hermes Buoys, and FTL communications through our recon drones, we can handle anything we can fire across the full range the missiles are capable of; though we hadn't tried it with MK16s as yet." The intercom buzzed, and she stood, walking to the desk. "Captain here."

"Senior Chief Womack has something he thinks you should see on the prison station, Ma'am." Saya Gill reported.

"Saya, you sound beat."

"I'm... all right, Skipper." The voice was heavy with fatigue.

"Turn over your panel to your relief. That's an order."

"Yes, ma'am."

She turned to look at De Frees. "Number One, get with Ensign Carruthers, and see if she can get you up to speed using the LACs to direct our missiles. I am going to see what Chief Womack thinks is so important."

After what felt like days, Jessica Riyal had one more duty. She stopped outside Snotty Row, looking at the sign Joshua had put up ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. Below it, Chin Li had hung another; You mean I have to stop dating Hope?

She staggered into the compartment, gathering up their things. Josh's textbooks, Chin Li's socks... She collapsed onto her knees, wailing. She had just seen them this morning! They were talking about going to J. Quesenberry's Ice Cream and Pastries, the one ice cream parlor favored by Queen Berry. There was an ongoing challenge that anyone who had not been created by one of Mesa's projects who could eat an entire 'Queen's Portion' selection ate for free. Chin Li had said he'd be the one to do it.

She could even see him, spooning it into his mouth, that little smack he gave when he really liked something he ate... She screamed wordlessly in her pain.

Something touched her, then arms pulled her in. She looked up enough to know who it was. Abigail Carruthers.

"I felt it too." The slightly older woman whispered. "My snotty cruise. I was assigned to this ship with Michael Tregant. He was like a golden child, top of his class at Saganami Island, he could do the balancing loadout on the ship in his sleep, and a wizard at navigation. I was just some kid who lucked out in getting into the Academy, and he was always helping me to learn." The arms tightened until her ribs creaked. "When we started out, a Sollie skipper handed us a slaver prize. He was sent with her home because the captain believed he needed greater challenges. He was reassigned to HMS Hexapuma. She was docked in Hephaestus station when the Yawata Strike occured."

She pulled back, looking into the girl's tortured eyes. "When they die, we have to go on, to make our own lives a monument to what they died for. Neither Josh, nor Chin Li would have done anything less than they have always done, and if it were you and I that had gone on instead, Mike and they would be doing what we have to do in their stead. Making their deaths matter." She wiped Jessica's eyes. "I'll help, then we'll have a drink, toast them for both their lives and their deaths. Then we'll go out and kick the enemy's balls up between their shoulder blades for them."