Chapter 39 - More Visitors

To I think everyone's everlasting surprise the rest of the visit by the remnants of the Wolf attack was absurdly simple. I was alerted by the AI when the Jackson finally slipped into a repair bay about four hours after I crashed into bed, but Commodore Sprague had requested that the formal meeting be delayed until morning as his own crew was collapsing where they stood due to lack of sleep. So it was nearly ten o'clock local time when I finally walked into the briefing room to find Yvette, Louis and Tamara reviewing the damage reports.

"What are we telling the Admiral?" I asked as I took a seat.

Louis smiled. "We will have every ship able to leave on her own power in four days. We are limited on the number of weapons and don't carry spare fighter wings, but we can have them all combat capable in six days with the exception of the Jackson. They still need additional crew and both Goddess class ships will only have half of their turrets operational. But give us six days and they can all make Borneo on their own."

I nodded. "Well, the Ishtar fender shop is doing well. What are the ships complements looking like?"

Yvette frowned. "To say it simply, decimated is about right. Only the captains of the Pembroke, Torrey, Thena and Morrigan survived. Commodore Sprague can handle the Sigurd, but the senior officer on the Jackson is an engineering lieutenant. The Tintagel's first officer is alive and will show at the briefing but that's all, and the Pebble Beach lost every officer they had. It's the Bosun who's going to be at the meeting."

I sighed. "When does everyone start arriving?" I asked.

Just then Captain de Wynter wandered in with her daughter just in front of her. I could see her daughter had a number of what looked like still healing burns around her neck and her hair was in an attractive, but extremely short style. Captain de Wynter smiled when she saw us.

"I just brought Jessica over because she told me something interesting and I had to ask," she started.

I looked at Louis who merely shrugged. "Ask away," I replied.

Jessica suddenly spoke. "Is it true that I can trade you plant seeds for a rabbit?"

Yvette, Louis and I sat silently for a moment and then Yvette burst out laughing. "Oh, that one is definitely a classic," she said. "We do have rabbits to trade, why do you ask?"

Jessica looked uncomfortable and blushed for a moment. "Because I heard it as a rumor over three months ago from Captain Nelson and I traded two nights in bed with a marine who was on pickup duty for a five pound bag of Kentucky Bluegrass seeds. My concubine back on the Athena has those seeds with her."

I smiled and called out. "AI, could you ask Brittany to come to the briefing room?"

There was a bit of a wait during which Monique and Yvette caught up on the status of the Athena's repairs. The communications links were back, so Captain de Wynter was able to talk to her crew. She had just signed off when Brittany arrived carrying a small white rabbit. "I'm guessing you needed one," she said.

Jessica gave a cry of joy and jumped to her feet. I just smiled and waved. "This lady has some seeds for us, and I wanted her to see the rabbits," I replied as Jessica dashed over for a closer look at the rabbit.

Monique just looked on for a moment. "The admiral wasn't joking," she said in wonderment. "You really have rabbits here."

Brittany giggled. "We have more than one hundred right now. But I'm guessing that most of your ships will leave with a few, if the captains agree."

Monique looked at me and I shrugged and said. "We are going to keep about eighty for breeding and there are another thirty or so scattered out with the other sponsors on Ishtar, but the goal was to have a pet and the AI accepted my argument. We started with fewer, but rabbits do know how to multiply."

Monique laughed at that as Brittany dragged Jessica out of the briefing room and off to look at the pod full of rabbits. Meanwhile, the other captains and representatives were arriving and I turned my attention to the meeting.

Each captain arrived and gave me the briefest of nods before taking a seat. I was looking closely to see if any were upset by the conditions on the planet, but overall they seemed content. They all filed in rather quickly with Commodore Sprague being the last to enter.

The man had a haunted look about him as he nodded to each of the assembled ship representatives. "Greetings. I wish this was under much happier circumstances, but I guess we are here to discuss the fiasco that was Wolf three-six-seven."

Captain Evans of the Morrigan sighed. "Our problems were the lack of intelligence we had, and the bad formation we got stuck in. We could see the incoming wave of Sa'arm interceptors, but Pollux blocked our shots until the enemy had already crippled the George."

Commodore Sprague sighed. "No useless accusations please."

Captain Clayton, just out of the Pembroke Castle's medical bay held up his hand. "No Sir, sadly Captain Evans is right. We did not expect the number of Sa'arm ships, and never expected the second hive sphere, which meant we came in with inadequate screening. But we also did not use the Goddess ships we had well. Hero class battlecruisers are great against enemy hive ships, but those interceptors can slash a Hero to death, and too many Hero commanders don't get out of the way and let the Goddesses and Asians do their job."

The Commodore stood silently for a moment and then nodded. "What about our fighters? They never reached the Sa'arm interceptors."

Captain Fletcher of the Torrey Pines sighed. "Some kind of dead fire cluster I'm guessing. Just a giant shotgun fired ahead of their interceptors. Our fighters don't have a lot of armor or shielding and a handful of ball bearings traveling at great velocity can rip one apart if they get by the shielding. I'm guessing the Sa'arm just tried throwing a few hundred thousand ahead of their interceptors."

"But that's...!" one of the others shouted.

Commodore Sprague groaned. "A perfectly efficient way to remove one of our favorite battle tactics from us. Capital ships have the shielding and armor to ignore that kind of attack. Fighters don't and it fits with how they disappeared, like a wave crashed over them."

The Commodore looked at me. "You said four days to fix all the engines and six to launch, correct?"

I nodded as Yvette sat up. "Correct sir," she said. "The only major repair is the Tintagel and we have the spares already set up for her. All four corvettes can be made one hundred percent in the four days. We do not have enough spare Goddess turrets and no spare fighters, so we cannot fully return the Andrew Jackson, Athena or Morrigan to service."

He nodded. "Well, it will get us back to Borneo. Now we need to review crew requirements and move some people around, an action which will be rather dry, if you don't mind can we borrow the briefing room to do that?"

Yvette and I smiled. "Not at all," I replied. "Just ask the AI to alert us if you need anything, or ask whoever is working in the command post." We stood to leave but the Commodore smiled wickedly.

"Before you go, I have a question for the all captains here. How many of us have crewmen who have a stash of seeds to trade to these barbarians?"

Yvette and I paused as six of the captains raised their hands. Only Captain Evans of the Morrigan and Commodore Sprague himself kept their hands down. Yvette coughed to hide a giggle as I smiled.

"We have twenty rabbits ready to go to new homes," I reported. "We just need to organize the trades, but that can occur after this meeting. Thank you all."

Yvette and I were about to leave when the Commodore stood and saluted. "No, James Rabb and Yvette Mimeux. We thank you for being here and saving us! We will talk later."

The other captains echoed the salute and Yvette and I left the room, calling for the AI to close the door behind us.

After that confusing moment the rest of the stay by the squadron was smooth. The Commodore requested that we allow 'shore' leaves and although a few unruly subjects had to be banished from the colony the majority had a surprisingly good time. Our recreation room was rarely empty and we even ended up having our first ever bowling team tourney with teams from Torrey Pines, Athena and Tintagel Castle taking on a team lead by Tyson and Fred. Sadly, despite having time to practice, our champions came in second to a spirited Tintagel Castle team.

We even watched the ships put together impromptu basketball games on our half-court. The pod was still expanding, but a full court was still more than three weeks away.

Brad had made a full recovery and was gifted by kisses from just about every concubine and female sponsor in the enclave. I remember than on his first day out of the pod Janet and Edith grabbed him and dragged him back to his own pod. Candi and Randi only giggled and dashed after the man who crawled out of the pod several hours later with the largest smile we'd ever seen on his face. He vowed to never again go up on the lasers with a bad seal, but fierily declared that he would be the first to jump into action should the lasers be needed again.

Even Mike and Debby had a meeting of sorts and made peace over a replicated pizza and one of the rock band games on the consoles. They still were not going to be the best of friends, but the last of the lingering tension between them had vanished.

However, the heart of this activity was the monitoring and maintenance of the repair systems while each ship was brought back to readiness. As the fifth day drew towards completion the corvettes were boarded by their reorganized crews and slipped from the docks, testing the repairs in space. Sigurd followed by Angel Hour, and the Goddess class cruisers were ready before the day had ended. Only the Jackson took the full six days, and much of that was due to the time required to clean up the massive fragment damage from the metal slivers. Commodore Sprague was quite worried as they appeared to be some new weapon, and he had to wonder what had inspired the Sa'arm hive mind to develop such a deadly advancement.

The Jackson did not take too much longer and as noon on day six hit, Commodore Sprague was getting his squadron into a loose order for the jump to Borneo.

We were watching the tracking in the command post when Tiffany giggled. Before we could ask her what was happening she turned on the overhead speaker. "Ishtar control, this is Commodore Sprague."

I smiled. "This is Ishtar control. How can we serve you?"

The Commodore snorted. "You already did a sterling job of it. I just wanted to once again thank all of you for the welcome and care we received. You saved a lot of lives with your dedication, despite being all but abandoned out here."

I felt a shrug. "We have our own community now," I replied. "And as one citizen here said, be it, dank, dark and mysterious; Ishtar is our home."

The Commodore laughed. "Well, we'll be raising a glass to you in Borneo in a couple weeks. Godspeed and keep the lights on for ships in distress."

"Godspeed," I spoke quietly as the ships slipped into hyperspace and vanished.

Yvette was wiping a tear from her eyes. I looked over at her and she returned my gaze with a glare. "What? I can't be sentimental?"

Everyone in the command post laughed and Terrence whispered. "I think we'll all miss them. But we have a life here now."

"And one with lots of green," Tamara said reminding us of the huge seed haul we had ended up with.

We all started laughing remembering Tanya's expressive language when she entered the hydroponics pod to find sixty pounds of seeds carefully arranged in bags. We had received wheat, grass, hops, barley and rice as I had long ago requested, but some of the sixteen naval personnel who had brought seeds had been unable to obtain ones we requested. We had ended up with radish, carrot, sunflower, violet, dandelion, pumpkin, cherry and orange seeds. Tanya had been openly dismayed by the idea of having to keep so many seeds growing for the three years we needed. At the same time the morale in the enclave had never been higher.

I just smiled with the rest as the ships left our system, wondering what additional challenges might hit our colony.