Six
The Shade Tree
Jean watched for a few moments as her Bridge crew set up the trajectory through the nebula.
If we get through this, she told herself wryly, we will be the talk of the Confederacy – the ship that slingshotted around a Q-star. Assuming we survive. And assuming the Feds don’t confiscate my ship for violating a declared exclusion zone.
She tapped a contact on her chair’s arm. “BJ,” she said, addressing her Chief Engineer, “talk to me.”
The reply came back a few moments later. “They’ve hurt us, Captain,” the deep, cultured voice of Dr. Bernard James Smith came back. “But nothing I can’t fix, given time. I presume they’ve followed us into the nebula?”
“You presume right. They haven’t gone back into cloak – we’re down to visual scanners only in this slop, but I’m getting a glimpse of them back there every now and then.”
“Very well. The good news is they cannot shoot at us in the nebula. Their main batteries fire a bolt of anti-particles contained in a very fine magnetic bubble, which dissipates immediately after firing – that is why they have such a nasty explosive effect when they hit normal matter. They are safe to fire in open space, where ordinary matter is so thin that they only lose a few particles by erosion in transit. However, in this gas cloud, any attempt to fire an anti-proton bolt would result in a nasty explosion right on the emitter. It would be, well, counter-productive.”
“They haven’t launched any more torpedoes after the first two. It’s a really small ship, about the size of a Navy corvette. I’m guessing they only carry the torpedoes in the launch bays, with no reloads.”
“I hope you are correct; they certainly could deploy torpedoes in the nebula. Now, Captain, as to our situation. I think I can reroute main power to our aft shield emitters, but I would rather not at the moment – we are safe from return fire for the time being. Instead, I recommend transferring power to balance all of our shields, internal gravity generation and to inertial dampers. The shields and dampers will help us to maintain ship’s structural integrity, and that is where we will need all the help we can get. Tidal forces will be very hard on the ship in this transit, Captain – very hard.”
“All right, BJ, I trust you. You know I do. Make it happen. Just hold us together; we’ll worry about the rest when we come out the far side of the cloud.”
“I will do that, Captain.” He signed off with a click.
***
Tarbos, 2253 C.E.
Damn, but it has been a long time. Good-bye, celibacy, and good riddance!
Jean Barrett walked the streets of the wartime capital with an ebullient spring in her step, despite having a badly damaged ship in orbit. Her happiness was tinged by a touch of guilt; she had for the moment allowed herself to forget the death of her friend and Chief Engineer, Geri Wilson, lost into open space when Grugell anti-proton fire blasted open the Shade Tree’s engineering section.
A Senator, and me, she told herself happily. A ragged-arsed privateer Captain and a Confederate Senator mixed up in a torrid wartime love affair. Who would have thought that? This has to be one for the books.
It was still a trifle amazing. While Jean barely noticed Michael Crider, Jr. when he and several other lawmakers toured her ship the year before the war, she had felt a strong attraction to the Senator on their second meeting only months earlier. That meeting had ended at the door to the Navy’s Transient Quarters after dinner and dancing; the next morning Jean woke alone in the narrow, hard bunk in Transient and sorely regretted letting the Senator go home alone.
On the previous evening, she did not let that opportunity slip past a second time.
As she walked, thoughts of her ship and crew intruded on her happiness. She had unbent enough to bring her datapad along on her date with the Senator after putting an ad on the Tarbos craigslist seeking a new Chief Engineer, although she had discreetly muted it during dinner – and left it muted during the rest of the night.
I suppose I better check messages. I do have people working on my ship.
Jean looked around as she walked, finally noticing a small coffee shop. This is as good a place as any to check my messages. She picked up a cup of coffee and sat down at a quiet corner table with her datapad in front of her.
She deleted the first two messages unread; one promised her the best prices on vacations on Avalon, the other was a campaign ad for the incumbent Selectman from the Mountain View district where she registered to vote. The third was from someone named Bernard James Smith, from Rangely, a small town a few kilometers from the capital, and listed a voice message under the header “Responding to your ad for a Chief Engineer.”
Intrigued, she tapped the screen to play the voice message. A deep voice rolled out of the datapad; it was the voice of a middle-aged man, smooth, articulate, obviously educated, every word enunciated with enormous dignity:
“Captain Barrett. My name is Doctor Bernard James Smith. I am originally from Caliban, but until last month, I worked as Chief Engineer aboard the Off-World Mining and Exploration ship Goliath.
“I have resigned my post with Off-World due to a desire to do my part in the ongoing war. I came to Tarbos with the intention of joining the Confederate Navy only to find that my age precludes enlistment. I am fifty-one, strong, in excellent health, but the Navy bureaucracy will not take my physical condition into account, only my age.
“My background in shipboard systems is extensive. I graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Particle Physics. I took my master’s in Physics from the California Institute of Technology and went on to that institution to take doctoral degrees in Advanced Physics and Quantum Engineering. My doctoral thesis for Advanced Physics was on improving the output ratio of the Mk III Gellar Star Drive, and those improvements were incorporated into the now-standard Mk IV drive.
“Captain Barrett, we are at war and I am determined to do my part. If I cannot serve aboard a Navy vessel, then I am more than willing to serve aboard a private warship. I come to you with excellent qualifications, and promise you I will keep your ship and its systems operational, come what may.
“My curriculum vitae are attached to this message, as is a letter of recommendation from the Captain of the Goliath. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.” The deep voice left a standard comm code, and the message ended.
Jean Barrett sat back in her chair. She was not a woman that was easily impressed, but Bernard James Smith succeeded – if he was telling the truth.
She opened his CV, glanced over it, found most of it incomprehensible; Jean knew how to command a ship, knew most of the basic principles of spaceship architecture, but the intricacies of the Gellar Star Drive were a bit beyond her. Smith’s grades were impressive – a 3.98 average in undergraduate work, 4.00 in graduate school. His record showed employment in design and development with two different shipbuilding consortiums before he accepted the position with the Goliath, now six years ago. The letter from the commander of the Goliath spoke warmly of Smith’s ability as a ship’s engineer; Captain Helen Seegmiller praised Smith’s technical knowledge, his reliability, and his ability to find creative solutions to tricky technical problems. Jean smiled at the Captain’s mention of what she considered Smith’s primary shortcoming, that being that he rarely if ever left the Engineering spaces. On a ship as small as mine, that is probably for the best. Nowhere to go, anyway.
She punched in Smith’s comm code. After one tone, the deep voice answered: “Smith.” No picture appeared; Smith apparently used voice-only comms.
“Doctor Smith,” Jean said, “This is Captain Jean Barrett of the privateer ship Shade Tree.”
“Ah. Good morning, Captain Barrett.”
“Doctor Smith,” Jean told him, “If you’re still interested, I have a job offer for you. My ship is at the Mountain View Skyhook, Pier 4, level 8. I’ll be honest with you – the ship is in bad shape. We took an anti-proton hit off Fortune a few days ago. The Engineering section is pretty much wrecked, and we have shock damage all over the ship. The drive is down to sixty percent capacity, we have two shield generators blown out, the number two port missile bay doors are stuck shut, and the video system in the Wardroom is busted. Furthermore, we’re a pretty damn small ship, water-poor, and we eat combat rations most of the time.”
“I travel light, Captain. I can be on board by sixteen this afternoon. Personally I find static-jet showers refreshing, and combat rations do not bother me at all. And Captain, I will put your ship right. Just let me know when you want to leave port, the Shade Tree will be ready to fly.”
“Doctor Smith,” Jean smiled at the datapad, “Here’s the deal. I want to leave port in three weeks. I will meet your salary requirements for three weeks. At the end of those three weeks, if my ship is ready to fly, you will be on her as her Chief Engineer. If not….”
“I enjoy a challenge,” Smith said. “I accept.”
“Sure you wouldn’t like to look over the damage first?”
“I did say I enjoy a challenge, Captain.”
At fifteen-fifty that afternoon, Bernard James Smith came aboard the privateer, introduced himself with a quick nod and three words – “Call me BJ.” Within ten minutes, he was in the Engineering spaces, evaluating the damage. Two weeks and three days later, the Shade Tree was indeed ready to fly, and Barrett had hired a new chief mechanic.
***
The K-1011
“Coming up on the leading edge of the gas cloud,” the Helmsman announced. “Subcommander, we are going to have to shut down our main drive. Thrusters should be safe.”
“We will not be able to go into cloak,” Atta the Angry mused out loud. “Nor can we fire main batteries – not in this mess, we will self-immolate if we try. If only I had reloads for the torpedo bays, we could use visual targeting.”
Tiktikitti III nodded in agreement, but did not look up from the main scanner array. “We are losing subspace tracking, dark matter and gravimetric scanning capability – Subcommander, we will be limited to visual tracking only, and even that will be limited. I suggest we follow them closely through their trajectory. We have to maintain visual contact if we are to re-acquire and destroy them on the far side of the nebula.”
“And if they simply reverse thrusters and stay in the cloud?”
“They are damaged, Subcommander; we are not. It is conceivable that they could stay in the cover of the nebula until they can effect repairs, but they have to leave eventually. And, if I may remind you, this is the privateer captain Jean Barrett in that ship. We know her history, we know how she operates.” Tiktikitti frowned at the notion of a female commanding a warship; the fiercely patriarchal Grugell found the idea appalling, but the Confederates obviously had other ideas. The war had also instilled in the Imperial Navy a healthy respect for Confederate privateer captains in general, and for Jean Barrett in particular.
“We know from bitter experience during the war all too well how Jean Barrett operates. She will not be content to hide in a gas cloud. She will want to find a way out of the cloud, either to evade or ambush us. Her history shows her to be compulsive, even reckless. No, Subcommander, she will not stay here in the cloud. She will act. We should follow as closely as is safe, and we should maintain the initiative.”
Atta the Angry was not known for listening well to his inferiors, but his second-in-command was talking sense. “Very well,” he said. “You are correct, Tiktikitti. Helm, thrusters are at your disposal; match their trajectory, keep us as close as possible. If we lose visual contact, your estate will fall to whatever heirs you may have.”
“By your command,” the Helmsman said. “Main drive is now off-line. Thrusters are at full power. We are moving into pursuit course.”
“Good.”
***
The Shade Tree
The Shade Tree shook again, harder this time. Somewhere in the hull there was a screech of strained metal.
“BJ,” Captain Barrett called into the Bridge chair panel, “How are we doing on shields and inertial dampers? This is going to be rough.”
“Trying, Captain,” the Chief Engineer’s voice came back. “Shields might not do much good, we’ve got serious tidal forces starting to build. I am putting higher priority on inertial dampers for now.”
“Will she hold together?”
“She should. I hope so.”
“How’s our course?” Barrett asked.
“Captain,” Paolo Guerra called, “I’m adjusting course on the fly here, based on what little Scanning is feeding me gravimetric readings, but hell, I’m just guessing. Looks like we’ll hit perigee in about three minutes.”
“Do your best, Paolo. Scanning, where’s that corvette?”
“I think they’re still back there, trying to match our course. All I got is direct visual now, and that’s not much good in this mess.”
“If they can follow us through, they’ll bring weapons to bear as soon as we clear the nebula.”
As if in reply, the ship groaned. Barrett’s personal datapad suddenly floated up from the arm of her Bridge chair.
“Losing gravity,” Indira Krishnavarna observed coolly.
“We’re not losing anything,” BJ Smith said through the open comm circuit. “It’s that Q-star, the tidal forces are overwhelming our gravity generators. Space is so twisted and strained out here, there’s no telling what might happen.”
As if in agreement, the datapad suddenly shot aft. Barrett felt herself pressed against the back of her Bridge chair. The ship’s nose suddenly swung downwards to point at the blue indicator on the main display that depicted the computer’s best guess at the Q-star’s location.
“Hold her nose up!” Barrett barked.
“I can’t,” Paolo Guerra protested. He stabbed contacts, pulled back on his yoke. “She won’t pull up — she wants to keep her nose down towards that damn thing.”
“BJ, we need gyros,” Barrett called.
“You have them,” came the reply. “But they won’t help. That gravity well is too strong. The tidal forces are going to hold us on our long axis. We should swing around it all right this way, assuming it doesn’t pull us apart.”
“And come out of the trajectory flying backwards?”
“Something like that. Can’t be helped, Captain; we are playing crack-the-whip with the biggest gravity well in the sector, you know. I have to get back to my teakettle; it’s just a bit hectic down here.” There was a sharp click from the comm panel as the Chief Engineer switched off.
“Paolo, you heard him. Queue up the aft scanners and look sharp when we swing through. I’d just as soon not hit anything.”
“All right, Captain,” Guerra answered, his voice doubtful. He risked a look at his panel. “Two minutes. Give or take ten seconds or so.”
“Weapons, stand by forward pee-beams, slave targeting into forward scanners – if we come out flying backwards, then we’ll be able to shoot. Better figure on visual targeting, scanners may be out of whack from all the gas. Plan on a fan-fire the moment we are clear to shoot. Warm up the Shrikes, get them ready to fly, get a solution as soon as you can.” At least flying backwards would unmask the privateer’s missile tubes.
Beneath her feet, the Shade Tree groaned as though in pain. “Come on,” Barrett urged the ship. “Come on, baby. Hold together.”
***
To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.
Links, in case you need them:
They don’t get authors like this over at Redstate!
Good story, Animal!
Yes! I am really enjoying this one.
#metoo
Indubitably!
ditto
Same here. Nice touch with the gravity of the start screwing with whatever artificial grav the ship uses.
An OT with apologies to kinnath.
The nut who tried to take out Trump had not only an AK, but also drove a Nissan. It’s like he came from central casting.
Donald Trump in the Cross-Hairs Again
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-in-the-cross-hairs-again-d7316cea?st=kGyPLt&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Altima?
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2024/09/15/who-is-ryan-wesley-routh-man-detained-in-alleged-would-be-trump-assassination-attempt/
Frontier???
what, no link?
Darn, it’s an Xterra.
At least he’s a registered Republican and a fan of Vivek Carsalesman and Nikki Haley.
Darn, it’s an Xterra.
I wonder if it’s available now. I imagine he needs a bit of cash at this point.
Sorry kinnath, similar to Thomas Crooks it will be completely disassembled and immediately melted down as salvage within the next 10 days.
Sensei, what a waste.
Not a Subaru?
Who’s this we, kemosabe? What a load of shit.
Bad luck
The European Union brought peace and prosperity to a troubled region in the decades following World War Two. But it may lack energy and become impotent in the decades ahead.
Not only is the EU economy stagnating. The bloc may also be bullied by Russia, China and even the United States. While there are potential fixes, such as the plan former European Central Bank boss Mario Draghi set out last week, the EU and its members are unlikely to implement them. It’s a sad, bad future.
The sad part of the prognosis is economic stasis. EU productivity has grown on average only 0.7% a year since 2015. Combine that with a shrinking working-age population and the economy will stall, Draghi concluded in a report, opens new tab the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, asked him to produce.
——-
Draghi has a blueprint to revitalise the EU. He wants the region to invest an extra 800 billion euros a year, equivalent to nearly 5% of its output. Much of this would fund an industrial policy to compete with the United States and China, with an emphasis on clean technology and high-tech sectors such as artificial intelligence.
No one knows how this happened. But Mario has a plan to revitalize Europe. They just need more debt fueled industrial policy and central planning. They’ll be back on their feet in no time.
Probably low taxes. Needs moar harmonizing.
They’re going to spend more money, why hasn’t anyone tried that before?
Note economist and all around genius agrees!
I thought that would link to Winston’s Mom.
Yeah. Who needs innovation, and people motivated to improve business and turn a profit. We’ll just throw out more money for middle management.
Oh, and make some more regulations while they are at it. Can’t keep people safe enough from their own decisions!
OT Brooks. I’m not a “fan of the fan”, but it sounds fantastic. It’s not like I’ll be buying one…
Gordon Murray’s T.50: The Ultimate Successor to the McLaren F1 | Jay Leno’s Garage
Thanks, Animal. Good stuff.
Listening to Lawless Lands while reading. Seemed to be appropriate.
If the same thing happens to the aliens, Shade Tree will have the advantage.
It’ll be like the Acheron getting the weather gage on the Surprise.
(watched that movie for the 539th time last weekend, still amazing)
I wonder if the Shade Tree could blind-launch a couple of Shrikes in scan mode, and let the K-1011 blunder right into them…
In my head, there’s a non zero chance there are no shots fired. The Grugell eff up and end up in the gravity well.
Since they are in normal space and traveling at high velocity, I expect anything tossed out of the lead ship would really create an issue for the following vessel. They also have to follow a very specific path to slingshot around the gravity well. A hand full of pennies or the waste from the head would work about as well as a lead projectiles at those speeds.
She’s the fakest bitch in Fakertown.
Which accent will she pick for the inauguration?
Sore loser.
Does she have a Hillary accent?
On speculation about how the shooter knew where Trump would be:
Just like the last one, this is odd. The guy is not a local who would be familiar with the area.
There was some back and forth about where he actually lives, but the last answer was he moved to Hawaii from NC a couple of years ago with his girlfriend.
So…..
How do you get from Hawaii to Florida with your guns and body armor (in the backpacks)?
His son said he knew his dad was at the beach and thought he was in Hawaii. The article also said “outer banks in Hawaii”, which I don’t think is a thing. I suppose he meant OR. As in, dad was at the beach in the Outer Banks (North Carolina) or in Hawaii.
So, perhaps he still maintains a residence in Greensboro NC? Otherwise, the logistics of obtaining weapons, vehicles and getting to Florida are pretty daunting.
We know this guy was followed on Twitter by an active CIA agent for years, as one of his earliest followers, just as we have reason to suspect the earlier shooter was in contact with the FBI.
This Guy traveled the world making representations about mercenaries and such. One would be hard pressed to imagine a world where he was on the radar of Newsweek, but not the FBI or the CIA.
Scouting this location and planning his getaway seems farfetched. Trump has recently made appearances in NC. Seems it would be easier to operate on your home turf.
I haven’t seen any talk about the weapon – but I assume he had to have a home base in NC, or this whole thing becomes extremely farfetched.
Has anyone seen any reporting about his path to West Palm, and where the vehicles and gun came from?
If it turns out the firearm came from Palmetto State Armory, I’m going for full body tinfoil suit.
Everything comes from Palmetto State Armory these days, they’re the most popular AR builder in the ‘States by a good stretch.
The rifle he had was an SKS converted to take AK magazines. Basically the cheapest piece of shit that would probably work most of the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if he bought it from a pawn shop or in some local private sale. It’s the kind of rifle I’d expect of a mostly-homeless transient with a history of mental problems.
They said he was on site for up to 12 hours. It shouldn’t be hard to find out when Trump was in town, and assume he’d like to play a round on the weekend. Trump would have a pretty big entourage with him. But this did take some planning and probably some amount of training.
I haven’t heard anything about his travel. Supposedly it was a fully automatic AK, which makes your questions even more interesting.
Given his degree is MechE and his prior arrest for having a supposed full on machine gun — it isn’t implausible to think he picked up some gunsmithing at some point and can convert his own receivers. That’s about the only part of this that does make some sense (well, besides the OMB==Hitler driving these nut cases to try… after all, if you’d stopped Hitler in 1932, you’re a hero!)
The fact that he camped out for 12 hours to me makes the theories less likely.
Possibly he just waited on Trump’s course knowing he’d eventually come along.
That he could camp out for 12 hours on/near the perimeter fence is insane. When Big Mike came to town to visit her brother, the entire neighborhood was locked down. No one came near it.
And public streets meant jack shit.
If not, he could just snipe any random fat guy in gold pants to relieve his fury.
Golf pants. Golf!
Curse you tiny iphone!
We’re talking Trump — he probably does have gold pants.
Gold clubs, I’d believe, but Trump ain’t MC Hammer…
This alludes to some of this — and yeah, I was kind of wondering the more I heard about this turkey. At the end of the article:
Ok… so this loon who apparently worked construction after getting a MechEng degree in North Carolina has jetted around the world, attempted to bring Taliban fighters in via forged passports in Pakistan for the Ukraine…. and while supposedly making very little money can get from Hawaii to Florida, pick up a SKS style rifle, body armor plates, etc. and start camping out? Really?
That just seems like a chunk of change lying around for someone with zero savings, no real estate… yet mysteriously can relocate to Hawaii and start a construction company (for tiny houses!) after several international trips. I know I’m not as good with money as I should be — but just a yearly trip to Georgia is a chunk of change for me… much less all this stuff.
It reeks, to put it mildly.
He gonna be Epstein’d.
Why do you doubt the narrative comrade?
I’m not a “fan of the fan”, but it sounds fantastic. It’s not like I’ll be buying one…
The motor is incredible. Other than that… Murray should have let the McLaren F1 be his legacy.
It is 2,200 lbs as well.
He will still sell all he builds at basically any price. But I agree.
I love it. I can think of worse uses for fuck you money.
He will still sell all he builds at basically any price. But I agree.
No doubt people are lined up over the horizon to buy one.
Speaking of “at any price”
I got sucked into watching the end-of-auction flurry of bidding on a 1970 914-6 this morning on BaT; sale price, $99,100. The usual prissypants BaT commenters used this as an illustration of the collapse of prices. The buyer stole it.
It was a really nice car, but I wouldn’t exactly call that a steal.
I love BaT but the Porsche dudes are more tedious than the muscle car guys.
They backtracked when they found out it wasn’t numbers matching.
And- you paid thirty times what it cost new. What likelihood is there it will ever be used as originally intended? The guy who bought it will probably put three or four hundred miles a year on it, going to cars and coffee and Porsche Club butt sniffing parties.
I met a dude once who had over 300K miles on his 911. I kind of admired that.
They backtracked when they found out it wasn’t numbers matching.
Exactly.
I met a dude once who had over 300K miles on his 911.
Excellent. Well done.
I am such a slacker. I only have 115k on my Z.