Naril

Falling Skies: Wavering Valor

There are things you never really appreciate until you’ve lost them. Or, in Sarett’s case, almost lost. Bedridden for months and the mostly-willing participant in more surgeries than she could count, the novelty of being able to stand up on her own again still had not entirely lost its shine. She raised her left arm and rubbed at the scars around her eye with the ceramic thumb of her artificial hand, a gesture she’d picked up during therapy and had developed, now, into an almost subconscious reaction. Or, at least, something she did when there was more than usual on her mind. With an effort, Sarett caught herself and lowered her arm, wrapping her fingers around a railing.

Artemis was in an orbit the proscribed distance from Attica Station, ‘behind’ the installation in its orbital path. The ship’s bow was pointed just to the side of the station, which meant that Sarett had a breathtaking view through the command deck’s thick transparent forward plating. They were coming over the terminator and she could see the planet below, daubed with lapis oceans, they coasts marked with circular bays carved in continental shelves from orbital bombardments. The night side showed the spray of lights from the world’s single surviving city, along with the bright, ragged ribbons of fires that had been burning for a decade, and would burn for decades more. It was all so abstract, almost beautiful from 2800 kilometers. Ahead, If Sarett looked closely, she thought she could just see the tight cluster of lights another fifty kilometers out, more or less exactly according to the ship’s laser rangefinder. That would, of course, be the Perseus.

Sarett felt a sensation she still wasn’t entirely used to yet, the request for someone else to enter her mind. It had taken a few days, but she and Ava had managed to work out a protocol that didn’t make Sarett’s skin crawl or startle her to the point where she jumped out of her shoes. Part of that had just been time - cybernetics weren’t uncommon among the Empire’s ranks, but there were almost no officers with quite so much equipment shoved in their body, so many machines sharing space in their head. With a thought, Sarett allowed the connection.

“They’re tagging us again,” Ava said in Sarett’s mind, “If I were to guess, someone on the Perseus is trying to find my return sensor with their rangefinder’s laser, see if they can burn it out with a straight shot down the optic.” Her voice was crisp, lightly touched with an accent Sarett couldn’t place. Arabic, maybe?

“Are they close?” Sarett thought. Another bridge officer walked toward her carrying an infopad, handed it over with a nod.

“Not even a little bit,” Ava said, was there smugness in her voice? “They've managed a straight shot down a hull inspection camera - with the shutter closed. I'm going to guess that means they don’t have my plans.”

“And we don’t have the Perseus’ either,” thought Sarett, “That puts us on even ground. Sort of.”

The infopad was a status report from Tolliver, meticulous and almost over-detailed, but she had discovered rather quickly that was something to be expected. There would probably be a time that amount of information would be useful, but damned if she couldn’t figure out what it would be. The exact neutrino emission from the fusion core, the status of the ship’s ablative thruster armor, the exact rad count and tritium storage levels on each of the ship’s fusion warheads - Sarett scrolled through dense pages of information, her finger clicking on the info pad’s screen. She had read the first report, she really had - and she had also noticed that every report thereafter contained the same information, and that it did not change meaningfully from day to day. It made Tolliver happy to know, though, and for the moment the crew seemed happy enough to report that information. If nothing else, it made sure that people actually did visit every part of the ship regularly.

There was an addendum about the negotiations, which in contrast contained almost no information. The doors were still locked, the talks presumably ongoing. Nobody had any reason to believe that it would end any time soon, and there was some speculation that both sides may have walked into the negotiation room with briefcases full of stims. Sarett wondered if a peace treaty written under the influence of spray-injected drugs could be legally binding.

“Captain, we’ve got fighters and suits on approach to the hangar,” said Lieutenant Carys Myles, her voice touched by a Welsh accent.

“Let’s get them landed and put away,” Sarett said, “We have an advanced sensor pod on one of the fighters in the next flight?”

“Aye, the first ship out,” Myles said.

“Good. Maybe we can get some deep data on the Perseus - or maybe even find out if they’re still alive at the negotiation table.” Sarett said. She touched her finger to the infopad, acknowledging receipt, and handed it to another crewman, who left.

Myles turned her head away from her display for a moment, “Begging your pardon, Ma’am, but…Consul Nagwen’s ship?”

“A cat can look at a king, Lieutenant” Sarett said, wrapping her hands around the railing again, “So can 500 kilos of silicon and glass. If we’re wasting this much time, we may as well find some way to waste it productively. I’ll damn well put every mass sensor, every gravity wave observer and interferometer out there I can.”

“No active sweeps, then?” Myles said, and Sarett saw her shoulders relax.

“Not unless we have to. Make sure they keep the system charged and the transceiver active, though.” Sarett said, “If something happens, I want to know where every person is inside that ship.”

“Aye,” Myles said, and started tapping at her control panel, pulling a microphone close to her mouth.

Ava’s voice flitted though her head, “Commander Flynn would like me to remind you that you’ve missed your last two appointments.”

Sarett fought to resist the urge to wave a hand in dismissal, “I’ve been busy."

“And he understands that, but your implants will need checking and adjusting for the next few months at least. He needs some diagnostic data, and the only way he can get it is if you stop by so he can actually get that information.” Ava paused, then said, “Unless you’d like me to collect it, and forward the data on to him.”

“I don’t think we’re at that point in our relationship yet,” Sarett thought, and she couldn’t keep the tug of a smirk off her face, “Wait a minute, can you really do that?”

“I think so,” Ava said, “Although I’m not entirely sure if I can do it without shutting down the neural bridge interface.”

Sarett managed a mental sigh, which she was rather proud of, “Yeah, Flynn can’t do that either. Tell him I’ll see him after we get the pilots rotated.”

“Promise?” Ava said, and her voice held a tone that Sarett hadn’t heard for a long time. It made her smile.

“All right, all right.” Sarett thought.

“You also have a letter from Lara,” Ava said, “But I’m going to keep it until you see the doctor.”

“I could order you to hand it over,” Sarett's thoughts came with the mental equivalent of an arched eyebrow.

Ava’s voice was perky, bordering on insouciant, “But you won’t,” she said.

She was right. At least, for now.

The Sunday Group

Take care of yourself, Penny. I understand what you're going through.

I, um. You really don't need to worry about this. I'll take the reins if you'd like.

A 1940's Pulp Adventure (Indiana Jones/The Rocketeer/The Mummy inspired)

Did you grow this idea in a lab just for me?

I am going to have not even kind of the time to do this, but I hope you get a ton of interest so I can join it in six months or so. :3

NaNoWriMo Discussion

@Tybalt Capulet One of my favourite characters was someone I originally wrote to be a Tragic Backstory kind of character, because sometimes you need those. She wound up as one of my favourite characters I ever wrote about, and it's a concept I still play with from time to time.

I'm absolutely certain that one of the sisters in my NaNo story is going to die, though. It's the only way the story can end. They're both proud, intelligent, convinced that they're right and have good personal and narrative reason to believe that. There's no room for daylight between their points of view. The question will eventually be whether I want to write a knock-down, drag-out, Last Act Of A Marvel Movie ending, or whether it's going to be something more like the Chess Courtyard Fight in Hero. I admit I am hugely leaning toward that second one.

NaNoWriMo Discussion

I'm closing on on 32,000 words, after a brief stint to write about 7000 words of "a different thing" while I let some unresolved outline and motivation points percolate. My brain eventually spit out what I'm hoping will be a fairly elegant framework for "why did this character do this thing," and flesh out the conspiracy-thriller theme in this weird superhuman story.

I like this story, and I really like the two main characters. I'm real sad one of them has to die.

Falling Skies: Wavering Valor

Captain Ashley Sarett

Appearance:

There is little exceptional about Sarett's height, save that she stands taller than a wheelchair. Her features are proud and defiant, the expression on her face is that of someone who has walked through Hell and perhaps was not terribly impressed. She has a slim, athletic build made of lean, long lines, and she moves with a careful and practiced grace that echoes the motion of a ballet dancer. Silver-streaked dark hair, slightly wavy, complements the warm olive tones of her skin, held in a loose ponytail to her shoulders but with enough escaping to frame her face. Her eyes, though, are large, intelligent, and dazzling. The left is a glittering jade-green deeper than any gemstone, and the right is pale blue, subtly but clearly artificial, the skin nearby marked by the fine silver lines of surgical scars. Indeed, her left arm, leg, and parts of her trunk have also been replaced with prostheses, the grey and white of ceramics and alloys a marked contrast to her uniform. For those times when her neural bridges and interfaces are not operating at peak efficiency, Sarett also owns a cane made from a salvaged piece of scorched starship armor plating.



Name: Sarett, Ashley T.

Age: 38

Gender: Female

Callsign: N/A

Kills:

Responsible for the destruction of the Coalition Third Fleet at the Battle of Kassir.

Responsible for the loss of INS Nocturne, an experimental stealth-equipped destroyer, and 280 of the 400 souls aboard during same engagement.

Responsible for the loss of Task Force Typhon during same engagement.


Psychological Analysis:

Proud and confident, in a way that can strike people as being arrogant, Sarett is never shy with her opinions. Infuriating to her detractors, she also speaks only when she is sure of something and has good reason for that surety. She is a brilliant tactician, analytical at speed, and ferociously intelligent. Her attude and manner of speech is direct but rarely rude, and she manages to walk the line between pragmatic and sentimental. Sarett has a tendency to hold herself to a higher standard than those around her, which can have a distancing effect on relationships with her peer and crews, though she does not take her own failings out on others. A systemic, end-goal thinker by inclination, Sarett tends to issue orders and expect them to be carried out without micromanagement, and officers in her charge tend to have broad leeway to accomplish tasks given to them. Perhaps more than other commanding officers, Sarett has demonstrated a willingness to treat herself and those under her command as acceptable losses in order for others to gain a tactical advantage, most famously at the Battle of Kassir.

Sarett has very little trouble speaking her mind, an insouciance that has been taken as insubordination by some of her commanding officers. She retains this tendency even in the face of disciplinary hearings, of which she has had many. She is however extraordinarily difficult to rattle or emotionally unmoor, at least in public; nobody she has served with can even recall her raising her voice in anger. Instead, at times she is dismissive, viciously sarcastic, or belittling, treating someone that tries to get a rise out of her with contempt and with the attitude that they are somehow 'beneath' her.

Along these lines, Sarett is, when asked and when her answer is explicitly requested (occasionally with the on-the-record statement that her words will provoke no retaliation), not especially enthusiastic to be a Naval officer, and is a voice advocating for peace with the Coalition.

Away from her duties in the Navy, which occupy most of her time and attention, Sarett remains a cool and sometimes distant person. She enjoys drinking, though more in the flavor of small amounts of exceptional liquor than in losing herself to the bottle, and rumour has it she has laid in a supply onboard for special occasions. Sarett has never been married and has no children; her last serious relationship ended some time ago. That said, Sarett is very much not a sexless automaton; however the execution of her duties and continuous physical therapy make pursuing others difficult. Recently, she has taken up gardening, with several pots of flowering plants taking up a small shelf in her quarters.

She worries intensely about her sister, Lara, who is a MAS pilot of considerable distinction in the 8th MAS Team, 44th Legion. Lara is currently posted on the INS Atagaris.



Military Record:

The room was too bright, or at least Sarett thought so. The autonomic responess of her new eye weren't entirely dialed in yet, and she already knew that the increased sensitivity on one side was going to leave her with a headache. The technicians could not sign off on her implants quickly enough, for her preferences, so that she could modify them on her own rather than relying on hospital staff. The new uniform felt scratchy both on her living skin and on the tactile response network on her new leg, and she shifted her weight from side to side, trying to ease the sensation a little. She also tried - and failed - not to rub at the scars around her eye, the strange smoothness of her artificial hand a novel and not entirely unpleasant sensation against the last of the swelling from more surgeries than she could count. The door across from her opened, and Sarett dropped her arm to her side. A man in a uniform so sharp it looked like it had been pressed while he was wearing it came out, nodded.

"Admiral Lasca will see you now," the man said, and gestured into the office beyond the door.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Sarett said, her voice smooth and lightly accented. At least that hadn't changed.

The door shut behind her, fitting into its felt-lined frame in perfect silence. Ahead, an older man, his hair gone iron-grey, sat at a desk littered with detritus. Printouts and folders were arranged in chaotic stacks along with at least half a dozen infopads, some propped up and glowing, others half-buried in a slide of paper. The man, though, sat in front of a wide clear work area, a single new infopad held in one hand, flicking through something on the screen with the other. He was neat, not quite the almost-caricature of his assistant, and watched Sarett with cool blue eyes.

"Ashely Sarett, reporting, Sir," Sarett said, her voice polite.

"Of course," Lasca said, gesturing to a chair, "Have a seat." She did, lowering herself with care to the cushion.

"How's your recovery going?" Lasca said, setting the infopad aside.

"Better than I expected, Sir," Sarett said, "The med techs tell me they'll be willing to sign off on my implants in the next couple of days. Frankly, I wish it were sooner because they seem to have a fairly monsterous idea of what my eyes are supposed to do. Beyond that, apparently I could make a complete recovery, in time."

"My daughter has a neural bridge," Lasca said, gesturing at her, "She had a very difficult time learning to walk again."

Sarett shrugged, "I can't explain it, Sir. It isn't perfect, and there are better days than others, but I'll manage." She paused, then said, "Permission to speak freely?"

At Lasca's gesture, she said, "I don't think you brought me in here to ask about how my artificial eye is doing."

The Admiral leaned back, a small grin on his face. "Tell me a little about yourself." He tilted his hand, forestalling another question, "Consider it an order."

Sarett took a breath, "I was born in space, my parents were weapons designers for the UEE. They moved around a lot, wherever the R&D facilities were, I guess. They had two children, me and my sister, and we spent almost our whole childhood on ships or stations. I didn't even see the ground until I was almost a teenager." She smirked, "I still remember not quite believing the idea that there wasn't some huge piece of machinery moving air around planetside. The first night we actually stayed on a colony, I couldn't sleep. It was too quiet."

"Not an uncommon story," Lasca said, gesturing for her to continue.

"Um...I mean, I always knew that Mom and Dad were doing something with the government, something with the war. Sometimes we'd have to pack up and leave in the middle of the night, and they told me later that's because we were getting out of the way of Coalition ships. Dad always gave us the patriotic lecture about what we were fighting for, how we were taking back what the Coalition stole from us," her voice lapsed into a slightly bored monotone, "He really believed, you know? He even pulled all kinds of strings when we were older, made sure Lara and I got into the Academy."

"I didn't...I wasn't all that excited about going," Sarett said, "But I couldn't let Dad down, he wanted it so much. And..I don't know. I understood everything they told me, I really did. They told me I was one of the best students they'd had in a while."

"You didn't enjoy your time at the Academy?" Lasca said.

"Not particularly. I mean, I got laid a lot," Sarett said, "That was nice."

Lasca let out a laugh and tapped the infopad, "Your record - all of your records - say you excelled."

"If I'm going to do a thing," Sarett said, "I'm going to do it well; there's no point otherwise. And my whole life, Dad had been making sure that what I could do was be a good Navy officer. I'm not going to pull the bare minimum just becuase I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the career I'm in. I am not particularly pleased at what the skills in my life have wound up being, but I will use them to the best of my ability." She paused. "Sir."

"That certainly seemed to be the case at Kassir," Lasca said, putting the infopad back down.

Sarett sighed. She'd hoped that this wouldn't come up. The smell of burning flesh and plasma fires, the sound of tearing hull plating, and the faces of the dead were still just behind the darkness of her mind.

"Sir, with all due respect, I just had a hearing about Kassir," she said.

"Do you know how many kills the Nocturne is credited with?" Lasca said.

"No, and I'm not particularly interested," Sarett replied.

"More than any other experimental ship has in the history of the Fleet," said Lasca.

"Good for it," Sarett said, "The Nocturne is gone, and it took a lot of good people with it."

Lasca sighed, "How long were you in command?"

"About twelve hours," Sarett replied, "After Sera...Captain Beaumont died in the ambush."

Lasca tapped his infopad again, "Why didn't you come back to the main Fleet afterward?"

Sarett shook her head, pinched the bridge of her nose. Why was Lasca doing this? These were the same questions the tribunal had asked, the same thing she had to explain over and over again after she'd finally hit the distress beacon and someone came to rescue them. She smelled smoke and burning hair, and her hands clenched into fists.

"Because we knew what we'd run into wasn't a random patrol," Sarett said, keeping her voice calm with an effort, "They were the advanced scouts for a large-scale jump-in. We jammed them the moment we saw them, and just barely managed to disable them. The fight wasn’t long, and we came out with a lot of damage, but we were also sure that they hadn’t managed to contact the Coalition. When the dust settled, Captain Beaumont was dead, along with a dozen other crewmen and we…I…had a decision to make.”

She swallowed. “We knew where the Coalition was going to jump in, but we’d taken damage to the comm system; we could send data but not receive. I decided that if we ran back to the Fleet, we'd just be one more ship and the Fleet would be no richer for it. If we stayed, and the stealth system kept working, we could relay data back to the rest of them, real-time, and without having to account for the echoes of everything in the graveyard. The Fleet would have, at least for a while, better visuals and better situational awareness than the Coalition did. So we squirted our intention back to Fleet Command, and went dark."

Sarett took a breath, and continued before Lasca could ask another question, "And then I realized that the place wasn't just a graveyard, it was a graveyard of warships, and that there were so many fights there that scavengers tended to keep away. Too many people getting killed by automated defenses on wrecks to make the trip profitable. And we didn't have many guns, but what we did have were manipulator arms, and environment suits, and a ship full of people whose whole life was making things up while they went along. We found a dreadnought wreck, and we started scooping torpedoes, mines, fuel cells, anything that we could make explode out of it. We attached charges to thenm, remote-controlled detonators; I even had someone wire my sidearm to a warhead with a timing trigger, and we used some of that to mine the Coaliton's approach vector."

"That's not all you did," Lasca said.

"I ordered the ship to make a short-range jump tangent to the Coalition's approach, just far enough away so that we would be a little outside their high-gain sensor range when they approached in-system," Sarett said with a sigh, "And we started accelerating under conventional drives, fast as we could make the engines burn. A couple of hours later, we were moving at a pretty intense velocity, and we kicked almost all of the mines overboard on an intersecting path with where the Coaltion would probably move after they got hit by the other mines we'd laid down. There was really only one path that didn't involve shouldering wrecks out of the way; that's why we picked that spot. There aren't a lot of good jump-in points in Kassir anymore, and you have to spend a lot of time on conventional drives after arrival even in three dimensions. You can go totally out of system plane, but that's announcing your arrival with a big flashing sign and we already knew they weren't doing that."

“We made another jump to bleed off our velocity, somewhere above-plane and not too far from the wreckage, with the stealth system on. The Coalition fleet jumped in, and we started relaying information to Fleet Command fast as we could. Our sensors were closer, and we had the benefit of not having to try and scan through half a dozen dead battleships. We watched the first set of mines go off, and that was pretty spectacular, I remember seeing one of the smaller ships go drifting. When they changed course, it wasn't exactly on the vector I'd thought, but a few of the mines hit. With all the extra speed, one of them tore a hole in a carrier and it started venting atmosphere."

Sarett shifted in her seat, “Do you really want me to go on?”

“I wasn’t at the hearing,” Lasca said.

“Then let me be frank,” Sarett said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You’re going to disobey an order?” Lasca said, arching one eyebrow.

Sarett opened her mouth, then closed it again, biting off the beginning of something that probably would get her before yet another disciplinary committee. She took a long, slow breath, let it out between her pursed lips.

“Everything was going fine,” she said, her voice a tight, “Until the ship’s communication officer said that they thought there might be a problem with stealth system. We had to broadcast tight and loud in order to make sure the Fleet could hear us over the interference and refraction in Kassir. That meant we had a certain amount of signal leakage, and it seemed like the stealth system hadn’t accounted for long-term, high-gain data transmission. About ten seconds later, we saw half a dozen Coalition ships breaking formation and heading in our direction. They were sending out such loud scanner pings that they threw sparks off the derelicts.”

She cleared her throat, “We didn’t have enough fuel for a jump all the way back to the Fleet. The fight with the Coalition scouts had damaged our fuel storage system and I’d burned up a lot of what was left setting the trap with the mines. That also meant we probably didn’t have enough fuel to get back on thrusters, at least not in any way that would be remotely safe. We’d run dry along a path where we had to evade debris but avoid Coalition guns and sensors, and if we made a ballistic trajectory along a clear corridor, we were in the path of the Coalition’s biggest guns without cover. I…made a mistake. I failed. I had put us out of the reach of help, in the path of danger, and used up our ability to escape.”

Lasca stayed quiet, raised one finger in the smallest possible gesture to continue.

“So, I decided that if we were going to die, we’d make it matter,” Sarett said, “I told the crew to take the stealth system offline and crank the reactor up. The ship’s power system was already oversized, and without it we must have registered on every scanner across the system. We widened the beam on our data transmission, making sure that the Coalition could hear it. If they decrypted it, then they knew what we were doing, and that worked great for me. If they didn’t, they still knew we were communicating a lot of information, and they’d want to make sure we stopped. More Coalition ships broke formation, we ran, they launched ship-busters, and eventually there was no way out.”

“After we put the fires out, half the ship was in hard vacuum and the reactor had gone offline. I was hurt, shrapnel from the ship-buster explosion, fire from an overloading power bus. The doctor had enough stims and painkillers to keep me going, but he couldn’t make my eye work. Radiation damage, apparently.” She chuffed out something like a laugh, flexed her artificial fingers, “That worked out for me.”

“We wound up in the debris field of some huge ship,” Sarett continued, “Something so large the pieces of the ship were actually orbiting one another. One of the heavy hitters from the Coalition fleet stayed on station near where we went in, scanning for us to finish us off, I think because they realized the Nocturne was something unusual, something worth salvaging. More important, that meant it wasn’t joining the main battle.”

“We watched the fireworks for an hour. The Coalition ship eventually moved off, but not so far away that we could try and get away from it - the reactor was offline, we were leaking air, and even the cold-gas thrusters were damaged. I made the decision to not pull the pin on our emergency distress beacon. If I did that, the Coalition would know where we were. It’s the same reason I chose to keep radio-silent when Task Force Typhon came to investigate where the Fleet had last seen our broadcast. A handful of suits would have had no chance to begin with, and if we’d sounded an alarm it would be even worse than if I had pulled the emergency beacon. I weighed their four lives against the lives on my ship, and I watched them die.” Sarett kept her voice level, though it cracked around the edges at the end.

Lasca was quiet for what felt like an eternity, watching Sarett with an expression of careful evaluation. Sarett, for her part, felt her muscles seize up at the small of her back but kept herself sitting upright, matching the Admiral’s look. She had no idea what was going on, why the man had wanted to hear that story. The whole report had to be somewhere in front of him on one of those infopads, complete with telemetry and sensor data and no doubt annotated by some back-room tactician with all the mistakes and ‘grave errors in judgement’ highlighted and underlined in red. No doubt, the Admiral had received some kind of recommendation regarding what to do with Sarett; with her history of insubordination, of questioning authority, of her many disciplinary hearings. Now she’d lost a ship, and for what? A point on a map, a convenient location to let jump engines cool. She would be drummed out of the Navy, she was sure of it.

And then what? Sarett did not particularly relish the set of skills she’d developed, or that finding ways to seize a tactical advantage came to her naturally. Her upbringing, her childhood, the way her brain had developed, and years of training and expectations had honed her into a weapon the likes of which came around perhaps a half-dozen times in a generation, and she…didn’t really care for it. But what would she do if she wasn’t part of the Navy? Learn to cook? She could burn a boiled egg. Take up gardening on some colony far from the front lines? Maybe she could make something grow, watch a tree take root and make flowers and fruit. Sit in its shade while starships burned overhead, and wonder if she might have helped.

Lasca broke his gaze, “What is your rank, if you don’t mind?” He said, shattering Sarett’s reverie.

“Commander,” Sarett said, suddenly off balance.

“I don’t think that’s quite right,” Lasca said.

Sarett blinked, “Sir?”

“You said you commanded the Nocturne for twelve hours, but she’s still commissioned. The hulk has been salvaged, though I don’t know what’s going to happen to it. By tradition and procedure then, you’ve been captain of the Nocturne for…” Lasca checked his calendar, “Three months, two weeks, and five days, by my count. The situation was something nobody could have wanted, but here we are.”

“I spent all that time in a hospital bed, it doesn’t-“ Sarett began,

“I have a desperate need for competent captains,” Lasca said, holding up his hand, “People who are intelligent and thoughtful, ferocious and driven. You are all of these things and more. And, because I am aware of your opinion on the state of the war, I will tell you that I have a mission in mind, especially for you.”

Sarett held the breath she’d drawn to object, her train of thought suddenly off track.

“…What?” She managed.

“The Empire and the Coalition have agreed to peace talks,” Lasca said, “The news is going out to the feeds in the morning. The Navy will be sending a detachment to escort the politicians and the diplomats, and…well. I’m sure you can figure out the rest. Don’t worry, they won’t be on your ship, probably. I need someone who isn’t a bright-eyed zealot on this mission, someone inclined to offer the benefit of the doubt, but will defend the Empire’s interests with uncommon prowess should the question be raised. I, in fact, need you.”

Sarett coughed to cover her surprise, “You’re giving me a ship?”

“A captain without a ship is a tragedy,” Lasca said, “And yes, I’m formalizing your promotion.” He tapped the infopad, turned it around to face Sarett.

“I didn’t know this class had launched yet,” Sarett said, taking the pad and scrolling.

“First of her line,” Lasca said, “Efficient, more of a rapier than a broadsword. Nimble, for a ship its size - and there are a few other things that I’ll let you find out on your own.”

Sarett looked at the Admiral, one eyebrow raised. Not intentionally; the nerves over her artificial eye hadn’t reconnected yet. She looked back down at the infopad, and swiped across the screen. The diagrams of the smooth, sleek ship slid away, replaced by a complex piece of paperwork. She knew what it was with only a cursory look. Lasca had been telling the truth. All she had to do was touch her thumb to the reader, and she would accept her promotion. And become master of a ship, take on responsibility for the crew. She closed her eyes, took a long, slow breath, blew it out in meditative stillness.

She pressed her thumb to the pad. Really, what else could she do?

She and Lasca spoke for a few more minutes, taking care of a handful of logistic, legal, and bureaucratic details. From the Admiral’s description, there would absolutely be a few people who would be upset that Sarett was taking command of the newest ship in the Empire’s fleet, but that didn’t bother her at all. By the end, she almost felt like herself again, save for the knot of anxiety forming in her stomach. Strangely, part of it fluttered away when she shoved the Admiral’s door open, making her way back to the reception area.

“Captain Sarett,” the Lieutenant, standing up from his desk, “The Admiral has asked me to take you to the drydock. You must be excited to get back to the fight,” He grinned, and stuck up a pose from the latest round of propaganda posters, “‘The Coalition grows fat on the blood spilled in our stolen systems,’ right? And look at you, with that cool prosthetic arm, all the scars! You look ready to take on the whole Coalition yourself - hey, maybe they should put you on the next poster! I bet the Admiral could make that happen.”

Sarett paused by the man’s desk, and turned her head with a kind of precise, delicate slowness to fix him with her gaze. When she spoke, she made sure her voice was clear, cool, and loud enough that there could be no mistaking her words.

"I don't like fighting, Lieutenant," Sarett said, "I don't like war. From my point of view, it has been a painfuful, disfiguring, humiliating waste of my time. But it also happens that I am very, very good at it, and if my fighting keeps someone else from going through what I have, then I will fight, and I will win." She looked at the man, her mismatched eyes glittering, “Now take me to my ship.”


Equipment:

Nearly 60% of Sarett’s body has been replaced or modified with advanced neuroprostheses, the result of extensive burns, blunt trauma, and severe radiation exposure. Virtually every system in her body has some kind of artificial intrusion, though beyond direct prosthetic replacement, those systems are only monitored rather than being wholly replaced. Her prostheses and implants give her some interesting, though subtle, advantages, but otherwise function as replacements for normal human limbs and sensory apparatus - she cannot see into the X-ray spectrum, and her artificial limbs are not stronger than human baseline. Sarett has a set of personal diagnostic tools to adjust certain sensory responses in her quarters, and the ship’s medical staff have another set.

Sarett also has a cane, fashioned from the hull plating of the Nocturne. The hull fragment is a piece that was not part of the stealth system.

She owns a guitar, having been told by her physical therapists that learning to play it will help maintain and improve the dexterity in her artificial hand. She plays regularly, though privately.

INS Artemis

(Art by Lownine)

INS Artemis

‘In allis verbis, tenere manu mea’

Class Olympus
Function: Strike Carrier
Manufacturer: Athoek Drive Yards
Length: 318m
Displacement: 203,800 long tons
Crew Complement: Crew complement of 800, air wing of 400, Marine compliment of 400, artificial intelligence construct compliment of 1 (backup core installed).

Assigned Groups:
MAS complement: 12th MAS Squadron
Air complement: 114th Aerospace Squadron (‘Stormriders’), 519th Aerospace Squadron (‘Pluggers’)
Marine complement: 8th Battalion, 2nd Marines (‘Delta Victor’)

Description:

The Olympus-class is first in the line of next-generation warships, designed to complement and augment existing battle strategies while opening up new avenues of attack and defense. Unlike older vessels, which are designed to project overwhelming firepower from relatively stationary positions, the Olympus class is designed to dictate the field of engagement on its own terms. The ship has a very large central fusion reactor compared to its displacement, which powers a short-recharge Jump drive and provides plasma flow for outsized conventional thrusters. It is additionally armed with forward-facing hypervelocity rail guns and a full compliment of conventional anti-ship and anti-air weaponry. Captains tasked with commanding an Olympus will know that where compromises have been made, they have tended to affect the ship’s armor plating. These ships will not endure the punishment of larger battleships and dreadnoughts, and tactics should include the understanding that these ships are designed to avoid fire, rather than simply absorb incoming. That is not to say they are not still well-armored, but they are meant to be hard to hit and hard to kill.

These tasks are made considerably easier by the ship’s largest persistent upgrade from traditional Naval vessels, their quantum-core artificial intelligence construct. Many of the ship’s functions, especially data aggregation and command execution, are handled in a way similar to the synthetic personality matrices that will remain in use for the foreseeable future. Unlike the SPM installations, the Olympus intelligence is capable not only of managing data aggregation and shipboard communication, but it is an additional member of the crew (nominally of a Master Sergeant rank), and is capable of synthesizing and contextualizing information and relaying experience-driven suggestions to command staff. In combat, the AI can coordinate firing solutions at marginally faster-than-human timescales for incoming fire, analyze and coordinate target tracking, and many other functions.

Power:

Artemis, like all ships of her class, is powered by a Kandon Dynamics fusion plant buried deep in the heart of the craft. Waste heat is piped via superconductive pathways to exterior hull radiators, or captured to use for shipboard functions. The core is similar to those used in vessels nearly twice Artemis’ tonnage, modified to be stable at comparatively low average power production and with additional stability measures for extremely rapid power ramp-up.

Propulsion: Olympus-class vessels are designed to move around their local volume with considerably more speed than ships of their size typically do. High-temperature plasma diverted from the reactor is capable of moving the ship at 3.5g for an indefinite period of time. The thrusters are additionally equipped with layers of ablative armor that will allow up to 6g of acceleration for no more than 12 hours, after which the ship will be limited to 0.25g acceleration until the armor panels, or possibly the entire thrusters, are replaced. In addition, the ship is equipped with unusually powerful reaction-control systems, and is capable of changing the ship’s direction comparatively quickly - all the better to bring the fixed-arc forward weapons to bear.

Finally, the ship’s Jump drive is capable of moving it up to 35 light years in a single jump, after which the ship will require at least 38 hours of cool-off and recharge time. The drive is, however, optimized for smaller jumps in the light-hour range, requiring as little as 5 minutes of recharge time for the shortest jumps. This is an entirely novel capability, and one that allows an Olympus a tremendous degree of mobility in the field of combat. These short-range Jumps are, however, very hard on the ship’s power system, and even minor damage will render these “combat jumps” inadvisable. In addition, with every Jump the ship must dissipate more and more heat, and it is entirely possible for an incautious captain to overtax the ship’s heat reservoirs and render themselves entirely unable to jump for a considerable period of time - or of destroying the Jump drive entirely.

Weapons

The ship is equipped with full coverage arcs for anti-aircraft and anti-incoming weaponry, ranging from propellant-based mass drivers to small plasma casters to vaporize or physically disrupt incoming ammunition, missiles, or ships on suicide trajectories. These weapons can be selectively controlled by the onboard intelligence, though the AI is not capable of coordinating the entire defense grid unless she devotes her entire consciousness to the task. Large communication arrays can be used for fleet coordination, or used for electronic warfare, jamming, or even direct remote override of any system that (foolishly) accepts connection.

The ship’s primary armaments, two longitudinally mounted (one above the other) hypervelocity rail guns, are in a fixed, non-overlapping profile, and can fire out either the front or rear of the vessel. They are primarily designed to deliver massive, inert slugs of metal at relativistic speeds, but they can be modified (via easily-manufactured sabot) to fire anything that will fit down the bore. Acceleration and desired muzzle speed are nearly infinitely variable, and the payloads can range from battalions of Marines to megaton-class fusion bombs. Artemis is currently equipped with 12 fusion payloads, and deployment requires the joint authorization of the Captain and the ship’s AI construct. In addition, the ship is equipped with four large plasma casters on deployable turrets in a spinal-mount orientation. These weapons are intended for direct capital ship combat, orbital bombardment, or other tasks that require a large amount of firepower.

Defenses

While captains are instructed to consider the ship’s mobility its primary defense system, Artemis is equipped with a high-performance shield system, designed to absorb or deflect most energy weapons. By varying the field, it is additionally possible for electrically conductive incoming fire to be physically deflected, though the degree of course change can be very small. In effect, a heavy-caliber mass driver could be steered to hit a less-critical area of the ship under absolutely ideal situations. Most small-arms fire can be much more easily manipulated, however the field geometry changes required represent an considerable investment of time by either onboard subroutines that could be doing something else, or direct intervention by the majority of conscious bandwidth available to the ship’s AI construct.

The ship’s armor plating is largely conventional, and lighter than a ship of this size would typically mount. The armor has been applied in clever geometries to minimize energy transferred to the plating (weapons tend to ‘skip’ off it, rather than deform or remove it), but concentrated effort, bad luck, or well-aimed heavy weapons will inflict considerable damage. While the ship is designed to be highly survivable, and critical areas (fusion reactors, warhead storage) remain heavily armored, the ship is not designed to be an immovable bulwark.

Flight Deck

The ship’s flight deck is mounted forward, with the hangar bay beginning halfway down the forward “neck” of the ship. Fighter and MAS recovery is handled through a large opening on the “bottom” of the ship, and the “top” is heavily armored and reinforced to withstand crash and combat landings. The ship provides armament, repair, and refit capability for 5 MAS units at once, and can mount 40 aerospace fighters of varying types. There are an additional 3 boarding craft, 2 railgun-launched “breaching pods” for Marines, and a number of personnel shuttles and utility craft.

The hangar is a busy place, and if many ships are undergoing refit or are out of stowage, space can be very tight. Most tools and repair stations fit into panels and storage compartments that rectract or flip out of the hull, and any tools left on the flight deck during combat launches are likely to be swept out with the initial burst to vacuum. Pop-deploy air shelters, oxygen masks, and other accoutrements of an area likely to be rapidly depressurized are in prominent and visible locations throughout the deck.

Artificial Intelligence

Artemis is inhabited by a quantum-core artificial intelligence that has named herself “Ava.” She is professional, polite, but anything but subservient. She is accorded the rank of Marine Master Sergeant, and while she is the primary authority for few things on the ship, she is a respected member of the crew. While she is very aware that she is not human, Ava does have emotions, though they tend to be somewhat more muted than a human’s. She is wholly conscious and self-aware, and has a tremendous ability to process and analyze information, but she is not necessarily more intelligent than a very bright human being. By inclination rather than programmed-in directive, Ava is affectionate and cares quite a lot for the crew, and could not be accused of considering them only as assets to be spent or saved.

Due to the extensive artificial intrusion already present in Captain Sarett’s brain, Ava has an unusual relationship with the Captain. She is capable of displaying information directly into Ava’s field of view, and of relaying information or conversation into her mind without needing a terminal or voice output. This connection goes two ways, is consensual, and either party may terminate or request reconnection at any point. She typically keeps the Captain aware of overall ship function and various administrative data (ETA, fuel reserves, etc) through ambient information (similar to a nonintrusive HUD), but is capable of other tasks. Ava tends to work closely with the ship’s executive officer, but augments, rather than replaces, that officer’s function.

Should the ship’s human compliment be killed or disabled, Ava is capable of returning the ship to friendly space on her own, with a complex series of conditions that must be met in order for her to assume that level of management over the ship. She does not, however, have the capability to replace the entire crew during a combat situation (her total available mental capacity is insufficient to manage all ship systems), and as she has no physical body, there are many maintenance and repair tasks that she cannot perform.

The Sunday Group

I have a fairly gigantic document about Morgan, yes. :3

The Sunday Group

I admit that I structured my post the way I did so that if it was convenient, we could narratively spin our wheels with "wait a minute, Morgan, what the fuck?" while we collectively figured out a Where To Next for the plot. I can probably invent something too, but it'll be a minute because I'm pretty stretched at the moment. :3

The Sunday Group

I swear that Penny and I aren't the same person.

We can probably forge ahead at least for a while, though; she's been pretty relaxed about allowing us a lot of narrative leeway. Make stuff up. :3 I can probably put together a Discord or Slack or something so we can have a more realtime chatterbox if that might be a sensible thing to do.

NaNoWriMo Discussion

At the moment, I think I have enough high-grade emotional stakes without involving a romance subplot - but I'm just now realizing that I've never written a romantic arc for any main character. I still don't think my story needs one, but it's something to think about.