Destiny's Choice (The Wandering Engineer) (51 page)

Chimps
like gorilla's had a single male and female alpha. The caste lines were blurred
when you factored in modern civilization and social standards however.

Bailey
looked comfortable. Balancing work and family must be hard on them Irons mused.
He wasn't complaining though, Bailey deserved it. He was definitely going to
have his hands full when that little tyke got older though.

“We're
going to name him Fiben. Galiet got the idea from an old sci-fi book she read
as a kid. Something about chimps and invading alien birds if you can believe
it”

“Okay,”
Irons nodded. “I've known you for what? A couple of months now chief? How come
I didn't hear about this before?”  he asked, waving to indicate the family.

“Our
shifts were screwed up so we couldn't get the alone time.” Clennie said with a
smirk. “We're half way through our first pass so we had a shift change to keep
everyone from getting stale.”

“Hey,
don't fault me if you miss the obvious,” Bailey snickered.

Clennie
threw her head back for a hooting laugh. She settled in the chimp's lap, arms
on his shoulders. “Wanna go for a ride sailor?”

“Maybe
later. When it's a lot less public,” Bailey said eyes cutting around to the
crowd.

“Spoil
sport,” she teased giving him a leer. She leaned close and whispered something
in his ear. Irons turned away as the chief began to blush even hotter than
before. He just caught Clennie's tongue caressing the chief's earlobe and
looked away, coughing softly and trying hard not to laugh. From the look of
intense discomfort and embarrassment on Bailey's face he knew she was going to
get it in the end later. Of course she seemed to be enjoying herself now. She
stopped and looked Bailey directly in the eyes for a moment. There was an
intensity in their gaze.

“Oops,
look at the time, gotta go!” Bailey lunged to his feet and made for the door
with Clennie in his arms. Sylvia was covering her mouth, laughing and shaking
her head.

Clennie
looked over her shoulder and waved, grinning. Irons laughed with the rest of
the crowd, shaking his head.

"Wow,"
April said, looking around. "Lucky I'm not agoraphobic." She clung to
his side anyway, like a limpet.

"Yeah,"
Irons said with a smile. He had his girl tucked under one arm. He enjoyed the
starlit view. Gorgeous. They were in a virtual reality holographic
representation of what ships saw. He'd never bothered to book a holodeck on the
trip before, but this seemed like the time.

The
ship had three, all on the rec deck right across from the dojo and gym. They
were all small, about the size of a closet. Most were used by a couple to um...
his thoughts shied away from that avenue with difficulty. Though they did add
possibilities for a later date.

“Most
people would have booked something romantic for a date you know,” she teased,
looking up at him. She liked it that he was taller than her.

He
smiled at her puckered lips. “I'm not most people. I wanted you to see some of
what I see. What I went through, and what I'm probably going to go through in
the future.”

She
gave him a searching look and then shrugged, turning to take in her
surroundings. She didn't move away from him though, just turned her head and
torso to look and drink in the sights.

"This
is what you see when you're in combat? And all this time I thought you looked
at flat displays that looked like something out of a bad holo drama and
clenched your teeth."

"We
do that too," Irons chuckled. "We call this the god view. This is the
tactical view. Your upper right is a map of the surrounding area. It has your
sensor feeds." He pointed.

She
looked then nodded. "And this?" she asked. She pointed to the bar
below them. "Oh it moved!" she said, snatching her hand back and
hugging it to her breasts.

He
smiled. "Your HUD stays in place and moves as you shift your point of
view. This is a basic HUD. On your right is your own ship status. Bar graphs
are for various things. Damage, power, shields, that sort of thing."

"Such
a... detailed description from the expert," she teased. He blushed a
little.

"Just
trying to keep things simple," he said with another smile.

"What's
this?" she asked, pointing and touching an object in the distance. A box
formed around it in a blink then zoomed in. She jerked her hand back.
"Oh!"

"You
didn't do anything wrong," he laughed. "That is a ship. In this sim
it is a destroyer. What you did is identify something and then when you pointed
to it the computer zoomed in so you could see it better."

"Oh,"
April shook her head. "I just noticed the circle around it and the line
sticking out."

"That's
an indicator. The circle is a color coded bar graph showing various things
about the ship."

"Like
what?" she asked looking to him. The view shifted with her. she grimaced
as vertigo hit her.

"Don't
move so fast," he explained. "The ship can get some information from
it's sensors. How much power the other ship is putting out. It's engines, speed,
position, direction of travel, shield strength, that sort of thing."

"Why
is the bar only partially filled?" she asked, pointing again.

"Well,
since we know what class of ship that is, It's an Arboth class by the way, the
ship gets an identifier from CIC, that's the combat information center, and it
pulls up that class's stats."

"Oh."

"The
stats tell us about the ship. The circle bar graphs are a comparison of how
much it is putting out compared to what it's class can normally put out. It's
color coded too. Green, blue, yellow, red."

"Oh."

He
nodded, pulling her close. He pointed to one side. She looked in the indicated
direction. He sent a mental command and they zoomed in to a spectacular sight.

She
gasped. He smiled, happy to have surprised her. "It's a black hole. It is
consuming a star," he explained as she looked up to him. She turned back
to the natural splendor. The star was being torn apart, a stream of plasma was
coming off it and being sucked into one point. Tendrils seemed to be going out
in other directions, but they all curved back to that single point.

"You
saw this?" she breathed softly.

"Yes,"
he answered softly. She shivered.

"What?"
he asked looking down at her.

"Reminds
me of a Nova bomb," she said tucking her arms to her chest.

"Not
even close," he said. “A black hole takes centuries to tear space apart. A
Nova bomb does it a lot faster,” he said looking away. "But it is where I
got the idea from."

"You..."
She looked up to him in horror. "You..." He felt a gulf open up
between them. He sighed softly, closing his eyes for a moment. Then he stopped
and looked at her.

"We
had been tossing the idea around for some time. I mean mankind. Well, all
species really. Mostly in fiction. I like to read old sci-fi operas."

"Oh,"
she blinked at him not knowing what to think.

"I
got the idea from this. I... well, I didn't want to do it. But we needed a win.
Something to get past the fleets. Break them down. Scare the hell out of them
and bring an end to the war. Fast. A hard hit, something they couldn't
block."

She
nodded. He sighed. "April, I'm human too. God I didn't want to do it. I
knew it could be used against us. I hoped it wouldn't be. That we'd crush their
will to fight and they would fold. Stop destroying our planets. I was
wrong," he grimaced.

"Did
you... did you ever see it? Do it?" she asked. "Kill a Xeno
world?"

"No.
I wish," he sighed. "Oh I didn't want to kill innocents. I'm not a
monster," he said as she looked at him. He shook his head. "But
having watched what they did over and over... watching world after world
smashed, millions, billions dying... rocks, nanites, antimatter...that changes
a person. They didn't care. So why should we?"

She
nodded at that.

"I
finished the design and we tested it. I was on my way back from another
assignment when, well... the ship I was on, the North Hampton was hit. She was
a New York class light cruiser. We were ambushed by a Xeno raiding squadron as
she was passing through Senka. She took out the ships attacking her but was
taken down herself. I made it to a pod," he grimaced in familiar pain.

"It
must have been horrible. Seeing your friends die," she said quietly. She
saw his look and put it together. “And waking to most of them... most of the
worlds you knew gone,” she said, giving him a tearful look. He rumbled a sigh.

"Yes,"
he said, not knowing what else to say. Her arms wrapped around him. He wrapped
his arms around her and rested his head on the top of hers. "Yes it
was," he said softly. Together they watched a star die in silence.

"So,
some said that you were trying to take power, become a dictator. Comments
Admiral?" April asked as he came into the galley. He paused then snorted.

"This
another background interview miss O’Neill?" he asked with a teasing smile.
He looked around the room. There were about twenty people there. Half were crew
off shift. The rest were passengers. He straightened at some of the faces in
the room.

From
her look and the looks of the others in the room this was obviously a serious
question. He decided to follow her lead.

"As
a note on that, you should check your history. I was governor remember? I
organized a constitutional convention and organized elections. When they were
approved I turned over the reins of power to the duly elected
authorities," he said, making sure his voice carried to everyone here.

"Only
because you didn't have a choice," Miss Mayfair muttered. He gave her a
sharp look. He'd heard from Sprite that Mayfair had been up to her usual
tricks, spreading rumors. Unfortunately the AI had yet to catch the bitch in
the act. She was careful enough to do it out of ear shot of a camera.

He
straightened, coming to full attention, focused intently on her. She seemed to
squirm under such a heavy gaze. "Which is it Miss Mayfair? That I am a
power hungry, dictating slave driver who was going to use the military to
browbeat everyone into submission or that I wasn't?" He pulled a chair out
and sat. His back was rigidly straight.

"You
can't have it both ways. If you're accusing me of trying to take power why
didn't I just stay in power?  I had it already, why did I give it away?” He
spread his hands meaningfully. “I declared martial law, I could have stayed in
power. I had control of the military remember? The fact
is
that I
didn't. I wasn't interested in power. I was not then, I am not now. If I had
been I would never have turned over everything to Governor Walker. But I
did
.”

He
waited a moment for them to digest that. His gaze shifted from her to the group
and room at large. “After all, I was there to begin with. If I had wanted power
why the constitutional convention? Why the elections?" He shrugged and
spread his hands.

"You
had to. You didn't have a choice," Mayfair said. "The people would
have risen in revolt against you."

"The
people were a bit busy celebrating at the time if I recall. Something about
pirates?" Sprite said sweetly from the overhead speakers. The
entertainment center in the corner came to life and her holo projection dusted
itself off and came over.

"I
was there too remember? We all were for that matter," she waved to the
compartment. A few people nodded. Some of the nods were reluctant, a few
grudging in their support. A few were natural though. It was almost evenly
divided in thirds Irons decided. A handful muttered to themselves.

Mayfair
scowled, trying a slightly different attack. "He was trying to be a puppet
master..."

"No,
he had enough on his plate," Sprite said shaking her head. "Admiral
Irons is many things, a puppet master isn't one of them. It's actually one of
his failings. He hates politics with a passion. I tried to get him to run, he
flat out refused. I think he's allergic or something. He'd much rather play
engineer and make stuff."

April
snorted at that. She smiled as her eyes met his. Obviously he was playing to
her script. He was glad she was entertained.

"Easy
for you to say, you're just a contrived lackey," Mayfair sneered.

"Lackey?"
Sprite turned on her, eyes flashing then back to Irons. "Did she just call
me
a lackey? Why you little, flat chested organic
bitch
!"
Her fingers curled as much as her upper lip.

"Down
girls," Irons sighed as Mayfair's eyes flashed in return. He waved a hand.
"Commander, at ease," he ordered, full command mode now, turning a
look at Sprite. Sprite's lips quivered in a snarl.

Mayfair's
eyes gleamed. "That's right, be a good dog and heel," Mayfair said
smugly. He turned a glare on her and started to rise but April beat him too it.