Ten
January 2252
Mountain View
Senator Crider had only met the privateer captain Jean Barrett once, on board her ship in its berth in the Fleet spacedock, a year ago. That day he’d spoken with her briefly on her Bridge, and had a five-minute tour of her cramped, claustrophobic ship. Captain Barrett, clad in her habitual black fatigue pants and shirt, had threaded through corridors stacked with ration boxes and water cans to show the Senator the tiny engine room, the crew’s quarters, the central astrogation computer and the weapons bays.
It was a very different Captain Barrett that had just entered the Road House, the downtown restaurant where the Senator had arranged a dinner meeting away from the Senate Office building.
She had just walked into the dining room, dressed simply in a light gray cotton spaghetti-strap dress, cut just above knee-length in the current fashion, and gray heeled Roman-laced sandals. The Senator caught himself gaping for a moment but controlled himself with the discipline of a practiced politician before waving at the privateer captain. Jean Barrett spotted him and made her way to the table, smiling slightly.
“Good evening, Captain.” He stood up as Barrett approached the table.
“Senator,” she replied. She sat down, and Mike noticed her brisk economy of movement; no doubt a habit born of long months aboard her tiny ship. “Thank you for offering me a dinner. I’ve been eating CRAP so long; I don’t know if I remember what real food tastes like.”
Senator Crider almost dropped his napkin. “Crap?”
Barrett laughed. “Combat Ration Alpha-Packs. Dehydrated shipboard rations, one pack feeds one person for one twenty-four-hour period. Trouble with them is that they take a lot of water, and even with a good recycling system, that’s what limits our deployment – we can only carry enough water to stay out about three months without a planet fall, unless we can snag a comet and whack off a chunk of ice to distill for water. And they’re bloody monotonous, too.”
“I’ll see if I can set up a meeting with the Navy Commissary department for you,” the Senator said. “Maybe they’ve got something that will work better.” It was difficult not to stare, even for a seasoned politician; Mike was having a hard time reconciling the woman before him with the hard, curt professional he’d met aboard the Shade Tree a year earlier. Her russet curls bobbed in an engaging way when she laughed, and her green eyes sparkled. He shook his head quickly, once. “I read the report you hyperphoned from New Albion. I imagine that the Grugell have their prisoners back by now, but you’ll be pleased to know we did learn a few things from them before the planet fell.”
“Oh?” Their waiter appeared, hovered over the table. Captain Barrett ordered Forestian pale ale. The Senator followed suit. “What exactly?”
“As we suspected, they’re planning to occupy our space, one planet at a time. They knew the Orleans Task Group was going to be in the area, and they hit it deliberately – and within a week of driving the Navy clean out of the sector, they moved on New Albion. They dropped troops right into the middle of Glengarry in the middle of the night, but the Governor had already had all but a few Security troops out of the city and into the woods and prairies north of the city. There have been some skirmishes; I guess at least one group of guerrilla fighters is operating. I grant you the reports we’re getting are pretty sketchy.”
“I imagine so. We did a quick flash-by of their Occupation group as we left the system – they took a couple of shots at us, but I’ve got a pretty good Helmsman, and we were coming at them head-on, so the engagement speed was too high for either of us to do much. I’ll tell you one thing, their Occupation ships are big damn things – their drive fields screw up the dark matter matrix for a couple thousand kilometers all around. It was a rough ride there for a few seconds.” The waiter appeared again, setting frosted glasses of ale before them. She picked up her glass and sipped the cold ale. “I thought about turning in behind them and taking a shot or two, but there were too many ships in the area – we were getting all sorts of alarms in our scanner tanks. So, we just beat feet out of the system, aiming north out of the Ecliptic before turning for Tarbos.”
“You’ll get your chance, Captain,” the Senator began. Barrett reached across the table and touched the back of his hand.
“Jean,” she said.
“Oh. Of course. And please, call me Mike.” He was suddenly, unaccountably, flustered.
“All right, Mike,” she smiled, removing her hand. “What do you have in mind?”
“Well, Jean,” Mike replied, grinning, “Let me start by asking you a question. Do you think you can slip back into the New Albion system with a Navy drop boat attached to your sally port?”
“Probably. I’ll want to talk to my Tactical people first. I’d have to leave my clampon lander here at the dock to take on the drop boat, but I have a feeling I won’t need it this trip, will I?”
“No, I shouldn’t think so. You’re going to drop a couple of people and some equipment in to help out those guerillas. What you do after that is up to you, but indications are that there’s a fairly heavily armed fleet in the area. If you can get back to Tarbos, I’m sure there will be more work for you and your ship.”
“Standard contract?” The privateer’s eyes glittered like polished jade at the mention of money.
“Standard contract. Twenty percent bonus if you’re successful, and back here on Tarbos six weeks from today.”
“That’s fast,” Barrett mused, “But I think I can do that.”
They shook hands.
“Now, Senator,” Barrett smiled, “Tell me, is there a decent nightclub within a few minutes’ walk? Better yet, let’s eat, and then you can show me. I’ve been cramped up on my ship too long.”
Three days later – the Orleans
A slight shudder announced the jump to subspace. Admiral Gauss stood in the flagship’s Combat Information Center, watching the scanning displays turn to unintelligible gibberish. The Orleans and two other ships would rendezvous with the Mountain View, before proceeding on a plan of the Admiral’s making. He was sure it would prove to be an interesting trip.
The Shade Tree
I should be ashamed of myself, Captain Barrett told herself with a touch of anger. Flirting with a Senator like some addle-brained schoolgirl. And that bloody dress! What was I thinking? I’m amazed he was still willing to give us the job after that performance.
She glanced at the Navigation scanner display. The walls of the Tarbos spacedock still curved protectively around the tiny gray ship. “Is that drop boat secured?”
“Yes, Captain,” someone replied. She didn’t look up from her Bridge chair to see who had answered. “Good. Clear all moorings, navigation thrusters back one-third. Get us out of here. Navs, I want a course taking us high out of the ecliptic, loop over and bring us into New Albion from a direction the Grugell won’t suspect. It’s a big damn sky, they can’t watch all of it.”
“You got it, Captain.”
“Are we clear of that dock yet? Bring us about, one-eighty by fifteen. Thrusters ahead full. Go to full main drive as soon as we’re at the space beacon. I’m going to go talk to our guests – call me when we jump to subspace.” She kicked her feet back into her sandals and left the Bridge.
The Confederate Senate Office Building
Senator Crider had been trying all morning to keep himself from looking up at the sky. Not that he expected to see anything; the Fleet spacedock was only visible at night, and then only with a good pair of binoculars or a cheap telescope.
But he knew that, up there, right now, Captain Jean Barrett was going into harm’s way again, at his request, and on the Confederacy’s payroll.
The feel of her small, tightly muscled body in his arms on the dance floor of the Tiger Den nightclub was burned into his mind. And the image of her laughing green eyes haunted him. I hope she gets back safely.
To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.
the lady is trouble mate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izGwDsrQ1eQ
nice choice
It played in my head the second she walked in wearing that dress.
I’m guessing that you’re a generation younger than me. George was never anyone that I really paid attention to, although he was unavailable for a while. However, that is an excellent song.
I am a very hip 60.
Half a generation. Much cooler than me.
I knew you were trouble – T Sworft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNoKguSdy4Y
Time to walk. It’s a sauna outside today, so I am stuck inside crisscrossing the plant.
2900 steps, 26 minutes. A good pace.
Go Kinnath!
It’s lawn mowing time this afternoon. That will be my exercise.
Left wing lynch mob
Tuesday’s democratic socialist victories led by Mayor Zohran Mamdani further energized a movement of young Democrats hungry for change. But they also unnerved some Black and Latino New Yorkers who say gentrification threatens to leave them politically and literally homeless.
A viral video of a crowd erupting into boos and chants of “You’re next” when House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ face flashed on a television screen at a watch party in Brooklyn for Claire Valdez struck some as particularly offensive. Jeffries is the first Black person to lead a party in either chamber of Congress, and could become the next speaker of the House.
“To be shouting ‘you’re next’ — a majority white audience to a Black man — just harkens back to some dark times in history,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who endorsed Valdez’s opponent Antonio Reynoso.
The color that matters is the Little Red Book. Get on board, Comrade.
The Dems created this monster. Now they have to bow to it if they don’t want to get primaried.
It’s a sauna outside today
It’s pushing 50 here.
We’re at 89, ‘feels like 106’, humidity 55%. Overnight low forecast to be 76.
In interviews with the New York Times and CNN, New York Attorney General Letitia James spoke about “hurt feelings” in communities of color. She said she was disappointed by Mamdani’s lack of understanding about race and class issues in the city.
“Some of the candidates that he has supported are individuals who do not understand the politics of New York City, the cultural differences from district to district, who have not been part of the history and the struggle of some of these districts, and are relatively new to the body politic,” James told CNN.
Know your place. Wait your turn.
Translation – he’s relying on outside commies and not the commies who have typically benefited. Machine politics are about the people feeding at the trough with make-work jobs.
I think it is more that they think the Commies have now won, so they have no need to pretend to care about the desires of the minorities any longer. Once the Party is in control only the desires of the Party matter.
I would only say I think you’re giving the people bitching too much credit even if not intentionally. If they were the ones getting the power and money/contracts, they wouldn’t give two fucks about the people from the neighborhoods they claim to represent.
But I don’t doubt the general premise of what you’re saying.
This is what happens when one party is in overwhelming control of a government entity. Without an outside enemy, eventually, factions arise and battle each other for power. You see it in office politics, in churches, on museum boards, even in an embattled entity like the Libertarian Party.
No way…
Barrett, a conservative, was joined in the majority by one other conservative, Chief Justice John Roberts,
Supreme Court Lets States Count Mailed Ballots Received After Election Day
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/supreme-court-lets-states-count-mailed-ballots-received-after-election-day-45d7849d?st=JaEKRf&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
postmarked before the election. received after the election. they split the baby.
Couple that with the post office declaring they won’t guarantee that they postmark mail the day it is received.
postmarked “before” the election.
Can you tell the difference between an authentic postmark and a backdated one?
Are you suggesting that someone might break the law in order to rig the election?
Cause that’s not actually relevant to the law that SCOTUS upheld.
I’m not suggesting it, I’m outright saying it.
Elections in this country are more crooked than a dog’s hind leg.
Elections are not going to be fixed by the courts. They need to be fixed by the legislature. Failing that, the population needs to do what it needs to do.
Attempt to create civility on college campuses is a right wing plot to suppress the left.
These students expected to go into a seminar on civil discussion and solve the Palestinian crisis! Instead they were expected to have civil non-political discourse with bigots and genociders!
A left wing group calling itself Uncivil is complaining that civility is too right-wing? Full makes for consistency, minus a few points for the unnecessary Jew-baiting.
the words campus, dialogue, and initiatives are red flags individually, put together they require a helicopter.
I’m not going to read any of the stories. What is the E Jean Carrol ruling? Why haven’t those doddering old imbeciles tossed anything to do with that case on statute of limitations grounds? As I recall, New York wrote a law specifically targetted at Trump for the declared purpose of getting Carroll’s bullshit allegations into court.
Appeal rejected:
“Supreme Court rejects Trump bid to appeal E. Jean Carroll $5 million verdict”
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/29/supreme-court-trump-carroll-appeal.html
Case rejected on the grounds of the penumbra stating we have to listen to half insane broads with incomplete recall of events thirty years later (or maybe it’s an emanation, IANAL).
From a political point of view, that’s a good ruling to throw at people who claim the Court is just Trump’s cockholster at this point. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was brought, and accepted by the Court, for just that reason .
Chaos! Imperial Presidency!
“Put simply, today the majority reshapes our Government,” Sotomayor wrote in a 49-page dissent joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“Dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President’s hands,” she added.
——-
Sotomayor argued that overruling Humphrey’s will “unleash only chaos” for the agencies, Congress and lower courts in future removal determinations because the majority “simply refuses to explain where its theory leads or where it ends.”
“Today, the majority replaces 90 years of proven, workable practice with a half-baked theory of executive power that is simultaneously all encompassing yet also subject to necessary but undefined exceptions,” the liberal justice wrote. “The one thing that does appear to be clear going forward is that chaos will follow.”
I’m just a simple country bumpkin, but I can’t help wondering what Constitutional authority exists for “independent” agencies not subject to review or control.
what a crackpot theory. It’s like they don’t even technocrat and are just reading some ancient 250 year old document that founded our government or something.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-allows-trump-to-fire-ftc-commissioner-and-overturns-major-restraint-on-presidential-power/
I want to vomit anytime I hear a leftist talk about the rule of law let alone the Constitution. They’re never referring to the actual text or how things worked for roughly the first 150 years the country existed and entirely to the rulings that overturned all of that and made a mockery of the founders in the progressive era on down.
“Independent” means the same thing as “unaccountable” when it comes to government agencies.
You have to be demented to think that the legislature can force the executive to establish an agency but prevent the executive from controlling that agency.
It’s almost as though legislating and executing the laws legislated are separate branches of Government…
She further argued that the historical precedent should have prevented Humphrey’s from being overturned, even if the court found it was wrong.
I guess Dred Scott should still be in effect today.
I got good proof this morning that adding a second portable air condition on the other side of the house was a good call. When I got up the kitchen windows were fogged up because it was so humid outside and nice and cool and dry on the inside.
“I’m horrified by people who tell me we just need to put AC everywhere …
Do you think that by air-conditioning everything we’re going to prevent forest fires or the death of animals?
This is not adaption to global warming”
-French Minister of Ecology Monique Barbut
https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/2071130912650084508
Just stay out of France, you might get the guillotine.
Fuck France. We should have let the Germans keep it.
The Germans are worse. They ban AC in schools and hospitals, for starters.