Fortune
The three privateers broke through barely in time, and only one was able to bring weapons to bear. The Shade Tree launched two Shrike missiles and engaged the fleeing Grugell with their forward particle beam, damaging one frigate before the enemy disappeared into subspace.
“Damn,” Captain Jean Barrett muttered, watching the last two enemy ships disappear from the Shade Tree’s main screen. “I thought we had that one. Scanning, are the Red Witch and the Cape Fear still with us?”
“Still there, ma’am. The Witch is breaking off to the port, high, looks like they’re moving out of the debris cloud. The Cape Fear is on our eight o’clock, moving to the starboard. They just launched a lander, Captain – looks like it’s moving towards what’s left of the Pritchard. The Giles Davies is dead in space at our ten o’clock high, she’s bleeding air, no engine signature, looks like life support is on emergency.”
“Call the Marines, have them, Doctor Adams, and Chief Smith meet me at the lander. How big a crew does a Navy frigate have?”
“About a hundred and fifty,” someone piped up.
“Let’s hope there’s some survivors.”
It was the work of ten minutes to bring the Shade Tree alongside the wrecked frigate; the clampon lander puffed across the fifty-meter gap between the ships and docked on the Giles Davies’ undamaged portside docking point. While the Marines and the Chief Engineer went to look for survivors, Captain Barrett went directly to the Bridge.
The twin door panels to the frigate’s Bridge were bent outwards and scarred by an explosion, but that at least told Barrett that there was still atmosphere inside.
“Gomp,” she spoke softly into her throat mike, “any sign of Grugell boarders?”
“No, Captain,” the reply crackled into her earpiece. “No signs of any burn-ins. I’m in the main Weapons storage now, and nothing’s been disturbed except by shock damage. Chief Smith says the computer is damaged but hasn’t been hacked, all security codes are clean.”
“All right. I’m at the Bridge now.”
She placed a hand thoughtfully on her pistol and decided to leave it holstered but kept her hand on the comforting plastic of the grip as she stepped carefully through the smoking doorway.
The Bridge was well and truly wrecked. One major panel had exploded, and the compartment was strewn with shards and splinters of metal and plastic, splashes of blood, and worse. The Bridge crew was cut to pieces.
Just then, a low moan came from the floor behind a fallen ceiling panel. Barrett stepped over the panel to find a burned, blasted figure in the remnants of a Navy uniform, the one side of his collar that remained bore the silver leaf of a Commander.
She knelt beside the man as his eyes fluttered open. “Can you hear me?”
He looked at her, squinting. “Who are you? Not Navy…”
“No. I’m Captain Jean Barrett of the privateer starship Shade Tree. I’m sorry we didn’t get here sooner.”
“Nothing… you could have done,” he gasped. “There must have been a dozen ships… I’m Commander James McAllister, commanding the Giles D.”
“What were a dozen Grugell ships doing at Fortune? We thought they’d given up on this system.”
“It looked like a rally point.” McAllister spoke with great difficulty, and his face was growing paler by the moment. Beneath him, a pool of sticky red was growing, puddling on the deck.
“Doc,” Barrett barked into her mike, “Get up here to the Bridge.”
“Give me two minutes,” the reply came back.
“No time,” McAllister breathed. “We caught a frigate scouting the rally point yesterday before their main body showed up, boarded it, took eight prisoners, and hacked their main computer before blowing it up.” He reached into a pocket, produced a tiny object, and held it out. “This is a phoebe,” Captain McAllister explained. “It’s got thirty terabytes of data encoded in it.”
“Thirty terabytes? In this?” Barrett took the tiny device, examined it; it was a three-centimeter chip of plastic with a tiny metal plug on one end for a standard data port.
“It will hold fifty,” McAllister breathed. His life was hemorrhaging away along with the blood that puddled on the deck beneath him, and the knowledge of the impending death showed in his eyes. “But this one has the plans for the Grugell Fleet’s plan to move on Earth. Co-ordinates, subspace jump points, rally points, everything. Lots more, besides. We destroyed the frigate before the main body showed up; they don’t know we have this information. Get it to Admiral Gauss…”
“You bet I will,” Barrett agreed. With this kind of info, we could hit the Grugell unawares at a rally point. It’s the perfect chance to hammer their fleet hard, maybe finish this thing for keeps… After almost three years, what if we could actually finish this war? It would be worth anything.
Captain Barrett looked away from the tiny plastic phoebe to where Commander McAllister lay bleeding on the deck of his shattered ship, but his eyes stared back lifelessly.
“Shit,” she breathed. “All Shade Tree boarders, return to the lander immediately. Say again, all Shade Tree boarders, back to the lander at once. Acknowledge.”
“CheifEng, roger that.”
“Gomp, acknowledged.”
“Doc, heading back now with three survivors.”
Three survivors – out of a crew of a hundred and fifty. Jean Barrett scowled at the Phoebe. Damn right I’ll get this to Admiral Gauss, or I’ll die trying.
Ten minutes later the tiny lander clamped on to the Shade Tree’s sally port, and one minute after that, Jean Barrett bounded onto the Bridge.
“Come about to one-eighty by zero, ahead flank. Navigation, get a course for Tarbos. Helm, lock in that course and bring us to subspace transit as fast as you can get there. Weapons, lock a Shrike on what’s left of the Giles Davies. We can’t afford to leave any clues behind.”
“Ma’am, technically that’s still destroying Confederation property; that’s a Class One felony.”
“Thanks, Weps, but I think Admiral Gauss will forgive us this once.”
“Subspace transit in three minutes, Captain.”
“Good. Get that course laid in.”
As the ship accelerated away from the scene of the battle, a single Shrike missile leaped from the starboard stub wing, angling back to obliterate what remained of the CSS Giles Davies.
“How long will it take us to get to Tarbos?”
“Four weeks, Captain, if we’re a bit lucky,” Navigator Geoff Peters answered. “Hell, twenty years ago it would have taken four months. Be glad OWME keeps developing refinements in the drive systems.”
“All right. Indira, doesn’t one of the Marines speak a little Grugell?”
“Yes, Captain, Sergeant Gomp does.” Indira Krishnavarna had, in fact, been spending a lot of time with former Marine Sergeant Hector Gomp, an event almost impossible not to notice on a ship as small as the Shade Tree. “He took a course in it on Earth, when he was still in the Corps.”
“Have him meet me in the mess room. I want him to look at the data on this Phoebe. We still have that computer terminal, right?”
“In the mess room, Captain. We’ve been using it to write mail.”
“Good enough.”
***
It took two hours; the data was not encoded, but Hector Gomp’s training in written Grugell had been six years before, and his skills were rusty. What he understood wasn’t comforting.
“Captain,” he said at last, looking up from the computer screen with red-rimmed eyes, “If I’m getting this right, the Grugell have found Earth.”
“Shit.”
“Chin-deep, Cap’n. But there’s more. This here,” he pointed at the screen, “is an operations order. There’s a lot of other crap here – ship specs, personnel orders, even officer’s mess menus – the Intelligence people on Tarbos will love this stuff, but the op-ord is where it’s at. The Emperor – I hope that’s the right word – has ordered their fleet to mass at a rally point to attack Earth. I can’t make sense of their coordinate system, it’s probably based on their home world as a start point, but it sure as hell reads like they know where they’re going. There’s a whole star map of their territory here, and if I’m right it goes into Confederate space too – a good astrogator should be able to unravel the whole thing.”
“Wait a minute – back up. You said that their coordinate system probably uses their home planet as a start point. Wouldn’t that mean that we could figure out where to look for their planet based on this?”
“Maybe. You might want to stick one of your ship geniuses on it; I’m just an old broke-dick jarhead.”
“Maybe. Go on.”
“Well, Captain, the op-ord here has their rally point, jump points, and even an interim rally point; if we can figure out for sure where it is. But if their target point is Earth, and we can figure out where their home world is and plug that in, we should be able to plot out their whole route…”
“And ambush them at a rally point.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“Good work, Gomp. You just earned yourself a bonus for this trip. Now, why don’t you get some sack time? Between the landing and this, you look like you’ve about had it. You’re going to be pretty busy the next few days – I want you working on translating this stuff for Indira Krishnavarna and Geoff Peters.”
“Captain, all due respect, but you’re looking pretty dogged out yourself. You were on the landing party too, you know.”
“I know, and thanks. Soon, OK? Do me a favor, shout up to the Bridge and have Indira and Geoff come down.” She leaned back in her chair, thinking hard.
“Roger that, Captain.” The former Marine stood, gave Barrett an informal, one-fingered salute of sorts, and left.
If we can figure out their course, and get word to the Navy… And if we can figure out where their home world is…I wonder if we could pull that comet trick again.
I’m too tired for deep thinking just now.
***
Her eyes were trying to close of their own accord when the Scanning tech and Navigator walked in. She fixed them with a bleary eye as they took seats, trying to conceal their curiosity.
“You two, you two have got one hell of a job to do. Geoff, given two known points on a star map using unknown units of measure, could you translate the data to be usable in our own Navigation console?”
“I think so,” he said, frowning. “I’d have to work out the data on a copy of the standard Galactic chart, and then plot the data into the console.”
“Good. The data’s in Grugell; Gomp is going to help you with translations. Indira, I want you to work on another little idea with me…” She went on for about ten minutes.
“I think we can do it, Captain,” Krishnavarna said at last, her eyes wide. “If you’re sure you want to try it. All on our own, I mean.”
“Just our cup of tea, Indira. Are we on course, everything normal? Good. I’m going to crash. You two call your relief to the Bridge; you’re both off-duty for twelve hours. Get some rest; at noon tomorrow, I want you here in the mess room, working with Gomp on making this happen.” “Shit,” Peters observed. Barrett grinned at him and left the chamber.
To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.
Did I miss an attack? Darn! Still awesome. I am enjoying this Animal, thanks!
Definitely some explosions in this one.
Thanks again for these.
From the dead thread.
6-6-6
The older version of this had a couple more questions on it, number of children, I believe previous marriages and never married. Looks like they removed those questions.
https://igotstandardsbro.com/
Where’s the version which has the option to look at which women meet what standards? I know one exists, I can’t find it.
I think this one is the female delusion twin. https://realitycalc.com/
I could another that had several more categories you could choose from.
Were I looking my odds according to this would be much better than where I’m at now on the flip side. https://realitycalc.com/results/age1=30&age2=40&excludeMarried=true&excludeMothers=true&race=any,asian,black,hispanic,white&height1=67&height2=79&excludeObese=true&excludeOverweight=true&income=40&incomeType=false&
Doesn’t even have selection criteria for “owns a liquor store”.
Woot. Good stuff.
No need to encrypt your battle plans when the savages can’t read.
UCS and I can read.
We can’t spell.
“Altus Shrugged”
We are leigion.
She placed a hand thoughtfully on her pistol and decided to leave it holstered but kept her hand on the comforting plastic of the grip as she stepped carefully through the smoking doorway.
visualize
Off think!
Useless factoid fron cars and bids right now:
2013 FJ Cruiser special edition, ~$18k
1985 FJ60, ~$16.5k
I know which one I’d rather have.
I just bought a 46-year-old bicycle. So, I’m not gonna criticize anyone seeking old cars and suvs.
Live axle beats IFS.
Live axle beats taped axle.
A buddy of mine had an 85 or 6 FJ60 with over 300k on it. Decent shape. Older repaint. Five speed. Bunch of new parts, 2-3” Old Man Emu lift. He sold it two years ago for $10k.
Don’t let your wife run up $12k in secret credit card debt.
I had a 2013 FJ Cruiser that I traded in 3 years ago for somewhere in the mid-20s. 117K miles, not a Special Edition, still pretty much stock (aftermarket chip, which boosted the horsepower into 230 range, was about it).
We looked at that body style and liked the overall build quality (Toyota after all) but couldn’t get over the visability.
Meanwhile in the PRNJ – I finally picked up my CZ today. If we discount the time the roughly 1 week it took for shop to order the pistol in it took 38 days give or take a day. Only 4 days for the “instant” NICS. Thanks NJ for keeping us all safe!!!!!
The shop also has to block the 15 round magazines – they note that they will “break-in” but expect them only to hold 8-9 rounds. I managed to get 9 in both mags, but one is fiddly. There ain’t no way that magic 10th round is ever going in there. They actually make you sign a waiver noting this. They absolutely error on the side of the shop on purpose. I don’t fault them given the penalties they’d face for failure. Fortunately factory 10 round mags are available and relatively cheap. I have 4 on order and I’ll set these borked magazines aside. My assumption is in a year or so when NJ’s mag ban either maker it to the USSC or it refuses to hear it they’ll be legal in NJ.
People love the aluminum grips on the Shadows – I’m on the fence. They bite-in great, but are tough on the hands. I waffled about buying a torque driver to mount the red-dot, but I’m glad I did. It was $21 for a fixed value and there was no way I was going to properly set that by hand after seeing how much more torque the tool used than I would have.
I am in the stock-grip hater camp. I use LOK grips, but the only ones I’ve tried that I’d even begin to suggest for actual carry would be their “veloce” pattern.
Thanks I’ll check them out!
I’ve never loved the aluminum CZ stocks – the checkering is too small and slippery to get a really secure grip. I switched mine out to LOKGrips G10 ‘Bogies’ after the first range trip.
The torque driver was an excellent idea. You don’t want the optic to come loose while you’re shooting, and you *REALLY* don’t want to strip out one of the threaded holed in the slide, or bugger up the Torx socket itself. Use threadlocker on the mounting plate and optic screws – Loctite 242 is the common recommendation, but I really like Vibra-Tite VC-3 better.
I used the recommended Blue 243 that’s oil tolerant.
I did a post!
https://www.glibertarians.com/2023/06/get-a-grip/
There was an excellent joke in there that nobody commented on. You people, I swear.
Thanks again! I’ll try and shoot it for while and see how it goes with the stock grips. I don’t mind the look so the only reason to change them out would be ergonomics.
The “compact” is surprisingly heavy. It actually feels heavier than my Ruger P90DC which is also a steel slide and aluminum frame.
And the P90 was famously overbuilt and beefy.
That P90 is a tank. Trigger sucks, but it is otherwise a really good gun.
Montana- walk in with money, walk out with pistol. I haven’t bought anything in Idaho.
*I probably couldn’t if I wanted to, because I still haven’t gotten around to getting an Idaho driver’s license. I need to sell, not buy.
Long gun shouldn’t be a problem from MT but all the FFLs and a lot of private sellers are terrified of WA state of you’re coming from the west.
Under Federal law for non-licensees purchasing outside in their state of residence, you buy and take possession of long arms face to face from a FFL01, and I think in a face to face private sale it has to go to a FFL01 in your state of residence. Actually, I could be wrong on the private sale regulation for long arms, but face to face from a FFL01 outside of your state of residence it’s not a problem. Handguns outside of your state of residence it will need to be shipped to a FFL01 in your state of residence. Yes, the FFL01 will run a background check.
State laws will vary.
Whereabouts are you Brooks?
Does not compute!
I think Neph needs to write an article on just how miserable it is to be a Browns fan. Franchise sold it’s soul to trade for Deshaun Watson. Gave him the most ridiculous contract in NFL history despite his predatory nature. They trotted him back out there again this week with a new coaching staff likely because the owner is desperate to salvage some value out of the money spent even though he’s routinely been outplayed by back-ups who also have sucked horribly.
You sold your soul, and you still suck. And I can’t even say that’s the most depressing thing they’ve done since returning as a franchise.
And the coach just gave him a vote of confidence. Says they can build on this.
“I did think that when he had time, when he understood the concepts, he didn’t play tentative, that he let it rip. Even the touchdown at the end, sure that was garbage time, but that was on their [No.] 1 corner. That was one of their starters out there. And that was a communication between him and the receiver. So, there were a lot of things to build on. Was it perfect? Of course not, otherwise we wouldn’t have scored as few of points as we did. But I’d like to see how we can build on that. I like his week of practice last week. And I think he’s only going to continue to get better.”
This is like my boss defending a co-worker who showed up that day.
Dude is embarrassing himself to the rest of that locker room. I have to think it’s the owner giving him the job under some bullshit premise that he salvage Watson and he can’t bench him.
Isn’t Deshaun just another example of the many mistakes that pro football (and pro sports) land in because of guaranteed contracts, cuts that impact caps, unforseen injuries, oceans of cash from tv, merch sales and – perhaps most all – actually wanting to please demanding fans by bringing in big name talents to “turn the franchise around?” Baseball probably has a number of former players (looking at you Casty) sitting around getting millions for doing nothing. But I’m dreaming – there will never be short contracts, and performance laden contracts ever again.
See also: Bryce Underwood’s NIL money.
Pocatello
Busy place in the last decade. I’m in the Lewiston area which is a world away.
FBI?
The FBI supposedly rents a space in the old Lewiston Hotel. That answered a question as to how that huge building that only gets used for weddings and a never open whisky bar can afford property taxes.
Day of rest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjFoQxjgbrs
Rain the entire week here – my fence isn’t going to repair itself…
I didn’t know this existed, but some GUY created something called the “Tea App.” It’s for women to basically create social credit scores for guys. Yes, they pay for this. Some guy is making bank off these dopey broads.
I need to get in on this racket. There’s so many ways to take advantage of the left’s crazy.
Make a MAGA tracker app so they can flag any man who likes Trump. Then they can steer clear or harass as they see fit.
You could even use voter registration to verify.
Make that an extra fee.
Busy place in the last decade. I’m in the Lewiston area which is a world away.
It’s not bad. Vastly superior to Boise. I spent a year in Moscow at the U 40 (holy shit!) years ago.
Moscow feels a lot the same as it did thirty years ago.
There is a Starbucks and a Target now along with a Walmart and a Home Depot.
It’s seen growth but mostly in the college end. It’s still as nutty as ever. The crusty used book stores are gone, to be replaced by one super corporate looking hard core prog store in the same location as Book People.
Idiot college students still walk out into traffic without looking and the highway between lewiston and Moscow is finally four lanes.
Boise is nuts. I’ve really only spent time traveling through over the course of the last thirty years but it’s grown like crazy and dosent feel like Idaho anymore. Neither does Post Falls.
It looks like they got a flurry of last minute bids on that land cruiser
Sold for $33,583. I knew 16 wasn’t going to get it, but that’s goofy.
Especially with leaky wiper seals and rust in the corners of the wheel wells.
Makes you wonder what else is hiding.
Syracuse is unimpressive. That is all.
FBI?
No, but I drive by that place all the time. I assume we’re all in there, under “subversives”.
I bet more if us have files with the ATF than the FBI.