Clearly, this being a series and all, it would be wise if you'd read the previous chapters. But if this is your first exposure to Pixy Pfeiffer and the crew of the P/E starship
Tirving?
Welcome, and I hope you'll love reading the earlier ones.
* * *
The cosmos flashed by as it always did, stars reaching back toward the Main Plot in their distance-induced haze, the Lerbal Effect stretching them a little when the eye tried to focus on them. Pixy Pfeiffer stirred, her implant stroking gently at her brain, warning her: almost time. She straightened in the command chair, glaring around the globe of her bridge. "One minute to drop-out, Mr Verily."
"Aye aye, ma'am." Pixy glanced over at him as he bent to study the helm display. Not a bad officer, Verily: he'd spent his first year and a half on this ship as her secretary, probably feeling each day as though she'd fucked him up the ass dry, with no lube.
He'd been happy to move off to become Second Officer a couple years ago, handling comms, though tonight he held the ceremonial telescope of the Officer of the Deck. It would be his responsibility to get the big P/E ship out of lightspace and into subspace. The Organic Armor was due for a UV flood from the nearest star, and there were some supply matters that needed taking care of.
To wit. A shadow fell over Pixy's shoulder. "Captain?" Pixy didn't look up: by now, with almost three years in command of the
Tirving
, she knew every voice on the ship. Sun-Li Milipet, in Supply for the past seven months after poor Seton had been wounded.
"Ms Milipet. What is it?"
"Ma'am, remember I told you I was going to need a shuttle? For the fucking light modules?"
"Ah." The captain swiveled slowly around in her big chair and looked her supply officer up and down. Something in what she'd said triggered something, a memory... "They're going from buzz-lifts back to the older system. Right?"
"Yes, ma'am. Who knows why?" She hesitated. "
Leith
has our order, but I'll try to get a few extra. We burn through those like a motherfucker."
"This is true." Pixy cast a skeptical eye along Milipet's uniform. "You're going in that? Just utilities?" The lieutenant raised her eyebrow. "And you're asking for extra? You're going to need to give up that ass of yours, probably."
"Please, ma'am," Milipet scoffed, "I've worked with Juler over on the
Leith
for months now. He doesn't care what I wear." She sniffed. "He never passes up a taste of me."
"Eww." Pixy raised her nose and swung the chair away. "Decorum, Ms Milipet. I don't need to know. My days in Supply were sordid enough; nobody wants to hear what you and Mr Juler will be up to." She yawned. "You know Captain Stellato's not around, right? He's on special assignment at the Wad this month, some kind of meeting. The First Officer's in charge, so take advantage if you can steal anything. You can take my shuttle. Tell Byskop I said it was all good."
"Ma'am." Milipet hesitated, greatly daring: everyone knew it was wisest, when Captain Pfeifer was done talking, to vanish. "Weapons status, ma'am?"
"On a supply run to a nearby tender, you're asking whether you need to have the shuttle's weapons systems charged up?"
"Fifteen seconds to dropout," Verily boomed over the Mass 'Tube, as all around the ship people secured themselves for subspace. Pixy raised an eyebrow at the supply officer.
"Watch and learn, Ms Milipet." She smacked the paddlecatch on her chair and called up her fighter chief. "Detail a fighter to escort my shuttle to the
Leith
, Commander Laredo," she grated. It had chapped Pixy's ass that the odious little Pepper Laredo had been promoted from lieutenant, and the year since then hadn't made her any happier.
"Aye aye, ma'am," drawled the fighter pilot through the vox, and Pixy shrugged up at Milipet.
"You see? You'll have a Tygon Interceptor as escort while you fly. You'll be fine." She waved the woman away. "Now scram. I have things to do here."
"Aye aye, ma'am," she replied as she walked away, but Pixy paid no attention: they were four seconds from Dropout, with the Main Plot flashing its sprightly warning chimes, and there were indeed things to do.
* * *
Staff Call was at 1500 that day, mostly because the XO had given everyone extra time to get their reports done after the placer/extraction operation on the inner moon of II Antaeus. When Pixy came in for her usual brief post-mission pep talk, the assembled officers were laughing as they debated how the hell to pronounce Antaeus. "Attention for the captain," rasped Commander Jatsupa, in the main chair.
"At ease," Pixy snapped automatically. She'd started a couple years ago giving these little personal chats, at Jatsupa's request, once the Tirving had started getting a little too swaggery about how well they were doing early on in the Arm campaign. He'd sensed an overconfidence then, and Pixy had been glad of his insight. She'd agreed to come in at once, because nobody could shatter an ego like Pixy Pfeiffer.
That first meeting, after the Liridona strike, she'd bypassed all the mutual congratulations and marched straight over to Marisa Legette, the assistant engineer who'd been fractionally slow with the power shunt during the Scout Phase.
A well-placed kick had left two of Legette's teeth glistening on the deck, after which the XO had no longer sensed that lingering swagger.
She leaned on the table now, glaring balefully at her officers, then allowed a small smile. "Actually? There was very little for me to complain about today." She savored the slumping shoulders all around the table as the assembled officers relaxed. "I'm moderately annoyed by your Lieutenant Adrian, Commander Laredo," she went on, with a nod at the fighter pilot, "but I'm sure you realize that, and will take corrective action."
"Already did, ma'am." Say what you liked about Laredo, she definitely shared Pixy's belief in summary discipline. Shared it in other things, too: most of what had led to the bad blood between them was Laredo's pursuit of the man Pixy had been fucking, years ago. Of course, now that Pixy had started to re-fuck him on occasion, she no longer worried much about it. Pixy imagined Adrian was already nursing a bruise somewhere. He'd earned it for being marginally out of position when sweeping out to starboard.
"Good. Then that's about it. Nice operation, everyone, and the Army sends their regards." She caught Jatsupa's eye. "If you wouldn't mind coming to my office afterward, XO?"
"Ma'am."
She strode out with her head high, her usual sense of airy, confident command fully intact. Everyone in the ship knew she was the motherfucker in charge, and because she brought them victory and kept them fed, they didn't mind her occasional snap-kicks. After all, she really only booted sailors who deserved it, usually.
She wondered, often these days, whether any of them could see how shaky she was with some of the stuff coming to her from Fleet.
P/E ships like hers were independent operators, free agents who sought their own targets with support from Fleet Intelligence and the strategic thinkers in the Core. But lately, some of her comms with those people, the secret eyes-only dispatches nobody could read without a captain's coding gun, had been giving her agita.
The war was going well out here, on the Bacchanal Arm. Fleet's Placer/Extraction tactics had, at long last, made the Flasbards their bitch, minds awhirl, completely unsure how to react. The few P/E operations against the Cathos Vremein had been far more dangerous, but even those were starting to roll these days. The ships, the crews, the soldiers, the captains, all of them were smooth and fast now, placing and extracting in hours instead of days, leaving hulled shells of Flasbard bases in their wake.
And as long as you listened to the Federal propaganda and ignored the troubling signs from Fleet Intel, you could not be blamed for thinking the War was headed, at long long last, for that final victory the government had been promising for so long now.
But Pixy was thinking ahead to her meeting with Jatsupa, when one of her unfortunate pieces of news was going to involve more training, less combat. And another was going to involve personnel moves. All seemingly routine, of course, but Pixy was not dumb. And she had read between the lines of the intel summaries.
He showed up at her office a few minutes after 1530, his eyebrows up. "You wanted to see me, ma'am?"
Pixy glanced at her new secretary, a nonentity called Tayvo Teuvo. "Go away, Mr Teuvo." The other desk, the one in the corner where the Legal Clerk usually worked, was already empty. "I need privacy."
"Yes, ma'am." Teuvo seemed impossibly young, but then Pixy was finding that true of all the new officers Fleet was inducting these days. He scuttled out under the impassive gaze of his two senior officers, desperately seeking something else to do. The glance Jatsupa and Pixy exchanged in his wake said it all.
"Sit down, Commander." If there was anyone, anyone at all in this entire Fleet Pixy would use a first name with, other than maybe Amisuul and, just possibly, Juno, it was this man. They worked together as one, these days. But no. He would never be Kees, just Commander. "I'm nervous," she confessed.
"Nervous?" His eyebrow rose high, broadcasting sheer disbelief, but other than that he kept himself carefully neutral. "About what, if I may ask."
"You may ask. It's why you're here." Pixy stared at her empty tea-bowl, the dregs of several hours ago now gelid in the bottom. "We're going to have to transition to more of a training role, less of an active one. I'll need you to inform the officers."
"What?" He looked shocked, a rarity. "Why?"
"Fleet Intel, for the very first time in the life of the USS
Tirving
, has sent a bulletin indicating absolutely no eligible enemy garrisons within 12,000 light years." She passed him the flimsy bulletin, which he didn't even glance at. He would hear her out. "None. They can nominate not a single objective for us."
Jatsupa nodded slowly. "We're out of targets."
"We're out of targets," Pixy sighed. She'd thought this out this afternoon, that perhaps they could take off back toward Headquarters Planet, maybe keep on going after that, over toward the Nambwamo Galaxy, or maybe that intriguing bit of unmapped space off the left side of the Pospana Nebula, but something had held her back.
"We could pick up and go elsewhere, ma'am?" Jatsupa had read her mind, but Pixy had her answer already. The hunch that was going to keep them here.
"Last month there were six targets, out at the far end of the Arm," she went on slowly. "six fat objectives. We could have smashed them. I was already planning it;
Leith
would have only needed four extra runs."
"But?" He picked up the bulletin at last. "They're no longer eligible?"
"No, Commander, they are not." She looked aside, out the massive port, taking in the passing stars she'd always loved. "And I wonder why."
