as chief medical officer on the Liberty. He missed Kathryn, although he had understood why she had made the decision to leave. Eventually the trauma of treating so many wartime dead and dying had affected her badly. It probably did all medical officers in the end, you see your friends and colleagues brought in torn to pieces on the operating table, and it’s your job to sew them back up, and send them right back out there again. It wasn’t a job Michael particularly envied.
Kathryn went and spent some time in counselling and therapy, trying to exorcise some of those demons that she encountered on that operating table. Finally quitting the medical profession altogether and re-training as a planetary geologist, her other great love.
While his current medical officer and Kathryn’s replacement, Lillian Goddard was the more experienced of the two. He missed Kathryn’s gentle, warm smile and soothing touch. She had that rare quality to be able to put anyone at ease.
Lillian on the other hand, was harsher, colder. Michael had to admit she was good at her job, she definitely knew her stuff, yet lacked Kathryn’s gentleness.
Commodore Valente looked grave, nobody launched a distress buoy for no reason. “Have the Eisenhower transmit the contents of the buoy to us.”
He gently rose from his seat, turning back to face Michael, “I’m sorry captain, but I must attend to this.”
“By all means,” Michael nodded in understanding.
With that Commodore Valente left the small restaurant, rushing to the nearest elevator with the lieutenant hurrying to keep up.
Michael was left alone, just as he liked it. Quietly watching the berthed vessels once again, and wondering if Kathryn was okay. Hoping she was safe out there wherever she was. He drank the remainder of the lukewarm coffee in his cup, before returning to his quarters aboard the Liberty.
A few hours later as he was quietly perusing the reports of the final test results, that were completed on the Liberties new shielding system the previous day. His wrist comm. chirped, interrupting him.
“Captain, I know the hour is late, but a serious situation has arisen, I need to brief you immediately.” It was the grave voice of commodore Valente.
Well, this is a turn up for the books, an emergency in a dockyard. Michael guessed it had something to do with the incident involving the lieutenant and the Eisenhower earlier.
“I’m on my way,” he replied as he hauled himself out of his enticingly comfortable bed, put down the data navigator containing the report; splashed his face with cool water in an effort to re-awaken himself, and got dressed for the second time today, straightening his tunic as he went.
He made his way across the Liberties empty bridge, to an elevator which guided him to a deck where the main hatch was located on the port side of the ship. It was strange, he thought. With the Liberty berthed in a dockyard like this, instead of being out amongst the stars, bereft of her crew, and only functioning on minimal power it almost felt like the ship was sleeping. He had found that without a crew, six decks and one hundred and forty metres was a very big place indeed; though Michael had gotten used to it over the past three months while the ship received its latest batch of upgrades.
The elevator stopped on deck four, and opened out into a long corridor that ran the entire length of the ship, wiring and delicate circuitry for the myriad of the Liberties systems were all secreted away in overhead trunking, that, in some sections almost half covered the ceiling.
The floors were white, and the walls a very light grey, giving the corridor a clean almost hospital like appearance. Fully customizable displays lined the walls in even intersections, where the corridor didn’t branch off into separate sub-sections.
The displays were all powered down for now though in order to conserve power. The corridor itself had a series of bulkheads every fifteen metres or so, that created a kind of octagonal archway. This proved to be a nuisance, because if one didn’t mind their head, they could quickly be incapacitated by running into one of the armoured bulkhead surrounds, as several of his crew had already found out to their cost. Lillian had at least one concussion per week to treat. The idea was sound though, in the event of a fire or decompression, the entire area could be sealed off until repairs could be made.
Michael made his way halfway along this main corridor, eyeing the bulkhead arches with a kind of grim suspicion, he didn’t feel like a trip to the stations sickbay tonight, thank you very much.
He then hung a right, turning into a much narrower corridor with only small displays and many more doors leading into several ships departments, crew quarters, maintenance access corridors, supply rooms, the ships main computer core was located on this deck although that was on the starboard side of the ship, towards the aft of the deck lay the power plant for the ships primary sub-light engine. The Solarian negative Ion propulsion drive, as they called it. He loved the engines on this ship, it was what turned the ship from an ordinary cruiser, into a hot rod. Able to fly at a speed, dive and jink to avoid attacks, that left other ships simply in its wake, and able to get out of danger quickly if the action became too hot.
This ship was unique, there was nothing else like it in the entire E.D. F, and Michael loved its uniqueness, which was why he was a little hurt when he heard of the E.D. F’s plans to reverse engineer some of its technology. Suddenly, the Liberty was not so unique anymore, although he understood the decision, he didn’t have to like it.
Nearing the hatch, which was attached to a small temporary berthing corridor, a relatively recent addition to the ship that allowed it to dock with stations and other ships more easily, this small corridor led onto the main structure of the facility. At least here were signs of human life, a few dozen E.D. F engineers were strolling past, carrying equipment to perform some routine repairs to a couple of freighters having just recently arrived. They had already offloaded their cargo, and were just going through some minor repair work, before heading off out into space again.
Michael made his way over to the nearest elevator and said “command deck,” into the speaker.
The elevator merrily chirped its response and sped him onto his destination, although Charlie Gamma base was only a small substation under the command of the E.D. F research division, it was still quite a sizeable installation in its own right. Made up of thirty six decks and over eight hundred E.D. F engineers and research personnel worked there, its small, but advanced dockyards could service anything from a single seat Peregrine fighter all the way up to a Washington class heavy cruiser. Though not the Danitza class, or main carrier classes, as they were simply too large for the station to handle, they needed the services of a major facility like Alpha, Delta or Echo base, as those were the only facilities large enough to accommodate those metal goliaths.
After a few seconds had elapsed, the elevator stopped at the command deck of the station, and cheerily beeped again to let him know of the fact. Michael stepped out onto the command deck of the base and was immediately shocked. For the size of the station, the command deck was tiny, the bridge of a Montgomery class carrier was bigger than this. Around twenty officers were sat manning stations, a central walkway ran toward the commodore’s office. Either side of this walkway a small flight of four steps descended into a pair of sunken semi- circular work areas lined with complex displays, five men worked within each section.
To Michael’s left and right, another flight of ten steps led to an overhead gantry, lined with yet more displays, here another ten men worked. He spied the commodore’s office ahead and just to the left of him. In the wall directly ahead was a giant viewer, partially obscured by this overhead gantry. It was currently showing the forms of the two Lincoln class supply ships which had docked earlier.
Michael could see the commodore waving from his office to enter, so he hurried along the central platform toward the side room, the frosted glass doors opened automatically.
Valente had guessed Michael’s surprise, “not what you were expecting?”
Michael had to admit, “not really, with a station of this size, I was expecting something a little larger.”
“That’s what surprised me too when I took command here three years ago, you would expect for a station that essentially oversees all operations in the Malthus system and for several light years beyond, to have quite a sizeable command and control centre, but not Charlie Gamma base,” Valente said shaking his head. “Please, take a seat.”
Michael sat down in a comfortable leatherette chair next to the commodore’s desk, as he did so a small monitor rose from the surface.
“As you are no doubt aware, the Jefferson class heavy cruiser, Eisenhower picked up a distress buoy from the Copernicus, which was conducting a survey of the Auriga system. From the logs and sensor data downloaded into
