The Kolbangara Incident

What was Fitzgerald like? She was a fire-breathing dragon who could incinerate you with a look. She was a petty tyrant who would gig you fifty credits for leaving your shirttail untucked during inspection. She was an iron hand in an iron glove that ruled her boat like it was her own personal empire.

And she was the best godsdamned commander I’ve ever had.

Look over there, on my wall. You see that ribbon rack? I got half of those during the five years I served under her. Not because of anything I did; because of what she did.

And you see that big chunk of useless metal in the middle? Yeah. That’s a Casimir Drive Effector. It’s my most important memento, because she gave it to me personally. It’s not an award exactly. But it sure meant a lot. And it tells you everything you need to know about Captain Jeanne Fitzgerald.

I got it just off of Kolbangara, in the second year of the war. You’re too young to remember, but that was just after the Spathe had broken their non-aggression pact with the Confederation. In just under a year, they had pushed across a third of Confederation space and taken more than thirty worlds.

We’d been at peace since the end of the Bougier war, which meant that the newest fighting craft we had were twenty years old and that none of the brass had actually ever been in a real battle. And as usual, the politicians were caught with their thumbs up their asses and demanded that the military do something to stop the advance. Since the politicians also demanded that what ships we did have be used to protect the more ‘vital’ worlds, that meant using whatever was left over to actually fight the war.

So some bright-eyed pencil pusher who’d never been further off-planet than the nearest orbiting brothel decided that what we’d do is confiscate all of the ten-crew craft we could, retrofit them with hull-mounted skip mines, and use them to destroy the Spathe supply lines.

The idea was that we’d hide in the gravity well of some out-planet until a Spathe pod cruiser came by. We’d run after them, throw the skip mines, and get away before they knew what was happening. Stop the supplies and we stop the advance. Brilliant, right?

Wrong.

What the pencil-pusher forgot was that Murphy always gets a vote. And in this case, Murphy had two votes. The first was that the skip mines were a new design. Sometimes they would explode when they hit the enemy ship and sometimes they wouldn’t. And sometimes they would explode on the boat carrying them, which did worlds for our confidence.

Murphy’s second vote was that the skip mines couldn’t just be tossed out. Their skip-drive would only start once the mines were up to 0.1% of C. But big ships take a long time to get up to speed, so the best bet was small ships with big drives. Which is why we nabbed those ten-crew boats. Six people plus four mines meant that if everything went right, each boat could stop a cruiser before having to come back into the forward arming and refueling point for more mines.

What’s this got to do with the Casimir Drive Effector? I’m getting to that. Jobe, but you kids got no patience.

We’d headed to Kolbangara with the PC-DIX, captained by Jay Zinser. Spathe pod-cruisers had big guns, but they could only point them in one direction at a time. Fitzgerald and Zinser decided to split up and hit any enemy ship from two sides at once in the hope of overwhelming their defenses.

So we took up orbit around Veve, the largest planet in the system, while DIX laid in wait near Melene, the next biggest. Fitzgerald figured that since they were gas giants, their natural radio and thermal emissions would hide us from any Spathe scan, and she was right. We hadn’t been there more than eleven cycles before they showed up and headed down-system for Gizo.

We’d gotten lucky; the pod-cruiser had been spotted just after it wefted in-system. Even better, they didn’t seem to have seen either the CIX or the DIX. When they got in range, those godsdamned leafies were gonna get the surprise of their lives.

After twenty minutes, we finally got into what Fitzgerald had decided was the best position to start our run and she called out “Casimir Effector on!”

And I pushed the button, and nothing happened.

She looked over at me and repeated “Casimir Effector on!”

I pushed the godsdamned button again and still nothing happened. “Just a moment, Captain,” I called out as I unstrapped and pulled myself back to the engine compartment. Every godsdamned light was green - except the one for the Casimir Drive Effector. Lucky for me, the godsdamned things are modular. Pull it out, check the contacts, put it back in. Still no green. No light at all.

Fitzgerald’s voice came over the squawk box. “What’s going on, mister?”

“The Casimir Drive Effector is off-line,” I said. “I don’t know why. Trying to fix it.”

“Belay that, mister. Just slot in the replacement.”

“We, uh, don’t have a replacement, Captain.”

Ten seconds go by before she spoke again, and they only felt like ten million years. “What do you mean, we don’t have a replacement?”

“I, uh, swapped it at FARP.”

“Get back up here,” Fitzgerald said, and I did, fast as I could.

As I’m strapping back into my position, XO Matt Maguire said “The DIX has begun her run.”

“Damn,” Fitzgerald said. Glaring at the plotter as if she could will the CIX into place, she asked me “Can we maneuver at all?”

“I can give you thrusters, but those aren’t strong enough to catch the pod-cruiser.”

“I don’t want to catch it,” she gritted out. “I want to kill it.” With another look at the plotter, she said “Aim the DIX straight at Veve. Full burn.”

“What good will that do, Captain?” Lane Starkey, the navigator asked.

“Just do it!”

So I started the thrusters and Starkey aimed the boat at the planet like she was trying to stab it.

Over the building vibration, Fitzgerald asked me “What’s our output?”

“Thrusters at 90%, Captain.”

“Give me 110%,” she said.

“Captain, the thrusters aren’t rated for more than -”

“Don’t tell me what you can’t do, Pappy,” she barked. “Those thrusters can take 120% of max for thirty minutes. Now give me 110%.”

So I pushed the thrusters into the overload.

“DIX is at speed,” Matt said. “First skip mines away.”

The whole boat started vibrating as it pushed itself deeper into Veve’s gravity well. “What’s our speed, Nav?”

“We’re at 30 klick-secs and rising,” Starkey said.

“Spathe craft is returning fire on DIX,” Matt said.

“Give me 120% on thrusters,” Fitzerald demanded.

I didn’t say anything; I just opened the thrusters as wide as they would go. The boat’s vibration became a force of nature, shaking us as if Jobe itself was using us for dice.

“The DIX has been hit,” Matt said in that damnably calm voice of his. “The DIX is destroyed.”

“Speed, Nav?”

“We’re at 42 klick-secs and rising.”

“Let me know when we’re at 50.”

“Aye, captain.”

“Captain, what’s the plan?” Bucky asked from back in the weapons bay.

“Are the skip-mines programmed?” She asked.

“Yes.”

“Then prepare to fire on my command.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Just when I thought the boat was about to fly to pieces, Starkey called out “Fifty klick-secs!”

Fitzgerald nodded and said “Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire.”

With each repetition, the CIX shuddered as a skip-mine blasted away from the hull.

“All skip mines away,” Matt said. “Tracking.”

“Reduce thrusters to 10%,” Fitzgerald said. “Nav, chart a course that will take us to Gizo, best speed.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Aye, Captain!”

“First skip mine has impacted on Veve’s atmo,” Matt said. “Mines two, three, and four have modified course.”

“Are they at speed yet, XO?” Fitzgerald asked.

“Just now reaching speed,” Matt replied. “Mine two has gone super-C. Mine three is now super-C. Mine four is super-C.”

“You used the gravity well to get the mines up to speed!” Starkey exclaimed.

“That’s right,” Fitzgerald replied absently as she stared at the plotter. “What’s the track look like, XO?”

“Mine two has just exploded behind the pod cruiser,” Matt said. “Mine three approaching. Mine three is a dud, repeat, no go.”

Fitzgerald just nodded, as if she’d expected it.

“Mine four on approach,” Matt said, as calm as ever. “Mine four is a direct impact. Spathe pod-cruiser destroyed.” Suddenly Matt smiled. “Congratulations, Captain. You did it.”

“We did it,” she corrected. “XO, you have the bridge. I’ll be in my cabin.”

“I have the bridge,” Matt repeated. “Nav, how long to Gizo?”

“Thirty days at best speed on thrusters,” Starkey answered. “We’ll get a little hungry, but I’ve been meaning to lose some weight anyways.”

While the rest of the crew started bantering about just how much weight Starkey could stand to lose and which part of her body, she should lose it from, I went back into the engine compartment to examine the Casimir Drive Effector. I knew I didn’t have a hope of fixing it, but I wanted to know what went wrong.

About ten minutes later, the XO called me over the squawk box. “Pappy, the Captain wants to see you in her cabin. Bring the Casimir Drive Effector with you.”

“On my way, XO.”

Thirty seconds later, I was knocking on the Captain’s door.

“Enter.”

I went in and came to attention before her desk. “You called for me, Captain?”

“Close the door,” she ordered.

I did. When I turned back around, a piece of paper was lying on her desk.

“What happened?” She asked.

“The Casimir Drive Effector quit,” I said. “I don’t know why. I’ve never seen one quit before.”

“Why didn’t we have a replacement?”

“I traded our spare to Johnson over on the cruiser Manatee; we got twenty pounds of real Terran coffee for it,” I replied. Gesturing at the drive, I added “I mean, the Casimir Drive Effector never breaks. So we didn’t need a spare.”

“Until we did,” she said. With a thump, she put a thick book on the desk. “Do you know what this is?”

“Yes, Captain. It is the regs for outfitting and maintaining a PC like the CIX.”

“Wrong. It is blood.” Tapping the book to emphasize her words, she repeated “It is blood. Every single regulation in here is written in the blood of someone who died. They died from negligence. From stupidity. From greed. And now you’ve added the blood of six more people to this book.”

“Captain, I -”

“Shut up. ‘Regulation 6.32.A: No fewer than one and no more than three spare Casimir Drive Effector units are to be carried on all ships at all times.’,” she quoted. Pushing the paper over to me, she said “Read this.”

It was a list of the six crew on the DIX. “Jay Zinser. Reg Evans. Holi Gasa. Thom Leonard. Kumana Williams. Eroni Gibson.”

“You will post that list over your bunk. Every night, before you go to sleep, you will read it aloud. Every morning, before you do so much as stretch your arms, you will read it. Those six people died for your twenty pounds of coffee.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“In addition, you will carry the Casimir Drive Effector with you everywhere you go. In your bunk. In the mess. In the head. You will carry it with you until we get to the FARP at Gizo and you replace the missing spare. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Dismissed.”

I left her cabin and went back to the bridge. Nobody said anything but they all watched as I put the Casimir Drive Effector right next to the controls where it would never be out of my sight.

Starkey was better than her word. We made orbit around Gizo in twenty days. Fitzgerald submitted her report of the action but left out that I had traded away the spare Casimir Drive Effector. That probably saved my career. Thanks to her creative solution to launching the skip mines, she was promoted into a bigger ship. I paid for a new Casimir Drive Effector out of my own pocket and stayed on the CIX for five more tours before getting wounded in the Battle of Kalinghara and being medicaled out.

To this day, I still recite the names of those six people before going to sleep and after waking up. And I add one more - Jeanne Fitzgerald, the best godsdamned captain I ever served under.

THE END

Bio: John E. DeLaughter is a retired planetologist who lives on a sailboat with Missy the cat. He has previously been published in Youth Imagination Magazine, Aphelion Webzine, and Pilcrow and Dagger. I also have stories in the Strange Wars and Strange Economics anthologies.

E-mail: John E. DeLaughter

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