Government Business
© 2021 by Walter Reimer

Thumbnail art by  rabbi-tom


The light cruiser that had bothered the Bōank and the other ships along the border had disappeared, replaced by a destroyer that very primly stayed on its side of the arbitrary line in space. It was equally scrupulous in its communications; the former spate of insults in bad Kashlanin was replaced by a terse AI-generated greeting. Intelligence briefings stated that most of the larger units of the Terran Fleet had withdrawn to the remnant Confederation worlds to keep order.

Seated in her command chair, Varan found that she was of two minds about the current state of affairs.

Part of her still wanted to punish Terra itself for their government’s insult to the Empire, but that part was usually drowned out by relief that the war was over. The heavy cruiser she commanded wasn’t in need of repairs, but some of the crew had been called away from leave to assist in operations. Some of them still needed time to heal before the weight of memory began affecting their performance.

Varan didn’t necessarily include herself among those shlani. Her leave had been cut short, true, but she had spent most of her leave, and had been looking forward to returning to duty.

The command crew was going about their business, and the ship was at Step Three status. The usual Terran presence was due in a cycle, which interested her somewhat. There was no overlap of shift rotations on that side of the line, which could indicate that the Terrans didn’t have enough ships to fulfill the ‘boundary security’ demand that the Sovereign had imposed on them.

Aka, that was above her.

She glanced down and to her left as her repeater screen signaled an incoming message for her and the other captains in the 119th Cruiser Division. The Division and the Eleventh Fleet were to be demobilized, with reservist crews and ships returned to civilian jobs and the Reserve Fleet. Front-line ships like the Bōank would be redistributed to fill out any gaps in the order of battle for the four active-duty fleets. The captains of the ships had the opportunity to choose where they would prefer to be deployed, with the proviso that the distribution would be arbitrarily evened out by Fleet Command if one formation ended up with too few or too many units.

Varan’s tailspur twitched.

It was tempting, but would be terribly selfish of her, to choose a posting somewhere closer to where Meredith. However . . . the Duty Officer perked as she stood up. “Captain?” the kam asked.

“Just going to my office for a moment, Duty Officer,” Varan said. “I’ll return shortly.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” and he took her seat as she stepped out of the compartment.

Once in her office Varan began typing commands into her desktop, bringing up the crew roster. She then cross-referenced each crewmembers’ home planet or settlement with her own, Chadan, and finally matched it against the projected active Fleet deployments.

When it was done, the vir felt like singing.

The best match for a basing option was Station NZh-2233.

The Terrans called it Downtime Station.

Varan quickly entered her choice for the deployment, giving a second and third choice that were not as ideal, but fairly close as one measured it in light-years, and transmitted the message as a reply. Aka, it was by no means a sure thing, as she was still quite junior as a captain.

She grinned. Playing that game with Meredith was making her more open to gambling when the odds weren’t overwhelmingly in her favor.

The Yōzhim-kestin stood as she reentered the command section and stepped aside as she resumed her seat. “Status?”

“Danzak aan’ siju, Captain,” the Duty Officer replied promptly before returning to his own station.

The rest of her duty shift was as uneventful as the start of it, and she was relieved by Subcaptain th’Ner with nothing to pass on to the kam. All stations were prepared to go up in alert status on a subfraction’s notice, and all ship systems were in good order. Varan left command and did a walking tour of the ship before returning to her quarters for lastmeal.

There was one thing that she missed while on a forward deployment like this, and that was d’rathi. However, the tiny insects that created the dessert required some delicate cultivation. In a way, it was a good thing that Varan couldn’t get her hands on it easily, or she might find herself getting fat.

Her padd chimed, and she grinned when she saw that the message was from Meredith. Setting her small plate of sliced fruit aside, she licked her fingertips before swiping them across the device’s surface to open and read the message.

And she found herself agreeing with the mare.