A pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, mirrored and layered upon itself
“Listen, Captain, I would cuss you out in German, but you wouldn't understand and the universal translator will not allow me to do what is necessary in its full glory because it thinks commodores should not communicate like that – and it is right, so let me bust you down all the way to ensign in English and then teach you what you should have learned all the way up so that you weren't making ensign mistakes as a captain!”
Commodore Wilhelm Allemande had lit on his next victim, a captain whose messup would not even let us be home for New Year, and had my chief engineer crying.
“Captain Biles-Dixon, I don't even know why you keep asking me for Warp 6.5 unless you want us to be in eternity for the New Year! I can give you Warp 6.475 for eight hours, but we're going to have to head back to the Solar System below Warp 4!”
On the Amanirenas, we had been doing structural integrity field repair on the fly for weeks, running around saving a billion humans from themselves, trying to get home into dry dock, but –.
“If you get home in time for Christmas every year in a galaxy that doesn't know the least bit about Catholic holy days, you aren't doing it right,” Admiral Benjamin Banneker-Jackson said about it. “That's half the trouble we are in now because we have too many people in command who think the galaxy cares about our human preferences. It does not and will kill you and everyone around you for the trouble.”
“You and your niece Captain Biles-Dixon, and my cousin Commander Allemande are so refined, Admiral, and I love you all – and I'm 95 so I don't want to hear about I can't say that on duty because I will not remember to say it at the end of the shift – but I love you all because I don't need to tell any of you for your own protection that if you don't sit your – .”
“Commodore,” Adm. Banneker-Jackson said, “I understand. As you were.”
Cmdr. Helmut Allemande, cousin to the commodore, was praying and running – literally – applying all his science officer skills to engineering. I could track him and Lt. Cmdr. James Doohan running through the ship with their teams in opposite directions because structural integrity fields that were slipping down to 90 percent strength came back up like Christmas lights to an average of 98 percent strength, round and round and round the ship while we stayed at Warp 6.475 and I as captain figured out how we were going to rescue a starship whose structural integrity problems made those of the Amanirenas look like showing up at 11:45am to a Christmas breakfast.
To make a very long story short: we already knew in Near-Earth that one of the reasons we didn't have problems with rock being ejected from the Petraon System into regular shipping routes was because the Petraon Fishers, once every 20.6 years or so, put out their nets, cut that material up, and ate most of it before it could become a problem.
Understand the general convention that nothing in the galaxy under its own natural power can exceed the speed of light … but then we do see that relativistic jets, somehow, are coming out of black holes, and not even light is supposed to be able to escape them … so, somewhere, the theory of relativity still has some explaining to do, and the black hole in the Petraon System just keeps breaking up its remaining planets and throwing them out of the system with its relativistic jets much closer to the speed of light than should be possible. So, if any other being is able to net said rocks, the energy level they possess must be quite powerful.
Because the Petraon Fishers only spread their nets out every 20.6 years … actually, 20 years, seven months, and somewhere between that fifteenth and twentieth day … there were always going to be captains who were ensigns when it last happened, and of course had forgotten by the time it happened again – but there were fleet updates and alerts and sensor warnings that all starship computers had in their software, and all navigators in the region received alerts on their consoles about when the event was to occur and what readings to look for.
Unfortunately, there was also that one captain who was betting on the twentieth day instead of the fifteenth day, and was ignoring the ensign whose readings said the ship was going to sail straight into the Petraon Fishers' web on the sixteenth day.
The blessing was that the Amanirenas had turned back to drop Queen Qvalliqa off at the rendezvous point well outside Near-Earth, and so was close enough on that sixteenth day to hear one of the most unique distress calls in fleet history. The ship in question, at higher than light speed, had gone right through the web, but had gotten cut in pieces in going – so only the structural integrity fields were holding the ship together, because the onboard computer, in an instant, had activated all the sub-stations to wrap the cut pieces until the big field could pull the ship back together – and somehow, the warp engine and its containment fields had come through in one piece.
“When you are dumber than anyone except the captain of the El Faro in the 21st century, but God still cares about your hind parts and does a Christmas miracle for you anyway!” Cdre. Allemande raged about it.
“When the miracle is that you live in the 23rd century and something can be done, unlike what happened to your ancestor sailing right into a category 3 hurricane,” Adm. Banneker-Jackson said as he handed the present captain's record over to the commodore with a sigh.
I knew that my first officer, the younger Allemande, was a basso profundo with a vocal range of at least four octaves. I found out the elder Allemande had the same range – from a bellow to a shriek – in the worst possible way.
“Donald Davidson? He was in my class at the Academy – and how did we not screen him out for command owing to the ancestral narcissistic stupidity in his family that we already know is deadly? Who else do I need to get fired?”
Ensign Pushkin at navigation quietly turned on “Taps” on his console, and Lieutenant Morimoto at tactical had to cover his laughter in a hurry …
“The good thing is,” Lt. Cmdr Almuz said to me after he put the commodore on mute, “Captain Davidson probably already notified his next of kin owing to the accident, so that part is taken care of.”
I called engineering.
“Lt. Cmdr. Doohan, what is our structural integrity field strength looking like right now?”
“Holding steady at 98.7 percent, Captain,” he said, “and Cmdr. Allemande comes by here every hour with optimizations and the reminder that if we get below 90 percent, you are not even the person we need to worry about reporting to, Captain.”
“Well, the commander knows his cousin,” I said. “I do not envy Captain Davidson any of the experiences he has had and is about to have, and my job is to make sure nobody on this ship has to experience any of that. Take the auxiliary shield generators off line and divert 25 percent of the power to the structural integrity fields and 75 percent to the tractor beams, because we don't dare ask the Farragut to put on any power in its condition.”
“Aye, sir.”
Meanwhile, on the other end of the communication board …
“So, Ensign Davidson, we're just going to start over, because as an ensign you just have one job: know what you are assigned to like the back of your hand including making a detailed and accurate report. Everything else is aye, sir and yes, ma'am – we understand that, Ensign, but see, your problem was that all you did as an ensign was sit around and dream about being a captain and ordering ensigns around, because you thought that your ensign was trying to get your job, so you didn't even bother to go check the readings for yourself, because you don't even remember how to do that because you never bothered to learn your job as an ensign!”
“See, I could live with a demotion,” Lt. Cmdr. Doohan said to Cmdr. Allemande, “but your commodore cousin just goes after people's souls!”
“But that's where the trouble is,” Cmdr. Allemande said.
“See, Ensign, I'm a commodore! My job is to tell Adm. Banneker-Jackson that he doesn't have to be bothered with dealing with you before the court-martial because he has better things to do, but one of those things he has to do is to listen to me giving him information about what is going on with you and Captain Biles-Dixon – and my first job relative to her is to make sure she will not be hearing your mouth while she is saving your butt at risk to her ship – but my other job is to listen to her about what is going on with her ship and crew and what they can actually do and not worry about whether she is trying to be a commodore, just like your job was to listen to your ensign whose whole job was to keep up with the Petraon Fishers and tell you when they were casting their nets!
“Ensign Forester knows her job – and she's going to be a lieutenant and all you are going to be saying is 'yes, ma'am' to her, because your whole job in the brig starting right now and for the next decade is going to be to keep those floors spic and span and to say aye, sir and yes, ma'am to everybody!”
We extended the structural integrity fields of the Amanirenas around the Farragut long enough for their engineering teams and ours to weld the cuts back together beyond how they, being molten and separated for only a nanosecond or so, had resealed inside the ship's own field. After that, we assessed how fast we dared tow the Farragut even after taking both the warp its impulse engines offline, because we had been using the Amanirenas's resources quite heavily. We were still closer to the Solar System than to Star Base 1, and Altair's shipyards did not have the resources for both the Farragut and the Amanirenas if the Amanirenas started to have serious trouble.
“Understand this,” I said to my bridge crew. “We are not taking any chances on me having to explain to Immanuel in person how for a day He never commanded us to celebrate I overdrove this ship and all of us into eternity. That's No. 1. No. 2 is, you know that Cdre. Allemande will bust us all back to ensign before we even get to eternity if we do something dumb, so we're going at Warp 2, and get ourselves and the Farragut home safely in two weeks.”
“Yes, ma'am and thank you because I'm already an ensign, so what am I supposed to do?” Ensn. Pushkin said.
“Oh, both of us will have to take the Academy all over, wherever Heaven has its fleet training,” Lt. Morimoto said.
Cmdr. Allemande had said, “Yes, ma'am” and gone back to engineering just that quick … and I understood him better then. He was quiet, but he was an Allemande, through and through … he made sure I had no problems that he could prevent, and his reports told me he accomplished that by not only his own labor, but by deeply listening and understanding what officers junior to him reported. Lt. Cmdr. Doohan was just below him in rank as third-in-command, and the two men had been working hand-in-glove so well that unless there was another emergency … but there wouldn't be for the Amanirenas, because I had delivered my first and second officers' reports to Cdre. Allemande in the presence of Adm. Banneker-Jackson, and he, as rear admiral and ranking officer, had spoken with full fleet admirals Elian Bodega, in whose group we were, and full fleet admirals Hill and Talvela who were sharing responsibility for Near-Earth. So the Amanirenas was added to Adm. Talvela's command group, and he would send his next ship coming out of port to join Adm. Bodega's group.
“Your orders, Captain Biles-Dixon,” said Adm. Talvela, “are now to get the Amanirenas and the Farragut safely to port. That is all. There are no emergencies for you but that, given that the Farragut literally has now seams now to come apart at that are not in accord with its configuration!”
“Aye, aye sir,” I said.
“I am looking forward to reading your report of exactly how, in space, you and your crew managed a full-ship weld,” he said. “I know that necessity is the mother of invention, but I think you have made a midwife unlike any we have seen in the fleet for many years!”
“Thank you, Admiral,” I said. “I have the greatest bridge and engineering crew for the job any captain could ever have wanted.”
The admiral laughed gently.
“We look for great things from you because of whose niece you are,” he said, “but also and increasingly, Captain Biles-Dixon, as you live up to the standard Adm. Banneker-Jackson has set, that you will advance the standard. One day, you may sit where I sit, for you have the wisdom and the humility for high command, even as a captain.”
“Thank you, Admiral.”
“So you weren't going to tell him that you just don't want to get busted down to ensign,” Lt. Cmdr. Doohan said to me when Adm. Talvela was off the line.
“Look, Adm. Talvela is too far up in our command line to even be bothered with that even as a joke,” I said. “He has to go figure out how in the galaxy he is going to get every single fleet computer hard-wired not to run through the Petraon System every 20.6 years or get the Academy to brainwash new commanders into it, because we can't keep losing spaceships like this and keep our reputation as the consortium. Just like you know I had better not be bothered hearing about how our structural integrity fields are at 89.9 percent, we have things we don't burden those in command of us with but take care of at this level so when we need to work together, the way is clear.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Lt. Cmdr. Doohan said.
I had not noticed that Cdre. Allemande had come up on the bridge during my explanation, but realized it when I heard my third-in-command jump and then say, “Commodore on the bridge!”
“At ease,” the commodore said, and I turned around to meet his smile and offer him the command chair.
“No, ma'am, Captain Biles-Dixon, the comm is yours,” he said gently. “I am just the bearer of good news. My request to put you and the crew of the Amanirenas up for a commendation has been approved by Admirals Banneker-Jackson, Lee, Jefferson, Triefield, and Chulalaangkorn, and I am sure Adm. Talvela will agree when he has time to consider it. Call it a delayed but not denied Christmas present, well-deserved!”
The next day, the Amanirenas having no trouble maintaining its structural integrity fields at Warp 2, and the Farragut's crew safely aboard with us as the Farragut itself was towed, I caught up with the younger Allemande. He had pulled 20 hours – 2.5 full shifts – making sure that Lt. Cmdr Doohan had what he needed and I had what I needed, and I ordered him to rest a full day after that. He had gratefully followed orders, and looked completely recovered the next day.
“You are the weld between the science of engineering and command decisions for the Amanirenas,” I said to him, “and I appreciate you, Commander.”
“Thank you, Captain,” he said. “I did that which it is my duty to do … and, you already know my name is Allemande.”
“And you certainly are living up to it – Danke,” I said.
He tipped an imaginary hat with a smile, and quietly went to his science station, only to get right up again when his cousin came on to the bridge, announce him, and then offer his chair just as I offered mine.
“OK, first of all, at ease, and second of all, I'm ordering all of you to not offer me anything unless I ask, because I am 95 years old and I don't know what half of these new buttons do, so what you want is for your ship not to look like the Farragut and you do that by keeping me off of most of these boards!”
“Aye, sir,” we both said.
The commodore had come up to present me a tablet of Adm. Talvela's orders to detail, and when he left, Lt. Morimoto said, “Captain, did we just get fussed at for just existing?”
I just started laughing as Cmdr. Allemande shook his head.
“Yes, Lieutenant, but see, that was a fussing compliment because he knows we know how to do our job and therefore he doesn't need to do it or get us off of it,” I said. “We are grateful that we are not ensigns today, whose only job is to keep the brig floor spic and span and say aye, sir and yes, ma'am to everybody else.”
“Right,” the lieutenant said. “Extended Christmas miracles and all that.”
“You better believe it!” I said.