A pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, overlaid on itself with eyes highlighted
When you sit around and listen to old space admirals, you realize that they are a highly professional and dangerous group of individuals. These are people who can make decisions that can blow up an entire star system, planet by planet or just nudging some old oxygen-burning supergiant star over a little. They no longer think like the average captain, to say nothing of the average everyday person.
It changes you, as a young captain, to realize your mentors can flip that switch at anytime, and to pray that they do it for only good purposes, especially when you are howling at your chief engineer to get you Warp 9.675 because you hear the gravelly voice of full fleet admiral Chenggis Chulalaangkorn telling some folks on your long-range sensors:
“Listen, even at Warp 9.5, Adm. Benjamin Banneker-Jackson can't get here in less than six minutes to explain to me, as his superior officer, why I shouldn't blow your whole excuse for a pirate base and the rock you have it orbiting off the stellar map. Adm. Benjamin Banneker-Jackson is a good person. He believes in a God of redemption and all that. I don't. I'm also not a good person. You have exactly five minutes to beam over that artifact and evacuate your station unless Adm. Banneker-Jackson thinks you're worth getting to maybe Warp 9.675.”
Adm. Chulalaangkorn had a lot of respect for my uncle, a rear admiral in rank, but widely held as the senior science officer in the galaxy even when he was a mere captain. A return from retirement and two promotions came very quickly owing to a trans-warp time defying emergency, but the promotions were just the fleet's belated way of catching up. But it was not just the science: people understood that Adm. Banneker-Jackson was that one human being any kind of being anywhere could count on to get a fair shake. Adm. Chulalaangkorn respected him so much that he tended not to blow folks away in front of the more merciful rear admiral – he already knew that said rear admiral would have me running the *Amanirenas * clear out of dry dock to Warp 9.675, saving lives.
Not that we could save the pirate station or most of the pirates in it, but the star dust did not need to be on the fleet's hands. That artifact was well able to take care of itself.
Alien death sometimes comes as a gentleman, bow tie and all; that was the colloquial view of what would be known the Froloov Flare Incident, but my uncle arrived with the science, of course, with my whole crew working with him so that he could speak with knowledgable authority.
“Adm. Chulaalangkorn, sir, please power down your planet-wreckers,” he said, “because we've got a way bigger problem here.”
“Oh, we do?” the senior admiral said.
“Yes – you see, the Winged Skull of the Frolooviar God-King is a homing beacon, so, when any ship of ours beams that aboard, we need to do what the pirates here didn't know to do.”
“Didn't know to do in time, sirs,” my first officer Cmdr. Helmut Allemande said, and I came and looked and shook my head.
“We've got seven minutes, at best,” I said as I sent the information to Adm. Chulaalangkorn's flagship.
“OK, we're probably going to have to get towed back to Star Base 3 after we do this other near-light-speed thing I see we have to do at the same time -- but I got your containment field!” Lt. Cmdr. James Doohan my chief engineer said.
“Cut me in to speak with the pirates – this is Adm. Benjamin Banneker-Jackson of the starship Amanirenas. Adm. Chulaalangkorn wasn't lying: you have five minutes to beam that artifact over here so we can safely put it behind a containment field. It's a beacon, and the minute you took it off Froloov 6, it started transmitting its location to all of the planets in the system, all of which have transceivers working in their magnetospheres to attract a stellar flare into a conduit that includes your location.”
There was a moment's pause, and then a huge fit of laughter.
“You just wasted a minute,” Adm. Banneker-Jackson said. “Never mind – put Adm. Chulaalangkorn back on – can we beam most of the people off that station?”
“Easily. I have 20 ships here – they can't get away any other way, anyhow.”
“OK. Put me on general bandwidth – to those of you on that station ready to surrender and live, get to the forward areas and set your communication devices to the emergency frequency in two minutes. We're pulling everybody who is ready.”
The laughter from the pirate captain's room was now joined by other sounds – there was the sound of few people breaking and running and getting cussed at by the rest who stayed.
“What about the artifact, Rear Admiral?” Adm. Chulaalangkorn said. “I did represent that we were going to get it returned.”
“They understood when they sent you to get it that you were either going to get it or be part of the human sacrifice to their gods for failing to get it back – but they've got about five hundred thousand of the things, so one doesn't make a difference either way,” Adm. Banneker-Jackson said.
“What?” Adm. Chulaalangkorn said.
“I strongly advise, sir, that you sync up your fleet to this impulse jump we are doing, because the Frolooviar races want us all dead at this point,” Adm. Banneker-Jackson said. “They are just going to irradiate their star system, enjoy auroras beneath their atmospheres for years, and move on from ever knowing us.”
“You heard the man – all ships' engineering, sync up with the information from the Amanirenas.”
All this was still on an open channel – folks were still laughing, cussing, or running, as the state of their redemption or destruction was thus manifested to be. Our ships beamed out the willing and high-tailed it just below light speed out of that system in the nick of time, and then put on the rear sensors to see Froloov, that great blue star, send a solar flare right along the conduit Adm. Banneker-Jackson said it would, vaporizing everything in its path.
Some time later, the two admirals had dinner together, and my uncle said this to me about it: “Adm. Chulaalangkorn said what I believe makes more sense now, because he realized in that moment that he would have been just as dead as the pirates, but the same salvation from one who was sent in mercy came to us all, pirate and fleet admiral alike, who were willing. He said he has much food for thought now, as someone who knows he is not a good person, but thought he was more worthy of life than a pirate and just found out he is not.”
“Mission accomplished?” I said.
“Not exactly the one we thought we were on at that moment, but, maybe,” my uncle said, and smiled. “The work of redemption is ever available to be part of!”