[b]Island 19 on Herculaneum [/b]

“What,” Lieutenant Sabatine Hickoring observed, hands on hips, “an absolute shittin’ disaster.”

It was just about mid day on Herculaneum, a tropical world that served as the Republic of Cinabar Navy, or RCN’s principle base in the Rayleigh Stars. Like most worlds that served as major fleet bases, Herculaneum was largely ocean, it had several small continents but the jungles that covered them and the creatures that lived in those jungles were an effective deterrent to human colonization. Civilization, such as it was on Herculaneum, was centered around its numerous islands some of which were themselves fairly large, but much more manageable for the early colonists to clear and cultivate. Sprawling plantations produced rice and vegetable crops for domestic consumption and there was a degree of fishing for the large five finned calcini, a lifeform similar to but distinct from Terran fish, which was of good enough quality to be exported off planet. The locals even bragged it could be found on table in Xenos, though, frankly, Hickoring doubted it. If Herculaneum was anything, it was very, very far from Cinabar.  

“I thought I was doing well just to save her,” Motorman First Class Gregor commented, sounding embarrassed and looking down at his shapeless sailors boots. The six riggers whom Sabatine had bought with her gave the man scornful looks though in truth Gregor had done rather well to save Commodore Welkins’ gig when the port plasma thruster had failed on re-entry. The surviving motor had been enough to bring her down intact, but ballistic control must have been a real bitch and no mistake. It was rather a shame that the Commodre had survived the controlled crash in Sabatine’s opinion, though she didn’t say that outloud. Welkins’ was an unpleasant man in his late middle years, chafing for his admirals pips. That was fine, even understandable, but he seemed to blame everyone right down to his engine wipers for the fact that he hadn’t yet been awarded that honor by Navy House. To hear his stewards tell it, the Commodore could reliably be heard raving about the conspiracy at Navy House whenever he was in his cups, which was, again by the stewards reports, most nights.

Sabtine sighed and put her hands on her hips, considering the situation before her. The admiral's gig had come down in the estuary of a small river on one of the outlying islands, a thousand kilometers from Port Sarento, the main naval base on Herculaneum. The gig, about the size of the barrel of a cement mixer with two large outriggers wassunk to its entry port in the mud. Herculaneum had no moon and the solar tides were slight, so the handbreadth of water currently sitting atop the mud and lapping against the steel hull was all they were likely to have to contend with. Unfortunately the mud itself, at least two meters of it was much more of a problem. The river itself was not very deep even at the center of its channel but it had a broad easturay that was fringed with strongly looking mangroves. Indeginous crustaceans, their shells glittering with blue from the copper in the water, skittered and clicked, some of the bolder ones scuttingly close to the mired gig to snatch chunks from the sea life the plasma thruster had broiled to death as Gregor brought her in with long bifurcated claws. The half burned meat and ion broiled mud did little to improve the scene.

With a long sigh Sabatine turned to face her crew, all of whom had lightered out here with her on one of the large surface effect transports that carried food from the plantation islands to the port at Sarento and returned with what rude goods and petty luxuries were required to make life liveable in remote places. She was a woman of middling size, lean and muscular from an active life spent running up and down the rigging of starships and crawling through maintenance access ports. While no one would consider her a beauty she was pretty enough to turn heads on the rare occasions she made an effort and there was a lively energy in her bright green eyes that many found appealing. She pulled off her bush cap and ran her fingers through her dark auburn hair which had been gathered into a tight bun to allow her to wear a rigging suit or commo helmet without difficulty.

“Alright spacers, any idea as to how we are going to unfuck this bitch?” she asked, hiking a thumb over her shoulder to indicate the stranded gig. With the exception of Gregor, all of the ten crewmen she had bought with her were riggers, the personnel who climbed the masts to set the sails that drove vessels through the infinite universes of the matrix. In theory the process was automated, but cables kinked and yards stuck with monotonous regularity and had to be cleared by hand. When a ship was in port, as now, riggers were of little use, except for as unskilled fetch and carry. The shipside crew, technicians and engineers handled most of the routine maintenance for which they had the specialized training. Riggers for whom work wasn’t found soon became a disciplinary problem largely because there was little they could be threatened with that was more unpleasant than the task of climbing the rigging in an alien universe where any step could mean spending the brief remainder of your life in a place never meant for humans, or any kind of life as humans understood it. Work like this was perfect for them, at least from the view of a captain who wanted to avoid a riot once his spacers had spent their pay advances in the brothels and dives on Harbor street in Sarento. They were a hard bitten lot standing in a lose clump underneath what shade a trio of Terran palms provided. Their uniform was the gray shapeless garments of spacers slops though they wore boots and several had rigging gloves on their belts. Behind them was a large diesel flatbed that they had rented from the locals for the duration, Sabatine overpaying with coin given to her from petty cash for the purpose of sourcing local equipment. There were several large totes of equipment stacked in the back, containing rigging cable, tools, and other sundries Sabatine had thought they might need for the job.

“I suppose lighting the main drive is out of the question,” bosun’s mate Klave, the senior enlisted man, asked with a snicker. Sabatine put her hands on her hips and opened her mouth to tell the man to shut it unless he had something serious to add but then an idea struck her. Gregor goggled in horror at what he saw as a junior officer about to make a terrible mistake. Blind obedience wasn’t something riggers were good at, and officers with ideas were legendarily bad luck.

“You can’t be seriously considering it! If, and it’s a big if, the thruster nozzle isn’t crumpled to junk, the mud clogging it will turn it into a bomb!” Gregor ejaculated. One of the other riggers, Danzetti, whacked the motorman over the back of the head.

“You just shut up and let mis Sibby think, right barge jockey?” Danzettii told the man. The blow hadn’t been aimed to injure Gregor but it obviously hurt and stunned the man into fretful silence.

“We can’t light the thruster no,” she mused, “but we could open the feedlines…” Plasma thrusters worked by pushing reaction mass, usually water through the reactor to be stripped of their electrons and ejected as ions to produce thrust. If they could turn off the reaction drivers though, it would just be high pressure water shooting out of the nozzles.

“How would that help?” Klave asked, not challenging her but curious as to what her plan was.

“Ever dug a hole with a garden hose?” she asked the bosuns mate. Klave looked blank for a moment and then his eyes brightened.

“Oh… oh!” he nodded with growing enthusiasm. 

“Lets get some men over the other side and rig up a net of cabling as well, find something solid so we can get the winches going to help break the suction,” she ordered before turning back to the gig. It was still going to be a bitch of the job and take most of the rest of today and perhaps tomorrow as well, but it just might be possible to get the gig free before Commodore Welkins had an aneurysm.