Unlisted cargo

Belieze caught me in the corridors between a couple of the incessant preparation meetings that invariably occupied my time between mission drills, and solving personnel problems, and dragged me into the oversized closet she had as an office. "Have you seen this?" she asked, sliding a data display across her desk to me.

Bel's look was a mixture of concern and bemusement, and at first glance I had to answer "yes, I have, but . . ." The fact was, I hadn't seen all of what she was showing me. Several of the Sled's cargo sections were mounted near the core of the ship along the central spine. The spine itself housed some of the ship's most critical equipment and supplies behind an additional layer of armored hull plating. Nora's core was down there, along with emergency life support, a secondary infirmary, a control trunk that would let us run the Sled in case the bridge was out, an emergency power system, and several small storage areas. What she was showing me was the acceptance report for a very specialized cold sleep section and its equally special cargo.

"Twelve thousand frozen embryos?" I said, a bit bemused myself.

"Thirty two thousand more split between two of the inner ring cargo areas as well." Bel replied, sliding over another data display. "Plus a seed bank, about four thousand animals, and incubators. Sea, they sent us enough frozen people to start a whole Gorram colony."

She was right. While I'd been staying on top of the mission loading as best I could, detailed cargo manifests usually didn't make it up the food chain to my level. The Sled's Loadmaster, Leon Grant, had been handling things professionally and I had no reason to ever question the details. Honestly, I didn't care if our food stock included 4691 Irradiated Haggis. The people reporting to me were supposed to be better at doing their job than I was at doing their job. That's why it was their job. But this had completely dodged notice.

There were incubators that could take a frozen embryo and nurture it from frozen to birth over the course of several months. There were eight of the things and kits for four more in storage, plus a pair of larger ones that could handle any mammal up to the size of a cow. Which we had. Horses too. Further down the list, under medical supplies, Bel pointed out the specialized equipment that could thaw an embryo and the additional instruments that would be needed to implant it into a natural Human host.

"You didn't know, did you?" Bel said in a consoling tone. I shook my head no, because I hadn't. I knew the possibility of colonization was in our mission profile. There was the very real chance the Sled was on a one way trip and we'd have to settle where we were. But this went far beyond that. There'd been colony ships that left Earth that Was during the Exodus that weren't as well equipped as we were.

I looked through the load out and project logs Belize had passed me, and everything pointed to this being part of the project for a long time. Unfortunately, no one had ever thought to relay the specific details of this particular 'Mission Contingency' to me. No one, in this case, being our Captain, and me being the Executive Officer who'd nominally be in charge of making sure the extra forty odd thousand not-yet-people made it to Sol system alive.

"Thanks for showing me this, Sis. Not sure why they kept me out of the loop, but that'll change."

Belize nodded. She'd seen this look before. The 'I'm on a mission, and being between me and my goal is unhealthy' look. It was possible there was some kind of legitimate reason why this had been kept from me. Given Children of Earth's loadout, the embryos and support equipment was only a small fraction of our cargo. If Bel hadn't explicitly shown me, chances are I would never have seen the gear. Unlike my beloved Sabrina, I hadn't crawled through virtually every passage, access tube, ventilation duct, storage space, and compartment in the Sled. Still, I had every reason to know.

I would be very calm when I met with Captain Gill.

I managed to track down Gill after dinner in the Officer's Mess. I'd never been exceptionally formal when it came to separating Officers from Enlisted personnel. When I was in the field I was just as likely to be trusting my skinny ass to a non-com as I was another officer and I never saw the point. Even at base I was more likely to be spending time with people who worked for a living than people who told others what to do. Not so Gill. For him, the Officer's Mess was some kind of sacred space that only senior officers, not just any officer, were allowed to dine. He'd once explained that formality was how Fleet maintained discipline, and a ship couldn't operate without sound discipline. While I agreed that discipline was important to any kind of mission like this, I'd always thought maintaining it by earning your subordinates respect was more effective than setting some kind of arbitrary barrier. But then, that's why he was in charge of the mission and I was in charge of the people who would execute it.

Gill hadn't yet learned that I had levels of Calm, and Icy often translated into Annoyed. Though, to his credit, he did seem to know why I was cornering him after mess. Of course, since I'd spent several hours before tracking him down looking into loading manifests, cargo bays, and the Loadmaster's business, chances were someone had told him directly that I was looking for him and had been asking pointed questions about our cargo.

"You want to know why you weren't told about the embryos and the incubators," he started matter of factly. His tone translating roughly into 'I didn't tell you because I didn't think you needed to know.' His actual explanation wasn't actually that much better. Somehow the idea that since it was all just a mission contingency and, thus, exclusively his purview, I didn't really need to be involved unless, or until, such a time as the mission called for us to start thawing cargo.

I didn't agree with his assessment of my need to know, and told him as much without my practiced exterior calm ever breaking. Of course, that gave him an opportunity to lecture me on all my perceived shortcomings: I didn't have experience as a ship's officer. I was too informal with the crew. I was married. I'd spent too long as a civilian. I was only there because of my family connections. Ground force officers didn't understand discipline. I didn't show him the proper respect. I couldn't possibly understand the gravity and scope of our mission. Several other points equally as irrelevant or inaccurate. All without actually answering the questions I had about the cargo and those aspects of the mission.

Fortunately, probably for both of us, he hadn't made the mistake of dressing me down in public even if it was quite civil in tone and text. The discipline and respect for military decorum he claimed I didn't have was, ultimately, what let me take his criticism without making it a matter of honor. Something he, apparently, didn't understand. As it was, I put on my best 'calmly subordinate' face and excused myself.

A few hours later as I was digging into the Classified parts of the mission profile, working my way past the security locks where needed, Lieutenant Conner appeared at the door of my office. I waved him in towards the seat across from my desk. "What's on your mind, Lieutenant?" I was still calm, but no longer Icy.

"Ma'am, we, ah, heard you and the Captain had words earlier." He kept his tone level, calm, words chosen with care while still being straightforward.

I looked at him for a long moment, before nodding slightly. "Word gets around, doesn't it, Lieutenant?"

"It does, Ma'am. Big ship, small crew. Hard to keep scuttlebutt in check. But it got the team talking."

"I see, Lieutenant. And what is the the team talking about?" I asked curiously. The tension between Captain Gill and I had been simmering for months, but never heating up to the point where we, or the Mission Management Team, worried that the mission was in jeopardy. We were professional soldiers. We didn't have to like each other to work efficiently together.

Conner smiled a little, just a faint uptick at the corner of his mouth. "Ma'am, we are all loyal to this mission, this ship, and her crew. The Cap'n's in charge, but Ma'am," he paused a moment, looking unflinchingly at me, "the ORCA's report to you."

I nodded thoughtfully, looking at him, understanding more than I could say. "Understood, Lieutenant. Thank you."

The inter-service rivalries ran deep, but rarely affected the outcome of a mission. The line infantry and the transport pilots didn't have to like each other, and often didn't. But they needed each other. Without the pilots, the gropos couldn't make planetfall. Without the gropos, the pilots didn't have a job. A Cruiser could turn a planet into a shiny glass ball, but only a ground force unit could actually take and hold territory. We all understood that. Even the Captain.

Sometimes though, it helped to know where the lines were drawn.

"You're welcome, Ma'am. If I may?" He nodded faintly towards the door, asking to be dismissed.

"Dismissed, Lieutenant. Tell your team I appreciate their dedication."

Conner rose from the chair, saluted crisply, and stepped for the door before pausing and turning back to me. "Yes, Lieutenant?"

Conner paused a moment before continuing. "Well, Ma'am. There's a rumor going round that you killed an Operative of the Parliament a few years back. Beat him to death with your bare hands and left him pinned to a bulkhead with his own sword."

"I'm familiar with that rumor, Lieutenant, yes," I said calmly with a hint of a smile.

"And?"

I hadn't thought about the incident on the Sun Tzu in several years now, but I'd always wondered just how long it would take for High Command to connect me to it. "It's true, Lieutenant. Though I'm surprised the rumor made it this far. High command rarely admits that Operatives exist, let alone any details about how they lost one. Why do you ask?"

He surprised me with a smile. "You know how it is with Rumors, Ma'am. Sometimes you need to do a little research before you can put them to rest."

I laughed lightly, waving him out of the office - "Aye, Lieutenant, that I do."

He gave me another salute and disappeared back into the bowels of the Sled, leaving me to my work and the realization that the respect I had for the ORCAs was mutual. Something I found quietly reassuring.