At twenty-nine, Colonel Sean Quinn was quite young for the rank he’d obtained while serving in the Colonial Defense Force. In the old NA Alliance military, on which the foundations of the CDF were based, he couldn’t have attained such a rank for at least another sixteen years, and this was in spite of his past twelve years as enlisted. But given the unique circumstances, Connor Gates couldn’t wait on years of experience to build up the colonial military. He’d told Sean that he had to rely on people’s capabilities to do the job, and Sean had served at Connor’s side for most of his military career, right up until Connor retired from the CDF. Who better for him to learn from than the former commanding officer of the Special Forces known as the Ghost Platoon?
Sean went into the bathroom of his quarters aboard the Vigilant. He’d taken command of the ship within weeks of its first shakedown cruise, and his tour of duty would be no less than two years. He splashed warm water on his face and grabbed his razor from the countertop. There were quite a few men who’d elected to have their facial hair permanently removed so they’d never have to shave, but Sean had always found it calming. He also wanted to keep his options open for growing a beard one day, especially if he were ever stationed someplace cold. Besides, shaving was part of his daily routine, as was his physical training. He still missed his long treks across the New Earth landscape, which he’d traded for serving aboard the Vigilant.
His shaver was essentially a laser, and it adjusted to the contours of his face, removing only the hair and leaving him with a clean, close shave. When he was done, he splashed some more water on his face and quickly dried it with a towel. He’d been aboard the Vigilant for six weeks, and it was slowly starting to feel routine. Of course, this ship wasn’t exactly like its predecessor of the same name. The Vigilant-1 had been an NA Alliance heavy cruiser designed for a specific purpose. After the Vemus War, the CDF had no shortage of materials, so the engineers set out to make improvements over the original design.
The newest Vigilant was still a warship, but it was also equipped for scientific research. The CDF had to be more efficient with the ships in its fleet, which necessitated that they perform double duty. This included having an additional crew that wasn’t part of the CDF. In essence, Sean’s first Fleet Command was a bit of an experiment that would influence future ship designs, as well as crews, not only for the CDF but for the colony going forward. Sean understood the expediency, but he didn’t like the potential dangers of bringing noncombatants into a hostile situation. They weren’t trained, and they weren’t equipped to encounter another military ship—not that they’d had much practice in the two years since the end of the Vemus War.
The significance of the ship’s name was one of the pillars of the CDF. Since they were operating in space, there was always the potential to encounter a hostile force, whether from Earth or an actual alien force. Sean had participated in committees to determine whether there could be a latent Vemus force that simply hadn’t arrived in the New Earth star system yet, which was much more probable than an interstellar alien threat; but the universe was as quiet on that day as it had been when the Ark first left Earth over two hundred years ago. Nevertheless, the CDF still needed to equip themselves to deal with potential threats to the colony, and for Sean, that also meant preparing his entire crew—even those not of the CDF—for the possibility of facing the dangerous situations that could occur aboard a warship.
To deal with the problem of the noncombatants aboard his ship, he’d taken a page from Connor’s leadership example when he’d commanded the entire CDF. This meant that a set of drills had been designed to help prepare those who were not in the military. These new drills had caused more than a few complaints about impacting the scientists’ work, but this was his ship, and they would abide by his rules. General Hayes had agreed with him, and for now, the colonial government was staying out of it.
Sean walked out of the bathroom and into his quarters to put on his uniform. The walls of his quarters were white with a yellow tinge, and he’d set one of the wallscreens to show a spacescape based on the scanner data from the ship’s systems.
He still caught himself looking around his quarters as if they belonged to someone else, even though no one besides himself had ever lived there. They were just standard officer quarters that he’d seen many times throughout his career, but being aboard this ship of the same name reminded him of his time serving with Connor. For his first few weeks, he’d kept expecting to see him. It wasn’t that he wanted Connor there with him; Sean had long since gotten used to being in command, but the familiar surroundings were a reminder of an earlier time in his career.
His last assignment had been planet-side on New Earth in charge of CDF ground forces, and when General Hayes had first given him his orders to take command of the Vigilant, Sean had been a bit surprised. There were other officers who were top picks for that seat, but the general had brushed his objections aside. To be honest, those objections hadn’t been entirely sincere, but despite what he’d achieved, he was still sensitive to being the son of the legendary Tobias Quinn—one of the founders of the Ark program and the first colonial governor.
Sean looked at the starlit sky, envisioning a window into the past, and his brows pushed forward to become a hard line above his eyes. He and his father had gotten along better as Sean matured, and even though he knew the path he walked wasn’t the one his father had had in mind for him, his father had come to respect it. Though it had been two years since his father died, he and his mother still missed him—his mother probably even more than he did.
He recalled General Hayes saying to him, “You’ve served aboard CDF ships, but you’ve never commanded one, and it’s time to rectify that. The CDF isn’t a large military, so there’s no reason future generals shouldn’t be familiar with the challenges that come with commanding different posts, and I think you’re well suited to command our newest flagship, as it were.” Sean liked the challenge, and the longer he was aboard the Vigilant, the more he found that his latest post was quickly becoming his favorite.
“Alright, Gabriel, what’s on the docket for today? How’s my ship?” Sean asked. The holodisplay on his desk became active, showing a featureless blue orb.
“Good morning, Colonel Quinn,” a pleasant, almost naturally modulated baritone voice said. The blue orb flared along the edges when Gabriel spoke.
To help cut down on the number of meetings required to run the ship, Sean had started having morning briefings with Gabriel, the Vigilant’s AI. Senior officers filed their reports and the AI analyzed them, comparing them to the performance of the ship’s systems, which then fed into Sean’s morning briefings. He knew other ships in the fleet were run differently, with senior officers meeting on a daily basis, but Sean wanted to try a different approach, and this practice had increased overall efficiency and productivity by eighteen percent, according to Gabriel.
The holodisplay showed a representation of the Vigilant, along with a list of core system statuses below. The heavy cruiser had a mass of four hundred eighty thousand tons, which made it fifty-eight percent larger than its predecessor. The sheer size of the Vigilant-2 series approached that of an NA Alliance battleship carrier, but it wasn’t quite there. The hull was roughly cigar-shaped, though flattened to provide a narrower profile, and was wider at the top and the bottom to support the superstructure and the mag-cannon turrets. The missile tubes were between the turrets. There were fewer missile tubes than on a battleship carrier, but they were larger and capable of handling the new HADES V missiles—a significant upgrade from the HADES IV-B, both in range and overall destructive power. There were eight heavy-cruiser-sized grasers and three lasers at each end of the ship.
The outside of the ship sported battle-steel-gray walls, but the interior corridors were much more pleasing to the eye, especially for nonmilitary personnel. This warship was designed for a mixed crew of both civilian and military, and a certain amount of comfort was to be expected. Improvements to the Vigilant’s design had reduced the number of crew required to man the warship, and the ship could, in theory, operate without putting into a spaceport for a year. Even then, they could extend their deployment if needed, taking on supplies found elsewhere within the star system. Contrary to popular belief, water was actually quite plentiful and could easily be extracted from smaller celestial bodies.
“Core ship systems running within standard ranges,” Gabriel said. “There is a power distribution issue near the forward grasers, and Major Brody is working with Captain Jing to address the issue. Captain Allgood has the con. Our current trajectory puts us on an intercept course with Gigantor in seven days and is within the current Apollo Mission parameters.”
“Outstanding,” Sean replied and read through the information on the Vigilant’s dashboard for core systems, making mental notes of things he needed to follow up on.
“Colonel, there’s a request from Captain Boseman on your private channel. Do you wish to speak with him?” Gabriel asked.
“Yes, put him through.”
“Colonel, I must point out the irregularity of a private channel being used to communicate with a commanding officer.”
“Understood, Gabriel. Captain Boseman is my eyes and ears. He helps keep me apprised of the status of the crew that falls outside the standard reporting by those you monitor,” Sean replied.
“Acknowledged, Colonel. If my services are insufficient, I can realign my priorities to address the shortfall.”
Gabriel was a newer breed of artificial intelligence whose interaction with humans would make him more observant of particular communication nuances that were difficult for a machine to grasp. At first glance, it would appear that Sean had hurt Gabriel’s feelings, but that wasn’t the case at all.
“You’re doing fine, Gabriel, and you’re extremely helpful. Keep with standard priorities for now,” Sean replied.
Immediately following this exchange with Gabriel, Captain Chad Boseman appeared on Sean’s holodisplay. An Engineering Work Area Three indicator showed in the upper-right corner of the comlink window, and Boseman was out of uniform, his gray shirt damp with sweat.
Chad smiled and arched an eyebrow, looking at Sean shrewdly. “If you’re done feeling all nostalgic this morning, I could use your help.”
Sean smiled. Chad had been on his Spec Ops team for the past three years, and they knew each other well. “I was just finishing my morning briefing with Gabriel. I thought you were off duty this morning.”
Chad leaned in toward his screen. “Are we ever really off duty?” he asked knowingly. “Don’t answer that. I was doing my morning constitutional, and you asked me to contact you if I noticed anything important I thought you should know about.”
There was shouting from behind Chad, but whoever was shouting was off-screen, and Sean couldn’t see who it was. Chad glanced behind himself for a moment and then turned back to Sean.
“Volker?”
Chad nodded. “Dr. Volker is very upset and is demanding to see you.”
“Captain,” Dr. Volker’s voice screeched from off-screen, “are you speaking to the colonel? I haven’t been able to get through to him. Do you have him?”
Chad glanced apologetically at Sean before Dr. Volker’s pudgy form invaded the video feed. His eyes narrowed piggishly. “Colonel Quinn, I’ve tried to contact you multiple times about the issues we’ve been facing, and now I’m afraid we might not meet our deadline for our mission to Gigantor. Do I need to remind you how important the timeline is for the Apollo Mission?”
Sean’s eyebrows rose. “Your last status update indicated you were on schedule. What’s the problem, Dr. Volker?”
“I would prefer to speak to you in person, Colonel. That is, of course, if you can fit me into your busy schedule,” Dr. Volker said, biting off his last words.
“You need to watch your tone when speaking to the colonel,” Chad said.
Volker’s gaze swooped toward him. “I don’t need to explain myself to you, Captain—”
The Vigilant’s science officer was about to say more, but Sean cut him off. “This is a high-priority mission, Doctor, and we will meet our scheduled deadline. Meanwhile, you will treat Captain Boseman with the respect he deserves, and we’ll work to get you back on schedule. I have a meeting with Captain Halsey in Engineering this morning, which is right by your work area. I expect you to have a briefing ready for me when I get there, highlighting the issues affecting you and your staff’s work. Will that suit you?”
Dr. Volker drew in a breath to begin voicing another tirade of complaints, but instead, the frazzled scientist glanced at Chad, who had cleared his throat rather loudly next to him.
“Very well, Colonel,” Dr. Volker said and stalked off, muttering to himself.
Chad came back on screen. “He’s in rare form. I think something has really ruffled his feathers. But I do think this needs your attention, Colonel.”
Sean didn’t miss the formal address. Though he and Chad were friends, there were times when they needed to be professional.
“Very well. Would you like to volunteer to get Volker back on schedule?” Sean asked.
“Say the word, Colonel. I’ll get these scientists into tip-top shape in no time at all.”
“I’m sure you would, and I’ll keep that in mind, but I’m going to try a more diplomatic approach,” Sean replied.
Chad smiled and closed the comlink.
Dr. Volker had proven to be volatile on occasion, but he was under a lot of pressure. The Apollo Mission was of paramount importance to the colony. The alignment of the planets was ideal for a mission that would give the colony their first glimpse into whether there were any survivors back on Earth. Sean had assigned Major Brody the task of making sure the scientists had everything they needed to complete their mission to Gigantor. His executive officer had been part of the team involved in the Vigilant’s construction. He was a quiet sort of man, and Sean was still getting to know him, along with the Vigilant’s entire crew. He would have to get to the bottom of whatever was going on with his science officer, because missing the deadline wasn’t an option. Doing so would set the cornerstone of the Apollo Mission back more than ten years.
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