The Orion Plague by David VanDyke

Author:David VanDyke [VanDyke, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: BluA
Published: 2013-12-27T00:00:00+00:00

***

In the end, Major General Nguyen did not hold Ekara to his promise to join the crew of the Orion; once the great ship lifted, it would never come back to land, and he knew the R&D minister would be needed to continue the work of the shipbuilding program. There was some talk of having a shuttle aboard to return some personnel to the Earth after launch but in the end this extra complication was discarded.

Instead, Nguyen settled for ensuring Ekara would be present in the bunker a mile from launch. This placed him within the crash zone if the Orion’s drive failed early in its liftoff. Though the risk was small, at least Ekara would face the chance that millions of tons of falling battleship would crush him for any negligence.

Of course, if the Orion failed, the Earth was likely doomed as well. Even so, Nguyen found that immediate consequences usually had more influence on the thought processes than delayed ones.

Now that this issue had been settled Nguyen tuned his thoughts to the makeup of the ship’s complement and ancillaries.

Aside from the Marines, more than three thousand men and women would crew the ship, mirroring an oceangoing vessel. They included pilots, gunners, engineers and machinists, specialists in computers and power generation and nuclear weapons and intelligence and communications – the list seemed endless.

Every job had a roster in depth, a luxury almost unheard-of in naval ships. Many oceangoing vessels of the past had failed for lack of a critical skill-set, which was also why cross-training was always a high priority. Nguyen remembered tell of one US frigate that sat in port for two weeks unable to deploy – by the book – for lack of its two ASROC gunners’ mates. They finally obtained one from another obliging ship, only to find out that the man, though qualified, was a dedicated Satanist with a penchant for painting pentagrams and erotic art on the deck around his workstation. Guess what, he mused. They went to sea anyway.

Nguyen suspected that such aberrations would now either be tolerated as immaterial during this crisis, or ruthlessly dealt with. Political correctness had dropped far down the list of priorities, as it always did in time of war. He mused on the irrationality of civilians, fat, safe and comfortable on their sofas, who condemned warriors to prison for such “atrocities” as desecrating the bodies of their dead enemies. A slap on the wrist, certainly, a loss of rank and pay – but prison? He laughed without mirth at such stupidity and betrayal.

These same pampered masses enthusiastically consumed movies glorifying such fighters as Vikings or Teutonic Knights or American Indians, forgetting that, no matter how noble, those warriors were also quite cruel to their enemies. It was only the definition of atrocity that had changed, not war or warriors itself. You can’t make troops effective by cutting their balls off.

Fortunately such considerations were largely absent in this coming battle. If MacAdam’s Marines wanted to piss on the bodies of dead Meme, he doubted Captain Absen would complain.

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