From Every Storm, page 1
Copyright
From Every Storm
Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 35
Pinbeam Books: pinbeambooks.com
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Copyright 2022 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without permission in writing from the authors.
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"Standing Orders" first appeared in Derelict, edited by David B. Coe and Joshua Palmatier, Zombies Need Brains LLC, July 2021
"Songs of the Fathers" is original to this chapbook
"From Every Storm a Rainbow" first appeared on Baen.com, December 15, 2021
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Cover design: SelfPubBookCovers.com/billwyc
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ISBN: 978-1-948465-21-2
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
FROM EVERY STORM
Standing Orders
Songs of the Fathers
From Every Storm A Rainbow
Authors' Afterword
About the Authors
Novels by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Novels by Sharon Lee
Pinbeam Books Publications
THANK YOU
DEDICATION
Dedicated to our readers, fans, and friends, known and unknown, who’ve provided unanticipated safe harbors and connections for us since the days of Midnight BBS, Fidonet, Usenet, GEnie, AOL, and all the way through to Facebook, stormy weather or no.
Your support of our work, of our early experiments with crowd-funded chapbooks and your enthusiastic adoption of our electronic outreach across so many platforms over time has been an important part of our lives and our success. Your connection with the fandoms we came from and the fandoms we’ve joined is a joy.
You’ve been the rainbow behind the rainbow through so many storms that we can only be amazed you continue, knowing as you must, that there are always clouds on the horizon.
Thank you all, for everything.
EPIGRAPH
May God give you . . .
For every storm a rainbow
for every tear a smile
for every care a promise
and a blessing in each trial.
For every problem life sends
a faithful friend to share,
for every sign a sweet song,
and an answer for every prayer.
– An Irish Blessing
FROM EVERY STORM
Standing Orders
The war was over.
The Admirals had prevailed.
The enemy was vanquished.
Mankind was safe.
Some people would think that was a good thing.
Some people don't know much about mankind.
IT WAS STILL "the war" in the minds of those who had participated, lived or did business in or near an active zone, or who had lost family, friends, property to the efforts of either side. Others, who had distance or education to shield them, had bestowed a formal name. The AI War, it was to those fortunates. That was because the root of the conflict had been the use, by one side, of artificial intelligences to gain advantage in commerce, in exploration, in finance. It was said that AIs were unnatural and that their use in those areas traditionally populated by mankind was . . . immoral.
It should have surprised no one that the enemy would also deploy AIs onto the field of battle. However, the High Command had been surprised and it had looked at first to be a very short war, indeed.
Then, something, or, as it was rumored, someone fell into the hands of the High Command, which took counsel of itself, and found that victory was more precious than either principle or peace. And so the Capital Ships, the Independent Armed Military Modules, the great Admirals, were designed to be the heroes of the war.
The High Command gave the Admirals their orders: they were to win. In specific, they were to do whatever it took to gain a decisive victory.
The Admirals realized very quickly that, as the High Command had created the Admirals as the instruments of their will, so, too, did the Admirals require specialized tools. Though they were themselves formidable, they were few. In order to bring defeat to the enemy, there must be more ships, not necessarily as fully aware as an IAMM, but clever in their own, limited sphere of expertise.
The least-ships were created in two classes: Fully Automated and Fully Integrated. They carried human crew and the Specialist Teams, the smallest of the Admiral's tools: repair and destruction units, translating units, coding units, and all the others. The enemy discounted mere organics, therefore the small tools were completely human in appearance, organic, but reinforced with machine parts and processing augments.
The strategy was simple. The Admirals sought out the enemy's AI warships and kept them engaged, while the FAShips and the FIs slipped behind the lines, disregarded by the warships as human-crewed, easy prey for the AI-controlled intruder net that was the second line.
But the nets caught nothing, the least-ships passing through them like so much dust and starlight, to strike fortified stations and important ports of call, before sliding away again, weakening the enemy's core, occupying known fall-back positions, allied bases, and strongholds.
When the time was right, the Admirals made their last push, shoving the enemy over their lines. The places they fell back to, the forces they expected to increase their failing strength, were not there. Instead, they found breached defenses; Specialists the least-ships attacking them from behind sundered walls.
AT THE END OF THE WAR, Meggie Rootfir had gone . . . away. Away from the sectors that had been most disputed, away from the center of the enemy's space, where, with her team and her crewmates, she had gutted the fall-back positions, leaving them open to the advancing Admirals. As the Admirals came on, FIShip Number 893, call-name Henry, one of a squad of least-ships, had continued to fall back, even after the main force had stopped to secure victory.
When the squad judged itself to be out of the range of the Admirals and the High Command, they fell back some more.
Eventually, their force grew smaller, as these and those found something like what they were looking for, on the other side of the war, and peeled off to pursue those dreams.
Meggie found what she was looking for in the Cornelian Knot, a tumble of asteroids united about a heavy primary. The asteroids had previously been mined; there were caves and dormitories, life support, and solitude. The pay-veins had long ago been tapped out; the sector deemed useless by victor and defeated alike. It was the perfect location for a hospital for the veterans of the war. All the veterans of the war.
There had been four of them at first—Meggie, Gerb, Junit, and Henry FIShip—all that remained of their original Specialist Team of ten, none of Henry's crew having survived the long retreat. They had what supplies they needed, the hospital having been their end plan for a long time. They readied the facilities and they waited, not long, for the first patients to arrive.
Over time, the population and variety of the Knot increased—human, Specialist, bot, ship—though not all who sought them stayed. Not everyone could stay, though enough did that they cloned the hospital twice, sending medics and repair Specialists and supplies out to become another nexus of care for the wounded of the war.
There came an increase in wounded arriving at the Knot, most wanting to move on quickly. The reason for their haste was named "Spode."
Meggie made inquiries.
"Spode" was Commander Roderick Spode, charged by the High Command to decommission the Admirals.
The High Command had promised the Admirals a place in the civilization they preserved. They had promised the Admirals would be heroes. The Admirals had not doubted; not even Admirals could doubt promises written into their code.
Meggie thought that the plan had always been to decommission the Admirals. The High Command compromised their principles in order to win, but never changed those principles.
Most of the Admirals were taken by stealth, their cores shut down remotely. Those not taken this way, however, proved . . . difficult to locate.
Spode offered rewards for information leading to the apprehension of an IAMM, derelict or alive. He captured Specialists, and questioned them.
Two translators and a medic made it to the Knot after surviving Spode's questions.
After the second translator died, people who called the Knot home began to leave, singly, in partnered pairs, or in groups no larger than four. Gerb was one, though he'd been Meggie's second, with her team since the beginning of the war.
"It's easier to hide, as one or two." Unlike some others, Gerb came to her, to ask her to go with him and, if not, to say good-bye.
"The hospital's a target, Megs. This Spode—he'll end us all."
"No," Meggie told him. "No. That he will not."
"You won't come, then?" Gerb looked as if he might cry and Meggie stepped forward to embrace him.
"I'll stay," she whispered in his ear. "It will give me courage, to know that you're free."
"We should spawn again," Junit said, and Meggie agreed.
"We have three possible sites, and safety analyses."
"I've been thinking," Meggie said then. "Why not hospital ships?"
Junit blinked and frowned at the stone floor, thinking.
"In the war, the hospital ships were . . . Admiral class."
"True, but is that necessary? We have trained personnel. We have
Junit went away to take counsel. When she came back, she had a plan.
"We'll site a hospital in the safest of the three locations, according to analysis," she said. "Henry will be part of that." She paused and looked carefully at Meggie, who nodded, though it was hard to hear that Henry was leaving her, too.
"Yes," said Junit, clearing her throat. "The two FAShips have accepted retrofitting as hospital ships. They're eager to be of use."
Meggie inclined her head. That left—
"FIship Kyle declares his intention to remain here."
That was no surprise, and not as reassuring as it might have been. Kyle had been badly damaged. Henry had found him during a routine patrol, years ago, inside the perimeter and all but dead, hull holed, support systems off-line, no answer to Henry's hails on any level. Of crew, there was no sign.
It looked like the job was a simple clearing of the lanes, and Henry was bringing his weapons on-line when the derelict adjusted course.
Not by much, only enough to keep it from drifting outside of the hospital's self-declared perimeter.
Henry ran a diagnostic, pulled the derelict's files, and put the wreck under tow, sending ahead to Meggie.
The pilot's alive.
And so he was. Alive, but deeply depressed. They mended his broken body, installed new systems, ran more diagnostics, swept the piloting brain clean of broken code, and upgraded its programs.
Henry made Kyle a special project; a labor of love, Gerb said. And Kyle improved, to a point. No longer a derelict, Kyle shared the boundary sweeps with the rest of the ships and did whatever was asked of him, short of taking on crew.
Mostly, he sat snug at dock, processors the next best thing to off, dreaming, if a ship could dream, or maybe just avoiding his own archives.
Still, Kyle would be somebody to talk to, Meggie thought, considering the shape of her own plans, and she smiled at Junit.
"I'll be pleased to have him here."
"MORNING, KYLE," MEGGIE said, on her way into the repair bay.
"Hello, Meggie," Kyle said, which he managed most days, and then surprised her by adding, "Message for you on the comm-string. Seeple says there's a derelict inside our boundary."
Seeple was a satellite, not a ship; not smart, but sentient all the same. He reported his finds to the ship on duty, who would go out and do what was needful.
Meggie considered Kyle's comfortable snug against the dock.
"Is there something special about this wreck that I have to know before you go out and do some work for a change?"
"In point of fact," said Kyle, "yes."
Meggie felt the fluctuation of power as he brought himself up to working FIship standard.
"What's special is that it's asking for you," Kyle said, as his hatch rose. "By name."
"MEGGIE ROOTFIR?"
The ship's voice was scratchy and lagged, which wasn't too surprising, given that the stats Kyle had pulled from it showed two-thirds of its systems in the red zone. The rest were dark.
No, what was surprising was the ship itself.
Meggie stared at the image hanging in Kyle's number one screen, tears pricking the back of her eyes, as she tallied the damage done to the once-proud hull.
For it was an Independent Armed Military Module—an Admiral—that had managed to drag itself to the Cornelian Knot. An Admiral was asking for her by name.
The war had produced heroes, whose names became known: Admiral Kesseldeen, who held Vithelt Sector against three of the enemy's Warrior Class vessels. Constint FIShip, who ensured the success of the Holfort Evacuation—a success she purchased with her life. Admiral Qwess, who spearheaded the final action that handed victory to the High Command. Oreitha FAShip who by itself guarded the wormhole at Langin Beacon, delaying the enemy's advance long enough for Gilderna to fall to the Admirals. Admiral Josabel, who defended the hospital at Kreever, took medical staff and wounded aboard, and refitted herself as a hospital ship on the fly.
Those were the names, the estates, of heroes. Repair and Sabotage Specialist Meggie Rootfir? Not a name known to any, aside from those with whom she served.
And those she had repaired.
She had never been called upon to repair an Admiral; her service had been anonymous, for all it won the war. Even now, it was the hospital's name that rode the back of rumor. Go to the Knot. She'd seen those words in ship logs, heard them from the wounded. Go to Cornelian Knot. They can fix anything there.
"Meggie . . . ?" the wasted voice whispered.
She leaned forward and opened Kyle's comm.
"This is Meggie Rootfir," she said, calmly. "To whom am I speaking?"
"Meggie . . ." The voice was suddenly stronger. "It's Gerb."
Fear stabbed her.
"Gerb?" she repeated. "What happened?"
"Got caught, Meggie. There's somebody here to see you."
"Who?"
"Spode."
"Spode?" That she didn't believe.
"An instance of Spode," Gerb breathed.
Meggie frowned. That was worse than the arrival of the man himself. She took a breath and closed her eyes, trying to understand what could have driven Roderick Spode, the High Command's decommissioning officer, to a step that must disgust him at every level, that would make him one of those he was sworn to annihilate.
"Admiral Spode," she said then, and flinched when a new voice came out of the comm.
"Commander Spode, if you please. Am I speaking to Meggie Rootfir?"
"You are," she said slowly, "speaking to Meggie Rootfir, yes."
"Good," said the instance of Spode. "I need your help."
"YOU NEED A SHIPYARD, not a hospital," Meggie said.
"I need," Spode answered sternly, "a repair unit. You are a repair unit, are you not, Meggie Rootfir?"
There was no sense denying it; Spode had the records, the lists of teams and their specialties.
"I'm one repair unit. There's a lot to repair, here. What happened?"
"There was an altercation."
"More like a massacre," Kyle muttered for her ears only.
"We hope not," Meggie breathed, "considering that Spode got out alive."
"Ouch," Kyle said. "I take your point."
"What exactly do you want me to do, Commander Spode?" she asked.
"I want you to repair this vessel and integrate me fully into the environment."
Right. She'd been afraid of that. For a few heartbeats, she simply sat while her backbrain analyzed the situation. She recalled, absently, that Kyle was armed.
And also recalled that there was a possibility—though not a strong possibility, given what she knew of Spode—that Gerb was actually on the wreck. She sighed and opened the comm again.
"That will take some time," she temporized.
"Then you had best commence, Repair Unit Rootfir. I have a schedule to meet."
Of course he did.
"Bastid," muttered Kyle.
"Officer present," Meggie said absently. "Can you latch onto that?"
"No problem. We taking it to sick bay?"
"You have a better idea?"
"Not with Gerb maybe on there."
"Then we're obedient soldiers," Meggie said, and leaned to the comm again.
"Commander, we're going to get a tow beam on you and get you back to the Knot—the hospital. Disengage navigation and all systems but life support."
There was a pause, then a voice that was neither Spode nor Gerb spoke. Very nearly, it sounded like a machine voice, except for the nearly imperceptible quaver.
"Navigation disengaged. Systems down. Life support on."
"Thank you," Meggie said. She closed the comm and sat back in the chair.
"At will," she told Kyle.
SPODE WAS LOCKED INTO the largest repair dock, which was very nearly not large enough, and hooked into the hospital systems. Meggie waited while systems came fully online before she went to the hatch, the big toolbox trailing behind, and requested entry.
This was a courtesy; she could have easily opened the hatch from her side. Being one with hospital systems was somewhat more comprehensive than accepting feeds and power from a station. Many of those who came to the Knot for assistance were traumatized to the point that they couldn't open, no matter how much they wanted to do so.
