The Empire of Man (series of short stories)

[Starhawk]

The Salvage of INSS Liberty

It had been about six months since we had received our orders to go salvage the Liberty and we had finally arrived in system after four warp jumps and months of high gee acceleration, I was just glad to be able to get to work after such a long trip and when the alert sounded that standard ships gravity would be restored I heard half the crew cheer and I too felt like we had just been freed from prison.
You see that's the funny thing about Imperial ships they have inertial dampers so that we can accelerate roughly 100,000 mph without feeling any gee's but once you hit .C even the best inertial dampers will only help in somuch as not to keep you from turning into a puddle, but as you got closer and closer to C (what we call the speed of light) the gravities increase on your body, and so in normal space the Navy refers to acceleration in referance to Gee forces, the higher the gee's the higher the speed and my ship had been accelerating at 5 gee for 6 months between jumps....needless to say the crew was miserable and very sore when we finally dropped back into the standard ships gravity which is .82 standard Spartan gravities. Well anyway we all know basic ship's physics here so I'll move on.

Well the alert had just sounded and my three bunk mates and I unstrapped from our grav couches and stood up, with some effort mind you. After about five minutes of just regaining our legs we responded to the ship's gym to begin freefall exercises until our shift started.

"Hey Brad, have you ever seen an Imperial Battlecruiser before?" Rodrick Tou was a new boy from some backwater colony that didn't even have an official name yet but all in all he was a good guy.
"Heh, I've seen an entire fleet massed before Rod it's just you backwater boys that rarely see anything bigger then a light cruiser." I liked teasing him about his backwater roots every now and then but like I said he was a good kid and he took it in stride.
Well after the standard hour of freefall exercises we reported to the ship's mess to eat the standard freefall meal that had the standard pLasteel taste to it.

After all that I was finally able to report to the bridge and imagine my suprise when I ran into a squad of marines! I hadn't even known marines were attached to Grasp until then, they must have done their exercises and eaten their meals in another part of the ship, but I still wondered how I didn't see em coming on board with the rest of us when we left Port.
Well I figured it'd be best not to try and talk to the marines so I just went on to the bridge to get my orders from the captain.....okay actually it was just so that I could get to a screen and see what Liberty looked like.

When I got to the bridge Cap'n Schmite and the bridge crew were already moving us into position to dock with the wrecked battlecruiser, it was finally coming on screen and my Lord she looked like someone had taken her to hell and left her to roast for a year, entire sections of her hull were gouged out, her engines were wrecked and the few remaining intact sections of the ship were open to vaccum.
"Mister Williams we are docking with that ship in five minutes, I want your salvage team and the marine squad to be ready in three minutes is that clear." Schmite barely paused long enough to look at me when he ordered me to get my team assembled but I just couldn't resist asking the question I knew my team would ask.
"Sir, if I may ask why are there Marines on board?" I wasn't really expecting the Cap'n to answer so when he turned his chair around to face me I was a little suprised.
"Because mister Williams the Navy and Marines decided that since this ship is not officially an Imperial Navy ship it is not necessarily a good idea to leave us unprotected should smugglers, pirates or scrappers happen to be aboard that wreck, now get your team moving mister." with that he turned back around and I walked to my team's birthing and had everyone don preasure suits and get their gear together so that when we boarded the battlecruiser we could begin repairs immedietly instead of having to wait.

Five minutes later my team and the squad of marines was at the airlock waiting for that thump that meant we were attached to Liberty ten marines five salvage techs to be divided into five survey teams.
"Ensign Williams Navy orders state that my team is to go in first, your salvagers are to come in only after we give the okay, understood?" Seargent Thompson was posterchild for the marines, he was hugely muscled man and 2 meters tall at least with a standard marine buzzcut that was hidden by his armored preasure suit so I decided it would be best not to argue with him as he would easily win. So when we docked the marines went in first and we listened in on their communications.
From what we heard there were still bodies on board, a lot of them which I admit none of my salvage team was used too but it also wasn't much of a suprise as she had been abandoned in the middle of a battle and the navy couldn't spare a ship to come clean the bodies out, until now of course as my ship had been tasked with full cleanup detail.

"Allright Ensign bring your team in, but watch your step." I knew Thompson was just trying to be a good soldier but I couldn't help feeling a little insulted about being told to be careful, I mean afterall salvage was what we did. When we stepped out of the airlock we felt an immediate feeling of weightlessness until our maglock boots established a seal and we were able to walk somewhat normally.
The corridor that we were in looked battered to say the least, debris and scorched metal was everywhere but what was really disturbing is how quiet it was, since the entire section was exposed to vaccum there wasn't any sound whatsoever except for what we heard over the comn links and it even had the experienced salvagers a little on edge myself included.
The marine squad came back at a rather casual pace and Seargent Thompson began assigning the teams, I considered myself lucky as I was assigned to Private's Whelch and Vierra (Vierra being a rather stunning 19 year old female) and began heading towards engineering, it was a long walk as engineering was two decks down and the lifts were offline but I wasn't about to complain as the marines had made that trip twice now and I didn't want to look bad in front of them, well okay I didn't want to look bad in front of the only woman my age I'd seen in person in a year.
When we reached engineering we were rather surpised to find a large pile of debris blocking the door, it was good that the marines came with us afterall as Vierra stepped in front of me and stood next to Whelch.
"Step back Ensign we don't want you getting hurt." Go figure I thought, first time a girl talks to me in a year and it's to crack wise. Well I stepped back anyway and watched as her and Whelch fired their laser rifles on sustaining beam mode until the debris turned bright red and begam melting into the floor. After about four minutes of waiting the debris was finally gone, but the marines insisted on entering engineering first "just to be sure".
When they finally waved me forward Vierra put an armored hand on my chestplate and looked at me grimly "Ensign, the engineering crew didn't get out, there are bodies in there....just to warn you some of them are not in good condition." She sounded sincerly concerned and to tell the truth I was a little nervious about having to enter a room full of bodies especially since I knew what "not in good condition" meant.

When she turned around to reenter engineering I gulped hard and worked up my nerves then I stepped into the room...eighteen bodies some of which had been badly mangled waited for me when I stepped in, eighteen people some of whom that still had recognizable faces looked about my age, some looked about 13 or 14 and others were just too badly burned or mangled to recognize, I almost threw up a few times as I went to work on the systems that we'd need to get on-line. I kept going by realizing that 1. The marines had been trained to deal with this and they could deal with it so could I. and 2. I just kept moving from one system to the next without looking up or to my sides at the corpses floating all around me.
I was glad to be out of engineering after I got the power turned on because when gravity came on and those bodies fell to the deck with some rather disgusting sounds and a rather nausiating splash of gore from some of those bodies who had only their preasure suits holding in their internals until that is grav came on and shattered the already damaged plates of their suits well let's not talk about that anymore, needless to say I threw up my lunch and embarrased the hell out of myself in front of Vierra and Whelch, although neither of them joked me about it even after a month went by and we were still working on getting the ship ready for tow back to a Naval base.

Two months of hard work repairing systems and bagging over 300 bodies later and we had newly designated Liberator ready for tow back to base, and me, Vierra and Whelch ended up good friends. You know for marines they weren't bad folks.
Well I was glad to hear that I would be part of the team taking Liberator (not yet newly christened but we all knew what her name was to be) because Vierra and her squad were going to be coming with me and a twelve man salvage crew which gave me another month of getting to know Miss Vierra.

I was proud that we got the battlecruiser back on-line and that she'll rejoin the fleet in only a few months but I still remember the bodies, those men and women were a lot braver then I was and they died protecting my sorry *** and those of millions or even billions of other colonists. You know before this salvage I thought of the navy and marines as a bunch of glory boys just out there cruising the stars not doing any real work but after this I realize just how dedicated and self sacrificing they are and I don't think I'll ever make any more mud jumpers or laserbrain jokes about the marines....in fact I am considering putting in a request to join the corps when we get back to port, hey maybe I'll get lucky and assigned to the same ship as Vierra...maybe not but I just can't wait to see the looks on my parent's faces when I come home in a marine uniform.

Personal log Salvage Tech Ensign Willaims.