CyberBlue


"Ambassador, sir," waiting with diplomatic politeness, he is not sure his ambassador hears him although it is virtually graveyard quiet in Alexandria Lounge during this ship's shift. "Ambassador Bluethorne, sir," standing to one side and just behind his ambassador. "Ensign Neal, do you think it is dangerous out there?" Turning to his polite ship's escort, "I mean truly dangerous Ensign?" Bluethorne conceals a small smile noticing Neal is mildly wringing his hands much like a worried mother. "Sir?" Suddenly becoming aware of his unconscious habit, Neal drops his hands military straight along his sides, then in quick forgetfulness, balls both hands up into tight fists of concern. "Sir, we are very safe. This transport ship sports nearly a dozen fighter craft constantly ready to launch should even the slightest problem hint."

Ambassador Bluethorne glances over at their barkeep approaching with a tall slender glass of champagne, an exotic, almost thick champagne, his favorite, fermented on a planet he will visit in a matter of a few days. "Ambassador, your favorite," taken from a fine antique stainless steel serving platter of clear Twentieth Century Earth era, "and chilled to four degrees Celsius as you like." Bluethorne's eyes twinkle, his lips form a small smile, "Thanks Andrea, you are a love. Andrea, join me for some small talk, won't you? Neal, hey grab yourself a seat. Let's shoot the bull for a bit." Andrea gives Ensign Neal an odd look, "Hold on Ambassabor, allow me to draft Nelson a beer and decant a shot or two of peach brandy for me."

Ensign Neal blushes visibly. "Ambassador, Ms. Sarkut, I really, I shouldn't drink on duty sir, I mean ma'am, I mean," Bluethorne cuts him off with a wave of a hand and a loud laugh. "Sit down young man. That's an order." Neal looks back and forth between his ambassador and Andrea Sarkut several times. Sliding out a chair, after setting a cold mug of beer in front of the still standing ensign, "Plop your boney butt down right here Nelson," patting the chair seat for him, "that's an order." Tiny beads of embarrassment sweat break out on Ensign Neal's forehead, "Yes ma'am," and he stiffly seats himself, then stands, "but ma'am, you're a civilian." Andrea crosses her legs, reaches up and takes Neal by the arm, "Nelson, shut up and sit down before you offend Ambassador Bluethorne." Neal immeadiately seats himself, "Yes ma'am." Bluethorne turns his head towards a plexiplate window behind them and barely contains a belly laugh, then turns back to Andrea and gives her a wink, "So, Nelson what do you think?" Addressing his ensign with a deliberately stern look. "Sir? What do I think?" Andrea gently kicks Bluethorne under their table with her toe. "Yes Ensign Neal. Do you think it is dangerous out there?" Hitchhiking his thumb over a shoulder, "You know, out there in that black stuff." Nelson glances out the lounge's window into deep space, "Oh, yes sir Ambassador. It is extremely dangerous out there with an average temperature of four degrees Kelvin and most certainly a hard vacuum. Sir, a person would die out there in milliseconds without proper protection," Neal is cut off by a com beep which he answers instantly in a well experienced motion of raising his right wrist near his face, keying activation of his small communications unit with his personal voice recognition code, "Neal, 327" and answers, "Ensign Neal, Sir." A gruff military voice responds, "Neal. Chief Pitts here. You are late Ensign." Neal glances at both Bluethorne and Andrea, turns pale, "Sir, yes sir. I will be," Ambassador Bluethorne grasps the ensign's arm firmly, interrupting Neal, and pulls the ensign's wrist near his face, "Pitts you old coot, where are your manners?" Ensign Neal drops his jaw and looks court martialed guilty already. "Pitts, if you don't learn to lighten up some, I'm going to come down there, knock you on your ass and lighten your load for you!" Andrea nearly spits brandy, quickly and firmly places a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. "Excuse me Neal? Son, is everything ok there?" His chief doesn't sound quite as gruff. "No sir, it isn't alright. I have a notion to put on my boxing gloves and beat the pimikin out of you." Ensign Neal is struggling, politely struggling to retrieve his arm from his ambassador and is shocked how strong the ambassador is. His arm might as well be set deep in plexicrete for all the effort he is wasting. "Jeff? Damn you Jeff!" Chief Pitts' voice has a sudden boyish quality to it, "I heard you are onboard. You come on down here whenever you are ready to get your butt kicked good."

Andrea lightly touches the ensign's arm, he looks at her and she gives him a finger to the lips be quiet sign. Ensign Neal's eyes look ready to pop. "Paul, you still have those motorcycles with you?" Blackthorne now sounding younger than his hundred some odd years, "I sure do Jeff. Want to do some riding?" Ambassador Bluethorne looks pensive, closes his eyes, whispers, "More than anything," and adds in a voice Chief Pitts can hear, "Paul your ensign is on his way. He has been filling me in on the dangers of hard vacuum space," and Bluethorne releases his iron grip on Ensign Neal's arm accented by a beep of communications termination by Pitts.

"Sir, if you will excuse me, I need to report to Chief Pitts right away." Ensign Neal is standing up. "Of course Ensign Neal." Bluethorne stands to show some respect for his assigned ensign, "Ensign Neal, when you report to Chief Pitts, will you give him a message for me?" His ensign takes on a serious inquistive look. "When you arrive in Engineering, walk over to Chief Pitts and give him a tender pinch on his rearend for me, Ensign Neal." Andrea grabs the ensign's arm before he is floored, "Oh for Christ's sake Jeff, shut up and allow this man to discharge his duties as an officer. Go on Nelson, beat it," looking up at Blackthorne, "this yahoo will drive you nuts with military precision."

After Ensign Neal stammers some, salutes Ambassador Bluethorne, then crisply and quickly walks out, Andrea gives Bluethorne a healthy kick to a shin. "You are such a rascal Jeff!" Her gentleman tilts his slender glass in her direction, sips some chilled champagne, returns his glass to their table, turns it around twice, pouts his lips, "Not as much of a rascal as you know I well can be," glancing over his shoulder at a softly glowing twenty-four hour clock. He looks back to Andrea who already has a knowing look on her face. She knows Jeff has adjusted his schedule to match hers so they can spend time together, as customary for them. "Andrea, meet me in my quarters in one-hundred-three minutes when your shift ends? I could use some company and promise to be a real rascal." He is answered with a soft touch to his cheek, "One-hundred-thirty- three minutes Luv. I want to freshen up a bit first, then show you how much more of a vixen I am than you are a rascal."

"Andrea, I need your insight, your common sense," Jeff is now serious, being the ambassador, a well respected successful diplomatic negotiater, he truly is, "These people over there," motioning to a bluish colored planet visible through the lounge's space view window and not far off, perhaps a centiparsec away, "those people down there, what makes them truly tick, Andrea?"

Andrea sips some of her peach brandy, sets her leaded crystal glass down, runs a finger around its sweetly sticky rim a few times, looks up at her lover, "Profit. That simple Jeff, profit." She lifts her glass, frowns, sets it back down and retreives a cloth napkin next seat over. "Darn these high gloss black tables. I told them I wanted real wood tables with polished brass trim," and she wipes at a ring of sparkling moisture left by her glass and outlined by gloss black. Ambassador Bluethorne glances at her table top where he has his champagne glass resting, reaches over and takes her napkin from her hand, wipes at something and looks guilty. Andrea slides him a wicker coaster across the slick table top and he sets his glass upon it.

Although Earth has known of this planet, nicknamed, New Japan, for nearly a century, contact has been kept limited with theirs being a relatively new culture, a simple culture, one that would not have been contacted so early on had it not been for circumstances surrounding the Starjammer incident when Ambassador Bluethorne was still a wild oats sowing teenager. Events nearly a century back left no choice but to contact them, these peoples of New Japan, far earlier in their development than would be normally recommended.

Close to the same time period a young Ambassador Bluethorne enlisted and is accepted into military service, a civilian passenger liner, one of the best made but old and of late twenty-first century technology, the Starjammer, has a run-in with a still unknown culture which appears to attack, periodically, for no reason, for no profit, perhaps for sport, then vanishes back into deep space. Starjammer's captain, an ancestor of Bluethorne, a clever, if not out right devious retired military man like his great-grandson, Ambassador Jeff Bluethorne, successfully defends his unarmed ship, crew and passengers but his ship suffers a serious hull breach in the process. This Starjammer incident gave Earth its first real physical look at this unknown culture randomly attacking their ships in deep space. However, nothing is known of what makes them tick, what makes them attack and, only in deep space.

Captain Jack Bluethorne's ship, Starjammer, now spacedocked and serving as an invaluable source of parts, is a behemoth of a ship, in comparison to those of her once numerous mysterious attackers. Their battle is much like a pack of hyenia attacking an African wild bull elephant, more of an annoyance but potentially fatal in the long run, if enough injuries are inflicted. During Captain Bluethorne's brief and successful battle, he and his crew use pure wits and their wild imagination in defense. Two of their techniques are a matter of highly honored history now, even by those of military command.

After allowing several minor laser strafing runs, while crew secures their fearful passengers within airtight quarters, Bluethorne, working with his Starjammer's chief engineer, a man not all that unlike Ambassador Bluethorne's older lifelong friend and current chief engineer of the Starside, Paul Pitts, the two hastily come up with an intended plan using ship's mass gravity generators. Bluethorne has his engineer shut down their internal gravity, adjust thier field generators to project their mass gravity fields outward, focused and concentrated midships, away from Starjammer rather than the usual inward patterns, which serve really no more than as comfort for passengers without space legs. During the next strafing run, Captain Bluethorne's engineer allows the aliens to fry Starjammer's exterior hull in long linear lines with their lasers before snapping on his gravity fields, just as seven of the unknown's ships approach Starjammer midships, her structually strongest area and far from quarters holding passengers. This sudden and dramatic increase in mass gravity drawa all seven attacking ships directly into Starjammer's hull before their surprised pilots can pull up and away. It is a calculated risk with serious, but recoverable damage inflicted solely from the attacking ships' physical impacts. Starjammer took out seven with a single flip of a switch.

Breaking away, four surviving alien attack ships begin a long, deep and accelerating turn to match Starjammer's desperate acceleration, with their calculated projectory having them come to in line with Starjammer's stern, straight in, right up her exhaust pipe with access to her most important of areas for survival, her engines and power generating systems.

Starjammer, having less than a handful of minutes before the alien ships catch up with her, with completion of their long turns and increasing acceleration of their own, needs a miracle. Starjammer could easily out distance these small alien ships, however, she cannot accelerate quickly enough to escape them in time.

A miracle comes from, of all places, Starjammer's galley and her chief cook. Bursting into engineering, after listening to events on Starjammer's ship wide communication systems, her chief cook hurriedly recounts an old family story of his great-grandfather nearly blowing himself out of his farm's kitchen trying to light an old fashion methane gas oven. He had allowed too much raw gas to accumulate inside his oven before igniting it, resulting in both the oven's door and his grandfather being blown across his kitchen, suffering mostly only embarrassment and singed eyebrows. Engineering, working with Starjammer's bridge crew, quickly threw together a plan, or hopefully a plan, to rid Starjammer of four attacking ships planning to stuff laser beams up her stovepipe.

Captain Bluethorne quickly approves their notion with a simple, "Do it." He knows they are going to be dead meat in a matter of minutes, the extreme risks involved are worth taking. If this plan didn't kill them, those aliens certainly will. This is not an intended plan like using their artificial gravity, not truly intended. It is more of relying on pure luck than anything else.

Starjammer's engineering shuts down all engines, which certainly has to confuse their attackers but doesn't stop nor slow their attack run, and begin flooding Starjammer's exhaust ports with pure hydrogen plasma, normally used for powering docking engines and navigation thrusters, along with a well guess-timated amount of pure oxygen to exponentially increase the temperature and the explosive nature of their hopeful stovepipe backfire. This time, Starjammer's chief cook has the honor of striking the match. When navigation signals engineering their attackers are within laser firing distance of Starjammer and, are actively firing straight into her rearend, her cook strikes a technological match literally blowing apart then incinerated four hyenias closing in for an intended kill of a very annoyed bull elephant, Starjammer.

When originally built, as a half century project, Starjammer was designed to stand up to a lot of abuse, to suffer major damage and still remain a relatively safe and functional star sailer. Her designers, however, did not have in mind for her main engine compartment and its huge exhaust port to be used as a primitive cannon. Hydrogen plasma and oxygen weren't the only things flooded into her aft exhaust port during the attack. Her rearend was also loaded with tacks and nails, in a sense. Starjammer, set a standard for modular ships. More than half of her could be replaced with new or rebuild parts as specialized modules, with most of her modules being related to her engines. A flip of a few switches, and huge modules would be set free to be manipulated in zero gravity, to be worked on or be replaced. Just before her oven is flooded with ignitable gases, her engineering crew cuts loose every expendable module in her engine compartment and exhaust port they can think of, and still maintain an ability to return to space dock for renewal and repairs. They load her rearend with all types, sizes and shapes of projectiles to blow into the faces of her attackers, to literally physically rip their ships apart. This exploding oven worked well but nearly blew Starjammer out of her cosmic kitchen.

Her engine compartment is so severly damaged with the striking of her cook's match, engineering decides it would be too risky to attempt to use their main engines. Starjammer's velocity is relatively good at near .3C, a third of light speed, and navigation is not a problem with no damage done to that system. Making it back home to safe port without main engines is not problem. A more serious, unexpected problem develops with the cook's bone rattling explosion. Starjammer's infrastructure is so stressed by the explosion, those long linear laser wounds along her hull, from her initial attacks, fracture and a few open to hard vacuum of deep space. Starjammer is slowly losing her atmosphere, being flooded with vacuum, much like the ancient Titantic was slowly flooded with chilly sea water. It would be just a matter of time before Starjammer became a functional deep freeze.

Captain Bluethorne and his executive officers make a decision to remain aboard Starjammer, along with a skeleton crew, to safely sail their ship to homeport and, to launch life boats and safely transport thier thousand plus passengers to a nearby survivable and, unfortunately, an inhabited planet, albeit a moderately primitive culture, today's New Japan. Their passenger's safety is well assured within the well stocked stout lifeboats, manned with well trained crews, more assured than becoming rock solid frozen meat within the cold vacuum of space aboard Starjammer.

"Profit, a powerful diplomatic tool of the ages Andrea," looking over his champagne glass at her, "a timeless tool leading to both success and failure. Andrea, do you remember my great- grandfather's adventure aboard Starjammer, not far from here, when we were just horny kids?" Andrea narrows her eyes, gives him a small demur smile, "Maybe you aren't horny anymore Jeff, but that doesn't mean I have lost it. Yes Jeff I do. It is an incident I have studied well along with the resulting history of economic and cultural influenzes on New Japan's culture. It profits me to know these people over there," nodding towards New Japan visible through her lounge's veiw window, "in my bartering with them. This champagne you are nursing cost me a pretty penny and it's on the house tonight, well, until later tonight when you will pay a handsome price for my champagne and my company."

Ambassador Bluethorne clears his throat a bit to conceal a mild blush rushing to his face, sips his champagne, "Fine champagne and very fine company it is, at that." Andrea rubs a bare toe, under his pant leg, up and down his shin, "Jeff, get down to brass tacks. What is on your mind besides my precious commodity I seem to have the corner of the market on at the moment?" Jeff leans forward to meet her sparring comments, "Profit Andrea. It's that simple, profit. Incidently, I hold a product which is my corner of the market for the moment. Interested in a mutally profitable venture?" His lover grins slightly, "How profitable could it possibly be for me if you are holding it?" Bluethorne, suffering a semantic blow, quickly raises his left hand up from where it had been resting on his knee, places it on their table, finger tips just meeting hers, "Well, I would be willing to allow you a hold on my product in exchange," turning both empty and calloused palms up for her, "for a profitable hold on your product, my dear semantic guerrilla."

Andrea pauses a bit, sits very still, looking down at her glass of brandy, breaks thought, reaches over taking Jeff's left hand in her own, tilts her head, pouts her lips and begins stroking his thumb with a firm circular clasp of her thumb and forefinger, "Motorcycles Jeff." Bluethorn wiggles his thumb for her in a rhymic pulsing manner, withdraws it from her grip, leans back looking intently at her knowing she is about to clue him in on what he really needs to know about the Blęwenians, "Motorcycles Andrea?"

Dipping an index finger in her sweet and teasingly thick peach brandy, Andrea looks Jeff straight on, slightly opens her mouth, slides her wet finger in, visibly runs her tongue around its tip a few times, purses her lips around it and, slowly withdraws her finger, leaving it shiny wet and clean. "More specifically Jeff, dirt bike technology. Over all these years, each time I drop planet side to barter with those blue people, foremost on their minds are technological details of dirt bike construction. When the passengers and part of the crew of Starjammer gently set down their life boats on Blęwen, a distant uncle of Chief Engineer Pitts, a junior engineer of Starjammer at the time, grabbed a small stack of technical journals on dirt bikes to take with him planet side to read while they awaited rescue some calculated four to six Earth months later." Jeff imposes a diplomatic silence with offering Andrea a champagne dipped finger which she promptly and playfully bites, quite firmly startling Bluethorne, "Ouch! Darn, you bite. I can tell where you are leading me Andrea and, what you are thinking."

"As always Jeff, a true diplomat," sticking out her tongue at him and continueing on, "Yeah, you can guess what happened to those tech journals with the amusing history of the Blęwenian's stripping of the life boats and their accessories during our brief stay there. It is not surprising Starjammer's passengers were half-naked and a bit annoyed by the time they were lifted off the planet with virtually everything being five-fingered by the local populace," she wiggles five fingers in the air to clarify her archaic expression. "They still have not had much success in translating our language not being exactly intellectual giants, but they have ingeniously duplicated everything they five fingered from us, including dirtbikes based solely on technical drawings in those motorcycle magazines which vanished under rather mysterious circumstances. Not suprising we nicknamed their planet New Japan with their duplication skills in manufacturing, sans any real deep understanding of what they make nor any true understanding of long-term consequences, such as environmental pollution."

Ambassador Bluethorne swirls the last of his exotic champagne around a few times, turns up his glass and finishes it, "Motorcycles. A valid barter ante to toss on a poker table, you think?" Andrea finishes her brandy with a healthy tossed down slug, signaling understanding his subtle signal to end their bantering, "Absolutely Jeff. Those people are more crazy about dirt birts than you and Paul are over your own toys." Jeff admires her for a bit, watching her look down at her long black corkscrewy hair, displaying a hint of a fat roll developing under her chin as a natural part of aging. Wrapping an unruly curl around a finger, wetting it with a few drops of brandly left in her glass, Andrea primps her tangles a bit, "Boys and their toys. So Jeff, what use does Earth have for Blęwenia's vast natural petroleum reserves? That is what you are after." He raises a surprised but logical eyebrow, "Girls and their curls. Sometimes I wonder Andrea, if you are half the bimbo you try to pass yourself off as being. Those petroleum reserves have been a well guarded secret for a decade. I won't ask." A demur smile from her, "Oh like really, I mean, a bimbo? Gosh." Andrea stands, picks up their glasses, along with Ensign Neal's still full beer mug of lemonade, and walks off with a deliberate wiggle. Bluethorne, being abruptly excused, walks towards an exit, glances over his shoulder at Andrea bent down working with something, displaying very long legs barely concealed by an equally short skirt, "Whew, and she's a doctoral of Cultural Anthropology."