Honor of the Fallen

Chapter 4

Phyllip wondered if someone had finally invented a 'weather generator' and plugged it into his chair as he watched the storm rolling off the horizon in his direction. "Why did 'he' have to go off the reservation? I don't understand it... He was third for his year. Not quarterly, like these guys, but for his whole year group. What happened to him? 'John Smith'... I don't understand it Thomys!?" The name left a distasteful bite in his mouth.

After several seconds Thomys finally replied quietly, "I don't know either, it was all so... bizarre. Samson, of all people! How is it that he loses his clothes and goes running around n***d? It would have been funny as hell if it was anybody else."

In the blink of Thomys' eye, Phyllip had the folder in both hands, crushed in his vice grip, bent and twisted ready to throw or tear whichever came first.

Thomys shouted "Don't you dare! If I have to have another one of those 'Unit Strength and Status' reports printed I'm going to kick you in the teeth."

Phyllip just looked blankly at his taller but much thinner friend. He could probably reach high enough to kick him in the teeth, but Phyllip would rip him in half after.

Phyllip took a deep breath and allowed the adrenaline surge to taper out of his body. His nanobots far exceeded civilian issue bots, and even superseded the premium packages that scrubbed most executive's bodies.

The higher up the social strata the more 'toys' an individual could afford. There were nanobots that could take care of just about anything. As long as the brain functioned, blood still flowed and they could reach their target they could help the body's natural functions fix anything from 'sore muscles' after a workout, to the common cold, to even periodically simulating pathogens to stimulate the body's natural defenses while training the white blood cells and 'inoculating' the host against the diseases the nanobots were programmed to mimic.

Because of Phyllip's background in the Empire's most elite military force, the Guardsmen, he was one of a very small cadre in the entire Empire who was authorized 'Guardsmen Nanobots'. They were only available after extensive multi-year preparation, and custom tailored to suit his personal physiology. Over the last years of the Guardsmen academy, Nanobots were slowly added to a candidate. The final addition was a very secret and very powerful component that allowed the Nanobots to become greater than the sum of the parts.

They made Guardsmen almost impossible to kill. They did everything from expelling chemical weapons attacks, to physically strengthening the body by adding to bone density and muscle tone, and even helping pinch off blood flow from major injuries. The last was a hell Phyllip never wanted to visit again. He could feel everything but the catatonic shock state was like screaming inside his own skull and unable to move or do anything to stop the pain. The little bastards in his blood were powered by his adrenaline. When injured and the threat had passed, the grievously injured Guardsman slipped down from his adrenaline high... the shock state kicked in to protect the brain functions and stabilize the rest of the wounds. Destroying a Guardsman's brain and severing the spinal column at the cerebral cortex along with completely destroying the upper half of their body, were more or less the only ways to finish the deed. Even a minor injury to the heart could be mitigated for enough time that medical staff could collect the patient at a relatively leisurely pace, transport the patient, completely rebuild the organ and allow the Guardsman to recover.

Guardsmen were multi-million credit investments. Twelve years of training, plus the year of officer training, plus all the improvements, made them well worth the investment and the expense of keeping them alive and rebuilding them, even when they were catastrophically damaged.

Since the median wage for the Empire's average worker was a few hundred credits every two weeks, the Chroynos Corporate Guardsmen were an expensive proposition. The one hundred twenty five that he had just commissioned, for the quarter, represented a larger investment than most corporations could scrape together in several years of operations.

That massive annual investment was required. The casualty rates in those Elite units were still high enough to require that many since a great many were killed outright, and unrepairable. As to the rest, the rebuild hospital could fix almost anything up to brain dead and damage to the cerebral cortex and major brain damage.

Phyllip controlled the power utility monopoly on this world and over two hundred other worlds, admittedly they were smaller and less productive worlds, but each still housed and employed over five billion people. He owned the infrastructure and had some of the best reactor design patents in the galaxy, and could undercut even the most determined competitor if they drew his ire.

Phyllip was formidable physically but his years of training and fighting in his family's wars left him hard. On top of the mental and physical temperament, he spent time every day in the gym and was enormously strong. All on top of the Guardsmen upgraded strength.

"Samson... Damn! Now you have me saying it! 'John Smith' just pissed me off I guess. And you!" Pointing at his friend, "you know the rules. He is a dishonored man with no name. 'John Smith' is the only identifier he possesses until Hades takes his rotten decadent soul."

Thomys just nodded once to his boss, but remained silent, after the correction.

Phyllip smoothed the folder on his desk and pulled the slightly less wrinkled report into his lap. Thomys started babbling from memory all of the highlights. Phyllip shook his head at the number of troops they had deployed around their arm of the galaxy. The Genesis Wars were supposed to be in a state of truce. But he couldn't tell from the numbers of troops they had occupying their various worlds.

"You will be pleased to know that the officers you just commissioned replenished all our line officer and Guardsmen losses from that last campaign on JU-X53-blah-blah-something-or-other."

"Yea..." Phyllip sang sarcastically, "how long did it take us? Three years to recover from that meat grinder?"

"About that, we did pick up those resource surveys, the iron and heavy metal deposits will make us a pretty penny. And the troops are happy. The surveyors located a dense gold vain that was missed in the initial surveys."

"Lucky them," Phyllip flipped the page, "that will make a nice addition to combat bonus and profit sharing for the campaign veterans. Maybe they can get that hellish inferno out of their memories before long... Why can't accessible heavy mineral planets 'not' be right next to suns..."

Thomys knew it was a rhetorical question. The Terraforming Commission did what it could to modify the atmosphere of worlds to allow human industry and as often as possible habitation and agriculture. Heavy rocky worlds that contained many of the accessible minerals were barely habitable wastelands. The atmospheres were added just to make accidents more survivable. 'Green worlds' were just too valuable to strip mine. Any planet that could support Earth-like conditions was jealously nurtured and coveted. Population and food pressures were too great to ignore or despoil the pristine worlds that could comfortably support life.

"Our mechanical maintenance rate in our units is along where it should be. We are coming back up to standard training levels on our infantry and armored line units. Most are at or near full strength. Home Guard is flush with applications and not enough slots for all the applicants. Most importantly that batch you sighed brought our Guardsmen ranks up to strength."

"Well that's good news for a change, I hate seeing our units so battered. What about our capital ships? What is the news from Indomitable?"

Phyllip's mention of the carrier that had been the bane of Thomys' existence for the last thirty two months, made him wince. "She is still broken. The major holes are finally 'filled in'. The drives are online finally. They are still chasing some power faults..."

Phyllip interrupted, "Well get their asses back here!"

Thomys shook his head in the negative, "No-can-do. They found a c***k in the hull when they installed the third engine. The repair ships are on it and the tugs are still dragging the whole mass back in our direction but it is slow going. They need to accelerate painfully slowly."

"Well at least they aren't being hounded by enemy frigates and raiders anymore. Escorts?"

"Yes. We have a heavy battle group, built around twin battle cruisers and five cruisers. We keep them rotating on month cruises, with Navy Corporation cadet trainees for their certifications cruises."

Phyllip nodded at the practical benefit from the teetering disaster. "How the hell does a carrier Captain, allow his ship to be hit by a meteor!? Granted that one was sent his way but... how? I wish I could just..."

"I know! I know! 'Wish you could just get your hands on him and squeeze until his head pops off'... Not going to happen, and you know it."

"If we lost that carrier it would have taken us decades to replace the investment!"

"Phyllip you know as well as I do that our share of that world's iron deposits alone will pay for that Carrier, in full three times over. Even with the expense of Indomitable's repairs we will be in the black on that world in five months. The miners are already moving and breaking ground.

"Dead or not... I still want to."

"Stop pouting. The engineers estimate that with current security and repair assets their worst case arrival is two months. Probably three weeks. They have a dedicated repair tender peeling back the hull and mending the keel. The electrical and mechanical faults are the most time consuming now that most of the large component repairs are complete."

"I can't believe we had to build those components and ship them out there. The success of those commerce raiders picking off our resupply ships, that was just... uncanny. How many times did we build the engines for that stupid thing?! We do need to track that down. That many successful raids is just... frustrating and abnormal."

"Agreed." The two men pushed folders back and forth to each other. "On a related subject our intelligence estimates here. There is not much about commerce raiders, but our core systems are clean. Our patrols are swatting the ones that do show up. There are the occasional raids on resource worlds. It is nothing that we can't handle. Pleasantly it is nothing that we aren't covertly making up with our own raids. Standard fun and games.

"There are a few blips here and there. I spoke to General Zastphere, and he feels the same way I do about them. Most of them look like places where we could send a few light battle groups on a fly-by and show the flag. There are a few places Zastphere would like your permission to prepare some 'obvious' heavy defensive weapons."

Phyllip shrugged as he thumbed through the report. "Our military corporation is his division. I won't tell my General how to run the wars. That's why I pay him, so I don't have to play with model ships all day long." Phyllip paused as he reread something that caught his attention before continuing absently, "He knows his job. And he knows I hate retaking the same ground a second time. If it wins the war and we benefit long term we all do well. I think he has a good policy of preventing the fight as opposed to dealing with it once it starts. We need time to let our miners work and break those rocks down, or the campaign will have been for nothing." He slapped the intelligence report shut and pushed it back to Thomys. "What's next?"

"The last quarter's Profit and Loss statements."