Corvus Prime: Escalation Read online

  Corvus Prime:

  Escalation

  C. Cougar Sanborn

  A Big 'ol Lazy Cat Production

  U.S.A.

  Corvus Prime: Escalation

  Copyright © 2014-2015 by A Big 'ol Lazy Cat Production

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sanborn, C. Cougar

  Corvus Prime: Escalation / C. Cougar Sanborn

  ISBN 0-000000-000-0

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission of the Author.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  This book is dedicated to

  Juliet,

  and to

  The Black Hats

  from which I drew inspiration.

  Corvus Prime:

  Escalation

  By

  C. Cougar Sanborn

  First Edition

  Version 1.01

  CONTENTS

  I

  A Fly in the Ointment

  7

  II

  Onlooker

  20

  III

  Slight of Hand

  34

  IV

  European Union

  48

  V

  Interloper

  66

  VI

  Impact

  81

  VII

  Take Two

  94

  VIII

  Unforeseen Circumstances

  108

  IX

  Double Trouble

  121

  X

  Hidden Cost

  134

  XI

  Just a Walk in the Park

  152

  XII

  All Stars

  165

  XIII

  X Games

  177

  XIV

  Long Odds

  195

  XV

  And Baby Makes Three

  213

  XVI

  Only the Beginning

  226

  Chapter 1

  A FLY IN THE OINTMENT

  Straus was jarred awake by the sound of his alarm going off. He rolled over and silenced the offending device noting that it read 0500. He forgot to deactivate it for his day off and rolled over hoping to go back to sleep. After fifteen minutes it became apparent to him that he was now too awake for that to happen. He got up slightly irritated that he blew his chance to sleep in.

  After a quick shower he made his way to the officers mess to grab a cup of coffee. He felt surprisingly good considering that he was up late drinking and celebrating at the big “Independence” party that was thrown the night before. It was well after midnight when he walked Dr. Darla Peters, head of the Tech Research division and his fiance, back to her quarters. By the time he settled down for the night it was nearly 0100.

  ‘Morning Sir. Something to eat?’ asked the petty officer on duty in the kitchen.

  ‘Morning Cookie. No, just coffee for now. I’ll wait until the “Little Lady” is ready to eat.’

  ‘Yes, Sir. Have you seen the morning headlines? We’re big news.’

  ‘Really? No, I haven’t looked yet. I’ll check it out. Thanks.’

  Commander Mick Strausser was the Space Wing Commander aboard the space complex now known as Corvus Prime. It was in high orbit over the Earth and tasked with protecting it from the invading force that they referred to as the Drone Armada. The station had been gifted to them by a friendly race of aliens from a planet in the constellation that we call Corvus (The Crow). With their home world destroyed, the last vestige of their civilization was on the run, looking for some quiet corner of the galaxy where they could start over.

  In their search they found their way to our solar system, however they were pursued by the enemy which was bent on their destruction. An all-out space battle was waged beyond the asteroid belt, near Jupiter. Through great sacrifice the Corvan’s prevailed. To show their gratitude for coming to the aid of one of their pilots, they left us with the last surviving Corvus station and brought us up to speed on their advanced technology.

  Commander Tómas Harrison was in charge of Station Operations. He and Straus had become good friends having originally met at the U.N. briefing that gathered people together to staff the new station. Straus and Harrison had hatched a plan to declare independence in order to thwart an attempt to be taken over by a special committee of the United Nations. The pieces fell into place at the last moment and their plan of independence seemed to work.

  With coffee now in hand, Straus proceeded to his office. His staff sergeant wasn’t in yet, and he made his way through to his desk and turned to his computer. He checked several of the major news sources and confirmed that Corvus Prime declaring independence was the top headline in most of the news feeds. After scanning the articles he found that the general consensus was positive and he breathed a sigh of relief as it quelled some of his own doubts.

  He heard a rustling in the outer office and a few moments later the staff sergeant walked in with a stack of papers.

  ‘Oh... good morning Commander. I thought you were off today.’

  ‘Morning Davis. Yeah... couldn’t sleep in so I thought I’d get a few things done.’

  ‘Yes Sir. Well, this stack here is probably the most pressing. It includes all of the pilots passport applications. You need to approve them, then forward them on to Commander Harrison.'

  ‘Passport applications?’

  ‘Yes, Sir. Someone from the legal team brought them over. Now that we’re our own country, we need passports, visas... all that diplomatic stuff.’

  ‘Hmmm... didn’t think about that part of it. Ok, hand them over and I’ll get started on them.’

  As Straus was sitting there signing off on the applications he started to think about all the other diplomatic ramifications that they were going to need to deal with. Then he relaxed when he realized that it was going to be Commander Harrison’s job, since it was a Station Operations concern.

  It took two hours to go through the stack and he was just finishing up, when his comm device alerted him to an incoming call.

  ‘This is Straus.’

  ‘Good morning, Sweetheart. Don’t tell me you’re working. You said that we could spend the day together,’ said Darla.

  ‘Oh, I had an alarm clock malfunction that got me up a couple of hours ago. I thought I’d put my time to good use until you were up and ready to go.’

  ‘I’ll be ready for coffee in about ten minutes.’

  ‘Great. I’m nearly finished here. I’ll head over and pick you up.’

  ‘Sounds good. See you in a few.’

  Straus finished the last of the applications and on his way out, handed the stack to the staff sergeant.

  ‘I’m taking off the rest of my day off, Sergeant. If anything urgent comes up, you don’t know where I am. If anything super-urgent comes up, then you can give me a call.’

  The staff sergeant chuckled and said, ‘Aye Sir. I understand.’

  He made his way to Darla’s quarters and keyed in his pass code. The door slid opened and he stepped in. Not seeing her in the room, he called out, ‘It’s me, Sweetheart.’

  ‘I’ll be out in a minute,’ came the reply from the bedroom.

  Straus picked up the control for the wall screen and tuned in a broadcast from one of the major news organizations. He browsed through a few more channels and found one talking about Corvus. They were showing highlights of Tómas’s video address to the United Nations. They then showed an interview with the now Ambassador McKay who had been the Admiral in charge of Flight Operations when Straus first came to the station.


  Darla came out of the bedroom and sat down next to Straus, gave him a quick kiss, then turned her attention to the wall screen to watch the interview.

  “Mister Ambassador, Corvus Station has repelled two major attacks from the Drone Armada while under U.N. jurisdiction. Why the sudden move to independence now?”

  “Efficiency. The U.N. or any government for that matter, is fraught with a sort of bureaucratic inertia, also known as red tape. This makes it hard to get things done quickly. We’re in a volatile situation and in order for us to respond at a moment's notice to any advances made by the Drone Armada we need to be able to make the top level decisions out there where the action is.”

  “Will this move in any way impact the level of protection that you say you are offering freely to all nations?”

  “Yes, of course. It means our service to the planet will only improve, and improve more quickly than it would if we had to go through channels.”

  “What’s next for the new nation of Corvus Prime?”

  “Well, declaring our independence is only the first step toward becoming a sovereign nation. We have the support of the people, but there are world leaders that are none too happy with our move, because they were hoping for a piece of the action, as it were. We still need approval of the U.N. to make it a done deal.”

  ‘What did he just say?’ asked Straus.

  ‘I thought it was a done deal,’ said Darla.

  “Thank you for your time Mr. Ambassador.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “This is Mark Gregory in New York reporting. Back to you.”

  “In related news, stock markets from around the world are up ten to fifteen per...”

  Mick picked up the remote and turned off the wall screen. He continued to stare at the blank screen as his mind processed the new information that they may not be as independent as he thought. Just then his comm device alerted him to a call.

  Before he had a chance to say anything, he heard, ‘Listen I know it's your day off, but we need to talk. I just spoke with the Admiral... I mean the Ambassador.’

  ‘We just saw his interview. We’ll meet you in the officers mess,’ said Straus.

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘That was Tómas. I think he wants to talk about the situation. Let’s go find out what’s going on,’ said Straus as he stood and helped Darla up from the sofa.

  Before taking a step however, he pulled her into a hug and held her close, saying, ‘Good morning, Beautiful.’

  She smiled and nuzzled in. Then she pulled his face down into a kiss and said, ‘Good morning, Handsome.’

  They walked into the officers mess and Straus saw that Tómas, and his wife Vicks were already there and had just sat down with their breakfast. Straus had recruited Vicks after First Strike and assigned her to fly the Galleon support craft for his squadron. He introduced her to Tómas and they hit it off right away. It wasn’t long before they were married with Straus acting as best man.

  Straus nodded to Tómas, then led Darla through the chow line and joined them at their table. As he was adding the fixings to his coffee, he asked, ‘So what’s going on? Is it a done deal, or not?’

  ‘Apparently not. McKay explained that the road to independence isn’t as straightforward as we assumed. We’ve done everything right so far. We have an undisputed territory, a permanent population, and a stable government.’

  ‘Ok... so what are we missing?’ asked Darla.

  ‘International recognition and acceptance is the last step. We’ve already got a jump on it with our agreements with the United States, Canada, Japan, and some of the European Union nations. All we need now is the approval of the U.N.’

  ‘So, what do we need to do?’ asked Straus.

  ‘McKay will present our case to the U.N. Security Council. We only need nine of the fifteen members on our side, but that includes all five permanent members.’

  ‘Who are the five that we need to worry about?’

  ‘The U.S., U.K., China, France, and Russia,’ explained Tómas.

  ‘So this is just a formality then. I can’t see why any of them would have a problem with it,’ said Darla.

  ‘The Admiral said not to worry about it. Even if we get voted down, we can still continue independently. It just means that we won’t be able to travel to countries that we don’t have specific individual agreements with.’

  ‘Well, I guess there’s no reason to get worked up over it then,’ said Straus as he continued eating his breakfast.

  ‘What’s our status with Austria?’ asked Darla.

  ‘I don’t recall offhand. I can check with McKay. Why do you ask?’ asked Tómas.

  ‘I’ve been invited to give the keynote speech at the International Physics Symposium in Vienna. I’ll also be presenting a paper on our current theory of our energy source, Dark Energy Precipitate and how DEP is used to power just about everything here.’

  ‘Be sure to not mention anything about anti-DEP. I don’t want any terrorists getting any bright ideas. Let’s keep that a military secret,’ said Straus.

  Tómas nodded in agreement and Darla said, ‘it's sad that we have to stifle the flow of information, but I guess that’s the world we live in.’

  ‘I’ll check on Austria, but it shouldn’t be a problem Doctor. I’ll let you know,’ said Tómas. ‘The Ambassador did give us our marching orders however. We need to establish embassies for our major trade partners and consulates for the minor ones. We need to add an entire diplomatic wing to the station. I’ve already got the Engineering team working on designs.’

  ‘Wow... it all seemed so simple when we first came up with the idea of independence,’ said Straus.

  ‘Not only does it mean that we need to establish embassies here, it also means having to establish our embassies planet-side. That means having to come up with more Ambassadors and Consul-Generals to fill those posts. it's really snowballing.’

  ‘All I have to worry about is stopping the invading armada from destroying the Earth. Sounds like you have the hard job,’ said Straus with a smile.

  ‘Fortunately McKay has a lot of contacts and ideas. I don’t think it's going to be all that bad. However... there are a few problems that you’re going to have to work out.’

  Straus looked up from his breakfast with a questioning look.

  ‘All the special trade agreements that were in place to keep this place stocked with food and materials were rendered void. We’ve established new agreements for the basics, however...’

  Straus swallowed his bite, and asked, ‘However, what?’

  ‘Military weapons are a special case. The U.S. can’t supply us with the Hydra-70 rocket pods until we iron out the red tape. That’s why I contacted you. I thought you’d want to know.’

  Straus pulled out his comm device and punched a few buttons, then said, ‘My last requisition didn’t make it through which means we’ll have to make do with the stock on hand, which isn’t much.’

  ‘We’re setting up temporary embassy’s with the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Japan. Should only take a week or so to re-establish trade for critical items. Everyone recognizes that it's in Earth’s best interest.’

  ‘We’ll make it work,’ assured Straus.

  ‘So, what’s the criteria for deciding who gets an embassy versus a consulate?’ asked Vicks.

  ‘Any nation that we’re giving DEP reactors to and that we can trade with DEP directly will get an embassy. Those countries that we do less business with, that we deal in cash with, will have consulates.’

  Vicks nodded that she understood as she ate.

  ‘Since we’re talking infrastructure, I’ve got some news to share that will require some changes down the road,’ said Darla.

  They all turned toward her waiting for her to complete her thought.

  ‘Joe and Mandy Emerson are pregnant. Their little boy will be our first-born citizen in about six months. Others will no doubt follow,’ she said looking up to Vicks.

  ‘We haven’t disc
ussed it, but yes, it's just a matter of time,’ said Vicks with an embarrassed smile.

  Darla continued, ‘We’re going to need a school system that can handle pre-school through at least high school. Besides that we’re going to need more in the way of entertainment facilities... maybe a bowling alley, or a park with grass and trees. Things like that.’

  ‘So what you’re saying, basically, is that we need to transition from being a military outpost to a full-service base with a growing civilian population,’ said Straus.