{"id":559,"date":"2013-10-23T17:34:14","date_gmt":"2013-10-23T23:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/?p=559"},"modified":"2013-11-17T19:40:03","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T01:40:03","slug":"559","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/559\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Blitzers, Episode 3: “Enter Commander Abel Firth”"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Enter Commander Abel Firth”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Enter Commander Abel Firth. I\u2019d never met the guy, never heard of him. But he had security badges like you wouldn\u2019t believe. He had an Omega Orange. And he was all business.<\/p>\n

He said: “You\u2019ve heard about the PFK-480 by now.”<\/p>\n

I didn’t want him to get too full of himself.: “Sure,” I said. “I\u2019ve got intel clearance. I\u2019m in the loop. What about it?”<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s up there waiting for somebody to grab it. Could be us, or it could be the Gramlings.”<\/p>\n

What was that to me? “Yeah, I know.” I said. “Or the Holloi. But with the Sagitid meteor shower just starting to rev up, even the Gramlings and the Holloi won\u2019t go up there. Nobody\u2019s<\/i> that dumb.”<\/p>\n

Says Firth: “Yeah, well, somebody is. Us.”<\/i><\/p>\n

“What do you mean us?”<\/i><\/p>\n

He was not cutting me any slack. Whatever this was, it was going to happen–at least as far as he <\/em>was\u00a0<\/em>concerned. “Slice it however you want,” he said. “Earth intel, A-7 himself, or little old you and me. When the order comes down, it\u2019s all the same. Except that somebody has to do the dirty work.”<\/p>\n

“Are they crazy?”<\/p>\n

“Dumb, crazy, that\u2019s all the same, too. They want their PFK-480. Or at least they want it scrubbed clean before anybody else can get to it. And they\u2019re not going to get any help from the Daulians, not even charts, not in our lifetime. That\u2019s why I\u2019m on it.”<\/p>\n

“Well, I hope you have a very nice time, Firth. Bon voyage.”<\/p>\n

“And they want a pilot\u2014”<\/p>\n

Now things were starting to get a little weird, even for Citheron. “Look,” I said, “even a crack pilot\u2014which I am not, being about a five-point-six on a scale of ten according to my last\u2014”<\/p>\n

“\u2014who\u2019s good at handling a field buggy, and they want\u2014”<\/p>\n

“Even a field buggy master charioteer<\/em> cannot drive through a meteor shower<\/i>. Have you heard about the meteor showers up there at this time of year? It would be like trying to run through a hailstorm without getting hit\u2014once. And one hit–”<\/p>\n

He pushed right over me.”They want somebody who\u2019s had experience with Daulians.”<\/p>\n

That stopped me. “The Daulians? What for?”<\/p>\n

Now that he had my attention, he took his time. “They think there\u2019s one up there. They think there\u2019s one that survived the crash.”<\/p>\n

“I thought the thing was unmanned.”<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s what they want everybody to think. But there were five humans aboard\u2014and one Daulian.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Omega orange. The guy seemed to know everything.<\/p>\n

“A Daulian on a PFK-480? Those ships are way too sensitive. They\u2019d never let a Daulian or any other Citherian so much as set foot on one.”<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s something else they want everybody to think. So now consider, what if the Gramlings or the Holloi did <\/i>get a hold of that ship and <\/i>the Daulian on it? You want to talk about intelligence coups?”<\/p>\n

“And they expect us\u2014you and me\u2014to find that thing and clean up their mess for them. If they\u2019re lucky, a big old hunk of the Sagitid belt will take care of everything for them.”<\/p>\n

He was smooth. “Get a hold of yourself, Bowman. When was the last time your read your commission? This is a matter of earth security.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“Look,” I said, “if this is earth security, it\u2019s a long way from home. Can they at least give us a fix on the thing? They can do that, can\u2019t they?”<\/p>\n

“Kappa Bravo 2799.”<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s it? For real? The whole blasted sector? No triangulation on the 480\u2019s transponders?”<\/p>\n

“No triangulation, no biangulation, no vectors, nothing. They think that a rogue Sagitid squall took it down and that it ended up in a crater with the transponders either knocked out or buried too deep to function. But the number crunchers say we can run the perimeter of the sector with a wide-band seeker beam and hone in on whatever signal it\u2019s sending out.”<\/p>\n

I was starting to feel a little itchy under the collar. “So what makes them think there\u2019s still somebody alive up there?”<\/p>\n

He dialed up a file on the communication console.”This. A fragmentary voice transmission. Take a listen. It\u2019s unscrambled.”<\/p>\n

Next: Episode 4: “The Appeal”<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Enter Commander Abel Firth” Enter Commander Abel Firth. I\u2019d never met the guy, never heard of him. But he had security badges like you wouldn\u2019t believe. He had an Omega Orange. And he was all business. He said: “You\u2019ve heard … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-serial","tag-serial"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3Ouwt-559","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644,"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions\/644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}