Chapter 20: Martinez

Flickering images look towards Captain Martinez as he seats himself at the head of the conference table.  "It's good to finally be able to see you all." He says as his eyes flicker to the empty spots.

"Well not all of us are here. Has anyone been able to contact the Houston ships?" The flickering image of a stout, older man responds.

"I'm afraid not Commander Chase. The ISS has found no evidence that any of the Houston ships survived the initial impact. Houston is nothing more than a massive crater. How are the crew holding together?" He asks.

"As good as can be expected Captain. Considering we have no functioning Captain right now. Captain Miles is still comatose, only time will tell if he'll wake. In the meantime the crew and I are functioning to spec. They're a good bunch."

Nodding, Martinez turns to Captain Weatherby as her image flickers violently. "Everything okay?" He asks.

Her visual image flickers again as her head whips towards something they can't see. "Excuse me for a moment, I'll be right back." She says, her lithe figure rising and disappearing from view.

"Does anybody know where the hell these meteors came from?" Another Captain asks. His Australian accent thickening in his anger. "And why the hell we had no warning at all?"

"Calm down Sam. Keep your anger in check until we're all safe. How're yer ships coming along laddie? Any luck with the EmA Drive issues Ye've been having?" Captain McMannus asks.

"No. Damn thing keeps conking out and our chief engineer was caught out in the first damn meteor storm we had here. Fucking idiot thought he should try to make the ship instead of hunkering down somewhere safe. Thankfully, the doctor says he should recover. But... We've no one qualified onboard to deal with this sort of issue." He groans, head in his hands. "We're done for mate."

"Now see here!" Captain Torrez blusters. "I'll not have any defeatism here. We've all got our own engineers. I'm sure they could use this conference room to help you out." he grins as the younger Australian Captain slowly raises his head. "You young whippersnappers just don't know how to think outside the box." He complains.

"But protocol states that..."

"Bloody protocol. Whose gonna know?" he grins, head tipping to one side as if asking a silent question.

Captain Weatherby's image flickers back into view, taking her seat with a heavy sigh. "Sorry about that fellas. I heard parts of that last bit. I agree, we need to get our engineers together and pool resources. I'll put my two pence in and ask for help with our shield generator. It's fluctuating, and going to cause no end of problems. Not to mention none of us will survive outer space without the damn shield."

Captain Martinez sits straighter, setting his mug of coffee on the conference table. "Then it's decided we'll get our best engineers in here, instruct them on the correct use of the system and let them hash out any engineering issues each ship has. We have to rely on each other now. From reports the ISS have sent me, the entire planets being pounded to dust right now. And before you ask. No, we don't know where it's come from."

"I don't have any engineering issues, but we'd not finished our supply runs. We're seriously short on food. My entire crew and passengers will be dead by the time we reach New Earth." Captain Healey mutters in disgust.

"Then get your supply crew off their asses and outside looking for supplies." Captain Munez shouts.

"I'll not send my men out to die Munez, you horses ass!" Captain Healey shouts back.

Picking up his mug and finishing his drink, Martinez watches the two men shouting at each other. The bang of his mug slamming into the desk startles everyone as he rises to his feet. "We can't afford to bicker like children right now. Get your fucking acts together. Munez stop baiting him. If you've nothing constructive to say, shut the fuck up. Healey,  there are multiple cavernous stores in every ship location. Find them and plunder them. As for the goddamn meteors, they don't fall 24 hours a day. Find the bloody gap and use it."

"Are you alright Sebastian? That outburst isn't like you." Weatherby asks.

"I'm fine. I'm tired, but I'm fine." he sits slowly, as he looks at each Captain around him. "Now, more than ever we need to be working together, not sniping at each other. Are we going to a new planet, a new start, just to start up old feuds and issues? If we're going to do that, then we might as well all stay here and let the human race die out." Shaking himself to clear his head, he clears his throat into the silence. "Enough. Is there anything else?"

"Just one, Are we limiting how many people we take onboard. I don't want to but, any more refugees and I'll run out of everything in a few years. As it is I've already crammed several thousand extra people in each ship."

Martinez snaps his attention to the Australian Captain and grins. "Take em, cram em in like sardines in a tin. I've a ship with a crew and no damn occupants. I was going to leave it behind and transfer the crew. But this is so much better. I'm certain a few of us are low on warm bodies." Looking around he notices a few nods. "And I'm sure some of you are over crammed as well. Well, pack em in and we'll rendezvous at the mars base, If it's still there. We can swap people around, fill the empty ships. Get a list of personnel together for each of your ships, missing and extraneous and we'll swap those out as well. Between us we can outfit every ship with a full complement of crew and passengers." Martinez grins. "I was sore pissed to have to leave that ship behind. Ya'll have no idea how good it feels to be able to bring it along."

"Does anyone know how many ships we have left out of the five hundred being built?" Weatherby asks.

"Less than a hundred." Martinez whispers. "But with each ship full it'll be a large enough sub section of the population to start again at least."

"Damn. Are you sure?" She asks.

"we've been able to contact 92 ships, ours included." Martinez responds. "93 now, if you include the one I was planning on leaving behind."

"That's not good Sebastian. Our margin of error just got a lot smaller. If we average out each ships complement at seven thousand. We're looking at  only half a million people, out of the billions still left." Sarah Weatherby says, looking around the room. "Add in technical errors, damaged machinery, wear and tear, space born phenomena. We'll be lucky if less than half that arrives at the planet. You all know the odds placed on such a large mass migration. That's why it was decided to launch so many ships, in order to even out the odds of enough people surviving the journey intact to re-populate a new planet."

Reaching out, as if to take hold of her hand, Martinez tries to reassure her. "Your statistician brain is taking over again Sarah." he responds, smiling. "We're a hardy lot, and I plan on banding us together in groups of ten. We'll make it. I know we will."

She smiles, the room seeming to shrink down to just her and Sebastian. "Optimist." She laughs, as she nods to him.

"Bloody British Pessimist." He grins back.

A throat clears breaking their hold on one another. "Come back to the real world you two. You can get gooey on your own time." Commander Chase says laughingly.

Blushing Captain Weatherby turns back to the room. Her eyes steadfastly refusing to meet any of theirs.

Martinez smiles and turns back to the others. "Okay Ladies and Gentleman. I think we should leave it there for now. The ISS is continuing to stream telemetry every 90 minutes when they rotate into comm range. They've taken several meteor strikes though and their systems are starting to shut down. I'm going to wait as long as I can to see if any survivors can make it to me. After that I'm going to launch early and get them off that station. I'd also like to suggest that any overfull ships launch with me. I'd like to have a little bit of a safety net."

Standing he claps his hands together. "Make sure you load up every spare ounce of stock you can for those that don't manage to fully stock. We'll work out the details once we're safe at the Mars base. See you all next week, I'll send a comm burst out with my launch time. Have your engineers here in, let's say 5 hours. That gives them time to put together a list of issues."

Heads nod in agreement as each Captain turns and disappears from view.