I claim no ownership of any recognizeable setting, character, or plot element, but assert fair use. I make no money from this, and have very little money otherwise. A raddish might be red, but you can't bleed it any more than a turnip.

_line_

There was a raptor waiting at the spaceport, he just had to get there. As Alex wormed his way through rush hour traffic, he made the necessary calls. He checked if his fellow veterans at his new consulting firm had been informed. They had. He instructed them to hold back and let him negotiate. They agreed. He called the company's lawyer.

She'd be ready.

They told him that he'd be in communication with his former superiors the moment he was on the raptor. He was, and then some.

"In all my years in DRMD, I never had the President listen in."

On the other end of the line was the stiff and wary President of the Colonies, the ever-political Adm. Cain standing over his shoulder, and a decidedly uncomfortable looking Minister of Defense, who opened with, "Maj. Shadrach, I don't believe we ever spoke before. My condolences on the loss of Cmdr. Adams."

"Thank you, Minister, and it's Mr. Shadrach, now. I'm retired. To be fair, I was quite glad to have him above me, running interference with the politicians while I managed the disaster of the hour."

"Yes, Major, he is missed by all of us." President Adar joined the conversation, "What resources will you need to resolve this disaster?"

Ignoring the President's mistake as the raptor lifted off, Alex replied, "From what I've heard, the personnel I'll need are already contacted and being transported much like I am. I'm going to need information, every scrap of information you have on the accident, to assess the situation. The equipment for the comptometry and metrology departments are supposed to go up for auction on Virgon in two months. I know because I was going to bid on it. Pull the lots from the auction and get them to the site ASAP. They're almost as important as I am to the operation. I should have all the people I need to set up and operate it there, but a half dozen each comms, computers, and electrical ratings from the fleet under our direction would make it go faster. What fleet assets are on site?"

The President and Minister of Defense began to relax with the show of competence. Adm. Cain lifted some papers from the table, "Aside from the Pegasus, there are one Valkyrie class and one Jupiter class battlestars in orbit."

"Jupiter class? Athena or Galactica?"

"Galactica. Athena is being decommissioned this week."

"And non-battlestar assets?"

Adm. Cain checked the paper again. It was typical of her faction to ignore everything smaller than a battlestar. "A warstar and a fast cruiser, three destroyers, nine frigates, three tugs, one fleet and two merchant marine, various tenders including tyllium tankers, and two customs boats trying desperately to keep everybody out of Pegasus's way."

"If you could forward me every bit of information you have on the status of the Pegasus and what went wrong..."

"Corman's idiot son, her Commander." The President stiffened at Adm. Cain's outburst, while the Minister of Defense went back through looking more uncomfortable again, coming out on the far side looking nauseated. Politics must have interfered with other military decisions. Adm. Corman had campaigned for President Adar. "You'll see when you have the information. I'll get everything we know to you."

"Thank you. Now, for the matter of compensation."

The Minister of Defense rallied himself, "We are prepared to reinstate you, with the full rights and privelidges of the rank you were brevetted to on your retirement, and restore full funding to the DRMD." He actually looked proud of himself.

"No."

"But Maj. Shadrach, be reasonable!"

"Again, it's Mr. Shadrach. You cannot conscript me out of my retirement except in a time of war. Mr. President, your administration wanted to shift responsibility for disaster recovery to the private sector. Now I am the private sector, and we are coming at this from behind. I expect the same sort of compensation I saw flow like water from the defense coffers to various other private contractors over the years. I know damn well what a Mercury class battlestar costs, and I'm not going to ask for anything near that, let alone the cost of what will happen to Canceron if we do not recover the Pegasus. That isn't even considering the loss of goodwill on the part of the public for the military and your administration over how this disaster came about, nor the loss of goodwill on the part of the military for your administration for eliminating the office responsible for quickly solving this sort of clusterfuck."

By now, Adm. Cain looked appraising, the Minister of Defense looked horrified, and the President merely looked resigned. "What is your price?"

"I want a five year no-bid first-refusal contract for disaster response, a military liaison of command rank so a stubborn ship commander doesn't screw up my recover operation, ownership of the comptometry and metrology equipment we discussed earlier, Quorum-backed immunity and indemnity, both personal and corporate, for any actions we take to resolve your disasters, 750,000cb, and a Hephaestus class fleet tender, fully refurbished and stocked to its specifications when it was mothballed, as well as the licenses necessary to operate that ship, both personally and for my company. This is the contact information for my company's lawyer. She's aware of the situation. If she approves of the contract, we have a deal."

The President turned to the Admiral, "A Hephaestus class?"

"Do you mean the Scorpian Hephaestus class?" She asked.

"Yes. The reason Scorpia never suffered like Saggitaron."

"I'll need some time to run your requests past some departments. In the meantime, the Admiral and Minister will forward you everything we know. You'll have a response by the time you reach Canceron."

The signal cut out without even an opportunity to respond.