{"id":77,"date":"2024-02-26T21:13:33","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T02:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/?p=77"},"modified":"2024-03-12T16:32:16","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T20:32:16","slug":"chapter-1-hulling-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/index.php\/2024\/02\/26\/chapter-1-hulling-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 1: Hulling I"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cYou have contacts descending, Angels 100 and dropping-\u201d<\/em>
<\/em>\u201c-jesus, I\u2019m lighting up like a Christmas tree-\u201d<\/em>
<\/em>\u201c-roll left, roll left-\u201d<\/em>
<\/em>\u201c-hypersonic, hostiles going hypersonic-\u201d<\/em>
<\/em>\u201c-hell, they\u2019re gonna be on me like white on rice – Fox Two, Fox Two!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

-First confirmed hostile action against House Suubanunaam during the Battle over Hampton Roads<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CE2047\/NC695<\/strong>
<\/strong>OLYMPIA – LOW EARTH ORBIT [LEO]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kilauea <\/em>was in drydock and being subjected to desperately needed refit and crew rebuild, so Katherine reported to Emiliano Salas\u2019 borrowed office over in the naval annex. Her CO stood up, welcoming her with a smile, a returned salute and a firm handshake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKate! I was just pulling up your request. Sit down, sit down. Want any coffee?\u201d An expansive gesture took in a little battered Keurig, precariously perched on a bolted-down filing cabinet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo sir, thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salas looked comfortable, his uniform jacket off and hung on a collapsible metal hanger by the door. The Naval Annex provided temporary office space; compact but comfortable and in the last month since Kilauea <\/em>docked Salas had added a little bit of home to it. A framed picture of his wife and kids, a mobile trunk stamped with Kilauea<\/em>\u2019s service number. They exchanged a few pleasantries, discussed how their leave was going \u2013 Salas rode her a little for not taking a shuttle down dirtside, but then, neither had he. She made excuses about wanting to be available for the refits, that she still had paperwork to finish. Salas nodded and commiserated and though it had only been a six-month tour, Kilauea <\/em>was small and Salas was perceptive. He knew that she knew she was dissembling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to be straight with you, Kate \u2013 you\u2019re not on a command track.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The words weren\u2019t unexpected. It was too much of an ask, too presumptuous-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve done a bang-up job as Chief Ops,\u201d Salas continued, trying to soften the blow. \u201cLiu\u2019s never had a bad thing to say about you. Command\u2019s a different animal. Besides, I didn\u2019t think you ever wanted a boat of your own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She set her teeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the next step.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salas nodded slowly, the scroll wheel of his mouse click click clicking <\/em>in the sudden quiet. Atmosphere scrubbers hummed and popped. Olympia\u2019s half-gee felt strange, neither the comforting pull of standard thrust gravity or the loose uncertainty of the float. The chair under her rear felt only partially real, her stomach stuck halfway between settled and confused. Plan was for Olympia to be dialed up to normal gravity over the next year, year and a half, to let the complex settle. Earth\u2019s most famous orbital had grown quick, as fast and as reckless as everything else after the end of the occupation and now it had to be reined in before it fell apart under its own momentum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAcademy into five years active, five reserve and then applied for active again. You\u2019ve got kids, Kate \u2013 how old is the youngest? Your daughter \u2013 I\u2019m sorry, her name-\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKyla,\u201d Katherine offered. \u201cLiam is the older, he\u2019s eight. He\u2019ll be nine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a reflection on you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She almost chewed on her lip, caught herself. She reached Lieutenant Commander five years ago at twenty-five. Quick, young. Five years ago<\/em>. The Navy didn\u2019t skimp on promotions, not if you proved yourself. It was about getting the right asses in the right seats. Calling the growth of both the Army and Navy in the past two decades \u2018explosive\u2019 was an understatement and with the way ships rolled off the line both here at Olympia, at the Iyyesian yards and the new ones by Saturn: there were always slots to fill and just not enough people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five years without a promotion was, if anything, the baldest reflection on a person. She had been reserve, not active, fine \u2013 but that didn\u2019t change things. It meant she\u2019d reached her pinnacle. Chief of Combat Systems Operations wasn\u2019t bad<\/em>, but it was a plateau. Her peers were all moving on. Kilauea <\/em>wasn\u2019t just being refit; she was also being rotated with a new crew. Ekon – Chief Engineering \u2013 he was reassigned already to a battleship. Rumor had it Salas might not return to captain Kilauea <\/em>again but might be on the shortlist to captain the latest of the new Roseate Hour<\/em>-class dreadnoughts when it rolled out of production: The Cloud of Unknowing<\/em>. Her gigantic hull loomed over Kilauea <\/em>just a few dozen kilometers from where they sat now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the end of your career. This isn\u2019t an old world Navy, you know that. You\u2019ve done a great job where you are and with Big K going through a rebuild, it would be good for you to be one of the constants in the command group. And Big K is going to be staying local. I shouldn\u2019t be saying that, but she\u2019s staying attached to Battlegroup Caloris as a training ship. Mercury is a whole lot closer than Eridanus or Herculaneum. You\u2019ll be able to see little Liam and Kyla grow up. Talk to them on a delay of minutes, not days or weeks. Get shore leave to spend time with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a strange feeling, getting exactly what she wanted and was terrified to get. Half of her wanted to screw propriety and hug the man, the other half of her wanted to dig in her heels and fight. He kept saying she did a great job as Chief Ops. Great job, no complaints, excellent officer, admirable division chief, respected by those who served under her, blah blah. And then: you\u2019re not good enough for command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIsn\u2019t it worth a chance?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God<\/em>, she thought, even as she spoke, it was <\/em>not worth a chance<\/em>. She couldn\u2019t take the words back, but everyone had to do their part. Was sitting on her ass on a training ship for the next four years, was that doing enough? And Salas was right: Caloris Planitia was just a few days from Earth. Mixed blessings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salas hummed under his breath, gaze flicking over his computer screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere might be something. A friend of mine\u2019s boat came in a week ago. Jamie\u2019s lost his XO to lung cancer \u2013 not terminal, but she\u2019s going back earthside for treatment. If you\u2019re serious about this \u2013 and Kate, listen carefully \u2013 I could put in for you to transfer to his command. Semeru <\/em>is the ship and she\u2019s set to escort the next convoy to MAR Pelileal. Pelileal<\/em>, Kate.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The name of the ship \u2013 Semeru \u2013 <\/em>didn\u2019t ring a bell nor the name of the captain. Pelileal absolutely did. The latest and possibly last of the Mustering\/Armory\/Refit bases whose distance made it the darling of the news cycle. Sixteen hundred short light-years away: the farthest the Allies had ever reached. A real marker of the ingenuity, gumption, and bloody-minded determination of the Navy and their doctrine. Sixteen hundred SLY or close to a month\u2019s travel and that was just the diving part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It couldn\u2019t possibly be farther from Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ll take it,\u201d she said, mouth dry and tongue like wool. It was for the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CE2048\/NC695<\/strong>
<\/strong>MAR PELILEAL – HIGH SOLAR ORBIT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Semeru <\/em>was of the oldest battlecruiser type: Acotango-<\/em>class. She was on the smaller side at three hundred and fifty meters, barely longer than the largest wet-navy ships of the old world. A ship without a thought to aesthetics: blocky and angular, ugly to look at but efficient, wrapped up in layers of whipple over composite armor plate. A phased lance ran the length of her and sixteen two hundred millimeter railgun rifles made up her main teeth, supplemented by the usual tube clusters for a variety of missiles: ARMAC-9s, SKIDAR-202s, Tupo-4s and RINGDARTs. Katherine knew the systems inside and out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Acotangos<\/em> were part of the initial fever-pitch design frenzy, one that resulted in the scrappy and famous and now long retired Powell<\/em>-class destroyers of Intercession fame. Like all of those from that time and still some now, Semeru <\/em>was tower-type, all her decks aligned with her thrust vector. Newer designs, starting from the largest, were incorporating smaragdine <\/em>tech from the drawing board, giving them the same inertial sinks as Reach warships and constant artificial gravity as well. Semeru <\/em>had first <\/em>sailed before the neutronium looms at Hyades started to get up to speed, when the only smaragdine to be found came from looting killed Reach ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only problem with the delicate, exotic material was that it liked to rapidly decay if you so much as sneezed in its general direction. Surviving the various shocks and violence that putting a warship out of action entailed meant that most of the smaragdine threads of Reach warships had already evaporated by the time marines cut their way in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things changed a few years ago when news started reporting a huge increase in smaragdine production from the neutron stars in Hyades. Popular rumor for the rapidly increasing output was that some Reach research materials had been recovered, but others suspected turncoats or captured specialists that helped the Allies get their own production up off the ground. Whichever it was, or if God himself decided to give His people a hand, Katherine was eternally grateful that the Navy decided it was worth sharing the wealth. Almost all of the stuff stayed earmarked for dreadnoughts like the Antediluvian- <\/em>and Roseate Hour-<\/em>classes, for Olympia\u2019s expansion, for the kingships, for dive-stations, but the looms were running 24\/7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Semeru<\/em> joined the ranks of tower-types that gained a tiny threaded smaragdine sink, allowing the ship to maintain between .7 and .8g constantly <\/em>in the living spaces. Trying to thread the whole ship would have been a waste of time, effort and the precious material. The big heads in charge thought it was worth at least overhauling the older ships so that the crew could cut back on the necessary supplements and complicated exercise rituals needed to not sort of fall apart in prolonged zero gee. Not to mention it saved lives, shifting medical into the sphere of the inertial sinks. Gee-burns did unsightly things to injuries and microgravity was worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, it meant that Kate could go for a jog every morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The yards opened Semeru <\/em>up like a fish, cutting out the previous living module and welding in a new one. Bulkheads had to be shifted and rearranged and it left a loop of a corridor between the new living spaces and the rest of the ship, which made for a perfect jogging track. It was probably the intended use, given the sometimes obnoxious thoughtfulness <\/em>that was being enforced at almost every level of society these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waste not, want not: find ten uses for a single thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In compression pants under shorts and a tank with her hair up in a short, tight tail, she pounded feet in circles, making lap after lap after lap, lost in the music thumping through one earbud. Out of uniform, a handful of other sailors entering and exiting the living spaces didn\u2019t recognize her as their new XO, just giving her space and right-of-way as she jogged past. A few others used it the same, passing her in the opposite direction. Underfoot was tight mesh grating, walls covered in anti-spalling cushioning, broken up by maneuver bars for microgravity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lost in her thoughts, she slowed down to a rapid walk, taking deep breaths and savoring the burn in her legs and lungs both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seegs joined her, poking his head out of one of the hatches leading into the living spaces and smiling, warm and sincere as ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGod, Katie, you still run?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t even,\u201d she laughed, catching a towel he tossed to her, paired with one already over his shoulders.  In his exercise kit like her, Seegs fell in beside her, matching her pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cSo how the hell have you been? Last I heard, you made a little Hulling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTwo now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDamn, congratulations. You look good.\u201d He glanced at her, askance. She hummed acknowledgement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow\u2019s Nisha?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He leapt on the redirect, excited as a little boy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAh, she\u2019s postdoc. She did her practicum in over in the Pact capital on Iyyestil. Things are real dogshit <\/em>over there, Kate. We thought Earth had it rough, but from what Nisha is telling me, we got lucky\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour family saw the Bihar drop, Seegs. Come on. It\u2019s worse than Archie wiping seventeen cities?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLittle biddie planet, so things get worse over there quick. Nisha\u2019s telling me that it\u2019s decades before they\u2019re thinking things settle down instead of up. Earth\u2019s already bouncing back. That\u2019s why we invited all the saehara.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2020 was too early for her to remember anything but scraps of images, here and there. Seegs, like her, was Gen H. Or Gen O. Harrowing or Occupation, depending on who was asking. They didn\u2019t see the drops, but they grew up in the shadow of them. Seventeen holes in the ground where cities used to be, gravesites for a billion souls. Her mother did a lot to explain why God would let something like that happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her generation, they grew up with Archie\u2019s boot on the necks of the species and never knowing anything else. Names everyone knew, names ingrained into every single human being. House Suubanunaam, Governor-General Vhithliss. Secretary General Kinkulith – and that one was a joke. The biggest name: The Reach of the Houses of Sholuto. A big name for killers. She knew darker, colder winters; summers with paler sunlight and frost on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seegs\u2019 girl, Nisha, was right about one thing at least. Suub, the idiots that came to Earth, tried to fix things. They wanted to get the world running again after they cut the legs out from under the global community and apparently they had a timetable to do so. While their partner-in-crime, House Kalathivu, was re-enacting World War I a hundred short lightyears away at Iyyestil, the aliens at Earth were scrambling to hook fusion reactors into powergrids and set up local production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After L-Day, after Endurance – <\/em>the original Endurance, <\/em>the captured cruiser, not the kingship – cut the head off the snake at New York City with one hundred and twenty-two millimeter rifles, there\u2019d been a widespread release of documents captured from Suubanunaam and revealed by captured officials. The Harrowing had been a workshopped tactic, calculated for expediency of \u2018local political collapse\u2019 and \u2018generating viable power-vacuum openings for integration of Suubanunaam ruling apparatus\u2019. The movies always said the aliens came to earth because they hated humans or wanted to eat them or things like that \u2013 none of them imagined the aliens that showed up would be middle managers<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seegs went on and on about Nisha\u2019s work on the other homeworld, talking about fallout management and trying to reverse acidification in the local seas \u2013 which was also a test for Earth, because the Harrowing and then collapse of global traffic bought time, not a stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019d only met Nisha once or twice, but the Indian woman was bright, if quiet, and from everything Seegs said about her (and he always said a lot) she had a drive that was frightening. People like her on the problem of Iyyestil\u2019s collapsing biosphere and Earth\u2019s shaky one had to be a good sign for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cGuns,\u201d a sailor greeted, sidling past them, interrupting. \u201cMa\u2019am.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2018Guns\u2019?\u201d She repeated with a snort and ugly laugh, unable to choke it back, train of thought thoroughly derailed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seegs flexed, biceps bulging, raising an eyebrow and looking betrayed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChief of Combat Ops. You know. Guns<\/em>.\u201d Walking backwards, he struck another pose, deliberate. She shoved his chest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat? It\u2019s better than Seegs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI still\u2019ve no idea where you even got that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subodh shook his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not even a story<\/em>. I can\u2019t believe it stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s how I was introduced <\/em>to you! Devin\u2019s like: \u2018Hey Kate, this is Seegs, he\u2019s trying to be a stupor soldier, gonna strangle Archie and knock his nuts off.\u2019 I didn\u2019t know your name until second year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAcademy shit,\u201d Seegs replied sagely, which explained it all. \u201cI\u2019ve made my peace. Listen, Kate, you done pretending to be a trench monkey?\u201d He pointed to a hatch, shut and sealed, coming up. \u201cYou should come topside.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katherine mopped her face, the back of her neck, draped the towel over her shoulders, rolling her arms. Semeru <\/em>ran warm, the old boat\u2019s heatsinks only keeping just ahead of demand. At least water reclamation kept the air dry and low humidity \u2013 nothing was worse on a ship than when both went down. It got hot, humid and oppressive fast<\/em>. Stopping at the designated hatch, Seegs racked the lock-wheel for her, pulling it open and gesturing Katherine through first. He was old-school; she remembered back in Academy he always got doors for their female classmates and only sat after they did. He got shit for it. It never stopped him. Good to see Seegs hadn\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The view beyond stole her breath away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every Navy ship was required to incorporate a particular piece of architecture. It was actually outlined in a General Order, veritably written in stone. Along with weapon hardpoints and reaction-control thrusters and sensor arrays, they had to have a topside<\/em>. Usually, it was tucked away somewhere inconspicuous and on the Acotango<\/em>-class, it was a little blister dome of coated luminglass panels like a greenhouse. Topside was figured essential to mental well-being; otherwise sailors locked up inside titanium tubes for months on end would go, in a word, crazy<\/em>. Submariners in the past century could surface and breathe air under the sky. Not an option out in the black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Topsides were there to open the world up, to look at the stars and the \u2018sky\u2019 and pop that blister of claustrophobia that slowly dug into a person during tours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seegs, following her topside, murmured something in hindi as starlight fell across his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pelileal\u2019s Veil was an open cluster, young enough that it still had a nebula. She\u2019d read up before Semeru <\/em>left the solar system, not knowing what an \u2018open cluster\u2019 was. In short: a bundle of stars packed together, all being born from the same dense interstellar matter until eventually they blew it all away. Reading about it was one thing \u2013 seeing it was something else. She\u2019d been on duty in CIC when they surfaced at Pelileal and seeing the exterior through hull-cameras wasn\u2019t the same as the breathtaking vista now before her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stars filled the sky. Bright, brighter than any to be seen on earth and close enough that their color shone through. Ghostly tendrils and threads of shimmering blue and green made a heavenly web across the entire sky, mixed in with a gauzy, pale haze just visible enough so that no part of the sky was truly black<\/em>. \u2018The Lady\u2019s Veil\u2019, they called it, and Katherine couldn\u2019t see it as anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve never been out of the solar system, hm?\u201d Seegs whispered. It didn\u2019t feel right to speak any louder when topside, like it would disturb the peace of the place. Acotango<\/em>-class had a decent square-footage to their topside: about thirty feet in diameter and perfectly circular and it was empty but for them. No lights – letting the stars and the sky throw cross-hatch shadows from the luminglass dome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was stationed at Caloris for my whole first tour.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before seeing the Veil, that had been the most humbling moment of her life. It was something of a rite of passage for new arrivals at the Caloris crater to have to go out and see the Sun from the scorched surface of Mercury. Three times bigger than at Earth doesn\u2019t seem like it would be that different, but she couldn\u2019t put into words the feeling when she looked up and the Sun, that one constant, the thing that every human ever saw the exact same way, was different<\/em>. Bigger and brighter and somehow more furious. More powerful. Mighty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nondenominational chapel at Caloris had a luminglass window that faced the slow, endless sunrise for a reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sun from Caloris Planitia meant more than the Sun up close at the dive array. At the array, she\u2019d gone topside to look and it looked\u2026unreal. Too big, too clear, too detailed. The Sun wasn\u2019t a ball or a real, physical body with spots and glows and huge streamers of starstuff. That view, that was for stars<\/em>, not the sun<\/em>. The sun <\/em>was white disc; a concept more than anything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, at the tight orbit the dive stations claimed Semeru <\/em>had to have her fields up at full tune and the filter coating on the luminglass was tinted to maximum, which washed out color and made everything unreal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was at Perseus for a few years. That was my first time out of the solar system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUh-huh,\u201d Kate managed, still open-mouthed. She had to get a picture of this. Send it back home. Liam would flip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGot in a fight out there, when the line was pushing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That got her attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo shit?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNone at all. Didn\u2019t make the news, just a handful of goblins popped in to see what was going on. They tried to take a dive station and we were all gunning for promotions so our squadron ran them down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katherine whistled, tuneless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you get to strangle Archie and punch his balls off?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlmost.\u201d Seegs wandered over to the edge of the dome. Semeru<\/em>, along with the rest of the squadron, sat at high anchor over the local star, just in sight of topside, churning and warm and orange, as big around as her fist. The dive stations skimmed lower, in the denser stellar matrix where their fields always glowed a little from the superheated flux. She followed her friend, reaching out to touch the chilly luminglass. It felt good, compared to the warm air. Far distant, a flicker of Saint Elmo\u2019s fire marked a new surfacing, too far to make out any details. It could be a courier from MAR Tysuv, it could be another chunk of the convoy; it could be a ship returning from local recon. Diving was always an imprecise \u2018science\u2019, driven by vagaries of weather and friction and streams, leaving estimated arrival times as a guesstimate, not a rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThink we\u2019ll see anything out here?\u201d She wondered aloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seegs wrapped fists about either end of his towel, resting his arms against his chest and looking thoughtful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re too far out. When the push goes at Leonis; that\u2019s where all the Houses are going to look.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of passing through her service without ever once seeing combat sat strange with Katherine. To grow up under occupation, to be too young to take part in the global liberation, to be just the right age to take part in the birth of mankind and saeherid\u2019s true interstellar navy, but to never get a chance to see guns fired in anger? Count her blessings. Seegs\u2019 luck at MAR Perseus aside, the casualty tolls from near-parity clashes against the Reach could be horrifying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019d keep her faith in God. He led her out here for a reason, Katherine just had to trust that it was one that would mean something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kilauea was in drydock and being subjected to desperately needed refit and crew rebuild, so Katherine reported to Emiliano Salas\u2019 borrowed office over in the naval annex…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[15,14],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tales.ecumene.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}