Battleborn

by Andrew Beery

  The fighters were continuing to harass us. Arquat kept the Defiant spinning and weaving to make hitting the engines that much more difficult. The only reason the smell of burning insulation wasn’t filling the ship was because we had too many holes in us to hold an atmosphere. We caught a break a couple of minutes later.

  The frigate was holding orbit near the surface of the moon. Presumably they had an away team crawling through the Diaspora. When our nuke went off and the Diaspora’s fusion containment field breached, the resulting explosion severely damaged the Mashuta ship. The fighters broke off their attack. Apparently losing a mothership to return to was more important than disabling the Defiant.

  My guess was they thought they would be able to chase down the Founder ship at some later point. We were damaged, leaking atmosphere, and apparently without shields or weapons. Where were we going to go?

  “Status, Chief?”

  “Honestly, sir, I have no idea. I don’t recognize half these systems and those I do are so far beyond me I might as well be a cave man fiddling with flint and steel.”

  “Cavemen didn’t have access to steel.”

  “You know what I mean, sir.”

  After another couple of minutes, Arquat rematerialized on the Defiant’s small bridge.

  “I believe we are ready, Colonel. We should be able to execute a 0.36 second microjump.”

  “0.36 seconds? How far can we get in under half a second?” I asked.

  Arquat smiled. It was a strange sight on his almost human face.

  “Farther than you might imagine. For the moment though, we should be able to reach Beta-118 without too much difficulty. Assuming we don’t disintegrate on entry or exit from Skip Space.”

  Mashuta was a big company. The biggest of the big. They had gotten that way by being ruthless. Ronit Yargiv was every bit as ambitious, but since she had taken over TransCorp she had worked tirelessly to transform the culture of her company. Was the point of life to finish with the most toys… or to leave the world a better place for your children?

  Chapter 9: There is fire in the air

  I woke up with the bitter taste of bile in my mouth. It was a taste I hadn’t experienced since my days as a drunk. To be honest, it was not one of the memories I missed. The room I was in was dark except for the occasional flicker of an electrical short. I was still trying to put together where I was and what had happened when the lights winked on. They were red, which I found odd.

  Suddenly my seriously abused grey matter connected the dots. I was on the bridge of the Defiant. We had attempted to enter Skip Space. If this is what the crew of the Diaspora had endured every time they jumped for sixty plus years, then they had even more of my respect.

  I looked around the bridge. Tange was slumped over the engineering console just behind me. I checked her vitals and the vitals of everyone else using my suit’s status display. Everyone was fine but sleeping. It appeared that half the systems on the bridge were dark. I didn’t know what that meant for the rest of the ship, but it couldn’t be good.

  I tapped my comms.

  “Arquat, you still around, good buddy?”

  Nothing. If I hadn’t already been worried, I would be now. Without the Founder AI to help us run the ship, we were well and truly screwed.

  The Princess began to moan and shift in her seat.

  “My head… It feels like it’s going to explode. What happened?”

  “Welcome to my world for most of the last five years,” I said dryly. “If I had to guess, I’d say we had a malfunction entering or exiting Skip space.”

  “Where are we?”

  I moved up to the navigation station. It still seemed to be operational. The lights were another matter. They kept flashing on and off. It was quiet irritating

  “According to the ship’s sensors we are still in the solar system but we’re just shy of ten AU out from our previous location. Congratulations, your Highness. We have officially gone farther than any human since the Founders.”

  Before I could say more, the others began to enter the bridge. Since we seemed to be marginally safe for the moment, I decided it was time we started setting repair priorities.

  Horse and Mel, I detailed to find a section of the ship we could seal off, patch and re-pressurize. I had no intention of spending the next several days or weeks sealed in an encounter suit.

  Doc, I put on Arquat detail. We needed the Diaspora’s former AI if we were going to have any chance of getting this ship running again. We knew from his previous comments that the AI’s core was located on the bridge. My guess was if we could restore power to the right systems he would come back online. As a secondary consideration I asked him to fix the damn lights. If anything, they had gotten worse since I woke up. In fairness to the engineers that had designed the screwy lights… I was suffering from a major screwed-up-skip-jump induced headache.

  The Chief and I were going to take a look at the engines and see what we could do. Without a working FTL drive of some sort we might be years getting back home… and that was assuming we had food, air and water to survive that long. Without sublight engines, even that option would evaporate.

  That left Tange. It felt awkward giving royalty orders, but when I hesitated to do so she made it abundantly clear in front me and the others that for the duration of this emergency she was placing herself under my command and she expected/demanded to be treated equally.

  That being the case, I assigned her the task of exploring the ship and cataloging things that might be immediately useful… water, food, medical supplies, etc.

  I was thankful to get off the bridge. I didn’t envy Thompson one bit. The red lighting and the fact that it refused to stay on was enough to drive a man to drink and I needed no such temptation.

  With no maps or prior knowledge of the layout of the Defiant, the Chief and I were forced to make our way aft and explore in the hopes of finding our way to Engineering eventually. The ship was designed to carry twenty passengers and a crew of ten. That meant it was not so big a ship that it should take hours to find engineering and yet after our third dead end, I thought that might well end up being the case.

  Eventually we stumbled upon a well-lit corridor that ended in a secure bulkhead with a hand plate.

  “If I were a betting man, Chief, I would say we are at Engineering and that is some type of biometric sensor designed to limit access to authorized personnel.”

  “That’s not a bet I would be willing to go against, Colonel,” the Chief said. “The question is… how do we get in?”

  The chief ran his hand scanner over what we were assuming was the biometric lock. He used his finger to trace an outline just wider than the plate. It seemed there was a minute break in the metal that might indicate an access point for the circuitry below.

  “Let’s pull this panel and see if we can’t figure it out?”

  At about the same time the words exited my mouth, the lights went out. I was cursed by the Defiant’s lighting systems. How could a ship as advanced as the Defiant not be able to keep the lights on… I mean aside from the fact it had been shot at… nearly blown up by both a nuclear bomb and a fusion reactor containment breach… and barely survived an abortive attempt to execute a Skip drive jump?

  I guess in retrospect, it was amazing there were lights at all.

  Farther down the hall, in the direction we had come from, the lights flashed three times and then stayed on.

  “Did that strike you as odd?” I asked the Chief.

  “That it did.”

  We slowly walked towards the new light. As we got there the light went out and this time the section of the corridor near what we assumed was the Engineering security hatch lit up.

  “Ah… somebody’s messing with us,” the Chief said.

  “I think you’re right and, if my suspicions are correct, that someone is the ship’s AI.”

  I tapped my comms.

  “Jamie, how soon before you get those systems on the bridge back online?”
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  “You mean aside from the fact I have no idea what half this equipment does and have no idea why it’s not working? I’d be happy to give you an estimate. I’d say the day after next year or the year after that! It will be fixed when it’s fixed and not a moment sooner.”

  I switched my comms back to the Chief and myself.

  “I think I liked him better when he was afraid of his own shadow.”

  Switching back to the bridge circuit I tried a different approach.

  “We think Arquat may be using the lighting systems to communicate.”

  “Duh… Of course, he’s using the lights to communicate. That should have been obvious to anyone on the bridge. What, did you think all that flickering was just faulty wiring or something?”

  I switched back to my local comms again.

  “Scratch that, I definitely liked him better when he was afraid of his own shadow.”

  I toggled comms to link everybody in.

  “This is Riker. Heads up people. Arquat seems to be alive and not so well. He’s attempting to signal us through the lighting system. I think he can see us but cannot hear us. Doctor Thompson is working on establishing two-way communication.”

  “Hello, Doctor Thompson is already communicating with the ship’s AI, he’s helping me figure out the defective bridge systems,” Thompson said sarcastically from the bridge.

  I was a bit confused.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor, but didn’t you just tell me a few minutes ago that you didn’t know how long it was going to take you get power to the bridge? If Arquat is helping you, how is it you don’t know more about your repair status?”

  “It’s not as if we are having an open and frank exchange of ideas here. I’m doing the best I can as fast as I can.”

  Suddenly the lights went on… in my head, not the corridor.

  “Doctor… How are you communicating with Arquat?”

  “You said it yourself. He can see, but not hear. I’m…”

  “…writing on the walls,” I finished.

  I felt stupid and wished I hadn’t kept the team-wide comm link up.

  A few seconds later, both Horse and the Princess checked in and confirmed they too had been communicating with the ship’s AI. Neither had thought to write on the walls but play-acting and pointing had worked well to get them to their objectives. Apparently, the Chief and I were the only ones who missed the memo on the whole ‘Arquat’s trying to help us’ thing.

  Did I mention I felt stupid?

  “Chief, does your belt pouch include a pen… something we can write on the wall with?”

  Michaels skipped his belt pouch and went straight to his tool bag.

  “I don’t typically carry markers that can work in a vacuum, but I do have something that should do the trick quite nicely.”

  He handed me a small plasma torch. Now let’s be honest. Who doesn’t like a plasma torch… especially a small, easy-to-carry one? If I ever have kids, I’m going to ask for one for Father’s Day.

  I quickly sketched on the wall.

  Is this the way to Engineering? 1=yes 2=no.

  The lights flashed twice. Now we were getting somewhere. Well, not actually; we still had no idea where Engineering was.

  Suddenly all the lights went out. I was clued into the game by now, so this didn’t surprise me.

  A moment later a single light reactivated. It was down a corridor we had previously walked. The Chief and I then played a game of follow the light. Eventually we arrived at a blue wall. We had been here before. As far as we could tell it was still a dead end. It was plasma torch time again.

  Is this Engineering?

  One flash.

  Can you open?

  Two flashes.

  Can we open?

  Two flashes. A pause then one flash.

  I looked at the Chief.

  “Thoughts?”

  “He doesn’t know?” the Chief answered questioningly.

  Michaels tried to rub his chin. He was not successful. That pesky little encounter suit that allowed him to breath in a vacuum got in the way.

  Suddenly, I had a thought… yes, it does happen upon occasion.

  “Chief, what would happen if there was atmosphere behind that bulkhead and we opened it?” I knew the answer. We’d be smashed flat as the air rushed out and we’d be bounced along with it.

  “We passed through a hatch about fifty feet back. I’ll close it and let’s see what happens,” he said by way of answer.

  As soon as the chief touched the door Arquat must have seen it because he confirmed the move with a single flash of the overhead lights.

  I moved back to the now sealed hatch with the Chief. If Arquat opened what I now suspected was an emergency airtight seal to Engineering, then the air would fill the corridor like an explosion. I’d prefer to arrive at the hatch the Chief had just dogged shut on my own two feet as opposed to being blown across the same distance.

  The two of us squatted down. A moment later, the blue wall began to retract into the floor. As it did so there was an explosive recompression of the corridor. Despite being prepared for it; the Chief and I were tossed around like leaves by a lawn blower.

  It was only when things calmed down that we saw the fire.

  Major Clarkson buttoned his uniform collar. He was finally free. He had spent the last week in a Mashuta corporate lockup. It hadn’t mattered that he was innocent. That had been clearly established within a few days.

  Senior Execs needed a way to mollify their superiors. A ready-made scapegoat was an effective tool in this endeavor. It was only when he had been able to offer something sufficiently valuable in exchange for his freedom that the powers-that-be had begun to listen to him.

  Chapter 10: Wading across an ocean

  Let me state the obvious for a minute. Uncontrolled fires are bad things. An uncontrolled fire on a spaceship is no different than an uncontrolled fire on a submarine. It is to be discouraged and dealt with posthaste.

  A fire in Engineering was one of the worst places to have a fire. By the looks of things this one had not been burning long. That was the good news. The bad news was the sudden rapid movement of air when the air-tight barrier had lowered was like blowing on a hot coal. Flames suddenly erupted with renewed intensity.

  “Colonel! We need to get those fire suppression systems back online,” Michaels yelled as he started to race past me.

  I grabbed his shoulder.

  “No time, Chief. It could be hours or days to figure out how those systems operate. And that’s assuming they even are operational.”

  “We can’t just let it burn, sir.”

  “I agree. I have a plan.”

  He knew me well enough at this point to groan. In the interest of civility, I chose to ignore it. When I explained my plan to him; he reluctantly agreed. We began to look for long cables or wiring harnesses we could use to secure ourselves.

  One difference between a spaceship and a submarine is I can punch a hole in the one and air flies out making it harder for a fire to burn. In the other, water floods in… increasing air pressure and making things worse… think living in the combustion chamber of a diesel engine worse.

  The Chief and I were going to expose the Engineering section to as much hard vacuum as we could… and I knew just the hatch to open to make it happen.

  When we had secured ourselves as best we could, I cracked open the hatch the chief had just dogged shut a few minutes ago. I nearly had my arm ripped off for my trouble but within a couple of what seemed like hour-long minutes the volume of air moving through the open hatch dwindled to nothing.

  I closed and secured the hatch one more time. The Chief and I then went to inspect the damage. I have to be honest, I expected things to be worse. It looked like the primary controls had taken the brunt of the fire damage, but the auxiliary systems and control room seemed completely undamaged. I toggled the environmental override and this section of the ship began to pressurize.

  “Colonel, you
’re going to want to see this,” Michaels said after scanning the readouts for a few seconds.

  I walked over to where he was standing and looked at the screen that he had brought up. It was an inventory of the major systems on the ship. The item that the Chief had highlighted was labeled Da’Tellen Transfer device – teaching machine.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Sir, if you think it’s a way to fix this ship, then yes, it is.”

  There was an old saying told to school children. The Founders could teach you to fly in a night. Was this the Founder’s secret?

  “Does it give any other details?” I asked.

  He pressed a few buttons and a holographic display popped up in front of us. It showed what looked to be a reclining chair with an oversized helmet mounted to the back. A female voice began to describe the various features of the learning machine. It turns out the technology predated the Founders themselves. It was one of several bits of technology based on Ancestor artifacts that had been used by the Founders.

  “Looks like there are a couple of them in the Medical Bay,” the Chief said as he read through a secondary scrolling display.

  I nodded and toggled my comms.

  “Riker to Tange.”

  “Colonel, Tange here.”

  “Princess, have you found the Sickbay yet?”

  “Why, is somebody hurt?” was the immediate and somewhat concerned response.

  “Negative, negative. I just…”

  Before I could finish, she interrupted me.

  “Then unless you want to be my first patient you will cease calling me by my royal title. Understood?”

  I could tell from her voice that she was both serious and teasing at the same time. I smiled to myself. It was hard not to like the woman. Still, it didn’t matter what she said. She would always be a Princess and I would always be an indentured soldier.