Ensign Probus

by Wendie Nordgren

  Hearing her speak was enough for me to identify her. “Captain Espanoza, to what do I owe the honor?”

  Again, her voice echoed across the entire base. “Imagine my concern when I tracked your heat signatures from the Empress and realized you’d gone. Captain Alaric would never forgive me if anything were to happen to you under my watch.” I detected far more humor than concern in her voice.

  “Do we have you to thank for deactivating the monstrosity which was about to skewer us?” It had stopped mere feet away. I could only assume that she had been the one to sic it on us in the first place. She had gotten our attention just as she had intended. I could smell the machine oil used to keep it moving.

  She hesitated before answering. “I did remotely command it to stop. Tell me. What was so important on Luna 241 as to take you away from your ship?”

  I clenched my jaw. She had probably already guessed the answer. “I was bored. My ship became encumbered by debris, so I decided to go on a field trip to see where it would be sent once it’s cleared. Has there been any progress with the mess?”

  “Regretfully, no. Has the base given you the insights which you sought?”

  My left eyebrow seemed to raise of its own accord as if steamy anger exiting my eyeballs had done it. Captain Espanoza suspected what had brought us here. She would have scanned the base immediately and found the alloy and was probably on her way here to take it. I was sure the others could hear her voice booming through the station and would know it was too late to worry about the AI sending an alert to the Militia now. I watched as another red light began to glow on the machine trapping us in the corridor. I assumed her communications officer had gained access to its sensors. She and her bridge crew were probably watching us as if we were mice caught red-handed with the cheese, but surprise. I wasn’t a fucking mouse.

  I smiled sweetly. “Why yes, Captain Espanoza. Thank you for asking. It seems starship captains can remotely operate the systems on bases such as this one. I had no idea. Did you?” I asked Cedrenus. Turning to him, I hid my hand from the machine’s sensors and signaled for him to prepare to fire. I tapped my thigh for Thunderdrop to come to me. He crawled to my back and watched everything over my shoulder. There was no way I’d let her keep us trapped until she got here to take from us what we’d found first. Fuck that.

  She said, “It comes in handy when your ship needs repairs and the supplies needed aren’t onboard.” Amusement continued to grow in her voice.

  “This excursion has been enlightening. Had my ship not been mired, I never would have realized how vastly amusing lunar bases can be. Oh, and Captain Espanoza?”

  “Yes?”

  “For the time being, I’m going by Ensign Probus.”

  I gave Cedrenus the signal. Lifting the blasters Sparrow had made for me, I set them to their highest setting and fired. Cedrenus fired his blaster rifle where I did. We couldn’t destroy the heavy hunk of automated metal, but we could turn it. High-pitched scraping sounds assaulted our ears as the machine shrieked and gouged the flooring and walls. We kept firing until it was wedged and slightly warped sideways into the corridor wall. A groan sounded from within it. It was thoroughly stuck.

  “Oh, no! Did we break it?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Let’s go,” Cedrenus whispered. Wedging a boot between the doors, he widened the gap enough to get his arm and shoulder through. Then, he got his knee between them and pushed.

  On the crosswalk, I said quietly, “They know. We need to get the others and get out of here before they arrive and take it from us.” As we walked toward the next building, I fumed. “She did all of this on purpose, the AI, the forcefields, and all of it.” My forehead scrunched up in anger. “There is no fucking way that I’m letting her take it from us. Finders keepers.” Whipping out my vid-screen, I tried to get a lock on the others and their locations, but my readings were being scrambled. “That bitch! You know. Once upon a time, I idolized her. I had wanted to be her.” I made a disgusted sound.

  Cedrenus grinned at me. “If you were her, what would you do?”

  My cheeks burned. Sheepishly, I said, “The same thing but with explosions.” I returned my now useless vid-screen to my pocket.

  A buzzing sound had us walking faster. Drones were coming straight for us, and from the next warehouse, I could already hear the sounds of heavy machinery moving to trap us.

  “Well, fuck. What do we do now?” I asked.

  Lifting his rifle, Cedrenus shot both of the drones out of the air. I tipped my head to him in respect. He was an excellent marksman. “They have control of the station, and their goal is not to harm us but to trap us.” He stared at the next building and then down at the rocky ground several feet below.

  Dread soured my stomach as I came to my own conclusions.

  He said, “She’ll have every robotic piece of equipment on the station coming at us inside of the buildings.”

  I shook out my hands to release the tension. I needed to be calm and centered like an Inquisitor. A surprising realization came to me. That was it. That was what had really attracted me to the Academy. I didn’t necessarily want to hunt down criminals or serve them with the Empire’s justice, but I did want the calm emotional detachment and logical reactions for which they were known. Granted, boys selected for service into the Inquisitors branch were born with those qualities and early on tended to manifest aggressive tendencies, but I needed to master them. It was a way for me to continue to heal from the trauma of my youth so I could put it behind me. Calming and centering myself, I looked logically at our predicament and tried to put myself in Captain Espanoza’s chair.

  “If I were her, I’d use heavy machinery to trap the two of us since I’m pregnant and not much of a threat. I’d focus my attention on Eli, Drex, Zared, Dario, Yukihyo, and Izaac. They are dangerous. No offense, but we’re still students and aren’t as threatening. Going inside is a mistake. She’ll expect us to realize it and try to get to the ground. If I were her, I’d shut off the artificial gravity outside in the domes to keep us from being able to run to my husbands for help.”

  “Would she turn off the oxygen?”

  “No, killing me would start a war, and it would be her fault.” Smiling at Thunderdrop, I asked, “Can you tether the three of us together and take us to Yukihyo?” I leaned over the walkway’s railing and looked at the ground below. “We need to get down there.”

  “Chirp!” Excited to be of monumental importance to our mission, Thunderdrop used his sticky butt glue to make lines of silk around our waists. Soon, only a few feet of web separated the three of us. He attached a line to the walkway in preparation.

  Cedrenus and I sat on the edge and waited.

  “How far down is it?” I asked.

  “With my vid-screen being scrambled, I’d have to guess it’s about forty feet.” He could see my fear. “Thunderdrop, be very careful with Teagan and the babies,” he warned.

  “Chitter! Chitter! Clack?” translated into, “Who the rainstorm do you think you’re talking to?” Rain, water, and getting wet were amongst the worst things in my spider’s opinion.

  Having yet another epiphany, I asked, “Do you hate your name? You hate water, and I named you after a storm on Arachne.”

  “Chitter clack chirp chirp.” He liked his name. For Arachnean Silk spiders, it was a tough name, like what a mercenary would have.

  “What did he say?” Cedrenus asked.

  “He likes it. Being named after something they think is scary gets him some respect from the other spiders.”

  Cedrenus was grinning while Thunderdrop attached additional lines of silk to us and started lowering us down. “You’re stronger than you look.”

  “He’s the best spider,” I said nervously. The metal edge of the walkway scraped against the back of my environmental suit. Keeping a tight grip on the railing, I forced myself to let go of it at the last possible moment and concentrated on my breathing and on being calm and emotionally detached. Maybe, detached was the w
rong word to be thinking about under the circumstances. I knew Zared and Izaac were struggling to stay out of my thoughts and emotions since I was on a mission, but Yukihyo couldn’t help himself.

  Sensing my fear, he soothed me. Forcefields and short distances meant nothing to him and neither did my own insistence of doing everything on my own. Sighing, I welcomed his assistance and realized it was similar to when one of the children wanted to do something on their own, and I offered a bit of facilitation without taking over. I couldn’t help it, and Yukihyo couldn’t help it either. Our empathic connection saved me from panicking. I looked down at the hard, greyish-white, rock-strewn ground below.

  “Don’t look at it. Instead, look at me.”

  “Is that fear I hear in your voice, Ensign Cedrenus?” Tearing my sight from the ground, I looked from his boots, dangling in the empty air, and up his suit to his face.

  “Drones,” he said. Lifting his rifle, he fired while I shot the second one.

  Shooting drones while dangling in midair from lines of spider silk hadn’t been the best choice. I started spinning. Grabbing my arm, Cedrenus tried to stop me.

  “Chitter chitter!”

  Dizziness overcame me, and my chin dropped to my chest. Luckily, I didn’t vomit in my helmet. Cedrenus surrounded me in his arms, but it didn’t make my head or our bodies stop spinning. I heard the crunch of his boots touching the ground, but he held me away from it. Regaining my equilibrium, I pushed against his chest for him to put me down and realized that he couldn’t. We were stuck in our current position by Thunderdrop’s twisted lines. Quickly, my spider crawled over us and used his claws to cut us free.

  “Are you alright?” Cedrenus asked.

  “I’m fine, now that the spinning has stopped.”

  “They would have seen what we were doing before we managed to disable their drones.”

  “Let’s move. From what I remember of the layout, we need to go there.” I pointed to a building half a mile away. At that very moment, the dome’s artificial gravity was deactivated.

  Chapter Seven

  Quickly, Cedrenus and I activated our boots, but without metal hulls onto which they might attach, they didn’t do us much good.

  “That fucking cunt,” I quietly fumed.

  “At least, we still have air,” he said as he took my hand.

  Thunderdrop clung to my back. Together, we traversed the distance in a slow bouncing walk across the barren landscape toward our objective. The base’s warehouses had been constructed atop metal pylons above the surface which probably made it easier for scows and other ships. However, there were other buildings at ground level. Their entrances were used by bots which we discovered once we’d gotten the doors to open.

  “It’s another trap,” Cedrenus said as he quickly closed them.

  They sealed with a puff, and in vexation I stared at them. The raised metal designs on the doors were coated with a thin layer of moon dust that had settled into the ridges. “What do we do now?”

  Frustrated and angry, we tried to find a solution.

  “Dust.” I stared up into his eyes. “Dust causes problems when it gets into machinery. They must have cleaning bots programmed to keep the doors and corridors clear of it.” Moving along the sides of the lower level, I found a small access point and pulled off a control panel. Smiling, I directed the bots to clean the doors. “Throw some dirt on the doors!”

  Cedrenus bounced away to do it. Sure enough, the small hatch opened, and a cleaning bot whirled out to clean up the mess. Sadly, it wasn’t heavy enough to stay grounded. I chuckled as it floated away. I motioned for Cedrenus to hurry.

  “Thunderdrop, will you go first?”

  “Chirp!” Black legs crawled over my head, and then his abdomen filled my sight. He disappeared into the darkness, and we followed.

  The tunnel had been designed to accommodate bots and was only about three by three feet, so we had to crawl through it on our hands and knees. Bots had no need of illumination either. Cedrenus and I activated the lights on our suits so we could see. Shuddering, I pushed aside my fear of dark, enclosed spaces. My knees, lower back, and the heels of my palms ached by the time we exited the tunnel and came out into a small room. It contained a bot-charging station and an incinerator.

  Shining our lights at the walls, we found a door used by the AI engineers for when they were sent to make repairs. It wasn’t secure and was easy for Cedrenus to open.

  “Good job, Thunderdrop.”

  He crawled up to my chest and nuzzled me while I ran my hand over his back.

  “He has been quite useful.”

  “Well, now what do we do? We got inside and past the robots and machinery, but how do we find the others without her spotting us?”

  Cedrenus thought for a moment, “If he stays on your shoulders and we activate our visual displacement shielding, we should be able to remain undetected as long as we don’t accidentally touch or move anything.”

  Without the use of our vid-screens or probes, it took some searching, but eventually we found our team. Using the power in my probe, Cedrenus gave the forcefield which trapped them a jolt. With sparks and the smell of burning plasti, it dropped and the doors opened. Smiling to myself, I hoped that Captain Espanoza was cussing up a storm trying to locate us.

  “We’ve been trapped and assumed you had been as well. How did you free yourselves?” Clark asked.

  “It’s a long story. We need to free the others and get out of here,” I said.

  “What about our mission?” Stayton asked.

  I pulled the brown and black metal with its iridescent sheen from my pocket. “If we escape Captain Espanoza, it will have been a success.”

  The guys looked from me to Cedrenus and seemed to observe how close we were.

  Unconcerned, Cedrenus said, “They’ve been using robotic machinery to try and trap us, but they can’t sense us through our visual displacement shielding.”

  Stayton said, “Then, we need to make a run for it.”

  The word made me cringe, and Clark noticed my hand as it drifted down to my babies. Turning to Stayton and Ross, he said, “The two of you are fast. Teagan is worn out. Go get a stealth vessel. We’ll stay here and work on overriding the cargo bay door.” He pointed at the one used by robot drones to remove bins from the warehouse.

  “We won’t be able to fly it inside,” Stayton said.

  “No, but you can get close enough for us to make a short jump inside,” Clark said. Seeing my worry about attempting that kind of jump in my condition, he said, “Thunderdrop can harness you to my back. Don’t fear. I won’t let anything happen to you. Once we have a ship, we can blast our teams out.”

  Agreeing it was our best chance, we activated our visual displacement shielding, and the guys left to complete their tasks. Since we had left the doors to the storage facility open, it would look like we had all left and scattered. Captain Espanoza would never guess we would be staying put. Needing to rest, I sat.

  Beside me, a voice asked, “Are you alright?” It was Tyler.

  “I’m fine, just tired.” I watched as invisible men removed hull panels and worked to force the cargo door open. By the time Stayton and Ross arrived in the stealth ship, it was open.

  It was pointless now to continue using our shielding, so we deactivated it. The Constantine wouldn’t be able to miss the commotion outside of the building. Clark bent and picked me up in his arms. He was young, but he was strong. Thunderdrop looped strands of silk around us and then jumped inside of the ship where he secured his line. I still worried. I couldn’t help it. Levi ran, jumped across the two feet of empty air, and landed gracefully inside of the ship. Then, he turned, prepared to help us. If Clark slipped… if I hit my stomach….

  We’d had to change our plans. I couldn’t let him carry me on his back. It was too uncomfortable. Instead, he held me in a bridal hold. Holding onto Clark’s neck, I closed my eyes and lowered my helmet to his shoulder. He ran and jumped across the two feet of empty
air and landed inside of the ship without so much as jostling me. I sighed in relief. He placed me on my feet and turned to help the others. Stayton sealed the hatch, and we entered the lift, going up to the flight deck.

  From the cockpit, Ross said, “I’ve managed to override Militia interference! I’ve got Rovek!”

  “Report,” our instructor ordered.

  “Mission complete. We escaped and are aboard a stealth vessel,” Stayton responded.

  “Rendezvous with Gordian immediately,” Rovek sternly ordered.

  I sat wearily on the couch in the habitation area behind the cockpit and removed my helmet. An order was an order. Besides, the Militia couldn’t charge Yukihyo and the others for anything. Visiting Luna 241 hadn’t broken any laws. At least, I didn’t think so. Cedrenus and I might have gotten ourselves in trouble for destroying some expensive equipment, but I could pay for the damages.

  “Our goal is to evade the Militia and deliver the alloy to Inquisitor Gordian,” Stayton announced to us all.

  “Activating encrypted emergency beacon,” Clark reported.

  They had everything under control, and I didn’t have it in me to argue for the command chair. Cedrenus sat beside me. “How are you?” he asked.

  “Tired.”

  “Chirp! Chirp!” Thunderdrop lifted his legs up and down excitedly.

  “Good job out there, baby. We couldn’t have accomplished our mission without you.”

  “Chirp!”

  From the front of the vessel, I heard Stayton say, “Incoming. Two Militia scout ships coming in hot.”

  “Going dark,” Tyler said.

  The cabin lighting and all non-essential systems powered off to make our presence to the scouts less noticeable. Only the sensors of an Inquisitor’s warship would be able to detect us. For long moments, we waited in silence. Faintly, I felt something, almost as if someone had brushed against me. Pulling on Zared’s strength, since Izaac often fell into his habit of closing himself off from me, I shielded our thoughts and emotions in case the pilots were Laconian telepaths. In Captain Espanoza’s place, that’s who I would have sent. I could feel Zared and then Izaac in my mind, giving me the use of their telepathic abilities.