“Starlight?”
“A fusion reactor is little more than a miniature star, is it not?”
“Forget romantic, that’s downright poetic.”
Marigold shrugged again.
“I’ve had a lot of free time while we huddled in the shuttles. A hobby of mine is old literature, particularly fantasy. I wouldn’t admit this to my troops, but if I read enough of it over a short enough time period, I find it influences how I speak for a week or two.”
“Maybe you can give me a list of your favorite authors later? I wasn’t much of a reader when I was younger,” which is a rather massive understatement, “but I am finding I enjoy it more now.”
Marigold nodded.
“Let’s get up to the bridge. I want to watch as the ship comes back to life.”
They walked on, in silence once more, but now the darkness didn’t seem so oppressive to Morgan. Now it felt full of potential. A sleeping man, about to wake up.
At last they reached the lifts below the bridge. Pulling open a discreetly hidden panel next to the lifts, Morgan triggered the lock on the small hatch leading to the crawlspaces. Pulling it open revealed an even darker hole, much smaller than the corridor they were in.
“Another thing I wouldn’t admit to my troops. I hate ladders,” Marigold admitted.
“Well, at least we’re in our skinsuits,” Morgan pointed out. “It would be far more irritating to have to climb up in our regular uniforms.”
“Yours more than mine,” Marigold muttered, before adding in a normal level voice, “There are certainly downsides to skinsuits, but moving freely is one of the best advantages.”
“That and we’re kept cool, or warm, as needed,” Morgan added.
“Yeah. Pity we couldn’t just stay in them the whole time. That would have solved a lot of problems.”
Morgan grunted in disgust.
“And caused a whole bunch more. Even with the suit keeping you cool, it still is a pain to wear it more than four or five hours at a time. I’d hate to wear it for even one full day, let alone a week or month.”
Marigold laughed.
“Try being in the Marines sometime. Longest I ever had to wear a skinsuit – and one of the armored ones, mind, not these lighter civilian types – was a week. I couldn’t even crack the helmet to get food, we had to just plug in to a dispenser and refill the liquid MRE pouch.”
“What does that even mean, MRE?”
“I knew a guy once who said he knew, something off Old Earth. We just ignored him. You might as well ask why they still called us Marines, when there wasn’t any single marine thing about it. They’re MRE’s, always have been, always will.”
“What, what does marine mean then, I always assumed it just meant space military?”
“Now, sure. Originally it just meant something coming from the ocean or sea.”
“And this is the language picked to be the standard for the galaxy? I’ll admit to trying to pick up a bit of Japanese after starting with Takiyama, and getting nowhere, but Standard English is just weird.”
This just got the LT laughing again.
“Picked is too strong a word. Stumbled drunkenly and accidentally are others. A lot of stuff in this galaxy makes more sense when you realize almost none of it is planned. Stuff happens, we react, and eventually ends up being normal.”
They had reached the hatch leading out to the bridge, so Morgan didn’t respond to that. Not that she had a response.
The captain was already on the bridge, seated in his chair like he’d never left it. He was, however, alone on the bridge.
“Ah, Black, good. I want you at the engineering station while they handle the startup sequence down in engineering. You’ve got the best mechanical background of the few of us present. Marigold, if you would oversee the powering of the weapons systems, to make sure there aren’t any oddities.”
“The weapons systems?” Morgan asked, raising one eyebrow. “Do you think we’ll be needing those soon?”
Rain snorted.
“Of course not. They’re simply coming online like everything else, and a malfunction there could be disastrous.”
“Right. That makes sense,” Morgan said slowly, shaking her head as she sat down at the bank of computers that, when on, replicated most of the information fed to the crew in engineering, plus the detailed diagram of the ship that replicated the information coming in from damage control central.
It felt odd to say the least, being on the bridge with only the captain and Marigold, but the others had their own duties. Lieutenant Jacob was handling powering up damage control central, Lieutenant Bill the combat information center, and of course the engineering officers were all down there overseeing the reactor and the rest of the vital systems, except for two who were monitoring the main hub of environmental control.
A comm line opened with the beep that indicated a ship-wide broadcast, though in this case it was limited to just their individual suits picking it up.
“Reactor is powering up to nominal levels… now,” Chief Engineer Matthews said after a moment. For something as complicated and delicate as a fusion reactor, it didn’t take long at all for the changeover to occur, and within seconds the lights came back on, followed by the screens – holo and physical – of the various systems to do likewise.
Time to earn our keep, Morgan thought as she tried to take in the information flooding onto her screens as fast as she could. Hydroponics is online and reporting normal, not surprising since it was one of the few things never powered down… environmental still showing low coolant, but temperature is only a few degrees high across the ship… oxygen levels rising across the board… “So far everything is normal,” Morgan told the captain. “Communications coming up now, standard ready ping already sent to Takiyama Station. We won’t receive a reply any earlier than…” she checked, despite knowing roughly what the answer was, “three hours, fifty-four minutes.”
“Good. Black, make sure the duty officer is ready to receive those messages the moment they come in, to check them for anything important. I would order you to do it personally, but they’ll likely reach us around our arrival time, and I want you sitting in on my initial conversation with the mining station.”
“Yes, sir,” Morgan replied. She wanted to ask, Why would you want me to do it and not the crewmen trained to do that job, who could do it more efficiently, but she didn’t. The answer was probably either ‘for the experience’ or ‘in case anything sensitive comes through marked officer’s eyes only,’ but the truth was, it didn’t much matter if it was one, the other, or neither, being a moot point.
Meanwhile Marigold was tapping away at the tactical controls, occasionally grunting loud enough that Morgan could hear her over the hum of the machinery.
“Looks like… yes, weapons all came back without any problems. There was one short the computer registered, but it was routed around automatically.”
“Which emplacement?” Rain asked.
“Alpha-Two-Three,” Marigold promptly answered.
Port side, lower row of railguns, third aft, Morgan automatically translated, trying to visualize where it was on the ship’s hull. “Captain, that would be the closest one to where the micrometeorite struck,” she reported after a moment, to which Rain nodded.
“You’re right. Marigold, take that one offline. We hardly need it anyway, and I’d rather it be down until we can get someone to give it a visual inspection.”
More tapping at controls from the LT.
“Done,” she said.
Abruptly Morgan realized she didn’t have anything to do, at least not for a few hours.
“I can’t decide if I need to wait for the inevitable problem to pop up, or if it’s okay to feel a bit relieved.”
“Almost,” Rain said, giving her a rare smile. “Let’s wait for the others to report in.”
Over the next few minutes, they did just that.
“Brown in DCC, green.”
“Lieutenant Brown report
ing combat information center working perfectly.”
“Environmental reports system working at expected capacity. Coolant levels are no lower than before, and the ship is currently maintaining twenty-three degrees centigrade in all occupied sections. Oxygen levels will return to normal throughout within ten minutes.”
“Main engineering, Matthews reporting. STEVE is purring like a kitten a fifth his age.”
“Now we can relax,” Captain Rain said with a nod of his head. “Lieutenant Marigold, if I could trouble you to oversee the crew evacuating back onto the ship?” Marigold nodded and headed toward the lift. Once she was gone, he visibly relaxed a bit in his chair. “How are we looking for oxygen?” he asked Morgan.
“One moment,” Morgan said, pulling up the readings and making sure they were up to date and accurate. “We’re fine up here. The shuttle bays will need a minute or two longer to finish, but it is perfectly breathable now, and Marigold will need time to get down there anyway.”
“Good,” Rain said, his helmet retracting. “I’m going to my ready room. Take the con, Morgan, until Bill or Jacob gets back up here, but either way keep an eye on the engineering displays until the rest of the bridge crew arrive.”
“Yes, sir,” Morgan said, trying to keep her voice level. You’re leaving me on the bridge, alone? What if something goes wrong?
Don’t be silly, Morgan, another voice in her head said, He’ll literally be five meters away.
Morgan thought she’d gotten over her unease about being in an empty ship, but being on an empty, operational bridge brought on a new and different form of uneasiness than the empty, darkened corridor had.
Everything’s on, just waiting for the people. What if they never came? What if a ship just sat there, ready to go, with no one to command her? How long would it last like that on automatic? Until the fuel ran out? Years?
For a moment, she imagined coming across such a ship, walking its corridors, trying to figure out what had happened to the crew, and she shivered.
A beep at the console opposite hers caught her attention. It was the communication station, an incoming message.
It can’t possibly be a reply, nor something sent to us specifically. Neither Takiyama Station or the mining outpost know exactly where we are to send a message, and while we were powered down we were as close to a hole in space as is possible.
That means a general broadcast. This far out that wouldn’t be anything trivial.
Hoping out of her chair, she walked over and hit the button to play the message without bothering to sit back down.
“Message repeats. This is the mining ship Altair, on the emergency channel. We lost contact with our hub vessel several weeks ago, and have not been able to reestablish contact. We are desperately short on supplies, and need pickup soonest, and help finding out what happened to our families. Our coordinates and heading are attached. Message repeats.”
Morgan pulled up the data, hoping that somehow they were close enough. It took the computer a bit longer to calculate, since it was still verifying its own position in the system.
“Blast,” Morgan said as a holo representation of the system came up, showing their location in relation to the Altair’s. They’re more than a light hour away, three months at our top speed. Even if we could head straight there – which we can’t, and not even because of the cargo, we’d never last another three months with our coolant levels where they are – they’d be long dead.
I know there are Navy ships, from both planets, that patrol the belt, I pray they’re in position to help.
I pray…
Morgan thought about that for a bit. It was an area she was struggling with, as Gertrude tried to teach her.
Is it comforting, that there is someone watching out for you who might intervene on your behalf? But only might. Clearly it isn’t guaranteed, a simple look at the news confirms that.
Or how about her own experiences? Was it the work of this god that saw her attempt to escape Hillman successful, or was it evidence that he didn’t exist that she’d been born on such a hellish world to begin with?
Gertrude had compared life to school, that if she did Haruhi’s homework for her it might look like she was helping, but really, she was hurting Haruhi in the long term.
That made sense, but didn’t feel like a full answer either.
Morgan sighed.
On the other hand, do I want there to be nothing? We live, we die, that’s it? Nothing left of Morgan after I’m gone?
I’ve seen things I can’t explain, that science can’t explain, out between the stars. Even something we see all the time, like subspace, is completely alien to humans, completely unknown, after so many hundreds of years.
And on the third hand saying a god exists because we don’t understand everything feels like a bad argument. What we understand grows every day.
‘What do you feel?’ Morgan could hear the words in her head in Gertrude’s voice, but that was the problem. She didn’t know what she felt. Not yet.
Shaking her head, Morgan refocused on her work. Now was not the time to distract herself with such complicated questions, not when she literally was in charge of the entire ship, a ship that was just coming back online after being damaged at that.
With the sensors back, she could get a better picture of what was nearby, at least in terms of ships broadcasting their location. They could pick up ships without it, but not very far away, and it was harder still while they were moving more than a hundred kilometers every second.
Her mind still on the distressed mining ship, she looked over the beacons in that region of the belt.
There was hardly anything there. No Navy ships either, but from the same briefing where she’d learned they had ships out here, she’d also been told that they didn’t always broadcast their location, since any theoretical pirates, thieves, or other enemies would be warned off by so doing.
Out by them there was more, a lot more. Mostly small ships, the tiny miners that earned a modest living by going after the smaller rocks and selling their haul to the bigger stations, like the one they were headed towards.
The way they were clumped bothered her for some reason. She couldn’t put a finger on it, but something was odd.
Are they territorial? I can’t see why, aside from protecting specific rocks they’re actively mining. There’s certainly enough out here for everyone, and I don’t think the lot of them have made even a noticeable dent in the field after several centuries. It will literally take millennia to carve up everything at this rate, or even double it.
Too bad I can’t pull up the data for the last six months, see if there’s any change in the pattern. Still, there is something there…
She must have been staring at the holo map for longer than she’d realized, as the lift doors opening startled her out of her hyper-focused search.
It was the bridge crew, or at least the men who’d been in the closest shuttles. Morgan didn’t know them as well as her own shift, but she was relatively sure that there were at least a few women among their number, conspicuously absent now.
Relinquishing her spot to the comm tech, Morgan settled in the command chair.
“We received a distress call,” she told the tech, gesturing toward the data she still had up, “Far too distant for us to do anything, but I want you to see if you can find someone closer who can. And keep an eye out for any more messages, I want to know what happens to them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the tech said with a sharp nod. Morgan knew it was almost a useless gesture, but some things were ingrained in spacers, including a need to help their fellows, out of a fear of needing such help themselves if nothing else.
Turning to face the rest of the partial crew, she said more loudly.
“I know we’re all a bit rusty, a bit exhausted, but check everything. STEVE hasn’t let us down yet, and I don’t want to let him down, either.”
It felt a bit odd, being the only one on the bridge in her skinsuit, if you didn’t cou
nt the captain in his cabin.
I guess it’s just a day for odd feelings, Morgan thought, mentally shrugging. Nothing for it, at least not until I can go off shift. Not that I’ll be able to go change until after we get to our destination, if even then.
With no formal duties for the moment, Morgan’s thoughts returned to the mining vessels, and the odd way they were scattered.
I wonder if I can find a rough number for how many there should be out here?
Chapter 21
Humans are amazing at recognizing patterns. It is, in fact, one of the things that sets us apart from animals where we come out ahead, along with our intellect, endurance, and toughness. It serves us well in many, many ways. Only the most obvious are things like ‘Grog ate red berry. Grog died. I no eat red berry,’ or ‘That shape look like tiger. Time to run.’ The problem is we are too good at pattern recognition and often see patterns that simply aren’t there. Thus, in the decades and centuries leading up to mankind reaching the stars and finding ourselves alone, many people swore they saw alien vessels in the skies above our homeworld. I’m sure they genuinely saw something, there were too many reports for them all to have been lying, but evidence clearly shows it was not little green men coming to experiment on unlucky humans.
- Chief Inspector Jonathan LaForce, Enna Crossing Constabulary, Albion.
“WELCOME TO our little corner of the belt, STEVE. Better late than never, I suppose, but I think before we accept delivery, we need to go over the terms of the contract,” the station’s captain, a rather grumpy-looking man of apparent middle-age, said as soon as they established communication.
Morgan was shocked at his rudeness, and from the red tinge flushing Captain Rain’s face he was no happier. There was no trace of his… displeasure… as he responded.
“Captain, our company went over all these details with you six months ago, before we ever departed. Furthermore, we are not, in fact, late. Our original estimate for STEVE’s arrival was for tomorrow.”
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