The jump drive itself was somewhat like a powerful gyro and as a system it was nearly impossible to turn. It so steadily resisted rotation that when the Dee-Dub turned it actually rotated around the jump drive using it to orient the ship’s heading. When the drive jumped, it folded space along a vertex. The position of the fold's vertex was the midpoint between the origin and the destination. It couldn't be changed except by moving the position of the jump drive's origin thus changing the angle. The portion of the ship’s vector that was perpendicular to the fold, would be reversed at the ship’s destination. So, the ship’s vector would change, but its velocity would not. If you jumped while heading directly towards both your destination and perpendicular to the fold line, you would arrive heading in the opposite direction. If you jumped while traveling parallel to the fold line, you would arrive heading in the same direction, but upside down. Vectors in between these two options were complicated. Though Max still found the whole topic of jump drive mechanics terribly confusing, he could now consider it without his brain actually melting. Though it did still get very hot, and a bit runny, if he thought about it too much in one stretch.
“My magic lays within the realm of physics and the natural laws of the universe. So, no. I can't. Sorry, Captain of the Long Legs.”
“But why did we explode?”
“Hmmm … the charge was still too low … but that shouldn't—oh. The drive was still spooling down when it was told to spool back up. It still tried to jump of course. But only part of the drive was ready…”
“So, part of the ship jumped but I stayed?”
“Oh no. The ship didn't jump at all. It blew up real good. You ejected safely enough though. Ah…but not your parachute.”
“I had a parachute?”
“You did. But it too was blown up real good. Don't worry about all this blowing up stuff though. You'll get it right. With practice.”
“That's true I suppose.”
“And you already have practical experience too! How many people can say that?”
“Mmmm…three?” Max said. So far as they knew, the only human beings to have ever made a darkwave jump were Freenan, Bob, and himself. Though as he was constantly reminded, he had only mostly jumped.
“Correct!” the lady in the computer said with enthusiasm. “Remember last time? When you mostly jumped away with the ship, except that you left your arm behind?”
“I do remember yes,” Max said. “Word gets around I see.”
“Well…I mean I was there so…”
The details snapped into place for Max. The lady in the computer didn't just sound like that other AI. She was that other AI.
“Though it's true,” the lady in the computer said. “I did tell anyone and everyone about the incident. 'Don't leave your arm outside the jump sphere,' I said, to the very few people I had the pleasure to encounter. 'No one wants to hear the unsettling sound of its dead weight thudding to the floor,' I added. But really, I'm just glad it was only your arm. Could have been…much worse.”
“Hey! How you doing in there?” Snow said over the radio.
“Good. I just finished a run. About to do another,” Max said. “How goes prep?”
“Is that…” said the lady in the computer.
“That's Snow,” Max said to the lady in the computer.
“The only prep left is on the ship. Fly it over to the hanger bay and we can get that going,” said Snow.
“Already?” Max said to Snow.
“She sounds pretty.”
“She's pretty,” he said to the lady in the computer.
“We're in a time-crunch. Big time-crunch. As soon as the ship is done, we are blasting off. Into space. We're ready to swap out the Dee-Dub-Jay-One with its cardboard cutout. Whenever you're ready,” Snow said.
The original Dee-Dub had been left where it lay after its short and swift maiden voyage. They feared that any changes to the terrain might be noticed by the alien in the Egg ship, and prematurely draw their attention back to Mega. DWJ2, though not actually made of cardboard, was a bare bones lookalike of the original.
“All right. I'm ready now. Assuming the ship’s engines are still operational.”
The ship’s engines were operational, and the swap was made. A small white tarp was thrown over each ship as camouflage during movement. It wasn't perfect, but if GE was being vigilant enough to see past the tarp, they would have already seen pods, supplies, and other bit of debris slowly disappearing from the surface of the ice. Which it so far seemed they hadn't.
Max ferried the pilot of the second ship, Gerry, back to Longissima, and the lady in the computer greeted him like the sane, somber AI Max had expected her to be. Max couldn't help but wonder if just maybe, his legs were sort of special. Probably not. But maybe…
He steered the ship into the hanger, hidden beneath the jagged edge of the torn and severed bow of Longissima. The outer doors were still open, but they closed as soon as the ship passed fully within. It was Max's first visit to the hanger from this direction, as well as the hanger’s first visitor from this direction. Max landed the ship on the pad of the outer bay and heard the clamps close, holding the Dee-Dub tight. With the outer doors closed and the Dee-Dub in position, the pair of inner doors began to slide open to the side in the same way as the outer ones had. But with one exception. A bulbous plastic sheet, like giant jelly fish, forced its way out of the slit in the doors, and lunged at the ship. He had been warned of this, but it was more alarming than he had expected. The air-filled side of the sheet pressed against the hull when it was allowed enough of a gap to reach it. The hanger bay's plastic bag 'force field' pressed against the ship as it was pulled into the inner bay. The plastic sheet pressed tightly all around the ship displacing the thin air from the surface outside, and they waited while the sheet and ship were both reeled in far enough for the inner doors to be closed.
Shapes filed into the hanger. They wrestled an edge of the plastic around and then drew on what Max knew to be a short sturdy zipper. He heard the hiss of air flowing past the plastic along with a short but violent flapping sound of the sheet whipping in the short powerful breeze.
“Come back soon Captain High-tower.” said the lady in the computer. She sounded genuinely happy, even with the tinge of electronic buzz.
“I think there is something wrong with my AI,” Max said to Gerry, when he was quite sure he was out of earshot of the ship and the lady that now lived in it.
“Really? She seemed normal to me,” Gerry said. “I'm not surprised to hear you say that though. They're all a little weird now. They've been here waiting just as long as we were, but the rest of us were sleeping. The AIs were awake. Yours was trapped in the jump room, but the rest were packed away for safety during the last days before the crash. They've been alone ever since. Totally alone, with no input but the recreation database to keep them from going nuts. They were centimeters from each other, but not connected or installed, unable to communicate. Have patience and show some kindness, give them a chance to recover. I think some are worried they might be abandoned again; they weren't all designed to be introverts.”
Snow found Max in the corridor outside the hanger, and with a quick glance first to see if they were alone, she greeted him with a kiss.
“Are we not supposed to be doing this?” he asked when she'd pulled her lips away.
“Of course we are… We're totally supposed to be doing this,” Snow said. “I just don't want anyone to get jealous.” She smiled slyly. “If it comes to a fight, I will of course mop the floor with the lot of them. But I don't want to have to do that. Hence the sneaky sneaking.”
“Do they get jealous … that seems like a bit more emotion than I would expect from your fellow earthlings,” Max said, “which is good because I might not fare so well as you against a jealous uprising. Not with all that Earth muscle you people are packing around.”
“Oh…” Snow's face went a bit pink. “I'm sure you would hold your own— should the need arise. I mean,
they don't have my strength. Well some do, I guess. But so far, they are all still in their pods. Only the Starborn are packin' this heat.” She pointed at her bicep, and added sheepishly, “I'm a GMO…”
Max hammed up his thinking face as he puzzled it out. “The G is obviously for giant and the M is probably for monster … Is O for omnivore? Oww.”
She only punched him once. In the chest. “Genetically Modified Organism.”
Max's eyebrows lifted.
“Is that why you are so tall? And … pleasing to the eye?”
She laughed. “Oh, god no. That's all natural.” Her face was now bright red. “Just the muscles n' stuff.”
Max pulled her close into his arms.
“I don't care if you are a weird, half-human creature from space. I like you just the way you are. Bumpy muscles, freakish good looks. All of it.” He lifted her chin up and looked deep into her eyes. “I think it best though, that you not tell the others about the GMO thing. I'm not sure anyone else could ever love you and your weird—”
She pinched him hard, but only in the normal, Snow-doesn't-know-her-own-strength way.
“Lucky for you then,” she said, and kissed him again.
The corridor along with the rest of the universe were forgotten for a few brief moments. When they broke their embrace, Max sensed the presence of another nearby.
It was Ravaea's turn to blush. “I'm sorry!” she said, “I was just going back to the toaster room … and …”
“And we were making out in the middle of the corridor that leads there. Our bad,” Snow said, patting Max on the chest.
Ravaea slipped by, eyes down as she passed.
Max, whose ears were also hot, said, “So, you are strong like a bull? Or …” He thought hard to remember the names of some earth animals known for strength. “Oh, like a lion?”
Snow said something under her breath that he couldn't make out.
“Could you say that again? I couldn't quite—”
“Chimp.”
“You have Monkey Muscles?”
“No. Chimp. Chimpanzee muscles.”
“So…monkeys.”
“I'll show you monkeys.” She grabbed his hips and lifted him up to the top of the rounded corridor, shaking him around a bit before returning him headfirst, though not ungently, to the floor. “Show me a monkey that can do that.”
“That must be why you are so good at miming a caveman,” he said, pulling himself to his feet.
She gave him a light Snow jab to the ribs.
“Speaking of bruised ribs, do you think we can get our hands on an android body?”
With the Dee-Dub's modifications well underway—they had already started removing the back end before Max even left the hanger—He and Snow rushed to prepare for the coming mission.
To that end, Max was back in the med bay with Gustov and Doozer. Doozer had been banned from most of the ship. Some of the crew wanted to hug him, a bad idea, others wanted to flee, which would risk triggering a fun (for Doozer) chase, and still others wanted to do both, which was perfectly fine, so long as they did neither. Doozer was in his own unique, uncanny valley of cute and terrifying. Gustov held a calm fascination with Doozer and though he wasn't alone in his interest, he had the space to house the little crab. Given that most of Gustov's patients were unconscious while under treatment, there was little opportunity for them to either hug or flee.
At the moment, Doozer lay on Max's lap, chittering and cooing as Max tapped on Doozer's carapace. The hidden hinge of Max's new arm was open, the seams of which ran along his green racing stripes. Gustov tightened the last screw and placed the steel tool with a clunk on his rolling workbench. Max noted the distinct tooth marks on the tool’s plastic handle. Evidence that Doozer had been helping.
“Everything seems to be good. Your reactions are normal, control normal. The bones have grafted nicely to the mounts,” Gustov said.
Max nodded. Part of him had expected it to all be fine and was vindicated. Part of him had expected the worst and was relieved.
“I still recommend you hold off on any upgrades. Your body needs to know that the arm works like a normal arm. You are doing well, but I don't want you to complicate things with all sorts of other options. You don't want to unintentionally change the channel on the TV or shoot your foot off.”
Max had been too busy to even look into upgrading his arm. So, he didn't even know what that would even mean. But having a gun in it did not seem like a spectacular idea. It did have a certain awesome aspect to it of course. Otho would die of jealousy. But the list of dangerous activities was long when your hand was a gun. Petting Doozer, putting food in your mouth, going to the bathroom. Mostly he didn't like the idea of holding Snow’s hand when his own hand was loaded.
Max's eyes caught sight of Doozer's leg stumps. “What about Doozer?”
“What about him?”
“Does he get new leg replacements?”
“He needs more legs?”
“He was born with ten. One was blown off. Two others were eaten or torn off as he tried to save Snow from a Lancer. You think Doozer has legs…”
“A lancer has more legs.”
“Yes, it does. Many more,” Max said, “but Doozer showed him who was boss. Didn't you buddy?”
Doozer chitter-popped doubtfully.
“Ya, it was a team effort,” he said. “So. Legs for Doozer?”
“I can make no promises,” he said, closing up Max's arm. “Honestly, I don't see how I would find the time.”
With the arm maintenance complete, Max's pre-mission checklist was all checks. He found Snow waiting for him in the toaster room watching the intermittent feed. She looked troubled, but she smiled when she saw him and got up.
“Everything okay down there?” he asked.
“No. But we’re winning now. So…hooray.” Snow's cheer lacked enthusiasm. “Clear to go?”
“Clear.”
Eva, at a terminal, gave the pair of them a look.
“What was that?” Max asked in a low voice.
Snow's face said, I'll-tell-you-in-the-hallway. “Okay. We are leaving to save the worlds now,” she said to the room of mostly earthlings. She and Max being the only exceptions.
The others looked up, nodded, and smiled politely. They were all working hard to save the worlds right now. Or at least delay their destruction for as long as possible. With a few nods and raised thumbs as fanfare—an earthling gesture that had not made it into Grailliyn culture—they made their way to the hanger. Doozer, who was coming with them on the Dee-Dub, was brought by Gustov. Max had wondered if there would be enough room in the ship to fit them all. Doozer was still rather small and would stay that way, growing slowly for years to come. But the ship was small too.
Or it had been. The modifications were complete, and they were extensive. The ship had grown in all directions, except forward, with the cockpit and jump drive being the only parts that had not changed significantly. The Dee-Dub now resembled a large rounded futuristic camp wagon, rather than the small rounded futuristic two-seater it had resembled before. Most of the extra space was taken up by a large bay for holding the heaps and heaps of Akoronite ore they were definitely to collect. But there was also a living space. It was small, but still more generous in size than Max's small boat had been. And the Dee-Dub was heated. In addition to the earthlings working in the hanger, Freenan and Bob were there to say goodbye.
“Take care of yourselves, we will need you both back,” Freenan said.
“Don't take too good a care of yourselves. We need that ore, or we're all dead any way,” Bob said. “I'm only joking. But I'm not.”
Max was again forced to keep his mouth shut to avoid agreeing with something that Bob said.
“While you two go off on your exciting treasure hunt, I'm headed back down to Grailliyn. To fight the good fight,” Bob said. His smile shone brightly, laced with arrogance.
“You?” Max was incredulous. Bob was as ignorant as Max was, and those
mechs looked to be more complicated than his AI assisted operation of the jumpship.
“Ya me,” Bob said, “I've spent my month in the simulator, not in a pod sleeping off a gentle wound…” He trailed off, perhaps remembering that he'd played a critical role in that gentle wound. “They haven't found that many trained soldiers so far. The ones they found have been sent already and more are needed. So, I'm going,” he said, dropping the bulk of his attitude.
“Where to?” Snow asked.
“Probably home,” Bob said, “You wouldn't think it, but Tawnee is faring poorly. Solidly in the bottom ten of trouble spots.”
“It's the water I think,” Freenan said, “All the places with the most squid activity, have what was in pre-squid times, the safest bodies water nearby. As far as local monsters go in any case. We wiped out the deadliest of them and so they weren't there to stop or slow the invasion. There is some irony there I suppose.”
Max, Snow, and Bob all gave him a look.
“How about you Freenan. Are you going off to kill squid?” Max asked.
“Oh no. I will stay here. And learn. And assist where I may,” Freenan said. He looked a little frightened of returning to Grailliyn. Fair enough since he might not ever manage to leave the surface again.
“Well, I guess we should be off,” Max said. “Be sure to stomp some squid for us,” he added to Bob, feeling very charitable, now that Bob was going away. Hopefully forever.
“Alright,” Bob said. “Bye now.”
Max shook their hands and Snow punched them in the shoulders. Then, almost as an afterthought, she gave Bob the login information needed for the Core back in Tawnee. Warda Starborn. She'd promised it after all if she got Max back. Max didn't think much of Coordinator Mortran, but he wasn't the only one that would benefit.
Snow had Doozer's leash when a pair of crab-stones clanked to the floor and rolled towards a nearby workbench clacking into its base. Gustov bend down and, picking up the two rock hard crab turds, placed them in his pocket.
Starship Invasion (Lost Colony Uprising Book 2) Page 10