Star Runners

by Clayton J Callahan

  Robishaw’s mouth filled with bile. She spat it out and answered, “He’s not coming back. He was shot by one of those protector sons-of-bitches.”

  The shock of her words was a visible force that slapped across their faces. But she didn’t have time for that. “Okay, now listen up. Everybody act casual. Quaid and his guys are going to be here soon. They’re going to expect to find a nice, friendly group of off-worlders who are ready to get back to their ship. And we are going to do everything we can to keep them of that opinion.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to work.” Robishaw’s head snapped up. Her eyes tracked the source of that comment to find Quaid standing in the doorway, snub pistol in hand with a squad of bully boys in blue standing at the ready behind him. “Now, I want you to drop that pistol, darling. We wouldn’t want anybody else getting killed around here today.”

  The snub pistol hit the deck as Robishaw surrendered it to the inevitable. Quaid and his men quickly moved into the dormitory to take up positions around the Yang-He’s crew. Thankfully, nobody was stupid enough to challenge them. Right now the only hope Robishaw could see was some kind of unlikly intervention by VanDer from the Yang-He in orbit. Lacking that, she truly had no idea how they’d get out of this.

  Then, in the distance, she heard the roar of a Gazelle class shuttle. The noise grew louder, and louder as Quaid’s men looked more and more nervous. Suddenly the shuttle engines could be heard directly overhead, and one of the blue-clad protectors shouted, “It’s their fucking marines!”

  “No! Stop!” Quaid shouted. But it was too late. Panic spread through the ranks of his troops as they ran in every direction to get out of the dormitory and away from the objective of any marine rescue force.

  Robishaw picked up her gun and aimed. Quaid’s eyes grew to the size of shot glasses as he saw the Earth woman drawing down on him. He raised his confiscated snub pistol but was too slow. Two neat ten-millimeter holes sunk into his chest before he could even aim his weapon. He took one staggered step forward only to receive a third hole in his skull as a reward. Twisting in a pirouette of death, Quaid’s body smacked into the floor as blood streamed from the missing half of his head.

  Lacking the luxury of time to morn good Dr. Harrigan, Robishaw felt no inclination to waste a moment’s thought on the likes of Quaid. To her people, she shouted, “Get to the shuttle!”

  Pell-mell the assembled spacers sprinted out of the dormitory. Once in the open air, they saw their shuttle parked astride a band of razor wire. Robishaw was among the first to reach the hatch but the last to pass through it. Instead of jumping right in, she counted every crewman to ensure no one living was left behind. Once satisfied, she sealed the hatch and shouted to Manly, “Liftoff!”

  “Aye aye, ma’am, at T-minus zero and counting.”

  The thrusters blasted at the surface as the Gazelle gained altitude. Robishaw strapped herself into a passenger seat just in time to feel the unique sensation of null-gravity. With the shuttle now space-born, she closed her eyes to fight back her tears. It was a battle she was destined to loose, however, as tear after crystal clear tear ejected from her face.

  She wasn’t alone in the crying, however. Young Medic Kim succumbed to the disease and passed away before they could even dock with the Yang-He. There wasn’t a dry eye on the shuttle.

  ***

  A few hours later, Robishaw found herself comfortably seated in Captain VanDer’s office with a cup of hot tea in her hand.

  “Tea, always helps me,” VanDer said as he picked up a cup of his own. “Did you know that most teas contain more caffeine than coffee? Dr. Ben that is Dr. Buganda, always kept a hot pot of chi in the lab.”

  Absently, she took a sip. “It’s very nice.”

  VanDer took a seat on the couch across from her. The office was smaller than Dr. Apple’s but had a lot more room due to the tiny desk that folded into the bulkhead. “You were right,” he said. “I should have sent down an armed team with the landing party.”

  With a nod of her head, Robishaw silently thanked him for his honesty. It was not a point, however, that she wished to rub in. Such lessons are hard won and need time to steep into the brain before wisdom can bloom. The good news was that VanDer was learning. Whatever pride he may have had in his intellect, he’d discovered that brains alone were not enough to command a ship.

  The captain took a sip of his tea. “I talked to Yu, and he and I are of the opinion that the Yang-He can make the jump to Alpha Centaury anytime. Though first I want the crew to have some rest. I think a day in orbit won’t affect our mission adversely.”

  “And we need time to bury our dead.”

  VanDer looked up from his chi. “What?”

  “The crew will expect a memorial for Dr. Harrington and Medic Kim. We only have Kim’s body of course since he died on the flight up and Harrington…”

  “…died on the plant below,” he finished for her. “Should we send a team to recover his body?”

  The shudder that coursed through her was both a negative reaction to his bad idea and a positive reaction that he was, at last, asking her for advice. Perhaps, she hoped, VanDer had truly turned a corner in his understanding of command.

  “No,” she answered. “As much as I would like to, it wouldn’t do any good. The locals have surely done something with his corpse by now, and we’d probably never be able to find it. Also, when the local militia discovers that we don’t actually have much military muscle to flex, Dr. Apple’s protectors may try to carve out a pound of our flesh for killing Quaid. All told, it would do more harm than good, and I doubt if Harrigan’s family want to view his decapitated remains that badly.”

  VanDer nodded. “So, I’ll have Yu arrange the memorial. He once mentioned to me that he’d spent a few years of his youth as a Buddhist monk, so I guess he’s the closest thing to clergy we have.”

  A red flag ran up the mast, but she chose to ignore it. Such ceremonies were usually the responsibility of the second in command, but Robishaw doubted VanDer knew the traditions of space services all that well. She could have corrected him, but she was extremely tired and badly in need of a shower. Besides, he was at least taking some initiative, and she didn’t think she should stymie that. To her boss, she only said, “That sounds like a good idea, sir.”

  They sat in silence for a while, sipping their tea and ruminating on the past few day’s events. When the last sip passed her lips, Robishaw slowly stood up. “Request permission to be excused.”

  “What? Oh, you’re asking to leave. Yes, of course. Very well. I’ll let the ship’s crew know when the memorial is over the address system. I suppose I’ll have to call Yu now.”

  “Fine, sir. I’ll be in my quarters until then.” With a ragged about-face, she turned and left the captain to his affairs, hoping with all her heart that affairs would never get so desperate again.

  ***

  Zero gravity hadn’t bothered Robishaw in decades. In fact, most of the early ships she’d served on didn’t even have rotating sections forcing everybody to take turns on the exercise bikes to keep in shape during those long voyages. Still, after so recently walking in a planet’s gravity well, drifting into her station chair on the bridge seemed somehow strange. She wondered what it would be like to finally be retired; to float down to Earth never to return to space, and look up at the stars at night alone.

  “Well, not alone,” she muttered, knowing John would always be with her. He’d stuck by her side for this long after all. Years of their marriage had been spent apart due to her service, and still, he clung to her. She figured him to be a one-woman man, and was ever so grateful for that.

  “Stations report!”

  The squeaky voice of Chief Medic Bronson who’d replaced Harrigan answered, “Fourth Officer, Medical, go.”

  “Third Officer, Supply, go,” Mr. Manly announced.

  Yu piped up, “Second Officer, Engineering, go.”

  Robishaw drew in a deep breath. “First Officer, Operations, g
o.”

  “Very well,” VanDer replied. “Initiate the drive.”

  In the seat behind her, Robishaw heard Manly mumble, “Here we go again.”

  And once again, Third Officer Yu inserted his key and gave it the old turn. Oddly, this time no shudder rumbled across the bridge as the drive began its gyrations. Robishaw re-checked her board, no problem lights flashed on the screen, and all indicators were green. Still, she couldn’t help wonder why there wasn’t the usual shudder.

  Her time to ponder that, however, was as short as the transit through the unknowable universe of hyperspace. In an instant, the first officer’s panel flashed with new data. As expected, they’d traveled successfully to the Alpha Centaury star system and were now within a day’s journey from a planet known as Gaulish. That was a new one on her. After some research, she’d learned that Gaulish was the ancient Celtic god of fruit trees. Robishaw figured that this was the kind of name that resulted from astronomers running out of Greek and Roman gods while drinking too much coffee.

  “Yang-He on station in the Alpha system. Approximate travel time by ramjet to planet Gaulish, eighteen hours.”

  “Very well, Ms. Robishaw,” VanDer replied. “You may now attempt radio contact with the colony.”

  “Yes, sir.” As before, she announced the Yang-He’s arrival to anyone who might be listening, but apparently no one was. After an hour’s fruitless attempts, the choir boxes began to empty as the superfluous crewmembers floated back to their duty stations.

  “Perhaps they’ve lost radio capability?” VanDer suggested.

  Robishaw shrugged. “Or they failed to survive in the first place. Records indicate that the sleeper ship was stocked with involuntary colonists from Ukraine. These people may not have had enough subject matter experts among them to maintain complex technology.”

  The captain’s brows furrowed. “Why were they involuntary?”

  Again struggling not to roll her eyes, Robishaw replied, “The Russian Imperium rounded up all the Ukrainian dissidents they could get their hands on just before the Doom War. They probably would have executed them if it wasn’t for world condemnation. So, they packed the poor beggars in sleeper ships and blasted the lot into space instead.”

  VanDer nodded and reached for his mug of tea, while Robishaw stewed in frustration that the captain never bothered to read the relevant historical records. At last, he said to her, “Well, we can at least orbit the planet and see if any kind of civilization can be discerned with our sensors.”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied. “I’ll plot a course.”

  ***

  Sitting in the captain’s office with a too hot cup of tea in her hand, Robishaw scrutinized the overhead images on the view screen. A wooded, snow-dappled landscape carpeted a river valley ten kilometers wide and hundreds of kilometers long. Threading through the terrain, the ship's sensors picked up unmistakable signs of rudimentary human habituation. “It looks like a medieval castle.”

  “Yes,” VanDer replied. “But surrounding the stone structure is that star-shaped berm typical the forts of the late sixteen-hundreds.”

  Robishaw raised an eyebrow. “You’ve studied seventieth-century military architecture?”

  “Not really. But there was an old fort near my house in the Netherlands called Fort Bourtange. Beautiful place actually. My grandfather used to show me around it when I was a boy. It had a museum and everything.”

  That made sense to her. Robishaw grew up near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and was forced visit that old battleground on just about every school field trip as a girl. She added, “We spotted three other communities with similar features; fortified installations surrounded by farmland and associated villages.”

  VanDer put down his tea. “And no indications of electricity or motorized vehicles?”

  “None, sir.”

  He stared at the screen while Robishaw’s tea cooled. Finally, he said, “Well, we can’t learn much more by merely flying above them. It looks like another landing party will be necessary to make contact.”

  “What kind of landing party are you thinking of, sir?”

  “Well, for one thing, it will be armed. This time we will be taking those twenty advanced combat rifles and handing them out to volunteers from the supply section like you suggested before.”

  Nodding, Robishaw added, “ACRs sure, but I also recommend you take two medics in case anybody gets hurt.”

  “Agreed, Ms. Robishaw, and I want you to know I am very grateful for your advice.”

  She took that as a good sign indeed. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Mr. Manly did you good service on the Isis colony, correct?”

  She nodded.

  “Very well, then I’ll take him down with me too. He can fly the shuttle as before and …”

  Robishaw picked her jaw off the floor and interrupted, “With you, sir?”

  He blinked. “Why, yes. I think I owe it to the crew. This time, I will take responsibility for the landing party, and you will be in charge of the ship in my absence.”

  “Sir, I’m more than willing to…”

  “Nonsense, Ms. Robishaw. I will not hear of it. This is my responsibility. I may have…I may have done better on our last escapade. I know that. I know. But Dr. Ben felt very strongly that the jump drive must be used to reconnect human civilization. That was the whole point of his life’s work, don’t you see? And I will not see his work wasted. Therefore, we must try to make contact with the people down there and I must…”

  “Make amends?” Robishaw offered.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Fine, but listen to me, sir. Keep Manly by your side. He’s got a keen eye for security. Also, listen to what he says, and never be shy about contacting me for help. I’ll be a communicator’s call button away twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Very well, First Officer. I’ll do my best.”

  ***

  Robishaw spent the next several hours gathering the volunteers for the landing party and ensuring that they had all the equipment needed, to include the ship’s total stock of twenty rifles and a few hundred rounds of ammunition. She personally briefed Manley, "This will be the captain' first away mission. He'll need somebody watching out for him. That's you. Give VanDer all the support he needs and make sure you maintain contact with the ship at all times. If things look like they're getting out of hand, contact me directly, anytime day or night."

  “Sure thing, ma’am. I’ll watch my back and everybody else’s’ if I have to.”

  She smiled. “I know you will. Is your communicator set to translate Common English to Ukrainian?”

  “Tak, dama, dyakuyu.”

  “Okay,” she paused. “What the heck was that?”

  “I downloaded Ukrainian into my personal hand computer and have been studying it since we jumped.”

  “And you’re speaking it already?”

  “Well, pidgin Ukrainian I guess. I’ve always had a knack for languages. I’m pretty sure I just said, ‘Yes, thank you, ma’am.” But if not, I hope it wasn’t something vulgar.”

  “Let’s just hope you don’t end up saying something vulgar to some local warlord.”

  He laughed. “I don’t know, could be a good thing. It’s been a long time since I had a hot date. Do we have any indication that there are warlords down there?”

  “Well, the forts seem to indicate some kind of warlike footing exists, but they may be in a state of peace right now. If they are a medieval culture and history is a guide, warfare should cease in the wintertime because it’s just too difficult to maneuver armored knights in the snow.”

  “Good to know.” He slung his advanced combat rifle over his shoulder. “Well, I need to go prep Shuttle One. Thanks for everything, ma’am.”

  “Just take care down there and good luck. If our last stop was any indication, you'll probably need it.

  “No worries,” he replied, holding up crossed fingers.

  An hour later, Robishaw watched the rest of the landing party
march into the Gazelle class shuttle, bundled in their white winter coats, each with an ACR slung over their shoulders. VanDer was the last to board. The captain paused long enough to shake her hand. “It will all be all right. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  And as the hatch sealed behind him, Robishaw, at last, felt that shudder—but this time it wasn’t the ship’s jump drive—just her.

  ***

  For hours, Robishaw watched from her office/stateroom viewer. Unlike the captain, her bunk and her desk were in the same compartment. That didn’t bother her, however, because unlike the rest of the crew she at least had a room to herself. Rank has its privileges after all.

  She followed the shuttle's slow descent until it came to rest on flat ground, half a kilometer from a nondescript settlement in the middle of the river valley. She’d like to have reassured herself that the site they picked for landing was based on an in-depth safety and security analysis, but no. All of the communities on Gaulish looked more or less the same from above, a huddle of cottages embracing fields with a fortress in the middle. In the end, they’d selected their site for first-contact simply for the availability of a convenient landing zone.

  Once the shuttle’s engines shut off, the landing party could be seen debarking in an orderly patrol formation. Now, there was nothing else for her to do but wait and bite her nails—and she never was a nail biter. She tried to look away and attend to her morning reports; oxygen consumption by crewmember, water regulation by kiloliter, and a garbage disposal rate of a half-ton a day, none of which held her attention for long.

  Her eyes kept drifting back to the monitor, eventually rewarded by an appearance of the natives. Some kind of delegation approached the landing party; people carrying flags, spears, and bows led by a woman in a red outfit with a cape so large its ends were carried by two attendants. Nervously, Robishaw scrutinized every pixel for any sign of aggression. Thankfully there was none. Soon she observed the two groups merging into one as the Yang-He’s landing party shook hands with the delegation and everyone walked together into the fortress. Once within the castle keep, Robishaw could see no more and so tried to return her attention to the morning reports.