It Ain't Over

by Robert M Kerns

  Cole departed the bridge via the starboard hatch and passage before going to the nearest transit shaft and ascending to Deck Two. His suit and helmet were still lying on the deck just inside the starboard personnel airlock. Cole exited the transit shaft on Deck Two, just at the right time and in the right place to catch an adolescent Ghrexel with his chest.

  The sudden, unexpected impact staggered Cole, but Wixil didn’t weigh enough to tackle him to the deck even with the speed of her arrival. As a matter of reflex, he shifted his balance to remain standing and wrapped his arms around Wixil to keep her from falling to the deck. Cole looked down at Wixil and found her looking up at him with her ears perked and her eyes intent.

  “Are you okay?” Cole asked.

  Wixil bobbed her head in a nod. “Mother and I were just playing. I apologize for colliding with you.”

  Cole smiled. “I remember what it was like for my parents to play with me. I wanted to be sure you didn’t hurt yourself landing on the deck when or how you didn’t expect.”

  Wixil’s eyes widened as her tail curled into that almost-question-mark shape again. “You were protecting me?”

  “Sure. I don’t like for people to get hurt if I can prevent it.”

  Yeleth arrived just then and saw Wixil wrap her arms and legs around Cole’s torso as she purred and said, “Thank you for thinking of me, Cole.”

  Cole rubbed his left hand down Wixil’s back as he walked over to Yeleth. “You’re welcome, Wixil.” Cole shifted his attention to Yeleth. “She flew into my chest, and I caught her to keep her from falling to the deck.”

  Yeleth jerked a human-style nod. “Among our people, it is uncommon for someone not Clan to care for the well-being of our young ones, and…”

  Cole quirked one eyebrow upward as he asked, “And…what?”

  Yeleth took a deep breath, and her ears curled forward as she said, “We are Clanless. That is how Vorhees could ‘own’ us. A Clan would never stand for that.”

  Cole shrugged. “I regret that for you. What little we’ve interacted has led me to consider you worthwhile people. Be sure you understand that ‘Clanless’ means nothing to me. You’re just as worthy as any other Ghrexel I’d meet.” Cole chuckled. “Heh…maybe you should start your own Clan, and if they don’t approve, tell the rest of your people to go pound sand.”

  Both Ghrexels’ tails went rigid like exclamation points, and their ears perked up. Yeleth was the one to speak, “That…we…we do not have the…gravitas, I think gravitas is the word in your language, or perhaps honor. We—Wixil and I—do not have the gravitas or the honor among our people for any Clan we create to be recognized.”

  Cole nodded. “Okay. I need to go over to my old freighter and retrieve its cargo and a few other things, but let’s come back to this discussion of making your own Clan.”

  Wixil swiveled her head to look at Yeleth, her tail curling into that question-mark-shape again. “May I go, Mother? May I, please?”

  “You should ask Cole first. He may not want a young Ghrexel at his heel.”

  Wixil swiveled her head back to Cole, and Cole smiled at her earnest expression.

  “I don’t mind you going at all, Wixil, but you’ll need a suit. Srexx tells me the cargo sled doesn’t possess its own life support, and I know the freighter lost any air it had hours and hours ago.”

  Wixil’s ears and tail drooped. “Those suits are not fun. They cramp my tail.”

  Cole looked from Wixil to Yeleth. “Well, I’m sure Srexx could design you a suit like mine, but you’d need one of his implants, too. The problem, there, is that he doesn’t have enough medical data on Ghrexel physiology to make one without risking harming you.”

  Yeleth’s tail began languidly swishing back and forth, curling almost into that question-mark-shape at each end of the arc. “I know where we might acquire Ghrexel medical data, if your Srexx is adept at retrieving data from damaged computer systems.”

  Cole shrugged. “We’ll need that data, either way, if you decide you want to stay aboard. Come to think of it, we’ll need a doctor who has experience with Ghrexels, too; the closest I come to being a medical professional is basic first aid training.”

  “All things to discuss once you have completed the sojourn to your old ship,” Yeleth said. “Come, Wixil. I’ll help you with the suit.”

  Cole had to steady himself as Wixil shifted her arms and legs to push off from him. He let her go, and she did a back-flip in midair, landing on the deck beside her mother. Watching that, Cole couldn’t keep from quirking one eyebrow up as an amused smile curled one side of his mouth.

  “Just how much danger would you have been in if I hadn’t caught you?”

  “Not much,” Wixil said. “See you soon!”

  “I’m going to get my suit and check on our castaway before we leave,” Cole said. “Srexx can tell you where I am; just call out to him, and he should answer.”

  “Okay!” Wixil said over her shoulder as she walked away with her mother.

  Cole visited the hospital deck, dropping in to check on the auto-doc. It still showed a couple hours left on the cycle, and Cole hoped none of Srexx’s modifications would end up being detrimental to the person. After all, Srexx didn’t have much experience with humans. His task on the hospital deck complete, Cole went to the cargo transit shaft to travel down to the very bottom deck in the ship.

  The regular personnel transit shafts that existed throughout the rest of the ship stopped at Deck Eleven, which Cole had taken to calling ‘Pilot Country’ after hearing Srexx’s description of the deck. Deck Eleven linked to Deck Twelve, the flight deck, through the cargo transit shafts at either end of the ship and personnel transit shafts that just ran between Decks Eleven and Twelve.

  Decks Fifteen and Sixteen were the cargo holds, situated just below the two hangar decks. Cole had learned Deck Fifteen—or Cargo One, whichever you preferred—stored bulk supplies and materials for the ship, such as raw materials for the fabricators or spare parts that couldn’t be fabricated for whatever reason. Deck Sixteen, or Cargo Two, had no specific intent in its design beyond a large volume of space for transporting items from Point A to Point B. Medical supplies for emergency relief missions, additional equipment for military facilities, or even generic cargo…anything was fair game to store there.

  The cargo sled Cole needed was on Deck Sixteen, and the cavernous space possessed an eerie ambiance as Cole trudged from the transit shaft’s location to the distant object he hoped was the sled. After walking almost a hundred meters, Cole faced a small craft that had to be the cargo sled. It sat on runners, not unlike the skids of old-time rotorcraft on Earth, and the operator’s seat swiveled from the cargo sled controls to the maneuvering controls. If Cole was interpreting the panels correctly, the cargo sled controls seemed to permit limited maneuvering of the craft but not much beyond allowing for the fine adjustment to deposit whatever cargo the sled carried in whatever place one desired.

  Cole sat in the operator’s seat and secured his helmet and suit before activating the maneuvering controls of the sled. From there, he took the sled to the aft cargo shafts, using that time to become acquainted with how the craft handled. The craft’s propulsion and maneuvering systems seemed to be based on similar technology as the ship’s systems, and soon Cole was almost ten meters above the deck, moving through an imaginary slalom course.

  Cole landed on the cargo transit shaft force-field platform, and it lifted Cole and the cargo sled upward at an almost abominably slow rate. Cole understood that. No one wanted lots of speed and inertia to counteract with multi-megagram pallets, but it didn’t make for the best transits when there weren’t cargo pallets or containers involved. After what seemed like an eternity of staring at the ship’s starboard bulkhead, Cole arrived on the flight deck. He turned the cargo sled toward the bow and maneuvered it over to the hatch allowing access to the flight deck. He found Wixil waiting for him, the helmet of her soft-suit held in the crook of her right arm.

  C
ole set the cargo sled on the deck and donned his own suit, watching Wixil don her helmet and seal it. Once again, the suit asked him if he wanted to conduct the full orientation, but Cole chose the ‘Later’ option again. As he looked at Wixil standing before him in her own soft-suit, he realized he had no way to talk with her. Lacking any other option, Cole gestured for Wixil to step onto the cargo sled and, after she did so, connected one of the sled’s three safety lines to her suit. He would’ve repeated the process with his suit, but it didn’t possess any connection points for a safety line.

  Cole really didn’t like not being able to converse with Wixil, so he attempted to access the new implant the same way he would’ve accessed his old one. Sure enough, the implant responded…only this implant seamlessly displayed a radial menu in his field of vision. As Cole focused his eyes on each menu option, that specific menu option highlighted, and focusing on ‘Comms,’ Cole learned blinking both eyes selected the highlighted option. In the Comms menu, Cole saw three contacts: Vilaxicar, Srexxilan, and TMC Soft-suit 54-Alpha (EM Radio Comms). Cole highlighted the soft-suit and blinked. He soon heard a chime and saw ‘Connection Established’ flash in his field of view just long enough to read and process.

  “Hi, Cole!” Cole heard Wixil’s voice right beside his ears as if they weren’t wearing suits.

  “Hi, Wixil! You ready to go?”

  “Yep! Let’s do this!”

  Cole activated the sled’s engines, spun the sled to angle it toward the opening at the aft end of the deck and nudged the throttle up to about ten percent. The cargo sled rose to a hover just above the flight deck and moved toward the force-field.

  “Wixil, keep an eye on your air and let me know if you run low. Okay?”

  “Of course, Cole! This is neat! I’ve never been outside a ship in space before. What do your people call it?”

  “Well, we usually call it hullwalking, but that’s more for the kind of repairs people do to the exterior hull of a ship. What we’ll be doing is better described as EVA salvage, and EVA stands for extravehicular activity.”

  “Wow…you seem to have seen a lot, Cole.”

  Distant memories of the colony his family had founded burst to the forefront of Cole’s mind just as the cargo sled moved through the force-field and into space. He didn’t jerk or flinch or react, but those memories always created a hollow pit in his stomach.

  “Well, Wixil, I’ve been pretty much on my own for thirteen years. Sometimes, you do what you have to do to survive.”

  “You’ve been on your own for thirteen years?” Wixil repeated, her tone questioning and laden with a mixture of astonishment and concern. “I’m only sixteen years old. Why have you been on your own?”

  “Someone massacred the colony my family founded. As far as I know, I’m the only survivor.”

  “Oh. That’s so sad. I’m sorry you’ve been all alone all this time. I thought my world was ending when my father died, but Mother does all she can for me.”

  The conversation trailed off as they approached the wreck of the freighter. Cole found a large gash in the side of the hull that had opened the cargo hold to space, and it was more than sufficient for Cole to take the cargo sled into the ship. He activated the sled’s lights—more for Wixil’s benefit than his, as his suit had that weird black-and-white vision—and smiled at seeing the three containers on pallets almost where he had left them.

  Cole brought the cargo sled over to the first container and swiveled around to the cargo controls. He eased the craft up to the container and activated the sled, which turned out to be a localized grav field…and the one-thousand-kilogram mass just barely registered on the sled’s total capacity.

  “Wow…”

  “What? Wixil asked.

  “This one-thousand-kilogram container doesn’t even come close to touching this sled’s capacity. Look here at the controls.”

  Cole pointed to the read-out for Wixil to see.

  “That’s amazing! Old Ones’ tech is always impressive. My people have found little of it in a working state, but the working tech we have found has catapulted our technology and understanding forward by leaps and bounds.”

  Before long, Cole had the three containers secured to the cargo sled. The only thing that remained was to retrieve the freighter’s computer core and black box. He didn’t want Qeecir having any more idea about what happened to the freighter than was necessary.

  Cole touched the cargo sled down on the deck and activated the magna-grapples to secure it in place before standing up from the seat and activating the magnetic soles on his suit’s boots.

  “I have to grab a couple things before we head back,” he said. “Want to come?”

  “Sure!”

  Cole and Wixil spent several minutes removing the computer core, data storage, and black box—as well as going through the cabins making the freighter’s hulk appear to have been ransacked—before returning to the cargo sled. Cole added everything to the grav field of the sled before returning to the operator’s seat, seeing Wixil already had her safety line connected.

  They returned to the ship in short order, securing the large containers in Cargo Two. Cole delivered the computer core, data storage, and black box to Srexx in the Main Systems Compartment on Deck Three and stashed the personal stuff he’d retrieved under the guise of ransacking the wreck in the captain’s office across the corridor from the port hatch to the bridge.

  As he sat once more at the helm station, Cole nodded his satisfaction at having the thousand kilograms each of gold, palladium, and rhodium. Time to head to Andersoll.

  Chapter Nine

  The first humans landed on a life-supporting world in the Alpha Centauri system during the first decade of the 22nd Century. They used a ship designed for generational travel to go there, as none of the research projects into faster-than-light (FTL) travel had borne fruit. In the latter half of that century (2278, to be precise), however, a team under the direction of Julian Wong and Arthur Coleson built the first working jump gates, sending an unmanned drone from Jupiter orbit to Pluto orbit in an instant.

  When news of their achievement spread across Earth, Julian Wong and Arthur Coleson became instant celebrities, and numerous corporations and governments began attempts to acquire the technology. After Julian Wong died in a sudden and freak ground-car wreck after a fresh round of harassment to sell their technology, Arthur Coleson destroyed the prototypes of their work and boarded the bi-annual ship to Alpha Centauri under a false identity, fleeing the Sol System with every cent he had to his name, his project notes, and all the engineering data for the prototypes.

  The colony in Alpha Centauri was still a subsistence-level existence to a degree, but there was sufficient industry for Arthur Coleson to found a company not long after his arrival in 2282: Coleson Interstellar Engineering. Over the next four years, CIE built what came to be considered the harbinger for a new age of mankind: a commercial-sized jump gate in the Alpha Centauri system. The jump gate was angled and aimed at the Sol system, and Coleson desired to learn if a single jump gate could be used for one-way travel before building its pair on the far end for return traffic.

  On December 15th, 2286, an unmanned drone appeared on the fringe of the Kuiper Belt at the closest point of approach for Alpha Centauri. It sent a message to the nearest comms buoy and self-destructed; the message would wait in the comms buoy until a passing freighter collected all the messages for Centauri on its way out of the system.

  In 2295, the Centauri jump gate was built in Sol, connecting the two systems at long last. In 2350, the Solar Republic was founded, comprised of Sol and its then-three colonies in far-flung systems, and humans continued to explore the galaxy and expand ever outward…one jump gate at a time.

  Based on the calculations and theories surrounding Einstein-Rosen bridges (or wormholes, as they are often called) of the 20th Century, the jump gate revolutionized the concept of interstellar travel, ending the era of both generational ships and cryo-ships by allowing a vessel t
o transit almost instantaneously from one gate to its remote pair. In the 721 years since their invention, jump gates spread throughout the mapped galaxy, with the known alien species even requesting them, and Coleson Interstellar Engineering grew into being one of the major financial powerhouses of human space, a true mega-corporation.

  Pyllesc System

  26 June 2999

  Cole sat at the helm station, watching the jump gate to Andersoll on the sensor display. He’d lost count of how many jump gates he’d used in his life, if he’d ever been counting. The technology was rather old hat at this point.

  The ship was moving at a sedate quarter-lightspeed. Even with all their advancement, the civilization responsible for building this impressive ship had found no way to escape the constraints of sub-light physics…or Newtonian physics, as humans said. Cole chose to keep the time dilation down to something almost non-existent for the trip to Bremerton Station in Andersoll. They didn’t have a pressing schedule, having sufficient food for the four of them to reach the station, so there was no reason to rush things.

  “Cole?” The bridge’s speakers broadcast Srexx’s voice.

  Cole yawned before replying, “Yes, Srexx?”

  “The auto-doc cycle is nearing completion. The timer reports only fifteen minutes remaining.”

  “Thanks, Srexx. I’ll head that way.”

  Cole entered the trauma room where they’d connected the auto-doc to the ship’s power and air supply. He arrived just in time to see the timer tick over to eight minutes and fifty-five seconds as it continued counting down. The cycle was near enough to being complete that Cole could have ended the cycle early, but even when the auto-doc was this close to being finished, ending a treatment cycle early often produced undesirable side effects. When the auto-doc’s status monitor flashed ‘Treatment Complete,’ the locks released, and the front half of the medical capsule opened upward much like a clam from the powered hinge at the top of the capsule.