As we continued the after action post mortem, it became clear that if there had been a ship waiting where we’d positioned ourselves to ambush the pirates, we would’ve incurred significantly more damage, or perhaps even been destroyed. We analysed the likely outcomes of all the scenarios we could think of before finally coming to the conclusion that if we’d made a conventional transit through the jump corridor, either the mines would have destroyed us or, if a ship was in a position to ambush us, then we could have been destroyed or badly damaged in the same way we were able to destroy the two pirates who pursued us into the system. This was a very sobering thought for all of us.
We were all very concerned with this new tactic by the pirates. FNS Destiny’s design is based on the hull of a Federation Cruiser Class warship. This makes her very tough, a much harder ship to stop than the average freighter or civilian vessel. It would also make her a valuable prize, well worth capturing. With the addition of some extra weaponry to replace the weapons deleted to build a deep space explorer, they could acquire a cruiser class vessel. Cruisers are fast, well-armed and very tough so if they had one, they would be far more dangerous to shipping within the Federation, even to some of the Federation’s navy ships. It seemed obvious to us that these pirates were going to try to board us with the intention of capturing the ship and either capturing or killing the crew. I suspected capture would be good from the pirate’s point of view because it would potentially give them some slaves with much sought after skills to sell. On the other hand, if the primary goal was only to take the ship, I thought they would be more than willing to kill the crew, particularly if they thought the crew were likely to cause them too much trouble. Of course on one hand, a big advantage of capturing the crew was that the pirates would be able to extract a significant amount of information about the ship from them. For my part, I didn’t want to die, especially so soon after being rescued by FNS Destiny’s crew, I wanted to go home to my family, but in all honesty, as we discussed the possibilities, I realised I wanted to be a slave even less.
I decided I needed yo go to speak with the Captain about the pirate tactics. He told me it was very rare for pirates to behave the way these ones were. Generally, they operated alone, or very occasionally, with one, or at most two other ships. The introduction of the mines was also another worrying new tactic. He told me we needed to get ourselves back to Federation space so he could report these developments. He stopped then and sat looking very thoughtful for a few minutes.
I’d come to the conclusion that our discussion was over and was about to excuse myself before leaving when he said, “Colin, we have to get back to the Federation no matter what, at least this ship and her crew need to. I think I am going to need your help here. You have such a different way of looking at things. In the short time I’ve known you, I’ve come to trust your judgement. I think you could be the one to get us home, you’re a wild card. I think my team seem to have really made the right decision when they rescued you after you had your accident back on Earth.”
I of course told him he could count on me to do anything and everything I could, no matter what the consequences to help him bring FNS Destiny home. I made it a promise, a promise that would later come back to haunt me, or so it seemed to me at the time. Of course, right then, I could not have predicted the events that were to come. At the time, I just thought I would be offering suggestions or perhaps in a worst case scenario, be using some of the skills the Troopers taught me to help defend the ship from boarders.
As we proceeded on our way, the Captain continued to hold regular meetings, analysing the past, planning for the immediate future, generally trying to make sense of all that was happening since we’d entered the Zafar system. It was during one of these meetings that I came to the realisation the pirates really were serious about capturing the FNS Destiny. It was after then I started to ask questions about the physics surrounding jump points.
“How well defined is the event horizon?
Does the entire ship emerge at once or does the transition pass along the hull as it emerges?
Why can’t we start raising the shields just before emergence?
What would happen if we brought the shields up a few seconds early, just before we cleared the jump point event horizon?
Could the shields be automated so they came up automatically the instant the ship emerged?
Better yet, could the shields be bought on-line incrementally as the ship passes through the event horizon?”
There were other questions and I could see some of the people at the meeting shaking their heads in disbelief, but finally I noticed Solan, the ships engineering chief nodding quietly to himself with a thoughtful look on his face. I turned to the others commenting with a straight face that I was only a primitive man from a backwater, not to mention, backwards planet who didn’t know any of these things. Of course, my comment started them all laughing until Solan spoke up, saying that many of my questions were actually valid ones. They were all questions he didn’t think anyone on the ship would be able to answer right then, at least not without doing a bit of research. It seemed they simply took many of these things for granted and never asked questions like the ones I had. At this point the Captain decided it was time for us all to take a break because it was approaching a mealtime and we were all beginning to become a little stale. He suggested we meet again the next day but asked us to keep thinking about what we could do to enable us to find a way past the waiting pirate. As we all rose to leave, he quietly asked Shulari and I to remain behind for a few minutes.
We waited till the compartment was clear and then turned and said, “Colin, I need to apologise to you for the teasing. It was not meant in a nasty manner and wasn’t intended to be hurtful. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive us. I think we have you to thank for the lack of serious casualties during that our engagement, I think the others know it as well. I want you to know we do all appreciate everything you’ve done for us over the last few days.”
I was quite surprised because I’d quickly realised they were just pulling my leg. I hadn’t really taken offense, particularly once I’d realised they were just teasing. In many ways, the teasing I’d been subjected to was true. I had to admit, compared to the people from the Federation of Sentient Peoples, I was a primitive and Earth is a relatively backward planet. But more importantly, by now, I was starting to notice they were teasing each other just as much or perhaps more than they were me. Clearly I was not being singled out for special treatment by this crew. In fact, the teasing made me feel accepted, at least as an honorary crew member. I knew this status had no standing under Federation law but right here, right now, I felt accepted, I felt like I was part of the team, I can’t begin to describe how important that feeling was at the time.
I replied, “Captain, I took no offense, particularly once I realised everyone was joking. As for the help I gave, well, this crew saved my life when they bought me aboard, I owe you, I owe all of you. On top of that, well, whatever happens to this ship, I share the same fate as the rest of you so I have a selfish interest in contributing anything I can to her defence.”
I paused for a few seconds to see if they wanted to make a comment before I continued, “I will say though, I have learned today never to play poker with any of you.”
The Captain and Shulari both had a strange look on their faces that I classified as quizzical or puzzled then Shulari asked, “Poker?”
I just laughed before explaining the game to them as best I could, including the facts that it was a game of chance, it was used for gambling and players were allowed to bluff. I explained the cards to them, the different suits, hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades, the order of importance. I even explained there were several forms of the game. I think they started to understand what I was trying to say because they soon began nodding then telling me they had similar games among the Tangesha people. After I finished explaining poker to them, I excused myself before going down to the Trooper’s squad bay to
see if anyone was interested in training with me. I spent a few hours doing a physical workout followed by some practice on the shooting range. I also managed to convince Shasi to start teaching me a little about some of the different weapons available to us, and the tactics the troopers used, particularly ones that could be used on the ship.
“Do you still think we are going to be boarded?” she said, “I thought we’d destroyed the two ships that were following us.”
“There is still another pirate ship picketing the jump point we need to exit through.” I replied. “We don’t have enough supplies to go back via Zafar and that route is blocked to us anyway because of the gravity fluctuations at this end of the jump corridor. Shasi, please keep in mind that much of this is just speculation on my part, it is not the official line.”
Shasi just nodded in return as she started instructing me. She began by running me through a number of different weapons, explaining their capabilities and where and when each one was used. This continued for about an hour or so till eventually, I realised I couldn’t keep myself focused any longer because I was too tired so I excused myself before going for food followed by sleep. When I sat down to work it out, I realised that by then, I had been going for 30 hours nonstop, no wonder I felt exhausted.
Next morning after waking, I showered before going to the mess for breakfast. As usual, I saw a number of people in the mess who had befriended me since I came aboard the ship so I chatted with them for a while. Most of the conversation was still about our recent battle but there was some speculation among the crew about what lay ahead. I didn’t make much of a contribution to these conversations because I felt it important to let the Captain brief the crew when he was ready. After eating, I headed back up to the post-mortem and planning meetings because the Captain requested my participation. During the night, the repair crews reached a point where most of the damaged structure was clear of the area to be repaired. The early stages of rebuilding could now proceed in parallel with work on removing the remaining damaged components. We felt it important to complete repairs to the ship before the next engagement for a number of reasons. These included the added protection of having an intact layer of hull between any hostile actions and the inner bulkheads. The other reason was because that section of hull held a number of shield emitters, not to mention a damaged point defence laser all of which we really wanted operational before we went into battle again.
When the meeting reconvened, Solan reported he’d been looking at answers to my questions from the previous day. He told us raising the shields while the ship was still within jump space would dump us out into real space at some random location, not necessarily in one piece. Similarly, if we triggered the shields before we completely exited the jump, the ship could be torn apart. He conceded that with certain changes to the design of the shield control system, it may be possible to have the shields come up in a ripple pattern as the ship crossed the jump point event horizon. He believed that by raising the shields incrementally as the ship exited the jump point, she would be at least partially shielded during this critical period. An added bonus was that by the time she had fully exited a jump point, the shields that were raised early would be closer to full strength. Even I could see that while the idea held some promise, it still needed quite a lot of development work before it could be considered at all useable.
I for one, thought some testing was needed before this concept was included in any ships design. On the other hand, I saw it could be a very useful feature for a ship heading into hostile territory or exiting through a defended jump point. In any case, a way of automatically raising the shields as we exited a jump point was not likely to be of any use to us in the expected upcoming engagement. This needed a different approach if we were to prevail. Once again, I applied myself, trying to think outside of the box, trying to be the Captain’s ‘wild card’. As I sat in the planning meeting, it occurred to me I really did not know how the ships offensive weaponry worked.
I said, “I don’t know who to ask this, and I haven’t had much of a chance to study the specifications yet, but how do the missile seeker heads work?”
The Captain just smiled before deciding to pull us back on track when he said, “I suspect you have an idea for the next engagement so could you hold that thought till after we finished examining what happened during the last one.”
I just replied, “Sorry Captain, this is all so new to me. My mind is racing through possibilities.”
“Just save them to the system with your implant as they come to you. That way, you won’t forget any and we can all look at them later” he said.
I nodded in response and started saving my questions as he suggested.
HUNTERS
The meeting wore on without me contributing very much. I didn’t have any kind of a background in post battle analysis, starship design, navigation through space or any of the other issues the others were touching on just then. To me, even my engineering knowledge seemed so out of date compared to where engineering was within the Federation. It occurred to me my knowledge was completely inadequate whenever I looked at this ship and all the other technology the people in the Federation took for granted. In my own mind, I felt the Captain invited me simply as a courtesy due to a few ideas I’d had. Of course, as it turned out, those ideas paid off handsomely when we emerged from the jump point into a mine field. Being able to accurately predict the existence of mines, something so completely outside the experience of these people, probably helped as well. Actually, I would have to admit to being quite pleased with myself at the time given the way things turned out. We could easily have been far worse off than we were right then.
It was during one of these meetings that I realised my mind was wandering down different paths again. Try as I might, I couldn’t focus properly on the meeting. Eventually I caught myself thinking about how much I was growing to really hate these pirates. Of course, hate can be a very destructive emotion and I began to fantasize about what I would like to do to them, how I would like to destroy them, even find ways of torturing them. Again, I caught myself doing this, gave myself a mental shake, told myself to get a grip and focus on the task at hand so we could defeat or evade the pirate at the next jump point.
After the meeting ended, I made my way back down to the squad bay so I could continue my education with the Troopers. I considered myself so lucky that these people seemed to genuinely like me. With my short experience of the Federation, I’d come to realise the Tangesha and humans seem to be quite socially and to a somewhat lesser extent, biologically compatible. When I say biologically I mean we can eat many of the same foods and have similar physical requirements such as air pressure and composition, gravity and temperature. It is even physically possible, I am told, for humans and Tangesha to have sex, but I personally never felt any urge to test the possibility with any of the ones I have met. Socially, we seem to share many of the same traits, including a similar sense of humour with the variations being within the limits you would experience among any sufficiently large group of humans. We also seem to have many of the same interests. I’d initially been concerned cultural issues might cause me problems but this didn’t seem to be the case. The Tangesha I’d met so far, seemed to be a very tolerant people, or perhaps accepting is a better description. Since then, I have learned that while as a people, they are indeed generally quite tolerant and accepting, there are more than a few exceptions to the rule.
Like any large group, there are the rebels, the intolerant, the people with a sense of humour and those with none. What I hadn’t taken into account yet, was that the Tangesha on this ship were all specifically selected for their ability to get on with others, not only other Tangesha but other sentient species as well. By bringing me aboard the FNS Destiny, they’d seriously bent a number of their own rules but nobody seemed to care about this. The Federation specifically banned the removal of people from primitive planets without their permission. Anyone approaching these planets were also not supposed
to make themselves known to the native intelligent species unless they’d already achieved a certain technological level. Even then, the people who were intended to make first contact were expected to make a detailed evaluation of the likely outcomes of making contact would be. They needed to have an idea of what interaction between the new species and the Federation would do to both groups. As it happened, humans on Earth, hadn’t yet quite achieved the level of advancement required and for my part, I hadn’t been given an opportunity to consent to being taken though if they hadn’t taken me I would’ve died. I just hoped these people weren’t punished somehow for saving my life.
That day, after the meeting, Shasi and Ani, who seemed to have been appointed to look after me, or perhaps they just took that responsibility on themselves, taught me some simple hand to hand combat techniques. By now, my healing was almost complete. I felt both stronger and fitter than I did before my accident. Some of the improved fitness was because of the exercise regime I was following, and some, due to the drugs and other enhancements Eri gave me to help my healing. Shasi, Ani and I decided I should practice these hand to hand combat techniques every day till I had mastered each of them, then I could learn more a few at a time but all the time increasing my effectivity in self defence.
Shasi had already told Ani about the likelihood we could still be boarded. The two of them decided my thinking was so unconventional by their standards, I should have whatever knowledge they could give me so I knew their capabilities. To begin with, they decided to teach me all they could about the different grenades that were available on FNS Destiny. They explained how most though not all of the grenades used by the Tangesha are launched from their long guns. The gun uses the same principle as the rail guns to launch the grenade toward the target. Within certain limits, they can set the range they wish to fire the grenade and the system is able to compensate for the gravitational environment within. At the same time, the grenade is primed to explode a set time after launch in order to give it time to reach the target.
Star Man 1: Star Bourne Page 13