by A. S. Deller
Hu laughed, dislodged his knees from around the parallel bars and flipped down to the gym floor. He spotted Jecky, and the red-haired, sweat-soaked, pale-skinned Lieutenant dropped to his feet. And promptly sat on the mat. “How do you do it?”
“It’s all in the core,” Hu said, pounding his eight-pack abs with a fist. “And will power, brother. Don’t give up. You’ll get there.”
“I’ll pass out and fall to my death before I do, though. That can’t be a good workout strategy,” said Jecky as Hu grabbed his hand and pulled him to a standing, though slightly wobbly, position.
“I’m going to go hydrate and get a few hours’ sleep in. You okay to walk somewhere by yourself?” Greg joked.
“Be fine,” said Jecky, stretching his hamstrings.
Just as he was walking through the hatch, Hu looked over a shoulder and added, “Let me know how things go with Pham.”
“Oh, that. We’re just talking,” Arno said, rubbing his neck.
“Right.”
“Linh’s a Petty Officer. It would be wrong of me to—-“
“Not enough time to be wrong, L.T.!” Hu yelled as he disappeared around a corner.
Jecky groaned. Hu was always right. There was a party planned a couple weeks out, a surprise for another crew member’s birthday. She would be there. That would be a good time to see just what she thought of him.
Twenty minutes later, Lt. Arno Jecky was showered, shaved, had donned his uniform and was on his way to run his daily inspection of the Talisman’s weapons systems. His specialty was keeping the ship ready to engage targets at all times. Behind enemy lines, Talisman was a juicy treat just begging to be stumbled upon by the Alliance. It was packed full of data and advanced scientific instrumentation that they would love to get their dirty claws on. And even though it wasn’t a battleship, it represented a real threat to the Valgons and their soulless Malign comrades. The last thing you want is to have a vessel full of some of the farthest-ranging sensors available, scooting around in your territory, filling itself up on snapshots of your movements, supply lines and fortifications. Jecky knew that during the four-plus years the Talisman had been “wandering in the desert”, they had amassed an absolute stockpile of information about current and former Alliance bases and colonies. At the same time, they avoided most of them, due to the enviable range of their active sensing facility.
Thank the Progenitors, and Infinitus, and whatever gods everyone believed it, they had avoided getting the Alliance’s attention. No matter how proud Jecky was of the Talisman, and the reverence he felt for his work, his ship was not even remotely close to having the firepower it would take to stave off a Valgon cruiser, let alone a battleship.
Like everyone else, Arno was in awe of the wonders Dr. Weller and Chief Falken and the Captain had pulled off that kept them alive in the minutes after they floundered through the Alliance wormhole. But he knew it was the Valgons’ rage and a healthy serving of luck that deserved most of the praise.
If Talisman ever had to truly duke it out, head to head with an Alliance ship, both fully shielded and all systems go, it might take the Alliance ship a few seconds longer to blast his ship to atoms than they’d hoped, but blast it to atoms they would. The Talisman would be fortunate to scratch the enemy’s hull before it was over. All that Arno Jecky had to work with he could count on a single hand:
One plasma projection cannon, stern, check.
One five-petawatt continuous UV laser, bow, check.
One dual-barrel 20mm railgun, forecastle, check.
One AI-targetting superluminal missile tube, 1 kiloton and 3 kiloton yields, starboard, check.
One AI-targetting superluminal missile tube, 1 kiloton and 3 kiloton yields, port, check.
A typical UPSN or League battleship had up to three times the armaments, at higher powers. A typical Alliance battleship had up to six times the destructive capabilities. Even a Valgon Keevaks class scoutship, far smaller than the Talisman, possessed nearly double the firepower.
As he made his way from access panel to weapon station to magazine and on and on, Jecky tried to keep from dwelling on such things. A good chunk of his identity was tied up in the ship he’d lived on for years, and he even felt himself somewhat emasculated whenever he considered the Talisman’s relative weaknesses.
Despite that, Arno couldn’t help but feel fairly auspicious. He’d come a long way in his life not to.
Son of an independent asteroid mining contractor, he witnessed first-hand the aftereffects of dangerous working conditions combined with under-trained, careless, and often drug impaired laborers. Those who chose to work so far from Earth and Mars tended to be loners, desperate, or desperate loners, with plenty of other problems that would have sent them packing from wider civilization. The only things keeping those folk from leaving the Solar System for a place in a frontier colony would have been legal issues or reasons too personal to speak of. Jecky remembered one of the miners who opened up to him after a particularly hard day. His name was Traylor, or Tailor, or something. One of the few miners who didn’t have some kind of restriction on him by the UP keeping him from being a colonial, he nevertheless stuck around the system just so he would still be close enough to a supplier of a designer drug known as “stardust”. The strung-out man, looking twenty years older than he should, offered Jecky some stardust. He declined it, and reported Traylor/Tailor to his father. Big, tall, gruff Chief Jecky shouted Arno out of his cubbyhole office, telling him not to sneak around and prod into his workers’ private business.
The Old Man knew everything. He didn’t care what the miners did on their downtime. He didn’t care if any of the very few women were raped. He didn’t care when someone lost a limb, or a life. It was cheap enough to replace a miner, cheaper than leasing an AI and some robots.
One of the accidents ended up killed Chief Jecky. He was crushed when an ore processor exploded.
Jecky was sick to his core with the business, so he used all of the Old Man’s hard-earned blood money and bought out the remaining workers’ contracts. With the last handful of Units, Arno left for Earth. He finished secondary schooling, meeting Greg Hu along the way, and the rest was history.
If he ever had children of his own, they would never know a damned thing about the Old Man.
Just as he was getting ready to hit the galley for a quick bite, Greg Hu pinged him over his comm implant. He sounded groggy and annoyed, and Arno found out why right away. “I got an unwelcome wakeup call. Need you to meet me in the armory.”
Jecky’s pulse raced. “What’s this about?”
“XO pulled me in on an away mission, asked me to suggest a tech guy. I think you count.”
Arno Jecky had gone off-ship only one other time in his years on the Talisman, and that was just to sightsee in a quick shuttle orbit of a hostile planet covered in some markedly bewitching auroras. It so coruscated with shimmering greens, blues and violets that the world looked like some empyrean soap bubble of godly proportions.
Now, he actually had a chance to set foot on an alien planet, for the first time. Not Earth, not Mars, not some dingy, bleak asteroid.
Jecky stepped up his pace. He’d grab one of Wong’s bland nutrient bars on the way.
CPO Hu handed out the weapons, Tactical Sonic Pulse Rifles, or “Tespers” as Star Navy crews liked to call them. They were one of the United Powers’ most reliable weapons, and one of the few models still in use after most weapons were replaced by League tech. Tespers could be adjusted to blast a wide cone of sound waves that would merely incapacitate a target, or to shoot a focused sound beam that could disintegrate most materials on impact. They were small and light, like an ancient projectile weapon called the Uzi, but had a fold-out stock that was often used in beam mode to help with accuracy.
As the selected shuttle crew passed through the Armory, Hu gave them each an assigned Tesper and linked them to it via his tablet. Rhodes first, followed by Carly Ming, Arno Jecky, Petty Officer First Class Alisa Nunez (nickna
med “Pretty Officer” by half of the male crew), and Lt. David Ayler, shuttle pilot. Dr. Hubert Martell was Weller’s choice for medic on the flight, a gaunt man with a balding head of blond hair known for his thoroughness in the lab. He refused his Tesper but Hu pressed it into his arms anyway. Finally Lt. Rax ambled through the Armory. He looked down at the Tesper in Greg Hu’s hand and cocked his head to one side.
“Right,” said Hu. “I hope you don’t actually need your cannon, but here you go anyway.” Hu put the Tesper back on its rack and opened a tall locker set against the bulkhead.
Rax grinned his awful grin as he reached in and removed what the Kenek called an “iddik”—- the word for “killer” in their language. It was a portable railgun built of exceptionally heat-resistant materials, and it could punch holes through ten feet of solid rock.
“Suit up!” Said Rhodes.
Hopefully, the guns wouldn’t be needed. No matter what, the suits would be. LM-32f was -80 degrees Fahrenheit, not including wind chill, with a gravity 1.2 times that of Earth and air made up of mostly methane and carbon dioxide. Even Rax, as tough as he was, appreciated the suits in such a case.
A standard Survival Expeditionary Suit, or SES, was a remarkable collaboration between Kenek and human technologies. In addition to being self-sufficient enough that a person could live inside one for up to thirty days, an SES also incorporated a full array of sensory and communications devices and an interchangeable mass exoskeleton that allowed someone to adapt a specific suit to work at an optimum level in a wide range of gravitational environments. Parts of the exoskeleton could be mass-reduced or increased so that the wearer would weigh an appropriate amount on a lower or higher-G world. Plus, the exoskeleton itself could give the user added strength and speed as situations demanded. This last feature is what made an SES undeniably fun for crew members to train in. Since there was one of the suits aboard the Talisman for each of the 156 crew members, SES training had become a major source of recreation in the past four years. The SES’s of the United Powers Star Navy also doubled as Extravehicular Activity suits with the addition of zero-G maneuverability thruster packs, so they were used often enough for repairs in the vacuum of space. Everyone aboard a starship was trained on them.
The other military branches had variants of SES that were more specialized for combat, and included greater enhanced strength and speed, as well as built-in weapons systems and sometimes even portable EM shield units that could offer protection from heavy weapons. Even though the Talisman’s SES units were formidable in comparison to the NASA spacesuits of yore, Rhodes found himself wishing he had a few of the Star Marines’ SES battlesuits on hand. He had been on a few alien worlds during his career, but on missions to deliver medical or engineering aid to colonies of humans or other League members. Answering a distress beacon in what was likely hostile space really called for an SES rig that could make a human a match for a Valgon. None of Rhodes’ suits came close.
Which was why he was taking Lt. Rax with him. Rax had a specially-modified SES built for the larger scale of a Kenek wearer. Kenek SES units were on par with the Marine suits as far as physical capabilities went. That, combined with a Kenek’s natural power and speed, would make Rax the equal of a Valgon in combat.
Now they just had to cross their fingers that the worst they came across would be a single Valgon.
Gulliver’s voice sounded through everyone’s comm implants, “Shuttle B is prepped for takeoff. Please secure yourself. Launch in T-minus 60 seconds.”
“Okay crew, you heard the man. It’s time to make atmosphere,” said Rhodes. Ming, Rax, Dr. Martell, Hu, Jecky, and Nunez buckled themselves into their seats while Rhodes and Ayler did the same in the cockpit.
“Try to find me a few spare parts from that list I gave you,” chimed in Chief Engineer Falken’s voice over the comms.
Ayler answered, “Will do, Chief.”
Captain Lancer’s image appeared in Rhodes’ mind through his implant as he and Ayler triple-checked the shuttle’s systems. “Commander, caution is your number one priority,” she said.
Rhodes thought back to her, “Understood, Captain. We will take all necessary precautions, and some unnecessary ones, too.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
On the Bridge, Captain Lancer couldn’t help but chuckle at Rhodes’ reply. Sorakith stood next to her, with Chief Falken towering over her shoulder.
Reina could see the concern written on Sorakith’s face. The bronze skin of her brow was knitted in worry. Just like most of the crew, the Captain had met and talked with Sorakith on many occasions about both personal and professional matters.
Reina would usually speak about her rough childhood, spent caring for her two younger brothers in the slums of New Rio. She had committed crimes nearly every day for seven years to keep them, and herself, fed and clothed and warm. Thanks to the charity of the Sisters of St. Lumia, her little family was taken in and cared for. In time, they were all adopted by Charles and Yuko Lancer, philanthropists and trillionaires who had made their money in starship AI systems. Life in the Republic of North America was so different for Reina and her brothers that it was a shock to be overcome in the first months. But children were adaptable, and they all found new friends and new directions. One of her brothers, Joao, followed in the family business and was currently (as far as Reina knew) a Vice President of Lancer Interplanetary Intelligence. The other, Matheus, moved back to Brazil and became a professor of League Studies.
Reina’s parents tried, gently, to steer her away from joining the UPSN, but her taste for exploration was unquenchable. Charles had even offered to finance a multi-year expedition just to satisfy Reina’s desires. Ultimately, his daughter wanted to voyage light years in service to her world and the worlds of the League. Conditions had been improving for every human on Earth since Donal Banyan had formed the United Powers, and at an even faster rate since the arrival of the Torrent and Earth’s acceptance into the League. But Reina knew that there were dangers in the void. The Valgon Alliance was a threat, to her brothers and their children, to any children she may one day bear, and to all the children of Earth. Captain Reina Lancer vowed to help defend them all.
Sometimes, however, Sorakith would open up to Reina about her own thoughts. As an Althorian, Sorakith was able to feel others’ emotions and nearly able to read minds, but there was no one else aboard the Talisman that could empathize with her as well as she could with others. She formed a trusting bond with Reina. One day, Sorakith told the Captain that she felt a significant connection with Commander Rhodes, and that she could tell from his own mental energy that he, too, felt it.
“Would it be... feasible...” Sorakith hesitated, “For me to act on this knowledge?”
Reina answered slyly, “Do you mean would it be alright for you to ask him out?”
Sorakith looked down, trying and failing to mask her embarrassment, and replied, “It would be a violation of my position.”
“You’re picking up on signs that even one of us human women would see, Sorakith. So yes, you have my permission to fraternize with Deputy Commander Rhodes.”
So Reina knew what Sorakith was feeling as Shuttle B drifted out of the Talisman’s hangar bay. She felt something close to it, but it was for everyone aboard the tiny boat. It hovered for a minute, 500 miles above the planet’s craggy slate-colored surface, dappled with swatches of sage green plant life and strange periwinkle cloud formations that formed strident longitudinal rings. With a bright explosion of plasma energy the shuttle began its traverse down into LM-32f’s gravity well.
The flight through the planet’s atmosphere was bumpy, but otherwise uneventful. Shuttle B broke through the lowest cloud ring and the HUD in the cockpit zeroed in on the coordinates provided by Gulliver. The broad, barren valley where the source of the distress beacon awaited them opened up below. “There we go,” said Ayler.
“Landing jets?” Rhodes said as he calculated their trajectory.
“Aye, sir,” responded Ay
ler, swiping a finger over the landing controls. Outside, six small plasma jets flashed to life along the shuttle’s hull.
CPO Greg Hu spoke up, “When we touch down I want everyone in a two-by-two formation exiting the boat. I’ll take point with Ayler. Nunez, Rax, at the rear. Watch each other’s backs.”
The shuttle passed through a last bit of chop and the settled down onto a patch on flat, dark gray ground mottled with a mossy plant the color of wilted asparagus. Its hatch sprung open with a hiss, and the landing party filed out quickly, weapons at the ready. Rhodes was in the middle, with Arno Jecky at his side with a portable scanning device, a PSD, that could detect anything from microwaves to gamma rays, and infrared to the electrical current of an animal’s nervous system. “What do we see, Jecky?” Asked Rhodes.
“We have the beacon up ahead 400 meters, some weather activity building about 2 hours away in the east, and ten or twelve animals of some kind, big enough to show on here. All around the beacon’s location,” Jecky answered.
“Move in, slow and steady. Watch those life signals, Lt.”
“Yes sir,” affirmed Jecky.
Hu raised his right arm and waved forward, “On me.” Everyone started forward on a slow jog, aided against the higher gravity by their SES exoskeletons. The moss crunched lightly under their boots. They tramped up and over a lip of rock and a wide, rocky landscape unfolded before them:
A carpet of alien moss, speckled with tiny brilliant splotches of fuschia flowers and interrupted by boulders of every imaginable size. They were mostly rounded, and some parts smooth, indicating that this area had once been scrubbed over by massive glaciers. A few oases surrounding pools of aquamarine water coated with rainbow sheens of oil. Clumps of odd bushes made up of huge fronds the color of ochre, stippled with vermillion stripes. A low, roiling fog, not dense enough to obscure their view of a 25 foot high structure that was the distress beacon’s source.