“Get down!” Cain yelled, getting immediate action from his Marines. They planted themselves on the deck and waited. “Androids, port side high.”
The Marines tried to look, but couldn’t get a view without pressing their faces against the windows. They were pinned down.
“Anything, Brutus?” Cain asked out loud. The ‘cat shook his head, eyes narrowed.
“Androids,” Cain said, resigned with his fate that he would be forever at war with the bio-mechanical creations. “We need information, so here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to pop up over here, make myself a target. Ascenti, look out that far window. We need to know how many and where they are. Spence, look out this side and see if you can find us a way out of here. Ready? Go!” Cain stood for an instant, then dodged left and right, before ducking back down.
It took Spence a little too long to get back down as a laser beam hit the back of his ballistic vest. Tobiah ran into the small man, bowling him over and dragging him to the floor of the pod.
“Report!” Cain yelled.
“I count five. They are in a transit pod opposite us, maybe forty meters away. Their pod is stopped and they are firing from the open doorway,” Ascenti said.
“I saw nothing. We are in the middle of a long empty space. The wall is not far, but it looks smooth. I don’t see where we could use it to escape,” Spence told them.
‘Stinky, we’re stopped and being attacked by Androids from another pod nearby. I hate Androids,’ Cain told his friend back at the transit station.
“Bull, can you break out these windows? I think the Androids don’t understand what it’s going to be like on the receiving end of a lightning barrage.”
The massive Wolfoid tightly gripped his spear, then jumped up and with a mighty thrust, jabbed his spear into the middle of the ancients’ window. The spear bounced back. Bull stood for a second dumbfounded at the failure of his best effort. Two laser beams found him. One hit the protective cloak/vest that he wore, the other found his chest. He howled as he spun away from the pain and went down. The human called Derby crawled to him, pulled numbweed from his pouch, and applied it to the hole that burned through the Wolfoid’s chest muscle from his breast bone, exiting the side at the lower part of the rib cage. A painful glancing blow.
The ‘cats were wedged under the seats against the wall that faced the enemy. There was nothing they could do except be angry.
Cain pulled his blaster and dialed the narrowest beam. He fired at the window, melting a small spot. He burned four more holes in a rough circle. He nodded to Pickles, who was on the floor near him. The lieutenant jabbed at the spot with his spear. A few tries and it cracked out, creating a firing port.
The other humans pulled their blasters and started melting holes. Then they melted more.
“Lightning spears, on my mark,” Cain called. “Mark,” he said softly. The Wolfoids jumped up as one, smashed a spot out of the window, and fired at the other transit pod. One, two, seven, ten spouts of lightning ripped through the other pod. It started moving away, a sparking, smoking wreck.
“Cease fire!” Cain called with a smile. “Injuries?”
Fickle held up an arm. Cain worked his way through the Marines. There was a laser crease along his forearm. The laser cauterized the wound that it caused, so there was no blood, but the major could see that his academic was in pain. He used some of his own numbweed on the private’s arm, then slapped him heartily on the shoulder.
“Looks like a Shooting Star for you, Private! And one for you, too, Corporal.” Cain looked down at the two he wore, before screwing his face up. “These are not badges of honor,” he added. He didn’t want a unit filled with people who’d been injured. He didn’t want people taking unnecessary risks to earn that medal. He had to take more care in the words he used.
The transit pod started moving of its own accord. Wind whistled through the shattered windows.
‘Stinky, we’ve eliminated the threat. The pod is moving again. See you on the other side,’ Cain reported over the mindlink.
They had never thought about how the pod system worked, but a single pod was not tied to a single line. The one that showed up for the Marines remaining on the platform was filled with smoking Android hulks.
“Pull those bodies out of there. This is our ride.” They unceremoniously threw the five dead Androids onto the platform and they climbed in. Scorching marked the walls. The doors had been blasted away. The seats on one side were melted and twisted. The pod remained in place as they waited.
A maintenance bot appeared, using one arm to wave the Marines away from the panel on one end. It pulled the cover, replaced three parts, then put the cover back. It moved to the front where the Marines cleared a path for it. The bot removed a panel, replaced one more part, then hesitated before hovering through the door and onto the platform. It turned to look at the pod. Stinky could have sworn that it sighed and hunched its shoulders.
The pod started moving slowly. It did not accelerate as they’d seen before. They traveled slowly, without issue, the Marines taking care not to stand too close to the open doors. As they approached the platform on the far end of the transit line, Cain and the two squads with him cheered and waved, welcoming their comrades.
Stinky stepped off first so he could shake Cain’s hand. “Those damn Androids,” the Wolfoid said, laughing through his vocalization device.
Take Us Out
Captain Rand was not pleased at all with the new additions to his crew. Two of them seemed to have no knowledge at all of a spaceship. Their math skills were abysmal and they couldn’t read a construction drawing in order to work in maintenance. The captain put his foot down and returned them to the space station, which made the maintenance chief Garinst a happy man. He’d rather have no one than somebody who was incompetent. He considered those two to be oxygen thieves. Although there was plenty of O2 on the ship, he hated wasting anything.
The other seven seemed marginal, with only one motivated and capable, and the others, at best, bad at following direction.
The new sensor operator decided that he wanted to play throw the ‘cat with Mixial. The captain was angry at having to detach a maintenance bot to clean his blood off the walls of the corridor. They carried him to the shuttle on a stretcher.
Rand assigned the so-called engineer to Briz, putting him in the spaces with the Rabbit and Ellie. The first thing he did was decide that Ellie was going to be his personal love slave. She ended up breaking both of his arms with a pipe wrench. He left on the shuttle after the first two, helping to carry the stretcher.
The first thing the individual did who had been assigned to backfill Cain was to misalign the main pump and run it at full power until it blew, flooding the space with unprocessed sewage in which he almost drowned. After a short stay in the med lab, he couldn’t get off the ship fast enough.
That left four new additions, including the one who was motivated and capable. Compared to the others, she seemed like the odd person out. The captain remained skeptical of her. There was no job on the ship that he felt comfortable assigning her to. He wanted to watch her, so he put her on the command deck, near him, Pace, and Commander Daksha. Between them, they’d keep their eyes on her.
The other three were split, one to engineering and two to maintenance. It took one day for Briz to determine that he had no time to train a new engineer from scratch, so all three ended up in maintenance.
“Why?” he howled in the privacy of the captain’s quarters. Rand shook his head, thinking himself less pleased with the situation than his head of maintenance, although he couldn’t be sure based on Lieutenant Commander Garinst’s tirade. “There’s no way these people passed Space School. Have you seen their resumes? What did they send you?”
Rand pointed to his screen. “They sent me stellar looking resumes. Too bad that’s not who we got. I have no idea who these people are, but you have to whip them into shape. There will be no new additions to the crew. The SES made that abundan
tly clear with a take it or leave it offer.”
“I say we leave it,” Garinst spit.
“Just partner them with someone and maybe they’ll learn at some point. If we keep them away from each other, maybe they won’t fester,” the captain offered.
“So we let them infect the good people on our crew instead? These three are a cancer!” he proclaimed and stormed out. Captain Rand was at a loss. He needed people, but the SES seemed more than willing to send him out shorthanded. He hoped that nothing went wrong. As Cain had often said, hope was a lousy plan.
“It seems a lousy plan is the only plan we have,” Rand told his terminal.
“I disagree, Captain Rand,” Jolly said over the speaker in his quarters. The captain hadn’t realized the AI had been listening in, but he hadn’t excluded him. He needed Jolly to run the ship, definitely more than the ship needed the captain. “I am working on fabricating more maintenance bots, which I can use to fill the void with maintenance personnel, but they don’t have the autonomy we need in case of a real emergency. We have the backups in cold storage, if you’d like to activate enough of them to fill the void?”
“Not yet, Jolly. I’ve considered it, but we’re not there yet. This ship is run by the people of Vii, of which we count you as one. Make preparations to leave space dock, Jolly. It’s time to go. Give me the ship, please,” Rand requested. The speakers crackled as the captain prepared to broadcast throughout his ship.
“Recover the last shuttle, secure your work, and prepare to leave space dock. Report status to Jolly and when the board shows green, Lieutenant Pace will take us out. Carry on.” The captain ended his broadcast. He felt different. Every other time he’d ordered the departure preparations to leave, he’d been exhilarated. This time, he felt like he was heading to his own funeral. He pulled himself from his quarters and swam down the corridor.
Master Daksha was on board the last shuttle. He’d already contacted Rand to approve an immediate departure. The commander didn’t have his aide with him, Lieutenant Black Leaper. He wondered how the structure might change once Cain and his people were brought on board. He had little to no information on the Marines, which bothered him, but only a little since he had the utmost confidence in Cain. Admiral Jesper had been mysteriously mum on the subject. Daksha didn’t press the issue.
Rand would be patient until he could talk with the new major himself. Patience was the virtue of the Tortoids. When the shuttle was pulled into the hangar bay, Daksha swam free, enjoying the taste and smell that was unique to his ship, no matter what the others called it. Cygnus carried humanity forward, Cygnus came home, and now Cygnus would return to IC1396.
As he swam slowly into the corridor outside, he heard but didn’t see the crew rushing about, making preparations. He continued to the stairwell and swam straight up the middle, trying to shorten the distance. They wouldn’t leave until he was in place, but the commander hated holding them up because he was so slow.
‘Jolly, can you connect me to the captain, please?’ Master Daksha asked. A moment later, his direct line was confirmed. ‘How are you doing, my friend?’ Daksha asked pleasantly.
‘I’ve been better,’ the captain confided. ‘We’ll need to talk, in private, if you understand my meaning.’
‘That I do, Rand. That I do.’ The Tortoid wondered what else to say, but since the captain implied that they shouldn’t talk in front of Jolly, he decided to keep it simple. ‘I’m heading up the stairway now. I’ll be there shortly.’
Rand was strapped into the captain’s chair, running through the extensive checklists that scrolled down his monitors. The buzz of activity within a ship as it prepared to undock helped get him past his lethargy and into a better emotional place. Pace was at a new station, squeezed next to Peekaless’s station, currently occupied by the only respectable new crew member. Kalinda cruised through the screens almost as quickly as Rand. She stopped, made a correction, then moved on. She contacted various crew members who seemed to be slow in verifying system statuses. Rand mirrored her screens. The three that seemed to be slowest in finishing their departure checklists were the new crew members. The captain shook his head, letting the disgust show on his face, before quickly hiding it so no one else noticed.
He had only two sensor operators, which meant there would be blank spots. The AI was better at everything than humans except in determining signal validity. He could make recommendations, but it took a person to dig into the data.
There were twenty-one more ‘cats coming to join the other two. Maybe they could take care of his problem crew, in the dead of the space night, without anyone noticing. They’d only be missed when people realized that they weren’t being annoying. You’re being too harsh, the captain cautioned himself. No matter how he felt, he had to lead this crew as they operated the spaceship, his ship.
The Olive Branch.
He rotated his chair to look at the plaque on the bulkhead. In large block letters at the top it said, “Cygnus-12.” If he didn’t add any names to the plaque, then he wouldn’t have to think about which ship they served. Wouldn’t that be ironic, dying in action on a ship named for a peaceful mission that carried a contingent of armed Marines.
Not optimal, he thought. If there could be peace without war, he wanted to be part of the group that made it happen. Then again, the Concordians had already declared war on Cygnus, with their actions, not their words. Maybe the next planet would be more kind.
The hatch opened and Daksha swam onto the bridge. Kalinda jumped from her seat and floated stiffly as a sign of respect for the mission commander. He nodded to her, and she clawed her way back into her seat. Daksha had read the report on the new additions from Captain Rand, the report with volumes unspoken between the lines of vanilla prose. He expected the captain would fill that void during their private conversation, sometime much later when they weren’t under acceleration.
Daksha assumed his position where he could grab a strap and hang on.
The lights reflected green across the board. “Pace, contact docking control and have them release the clamps. Engineering, confirm power to the thrusters.”
“EM drive thrusters are nominal,” Briz’s vocalization device echoed through the speakers.
The lieutenant mumbled something at his control panel and touched two of the icons showing on his screen, then slid his fingers across it as he adjusted other elements within flight control. He usually did this alone, in a separate space where there were no distractions. He was still getting used to being in a space with others. “Clamps released,” he said aloud.
“Take us out, Lieutenant, extra slow, please,” Rand said, watching the status as the new EM drive thrusters engaged. Small green flashes suggested Pace was simply tapping on the “gas” to give it a little momentum. They couldn’t feel the ship moving and wouldn’t have known if not for the external monitors showing the dock moving away from them.
The spaceship continued at a crawl away from dock and into clear space before changing attitude, aligning the spindle section aft. The second, smaller core module was in place on top of the first. It contained four nuclear reactors and had minimal life support at present because it had not yet been fully integrated into the ship processes, as in, no one lived or worked in there. They’d save power and resources until such time as they needed the space and capabilities of the new module.
“Prepare for artificial gravity! I say again, prepare for artificial gravity!” the captain announced over the ship wide broadcast. “Ensign Kalinda, please make sure that all sections report green before we start the spin.”
Without a word in acknowledgement she worked with Jolly to contact each section head, using Jolly’s personnel tracking ability to ensure no one was free floating where they could fall, like the middle of the stairwell. It took longer than Rand wanted, but he couldn’t engage the artificial gravity without confirmation. He was never in a hurry to get someone hurt, especially not five minutes from space dock.
After seeing th
e thumbs up from Kalinda, Rand said simply, “Engaging artificial gravity.” The first jerk was intense as the spin began. The EM thrusters had been incorporated into the rotational drive system and they had far more power than the old thrusters.
“Sorry about that!” Briz apologized through the intercom to the command deck. “I still had them juiced from some of the prior simulations. You won’t get that quick a start from here on out. I promise.”
The Rabbit unbuckled himself from his chair in engineering. He walked heavily. It had been two and a half months since he’d last felt gravity and it was more than he expected. “Did I get heavier while we were in dock?” he asked Ellie. She laughed at him and shook her head. The Rabbit had probably lost weight as he had forgotten to eat more times than she could count.
He lumbered past her to physically inspect power couplings. He carried a meter to check emissions. She thought that was a good idea, so she dug into her kit and pulled out her own meter. She headed in the opposite direction, yelling at Briz with a list of systems that she would check. She didn’t wait for his reply. She’d log her verifications with Jolly, who would inform Briz of any duplicated effort. She started whistling happily, although she noticed that she felt heavy, too. She hoped that feeling would go away quickly, otherwise she’d find herself in the workout space more and the galley less.
Allard and Beauchene had uncovered the plants and stowed the material, waiting for the return of artificial gravity. They’d been on the station nearly the entire time their ship was in space dock, so they felt no different. Once they had their feet in the dirt, they happily went from plant to plant, greeting them and extracting the watering system for the misting process used during times of artificial gravity. When in zero-g, the system injected water into the soil for the roots. It worked to maintain them, but they needed the moisture both above and below ground to maximize their growth and yield.
Cygnus Expanding: Humanity Fights for Freedom (Cygnus Space Opera Book 2) Page 23