Blue Defender

by Sean Monaghan

  Chapter Three

  The cockpit’s red lights shut off. The harness kept Matti-Jay tightly against the seat.

  The air grew cooler. Fast. She gasped for breath.

  This shouldn’t be happening. A dragon! How could that be?

  Through the forward window, the blue of Ludelle 8 swung by. Stationary, but with the runabout spinning it looked like the planet sweeping across the view.

  The Blue Defender’s emergency systems began kicking in fast. A plastic bubble expanded from the seat’s headrest. The bubble flopped heavily over her head. Right away the bubble began inflating. Warm, sweet smelling air flowed around her face.

  The bubble continued to roll down her body and across her legs. Some kind of smart semi-liquid, the bubble would encase her against the seat. Together the seat and bubble would form a life-preserving pod. Enough to keep her alive for hours. Perhaps even longer than a day.

  Matti-Jay worked on controlling her breathing. Easy to panic in a situation like this. The air smelled faintly of strawberry. Probably designed to keep her calm. It just made her hungry.

  The runabout’s tumbling slowed. The seat and harness jerked her slightly with each automatic puff from the attitude jets.

  Ludelle 8 came into view again. Slower this time. Was it closer? Matti-Jay had accelerated the ship. Had it been toward the planet?

  Better if it had been toward the Donner. She needed to get this spin steadied and get herself safely back to the main ship.

  But where was the dragon? Was it coming back for another attack? Why had it attacked in the first place?

  No. That was in the second place. The first place question was why was there a freaking dragon in space? Sheesh.

  Matti-Jay took a deeper breath. She had to trust the bubble. Had to trust the Blue Defender to take care of her, and of itself.

  The tumble had just about steadied now. She was looking almost directly at the planet. A great ice cream swirl of a cyclone spiraling across part of the large southern ocean. From this altitude it looked calm and quiet and peaceful.

  Matti-Jay felt along the seat’s armrest. She didn’t have much space in the bubble. The armrest included a set of emergency controls. Matti-Jay squeezed her hand along. Felt the five buttons.

  Simple controls. Each button had a single press response–communications, atmosphere, attitude and so on–and long-press combinations for more complex system access. Part of the bubble in front of her eyes formed into a small display. Like the Heads-Up-Display inside a suit helmet visor. The bubble’s display showed exactly which controls she’d brought up, and asked for confirmation before executing any commands.

  A primitive system, full of safeties and redundancies. But it assumed that the ship was disabled. It gave any potential victim–her!–the opportunity to work their way out of whatever mess they’d found themselves in. Or created.

  Whichever.

  Matti-Jay used the system to call up the communications. She was going to need the Golden Glow or another vessel to come over and make a rescue. Matti-Jay’s stomach clawed at her.

  Embarrassing. She would get a hard time about it. Not overtly. Quietly. It would come with glances and whispered comments. As the youngest member of the Donner’s crew, she had to work extra hard to prove herself.

  This was a setback. Hardly her fault–that dragon had attacked–but she would still be coming back with a ruined runabout. She still needed a rescue.

  “Unless I still have thrust control,” she whispered to herself.

  Technically she shouldn’t run the ship. Not with damage to the hull. The loss of atmosphere was one thing, but the damage might also be structural.

  She might turn on the main drive and the ship would crush itself. Crumple into an empty soda can.

  But if she could bring it in herself, that might go some of the way to avoiding those sideways glances and snide whispers.

  “B.D.?” she said. “You online there?”

  No response. Maybe the damage had caused the system to retreat away from the voice communications. That would be normal. A way to conserve things.

  “B.D. Can you give me details on any damage?”

  Nothing.

  With some careful tapping of the simple armrest controls, she brought up menus on the bubble’s display. A whole list of what was wrong with the Blue Defender.

  Punctured through three levels of her hull. In five different places. Only the little vessel’s self-repair gels had prevented an explosive decompression.

  Touch and go.

  Even then, the gels, smart as they were, hadn’t been enough to prevent the loss of the vessel’s air.

  The display alerted Matti-Jay about medical issues. Her skin was sweating and her heartrate was elevated.

  “Well, what do you expect?” she said. “My ship just got attacked by a dragon.”

  Speaking of which, where was the dragon now? Coming back around for another bite of her?

  With some more taps at the controls, she got the Blue Defender’s scanning system up on the little bubble display. The image showed the runabout, with empty space around her. No sign of the dragon within two kilometers. Matti-Jay checked that her scan was a full three dimensional, three hundred and sixty degrees. It was. Covering the whole volume of space around her.

  No sign of the dragon. Perhaps it had gone farther out.

  Matti-Jay widened the scan. Ten kilometers.

  No dragon.

  Twenty.

  Something there. Just at the edge of the scan’s range. The contact slipped out of view.

  The Blue Defender’s scanners were quite limited compared to those aboard the Donner. Every time Matti-Jay expanded that range, the results grew coarser and came in more slowly.

  She expanded it again. Fifty kilometers.

  There. Twenty two kilometers off. A faded, gritty spot.

  The scan display just showed points and circles. No detail. It was just letting her know that there was something there.

  It had to be the dragon. Moving very fast. Moments ago it had been practically stationary relative to the Blue Defender. Now the thing was more than twenty kay off.

  At least it was done with her. She could see if the runabout’s systems could seal those breaches and refill the cockpit with air. Like all the runabouts, Blue Defender carried sufficient reserves to refill a few times.

  Now the dragon was close to thirty kilometers off. Accelerating.

  Where was it going? If she had the full system, Matti-Jay would be able to track it. Perhaps there were others. Perhaps it had hurt itself biting her ship and was running away home.

  With some more tweaks of the basic controls, Matti-Jay got the runabout moving. Keeping the ultramagnetics on low thrust, she started back toward the Donner.

  The runabout accelerated gently. No indication of structural stress there. Matti-Jay pushed the engines a little more. Several warning lights came on, both on the bubble display, and on the main consoles. Nothing too bad.

  The seat vibrated gently against her. With some more taps she brought up the navigation system. To check that she was on the right track. Blue Defender should automatically locate and head for the main ship anyway.

  There. The Donner lay dead ahead. Out of visual range, but the navigation transponders picked up on her. Got the trajectory neatly calculated.

  And there was the dragon.

  Along the same path as the Blue Defender. Heading straight for the Donner.

  Chapter Four

  Matti-Jay stared at the tiny display inside her plastic bubble cocoon. The air felt like it was getting stifling.

  The display showed the dragon heading right toward the Donner.

  Her mouth was dry.

  It was as if she’d been an appetizer and the Donner was about to be the real meal. Matti-Jay needed to contact them.

  “Charlie,” she said, her voice nothing more than a whispery crackle.

  No response came. The cockpit felt as if it was closing in on her. If the drago
n could do that much damage to the Blue Defender with just a passing swipe, what could it do to the Donner with determination?

  It all felt surreal. A dragon!

  “Charlie?” she said, louder. Still no response.

  Matti-Jay pushed the throttle up. It was difficult in the bubble with just the armrest controls. The ship wanted to fly itself.

  So much for the Defender part of its name. It wasn’t defending anything right now. Well, perhaps its own structural integrity.

  The dragon continued to expand the gap. Well over forty kilometers now. At least the runabout was going in the right direction. Toward the Donner.

  And still close to a thousand kilometers to the main vessel. A lot of ground to cover. If she could just keep up.

  “Charlie?” she said again. “Charlie come in. Donner? Anyone aboard? Please come in.”

  Still no response.

  “We have an emergency,” she said. “Something’s on its way to you.”

  Nothing.

  “Please come in. You need to prepare. You need to...” What? What could they do? How could she explain the dragon?

  Well. They must have seen the feeds from the Blue Defender. Must have seen what had happened. The little vessel’s own computers would have sent distress and telemetry messages from the first moment of impact. The Donner’s crew would know what had happened.

  Why hadn’t they responded?

  Damage to her ship? When the dragon had impacted. Maybe it had damaged the comms systems. It should show in among all those red lights somewhere on the main displays.

  The runabout was pretty beaten up. Matti-Jay pushed the throttle higher. The speed crept up. She wasn’t gaining on the dragon, but at least she was falling behind less quickly.

  With some more taps she worked to get the Blue Defender to slowly increase its speed. Right now she had it at three hundred kilometers per hour. Heading for three ten.

  The dragon was already hitting five hundred. At that rate it would reach the Donner in two hours. But the dragon was still accelerating too.

  If only Matti-Jay had full access to the runabout’s systems. She could calculate the relative times. The system would figure out when the dragon would reach the Donner, and then calculate an acceleration profile for the runabout to arrive sooner. An elegant calculation that would protect the damaged hull, but still have Matti-Jay at the main ship in time to give warning.

  “Charlie?” Matti-Jay said again. “Anyone.” Surely they’d seen what had happened. They had been watching her. Charlie had already offered to send someone over. Surely they knew that the communications were down. Maybe even now a crew was boarding the Golden Glow and prepping to come out and get her.

  Coming straight into the dragon’s path.

  “Charlie! Charlie, pick up.”

  Nothing. Dead air.

  Matti-Jay cursed. This was not how this cruise should have gone. Just an investigative mission. Take a look at Ludelle 8. Orbit for a few weeks at least and gather lots of information. Set down and explore if it was safe to do so.

  Maybe this was a planet where people could set up a colony. With little houses by the seashore, and forest excursions and sailing boats. All those dreams and fantasies about humanity expanding through the galaxy.

  But dragons. Out in space.

  The Blue Defender continued its ponderous acceleration. The dragon continued to slip away. If it continued at this rate, it might reach the Donner in less than five minutes.

  Matti-Jay took a deep breath. She worked on the simple controls. She nudged the acceleration up some more. The runabout beelined for the Donner.

  Matti-Jay had turned the runabout around, so now the planet was to the left, and it was slightly above. As much as there could be an above and a below in zero gravity. The cockpit’s floor would be a true floor when she set down on a planet, but out it space it was all arbitrary.

  The human brain, though, liked to picture things with an up and a down. Funny. So the planet was slightly ‘above’.

  Matti-Jay worked on the controls some more. What she needed was for the self-repair systems to seal the vessel. Once that was done she could get out of this bubble and access all the controls instead off just this basic set up.

  The bubble’s display was frustratingly simplistic. Slow and with limited access.

  “Charlie?” she said again, not expecting a response. The runabout was pretty busted up. The air in the bubble was cool, and the strawberry scent had faded away.

  With some more taps at the armrest controls, she brought up the environment controls. That system was working. Plenty of green lights, with a couple of orange. Pressure control and ventilation had issues. That didn’t matter. She didn’t really need ventilation for the quick trip back to the Donner. Assuming she could make it a quick trip without breaking the Blue Defender in half.

  Matti-Jay shifted around, trying to stretch her muscles. The bubble was protective, but also very restrictive of her movements. Her right calf started getting a slight painful cramp.

  She kept working on the controls and the small display. She found the structural data.

  The system was still self-analyzing. Trying to determine what was broken and what was working. With numerous embedded sensors damaged, there was only so much the computers could figure out. The system was extrapolating.

  But it looked like the vessel was solid enough for her to push the speed. Immediately Matti-Jay tapped back to the throttle menu. She adjusted the acceleration. Felt the kick as the craft jumped ahead. The velocity climbed rapidly.

  Now to figure out the environmentals and get out of this annoying bubble. If that was possible.

  Something clicked in her ear. Followed by a crackling sound. The runabout shuddered.

  Chapter Five

  Matti-Jay tapped at the armrest console. Her fingers bumped against the taut shield of the transparent bubble. Remarkably solid. She eased the acceleration.

  The shudder lessened. Better. It was scary riding in a broken ship. Oh, and trying to outrun a dragon.

  The crackling came again.

  “Someone there?” Matti-Jay said. “Charlie?”

  On the bubble’s tiny display, details about the Blue Defender’s status came up. The self-repair systems were putting workarounds in place. The little vessel might be able to take a bit more acceleration soon.

  More crackling.

  “Hello?” Matti-Jay said.

  “Matti-Jay?” Charlie said, his voice barely understandable through the hiss and crackle. “Matti-Jay?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Oh boy. It’s great to hear your voice. The telemetry from your runabout shows a whole lot of damage. Loss of internal atmosphere. When we couldn’t reach you we thought the worst.”

  “Ship’s damaged. I’m okay. The emergency systems worked.”

  “Did you get hit by something? Space junk? Or was it an internal problem? An explosion?”

  “It was the dragon.”

  A pause. “Say again please. Your voice is breaking up. It looks like there’s a problem with your communications systems too.”

  “There is. It was a dragon that bit the Blue Defender.” It sounded so ridiculous as she said it.

  “No,” Charlie said. “I’m not receiving that right. It sounded liked ‘dagger’.”

  “Dragon. Look. Turn your scopes on me. You’ll see it.”

  “Scopes? We see you on radar. You’re coming our way fast. Just take care that you don’t do any damage when you swing around to slow down.”

  Travel in space was a simple thing. You blasted your rockets in one direction and your ship went in the other direction. When you wanted to slow down, you used your ship’s attitude jets to turn around and turned on the rocket again. Very simple action and reaction.

  When the Blue Defender drew closer to the Donner, Matti-Jay would have to spin the runabout around on its axis and burn the ultramagnetics again to slow down and match the Donner’s speed.

  She just had
to make sure she didn’t aim too close to the Donner itself and turn it all into a big barbecue

  “You can see me? On your scopes?” she said. “Anything else?”

  “Ludelle 8 is there. A couple of distant asteroids.”

  “There should be something between me and the Donner. Almost a direct line.”

  “Nope.”

  “It’s moving faster than me.” Matti-Jay tapped the cramped armrest controls again and brought up the scan.

  The dragon was still there. Over eighty kilometers from her. The distance was diminishing now. She was moving faster.

  But why couldn’t they see it from the Donner?

  The same way that she hadn’t known about it until it was practically on her. When she’d seen it with her naked eyes.

  But why did her scopes see it now? Had something happened because she had already seen it? That didn’t make sense.

  The thing had to be shielded. Who knew what, but somehow it was deflecting the detection systems. But perhaps only ahead. In its direction of travel.

  “Charlie, I see it,” she said.

  The thing was just a speck now. Just reflecting sunlight from Ludelle. The thing had a dark hull. Probably just part of its stealth systems.

  The thing was designed–or evolved?–for ambushes.

  “Matti-Jay, you’re runabout’s going way too fast. This was supposed to be just a shakedown run. And you’re damaged.”

  “The Donner’s in danger,” she yelled. Her voice echoed strangely in the bubble enclosure.

  “Danger?” Charlie said. “This... dragon?”

  Matti-Jay sighed. It did sound ridiculous. Yet here she was inside an emergency bubble because the thing had bitten her runabout.

  “There’s something coming, Charlie,” she said. “Fast. I don’t know what it is.” It’s a dragon. “But it’s what did this damage to the Blue Defender. You see all the issues coming through the signal from the runabout’s telemetry, right?”

  “I see the telemetry.” Charlie’s voice was still crackly. As if he had a foil-wrapped pack of protein snacks and was crinkling it by his mouth as he ate. “You shouldn’t call it ‘Blue Defender’. It’s just a standard runabout.”