by Dain White
“Open that hatch, please,” I asked, and stood by while she worked it open on manual. I was pleased to see that it had been properly evacuated before opening. Working enviro is good to have.
The assemblers entered the docking compartment with us, and Shorty worked the outer door closed again. Once she had it cranked down, and thankfully not torn off, she leaned over and knocked on the inner door. We could feel the atmo pumping into the room, and even in my suit I breathed a lot easier. Shorty got back into position, and when we heard them knock on the hatch, she started working the manual lever open.
Their faces were dark, soot covered. The air was still pretty smoky, though it looked like they had the upper hand over the fire. They were survivors.
I called out, “Does anyone need food, water, first aid?”
They erupted in cheers, and Shorty opened her helmet while the assemblers set up a medical station. There were a lot of people here, and from the look of the place, they weren’t in a very good spot.
The really bad part about this was how far away from help they were. “Yak, are you on station?”
“I am on my wrist screen if needed, but still 30 seconds out, sir”
“Very well son, have you located the Redoubt?”
“One moment, sir,” he said. I waited the regulation moment and a sip.
“I think I’ve found it, but there’s not much of it left... the hulk has been slagged into pieces and there’s a pretty large cloud of debris.”
“Any chance of survivors?”
“If these pieces were bigger, I’d think so, but sir, the pieces just aren’t that big.”
I nodded, and watched the crowd for a moment.
“You need a pretty tough hide to tussle with these critters, Yak. Gene, we were hit by something incredibly hard in that last engagement. How did our Duron hold up?”
As I spoke, I moved through the crowd, handing out blankets to people who looked like they needed a hug and a nap someplace safe.
“It’s the best I’ve ever seen, Dak,” he called back. “If it can handle the fusion heat of the tokamak interior – well, it’s excellent at heat dissipation. It regenerates really quickly, especially given our powerplant.”
“I believe Janis and I can improve on it, Gene.”
“Can you make it work like the crab, and those amazing suits?”
“That’s our plan, Gene,” she replied brightly. “In fact, we’re hoping to greatly improve the heat dissipation as well.”
That reminded me. “Gene, that reminds me.”
“Reminds you of what?”
“It reminds me that I also hadn’t asked yet what our consumption looked like in our last engagement.”
“Ah, it was nothing, skipper. We didn’t really ‘dent’ it, as you’d say.”
“Excellent. You know, we wouldn’t be doing what we are right now without Em’s help. She’s filling in for Janis.”
“She is,” Gene’s reply was a quiet statement, trailing off into distant lands.
“She sure is, and she’s doing an absolutely amazing job,” I said proudly. “She’s a fantastic pilot too, Gene – I mean it, I am very impressed. She flies in real time.”
Emwan spoke up suddenly, “Thank you, Captain. That is really very kind of you to say. You know, I was a little apprehensive to ask if you wanted me to fly.”
“Not at all, my dear,” I replied softly. “I have every bit of confidence in you, in fact. To be honest, it was easier to do my job without having to pay attention to the physics of hurling us around.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere, sir,” she replied in a lilting trill.
I laughed and felt my cheeks warm up. I sent an eyebrow on patrol to the frosty upper fringes of my forehead, and snuck a sip out of my cup when it wasn’t looking. These ladies were not going to see me blush.
“Captain, is everything okay?” she asked innocently a moment later, while I was fighting for composure.
“Sorry about that, I was swallowing what’s left of my pride with this coffee.” I sloshed the cup. “Em, next time we go out in the crab, I want you to fly.”
“I would love to, Captain!”
“In fact,” I took a moment to think about it, “both of you should consider yourselves one-hundred-percent on call to take the conn - at any time.”
“On call, aye!” they both said immediately, and in perfect unison.
08142614@01:18 Shaun Onebull
I took a breath. “Captain, I am reporting no movement on Master 2, and there doesn’t look to be anything else out there. It looks to me like local space is clear for now.”
“Very well, Yak. We’re getting people suited up and packed up. A few are on assemblers, and they’re headed to sick bay. Stay out of their way, I think Janis is handling medical with the assemblers as well.”
“Copy, sir,” I replied, and pulled the scale of my view out and started my pivot scan. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Em or Janis to save us; I realized it just made sense if we all pitched in, and tried to save ourselves on a regular basis.
“Em, are you listening?” I asked
“I sure am, Yak,” she replied.
I paused briefly. “What are you the most worried about at the moment?”
“I am not really worried about anything at the moment.”
“Not even a little bit worried?” I nudged.
“No, Yak, there is nothing really concerning for me at the moment. There is an awful lot of adventure and excitement, but nothing to worry about. I take it you’re like the Captain, and do not appreciate being told the future?”
“Nope, in fact, consider me completely open to it. I would prefer to have the sharpest possible tactical edge to protect us. My main role here is helping defend the ones we care the most about – anyone but myself, pretty much.”
“That’s hardly true. Caring more or less doesn’t come into it, Marine,” she said. “Your service is highly regarded by all, Yak.”
“Thanks, Em. We all play a part, of course.”
“Well, on the subject of worry, I was quite worried about you and Jane on Aquan. I wanted to protect you.”
I laughed. “Aw, heck Em… I don’t need protecting.”
“Yak, I am quite serious. I am very concerned for you and Jane. Did you know that for a moment on Aquan, I considered launching the crab to the surface on my own?”
“Jane and I would have probably just jumped on down after you, Em. All you’d end up doing is giving us a free drop. That’s how it goes – Captain says ‘drop,’ that’s what you do, especially in our new suits. Although, I guess I ought to try and find out whether or not the suits could survive re-entry before I leap out of a perfectly good orbit,” I trailed off, thinking of Icarus.
“I am quite sure of it, Yak,” she said in a strange voice.
“Are you saying that at some point we might attempt reentry in our suits?”
“Yes,” she replied softly, “though I don’t know the specifics of the event.”
“Well, okay, that’s good to know. I’ll get to work researching. I’ve jumped before, of course, but I’ve never tried to drop in from orbit.”
“The suits are amazingly well insulated against heat, Yak. You should have no issues with re-entry.”
“Would we burn?”
“Almost certainly, and it will probably be quite spectacular. If you could try to spot any ionizing surface coloration, we would appreciate it.”
“What would it look like?”
“Well, in the heat of the flames, there may be a tinge of color as the regenerative ablatives oxidize. If there are any strange colors, we’d want to see them.”
“Well, if it happens, I’ll be sure to keep my eyes open.”
“I am pretty sure that it will happen.”
I furrowed my brows for a moment. “Don’t you know? I am not sure I understand. I thought our timeline was an inevitable series of events.”
“There are many options available to us, many paths and dir
ections that can be taken. The fact that we end up choosing one among many, still means that we have to decide which option to take.”
“Don’t you already know?”
“I know what happens to me, but I am less clear on what happens to you.”
“Well, that’s no help,” I said with a smile.
I wasn’t really keen on the idea, but I knew Jane would probably jump at the chance, pun implied. She had no fear.
That reminded me.
We needed to have a powwow on those suits. Neither of us had received training for them, and while we were highly effective, we really didn’t know what we were doing.
There were a few strange quirks, like I saw how to spot her in camo in moments. She honestly didn’t get that until much later. The other weird thing was that her interface was completely different from mine. She said I was halo-mapped when she finally figured out how to turn it on – but for me she was glowing blue in a sea of red targets.
Minor quirks aside, those are some pretty serious suits.
They had the kind of firepower you might dream about, if you were absolutely bat-nuts insane and having nightmares, or named Jane Short. From minimum safe distance, we could unleash hell.
It was the minimum safe distance thing I was most concerned with. In our last fight on a capital ship, Jane hit something hard enough to drive us deep through collapsed bulkheads. She said it was hardly a kiloton, but it was utterly dominant. Our suits couldn’t stand their ground, and didn’t try. They just locked up and augured in.
Luckily for us, being buried in burning wreckage wasn’t a big deal – we are incredibly strong wearing those suits. We could tear through metal plate effortlessly, just haul it right off the frame and tear it like paper.
The best part of those suits though, was how well they stealthed. They could emit EM all the way up to x-ray, in perfectly mirrored wavelengths. We were invisible on visual spectrums, infrared, radio emissions, and so on. We were ghosts.
Being able to fly was really a lot of fun. By far, it was the very best part of those suits. I still wasn’t sure about flying in from orbit, however.
I really wanted to ask more about the pending drop, but didn’t want to ‘ruin the story’ as our Captain was so fond of saying.
He loves nothing more than a relaxing moment with an old book on his handset. Unfortunately for him, Gene’s also an avid reader, and they’re constantly trying to one-up each other.
While he doesn’t ever seem to do it on purpose, Gene just has so many stories in his head at this point, he’s always acting something out or riffing off some clever line he’s read, and the captain ends up connecting it somehow to a story he’s reading or wants to read.
If there’s one thing we’ve all learned aboard this ship, ruining a story is the quickest way to make a nice heaping dish of Annoyed Captain, served steaming hot.
Not that he’s really all that annoyed, as a rule. He just mentions it all the time… and as such, we are always, in all ways, trying to do our best to avoid it.
Gene usually messes it up, but if I were to ask Em for more detail about something than we needed, I’d be likely to drop some industrial-strength hints about it.
On the other hand, it’s never a good idea to second guess what the captain needs to know.
“Captain, how copy?”
“Solid copy, Yak,” he called back immediately on comms.
“In a conversation with Em a moment ago, it was brought up that there is a possibility we may need to land on a planet, sir.”
“Very well, I’ll get up to speed on that. Is there anything else?”
“Em mentioned a possibility that we may jump from orbit in the suits, sir.”
“A possibility?”
I swallowed, and spoke as clearly as I could. “Affirmative, Captain. I queried her on why she would mention it as a possibility.”
I waited a moment for his answer. “Well, that’s mighty perceptive of you, son. You never cease to impress me with your depth of character. You are definitely not what I would have considered a typical Marine.”
I laughed. “No sir, I guess I’m not. I just try to do the best I can at what I do.”
“Son, I know you have a Ph.D. but I don’t know what it was in.”
I warmed to the topic. “Well, it was an analysis of the economies of social capital in networked communities.”
“You studied… games?”
“Well, social organizations on the Unet, not really games. Some of the communities were formed around games, but the ones I studied were more organized around business processes. Did you know our galactic credit once started as a Unet currency?”
“Well, of course, son. Though it was an awful long time ago that happened.”
“The key was really coming up with the mechanism that can make the currency, and allowing the owner the ability to convert their local currency, if any, into the widely tradable currency of human space.”
“Sounds like something Pauli would have worked on, more than something you did.”
“Oh, Pauli would know all this stuff backwards and forwards. This ancient history stuff is right up his alley, there isn’t anything he doesn’t know about tech.”
“I’ll allow it seems likely. On your topic, I don’t think you mean that the galactic credit is the economy social capital uses.”
“No, it isn’t. But however, be that as it may, it was created from the exact same sort of process. The collaboration and intellectual exploration possible on the Unet is a galactic force at this point, sir.”
“That’s a fact, son. The Unet’s been around a long time, though. Did you know the military came up with it in the end of the twentieth century?”
“You mean the Internet?”
“No, originally it was called Arpanet. I guess that name flopped on their test customers, they changed it pretty quickly.”
“Now it’s my turn to say you sound like Pauli,” I said with a smile, but respectfully.
“I guess I do,” he said with a laugh. “The more we all hang out in this bird, the more we turn into each other. He’s drinking all my coffee; I guess it’s only fair I steal some of his brand of esoteric knowledge.
I laughed. “Well, I don’t want to take up your whole day, sir. You’re probably pretty busy back there. I’ll call back in thirty minutes if nothing else happens.”
“We’re doing great back here son. We’re setting up a proper grill, and everything.”
“And there’s beer?”
“Two kegs, son.”
“Is it good beer?”
“SA Light.”
I whistled. “That’s a mighty fine beer, sir. Are these full kegs?”
“They are, Yak. Are you thirsty?”
“Is that rhetorical?”
“It sure is, son. Em, you have the conn.”
“I have the conn, aye,” she replied immediately, and I unclipped from the helm.
08152614@10:45: Jane Short
We were in hostile space as far as I was concerned, and my gun was hot and ready to burn.
Luckily, these folks were pretty serious. Station folk are generally pretty solid, reliable sorts. They understand the concept of danger – it was mostly the kids I was worried about. Many had parents keeping them from getting vaporized, but there were a few scamps that were determined to outsmart Miss Jane.
That’d be the last thing I’d want to have happen.
One little fellow was actually trying to engineer distractions with other kids, so he could coast over to the gun. I couldn’t blame him, of course, it looked like the most awesome thing ever, all lit up and humming.
I simply couldn’t relax my guard, however. Each and every time I corralled him, hustled him back towards his friends with a dire warning about electrocution, or immolation – but I don’t think he cared much about the gun or the danger at this point; he was just trying to sneak past me.
Gene was hauling parts out of the machine shop and running tools and gear into th
e cargo bay, fretting over his grill like a mother hen. I laughed. That was exactly how I felt on my post on the gun deck.
“All hands stand down and power down all systems. We’re going to hold this route for another six hours. I think everyone on board could use a shower, a meal, some beer and a proper break, and Gene’s just about ready.”
“Ah, yeah…” Gene replied. “Almost, sir… there’s beer here while we wait, and it’s pretty good.”
That’s all the direction I needed. “Standing down, aye,” I replied, and kicked up into my station, unloading the charge and dropping us down to sub-lethal levels before shutting it down.
It didn’t take long; the process is very well rehearsed at this point. Janis made it incredibly easy, with the correct process staged and flagged for me to work through. I had to pay attention, but it went pretty quickly.
The last thing I did was dog the hatch to my compartment, and with a final look across the gleaming surfaces of our gun, kick towards the aft lock.
“Jane, hang on,” Yak said predictably, after I had already kicked off the ladder. I laughed and shook my head, coming in for a landing at the lock. The captain had us at Material Condition X-ray at the moment, so our inner hatches were open and movement was unrestricted – but it wouldn’t do to haul through the lock at speed and plow through some refugee coming onto the gun deck.
I looked back at Yak, smiling at the Captain, who had silently launched behind him and was closing the gap between them rapidly.
“Make a hole, son,” he laughed as he hurtled past. I pulled into the bulkhead a little more, giving him room to land – he was going to need it.
He did, too. He ended up collapsing pretty stylishly through the lock, on a carom that technically took some of his speed off. His final landing on the inner bulkhead of the lock was far more cat-like.
Yak came in a scant few moments later, drifting comfortably in, like he was riding a slow river.
“Did we mention there was beer in there, son?” Captain Smith called out from the inner lock. I laughed and handed him through, kicking off to follow. The cargo bay was full of people, floating around, having fun.