by Hellfire
“72% complete,” Windjammer answered.
Alkema brought up a display that showed Archonix attached by umbilicals to Pegasus’s rear quarter, the cargo of Tritium draining into the holding tanks below the Hangar Deck.
“Nice,” he said. “Any problems during the last three shifts?”
“Not a one,” Windjammer reported.
“Dang, this ship is getting boring,” Alkema
“This might wake you up.” Windjammer pulled some data for Alkema to review.
“These are the navigational fixes on the six nearest potential colony systems.” Alkema read through them. “Fallon, Moraine, New Galapagos, Unnamed System, Gethsemane, Icon… and do we yet have a clue about any of these worlds beyond their probable position in space?”
Windjammer indicated the two nearest systems on the star map. “Moraine and Fallon were trading partners with the Hellfire Colony, and their positions were in Liminix’s Navigational Core. If they were trading in Tritium, they probably had fairly advanced technology.”
“Za, but a hundred years ago, the trade stopped,” Alkema pointed out. “They may not be as advanced as they were.”
“Or, they may have simply advanced beyond the need for Tritium,” Windjammer suggested.
“Maybe we’ll find out after the commander makes up his mind which system to go to.” With that, Alkema took his seat in the command chair, and sat back to wait for the commander’s rendezvous signal.
Pegasus – Hospital Four
Rook lay in a healing bed, attended by the Medical Technician Boon Tam Rand. “He’s fine,” Rand reported. “A little decompression, a little hypothermia. Nothing his system can’t handle.”
When Arkonix CI-88 pulled free of Legacy, two large plates on its hull were torn and opened up cracks and fissures all across the bottom of the ship. All of the areas underneath the bottom deck had been venting atmosphere.
“We completely thought you were possibly dead.” Max Jordan had been at the other warfighter’s bedside from the moment he had been brought aboard.
“It wasn’t my turn, yet,” Rook replied.
The breakaway had opened several small cracks in the space between hatches where Rook had been hunkering down, and one fissure large enough to put his hands through. It was a matter of seconds before all of the atmosphere had spaced.
“As it turns out, staying in the lower conduit was a stupid idea,” Rook explained, he was still a bit raw and knocked back by the ordeal. There were ugly splotches of red across his handsome face where capillaries had burst en masse because of the decompression. “I stuffed my pack into the hole, dug out my last microcharge and blew a hole into the next deck above.”
He had to punch through the weakened deck plating, to create an opening just large enough to squeeze through, just as the last of his air was running out and the cracks in the hull were widening from the stress of high-speed maneuvering. That section was depressurizing also. As he made it to the hatch between himself and the adjoining section, freezing cold and growing dizzy with hypoxia, his refuge was racked with weapons fire from one of the Hellion fighters.
“I looked through the hole in the deck, and I could see the Hellion fighter shooting at us, and I saw his bullets tear through the hull,” Rook reported. He always paused at that point.
“But, by then, I was hallucinating so bad I also thought I saw green bunnybeasts and giant dancing raspberries. I’m not sure how I made it to the next section, but it was still pressurized.”
That’s where they had found him, after the Hellion fighters had retreated and Arkonix CI-88 had pulled up close to Pegasus. “Your tactical gear staved off the worst of the hypothermia and oxygen deprivation, but you’re still lucky to be alive,” Rand told them.
“Great, can I leave now?” Rook asked.
Rand shrugged and filed off his medical report. “You can return to quarters. I’m putting a monitor on you for the next 28 hours just in case. It’s standard procedure.” Rand left, and Rook changed out of his bed-clothes into some comfortable “off-duty” togs, electric blue with a hot-pink design on the sleeves.
“Is she still in your head?” he asked Jordan, as he pulled on his boots.
Jordan shook his head, “While you were still unconscious, Caliph and I had a talk and we decided we need to see other people.”
“Good luck to her finding somebody’s else’s head to ride in,” Rook snorted.
“She saved your life,” Jordan told him.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Rook shot right back him. “I’ve thought about this a lot. If she knew the ship’s schematics enough to know about the pressure seals, she probably figured out that tearing loose the docking clamps would depressurize the tube I was in.”
“I think I would have known if she were doing that,” Jordan told him.
“She can manipulate your thoughts at will,” Rook reminded him. “How can you be sure of anything that goes on in your head any more?”
This put Jordan in a thoughtful mood as he and Rook made their way to the Officer’s Lounge.
Pegasus – Main Bridge
Alkema was near the end of his duty shift, when the Telemetry Officer alerted him, “A ship has just come into sensor range, it’s a Solarite Command Ship.”
“Raise alert level to Situation 3 and stand by,” Alkema ordered. “Put the Solarite Ship on the Main Display.”
A hologram activated in the forecenter of the bridge, showing a ship shaped like a giant wheel emerging from the stellar atmosphere. It was easy to see how it had been rebuilt from what had once been a Hellfire tritium refining station.
“Solarite Mother Ship off the port bow,” Tactical Specialist Arcane reported from the tactical station. “Tactical systems on alert.”
“Transmit signal,” Alkema ordered his COM officer.
“Receiving transmission,” Specialist Docker reported back, before the signal had even been sent. She transferred the transmission to a holographic display. The eye-part of Commander Keeler’s face appeared, as though shoved up against the transmitting camera.
“Is this thing working?” he asked.
“Hoy, Prime Commander,” Alkema greeted him. “Were the negotiations a success?”
“Oh, hi…,” Keeler said, stepping back from the camera and waving. “How are you guys doing?”
“We’re fine, sir,” Alkema told him. “Were the negotiations with the Solarites a success?” Keeler shrugged, “I guess so. Hard to tell. Are you going to pick me up.”
“An Aves crew is standing by,” Windjammer told him.
“Brilliant!” Keeler exclaimed. “Meet me where you dropped me off. You know where that is, right?”
“We’ll find it,” Driver assured him.
Surface of a Dead Asteroid
The Aves Zilla took the run from Pegasus to the surface of the moon it orbited, carrying Lt Cmdr Alkema and a pair of warfighters who, for once, were neither Rook nor Jordan. The brutally scorched moon had managed to hold onto some atmosphere in caverns below the surface, and its gravity managed to pull in some hot gas from the sun. As the Aves approached the surface, it passed thin clouds spun like wisps of smoke, belched from the planet’s dying interior.
On the surface was an ancient and much scarred spaceport, or more descriptively, the ruins of a spaceport. Flight Lieutenant Toto put the ship inside a very old landing field built in a crater and sheltered underneath the ruins of a large metal dome.
Some minutes after they landed, they were joined by another ship. The Solarite shuttle was a rounded triangle beast, like a fat guitar pick with a pair of X-wings fastened to its rear quarter. It set down about twenty meters from Zilla .
Upon its arrival, Alkema and the two warfighters suited up. They left their Aves in space-gear, bright lights around their face-plates shining in the darkness of the crater-dome. As they approached, they saw a hatch open on the side of the Solarite shuttle, and watched a pair of other face-lights descending a kind of ramp-ladder.
As Keeler and his assistant approached, Alkema and the warfighters saw two tall Solarites following close behind. Nervously, the warfighters double-checked the charges on their gauntlets.
Keeler waved as he got close. “Hi.”
“Greetings, commander,” Alkema said.
“I’d like to introduce my friends Yarr, and Yarr. Yarr and Yarr, meet Dave amd two guys I don’t know.” “Yarr,” said Yarrgh.
“Yarr,” said Yarrgh also.
“They’ve got some cargo they would like to bring to the ship, if that’s okay,” Keeler said.
“Actually, I forgot. Of course it’s okay, I’m the stinkin’ commander.” “What is it?” Alkema asked.
“The surviving crew of some ship called ‘Lemonade,’ or ‘Lollipop’ or something.” “Liminix?” Alkema suggested.
“Za, that could be the one,” Keeler said.
Alkema was impressed. “How did you persuade the Solarites to release them?” “I’m not a hundred percent clear. There was a game of Diamondback involved. They offered us the prisoners in exchange for their losses, and they said they were just going to eject them into space if we didn’t take them. So, I figured, what the heck, you know? Amyway, did I miss anything?” “You’ll probably want something to drink,” Alkema told him. “We should get back to the ship.” “Right! Drinks!” Keeler agreed. As Alkema and the warfighters turned around to walk back to their ship, Keeler abruptly swung around and gave the Solarites huge bear hugs before parting company with them.
Zilla
As the Aves lifted off and made a course for Pegasus, Alkema fixed Keeler drinks and sat across from him on the landing couches, next to Planetology Specialist Gary Braniff.
Neither of them were especially eye-worthy after spending the better part of two weeks among aliens with no concept of showers, shampoo, or personal odor management. They were happy to swab off with the field towels from the ship’s stores, but Keeler, especially, still looked to be fighting eleven straight days of bedhead.
Then, the two settled down for drinks and snacks and Alkema filled the commander in on the events over the last few days, interrupted by several exclamations of “She did what?! ” Finally, after Alkema explained that the ship was secure, and up 600,000 liters of Tritium for its trouble, Keeler sighed and took a long drink from his Corvallian Ginger Spank.
“I’m not sorry I missed any of it,” he told Alkema.
“She scares the Hell out of me, sir,” Alkema confided.
Keeler nodded. “She scares the hell out of me, too.”
“And how was your adventure?” Alkema asked him.
“Adventuresome,” Keeler replied. “The Spacehogs are actually pretty cool cats, once you get to know them.”
“Spacehogs?” Alkema asked.
“They never liked being called Solarites,” Keeler explained/ He pulled up his landing pack from under the seat and began shuffling through the things inside, looking for something. “When the humans came to this system and found the Spacehogs, they thought they would make slaves out of them. The Spacehogs are highly resistant to stellar radiation, they thrive on stellar atmosphere, and the humans thought they had only limited intelligence.”
“I can see why the Solarites would hate the Hellions,” Alkema put in.
“You remember how the Hellions rooked you,” Keeler reminded him. “They’ve been rooking the Spacehogs for centuries, and the spacehogs just got fed up with it. They never wanted the planet, but they did want to drive out the Hellions.” Driver looked over his shoulder, to the back of the cabin where the four men and two women from Liminix CH-53 sat under the watchful eyes of the warfighters.
“This is how it was,” Keeler explained. “Way back three thousand years ago when they first began harvesting tritium from this star, humans couldn’t survive the intense stellar radiation. So, they grafted human genetic characteristics with those of a life form that inhabited a high-radiation nebula… and that’s how they created the Spacehogs.”
“Solarites,” Alkema muttered.
“They were thought to be mindless slaves, but after a time, their latent intelligence emerged. Meanwhile, over the course of generations, the Hellions also became more tolerant of the stellar radiation,” Braniff probably said that just because he didn’t want to be left out of the conversation.
“Spacehog culture is fascinating, I only wish we had more time to learn about it,” Keeler said, putting his feet up on the table between the landing couches. “They don’t eat, because they can convert stellar radiation to life energy. They had no concept of clan or family, but intense ties of loyalty based on, as near as I can tell, shared affection for music. There are over 57 varieties of music and hundreds of sub-genres. Apparently, the spacehogs form loyalty groups based on what kind of music they like.” Keeler shrugged. “Frankly, it all sounded alike to me, like someone torturing cats during a thunderstorm. But they also claim the star sings to them.”
“Probably oscillations on energy wavelengths throughout its spectrum,” Alkema guessed.
“They’re also 100% hermaphrodites,” Exo-biologist Braniff told them. “They reproduce by squirting their genetic material into a kind of pod…”
“Don’t they know you can go blind if they do that too much?” Keeler asked.
“And they have no physiological requirement for water,” Braniff went on. “They synthesize a kind of complex hydro-carbon out of the stellar atmosphere.”
“Oil for blood,” Keeler said, short-handing it.
“They probably were upset that we had to destroy several of their ships,” Alkema asked.
“Not so much,” Keeler told him, waving his hand. “Attacking ships is considered kind of a sport with them. And they feel like, if you got the best of them, well, those are the breaks. I think some of them think the whole piracy thing was… kind of a tacky, lower-class thing to do. Most of the Spacehogs weren’t that upset to see the ones you blew up go. Plus, they’re kind of overjoyed to be rid of the Hellions.” He paused. “Actually, they don’t really have an emotion for overjoyed, but if they did, they would be it.”
“To the victor go the spoils, I guess,” Alkema muttered.
“Speaking of which,” Keeler continued after finishing off his drink and receiving another. “You say the Hellions took all the Tritium they had, and built a giant ship to leave the system?”
Alkema nodded. “That was their plan from before we arrived. They had almost given up on getting the last of their Tritium, and they were probably going to abandon the people on Hellfire Station 3. When we showed up, instead of asking for help, they just used us.” Keeler smacked the arm of his seat affirmingly. “That’s the way they are. I understand the Hellions were dealt a tough hand. I’d almost feel bad for them if they weren’t such massive jerks. They’ve been losing their war with the Solarites for a long time.
“At one time, they had outposts built on a bunch of the asteroids surrounding this sun.
There was one particular worldlet called ‘Vice City.’ From what I am told, it made the Mining Guild Sex Mall on Aegir III look like a Christianist Church Picnic.
“But, after the Tritium trade declined, the Hellions just kept pulling back and pulling back until ‘Quiet City’ was their last outpost.”
“And now it all belongs to the Solarites,” Alkema said.
“Don’t be sad,” Keeler reassured him. “The Solarites are not all bad. And the Hellions are off to a better place, hopefully.”
“Za, hopefully,” Alkema sighed, wistfully.
“You say that wistfully,” Keeler observed. “What the Hell is wrong with you?”
“Without the Tritium we kept, their ship only has enough fuel to reach their primary relocation site,” Alkema explained. “We consumed the safety margin that would have enabled them to reach the alternate colony.”
“But they were too proud to accept any assistance from us,” Keeler argued. “Pride can be the most suicidal of all emotions.”
“Still, maybe we should s
cout ahead and make sure Fallon colony is still viable,” Alkema contended. “It’s the compassionate thing to do. And besides, aren’t you curious to see why Fallon colony stopped needing Tritium after all these centuries?”
“Maybe a little,” Keeler conceded. “Let’s talk about this more after I’ve had a couple of hot baths and a sandwich.”
Pegasus –- P.J.M Redfire’s Quarters
On top of the messed up gray-on-gray bedsheets of Redfire’s bedchamber, Phil Redifre and Eliza Jane Change entwined their pale white bodies, having recently completed a session of non-reproductive recreational coitus. He stared at her in the pale light of his quarters, because he liked to admire her body and contemplate how the miraculous sum of its parts was somehow less than the woman he had just fornicated with. She simply lay back with her eyes closed, but he didn’t think she was sleeping.
After a while, Redfire slowly moved to the edge of the bed because he needed to use the euphemism. As soon as he started up, her eyes opened. “Where are you going?”
“Just to the hygiene pod,” he answered, and slid out from the bed, no longer giving any reason to worry about disturbing her.
She pulled herself over to the side of the bed and began dressing. “I should begin the navigational calculations for the next transition.”
“I thought the commander hadn’t chosen a destination yet,” Redfire called above the sound of urine striking the bowl of the euphemism.
“I think I know which colony he’ll choose,” Change replied, pulling on her uniform pants.
Redfire emerged from the hygiene pod. “At least stay and have some kava before you go.”
“Agreed,” she replied and continued dressing. Redfire did not bother to dress as he went into his kitchen to prepare the beverage.
“I am glad for you, for the time you spent on the mining ships reminding you of home,” he told her as he mixed the ingredients. “I hope the next system has a terra-class planet in it, though. I know you don’t like planets, but I’d like to get to the surface. Maybe walk along a beach or pick dandelions in a meadow. It’s been a long time.”