‘Yes. I am pleased with the functioning systems, but alarmed at the heat and humidity. These are not good for the systems. I will close the door to the matter transfer room. The instruments in that room are delicate. They must be protected if you are to return.’
‘Do you want your box in or out?’ Micah asked.
‘In is better. I’ll close the door. Don’t be alarmed,’ Holly responded.
“Holly’s closing the door. He wants to keep that room dry to make sure we can leave when we’re done.”
The door to the matter transfer room silently slid shut. The only light remaining shone from the beams of their flashlights. Aadi and G-War moved wide to see anything to their sides while Braden and Micah moved forward, past the work stations. Metal equipment and large devices covered the wall to their front. To the left, their lights faded into the distance as the floor arced toward the ceiling. There was a great deal of space above them.
“Elevator – there.” Braden pointed with the light beam. “Up one and then down the platform to the right. He shined the beam along the walkway, but couldn’t see the doorway they needed to go through. It was disconcerting seeing the floor slope upwards. Holly explained that the shape was necessary so the ship could spin, creating the appearance of gravity. When they asked what that meant, Holly said without the spin, they would float through the air. They’d get a taste of that when they reached the forward Command Deck.
Skirill launched himself from Aadi’s back and flew upward. Braden followed him with his light so the Hawkoid could see. He flew oddly, at an angle and sometimes sideways. He turned tightly and flew back, swooping past them. He made another tight turn, then climbed to the catwalk, as Holly called it, they needed to take. He flew a hundred strides down and landed on the handrail. Braden and G-War waited while Aadi and Micah called the elevator and entered it.
“One floor up please,” she said as Holly had told her.
The doors closed and the elevator moved quickly upward. They floated off the floor as it slowed, landing when it stopped. The doors opened and they stepped onto the catwalk. Braden was far below with his light shining past Skirill. Micah waved her flashlight and then pointed it at Skirill. She headed toward him.
Braden and G-War rode the elevator and stepped onto the walkway.
Braden’s neural implant buzzed. Holly insisted that they not close the window while they were aboard the RV Traveler. He needed to stay in touch at all times. Braden thought Holly was more worried than he was.
‘What, Holly?’
‘Braden, thank you for answering.’ Was that sarcasm? ‘I suggest you go the other way and check on the vines growing down the wall. There shouldn’t be any growth in here. You may need to burn that down to preserve the systems in this area. That may be the reason for the high humidity.’
“Micah!” Braden shouted. She jumped and shushed him.
“Holly wants us to look at the vines and maybe burn them out,” he said in a quieter voice. “We have to go back this way.” G-War turned, shaking his head, and padded in the new direction.
Skirill flew past them, angling away from the vines, slowing and hovering with great wing beats. The other companions looked through his eyes at the vines. They looked like something straight out of the rainforest. The vines were heavy, with small leaves. Water ran downward puddling on the floor before disappearing through a grating below. Braden leaned around the railing of the catwalk, hanging precariously over the edge. Even with Skirill’s help, he couldn’t see the base of the vines.
He held his hands up in surrender, then Micah looked. The vines covered the catwalk like a waterfall. If they wanted to pass this way, they couldn’t, unless they went back to the main engineering space, down one level. She looked closely, focusing her light on a single thick vine and the small leaves on it. She reached up to touch it.
‘STOP!’ G-War shouted over their mindlink.
She pulled back as the leaves whipped back and forth where her hand had been a moment before. She pulled her sword and held it close. The leaves whipped against it, ringing as metal struck metal.
She swung at the vine and chopped deeply into it. The leaves slapped the blade in a frenzy. She pulled it back. The Old Tech blade was unscratched. She hacked into the vine until it started spewing red juice that looked too much like blood for her comfort. She backed up as it sprayed toward her.
“That’s enough of that.” Braden pulled his blaster, changed the setting to wide and depressed the trigger. When the flame hit the vines, they jumped and flew about the space like a tree in a storm. The vines pummeled the catwalk, shaking the companions off their feet. They crawled backwards trying to get away.
They got to their feet and ran. Skirill flew like one possessed. Aadi struggled to move quickly. A vine slapped against him, leaving an ugly scratch down the armor over his shell. Skirill’s harness was cut from the Tortoid and fell over the catwalk to the floor below. Braden and Micah dropped to a knee and dialed narrow beams. They fired into the vines in short bursts, cutting through the thick of the vine trunks. When the beams hit a leaf, it was reflected away.
One, then another and another of the vines were cut. The top sections hung, the blood-like juice running freely from them. The bottom parts of the vine fell away from the catwalk, crashing into and through a number of the terminals in the engineering section. Sparks flew. The smell of ozone filled the air. Silence returned. They shined their flashlights on the carnage.
Both their neural implants buzzed.
“What?” Braden asked angrily.
‘What just happened? A number of systems have gone critical.’
“That vine acted like it was alive! When I hit it with blaster fire it went nuts, tried to kill us. It needed to die.”
‘I understand,’ Holly said calmly. ‘Next time, please take care not to destroy the systems you need to keep you alive.’
“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” Braden said to Micah. “We haven’t been here any time at all and we’ve already tried to destroy the ship.”
“More like the ship tried to destroy us. Then again, it didn’t bother us until we went after it. I can’t blame it,” Micah answered.
“So, we take more care then?” Braden offered. She nodded. It was a prudent course of action. She was already certain that she didn’t want to spend one more heartbeat on the Traveler than she absolutely had to.
Skirill flew past them to the lower deck. He stayed away from the vines as he looked for Aadi’s harness. It was underneath a dying vine, swamped in a growing puddle of the vine’s juices.
It was going to be a long trip, he thought.
12 – The Corridor
They stood on the catwalk with the door before them. Micah readied her blaster as Braden waved his bracelet near the pad on the left side. G-War crouched low as the door slid open.
An emergency light flashed somewhere ahead. The wide corridor was filled with debris, but no vines. Nothing moved. G-War nodded and stalked through the door, jumping to the side once in. He stayed in the shadows and watched.
Aadi floated in the middle of the doorway, Skirill holding a rope tied hastily around the Tortoid’s shell. The new scratch in his armor provided a notch that kept the rope from slipping.
The lights flashed and they saw the corridor in snippets, like watching during a thunderstorm.
Braden walked forward, staying close to the side of the corridor. Micah followed him in, moving to the other side. Once Aadi and Skirill were in, the door closed. They had to watch out for Aadi, keep him close. He no longer had his access band. The killer vines had seen to that.
Micah leaned down as Braden carefully walked ahead, holding his blaster at the ready, G-War at his side, walking as a ‘cat does on a sunny day in the middle of nowhere. This helped Micah relax.
She looked at a box, burst open on the floor. It looked like someone had dropped it. Repair parts for a Bot or an Old Tech system. Holly had tried for the past moon to teach them what they needed
for the ship, but she didn’t care what any of it was called. She only wanted to know what was dangerous and what wasn’t.
She opened her neural implant window. ‘Holly? We’re in the corridor and the floor is littered with stuff. I’d say a bunch of people dropped what they were carrying and ran off.’
‘These look like repair parts for small motorized systems, like actuators. Over there I see electrical components. But these look like storage boxes. If a technician were going to repair something, they’d bring just the parts they needed, not the whole box. Maybe a group of people raided a storage room and then were stopped by the Security Unit at the end of the corridor.’
“What Security Unit?” She asked out loud. Braden instantly crouched, darting glances into the shadows.
‘Behind you, beside the door. See that red dot? That’s the unit embedded in the bulkhead, the wall holding the door. You have bracelets. You’re safe.’ Braden continued to huddle behind a pile of metal plates. G-War sat in the middle of the corridor and looked at him.
“We’re safe because of our bracelets and Aadi’s safe because he’s with us,” Micah said, pointing at the wall behind her. Braden squinted, then turned on his flashlight. The beam showed the Security Unit. It had a label that said “Engineering Security.”
‘We need another access bracelet for Aadi. The vines destroyed his last one.’
‘With your bracelet, Master President, you will be able to fabricate one. At the end of this corridor, before you enter one of the main decks you will find crew spaces. In there will be a fabricator you can use.’
“Detour at the end of the corridor. Holly says we can use a fabricator to make another bracelet for Aadi.” Micah minimized her window and shoved it into the lower left corner of her vision.
Braden expanded his neural implant window and accessed the ship’s map. He saw the way ahead clearly. Another 150 meters along this corridor. Last door on the right. He minimized the window and moved forward.
He’d never get used to the way Holly measured distance. He figured one stride was roughly one meter. He gauged everything else from there. It was close enough for him, but Holly had an annoying tendency for precision.
The corridor cleared further on. It reinforced Holly’s impression of why the materials were strewn about.
The red emergency lights flashed, but provided enough continuous light that they could see. Maybe those red lights should have been called flashlights?
Once they passed the debris, they moved quickly to the door at the other end. There were two doors. The one straight ahead gave them access to one of the great open levels of the ship. Braden turned his back to that door. They’d go through it soon enough. For now, they had to find the fabricator.
About the Author
Visit Craig's web page, craigmartelle.com for the latest posts and updates or find him on Facebook, Author Craig Martelle. Send an email to [email protected] to join his mailing list for the latest on new releases, information on old releases, and anything related to his books.
Craig is a successful author, publishing regularly. He's on track to publish ten books in 2016. He’s taken his more than twenty years of experience in the Marine Corps, his law degree, and his business consulting career to write believable characters living in a real world.
Although Craig has written in multiple genres, he believes that most important is that compelling characters are critical. Just like Star Trek, the original series used a back drop of space, but the themes related to modern day America. Life lessons of a great story can be applied now or fifty years in the future. Some things are universal.
Craig believes that evil exists. Some people are driven differently and cannot be allowed access to our world. Good people will rise to the occasion, whether it’s before or after a crisis. Good will always challenge evil, but will it win in time?
Some writers who’ve influenced Craig? Robert E. Howard (the original Conan), JRR Tolkien, Andre Norton, Robert Heinlein, Lin Carter, Brian Aldiss, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Anne McCaffrey, and of late, James Axler, Raymond Weil, Jonathan Brazee, Mark E. Cooper, and David Weber. Craig learned something from each of these authors, story line, compelling issue, characters that you can relate to, beauty of prose, action, and unique tendrils weaving through the book’s theme. Craig’s prose has been compared to that of Andre Norton and his Free Trader characters to those of McCaffrey’s Dragonriders, the Rick Banik Thrillers to the works of Robert Ludlum.
It is humbling, but never the intent. Craig only wants to tell a good story about real people, keep readers engaged, leave them with something to think about – “What would I do in that situation?”
Through a bizarre series of events, Craig ended up in Fairbanks, Alaska. He never expected to retire to a place where golf courses are only open for four months out of the year. But he love it there. It is off the beaten path. He and his wife watch the northern lights from their driveway. Their dog has lots of room to run. And temperatures reach forty below zero. They have from three and a half hours of daylight in the winter to twenty four hours in the summer.
It’s all part of the give and take of life. If they didn’t have those extremes, then everyone would live there.
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 – The Companions
2 – The Power of Old Tech
3 – Back to the Oasis
4 – The Hologram
5 – Sweet Suite
6 - Peace
7 – New Command Center
8 – Two Become One
9 – A New Dawn
10 - Insight
11 – The Next Move
12 – Leave the Soft Life Behind
13 – Waiting Productively
14 – A Missing Tortoid
15 – The Lizard Men Trade
16 - Zalastar
17 – Another Celebration
18 – ‘shrooms
19 – Setting Up the Trade
20 – Learn to Hunt
21 – Moving to Trade
22 – Mushrooms for Tunics
23 – A Bridge to the Future
24 – Back in Village McCullough
25 – Three Less in Charge
26 – Clean It Up
27 - Hope
28 – The Last Brother
29 – Masters of the World
30 – Building Trust
31 – Going West, No, East
32 – Loading Up
33 – Market Square: Open for Business
34 - Karma
35 – Mutie Birds
36 – Treating Wounds
37 – Continuing the Journey
38 – Village Greentree
39 - Bronwyn
40 – Ear of the Amazonians
41 – Lots to Trade
42 – The Good Companions
43 – A Growing Caravan
44 – Village Coldstream
45 – Never a Dull Turn
46 - The Aurochs
47 – Too Many People
48 – An Injury and a Bond
49 – Needing a Wagon
50 – Trade!
51 – Muties Attack
52 – Through the Rainforest
53 – New Sanctuary
54 – Preparing to Fight a War
55 – Building a Better Human
56 – Contact
57 – The Return Trip
58 – The Fires Raged
59 – Home
60 – Dwyer
61 – Next Leg of the Journey
62 – The New Traders
63 – Fighting to the Western Ocean
64 – Heal
65 – Westerly
66 – The Western Ocean
67 – Splitting
68 – Hope and Fear
69 – A Long Road Ahead
70 – The Walk to Bliss
71 – Traders’ Rest
72 – River Crook
73 – The Rescue
75 – The Traders Return
76 – Trade Routes and More
77 – New Sanctuary
78 – Change Is Constant
Postscript
The Adventure on RV Traveler
10 – Transfer to the Traveler
11 – Controlled Chaos
12 – The Corridor
About the Author
The Free Trader of Planet Vii Page 26