Starship Relic (Lost Colony Uprising Book 1)

by Darcy Troy Paulin

  Dirt and dust tumbled from the opening and rolled down across the canopy to slide from the side of the probably-a-rocket. A number of colored lights lit on the control board. Some glowing steadily, others flashing in patterns.

  A moment later Freenan’s voice returned to the control panel. “There seems to be a certain amount of activity going on in the secondary station. Are you certain you are at your terminal?” His voice held a note of concern.

  “Yes, yes. Just come down if you want to talk to me, it will take no more than two minutes, and the speaker here is quite squeaky as you well know,” Snow said, though the speaker didn’t sound at all squeaky.

  Freenan answered that he would see her shortly and signed off.

  Above them a large balloon was rapidly filling, and lifting up, out, and over the craft.

  “So… what’s going on?” Max asked, doing his impression of casual. “There seems to be a bit of excitement. Freenan seems… bothered. And someone is coming to meet you at your terminal? Oh, and up there I see a big balloon, getting bigger. Are we going somewhere?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her smile could not have been bigger. She said nothing more to clarify but continued to monitor lights and press buttons and tap her fingers on the console excitedly. A part of Max’s brain told him now was not the time to press for answers.

  A minute went by perhaps two, and there was a noise from below. Snow didn’t seem to react to it, so Max took a look. Below, he saw the top of what was surely Freenan’s head, climbing the ladder. Max checked his weapon and readied it, fully prepared if necessary, to menace Freenan with it, or even hit him with it, though maybe not actually shoot him with it. When Freenan reached the top of the ladder his face was bright red. He looked ready to explode.

  “By all the gods and their seaborne companions!” yelled Freenan as he emerged through the floor and stepped from the ladder. “That is a long way to run isn’t it. I had thought myself reasonably fit. But no. Too much time in front of a terminal and not enough time dodging crabs and lancers and all the things you do eh?” he said, to Snow. Then, seeing Max, he added, “Oh, but here we have the chief dodger don’t we. You will have to tell me all about it when we have more time.”

  He paid the rifle no mind and patted Max on the back amiably.

  Max said nothing, keeping his face neutral. He wasn’t yet sure where they stood with Freenan. He was sure the man was behind Snow’s abduction, but as she seemed to be in good health and better spirits, perhaps Max was wrong to want to smack the smile from Freenan’s face. If he wasn’t wrong, there would be time later. And plenty of opportunity as Freenan’s smile seemed like a permanent feature.

  Max heard another sound from below. The lower hatch had been opened again.

  “Oh my,” Freenan said, “I say, that was fast. They arrived much sooner than I’d expected.”

  Max peered cautiously down the ladder again.

  “You!” said Ravaea, pointing an accusing finger. “What are you doing up there? You shouldn’t even be here!”

  Above the ship the balloon got bigger and bigger and Max could feel the ship lift from the ground. But its movement was quickly arrested as its tethers grew taut, holding it in place. Ravaea shifted to catch her balance and so did everyone else.

  Freenan popped his head over the portal in the floor beside Max.

  “Ravaea my dear, I am sorry about the paperwork. But you see,” he paused for dramatic effect, “there is no paperwork for travel via Icarus. But hop off now. We will be lifting off at any moment on a grand adventure and I am certain you will have no interest in that.” He turned to Max, as though he would understand the humor of it.

  Ravaea bunched up her face stubbornly. “We’ve not finished the refit!” she said.

  “Sorry, Rav! We’re out of time,” Snow said. “You could come with us… that way if anything goes wrong you’ll be there to set it right.”

  “Launch assist device reports as ready,” came a bored-sounding, male voice from the console, “Shackle release in ten seconds, nine, eight…”

  Max looked down the ladder to Ravaea once again. “If you’re going to stay, you should probably hold on. And maybe close that—” The sound of footfalls coming from outside the hatch cut him off. Max shouldered the rifle, leapt onto the ladder, and slid to the bottom of the ship, ignoring the pain in his shoulder.

  “Five… four…” said the bored computer.

  Max turned from the ladder and was immediately forced to step sideways to avoid being tackled. A man in a black security uniform just missed Max, and so grappled the wall instead.

  “Three… two…” continued the computer, obliviously.

  Another man entered the ship. Max stepped forward, placed his foot on the man’s chest, and kicked out with all of his weight. The man flew backwards through the hatch and slid roughly along the narrow bridge. Max slammed the hatch.

  “One… shackles released,” said the computer in a tone that suggested this sort of thing happened every minute of every day and it had long since gotten over it.

  A clacking noise preceded the ship launching sharply upwards. The motion sent Max sliding away from the hatch before he could seal it. The door swung wide once more.

  The guard, having recovered from his altercation with the wall, now lurched sideways, struggling to keep standing as the ship lifted. He caught himself and moved on Max. A crab arm from a box on the floor poked out of one of the holes in its side and clutched the man’s pant leg, tripping him up.

  Max, instead of fighting the swaying of the ship, pulled the rifle from his shoulder and allowed himself to fall on his backside. He held the weapon towards the man.

  “Don’t kill Bob!” said Ravaea.

  The man frowned and, seeing the weapon, he made no further move. He glared at Doozer’s box and raised his hands.

  “I thought we were friends?” the guard said to Doozer.

  Doozer gave a remorseful chitter as apology.

  “He doesn’t like to see his friends fighting,” Max said.

  Bob just shook his head.

  “Looks like you’re coming with us too, Bob,” Max said. “Unless you feel like jumping. He gestured towards the hatch. “I don’t recommend it.”

  Through the hatch, they could see the inside of the launch tube sliding by, then trees, then sky.

  “So, how about you show us what a great team player you are, and close that hatch up tight,” Max said.

  Bob did as he was told.

  “So, Bob has decided to join us,” Max yelled up the ladder then, lowering his voice added, “Wherever it is that we are going.”

  “Bob?” came Freenan’s voice down from the circle in the floor above. His face appeared a moment later. “Bob, what are you doing here?”

  “Coordinator Freenan?… we thought… ah… that is, the security chief told us to get down here and stop whatever was going on. I had no idea you were here, sir,” Bob said obviously confused, “But I am pretty sure this Max guy here is an unwanted criminal of some sort.”

  “Oh no. No, no, no. He isn’t a criminal at all. He is simply doing his survey, Bob. You know how that sort of thing can go. It gets a bit dirty when you are doing it right,” Freenan said, “Now Bob, I order you to stand down.”

  “Well, sir, I can only take orders from Security Chief…” Bob said.

  “I am the coordinator, Bob,” Freenan said

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So, I then coordinate you to stand down. Is that better?”

  To Max’s surprise, that in fact did seem to make Bob feel better.

  Max shouldered his rifle and pointed to the webbed seating on this level.

  “You can sit there,” he said. “I bet Ravaea can show you how to lock yourself in.”

  Ravaea agreed that yes, she could, and, once he’d taken his seat, she fastened Bob tightly into place. Max grabbed Doozer’s box with one hand and worked his way slowly up the ladder. At the top he tipped the box sideways to get it through the hole in
the floor, apologizing to Doozer for each bump and bang.

  The enormous balloon dragged the ship higher and higher, and the ground grew further and further away. Soon they could see the vast city across the water, whose urban sprawl spread for miles and miles in all directions away from shore. Before long they could see the even more vast expanse of the forest, and then, almost unbelievably, the northern edge of the forest and beyond.

  “If we had that newsman’s camera we could get a picture that would make the front page,” Max said.

  “Oh, we are taking pictures. Quite a lot of them actually,” Freenan said, who was, if possible, bubblier and happier than Snow.

  “What can we expect from the city, from HOSaS?” asked Max.

  “They could send an aircraft, a fighter, to intercept us. But they will have to find a pilot and ready the craft for launch. That sort of thing. And before too long we will be too high even for that,” Freenan said, “In say another twenty or thirty minutes, we will be in the clear.”

  “That is a long time,” Max said.

  There was no response beyond an optimistic shrug.

  “Where are we going anyway?” Max asked.

  Snow who had been continuously flitting between the control panel and the view through the window since launch. “It’s a surprise… A BIG surprise,” she said. “That’s a hint.”

  “Is this revenge for not telling you about the Craik,” Max said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Max considered the clue. She couldn’t mean… He looked up at a crescent Mega, riding high in the sky.

  Chapter 59

  “There really does seem to be some sort of emergency, sir,” said Sergeant Wallace, “Brigadier Ghent wouldn’t say more. Top secret, need-to-know sort of thing it seems.”

  Captain Ferrian chewed his crab-lard-topped toast without haste. The sergeant wouldn’t know the joy of wheat toast. Having never had so much as a crouton pass his lips, he simply could not understand. He would not know that to waste the rare and precious food would require a true emergency. Greater in any case, than picking up the general’s daughter from school, due no doubt to a double booking of sporting activities, or bad traffic.

  “I’ll be right there,” said the captain. He continued to eat his toast. Very slowly.

  “I did have the distinct impression that this was not a… domestic, emergency sir. The tone of the brigadier's voice had the quality of a, genuine emergency… emergency,” said the sergeant.

  “I said I would be right there, damn it!” said Ferrian, then he threw his toast onto the plate before him. He immediately regretted it, “Now look what you’ve made me do. Begone, Sergeant. I will get there when I get there.”

  The sergeant sighed audibly, “Yes sir. The AF-12 will be ready when you do, sir.”

  He saluted, turned sharply, and marched out of the captain's house.

  True to the sergeant’s word, the AF-12 was fueled and ready when Captain Ferrian arrived. Ferrian opened the envelope he had been given and read his orders. The sergeant was right about that too. It was, as it turned out, a true emergency after all. Which could turn out to be a real embarrassment for the general. Hopefully, the man would learn the lesson of not crying for wolves unless one needed them.

  Having read the note and memorized its contents, the captain ate it and enjoyed the sugary, sappy texture of the paper. Then he climbed the short steps into the AF-12 and prepared for takeoff.

  By the time the fighter lifted from the ground on its way to Icarus in the sky, an occurrence which the note did NOT explain, he was settling into the mission. There had never been a real emergency before. This could certainly be interesting if not actually exciting.

  Fifteen minutes later as he arrived at the Icarus, tethered, and floating below a gigantic balloon, he found that things were quite exciting after all. He was pushing the upper altitude limit of the AF-12. There had never before been a reason to want to fly so high. He now was regretting the slow toast eating. With his engines at full throttle, he would have only one pass to affect Icarus’ upward trajectory. If he’d arrived even a couple minutes sooner he would have had other options to force it down. But he hadn’t arrived earlier. And now he would have to shoot the balloon. Just enough to spoil their plans, whatever those were, and lower the Icarus into the swamp. It would crash of course, but with a slower initial descent the debris field would be smaller and so recovery would be more complete.

  He was coming up quickly on his firing window. Aiming carefully, he fired one gun, expertly limiting the weapon’s fire to a volley of one round. The shot was low, just above the main hull of the Icarus and through the bundled tether holding the balloon to the nose. Icarus listed ever so slightly but held. Lucky for him since a plummeting Icarus was not his goal. The second shot was centered vertically but still to the left. He was running out of space to fire, if he missed the next shot he would have no choice but to open up with a full burst to guarantee a hit. He pulled the trigger. A ripple, flowing across the surface of the balloon, confirmed a hit. He breathed a sigh of relief and circled around to track and follow Icarus into the swamp.

  Chapter 60

  Everyone had finished screaming, and the ship, though swinging gently, was beginning to stabilize. But there was a hole in the balloon and its pressure was dropping as the hydrogen inside slowly leaked out and made its own way in the world, up-up to the very edge of the atmosphere.

  “This is ground control to Icarus. Come in Icarus,” said a voice from the control panel.

  Snow flicked a switch. “Nope,” she said.

  “Ground Control—”

  She flicked another switch and the ship was quiet.

  “We are still rising,” Freenan said, breaking the silence. “But for how long.”

  “We’re already high enough. But ah…” Snow said, “There’s a fault in the mechanism. We can’t release the balloon.” She looked at Max. “Someone needs to climb up and jiggle the cable or… whack it. Something.”

  “How do I get out there?” Max asked.

  “I’ll do it,” Snow said, “I know where it is and how it works.”

  “You’re the captain. Captains don’t get to leave the ship, not while they’re in command,” Max said.

  Snow started to object, but Freenan joined in, backing up Max. She seemed about to argue anyway, but then nodded acceptance, and quickly explained to Max what he would have to do.

  They tied a line to his waist, and he climbed out the upper hatch from the Icarus’ bridge. As he stepped out the door, Freenan thrust a small hammer at him. Max stuffed it in his pocket and carried on. He had been expecting terrible wind forces to claw at him and try pulling him from the ship. Instead it was calm and peaceful outside the ship. The view was even more impressive than from the window. Impressive and terrifying. He quickly learned not to look down. After a moment of clinging to the side of the ship, he reminded himself that there was no time to fool around. He had to get up there and whack the thingy. He climbed up the side of the ship up towards the U. When he reached it, he looked up at the web of tethers leading to the bundle, where the disconnect mechanism lay. He saw the trouble, just shy of the bundled connection. One of the lines of the lower tether bundle had severed. The hydraulic tubing must have been twisted before, and now having been pulled taut it was pinched, stopping the hydraulic fluid from moving through the tube.

  He couldn’t quite reach from the U, so he shimmied up, grasping onto a pair of tethers. He needed only a few more inches to work on the bunched tube, but it meant his feet were off ‘the ground’. He reached the twisted knot and examined it. Grabbing the bunch with one hand he tried twisting the cable back over. It wouldn’t give. His hand slipped and he nearly fell but he managed to cling to the tether by one sweaty hand and not fall screaming to his death, despite his wonky shoulder. Which was good. Uncertain how he would release the knot, and fearful of falling, he hung in place. There was a gentle sway as Icarus swung below the balloon and that gave Max an idea.
The tension on the tube lessened during the apex of each swing and he waited. At the right moment he gave it another twist. Using the small hammer, he wedged the wooden handle into the tangle. He rotated the hammer, but the twisted bunch resisted. He waited for the next swing and this time used both hands, pulling hard with all of his weight. With a snap, the tube rolled over releasing the knot. It released Max too and he plummeted backwards. His legs, looped around a segment of tether, saved him. With his legs hooked around the tether he tried to swing back up to a more upright position, instead he swung his head into the unyielding U. Though reeling from the impact, he grasped the tethers with his arms and slid down, coming to an undignified rest with his back on the U.

  “Jiminy Cricket…” he said to the balloon directly above him. After a few moments of rest, he sat up, clung tight to the tether, and looked down to find his path back inside. Snow was halfway out of the hatch, his tether wrapped around her waist and on the way to his rescue. He waved her off.

  “I’m fine, really,” he said, with a cool that felt natural to him. He stood up quickly in preparation to climb down. His vision quickly narrowed to black and Snow got very close very quickly.

  When he awoke, he was inside the ship lying on his back and unable to sit up. To his left was Snow and to her left was Freenan. Each strapped down, as he must be, with the control panel now rotated above them.

  “You woke up just in time,” Snow said. She looked relieved.

  Above the control panel was the view out the wind screen. The sky was much darker than before.

  Snow pressed another button.

  A noise sounded throughout the ship. ‘Ahwoogaa. Ahwoogaa.’ Four panels rose into position, sliding towards a meeting just above the tether bundle, and began to form a nose cone.

  “Prepare for secondary launch! Brace for ignition on release!” called Captain Snow, loud enough for all aboard to hear. She pulled a lever. Nothing happened.

  Then the bored male voice from the computer returned. “Tether release in five… four… three… two… one… release.” The whole ship dropped.