Resurrection

by Jeffrey Burger

  “We can’t!”

  Getting a boost from his friend, the injured man popped up, belly-flopping onto the ramp, half of him dangling off, the Chief and the tool man grabbing him by his arms, pulling him up, dragging him clear of the narrowing opening. Panicked, the last man was barely holding on, trying to pull himself up with nothing to secure a grip. The Chief lunged forward, landing prone, his head and shoulders hanging off, catching the man by his uniform shirt as he now hung fifteen feet off the ground.

  “It’s OK, let me go Chief…”

  “No! Climb over me!”

  “I can’t! There’s no room! Let go or it’s going to chop you in half! Chief...!” The man let go but he hung in the Chief’s grip, whose face reflected grim determination. “Chief… please…” He watched in desperation as the ramp neared the frame of the ship, nearly touching the Chief’s back. But the engineer was concentrating on inching himself back. “Dammit, let go of me Chief!”

  The ramp finally clear of the P-57, the crew flooded forward. “PUUULLL!”

  Many hands make light work, and in one rough heave, both men, still connected by the Engineer’s iron grip, slid up the surface, the last man’s legs and feet narrowly clearing the guillotine of the closing frame.

  “Hull sealed.”

  Exhausted, the Chief Engineer rolled on his back and keyed his comm, “Engage ARC, system…” he croaked.

  ■ ■ ■

  “Engine cores warmed to sixty-percent, all stations manned and ready…”

  The crew continued with the readiness report and Derrik leaned toward Reegan from the First Mate’s command seat, “Think they saw us?” he asked quietly.

  Reegan was still dwelling on the size of the thing - a container ship a mile long. “I don’t know. Not sure if she had the technology to pick us up or not. If it had been military…” his voice trailed off.

  “Both listening stations are operational, Commander.”

  “Very good. Have we recovered all crew members?”

  “We have Commander. All systems and personnel are standing by.”

  He took a deep breath, “We need to get off the ground before daybreak… Using passive readings, any other ships in our sector of sky?”

  “The canyon has severely limited our passive line of sight. What we can see is clear.”

  “Engine cores warmed to seventy-five percent”

  “Course to gate Mr. Ragnaar?” Reegan eyed the live video inset provided by the monitoring station, of the area they started referring to as the Zone. The scout teams had tethered the primary station to the Perseus via a short-range signal with a reach of a thousand feet. As soon as the ship ventured beyond that distance, the transmission software would default to a 20-second, deep space burst transmissions, periodically clearing its memory.

  “Aye, course laid-in Commander.”

  “The container ship is on final approach to the Zone…”

  “Engine cores warmed to eighty-five percent. GOD drive on-line and standing by…”

  Reegan busied himself with reviewing the ship’s repair list, half-listening to the chatter around the bridge.

  “The DD62 is lifting off, looks like she’s leaving the zone…”

  “Probably needs the room for that container ship to off-load…” Reegan muttered, half aware he spoke it out loud.

  “Engine cores warmed to ninety percent…”

  “Commander! The DD62 has swung a direct heading to our location!”

  Reegan’s mind snapped out of his busy work, “Engine ignition! Now!”

  “Sir, engine cores aren’t…”

  “NOW Ensign!” he barked. “Initiate GOD Drive! Lieutenant, get us off the ground! Keep us low and take us out through the canyon.” Two hefty thunderclaps echoed off the rock walls, rolling up the canyon as the engines woke from their slumber.

  “She lives…” smirked Ragnaar, satisfaction in his voice. He eased the antigravity collective forward, the bulk of the Perseus lifting off her legs.

  “Communications, ping a FreeRanger signal - it may buy us some time…”

  “FreeRanger, aye. Pinging now.”

  Hydraulics thrummed, the landing gear thumping up into the hull one by one, Ragnaar manually piloting the Perseus down the treacherous winding canyon, “GOD Drive spooling up, twenty-five percent…”

  “Commander, the DD62 is hailing us...”

  “Ignore. Keep pinging FreeRanger.”

  Ragnaar was slowly creeping the throttle forward, the Perseus accelerating, the rugged rock walls of the canyon whipping past in a colorful blur. “End of the canyon coming up…” By the time he finished the sentence they were clear, racing across open plains. “God Drive at fifty-percent…” Tendrils of color swarmed over the ship’s surface as the jump bubble grew.

  “DD62 is hailing again. Their weapons are hot, shields are coming up.”

  “Full sensor sweep,” commanded Reegan.

  “Already done. The DD93 is descending on an intercept course. The DD62 is giving chase and we have a flight of fighters above us.”

  “Full military power, Lieutenant!”

  Reegan shook his head, easing the throttle forward, “The starboard engine won’t take that, Commander - at least not for long…” He eased the flight stick back, the Perseus climbing, entering daylight, passing between mountain peaks that went by as a smear of color, the thunderous sonic compression of air exploding the snow caps off the sides of the mountains in a blizzard of white clouds. “GOD drive at seventy-five perc…”

  “Missile lock, they are preparing to fire!”

  “Ready countermeasures!”

  “Take us up, Mr. Ragnaar!”

  “No, Sir!” objected the Lieutenant. “Something I learned from Admiral Steele… an atmosphere jump…”

  “Missiles! Missiles! Two, six, TEN! Multiple shooters and angles!”

  “Fire countermeasures!” he commanded. “Mr. Ragnaar, I hope you know what the hellion you’re doing!” The electric color swarmed the ship, washing over it like a wave, even as explosions thundered behind them.

  “Twelve, FOURTEEN missiles...!”

  “Initiating GOD jump… Jumping!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  FREERANGER DD62, MIRBELLUS SYSTEM : NEAR MISS

  FreeRanger Commander, Kindre Thurmer, alone in the ready room off the bridge of her beloved DD62, paced the room in exasperation.

  From his own ready room on the DD217, Commander T. B. Yafusco studied the woman with the short platinum blond hair he once called dangerously beautiful, “Stop it Kindre, you’re going to wear a trench in your carpet…”

  She turned to face the comm screen on the wall, “I can’t help it Tibby, we almost had him - we were this close,” she gestured, her thumb and index finger an inch apart. “And the Commodore, by the Gods, he was furious…”

  “Did you make any mistakes?”

  “No, none. But I don’t think the Commodore was interested in hearing that…”

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s got no formal complaint then. It won’t affect your standings or mission rankings…”

  “The damn thing just outran us all,” she blurted out, interrupting. “The fighters nearly had him, but he jumped - one of those GOD drives. I’ve never seen a transport with one of those drives…”

  “Are you sure it was a transport?”

  “It didn’t match any profiles in the 62’s database, so I can’t be sure - but it had no armaments we could detect. It was pinging on our signal frequency though…”

  “So maybe they hacked the FreeRanger signals, that doesn’t tell us a lot.” Tibby leaned closer to the screen, “Tell you what, send me whatever scans you have, I have a friend over in Supply Command, Major Izadore - you might know him…”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar,” she countered.

  “He handles ship dispersal,” continued Yafusco, “if there’s a new hull in use he’ll know it. If anyone can tell us more, he’d be the guy.”

  Kindre nodded, “It’s wo
rth a try. I’d feel better If I knew for sure it was one of ours. But that still doesn’t explain why he ran…”

  “Maybe he knew he was in a place he wasn’t supposed to be. Did you fire on him?”

  “We all did - ordered by the Commodore, He wanted it destroyed.”

  “Damn. He’s really taking security of that new location seriously… did it fire back?”

  Kindre shook her head, “No. I told you, we didn’t see any weapons on her…”

  “Right,” he nodded, “you did say that…” He folded his arms and leaned back against the desk in his office. “Can’t say that I wouldn’t have run in the same circumstances,” he observed. “A couple of destroyers and a handful of fighters charging in…”

  “But he had begun running before we got to him…” she countered. “In fact, we would have never known he was there except for the Goliath. It flew over the position on its approach to the landing zone. There was no recorded visual, but their sensors picked up a concentration of metals and alloys that didn’t look to be naturally occurring. Of course, they hadn’t been actively looking for anything, so by the time the readings got noticed they were passed the position - which was at the bottom of a canyon…”

  Tibby Yafusco nodded his understanding, “Yeah, alright, that would definitely be suspicious. Goliath, huh? That’s a big boy.”

  “A mile long. About two-thousand cargo containers…” Kindre stopped pacing, facing the screen, her hands clasped behind her, “After the ship jumped we doubled back to the original location that was reported on the scans of the Goliath and put down a security team to search the area.”

  “Find anything?”

  She pursed her lips, “A bit… Welding equipment, a couple portable power stations, a machinist’s station, assorted tools… Then of course, the landing gear impressions and all the foot traffic evidence around the location.”

  “Sounds they were doing repairs…”

  She folded her arms across in front of her, “That’s what we initially thought. Until we found the listening station on the ridge above their position.”

  Tibby’s face went slack, his mouth dropping open, “Whaaat? What kind - whose - could you tell?”

  “No branding of any kind. Definitely not ours…”

  “UFW?”

  She shook her head, “Nothing that sophisticated. My best guess, private contractor. Top quality equipment, but definitely private. Completely clean, not an identifying mark on it anywhere.”

  “What was the setup protocol?”

  “Deep space burst transmission…”

  Tibby rolled his eyes and swept his hair back, “Oh, that’s not good. Did you inform the Commodore?”

  “Kindre’s mouth skewed sideways, “He was livid. The upside was, there wasn’t any broadcast history in the transmission logs.”

  “Small victories.”

  “Again,” she countered, “the Commodore didn’t exactly see it that way.” She pointed at him on the screen, “Sending you those profiles - see if you can identify them for me?”

  “Sure,” he nodded, separating tabs on his MOBIUS into individual screens floating in front of him. “I’ve never worked with him, he sounds like a real prince…”

  Kindre raised an eyebrow, “The Commodore? Yeah. He’s a real special kind of pain in the ass.”

  Tibby Yafusco slid back, sitting on the surface of his desk, inspecting the images, the door from the bridge opening with a hiss as it disappeared into the bulkhead. “It looks familiar,” he mused, not looking up. He felt Grinah peek over his shoulder.

  One hand on the back of his neck, Grinah studied the images, “What are we looking at...?” Glancing up at the big screen she gave a little wave, “Commander.”

  Kindre smiled, “Grinah, good to see you. You can call me by my name you know…”

  Feeling a familiar pang of jealousy, Grinah, bit the inside of her cheek, “I know,” she said as diplomatically as possible. Fully aware Tibby’s heart belonged to her, she still had to fight the feeling of inadequacy that crept in and whispered in her ear. Faced with this woman from his academy days, Grinah felt the irrational impulse to hiss at her. Was it possible she got better looking each time Grinah saw her? Leaning in, she pointed at one of the images, “That looks a lot like one we saw on the ground at Amanpoor, doesn’t it?”

  Tibby nodded, “I think you’re right. Question is, are these two the same ship?”

  “And if they are?” asked Kindre.

  Tibby rubbed his chin, “It would be quite the trick… even with a GOD drive. I mean, you and I split up back in Nelson’s Point and went in two completely different directions. If that’s the ship we saw on Amanpoor in the Bengaloo System, how did it get all the way back around to Mirbellus by you? Wouldn’t they have to go all the way back to Alpha Centauri?”

  “That’s the way we went,” confirmed Kindre. “We had to get to Holt’s Folly to meet up with the Commodore’s group first, then we convoyed here.”

  “I’m just wondering,” offered Grinah, “If that could be the ship that was behind us between Madrassas and Edenlight…”

  Yafusco shook his head, “They never made it out, Grinah…”

  “Was that during the travel restriction? asked Kindre.

  “Yeah, solar flares and an ion storm destabilized the transition, we barely made it through the gate to Madrassas. As soon as we had comms up, we called for the travel ban. There was a ship about half an hour behind us, they never made it to the system.”

  “Floating around out in null-space, no doubt,” commented Kindre, solemnly.

  “Unless…”

  “There’s no unless, Grinah,” snapped Kindre. “To expect to survive or magically appear somewhere is nothing but fantasy. No one’s ever survived a drop to null-space.”

  If Grinah could have stabbed the woman on the screen, dozens of systems away, with a simple look, she would be bleeding. Profusely. She bit her tongue - for Tibby’s sake.

  Yafusco looked suddenly pensive, absorbed in thought. “Hmmm…”

  “What is it Tibby?” asked Grinah, her hand on his shoulder.

  He snapped out of it, back to the present, “Huh? Oh, nothing - just thinking.” He looked back up at the screen, “I’ll get back with you on this, as soon as I hear back from Izzy over at Supply Command. I’ll send him this info as soon as we sign off.” He began swiping the image tabs closed, one-by-one. “I think we might have some passive scan data left on that ship in the Madrassas - Edenlight trip, it might be worth a look as well.”

  “I appreciate it, Tibby,” smiled Kindre politely.

  After the closing pleasantries, the comm off, the screen dark, the room quiet, Tibby had a moment to reflect on the conversation. “I’m sorry Grinny…”

  “For what?”

  “For Kindre. She can be…”

  “An overbearing, opinionated bitch?” she interrupted.

  He couldn’t help but laugh out loud - it had caught him off guard. “Well yeah, that’s one way of putting it…”

  “That’s the only way of putting it,” she insisted, an evil smirk curling the corners of her mouth.

  “I don’t like it when she does that. Especially to you.”

  “Then I’m OK with it.”

  Yafusco turned to look into her eyes, a little surprised at her response, “I don’t understand.”

  “As long as it bothers you when she’s nasty, I can take it. If you were OK with it, then I’d be worried.”

  He reached up and touched her cheek, “You’re remarkable, you know that?”

  She smiled, knowingly, “And don’t you ever forget it…” She kissed him - a peck on the lips before tugging on his sleeve, “Now let’s go see if we can pull up that sensor data from the Madrassas - Edenlight run…”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE DRAKE, DARPINGER RUN SYSTEM : TWISTED SISTER

  Command Master Chief Daryl Jolly made his way between the containers of supplies stacked at the base of the Drake’s cargo r
amp and weaved his way through the groundcrew loading the cargo into the belly of the ship. “I want this stuff aboard and the hull sealed tight in ten. Meeting on the bridge in fifteen. Let’s go, let’s go!” he clapped.

  Andrea paused, a container in her arms, “Chief, where is the Captain?”

  The Chief broke stride as he headed off the cargo deck, “The Captain won’t be coming…”

  The container she was holding dropped straight to the deck, slamming loudly on the metal floor, causing him to stop abruptly and whirl around, “Please explain,” she demanded.

  “I don’t answer to you android. You answer to me. Got it? But just so you don’t get your wiring in a bunch, he has other business to attend to.”

  “I do not find your explanation sufficient, Master Chief. Where is he?”

  Daryl was beginning to lose his temper, pointing at the ramp, “Get back to work, or get off my ship.”

  “Where is he,” she insisted, standing her ground, undeterred.

  “He had an appointment at Sentinel Services,” Daryl replied, contempt for her rising in his voice.

  All work and movement had stopped on the ramp and in the cargo bay, cautiously watching the encounter. Andrea spun on her heel, snagging the long leather duster she had draped over a stack of polycarbonate supply crates. In one motion it billowed out behind her as she slung it over her shoulder and slipped it on, pulling it around her as she moved purposefully down the ramp, the ground crew moving out of her way.

  “Don’t come back, android!” Daryl shouted after her.

  ■ ■ ■

  By the time Andrea returned to the Drake, the pad was clear of supply crates and ground crew, the ramp retracted, the hull sealed. The ship was ready for takeoff and she could hear the blowers running for the engine core warmers. Thankfully, the landing pad’s retractable canopy was still sealed or re-entry to the pad would have been impossible without atmosphere.

  Under the hull, easily within reach, she pulled down a recessed lock handle and rotated it, releasing a small armored hatch revealing a keypad. The keypad replied with musical notes as she entered the security code Captain Jaxon had provided her the night before to gain entry for the grocery inventory. Re-securing the access hatch, she waited as a two-person lift descended on hydraulic pistons through an armored iris, stopping as it touched the ground.