Deadly Nightshade

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Deadly Nightshade Page 3

by H. Paul Honsinger


  He tried maneuvering thrusters with a similar result.

  Max unstrapped himself and used the handholds on the overhead to pull himself over to the Main Sublight Management Console. Careful to slip his feet into the restraints attached to the deck in front of this and every other panel configured for crew access, he pulled off the cover and left it floating in the air behind him, reached into a nearby Velcro pouch, pulled out a handful of tiny red maintenance attention flags, and started attaching them to the leads for the relays that, if activated, would give him minimum thrust on the drive. He then flipped open an access to an auxiliary power conduit, shut down power to it and verified that it was dead, and grabbed a set of bypass wires from another Velcro pouch. He plugged a bypass into the conduit.

  And woke up screaming. He was floating upside down on the other side of the Nightshade’s control cabin, surrounded by drifting globules of his own saliva, every nerve ending on fire as though he had been dipped in gasoline and set ablaze. Fortunately, the unexplained pain seemed to be ebbing quickly. Substituting gasping in pain for screaming, Max grabbed a handhold and glanced at the chrono. Nearly an hour had passed. He quickly returned the ship’s wiring to its original condition, put the cover back on the panel, used the Handihoover to vacuum up the spit drops, and strapped himself back into the pilot’s seat. He was not giving up on the idea of getting away, but wanted to think carefully before he tried again. The Vaaach were obviously punishing him for trying to get away. For all he knew, the next time, they might kill him.

  The Vaaach had already done a great deal of killing. A quick review of his displays showed that, while he was unconscious, the powerful aliens had finished what they started—in a most thorough fashion. A single Vaaach ship had taken on an enormous battle station and a formidable fleet and left behind nothing but an enormous field of tumbling debris and rapidly freezing chunks of flesh.

  Max was not surprised when, a few seconds later, the comm panel chimed to indicate that he had just received, on one of the fleet channels, a command message coded as high priority. He noted that the message was transmitted in Standard, using one of the Union’s more common text protocols:

  ENSIGN MAXIME TINDALL ROBICHAUX YOU ARE IN OUR CUSTODY WHILE WE DECIDE YOUR FUTURE. WE HAVE IMMOBILIZED YOUR VESSEL. WE WILL NOT TOLERATE FURTHER EFFORTS TO RESTORE PROPULSION. MESSAGE ENDS.

  Max wondered what the Vaaach had managed to retrieve from the Nightshade’s computer other than his name. It occurred to him that he should purge the most sensitive files. He keyed for a directory and began the purge sequence.

  The comm panel chimed again.

  DO NOT DELETE ANY DATA OR ATTEMPT TO ACTIVATE YOUR DRIVE SYSTEMS. WE RECENTLY RENDERED YOU UNCONSCIOUS WITH OUR NEURAL DISRUPTOR FIELD AT ITS LOWEST INTENSITY. THERE ARE A TOTAL OF TWELVE PROGRESSIVELY HIGHER INTENSITY SETTINGS. DO NOT GIVE US CAUSE TO USE THEM. MESSAGE ENDS.

  Good idea.

  If what he had just gone through was the lowest setting, Max was pretty sure that he didn’t want to make the acquaintance of any of the higher ones. He aborted the purge sequence and closed the file directory.

  What do the Vaaach want? No one knows anything about them so I have no idea what motivates them.

  Max had an idea. The Vaaach were talking to him. There was no reason he could not talk to the Vaaach. In fact, his life might depend on it.

  He set the comm panel to transmit text on the same channel, using the same protocols as the Vaaach had used to transmit to him.

  ENSIGN ROBICHAUX TO VAAACH COMMANDER. I REQUEST THAT YOU TELL ME WHAT OPTIONS YOU ARE CONSIDERING FOR MY FUTURE. MESSAGE ENDS.

  He hit the send button and started a timer. The reply was on his display after only 14 seconds.

  REQUEST DENIED. MESSAGE ENDS.

  Calvin Coolidge had nothing on these guys. Max started typing again.

  QUERY DO I HAVE ANY SAY IN WHAT IS DONE WITH ME.

  He hit send.

  This time, the reply took only six seconds.

  NO. MESSAGE ENDS.

  As if to provide a further note of finality to the Vaaach response, all three of the Nightshade’s consoles devoted to communications suddenly went completely dark.

  So much for that idea.

  Max had only a few minutes to contemplate how completely alone in the universe he was before the compression drive console emulated the communications consoles. Total shutdown. Panel dark. Status lights dark. No response to any control inputs. All hope of reactivating those systems evaporated when Max looked at the Master Systems Display. The Vaaach had deprived of all power the compression drive and its supporting subsystems, down to the dedicated processors that managed each of them and the separate computer that watched over the processors.

  Just as suddenly, the main sublight drive console went active with the status panel showing nothing but green lights. The maneuvering console was next, with a course and acceleration profile being entered into the autopilot from no apparent source. The drive engaged on its own and ran up to 5 percent thrust as the ship came around to a new heading that was locked into the console and could not be altered from any control that Max tried.

  Max didn’t need to look at the NAV display to compute his destination. The Nightshade was delivering him to the Vaaach.

  Chapter 2

  04:11 Z Hours, 23 June 2304

  I’m bored.

  As hard as it might have been to believe, it was true. Max was hundreds of light years from the nearest friendly forces, a helpless captive of a virtually unknown and incomprehensibly powerful alien race renowned for their hostility to trespassers. He had just observed those aliens crush a powerful Krag fleet the way a man might step on a half dozen pesky cockroaches—and, yet, Max was bored out of his mind.

  Even though he was in extreme, existential danger, there was nothing for him to do. The Vaaach had twice more zapped him into unconsciousness, triggering progressively higher degrees of pain, in response to two increasingly surreptitious attempts to circumvent their blocks on his systems. First, he had tried to implement a workaround in the middle of a system diagnostic and, second, he had remote accessed his main computer from a padcomp usually used for reading reports and doing paperwork.

  He couldn’t even bail out. The Nightshade’s accommodation cabin was designed so that it could be jettisoned from the ship to serve as a lifeboat, but all of the pyrotechnics for doing so were simply missing from their brackets, probably removed through the use of some incredibly sophisticated matter transport system. His pressure suit was also missing, as were the oxygen generators for his SCU and all of the spares. Even if he could manage to cobble together some sort of oxygen supply so that he could use the SCU in its intended capacity as an emergency pressure suit, there was no way for him to get out of the ship because none of the hatch controls would operate.

  Finally, cowed into at least temporary submission, he had watched helplessly while his ship, under Vaaach control, piloted itself toward the immense alien warship and brought itself to a stop near an opening in the vessel’s port side. He had twiddled his thumbs while the Vaaach used a grappling field to pull his ship inside their own and then deployed a tug no larger than a bowling ball to pull it through a labyrinth of holding areas for what appeared to be advanced fighters and scout ships and transports. And, he had sat on his hands when that tug deposited his vessel in a small hangar. Any urge Max might have had to defeat the Vaaach lockout on the hatch mechanisms so that he could get out and explore his surroundings quickly faded when an alarm alerted him that although the Vaaach had not pressurized the hangar with any air, they had filled it with intense gamma radiation—no problem for the minimal deflectors with which the Vaaach had left his ship but almost instantly fatal to a man outside in a pressure suit, which he no longer had.

  I guess a morning stroll is out of the question.

  Max had systematically checked the functionality of all of the Nightshade’s systems groups without any more punishment by the Vaaach. Perhaps they wanted him to know the
precise nature of his captivity. He was completely locked out of all drives, maneuvering thrusters, navigation, fire control, weapons, active sensors, communications, and any means of venting any of the various hazardous, inflammable, toxic, corrosive, or radioactive materials his ship contained that might in any way do any harm to his captors or their vessel. The fusion reactor was shut down and all means of getting any power to the complex systems that compressed the deuterium so that it could fuse to restart the reactor were blocked, as were all means of even getting deuterium into the reactor. Because the Auxiliary Power Unit was also shut down and the reserve batteries isolated, Max should have been entirely without power. Somehow, however, the Vaaach were remotely energizing the craft’s shore power umbilical (which was retracted and stowed in its internal bay—Max checked it twice) so that Max would not have to asphyxiate in the dark.

  Max also found himself physically locked out of just about any part of his ship that contained anything he didn’t immediately need to keep himself alive. His access code would no longer open the ordinance locker, the small arms locker, or the access hatch to the missile bay. And, much to his frustration, all of the chisels, power drills, and fusion torches that he might have used to defeat, pry open, or cut through the doors or hatches in question were properly stowed in one of the vessel’s tool and equipment lockers which, of course, his access code no longer opened. Max broke four of the five steak knives on board attempting to get into one of the tool lockers, stopping only because he decided to save the fifth steak knife for use as a weapon. Or, in case he wanted to eat steak.

  Max did have some control of life support, but only to vary the oxygen flow and air pressure plus or minus 12.8 percent—no more change than one might experience driving a ground car from the bottom of a river valley to the summit of moderately high mountain pass--and vary the temperature from 15 to 26 degrees Celsius—chilly room temperature to warm room temperature. So, he couldn’t commit suicide by giving himself hypoxia, hyperoxia, hypothermia, or hyperthermia.

  The autochef still worked, so he could feed himself until the food ran out in ninety days or so, but all of the overrides he might have used to cause it to whip up something toxic were locked out. Passive sensors and optical scanners were also online, so Max could monitor what was going on in the hangar, which was like monitoring a still life oil painting. And his computer cores were still available, so he could read, do research, watch entertainment vids, listen to music, and otherwise amuse himself if he were so disposed.

  Which he wasn’t. Finally deciding that he wasn’t going to accomplish anything useful in the Nightshade’s control cabin, he squeezed aft through the access tunnel that ran between four tanks of maneuvering thruster monopropellant to the accommodation cabin. The compact space held two convertible 0G-1G bunks (the Nightshade was designed to be operated by a crew of one but could support two men for exceptional missions that required that one man be on watch in the control cabin at all times), a head/shower unit, a nearly microscopic galley, and a work station containing a computer terminal, comm panel, entertainment console, and a set of basic ship controls.

  Reasoning that his SCU—particularly now that it no longer had an oxygen generator unit--did nothing to make him safer in the face of the enormous power of the Vaaach, he stripped down, showered and shaved, slipped into a vastly more comfortable ship’s jumpsuit, and brushed his teeth. He paced back and forth in the accommodation cabin. Well, “paced” may not be the right word for the kind of movement that the Nightshade’s tiny living space allowed: three steps in one direction, turn, three steps back. Max chafed under the burden of this kind of powerlessness. If there was one thing that characterized Max Robichaux more than any other it was action. Every instinct screamed for him to do something while his mind told him that there was nothing to do. At least nothing that wouldn’t end very badly for him.

  How will it all end for me?

  As best Max could figure, there were two outcomes that were more likely than all the rest. First, at some point the Vaaach would crack open his ship, pull him out, and perform all the tests on him that they felt necessary to learn how humans were put together, what made them work, and how to kill them most efficiently—all ending with him being dissected or, even worse, vivisected. Just thinking about that one made Max break out in a cold sweat. Or, perhaps, the Vaaach would do to him what the Tri-Nin did to the crew of the USS Barracuda when it escaped a Krag hunter-killer force by ducking into the Union/Tri-Nin Demilitarized Zone. The advanced, pacifist, tri-sexual, singing aliens neutralized the Barracuda’s weapons, captured the ship, and returned the crew to the Union both unharmed and vastly more appreciative of choral music. They kept the ship, probably as a deterrent to further incursions, as they certainly had no technological lessons to learn from Humankind. If that were to happen, Commodore Hornmeyer would probably eat him for breakfast, garnished with onions and bacon sautéed in garlic butter, bust him back to recruit spacer third class, and detail him to clean out every waste disposal pipe on his own flagship, making it convenient for him to chew his ass out on a daily basis. But at least he’d be alive and home with the fleet.

  It was better than being vivisected.

  With a sigh, he converted the bunks from zero G configuration to the setup for sleeping in normal gravity (the Vaaach ship provided a 0.82 G field) and stretched out. With all the fears and worries going through his mind, and with his life at the mercy of the mysterious Vaaach, he seriously doubted that he would get any sleep. Confident he was wasting his time, Max closed his eyes and tried to think of something peaceful.

  Max suddenly found himself scrambling out of his bunk toward the work station. He was hitting the READY TO RECEIVE key on the comm panel before his conscious mind was able to process that he had fallen asleep to be awakened by the buzzer that signaled an incoming message.

  So, now you want to talk.

  Max checked the time. He had been asleep for nine hours. He needed to pee. Check that . . . he really needed to pee. The message could wait a few seconds.

  His bladder voided and “equipment” stowed, Max keyed DISPLAY.

  ENSIGN MAXIME TINDALL ROBICHAUX, WE WILL NOT KILL YOU TODAY. WE WILL REFUEL AND RESUPPLY YOUR CRAFT. MESSAGE ENDS.

  Max hit the AUTO DISPLAY key so that the present message and any future ones would appear without need for any further button pushing and began to type.

  TO VAACH COMMANDER. QUERY: ARE YOU RELEASING ME TO RETURN TO UNION SPACE NOW. MESSAGE ENDS.

  It took the Vaaach less than five seconds to respond.

  NO. MESSAGE ENDS.

  They must have known what I was going to ask.

  TO VAAACH COMMANDER. QUERY: DO YOU EVER INTEND TO RELEASE ME TO RETURN TO UNION SPACE. MESSAGE ENDS.

  The next reply appeared on the screen less than a second after Max pressed the SEND key.

  UNDECIDED. MESSAGE ENDS.

  After Max had five seconds or so to read the message, the comm panel went completely dark. When he pulled up the Master Systems Display on the accommodation cabin’s terminal, he could see that there was no power of any kind going to any of the ship’s comm systems.

  Conversation over.

  True to the Vaaach’s word, less than a minute later a computer command opened the Nightshade’s fuel inlet door to allow a robotic fueling probe to mate with the fuel fill aperture. The tank safety valves opened and fuel flowed into the ship, refilling the nearly half empty main tank and topping both auxiliaries. Other robotic systems replenished Max’s supplies of maneuvering thruster monopropellant, water, lubricants, and coolants while removing accumulated waste products. The exterior access panels to the engineering spaces popped open to admit a swarm of maintenance robots, ranging from Border collie to ant sized. As best Max could tell, the robots were performing maintenance on his engines and other critical systems. Various status displays Max called up on his terminal bore out that theory, at least until he started hearing mechanical sounds behind the panels in the accommodation cabin. Sho
rtly thereafter, a few hundred of the ant-sized robots in distinctly creepy fashion swarmed through the cabin removing lint, hair, food crumbs, and the other detritus of human life. Max turned on the optical feed from the control cabin, and could see the tiny devices at work there, too. He hoped that they fixed some of his less than perfectly executed repairs and attempted work arounds.

  Meanwhile, one of the Vaaach hangar’s hatches opened to admit a small vehicle that, but for the absence of a driver, would have resembled an ordinary forklift. The vehicle carried two moderately-sized cargo pallets, each carrying a few dozen or so boxes of varying sizes. In response to the vehicle’s approach, the hatch to the ship’s small stores/cargo bay opened, allowing a robotic arm on the top of the vehicle to place the pallets inside the bay.

  At the same time, the accommodation cabin’s computer terminal beeped for attention and displayed a message that ship’s stores/inventory had increased by 210 kilograms of foodstuffs, 25 kilograms of renewable CO2 scrubber medium, 5 kilograms of laundry detergent, 0.5 kilograms of body wash, 3 tubes of dentifrice, 32 rolls of toilet paper, 5 spare uniform jumpsuits (which the computer listed as being Union regulation and in Max’s size), minor amounts of various other consumables, and 718 kilograms of spare parts. And Max’s pressure suit as well as the oxygen generators for his SCU.

  Max didn’t know off the top of his head what his average daily or weekly consumption was of things like toilet paper or body wash, but he did know that he consumed about 2.3 kilograms of food per day. With just over 70 kilos of foodstuffs already on board, this meant that the Krag were provisioning him for something like four months, which fit with the ship’s 120 day nominal endurance. On one hand, Max was relieved to know that he wasn’t going to starve anytime soon. On the other, he felt his stomach drop at the idea that the Vaaach had plans for him that included at least 90 days before he could begin the month-long trip back to the nearest Union base.

  Once the reprovisioning was over, nothing stirred in the hangar where Max’s ship was stored. Max heard nothing from the Vaaach. Not that he didn’t try to talk to them. He shouted. He banged on the hull in Morse, Chang, and Ch’Haymz Bh’iiaal II code. He flashed his signal lamp at anything in the hangar that looked like it might be any kind of sensor. He blinked his running lights. He input requests for communication into the computer’s outgoing messages cue. No response.

 

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