by James Warner
Then I tuned in at random to several conversations whose threads I could pick out from the general hubbub. It was like being at a large garden party. I thought I wouldn’t have too much trouble working with it.
“I’d like to continue the mapping, Sassy,” I said.
“Yes, Caryn,” she answered and away we went. Meanwhile I began asking to the assembled intelligences that I could reach about getting the fleet in my planet fueled and the station repaired. I found myself talking to Repair Station 140, which was in a system near mine and which was fully operational, about what I wanted to do. 140 wanted to know my intentions, which I gave. After all, I wanted to develop a model civilization on these worlds using the Parents’ technology as much as possible and I envisioned a need for defense as jealousies developed from time to time.
I was able to convince Station 140 of the purity of my motives and he (she? No it seemed more of a male voice) agreed to send over several repair platforms to work on the station here. However, 140 did not have any sources for repairing or replacing the power units in the various starships.
Then what sounded like an elderly woman’s voice chimed in. I was amazed how much like my mother she sounded. She said she had the capability of setting up a robotic fuel refining plant if I had a world with the proper resources. I asked Sassy to join in. She told this new voice, Station 3, that our sixth, third and second planets had the required mineral resources. Station 3 said she would send out an exploration and set-up team of ‘droids immediately to Planet 6 in our system and that in approximately three of my months there would be power plants and fuel in plenty for the fleet in my system. She suggested I begin recruiting settlers as soon as possible and gave me and Sassy a list of planetary coordinates of worlds currently populated by Parents’ children who might have the necessary mind set to take on the task of settling a virgin star system. Earth, I was happy to note, was on this list.
I asked Sassy if she thought there were any machine intelligences that might like to settle on a planet. She didn’t know of any but from the flurry of communication she immediately sent out I guessed she’d find some.
In the meantime, we were happily mapping the other planets of this system when we received a distress call on the normal hyperspace channel from another Scoutship. Sassy and I both realized it was the ship of my future husband! This couldn’t go unanswered.
Sassy relayed the call to HQ and got a fix on the position. It was on the other side of the galaxy from us. I asked if we could warp right in. She reminded me that with the help of the Parents’ communications system, no location in the galaxy was unavailable to us. So we went. Sassy told me it would take about six hours to get there, so I prepared a snack of tuna salad with tomato chunks and celery in the galley and went to my quarters to read some more about the stardrive we had inherited, as well as find out more about my new “bionic woman” abilities. So apparently now I had become an “Ancient” cyborg. Like Sassy, I was 20,000 years old, or at least a part of me was. Really romantic.
Chapter 12.
I awoke with the last wisps of a feeling of not being alone. My room was dark, but with my new eyesight, I could see well enough to know no one was here. I suppose I was picking up the radiation from my body heat reflecting off the room’s surfaces. Talk about esoteric. If the medicos ever got hold of me I’d probably never get off the operating table. Bionic woman, that’s me.
I realized that I was not receiving any communications from any of the Parents’ stations.
“What’s going on, Mate?” I asked.
“I’ve put us on battle stations about a half hour ago because I picked up some other ships in the area of the
Falcon, Fred’s ship.”
“What’s the Falcon’s status?”
“Not moving at present, though her shields are intact.
They are not yet under attack,” she answered.
We were still a half hour from the scene at normal sub light speeds and Sassy had held us here to see what was going on.
I threw on my Government Issue silver jumpsuit and ran to the bridge. There in the star map I could instantly see what was going on. There were five ships converging on the Falcon. The Falcon was totally defensive, all its power to the shields. I remembered that I was unique and most Scoutships did not have anything near the armament Sassy carried, even before Meph’s bloodthirsty additions.
“Your Captain is doing okay Caryn. He’s managed to break his arm somehow, but the medkit has it in a good splint. His First Mate is nowhere on board. I can’t tell from the computer records where he left him, but there is no death record, so I assume the Mate is alive too. Most likely on the last planet they visited. More serious is the Falcon’s situation. She is very low on fuel and not able to engage warp drive at all. I think we should help out there first and then go looking for the lost First Mate.
Muldoon is his name.”
“Thank you Sassy, for scanning. I quite agree. We will need the Falcon’s records and it is always best to save life forms if possible. I guess I’ll find out what happened to Meph later. By the way, is the
Falcon sentient?”
“No, she is not a brainship. But we might be able to change that back home in Caryna.”
Aha. Home. I guess I had been thinking along those lines myself. It was a good feeling. I wondered how my man would feel about it - and his ship, since it seemed Sassy also wanted a mate, in her own way.
“Okay Sassy, let’s go in. No guns yet until we find out their intentions.”
We faded in, right next to the Falcon and hooked on, airlock to airlock. Our shields easily covered both ships. The five wolves, after the initial shock of seeing another ship appear, immediately began firing on us both.
“Sassy, waste them,” I said out loud. “I’ll go check on Fred.”
The attackers began winking out, one every 30 seconds as their shields flared to violet and imploded. By the time I was in the Falcon’s airlock it was all over – just five balls of incandescent energy dissipating into the void of space where the enemy had been. War is never fair.
“Did you pick up anything from them?” I vocalized subliminally to Sassy, testing out my new gear.
“Yes. I scanned their computers before they blew. I’ll tell
you about it when you get back.”
“Okay. Good shooting,” I acknowledged as I walked into the Falcon’s bridge.
There was my man, staring into his scanner with a shocked look on his face. I realized that this all had happened in the course of ten minutes. He didn’t know yet that we were here and hooked on, as he hadn’t thought to look with a close scan to his own ship. Learn and live, they say.
“Hello, good looking.” I announced as I waited by the bulkhead. I didn’t want to scare him too much. His head jerked around, followed by his body. Actually he tried to jerk around, but caught his broken arm on the side of his command chair and slipped to the floor on his butt, still facing the console. He managed to pull himself around to look at me and his mouth was working in the most fish-like manner as he stared at me, tried to pull himself up to his feet and, well, my grin was getting bigger and bigger.
“W, wh, where did you come from Caryn?” He finally managed to push from his lips. “Did you do that?” he gestured vaguely toward the Falcon’s screens.
“Sassy and I are here to rescue you. Actually Sassy did that while I was coming aboard.” I was walking to him now. I wanted a hug so bad I could feel it. But I didn’t want to hurt his arm. It didn’t matter. He grabbed me and planted a most satisfactory kiss on me while trying to break every one of my ribs with his good arm.
“Excuse me, Captain, but we have more company coming. I count twenty-five ships emerging from hyperspace roughly surrounding us. Perhaps we should find his First Mate, I mean the official one assigned to the
Falcon.”
Sassy’s humor was not lost on me. Nor was her warning.
“Uh, Captain,” I said as I squirmed out from what was to be
come another amorous embrace, “Sassy informs me we have many hostile visitors. Please strap into your command chair and I will return to my ship. Sassy will get us the coordinates from the Falcon if you will just tell us where your First Mate is and she’ll take us there.”
“Oh, sorry Captain, I have been neglecting my duty,” his face turned the most intriguing color of red. “Mr. Muldoon is surveying a planet in the last system we visited. I had to lure these pirates away from the planet lest they find and kill him. I’m afraid he’s a bit absent minded when he gets into the research frame of mind. I have no idea why we’re so low on fuel, though.”
“Thanks.” I called back to him as I ran back to the airlock and Sassy. She had informed me that they would be in firing range in a few more minutes and she didn’t want to destroy life forms needlessly, even if they were Pirates. I concurred.
As I returned to my familiar chair, we checked the Falcon for space worthiness and then we both faded out. Sassy had only needed a second to locate our new destination in her galactic star chart. Amazing.
The planet we were viewing was a rather pretty thing; slightly smaller than Earth normal, but with a very M-1 star, to the 9’s. The gravity checked out at about point eight G. The atmosphere was pretty much the same as at the average Earth ski resort, but the planet wasn’t any colder than Earth because its orbit was a bit closer to its star. The first thing I thought of was a resort. It would be perfect, with its lighter gravity, mild temperatures and slightly higher radiation levels. Kind of like Costa Rica or Mexico City in the American continents back on Earth.
We found Muldoon inside the basement of a house on the outskirts of one of the major cities on the planet. Things were in the usual state of decay, with very few large buildings left standing. Most of the structures were covered with varying depths of dirt and overgrowth. They had obviously cleared away the area around this house for some reason. Sassy did not pick up anything of special note from our orbit out in space.
The Falcon’s lander was in fine shape so Fred went down to ask Muldoon what was going on and in general check out what they were about. I didn’t want to interfere, as I was off duty and it would be a serious breach of etiquette, not to mention regulations, for me to interfere in their work. Rescues were, of course, not included in that rule.
Sassy and I talked to the Falcon, trying to find out what had happened. We scanned his ship from stem to stern, trying to find what had happened to the fuel. No clue. There just wasn’t much left.
Our fuel tank was full, since the engine modifications had left the secondary generators intact and only they used regular fuel. We had about enough in the Hornet’s tanks for over a hundred years of generating, so pumping some into the Falcon was no problem. Sassy gave the Falcon half of her capacity, which would hold them for the rest of their mission. Then she checked out all the fuel lines for leaks, or whatever. Nothing. The only thing I could figure out was they never got a full load at base before they left. This raised other questions, of course.
I asked Fred what had happened and he said they had been in hyperspace on their way to this planet when the Falcon had suddenly warned them that their fuel was low. But this didn’t make sense. Sassy had checked out all the Falcon’s circuits and found nothing amiss.
“So Fred, Mike, what do you think?” I asked, totally at a loss as to what had happened and not willing to leave it unsolved.
“Well Captain,” Muldoon piped in, “I have a theory that the sudden draining of our fuel and the appearance of those ships are somehow related.” “Of course!” Fred and I chimed in at the same time. “How stupid of me. Sassy, do you have anything to add here?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, Captain. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what they were planning, as I was just blowing them up. Let me look over the memory scans I made of their ships.”
“Your ship can do that?” Fred asked. We waited a moment for Sassy to look.
“Ah, yes Captain. I have it. There is a shadowy record of some sort of plan that had been erased when battle commenced, but since I was able to destroy them so fast, the memory shadow was still in their computers. It seems, yes, I have a complete record from their fourth ship. According to the computer record, many of their ships are in a stationary orbit around this star system at about four A/Us. They have some sort of device that allows them to scan a ship in hyperspace and probe it. Apparently they were able to suck fuel from the Falcon before she discovered the drain and notified her Captain. We must have not been discovered or affected because of our peculiar method of warp drive travel. However, our destruction of those five ships has been noticed and the patrol ships are scanning that portion of space for hyperspace trails. They won’t find any. I estimate we are safe here for a few more hours.”
“Thank you Sassy,” I answered. Fred and Mike were looking at me peculiarly. Of course, they couldn’t know about the Hornet and me at all, as our technology was still totally unknown to human civilization, except for a possible stray researcher in the Galactic University who might have already stumbled on the record I deposited there.
“Well, you three are ready to run and I have my claim to work. Unless there is something else I can do for you, we had better be on our way so you can finish your mission.”
“Look, Caryn,” began Fred, “I don’t mean to pry, but well, I didn’t have a chance to see your ship when it was docked back on Hamarabus and I would really like to see what you’ve done here. You are famous, you know.”
I blushed slightly. I know I am famous; the holo shows keep the make-believe stories in the public eye. But I really don’t enjoy getting my nose rubbed in it. However, how could I refuse a request to show off my new Second Mate to the man I love?
“Okay guys. Come along.”
“Sassy, do you mind watching over the Falcon while these guys explore you for a few minutes?”
“Not at all Caryn. Enjoy yourselves. I have everything under control here.”
“How about the Pirates?”
“They’re still a few hours away.”
We went back into the Hornet and I took Fred and Mike on a grand tour from engineering to the bridge. I showed them in Meph’s quarters which I intended to keep, but just a quick look, since it was after all Meph’s personal space. They checked out the pod. I showed them the battle bridge, the likes of which they had never seen before, since it wasn’t regulation at all. I skipped my quarters, as I wanted to christen them privately with Fred at some future date.
By the time we got to the bridge, they were so overwhelmed they couldn’t even ask any questions. The Hornet was so far from what was taught at the Academy, or for that matter what was standard practice for a Scoutship, that for a new Captain and his First Mate, she was just too much to assimilate all in one visit. Oh well, they’d have a lot to think about for the next half-year or so their time. So I escorted them back to the lounge and we sat over three cups of tea and talked about it.
Actually, I asked them questions about their experiences at the Academy and on their first few jumps. They came out of the shock and started a more animated conversation. That was fine with me, I didn’t want them leaving all overwhumped. They were going to have to be bright and alert for their confrontation with the Pirates.
“Sassy, can you adjust the sensor programming in the Falcon so she can detect the Pirate fuel probe?” I asked on our new secret comm system. That gave her a problem helping out one of her “own kind” and I think she appreciated that.
Finally, a couple hours after their arrival aboard, Fred and Mike were much more extroverted and ready to go back to their ship. It was, after all, their ship and they were proud of her.
“Pardon my asking, but what ever happened to Meph? He was going to be your First Mate, I thought.”
“I thought so too, Caryn. But the time to leave came up and he wasn’t anywhere to be found. I asked the Commandant and he said Meph had another assignment. So Mike came aboard and we checked out. I don’t know where he is.”
This was a puzzle, but Meph is a big octo/spider and can take care of himself, so I filed it in the “strange” file in my mind.
“How is it going?” I asked Sassy.
“I had to change one of the circuit boards on the Falcon, but I used a ‘droid for that and everything went well. She can now detect any interference on normal hyperspace channels, similar to when Meph moved in to me. She’ll tell the men about it and it’ll be okay,” she explained. It sounded fine to me.
The Pirates were only a half hour away now and it was time for me to go. So I told Fred the status of the approaching Pirates, letting him decide what to do with his own skin. It wasn’t my place to interfere. Sassy and I faded out, back to my system to complete the survey before my time limit ran out. I blew Fred a kiss as we left – in the secrecy of my bridge. I was really stuck on that guy. I hoped I hadn’t ruined it all by rescuing him. I really didn’t know him very well yet.
Chapter 13.
“Sassy, I have an idea. Would you be able or willing to move to a different starship?”