Voyage of the Valkyrie

by Robert Horseman

  Mac shook her head in disbelief. “You never cease to amaze me Rae. Yes, please do so. Our first order of business is to put the Redshift personnel in stasis sleep, then get everyone up to the Valkyrie. I think we stashed enough medical cuffs in the shuttle. Can the maintenance drones handle the cuffs?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Although old, the drones are humanoid in form with adequate dexterity.”

  “All right, get it done. It’ll take several trips to get everyone out of here in that big shuttle. I just hope we have enough time.”

  “Can I help?” Cale blinked, shook his head, and sat up. “I assume we won round one?”

  Mac smiled and suppressed the urge to kiss him. “That we did. You’ll have to watch the record later. The mining drones were impressive.” She furrowed her brow. “Are you okay? The cuff says you were hit by a stun weapon.”

  “No wonder I feel like I spent last night in the Pitcher Palace. One minute I’m sitting in the shuttle, bored stiff, and the next I find myself stretched out here.”

  “You should be feeling better in a few minutes. The cuff says you’ll be back to your annoying self in a few hours, but I need you now. Do you think you can fly that big shuttle in your current condition?”

  He looked over at it. “Yeah, I think so, assuming it’s fueled. Give me fifteen minutes to do a systems check.” He pushed himself off the floor and wobbled to his feet. “Damn my head hurts; better make that twenty minutes.”

  ***

  Mac turned to see Captain Horne standing quietly, his head down. Saliva drooled from partly open lips, and her heart sank. She hadn’t known him long but he had impressed her, and to see him like this was disconcerting. “Captain Horne?”

  He looked up and his face pinched in effort as though trying to form words. She put an arm on his shoulder and led him to the opposite side of the hanger from the assembling Redshift crew. “Please remain here, Captain Horne. I’m going down to the lower levels to find our crew.”

  She found them on the uppermost commerce level, lying in cots in small cubicles. The smell was awful, presumably from too many previous unwashed occupants. She counted heads, and was relieved to find all present and accounted for. In one cubicle near the access tube she found Lieutenant Malena Fuller, the Valkyrie’s weapons officer. She went over to her cot and knelt by her head. “Lieutenant Fuller, can you hear me?”

  Fuller’s eyes popped open, and she turned to look at Mac. Her brows furrowed as if trying to make a connection, but after a moment the same infantile smile she had seen earlier on the Captain crept across her face.

  Mac recalled what Grace had told them about the indoctrination procedure, and how it left the recipients in a persistent subservient state. Presumably that meant they would follow instructions, just as the Captain had. She pointed to the access tube she had used to get to the level and said, “Lieutenant Fuller, go and stand over by the access tube and wait for me.”

  To her relief, Fuller climbed out of the cot and shuffled to where she had pointed. Mac wondered if they would remember any of this, assuming an antidote could be found. She dismissed the thought as irrelevant, but some small part of her brain continued to worry about ordering around superior officers.

  She went cot-to-cot, giving the same instruction to all of them. When they were assembled, she led them up the tube to the hanger level. She had them stand with the Captain against the wall opposite the Redshift personnel, who were surrounded by a small army of skeletal maintenance drones. About half were already cuffed and unconscious.

  She found Cale in the Redshift shuttle’s pilot chair. “I found our crew and got them all up here. How are you doing?”

  He turned with a grim face. “Not great, but it could be worse. The good news is that it’s half fueled. That should be plenty. The bad news is that it looks like they have kept this beast running with salvaged parts that weren’t meant for this vessel class. They’ve cobbled together interface codes to make it all work together, but I have no idea how well it’ll perform. “

  “You’ll just have to do the best you can. We have almost eighty people to move. How many can she hold?”

  “Ten in the seats, but I’d say we could fit twenty if we put half of them in the cargo compartment. It won’t be pleasant back there, but it doesn’t look like we’ll get too many complaints.”

  She grimaced. “Damn, that’ll mean four trips. Can you run the hanger airlock from here?”

  He nodded. “I think so. There’s an interface, but I haven’t tried it yet.”

  “Okay. I’m going to get our people out first. Just as Grace said, they’ve been indoctrinated. They’ll do anything you ask them to do, but you’ll have to keep it simple. As soon as they are loaded, get them up to the Valkyrie. Tell them to go to their staterooms and take care of any bodily needs, but otherwise to stay in their compartments. Come back as fast as you can for the next load. Save the last trips for the Redshift people. I don’t know how much time we have, but if push comes to shove we may have to leave them.”

  As Mac turned to leave, Cale said, “What about the mining drones? We can’t leave them here.”

  “Leave that to me.”

  ***

  Four hours later, Cale had taken everyone including the Redshift personnel up to the Valkyrie except Mac and Rae. His instructions were to use the ship’s maintenance drones to move the unconscious Redshift personnel to cots set up in the ship’s C-deck lounge, then program the shuttle to crash itself into the planet’s south pole. She and Rae’s drone would come back in the Valkyrie’s shuttle, but she had a few other tasks to complete first. While Rae reprogrammed the mining drones, Mac went in search of the base’s computer memory core. She found it on level fifteen by following the engraved maps next to each access tube. The memory core was larger than she expected, about the size of a loaf of bread, no doubt due to the age of the equipment. It seemed obvious that Redshift’s threat was far larger than UDA command had let on, at least to officers of her lowly rank, but any intel she could get might offset her other career ending activities such as using mining drones as weapons. She pulled out the core, and a red flashing light accompanied an audio announcement: “Warning, the memory core has been removed. This system will continue to run in volatile memory; however, no new data will be saved.”

  When Mac got back up to the hanger level with her burden, she climbed into the Valkyrie’s small shuttle and dropped the memory core in the aft cargo section. She found Rae sitting in the pilot’s seat, prepping the shuttle for the return trip. “Are we ready?” she asked, as she dropped into the co-pilot’s chair.

  “All set. The mining drones have been reprogrammed per your instructions, and pre-flight is complete.”

  “Very well, Rae, please use your link to the computer core to cycle the hanger airlock, then depressurize the entire base.”

  Three minutes later they set down on the flat landing pad outside the base’s hanger doors. Rae called up a composite display transmitted from the mining drones showing the inside of the station. “Rae, take it down please.”

  Mac watched entranced as the mining drones went about dismantling the station from the inside. They cut through decks and bulkheads like warm butter, spraying metal shavings and clouds of dust in their wake. When it was done, the solitary thing left intact was the ice covered surface dome and the airlock passage. The base’s inside was a dark hollow cavern with an enormous pile of debris at its bottom. The mining drones final task was to cut through the base’s outer shell below ground level, and bury themselves under the landing pad.

  Chapter 21, Revival

  Mac woke after sleeping for two days in her tiny cabin, waking occasionally to eat, drink, and relieve herself. She had put Rae in charge of navigation toward Serenity, with instructions to wake her if any UDA or Redshift ships appeared on scanners. She had no idea what Cale was doing. He had worn stim patches on each forearm when she and Rae had returned in the shuttle, and had deep bruising under his eyes, sure signs of stim overdose. Sh
e had ripped his stims off herself, taking a satisfying chunk of hair with each, and ordered him to bed.

  She took a long hot shower, and felt human again for the first time in far too long. A communication chime sounded, and Rae’s voice came over her cabin’s speaker. “Good morning Mac. Nice to see you up and about. Would you like a status report?”

  “Yes please.”

  “We are zero-point-one-five light years from the rogue planet, en-route to Serenity. We are staying just beyond commercial scanner range of the main shipping corridor. Our long range scanners picked up a few small private cargo vessels, but nothing of interest. Per your orders, I assembled all available logs of the past few days, including those from the two pressure suits you wore, and transmitted them to Serenity via the secure communication buoy network. It should arrive there in approximately three more days. The Redshift base’s computer core has far too much data for transmission, so that will have to wait for our arrival.”

  “Thank you. What’s Cale been up to?”

  “He slept for nineteen hours in his cabin, and is doing so now on the bridge.”

  “That figures. What about our crew and guests?”

  “Our crew is still in their quarters. I’ve had the maintenance drones distribute provisions to all of them. The Redshift personnel are all in stasis sleep in the C-deck lounge. I am monitoring their medical cuffs, and all are doing fine. Shall I wake Grace Shelby?”

  Mac pursed her lips. “No, not yet. We still don’t have records access to prove her story, and even if she’s telling the truth her loyalties are suspect. Let’s leave her in stasis sleep for now. If we get the Captain back, he can make the decision. Speaking of which, how are you doing on the cure for the Redshift nanites?”

  “The nanites seem to be impervious to any conventional medical treatment. However, I have designed and constructed a portable eradication unit based on the pulse rifle design. The pulse rifle generates a thin plasma stream that is confined and aimed by a tight magnetic field. The magnetic field is quite strong already, so all I had to do was remove the plasma and widen the field. It will act like a local electromagnetic pulse, essentially frying all the nanites. The crew should come back to themselves over the course of twenty-four hours as the drugs in their systems wear off. Just make sure not to use it anywhere near a critical system. I recommend the middle of the hanger bay.”

  “Have you tested it?”

  “No ma’am. I have been awaiting your orders in that regard.”

  Mac frowned. “Are you telling me I have to shoot every crewmember with a pulse rifle?”

  “A modified pulse rifle, yes.”

  “Great. That will look wonderful on my rapidly expanding list of court-martial offenses.”

  She dressed in a clean uniform, and went up to the B-deck officer’s mess. Since her return she had eaten ready-meals and little else, which left her starving for real food. Since there was no crew manning the galley, she programmed the auto-cook for a large breakfast for two, consisting of waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, sausages, bacon, pastries, juice, and coffee. When it was ready a few minutes later, the heavenly smell almost caused her to eat it right then and there. Instead, she carried it up to the bridge on a large tray.

  Just as Rae had said, Cale was snoring in the navigator’s seat. She crept up behind him, and blew over the food. He awoke with a start, and she plopped down in the seat next to him. “Sleeping on duty, Ensign?”

  He yawned. “No ma’am, I’m just fantasizing about the riches that await us when we get back. Medals, promotions, rewards, accolades…”

  “Investigation, sentencing, dishonorable discharge, and disgrace,” Mac finished. “I could not have done it without you, you know.”

  Cale grimaced. “How comforting.” He stared at the food. “Are you planning on sharing that glorious buffet?”

  “Oh, I suppose. I could eat it all you know.”

  He grinned. “No doubt.”

  She passed him a heaping plate of waffles and took a large bite of her own.

  Through a mouthful he said, “So what happened on the surface after I left with the last batch?”

  “The base is gone. Rae programmed the mining drones to take it down to rubble, but left the ice dome overhead intact.”

  Cale frowned. “I don’t get it. Why leave the dome intact?”

  “Because I buried the mining drones under the landing pad. The drones are now programmed to mine any and all titanium found.”

  “But there can’t be any titanium on the…” He paused and looked at her, a smile crossing his lips.

  “Exactly,” she said. “Lots of titanium in shuttle hulls. Anything that lands will be turned into scrap.”

  He chuckled. “You’re positively Machiavellian. But what if one of ours lands there?”

  “The drones are programmed to slag themselves in ten days, and I had Rae send an encrypted warning message through the UDA com buoy system just in case.”

  Cale nodded, then his expression grew serious. “Mac, I wasn’t the greatest student of military doctrine at the academy, but there is one rule I remember quite well after I failed an engagement simulation. It is against UDA rules of engagement to leave the scene of a battle unless you are ordered to do so, withdraw due to damage, or are relieved by another vessel. We just cut and ran. There might be enemy forces back there, and our ship is undamaged.”

  Mac glared at him. “Cut and ran? Really? We didn’t steal a shuttle and attempt to escape. No, we commandeered an orbital defense platform, used it to destroy another, then destroyed it and a Redshift military vessel, recaptured the Valkyrie, rescued our crew, captured all the local enemy, and destroyed their base. Just you and me and Rae. But we can’t fight this ship ourselves in a normal engagement. The crew is out of commission for the time being. A ship is nothing without a crew, Cale. If a board of inquiry doesn’t get that, then they’re idiots. I would resign before they dismiss me from the service for that cause.”

  Cale put up his hands. “Hey, you don’t have to convince me. I was there too. I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”

  “We’ve done everything humanly possible, and maybe a bit more. Right now we need to focus on our crew. Rae says she’s figured out a cure for the Redshift nanites. All we need to do is shoot our crew one-by-one with a pulse rifle.”

  “Ah, call me nuts, but doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?”

  She grinned. “Not at all. You can’t like everyone on the crew anyway, can you?”

  Cale rolled his eyes. “Just tell me what Rae has cooked up.”

  ***

  With Rae’s help, they had the Valkyrie’s crew assembled along the walls in the hanger bay two hours later. The body odor stench made Mac’s eyes water since none of them had been instructed to bathe. It hadn’t been this bad during her one month survival course at the academy. Even running the ventilation system at full capacity did little to clear the stench. They all still wore the stained gray smocks given them during indoctrination.

  Mac said, “Rae, I want you to record this, full video and audio, multiple angles. I want there to be no mistaking what we are doing here.”

  “Acknowledged. Recording has commenced.”

  “Who’s first?” asked Cale.

  Mac put the heels of both hands on her forehead and rubbed. “I don’t know how commanding officers get to the point where they can make these decisions. Logic tells me to put the least valuable crewmember through first in case something goes wrong, but that person would be the least valuable to us. I don’t even know if I could figure out who that person would be. On the other hand, the Captain would want to be first if he was in a position to answer for himself. At least I think so. Who knows what a board of inquiry would say.”

  Cale shook his head. “Mac, didn’t you just tell me to stop worrying about what a board of inquiry would say? If we had worried about an inquiry before, we’d be zombies now like the rest of them.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She sighed.
“We need the Captain most of all. He’s got the command experience we lack. He’ll be first.”

  She turned to Rae. “So what’s the procedure?”

  The humanoid drone smoothly rotated its head in Mac’s direction, a decidedly inhuman move that reminded Mac of who, or rather what, Rae was. She shivered, hoping that her psyche never ended up in some far away computer core keeping lights on and air pumping.

  “Place the subject standing in the center of the bay over the reinforced landing pad. Traverse the subject with the eradication unit, starting above the head and ending below the feet. Move the beam slowly, taking no less than ten seconds with the sweep. The electro-magnetic field dissipates with distance, so anything beyond five meters from the discharge will be unaffected. The beam has no affect on living tissue, but the subjects must not have anything ferrous or electronic, including implants, on or in their person. Such items will heat, and electronics will fuse.”

  “What about the crew’s audio implants?” asked Cale.

  “All their audio implants were removed during the indoctrination procedure. I am receiving no return pings from any of them. I confirmed this by examining each person as we brought them down here.”

  “And medical devices?”

  “Medical records indicate that seven of our crew have implanted life sustaining or health maintenance devices. I recommend that those persons be put in stasis sleep rather than attempt to revive them now. Once our chief medical officer is restored, he can decide how to proceed with them.”

  “Does the Captain have any?”

  “Not according to the records.”

  Mac pursed her lips. “How will we know if it works?”

  “The nanites put out a tiny but measurable electromagnetic field. I’ll be able to detect the field change. The nanite samples I took did not reproduce, so a few remaining active won’t be significant to their health. The crew should be recovered within about twenty-four hours.”