Ariticle Six

by C. T. Christensen

  “Sir, I believe your suggestion that his glorious triumph in the rescue operation on the planet Forest leading to a sector command has had unintended consequences.”

  Wills got slowly to his feet as the glittering Captain Weathers marched toward him with his left hand on the hilt of his sword. He stopped two meters from Admiral Reynolds, came to rigid attention, and presented a textbook salute. Wills returned it with an incredulous look on his face.

  “Sir, I beg to report that my ship is loaded, and I request permission to leave orbit and return to Archer.” He swept his left hand in the direction of the floater he had arrived in, “My floater is piloted by a crewman from the Rance so that it may remain here. I have been informed that all of my floaters will be carried back to Archer on the Weasel.”

  “Ahh . . . permission to depart is granted, and, yes, all floaters will be returned on the Weasel. I love that sword.”

  Weathers acquired a huge grin, “The blade is made of the finest compacted steelite with full heat and cryo treatments. If the blade was sharpened, you could cut down a large tree with it. The gemstones are synthetic but the best available.”

  Weathers opened the buckle of the scabbard’s belt, and held the sheathed sword horizontally in both of his hands with the blade edge toward himself in the traditional Samurai style, “Admiral, I would like to present you with my sword as a memento of this day and this mission.”

  Wills was more than surprised, but managed to accept the flashy antique weapon, “I . . . ahh . . . well, thank you, Captain Weathers; I . . . I’m overwhelmed. I should give you something in exchange, but I . . . wait.”

  Wills handed the sword to Hayes--who almost dropped it--and reached up to his collar where he removed one of his two stars, “Captain, when you get your sector command, I would be honored if this star was the first one on your uniform.”

  Weathers’ eyes widened in obvious pleasure and he folded the star into his hand, “Thank you, Admiral; this will be the first symbol of my new position. Now, with your permission, I will return to my ship and get my group of refugees to Archer.”

  Once again, Weathers braced to rigid attention and saluted. Wills returned the salute.

  As the floater rose toward the Gregory Falls’ orbit, Wills took the sword back and partially withdrew it from the scabbard so he could see the gleaming blade. He looked at Hayes with a childishly happy expression, “I’ve never had a sword before.”

  #

  Hayes, Wills, CeCe, Stoker, Treelam, Ames, and Twisst stood in the field next to one of the landing struts of the Santana watching the sun come up.

  “Well, Hayes, it’s time for you to leave. CeCe and I should return to the Weasel and get things ready to go there.”

  Hayes nodded and turned to Ames, “Will you and Doctor Twisst be returning with me?”

  Ames got a slightly embarrassed grin on his face, “Gladys and I had a very short conversation on that subject; we feel that the artificial gravity and much expanded living space aboard the Weasel is more suited to our less adventurous natures. Please don’t take it personally, we found you to be a most stimulating travel companion; it is just the uncivilized nature of your preferred mode of travel that intimidates us. To put it simply, once was enough.”

  Hayes smiled and nodded again, “I kind of had a hunch. Well, go get your gear; I have a couple of things to do before I leave.”

  He touched his com pad, “Santana to Kellogg.”

  “Pressler here, Hayes.”

  “Are you and the Rance ready to leave orbit?”

  “That’s an affirmative; we’re just waiting for word from you. All floaters are now being handled by Weasel crew members. Neither one of us has taken on any passengers, and from what we see from here, you won’t be getting a big load either.”

  “Yeah, that’s our opinion of the situation too. Anyway, you and the Rance are cleared for immediate departure.”

  “Thank you, Hayes; tell the Admiral we’ll see him back at Archer. Nav has the con; we’re outta here.”

  Hayes turned to CeCe and handed her the second puppy. He then looked down at a slightly confused BA, “You go with her.”

  CeCe scowled at Hayes, “What? You might have asked first; there were no plans to bring animals on the ship.”

  “I would take them with me except for the free-fall thing, and I’ve gotten rather attached to them. You have a dog so you should know how to handle them. Please?”

  She was not, particularly, fond of surprise responsibilities and one of the puppies licking her chin didn’t help.

  “Okay, but you are going to paint my house when we get back.”

  Hayes smiled, “Deal.”

  Next, he turned and walked over to Eva and her parents, “It would trouble me for the rest of my life to know that Eva died because her parents feared to leave.”

  They stood up and faced him; Eva took his hand. The father spoke, “We will leave - we have great fear and sadness, but Eva sees in you”

  A great weight lifted, “Thank you; I am very pleased.”

  He turned and steered them to CeCe, “Commander, one more favor; could you find quarters for Eva and her parents?”

  He leaned a bit closer and spoke quietly, “They could be a good foster family for BA and the puppies.”

  She gave him an exasperated look, “You vex me, Lieutenant.”

  Ames and Twisst rejoined the group carrying their bags.

  Wills looked around the group, “Okay, everyone on the floater. I’m going to remain here for a couple of hours and try to get a few more customers.”

  Eva grabbed Hayes’ hand, “Go with you Santana ”

  Hayes dropped to one knee, amazed that she had picked up the name of his ship, “I would like that, but it is a very small and uncomfortable ship. I want you to go with CeCe and take care of BA and her puppies. When you get to my planet, I will be waiting for you. I would go with you on the big ship, but I am the only one here that can operate this ship; the Admiral would be very upset with me if I didn’t take it back.”

  Eva did not look too happy but seemed to understand the situation. He stood with Wills and watched everyone head for the floater.

  Hayes turned and saluted, “Sir, I am out of here.”

  Wills returned the salute, “You’ve done a good job here, Hayes; consider yourself promoted to Lieutenant Commander as of the moment you set foot on Forest. I have entered an official note to that effect in the Santana’s AI.”

  Hayes broke into a big grin and saluted again, “Thank you, sir.”

  Two minutes later, the hatch of the Santana was swinging shut… “Hello, Easton-”

  #

  Wills stood in the game field seating area with a crowd of locals and watched the Santana quickly disappear into the morning light.

  ##

  CeCe swung her chair to face Wills as he came out of the passage, “Admiral, there are two floaters on their way here, but neither one is full; the remaining floaters are still on the ground at various towns. Also, one train has arrived at Watts, and about a hundred passengers are walking to the ship. It looks like we will total out at around six thousand passengers.”

  “Even worse”; said Doctor Stoker, who was sitting with his team, Commander Kraigor, and Lieutenant Bonn at the observers table examining the latest feed from the solar monitor, “there is no slacking in the radiation storm headed our way. The levels are already beginning to rise at ground level. I strongly suggest that we be off the ground in thirty minutes.”

  Wills turned an unhappy face to CeCe, “General recall, Captain, we leave in twenty minutes.”

  #

  The screen to the right showed a harried looking petty officer down on the strut platform, “Sir, the last floater just settled to the deck and there is no one else walking in this direction. I’m closing the last loading ramp now.”

  Wills nodded, “Very good; seal and secure everything and get ready for lift.”

  He cut that connection an
d looked up to the screen that showed Captain Helt in his chair in the engineering station. He and CeCe were comparing readings. Wills checked his side of the console and verified that all through-hulls were sealed. When CeCe and Helt finished their exchange, he gave his report, “All floaters and personnel are aboard. The ship is sealed; ready to announce.”

  “Please do that, Admiral; we’re ready here.”

  Wills tapped the SHIP-WIDE pad, “Attention, attention, we are lifting now.”

  CeCe tapped on her panel and checked the settings.

  “Global attitude to level and hold; maximum allowable power input to ninety percent of rated limit, and max allowable standard distortion level to ten percent.”

  Satisfied, she entered the ring activation command, “Zeroing now.”

  As the reactors fed power to the ring, CeCe’s eyes lost their focus, and she closed them, “Admiral, what did we get, ten thousand out of a half million? I wish I had never heard of Forest.”

  “Commander, look at me.”

  She turned her head toward Wills and opened her eyes; they were wet.

  He pointed a stern finger at her, “CeCe, don’t ever get the idea that we failed here. I don’t see anyone else putting in the effort we did. No, it didn’t go as well as we would have wanted, and we would never have gotten them all off anyway. We did good, we did our best, and that is something we all can live with.”

  CeCe nodded and reclined her chair, “Ready.”

  The control arms came up and the virtual hood enclosed her head.

  “Get us out of here, CeCe, and don’t spare the horses.”

  She hung in the virtual air on the last sunny day this planet would live to see. She was facing the game field and the large crowd that was standing there. She jerked her head away from that to look at the pads on the hard ground toward the beach and began applying power.

  Those pads lifted just clear of the ground, and she swung her head toward the opposite side of the ship and the pads that were deeply buried in clay and soil. She could see the virtual representation of the pads but couldn’t tell if they were moving; she applied more power. Nothing seemed to move, so she applied more power and then more power.

  The Global Attitude System has one function; it maintains the ship perpendicular to the gravitational field of the planet it is landing on so the pilot has an accurate visual reference between the virtual pads and variations in the surface being landed on. Once contact is made, the landing struts adjust extension length to keep the ship gravitationally level. The standard response of the GAS to an asymmetrical pad release situation was to apply more power to the lift ring section above the mired pads. In this case, CeCe had entered a limitation of ten percent to ring power distortion. The standard control procedure did its job and stopped feeding more power to that side of the ring in excess of ten percent above overall commanded input power. Now, instead of a heavy lift being exerted just over the stuck pads, increased power input translated into a massive vertical lift that, because of the still anchored pads, became the initial stage of a dynamic rollover.

  All flying vehicles that land on geological surfaces have to do so with consideration for the nature of the surface they land on; horizontal landing and takeoff craft get stuck in mud or hit obstacles at speed while vertical craft run the risk of getting one side of their landing gear stuck without the pilot being aware and pivoting the vehicle around that stuck gear like a hinge. Having something the size of a Rhino-class ship do a full dynamic rollover was considered undesirable in the extreme, so a specific routine was included in the standard control system to watch for certain events. As the Weasel tried to lift, those events were recognized, and the routine transferred control of the ring to an emergency subroutine outside of the standard system--unrestricted by any preset limitations.

  CeCe was looking at the buried pads; trying to detect movement. She should have been looking toward the beach if she wanted to see movement. What she did see was a blinding flash as a structural element sheared and an induction link insulator failed under a surge of power. The multi-megawatt arc vaporized a four meter section of the lift ring, and brought the beach-side of the ship crashing down when all power to the ring was cut. Unfortunately, that side of the ship had continued upward from inertia and didn’t stop rising until it was thirty meters off the ground.

  Interior damage was minimal because the grav system masked the greatest part of the movement and impact; still, many people were thrown around, and there were some injuries. CeCe’s virtual view flickered and disintegrated as alarm reports filled her vision. She hit the emergency switch under her right hand and the chair returned to normal.

  Wills was picking himself off the deck as was Captain Helt on the screen.

  “HELT, WHAT HAPPENED? I LOST RING CONTROL.” She yelled.

  Helt tapped his panel in a panic, “I’M NOT GETTING ANY RESPONSE FROM THE RING SYSTEM.”

  He stopped and froze, “Uh oh!”

  Everyone on the bridge looked up at his remark. One of the screens had a view of a section of the ring.

  Helt slumped back in his chair, “We are not leaving here.”

  Doctor Twisst gave Ames a sick smile, “Jonathon, it appears we should have gone with Hayes.”

  Stoker was on the edge of panic, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WE HAVE TO LEAVE; WE HAVE LESS THAN HALF AN HOUR.”

  Wills closed his eyes and shoved hard at the rising surge of fear and panic. He opened his eyes to face the people on the bridge, “There’s nothing we can do; repairing damage like that would take a month with all of the facilities on Archer.”

  Doctor Treelam dropped back into her seat and began crying.

  Wills put his hand on Stoker’s shoulder, “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do.”

  A soft voice broke the silence, “Maybe there is.”

  Wills turned to CeCe, “Huh?”

  CeCe looked up at Helt, “Captain, what is our power status?”

  “Ahh . . . well, all reactors are online. Two of the original Weasel reactors seem to have some damage to their primary cooling systems, but the secondary systems are operating.”

  “What is the status of the isolator drive?”

  That got a very curious look from Helt. His eyes quickly scanned a panel, “Ahh…fully operational. What are you thinking?”

  “AI, say operational status.”

  “RING SYSTEM OFFLINE. REACTORS W5 AND W6 OPERATING ON SECONDARY COOLING SYSTEMS. LANDING STRUTS 11, 12, 13, AND 14 NOT RESPONDING TO CONTROL SYSTEM. SUSPECTED HULL DAMAGE ON STRUT PLATFORM IN THE AREA OF LANDING STRUTS 10, 11, 12, AND13. ALL OTHER SYSTEMS OPERATIONAL.”

  She had been tapping on her command panel as she got the information, “Doctor Stoker, how much time do we have?”

  He hurriedly checked his data pad, “I . . . ah . . . just over twenty minutes, I think, maybe.”

  “Captain Helt, you have just over twenty minutes to get us off this planet.”

  CeCe looked up at the screen, “What can you do?”

  The wide-eyed engineer was speechless for a few seconds before the challenge sunk in, “It would be possible to use some structural materials to short across the gap, but the resulting control would be very sloppy, I’m sure. The real problem is that it would take at least an hour to get people out there and a couple of hours to do even a bad job. Even if we did a good job, the whole thing is theoretical at best. The only other wild-ass thing that comes to mind is to use the floaters to lift the ship, but we would need something like two thousand of them.”

  He swept his eyes around his panels and screens, looking for that one thing that would solve this problem. Finally, he slumped in surrender, “Give me a week, and I could do it.”

  The alarmed voice of Doctor Stoker riveted everyone, “Admiral, we’ve just lost the monitor.”

  Wills jerked his head around, “How? To what?”

  “Radiation; there was a huge spike and it was gone.”

  “I thought that equipment was hardened against that?” />
  Stoker looked at Wills with a wide-eyed expression, “It was; that’s why we have a problem. That radiation wave is less than three minutes behind the data stream.”

  They all just looked at each other; each assimilating in their own way that what had been a marginally successful mission that they were heading home from had just disintegrated into a horrible death from radiation exposure.

  CeCe placed one finger over a command activation touch pad, “We have power, we have control, and we have an isolator drive. Shall we take the quick way or the long painful way to Valhalla?”

  Wills looked at where her finger was and realized that she had been entering the isolator drive release sequence. He looked at her, “You can’t do that; the Silverman won’t deactivate its lockout this close to a mass object.”

  CeCe looked slightly embarrassed, “Actually, sir, the Silverman was never set up with mass proximity lockout authority. Chalk it up to paranoia about being attacked by kitchen utensils; it made everyone feel better if humans retained control until we knew more about how the Silverman performed. So, activation of our isolator drive requires my command release and that of Captain Helt. You were sent a memo describing the modification.”

  A stunned Wills just slumped in his chair and nodded.

  CeCe turned to Helt, “Captain, if you would please.”

  Helt leaned forward and checked his board, “You do realize that the first time this was tried was the last time this was tried, don’t you?”

  CeCe smiled at Helt, “It has always fascinated me that no trace, even microscopic, was ever found of the original isolator test device or its crew. We have more power and better control. Given the choice of sitting around watching our skin peel off or getting it over with in a hurry . . . well . . . .”

  Helt grimly nodded and entered his release code, “I could really use a beer.”

  CeCe looked around at the group on the bridge and touched her finger to the pad.

  Nothing happ--

  #

  It was days, hours, or no time at all. There was no sight, no sound; just the smell of onions--CeCe’s Mother was fixing her French onion soup. The only thing that reached her mind was the chilling cold and the soft murmur of the ventilation system. She tried to open her eyes, but wasn’t quite sure where they were. She jolted back to awareness, snapped her eyes open, and tried to suppress the spasms that racked her body. Gradually, her breathing slowed, the shivering and shaking calmed, and her mind tried to report for duty.