“And, Eris, you are not queen,” Jerome stated. “There never was a throne, or queen, which did not represent a crime. The antiquated institution of monarchy in any form is an insult to modern humanity.”
“Queen?” Eris asked with a mirthless laugh. “I am Captain of the Conestoga, not queen.”
“You are playing captain, yes, but are really just some junior grade technician for obsolete paraphernalia. More mature minds should be making these decisions. Cammarry and I will go, and you two can stay here,” Jerome stated smugly.
Eris halted the retort she was about to speak, but Monika did not hold back. “Yes, we are antiquated, with obsolete ways, and primitive conditions. So Jerome, remind me, what did your own Dome 17 Committee do, with all that advanced technology and sophistication? Just what did they do to your adventurers before you launched? Were they kings and queens?”
Jerome’s face turned as red as heated metal, or like a flashing warning indicator. His anger rumbled in his belly. He balled up his fists inside the gloves.
Cammarry answered, “They were a bunch of lying dictators. So what do we do here?”
“Cammarry, are you siding with these people, again?” Jerome choked out the words.
“You sided with Monika far more intimately than anything I have done,” Cammarry snapped back. “We have a mission here, and I agree with Monika. If she feels competent to hover the shuttle here while the three of us look around, fine. If Monika would rather have a backup person stay here with her, maybe we should divide into two teams. One in the shuttle and one for the surface.”
Eris spoke up, “That is a valid compromise. Cammarry, you and I will go to the surface and check it out. Jerome and Monika will remain here to keep the shuttle secure. Honestly, I would rather go with Monika to assess Delta, but I do not trust either Jerome or Cammarry to be alone in my ride back.” Eris smiled to soften her words. Monika’s piloting skills are limited, and this will be good practice.” Looking at Monika, Eris said, “Hovering and even flying back to the needle ship should be no real problem for you, with Sandie’s guidance.” She then turned to Jerome. “Jerome, physically you are larger, even in the spacesuit, and getting to that central memory core might involves some tight places. I, being immature as you put it, can squeeze into places you cannot. So you can be co-pilot for Monika, and remain here in NS-99, Sandie and the lattice can serve as an additional backup as well.”
“With the connection to Sandie, we all three should go into the wreckage. Monika does not need me,” Jerome stated. He was not eager to stay with Monika, and was urgently wanting to do something, if for no other reason than to have an outlet for his anger.
“Sandie can offer assistance, but cannot reconnect a physical object,” Monika pointed out. Jerome’s comments had bit into her emotions more than she let on. “I suppose having some advanced human here could possibly be helpful. Jerome knows the modern things, and I know the antiques.” She forced a playful note in her voice, but it fell flat as Jerome heard it. “The same goes for Cammarry and Eris, a team of old and new.”
“Are we good with this decision now?” Eris asked. “Not being a queen, I am seeking consensus. I want to get this accomplished.”
“Sandie?” Jerome inquired. “What do you think?”
The AI was quiet for a moment, then replied, “I think the interpersonal conflicts here are deeper than your discussion about this expedition. The course of action which Captain Eris has laid out is responsible and fair. Do not ask me to fix your various personality conflicts. Perhaps when you get back to the needle ship, I can set each of you up with individual counseling sessions with my simulation of Doctor Chamber to address those issues?”
“What?” Jerome snapped. “I just… oh, do not concern yourself any longer. I withdraw my inquiry.”
“Now he knows to withdraw,” Cammarry muttered. Then she spoke louder. “Eris, I agree with you. We should do this together.” She glanced at Jerome, and it was not a pleasant look, but she said no more.
“Adjust your personal gravity manipulation systems,” Eris instructed. “Monika get us over that landing spot.”
Monika used the shuttle’s most forward and most rearward thrusters to hover over the relatively flat platform area they had observed. That would keep the wash from the thrusters away from the two people who were descending down. Eris opened the side hatch of the shuttle, and extended out a small crane arm. On it was a thin, but strong cable. She looped it around several times and made stirrups so that one spacesuited foot could fit in each loop.
The red light of Zalia’s sun was penetrating the sky more, and ruby colors were cast in the shadows of the wreckage. Strange glows came from the atmosphere. Wind buffeted against Eris as she stood in the hatchway. Eris and Cammarry both stepped into the loop stirrups and then grasped the cable with their gloved hands.
“Lower us down,” Eris commanded.
They twisted and spun and swayed a bit as they descended on the cable. Then they reached the platform. The cable was retracted. The platform felt solid enough under them, since their suits were modifying the gravity inside so they felt as normal as possible. Walking along the wreck was not easy, as the surface was jagged and uneven, but the spacesuit’s boots were designed for gripping.
“We will enter though what had been the hanger bay,” Eris said and pointed.
They made their way across the rough platform and reached the portion which jutted up. Up close, they could tell it was the crumpled and ruined parts of the hanger bay doors’ frame. It was till dozens of meters wide, looking far larger and more gaping from their vantage point on the hull. From there they climbed a bit using the broken parts as hand and footholds. Then they could see down into the hanger bay, which slanted downward at about a forty-degree angle. The exterior doors had been sheered apart, and only a small section remained in place. That was stripped in yellow, but only extended down a bit from overhead. The entire hanger bay was set at a tipped slant downward from their position. The red light from Zalia’s sun shone, but did not really infiltrate the darkness of the crumpled hanger bay.
“I think we are in luck,” Eris said as she activated the spacesuit’s lights. The white light from the suit contrasted sharply with the reddish green glow that came in from outside. The beam shone down into the murky depths, and light played over five shuttles which were still clamped into place on the now canted hanger bay deck. “That Class PS1 will never fly again.” Eris gestured toward the largest of the five shuttles. One of its wings was warped out of alignment, and some kind of bubbly and sticky looking globs were covering where the wing had bent. “Hydraulics must have interacted with Zalia’s air. Looks like some kind of catalytic action which….” Eris sensed something and turned to Cammarry. “Cammarry?” Eris asked.
There was no response.
“Cammarry what is wrong?” Eris reached over and tapped on the other’s bubble helmet.
“I was just remembering,” Cammarry said hesitantly as she looked at one specific shuttle. “We found one like that before, filled with dead bodies in spacesuits.”
Eris understood her grief. She still recalled the death and dying from the repository where she had awoken, so the remembrance of trauma caused compassion to swell in Eris’ heart. She prayed for the right words to say. “Cammarry? Loss is so hard, I know. Do you want me to check out the interiors?”
“No, I must do this myself.” Cammarry looked down at the shuttles which were perched there, inclined on the slanted deck. “How do we reach them? Will the magnetics in the soles of the boots be strong enough on that slope?”
Eris stepped onto the incline, her foot gripped only partially. “No, we cannot just walk down there.” She considered the problem. “The corner there, where the deck and the sidewall come together, provides some potential for climbing down. When I get to the control station on the side, I should be able to operate one of the cranes. They have a manual hand-crank system which will allow me to extend it out from that opposite wall. I
f they are working, I can cobble together a way to get to the shuttles.”
“Several of the cranes look banged up, but those two on the back wall seem intact,” Cammarry responded, shining her own suit’s beams of light down and across the hanger bay. “How can I help?”
“Check the thruster fuel storage tanks on the other side,” Eris instructed. “The fuel may have survived in that third one. The others all look to have been breached.”
Eris then climbed down the wall using the corner as bracing for her feet and hands. Reaching the control station, she opened the door marked ‘Menlo 820 Alternate Controls’. There she was pleased to see the dark green levers and yellow wheels which were the instruments for the manually operated backup hand cranks. Eight individual cranes were built into the overhead of the hanger bay, and she began by selecting the ones which looked the most intact. Most of the cranes were jammed or frozen in place, but she did get two to work. One looked outwardly like it was in the worst condition of any, but it extended out as she spun the crank. Its pulleys and gears smoothly shoved the long crane arm out and across to where the first shuttle was located. Adjusting the controls, she then dropped the roughly horizontal crane down until it rested just above the shuttles.
“Well, that gives us a start on a pseudo-bridge across the span,” Eris stated. She searched the controls and found one for an on-deck winch. Hoping it would unwind, she engaged the mechanical devices, and the winch unwound its thick cable and attachment hooks. That dropped and slid down the slope rapidly in the heavy Zalian gravity. Luckily it missed the shuttles and the horizontal crane. It looked odd hanging down the slope, but gave them a rappelling line. The second functional crane also reached across and spanned the distance, this time connecting from the opposite wall. She tightened the cranes into place, and set locking mechanisms. Done manually, this took some time, and careful adjustment, but Eris was tedious in her attention to details. Her finished result was a sort of bridge from either side of the hanger bay, spanning across to just over the top near the hatches of the shuttles.
Cammarry, meanwhile, had climbed down to where the thruster fuel storage tanks were located. As they suspected, only the third one had fuel. From her vantage point, she could look out through the hanger bay entrance. Judging its distance and space available, Cammarry figured each of the shuttles should be able to fly out, except for the largest one which had the busted wing. The frame of the hanger bay was irregular, and to Cammarry’s eye that was disconcerting. For she knew the strength of permalloy, especially compressed and fashioned as it was for the exterior doorway. The red light and greenish air of Zalia looked odd from her perspective. It was a surreal vista.
“Eris, this third tank’s gauges read full. Will that be enough fuel? And what kind of shuttles are these? I recognize the one smallest one. That is like the one Carter the Kidnapper took me to Alpha in. Will these others be useful to us?” Cammarry was swallowing so hard it was audible to Eris.
“Yes. Excellent! As to fuel, we will have to see what levels are in the shuttles, but fuel should be adequate to get us to the needle ship. That big one is a Class PS1. Too bad it is a wreck. The small one we call a runabout and seats two. The Class 6 shuttles are pretty good workhorses, and we got very lucky, blessed, to find that one that is furthest over. That is an engineering tug. I will fly that one back myself. It is a real find! Lots of power, and loaded with built-in tools, adaptations, and manipulation devices to work on the exterior of the ship. That will be a real bonus!” Eris could not contain her gleefulness about the engineering tug. Then it struck her that Jerome and Cammarry would need to each personally fly one of the Class 6 shuttles. “Cammarry, will you be alright piloting one of those Class 6 shuttles? I mean with all that you saw?”
“I think so,” Cammarry responded, again swallowing hard. “It is important, and theses will not be filled with dead people. So yes, I will be fine with it.”
“What about Jerome?” Eris asked.
“I will be fine too,” Jerome responded through the spacesuit’s systems. “I have been monitoring and listening in, remember?” The anger in his voice was overt and filled with asperity. “May I come in now, captain?”
“Monika? Do you feel safe hovering around out there without Jerome?” Eris asked.
“Yes. I plan on doing a lot without Jerome,” Monika replied. “I will be on standby just in case you cannot get any of those shuttles to fly. Alone, I can take care of whatever needs to be done.”
“I will be inside in a few minutes,” Jerome barked.
Scrambling up from the alternative control station, Eris carried with her a cargo net which had been stored in a cabinet on the sidewall. She connected that to places on the wall, and on the deck, creating a ladder of sorts. That allowed for a better way to reach the controls. She then walked over to where she could use the cable to rappel down and reach the makeshift bridge. The crane’s arm was wide enough to stand on, and by judiciously walking along, she could reach the first shuttle, the Class PS1. She did look down the slope several times, and knew that a fall in the heavy gravity of Zalia would probably be fatal, even inside the protection of the spacesuit.
Cammarry extracted the thruster fuel supply line and carefully lifted it up and over to where she could haul it across the way to drop it down to the bridge Eris had made from the cranes.
“We will have a lot of climbing down and coming back up,” Cammarry said. “But we can do it.”
“Once you get the supply line near that large shuttle, I will be able to move it from shuttle to shuttle. Just be sure to wait until everything is fully connected to activate the pumps. We do not want spills in here, the fuel would drop all the way down, and be lost,” Eris commented. “The fuel is under pressure, so the pumps should still work.”
Eris activated the latch on the largest shuttle, the Class PS1. It had no energy in any of its systems at all, and the hatch had to be opened with the supplementary, non-powered entirely mechanical operated hinges. There was a puff of some kind of vapor exchange as the air which had been locked in the shuttle for decades interacted with the gases of Zalia.
“This shuttle had held its seal this entire time, even with the wing damage,” Eris stated. “That gives me some hope for SB Virginia Dare’s central memory core.”
Cammarry stopped and considered, then her emotions surged. “Like Cotard’s? You went and got Cotard in Beta when you got the shuttle, right? Before Beta collapsed.”
Eris hesitated, before answering.
“Why did you hide it? Cotard tortured me!” Cammarry yelled. “Why is everyone hiding things from me? The Shadow implant, that Cotard system, Jerome and Monika’s relationship, the Committee’s actions. I just do not know who to trust.” She calmed herself and took some deep breaths. “But we need these shuttles, so keep your secrets. Jerome thinks the Crocks are our enemies, but there is more than enough conflict to go around.”
“You are right, we do need these shuttles, and I am sorry for all the problems you have been through.” Eris avoided focusing on SB Cotard, for she wondered what actions Cammarry might take. “Your help is essential. This PS1 has a half tank of thruster fuel, so we better drain it as well. Thank you for getting the fuel hose to me. I will connect it and we can pump the fuel back into the supply tank.”
Cammarry passed along the hose, then walked back to the sidewall and climbed down to the thruster fuel tank.
“On the side of the storage tank you will find the manual pumps,” Eris said as she crawled along and connected in the fuel hose. “They are near where the gauges were located. Might be behind a small panel or door.” Eris moved along with the end of the fuel supply line and it was somewhat precarious, being at such an angle. Eris used built in handles and grips on the big shuttle’s surface. The shuttle was nearly all black, with a pink colored edging, and markings. She was able to wedge herself between the shuttle and the docking clamps. “All connected in. Use the manual pumps.”
“I will jack in a fusion pack, a
nd empower the pumps,” Cammarry stated. “Sandie, be sure to modulate the power from the fusion pack into this antique system. No explosions, or surprises. Eris has already given me too many surprises today.”
“I now know much more about the Conestoga’s energy systems, and requirements, than I did before,” the AI Sandie replied. “There should be no overloads.”
“I hope you are being honest. But what choice do I have?” Cammarry then extracted the cable from a storage compartment on her suit and plugged it into an access port of the side of the storage tank. Opening a small panel, she saw that lights had come on, and a small display screen was lit. She pressed ‘Reverse pumping’ and felt a vibration in the storage tank. It must have been a significant rumble to be felt though her spacesuit.
“I am here now,” Jerome said as he walked into the hanger bay. He too had activated his spacesuit’s lighting and that added to the illumination of the shuttles. His white light was shining down the slope, mixing with the beams from Eris and from Cammarry. The red glow of the light coming from the entrance was somewhat washed out, but the overall look was shadowy, still murky, and odd. “Reminds me of Beta, when we met SB Amelia Earhart, only….” He looked at the shuttles. “No, reminds me of Alpha.”
The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books Page 162