by Jerry Aubin
The Captain always retained final authority, but with the Ship at Condition 1 the Flight Boss was granted the power to make all decisions except launching a Planetbuster. Only the Captain had the launch codes for the Planetbusters, although no one in her seat had deployed one for 2,000 years.
Though Zax was initially excited to witness Condition 1, he soon worked himself into a frenzy of worry when his mind went back to what Sayer had said earlier about the potential for an emergency FTL evasion. What might happen if he tossed any of his zero-g cookies in the direction of the Flight Boss? Zax had never been in Flight Ops during an FTL Transit, so he didn’t know yet how the Crew there would react to his affliction.
Zax focused back on the threat board. His worries receded once the Alert Two squadron caught up with Vampire, and Daedalus started to coordinate the dogfight against Bandit 1. Unless there was some crazy advanced technology deployed by whatever alien race was behind the craft, Zax couldn’t imagine a situation where eleven of the Ship’s fighters would get beat by a lone enemy.
Something on the threat board yanked Zax’s attention away from the dogfight. The system was tracking a kinetic weapon inbound from Bandit 1 but had not raised any alarms due to its small mass. Collisions with projectiles, naturally occurring and otherwise, were a permanent risk in space, and the Ship was armored well enough to tolerate constant encounters with small objects. Anything that could be launched by a craft the size of Bandit 1 would do such minor localized damage the threat system effectively ignored it.
This particular inbound made the hair on the back of Zax’s neck stand on end, so he hailed Cyrus.
“Threat—there’s something about that projectile inbound from Bandit 1 which seems weird. Can you evaluate it with me?”
“I really don’t have time for you right now, squib. If you want to waste your time investigating every pebble some alien lobs at us, then be my guest. I’m going to focus on doing my job and worry about avoiding any actual threats.”
Zax fought the desire to fire off a witty reply and instead focused on plotting the trajectory of the inbound. The threat board was not optimized for evaluating such small projectiles, so the best it offered was a ten klick radius for impact. What troubled Zax was his realization that Flight Ops fell neatly at the center of that circle.
Zax pulled out his slate and used a trajectory analysis program he had developed on his own. Ten secs later he leapt out of his seat and shouted to the room.
“Boss—we’ve got an inbound kinetic weapon. It’s coming right at us. 99.82% probability it strikes either Flight Ops or the hangar in fourteen secs!”
There was a long, pregnant pause as every head in the compartment swiveled towards Zax. Beyond the craziness of a trainee yelling something during an engagement, the words which had come out of his mouth were so absurd they defied belief.
To his credit, the Flight Boss hesitated much less than anyone else would have before exclaiming his order.
“FTL—emergency evade now!”
The Boss was fast to react, but not quite fast enough. The projectile impacted against the Flight Ops exterior panorama moments before the FTL drive kicked in. Zax watched in horror as the window cracked from edge to edge. The last thing he heard before the FTL engine drove everyone on the Ship into unconsciousness was the wail of the hull breach alarm.
CHAPTER SIX
Forget about him!
Zax was drowning. His mind centered on the relaxed descent into the depths of a swimming pool while his body calmly surrendered to a lack of oxygen and impending death. It was a shockingly soothing sensation. Except for the noise—an incessant screeching that grew fainter as Zax slowly sank deeper and deeper. And the smell—why was he smelling puke near the bottom of a pool?
He pushed the unpleasant inputs from those senses aside and instead focused on the beauty as he floated downwards. The bottom of the pool approached and Zax wondered what it would feel like when his bare toes touched its tiles.
Just before his feet reached the bottom, a piercing sting on his face dragged his senses back to his chair in Flight Ops. The screeching noise snapped to the foreground, and Zax registered it as the hull breach alarm. He opened his eyes and the cool blues of the pool’s depths were replaced with flashing red lights. The breach was located in his current compartment.
Kalare hovered above in zero-g, smeared with what had remained in his stomach after his earlier FTL discharge. One arm held on to his chair while her other one was cocked to deliver a second slap to his face. A quick smile, visible through her secondary breather, revealed her recognition of his restored consciousness. Her free hand went instead to his shoulder and a sec later she affixed Zax’s breather over his nose and mouth.
Zax greedily sucked oxygen deep into his lungs and established situational awareness. The breach’s explosive decompression had turned the compartment’s small items into junk that floated around the panorama. Most of the Flight Ops Crew remained strapped in their seats, unconscious and turning blue from a lack of oxygen. The only exceptions were the Flight Boss and Cyrus. The Boss, cigar still clenched between his teeth, floated towards a bulkhead with his arm outstretched to grab one of the secondary breathers which had automatically deployed from a breach cabinet. Cyrus flailed in a panicked frenzy to release the straps keeping him in his chair.
The Captain appeared to sit in the middle of the room without a hair out of place. Her holopresence was not affected by the hull breach. Zax observed for a moment as she efficiently relayed orders to the Crew who were safe and sound alongside her on the Bridge. She caught his eye and formed her fingers and thumb into an “OK” sign in inquiry about his status. He returned the gesture with one hand and released his straps with the other.
Zax launched towards the closest breach cabinet and pulled a patch kit from within it. Kit in hand, he kicked off again and evaluated the state of the panorama as he floated towards the crack in the upper right corner. As he glided closer, he discovered there were two large fissures and each contained a distinct breach. Since they were at opposite corners of the window separated by thirty meters, there was no way Zax could patch both fast enough by himself. He rolled onto his back and spotted Kalare tending to Cyrus. She had calmed him down enough to buddy-breathe by passing her breather back and forth.
“Forget about him!” Zax shouted. “You’ve got to patch the crack in the lower corner, or there’s no way we get air in here before everyone suffocates!”
Kalare hesitated for a moment and Cyrus’ face flooded with panic once more as he thrashed in an effort to retain her breather. Given the size and strength differential, he would have stolen the device from her if he had been a fraction more coherent. Kalare took advantage of an opening and shattered his nose with a punch that sent a crimson cloud of blood floating in every direction. She then vectored off towards a breach cabinet for a patch kit.
Zax rolled back onto his stomach as he reached the panorama and pistoned his arms to dissipate his remaining momentum and stop. This move was second nature for him after years of dealing with puke cleanup, but Kalare ricocheted off the panorama and bounced off the floor when she attempted the same a moment later. She misjudged the initial approach, but Kalare stuck the landing on her second attempt.
Zax returned his attention to the patch kit. Whoever designed the kits made them obvious to operate. Zax pressed the giant red button (helpfully labeled #1) and opened the kit’s upper compartment. A holographic vid displayed a female actor who provided instructions.
“Shape the blue patch pellet until it covers the breach.”
The hologram actor seemed absurdly cheerful considering the kit designers knew she would be talking to someone who needed to resolve a life-threatening emergency in an oxygen-free environment. Her instruction was straightforward, though, and the demonstration easy enough for Zax to emulate. The patch material was firm yet malleable and after a couple of secs he flattened the pellet and affixed the material to the panorama just like the actor had sho
wn.
Zax pressed giant red button #2 and opened the kit’s lower compartment.
“Shape the yellow activation pellet until it covers the blue patch material.”
The yellow material shared the same consistency and was just as malleable as the blue, but differed in being almost uncomfortably warm to the touch. Zax flattened it out enough to cover the blue material and then activated giant red button #3.
“Apply firm, even pressure for five secs until the yellow material turns green.”
The actor flashed her vacuous smile and made the task appear easy as she pressed her palm against her faux breach and then removed it to reveal a final green patch. While her first two demonstrations were easy to emulate, the actor’s last instruction was impossible for Zax. She had access to a critical ingredient he did not—gravity. Without a sufficient handhold, any force Zax exerted against the panorama while he floated in zero-g would send him soaring in the opposite direction.
Frustrated, Zax checked on Kalare’s progress. She had caught up with him in the patch process and her palm was pressed firmly against the window. Kalare was not impacted by the lack of gravity because the location of her breach allowed her to brace her feet against the deck and use that leverage to exert sufficient force against the patch. Something about her pose held Zax’s attention until he shouted “That’s it!” a few moments later.
Fingertips pressed against the panorama, Zax rotated his body 180 degrees. He had previously floated parallel to the deck with his belly pointing towards it, but this move traded “down” for “up” until he faced the overhead. He pulled his legs in towards his chest and then extended them back out at an angle that braced his body between the panorama and the overhead—almost the perfect inverse of Kalare’s pose.
Zax exerted pressure through his palm into the soon-to-be-green patch. He counted to five and wondered whether he would feel anything when the activation material triggered and permanently bonded the patch to the panorama. He waited a couple extra secs past five to be safe and then removed his palm. The activation material continued to shine accusingly with its original yellow hue.
Zax squinted along the border of the yellow material and discovered the smallest blue speck that peeked out from underneath. He pinched and pulled the yellow material just a millimeter further until it completely covered the blue. Zax braced his body, reapplied pressure, and started a new countdown. There was a short burst of heat after five secs and the hull breach alarm silenced. One sec later the main hatch sprang open and admitted a stream of medics who each floated to an unconscious crew member and deployed a supplemental breathing device.
A lone person clapped and laughed loud enough to be heard over the commotion. It was the Flight Boss. Since Zax was still oriented with his belly facing the overhead, the Boss appeared to be standing upside down. The view of him from the odd vantage point, applauding and grinning, was entirely surreal. Not nearly as surreal, though, as the words that came out of his mouth.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It’s your chair now.
“I have never seen such an amazing performance in all my years working with cadets!” roared the Flight Boss as he looked up at Zax. “Mini-Threat, you went from being unconscious to performing high-skill, zero-g maneuvers in less than ten secs. You did this while simultaneously demonstrating mental agility and confidence by ordering your peer to perform a critical, life-saving task. Five thousand credits.”
The Boss addressed Kalare next. “I have methodically adapted my mind over dozens of years to be as fast as possible when it comes to regaining consciousness after FTL, but you were already up and moving when I woke up, Mini-Flight. You made a great decision to first revive the other person in the compartment who you knew would have immediate access to an air supply. When you were interfered with by another Crew member, you decisively applied appropriate force. Finally, although your zero-g abilities weren’t as good as Mini-Threat’s, you didn’t let that stop you and instead figured out what was needed to accomplish your task. Five thousand credits.
“Threat—your performance was an entirely different flavor of amazing.”
The Flight Boss had turned his attention to Cyrus and Zax did the same. He was astonished by what he saw. Kalare’s punch had not only left Cyrus’ nose horribly misshapen, but it had also resulted in two black eyes. His wretched appearance was exacerbated by the fact he had clearly been crying—whether from the pain of his nose or the shame of his actions it was impossible to know. The tears dripped off his cheeks and mixed with the blood splatter from his nose to create a pathetic stew that floated inches from his face.
“You were an absolute disgrace.” The Boss paused to let the admonition sink in and then continued. “It was bad enough you couldn’t get your straps undone, but then you panicked and made the situation infinitely worse. It was pathetically clear you were thinking only about yourself rather than the safety of the Ship when you tried to impede Mini-Flight in her mission to patch the breach. That is inexcusable. You earned yourself that busted nose and two shiners from her, and now fifty thousand demerits from me. You need to figure out those straps and get out of that chair in the next ten secs or I will cut your miserable body out of it myself.”
Both Kalare and Zax gasped when the Flight Boss announced “fifty thousand demerits.” It was a wildly severe punishment and left no doubt that Cyrus would be Culled. A few nearby Crew had regained consciousness and, along with the medics attending to them, watched the drama unfold with their mouths agape.
Kalare recovered from the shock first and addressed the Flight Boss. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t think it’s fair you’ve given the two of us the same number of credits.”
Zax scarcely believed his ears. Kalare had just been gifted a massive bump on the Leaderboard, and from the sounds of things, she wanted to fish for more at his expense. Sure—everyone wanted to score every point they could, particularly when vying for position against their prime competition, but most officers looked askance at cadets who sucked up too hard. Zax fought off a smile as the Flight Boss clearly set a trap for Kalare with his response.
“In all your wisdom, what would you recommend as a more equitable allocation of the points, Mini-Flight?”
Kalare missed the hidden threat in the Boss’s words and grinned. Zax almost pitied her. She really did not understand what kind of fire she was playing with. She rolled the dice (!) to pick Flight Ops and miraculously walked into a situation where she earned five thousand (!!) bonus points on her first (!!!) shift, only to put all of that at risk to score a little extra edge over Zax by arguing with the Flight Boss (!!!!) about how many more she deserved.
“Sir—you’ve split ten thousand credits equally, and I’m grateful for my share. However, it’s crystal clear to me that Zax should receive more of the reward. I only had to give Threat that broken nose in the first place because I hesitated when Zax told me to grab a patch kit. If I had reacted immediately, I would’ve been mid-air and well away from Cyrus before he thought twice about what was happening. If you believe this situation worthy of ten thousand bonus points, then I respectfully suggest you allocate eight thousand to Zax and I’ll accept two thousand.”
The Flight Boss appeared as shocked as Zax felt about Kalare’s suggestion, and there was a long pause. The idea of giving up credits and asking for them to be awarded instead to a top competitor was as absurd a concept to Zax as jumping out an airlock without a spacesuit.
The silence was broken when the Flight Boss offered his slow applause once more. “Well said, cadet, well said. Your rationale makes perfect sense, but I’d rather not take away anything I think you deserve and will instead award an additional three thousand points to Mini-Threat. Correction—now that I see that other pathetic excuse for a Crew member has finally managed to release his straps, I want Zax to take over as Threat.” The Boss turned to Zax with a smile. “I hope you didn’t just get lucky once. It’s your chair now.”
Zax had held his breath durin
g the last min and paused for a moment to suck in a deep breath before he replied. “Thank you, s-s-s-sir.”
Zax couldn’t fathom what had just transpired as he glided to the Threat workstation and strapped himself in. He looked over the Flight Boss’s shoulder, past all of the medics tending the Crew, to where the chair’s previous occupant floated outside the compartment’s open hatch. Cyrus gazed back with his eyes full of hatred and venom until the hatch slid shut and the Captain’s voice broke through all of the commotion.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It looks habitable.
“Flight Boss—we’re getting things resolved and are almost ready to jump. What’s your status?”
Zax reviewed the Threat board in reaction to the Captain’s query and was confused by what it revealed. The white dwarf system was gone and had been replaced with a binary system. This meant the emergency evasion was only halfway complete and their fighters were temporarily abandoned. Eleven of the Ship’s finest against one puny alien spacecraft was no contest, but Zax remained anxious to return and support Vampire and the rest of the fighters.
“Ma’am,” the Boss gestured around the compartment, “you can see my team is almost back up and we’re getting prepared for action. What happened?”
“Alpha aborted the second Transit during the emergency evasion. When we tried to spin it up manually, Alpha aborted that one too and reported a fault in the FTL engine. We’ve run a full set of diagnostics and can’t find anything wrong, so we’re configuring an override.”
The Boss appeared frustrated for a moment, but paused and calmly replied. “Give me another 120 secs to re-establish full battle readiness, and then I’ll resume tactical command for the Transit.”