END of LINE: Humanities Last Stand - part 3

by John Short

  They had been inside Leviathan for over a month when it was Talga who had found the hidden section of the ship. There were statues of saber-tooth tigers in front and a pair massive doors with fierce dragons carved on them. No one could open the doors except Jon. Once Jon placed his palm on the pad beside the door, an indicator light started to blink green before alarms went off and the huge doors slid apart into the walls. Inside was another control room with four consoles and a command chair. Phillie had been studying the data on the ship and could understand the writing on the stations. This room controlled the planet killing weapon. The ship really could destroy an entire planet! Jon had never believed that part of the legends but here was the proof that the stories had been true!

  In another room near the engines, Jon was shocked when Phillie showed him five more attack shuttles neatly parked in a row. There were far less of these than there were of the others, but these looked much more deadly. Even sitting on their landing pads the outline of a legendary dragon could be plainly seen.

  “I think the middle one is yours Jon.” Phille told him.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because it has your family colors.” Phillie answered.

  “Want to find out?” Jon asked and he rolled himself up the rear ramp. He pulled himself into the pilot's seat of the ship and watched as it slowly came to life.

  Phillie came up behind him and leaned over the pilot's chair to wrap her arms around his neck. “Jon, you do realize what this means don't you?”

  “That the ship likes me?”

  “In a way, yes. It means you have the Umin marker. Everything I found in the data says these ships only respond to those with the marker in their genes. The ship thinks you're one of its creators.” she told him before jumping into the copilot's seat. “Let's go for a ride in this Dragon.”

  “We can't Phillie, my legs still won't work the controls.” Jon sadly reminded her.

  “You won't need them if I'm right.” she answered him back. “According to the records I've found, the original Jon Connell was a great pilot. These are the ships he and his men flew to destroy the machine race. Did you ever hear about the Dragon Ships?” Jon nodded that he had heard of the Dragon Ships. “If I'm right, that's what these five shuttles are. But even he didn't understand why these ships responded to his commands the way they did. The ship doesn't respond to the controls as much as it responds to your thoughts!”

  “OK, so how does it work?”

  “If you were going out during a regular mission what would you do first?”

  “Have the controller open the outside doors.” The words were not even out of his mouth when flashing lights began to fill the bay with reflected light and alarms began to sound. Then the doors cranked open.

  “What's next?” Phllie asked.

  “I'd start the engi...” the shuttles engines came to life and went through their warm up cycles.

  “Phillie, what's happening here?” Jon asked suddenly frightened himself.

  “You're just telling the ship what you want it to do and its doing it.” she told him. “I hate to say this, but it’s all in your head.” Phillie giggled. “I still haven't figured it all out, but between your marker and the nanoid nuroenhancers the Peacekeepers gave you, the ship and this shuttle can both react directly to your brain's commands. The other pilots will need to use the controls, but their enhancers should let them fly these birds even without the genetic marker. Come on Boss, let's go play among the stars!” she begged him. “I want to see if these things can really just jump from place to place.”

  “Help me out, how does that part work?” Jon asked her.

  “First take us outside, nice and slow.”

  Jon thought about the shuttle flying out of the hanger and was shocked when it obeyed his commands. Once clear of Leviathan he looked at Phillie and asked her, “Next?”

  “See those knobs on your left with the numbers over them? Turn them to different numbers then once the red button turns green, push it.” Phillie instructed Jon who did as she told him and suddenly they found themselves far out in space away from the Leviathan.

  “Where are we Phillie?” Jon asked.

  “Turn us around and look behind us.”

  When Jon had spun the shuttle on its axis, he could see the Leviathan with its cloud of wreckage far below them. “That's impossible!” he proclaimed. “We are further away now than when we brought Defiance out of the slip.”

  “Isn't that marvelous?” Phillie asked. “That is what is called jumping. Turn the dials back to zero's and hit the button again.” Almost instantly they were back outside the hanger bay along side Leviathan. “Leviathan can jump like that too. The data says she can make over twenty light cycles in one jump. Your ancestors only jumped her that far in any one try. I think she can go a lot farther. This shuttle and the ones we found in the forward hangers can jump five light cycles in a single hop. Each jump only takes a second or two to complete. Jon in this ship we can respond to any call for help before they finish making the call!”

  “Can you adapt the Defiance's engines to do this jump thing?”

  “No, but I've found extra engines for the shuttles in a storage bay under the mains. Maybe I can figure out how to add the jumpers to her standard drives then we can use both the slip drives and the jumpers. Jump in real close, then slip through so no one sees us jump.”

  “I'm thinking about all of our ships. Not just Defiance. I'd rather have all of them able to jump.” Jon told her.

  “I'll have to see how I can do that one. Why do you want them all to be able to jump?”

  “If I load a ship and announce that I'm heading out to the rim to deliver its cargo, then move the ship out to say a regular slip point. If instead of slipping away, I have it jump directly to its destination. What do you think that would do to any pirates waiting to ambush the ship along the way?”

  “They would be shooting at anything that passes hoping to knock your ship out of the slip.”

  “And if what is passing is another pirate ship?” Jon said.

  “Yes, but what if it isn't? Innocent people could get hurt. Suppose the next ship through is a passenger liner taking colonists out to the rim?” Phillie asked him.

  “I didn't think they used the cargo lanes for that.” Jon said.

  “Sometimes that's all the colonists can afford Boss.” Phillie informed him.

  “OK, I still want your opinion on making all of our ships jump ready. The slip takes too long. Why crawl when we can jump?” Jon asked her as he brought the Dragon Ship in, parked it in its berth, closed the outer doors and re-pressurized the bay. All just by thinking about the commands rather than actually using any of the controls.

  “There's one more thing you'll want to see before we leave this ship boss.” Phillie said as she pointed to a storage locker built into the ships hull. “It should be inside here.”

  Jon put his hand over a control panel and the locker's door slid open. Inside was a full set of unique battle armor. It was made in the same silver and black colors that Jon had worn for most of his adult life and opened like a clam at the back. Jon tried to step into it but could not lift his leg enough. “Its pretty, but unless I can get inside, its not going to help me at all.”

  “You'll get it boss.” Phillie smiled. “Together we can do anything, remember?”

  “Can you imagine the reporters on Lexon Station if I came strolling along in that thing? Jon joked as Phillie helped him back into his wheelchair.

  Rolling through the corridors of the Leviathan, still getting used to the size of the ship, Jon was called to the Med Lab.

  “What's wrong Healer Hukor?” Jon asked as he rolled himself through the doorway. The overweight green Healer had left the Peacekeepers when his contract expired and taken a position as one of Jon's regular crew. He was now responsible for keeping everyone healthy and ready to go into battle on a moment's notice.

  “Jon, how does your back feel?” the Healer asked him.

>   “It hurts. All day, everyday. Most nights too.” Jon told him honestly.

  “Phillmma came to me last week with a crazy idea.” the Healer started to tell him. “She said that the data she had been studying on the ship mentioned transport tubes used for extremely long voyages. The original humans used them to make the trip from their Earth out to Haven. Their Earth was many hundreds of light cycles away. Anyway, these tubes had some unusual effects on people. The longer they stayed in them the younger they got and any sickness or infirmities they had went away. There are reports of missing body parts regenerating, very old people coming out much younger, and even one case of an older female who was known to have reproductive trouble her entire life not only becoming younger, but actually bearing a child after spending the entire trip in one of the tubes. Not just one child either, she had three of them! All within the first five cycles of reaching Haven. I've been looking over the data and the tubes should still work.”

  “So you want to put me in one for a couple of hundred light cycles?”

  “No, just a month. I need my Commanding Officer to step out of the tube. Not some youngling that needs its cloths changed and a female to suck on” the healer laughed.

  “Alright. I have a meeting scheduled for later today. Let me think about it.” Jon chuckled. Rolling away he wondered if the Healer didn't know that males sucked on their females for their entire lives. They just changed from their mother to their mate and stopped getting any milk unless the female was carrying a child inside her womb. He was also surprised by the change that had over taken the Healer. The male he remembered as a no nonsense, by the book type while he was a Peacekeeper had suddenly developed a more friendly manner since joining the crew of the Defiance. There were even reports of him laughing at the jokes the crew told during meal times and of him even telling a few of his own!

  Later that day all the pilots, many of the newly assigned department heads and his bridge commander all met with Jon in the main conference room directly behind the command bridge. “So that concludes the business portion of our meeting. Current estimates say we will be here for another two months clearing away wreckage and bringing any salvageable items into one of our cargo bays. All of the wreckage we've found so far has come from known ship types. That means we won't have any invading forces from outside our own galaxy to worry about for a while. Even if we do, apparently Leviathan was able to destroy what ever they were flying when they got too close to her.

  We are going to search for reliable people to fill out our crew once we reach known space. Training has already begun for those people who will be taking on new responsibilities starting tomorrow.” Jon listed off the main issues that they had discussed. “Now I have a question for you all. Apparently this ship performs miracles. Our Healer told me that there are special tubes in medical that could heal my back and get me out of this wheelchair and the frames within a month. Now, IF I agree to let myself be put in one of these tubes, who will be in overall command while I am unavailable?”

  “We've all thought about this one Jon,” Jarrieal told him, “We've agreed that Wrenches has the most information about every aspect of the ship from what it's made of to what makes those engines jump instead of slip. We all respect her and she's much easier than you are to look at. We'd recommend Phillie to act as the Admiral while you are in the tube.”

  “What did she have to say about it?” Jon asked.

  “She is in favor of you being healed in the tube. We haven't had the courage to tell her we wanted her to take command.” Jomach, Jon's Team 3 Leader said.

  “For a bunch of battle hardened Warriors, you males are certainly a bunch of frightened younglings!” Jon joked with the males. “All right, I'll tell her. No one better take any bets on her not hitting me when I do.” Jarrieal sighed, reached in his pocket and drew out several credit chips that he passed to some of the males at the table. “Do you all think I should let myself be sealed up for a month in an ancient Umin healing device?” Jon asked seriously.

  “We can't tell you what you should do Jon,” Jarrieal said. “I can only tell you that if I was in your condition, stuck in either a chair or those frames that must hurt like the Goddess' dress, and there was even a small chance of getting back to myself again, I'd jump at the deal.” Everyone around the table nodded their head in agreement.

  “OK then, lets break this up and get to work.” Jon told the group. “I'll roll down to see Phillie so she can beat my ass and then head in to the Med Lab to be stuck in storage while you males do all the work.” Each of the males headed out to get busy with their assigned jobs but Jon stayed behind and sat in his wheelchair just starring down at his notes from the meeting.

  “What's wrong Jon?” Jarrieal asked.

  “Am I doing the right thing Jar?”

  “Trying to make your body whole again? Of course.”

  “Not that, this whole thing with the ship. Leviathan isn't your average Warship. She's a planet killer. She can stand way out of a star system and break an entire planet into so much debris with just three shots. The attack shuttles she carries are far more advanced than anything we have, not to mention those fighters and the Dragon Ships. The ship herself is so far above anything else, it’s like the difference between a full fledged Battle Wagon and a youngling's toy flier. I'm the only one on her who has the Umin marker in my genes. That makes me responsible for the lives of millions of people, maybe even billions. I can play God with people's lives just by sitting in the Umin control room and blasting whole planets out of existence. Maybe I should just leave her sitting out here with her defensive systems back online keeping people out.”

  “Jon, I've watched you from our first day at basic combat. Your heart is heavy right now. You've lost an important friend and I think even a lover. You wouldn't be the first warrior to have a female choose another while he was gone under contract. It happened to me and a few others in our unit. I wanted to surprise my wife when we came home after Canari. I was the one who got surprised when I found another male in my bed using my wife! However, one thing about you I know. If anyone is to have this kind of power in their hands, you are the one to have it. You would never use it to get revenge no matter how much you may think you want to. You would only use it as a last resort and only to protect the innocent. We can do a lot of good with this ship. Think about that. How long would it take to get a wounded warrior from the rim to some place with good experienced healers using the slipdrives? Days/ Weeks? This ship can do it in seconds! It would take longer to get the injured person off the surface and into our med lab than it would take to get from Canari to Lexon II and good medical care. Plus with these tubes onboard, we could heal them ourselves in a matter of weeks.

  How much food can we carry to a starving planet and how fast can we get it to them? What about vaccines and other medical supplies? How about restocking a colony that was hit by pirates that we didn't catch, who lost everything from seed crops to tractors all during one raid? We jump in, take their order, jump out to the nearest supplier, jump back and unload. It might take us a day or two to arrange for the cargo and get it loaded. Then another day to unload it. We don't have the issue of a long slipway run. No pirates can knock us out of slip and attack us. Even if they could, this ship would destroy them before they got the first shot off.

  No Jon, you are doing exactly the right thing. This ship is needed right now, that's why you found her and tamed the beast yet again! First you tamed a wild tiger that now roams this ship like its Guardian, now you've tamed a planet killer that could well be the Guardian of the entire outer rim. Phillie tells me you even tamed the wild Dragon that's lurking in a rear hangar. You are the right male to hold all this power. You'll know how to use it if the time ever comes. I trust you Jon Connell. All of us trust you. We all know you'll do what is right. We've seen you already make the hard choices and never weaken when that choice was not the one you would benefit from.”

  “Thank you for your trust Jar,” Jon told him. “You ha
ve always been a good friend. You always seem to know when to leave me alone and when to offer me comfort. You are right about loosing a friend. A part of me died when we lost Zeprik. I loved him like my own brother. As far as losing a female goes. I learned at the memorial we had for Zeprik that I never really had her to begin with, so I should not be surprised that she decided to walk away. Still, losing her caused yet another part of me to die. I may never find that part again. I've learned that it hurts too much to allow myself to love someone only to lose them. I have decided never to allow myself to be in that position again.” Jon stopped talking as he fought back the tears he wanted to shed over the loss of Satrina's love. He would never cry in front of anyone ever again! Steeling himself he continued. “Let me go tell Phillie the happy news that she is in charge while I relax in one of the tubes. I'm sure she'll be happy to hear that.” With that the two friends went in different directions, Jarrieal went forward to the shuttle hanger to help with the salvage operation and Jon went aft to Engineering to find Phillie.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jon found himself standing at the entrance to the Umin cave back on Haven. He knew this was not possible because he knew that he was onboard a spaceship several hundred light cycles away from Haven. He also knew that his body was in a Umin devise in the hope that it could repair the damage to his spine. Yet here he stood in front of a pair of doors that had twin dragons carved in them and on each dragon's back was a male with a flaming sword. Between the dragons was a small object that could somehow expand to engulf both dragons and their fliers.