Jim hung his head. What did he mean by that?
“Look, I didn’t want to do this, but maybe somebody on your team will respond better. Maybe if we use some ’enhanced’ interrogation techniques. The girl seems like she’ll break pretty easy.” Stepping up to the door, he rapped on the metal plate. When it slid open, he said, “Take her to the other room.”
No response came except for the plate sliding shut again.
“Can you guys hear me?” Jim said.
Now it was the general’s turn to turn his head. “They can’t hear you. The cells are on the other side of the building.”
“Yeah, we can, dad,” Melissa said. Paying closer attention this time, he realized that he didn’t actually hear her response. Maybe he didn’t have to speak his either.
-You guys need to get out of there. They’re coming for Mel. I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but you keep her safe.-
“Actually, I may have an idea,” Chris said. “Seems like Bobby powered up one of the engines. Caused a bit of a stir. I might be able to do the same with the turret.”
Jim bit his lip. “Do it.”
Almost immediately, an explosion rocked the building. Jim swayed with the blast of air. The door swung open and Long stepped in with his pistol drawn. “General, we need to evacuate you. We’re under attack.”
“Attack? From who?”
“The ship. This time it’s weapons. We need to take the tunnel.”
The two left, leaving Jim still chained up. Outside the open door, he heard gunfire and shouting. After a few minutes, the fighting stopped. “Guys, you okay?”
Chris’s head popped into view. “There you are.” He turned back and shouted down the hall. “Found him.”
The other two soon joined him. Chris carried an assault rifle, while Melissa had a similar weapon slung over her shoulder. Bobby took up the rear, looking nervous at the service pistol in his hands.
“They’ve got me locked down. Doubt they left the keys.”
“I can shoot it off,” Chris said. He raised his weapon.
Jim shook his head. “Whoa, that didn’t work so well last time.”
“Last time? Whatcha talking about?”
“Yeah, dad, you’re not making sense. Did they torture you?”
His jaw dropped. “Nobody else had the dream? When we, well, our ancestors, crashed here a thousand years ago?” The others shook their heads. “Fine, figure out how to get me out of here WITHOUT firing a gun in my direction, and I’ll tell you what happened.
Jim sat helplessly as the others searched the room and hallway for a set of keys or something with which to break the chain.
“Uh, we have company,” Chris called.
“Escape while you can. Leave me,” Jim responded.
Chris entered the interrogation room with his hands over his head. Long followed him in there. Long’s rifle pressed against his back while the weapon he’d carried was now slung over the soldier’s shoulder. “Twelve dead, so far. Probably more that we haven’t found yet. Because you wouldn’t cooperate with us. Well, maybe now you’ll show us how to control your ship.” He jabbed Chris with his gun.
“If anyone is going to kill him, it would be me.” Bobby had entered so quietly that even Jim, who had been facing in that direction, hadn’t noticed him. The pistol he’d carried so nervously earlier was now firmly pressed against the lieutenant’s skull.
Long raised his weapon away from Chris and took his finger away from the trigger. Chris turned and took it away from him. Then, for good measure, Chris decked him. The soldier dropped to the floor in a heap.
“You saved my bacon, man.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” Bobby decocked his weapon and tucked it into his pants. He dropped down beside the unconscious man and rifled through the pockets. He pulled out a key ring and tossed it to Chris. “Probably one of these.”
Jim rubbed his wrists from where the cuffs had chaffed. “Chain him to the chair so he can’t follow us.”
“Or I could just shoot him,” Chris offered.
“No, he was just doing what he thought was right, just like we are. Besides, we’ve got a bigger problem ahead of us.”
Nobody harassed them as they escaped and returned back to the ship. “It’s been a long time, Jim. What are the chances the Razak are still after us?” Bobby dug his hands into his blue jeans.
“I get the feeling they’re the type to hold a grudge. Live a lot longer than us, too. I don’t want to take the chance and get caught with our pants down.”
Chris grinned at Jim’s metaphor. Melissa shook her head. “You’re disgusting.”
His expression fell and he held his hands up in mock surrender. “Don’t know what you’re so upset about. That dream was about you.”
“Exactly. As if I’d ever get down on my-.”
“Okay, okay,” Jim spoke over them. “Let’s get this boat in the air and figure out a plan.”
They took their seats. Bobby called up his display. “Hey I can read this now.” He scanned the controls. “Yeah, we don’t have cloaking.”
On the viewscreen, Jim watched soldiers begin to return from cover and march on the Resolve. When the ship's engines fired up, it spooked the nearer ones, and they began firing. Bullets pinged against the hull.
Chris’s display turned red as more and more targets lit up. He leaned into the console. Jim hadn’t taken the captain’s seat yet and put his hand on Chris’s shoulder. “No,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Bobby, get us out of range.” The order came louder, a little too loud and revealed the edge they were all feeling.
As before, they barely felt the movement as the thrusters fired and pushed them into the sky. Jim watched as blue sky turned to black. He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of that sight. Missed my calling, I guess. Well, if we survive the Razak invasion, this can be my new calling.
“Take us up to the moon.”
“But Chris destroyed the base,” Melissa said.
“Even so, we need to go somewhere till we get this figured out. Might as well see if anything survived.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” She giggled as she fumbled a salute.
He smiled until his stomach grumbled. “Bob, set it to autopilot. We need to figure out how to get into the galley.”
In the hallway, they stood in front of the unmarked section of wall that the map insisted was a door. “That dream of yours show you how to open it, ’Captain?’ “ Chris grumbled. “I ain’t eaten all day.”
“None of us have, idiot,” Bobby quipped.
“Ship, err, Resolve.” Jim looked up at the ceiling. “Open the damn door.”
Still nothing happened. “Come one, you piece of garbage. We dug you out from where you’d been buried since the fall of Rome. The least you can do is let us into the galley.” He kicked at the wall. Then he kicked it again.
The others watched, slightly horrified, as he lost his temper against the inanimate object. Melissa stepped forward and put her arms around his shoulders. “You’ve been under a lot of stress, dad. Maybe you should go lay down.”
He slumped and fell to the floor. “I made a lot of decisions in my life that never made any sense, that went against what I wanted to do, but just felt right. They were all building to the four of us being on this ship. But now I’m doubting everything all over again.”
He leaned against the wall and tapped his head against the cool material. He looked up again, not so much looking for answers but to avoid looking in the eyes of his crew whom he knew he let down.
Conduits ran the length of the hallway. He’d known they were there, but they were just a feature of the ship. Periodically, a tube would split off from the main array and disappear into the wall. The final one ran into the cargo hold, just above the broken door. A blackened ring radiated around the latch, where Setor had shot at it. Even though he, as Jim, never knew her, his heart ached for the loss of his ancestor’s beloved Chemogg.
If he didn’t think of something, they�
��d all join her. He banged his head again. Another char mark caught his attention. When the plasma bolt ricocheted, it must have scattered. Chemogg got the brunt of it, but the weapon had been powerful enough that a fraction of the charge burned a whole through a conduit. He followed the burnt pipe. It entered the wall right over his head.
“Resolve, what is the status on the conduit powering the entrance to the rest of the ship?”
“Plasma cable five-four-three-two severed. Panel receiving no power.” They all jumped, but Jim most of all. The voice sounded just like Chemogg’s soothing tone.
“Reroute power and send the repair drone, if it still works, to fix that conduit,” Jim said. A portion of the wall dissolved and revealed a nook large enough for the four of them with a little room to spare. Well, probably room for five, he mused.
They looked at each other, but nobody moved. Finally, Jim stepped into the alcove. “Well, come on.”
They entered and the wall rematerialized behind them. The ceiling gave off a dim glow, providing just enough light to see. Just as they started to react, the wall disappeared once again. However, the hallway now featured white walls instead of gray.
Jim stepped out. “Galley’s on the right.” They pushed and shoved past him. He let them and followed slowly, marking off in his mind the other sections of the ship as the map and his new memories had shown him. Weapons and munitions to the aft. He made a mental note to keep Chris out of there for as long as possible.
When he made it to the kitchen, the crew was already rummaging around in drawers, looking for food.
“Are we wasting our time here?” Melissa asked. “I mean, nobody’s been in here for a thousand years. Anything organic has turned to dust. If we can even eat their food.”
“Resolve, status of rations on board ship. What can we eat?” Jim called out. He was figuring out that you needed to give it specific commands to get any response and, if it couldn’t do what you wanted, it simply wouldn’t answer.
“Long term rations stored in micro-stasis pods stored in compartments three, four, and six.” Cabinet doors lit up with each number. “All known human species in galaxy have similar nutritional requirements.”
Chris pulled out packets that resembled a tv dinner. He popped one into a device that looked like a microwave oven. It was the only appliance in the room save for what was obviously the trash bin.
There were no buttons, but the thing came alive once the door closed. Lights flashed inside and then it beeped. Chris opened the door. The packet had split open revealing a slice of white meat that smelled like beef and blue vegetables resembling carrots. He ignored the others as he sat down at the table and produced folding utensils from a pocket in his vest. “This stuff’s really good,” he got out around a mouthful of food. The others didn’t need to be told a second time and soon they were lined up at the strange appliance.
They spent the next couple days falling into a comfortable routine. Bobby flew them out to different destinations in the solar system; taking hours to reach places that NASA spent years pursuing. Flying through the rings of Saturn was a memory that Jim would cherish for the rest of his life.
Assuming that they lived past the end of the week.
As the days progressed, Jim became more and more reclusive, poring over the logs of the previous captain. Jum had a lifetime experience dealing with the Razak, and Jim needed to absorb it in a few short days.
It didn’t help that Jum had a habit of using shorthand in his logs, assuming that only he would ever read them and only needing notes to jog his memory.
--Encounter with Razak today. Pursuit ended suddenly as we approached Coucare system. What a joke.--
Out of five years of logs, this was the only listing of retreat by the enemy. If it had been Jim, he would have poured every detail onto paper and agonized over it until he’d figured out what exactly was different about that time. But all that he had were three short sentences. And one of them was a reference to some sort of inside knowledge that Jim wasn’t privy to.
“Resolve, give me information on the Coucare system.”
“Coucare consists of three populated planets. No organized military. They have limited trans-warp technology that allows them to trade with nearby systems and knowledge of greater galactic community. Primarily known for their Selenium trading.”
Jim mulled over the information. There was nothing about that civilization that should have intimidated an enemy capable of razing a planet. He continued reading the logs, but kept coming back to that one entry. The Razak didn’t want to go anywhere near Coucare for some reason. That had to be important.
Jim startled awake at the sound of knocking. E-pads littered the desk where he’d fallen asleep and that puzzling entry blinked on the giant monitor. Lines creased his right arm where his face had rested against his flesh. He blinked twice. “Come in.”
He was still rising to his feet when Melissa entered. “You missed dinner, dad.” She held up the tray she was carrying.
“I’m not really hungry right now. Just put it down.” He waved his hand towards the small table in the corner of the room. Previous trays she’d brought him covered the surface. Some were empty, but more than a few still contained their untouched contents.
“You missed lunch, too. And breakfast. Same as yesterday.” She sat down on the bed.
“I ate. I just missed you guys, that’s all. I’ve been busy.” Jim rubbed his eyes and caught his reflection in the glare from the monitor. Dark circles surrounded his eyes and his hair rivaled Einstein in its unruliness.
She leaned forward, supporting her weight with her hands on her knees. “The ship logs the rations, you know. If I didn’t bring it, you didn’t eat it.” She glanced back at the stacks of trays on the table. “And sometimes not even then. You need to stop obsessing over this.”
“How can I not obsess? If I don’t figure out this riddle, everyone dies.” He threw his arms up and started pacing. “If we can’t figure out how to defeat them, they will destroy us and then poison the Earth.”
“We seem to be doing a pretty good job of poisoning the Earth on our own, with chemical runoff from everyday things we bathe with to pumping the atmosphere full of toxic gases.” Melissa stood. “I can’t make you do anything, but, please, dad. Eat something.” She gave him a hug and left.
He pondered what she’d just said. It was true that humanity had its problems with pollution, but things were getting better. They could even help. With the technology on this ship, they could move mining out to the moon and asteroids to avoid the waste products of that.
The plan hit him like a punch to the gut. It was so simple; he should have thought of it days ago. He sprinted through the door. “Melissa, Melissa,” he yelled.
She turned just before the elevator. “Set a course for the asteroid belt and have everyone meet me on the bridge in fifteen minutes.”
The trip to the belt was inconsequential at the ship's highest sub-warp velocity. Still the minutes chewed at him. As they approached, Melissa scanned the belt for what they needed.
Jim paced the bridge before stopping at Chris’s station. He leaned on the gunner’s chair. “What’s our status?”
“Not much more than when you asked half an hour ago.”
“Can’t you hurry up?”
“Maybe if you’d stop hovering over me all the damn time.” Chris lined up his shot and fired. A grabber arm shot from the ship, its tether unwinding behind it. The hook glanced off the asteroid and spun off.
“You missed,” Jim said.
Chris slammed his palm against a button to retrieve the grabber. As it spooled back to the ship, he stood and faced his boss. “This ship wasn’t designed for this,” Chris grumbled. “Much as I enjoy blasting space rocks, this is still a delicate operation.”
“Well, the Razak will be here tomorrow, and we need to be ready, or-.”
“Yeah, we know. You’ve told us already.” Chis put his hands on Jim’s shoulders. “Look, boss. All you’
re doing is stressing everybody out. I know how important this is. But unless you can figure out how to build a smelter that goes out to the rock, I gotta keep reeling those suckers in to the cargo bay. You’ll have your Selenium when I can get it to you, until then, chill out.”
“Captain,” Melissa called out. They’d fallen into the habit of using titles while on the bridge, but staying more casual in the personal areas. “Warp signature on the scanners. Ship coming into sensor range.”
On the viewscreen, a blurry dot moved against the background of stars. Soon details began to emerge. The black cylinder moved silently against the night, bearing no identifying markings. It looked just like how the computer entries described them.
Jim sighed. “They’re early.”
“Guess they’ve advanced their propulsion tech in the last thousand years,” Bobby said. “We’re basically flying an antique against them. You sure this is a good idea?”
“I’m not willing to let seven billion people on Earth suffer for our mistake. How much ore have we loaded up?”
“Half as much as you wanted,” Chris reported.
“Well, nothing to be done about it now. Load up what you’ve got. Let’s go full dark. If they haven’t spotted us yet, it will buy us some time,” Jim said.
Bobby cut the engines and the lights flickered off. Emergency phosphorescent panels emitted a dim glow to provide just enough light to see by. There was no reason to keep silent, but all conversation ceased when the lights fell.
Only the viewscreen still operated. It tracked the Razak ship as it flew from the outer system into the belt before falling into a search formation. Jim let out a breath. Their mining activities in the belt made it a good place to start, but their exact location was still hidden.
They played this game for an hour, then two. To the Razak’s sensors, they were just another piece of space debris, orbiting the sun since the dawn of the solar system. Jim had even had chunks of the asteroids they’d mined strategically mounted to the ship to make them look even more like a wayward rock.
Lost Fagare Ship 1: Resolve Page 6