Cygnus Arrives: Humanity Returns Home (Cygnus Space Opera Book 3)

by Craig Martelle

  “Prepare to activate the ISE.” Daksha floated downward until he was resting against the captain’s chair. Nathan was squeezed into it behind him.

  Pickles replied, “Board shows green.”

  “All hands. Activating the ISE in three, two, one.”

  ***

  Cain was thrown across the corridor as the ship lurched. He caught himself in time to keep Ellie from slamming into the bulkhead. They were both weak, having donated too much blood to the earthers. Cain struggled to open his eyes as the Cygnus-12 settled into an eerie silence.

  Cain helped Ellie to her feet. “I need to get to engineering. Briz is down there by himself,” she slurred. Cain didn’t want to let her go, but they were short-handed, even with the four additions to the crew.

  A woman in coveralls picked herself up off the deck and hovered near the captain, pilot, and navigator from the Ganymede Seven. Their uniforms were familiar to her within the foreign confines of the strange ship.

  Cain didn’t have time for social niceties. He’d introduce himself later.

  “Come on, Brutus, to the bridge,” he told the ‘cat standing nervously nearby. Brutus seemed happy to be doing anything other than waiting outside sickbay with the injured.

  Carnesto had remained in the stairway so Jane wouldn’t see him. When Ellie appeared, he rubbed against her leg and joined her as she leaned heavily on the railing while descending one deck to engineering.

  Cain climbed past the garden deck and to the command deck. He lumbered into the corridor, his legs feeling abnormally heavy and unresponsive. His stomach churned and he started to sweat. He slid along the bulkhead, counting on its support to keep him upright. He staggered from one side to the other and the hatch opened.

  He stumbled in as Daksha was listening to a damage report from sensors. “…the array is gone. In the moment of transition, something hit us and tore it off. We are hard down with fifty percent of our active systems,” Chirit reported.

  “Can you fix it?” Rand asked from the pilot’s seat.

  “There’s nothing to fix. It’s gone!” Chirit exclaimed.

  “Can Jolly fabricate a new one? We have the specs,” Rand offered.

  “Maybe, but we lack certain metals. Heimdall may have what we need, but I’m not sure anyone wants to go back down there. They may have what we need on Concordia.” Chirit was browsing the ship’s raw material inventory, but he wasn’t seeing what he hoped to see.

  “Where are we?” Daksha asked. Pickles looked at Foucault. The young man was elbow-deep into his screens. The damage to the sensors slowed the data acquisition. If the Tortoid had fingers, he would have drummed a staccato on the arm of the captain’s chair as he waited impatiently. The star field finally appeared on the main screen and sharpened.

  “We are at the edge of EL475’s gravity well. Bullseye, Commander!” Fickle shouted.

  “Thank you, Private. How are the engines, Briz?” The Tortoid remained in the captain’s chair while Rand set the controls to hold the ship in place, which wasn’t difficult in interstellar space. There were currents, but they weren’t fast moving and the Cygnus-12 would be long gone before their drift would have caused them any grief.

  Cain had stopped in the hatchway, listening. The information only half registered. He stumbled the last few steps and crashed into the commander before he stopped himself. BJ looked crossly at him, until he saw who it was and what kind of shape he was in. The kitten jumped from the Tortoid’s shell and rubbed himself against Cain’s hand. Brutus jumped into the captain’s chair, so recently vacated by the commander.

  “The engines are fine. We hit something on the way out, before we entered the void between the molecules. It appears that we’ve not only lost part of the array, the entire module is gone,” Briz reported, thinking about how much work he’d done in that section of the ship, just to see it evaporate with an ISE jump from within a space station.

  Briz smiled wryly, thinking that they’d done something that had never even been contemplated before.

  “Thank goodness we don’t have a large enough crew to populate that section of the ship,” Cain added.

  “Starting to bank dark matter for the next jump, Commander. Current estimate is fourteen days to one hundred percent,” Briz told them.

  “Let’s go see what we have,” Rand said, working his way free of the pilot’s chair and scooping Nathan up, putting him on his shoulder as he walked past.

  Daksha swam close to BJ so the ‘cat could jump aboard. Rand threw an arm under Cain’s to help him back to sickbay.

  “Private Foucault, you have the conn,” Rand called over his shoulder as the group left the bridge on their way to sickbay.

  ***

  Night Stalker was pacing back and forth in the corridor. The med bots had chased her out because they needed to perform surgery on her mate. She didn’t know why, because they didn’t say.

  The others were in the corridor and hooked up to IVs, forcing replacement fluids into their bodies. Brayson, Mahjing, and Star had been experimented on as well to determine if they were spies infiltrated into the human ranks. Of the newcomers, only Jane was unscathed.

  ‘She loves ‘cats and Carnesto used her to block off the top ramp. We should probably give her a little ‘cat love,’ Brutus suggested.

  Cain’s mind was clearing because of the adrenaline surge, but he was a long way from being healthy.

  ‘Did I hear you singing?’ Cain asked in his thought voice.

  ‘Not as far as you know. Understand that I’m doing what it takes to save you, time and again, but I’m having to get more and more creative,’ Brutus replied matter-of-factly.

  ‘Your sacrifices shall go down in our annals to show what a martyr you have become, all because of me. Thanks, Brutus. I am happy to be out of there. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life,’ Cain confided.

  Garinst appeared in the corridor carrying Ellie over his shoulder. Cain stumbled toward him, but the lieutenant commander waved him off.

  “She passed out. Severely dehydrated. How do we get her hooked up to one of those?” Garinst said succinctly.

  “Put her over here. We’ll have to make do with drinks from the mess deck until Stinky is out of surgery.”

  “I got it, Cain. You should probably sit down yourself. You look like crap.” The commander hurried away.

  Cain sat on the deck, holding Ellie to him. His head cleared as the anger seethed within. He couldn’t wait to go back to Earth. The prime minister had a lot to answer for, and Major Cain wanted to see the man beg for his life, grovel before those he considered inferior.

  Garinst returned with two tall glasses of weak juice.

  “Who are you?” he asked Jane gruffly while handing the glasses to Cain. He saw the coveralls and thought he recognized a kindred spirit.

  ‘We call her Jane Jane,’ Brutus had already told Cain.

  The woman looked surprised that someone was talking with her.

  “That’s Jane Jane. She helped us escape. I think she’s stuck with us now,” Cain told him.

  “Nice to meet you, Jane Jane. I’m Garinst, head of the maintenance section on this fine boat. You look like you know your way around tools.” He stuck out a dirty hand, then pulled it back and wiped it on a rag he carried in his back pocket, but wasn’t satisfied with his hand’s cleanliness to offer it a second time.

  “Is there any more of that?” She nodded toward the glasses in Cain’s hands.

  “Yes, there is. Are you still needed here?” he asked. She shook her head. The people were sitting and waiting for their turn to see the med bots.

  “I’ll show you how the fabricators work, and we’ll get you something nice and cold.” He offered his arm and she took it in both hands as they worked their way through the bodies and down the corridor.

  The hatch slid open when they were gone and the med bot pointed to Ellie and Cain. He slugged his juice and even with Stalker’s help, he struggled as they half-dragged Ellie into sickbay. Stinky wa
s on the recovery table, still out could but stitched and bandaged. He was breathing on his own. Stalker rushed to his side once Cain and Ellie were situated.

  The med bots went to work, putting all the injured to sleep so they could rest. Garinst had moved cots into the hallway and that was where they stayed, where the med bot could check on them all without leaving sickbay.

  Daksha and Rand wanted to talk with those from the group, but they were out. The only one available was Jane Merriweather, who was engaged in a contest with Garinst to see who could tell the most crass joke. Some of the Marines had found their way to the mess deck and were egging both contestants on.

  When the captain and the commander arrived, the guffaws stopped abruptly.

  “We have a hole in our ship, Garinst. We need you and your people to patch it up so we can continue to IC1396 and then home. Take whoever you need. I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m Captain Rand, and this is Commander Daksha.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Daksha said, bowing his head slightly.

  “I’m Jane, Jane Merriweather. I’d like to try and help, if I could. I’ve never met a talking turtle before,” she blurted without thinking, then slapped a hand over her mouth.

  “Tortoid, and you are more than welcome to help, assuming Garinst gives it the green light. I’m not sure what you know of our systems, though,” Daksha countered.

  “I know when something is vented to space and shouldn’t be,” she said.

  “Fair enough. Let’s put our ship back together, people. We’re going home,” Rand said.

  ***

  “I wanted you to know that Jolly and I put videos of the prime minister and the others getting their gene splicing on permanent loop to every video monitor on the entire station. I expect it will take them a while to shut it off…” Briz relayed to Cain and Ellie while they rested and recovered in their cots outside sickbay.

  Home

  They repaired what they could, opting for fifty percent sensor capability, the heliosheath, and the void of interstellar space to protect them. They were out in the open, but the universe was a very big place.

  The jump to IC1396 had none of the excitement of the jump from within Earth Two. Cain called it a walk in the park. The earthers weren’t sure what that was since they didn’t have such things. Parks failed the efficiency test. Their resource cost was more than they delivered.

  “You’ll like Cygnus VII,” Cain told the group. They’d assembled in the briefing room for a more formal conversation as they prepared to join the explorers from the Cygnus system.

  “Dark matter at thirty-one percent,” Briz reported over the communication system. “Estimate twelve more days banking to achieve one hundred percent. We’ll need all we can get for the next jump, Captain.”

  “Understood, Lieutenant. Carry on,” Rand told the ceiling.

  Daksha floated peacefully at one end of the long table. The earthers tried to sit on one side, but the commander wouldn’t allow that. He mixed them up and since the pilot and navigator had found their soulmates in their fellow pilot and navigator, Rand asked Kalinda and Pace to attend.

  The new couples sat side by side, while Captain Brayson and Jane Merriweather were on one end. Jane kept looking at the hatch as if surprised it wasn’t opened.

  Cain watched her with interest. ‘Brutus, a little insight, please. I’m missing something.’

  ‘You’re missing the boy toy. What is with these earthers and their libidos? Don’t answer that. Compared to you, they are fairly tame,’ Brutus replied as if Cain were bothering him.

  Which was probably true. Brutus was still upset that he hadn’t been able to bring any live rabbits on board to stock the garden deck with readily available prey. Brutus hung in his tree, bored and ungratified.

  Cain sensed the ‘cat’s dismay. ‘We’ll be home soon, Brutus. With our feet planted firmly on the ground. We’ll get you a good hunt, in the north when we go to visit Ellie’s home. Do you want to see the memorial of the final battle in the great ‘cat rebellion?’ Cain laughed in his thought voice.

  ‘No,’ Brutus replied.

  Cain chuckled as he looked down, hoping the others wouldn’t notice. He caught Brayson smiling in his direction. Mel knew every time that Cain and Brutus talked.

  The hatch opened and Garinst walked in. Cain was surprised. The lieutenant commander attended staff meetings, but not ones of this sort. He took the empty seat next to a beaming Jane and like the others, they held hands.

  “How did I not know?” Cain whispered to Rand. The captain shrugged. He didn’t know what Cain didn’t know. That was a pretty demanding thing to ask of Rand. He looked sternly at Cain. The major mouthed the word “what?”

  “Welcome again, for the fiftieth time, we bid you welcome. And for the first time, I apologize that we have made you outcasts,” Daksha started. He swam over the middle of the table so he could be closer to the earthers. “It appears that I don’t need to tell you that we will help you with every part of your journey. Whatever you want to make of yourselves, wherever you want to live, whatever you want to do . Cygnus is free that way because the Free Trader made it so.”

  Daksha turned to look at Cain.

  Rand pointed at him, just in case the others hadn’t already gotten the hint from the Tortoid. Cain looked away. Rand slapped him on the shoulder.

  “The Free Trader helped people appreciate what they had, what they could do for others, and how that could make their lives better. And here we are, a mere one hundred, thirty-eight years later and we’ve been back to Earth.” Rand stood as he was too tall to get comfortable in the conference room chairs.

  “It wasn’t quite what we expected,” Rand conceded, hanging his head. “Jolly, what did you get from Earth’s space station?”

  “We got most of it, Captain,” Jolly said, not as happy as he should have been with such a victory. His visage appeared on the monitor. “Most of it has no value for us. We’ll turn it over to Dr. Johns and the researchers when we get back, but they didn’t advance as quickly as we did. The one thing we very much wanted, we have secured the energy shield technology with multiple copies kept separate from my hardware.”

  “That is something we’ll be able to put to use, almost right away. Imagine the shipyard, enclosed, with artificial gravity, but still open to space. That would advance our shipbuilding tenfold. Maybe we can trade the technology for the new shuttles that we want for the Marines,” Rand stated.

  “Of course not,” Daksha gently corrected the captain. “We’ll work with them on the new design. I’m not sure when next we’ll deploy. We didn’t leave under the best circumstances last time.”

  Brayson’s brow furled and his expression turned dark.

  Daksha turned around to face the man. “The AI that runs the planet was having a crisis. Cain and his Marines kind of had to shoot their way off the space station, the former colony ship. We have a plan to engage Holly when we get home. Is it foolproof? There’s no way to know, but we have Jolly on our side and that gives us a fighting chance.

  “We can go where we want? Do what we want?” Brayson asked.

  “Yes, both. It is your life and your choice,” Daksha answered.

  “I want to stay on board The Olive Branch!” he blurted. The others were vocal in their responses. No one wanted to go anywhere other than the ship.

  “We send our people to Space School to earn a billet on one of these. The Space Exploration Service screens all the candidates, but they’ve made exceptions before. The Cygnus-12 has had too many firsts to count, so we won’t bother. When we arrive, we’ll transmit our crew manifest and you’ll be included. I wonder if anyone will notice?” Rand wondered.

  “No matter where you go in the galaxy, there’s always bureaucracy,” Brayson added wryly.

  The others nodded knowingly.

  “Any questions?” Daksha asked, thinking that they had to be wondering about a million different things, but they looked calm, not bothered by the unknown. Then again, they were spac
ers, used to being in the middle of space, nothing to rely on but their ship and their wit.

  Rand had already seen that they would fit right in. From two couples on board to five. ‘Cats were underfoot everywhere one turned. It was like running a miniature generation ship. But they no longer needed generations to get where they wanted to go.

  The captain wrapped the meeting and most of the group left, leaving only Rand, Daksha, Cain, and Brayson. “This ship already has a captain,” Brayson said, looking from Rand to Daksha. “I don’t want to leave my people and I don’t want to get in your way. What can I do if I say on board?”

  “We don’t have a ship XO. Even Cain has an XO. I think we can establish that position. We can always make sure that someone is in the chair, same with pilot and navigator. We seem to have some overlap.”

  “Yes, we do!” Brayson exclaimed, finally getting up to excuse himself. “I think a fabricator is calling my name. I could see getting fat here. We didn’t have that problem on a Ganymede-class cutter. If you got the chance to eat, you were lucky to keep it down. We were weightless all the time, except when accelerating and then we stayed in our chairs. It’s nice to walk like we were meant to.”

  “I think I’ll join you. I still haven’t recovered the weight I lost when we had an accident well over a year ago. Let me tell you about it…” Rand and Brayson left together.