Human Starpilots

by F Stephan

  Derantor sent again. “Please confirm what assistance we can provide so that we can prepare.”

  Seconds ticked away. They were now fifty minutes from rendezvous. More minutes passed. Forty-five appeared on the screen, and they heard the reply. “We have had a radiation leak from the singularity, and we need antiradiation nanites to cure our teams. We have split them in both ships, but our infirmaries cannot cope. We need to use your production satellite.”

  Kaloumar breathed better and said aloud, “Lucky for them we transport it.”

  “And do they know about it?”

  “When we broadcasted it to the satellite on arrival?” And then Brian understood the age in the captain’s voice.

  “Pirates and they know a lot about us,” she muttered “Let’s get ready for the fight.” She called the marines’ quarter. “Tiel, Rendor. Organize your team to defend the bridge and the cargo bay. You have my permission to release and distribute personal weapons.”

  Kaloumar rose. “Are you sure you want to fight? We could negotiate a surrender?”

  “Negotiate with what, my dear?” Her voice has taken a new note of contempt Brian had not heard before.

  “I don’t know, something of value,” answered the navigator shyly.

  “And what is the rarest thing in the Federation?” Brian suddenly saw where the captain was headed. Nanite industrial satellites were expensive but the rarest commodities were the ships themselves and their pilots. Once on board, the pirates would not leave. A sudden chill froze him. Next to him, Kaloumar seated himself, swearing abundantly.

  “Taolel, engage the defense protocol. Kaloumar, give us more speed. Brian, check again anything for an alternative. Both of you, you have my leave to use the full console and full nanites at need during the crisis. But save your strength until you need it. Ship mode is under emergency protocol by captain’s order.” Brian knew the sentence from the Flight Handbook. It unlocked all functions from the console and needed confirmation by three senior crew members. In the background, the doctor, the navigator, and the engineer confirmed the order.

  67 Lenice

  “They accelerate your honor.” Lenice’s captain swore while Cortal confirmed the reading.

  “Something we said has given us away,” confirmed the Grand Inquisitor. “From what I read, it doesn’t matter now. You are free to engage all measures needed to capture the heathen ship and bend it to our will.”

  They had expected a reaction from the ship even if they had hoped it would occur later. Cortal accelerated to gain angle on the ship. The cruiser had so much more raw power that the carrier could not escape, and they all knew it. It would take a couple of hours, but they had already waited days on end.

  “When will we be in range to shoot?” he asked his first blade.

  “Half an hour, sir.”

  “Perfect; let me know when we’re ready. Please provide me with a firing solution that doesn’t destroy the ship or its singularity. But make it an efficient warning.”

  The captain turned to the commander of the boarding party.

  “What is your status?”

  “We’re as ready as we can be. We had three deaths in the crews, weaklings. We’re better without them. I have released blades and tasers to all.”

  “Have they understood their orders?”

  “Capture all officers they can? Is it truly required, Your Honor?” The captain could hear the doubt in the warrior’s voice. It was hard to lead when everyone distrusted you. “This are the orders of the Father. If you want to protect the faith and convert the heathen, we need them to teach us their devilries. We need at least some of them alive. Do you want to question the Father?”

  “Naturally not. We will do our best as the Father asks. The Grand Master will guide us.”

  The captain nodded. This was the best he could get.

  Thirty minutes later, the captains confirmed the firing solution and both ships sent synchronized plasma bolts at the communication and observation gear on either side of Theoldcow.

  68 Brian

  “Twenty minutes to rendezvous,” Kaloumar announced the count aloud from the bridge. The tension built increasingly as minutes trickled by.

  “Any alternative, Brian?” The captain was an island of calm in the turmoil. Brian exited his console to answer the captain. He was growing more desperate with each new check he ran. He still couldn’t find any solution. The different paths across the system he tried had a force gradient against the ship. And a jump could only be done from the lowest gradient point.

  Before he could provide his answer to the captain, energy saturated the bridge and the different consoles. Kaloumar screamed and fell to the floor writhing.

  “Full nanites. We are in combat mode. Doctor to the bridge. Now.” Brian closed his eyes and activated his full mode.

  The ship is surrounded by ionized plasma. For a few minutes, until we leave the cloud, the others cannot fire again.

  “Taolel, execute action. How long until they can hit us again?”

  “I have a profile on the plasma bolt. Based on the DataDump, five minutes.”

  A countdown appears on the console. Time to exit, 4 min. Time to hit, 5 min, Time to be hit, 8 min. Time to rendezvous 18 min.

  “Brian, damage control and report.”

  Some corridors are filled with smoke. I route ventilation to push it into the empty cargo bay. Sonter and Lanakar are busy in engineering. Singularity remains stable. In a few minutes, I stabilize operations within the ship. “Control clear for now.”

  Time to exit, 1 min. Time to hit, 2 min. Time to be hit, 4 min. Time to rendezvous, 14 min.

  I reacquire the two ships and map them into the screen. Cortal has maintained its vector to catch Oldcow, while Lenice is getting some angle to control us. Taolel adds her interception vector.

  “Oldcow, stand down and decelerate, or we fire again and blow you out. You cannot escape us.” The voice is harsh and dictatorial.

  Suddenly, Cortal leaks gas into the void from its side. The drone has hit.

  Time to be hit, 2 min. Time to rendezvous, 12 min.

  “Taolel, damage report on them.”

  “They leak air. Singularity reading show increased instability.”

  Lenice corrects its course for an intercept.

  Time to be hit, 1 min. Time to rendezvous, 11 min.

  “Emergency alternative route request under maximum power,” I almost shout.

  Energy spikes explode in my console and open a new path upward against the gradient. I choose a path up the energy slope, and I engage hyperspace.

  “Singularity stability drops at ten percent.” I increase my nanite level to control the field around the singularity, and I continue to move the ship uphill.

  “Singularity stability drops at one percent.” My internal alert systems are in the red. The exit point appears on my console.

  “Singularity stability at zero, five percent. One percent. Zero, two percent.” My head burns. I have to hold just a little while longer.

  Exit point. Hyperspace disengage.

  “Singularity stability increases at ten percent.”

  Time to be hit, unknown. Time to rendezvous 4 hours.

  Return singularity to normal level. Singularity stability at 90 percent.

  I cannot stand it anymore and disengage the nanites. I hear the voice from the captain far away. “Stand down and return to normal procedure. Standard vectored approach to next jump point.”

  Brian dropped out of his chair onto the floor, unconscious, in a pool of blood. Dr. Shaz’al’nak who had been tending Kaloumar on the other side of the bridge moved to him.

  69 Brian

  Brian woke up slowly. The room was darkened. A fire glowed in the back, and a very old woman, white hair and heavily wrinkled skin, sat in a club chair beside the bed. Her eyes were sparkling blue, and she smiled at him. Brian had rarely seen Shaz’al’nak outside the infirmary, and it took him a moment to recognize her. How old must she be in a society th
at controlled aging so well?

  “Where am I?” he managed a croak.

  “You are in the infirmary in a simulated virtual environment. We didn’t want to wake you up too directly. This place is created within your brain through neural feed. How do you feel? Do you like the place?”

  “The place is fine.” Brian struggled for thoughts. “I feel very weird. And the other? The ship?”

  “Later. I’m going to run you through a series of exercises. Can you follow them with me?”

  Brian spent the next hour or more in exercises. The doctor made him focus on what he felt, but he found it hard to sense his body, as if he had lost all connections. He had virtual sweat rolling down his forehead just with the effort of moving his little finger, and whenever he managed an action, an intense pain stabbed him. The doctor had him sleep and wake for regular sessions for what seemed an eternity until he proved he could control his body. Slowly, the pain receded, and the control came back—but so slowly.

  “You will now sleep and wake up in the infirmary in a few hours. You need some rest.”

  With that, and before he could ask all the questions he had, he was sound asleep.

  Brian woke up again in darkness. He was lying on a bed with different monitors attached to him. As soon as he woke, the light increased to show a dim white room, empty except for a medical bed, monitors, and a single metal chair.

  The doctor appeared rapidly. Her voice was a murmur. “Much better, much better. Let me check on you, and I’ll answer your questions.” She took out a pair of connected lenses from her coat and checked on him, softly humming to herself. She didn’t touch him nor come anywhere close. After a while, her examination concluded, she sat, removed her lenses, and looked again at Brian.

  “Well, this has been touch and go. Your edges were becoming misty.. Your nanites were burning all your energy.”

  “What—what did you do?”

  “We restored your energy and worked to rebuild your control over it. You pushed yourself beyond your current limit. You are very fortunate to be alive, young man, and you will not use any nanites for the next week. Or you will die.” Her tone was flat, clinical, and unmovable. “This order has been confirmed with the captain. I understand what you did and how you did it, but you cannot do it again in any future.”

  “What did I do, exactly?”

  “The captain or Lanakar will want to talk to you about it in more detail. You moved us in free hyperspace. A few have been able to do it from time to time. A lot were dead before they could reach their thirtieth anniversary.” Brian gulped and thought for a moment under the continued scrutiny of the doctor.

  “And the others? Kaloumar? I heard him scream.”

  “He is in the other room of the infirmary. He was connected directly to the sensors console when the bolt hit, and a part of the energy went through him. He is badly irradiated, and many nerves were burned. He will need long months, maybe years, to recover. But everyone else is fine, and this is thanks to you. Now, exercises again. Let’s check if your body is stable.”

  During the next two days, he slept and exercised alternatively under the watch of the doctor. She didn’t seem to need to sleep, for she was always there when he woke up. Progressively, his sense of touch returned, and he could move around, pick objects. On the second morning, Brian asked a question that was nagging at him since the incident.

  “Doctor. You have been here for quite a time.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “In the old time, did they automate the jumps and movement in free hyperspace?”

  “In the end it seemed they were able to. But we have no evidence of this, and they stopped.”

  “All research in that direction is now prohibited.”

  “Go to the point, boy. Don’t go around in circles.”

  “If we had had more intelligent computers, even sentient ones, I wouldn’t have had to risk so much. They have cared for the jump directly.”

  “And you wonder why this is strictly forbidden?”

  “Yes. Do you know why?”

  The doctor smiled enigmatically. “A computer well maintained is eternal, and eternity is long. You will understand better when you are my age. Until then, I hope you don’t find out why exactly.” And then she left.

  On the third day, Shaz’al’nak allowed him to join everyone in the common room for a short break. As soon as he showed up, Sonter cleared a space among the cushions around the table and bombarded him with questions.

  “I don’t know how I did it. Suddenly, the console showed another dimension of forces on the map, and I could ride those forces up, not stay at the bottom of the gradient like usual. I escalated it, but I had to spend all my energy on the singularity. It was so close to disruption. I was scared as hell, and when I reached an exit point, I withdrew.”

  “And deactivated that mode at the same time,” grumbled Sonter.

  “And brought back the singularity to near stability. Near, young man, is not stability. It took me all those last three days to be sure it wouldn’t collapse with the ship,” added Lanakar.

  “And the other ships?”

  “Before we jumped out of the system,” said Taolel, “their light reached us. The one we had hit blew. The singularity must have been destabilized enough, probably with the huge acceleration it had already provided to ambush us.”

  “So the other?”

  “It remained behind us. The Federation will send a force and have a chat with Lelet. I never liked that planet.” Derantor was quite sure of herself.

  “But Captain, how could they know our cargo?”

  “Keen memory under action,” the captain murmured. She cleared her voice and answered. “Good question. I don’t know, and, unless the force is lucky, we will never find out.”

  All seemed to talk at the same time in a babble of voices that Brian welcomed after his forced isolation, and he bathed in the chatter for a long time.

  Far behind in another system, Lenice crept toward its home system. The Grand Inquisitor had died and would bear a lot of the blame. Lenice’s captain had committed suicide, an ancient ritual that would maybe protect his family from retaliation. The remaining pilot would have to announce the plot’s failure.

  70 Brian

  As soon as they emerged in the Pelor system, the captain downloaded Brian’s report personally to the communication satellite orbiting the exit point.

  They were all on the bridge when she had motioned to them to follow her to her cabin.

  “This is such a rare occurrence. Red level. Come. You need to see how you build the message.” Derantor had written a very precise report, which they checked.

  “Then, you need to retrieve the Federation codes from Brian’s console to define the priority. I declared the emergency, and this has freed the codes from the console.” Then she had shown them the complex procedure to add the codes to a message. Once the message was sent, she let go of the console.

  “Now, if a ship exits one of the jump points, the message will be pushed to it and downloaded to all the next nodes until the ship receives the Federation’s acknowledgement.”

  “But we are the ones who organize the download and upload to the DataDump?” asked Brian.

  “Yes, this is the normal procedure. But when I retrieved the code, I activated another type of message. They have the highest priority in the Federation.”

  “What will happen now?”

  “The Federation will send a mission to Lelet to check if the ships came from there. If not, they will explore all links until they find them. But the Federation is very thorough when such attacks happen.”

  “And for us?”

  “You will send in parallel a request for assistance to Upandaway to check if there are backup pilots cleared for intersystem space jumps. If there are none, the guild representative on Pelor will pass on the message to all ships going through. Until then, we will work double shifts with Taolel, and you will support us for the jumps intrasystem.” Both apprentices nodd
ed. “You will be on light duty on board during that period. I will notify the academy on this.” Then she smiled one of her rare smiles. “Anyway, you are going to learn a lot more like this, and Reinkel and Heikert knows all about these situations. They went through similar experiences, both of them.” Brian’s and Sonter’s curiosity was piqued, but she stopped there, showing she would go no further.

  “Why don’t we stop here? Wouldn’t it be easier to find support?”

  “Do you remember what the Handbook says about the threads?”

  “Yes, Madam.” Brian remembered well the incantation. He quoted aloud. “Thee are the threads of the rope that binds humanity together. Should one thread break, all will come loose and the future be forsaken. Thee must fly at all costs, stopping only as a last resort.”

  “We can still go on. You have shown that with this console you can jump. Sonter has also demonstrated his capacity in the last days. We have all required pilots to go on and deliver what Fizhert needs.”

  “But wouldn’t it be more efficient to wait here?” Brian replied stubbornly.

  “You don’t know how long we could wait. Maybe the one who attacked us wanted precisely this. That we postpone our delivery to Fizhert.”

  Brian and Sonter looked at her incredulously. “It happened not so long ago. Trust me. As long as we have a capable crew, we will continue.”

  And she left, leaving Brian and Sonter wondering what could drive her that much.

  Later, during rendezvous, they off-boarded an unconscious Kaloumar for heavy medical treatment, a complex procedure that left them exhausted for a full day. Droum commented nicely, “You were here to learn, weren’t you? Wait until you do this for real.”

  As expected, there were no backup pilots in the Upandaway allowed to work on intersystem jumps. From then on, they all worked double shifts—and in the case of the captain, triple—to move on toward their destination. Yet they continued with grim determination.

  71 Don Mariano

  “Where are we going?” Leandra Cipriani had arrived a few weeks ago and still had trouble finding her way through the alien city. She had been Don Mariano’s senior staff member on Earth before he left. Her kids had still been at the university when he left three years ago, and she had wished to see them through, but now that they were on their way, she had decided to tour the stars. The job had become vacant with Mathias’s return to Earth, and she had filled the post. Her eyes had gleamed mischievously, looking at all the wonders around her, and Don Mariano had welcomed her back gladly. He had missed her humor and her quiet efficiency. From the corner of his eye, he looked at her. Dark hair, brown eyes, dressed impeccably, maybe a little skinny, she belonged to the group of people who run the world without ever letting anyone discover it. He sobered, thinking of his next meeting.