by Joyner, GP
Snapping her attention back to the business a hand, Reyna called, "Helm, present distance from the Remnant?"
"Now passing within one AU," said the man at the Helm.
Casting a glance at the Orionite, Reyna commanded, "Give me a check of external shielding."
The antennaed blonde reported, "Shields at maximum efficiency, Captain."
"Good," said Reyna softly. An official Earth Commonwealth craft such as the Aureole had stronger shielding than a prospecting craft, less prone to power fluctuations such as those that left Captain Callum's ship so vulnerable and better able to withstand attacks. But Reyna became a Captain of the Stellar Guard by knowing what chances to take and when and how to take them, and she had the authority to pull out of any situation, regardless of orders, when she deemed the risk to her crew too great to go forward. With the Space Urchins lurking in the glowing curtains before her and a pulsar spinning in the depths beyond them, she chose to calculate her risks exactly.
"Helm," she ordered, "proceed forward at best sub-light velocity. Comm, put out a hail into the Remnant. Let's see if we can raise the Morrow and determine their status."
"Aye, Captain," replied the Comm Officer as the ship forged ahead into the shimmering expanse.
Minutes flew by with the flight of the Aureole. Reyna watched the screen for any visual sign of the lone vessel--or any part of it, or any discharge of energy or plasma from it; anything to indicate what awaited them. She kept her eyes forward with lips creased, until the woman at Comm announced, "Inbound transmission. We have a response, Captain. Visual and audio."
Grasping the arms of her chair anxiously, Reyna ordered, "On screen."
The view on the forward monitor distorted into a screen full of video noise, accompanied by a crackle of static, until it cleared--at least partly--into a flickering and striated picture of what was obviously the bridge of the SS Morrow, from which a familiar face looked out. Ty Callum was alone on his bridge. Surrounding him were ruptured fixtures and control stations in various states of usability, some of them issuing sparks and pops of energy. Reyna found him as handsome here as he was in the picture on his ship's stats. His stained uniform top was open, exposing a torn T-shirt, and he wore the look of a man trying not to appear as desperate as he was, which Reyna respected and understood. Whether in the service of the Commonwealth or his own personal fortune, a Captain, in the end, was a Captain.
Reyna leaned forward in her seat to address him. "This is Captain Reyna Talbot of the SS Aureole. We're here to lend assistance and whatever aid you need. And I'm speaking to..."
He finished for her, knowing she was already aware. "Captain Ty Callum, SS Morrow. And we'll take whatever aid you can give. Let me see if I can send you our exact coordinates; you might not be able to pinpoint us through all that out there."
"Standing by, Captain," Reyna said.
Ty Callum looked down to one arm of his chair. Reyna waited for him to press some surfaces on the interface there, and in a moment she heard the Comm Officer call, "Receiving coordinates of the Morrow, Captain. I'm sending them to the Helm."
The Helm officer watched his panel while the image of Callum on the screen looked back up. "Acknowledging coordinates; I've got a lock on them," called the Helmsman.
"Can you give us your status, Captain Callum?" asked Reyna.
"Not good," said Callum bluntly. "We've taken some casualties. I've ordered surviving crew to the engine deck and the emergency evacuation ports and cut all power to everything but hull integrity, life support, and whatever engine power will help us resist the gravity of the pulsar--for now. But we're a good way's into the Remnant, we've got Urchins on board working their way through the ship's structure and chewing up everything in their path, and we're blasting them and killing them where we find them. But we frankly haven't got much time left. Go for my crew first and save me last, if you can."
Reyna opened her mouth to respond, but before she could get a word out, the transmission fizzled harshly into another screen full of static and was gone. Frustrated, Reyna clamped her jaw shut. She leaned back hard into her seat, muttering, "Damn." Though Reyna still held her general opinion about the undeniably handsome Callum as a prospector--he was an opportunist--she thought he seemed to be at least a good Captain and a decent and responsible man, putting the welfare of his crew before the interstellar gold and other cosmic plunder that they entered the nebula to collect. Then again, she thought, a life-and-death situation will always change a man's priorities at least until he was out of danger. Never mind the relative morality of the situation; Callum and his people were in trouble and she was there to help.
She called out, "Helm, maintain best speed for the coordinates of the Morrow. Ops, signal Condition Yellow." And Reyna kept her eyes fixed on her screen while the Condition Yellow sound trilled through the ship and the Aureole continued further on into the glowing curtains of Xerxes.
They had not gone far when the situation changed. Towards the bottom right of the screen, a shape appeared, dark against the multicolored, glowing ripples of the supernova remnant, and discharging a glowing plume of its own from its middle. "We have visual," reported the Helmsman."
"I see it," said Reyna. "They're venting plasma. We're going to have to move fast. Comm, signal Emergency Responders to be ready to board that ship and start getting people out, guns set for heavy disruption; they know what we're up against."
"Signaling Emergency Responders," answered the Orionite.
Reyna called to Tactical, "Stand by on cannons."
"Standing by," answered the red-skinned crewman.
"Steady as she goes," ordered Reyna. "And look sharp, everyone."
The ship went steady on. The distant shape of the stricken Morrow gradually grew larger in the viewer. The minutes ticked by...
And then, seemingly from nowhere, something swept into view. It appeared to loom up from the direction of the ship's keel, emerging from the nebular clouds below them. It streaked directly for the ship, hit the forward shields, and stayed there, as if splattered like an insect on the windshield of an old Earth automobile. There was a rumbling sound, and the Aureole lurched and shook with the impact. The image on the monitor flickered. The lad at Sciences said, "Space Urchin attached to forward shields, Captain. Forward shields are in flux."
"Obviously," said Reyna, trying not to sound as if she were chiding the youth for stating what everyone could clearly see. "It's trying to drain off enough power to get to the outer hull." She gritted her teeth at the creature, feeling generations of loathing that all the spacefarers before her had held for these creatures. Adhering to the shell of energy at the bow of the Aureole was a glowing, bulbous mass with a whirlpool-like pit of darkness at its front end, corresponding to a hungry mouth. It had four appendages, two on either end, with the effect of grasping, leg-like claws; and a glittering, comet-like tail spewing from its rear and into space. The energy of the forward shields continued to flicker and sparkle in resistance to the attachment of the Urchin, which would continue eating energy until it got through to matter--if it were allowed.
Reyna clutched the arms of her command seat, knowing full well that the presence of one Urchin promised a swarm to follow behind it. "Battle stations, Red Alert!" she cried. "Arm the cannons; we're going all the way in!"
Over the years ship designers had devised different methods of dealing with the Space Urchins. Reyna knew it was time to call out one of them.
"Tactical!" she called. "Set forward shields for a repulse charge."
The Proximan at the Tactical station quickly complied. "On my count," Reyna commanded. "Five...four..." The shielding of Stellar Patrol craft could be stepped up to an increased power level and the increased charge could thus be channeled in a specific direction or to a specific spot. Tactical set the increased charge to be concentrated on forward shields to dislodge the Aureole's unwelcome, hungry rider. When Reyna called out, "...One!" the Tactical Officer hit a command surface and there came a crackling whi
ne on the bridge. On the forward viewer, a sudden, brilliant flash of light erupted as the signature of the repulse charge. The Space Urchin attached to the energy screen throbbed from its maw to its tail, but held fast. "Again!" called Reyna. Another slap of the Tactical Officer's panel unleashed another pulse, and the bridge was again filled with a burst of radiance. Once more the Space Urchin throbbed and pulsed violently and almost seemed to slip, but still it clung to the blister of energy surrounding the ship.
Reyna scowled at it: "Damn you, get the hell off my ship!" To Tactical she barked, "One more time!" The Proximan hit the control yet again, and again the light burst flooded the bridge. This time the Space Urchin throbbed, pulsed--and went flying back. It spun and flailed away into the space of the supernova remnant--but it still lived. Instantly Reyna commanded Tactical, "Set cannons for maximum strike! Fire at will!"
In space outside, the Urchin halted its uncontrolled spinning flight and righted itself, then zeroed in on the Aureole once more. It launched itself forward at the ship--and a heartbeat later it was met with a bolt of energy from the Aureole's forward cannon. The pulser beam did its job, slicing the creature in two and reducing it to a cloud of whirling sparks.
On the bridge, the Helmsman eyed his station and reported, "Multiple inbound targets from multiple directions."
Reyna noded curtly, "Our friend's brothers and sisters are coming in for a bite, which they're not getting. Helm, set evasive course for the Morrow and continue best speed. Tactical, arm all cannons and continue firing at will. Let's move!"
The officers carried out their orders as fast as they were given. The Aureole forged ahead on an arcing path, set to swerve and detour as necessary. From all sides came the glowing forms of the Space Urchins, plasma tails propelling them on multiple courses, all of them aimed at the Patrol ship.
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In the Captain's seat on the bridge of the Morrow, Ty Callum resorted to using his personal screen to follow the progress of the Space Urchins through a schematic of the ship's structure. The ship's computer and data systems were operating at 60 percent efficiency, which was falling fast. Frowning at his screen, he muttered, "Hungry bastards. You've already eaten through some of the ship's data relays." He couldn't even raise the ship's interactive computer voice. His personal screen would have to serve him, and even its link to the ship's systems had begun to flicker. Looking up futilely at the viewer, he muttered again, "Too bad I can't see how the Aureole is doing."
He thought of the other officer who had addressed him, the Captain of the Aureole. In spite of his jeopardy, he now harbored some thoughts about this Captain Reyna Talbot that were out of place and time at the moment. "Quite a looker, that one." Any other time, he would do everything to try to persuade such a woman to drop both rank and uniform and join him for some naked horizontal R and R--at which point the two of them would indulge themselves in a number of other choice letters of the alphabet. His thoughts strayed just enough to wonder whether Reyna were like other female Patrol Captains he'd met, too full of her position to get into some positions lying down with him. In his travels he had been able to prevail on a few of them, but found others too self-important to sleep with a common prospector. As he noted on his screen that an Urchin was even now chomping its way through a service duct on its way to the bridge, he wondered whether he would live long enough to find out just what type Captain Talbot was.
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In space, the Aureole swerved and looped, banking and diving and releasing pulser beams to the fore and aft, port and starboard, keel and mast, holding at bay the ravenous spectral forms of the Space Urchins which swooped and lunged, trying to latch onto the ship's shields again and penetrate to the hull. Where the beams connected there was a sudden burst or upheaval and a stricken Urchin went spinning away with severed limbs or tail; or erupted in a violent cloud of plasma and sparks as it was skewered right through its middle. To Reyna's satisfaction, one creature put itself directly between the Aureole and the Morrow and made a frontal charge--and took a pulser blast right in its voracious maelstrom of a mouth. An instant later, the Aureole sailed through the sparking cloud where the Urchin had been.
"Got you, you wretched monster!" Reyna cracked with another curt nod at the tableau on the screen. The Morrow, still bleeding plasma and listing to port, loomed ever larger in the viewer. "Comm," she called, "can you give me an updated status on the Morrow?"
The Comm Officer reported, "Morrow approaching half power and dropping rapidly."
Silently, Reyna commended Callum and his people for keeping themselves going this long. Before her, the screen was still filled with Space Urchins, which seemed to be deliberately avoiding doing any more damage to the Morrow and making for the Aureole as fresh prey. And perhaps, with a calculated risk, she could turn that to her advantage.
"Helm," she called. "All stop. Tactical, full main power and full reserve power to all external shields."
An icy silence fell over the bridge as the officers seated before her turned around and they and their comrades to both sides all fixed their eyes nervously on the Captain. The Helmsman asked with a gulp, "All stop, Captain?"
Setting her jaw, Reyna repeated, "That was the order, Helm. All stop."
Exchanging a look of mounting anxiety, Helm and Sciences turned back to their posts. And with the execution of orders, the Aureole came to a complete stop in the Xerxes Supernova Remnant.
As quickly as it would take to say it, the Space Urchins were upon the ship. They came sailing in from everywhere, hit the shields, and held on. The space around the Aureole was filled with the ominous flickering and throbbing of light from the creatures draining the power of the shields like a mass of cosmic leeches.
On the bridge, Reyna allowed herself a frown of disgust at the sight of four of them attached to the forward shields alone. She knew that the entire envelope of energy surrounding the ship was covered with them.
Tactical reported, "We are now completely enclosed in Space Urchins, Captain."
Reyna replies, "Just like I expected. Now, Tactical, I want you to put all the power you just put into the shields into an omni-directional discharge. Hit them with everything. Fry the damn things."
In front of her, Helm and Sciences traded another look. Both men silently smiled at their Captain's strategy.
"Discharge at will," said Reyna. "But make it fast."
With a hand striking his panel, Tactical answered, "Discharging now, Captain."
The response was instantaneous. In the spaces between the clustered Space Urchins covering the shields, there was a second of pulsating light. Then, from those same spaces poured a mighty cascade of power; fountains of energy surging out on every vector at once and blossoming into a ball of energy that expanded blindingly. It spread out, shining brighter than the glow of the nebula itself. As it started to fade, the space surrounding the Aureole was strewn with wisps and curls of dissipating plasma--and the ship was alone.
On the bridge of the Aureole, the Science Officer reported with satisfaction, "The Space Urchins are gone, Captain."
Reyna stood up. "The ones who came after us are gone, that is. There'll be a few more of them still making a meal of the Morrow. You're in charge, Science Officer. I'm heading over there with the boarding party."
All eyes once again turned to the Captain. Sciences asked, "You, Captain?"
"You heard me, Mister," said Reyna. "I'm going over to help--one Captain to another."
The Science Officer rose to comply with orders, taking the Captain's seat as Reyna quickly headed out.
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Ty Callum, too tense to stay in his seat on the bridge of the Morrow, clutched his personal screen and watched the progress of the Urchin chewing its way through the inner conduit on its way to the bridge. At the same time the screen connected him with his Engineer on a lower deck. The Engineer, his dark-haired Asian face occupying a section of the screen, reported, "The Aureole has cleared out the Space Urchins
from the surrounding space. It's safe to start sending the Emergency Pods out now. And they're sending their own Emergency Pod to dock with us; they've got rescue and medical personnel on board. But we're having trouble with the motors of all the docking port doors; we're going to have to do a manual docking procedure."