The Lost Gunboat Captain (The Jolo Vargas Space Opera Series Book 1)

by J. D. Oppenheim

  And then, breathing heavily, still clutching his prize, he relaxed, floating in the pitch black, and listened to the sound of the air moving in and out of his body. He knew he’d just wasted oxygen, but didn’t care.

  After a few minutes his breathing slowed and the muscles in his chest and arms stopped burning, and he felt something jabbing the back of his head. He turned and reached out with his hands so he could find it.

  It was the remains of the headrest brackets. One was pointed straight back and he was glad he didn’t poke himself in the eye. Even though eyes are fairly useless in this can, he thought. He carefully bent down the pointy end so it was more or less flush with the hull and he wouldn’t lose a worthless eyeball.

  When he’d gotten it down far enough his hand brushed against something else. He steadied himself again and carefully reached out with his fingers. It was a rectangular section of metal with raised numbering.

  It was the ID plate.

  “I knew you were an old boat!” he yelled.

  The Federation used the common old Earth Roman alphabet, but there were several other common writing systems in use, especially in the outer trade port realms.

  He felt the first letter with the tip of his index finger. It traced a perfect letter R. Then an A, followed by a C, and then a string of numbers and letters: 94628X-w725.76. He kept reading with his fingers excitedly, and only when he came to the last number did he worry that he might not remember them all.

  Computer, identify space craft, one-man, with id RAC94628X-w725.76, he thought, surprised he hadn’t forgotten anything.

  Racine Mark 7 Long-Range Podship, the computer replied.

  Give me the overview.

  The Mark 7, manufactured in the outer Racelle rim during the early 2300s, was used mainly for large trading vessels, and was designed to accommodate Racellian occupants, with retrofitting available for humanoids under 2 meters.

  Now give me the technical specs.

  The Mark 7 is 8.24 meters long with an outer radius of 3.78 meters, utilizing a single, modified Barr-Stien hollow thruster, can make 7 jumps on a single charge cell.

  Computer, how do you turn on the lights in a Mark 7 escape pod? He closed his eyes, even though he couldn’t see anything, took a few deep breaths.

  The Mark 7 accepts a rudimentary set of verbal commands. Say “lights on” to turn on lights.

  That’s it? the man thought. I’ve been in darkness for two weeks and all I had to say was lights on?

  “Lights on!” the man screamed.

  And nothing. Still black. Oh, shite, he thought. I’m a blind humanoid.

  Computer, what language sets does the Mark 7 accept?

  Default language is New Raceli. Though other language chips can be added.

  How do you say ‘lights on’ in New Raceli?

  Denki tsukerion.

  The man took another deep breath, and this time didn’t close his eyes. He paused for a moment. Don’t start kicking again if this doesn’t work, he told himself.

  “Denki tsukerion,” he said.

  There was a bright flash and suddenly he was blinded, this time by white. He closed his eyes, but the light still came through. He could see orange through his eyelids. “Computer, we got orange!” he screamed aloud. After a few moments his eyes adjusted and he slowly opened them again and saw his hands for the first time. They were large and strong. The left hand was scarred, the right had burn marks.

  Suddenly he was full of energy and hope. Even though his living space wasn’t much more than a C-tube, there was too much to take in. He was surrounded by squares of white padding. The belt straps were black as he imagined and the IV hole in his wrist had a little dried blood but he wasn’t bleeding. His uniform was light blue, just like the girl, Jaylen. The shirt was torn, with dried brown stains that he guessed were blood, and the name patch was ripped off. No Fed insignia anywhere, but he guessed it was Fed gear.

  Next thing to do was find the nav.

  Computer, does the Mark 7 have a navigation system.

  The Mark 7 is equipped with a pre-programmable destination system.

  Does it have a navigation display?

  Yes, the navigation display is in the porthole.

  What is the command in New Raceli?

  Nabi Tsukeri.

  The man moved up, back into the cone and looked out through the porthole. “Nabi Tsukeri,” he said.

  Instantly the porthole screen showed several systems with one blue dot in the middle: his little escape pod. Another green dot blinked off to the left corner of the display. He zoomed in and found planet names in English under the New Raceli. The pod was headed straight for the green dot: planet Sol in Fed space.

  Fed space is good, right? he thought. I’m a Federation captain of some kind of ship, he thought. Unless the dreams are just dreams and not memories. They’ve got to be real. The girl is real.

  The man started to ask the computer if he could query the nav system but tapped on the green dot and time to destination popped up. 89365.347 RHZ. The three decimal points at the end constantly changing, almost randomly, but then the time changed to 89364, and then to 89363 a little while later.

  Computer, what is RHZ?

  New Racelian time.

  How many Federation standard hours is 89363 RHZ?

  352 hours.

  He sucked in a long breath of dry air. I’ll be DOA, he thought. In the excitement of lights and nav he’d almost forgotten about the more pressing issue. Staying alive.

  Supplicant

  Bakanhe Grana Homeworlds

  Warumon 5, in The Temple of Warufal

  The Bakanhe Emperor, a black-robed mech giant, strolled back and forth in front of the two, smaller, softer Vellosians. Merthon and Jamis were on their knees, in supplicant position, thumbs to forehead and eyes down. One mustn’t look directly into the eyes of a superior, Merthon had been instructed many times before by the lesser BG in preparation for an audience with the Emperor. But they don’t really have eyes, Merthon would think.

  But nonetheless, he stared at the iron floor, a clear view of the BG leader’s heavy mech lower limbs, two front alacyte pads and one in the rear for feet. Birdlike, he thought. Odd that the feet the BG crafted would be similar to a bird given the heart and brain of the beings was nothing more than a frail wormlike creature encased in a metal chestplate. The essence of their being Merthon could hold in his hands, could toss into one of the million birthing tanks and watch drown. They were as worthless and weak as a human infant, but yet here we were, he thought, the bastard could pick us both up with his metal arms and break our bodies against the wall or simply crush us in his long metal fingers.

  The Emperor had begun to drag Merthon and Jamis in regularly for lectures. Was he getting nervous? thought Merthon. Is this a show of weakness?

  “…so the children must be fully grown by the time of the Corduin Festival when the moons align and the Federation fools grow fat and sleepy,” said the Emperor. “You two will be richly rewarded when the Bakanhe Grana take their rightful place as the benevolent masters of the worlds.” You mean kill us and hold the ignorant Federation planets hostage, thought Merthon.

  “Did he land yet? Jamis asked, later, in the great production hall where the Emperor’s children grew in birthing tanks.

  ”The BG smell like tide pool slugs on Vera, back home,” said Merthon, changing the subject, tired of Jamis’s incessant nagging and worrying.

  “Perhaps they are related,” said Jamis, playing along for once.

  “All I have left is the memory of a smell,” said Merthon.

  “Don’t get melancholy again.”

  “It’s okay. I’m going to kill them all.”

  “Yeah, right, you skinny frog,” said Jamis. “You couldn’t even fire a BG weapon.”

  “I don’t need one of their crude weapons. I have a weapon of my own. And he’s coming back for us soon.” The conversation always came around to this.

  “Are you sure?”

&
nbsp; “He’ll come. His mind is bent on it. I made sure.” Merthon gazed out over the vast array of round tanks. “He’ll kill them all.”

  “Sometimes you scare me, Merth,” said Jamis. “All of this scheming and plotting is not our way. We are creators.”

  “Our way!” Merthon yelled, a few of the curled up children in the tanks nearby sloshed around. “Our way is gone. They took all of it.”

  “They took our home, but not our ways. If we lose that, what are we then?”

  Bullet in the Blue Sky

  Escape pod.

  242 hours to the edge of Federation space.

  The man woke up with a scratchy throat, the air dry and his skin like leather. Computer, how can I access the life support computer on the Mark 7?

  There is no life support computer on the Mark 7. Life support is either functional or non-functional.

  The man unfastened himself and floated up to the port screen, pulled up the nav display and checked the time to destination. 341 hours to planet Sol in Federation space. 11 hours since he last checked. He did a rough calculation based on the size of the pod and total cubic feet of air remaining and decided he had, at worst, 36 hours until he was sucking a higher percentage of carbon dioxide than oxygen.

  He took a hard look at the outer rim planets on the nav. He wanted to avoid dense particle fields, planets with high asteroid debris concentrations and outer rim pirate activity.

  He could see the little escape pod, his blue dot, right in the center, and his current destination, Sol, as a small green dot. The pod would get there eventually, but he’d be dead.

  There were outer rim planets near him: Maros, Tichel, a few scattered beyond, maybe within his 36 hour limit. But for some reason he didn’t trust them. Just like he knew the woman on the Fed frigate wasn’t Jaylen. He went with his gut and kept digging, but there was nothing close enough. Tichel was his best bet, but then he thought to zoom in, and suddenly more planets popped up. They were smaller, but within reach. The closest three were, Davos, Barc and Duval. He rolled the names around in his head for a moment, said them aloud a few times, and one sounded good, felt right: Duval.

  Computer, what do you know about the planet Duval? Digest version.

  Duval is a small planet in the outer reaches of Federation space. Habitat is arid, yet human compatible. Known mainly for alacyte production. The Federation maintains at least one patrol in the sector near Duval due to high pirate activity.

  What planet in the outer reaches near Duval does the Federation consider safe for traders?

  Entry to Tichel is protected by Federation ships and since the Reunification Accord, post BG wars, the BG now assist in protecting trade routes. There is no pirate activity in this sector.

  The man tapped once on Tichel on the port screen to reroute the pod. Two options popped up on screen, both in New Raceli, which he couldn’t read. He asked the computer how to reroute the Mark 7’s nav, then started to press the reroute button, but stopped.

  He pulled his hand back and floated there for moment. He stared out at the stars in the nearby system, then counted the pad squares for awhile. There were 492 that he could see. He wondered if he was going crazy. They all looked the same. But not the stars. There was something familiar about the cluster he could see at that point. They weren’t from the Tichel system. He looked at the star map again.

  They were from Duval.

  He pulled up the nav and rerouted to the small planet. Instantly the pod started recalculating, the green dot on the nav changing from Sol to Duval. The pod made one turn, then a series of minor course corrections for the next hour. Right before strapping in to take a nap he tapped on Duval on the nav. Time to destination read 15 hours. Here we go, he thought. He swallowed but his mouth was dry and he wondered just where on that planet he would land, and most importantly, would someone be waiting with a nice cup of water? And as the pod made its way to the planet, the man slept, and dreamed about the ship and the girl.

  In his dream the captain took Voss straight through the main navigation deck where the giant viewport looked out into space, all the while making a show of reading from the Federation deep space protocol manual, page 3,482, sub-section alpha, paragraph 4: “…the initial gunboat designs lacked hull integrity coefficient near the forward nacelle, mainly due to weight—” and there he paused for a moment to bark out a few orders. “Filch, you got the chair. Maintain course until Aurora, then burn it if you want.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Filcher, not even glancing at the ensign.

  The captain led her up the stairs, lecturing the whole time, to the observation platform, then through a tight gap behind a nav computer array, down a dark maintenance corridor and then up another set of stairs she didn’t know existed. At the top of the stairs he pushed open a hatch which led to a tiny space just big enough for two. He closed the hatch behind them and it was quiet.

  “You’re quite the actor,” she said.

  “I wonder if anyone is fooled,” he said.

  “I don’t care for me, but I worry about you.”

  “I’m not too concerned about regulations when you are around.” He reached out in the dark and touched her face. He loved her smell, the touch of her hands. He pulled her close and they kissed.

  “If we get into trouble I’m getting you off this boat,” he said.

  “What, you think I’m a liability? The chief needs me in engineering. What if something happens to him?”

  “It’s not about you. Not about your qualifications. The closer we get to Vellos, the more dangerous it is.” He pulled her close again and they stopped talking for awhile.

  ……

  He woke up twelve hours later, scratched the dry skin on his arms, his body achey and cold, and a loud audio message in New Raceli repeating over and over. A bright red alert message blinked on and off on the port screen, the padding all around him turning red, white, red, white... There was an urgency in the loud, female voice that suggested something was wrong.

  He unstrapped and floated up to the nav. The pod was close now. Three hours to destination. Soon he’d be moving through the upper atmosphere. The warning message, again, in New Raceli, was flashing on the screen.

  He couldn’t understand the audio message. But one part he could make out. It repeated over and over: “…dah king gya na… …dah king gya na… …dah king gya na…”

  Computer, translate New Raceli to English. What is “dah king gya na.”

  “There is no King,” came the reply.

  There is no King, the man thought. What does that mean?

  Computer, what does ‘There is no King’ mean?

  No data.

  The man closed his eyes, the message still repeating over and over. The red alert text still flashing in the nav. Meanwhile, he was getting closer: 2 hours 48 min to destination.

  He floated back down and strapped in. He said the New Raceli warning message a few times aloud. It sounded similar, but maybe he said it wrong?

  He tried again and again, with different variations. But the computer continued to spit out: “There is no king.” By then the incessant warning loop was driving him crazy. He tried one more time, this time holding the “dah” part a little longer: “daah king gya na.”

  And the computer replied: There is no docking.

  Computer, how does the Mark 7 land? the man thought.

  The Mark 7 is made to dock with Galaxy class frigates utilizing the Racellian docking coupling.

  Can the Mark 7 make a terrestrial landing?

  Yes. And the man let out a deep breath. But then the computer continued: …with a compatible Racellian terrestrial landing coupler.

  What if there is no coupler?

  The Mark 7 cannot make a terrestrial landing without the requisite coupler module which provides inertial dampening and acts as a final approach homing beacon.

  So I’m a bullet without brakes headed straight down into a planet, he thought. He asked the computer for instructions on how to override the war
ning. He issued the command and suddenly the pod was quiet. Just the soft red nav warning still flashing. He left it on and floated down to his bed. Then he strapped in and let out a deep breath of air, started coughing.

  At least I know how I will die, he thought. At least it won’t be from running out of oxygen or dying of dehydration. That is something. He instinctively reached for the gun under his left arm that wasn’t there. He missed the gun. Wanted to feel it in his hands. But right then, the struggle for life and meaning and the quest to know exactly who he was had ended, and a calmness came over the little pod headed straight for Duval.

  Computer, he thought. We lost.

  Invalid query, came the reply.

  And so the man relaxed, dimmed the lights and waited. There was nothing else to do.

  After awhile the little pod started to shake violently. We’re getting close, he thought. He jostled around, his head hitting the pads, and he wished for a moment he had a helmet or another strap, but he knew it would be over soon enough. The final dive down into the atmosphere would only take a few minutes and then he and the pod would make a nice, big crater somewhere in Duval for the locals to gawk at. He started to sweat, the temperature inside the pod getting hotter and he imagined the cone glowing red, wondered if the old pod would simply burn up before he got to the bottom.

  His mind drifted and he didn’t strain to remember anything. He thought of the girl, Jaylen. How he missed her. How she felt in his arms. He wished he could go to sleep and dream of her just once more but his time was over. So he remembered her. Dream memories, but they were his. The first time they met. He’d been so nervous, and couldn’t think of what to say.

  And she’d rambled on about jump time calculations and dampeners warming up. Fed frigates with escape pods launching. The ramblings of an engineer. His beautiful engineer. And then an image popped into his mind. It was a memory from before. Not the ship memories with Jaylen, but something else. The picture in his mind was a merchant ship, cut in half by an ion cannon from a BG Destroyer, tiny escape pods spilling out of the broken ship. Where was he then? Who was he then? He didn’t know. He could see the tiny pods making a bee-line for a Fed space station. He could see them trying to evade the smaller fixed cannons from the shiny black Destroyer.