Paws and Planets

by Candy Rae

  “Captain?” It was a male voice. Wanda didn’t recognise it.

  “Who is this?” She enunciated the words with great care.

  “Sub-Leftenant Switherburn, Engineering,” the voice identified himself.

  Wanda recognised it now. Denis Switherburn was one of the more junior engineers, a bright-faced young man in his early twenties and more importantly, a steady officer with a calm disposition and noted for his quiet common sense.

  “Damage report?”

  Denis Switherburn’s crackling voice replied with commendable promptitude.

  “Minimal here in Engineering Captain. Power-core is intact and we’re working on trying to restore operational manageability.”

  “Casualties?”

  “Here? Minor bumps and bruises but two fatalities, Artificers Watt and Kendrick.”

  “Commander Wright?”

  Commander Wright was the Chief Engineer, an elderly man who was due to retire on the colony world of Riga at the end of this commission.

  “Knocked unconscious but he’s beginning to come round.”

  “Good. Keep me informed of his progress.”

  “Aye aye Captain.”

  “Do you have contact with the Bridge?” Although she had pressed that button, it had not lit up, signifying that the connection was as dead as a dodo.

  “Not yet Ma’am but we’re working on it. We do know however that the bridge hull wasn’t breached.”

  He became silent then and a sinking feeling started in the pit of Wanda’s stomach.

  “Where are the breaches?”

  “Colony sections one, two and four Ma’am, down port side. Three, five and seven are intact, we have restored contact with them and six and eight we don’t know. Some of the sensors are malfunctioning.”

  Wanda took a deep breath. That her ship had been badly damaged was certain.

  “Life Support?”

  All she seemed to be doing was asking questions.

  “Apart from here and the sections we are in contact with I don’t know yet. We’re working on it.”

  “Right, keep this line open,” she ordered, glancing up at the support status box above her head. “Life support here is A-okay and this ready cabin shares oxygen with the bridge so chances are that they are a-okay too. Door lock is showing A-status but is emergency locked. Is there any way you can get the blasted thing open from your end using the over-ride?”

  “I’ll get Ensign Black on to the problem Ma’am.” There was a pause. “He says it shouldn’t take long. He’s rerouting the data paths.”

  All Wanda could do now was wait. She sat, listening into the murmuring voices at the other end of the comms link. She was hearing enough to begin to build a picture of the Melbourne’s status.

  Colony section one was a write-off. Not one occupant, unless he or she had managed to reach one of the emergency cabinets could have survived due to the total decompression. Rescue parties would have to don EVA suits to enter and their progress would be desperately slow.

  Luckily ship design was no longer in its infancy and even major hull breaches could no longer destroy a ship’s capability to survive. Each section and that included both engineering and the food and livestock pod could sustain themselves for a considerable time. The airlock systems had done the job they had been designed to do.

  As the ship hours passed a fuller picture began to emerge, especially once the comms link was restored between Captain and Bridge.

  Amazingly the on-duty bridge crew had emerged from the disaster unscathed. Wanda’s 2IC, one Denis MacBrayne, a brawny Scotsman with bright ginger hair, had, in his usual capable fashion and with his Captain incommunicado, taken control of the situation, dealing with one emergency after another, not that Wanda would have expected anything less.

  Except for the destroyed colony section, the WCCS Melbourne had emerged from the disaster better than Wanda could possibly have expected.

  By the time her cabin door whooshed open, he could even report that the rescue crews were finding survivors there; those fortunate enough and quick enough and with enough presence of mind, when the klaxons rang out to reach one of the emergency cabinets. A percentage of those being found alive were young children, some very young, whose parents had got them inside the cabinets first, not leaving themselves enough time to save themselves.

  The schooling facility too had survived and had in fact, sustained absolutely no damage whatever. The facility had extra safety skins and locks in place for just such an eventuality. Almost the full complement of the Melbourne’s children, aged between seven and sixteen were waiting impatiently to be let out but Commander MacBrayne had left them there for the moment until it was found out who had families to return to and who had not.

  The psychiatrists on board would have a busy time ahead of them comforting the bereaved.

  By ship-night, the majority of the exhausted survivors were asleep and Wanda could at last take a deep breath and bend her mind as to what they should do next.

  There had been no sign of any of the other ships in the convoy, which was really not surprising when it was ascertained just exactly where the WCCS Melbourne was.

  The Navigation Leftenant checked and re-checked his results at least four times before he made his report.

  “How far?” asked Wanda in a voice devoid of emotion as she waited for the confirmation of her own calculations.

  “It would have taken us forty-seven years to have travelled this far Ma’am,” he reiterated. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible to have come all this way in a matter of seconds and still be in one piece if you’d asked me yesterday.”

  Wanda looked over to her 2IC. “So what do you suggest we do now Denis? The way I look at it we have two choices. We can either turn round and try to make it to Riga on our own. It would take …” She made some mental calculations.

  “Forty-one years and ten months,” the Nav Leftenant supplied in a helpful voice.

  “Thank you,” Wanda replied absently, “or we can cut our losses and try to find another planet on our own, here, in this part of the Galaxy.”

  “The Melbourne wasn’t designed for a long haul of an extra forty-one or so years,” vouchsafed Denis MacBrayne. “The power-core would be fine, it’s a new unit fitted last refit but she’s been severely, although not fatally damaged structurally, the inner airlocks holding at section one aren’t designed to keep up support integrity on a long term basis. There’s the not knowing how long they’ll stand up to the strain.”

  Wanda accepted this as fact.

  “Food and water,” continued Denis MacBrayne, “that’s another minus. We were twelve years out on a twenty year passage. Livestock and growing pod is intact but I say we do, as you suggest, cut our losses and start looking for a planet we can reach in safety.”

  Wanda nodded. “I agree, but with one proviso; we head back the way we have come, more slowly this time of course,” she grinned, “making repairs as we go and if we find a suitable planet we stop.”

  “There are indications that there might be some that might fit,” added the Nav Leftenant. “Probes have reached this far out and they did flag up possibilities.”

  “Right,” announced Wanda, “o-seven-hundred hours tomorrow, meeting of all departmental heads. I’ll inform them about my decision then.”

  “Some have been asking already,” warned Denis MacBrayne.

  “Let them wait,” said Wanda, “we’re all tired and should be asleep. Leftenant, get some information about possible routes then get some rest.”

  The Nav Leftenant saluted and left them.

  “Agreed,” said Denis MacBrayne, also preparing to depart. “I’m going to get some shut-eye and you Captain must too.”

  “Once I’ve visited the sick-bays,” she told him. “My job, not yours. The price of command.”

  The occupants of the Melbourne spent an uneasy night. Wanda herself managed a few hours sleep and woke refreshed to a certain extent but Denis MacBrayne only managed a sixth
of that being called to the bridge early on in his slumbers. The airlocks and bulkheads around section one continued to hold and life support in all other sections was at ninety-seven per cent normal but the ships-engineers were worried.

  Whilst his Captain was sleeping Denis MacBrayne made another decision. As a precaution the sections around number one had been evacuated but when informed of this later that day, Wanda was confident that over the next days their occupiers would be able to return.

  EVA crews were beginning repairs to the outer hull. The ship remained stationery, not moving forward although the grav-turnings continued.

  * * * * *

  Wanda woke up.

  The ship felt different with her main engines silent. The rhythmic throbbing which Wanda had listened to and learnt to ignore over the past twelve years was absent. The hiatus of the ship’s lifeblood, she had heard Denis MacBrayne describe it as.

  Wanda found herself hearing sounds she hadn’t noticed before, the whirr of the air-fans, people moving around, the cry of a child. And the steady hum of the mainframe, she hadn’t even realised it made a noise.

  Wanda, even though she had rested, felt dry-eyed. The humidifiers weren’t working at full capacity yet and everyone would be soon complaining about it, but there was no time to savour the quietness, she had a meeting to prepare for. In Spacefleet one learned not to dilly dally around when duty called. She extricated herself from her bed covers and swung her legs down on to the deck. She wriggled her toes on the matting. Socks, she needed clean socks and a clean uniform and she would feel much better after a wash and a change.

  The meeting wasn’t for another hour so there might be time for a bit to eat, even a mug of caffee would be better than nothing. The kitchens were bound to be fully operational by now. It was said that an army marched on its stomach, well, Spacefleet was much the same.

  Spacefleet was the younger sister of what was commonly known as ‘The Wet Fleet’ or the Navy. The sea navies on planet Earth had been amalgamated in the middle of the twenty-second century and had a long tradition (copied by Spacefleet) of looking after its sailors.

  During her Officer Training Wanda had been required to read screen-page after screen-page of journals and books kept by sailor captains in those olden days, some from as far back as the eighteenth century when the Captains had written copious notes and reports about how they had fed and kept healthy those men under their command.

  She often thought that little had changed since these ancient days of sail. Provisions and the state of the said provisions, still took up an inordinate amount of a captain’s time. Nowadays of course it was not so ‘hands on’, she had a large commissariat department whose job it was to keep the occupants on the Melbourne well fed.

  Caffee would therefore be available, of that she was sure and was proved right when, a few moments after she had pressed the buzzer, her orderly appeared with a steaming mugful.

  She smiled a greeting at the woman and took the mug.

  “Thanks Emma,” she said, taking a sip. The woman had been her orderly for a long time and in private the two of them were on first name terms.

  “Is it okay Wanda? It’s last weeks stock you see. I had to rootle around a bit. Supplies from the commissariat pod aren’t exactly normal yet.”

  “No, its perfect, as usual,” Wanda replied, taking another sip. It was sweeter than normal but she knew Emma would have added another measure of sweetener to cover up any deficiencies. Caffee had a short shelf-life, beginning to deteriorate within around five days of picking.

  Once Wanda had tasted coffee, real coffee but coffee-bean trees didn’t travel well in space and caffee had been developed as a suitable alternative.

  “Commander MacBrayne said to tell you that he is on the Bridge. He’s been trying to make contact with other ships in the convoy. I’ll lay a fresh uniform out on the bed shall I, whilst you shower?”

  Emma had emphasised the verb and that told Wanda, without having to ask, that so far he had been unsuccessful.

  Wanda nodded and got on with her morning ablutions.

  * * * * *

  Denis MacBrayne lifted a tired ginger head towards his Captain as Wanda entered the bridge and waved a greeting. The Melbourne, although a part of Spacefleet, was not a military vessel but a colony transport and unlike these (Wanda had served as Ensign on the frigate WCMS Victory before deciding that colony transports were for her. After a few weeks of that commission she had realised that she was not emotionally suited to the military arm) discipline was more relaxed. When she had transferred to the colony arm it had been in its infancy and she was now one of the oldest Captains still on active service.

  Her rise up the fleet hierarchy had not been meteoric, rather the slow and steady climb up through the ranks, from Ensign (some old-timers still used the ancient term Midshipman) to Sub-Leftenant, Leftenant, Commander and then Captain. She had held the rank of Captain for the last sixteen years and didn’t expect to go higher (there were only three admirals in the entire colony branch).

  She was content with her lot. There had even been time for her to marry. Her husband was dead, he had died in a space accident when their children were very young and she had brought them up on her own. Unlike the military wing, crews in the colony wing were encouraged to keep their families with them, necessary because some of the voyages were very long, such as their now abortive journey to Riga.

  Her two daughters were grown up.

  Her eldest, Shelley was also a Spacefleet officer and was serving on the WCPS Electra, the prison transport that had been a part of the convoy to Riga.

  Wanda was trying hard not to think about what might have happened to her.

  Her younger daughter was Assistant Medical Officer here on the Melbourne.

  “Nothing from the others?” she asked Denis MacBrayne, her eyes ranging through the activity on the bridge.

  “Nothing so far. We have managed to retrieve one of the external dat-recorders, damaged but mostly watchable. We now therefore know something about what happened, small screen, here, look.”

  Wanda watched the short replay in silence, lips thinning as she saw how the wave of space debris had hit the convoy.

  “That bright flash is the Oklahoma as she exploded,” said Denis MacBrayne. “Must be her. She was next on our starboard side. Power-core must have blown. They never stood a chance.”

  The screen went blank.

  “The proximity sensor records tell us a little more,” he continued, “we think the Electra and the Argyll passed behind us, at speed. We’re lucky they didn’t hit, one was very close but I can’t tell you anything else about them. We think though that they were pushed in the same general direction as us but hey ho I’ve no real proof. It’s these two we’ve been trying to contact but without much success, in fact without any success. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you Denis. We go with our initial plan. Meeting is in half an hour.”

  * * * * *

  NEWCOMERS ON TWO LEGS (AL 0)

  What happened when man arrived on Planet Wolf?

  Daru always thought of morning as a magical time, the time when the sun would edge over the horizon bringing light and warmth to banish the cold, dark night. This was the time when the little burrowing vuz scurried back to their underground homes and safety, when the animals of the day woke and began to browse among the lush undergrowth at forest’s edge.

  He sat perched at the very edge of the cliff top surveying the vista that was opening in front of his sparkling blue eyes.

  Flapping wings alive, but it is good to be here, watching the morning mists dissipating, the forest as it reveals. It was also promising to be a very fine day, good flying weather. He sniffed the air, a hot summers day was in the offing he decided at last, fly Daru, fly!

  He bunched his muscles, extended his wings and launched his body off the cliff.

  By the rtaths of lost Diaglon, but this feels good!

  He spiralled down through the light wisps of cloud that clu
ng to the air, playing at trying to catch them, then wings labouring gained altitude again, this time snaking his tongue out to catch moisture drops. Xanus ago he had told his eldest son Haru that each drop tasted fabulous and had taught him the same manoeuvres when he had taught him to fly. What Haru, now long past the bumpety-flying stage, thought about the spraying cloud moisture-liquid he kept to himself, not wish to hurt his father’s feelings.

  His ears twitched and his nostrils flared as he sensed movement among the trees below and he peered down, his wings flapping to retain altitude then with effortless abandon he swooped down in the direction of the movement he had spied. Yes, there they were, a herd of kura, nosing amongst the grass, oblivious to the danger above. They were silly creatures, the kura, small ruminant herbivores. They never remembered that it was dangerous to move out from the cover of the forest glades. Daru was not the only creature on the planet who liked eating kura for dinner.

  Of course the forests were not safe either. They were the natural habitat of the Lind, the rtath of the wolf-like native carnivores with whom the Lai shared their continent.

  Daru chuckled to himself, the kura were safe from him, this morning. He had eaten of a large zarova buck late the previous evening and was no longer hungry and wouldn’t need to eat a full meal for a number of days. He wouldn’t be surprised however if another of his kind was to pay the browsing kura a visit before the day was much older or, more likely, that the supreme four-pawed hunters of the continent, the Lind might just cut out a meal from the silly, bleating herd.

  At the moment all Daru wanted to do was to fly until he could fly no more. Wings beating he flew and gloried in the simple fact that he was alive to do so.

  The sun was full in the sky when he decided that he should return to his daga and he turned to fly home, by a circuitous route, spiralling and diving with and through the air currents, never dreaming the news awaiting him.