They had an honor culture, in which duty and obligation were paramount. Loyalty was everything to the v-kuay. Whether it was their condition or their culture, when challenged, v-kuay often became irrational and violent. There were rumors that when they ran out of food, they ate whatever they could catch, including people. Since the resources they mined were needed by every society, v-kuay were barely tolerated.
“They’re decayed?” Glaikis jumped up and looked around.
“They probably meant to drop you off but if they can’t, that’s bad. We have to get you out of there –” The panel went blank. He lost the connection to Glaikis.
“They’re charging their engines for a jump!” Yuina said.
“Get us ahead of the curve,” he instructed.
Hawking spoke up. “We have some energy stored sir.”
Yuina turned her head and said, “A science robot? That’s handy. Show me their heading!”
“If you don’t mind Miss Yuina, I’m calculating their vector now,” Hawking replied.
Steo spoke to the freighter again. “This is the captain of the Eye of Orion. You have a passenger for us. Don’t move.”
Faster-than-light travel couldn’t happen by burning fuel. That took too much energy. The universe has an unlimited source of energy in gravity but it’s dispersed and weak. Engines gathered gravitons and converted them into tremendous amounts of power.
For FTL travel, a bubble with no mass was formed around a ship. Since nothing with mass can exceed light speed, the ship seemed massless. That meant the ship couldn’t have inertial mass either; it had to stay still. A tachyon subengine would use the energy stored in the e-cores and convert everything in the bubble to tachyons, and the ship shot across the cosmos in a straight line. The ship couldn’t turn while in this form.
Travel within solar systems didn’t need to be faster than light. For bursts of fast flight within solar systems, the engines could collect gravitons and release them, flinging the ship from point to point. With small bursts from the engines, the ship’s course could be changed, just like the Eye of Orion had flown to the freighter in a few minutes.
The amount of energy a ship needed to collect was in direct proportion to the distance traveled. It didn’t take long to raise enough energy for a dash to another planet, but it could take weeks for a long interstellar jump.
“They’re at a dead stop. They’re about to jump,” Yuina warned.
“FTL?” Steo asked.
“Yes,” Yuina said.
“Far?”
“No.”
“Vector calculated,” Hawking confirmed.
An observer could collect two vital pieces of information: the direction they traveled and the amount of energy released. This allowed ships to pursue one another.
“Follow them!” Steo said. He shut off his lee and the icons disappeared.
Yuina talked while tapping. “Calculations show they’ll still be in the Navo system. Short jump. Jumping!” The Eye of Orion suddenly accelerated to 700 million miles an hour and shot like a bullet away from Bul Sahn. Light took minutes to get from one point to another in a solar system so the ship would take a little while to get to its destination.
“Do you think they’ll stop and change their course in route?” Steo asked.
Hawking said, “Even I would require some time to calculate safe passage to avoid planetary rings and comet trails sir. A lot of factors have to be accounted for in navigation. I doubt they have the processing power.”
Yuina said, “Wow. These controls really respond. Let’s see how tricky these decayed are.”
“We’ll catch up to them, right?” Steo asked.
“No,” she smiled. “They’ll catch up to us. I set our speed faster. We’ll arrive at their destination first.”
Everyone had a chance to calm down for a few minutes while they rushed through space. As they and the ship were in the form of tachyons, they passed through objects like meteorites and space dust. Shields were unnecessary.
A moment later they came to a halt. There were no nearby planets.
The worst end for a faster-than-light trip would be to rematerialize in the middle of a planet or a sun. However ships were equipped with computers to adjust the final position, avoiding that fate.
“What do sensors say?” Steo asked.
“Sorry to keep saying this Steo, but wow. There’s more detection power here than I’ve ever seen. The freighter will be here in a minute,” Yuina said.
“One minute twenty three seconds,” corrected Hawking. “We can’t force information to get here faster but the pattern recognition, processing power and accuracy of these sensors is remarkable.”
She scowled at the robot for repeating what she said, then turned back to Steo. “I’ve got the antennae and dishes in the belly fin deployed. Even if we can’t visually see them when they appear on the black background of space, we’ll know they’re there.”
“Glad you found those controls,” Steo said.
“Yeah, but there are lots of others I can’t use. It’s like you don’t trust me,” she said with a sly smile.
On board the freighter, Glaikis packed quickly, stuffing her things in her backpack. She doubted the stories of v-kuay being cannibals. After all, they did business with other species all the time. It was probably a myth because of how they looked. She didn’t plan on staying aboard when it left, though.
Her connection with Steo had been cut, possibly by the freighter crew. She had no weapon and didn’t see anything useful in the hold. She headed to the door; the lights above it showed it was still unlocked.
When she swiped her hand over the pad, the door slid up to reveal a man wrapped in yellow and brown robes. Now she noticed the runny eyes and sticky patches of their brown, oily blood. He raised a large tool to strike. She punched him hard in the stomach. He doubled over, gasping from the impact. She grabbed him and tossed him into the room.
Glaikis was a heavyworlder. She was short for a human, barely five feet tall, but she was stocky and muscular. Her punches were forceful.
Seeing no one else in the metal corridor, she took the tool, shut the door and locked it from the outside. Which way to the lower bay? she wondered. That’s where the shuttle is.
Back in the bridge of the Eye of Orion, Hawking and Yuina announced simultaneously, “The freighter has arrived!”
Steo hailed them again. “Freighter, stop. We are not a threat to you.” He waited for a reply.
Yuina shouted, “They’ve launched a missile at us! Oh, that makes me so mad!”
“Defensive countermeasures should be available,” Steo said hopefully. He really hoped he hadn’t locked those systems down.
“We only have a few seconds, Miss Yuina. Try not to get us killed,” Hawking said.
“Shut … up!” she said through gritted teeth. She pounded the console on her right, then banged it a few more times.
Before Steo could ask, Hawking said, “Crisis averted.”
“What did you do?” Steo asked her.
“I sent a standard jamming signal at the missile and fired a decoy drone as a back-up.”
“A nice piece of work, sir. She did two things where I didn’t think she could do one,” Hawking said.
Yuina guffawed. “Next time I’ll eject you as a decoy Hawking.”
“Miss Yuina, that would hardly work as I don’t emit the proper electromagnetic and heat signatures of the Eye of Orion.”
She ignored him. “I’m taking back the decoy drone with a tractor beam. We have more drones but there’s no sense wasting it.”
Tractor beams used the ubiquitous energy of gravity to push or pull small objects near a starship. They were usually for preventing spacewalkers from drifting away from the ship.
Yuina relaxed a bit and leaned back in the pilot’s chair. “What now?” she said to Steo. “It looks like they’re charging their engines for another jump.”
“We have to follow them again,” he said.
“Why are
we doing this?” she asked doubtfully.
“First, one of our crew is on board that ship. Second, they fled for a reason.”
“They were in orbit on the side of the planet exactly 180 degrees from NBS 2. They were out of sight when they met that shuttle,” Hawking added.
“Hiding in the shadow of the planet,” Steo said.
Yuina checked to make sure the engines were charging. Hawking calculated the direction and distance of the freighter.
This time the instant they took off, the Eye of Orion was right behind them.
“T-mek, when we stop can you keep the engines gathering power?” Yuina asked.
“Affirmative, Y-fly,” Tully replied from below.
As they flew she said to Steo, “How do we stop them? Talking isn’t working.”
Steo paced and rubbed his jaw.
Meanwhile Glaikis worked her way to the freighter’s bridge. Freighters had few crewmembers, so she didn’t encounter anybody.
She came upon a locked cabinet near the bridge. Although she couldn’t read the v-kuay language, she could guess what the icons meant. With her heavy tool, she broke off the lock. It was a weapons locker. She found a laser pistol and checked its battery.
The Eye of Orion came to a stop. Yuina busily checked controls.
When the freighter appeared, Steo didn’t have time to say anything. It moved off at a slow speed. Hawking tracked it and Yuina followed. The freighter headed for an asteroid field. Everybody on the Eye of Orion wondered at the move by such a clumsy vehicle. They followed. As the freighter entered the asteroids, there was a sparkle and waver on the scanners. They had fired chaff, a combination of ship’s garbage and small pods that emitted random signals.
Yuina guided the Eye of Orion forward, confident that the new ship could navigate the asteroids with its precise controls and superior shields.
“MINE!” Hawking announced loudly.
“HALTING!” Yuina replied. “Now I need the targeting reticle!” The plastic device deployed and slid down in front of her eye.
“A mine?” Steo asked.
“Indeed, sir, obfuscated within the chaff,” the robot replied.
Yuina located the mine and fired a decoy drone at it. The mine’s sensors detected what it thought was a ship and shot high-velocity shrapnel at it, destroying the drone.
“How big is that asteroid field?” Steo asked.
Yuina almost answered, then shut up to let Hawking provide an exact number. “16,426 miles in diameter.”
“If you want them out of there, I can do it, but you have to unlock the offensive missile systems Steo,” she said.
“Not yet,” he said.
A debate started. Then they heard a woman’s voice interrupt, “Freighter to the Eye of Orion.” Steo hit a button and Glaikis’s face appeared. She stood in the other bridge with five v-kuay, a gun in her hand. Glaikis had the situation under control.
Soon the freighter came out of the asteroid field and met the Eye of Orion. Glaikis used the freighter’s shuttle to travel between the two. Steo shook her hand and greeted her aboard. They closed the door and let the shuttle fly back to the freighter by computer assist.
As they got into the bridge he asked her, “What happened?”
She plopped into a chair. “Freighters don’t have a lot of crew. I found a weapons locker and took a pistol, then I confronted them in the bridge. They stood down.”
Steo asked, “What were they running from? We were no threat.”
“They accepted a stolen shipment of narcotics from Bul Sahn. Powerful junk used for recreation on a lot of worlds,” Glaikis said.
“Garden to the galaxy,” Steo said.
“When I left in the shuttle, I jettisoned the lower cargo bay. That garbage is scattered throughout the asteroid field, and it probably wasn’t protected from cold-space, so it’s destroyed.”
Yuina asked, “Are we going to do anything more?”
Steo said, “Let them go. Our mission isn’t for thieves and contraband. Anyway, glad to have you on board Glaikis.”
Glaikis stood and introduced herself to Yuina, shaking her hand. “Where are you from?”
Yuina got serious. “I’m an orphan. My parents were killed in a raid by the Red Sector.” Lowering her voice she added, “And I’ve sworn revenge on them.”
Steo looked grim and thoughtful at this.
Glaikis laughed out loud. “Ha haaa! That’s hysterical! Where did you find this one?” She pointed at Yuina.
“What?” Steo said, confused. “It isn’t true?”
“By almighty science, no!” Glaikis said, still belly laughing.
Steo looked at the tirrian.
She looked abashed. “Actually my parents are alive, on Tirria. Last night I sent my mom a thank-you note for these.” She pulled a bag of cookies out of her cargo pocket.
“Cookies?” Steo exclaimed. “What kind of space adventurer gets cookies from their mom?”
Glaikis laughed.
CHAPTER 17
Mission Statement
After collecting their last crewmember, Yuina took the Eye of Orion back to NBS 2.
Hawking’s applications had kept the Forbidden Spin running smoothly without anyone noticing he was gone. As agreed, Slank and Steo transmitted Vane Tokar’s accounting and other incriminating files to NBS 2 news organizations as well as public networks. Hawking locked everyone out of the casino and opened the servers to the public. Hawking uploaded the vids in places people would see them. The deed was done.
Slank had improved security at Eroteme? and established an alibi. They spoke one last time before the Eye of Orion jumped out of system.
“All right, thanks Slank. See you again if I’m in the area of the Navo system,” Steo said cheerily.
Slank had a serious face. “You’ve always been welcome here Steo, but if I see you again without warning, my guards might shoot you dead.”
“Hey, I –” The screen went black.
“Another friendship strengthened, sir?” Governor asked.
“She’ll get over it. She just needs time.”
Governor left Steo’s side and floated to the astrometric station.
“What was that about?” Glaikis asked.
“The galaxy keeps getting smaller,” Governor responded.
Steo called a meeting in the holobridge, an empty white room attached to the main bridge. Everyone filed in: Yuina, Glaikis, Tully and the robots Governor and Hawking. Seats and a table floated out.
“The Savior of Yrtria. Have you heard the name?” Steo remained standing.
Yuina put her feet on the table. “Sorry, I don’t pay much attention to politics.”
“He’s not a politician. He’s Dr. Spierk, once called the Savior of Yrtria.”
“That sounds nice,” she said.
Glaikis scowled.
“Dr. Spierk promised the people of Yrtria paradise. Everlasting life. No one would need again,” Steo said.
“And that’s how it turned out. Everything’s fine and Yrtria is a party planet!” Yuina exclaimed.
Everyone looked at her. She shut up.
Steo continued. “Yrtria is quarantined. The remnants of the human population are mutated beyond recognition.”
“Unspeakable abominations,” Glaikis said.
“Many people died in the initial outbreak of a biological terror. More died in the camps Dr. Spierk set up to test for a cure, though some reports suggest he never tried and just used people to develop even worse diseases. Finally it got out of control. Neighboring star systems learned about it. They hired knight-mercenaries to contain Yrtria with whatever tools they had.”
“Boom?” Yuina said.
“Space!” Glaikis exclaimed. “Girl, you have no idea.”
“What?” Yuina asked.
“Glaikis was there,” Tully said.
“Oh! On the planet?” Yuina said.
“No. I was a crewmember on the Visigoth – a cruiser in the fleet sent to Yrtria,” the heavyworld
er said. “When the governments collapsed, the Doctor took control. Yrtria’s fleets thought he could do no wrong. He was their Savior. Our instructions were clear: nothing could escape the system. Ship-to-ship battles are usually short, but when neither side wants to leave …” Glaikis stared off into the distance. Yuina followed her line of sight and saw only a wall.
Glaikis said, “Three solid days of fighting. We couldn’t scare away the fanatics, we had to fight them. I watched the destroyer Minnesanger break an Yrtrian ship with a close-range missile barrage. The Yrtrian crew kept firing even as they died off, one by one. They made no effort to get to escape pods.”
Tully cut in. “The command summary: the Yrtrian fleet was destroyed. No ships escaped. The planet was quarantined. That was 14 years ago.”
“Today?” Yuina asked.
“Recent surveys show no human population. The virus leapt species, mutating what it didn’t kill outright,” Steo said.
Everyone was quiet.
“So you are a knight-mercenary?” Yuina asked Glaikis.
“I was,” Glaikis said.
Steo said, “Dr. Spierk is dead. That’s the official story. The bounties were never paid, so every pirate, knight-merc and infosurgent would get excited if they thought he’d escaped before the attack fleets got there. The upshot is, my contact on NBS 2 has a line on him. He’s got a ship and he’s building something. Probably a superweapon.”
Tully said, “That’s a heck of a bounty, my friend.” He stroked his goatee.
“How big is this bounty?” Yuina asked.
“Your share will be big enough to buy your own ship and fly it to your own dance club,” Tully said.
Yuina jumped up. “Awesome brilliance!”
“That’s not the only reason we’re going. I’ve never captured a man before, and Dr. Spierk might not be on the ship. My goal is to gearjack whatever superweapon they’re building. We leave as soon as Tully says we’re ready,” Steo said.
The Eye of Orion_Book 1_Gearjackers Page 10