Baxter Moon, Galactic Scout

by John Zakour

  “We did it,” I said.

  Elvin and Zenna both smiled. GiS pointed forward to the bay door.

  “They are ready for you to land now,” he said.

  “That is correct,” SC confirmed.

  “Then let’s bring her in,” I said.

  I turned off the stabilizers and nudged the control stick forward. We were so close to the Searcher I didn’t need much power. I just floated her in.

  I turned off my shuttle and looked around. I couldn’t help smiling. I had towed one shuttle and landed my shuttle on a real warp-capable Searcher-class space sphere. We had been on simulator versions of Searcher before, but this was the real thing. Now there would be no imagining I was on a simulator. I wanted to soak it all in. I deserved it.

  GiS must have seen the look on my face. “Wipe that silly grin off your face, Scout Moon,” he ordered. “We’ve just started this mission and we’re already behind schedule, and we may be one shuttle down. To make matters worse we have no idea what went wrong with that shuttle.”

  I released my flight harness and stood up. I wanted to tell GiS to lighten up. He always had a way of finding the worst in any situation. The thing is, in this case he was right and I knew it. Last week I probably would have argued for the sake of arguing, but not today. This wasn’t the time. We had a mission to accomplish. This was my first real mission and I was determined to make it a success. Even if that meant not arguing with GiS.

  “You’re right, again, Commander,” I said, hanging my head just a bit.

  GiS unbuckled his harness and then just stood there. He was dumbfounded. He wasn’t expecting to me to agree that easily. It threw him off stride. He adjusted his uniform and straightened up.

  “Of course I’m right,” he said.

  He patted me on the shoulder with his foot.

  “You did good, Baxter.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Of course with all the time I’ve spent training you, you better do good,” he added, though I swore he wasn’t quite as dead-on serious as he usually was when he said these things. “Now come on, we’ve got a job to do!”

  He walked off the shuttle.

  I looked at Elvin and Zenna. I shrugged.

  They shrugged.

  We followed GiS out of the shuttle on to the deck of the Searcher’s landing bay. You know how they say if you’ve been in one landing bay you’ve been on them all? Well, that doesn’t hold true when you are on a warp-class Sphere’s landing bay. Though it looked like a smaller version of the space station’s landing bay — a big open area surrounded by launch door — the thing was, knowing that this landing bay was inside a sphere that could go faster than light and travel to other galaxies made it special.

  We had all been on simulated Spheres before, but none of us, not even GiS, had ever been on a real one.

  “Zap!” Elvin exclaimed. “We’re on a real intergalactic faster-than-light sphere!” he said, echoing my thoughts.

  GiS looked around unimpressed. “No big deal. We’ve done this simulation module enough so you should all feel right at home.”

  I just looked at him.

  “Okay, maybe not right at home,” he admitted. “But close enough to get the job done.”

  We walked over to the exit elevator door where we were met by Kymm and her team. They looked a little shook up, but not much worse for the wear. It’s not like Lobi and Chriz were that much to look at even when they were at their best.

  Kymm extended her hand to me. “Nice work, Moon,” she said, “though I would have done the same for you, only with a smoother landing.”

  “A much smoother landing,” Chriz added.

  Kymm shot him a look. He sulked back. Yep, she had a thing for me alright.

  I shook Kymm’s hand. All I said was, “You’re welcome.”

  “Do you think what caused the malfunction on our shuttle could be related to what happened to Axel?” K-999 asked GiS.

  GiS rubbed his chin with his foot. “I don’t like to speculate,” he said.

  “Then just guess,” Zenna said.

  “I’d guess yes,” I said.

  GiS looked at me. “It’s still too early to know.” He looked at his watch. “It’s 0900 now; report to your quarters. We’ll meet in the conference room at 0930 to discuss options.”

  “That’s in thirty minutes,” Zenna whispered to me.

  “Thanks, I figured that out,” I told her.

  We all stepped on to the elevator.

  “SC-711, what floor are we staying on?” K-999 asked.

  “I have assigned you all adjacent rooms on level 13.”

  “Now, that’s an omen if ever I heard one,” I mumbled.

  “Will we have single rooms?” Kymm asked as the elevator started to rise.

  “Yes,” SC answered. “The rooms here are much smaller than your quarters but they are single occupancy. This sphere has room for up to two hundred crew and a hundred passengers, and since there are only eight of you, I thought it was logical to dedicate a floor to you.”

  “Good computing,” I told SC.

  I personally was thrilled to have a room to myself. It probably stems from me being an only child back at home. I respect my crew and I’m use to having them around me all the time, but there are times when it would be great to have my own space. I looked at Zenna. She had that look about her, a cross between her trying to think and being worried.

  “What’s wrong, Zen?” I asked.

  She looked down and lowered her eyes. “Uh, nothing.”

  Then it hit me. Zenna, being a twin, probably had never had a room to herself. She was scared. Bloop, I had never seen Zenna scared before. I’ve seen her confused many times. I’ve seen her baffled. I’ve seen her confused and baffled, just never scared.

  “Don’t worry, Zen, it will be okay.”

  Zenna looked up at me. “It’s just that…”

  “All the rooms are connected,” SC said, being surprisingly helpful. “Your brother Elvin will be in the room to your right and Baxter will be in the room to your left.”

  Zenna thought about it for a tic. “Well,” she said slowly, “with having a room to myself, at least I don’t have to worry about my foot odor accidentally knocking anybody out.”

  “See, that’s a plus for all of us,” I said.

  Zenna forced a smile, I knew she was trying to convince herself. “It probably won’t be too bad.”

  “Of course it won’t be. Bloop, Zen, you’re stronger than all of us put together.”

  “I know that,” she told me, speaking as if I was denser than the core of a white dwarf star. “I just don’t want to be lonely.”

  “Your room has doors that open to your brother’s and Baxter’s room,” SC added.

  Zenna looked at Elvin. “Will you keep your door open?”

  “Sure, Sis,” he said.

  Zenna looked at me. “Will you leave your door open?” she asked.

  “I won’t lock it,” I offered.

  Zenna looked at me with big puppy dog eyes.

  “Fine, I’ll leave it open a little,” I sighed.

  “Great!” she said.

  Kymm leaned over to me. “Nice just easing the fears of a teammate,” she whispered. I wasn’t sure if she was being cynical or not. I decided to believe she wasn’t.

  “You guys are the best!” Zenna said.

  Almost on Zenna’s remark the elevator stopped. The doors opened.

  “We have reached the 13th level. Please proceed out of the elevator to the right,” SC said, acting like an electronic tour guide.

  We followed SC’s instruction and entered the hallway. There wasn’t much to it, it was just a hallway. I imagine hallways haven’t changed much in the last couple hundred years, just walls dotted with doors and cheap lights. The only thing special about this hallway is that it happened to be on a sphere that goes faster than light, which in my humble opinion made it pretty sweet.

  As we walked, GiS talked, well, more like lectured. �
�We have no time to waste. SC, how long before the warp engines are ready?”

  “I am charging them now. They will be ready for warp burst in one hour and forty-two minutes and thirteen tics.”

  “Very good,” GiS said.

  That’s the thing about warp burst engines, while they are way fast, they take a while to prepare. I’m not entirely sure about the physics involved (though I am sure Elvin, Chriz or Lobi would be all to happy to explain them to me) but I do know it consists of mixing matter and antimatter to create worm pathways in space. These pathways are cosmic short cuts from one place to other.

  The other problem with warp burst engines is they are energy hogs. Once you warp burst to someplace you are dead in the water for a good deal of time. This means warp burst equipped spheres are great to hop from place to place if you plan to stay there and look around for a while. It makes the Searcher-class ships great research ships but lousy war ships. Which most of the time is fine as Searchers are exactly that — searchers. It is their mission to explore and to search out new life and all that jazz. We don’t want them warp bursting around the universe shooting things up. That’s not the way to make friends.

  Of course we’re not stupid either. We know that certain parts of the universe may not be as friendly and as open to us as we would like them to be. Some parts may even be downright hostile. I remember a class on possible alien cultures once where my professor had a theory that there might possibly be races out there that are so appalled by the way we smell they would want to destroy us. Luckily we haven’t run into any race like that. And quite frankly, to me any race that has evolved to the point of intergalactic space travel and has the capacity to destroy us would probably be smart enough to develop air filters so we wouldn’t offend them so much. Or at the very least hold their breath when they are around us. Still, since the possibility of hostile encounters certainly exists, we don’t go into these missions blindly. Searchers do come equipped with laser cannon batteries in all directions. We may come in peace, but we don’t want to leave in pieces. Searchers obviously don’t pack the pure power of the missile-loaded battle cruises, but they are capable of defending themselves.

  In this case, though, we were heading into potentially hostile territory with our weapons off-line. We’d be motionless and defenseless. I decided it was better not to think about it.

  I went into my room and looked around. It was your basic room, bed, desk, closet, computer screen with a small bathroom on the side. It was Spartan but it served its purpose. Plus, it was mine, just mine.

  I sat down on the bed, just to test its mattress. I was pretty certain that Earth Force regulations required a firm mattress. I was right, the mattress recessed just enough to give in to my weight, no more. It certainly wouldn’t be like sleeping on air. But I was sure GiS would say we are not here to sleep.

  There was a knock at the bottom of my door. It was like somebody was banging the door with their foot.

  “Come in,” I said.

  The door receded into the wall. A little meter-tall bot that looked like a box on wheels, was in the doorway.

  “Greetings, Scout Moon. I am personal assistant bot PA2407,” the bot squeaked in a high pitched sound that matched its diminutive size. “Are you in need of any toiletries? “

  I just looked at the bot. Being a cadet I wasn’t use to having a bot actually wait on me. Sometimes I think our commanders think cadets are lower on the food chain than bots.

  “You know toiletries: soaps, shampoos, shaving cream, a shaving laser?” the bot said, almost as if it was apologizing.

  “I know what toiletries are,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” the bot said, more apologetically, rolling backwards. “It’s just the last cadet I asked, told me and I quote: ‘No thanks, I have a toilet in the room.’”

  “That must have been Zenna,” I said.

  The bot rolled forward again. “Yes sir, I believe it was. My sensors detected she was female. Once I explained to her what toiletries were, she requested two vials of anti-foot-odor nano-bots.”

  “Yep, definitely Zenna,” I said.

  The bot rolled into the room. A couple of telescoping robot arms and hands folded out of the bot’s sides. Each arm reached into the bot’s storage area. The bot pulled out some shaving cream and a shaving laser.

  “I will leave you additional shaving cream and shaving laser,” it said.

  “I only shave twice a week.”

  “Yes, in real space, but things work differently when warp bursting. As far as my data banks show, you and your crew will be the first adolescents into true hyperspace. Who knows how your bodies will react?” it said. “You humans may play with the time-space continuum but you still do not understand it. It never hurts to look nice,” the bot concluded.

  I wasn’t going to argue. I didn’t have a leg to stand on. Was the bot correct? Would we be the first teens to travel faster than light? I thought for a tic. He probably was right. Wow, I had never thought of that. Our mission was going to be even more significant than I thought.

  The bot rolled out of the room. I was pretty sure it said, “Have a nice warp. If you need me just send me an email,” but truthfully, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. I was deep in thought, at least as deep in thought as I ever get. Were we really going to be the first teens in hyperspace? Did they know how that might affect us? Did they care? What the bloop were we doing out here anyhow? We’re just a bunch of kids. Sure we’ve been training for a few years, but we have no experience. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe Earth Gov wanted us to fail. Did they maybe they want a war? Maybe they thought the planet was getting too complacent and a war would shock us into working harder. Maybe they thought ten billion people on the planet were too many. Did they want to cull some out? Maybe I was just thinking too much? Maybe I had read too many conspiracy blogs.

  Before I got too deep into my thoughts, SC came on over the intercom.

  “As per GiS’s request, I have loaded all mission data into your quarter’s personal computer station,” SC said.

  “Thanks,” I said, leaving the world of the paranoid.

  “I have also downloaded all the specs from your shuttle and Shuttle K-II.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Though I was pretty certain I wasn’t going to look at those at all. I looked up at the screen. “What about transmissions to the shuttles?” I asked.

  There was silence for a few tics. “I never computed the possibilities that those would be important,” SC said. There was more silence. “Why would they be important?”

  “Just a hunch,” I said. “I admit I have no idea where it came from.”

  “I will look into it,” SC said.

  * * * *

  When I arrived at the conference room, the rest of the group was already sitting around a long metal table, each staring down at the table’s built-in computer screens. GiS looked up at me.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “SC, what time is it?” I asked.

  “09:29.90,” SC answered.

  “Well, you’re the last one here,” GiS said,

  “So I’ve noticed,” I said as I slid to the one open chair between Zenna and Kymm.

  I sat down. I patted Zenna on the back. I gave Kymm my best smile.

  “What have I missed?” I asked.

  “Do you mean missed now?” Zenna asked.

  “Ah, yes,” I answered.

  “Not much. GiS and K-999 were just explaining to us the importance of being prompt.”

  “Gee, sorry I missed that,” I said.

  Zenna leaned over to me and whispered. “Don’t worry. You’ve heard it about a thousand times!”

  “Thanks, Zen,” I whispered back.

  GiS cleared his throat to get our attention. We all turned toward him.

  “We need to figure out sooner than ASAP what happened to Kappa’s shuttle and how to fix it,” GiS said.

  “Scans have shown the shuttle is physically fine,” K-999 said as gruff as e
ver.

  “So why not erase the software, then copy Shuttle Sigma-II’s software over it,” Chriz suggested. “The two shuttles are identical; it should be a snap.”

  Elvin and Lobi just looked at each other. It figures the two super brains couldn’t figure out the easy solution.

  “That will work,” Elvin said.

  Lobi just nodded in agreement.

  “Good,” GiS said. “One problem solved. Of course that still doesn’t tell us what caused the problem and how we can prevent it from happening again.”

  “It has to be related to what happened to Axel,” Kymm said, as sure of herself as ever.

  “It doesn’t have to be,” GiS said, keeping Kymm from getting too sure of herself. “But I admit, it is a possibility.”

  Kymm smiled to herself and then at me.

  “I suppose it is possible to reprogram an android and a shuttle,” K-999 said. “Difficult but possible.”

  “I could do it,” Elvin said.

  “So could I,” Lobi said.

  “Me too,” Chriz added.

  Zenna shook her head. “I might be able to, but I wouldn’t want to.”

  I looked at the nerd squad. “Knowing how to do it and being able to do it are two completely different things.”

  The three of them just sat there with empty looks on their faces.

  “The shuttles are constantly guarded. Axel may not have been constantly guarded but he was a highly programmed, combat-ready android. It’s not like you could just walk right up to him and say, ’gee, Axel bud, let me reprogram you.’”

  “I admit it wouldn’t be easy,” Elvin said.

  “But we’re clever. We’d come up with something,” Chriz said.

  “Yeah,” Lobi added.

  Zenna shook her head. “I’m not that clever.”

  “SC, run a scan and identify all people, animal and machines that have had contact with Axel and the Shuttle K-II over the last two weeks.”

  “There are 213 matches to your search,” SC said.

  “That narrows it down,” I said cynically.

  “Not by much,” Zenna told me.

  “Any other anomalies?” K-999 asked SC.

  “Actually, yes,” SC answered. “On a tip from Baxter I did a scan of remote transmissions and I found something strange. Both Axel and the shuttle received an incoming transmission right before they went wacko.”