Wings of Earth- Season One

by Eric Michael Craig

  “I’m on my way.” The lift took forever to drop the two decks to the middeck, and as soon as the railing opened Ethan dashed for the MedBay door. Quinn had her on the diagnostic bed and was holding her down with one hand while she fought to get up. She was covered with fresh blood and had several large deep purple bruises on the side of her face.

  “What the frak happened?”

  “I was on my way back from meeting with a potential client in Down Seven, and a bunch of crotchbrain idiots wanted to dance me over.” Tiamorra Rayce was the ship’s load broker, so it was her job to find work, but usually doing her job didn’t involve getting the stuffing beat out of her.

  She hissed, as Quinn wiped at one of the wounds on her forehead.

  “Hold still so I can try to get some of this blood washed off. We need to see how bad you really are,” the handler said, leaning in and shaking his head as he looked at the gash.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks.” She pushed his hand away. “They’re probably in worse shape than I am.”

  “Maybe they are, but you look a little like a farm machine accident,” Quinn said. “I’m sure if they look worse than you, they’re still lying around in crumpled piles.”

  “I don’t care what kind of shape they’re in.” Ethan set his hand on her shoulder. She flinched, and he raised an eyebrow.

  “She doesn’t look to have anything that needs major repair.” Quinn turned around and grabbed a handheld scanner. Neither he nor the captain were qualified in anything more than basic first aid, but most of the gear was automated. If anything required more attention than what they could do, the ship’s AA could walk them through it.

  As he ran the unit over her head he frowned. “Except for this one. That looks like a fracture and it’s going to take some work.”

  “I agree, Captain,” Marti said, appearing at the door with its Humanform automech. It’s projected face showing a good simulation of concern. The AA had taken to wearing its body most of the time. However, it maintained continuous contact with the ship’s datanet, so it was reading the scanner even before Quinn saw the readout. “With the exception of the one injury above her right eye, she appears to only have minor cuts and contusions. The fracture of her suborbital foramen is limited and there are indications of a minor concussion. None of her injuries appear to be critical and all are within the repair capabilities of our equipment.”

  “I told you. I’ll be fine.” She glared at Quinn as he grabbed another piece of equipment off the bench behind him.

  “I think we should still get you to the Medical Center and have a doctor do a lookover,” Ethan said. “While we’re at it, we can comm security to go after whoever did this to you.”

  “No.” A surprising edge of steel sliced through her voice. She made serious eye contact with the one eye that would open completely and shook her head. “I’ll be fine, and I don’t want to get security involved. I taught them enough of a lesson that they won’t think about doing it again. I’ll heal and it’s not worth making a stink.”

  “Can you handle this Marti?” The captain turned to face the automech so Ammo couldn’t see his frustration. It would be nice if my crew did what I wanted, at least once in a while.

  “It is within my skill set.” The automech stepped up and took the tool from Quinn. The AA was more than capable as a doctor in a pinch, or even in a serious situation. Fortunately, this didn’t appear to be one.

  Stepping out of the way, Ethan leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms as he studied Ammo for several seconds. “Why are you pushing against getting security in on this?”

  “It won’t do any good,” she said. “Honestly, they’re probably long clear of where it happened, and it would just tie us up in things we don’t need.”

  Quinn glanced over his shoulder and shrugged. His face showed that he agreed with her.

  Ethan thought it over then nodded. “Since you’ll live, why don’t you tell me about what the hell you were doing alone in the deep district?”

  “Meeting with a potential client.”

  “You said that already, why didn’t you meet this client somewhere safer? Like maybe here on the ship?”

  “Down Seven is not that bad,” she said, aiming a hairy eyeball in Quinn’s direction as he held her head still while Marti ran the tissue regenerator over her forehead. The regenerator was making subsurface repairs, so the field was probably rattling her brain cells along with the bones of her skull.

  Ethan looked down at the blood that soaked the front of her thinskin and vest and shook his head. “Obviously, that’s a lie. It’s been a while since I was down that far in Phobos Landing, but I seem to remember that was an ugly neighborhood clear back when I visited here with my parents. This was where we came to pick up supplies and even my granddad wouldn’t go out alone in the deep district.”

  “It’s all in who you know.” She tried to wink but the swelling in her eye made it look like a painful twitch.

  “I also seem to remember it’s a bit of a low rent area. I thought the idea was to bring in high credit work?”

  She nodded and Quinn pushed down on her to hold her in place. “Unless you want us to seal your eyelid shut, I recommend you hold still.” She rolled her eyes but didn’t move again.

  “I went down there for a job, and I think I found one. But you need to get facetime with the client before I bring the paperwork to the deck. It would be a little outside our normal range of operation.”

  “After the last few jobs, I don’t know as anything would be beyond normal,” Quinn offered.

  “I think this would qualify,” she said. “It’s a big load that needs delivery in a single run. It would include lots of bonus time and would keep both ships operating together.”

  “That might make it more interesting for me,” he said.

  Ammo knew he was still debating whether to lease the Elysium Sun out to a contract crew. He wanted to put Nuko in the big seat, although she was resisting the idea of command. It would be a good career move for her, but she seemed like she’d rather sit back and stay second on the Olympus Dawn.

  Having a two-ship run, would be a way to give her more time in the black without making it obvious he was pushing her in that direction.

  “Then I should pass the word that you’re willing to meet with her?” Ammo flinched as the handler turned her head slightly to the side to give Marti better access to her temple with the regenerator.

  “Set it up and we’ll talk it over. Have her come to my office—”

  “She said she’d prefer not to do it on the ship,” she said.

  “Of course.” Ethan sighed and nodded.

  “As long as I don’t have to get mugged in order to meet with her.”

  Chapter Three

  Nuko Takata left the Elysium Sun moored at Armstrong Station and rode the shuttle down with the others to the Gateway Colony platform on L4 Prime. It took special dispensation from the Shan Takhu Institute’s security division to bring a ship all the way down to the colony platform, so unless they were picking up equipment, they had to leave the Sun behind.

  The Tacra Un Facility itself was the most secure place in Zone One, so she understood the need. In fact, they hadn’t even been allowed to bring their own security handler down with them. So, they left Angelique Wolf stranded on the ship. Nuko felt more than a little guilt over being a tourist while her friend sat back on the ship watching tri-vids and probably drinking massive quantities of synth-ale.

  It wasn’t the first time Nuko had been to STI, but it was the first time she’d been here as an adult. Back when she was a girl, her grandfather had brought her to Gateway to show her the archives of what had happened when they defeated Odysseus’ Ghost Fleet.

  She understood the history of the events that led up to the founding of the Institute because she’d seen the records in school, but standing on the platform and staring up at space where the battle had been fought to protect the Tacra Un Archive, it had felt so much more real to
her.

  Her childlike imagination saw the ships dancing across the sky, and that was what inspired her to become a pilot. And to throw herself out into the black sea of stars.

  Now, as an adult who had achieved that goal, she looked around at the Institute and saw it for what it was. Another school. Another base. It was far less exciting even as she knew that she was standing on the repository of one million years of alien technology. The Shan Takhu had left this archive of knowledge for humanity before mankind had climbed out of the caves, before anyone on Earth had even been aware there were stars in the sky.

  Yet for some reason, as exciting is that should be, the walls around her felt claustrophobic and she longed to get back to flying.

  Nuko sat in the dining hall of Old Main, watching students talking among themselves as they enthusiastically debated whatever it was they were doing. She could see the inflated sense of self-importance they all carried. They believed they deserved it because they were the penultimate of the educational hierarchy of humanity.

  She knew that in reality she wasn’t qualified to breathe the same air as these intellectual elite, and that it was her family name and its historical significance that had brought her this chance to tour the Institute. Again.

  There was only so much that she was allowed to see, because the Shan Takhu technology was so advanced that the scientists were still figuring out most of it, and more than a small fraction that they did understand, had been deemed to be too dangerous to proliferate to society in general.

  “How can you possibly be bored?” a man asked, walking up and standing at her table.

  She glanced up and recognized him but, doubted he was who he appeared to be. She blinked several times.

  “May I join you?” he asked.

  “You can’t be Chancellor Lu?” she asked.

  “I could be.” He grinned. “In fact, I was when I got up this morning. But I prefer Chei.”

  He looked exactly like the image she’d seen of the original crew of the Jakob Waltz when they arrived at L4 Prime, 127 years ago. She stared at him for several seconds and realized maybe not exactly, since there was a little gray in the hair at his temples. Otherwise, he looked no older than she was.

  He stood politely waiting for permission to sit and nodded at the back of the empty chair across from her.

  “Of course, I’m sorry. I didn’t honestly expect…”

  He winked and smiled. “They tell me you are Carter and Mikaela’s granddaughter,” he said as he settled into the chair. “I can see that in your eyes and your smile. I haven’t seen them in forty years.”

  She nodded. “They’re both gone now, but they told me so much about you. I almost feel like I should know you.”

  He sat in silence for several seconds nodding. “They could have come here for medical care if they needed it. We’ve got a few things we know how to do.”

  “I think they knew that, but they were both happy.” She smiled despite the feeling of profound sadness she felt from him.

  “What brings you to the Institute?” he asked, visibly picking himself up from the old memory. The set of his eyes had changed and for a brief instant she could see the age beneath his ageless skin.

  “I’m a pilot, and I brought one of your associates here to discuss business. We won’t be staying long, but I couldn’t pass the opportunity to come down and take the tour again.”

  “So, you’ve been here before?”

  She nodded. “I was maybe eleven or twelve. It’s what inspired me to do what I do for a living.”

  “Ouch. Now I feel really old. I was going to offer dinner and drinks, but maybe there’s something a bit inappropriate in that.”

  She blushed and looked down at the table. “Actually, I was waiting for my friends, but I would be… honored to…” She could feel her skin deepening toward crimson.

  “So, since this has become terribly awkward, who are the friends you’re waiting for?”

  “Kaycee and Elias.”

  He looked at her blankly.

  “Sorry. Keira Caldwell and Elias Pruitt.”

  “Oh yes, she was the doctor who was one of the survivors of Starlight Colony wasn’t she?” He cocked his head to the side. “That would make him the engineer assigned to work with her. How did you come to know them?”

  “I was the pilot on the ship that discovered the colonists were missing. Ethan Walker is my Captain,” she offered.

  “Interesting. I had no clue you were also famous.”

  She blushed again. “I don’t know if famous is a word Ethan or I would use. It was an unfortunate incident, and we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “That’s very much like what landed me here,” he said. “Sometimes history happens around us and we don’t even realize it.”

  “My grandfather said that to me more than once.”

  “That’s where I heard it. He was a very wise man.” He looked around and waved for an autobot. It appeared, bringing a bottle of gold liquor and two glasses without being given an order. “You do consume alcohol?”

  “Do you know a freighter pilot who doesn’t?”

  “Then I’d like to raise a glass to old friends and family.” He poured them both a drink. “To those moments in history that happen in spite of our best efforts.”

  He clinked the rim of his glass against hers and slammed down his shot in a single gulp. “How long will you be here?”

  “Until they finish their business,” she said, sipping her drink much more cautiously. “Kaycee wanted to get the lease reinstated for whatever piece of magical equipment she was studying, and I think Elias was looking for more info about what happened at Starlight. I figured it would be a few days, but I don’t know.”

  “Do you have any suspicions as to what happened to the colony?” he asked pouring himself another shot but leaving the glass on the table.

  She shook her head. “Other than the fact that everyone disappeared, and there was something strange going on with the power grid, we didn’t get much of a chance to figure it out.”

  He studied her for several seconds and she got the impression that he wasn’t sure he should believe her.

  “I’m more than a little frustrated about the lack of information,” Elias said as he walked up. Kaycee had appeared at a different door and was angling across the room behind him.

  “A lack of information?” the Chancellor asked. “I assume you are Mr. Pruitt?”

  He nodded. “It’s more than a lack of information. It’s like things are falling into a black hole.” He stood beside the table until Chei gestured for him to take a seat too.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I wrote up the preliminary assessment of the technology that caused the power grid anomaly. I spent two months on a temporary assignment to the Magellan,” he said. “Now I can’t even find records of my initial work. I wanted to run a comparative analysis of what we discovered to see if it matches anything in the Shan Takhu technological database.”

  “You think it might be Shan Takhu technology?” Chei asked.

  “I don’t know because we never found any hardware, but since it doesn’t appear to be anything of human origin, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to see if there was some kind of correlation.”

  “That’s an interesting hypothesis,” he said, leaning back a bit in his chair. His features drifted toward a flatness that caused Nuko to wonder if he was hiding something.

  “Have you talked to the Tacra Un central interface?” Chei glanced down as an autobot brought another glass to the table.

  “I tried, but the new system is nowhere near as helpful as Dutch was,” Elias said.

  “What happened to Dutch?” Kaycee asked as she crashed down in the remaining seat without waiting for approval from the Chancellor.

  Apparently reading Nuko’s expression of confusion, Chei explained, “Dutch was the original AA on the Jakob Waltz. He had blended into the Tacra Un awareness shortly after we arrived, and a fe
w years ago he decided that it was time to call it quits.”

  Picking up his glass and staring at it, his face settled into an expression that showed his true age. “Dutch self-terminated almost two years ago. It’s strange how I miss that AA more than almost anyone.”

  He emptied his drink in a single swallow and hauling in a deep breath, stood up. “I’ll leave the bottle here for you to enjoy. Just remember to always keep old friends and family near.”

  Chapter Four

  Lately Ethan had been drinking and eating in establishments that had been well above his usual air supply, but occasionally he just liked to find a dive and watch people drink themselves stupid. He’d refused to go all the way to Down Seven, even for work, but Phobos Landing was full of marginal watering holes on almost any of the levels.

  Today he felt like joining them in the ranks of drunken idiocracy, but it wasn’t going to happen and he knew it. Even if Quinn weren’t tagging along to keep him out of trouble, he was here to meet with the client. It didn’t matter whether he felt inclined to binge. He had work to do. It had surprised them when the client suggested a place called Cranky Drake’s and as they sat watching the clientele come and go, it was obvious the place lived down to its name.

  The handler sat discreetly at the bar, not close enough to be part of the conversation, but well within range if someone was inclined to try to inflict attitude on Ethan like they’d tried with Ammo. Of course, they had walked in together, and Quinn’s two meter-thirty bulk was anything but discreet. Even if he hadn’t been wearing his leather fetish uniform.

  “I’ve got to get him something less kinky to wear for security work,” Ethan muttered as he stared at the chrono on the wall behind the bar.

  “Boss, what’s the matter, you don’t like leather?” Quinn ran his hand over his chest like he was enjoying himself inappropriately. “It’s so sexy.” They maintained an open comm channel and the handler’s voice reminded him he needed to keep his thoughts to himself.