Garth took the parts box and jumped down, and with his co-pilot and the crew from the other chopper they started putting the ship back together. Lucy had us all grabbing rags and buckets and gear and bags, and hauling them into the ship. I almost gagged at the stench, not unlike the cages that had been at the center, but stronger.
Lucy spent time figuring out different functions and marking them as I, Loka, and the others used the water cans off the choppers to clean the shit and slime off the deck of the ship. Lucy said not to splash a lot of water around doing it. Finally we transferred food and water. After thirty minutes another chopper showed with additional supplies along with cleaning people to help the ship get a full sanitization. Next I knew Garth was inside, all the extra people were gone, and I watched the choppers leave.
The smell was still there faintly, but the stronger smell of soaps and sanitizers prevailed. “Damn they are pigs!” I said.
“Maybe or maybe it was because the toilets were all broken? I have two working, but the external dumps had been locked closed and I don’t think the MKs knew how to open them, so they tried to break them open—they just broke them instead,” Garth said, as he crawled out from under a console.
“Lucy, ready here,” he told her.
“Okay people, we are ready to start. I will run the checklist with Garth. Secure hatches and find a seat to strap into,” Lucy said.
The ship was small and tight. It had two benches down the sides and four chairs around the nose. Pilot, co-pilot, communications, and last was a navigation station. In the middle was a single seat with a small console, the captain’s seat. They were all designed for someone a little taller than we were, but not a lot.
“Garth Pilot, Loka Co-pilot, I’ll sit Captain, Eldon take the nav station, anyone can have communications—we won’t do anything but monitoring. The rest of you grab a bench and strap in please?”
I guess Reta was fastest; she got the com chair and smiled.
“Garth and Loka, I found the manuals on this, it is early spaceflight. Just past where time/space jumps developed. Give me a few minutes, I am figuring out the rest of the language structure. It has no common base that I recognize.
I watched her take a couple of markers and her hands flew over the various consoles, writing names and notes on the parts not already marked. The com console she left alone. The nav took the longest. When I asked she said all their measurement systems were different and not as linear as ours; also the conversions were going to be tricky for some of it.
“Okay, I think we are ready. While we work to get airborne I need Eldon to work on finding where we are and where we want to go. Seems their name for their home planet was Dinhja. It is as close as I can get. I wrote it on the pad there. I need to know a three dimensional direction as soon as you can find one for me.
“Garth, and Loka, follow my thoughts here. For them yellow was our green and red was our red, they had no green as we use it. If it is yellow say green.
“Let’s go. Forward converters on.”
Garth flipped a switch. “On, umm, green.”
“In order, battery banks one through four,” Lucy said.
“One green, two, three, four, all green,” Loka said.
“This is weird the way they wrote it, oh well. Aux one and two on.”
“Green,” Garth said.
“Stabilization comps one and three on.”
“Green,” Garth said again.
“Stabilization comps two and four on.”
“Green,” Loka said.
“Rear converters on.”
Garth flipped, and said, “Green.”
“Main Comp on.”
“On and green,” Garth said.
“Says wait one minute for warm-up,” Lucy said. “Then looks like we start the reactor.”
The minute took forever. “Reactor main cooling valves open, shield check active, pumps active, start sequencer to one, fuel rods to auto, dampers to auto, check all status. If green then close the activate switch and wait for final power green.” Lucy was reading from her memory as Garth or Loka activated each and acknowledged a green.
“Final power is green,” Garth said.
“Excellent. Forward thrust to zero, rear thrust to zero, both lateral thrusts to zero, vertical thrust two clicks.”
I heard a light buzz then a rumble. Looking out the forward view ports I saw flames of red/yellow as the ship started to shake a bit then I sensed we were rising. Oh shit, I was supposed to get a heading. I heard Lucy say, “Vertical to four.”
I looked at the console and found a map could be brought up on a screen and expanded or contracted with my fingers. I kept comparing the name she gave to what I was seeing labeled on the screen.
It took a bit of work and Lucy came over to help. “Dang, I thought the Honor Central crap was old—this is old school. Okay, here is our destination. Use the two little sticks to maneuver the vertical and horizontal hairs over top, then hit the side view, this button here.” When she hit it everything changed, like a side view. “Turn the knob up or down until the dot is exactly on-top of the cross then flip back to front.” She did. “And here is all the information, which of course you can’t read, but I can.” She grinned.
“Pilot and co-pilot, both set these as I read them. When done and set hit the orange buttons next to each to lock them, then each read them back to verify. Clear?”
Garth and Loka both said it was clear.
“Line A: 25361.23, next is Line B: 44912.22, Line C: 72134.17, set those, lock and read back, both of you.”
They each did as instructed, then Lucy said, “Pilot, thrust is 16 more clicks from where it is now then, at 80,000 feet stop vertical and neutralize it with negative clicks. When vertical rate is zero switch forward to 100% and the computer will handle the rest.”
I couldn’t see the altitude meter, but knew Lucy had marked it. Garth finally said, “We are at 80,000 feet and holding, switching to forward now.”
“Okay, both of you hit the auto pilot, and when it turns green we are officially space-borne.”
Loka was the last to say, “Green,” as out of the corner of my eye I saw lights blink to yellow.
“People, you are free to move about. Loka, that round green screen to your left is the radar and laser detection scope, keep an eye on it for other vessels. Let me know if you see any. There is an alarm for it, but they miss things sometimes. This ship is barely reliable.
“Garth, you or Loka keep an eye on the yellow dot, which is us—make sure it stays in the center of all three of your screens; holler if it moves,” she said. “Reta, let you mind flow as far as it will. Relax and report anything strange or different you feel. I also want a full bandwidth sweep of all radio, microwave, and laser frequencies at least once an hour.”
“I thought they use mental waves?” I asked.
“I am looking for human signals from anyplace.”
“Oh, I see.”
As the reality of being in space set in we all looked to a window and watched Myla’s planet as it slowly shrunk. To be among the gods, to be in space. Damn, what a rush!
Lucy sat in the Captains chair and it took a few seconds for me to realize she really didn’t need any of us. All of our telltales were on her panels as well.
Time passed in what became boring routine, nothing changing, nothing spotted, nothing heard for several days.
The detection gear went red, as in warning, one day. I will call it morning for the sake of argument. Loka spotted it first. It was a long thin wavy red line on the scope.
Lucy smiled as she analyzed it. “A space fold. Good. We will be in range in another day. For those that don’t know, it can shorten our travel time from years to days, depending on the fold’s size.”
She showed us the how and why of fold jumping, the earliest version that eventually led to the development of the warpfield generators. Lucy studied it and calculated where to enter and leave to present ourselves as close as safety permitted to our targe
t area.
“Okay, I think I can get us about two days out from the planet. Full scans as we go through. Eldon, you’re on weapons. I’ll show them to you in a minute. The rest of you secure all loose items—sometimes it gets bumpy.”
People were putting up water cups, writing instruments, papers and books, as Lucy stood beside me. “I can do this of course.”
“Of course, but you have to make us feel needed.”
“Something like that,” she laughed. “Not really, I want to focus on the scans of space and ground and see if we can find that rodent. Also we will need crews as time goes on. All humanoid ships are similar, just a matter of finding the correct sequences. You are our training base.
“If we find these rodents we’ll need to land. If any MKs show up here is what you need to do, it is all a straight forward system.” With that she went to the top right hand corner of my nav screen and I saw her push the corner with a short jab. The whole panel pivoted around and a new panel locked in place.
“This uses 32MM projectiles. It fires four at a time. We found eight reloads. Only eight, Eldon. They are HE. Pretty simple, your center stick now controls the aim. When it flashes red you’re on target, computer does ranging. Now this one here,” she pushed a button and a different screen came up, “this one shoots the fairytale.”
She was baiting me and I knew it. “What’s a fairytale?”
She smiled. “It is what many people on many planets always hoped would be the cheap ultimate weapon, the pulsed laser. Good idea, but a fairytale.”
Okay, we’d had this discussion before. The pulsed laser was okay on stationary targets where you had time to let it penetrate metal or stone. It was what they used to cut the rooms in rock like Honor Central. Efficient but slow.
“This is actually one of the better designs. A 1.6kV pulsed Nd: yttrium-aluminum-garnet beam. It uses a 12.5 cm transmissive focusing lens but I won’t bore you with the details. It can work on thin metal and soft rocks if they are sitting still or you are very accurate with repeated shots. I think the people who made this used it for the mining of asteroids, not sure. Anyway, that’s it, just those two. We didn’t have time to rearm it with weapons we actually have ammo for so if needed make it all count. You just need to keep us flying if we are jumped until I can help.
“Okay, here is the targeting system. For the 32MM just point, lock and shoot. But the laser uses focus as well, that is why it is on your station. The second is the depth of field or focus. Bring up the second screen and line it up so the dot is just past the line that makes the target. In other words the depth of penetration. Once in place hit this and it will adjust the depth from then on. You’d think the computer would do it and it would be automatic, but no, which is why I think it was used for mining. Different rocks and minerals required different depths rather than metal ship skins. Oh, this button gives the forward view and is guided by the left hand stick. You’ll need to practice a bit, but it isn’t hard.
“Everybody strap in please, we jump in forty-five seconds.” She sat in her chair and we were ready.
How do I describe feeling like my body was being disassembled and then put back together? I could actually see other me’s staring at me or ahead, lines of them on both sides. I did notice as they went further away there were more and more differences, but I may have been seeing things. All felt weird, a bit like the gates, but different and slower.
As the room refocused there was some bumping around, not a lot, then things settled down.
“Scans, please,” Lucy said, as we all were looking for anything.
The planet was a greenish blue orb that hung in space, we came out pretty damn close. It had a single moon and from what I saw, the planet had several land masses and vast oceans. Very pretty. I scanned the screen in front of me and zoomed in and out, but a laser sight wasn’t a telescope. Lucy brought it up on her main screen and zoomed in—it worked and we could see woods and fields. After a bit she zoomed in on a large city, not unlike ours had been, but bigger, much bigger. As she went to max the view blurred but one thing was eerily clear, the place was empty. Some buildings had been destroyed. Around the perimeters of it was major damage, shells of buildings, ghosts of what once was. From what Lucy had said and I knew, they had put up a fierce fight in their last desperate gasps to live, like Earth and Olgreender; they also failed. After a bit I saw Reta was crying silently. Tears flowing freely as what she saw registered. Loka was sad, others were as well—it was clear we all had memories of what was and is no more.
“I register nothing,” Reta said. “A lot of static, a few bursts in the light region I’m recording. I don’t feel anything alive either.”
All of our scans were negative until Reta yelped.
“What?” Lucy asked.
“Pain burst. Someone or something is alive.”
“I thought you could only receive at close range,” Garth said.
“We can only transmit at close range,” Reta said.
“Oh, sorry.”
“From the planet?” Lucy asked.
“Not sure, it was fairly strong.”
Lucy took over some scans and finally said, “They have eighteen satellites, they had global communications networks. Three of them are large enough to hold life. Check them first, look for signs of heat and electrical energies.”
The scientists came into play as we were crowded out of our chairs. They knew what to look for. Lucy spent time showing them how to use the instruments and soon Loka and I were on the benches in back. Actually a comforting change. I stretched out and Loka put my head in her lap as she watched the happenings in the ship. I think I was instantly asleep.
When I woke up Loka was asleep, she swapped her lap for a pillow and stretched out as well. What woke me was Lucy talking in my ear. “Sorry Eldon, I am sure you are all very tired but I need you for a bit. Let her sleep.”
I slowly rubbed circulation into my one numb arm as I stood up.
“We found something alive, actually two somethings. I think they are humanoids. Too soon to tell. The Station ahead. Reta says one is hurt or dying. She isn’t sure, not a normal reading. She says it is cluttered or jumbled.
“I need you to navigate the ship. I am the only one who can go outside without a suit, but only for a few minutes—my core processor isn’t heated. I also need to go out through the rear engine room, this ship has no pressure hatches.”
“No what?” I asked.
“Never mind. I will go into the engine room and void it then go out the cargo hatch to the station. It seems big enough for a crew of ten or twelve. I need you to keep the tail of this ship as close as you can to it until I return. Just like setting the nav point, just keep all three dots where I set them, okay?”
“Sure,” I told her. She smiled one of her weird smiles and I felt she hadn’t told me all. She patted me on the back and stepped through the rear door with one of our portable med units and locked it.
“Eldon, see the station in the view screen?” she asked through the earpiece.
“Yes,” I told her, as I saw the outside tail of our ship and the hatch of the other very close to it.
“Good, mark the points on the three screens and keep this ship exactly where it is.”
“Okay, I will,” I told her.
I saw her go to the hatch and tap on the door—nothing. Then she was at a window and looked in, then to a lower window. This seemed to have a full ring of windows. Lucy tapped on it several times and kept pointing to the hatch.
“They are humanoid and very afraid. One is female and pregnant from the looks of it,” Lucy said over the com. “I think they will cycle the hatch. If not I have to get back inside and warm up again.”
I found out why she had smiled as I realized the ship was drifting. I carefully realigned the dots and guess I said “shit” as Lucy laughed. I spent the next few minutes learning to try and move the ship gently, in the smallest of microbursts, all as I watched Lucy finally go into the satellite hatch and close
the outer door.
“I’m in, the male has a weapon on me but he’s not sure what to do with it. Though I know how to read their language from the ship’s manuals I find the verbal is quite different.”
I could hear her chattering away and his responses. Lucy kept changing how she talked and soon she was speaking to him. “He wants me to help her, she is in pain. He says he is sorry, they weren’t supposed to be able to conceive. All the rest are dead, most committed suicide once they saw what happened to their planet; she refused so he stayed as well. They don’t know how the MKs missed them, they had found the other satellite and ate them. Only thing I can think of is he said they pushed all the dead out into space around the station.” She chatted some more with him. “He says the woman has been in pain, almost all the food is gone, and there is little water. Systems are breaking down, it wasn’t designed to last so long without resupplies.
“Eldon, they have suits but none to fit her condition. Anyone have any ideas?”
Those awake shook their heads. “Nothing this second, Lucy.”
Loka came awake at all the commotion. I explained it to her.
“Ship her over,” she said.
“Excuse me?” Lucy asked.
“They transport supplies like Honor Central. I am sure some were pressurized crates.” So simple a blind man could see it, but I wasn’t blind.
I could hear Lucy chatting in the background. “Going to be very tight but it will work, good idea, Loka.”
I think I heard moans and grunts. Her moans, his grunts. As I maneuvered the ship back to position I saw Lucy come out the hatch and it closed then opened and a box just barely fitting emerged as Lucy guided it into the engine room. Soon a space suit followed. After they were in and our hatch closed Lucy told one of the scientists to do something and soon the door unlocked as Lucy carried the box into the small cabin.
She laid it on a bench and immediately opened it. A woman started gasping for air. She was very like us, a rusty gold hair color, a pinkish skin, even about Loka’s size, a little shorter. She had longer, more slender fingers. When she glanced my way, surveying the ship, I could see brown eyes. Not pretty, but not ugly, I guess normal would fit.
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