Voyager Dawn

by Richard Patton

  Ethan watched the DRACs depart day after day, envious that his own work did not extend beyond the boundaries of the fence. Mason would often visit him in the hangar on his break, rivaling Ethan’s lamentations with his own.

  “Think you’ve got it bad,” he said. “You haven’t had to deal with fights breaking out on the lido deck because someone stole a lawn chair. Civvies are going stir crazy in there. Come to think of it, I am too.”

  It was true that Ethan was at least granted the freedom to fly and perform real work. All of Omicron squad had been posted across the civilian sector of the ship, and had nothing to do but watch and wait for the civvies to do something stupid.

  “I guess,” Ethan responded lazily. He nodded at a crate that was being carted to the cargo area of the next DRAC in line to leave. “Looks like they’re having fun out there. That’s more equipment than we brought along.” Ethan stopped the loadmaster, Vance, as he passed by. “What are they taking with them?” Ethan asked, nodding at the crate.

  Vance checked his manifest. “Atmo, hydro, seismic sensors, fauna cams” he listed off, “And helluva lot of firepower.” He noted Ethan’s surprised look. “Yeah, I know. Captain’s a bit paranoid, if you ask me.”

  Rhodes was remaining cautious, Ethan agreed, but he did not think it was fair to accuse him of paranoia. Though the marines had not come across any further signs of sentient life, even in their now-massive search radius, the planet was dangerous enough. Ethan suspected the only reason Rhodes had not ordered that the ship leave the system was the world’s vast natural resources.

  “Got to be careful out there,” Mason said mildly.

  “Yeah,” Vance replied. He nodded to Ethan. “You were the one who brought in the Bullhound, right?” Ethan returned the nod in answer. “Good thing they die like everything else, then,” Vance finished. He excused himself to continue working.

  Although Vance was technically correct, the Bullhound itself continued to worry Ethan, as much as the device that was implanted within it did. Since the scouting mission and his encounter with the Bullhound, he had a feeling that it was the same type of creature – if not necessarily the same individual – that had approached Voyager Dawn on the night that Waffle arrived. Two encounters with such animals in less than two weeks proved Rhode’s hypothesis that they were indeed not afraid of humans or technology, and despite Vance’s nonchalant observation regarding the Bullhound’s mortality, they were not easy to kill.

  “Walker!” someone called suddenly from behind. Ethan twisted around on top of the pile of I-beams that he and Mason were sitting on to see Moira Goodman approaching them.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he acknowledged.

  “That little fuzzball’s got me-” she stopped, only now seeming to realize Mason’s presence.

  “I told him already,” Ethan cut in, “he’s good.”

  “Fine. That little fuzzball’s got me stuck up on Level C all day making sure he doesn’t get into trouble. I’m itching for a change of scenery.”

  “I’m sorry?” Ethan tried hesitantly.

  “Shove your sorrys, Sergeant. You take care of Waffle until the end of the shift, and I’ll see you get some better flights this week. I’ve got enough pull with the captain for that.”

  Ethan looked to Mason, who remained unhelpfully reserved. “Sure,” Ethan said finally. Moira was visibly relieved.

  “You’re one in a million, Walker,” she said. She stuck a finger in the direction of the pilot’s barracks. “Waffle’s asleep on my bunk. Don’t feed him anything.”

  *

  The crew sector of Voyager Dawn was unusually quiet for the lunch hour; everyone evidently had the same idea as Ethan and had taken their meals outside. One could only look at the same hallways and cramped metal rooms for so long before going stir crazy, as was evident with the civilians. Despite the danger that lurked beyond the fence, Ethan had a feeling the colonists would find Dawn Six quite to their liking.

  Ethan arrived at the barracks and opened the door, casually glancing down the hall to make sure no one was coming. Other than the pilots, he was sure very few people knew about Waffle, and Moira wanted it to stay that way.

  Something shot out of the darkened barracks, nimbly sliding between Ethan’s feet. “Shit,” he breathed as Waffle scurried down the hallway towards the civilian sector.

  Ethan gave chase, having no real hope of catching up with the animal. It moved with a purpose, pausing only for a split second at junctions to orient itself. For a moment Ethan thought Waffle was trying to find his way to the elevator, having sniffed out Moira’s trail, but his initial assumption proved more accurate: Waffle darted past the elevator and continued towards the civvie sector.

  “No, no, no,” Ethan panted under his breath. Distance growing between them, Ethan redoubled his pace just as they rounded the final bend at the edge of crew territory. There was a guard stationed at the end of the hall. Ethan saw with a rush of relief that it was Rebecca.

  “What the hell?” she called to him.

  “Stop him!” Ethan yelled in response. She steadied herself, bending low in preparation to scoop Waffle up, but he dodged her, ducking through an open vent into the air duct. Rebecca turned to the door panel and quickly tapped in a series of commands. A hollow thud emanated from the duct.

  “What did you do?” Ethan asked, horrified.

  “Relax,” Rebecca shot back, “I just locked it in.” She turned to confront him. “Now, what is that thing?”

  Ethan looked from her to the vent and back. “Waffle?” he said hesitantly.

  “Are you trying to be stupid?”

  “No, I mean it – he – is called Waffle. Lieutenant Goodman named him, not me.”

  Rebecca’s eyebrow arched higher with Ethan’s every word. He cringed, hoping it was not visible. “But what is it?” she repeated.

  “A local.” He instantly regretted saying it.

  “What is wrong with you?” Rebecca exploded. “You bring an indigenous lifeform onboard an Imperial colony ship, without checking for diseases or parasites?”

  “It was Moira who-”

  “Everyone that thing has been in contact with could be infected! Did you give it any thought whatsoever?”

  “It wasn’t me!” Ethan blurted out.

  Rebecca paused to give him a condescending look. “It sure seems to be your problem now,” she said hotly.

  “Okay,” he agreed, “yes, it is. But can you save the lecture? I need help getting him out of there.” He pointed at the open grating, where a pair of eyes was just visible, staring up at them from the darkness.

  Rebecca looked down the hall, and sighed heavily. “Fine, but then it has to go.”

  “Sure,” Ethan said. He wasn’t about to argue; it would be up to Moira to decide whether or not confronting the captain – or Rebecca, who now seemed a more formidable opponent – would be worth keeping Waffle. Ethan got down onto the floor, drawing level with Waffle, who retreated slightly into the vent. Rebecca returned to her post, leaving Ethan to his task.

  “C’mere, Waffle,” Ethan said gently, reaching a hand slowly inside the vent. Waffle retreated, squeezing himself further into the hole. It became too tight for Ethan’s hand to fit through. “Can you do it?” he said to Rebecca, “You have smaller hands.”

  Rebecca rolled her eyes, but bent down nevertheless and jabbed her hand into the vent. She retracted it a moment later. “It scratched me!” she said.

  “Well, yeah,” Ethan responded. “Even I thought you were going to kill him, moving like that.” Rebecca sighed and tried again, this time moving much more slowly.

  “Why are you so worried about it, anyway?” she wondered aloud, rolling onto her shoulder to reach further as Waffle continued to retreat.

  “Look at him,” Ethan prompted.

  Rebecca glanced down the shaft. “What?”

  “He’s adorable,” Ethan said.

  “He’s an alien,” Rebecca corrected, “carrying alien diseases.”

&n
bsp; “He hasn’t killed anyone yet.”

  “Yet,” Rebecca emphasized. She pulled her hand out again, falling back on the floor. “He’s not coming out,” she concluded. “He’s too far back. We’ll have to lure him to the vent. Do you know what he eats?”

  Ethan grinned. “Why do you think his name is Waffle?” he asked. He pointed towards the door Rebecca had been guarding. Just behind it was the civilian sector’s Market Row, home to the micro-economy that lived aboard Voyager Dawn. “I’ll go get some,” he said, “I know the cook at TJ’s.”

  He returned a short while later from TJ’s Diner to find Rebecca sitting cross-legged on the floor, pensively staring at the grating into which Waffle had disappeared.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said quickly. She took a waffle from his outstretched hand and tore it into pieces, throwing the scraps into a ragged line between Waffle and the vent’s opening. Ethan looked through the grating to see Waffle chewing madly at the food, progressively working towards the exit.

  Finally he reached the open vent, and was lured into the hallway with one last piece of waffle. Ethan and Rebecca watched as he nibbled apart the treat, sitting happily in the middle of the hallway. When he was finished, he ran over to Ethan and clambered onto his shoulder, chirping happily.

  “Okay,” Rebecca said, defeated, “I guess he’s kind of cute.” After a moment of contemplation, Rebecca jerked her head towards the rear of the ship. “Now get him back to the bunks.”

  Ethan voiced his agreement and started down the hall, Waffle chittering all the way.

  The Arrival

  “The balance of nature on Nossali is in jeopardy. They continue to desecrate the planet like it was some barren rock.”

  “As Humans are wont to do, of course, despite their hypocritical code of conduct. I did not think I could hold them in less regard, and yet now I stand corrected. This abhorrent behavior, however, only strengthens our resolve. This will be a sweet and glorious thing to behold. I shall relish every moment of it.”

  Between shifts, Ethan and Frank set about acquiring the necessary components for the terraforming bomb. While Frank gutted outdated projects for parts, Ethan began collecting metal fragments to assemble the bomb’s casing.

  It was no trouble for Ethan; there was one place he knew he could find what he needed, and it meant interacting with two of his favorite people on the ship: Rick and Jessica Scott.

  The Scott twins had been on the ship since its launch, and were an infallible source of entertainment. They worked as engineers on the flight deck, maintaining all airborne vehicles stowed aboard Voyager Dawn.

  “Hey hey hey!” Rick Scott called when he saw Ethan approaching. He was at a computer terminal, the hangar inventory open in front of him. “I was wondering when you were going to come see us,” he said, coming to greet Ethan. “Jess thought you forgot about us, with all the fuss about that animal you bagged.”

  “I’ve actually been busy,” Ethan said in his defense. “Hope you’ve been too. Keeping out of trouble?”

  “In the loosest sense of the word.” Rick waved his hand at the inventory screen. “I’ve been trying to get a requisition for a coolant valve, but it keeps blocking me. It’s like it knows what I do with them.”

  “I hope I never find out. You might be in luck, though.”

  Rick cocked his head. “How’s that?”

  Ethan opened his comm and brought up his authorization from Rhodes. “I have clearance to grab whatever I want,” he explained. “Might be able to slip a coolant valve in there.”

  “Sweet. Hey, I owe you one.”

  “Not a problem.” Ethan wandered onto the flight deck, Rick close behind. Forty F-50 Sparrowhawks filled the cavernous room, tethered to the ground in uniform lines. An aisle down the center led to the cargo elevator, which could carry an entire squadron of Sparrowhawks onto the runway outside, but right now it was surrounded by empty crates and stray materials. Ethan thought the entire place was a sorry sight.

  Jessica Scott was lying on the ground under a Sparrowhawk, fiddling with its circuitry. “Look who’s here,” Rick shouted across the deck to her. Jess looked up, smacking her head against the low-strung hull of the jet.

  “Hey – ow – Ethan! Nice job with the – holy crap that hurts. Nice job with the landing. And killing that thing. What did you call it?”

  “Bullhound,” Ethan said.

  “Bullhound, right. I like it. It’s got flair.”

  “Thanks.” Ethan leaned over to see what Jess was up to. The engineer caught his glance and pointed at the small meter that was currently not where it was supposed to be.

  “The orbital adjuster’s on the fritz,” she commented, “Looks like they all are. I don’t know why. It’s like they aren’t moving in sync with the planet.”

  “I think the planet’s gravity is wonky,” Rick put in, “but Jess says-”

  “I say the gravity on this planet is a steady one-point-two G’s, and the adjuster’s more than able to compensate for that,” Jess interrupted. “I think the planet has actually been shoved out of its natural orbit by something.”

  “An asteroid?” Ethan guessed.

  “Maybe. I’d need to look at the satellite images to see, but then again, I’m no meteorologist.”

  “What does weather have to do with it?”

  “What?”

  “A meteorologist studies weather.”

  Jess looked up, surprised. “A meteorologist is a weatherman? Then what the hell do they call someone who studies meteors?”

  Before Ethan could answer, the ship quaked violently.

  “Woah,” Rick said, coming up behind Ethan, “I thought they said this planet didn’t have earthquakes.”

  “They did,” Ethan said, “Maybe-” He was cut off by a violent blast that shattered the wall. The explosion hurled the closest F-50 into the air, wings set aflame as fuel leaked out of its punctured hull.

  Ethan dove down, pulling Rick with him, and scrambled for the opposite side of Jess’s craft. The carnage hit a second later, a series of detonations pressing against the Sparrowhawk that now stood as the only barrier between Ethan, Jess, Rick, and a gruesome end.

  The orange blaze of the fire blended with the blaring red of alarms. A klaxon sounded somewhere in the haze, barely audible over the roaring fire.

  “We have to get out of here!” Jess yelled over the din. “If the fire spreads to the other fighters, this whole place will go up!”

  “Better plan,” Rick said. He held up his personal comm, which was displaying a ship-wide text message. “We need to scramble the fighters, Captain’s orders.”

  “The elevator’s got a ton of crap around it! There’s no room for fighters!” Jess said, pointing at the cargo elevator at the far end of the deck.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Ethan said. He climbed into the nearest undamaged Sparrowhawk, kicking the moorings loose on his way. “Get the elevator ready to run.” Rick took off towards the control room, and Jess moved in to unlatch the fuel line attached to Ethan’s fighter.

  “Nexacors?” she shouted to Ethan.

  “I don’t know, but nexacors don’t usually have such good aim.” The image of the GPS locator instantly flashed in Ethan’s mind. They found us after all, he thought.

  Shooting a burst of fuel into the engines, Ethan brought the Sparrowhawk into a tight turn, tires screeching. The stack of crates blocking the elevator fell into his rangefinder, and he spun up the gun. Rick, nearly at the controls, made a mad dash to the side, out of the line of fire, and Ethan squeezed the trigger. A volley of fifty caliber rounds spat out of the fighter’s hull, instantly scattering the crates.

  Rick pinged him on the comm, “Get on and we’ll get you up to the catapult.”

  Ethan gunned the throttle, maneuvering onto the elevator. It lurched, unused for months, then began to move, cargo doors opening to the sky above him.

  “This is Raptor One,” Ethan said systematically, donning the flig
ht helmet stored beneath the seat and performing final checks as he ascended to the runway. “Tower control, do you copy?”

  “Tower’s down,” a voice responded. “Control is being forwarded to the bridge.”

  “Copy that. What’s the situation?”

  “All fighters are being scrambled, but you’re the only one on the flight deck so far. Do not, repeat, do not launch until the catapult is at maximum capacity. We don’t know what we’re dealing with, but they’re definitely hostile.”

  Ethan could feel his guts churning wildly. The thought of alien contact had been hypothetical when the locator was first discovered, but now it was real, and the aliens did not have peaceful intentions. Quite abruptly, Voyager Dawn had found itself on a battlefield.

  *

  All eight wings of Raptor flight were lined up and locked into the catapult by the time Ethan had gotten his nerves under control. He scanned the skies warily, waiting for some monstrous ship to descend out of the clouds, but nothing came.

  “Throttles to full,” Traffic Control ordered. “Activating catapult in three, two, one.” Ethan gunned the throttle and was flung forward, blasting past the sound barrier as he lifted off. As soon as he was in the air, he formed up with his squadron, patching the mission briefing through to the rest of them.

  “We have an unknown enemy in low orbit over the planet,” Rhodes said through the comm, his normally professional voice sounding strained. “By attacking our vessel without provocation, they have declared war on the United Orion Empire, and we are the first line of defense.” Ethan swallowed hard. He could hear the other pilots muttering nervously under their breath.

  “Your mission is simple,” Rhodes continued. “Get up there, shut their ship down, and get back in one piece. We don’t have any intel on their tech, other than they hit us with concentrated energy weapons that breached both our shields and hull. Watch yourselves up there.” With that, the channel to Rhodes was closed, and Ethan was left with his squadron.