The Gauloi

by Donald B McFarlane

  The Gauloi

  An Earth Saga Story

  Donald B McFarlane

  Cover Art

  Luke West

  Beta-Test/Editing

  Sandy G., Nick C., Zach N

  Copyright Donald B McFarlane 2019

  www.donaldbmcfarlane.com

  Earth Saga Books by Donald B McFarlane

  Minus Epsilon: The Earth Saga I

  Defiant Order: The Earth Saga II

  Horizons: The Earth Saga III

  Remnants of Empire: The Earth Saga IV

  Edge of the Vortex: The Earth Saga V

  Condition Zero: The Earth Saga VI

  Love in a Time of War: An Earth Saga Story

  Standish: An Earth Saga Story

  The Gauloi

  “Lighting activated.”

  Runo opened her eyes to a blur. Above her, she could just make out the canopy of her stasis pod in its up and locked position. Then the ceiling, greenish-grey and in need of a fresh layer of lamination.

  She felt drowsy. She wasn’t supposed to feel drowsy. That much she knew. The lights in the room appeared to be on max; the brightness was overwhelming.

  “Central, dim lights.” She ordered.

  Runo was laying flat on her back, naked and cold.

  “Lights dimming.” The computer reported.

  Rubbing her forehead, Runo looked over to her left, then right. Instead of seeing four open stasis pods, they were all closed, still in what looked like suspended animation.

  “Central, status of flight crew?”

  “Flight crew undergoing reanimation.” The dull voice of the ship’s AI replied.

  Runo propped herself up on her elbows and re-checked the four other pods in the room. They were sealed, a thin blue mist visible below the transparent covers.

  “Central, confirm status of flight crew.” Runo ordered, laying back down.

  “Flight crew undergoing reanimation.”

  Fucking tech.

  Looking up from her pod, Runo spotted her brown overalls hanging on the wall opposite; just where she had left them, along with her undergarments, boots, and tool belt.

  With her vision clearing up, Runo pushed herself up from the padded mat she had been lying on, swung her legs out of the pod, and stepped out onto the cold ceramic floor.

  Stretching out, all 160 centimetres of her body, Runo tried to loosen up. She felt tight. Besides the false report on crew status from the AI, the tightness in her body was the second thing she noticed, and this concerned her more than the first. She shouldn’t have been tight at all.

  “Central, time and location?”

  She took a step towards her clothing, her legs feeling weak while the floor felt freezing.

  “192nd year of the reign of Emperor Loistava. Location, three-thousand light-years beyond the Reach.”

  Runo smiled, reaching her jumpsuit, she plucked it off the hook and stepped into it slowly.

  Fucking tech. Nothing she had just heard made sense. Central on the glitch.

  “Central, confirm date and location.”

  The Gauloi had left AnBarn Central last week. And if her memory served her, Emperor Loistava had only been on the throne for two years.

  “192nd year of the reign of Emperor Loistava. Location, three-thousand light-years beyond the Reach.”

  Runo zipped the front of her jumpsuit up, then sat down onto the cold ground and pulled her boots on.

  “Central, closest Imperial system?”

  “Nadolo System.”

  “Central, distance to the Nadolo System.”

  “3725 light-years.”

  Runo froze. Either the computer was having a laugh, or something was wrong.

  “Central, time since launch from AnBarn Central?”

  “190 years since departure.”

  What the shit was going on? Taking a few deep breaths, Runo tried to gather her thoughts. Her lungs felt weak, her muscles felt weak. She shouldn’t have felt that poorly, even after a prolonged time in stasis.

  “I need to get to the bridge.” Runo mumbled to herself. “Central, status of flight crew.”

  “All crew out of hibernation.”

  Runo looked at the four closed stasis pods.

  “Out of hibernation my ass.” She shook her head.

  “Central, status on engines?”

  “Engines off-line.”

  Toolbelt on, Runo checked herself in the mirror. She could tell that she had lost weight, her face looking gaunter than she could ever remember. Pulling her hair back into a tight ponytail, she put on a band from her jumpsuit, then walked over to the chamber hatch. Tapping the access pad, a single chirp was emitted before the hatch slid up and out of view, revealing a partially lit hallway running right to the left, most of the length of the ship.

  “Central, status on cargo?” Runo asked as she started off towards the bridge. She was worried about all the miners and engineers they were supposed to be transporting to Mella II. If they had been out of port for such a long time, there was a chance that some of the stasis pods would have failed, just like hers.

  “All cargo in stasis.”

  “Really?” She asked out loud.

  Rubbing her forehead, she searched for how many passengers they were carrying, but the number escaped her.

  Looking down the worn corridor, Runo stopped, taking in the smells of the old ship. There was a damp smell in the air. Something somewhere on the Gauloi must have been leaking. If the ship had been cruising through the stars for so long, with so many of the systems running, eventually they’d start to fail and break down.

  “Central, status of jump drives and life support.”

  “Jump drives off-line. Life support fully functional.”

  She’d already be dead if the life support had malfunctioned the minute she was awoken from stasis, but here she was, breathing in the stale air that had been circulated around the ship for nearly two hundred years, scrubbed through the filters continuously without replenishment. That was assuming the ship had really been out of port for almost two centuries, which she was struggling to believe.

  “Central, status on hull integrity.”

  “Hull integrity compromised section five of J-Hold.”

  “Central, are we venting?”

  “Negative. Breach sealed.”

  “Central, what did we hit?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Central, what sealed the breach?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Central, other than section five of J-Hold, are there any anomalies on the ship?”

  “Tracking and monitoring systems down on J-Hold aft of section four.”

  “Central, if the tracking and monitoring systems are down, how can you confirm that hull integrity is intact?”

  “Hull integrity was sound before the loss of tracking and monitoring in compromised sections of the ship.”

  Great.

  Checking the hallway behind her, Runo watched as several lights flickered on and off as a dull hum was carried through the ship. Continuing towards the front of the Gauloi, she hurried towards the bridge, where she hoped to get more answers.

  Watching the lights come on as she moved down the corridor, Runo thought of all the time she had spent on the Gauloi since she had joined the Merchant Navy at eighteen to escape an arranged marriage on her homeworld. As she continued down the dimly lit passageway, she glanced at the pipes and other wiring running along the sides of the walls that she had passed for the last ten years in the ship that was her home.

  Reaching the bridge, Runo opened the hatch to reveal a room that looked exactly like it had when they had left AnBarn Central; tidy. Albeit the room was in almost complete darkness, with blast shielding pulled down over the forward observation windows preventing
any celestial light from illuminating the room. That and the room was frigid.

  Keying the light switch, Runo watched as the room was brought to life with dull white lighting. Arching her neck, she looked over the five stations that were at the front of the compact compartment. The stations were arrayed in a crescent, with the Ship Master in the centre, the Second Officer/Navigator to the right, then the Engineer Officer. On the left of the Ship Master was Runo’s position, Flying Officer, followed by the Medical Officer.

  “Central, all commands to Flying Officer station, authorisation Runo, Sierra Whisky One-Two.” Runo took in a deep breath and rubbed her arms. If life support was coming on, then the bridge and the rest of the ship should soon reach a reasonable temperature. “Central, activate primary ship AI.”

  Runo watched the console at her station come to life as she walked to a food dispenser on the sidewall of the bridge. Requesting a warm caffeinated drink, she waited for the beverage to be readied before moving to a spot just behind her chair, casually gazing down at her console as it uploaded the mission logs, the standard procedure when the crew awoke from stasis.

  “Central, open blast shields.” She ordered. “Central, status on primary AI?”

  “Primary AI disabled.” The ship’s speakers reported.

  “Disabled how?”

  Runo could hear the four blast shields creaking, even from inside the ship, as they opened slowly, revealing a single planetoid in the distance. It was light green with rings of ice surrounding it.

  “Electrical fire destroyed primary AI.”

  “When?”

  “Thirty-nine years ago.”

  Runo shook her head. “When it rains, it pours.”

  Closing her eyes for a moment, Runo tried to get control of her emotions. She wasn’t scared, but she was verging on being pissed off. Opening her eyes slowly, she looked at the planet in front of the Gauloi.

  “Central, identify planet.”

  “Unable to comply. Planet not in database.”

  A beep to her side alerted her that her drink was ready, and without looking, she reached over and picked up the steaming hot cup filled with brown liquid. Bringing the cup to her nose, Runo expected hints of bark and dirt, the classic aromas of the drink, but instead, smelt nothing. Either the beverage machine was broken, or her senses were off from too many years in stasis.

  Looking into the cup, its contents looked correct. Brown and warm, with steam billowing upwards. Pursing her lips, Runo lowered the cup and walked over to her station, pulling the flight chair back before settling herself down gently into the well-worn seat.

  She put the cup in her drink holder, then leaned back into the aged artificial leather that covered her chair, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

  Her seat was something she had gotten to know well since joining the crew. Life among the stars was a steady routine with the occasional drama thrown into the mix. Her family was the rest of the crew of the Gauloi, and while life always on the move wasn’t for everyone, she loved it.

  This better not be a glitch.

  Opening her eyes, she looked at her screen. It had the logo of the Gauloi on top of a sky-blue background. Reaching forward, Runo tapped a key and brought up the primary menu.

  “Sierra Whiskey One-Two.” She said out loud as a course of habit.

  The terminal accepted her voice code-in, and she leaned forward and started to type in commands to the terminal, Runo half wondered why she was even bothering with the exercise. If the ship’s primary AI was fucked, then there was little hope that the rest of the network was working correctly, but it was Standard Operating Procedure to run checks on all primary flight and ship systems once they woke from stasis.

  “Right.” She shook her head. “Let’s see what we can see.”

  Runo went to what she knew first, flight systems. Reading the information displayed, she confirmed that the jump drives and the engines were both off-line. And apparently, the ship was out of fuel.

  “Fuck.” She said out loud, reaching for her warm cup of brown fluid. “Let’s have a look at the flight and jump history.” She mumbled under her breath as she typed away.

  Going directly to what she remembered, Runo scrolled back through the ship’s history until she reached the record of their departure from AnBarn Central. Her eyes read across the screen. Each moment the vessel had made had been recorded in precise detail and was heavy on the facts, but she just checked the broad strokes. The Gauloi was supposed to make two jumps to Mella II, with a single, long cruise, through the Kalei nebula along the way.

  Looking at the data in front of her, it was clear that the ship had made the first jump without issue, but when they were passing through the nebula, which was known to contain several uncharted worlds tucked inside it but offered a perfect transportation lane to their destination, they started to have trouble. The hull breach in J-Hold was recorded by the ship’s systems, but for some reason, the primary crew wasn’t woken from stasis, and when the second jump came, something had gone wrong, and the Gauloi had been thrown thousands of light-years off course.

  So, whatever the ship had hit in the Kalei nebula was the source of their present woes.

  Runo shook her head. Space travel was inherently dangerous, but it was not often that ships collided with anything large enough to cause a significant hull breach like they had taken. Either the Gauloi’s sensors were already damaged, or whatever had hit them hadn’t been picked up on the scanners.

  That second just hadn’t brought them all the way to their current position. Once the ship had returned to normal space from sub-space, the engines had fired back on, the nose of the vessel had pointed in one direction, away from the Empire, and off the Gauloi went.

  “Damn it.”

  Bringing the cup to her mouth, she blew across the top of the liquid, then took a sip. The drink was virtually tasteless, but she could feel that it still packed the punch that her system needed.

  Exiting out of the flight controls system, she checked life support. It was obviously working in her part of the ship, but she needed to know if the rest of the Gauloi was in a habitable condition.

  Life support was clearly working in the parts of the ship she had already passed through, but she wanted to know the status of the rest of the 170-metre-long cargo vessel. With hundreds of metres of corridors and dozens of holds and chambers, if there was a loss of life-support somewhere, she needed to know.

  Bringing up an image of the Gauloi, Runo watched as each section of the ship was lit up. Green to indicate all life-support systems were functioning, red to report a fault or failure. As the screen started to fill up with more and more green, Runo took another sip of her tasteless caffeine drink and waited until the scan was complete.

  “Shit.”

  She looked at the completed scan, took another sip of her drink then set it down.

  J-Hold, one of six cargo compartments at the stern of the Gauloi was compromised from section 3 all the way to the end of the deck at section 8, including section 5 where the hull was breached. J-Hold held almost a quarter of the five thousand passengers that were in stasis, but luckily life support wasn’t critical if the individual sleep pods were still intact.

  Sitting back into her chair, Runo rubbed her hands together and considered her situation. They might have been out of fuel in the flight tanks, but the Gauloi had plenty of reserve in the primary hold, which she’d have to transfer to the primaries. So, moving the ship at sub-light speeds was not going to be a problem, if she could get the fuel moved. And maybe repairs could be made to the jump-drives, regardless of what the AI was telling her.

  The hull breach on J-Hold was the pressing concern, compromising not only the tracking and monitoring systems for that section but possibly leading to future systems failures.

  “Central, activate external monitors and display on my screen.”

  Rubbing her face, Runo considered her options. Waking the Ship Master was protocol under an emergency situation, but
if the AI thought that it had already woken the rest of the flight crew, then there was a chance that the stasis pods were damaged in some way. Either way, she needed to sound out the ship first, and understand everything she was dealing with before going up the chain of command.

  The first image blinked onto the screen. It was grainy and displaying an image directly in front of the Gauloi, the green planet surrounded by the ice-belt. Shifting through the pictures, Runo looked at each one, searching for anything out of the ordinary, and when she reached the first image of the J-Hold exterior, she got a good look at what had hit the hull. She wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  The object was fifty metres long and had the telltale signs of a spacecraft with thrusters at the rear of the mass, but the hull looked more like some kind of rock or asteroid than a ship. The surface was rough and covered in oddly shaped bumps and veins. The whole thing was dark grey, an intertwined mass of rock and metal. It was unlike any ship Runo had seen before.

  “Central, identify object from camera five-two.”

  “Object unidentified.”

  Runo shook her head. The AI was more useless than ever.

  “Central, any Imperial ships within voice range?” Runo asked, looking over at the second officers' station, where the primary communications terminal was located.

  “No ships within voice range.”

  “Central, distance to nearest Imperial station?”

  “Imperial Station, Nadolo Prime. Distance 3725 light-years.”

  “Central, how long would a burst transmission take to reach Nadolo Prime?”

  “Nine days.”

  Runo rubbed her chin. She wasn’t sure how that number had been arrived at. Either way, the ship required assistance.

  “Central, start reanimation of Ship Master.”

  Considering their situation, Runo knew that calling in help was the clear answer. She was also aware that under company policy, it was the Ship Master who was supposed to make distress calls, not the Flying Officer.

  “Ship Master reanimation complete.”