Starship Invasion (Lost Colony Uprising Book 2)

by Darcy Troy Paulin

  Terrance adjusted the velocity of the tug to match that of the sleep array and kept the two from colliding. Though there was little evidence that GE was investigating every local jump, it would be foolish to stay in a position that so many tugs had recently jumped away from. On Snow’s instruction, they jumped to the coordinates of the second orbiting rendezvous point.

  When they arrived, it took only a moment to locate the other tugs. They were picking up Longissima's ejected personnel from near the surface of the space bergs, and scooping them into the small tug jumper cockpits, which were mostly empty to begin with. In addition to the free-floating space-suited earthlings, was a total of three more iceberg moons. The brightness of the new moons would be easy to see against the blackness of space, and so necessitated a mass jump to a predetermined, third rendezvous point.

  Chapter 33

  Linda's core flickered into view again as she spiraled through space. The Dee-Dub caught up with her. Max had been surprised to find that the controls responded to his commands through the stick despite the seemingly catastrophic damage done to the right-hand side of the ship, where Snow usually sat. The canopy dangled, folded in half in front of him. Strangely, it interfered very little with his ability to see. Whatever sensors or cameras were recording the area around the ship, they were compensating well and through his dome-chip, projecting the image in his mind as though the canopy were not a jumbled, mangled mess. Max maneuvered the ship so its new arms could grab hold of Linda and stop her spinning. Then he stopped the ship. Doozer clung tightly to the back of the back bench. Max pointed at him. “You stay put.”

  I'm-staying-here, said Doozer's eyes.

  Max unhooked his own harness, and climbed out of the gaping hole in the hull to clamber outside. He made his way around to the side of the ship where the left arm was positioned. He couldn't see Linda's core, but her upper torso—the only part present since most of what normally situated below that was still strapped safely in Snow's seat—was badly battered, her head was missing entirely, as was one arm. The hand of the other arm was dangling by its tendons. He retrieved her from the ship’s Roughshod arm and awkwardly dragged her back to the cockpit. Only when he was safely back inside did he remember that they had no drones left. If he'd drifted away, it would have been permanent.

  Max tucked the android's remaining arm under the seat strap and tightened it to keep her in place while he manually twisted the AI cradle to release Linda. It was a battle, but eventually he managed to twist the cradle open. He felt a flood of relief when the tiny globe came into view, sparkling with an internal light. He opened the ship’s cradle—which had only barely escaped being cut away with the damaged section of hull—and transferred Linda into it. She sparkled pink as he lifted her across the gap. He closed the cradle, and waited with his fingers crossed.

  “Hi, boss,” Linda said from the speakers in his helmet. “That was exciting. Thanks for coming back for me.”

  “Don't be silly. We need to stick together,” Max said, “and to that end, let's go find Snow.”

  The quitter in him had accepted that Snow was gone. That there was nothing to do but grieve. The rest of him rejected the thought, and banished the quitter from his mind. Snow was out there. She was alive and he would find her.

  “We don't have comms. The long-range antenna is hooped,” Linda said, “and the jump drive is offline.”

  “What's wrong with it?” Max asked hoping that offline was as much better than hooped as it sounded.

  “I don't know what's wrong with it. It should be working. But it isn't.”

  “Crab stones,” Max said. His mind went to the second, larger drive in the cargo bay. “I suppose installing the other drive is beyond our current capability—”

  “The second drive! Brilliant, boss,” Linda said. “You just need to strap it down somewhere and plug it into the power plant.”

  “We could use the factory mount. Would that work?”

  “Perfect. But we won't be able to use the factory…”

  The lack of drones was limiting. Though there was no mining to do, they could be put to other uses. And repairs to the half missing canopy couldn't be made without the factory. But they would just have to do without. Drones were useless if the ship couldn't navigate. And without the jump drive they would be left, puttering around space, hours or days too late to help and useless in the evacuation process.

  “Okay, well let's get the big one working and get back to Mega,” Max said, though what they would do there, he had no idea.

  Max climbed into the back of the ship. At first, he failed utterly in his attempts to unbolt the factory. He turned in place rather than the bolts. But once he latched onto the straps and hooks of the cargo bay, he managed to make bolts turn instead. He secured the factory and fitted the drive in its place, then plugged the factory's power cables into the drive. All in all, it was as quick and easy as Linda had suggested. He made one last quick inspection of the drive to ensure all was in order. He opened the access panel and checked out the core. He ran his hand along the hollow sphere of Akoronite at the center. It was whole and smooth, undamaged in the shockwave

  Next, he checked out the ship’s original drive, accessed through a panel beneath the floor of the Dee-Dub's living space. Everything seemed to be in order as Linda had said. He opened the access panel to look inside. Again, everything seemed normal. He noticed the Akoronite sphere was smaller than that of the larger jump drive he'd just installed in the cargo bay. But that made some sense, the drive itself was smaller so naturally the core would be too. He ran his hand along the hollow sphere of the core. His thumb went right through it. “Ah…Linda? I think I may have found the problem with the drive. The core…it's paper thin.”

  “That's not right,” Linda said.

  “I only know that my fleshy hand doesn't normally have the strength to crush Akoronite, and that the very same hand just went through the sphere by mistake,” Max said.

  “Are you sure you didn't hit it with a hammer? Or some other dense object?”

  “I'll replace the core and see if that fixes the problem,” Max said, ignoring Linda's wild accusation. Carefully he removed the fragile, crumbling core, and swept its chamber free. It occurred to him that the original core was thousands of years old. It had traveled all the way from Earth. It had sat unused all those long years along with the earthlings. And then they had turned the drive on and began jumping around willy-nilly, assuming the ancient device would continue to function forever. Sweat rose upon his neck as he considered just how close they'd come to not making it back with their crucial supply of Akoronite.

  He collected a new core from the cargo bay and loaded it into the drive. Before he had even grabbed the access panel to close it, Linda reported that the drive was back online. He closed the panel and heard the core spinning up within.

  As he drifted back to the cockpit, he cursed the time wasted installing the new drive. If he had inspected the ship’s original drive first, they would still have the factory up and running. But they'd wasted enough time. He needed to get back to Mega and find Snow.

  Chapter 34

  Snow cursed the questionable wisdom of spreading rally points so tightly around the planet that it made direct communication impossible.

  Eva was gone. She'd still been on Longissima when the impactor struck. She must have stayed in position, locked up within the command center. She would have calculated the impossibility of her reaching the exit before impact. And she would have been correct in those calculations if not for Margret's failed attempt to save the Longissima. Because although the Longissima had been lost, Margret's attempt did have an upside. She managed to scoop up all the loose personnel (and debris) in Longissima, so long as they were not sealed into the ship, unable to move. It was all part of complicated jump sphere mechanics, and the reason one could not simply overlap your jump bubble with a small part of another ship and jump away with their stuff and/or people. But thanks to Longissima's airlocks being blown du
ring the emergency, that included any of the crew on the ship that had been otherwise too deep to escape. That was, so long as they were not locked within a sealed chamber. Many more earthlings had been saved by Margret's impulsive attempt to save the ship’s command center, as well as two Grailliyns. Both Freenan and Ravaea had been deep inside Longissima at the time, overseeing some of the smaller factories, familiar technology to each of them.

  With Eva gone, and all the other command oriented earthlings deployed out of easy contact on Grailliyn, Snow was thrust reluctantly back into the position of leadership. But thanks to Margret, Snow had the beginnings of a plan formulating in her head.

  It was a long time before Max arrived, crucially with the last remaining factory, at the rally point. By then she had explained the plan to the others. It was, they all agreed, a reckless plan. But it was the only plan which had any chance of success, given their constraints. The original concrete sleeper ship plan was clearly no longer viable. It required far too much time, and a vast array of factories that they didn't have. But the key point of the new plan was that it could be very quickly set into operation.

  Max too balked at the idea. “Plastic? really?”

  “It's only temporary. Once we are away, we'll come up with something more permanent,” Snow said. She was confident this was their best chance at saving the most people.

  Max didn't look fully convinced. But Snow could see him trying, and failing to come up with anything that was even close to as efficient.

  They transferred the factory into the central access hall of the sleep array, which was all that was left of Longissima. It wasn't what you would call roomy, but it would do the job. It would take that most precious of resources, time, to manufacture what they needed. But there was plenty of work to be done on the surface to prepare for the coming mass evacuation. And that was a job for Max.

  Snow stole a moment when Max dropped off the factory, though it amounted to no more than a punch and a hug. She was shaken for a moment on seeing his face. With all the drama that came after, she had almost forgotten about his missing eye.

  He squeezed her tight. “Distribute those Akoronite cores to the relay tugs,” he said, “and make sure you have a body on hand to make the swap.”

  “Good tip,” she said.

  And she meant it. How dumb would she have felt if an AI pilot ran out of juice and no one was there to physically swap the Akoronite jump cores. She rewarded him with a slap on the behind.

  “Again, try not to misplace any more body parts out there.”

  He gave her a plastic thumbs up, climbed back into the Dee-Dub, and flew clear of Longissima before jumping to his first destination. Even as her mobile home jumped away, tug jumpers pulled long sheaths of material from the tiny factory at one end of the gigantic sleep array.

  Chapter 35

  Commander Carrack made one last trip to the Rock, which it now seemed would be the one and only concrete ship they would ever build. He had bad news for Quin, and it was worth the short walk to deliver it in person. The evacuation would be starting soon. And in Carrack's adopted city of all places. But despite SoChar being chosen as the launching point of the evacuation, the Rock wouldn't be going anywhere, anytime soon. It no longer fit easily into the evacuation strategy. Therefore, it was to be left in place until the last moment, which would spare one tug from having to shepherd it from rally point to rally point during the operation.

  Carrack arrived at the Rock and keyed his mic. “Carrack to Rock,” he said.

  “This is the Rock, go ahead, Commander,” said the voice of Greta, one of the only two duty crew aboard.

  Carrack could see her through the view port in the door and rapped his knuckles on it to get her attention.

  She turned to face him just as her young crew mate Quin entered the small living space through a portal. The left side of his body, dominated by white plastic, stood out in contrast to the boy's brown skin. “Good-news bad-news,” Carrack said.

  The looks on their faces said they understood. The bad news pertained to the one topic that mattered to them at the moment. When-are-we-leaving? But neither said it. They just looked at him, waiting.

  “The bad news is that it may be sometime before you go anywhere. Things have changed and now soft bodies will be leading the way.” He paused to let this sink in, but as usual, neither of these two took very long to absorb bad news. “The good news is that the evacuation is beginning as we speak, so… at least things are moving.”

  Quin's face brightened ever so slightly at the news. Greta, the more cynical of the two remained unmoved.

  “I caution you to remain on board. Although it will be hours or days until you ship out, when the time comes, there might not be any notice. Maintain a readiness level of zero seconds notice,” he said. “I'm heading above to help organize the evacuation there. I will be gone for a while if I ever return at all. So, if not, then good luck to you!”

  “Thanks,” Quin said, “for letting us know.”

  Carrack withheld a laugh. The pair of them were much more inclined to think rather than speak. That attribute would serve them well in their duty. He waved, thanked them again, said farewell, again, and headed to the exit. His Grailliyn crew were already waiting for him at the entrance to the complex when he arrived.

  There was chaos in the city, centered around the six jump sites. In addition to the six good sites, there were three unsuitable ones. Each had some problem. They were either too deep or too crumbly or both. One had a city sewer tunnel and access pipe below. Luckily, the pilot, Max, had recognized the problem. They would have transported a load of raw sewage with each load of evacuees since the pipes below would refill between jumps.

  Four of the good jump sites were on the perimeter of the city. As close to the city as Max, who was a Grailliyn himself, had been able to manage. The central site was in a park, or former park. All the trees and foliage had been stripped away by Max's preparatory jumps revealing bright gray rock beneath. The sixth, and best site, was the theater. Though its roof had collapsed on the first clearing jump, the second jump cleared the debris caused by the first one. Though the roof failed, the thick castle-like walls had held against what were reported to be stiff winds brought on by the vacuum left behind as the ship jumped away with a load of atmosphere and debris. Carrack's crew had managed to clear the building. At first, he had worried the clear line of the jump sphere might not be clear in the structure. But as it turned out, removal of the loose dust dirt and even some of the grime of the ancient building, left a line as clear as could be hoped for. The stage and screens, the speakers, a few chairs, a chunk of roofing tiles, anything and everything that was not firmly attached to the stone building was now gone. Carrack imagined the momentary sight of all that dirt and grime in the shape of a building, hovering in space, just for a moment before it was torn apart by rapidly expanding, dissipating, atmosphere. Although Grailliyns used old American standard names for measurements, they must have been based on metric as the interior of the stadium was precisely one hundred meters in diameter. That meant the busiest evacuation point would also be the most orderly as evacuees would be forced to pass into the familiar halls and corridors and more easily kept from straddling the jump sphere perimeter and making a mess. That meant he could leave the theater to others and concentrate his efforts on the less constrained jump sites. Of those other five, Carrack deemed two to be more manageable due to their positions, one a small plateau, the other, a stretch of land between two fairly steep hills, each of them with limited access.

  Each of the other three had few barriers, natural or artificial. Carrack stood before the worst of them. The park's vegetation seemed to have been selected for its greenness. There were dashes of color here, but mostly it was green, and close enough to home that if he squinted, he could imagine being back on Earth. The otherwise beautiful park was marred by the one giant circle cut into the soil exposing the uneven rock below. Thick crowds of people were milling around the area in inter
est or anticipation. The remaining trees of the park were meters away from the perimeter at the closest. The thin soil was fuzzy at the edge of the circle. Carrack along everyone else in the city, had heard the crack of thunder that coincided with the wind dragging dust and debris into the sphere. There was no getting around the fact that each jump would transport that dirt and debris along with the evacuees. The vacuum of which would cause more dust and debris to coat the rock floor of the circle. They would have to add sweeping up that contamination to their long list of problems for later.

  “Bob to… anyone. Come in anyone.”

  Carrack recognized the voice of one of the Grailliyn's responsible for waking the colonists after their long sleep. “This is Commander Carrack. I read you, Bob.”

  “I read you, Bob,” said the voice of acting Supreme Commander Snow.

  “I read you, Bob,” said the voice of Max, currently their most experienced pilot.

  “It worked,” Bob said. He sounded surprised.

  Bob had gone back to his hometown of Tawnee to smash squid there. Carrack noted the network now included a brand-new node. He guessed it must be Tawnee.

  “Tawnee is networked up,” Bob said.

  Congratulations were given and there was some back patting before Bob signed off.

  “We're set up here to start jumping when you're ready, Commander,” Snow said.

  He ordered his crew, dozens of them newly deputized, to push the crowds back a few meters from the perimeter to reduce the chances of missing hands and arms. Though the park site was surrounded by people, only a few had dared venture within the circle. Carrack made a rough count, and determined that perhaps a hundred or more daring souls were in the perimeter.