If there were, I would be the first person to tell you.
“Just focus on navigation then. If we could find a way to jump to their home word that would be enough. If I can fly it manually we can just zip by, pick up Luke and then gate to the world.”
They are firing missiles!
Alarms scream at me. Epic seals my helmet without me thinking about it. A good move considering if the ship takes a hit I’d be killed by decompression.
“ECM?”
Navigation or defense, which one?
“Navigation, definitely navigation.” I can hear the alarms from another station blaring at me. Short chirps that are barking closer and closer together as the missiles close on us. I scan the console, looking for a way to go faster, but I don’t see anything that looks like afterburners.
The helm does have the three-D representation of the system. I take my hand off the left stick for a second to press on Luxilla. A line appears from where we are, to the planet that isn’t that far away. I use the controls to try and bring our projected course in line with the one on the screen. The ship shakes as I fight to make it do what I want it to do. It ain’t easy.
A loud bang echoes in my ears before Epic clamps the sound dampeners around me.
Hull breach. We are trailing atmosphere.
“We’re not going to be able to pick up Luke, are we?”
That is no longer a possibility without significant risk to those we leave behind.
“Epic, could you figure this out faster if we took the safety interlocks off our neural connection?”
Amelia, I do not advise that course of action. If you were to fall unconscious…
“Epic… would it work?”
Yes. I could increase speed by twenty percent.
“Do it.”
Safeties off. Engaging full speed neural link. I will monitor your brain activity and modulate the speed on the fly. However, this may leave you feeling euphoric and disoriented if I have to change speeds drastically.
“Roger that.”
I don’t feel it physically but suddenly the world is full of details I hadn’t seen before. Little things and big. There are several switches on the console, a button under the nav screen. Alien code leaps up in my field of view as Epic accesses the full power of my brain to translate the computer systems.
The code shifts and I understand it. Read it like a book.
“Epic, there, that symbol. It means ‘if’, and that one there,” I say using my eyes to highlight the one I’m looking at. “That’s ‘execute.”
The enemy ship fires again and more alarms sound. There is still air in the compartment and the blaring of distant klaxons alerts me to the incoming fire. I ignore it though. We’ve made more progress in thirty seconds than the entire last few hours.
Your temperature is rising, reducing—
“Don’t you dare! We’ve almost got it. I can take it a little longer.” Euphoria builds inside me. I tingle all over as an exhilaration spreads through me exciting my brain and heart. I feel like I just watched a trailer for a movie I’m dying to see.
“There, right there, you see it?”
I do. Translating…
As he does the entire wall of code shifts from alien symbols to numbers and English. We’ve cracked it.
“Epic. Take the wheel. I’m going to find Tahunnan on the nav screen and get us the hell out of here.”
Prepare for evasive maneuvers.
Now that I know what to look for, I flip through the screens. It switches to a local map, not just of this system but the surrounding ones. Zooming out, names appear on the stars. A key on the right-hand side tells me I am looking at one square light year. I zoom out to ten squared and that’s when I see Tahunnan.
“Wow, they’re interstellar neighbors. If Earth had another planet this close we’d be on it already.”
Do you see Earth from here?
The klaxon sounds again. Another launch. “Let’s look once we’re not here.” I tap Tahunnan. A line appears on the nav console. Interesting, the ship needs to be pointed in a specific direction going a certain speed.
“Epic, make it so!” I shout with a grin. This is awesome. “Pull up comms, I need to tell Luke the sitrep.”
The enemy ships are going to rapid fire. However, now that we have control of their ship I have shields up, ECM active and the ship’s missile defense is active. The two ships in pursuit are designed for this kind of engagement. The one we have commandeered is not. More of a command and control vessel. Two minutes to position and we can activate the QG Drive.
“Roger.” I glance at the nav menu. We’re a hundred and eighty thousand miles from Luxilla and gaining miles every second. I can’t have a real-time conversation with Luke anyway. “Epic, record for transmission.”
Recording. A red light appears on the bottom of my vision.
“Luke, hon, bad news. We’ve hit a teensy snag. I’ve figured out how to fly their ships and even use the quantum gate drive, but not in time. Two cruisers are doing their level best to blow us to smithereens.”
Reducing neural link connection speed. Safety lock engaged.
A wave of dizziness washes over me and I sway for a second with my eyes closed trying to fight back sudden nausea. It’s as if my thoughts were suddenly submerged in mud.
“I… I’m going to go ahead and fly to Tahunnan and rescue Kate. You four stay here, do what you can to help Lux. If all goes well, we should be back in less than a day with good news… if not… well, you know. Luke…”
The ship shakes as another missile hits, vaporizing hull and internal components. The hatch at the back of the bridge melds closed and red lights flash.
Twenty seconds to gate translations. Spinning up the drive now.
Brilliant white light fills the panoramic view screen. A thousand miles in front of us, barely twenty seconds away at our current speed, a white square appears in space, like God just opened a window into heaven.
“Luke, I love you. Just in case I don’t come back… I want to say… Yes. See you soon, stud.”
The light turns off and Epic starts transmitting. The status bar appears, filling my HUD, but it's hard to keep my eyes open. I strain to prevent them from closing but the hurt I put on my brain is forcing me into unconsciousness.
“Epic, take the wheel. Don’t get us dead…” The last thing I see as my lids close is a massive wall of white light as we approach the gate.
113
I struggle to sit up, trying to remember where I am. My lab? In the conference room? Green lines boot to life over my vision as lights blink on and everything comes back in a rush. The Th’un ship. I stole a Th’un ship. Right. I shake my head, trying to clear the last bit of fog from my brain as I look around. The bridge lights up entirely, including the panoramic viewport. Which shows a massive rock wall. Panic assails me. Did we crash?
It is okay, Amelia. You were unconscious so I hid our stolen vessel in the system’s outer asteroid belt while I spied on their communications. You have been out for twelve hours. How do you feel?
“Good, I guess. A little stiff.” A glance at the HUD tells me the atmosphere on the bridge is intact. A mental thought removes the helmet, sending a slight shiver through me as the metal seeps into my skin. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it, but damn it’s cool.
I have put the considerable electronic warfare power of this ship to good use in your absence. We now have transponder codes which will allow us to fly directly to Tahunnan while remaining anonymous. I have also scanned this system and cataloged the different outposts they have. Would you like a report?
“Keep it short, I want to find Kate.”
Understood. This will be pertinent. My best estimate based on their own data and my scans is the system supports almost forty billion people. They have colonized three planets but the one that is approximately the same distance from their sun as Earth appears to be their homeworld, with almost thirty billion people on it.
“Dang. H
ow do they even feed that many people?”
They won the cosmic lottery. Planet two, which is twenty million miles closer to their sun, is a lush green tropical wonderland with an endless growing cycle. Enough water to drench the planet every few days and plenty of flat farmland. They have harvesters like on Luxilla, but these sow and harvest crops.
“You said three planets?” I ask while I stretch. No time like the present to test my idea about the minimum amount of armor I need to walk. Especially since I need to use the bathroom. I close my eyes and imagine the look I’m going for. I shiver as the Animetal flows into my pores for storage mode. I open my eyes. My hips and thighs are covered in armor. Four bands run down each leg. Front, sides, back, all the way to my feet where the armor cradles my feet like shoes. I don’t really look at my legs often; they are a reminder of what I’ve lost. It isn’t painful, just not something I need to be reminded of. However, they look considerably more full than last time I examined them.
“Epic, do you think this is a side effect of the new armor?” I say gesturing at my legs.
I do not have enough data. It is possible you are working out more and with the stimuli of the external nervous system, the muscles have responded.
They’re not… normal, but they sure aren’t as thin as they were. Cool. I’m stalling, I realize. I don’t want to hop off the little chair and have this not work. I focus on wiggling my big toe… nothing happens. Bitter disappointment wells up in me and I choke it back down. Setbacks are part of science. I close my eyes again.
“Epic, keep filling me in while I multi-task,” I say as I imagine a different configuration for the bottom half of my suit.
The third planet is where they are holding Kate. It has all the hallmarks of a research station. No significant cities or factories but they do have outposts in different places. One in the north where the nighttime temperature sinks below zero. Along with the rare outposts, they have a space elevator and a few orbital facilities for repairing and transporting ships. The planet is less hospitable than the other two, which would make it a perfect place to test weapons.
“Awesome. What makes you think they have Kate there?” I open my eyes to my new configuration. I can’t see my back but I can feel the armor, two inches wide, encasing my spine all the way up to the base of my neck. It wraps around my chest like a corset and then around my hips and thighs. The strips of nerve conductive material on my legs is the same but this time I have it coat just the bottom of my feet and toes while leaving the top open. It also braces my ankle, giving me support if I need it. Please work. “Wiggle!” I glare at my toe threatening it not to respond. Did it wiggle or was it my imagination.
I have intercepted several communications with updates on their progress and what they have learned, which is very little. Amelia, she is alive. But she won’t be for much longer.
When Epic drops the news, all thoughts of trying to configure the armor to walk vanish. The alloy flows out of me, wrapping around me in a heartbeat.
“Let’s go get her, Epic. Right now.”
The base’s security is quite advanced. Once you are detected they will respond with overwhelming force. This location has all their most advanced research. Including what they are calling a ‘quantum singularity generator’.
That news stops me cold.
“Are you serious?”
Of course. I would never joke about science… on a Tuesday… in the morning.
I smile. “Okay, note made. Don’t blow up the generator. Do you have a location for Kate on the planet?”
He hesitates and I can tell the news isn’t good.
No. There are eighteen research stations, all connected via maglev to a central location where the space elevator is. They do not appear to have any spaceports. A network of satellites with high levels of energy defend the orbit. They seemed to be inordinately concerned about defense.
“Figures. So, our way in is the station, to the elevator, to the surface, to Kate. How do we find her once we are there?”
Now that we can understand the coding language and their computer language we should be able to interface with their computers once we are on site. There is only so much I can do from this distance. They do not have FTL communications.
“Plot a course. Let’s go get Kate.”
Course plotted.
“Engage!”
I’ll be the first to admit, this is freaking cool. I hope I can take this ship back with me. How awesome would it be to have a ship for a base? “Epic, make a note. Let’s explore having an orbital base. If we could use quantum teleporters as Lux has… we could be anywhere in the world in seconds.”
Note made. Engines online. Course laid in… ETA, one hour thirty-seven minutes. I will continue to monitor their communications to see if I can narrow down her location.
“Understood. Keep me in the loop.”
The rush of adrenaline that spiked me when he said she wouldn’t be alive much longer fades. Maybe I could spend a little more time configuring my armor? If I could get it right, I could use it all the time, not just when I’m crime fighting.
The possibilities flood through my brain in full force. If programmed just right, I could use this tech to bypass just about every spinal column nerve damaged injury on Earth. The possibilities blow my mind for a second. I’d need a crap-ton of this alloy and every penny of my ill-gotten gains… but I could do it.
I lose track of time using my neural interface to draw plans with my fingers and put together blueprints for my MKV version. With the new possibilities… I could do so much with this stuff. By the time Epic signals our arrival I’ve managed to make my big toe wiggle. I let out a cheer as it moves and I feel it move.
We’ve inserted in orbit and are in line to dock with the station. Once we dock, give me a few minutes to override their security. The ability to open the doors will make things easier.
I will the armor to spread over me, encasing me entirely in the suit, helmet and all. I flex my hands open and closed in nervous anticipation. All we’ve been through, the Creature, Ericsson, the drones, now this… I can’t even remember what life was like before I joined the Diamondbacks, and here I am… in another solar system… about to rescue my best friend from evil aliens bent on galactic domination. Maybe all those years watching Star Trek weren’t a waste after all.
114
The ship vibrates as mooring planks attach and pull her into a cradle next to the massive space elevator. A final bang echoes through the ship before a hiss of new air flows through the ventilation system.
It will not be long before they send a repair crew. The best I can do is not respond to their hails and just let them wonder.
“Do it. I’m heading for the gangplank. Let me know when you’re ready.” I practically jog to the center of the ship where the main airlock attaches to their space station. I snap my blade in and out reflexively, trying to channel my pent-up nerves.
The last time I felt this anxious about something was my first date with Luke. What if I’m too late? What if they’ve already killed Kate? If I find her vivisected… No. I push those thoughts aside. I didn’t get where I am by focusing on the negative. Focus, Amelia. Kate’s alive, I know it.
I am in. They have a data center on the planet where the space elevator base is located. If we can access it we should be able to locate Kate.
“Any luck on the doors?”
One moment.
I roll my shoulders and neck, trying to free up the tension. Sleeping at their stations didn’t do me any good.
Done. I am programming a proximity broadcast that should trick their door sensors into opening for us as if we had an all-access pass to Disneyland.
“Nice. Let’s do it.”
Amelia… I must caution you. There is a chance that stealth and subterfuge will not last long. You will have to fight your way in and out and there will be many deaths… I do not wish to alarm you but make you aware.
“I understand, Epic. I never signed up to
be a soldier. The Th’un, though, they’re fighting a war. We won’t win by trying to be the police while we fight them. I don’t want to kill callously, but we do what we need to do to bring our people home.”
Understood.
The light above the door flashes from red to green and the metal flows apart, revealing a circular hallway leading toward the station. The emptiness is almost a letdown after my nerves were keyed for a fight.
I do a little hop and run down the length. My armored boots clang against the deck, making a lot more noise than I like.
“Is the whole thing constructed with metal decks? No carpet?”
It is unclear, but I would assume so.
The far door hums as we approach, flashing green and opening in the same flowing way. The space behind it is a large debarkation hub with chairs, terminals, and about a hundred Th’un in various states of dress. None of them turn toward me right away; after all, I’m just another ship docking.
“Light me a path to the central elevator, least time!”
Yellow lines flash to life, overlaid on my vision showing me the quickest route to the space elevator. I run, leap, and kick in the Emdrive, shooting past several Th’un who scream and point. I don’t have time to translate what they’re saying. Epic’s path takes me off to the left. This looks like every airport terminal I’ve ever been in. The donut wheel outer hub has docking collars every hundred or so feet. Epic throws a wireframe map of the hub up for me to see. The outside of the donut looks like all airlocks and waiting areas. The inside has small shops, sleeping quarters, maintenance stations, and security.
Glowing yellow arrows flash to life, warning me I need to turn. I throw out my hands to blast through the turn, rolling as I go. The door ahead of us flashes green and flows apart.
Warning. There is an intruder alert out for you. Expect automated security to converge on your location along with armed reinforcements.
I hit the deck in a shower of sparks as my armored feet slide across the metal plating, grinding me to a halt in front of the internal door leading to the actual elevator. It doesn’t open.
Full Metal Superhero Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 62
