by T. R. Harris
Just then, they came upon the point lead of the pirate force. Adam reached instinctively for his MK. It wasn’t there. He’d left the common room without bringing his weapon. He looked at the others. They were unarmed as well.
It was probably this fact that kept the two pirates from firing first and asking questions later. They had their hand weapons pulled and leveled at the trio.
“I took care of the one on the left,” Riyad reported, meaning he’d nullified the energy weapon held by the pirate, separating the battery charge from the firing controls.
“Let me do the other one!” Jym exclaimed.
Immediately, a low hum began to emanate from the weapon held by the pirate to their right. The alien lifted the gun to his face, curious about the never-before-heard sound coming from his MK.
Adam and Riyad knew what it was. Jym had severed the wrong connection within the gun, cutting the firing circuit while leaving the battery input still open. The MK-17 was building up to a critical mass, where it would explode with the force of a small hand grenade.
Adam stepped forward, pulling back his right arm before whipping his hand forward in a sweeping motion. The pirate and his bleating weapon were flung down the corridor by an invisible force, sliding along the deck before the weapons exploded in a flash of smoke and hot concussion.
The other pirate was close enough to take the brunt of the explosion, killing him instantly.
The roiling cloud of heat and flame raced up the corridor. Adam didn’t have time to use his mutant-enhanced body to cover Riyad or Jym. Together, all three were blasted along the smooth metal deck, eventually coming to rest twenty feet from where they’d been standing.
Adam was the first to his feet.
“Are you all right?”
Jym’s fur was smoking, but he appeared okay. Riyad rolled off his stomach and glared at Jym. He didn’t have to say a word; Jym understood the look.
“Wrong connection?” the tiny alien asked.
Riyad nodded.
Adam helped them to their feet. “Next time, let us handle the weapons. You just watch our backs.”
“Is there something unusual your backs will be doing?” Jym asked sincerely, confused.
“They’ll be in front of you, that’s what,” Riyad barked.
More pirates rushed into the corridor, drawn by the sound and fury of the exploding MK. Riyad and Adam disarmed all their weapons before a single bolt could be released. Next, they had to contend with seventeen screaming aliens—made up of five different species—as they rushed the pair of Humans, resorting to hand-to-hand combat now that their weapons were inoperative.
As arms flailed and bones broke, an MK-17 slid across the deck and came to rest in front of Jym. He hesitated to pick it up.
Adam blocked an alien fist before glancing back at Jym. “Go ahead,” he yelled. “I reactivated the firing circuits.”
Jym snatched up the weapon and began picking off the few pirates that were left standing. Ten seconds later, the corridor was quiet and still, except for a swirling residual smoke cloud hovering near the ceiling panels.
Adam watched as Jym casually walked through the maze of dead aliens until he reached the end of the hallway. There was a hole blasted in the right sidewall. Jym turned to the two Humans and smiled.
“It appears we no longer need the cutting tool. This will do nicely.”
By the time Copernicus and Kaylor returned to the Nautilus they’d already been briefed about the pirate attack via ATD. But they weren’t prepared for what they saw when they entered the common room to find Adam sitting in a chair, facing a semi-circle of his grim-faced teammates.
Kaylor pulled a chair up next to Jym before sniffing his still smoking fur. He moved the chair a few feet away and sat down.
Coop pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “I saw the hole in the wall and the pile of dead aliens in the hallway. Other than that, what did we miss?”
Sherri glared at him. “Why don’t you ask mister I-keep-secrets-from-the-rest-of-the-team, mister-man type guy. You know what I mean!”
“You mean Adam?”
“Of course, I mean Adam,” she snapped at her boyfriend. She turned back to stare at their leader. “Go ahead; you were about to explain….”
Adam tried to smile, but it came off as a smirk. “Okay, first of all, I wasn’t keeping secrets. It just hadn’t come up…not yet.”
“What hadn’t?” Coop asked.
For an answer, Adam turned his attention to Sherri. “Can you create a static electricity ball for me?” he asked.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just humor me. Can you?”
“I used to. I haven’t made one since I got the new ATD.”
“Go ahead, try.”
Sherri took a deep breath before placing her hands out in front of her, palms parallel, and about eight inches apart. Her forehead furrowed as she concentrated. A few seconds later, tiny sparkles of light were seen in the space between her hands. A moment later, the light had condensed to a marble-size ball of crackling blue and white electricity.
“There…are you satisfied?”
“I am,” Adam replied. “Now watch this.”
He raised his right hand and snapped his fingers. Instantly, a sparkling ball of electricity, twice the size and intensity of Sherri’s, popped into existence. There was no tell-tale sign of accumulating charges. One moment there was nothing, the next a cracking globe of energy.
“So what? You’re better at making electricity balls than I am.”
“I discovered my latest power—for lack of a better word—when I was on my way back from Tactoria a couple of weeks ago. So, you see, this is all new to me as well.”
“What new power?” Copernicus asked.
“Levitation,” Sherri answered. “The bastard can levitate things now.”
“Hey, don’t knock it,” Adam defended. “It just saved our lives.” He swept a hand at Riyad and Jym.
“What do static electricity balls have to do with levitation?” Coop asked. “We’ve all seen you make the sparkling ornaments before. They’re nothing new.”
“It seems Panur’s brain cells can make my ATD do things I didn’t know it could,” Adam began. “When I was bored during the trip, I started playing with the balls—”
Someone in the crowd snickered.
Adam continued: “I noticed I had a lot more control over them than before and was able to call up several at a time. Then in my mind’s eye—looking with the aid of the ATD—I noticed how the static electricity was able to create wispy ribbons of light blue air currents. The more I played with them, the more I found I could control the currents. After a while I was able to compress the air into near-solid sheets, ribbons, bands—whatever you want to call them. With practice, I could wrap these bands around solid objects…and move them.”
“Bullshit,” Coop replied.
“No really, watch.”
Adam focused on a cup of liquid—probably alcohol of some kind—sitting in front of Sherri. The container was made of a recyclable form of plastic used aboard most starships. Within his mind’s eye, he saw swirls of light blue circulating near the cup. Then the color intensified as the bands wrapped around the container. It rose up about five inches…before being crushed by the strength of the compressed air around it. Liquid exploded into Sherri’s lap, causing her to jump to her feet.
“Dammit!”
“Sorry…I’m still learning how to control it. Let me try something else.”
Next, he focused on a harder plastic tray used to carry food and drink from the processing station. To Adam, the tray was shrouded in the light blue light. To everyone else, it simply hovered in air until Adam made it slowly rotate. With his mind, he gently set the tray back on the table.
“I want to learn how to do that!” Jym exclaimed. “Teach me.”
“I don’t think I can,” Adam said. “I think it’s the mutant brain cells that make it possible.”
; “That is not fair! You seem to have all the best abilities, although I should be able to make the static electricity balls….” Jym placed his hands in parallel and began to concentrate.
“Well, damn,” Coop said. “Jym’s right; too bad the rest of us can’t do that. It could come in handy during the mission.” He shrugged. “I guess it’s cool that at least one of us can do it.” He looked over his shoulder. “Now, I’m wondering if you could use your new superpower to clean out the corridor? All those dead bodies are beginning to create quite a stink.”
7
Adam opted for the old fashion method of alien body disposal. After gathering the weapons, he took a motorized cart from one of the cargo holds and stacked the bodies five high before dumping them out the back of the ship.
Two pirates had remained aboard their ship, but they’d bugged out after seeing the life-sign monitors for the boarding party wink out. Nineteen dead pirates meant they’d obviously bitten off more than they could chew by attacking the old freighter. The survivors weren’t looking for any retribution for the loss of their comrades. It was a wise decision.
Once the bodies were jettisoned, Adam went to the starboard engine room to check on the progress of the cycling unit install. The metal casing fit well into the hole created by the MK blast, and Kaylor, Riyad and Coop moved the heavy piece of machinery to the forward end of the generator and were attempting to lift it into place.
“Ah, just in time,” Riyad said as Adam entered the room. “We were just getting ready to cut the gravity again, but seeing that you’re here, you can just lift the cycling unit into place with your mind.”
“That’s pretty big. I’ve never lifted something that big before.”
“Yeah, that’s what she said.” Riyad sent Adam one of his trademark smiles.
“C’mon, hotshot, give it a try,” Coop prompted.
“Sure, why not?”
Adam stood back so he could grab all the air in the room as he could. The blue swirls returned, this time longer and wider. He concentrated on the underside of the ten-foot square module, and the light began to accumulate there. The unit began to move. He was doing it.
Just then, Kaylor gasped for breath, followed a moment later by Coop and Riyad. Eyes bulged, and hands grasped at vein-pulsing necks. All three crumbled to the deck.
Adam was the next to feel the rush of air from his lungs. His mutant brain cells responded to his distress, allowing him to stay conscious longer than the others. He let his mind drop the cycling unit, releasing the compressed air under it to flow back into the room.
Kaylor and the three Humans recovered quickly, coughing and leaning back against the bulkhead, trying to figure out what just happened.
“Don’t tell me,” Riyad gagged. “You sucked all the air out of the room to lift the unit.”
Adam was rattled himself, but not like the others. He nodded. “Another good thing to know, I guess. Like they say: Live and learn.”
“With an emphasis on live, my friend,” Riyad added.
After the many distractions and interruptions, the freighter was just about ready to go. The cycling unit was connected to the NX-41 generator with power lines attached. Monitors and gauges were running, and everything seemed in order.
The next phase called for Kaylor to align the eight focusing rings—four for each generator. They were located in a compartment under the bridge and focused the gravity-mass waves at a point in space about seventy miles in front of the ship—hence the name focusing rings. The waves would almost instantaneously build upon themselves in a dynamo effect before reaching the point where a miniature blackhole was created, along with its accompanying event horizon. The freighter would fall toward the singularity before the blackhole would dissolve and be replaced with another, also seventy miles from the ship. All of this took place in a fraction of a second. Pretty soon even the mightiest of starships could move through space using this technique, always falling towards oblivion, yet never able to reach it.
Kaylor was relieved to find that the focusing rings were easily accessible aboard the freighter, not like they were with his old muleship, the FS-475. That ship had been poorly designed, with the placement of the focusing rings almost an after-thought. Yet without focusing rings, it wasn’t a starship. The skewed thinking of the ship’s designers still upset him to this day.
Over the past couple of days, Kaylor had already done several surveys of the ring compartment. He knew that at one point in the long history of the freighter something had hit the ship, damaging a number of the coupling stations. That was hard to do to this part of the ship. Normally, the singularities cleared the path ahead, sucking everything in the way into the event horizon. Whatever hit the ship had streaked in at an oblique angle, tearing out a pair of focusing rings in the process. Repairs were made—sort of—at least enough to keep the ship operating for a few more years. After repeated breakdowns, the freighter had been retired to some unnamed planet where it rusted for several years before being moved to the orbiting starship graveyard.
Two of the main coupling brackets showed signs of the haphazard nature of the repairs. On his first day aboard the freighter, Kaylor began making more permanent and modern improvements to the coupling units. He was a master at utilizing whatever he had available, and a ship this big provided the Belsonian with ample spare parts. He cannibalized whole sections of a transport system attached to the bulkhead of a cargo hold and managed to shape the necessary coupling brackets in the ship’s damage control workshop. He took great pride in his handiwork, even as Adam chided him, saying they only needed the ship to operate for a couple of months. This wasn’t going to be a permanent addition to the Cain fleet—a fleet which, by the way, didn’t exist.
Yet Kaylor couldn’t do anything halfway.
There were plenty of spare focusing rings in the supply compartment; unfortunately, many had collected a thick layer of dust when a section of the hull rusted away sometime in the past. Kaylor had to clean the lenses before they could be installed, being careful not to scratch the glass. Even still, several were discarded because of pitting on their surfaces.
Four of the existing rings were good. Kaylor replaced two others, and now he had the final two with him as he walked along the curved passageway, lined on his left with periodic ring stations.
He twisted a release lever and pulled out the sled that held the ring components. The new focusing ring was dropped in and pressed into a locking position. He closed the compartment before turning to the alignment controls placed on the wall.
Send power to number seven, he said through his ATD. By now, the team was comfortable communicating through their brain interface devices; it was easier and didn’t require any additional equipment. The problem came from revealing too much information through their thoughts. Copernicus was still trying to make up with Sherri after transmitting some rather lurid observations about Arieel on an open thought. He still had a ways to go to perfect his telepathy technique.
Routing power now, Jym answered in Kaylor’s mind.
The panel lit up, and Kaylor began to fine-tune the focusing ring alignment, bringing the sine waves into sync, while also adjusting the target angle. This was much easier than he was used to. Having ample space to work was definitely an advantage.
When he was satisfied with the alignment of ring #7, he closed and locked the sled before moving to #6.
This ring station had provided him the most challenge with the new coupling brackets. It had taken the most direct hit from the rogue projectile and therefore needed the most reconstruction. When he inserted the new focusing ring and snapped it into place, he got an immediate red-light notice on his monitoring datapad.
I am at number six. The wobble is beyond tolerance.
Understood, came Jym’s mental response. What are you going to do?
Not sure. I do not want to rebuild the unit; that would take too much time.
Is it peripheral or lateral? Jym asked
Lateral…wait, I
have an idea.
Kaylor flipped the monitoring datapad over so he could see the backside. A small panel covered the battery compartment. With his thumb, he removed the panel and placed the two-inch-by-one-inch piece of plastic along the left side of the ring channel, giving a final push to secure it in place.
Checking the still-operating datapad, he was happy to see the light shift to yellow—an indicator that the ring was stable and within tolerances.
Activate power to the ring, he commanded.
Did you fix it?
Apparently. It should hold for a while.
And that’s how a five-hundred-foot-long intergalactic star freighter—a vessel that harnessed the unimaginable power of blackholes—got its groove back.
Like most things that take place over a galaxy-sized area, it was another case of hurry up and wait.
Once the freighter was flight-tested and ready for faster-than-light travel, Kaylor placed the vessel within a deep gravity-well for the two-month-long journey to the starting point of the Klin invasion of the Milky Way. After a frenetic three days getting the ship ready, the team had nothing but downtime now before reaching their destination.
Kaylor steered the large craft above the ecliptic so to avoid a transit directly through the Klin cone of conquest. He and Jym spent the bulk of their time learning the finer aspects of the ship’s flight systems. After reconciling with Sherri, Coop was enjoying the personal tutelage of the two females aboard as they continued to give him a crash course in ATD operation. Adam got the impression he was learning faster than he let on, just to keep the women fawning over him.
Adam spent most of his time with Riyad, each trying to outdo the other with dire scenarios about their current mission. When not so engaged, he was in his compartment perfecting his new superpower.
More than any ‘power’ he’d acquired to date, he was getting the most kick out of his power of telekinesis. Since he’d learned a valuable lesson from the episode in the engine compartment, he was anxious to try out his abilities on a planet where there was ample atmosphere he could play with. He snickered when it dawned on him that even the real Superman didn’t have this power—not that he could remember.
