Obsidian Ressurection

by T J Bryan

  "I don't know where to start," replied Lennie. I told the Chief everything last night. You know about the Sentinels and how we threw rocks until one seemed to die... and then, well, we went inside. I know it was not right. But we went inside anyway and found the vac suits."

  Helen remained silent but her gaze on Lennie did not waver.

  "Go on Lennie. Tell Helen about what you found. Inside the zone."

  Lennie swallowed hard. "Well..." He paused for a moment to gather some courage. "After we threw in the second and third rock and the Sentinel didn't do anything we thought we might just slip in. You know to do a little exploring. Larry wanted to go and I thought it was a bad idea but he talked me into it."

  Abel restrained a laugh at what he knew was a lie. Helen knew also.

  He continued, "The angle of attack from 30 degrees below the elliptic and about 200 yards from Dees Rock was tricky especially given the funny shape of Dees and its' crazy spin. The two Sentinels that seemed dead looked silent, but the others on the high elliptic and well below we knew were still alive and deadly. But... you know... we went in. Slid in between the two dead ones. Easy peesy as they say in the holo-vids." He paused a moment to think and take a breath. Lennie began talking fast as if the governor somewhere in his brain had decided to tell everything as fast as he could and then get the heck out of there.

  "So we slipped in and didn't see much for about a dozen klicks, but then Larry looked at the scope and he swore some curse words. I leaned over and took a look and the scope was full of pips. Not just a few, but hundreds. Pips of all sizes and arranged in neat rows. All lined up. We kept going and then as we got close we could see them on visual."

  As Lennie paused to gather his breath Helen interrupted. "Ships Lennie. How many ships did you see?"

  Lennie looked startled as if surprised that Helen knew what he had found inside the forbidden zone. "Lots of ships. All kinds. Big ones, little ones, and odd ones as well. Lots of them looked in really bad shape with scorch marks and bad holes, breaches you know. Really bad breaches. A few looked like they were only half there. You know, like someone broke them in half. Some of the breaches were really big, I guess from Plasma, or torpedoes, or stuff like that. I told Larry we needed to get out of there but he insisted we look a bit farther. So we pulled away from the big stuff and pulled up alongside a long line of the smallest ones. They were perhaps each a 100 meters long. Must have been thirty or so all in a line. Really neat looking like arrow heads in the holo-vid flicks of the cowboys and Indians that you see in the Encyclopaedia Gallectica entertainment section. The really big stuff just looked like kilometre long tubes with funny end caps covered in holes and bumps. They were really big, but the small ships... They were different. Well, we pulled up alongside one and saw that it was 'vac-d'. You know the ports were open. Even the cargo bays were open. The ships had no atmosphere. Larry did a quick look and it seemed that every ship was vac-d and dead. We scanned for energy readings on the small ship but the ship was dead. Nothing and stone cold. Then Larry said, let's take a look inside. The runabout could easily get through the cargo bay and into the hold. I thought it was a bad idea, but we had come so far I decided to go along with Larry."

  Helen drew a breath: "So you went inside this little ship? And what did you find?"

  Lennie broke his gaze on Helen and looked at Abel. "Well, we pulled inside and Larry energized his old vac suit and said we should go outside and explore. I told him he was crazy and his old suit was likely to get him, or both of us killed. But he wasn't going to listen to reason. He went out into the hold of the small ship alone. The voice comm wasn't working so I couldn't hear what he was up to, but I watched as he passed into the dark sections of the hold. He was gone for what seemed forever and I was really getting scarred and then I saw his helmet light. He was pulling a big yellow carton and threw it into the aft hold. I was really glad and thought we could get out of there, but he went back into the ship. I was yelling at him, but he could not hear me and after what seemed forever he clambered back to the runabout. He was all sweaty and breathing heavy when he came back and kept talking about vac-suits. He didn't make any sense and I really needed to pee. We didn't have a facility cause were a race runabout and the soda bottle was just too embarrassing. So we came home. Fast. Probably too fast and Officer Telson stopped us at the dock."

  Lennie stopped.

  Helen reached for her inter-tab and typed in a few lines. Abel could see several pictures displayed in response to her query. "Did the little ship look like this one Lennie?" she asked?

  Lennie leaned over to stare at the display. "Yeah. Looked just like that""

  Helen looked at Abel for a long time. "Abel, I think Lennie needs to take us out to the Fleet. It's time we figured out what's going on."

  Abel looked at Lennie again. His face had gone white. After a long pause Abel responded, "Yes. It's time."

  Chapter Three

  Jamon System - Habitat - Year 3245. May 13 ET: Time 11:23

  Before returning to his home and bed Abel had left messages for Helen, Lennie, and Emmitt Wong to meet him at the Maintenance Dock at noon the following day for an excursion out to the Sentinels. In addition he asked Emmitt to bring along four of the new vac suits if they had passed inspection. He had also spoken with the maintenance night supervisor and asked if either of the two 'busses', Queenie and Beatrix, were available for a short Constabulary authorized trip to the outer ring. Abel had not mentioned the real reason for the trip, but given the speed of the rumours concerning the vac-suits he need not mention the reason why. Unfortunately both Beatrix and Queenie were down for repairs. Quennie was the nickname for the shuttle 'Queen Eufemia', and no one really knew why the other shuttle was called 'Beatrix.' The supervisor did not know when Beatrix would be back on line and that Queenie was still awaiting gimbol repairs and it would be at least another week. Both Queenie and Beatrix had once been part of a small fleet of eight shuttle busses used to ferry workers out and back among the asteroid rings for work, but they had been purchased used and cheap over three hundred years ago and only Queenie and Beatrix were left. The others had been salvaged for parts and then scrapped.

  The sweeper Quark was available however and Abel left a message for Ingvar Karrlson, Quark's pilot, to call him in the morning about taking the Quark out to the outer rings on police business. He failed to mention that the trip would include his son Lennie. As Abel finished the message he realized that it was already morning and he had not made it to bed and some needed sleep. Just as he dozed off the vid-com rang and it was Ingvar who confirmed the availability of the Quark. As usual the taciturn Ingvar did not ask the reason why the police needed his ship for the afternoon.

  Abel arrived at the Maintenance Dock early and checked in with the Officer of the Watch who occupied a small office just inside the triple vac doors that separated the living area of the Habitat from the working areas. The deck was cold as always. His breath formed little clouds as he stamped his feet on the steel deck plates. The living areas of Habitat were kept at a relatively warm temperature, but here on the Maintenance Deck the energy needed to keep the place warm would be wasted, and now that even the Habitat's energy providing fusion engines had begun to fail, he knew that even Habitat living areas might well be unable to keep their inhabitants warm and toasty at some point in the near future. After passing his warrant card across the scanner and exchanging pleasantries with the Watch, Abel walked onto the Maintenance Dock and past the repair and refurb area. He paused a moment to look at both Beatrix and Queenie in their unadorned disassembled state. Amazing how we have kept these two old girls running after all these years, but even Abel knew that entropy always won, and that eventually both of the busses would become scrap leaving the Habitat without local transportation to the mining and work sites. Perhaps ME at the Collegium and the Fabricators Guild might be able to build something to replace the busses, but Abel had his doubts as did both the Collegium and the guild. Building runabouts was one thing, bu
t building industrial level shuttle ships was another.

  Abel continued his walk across the cold deck and toward the berthing area the sweeper Quark. After passing three huge stanchions linking the deck to the rock ceiling high above Abel saw the steel gray hulk that was the Quark. He paused a moment to take in the size and condition of the sweeper. Quark had been purchased new from the Greayson yards at Wawalla almost four hundred years ago. She was a purpose built sweeper and her years of duty removing rocks and the debris of the failed to form planetary system of Jamon were showing. Her once clean hull was now pitted, scuffed, and burned in more places that she was clean. Welded steel patches covered her skin. Her blackened reaction jector engine nacelles revealed too much wear and tear. Quark had become increasingly reliant on simple impulse engines alone for movement. No fancy fusion engines or mythical gravity well drives propelled the sweeper on its' almost daily mission to keep the travel lanes of the Jamon System clear of dangerous obstacles. Quark was slow and need not rely on speed to perform its' work.

  Quark was almost 300 meters long in a long tubular shape, and her nose, if you could call it that, was really a very large octagonal cargo door with eight articulated beams ending in large opposed fingers used to grasp the smaller rocks and pull them into her cavernous hold. Above the nose and just below the flight deck windows were a pair of small rail gun impactors used to break up larger rocks into something small enough to be captured by the arms and pulled within the Quark. Up top was her bridge and her living quarters. In the early days of the Commonwealth a crew of 12 lived aboard her full time and she was used 24/7 as the Commonwealth established itself here on the far edges of the galactic arm. After the Habitat was established and much of the intense work of the Quark was completed her crew moved ashore, but following a blow out almost a decade ago, her now only pilot Ingvar Karrlson, moved his family into the safety of the ships quarters. Ingvar had lost his wife Astrid in the blow-out and recovery had been difficult as he raised two small children without a mother on board the sweeper.

  The overall tubular form of Quark was ringed every 20 meters of so by clusters of impulse jets fuelled, Abel knew, by pressurized water and air. Water and air in a system like Jamon had proven plentiful and cheap given the comets that ringed their system. These rings of low power positioning jectors were used in finely manoeuvring the ship in its' daily efforts at catching wayward rocks. Upon looking closer Abel saw that many of the small jectors were capped off, evidence of either an impact long ago from stray rocks or of failing ejector nozzles which could not be maintained. At the rear, where the business end of the impulse propulsion system lay, was a ring of eight full sized reactor jector nozzles and very large hallows manifolds used in pushing the ship forward. These jectors Able knew were powered by hydrogen and oxygen burns. The jectors were very old and portions of the aperture of one looked melted. Able could see only three black stained nozzles that faced him as the ship lay in its' berthing cradle, but soon he heard a loud metal on metal clang followed by cursing coming from the far side. Abel approached the sounds with caution and when rounding the rear of Quark he found Ingvar Karrlson hammering a full reaction jector nozzle with a huge iron wrench. Abel could see that a rear jector nozzle was caught at a hard 90 degree angle unlike the others which stood in a neutral position relative to the ship. His son Lennie stood by his side. Ingvar raised the enormous wrench high overhead and brought it crashing down upon the gimbol that connected the jector nozzle to the ship. The gimbol did not move and Ingvar took another swing while shouting an old Norse curse.

  Lennie looked up at Abel but said not a word waiting for his father to complete his adjustment of the faulty gimbol. Down came the wrench with a whack, and finally the gimbol fell free as the nozzle fell into a neutral position matching that of its' companions. Ingvar stood and swore again in old Norse, a language that few now could comprehend, except for its' wealth of swear words. Ingvar wiped his forehead of sweat and turned toward his son who motioned toward Abel. Abel thought for a moment that in all his years of knowing Ingvar he had heard the taciturn Ingvar say more swear words than other words in polite conversation. Such was the man who was the last pilot of the Quark.

  Ingvar was tall as were many in the Habitat and Abel knew he was 63 years old. The Pilots Guild looked down at those who flew a sweeper and Ingvar had never advanced beyond Commercial Pilot Second Class. The irony of his Pilots Guild status was that, of the 35 or so remaining First Class Pilots in the system, there was nothing for them to fly except Queenie and Beatrix. Most of the now aged pilots had been promoted on seniority rather than on actual flight time simply because there was nothing left for them to fly. In addition most were well over 120 years old, and although healthy and fit, they simply lacked the reaction times and 'right stuff' expected of a pilot out here on the edge of space.

  Ingvar nodded to Abel but remained silent as they walked down the length of the ship toward the foreword hatch with Ingvar holding the enormous wrench in his left hand. The hatch was open, which struck Abel as unsafe, but who was he to question Ingvar. Ingvar entered the hatch wrench in hand. Lennie stood outside and followed Abel in. The hatch door hissed to a shut condition, the tell-tales went from red to green, and Ingvar turned to Abel. "Yeah. The hatch was open. But I don't trust the Habitat. Might have needed to run for it," Ingvar muttered.

  Abel nodded and realized that Ingvar's paranoia of the failing systems of the Habitat might be justified after all. Ingvar motioned up and began to climb the ladder to the first deck and the bridge and living quarters lugging the wrench along with him. Down a short but cramped hallway they entered the equally cramped bridge. The bridge had three stations and a command chair and a folding jump seat. The stations were for engineering to run the ship, one to capture and gather in the rocks, and the other flight control. The jump seat probably for visitors of which there were now few if any. At this moment all three stations were powered down. Abel knew that the ship was now flown by only Ingvar and Lennie. Silvi had gone off to the Collegium and now lived in the student barracks. Study at the Collegium was intense and it made no sense to live anyplace other than the student barracks.

  No one said anything as Ingvar pushed the wrench into an equally large bracket on the bulkhead and then slumped down into the engineering station seat followed by Lennie who sat in at the pilot's station. Lennie powered up the pilots station and began a pre-flight check. Abel noted that Lennie did not use the plasticard check list that was attached by a lead to the control section, but rather relied upon memory to complete a full system check. Impressive but perhaps reckless thought Abel. They waited and Abel decided that saying nothing was better than rambling on about nothing.

  The bridge of the Quark was functional but worn and old. Able could see that many of the control arms and switches had seen years if not decades of use. The paint and etched labels of many of the function control switches were entirely worn away. Only someone totally familiar with the ships control could determine which switch or control was which. On what Abel thought to be the ceiling of the bridge were pipes and conduits leading to various stations on the ship. Abel noticed that several of these pipes and conduits were new and their obvious homemade nature could not be ignored. Gate valves, which Abel knew were nothing more than the plumbing fixtures he might find in the sewerage system vents at the station, were installed along one pipe. Well, thought Abel, why not. If they worked on the station they would probably work on a ship. Two eight inch pipes hung low in the compartment held aloft by thin stanchions. From one pipe hung a pale grey rope woven into a complex and indecipherable pattern. One pipe was painted white with a red arrow pointed aft with a stencil saying 'H2O Pressure' and another painted green labelled 'H20 Relief'.'

  After a while the hatch chime buzzed and Lennie reached over and threw a worn un-labelled switch that activated the lower hatch door release. Abel could hear conversation and footfalls on the ladder as first Helen and then Emmitt Wong entered the living quarters of the ship and adva
nced to the bridge. The bridge had been crowded with just the three of them but now became cramped as Helen found the jump seat attached to the bridge wall and settled in. Emmitt sat in the command chair which was the only vacant seat on the bridge. The seats were small and fitted tightly against the bulkhead wall. The straps and restraints were probably the only elements of the bridge that retained some hint of disuse.

  Lennie, who was at the pilot's station turned toward Helen and Emmitt. "Make sure your tight in those seats. Pull the straps down hard. Really hard. Were in for a bumpy ride. Quark is a lot bigger than the runabout and were going to have to get a lot closer to Dees Rock. It might be bumpy." Lennie paused a moment. "Well, it's going to be bumpy"

  Abel realized that Lennie's comment was probably a gross understatement given that Quark was perhaps a thousand times larger than the runabout but more importantly far, far greater in mass. Mass could be good in a ship, on the other hand it could also be a killer. A small runabout was highly manoeuvrable given its' light mass, but a ship the size of Quark was quite heavy, and as Newton said in the ancient sagas a 'body in motion tends to stay in motion'. Quark was hardly a spring chicken thought Abel, wondering after a moment what a spring with a chicken might be. So many of the idioms made so little sense he thought.

  Emmitt spoke first, "I sent the vac suits over this morning. Did they arrive?" Ingvar nodded pointing down toward the forward storage compartment below.

  "Take her out son." Ingvar directed in almost a whisper.

  Lennie nodded and reached for the comms-mic. "Maint-Stat, this is Quark requesting departure. Station 2B. Ready for launch."

  A moment later Maint-Stat responded through a tinny speaker haphazardly attached to the bulkhead above the pilots station. "Ok Quark. Purging now. Station 2B hatch open in 30."