The Belt Loop _Book One

by Robert B. Jones

  “I remember,” he said finally. He repeated how sorry he was and promised not to do it again. In his heart, he knew it was a promise he was not fully sure he was able to keep. Boys will be boys?

  “You’d better, young man. I’ll put you out of the lock myself if you don’t get serious about your situation.”

  Geez, there she goes again, he thought. Always calling it “my situation” and not owning up to the fact he was only eight when she smuggled him aboard this warship. Heck, he could always plead that she did it against his will or something lame like that, and he would be absolved of all blame, probably get a medal from the High Command for bravery, get the pretty girl and the big parade, get —

  Max covered the few steps between them and shook him. “You are getting old enough to understand what we face here, Har. Be a good boy and help me out. I don’t want to lose you,” she said, pulling him close to her bosom.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, turning his head to the side. “I promise I’ll do better. But you gotta admit, that was some kind of scary Red Alert or something this morning. We find some kind of monsters out there, or what?”

  She looked at him and her heart melted. He was just like his father, full of energy and enthusiasm. “No, Har, no monsters, just an old abandoned ship. Looks like its been floating in space for hundreds of years. It’s just sitting there off our left side. The captain is sending a team over to take a look, that’s all.”

  He jumped in place and hugged himself. “Infinitely awesome, Mom! I’ll betcha they find some kind of creatures over there, some kinda mind-control space monsters that will try to take over the universe. Spacin’ cool!”

  She shook her head. She wished he wouldn’t talk that way, trying to spice up his vocabulary with that centuries-old jargon he had been reading from those horrible space novels. But, as limited as her time with him was because of her duties, she could only leave him her extra portable reader and silently hope he would absorb some of the millions of modern books and technical treatises there. Hopefully by the time they finished this tour he would be ready for his formal university education. He certainly will be old enough by then. But that was three years out and she had to find a way to contain him until then, a task that was getting harder and harder on her as the cruise wore on. Plus, she realized, because female rankings and ratings were hormonally restricted from bearing children while in the Colonial Navy, she would be on the long-hand side of the biological clock when this cruise was finished, her chances of having more children limited by circumstance and diminished opportunity out here in the ass end of space.

  “I don’t think so, young man. That ship is dead. If there are any monsters aboard, we’ll have to reconstitute them with magic mineral water and quantum rays or something. Don’t get your hopes up.”

  He danced around a couple of steps and almost tripped over his own feet. “You’re just saying that to keep me in the dark, aren’t you? It must be a secret mission, you were sent out here to find the monsters and smoke them, huh, Mom?”

  She ruffled his hair again. “How did you find out, Admiral Hansen? Do we have a spy in our midst?” Max said, playing along.

  He stiffened and held one hand cupped to his ear. “My agents haven’t reported in. There must be trouble,” he said.

  She looked at him and a tear formed in her left eye. Gosh, he has nothing but me. No friends, no playmates, nobody his own age to pal around with. She wondered if she had done the right thing. “You keep trying to contact them,” she said, “and wait for the ‘all clear’ signal from the bridge.”

  They collapsed into each other’s arms and laughed and laughed. She loved her son and his safety and security was her main purpose in life. He loved her just the same and her, well, her motives for keeping him below decks bewildered him. An alien ship, hard off the port flank! He just had to get a look at it, live and in-person.

  Admiral Hansen started readying his plans in his over-active mind.

  Chapter 6

  “Boat is away, captain,” Davi Yorn said into the mouthpiece on the end of the communicator attached to the soft skull-cap headgear he wore inside his evo suit. “ETA, ah, seven minutes, sir. Reposition your drones and give me coordinates.”

  “Standby, one,” the earpiece told him.

  The little lifeboat was capable of ferrying up to thirty persons and had a reasonable amount of space allocated for gear and weapons. The little fusion motor was located in the stern and was shielded from the crew side by thirty centimeters of carbon steel laced with monofilament graphite. The manual reported that should the engine go critical and reach fission, the shielding would protect the human crew. What the manual didn’t say was that should that little engine explode, it would push the protected part of the lifeboat away from the explosion at a speed roughly 184,000 kilometers per hour. A wild ride to nowhere.

  “Coordinates coming in, commander. Your infiltration point is just below the center line on the starboard fuselage. The drones have marked it with a powder burn.”

  Yorn thought for a second, then said, “Anything on the port side? It would be nice to stay in visual with the Christi and the lights,” he said.

  “Negative. I don’t want them to see us yet, Davi,” the captain said. “Proceed as directed. . .”

  The captain had a good point, Yorn decided. If they had to blow a hatch to enter the ship and something ugly was waiting on the other side of that hatch, maybe it was good to keep the bulk of the mother ship out of plain sight. That’s why he’s the captain, Yorn said to himself, stifling the desire to say that thought out loud.

  The CNS-141 lifeboat, designated LB-141-02, slowly left the bulk of the Christi and its brilliant lights. With his six charges glued to the small windows on the boat, Yorn navigated the 500-meter distance in almost total silence. Some of the crew had cogent comments to make about the derelict, but most of their banter was military in nature, sexual in intent, and raunchy in anyone’s ears that was on the freq. The derelict vessel was now well-defined and after a few minutes surface detail was visible.

  “Two-fifty and closing,” Yorn reported. “Going to swing under that area amidships and try to get a look at those appendages, captain.”

  “Bridge, aye.”

  “Mister Bone, get your ass up here and start your recordings,” Yorn said, instinctively turning his head to look over his shoulder, even though he knew his words were being transmitted loud and clear over his suit mike.

  “Coming forward now, commander. Cameras loaded,” the archivist said.

  Lieutenant Perry Bone eased into the right chair at the front of the boat. The huge forward screen offered him perfect views of the derelict. They were close enough now to see the port side of the ship in great detail and Bone started his recordings. He used a hand-held gigapixel camera to supplement the automatic wing cameras on the nose of the lifeboat. He also switched on the scanning electron cameras with a voice command. “Cameras rolling, sir,” he said.

  Bone held the camera out away from his body and voiced a few more commands and the machine automatically started ratcheting through frame after frame. The sphere inside the device was capable of storing over a million images and Bone was determined to get as many close-up shots as he could as they descended towards the keel of the vessel. He frowned at what he saw.

  From 200 meters, the pulsating rhythm of the ship was very pronounced, and it indeed looked like a giant oligochaetous creature. He decided right then, barring any other discernible markings, he would dub the ship the Lumbricus because anything else would not be fitting and proper. But from that point on most of the crew would just refer to her as the worm. What looked like legs from a distance actually resolved into appendages that were fashioned like grappling hooks. They were certainly mechanical, articulated in two places and erupted from the bottom of the derelict at regularly spaced intervals near the keel, if this was the bottom of the hull as the crew suspected. Purpose? Unknown. Each of the thirty or so appendages met the hull of the ship at a wr
inkled, organic-looking sphincter at what would have been the water-line had this been a common ocean-going vessel. His camera whirred away.

  The main body of the vessel was dull gray and striated bands of raised material, slightly off-color, ringed the hull. Definitely reaffirming the annelid comparison Bone had made. The central bulge was much lighter in appearance and this wide band encircled the entire circumference of the hull. At 100 meters Bone could see two things: the ship was huge, reminding him of a gigantic vacuum hose of some kind; and it was ancient: the hull had been pelted with space debris and micro-meteorites for centuries. Small craters had left dimples along the skin of the ship in random patterns. Some of these tiny craters were grouped such that he speculated the ship had passed through the tailings of a comet or two.

  “Going up the starboard side, captain,” Yorn reported.

  The bridge acknowledged and Ensign Corman said, “Drones at your six and twelve, LB-02.”

  Yorn acknowledged the information. Relay drones were now above and below the ship enabling him to keep communicating with the Christi should transmitting through the bulk of the derelict prove problematic. The captain again, Yorn thought, thinking of everything.

  Since the Lumbricus was listing slightly starboard of her centerline, the appendages from the other side were now coming into view, looking like greedy hands attached to dull metallic arms. Soon they would lose the super-bright illumination from the Christi so Yorn ran his hand over a control panel and voiced the exterior lights on the hull of the lifeboat into being.

  “You still with us back there? Mister Ryon, get set for egress. Coming up on the powder burn. Mister Bone, you got enough light?”

  “Affirm that, sir. Cameras still rolling. Bridge, you getting my stream from this side?”

  The captain’s voice: “Keep it rolling, Bone.” “We have you five by five,” Ensign Corman replied. So, the bulk of the derelict ship was transparent to EM radiation; a good piece of information to know and process.

  The lifeboat was rising vertically along the flank of the ancient ship, making about two meters per second. Then it began to slow. Yorn saw the starburst pattern of the powder grenade. It was twenty meters above him and ten meters forward. “Hatch is located, captain. This side is just about the same as the opposite side. Stopping the boat twenty meters from the burn mark,” he said into his suit mike.

  Yorn and the bridge of the Corpus Christi exchanged a minute of operational and safety instructions before the captain said, “Get your feet wet, commander.”

  Yorn laughed and said, “Aye, aye, captain. Boots in the water.”

  Davi Yorn set the lifeboat to hover in place and Gilroy came forward while Bone made his way to the rear of the boat. Gunny Sergeant Ryon was at the central hatch and waited for the nod from Yorn.

  “Pressure check, atmosphere check?” the commander asked into his suit.

  “Expedition ready and able, sir,” Ryon answered.

  “Station keeping twenty meters off starboard hull, amidships,” from Hec Gilroy.

  Yorn nodded his head and said, “Pop the hatch, Mister Ryon, get the lanyard in place.”

  Sergeant Ryon slapped the panel beside the starboard hatch and it opened silently. A wisp of dust motes outgassed into the gap between ships. Yorn stood behind the sergeant and watched as he braced himself and propelled the grappling hook toward the derelict. Silently, slowly, the steel cable unwound and eventually made contact. When the lanyard pulled taut Ryon secured the handheld winch into the slot near the hatch and gave it a tug with a gloved hand. “Line secured, commander,” he said.

  Yorn stepped toward the opening and surveyed the scene before him. A cloud of dust floated away from the spot where the line was attached to the ship. He could see a thin outline of what appeared to be a hatch. “Make your way across, sergeant,” he said. One by one the seven-man search and rescue crew voiced their suit lights into operation and fourteen shafts of blue-white LED cones danced across the gap between the ships. Yorn watched as Ryon silently attached his safety line to the cable and started across. Small puffs of vapor from his jet pack pushed him across the gap and as he got closer to the side of the derelict he extended his arms.

  “Contact, commander. My hand went about three or four centimeters through the dust. Solid underneath but not rigid. Send over a blower,” Ryon requested.

  Silvie Tan clipped a small instrument to the cable and gave it a slight push. The portable blower eased across.

  Sergeant Ryon settled the tool in his right hand and steadied himself with his left. He hit the stud on the blower and the force of the escaping gasses caused his legs to stretch away and he aimed the airstream toward the bow of the ship to push them back. A small cloud of dust wafted away from the ship in the stark blue-white light. “Man, this baby’s been out here a while,” he said, his words punctuated by short gasps of breath between the syllables. “Markings on this hatch, commander. Some kind of glyphs. . . cuneiform writing of some kind,” he said.

  Ryon described what he saw on the hull of the ship during the ten minutes it took him to clear the hatch of dust. The cloud of fine talc drifted around the outline of an opening that was roughly circular, two meters in diameter. Several indented circular craters stood out in stark relief as his suit lights danced across the surface of the hatch. “Got what appears to be a dozen EB heads on this hatch, sir. Let me clear more of the dust and ice away around the door and see if I can find a control panel or something.”

  “Careful, sarge, don’t blow that hatch until you’re away. If those are explosive bolts, you have no way of knowing which way that thing will pop,” Yorn cautioned him.

  Twenty minutes later Ryon had cleared a patch of hull about ten meters square and the dull surface of the derelict ship continued its slow pulsations.

  Yorn eased out of the lifeboat and worked his way towards the sergeant while keeping a running commentary going with Captain Haad on the bridge of the Corpus Christi. The moment of truth had arrived.

  Chapter 7

  CPO Eddie Rich sat down with a huff and clanged his tray to the table top. The crew mess was busy just after shift change and he deposited his 90-kilogram mass unceremoniously into one of the molded plastisteel chairs on the port side of the ship. Hell, most of the diners this morning were sitting on the port side, taking advantage of the large vertical viewports situated every two or three meters along the dining hall bulkhead. Captain Haad had raised the security shutters earlier and a lot of necks were straining to get a look at what was now called the worm. A steady flow of conversation worked its way to his ruddy ears.

  “Man, I think that thing is creepy. . . I mean, look at those legs!”

  “They look like yours, fuckhead.”

  Laughter.

  “Your wife didn’t think they were so bad when I had them wrapped around her waist.”

  From another table: “I don’t see why we don’t just blast that thing. Call it space junk and be done with it.”

  “That’s why your sorry ass won’t make the promotion list next cycle, Ninny. You’ve got no vision,” another voice said.

  “Yeah, but, I have vision enough to see that freaking worm thing is up to no good!”

  “How’d that thing get out here, that’s the question.”

  From still another table: “They sent a boat over there a few minutes ago. You guys know that?”

  “Full of grenades, if they were smart.”

  Eddie Rich looked at the ratings but offered nothing to the conversations. He ate in silence and after each bite of his breakfast he glanced at the hulking worm. He had seen some strange shit in his years in space but this was the first time he had come across floating debris that offered no clue as to its origins. He had been one of the first sailors on the CNS Imperial Beach to breach the hull of a Varson ship back in 2777. But, at that time, he knew what he would see inside. Varsonians. Concussed, starved of air, and very dead. This floating worm was an object of fascination for him but he tried not to let it
show. Right now it represented just another campaign ribbon, just another citation in his personnel records. The fact that he was eating breakfast instead of out on the away mission spoke volumes to his bruised ego. He was old. Fifty-six and counting, perhaps the oldest rating on the Corpus Christi and surely one whose distinguished career would end at the E-7 high-water mark. Maybe they could resurrect that old-school “tombstone promotion” policy for him and he could at least get out of the Navy as an E-8. Not that he would get any extra pay and retirement entitlements because of the bump; it was just a matter of prestige. It was a pride thing. After twenty years’ worth of naval service, most of it in the Fringes, he thought he deserved more respect from the Fleet. Maybe, somehow, he could use this worm thing to get him the recognition he thought he was due.

  He looked out at the derelict again. That’s funny, he thought, that thing’s moving!

  * * *

  “What do you mean she’s moving, Mister Gant?” Captain Haad said.

  “Proper motion, relative to the background stars, captain,” Gant said.

  “Put the trace up on screen.”

  Gant slid his fingers down a column of controls on his stack and transferred the images to the blister.

  A rotating graphic display marched silently across the huge viewscreen from right to left. Various lines pierced the central image of the elongated derelict ship and vectored away in three dimensions. Then the image rotated through each of the axes and annotated formulae associated with each line blinked in bright yellow.

  “I make it about two centimeters per hour, captain,” the helmsman said.

  Uri Haad pushed back from his console and walked toward the forward blister. He stared at the projection for a heartbeat or two, then said, “Did you get that, Davi? Your bird is flying away at a less-than-incredible rate of speed. Helm makes it out to be two cps. You copy?”