The Belt Loop _Book One

by Robert B. Jones

  “Get some more light over here, Mister Tate,” Gena Haslip said, waving her arms.

  Soon the cage was surrounded by about a dozen space-suited humans and for the first couple of minutes, the airwaves were silent. Bone’s camera continued to run.

  From the looks of it, the creature had fallen and it couldn’t get up. A condition known to many a drunken sailor. But in this case, Yorn thought that perhaps the little grenade explosion caused whatever glue was sticking that thing — its pod, its cocoon, whatever those things were — to the wall somehow gave way. He looked past the writhing alien to the far bulkhead and noticed several other cocoons hanging from roost-like perches. Had they accidentally dislodged that creature’s deep space habitat? Its hypersleep chamber?

  “It can’t breathe, sir. Its suffocating. . .” Max said.

  “Fine with me,” Haslip said.

  Yorn looked at his officers. “We don’t know that. And, even if what you’re saying is true, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it, is there? It’s got some kind of suit on beneath all of that gook, but, really? We don’t know what it might be used to breathing. And, besides, why didn’t it outgas? Why didn’t it start to decompress? There’s no air pressure in here.”

  “Change your filters. Use IR3c. That thing’s got some kind of shield around it,” Olson said. He had been standing away from the group at the cage running through his filters on his faceplate.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” Haslip said. “You see that, sir? That thing is in a containment field.”

  “Gertz! Are you getting my suit feeds?” Yorn said.

  No answer.

  “Lieutenant Commander Milli Gertz, Commander Yorn.”

  “I’m here, sir, I, I. . .”

  “Pull your head out of your ass, commander. We need some answers. We were expecting worms. Now we have these fucking birds. You getting all of this?” Yorn said, noticibly agitated.

  “It’s just that I don’t know what to say, sir. I’m as shocked by this as you are.”

  “Bridge to Yorn. Davi, come in.”

  “Yorn here, captain. Sir, we need some specialists on scene. Now we have live aliens in these cages. In at least one cage. Looks like the thing is choking, but we have no way to help it. It has some kind of containment field around it, and other than that, we’re clueless.”

  “Have you located the bridge yet? Do you see any way into the bow of that ship?” Captain Haad said.

  “Negative, sir. There seems to be one distraction after another.”

  “Mister Yorn, bag and tag that bird thing and move on. Get into the control center of that ship. First Priority. The body count is mounting, Davi. Get that ship under control, lit up, harmless, before I have to blow it into dust.”

  Yorn stuck his chest out a few millimeters and said, “Orders understood, Captain Haad. Dead or alive, I will send this thing back when boat three returns.”

  “Get a move on, Commander Yorn. I’ll have Gertz or one of her rankings on the next boat.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  “Bridge out,” Haad said firmly.

  * * *

  At 2330 hours the bridge crew turned their duties over to the third watch. The OOD — Officer Of The Deck — was a seasoned line officer named Bill Mason. He exchanged operational instructions with the captain and slid the bridge log across his screen.

  “Of course, captain, you know the whole ship has been following this all day,” Lieutenant Commander Mason said.

  “Yes, I know, Bill. Try to keep the men focused on their duties as best as you can. Fill in with staff corps officers where you can; a lot of my brass is over on the worm right now.”

  Mason nodded. “You just go and get some rest, Uri. Maybe that courier boat will dock tomorrow evening and we’ll get Fleet’s take on all of this.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Haad said with a wave of his hand. “Make sure you get some relief to that away team. Yorn’s pretty much all in by now. If that worm so much as belches, you call me.”

  “Aye, skip,” Mason said. Bill Mason was in his mid-forties and he had served on many Colonial Navy Third Fleet ships. He was medium height and almost bald with a tuft of graying hair above each of his prominent ears. Mason was a no-nonsense professional and Haad appreciated having him sitting in his chair.

  Haad looked around the bridge one last time before the boatswain’s mate piped him off the bridge. He walked aft down the passageway, went down the ladder, skirted the wardroom and the officer’s mess, and finally, after over eighteen hours on duty, he eased open the hatch to his stateroom. He looked at all of the displays on the console near his small metal desk and decided not to get involved any further. He shed his clothes and headed for his shower. Twenty minutes later he was fast asleep.

  * * *

  The transition of power on the worm took place over the next two hours. Yorn, Bone, Tan, and most of the first round of officers had rotated back to the Christi and that left Haslip and Max Hansen, along with twenty fresh able-bodied seamen and officers to run the advance. Haslip cancelled the attempts to bring air into the enormous cargo hold because of all of the tunnels that transected the space. She had no way of knowing which of those tunnels lead to vacuum and considered the engineering efforts to be a waste of valuable time.

  The relief electronic techs had found several more of the trip-wire electron beams and diffused them. As the group moved forward toward the bow, they started to see and recognize small alcoves of control stations, small electronic panels festooned with the strange glyphs, and many other items that were entirely undecipherable as to nature or function.

  At 0300 hours, Haslip and her group were standing at the base of an enormous bulkhead. One of those roost-like ladders marched up and away from them like a vertical fence without the barbed wire.

  Haslip gave instructions to the exobiologists and science officers still on the deck and she led her band up. The going was slow at first, but after two of her escorts got up to the third or fourth perch and lowered ropes for the rest of the group, things got easier. Forty meters off the deck Haslip and Hansen were standing on a small platform near a circular hatch similar to the one that had opened up on Gunny Ryon and cost him his life. Two of the MA petty officers threw carbon-fiber lines up to the next level of horizontal posts and looped them back and secured them with D-rings and clips. The seven people on the little platform secured themselves to the ropes and to each other. Haslip agreed to open the hatch.

  Just as before, two small circular panels were present, one at the nine o’clock position, one at twelve. Instead of making the almost impossible reach, Haslip activated the noon switch while Hansen pressed the nine. The hatch slid up and folded back soundlessly in the vacuum of the hold.

  “Okay, ladies,” Haslip said, “follow me. This looks like the way in.” She started rearranging the ropes.

  “With all due respect, ma’am, perhaps you should let me hit the door first,” MA Petty Officer Second Class Yank Reive said, putting a respectful hand on her upper arm. “That’s what the Navy pays me to do, ma’am,” he said.

  “He’s right, sir,” Hansen offered. “We don’t need any more accidents up here.” Max regretted the words as soon as they left her lips. But instead of a tounge-lashing, Haslip was very conciliatory.

  “Agreed. You two go in first. Hansen and I will follow and the electrician techs can bring up the rear.”

  Whew. Max Hansen blew a sigh of relief. She and Haslip had a rocky start and she didn’t want to purposefully do anything else to antagonize the commander. Life was hard enough without a hard case on your ass, she mused.

  “Get those filters in place,” one of the ETs said from the rear. They all voiced the electronic filters on and once satisfied that all was in order and everyone was tied to the safety line, they proceeded down the new tunnel. After the last of the group was ten meters from the entrance, the hatch sealed itself behind them.

  “Hey! Commander Haslip, the door behind us just closed.” This
transmission from one of the techs bringing up the rear.

  “I expected it would. This, in my estimation, has to be some kind of airlock,” she said.

  “Well, we didn’t trigger any kind of beams, sir. At least none that I saw,” Reive said from the front.

  Hansen looked around the tunnel. He was right. Then she looked up. “Look at the overhead. There’s some kind of sensors up there. I can just make out thin circles of light. Some kind of detection system is in play, commander.”

  Haslip looked up and nodded her head, a motion not translated very well in her evo suit helmet. Finally she said, “Good catch, lieutenant. I guess we should all be extra vigilant.”

  The rest of the slow walk through the elevated tunnel went without incident. They saw another hatch up ahead; the twin lights on the seven evo suits danced around the hatch as they approached. Hansen noticed the walls were not covered in glassy mucus as the first tunnel had been. Off to her right she saw a rather large control panel. The embedded screens were coated with a fine layer of dusty frost. Several control studs were aligned around some of the screens.

  “There’s some kind of panel up on the right,” Max said. One of the techs side-stepped her and put his face close to the wall. He produced a small blower from his ditty bag and started to blow the dusty ice from the face of the panel. Tiny dark screens were revealed and nothing could be determined from their shape or positioning on the panel. Several of the protruding studs looked like they had been used often in the past, small lines from fingernails — talons? — marked their surfaces. Two large symbols showed up on the lower edge of the panel when the frost headed downward to the deck.

  “Sir, this looks like a lock sequencing panel. I think your airlock analogy was right on the money,” the rating said.

  “Well, I don’t trust myself trying to push any of those buttons, Mister Reive.”

  “Roger that, sir,” he said. “Let’s see if we can find those manual hatch releases up forward.”

  “We need one of those exobiologists up here, ma’am,” Petty Officer Johns told her. “Maybe get one of those cryptologists from the Christi over here to look at that chicken-scratch writing all over the place.”

  “I think we have enough people over here already, petty officer. They can try to decipher that stuff from the digital feeds. It wouldn’t make it any clearer to them if they were here, probably just get in the goddamned way,” Haslip said.

  Max Hansen started to comment but held her tounge. Haslip was one of those leaders that didn’t like her authority questioned. Since she had gotten away with that first quip, she elected not to push her luck. What a finely calibrated balance between command and common sense she had to weigh.

  “Got some hatch controls up here, commander,” someone said from the end of the tunnel.

  “We’re on the way,” Haslip said, and turned away from the dead panel.

  The masters-at-arms at the head of the column went through the ritual of opening the small circular hatches and, after making sure the safety ropes were tight and secured behind them, they pressed the little round red plates. The inner hatch opened and the ratings jumped back instinctively.

  This time, the floor did not telescope away beneath them. This time the hatch opened outward of their positions in the tunnel. This time the group felt relatively safe and unsurprised.

  But what they saw ahead of them was enough to literally take their collective breath away.

  * * *

  Milli Gertz had only slept for three hours. And her sleep was punctuated by disturbing dreams and a total lack of restfulness. There had been too many things going on over on that worm to satisfy her sense of well being. That feeling of awe and dread had spilled over to her subconscious mind and eventually woke her. After a quick hot shower she donned her uniform and fixed her short hair by running her fingers through her salt-and-pepper locks a few times.

  She wore no make up or rings or jewelry. She examined her reflection in the metal mirror over the washstand and judged her appearance satisfactory in spite of the bulging duffel bags under her hazel eyes. Having never considered herself as being very attractive, she still took pride in her appearance but not obsessively so. During her three years on the Christi she had managed only two liasons with the opposite sex and both of those encounters ended in less-than-passionate lovemaking and left her with mixed emotions. At thirty-nine, she was approaching the end of the line as far as marriage and children was concerned.

  She was considering retiring when the ship finished this run. She would have twenty years in and could lead a comfortable life on Elber or Bayliss with her retirement entitlements. With all of her accrued leave — she had never taken any shore leave or hopped the courier boat back to Elber for annual vacations — she calculated that after returning from this cruise, she would be down to twenty-six days and a wake-up.

  But, that time was still thirty-five months in the future and she only had to —

  Squawk squawk squawk. “Bridge to Lieutenant Commander Gertz. You there, Milli?”

  She shook her head and climbed out of her reverie. “Gertz here, Commander Mason.”

  “Are you awake, Milli?”

  “I’m up, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said through a light chuckle.

  “Haul it up to the bridge, Commander. I’ve got something you need to see first hand,” Mason said.

  Gertz paused and punched the stud on her comm stack for the little LED vid screen, the one set to show the feeds from the worm. She took a step back.

  “Milli, you with me?”

  “Aye, aye, sir. On the way.” She went to her wardrobe and grabbed one of her white lab smocks and ran out of her quarters without closing the hatch behind her.

  PART THREE: The Early Birds

  Chapter 15

  Morris-126 was an unremarkable star floating in a small cluster of stars 800 light-years inbound of Bernard’s Loop. It was the one-hundred-twenty-sixth star catalogued by the renowned astronomer Witt Morris working from the DS — Dark Side — Lunar Observatory in August of 2433. Using infra-red and other false-color images in hydrogen-alpha light Morris was able to resolve many systems through the dust and haze of Barnard’s Loop. Seven of the stars he catalogued that year had rocky planets. One had a rocky planet with liquid water. That planet was Elber Prime.

  Though not quite as large as mother Earth, it proved hospitable enough to warrant exploration when the star drives came on-line a hundred years later. Once the unmanned probes studied the environment, sampled the atmosphere and reported back to Earth, the exodus was on. It took over two hundred years to supply enough men and materials to colonize the system and specifically to construct the military installations on Elber. The Navy Shipyard was the first facility completed and the community of Nova Haven — called simply Haven by the locals — sprung up around the huge base and instantly thrived. Most of the land mass on Elber was found to be basaltic lava overlaid with viable top soil and large grassy meadows. Two of the four continents were mountainous and sat at almost opposite sides of the planet’s poles. Elber’s four oceans were named Scorpious, Galena, Matterni and Houstin.

  Hard by the Nautilus River inlet on Haven Bay, the Elber Administrative District complex glittered like an upturned cut-crystal bowl in the waning afternoon sun. White puffy clouds dotted the horizon from north to west and presaged another gloomy sunset. Days were short on Elber, measuring only 20.27 standard-hours long. That interval was converted into regular 24-hour military time-keeping for the purpose of local divisions of labor assignments and ship schedules but right beside the local clock was the common 24-hour Earth-Standard atomic clock calibrated to keep the colony in sync with mother Earth.

  It was one of those ship schedules that had Rear Admiral (two star) Vinny Paine scratching his head. He was seated in a rather plain conference room on the third floor of the NAVFLT Headquarters building that was about three kilometers from the erection yards and the space port. On Elber, the colonists had their own wat
er-based Navy but for now that was mostly a merchant marine enterprise that had only two real warships. Most of the ocean-going vessels in the Elber Commercial Fleet were container barges and sightseeing passenger liners and those boats didn’t fall under the umbrella of the Colonial Navy at all. They were controlled by civilian authority and regulations.

  The ships that were under Admiral Paine’s direct supervision were those of the Third Colonial Navy Fleet of Elber. His Fleet contained 32 battle cruisers, 54 destroyers, 16 tenders, 34 fast-attack boats and 19 assault frigates. It was one of those attack boats, the Corpus Christi, that was under his command magnifying glass at the present time.

  Paine looked at the wall display as the messages from Captain Uriel Haad spooled out. Sitting around the large conference table with him were two one star admirals, six captains, two adjutants, and a rating from the IS — the Intelligence Service. From the silence in the room Paine could tell the dispatch from Haad had captured everyone’s rapt attention. Hell, Paine thought, this dispatch is more popular than a Saturday night stag film. A yeoman from the pool operated the controls on the big media console from a sideboard at the back of the room.

  When the dispatch was finished, Paine spoke for the first time in twenty minutes. “Well, gentlemen and ladies, looks like Captain Haad has a little situation on his hands. Damn, we’re spread pretty thin right now, too. Any thoughts?”

  Rear Admiral (lower half) Coni Berger spoke first. She was one of the first combat female officers to don a star in the Colonial Navy, a position she cherished. Her experience in defeating the Varson Empire had propelled her from Captain to O-7 in a matter of months. Berger was a thin woman in her fifties and she cleared her throat before she said, “I would have preferred to have seen more of the alien ship. Perhaps he should have waited until he had more information to share with us.”