PART FOUR: Worms, Anyone?
Chapter 22
Turning her head away, Milli Gertz winced as Doc Isaacs sewed up her arm. The wound was not too severe even though the alien talon had gouged deeply into the muscles underlying the skin. No major arteries were affected and the prognosis was good: after a few days her arm would be good as new. But that’s not what really concerned the doctor.
He was in his containment suit and, following protocols, he made sure to inform Gertz about her pending quarantine and isolation.
“You know you have to be locked up in the isolation ward, don’t you?”
She swore. “Yeah. I know. Pretty bad time to be out of the loop, don’t you think?”
“It can’t be helped. I can’t run the risk of you becoming infected with some kind of alien bug that we can’t control. You cough into the air supply and the whole ship goes down.”
She looked at him and nodded her head. What he was telling her was true and she knew it. The doc had rushed into the containment vault and sealed himself in with her. After cutting away the ripped sleeve of her suit he examined her arm. Next he’d produced a portable anti-pathogen UV streamer and bathed her arm in its cleansing light. A five-cc injection of antibiotics was next and while the air gun was pressed against her upper arm he rotated the cylinder and popped a four-cc jolt of a lidocaine derivative into her system.
Seconds later her whole left side was numb and he set to the task of cleaning her wound and sewing her up. The fifteen stitches marched from just above her wrist to a spot midway between her hand and her elbow like a miniature railway roadbed laid for a tiny monorail train.
Now Gertz contemplated her future. She had tons of work to do, her staff was swamped as well, and she didn’t want to spend any more down time than was absolutely necessary. “How about I just stay in here, Doc?”
He was applying a surgical dressing to her arm. “In the containment locker?” he queried.
“Yeah. I could finish up what I was working on and that sure beats being holed up in your iso ward. I mean, what do I have to loose? I’ve already been exposed.”
“You’d need another suit,” he said with skepticism.
“In the locker over there.” Gertz waved her good arm up and to the right.
Isaacs looked at her through his visor and shook his head. “I see where you’re coming from, Mildred, but, really? Don’t you think you’ve had enough for one day?”
He finished taping the bandage in place and sat back. Gertz flexed her hand a few times and rubbed her exposed upper arm. “Hey,” she pronounced, “I’m good as new. I can always call you if I get into more trouble in here. Maybe start with filing down those claws on that bird.”
“Hold still,” Isaacs said. He produced a scanner from his medkit and thumbed it on. “Your vitals are okay, temperature’s normal. I’ll tell you what. I’ll come back over here in two hours. If you scan out okay, you can stay until you die of exhaustion. Deal?”
Gertz stood up. “Deal,” she said, walking toward the closet. “I have to get this bird finished and into the system. Haslip’s sending over some of those worms on the next returning boat. Live ones,” she said excitedly over her shoulder. “That’s going to be something!”
Isaacs gathered his gear and went to the inner hatch. “Don’t get clawed by one of those worms, Mildred. Who knows what they’re like? Those things are still asleep. I’d be careful. . .”
She laughed as she shook out another containment suit. “A vicious worm? Please.”
Doc Isaacs pursed his lips but didn’t offer a reply. He cycled through the double hatch and was gone.
* * *
Back on the bridge Captain Haad was at his command console. All around him his officers and men were leaning into their screens, rattling off instructions to the departments below, exchanging ideas and speculations about the derelict. Haad was anxiously awaiting the courier boat from Elber Prime. He went over his calculations in his head. Seven hours to Elber, who knows how long for Fleet to respond, then seven hours back to the Christi. If he allowed Fleet ten hours to make a decision, the courier boat should be unfolding very soon.
The Dyson Drive was a simple process and every ship in the Colonial Navy had one. The Dyson Field, once activated, sent out a wave of energy ahead of the ship; as the ship’s speed increased, the wavefront bunched up in the direction of travel. Eventually the bow shock ahead of the ship was powerful enough to bunch the surrounding fabric of space like a throw rug being bunched up when pushed against a wall. Once the nav computers determined that the right frequency of troughs were optimal for the intended destination, the Dyson Drive punched a hole through the folds. Instead of the ship following the curvilinear route, it tunneled through the bunched portions and traversed vast distances in a very short time. The impossibility of faster-than-light travel thus attained. But even this magic in a bottle came with a causal price: energy consumption. That was the reason most ships in the Colonial Navy Fleet were equipped with ram scoops and matter/anti-matter engines. At star-drive speeds, enough free hydrogen was always available and the Higgs Field was magnetically powerful enough to contain it and render it usable. Haad marveled at the technology but cursed its slowness. Oh well, he surmised, it could be worse. At least he had roughly a twenty-four-hour turnaround with Elber from a distance of 100 light-years instead of the eighteen- to twenty-month delay had he been required to contact Earth.
“Ship unfolding 7,000 klicks off our starboard aft quarter, captain,” one of the quartermasters announced.
Haad managed a thin smile. “Identify,” he said.
“Transponder active, sir. It’s our courier boat. Decelerating and spiraling in.”
From the comm stack: “Hangar bay one, standing by.”
“Burn a hole for it, Mister Gant,” Haad commanded.
“ETA seventeen minutes, sir.”
“Get that dispatch up to the bridge soonest, Mister Corman,” Haad told his comm officer. “We need to see what’s on Fleet’s mind.”
Corman acknowledged the order then relinquished his chair to one of the comm ensigns and left the bridge.
Haad looked at his watch and continued his calculations, surprised at the swiftness of his reply from Elber. Maybe things would begin to get better, he mused.
* * *
Max Hansen was in way over her head. She had lucked out with the communications modules and considered herself fortunate that her circuit-board swapping had not caused any major malfunctions on the alien ship. Now she was faced with the daunting task of trying to find some kind of ship’s log or recording device. She had no idea where to start, or realistically, how to recognize the thing even if she found it. The alien chicken-scratch writing offered no clues and other than the eight symbols she had been able to decipher as numbers the glyphs still left her with no concrete ideas as to what to look for next.
She was just about to go to Haslip and asked to be relieved when she heard her name called on the suit comm.
“Lieutenant Hansen?” the voice said.
She turned around and saw a tall, thin officer looking at her through a very clean faceplate. A new arrival to the ship of horrors? “Yes. And you are. . . ?”
The new arrival said, “Lieutenant Niki Mols. Junior grade. I’m from the IS shop. Intelligence Specialist?”
Max just grunted. Swell. A smart gal from the three-man crossword-puzzle factory. “Mols. . . I don’t recall ever having seen you aboard the Christi Lieutenant Mols.” Max searched her memory banks and wondered why this kid’s name sounded so familiar to her.
Lieutenant Mols’s thin laugh was made to sound insincere by the tinny suit-to-suit link. “Oh, I’m not from the ship; I hitched a ride on the courier boat from Elber. I’m a CT, ma’am.”
Whoopty-doo. A “CT” was just what Max needed. “What the freak is a CT if you don’t mind me asking.”
The newbie looked around the alien bridge and shrugged. “Cryptologic Technician. Fleet sent me out here to look
at your ciphers. That writing on the hull of this derelict? I see more of that stuff in here, too. I’m going to try to decode it — try to translate it — if I can. I passed that Lieutenant Commander Haslip out in the tunnels, and she told me where you were.”
Max stared at the young lady and tilted her head to one side. Fleet had sent us a code-breaker. That was nice. Instead of getting all warm and fuzzy inside, Max was filled with skepticism. “You’ve got experience with this kind of thing?”
Mols shifted from foot to foot and slowly released the equipment bag she was carrying. “Well, not this exact thing, not this kind of writing per se, but, ma’am, I have advanced degrees in linguistics and the Navy also trained me in pattern recognition and code algorithms.”
“I see.”
“Trust me, lieutenant, I’m very good at what I do.”
Mols, Mols. . . . Max was wracking her overworked brain trying to make a connection. In her current state of mental overload, she just couldn’t do it. Having read almost a thousand books on her reader, she was certain that she had seen the name before. Her curiosity finally got the better of her and she just came out with the question: “Why do I think I should know you, lieutenant? Your name sounds very familiar to me but I can’t seem to place it.”
Another self-deprecating laugh and shrug. “I was the one that cracked the Varson codes over ten years ago.”
That’s it! Max instantly remembered reading about a precocious fifteen-year-old college student that had cracked the Varson’s complicated 40-character alphabet and had written a doctoral thesis and a textbook on the subject before the war was concluded. “But, you’re just a kid! How’d you wind up a lieutenant in the Colonial Navy?”
“Lucky, I guess.”
“Well, Lieutenant Mols, get your big-brained ass over here and help me find the alien recording devices. Or the ship’s log.” Max pulled her reader from her backpack and turned it to the young lieutenant. “I scanned in these glyphs. These are alien numbers, one through eight. See if you can use them to help us find out how this machine works, lieutenant.”
Mols looked at the screen. “Hey, great. That’s a good way to start. Mathematics is the only truly universal language and if we can decode some of the numbers, that’ll lead to understanding their basic computational logic, and that’ll lead to true/false, and/or assumptions, which’ll lead to —”
“Whoa, Mols. Stop with the techno-speak. Don’t just talk about it, get it done!” Max said as she moved away from the console she had been staring at. “You have the floor. Impress me.”
Lieutenant Mols reached into her ditty bag and pulled out a portable scanner. “Once I get this done and publish again, the Navy’s going to give me a huge staff corps promotion. I’ll be a double-doc lieutenant commander with my own shop back on Elber. Ain’t life grand?”
Max just said, “Go for it,” and walked away.
Chapter 23
Captain Haad was in his ready room along with Davi Yorn and a few of his senior line officers. In his hand was the small plastic container containing the dispatch sphere from Admiral Paine. He slit the seal with a fingernail and opened the box. After voicing a date/time stamp into his log he plopped the ball into the reader on his desk.
“Here goes nothing,” he said to no one in particular.
The wall screen on his comm stack sputtered for a brief second and then settled on the logo of the Colonial Navy, a depiction of a trio of warships flanked by twin eagles holding olive branches and arrows.
Then the image of Admiral Paine appeared after a lapse-dissolve of the emblem. He was seated at a rather austere-looking desk with his hands folded on the laminated top. As he spoke, the message text scrolled across the bottom of the screen:
“Captain Haad, let me be the first to laud you on your amazing discovery. It has been ten-plus years since our first encounter with a sentient life form out here in the Fringes and, of course, we both are well aware how that played out. There are some here in headquarters that would have liked to have seen more information on your derelict ship but it is my learned opinion that you followed operational protocols to the letter. That having been said, I do think we need to have a running commentary from your site to headquarters and therefore I am requesting that you put all of your recorded information back on the courier boat and send it soonest. Scars from the Varson delay still burn in some of our hearts, captain. Fleet staff recommends that a task force be sent to your coordinates as soon as it can be assembled. As per your request I have authorized two Typhoon-class destroyers and their associated tender craft to rendezvous with the Corpus Christi no later than 27 September 2789 1600 hours Earth-Standard. You are directed to remain on station and salvage what you can from the derelict ship, especially any viable alien life. On a sad note, it distresses me to learn about the untimely death of Gunnery Sergeant Michael Ryon. I had the pleasure of serving with him during the Varson campaign and found him to be a dedicated and disciplined NCO in keeping with the finest traditions of the Colonial Navy. The Secretary of the Colonial Navy has dispatched the appropriate marine detail to inform the NOK. Uriel, on a personal note, do the best that you can to keep your men and women on mission; your vigilance in these matters out in the Belt Loop are critical to the welfare of the sixteen million citizens on the seven planets of the Colonial Alliance. Not only are we charged with defending them and their interests, we are also burdened with the ultimate responsibility of protecting the Human Race from all threats alien or domestic — including those entities that have heavily invested in our colonies. You know the drill, captain; you know the monied-interests back on mother Earth will tolerate very little disruption in the flow of commerce; and you know that keeping the space lanes free of intruders with unknown intentions is your pre-eminent mission. Godspeed, Captain Haad, and smooth sailing. ---Rear Admiral Vincent Paine, Commander-in-Chief, Third Colonial Navy of Elber Prime, NAVFLTHQ. 26 Sept 2789 1946ES/36HHQ1-2.---
“There you have it, boys and girls, right from the horse’s mouth.”
Yorn looked at Haad and said, “You know, it’s what he didn’t say that has me intrigued. All of that ‘ultimate responsibility’ crap. What he meant to say was that the moguls back on Earth would have his ass if the hydrogen supply was somehow affected by all of this.”
“And,” Lieutenant Commander Mason interjected, “since he’s just about to be kicked upstairs in the next cycle, and owing to the eighteen-month transit time back and forth to Sol, he’s wondering if this shit will go away in time for him to put on his third star.”
Haad returned the sphere to its container and sat back. “Politics. It’s always about politics. Even out here, Fleet lets the fucking politicians and the energy barons dictate its every move. Well, I’ve seen this vid before, gentlemen, and I for one am not impressed. As long as I have to take all of the responsibility out here, get none of the credit for what we find, and take all of the blame should something go wrong, I’m pretty much screwed no matter what the outcome. We’ve already lost four men to this alien ship. And the dance just started.”
Lieutenant Commander Ty Borges, a line officer on the Red Team, added, “So, if you’re going to take a fall by doing what they want you to do, which is watch and wait, then perhaps you should rethink our options, sir. I mean, they’re sending two Typhoons and probably a couple oilers out here. For what? A show of strength to a dead ship? Hell, sir, I’d just act with the best interests of our men first, Fleet second.”
“Preventing another Varson-like disaster, that’s what,” Yorn said matter-of-factly.
“He’s right, Ty. If those guys in the Second Fleet had reported that first exchange of fire with the Varson ship, and we’d showed up with twenty or thirty boats, maybe that whole damned war could have been avoided,” Haad said.
Lieutenant Commander Nan Pratt added her opinion to the discussion. She was a tall Weapons Control Officer from second watch. “Remember, that captain tried to keep the skirmish under wraps. He wanted to follow the Varson sh
ip to its home base. He made a tactical and strategic mistake with that move.”
Haad let the back-and-forth go on for a few more minutes. Some were saying that the Christi was taking an awful chance by bringing alien life forms aboard. Yorn and two other officers argued for using the time before the task force arrives to get every ounce of data they could from the derelict. Only Uri Haad knew what he had to do to satisfy both factions.
“Okay. You all have valid points,” Haad spoke firmly. “But, in the interim, we stay the course. Get that worm deciphered, get those survivors into containment and see if we can revive one of them. That, I think, is the obvious choice. How the hell do we know what happened on that ship? What disabled it and set it adrift? Until we find the logbook or a recording of activities on that doomed bridge, it’s up to us to do our due diligence and come up with some answers before the big guns get here. The admiral didn’t let on who was on the way out, what ships, but if I had to guess, it’s probably going to be Pax Curton in the Pearl Harbor and Robi Zane in the Casco Bay. The last triangulation and range finding exercises put them closest to our present position. Let’s see, 1600 hundred hours tomorrow afternoon, that’s twenty-six hours away.”
Davi Yorn walked a few paces towards the hatch and said, “Okay, captain. We know what we have to do. You guys get your sailors rotated and rested. Make sure no one spends more than a watch at a time over on that worm. I want my crew fit and refreshed when the help arrives. Questions?”
The six officers agreed with the XO and departed the ready room. Captain Haad looked at Yorn and shrugged. “Not much else we can do, is there?”
“I would suggest that you catch up on your rest as well, Uri. I can run the boat until 2400 hours. I think I have most of the departments and sections in pretty good shape, and that brainiac the admiral sent us is cracking that alien writing faster than a three-year-old kid masters a game box.”
The Belt Loop _Book One Page 14
