The Belt Loop _Book One

by Robert B. Jones

  “That’s horrible,” Max said. “All of those creatures, all dead. . . .”

  Milli Gertz spoke up for the first time since the video display went live. “Not quite all, lieutenant. We still have a bunch of those worms loose on the ship and a bunch of those birds still sleeping away down in a containment field on the recreation deck. Captain, I think it’s imperative that we try to at least contain one of those worms; I’m sure Fleet would want that. Maybe with the work this young officer has done, maybe we can find a way to communicate with it. Using its own language. Is that something you think you can do, Lieutenant Mols?”

  “I don’t see why not. I could set up a translation table and then just input standard Elber into my end and have it flash standard Wormish on a screen.”

  “Before we get all sidetracked here, let’s see the rest of it. You said you had images of what happened on that bridge? The end game? I want to see that. If these creatures disabled their own ship to put down a bird revolt I think that’s what we need to see.” Captain Haad was out of his seat. His XO nodded his agreement.

  “Aye, aye, captain,” Mols said and switched spools. The show went on.

  But not for long.

  Chapter 34

  By her count there were still three worms on the loose and Val Young chased the worms relentlessly. Cott had found one emerging from a bored tunnel just forward of the enlisted crew bay and dispatched the creature with a sustained blast from his UAW. The area had been cleared of everyone but essential personnel beforehand. The ship was beginning to run short of available ratings since so many sailors had been pressed into sentry duty. Once an area was cleared by Young’s detail she posted sentries on each and every hole. A small contingent of medtechs followed her trek topside and crept a few meters behind the armed men and women. Then the hull maintenance men went to work. They had assembled a crew to repair as many worm holes as possible starting at the initial damage points down in sick bay. Electrician’s mates, damage controlmen, hull maintenance techs, machinery repairmen and the like had been pressed into service. Out of the crew of 218, most were working. There was no downtime during ship emergencies.

  Lucky for all involved, the worms had not ventured near the outer hull bulkheads. Even though the triple hull construction would have presented ever increasing bulkhead thicknesses for them to bore through, the rampage would have been stopped by the confining Higgs Field. Enormous amounts of directed energy would have been required to knock a hole in the field.

  It had been discovered that the weapon the first escapee had in his hand was not really a boring tool or a conventional discharge weapon. The electronic techs had discovered that it was just the opposite. When activated, it would draw out molecular energy from the atoms that its beams highlighted. Once the weak nuclear bonds were disrupted and the area lost its atomic cohesion and all electronic motion was nullified, the area “froze” and was easily punched through like so much paper board. That was the way the worm had entered the shower stalls from below.

  Young looked down at her reader and input the latest information onto a cross-section diagram of the ship. No doubt about it, the worms were meandering in the general direction of the bridge.

  She alerted Commander Yorn and proceeded with her search.

  * * *

  About 4,000 meters from the Corpus Christi the remains of the derelict worm continued its breakup with several drones still circulating around the debris field sending video transmissions back to the ship. Huge slabs of the biomechanical worm ship fell away from the remaining ribbed superstructure and floated lazily away. Occasionally something else would rupture in the disintegrating hulk and spew debris and sparks out into the littered void. Small flares of fire erupted from the line of pores down its flank and thousands of tiny pods were ejected into space.

  Some of the material in those pods was organic. Unborn birds sealed in extruded plastic shells destined for birthing at some unknown final destination. Waiting for their life of servitude and denigration.

  But not all of the pods were made up of hibernating proteins. Some were electro-mechanical in nature. These were the ones that had been systematically and regularly ejected from the flanks of the derelict. These were its marker buoys, its positioning beacons. An observer from afar would have seen the hyperbolic trace of their positioning, and if this observer was so equipped, would have been able to plot their course back to its origin.

  But the only observers near the ruined craft were the drones from the Christi and they were not equipped to solve spatial equations nor did they look for any. They were just programmed to concentrate their digital eyes on the widening debris field and send that data stream back to the mother ship. No more, no less. For any more complex scrutiny, human eyes connected to an organic brain was needed. Right now, most of the eyes that could have made a difference were focused on something else.

  * * *

  As the third spool played out, the images were accompanied by an assortment of groans and stifled yelps from the bridge crew. The first part of the reel showed the killing pit, the large compartment just aft of the alien bridge, the compartment that Commander Haslip and Lieutenant Hansen had observed from the precarious catwalk leading into the alien command center. Although nothing could be determined with full accuracy by just viewing the recording, it was pretty evident that the revolt had started in this killing pit.

  The pit was full of alien birds. Maybe it was an exercise yard or a communal mess pit. It was anybody’s guess as to why so many of the birds had been allowed to gather there, had been allowed out of the cages or resuscitated from those containment pods. No commentary in the worm glyphs accompanied this scene. Then there was some kind of commotion in the center of the pit and the walkways above filled with uniformed and armed worms. The firing began. Energy bolts from the catwalk rained down into the pit and the slaughter commenced. There was a lapse-dissolve and the later image showed the worms fighting hand-to-hand with the birds in the pit, up the sides of the walls, and finally on the catwalk itself. Destroyed birds were unceremoniously dumped over the side and as the pile of bodies grew the surviving birds climbed over their fallen and made it to the catwalk to further engage the worms. Then the image stopped.

  “As you can see from this first part,” Mols said, “for some reason a disturbance ignited fighting down in that pit and it quickly spilled up onto the higher levels. From what I can make out, the birds were flightless and a lot of them had those leg restraints. That notwithstanding, they fought their way onto the walkway and ultimately onto the bridge.”

  “So you see this as a slave revolt?” Milli Gertz asked.

  “What else fits, commander? This penultimate battle was deadly and unmerciful. The worms killed with no compunction whatsoever and the birds fought like crusaders or freedom fighters.”

  Captain Haad joined in, his voice tinged with suspicion. “But, why? What kind of social dynamic would lead the masters, if they indeed were slavers, what kind of logic leads them to destroy their cargo? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Captain,” Gertz said, “I can see her point. But we have really nothing to go on other than these recordings. We don’t know where these creatures are from, what their evolutionary background is, how they came to this point as far as their class struggles in the past, that kind of thing. Hell, we don’t even know if they’re from the same system, parts of divergent histories based on economic or nutritional needs. Maybe the worms grew the birds for food. Maybe they picked them up on another planet and were taking them to a third party. We just don’t know. As an exobiologist and not so much a social anthropologist, I can’t even venture a guess as to why this killing frenzy took place.”

  Max inwardly agreed with Lieutenant Mols. Her reading had painted a gruesome mental picture as to what the conditions were like on a slave ship. She thought about recommending some reading material for the captain but reconsidered. If he wanted to discover the facts, he could do it without her help. Slavery had been outlawed in m
ost of the civilized world back on Earth by 1808. Almost a thousand years ago. It was not something she wanted to remember and it played on her emotions as she imagined the pain and suffering of the birds at the hands of the vicious worms.

  “Now in the second part of this particular recording, what I’m guessing is the last one made, we see the results of the uprising. Notice, the sleep chamber wound up as the final battleground for both species. I can’t be sure, but it looks like the worms got to the chamber first then either vented the atmosphere in the chamber or introduced a bird-specfic toxin of some kind. And even though I can’t tell when or how, one of the birds walks off camera and does something that kills the worm ship. Watch,” Mols said, reactivating the recorder.

  The rest of the spool sputtered across the screen. Just as Mols had described, the fighting poured onto the bridge. Birds and worms were locked in hand-to-hand combat and the worms were winning at first but finally their overwhelming numbers tipped the tide in favor of the birds. Many birds were killed on the bridge and the remaining worms retreated to one of the hatches and disappeared. Some of the birds followed them, others removed carcasses from the bridge to somewhere off camera. The birds that had followed the worms into the sleep chamber met resistance. Flashes of bright light could be seen from within the mouth of the tunnel. The image shook violently and after some minutes one of the birds returned to the bridge and ran his hands, talons, down a control panel. More shaking. Then three more birds came out of the tunnel and walked back to the main bridge hatch. The bird left on the bridge started punching random controls and lights started pulsating on the bridge. A shower of silent sparks erupted from one of the other alcoves. Finally the bridge went dark and the last bird retreated into the tunnel that led to the sleep chamber and pulled the hatch closed behind him. Then the image winked out and the blister was dark.

  Another round of discussion was getting ramped up when Commander Yorn raised his hand and shouted, “Quiet. I have a report coming in I need to hear!” He pressed his earpiece with one hand and covered his right ear with the other.

  The bridge deck was silent. Mols started replacing her spools of alien recordings into her bag and stepped over to the cable trough.

  Max Hansen looked down, thinking she had heard something below her feet.

  “Sir, ship unfolding 8,000 klicks off our starboard quarter, forward up angle two two degrees.” Mister Gant said from the helm.

  Haad scratched the side of his face. That was odd. If it was the Pearl Harbor she was hours early and totally in the wrong quadrant of space. “Put it up, Mister Gant,” the captain said.

  “Ahh, no can do, sir. Blister control is down. That video thing?”

  Captain Haad turned and snapped an order at the comm console. “Lieutenant Mols, get my screens back up on the double.”

  Mols saluted him and jumped into the cable trough.

  “Captain, we have capsules of live birds down in the recreation compartment. They’re waking up, sir!” Davi Yorn said over his shoulder.

  Lieutenant Niki Mols screamed.

  She jumped out of the cable trough with a worm attached to her boot.

  PART SIX: The Smallest Hero

  Chapter 35

  Doctor Isaacs was at a loss. He didn’t know what the hell to do. One of the exobiologists from Gertz’s shop had dropped a tray of cleaning supplies. The noise briefly took his attention off the containment field. Inside the energy bubble one of the capsules was easing open. The movement had startled his young assistant as she had been going from bed to bed on the other side of the compartment cleaning equipment racks with disinfectant sprays.

  When Isaacs looked back at the containment field the top of one of the sleep capsules was fully open and a thin mist floated just above the reclining alien bird.

  Then the creature sat up suddenly. It gasped and worked its mouth. The eyes opened and it looked around and uttered a thin chittering sound that slowly morphed into a songlike twitter.

  The bird stretched its long neck and extended one of its arms, the tiny arm in the fold of its useless wing extending and retracting its claws. Then it preened for a second or two then gasped again. The bird extracted its legs and swung them around and down. It eased off the platform and looked right at Isaacs. The bird stretched its neck again and its mouth opened and closed rapidly. It was trying to breathe.

  The thing hopped the few meters to the edge of the containment field and tried to cross the electronic barrier. A shower of sparks greeted him. The bird staggered back and clutched at its throat.

  “Oh, shit! What’ll we do, doctor? That thing is trying to get out! If it hits that field again it’ll probably fry itself,” his assistant said. Her name was Ensign Palms and she was standing right beside him now, both of her hands on her slim hips.

  “I think that bird is suffocating, Sara, see how it’s grabbing its throat? Hell, I don’t know what those things breathe.”

  “Try ammonia,” she said. “Milli said the one she had on her table had some kind of ammonium nitrate in those air sacs. At least it smelled like it.”

  Isaacs looked at her. Could she be right?

  The bird staggered back to the sarcophagus and inserted its head into the cloud of mist. By god, she may be right! He looked around the huge compartment and had an idea. He ordered the marine that was near the portable field generator to get over to the equipment locker and get him the little steam-cleaning machine they used to clean the tiles in the shower areas. He followed the man out into the storage area and came back with four gallon jugs of ten percent diluted ammonia.

  In the containment area, the second and third capsules were opening. The first bird staggered over to the nearest one and started to inhale the escaping fog.

  Isaacs waited for the marine to return with the steam cleaner and started opening the cleaning fluid containers. He had one chance to make this work and he had to be ready to drop the field and shove his makeshift contraption into the containment ward.

  He had no idea how long the birds could live without their “air” but he knew if he did nothing, these birds would suffer the same fate as the first one did, the one that Milli Gertz had received from the alien ship. For some reason he wanted to help these animals survive, if for no other purpose than to get more of that transparentizing fluid from their claws. That stuff, if it proved non-toxic to humans, would be a great boon to his surgical efforts. He would be able to view the healing process from a very unique vantage point. Maybe he could develop a spray of the compound, and use it as a topical x-ray solution, why he could —

  “Okay, doc, here’s your machine,” the marine said, his words pulling Isaacs out of his Cross of Elber awards ceremony. He gave his helpers some simple instructions and they set to work.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Mols yelled and shook her leg as if she had just invented a new dance called the Worm Boogie. Fortunately for her the worm had only been able to grab her boot with one of its vestigial arms and not its powerful and fully functioning mouth. The nest of wires and cables in the cable run prevented the creature from pushing its head up and onto the bridge deck.

  It was also fortunate for the young officer that Max Hansen was still armed. She immediately whipped out her UAW and put a burst through the alien’s shoulder, severing the arm from the rest of the body. A harsh shriek came from the cable trough and the worm finally found enough energy to burst through the metal grating and expose the entire length of its body. Hansen fired again and played the electronic fire across the front of the worm’s suit, frying six of the eight tiny arms that protruded from the swollen body. The creature still tried to advance using the powerful hind legs to push itself forward. Thwarting that effort its clawed feet, all four of them, became entangled in the connecting cables from the recorder. It struggled but only succeeded in tying itself up more.

  One of the door sentries who had been on the move since the first scream was now at the comm alcove and it put the worm down for good with an energy burst tha
t removed the creatures head. Another shot took care of the still writhing body.

  “What the fuck, I mean, ahh —”

  Commander Yorn was at his side in a flash and said, “No, son, you had it right. That was quick thinking on your part seaman. It’s no telling what kind of damage that thing could have done up here. Get that piece of shit off the bridge. And get, I think her name is Young, get Lieutenant Young up here and have her men start at this cable tunnel and work backwards. See where they got in here from.”

  The sentry acknowledged his orders and started to move out, dragging the still smoking worm with him across the metal grates.

  “That was some shooting there, lieutenant,” Mols breathed at Max. She reached down and picked up the worm hand and tossed it on top of the reeking body the sentry was dragging away. “Here, let me give you a hand,” she said.

  Max smiled and holstered her weapon. In her mind she replayed her little drama and shuddered with relief. Heck, wasn’t that how careers were made? Being at the right place at just the right time? Now if she could only resolve the issue with her son. . .

  “How’re you coming back there, lieutenant?” the captain said, his tone clearly indicating that he really didn’t give a shit what just happened a few meters from his command console; he still wanted his blister screen restored.

  “Ship closing, sir,” No-no Gant said in a mechanical voice. “Range now 6,000, relative bearing zero four two.”

  “Is it the Pearl? Is it one of ours?” Haad asked.

  “Trying to establish contact, sir,” Sid Corman said from the comm alcove.

  “Get me my screens, Mister Mols!” Haad barked again.

  “Ten seconds, sir,” she said calmly. She pulled leads from the alien recorder and whipped them away. Next she reached into the trough and snipped two cross-connections with a pair of side-cutters. Finally she reintegrated the loose cables from the blister with their sources and stepped back. Max reached out and pulled her from the cable trough. “Forward screens active, sir.”