by J. W. Kurtz
The acceleration couch, or "iron maiden" as many called it due to its resemblance to the iron maiden torture device used by some of the more sadistic people of Europe hundreds of years before space flight, was the best solution for surviving space combat other than not engaging in the silly dance in the first place. But, even with a fully functioning maiden, during the hardest of maneuvering, the contrivance often resembled its primitive namesake.
Pfeiffer reached into the acceleration couch and retrieved the breathing mask hanging from a hook on the overhead. The mask was attached to a long clear umbilical. He then affixed the mask snuggly and plugged in the heavy umbilical to supply the air he needed to breath.
Wray then helped Pfeiffer don the heavy NIFS helmet over his shaved head, while taking care not to disturb the tightly fit breathing mask. He then guided him back-first into the waiting acceleration couch. Pfeiffer now stood naked in a box commonly referred to as an "iron maiden" with a garbage can on his head. A garbage can connected to a clutch of thick cables with a heavy umbilical for the oxygen mask trailing beneath. The Captain plugged in the heavy cable lead trailing from the NIFS helmet into a node inside the couch with an audible "click."
*****
The moment the helmet was connected to the data node, Pfeiffer in effect, became the Bellerophon. His body underwent a single convulsion as he merged with the systems of the ship. With the helmet unplugged and unpowered he was helpless to see so much as his hand in front of his face. But, with the NIFS connection made, the user could feel every system of the ship as if it was a part of their own flesh.
The neural connection was so strong, so precisely in tune with the users brain, that it was not uncommon for the user to suffer physiological injuries due to the damage suffered to the ship while under control of the individual. Rehabilitation was usually quickly successful in returning the NIFS operator back to 100 percent, but sometimes the neural damage was lasting. Not everyone was neurologically compatible and trained to run the NIFS helmet. Of the entire crew of the Belle', after the death of Stacy Franks, there were now only four serving on the ship. Wray would have to shave his head if they survived this action to make up for the loss of Franks as he was one of the remaining four able to run a NIFS.
The Captain backed into his own acceleration couch, donned the breathing mask, and engaged the system via the small set of analog switches on the left panel inside the couch. The hatch swung shut just before Pfeiffer's. Quickly a cold thick gel filled the almost utterly dark container from the bottom up, the only light provided by the few LED's on the internal control panel. The gel was a semi-transparent green that glowed eerily as it rose above the control panel. Wray's ears popped painfully at the change in pressure due to the gel being pumped into the airtight container with such force that the box was entirely full in just seconds.
Motors hummed as the gel filled acceleration couch reclined into a horizontal position. Carefully calibrated sensors determined the proper density required of the gel so that the occupant of the iron maiden would float at a perfect hover, not touching the top or the bottom of the tank. Wray felt himself float off the bottom of the tank as the gel reached equilibrium, a perfect of fluid viscosity and pressure. For the uninitiated this could be a maddening experience as the feeling was almost entirely sensory depriving. To the initiated and experienced...it was still rather maddening. Only the slight illumination from the control panel LED's softened the experience to the point of manageability, and thankfully, win or lose, the ordeal would be over quickly.
This was modern ship-to-ship combat in space. Breathing through an oxygen mask in a dimly lit box filled with cool greenish gel, waiting to live or die, while the fate of the ship and her crew was entirely in the hands of a guy wearing a space-aged garbage can on his head.
Chapter 8:
Time: 16:14 (Zulu)
Oren Pfeiffer hovered in space. He existed in a strange duality, one part corporeal, and one part conglomeration of steel, wires, and energy. He knew he was both man and the ship. He felt the cool gel in the iron maiden where his body was protected against the forces of inertia. His eyes were open. His vision was sharp and detailed, with a near perfect clarity of his surroundings. Pfeiffer's vision stretched beyond the normally defined sense of sight. He felt the heat from the far distant stars. He smelled the radiation shooting through space. X-ray. Alpha. Gamma. Everything that could be recorded by a sensor, onboard the Bellerophon and attached to her exterior hull, streamed into his brain. It was a torrent of information that only a small percentage of human brains could endure and then operate effectively with. Those that donned the NIFS helmet and were not compatible, suffered severe brain damage, horrific strokes, or "life" in a permanent catatonic states.
Areas of the ship that were damaged were ghostly images. A large portion of the port side of the Belle' was hazy. Pfeiffer's left arm was numb.
He "looked" about the near region of space. Searched and searched...there. He located his prey. A ship, his mind, linked to the vast database of the Belle', identified as a Vulture Class Frigate. He pinged the frigate with an IFF transponder request. There was no reply from the query. The IFF request was a mandatory procedure. There was a chance afterall that this was a sanctioned CDF operation. The chance which, went from being a real possibility, to near zero with the lack of an IFF squawk. The frigate was almost certainly a rival privateer, operated likely by men and women working for either The Corporation or the Maddox & Tokev Terraforming (MTT) who had been flexing their muscles of late throughout colonized space.
Pfeiffer's sensors could read the buildup of heat in the weapon and propulsion systems of the frigate, who had seemingly recovered from the glancing strike scant minutes before. The frigate was now powering in a hard high-g burn toward the slightly tumbling but stationary Belle'.
Sitting in space in one spot was a death sentence when hostile forces were near, or even far for that matter. Projectiles, be them kinetic kill vehicles or grains of sand propelled at a fraction of the speed of light, across great distances through the frictionless vacuum of space, could turn even the mightiest dreadnought, battleship, or battle station into rapidly expanding spheres of atomized dust regardless of their level of particle shielding and armor.
It appeared the captain of the frigate hoped the crew of the Belle' was too rattled to put up a fight. Or perhaps there was optimism that the collision minutes ago had done enough damage to the former CDF fast cruiser to even the odds, because normally a fast cruiser versus a frigate would not be much of a clash. Damage had indeed been inflicted upon the Belle', but all her weapon systems had survived and just now nearly all power and cooling conduits were primed and operating at maximum efficiency. Even had the frigate been undamaged the impending battle was far from fair. A stream of debris being left in her wake, as she rushed to meet the Belle' , it was evident that the odds were even more lopsided against the poor frigate than initially estimated.
The heavy Siren, still in tow by the Belle', was magnetically detached and sped away, as best it could with the small emergency propulsion system in place for instances such as this, to a take refuge from the coming battle at the direction of Pfeiffer.
Heavy maneuvering thrusters fired on the Belle' once she was unburdened by the mass of the Siren. These thrusters were not designed for delicate operations like docking or navigating a debris field. These were military grade snap-fire heavy thrusters which allowed the Bellerophon to rotate better than 90 degrees on her axis in less time than it takes to bat an eye.
At the same time as the Belle' snap rolled, her conventional electromagnetic propulsion drive engaged in a burn with such ferocity, that even with the inertial dampeners operating at full capacity, anyone on the deck recovering from the violent snap roll would now be immediately unconscious, but most likely dead, from the trauma of impacting the rear bulkheads in every cabin and corridor on the ship from the sudden heavy-g force. And the acceleration increased. To complicate and confuse any hostile firing solution
, the Belle' began to swerve wildly and erratically as she "crossed the T" of the oncoming Vulture. A thorough cleanup throughout the ship after this engagement would be in order as everything not secured properly was now being tossed, crushed, and smashed against bulkheads, decks, and overheads.
The captain of the Vulture may have thought he still had a chance, that this cougar may indeed survive a tangle with the bear, and that maybe the Bellerophon was trying to run and evade, but then the battle was over before it had truly been joined. The top of the Belle' betrayed no weapon systems until now, when six hatches slammed open and quickly six deadly turrets locked into place. Each turret housed a quartet of rapid firing plasma cannons that could alternate between faster, but lighter impacting red plasma, or slower but significantly more powerful blue plasma. By brandishing these weapons the Belle', without firing a shot, had condemned the Vulture to death, for if word were received by the CDF that the military grade weapons, once removed from the Belle' prior to her "scrapping," were now back in place, a very illegal action on any private craft, the repercussions would be swift and severe as the transgressant Bellerophon would be hunted to her end by her former brothers and sisters.
Accelerating hard, teeth now bared, Pfeiffer was a 80,000-ton instrument of death controlled by a single human mind. Wordless orders, sent via electrical impulses of his mind, engaged the targeting and weapons systems. And the body of the Belle', she answered, she answered the same as if he had commanded his own fist to fire a punch at the nose of a menacing foe.
Twenty-four barrels ripple-fired both blue and red plasma shots in a near continues rain of devastating energy at the now panicking predator-turned-prey. Two missiles managed to be loosened by the charging frigate, both of which were easily dispatched by the point defenses of the Belle', the effectiveness of the missiles being lessened dramatically due to lack of acceleration space provided them in this short range knife fighting duel. Further missile salvoes and mass driver fire were not forthcoming as the priorities changed for the panicking frigate pilot.
The Vulture twisted, spun, accelerated latterly on heavy thrusters of her own, in maneuvers that tested the very welds that held her together but all for naught. The already damaged frigate only succeeded in causing near fatal wounds to herself performing these gyrations. A half-dozen near simultaneous impacts of plasma shot, hotter than the surface of Sol, were really just an afterthought as the Vulture folded in on herself after one too many frantic maneuvers undertaken out of mortal desperation.
The broken ship, expelling gasses, people, and other debris from numerous hull breaches shook with violent secondary explosions, the fires snuffed out by the vacuum of space. The nearly dead Vulture drifted on the last vector of her final back-breaking maneuver. An uncomplicated firing solution was prepared by Pfeiffer and a quiet and wordless death in the vacuum of space was had by the rival privateer upon the final salvo. Her wreckage to forever drift in space awaiting capture by a body of gravity, such as a star or a singularity, to then be recycled down to her raw atoms.
From being pulled out of transit space to the death of the Vulture, the whole episode lasted less than 5-minutes.
Chapter 9:
Time: 16:21 (Zulu)
Takashi Kurou awoke with his head throbbing and for the moment he had no idea where he was. He felt like he was in a dream, and that he was walking out of a dark forest only to find a meadow covered in thick wisps of swirling fog. Pieces began to fall into place and he burned through this mental fog. He was cold. He was naked. He was wet with...gel. Takashi breathed deeply through the too-tight mask he found himself wearing. He was in an acceleration couch! A humming broke his concentration, and with a lurch, he could feel the dark box he was in moving from a horizontal to a vertical position. And with a metal "thunk" the necessary apparatus for modern space warfare locked into place. The hatch then lifted open where he was greeted with the grins of Darius Protochenko and Jason Petty.
"Shit, Tak...you look like death warmed over," Darius said as he stepped forward and handed a well worn gray towel to Takashi, identical to the ones both he and Jason were using to wipe away the cold green gel.
"How's your head?" Jason asked. "We injected you with a stabilizer before we threw your ass in the maiden. You were really fuckin' out of it, man."
Takashi did feel like "shit" and he did feel like he was "fuckin' out of it."
He answered Jason initially with a grunt and followed with an exasperated, "I should've kept the breathing mask on. The extra oxygen...would be good...about...now!"
"Deep breaths. Deep breaths," Darius instructed. "Here., take a couple hits," he said as he handed him the recently discarded but still active breathing mask.
Takashi took a couple deep breaths from the oxygen mask. He then slowly stood tall to stretch and open his lungs. He felt somewhat better but then he bent down again to towel off the gel that coated him and the throbbing headache and lightheadedness immediately returned. He nearly fell over but was caught by the arms of Darius and Jason who then helped him over to a bench along an inner bulkhead of the compartment. Takashi sat there for a moment, concentrating on his breathing with his head between his legs. He glanced around the space and noticed the evidence of havoc and chaos that had transpired.
Everything not bolted down was strewn about. Some items were indistinguishable as they had been smashed into incomprehensible shards of rubbish. It was as if the cabin had been put through a high speed mixer...Takashi's thoughts then turned to his galley. He now remembered that he was playing cards with these two, and getting ready to report for his shift in the galley for meal prep. If the disarray of the compartment he was in was any indication of what the rest of the ship looked like, he was very fearful of the mess awaiting him in the galley.
"What the hell happened?" Takashi asked as both Jason and Darius finished the act of removing the unpleasant gel and began the process of putting on their standard gray coveralls worn by the crew of the Belle'.
"Well," Darius began. "You were losing badly, as usual, at 5-card. Then I think you finally got a good hand, and because of your awesome luck, you then got hit in the head by a poorly secured overhead bin when...the Belle' hit something, I think."
"Somethings," Jason interjected as he completed tying his boots and stood up to stretch.
"Yeah, somethings," Darius agreed with a nod. "By the way Tak, you owe me 150-credits. That last hand doesn't count."
Takashi probed his head until he found the painful lump. He pulled his hand away and noticed it was wet with a mixture of thin scalp blood and gel.
"Put it on my tab. My luck'll change," he replied. "It couldn't get worse. Could it? Do you guys know what we hit?" Takashi asked changing the subject from cards, "also, who threw me into the iron maiden over there?" Tak asked as he pointed to the dripping acceleration couch standing in its vertical position.
"You were out. Cold out. I dragged you over to the couch and threw you in. Almost didn't mind you...but we could have you bouncing around in here like a kitten in a dryer. Would'a been a bitch of a mess to clean," Jason replied. "Darius over there thought it was a good idea to inject you with some stabilizer from the medkit, in case your peanut brain decided to swell out your ears or something," Jason said with a grin. A grin missing a tooth. "Luckily the kit was in the bin still secured to the bulkhead by the hatch. The bin that hit you nearly cracked your skull. In fact...joking aside we should get you down to the med-bay and get you scanned. No doubt that concussion of yours is pretty severe."
"That first impact was the big one," Darius said. "It put you out and tossed me into a pile of dirty laundry I've been avoiding, which probably saved me some bruising. Knocked a tooth out of that shit eating grin Jason's always flashing. It looks to be an improvement on him... The second impact was significant but not nearly as severe as the first. All that did was toss more stuff around like grasshoppers on a skillet."
The head of Jason snapped up, "'like grasshoppers on a skillet? What the hell does tha
t mean? I'm glad Tak is the cook here..."
"Fine..shit got tossed around. You need help finding your tooth?" Darius replied.
While Darius and Jason shot barbs back and forth Takashi laboriously completed the process of removing the gel as best he could and then recovered his gear from the various piles scattered across the deck of the cabin. He found one of his boots jammed between the overhead and one of the three previously occupied acceleration couches. After a moment of difficult negotiation he managed to get the boot freed which then allowed the couch to snap completely into its ready vertical position. A nice deep crease was now scarred across the toe of the black heavy polymer boot. He was surprised that the boot wasn't cut in half.
A still wobbly on his feet Takashi completed the act of tying the once wayward boot and interrupted the duo of Darius and Jason who were still caught up in their animated discussion about bad metaphors and missing teeth.
"Thanks guys."
Both immediately stopped their heated but good natured ribbing of each other and turned to their injured ashen faced crewmate and friend. No words were exchanged, just nods of acknowledgement.
Darius, as an assault skiff pilot among other things, technically outranked his two friends, Takashi the cook and maintenance specialist and Jason the combat grunt. From time to time he was required to lead. This was one of those times.
"Let's go. Just because we're in stand-down release," Darius said and pointed to the green light above the hatch that, just a short time ago had been blinking red, "doesn't mean there isn't work to do. And from the look of the piles of shit around us now...I'm betting the rest of the Belle' fared no better. Takashi, I'll escort you to the med-bay in case you pass out again and you need someone to drag your ass to Dr. Skansi. Jason, you work your way forward parallel to the upper port side fast-pipe. Report anything major to the bridge. Don't bother them with the little stuff. Got that? They probably have their hands fool putting the pieces back together."
