Cygnus Expanding: Humanity Fights for Freedom (Cygnus Space Opera Book 2)

by Craig Martelle

  Major Cain didn’t spare it another look as he continued to hobble forward, following the path the beast had cleared through the undergrowth. Up ahead, the recruits and the wild pigs raged against each other. Cain was prepared for the worst when he broke through into a clearing where ‘cats, Wolfoids, and boars were paired off, circling and fighting. Recruits were down. Prey was down. Cain took careful aim, but there were too many of his people active. He couldn’t risk hitting one of them.

  Stalker was trapped between two boars and a massive tree trunk. She hissed and clawed ineffectively, but Cain saw the flash of light fur in a branch above her. When the boars made the final rush, ‘cats dropped from the tree. Stalker dodged, dropping to all fours and driving herself back into the attack. She hit one beast’s exposed neck, digging deep with her fangs and joining a ‘cat in ripping the creature’s throat out.

  The other bucked and fought the ‘cat on its back, but he was quickly losing. Cain turned away. They didn’t need help. He looked for a new target as the humans burst past him and waded into the fray, wielding their half-sharpened sticks. Ascenti dove into a melee, raking his claws across a beast’s head before winging away, looking for another fight.

  Cain finally had clear shots and dropped two of the bigger boars before they even knew they were in his sights. Pickles tottered in the middle of a melee, his blaster waving around like a sunflower in a strong breeze. Cain ran, despite the warning pains his knee gave him. He caught the Lizard Man as he appeared ready to pull the trigger.

  “Don’t do it, Pickles!” Cain begged. They both jumped out of the way as the boar charged them. It caught Cain just below his bad knee as the beast drove forward. Cain had his foot barely off the ground, so the impact was minimal, but he was bodily thrown over the top of the beast. He landed heavily and rolled to the side, coming up into a kneeling position to shoot the beast as it charged a second time. Cain turned as he felt the ground shake behind him. A second creature bore down on him. He fired one-handed as he spun to the side. The beast’s eye exploded as the blaster beam licked through the socket and into the creature’s brain.

  Cain had lost his bat somewhere along the way. He struggled to stand, finding help from the many recruits who rushed to his side. They’d all seen the final battle, seen him use his weapon and skill to take out two of the largest creatures while protecting his fellow Marine. That was what it looked like to them. He wasn’t about to tell them he was protecting the recruits from the Lizard Man’s wild aim and because of that, they got caught in the middle of the wild pigs’ last stand.

  ‘I meant to do that,’ Cain told Brutus in a laughing thought voice. The ‘cat saw the humor in it. The major looked around and found his little orange friend, covered in blood. Luthie’s white fur was also wet and matted with red. Cain staggered toward them, everything else forgotten.

  ‘Not our blood,’ Brutus said, putting Cain’s mind at ease for the moment, but he had a platoon with injured people.

  “Report!” he yelled. No one knew what he meant. “Stinky, Pickles, check on your people and let’s get help to the injured.”

  One ‘cat and three Wolfoids were down, slashed by boar tusks. They held pressure on the wounds, but none of them knew what to do. Cain limped to the worst injured Wolfoid, an ugly slash across Slayer’s shoulder, under his armored coat and continuing along his ribs. Cain gathered everyone around him as he used water from a flask to flush the wound, then packed numbweed into it to slow the bleeding and stop the pain. He prepared a needle and suture. More water to clean the numbweed out of the wound, and he started stitching.

  He had recruits take care of the other two Wolfoids. They had similar wounds and the treatment would be the same. Doctor Starsgard took over and with a steady hand, cleaned and sewed both wounds shut.

  The ‘cat had been kicked in the head when he got in the middle of a scrum. When he came to, he was woozy, but functional. Brutus declared the other ‘cat healthy, so Cain let it go.

  “Sergeant! How many of the wild pigs are there to butcher?” She looked surprised and bolted away. Cain laughed. “How is the other bunch doing?”

  Stinky raised both paws in the air. He didn’t know. Pickles either. Brutus was studiously cleaning himself. ‘Well, Bee? The other group have any luck?’ he asked.

  The ‘cat paused for only instant before going back to work on himself. Cain shook his head, not surprised. No news was good news. The ‘cats would know if anyone was in danger.

  Stalker ran up to him and locked her body in the upright position, ‘attention,’ the manual called it. “Seventeen total killed, sir,” she reported.

  “We waste nothing. Get them cleaned and prepared for cooking. We’re staying until we’ve eaten our kill. Move the camp here, please. Ascenti! Go find the others and tell them where we are!” Cain was pleased to issue orders. He needed to sit down and take a load off his knee. He joined the ranks of the injured, placed in and around a log. Cain imagined a big fire right in front of him. Brutus appeared next to him on the log.

  ‘Yes. A fire right there would suit me,’ he said, looking at Cain as if the human could magically make it happen.

  “Bringing you comfort is the reward of my life’s work,” Cain said out loud with a bow. “Sergeant! A fire right here, when you please,” he yelled. They’d need to start a fire somewhere. In front of Cain was as good as anywhere.

  The other group managed to kill two deer and two wild rabbits, which added to the stock of meat on hand, but most importantly, the other group had no injuries. As they were cooking the first of many, Cain walked them through the standard after-action review, simplifying it to what went well, what could have gone better, and what was one thing you’d change if you could.

  The recruits started talking tactics in a way that had taken Cain much longer to understand. They talked through gathering more and better information. Better intelligence leading to better plans and better decisions.

  Stinky ordered the recruits to find water, so Zisk led a party into the rainforest. The other recruits built more fires to cook more of the meat at one time. Fickle helped them build a smoker to preserve it. They did the initial cooking over a big fire, then put the meat into their contraption to finish cooking and preserving it.

  Cain’s knee hurt, but he was proud of his recruits. They’d gone against a superior force with no weapons, and they persevered. He’d seen enough to tell him that this was the right group. With this team, he would have been able to destroy the Concordian force that had come after him. He opened his neural implant.

  ‘Holly, any progress?’ he asked the AI.

  ‘No, Master Cain. I suspect it will be quite some time before I have any answers at all. My heightened awareness will hopefully prevent an aberrant program from running independently, from hijacking any of my systems. I will find it and remove it. In the meantime, I’m not happy with what I’ve been seeing of your vital signs. They suggest you are engaging in rigorous activity. We didn’t stop you from leaving the med lab early because I reasoned that you would take it easy. I was wrong.’ Holly waited, expecting a lame excuse from the major.

  ‘My knee hurts, Holly. I should have stayed a couple more days, but I am going to take it easy now. We have food and water. We’ll be fine. I expect we’ll need our ride in four days,’ Cain advised.

  The Cygnus-12

  “We can’t rename the ship!” Captain Rand yelled at the screen on the wall, then returned to a more normal voice. “We can’t. It is the Cygnus-12, sure, a little different now than when it was initially laid down, but most importantly, it’s the same crew.” The captain had been blind-sided by the note from the admiral.

  The new name? The Olive Branch.

  Rand restrained himself from calling the name-creator an idiot as it could have been the admiral attempting to placate the scientists who were adamantly opposed to arming the Cygnus-12. Rand had no arguments beyond what he’d already stated. He had never contemplated such a conversation. With his jaw clenched, he fo
rced his next words out.

  “Is this a done deal?”

  “It is. Ship’s records will reflect that as of this day, the ship is called The Olive Branch. I’m sorry, Rand, I know how you feel. I wouldn’t want my ship renamed either, but to keep all the original crew on board, we had to horse trade a bit. So, I traded the crew for the name.” The admiral looked away from his terminal, then back at the captain. “If there’s nothing else, I need to go.”

  Admiral Jesper signed off. Rand stared at the blank screen and determined then that he wouldn’t tell the crew until he absolutely had to. He left his quarters for a tour of the ship, the one thing that always made him feel better. The ship. The crew.

  He opened the hatch to his quarters and threw himself into the corridor, almost crashing into a flying Hillcat. Rand dodged as Mixial flailed her way down the corridor, Tandry hanging onto a handhold not far away. The ‘cats had real problems in zero-g, needing as much help as anyone could give them to get around, to simply exist. Mixial and Carnesto were miserable. Even something as simple as going to the bathroom required human assistance. They denied themselves food and water to minimize the occurrences, resulting in weight loss and more misery.

  Tandry was taking it well. She’d melted down after killing her first person. The captain had apologized repeatedly to her for yelling after she collapsed. She apologized to him for not being there when he lost his arm. Neither had conceded the other’s fault. Mixial helped make everything better. The captain didn’t understand how ‘cats worked when inside someone’s mind, but he’d heard that they could take bad memories and cushion them, then lock them away where they couldn’t hurt the person anymore.

  Tandry was fully recovered and stretching her legs when it came to sensor systems. She continued studying the manuals from the start of the last cruise. There were no new technological advances in the past four months so she was catching up on the latest in sensor technology.

  She pulled herself forward, executing a barrel roll before impacting the far wall and pushing off, side to side as she transited the corridor, waving as she passed.

  “You are having too much fun, Ensign!” the captain called in friendly voice. Was the name change worth keeping the crew? He would have done the same thing. His people had committed to staying on board after the last cruise. SES policy offered every single crew member a chance to leave their spaceship when they returned to Cygnus after a deep space mission. Each crew member had to sign a document to stay. Silence on the issue would get one transferred.

  More than half the crew was on board the ship while it was in space dock, working with the upgrade team or simply working to improve themselves, like Tandry. She was free to travel, stay on the space station, go to Vii, do whatever she wanted. She didn’t have to return for ten more weeks, to be present for the final shakedown cruise and then head out once again, for regions unknown.

  Concordia, Captain Rand thought. They are sending us back there to negotiate with the other humans. He didn’t know for sure, wouldn’t know for a while. It wasn’t supposed to matter, but in this case, it did. There was a big difference between being an explorer and the one who carries an olive branch.

  Rand pulled himself into the stairway, which was also getting an upgrade, so people could use it when the ship was under sufficient acceleration to defeat the artificial gravity produced by the spin. They were adding a ramp which curved from the steps halfway up the hand railing with additional steps from the hatchways to the railing. The modification also gave the Wolfoids and Rabbits the ability to run down the stairs recklessly, as the captain considered it.

  He pulled himself past the garden deck. Allard and Beauchene were still on the space station. There was little they could do in zero-g, so they stayed away. Rand hadn’t heard from Cain since he left and wondered what kind of menagerie he was going to bring back on board. The Rabbits wouldn’t be pleased if there were too many ‘cats.

  ‘Jolly, can you send a note to Cain and ask what kind of group he intends to bring aboard?’ Rand asked using his neural implant.

  ‘I must admit that I’ve been in touch with Holly, and it appears that Cain may be bringing as many as twenty-one Hillcats, twelve Wolfoids, nine humans, a Lizard Man, and a Hawkoid, in addition to Lieutenants Leaper and Peekaless. I’m also sorry to report that he’s been attacked twice while on Vii and has been injured,’ Jolly reported. The captain’s first impression was to yell at Jolly for withholding the information, but that was less important than the substance of what the AI had said.

  “He’s been attacked? On Vii? How could such a thing happen?” the captain asked in disbelief.

  ‘The details I have are incomplete and I hesitate to guess. Be comfortable knowing that Holly has put additional security measures in place around Cain. He is keeping a security bot close by as a last resort. Cain, Leaper, and Peekaless are fully engaged with training the new recruits. I don’t expect we’ll hear from them directly for quite some time,’ Jolly replied.

  Rand pulled himself toward engineering. He wondered if Cain was keeping in touch with Ellie, although that was none of his business.

  He stopped at the hatch and looked in, shocked at what he saw. Briz and Ellie were nowhere to be seen while heavy cabling and temporary piping nearly filled the large space. He’d been in there two days prior and hadn’t seen any of this. They did this in two days? Rand wondered if Briz had hijacked the maintenance bots again.

  “Briz!” he yelled. “You need to explain this!” He was getting ready to ask Jolly to find his chief engineer, when Ellie popped out from between two large modules.

  “Hey, Captain! How are you doing?” she asked pleasantly. Her jumpsuit was ripped and dirty, her hair disheveled, and her smile went from ear to ear.

  “What’s going on, Ensign?” the captain asked, still appalled at what he was seeing.

  “Just a temporary reroute of primary power systems while Briz oversees installation of the new couplers, transformers, transducers, storage banks, and the rest of it. There were a couple more, but I forget. He’s up in the spindle between the core and the new module if you’re looking for him,” she told him, still smiling.

  “You seem happy. What’s wrong?” the captain taunted.

  “I understand this stuff!” Ellie exclaimed. “Briz got me over a couple hurdles, and it is amazing. I’m an engineer!” She wiped her hands on her uniform as she nodded toward the mess. “I need to get back to work, unless you have something else?”

  Rand thought about telling her that Cain had been hurt, but decided against it. He didn’t need his engineers distracted while they were rebuilding the power distribution system. The captain would have been angry if it had been anyone other than Briz.

  “No. You’re doing great,” he said, trying to sound encouraging. She swam into the mix of cabling and pipes and disappeared. Her spirit wasn’t dampened in the least. No, if she wanted to know anything about her crewmates, she could call them directly. It wasn’t the captain’s place to gossip, even if it wasn’t gossip. Or Cain could have called her. He bowed out of it, not previously having had to deal with a crew relationship such as theirs, and doing what men for millennia had done–avoided it like the plague.

  Captain Rand pulled himself through the levels of his ship, ensuring the bots were in the correct locations for assigned work, which of course they were. No crew needed to be aboard during this part of the upgrade, but they were. Jolly and the bots had everything well in their mechanical grips.

  The captain expected that the crew was on board to provide moral support to him and the commander. He appreciated the gesture.

  Once the tour was complete, he checked in with the AI to find his chief engineer. Briz was still in the spindle. Rand flew through the stairway and corridors of the ship. He wanted to hear the status directly from the Rabbit, but expected that everything was ten times better than when the chief engineer wasn’t involved with some such degree of genius bravado. He laughed to himself. The worst part was tha
t the Rabbit was certainly correct.

  The Next Challenge

  Cain felt more like his old self after four days of doing nothing. He sat and watched as the others ran through a variety of small unit combat formations based on the manuals that Holly had shared via the neural implants with Leaper, Peekaless, and Cain. They, in turn, shared the information with the recruits, who also expressed an interest in getting implants.

  They’d all get them when they could get to the med labs on the Traveler. Cain needed the Marines to be connected and have access to a wide range of information.

  While they waited and in order to continue with their physical training, the platoon created all sorts of games. The Wolfoids loved running and often, the ‘cats would join them. Bull turned out to be the slowest of the Wolfoids, while Night Stalker was the fastest. The female easily outpaced the next fastest.

  Zisk took them hunting in the rainforest to show them how to find the mushrooms that provided sustenance and would keep someone healthy as they traveled if they couldn’t eat a normal diet. The mushrooms were a heavily traded item, many farmers and shepherds swearing by them as they worked long days away from home.

  The platoon became tighter. The ‘cats even stayed closer to the recruits. The third night it rained, a complete downpour. People found ways to hide under the trees while Zisk stood in the open with his skin suit off, enjoying life as it was meant to be, according to the Lizard Man.