Boots of Oppression

by M. J. Konkel

  I warned everyone to hold on to something as we would be entering the wormhole soon.

  I peeped through a scope and got our bearings relative to a couple of known background galaxies. I then reoriented the ship so that the wormhole would sweep over us after it formed. The wormholes always moved in the same direction. If the ship wasn’t properly oriented, the wormhole could end up moving away from us instead, leaving us stranded until the capacitors could be recharged. Or worse, the highly contorted space at the edge of the wormhole could sweep over us, ripping our ship to pieces.

  Our thrusters had been turned off already, so we were weightless. Space in front of us turned bright neon purple for just an instant. The whole ship shuddered as if it hit a bump, and I felt a wave of nausea from the slight distortions of space as we entered the wormhole.

  All became dark outside of the ship.

  The entrance to the wormhole had already collapsed, and the wormhole was continuing to collapse behind us. The collapsing space actually created the wave our ship would ride for the rest of our journey through the wormhole. We no longer had control over where we would re-enter normal space, but that would happen in another three hours. And we would find ourselves a little less than a third of a parsec from Bahram. That had been predetermined with the energy with which we entered the wormhole. Any attempt to use our thrusters now would just make our ride bumpy and, if we pushed it too hard, could tear the ship apart.

  I removed the goggles since there was nothing to see in them anymore and saw, as expected, there was nothing on the big screen either. I set a timer showing on the screen so we could all see when we would exit the wormhole. The screen would have been black otherwise anyway, so it seemed like a useful thing to put up there. It was either that or a movie. One of the Spits’ propaganda films.

  I decided I would use the next hour and a half to see what else was aboard the ship. Like food.

  I turned back toward the others, and something caught my eye. Above the screen was a plaque with fancy gold lettering spelling out The Glory of the Righteous, the name of the ship.

  I turned, pushed off, and floated back toward engineering. Returning to the bridge a short while later with tools, I reached up over the screen and pried off the plaque.

  This was our ship now, and it was not going to have a damn Spit name on the bridge.

  Chapter 25

  I chose Marla’s Revenge as the new name for our ship. I tried the name on the others, and they approved of it.

  I found a black marker and penned it across where the old name had been attached. My penmanship sucked. Enceladus agreed, saying it looked like a preschooler had written it up there. I didn’t care. Okay, so I did care a little, but the new name was up there for all to see that the ship no longer belonged to the Spits. It was ours now.

  I noticed Enceladus looked a little green. Dr. Z as well. I realized none of the others had ever been in zero gravity before. It was surprising only two of them had come down with the sickness, and none of them had it very bad. For the first time in zero gravity, usually more came down with it than not, and many threw up soon after zero gravity. When I glanced over at Drummer, he appeared like he might also be suffering from it. But he wasn’t about to show it if he could help it.

  I got bags for Enceladus and Dr. Z, and then I found some meds for space sickness in the emergency room for the two and Drummer. I checked on Luci while in the emergency room, but there was no change in her status. Benjanin and Morgan kept a close watch over her.

  My next order of business was an inspection of the ship. Immediately behind the emergency room was the captain’s room. It was small and contained only a bunk, some storage cabinets, and a desk with a computer console. The next room was the kitch and pantry room. I was glad to see the pantry and freezers were fully stocked. Behind the kitch was the hatch to the outside. Opposite of those rooms and the hatch were the crew quarters. Four bunks and two storage cabinets for each bunk in each small room. Behind the hatch was a small weapons room stocked with rifles, ammo, several rocket launchers, and other assorted weapons. The Spits sure liked their weapons. The room also had several space suits and a couple of armored suits. Behind the weapons room and across from it were two bigger rooms that were locked.

  I tried my new password for the ship’s systems on the doors. But they didn’t open, meaning the locks weren’t hooked up to the ship’s systems. The captain must have had a special password for them which meant that whatever was inside was valuable enough that the captain didn’t trust the rest of the crew not to take it – possibly even the other officers. And that made me just want to get into them all the more.

  I grabbed Dr. Z to pick his brain on it, but he told me he wasn’t a safecracker. Drummer overheard and suggested we look back in engineering for a cutting torch. After searching for a while, we found what appeared to be a laser torch.

  Drummer held the torch and cut a neat circle around the locking mechanism. He pulled the piece out and snipped the wires attached to the back side. The lock start to float away from the door in the zero G, so I grabbed it. Loose items floating around could be a problem the next time we used the ship’s thrusters.

  Dr. Z peered into the hole Drummer created and pulled on the pair of loose wires sticking out. He rubbed them together, and sparks flashed between them. The door audibly clicked. I grabbed a handle on the wall for leverage and pulled on the door handle. The door slid open, and the three of us stared inside as lights automatically came on to illuminate a room filled with boxes of all sizes and shapes, but all were pure white in color.

  I pulled myself inside and floated to the nearest box. It was secured to the floor, but I saw a latch for the lid. After unlatching it, the cover floated upward on its hinges, and I peered inside. Dr. Z and Drummer floated over to peek as well.

  The box was filled with frames with labels on the them. “It says ‘Glacier on the River by Czerni’ on the top of this one,” I said. I tugged on the frame and out came a painting part of the way out of the box.

  “Czerni?” Dr. Z’s face pinched up. “I’m no expert when it comes to art, but even I’ve heard of her.”

  Neptune floated in. “Did you say Czerni? I love her work,” she said before bumping into me. She tried to pull the painting the rest of the way out of the box but wasn’t used to working in zero gravity. She ended up spinning off toward a wall. I helped her get reoriented before I went back and pulled out the piece for her.

  “Those frickin’ bastards,” Drummer swore. “They’re stealing our world.”

  I put my hand gently on his shoulder. “They steal from all the worlds. Let’s see what’s in the other room.” I left Neptune behind to admire the artwork.

  Drummer growled before twisting and pushing off toward the door.

  In about ten minutes, we opened the door to the other locked room. I went in first. In contrast to the art room, this room was nearly empty. In the center, three clear cylindrical containers sat alone in the bright light. I gently pushed off from the door frame and floated up to the center container. Dr. Z and Drummer floated in immediately after.

  “What is this?” Drummer asked. “Silver? Palladium?”

  “Unless I miss my guess, this is tantalum-180,” I replied.

  “If this is pure, this is probably enough to create a dozen new engines,” Dr. Z said. “But my guess is this is mostly tantalum-181. It’ll still need to be enriched.”

  “So not only did we steal one of their ships, we also got their load of tantalum. Sweet!” I said. It felt like we had really stuck it to the Spits when we stole their ship. Sent a single finger in their direction, and it wasn’t a pointer. I wanted to give Drummer a high five, but I knew that wasn’t such a good idea in zero gravity. It would have just sent us both spinning. I glanced at Dr. Z. “Is there a way to determine how pure this stuff is?”

  “Not unless there is a mass spectrometer aboard,” Dr. Z replied.

  The purpose of the corvette made sense to me suddenly. The ship
was commissioned for the purpose of hauling the tantalum back to Spitnik so even more ships could be built. The captain was probably waiting for more of the tantalum before going back to Spitnik.

  Just then Enceladus poked her head through the doorway. “Just thought I should let you know. That timer on the big screen is now under five minutes.”

  I turned and followed Enceladus back to the bridge. I needed to be there when we popped back into normal space.

  The chance of there being anything dangerous once we reentered normal space was miniscule, but interstellar space is not as empty as people once thought. It is littered with rocks and ices ranging in size all the way from dust grains to whole planets. Of course, dust grains were way more common than rogue planets. It is thought that some of the early fusion ships that had been lost might have run into some of those interstellar rocks that were bigger than dust grains. Those ships had been streaking through space at high velocity for centuries though. Thankfully, we would not be moving as fast relative to anything that might be out here, so we should have time to detect and react to just about anything of danger.

  I wanted to be in the pilot’s seat to verify our location and then set up our next jump.

  The timer counted down the seconds until it hit zero. The screen flipped to a forward-looking camera and was suddenly filled with stars. I whipped the pilot’s goggles over my head and looked around. Behind us, the purple ring of ruptured space had already disappeared. Even the brilliant flash of light that was emitted as the wormhole collapsed was long gone from our position. There still was evidence of the collapsed wormhole though. There was the burst of gamma rays that shot past us a microsecond after we exited, the ripples of gravity waves still around us, and, of course, the fact that Ursa Phinia was now a star only slightly brighter than the others around us.

  I ran some quick scans to make sure there were no rocks about to collide with us. Then I scanned the local stars’ positions, ran the results through the triangulation program, and determined we were right about where we were supposed to be. I entered the parameters for the next jump and then waited for the gravity ripples from our last jump to settle. Those would prevent us from forming the next wormhole. Unlike a steep gravity well, the ripples would not cause us to form an explosively unstable black hole. But it could fry our Einstein-Rosen coils, stranding us in interstellar space.

  After a few minutes, the ripples were no longer detectable, so I activated the wormhole generator after double-checking the orientation of the ship. This one would be a longer jump, lasting just over eight hours.

  Since I could no longer keep my eyes focused, I announced to everyone I was going to take a nap. I floated back to one of the crew cabins and found a bunk to net myself into. Sleeping in zero gravity is usually the best sleep, but I could not fall sleep for the longest time – despite being dead on my feet tired. I kept thinking about Luci and about the enormous responsibility that had fallen on my shoulders. I wasn’t quite sure I was up to it.

  Chapter 26

  I slept for seven hours, but bad dreams haunted me. Way too many worries on my mind. After waking, I immediately checked on Luci. Benjanin remained with her and was still awake. He told me he had sent Morgan to try to get some sleep. Most of what was displayed on the autosurgeon console didn’t make sense to me, but it listed Luci’s condition as stable. That I understood, and it was an improvement. Something to feel a little hopeful about.

  I grabbed a breakfast plate from the pantry, microwaved it, and headed to the bridge. Dr. Z was stretched out in one seat, and straps kept him from floating away as he softly snored. Neptune was in another and slept quietly. Enceladus and Drummer floated not far from the front screen and were already eating. Actually, mostly just picking at it.

  “Get any sleep?” I asked.

  “A few hours,” Enceladus replied.

  Drummer just nodded. I guessed that meant the same.

  I peeled back the lid on my meal and stared at it. Eggs and desert hash. Spitnik food. Aboard the Spitnik’s Fist, we usually ate food that came from other worlds of their empire. I stuck it ;close to my nose and sniffed. Not spoiled – just not appealing.

  “This stuff is as bland as bland gets,” Drummer complained. “Don’t you have spices? At least salt and pepper?”

  “This stuff’s not from my world, dude. This is Spit food,” I replied. “There’s an old joke that the Spits went out to conquer other worlds because they were looking for better food. There might be some truth in that though.”

  Enceladus snickered and a piece of her hash floated off until she retrieved it.

  “That’s funny mostly because there’s probably some truth to it,” I said.

  “No, that’s not why I laughed. You called him a dude,” Enceladus giggled. “That means a muscular woman on Bahram.”

  “Oh!” I exclaimed. “On my world it means … oh, never mind. Sorry, Drummer.”

  Drummer waved his hand. “It’s no problem, dude. Eat up.” At least he was smiling rather than frowning.

  “Did someone say food?” Dr. Z stretched his arms.

  “Nobody’s calling this food,” I replied. “But we’re putting something into our stomachs. Let’s just call them calories.”

  “How about we call them imitation snot and imitation rubber?” Drummer suggested instead.

  “Please!” I waved my spoon over my hash. “We may not like this …stuff. But we have to eat it.”

  Enceladus sipped through a straw from a pouch. “Eww! Even their coffee is awful. This is supposed to be coffee, isn’t it? Because it seems more like burnt axle grease. Almost as thick too.”

  Drummer glanced at the front screen. “Twelve minutes and then what? We jumping again?”

  “Yeah, after I run the usual scans.” I noticed everyone stared at me. “I guess you’re all wondering what the plan is.”

  “Nah,” Enceladus responded, “we like not knowing the plan. It’s more of a challenge that way.”

  “Pfft! Plans? They’re overrated,” Drummer scoffed.

  “We’re heading for the Pavonis system. They call their world Dominic’s World or Dominica.”

  “How long till we’re there?” Enceladus asked.

  “Our maximum jump is about 0.8 parsecs which takes about eight hours, so it will take us about six jumps to get there. About 67 hours in the wormholes. Luckily, we have a corvette. Those destroyers and carriers are so big, it would take them twice as long to go the same distance.” The bigger ships needed bigger wormholes which traded off to shorter and slower jumps.

  “Why there?” Enceladus asked.

  “What did your world think of the Spits before they invaded?” I asked.

  “We didn’t know much about them. I guess we thought they were an okay people. We had no frickin’ idea they had faster than light travel and could reach us,” Enceladus replied. “We’re certainly didn’t know they were such damn bastards.”

  “And that’s what the Spits count on,” I said. “The interstellar radio network only travels at the speed of light. There are messages on the interstellar network that tell about the true nature of the Spits. They warn of their invasions. But the Spits keep conquering ahead of the signals reaching other worlds. No world is ready for them. Especially with the propaganda they’ve sent earlier of how peaceful a world Spitnik is.”

  “So we’re what? Going to go out and tell everyone what a great bunch of great guys the Spits are?” Drummer asked.

  “Oh, we’re going to do more than warn everyone,” I said. “And Dr. Z and Dr. Carlsgood are going to help us with that.”

  “Huh?” Dr. Z acted confused, but I was pretty sure he knew what I meant.

  “We’re going to give them blueprints for how to make wormhole generators and tell them how to make the superatom complex,” I explained.

  “Why there?” Enceladus asked.

  “The system is 6.8 parsecs from Bahram. Light will take over 22 years to get there,” I explained. “If the Spitnik continue to follow
their pattern, they will attack Rubis, Nuevo Comienzo, and Hermoso before Dominica. Those other worlds are closer to previous worlds that have already been invaded, so they are more likely to receive warnings. And the Spits will attack before those warnings have time to arrive.”

  “Shouldn’t we go there first then?” Enceladus asked. “At least give them warning that the Spits are coming?”

  “I’m afraid there’s not much hope for those worlds,” I replied. “What we need to do is deliver these plans to worlds that have time to build ships.”

  “We can’t just leave them like that,” Enceladus insisted.

  “I don’t like it either, but we need allies that can fight the Spits,” I countered. I took a deep breath. “If we can squeeze it in, we’ll swing by those worlds and give them a warning to prepare the best they can. But we’re not giving them plans that might fall into the Spits’ hands.”

  “But …” Enceladus continued to protest.

  “If the Spits get a hold of Neptune’s superatom formula. Well, that’s just not acceptable,” Dr. Z interrupted, defending my position.

  I added, “It’ll be game over if that happens. They’ll build a huge navy and run roughshod over the rest of human space before anyone has a chance to do anything about it. That must not happen.”

  Enceladus frowned, unhappy about my decision, but she didn’t argue further. I was glad Dr. Z had backed me. I just hoped I was doing the right thing.

  Over the next couple of days, I had no trouble convincing Enceladus to continue practicing with the weapons systems. I then coaxed Morgan into learning how to use all the sensors and communication equipment. I figured it might distract him from his mother’s condition.