“Probably isn’t certainty,” Todd said. “And being squashed by a half-ton suit of armor isn’t how I want to end my time on this planet.” He stopped a minute and looked at Verne. “I wanted to come and wish you good luck as you chase your dreams, but I also wanted to warn you. Whatever brought me here, and whatever it is that took my memory of who I am, is still out there. I don’t know if it’s something sinister, but I also don’t know that it isn’t. Be careful. In a galaxy this big, there are bound to be bad people and races out there, and you are somewhat…gullible.”
“What do you mean by that?” Verne asked. “I am no longer a child.”
“No, but you are easily distracted by new equipment and machinery, and you often lose your focus. For example, you are likely to work for free if a new employer let you work on equipment you had never seen before.”
Since that was pretty much the arrangement Verne had made with Steele, he decided to watch the Humans loading his gear onto the shuttle rather than say anything.
“Please tell me you aren’t working for free for the Humans,” Todd said when Verne didn’t reply. “You need to make sure they pay you, so when you get to Karma, or wherever you end up, you will have some credits to get the things you need.”
“I don’t need much…”
“You need to eat,” Todd warned, “and there are many things you like to have, like new tools and new accessories for your VASPer. None of these are free out in the galaxy; they all cost credits, and you need to make sure you have credits for when you need them. I can’t follow you and pay for them; you’re going to have to do that for yourself now.”
“I will try, Grandpa.”
“Good. Make sure you do. And try to write sometimes. Nemo barely ever sends us any messages, and it is hard to keep up with where he is and what he’s doing.”
“I will,” Verne said as Overstreet carried the last load into the shuttle.
“Good,” Todd repeated. “Then it is time for your adventure to begin. Do well, but keep your eyes open, no matter where your arms take you.”
Verne nodded, then mounted his VASPer and closed the canopy. “Goodbye, Grandpa,” Verne said as he trundled off.
“Goodbye, Verne.”
Verne made his way up the ramp, careful not to crush any of the pallets of gear, then backed into position against the shuttle’s bulkhead. As the ramp came up, Verne could see Todd waving an arm and flashing his, “Goodbye.”
As the ramp closed, Verne wondered if he would ever see his grandfather again.
* * * * *
Chapter Nine
“All hands, this is the bridge,” the public address system announced some weeks later. “Acceleration stations. Stand by for maneuvering.” Red lights began flashing throughout the engineering space.
Verne looked up at the speaker on the bulkhead as if it had just spoken in MinSha. “What did they just say?”
“The bridge just said to get to acceleration stations,” Terry Collier replied as he grabbed up the tools, threw them into a bin, and dashed to his chair. “I swear, sometimes you get to working and lose track of the entire galaxy.”
Verne crawled over to his own chair holding the spanner he’d been using, dropped it into the receptacle he’d attached to his acceleration chair for just that purpose, and strapped himself in. Not only was it painful to get slammed around when the ship started accelerating, it was also dangerous to both his health and the continued well-being of the engineering room’s equipment. He’d lost the tip of an arm to some rotating machinery when he’d missed one acceleration stations call. Another meter to the right, and his main body would have gone into the gearing, likely shredding his body and destroying the machine. Worse, he would not have been around to fix it again.
Since then, he’d learned to take the warnings seriously…and to try to notice them when they were given. Still…it was sometimes hard when the work was so fascinating.
“What’s going on?” Verne asked. “We aren’t to the planet already, are we?”
“No, we’re not even close,” Collier replied. “I guess you missed the first announcement saying there was a ship in distress, and that we’re going to help them?”
“Yes, I missed that.” So much for paying attention to intercom announcements. “What’s wrong with the ship?”
“I don’t know. I think they said they have an F11 leak or something like that in their engineering room.”
“Really? How did they do that? You’d have to want to break it to make something go wrong with the system. When I came aboard, that was the only system that seemed to be working at one hundred percent efficiency.
“I don’t know. All I know is Steele said to be ready to go over and help them with it. I suspect that means you’ll go over to help, as well, once we’re alongside.”
“Okay. Once we’re docked, I’ll go get my VASPer. It can carry the widest variety of tools. That way, I will have everything I might need, from electronic to hydraulic.”
“Secure from acceleration stations,” a voice said over the intercom. “Engineering away team assemble at the amidships docking collar.”
“That’s us,” Collier said. “Go get your VASPer and meet me there.”
“Wilco.” Verne flashed happiness. He was going to go fix a broken ship, and he got to use military terminology. It didn’t get much better than that. The fact that his VASPer was needed, too, was just pure awesome. It was almost like being a merc.
He pushed his way back to his closet—he had found out his room really was a closet, but it hadn’t mattered because he was in space—mounted the VASPer, and started it up. Before he could shut the canopy, though, he felt the ship jar, and a brief overpressure wave came through the open door.
It was an explosion. The other ship’s engine must have detonated somehow.
He had to go help!
The Leaf’s red and white strobe lights were illuminated. “Action Stations!” blared over the intercom. Vern wasn’t surprised; they would need to be as prepared as possible if they were connected to a ship that was on fire or had suffered a casualty. He didn’t catch the second half of the announcement until it was repeated.
“Action Stations, Action Stations! All hands, man your action stations! Prepare to repel boarders! We have boarders at the amidships docking collar. All hands, defend the ship!”
The announcement repeated a third time as Verne stood at his doorway, unsure what to do. Boarders? They had been boarded? By who? Why? None of his training covered being boarded—the crew of the Leaf had only given him instructions for a few emergencies, most of which entailed going to his closet and strapping in. The only one that didn’t—abandon ship—required him to go to the ship’s one lifeboat.
But strapping in now didn’t seem to be what the situation required.
What was required now was action! The announcement had said to defend the ship, and there was nothing better to defend the ship than his VASPer. He looked at the two boxes pushed into the corner of his closet labeled LASER and MAC—his laser and magnetic assault cannon primary armaments, but they were still in their original packing. He had never unpacked them as there wasn’t a need for them onboard ship. He did not even know if they worked.
And now was not the time to find out.
He turned back to the door and walked out, colliding with a crewmember flying past from the direction he wanted to go.
“Sorry,” Verne said. “I didn’t see you.”
Then he saw the crewmember was not a crewmember—it looked vaguely like one of the Humans’ domesticated dogs, only larger—at the same time the being raised its laser pistol and fired it at his suit.
The beam was a glancing blow, and his armor turned it. He had worked hard on developing an anti-laser paint scheme—that was what the CASPer veterans said they feared most—and the silver paint on his VASPer covered several thousand small, reflective surfaces. The initial part of the beam burned off the paint, then the mirrors reflected the beam harmlessly to the si
de.
The dog-man flinched back in surprise from the giant mech, clearly surprised his shot had nearly come back to hit him. He raised his pistol to fire again. Without consciously thinking about it, Verne backhanded the creature with the full force of the suit. He had intended to knock the pistol out of the creature’s hand, but the invader moved and took the brunt of the blow in his face. His head snapped back with a loud crack! and the creature bounced off the bulkhead like a giant pinball on the physics show, How Things Work.
Unfortunately, the pistol was too small and awkwardly shaped for Verne to use it with his VASPer—he hadn’t designed the hands to be sensitive enough, obviously, and he crushed the weapon in his hand. The pieces floated away from the VASPer as Verne flashed his dissatisfaction to the cosmos.
He saw the enemy—he did a pinplant search and found it to be a Zuul—was no longer a threat, as its head was rotated in a different direction than the rest of its body, so he started toward the docking collar.
The air sampler started picking up traces of smoke as he approached it, which was probably residual from the explosion he had felt earlier. He rounded the final corner and saw three more Zuul guarding the access to their ship.
One saw him and started to raise his weapon. Realizing he was too far in the open to retreat, Verne did something he had read mercs did when they surprised an enemy; he charged them before they had time to recover. He dove forward, flying through a red mist, and toggled his jumpjets to full. He had never used them in space, and he immediately recognized his mistake. He turned off the jumpjets with a thought, but by then he was rocketing down the passage toward the Zuul, all of which were now staring at him in shock. The first one fired, but the shot passed over him.
Another Zuul ducked as he slammed into two of them, grabbing one in each hand. However, they were wearing mag boots and the force required to rip their feet out of them unbalanced his flight. He spun awkwardly through the docking passage and into the enemy ship, bouncing off the passageway’s walls and, sometimes, the two Zuul he was holding.
He activated his own mag boots and came to a jarring stop that threw him into his restraints so hard he thought they would break from the stress or cut him in half. But the restraints held and he wasn’t cut in half. He found himself standing on the port bulkhead of the enemy ship, with a Zuul in each hand. The left-hand one struggled to get away, but the other’s head was crushed, and he didn’t move.
A third Zuul was just turning toward Verne, and he dove back toward the creature, this time with just a tap of his jumpjet. The Zuul lifted his pistol to fire, and Verne threw the dead Zuul. The enemy-turned-missile pin-wheeled into the third Zuul, who ducked under it, but came up just in time for Verne to grab him around the throat in his now-empty hand.
Unable to stop himself, again, Verne flew through the docking passage into Leaf and slammed into one of the bulkheads. Since he was holding the two Zuul in front of him, the enemy cushioned the VASPer’s collision with the bulkhead, and the VASPer broke their bodies and caved in their chests.
Verne dropped them and considered what to do next. As he looked around, he saw what he had missed as he rocketed past the first time—there had been a fight at the entrance to the Leaf, and a number of the Leaf’s crew—including the chief engineer—were now dead. The red mist he had flown through appeared to be primarily made up of Terry Collier’s blood. The way his chest was torn up, he must have been close to whatever had exploded.
Verne’s photoreceptors lit up with grief and anguish. While he knew he didn’t experience loss exactly like a Human, he knew what they said it felt like, and he felt it, too. He would never see Collier again. He had been one of the first to speak up for Verne, and now he was gone because of a group that would rather steal from others than earn a living.
They had to be stopped, and he had the equipment—he had the suit—to stop them. But how many of them were there, and where were they?
* * * * *
Chapter Ten
There were obviously a number of Zuul onboard his ship, and Verne could think of only two places where they would go: the bridge and engineering. While they could disrupt the ship from the bridge, like remotely turning off the motors, it was not anything he could not counter with local control in the engine room. To him, engineering was more important than the bridge. There, the invaders could control things like the environmental system, which would kill his crewmates.
Verne started to turn back toward engineering, but he realized the two ships were still connected. If there were more Zuul on the pirate ship, they could keep coming aboard the Leaf. He jetted—slowly and under control—to the hatch on the other ship, closed it, then bent the handle to where it wouldn’t open again without applying as much force as the VASPer had…which was significant.
He pulsed happiness at a job well done, then turned and jetted as quickly as he could toward engineering. This process led to a number of collisions with the bulkheads as he pinballed back and forth between them, but it was quicker than trying to run in the suit, and he figured time was of the essence. He could buff out most of the dings later.
As he reached the hatchway into engineering, he saw a Zuul skitter back inside and shut the hatch. The ship was not a warship, though, so the hatch didn’t lock, and the Zuul didn’t have near enough strength to keep Verne’s mecha from opening it. Unfortunately for the Zuul, it tried to hold down the bar latching the hatch shut. When Verne grabbed it on the other side and yanked it upward, the bar was ripped from the Zuul’s hands and smashed into his face, caving it in and catapulting him into the overhead.
Verne pushed the door open, and two laser beams lanced out, hitting his suit. One bounced off ineffectually, but the other hit his right arm and drilled through. It didn’t hit his own arm or anything critical in the suit, but it showed him the VASPer was not impervious to laser fire. He dodged to the side then drifted down the passageway as his mag boots lost contact with the floor. He gave his jumpjets the barest touch of power, bounced off the overhead, and locked them to the deck. Then he had an idea. He pushed off the deck and reoriented himself to stand on the ceiling. The Zuul were land creatures and expected threats to come at them from their orientation; as a sea person, Verne was used to looking down or attacking prey from above. He was also very patient when it came to hunting.
He walked back to the hatchway, careful to remain hidden. After about thirty seconds, the defenders couldn’t wait any longer, and one came out, leading with his laser rifle. He turned in the direction Verne had dodged, and Verne reached down, grabbed him by the neck, and slammed his head into the overhead. He did it a second time for Terry Collier’s sake…then a third.
He threw the body through the open hatchway, immediately drawing a number of laser blasts, and dove in after it. He skipped once off the deck, then crashed into a piece of auxiliary machinery he knew was in front of the hatch. Grabbing hold of it, he used it for cover as he got his legs underneath him.
As his mag boots connected to the deck, he ran a thermal sweep of the space. In addition to the thermal sources he recognized—he knew all of the machinery well by then—there were two others. He immediately recognized his mistake: the additional sources were on opposite sides of the room, and both of them were moving to take him under fire. He wouldn’t be able to attack either of them without exposing himself to the other. Nor could he flee out the hatch without exposing himself to both of them.
He moved his optical sensors around, trying to see how the Zuul were armed, and realized that he needed offboard sensors, like a drone or three, to augment his suit’s defenses. He finally managed to get a look at both of them, although he took a laser strike that penetrated his suit’s left shoulder in the process. The Zuul to the left was only armed with a laser pistol, while the one on the right had a laser rifle that was the greater threat.
Happily, he didn’t have shoulders, so the laser passed through the suit without hitting him. It did, however, compromise some of the left arm’s functio
ns. But he was as ambidextrous as an eight-armed creature could be, and while two of his arms functioned as his primary appendages, he could operate the suit’s functions with any of his eight arms or even his two tentacles, if need be, with a very small drop-off in efficiency.
Knowing he needed to move before either Zuul could shoot at him, he grabbed the body of the Zuul floating nearby—now even worse for wear after being shot—and threw it to his right. The Zuul ducked, and Verne tapped his jumpjets and soared over the box he was using as cover to the other.
The Zuul must not have fought Humans before—or at least not ones with CASPers—because the sight of the giant suit of armor flying toward him stopped him in his tracks, and his mouth dropped open. The VASPer smashed him into the bulkhead, putting a sizable dent into it, and the Zuul stopped thinking anything at all.
Though the attack had worked, Verne realized he really needed to work on a way to stop so that he didn’t keep damaging the ship. While he was getting better at killing the pirates, he was also causing himself a lot of menial work that would keep him from projects he wanted to work on.
A laser strike on the bulkhead next to him made him duck behind a turbine, and as he turned toward the remaining Zuul, he saw the laser rifle floating by. He snatched it up in his right hand. Although a rifle for a normal Zuul trooper, in the suit’s hands it wasn’t much more than an oversized pistol, and he was able to hold it with only one hand.
But he had a weapon, and he initialized the suit’s targeting system. Unfortunately, it was the first time he’d ever used it, and not only was he slow to target the Zuul from lack of practice, the system also hadn’t been calibrated, so his first two shots hit the hyperspace generator the Zuul was hiding behind. Oops. More work.
Do No Harm Page 10
