“Well we don’t exactly have a replacement,” she replied.
The cockpit’s door slid open and Ju-Long floated inside the cramped area, forehead bloodied and lip split open, bruising fast. His white tank top was stained with blood from where he’d used it to wipe his mouth. Ju-Long’s muscular arms held him steady in the frame of the hatch.
“You should probably come see,” he said.
Liam and Saturn exchanged a look, then followed him out of the cockpit and into the main corridor, kicking off from the walls to gain momentum. Along the main passage were four rooms, each only a few meters square. Enough room for a bed and a small trunk for personal items. Regardless, they were more spacious than the quarters at the mine, where workers were stacked three high in rows of uncomfortable cots.
They used the railing on the ladder to descend to the cargo bay, which was the main intersection between the cockpit, the airlocks, and the engine room, forming a cross. Yellow strongboxes of cargo were strewn about the bay after their little adventure. Ju-Long led them to the starboard side, pointing vehemently toward the airlock’s window. When Liam pressed his face up against the porthole he knew why.
The starboard wing sparked and jolted violently. Chunks of the panels were missing from the frame of the wing where the laser had cut clean through. It was worse than he thought.
“What are we going to do?” Ju-Long asked.
Liam thought for a moment. The scout ship’s supplies were limited, but if they had welding equipment they could salvage some interior panels and perhaps work out a fix. Liam took a deep breath and let it out. The cargo bay smelled of stale air and sweat. Ju-Long and Saturn looked to him expectantly, though he didn’t know why. No one had made him leader, but he was beginning to feel he’d been placed in that role regardless. He went with his gut and ordered, “Start checking these boxes, we need to know what we have in inventory.”
Ju-Long and Saturn nodded in agreement and began tearing the tops off of the crates, careful not to let the contents float away. Liam searched the cargo bay for a panel that might fit, preferably something only aesthetic in nature. It took five minutes, but he finally found a wall panel near the ladder to the main passageway that could work.
“I’ve got something,” Saturn said, holding up a small cylindrical device that fit in the palm of her hand. “I think it’s a laser cutter.”
“Bring it here,” Liam said.
Saturn pushed off from the floor and met Liam at the ladder. Liam pointed to the rectangular panel.
“Try to get a clean cut along the edges. Start with a lower power so you don’t burn what’s on the other side.”
Saturn shot him a questioning look.
“What is on the other side?”
Liam didn’t know what was behind the panel, but he was sure whatever it led to was still inside the ship, so he said, pointing to the seam in the metal, “It’s a living quarters, don’t worry about it. Right here.”
Saturn reluctantly pointed the laser cutter at the panel and turned the dial to medium power. Ju-Long pushed off from the floor and met them at the ladder, interrupting Saturn before she turned on the cutter. “Forgetting something?”
He handed Liam and Saturn a pair of darkened goggles, putting a third pair over his own eyes. He jeered, “Have you guys learned nothing at the mine?”
Saturn’s mouth opened to give a retort but she stopped after the first syllable, simply nodding and pressing the button on the cutter, sending a blue laser at the seam of the metal panel. The plate turned orange around the cut as she went, a few bits of molten metal floating away. Liam hadn’t thought about cutting in the weightless environment. A small chunk flew out and caught Liam in the shoulder, burning his skin through his gray jumpsuit. He brushed it away with his hand and pressed his palm down on the burn. Liam kicked off from the wall and stayed a few meters back while she worked.
Luckily, Saturn finished quickly and punched the panel through to the other side. The orange edges of the remaining fixture faded until they retained only a small amount of color. Saturn removed her glasses and admired her work. Her expression changed from satisfaction to disdain. She moved her head close to the hole and looked inside, then turned toward Liam, fuming.
“What?” Liam asked.
“Take a look for yourself.”
Liam pushed off from the wall he was holding on to and floated to the hole in the wall. Upon inspection it was pretty obvious why she was mad. If she’d cut into one of the living quarters it would have been fine, since they had a spare. Instead, she’d cut a hole a half meter by a meter into the side of their only bathroom.
Liam smiled and said, “Come on, that’s a little funny.”
“I’m not laughing.”
Ju-Long Ma snickered in the background. “I guess this means we’re all going to get pretty chummy.”
8
It took Liam and the crew an Earth hour to find and cut a second panel for the underside of the starboard wing. Now that they had the materials, the big question was how they were going to attach the panels without leaving the ship. To Liam’s surprise, it was Ju-Long who came up with the answer. What he lacked in social skills he more than made up for with his engineering prowess.
The cargo bay had a side airlock along with several small portholes with views of the wing. Under each window was a control panel, capable of projecting a hologram or displaying numerous key statistics, acting as bank of workstations for scouts looking for a new asteroid to mine. All they could see out the windows now was the front of the wing. Some of the cargo was still floating around the room, but they’d managed to tie off the bulk of them to one wall so they would be out of the way.
“Are you ready?” Liam asked.
Ju-Long nodded and waved his hand over a panel, taking control of one of the ship’s robotic arms, normally used for collecting asteroid samples. They’d placed the panels in the side airlock, depressurizing the chamber to match the outside. The two panels floated aimlessly near the airlock, bumping into each other and diverting each other’s paths slightly. Ju-Long positioned the arm near the airlock and motioned to Liam. “Now.”
Liam pressed a button near the inner airlock which opened the outer door. Ju-Long grabbed the nearest piece of scrap metal with the arm and moved it out toward the wing, which sat several meters behind the cargo bay. Liam closed the outer airlock, sealing the remaining piece in. It only took a minute for Ju-Long to position the panel over the hole in their wing, pressing down the arm’s pincers in the center of the panel.
“You’re up, killer,” Ju-Long said.
Saturn pulled her darkened goggles over her eyes and waved her hand over the control panel nearest the cargo bay window and a hologram of a joystick appeared, shimmering orange in the weightlessness of the chamber. She motioned to grab the stick and a second mechanical arm extended outside the ship. She used her free hand to move a dial on the holographic projection, “Adjusting to lowest power setting.”
Liam held his breath. If the arm’s laser cutter was too powerful, it could very well tear a new hole in the wing. All they needed was to melt the sides of the panel over the hole. It would be a temporary fix, but with any luck, it would get them through the atmosphere of that mystery planet.
Saturn pressed the trigger and light from the blue laser reflected in her mirrored goggles. She moved a magnifying lens in front of her left eye, keeping close track of her weld. Slowly, the panel’s edge turned orange, molten. Saturn kept the arm moving so it wouldn’t burn through. When she reached the other arm she released the trigger, twisting her hand so the arm she controlled spun under the first as though on a gyro. She continued welding until the panel was affixed, the orange glow quickly subsiding in the cold of space.
Ju-Long removed the first arm so they could admire their work. It wasn’t pretty, but it would have to do. Attaching the panel on the underside was going to be trickier. The robotic arms did have cameras, but when the laser cutter was engaged it would make it hard to
see anything but flashes of blue and white.
Liam opened the outer airlock once more while Ju-Long clamped down on the remaining panel with his robotic arm. He moved the arm toward the wing, spinning it underneath at the last moment. Ju-Long pressed a button on the control panel and his window took on the perspective of the robotic arm, displaying the underside of the wing in vivid detail.
When the panel was in place, Saturn moved her arm around the underside of the wing, displaying her arm’s camera angle in split-screen with Ju-Long’s on her window. She positioned the laser cutter over the panel’s edge and took a breath.
“You’re sure about this?” Saturn asked.
Liam nodded, “Obviously it’s not ideal, but it has to be done. I trust you.”
Saturn blew out a breath of air and said, “Here goes.”
The laser cutter jumped to life as she bore down on the trigger. The panel quickly turned molten orange, bits of metal coming together in globs and floating off into space. Saturn moved quickly but it was getting too hot, too fast.
“Easy,” Ju-Long said, trying to keep the panel from moving under the slippery liquefied metal.
Saturn took her finger off the trigger and let the panel cool before continuing. She’d moved just as fast as the previous panel but something about this one was different.
“This panel must have a different composition,” Ju-Long said. “A different melting point.”
Liam examined Saturn’s control panel. “The laser cutter is already at the lowest setting.”
“Do we keep going?” Saturn asked.
Ju-Long pointed at his monitor. The panel was halfway attached already and the first blast hadn’t made it through the wing. “I don’t think we have a choice. We’re almost there, just work quickly.”
Saturn nodded and asked, “Ready?”
“Hit it,” Ju-Long replied.
Saturn pressed the laser cutter’s and moved it along the edge of the panel, barely giving it time to turn malleable. She stopped the laser and examined her work, moving the arm and camera around to get a good look at the seam. It seemed to be intact. “How’s that?”
Liam clapped a hand on her shoulder.
“Good job, I couldn’t have done it better.”
“Now we’re in agreement,” Saturn retorted.
•
Five Hours Later
“We’re within scanning range,” Saturn said, pointing at the screen behind the two pilot’s seats.
She floated there, examining the readouts as they came in. Pages of information flashed on the screen, scrolling up to make room for more, with a vibrant picture of the small world coming into focus. Liam unstrapped from the pilot’s chair and floated over to her, examining the display for himself. Liam was surprised the mining craft had sensors that detailed, but Vesta Corporation always seemed to have something up their sleeve.
The planet was smaller than the Earth, maybe only two-thirds the size. Its terrain was rocky and reminiscent of the deserts of Mars. Instead of red sand, it was a course yellow, much like the Sahara desert. The surface had only two large bodies of water, akin to the Great Lakes of Earth in size, the rest was one large expanse of nothingness. Saturn pressed her finger on the screen, stopping the flow of text.
“Do you see that?”
Liam examined the text.
“Can that be right?”
“Two million humanoid life forms located primarily around the bodies of water. This area here looks like some sort of hub,” she said, pointing just west of the larger body of water.
“Can we compare these readings with the ones from the other ship near the Asteroid Belt?”
“I’m working on it.”
Saturn swiped her hand to the left, sending the scrolling information to the left hand side of the screen while she pulled up the other ship’s details on the right.
“Here,” she said. “One thousand humanoid life forms aboard. But, this is interesting. They aren’t a match. The life forms on the planet surface don’t even match each other. We’re dealing with three distinct species.”
“Three?” Liam asked.
Less than a day ago they were under the impression that they were alone in the universe. Earth’s scientists had long posited that alien life was sure to exist, but was far beyond our reach and perhaps didn’t even exist in our current time. This proved that they were real. This proved that there were at least four species of intelligent life in the universe.
“The two species on the surface appear to be intermingled, living together in the same areas,” Saturn continued.
Images of Homo sapiens living with Neanderthal came to Liam’s mind. The thought made him laugh a little inside. He hadn’t ever thought about it, but they must have intermingled on Earth for some time.
“What kind of images can we get from the surface?”
“Not much,” Saturn replied. “We can zoom in and get a pretty good look at the topology, but remember, this thing was designed for searching for compounds on asteroids. It can tell you if there’s any palladium in the mountains, but not much beyond that.”
Liam thought for a moment. The alien ship from before was hostile, but did that mean the two species on the surface were too? Liam remembered back to his days freelancing for Vesta Corporation. It would have been nice at the time having a ship that could detect rare minerals. He could have made a lot of money that way. Now he wished he had an explorer’s ship like the ones from the Titan missions.
“But, this is interesting,” Saturn began, “There’s a single moon that’s far smaller than the planet with a few hundred inhabitants.”
Liam ran his fingers through his thick blond hair, deep in thought.
“It doesn’t change anything, we need to get to the planet surface. We don’t know how intelligent they are, so maybe it’d be better to try to set down away from the major population centers a bit.”
“Liam, we don’t know anything about these creatures. What if they’re like the ones at the Asteroid Belt?”
“If we don’t land we’ll be dead in space without direction. Plot a course for just west of the ocean there,” Liam said, pointing at the map on the screen.
“We’ll be about ten kilometers from that large mass of life forms. Shouldn’t we land a little farther away?”
Liam could tell Saturn was frustrated. She was talking with her hands and was out of breath. Her dark hair, still tied back, floated up in a ponytail behind her. Saturn didn’t like taking orders from anyone, even him, whom she’d known for years. Still, someone had to hold their little group together. They were stranded ten thousand light years from home and while there were three entire species of aliens out there somewhere there were only three of them.
“We might need them,” Liam explained. “We only have enough supplies for days, a week or two at most.”
Saturn softened her stare and said, “I still don’t like it.”
“We need to make repairs to the ship and it will be a lot easier when we’re on the ground.”
“Fine.”
9
Four Hours Later
“We’re passing the two hundred thousand kilometer mark,” Saturn said, waking Liam up from a nap.
Liam opened his eyes and removed his feet from the cockpit console. He unbuckled his straps and floated up out of his chair, redirecting himself so he could see better out the window. The brown planet took up most of their view now, the large lakes coming into their line of sight. Its sole moon, a small black and grey sphere was on his monitor. They’d passed it a couple of hours before. Liam matched their course to the spin of the planet so they would have a favorable angle of descent. With any luck, their makeshift repairs would hold together. Liam briefly fired the reverse thrusters until they were traveling at a steady velocity.
Saturn retrieved a packaged protein bar from a small cabinet to the left of her console. The door clicked shut and she ripped open the package. The solid brown substance floated up out of her hand where she caught it
and took a large bite. The mining craft’s supplies were limited to nonperishables in which anyone familiar with spaceflight had grown accustomed. That didn’t make the supplements any more palatable, but there was some comfort in knowing that not even the president of Vesta Corporation had it any better than they did.
“One hour out,” Liam mused, “Then we see just what secrets this mystery planet holds.”
Saturn yawned, revealing chunks of her protein bar lodged in her teeth. She swallowed too much at once hit her chest with a closed fist, coughing and sending a small piece floating up out of her mouth, which she quickly grabbed and shoved back between her teeth.
Liam watched as she regained her composure. She tightened her straps so her chair was hugging her body. Liam knew it was hard to get comfortable in a weightless environment. It wasn’t just finding a comfortable position, but finding a way to support the back without waking up in pain. Liam asked, “Did you sleep at all?”
“No,” Saturn replied. “I’ve been trying to go over the readings and see if I can find out anything else about the aliens on the planet.”
“And?”
“I’ve come to a few conclusions about them, but nothing terribly useful I’m afraid.”
Liam turned his back to the cockpit’s window, floating at an odd angle above the console. “What conclusions?”
“Well, for starters, whatever species are on the planet have been attracted to the water source, which means their biology must be similar to life on Earth, probably Carbon-based.”
“We know they’re bipedal.”
“Right, but it’s more than that. On Earth, there’s human life even in some of the most desolate deserts and tundra. On this planet, apart from the life near the water, there’s nothing.”
Liam scratched his scarred right cheek, noticing he needed a good shave soon. He thought about the implications of what Saturn had just told him. Liam thought aloud, “Does that means this is some kind of colony?”
The Corsair Uprising Collection, Books 1-3 Page 4
