by Terry Mixon
Before reinforcements could arrive, the ships on station at Twilight River departed as a unit and attacked the next system. Like an unstoppable cascade of dominoes, the Empire fell. Within two years, the rebels had taken Terra and the Emperor had fled. All attempts at taking back the lost systems failed.
Imperial scientists had quickly discovered the flaws in the implant software that the virus exploited. They even managed to reverse the process. The only problem was that it took time. The rebels could enslave a person with implants in less than half an hour. Undoing the damage took significantly longer.
Avalon was on the detailed maps of the Empire. The weaker flip points were not. It seemed the old Empire hadn’t known they existed either, which prompted the computer to ask for detailed scans of the one in the system. It also sent one of Courageous’ probes through. Jared took the opportunity to update the drone he’d left on the other side with their most recent status.
Using standard flip points, they could now return to Avalon in a little less than two months. Or they could have, if not for the Pale Ones between them and home.
There was also a wealth of historical data in the computer’s databanks. A treasure trove of lost literature and history. There were lost examples of everything from music to science textbooks to art. Anything that a crew in space could use to divert themselves from boredom or to educate themselves. It would take the scholars at home decades even to finish cataloging it.
Jared didn’t have that kind of time. He needed to get the ship operational as quickly as possible. He also needed to get his people trained as best he could. Courageous was going to be their ride home, so they’d better understand her.
They maneuvered around the system to become familiar with the controls. Though they were significantly different from what Fleet currently used, they were quite intuitive. And very advanced. The consoles seemed to know what they wanted before they even began looking for it.
The main computer assured him that the manual controls were significantly more cumbersome than controlling the ship through the headsets. Jared could hardly imagine that. Unfortunately, to experience what the main computer was talking about required going through the implant process. Something no one was yet ready to do.
Instead, he invited Kelsey up to the bridge to test one of the headsets. Her eyes widened when she stepped onto the bridge. The last time she’d seen it, it’d been dead and lifeless. Now all the consoles glowed, the main screen was on, and people filled all the stations.
“Wow. This looks amazing.”
He grinned at her. “It does look pretty awesome. I’m going to hate giving her up when we get back home.”
She frowned. “Give her up? But you’re her Captain.”
“Alas, Fleet won’t see it that way. This ship is an amazing resource. There’s absolutely no way they’ll leave her under my command. She’s going to get a Commodore or more likely an Admiral sitting in the center seat. After all, I’m only a Commander.”
“Well, that’s bullshit.”
He laughed. “That’s the way it works. I’ll just have to enjoy her while I can. Are you ready to give this thing a try?” He held up a headset.
Kelsey shrugged. “Sure. I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, but I’ll give it a swing. What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to sit at the console next to me and try to interface with the ship. We’ll use the scanner suite.”
She sat down beside him. The main computer had told him that the spare station was for the executive officer during normal duty operations. His new bridge could afford having the extra console because it was twice the size of Athena’s.
The Captain’s console in the center of the oval-shaped control room had room for two people. Four side-by-side consoles sat between the Captain and the main view screen, two in front, two in the middle. Three consoles faced the bulkheads to the right and left. Another two bracketed the lift at the rear of the bridge.
He shuddered at the memory of all of them filled with dead bodies.
Courageous didn’t need that many people to control her under normal circumstances, but there were enough systems to watch over her in manual mode. The computer told him that with implants, she just needed officers at helm, tactical, scanners, and engineering. Right now, he had one Terran and one Pentagaran Fleet officer at each pair of consoles.
Two hatches on the left completed the bridge layout. One led to a spacious head for the bridge crew and the other opened into his day cabin. An office, he might add, that was larger than his old one on Athena.
Jared had already configured his console for scanner operations, and he’d had Zia configure the main screen to do so as well. They would compare their results to what Kelsey was able to do.
He handed her a neural headset. “I’m told that all you have to do is put it on and request an interface with your console. See what you can grasp about our present situation.”
She settled a headset on and stared at the screen. “No, I better close my eyes. I don’t want to skew the results.”
He watched her face as she tried to do the unfamiliar task. She looked far more serene than when she’d first come on board. It was particularly amazing how far she’d come in the last few weeks. She’d remastered the fine motor control that the Pale Ones had taken from her.
Of course, she could also bench press an astonishing amount. Every time he saw her do that, it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He didn’t know if he’d ever get used to that.
Kelsey’s eyes flew open. “Holy crap!”
He leaned forward eagerly. “What did you see?”
“It’s not what I saw, it’s what I felt. I felt Best Deal. It was as if I could sense her. It wasn’t sight or sound. It was some new sense that I can’t put a name to. Without asking, I just seemed to know all kinds of facts about her. How far she was away from us, how big she was right down to the metric ton, what her speed and course was. All kinds of other stuff, too.”
“Tell Zia exactly what you’re sensing. Tell her the speed, mass, and anything else that you can determine.”
The two women quickly exchanged figures. Zia turned and nodded to him. “She’s right on the money, Captain.”
“Okay Zia, go to stage two.”
As soon as she touched her console, Kelsey spoke up. “Best Deal just activated a weapon. I think it’s a missile defense railgun. They’re targeting us.” She gave him a confused look. “Can you actually shoot somebody with a railgun?”
“If you’re in their face and desperate enough. The metal slugs can detonate a missile at close range, but a ship wouldn’t be in much danger. Were you still watching them?”
“Not really. I was looking around the rest of the system.”
“Where’s the flip point?”
“The normal one? 037 by 255, range 122,000 kilometers. Well, not exactly. It’s 122,473 kilometers.” She pointed. “It’s that way. I’m not seeing Athena. Did she already go back?”
He nodded. “I can hardly believe I’m seeing this. That’s amazing. It’s like you have a 360 degree view and you’re paying attention in every direction.”
“It’s really spooky. It’s as if I have eyes in the back of my head. Wait a minute. I see something else. There’s an artificial device under thrust in the asteroid belt. It’s changing course.”
Zia laughed delightedly. “I can’t believe you spotted a pinnace at that range. It’s not even accelerating that quickly. Its grav drives are way below the threshold at which Athena could detect it.” The Tactical Officer looked at Jared. “That right there is enough for me to consider getting implants of my own.”
Jared raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
The Lieutenant shrugged. “Someone’s going to have to be the first willing implantee. I’m not committing right now, mind you. And you know, Captain, we should all be thinking about it. That type of connection with the ship might save our lives on the way home.”
She looked back at Kelse
y. “In a few years, there’ll be a lot of people following in your footsteps, Ambassador. Your experiences are going to help all of us.”
Jared had been thinking about it. The idea emotionally repulsed him, but his rational side knew Zia was right. It was the future, as well as the past. And who knew? If he had implants, he might keep command of Courageous. At least for a while.
“Well, whatever we do, we won’t be doing it today. It’s time to take the shakedown cruise to the next level. Pasco, head into the asteroid belt to recover the pinnace. We’ll test out the weapon systems while we’re there.”
Kelsey stood and set her headset on her seat. “While that sounds very exciting, Senior Sergeant Talbot and I have an appointment in the gym. Don’t blow up anything important.”
Chapter Fourteen
Talbot wasn’t in the gym when Kelsey arrived, so she found something else to occupy her attention. Lifting weights was somewhat pointless, but the delicacy it required still proved challenging.
As ridiculous as it seemed, she could lift more weight than they could safely put on one of these bars. At least she could if she allowed herself to work at full strength. The trick of what she was doing now was gauging what level of power she needed to accomplish the task. No more, no less.
She added weights until she was certain she was getting near the maximum the bar would hold. Then she squatted and grasped the bar. She eyed the weights and adjusted her internal strength controls. If she got it right, lifting this would be a strain but doable. If not, she’d be falling on her ass. Again.
Kelsey took a deep breath, gripped the bar tighter, and brought the weight up to her chest, still balanced in a squatting position. She wobbled, but didn’t fall down. With a mighty thrust of her legs she stood and shoved the bar over her head. Kelsey grinned at her success before letting the weights fall to the floor with a loud clang.
A slow clap at the hatch drew her eye. Senior Sergeant Talbot stood there smiling. “Very nice. I think you’re getting the hang of this, Princess.”
“I count it a win when I don’t fall and drop it. So, you want me to do a few more reps?”
“Nope. I have something much more exciting in mind. Come on.”
He led her to a part of marine country that she hadn’t been in before on Courageous: the range. It looked big enough to crash land a cutter.
Talbot opened a wall locker with this thumbprint and took out two pistols and two rifles. He set them on the firing rest beside hearing and eye protection. These were old Empire weapons.
She picked up the oddly shaped pistol, the one with the solid barrel. “You got this working? What the hell does it do?”
“You’re a commando. You tell me.”
She queried the pistol. A table of information popped up in the corner of her vision. “This is a neural disruptor. Depending on the setting, it can either stun or kill. Appropriate armor can block its effects. Well, not the armor, but a mesh built into the armor. It’s not a long-range weapon, though. Fifty meters max, though it’s most effective under thirty. It can fire about fifty times before the power pack needs to be swapped out.”
The information indicated that the weapon could interface with her implants, so Kelsey told them to link. A weapon status screen replaced the diagram. The pistol was fully charged and read as operational.
Kelsey shook her head. “This is surreal. I can tell that it’s ready to use.”
“And this other pistol?” Talbot handed it to her.
This one fired projectiles, but if her memory served, they were just darts. She dropped the magazine and looked at one. As before, it was a long, thin dart with stabilizing fins imbedded in a clear gel. Unlike the last time, these popped out easily when she pushed one with her thumb.
“You found usable ammo?”
“Actually, one of Doctor Cartwright’s people figured out the formula and re-created the discarding sabot. Let’s see, how did he phrase it? “An interesting challenge.” He said it would be easy enough to salvage the ammo and restore it. Two of our guys will start learning the process tomorrow.”
“And these things work?”
“So I’m told, but I’m not sure how he tested them. He only brought them down yesterday. If you think the weapon is safe, why don’t we give it a try?”
Talbot touched a keypad next to the firing rest and a human shaped target appeared in the air about fifteen yards away. In fact, it looked like a real human. Her blood ran cold as it sank in that she was looking at a Pale One.
It snarled and raised its hands as it charged her. Without thinking about it, Kelsey raised her pistol, turned off the safety, and fired. The small hypervelocity dart had a substantially larger effect on the target than she would’ve expected. The thing’s head literally blew apart. Virtual blood and gray matter scattered everywhere and the target dropped before it disappeared.
“Very nice,” Talbot said, “but don’t you think you should’ve put your hearing protection on first? It isn’t as loud as I expected, but it could have been.”
Trembling, she set the pistol down before rounding on him. “You bastard.”
He nodded. “Sometimes. I could’ve made it a different target or warned you, but I needed to see how you handled the weapon when you weren’t thinking about it. I’m very sorry. I won’t do that again. If it’ll make you feel any better, we can go back to the gym and you can punch my lights out.”
“Tempting…but no.” She took several deep breaths. “You are going to make it up to me though. Why did we have to go through this theater?”
“How good of a shot are you, Princess? You just took an unfamiliar weapon and blew someone’s head off. Literally. How did you do that?”
She started to snap at him that she just did it, but she stopped. Yes, she’d fired a pistol before, but never one of these. The safety was similar to those she’d used before, but not exactly the same. Without consciously thinking about it, she’d known how to turn off the safety, aim the weapon, and fire it.
Not only that, she’d held the pistol differently than Talbot had trained her to. Not a whole lot differently, but enough to be noticeable.
“Put up another target. Not a Pale One, just a regular target.”
It took Talbot a minute to figure out exactly how to do that with the controls, but he got what looked like a standard target up. She aimed at the target’s head as best she could and pulled the trigger. She couldn’t see the result, because she missed, but her implants told her that she shot low and to the right.
“Okay, why did I miss that time?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say you were on autopilot the first time, just like during the fight at the Parliament building. Your implants put you in the right stance and selected the aiming point.”
Kelsey lowered the weapon and closed her eyes. She took two deep breaths and snapped the pistol up, firing as soon as she spotted the target. Still a miss. “I’m definitely going to have to practice more.”
Talbot took the pistol from her. “Yes, you will, but it’s good to know that you can hit what you’re aiming at if you really need to.” He tapped his hearing protection. “I know this thing isn’t as loud as a regular pistol, but you really should put on some hearing protection.”
“Actually, I don’t think I need it. I bet the implants in my ears are canceling out the noise. Eye protection, on the other hand, is something I think I need to use.” She put on a pair of shooting glasses and stepped back to let Talbot shoot.
He took a good stance and fired three times. “No wonder you keep missing. This thing has almost no recoil. Talk about point-and-click.” He snapped off two more shots. Both of them struck the target center mass.
“That is so unfair.”
He grinned at her. “Whoever told you that life was fair lied to you, Princess. I’ve been shooting firearms for longer than you’ve been alive. Sure, this is new, but it won’t take me long to adjust. And man, those little darts really blow somebody up. How fast are they going?”
Talbot whistled. “Mother of God! How the hell does a little pistol like that get something moving that fast? No wonder it has such an extreme impact on a target. I’ve got to get me one of these.”
She thought back to when the elderly scientist had showed these weapons to her just after they’d found Courageous. “Doctor Cartwright guessed that they used electromagnetics, but he was wrong. It has a tiny grav generator, similar to the ones we use to create artificial gravity. That’s why there’s very little recoil. I had no idea such miniaturization was even possible. Let me have that again.”
Kelsey took the pistol from him and ordered her implants to show where she was aiming. A dot appeared in her vision off to the right hand side of the target. She took a two-handed firing stance and put the red dot on the target’s forehead.
She fired twice. Both flechettes hit exactly where she aimed. The barrel had gone up not because of recoil, but because she’d jerked expecting recoil.
“That’s a lot better,” Talbot said, taking the pistol back. “What did you do?”
“I told my implants to put up a targeting dot,” she said smugly. “It’s a hell of a lot easier to shoot when you know exactly where the bullet’s going to go.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” He took the magazine out of the pistol. “It looks like it holds about twenty flechettes. That’s great in a pistol this size, especially with that kind of firepower. The doctor delivered several thousand flechettes. We’ll get on making more of them as quickly as possible. Especially if we can get several hundred of these pistols and rifles refurbished.”
Kelsey took the pistol from him and reinserted the magazine. “These pistols are mine. You can keep the rifles until I need them.”
Talbot nodded. “I’ll make sure and get you half a dozen magazines and plenty of ammunition to train with. I got a belt and holsters in the locker. It looks like the marines wore the flechette pistol on the right side and the neural disruptor cross-draw on the left.”
