Stories of the Confederated Star Systems

by Jones, Loren K.

  Alberto chuckled. “I wouldn’t have accepted that deal. Strap in.” He went to his own chair and fastened his harness. A man and a woman came into the bridge and addressed him.

  “Captain De La Cruz, I am Ishmael Gomez, Navigator Second of the Juarez,” the man said, coming to attention. “My companion is Isabella Santiago, Primary Helm.”

  “Take your positions,” Alberto ordered without looking up from his panel. “Get clearance from NHSP-1 to depart, and plot us a course to the asteroid belt. Our target is six-seven-one by two-six-two at four point three six nine astronomical units from the star.”

  The navigator had been working while Alberto talked, and looked up almost immediately. “Course set and laid in.”

  “Very well,” Alberto answered as the butterflies that had been missing appeared in his stomach. He pushed the button on his panel and the canned acceleration warning echoed through the ship. Exactly one minute later, the Guadalajara eased away from port.

  The trip to the asteroid belt took seventeen days. Seventeen days for Alberto’s doubts to grow. Seventeen days for him to second-guess himself. Seventeen days to wonder what he would find this time.

  As soon as they arrived in the asteroid belt, he instituted a search pattern. He remembered the asteroid’s movements as being generally toward the ecliptic south-east, and he directed the search in that direction. He tied the optical sensors to his panel and searched with his eyes as Cabrillo and Gomez searched with the ship’s sensors. It still took three more days to find the right asteroid.

  “Are you certain, Captain?” Cabrillo asked as Alberto tapped his screen with one finger.

  “What do your sensors say?” he asked in return.

  “Inconclusive.”

  “Exactly what they said last time. We’ll stand well away this time, though. Helm, maintain at least ten kilometers from that rock at all times. Señor Cabrillo, you and I will take the shuttle and investigate. I won’t hazard another crew.”

  Cabrillo looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “A wise precaution, Captain. I will go suit up.”

  “As will I. Meet me in the shuttle bay when you are ready.” Alberto turned and walked off the bridge to his quarters. He carefully checked his suit, then strapped in. It was a miner’s suit, with exoskeleton servos to enhance his strength.

  He had already done the pre-flight checks on the shuttle by the time Señor Cabrillo arrived. Alberto hid a smile when he saw the suit that Cabrillo had brought along. A civilian excursion suit, smooth and attractively tailored, it looked like a slightly bulky coverall.

  “Are we ready, Captain?” he asked as he came aboard the shuttle.

  “Yes. Strap in and don’t touch anything.” Alberto keyed his microphone and contacted the bridge. “Captain to bridge. Depressurize the shuttle bay and open the outer doors.”

  “Bridge aye,” the navigator replied. It took just a few moments, and then the mighty doors pealed open to reveal the glory that was space.

  Alberto eased the shuttle clear, then used small bursts of his thrusters to get them moving toward the asteroid. “It will take a little while to reach the asteroid. Just sit back and relax.”

  The little while was nearly an hour as Alberto maneuvered them into position to land on the rotating rock. It was a tricky maneuver, but he executed it flawlessly and grinned when he saw Cabrillo’s white-knuckled grip on his arm rests.

  “You can let go now. The mass is sufficient that we have almost one tenth of an Earth-Normal gravity on the surface. That was what drew out attention last time.”

  “Can we go out onto the surface?” Cabrillo asked, and Alberto led him to the personnel airlock.

  “Double-check your suit before we get into the lock. There are no second chances with vacuum.” Alberto was following his own order as he spoke. When both of them were ready, he opened the inner airlock door. Once they were in the lock and the door was closed and secure, he activated the pump-out sequence. As the air was removed from the airlock, their suits tightened and Alberto watched Cabrillo carefully. When the other’s suit showed no signs of rupturing, he opened the outer door.

  The asteroid was rotating in two planes, causing a kaleidoscope of shadows to writhe across the surface. It wasn’t enough, however, to hide the evidence in the dust.

  “You landed here before,” Cabrillo said as he looked at the tracks.

  “I sent a team to investigate.”

  Cabrillo turned toward him with a stunned expression on his face. “Your report said nothing of this.”

  “There was a lot that wasn’t in my report.”

  “What else are you hiding?” Cabrillo demanded.

  “Minerva,” Alberto answered.

  “Your delusion?”

  Now Alberto laughed. He walked forward, leaving Cabrillo to follow in his wake. It wasn’t far. He’d seen to that when he picked his landing spot. He turned on his suit work-lights and pointed. In a depression that had been gouged out by a collision with another asteroid was what looked like a metal object. It was smooth and curved, and there appeared to be writing on it.

  “Do you see it, Señor Cabrillo?”

  Cabrillo was silent for a moment. “That’s impossible.”

  “No, Señor, it is possible. It’s what you came here to find material for. A super-dense ship’s hull. It’s been collecting space debris for centuries. It’s Minerva’s ship.”

  Cabrillo was backing away from him, shaking his head as he stared with wide eyes. “That cannot be real.”

  “It is, Señor. My First Mate led an assay team here and found it. When they touched the hull they triggered an automatic system that opened the airlock. That freed the spirits of the crew.” Alberto turned and faced Cabrillo. “There were over a hundred of them. They possessed my crew, fighting to take over their bodies, three and sometimes four at a time seeking to displace the souls of my people. All except Minerva.” Alberto smiled softly now, as if remembering a lost love.

  “She came to me alone. She was gentle with me. She was a lover, not a conqueror. She joined with me, and is still with me. The crew went mad because of the multiple personalities in each of them. Minerva kept me sane. She helped me kill them all, freeing all of their souls to move on. Now it’s time for you to go, Señor Cabrillo. The shuttle is set to auto-return to the ship.”

  “But what of you? You’ll die out here,” Cabrillo all but shouted over the suit radio.

  “The ship is waiting for me. For us. You should go now. You don’t have long.” Alberto started walking down into the scar, and it took a moment for Cabrillo to realize what was going on.

  The suit radio came to life again, but it wasn’t Alberto this time. “Captain, this is Gomez. What is happening? We’ve been listening in, and now we’re detecting a massive buildup of power on the asteroid.”

  “Señor Gomez, take my ship home. Wait for Cabrillo, but you need to leave as soon as he’s aboard,” Alberto said as he continued to walk into the gap.

  *

  Cabrillo hurried back to the waiting shuttle, and felt the thrusters engage as soon as the outer airlock door was closed. He hurried to cycle the lock and moved to the passenger seat to look out the viewport.

  Alberto had reached the bare metal of the alien hull and was engulfed in blue light. He turned as the shuttle lifted off and raised one hand in farewell, then a door opened and he went into the hull. The asteroid stopped spinning abruptly just a few moments later, sending accumulated space debris sliding off into the void. Cabrillo watched as the surface of the asteroid seemed to liquefy, then a great cloud of debris was ejected in all directions. Rocks and boulders, sand and dust, the accumulated asteroidal remnants that had been captured by the ship’s gravity over who knew how long sped away from the ship as its systems came on line once again.

  The shuttle returned to the Guadalajara on its own, and Cabrillo hurried to the bridge as soon as he could. “What’s happening?” he demanded.

  “Take a look for yourself, Señor. That ship is pow
ering up.” Gomez was using the ship’s optics to project a picture of the alien spacecraft on the main view screen. The ship was of a design that no human mind had ever conceived. There were no sharp angles. Few straight lines. And somehow it still looked—right. It was currently shrouded in a blue nimbus of energy, and the glow at one end was intensifying. Then the ship streaked away, accelerating at a rate that no human could survive.

  “All hands prepare for acceleration,” Señor Gomez announced. “Señor Cabrillo, take a seat and strap in. We need to get back to New Hispaniola as fast as we can.” Turning, he caught Isabella’s eye. “Did you get all of that on disc?”

  “Audio and visual,” she confirmed. “Multiple backups as well as the original digital signals in the computer.”

  “Well done. Course set, engage when ready.” The Guadalajara accelerated away from the asteroid belt on a least time course for the planet.

  *

  The ship was inert when Alberto entered its control center. The last living crewmember had shut it down just minutes before she died. Now the newest crewmember pushed the proper sequence of controls to send the ship on into the eternal night of intergalactic space. Alberto had one instant to realize what was happening before the acceleration killed him, freeing his soul yet trapping it within the hull. He floated free of his body and found the spirit he called Minerva beckoning to him, welcoming him into her eternal embrace.

  “Minerva” © 2006

  The CSS Pristine Virgin stories were just for fun. I get tired of serious, life-or-death drama all the time. First contact doesn’t have to mean first fight.

  Seeker

  LIEUTENANT COMMANDER ERIC (THE RED) CARLSON sat at the command station on the bridge of the CSS Pristine Virgin, SSH 1303, contemplating his fate. The Virgin was not so pristine any more, not since they had been denied dry-docking at Hampton’s Planet the last pass. After sixteen months even the cleanest of crews could leave a ship looking shabby. And this, (sigh), wasn’t the cleanest of crews. Like the submarines of ancient Earth, deep space scout vessels such as the Virgin tended to be crewed by a special breed of sailor. Special, but not clean.

  “Officer of the Deck, long range sensors are picking up something, Sir. Considerable delta-V,” the sensor operator reported, boredom clear in his voice.

  “Ship?”

  “Unable to determine at this distance, Sir. We may be able to pick up something more definite in three or four hours.”

  Carlson sighed. “Very well, keep me informed. Does anyone know what’s for … what meal is this anyway?”

  “Lunch,” the starboard pilot answered. “Roast beast in vinegar. I think that they call it sauerbraten.”

  The port pilot laughed. “I’ve had sauerbraten, and that ain’t it. I wish the culture tanks could produce something else for a change.” He held up his hand to forestall any comment from the officer about healthy food. “I know, I know. ‘Better than real.’ But real what?”

  Carlson let it pass. If the worst thing he heard today was bitching about the food, he’d count himself fortunate. “Weapons, run a diagnostic. Keep it low power. If that’s a friendly, we don’t want to alarm him.”

  The gunner’s mate, an anachronism in an era of gamma-ray lasers and hyperdrive nuclear torpedoes, straightened marginally in his seat. Switches flicked under his knowledgeable fingers as he watched his display. Then he snapped to an upright posture. “Sensors, check target. I’m showing an eleven AUH delta-V, course set to intercept.”

  The sound of chairs creaking and keyboards being rapidly tapped all but echoed in the control room. The sensor operator’s voice, bored just moments before, was excited now. “Sir, the target has changed course. Sensors show an eleven Astronomical Unit per hour closing speed.” The operator swiveled his chair to face the officer. “Sir, that’s greater than the speed of light.”

  “I am aware of that, Livingston,” Carlson replied, quickly moving to look over Livingston’s shoulder. The numbers were right there, in defiance of Einstein’s Theories. Reaching behind his head, he pressed a button for the shipwide announcing system. “Captain to the bridge, XO to the bridge.” Eric stepped back and muttered, “Let them figure this out. It’s above my paygrade.”

  Captain Andrew Corban and Commander David Steinman arrived within moments. “Let’s have it, Mr. Carlson,” the captain said, moving to look past the Officer of the Deck.

  “Sir, we have an unknown contact moving toward us. Delta-V is, well, you can see for yourself, Sir. We indicate an eleven AU per hour closing rate.”

  “That’s impossible,” Steinman snapped, glaring at everyone in range. “Check calibration on the sensors.”

  “Done, Sir. Weapons array verifies the solution. We have someone out there who’s never heard of Albert Einstein,” the gunner’s mate answered with just a hint of humor.

  “Well, damn-it-all anyway. Battle stations,” the captain said softly, and klaxons began shrilling through the ship. “Sensors, range to target.”

  “Range is still rough, Sir, but estimates are twenty-three AU. Intercept at present velocities…”

  “…Two hours,” the captain interrupted. Reaching above his head, he pressed the button for the shipwide address system. “People, we have an unknown contact closing with us at greater than C in normal space. By definition, that makes it an alien. All weapons are to be slaved to the bridge. We will not fire unless there is no other way to save ourselves. If there’s someone out here who can prove Einstein wrong, I want to meet ‘em.”

  The next two hours were nerve wracking for the crew of the Virgin. Then the intruder began to slow. “Sir, target is slowing, speed dropping almost as fast as we can detect it. We also have a course change indicated. Target is turning away to the ecliptic north, angle on the bow approximately twenty degrees.”

  “Noted,” the captain and XO said almost simultaneously. “Engineering, slow us down. All hands, I want this ship ready to jump out of here if there’s trouble. All systems on hot standby.”

  A chorus of, “Yes, Sirs,” echoed in the control room and from the speakers that had taken the captain’s command to the rest of the ship. With the slower speed of the target, the captain felt confident enough to send his men to eat. Men ate quickly and quietly, and returned to their stations to await the coming encounter. The two hours had stretched to seven before the contact came within range of the ship’s most sensitive instruments.

  The sensor officer, Lieutenant DeBaren, was standing over his men, watching everything that happened. “She’s big, Sir. Easily eight hundred meters. Girth is an average of sixty meters, plus and minus ten. Shape seems to be almost random. She bulges and squeezes in some really interesting places.”

  “Not meant for planetfall,” the captain said softly.

  The XO nodded his agreement. “I’d love to see their engines. How much power do you think it takes to push a ship that big at high velocities?”

  “Who cares about that?” DeBaren said excitedly. “I want to know how he managed C-plus in normal space. Even allowing for our apparent velocity, he was still greater than C. And, allowing for that, we shouldn’t have been able to detect him. Our normal space sensors are limited by the speed of light.”

  “He’s maneuvering, Sir. Coming along side, matching course and velocity,” the senior sensor operator said in a soft, calm voice.

  “Communications, are you receiving anything?” the captain asked, not bothering to look away from the sensor plot.

  “No, Sir. We have everything wide open, but no one’s broadcasting,” the answer came softly, with a hint of disappointment.

  The captain pursed his lips for a moment, then nodded to himself. “I am making an assumption here, people. OOD, begin flashing our running lights at two second intervals. He’s illuminated, so we can assume that he sees at least part of the same spectrum that we see.”

  The response was immediate. The intruder began blinking its lights at the same rate. “That’s enough Mr. Carlson. Mathematical progression
now. One, two, four, eight.” The intruder matched the sequence immediately. The captain once again nodded. “Communications, broad band normal space broadcast. I want clicks, same numerical sequence.”

  “Aye, Sir.” The communications tech complied, making clicks by the simple expedient of tapping the side of his microphone with a stylus. The response was quickly received.

  “Oh, now you’re being silly,” a soft, melodious voice said from the speakers. “Please identify yourselves.” Every eye in the control room widened as the voice, slightly feminine and in impeccable English, continued. “I have been monitoring your internal communications. Are you from the species that calls itself ‘human’?”

  The captain swallowed several times before answering. “We are. I am Captain Andrew Corban, commanding officer of the CSS Pristine Virgin, SSH 1303. We are a deep space scout vessel from the Confederated Star Systems, operating under the authority of the Research Directorate.”

  “I am Velvet Rabbit, if I correctly understand how my name translates into your language. I also am a scout, seeking other inhabitants of this arm of our galaxy. I have encountered your electromagnetic emanations for quite some time now, though I have never before encountered one of your ships.”

  “You have a very good command of our language, Velvet Rabbit. Are you willing to exchange information with us? You are quite a surprise to us.” The captain’s voice held just a hint of his awe that the intruder spoke English.

  “I should not be. There are many species in this galaxy.”

  “We had theorized that, but we’ve never encountered anyone before.”

  The voice laughed softly. “You have explored such a small portion of the arm. There are nine sentient species within six hundred light years of your Confederation. Six of them are space-going races, and three have some form of faster than light propulsion.”

  The captain looked sharply at his XO, and Steinman nodded, pointing at the red light that was flashing on the control room recorder. The captain nodded and returned to the conversation. “Velvet Rabbit, when we first detected you, you appeared to be traveling in excess of the speed of light. Our best theorists have declared that to be an impossibility.”