“Right now?”
“Your clothes are stained,” she pointed out.
“I’ll start pinging this relay. Might take us a few minutes to get through to them,” Z said. “You’ve got time.”
“Why do I have the feeling you both just want to see me in this skin tight outfit?” I let out a laugh as I stood from the chair.
“Because we both want to see you wearing a skin tight outfit,” Z said with a smirk. “You are quite handsome and have lots of muscles. I’m just going to plug away at this relay. Don’t mind me,” Z said as she turned away from us.
“Don’t forget the naviga--”
“I’ve got that too, and I clean the shuttles, and I pilot the ship, and I’m probably going to do your laundry.” Z turned back to me. “So I’d like to see a good looking guy wearing his space suit. Okay?”
“Confirmed.” I laughed and then walked back to my room. I spared a glance at the floating map as I passed, but there was no evidence of the strange twin-star solar system, or the blood-like numbers dripping down the floating image. Had I imagined it? I doubted it, but then again, there was a possibility that I needed some kind of drug the scientists gave me to keep living, and my mind was starting to crumble.
I didn’t want to think about my future too much. I’d saved Eve, and we now had a ship. I was grateful for my freedom, and I would do as the woman asked.
I’d try to help as many people as I could.
I would atone for all the mistakes I’d made, and when my death did come, I’d know that I had paid all my debts. Not everyone got a second chance at claiming honor.
The suit was tight, but it seemed to settle after a few moments. There was actually some padding around the crotch area so I didn’t feel like I was practically naked. It was made of gray and black cloth, with the black parts making designs which lay across the leg and arm parts almost like tiger stripes. The coincidence was somewhat odd, but I recalled Eve insisting this was the ship that spoke to her.
I also noticed strange bands on the sides of each limb, and I ran my fingers over the material on my arms, shoulders, and hips. I found a series of buttons on the left sleeve, and I pressed one of them with my finger. The bands lit up with a blue light, and my room was instantly illuminated with a glow.
“That is useful,” I muttered as I pressed the button again. Then the lights started to flash an SOS signal, and then another press of the button turned them off.
I cycled through the other buttons. One made the suit heat up a good twenty degrees. Another button made it cool down so that I began to shiver. I couldn’t see where the powerpack for the suit was located, so I guessed it was using radiation technology.
Three of the buttons didn’t seem to do anything, but I guessed we’d figure them out once we finished reading the ship manual. I put my boots back on, buckled my gun belts around my hips, and then walked back into the bridge.
“You look handsome,” Eve said as her red eyes seemed to drink me in.
“Thank you,” I said. I’d never felt particularly shy around women, but Eve wasn’t a woman. She was a dark goddess that had saved my life.
“Wow.” Z’s mouth opened, and her cheeks turned red. Then the woman looked back to her terminal and continued to speak. “Yeah. I like it. Okay, since the captain is wearing his uniform. I’ll put mine on.” The blonde hacker moved to stand, but then there was another chime from the terminals surrounding us.
“That’s the response through the relay. Should be the Children of Rah people. I’ll put it on screen.” Z drummed her fingers across her keyboard and then I saw the screen flash.
“This is Jatal Coorhar. I’m replying to an ‘Adam’ on the starship Persephone. Do you copy?” The screen wasn’t showing a video.
“This is Adam. I’m captain of the Persephone. Heard you are expecting a delivery. Can you confirm?”
Z raised her hand. “I just muted. We are sending encrypted signals back and forth between solar system relay satellites. It will probably take a few minutes for him to reply.”
“Got it,” I said, and the hacker pressed another button on her screen to turn the mute off.
“Got your signal Persephone. Confirmed. We are expecting a delivery from two friends. Both mentioned your name independently. Please confirm.” The man’s accent was somewhat familiar, and I wondered if he or his family had come from the Jupiter region.
“What is with you guys and ‘confirmed’? You sound like robots or something,” Eve chuckled after she hit the mute key, and I shot her a frown before she pressed the button again.
“Yes. We’ll have two shipments for you. I’m glad you’ve filled in the blanks for me. I was unsure if you were getting both, or if there were two contacts. Can you give me the state of the blockade?” I asked.
We waited for a minute or so for the response to come back.
“They’ve got five circling. Three hundred meter carrier class escorted by two one hundred and forty destroyers and two one hundred and ten-meter frigate class. I’m sending you the plotted data of their orbit as well as the location of our drop point. Please confirm when your navigator has figured out an entry window.”
“It will take me awhile to figure out this data. I know I said earlier that it is just math, but I’ve never done it before,” Z said as she stared at her screen.
“I understand. I’m going to reply to him. Open communications again,” I ordered.
“Opened.”
“We will need to plot. Please provide more detail about the situation on the ground and in orbit,” I said.
“They have eight hundred infantry plus two hundred drones on the ground. We’ve got a few thousand, but only about fifty drones, not enough weapons, and no food. So your deliveries will help. We think their ships are just manned with a skeleton crew. You might be able to squeak by with a larger window than you think.”
I sat back and did the math in my head. It was possible Jatal was correct, and almost everyone on the five ships was on the ground. It seemed like it would be a foolish move, but what if Alloprize’s plan had been one of swift conquest, and they were betting that no other megacorp would come into the solar system and try to vulture?
“How long has the conflict lasted?” I asked.
“Six and a half Earth months. Morale is low. Your delivery will help. Alloprize is trying to punch above their weight. Those five starships are their entire fleet. If we can last another few months, they will have to re-supply. Then we can build some fortifications, get more food, and last another year. This is our home, and they’ve come here as slavers.”
I looked at Eve, and the vampire’s jaw was tense. Her eyes met mine, and I knew that she wanted to do more than deliver these people supplies. She wanted to crush their oppressors.
“We’ll send you another transmission when we have plotted our entrance. Standby,” I said, and then I motioned for Z to end the communication.
“We must help them more,” Eve whispered the words I expected.
“I know, but how?”
“Can we destroy some of their ships?” the beautiful woman asked.
“No. Maybe if we had a full crew and pilots, and they really did have only a skeleton crew on the boats, but engaging five of them now with just us is suicide.”
“I guessed that,” Eve nodded. “Perhaps there is something else we can do. Maybe against their ground forces.”
“It’s possible, but let’s work on the first part of our job first.” I turned to the skinny blonde woman. “How long will it take you to plot the course?” I asked.
“At the earliest? Four or five hours,” Z said.
“That long?”
“You are driving me crazy kitty-boy,” Z put her fingertips on the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes.
“Do your best. I believe you can figure it out in an hour, and while you are learning about the ship, I want the video surveillance footage of the bridge for the last few hours.”
“Why?” Eve asked.
/> “Let’s take a walk,” I answered her as I stood from the leather chair. Eve rose from her seat with unnatural grace, and I pointed back to my suite.
“I’ll be here. Working. Have fun.” Z raised one of her hands and made a wave with her fingers.
“I will return to help you. I don’t understand these controls as well as you, Z, but I feel Persephone’s joy that we are on board, and she will help us.”
Z looked up from her screen and blinked at the both of us a few times before she smiled. “Sometimes, for a few seconds, I forget I’m on a spaceship with a tiger-man and a vampire. The universe is way stranger than I ever thought, so if you say the ship is talking to you, I’ll believe you.”
“Thank you.” Eve smiled at the blonde woman, and then we both walked toward my room.
“I felt a presence on the bridge earlier,” I said once we had entered my room.
“Oh? Explain.”
“I felt as if someone was watching me. I walked to the bridge, and the map showed me a solar system on the far side of the Milky Way. There were three planets trapped between the gravity pull of two red supergiants. Then the map began to fill with red text of ones and zeros.”
“Hmmm,” the beautiful woman put a finger to her lips, and I tried to keep my eyes away. I recalled the kiss we had shared after I first woke up, and I resisted the urge to pull her into my arms again. Eve must have sensed my thoughts because she smiled wide and her eyes met mine.
“You excite me also, Adam.”
“Sure it isn’t just the suit?” I asked as I gestured to my outfit.
“Oh, I am sure some of it is the suit.” She laughed. “I am considering what you have told me. She has a soul. She is alive. Can you feel her around us? She is happy we are her crew. She is happy you are her captain.”
“You mean Persephone? How can she be alive? It’s a starship. A machine.”
“Are we not machines? Made of flesh and bone, but our brains are powered by electricity. I believe she was speaking to you.”
“If she was speaking to me, what was she trying to say?” I asked as a shiver of cold ran down my spine. The beast in my stomach didn’t understand my fear, and it wanted to take control so that it could kill.
“I am unsure. Perhaps if Z finds the video, I can watch it. I can only think of two options,” Eve said with a nod.
“Which are?”
“She wants you to go there. Or, she is warning you not to.”
Chapter 8
I had been right, and Z ended up figuring out a series of entry points into the atmosphere of Gliese 876 - B’s moon within an hour. The nearest window was twelve hours from now, and I sent a transmission to Cynthia to see if she could have the delivery, and our first payment of mixed, ready in nine hours. She said she liked my “go get ‘em attitude” and would have everything ready by then. She also gave me her contact’s relay information, and it matched the codes Wayne gave me earlier.
Wayne also replied that he would have the delivery ready by then, and I began to feel better about working with both of them. Sure, they were both probably going to betray me, but Eve would be able to learn from the guards Cynthia sent aboard Persephone, and we would deal with them knowing we had honor on our side. Then I could just do a flyby drop off with Wayne and not worry about getting the food from him, or the potential of a double cross.
When Z finished setting up the communications, she said that she was going to work on getting my surveillance footage, but the young woman was also yawning every few seconds, and she was having problems holding her head up, so I told her to grab some sleep. I wanted Eve to be able to see the map, but it could wait. The planet between the two red stars was a good ninety thousand light years away from us, and a day of work on other projects wasn’t going to change much in the grand scheme of travel. I didn’t know exactly how long it would take us to get to the other side of the galaxy, but it would probably be over two hundred years if we only used the hyperdrive.
Could the folding drive take us there? I didn’t really want to use it, since we didn’t really know exactly how it worked at the moment. Even though we all lived through the first experience, I didn’t know if that would be the case if we used it a second time.
Eve had decided to rest also, and I found myself exploring our new vessel alone for a few hours. It took me two passes through each of the hallways to get the feel of the design, but I was soon familiar with the sickbay, crew quarters, passenger quarters, galley, mechanic’s shop, recreation room, gymnasium, hold, and the brig. I finally found the engine rooms and spent some time examining the physical atmosphere thrusters, the ion space thrusters, hyperdrive engines, and warpdrive engines. I knew that the warpdrive wasn’t working, but my uneducated eyes couldn’t decipher what was wrong with it by just looking at the massive chunk of metal, intake, tubes, and computer screens. We definitely needed an engineer, and I was going to guess the man or woman would need to be extremely talented since the engines were all brand new.
I couldn’t find the entrance to the room where the folding drive was kept.
I circled the various engine rooms, looked at all the doors, and even searched the walls and ceilings for a latch that would have taken me to the room with the drive. I didn’t see one, and if Z hadn’t of used the thing to teleport us out of the Trappist - 1 system, I would have thought Persephone didn’t have one of the experimental drives.
I eventually gave up. Z, or our future engineer, would find the machine, and then I’d be able to take a look at it. I decided that I wanted to go inspect the damaged shuttlecraft, so I walked away from the engine rooms and into the bays.
The ship had two shuttles, three manned fighter craft, and half a dozen smaller drones that could be launched into space. The bay actually had room for probably twice the craft inside, but I imagined it would be expensive to buy any more, so we were probably going to be playing with only these toys for the rest of our journeys.
I walked over to the shuttle we had taken down to the moon and went to check its underbelly for the damage I’d done when I bounced it off the canyon floor. I couldn’t see any damage to the bottom of the metal there, nor could I see any scrapes on the paint from where we’d gone through the forest.
“Maybe they had moved it to the other spot,” I muttered to myself as I walked over to the other shuttle. This one didn’t have any marks or dents on the underside, and I returned to the original craft even more puzzled.
The ramp was down, so I walked inside and sat down in the pilot’s chair. Despite the scent of cleaning solution, I could still faintly smell the sweet, smoky smell of the leftover food Z spilled. This was the right shuttle. Why wasn’t the exterior damaged?
I walked out again and carefully examined the wings and underbelly. The paint and metal showed no sign of damage. It looked brand new, almost as if it had never been flown.
What in the hell was going on? Had Eve and Z found a way to fix the dents and repaint the dark gray surfaces? I turned around in the bay but found no evidence of any repairing equipment nearby.
A shiver ran down my spine, and I turned to look across the launch platform. It felt as if someone were watching me again, but there was no one else here but me.
“Persephone?” I felt like an idiot for whispering the ship’s name, but Eve’s words were leaking into my beliefs. I was a weretiger, Eve was a vampire. None of those things should be possible, but here we were. Was our ship alive? I would have never believed it possible, but perhaps Elaka Nota had put an artificial intelligence on board.
There was no answer to my question, and the feeling of someone watching me faded a few moments later.
I went back into the shuttle and grabbed the extra rifles that I’d taken from the corpses of the men who tried to bushwhack us. Then I went up to the bridge and got the bag with the rest of our guns. I took it all into the armory and spent the next few hours servicing the weapons, organizing them on the hangers, and trying to figure out how the armor pieces I found fit onto
the skin tight suit I wore.
The armor was made of strange metal plates painted to match the design of the suit that I wore. The metal was lightweight, somewhat flexible, and could be attached to the base suit with a series of harnesses and magnets. I discovered one of the buttons on the sleeve of the suit could actually activate the magnets, and the armored plates attached to me like a second skin, or more like a third skin since they were really attached the skin tight suit I wore.
“It looks wonderful on you,” Eve said from behind me.
“Thanks. I thought you were sleeping?” I turned around and felt the air leave my body with a woosh sound. The beautiful woman was wearing her own gray and black suit now. It hugged her body perfectly, and the sight made my heart skip a few beats. It wasn’t just the tightness of the uniform; I’d seen plenty of women wearing less clothing and not felt such desires. It was because Eve was now the only woman I wanted.
“I did sleep, and now I am rested. I’m glad you like the outfit. I feel as if they are gifts from Persephone.”
“Thank you, Persephone,” I said with a laugh.
“You have organized the armory.” She pointed at the hanging guns on the wall behind me.
“Yeah. There is much more room for weapons. There are fifty of these boxes with the armor plates in them,” I said as I pointed to room’s corner. “We can outfit eighty people with full kits. Perhaps more.”
“I agree. There is more than enough space for them on Persephone. Imagine what we could do with such a force of like-minded men and women? We could help so many people.” Eve smiled at me, and the gesture made my heart slow its excited beating.
“We’ll start with these Children of Rah,” I said.
“Yes. I see the plan in your mind. I believe it will work well to protect us from a double cross.” Eve had walked into the armory and was sorting pieces of armor from the tower of boxes. There were spots to put them in the equipment lockers, but I hadn’t bothered to start the project.
Space Witch: A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure (Star Justice Book 2) Page 6
