Trinity smiled. “My lips are sealed, Sergeant Ron.”
The cranky old captain glared at Janet.
The special operations officer raised her hands and grinned. “Hey, she won’t hear it from me.”
Sergeant Ron winked. “Well, see that she doesn’t. I’ve got a rep to protect.”
Then they all burst out laughing, even Sergeant Ron.
Chapter 7 – Maintenance
_______________________
After two weeks on the Defiant, Anna was becoming much more familiar with the operation and maintenance of starships. Both Connor and she spent their days and a large part of their nights helping the four-armed, human-sized lizard called Charlie take care of the recon ship. The ship’s captain, Sergeant Ron had informed them right off the bat that he didn’t take kindly to slackers on his ship. He expected them to work for their keep.
Anna didn’t mind work. She never had. The cantankerous old ship’s captain had put Charlie in charge of Connor and her. Once Charlie realized she enjoyed tinkering with equipment, he’d taken a shine to her. He never seemed to grow impatient with having to teach her all of the ins and outs of maintaining smaller starships like the Defiant and the Donovan. She’d learned a lot in a short amount of time.
With Charlie as her shipboard supervisor, the time on the Defiant had been anything but boring. Today was no exception. Charlie led her down the steps to the Defiant’s first floor cargo bay. Like the Donovan, the Defiant was a horizontal-takeoff-and-landing, swept-wing design recon and survey ship, albeit the Defiant was a newer model and better maintained.
As they walked down the steps, Charlie pointed at ladders running horizontally from one side of the hull to the other. The mechanic made a series of hisses. A small box on the lizard’s belt dutifully translated them into intergalactic standard. “Recon and survey starships need to be able to take off and land vertically when required. Stairs won’t work in vertical mode. You use ladders then. Make sure you always strap equipment back down and keep cabinets closed just in case we have to land vertically. Engines more efficient when landing horizontally, but sometimes no room. Must come straight down.”
After Anna nodded, the old lizard continued down the stairs. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he moved toward the glass-enclosed engine room. He pointed at a ball of energy floating in red gas on the other side of the clear barrier. “Engine goes through all three decks, but only accessible from decks one and two.”
“The Donovan only has access to its engine on deck two,” Anna said. “I like the layout of the Defiant a lot better.”
Charlie opened his mouth slightly to reveal two rows of needlelike teeth.
Anna recognized the terrifying display of teeth as the Sterilian’s version of a smile.
Seeming to take her words as a compliment, the old mechanic nodded. “Yes. Defiant forty years old, but still ten years newer than Donovan. They no make our model anymore. Still, she a good design. Sergeant Ron and I make many modifications over the years. Good ship.”
All Anna could do was nod in agreement. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out the old lizard was sensitive when it came to his ship.
“Enough chit-chat,” said Charlie. “You follow me. I show something you may need when I gone.”
Anna knew the ship’s mechanic wasn’t asking her to physically follow him. The four-armed lizard had a Power reserve similar to a wizard scout. Although no scout himself, he was adept at using his Power to troubleshoot problems with the recon ship’s equipment. During Connor and her first day on the Defiant, Charlie had told her that she also had a Power reserve. It was a small reserve according to him, but he’d assured her that she had more than enough to be a good ship’s mechanic. Anna had a feeling that was the reason she’d been able to work on repairing the lifeboat after her parents’ accident. From the way Charlie explained it, her Power allowed her to intuitively sense what needed to be done.
Anna sensed a line of Power reach out from Charlie and enter the engine room. She formed a line of her own the way he’d taught her and entwined it with his. When a slight backflow of energy shocked her, she pulled her Power back.
“No,” came a hiss from Charlie as if from far in the distance. “You tighten your line too much around mine. Must be gentle. Try again.”
Dutifully, Anna pulled more Power from her reserve and wrapped it around Charlie’s line, trying her best to be gentle. This time when some of the mechanic’s excess energy tried coming back up her line, she deflected it away.
“Good,” came Charlie’s hiss. “Now follow.”
Following the Sterilian’s line of Power, Anna allowed her mind to be pulled into the engine room. She sensed complex lines of energy dancing around each other as they formed intricate patterns. One line of Power in particular felt wrong.
Charlie must have sensed her thoughts. “Ah, you sense the flow. Good. Impurities build up in the gas. Could reduce energy output. We need to bleed off contaminated gas and replace with new. We do that later. Come.”
Charlie’s line of Power exited the engine room, pulling Anna’s line with it. She didn’t resist. For the next hour, the old mechanic led her around the Defiant probing every major piece of equipment on the ship. By the time their minds returned to the first floor cargo bay, Anna was exhausted. Eyeing a bench near one of the cargo bay’s work tables, she made her way toward it. She stumbled halfway there, nearly falling down in the process. Charlie grabbed her arm with one of his four hands and helped her sit done.
After she was seated, the mechanic bared his double row of serrated teeth. “Using Power takes a lot out of you when you first start. You get used to it. I feel weak sometimes too.”
Glancing at the bulging muscles on the Sterilian’s four arms, Anna doubted the mechanic’s words, but she nodded appreciatively nonetheless. One thing she’d learned about the old lizard during the time she’d been around him was that when he spoke you’d best be listening because he rarely repeated himself.
“I doubt I’ll ever get used to using Power,” Anna said. She waved a hand in the direction of the ceiling. “We checked a lot of things. I didn’t sense much that needs fixing. Did I miss something important?”
The mechanic smiled again, showing even more of his teeth. “No. You sense good. Sergeant Ron and I keep ship in top shape. He good mechanic too.” Charlie hissed. Laughter came out of the translator on his belt. “Not as good as me, but he good.”
“Well, I hope I’m half as good as you when I’m your age,” Anna said. She smiled. “I like working on things. It relaxes me.”
Charlie nodded. “Relax me too.” Dropping his smile, Charlie said, “Repairs on Donovan done enough that Connor and you can move back there today. Sergeant Ron says we have to go back to Academy. I think soon. You help Donovan’s crew take care of their ship when we gone.”
The thought of being responsible for the wellbeing of the beat-up survey ship was a little overwhelming. “Me? Hey, I like fixing things, but I’m still learning.”
Charlie showed his double row of teeth again. “I still learn too. Always learn.” He dropped his smile and grabbed a large box of tools off the workbench with his lower right hand. “No more rest. We work now. Fix what we found.”
Refreshed from her short rest, Anna picked up a smaller box containing diagnostic equipment. One thing she’d learned during her two weeks on the Defiant was that Charlie was right when he said the recon ship’s ornery captain liked to keep his vessel in topnotch shape. The old fart didn’t take well to slackers when there were things to be done.
“I’m ready when you are,” Anna said.
Charlie nodded and smiled again. “Yes. I think you are.”
* * *
As the old mechanic had predicted, Connor and Anna moved back to the Donovan later that afternoon. It was the first time they’d been back on the old survey ship in several days. A score of orange-suited technicians of various races were swarming around the little starship welding damaged section
s of the Donovan’s outer hull. A large crane was in the process of lowering a turret with two long barrels onto an opening at the top of the starship. The crane operator appeared to be having trouble getting the meter-long metal extensions under the turret lined up with the correct slots on the top of the survey ship.
Sergeant Ron stood near the crane operator shouting to be heard over the noise. “No, dang-blame-it. I told you to ease the thing down, not drop it down the hole like a side of pactar meat. That’s a fifty-gigawatt plasma cannon, not your mother’s laundry.”
The technician operating the crane was none other than Old Man Ryan. He looked over at Sergeant Ron and winked. “You must be talking about your mother. My mom, bless her departed soul, used a dry cleaning service. I also suppose it’s a good thing this here’s only a fifty-gigawatt cannon and not a hundred-gigawatt like you’ve got on the Defiant.” Ryan grinned. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you bigger ain’t necessarily better?”
The Defiant’s captain started turning red, but suddenly laughed. “You ain’t changed a bit, you old space dog. I swear if’n I’d known you were stranded on Talos, I’d have come fetched you myself. As it is, I thought you were long dead and buried.”
Ryan laughed. “I’ve felt that way a few times over the years.” He glanced over and made eye contact with Anna before winking. “Now I feel young again, and I’ve got this little lady to thank for it. I suppose it pays to have a purpose in life.”
Nodding her head at Ryan, Anna led the way up the ship’s rear ramp into the cargo bay. Connor and she were greeted by the sight of a dozen more of the spaceport’s workers replacing plasma lines in the ceiling and walls.
Leaning toward her, Connor whispered, “How’d Sergeant Ron get so many people to work on this old bucket of bolts? It must be costing a fortune.”
After spending the past couple of weeks around her fellow Talosian, Anna found that Connor didn’t irritate her nearly as much as he once did. If anything, she was getting used to having him around. She gave the redheaded boy a conspiratorial wink. “I heard Sergeant Ron telling Trinity it pays to have friends in high places. He told her that he has more friends than she can shake a phase rod at. I’ve got a feeling one of them is the chief mechanic here at the spaceport.”
“Well, whatever the reason, I’m glad,” replied Connor. He looked around to make sure none of the ship’s crew was nearby. “I’m not sure this old beat-up hulk would’ve made it back to Talos in one piece otherwise.”
Anna laughed. “Me either, but I’d advise not telling Ryan or any of the others that. They’re sensitive when it comes to their ship.”
Connor nodded in agreement. “Amen to that.”
Making their way past technicians and scattered boxes of equipment, Anna led the way up the stairs to the Donovan’s second floor. The first thing she spotted was the change to the engine room. Actually, she sensed it more than saw the changes. While the reddish gas that was visible through the clear wall of the engine room appeared the same, the Power emanating from within the gas-filled area was many times stronger than it had previously been.
“Ah, I see you’ve spotted the heart of our renovations,” said McAvits as he walked over to join Anna and Connor. “I’m only a navigator, so I don’t profess to know a lot about hyper-drives, but Ryan told me that Sergeant Ron somehow finagled a fully-charge energy hyper-drive core out of the spaceport’s maintenance depot.” He patted the engine room’s clear wall affectionately. “This old girl’s got a full twenty jumps in her now before needing another overhaul.” Wiping at his eye, the old man said, “Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Well, the Donovan looks a lot different than when we left Talos, that’s for sure,” said Connor. “We can make it back home easy now once we get some equipment to take back.” He pointed at the stairway leading down to the first floor. “How much gear can we load in the cargo bay? I assume we’ll have to make multiple trips.”
McAvits shrugged. “We ain’t got nearly enough to make a difference.”
“What?” Anna said. “I saw boxes of weapons and ammo that Sergeant Ron’s gathered in one of the storage ha—”
“Yeah, I know,” said McAvits, waving his hand dismissively. “He’s conned someone out of enough small arms to equip an infantry company. That’s the trouble. It’s all small arms. What you’re gonna need is some UHAAVs. Even if we had them, which we don’t, only small recon cats like a Warcat or a Tomcat would fit in our cargo bay. When the pirates return, they might have medium and heavy assault cats. They’ll make mincemeat out of any smaller cats we might have. Firing small arms at those larger cats is a waste of plasma energy.”
Anna felt her face grow warm. “Well, if you’re saying we should just give up, then you’ve got another th—”
Raising his wrinkled hands, McAvits smiled. “Whoa there, Mate. I didn’t say nothing about giving up. I’m just a navigator, so what do I know? All I’m saying is that we’re going to need some of the big stuff if we’re going to stand a chance against those pirates. That’s all I’m saying. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to oversee the control hookups for our new fifty-gigawatt plasma cannons.”
With a nod, the old man left and headed down the stairs. Once he was out of sight, Anna turned to Connor. Before she could say anything, the boy spoke up.
“So what do you think?” said Connor. “You gave Sergeant Ron all of the processed titanium. How are we supposed to get UHHAVs without a shipload of credits?”
Anna glanced at the engine again before looking back at Connor. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Let’s get our stuff in our rooms and then corner Trinity and Sergeant Ron. Talos is our planet, not theirs. I’m tired of sitting around doing nothing. One way or the other, we’re going to settle this before the day is out.”
Chapter 8 – Planning Session
_________________________
As it turned out, things didn’t get settled that day or the next. Everyone was so busy that Anna barely had time between her duties to speak a few words to Trinity or Sergeant Ron before either they or she were called away for one emergency or another. It wasn’t until two days after Connor and she’d moved back to the Donovan that Sergeant Ron called them to attend a planning session in the Defiant’s mess area. When Connor and she climbed the stairs to the recon ship’s third level, she saw Sergeant Ron, Trinity, Ryan, McAvits, and Lieutenant Commander Stevens already sitting at the dining table. A small metal disk was positioned in the center of the table. Above the disk flickered a hologram of a handsome, half-meter-tall man who appeared to be in his late twenties. He was dressed in a black and silver uniform and was sitting behind a bare wooden desk. Actually, the desk wasn’t entirely bare. A black helmet was positioned on the desk to the man’s left side.
Taking a closer look, Anna recognized the helmet as a twin of Trinity’s battle helmet. She looked at the hologram, soaking in every detail of the man. Something about his eyes bothered Anna.
He looks young physically, she thought, but his eyes look old. It’s almost like he’s experienced more things in his life than anyone his age has a right to have seen.
The hologram of the man turned. When he spied Anna, the man smiled. His eyes twinkled, taking on a youthful appearance. “Ah, these must be the kids you told me about. I have to give the two of you a lot of credit. You’ve both got a lot of guts if you don’t mind my saying.”
“We’re not kids,” said Connor. “Anna’s sixteen, and I’m almost seventeen.”
The man smiled, seemingly unoffended. “I stand corrected.” He gestured toward the empty bench seats at the dining table. Please. Have a seat.”
More than a little leery, Anna took a seat.
Connor waited until she was settled before sitting close to her. His body warmth made her suddenly uncomfortable.
Why’d he sit so close? she wondered. There’s plenty of empty space on the bench.
Before Anna could scoot over to make room, the man in the hologram nodded.
Anna glanced around the table before looking back at the man. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
Trinity turned pink and placed a hand over her mouth. Sergeant Ron and Lieutenant Commander Stevens both burst out laughing. So did the man in the hologram.
“Obviously not,” laughed the man. He glanced over at Sergeant Ron and winked. “Leave it to kids...err, I mean young adults to put us old timers in our place.”
Pointing at the hologram, Sergeant Ron smiled. “This here’s none other than the apparently not so legendary Wizard Scout Thomas R. Jacobs, commandant of the Intergalactic Wizard Scout Academy and my oldest friend. He’s here to help, so a little respect would probably be in order.”
“I’m respect—” Anna started.
“Never mind him,” said the commandant with another laugh. “As for help, there’s not much I can do personally. Sergeant Ron and Trinity have explained the situation to me, but Talos is in the neutral zone. My hands are tied; officially.”
“Officially?” Anna asked. “What do you mean by that? Either you can help, or you can’t.”
“What the commandant means,” said Trinity, “is that the neutral status of Talos prevents the Empire from doing anything to help. The politicians would have a field day if our military took a direct hand and tried to intervene. That is, unless they had a really good reason.”
The commandant’s image nodded. “That’s right. Fortunately, there’s other ways to help. Neither of you have any experience with UHAAVs. For that matter, none of the Donovan’s crew does either.”
Last Stand on Talos Seven Page 7
