by Alan Black
The ensign on his right interrupted his thoughts by tapping him lightly on the shoulder. The man, probably older than Stone by a few years, stuck out his hand. “We didn’t get a chance to meet yet. I’m Zisk Tander, sir.”
“Nice to meet you, Ensign Tander. I’m —”
“Ensign Stone, yes, sir. I know. I’m really glad to meet you. Would you autograph my book?”
“Autograph your what?”
“My book, sir. Or rather your book.”
Stone looked baffled and shrugged. “I don’t —”
Tander tapped on his civilian personal assistant. Flicking through a few menus, he pulled up a novel. “See? That’s you, right?”
Stone stared at the cartoonish picture of himself. He was standing shirtless, oiled muscles rippling in the overhead lights, battling a seriously flawed representation of a mass of Hyrocanians using only a glowing sword. Beside him, cartoon versions of Jay and Peebee stood in their fighting stance. The cover shimmered as the cartoon version of him swung the sword, decapitating a Hyrocanian as the alien held a raygun in the hand sprouting from the middle of its chest. Jay and Peebee roared with anger, a noise he’d never heard either of them make and leaped forward to bite the heads off aliens, their huge fangs dripping bright red blood. The title marquee proudly displayed the book title as Metal Boxes.
Tander said, almost like an apology. “It’s not really written very well, kind of trashy entertainment, sir. And I’m sure it’s not really accurate, but golly, it’s exciting.” He tapped an app on the side of the book. A small square popped up. “Just sign across here, that would be great.” He pulled up another square and pointed at a scrawled signature. “Look. I already got the author’s signature when I bought his book. It’s a number one best seller. Everyone wants to read about how you beat the aliens. I’ve got the sequel, but I haven’t had time to read it yet.”
Stone didn’t know what to do. He reached across and signed his name with a finger. “Can I borrow the book?”
Tander grinned, “Really? I’d have thought you … yeah, sure.” He grabbed the book with a finger and pointed the finger at Stone’s p.a. “I have the book autographed and I’m going to keep it. When you’re done, just delete it and it’ll come back to me automatically.” His grin widened. “I’m not going to sell this, but I could get top credits at a comicon with the author’s signature and your’s, too.”
Stone was saved from responding when LCDR Gupta, the XO and first watch officer, jumped to his feet and called the room to order. “Rusty Hinges, gentlemen.”
Leaping to his feet and stiffening to attention was more muscle memory than conscious thought. Stone barely registered that he’d moved when the captain, CDR Thomas Butcher marched into the room.
“Sit,” Captain Butcher ordered. The room was silent as Butcher glared at the people around him. “Enough of the pleasantries.”
He flashed a dozen reports open from his dataport, scattering them about the air in front of him and the gathered crowd of officers. He waved his hand in a wide sweeping motion, swishing the reports away before even the closest officer could read more than a word or two.
“I have stacks of reports from dozens of departments stating Rusty Hinges is ready for duty. I believed my officers and reported it to the navy. The navy believed me and gave us orders. Now I find that more than one of these reports was — shall we say, artfully enhanced? I will give kudos to engineering. You’ve got that wreck of engines and power sources in shape, they’ll get us where we’re going. Whether we’ll ever get home again under our own power is anybody’s guess.
“Life support is improving, at least the air smells fresher, but I’ve been told that is more due to additional vent runners cleaning air ducts and due to Ensign Stone bringing more piglets aboard and having them clean up hydroponics than it is due to the repair of malfunctioning air exchangers.”
Stone kept his face forward, but tried to look out the corner of his eyes at the officers whose departments were being mentioned. The fragrance in the room had changed from spearmint to a light citrus odor. More than one officer was worried about their performance. He could smell the officer’s loyalty to the navy and specifically to Butcher, but they were worried for themselves and their careers.
For once, Stone was glad he was far enough down the food chain that when Butcher chewed ass, his would be safe. Still, he’d been mentioned by name. It didn’t matter that he’d been complimented for something that wasn’t his doing, being mentioned at all in this type of meeting was never a good thing.
Butcher jabbed at angry finger at LT Vera. “Weapons is the only department that I’m getting good reports on. By good, I don’t mean that everything is working. We’re only at fifty percent weapons capacity. By good, I mean straightforward and honest reports, not fluff. Lieutenant Vera is consistently honest about her failures to get her department up to one hundred percent.”
He held up three fingers. “That is it, gentlemen. We have three days before we jump out of hyperspace and into…what? Anybody know? Because I sure don’t. Communications has the IFF functioning to spoof any Hyrocanian in the system and our civilian translators have put together enough fake message responses that we shouldn’t be blown up just for showing up. If we get into a shooting match, we’re dead meat.”
Vera jumped to her feet. “Sir, weapons will be ready. I swear it.”
Butcher glared at her until she sat down again. “No, you won’t, Lieutenant. I’ve had some of the gun emplacements inspected and you won’t get them ready in three days or three years.”
Stone could see some of MCPO Thomas’s hand in those inspections. No one had seen the captain inspecting anything, but the master chief seemed to be visible whenever he turned around. He’d been so used to Thomas watching over his shoulder he’d become immune to his presence.
Butcher paced back and forth in front of the officers. Occasionally he grabbed a report from his dataport and threw it an officer. Finally, he signed. “Okay. That ends the angry captain portion of this meeting. We’ve had three weeks in hyperspace and we’ve accomplished a great deal in the time we’ve had. The navy would have accomplished much more if we’d been allowed to take Rusty Hinges to a real spaceport repair depot. But the powers that be wanted to keep our retrofit as quiet as possible so the enemy wouldn’t get word of a Q-Ship in their midst.”
He pointed at Stone. Without thinking, Stone jumped to attention. Butcher said, “There are very few military personnel who’ve had more direct contact with the Hyrocanians and survived than our own Ensign Stone. Therefore, as much as he’s been helpful to Vera in weapons, I want him with us on the bridge for our jump into Hyrocanian space. Ensign Stone?”
“Sir. If it comes to shooting, Petty Officer Juarez on my team can pull a trigger just as good as I can. I’ll be on the bridge if that’s where you think I’ll be most helpful.”
Butcher grunted, “I don’t know where anyone will be most helpful. I’ve asked Whizzer to join us on the bridge. The man is a goofball, but his team has put together our Hyrocanian translators. Dr. Emmons will also be joining us. She’s a good human behaviorist and she’s also the best Hyrocanian behaviorist we have at our disposal. You tell me now, Stone. You’ve outranked me for the past few years. You’ve held an admiral’s position on a ship in combat. Can you step back from that and act as an advisor to me?”
“Yes, sir.” Stone was surprised at the question. He was relieved he wasn’t in charge anymore and wondered what kind of nut would be upset at a change of position. The change wasn’t a demotion. The change was simply an alteration of duties.
Butcher smiled. “That’s what I thought. Just to let you know, Kat Emmons told me the same thing about you.”
Stone was really surprised. He knew Doctor Emmons wrote reports on lots of people, but she specialized more in groups than individuals. He hadn’t realized she’d paid that much attention to him beyond a few casual reports.
Butcher pointed at Tander. “Ensign, you are reliev
ed of your duties in the kitchen. As soon as we break here, report to Lieutenant Vera as a replacement for Stone. Do you think the cooks can get by without you?”
Tander laughed, “Without me? Sir, they’ll probably get along better without me being underfoot. I couldn’t boil water without burning myself, so mostly I’ve just tried to stand back and let the enlisted people do what they’ve been trained for.”
In a stage whisper that carried across the room, XO Gupta said, “I can tell that boy has the makings of a good officer someday.”
In a reply whisper, LCDR Li said, “I didn’t learn that lesson until I was a butterbar LT.”
Butcher ignored his two officers and said, “I got the same report from Spacer Dollish, Ensign Tander. Not that you were in the way, but he said you’ve been a big help expediting things they can’t do for themselves.”
“Sir, I didn’t know you knew Dollish? The man is better than most of the petty officers in the kitchens.”
“I know that, Ensign. He’s why I can move you. I’d promote him above those petty officers if his last boss hadn’t already promoted him as far as he can go with his education and time in service.”
Stone was still standing. “Sir, we can’t do anything about his time in service, but Tim and I have been working on his education. He should get his standard high school diploma before we get back to Allie’s World.”
Butcher nodded, “That’ll be a good idea, if we survive this assignment.”
“Yes, sir. If we survive.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bolted to the floor around the new bridge conference table was a small cluster of overstuffed Hyrocanian chairs. Seating was first come, first seat choice. The conference area was an obvious addition, but in the hodgepodge of mismatched equipment and odd bits of strung wires, it didn’t look too much out of place. Stone grabbed a seat next to Whizzer ignoring the scientist as the man nibbled on Emmons’s earlobe while whispering softly to her. Whatever the man was saying caused Emmons to giggle, a sound not usually associated with a woman of her years.
On the other side of the table were MAJ Numos who sat directly across from Stone and LTSG Missimaya, the third watch commander. Numos, the only person on the bridge not exuding any strong fragrance of worry or caution, smiled a greeting at Stone. The man was positively calm, giving off his normal minty odor, indicating he was fully loyal and ready to do whatever was necessary and required.
Butcher sat in the standard three-chair bridge configuration overwatching the consoles. Gupta and Li flanked him. In place of the one pushbutton console the Hyrocanian’s favored, the navy had installed a dozen consoles for a myriad of functions. The captain rose from his chair and paced along the workstations, addressing each operator by name, getting a go-no go thumbs up or down.
Stone caught a strong whiff of vanilla as Butcher walked over to the conference table where he stopped pacing to rock back and forth on the balls of his feet. His nervous energy appeared to bleed out through his fingers as he flexed his hands. The vanilla fragrance was entirely too bland to represent determination and utter commitment, but Stone believed that was what Butcher was feeling. If there was any lemony scent of concern, the odor was lost in the citrus lime odors of fear and caution coming from others on the bridge.
Butcher said, “I appreciate each of you volunteering to be here. With the exception of Lieutenant Missimaya, we’ve all encountered Hyrocanians. No one knows how they think and since we don’t know what to expect when we jump out of hyperspace, I want you to speak up if you see something I might have missed. Do not stand on protocol, just say something, and say it fast or it might be too late. Understand?”
Everyone agreed except Whizzer who still had his nose buried in the nape of Emmons’s neck. Stone didn’t think it mattered since Whizzer had never learned not to speak up when a thought came into his head. Stone wasn’t jealous that the scientist got to have his girlfriend on the bridge with him, but he missed his girlfriend. Allie was in her combat suit, formed up with the marines, ready to do whatever she might be called on to do.
Stone stared at a small screen set up on the conference table. The gray flat view was more than familiar to anyone who’d ever jumped into hyperspace. Beyond the bubble generated by the ship’s jump engines, there wasn’t any light, heat, matter, or even time. All anyone ever saw was a gray nothing in hyperspace.
Stone had spent his childhood as a freighter’s kid, jumping through hyperspace from one station to the next. He’d seen more gray than he’d seen open planets. He’d made more jumps between planets than he’d made visits to those planets themselves. Some people claimed to be able to feel the jump, but he doubted it. There wasn’t any sensation. You were in hyperspace one moment and the next you weren’t.
Galactic time never registered any change while in hyperspace because time didn’t exist there. The only time recorded was by the ship’s internal sensors located inside the normal space bubble encapsulating the ship while in hyperspace. A ship jumped out of hyperspace at the same time they’d jumped in, no matter what the people inside the ship thought. Time continued to click by in the hyperspace bubble, but the bubble dispersed the moment the ship jumped out of hyperspace back into normal space, taking any passing moments with it.
No matter how much math and physics Stone studied and been tutored while earning his online degree, he still didn’t understand the time thing. Whizzer claimed to grasp the concept, but no one believed him, not even Doctor Emmons.
Something about the nothing had always fascinated Stone. The whole thought that he could look at a video of nothing wasn’t right. It wasn’t a blank picture picked up by the ship’s external sensors, but the cameras were taking a picture of nothing. No matter what most planet-bound people thought, space wasn’t empty. There was always something such as light from a distant star, dust, or gas. But, nothing existed here. Staring at the display, he missed Butcher retaking his seat.
The petty officer at the navigation console shouted, “Nav here, Captain. We are at —” The man held up five fingers. Then four. Then three.
Butcher said, “On your mark, nav.”
One finger. The man used that finger to hit the button on his console.
Stone expected to see a solar system blink into view. He’d seen more than his share of planets, space stations, raw suns, and in one case a space station so close they almost clipped a corner of it. The monitor flashed a bright green and then blanked back to the gray.
Butcher shouted. “Nav, report. Did we miss our jump point window?”
“No, sir. Nav reports a perfect exit exactly where the Hyrocanian computers said we had an exit.”
Butcher called to another console, “Engineering, did we have jump engine failure?”
“We’re in the green, Captain. Engines report that we made the transition.”
Stone remembered Whizzer telling him about the Hyrocanian’s performing a double jump.
Butcher said, “We are off the mark, folks. And getting farther from our destination by the second. Somebody tell me what happened?”
Stone said, “Captain, jump out of hyperspace now.”
Butcher asked, “What —?
Stone interrupted, “Right now, sir.”
Butcher shouted, “Navigation, exit hyperspace now. Engineering, bring us to a full stop relative to any spatial bodies.”
“Nav, Captain. Aye, aye, full stop relative to any — sir, there aren’t any bodies.”
“Engineering, sir. Full stop, aye, aye, sir.”
Butcher turned in his chair to face the conference table. “Ensign Stone, what are you thinking?”
“Sir, Whizzer said the Hyrocanian’s made a double jump, right?”
Whizzer, with a shocked look on his face, nodded. Stone wanted to laugh, the man’s shocked look was probably not at their navigation predicament, but at not having jumped into the middle of a Hyrocanian fleet and been killed immediately. Stone thought the man had planned and expected to die while nuzzling his girlf
riend’s neck.
Stone continued, “It’s just a theory. What if the Hyrocanian’s were jumping into the same system we just tried to jump to and they got thrown back just like we did? So, after a time, they jumped out at random, just like we did and that random jump out landed them at Allie’s World.”
Nav interrupted. “Wait. What do you mean, they were thrown back? We didn’t make a jump. Something went wrong and we never left hyperspace.”
Stone shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. I had my eyes glued to the display. We got a flash of color.”
Numos added, “I concur. I saw a blue flash.”
“Blue?” Stone asked. “Huh. I thought the color was green, but then it happened really fast. At first, I didn’t think I saw anything. Imagined it, you know? If I’d blinked, I’d have missed it.”
Missimaya shrugged, “I was watching the Nav console and didn’t see anything.”
Butcher said, “Give us a playback. All screens.”
Every monitor on the bridge showed a gray screen, replaced by a flash of color and a quick return to gray. Shouts of color volleyed around the room. Everyone saw a different color from yellow to deep purple.
Butcher said, “Play it again. Minimum speed. Frame by frame, if you please.”
They watched as the monitors showed gray, then at a pace almost too fast to see, they caught a picture of a solar system with a small planet in the background surrounded by four rocky moons. A dot in the middle of their screen exploded in a flash of light. The light expanded until it covered the whole screen and then returned to gray.
Someone on the bridge cursed. Stone wanted to join in. They’d been hit by a mine that instead of killing them outright, thankfully pushed them back into hyperspace. UEN mines, and by extension Hyrocanian mines, were either shot at an enemy ship like a bomb or tethered in space near a navigation point. This mine was tethered near enough to the jump point it repulsed the Rusty Hinges, shoving it away from the system.
