Sleeper Ship

by Jim Rudnick

  In fact, as the XO realized, yes, that was the best way of handling their mission, but even a teensy side-trip off to see a comet would break the monotony of their buoy-to-buoy mission. And as he knew, it'd get the Marwick away from any real needed work for a day or two, which would also keep the captain away from any worries. “Our MIA Captain,” he said to himself, and then nodding to the helm, he smiled.

  "Which is the right of the Comm and today that's me, so off comet chasing we go. We can return to the buoy after we just double-check on the comet and make sure it's not going to break up and cause any navigational issues for the next few hundred years. Helm, light the TachyonDrive candle and get us there stat!"

  He turned to the front display screen, logged in the buoy repair lists for new equipment from their stores, and busied himself as the ship spun to port, and they all felt the jump to FTL.

  "ETA, Helm," the XO said and waited.

  "Sixteen hours, give or take, Sir," Lieutenant Rizzo replied, "we may need to angle in depending on tail and streamers, Sir."

  The XO nodded again and a single "Aye" ended the conversation.

  On his console, the XO guardedly asked his Ansible officer if the captain was "still" in the gym and received a simple "Aye" in response.

  "Framingham, you have the Comm," the XO said as he rose and went to the lift.

  He knew what he might find. And he knew that finding the captain was a task that he wanted to do alone.

  The lift let him off on Deck Twenty-three, and he went counter-clockwise to the door of the gym. It wouldn't open on AI as the automatic functionality had been turned off. It could only be turned off by a senior officer, like the captain.

  He placed his thumb in the ID grid and then said "XOCode-Alpha 13 Over-ride," and the door slid open. As he walked through the aisle between the treadmills and stair-masters, he searched behind them all, but found no one. Ahead was the immerse poolroom and sauna, but he left that as he turned to starboard and went into the weight room. Behind the large isometric machine in the center of the room, the captain lay half-propped up by a stack of free weights.

  Templeton moved to the right-hand side of Tanner and knelt just outside the pool of vomit that lay along his captain’s hip. Tanner's eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, his face flushed, and sweat lay on his brow. Passed out, he figured and shook his captain’s arm gently at first and then harder.

  "Sir ... Sir ... Tanner ... it's me, Craig ... Sir," he spoke loudly, trying to awaken the inert body that lay before him.

  "S'not important," the captain barked out as his body jackknifed, and his legs first went up then down with a bang.

  "NOT important, I tell you, Admiral ..." he said, and his eyes widened as he looked at his XO. He shook his head, his eyes closed in pain immediately, and he began to shake.

  The XO held him by one shoulder and waited as the shakes escalated and then slowly subsided. Tanner rolled to his side facing away from the XO and slowly lifted his head to peer back over his shoulder at his number two in command.

  "Umm ... Craig ... um ..." he said, his voice raspy and low, "status?"

  The XO knew that no matter what he said, the captain would nod and then ask for a hand to get to his quarters. This is what had happened twice before on this Boundary buoy mission over the past few months.

  He gathered up the empty Scotch bottle first, tossed it into the trash bin against the near wall, and returned to stand over Tanner. Ninth one this mission, he counted back mentally and wondered how many the captain had been able to throw away on his own. And how many the Stewards had cleaned up too.

  Reaching down, he hefted under the captain’s armpits and manhandled him up on his rear end. Then slowly by gripping the weight bench, he moved the captain upright. Throwing an arm under his shoulders, he was able to help Tanner make it to the door of the gym, out into the passage toward the lift, and up to Deck Twenty-nine where the captain's quarters were located.

  He didn't bother really filling him in on the comet nor the side-trip to take a look at it either. He knew that once the captain had slept it off, he'd be back on the bridge, and that'd be soon enough—after all, it was just a comet ...

  #

  Tanner stood in the head and realized his left hand was slipping down the side of the vanity counter and he'd fall soon ... and then he did. Hitting the edge of his jaw on the rim of the counter as he fell, he realized this might be a way not to hurt his head that badly. He was wrong yet again. He lay there dazed for a full five minutes wondering if he just stayed down if this would all go away, and he knew somehow that it would not. Groaning, he forced himself to one hip and then used the john to grab onto and slowly rise up to first kneeling then sluggishly standing up again.

  He knew not to shake his head, but wanted to. He knew not to think of how he'd even gotten to his quarters, as the gym was the last place he remembered being in—even if that wasn't more of a general feeling rather than a memory he could trust.

  He knew now that the shower he had just taken wasn't going to be enough. He slowly turned back to the stall and twisted the cold water on again ... shaking already. He carefully stepped over the sill and braced himself as the cold, cold water pounded down on his back and legs, and he howled as the freezing chill set in and shook, and shook, and shook.

  After less than three minutes, he jammed the knob to off and stood shaking for minutes more. The sill was slippery as he'd learned just last week, and he still had the bruise on his thigh to prove it. He carefully stepped over it to the bare tile and skidded only a little as he eased his way back to stare at his haggard face in the mirror.

  As he moved his head slowly left to right, he almost couldn't see the red mark on his jaw where he'd hit the counter. Shaving he knew he couldn't do; he barely was able to squeeze the toothpaste onto his brush and then recognized that he couldn't really do a great job of brushing either. Bending over the sink, he spit and rinsed his mouth a few times trying to remember more of yesterday. All he could remember was this was buoy number eight of twelve, they'd be done in about a month more of this punishment mission, and then it'd be back to normal Navy duty.

  He rubbed his face with a towel that didn't look too dirty and faced the task of getting dressed, which also sounded like a challenge. Hangovers were bad, but he refused to take a pill until after he was dressed—fully dressed for duty—so it was twenty more minutes until he swallowed two of the anti-hangover pills and slowly made his way to the bridge.

  "Captain on the bridge," broadcasted the Helm officer, Lieutenant Carmichael, loudly, and Tanner winced as he walked over to the coffee station and started to prep himself a hot double-double coffee. He paid attention to making it as cautiously as possible knowing some of the bridge crew would be watching, but he made no mistakes and slid into the captain's chair without spilling a drop.

  "Status, Helm," he said calmly, his voice slightly raspy but in command. He was their captain, and he would act just like that for one and all to see. He also noted that the XO was not on the bridge and wondered if his memory of seeing Craig last night was a real one. No way to know now, he surmised as he sipped the hot, sweet coffee ...

  "Sir, we're due to jump out of FTL to rendezvous with the comet in about a half-hour or so, and we're getting some sensor readings already that show it to be point six of a mile in length and moving ... still ... at approximately 30K MPS, Sir!" Carmichael said succinctly, adding on the data that he thought the captain would want.

  Tanner turned halfway around and looked at his science officer, Lieutenant Jessop, and raised his eyebrows.

  "Um ... confirmed, Sir, she's about half a mile long by about a third of a mile wide, and she's slow and steady. No collisions. Vector tracking says she'll leave the RIM aimed outward in about 230 or more years. Sir," he added at the end, "she does have some interesting sensor readings—for instance, she's got some traces of anti-matter in her tail, and the corona appears to be very, very ... well ... lumpy. Anything but streamlined, Sir ..." he fi
nished with a shrug and turned back to his science console.

  Tanner nodded and asked generally if anyone had any idea why a comet might be expelling out anti-matter seeing as it was composed of ice and rock. No one answered, and he instructed the Helm to give him full magnification on the forward viewing screen as soon as they quit FTL. Until then, he busied himself with that double-double and nursed his jaw where a red welt had decided to sting and darken beneath his unshaven jawline. He was looking at his console when the telltale jump out of FTL happened, and as he looked up at the view screen, the bridge klaxons began to wail.

  "Helm, status ... Ansible, what the hell is that?" he barked out at the crew and stared at the giant alien ship that filled the view screen.

  "Kill those klaxons," he barked out to the Helm, stabbed his own battle stations button on his console, and the sounds died away. The bridge was suddenly bathed in red light, and the crew aboard the Marwick scurried to their stations as the ship went on full alert. On the bridge, hands spidered across consoles to push button and toggle switches as the bridge crew hustled to identify the alien ship and determine their own security, having just found this threat. Tanner would not wait any longer.

  "Ansible, any word from them? Science, they got armaments—I don't see the usual arrays for cannons or lasers? Helm, distance and—whoa, who the hell is that?" he said half-rising out of the captain's chair!

  From the other side of the alien ship, the Novertag frigate the Drozir suddenly appeared only a few miles away from the Keshowse and on Inertial Drive, moved toward the Marwick.

  "Ansible ... that's a RIM confederacy ship; contact them and get a sense of what is their mission here ..." he barked at his Ansible officer, and Lieutenant Sutherland nodded as he spoke into his throat mic and seemed to be arguing with someone over on the Drozir.

  Lieutenant Carmichael at the Helm did some more maneuvering, put the Marwick just off the alien ship about equi-distant from the Drozir, held them there, and maintained that position. Tanner nodded to him and turned to Lieutenant Jessop again with a raised eyebrow.

  "Sir, from what our sensors tell me, there is no armament at all on that ship. She has no plasma cannon, lasers, or energy pulse weapons either. No mines or projectile launchers—nothing, Sir ... she is unarmed. And even more strange, Sir, is I can find no boarding ports, no access ways—no way in fact to even get 'in' the ship, Sir. She's closed off and isolated. Sir," he said, his voice quiet.

  He looked at the captain and held out his hands.

  "She's almost like a dead ship, Sir ..." he added.

  "Dead maybe, Sir, but not the Drozir," Lieutenant Carmichael said and turned back to face the captain.

  "Sir, according to them, this alien ship is being 'claimed' as 'salvage' by Novertag with the Drozir here to protect their rights to that salvage. The ship does appear to be under her own power, so I doubt the claim would be upheld by the RIM Council, but they say they own it. And we must push off. Sir. That's what they said, Sir. Push off ..."

  Tanner nodded.

  "How far are we from Novertag" he asked Lieutenant Jessop who stared at his Science console for less than a few seconds.

  "Sir, we're just a tad more than 1.1 light-years out from same, so we're not 'in' their space, Sir, so the claim of 'salvage' is bogus—to me at least, Sir. And, Sir, the RIM Navy database has no such ship whatsoever recorded ... these are truly aliens to us, Sir."

  Tanner nodded and then upped the ante.

  "Armament on the Drozir, Tactical" Tanner asked and the bridge grew quiet.

  Lieutenant Ashley, the current bridge Tactical officer studied his console and then again ran a quick sensor tracking on his science console and reported back quietly in a monotone.

  "Sir, standard Navy frigate at half our size, one pulse cannon forward and one aft, twin lasers amidships, but I see that one is ported off for what might look like repairs. So in balance, Sir, we out-gun them big time. Course ... Sir ... they are a RIM confederacy member, Sir ..." he added and waited.

  Under his fingers lay the controls that could demolish the Drozir, and that responsibility lay on his shoulders greatly. He focused his attention on the captain and waited, hands poised but frozen.

  The whole bridge was still.

  "Did they see that we just sensored them for weapons, Ansible?" Tanner asked dryly, gulping a big swig of the coffee.

  Lieutenant Carmichael busied himself with the communications console in front of him and then nodded back.

  "Yes Sir ... not only did they see us look at their functionality—they just finished scanning us for the same, and they know we out-gun them now for sure."

  "So you learn, bridge, what we just did was we just raised their bet. We went 'all in' and the next move is up to them ... salvage, my ass," Tanner said and moved off his chair down to make himself a new double-double, and he took his time. He nodded to the XO who suddenly flew into the bridge, took over the Tactical officer station from Lieutenant Ashley, and was being updated by the Helm at the same time.

  "Sorry, Sir, was down in Cargo Bay number A thirteen working with crew on the installation of new arrays for the Boundary buoy number eight and just was able to get up here. Sir," he added as his hands glided over his console.

  "Shields, Captain?" he inquired, and it was if the bridge held its breath.

  "No, XO ... we wait. We played our cards ... so we wait."

  Sitting again in his chair, Tanner was glad that the coffee was helping a bit. This was the kind of situation that any RIM Navy captain wanted to face totally sober not goosed up on anti-hangover pills after a night with a best friend.

  He sipped. He waited.

  They all waited looking at Carmichael who was studiously staring down at the Ansible console at his station. The console was dark for more than ten minutes ... and then a small red alarm notice began to flash.

  He stabbed it immediately and listened to the incoming message from the Drozir, and a hint of a smile came onto his young face. Nodding his head, he spoke using his throat mic a few times and then turned to the captain.

  "Sir, the Drozir reaffirms its claim of 'salvage' but would be willing to share information and data with us—and will send over streaming data too if we are willing to not take this to a confrontation here and instead refer their claim to the upcoming RIM Confederacy Council meeting. They are folding, Sir ..." he said and smiled outright.

  The XO pumped his fist in the air, and the rest of the bridge crew yahooed too.

  "Ansible, take the feed and put it up—and make sure we double-blind archive this too. I want to see what they've got there—and I want to ensure that the RIM is not letting in an intruder that has any kind of malice here," Tanner said and sipped again.

  Amazing, he thought, what a bad hangover can do for your day ... not to mention an invader from inward. He looked up at the screen sidebar to see what they'd be viewing. More than an hour of streamed vid he saw was labeled as both from the Drozir as well as the alien ship, and he noted that the Novertag navy still had no name for this ship or the aliens within.

  The view screen disappeared as the interior of the Drozir appeared, and sitting at a mess table was one of the usually over-uniformed Novertag political officers. He wore a whole breast-full of campaign ribbons and ranking insignias, which left no way to tell if the man even had a rank one could identify.

  Introducing himself as the ship's Political Officer Anatoly Vetochkin, he reiterated the claim that the Drozir, under orders from the Novertag Secretariat, their ruling body, had claimed salvage on the alien ship. The ship had been discovered within Novertagian space and the Drozir had been shepherding the aliens while they investigated how to enter a ship with no point of entry. And before they even attempted that, they wished to try to determine what the mission of the aliens was first—and whether or not such entry would be seen as the help they intended or as an attack.

  As he spoke, he often fingered his ribbons or his medals that sat on his showy uniform, as if to try to val
idate his standing, preening while he did so. He pointed directly at the viewers too to make a point, and his index finger jabbed at them often. He reminded the viewers that the Novertag Secretariat ruled the RIM here on the very edge of the Confederacy, and as the political officer on the scene, he was in charge. There could be no doubt about that he added more than once.

  And he finished with what could only be a somewhat embarrassed option that from what they had learned, this ship should be considered a cargo ship only, as their inspection— from the exterior, he admitted—showed only cargo, as the rest of the tape would prove out. Cargo, he said as he fingered his lapel, that now belonged to the Novertag Secretariat.

  The camera changed to what looked like an away team on a shuttle that appeared to be approaching the alien ship. They watched for more than thirty minutes as the shuttle went stem-to-stern looking for access—for a port or a landing bay or even an airlock. There was none. The alien ship was a sealed monster of a ship with no access that anyone on the Drozir shuttle could find, and the shuttle came to rest in proximity to the huge rectangular mid-section of the alien ship.

  They knew there was an astronaut EVA when the tape changed quality and the handheld camera suddenly showed the rows and rows of lit ports that lined that rectangular section. As the camera got closer, the astronaut controlling it touched down on the exterior surface of the ship, and as his magnetic boots acquired adhesion, the camera began to bounce slightly in response to the astronaut’s steps.

  Just ahead on the second row from the top of the long lines of ports, the Drozir astronaut squatted to point the camera within the alien ship for more information and expanded its view with a zoom.

  Ahead of the port, in bright interior lights lay rounded individual tanks of bright red color in long rows stretching both ahead and astern—hundreds and hundreds it looked like. And below in rows were more tanks and still more ... one could not see what was in them, but it appeared that there would be thousands.