by Jacen Aster
Vivian grunted. “You did a good job getting access to this terminal, Henry. You even removed it from the local net so the activity wouldn't be tracked. Bloody amazing really, given the translation issue.”
“What can I say, I was motivated.”
Saint Claire chuckled. “Indeed. Still, you got far enough in that it won't take long to seize control.”
Vivian smirked. “Not long? Try done. I'm in control.”
Kira gaped and Henry barely hid his own astonishment, causing Saint Claire to chuckle again. “Vivian is one of the best...security experts let’s say, in the galaxy. There is a reason I've gone to enormous lengths to retain her on a semi-permanent basis. Including offering her protection from some of her...past indiscretions.”
Kira looked like she’d bit a lemon, but Henry just shrugged. It wasn't common, but it was hardly a rare story either. He just quietly upgraded his mental estimate of Saint Claire's connections and moved onto the next issue. “So we have control. Now what?”
Vivian didn't answer, causing them all to look to her. She had gone noticeably pale and didn’t seem to be paying them any attention.
Saint Claire reached out and touched her elbow. In a worried voice he asked, “Viv, what's wrong? You're pale.”
Vivian turned to him and opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out. On her second attempt, she managed, “I've got the others free and headed this way.” She took a deep breath before continuing, “But the planet jumps in eight hours and I can't find the shuttles.”
“What!” The shocked question was chorused by Henry and Kira, Saint Claire merely making a distressed noise of his own alarm.
“Worse, it's curtailing its route due to our break in and going straight to its home system. The trip takes two years as a straight shot. The jump controls locked down the moment we escaped. They’re completely disconnected. I don't even have a location for the jump control center.”
They stared in dismay at her until Henry remembered something. “Wait!” Stepping forward, he tapped at the console next to Vivian. After a few moments of struggling with the system, he let out a relieved breath. “We might have an option yet, though a troublesome one.”
When they looked at him expectantly, he tapped a few more commands and a holo image of a large ship appeared. “This is currently in the main dock. It’s a passenger cruiser that belongs to the planet owners, I spotted it when I was looking through the public information. The automated systems have been maintaining it to the best of their ability, so we might just be able to get it flying in time. If we're lucky.”
Kira summed it up nicely with a deadpan question. “Oh God, we're all going to die in a flaming ball of fiery death because we can't read which button is the self-destruct, aren't we?”
“Probably!” Henry admitted cheerfully.
“Hell of a thing for the tombstone though,” Vivian added.
“Indeed. We should remember to send out a signal before we launch, just in case, so they know what to write.”
That was Saint Claire, of course. Kira was looking at all three of them, gaping like a fish out of water. Probably certain they were crazy.
Henry patted her reassuringly on the shoulder and moved towards the door with the others. “Must be your first expedition, huh? This is actually pretty normal for how they end.”
Kira's face was incredulous as she shook off Henry's hand and followed them out. “Seriously?”
Vivian happily answered for the veteran team members. “Oh no, not all of them. Just the good ones.”
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The four of them jogged past a dozen mechs, all shut down where they were standing, on the way to the dock. The service building had been closer to the main dock than the prison and thus they arrived several minutes before their comrades. Opening the dock, they stepped inside and took in what they had to work with.
Vivian let out a low whistle. “Shit, Henry, you really know how to pick 'em.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Not sure yet. I haven't properly weighed style versus likelihood of success yet.”
The comment, of course, was caused by their first sight of the ship. A sight which had brought them all up short. It was a beautiful ship, there was no denying that. All curved, flowing lines, large observation viewports, and a green and blue swirling paintjob that brought to mind ocean waves on a peaceful shore. No bulky armor or weapons blisters. Very elegant.
All three hundred meters of it.
Vivian's comment snapped Kira out of her shock. Her voice had an edge of harshness to it, almost panic. “Holy shit! Are you crazy? That's a bloody cruiser. How the hell are we supposed to get an alien cruiser off world in eight hours?”
There was a resounding crack and a grunt as Vivian slapped Kira hard enough to leave an imprint of her hand. Using her shock to get a jump on her, Vivian snarled, “Now look here girlie. You've done a damn fine job keeping it together so far. Henry says you pretty much took charge and ran the rescue op. Good, bloody fantastic even. But that does not give you the right to spit out crap like that. We will get it working, because we have to get it working, in order to get the people we're responsible for all home safe. Understand?”
Henry was gaping at her nearly as much as Kira, but privately agreed. Kira had done well, but she was still young and it showed. He nearly spoke up to moderate Vivian's words just a smidge when Kira responded.
“You're right. Sorry.” She still looked angry, but there was chagrin there as well. She knew she had been out of line.
Vivian eyed her for a moment before nodding. “Good. You've got promise, kid, and you didn't say it where the rest of the crew could hear so I'll let it go. Keep in mind, though, if you're going to keep up this line of work, that you can't ever doubt things are going to work out. If you do, they won't and everyone dies.”
There was only a moment of awkward pause before Saint Claire stepped in. “Yes, well, let’s get to it. Better we have an idea of what we need them to do by the time the crew gets here, and they'll be here in a couple minutes, at longest.”
Henry nodded and took charge. “Right. Vivian, Saint Claire, get inside. Find the bridge and see if you can boot up the computer. We need to know if it's working and how much of it we can actually read, soonest.” Turning to Kira, he continued, “Kira you're with me. We need to do a basic sight check on the outside of the ship. You go along the far side and I'll take this side. Look for any obvious damage or problems. Cracks in viewports, hull fractures, animal nests and debris blockages. That sort of thing. Also mark down any engine or thruster locations. There’s no guarantee we'll get a schematic for the ship or that we can read it if we do. When the others get here, I'll split them and send half to help you check your side.”
Everyone nodded and moved to their tasks without question. Henry was, after all, the clear expert for this sort of thing.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
It had taken several manufactured miracles, and possibly a bit of genuine divine intervention, but six and a half hours later, they had the Bellevere, newly christened such as no one had been able to pronounce her original name, space worthy. Probably. Everand and Jackie Lansing, the pilot of Shuttle Two, along with Vivian, Saint Claire and Robel, were manning the bridge. Henry, his small engineering team, and half the security detail, led by Kira, were running engineering.
Henry, glancing at the countdown timer on his portable, sighed and flicked on his comm. “Alright, Viv, I think that's the best we can do without running out of time. I'm declaring the all clear. Get us in the air. Tell Everand not to forget that this bird has a two stage engine. We can't make heads or tails of the automatics, so he's going to have to flip manually from the low impact planetary drive to the space drive at thirty thousand, no earlier, and no later than forty.”
Vivian’s voice came back amused. “He's rolling his eyes at you, Henry, I think he's got it. Any last checks?”
Henry closed his eyes for a few moments, running throug
h everything he knew about the ship, and all the standard regulations they were completely bypassing. He breathed in deeply and made his call. “Nothing. I've done all I can in the time allotted. Cross your fingers and light her up.”
“Understood. Lighting the candle.”
Henry watched his portable, which was streaming a translation of the main board, as Everand engaged the anti-grav. Everything looked stable. A moment passed and the ship’s low-yield drive, nice and eco-friendly for paradise, kicked in. The ship lifted with a groan and began moving forward, very slowly. Either Everand had overestimated the drive power or he was just being cautious. Probably the latter, all things considered. In a few moments, they cleared the dock and the ship nosed up before steadily putting on more power. Henry cycled his portable through translations of all the engineering controls.
Vivian’s voice came through as they hit five thousand meters. “Henry?”
Henry blew out a breath he'd been unconsciously holding and quietly uncrossed his fingers. “Mostly green, Viv. A few cautions from a system or two, but that's better than I was expecting. Once we clear atmo we can shut most of it down and track the problems.”
“Good. Try to keep it that way. Coming up on drive transition in...five minutes thirty-seven.”
Henry nodded, even knowing she couldn't see it, and began flicking through the main drive systems again, checking for anything that had busted from the acceleration. “Understood. Main drive looks clean.”
Vivian went quiet and Henry tried to ignore the jabber of the rest of engineering around him as he checked all the transition and main drive gear for the sixth time, or was it the seventh? His mind was starting to fuzz, too much adrenaline and not enough rest. No matter. With a little luck, he'd get a breather once they were clear. Two minutes to transition, time to address the rest of the team. “Transition in one minute fifty-seven. Williams, be ready with the crossover. Without the automatics, you've got to hit it within a second either side. Fifty-three seconds. Twenty-two. Twelve. NOW!”
Williams threw the switch, and for a moment everything seemed to be fine. Only a small lurch and a change in drive pitch, just like they’d expected.
Then the hum reverted, the world lurched, and the ship began spinning downward, losing altitude rapidly.
“Henry!” Vivian cried over the comm.
“I don't know!” Henry snarled as he frantically fought the unexpected pull of G-forces, flicking through translations on his portable. “Shit! Too much power. We should have shut the anti-grav down. The coils overloaded. The port anti-grav is gone.”
“Henry, Everand can't compensate without more power. We need the mains! Where are they?”
“Same relay. We can't make transition.”
“Damn it, Henry, we have to transition. Bypass it or something.”
Henry was, uncharacteristically, freaking out a little. He was standing in front of the open relay panel. “I can't, Viv. I can't read the damn language on the circuits without a translator. There isn’t enough time to figure them all out before we impact.”
The line was quiet for a moment. “Henry, you have to.”
Pounding the bulkhead in frustration, Henry wanted to rip his hair out. He opened his mouth to yell at her when a small hand caught him across the face.
Kira had slapped him. “GUESS damn it!”
Henry looked at her in shock. “Guess? These are the mains. If I get it even a little wrong we explode.”
“And if you do nothing, we crash! You're a zecfling brilliant engineer with decades of experience. Guess.”
Henry stared at her for a moment, then at the relays. He stepped forward, closed his eyes, and whispered a prayer for luck. Then he started manipulating the relay in what his hands and every instinct he could hear said was, probably, the right manner. He finished in under ten seconds, hesitated only a moment, and punched the power reset. For a moment, nothing happened and his heart sank, but then the mains roared to life at full power and the ship stopped tumbling as it gained enough linear movement to overcome gravity. Henry slumped against the bulkhead, vision fuzzing, unwilling to even look at his portable.
Three minutes later they were free of the planet and a cheer rang through the ship. Henry managed a small grin as he heard Kira mutter under her breath, “There's still the self-destruct button.”
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Despite continuing issues with translation, we did not die via mistaken self-destruct button. We did, however, have a great number of other difficulties with the ship. We barely had a skeleton crew for something that size, poor translations to work with, and we were out on the fringes of space with few supplies. Nevertheless, we made do and managed to limp in to a far flung research outpost that someone on the crew knew about. A little hungry and very tired, but alive. More than alive, actually. We were successful! Not only did we have a (mostly) working alien starship chock full of data and tech, but Kira, of all people, had apparently thought to find out the planet's usual circuit. Without us on it, it was hoped that it would revert to its regularly scheduled route, something we now knew it did in fact have.
Until recently, all who went on the expedition were sworn to secrecy about the events. Due, of course, to Fredrick Saint Claire planning a much larger endeavor for when it came back around again. Which it did. Which is why it is in the news as recent events, as I mentioned at the beginning. I, of course, went on the second expedition as well, as did most of the senior team and a much more seasoned Kira. Now that our NDAs are being systematically released, I will almost certainly tell a few of the events of that marvelous expedition in another chronicle. Perhaps even several, considering it was a rather event-filled nine-year journey that took us to the other side of our galaxy. I had, in fact, only recently returned from that expedition when I took a short berth aboard the diplomatic cruiser Elrosna, on which I was first convinced to write my chronicles down. We are, as it were, beginning to come full circle.
P.S. I never did find out what zecfling means. When I asked Kira later, she just blushed.
Chapter 9 – Children's Tears
This little snippet of my life covers a disaster that most of you, or at least those of you old enough, likely remember seeing plenty of coverage on across the various galactic news networks. I have finally been advised by my entirely underpaid legal counsel that I can now tell my small part in the infamous events. As my view of events contains details the public never learned, it is only now, over a decade after the disaster, that I can share the tale without fearing repercussions. Additionally, I have always felt that my refusal to come forward and identify myself in the past served to put the focus where, and upon whom, it truly ought to have been. My previous silence served good purpose, but that purpose is finished now, and the full and complete rendering of the events on Trabella Station may now serve a greater good by being told rather than contained.
I, like many other good and not-so-good Samaritans, found myself responding as a volunteer to the disaster on alternatively famous and infamous Trabella Station. What I found and experienced on that station has led me to give this particular chronicle the somewhat melancholy title of Children's Tears. May it serve as a reminder of many things.
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Henry, old and battered duffel over one shoulder, took the final step off the ramp of the tramp freighter Harlod's Hysteria and onto the deck of the enormous space station known as Trabella Station. A quick glance around wouldn't show his surroundings to be very much different than any of ten thousand docking bays across the galaxy, but Henry knew better. He had seen the near moon-sized space station as they approached and had been aboard the complex behemoth several times in the past. The largest space station in the known galaxy, built by a race whose homeworld lay now in irradiated ruins, and would for many generations more, had been piecemealed together over the course of nearly four centuries of operation. As one might imagine, this resulted
in a nearly unnavigable labyrinth only truly known to any degree by the sentients that made it their home and even they rarely knew more of it than their local district.
Of course, that only made the current disaster several orders of magnitude worse, creating nightmarish conditions and problems for the legions of engineers pouring in from all over the galaxy, crippling their efforts to save the station. Within the confines of the familiar-feeling docking bay, Henry and his fellows bore witness to the resulting chaos kept only partially in control by the infamous Tralzeen bureaucracy in charge of the station. The bay was very clearly filled and functioning well beyond its normal operating capacity, with masses of people, cargo loader mechs, and tightly squeezed ships intermingled so erratically that a whole new set of catastrophes seemed only a single false step away.
Just as the last of Henry's group stepped off the ramp, a harried-looking bureaucrat rushed up to them, flanked by a pair of bored-looking guards. He was a Tralzeen, of course. A bit under their average meter and a half height, the near albino skin common to the race, and compact muscles built for speed far more than strength.
He displayed that unconscious speed with every jerky movement as he shuffled through actual physical documents. He came to an abrupt stop before them as he haphazardly pulled one such document out from the middle of his pile. “Ah, relief crew from Harlod's Hysteria, out of Teliza Seven. Oh, engineers. Very good, very good indeed. We'll expedite you through to the front. Should only take an hour.”
Someone behind Henry asked in disbelief, “An hour is expedited?”
“Yes, yes, of course. Normal procedure should take three at least. Much more in the current emergency, obviously. Lots of extra securities to sign off on and such. But engineers are needed badly, almost as badly as medics, so we'll get you sorted out quickly.”
Muttering and groans were heard, but the bureaucrat somehow got them all moving into little cubes in just a few minutes, with the Harlod's Hysteria quickly fleeing the deck, abandoning them to their paperwork fates. It actually took nearly two hours, still four faster than the last time Henry was there, before they were all cleared. They were shoved through the docking bay doors with hardly another word, still bewildered why the bureaucracy thought that declaring whether you were carrying any fruit and measuring you for gift shop purchase convenience were the most important things to retain on their forms during a crisis.
