by Brett Bam
She sailed into the RHS and slid clumsily into her couch, banging her shins. She interfaced with the flight computer and started squirting instructions at it. She altered the dissipater fan array into an arc that swept across the limping Protocol ship. She watched with grim satisfaction as the blistering heat and radiation washed over the Protocol ship. It turned and fled.
“We've hurt them Skipper, they're running.” said Oscar.
Dalys toggled the weapons array and sprayed everything she had at her enemy, trying to disable it. The Protocol ship exploded. The blast blazed white in the sensors and caused Dalys and Oscar to flinch as the Ribbontail shook in the wake of its destruction.
In the few hours it had taken Dalys to recover a sense of normalcy after the attack, things had gone from bad to worse. How they had survived this long was a mystery. The Ribbontail was badly scarred and limping through space towards the Community of Man, which now seemed an impossible distance away.
Once the situation was stabilised and the immediate danger was passed, Dalys called the crew into the galley for a meeting.
“Well kids, we’re in some deep trouble.”
Her statement was met with grim silence. The crew looked beaten and weary. Oscar wore his fear on his face, unable to hide it.
“A lot of the dissipater fans were loosened in their support brackets when the helix vented. If we try to apply any velocity they’ll break up. To attempt thrust without the heat venting ability of the fans is suicide. Also, the hull casing is cracked in several places. They managed to slice through the communication lines when they cut their way aboard so we can’t scream for help. The hull casing is still depressurising near the med bay so we’ll have to try a partial patch there first. The ship is crippled.” She was silent for a moment, lending gravity to the mood.
“Berea is gone.” As she said this last and most horrible of things, she looked at Jack Mac. His blank stare conveyed more emotion to her than any words could possibly have done.
“I’m so sorry Jack. I fired on the ship and it blew apart. If she was on board…”
He shook his head. “No, I saw it grab her. She was dead before…” his voice broke and he put his head to his hands, fists clenched and knuckles white. He was dirty and bruised and his shirt was torn. He was covered in bandages and healing creams. Without lifting his head, he said, “What the fuck happened here Dalys? I mean what the fuck just happened?”
Dalys had no words. There was a small silence before Dalys looked at Curtis. “How is Kulen?”
“It’s bad. Both shoulders and his right hip are dislocated. His right femur and tibia are broken and so are his clavicle and five ribs. He’s got a skull fracture that really worries me, lacerations all over his body and some internal bleeding. He’s going to need surgery. He’s still unconscious but he’s alive, which is amazing. It should have been worse. He looks so small and frail, but he's very strong. Just before the attack I was scanning him and there’s something weird that I can’t explain…”
Dalys frowned, “What was weird about the scan?”
“Well, quite a few things really. At first, I couldn’t get a read at all, there seems to be some sort of intense bioelectrical aura surrounding him that is interfering with the sensors. When I finally did get a reading, I didn’t understand what I was seeing. His brain activity is off the scales, I need more time to examine the data.” Curtis was shaking her head and a frown creased her brow. “Also, he knew the attack was coming. He warned me and then actually got up to hide somewhere in his panic. That’s when he broke his leg and dislocated his hip. I think the skull fracture was from hitting the deck but I can’t be sure about that. Those things broke his ribs and caused the lacerations when they grabbed him. They were after him, weren’t they?”
“They must have been, him or that thing on his hand.”
“OK.” For the smallest second Dalys was overwhelmed by the situation and not sure what to do about it.
“We need to know all we can about this boy. He came to me under some very suspicious circumstances, and he's somehow known about danger twice before we could pick it up on sensors, outside the ship for god’s sake. And that silver glove on his hand, that thing he says he stole, what is it?” She looked at Oscar as she asked this last.
He flushed under her gaze. “Why would you think I know something like that?”
“You’re the information officer. You have a better grasp on tech than any of us. All I need is an idea, somewhere to start.”
“Well, they made a huge effort to recover him. You don't suppose it’s what all the fuss is about, do you? I mean the timing is dead on. Maybe he took something really important, you know?”
Jack Mac scoffed, “The amount of chaos down there was ridiculous. No small boy, no matter how weird could have done all that.”
“Nevertheless,” said Moabi, “we still don't know what it is, or who he is, or why he and his father were running. I doubt that the child will shed much light on the situation; he’s a victim in all of this, more so than any of us. The Community will know what to do with him when we get there.”
“If we get there.” said Dalys. “We’re seriously hurt, potentially crippled. We need to do an external inspection. Are you up for a little EVA?” she asked Moabi.
“You can’t possibly want him out there Dalys, he’s very badly hurt, it will be too dangerous.” Curtis could not manage to keep the quaver out of her voice. Moabi had suffered some serious burns to his face and hands.
“Sorry, doc. If Moabi doesn't help me outside then this ship will falter and we all die, every helping hand is needed. Jack Mac, see how much you can do about the venting around the major breach. Moabi and I will start on the dissipater fans and see if we can't afford a little more thrust. Oscar, I need to have the communications up and running again so we can yell for help. Also, we need to know if there’s another Protocol ship on the way so I want hard scans.”
Her last statement caused them all to look sharply at her. She met their gazes one at a time, saving Jack Mac for last. There was no tenderness in her eyes, no sign of anything but hard control. Without a word, she stood and walked from the room and after a moment they all followed.
Jack Mac took the better part of a day to stop the vents, but eventually the atmospheric scrubbers were able to restore pressure to the entire ship. The welds were tenuous but they would hold through some minimal thrust. Dalys calculated that at 49 hours of thrust at 0.3 g, they would gain enough velocity to reach the Community of Man within 40 days. Curtis had her work cut out for her. Every member of the crew, bar Dalys and Oscar, had injuries of varying degrees of urgency that needed attending. Aside from Kulen, Moabi’s burns were the most severe injuries and would probably leave some scarring. He was in tremendous pain yet still managed to function without complaint.
Jack Mac suffered in his grief silently. He would not meet Dalys’ eyes, and his manner was gruff and efficient. He had many bumps, bruises and lacerations and a severe cold burn from the vacuum exposure; while she herself sported a massive bruise that spread across her upper body and caused her to wince in pain often. Working through the pain was more an irritant than a hindrance and she turned to Kulen to begin the long work of helping the small boy to heal from his terrible wounds.
The sick bay aboard the Ribbontail was a good one, with an entire library of reference manuals and autodocs to assist her. She could manufacture her own drugs and repair almost any wound or injury within hours or at least days. She used her eyepiece constantly, watching the digital overlay it provided. As the information flowed she worked softly and gently with was no sign of further Protocol pursuit. Dalys could only hope they were too busy dealing with their own problems to worry about them. She thought the Ribbontail and its crew were a minor footnote in all the chaos they had left behind.
Oscar made thousands of electrical connections correctly and so managed to finally fix the comm system. He coded a message and beamed it to several places in the Community of Man and had a reply from hund
reds of sources within a few minutes. He filtered the list of correspondences through a couple of screening programs and examined the remaining messages. He toggled the comm system and reported the results to Dalys.
“We’re not alone out here Dalys. There’s a lot of traffic outbound from Earth. Several ships saw the explosion and have been approaching for some time. I’m getting messages from all of them. Do you want the good news or the bad news first Skipper?”
Dalys was outside on the hull working hard alongside Jack Mac.
“Bad news first kid.” She signalled Jack Mac to take a short break and concentrated on the information Oscar was squirting to her.
“Hmm, the Korporatsie has five ships in the vicinity. That’s a problem. I’m also getting a small Rommel Corporation fleet flooding a couple of channels with some tedious propaganda. They’ve got three corvettes and seven scouts, one of the corvettes is enroute. What’s left of a gypsy caravan is heading away from us. They can’t help but they’ll relay the mayday for us. There's also a Gamaridian ship headed our way. They all seem to be pretty much intact, especially compared to us. They’ve all been screaming for help, telling the Community what happened on Earth. The news is spreading fast and there are a large amount of ships inbound from the belt, mostly newshounds, but there are a few relief and salvage vessels heading in too.”
“Who's going to get to this sector first?”
“My best projections put the Gamaridians first, Captain Ronid Jabesh on the Otherc, closely followed by the Korporatsie’s corvette and Rommel’s guys last.”
“That's even better news. Jeremiah Comfort doesn't mind the Rommel Corp. guys that much, but he hates the Korporatsie as much as we do.”
“Who is Jeremiah Comfort?”
“The democratically elected President of the Gamaridian Group, the High Priest of the Church of the Consumption and the People’s Pope.”
“Great, never heard of him.”
“How long before the first arrival?” she queried.
“Best projection is 20 hours at current velocity.”
“Excellent, adjust course for optimum intercept with the Gamaridians and squirt me the updated schedule. I'd like to see how much we can do ourselves before the rescue squad arrives. I want to be able to manoeuvre when the Korporatsie arrives, just in case. I don't think they'll do much with the escort we'll have, too much attention for them to start something. The Gamaridians are well armed and hostile to the Martians. And besides, with a fleet of refugees from Earth approaching behind us, those crews are going to be busy.”
“Aye Skipper.” He left the question about the Pope alone, sensing there was something there he did not want to know.
And finally, there came a time when Dalys started making little mistakes. She would find herself taking inordinately long amounts of time to come to simple decisions. It was time for sleep. She was exhausted, physically, mentally and spiritually drained from the exertions of the last few days. She was trying to allow her tired brain a small break from the maelstrom of technical problems and difficulties assailing her. The ship was in breakdown condition, and their run to a safe haven was balancing on a knife’s edge. She was responsible for the lives and well-being of every person on board, and they were all at risk. So, she went to bed. To sleep, to recover, to work again tomorrow.
When her head hit the pillow and her tool belt hit the deck, Dalys finally had a quiet moment. In the middle of that solitude, that relaxation, she felt the responsibility of her position in a very profound way. So far, she had managed to stave off the worst of the problems. The fragile little conglomeration of matter sailing through the vacuum would sustain them. They would live a little longer, resisting the vacuum with their limping technology. And help was on the way, easing the burden of stress.
And then, just before sleep took her, she thought of Berea. Grief began to swell up from a place deep inside. She felt an overwhelming compulsion to wail and beat at the bulkheads as if they were the walls of fate and she could force them back. She felt a terrible sense of loss for the snuffed life a woman whom she had loved. She thought of Berea’s smile and her laugh which had echoed through the corridors of this ship so many times. She thought of Berea’s love for Jack Mac and the terrible grief the man was now suffering in stony silence. In the suddenly lonely darkness of her bunk, Dalys allowed herself to cry for a moment, easing that iron grip she maintained on her emotions just enough to allow some of the intense pressure to escape.
As the night slipped away, Dalys came to terms with the grief she felt for Berea. Sadness for the loss would stay with her forever, and the sharp suddenness of her death would leave yet another scar on her soul, lost amongst the rest. Dalys had seen many good friends die during war and after. Grief was an old companion.
She thought of the young boy lying in an induced coma in the med bay. A great evil had been committed against a young and defenceless victim and Dalys boiled with rage, sharper because of the grief. Now she had a direction to point her wrath. She knew who her enemy was. There should be nothing so valuable that caused the machines to murder. They had no appreciation or understanding of human life and they proved that the moment they pulled the trigger and killed Kulen’s father. The man had been on his knees and injured, no longer capable of flight or figh, but they had killed him anyway. And from that came this, a second unprovoked attack, and the murder of her friend. Dalys had done the right thing by fleeing with the boy, she had saved him, he was her responsibility now, no matter what he had stolen.
As for that thing on his hand, Dalys had no idea what to make of it. It was obviously some sort of Protocol artefact, which meant it contained a technology she could never understand. It would be valuable, which meant a great deal of danger to the boy. For a moment she was nonplussed. Where could she take him? Where would he be safe? After a moment’s contemplation, she realised he was probably already in the safest place he could be, right here at her side where she could care for him. She knew it was hardly a permanent solution; a space bound ship was no place for children.
Then she thought that Berea would disagree. She had been raised on a ship in a gypsy caravan, spending all her life between the metal bulkheads safe from the void outside. Dalys could hear Berea’s voice, and the argument she would have put forward to keep Kulen with them. And maybe because it was Berea’s voice urging this in her mind, she listened and sympathised, and eventually decided to do just that.
Her comm beeped, “Skipper, this is Oscar. We’re receiving communication from the Otherc.” She had not managed to sleep yet, and sighed.
“I’ll be right there.”
Dalys rose from her bunk, stooped for the toolbelt, and stalked from the darkness of her cabin.
Chapter 14
Jack Mac
Standing over a comatose Kulen De Sol with a bottle clutched in his right hand, a gun clutched in his left, and a look of confusion chiselled upon his face, stood Major Jack Mickelmack, former Ships Sergeant in the service of the Rim Division of His Majesty Nikolas Scribe’s Royal Navy.
Jack Mac was deeply grieved, a broken man. He'd seen death many a time, but never had it pierced his soul like this. He had served many years in the armed forces, killing many men along the way, and seeing many men killed, both friend and foe. He had slain men without compunction at the order of his King, and he had sent men off to die at the order of his King. It had happened at a far remove, and right in front of him at his own hand. Once he had killed a sleeping man. He had simply slipped the steel across his skin and let the blood flow. He had never before committed a murder. All the killing he had done was in the name of King and country. Not that that made it right, but those bastards had been trying their damnedest to kill him too, he was just the one who walked away. His greatest emotion after the war was relief that he had not joined the ranks of those martyred for their beliefs.
But there was no relief now. He was filled with a deep and abiding despair at the thought of life without her, of a future without her.
He was filled with the tragedy of her loss and a rage he was struggling to contain.
It was all because of this boy, this wisp of a thing, this tiny piece of meat, this boy who had brought all this death and destruction onto the ship. He had stolen something from the Protocol, something important enough for them to send a retrieval unit into space to attack the Ribbontail. It was because of him that Berea was dead. A sob wracked Jack Mac’s body, nearly doubling him over. He was exhausted from the effort of the last week. From the effort of surviving the same attack that had… that had…
He could not complete the thought. He took a swallow from the bottle instead and scowled at the comatose boy.
Jack Mac had been a killer for many years. He killed without remorse. Three times he had even enjoyed the killing. It had been easy, until he met Berea. She had awoken something inside him that he thought was dead and buried. Joy. Love. Tenderness. These things had flowed into him from her touch and he had become human again. The filth of blood on his soul was washed clean by her laugh. He had learned to laugh under her patient love. He had healed from all the hurts, his soul had become young and smooth again, as blemished as it was. She had been his redemption; her forgiveness was the salve that calmed him. And now she was gone, the ugly anger was back, and he was about to kill this boy in revenge. He dropped the bottle and lifted the gun. Suddenly calm he tightened his finger on the trigger. Then he felt a soft hand touch his shoulder. He did not turn and look because he knew that hand was on his soul and not on his body. Berea was still with him, he carried her inside him and he always would. He would keep her memory alive with his love. If he tainted that love with this murder then he would lose her forever. He could hear her voice and see her face. With another sob, he dropped the gun next to the bottle and slumped to the floor. A series of sobs tore through him and he bit a knuckle to keep from crying out in the dark. Jack Mac curled on the floor and cried as he never had before, allowing the grief to wash through him and over him. Eventually he quieted, more from exhaustion than from closure to his grief. He picked up the gun and the bottle. He stood and walked from the room, folding up his grief for later, when he had the time. He left his pointless lust for revenge behind him, along with the rage. It was getting in the way of his memory of her.
