by MJ Blehart
And despite having lessened ambitions compared to normal people, clones had feelings too.
As they jogged along, Onima realized she had never re-holstered her pistol. Jace, she noted, was holding his as well. He was casting glances all about, most likely on the lookout for Feroz in case he was still on the ship and waiting to ambush them.
Onima expected that he was not.
“In case I’ve not said so lately,” Onima began, “I’m very glad you joined my team, Jace.”
“Thank you,” he replied.
They arrived at the forward escape pod bay. All the pods appeared to be present and accounted for.
However, all the pods were inert.
Onima stepped up to a pod and tapped its controls. Nothing happened. Jace was going from pod to pod, checking in case Feroz was hiding within one.
Each escape pod could accommodate six people total. There were eighteen pods in the forward compartment, and eighteen more in the rear. More than enough pods for all hands, but if they were non-functional, there was no way out.
“This shouldn’t be possible,” Jace said. “Escape pods have fully independent power sources.”
“But they are linked to the starship,” Onima said.
“Son of a bitch,” Jace breathed. He looked again at one of the pods. “He must have sent a disabling signal of some sort to the pods. Really sucks he’s as good as he is at what he does.”
Onima’s comm beeped. It was Kara. “What have you got?” Onima asked.
“Bad news,” Kara said. “One pod is gone, and all the others are disabled. Which Yael says shouldn’t be possible.”
“Jace said so too,” Onima replied. “I would suspect Feroz launched the pod as a decoy, given that he disabled everything else that could have served as his probable escape.”
“If Captain Barr and the crew can’t get the Aquila back online,” Kara began, “we’re going to need to abandon ship. Yael and I are heading to the shuttle bay.”
The deck shifted beneath Onima’s feet. She caught herself on the bulkhead. Jace also stopped himself from falling.
“Good idea,” she said. “Onima out.”
There was an unpleasant rending sound, and Onima found herself leading Jace toward the ship’s engineering section.
As they reached the lift, Onima tapped the panel. While most of the ship’s systems were disabled, she suspected that the lifts—a subsystem of life support, which wasn’t disabled—would also work.
The door opened immediately.
Once inside, Onima flashed her digital warrant card at the panel as she called out, “Engineering.”
Jace flashed her a look of confusion as the lift began to move.
“Security,” she told him. “Not everyone can get in.”
“Feroz must have,” Jace remarked, “or else how did he manage to set off so powerful an explosion?”
The lift reached engineering, and the door opened. There was shouting back and forth, but apart from the emergency lighting, Onima didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. At least, not yet.
As they stepped off the lift, her comm beeped. She saw who it was and answered, “Go, Kara.”
“Shuttle bay can’t be accessed,” Kara stated calmly. “Yael reached out to Barr to see if the forward bay can be accessed, but she’s pretty sure Feroz did something there too. She thinks we might be able to use one of the access tubes to get in and is looking into that now.”
“We’re in engineering,” Onima reported. “We’ll see if there is anything we can do. Gwok out.” She looked to Jace and gestured aft. “Come on.”
As they trotted aft, a crewmember Onima recognized was heading their way, pausing as he reached them.
“Any word, Petrov?” Onima asked.
“Not good,” the crewman said. “If we can’t get the main computer restarted, the Aquila is going to burn up in the atmosphere. Captain Barr thinks our best option for this is a hard restart of the computer. But there’s a whole other problem with that, which was why I was heading for the MBCC.”
“What can we do?” Onima asked.
“We have a twofold problem,” Petrov said. “The controls to do a hard reset of the computer are in the section where the hull is breached. One top of that, all the radiation suits have been compromised.”
“How?” Onima asked.
“Microtears and broken seals,” Petrov reported. “Nothing obvious on regular inspection—but as soon as you assembled a full suit, you found the problem.”
“Would an EVA suit work?” asked Onima.
“Yes and no,” Petrov replied. “Though the antimatter wasn’t breached when the Alcubierre-Natario drive was destroyed, we still have some dark radiation leakage. EVA suits offer some protection, but not enough. The chief thought maybe your battle armor would be able to better handle dark radiation.”
Onima shook her head. “I don’t know. But even if it did, you’d have to contend with the bulk of the suit in that space.”
“La shi, that would be a problem,” Petrov said.
“Take us there,” Jace requested. “Even though I was light infantry, I still worked with full-armored suits as well as armored shells during my service. Let me see what we’re working with.”
“Sure,” Petrov said. He led Onima and Jace a little way further aft.
They reached a sealed hatch. At the hatch, Onima saw the lead engineer for the Aquila, Chief Elyas, looking at an image of the space on the other side, probably acquired by drone.
Onima could tell it would likely be too tight for armor.
“Chief,” she said.
“Oh, good—Marshal Gwok,” Elyas said upon seeing her. “I sent Petrov to the MBCC to see if an armored suit would offer sufficient dark-radiation protection and oxygen.”
“Let me see what kind of space we’ve got to get into,” Onima said.
A second hologram appeared beside the drone image. It showed a relatively tight space just behind the bulkhead. “There is an actual, factual switch in there. It will reset the computer. Hard to get to because it should never, ever be used—save in port or in an extreme emergency. This is a terrible idea, but I haven’t got a better one.”
“Armored suit would never fit in there,” Jace said. He looked around. “Radiation suit would be tight too. How much time do we have?”
“By Captain’s estimate,” Elyas said, “fifteen minutes before we can’t pull the ship out of the gravity well without extreme maneuvering that will likely further tear the breach.”
Onima was looking at both the hologram and drone images. “How bad is the radiation?”
“Unsure,” Elyas said. “The drone is reading it as coming in waves, so it’s not just a steady stream. Likely just residual from the obliterated A-N drive.”
“How did he do it?” Onima asked.
“As best we can tell,” Elyas began, “he set up a feedback overload through the warp bubble projectors right into the drive itself. Blew up the drive but spared the antimatter generator. Which is great because blowing that up would have killed us all.”
Jace gestured to the radiation suits. “How badly are they damaged?”
“Enough that I wouldn’t trust ‘em,” Elyas said.
“Will they hold oxygen?” Jace asked.
“Ulysses?” Elyas queried another crewwoman.
“All of them are going to bleed a ton,” she said. “It would be the equivalent of working high-altitude, and you might have no more than five minutes of air.”
“Get me into the best one,” Jace said.
“Jace....” Onima began.
He turned to her. “If that switch isn’t thrown and the computer isn’t restarted, the ship burns up in Aarde’s atmosphere. Someone has to go in there.”
“Just because you’re a clone doesn’t make you more expendable,” Onima spat.
Jace shook his head as Ulysses handed him a suit. He began to pull it on, saying, “That’s not what this is about. As a clone, I can handle a much higher dose of
radiation than non-clones can. That was meant to prevent the use of any high-radiation weapons during the war. I also technically need less oxygen than a non-clone. I’m the only one who has a chance of getting in there and getting out again.”
Onima hated it. But Jace was right. She couldn’t argue with his logic.
As Ulysses helped Jace get into the damaged radiation suit, Elyas, Petrov, and two others put a portable plastic airlock on the hatch.
Onima felt helpless, but the best thing she could do was to stay out of the way.
Her comm beeped—Kara.
“Did you get into the shuttle bay?” Onima asked.
“No,” Kara replied, ire clear in her voice. “We’re in the service corridor now, but the hatch is jammed.”
“That’s probably another effect of the cascade that brought the computer down,” Elyas said. “Save emergency lighting, gravity, and life support, all the other fail-safes that should have been independent and unaffected probably got tied into the overall network.”
“Feroz,” Kara hissed. “Yael thinks we might be able to cut our way in.”
“I don’t have a better suggestion,” Elyas said.
“Give it a shot,” Onima stated.
“Okay,” Kara replied. “Martinez out.”
Jace was donning the helmet for the radiation suit. Onima couldn’t see any breaches in the suit, but that was the nature of the damage done to it. It passed visual inspection—but when put together, it failed. Moreover, the gloves were not the ones that were meant to go with the suit.
“Okay, Jace,” Ulysses said, “don’t start the oxygen until you’re in the airlock. Hopefully it won’t hiss too badly.”
“What if I turn it on, grab a breath of air, and hold it as long as I can?” Jace asked.
“Yeah,” Ulysses replied, “that might work. But it might also make you really lightheaded.”
“Okay.”
“Once you are in the airlock and we seal it, we’ll open the hatch,” Ulysses continued. “You’re going to be dealing with zero gravity, as well as considerable cold. The suit will offer some protection, but it’s not as full as it should be. I have programmed the HUD in the helmet to lead you right to the switch. Should take about a minute.”
“Got it,” Jace said.
Elyas spoke now. “When you get to the switch, pull it down. Probably going to be stiff, but you should be able to do it. Count to five and flip it back up. Hopefully that will commence the restart. If it doesn’t, repeat it. No more than three tries. If it doesn’t take by the third, it won’t restart at all.”
Jace took a deep breath and let it go. “Okay, I’m good to go.”
“Jace,” Onima said, getting his attention. “Thank you for being a part of my team.”
“No,” Jace said. “Thank you, Onima. Thanks for offering me your trust. We clones don’t get that much. I’ll be back in few minutes. We’ve still got a conspiracy to dismantle.”
Onima smiled. The cockiness of a soldier was not something she’d expected from a clone. But coming from Jace, it filled her with confidence.
Jace stepped into the plastic airlock. They sealed it behind him.
“Okay, Jace,” Elyas said. “We pump the air out on the count of five, then open the hatch. Ready?”
“Ready,” Jace replied.
Elyas stood at the necessary switch. “Okay. Five...four...three...two...one....Now.”
Ulysses tapped a control on a datapad in her hand, and the air from the plastic airlock pumped out. At the same time, a high-pitched hiss reached Onima’s ears as Jace started his portable oxygen.
A moment later, the hatch slid up and open. Though Onima was a little more than a meter from the airlock, she could feel the sudden chill.
“Yup,” Jace said, “that’s brisk.” He walked through the hatch.
Elyas hit the control, and the hatch closed again.
The drone inside the compartment showed Jace moving into it.
The Aquila shook violently once again. Onima grabbed hold of a nearby pipe to steady herself and was glad it wasn’t hot.
As the tremor ceased, Ulysses said, “As the gravity pulls us toward the planet, it’s altering the ship’s course. The compensators aren’t keeping up.”
“Chief,” a crew member called, “drone camera’s out. It probably got damaged in that quake.”
Onima looked. The drone’s feed was gone.
“Jace,” she commed. “You still with us?”
“Yes,” Jace said, sounding winded. “Can’t talk. Save air.”
Onima looked at the other display. It showed a blip representing Jace, but offered no further details.
She worried about her friend, but knew if anyone could fix the problem, it was Jace. Onima just hoped that he could get to the switch and restart the computer before his oxygen ran out.
“One minute,” Petrov reported. “He should be at the switch now.”
The ship rocked again, but it didn’t ruin Onima’s balance. She looked at the representation of Jace in the stricken compartment and hoped he would once again prove his competence.
She had never imagined how many times her life might be in the hands of a clone.
<->
The investigation is far from complete. Check out the next part:
Unraveling Conspiracy
Forgotten Fodder – Book 3
Acknowledgements
There are several people I would like to thank for all their continued help and encouragement.
In no particular order:
My new editor, Rebekah Becker. This is the second time I have work with her, and I look forward to working with her on many more books.
My cover artist, Starla Huchton. She is awesome and continues to provide me with incredible covers and thoughts on my blurbs.
My wife Chrissie. Without your support I couldn’t do this work. You are so awesome! I know I talk a lot about the plans for the series – and strive not to offer too many spoilers in the process.
My cats, Thalia and Cosima. Thank you, oh feline overlords, for allowing me to live in this apartment and work.
My dad, for buying everything I write. My stepdad for being a regular reader of my blog. My mom, stepmom, and sister for your ongoing support and encouragement.
All my friends who have offered encouragement and support for my writing. Danielle, thanks again for the series title! Thank you, everyone for following along on social media as I yap on about this process.
Last, and certainly not least, YOU. I love and appreciate all my readers, and I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
I promise the cliffhanger will be resolved in the next book!
Author website: mjblehart.com
Blog - The Ramblings of The Titanium Don: titaniumdon.com
Articles on Medium.com: mjblehart.medium.com
Podcast, Awareness for Everyone: awarenessforeveryone.com
YA Fantasy series The Source Chronicles: sourcechronicles.com
Follow MJ on twitter @mjblehart
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Facebook @blehartmj
About the Author
MJ BLEHART has been writing stories of high fantasy and sci-fi/space opera throughout his life - the first when he was nine years old. Star Wars and Star Trek were some major influences in his youth.
He is a history aficionado. MJ has been a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA - a medieval re-enactment society) for over twenty-nine years. In the SCA, he studies and teaches 16th century rapier combat (fencing) and court heraldry, enjoys archery, social interactions with people from all over the world, and spending time with friends.
MJ blogs regularly, exploring mindfulness, conscious reality creation, positivity, the writing process/business, and creating an amazing life.
MJ currently resides in south New Jersey with his wife and two feline overlords (cats).
Forgotten Fodder Book 2)
