by Yronwode
Jordan grinned. “Yeah, it was fun, wasn’t it?”
A flying section, propelled by a leak of the atmosphere it still contained, bounced off the freighter and struck a glancing blow off Phoenix’s port wingblade. “Dave, it would be really nice if you got back on my ship,” Trajan Lear said as the Aves shook. The break up of the hull in the area of the grenade explosion transmitted along the length and shook the Aves, and carried with it the sound of groaning and twisting metal.
“Almost there…” Alkema replied. He was drifting upwards next to the ship’s central Braincore. The airlock was only a few meters away.
On Phoenix, Max Jordan shouted, “There’s a monster on the wingblade.” Rook and Lear diverted their eyes to the display Jordan was indicating. There on the port wing, the beast from the other section was standing. His howls cut through the EM spectrum as fierce ghostly static.
“Crap,” Lear said. “Lt. Commander, we’ve got a problem.
“Handle it,” Alkema ordered.
Lear looked at Rook and Jordan. “Handle it how?” Jordan asked.
Jordan began resealing his space helmet. “Stand by to open the primary hatch.”
“Why?” Lear asked.
“Don’t ask me why, I’m gonna try something,” Jordan replied.
Rook began resealing his helmet as well. “Don’t worry, we’ll get it.” Lear over-rode the controls that prevented opening the main hatch to hard vacuum and stood by.
Alkema, meanwhile, kicked away from the braincore and toward the airlock, drifting in the dark. After a long period of suspension, he bumped into the far wall and began feeling for a handhold. “Almost there,” he radioed Lear.
“Acknowledged,” Lear replied. He switched to Rook and Jordan. “Ready?”
“Stand by,” Rook replied. “Jordan has a plan, but for it to work, you should delay blowing the hatch until you’re ready to clear the station.
Lear looked at his external display. “Comrades, he’s trying to rip my wingblade open. If he gets to the tritium fuel cells…”
He was interrupted by Alkema. “I’m at the airlock, guys. Just a few more seconds.”
“Cycling ventral airlock,” Lear reported. “Lt Commander, let me know as soon as it seals behind you.”
“It just did,” Alkema reported.
“Keep your helmet on!” Rook shouted.
“Oh, yeah, keep your helmet on,” Lear repeated.
“Acknowledged?” Alkema said.
“Now, Traj!” Rook shouted. “Do it now!”
Lear did a few things very quickly. “Decoupling from hull. Firing thrusters.
Opening Hatch… now!”
The primary hatch on the ship’s port side cycled open, emitting a blast of atmosphere. The freighter seemed to drop away below as Lear fired thrusters to clear his ship. Grabbing on hard to the ohshit handles on either side of the hatch, Rook and Jordan let loose a fusillade of micro-grenades against the monter. Enough of these hit and exploded to create a storm of charged plasma that knocked the beast hard down and over. As Phoenix peeled away, the monster slid off the wing and into space.
“So long, you ugly space monster creepshow thing,” Rook yelled after it. “Lear, close the hatch and re-pressurize the main deck.”
“Acknowledged,” Lear reported.
Phoenix cleared the ship just as its backbone snapped in half, breaking the ancient hulk from two big chunks into three and filling that vicinity of space with chunks of hull and debris. Lear maneuvered through the remaining debris as the hatch closed and air and warmth returned to the main cabin.
Rook and Lear peeled off their helmets. They were soon joined by Alkema.
Finally, safely on board the Aves, Alkema peeled off his helmet also. David Alkema was in his early twenties, had curly dark hair, blue eyes, and a ruddy complexion. Lately. A frown line had come to be between his eyes, and just around the edges of those eyes, he had become the slightest bit careworn. This was probably because his wife had borne him two children in the previous two years and was back on board Pegasus, pregnant with a third.
“Did we get it?” Rook asked.
Alkema opened his mission pack and showed them the nine small cylinder arranged on the hexagon-shaped tray that matrixed them together.
“All that trouble over a few pieces of glass,” Rook grinned.
“We better hope it was worth it,” Alkema replied. “If these little pieces of glass don’t contain a guide to the surrounding star systems, we are totally lost.” Rook seemed a little concerned that their spectacular heroism might have been for nothing. “Didn’t you confirm with Pegasus that…”
“Pegasus found astronomical data on them… it damn well better be a navigational chart,” Alkema said.
In the main head-up display, a view of Pegasus appeared, the magnificent ship built of humanity’s highest aspirations. Her graceful, swan-like hull gleamed like alabaster. The lights of her command towers and inhabitation areas glittered like stars.
Max Jordan finally noticed that blood was trickling from his mouth. “I think I better see a healer,” he said, and then passed out.
CHAPTER: 02
Pegasus Officers’ Cocktail Lounge (formerly Lear Family Quarters)
An animatronic facsimile of his former Executive Officer in a tight short skirt brought Prime Commander William Randolph Keeler his Borealan Highball. Making an automech that resembled a human had been a serious taboo back in the Sapphire system. Making all the cocktail waitresses in the new lounge resemble his mutinous first officer had been a petty, vengeful act, but at the time, it had at least seemed funny.
Now, it seemed to him a little sad. The commander regretted it a little, but not enough to change them back.
As he sipped his beverage, he caught sight of himself in the smoked mirror behind the bar, and was shocked, as he usually was, to see his age. There was more gray in his straight, thick hair than he had ever remembered there being before, and in his round face, a kind of permanent fatigue had set in.
“I had that dream again,” Keeler said to the bartender, the former TyroCommander Philip John Miller Redfire, on indefinite leave since having his memory wiped by aliens … or maybe it was not Redfire, but a replicant produced during his alien captivity to gether intelligence. No one was quite sure, but he made a hell of a bartender and piano player, although a robot was playing piano at that particular interval, a jaunty Sapphirean piece about a Panrovian porkbeast farmer, his three comely daughters, and a traveling merchandiser of home sanitizing equipment.
“Is that so?” Redfire replied, refreshing the commander’s drink with snow from the slush dispenser. He seemed to have aged a little, too. These days, he was wearing his red hair a little longer than the close crewcut he had favored before his abduction.
He also favored white dinner jackets instead of black leather, and he had neither painted nor blown anything up in the past almost three years either.
Keeler stirred the snow into his drink. “That dream where… Sapphire is gone.
Republic is gone. The Aurelians or the Tarmigans destroyed our homes and… we’re the only ones left.”
“Not so weird,” Redfire told him. “In a sense, they are gone, because we left them on the other side of the galaxy. Over two hundred years have passed at home since our launch. And, in a sense, we are the only ones left, because we have not found anyone over here.”
“Was that intended to make me sad?” Keeler asked.
“At least you know who you are,” Redfire told him. “I don’t have that.”
“True, but you get to decide who you wanted to be,” Keeler told him. “I don’t have that.”
“Speaking of which,” Redfire added, “Do you ever intend to make the position of Chief Tactical Officer permanent, or are you going to keep David Alkema and General Kitaen alternating as Tactical chief?”
“I’m still holding out hope that you will recover your memory and come back,” Keeler answered.
“After two and a hal
f years?” Redfire seemed amused by the suggestion.
“Commander, would you permit me a philosophical interlude?”
“That sounds like the Redfire I used to know and used to comp my drinks,” Keeler replied.
Redfire brushed the top of the bar with a cleaning wand. “I hear the crew talking, and I get a sense that everyone feels the same way; we’re lost out here. We are stuck in a prolonged transition in-between what we were doing, and what we will be doing.
The crew needs to…”
He was interrupted by a call on the commander’s COM Link. Even after all this time, Keeler still expected to see Shayne American’s face when the COM Link chirped for his attention. But she had signed on aboard the Pathfinder Ship Lexington Keeler.
Instead, he met the round, soft visage of Sr. Specialist Brian Panda. “Aves Phoenix has returned from the Hewlander. They have the NavCore.”
“Good,” Keeler replied. “Take it to … um, someplace where they can get the data out.”
Panda continued. “One of the team was injured battling the ship’s monster, but the injuries are not life threatening.”
“Not life threatening, excellent!” Keeler told him. “Inform Mr. Alkema I’d like a mission debriefing in four hours.”
“Who was injured?” Redfire asked.
“Warfighter Specialist Jordan,” Panda answered.
Redfire’s face fell somewhat. In a complicated way involving infidelity and time-travel, he was something like a father to Max Jordan, although Redfire’s amnesia and Jordan’s resentment that his mother had not come back from their encounter with aliens – in replicant form or otherwise – had led to a degree of estrangement.
“Thanks, Brian,” Keeler deactivated the link and turned to Redfire. “He said non-life-threatening.”
“I heard,” Redfire said.
Keeler prompted, “What were you about to say, the crew needs to…”
“It’s not important,” Redfire replied brusquely, before moving away down the bar.
Pegasus – Hospital Four
“Your ribs have almost completely healed,” Dr. Skinner told Max Jordan. “And in less then a day, that’s… highly interesting.”
Max Jordan sat up on his healing bed. “How long was it supposed to take?”
“I honestly didn’t know,” Skinner said in his clipped, erudite tones. “For a typical Sapphirean, or Republicker, it would be perfectly normal for an injury like that to heal so expeditiously. But you are half-Bodicean, and Bodiceans do not heal so quickly. It might have taken weeks.”
“I thought we were all human,” Max said.
“We are… but we have now sampled human DNA on over thirty other colonies, between Pegasus and the other pathfinders,” Skinner told him. “On average, our DNA shows a 3.5% to 4% genetic variance. For Bodiceans, the variance was 3.8%.”
“That’s not much,” Jordan sniffed.
“The genetic variance between humans and the lower simian life forms on Earth is 2%,” Skinner said. “And if you take Sapphire and Republic out of the pool, the genetic variance among the other colonies is less than 0.1%” Max was growing bored with the discussion. “So?”
“You are the first hybrid between someone from Sapphire and Republic and a colonist from another world,” Skinner, who was not getting bored, explained. “Your DNA should be a mix of your mother’s Sapphirean DNA and your father’s Bodicean DNA, but according to your genetic profile, you are indistinguishable from a full-blooded Sapphirean. Your mother’s DNA completely dominated your father’s. And this is fascinating.”
“I guess,” Jordan said. “Can I leave now?”
“Go forth, brave young warrior!” Skinner shooed him from the healing bed.
When he had gone, he entered the latest genetic data from Max Jordan into his database. The same thing had happened with David Alkema, whose children were genetically indistinguishable from full-blooded Sapphireans, despite having a Bodicean mother.
So far, only Pegasus had data relating to inter-breeding between their crew and people from other colonies; and both had involved Sapphireans and Bodiceans. But it proved that both the Sapphirean genetic code was dominant regardless of the sex of the sex of the parent. Now, if Skinner could only get the crew to breed with people from additional colonies, he might be able to figure out what it meant.
But, of course, they would have to find other colonies first.
Pegasus – Forensic Telemetry Laboratory
Lt. Cmdr. Alkema delivered the Navigational Core to the ForTel Laboratory on the 73rd level of Pegasus’s Secondary Command Tower as soon as he and it had cleared decontamination. The ForTelLab had been created during the previous two years as a special project, devoted to understanding and making use of Commonwealth Technology and data Pegasus had recovered in the course of its journey. It occupied nearly the entire deck on which it was situated, and in addition to instruments and computers, its space was filled with artifacts and devices from the Chapultepec and Chanticleer StarLocks. At the rear and either side were large, specially constructed airlocks for blowing artifacts into space, just in case they turned out to be explosive, tried to bite off someone’s head, or otherwise proved dangerous.
Technical Specialist Billy Zero took the NavCore out of the case and gingerly set it on an analysis table.
“How long before we have something?” Alkema asked.
“Not too long,” Zero answered. “We’ve gotten much better at reconstructing Commonwealth data over the last two years. There, that should do it.” Several displays activated. Numbers and letters in the three primary old Earth dialects scrolled up across each of them. The streams were broken in places where data was corrupt or missing.
“Is it Navigational data?” Alkema asked.
“I think it is, but the dialect is unfamiliar. We may need a little help,” Zero touched a panel nearby.
A hologram appeared next to him, an attractive young woman glowing in shades of white, blue, and neon pink. This was Caliph’s latest self-actualization. “Need a hand, Billy?” she asked.
“What can you make of this data-stream, Miss Caliph?” Caliph made an unnecessary mimicry of walking to the displays and inspecting the data stream. “You got almost miraculously lucky. According to this, the ship we found was a Deadelus-class heavy merchant transport, launched in the Solar Year 4907. That ship made stops on several hundred colonies during its working life.” Her hologram shimmered. The largest display was replaced by a star-map.
With her finger, she drew little pink circles around several stars. “These are systems previously visited by the ship. I am trying to locate a time-index to tell me where it went on its most recent voyages. Got it.”
Several pink circles disappeared.
Alkema asked her, “Caliph, can you identify any systems within 40 light years of our present position.”
“Stand by, I have to account for a couple thousand years of stellar drift.” Caliph concentrated hard, and several long moments passed.
All the pink dots dropped away except for six. “These systems are all within forty light years of our position. The nearest one is this one.”
“Does it have a designation?” Billy Memphis asked.
“It’s difficult to ascertain without contextual data,” Caliph told him. “I calculate there is a 70% probability we are in the Ara sector. Beyond that, designations become increasingly speculative.”
“That’s not important right now,” Alkema asked. “Can you plot courses to these systems?”
“You bet I can,” Caliph answered him, with a twinkle in her holographic eye.
Pegasus – Main Bridge (No Longer Called PC-1)
A few days (ship-time) later, Pegasus emerged at the edge of the nearest system from the wreck of the Hewlander after a hyperspace transit of 32.6 light years.
Unlike past explorations, they knew exactly where to go. The data from the navigational core showed that they wanted the first planet, which had been the merchant freighter’s last st
op… ever!
Planetology Specialist Mariana Venture was providing a briefing to the ship’s senior officers on the advance telemetry provided by Pegasus’s probes. A hologram of the planet hovered over the table, a pastel sand-colored sphere with shallow, pale-blue oceans covering about half of its surface area.
“The planet is only-two thirds the size of Sapphire,” she told the senior officers.
“But it has a core and mantle of pure iron. It also has the most intense magnetic field we’ve ever seen, almost 300% stronger than Aurora’s.”
“Does it support life?” Alkema asked incredulously.
“Near the surface, the difference is negligible, but in the outer atmosphere, the intense magnetic field creates a scattering effect that not only makes it difficult to scan the surface, but would also blank out starlight at night and diffuse sunlight to the point where most of the sky is white.
“The planet has almost no axial tilt,” Venture continued, slowly circling the hologram of the planet. “No seasonal variations in temperature. Also, anything beyond 57 degrees in latitude is tundra and ice cap. Anything between 33 degrees north and south latitude is desert.
“And, by coincidence, the planet has just two continents; a large northern continent, mostly above 57 degrees, and mostly tundra, and a smaller desert continent that straddles the equator.” Outlines of these two landmasses appeared on the planet.
The polar landmass capped the planet like a helmet pulled down tight. The smaller continent looked kind of like a dog.
Venture continued. “The planet has some fascinating topography, of course, any topography would be fascinating after two years in space. Nearly eighty per cent of the land mass is in this large continent in the northern hemisphere. Most of it is sub-arctic tundra, except for the part that’s polar ice. In the southern extremes, there are some remarkable forests. Look at these trees.” She enlarged some fuzzy, long-distance recon of a forest on an island off the large northern continent.
“They look like… trees,” Commander Keeler observed.
