The Lost Tribe (Sentinel Series Book 2)

by Richard Flunker

  The mess she walked out of in that room was a highly dysfunctional family at its best. She took a deep breath as she entered her room and closed the door, bringing silence to her mind. With the noise drowned out, she counted the days until she could get back to her research. This hell would be worth it. If she had to stay one more day on this ship, she would lose her mind.

  ***

  Kale’s alarm went off and he sat up in bed. It was not a distress alarm.

  “Sentinel?”

  “Fifteen minutes till we exit threaded space Captain,” the AI informed him.

  Kale stood up and rubbed his eyes. The room was dark, except for the light glow of a tablet. It was Ayia’s tablet. She had handed it off to him so that he could review all the ships they had gone over. He had hoped to get some ideas of how they would design their ship. He had been so stubborn in turning down all the ships they had looked at in the past that he had failed to see the solution in front of him. Once again, Ayia had seen it for him.

  He hadn’t looked at the tablet the night before. He had taken it into his room and had been about to look when he had begun a conversation with Sentinel. He thought for a moment about sneaking a look on the tablet beyond the ships, but quickly turned that thought aside.

  Kale stumbled out of the room into the brightly lit hallway. Gheno was walking out of his room, looking far more fresh and awake than he ought to. He walked past the Captain, smiling that large insulting grin of his. He turned around to see Ayia coming out of her room with the same disheveled look he surely had. That sight made him feel a bit better about his condition. Ayia walked up to him and looked up at him.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “You're damn right,” he mumbled.

  She continued on past him towards the mess hall. Kale looked back to see if the short red head would show up, but he figured she wasn’t used to being woken up by the ship like they were.

  “Sentinel, make sure she’s up. I'm sure she isn’t going to want to waste any time with her work,” Kale asked.

  “Working on it, Captain,” the AI replied. “I also have hot water running for your shower. It might be a long day.”

  Kale nodded his head. He had to stop letting everyone else think for him. “That’s why I love you, Sentinel.”

  It didn’t take him but five minutes to wash up in the steam and get fresh clothes on. The AI had been right, of course. The shower had been refreshing, and knowing how missions had gone in the past, he never knew when it might be when he could clean up next. As he stepped out of the extremely small bathroom, the smell of coffee hit him. For a brief moment, everything was good with the Captain’s life.

  “Captain, three minutes.” The AI quickly brought him back down to reality.

  Kale rushed into the pilot’s cabin and was handed a cup of coffee. Ayia was already sitting in her customary chair and Gheno was standing up towards the back of the cabin. Kale sat down and then noticed Karai sitting in a small pop-up chair at one of the consoles to his right. All of her equipment and sensors were in the cargo bay, but she could work them all from that console. She looked even more disheveled than he had felt.

  She was completely focused on her project. She was in the process of booting up her gear. Gheno leaned over Kale’s shoulder.

  “She’s angry no one woke her up earlier. It’s gonna take some time for all her gear to come online,” Gheno whispered.

  Kale looked back over his shoulder at his adoptive brother and shrugged his shoulder. He had to admit, his crew and ship were a ragtag bunch, but he couldn’t blame anyone if she hadn’t told them anything.

  “Twenty seconds, Captain,” Sentinel informed them.

  “Sentinel, keep the flare guard up, just in case,” Kale ordered the AI.

  “Why?” Ayia asked, turning back to look at him.

  The flare guard was up to keep the bright light that came through in threaded space from flooding the cabin. It was usually disengaged once they exited into normal space. Kale was in the process of explaining this to Ayia when the Lion transport ship slipped through the other end of the hook generated hole and dropped into the Gemini 53 system. In the distance almost directly ahead of them, the twin stars were clear. The flare guard came down after a few seconds when Sentinel determined they were still far enough.

  “Oh yeah, two suns,” Ayia remembered.

  Had they jumped in closer, the added brightness might have overwhelmed the cabin. Kale didn’t think it would have happened, but he wanted to be sure.

  In the distance, the system’s two suns could be seen clearly. It was a smaller system, so their solar edge was far closer to the suns than a system that had other planets in them. This system was devoid of any other bodies other than the two suns. Most likely, if any had existed at any point, they had been pushed away or pulled in by the system’s unusual gravitational forces. It was the prime reason why such a system was a prized research location for those wanting to further understand how gravity worked.

  The two suns were unequal in size and age. The far brighter and almost white star easily dwarfed the much smaller brown star. At the same time though, the density of the stars were most likely equal, and so the giant and the dwarf fought a gravitational battle against each other and would continue to do so for millennia to come. At some point, they would collapse into each other and the resulting fireworks would obliterate everything in sight, so to speak. What would come after that was a matter of speculation, but that would be far past this time.

  “Ok, enough star gazing. Sentinel, find that station and let’s get moving,” the Captain ordered.

  “No beacons,” the AI pointed out.

  “Nothing?” Gheno asked.

  “No, I'm not picking up anything,” the AI replied.

  “They must be worse off than we expected,” Kale said. “Can you find the station?”

  “I am already working on optics and looking for the orbital path around the system. It may take a few hours but I will find it. Unless it isn’t there.”

  “Doom and gloom for breakfast from the AI. For the rest of you, we can eat normal food in the hall,” Kale said, standing up and heading to the dining room. Ayia and Gheno began to follow suit, but Ayia stopped and looked back at Karai. She was intensely involved in her console.

  “Coming, Karai?” she asked.

  “I will shortly. I want to make sure the sensors are up and running. I need them to start taking readings as soon as possible,” she replied, waving Ayia off.

  Karai joined the group already eating their breakfast, about twenty minutes later. The mood was much different than the night before. They were all business-like. When it came to their job, Karai could at least be thankful they took it very seriously.

  After breakfast, Kale and Gheno went to work in the cargo hold, going over their resupplying gear. Nearly two hours after they dropped out of threaded space and into the system, Sentinel had located the research station and had maneuvered the ship into a sling towards it.

  They reached the station in just three hours, all during which Kale and Gheno continued to work. Karai sat up in the pilot’s cabin the entire time, pouring over the first bits of data that were coming in from the sensors. Ayia had looked in on her once to ask how things were going. All she managed to get out of her was a laugh and a raised finger.

  When the transport came to a stop after its sling, Sentinel called everyone back to the cabin. When Kale entered, Karai was already standing looking out of the window. The large black station came into view.

  “Oh, no,” Ayia said quietly.

  The research station was far larger than the Lion transport. It was shaped like a spinning top and was nearly pitch black. Against the blackness of space, it was nearly impossible to see, but with the fraternal twin suns in the background, it was silhouetted clearly. Kale was familiar with this standard station design. He had flown into and out of hundreds of the same design and knew instantly that something was wrong.

  “Unless that’s a new
design,” Kale pointed out, walking and standing in front of the windshield, “there is some kind of, I don’t know, crust, all over the hull of that station.”

  Kale sat down on his Captain’s chair and began running his hand through his short beard.

  “Sentinel, have you picked up anything else?” Kale asked.

  Sentinel informed them he saw nothing else on sensors or opticals. The station itself appeared to be fully intact, but spread across the entire visible hull were small bumps. They were spaced out randomly, not in any pattern even the AI could recognize. Gheno pointed out they looked like inverted craters. The station had been pelted by something, and it was stuck all over its hull.

  “Kale…” Ayia began to say.

  “Yeah, I know,” he added, biting his bottom lip. His chin hair pointed straight out as he did that.

  Karai looked back at them. “What?”

  “It’s just that we don’t have the best of luck with random derelict objects in the deepest parts of space,” Gheno pointed out.

  Kale began trying any open coms, but Sentinel let him know that he had been attempting the same since they had entered the system. They hadn’t picked up any kind of signal, at any point. There were a few windows in the station, but everything was pitch black. All of the external lights were destroyed, off or had no power. As they moved the Lion around to try to find the entrance hangar, they found it half way open. All their sensor readings pointed to the station being completely drained of power. There weren’t even any reserves in the capacitors.

  Kale tugged at his beard. In the past, he would have simply deployed the beacons and drones and left the system. It was all that would be required of him at this point. But he had already seen Ayia’s look of concern and knew that simply bailing out wasn’t going to happen. He turned and looked at Gheno.

  “Can you get that hangar door all the way open?” he asked.

  Gheno smiled and nodded.

  “Then go suit up,” Kale ordered but Gheno was already running out of the cabin.

  Karai looked back in fear. “You're going in there?”

  “Gotta check for survivors.”

  “But,” Karai began, “am I the only one freaked out here?”

  “No, you're not,” Ayia chimed in, “but Kale is right, we have to check it out.”

  “Besides, that gives you more time to do your readings,” Kale added. When he saw her continued look of terror, he said, “Plus, if we get inside, and there are no survivors, maybe I can tap some of their data for you.”

  That was all it took for her terrified look be replaced with a look Kale labeled as greedy. She stepped forward quickly and asked:

  “How can I help?”

  ***

  The main hangar door appeared to be stuck. It was open nearly ten feet. That was enough to allow Gheno to slip in, but nowhere close to allow the transport to fit. Inside, the hangar was cavernous. As Gheno floated in, he shone his light into the darkness and spotted some debris, but no other ships. The station would have had at least one ship there at all times. Gheno took one quick look around to make sure nothing unexpected jumped out at him, then turned around to face the hangar door. It was probably eighty feet wide and just as tall when it was opened. Just outside of the hangar doors, Gheno could see the rear of the Lion transport, angled down just slightly so that he could see one of the cargo bay doors open. Kale floated out of the cargo hold holding two large metal panels about the size of a small briefcase.

  “Catch.” Kale aimed at the open section of the station’s hangar and pushed the two plates. Gheno floated out to the outside of the station and waited there to catch them. He watched them floating slowly over to him and caught them easily. He turned around and set them against the bottoms of the hangar doors. He then turned just as Kale was floating more of the plates over. Gheno caught each one, and continued to place them down along the length of the hangar doors until he had placed twenty similar plates. Once he had them all in place, each one locked on by a small magnet, he turned and gave Kale the thumbs up.

  “Ok, clear back,” Kale ordered.

  Gheno pushed off of the station towards the ship where Sentinel caught him with a tractor field about thirty feet off of the station. The two men, along with the ship, were spinning right along with the station, making it seem like they were stopped in front of it. The station continued to spin on its own, even without any power from within.

  “Sentinel. Pry those doors open if you would.”

  Sentinel extended the gravity field from the transport to form a small wedge in between the stuck doors. He pinpointed pressure on each of the metal plates and began to increase the gravity acting upon them. Kale and Gheno both watched from within their suits as the hangar doors began to slowly shake and then start moving open, even if just slightly. In Kale’s head, he imagined the sounds of groans and creaking as the huge doors tried to move. Those sounds were replaced by the crack of snapping wood as the two hangar doors suddenly crushed inwards, buckling under the pressure of the gravity wedge Sentinel had created.

  Luckily, no debris came flying out.

  “Well, that’s one way to do it.” Gheno turned and smiled at Kale.

  “Sentinel. Take us in,” Kale commanded the AI.

  The Lion transport began to slowly back into the hangar. As the ship went past Kale and Gheno, they grabbed on to the hull of the ship at one of its many hand rails and took a ride into the derelict space station.

  The inside was meant to hold up to three large ships. A horseshoe shaped docking pier was mostly intact and Kale asked Sentinel to dock the ship against the edge on the right as they came in. Three bright flood lights came on from the ship’s hull, shining up, down and to the right, directly onto the dock. Under normal circumstances, the hangar doors would have closed and the hangar would have pressurized, but this was not a normal circumstance. As the ship docked, three clamps appeared under the ship, reaching out to the dock and grabbing onto it. Gheno pulled himself along the hull towards the rear cargo door and disappeared inside. Kale pushed himself off from the ship and onto the dock where his magnetic boots took hold. They could have attempted to move the ship’s own gravity field onto the station, but the risk of falling debris was too high. They would stick to the slower, but safer, non-gravity walk.

  Kale walked towards the middle of the horseshoe, checking out the consoles along the edge. He stopped at the one closest to the ship and opened up the top of the console, revealing several switches and plugs. He turned back just in time to see Gheno coming back out of the cargo hold pulling two cables with him.

  “Yep, just found some here, too,” Kale waved over to Gheno. “Looks like standard F-tap for power and Klink for data.”

  Gheno floated down to the deck with the two cables trailing behind him. He walked over slowly to the console, first plugging the much thicker power cable in, then the data cable.

  “Everything looks ok, nothing damaged,” Gheno pointed out as he turned the console on. The power usually worked in reverse, as the station would provide power to the ship if it needed to do any maintenance to the Hausen reactor, but in this case, they were hoping to use the ship’s reactor to power at least part of the station. It would be up to Gheno and Sentinel to find out how to do that.

  Gheno reached down under the console, opened up a panel to expose the wiring, and began looking inside. Sentinel could see what he was seeing through his helm’s camera and together they would work on that problem.

  “You got this?” Kale asked.

  Gheno gave him a thumb up without looking away from the wires.

  Kale turned around and walked back to the ship. He jumped off from the deck, aiming to the cargo hold. They had left the smaller hold depressurized and would use that as the main entrance and exit from the ship. It was easier that trying to vacuum the whole ship just to get in and out of the main hatch. Once inside, Kale waited for Sentinel to seal the cargo and admit the atmosphere back into the cargo hold before taking off his helmet
. He stripped the suit off and hung it back up just under one of the cargo hold’s air vents. He wanted the sweat to dry out.

  Kale went back in through the ship and found Ayia and Karai in the main cabin.

  “We have power?” Ayia asked.

  “Gheno will figure it out, if it’s possible,” Kale said. He had full faith in the genius teenager. “You getting what you need, doctor?”

  “I don’t have a doctorate,” Karai said, looking back at Kale. She was almost insulted until she realized he was playing with her, yet again. “And yes, I'm getting readings. The initial readings were great. The data from the two suns alone will get me a research grant, but there is some other stuff going out there.”

  “Like?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m not getting the best of readings from inside this hangar. Sentinel? Can you hear me?”

  “Of course he can…” Ayia began.

  “Yes, doctor, I'm here.” The AI’s reply sent Kale into a fit of laughter and made Ayia smile.

  Karai was not amused. “I have three drones with my gear. Are you able to launch them out through the hangar? Once they are out there I can control them myself.”

  “Three minutes.”

  Karai watched through her data as the drones booted up and Sentinel guided them out through the torpedo launch tubes into the void of space. Sentinel used the gravity field to move them out beyond the crushed hangar doors and then released them. Kale and Ayia both watched as Karai began inputting commands from her console to the drones. She hit enter and the three drones vanished from their sight.

  “Where are they going?” Ayia asked.

  “There were three odd gravitational anomalies I had just started to get a read on before we moved the ship in here. I sent the drones on a sling to each of them to see what kind of readings I get back. It should take them between three and six hours to reach them all.”