In between those tasks, I want the three of you to work on the fighter we found boxed up, I need a report as soon as possible as to whether it can be made space worthy.
Can you take this on Kyle? Buzz and Bambi will you support you.”
“Aye, aye Skipper,” replied Kyle, who was quickly followed by his two colleagues. “We will turn in now to get some shut eye and let’s meet in the forward mess around 7:00 ship time.”
Esther bid them good night and returned with Kara to their positions on the bridge.
The three Engineers, still in their armour eased their bones from their seats and headed back to their quarters. They reached Buzz’s first, the other two wished him a good night agreeing they would meet for breakfast and he better not over sleep.
As they came to Bambi’s door she turned to Kyle and said, “I need to talk, can we grab a quick drink in the mess?”
“Sure but let’s get out of this gear first, it seems like we have been wearing it for days not hours. I want to get a quick shower too, so, I’ll see you down there in fifteen to twenty and I bet I am first.”
“See you,” she replied, “if you are there first get me a Sibolian Kaffoo with extra everything.”
After the shower and fresh clothes, he felt light on his feet without his life saving armour. He already had an idea of what was on Bambi’s mind and decided to take a bottle of old earth brandy with him that he had liberated from the stores. Strolling through the double doors of the mess he was surprised to see his date already there, she had two large cups of steaming Sibolian on the table in front of her. She too was wearing a green Moons coverall, but still looked feminine even though she had recently been an armoured killing machine.
Kyle picked up two small glasses from the storage cover and nodded towards the bottle, “I feel I might need a shot of this, do you want to join me?”
“Yes I better had, make mine a large one. Kyle, I think I can say that we have got a lot closer than colleagues or friends since we have been on the Moons. From the time I broke up with Lengo and since we lost the Seeker I have really enjoyed your company but……..”
“Ah the but………., look Rachel,” he said using her real name, which was quite unusual but thought it appropriate, I saw your face when Kara mentioned Lengo was still alive. I can see that you still have feelings for him and that’s fine, he is a really lucky guy to have a girl like you caring for him. Lucky is probably not the right word in the circumstances but you know what I mean.”
“Kyle, you are a fantastic friend, the best, you are right that I have feelings and I am confused as hell but I do know that until Lengo is free I just cannot get involved.”
“Whatever I can do to help I will and it's ok to focus on Lengo, I feel that at this moment, he needs all our thoughts.”
He had to really watch what he was saying as he knew Lengo and had thought that he was a flashy show off, who would break a girls heart without a thought but now wasn’t the time. Neither did he know whether he wanted a deep relationship with Bambi when Esther was potentially available.
Kyle had sunk the first brandy very quickly and was now sipping his Sibolian whilst it was still warm, “let’s change the subject, how do you feel after the fighting today?”
“It’s a tough question especially as I think I had every emotion going, fear, elation, worry, self-doubt and self-loathing but at the end of the day it’s just relief, relief that I survived, relief that I will wake up tomorrow and relief that I didn’t let my friends down.”
“A good explanation Bambs and I can honestly say that’s exactly the same for me. One more shot of brandy and we had better turn in, we have a mountain of work to do.”
Ten minutes later they drained their glasses and walked arm in arm to Bambi’s door, without stopping Kyle bent down and kissed her on the cheek, opened the door to her cabin and turned for his own room knowing that Bambi was still watching him.
He had trouble sleeping as he kept seeing the face of the man he had killed in hand to hand combat but after all the regret he had to recognise that the other man would have had no qualms about running him through if he could have.
When sleep finally came it only seemed five minutes before he was being woken by the alarm on the comms centre. “Crap, crap and double crap,” Kyle spat out as an oath. Unfortunately for him, he was the one responsible for the work detail, so pulled his tired body out of the bed and towards the shower.
He came out of the bathroom feeling at least partly refreshed and looked for another clean green overall to put on. Dressing he looked across at his armour, leaning erect against the wall, it still gave him a thrill to think it made him look so warlike. Seeing the scorch marks and dents which now blemished the surface, he understood that without his protective shell he would have been fried early in the fight.
It was a few minutes to seven and he was the first of the trio to arrive for breakfast, Pixie was in the mess just finishing hers. “Hi Pixie, how’s things at the front end?” he enquired in a manner more cheerful than he actually felt.
“Oh you know, so far so good, we are maintaining a good speed and the course is just right, we should arrive at the cloud within the next 24 hours. The one bad thing is that our scanners have picked up three ships from Chamtofi in hot pursuit.”
“Will they catch us?”
“At their current speed the back two will just be too late, but the first one will arrive at almost the same time.”
“Has Esther, sorry the Sub got a plan?”
“No, well not that she has told me but I am sure that she will think of something. Please excuse me, I have just done twelve hours straight on the bridge and I have to be back there in eight for another shift, see you later Getaway,” she shouted back using his crew name.
Buzz the next to arrive was followed by a weary Bambi, it looked as though none of them had really slept and he filled the others in with Pixie’s update.
“I don’t want to sound stupid and I know you have told me before but how do these clouds work?” asked Buzz.
Although Kyle was an ex-con he was probably even more intelligent than Bambi, who was quite a brainbox being a reactor engineer. Studying Astral physics had been his early passion and it was something he had continued in the prison library.
Kyle began, “It’s like this Buzz, you must have heard of the ‘big bang’ which to all intents and purposes created the universe, well it generated black matter, grey matter, planetary mass and yellow matter. These components have taken millennia for the scientists to unravel but we now use energised grey matter to power interplanetary ships, factories and cities. Black matter seems to hold everything else in place. The one that is still not fully understood is yellow matter, which exists as clouds of yellowy brown dust at various points around the universe. The magical property of this dust is that when it was fired out in the ‘big bang’ it gathered in clumps and these clumps have the need to re-join the other groups of matter at whatever point it held before the bang but now the force to move is counteracted by an equal and opposite propulsion. When anything enters a cloud the forces within spit it out into another cloud in the blink of an eye. Which cloud you arrive at depends on your angle of entry, mass and speed, it has taken many years to work out any sort of coherent map but it does all seem to work.”
“OK, I accept what you say but it still sounds like a bizarre piece of witchcraft.”
Bambi who had been quiet for a while was staring into her empty mug. “The cloud could be our escape route or it could be a spider’s web to lure us to destruction. If we get there first and that is not for certain the pursuers can monitor our course and speed. If they get our mass calculations anywhere near they could still be on our tail at the exit point.”
Kyle could tell that she was a bit down and did not want to get into an argument, so he ended the conversation by saying, “Whatever happens it’s going to be close and we have got to pitch in and do what we can. You two get the prisoners fed and watered, I’ll take t
he mug shots of the bodies then join me when you have finished with a couple of air trolleys and we will give our deceased friends a space burial.
Some two hours later the small personnel air lock door closed for the last time as the final batch of the vanquished pirates was blasted into space. None of the three former Seeker crew watched the bodies go into the vacuum, they knew it wouldn’t be good viewing.
Bambi spoke quietly, “shouldn’t we say a few words for them? You know, something religious.”
“You must be joking,” said Buzz, “that godless lot won’t have a religion between them.”
“She is right Buzz and although it may not help their souls it might be of benefit to ours,” with that he dropped his hands and brought them together. “May the God of the fallen remember the souls of those recently departed and may you grant them a better life in the next world and time to reflect on the evil they inflicted on others in this one. Go in peace.”
“Thanks Getaway that feels right,” said Bambi.
“That’s all the moralising from me today, come on you two we have a fighter to build.” Kyle pressed the door release button and strode off to the waiting Slasher.
Checking out the manual for the Slasher on the computerised display in the hanger, the 5 day assembly time was confirmed, how were they going to get the job done in 24 hours? The answer became quite apparent as the main crate for the kit was opened. It had already been assembled!
The bullet shaped craft was eased out of its crate with the hangars Tug and when it was clear it was lowered to stand on its landing tripod. As the trio walked around the small craft Buzz pointed at the scorch marks surrounding the engine vents, “Guys this baby is second hand, used or something but it don’t need any assembly.”
Bambi was off searching through the smallest crate in the kit and soon found what she was looking for, the command and control pane computer for the fighter. They were fairly standard in layout and configuration. She soon found the service log entries and shouted, “Hey you two, I’ve found the problem” and as the two men gathered round she continued, “It’s been flown for around twenty hours and the indications are that it flies pretty well. Equally the weapons systems have been installed and have been tested as functional, the problem that has been identified is a software bug within the programming and it won’t talk to the ship’s computer. The records indicate that the engineers at the destination point spent hours trying to solve this issue and everything they tried was useless, so ultimately they rejected the delivery and it was on its way back to the manufacturer.”
“So good news and bad news, can you two run some diagnostics and see if you can come up with anything?” asked Kyle, “I’ll check out our men in the sick bay and report in to Esther but I will be back as soon as...”
He jumped on a nearby air scooter and raced off to the sick bay. When he arrived he shut down the scooter and left it against the wall, walked through the door and was met by Nurse Betty 2671 whose recognition software calculated that she had seen this visitor recently.
“Have you come to visit the patients?”
“Yes nurse are they taking visitors?”
They have both had the necessary medical procedures and with rest will make a good recovery. Secom Freeman is now in recovery room 7 and Mr Ngola is in room 9. Please go through but you may have to wait for the Secom as he currently has a visitor.
The door to room 7 was open and Kyle stuck his head around to see Freeman in the bed and Esther seated on a chair by his side, she was holding his hand and speaking quietly. She looked up to see Kyle in the doorway and pulled her hand away. “Come in Getaway, I was just leaving.”
“No hurry Sub, I need to bring you up to speed on the situation with the Slasher, we can undoubtedly get it flying in a matter of hours as it has already been assembled and flown. What I cannot guarantee is that it will deliver any munitions, unfortunately it’s been rejected by the government that purchased it for just that reason. Bambi and Buzz are trying their level best to sort the software but my advice is to make your plans without relying on the fighter.
I will check on the latest position after seeing Shiner and get straight back to you Sub, sorry for the intrusion I can see that the Secom is in good hands.”
“Getaway, spare me a few minutes when you have seen Ngola.”
“No problem Secom, I’ll be back when Shiner gets boring,” he backed out of the room feeling embarrassed that he had caught out his superiors in some tryst and he was more than a little jealous.”
His next stop was Ngola’s room, he did not bother to knock and made his friend sit up with a start. “How’re you doing you work dodger?”
“None the better for seeing you, you miserable ex-con,” responded Shiner with a wide smile, “I thought you had forgotten about your wounded comrade.”
“No chance of that, you still owe me 30 creds for the personal entertainment centre I sold you.”
“You mean the one I left on the Seeker and is now in a billion particles,” Shiner replied, “if that’s the one then I was going to give it you back because it was too loud.”
“If only you had given it me back, then you wouldn’t still owe me the 30 creds,” said Kyle smiling. “It does mean I still have to keep your worthless hide safe until I am paid.” They both laughed “seriously Shiner, how’s the arm coming on?”
“My arm is nearly as good as new, the staff here may be weird but at least they seem to be programmed to know what they are doing. They stabilised the burn then sprayed my burnt arm with a skin gel and setting solution, it feels great. It has to be bandaged for another day or so and then I will be back with the gang.”
“Yes and it will be good to have you back, especially with your knowledge of OS software,” and he explained the problem with the Slasher’s weapons systems.”
“I am afraid you are wasting your time at least for now, I have been doing some research using the Secom’s pane computer while I have been lying in bed and there was a batch of Slashers that had infected software installed at the auxiliary interface. It looks like ours is one of those and the only way we can get it working is to complete a full software removal and reinstall a beta version.”
“So, why don’t we do that?” questioned Kyle.
“There is no beta version in the ship’s software library and we are not close enough to any secure source for it to be sent to us.”
He exhaled loudly, “Damn to the power of twenty, this means we are still defenceless. That’s bad news but I might as well stop Bambi and Buzz wasting their efforts. Send me a comms from the sick bay comms unit when you know when you will be discharged. See you later and try to leave the nurses alone!”
On his way out he was thinking of missing out the Secom, but the decision was made for him when a voice boomed out, “Engineer Cassidy in here please.”
“I was on my way Secom,” he lied unconvincingly, “how are you feeling?”
“Cut the crap Cassidy,” Freeman said choosing not to use the crew name, I know you are sweet on the Sub so don’t lie but I think you have little chance with her. I would guess by your look when you came in here the first time that you think I am making some sort of play for her, but you can put that out of your mind. Firstly I am nearly old enough to be her father and secondly I am happily married. If that weren’t enough then you will realise that Esther is hell bent on a career and she has no place for any man who might get in the way of her ambition.”
“Sorry Secom, I know you are right, I am a bit old for a schoolboy crush. Just do me a favour if you catch me going dewy eyed again and hit me with something hard.”
“No problem Getaway, I do need to tell you that Esther has been a real friend over the last few days, I don’t want to go into details why but she has been fantastic.
Changing the subject, you began by asking how I was getting on and the answer is only so good. Unfortunately for me the metal rod which punctured my leg, not only wrecked a mass of tissue but it also shattered my femur
. The staff here have implanted new tissue but the metallic bone is going to take a couple of weeks to bind with the real bone and even then I will probably walk like a hu-mechy.
Still it could have been worse and we were lucky to get through the fire fight. Getaway you were awesome out there, but don’t get any ideas that fighting pirates is easy, we were lucky and they were sloppy.”
“Sorry Secom, I didn’t realise I was behaving like an arse, I will try to be more professional and I take your point about not getting carried away with our victory. Now don’t you worry about me Sir, you are the one who needs to heal.”
“Getaway, you can cut out the Secom and the Sir right now, call me Ivan. Despite us both agreeing that we were lucky with the firefight you were the difference between success and failure, if you hadn’t seized the initiative with the attack we would not have had the element of surprise and would have been barbecued ourselves. As a piece of soldiering you should be rightly proud and if I get chance to tell the authorities about your role I certainly will.”
“Thanks Secom, I mean Ivan, I think it was down to your training and the equipment we had but I am quite prepared to accept all accolades especially monetary ones. You should know that I was as sacred as hell and think I’ll stick to engineering in the future.
Let me know when you can get out of bed, I will stand you a Kaffoo in the mess and bring the ‘special additive’ with me.”
“You are a good man Kyle, now get back to work there’s a war on.”
He got up from his seat and gave Freeman his impression of a full salute, as he thought here was a proper officer and worthy of it.”
He rode his air scooter quickly back to the hangar where his friends were still vainly trying to get the fighter’s weapon systems to wake up. As he stuck his head through the access doorway he heard another voice which was Kara de la Criox and shouted, “High gang any luck?” though he already knew the answer.
“Not looking good as yet,” said Bambi “Kara told me that she had heard of the issue before with this model of Slasher and sometimes it is cleared by installing all the weapon packs.”
Seeker of Moons (Cassidy's Command Book 1) Page 8
