With help from his “smart Johns,” Auntie Gee, and a highly-engineered reclining seat, a male human of Max’s age, physical condition, and training could sustain that kind of variable G load almost indefinitely. As long as the G load didn’t become more severe.
Which is exactly what it did.
The ship’s angle of descent had become steeper by several degrees, subjecting Max to a G load fluctuating between 6.8 and 8.7 Gs. Max knew that, even all the help the technology at his disposal could give him, an unrelieved G load this severe would kill him would in less than ten minutes.
Probably closer to five.
So, in the end, it seemed to Max that death would come not in the stomach of a tiger, not on the fangs of a serpent, and not at the end of a blowgun, but from the sting of a venomous insect.
Less than half of one minute after reaching this conclusion, Max to begin to experience the effects of, “excessive G forces” on the human body.
It began when his vision began to go gray around edges. Then, a trickle of blood started from his left nostril, serving as a cheery companion to the one from his right that had begun about a minute earlier when the ship took a particularly hard lurch.
It won’t be long now.
Something thumped into the center of Max’s chest and stayed there, stuck to him by the increasing G forces. Max used the fingertip controls on the arm of his command chair to zoom the image from the fixed focus PILOTCAM onto the object, which was quickly revealed to be a tube of some kind of ointment that had worked its way out of one of the Velcro pouches that Max stuck to various surfaces in the cabin to hold pens, styli, tape, odds, and ends. Max ran up the magnification so he could see the tube in detail. It had had landed with the rear side—the one with all the fine print—facing the camera.
BURN TREATMENT CREAM, TOPICAL
NAVSPEC# TCBT-17-100
INDICATIONS: FOR FIRST DEGREE BURNS AND SUNBURN ONLY.
DIRECTIONS: USING STERILE APPLICATOR SPREAD LIGHT COATING OVER BURNED AREA THEN COVER WITH GAUZE BANDAGE AS NEEDED.
DO NOT INGEST. DO NOT APPLY TO OPEN WOUND. DO NOT USE ON EYES OR MUCUS MEMBRANES. NEVER INSERT TUBE INTO ANY BODILY ORIFICE. THIS MEDICATION IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE TREATMENT FOR ANY SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE. THIS MEDICATION IS NOT A SPERMICIDE.
WARNING: NOT FOR USE ON SHIP’S CAT.
WARNING: DO NOT USE AS A MECHANICAL LUBRICANT ON SPACECRAFT MOVING PARTS.
CONTENTS (ACTIVE INGREDIENTS): DUROPARICAIN HCL GSP 5%, (LONG DURATION TOPICAL ANESTHETIC), TRYONOCYCLENE 1.5%, ATASSIMYACIN 1.5%, GESUNDAMYCEF 1.5% (ANTIBIOTICS), KERATINAGEN 0.25%, MELANOCYTE STIMULATING FACTOR #22 0.05% (SKIN REGROWTH STIMULATING AGENTS); (INACTIVE INGREDIENTS): PETROLEUM OIL BASE, COLOR, BORIC ACID AS PRESERVATIVE.
NET WEIGHT 100 G
PROPERTY OF THE UNION SPACE NAVY. NOT FOR RESALE OR BARTER. POSSESSION BY PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS IS A CRIME PURSUANT TO UGS TITLE 28 § 1962.
At that moment, Max came to know for all time one clear, settled, proved, and established fact:
The Universe has a sense of humor. A deeply fucked up sense of humor.
He laughed out loud. Of course, laughing out loud is not a particularly good idea when one’s body is being subjected to a high G load. Max nearly passed out as a result.
Hell, if the Universe has a sense of humor so strange that it throws a tube of burn cream at a man who is about to be char broiled. . . maybe it’s just crazy enough to roll with the joke even farther and let that man survive the landing.
With renewed resolve, Max bore down even harder in the service of Auntie G, stopping the graying vision from getting any worse while speeding up the bleeding.
Life is full of trade-offs.
“Warning: Internal sensors detect increased blood loss by vessel occupant. Excessive blood loss can cause loss of consciousness or death. Recommendation: Implement standard field ex--”
“Discontinue blood loss alarm,”
Max felt a sudden squeezing of his chest as something caused the ship’s angle of descent to steepen by yet another few degrees, pressing him ever harder into his pilot’s seat and causing the baby elephant he felt standing on his chest to grow far faster than young pachyderms do in nature, making it progressively more difficult for him to breathe until he could no longer get enough air. Max didn’t even bother to look at the G reading--he could tell that it was topping 9--the very edge of survivability, and was still increasing. Max’s long held horror of death by G force suffocation started as a tiny ball of ice in his belly that rapidly spread to make his whole body cold with terror.
Several lights and system icons on console displays—of the few that were actually working--turned red and began to blink rapidly, signaling that the G load had crossed the deadly 10 G threshold and was continuing to rise. There was no gear known to the Union that could keep him alive under those conditions. The pain in his chest muscles as they tried to inflate his lungs against the crushing weight was becoming unbearable as Max had to endure more and more pain to get less and less air. In less than a minute, Max found that not being able to inflate his lungs enough wasn’t the problem. He could not inflate his lungs at all. If Max could have drawn a breath, he would have screamed.
It’s all over. C’est tout. I’m already oxygen-starved, so I’ll lose consciousness in about 30 seconds. Two or three more minutes after that, there’s irreparable brain damage, followed in another two minutes or so by brain death, then cardiac arrest. Au revoir Max Robichaux.
Eternity, here I come. This is where I’m supposed to pray. So, here it is: Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me. I beg you to accept my sin-burdened soul into your kingdom and, sweet Jesus, please, please, PLEASE, help me to die like an officer of the Union Space Navy . . . don’t let me piss my flight suit when I die.
The gray that had already started to fill Max’s vision started to go black as the need to breathe ramped up from merely unbearable to torture beyond any imagining. Yet, in the anguished blackness, Max had a distinct consciousness of sound--the rushing of air over the hull of the ship, the groan of stressed metal, the roaring of the life support system as it tried to cool the rapidly heating control cabin, various warning beeps and buzzes of systems that Max had not had time to silence.
This place is remarkably noisy . . . for a tomb.
Two last thoughts . . . what is it like on the other side, and what the fuck am I doing here in the first place?
Log Excerpt, Union Space Ship KMRH-7239 (Nightshade Class), Ensign Maxime Tindall Robichaux, USN, Commanding
08:37 ZULU HOURS, 9 JULY 2304, SHIPLOC UNKNOWN. COURSE 211/147, SPEED 512C [LOG NOTE: CONSUMABLES QUANTITY AND SHIP CONDITION DATA OMITTED]
The Vaaach. The fucking Vaaach. Whoever the hell and whatever the hell they are, it all comes back to them. Union Naval Intelligence, which thinks it knows just about everything (about anything that matters) to anyone (who is anyone who matters), knows almost nothing about the Great and Powerful Vaaach, except that (1) they are the most technologically advanced race ever encountered by humans and (2) they defend their territory by shooting first and asking questions . . . actually, they almost never seem to get around to the “asking questions” part. Even their name is a closely guarded Union military secret. The only reason a lowly ensign like me had even heard of them was that Commodore Hornmeyer, always my biggest fan, ordered me to sneak through enemy lines to a point deep in Krag space near their border with the Vaaach to gather some intel on the Krag. Otherwise, Vaaach weren’t even a blip on my mental sensor display.
That is, until these same Vaaach rudely interrupted my mission, which was to conduct surveillance of a Krag live fire exercise at the above-referenced location. One second the Krag were cheerfully simulating a massive battle, simulating the killing of each other in that cheerful, manic, warlike rodent way we all know and love so well and then--POOF!--a small Vaaach scout ship seemingly just popped into existence into what had looked like a parcel of empty space right in the midst of the simulated fighting.
>
Clearly, the Vaaach ship had been there all the time, hidden by a fantastically advanced stealth capability. It broadcast to the Krag ships a warning that they were in Vaaach space and that they needed to get the hell out immediately, if not sooner, on pain of three kinds of death: speedy, instant, and immediate. The Krag responded to this ultimatum exactly as I expected, in their usual measured, careful, rational manner.
They blew the scout ship to flaming atoms.
The Vaaach were not amused.
The Vaaach were in fact, so distinctly unamused that they sent the Krag a message, the essence of which was: “YOU ATTACKED OUR UNCREWED SCOUT SHIP. YOU ARE VERMIN. WE WILL KILL YOU NOW.”
And that’s exactly what they did.
A giant Vaaach ship--I mean “GIANT,” as in the “that’s no moon” over twenty-two fucking kilometers long kind of “giant”--appeared just 2000 kilometers from the Krag formation. It looked like an obsidian spear point, except for the 3.8 bazillion weapons bristling from its hull. It was the deadliest looking thing I’ve ever seen.
For a while it just sat there, giving the Krag a chance to try to destroy it with every weapon they had. It was like watching a rabble of Preserve the Primitive Planets protesters throwing pebbles at Union Marines driving Zhukov Mark XX Main Battle Tanks. The combined firepower of two full-blown Krag carrier battle groups--at least ninety carriers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and fighters, plus an enormous battle station--wasn’t enough to reduce the strength of the Vaaach deflectors by so much as a tenth of a percent, much less make a dent in the actual ship.
If Vaaach laugh, they must have laughed their asses off. If they have asses. Once they were (presumably) done laughing, the Vaaach returned fire and effortlessly swept the Krag from space, leaving behind nothing but fist and smaller-sized debris along with a huge metal ball into which they had somehow gravitationally wadded an entire battle station as though it were nothing but a sheet of aluminum foil to be tossed in a waste receptacle.
All of which was fine by me. I’m all in favor of killing Krag, and killing as many of them as possible as fast as possible. Given the chance, I’d even sell tickets and work the concession stand selling Nebula Nougat bars and Cosmos Colas. If the Vaaach had wiped out their entire species down to the last set of whiskers, hit their homeworld with a planet cracker leaving nothing behind but a belt of asteroids, and wiped away all evidence and every record of their very existence, it would be the happiest day of my life.
In fact, if I hadn’t been hiding from them out of concern that I would receive similar treatment to what I had just seen them do to the Krag, I’d have sent the Vaaach ship a hearty BRAVO ZULU and offered to buy the whole crew a round at the nearest bar that lets sixteen year olds buy liquor so long as they are wearing a navy uniform for any rank above midshipman. But, the Vaaach spoiled their chance to join the only Coonass in the sector in hoisting a tall half (known among some old timers as a “pint”) of Brother Babineaux’s Genuine Cajun Lager (or even two or three of them) by locking me out of almost all of my ship’s controls and tractoring my ship inside theirs. They then totally ruined their chances of being invited to any crawfish boil, shrimp boil, picnic, boudin buffet, fish fry, barbeque, or couchon de lait I will ever hold by dragging me 14,000 light years across the galaxy (quite literally, “where no man has gone before”), a distance that I could never cross in this ship without a lot of outside help in terms of provisions and maintenance.
It’s their loss.
My captors haven’t exactly been chatty, but the Vaaach have made it clear that they want me to jump through some hoops before they will ever let me go home. I managed to make it through the first hoop when I saved an insectoid race I call the Tindallites from having millions of their still-in-the-egg children stolen from them by aliens they called the Plunderers. After completing that task, I didn’t get so much as a pat on the back before the Vaaach told me that my next hurdle involved being sent to the “Hunters of Vermin,” whoever they are. I barely had time to catch my breath and eat a pseudo-chicken sandwich before one of the Vaaach’s gigantic, spearhead-shaped, “look at me, I’m here to kill you now” battle ships showed up, pulled my ship inside with a grappling field, carried it for a little over a day, and then spat it out in the middle of nowhere.
I’m now on a locked course, with no access to my sensors, no access to any of my nav systems, just along for the ride. I don’t even get the highly dilute thrill of watching the galactic coordinate numbers slowly change as I move through space, as the display is showing nothing but asterisks for all three coordinates. I don’t even have access to the controls for the calibrated telescopes and star scanners that would let me work out my position by direct measurement and calculation.
I’m probably repeating a lot from earlier entries, but with no access to any of my flight, navigation, or sensor systems, it’s not like I’m exactly overloaded with things to do. A little boredom is probably good given what I’ve just been through and what I expect I’m about to go through.
My only consolation is that I’m probably using up my personal quota of excitement for rest of my life. How many wild adventures can one life have, anyway? Besides, when I get back home from a fiasco like this, after he’s done carving me up like a Christmas ham, old Big Horn Hornmeyer is going to chain me to the most boring desk job in the whole Union Space Navy for the next twenty years.
I’m kinda looking forward to it.
Full Text of LORAHIPO (LOng RAnge HIgh POwer--Pronounced “Low Rah Hippo”) Tachyon Morse Transmission Received by SFR-52 Stealth Reconnaissance Fighter KMRH-7239 05:53 Zulu Hours, 9 July 2304
15:14 ZULU HOURS, 8 JULY 2304
TOP SECRET
URGENT: FOR IMMEDIATE IMPLEMENTATION
FROM: HORNMEYER, L.G., CMRE USN, CDR BG-I 84-3 ORANGE
TO: ROBICHAUX, M.T. ENSN USN, PLT SFR-52: KMRH-7239
RE: OPERATIONAL ORDERS
1. RECEIPT OF YOUR STATUS UPDATE OF 11:38 ZULU HOURS 6 JULY 2304, AS WELL AS SHIP’S LOGS TRANSMITTED UNDER COVER THEREOF, IS HEREBY ACKNOWLEDGED. KEEP THEM COMING, SON--THIS SHIT BEATS THE HELL OUT OF THOSE GODDAMN LIMEY SAILING SHIP BOOKS THAT REAR ADMIRAL MIDDLETON KEEPS SWEET-TALKING ME INTO READING. GIVE ME THE VAAACH OVER “HOIST THE MIZZEN TOPGALLENTS AND STRIKE THE ROYALS” ANY DAY.
2. MIDDLETON INFORMS ME THAT THE “SENIOR UNION ENVOY AT LARGE” HAS PERSONALLY TAKEN CHARGE OF DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS TO OBTAIN YOUR RELEASE FROM THE VAAACH. THIS IS GOOD NEWS BECAUSE THE ENVOY IN QUESTION ISN’T THE TYPICAL MEALY-MOUTHED, TIME-SERVING, PAPER-PUSHING, ASS-KISSING, HALF-WITTED, PANTY-WAISTED, EXTENDED-PINKY-FINGER, WANKER-SPANKER BUREAUCRAT WHO COULDN’T OPERATE A ZERO-G CRAPPER IF YOU DREW HIM A DETAILED DIAGRAM. INSTEAD, HE IS ADMIRAL MIDDLETON’S OLDER BROTHER, SIR RUPERT HOLBROOK MIDDLETON, KG, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, GPGC, FIRST LORD OF NEW STRATFORD AND ALL THE STRATFORDIAN MOONS, ALONG WITH A WAGONLOAD OF OTHER PROPER BRITANNIC HONORARY HAPPY HORSESHIT. I’VE WORKED WITH THE MAN AND HE MAY ACTUALLY BE EVEN MORE LOYAL AND DECENT THAN HIS BROTHER, AND IS ONE BRILLIANTLY CRAFTY MOTHERFUCKER BESIDES.
3. SIR RUPERT IS GIVING IT HIS STIFF-UPPER-LIP-OLD-CHAP BEST BUT HAS NOTHING YET TO SHOW FOR HIS EFFORTS. THE VAAACH WILL NOT MEET WITH HIM, WILL NOT ALLOW HIM INTO THEIR SPACE, AND WILL NOT (WITH ONE NOTABLE EXCEPTION) RESPOND TO HIS COMMUNICATIONS.
4. STUBBORN OLD BASTARD THAT HE IS, SIR RUPERT REFUSED TO TAKE “NO, WE’RE NOT TALKING TO ANY CLAWLESS MONKEYS WITH BANANA SEEDS IN THEIR SHIT” FOR AN ANSWER. SOMEHOW, HE MANAGED TO GET THE ATTENTION OF THE EVEN-MORE-MYSTERIOUS-THAN-THE-VAAACH “SINGING SISTERS” OF THE BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION OF TRI-NIN MATRIARCHS AND ASSOCIATED MALES, WHO ARE AMONG THE FEW RACES IN KNOWN SPACE THAT HAVE DIPLOMATIC AND TRADE RELATIONS WITH THE VAAACH SOVEREIGNTY. THEY AGREED TO ACCEPT SIR RUPERT’S MESSAGES AND PASS THEM ON TO THE APPROPRIATE VAAACH OFFICIAL, IN EXCHANGE FOR FREE ACCESS TO THE COMPLETE CORPUS OF HUMAN RECORDED MUSIC VIA THEIR GALACTINET HOOKUP. THE DOWNLOAD FEES ARE ALREADY MORE THAN YOU WILL EVER MAKE IN YOUR ENTIRE NAVAL CAREER, SO I HOPE YOU TURN OUT TO BE WORTH IT. I HAVE MY DO
UBTS. I KNOW YOU ARE A MUSIC LOVER, SO YOU MAY BE INTERESTED TO KNOW THAT THE SINGING SISTERS APPEAR TO BE PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN THE COMPOSITIONS OF MOZART, DVORAK, GILBERT & SULLIVAN, TARO ISHII, AND SOME FELLOWS CALLED “THE BEATLES.” NO ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE.
5. SIR RUPERT HAS SENT THE VAAACH FOUR MESSAGES VIA THE TRI-NIN AND HAS RECEIVED ONLY ONE REPLY. GIVEN THAT THE VAAACH HAVE A CERTAIN WAY WITH WORDS (IT’S POSSIBLE THAT THIS MAY HAVE ESCAPED YOUR NOTICE), I’M GIVING YOU THE ORIGINAL TEXT IN FULL. AFTER ALL THERE’S NO NEED FOR ME TO HOARD THIS STUFF. THERE’S PLENTY OF INSULTS AND CHEST BEATING TO GO AROUND.
*****************************************
TO: RUPERT MIDDLETON, SPECIAL ENVOY AT LARGE, REPRESENTING THE UNION OF EARTH AND TERRAN SETTLED WORLDS.
FROM: RRMTHMRM, DISHONORED HUNTER, NOW THE VAAACH SOVEREIGNTY’S MIDDLE-SPEAKER TO FRUIT EATERS, GRASS GRAZERS, BOTTOM FEEDERS, SCAVENGERS OF DEAD ANIMALS, SELF-AWARE PARASITES, SELLERS OF USED SPACE CRAFT, AND THE OTHERWISE LOATHSOME, BASE, AND HONORLESS BEINGS OF THE GALAXY.
I GREET YOU, BLUNT-TOOTHED FRUIT EATER. THE VAAACH NOW HOLD IN THEIR CLAWS YOUR LONG-WINDED MONKEY-CHATTER ABOUT ENSIGN ROBICHAUX. THE MIGHTY FOREST-MOOT OF THE VAAACH SOVEREIGNTY BIDS THAT I SEND TO YOU ITS ANSWER, THUS:
YOU TELL US THAT SENDING YOUNG ROBICHAUX BACK TO YOU WOULD BE A FRIEND-TOKEN, BUILDING GOOD WILL IN THE UNION TOWARD THE VAAACH.
IT MAY BE SO.
BUT, THE MIGHTY VAAACH NEITHER NEED NOR WANT FRIENDSHIP WITH YOUR KNUCKLE-WALKING MONKEY KIN. WE WOULD GAIN NOTHING. EVEN YOUR STUNTED APE BRAINS SHOULD GRASP THAT YOUR HOPELESSLY WEAK “SPACE NAVY” IS NEITHER A THREAT TO US NOR FIT TO FIGHT AT OUR SIDE. EVEN IF YOU HAD MANY MORE SHIPS, YOUR WAR-CRAFT IS LITTLE MORE TO US THAN STONE-TIPPED WOODEN SPEARS AND ROUGHLY CHIPPED FLINT HAND AXES.
The Hunters of Vermin Page 2
