by Randy Dyess
Entiray had just cleared the complex’s main gate when he saw Freack ships entering the atmosphere. I’m not going to make it, he thought as he stopped and looked at his AI unit. Damn, he thought as he saw the unit wasn’t working. After this is over, I need to figure out a way to counter-act that damn energy pulse. Entiray knew he didn’t have a choice, he needed to make it to the family shelters to make sure his wife and daughter were safe. He started to pick up the pace when he saw a Freack ship land a few blocks from him. Knowing he wouldn’t make it to the shelters, he looked around for something he could use to defend himself with. The tunnels! He remembered. They should be safe and there is an entry just outside the data center complex. Running back towards the complex, Entiray stooped down and opened the small hatch leading into the system of drainage tunnels running throughout the old city.
Jumping into the drainage tunnel, Entiray cringed as a splash echoed down the tunnel. He knew the tunnel openings were too small for the type of Freack he saw landing on the surface, but his active mind kept creating a smaller version of the monster which could search the tunnels and find him. Just keep going, he thought. There are no small Freack and you’re safe. Keep going.
Quantum was a wet world. Entiray’s people had evolved from small amphibians living in the large swamps covering the planet. Old stories had said the Freack were afraid of water, but nobody seem to question the fact that this supposedly water-hating species had attacked Quantum, which was covered with swamps and water. It wasn’t until much later, that Entiray had come across references to multiple types of Freacks. The Syndicate had created several versions of the monsters, each suited to its purpose. They had created Freack suitable for dry planets, wet planets, planets without gravity, and even a version which could be used in space. Entiray had once found a reference in the Feebie data banks to a superior version of the Freack, called the Eyoxcan. The Eyoxcan were the version the Syndicate used during their war with the Feebies. He shuddered thinking how terrible the Eyoxcan were if they could overcome the technology of the Feebies. But right now, he didn’t care about which version of Freack were landing. He was just glad Quantum was a wet world and his ancestors had built the drainage tunnels. Any questions he had about the Freack could wait, all he cared about was how to get to his family before the Freack found them and the tunnels were the answer.
The scientist in Entiray couldn’t help but marvel at the workmanship of the tunnels. He had been in them before and just couldn’t get out of his mind how advanced his ancestors must have been to be able to fuse rock together in a way that 30,000 cycles later it looked brand new. Yes, moss covered the walls and rubble from the recent storms blocked some of the tunnels, but they were still as good as the day they were created. His ancestors had created whole cities using this system and except for the buildings destroyed in Freack harvests, the buildings were ready to move back in with a little cleaning and clearing. How could we have fallen so far, Entiray thought as he crawled over a pile of rubble blocking his way. We have got to figure out a way to stop these damn Freack and recover. We shouldn’t have to live in fear and with technology our ancestors had a hundred thousand cycles ago.
“I should have planned for this and had Eoqae and Aebhi just use the tunnels. I should have known I’d be in the data center if something happened. This would have made it much easier,” Entiray muttered. Stop beating yourself up! There’s no way you could have known they would be 1,000 cycles early. There’s were no indications, anywhere in the data bank, they would change their harvest cycle and harvest earlier than every 3,000 cycles. It doesn’t matter what you think you should have done, he thought. Now’s the time to suck it up and save your family.
Entiray had been keeping a rough accounting of the distance he had traveled in the tunnels since leaving the data center. If he was right, he should be right outside of the family dorms and only a hundred or so mini-lengths from the shelters. Walking over and facing the nearest drainage hole, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Now! he thought as he jumped up and grabbed the lip of the hole. He needed to see if any Freack were in the area before he opened the hatch and stepped out of the tunnel. He was worried. He didn’t know what a Freack would do if it saw him in the drainage hole. Would it try to get him and then give up when it couldn’t get into the hole? Would it rip the place apart trying to get him? Entiray just didn’t know and had to take the chance. He let out a deep sigh as he saw the area around him was clear of Freack. He hung a few more mini-divisions to make sure and when he was positive there were no Freack in the area, he dropped down back into the tunnel and found the first hatch to the outside.
Stepping through the hatch, Entiray scanned the area once more. I need to get to cover, he thought as he raced to a small section of forest near the dorms. Immediately, he could hear the bellowing of the giant Oohr that lived in the swamps. He knew from his studies that the beasts were not native to Quantum. They and the others had been placed on the planet as livestock for the Freack. That was the reason for the continued harvest of the planet. The Freack would come back to harvest their herds after they had time to repopulate the planet.
Maybe, the Freack were only after the Oohr and would ignore us, he kept saying to himself as he crept through the grove of Brak. The giant plants covered the surface of the planet and Entiray had always loved their fruit. Now, he loved them because their fronds provided him with the safety he needed to find his family. Stepping through the last of the Brak, Entiray could see the shelter’s entrance. “No!” he screamed as he realized the shelter’s doors had been blasted open. Still screaming, he fell to his knees and never saw or heard the Freack rushing towards him.
Chapter 3
The Sullivan Shipping Company’s flagship vessel, Sullivan’s Pride, streamed through the tunnel that formed when two FTL endpoints connected. No one outside the Sullivan’s Pride could see the vessel or interact with it during FTL, and no one inside the Sullivan’s Pride could communicate with the outside. To those who watched a ship entering FTL, she would seem to simply disappear into a distortion field. To those inside the Sullivan’s Pride, life went on as normal.
“Ten hours to Taurus Prime,” the ship’s AI announced. Captain Dakota Sullivan was making her way from her stateroom to the mess hall for breakfast when she heard the announcement. She glanced at the AI strapped to her wrist and confirmed that the ship was on schedule. Sullivan’s Pride was new; it had taken Dakota and her sister, Cheyenne, five years of hard work to develop. They had taken every lesson they’d learned from the battle at Pirate’s Bay five years ago and implemented them. The Sullivan’s Pride now had advancements in navigation, propulsion, sensors, and weapons, which made her outclass every ship in human space. After looking at her design, most ship architects would put her up against anything the Terran Navy had, including their much-vaulted flagship, the Titan.
“Morning, Captain,” the cook said. “The usual?”
“You got it, Joey,” Dakota said. She waited for the cook to put two scrambled eggs, two pieces of lightly browned toast, and two slabs of turkey bacon on her plate. When they were heading into battle, Dakota always ate a large breakfast. A decade of experience with fighting pirates had taught her to eat before her ships came out of an FTL tunnel and headed into battle. A battle could last a few minutes or all day and would often leave her without another chance to eat for ten or twelve hours.
After grabbing a cup of coffee, she sat down with her food and started the ritual of her pre-battle breakfast. The coffee cup was placed five inches to the upper right of the plate, and the plate was turned so the eggs faced her with the bacon to the upper right and the toast to the upper left. Dakota then sprinkled five shakes of pepper over her eggs. She closed her eyes for a quick shipper’s prayer, thanking the shipping gods, whoever they may be, for a quick and easy patrol. She prayed for no red tape, no official hoping for a bribe, and no reckless pirates thinking they could raid ships in her patrol zone.
A forkful of eggs, twenty
chews. A piece of bacon, twenty chews. A sliver of toast, twenty chews. A sip of coffee to wash it all down. It was a ritual she had performed dozens of times over the years—a ritual she would have sworn helped her create the most feared security vessels for billions of kilometers.
“Someday, you need to see a shrink about that ritual of yours, big sister,” Dakota’s younger brother said as he walked up beside her. The rest of the crew cringed; no one bothered the captain as she ate her pre-battle breakfast.
Dakota glanced at Owen. “You should see someone about that habit of yours,” she commented as she saw Owen’s plate, which was packed high with eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, melon, and just about everything he could snag from the breakfast bar.
“I’m hungry. The way you work me, I need to eat this much to keep up my strength.”
“You sit in a chair for ten hours a day punching buttons on a monitor. It’s not like you’re fighting pirates. Why are you not on duty? Didn’t you have the third watch last night? I don’t believe it ends for another two hours.”
“Yeah, yeah. Skip relieved me early. He said I should come down here and keep you company—you always get nervous right before a battle.”
“He did, did he?” Dakota said.
“Yep. I’m supposed to talk to you and make you feel better,” Owen said with a smile.
“You should take your food up the bridge and ask Skip what the punishment is for disturbing the captain during her breakfast. Once he tells you, you can thank him for making you look like an idiot again.”
“Crap—that jerk. You don’t want anyone bothering you, do you?”
“You’ll learn, baby brother. One of these days, those guys won’t be able to punk you like this,” Dakota said. “Well, since you’re here, take a seat. Not what you expected, huh?”
“Not exactly. Why go to battle stations so soon? I thought we had another eight hours before reaching the pirate fleet?”
“A ship is vulnerable when shedding its FTL bubble. Pirates often line up and strafe a freighter as it exits the bubble before it has electronics back. Being at the battle stations lets us respond fast enough to fight off the attack before we are damaged.”
“What ship out there could damage us? I’ve seen the specs—we have more armor than ships five times our size.”
“True, but we didn’t build the Pride for today’s environment; we built her for the next thirty years. We may not always be the toughest ship out here.”
“What makes you think that? Except for your battle at Pirate’s Bay five years ago, it has been hundreds of years since the last fight between actual warships. The pirates we go up against now barely have weapons—they aren’t actual warships. What would change that, now?”
Dakota didn’t answer. She looked at her AI unit and flicked a series of files at Owen’s. “Read those and tell me what you think.”
He spent the next few minutes scanning the reports before looking at his sister. “Are these figures accurate?”
“Unfortunately, yes. U-981 is about to be played out everywhere in our little part of the galaxy. As you can see, the prices have tripled in the last year alone, and the delivery amounts have fallen to a tenth of what they used to be. Nothing is coming out of the asteroid fields.”
“How are we going to operate without U-981? This would send the economy into a tailspin. Nothing would move, and planets would be cut off.”
U-981 was a mineralized crystal which made faster-than-light, often called FTL, travel possible. Without FTL, ships couldn’t travel between systems and mankind would still be stranded in the original Sol system, taking decades to travel between the home planets. Over seven hundred years ago, a lucky scientist working on a captured asteroid came across an unknown mineralized crystal. She soon discovered that this rare crystal could harness and store huge amounts of energy, which could be released all at once. Soon after, a pioneering company attached the crystal to a drive they were working on; it created an FTL bubble and sent their ship to the next star system. Faster-than-light travel between star systems was born, and mankind hadn’t looked back since.
With FTL flight possible, humans began to spread out to neighboring stars. Hundreds of planets were colonized, and now, seven hundred later, these planets had huge human populations in need of commerce. Interstellar shipping routes were everywhere and filled with ships of every make and model. This widespread interstellar travel came at a price, though: every asteroid in colonized space had been scoured for U-981, and now the mineral could only be found in asteroids at the far reaches of human space, but never in large quantities. It took tens of thousands of asteroid miners searching every little rock to find enough U-981 to keep mankind travelling between the stars and to expand human-controlled space.
“We won’t,” Dakota replied, “which is why the Sullivan’s Pride was designed and built.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Five years ago, the Candus Corporation put together a shipment of over a ton of U-981.”
“Yes, I read the report: it was the loss of this cargo which finally allowed the formation of your task force and the end of King Florres.”
“Correct, but what isn’t in the reports was that the shipment represented almost thirty percent of all available U-981. Candus Corporation had to clean out every warehouse it had to replace the cargo. None of us knew it at the time, but if we would have lost the cargo of the Seraphim to Florres, it would have virtually stopped all shipping in the outer-rim sectors for years.”
Owen whistled. “I never knew that. If U-981 disappeared, then the remaining mines and untouched asteroid fields would be priceless. Every company out there would be falling all over each other to be the remaining supplier, or to get enough U-981 to keep their fleets in the air.”
“Exactly. How long do you think it would take before companies started taking shipments of U-981 by force, or by using security forces to take over and hold promising asteroid fields?”
“That’s why you built the Pride. If we can fight off any other ship out there, we would control shipping; our revenue from shipping U-981 or providing security services would be enormous.”
“That’s what we figured. It’s the reasons why the Pride was built and why we must set the standards for all security patrols. We’re not only shaking down the Pride, but we’re shaking down all of our operating procedures for a future full of waring corporations.”
“Now I understand,” Owen replied. “What can I do to help?”
“I have a few procedures I want you look over. I need your comments on them. Also,” Dakota said with a smile creeping across her face, “I have a little project for you.”
“Why do I get the impression I’m going to regret being the newest member of this crew and the youngest Sullivan? What are you going to make me do?”
“Cheyenne has created a new suit to be worn while we are on patrol. When we get back, we need you to test the suit out and create the operating procedures for its use.”
“Which means what, exactly?”
“You get to wear the suit night and day for three weeks. We need the suit comfortable and flexible enough so every crew member can wear it without it causing problems.”
“Three weeks?”
“That’s just to start,” Dakota chuckled. “You also need to come up with a way to test the suit’s ability to keep us safe, which means you’re going for a few walks in space.”
“Oh, great,” Owen said. “I suppose you’re going to see if you can catch me by surprise?”
“You’ve got it, baby brother. Combat is one thing—we can anticipate decompression events during battle. What we need to design is a suit flexible enough to provide safety in rapid decompression events. You’ll have to find out which design provides that.”
“In other words, I must find a design that allows me to sit here, talking to you, in comfort, but which also allows me to seal it up fast enough to survive being hurled out to space, if the hull is breached.”
“Right again. You need to come up with some way of testing the suits. Cheyenne has worked on a few designs she thinks will meet our needs and has tested them in her labs. Now, it’s time for a real-world test.”
Owen grinned, “It’s not like I have a choice in the matter.” Current suit designs hadn’t changed in hundreds of years and were bulky and uncomfortable. Suits designed for spaceship crews were the same ones used by asteroid miners: they worked when you had time to put them on, but you couldn’t wear them inside the ship and get anything done.
“That’s right, nugget: no choice,” Dakota grinned back.
Owen’s face took a serious look, “Was it that bad during Pirate’s Bay?”
Dakota immediately knew what he was talking about. During the battle, Cheyenne recorded video of pirates being swept out to space when their ships decompressed. The marines had opened the space station’s airlock hatches and over a hundred pirates had been sucked out without protection. Dakota knew Cheyenne would never forget how they’d struggled in the first few seconds before dying, and she’d heard her vow to come up with a suit that would protect crews long enough to be rescued, if it happened to them. It had taken her five years, but she’d done it.
