Warp Resonance

by Cedar Sanderson

“You want me to help?”

  “I need your help.” Lia corrected. “I want to do a comprehensive video survey as quickly as possible. There may be a bio-component to whatever they did to the crew, and I don’t want us to be exposed to it.”

  Sera thought for a moment and then squared her shoulders. “I want to help however I can.”

  “Good girl.” Lia squeezed her shoulder. She programmed the route to the planetary surface, to the plateau where the shuttle was grounded. There were no active transmissions, but she was duty-bound to go and look. She thought of the cat and shuddered a little. She added commands to their route that were rarely necessary. The ship would launch itself if they were affected and return them to Hudson’s Bay on autopilot even if Lia didn’t know where she was or where she was going.

  Once the descent was underway and Sera was strapped securely next to her, she asked her “Have you ever worn a space suit?”

  “No. We never even had evacuation drills that I can remember, although Ma talks about them happening when she was little. They would have to pull on suits and hide under their desks at school, she said.”

  “Copper is a domed planet, most planets don’t have air loss drills.”

  “I know, it just seems... weird, to think about being out in open air.”

  Lia nodded. “We aren’t going to do that today, either. Space suits double nicely as hazmat suits.”

  “Do... do you think that’s necessary?” Sera asked doubtfully.

  “Time for you to learn the unofficial Scout’s motto. ‘Shit happens... Be prepared.’”

  Lia helped Sera into her suit when they were landed neatly next to the shuttle. She had taken a long look out at it once they were landed. The vegetation seared by their landing was already greening back up. There were no signs that people were in the area.

  “Once we are outside, stay with me. I could leave you in the ship, if you would prefer.”

  Sera shook her head emphatically. “I’m going to help you cover more area with the suit cams.”

  Lia nodded. “Yes, it will help me and take less time.”

  “So I’m going.”

  “Yes.” Lia squeezed her shoulder and flipped her helmet on.

  Sera smiled wanly and fastened it properly as Lia watched closely. Lia gave her a thumb’s up. Without a mastoid implant, she couldn’t talk to Sera via radio. Sera would get her implant at the Academy. In the meantime, they could shout, or use hand gestures. Thermal scans showed no large lifeforms in the area, but that information Lia trusted about as far as she could throw the ship. She’d look for sign once they were out.

  The hatch slid open slowly, and Lia missed the usual cacophony of noises, smells, and warmth of the sun on her face. The climate controlled suit kept all that at bay. The chances of infection were slim to none out here in the open, but Sera’s reaction to sky was something she wasn’t ready to rush. Therapy at the academy would help her through that without Lia throwing her into the deep end.

  She walked down the ramp onto the ground, looking around. Grass-like vegetation carpeted the small prairie they had landed on. They were a few hundred feet from a brushy area she thought hid a creek or other body of water.

  She scanned the area slowly, allowing the camera to catch tiny details she would check for later. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sera doing the same thing in her blind areas. Slowly they proceeded to the shuttle hatch. Lia saw no signs of human habitation in the area. No smoke arose in the visible horizon. Her heart sank.

  “Stay here.” She yelled and pushed her hand at Sera, palm out. Sera looked at her blankly. Lia hoped she had understood.

  Lia walked alone up the still-extended ramp. The hatch was closed, but it had probably been set to cycle automatically. She pushed the handle. Obligingly, the hatch cycled open and Lia stepped in reluctantly. She set the hatch to stay open. The thought of it closing behind her made her spine creep.

  There was nothing aboard. No food, no people, nothing. There wasn’t a lot of space aboard the small shuttle, which could only carry four, and it didn’t take her long. Sera was poised at the bottom of the ramp when she emerged. Lia guessed she would have come up had she been inside much longer.

  Tired beyond words, she flapped her hand at the girl and trudged down the ramp. “Back to the ship.” she yelled and pointed.

  Together, they silently crossed back to the scout ship. Lia looked up and the greenish sky, so different than Old Earth and Hudson Bay’s blue skies. There were no answers there, either.

  They patiently endured the decontamination of the suits together. One at a time might have been more comfortable in the small lock, but Lia guessed the girl needed her company as much as Lia needed her.

  Helmets off, finally, Sera just looked at Lia. “Nothing. No sign of them, inside or outside. No radio transmissions, no distress beacon activated. It was still intact in it’s case. I have no idea where the crew went after they landed on planet.”

  “Now do we go look for them?”

  “Yes,” she shook her head sadly, looking at the girl. “But we won’t find them. We don’t know where they went. This is an entire planet, with no human settlements on this continent. We could spend the rest of our lives looking.”

  They lifted to an altitude high enough to clear trees and terrain and Lia began to circle, spiraling out slowly from the shuttle. The computer processed the video and thermal feed. Lia and Sera took turns using Mark One eyeball through the cameras. Sera would have continued straight through if Lia hadn’t forbidden her to watch longer than three hours at once. Lia guessed that the girl didn’t sleep for the three days they searched. ‘Finally Lia stroked Sera’s hair, startling the girl, who was poised over the camera feed like a kingfisher about to dive. “Child. We must go. There have been no signs of them.”

  “So we just go off and leave them?” Sera’s voice rose to a shrill.

  “Duty. We must go back to base and make our report. I think this goes far beyond this one ship.”

  “But the people. There is a child out there!”

  “Yes. And there are more on other ships in this sector.”

  Sera gulped. That sounded like a sob. Time to distract the child. “I think you can download the suitcams and send it off to base, now.”

  “You want me to do that?”

  “Yep, you know how to do it. I showed you and it’s not that different from a personal comm.”

  “Sure.” Sera’s eyes were dull with grief over the people she had never met. Lia suppressed her sigh this time. It was going to be a long two weeks until they got back to present at the inquiry.

  She stripped off her helmet and handed it to Sera. As the girl disappeared into the bridge Lia leaned against the wall. Chances are they were all dead, the young captain, his wife, the child, and unknown crew members. Whatever the pirates had used had affected the cerebral cortex permanently. Who knows what they had though they were doing as they embarked on the shuttle. Going home, perhaps. She didn’t want to think about the planet and what happened there.

  Lia sat heavily into the captain’s chair and toggled open a transmission to Gerry and the Hudson Bay Company Base. “There were no signs of life at the shuttle on Belandir. The emergency beacon had not been triggered. Based on the evidence, this Scout must report that the crew of the Brigitte Aster perished to the last hand.”

  Sera was looking at her in horror, Lia saw. Lia also knew it was best she know now, not at the inquiry weeks in the future. “The chromatographic analysis shows that the canister I found contained an agent that causes permanent and deep delusions and hallucinations. I don’t know what caused them to leave the ship, but their chances of survival in an unpopulated area were negligible, and zero once they left the shuttle with the survival gear untouched.”

  Lia clicked off the transmission. She would talk to Gerry later. Now, she needed to talk to Sera, take a shower, and sleep once they were on course off the planet.

  “Buckle up, we’re lifting.”

 
“They’re dead?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Almost certainly.”

  “How?”

  “Pirates, I think. I hope.”

  “Why didn’t they take anything?”

  “The captain was delusional. He set a course that took him somewhere they hadn’t planned. Who knows what he was thinking.”

  “What happens next?”

  “Well, there will be an inquiry. A proper investigative team will follow up on the last few stops the Birgitte made. But for now, we go home.”

  “Home?”

  Lia grinned suddenly. “Not Copper. Home - where every voyageur comes back to, in the end. Hudson Bay. I can’t wait to take you to the lake and teach you how to swim.”

  “I can swim.”

  “In a pool. Not in real, raw water that fish have been peeing in.”

  “Um, Eww?”

  Sera was moping again after the first day, and in the silence that her chatter left behind, Lia thought. She was still thinking when she overrode their course and headed the little ship back toward Gavan. Sera didn’t realize they had changed course until Lia went into orbit around Gavan.

  “Sera, you have a choice.” Lia looked at her across the clutter of papers on the galley table. Sera blinked owlishly at her. She had been studying for her entrance exams non-stop since they left the Blender.

  “What?”

  “We’ve just orbited Gavan. I have a plan to catch the pirates that wanted the Birgitte Aster. Your choice is to stay with me, which could be dangerous, or to land on Gavan until another Voyageur can get you to school.”

  “You’re going after the space pirates?”

  “It’s not like a vid, child. We might not find them, we are a tiny ship against who knows what they have.”

  “But those people who died.”

  “This won’t bring them back.”

  “What can I do if I’m with you?”

  “Perhaps nothing. No duty binds you to my side, Sera.”

  “I want to see this through.” the teenager whispered.

  Lia nodded. “I thought so.”

  Sera came with her this time onto Gavan. She hovered by Lia’s elbow, mostly, just slightly behind her where she could watch and hide behind her elfin mentor. Lia put up with it silently, knowing that Sera was pushing her comfort levels to come onto the space station with her face bare.

  Gavan’s navy wasn’t anything to write home about. A battleship, a half-dozen corvettes and a few privateers. Lia hoped it was enough. She laid out her plan to the ranking officer, Gavan’s only admiral. His nearly non-existent grey hair and neat goatee framed a face burned bronze by solar radiation and creased with experience.

  “Always a humbling experience to talk to a Scout.” He said cheerfully.

  “Sir?” Lia replied in bemusement.

  “Here on Gavan I report only to the President and Prime Minister, but then you come along, a slip of a girl, and I dance to your tune.”

  “If you would prefer...” Lia began diffidently. It would never do to antagonize him either in the short or long run.

  He waved her to a stop. “No, I think it’s a good plan, but it does leave you a little vulnerable. Are you sure we shouldn’t go in guns blazing?”

  “If we knew where their base was, yes.”

  He leaned back in his chair and contemplated the ceiling for a moment. Lia watched him think in silence. She had a feeling this gallant old man was going along with her hare-brained scheme. She wasn’t going to tell Gerry about it until after. Her boss was liable to quash it, and her standing orders gave her the latitude to carry this out on her own.

  He sat back down with a snap. “So you will be the staked goat to my big game hunter. I can live with that, Scout. You have more teeth than a goat.”

  He looked at the silent Sera. “Child, will you be partaking of our hospitality during this exercise?”

  “No, sir.” The girl’s voice was almost inaudible. “I will stay with Lia.”

  He nodded. “Foolish, but commendable. Right, shall we be about it?”

  A day later, at the jump point to Princeton and three jumps beyond Gavan, Lia activated the transponder she had taken from the Birgitte. She had used the medcomp aboard her ship to scrub it thoroughly clean of the toxins, and to do something else while the samples were relatively fresh.

  She leaned back in her chair.

  “Now, we wait.” she told Sera almost cheerfully.

  “What do we do?”

  “Well, I think you’ve studied enough for now. Much more and your brain will fry. How about some music?”

  Sera learned that a Scout’s ship - or at least this one - had a huge music library. Lia’s mood seemed to lean toward heavy drums and stirring lyrics at the moment, and Sera was treated to the sight of the Scout headbanging and dancing in the Galley with the table folded up.

  “C’mon!” Lia grabbed Sera who was leaning on the bulkhead.

  “I can’t dance!”

  “You don’t have to. Just let the music move you!”

  ########

  Sera giggled. Lia moved so gracefully most of the time, watching her switch to a gyrating teenybopper was surprising. Sera tried to mimic her movements, then gave up and listened to the music, trying to keep up with the driving rythym. The song changed to a wild lament with pipes, and Lia moved with the music in a flashing dance that had Sera gaping at the other woman. Lia grabbed her and shouted “computer, alt rock song!”

  Pulsing music filled the little ship. “Here. Shake your hips. Put your hands up and groove with it, chickie!” Lia demonstrated and gave Sera a little nudge every so often. Sera finally felt what she was trying to do. Lia nodded. “You got it!”

  Later, Sera collapsed into a chair. “Whew. Was that dancing?”

  Lia shrugged. “Well, some of it was. Some of it is just moving to the song. I think I need to teach you some moves. You won’t have much time to party at the Academy, but there will be a few events.”

  Sera blinked and tried to imagine herself doing that in a room full of people. “Er. Yeah, I think you should teach me.”

  “Exercise is good, too.”

  Sera mopped her forehead. “True.”

  Sera appreciated the change of pace. Lia seemed determined to lighten the mood and not let her worry while they waited for the pirates to come find them. They danced, played games, and watched vids. Lia’s taste was very different, but Sera enjoyed getting to see the lighter side of the Scout. Three days in she was beginning to wonder if the pirates would ever come. She laughed out loud at herself.

  “What’s funny?” Lia looked up from her board, where Sera though she was reading a book.

  “I’m bored enough to be wishing to be captured by space pirates.”

  Lia shook her head. “That is bored. Here and I thought I was doing a good job of entertaining you.”

  “What would you do if you were alone?”

  Lia shrugged. “Read a lot. Listen to music. Study and exercise.”

  “So, pretty much what we’ve been doing.”

  “Yep.”

  Sera sighed and went back to her book, trying to pay attention to the plot. She had a feeling it wouldn’t be much longer.

  She was right. The other ship came in radiating loud and clear, obviously expecting the Brigitte, dead in space. Sera almost fell out of her chair when they tractored on. Lia buckled her in without a word. Sera could see the Scout switch from waiting-mode to action-mode in an instant.

  Lia, her frame radiating tension, bent over her board. She punched codes in, and then ran down the short corridor to her suit and the airlock. Sera envied her the graceful movement and ability to act while the ship was jerkily being drawn to the pirate vessel. She almost regretted her decision to stay with Lia. There was nothing she could really do at this point.

  Lia was in her suit and waiting in the outer airlock, Sera thought when the clunks of the hatches echoed through the ship.

  “Hey! who are you?” blatted throughout
the scout ship.

  Sera jumped at the harsh male voice. She realized the pirate whip was attempting to contact them.

  Quickly, she unbuckled and went to the pilot board. Pressing in the short codes, she called back to the pirates. “This is the Birgitte Aster, who are you?”

  She decided the quaver in her voice was quite artistic even if she hadn’t done it on purpose.

  “The Birgitte?! Hey, Cap...” His voice trailed off and Sera realized he had left the channel open while talking to someone else. She felt the airlock open and close as Lia crossed to the other ship.

  “Who are you?” Sera repeated a little with a little hysteria in her voice. She wanted to distract them from their boarder as long as she could.

  “Who the hells do you think we are chickie?”

  “Well, I was hoping... I mean, my drive gave out... “ Sera trailed off.

  He laughed and she shuddered. That was not a nice sound. “Hey, Cap, she thinks we’ve come to rescue her.”

  Sera could hear the rumble of another voice, but not what they were saying.

  “Well, chickie, how about I come on over there and rescue you.” He said with an audible leer.

  Sera took a deep breath and toggled the transmission to full visual. She wanted to hold their attention a little longer...

  “Oh, sir...” she began.

  “Holy shit.” He exclaimed, staring at her. He looked over his shoulder. “Cap, come see this.”

  The other man resolved into an ugly face over the communicator’s shoulder. “Well, I’ll be.”

  Sera was crying now, the tears she had started to fake them out becoming real at the expressions on their faces. Would all men look at her this way?

  “Don’t cry, pretty, we’ll take good care of you.” The first man soothed.

  Sera saw Lia behind them, and her eyes widened in spite of herself.

  They both spun around to see what she had. Lia, standing in the door to the bridge, hip cocked insouciantly. Her grin took in both men, found them wanting, and mocked them dismissively. Red voyageur’s cap at a jaunty angle, she positively glowed.

  “What the HELLS!” the captain roared. He lunged toward her and she flicked a handful of powder into the air. He batted at it, coughing.