by F. E. Arliss
“I’m more than a distraction woman!” Carlo added with a grin. “On the other hand, your wish is my command.” Then leaned down and proceeded to make her forget everything but him.
Chapter Fifteen
Flying in Tandem
It didn’t take long for all hell to break loose. Major Bergstrom had left an exhausted Johanna fast asleep on her bunk. He’d covered her gently with a blanket then tabbed quietly out of her quarters. His team, Tiger Guard, were on their way to a manufacturing plant on the northern side of the island of Japan. They were going to make an incursion into the building, find Katyia and recover the stolen ore sample from the container they’d raided.
He’d been informed that Hiro Donji would be on another cruiser above the site. His cousin, Yakuza General Haruto Donji, would also be sending a team. Major Bergstrom was to enter the building through the lower levels were the labs were located. Haruto Donji would be entering from the sea. And was to cover the buildings upper floors and wipe the computer systems.
So far, the mission had gone successfully. They’d been able to take out the four guards that remained by the space vessel that had attacked the barge. Following a supply tunnel into the building they were approaching the lab area. Carlo fanned his men out and they breached the doors to the lab area as one. To his happy delight, they ran almost smack dab into Katyia Rustalov.
She looked like shit. “You ok, Lieutenant?” He asked. “Pardon my saying so, but you look like shit.”
“I’m fine,” she snapped back. “Help me get this ore loaded and get the hell out of here,” she added, in a less strident voice. “Please let me have two of your men to load this ore, then we’ll meet you at the air field?” Katyia asked to confirm what seemed the most likely scenario.
“Yes, you two go with the Lieutenant,” he motioned two of his Guard to accompany her. “We’ll finish sweeping our levels and meet you at the airfield in 8 minutes,” he replied, then gestured for his men to spread out and continue on-target.
Eight minutes later the Major pounded up the ramp of the confiscated cruiser to find Lieutenant Rustalov at the controls. “You know how to fly this thing, Lieutenant?” He asked doubtfully.
“Not really,” she replied grimly. “But my engineer roommate thinks we can,” she said pointing to her comm set.
Major Bergstrom smiled inwardly. “Very good, then Lieutenant, proceed,” he added calmly. Then turned and sat down alongside his men. He leaned back, prepared to enjoy the show.
Katyia fastened the headset onto her ears, then said quietly into the comm, “I’ve got an audience of one Major and a whole Tiger Guard. Let’s make this good,” she sighed out slowly.
Johanna laughed in her ears, “No problem roomie. We’ve got this.” Over the next several hours, Johanna and Katyia struggled through a take-off and atmospheric re-entry series; held a steady trajectory; and then fulfilled a tediously long landing checklist; then finally managed to put the cruiser down on the largest platform on the Orbit Guard Frontier Station. Mostly, without damage to any infrastructure.
Major Bergstrom appeared to sleep through the whole thing. His Guard found this very comforting and proceeded to do likewise. Katyia glanced back several times and couldn’t decide if it pissed her off, or relieved her, that they were all asleep. “Why couldn’t one of them know how to fly this thing?” She wondered grumpily. Johanna seemed to be having fun, even if she wasn’t.
Later, Carlo would whisper to Johanna as they sat together on the observatory loungers, that he knew how to fly the cruiser. He just wanted her to have the fun of doing it, so he didn’t tell Katyia. Johanna gasped and punched him in the arm. “OMG,” she shrieked at him. “OMG! You do love me. Don’t you?” She asked him certainly.
“Of course, I do,” he answered with a grin. “Like you didn’t know that already!”
Johanna snuggled closer, “Well I thought so. But this really was a gift from the heart. You put your life in my hands,” she stated grandly with a sweeping gesture at the stars around them, then fell back laughing. “Oh, please! Don’t ever tell Katyia,” she begged. “She’ll want to off you!”
Chapter Sixteen
Katyia’s Wedding
Johanna paced with anxious excitement inside the airport in Tokyo. It was an engineer’s dream and she’d spent the first hour marveling at all the cool gizmos and architecture. Now that her mom and Sophie’s flight was about to land, she was so excited to see them that she couldn’t sit still. Carlo slumped on the uncomfortable, yet stylish lounge chairs and watched her with amusement. He hadn’t told her that Pierre Roux and Joseph Abay were coming too.
It was Katyia’s ‘cloud soul’ ceremony with Hiro Donji and they were all getting together to attend the ceremony and catch up. They’d be staying at Casa Haruto, Hiro’s cousin’s place on the Sea of Japan. It was going to be a nice getaway and he was looking forward to it. Though he wasn’t sure if sharing Johanna with all these friends was something he was going to enjoy. Families, he thought, such a pain in the ass.
Just then Johanna whooped, ran forward and scooped up a tiny light-brunette, wearing her hair in a sharply angled bob style. This must be Sophie Roux, he thought to himself, and the sophisticated looking older man behind her must be her brother Pierre. Carlo hadn’t known he was coming. Clearly, from Johanna’s excitement, neither had she.
The next through the door was a darkly beautiful woman with grey threading her tight curls. That must be Precious Van Heusen. The stooped older man behind her must be Joseph Abay. The whole gang was here. Heaven help me, he thought, chagrined. Well, time to go face the firing squad. With that, Carlo heaved him bulk out of the lounger and stalked forward with a large grin on his face.
“Hi! I’m Carlo,” he boomed out. Johanna whirled to face him, beaming.
“Everyone, meet Carlo Bergstrom. He’s a Major with Orbit Guard and is the commanding officer of Tiger Guard. He’s also my love interest,” she stated with a giggle.
Carlo grinned at her in response then proceeded to shake everyone’s hand. Dear God, please let them like me, he thought. It’s going to be a long weekend.
Actually, it turned out to be a great weekend. Haruto Donji’s place on the Sea of Japan was beautiful. Good food and wine flowed. The sun shone. Everyone was delighted to meet each other, and there were no family squabbles. Carlo knew that if this was his real family, there’d have already been a knock-down drag-out fight. Orbit Guard really was the best of families.
Katyia’s pairing ceremony with Hiro Donji was gorgeous and very poignant. Everyone cried. Even Haruto Donji, the stoic Yakuza General, seemed to blink his eyes rapidly a few times. They swam, ate, and talked. It was by far, the most-lovely wedding ceremony, or whatever they wanted to call it, that Carlo had ever seen. He hoped he could persuade Johanna into something like this when their time came. Assuming she’d have him of course. That was the question…when should he ask the question?
Chapter Seventeen
Mission to UZ238
Johanna was excited but also apprehensive. She was deploying on her first long-range mission with Tiger Guard. Overall, the estimates were that they’d be gone around four months. It was a long haul to UZ238, a planet a probe had called to attention several weeks ago. It had all the hallmarks of a habitable planet and Tiger Guard was shoving off in a cruiser to take a look. Up close and personal, as the Colonel had said at the briefing.
She’d started calling the planet Uzi, like the old machine gun from a century ago. Carlo had liked that and the name had stuck. Now after six weeks of constant cruising they were about to drop out of warp near the planet’s atmosphere. Johanna couldn’t wait to see what it was like. In her nervous excitement to see the planet, she’d overhauled and upgraded just about every system on the ship. Her enthusiasm was beginning to wear on just about everyone, including Taggart and Smith who had also come along.
Johanna had commed Carlo twice in the last twenty minutes and he’d finally told her firmly to stop asking ‘are we t
here yet’ like a two-year-old. She hadn’t been able to stop the laugh that burst from her throat as that was exactly how she was feeling.
“All personnel strap in for exit from warp. Please secure all objects and work stations. Please strap in. Exit from warp in eight minutes,” sounded over the ship-wide comm system. “All personnel strap in for exit from warp. Please secure all objects and work stations. Please strap in. Exit from warp in seven minutes.”
Johanna grinned at Ensigns Taggart and Smith as they returned to the engineering bay and sat back in the web seating lining one wall. She was already strapped in, and couldn’t stop bouncing one knee. “This is so exciting! I can’t wait! A new planet guys! One that might be habitable! We are Soooo going to find a new Earth,” she sang out a bit manically.
Just as she ended her high warbling exclamation, the weird sliding sensation of dropping out of warp caused her to lean back and brace herself in her web sling. The slide stopped abruptly with a gigantic rending of metal. All three of them were hurled forward, their harnesses the only thing keeping them from being snapped in two. All forward velocity was lost, and the web seats flung them back against the bulkhead as the cruiser, now almost at a dead stop, seemed to slowly swirl to one side.
Sparks and fire raced across the ceiling of the bay as the gigantic turbines ground to a halt. All three of them frantically unclipped their harnesses and ran for fire extinguisher systems. Johanna threw herself into the console seat and began slapping fire suppression buttons. “Engines at all stop,” Johanna commanded. “Check the warp core,” she snapped to Smith.
“Warp core intact, but leaking,” he replied grimly.
“Launch sealant bots,” Johanna came back calmly. “Taggart, we need auxiliary power enabled.”
“Auxiliary power online,” Taggart responded.
“What’s going on, engineering?” Major Bergstrom demanded.
“I take it we impacted something on dropping from warp and meeting the atmosphere, sir,” Johanna said, a question rising at the end of her sentence.
“Affirmative. Science officer says we collided with a large mass of hail, frozen water, whatever the hell you want to call it,” he returned with exasperation lacing his voice. “The sensors didn’t pick it up because it was H2O in form. Damage report.”
“We’ve got a leaking warp core, sir,” Johanna responded. “We’ve got auxiliary power and should be able to maintain on that until we figure out how to restore the core, sir. We may have to land to fix the core. We can let you know in a few minutes. Running diagnostics now,” she replied.
On the bridge, Major Bergstrom had sensors going all out to find the best landing area on the planet. A few minutes later, Johanna commed the bridge. “Sir, we’ve finished the diagnostics. We will need to land in order to stabilize the core. The ship needs to be at zero velocity to repair the core with what we’ve got on-hand,” she stated, as though she wasn’t clenching the arms of her console until her knuckles turned white.
“Very well, we’ll be landing as soon as sensors target the optimal area for our approach. Stand by for landing,” the Major commanded.
“All hands to secure stations for landing. All hands to secure stations for landing,” sang the ship-wide comm.
Johanna didn’t feel quite so glib as she fastened herself in to her console so that she could monitor the ship’s systems for landing. What a mess she thought to herself, as she played the different scenarios for fixing the warp core over in her mind. None of them were great. But some were way worse than others. She’d have to evaluate them all carefully so they could take off and endure the six-week trip back to Frontier Station. Getting them aloft was one thing, getting them through six weeks of space, was another.
She could feel the ship breaking atmosphere and watched with her breath held, while her systems managed the changing demands of the landing. They’d held. Oh, thank God!
As soon as the ship settled onto its landing gear, Johanna, Taggart and Smith rushed to the warp core and began starting processes to stabilize and isolate the core’s energy. The Major commed her twice and she told him that she wouldn’t know for several hours if the measures they were taking would hold. In the meantime, she suggested he evacuate the closest sections to the engineering bay, just in case, she’d added. Carlo had been silent for a moment. “Understood,” he said quietly, then tabbed off his comm.
Johanna finally announced the core was stabilized a few hours later. She needed to sleep and then think about how to repair the core with what she had on hand. The Major told her to hit the sack and then began shouting orders for people to begin taking samples of the new planet. If they were stuck on the surface, they might as well make the most of it.
Several days later they were into the third process for fixing the warp core. So far, none of the options they’d tried had held during the stress test scenarios they’d run. One of the options had worked, but created so much radioactive waste, that it would contaminate the ship beyond the scrubber’s capacity to clean the air over the six-week journey home. Johanna was exhausted and at her wit’s end.
The latest crisis was that water supplies were going to run low. They’d found a rupture in the secondary water supply that hadn’t shown due to the core contamination when they’d first been hit by the hail storm. Good ol’ Mother Nature. She could be a real bitch sometimes. They had it patched, but it had wreaked havoc with their reserves.
After another restless sleep session. Johanna stumbled out of her cabin and headed for engineering. She’d had a brainstorm in the night and now was on her way to see if what she’d envisioned for the water supply would work. It was almost too simple. But worth a try. Sometimes the easiest method, was the best.
Once at St. Mary’s School in Pretoria, they’d done an experiment with solar energy and made an array from scraps that they’d had in one of the out-buildings. They’d also studied a Frenchman named Sabatier. He’d figured out how to take H2O out of the environment of space while astronauts were stationed on the International Space Station. That was over a century ago, but the technology would probably work now. It was crude compared to modern technologies, but more easily made from what they had.
Now she was going to make a solar array that could be attached the ship’s hull. It would help power auxiliary systems and an air-flow system until they could get into space. Once they’d cleared the atmosphere the Sabatier converter would take over. Water would be drawn into the system as they traveled through space. It sounded nuts, but she thought it might work. The catalyst needed would also produce methane which they would be able to use to produce more energy once they were out of the solar system’s reach.
The methane could also be used to fortify the energy shields sufficiently to safe-guard the radiation that the core would put off on the last proto-type for the repair of the warp drive. It was nuts, or genius.
Either way, it might be their only hope for the return. If she could vent the radiation away from the ship using some of the airflow technology she knew about from Roux Industries, when they still made wind turbines, she might be able to make a sort of upper shield for the ship that would melt the hail on contact. If that would work, she could keep the hail from tearing apart her fragile array. It was all very far-fetched, very integrated, and just might work.
In a fever she tore into engineering, grabbed a marker and began madly drawing diagrams on the floor for Taggart and Smith. At first, they thought she’d lost it. Then the ideas began to form into plausible flow-charts and they could begin to see where she was going with it.
It could work. They agreed. Practically fainting with relief, Johanna commed Carlo. “I think we may have it,” she said hesitantly. “We may have figured out a way to get us out of here.”
“How long?” the Major barked.
“Several days, and I’ll need extra hands for construction,” she replied.
“You’ve got them. Just take who you need. I’ll have the scientific sampling crews make sure they’re do
ne in three days. Good luck, honey,” the Major commed off.
Three days later, the many components had been assembled and teams instructed by a manic Ensign Van Heusen on what to do with each part. Taggart and Smith had each been assigned a part of the project and were overseeing their components fervently.
At last it was ready to go online. First, they’d fired up the solar collectors forty-eight hours ago. Readings showed the array to have stored a significant amount of energy and that it was making energy at a good pace. Enough to get them through the hail cloud at the atmosphere anyway.
They’d have to have some reserve from the solar array in order to get the methane fuel extracted from the Sabatier system and into radiation shield. The water extraction would simply drip out of the condenser and lines would redirect it into storage vats.
While each piece of the puzzle was fairly simple, the failure of even one part of the plan would wipe out the whole return. It was nerve-wracking. She could cause them to crash if the solar powered auxiliary unit didn’t have enough umph to get the radiation air-flow unit going. If that happened the hail would bring them down.
Once launched and through the atmosphere, if the radiation shields didn’t kick in, they could all fry to death. If the Sabatier system didn’t have enough methane manufacturing strength to cover what the solar array had been depleted, they could also fry, and/or die of thirst. Dear God, Johanna thought, help it work.
“Are you read engineering?” Major Bergstrom inquired through the comms.
“Yes, sir. We’re good to go,” Johanna replied, trying to mask the fear in her voice.
“We’ll take it up slow and steady, Ensign,” the Major assured her. “Let us know if any of the readings look like we need to adjust our power or trajectory.”
“Copy that, sir. Firing up engines,” she said. The first array caught and the airflow heat condenser fired up at once. “Heat condenser fired up and ready, sir,” Johanna said, a hint of relief evident in her voice. “Engines are a go.”
