“You hide on the floor. They will be looking for two of us.”
“But it smells down here!”
“Better to smell than to be dead or a prisoner.”
Doc didn’t argue that point and settled on the floor, curling himself into as tight a ball as he could.
We later learned that Sif had seen these trucks work before. He even had a ride in one when it cleaned out the tanks of one of the smuggler’s shuttles. He was confident he could pass through the gates and confident he wouldn’t be seen. He was wrong.
Just as Sif pushed the truck through the opened gate, we saw the Arkon Brown watching nearby, but not close enough to get to the truck before it passed through the gate as it was closing. We watched the Brown run to the customs gate where we saw his friends waving him on as they passed through customs and onto the tarmac toward another shuttle. Meanwhile, I had Amini maneuver the Argos to get closer to Tye.
Doc finally relaxed in the pilot’s seat of the Argos shuttle as it flew away from Kiber. He was qualified in the original shuttles aboard Argos as well as the Falcon. At least, as a pilot. He hadn’t yet grasped all the weapons capabilities of the Falcon and wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Sif. I’ve never been so scared in my life. That was the longest day I have ever spent.”
“Do not thank me yet, Doctor. If I understand the sensors in front of me, we are being followed.”
Doc’s calm was destroyed. He called us, remembering at the last second to use the new name.
“Planar, this is Shuttle 1.”
“Go ahead, Shuttle 1,” Amini answered.
“Shuttle 1 is headed for you. However, we believe we are being followed by another shuttle. Can you close the distance?” I was glad to see that Doc had enough sense to ask Amini to bring the ship closer to cut down on the time the shuttle would take to reach safety.
“Roger, Shuttle 1, we have already started. Are you being followed by one or two ships?”
Doc looked at Sif, who was head down looking at the sensor screen. Sif held up two clawed fingers.
“Apparently two, Planar.”
“We agree, Shuttle 1. The smaller is merging with a larger one. I think the shuttle has boarded a larger ship, which is building speed toward you.”
Fortunately for Doc’s nerves, the Argos appeared in the shuttle’s viewscreen as Amini turned to present a stern aspect. The trailing unknown was closing the distance fast.
“Shuttle 1, Planar has turned to parallel your course. As soon as you can get aboard, we will accelerate and leave our pursuer behind.”
Perhaps it was his high motivation more than just skill, but Doc married up with Planar/Argos and maneuvered into the lower cargo bay in record time. As soon as he did, the ship began accelerating.
I met the shuttle crew in the cargo bay. They didn’t climb out right away. I had to enter from the rear ramp and walk to the flight deck. Doc was sitting in his seat, drenched with sweat and exhausted. The strange thing is that Sif was fanning the doctor with an old star chart. I laughed mentally.
“Everything OK in here?” I asked.
“Fine, Captain Nick. The doctor is a good pilot, but I think the excitement was more than he is used to.” I laughed out loud this time and told them both to come to the bridge when they were ready. Sif was making good progress in becoming part of the crew. I could see that he had even broken, or at least cracked, Doc’s trust barrier.
By the time Doc and Sif got to the main bridge, Amini, Harry, and I were watching our pursuer on sensors.
“What do you think about that ship, Harry?” I asked.
“As you know, Captain, I do not think in the way you do. My assessment, however, is that the ship is fast, FTL capable, and is armed. In size, something between a corvette and a frigate. It has active sensors online, and her weapons are powered up.”
“Anything that might overpower our shields?’
“No, Captain.”
“Good. Amini, stay on this course away from Tye and enter FTL when you’re ready.”
“Do you have a destination in mind, Nick?”
“No, just away from here. Say a quarter of the way to Asteroid 5 from here. That would be about twenty-four hours, correct?”
“Yes. Course dialed in. Going FTL in three… two… one.”
And that was that, for a while. We would eventually have to come out of FTL to change to another course and see if our friend was still following. Or we might then be able to leap if nobody was looking. But for now, we could rest. Tomorrow, there would be time to teach Sif a few things and learn more about the ship that chased us.
Chapter 7
After the experience on Kiber, and Sif’s dedicated concern for Doc, my confidence was growing in the Arkon warrior. The Arkon as a civilization had, after all, been the mortal enemy of all humanity until just a few years ago. As a reflection of that trust growth, we spent most of the day in FTL familiarizing Sif with some features of the ship, including an introduction to the weapons station. There were no secrets of any consequence in the station, and I felt he would be at home with this capability and probably good at it. Later I would give him tools and access as needed — a few steps at a time. To his credit, Sif offered in turn to help train us in combat operations during the long FTL flights. To help, we would set up a training area, shooting range, and small gym in cargo bay 1.
Doc was on the bridge observing Sif at his station, and Harry was present in his holo form. Amini was again in the pilot’s seat and preparing our exit from FTL.
“Exiting FTL in three… two…” She never got to one. There was a tremendous bang, the ship shook violently, a sheet of pulsing, flashing light rolled over the ship, and all power went out. It seemed an eternity to me before the red lights of emergency power came on along with emergency airflow through life support systems. That was it, however.
“Harry!” I called out. He didn’t answer. I tried several more times but got no response. I clicked open the restraints from my bridge chair and started to step down to the deck only to find that the artificial gravity was also out. Instead of dropping to the deck, I began an uncontrolled slide across the bridge, which was stopped by my face meeting the bridge bulkhead.
“Shit!” I uttered when I got my breath back.
“You OK, Nick?” Amini asked
“Yes, only my pride is hurt. See if you can figure out what happened and what that light was. I’m headed to the main electrical panel behind the bridge.”
I grabbed hold of a bulkhead rack used to hold pressure suits and emergency gear and pulled my way around the bridge until I reached the rear hatch to the electrical panel housing and opened it. I had to stare at the panel for a few moments as my eyes adjusted to the relative darkness of the small room. When I did, I could see that many of the circuit breakers were tripped, and I set about restoring them. As I did, a few of the battery-powered lights on the bridge and the breaker room started coming back on. Next, I pulled back into the bridge, grabbed a portable light, and groped my way to the upper bridge hatch and pulled myself through.
Unlike the bridge, the emergency lighting in the corridor leading to engineering was still all I had to see by as I followed the handrails. If I could get power restored there, I could also use the remote panel for the Falcon to do the same for the gunship. The inside of engineering was more complicated than the electrical panel for the bridge. It was bigger and distributed over a wide area. From my learning chair experience, I remembered the sequence for restarting the ship’s overall systems and engines. To be safe, I used the restart manual kept there for just this kind of emergency. One by one, I followed the steps, all thirty of them, until I was rewarded with the hum of generators and pumps and, of course, lights. I checked my watch and saw that it had taken me forty minutes to restore power after I entered engineering. My next stop was the computer
core. If I had done everything right, the core should be operating again, but I had to check to make sure, especially because that’s where Harry lived.
Via implant, I asked Amini about the bridge status.
“Everything is coming online so far, Nick. O2 levels normal, temperature adequate, no extraneous gases, hull pressure nominal. We’re OK in that department. Doc just left to check on medical.”
“That’s good. The bigger question is, where are we?”
“Um, still working on that.”
“Don’t let me stop you. I’m on the way to the computer core right now.”
After leaving engineering, it was a short distance to the core, and I could move faster now that I could see where I was going. There was a door with a cipher lock for the room containing the core and Harry. It was lighted, and I punched in the code and was gratified to hear the click of the lock opening. I think I had my fingers crossed on one hand as I entered the core space. Power was on, lights were blinking, and everything checked out, as far as I could tell. The auto-reset appeared to have worked.
“Harry,” I called out and waited. No answer. As before, I called out several times and got the same silent reply.
Twelve hours later, we were all pretty much back to normal. We were also still ignorant of what had happened, and Harry was still not responding. We all met in the galley where Doc and Sif were talking. Their experience in Kiber had started a bonding process in them, maybe increased by this emergency. Not total trust, mind you, but less fear and more respect. Go figure.
I took some water from a dispenser and sat with my crewmates at a galley table. I told them what I had done, and what I had found out in the computer core.
“The core and the ship are fine, as far as I can tell. Do we know where we are, Amini?”
“I just finished a navigational check and did it a second time. You’ll all be glad to know we are still in Tye space, just not where we were supposed to exit.”
“What does that mean?” asked Doc, his voice quavering.
“It means we are OK and didn’t get kicked out of our dimension or something. Whatever happened took place just as we were exiting FTL. It caused us to drop out a little early. So, I’m happy to say that we are only off by about a hundred thousand miles.”
“How about the date?” I asked. I knew just enough about FTL travel to know that the process fooled with spacetime.
“If you are asking if we traveled back or forward in time, we didn’t. It is the same date and time we would expect after exit. I triple-checked that.”
That was a relief to us all.
“So, what forced us out of FTL early?” Sif asked.
“Harry,” I called out. No response. With building fear that Harry was gone forever, I called out again a little stronger.
“Harry!”
“I’m busy.”
The three of us looked at each other as if asking, Was that Harry?
“Harry. What do you mean you’re busy?”
“I’m busy trying to find out who messed with my computer core. Give me a break!”
This was different. Harry normally didn’t act or speak like this. I started to fear he was seriously damaged.
“Harry, we need to talk to you.”
“All right, all right. Hold your horses.”
Hold your horses? That was definitely not the way Harry spoke. Then he appeared in holo form. That was even more shocking. Usually, Harry looked like a fifty-five-year-old gentleman dressed in a basic gray tunic. No markings of any kind. This Harry was still the fifty-five-year-old, but the tunic was gone, replaced with a white robe and gold belt. There he was, robe and all with hands on his hips and a scowl on his face.
“What’s so important that I have to come just when I’m getting a handle on what’s happened to my core? By the way, I prefer Mr. Harry. It’s more respectful of my age, don’t you think?”
Nobody spoke for a few seconds until I managed to get a few words out.
“OK… Mr. Harry, but there is more going on here than just your computer.”
“Like what?”
“Like we were forced out of FTL early after a loud noise and a cascade of pulsing light. Everything went offline, including you.”
“Me? No way. I’ve never been better, I think.”
“Believe me, Harry, you were offline for over half a day.”
“I’ll remind you that I’m Mr. Harry, and I have not been offline. Oh, wait. It is not possible. Um, maybe I was wrong. How curious. Let’s see, checking this and that. OMG, what happened!”
“Nobody knows what happened, Mr. Harry. That’s the point.” I said, as calmly as I could.
“You say there was a loud noise and pulsing light?”
“Yes, like we were hit by something electrical,” Amini interjected.
“Umm, let me check. That’s OK. That’s hunky-dory. Ooops. Looks like we were hit by something on our nose. It didn’t penetrate and is still there. Dispatching a bot to have a look-see.”
Hunky-dory? Look-see? Mr. Harry was becoming as big a mystery as what hit us. Minutes later, we had a visual of the bot crawling onto the Argos’ nose.
“What’s that?” Doc asked, pointing to a black object stuck in a portion of the ship’s nose cone.
“Looks like a rock,” observed Sif.
“Maybe,” said Mr. Harry. “I ordered the bot to pull it out, and I’ll have a look at it. Meanwhile, don’t let me keep you from doing whatever it was you were doing before.” His holo image disappeared.
WTF? I asked myself. The look on everyone else’s face suggested they thought the same thing.
While Mr. Harry was investigating the rock, we had to get back on track after our near-death experience. Where were we? Before I could say anything, Sif raised a hand, or was it a claw?
“If the ship is back to normal, I would like to know more about the ship that tried to follow us from Tye. It was not a regular cargo ship and looked like some I have seen Toor use. Do we have a record of the ship?”
“Why do we care about her?” Amini asked.
“First,” I said, thinking Sif’s idea was a good one, “we know she isn’t just a normal cargo ship because she is armed. Second, Sif said she looked like the type of ship Toor uses. So, at the moment, she is the only target we have to watch to lead us to more information. That’s what intelligence operators do.”
“So, what’s the name of this ship, and where is she?” Amini asked.
Everyone was looking at me for the answer. There was only one person or thing that could provide the answer, and he had vanished again.
“Mr. Harry, we need to ask you a question.” We got a reply but no visual image.
“I know, I know, I heard. Don’t you meat sacks ever keep your own records? Do I have to do everything?”
“Sorry, Mr. Harry. Compared to you, we are so inferior, I know, but do you have a record of the ship?” This time the image appeared with the voice.
“That’s better, and of course I do. The ship in question is called Myron. It is an armed cargo vessel and often travels between Tye and the asteroid base you were dumb enough to be captured on. I was the one who rescued you, remember?”
“I think that was Doc in the Falcon, as I remember.”
“Yes, but I was the one who sent you the invaluable mantis drone. I was the one who coordinated the launch of the Falcon. Had it not been for me and my superior talents, you would still be there or on your way to a labor camp or something.” If he sounded smug, he was, complete with a nod of his head, turned up nose and crossed arms.
“And all of us mere mortals appreciate that, Mr. Harry. And, I suppose since you are all-knowing and all-seeing, you know where to find the Myron right now.”
“Of course.”
My patience was running out, but I held it together a while longer. “
Would you mind telling us where?”
“Umm, that depends.”
Now my patience was dry. “No depends about it! Tell us, or I’ll personally scramble your computer core!”
“OK, OK, no need to get personal. The Myron is back above Kiber. I think. I’m pretty sure.”
“You think?”
“Umm, yes. According to her schedule, which was brilliantly part of the data downloaded by my former self, she should be back above Kiber right now. That is, of course, if she stayed to schedule. Pirates, you know. They are so imprecise.”
I looked around the bridge to see if anybody was reacting the way I was to Mr. Harry and his new persona. Everyone but Sif had dumbfounded looks. Sif just sat at his weapons console and blankly stared.
“Amini, set course for Tye and above Kiber in stealth.”
There was no reaction. Amini was still staring at Mr. Harry with mouth agape.
“Amini!”
Amini jumped at my shout, composed herself, and responded. “Yes, of course. Course for Tye set in, target above Kiber.” A moment later, “Entering FTL in three… two… one.”
Chapter 8
A day later we exited FTL ten thousand miles out from Tye and then sped in with standard engines. We didn’t contact Kiber control. Instead, we took a position outside controlled space and came to a halt while Harry, I mean Mr. Harry, looked for the Myron. It didn’t take long. A red circle appeared around a light spot on the bridge viewscreen, around which all but Doc were gathered. He said he had other things to do more important than routine travel.
“Thar she blows!” came the disembodied voice of our now weird AI. We saw the screen zoom in, as if on its own, to a small cargo ship almost as crappy looking as ours.
Crucible: Records of the Argos Page 7
