Cygnus Arrives: Humanity Returns Home (Cygnus Space Opera Book 3)

by Craig Martelle

  “Here, here!” Cain called out, pounding a fist on the table and startling the others.

  Rand nodded grimly. “The commander is right. Jolly, Briz, fix our code so that we don’t have any hiccups if we need to fight with the ship. I hope to hell that we don’t, but our track record in meeting new people suggests that we had best be ready.”

  Major Cain turned to Starsgard. “Go bring up the weapon system and make sure you have the missiles online, then put everything on ice while we’re banking dark matter. After the next jump, you bring that system up and make sure it stays up as we transit the gravity well and see what there is to see,” Cain directed the corporal.

  “Will do, Major,” Starsgard replied. He got up, excused himself, and left the meeting.

  Captain Rand held his hands up and shook his head. He didn’t have anything else. He motioned to the commander.

  “Nothing more from me. Jolly?” Daksha asked.

  “I am certain that the ship is in tip top shape. You won’t have any more problems from aberrant code running rampant in the dark corners of our space,” Jolly said with a huge smile, bowing at the end.

  The Tortoid cocked his head and looked at the Briz avatar. It blinked out without saying anything.

  “I guess our chief engineer is satisfied,” Daksha said with a laugh.

  “I guess so,” Rand agreed, happy that the issue was resolved for the Cygnus-12, but not looking forward to their return home and a direct confrontation with Holly.

  “When’s the next heavy gee exercise, Major Cain?” Commander Daksha asked.

  “I think we’ll take today off, and then continue every other day. It is harder on the body than I expected,” Cain replied.

  ‘Hard on the body? By all that’s holy, last night’s wrestling match in Ellie’s quarters twisted Carnesto and me into knots! You need the day off is what you meant to say,’ Brutus injected forcefully directly into Cain’s mind.

  ‘Stop it! I’m having an adult conversation here,’ Cain replied in his thought voice.

  ‘You and your woman need to get yourselves under control!’ Brutus snapped. Cain smiled and bit his lip.

  ‘I’ll take that under advisement, you little vagrant. How are yours and Tobiah’s kittens doing?’ Cain asked, trying to deflect some of the ‘cat’s criticism.

  ‘I shall cause you great pain, human, when you least expect it.’ Brutus closed the mindlink with an audible snap.

  “Talking with your ‘cat?” Rand asked, still looking at the major.

  “Damn. I’m sorry. He was giving me a ration of nonsense, but we’re good. We’ll go heavy gravity tomorrow and every other day until the jump, and then maybe once a day as we descend into the gravity well, depending on what we find.” Cain waited for the captain to acknowledge the plan.

  Rand screwed up his face as he bit his lip before coming clean. “I think Brutus shared your conversation about Ellie with the whole ship.”

  Cain’s face fell.

  There it was--payback for the perceived slight. Cain closed his eyes and imagined ways he could throw Brutus from the airlock.

  “It’s not like we didn’t know, so there is that.” The captain tried to sound conciliatory but Cain wasn’t buying it. “If I were you, I’d go talk with Ellie. I expect she’s holed up in engineering and has vowed to never come out.”

  ***

  Briz left the meeting because he wanted to make sure the dark matter systems were running efficiently. He’d reprogrammed the collection process to cut the time it took. He hadn’t seen any unintended consequences, but he remained wary. What should have taken fifteen days would only take twelve if they were able to maintain their current collection rate.

  Jolly devoted more ship resources to the process, too. Together, Briz and Jolly were back at it, leaving the rest of the lifeforms behind.

  The complexities of the ISE and the dark matter process were nothing to be taken lightly. Briz wanted to give both Jolly and the ship his full attention.

  Ellie was in her seat watching the displays for the systems outside of what Briz was working on, but she didn’t see the information that scrolled past. She’d heard Brutus giving Cain a hard time, realized that he was broadcasting to everyone, and turned bright red with embarrassment.

  The hatch opened and Ellie prepared to run and hide, but it was only Cain strutting into engineering like he owned the place.

  She stood up slowly, and the heat built within like lava headed toward the caldera.

  Cain stopped where he was, the expression on his face, frozen in time, with only one thought in his mind.

  Run!

  He took two slow steps backward as she advanced, then he turned and bolted for the door.

  Cain had always been a fast runner and kept himself in shape. He never expected that she’d catch him, but she did, tackling him from behind before he made it out. He squirmed briefly, but decided discretion was the better part of valor. He rolled over and held his hands up in surrender to Ellie, but also keeping his hands close in case he needed to protect his face.

  “How could you?” she snarled.

  “I had nothing to do with it!” he claimed, ready to offer Brutus to her on a silver platter.

  “But you love me!” Her demeanor changed instantly and she settled onto his chest.

  Oh crap, he thought, closing his eyes and sighing.

  “We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, my beautiful Ellie, and I’m sorry for all the time I’ve lost with you. Can we be second?” he asked.

  “Who wants to be second place?” she asked, her voice gravelly.

  “Our careers are first. You are an amazing engineer and you’ve kept this ship flying without a problem. You and Briz, because you take good care of the Cygnus-12. I have my thing with the Marines, but next, it’s you and me. We support each other’s careers by supporting each other.” Cain found it hard to wax too poetic with Ellie perched on top of him.

  She exhaled heavily, wiped her tears, and peered down on Cain. “No. We’re first and careers second.”

  He nodded.

  Her eyes sparkled, and Cain was riveted. He reached up a hand and pulled her face to his for a gentle kiss, brushing his lips over hers.

  The hatch slid open and Captain Rand stopped mid-step to avoid kicking the pair lying on the deck. “Damn, Cain!”

  EL475 – Welcome to Heimdall

  “Prepare to activate the ISE,” Captain Rand told the bridge’s ceiling, trusting that Jolly would relay his warning ship-wide.

  “Board is green,” Lieutenant Peekaless called over his shoulder.

  “At your convenience, Lieutenant Brisbois,” Rand ordered.

  “Counting down, four, three, two, one,” Briz relayed. The momentary surge and displacement. The front screen showed a new star pattern.

  “Navigation, report!” Rand ordered, looking at the larger than expected glowing orb.

  Pace and Kalinda ran through their screens. “Chirit, confirm,” Pace said. The pilot spun around in his chair. “Impossible if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but we are halfway down the gravity well. We are less than one AU from the habitable planet within the EL475 system.”

  “BRIZ!” the captain yelled, furious at the implementation of the untested changes in the ISE. Daksha blinked rapidly. “I didn’t approve that jump. Get your ass up here right now!”

  “Captain, you have to believe me, but that was not the intent. We should have appeared right at the edge of the heliosphere, not within it. I’m digging in with Jolly right now to figure out what happened. I’ll get back to you soonest,” Briz explained before clicking off.

  Jolly appeared next to the captain, who was forcing himself to calm down. “We did not intentionally jump the ship into the well, Captain,” Jolly said softly as he held his hands out with his palms down. “We made some of the changes in calculations that Briz devised, but that should not have changed our trajectory. We do need to collect more data on this, but the jump was successful into the well.
This is precedential, as long as we can replicate it and control it.”

  Rand nodded tersely. “Pace. How long to Heimdall?”

  “Less than a week at standard acceleration,” Pace replied.

  “Hold us steady right here, please. We will be a hole in space. Sensors, passive at present, please. Tell me what’s out there, and be prepared to go active. We could be right in the middle of a hornet’s nest.”

  Daksha and Rand made eye contact. There had never been a jump to within the gravity well before, so they’d never contemplated the contingency of jumping into the middle of a foreign power’s fleet.

  Rand didn’t know if the people of Heimdall had retained space-faring capabilities, but prudence dictated he consider the worst case scenario first, then walk backward to best case.

  “Major Cain, report to the command deck,” Rand told the ceiling. The hatch opened instantly and Cain and Black Leaper walked through. “Were you waiting outside?”

  “I was on my way here when we activated the ISE. I was too slow. My apologies,” Cain answered. Stinky shrugged in the way of the Wolfoids, rotating one shoulder and lifting a lip to show one of his canine teeth.

  “We have materialized well inside the gravity well of this system,” Rand started to explain, splitting his attention between Cain and the front screen. “We are passive only at present until we learn enough to move without risk. That’s my analysis and disposition of the ship. If you have other ideas, I’m open.”

  Cain walked forward of the captain’s chair to get a better look at the screen and the system into the middle of which they’d appeared. “Jolly, can you please show us where the planets are presently located relative to our position?”

  The screen changed to a diagram showing the Cygnus-12 lateral to the rotating axis of the system’s planets. “Distance to the nearest habitable planet?”

  “Less than one AU,” Pace replied.

  “Can you put our flight path on the screen, please?” Cain asked. Pace touched his controls and a dotted arcing line appeared before them. “I think we’re in a good position here. If there was any intersystem travel, it would be within the rotational axis. There’s no reason for anyone to be all the way out here,” Cain said, comfortable with his analysis. “That being said, I don’t think we want to announce ourselves either. I expect we’ll know if there are any people flying about out there within a day or two.”

  “We are agreed,” Rand stated, still looking at the screen.

  “Any way we can squeeze in some heavy gee training in the next day or two?” Cain asked.

  “Maybe tomorrow. You know the drill, Cain. We check every fitting on the ship after an ISE activation. Your people are our people and shouldn’t you be down checking your sewage pumps?”

  “That cuts me deep, Captain. Private Derby is down there and working through the checklist. The Marines are at their duty stations. I have to give kudos to Briz and Jolly. I think this last one was the smoothest jump yet.” Cain nodded to Stinky, who had assumed his position next to Commander Daksha.

  “Is there anything you need me to do?” Stinky asked the Tortoid as Cain departed on his way to the center of the spindle where sewage treatment was located.

  “‘Cats, out of my quarters and clean sand. Is it too much to ask, Black Leaper? I think they’ve put family pictures on the wall and ordered new furniture. All I want is my quarters. How can I be homeless on my own ship?” The Tortoid’s vocalization device reflected a forlorn tone matching the words.

  Once in the corridor, Cain took a sharp left. ‘Brutus, my friend, it is time to move your family. I think Mixi has overstayed her welcome.’

  When Cain opened the hatch to the commander’s quarters, he was greeted by the smell of ammonia.

  “Jolly, can you have Stinky meet me at the commander’s quarters, and have him bring a stretcher please. Send Stalker, too. I’m sure we’ll need backup. And a maintenance bot to clean the sand.”

  Cain walked in and found that the smell wasn’t bad. He acclimated quickly to the meowing and perpetually drifting cat hair.

  “Brutus, my man!” Cain said when he saw the small orange beast lying in the sand, three kittens nipping at his ears. He looked miserable. “You and the tribe are moving to the garden deck.”

  ‘Thank the heavens,’ Brutus said.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Mixial’s petite voice carried a sharp edge.

  ‘I just want to share our good fortune, my sweet,’ Brutus lied. Stinky ran through the open hatch first, carrying the front end of the stretcher, and Night Stalker followed with the back end in hand.

  They put the stretcher down by the sand, both wrinkling their noses as they tried not to breathe too deeply. Brutus dragged his three out of the sand and took a position in the middle of the stretcher. One of the kittens hopped twice, sideways with his hackles up, as he tried to intimidate Stalker.

  “Aren’t you just the cutest thing?” she said through her vocalization device, then reached out her paw to let the kitten bat at it. “You are, are you? Well, take that!”

  Cain wondered why she was carrying on a conversation with herself, when a second kitten raced at Stinky and launched its little body through the air with claws out. It landed on the Wolfoid’s thigh, digging its claws in to find purchase, then started climbing.

  Stinky’s lips twisted and turned as he grimaced at the pain. He didn’t throw the kitten away from him, because Cain, Brutus, and Stalker were watching. Marines were always on display in showing how much pain they could tolerate.

  The kitten worked its way to his shoulder where she stopped, sat, and started cleaning herself.

  Brutus looked exasperated, shaking his orange head as if to say, “of course, the kittens are making trouble. It’s what they do best!”

  “Hello, little lady. So your name is Penelope. That’s a long name for someone so small, but I think you’ll grow into it,” Stinky said, lifting a hand to pet the little orange kitten.

  “And this little man is called Hortense,” Stalker added.

  Brutus chuckled. ‘Welcome to your new lives, the first Wolfoids with your very own ‘cat life-links. They might be a handful at this stage and you’ll have to bring them back to their mother for feedings every two hours, but outside of that, consider yourselves blessed.’

  Cain absent-mindedly ran a finger along the scar that Brutus had given him the first day they tried to get along. “Come on, Mixi, hop aboard your chariot!”

  She nudged the two kittens, one orange and the other big and gray, toward the stretcher. Once all were on board, with the exception of the two riding their pet Wolfoids, Stinky and Stalker picked up the stretcher and Cain led the way from the commander’s quarters. The maintenance bot was waiting in the corridor.

  “Clean that sand, Mr. Maintenance Bot,” he told it as he passed.

  ***

  Tandry knew that Mixi was moving, but the sensor operator couldn’t leave her post. Mixial reassured her that everything was fine. They would be on the garden deck for the foreseeable future. Tandry accepted that the move was necessary, because she knew the extent of Master Daksha’s sacrifice. She made a note to deliver a personal thank you when she had time.

  She was using the ship’s sensors as a huge funnel to vacuum up signals bouncing around EL475.

  “Nothing,” Tandry said, looking at the screens. She adjusted the settings, waited, then reviewed again. She opened the link to Chirit’s position. “I’ve got one big steaming pile of nothing in here. What do you have?”

  “Not a single man-made wave across the entire spectrum. We’ll give it a day just in case, but I don’t think the colonists are space-going. They’ve traded their starships for plows, I expect. That was the premise, wasn’t it?” the Hawkoid asked.

  “I have to say that I didn’t pay attention to history as much as I should have in Space School,” Tandry admitted. But she knew someone who was an expert in history.

  She tapped out a question to Pickles and hit send. An answer came bac
k within two minutes.

  The history of Cygnus VII tends to agree with the premise of colonization with the intent to become self-sufficient. During the actual colonization of Vii, they dismantled the shuttles to build Sanctuary, a high-tech city. They built an astrophysics research station on Cygnus VI to further the advancement of science. The colonization ship Traveler remained in space, with an Android and clone crew, but wasn’t broadcasting. They may have the same situation here, and if that is the case, their offensive weaponry is probably nonexistent as the colony ships were unarmed.

  “When do you think we’ll be able to learn if there is a ship in orbit?” Tandry asked Chirit.

  “We’ll have to go active first and wait for the return signal. I can’t recommend going active until we’ve moved closer and can focus the outgoing signal,” Chirit replied, his vocalization device reflecting a higher-pitched, calm voice.

  “I guess we have what we’re going to have, but will monitor for the next day to make sure?” Tandry wondered aloud.

  “I’ll inform the captain,” Chirit answered.