The Valkyries of Andromeda

by Lindsay Peet

CHAPTER SEVEN

  As in so much of life, in wormhole jumping preparation is essential. Best case, everything is carefully prepared, all the variables calculated to certainties, all the adjustments checked and checked again, and when you emerge from the wormhole you’re exactly where you expect to be.

  On the other hand ….

  When you jump abruptly, without having deduced the exact proper velocity and angular momentum and spin and color and piquant tang related to all the multi-dimensional distortions you whip up in the spaces where you start and end, and beyond that you’ve taken a wild-ass guess at your mass, well then you end up … wherever we ended up.

  Emerging and finding we were surrounded by stars, as opposed to, say, dark matter or the inside of a sun, was a good thing. Granted, the odds were in our favor as emptiness is the prevailing condition out there, but these are odds I don’t like to test. Generations ago, before the jumpways were established and kind of grooved in, ships used to disappear much more often, and it was generally figured that they’d mis-jumped and their terminus had been terminal.

  Just as we entered the wormhole we had lurched and I was sure I saw another flash of light from aft where Jedub, Lordano and the balls had all jumbled together in a heap. Wanliet untangled them and I expected I’d see some kind of evidence of a blaster hit, but nothing. Twisting about to check my load I saw just the guys and the balls, all kind of scattered with our personal gear what with all the herky-jerk jumping and twisting we’d been doing. It was dark back there, and once more I saw subtle glows from inside the balls, yellow and red and somehow soothing, and a damn welcome sight right then.

  Wondering what we had and what I’d gotten into, I slowly swung my seat back and set the astrogator to sorting out our location – because I, myself, the pilot, had no idea where I’d ended us up at, only that, judging from the lack of explosions, shrapnel and vacuum, I felt confident we were not in the vicinity of Basoolah. After viewing the points of light about us, the computer contrived to put a ‘you are here’ arrow somewhere in its charts, but couldn’t. It appeared we had gone where no man had mapped before, which wasn’t entirely bad as Basoolah wouldn’t likely find us here, ever. But we also had no idea which way ‘home’ was, nor how far.

  Six hours of floating convinced me of three things – we were totally lost, Basoolah had no more idea of our whereabouts than we did, and I couldn’t spend much more time with Jedub and Lordano in the little ship. It was time for a change.

  “Well, boss, whatcha gonna do now, huh? This drifting is starting to make Mobahey look good,” offered Jedub.

  “What doing shall we be then, Jaf?” Now that Jedub had said his piece, Lordano piped up.

  It was funny in a way. My whole life I’d made my way by blending in, keeping a low profile, skills I’d developed on Kipple and honed in adult life. Now I had a psychopath after me for some mysterious treasure, and in a high-profile chase I’d become chief of a crew of three on a lost ship. I was now in charge, and we were all depending on my skills to get us out of this mess! This is how major life-stream changes happen. It seemed Life wanted me to expand my horizons, literally and figuratively.

  “Well, we’re going to find the nearest habitable planet and we’ll see what we can see.”

  “To do what we will do” added Wanliet.

  “And grab what we can grab” finished Jedub, and I had to admit I kind of liked his thinking.

  I wanted to find a base because I had no idea how long we’d be lost, and a local point of reference seemed good. Even if we didn’t know where the planet we landed on was, at least we’d be able to get some bearings relative to where we landed.

  And, while the ship could keep us alive for weeks, the thought of being cooped up with these three made me shudder. The ship could keep us alive, but that was no guarantee I wouldn’t kill somebody. To cap it all, Wanliet had started whistling, either tunelessly or some melodies I’d never heard – either way was torture. Finally, getting a chance to see if the blasters or moonlets had damaged the ship sounded prudent, too.

  After too many more anxious hours we found it. Not only was the planet inhabitable, but inhabited. Or, so the indicators read – low-level electro-magnetic spectrum traffic, light pollution of air and water, and some clusters of activity, scattered throughout lone occupied continent. We – I – decided to land near one cluster, but on the far side of some mountains, so we could avoid attracting too much attention. I was being cautious; although the radio traffic sounded like Standard, I couldn’t figure out how it was that, on a planet so far out that it wasn’t even on the astrogator’s charts, the planet below us apparently was part of the Empire.

  I had a sudden thought. “W, any chance this is an MF planet?”

  “Huh, hadn’t thought of that. I don’t think so, I’m not getting any kind of feeling like I do. Of course, being near those balls might throw me off, too.”

  “Maybe those balls work like magnets, and draw us to MFs” I suggested.

  “Could be – I can’t tell. But if we do meet the MFs, I don’t think they’d be aggressive. Not the way they think.”

  “Considering the way you think, that doesn’t give me a lot of confidence.” I paused and tossed ideas back and forth in my head, then decided it was already decided. “Nothing for it, I’m thinking, but to hop on down there and see what’s what, then take it from there.” Hearing silence from the crew, that’s what we did.

  Fog and mist roiled away from our jets as we settled on a plateau behind a ridge. As the ship sank through the slanting early light we could see the region was green and moist, almost lush, but the plateau’s crown was a flat meadow fringed by trees. Without a magrail leaving would be tough, it always is, but we could do it, unless we ‘acquired’ a lot of loot here.

  Once down I secured the controls so only I could pilot the ship, using my usual code -- 8675309; no matter what happened on this planet, I wanted to make sure my crew wanted me alive. I also set the ship’s astrogator to spin the fringe maps of the galaxy every which way to sort out where we were, and told it to radio us when it sorted things out. I didn’t know how things would play out on this planet, but if we had to leave I wanted to have a destination, as the takeoff would use almost all our fuel.

  It’s hard to put a firm timeline on these things – after all, the computer was examining and re-imagining an awful lot of space -- but if I didn’t get a beckon from the beacon (oh no, was Wanliet rubbing off on me?) within two weeks, I reckoned we were likely stuck on this very remote rock for the rest of our lives. Or, until Basoolah found us – which, I guess, was pretty much the same thing.

  In the meantime, we were off to see what we could see, do what we could do, and get what we could get.

  A good captain must always keep his eyes open for opportunities.