Blood Sabers

by Burbaugh, MF;

  We had finally started finding a few of the rare trace elements in a small meteorite swarm, things were starting to look up as Bill suited and retrieved various rocks identified by Mary.

  At three months into our mission we got the alert we dreaded—the race for life was on. Head Hunters had been spotted at the fringe of our range, but we were unlucky bastards, we’d slowed down to get the elemental readings. They got a trajectory lock. I vaguely remember the wife screaming, “Balls to the wall!” Some ancient expression, but my trying to bend the throttles past their stops was quite present-time.

  I don’t honestly remember much of the following two weeks; I doubt any of us slept. It was slam this way, slam that, go up, go down, spiral, ‘yeah, they missed,’ or ‘yeah, missed again.’ We all knew we’d never get to say, ‘aw shit, they hit us.’ For two weeks we wiggled and wormed and jumped through space folds as these two huge alien ships followed, doggedly tracking us. We the fox, they the hounds with our scent, slowly running us to ground.

  “Fire the generators!” she said. That meant it was the end, the F/F was shutting down and the two chemical generators measured emergency power in hours. “Gil, head to those asteroids, I dare the bastards to follow!” We had jumped through a fold that had a large series of asteroids circling what seemed to be a dead star; maybe…maybe we could lose them.

  Little doubt what would happen now. At almost a quarter light speed and no fuel to continue to accelerate, and minimum maneuverability, we were zeroed in on the huge asteroid belt. Charlotte looked sad and very tired. “Sorry people, we tried hard. Just wasn’t to be. I promise we won’t be awake if they try to saw our heads off. Say your goodbyes and prepare for Death Sleep.”

  I kissed her on the cheek and crawled into the suit. I cinched down as tight as I could on all the safety straps as I sat in the XO’s chair one last time. We knew this was our last ride. I smelled the gas, I remember—

  ~~~

  After expending its last ergs of energy in emergency retro the little ship slammed to a stop against a large asteroid. Its atmosphere voided to space. Its six human inhabitants floated inside, slowly bouncing from wall to wall. Their bodies limp and unresponsive. The ship was just as unresponsive.

  Alien Thoughts

  He stood in Command on the First Battle Cruiser. They had chased the little ship for two full weeks. The second Cruiser had fired many times at it. His had fired more than once; neither had succeeded in getting close. As he predicted, they were out of fuel and coasting.

  The little ship plunged headlong into the asteroid belt, never reducing speed. The commander watched while his ships did emergency braking. That little ship hit an asteroid, it started careening wildly, its atmosphere voiding into space. Then it hit another, smashing almost in half and was lost to view in the huge field of rocks. He couldn’t understand why they had not simply given up. They would have died quickly and almost painlessly. Now, even if still alive, they had no hope, only a slow death in the middle of an asteroid belt. His ships would look for them; search the belt as best they could. They needed all the information they could find, but he knew they went deep just by their momentum. He dared not risk either of his ships; even in careful maneuvers they could only penetrate the belt the shortest of distances. If they could find the little ship they would either send a small recovery team to tether it and pull it out, or blast it to pieces, just to be sure. Even if they didn’t find it, he was fairly certain he could claim the kill. After all, records show other commanders were given the kill credit when they were rammed by the little ships they chased. They all died, he was still alive.

  Since the start of this war only one of these little ships had stopped and surrendered. It’s occupants, it was said, jabbered nonstop, but nothing of sense could be made of it. Each of their little heads were removed quickly, almost no blood lost, and they were assured almost no pain. The Goddess had smiled upon them. Careful studies of the limited data from the pod showed they had been transmitting the whole event. Why or where was never determined, only the small message pod was received at the home world. What is known is not a single little ship had ever stopped willingly again. His orders were clear—eradicate all humans upon contact; the Goddess demanded we purify the universe.

  His experts analyzed the videos. The other ship had recovered bits of debris that had flown out the other side of the field; large image blowups showed clearly the rending of the first impact and the venting of air into space. The second impact showed the massive damage done that would insure it never flew again. They would go home, he had his kill.

  The two ships turned away from the belt and they increased their speed and slowly became invisible to all the asteroids of the belt who couldn’t see, or hear, or feel them, and had nothing that cared even if they could.

  We Should Not Be Alive

  Open to space, the ship had a little red light that blinked once every 50 seconds. Each cycle it sent a little wave of energy that charged out until it hit something. Part of the little wave would turn around and race back. It was not light, it was not some fancy high-speed radar. It was not detected by the enemy, not seen, nor heard. If it had been, it would have been thought to be nothing but space noise. The little waves went out and back every 50 seconds until they didn’t come back anymore. The little red blinking light changed slightly, just a little brighter. The waves went out and nothing came back that was moving. A computer following its code eventually found more code, more routines. A small green light lit on a panel inside; outside a small gear whirred, a small iris opened and closed and panned and zoomed, peering into the void. Gradually more little lights came on, a blink here, a steady one there. Most were red; a few were green or yellow.

  Service vents closed. A little air was brought back into the ship, so little it couldn’t be seen or felt. Two small robots were outside. They came to life and crawled from their little storage lockers. Once the little camera eye turned on, they moved over the ship. Following programing, using the on board links to the main computer, they started finding tears and rends. They welded and patched and repaired. When the little ship was as airtight as they could make it, the air inside increased in volume and pressure. Heaters turned on. All this time the little camera never stopped searching, the little red light never stopped blinking its 50-second blinks. Space, in the vicinity of the ship anyway, continued to be void of anything that might care.

  Of the six bodies slowly banging around inside, the computer knew that five were still tethered to the ship, four still had the little spark called life, and the ship continued following its programs which brought one of them out of their drug induced coma. The untethered one was simply dead. The ship felt no remorse, no compassion; it merely followed the terabytes of code. Flowing from line to line, if/then, and/or, the route always changed, always following new highways, new sub routines, new program jumps.

  ~~~

  I slowly clawed my way to awareness, fighting that red haze that told me my mind was trying to work. The mind throbbed to the rhythm of the heart. It hurt! I started to see something other than red as grays and whites and blacks appeared. I could hear as the colors slowly deepened, focused, and took on shapes. I heard the little lights blinking between the booms of my heart. As the shapes took solid form they quit making noise. The head no longer kept up with the heart, the pounding subsided. The pink haze got lighter and lighter. The noise turned into recognition of speech.

  “…hear this. XO, please acknowledge when you hear this. XO please acknowledge when you hear this.” Over and over and over. It told me something other than I was alive, but I couldn’t grab it as it went by. I knew it was called recognition and I knew I had to catch it. The next time it came by I jumped and caught it. My body heaved and jerked as it gulped more than the few molecules of oxygen it had been getting. My mind cleared, my arms could move if I wished them to. I finally found I had a voice. “Acknowledged,” it said. I heard it.

  Head pounding, I slowly looked around. It was painful.
I was floating. I saw others; they floated as well.

  A voice kept insisting on interrupting my thought processes. “XO, remain in suit, acknowledge. XO remain in suit, acknowledge—”

  “Acknowledged,” I said. I remembered a little: I was XO, I was talking to a computer, we had been running from something…HH, and we had tried to run from them. I couldn’t remember who HH were but I knew it would come to me. I had been put to sleep.

  “XO, you are in command, acknowledge. XO you are in command—”

  “Acknowledged!” I said. “Shut the hell up and let me think!”

  HH, we were at war with HH, but we didn’t know who they were. From the video we knew they wore big suits, were big. We knew they had big eyes, we saw red eyes. That was all we knew about the Head Hunters other than they liked to cut off heads, our heads. We also didn’t know why we were at war.

  Point by point the fog lifted. I remember the planet was down to two of the original eight ships and if I was in command, then this one wasn’t going to be in good shape.

  We had been strapped in tight. I remember the captain saying we couldn’t get away and we were heading to the belt, but we were out of options and we knew it. The captain made the decision; the computer merely followed best-case programming. We went to what we called ‘dead sleep’. None had returned from it in this war, until now.

  We knew four of the six previous ships had gone to dead sleep and the computer did as it was told. If it could, it turned on the attackers, rammed the enemy and blew itself up, the crew with it. There were no escape pods, no transporters, nowhere to go, you died with the ship, period.

  I became fully aware I had come back from the dead.

  “Crew status?” I asked.

  “Three still in induced sleep, vitals good, two presumed dead,” it said.

  Since I was the one the computer called up, my wife Charlotte was one of the presumed dead.

  I pushed off the wall slowly and found the captain, her suit’s umbilical cord was ripped off—the air voided to space and she died.

  I found the second victim, no L.E.D. lit on his suit either. Cause unknown, but Gilbert was dead.

  All the crew chair harness restraint systems had broken, some of the chairs had bent, one ripped from the floor.

  I moved all the suited figures and using magnetic anchors, I secured each to the walls. Three alive and two dead.

  “Ship status?” I asked.

  “Systems on or off line?” it asked.

  “List off line systems.”

  “Attitude jets 1, 2, 3, and 7; primary water system; backup air scrubber;” and so it went, A to Z. It was a long list.

  “Can we move?” I asked.

  “Attitude jets usable to change position slightly before depletion. Main engines are off line, engineer required to determine status,” it said.

  “Engineer status?” I asked. Sylvia Collins was one of our best. Well, she was almost our last too.

  “Normal, no known injuries detected.”

  “Revive her then,” I ordered. “Air, water, food?”

  “Air 43 days without scrubbers, water 13 days, food 5 months based on a crew of four, which I assume is correct.”

  I couldn’t keep them in status long. It originally had been designed to reduce mental and physical damage caused when the ship was forced to use extreme maneuvers for extended periods like running through asteroid swarms. The human body withstood far more stress when totally relaxed, even with internal body parts slamming into each other. There had been many internal injuries with extreme cases, but to live was usually preferred to piling into a rock at quarter light speed.

  As I waited for Sylvia to come back from the dead I went over the ship’s recorders for anything useful on the HH. The two ships that caught us were different. I saw the original video where that ship had one large hump on the back—these had two. They had added an engine. Other than that I saw nothing about those two that were different from other encounters I knew of, except that we got away.

  We of New Earth left the real Earth after the great music was heard and almost 160 years to the day after the old NASA ship had entered our solar system and was intercepted. It had belonged to one of the earliest pioneers of T/S Fold jumpers. I remember in the Academy we studied its history. Most people believed it was a fabrication of NASA. The book found inside told of Gods and Goddesses, love and hate. Death and Birth, and a planet called Camelot. Politicians and religious zealots alike said it was just the ramblings of a lost and dying pilot. NASA said different and it was required reading at the Academy.

  The ship was totally gutted. The #5 computer was missing and someone had patched and rebuilt a wave-rider motor. They are a complicated Monopole jet style engine capable of high speeds as long as it continued to receive mass for thrust. That came from the reactor and the energy to mass converters aboard ship. The ship was controlled by a single computer, the oldest model known to exist. The ship was mounted to parts of what NASA thought were at one time huge liquid/chem rockets that had simply been welded to it. Most had been knocked off from many T/S fold jumps. How long it took to reach Earth was unknown.

  Regardless of what anyone believed, a few facts were known: the music mentioned in the book matched our history of the great song heard from space on Earth. Also the last four pages of the book was a math formula. It was tested, it was studied, it was verified. We could finally take big ships to the stars through T/S folds. I remember the last lines and signatures at the end, all done by hand…it said:

  To Earth, I send you my regards from Camelot, I offer a gift from Linda—we call her the Bronze Goddess. She and Latwasa and Rodel figured it out and said it works. Welcome to the stars!

  Signed: King Jake Spoonbill, First Queen Aawasa, Second Queen Katawasa, Fourth Queen Linda.

  President of the UNF: Chief

  Science Advisor: Latwasa

  I remember a few others were listed on the end.

  Jake Spoonbill was known to be the original pilot, as recorded by NASA. That signature was validated as his.

  So we built our huge ships called Great Carriers, or GCs, we packed 6000 people inside with enough stores to ensure any colony established would survive and, planet conditions permitting, thrive. We went to the stars in droves. My group was in the third great wave. 100 GC ships went on the first, 320 the second and we were, at the time, the last with almost 450, yet we knew thousands more were being built. All went in whatever direction they wished, for as far as they wished, limited only by the stores aboard and patience of the people in it. Ours went far—we jumped over fifty times. We were off the galactic plane a bit and found a wonderful little planetary system with eight planets and ours had two small moons. We called it New Earth. I suspect there were probably a hundred of them named that in our universe now. Dang, only four years ago when we landed? Seemed so long ago now.

  When we had decided to try our eleventh promising system inspection, it took over two months for the little scout to return, but we already knew all we needed to know from its telemetry before it got back. The fourth planet was about Earth size with similar gravity and air composition. It had four distinct continents. Vast oceans, woods and fields teaming with life. No intelligent life found, but remnants indicated it did have once. Slightly elevated radiation and a few low level ‘hot’ spots indicated a possibility of a nuclear war thousands of years past. It was our Eden. We had to be sure. Landing the Great Carrier was a permanent thing. Once down it would never lift again. We now called that planet home.

  I heard Sylvia. She was awake and responding. “What happened? I thought we were supposed to be dead? Ram them or something?”

  “The captain and Gilbert are dead, Mary and Bill are still in stasis for now.”

  “Shit!”

  “Yes, yes. I think that fits the situation.” I smiled at her.

  “Damn him to hell for dying on me,” she said.

  Sylvia was considered a wild one—if you had what she likes, she gave you her
body, but never her heart. No one who knew her ever thought she even had a heart. I also did not know of anyone who would not jump at the chance if they were not committed. She was a real looker. She also would not have anything to do with anyone either married or committed. Her little piece of honor, as she called it.

  Sylvia’s long jet-black hair, her perfect nose, her thin and inviting lips, and those lashes. So long, so beautiful on her black pools called eyes.

  “I suppose that means if we survive longer than a couple days we become an item once again?” she asked.

  “I suppose, unless you want Bill,” I said.

  “No, he is committed to Mary. I don’t screw around with another woman’s property, you know that!”

  “I know.” I smiled.

  She punched me in the arm.

  “Well, what have we got?” she asked, coming back to reality.

  I gave her the rundown. “Computer says we are pretty well screwed. Main Grav Riders off line, a few attitude jets work, however there is almost no gas left. We’re resting against a big asteroid and are bent and smashed. Oh, and we are short on water.”

  “Hum, okay. Computer you there?” She switched directions so I let her chat with the comp and listened. The F/F reactor was listed as still operational if we could get some rare elemental mass for it—it was depleted from two weeks at max speed and maneuvering. We call it burning for hell and it uses every erg of energy it can find. Even the reactor can’t make enough to sustain itself and still work the energy to mass converters, yet we dared not slow the slightest as they matched us day after day. We were on the backup life-support system. A separate power source good for a few days, but limited to what we can do with it.

  We were caught running slow while exploring for the rare Earth elements on the list and necessary for our continued existence as more than a medieval society. We also needed to build missiles to combat the HH.