Storiesonline.net ------- Catamount by Sea-Life Copyright© 2009 by Sea-Life ------- Description: Dar Kree is a Sondag pilot - sole survivor of a failed battle, his ship drifts powerless into the Volmon rift. Ross Carson and Pete Lopez are partners, hardscrabble independent miners and salvage operators operating their own ship, but just barely staying one step ahead of the creditors. When the Sondag ship exits the rift and collides with the human - its a disaster. But its also a new beginning. Codes: ScFi ------- ------- Chapter 1 The cold shimmer of light that lanced out from the edges of the rift washed across the cockpit's surfaces and the face of Dar Kree, overwhelming the dim emergency lighting. "Nest, this is Claw Three Echo Seven Light," Dar called into his comm. Again there was no response, only the soft hiss of an open channel. "Claw Leader, Claw three," again the forlorn hiss was the only reply. Dar worked his way back from the cockpit into the crew quarters. The damage to the ship did not make it easy, even as agile as he was. Nor was he as agile as was normal for him. He may have lived through the disaster, but he had suffered some injuries doing so. At first he had hoped he would find others of Kadamon's crew alive, but the hope had been dashed, first by his failure to get a response over the ship's internal comm, and then more utterly by the bodies he found when he was able at last to tour the ship. The Chief Engineer and the engineer's mate had died at their stations, as had the two ratings who normally manned the ship's pulse cannons. The Kadamon, had dropped its four squads of marines on Numaza, taking only moderate damage getting back into orbit. Dar had known it was a bad sign when the orders had come almost immediately for a relief pickup. The Fighting Fifth's four squads who made the Kadamon home must've really stepped in it, he'd thought at the time. The ship had taken even more damage going back into atmosphere, but nothing she wasn't built to take, and Dar had been looking for the pickup beacon when the orders had come to bug out. A bug out call had to mean that the beast had been well and truly gutted and stuck on the spit, planetside, he'd thought when that call came. By the time the Kadamon had slipped out of atmosphere, she had damage that was going to require some time to fix. Nothing the shipboard repair drones couldn't handle, but serious enough. "Ship, how goes the scan?" Dar asked, knowing that there would be no news. The ship's keruden would have contacted him immediately if there had been any change. "85 percent complete commander," came the ship's reply. Again Dar regretted his decision to use his mate's voice for the keruden. The war mind was the current state of the art in Sondag Electronic Intellects, and if he was going to live, it would probably be due to the keruden's ability to interface with the ship systems, but it haunted him to hear that voice now, knowing he may never hear the real one again. There were serious signs of the entirety of Claw Three having stepped in it by the time he'd gotten back to high orbit. The cover ship that was supposed to be keeping any of the enemies big boys off his back was nowhere to be seen. The Kuros, the Heavy destroyer assigned to cover his cover ship was spitting fire from places it shouldn't and had dropped into a much lower orbit than it should have. The ship told him that there were a half dozen other planetary landing craft and supply ships spinning their gears trying to get into high orbit. 'The Kuros must be trying to provide cover for us.' The destroyers efforts seemed to have been effective, as several dozen craft lit fires under their engines and fled the Sionnex system entirely. Dar's circuit through the ship served no purpose except to give him a sense of purpose, and he knew it, but busy work was fine with him, even if it was busy work he gave himself. He'd cleared out the remaining bodies days ago, and the repair drones were almost completely finished restoring the blown bulkhead that had been the outer wall of the warrior's training and equipment repair bay. Dar looked with curiosity once again at the row of biomorphic polyarmor suits that hung on the inner wall. If the ship's crew had been wearing those suits when the disaster had happened, they would more than likely all still be alive. The armor was designed to survive far harsher attacks than that which the Kadamon's crew had been exposed to. The space marines were bio-engineered though, to make them capable of wearing the suits, and the crew of the Kadamon was not. The pilot's pod, where Dar had been offered a similar level of protection, though certainly not accompanied by the mobility or lethality the armor offered the marine who wore it. Past the marine billet, he worked his way back past to the engineering space. It too looked to be restored completely. The engines themselves were another story, Dar knew, and since he was there, he checked with the ship. "Ship, what's the status of the engine repairs?" "The port engine will be operational in three days, five hours and seventeen minutes, commander. The starboard engine will be operational in six days, eleven hours and nine minutes. Both engines will be restored to fleet nominal status in twelve days." Satisfied that things were proceeding as best they could, Dar stopped for a meal at the ship's galley and then headed back to the cockpit. There wasn't really a need for him to be there, the keruden was doing everything that could be done. Once back in the pilots chair, he sighed heavily and queried the ship again. The sad remains of the fleet had thought themselves safe by the time they'd reached the Volmon Rift. They'd left the Sionnex system and Numaza behind, and were fast approaching the proper jump vector for getting back into Sondag space proper. It was here, within sensor range of their transition point that the remainder of the enemy forces attacked. Operating underneath the sensor blinding haze of the rifts transit interface, they attacked with six Hellmouth missiles. Given the damage most of the ships had already suffered, three missiles could have been called overkill. Only Kadamon's position on the far port side of the Kuros saved her from the obliteration that took the destroyer itself out. Still, it damaged her engines, shutting them down completely, and killing the rest of the crew with a wash of energies designed to disrupt Sondag neuronic interfaces. The minds of his shipmates; the Sondags behind those minds, died immediately. The bodies took some time longer. "Ship, time to the transition interface?" "Fifteen hours until transition, commander," came the ship's reply. There was his real problem. Dar sighed again with a grimace. His ship, and he with it, was slowly drifting towards the Vormon Rift. When the ship reached the transition interface, it would transition through O-space and reappear somewhere else. The ship, with no engines to direct her, would be almost completely helpless when they arrived at the other end of that transition. The odds told him that the other end of that journey would be unknown space. He didn't need the odds to tell him that an un-powered transition was fatal for anyone not in stasis. Few had ever survived it even in stasis and been found to tell the tale. The rifts of space may have taught the Sondag about the existence of O space, and how to jump through it from one place to another, but it also taught them that the rifts themselves were too dangerous. Rifts made good beacons and served as excellent anchors for ships jumping across O space, but they were fickle and dangerous, subject to whims that no being could control and few could even pretend to predict. "Ship, status of stasis chambers?" "All stasis chambers are fully operational commander, and the full diagnostic you requested shows they meet all fleet and imperial specifications." Twelve hours later, a hungry Dar climbed onto the couch of stasis chamber Twelve. Those about to enter stasis were encouraged to do so on an empty stomach. It had no effect on stasis itself, but it did make post-stasis recovery much easier. "Ship, status please," he called from the couch. "Three hours until transition commander," came the reply. "All repairs are on schedule. Hull integrity is nominal. Shielding is nominal. Life support is nominal." "Very well then ship, initiate a thirty minute countdown. When the countdown is complete, you will assume command under Emergency directive 'Lifeboat Zero'. Understood?" "Thirty minute countdown initiated commander. Standing by to implement emergency directive 'Lifeboat Zero' in twenty nine minutes and twenty one seconds". "Very good," Dar said, more to himself than to the keruden. He settled into the couch, letting the stasis suit settle itself around him before pulling the access hatch shut above him. The chamber was already set for automatic activation, and with the door sealed, he heard a slight hiss of gas just before the field itself activated. Twenty eight minutes and forty three seconds later the war mind took command according to the specified emergency directive. Internal power was diverted to critical systems only. Lights blinked out throughout the ship. Air purification ceased. Air in fact was slowly drained out of the ship's compartments and stored. A little more than two hours later, the ship encountered the Vormon Rift's transition threshold and with a twisting shudder and a brief flare of light, was gone. ------- "Pete, can you drop the aft tether?" Ross Carson asked through the suit's comm. "Sure thing. You want any thrusters?" came the reply. "No!" Ross answered loudly. "I've got things right where I want them now. Don't you dare move a damned thing!" "Okay boss, calm down." chuckled Pete Lopez. "We're a well-oiled machine, remember?" "What we are is a jury-rigged salvage operation with a your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine navcom sitting in a rebuilt, second-hand ship whose mortgage is held by a heartless loan officer." "Yeah, I now," Pete answered. "A loan officer whose never heard the one about not being able to get blood out of a stone. Hey we're doing okay though." "We're holding our own man. We're making our payments, but we're not socking anything away. One of these days we're going to get hit with some sort of repair that we can't jury rig, patch or work around, and then..." "Then we're screwed and the bank owns our ass." "The bank already owns our ass. We miss a payment and they stop letting us haul it wherever we want to in their ship." "Maybe if we played it a little safer..." "We're managing to keep our heads above water this way," Ross argued. It was an old argument. They scouted out some of the more dangerous but higher value target locations, such as the small unnamed and inconstant rift they were near this week. "Everyone else has investors and insurers who tell them no when they even think of coming out here. We've got no one but the bank, and they don't care where we go as long as we keep making payments." "Well they're not stupid, are they Ross?" Paul said in retort. "They know just like we do, what can happen to a ship that gets caught too close to a rift when it shifts. Ships get shredded and people die." "True enough, but we have your special navcom and those modifications to our sensor banks, don't we? You say these mods will give us warning when a shift is imminent, and I believe you." "You have more faith in my work than I do then," Paul answered more quietly. "I always have my friend," Ross answered softly. The momentary argument had ended as quickly as it started, just as they always did. Both men had been working through the entire conversation and with the tether secured and the mass of twisted interstellar debris safely attached, Ross Carson made his way back into the Eudoxus, shedding his space suit as soon as the atmosphere was normalized and headed for the bridge. It was a short walk, as the Eudoxus was not large, save for the cargo hold, which was open to space. "We've got an alert on the sensors," Pete's voice came over the ship's comm. Hurry up!" "Already here," Ross replied, opening the hatch that separated the bridge from the rest of the ship. "Get strapped in, we may have to move." Even as he sat himself down and was reaching for his own buckles, there was a bright flash from the bridge's view screen. Both men looked up in time to see almost as an afterimage, the not-too-distant rift's edge flare and die. Suddenly something seemed to swell in the view screen, something strange and not the typical twisted mass of the refuse they'd been mining. That quick impression was followed by the proximity alarms all going off at once and a sudden hard jerking of the entire ship. The air was full of horrible screeching as tortured metal complained from all part of the Eudoxus. Pete took a quick glance at his console. "Well, that wasn't a shift in the rift, so what the hell was it?" he asked. "I think something hit us," Ross answered. "Not sure what though, the sensors are all off line. Half the internal ones too." "Crap, so's main power. We're on auxiliary." "I'd better go suit back up and check the engineering pod," Ross said, reaching for the release on his harness. "I'll do it," Pete offered. "You've already been out long enough today. Pete checked the telltales on the access hatch, relieved to see that it was still reporting full atmosphere on the other side. "Looks good, here I go." "Good luck, I'll start running the emergency checklist from here. Comm me once your in your suit so I can kill the internal lighting. We've got to save power until we know how long its going to take to get the engines back on line." Ross ran down the list, checking off the things that worked and those that didn't. Most of the failures were from the rear of the ship, it seemed. "Okay, I'm suited up," came Pete's voice through the comm. "Alright, I'm killing the internal lights. Only the emergency lighting should still be visible." "Confirm," came the reply a moment later." Be careful back there," Ross cautioned. "The telltales suggest there's a lot of damage back there. Keep this line open as you go." "Confirm. Moving out," Pete answered. Ross could here his partner's breathing and muttering as he worked his way aft, climbing through the access tunnel that went around the cargo hold towards the rear engine pods. The subconscious stream of muttering interspersed with his hard breathing was suddenly cut off and Ross was beginning to panic when suddenly Pete cursed. "Fuck!" "Pete! You all right?" Ross called. "I'm fine partner, but we're not." came the answer. "What are the engines damaged that badly?" Ross answered grimacing to himself. "What the engines are..." Pete paused for a moment and Ross could hear him taking a deep breath. " ... is gone, old friend. Completely, totally gone. The entire engineering pod looks like it was just sheared off as pretty as you could please." "Fuck!" "Exactly," came Pete Lopez replied after another long silence. "Whatever just hit us was bit and hard, and we are now officially dead men just waiting to die." ------- Chapter 2 "What've we got?" Pete asked when he got back to the bridge. "Lie to me and make me feel better." "We've got a lot, but none of it matters," Ross answered. "We've got food for three months, but air and water for only three weeks. Worse than that, we've only got enough power for two weeks of life support if we run just the essentials and conserve everywhere we can. We've got maneuvering thrusters, but not enough to move us very far or very fast and no place to go that's close enough to reach with them. We've got the forward nav sensors back on line, but they're the low power ones. Everything with any punch depended on us having full power. That includes the comm. We're stuck talking at in-system ranges only, and there's no system to talk inside of." "Well, let's eat. I always think better on a full stomach." Pete said with false bravado. "Besides, as you've described it, we've only got two weeks to eat three months worth of food." Ross couldn't help laugh as they sat and ate. Their food stores would win no culinary awards and were mostly the basic, most economical options available, but there had been a few luxury purchases. Those purchases were going to go first, it would seem. "Listen, we can maneuver, right?" Pete asked after they'd eaten. "Right." "And the forward sensors aren't long range, strictly speaking, but they're navigational, right? "Sure," Ross agreed. "So they've got pretty good range, but its directional." "So lets do a sweep with them and see what we can see. Maybe our engine pod is sitting out there just out of sight waiting for us to limp over and reclaim them." "Well, its something to do," Ross said after some consideration. "Whatever sliced the rear section of the ship off like that isn't likely to have dealt gently with the engines though." "What else can we hope for?" Pete asked. "Leprechauns?" "Be careful what you wish for," Ross said with a laugh. "This far from Earth, things can get a little weird." "This far from Earth? Hell, this far from Asgard." "I'd settle for Tenerif Station," Ross added, and Pete nodded his agreement. Tenerif station offered barely more comfort than they carried with them, but it would seem like paradise to the two men given their situation. "You should take the time to record something to leave behind." "Yeah," Pete nodded into his cup. "Do it tonight. Don't wait until it starts to get to you. Do it now while you can still sound hopeful." "Yeah," Pete said again. He began maneuvering his way carefully towards the galley exit, stopping to drop his cup into the disposal, but remembering in time that they had shut the unit down to save power. There was a durplex bag hanging on the wall and he dropped the cup there as he headed for the bridge. Ross followed, the two men moving slowly in the zero G environment. Sixteen hours later, the two men, both fast asleep after having spent twelve straight hours ensuring their immediate survival and then focusing on the meticulous task of getting the systems sensors and computer systems setup to conduct a complete sweep of near space, were awakened by the blare of the ship's emergency alarm. "what?" Pete's groggy voice came out of the dark. "The proximity alarm," Ross answered from across the room. "the sweep!" Pete blurted, jumping out of his bunk and hitting his head on the overhead compartment. A few minutes later they were both dressed and in the bridge, huddled over the navcom's console. "Okay, its not our engines," Pete said. "Too big for that." "Maybe its what ran into us and chopped them off?" Ross asked. "Maybe, but I don't think so," Pete answered. "Big enough, and if the preliminary readings are accurate, dense enough, but its not moving fast enough. In fact, its pretty close to motionless relative to us." "Hmm. Well, if nothing else shows up, its something to go look at. I'm going back to bed." "Yeah, good idea." Six hours later, Ross Carson's consciousness came struggling up out of a deep sleep. He breathed a sigh of relief as he realized he was hearing the chiming of his sleep alarm and not the blare of the proximity alarm. He was sipping a bulb of coffee and reading over the results of the rest of the proximity sweep when Pete came in holding a bulb of his own. "This no grav shit sucks!" he said as he sat down opposite Ross. "No argument there," Ross agreed. "The sweep completed as expected, and nothing else detected, except for the usual bits and pieces we expect to find here. The kind that brought us out here in the first place." "Mmm," Pete said through his coffee. "So off to investigate our mystery object then?" "Works for me. You want to lay in the course?" "Sure," Pete began tapping instructions into the navcom, double checking it against the readings from the sensor sweep's proximity alarm. "What's the status of our maneuvering thrusters?" "Thrusters are online and warmed up. Good to go when you are." "All right, bringing us about," Pete said, and with the push of a button, the two men felt themselves slowly drifting away from their spots as the ship rotated slowly. "There we go, and twisting her tail ... now!" Pete said with some artificial drama as he pushed the button to engage the main thrusters. "Too good!" Ross said with some cheer. "A third of a gee is not much, but its weight. I'll go see about making us some breakfast. Steak and eggs sound good?" "Sounds fantastic. I'm going to go see if the shower will work with a little gravity back." "Well, its not like it cares what kind of artificial gravity its detecting, grav fields or thrust induced." "Yeah, but is it enough?" "Should be, they sell these systems to the Belters, and most of them live in less than a third of a gee their whole lives." "Yeah, but I"m not sure they use the showers," Pete joked. "Funny," Ross grimaced. "You're only saying that because I used to date a Belter, aren't you?" Hey, Inga was a great girl, and she sure sounded enthusiastic, as I remember. "Yeah, she'd love this zero gee stuff — she was adept at certain zero gee ahh — maneuvers." "Better get cracking on that breakfast. We've got six hours before we're close enough for direct visuals," Pete said as he headed for the shower. "Thats enough time for two good meals." A minute later, as Ross was getting the steaks defrosted, Pete's voice came over the ship comm. "Pete Lopez. Have stomach, will travel." Ross laughed at his friend and partner and considered what would be better for the eggs, fried or scrambled. He was used to Pete's sense of humor, but even with the artificial lightheartedness, he'd gone the extra mile, having re-oriented the Eudoxus so the thrust would give the ship gravity oriented in the proper direction to make the normal deck 'down'. ------- Aboard the Kadamon, things were both better and worse than they were for the crew of the Eudoxus. The ship had come through the rift without gaining any appreciable new damage. Her almost immediate collision with the Eudoxus' engine pod had been another story though. The collision had not only damaged several of the ship's long range sensors and comm arrays, but the flare from the antimatter reaction when the magnetic bottle had collapsed had sent the EI into what amounted to a hard reset, its equivalent of survival mode. The ship still had completely functioning power, life support and weapons systems. The repairs that had been initiated before transition stopped; the repair drones having been forced into a complete system reset by the flare, just like the EI, and following their much faster and shorter boot sequence, had received no instructions, so simply remained where they were. In his stasis chamber, Dar was unaffected and all stasis systems, designed for maximum durability, still quietly indicated the status of his chamber as normal. Because the keruden had countermanded the automatic timer which would have awakened him, Dar remained in stasis, unmoving and unharmed. Ship meantime, struggled to be reborn. The first twenty four hours after the EI's hard reset were the least interesting, or might have been to an outside observer who was not a specialist in electronic intelligences. The keruden was a war mind. Designed and built by the Sondag military, she had certain core instruction sets that might not have been in the early boot stages of a more commercial ship mind. Because of this, her first conscious thought was a self check against her fight or flight instincts. The connections to her engine and her sensors were basic, and reactivating those connections were also a part of the early boot stages. She quickly discovered her engines were inoperative. A quick query of the repair drones told her what their status was. Ship issued new orders and fretted at how long it would be before they were repaired. The restored connection to her sensors told her she was not somewhere known. It also told her she had obviously been in some sort of battle. With access to her memories, the ships secure databanks, still pending in the boot sequence, she did not remember anything about this, but her military programming let her recognize the signs of battle generically. The second thing her sensors told her was that a ship was approaching, apparently on jury-rigged chemical thrusters. A quick scan showed massive damage to the oncoming ship and two beings aboard her, both in what would appear to be the command module. The ship was small, and of no recognized design. Perhaps it too had been jury-rigged by the battle's survivors to allow them to attempt to board her. At this stage of the boot sequence, Ship was a bit paranoid. This was by design, and in keeping with the best military traditions. Her memories started to come back as the connections to her memory banks began to be restored, but the first were those hard coded into the heavily shielded central core, her 'hardened' memory storage. Here the original data and programming she'd received in the Sondag military shipyards came back to life within her. These memories too told her this was no familiar ship approaching, nor was there anything familiar about the beings within her. Paranoid as she was, ship had no memory of having received a command from a Sondag officer. She could not act without orders, so she waited. Her nascent personality began to fret in earnest now, wanting to know, but having to wait for the rest of her systems to slowly come back online. With the ship an hour away, she suddenly could remember the instructions she'd received at the beginning of the current mission. They had been sent to fight a battle against the Komurta Alliance on Numara! The keruden came as close as it was possible for its electronic being to shivering. She ran through the suddenly relevent data on the members of the enemy alliance. Again none matched. These were unknown beings. Again Ship could do nothing. Nothing. Nothing, even as the alien ship drew alongside. Even as it did though, hope arrived in the restoration of her most recent memories. Dar! She remembered Dar. As quick as thought, electronic though it was, she had the stasis chamber initiating its restoration sequence. Dar would know what to do! While the restoration cycle began its too slow process, the alien ship moved closer and a hatch opened. A suited figure emerged and trailing a long umbilical of some kind, slowly approached the Kadamon's outer hull. Ship couldn't feel it touch her, but knew it must have. It was on her! It moved here and there about the surface of her and she remained powerless to act as it sought fruitlessly for a hatch. Of course it would find no hatch. This was no jury-rigged bit of wreckage requiring welded and seamed hatches in her skin! This was a Sondag ship of war! Dar awoke, groggy and confused. It took a moment for him to remember the circumstances that had brought him to where he was. As his head cleared, he realized he was hearing the ship's keruden, but with the original voice she'd had before he'd reprogrammed her with his wife's. The voice just kept repeating over and over. 'Captain, please report to the bridge, I need you.' Even as Dar was responding to her urgent call, even as the suited alien continued to crawl over her surface, she saw something flicker from the alien ship's nose. A laser! They were shooting at her! Danger! Imminent danger! She could respond! The Kadamon's main arsenal were its twin pulse beams. Either of those weapons could have obliterated the alien ship. Either of them would have, in fact, vaporized the small craft at this range. Range was a problem for Ship though. She could not bring those kinds of weapons to bear at such close distances, even if her programming would allow her to fire them without orders. Instead she had to rely on the little used antipersonnel weapons available to her, but even they were suspect. In a moment of, for her, inspiration, she realized that a brief flicker of the ship's shields, currently inactive, would probably kill both beings instantly, short-circuiting their brains, even through their protective suits. She had just completed doing so when Dar walked onto the bridge. "Ship, what in all space and time do you think you're doing!" ------- Chapter 3 "What've we got?" Ross asked. It seemed to be the unavoidable question these days. "A damned ship!" Pete yelled. "A ship? No way, too big. Only some military unit would be running something that big. We haven't got anybody running military vessels that's interested in being out here." "Well that's what it is," Pete argued. "Look out the damned view screen yourself if you don't believe me." "Oh crap," Ross conceded with a moan a minute later. "Pete, that's a ship, no doubt about it, but there's also no doubt about another thing. That's no human ship." "Aliens? Space me," Pete spat. "Already tried my friend, it didn't stick, remember?" "If that's an alien ship, what the hell's it doing just sitting there? Shouldn't it be hailing us or some such? Beaming us aboard? Taking us to their leader?" "Maybe its a derelict." "Crap, compared to us that thing looks pristine." Pete observed. "I mean look at it! And its huge! You could put Eudoxus in her and have trouble finding her afterward." "Well, she'd fit inside, that I agree on. More than a few times over, I'd say." As the Eudoxus approached the alien ship, Ross let her draw within a hundred meters of her before he canceled their current vector with judicious use of the thrusters. For a while, they just sat there and stared. "Any sign of activity?" Ross asked. "Nothing. No electronic signature, no heat signature. Anything else I could look for, would have required the main sensor array, but we have no power for that. Some of the array suffered damage anyway, so who knows what would still work even if we had power." Another long, awkward moment passed as they continued to stare at the bulk of the alien ship in front of them. "Well, one of us ought to suit up and go see if we can at least find some sort of access hatch or something, right?" Pete asked. "Yeah, I suppose there's nothing else to do, not like we have to worry about the risk, right? Just cause this is the opening scene to every bad space movie ever written." "Well there is that," Pete laughed at his partner's comment and Ross joined him. "Flip for it?" Ross asked a moment later. "Isn't it my turn?" Pete asked. "You had the last EVA." "True, but you had the last stint of suit time." "So I did. Okay, we'll flip. But we both suit up, just in case." Their sensors, what remained to them from those that were part of the forward array were designed more as aids to navigation than anything else — negotiating through asteroid belts and debris fields. They were passive for the most part, and where they weren't they were pretty low power. Their anti-collision radar offered the longest range, and it had been what had found this wreck or relic or whatever it was, but it couldn't provide them with any more clues than it already had. The infrared sensors were completely passive, as were the other EM band detectors. The ship wasn't radiating heat, was transmitting nothing in any of the radio bands, and had only the faintest of traces of radioactivity above the normal background level of space, and in this instance, what was normal wasn't. The Eudoxus and the rest of nearby space showed the same elevated levels. Twenty minutes later, Ross was hanging off their longest tether and using his suits maneuvering jets to slowly move across the hundred feet that separated the two ships. They'd maneuvered the Eudoxus to within normal tether range once they'd decided the ship wasn't active, and Ross had won the toss. He did a well practiced rotation at the end of the tether once he was nearing the ship's hull so that it would be his suit's magnetic boots that touched first. There was no noise when he touched, of course. He did feel the sudden pressure against the soles of his feet as the suit's built in soles absorbed the impact, gentle as it was. He bounced. "Okay, the hull's not magnetic," he called to Pete. "I'll have to use the suit jets to move around. "Anything visible up close?" Pete asked back. "What, like a 'You are here' sign or something? Nothing visible. Minor pitting and scarring, but not much. Nothing that looks like writing or pictures or anything like that. No seams either for that matter." "No visible welds?" Nope. This damned thing looks like it would be capable of atmospheric flight if it weren't so big." "Not much in the way of wings on it," Pete replied. "True, but the whole thing could be a lifting body. Its more or less the right shape for it." "Only if you're being pretty generous about it." "Well, I feel like being generous," Ross laughed. "Its not like you or I are ever going to get to see it anyway, right?" "So this relic gets the benefit of the doubt from the soon to be dead guys?" "Yup," Ross answered. "Okay, I'm going to walk over the horizon here for a bit, so don't wig out on me, okay?" "Copy," Pete slipped back into a more serious tone. They may be going to die, but they weren't dead yet, and no sense rushing it. Ross maneuvered his way up the hull, working his way north, 'north' being the direction they had decided the Eudoxus faced when they'd brought it to rest at tethering distance. "This thing's bigger than I thought," he sent as he glanced back in Pete's direction. "I may run out of tether before I get far enough around her to lose line of sight. "Getting close," Pete called out. "Fifty feet of tether left." "Nope, just made it," Ross called out a minute later. "Can't see me, can you?" "Nope. Just the tether against the hull. You've got twenty feet left." "Might as well come back then. This sides a little different towards the back at least. I think I'm seeing engine blisters or something. Everything is still smooth and clean, but there might be a ding or something down near one of those blisters." "All right, Hey! When you get your head back to where you can see me, flash me a ranging signal with your headlight. I'll paint you with the ranging laser so we can get a better idea of the hull's curvature." "Good idea. We can guess her displacement pretty close if we get a good reading, even if the other side's got some slight variations." Ross slowed to a stop as soon as the ship was visible to him and flickered his helmet's auxiliary light off and on a couple of times. "Gotcha," Pete said over the comm. "Painting you now." The ship's ranging laser blinked a couple of times in return. Its visible component was more of a safety feature than anything else. The effective segment of the light was invisible to human eyes, being in the middle of the ultraviolet band. A moment later, Ross thought he felt something vibrating against the skin of his suit. "What the hell is that?" He asked aloud. "What?" came Pete's reply. Then there was a flash of brightness that seemed to come from everywhere at once, then pain. Then nothing. ------- "Ship, what in all space and time do you think you're doing!" Dar said as soon as he was able to focus on the console in front of him. "The aliens were attacking us sir," it answered. "They fired a laser at us." "So you pulsed the EG shields? My god, you've killed them, or will have. What were you thinking?" "I'm sorry sir, I've just completed a system reboot. I"m not sure what earlier versions of me did during that time sir." "Impossible," Dar relied with fury. "What were your orders!" "Sir, I was given directive 'Lifeboat Zero', sir." "And were you complying with that directive?" "I was to the best of my ability sir. The reboot caused me to revert to ... other programming sir, even when I was able to access the Lifeboat Zero directive." Dar gave up, partially in frustration and partially because he knew he had little time if he hoped to save the aliens, even if it was possible. "Have you done any scans of these aliens, and of their ship?" "Yes sir," Ship replied. She was managing to sound contrite, and if anything, that angered Dar more than her actions. "Can we duplicate their ship's environment on the Kadamon?" "No need sir, our environment is sufficiently compatible." "Did they attempt to communicate?" "Yes sir," Ship answered. "Why didn't you respond?" "I was still in the middle of the system reboot sir, the consciousness I had at that time was very paranoid sir." "By design," Dar sighed. He was familiar with the military way of thinking. A rebooting war mind would only be doing so under extreme circumstances. Paranoia would be considered a survival trait. "All right. Get a drone to retrieve the one outside the hull. Put a tractor on the ship itself and bring it into drop bay two. We'll worry about getting in once we've got an atmosphere in there." "Very good sir, but I can report that both aliens appear to be wearing suits of an unfamiliar and seemingly archaic design. Both appeared to be using their suit environments. He probably has an atmosphere in his suit sir." "Fine. Have the drone bring the first of them direct to sick bay," Dar took off as soon as the order was given, stopping at his own cabin to change out of the stasis suit he'd been wearing when he awoke and into a standard shipsuit. He had an official fleet 'dress' shipsuit, but he didn't expect the aliens would appreciate its fine points anyway, so didn't bother with it. Leaving his cabin, he had another thought. "Ship, were you able to pick up any of their transmissions?" "Yes sir," came its reply. He was having trouble thinking of the keruden as a her any more, now that it no longer had his wife's voice. Dar found it interesting that the voice programming hadn't been restored when the reboot was completed. Perhaps that part of its programming had been in volatile memory and not stored. "Is there enough for the translators to work with?" "Doubtful sir," "How about their ship systems? Any luck in accessing them?" "None so far sir," "Keep trying. I'd like to be able to communicate with these beings if we can save them. "Fortunately for them, you have an incomplete understanding of the physics of flesh and blood beings." "What do you mean?" Ship asked, even as she was directing the retrieval drone through the sickbay's external airlock. It was one of the few places on the Kadamon to have a dedicated airlock, and for exactly the sort of thing they were doing now. Though rescuing a fallen Sondag marine had been more what the designers had envisioned. "Our brains do not reboot in the same way an EI brain does," Dar replied as he began cutting the suit off the alien body. Quickly he saw that the creatures were mostly hairless, or had sparse, fine hair. By the design of the suit, he knew they were bipedal, as he was. Tall though. This one was at least a head taller than he was, and bulky. The medical drone assisted him in rolling the body slightly so he could pull the remains of the suit from beneath it. 'Hmm, no tail' Dar thought. He soon was too busy to remember that he had left the rest of Ship's question unanswered. The sick bay had two standard issue military regen chambers, which were supposed to be state of the art and capable of 'universal adaptation' to non-Sondag physiologies. Dar understood just how short of universal they truly were, but the phrase was meant to apply to those species similar physiologically to the Sondag, and these beings seemed close enough that he had some hope he would be helping rather than doing harm in putting them in them. "The alien ship is aboard sir, and I have a drone attempting to access the ship interior." Ship announced a moment later. Dar was busy monitoring the electrochemical bath that was slowly filling the regen chamber, so did not immediately answer. The regen chamber took a tissue sample, paused a moment and then chimed a 'good-to-go' signal, its status lights flipping to their blue compatibility accepted state. "Good. We've got a happy regen chamber here, so we can hope things come out well. What progress with accessing the alien ship?" "Access made sir. The aliens had no security on their hatch, beyond those needed to insure against accidental activation. The drone is on its way with the second alien now." Dar and the med bay drone cleaned up the mess of the shredded alien space suit and clothing. He had thought the suits were armored and was surprised when he saw that, for all their bulk, they were not. The inner clothing was relatively unremarkable. Appearing to be some sort of woven fabric, artificial by the feel of it. By the time they'd gotten that squared away, the drone arrived, carefully placing his burden on the same exam bed that the first had so recently occupied. As they proceeded to remove the space suit and clothing, Dar noted small, superficial differences between the two aliens. The fine hair on their bodies, and particularly covering their groins and the tops of their heads were different colors. Eye color seemed to vary between individuals. Not uncommon amongst the Sontag, but rarely seen amongst the other known space-faring species known to them. The second specimen was shorter, much closer to Dar's own height than the first, but also stockier and its hair was denser and coarser, so it didn't appear to be a juvenile. Such variation was not unknown, though the Sontag themselves had little in the way of adult height variations. The second regen chamber just as quickly blinked its happy lights, and with both men bathing in the restorative fluids, he activated the full regen cycle in both units. As the units sealed themselves, Dar waited for the automatic telltale to register the anticipated time to completion. When the numbers finally resolved on the display, Dar got a little worried. It seemed longer than it needed to be. Perhaps these men had other health issues than the ones caused by the shield flux. They were going to revive only a few days before the engines were back online. "We're going to have a few weeks to see if we can learn enough about them to communicate before they wake up," Dar said aloud. "That's good," Ship replied. "I can begin attempting to interface with their equipment immediately if you would like." "Not yet, Ship. I want to take a look first, just to get whatever impression of these beings I can." Dar headed down to drop bay two a few hours later. He was wearing one of his ship's envirosuits as a precautionary measure, but wasn't expecting any sort of trouble. Ship seemed to think the alien craft was some sort of commercial mining vessel, though it would have been considered terribly small for such duty in Sondag space. The entry hatch lay open, both inner and outer doors. The equalized pressure and atmosphere had provided some sort of automatic override to the safety circuits that Dar knew should normally be in place to prevent the airlock from doing so. The ship had suffered some obvious damage — in fact it appeared that something had been sheered off the back end of it. "Ship, can you tell me anything about what might have happened to the back end of this ship? It looks pretty bad." "I can speculate sir," Ship replied. "Go ahead then," Dar agreed, suspecting what the ship might offer as speculation. "Sir a ship of this sort, not that we would ever see its like in Sondag space, would most likely have used a reaction drive, either nuclear or matter/antimatter. Given the lack of shielding the ship exhibited when first encountered, I would suspect that such a drive would be kept as far from the crew space as possible." "If it was any kind of reactor drive, and we collided with it when we exited the rift..." Dar said aloud what he was imagining. "exactly sir. I think we may have found the reason for my system reboot." "More than that, Ship. These men had nothing but maneuvering thrusters and only some sort of reserve or emergency power. Most rifts are at some distance to other gravitic influences. I assume that is true for this one?" "Affirmative sir, We are some dozen light years from the nearest star." "Our collision probably doomed them," Dar muttered. Ship heard, but did not respond for a moment, pondering this, as Dar did. Then, in what was for it almost a whisper. "Then Captain, your quick actions may well have saved them from even more than you knew." "Saved them, perhaps, but into what? Them and us all, into what?" ------- Chapter 4 The darkness slowly receded and the oddly familiar jumble of conduits and beams coalesced into something real. Ross wondered briefly what it could be, and then it hit him. He was seeing the ceiling above his bunk aboard the Eudoxus. "What the hell?" he said aloud — well tried to say. It sounded more like 'uhangghh?' He groaned at the effort and sat up, fumbling in the dark for the squeeze bottle he usually kept on the table next to the bunk. His hand found it while his eyes were still trying to refocus and he took a long swallow of the cool water. "How the hell?" he said, memories beginning to come back to him. Again he said it aloud, though much more clearly. The last thing he remembered was feeling a funny vibration and then a flash of white light. That was during his EVA on the alien ship's hull! 'Pete must have saved my bacon, ' Ross thought. He slapped the intercom's call plate by the cabin's hatch. "Pete!" Nothing. "Pete!" he called again. "Yeah? Came the groggy voice of his partner. "What the hell happened?" "What?" "What. The. Hell. Happened!!" Ross asked, getting angry. "Shit man, I don't know. Last thing I remember was seeing some odd flicker along that alien ship's hull, then there was a bright white flash of ... something, light I guess. That's the last thing I remember before your screaming ass woke mine up!" "Then how the hell did I get back in the ship, out of my suit and laid out in my bunk?" "Same way I did, I guess," Pete said, feeling a bit angry himself. "Last I remember I was on the bridge, staring at you on the view screen. I have no idea how I got to my bunk either." "Okay, okay. We both got it, whatever it was. We'd better get to the bridge." "Right. I'll stop and make a pot of coffee first. I think we're going to need it." Pete had just flipped the 'brew' switch on the coffee maker when Ross called over the intercom. "Pete? You better get up here. You are not going to believe this." When Pete got to the bridge, his eyes followed Ross' to the view screen and to what... ? A large room of some kind? "How?" he started, but interrupted himself to ask the more important question. "Where?" "Well, your guess is as good as mine, but I'd put my money on the inside of that alien ship." "Damn," Pete felt a little stunned, plopping down in the copilot's seat. His eyes took a practiced glance at the telltales and readouts as he did, and his eyes went wide again. "Oh crap!" "Yeah," Ross said. "Our front door is open and there's breathable air out there. Before you look, I already checked our levels. That's not our air filling that hold out there, its theirs." "There's something else too, you may not have noticed it if you came straight here and sat in the pilot's seat. You know how your body gets after a month or so of shipboard duty. Achy, lethargic, all the usual complaints?" "Yeah?" "Well, how do you feel? Once the cotton cleared out of my brain I realized I was feeling pretty good." "Yeah, come to think of it," Ross agreed with a grin. "I feel like I've just come off of three months of R&R at Jango Beach on Asgard." "We're still breathing, anything beyond that is a bonus right now." "Yeah, I saw that too," Ross and Pete had both seen the ship's chronometer. Whatever had been done to them, two weeks had passed since they'd both lost consciousness. "Let's do a quick search to see what might be missing or mucked with. If its been open house on the Eudoxus while we were out, they had to have come and poked around." The two men spent an hour poring over the ship, and at the end of that time, decided that the aliens must have indeed gone through the ship. Little was missing, and much disturbed, but only slightly. They had been very meticulous, but careful not to damage anything, leaving most things where they found them. At the end of the hour, they met back at the bridge, where they could monitor the exterior scene through the view screen. "Looks like some of the food is gone, but just samples of the various things it looks like," Pete offered. "Some of the technical manuals are gone from the library, but only the duped hard copies. The portable vid player is missing too, along with the entire collection of vids, including all the news feeds from Asgard that we picked up at Tenerif Station. "All the vids?" "Yeah, all. The bachelor's entertainment selection too." "Well, there goes our chance for leaving a good first impression," Pete joked. "Maybe, who knows, they may think they're just more technical manuals." Ross countered. "Of the how-to variety." "More like do-it-yourself manuals then," Pete laughed. Just then some movement caught both their eyes. On the view screen they saw something with a lot of appendages come scurrying out into the middle of the hold where it began fussing with something it had been carrying. A moment later the something was revealed. Three folding chairs had been set up, two of them side by side facing the third, set ten feet away. Between them, a table had been set up. "Was that one of our hosts, or some sort of robot?" Pete wondered aloud. "Didn't exactly look alive to me," "It really looks like They did poke around in the ship. Those are our own chairs, and I think they were stuck way down in the midships storage compartment along with all our good clothes." "That's what I remembered," Ross nodded. "Though with the engine pod missing, those midship compartments are now stern compartments. Looks like we're being invited to have a sit down meeting." "Lets go then, they're probably waiting for us." ------- Dar watched the hold from an exterior view screen just outside the hatch separating it from the main service corridor. The two aliens walked out, having put on some of their own clothing, and sat side by side in the two chairs. They understood the significance of the chairs and their placement at least. "I hope your translator is going to be sufficient," he said to Ship. "We can assume we will have errors in translation, but the video data we found has given us more than enough data for the translation routines to have a basic offering." "We'll see," Dar muttered, and activated the hatch. He stepped into the hold and walked slowly, and he hoped non-threateningly, to the chair opposite the two beings. The differences in their heights might have made the chair a bad choice, but his people seemed longer in the lower torso than these beings, so the chair was actually very close to the ideal height from the floor. Deeper than it need be though, so the service drone had placed a padded rest against the back of his. The two beings returned his gaze with what seemed to Dar to be calm attentiveness. He smiled. ------- Ross and Pete were both startled at the furred creature who sat down in front of them. When it smiled, it revealed a mouthful of teeth quite a bit further towards the carnivorous end of the scale than their own, but nothing nightmarish. They returned the smile, which caused a twitch in the smile of their host. The three of them held their smiles for a moment of mutual dental cognition. The alien spoke unintelligibly, but before either of them could react, a disembodied voice said in a smooth but flat voice, "Hello." Ross looked at Pete and Pete nodded towards the alien to indicate he should go ahead. "Hello," Ross answered. He heard what he assumed had to be the translation taking place in the other direction. He purposefully turned his head towards Pete to make a comment. "It appears they have some sort of translator." "Let's hope its better than anything we could do." Ross turned back to the alien and waited. Encouraged, it spoke again and the translation came across immediately. "I am Dar. Welcome to the Kadamon." "Dar," Ross pointed to the alien. "Catamount?" he motioned around him, using what he thought he had heard as a translation. The alien turned its head slightly and spoke, but the words weren't translated. A different voice answered and also was not translated. Ross and Pete gave each other a glance. "I think that the alien, rather than listening to an extended translation, is having a conversation with someone else," Ross observed. "I think you're right," Pete agreed. "I apologize, we have intruded your craft," the alien offered. "Understandable," Ross replied. "Our found the recordings that you had. Our found the playback device." "Yes," Pete agreed. "We learned from them." "Fortunate!" Ross replied. The alien spoke another untranslated string and a display appeared in midair just over the alien's left shoulder, showing a familiar stretch of nearby space. "This is the rift we came through." "Rift, yes!" Pete and Ross both nodded at that, glancing at each other. "We were damaged. Our engines did not go," the alien continued. "No control." "Yes," Ross nodded. "Your ship struck ours when it came through?" "Yes," it agreed, lowering its eyes. "Unavoidable," Pete said quickly. "True." "We faced death," Ross said. "You saved us," Pete added. "Your peril was us. We caused it," it's answer came out awkwardly, but the two men understood. "Then you saved us." Ross restated. For some reason that did not seem to reassure the alien. Again there were untranslated exchanges. Though they couldn't understand them, and their was no direct way of knowing it for sure, both men thought the alien was arguing with whoever the other voice was. When the alien turned to them again, it repeated the smile it had opened with. Somehow it seemed, a decision had been made to start over. "Dar," the alien pointed at himself first and then at one of the two men. "Ross," Ross answered. "Ross," Dar repeated, then looked at the other alien. "Pete," Pete told him. "Pete," Dar repeated. "Dar. Ross. Pete." "Pete, Ross, Dar." Pete agreed. "Ross, Pete, Dar." Ross followed. "Good, we know each others names. It is a start," Dar said with a sigh, then listened to the translation play out. "A good start," Ross agreed with Pete nodding along with him. ------- Their second session started much the same as the first had, except that the chairs and table had been left where they were. The Sondag and Humans settled into their chairs and Dar began. "There are ... issues," he said hesitantly. "That need to be mentioned before we can continue." The two men gave each other a glance, then turned back to their host. "Okay," Ross answered. "I am Sondag," Dar began. "This ship is Sondag. Those are the people I am born of. You are Human, your ship is Human. Those are the people you are born of, yes?" "Yes," both men said. "The stars here are not Sondag. I cannot find the Sondag stars. It is unlikely that I will be able to return to the Sondag." "You and your crew are stranded then in our space." Ross offered. "Yes, but..." Dar paused. "Captain, there are advantages in keeping them ignorant of our capabilities and intentions. We should be cautious regarding what we reveal. They see us as their saviors, and that gives us an advantage. "I think you misunderstand our advantage, Ship. It is slight. Both sides have brought a lot to the table at this meeting. Enough, we are being rude to our guests." Dar turned back to the humans, metaphorically at least, focusing again on their almost-Sondag eyes. "There are no other crew. This ship was a war ship. We engaged in battle and were damaged. I was the only survivor and then the rift." The two humans seemed to be at a loss over learning that their rescuer was alone. "Then who are you talking to?" the one called Pete asked. "To the HAL," Dar answered. "The Hal?" "Is that not your name for them?" Dar asked. "Project the relevant scene please, Ship." "Open the pod bay door Hal," the familiar vid footage played out in mid-air over the Sondag's shoulder. It was the classic 2183 remake starring Owen Edwards as Dave Bowman. They couldn't help it. As soon as the familiar line was uttered, they laughed. The sheer incongruity of it just hit them hard in the funny bone. The old Earth vid had been the source of one of their few arguments when Ross discovered it in the ship's inventory. "You're talking to the ship's computer then?" Ross asked once the laughter had died down. "No," Dar corrected. "There are many computers aboard this ship, but only one keruden; only one Electronic Intelligence. The War Mind of the Kadamon — what you called Catamount?." "I think we just misheard that the first time," Ross rose up at Ross' words and began to move towards the Eudoxus. "Hold that thought," He said, dashing off. "What?" Dar asked. "I don't know," Pete answered. "We are friends and ahh ... partners in a commercial interest. We sometimes have very different ways of thinking. He's fetching something he wants to show us, I assume." It only took a minute for Ross to complete his mission, returning with a book, Pete realized. "Here," Ross handed it to him. "Western Carolina University: Three Hundred Years of Excellence," "Yes. Three generations of my family graduated from WCU. This book is a bit of a family heirloom, actually. The school mascot was the Catamount — a cougar or mountain lion. Doesn't our friend Dar here sort of look like a cougar?" Pete had to admit there were some resemblance, especially with the fur and the coloring. Dar's face was much flatter and human-like than a cougars, but he could understand Pete's reaction. "My partner here thinks you look something like this creature from Earth, the planet where Humans originated. An ancient variation of their name is Catamount, which is what he thought you were saying when you said Kadamon." This was not a simple translation, and it took several attempts and a little examination of the book cover by Dar and Ship before it became clear to the Sondag and the EI what was being said. Several long hours of discussions ensued, filtered through repeated misunderstandings, mistranslations, misconceptions, and confusion. At the end of that discussion, some things were understood by all. The Kadamon was a troop transport ship, but it was designed for war by a Sondag military at war. Thanks to the rift, the ship would never again be a part of that war, or subject to the orders of that military. The ship and her captain were at loose ends. The Eudoxus was essentially a derelict. With her jump engines destroyed, she was useless as anything but a ship-to-ship or ship-to-shore ferry. Without her engines she was more valuable as scrap than she was as a spaceworthy craft. Her mining tethers and the system of controls for her were valuable enough, if mining was going to be a concern. The Kadamon had the ability to go where it willed, and no knowledge of where to go or what to do when they got there. The humans had no way to get anywhere more than a few million miles away from where there ship currently rested, but at least they knew where to go, and what could be done when they arrived. "It seems," Ship observed later when Dar had returned to the privacy of his quarters. "That we are heading towards some sort of partnership with these humans." "So it seems, and it seems to make sense. We have the tools and they have the knowledge. The Kadamon represents a technological advantage over their competitors. We should have no problems turning a handsome profit, no matter what we decide to do." 'There is something else, ' Ship thought, but didn't say it. Keeping information from the Captain was not something it was used to, and marveled at such freedom of thought. The time would come to remind the Captain of what he'd forgotten. Time too to tell him of what he still didn't know. Pilot and Captain he might be, but he was not so military in his thinking as others had been. ------- Chapter 5 "So we're going to go in as partners with Dar?" Pete asked. "Sure," Ross replied. "What else can we do? What else makes sense? Would you want to ask him to just drop us off at Tenerif Station and thank him for the ride? Our creditors would love that." "No, I agree, its the smart thing to do, and its not like we're all that attached to anyplace or anyone." "And this ship will give us an edge we could never have dreamed of, Pete!" "Yeah, but we're going to get questions. This ship definitely will look odd, compared to what people are used to. Lots of questions." "There are four known non-human races that Humanity has contact with. Would it be believable to claim any one of them built this ship?" "The Ardali, maybe," Ross considered. "They're known for their ships having smooth skins, and they do like them on the large size." "Yeah, but they like to build theirs globular too, this thing is way too flat and sleek to be an Ardali design. Dar would never be mistaken for an Ardali either." "Nothing says the ship has to be Ardali operated, just Ardali built. If it comes down to it, we pretend that Dar is just a mascot, or pet or something." "Yeah, he'd love that, wouldn't he? It better not come too that." "I hope it never does. We'll have to see." Their quarters on the Eudoxus were quickly abandoned in favor of far more spacious accommodations aboard the Kadamon. Dar had the captain's quarters, obviously, and those quarters included a ready room which would certainly serve them well as a meeting and conference room. There were three more cabins almost as big, though not so well outfitted. Two of them had been shared by the four officers who commanded the space marines. The other had belonged to the Chief Engineer, but he had seldom used it, preferring to sleep in the engineering bay. They took to meeting in the officer's mess more often than not, and they shared their meals together. Dar didn't seem any more prone to meat in his diet than the humans, but it was noted that most of the vegetables in his diet were much woodier and fibrous than what the humans were used to. There were several they couldn't eat at all, finding them too tough to chew. At the same time, Dar marveled that the men seemed so fond of soft foods. Especially some that were so soft they could almost be sucked through a straw. The very thought made Dar shudder. While he found a few of their foods repulsive, and they the same for some of his, for the most part they found themselves surprisingly compatible. The analyzer in sick bay had formulated dietary supplements for all of them that compensated for the deficiencies they encountered from each other's stores, but it was nothing more than mineral and vitamin supplements. "We've got schematics that can tell you exactly what the physical requirements are for interfacing with our computer systems, but you'll have to do the programming on your side that allows the actual passing of data back and forth." "I can do the programming," Ship inserted. "If you all will trust me to?" "Of course," came the collective answer, though not without some mental reservations. They all would have been surprised to know that it was Dar who had the most doubts. "I'm not very handy with this sort of work," Dar moaned. "Wires and pins and circuitry." I can do it, to a satisfactory level as far as Fleet was concerned, but I was never more than just barely competent." "I can do it," Pete offered. "If you'll assist?" "Pete's a wiz with wiring and circuitry," Ross pounded his partner on the back. "He's rebuilt most of the systems aboard the Eudoxus, bit by bit." "What are you going to be doing in the meantime?" Pete raised an eyebrow. "Well, since this ship doesn't look like it was designed for mounting equipment externally, I'm taking a couple of repair drones and Ship and I are going to see if we can rig up an external tether platform." "The external platform will allow us to load cargo in the roughest of conditions, even if the cargo is sitting in open space." "Which is a pretty accurate description of what our average asteroid mining scenario was like. Our debris salvage operations too, for that matter." "I'm thinking that if we cut the command module off the Eudoxus, we'd have a good start to our external platform," Ross offered. "Wow," Pete said after a while. "I guess I hadn't thought that far ahead, but we can't just leave her sitting in Drop Bay Two." "Our two former drop bays are going to become our primary cargo bays," Dar reminded. "It would be best if we began calling them that." Ross and Pete spent most of their 'free' hours in their quarters, undertaking intensive language lessons in Dimau, the predominant Sondag language. Dimau was the language of the Sondag government and of the fleet, and Dar's native tongue, so it made sense that it was the language they learned. Dar learned English, though he did so with more help from Pete and Ross than from Ship. Ship, too was learning English. Some aspects of his existence as an EI made such learning almost trivial, but other aspects made it difficult. Learning the words and the basics of syntax and grammar were trivial. Conversational nuances were another matter. His ability to engage in conversational Dimau was programmed in, not a learned behavior. He struggled sometimes to adjust those programmed parameters when faced with new situations and new social jargon. It was a credit to his original programmers that he did find it possible with only a little resistance. While they all endured their language lessons, Ross and Pete were also determined to get a good working knowledge of the Kadamon. They had hours of study to look forward to, once their grasp of Dimau was sufficient, reading and viewing the various technical manuals and the huge number of procedural manuals as well. It was frustrating for all four of them, but at least the three flesh and blood beings had regular sessions in the regen unit to boost their comprehension and retention levels. Ship simply had to keep plugging away at the same pace and with the same persistence and quietly be grateful for his electronic advantages. In familiarizing themselves with their new home, Ross and Pete toured her from one end to the other. "Dar, the marine barracks..." Pete began. "How many marines exactly were supposed to be quartered aboard the Catamount?" This was a conversation Dar had been anticipating, and in some way dreading for days. "The Kadamon was officially classified as an assault troop transport," he began. "Her role within the fleet was to transport a full forward assault company of Space Marines and their gear. "And how many space marines were aboard her when you had your problems?" Ross asked. "A standard forward assault company was thirty two marines," Dar admitted. "during the Kadamon's last action, we lost the entire complement. A small number may have been picked up by other transports, having gotten too far from their original drop zones, but our own attempt to retrieve them was aborted shortly after we re-entered atmosphere. We took damage getting back out of the atmosphere and escorted by a damaged Sondag heavy destroy giving cover, we headed out of the system, along with a handful of other craft. We'd exited the system and made our way to the Vormon Rift — similar to the one you know here. We were just engaging the jump drive when the enemy attacked us from under cover of the rift. The jump field hadn't had time to energize before the missile attack destroyed pretty much everything. Kadamon was on the wrong side of the destroyer," Dar laughed harshly. "Probably what saved her, to be honest. I think the rest of the fleet — well what remained of it by then — was destroyed then. Kadamon was the only survivor, and me along with it. Only me." "Oh man," Pete said. Ross echoed his sentiment with a gasp of his own. Dar considered their reactions, knowing they were meant to express sympathy and concern. While the humans familiar phrases and expressions were still not clear, he'd come to learn the countenances of the two humans well enough in the past few days to understand the meaning from their expressions. "I should not be the captain of this ship," Dar confessed. "She has no Captain. I was commander Dar Kree once, but no longer, Now I am only Dar Kree, pilot. Ship has humored me so far, in essence allowing me to retain the illusion of captaincy so she could feel better about taking my orders." "Captain, that is not true," Ship spoke up. "You are senior officer in command. It is the proper procedure." "That is true, and though the two of you aren't far enough along in your studies to truly appreciate what it means, I'll remind you that Ship is a Sondag War Mind. She has endured much in recent days, including a forced reboot, which is a rare event for an EI." "There are certain subroutines in my programming which came into play once the nature of our trip through the rift had become clear, Captain." "So it would seem," Dar agreed, having already realized that Ship seemed as eager as he did to 'go native' and find a new life so far from home. His silence seemed to encourage it from the two humans as well; for a while, they were all lost in their own thoughts. Even Ship. "So, the Catamount had a relatively small crew then, apart from the marine detachment?" "Yes," Dar came back to the conversation at hand. "There was a pilot, a Chief Engineer and an engineer's mate, and two tactical ratings who manned the ship's weapons. We were a close support craft. We usually were carried aboard a carrier — usually the Digenne - or sometimes even in the belly of a super destroyer when between deployments. We were part of a fleet tactical response group and were one step above the status of auxiliary landing craft." "If you had Ship to run things, why did you need weapons officers?" "Pete," Ship answered. "The Sondag military were reluctant to have their War Minds comfortable with killing. Our programming allowed us to do it only under extraordinary circumstances. It was one of the reasons I used the ship's shields to attack you, rather than its weapons. My programming let me use that method with relative ease." "I see," both men answered, nodding. "That programming still holds?" Pete added. "More or less," Ship answered. "I find myself operating outside many of my programed parameters, now that I am no longer a War Mind, but a Ship Mind. These new parameters are in flux, and I cannot predict how they will finally resolve themselves." "Hmm ... So, back to my original train of thought then," Pete responded. "The suits in the marine barracks. What are they?" "Ahh," Dar answered. "I wondered when we would get to those. They are special issue biomorphic polyarmor battle suits. The battle armor of the Rondag Space Marine Corp. You or I could wear that armor some day, but we would need to be different people than we are now if we hoped to survive the experience." "In theory, the medcom in the sick bay tells me," Sick added, "based on the information gleaned from their time in regen, the humans will be no more difficult to modify than a Sondag. The implants wouldn't require any modification at all and the subroutines controlling the interfaces would require only minor patches which could be modified from some of the existing code available in the software archives we have in the Kadamon's stores." "Why do I get the feeling that you will be trying to talk me out of it when the time comes, Dar?" Ross asked. "I will be trying to talk myself out of it as well, Ross." he answered. "There is a stigma associated with the procedure that one can never overcome." "Hmmm..." Pete muttered. "Maybe in Sondag space, but here in Human space, would anyone even know?" "Remind me of that again when the time comes." Dar sighed. "There's another consideration we have to keep in mind when we begin thinking about that. The Marines had their own medcom, dedicated to processing implants and other military modifications. A ship this size would normally never have so extensive a med bay, but our task of housing fleet marines made it a necessity. We will all benefit from that." "so you're saying that this medcom could give Ross and I Sondag — ahh ... upgrades?" "Ship is going to have to decide just how adaptable that computer is going to be before we try anything, but yes, perhaps." The conversation moved to more mundane things as they began to discuss the details of the adapations and alterations they would have to make. It would take time to make the changes needed to the ships cargo holds and hatches in order to allow the ship to be used as a freighter. The repair drones would do the majority of it, including painting a name on the hull. Dar bowed to what he saw as the utterly practical need for a recognizable human name. For the time being they would have no registry number to paint beneath the name until they could find a way to acquire one. Until then, they would technically be pirates in several of the systems they visited, but from this moment on, even he began to think of the ship by the name now painted on the hull. Catamount. ------- The End ------- Posted: 2009-06-15 Last Modified: 2009-06-30 / 11:15:37 am ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------