Storiesonline.net ------- Tenerif Lifeline by Sea-Life Copyright© 2011 by Sea-Life ------- Description: The crew of the Catamount made it out of Keeler alive, but now they return to the rift in search of more debris from Sondag space. Of course in the rift, finding it is always the easy part. Codes: ScFi space ------- A tale of Asgard Space It had been a long and interesting six weeks since the Catamount had left Keeler space. They were proceeding with caution, having stolen a fortune out from under the noses of Ayna's 'grandfather', the current President-for-life of the Keeler system. Some of the gems had been easy to sell, and for full price, but the rest were far too large and too closely associated with Keeler royalty to be able to sell on the open market. The Gamma Imperiax was too famous as a part of the Keeler crown jewels, and too famous. Their only option was to ransom it back to the Keeler government, but that was more safely done after tempers there had cooled down a bit first. Perhaps in a couple of years. Smaller they may have been, but the lesser BloodCrys and Gamma Stones sold so far had the Catamount's bank balances swollen beyond healthy to prosperous. Perhaps even a little beyond prosperous. The immediate future only required a decision on the disposition of the Bugaboo. The crew was torn between keeping her or selling her. The yacht was capable of landing on a planet, and as opulent as it was, doing so far less conspicuously than the Catamount. While they struggled with the decision, they continued to go over the ship with a fine toothed comb. A phrase that had tickled Dar, the fur-covered Sondag, tremendously. Kat had been tickled herself to see just how deviously the former Keeler ruler had been when it came to protecting his data, and had spend endless hours ferreting it out in the myriad of places he'd hidden it. Dar, using a half dozen of the Catamount's utility bots had been scouring every physical nook and cranny while Kat explored the electronic ones. While Kat and Dar pored over the Bugaboo, Pete, Ross and Anya did the same with the Catamount. They were all learning everything Kat could teach them. Additionally, they continued to work out daily with the battle armor and, when possible, with the Sondag pulse rifles. This had become the settled routine, until today, when Kat had asked them all to gather in the galley as soon as possible. "You may be wondering why I called you all here today," Kat began, which drew groans from Pete, Ross and Anya. "Well, you did say you had something important to tell us," Dar said, a bit nonplussed by the reaction from the humans. Kat in the meantime had part of herself begin a furious search of the comm nets for references that would explain the groan. "I'm here to tell you," she told the gathered crew. "That the Bugaboo is less valuable to us than the data I've found." "What? Another treasure hunt?" Pete laughed. "No, something better than treasure. Ask yourselves, once Anya's great grandfather got out of the system in the Bugaboo, where would he go? Who would he be when he got there?" "We have a bunch of grandfather's fake IDs stored in the Bugaboo's computer?" "No. Better. Federation ship registrations. Six of them."Kat announced, unable to hold the information back any longer. "Yes!" Ross crowed. "How can he have six of them?" Pete asked. "I thought their assignment was rigidly controlled by the federation?" "Of course it is," Anya snorted. "The Federation may be a political bureaucracy of the highest order, but politicians are politicians and bureaucrats are bureaucrats, the entire universe over. Everything has a price, and the higher up the ladder you are, the easier it is to find someone willing to accept your fortune for a favor – or six." "I see," Kat said. "The Sondag military operated in a similar fashion." "It's true, they did," Dar confirmed. "I always knew that politics was what kept me piloting assault shuttles. I liked the duty, and enjoyed socializing so closely with the marines, so I was content." "How much of that contentment was a matter of being resigned to your fate though?" Pete asked. "Some, to be sure," Dar sighed. "But I won't try to reinvent myself completely in the retelling. I was really, really good at the kind of flying needed for making planetary landings and pickups under fire. The Space Marines assigned to the Kadamon loved me, because I brought them back safely time and time again. I still regret deeply that I was not able to bring them back that last time. Their loss haunts me." "Such loss is always difficult," Ross said. "Pete and I lost good friends and comrades when we were young. After all these years the questions still haunt us. Could we have done something different? What if we hadn't done this? What if we had done that? The questions never die, but the day comes when you make your peace with them and with the ghosts of those you've lost." There was a long moment then of silent reflection as each of them thought to those they had lost in years past. For her part, Anya was reminded of those family members, closer to the throne, who had not been offered exile when the change of power happened. Few of them would have been called friend, but enough. "So," Anya broke the reverie. "Six registrations. All assigned to the Bugaboo?" "Six unassigned registrations," Kat clarified. "There's something unusual about that, wouldn't you say?" "I wonder if grandpa Keeler paid a little extra for these somehow." "I could see it," Pete mused. "He might have paid to have these registrations automatically reset to unassigned after a set period of time." "More likely he paid a separate fee now and then to wipe the registration data." Ross suggested. "It would require someone with full access to the Federation secure data net to be able to program in an automatic reset. It would only take bribing an upper level bureaucrat in the registry section to get them reset it when requested." "So we can assign these six as we want, but once we use them, they're permanent?" Dar asked. "Unless the less likely scenario proves true, but even so, we have a registration for the Catamount," Pete refocused them. "We can now go anywhere in Asgard space we want, or even into Federation space itself." "So at last we can plan for something more concrete than the charter contracts we've been settling for?" Dar asked. "We didn't settle for those," Pete reminded him. "We could have been mining in the rift or even in Keeler's outer belt if we'd wanted to. The charters were more lucrative, and gave us other opportunities." "Speaking of the rift," Kat said. "The rift? I know the story, that Pete and Ross were mining there and that you survived transition through it from Sondag space. Is there more to it?" "Yes and no, Anya. I would like to propose we return there." "The rift is not a safe place, even in something as formidable as the Catamount," Pete reminded them. "We were there only because we couldn't afford to go anywhere else at the time." "Are you anticipating more debris?" Dar asked. "I am. Anything else that drifted into the Volmon rift at the same speed and approach we did may have arrived here as well. I would expect that whatever we find will be terribly broken up, and certainly not immediately usable, but even the salvage value would be tremendous." "You would recommend doing that now?" Anya asked. "It is a logical next effort," Kat argued. "We've sold everything we can for the moment from the Keeler haul. We've got these registrations, which solves that pressing problem at no cost to us. Anything else we do would require spending more time finding clients. Also, if anything did come through the rift after us, the longer we leave it, the more likely it is to be found by someone else." "Anyone have an objection?" Pete asked. No one spoke up. "Al right then, lets top off our stores with fresh fruits, vegetables and the like, and we'll plan on breaking orbit after breakfast tomorrow; destination Tenerif station." ------- Tenerif station is a misnomer, as it is not a station so much as it is a navigational aid, designed to warn ships away from the nearby rift. As the rift moves, so does the station. Since it's precise location was variable, it had powerful broadcasting features and a small crew of three Asgardian Naval ratings whose job it was to keep the station functioning and its broadcasts updated. Ted Riggins was the man on watch when the Catamount arrived. Ted was typical of those who found themselves assigned to Tenerif Station. He was a screw up and an underachiever of the first order whose only true interest was in counting the time until his exile to this dust speck on the underside of nowhere ended and he could return to the comfort of a ground-side station somewhere civilized. "Tenerif Station, this is Catamount, inbound towards the rift," came the call. "Ahh, affirmative Catamount," he returned a moment later after managing to clear his head well enough to trigger the transmitter. "Ahh, be advised of the current conditions. Broadcast is on the secondary nave frequency." "Confirmed, Tenerif Station," came the reply. "Are they always so matter-of-fact here?" Anya asked aboard the Catamount. "This was a relatively verbose exhcange," Ross laughed. "Usually we get a grunted reply: 'turn to nav 2', and nothing else. "Well, if there's nothing else to worry about from that end, lets keep our eyes focused on the rift," Dar reminded everyone. "Kat has the best eyes, but the more sets we have peeled, the safer we are." The rift was a shifting, unpredictable region of gravitic tides and surges. Light was known to do strange things here, and the normal assumptions regarding mass, momentum, and speed could not be expected to match the usual norms a good bit of the time. It was this, along with the isolation that made mining the rift dangerous. "The station crew may be the dregs, but the automated data broadcasts are top notch," Kat observed after a while. "Here," Ross said, sitting down at one of the nav station behind Dar's pod to key in some input. "Tune in here, its an open data frequency and you can access the archived data." "Oh very good!" Kat explclaimed after a few minutes, this goes back a long ways." "It does, and you can use it to plot the recent trends in the gravitic shifts and local variances." "I thought you couldn't predict these shifts, Pete." "You can't, Anya. But you can plot trends in the recent activity, and those trends let you get a more accurate reading on where the rift debris is likely to be collecting." "Pete's right," Ross agreed. "If you read the data plots well enough, you cut the search time down considerably." "And you have to go take up close looks to find anything close to the rift," Pete added. "The gravitic variances make long range scans pretty useless. The scanner will tell you there's a fifty megaton mass at a particular set of coordinates, and when you get there you find nothing." "Mining the rift is an up close and personal business. That's why almost nobody does it," Ross told them. "Kat, if you access the Tenerif sections of that old navcomm of mine, it has all our routines in it. They should prove useful." "Accessing," Kat said in her distracted, I'm-deep-in-the-data voice. "We've got company," Kat called a few minutes later. "What kind of company?" Dar asked. "Small, low-powered," Kat replied. "I'm detecting fusion thrusters. Maneuvering thrusters, I'd say." "Another miner then," Pete nodded. "Where are they?" "They are 20 degrees north of us, about 20 minutes away at normal thrust." "They're almost as far away from where we want to go as they can be," Ross said, still reading the nav data that Kat was examining. "Are we running in stealth mode?" "We are now," Kat confirmed. "However, local gravitic conditions make it slightly less reliable than normal." "Then lets not waste any time here," Anya said. "We need to start moving." "Agreed," Dar said as he laid back in his pod. "Kat, give me the plot." "Done. Gravitic thrusters online." "Gravitic thrusters?" Ross asked. "Correct," Kat replied. "We're rerouting some of our gravitic controls to use as thrust for the ship, rather than use our own fusion thrusters." "Ahh, I get it," Pete crowed. "Any gravitic surge the other ship detects will be assumed to be just another rift phenomenon." "That's correct," Kat confirmed. "We will alter the line of our travel to make our course more difficult to plot. We don't want anyone able to plot a smooth line out of the data if they are detecting our thrust." "you make it sound like you've had lots of practice at this stealth stuff," Anya observed. "That's absolutely right," Dar said from the pod. "A great many of our Space Marine's missions were covert. Landing undetected, within a planetary defense net was tricky business." "You guys are natural born smugglers!" Anya laughed. "No, don't laugh," Pete said semi-seriously. "Between Dar, Kat and the ship itself, that has always been our primary fallback position since we found each other. So far we've mostly been lucky, all we've smuggled so far is people." "We're getting close to a large mass of some kind," Kat called. "low-grade, rocky detritus, but it will let us run on normal thrust for a while. Hang on, as we're going to do a brief bump on full thrust and a hard rotate at the same time." The warning was just in time, as suddenly the three humans found themselves swaying to one side while feeling the deck drop out from under them for just a second. Ross was sitting at the nav station, but Pete and Anya were standing, and Anya swayed into Pete, who grabbed her around the waist to steady her. "I think the ship did that for you on purpose," she teased him as he continued to hold onto her as the ship steadied again. "If only I could talk Kat into doing anything like that for me," he teased back. Neither of them were quick to move apart. "This seems so strange, compared to the life I've been living," Anya said quietly as they watched the ship's display show them the twisting, convoluted path they took through the inner debris of the rift. "Your life on Keeler?" Pete asked. "No, this is different than that too," Anya laughed softly, "But I meant different than what I've been doing since the exile. I was an office drone, working as a purchasing specialist. I got up every day and walked to work from a one bedroom apartment. I clocked in at 8 every morning and clocked out every evening at six. I packed a lunch, or I ate vendor food. A particularly exciting week would include a weekend concert or a trip to the ocean." "Oh, that doesn't sound too bad," Pete said. "It was dull and comfortable." Anya shuddered, then more softly. "And lonely." Pete squeezer her a little more tightly, but they pulled apart then, both of them still not sure if this was right. Kat chose that moment to break their reverie with an excited announcement. "I've got something on sceeen, and it's big!" "Where," Dar asked. "Zoom in." "Here," Kat called, circling a section of the display in red and zooming in until it filled the screen. "What the hell is that?" Ross asked. The three humans were staring at a twisted mass larger than anything they'd seen before. Far larger than the Catamount. "Unable to determine at this time," Kat answered. "I'm going to swing around it," Dar sent. The far side of the object appeared to be in better shape, with far smoother lines that more closely resembled the Catamount's sleek features. "It's too small and too complete to be the Kuros," Kat observed. "I agree, too big to be a fast cruiser or a cruiser/destroyer," Dar added. "It could be a heavy cruiser, but if it is, its lost a third of its mass," Kat said after a while. "We need a closer look at the other end." "Agreed," Dar said, and the ship spun as he turned it, matching words with action. A quick burst of power sent them towards the far end of the wreck. "The Sondag really built big, didn't they?" Anya breathed. "They do," Pete said, reminding her that the Sondag were still a present tense civilization, if unimaginably distant. "That thing is at last twice the size of the biggest Federation Battleship ever built, and they say a third of it appears to be missing." "Its not even the biggest class of ship in their fleet," Ross said from where he sat. "It's a good thing they're so distant, and rifts are so unreliable. I'd hate to see what they would do to human space if they had access to it," "Confirm, the drive and power sections of that ship appear to have been vaporized," Kat said. "But it looks like a solid bulkhead survived," Dar said after twisting the Catamount around the jagged end of the hulk. The hydroponics section is probably a disaster, but it might have maintained atmospheric integrity." "Doing a broad spectrum scan," Kat replied. "What kind of scan?" Ross asked. "She's looking for air," Dar answered. "And signs of life" "Is that possible?" Anya asked. "Possible, yes," Dar replied. After a long pause he added, "Likely? No. Not very likely at all." "I"m sorry," Kat said after a while. "We do have some pockets of air in the remains, but there's nothing alive aboard." "I'm sorry," Anya echoed, Pete and Ross muttering their own sympathy. "No, it wasn't why we were here in the first place," Dar said. "It would have been a happy surprise, perhaps, but we're here for salvage, not a rescue. "True enough, my friend," Pete sighed. "True enough. That doesn't mean we can't be wishing it were so, for your sake." "Thank you," Dar said as Ross and Anya expressed their agreement. "It is good to have friends willing to look after you, but we're delaying our purpose here." "That too is true," Pete said, shaking off the sense of melancholy that had surrounded them all. "We need to tag that hulk, to stake our claim, since we've got competition in-system. Kat? Can you do it with a drone, or should I suit up?" "The drone is on its way, Pete," Kat announced. "We do have quite a few more smaller pieces of debris here we need to check on as well." All right," Pete said. "How shall we proceed? Biggest to smallest?" "The sensors are still too unreliable to make that meaningful," Kat reminded them. We should move to the largest nearby piece and rescan from there, moving to the next piece." "Are we worried about finding every piece that is identifiably of non-human origin?" Pete asked. "I think we should be, unless it proves too formidable a task," Dar said. "All right, then the three of us are going to suit up," Pete announced, looking to the other two for support. "We need to be ready to go at a moment's notice if you do run across something we can't fetch with drones." An hour, and twenty three pieces of debris later, Ross yelled. "What is that?" "Oh my," Dar said when he saw the highlighted object. "Indeed," Kat added. "Well?" Pete and Anya added, watching from the galley's remote display. "That," Dar laughed. "Is an orbital missile platform. What the hell is it doing here?" "It must have expended all its missiles early in the action," Kat speculated. "It would have pulled out of orbit once it had expended all its ordnance and headed for the rendezvous point." "These things don't have long range drives. It would have had to wait to be pulled aboard one of the bulk transports." "Perhaps it piggy-backed on one of the damaged ships like the Kuros," Kat speculated. "A lot of those ships had no fighters to pick up for the retreat." "I suppose, but how did it get away from the sneak attack as we approached the rift?" "Would they have had to jettison it to make transition?" Pete asked. "I know our own transition calculations require pretty accurate calculations on mass and volume." "That is a distinct possibility," Dar growled. "I hope they got the crew off first." "Probably," Kat said hesitantly. "What?" all four of the flesh and blood crew asked at once. "There is no atmosphere on board that I can detect, but there is minimal power." "What are you holding back Kat," Dar growled even louder. "Sir, there may be active stasis units on board. In an emergency, that is where crew would be directed to go." "Ahh, fangs and blood!" Dar cursed. "Get us over there, and see if it still has working airlocks. If so, we need one as close to the med bay as we can get. Where's my EV suit?" Kat moved the ship quickly to the med bay airlock, as Dar got his extravehicular suit over his shipsuit. He asked Pete and Anya to accompany him. Ross remained on the bridge in case Kat needed him. "These corridors are smaller than the ones on the Caramount," Anya observed soon after they'd entered the wreck. "This platform didn't have to worry about accomodating space marines," Dar answered. "I am slightly taller than the average Sondag, except for the space marines and some of the other combat specialists. Most places on Sondag worlds are designed for people my size." "doesn't that make it awkward for the space marines when they are off duty planetside?" Pete asked. "Space Marines have their own enclaves," Dar told them. "They seldom ventured into normal Sondag towns and cities. "And yet they were the Sondag ideal?" Anya asked. "I never claimed we Sondag were perfect," Dar said. "We have our foibles, just as humans do." "I suppose," Pete agreed. "Is that it?" He shined a light on a door with visible lights further down the corridor. "That it is," Dar said, moving faster. By the time Pete and Anya caught up to him he was poring over the readouts on the door. "What's it look like?" Pete asked. "There's no atmosphere in the med bay, but it appears to be airtight. We should be able to pump an atmosphere in there if we have to." "Are we going to have to?" "I hope not. If there's anyone in there, it would be better to take the entire stasis pod to the Catamount and process it there. If the pod has enough stored power to make the trip." "We can't find out standing here," Anya urged them. Dar nodded, something impossible to do in a human engineered space suit. There may not have been air in the med bay, but there were lights. A half dozen stasis pods sat resting at an angle along one wall and Dar rushed over to them immediately. Pete and Anya stayed by the entrance, waiting for word from Dar. "We do have someone in this pod!" Dar called out excitedly. "It looks like its intact and has power!" "All right, can we get air in here?" Pete asked. "We need an EV suit for whoever's in there first," Dar said. "I didn't think to bring one." "Shouldn't there be suits here?" Anya asked. "Sure, emergency suits at least," Dar agreed. He quickly began rummaging through the med bay's storage units. "Here we go," he said in triumph. "We'd have to carry the survivor across to the Catamount, but at least they'd survive the trip in this." "Okay, then lets try and cycle the lock and see if we get an atmosphere in here." "Right," Dar agreed, waving Pete towards the lock. "Its just like the med bay lock on the Catamount. Go ahead." Pete turned towards the airlock and realized other than the markings, which here were all still in Sondag, it was identical to what he was used to on the Catamount. "Cycling," he called. Several minutes later it was obvious that nothing was happening. The airlock's readouts continued to signal that they were attempting to pressurize the area, but the indicator was cycling indefinitely with no sign of change. Pete looked at his own suit's display. "I don't read any change in atmospheric pressure at all," he said at last. "Same here," Anya confirmed. "I'm guessing that wherever the system gets its air from, that it is no longer functioning." Pete said. "It looks like you're right," Dar said, his shoulders visibly drooping. "Looks like we'll have to move the stasis pod and all." ------- It took Dar only a few minutes to determine that the pod itself didn't have sufficient power to keep the stasis unit functioning during a transfer to the Catamount. "What can we do?" Anya asked. "I don't know," Pete told her. "I don't know if its safe to try to make the med bay airtight." "What about moving the platform?" "Where to? This thing is too big to fit in any of the Catamount's holds, even if we took the Bugaboo out first." "We need to look more closely at the wreckage of that heavy cruiser," Dar announced at once. "That's the only thing with a chance of having an airtight chamber large enough to hold the platform." "That's nuts," Pete spat. "Dar, you're not thinking straight here. Show me what parts of this room you need to be airtight, and lets think about making it that way first, before we go off on any hair-brained scheme like moving this huge wreck into another huge wreck while hovering near an interstellar rift!" "All right, all right," Dar stammered. "Lets see ... we need the pod of course and enough room around it to stand, plus enough room for two people to get whoever is in the the pod into an envirosuit, or an evac bubble. Suit would be better given the damage we'd have to pass through on the way back out of here." "All right then," Pete crowed. We can do that! "Ross, you listening in?" "Yes, Kat and I both, of course. What do you need?" "I need you to bring over two rolls of the heavy duty construction sheeting, a case of the sealant foam and three or four rolls of Jeffries tape. We're going to need air bottles too, enough to fill this room to at least a survivable pressure. Oh! and don't forget the fogger and a bunch of patch seals." "Got it!" "Ross can gather these things," Kat chimed in."but I will have drones bring the air bottles over. There would be too much to manage otherwise, even if you came back to assist." "Good," Pete said. "Get moving. We don't know how much time we have. Do we Dar?" "No, the power seems steady, but it is not a self-contained system. It could fail at any time." "Okay, lets get busy. What am I forgetting. Anyone?" "Heat," Anya said after a while. "We're in our suits so we don't feel it, but this area is going to be as cold as space, and releasing all that compressed air into it won't make it feel warmer. We'll need to heat it." the three humans already worked well together, even after so few weeks had passed. It didn't surprise them at all that Dar, once out of his pilot's pod, joined seamlessly into the mix. The work, and the frantic pace of it kept him from the frenetic loss of focus he'd suffered from earlier. Everyone understood. This pod represented the chance that he would not have to live out his days without the companionship of one of his own race. Three hours later they were as done as they had any hope of being. "We filled the room to partial pressure, and then began heating the air," Ross explained. "Heating it also improves the pressure some. If we filled it to full pressure and then heated it, we could wind up over-pressurizing it, and our jury rigged seals could blow out." Anya nodded at the explanation. After all this time, it wouldn't do to make a silly mistake now and ruin everything. As it was, there was nothing left for anyone to do but wait for the temperature to rise enough to risk opening the pod. "You will all have to remain in your suits for now," Dar cautioned them again. "Our rescue will seem confusing enough in these conditions without a new and unknown race brought into the mix. Enough time for that once we're back on the Catamount." There was still a leak somewhere they couldn't find, but it was a slow one. They kept one of the air bottles cracked open slightly to compensate. Once the room was warmed enough to make the surfaces of everything merely cold to the touch rather than dangerous to bare skin, Dar cycled the stasis unit. The four of them watched as the recovery sequence went through its routine, until finally, there was a hiss, and the pod's hatch popped open, slowly opening like a clamshell. Dar stepped forward. "You're all right," he said in Sondag. Pete and Ross knew enough of it by now to understand slowly spoken sentences, but Anya was clueless in the language yet. "Where am I?" "On the other side of the Volmon Rift. Beyond the transit point." "Who are you?" "My name is Dar. I was the pilot of the assault shuttle Kadamon." "We survived the attack?" "We must wait for more questions. The wreck of the orbital platform is not stable, and we need to get you into an envirosuit and over to the med bay in our ship." "The stasis units are amazing, and do what they were designed to," Dar told them later in the galley. "But our guest needs a little time in the med bay to deal with issues resulting from the planetary battle and the sneak attack we suffered during our retreat. She should be out of the unit in a day or two – she was suffering mostly from dehydration and a lot of small scratches and scrapes." "We've been busy while you were attending to our guest," Kat told him. "We've collected 63 pieces of debris large enough to be recognizable as of non-human origin, aside from the orbital platform and the heavy cruiser remnant." "We've secured those two to each other and placed everything else in the starboard cargo bay," Pete added. "There's some pretty scary looking stuff in there." "Dar, we have at least three semi-complete drive pods in there," Kat explained. "They appear to be from scout and planetary air support craft." "Interesting. Can you tell if they are complete enough to be made functional?" "Not at this time," Kat answered. "I have service drones looking them over now, and at least one of them looks complete enough that I'm going to presume it can be made functional, but we may not have the repair resources to do them all. The question of where we would use them needs to be raised also." "Ahh, well I was thinking we would replace the drive on the Bugaboo with one of ours, as a start." "That might be possible. Our drives tend to be smaller and more efficient than the humans, but these are not yacht-sized drives, even the smallest of them." "Some modification to the Bugaboo would be acceptable, if we're not going to sell it," Anya jumped in to the conversation. "Are we assuming that we will use this salvaged equipment to expand the size of our fleet?" "Fleet?" Ross laughed. "One Sondag assault craft and one human space yacht don't exactly meet my definitions of a fleet." "No,, but they're a start, and we did discuss the benefits of making planetary landings in something less likely to raise a stir," Pete reminded. "Any discussion regarding what we do with this new salvage, or our work together in the future is premature," Dar coughed. "Until our guest awakens, we should hold off on any major decisions." "That doesn't mean we can't keep working on some of them though," Anya offered. "It beat sitting around or spending all day training in the battle armor." "True enough," Pete agreed. "Next question. Are we going to be able to spoof the systems at Tenerif Station so they don't get a glimpse of what we're really taking with us when we leave?" "We're working on that," Kat answered. "We're not going to be able to enable any sort of stealth technology, but we may be able to overload their detectors, or confuse them. I'd prefer confusion to overload. That is more likely to seem like a technical glitch at their end rather than interference on our part." "What do you have in mind?" Ross asked. "We can generate very large fields, akin to the Catamount's shields. These fields, while huge, are very fragile, and could never be used as shields. I was thinking we could generate two fields, one slightly smaller than the other and then flood the space between them with gas." "Are you talking about putting those fields around us and the wreckage? That would be a huge volume, even if the gap between the fields was hair thin!" "No, I considered that, but you're right, we couldn't generate enough gas, quickly enough. I think we need to put a thin disk of it between us and the station and then use some of our electronic spoofing techniques to amplify the effect." "That sounds a little more reasonable, but will require some good navigation and crack piloting to make sure everything stays lined up right." "Don't worry about that, Anya," Pete laughed. "Dar and Kat are the best we could hope for." "What kind of gas were you thinking of using, Kat?" Ross asked. "I was thinking of methane. It will react to the radiation coming off the rift and fluoresce intermittently, for one thing. Also, it will reflect a lot of the Tenerif scan frequencies." "Swamp gas," Pete laughed. Ross joined him as soon as he realized what he'd said. It took a little longer for Anya. The old Earth tales of UFOs and their association with weather balloons and swamp gas were much dimmed by time, but still could evoke a response. "What's so funny?" Dar asked. "Ask me later," Pete said, getting up. "I've got kitchen duty. Get out of the galley. I've got a meal to prepare." "Dar, do you want to go down to the cargo bay and look at those drive pods with me?" Ross asked. "I'm fairly familiar with the way our drives are put together, and I know yours are more efficient and powerful. I'd be interested to see how they are different." "Yes, we can do that. I am not a drive technician, but every pilot must have basic training in drive repair and maintenance." The two left together, with Ross laughing about Dar's concern over the differences between human and Sondag bolt thread spacing. Anya stood for a moment staring at Pete before she smiled shyly and waved a goodbye. "Guess I'd better take off too, or we'll never hear the end of it from those guys." "All right, See you later." Anya didn't pick a destination when she left, but soon realized she was headed for the med bay. "Kat, is the med bay off limits right now?" "No Anya, as long as you don't touch the controls on the med pod where our survivor is, why?" "I don't know, just curious, I guess. You and Dar haven't said anything so far, so I wanted to take a look for myself." "I understand. Dar has been very protective of her, and understandably so." "Her! She's female then?" Anya asked, shocked. "Pete and Ross didn't say anthing." "They were probably too busy to see much during the transfer," Kat explained. "and sexual differentiation is not very pronounced in unmated individuals." "But there is now a potential Sondag Adam and Eve on this side of the rift!" Anya said with some drama. "Yes, I understand your reference. The Sondag do not have a similar creation myth, or rather in their most widely accepted creation story, a divine being created the sondag – collectively." "You mean that one minute there are no Sondag, and the next minute there is a whole Sondag civilization?" "Well, no, it doesn't mean that. The Sondag originally formed into large familial units. Similar to the prides that old Earth's lions formed. Actually, they were probably closer to old Earth wolf packs than to lions. So the old Sondag myths suggest the creation of such a unit, rather than a male, then a female, or even a male and a female." "Ah, I see. Still, this must be a big relief to Dar." "I think Dar is hoping he will find a mate, but he would be equally pleased merely to have another Sondag to share memories of home with," Kat sighed. The conversation had carried Anya to the med bay by this time and she cycled the hatch and entered. The lights of the med pod blinked and gleamed at her as she walked over and looked through the clear cover to see the Sondag within. She hadn't seen that much of Dar to this point, and certainly not unclothed, so she could only compare their hands and faces. This new face was very much like Dar's, but it was obviously different at the same time. "The ears appear a little smaller in relation to the face," she said aloud. "And the tips are a tiny bit darker, with slightly more pronounced tufts." "Very good. What else do you notice?" Kat replied. "There's some slight discoloration under the eyes that I don't remember seeing on Dar. Her mouth is a little wider I think, and the angle makes it hard to tell, but I think her face is a little narrower as well, or well, maybe not narrower, but sharper? Her features aren't quite as flat as Dar's." "Very good. The discoloration should fade as her health improves. Male Sondag do generally have slightly flatter faces than the females, so that is one of the most reliable sexual indicators." "I see." Anya said as she stared at the face, wondering. "Do we know anything about her?" "We didn't find any identification, and while the Catamount has quite a lot of Sondag reference material in our data banks, we did not have anything except the most general of personnel information. Mostly a command roster. Names and ranks, and little else." "There's so much you don't have, its a wonder it doesn't drive the two of you crazy thinking about it!" "It has certainly caused Dar some sleepless nights." "How much longer before she comes out of the med pod?" "Fourteen hours and thirty two minutes," Kat answered. "Just after breakfast tomorrow." "I guess I'll have to save my questions for then," Anya laughed. "It'll be good to have another female around anyway, even things up around here, since I think of you as female Kat, even if you're not." "I do self-identify as female, so your observation is accurate. Since I was a Sondag battle intelligence, gender was considered immaterial to my makeup, but since the reboot after crossing through the rift, I've discovered I've changed in ways not considered optimal by our military scientists." "That's okay, I think having the ability to be emotionally invested in the ship and your crew mates is a big plus, and one your military scientists should have considered more seriously." "Oh, they considered it, and seriously, I'm sure. A Sondag scientist, and especially a military scientist is the very definition of seriousness. Utter, utter seriousness." "You know, I'm constantly amazed at your and Dar's facility with our language. I would hope to learn some Sondag too, but I doubt I'll be speaking it as well in such a brief amount of time." "Save the compliments for Dar," Kat laughed. "He's got a gift for languages, obviously. For me its not big deal. I was designed to do it easily." "Sure, but you take some of the praise yourself. No selling yourself short around me, you hear?" "Will do," Kat chuckled. "Hey, since we've discussed Sondag mates, its fair to talk about Human mates too, isn't it? I've noticed that you interact differently with Pete than you do with Ross. Are you considering him as a potential mate?" "Ahhh..." Anya laughed and sputtered. "Well, I guess fair is fair, but we Humans don't usually talk about these things so casually, but just between us girls?" "Hehe, yes. Just between us girls," Kat tittered. "Then, yes, I find myself attracted to Pete. I like his appearance. I like that he can be decisive when he needs to be and still find the humor in situations." "So you and Pete may become mates?" "That is possible, but there are a lot of things to take into consideration. We come from very different backgrounds, for one thing. I spent most of my life in a very pampered environment. Exiled though I currently am, I am a member of the ruling family of Keeler and may be back in favor again some day. Pete's descriptions of his life up until now tell of a much more difficult time, with long stretches of danger, difficulty and deprivation. Keeping the large differences from causing problems will be a delicate dance to say the least." "I see," Kat said, having noticed how Anya referred to these relationship issues in the present tense rather than future tense. She thought Anya didn't even realize that this subconscious decision had been made already. "If you will excuse me, I have begun work on the field calculations for our spoofing plans, and I will need to drop some of my conversational nodes for a while. It's been nice talking with you." "Of course. Talk to you later," Anya said to the air. "and talk to you later too," she said softly to the med pod and the figure within it. ------- "Where are the exciters?" Ross asked, staring at the drive that he and Dar had just finished opening all the access hatches to get at. "Exciters?" Dar asked. "Yeah, the secondary magnetic field genrators that boost the drive's field strength." "Ahh, this engine doesn't need secondary boosters. It achieves the same thing more efficiently by channeling the primary field outputs into what's called a 'carhhdac' pattern. I don't have a word for it in your language. Ask Kat to show you the math behind it when you've got a free hour to be confused. It is somehow a matter of topology, as I understand it." "Okay, but these nodules here are still field deflectors, right?" "They are, very good Ross." "Thanks. They're still far smaller than anything I've ever seen before. I can't imagine how that is achieved." "I would have to have more knowledge of human drives before I could make that kind of comparison, I'm afraid." "I understand. How does this thing handle the superplasma feeds? For that matter, what's the composition of your base plasma?" "Ahh, I'm not sure what your word for it would be – We can look at the atomic structure when we have some time and see if we can identify it." "How long will the current supply last for the Catamount? It does deplete over time, doesn't it?" "No, the base for the superplasma is completely recycled. It is a closed system. None is lost. It can loose effectiveness over time though, due to isotopic drift, so we would have to replace it in about forty Sondag years, which is ... sixty two Earth years, if my conversion is correct. I would recommend reading the texts on the subject, but Kat says it would be better to read them in the original Sondag." "Too bad you people don't have some sort of teaching machines like the old fiction stories. There's a lot to learn here." "Actually, there are quick learning routines in the med pods, but they won't work unless you can think in Sondag. I'm certain it would take someone eminently more qualified than Kat or I to reprogram them to work in any other language. Better to wait for Kat, as she is translating everything as quickly as she can." "Man, I could sure wish we could use them, but it won't be the first time Pete and I had to do things the hard way." "Back to the matter at hand," Dar said, patting the field deflector nodule in front of him. "Despite the lack of familiarity with the technology, do you think we could adapt this drive to the Bugaboo? "Sure. Some of the technology here is advanced well beyond what we have, but the basics are the same. We'll have to dump some stuff, revamp a few others. I'm sure we'll have to engineer a few things here and there to adapt, but I don't see anything that can't be overcome with some hard work." "Good, that was my thinking as well. With the new drive, the Bugaboo could be used for all our passenger-related work." "Even the planetside operations, like the one on Meier's World?" "Even those. The new drive will be more than sufficient, but the real trick will be to see how well we can adapt the Catamount's shielding system. You put the right kind of shielding on a ship and it can handle planetary landings anywhere people would be found." "Once we're gotten away from here, we can worry more about that," Ross said. "We're going to have to spend a lot of time looking over that big remnant out there too. We have no idea what we've got." "True enough. ------- The meal was curried lamb and rice. The talk was boistrous as they discussed their upcoming attempt to deceive the instruments at Tenerif Station. They were going to use six of the Catamount's repair drones and sixteen modified mining beacons to define the limits of their gas pocket. The drones would be keeping the field intact and monitoring the gas pressure. Four hours after dinner, they had a working gas pocket, and were moving at a normal speed towards the Tenerif Station transition point. Pete, Ross and Anya had all been surprised to learn that the Catamount was able to do some pretty serious matter manipulation, taking some of the larger pieces of carboniferous chunks of debris from the area and turning it into methane. They didn't have true energy to matter conversion, but they did have matter-to-matter conversion. As long as they didn't try to play to loose with the laws of physics, they could take any material and recombine its elemental components to make whatever was needed. "There's an energy slope," Kat explained. "Transmuting lead to gold takes more energy than the process itself requires. Converting gold to lead takes less energy than the process generated, and results in surplus energy, to use the old Earth example of transmutation." "So then you have matter-to-energy convertors?" Anya asked. "No," Dar laughed. "We don't. Conservation of mass is not violated. We have exactly as much mass when we're done as we did when we started. Sometimes that conversion creates more energy than it uses, but in every case, there is an energy slope. Too steep a slope, and you can't achieve transmutation. That applies in either direction. We can transmute elementally within a narrow range, and achieve the meta-transmutation of complex molecules, like methane, within a much broader range, because we're not altering the elements themselves, only rearranging them." "So if we have a sufficient supply of the carbonaceous elements, especially carbonaceous hydrocarbons, then we can rearrange the hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, forming other, more volatile hydrocarbons, like methane?" Pete asked. "Exactly, and the debris here in the rift is loaded with the stuff, though for a change we had to actually reject a lot of what we would normally think of as more valuable material to get what we needed." Ross reminded him. The Catamount drew close enough to call the station, and did so, not wanting to stray from their otherwise normal behavior. "Tenerif Station, this is Catamount." "Catamount, this is Tenerif Station, go ahead," came the reply. "Tenerif Station, Catamount has concluded its run and is heading for the transition point, please advise." "Ahh ... Catamount," came a different voice, a rougher voice that sounded less than awake. "We're having trouble getting a good read on you here. Are you towing a comet or something?" "Negative, Tenerif Station," Kat responded. "We are towing several large asteroids, mostly ore-bearing bodies and one carbonaceous asteroid we read high in hydrocarbons. Is there a problem?" "No..." came the hesitant response eventually. "We keep seeing what looks like a big ball of methane where your ship should be." "Well, the carbonaceous asteroid could be venting gaseous hydrocarbons, but not that much," Kat said. The external mikes on the bridge were all turned off, and it was a good thing, as Dar and the three humans were all laughing loudly. "That," Pete said through the laughter. "Is the voice of someone with a hangover who was woken up way too early. The laughter grew even louder after that. "Tenerif Station, about that transit advisory?" Kat reminded the station after a momentary silence. "Ahh, roger that Catamount, the transit point is clear. Sending transit data now." "Affirmative, receiving." "Everyone strap in," Kat called an hour later. "With the mass we've got in tow, this could be a bumpy transition. Pete, are those mining beacons safely stowed?" "Good to go down here. Do I have time to get back to the bridge before transition?" "Transition in five minutes," Kate replied, letting him judge the time. "All right, I'll strap in down here," he called. "Wish I'd have brought something to read." "That's funny. I guess you can do some of those Sondag language lessons Dar is always saying we need to spend more time on," Ross teased. "Sure buddy," Pete teased back. "Just because they have all these verb tenses based on status and seniority, doesn't mean learning it is a form of punishment." "Hey you two," Dar interrupted. "I'm listening to all this. Why don't you guys insult my language on a private channel?" Everyone was safely strapped in with plenty of time to spare, and the transition went smoothly enough. "Safe to unbuckle and come forward now Pete," Kate called. "On my way," he replied. "How long?" "Thirty eight minutes." "I'm stopping in the galley then," he replied. "Can I get anyone anything?" "What are you getting?" Ross asked. "I was going to grab a couple of left over biscuits." "Bring them all," Anya asked. "Are there enough?" "Sure. Anyone want an apple? I'm going to get one of those too." "I'll take one," Ross said. "Me too," Dar called. "Bring the cinnamon too?" "Sure Dar? Anya?" "Can I just share your apple?" "Absolutely," Pete said, grinning to himself. = The second transition was tricky, having less than forty minutes to change course, speed and orientation, all while still dragging the immense bulk of the wreckage with them. It had been Anya's idea, originally, although she had suggested Masaka as the destination, it being an open port with not a lot of orbital competition. Pete had made his counter suggestion, and they had gone over the pros and cons for almost the entire time it took them to get from Tenerif Station to the transit point. "Caribe!" Anya said, shocked. "Its a barren outpost. There's nothing there but an automated transit buoy." "That's right," Pete agreed. "And that's what makes it perfect. We've got access to an ocean full of water, and more importantly, and ocean full of coral sharks." "Water is always important, of course," Ross said, concerned himself over Pete's sudden and seemingly hair-brained idea. "But what do the coral sharks have to do with it?" "What are coral sharks?" Pete asked. "They're big, fast ferocious beasts made of mostly ceramic carbides, with skin and teeth that cut like diamonds and no fear!" Ross said, reciting what he knew. They grow until they reach the size of an old Earth whale, and then they settle down on the ocean floor." "Exactly. The sea floor of Caribe is littered with the remains of a billion dead coral sharks, each species is an attractor for other elements as well, meaning those ceramic carbide bodies are laced with high density metallic compounds." "So?" Ross asked, perplexed. "So they're utterly useless to anyone in human space, because they're too damned tough to machine and impossible to refine. But we've got the Catamount, Dar and Kat, and the ability to transmute these ceramic carbides into more useful materials." "You mean you want to use Caribe as a base because we might be able to use it as a resource where nobody else ever has?" Anya laughed. "That sounds too good to be true." "We won't know until we try, but in the meantime, we need someplace out of the way to store these wrecks and work on them. Caribe orbit fits the bill, and especially if we've got the Bugaboo to run to the grocery store with when we need to." "But there's no protection there," Ross argued. "We'd have to constantly worry about pirates and marauders." "Yes, the Catamount would constantly have to worry about defending our stuff. Sounds rough." "Oh," Ross blushed. "Yeah, when you put it that way, I can see your point." So it had been settled that they would do an immediate turnaround and make for Caribe. Saying so and doing so were two completely different things though, and it would have been close to impossible to do within the transit points boundaries without the Catamount, Kat's navigation and Dar's skill as a pilot. Doing so however, let them arrive and depart without coming within scanner range of the Asgard transit station. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" Pete asked Anya later as they stood together watching the surface of Caribe rotate beneath them. "It is," she sighed. "Too bad its so damned deadly. Still, I'm surprised there's not some sort of scientific outpost here." "Oh, there has been in the past. I've read that there have been at least s ix different temporary orbital research stations, not counting the first two planetside stations." "Those poor people." "Yes, especially the first group. Those islands looked awful appealing, I'm sure, before they encountered the local version of sand fleas." "Uggh! Enough sightseeing for me then," Ross grunted. "I'm going to go lay in my bunk and steady some Sondag schematics." ------- "How are you feeling?" a voice asked in the darkness. "Fine." Zela answered. "I feel fine." "What's your name?" "Zela," she answered. "Where am I?" "You're in the med bay of the Kadamon, now known as the Catamount." "Kadamon is an assault cruiser," "That is correct," Dar said, surprised. "How do you come to know the name of my ship?" "It was in the fleet. I knew the names of all the ships in the fleet. Why is it dark in here?" "It's dark to protect your eyes, and let you adjust to the unfamiliar surroundings slowly." "Can we have some light so I can see you?" "Of course," Dar answered. "Kat, lights please, twenty five percent." "Yes Dar," came the reply and the room slowly revealed itself as the lights raised slowly to a still subdued level. "Who is that?" Zela asked. "That is Kat. She was the ship's battle intelligence." "Was?" "Yes, she is now the Catamount's copilot and navigator, amongst other things. We tend to think of her as the ship's mind." "We? How many others survived?" "Just you and I. Dar and Zela. No others survived both the assault by the Sionnex and the naked transition through the Volmon rift. I doubt that any survived the assault. I am amazed that we did." "Dar. You told me your name was Dar before, when you were putting me in an envirosuit." "I did. We had to evacuate you from the wreckage of the orbital platform we found you in. The power that remained to keep your stasis chamber functioning was unstable, as was the wreck itself." "You keep saying we, but you told me that you and I were the only survivors," Zela said, suddenly realizing the detail she had missed at first. She shook her head, not used to missing such things. "Yes, the rift has left us in an unknown sector of space. Their are intelligent beings here, called Humans. They are much like us, and yet very different. Kat and I have partnered with three of them. Together we have been operating our ship as an independent transport." "Do you hold out no hope for returning through the rift to our own sector of space?" Zela asked. "I do not. All systems were down at the time of Transition. There is no record of our vector. No record at all of anything during that time. We were so severely damaged that our battle intelligence did a complete reboot." "Blood and claws! How did the two of us survive at all? And you say you came out of this with the assault shuttle intact?" "Yes. Oh, there were many, many systems that were completely down, and many more that still functioned, but barely. It took the repair drones quite a long time to repair them." "Amazing." "Now, tell me something about you Zela." "I was chief engineer for the orbital platform you rescued me from, OAP-219-E. "You weren't a missile platform then?" Dar asked, recognizing that the E on the end of the plaform meant it was an energy platform of some kind. "No, our platform held a bank of twelve high intensity particle cannons. Unfortunately, the intensity of the cannons is so high that the linings of the beam chambers burn out very quickly if cycled too rapidly. Ours were cycled very, very many times, and far too rapidly. We burned out the linings in all twelve chambers in the opening moments of the battle." "That seems insane." "So I told our commanding officer when he ordered it. He envisioned our platform as being the key to opening the hole in the planetary defenses that would mean a quick and decisive victory. His appointment was a political one." "The platform seems to have survived more or less intact. How was that possible?" Dar asked. "We used our emergency thrusters to get the platform back up into a higher orbit, once the cannons were useless. Lieutenant Noy again decided to spend everything at once, but perhaps it did save us this time. We burned our thrusters out getting out of low orbit, but a destroyer came along and took us in tow, though only long enough to get us out among the battle cruisers where we had a chance to survive. When the retreat was called, the Keresel pulled us in behind one of her landing bays and grabbed us with magnetic clamps. She was hit, very badly, during the sneak attack and the clamps broke loose." "That's what set you drifting?" "Yes, and combined with a huge EMP pulse when her reactors blew, knocking out almost everything except the emergency systems, we must have looked like a piece of debris." "How did you wind up in a stasis chamber?" "I had been wounded during our retreat from low orbit, and had left the engineering deck to get treated. Flash burns was all, but severe enough that the med bot assigned to us couldn't handle it," Zela had tears in her eyes at this point, and Dar laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. "When the ship comm suddenly squawked and announced the sneak attack, a med tech shoved me into the stasis unit and told me I'd be safe there until the could get me into a med pod when it was safe to do so." They were silent then for a while as both thought back on what had happened to them during and after that fateful battle. Zela sighed finally and reached up to pat Dar's had where it rested on her shoulder. "That's the last thing I remember before coming to in the stasis chamber and seeing you standing over me. Thank you for rescuing me." "You're welcome, of course," Dar smiled. Zela smiled back. "You'll have to remember not too smile too much around the humans." "Why?" "They're ancestors were less carnivorous than ours. Our teeth frighten them." he laughed. "Really? Like Rhu?" "No, they're not herbivores, they're omnivorous. According to the theories of their evolution, they are descended from a group of species similar to our Kiritik." "Tree dwellers?" "Perhaps originally. It is not clearly established, or others have managed to obfuscate the truth over time, I'm not sure which. You know how a people's 'knowledge' can be influenced by politics and religion." "Ah, what about religion?" "It exists of course, but some societies seem to hold it at a distance, as ours does, and others are more directly influenced by it. Our partners are not particularly religious, I believe, though I'm certain they might disagree if you asked them." "Will I be able to?" "What? Ask them? Of course, though Pete and Ross have only a rudimentary understanding of Sondag. Anya, our newest partner has had little time to study it, so knows only a few words and phrases. The typical social phrases. 'Thank you', 'You're welcome', a few variations on hello and goodbye." "Do you speak their language then?" "Kat and I have both learned their language, yes. It is less precise than Sondag, but more forgiving. I had Kat to assist me, or it would have been a much slower process." "What about the learning modules?" "Unfortunately, they require the subject think in Sondag, so They aren't able to use it." "Do you think you are using their language well enough to think in it?" "Hmm ... I'm not sure. I think I've had a few dreams in it, but I'm not sure if I can think in it or not." "If you've dreamt in it, then probably you are capable of thinking in it. You might be the bridge we need to adapt the learning modules for use by these humans, if that would be wise." "Oh, I trust my partners. They each have their reasons for distrusting the authority of their own kind. Their loyalties have been geared towards individual loyalty before our arrival. On top of that, I like them, and I think they like me." A klaxon sounded then, interrupting their conversation. "Dar, we need you on the bridge," Kat's voice sounded. "We've got company." "Come on, let's go!" Dar called, heading for the med bay's hatchway. "Are you sure?" Zela asked. "No time like the present," he grinned. "Kat can interpret on the fly for you if it's needed. ------- "What's that?" Anya asked, startled. "That's the collision alarm!" Pete said. "Kat, what's up?" "Several ships have just transited into the system. They've ignored my hails." "Where's Dar?" "He is headed for the bridge. Zela is with him." "Zela?" Anya asked. "Our recently rescued survivor. Her name is Zela." "We're on our way. Where's Ross?" "He is headed for the engineering bay." A few minutes later, Pete and Anya entered the command bridge and found Dar and the new Sondag survivor already there. Dar was in the pilot's pod, mostly concealed from view, but obviously aware of their arrival, as he wasted no time in getting them situated. "Pete, I need you in your usual place in at the nav station. Anya, you and Zela will need to strap in somewhere." "What have we got?" Pete asked. "Three vessels transited in five minutes ago. The two larger vessels are what you would call scout cruisers, I think. The smaller ship is a scout of some kind." Looking at the display now, Pete nodded. "The smaller ship would be used as a boarding craft, or for planetary landings, if needed. "I'm thinking one of those ships is loaded to the gills with missiles and the other is packing a high intensity laser of some kind." "That's a standard pirate attack squad," Ross' voice came over the ship's comm. "Not quite naval standard lethality, but as much as they can pack in ships of that size." "Right," Pete agreed. "Scout Cruisers are the largest ships that most navies will sell when they've been mothballed. Anything larger gets cut up and scrapped. No government likes the idea of facing their own refurbished ships in battle." "Can we tell which is which?" Kat asked. "There should be a ring of missile ports around the hull of the missile cruiser. Perhaps even two rings, depending on the configuration. The one with the laser cannon is going to have either a hollow nose, or more likely a second keel with a firing port at one end or the other." "We are being hailed, captain," Kat sounded different, as if this situation had caused her to slip back into her previous role as a battle intelligence. " ... to and prepare to be boarded, or you will be fired upon," came the voice as Kat put the transmission on the ship's comm. "This is the Hell's Cross. You are outnumbered and outgunned. Heave to and prepare to be boarded, or you will be fired upon." "Well, that's clear enough, I guess," Dar laughed. "Shields up, and reactor to full." "Affirmative," Kat replied. "Captain, they're splitting up," Pete called from his station. "I think they mean to use our salvage as cover." "More likely they want to get a closer look at the booty," Anya suggested. "I'm guessing they have to think a ship this size is a transport. They have no idea you're armed." "I think you're right," Dar agreed. "Which of those ships would you say is the biggest danger to us, Pete?" "How good is your anti-missile screen?" Pete asked. "If you have a good screen then I'd be more worried about the laser than the missiles. If your shield can stop even a high powered laser, then I'd worry more about the missiles." "We'll concentrate on the missile cruiser then," Dar said. Our shields should be able to deflect just about any laser. They're designed to ward off Sondag planetary defenses, and those are primarily energy weapons. Missiles are another matter, if they can throw out a sufficient number to overwhelm our counter-missile batteries." "I concur," Kat said tonelessly. "Folks, if you aren't strapped down, get strapped down now!" Dar called. "Accelerating in five seconds." Dar's pod irised shut, and suddenly Pete, Anya and Zela found themselves flattened into their couches. "Rehenish!" Zela spat. "Damn!" Pete whooshed. Anya remained silent, her lips puckering like a fishes, as the ship surged away from the wreckage at a rate they hadn't known it was capable of. "We are accelerating at full speed to put the missile cruiser between us and the laser cruiser," Kat related to them, managing to speak in both languages at the same time so everyone understood. "Kat, can you find their tactical frequency?" Dar asked. "Yes, they're not even scrambling it." "Put it on speaker." Aye." the air inside the bridge suddenly crackled with the sound of the pirate transmissions playing alongside their own communications. "Steph, they're accelerating towards us! What the hell?" a male voice came. "They're trying to make a run for it, wow, look at that acceleration!" came a female voice in response. "Uri, discourage them!" The big display screen on the bridge was showing them a tactical display, showing the positions of the four ships, and the orbiting wreckage. A second display showed them a camera view of the nearest enemy ship: the small scout at the moment. "We were just struck by a laser in the drive baffles," Kat called as they approached the smallest ship. "Ross, you okay?" Pete asked, panicked. "I'm fine. Didn't feel a thing," he replied. "The laser did not penetrate our shields," Kat told them. "We're going to pass within a hundred por of the boarding ship," Dar's voice spoke. "Pulse the ship's shields when we're at the closest approach." "Aye," Kat answered. "No effect, Captain!" came a new voice from the pirate comm channel. "Cycling for another try." "Remember what happened to your ship when you two were exploring the Catamount the first time? That was Kat pulsing the ships shield's. The energy pulse is similar to an EMP pulse, and can knock out electronic gear, amongst other things. We won't be close enough to have to worry about the crew this time though." Dar explained. "Another laser shot," Kat called. They are coming from the small scout." "He's got a medium-weight laser, I'm guessing," Pete said. "More than enough to overload a transport's drive, normally." "no effect Captain!" came the pirate voice again. "Pulsing the shields," Kat called. Bringing the starboard cannon to bear," came Dar's voice. "Scout appears to be dead in space," Kat called almost simultaneously. "Firing starboard pulse cannon," Dar called. "Targeting the missile ports." On screen, the observers saw a beam of brilliant blue lance out from the lower right corner of the screen, touching briefly on the nearest missile port on the cruiser opposite them. Suddenly, the entire ship exploded in a blinding flash of energy and flame as the ship's atmosphere blazed afire from everywhere at once. "Oh my!" Anya gasped. "Holy crap!" Ross' voice came through, as he too was watching the display fed to him in engineering. "Jeez!" Pete cried. "What the hell?" "That was..." Dar started, but suddenly the ship's shields flared and electronics everywhere flickered and dimmed. "Captain we've taken a direct hit from the other cruiser." Kat announced. "Damage?" Dar asked. "Minimal. We overloaded a surge tank near the cargo bay amidships. The capacitors vented into space and energized the nearby hull enough to burn out a few sensors." "All right, rolling to starboard and bringing the port pulse cannon to bear." Dar called. "Cut all power to the drive." "Aye," Kat replied. "Captain, they're cycling for another shot. I'm registering a photon discharge imminent." "No, we get the next shot," Dar growled. "Firing maneuver," Suddenly the ship seemed to spin on itself, far faster than the inertial compensators could adjust for, and before the motion could finish registering on the brains of the observers, another bright blue beam stabbed out, seeming to come from the lower left of their screen this time, reaching out to the more distant target this time. The results this time were less spectacular, if no less deadly. A blackened hulk remained where the laser cruiser had been so recently. "Where's our scout?" Dar called. "It appears they restored power," Pete called, having focused on the remaining ship in order to avoid watching another spectacular display of men dying under the fierce touch of the Catamount's primary weapons. "They're under way and headed at full speed for the transition point." "Let them go," Anya begged. "Of course," Dar called. "We'll just trail them at a distance until we're sure they're gone, and to make sure they don't change their minds." "Oh, I don't think we'll have to worry about that," Ross called. "I'm on my way up." A few minutes later, the bridge was crowded with the entire crew. Dar had cycled open the pilot's pod and climbed out, knowing that Kat would warn them if their was any change in the remaining pirate ship's vector. Ross came in grinning, his grin growing wider when he saw Zela. Dar saw the glances and knew introductions were in order. "Everyone, this is Zela, Chief engineer of OAP-219-E, the weapons platform we rescued her from. Zela, this is Pete, Ross and Anya," he introduced each in turn. When Pete held his hand out at the introduction, Dar had to show her how to shake hands. "This is a common human custom when being introduced," he explained in Sondag. "A pleasure to meet you," Pete said in Sondag. "My pleasure as well," she replied automatically, grinning at the communication, then covering her mouth, embarrassed to have so quickly forgotten the admonition about smiling. "No problem," Ross said also in Sondag as he took his turn to shake hands. "We grow used to it now." "Welcome," Anya said in her barely learned bit of Sondag, offering her own hand and resisting the urge to hug the Sondag newcomer." "Thank you," Zela answered awkwardly, surprising them. "Its all she knows of your language at the moment," Dar explained, laughing. "She specifically asked to learn that phrase, just for this moment." "Thank you for rescuing me, and for being Dar's friend. It is good to have friends when you are far from home and alone," she said through Kat's translation. "The pirate scout has left the system," Kat announced. There was some awkward silence then, not because of the new presence on the bridge, or rather, not because of Zela's presence. Rather, it was the human's new understanding of how effective a weapon of war the Catamount was, and how harshly they had just dealt with a threat. Collectively, they were killers. Each of them was busy trying to absorb that in their own way. Anya broke the silence, deciding they needed a return to some kind of normalcy to get them going again. "Well, I didn't do much but stare, but I've worked up an appetite. Anyone else hungry?" "Indeed," Dar called. "Can we have waffles? Zela is going to love maple syrup." "Sure," Anya laughed. "Bacon too?" The round of enthusiastic support was all it took to break the tension, and the five of them headed for the galley, knowing Kat would be there waiting for them. ------- The End ------- Posted: 2011-11-16 ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------