Archaea (26 page)

“After that time, sir, I was in chains along with a small handful of other officers. One by one, they came in, and took someone out, sometimes they would come back, and other times they wouldn't. Those who returned were beaten or severely injured, some didn't make it. Red accused us all of sedition, of treason – that we were the mutineers who took up arms against the rightful chain of command aboard the Mantis.”

“Maybe because I was one of the very lowest-ranked officers, and had no influence on the crew, I was left for last. Over the past few days, they stopped feeding me entirely, and I only had a few mouthfuls of water. Every moment I dreaded the door to that compartment opening, and at the same time, I guess I wanted it to open, so my torment would be over.”

“I thought it was the end, I heard voices outside my compartment, they were shouting, but I couldn't hear what was said. I remember trying to call out, to beg them to just get on with it, to give me water or just space me, but I couldn't make a sound above a dry whisper. The sounds outside in the companionway went silent for a while, and then a few short hours later a massive blast hurled me against the aft bulkhead, and I don't remember anything more, sir..” he broke down, sobs wracking his thin frame, as the captain held his shoulder, and did his best to calm him down.

“Thom, you're okay now son, you're safe. We weren't sure we could save you, when we cut open the hatch to your compartment and found you chained up on the floor. It was pretty touch and go for a while – you were more dead than alive.”

“But how did you manage to be there at all, sir?” he asked, bewildered. “Red's men were everywhere...”

“Well son, that's a pretty good story in itself, but suffice to say that Red picked a fight, and I gave him more than he was looking for.”

Thom's eyes opened wide in disbelief, as he processed the reality of what Captain Smith had said. It sounded pretty far-fetched, when you consider the Archaea, a light-frigate going up against a fully operational modern destroyer. If I hadn't been there myself, with my hand on the trigger, watching as the destroyer's bridge deck was atomized – I'd have a hard time believing it myself.

“The fact is, we were taking a shortcut through this sector, headed to the Vega system, and we were
attacked without provocation, without any communication or demands, by some skiffs that we believe came from the Mantis. We scared them off after a brief encounter, and they fled off our scopes. Later, as we were making our way through the trickiest section of the Danaan Fields, the Mantis fired on us without warning, luckily missing us and giving us time to counterattack. We were able to get on their flank, and disable them with a nova blast to the bridge deck.”

Thom shook his head in disbelief, and a slow smile spread over his face. “They're all dead sir?” he asked.

“Every last one of them son. The only ones left alive on the destroyer were the two guards outside your cell, and you. Yak and Shorty were the ones that found and rescued you.”

Yak and I shared a look of relief and pride in doing what needed to be done. Sometimes the right thing to do is the hardest thing to do.

“But the Mantis, sir... If she's still out there, couldn't Red get her going again?” 

“I don't think Red will be getting anything going again
, son - after we found you, we rigged the scuttle charges to blow so no one else could get their hands on her, and... well, here we are.” He looked at each of us, proudly.

*****

While everyone else had the luxury of a nap, and relaxation, I stayed pretty busy – machinery requires maintenance, or replacement, naps and relaxation are almost never part of the job. Shorty stayed pretty busy as well, and between us, Yak was stretched pretty thin. Slipspace may be rest-time for the captain, to go lounge in his flannels and read a book, for the rest of us, the ones aboard the Archaea that actually work for a living, it was a different matter.

Shorty and I both had a veritable cornucopia of parts and other assorted pieces to organize and go through, to replace, maintain, and troubleshoot. We both knew that no matter what we did, our captain was standing by to find new and interesting ways to break, burn, fold, spindle or mutilate everything he can reach. It was our lot in life to work damn near tirelessly to prevent that moment when he might have an opportunity to give us that hurt look, as if to say 'gee guys, if you only did your job a little better, that lever may have stayed attached', or 'gosh, I wonder if maybe someone around here did something once in a while, we wouldn't have a terrible fire in engineering right now'. And so, we took things apart, cleaned them, checked tolerances, improved systems, fabricated parts – it was a race against the inevitable, but one Shorty and I ran well.

Pauli was indispensable, whatever Shorty or I couldn't do, he made look easy. As we brought systems online, he was right there to help blaze a path through the wetnet to get it connected, and he did a lot of communication troubleshooting when a sensor module wasn't able to talk to a controller module, but most of that was done now by Janis in real time. I am not sure what he did the rest of the time, probably worked to understand Janis better.

Janis was the busiest of us all, but she never seemed to break any sort of sweat about it. She was doing pretty much everything now, and on call for any of us at any time, day or night, as much or as urgently as we might need. I recall a time not too long ago when I was terrified that Janis might someday modify some of the engineering systems, and now, I can't actually imagine what life would be like without her. It's really funny how things have worked out – she has become the most valuable tool in the shed, mission critical to the day-to-day operation of the Archaea.

I've set Janis up with a secondary nexus core, installed in a hard-wall compartment aft of the reactive containment. Originally, this compartment held the enviro unit for this section, but it had been full of spare parts and other assorted semi-finished projects since I upgraded the enviro unit to a more modernized self-contained unit. With its own securely locking hatch and hardened construction it was perfect to house the secondary nexus core, and once the rack was welded and the core installed, Pauli and I pulled in a wetnet backbone. Both Pauli and Janis were pretty happy with it, and she seems to run even faster now, if that's even possible. All I know is she has every reading and report on screen the moment I want it, and sometimes even before.

*****

“Jane, can I move these cases to the starboard wall where the nexus core parts used to be secured?” Yak said, after kicking one of the cases for the umpteenth time on his way back to engineering.

“Sure Yak, here let me help” I said, getting on one side of the stack. He kicked loose the cable lock, and we unstrung the pallet they were loaded on. Shifting cargo in null-g is always challenging, often comically so, but Yak and I were getting pretty good at it. The cargo bay on the Archaea was very well designed, with an internal hoist that ran up and down, and slid across a beam that was itself able to transit across the bay, we could pick a load from anywhere, and move it just about anywhere else, of course the hard part was sometimes pulling the cargo back down, as there wasn't a hoist on the floor.

Most of what we hauled was secured, and the intent was not to move it until it was off-loaded, but right now the cargo bay was in a state of chaos, as Gene and I had it filled with parts and pieces we were working into rotation on redundant systems, or trying to find more permanent homes aboard the Archaea. The captain may want to use the cargo bay at some point for actual cargo, and that time may be coming sooner than we think, now that we're in Vega system burning towards Vega 4.

“Yak, these cases are impossibly heavy – do we even know what is in them?” I asked, slightly out of breath from trying to shift a stack strapped to a pallet.

“No, these were the cases we found at the beginning of our clear of the Mantis, remember? They were all locked away in the wire-racks in that storage compartment.”

I remembered, though I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the various crispy, melted or burned items in each compartment, if nothing was moving and shooting back at me, I didn't give it too much attention that day.

“Yak, how did you move these over? These must mass 200kg each!”

He smiled, lifting one in each hand, then shrugged. “I don't know Jane.
.. I just moved them I guess. I may not be all that bright, but I am pretty good at lifting heavy things.” I made a raspberry at his back. I can lift heavy things too, dammit.

“What do you figure is in them?” he said, breaking loose a pallet with the hoist and getting it started across the bay.

“Lead, gold, maybe gold wrapped in lead...” a thought occurred to me, and I pulled out my scanner. “Well, if they are reactive, the lead shielding is working pretty well...” I said, as the readings were flat, or as close to flat as to not matter.

“I tried to get one open, but the latches are stuck, or frozen...I figured they were heavy, they were locked up in cages, the cases themselves were locked... even if we had to toss them because they ended up to be nothing but antique combustion-engine parts, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Heavy things are usually expensive...” he trailed off, watching me go to work on a latch with the toolkit from my leg pouch.

The latches were frozen, but they weren't stuck shut with any sort of chemical bonding agent, and they didn't look welded... What I needed to do was drill and scope one to take a look at the internal complications of the latch, maybe there was some sort of key mechanism, or a lever.

“Gene, do you have a moment?” I called into my comms.

“Shorty, I always have a moment for you, two if you need. What's up?” Gene is always ready to help a damsel in distress, the old softie. Maybe he just likes to be needed, or maybe he likes the fact I might need his help from time to time, so he can show me how smart and capable he is.

“Gene, we're looking at cracking open one of the cases Yak brought up from the Mantis, but the latch complications are beyond my tools here to suss out. Want to give me a hand here?”

“Sure thing Jane, I'll be right there”, he was so excited to tackle an engineering problem, he forgot momentarily to try and make me angry about how tall I was. To tell you the truth, I've been Shorty for so long to these people, it's weird when they forget.

“Maybe they're welded inside?” Yak said, wiggling the catch on a case.

“No, they look functional, but they don't move. I'd just saw one off, but I really don't know what that would do – it'd be much better to just open it.”

“What's the worst that could happen?” he said, naturally preferring the hack-it-off-and-ask-questions-later approach.

“Well, there might be a vial of some sort, like a concentrated acid under pressure... or a radio transmitter that sets off the detanite packed around the lead flechettes that are making these heavy...or it might just open, I suppose. In any case, that's not the point. The point is, these suckers look pretty damn expensive, they are heavy enough to warrant a careful look, and... if they are full of detanite, I don't want to make a hole in the captain's fancy cargo bay.”

He nodded thoughtfully, giving the catch another yank. Luckily for us all, he didn't trigger the bomb that may be in these, because Gene kicked in from engineering.

“So what do you think we're looking at here Shorty?” he said, squinting at the mechanism.

“I really can't say Gene, could be some sort of interlock, maybe a tab catch. Could be a counter-weight, or an RF key...we need to drill and scope it maybe?”

Yak shook his head, laughing at our gearhead ways, and went back to shifting the cases to the starboard side of the bay. 

Gene pulled out a scope, and tapped it thoughtfully on the side of his head, as he thought a bit. “Scoping it is a good idea, Shorty
... but what if it's rigged? Could have something nasty in there. I've seen cases like this that went on and blew up when you started tampering with it.” He though some more, and pulled out some feeler gauges and started poking through the seams in the latch.

“Gene, I ran through that, there is something in there, but I can't get a hook on it. Can't even tell what it is...”

He grunted, and sucked on his teeth a bit, and then tapped on the latch a few times with the edge of the gauge set, eliciting a dull bonk from the alloy.

“What do you figure this is made of, Shorty? It's definitely not aluminim.
.. is it ferrous?”

“I don't know... hit it with a magnet maybe?”

He looked across his nose at me and made some clicking noises. “Could do, I guess... might just fry whatever circuit is keeping the trigger open on that bomb, too... Did you tell the captain what we're doing back here?”

“No, we were just shooting the breeze here, I didn't want to bother him with it...Plus, you know, the captain would have me hacking into it with a plasma rig, Gene.”

“Yeah, that's true... still, if these are rigged to blow or release some sort of toxin, chemical, or maybe just burn a thermite block, we'd be in a bad spot trying to explain ourselves.” He clicked and sucked on his teeth a bit and sighed, making one of his faces.

“Captain, could you come down to the cargo bay at your earliest convenience?” he grumbled into his comms.