Peggy Sue (The T'aafhal Inheritance) (18 page)

“Now dear. Just calm down and take some deep breaths. That woman is a medical doctor, a healer. You need to let her and the other humans help him.”

Hearing new voices in the reception area, Ludmilla went to see what was happening in her sickbay now. “Hello, Melissa,” the Russian doctor said. “I see you have brought me another polar bear, is this one wounded or just visiting?”

“Hey, Dr. Tropsha. This here is Isbjørn, Bear’s mate,” Melissa replied, either missing or ignoring the sarcastic edge to Ludmilla’s question. “She’s come up to keep Snowflake company while y’all fix Tornassuk.”

As Ludmilla was absorbing that information, Dr. Hofstadter stuck his head around the corner and asked, “Dr. Tropsha, do we have any whole blood? The serum we had in stock is almost depleted and we really need to get some whole blood into the patient.”

“Polar bear blood? No, just the serum. Have bears been transfused before?” Ludmilla asked the veterinarian.

“Yes, I have read about a few cases. But he’s tachycardic and we are going to need to get blood in him ASAP. I have no idea how many blood types polar bears have. We’ll just have to take samples and test for compatibility. I also suspect significant hemothorax is contributing to respiratory distress and hemorrhagic shock. I’ve already called for Dr. Carmichael.” 

“Set a chest tube and have Giselle established two large-bore antecubital IV lines for blood transfusion,” Ludmilla said, then addressing the two bears. “OK, ladies, you have arrived at an opportune moment—your friend needs blood. I’m going to get a couple of syringes and take samples from each of you.”

“He wants blood? He’s hungry?” Snowflake asked, totally confused.

“No,” replied Dr. Tropsha, returning from the next room. “Your friend suffered a gunshot wound to the chest, which caused traumatic pneumothorax—a collapsed lung—and a great deal of blood loss. Dr. Hofstadter was able to close the chest wall defect but the blood loss has made him shocky and X-rays show blood in the pleural space. We are draining his chest, but we need to take blood from you and pump it into him to replace his loses.” 

“You can do that?” marveled Isbjørn. “You can have some of my blood, if it will help.”

“Mine too,” chimed in Snowflake.

“It’s not that simple, first we need to check to make sure your blood is compatible, otherwise we might do more harm than good.” As she spoke, Ludmilla took the blood samples and again hustled from the room. The two bears looked at each other with worried faces.

Captain’s Quarters, Peggy Sue, Four Hours Later

Jack was sitting at the desk in his quarters, running over the endless lists of material needed to finish making Farside Base operational. The base was being constructed beneath an ancient volcanic dome near the Copernicus Crater, in what geologists call the Sulpicius Gallus formation. The location was on the farside of the Moon, shielded from prying Earth-bound eyes. An earlier ground penetrating radar survey located a number of large voids in the area, 1.6 billion year old drained lava pockets that provided a good starting place for building a shipyard and research facility.

The cabin door opened and Ludmilla came in, looking haggard and drawn. Jack went to her and held her in his arms. “You look like you had a rough day, Luda,” he said. She wrapped her arms around his back and hugged him. “Yes, my Captain, it was a very rough day,” she said, resting her head on his chest.

“Dare I ask how your patient is?” he asked with trepidation.

“He is alive, not totally out of danger yet, but alive,” Ludmilla replied. “Thankfully, the whole medical department pulled together as a team. I did think we might have to revive Dr. Carmichael. When he burst into the OR and found polar bears everywhere he almost passed out.”

“You told him about the bears before this, right?”

“Yes, but being told that there would be talking bears on the ship does not truly prepare one for that first encounter,” she said with a tired smile. “Particularly when you are rushing into the medical section to work on a chest wound. Dr. Hofstadter neglected to tell him that the chest in question was covered with thick white hair. He did recover quickly though.”

“And you got the bear—Tornassuk?—patched up?”

“Oh yes, we found the bullet—it barely missed the heart and lodged in his ribcage after passing through the chest cavity. There were bleeders everywhere. Richard, Dr. Carmichael, really is a gifted surgeon. If it had only been Gene and myself we may well have lost the patient. As it is, he has a better than even chance of pulling through.”

“Would you like a drink?” he inquired. He had been holding off on an evening cocktail until Ludmilla arrived.

“A hot shower first, and then I will have several,” she replied, reluctantly pulling away from his embrace. “Then maybe we can think of other activities to relieve stress,” she added with a sly smile.

“I’ll have the steward bring an iced pitcher of martinis.” Ludmilla headed for the shower and Jack called the lounge on the upper deck. Normally, alcohol was restricted to the lounge and the chief’s and enlisted dayrooms, but rank had its privileges.

Yuki, the Marines and Bear are back, the Chief is out of sick bay, the ursine recruits are bedded down, and the wounded bear is still alive. Tomorrow morning we dock at Farside Base, but before then the woman I love is about to emerge from the shower, thirsty and horny,
Jack said to himself.
Life just doesn’t get any better than this.
 

Part Two

A Star To Steer Her By

Chapter 9

Rogue Planet, Interstellar Space

In the interstellar void between Beta Comae and a red dwarf known to humans as Ross 1015, a dark world five times a massive as Jupiter followed its own lonely path around the Galaxy. A dark imitation of a stellar system, the rogue planet possessed its own swarm of orbiting satellites. Half a dozen of those sizable moons were inhabited by creatures as intelligent as humans, perhaps more so.

These creatures reveled in the darkness, on worlds barely lit by faint star light. Possessing no eyes, they found their way using sound, vibrations through the ground beneath their jumble of short straw-like legs and the thick atmosphere around them. They never saw the carbon dioxide icebergs floating on seas of liquid nitrogen, or the occasional, spectacular cryovolcanic eruptions that sent plumes of methane, ammonia and other gases into surrounding space, renewing the moons’ atmospheres.

Warmed tepidly by tidal stress and radioactive decay deep within their worlds, the creatures could only live at temperatures that would freeze Earth life solid. The low temperatures also slowed the rate of chemical reactions, making the pace of life on these dark worlds sluggish and deliberate. But that was fine with the creatures, their lives were long and contemplative—perhaps that was why they hated warm life, with its ephemeral lifespans and frenetic existence.

Ranging in height from one to two meters, their bodies were disc shaped hollow sacks, normally indented on either side. At the front of the sack was a vertical opening, fringed with long hair-like tentacles, a visage that could only in charity be called a face. The closest parallel among Earthly life was the trap sack of certain microscopic carnivorous plants commonly known as bladderwarts. Only these “plants” could move slowly about on the short legs that sprouted from their bases like bristles from a brush. Communication was accomplished using small vibrating membranes on either side of the mouth opening, conversation that would sound like random buzzing and humming to human ears.

A minor functionary was slowly approaching an elder of the race, its mission to deliver some disagreeable news. A probe ship had reported back from a star system only a third of a parsec away, bringing news of a new outbreak of warm life. A response was required but that needed the sanction of a more senior official. Carefully advancing from directly in front of the larger creature, the functionary spoke: “A thousand pardons, Significant One. I bring disquieting news from the warm worlds.”

“Speak, what is so important that you disturb my thoughts?”

“A probe ship has reported the presence of warm life in a nearby system, zxxwz987.”

“That system was cleansed a milli-cycle ago, new sentient life could not have arisen so quickly.”

“The warm creatures came from a different system, Significant One, in a ship of powerful design. Several probes and a refueling station were destroyed.”

“This is an outrage! Where do these vermin come from? We must find their home world and sterilize it.”

“Yes, Significant One. From the departure vector it would appear that the creatures came from qwyyq106. A multi-planet system 10 parsecs from zxxwz987.”

“Is there a record of life from this system?” As the Significant One was speaking a frilly, undulating worm-like creature floated by and brushed against its mouth tentacles. This triggered an automatic response: the dimpled sides of the larger creature’s feeding sack popped out, creating a sudden vacuum at its mouth opening. Faster than eyes could follow, the frilly creature disappeared into the Significant One’s digestive chamber. Neither participant in the conversation took note of this activity.

“I consulted the archives. A little more than a quarter cycle ago, a cleansing mission was sent to the system. It reported infections on both the third and fourth planets. The fourth planet was cleansed and a large asteroid was impacted on the third to disrupt development.” The dark ones marked the passage of time in cycles, the time it took for their system to complete an orbit of the galaxy, around 240 million Earth years.

“Incompetent fools! Both should have been sterilized. The client race that performed the action must be punished!”

“Begging your forgiveness, Significant One, but the client race that was used has since been exterminated. Evidently their incompetence was notice by others.”

“Send a mission to qwyyq106 and verify that this is where the offending ship originated. It may have been just an intermediate stop. Regardless, if warm life infests the system the affected planets are to be cleansed.”

“Yes, Significant One.” The functionary began backing away as the older official returned to its meditations.
That did not go too badly
, the functionary thought,
If I can successfully direct the eradication of these new warm vermin my status will be suitably enhanced.
Anticipating its coming triumph, the functionary crept away with almost unseemly haste.

Farside Base, The Moon

The Peggy Sue sat at the bottom of a large crevasse, a jagged slit carved into the top of the ancient volcanic dome that housed Farside Base. Overhead, massive doors closed off the space within from the void. Their primary purpose was to allow an atmosphere to surround the docked spaceship, making the planned overhaul and modifications easier. But in addition, the doors’ outer surfaces were artistically crafted to hide the existence of the base below.

Standing on the cavern floor next to the curving silver side of the Peggy Sue, Captain Jack, Rajiv Gupta and Jo Jo Medina were discussing the intended changes to the ship. “So you see, we will be lengthening the hull by the insertion of three extension sections: fore, aft, and center,” Chief Engineer Medina explained. “The center extension is the largest, being 12 meters long. The fore and aft extensions, which are at the junctions where the hull tapper begins, are 4 meters each. Overall we will add 20 meters to the ship’s length.”

“What will the added space be used for?” asked Dr. Gupta.

“Most of the center extension will be used to house magazines and launchers for the new gravitonic missiles. The forward and aft extensions will create some additional room for engineering and crew space, though the main reason for those additions is to alter the curvature of the hull. The midsection of the ship is being expanded to 14 meters in diameter, most of which will be used to house upgraded shielding and weapons systems.”

“And what do those upgrades buy us, Mr. Medina?” the Captain inquired. Improved shielding was his primary request after the close escape from Beta Comae, that and the addition of some smaller weapons suitable for repelling boarders or supporting a retuning shore party.

“The new shields are both more efficient and more capable, roughly three times as powerful. The X-ray laser batteries have also doubled in power and there will be eight new 15mm rail guns to provide close in fire support.”

The Captain nodded approvingly. “And what about shuttle docking? We have been playing musical airlocks for months now.” The ship’s original configuration supported only two docked shuttles at a time.

“We are going to move the existing pair of docking ports forward and add a second pair aft. This will give us the capability to carry four shuttles in all—two pinnaces and two larger shuttles. The large shuttles will be the new combat rated models, intended for troop transport.” Though the existing large shuttles were tough and capable vehicles, they were not designed to carry Marines wearing battle armor. Neither did they mount any external weapons to support insertion or extraction missions. The new military shuttles fixed those problems based on advice from the ship’s growing ground combat contingent.

“With all these additions dead weight has to go up significantly, is the Peggy Sue going to lose a few Gs acceleration on the top end?”

This time is was Rajiv who answered, since the ship’s new reactor and drives were his designs. “The total mass of the ship will rise to around 8,000 metric tons, but the improved drives and power reactor will more than compensate, Captain. Given 500 GW peak power generation I have calculated that full ahead acceleration should be 38 Gs with flank power pulling just over 40.”

“Excellent!” Jack said. “More armor, more weapons and faster to boot. I can’t wait to take her on a shakedown cruise. It took nearly five years to build her, how long will the overhaul take?”