The Unscheduled Mission (15 page)

“Clever,” Iris applauded. “so you can adapt this cabin to whatever use you have for it even if that changes on a given mission?”

“Exactly,” Velvet nodded.

“The fixtures are much more fixed on the upper deck,” Ronnie told them. “We have two ways up there. The Mer couldn’t quite grasp the concept of a circular stairway so we had to set a ladder in the wall over here. There’s another on the other side of the cabin. Cabin gravity in space is the same as a Mer lift belt, you’ll recall, so it won’t take much to pull ourselves up using only our hands, but if something needs to be carried up, we have an elevator right beside this one. It’s slow and it took longer to work out than most of the rest of the ship, but it holds six of us comfortably at a time. Just stand within these thick red and yellow striped lines on the floor.” They did so and she spoke to the air, “Lift, up please!” The line turned out to mark the top of the elevator walls and those walls rose up to the ceiling smoothly while the ceiling itself slid out of the way. Then the floor of the elevator rose and brought them to the upper deck.

“When we’re in flight the lift is automatically deactivated for safety,” Ronnie continued as they rose, “and can only be unlocked from the bridge. On the ground it can be locked from the bridge if it is deemed necessary. It’s as close to fool-proof as we could make it and not lose all that space just for the convenience. All the other plans we came up with left too much chance of someone falling off the platform or through the hole in the upper deck, or else left those sections blocked off from other uses. This is a big ship, but not big enough to waste that much space on an elevator.”

“How do the multi-deck
Alliance ships handle that?” Park asked Dannet.

“A normal elevator shaft goes from deck to deck,” Dannet replied, “but I like this system. As Ms. Sheetz, pointed out, it means less space is wasted.”

“We also have ladders and circular stairways, depending on the ship,” Sartena added, “but most of our ships are like your
Trenisi
was, with only a single deck. Many of our larger ships, the ones that don’t land on a planet, are wide and flat so they only have one deck too. Those are mostly used as passenger ships though, and there are only a few for military use.”

“What does your military use them for?” Iris asked curiously.

“When a new base is established they are used to haul in materials and personnel,” Dannet replied when Sartena looked uncertain whether to reply. “They aren’t armed, although I suppose they could be.”

“Well, let’s get off the elevator and I’ll show you the rest of the ship,” Ronnie told them. They did so and she spoke the command, “Lift, down please. By the way you need to say please to complete the command. We hoped it would make it less likely that someone might just say the words in sequence at an inopportune moment. We should probably use the ladders whenever we can anyway.” The floor of the elevator sunk down
 
and then as the walls returned to their down position, a panel slid out of the floor and covered the hole where the elevator had been. As it came into place it rose up half an inch and locked into place precisely level with the floor.

“That still looks a bit dangerous from this end,” Park opined. “Maybe on the next ship we’ll user a smaller lift, but one that’s more conventional?”

“I’ll need to measure the largest object we are likely to bring up here,” Ronnie admitted, “but I might be able to save some space next time. We weren’t very pleased with this one, but the whole deck was already in place before we realized there was a problem.”

“I thought Ronnie’s solution was fairly elegant,” Velvet told them.

“Now up here you’ll note we have some permanent cabins,” Ronnie kept going. “When we’re flying with a short crew, there are actually enough up here for everyone. And if you’ll step aft to the tail, you’ll find our weaponry cabin. Iris, are you sure you need three consoles back here?”

“Redundancy is a good thing,” Iris replied. “And I’ve been running sims with one gunner on missiles, one on phasers and one on defensive measures. We don’t really need someone who only turns the magnetic shielding on and off, but I know you have other plans so we’re practicing a number of scenarios, mostly to stay flexible, but also to see if we can find a better way. Having two or three gunners when facing more than one ship is a good idea.”

“You’ve done fairly well on your own so far,” Ronnie pointed out.

“The sims show us teamwork is better,” Iris replied.

“Really?” Dannet asked. “
Alliance ships usually only have one gunner on at a time. Multiple gunners mean you have delay as they talk to stay coordinated.”

“To each his own,” Iris shrugged. “You need to train as a team so everyone knows what the other is doing.”

The Weaponry cabin was small and cramped, but the gunners there did not need more space once they were seated at their consoles. Finally Ronnie conducted them to the bridge. “Sorry I didn’t have time to build in a cup holder, Skipper,” she laughed at Park.

“I love it!” Tina enthused. “But it doesn’t look like I can run it without a co-pilot.”

“We decided we should have both pilot and navigator in the front of the bridge,” Ronnie replied.

“We got the idea from the same place as Park’s captain’s chair,” Velvet stepped in. “A lot of the piloting controls are redundant, as are the navigational tools, but they are optimized for the pilot in this position and for the navigator on the other side. I’ll be your navigator for the trip to Van Winkle. Should be a snap as I already have the course plotted, assuming you still want two and a half orbits before landing.”

“Three,” Park corrected her.

“Two and a half unless you plan to land back on this side of Pangaea,” Velvet laughed.

“Hmm?” Park thought about that. “Oh, I was hoping for a polar orbit. We haven’t had a decent look at Australis yet, you know.”

“Good idea,” Velvet admitted. “I’ll recalculate the trip then.” She sat down in the navigator’s chair and went to work.

“Iris,” Ronnie told her, “Your master gunner’s console is over here on the port side again. “and the Comm station is on starboard. I plan to sit there for our trip. I take it we’re the entire crew?”

“It’s a short trip and we’re not expecting any trouble,” Park replied.

“You had to say it!” Ronnie nearly shouted as the others groaned. “This bird is barely armed, you know. All our missiles are back in Van Winkle, the stasis plating doesn’t work right and several other non-essential systems haven’t been tested yet.”

“But this bird is flight worthy, isn’t it?” Park insisted, wishing she had not even mentioned the stasis plating. Dannet and Sartena had heard of the experiment, he was certain, but he didn’t want them reminded of it.

“Flight worthy?” Ronnie echoed. “Yes. Fight worthy, not so much.”

“I’ll try not picking any fights along the way,” Park promised.

“And if someone tries picking a fight with us?” Ronnie pressed. “There are some Mer spacers here. Maybe we should ask them to come along, just in case.”

“And do what?” Park asked. “On the off –chance we came under attack from the
Alliance again, we aren’t fully armed. You said that yourself, but you do have me convinced of one thing. We take no chances. Velvet, what’s our fastest course to Van Winkle Town?”

“I can set up a course eastward across the
Pacific Ocean,” Velvet told him. “It will be a sub orbital flight, to about 100 miles up and right down again. We should be in Van Winkle in an hour.”

“It will still take two days or more to prep for a new launch once we get there,” Ronnie pointed out.

“As it would in any case,” Park pointed out. “Would you rather we sat here and waited for everything you need to be delivered?”

“And that would take a week or better,” Ronnie admitted.

“Okay,” Iris told them from the Comm desk. “I’ve made the arrangements. Let’s go.”

“What did you do?” Park asked.

“I had Quetso Control relay a request to put all Mer ships on alert until we land safely in Van Winkle,” Iris replied. “The
Alliance ships are amazing, but all the ones in this system are either in lunar orbit or on the other side of Saturn. None of them are in a position to intercept us, especially on a short hop only halfway around the planet.”

“Good point,” Park admitted, “unless Allience Ships have cloaking devices.”

“What are cloaking devices?” both Dannet and Sartena asked.

“Evidently they are fictional devices,” Park chuckled. “Vel, have you run those new numbers yet?”

“Coming up now,” she replied.

“All right, Tina, start your pre-flight check,” Park decided. “Ronnie, how do we secure the hatch?”

“It could be done from here,” she told him, “but it’s safer to do it from the controls at the hatch itself. I’ll handle it.”

“I see there’s a spare seat next to each of the consoles,” Sartena observed. “Would you mind if I took the one beside the pilot’s? Professional curiosity.”

“Go right ahead,” Park told her. “Dannet, pick your choice of seat too.”

Another half hour later they were in the air and starting their sub-orbital burn.

“We found out why the
Alliance hasn’t been back for a rematch,” Arn told them on their return to Van Winkle Town. “The ship that got away didn’t go back to Luna.”

“What do you mean?” Iris asked. “We tracked it back to Luna.”

“We thought we did,” Arn told her. “But we stopped watching when we thought it had landed there, but instead it made a low approach, used the Moon as a gravity sling and headed out system. Evidently they hightailed it off to the nearest
Alliance world, Chentalona.”

“What star does that circle?” Park asked.

“Erithan,” Sartena replied instantly.

“Stupid question,” Park shook his head. “There’s not a chance in the universe even so much as a single star has the same name I learned as a kid. We need to build up a concordance of the names we know and the names those stars have now.”

“I can help with that,” Sartena offered. “I think some of the others you rescued would help too. We’re getting pretty bored, just sitting around the base, you know. Several of us have been helping Marisea with her classes for the Atackack, but how many can teach one classload?”

“I appreciate that,” Park admitted, “but couldn’t that be considered colluding with an enemy?”

“Less so than going on vacation with you, I think,” Sartena replied. She turned to Dannet. “Captain, what do you think?”

“I don’t recognize the people of Van Winkle as enemies,” Dannet replied, “but officially I suppose the
Alliance might not look favorably on them. Still I don’t think building a comparative list of star names could be a crime. Go ahead. I don’t suppose it would be right to say much about the worlds orbiting those stars, if any, but the stars? It’s nothing they might not work out with the Mer astronomers.”

“I think the list will only be of academic use in any case,” Park considered. “We don’t have a ship capable of interstellar travel and even if we did, for astrogation purposes the modern names would suffice, especially since any star chart we might use would have those names anyway. But, Arn, so that ship went to Chentalona, wherever that is. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Had they stayed on the Moon, another few ships might have tried to attack soon after their arrival there,” Dannet told him. “On Chentalona they would have had to send reports through official channels. That would slow down response time. The Navy might even have gone to the Diet for a declaration of war.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Arn noted.

“I don’t think the Diet would declare war,” Dannet replied, “but it would take them weeks or months to do so, even if they did. The government moves slowly.”

“So when can we expect the next attack?” Arn asked. “It’s been two months already.”

Dannet considered that and replied. “Anytime now, I’m afraid, but there may not be an attack at all. I think there would be an official investigation into the incident first.”

“Better get
Phoenix Child
fully armed as fast as we can,” Arn decided.

Park and Iris got a call from Ronnie Sheetz the next morning. “So, would you two like to see the stuff I didn’t show you in Quetso?”

“Such as what’s behind mystery door number one?” Park rejoindered.

When they arrived at the spaceport, Arn and Veronica were waiting for them. Ronnie showed them, “We have a gravity cannon.” She signaled to someone up on the bridge and the flat spot on the nose split in two and opened up to reveal a sinister-looking matte black tube, which slid partway out and past the panels. “Not very pretty, but it should be effective. One thing, however. Newton’s Laws still apply here and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. As that thing pushes forward, we’re going to get pushed back. I had to put another of these jobs sticking out the back so we wouldn’t get shoved all over space whenever we fired this thing. I’ll want to spend some time on our next flight getting it tuned. There’s only so much you can do on Earth with that.

“Another thing,” she went on. “The gravity cannon has no theoretical limits. It will take as much power as we can put into it and fire it out, but once again Sir Isaac is going to have his say. Put too much in and the forward and aft cannons are going to collapse into each other and tear the ship apart. I’ve tried to put a governor circuit on the rig, but I don’t trust it. You’ll notice a dial at the weapons console that looks like an old-time tachometer. Try not to yellow line the weapon and if you red line it… Well, let’s just say we have a self-destruct mechanism now.”

“Let’s hope we never have to use it,” Park suggested.

“Now I’ll show you the stasis plating,” she told them. She pulled a gun out of her belt, aimed at the ship’s hull and fired three times. Each time she did, the appearance of the ship changed; it was still the bright flame colors, but they became slightly silvery. The bullets hit the hull and ricocheted off at an angle. “Not so much as a dent,” Ronnie told them proudly, “although the Mer’s hull metal should hold up to a mere bullet since it can keep most micrometeorites out. We have a few downsides, though. I still haven’t figured out how to keep the interior of the ship from going into stasis with the hull. Sitting still like the ship is now, you probably won’t even notice it, but flying through space, you’re going to notice. Your effective response time will be affected.