Gunship (11 page)

“Tell the Captain that we definitely got hit pretty hard along this side by some serious weaponry.” Duv clicked off his mic and got to work. The patches took several minutes each to set and weld, but in the lower gravity it didn’t take much physical effort. In fact, it seemed to be getting easier as he went along. Duv paused at that thought and glanced over to see the metal plates beginning to lift off of the floor.

“Shit! Ty, check gravity, check gravity!”

Ty and Skeeter both jumped, startled from their conversation by Duv’s call. Ty hit the wall console, swore, and hit his mic.

“We’re at thirty percent. Looks like the main gravitational drive has gone offline, but the backup kicked in…nope, wait…the backup just died, too.”

Ty crossed his arms as he floated to the ceiling, still linked to the safety line. Skeeter, who had never experienced zero gravity, grinned, pushed off from the wall Superman-style, then tumbled off the reverse wall and promptly puked in his mask.

“Great. That’s just great. Here—get yourself right-side up so you can adjust better. No, don’t take it off, the puke will just get loose in the cabin, and we’ll all have to deal with it then.” Ty shoved Skeeter’s hand down to keep him from releasing the mask while turning him right-side up again.

At that moment, Chang came floating by, beating back a cloud of hay and cow manure. He turned and secured the hatches leading to the main deck and bridge to prevent the mess from traveling throughout the ship. The brown cow struggled in the weightless environment behind him, attempting to walk on the ceiling unsuccessfully and giving off several mournful lowing sounds which were echoed by the cow left floating around the cargo bay. Chang grabbed the handholds and came back upside down, then looked in the door.

“This sucks,” he said as he passed, followed by “Sorry kid, forgot you are new to this” as Skeeter threw up again in his mask, disoriented by Chang’s maneuver down the hallway ceiling. “When you get done with Duv, can you help me tie down the cows and set up a small gravity field in the bay?” he hollered.

“Yeah. Sure. Be right there.” Ty slowly helped reel Duv back in and stuffed the tools back in the bag while Duv sealed the access-way hatch. He turned around and saw Skeeter woefully hanging onto the handhold and up to his eyeballs in vomit.

“Whoa! You okay in there? Ty, where’s the med kit?”

Ty floated down the hall and came back with the kit. Duv pulled out a syringe and took off the cap, then jabbed Skeeter with it.

“That will help with the motion sickness, but stay still for now. Sheesh, you could’ve at least showed him where the purge button was!” Duv pushed the button on the front of the mask, and with a loud whoosh, all of the fluid was sucked into a separate receptacle under the tank. Skeeter blinked miserably and continued to hang on for dear life.

Duv followed Ty down to the cargo bay. Cows, hay, unsecured firearms, and other assorted items made up a virtual whirlwind of slow-moving debris. Chang had tethered himself to the floor and was in the process of pulling one of the cows down that he had manage to lasso.
Yep, looks like it’s going to be a crappy day,
Duv thought as he moved to join Ty in setting up the gravity field gear and swatting cow patties.

—————

Crazy Ray stalked down the halls of his space station. Anyone who saw him went in the opposite direction. His white shirt was now splattered with blood, and he had his head characteristically cocked at a severe angle, which let everyone who knew him know that he was in a killing mood. He held his blaster nonchalantly in his right hand as he moved, blasting at any soul foolish enough to be within visible range. He made his way to the main receiving room, a throne room of sorts, where he received his very best clients and pitched them his wares. There was no doubt that this is where his visitor would be waiting.

He stepped through the broken glass sliders into the room. On the raised dais, in his chair, sat a man with his back to the door. To either side were Crazy Ray’s Enforcers, sitting like large metallic house cats, completely immobilized. Men in combat gear and masks lined the wall, standing at ease with their battle rifles and blasters. Several of Crazy Ray’s security men lay dead on the floor. He ignored them and proceeded to the person in his chair. He placed his blaster against the man’s head. “You have thirty seconds to apologize before you die.”

“Now, now, Mr. Ray. Why so hasty? Besides if you do that, we’ll all just go together.” The man shifted slightly, face still in the shadow of the broken lights, to display a small anti-matter bomb strapped to his chest. “If my heart stops, then this bomb pops! Boom! And wouldn’t that be unfortunate? What a terrible thing, to ruin a beautiful work of art like your space station. I just stopped by for a chat, but nobody seemed to want to get you. So sorry I had to damage your pet, but I was running out of patience and options.” He yawned and waved at the bodies around the room. “As you can see, all of your people here were very loyal, unfortunately for them.”

Crazy Ray was wearing his worst grin, his eyes wild, as he chopped his words. “What–do-you-WANT?” the blaster shook slightly in his hand as he shivered with rage.

The man in the chair sighed. “It’s very simple really. I just need to know the whereabouts of a couple of your sellers.”

“I am a businessman, and that is a matter of honor. I would never reveal my clients or sellers, bad for business and bad for me.”

“But of course you wouldn’t, and your reputation is widely known and respected,” the man continued in a soothing, patronizing tone. “I think I have a way around that problem, though. I am looking for thieves and…troublemakers, I believe you call them. Do you recognize this man?”

He handed a photo taken from a security video to Crazy Ray, who took it and snarled. “I have a reward out for him. Nobody has seen him in quite a while. Maybe he’s dead, maybe he’s hiding. I’ll get him. I always get them all.” He grinned again, grinding his teeth.

The visitor didn’t respond. “And her?” he asked as he handed back another photo.

Crazy Ray did a double take. This security shot showed a clear image of Joby Ty and Captain Campbell moving up to a building on a TORR. “When was this taken?” he demanded.

“Three days ago. My, you don’t seem happy to hear that at all!” The man gave an evil giggle as Crazy Ray roared his frustration, then turned and shot the nearest two soldiers dead. The others stood calmly in place as if nothing had even happened. “So I am right then? They were here?”

Crazy Ray skulked at the edge of the dais for a moment, thinking. “No. Only the woman. We searched the ship and Ty was not on board, just a boy and two other men. She told me she hadn’t seen…the miscreant…in a long time.”

“Well, it would seem that she lied, then. Which women often do. So two thieves on the run…but are they together or separate?” The man mused to himself for a moment, then refocused on Crazy Ray. “They cannot be allowed to go on unpunished for their crimes against me…and of course against you. So I would like to propose a business arrangement. You may keep the merchandise they stole from me. All I ask for in return is some ledgers that record my personal business ventures and must be kept private for my clients’ sakes, you understand I’m sure. I suggest that we pool our resources to locate them, and then I will gladly kill them both—”

“No! I reserve the right to detainment on them both.”

The man smiled, his face still shadowed. “Ah, yes! I had forgotten your enthusiasm for torture. Very well then. In fact, to start off on the right foot, you may have both of them to kill as long as I get a copy of the video as proof. That way, we are even. Agreed?”

Crazy Ray leaned in. “Even? Not quite even yet. Which one is yours?”

The man shook his head. “Really? Is that what it will take? Fine, get Maisen for me.”

One of the soldiers nodded and quickly left the room, returning a few minutes later at a trot, accompanied by a pasty-looking man in black who bowed his head to the man on the dais.

“You asked for me, sir? How may I be of assistance?”

“Well, actually…” the man started, but before he could go any further, Crazy Ray blasted the black-clad man dead on the spot.

He turned back to the visitor with an evil, cocky smile. “Now we are on even footing. Now we have an arrangement. Agreed?” He thrust his hand out towards the man.

The visitor finally turned around and leaned forward to grasp Crazy Ray’s hand. His red hair glinted in the stage lights, and his gray eyes were cold, hard, and calculating. The two sociopaths smiled at each other as they shook. Crazy Ray was already plotting to kill him once they found their prey, but Razam Welch wasn’t worried. It wasn’t his first rodeo, or as a matter of fact, even his first death.

—————

Reilly was on the bridge when they lost gravity. An instant before it went offline, she noticed the last of her coffee begin to levitate as a brown blob, along with a few other items that weren’t locked down. She quickly strapped into her seat and turned to the rear console. The gravity generator went to orange and then to red on the monitoring board as the backup failed as well. Reilly opened a lower panel and disconnected some wires, reconfigured them, and reconnected. She attempted to restart the ignition on the drive but there was no response from the secondary mech room. This told her that the problem was down there and not on the bridge. She released the lap belt and floated through the door and down the main hall until she reached the secondary mech room. The primary mech room was on the base floor of the ship, along with the cargo bay, and held all of the machinery for the ship’s thrusters, engines, primary life support, and other major functions. Secondary mech was for redundant systems support, shield control, fire control, life support, and other critical functions, like the gravity generator. She grabbed the emergency tether and hooked it onto her web belt, then turned to the machines. The gravity generator was reliant on gluon-to-gluon interactions which created flux tubes that exerted constant pressure, creating a sort of artificial gravity. Gluons were like the duct tape of the universe and held all matter together at the atomic level. Milo Cristofson, a physics researcher, had developed a method to manipulate gluons and other particles which had resulted in fantastic new technological advancements, including the gravity generator.

Reilly looked into the generator and could see that the normal blue light on the cylinder had now turned a somber red, indicating that the mix had reverted to plasma and separated out into free particles, which were contained by the system’s protective force field. It appeared that one of the circuits had fried, making the generator accelerate, which had resulted in an extreme amount of pressure and caused the system to fail. In layman’s terms, the generator needed a new internal cylinder. She rolled her eyes and headed towards primary mech and the cargo bay. This was still better than the reverse effect. Very rarely, some of the older gravity generators would create extended flux tubes that when exposed to additional quarks would bind them and begin to rapidly increase linearly in strength. One of the gunships during the battle of Bolly Surz was struck by a rail gun which sliced though the hull and the gravity generator. Before the crew knew what had happened, they had been pulled tight against walls, doors, and furniture, unable to move and steadily being crushed by the increasing flux tube strength. Fortunately, the effect had been localized to just one ship. However, theory had it that flux tubes could spread, and if not slowed or stopped early on, could compact a large amount of matter very quickly. Reilly had no desire to experience that type of pressure. In a matter of seconds, you went from feeling normal to feeling like you weighed 1500 pounds and were one inch thick.

When she arrived in the bay, Duv and Chang had finished anchoring the cows just as Ty turned on the gravity field. Hay, tools, and several weapons fell to the deck while Duv and Chang dropped three feet to the floor and began brushing themselves off. The bay was wrecked, cow manure and hay were scattered across the floors and walls, and the entire room smelled. Reilly moved in from the hatch and slowly came into the gravity field, allowing herself to settle at its very edge and then step through.

“I hate cows!” Ty growled. “How can they make so much crap in just a couple days?”

Chang shrugged and began picking up tools, wiping them off, and putting them away. “Don’t ask, don’t say. Everything lies in silence.”

Ty snorted. “Thank you, oh Grand Master of Wisdom! What the hell does that even mean?”

“It means as soon as we get planetside, the cows get off.” Reilly took another sniff. “Or maybe earlier if they keep this up—ugh!” She stepped around scattered piles of manure while helping Duv move a crate back to its tie-down. “I checked the generator, and the cylinder is dead, so we’re going to have to deal with zero Gs until we get to Roen. I’ll get a field set up for the bridge, and let’s get one set for the mech rooms, too.”

“We have some pretty heavy blast damage along the starboard hull. I patched it, but we’re going to have to get her into the metalworks to take a look,” Duv reported.

Reilly nodded her acknowledgement. “Kinda guessed that from the oxygen decompression I’ve seen. How many hops ahead have you programmed us?”

Duv had the ability as a master pilot to plot long-distance space travel up to twelve jumps out. The calculations were intense, but if necessary, he could do it safely. Roen wasn’t that long of a trip, so he was doing it in smaller plot sets called “journey plots,” or just “journeys.”

“I have about four to five journeys a day, so I won’t need to reset for the next journeys until later this evening. We’ve got time.”

“Good. Perfect day for some zero-G training, then. It’s been awhile for all of us, so let’s say meet back here in two hours, and we’ll get it set.” Reilly grabbed a portable gravity field and turned for the bridge.

“Sounds good, I’ll get Skeeter set up in one of the gravity fields before we get started—”

“Nope. He plays too.” Reilly turned to Skeeter, who was still hanging on the wall. “You want to get a full cut as crew, here’s where you start. Meds and staying still won’t help you acclimate to zero Gs, you’re going to have to learn to move around in it, get your body used to the feel of it. You can help Ty and Chang set up the gravity fields in the mech rooms, but after that, I want you moving up and down the halls and learning to maneuver in open space in the bay. If you got to puke, do it in the mask and use your purge button, but keep moving, understood?”