Ion 417: Raiju (3 page)

I made it back down through those tubes before I realized that I was going nowhere. I needed that disk to open the food locker, and it was still up there in the docking panel. Back up to the docking bay, and the ruined docking panel there. The disk was still firmly entrenched in the mechanism that I had thoroughly fried. I was busily prying the panel apart when a slender mechanical tentacle snaked in to assist me. I jumped backwards, tumbling over the knee-high bot that had arrived to repair the damage. I nearly put a bolt into it out of exasperation, but it pulled the disk out with tremendously more ease than I was having. I managed to intercept the manipulator before it dumped the disk into the bin attached to its side.

The way back to the food locker was thankfully clear, and I piled the cart full once more with the most random assortment I could find. I didn't read any of them because frankly none of it made any sense at all. I couldn't take the time to go searching for greenish-brown wafers that might not even be called that. Instead I grabbed three from that shelf, and four from there, I'd better snatch two of those also. Back to the ship I went, walking as fast as I could without spilling the whole lot of them across the passageway. This load of packages followed the first in getting strewn down the ship's passageway before I ran back for even more.

I was on the fourth run back to the food locker when disaster nearly struck. Perhaps I should say I nearly ran over a wandering Ttlictil with the cart, and that would have brought my escape to a disastrous end.  I couldn't tell if it was one of Teyrn Elon's underlings from the lab, but I sure wasn't going to ask either. As it was I ran off under a barrage of what sounded like words the guards used when something went amiss. I was shaking as I loaded the cart once more. I could feel the knot of panic clenching the muscles between my shoulders, and I was certain that Teyrn Elon would personally be coming through the door to grab me before I could be gone. Two final big boxes balanced on top of the overloaded cart as I wheeled it back toward the docking bay. After the run in with the Ttlictel I didn't want any more surprises. I never wanted to see another scaly set of tentacles waving at me again. Well, maybe just once more as it flopped about under an electric bolt.

I heard the lizards coming before I could see them, but every door along the passageway refused to budge when I tried it. Angry red light after angry red light greeted me. The trio of guards rounded the corner almost tripping over the cart. One of them started yelling at me about leaving the cart where he could trip over it, but his tirade was interrupted by another, who was busy poking a claw through the assorted boxes. That fear of being caught by Teyrn Elon was rising up once more, and I was calculating just how to take on all three of them at once. I could feel the charge tickling my fingertips, but his words shifted my whole thinking. He held up one of the boxes.

"Bring a cart of this to the barracks in an hour, and get a friend to come along also. I like the taste of shivering mammals."

I had no idea just how to respond to that, but they walked off with that rapid sniffing that I knew was a response to humor. I wasn't going to pursue that thought though; he was laughing and I was still free, or nearly so. I wasn't going to be in that barracks in an hour either. In an hour I hoped to be forever beyond Teyrn Elon's grasp. A couple packages fell off in my rush around the corner and I nearly left them sitting in the middle of the passageway, but reason shouted in my brain that they would be too conspicuous too soon. I needed to be aboard the corvette on my way to null point before I relaxed my caution, and before my escape was detected. Who could say if the next lizards along that hallway would be as thick skulled as the last ones. I hurried back to get them and slowed my pace to a nervous walk.

I had been out of my cage for over an hour, and every microsecond I was here increased the odds against a successful escape. I rammed the cart into the ship's hatch, flattening a few boxes strewn along the floor, and hit the control to cycle the airlock closed. That knot of panic that had been sitting painfully between my shoulders was moving into my belly, as the docking controls refused to release. It was probably due to them being tied into the console with the smoking hole in its middle that the little bot was still working to repair. I finally resorted to opening the airlock and scorching the outside controls again before I could release the ship. The airlock cycled closed once more, and I ran through the passageways up to the cockpit. Some of those packages had flown all the way to the bend in the passage as I had tossed them in my haste. My foot caught one and it ricocheted around the bend as I ran. I could pick them up later.

A view-port dominated the far wall from floor to ceiling. The glass from it wrapped around the front third of the cockpit giving a wonderful view out into nothing. I was looking out at the cavernous docking bay with a dark square at the far side. The drawings showed that to be the opening -- my escape route. Freedom was literally within sight. Now all I had to do was to get this ship moving. I'd never seen a ship before, but I did read the manual on this one.

Sitting at the front where the encircling view-port practically surrounded it was the pilot's seat. It seemed big enough to engulf half of my body too, not like the seats some of the lab people perched their butts on. There was a bank of controls that wrapped in an arc before the pilot's seat to give him control of all movements the ship was capable of performing. I'd read that line a hundred times. It had been impressive to see the diagrammed layout in the manual, but the actual controls were even more impressive. I stopped in the middle of mentally listing them to remind myself I still needed to actually escape.

Two more chairs occupied the cockpit, sitting behind and slightly to each side, forming an acute triangle. The seats and control consoles looked similar with the exception that the two rear seats also had fold away upper consoles as well. The manual called the left one engineering, and the right one auxiliaries. The information on auxiliaries had been sparse, with a lot of notes that read 'Dependent upon current configuration.' I could leave that mystery for now. My interest lay in that front seat. That was where I needed to be sitting right now.

I climbed into the pilot's seat, and reached for the engine ignition button -- top row, third from left. It did nothing, even after hitting it several times. The whole control board was dark. Why didn't it have power? Power, power, power..., the engineer's seat! I banged my knee on the console in the haste to switch seats. A quick stab of the finger and... nothing. Panic was doing its best to grab my belly once more as I thought back to all those long hours reading the manuals. I had done everything correctly, then why? I just needed patience, which was something I didn't have much of when trying to escape. A soft hum could be more felt than heard as it seemed to seep through the ship.

OK, so I hadn't remembered the fifteen second reactor startup sequence. As I looked around, I watched as indicators started lighting up on all the consoles. The soft glow of emergency lighting, that I hadn't realized was only emergency lighting, brightened to normal levels. A ring of lights around the ceiling also illuminated, making me realize that I had been running around in near darkness. When the docking had released its hold on the ship, most of the lights had lost power. My run through the corridors had been lit by only a handful of tiny illuminators.

The pilot's seat was where I needed to be, so it was another jump to switch seats, and tapping a few controls to bring up the auto-pilot. My escape was too close and vital to trust it to a pilot that had never touched the controls before, even if that pilot were me. I knew my pilot ability was about zero point one. I thought it would be much better to let the auto-pilot squeeze the big ship through that tiny hole on the other side of the docking bay. The drawings said that it could pass a two hundred meter diameter ship through it, but from here it looked barely big enough to fit a finger.

Step one, plot course through port hatch. Slide the direction mark to there, and there. Go another five hundred meters out before turning, just like the manual recommended. Initiate. The ship spun, and I was flung out of the seat to smack face first into the side view-port -- somewhat painful, majorly embarrassing. Step two, before initiating maneuvering ensure that the engineering officer has activated inertial dampers. The ship straightened up, and aimed its nose toward the exit. As it settled into the new course I could pick myself up off the floor to climb into the engineer's seat.

A quick stab of the finger activated the inertial dampers that would have saved me from smearing my nose across the view-port. The hole was looming larger, though it still looked too small. I knew this ship had gone there before, so it had to fit. Hurry up and go! Step three, initiate Zeta field. The left side of the engineering board was Zeta field controls. I slid the power field to full and toggled it on. Step four, do not activate Zeta field within atmosphere or five hundred meters of orbital installations. I punched it back off and saw the indicators drop back to the bottom scale. Whoever wrote that manual should put the warning before the instruction!

I sat there watching as the walls slowly slid by. I was headed out to my freedom... at a maddeningly slow pace! The opening loomed ever larger, and finally slid by as well. If the view-port wasn't in the way I could have reached out and touched it. I know that it took less than two minutes to pass through and be free of that place, but it felt like an eternity. I was more exhausted than if I had been running the treadmill for an hour. Never the less, it dumped me out into the black void of space. Only it wasn't so black as I expected. Once I'd found the navigational charts and seen all the solar systems that it listed, I expected to see a few thousand bright dots of stars. There were millions of them -- tens of millions. I could see whole swaths that looked like colored mist sweeping along the reaches of nothingness. Each minuscule speck of light was a star, and many of those stars had worlds circling them. One of them was even my destination.

The ship spun around for a moment, bringing the yellow and blue world past the view-port before settling on a patch of stars that looked no different than the rest of them. That world had to be Trekhll. It was so close that I could be there within hours, maybe less. So could my pursuers. Getting to null point and high drive was my best choice. I had to be past the five hundred meters limit since the ship had spun around, so I started up the zeta field once more. Those indicators came to life with the promise of a fast escape just as soon as I got far enough out of the gravity well. There's a point at which the gravity of planets and such drop below the level that will, how did the manual put it... compressively stretch the the distortion signature of the ship. I didn't bother searching that term, it sounded bad enough without knowing the details.

Back to the check list; step five, by now you are en-route to the null point with zeta field building. Life support and power regulators should be maintained in optimal settings. Life support? Why didn't I review these steps beyond simply memorizing them? My fist pounded the console right where the life support controls were. Flashing indicators came to life on the view-port displaying dozens of systems throughout the ship. Engine efficiency, power systems, life support -- yes it was working. That meant that I could keep breathing for a while. Breathing is a good thing.

I moved to shift over to the pilot's seat to plot the high drive settings, and as soon as I stood all those wonderful displays vanished from the view-port. Once again the ribbon of stars drifted before me. I needed those systems though. I couldn't have them shutting down just because I stood up. There hadn't been anything in the manual about that. As soon as my butt landed in the engineer's seat those displays were back once more. Some little trick of the view-port only let me see them if I was seated. I guessed it was fine, as long as the stuff remained working.

Sitting in the pilot's chair brought up a whole different set of displays spanning the view-port. Now it had various colored lined that curved away from the center. There were some readings that duplicated the engineer's, but those all dealt with driving the ship. When I keyed to bring up the navigation chart, that was just what it did. They looked a great deal different at two meters tall than they had at fifty centimeters on my data terminal. Sol three was listed in the system, and it only took a few minutes to get the reassuring beep of course acceptance back.

Before I could shift the view, it shifted on its own, right back to the star field with superimposed lines. This time there was a little green square where nul point was located, and a flashing red circle that was slowly moving to the center of the screen. As it neared the center the circle split into five smaller circles. I felt a little nudge and the pattern before me shifted slightly. The group of circles drifted back off the edge of the view-port. Whatever that had been, I missed it. The little numbers next to the green square read as three hours, fifty seven minutes, and some odd seconds.

There was no way either I or the view-port was going to survive those long four hours unless I took my mind off of it. The manuals hadn't bothered to mention just how long it took to reach null point. I know that it's all because each one is different depending upon mass, etc. It was still extremely annoying. The stars didn't seem to move, and that timer next to the green square paused a couple of times. I know it didn't but it looked like it had. It was hard to believe that years of plotting and planning were actually set in motion, and now I had to endure a test of patience once again. The only thing I could do now was to take stock of this ship, and clean up the mess of my hurried provisioning. That should help divert my attention from the waiting.

The passageway at the back of the cockpit was now brightly lit with the power regulator working nicely. It had three doors to each side of it that led to the only staterooms on the ship. Starboard, closest to the cockpit was designated as Captain's cabin. Standing and facing the same direction as the ship pointed, meant that starboard was to my right. I didn't understand why since there were stars all around. Three more were designated as crew cabins, and the final two were auxiliary berthing on models so equipped. I guess this ship was so equipped, since those doors were there. The passageway ended in a room larger than mine aboard the orbital lab, that the manual called Common Room and Food Preparation.