Running With Argentine (28 page)

Deep
Space

"Captain,
we have a contact!" Barry suddenly announced.

"We have a response to our signal?" Argentine
asked as he quickly set up in his chair.

"No, Sir. It's a real contact… There's another ship out
there!"

"Are you sure it can’t be our ship?" he asked,
somewhat confused.

"Not unless the ship were looking for is under power
and underway… She's seven light seconds ahead of us and will transverse our
projected course by 36°, port to starboard. She's also 7° above our horizon,
with a 3° graduating inclination."

Argentine setback on the Captain's bench. Running across
another ship in deep space was incredibly rare. So rare that it had never
accidentally happened on any ship he’d served on…

"Keep an eye on her, Barry."

He reached over and flipped a switch, "All bridge
personnel to your stations."

Once the bridge was fully manned he again said to Barry, Any
change in our contact?"

"None at all… They're bimbling right along, all fat and
happy."

"I take it that means that they don't seem to have
noticed us?"

"Righto."

They were fortunate that the contact had occurred during
their three-hour rest between signaling. Argentine caught the chief's attention
and held his gaze. He gave a small shake of his head.

He turned to the Lieutenant…

"I don't like it," came the immediate response.

"I don't either… But at that distance and on that
vector I don't see how she can be a threat to us. Still… Everyone stay sharp.
If there’s one ship, there might be others. I don't want anyone leaving their
stations until they’re long gone."

When he thought about it, he realized he was pretty proud of
his crew. No one had grumbled or complained; they all watched the lone contact
until it finally disappeared from their screens.

"Okay, everyone. You can go back to a normal
watch."

Argentine noticed a blinking light on Barry's console…

"Barry, you can turn off the contact alert."

"I did. I… We’ll all be stuffed," he sang out.
"Captain, that's new! We have a response to our light signal!"

ΔΔΔ

"What is the
response, Barry?"

"I don't have any idea; I can't read the code."

"Sami, go help Paula to the bridge, please."

Turning back to Barry he said, "How far away as
she?"

"I don't have any way to know that either, Captain. If
I assume that she returned our signal immediately after receiving it, that
would mean she can't be any further than two hours and forty-two light minutes.

"But every second she delayed in responding to us would
shorten that distance by half a light second."

"Still no other contacts on your screen?"

"No, we're clear. And that's a good point, Sir. If she
was within a light minute of us we should've picked her up sooner."

"Okay, then we know she's somewhere between one light
minute and two hours and forty-two light minutes away."

It wasn't long after that Sami helped seat Paula on the
bench beside Argentine. He pointed to the Captain’s screen in front of him…

"That's a return signal. It's not a reflection; it's
different from the code we sent out. But I have no idea what it's saying so I
can't be sure it's our ship...

"Can you decipher it?"

"I'll need a pad," she said almost calmly.

Argentine was torn between looking over her shoulder and
giving her the privacy she needed to concentrate. From the looks of the bridge
crew, he wasn't the only one that was anxious.

Finally, Paula looked up from her work.

Staring at nothing and with a trembling voice she said,
"It's her. It's the Roosevelt."

ΔΔΔ

Argentine's
heart almost leapt into his throat. He hadn't realized he was so emotionally
caught up in the quest.

It didn't help that Sami was screaming with delight and
everyone else on the bridge seem to be cheering too.

Once he got everyone settled down he couldn't help but
notice that the only one not celebrating was Paula…

"Paula? Are you okay?"

Sami immediately stopped cheering and squatted down beside
her.

Shaking her head slightly she said quietly, "Yes,
Captain. I'm fine. But I need to tell you… Something is wrong."

Argentine and Sami shared a glance…

"I can confirm," she continued. "That the
automatic systems are controlling the ship… But they are in Defensive Mode.
We've been ordered to make a slow approach and hold station at 1,000
kilometers."

"Is that bad?" Sami asked for them both.

Paula sighed...

"It means that the ship hasn't decided whether it will
let us board or not. It's very possible we've come all this way only to be
denied…"

Argentine pulled his head back from the conversation and
announced to the bridge, "I want a steady
in-system
velocity
approach to that ship."

"In-system velocity? It'll take us forever to get
there," Barry protested.

"Those are my orders. And bring us to a full stop
relative to her at…"

He turned back to Paula and said, "You're going to have
to tell me what a kilometer is…"

Deep
Space

The People's
Republic of Chezden's propensity to build warships without a large central
screen on their bridge was less about technology, and more about doctrine…

Crewmembers, even officers, didn't need to know everything
that was going on. They just needed to follow orders.

It was times like this where Argentine still found himself
cursing the People's Republic.

Everyone that could fit was crowded onto the bridge.

And since the bridge was so small, that meant even more of
the crew were backed-up into the corridor.

What made the situation so insane, however, was that it
wasn’t even possible for everyone on the bridge to see a screen. They were
designed not to emit light peripherally; you had to be right in front of them
to see anything.

Still, Argentine could understand everyone’s excitement…

He'd never seen anything like the ship that was now centered
in his screen.

They’d taken up a standoff position 1,000
kilometers
off of her port side. The ship was now dark so it was hard to make out much
detail; it had stopped flashing its lights as soon as they'd reached their
station.

Even without illumination, though, she was still impressive.
There was enough starlight to make out at least some detail for anything that
wasn't in shadow.

What was difficult was getting a perspective on her size…

"I'm not seeing any hatches," Barry mumbled.

The bridge was full of much of the same low-volume chatter;
everyone was making guesses and trying to figure out what they were looking at.

"Can we tell her size from here?" Argentine asked
no one in particular.

Barry said, "Sure. We know our distance and… Let me
redo that…Captain! This is barmy! That ship has to be over a mile long!"

"Rerun your calculations…"

"I already have… Three times!"

"She's a big ship, Captain. But not the biggest we ever
launched…" he heard Paula whisper beside him. She seemed lost in her memories…

"Okay, now that we've got some perspective on her size
let's take a look at her again… What can we make out?"

"The size of those engines must be… Massive!"
declared the chief.

"Captain, I've never seen anything like that sensor
array. At least, I'm assuming that's what that structure is hanging down from
the ship."

Argentine set back to consider… The ship was long and
(relatively) slender. She was single hulled up front but then split into upper
and lower sections for a large part of its length.

The lower section was solid enough, but the upper section
seemed made up of huge almost spherical modules. Now that he had a gauge on the
ship's size he realized that each module was large enough to an entire fleet of
Pelicans…

All the modules were held in line by what appeared to be a
very sturdy scaffolding type of structure. Whether they were detachable and
what they held would be a fascinating discovery.

What Sami had been talking about, however, was below all of
this.

Attached to the solid lower section was what appeared to be,
for lack of a better description, a giant keel. It appeared to be a massively
solid structure and below it hung (if you believed in up and down in space) a
number of masts and scaffolding.

Argentine was again startled to realize how massively large
the antennas and arrays attached to those masts must be.

"Argentine," the chief said as he maneuvered his
way towards the Captain's bench. Pointing to a section of the ship on the
captain’s screen he said, "Look at this… Is that what I think it is?"

The chief was pointing at what appeared to be a roughly
triangular opening facing forward along the side of the ship. If the ship was
smaller and designed for atmospheric flight, Argentine might think it was the
air intake for a jet or ram scoop.

But, he realized, the opening was huge…

"That's how we go aboard," Paula said, once again
focusing on the here and now.

They all looked back at the image in front of them and
realized that they were looking at a giant hanger – a hanger that was designed
to accommodate the simultaneous comings and goings of ships much larger than
the Pelican.

"Captain, about those mast arrays…"

Argentine turned his attention to the lieutenant and said,
"Yes?"

"I suspect those are far more than just sensor arrays.

"I'm guessing that at least some of them are used for
some type of field projection – possibly defensive shielding."

Argentine thought about it for a moment and realized that it
made sense.

The Pelican, and even the more modern ships used by the Asperian
military, had developed electromagnetic fields that were used to shield a ship
against radiation and high velocity particle impact when traveling at sub light
velocities (of course, shielding wasn't necessary when traveling in
Dreamspace).

Those navigational shields, however, were no match for
modern-day energy weapons. Even the close-quarters kinetic combat that
Argentine was used to could wear down a ship's shields quickly. Effectively,
interstellar combat was an offensive game.

True defensive shield technology was the Holy Grail…

Rumors and fantasies of developing that shield technology
had been around forever, but the physics of it had so far escaped humankind.

Everyone continued pointing out some new feature or other
but Argentine had trained his focus entirely upon Paula.

When she realized his attention, she held his gaze…

"Okay then," he said. "So how are we going to
get aboard?"

ΔΔΔ

Sami, as the
ship's only astrogator, was too valuable to risk. Most everyone else had their
specialties so Argentine figured that he was the most expendable… And the best
person to accompany Paula over to the ship.

Everyone had argued adamantly and probably correctly, he had
to admit, that his logic made no sense. But dammit, he wanted to go see that
ship!

So here he was, piloting the Pelican’s shuttle with just him
and Paula aboard.

The Pelican's standoff position had been close enough to go
to laser communication. Paula insisted that the proper binary coding could've
allowed even visual transmissions, but she didn't know enough about it.

So, she'd spent quite a bit of time exchanging what she
called Morse code messages back and forth with the ship.

At one point she got frustrated and explained, "Memory
is a funny thing when you get old… I can remember the code well enough. It's
the language that is giving me trouble! I haven't spoken it, let alone tried to
spell in it, for over two hundred years…"

Eventually, though, she claimed that the ship would admit
her. She was instructed to approach only in a personal transport device and to use
the portside auxiliary landing pad.

When they'd gone back to their screen and found the up until
now unnoticed landing pad, Argentine commented, “It's open to space!"

"The defensive computer has very limited programming,"
Paula explained. "We're not dealing with the computer core, just a lot of
subroutines. In Defensive Mode the ship is not going to allow a vehicle inside
its structure. I'm assuming you have vacuum suits?"

"Well, yeah…" Argentine responded, hoping that
they were all well maintenanced and ready…

He'd caught the chief's eye and received a sharp nod in
return.

Now that it was just he and Paula in the shuttle he asked
her, "Do you really have any idea what we should expect?"

She laughed.

At least Argentine hoped it was a laugh, and not a cough.

"No, not really. I've been trying to remember my way
around the ship. Assuming we can get on board, I think I remember the way to my
quarters. Of course, I know the general way to the bridge and other sections…
It just might take some trial and error to get there, though."

"What about life-support? Will we have gravity? Fresh
air?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Captain. But if I had
to guess I'd say gravity, at least, won't be a problem. These ships were built
to last much longer than two hundred years."

They would soon know. They were approaching the landing pad.

ΔΔΔ

It was much
larger than Argentine had first realized.

Colors can be difficult to distinguish in space. But once he
was close enough he realized that the entire circular pad was painted in
concentric red and white circles.

Even though there was plenty of room, he landed the shuttle
in the middle.

Which meant that they had a short walk ahead of them to
reach the airlock door…

Paula didn't walk quickly at the best of times; in a space
suit, even with Argentine supporting her, it took them a while to get there.

When they arrived she reached forward and lifted the cover
on a large access button. Without hesitation, she pushed it.

Argentine was surprised when the outer airlock door silently
slid open. He grinned to himself; apparently he hadn't been very optimistic.

When they entered the airlock the outer door stayed open but
an interior light came on.

They stood there for several moments and… Nothing happened.

The airlock wasn’t small, but the star field visible through
the still open door was distracting. That's probably why it took them a few
moments to notice a display screen that was scrolling a message. A message that
he couldn't read…

After allowing Paula to study it for a few moments he
couldn't help but ask, "What does it say?"

"It's telling me to initiate my identification
protocol," she murmured.

"Well?"

"Well… I don't really know what that is…"

After a few more moments of contemplation she tapped the
screen with one of her gloved fingers and a keyboard appeared. She typed in a
message whose only words Argentine could read were,
Paula Silva
.

Immediately, a small access panel next to the door slid
open. Inside was what appeared to be a camera lens.

With an exclamation of, "Of course!" She
positioned her helmeted head in front of the lens.

A moment later, the message on the screen had changed. There
was now a blinking icon…

"Captain, once I touch that icon this airlock will fill
with air and the inner hatch will open. At that point, this tells me that I’ll
have five minutes to complete the identification protocol."

"How do you do that?"

"I have no idea," she responded.

"What will happen if you don't complete it?"

"Nothing good…"