So It Begins (34 page)

  Geary’s body slipped into survival sleep, his damaged pod drifting amid the wreckage of battle, its beacon dead, its power usage levels too low to stand out among the other debris.

  He slept, while more battles raged in Grendel, one side then the other prevailing, the emergency station long since destroyed, larger and larger fleets clashing, then for a long time no ships at all. Around Grendel nothing orbited but the wreckage of earlier battles and one badly damaged survival pod, its power sources slowly draining.

  Until one day another fleet came, the largest of all, and a destroyer spotted a suspicious object amid the leavings of battles. Electing to investigate rather than simply obliterate the object, the destroyer picked up the pod and delivered it to the fleet’s flagship.

  Geary’s mind drifted back to partial awareness. His body felt like a block of ice and he couldn’t see. Perhaps his eyelids were still frozen shut. Vague noises around him resolved into a few words. “Alive,” “miracle,” “Black Jack,” and “war.” He struggled to make sense of the words, finally feeling some emotion as aggravation at the nickname came to the surface.

  “He’ll save us!” That sentence came through clearly just before Geary began passing out again. He caught one more word as he drifted back into unconsciousness; “
Dauntless
.”

  His body shivered and for a time he knew no more as warmth returned.

Cling Peaches

An Alliance Archives Adventure

Mike McPhail  

“The truth is what you make of it.” William Kriegherren

The year was uc104—2065 A.D. by the terrestrial calendar—the Scout Frigate
Garryowen
, NDF-1867, was inbound for the AeroCom Squadron Base,
Brooklyn Yards,
Heartland/Luna America. Damaged by a ground-launched Firemoth missile during the opening phases of the invasion of Demeter, she was running with only a skeleton crew, tasked with ferrying her home for repairs. Now some four-plus hours out from the planet, their next challenge rapidly approached: Transition to hyperspace.

  Floating through the last set of opposing hatches, acting Chief Engineer William Donovich entered the drive section’s service module. “By any other name it’s still engineering,” he stated. “A magical land traditionally ruled by mad Scotsmen and techno-fetish women.” The very though brought a smile to his face.

  In truth it was his love of science fiction that had drawn him to study engineering; he always seemed to have a need to find out the facts behind the fiction. Eventually this led him to apply to the National Space Agency where, after months of evaluations, he was rejected on the grounds that he was physically unfit to be an astronaut; whereas the AeroCom recruiter welcomed him with open arms.

  Despite the mundane crap of life in the service—and the occasional megalomania of its civilian overseers—there were moments like this; when his daydreams of crewing an all-powerful starship across interstellar space came true.

  “It’s just a shame it doesn’t look the part,” said Donovich, looking down from the main hatchway platform; he often felt the ship’s SM was less of a grand starship’s engine room—one capable of governing the drive field generators that boosted the ship to the higher energy plane of hyperspace—and more akin to a padded, cold-war missile silo, with its lack of interior walls to divide its circular decks into compartments; this in addition to having equipment platforms bridging parts of its central gangway.

  Looking back, Donovich could visualize the platforms being lowered through the central hatchways alone the gangway’s cargo rails, then locked into place and connected to a myriad of pipes and cables by engineering specialists wearing orange MAC suits just like him.

  “Wow,” he said, a feeling of excitement washing over him. “Now the fun begins.” He maneuvered himself to the platform’s hatch control station. With a practiced push and heel snap, he locked his foot into one of the station’s boot-docks; he activated the controls, which came to life with a myriad of color-coded icons. Looking up, he could see the hatchways, their passage indicator lights both showing steady-green.

  “Why can’t real life come with its own sound track?” he asked, thinking back and failing to come up with any score or song he could run through his head that would be appropriate to the moment. “I’ll just have to wing it,” he concluded.

  With a quick look down, he placed his gloved finger between the protective side loops of the “Lock All” sequence button. With a gentle press and a confirming click, his world became filled with pulsating yellow lights and the chirp of alert tones.

  With the ten-second time count for hatch closure running through his mind, Donovich once again looked up. “The CM’s connected to the pod-bay . . .” he started singing as the first hatch swung into place, to be shortly joined by it’s pod-bay counterpart, “ . . . the pod-bay’s connected to the SM . . .,” he continued as the hatches just above his head swung one by one into place, with a steadfast motion and an accompanying mechanical
whirr
, the SM’s main two-meter access hatch pressed into its frame and locked. Its pulsating, yellow warning lights then switched to a steady red.

  After checking the status display on the consoles, he looked over the platform and down the length of the SM, “ . . . the SM’s connected to the DS; the DS contains the TL Drive, the reactor, and some other stuff.” He paused before concluding with a boom in his voice, “OH HEAR. . .THE WORD . . . OF THE LORD!”

  “Nice little tune,” said a familiar female voice.

  Donovich turned to see who had intruded on his moment. There was no one. “Duh,” he whispered to himself. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said into his comm-hood’s pickup mics, “I was just running through the hatch checklist.” He felt foolish at being caught acting so cavalier about doing his job.

  “That’s alright, Chief, I’m glad you’re not stressing about the situation,” reassured Major Ware, the ship’s CO. “So I’ll take it to mean that the drive section is secured?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” replied Donovich, as he snapped his foot free from the restraint. “I’ll just need a moment to get into my station.”

  “Understood, Chief. Ware out.”

  With a tap on his arm control pad, Donovich switched his primary comm channel to standby and then opened the squad-band. “Patterson,” he called, as he pushed off toward the ramp at the side of the platform; grabbing the handrails with both hands he redirected his momentum down the ramp.

  “Patterson here, go’head, Chief,” replied a voice with a slight southern drawl.

  Donovich passed quickly over the life-boat deck and was now holding on to the top of the handrail loops for the ladder well. “What’s your status?” he asked as he looked down through the two stories of wire mesh tubing that surrounded the access ladder.

  “Everythin’s green, Chief; we’re good to go.”

  “Understood,” replied Donovich, while still debating his next course of action. “Go strap in; I’ll give the All-Go as soon as I hit my station and get some coffee.” With that he pulled himself head-first down the ladder-well; an experience that is visually not unlike diving into a cheese grater.

  “Yes’ir,” then there was a pause, “Um, did ya’ll say coffee?” asked Patterson.

  Donovich waited until he had cleared the ladder before answering; free-falling down a ladder-well was just something no sane Starman should do, so getting stuck and having to explain himself as someone came to fished him out was definitely on the top of his “things-not-to-do” list. Now over the main deck, he maneuvered to his station. “Do you remember that guy Tony from the
Vandenberg
?”

  “Yeah, I think so; but there were a lot of techs floatin’ around, tryin’ to glue us back together for the jump home,” he remarked.

  Grabbing the handhold next to his station’s jump-seat, Donovich pulled himself into place below the rack holding his MAC’s pressure helmet and its adjoined environmental chest pack. With a snap, he locked his heels into the boot-docks, and reached for the five-point harness handles. “Well, while we were talking, I mentioned that fluid-loading didn’t work to keep down the nausea during Transition.”

  The feeling of the seat’s restraining straps snuggling up, and then locking down, was always comforting, and in its own way sort of creepy. “So he recommended a hot cup of strong coffee instead of that citrus-flavored electrolyte stuff,” he continued as he reached for the self-heating pressure-mug. “I love a ship with cup holders,” he added as he pulled the mug free from its mount below the console. Depressing the top, he took a long, hard draw from the mug’s mouth piece; a satisfying warmth spread through his chest.

  “I take it ya’ll still got your bag with ’n arms reach?” asked Patterson.

  Locking the mug back down, Donovich opened the top pocket of his suit’s utility jumper and pulled up the open end of a red biohazard bag. “Aye,” he confirmed. “Okay, Patterson, I’m about to give the flight deck the All-Go, you set?”

  “Yes’ir.”

  “Understood, Donovich out.” A beep signaled that the channel was now on standby. Looking up he could see the underside of his suit’s pressure helmet. “Regs state that I have to wear it . . .” he said doubtfully, “. . . but after last time. . . Nope,” he concluded and turned his attention to his station’s console. All status lights were green, except for the few that were blacked out from the missile strike. He depressed the “All-Go” button and waited for the flight crew to do their part; on this trip that would be just Major Ware and the XO, Lieutenant Koenig.

  The two-minute warning klaxon sounded. “Attention all personnel, prepare for Transition,” announced the ship’s computer over the intercom. It was clear the CO was just waiting for his signal.

  Hyperspace Transition Syndrome, or hypes, was comparable to the space-sickness many astronauts suffered as they adapted to living in zero-g. The professionals didn’t really know what caused hypes, or who was likely to be susceptible to it—let alone how to cure or even minimize the effects; all Chief Donovich knew was it specifically didn’t like him.

  Eyeing his console, he wasn’t so much monitoring the systems readouts, as watching for flashing yellow or red icons: once the trans-light drive sequence was engaged, only a full-blown “Blow the main power couplings and pop the compositors,” abort could stop it from firing. Even then, it could only be interrupted up until the drive field started to form; after that, you were going for a ride.

  Suddenly, the sound of crackling static seemed to come from everywhere, and he could feel the hairs on his body trying to stand up under the constrictive force of his MAC suit. On his console the guard covering the lighted red “Abort” button popped open with an accompanying alert tone. As the saying went, “His ass snapped shut” at the very thought of ever being in a situation where hitting that button was his only option. The pretty, candy-like button was just part of the “pilot factor,” where the guy in charge (or in this case, the Chief engineer) must retain some ability to override the computer in the event of an emergency . . .

  Donovich’s thoughts were cut short as the drive field formed.

  It was said that how one perceived the sensation of entering hyperspace was directly proportional to how often, and how severely, one suffered from hypes. Some said it was like standing on a commuter rail platform in winter as a train speeds by. Personally, Donovich pictured it as falling down a long-forgotten mine shaft somewhere in the frozen hell of Siberia, this after having been drunk for the weekend and dealing badly with a massive hangover.

  The actual Transition to hyperspace wasn’t the problem; that happened faster than the human mind could ever hope to perceive. All of the vertigo-inducing special effects were actually caused by the ship’s own TLD systems. It was only after the ship had passed through the point of Transition that the field compensators could finally even out the power flow and balance the drive’s harmonics against the resident frequency of the ship’s spaceframe.

  “Enough technobabble. . .” he said to himself through clenched teeth, “. . . knowing doesn’t help. Believe me!” The nausea was there and starting to push at him; he reached for the bag’s grab tab at his pocket. A heavy thump sounded from somewhere overhead, quickly followed by a sharp metallic ping from somewhere nearby. Donovich looked up. His eyes were tearing; he attempted to wipe them with the back of his glove. “No good,” he murmured, and then looked over at his console; no flashing red indicators to greet him. Turning back, he listened for the sounds of escaping gas or grinding metal; there was nothing.