Index: Suspended animation | Some assembly required | More pew for your credit | Trust the Plan | The Lennart Manoeuvre | Cloak and Railguns
Captain Lennart swiped yet another file from G-net on the loaned PDA, skimmed over it and then turned his gaze away. Too much information was thrown at him and for a minute or so, he wished that his unwitting stasis rest had lasted a bit longer. Then Lennart’s tired eyes found the smiling face of his doctor and the captain, for the ninth time today, grinned from ear to ear.
Maybe, just maybe, he woke up at the exact, precise moment in time?
Moreover, he always dreamt of going on a date with a beautiful brunette after graduating from Academy Naval. One hour after he woke up for the second time in this new future of his, Silvia had already operated on him twice, treated and then sealed the wounds Lennart suffered when he fought that clanner. He was lying on the automatic operation table, its scanner constantly tracking the medical nanites which were slowly healing his damaged lungs.
She then explained the predicament they were in carefully, one important detail at a time. They were on a search and rescue vessel; no larger than a dropship, this craft was fitted with a medical bay and long-range scanning array. Silvia’s brown eyes watered when she told him that apart from the two of them, everyone on board died fighting the Aleska. Six crewmen and two pilots, plus a medical team of five (herself including), their mission was to scour old battle sites from the days of the First responders.
The S & R ship thoroughly scanned the derelict hulls looking for survivors in suspended animation and were to immediately recover anyone they discovered, no matter the situation. Most of the missions she partook in, her crew only managed to find frozen, mummified corpses and pieces of working gear, but they kept looking. They were searching exactly for men like Lennart; this time the colonists got lucky and tractored his damaged escape pod in.
It was her job to connect the old stasis units to a more stable power supply, and check if its systems were still capable of safe deactivation. It was due to her skill and experience with this type of stasis chamber, that Silvia managed to couple its systems to her ship, which allowed for his quick awakening. The procedure was initiated after a successful medical and system scan, both proving there was no immediate danger for Lennart’s life.
It was exactly after she activated the medical system when the Aleska pounced at them from ambush. Apparently some of their vessels lurked about this patch of space, preying upon lightly armed, small starships. She told him that both pilots took turns on the scanners, they watched their surroundings like hawks and still... One pirate raid ship carrying a full complement of star warriors descended upon their S & R vessel.
Thankfully the scum failed to catch it with their grappling arm, because if they did, both Lennart and his rescuer would be dead now. Silvia managed to kill one of the boarders and then the S & R craft’s pilot performed an emergency hyperjump, effectively denying the Aleska their prize. From the ten pirates who managed to board this vessel, only one was left and searched the ship for her since she was the last survivor. Before the spacecraft exited hyperspace this pirate wanted to “clean” it, kill anyone who might shoot him in the back, as he hacked its navigational controls.
Proper space pirates were merciless; they left little to nothing to chance and Aleska were probably the heartless, most prudent of them all. To them everything on an enemy vessel was a resource and if they couldn’t utilize its crew or passengers, they spaced them immediately.
Even though her colony, formed on a nearby terraformed moon named Kren, maintained a net of starfighter patrols, the pirates were still able to outsmart and slip past them. The filth were capable and more often than not, clanners danced circles around others since they were masters of space warfare. It was only recently, she said, that the Terrans were able to gain an edge.
He screamed internally – a dozen people died so that his frozen ass could be pulled from stasis. Silvia, the thirteenth crewmate, she was the only survivor and that was made possible only because he directly confronted the enemy. How was it that even in the freaking future, pirates still kept murdering his people?!
He blinked a couple of times in obvious discomfort; eyes itching, watering from the strong lights.
“Captain, your eyes are still suffering from toxic fume exposure. I say you’ve read more than enough G-net holo-news for one star-day.” – Silvia stated with her quiet, soft voice and reached for the PDA.
“If there are other, mundane questions you need answered, I think I can easily help you with that.”
“Whatever the mademoiselle doctor ord... cough... ” – He attempted to sound steady, confident, but his damaged lungs did not agree with him.
“Hush, captain, wait for a few minutes and then try again.” – She gave him a stunning smile and then added:
“No need to prove anything, you’ve clearly demonstrated your worth, sir.”
“You did the same... cough... ”
Silvia placed her finger on his lips, while her eyes quickly glanced over what the medibed’s scanner displayed over Lennart’s chest.
“Five more minutes, captain, please. The medical nanites work fast and you don’t help them by wrecking what they’ve already healed.”
She showed him that her finger was red – he’d coughed blood, no wonder that it hurt him so much to talk.
“Now, follow my finger with your eyes and when I ask questions, answer with one blink for yes, two for no.”
The young doctor proceeded to ask him a bunch of medical related questions, checked his vision once more. She was filling some holo-file of hers, a checkup of sorts and compared it constantly with another, much older file.
While she did so, her eyes kept evading the nearby holo-screen and sought his; each time Lennart found them full of wavering hope and a profound, deep sadness. The minutes passed and after most of the sharp pain in his chest had gradually subsided, he asked:
“Silvia, this colonial navy of yours, the CN, they don’t have star marines?”
“We are just one tiny settlement, captain. Our forces consist of one wing of multi-purpose strike craft, supported by a battalion of star troopers. Why do you ask me this?” – She said, while rummaging through her backpack, looking for another ration pack.
Lennart’s organism was suffering from the rapid stasis recovery procedure and needed extra calories. A well crafted vacfoam bag was neatly placed on the table and she produced one covered with colorful holo-labels can from it. Self-heating, this hearty stew was something one could either eat in gravity or in zero-G by sucking it through an expendable straw.
Silvia pulled a spork from her spacesuit’s sleeve pocket and after sitting beside him, offered to feed Lennart.
“Just asking...” – he slurped the piping hot stew, small pieces of meat and vegetables instantly melting after touching his tongue – “mmmm... beef?”
“No, but you are very close. Martian buffalo and steamed vegetables from our farms, captain. I am but a medic, but even I know that we don’t have enough armed soldiers to station in every single vessel.”
She fed him the rest of the stew and shoved the can and spork into the ship’s recyclotron’s shaft.
“The clanners fare no better than most of us small colonies now. I am told that they’ve lost many starships and hundreds of thousands of star warriors during their attack on Cav.”
“Cav? What is this, another one of these new Fringe space colonies you mentioned earlier?”
Silvia nodded, offering him a chilled Kong soda she’d just pulled from a cooling unit nearby.
“The biggest industrial and military hub here on the border, besides Sirius Prime, captain. They attacked it in force and got brutally mauled. Now drink, you got to stay hydrated.”
“Wait, the filth were defeated?! Then why are they on the offensive, why did they attack you?”
She hushed again and pointed at the bottle, another sad smile adorning her face. Eyes widened with surprise and barely containing his anticipation, Lennart nevertheless obeyed the doctor’s orders and slowly drank the soda before asking her more questions.
“Does that mean they have another, second force lurking nearby? Or are they probing the colonies, trying to gain intel?”
“I am quite sure that those are leftovers, captain.”
“But then... then why does your... erm... I mean our forces chase and destroy them?”
“As far as we were told, the CN squadron and all other allied forces were engaged in a pitch battle against superior enemy units. They sustained casualties, many ships are heavily damaged and a lot of crewmates... died.”
The sparkle in Lennart’s eyes vanished and he sighed, a sad frown soon adorned his face.
“Then you are left to fight those ‘leftovers’ alone?”
“This is correct, captain, but its nothing we can’t handle ourselves. One single raid ship, two... even three of them are not strong enough to conquer our colony!” – Silvia’s otherwise soft voice strengthened when she spoke of her home.
Lennart canted his head; after eating good food his body felt better, he was still not about to risk running around though.
“I am sure that your colony has proper defenses, but what about all those small transport and cargo ships who are flying around? Your starfighters can’t be everywhere at the same time and escort them all to safety. The pirates will prowl around and just as they ambushed this S & R vessel, the Aleska will continue to harass spaceship traffic. They will be effectively strangling your colony and those around it to death! Sure, you may not die from hunger, but I doubt all of those little settlements can survive without the aid of their neighbors.”
“You are correct, captain. My own home, Kren, it is a farming colony... mostly. There are no good places to mine metals from and with no gas giants in the entire Krenara star system, we have to purchase every blob of fuel from another neighbor of ours.”
He, despite his headache, did some basic calculations and then asked another question.
“Does this colony of yours, do you have bigger strike craft, something capable of launching torpedoes or fitted with long-range railguns?”
She answered with a negative nod.
“Only starfighters then... Show me a holo of this pirate raid ship, please.”
The long, needle-like shape of an Aleska raid ship slowly rotated above the medibed and Lennart asked Silvia to poke the holo, enlarge different parts of it so that certain details were better visible.
Combat grappling arm, enough speed to chase even after starfighters or escape quickly, stealth cowl around the main engine assembly. The thing was fitted with enough light beam cannons and carried few dozen, armed to the faceplates clanners – it was a boarding ship. Eyes squinted, the captain attempted to remember how many of those had participated in the 1969 invasion.
Similar in design but bearing different markings, perhaps of dozen or more pirate clans he had no knowledge of, hundreds of these ships swarmed Sol system. He knew that many were destroyed by successful ramming attacks, IEDs, missile or torpedo strikes. The beam cannons its main offensive weapon, this vessel relied on a heavy starfighter or mecha escort for safety. It was a raider, not a ship of the line.
“Silvia, apart from the fact that you grow food on this moon and your CN force is but a token one, does one of your citizens own a small cargo vessel, perhaps? Something we can quickly modify, jerry-rig for battle and remove these parasites.”
The young woman blinked a few times, scratched her snub nose and then adopted one quite adorable facial expression as she rummaged through her head. Then, another holo, this time projected from her PDA, emerged before his eyes.
“Here she is captain, the IMS Revenant! I remembered that our colony purchased her a few years ago from some alien salvager, after pooling all our funds together. We intended to fix, refit and then use her for large cargo shipments, but the ship designer who was offered the job perished. It is, as you can see, a Terran ship, lost in space she was for nearly forty years or so they say. Until that alien found it adrift near a wormhole’s exit and towed her home.” – Silvia fiddled with her tools as she spoke, smiling and obviously happy to give him the extra details.
“He was most peculiar this Mr. Brookumsh, because instead of pulling the usual shenanigans, so common for a Mumnsian scrap trader, he sold it to us and for a bargain price nonetheless. The merchant mentioned something about us being the perfect ‘cushtomersh’ and that spaceship – ‘a mosht proper purchase.’ It was literally a ghost ship when we took possession of her; the crew nowhere to be seen, mainframe completely wiped, no cargo, no nothing...”
Lennart’s eye twitched and with a shaky hand, he pointed at the damaged hull, exclaiming:
“I know this ship, I’ve seen it before!”
In his now overly-stimulated mind a torrent of images, memories and many other random events from these terrible days swirled, shaping themselves into one huge tornado.
“What, where?!”
“This vessel was sent to ferry relief supplies, essential for reinforcing Sirius Prime defenses, but apparently it never got there... The Revenant entered a wormhole which led directly to the Sirius star system, yet it came out somewhere else entirely you say?”
Silvia nodded and then enlarged the note attached to this file. It was short, stated much less than what she’d just told him, but contained a set of wormhole and derelict location coordinates.
“How close is this ‘Spire 2081’ system, Silvia?”
“Five light years close, I think.”
She pulled a local wormhole map from the S & R vessel’s navigational controls, projected it on his medibed and then traced an exact course between these coordinates and Kren. Surprisingly it was five light years to the last star-second...
He examined the Revenant’s elongated hull, her riddled with holes engine assembly and the mangled, bent arms of the rotating section. It was built in France by some visionary starship designer; significantly faster and her main reactor providing more power, the vessel was fitted with a new generation FTL drive.
Lennart and his class of cadets visited the star dock, drifted along its hull and stomped around the empty, unfinished corridors. They did play for a while, throwing someone’s backpack instead of a ball inside the Revenant’s cargo hold. Rather large crew complement for a cargo ship; this vessel was supposed to carry seventy souls, the cadets were told by one of the engineers who gave them a tour.
It even had a few turrets, fitted with light railgun cannons. Together with the standard point defense turret assembly and its better than average speed, the Revenant was not supposed to be an easy prey. With two smaller engines on its nose, the vessel’s maneuverability rating jumped right into escort ship territory.
For certain, it could be easily retrofitted into a makeshift warship, something he diligently studied in starship repair and engineering class. Lennart focused his gaze on the old spaceship’s holo, studied the damage, asked Silvia to rotate and enlarge certain sections again.
A plan was forming in his head, an ambitious plan!
“Mademoiselle, I’d love to ask you on a date... After we’ve successfully landed on this wonderful moon of yours, of course.” – This time, his lungs healed, Lennart’s voice did not falter, nor did he cough blood.
Silvia’s eyes sparkled once more, yet she choked on her words for some strange reason and could only nod in agreement. Was it the way he said it or there was another reason why he once more noticed that strange mixture of sadness and hope deep inside her eyes? He assumed that the young woman most probably mourned the loss of her crew, the men and women who died aboard this vessel.
“We grab some of those local vegetables, a bottle of wine, some fresh meat and I’ll cook you the best barbecue you’ve ever tasted.” – Once again, Silvia’s eyes watered and chin trembled, but one stunning smile a second later was everything that Lennart needed to keep moving gently forward.
“Then we explore that old ship which you and your neighbors never had the chance to finish fixing. What say you?”
A quiet beep coming from the vessel’s hyperspace alarm interrupted Lennart’s successful wooing of the young doctor and he sighed, eyes still locked with hers.
“So are we landing the ship from here or you help me limp to the cockpit? These ultra modern medical bays... they never seem to have the one, most important item a wounded captain needs, in their inventory.” – Chuckled he and reached for Silvia’s hand.
“What item would that be, captain? I assure you – the storage unit has a more than ample amount of all medical supplies needed for search and rescue operations in the field. We even have...”
He made a hesitant, slightly hurtful step off the medibed, leaning gently on her as she basically hugged him. Not surprisingly, the young doctor was in top physical shape; with their faces so close, Lennart’s entire being screamed on the inside, yet he was only able to whisper:
“A cane mademoiselle, you don’t have a cane.”
***
Dear reader, if you liked this story, you might enjoy my published work.
Great episode!
Yep and right back at you.