Solfleet above and beyon.., p.79
Solfleet: Above and Beyond, page 79
“Right here, Captain,” he responded immediately.
“We’ve snagged the Martius, Chief,” she told him. “She’s tumbling behind us and should start catching up to us momentarily. The rest is up to you and your people up there. Do this right and you’ll go down in the history books.”
“I’ll be happy just to survive it, Captain. We’re on it. Bowen out.”
“What the hell do you mean, you’ll be happy just to survive it, Chief?” the young crewman sitting on his right asked him as he closed the channel, glaring at him, wide-eyed. “Just how fucking dangerous is this?”
Bowen turned to the kid, Crewman First Class Lars Jorgensen, and told him to, “Depressurize the aft quarter.”
The crewman glared at him for a moment longer, and then, as he tapped the code into his panel to comply, remarked skeptically, “Well, here’s hoping this doesn’t all end with the universe’s second big bang.”
Bowen’s eyes lingered on the kid—the young man—for a few more seconds. They were alone in the control booth now, just the two of them, on his order. The engineers who had helped Jorgensen and him to safely boost the output of the magnebeam generators had returned to their regular duties, and Bowen had ordered everyone else out for their own safety, just in case they lost control of the yacht after they pulled it inside...not that any of them would survive the resulting cataclysmic explosion if that happened. Regardless, he’d issued the order all the same. He and Jorgensen were going to carry this operation out on their own.
Generally, speaking, Jorgensen was a good kid—often skeptical and far too often ready with a sarcastic response to every question or situation that he might face, but he was also highly intelligent. He’d graduated in the top spot in his tech school class and had taken to controlling his fair share of flight operations aboard the Blackhawk as though he had been born to serve right there at Bowen’s side, and Bowen intended for him to continue doing so, as long as his mouth didn’t get him into too much trouble. He had the makings of a good deck chief in Bowen’s opinion, and Bowen intended to do everything in his power to ensure that the kid got the chance to become one.
Even if he did get himself into trouble, which he likely would, sooner or later, Bowen would be right there to stand at his side in his defense...or to push the button on him himself, depending on how he chose to comport himself while he faced whatever consequences he might face.
“Depressurization complete, Chief,” Jorgensen reported.
“Open the doors.”
Jorgensen flipped up the safety lid and thumbed the bright red old-fashioned mechanical button. All of the lights in the aft quarter of the hangar bay blinked and then began glowing red, and the large doors at the back of the bay parted and began slowly to open.
Bowen gazed down the length of the hangar bay and out into space behind them...and caught himself squinting. He could see the distant trailing rainbow ring in all of its red, orange, and yellow glory, or most of it, but it appeared blurrier to him than it should have, its colors blending together into one almost uniform glow more than they had the last time that he’d bothered to take a look, however long ago that had been. He sighed. He was getting old. His eyesight was going.
“I think I see the yacht, Chief,” Jorgensen told him.
Bowen squinted a little more and scanned the blackness, but he couldn’t see anything besides the blurry circular rainbow. “Where?” he asked at last, swearing a silent oath that if the kid was only messing with him, he’d take it out of his hide. This operation was too serious. He had no time for games.
“Off the upper left of the ring, at about ten o’clock.”
Bowen concentrated on that area, but he still couldn’t see... Wait. He saw it. At least, he thought that he had. Only a quick glint of light, no doubt a reflection of one of the Blackhawk’s spotlights off of something, so yes, something was out there—something at least semi-reflective, like a ship’s hull.
Another glint, slightly brighter, and then another, brighter still. The object was growing larger by the second. It was a ship—a small civilian yacht, tumbling wildly out of control, but definitely drawing closer, though more gradually than he had thought. That had to be the Martius. “I see it,” he said.
“You going to notify the captain?” Jorgensen asked him.
“Why?” Bowen asked the kid. “She knows what we’re doing up here. It was her plan. I’ll let her know when it’s done. Now, get ready on the magnetics. It’s going to take the both of us to stop its tumbling and orient it to our deck.”
“Copy that, Chief. Just thought you’d want to keep your commanding officer apprised of the situation, like any good N-C-O would.”
Bowen looked sidelong at the kid, but chose not to take the bait...assuming that it was bait—that the kid was just trying to get him to defend himself for shits and giggles. Instead, he said, “I’d rather concentrate on preventing the situation from going south, numb-nuts. Now, less talking and more standing by.”
“Copy that, Chief.”
Several minutes had passed when the Martius finally tumbled into range of the magnetics. Working together, Bowen and Jorgensen managed to slow and then finally to stop the yacht’s tumbling. That done, they continued to manipulate the craft until they had lined it up to enter the bay along its duel-axis centerline. From that point on, until the yacht reached the predetermined stopping point, all that they could do was maintain the fields and wait.
* * *
Dylan at first sensed and then became acutely aware that the whole right side of his head was throbbing painfully. It was hanging forward, straining the back of his neck, his chin resting against his chest. He was slouching, too, but his harness was still holding him firmly in his chair.
It was quiet. The myriad of warning alarms... Had there been any alarms? He couldn’t remember. His head wasn’t rolling around anymore. His arms and legs weren’t whipping through the air anymore. Obviously, the ship wasn’t tumbling anymore. Someone aboard the Blackhawk had somehow managed to bring them back under control.
He straightened his back—it felt like the harness had rubbed his skin raw over his shoulders and across his chest—then slowly raised his head and opened his eyes. There she was, dead ahead—the Blackhawk, looking even more beautiful than he remembered, though his perception was no doubt skewed by the fact that that ship was at that moment rescuing him and Kenzie from certain death. They were approaching the starboard hangar bay from astern, slowly, its doors already wide open in welcome. But, there weren’t any stars, which could only mean that they were in jumpspace.
How had they ended up in jumpspace? Then again, it didn’t matter how. They were there, and the fact that they were there was a problem. Two separate objects couldn’t come together in jumpspace. If they did, they annihilated each other, every time. Those aboard the Blackhawk had to know that, so how in the name of God did they intend to...
Kenzie moaned. He looked over at her. The base of her chair had broken free of its deck guides and slid back on its rails to its rearmost position and turned about halfway toward him. She was unconscious, or at least appeared to be, sitting more or less in the same position as he had been, her arms hanging straight down over the arms of her chair, her legs canted at odd angles. Blood was dripping from her nose every couple of seconds and running in a few narrow rivulets down the center of her chest. There was blood on her right knee, as well. Had her knee somehow struck her nose? He called out to her. “Kenzie.” Or tried to. It came out as more of a whisper than a shout. She didn’t respond. He cleared his throat and called out louder this time, “Kenzie!”
“What!” she half-shouted and half-screamed right back at him, looking up at him so quickly that he worried that she might have injured herself further.
“You okay?”
She looked over at him through eyes that looked as though she hadn’t slept in a week, scrunched her nose up a little bit, just for a second—more blood dripped onto her chest—and then replied, “My nose hurts.”
“It’s bleeding a little,” he told her. “You might have broken it.”
“You’re bleeding, too,” she told him, “a lot. There’s a bad cut on the right side of your head.”
That explained the throbbing pain. He looked down at himself, which made his head pound harder. His right shoulder and upper arm were practically covered in blood, as was much of the right side of his torso. Then he noticed that there was blood on his right hand, as well. He must have held it against his wound at some point, though he couldn’t remember doing so.
Kenzie yelped. He looked over at her. Apparently, she’d tried to reach up to her nose with her left hand. Now she was cradling her left arm gingerly to her chest. “I think I might have broken my arm, too,” she said in obvious pain.
“Look outside,” he told her. “I think it’ll make you feel better.”
She looked ahead and gasped, then sighed long and loud. “Oh, thank God!”
* * *
“Here she comes, Chief,” Jorgensen remarked as the first red glow from the hangar’s lights kissed the Martius’ nose and then swept back up and over her hull as she continued her slow approach. “Looks like she’s been in a fight and took a little damage.”
Bowen transferred full magnetics control to his panel. “All right, I’ve got the magnetics,” he then told the younger man as he took a closer look at the yacht to see what he was talking about. “Close the doors.” The kid was right. The yacht had taken some damage—damage from some sort of weapons fire, from the looks of it, so he was right about the cause of the damage, too. It wasn’t real obvious at a casual glance, but now that he’d seen it, he couldn’t not see it.
“Sure, Chief,” Jorgensen said as he hit the big red button once more and then closed the safety lid back over it, “I close the doors while you take care of the fun part all by yourself.”
“You can take care of all the fun parts all by yourself, too...when you’re the chief someday,” Bowen replied. “Until then, just do what the hell I tell you to do.”
“Of course, Chief. I live to obey, my master.”
“I’m not your master, Crewman Jorgensen, I’m your...” On second thought, “No, scratch that. I am your master. You will obey my every word, always.”
“Yes, master. I hear and I... What the hell? Are you kidding me?”
Bowen glanced over at the younger man, but only for a second before he remembered what he was doing and swept his eyes back to the yacht once more. He didn’t dare do that again—look away. If he lost control of the yacht for even just a second or two... “What’s wrong, Jorgensen?” he asked him as he gently manipulated the controls. “Kidding you about what?”
“The people in that yacht. They’re naked! I mean...look at the tits on that woman, Chief!”
Bowen focused as best as he could on the yacht’s interior as it drew closer, several meters below the control booth, but it was still a good thirty to thirty-five meters away. He could see two people, though there was a bit of a glare on the canopy, but not real clearly and only from about the belly up on the one on the left, which looked like man, and from about the waist up on the one on the right, who was sitting a little farther back. Jorgensen was right. That one was obviously a woman. Both of them were topless, but whether or not they were completely naked, he couldn’t be sure. “Can’t tell,” he said in response to the crewman’s assertion. “Can’t see below the waist.”
“I’m pretty sure they’re naked, Chief. Must have been a hell of a party.”
A few seconds later, Bowen brought the yacht to a stop over the pre-planned position, then looked again. “Looks like you’re right,” he said. “They are naked.”
“Told you.”
Bowen glared at the younger man again. “Yeah, you told me,” he allowed. Then he said, “Let’s just degauss this thing and put her down on the deck.”
* * *
“So now what?” Kenzie asked, obviously rhetorically, still holding her left arm to her bosom while she tried to stop the flow of blood from her nose with her other hand by closing off one nostril at a time, alternating back and forth—if she could do that, Dylan reasoned, then her nose probably wasn’t broken after all. “They’ve brought us into their hangar bay, but what are they going to do now? If they lower us to the deck, it’s over for all of us.”
“Maybe they’re keep us suspended up here like this for the duration,” Dylan suggested. “At least once the bay has repressurized, we can open the hatch and let all this hot air out.”
“I don’t know if they can repressurize the bay, Dylan,” Kenzie said. “Even their air molecules might trigger mutual annihilation. If they are going to hold us up here like this all the way home, we might still have to put up with this heat until we get there.”
“So we shut down everything except life support,” he countered. “With all the non-essential systems shut down, the heat should... Ouch!” he barked, feeling as though someone had just stuck about a million electrified needles into his skin and hearing Kenzie yelp at the same time as something snapped and then crackled for the next several seconds.
“What the fuck was that?” she then asked, though she sounded more like she was demanding to be told rather than asking. “Felt like somebody just hit me with a cardio stimulator!”
Dylan looked over at her. Her hair was frizzy, as though it were saturated with static electricity and trying to stand up on end, but was just too heavy. Then something drew his attention to the bulkhead directly ahead of the ship. It was moving—rising. Or were they beginning to descend toward the deck? Yeah, that was it. That had to be it. After all, the hangar bays were on the top of the ship. If the bulkhead were to rise, where could it go? “I don’t know what that was we just felt,” he told her, “but look. We’re descending toward the deck.”
“We’re what!” She looked outside, then said. “Oh, fuck me! Bye, Dylan. It’s been nice knowing you.”
“I don’t think this is good-bye yet, Kenzie,” he told her, hoping to reassure her, though to be honest, he could have used a little bit of reassurance himself. “I’m sure the Blackhawk’s crew knows the science, and I seriously doubt they’d set us down on their deck unless they knew it was safe to do so.”
“How can it be safe?” she asked him, her tone a challenge to him to answer.
“I don’t know, but...”
They gently touched down.
“No boom?” Kenzie inquired after a couple of seconds.
“No boom,” Dylan confirmed. “They found a way.” Then he added, “Good. So, now they’ll repressurize the bay, and then we can get the hell out of this oven. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to meet our saviors with some clothes on.”
She looked over at him, and then down at herself. “Yeah, me, too.”
They unstrapped themselves—Kenzie did it right-handed, still protecting her left arm—then got up and walked back to their rooms.
Dylan discovered that he had a problem. None of his clothes were clean. But then he decided that that was okay. Hot and sweaty as he was, not to mention bloody, whatever he might have put on wouldn’t have stayed clean for very long anyway. He pulled on the most lightly soiled briefs that he could find, then paused and finally decided to stop with them. Decorum be damned. He was just too damn hot to put anything else on.
He returned to the living room and met Kenzie up by the hatch. As it turned out, she’d decided against putting on anything more than her underwear, as well—a lavender set, the same style as those other matched sets that she’d worn earlier. The lights out in the hangar bay were shining yellow-white, which told Dylan that the bay had been pressurized. “Time for us to open this damn hatch and walk the hell out of this flying oven,” he remarked. “Let’s do it.”
Kenzie stepped forward and hit the button with her open palm...and nothing happened. “Oh, what the fuck now!” she protested.
“Please don’t tell me we’re still trapped in here,” Dylan practically begged of her. “Not with a nice cool hangar bay on the other side of the door.”
“No, we’re not.” She reached up over the door, lifted a small lever up and out away from the bulkhead, and then yanked it to the right as though she were trying to break it off. The seals around the hatch’s perimeter started sizzling and smoking. Then, not too many seconds later, the hatch fell away from the ship, taking the smoke with it as the hot air rushed out through the opening, and hitting the hangar bay’s deck with a resounding metal clang that seemed to echo through the bay for several seconds before it finally quieted.
“I’m not sure Captain Dayton’s going to appreciate that,” Dylan remarked.
“She can bill me,” Kenzie declared. Then she told him, “We’re going to have to jump down to the deck. The ramp only extends when the hatch opens the way it’s normally supposed to.”
“I’ll go first and then help you down,” he told her. “You don’t want to jostle that arm any more than you absolutely have to.”
“My hero.”
Dylan went first—God, the cooler air felt good, and the deck beneath his bare feet was like a little piece of Heaven!—then turned around, took Kenzie by the waist, and slowed her drop to the deck as much as he could when she stepped off, being careful not to bump or jostle her left arm.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Ready to go meet our saviors?” he asked her.
“I’m more ready for a cool bath,” she replied.
Together, side-by-side, they started walking toward the bulkhead ahead of the ship—Dylan figured that there would be a door in it somewhere. Then, just as they passed the Martius’ bow, an approaching party of four startled them. One of them was a captain—Captain Dayton, obviously. The very bald man beside her—his skin was several shades darker than hers was—was a medical officer, and the other two were corpsmen, each pushing a wheelchair with a folded Solfleet-blue blanket sitting in the seat.
“Welcome aboard the starcruiser Blackhawk, folks,” the captain said as both parties stopped in front of one another. “I’m the ship’s C-O, Captain Rae Dayton.” She nodded briefly toward the medical officer. “This is my Chief Medical Officer, Commander Quentin Olajire.”
