No Man's Space 1: Starship Encounter (18 page)

The cloaking systems we rescued from space turned out to be a trap to burn our electric systems. We’d fallen for it, and all engineers had had to spend countless hours fixing burnt cables and replacing lightbulbs. It gets pretty boring after a while.

Not to mention that blackouts make everyone lose their minds very easily. Civilized people suddenly lose their access to artificial lighting and end up fighting each other, arguing at all times, and making babies. Don’t they have anything better to do? Like stargazing?

“You know we don’t need to fix the spaceport, don’t you?” Banner asked. “We can fix the Star, fly home, and forget about repairing this flying piece of junk.”

“That’s very romantic,” I said, “but at least we have women and alcohol if we stay here. What will we do if we end up with broken navigation systems in the middle of space, with a male-only crew? I won’t take the ship anywhere unless we’re sure that she won’t break down.”

“So you’re doing it for the wenches?”

The wenches didn’t solve anything – visiting them was a guaranteed scandal unless you were very wealthy or very careful. They did keep the lower crew calm and entertained, much more than if we left the port and tried to go back to Earth. Everyone wants to see their families, but men forget about their long-term goals too easily for my liking. Spending too long aboard the North Star could lead to mutiny, and we lacked the manpower or the number of officers to stop such an uprising.

“Yeah, for the wenches,” I said. “And the alcohol.”

“Cheap women and cheap rum…” Banner chuckled to himself. “I’ll miss it once we go back to civilization, you know?”

That’s
if
we ever went back to civilization. But hey, settling down aboard the port didn’t sound too bad: we had constant battles, I was acting captain, and we didn’t need to pay any taxes. We’d eventually have minor problems if we ran out of food or supplies, but we’d be fine if our stocks of rum never ran out.

“Planning to marry a wench and starting a family, are you?” I asked.

Banner laughed out loud. “My father would surely like such a mother for his grandchildren.” He took out some chewable vitamins and checked the flavor before eating them. “I’m actually considering it, just to make him lower his expectations about me. What about you, Wood?”

Me? I’d been too busy aboard the port to think about anything. Command had drained me, it had taken years out of my life, and I only wanted to go back home and spend a whole month sleeping.

That’s if I survived. Considering the recent battles and the state of the port, we were unlikely to survive another attack.

“I might marry Lady Elizabeth,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to marry into aristocracy. How about I let her choose between the brig or marriage?”

“A lifelong term in the brig? Don’t you think it’s a cruel and unusual punishment?”

“She can also marry me…”

“Exactly: a cruel and unusual punishment.”

Know what? Banner had been more fun when he didn’t stand me. I was a good catch for Lady Elizabeth, especially now that she wasn’t exactly doing too well on her own. She’d stolen a ship and sabotaged our defensive strategies. She might’ve conspired with the enemy! No magistrate aboard the port would dare to sentence her to anything, but life didn’t end aboard Port Aurora.

“Sir! Sir!” Gomez ran into the room. He was hysterical. “There’s a mob outside and they want to lynch Lady Elizabeth! They shout things and say that they’re going to take justice into their own hands! The men haven’t been able to stop them! They’re breaking into the shopping district, and they plan to break into the Star!” He laughed nervously and caught his breath.

Another revolt? Wasn’t anyone going to let us breathe?

“Doesn’t sound good,” Banner said.

“It’s awful, sir,” Gomez said. “Really awful. They’re many more than the last time, and they aren’t reasoning anymore. Dr. Hatfield has tried to talk to them, but they’ve told him to shut up. Is it a revolt? Should we consider it the start of a civil war? Is this like the Spartacus story? The hero of Rome? Does it make us the bad guys? Because I don’t want to be one of the bad guys. Are we repressing them? It’s the way the world works, but maybe they aren’t happy about it. Family links and politics don’t benefit the common man, do they?”

“Shut up, Gomez,” I said. “And fetch Flanagan.”

Gomez nodded and hurried off. Damn it, why do kids always run everywhere? They’re supposed to act like officers, not like kids.

“How does he talk without breathing?” I said, trying to soften the gravity of the situation.

“Why don’t we just give them the girl?” Banner asked once Gomez had left.

Give them Lady Elizabeth? I didn’t like her and she didn’t like me either, but she’d been flattering Banner for most of our stay. He managed to keep a shocking detachment towards her and everyone else, probably due to his upbringing. Wealthy people never knew if someone got close to them for their rank and wealth or for truthful reasons, so they never trusted anyone’s motives. Nobody ever got close to me for my rank, so I rarely suspected anyone. Besides, engineers are social pariahs even aboard spaceships, so I’m not forced to double-guess anyone.

“We’ll keep the girl as a last resort,” I said. “I’d rather reach a civilized agreement.”

“Civilized?” Banner smiled to himself. I glared at him; he could keep his condescension to himself. “Sorry, Wood, but I have my doubts about the locals’ concept of civilization. This is like a trip back to the Middle Ages, and we’re witnessing the peasants’ uprising against their lords. This isn’t our fight, but we’ll have to partake in it.”

“And we’ll have to end it.”

That is, if we wanted the port to survive.

Once we got outside, Flanagan had controlled the situation with his
diplomatic
skills. That is, he’d given electric batons to his men and they’d
shockingly
managed to calm everyone down. I don’t like the use of violence, but we were in a hurry and it’s better to zap a couple of people than to end up with a war both in and outside the port.

One of the rebels, a tall man who’d shouted several complaints during one of the previous protests, noticed us and approached the gates. “We’re not animals!” he shouted. “We can’t be treated like sheep!”

Flanagan noticed him, rolled his eyes and walked towards him. “Of course you aren’t sheep, you’re arrested for breaking the peace and causing as much trouble as you can.”
Zap!
He zapped the man, knocked him down, and handed him over to port security. He managed to end protests without feeling sorry for anyone.

York noticed the rebel leader and quickly hurried to seize him before port security took care of him. Kozinski was too busy approaching his fingers to his electric baton to see if he got zapped just by waving his hands around it. York realized that Kozinski wasn’t there, so he trotted back, grabbed him from the neck of his double-breasted shirt, and took him to the rebel on the floor. Kozinski lifted him from the floor with one hand and dragged him indoors.

York followed after him at a distance in case the protester decided to fight back. “You ain’t arresting him properly,” he told Kozinski. He’d used his classic know-it-all tone, like whenever he talked about shortcutting instead of short-circuiting without knowing what either meant.

“I’m draggin’ him to the brig, I am,” Kozinski said. “What’s wrong?”

“Shouldn’t you be reading him something?”

“Readin’?” Kozinski stopped in his tracks and turned to York, almost accidentally making the protester fall back down. “What do you mean, readin’? I can’t read.”

“It’s not reading, you idiot,” York said. “It’s called reading, but it isn’t reading. Like on TV. You need to tell him your rights so that he doesn’t try to hurt you.”

“Ah, that’s easy.” Kozinski pulled the man in front of him and poked him with a finger on his chest. “I can hit you if you don’t come peacefully.” He turned back to York. “Better?”

York nodded approvingly and they headed for the brig.

I’ll never understand those two, but at least they get the job done.

The ground shook violently around us without prior warning, and the lights and holographic skies flickered.

“Wood, you need to see this,” Banner said through the intercom.

I tapped on the intercom in my ear. I already suspected what it was. “Unwanted visitors again? Tell them to come back in a couple of weeks; we’re somewhat busy right now.”

“I doubt they’ll oblige,” Banner said.

So did I. We still had our prototype cloaking systems, though… with some luck, they wouldn’t notice us.

“Can they see us?” Gomez ran into the North Star’s bridge before me and repeated the question to everyone he found in his way. “Can they see us? Can they? They wouldn’t be here if they couldn’t, right?” He hopped onto a chair and gestured in the air to get a holographic map. “Wow! Look at these ships! I’m guessing they can see us, or they wouldn’t have gathered here for nothing.”

Banner ignored the kid and handed me one of the neural controls and HUD glasses. I didn’t take either.

“I’d rather not,” I said. “You never know who’s used them before.”

“Really?” Flanagan said. “We’re about to be attacked and you think it’s yucky to wear someone else’s glasses?”

Well, yeah. What if we survived? I could catch something. Naval men are tough and immune to disease, but engineers spend their lives indoors and have questionable immune systems. Hadn’t he heard about allergies amongst engineers? We aren’t particularly resistant to disease, and mere pollen can knock most of us down.

What? Do I need to catch an infectious disease to prove that I’m a good officer?

I snatched the glasses from him and put them on. The previous user’s forehead grease was still on them, but I put them on anyway because I’m as good an officer as anyone else.

We’d transferred our command center to the North Star’s bridge because we were more used to it and we needed her systems to control the drones and unmanned fighters. We’d left a detachment on the port’s bridge in case we needed them, but everyone who mattered was aboard the North Star.

The ground shook again. We’d been hit.

“Awesome cloaking systems, by the way,” I told the engineers on the bridge.

“Sorry, sir,” Gupta said. “We were still testing them and didn’t have enough time to develop anything.”

Really? I hadn’t noticed.

My glasses’ HUD showed several behemoths of the flying saucer model, a few smaller ships escorting them, and a cloud of fighters. They hadn’t spared any expense to assault our modest port. Did they think the core was made out of gold?

“Want us to take out the fighters?” Banner asked.

“Won’t make a difference for now,” I said. “Let’s keep them in the hangar in case we can use them for a non-suicidal mission.”

“So now we wait?” Banner nodded several times at himself. His face was tense, the kind of tension that you only have when you realize that the end is near.

“So now we wait.”

We set the defense systems to shoot at any enemies that appeared, set our satellites to explode whenever the enemy ships got close, and waited for the automatic defenses to take care of the situation. Some engineers controlled the weapons, as did weapons officers like Flanagan.

The spaceport was silent aside from the constant tapping on keyboards and controls, and the occasional metallic echoes of explosions.

We sent waves of unmanned drones to crash onto the enemy, but they collided against invisible shields without ever reaching their targets. The enemy guns hit other drones along the way, turning them into useless showers of space dust that didn’t hurt anyone either.

Gupta came to my chair with a tablet showing the damage we were sustaining. “The port won’t stand much more damage, sir.”

I knew. I’d hoped that we wouldn’t get to this point.

I knew what I had to do.

“Gentlemen.” I stood up from the chair and stood in front of them, facing straight into their faces.

I hadn’t clasped my hands behind my back or assumed an officer’s pose, but everyone stopped talking and typing and stood up to listen. Honestly, I didn’t care if they paid attention to me or not; I had to save the port and to use everything in my power to protect the crew.

“I’ve enjoyed the journey,” I said, “but it must end.”

I’d considered death before and it had always scared me, but it didn’t scare me anymore. It was part of being an officer, part of being in the Navy. Fearing death only led to encountering it sooner.

I told them to load the North Star with all the explosives they could find. I’d then take her on my own and fly straight into the enemy. I’d take them down if I could, but I’d keep flying even if they didn’t fall. Once they destroyed me, the explosion would hopefully wipe them out. I would be the modern version of a fire ship, a nuclear explosion ship.

The men glanced at each other and at me. They weren’t surprised; it was almost as if they’d expected me to say something stupidly heroic. Believe me, I wasn’t doing it for the history books; I was doing it because someone had to do it.

Once we’d loaded the ship and the men were supposed to leave, they stared at each other with stern expressions.

“I’m not leaving,” Flanagan said. It wasn’t a suggestion; he wasn’t going to negotiate.

Banner stepped forward. “I’m not leaving either.”

“It’s an order, gentlemen,” I said. “There’s no need for anyone to die with me.”

“I respectfully insist,” Banner said.

“I don’t respectfully anything.” Flanagan crossed his arms. “You can shove your order up your―”

“Thank you, Flanagan,” Banner said sternly, “I think we get the idea.”

Kozinski’s classic laugh sounded just outside the door. He and York entered sheepishly.

“Sorry, sir,” York said, “we weren’t eavesdropping, but we won’t let you be the only hero today.”

“Gentlemen, you weren’t supposed to listen,” I said, “and nobody’s going anywhere.”

“I was supervising them, actually.” Hatfield entered the room with a large notepad in his hand. “We’ve emptied the medical supplies to avoid destroying them, but I’m not leaving either. I don’t want anyone suffering heart attacks before we reach our destination.”

Okay… so the difference between being ignored and being respected as an officer was basically that people were happy to ignore my orders to die with me. Somewhat contradicting, but awesome.

“Let’s go for it,” I said. “Shut the gates and get ready to take off.”

“We might have a slight problem, sir.” Gupta pointed at one of the screens that showed the main gate. A group of protesters was heading straight into the North Star.