Topic: Genesis
Ah, the good captain Tripp . . . yes, as in one of the many names of Stephen King’s superflu in “The Stand”, except my captain doesn’t kill you with a head full of snot.
This is my first trip to Mercator, and I don’t even get out of orbit. In fact I was so involved in learning myself some orbital mechanics, that I put a little too much orbital mechanics in the story. As this story was created in February 2009, I do not know how much of this incomplete mess is going to survive. The original story surrounding this event has changed so much I don’t know what I would keep. Also the characters born in those words have also evolved.
Mil Kariden is presented as a crewmember aboard Tripp’s ship with a mysterious past. Raum is also present, but his character is a bit aloof, and who Raum is now in my mind is not the same person. Daphia was created here first, not as Kariden’s love interest but as Raum’s main woman (by her choice), who may have had some dalliances with Tripp that had gone rather sour. Daphia was also meant to be older and inspired by German rocker Doro Pesch.
This story has not been finished and it is not streamlined.
"You gonna vent that?" Captain Obrius Tripp asked the engineer flying his ship.
The other man's eyes and hands dashed from instrument to instrument and control to control as he sat in the pilot's station engaging switches and tapping options on display panels. Droker looked ridiculous wearing his oversized data overlay goggles. He threw a quick glance back at the captain sitting in his oversized chair on a raised platform in the center of an arc of clustered control stations. Tripp pointed with his head to the empty station to Droker's right. All the other five stations were empty as well, their controls dark.
Droker jerked his head around, saw the bright illuminated warning lamp. "Oh shitshitshit," he stammered reaching over and toggling a few switches, fingers barely reaching. He had to get out of his chair and nearly lost his footing scrambling to the other station to activate the purge. "Codus Iman," he swore in a voice strained and high pitched from age, registering the pressure in the cascade fusion vessel. He opened magnetic valves to redirect the plasma surge. "Sorry 'bout dat, cap'n."
Captain Tripp shrugged, his huge shoulders crinkling leather, as the engineer slipped back into the pilot's station. "It's only the flowback relief manifold. We would've only died just a little bit."
Droker shook his head not finding it the least bit funny. "I'm but one man, I can't do all this shit meself."
If it got too overwhelming for Droker, Tripp would lend the man a hand. Droker just happened to be the type that was quite entertaining when he was wound tighter than a clock spring. "You're doing fine," Tripp said looking at the deep screen wrapped around most of the small flight deck.
The display gave him a realtime view of space ahead and to the sides of the lumbering Chariot of Abraxis, a Rothstone class bulker that had just exited it own intersystem sphere-hole. A pre-calculated entrance point set them on a desirable orbit that would place them within rendezvous range of their destination. Ahead, the thin crescent of an ugly little planet loomed, the light of its red giant sun dimmed by the deep screen's processors.
Mercator.
It was never a pleasant visit.
Tripp had been twirling a mindset by one thin arm between finger and thumb. He clamped the end of the arm between his teeth as he adjusted his long, red, unkempt hair before placing the mindset snug against the back of his head. He accessed the communication system with a thought and waited. His channels were open but no one seemed interested in hailing.
The deep screen began overlaying data blocks near the objects that the ship's sensors and library could identify. The flight control system highlighted their predicted trajectory in a long green arc that curved around the limb of the planet. A disc on that arc, like a knot in a string, fast approached from near the planet's curve. Droker, busy with some other pressing detail, didn't notice. The captain asked, "You gonna spin us around before or after we hit the apo?"
"What," Droker groaned looking up. He let out a deep sigh. "Iman please," he muttered, cuing up ship's attitude systems. "Gawdammed automatics! That's whacha auta fix." He coursed power through a set of linear coils running through the center of the Chariot's slender midship. Exotic fields did something otherwise unnatural to gravity and the truncheon-like ship began to pivot, bringing its single, bell mouthed engine to point toward the planet beyond.
"Someone's got to watch the screen." Tripp reminded. "Besides, what are they gonna think if they call and I'm not sitting in the command chair?"
Droker waved a hand to shoo the thought away. "Doan mean nuttin. Doan mean a gawdammed thing, if's ya asx me."
"I've learned not to ask you some time ago. Doesn't seem to do any good."
Droker snorted. Another light on the other station caught his attention. "Bleedin Iman," he said under his breath getting up to avert another possible crisis. "I doan belong up here, settin all dees switches and pushing buttons."
Tripp stifled a laugh.
"Need to git back to da engine room where I know waddahell I'm doin."
"We're working on that," the captain said.
Droker returned to his chair, pulled the goggles off and rubbed the bridge of his beakish nose. "Headin into a clustafug is what we're doin. A gawdammed clustafug! Prolly worse than last time."
"Well, yeah," Captain Tripp agreed. "We do seem to follow a pattern."
Droker huffed, looked out at the enlarging, blood-red crescent. "Fuggin Mercator." He shook his head slowly, "Every fuggin time." He released a deep sigh that sagged his whole body.
Captain Tripp shared the old spacer's sentiments.
The engine fired when they hit the highest point in their orbit. The Chariot rumbled and both Tripp and Droker kept their eyes affixed to the deep screen's projected orbit trajectory. The wormhole deposited them on a higher orbit than their destination, giving them a greater velocity to catch their target. They were lowering their current orbit to arrive at their destination soon after the next burn. The screen identified other orbital traffic but nothing took an interest in them.
Yet.
The flight deck's rear door opened. Kariden stepped in, heaving the door closed behind him. Tripp threw a quick glance over his left shoulder. The thin and wiry man wore his side arm and had a laser pulse rifle slung across his back. He looked spoiled for a fight, and was probably the only one of the small crew that enjoyed actually visiting Mercator. He still complained on occasion, as if to hide his true feelings.
"Rail guns are ready," he said slinging off the rifle and propping it against the control station where he then sat. He engaged his panels, calling up the weapons system control.
"Just be careful you don't spook anyone," Tripp said. The captain hot miked the intercom. "How 'bout you Logan, see anything the sensors miss?"
Logan, the youngest crewmember at thirteen, sat in the observation cupola that had deployed to a point higher than the firing ring for the sphere-hole inflation system. "Nada, boss," he piped, peering through binocular goggles. "Doesn't look like anybody's sensor masking themselves." Other than using his eyes, he was checking the sensor array's returns for any malicious data streams that could take over their scanner readings.
Above the boy, Mercator hung like a bloated blemish against the perfection of the cosmos. The sun's ugly light tinted the heavy cloud coverage with a smear of yellows and oranges. The clouds released a perpetual rainfall against rocky landmasses nearly devoid of biota. The roaring oceans were a brackish green from oxygen laden minerals. Despite this there were sprawling cities under its nominal pressure and breathable air.
Lawless cities.
Governed by the strongest.
Three circles flashed on the left of the deep screen across the face of the planet. In the center of them were tiny ships, too small to be discerned from their distance. They had swept the Chariot with radar. "Looks like someone taking an interest in us," Tripp mused, pulling at his beard.
"Counter screens are ready if they want to take a pot shot at us," Kariden said never looking up at the main display.
Droker shook his head, "Oh they aint goan wais nuthin. Woan do'm no good. Bank on it."
Captain Tripp said nothing but watched the deep screen. Raum wouldn't let anyone attack them. He would enact a punishment far worse than Tripp could mete out. Raum owned Mercator. "Let's just take this easy," the captain advised as he watched the russet planet grow as their orbit drew them closer. They were headed toward periapsis backwards so Mercator's limb began to take up most the upper side of the deep screen.
Logan's voice came over the intercom. "Someone's trying to sensor decoy us."
"Do what you got to do," Tripp ordered.
"I think they are trying to test us," Logan said. "I've isolated the hostile code. I put our colors on it and sent it back out."
Captain Tripp chuckled. "I'm sure they'll appreciate that."
Kariden threw him a fat, knowing grin. "Giving 'em porn?"
Tripp knew that if the other ship's techs were any good, they'd stop the malware. "Don't reply with anything destructive," He told Logan. "We don't want to piss off anyone."
"Don't worry, sir. I got it under control." Logan had nothing further to say.
Nearly a half hour of mind numbing waiting passed before the periapsis marker strobed a bright green on the deep screen. "Comin up on peri," Droker called out. The countdown numbers cycled by the marker. Upon intersection, the engine automatically fired. A look down diagram in the right upper section of the deep screen showed their orbital path shrink from the subtle elliptic to something near circular. The engine shut off and Droker had the mighty Rothstone class about face. Mercator's cloudy surface grew across the screen as the ship took it's time pivoting. It dominated the lower half once they stopped. Droker rolled the bulker so that their zenith would face the planet giving Logan a better view of the orbital space between them.
Raum's orbital station, waited a several kilometers away. Droker targeted the station as a destination point and the Chariot automatically performed the maneuvers for rendezvous. Tripp tapped his knee with an anxious finger as the space station grew larger and more clearer. He wanted to get this over with, and even as fast as space travel was, there was no rushing it.
The cylindrical station stretched a kilometer long and half that wide, its surface punctuated with antennae and weapon placements. The dark blemish of Raum's sigil became more clearer as they approached. A large, black bird with extended wings, head turned to the left with a red beak, emblazoned across the forward section of the hull. The bird's body was enclosed in a black circle with two short parallel bars intersecting the center of its lower, left quadrant, the wings and tail feathers extending beyond the ring. The art appeared as if stenciled, militaristic and oppressive. The Chariot of Abraxis locked onto the docking signal and began to make maneuvers to place itself before the forward maw of the ominous station.
The open tube of Raum's orbital lair was an depressing expression of cubism. Along the inner curves of the surface an unimaginative cityscape of rectangular prisms devoid of any lighted windows crowded one another as if fighting for space. It always reminded Tripp of an ugly geode that had the potential to be a beautiful work of engineering art had it not been so prosaically utilitarian. The internal structures were buildings of massive scale, designed to house millions of people, but now it was mostly abandoned, the spoil of some long forgotten war. It had become an enclave of criminals. As they moved in orbit, the red light of the sun—a star the locals called "Boiler"—flooded the interior of the station, its orange glow lending the illusion that everything inside had caught fire. Three tall building at the mouth of the station met each other at a central cubic node. The bulker aligned with this node, its shadow small and insignificant against the cityscape.
"Ara'Zarak," Kariden murmured, calling out the station's name in something like awe. He unconsciously rubbed a scar on the left side of his jaw. "Home of Raum and his Death Ravens."
"Clustafug," Droker reminded everyone turning toward the security officer, "Like I dun toll da Cap'n."
"It's worst than that," Kariden said distantly.
"No matter," Captain Tripp called, "we are here to do a trade. We do that, we leave."
The deep screen suddenly drew a red circle around an orbital shuttle that had launched from the station's central complex. A data block annotated the shuttle's orbital elements. It came to meet them. "That must be our hostage," Tripp said. "Extend the port docking jetty for our guest."
"Wonder who he's sending over?" Kariden asked.
"No idea," Tripp murmured. "I hope it someone important." He mentally activated the mindset's communication set. "Bolan."
The man's serious and eager face bloomed into Tripp's visual field. "Yessir," Kariden's lieutenant answered.
"Meet me in the port dock. Hostage coming aboard."
"Aye sir," he gave a curt nod and disappeared.
Captain Obrius Tripp stood, his leather garments creaking, and dark red hair flowing over his shoulders. He glared at the Ara'Zarak. "You got it Kariden," he said turning, sharing a glance with the man, and walking to the flight deck's door. Droker shouted after him, something about Raum's people never seeing him sitting in the command chair. They never even called, for that matter.
The designers of the Rothstone bulker arranged the habitable decks along the inner curving walls, floors pointing towards the center, which posed no problems with the psuedo-gravity fields saturating the decks. The crew typically kept the gravity off in the arcing cross corridors. The halls were tight, almost coffin shaped in cross-section with round ceilings. Tripp made his way around, pulling on hand rails until he reached the two-seventy deck. The captain advanced under gravity toward the docking room at the end of the hall.
He stepped in. Bolan stood ready, armed to the teeth with an assortment of weapons, kinetic side-arms, pulse lasers, and knives. Maybe it was overkill. Maybe it wasn't. The mercenary kept his watchful eyes on the display, monitoring the closing shuttle. Tripp took a place behind the man. They said nothing.
The ship's sensor system identified the shuttle as a Holdfast type, shaped like two truncated cones butted at their bases, its faded yellow hull cratered with the oval pits of attitude thruster channels. A mating tube sank into the front of the four passenger craft. The retros fired bright staccato bursts. The shuttle softly docked.
Moments later the craft's door opened and a figure stepped over the threshold. Tripp shook his head recognizing the person. Bolan opened the door on their side. The woman stepped carefully in.
Her former beauty had been worn haggard by drug use. She had tried to look her best but her blonde hair exploded in chaotic disarray. Her clothing said she had a thing for leather as well, not for protection but for raunchy sexuality. The left side of her jaw had been marred by a tattoo of two short bars pointing to her mouth: the mark of Raum.
"Hello, Daphia," Tripp said crossing his arms. Bolan had a side-arm out, directing it away from her but ready it bring it to bear.
She glowered at the captain, "Why do you always seem to come into my life?"
Tripp shrugged, "I don't plan this shit."
Daphia cast Bolan a dirty look, then returned her scrutiny to Tripp. "Well, this shit still happens anyway doesn’t it?"
Raum had sent his main woman. That boded well. It meant Raum was actually being serious and the trade had not turned into a trap. Unless he and the little woman had a falling out and she had become expendable.
He hoped not.
Tripp asked, "So, how is he?"
Daphia cocked her head back. "Let me see the cargo first."
Captain Tripp sighed, then reached into his jacket's inner pocket and pulled out an ornate mechanical scroll. He pulled the tubes apart revealing a thin flexible sheet of nanoleaf. Pressing a button on the side of the scroll called up the cargo manifest.
The woman gave it a cursory glance. "Don't show me that. I want to see the cargo for myself."
Tripp then noticed the mindset buried in her hair. Of course, Raum was watching through her eyes and listening through her ears. He closed the scroll, shoved it back into his coat. "Let's go."
The three of them made their way to the three-fifteen cargo racks inside the spacious hold via the nearest circumferential corridor. They descended a ladder well, absent gravity, onto an enclosed pier butted against a pressurized cargo container. The container had a side door that was mated to its partner on the pier. Tripp gestured with an open hand toward the door.
Daphia studied it with trepidation as Bolan approached the door and cycled both open. He stepped in with side-arm extended, his face dour. Daphia glanced back at Tripp uncertain if she really wanted to see the cargo. She startled suddenly, then marched toward the door.
Tripp speculated that Raum reprimanded her via the mindset. He watched her step into the door, glance around into the dim interior of the container. She drew a hand to her mouth. Tripp looked away, his anger building.
Daphia stepping back into the pier, with Bolan following her. "Satisfied," Tripp asked.
Her voice had a hard edge, the tone of a person forced into something they despised. "Raum is." She stared into Captain Tripp's stony face. "He's ready to receive you. And the cargo."
Tripp grabbed her upper arm, squeezing it like a iron band. He bent down, eyes burning like hell. "You tell me what I want to know," he growled.
Daphia grimaced, tried to yank away. "He's fine."
He jerked her, squeezing harder. "Alive?"
Her face melted into pain. "Yes," she groaned through clenched teeth. "Raum'll—"
Tripp let go of her. "Kill me if I hurt you?" He glanced around then locked his eyes back on hers. "What more can he do to me," he shouted pointing toward the container beyond the wall. "What more can he fucking do?"
He forced himself calm. "Let's get this over with," he said to Raum through her. He turned to Bolan. "Put her in a holding cell."
Tripp took one of the Chariot's maintenance pods over to the Ara'Zarak. He would be Raum's hostage. The mouth of the station looked huge from his ship's flight deck, but it yawned agoraphobically enormous from the view ports of the pod. He passed through the pressure membrane stretched across the opening of the hangar, into the place Daphia's shuttle had launched.
Articulated robotic arms reached out to him, their magnetic end effectors contacting the pod's receptive plates. They spun and backed the bulbous craft into a docking collar. Tripp set the controls to stand-by and unclipped his harnesses. He could use a drink and planned to get excessively drunk when this was over. Hunched, he stepped through the tight confines of the pod through a hold designed to haul equipment and components for outer hull repairs. He opened the aft hatch and stepped into the realm of Raum and his band of Death Ravens.
The room was a dark place, lit by failing wall sconces. Four guards raised pulse laser rifles at him. Four? Was he that dangerous? Behind them, standing in shadow stood a giant nearly seven feet tall, a wall of lean muscle.
"Obrius Tripp," the man said, his voice deep and booming. He stepped into a cone of light. Raum was dark skinned and broad nosed. The apaxan species had deposited his people on a hot world and they had adapted both naturally and by genetic design to cope with the temperatures. He wore his hair dreadlocked, long past his shoulders. His hazel eyes were darkly outlined and under his left eye slashed tattooed short parallel bars. Raum's broad chest was bare except for a leather vest adorned with a red version of his emblem. Leather bracers covered his forearms, the right holding a knife in its spring-sheath. A belted pair of nanofiber pants and heavy combat boots completed his attire.
"Where's Crash?" Tripp asked.
Raum tossed a balled up sheet of nanoleaf to the captain. Tripp snatched it out of the air and pulled it open. He stared down at a realtime feed of a large coffin. Crash couldn't be dead. Strength began to run out of his knees. "She told me he was alive."
"He still is," Raum admitted. "For how long depends on you."
Tripp used an icon on the sheet to stiffen the nanoleaf. The coffin was a medical stasis transport litter. Tripp accessed the boxes health monitors and saw that Crash's brain activity was almost nonexistent. He couldn't determine why. "What have you done to him?"
"Nothing your medicoids can't reverse."
Tripp nodded. He accessed his mindset as he balled up the nanoleaf. Kariden's face overlaid much of Raum, and Tripp turned to keep the man in his peripheral vision. "Send the cargo over." His security chief affirmed the order and disappeared.
Tripp faced Raum and tossed the nanoleaf back.
Raum caught it, squeezing it like a toy. "Was that Mil Kariden?" he asked. Tripp said nothing. "It's a shame, really," Raum portended. "That you would have one of mine. I should have one of yours."
Obrius Tripp didn’t like the sound of that. "He wasn't one of yours when he signed onto my crew."
Raum rolled his head back, keeping his eyes on Tripp. "They are always mine. Always." He began to chuckle at Tripp discomfort. "Don't worry my good Captain. A deal is a deal. They will make a fine addition to my home."
"I'm sure they will," Tripp returned in monotone.
"Let's go wait on them, shall we?"
Tripp shrugged. What else could he do?
He followed Raum into another section of the hangar complex, to the place where the cargo container would be received. He was thankful they waited in silence.
The container finally made it across the expanse of space between the ship and the station. The robotic arms pulled into place and soon a guard had the side doors opened. Two guards rushed inside, shouting fiercely for the occupants to depart. Screaming and sobbing echoed out the open door and Tripp had to look at the floor.
A gun barrel jabbed him in the back. "Keep your eyes up," the guard shouted.
Tripp watched as frightened, young women and girls processed out of the door. He had been forced to acquire these girls. Raum would press them into prostitution.
Just to get Crash back.
He felt sick.
Raum grabbed one out of the line. He studied the distraught woman, groped a breast and slapped her butt as she sobbed and begged not to be hurt. Then pushed her back into the line as they were being filed out into another room. He turned to Tripp. "Well, well. Looks like you've done good."
Anxiety and adrenaline had Tripp jittery. He took a series of calming breaths. He wanted to get Crash, and get a drink. A lot of them. "I think I've fulfilled my part of the deal."
"Yes," Raum agreed coldly. "Better than I expected."
Tripp said nothing. He wouldn't push it. Men like Raum could change their mind in a heartbeat just for sport.
Raum spoke into the room, using his mindset, "Send Crash to Captain Tripp's pod." He looked at the captain and nodded his head to the door. "Let's go."
Tripp followed him back around to where his pod was berthed. When they arrived, the stasis litter sat on the floor like a refrigerator. Even so, he imagined they had to squeeze the bulk of the man into the thing. Tripp stood over it looking down at the monitor that revealed Crash's vital signs in waves of green lines. The computers were saying the man was fine, but Tripp felt no relief. He'd rather his pilot be standing on his own two feet.
Then again, Crash would have attempted to kill everyone in this room.
He recalled when he first met Crash, back home on Derelict Junction. He entered a bar to scout for crew and walked into an all out brawl. A mountain of flesh in the center of a ring of drunken fighters hunkered down and turned slowly, head and eyes darting, massive hands ramming into skulls of foolish advancers. Tables were up-ended, chairs smashed, the floor wet and slippery from blood and drink. The man held his own in the mêlée against him until those foes remaining with the ability to stand fled. Tripp could use the services of a bruiser and extended the offer to join his small crew. Turned out Crash had better skills that using his fists as battering rams. The man could pilot a ship like no one better.
Tripp felt an arm fall across his shoulder. Raum leaned in like an old friend and Tripp wanted to squirm away. "Before you go," Raum said, "I want you know that you are no longer welcome here. Return to Mercator, and you will die." He paused to let the words sink in. "I'll kill you myself." He clapped Tripp hard on the back and stepped away, gesturing for one guard to approach the litter.
Tripp stood at the front of the medical device and bent to grasp the handle. He looked up expecting the guard to do the same on the other end but Raum laughed.
"I'm not giving you the stasis litter. That wasn't part of the deal. Get your man out and get off my station."
"He could die," Tripp yelled. The guard slung his gun over his shoulder and began to lift the lid. Tripp put a hand on it to stop him.
Raum shook his head. "Then you better be fast getting him back to your boat."
Tripped hated it but he didn't have time to argue. He slammed the lid open. Alarms on the litter began to cry. Crash had been shoved in there. His shoulders were rolled forward, big meaty arms flopped on his sides. Tripp reached down to get his hand under the man's armpits. The guard had an better time with his feet. It would have been easier to get him out by tipping the litter on his side and rolling him onto the floor, but Tripp managed to heave his mass out. Raum could have made it less difficult by lowing the gravity, but that was asking for too much.
They got the huge pilot into the maintenance pod. Tripp had no where to put him so he secured him to the cargo floor. The guard lingered. Tripp growled, "You're finished. Get the fuck out of here." The guard snorted and left.
Tripp cycled the door shut and stood behind his seat. He beat on the seat's back and shook the poor thing, wanting to rip it from its mooring and throw it across the cabin. "Motherfuckers," he spat through clenched teeth climbing into the seat and fastening his harness. He stabbed his comm system on, "Kariden, we are going need a medicoid at the MP dock."
The robotic arms pulled his craft away from it berth and released him. The pod automatically followed its back course.
"Those sons of bitches! What did they do to him."
"I don't know. He's a vegetable at the moment. Raum said we should be able to revive him."
"Should be?" Kariden paused. "You want me to hold Daphia?"
"No. Send her home. We're done with this fucking place."
Hopefully for good.
He passed Daphia as she headed to the Ara'Zarak. He shot her an obscene gesture she had no way of seeing. It was a cowardly act but tensing his hand and fingers under the stress of his anger felt good.
He docked. Mil Kariden and the medicoid were waiting. The medical machine with virtual intelligence and a nanofluid surface entered the pod and administered to Crash where he lay. It did a quick scan, broad leaf like sensors sweeping over the man. Prehensile appendages pressed their applicator ends to his flesh and shot medicines and microbots into his blood stream from stores inside its body.
The medicoid spoke in a sexless voice, "He has suffered a drug overdose. The microbots will begin repairing cellular damage. It's imperative that you get him to the medical bay."
'No shit," Tripp muttered.
"I got the gurney sack ready," Kariden stated from out in the hall.
"Good," Tripp said, shutting down the gravity field from the pod to the sick bay with his mindset. He released Crash, and Kariden helped him stuff the oversized man into the gurney sack.
"It must have taken a lot of Venom to do this to him," Kariden observed.
They floated Crash to the medical bay where other medicoids were waiting. They strapped him down to a bed and Tripp reengaged the gravity along their route. There was nothing more he could do for Crash, and no orders to give the medicoids, they knew what to do. He wanted to stay by Crash's side, but they had things to do yet. "Let's get back to the flight deck," he said to Kariden barely above a whisper.
There, Tripp settled into his command chair, the security chief doing the same. Droker fidgeted at his controls as if he were itching and had no means to scratch. He was happy to have the captain return. "Thays got thay's guns trained on us," he said.
Tripp dismissed him. He ordered, "Initiate an orbital plane change, give me ninety degrees to the solar ecliptic. Then I want a high acceleration burn to put us into a long elliptic. And calculate a sphere-hole exit somewhere just outsystem. We'll figure out what to do from there."
"Codus bleedin Iman," Droker cursed, trying to figure out where to start. "Toljer it would be a clustafug."
"If you tell me it’s a clusterfuck one more time and I will strangle you," Captain Tripp warned. He had a better idea and stood up and stepped forward.
Droker turned around, mouth agape expecting to be beaten.
"Get out of here," Tripp barked. "Get down to the engine room. I'll take care of this."
Droker fumbled with his harness and beat a fast retreat off the flight deck. Tripp took the seat, began punching in commands. He contacted Logan. "Retract your roost and get down to the deck. I need you here."
"Right away sir," the boy called.
Tripp turned around to Kariden. "As soon as we stop acceleration, I want the port and starb'rd guns satelled. Just in case."
The other man nodded. "You got it."
Tripp turned away, focused on his piloting and navigation tasks. "I hope you don't have any unfinished business here. I doubt we'll be seeing Mercator again."
Kariden chuckled, "It hasn't been home for a while." He could see that Raum had really gotten to Tripp. There was no need to ask what happened aboard the Ara'Zarak. He supposed that Crash's little misadventure had gotten them banned from the system. Now they'd have to plow around the lesser systems of the Pavona Expanse. You survived in space by picking your battles. And they sure as hell didn’t have the fire power to take on Raum and his Death Ravens.
Not by a long shot.
Tripp would rather make the inclination change at their apoapsis where it would be more fuel efficient to pivot. The deep screen showed that several on orbit craft had a radar interest in them and he didn’t want to perform any maneuver that could be predicted to give anyone the chance to initiate an intercept. That, and the node was many minutes away and he didn’t want to wait.
"Droker," he called over the mindset, "where are you?"
"Aw-mos'd dere," he panted.
"I'm going to need as much power on those coils for a rapid rate of rotation."
"Aye."
"As in disengaging the safeties," Tripp added.
Kariden turned to him, "That'll effect the paranodal shields if we need them."
"I know," the captain spat.
Logan entered the flight deck and immediately jumped into the seat of his control station. He brought his station up fast, trying to clear his mind of the thoughts of doom than ran unbridled. We're not going to die, we're not going to die. Just do your job. He grabbed a mindset from off the control panel, extended a cable from the station, and plugged it in before wrapping it around his head. He entered the ship's sensorium and without a command from the captain began to wage electrodataic warfare.
Tripp heard Droker's voice over the mindset. "Aw-rite, I'm doin wacha's asx'd. Be a moment fer yer ready."
The captain switched over to the intercom to address the rest of the small crew, "Everyone strap in." He had the commands cued and ready to go, gave everyone a few seconds to at least find seats, and executed the ship's attitude change.
A moan rumbled out of the deckplates and bulkheads, the overhead lights flickered and dimmed, went out completely, then sputtered into emergency mode. Warning tones wailed as stress sensors tripped. The deep screen projected a list of minor system failures. The Ara'Zarak appeared to roll away and the blighted face of Mercator heaved sickeningly as the mighty bulker positioned itself for an inclination change burn. The fields reversed to brake their momentum and the Chariot of Abraxis lurched, sending her crew into nauseous vertigo until they settled.
Wasting no time, Tripp advanced the engine's throttle to full thrust. The numbers denoting the inclination angle began to increase. Tripp silently urged the numbers on, though there was nothing else he could do to make them go faster.
