Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles 2: Redemption (4 page)

Under the direction of the super-mind
she ordered her warriors to capture the larger ship.

Mike Jeffries was in agony. He had ordered the
Heidman's
computer to redirect gravity and environmental support to section twelve. This meant he was now feeling the full force of this planet's 4 plus gravity. He was quite sure his right leg had a hairline fracture. The fact that the medical nanites had not already repaired it meant there were more pressing medical needs to be dealt with. He'd have been concerned by this but the sound of straining metal and popping rivets reminded him that what was left of his ship was hurting too.

"How long until the new power systems come online?" He gasped thru pain-gritted teeth.

The AI did not respond immediately. Mike became concerned.  The sound of ripping metal reverberated through what was left of his ship. The floor shook so badly that had he been able to stand he would have fallen. The excessive gravity and his battered body had him seeing stars and fighting to remain conscious. 

Finally Cindy, the AI
, responded. Her voice sounded metallic and even more synthetic than normal.

"
Power systems powering up in fifty-three seconds
.
Section twelve has been compromised. There is extensive collateral damage to sections eleven and thirteen. Structural integrity in both sections will fail in the next thirty seconds
."

"How many crew in those sections?"

"
There are ten revivable members of the crew in those sections, as well as Sassy.
"

Sassy was the black and white ship's cat. He had come onboard as a stray kitten while the ship was being built. After months of failed attempts to corral the cat, the
crew had given up and accepted the feline as a defacto member of the crew. It was silly but Mike was momentarily overcome;
not Sassy too
.

Suddenly the
gravity compensators powered up and the bridge illumination resumed at 50 percent. Everywhere the sound of systems coming back online filled the bridge with a familiar but long absent technological cacophony. The sudden reduction of excessive gravity made Mike momentarily light-headed. There was no way fifty-three seconds had passed.

Cindy answered the Captain's unasked question.
"
Structural integrity at 68 percent and climbing.  Fusion reactor coming online in thirty-two seconds. An external power system is currently supplying 14.1 megajoules to the ship's systems
."

"Sections
eleven and thirteen?"

"
Neither section is in immediate danger. Section twelve is being restored. One crew member was irreparably damaged by the implosion.
"

One dead. That meant two survived. He hated the math that reduced men to mere numbers
but he had been lucky. "Open a channel to whoever is on that rescue ship."

"
Unable to comply.
"

"Why?"

"My linguistic database is offline. The rescue craft is of alien construction and employs an unfamiliar communication protocol."
Cindy replied.

***

"This is the flight deck. Welcome onboard prospecting shuttle
Honey Dipper One
. We hope your flight with us is a pleasant one. Please be advised our trip through the dense atmosphere will be a tad bumpy. Motion sickness bags are available for your convenience in the overhead compartment. If you should feel the need to use one of our air sickness bags please do not return it to the compartment as this makes the trip unpleasant for subsequent travelers. Again thank you for traveling with us and please think of us again the next time your travel plans take you some place you shouldn't go." Civilian Captain Ricky Valen grinned at his co-pilot as he toggled off the intercom.

Commodore Cat Kimbridge, who was currently serving as the shuttle's co-pilot, just shook her head. Ricky was as
irreverent as they came. She supposed that's why she had taken a liking to him. That and the fact that many moons ago he had been the one to discover her stasis chamber on Mars and in essence 'rescue her' some fifty-odd years after her first death on the Red Planet.

"Why '
Honey Dippe
r
’
?'"

His grin got even wider. "Have you seen the crap I have to fly this baby through?"

Cat toggled her comm online. "
Yorktown
, this is..." she glanced at Ricky, whose self-satisfied smile threatened to breakhis face,
"…
Honey Dipper One
. Our boards are Green. Requesting permission for departure."

Lt
. 'Ziggy' Zimmerman responded with a lightly veiled chuckle. "Roger
Honey Dipper One
. You are cleared for departure. Good hunting Commodore.
Yorktown
out."

***

Rasta-Tckner signaled his main computer to continue feeding power to the alien craft. His internal sensors showed several sections of the ship were actively reconfiguring themselves. Many sections had a breathable atmosphere.  He had to check his sensors twice. Apparently this amazing race seemed to have mastered gravity shielding technology. The effective gravity within the craft was only 60 percent of what his people considered normal.

He grabbed his
portable medical kit and carefully pulled the helmet down on his encounter suit. His chitinous exoskeleton could easily handle conditions within the alien craft, buthe would need protection from the crushing atmospheric pressure outside the shi
p–
not to mention bionic support for walking in this gravity. He didn't know if his medical computer was going to be of assistance given the probable differences in physiology between his race and the aliens, but what he could offer was the one universal need of all intelligent creatures. He could offer hope.

He wished his small
craft had been fitted with an airlock but such was not the case. He popped open the cowling and exited the cabin. The surface of this world was harsh and completely alien. The thick atmosphere was tinted yellow and was almost like walking through standing water.

The servos in his encounter suit
whirled as they struggled to compensate for the intense gravity of this nest world. His main legs extended to spread his weight out. He approached the alien craft in just a few steps. It was obvious from an exterior inspection of the ship that much of this section was uninhabitable. It was also obvious that this was only part of a once larger craft. Of course Rasta-Tckner already knew this. The other main section was three
ferels
farther south at the base of small mountain range.

The
damage did provide easy access to the ship proper. It appeared to Rasta-Tckner that these people, whatever their physiology, must be somewhat larger than his species. Even in his encounter suit he fit in the alien ship's corridor with plenty of room to spare.

He approached an airtight door.
As he debated how to get past it, the corridor behind him was suddenly sealed by another airtight door that had been embedded in a recessed panel in the wall. He was now in a sealed tube not unlike a pupa gestation cell. He started to panic. A red light flashed on the door in front of him. The period of the flashes slowed and then finally stopped, at which point the light changed to green. The door in front of him opened. It was then that he realized the atmospheric density had greatly diminished.

Rasta-Tckner checked his
encountersui
t’
s sensors. The atmospheric pressure was well within survivable limits. In fact the partial pressure of oxygen was rising to suitable levels as well. If he were a suspicious creature, and he was, he would suspect the masters of this ship knew he was here.

***

"
The visitor is now in corridor C3. I have re-pressurized the six surrounding rooms. The partial pressure of O
2
in each room increases by 5 percent sequentially,"
the
Heidman's
AI, Cindy reported.

"Great! Let's see which room it prefers
; that will give us a baseline for their physiology."

Captain Mike Jeffries leaned forward in his command chair. Medical nanites had repaired his leg. Cindy estimated it would be another couple of hours before it was safe to
revive the first of his remaining crew. This was OK with him because what he had to do next was best done without witnesses.

The ships main
power systems had come online ten minutes ago and the transformation was startling. The advanced nanite systems were literally rebuilding the ship from the ground up. With the right raw materials, enough energy, and adequate time they could make the ship space worthy again. 

Time
though. That was the key
, he thought. The
Heidman
had been attacked. Most of his crew killed or missing. His best friend had died in section twelve. He was angry. He wanted nothing more than to exact a pound of flesh in retribution but vengeance would have to wait.  The overriding question was 'why.' 'Why were they attacked,' and 'would they be attacked again?' This 'thing,' this 'creature' in corridor C3, had the answers.

Because of the damage to his
ship's AI, he might not be able to talk with his visitor but he could damn well get his answers through other means, and if somewhere along the line he got his pound of flesh... so much the better.

***

Captain Ricky Valen jogged the handle of the old fashion joystick he preferred to use when flying his mining shuttle,
Honey Dipper One
. It was his running gag that every time he flew her he gave her a new name. When asked he would simply say he liked to keep the relationship fresh. In truth he knew this craft inside and out. He truly believed he could feel a loose bolt in engineering through the subtle feedback in the joystick.

As he nursed the craft closer to Kepler-47b he kept a close eye on the approach vector.
Entering an atmosphere as dense as Uranus was a tricky business. Even the best ablative shielding would be hard-pressed to withstand the type of atmospheric heating that would occur if their approach was too fast. Unfortunately the excessive gravity of a world like this meant that even a slow moving vessel would face four and a half gravities of acceleration on the way down.   The only real option was to use a powered descent. At the same time, there was a lot of energy moving around in an atmosphere this dense. By comparison, flying through the wall of a category five hurricane would seem tame.

He had his onboard computer plot a course through the relatively
dead air in the eye of the largest storm he could find. To the untrained observer aiming deliberately for the largest storm might seem foolhardy, but Ricky knew it would give them hundreds of kilometers of clean descent.

His attention was so focused on nailing the
approach vector he failed to see a shift in the planet's single ring; a shift that mirrored in many ways the earlier shift of the larger asteroid belt orbiting Kepler 47. It was only when the Commodore leaned forward in her seat and said "What the..." that Ricky saw the cloud of ultra-small ships approaching their position en masse. 

He
quickly altered the course of the shuttle, but the swarm shifted to follow.

"This is going to get
bumpy," and he swore as he dove the shuttle towards the outer wall of the storm they had entered. His hope was the resulting turbulence would throw off these would be attackers, for he had no doubt that they were indeed being attacked. The wind speeds were off the charts and the ship was buffeted roughly.

"I'm not sure I'm going to be able to hold this thing together."

"LET ME," Cat yelled as she reached her hand towards the control panel. Immediately a silver mass of Heshe nanites flowed from her fingers and established high speed interconnects with the shuttle's systems. 

Cat took
direct control of the shuttle's systems. Her Heshe supplied internal encounter unit was in fact a computer of immense power and sophistication. Its AI, Cal, functioned at a level that far and away exceeded even the best of human technology. She accessed that resource now.

"
Cal, I need you to take control of this ship. Tie into the external sensors and find us a path of least resistance down to the plane
t’
s surface; as close as you can to the
Heidman
wreckage while avoiding those ships that are pursuing us."

Cal acknowledged the
command and began a series of maneuvers that even Cat, with her Heshe enhanced reflexes, would never have been able to match. She yelled above the escalating din, "EVERYONE, into your high pressure suits... NOW!"

As the others scrambled into their protective suits
, Cat watched the sensor display of the approaching swarm. Ricky had been right to edge the shuttle into the storm wall. The smaller ships were having a heck of a time dealing with the buffeting winds. What amazed her though was their single-minded determination. The little ships were being bashed into one another with often catastrophic results, and yet they continued to pursue the shuttle with little regard for their individual safety.