Dark Vengeance (27 page)

“Oh for Pete’s sake, Adrian!”

“There he is again. No matter where we go in the galaxy, Pete always seems to be there.”

“You did serve as Captain, Rowland?” asked Elachia.

R.J. rolled his eyes.

I stood, smirked, and took my empty plate in hand but before I could even turn, the door slid open and the Yeoman charged in to take it from me with a scolding look. She gathered up the other’s dishes and dashed out. It made me laugh.

I smiled again at my two closest friends and left them to finish their coffee and immodest tall tale. In the corridor, I asked the wall for “bridge,” and a map appeared leading to a nearby elevator. The door was open when I got there. The panel request indicator already read “7.”

When the elevator doors opened, someone was waiting. I found myself staring at an image that was difficult to believe. I was so stunned it took me a few moments to form the words, “Perk? Perk Murphy?”

“Oh my God, Adrian!”

We embraced outside the elevator giving no thought to the gesture. This was a man who had passed through hell with me. We had agreed to destroy an enemy by visiting death with them but had somehow, by some miracle, been spared. Perk’s injuries had been so severe he was on inactive duty for a very long time. The last time we were together on the Electra was in sick bay drinking apple juice through straws and grading the fair sex as they passed by the open door.

“You dog, you,” said Perk when we had pulled apart. “So you have inherited this diamond in the sky? Won’t you have bad dreams here? They made you a Captain? My God, I’m sorry I blew off the ceremony in the hanger bay now. I could’ve made some colorful wise cracks to lighten up the moment. I just got in yesterday. I’ve signed on so I’ll be here to keep you in line.”

“You look too good, boy. The last time I saw you we were on Cocoa Beach. You were cutting in on some women passing by. I heard they shipped you off with one of those to Hawaii for recovery.”

“Yeah it’s been way too long, Adrian. We got to get together for a drink to catch up.”

“I’d love to, but apparently there’s a four-foot lady from Enuro who’s got it in for me. I’m sort of sneaking around right now on borrowed time.”

“Oh cripe! You too? I’ve got one of those too! She’s nurse-maiding me through security and weapons systems. I’m trying to make it to the mess hall but it’s iffy. I know she’s looking for me.”

“So when one of us gets a chance at escape he contacts the other one, right?”

“On my honor, Captain. God, that sounds funny.”

He slapped me on the arm and took the elevator, looking back once as the doors closed. I waved and headed for the bridge. Ahead, the threatening red-orange bridge doors with a variety of locks and security access panels seem to evaluate the new stranger approaching. There were no warnings signs about unauthorized entry. None were needed.

As I neared, a security display screen on the wall began rapidly scrolling data. I was only able to catch a single word of it at the very end: “Captain, Electra.” The big doors parted.

Those doors opened to a stunning scene, a luxurious breath of gold carpet, black simulated leather seats within a cascade of colored lights and view screens flashing data and imagery. The bridge was completely foreign to me. The last time I had been on Electra’s bridge it was a double deck with a command balcony overlooking rows of consoles. Now there were three large view screens forward under a low ceiling. The walls were completely covered by light displays and readouts. One continuous control console ran around the circumference of the room on a slightly raised level. At the center of the room was a raised, large, black, heavily-cushioned command seat. Secondary command seats were located on either side with abbreviated control consoles in front of them. Various kinds of indirect overhead lighting highlighted some areas and dimmed others. The floors were plush gold carpet. Additional soft lighting ran completely around the room along the base of the raised portion of floor. The place was alive with light and readouts. The three main view screens displayed calibration data.

There were techs and engineers working. To my right, two of them were leaning over a section of console that had been lifted open and had fiber optic cabling exposed with colors running through it. On my left a lower panel had been removed and a tech was lying on his back with his head inside the panel. As I scanned the area, my image suddenly appeared in the command seat with a female junior-grade lieutenant standing alongside making adjustments of some kind on a tablet.

She was the first to spot me. “Captain on the bridge!”

The two working on my right jumped, looked, and came to attention with a salute. The one on my left banged his head trying to look and then stared trying to see if it was a joke or not. The junior grade lieutenant fumbled her tablet back and forth trying to salute.

Once again it caught me off guard. I quickly made downward motions with both hands, smiled at them and said “As you were.”

There was a long questioning pause that finally dissolved into an ‘okay’ moment.

I stepped down and went to the command seat. The junior grade lieutenant stiffened and said, “Sorry Captain, we can finish the image up now that you’re here. Is there something I can do for you? Would you like me to shut down so you can work with The Chair?”

Her name tag said Cadara. “No, Lieutenant Cadara. Please do not let me interrupt your work. I’m just here to get a feel for the bridge. This isn’t the bridge I remember.”

“Oh no, Sir, not at all. They call it a dash six-hundred series bridge. Most of the monitor points that bridge crew previously needed watch over are now tracked by the central computer. The bridge complement has been reduced from thirty-two people to ten including the Captain. Oh! I’m sorry. You probably know all that.”

“Please continue to educate me, Lieutenant. I’ll let you know when it’s not necessary.”

She began looking back and forth at the image in the chair and me. “Gee, I think we’ve tuned it nicely,” she said. “You couldn’t have visited at a better time, Captain.”

“Glad to be of service, Lieutenant.”

“Well, that’s it, then,” she said and she shut down the imagery system. “The chair is yours, if you like, Sir.”

I stepped up onto the circular platform supporting the chair, turned the seat to face me and sat. The others in the room stopped what they were doing to look as if it were a milestone moment.

For me it was. There were controls at the front of the arm rests flashing yellow and red in the not-ready state. The big view screens were changing their test patterns every so often. My associates on the bridge finally went back to work. They seemed uplifted for some reason. It was a very reassuring atmosphere. For some odd reason, I felt like I could have sat there until Electra was ready to jump to light. I began to relax and swiveled in my seat to look over the rest of the bridge, just in time to find a short, bald, very attractive woman peering over the armrest looking up at me with an impatient are-you-ready look. I had been tracked down and caught. Though I had planned my next visit to be engineering, I was summarily led back to my stateroom where tutoring began. Pama had a short jockey’s crop she kept in one hand and when I did not fully grasp a certain system component she would rap it against the display screen. I feared she would mark the screen hitting it as hard as she did, but since she had no fear whatsoever of captain’s rank, I dared not protest. I was, at least, allowed to have dinner in my cabin while she continued her dissertations, and when bedtime at last came I breathed a long sigh of relief as she disappeared out the door. Sleep was an ample reward to the day, despite her promise to wake me in the morning.

Chapter 17

Shock awoke me. For a moment it seems as though a skull face was looking down at me. I swung over and sat on the side of the bed trying to focus. The only light was a flickering fluorescence from somewhere. My cabin was in complete disarray. There were metal beams collapsed around the room. Torn cables hung from above. Trash was scattered across the floor. I stood and realized I was still wearing the gray flight suit and socks with no shoes, and there was no footwear to be found.

Climbing over the carnage was necessary to get out. Funny, there were strange glowing cobwebs everywhere that had to be brushed out of the way. I had to blindly wipe myself off, fearing something might be crawling on me. An open door on the right was visible in the shadows. It was an oval pressure door that had fallen to the floor, still hanging by one hinge. I worked my way to it, having to stretch over sickly-looking unidentifiable clumps of something on the floor. Wiping away more cobwebs, I made it through the pressure door.

The next chamber had only a single flickering light and was even more macabre. There was a row of tables with bodies covered by white sheets, and beyond a wall filled by square refrigerator doors like the kind used in a morgue.

Even fully awake it was impossible to understand what had happened. This was not the Electra. The superstructure didn’t match. Somehow I had been transported here, and at present my choices were few. The room was beginning to smell bad. The air was too cold. There was another door, closed, not far ahead. I hurried to it. The floor was wet with something. It soaked my socks.

The next door was a slider, opened just a crack with very little light coming through. Just enough space to get my fingers through so it could be pulled back. It took all of my strength but then snapped open wide. What lay beyond brought a flush of relief followed by a new spike of fear.

There were people here. Live ones, or so I thought. But, it took only a second to realize something was very wrong. These people were naked. They had no faces, just heads with no features at all. They were ambling around pointlessly. They had tattoos where a forehead should have been. LF1 was the nearest. Beyond her was LF2, and that series went on and on around the room as each turned my way.

There seemed to be no danger. They considered me one of them. I was allowed to make my way through without interference. The next available door was glass. There were warnings on it reversed on my side. It was locked tight. I was not in the mood to be denied. A metal chair nearby was the perfect key. I took a good position, swung it into the pane, and was rewarded by an explosion of safety glass raining down all around. My faceless associates paid no attention at all.

I had to step gingerly into the very large laboratory on the other side. More cobwebs. Disrupted equipment. In keeping with the macabre setting of the place there were large glass tubes containing embryos at different stages of development, submerged in fluid. They had been there a very long time and were at various stages of decay.

Again, only one other door allowed escape from the place. Double sliding metal doors this time. One side was open the other side closed. Enough space to squeeze through sideways.

It once had been a large luxurious office. Computers, bookshelves, lush furniture, expensive paintings on the wall that were shedding their canvas in pieces. The centerpiece was a very long intricately carved desk in the center. Still seated at it was a doctor in a decrepit white lab coat, stethoscope still hanging on his chest. The doctor, however, was now a skeleton. Although he was seated upright, his head was sagging to one side as the crumbling had begun. For a moment I thought I saw the lower jaw move as though about to speak. I wondered if he still had shoes but decided against it.

This time the next exit was double oak doors with gold-plated knobs.  I hoped I could figure out exactly where I was without spending time with the doctor. I pushed both doors open and found myself in a grand gallery. Cobwebs everywhere. Sculptures on pedestals at points around the room. Other items of art suspended from the domed ceiling. Cobwebs covering all. There was a staircase on the far right leading upward. Alcoves with statues on the left. Huge entrance doors at the far end. At last, exterior doors.

I wove my way through the rubble and spider webs and reached the main doors. They were so large they were heavy to pull open. The vision beyond them was immediately mind boggling. I walked out onto a large balcony with a polished marble floor and a heavily carved marble railing. But the balcony did not overlook a garden, or a seascape, or city. It overlooked the universe. In front of me was the largest black hole I had ever imagined, surrounded by a dense array of galaxies, clusters, and stellar matter, all captured in its current, and being drawn into the black eye at the center. Overhead a dense blanket of stars looked down on the slow destruction. On either side, other galactic designs filled the sky.

By stretching out over the rail I could make out portions of the derelict ship under my feet. It too was slowly on its way into the big black eye. Even from outside I could see it was hopelessly beyond repair. Gas was venting in places. Then I noticed the worst of it.

Slightly below me, a slowly orbiting ring had formed around the dead ship. It took a moment to focus on the floating objects. They were all body parts. Arms, heads, legs with feet, legs without, torsos, hands; so many that they looked almost like a turning platform in space.

I turned away from the sight and took a moment to try to make sense of everything. There seemed to be no easy answer to how or why I had ended up in this bizarre hell. My options seemed equally limited. This ship was beyond repair. Even if a shuttle could be found aboard her, it was doubtful anything could break out of the gravity field of that black hole. That made rescue seem equally unlikely. The outlook seemed to suggest the future would be long, one-sided conversations with the doctor. If there was communication gear still working aboard, even that would have trouble overcoming the big black eye.