Crash Course On Heroism Ch. 05

The idea for this one comes from Moonwing.

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Chapter 5: Passing Muster

More days passed, and with them more scouting. And more rescues. Frequent, often daily rescues.  Whatever The Enemy was, they were busy. Although I never saw them, I knew there had to be other spacecraft working around this place. They had other non-locals here recovering after all. And they’d rescued me. It was with a sense of unease that I noticed something during one of those rescues. When I dropped off the victim, the Mu unit who took charge of them was noticeably smaller than One Seven. To my inexperienced eyes, immature. The room being used was closer to the end of the hall than the beginning. If that meant what I thought it meant, that was really bad.

Alpha One was losing. They were running out of ability to care for people faster than the Enemy was running out of ways to make sapient lives miserable. Or short.

I didn’t go to the War College, my specialty didn’t lie in combat, tactics, or grand strategy. If I ever spoke up around generals, it was to say “please take your seats and buckle your harnesses for jump to Lightspeed.” But even I knew that when you were in a losing position, keeping on the same track would not end well. Not for nothing, most of these victims were Humans, too. I was rather fond of that species, not the least of which was because it included me. One plus one, you get two. We had to change what we were doing. Quickly.

“What’s on your mind, James?”

My reverie ended with a near-audible pop. I was in my room. Thinking about the incomplete report in front of me. And I wasn’t alone. Mariah had healed up well, and my resolve to not accept her payment of gratitude with her body was getting harder to stick to by the day. The lank blonde hair now shone in lustrous waves, her skin smooth and no longer creasy, the hints of a lush figure under the hospital blankets more than delivered upon once she was back in a skinsuit. Oh, and now that she was up on her feet again, she’d gotten a start to repaying her stay by coming on missions with me as a shockingly effective sensor tech.

I caught myself before I drifted back out into a very different reverie than I’d just been in. “Just trying to think forward. We’ve been at base for a couple of days now. That probably means the next mission’s probably coming soon. And like usual, we’re going to be behind the power curve.”

She sighed. “So you’ve been thinking the same thing as me, huh? These guys aren’t going to change. I’m not sure if they even can on their own.”

I shrugged. “It might be why they’re enlisting people like us.”

“Maybe. But that means they aren’t thinking like us. I’ve put in the coordinates of every rescue I know about to a local database on my laptop, and every time I add one the statistical regressions come back out narrower. If the next strike is in one of three specific star systems, I might be able to pinpoint the next one before they send us there.”

THAT got my attention. “I don’t even know where to start with that! How did you even… get the idea?”

She had a wry look on her face. “I literally do it with everything else on my job. The technique helped me locate samples and ores, or project where hazards might be if we had enough prep time and data. As soon as I pulled up a map and started plotting points, it looked like there might be a pattern.”

“Good thinking. Seriously.” I tried to ignore her blush. Also seriously. “Mind pulling it up to let me see? I might have some insight. Extra points of view.”

She got halfway through logging in before there was a knock at my door. Alpha Seven waited a few polite seconds before walking in.

Hopefully you two are rested enough. The sensors have detected another incident, they will need a rescue.

“Yes, ma’am. Where are we headed?” I was already standing, walking to my little closet to grab the go bag. After the worker units almost disposed of it last time they were cleaning up the ship, I decided I wouldn’t leave it in there anymore.

There are a trio of stars close to each other out on one of the southern galactic arms. Two yellow, the target is a red dwarf. The victim is in an empty stretch of space relatively close to the star, in an elliptical orbit that may bring them into lethal range unless their shielding is far better than it should be.

I looked back at her, but then noticed something just past her. Mariah was looking at me, and nodded. Her look was serious, her eyebrows furrowed. Her meaning was perfectly clear. The target location was one of the three she had been hoping to see. We might be going into this one with the same mission parameters as before, but the next time we flew there would be no such limitations. We would be able to anticipate things, and perhaps stop this before anyone else had to become a victim.

“Alright, we’ll launch right away. I assume that more precise location data is already loaded?”

It will be by the time you launch.

Oh, so this was FRESH info. Mariah and I started jogging down the hallways towards the hangar. We didn’t really speak along the way. Half because she needed to save her breath, but half because none was really needed. We knew what needed to be done and who needed to do it. Any further talk could wait until we were in warp space en route to the fairly distant destination. Like most places around the base, the hangar was several twists and turns away but we knew the route by now. Before long the hallway opened up, and the large bay was before us. My ship was swarming with ant-like worker units as they scurried to and fro to get it prepped for launch. My eyes had, the first couple of times I saw this, vastly overestimated how long they’d take to be set. Now I could see that it would be less than five minutes before I could hit the ignition.

The rear hatched opened, the humanoid top half of Computer’s naga-like form peeked out to look in our direction. “Sir, mission data has been uploaded, guidance systems are locked in to the target destination.”

Mariah and I got to the ship and squeezed past her to get inside. “Good. Plug in and prepare for launch… uh, who are you?”

The shock wore off quickly as the woman scurrying around the living room’s monitors stopped what she was doing and came over to us. It was easy to remember her, after all. Not too many attractive women with bright blue skin and long black hair in skinsuits that matched their skin tone almost exactly. The existence of the Shihiniri (that wasn’t exactly how to say it, but it was the closest Human tongues could get to an acceptable-for-them nickname) reportedly set off multifaction warfare in academic, religious, and philosophical halls of study across Humanity’s domain. Including at least five recorded fistfights. Shihiniri bodies were configured so closely to Human ones, in fact, that they were sexually compatible with minimal effort. Thankfully not enough to be fertile. Something which I had, in fact, tested. It helped that their physical builds had a much narrower range of expression, and that range tended to be something out of the wet dreams of horny teenagers. This particular wet dream had been the target of my third or fourth rescue flight, and had recovered very quickly under the care of the Mu units.

She reached out her hand to shake mine. “You must be James!” Her accent was an odd one, coming from a mouth more used to pronouncing the sibilants and aspirated tones of her home tongue. “You can call me Sani. The workers told me you could use a dedicated engineer for some of your missions?”

I took her hand and shook it. “Hopefully not, but given the kinds of areas we’re flying in that’s always a possibility. Welcome to the crew, this is Mariah, and we can talk more once we’re in flight since this one seems urgent. Think we can hit mid-band Warp or should I stay to the lowers?”

All of us rushed inside, the door hissing closed behind us. Sani kept walking towards the cockpit. “If you think it’s that bad, maybe an hour or two. I wouldn’t want to test the stabilizers more than that until I get a chance to verify my checks and the information they’ve been telling me.”

“That’s about what I thought.” I slid smoothly into the pilot’s seat. “Computer, load in a flight plan with one hour in the middle bands. That should be enough to get us there before we’re expected.”

“Yes, sir. Flight plan prepared.”

Mariah was silent during this exchange, outwardly focused on bringing up the scanners and other scientific systems. I knew what she was thinking, though. If we got there before we were expected, there was a significant chance that we would find something there besides what we were rescuing. That something would be very likely to not want us there, and there wasn’t a whole lot we could do about it if that was the case other than turn tail and run. Oh, and pray they couldn’t get to hyper as fast as us, since if they could they might just follow us all the way home.

The hangar lights went red, the local cue for anyone in the bay to get somewhere that wasn’t about to be exposed to hard vacuum. And my cue to power up the drive from standby to launch profiles. “Secure for launch. Ladies, are you ready with all systems online?”

“Ready.” Mariah quickly answered.

“Strapped in, readouts good,” Sani followed.

“Prepared for launch,” the Computer finished.

The lights in the hangar shifted from red to blue, the pathing lights blazed, and ahead of us the gate to open space opened. It was time. “Go for launch. Firing engines in 3… 2… 1… launch!”

No matter how many times I did it, the feeling of being kicked in the chest by the forces of physics was just never something you could really get used to. The acceleration continued until we were well past the gate, our trajectory then skewing to the left and upwards under Computer’s guidance until the stars went black. We had entered Lightspeed, and mere minutes later the darkness was itself shattered. Traceries and jagged sparks of light glittered at the limits of my vision, the telltale signs of the stabilizing field that allowed a tiny ship like mine to remain coherent in Warp. A moment or two later, the acceleration eased. We could walk and talk again.

Sani was the first to do so, unbuckling and standing, her movements indicating much less cheer than when she’d greeted us. “Alright. Now that we’re on course, care to explain what’s going on? That kind of haste was not remotely needed, and neither of you so much as gave my chest a second glance. That is not normal for Humans, even pair-bonded ones.”

“She isn’t my wife, we just have a second objective.” I tried to be brief as I explained our suspicions, but even so it took a while. Even supported by imagery that Mariah uploaded to show her.

“Let me get this straight. You know something’s killing people, your mission is to rescue them, but since that isn’t good enough you are trying to take the opportunity to rush in to see if you can get there faster, where the thing that wants to kill us might still be.”

I nodded. “That’s the gist of it.”

“Did either of you ever stop to consider that this ship is unarmed? At least, unless you managed to hide something from both me and the rest of the workers.” Her face betrayed little emotion, but her tone was inescapably sarcastic.

I shrugged. “It’s also fast, and we know what’s coming. I’m going to be depending on Mariah getting as many scans as possible immediately after we drop out of lightspeed into real space, and I’m going to need you analyzing what we get from it along with us so that we get a third set of eyes. Especially since you’re knowledgeable about spacecraft.”

Sani’s left hand tapped against her hip, a gesture somewhat analogous to a Human sighing in frustration and somewhat more like a facepalm. “I see.” She clearly wished she didn’t. “If that’s the plan and we’re already on our way, I’d better get ready.”

She walked out of the cockpit, though to do what I wasn’t sure. Mariah leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. “You think she’ll be useful?”

“I think she can be, and will be, the question is whether that’ll be in time for this particular mission. Now, we have about forty-five minutes before we drop into more normal speed bands and a few hours after that before coming out into real space. If everything else is ready, we can relax for a bit.”bit.”

We emerged into the living area to see Sani staring at the large screen there, taking in everything she could find about the schematics and materials of the ship. The slack jaw and limp arms would have indicated incomprehension in a Human. Shihiniri who looked like that were in the depths of extreme focus, literally using as little physical power as possible to save it for their brains. I took it as a good sign, and another that she only left the state a long while later to come to the cockpit and buckle in for our transition back down to lightspeed. Her station now had similar schematics pulled up with live readouts.

“Everyone get ready. We are going to come out of lightspeed in about 30 seconds at near-maximum safe speed. The first moments in realspace will be the most important. As much power to sensors as possible, once we’re stable we can redirect to other necessities. Seal helmets.” The hisses of pressurized protection met my ears as Sigma Four formed my own clear helmet. Descending to realspace in 3… 2… 1…”

Transitions between what the body feels as “real” and that which is “other” are never pleasant in either direction. When I asked one time, long ago, why returning to real space at high speed was still so shocking when I should be feeling relief, my instructor asked me if I’d ever had a dislocated joint set back into place. I hadn’t, but the winces of two of my classmates told me all I needed to know. All of us felt it as we transitioned through the barrier between unreality and our own home, and every sensor on the ship lit up simultaneously.

“Two signatures!” Mariah was practically screaming through her body’s worst attempts to send her unconscious. “Fresh lightspeed transition outbound! One ship in real space, status in distress!”

Shani sounded off. “Distressed ship has power, leaking significant atmosphere. Engines lit and attempting to self-stabilize, estimated time without assistance six minutes. Significant hull damage, the stress might rip it apart.”

I kicked on the negative acceleration, trying to match trajectories as well as I could. “Send a message and tell them to slow their attempts! Time to intercept eleven minutes from my mark… mark. Two minutes more to match vector.”

“Radar pickup! Either debris or micrometeors in the immediate vicinity of the victim.”

Computer’s calm voice came in. “Mariah’s statement is correct. That will make it extremely hazardous to dock or perform standard extravehicular rescue operations.”

Sani tapped a few things on her screen. “Our hull should be plenty to stand up to that, just not the docking bridge. Makes this harder. We either need a way to do this armored or get them clear of the debris field.”

We fell quiet as we made our approach. Although we did not get any return messages, someone over there either got what we sent them or else had the same idea. Their attempts to slow their rotation lost about half of their desperate power, the strain it put on the hull easing off with it. They’d be steady by the time we got there. Barely.

An idea struck. “Computer, I’m assuming our tractor beams will not work for this?”

“No, sir. Relative mass forbids.”

“Okay. How about physical tethers? They might outmass us, but we have enough thrust for that as long as we take our time.”

Computer let out a beep, the tone that meant she was processing a statement and response. “Our tethers will work for this purpose as long as we do not exceed 0.6g of attempted acceleration. They will need to be secured to stable hard points.”

Sani interjected. “That’s a standard Human light freight model. You want the base of the wings, or the engine mountings if they cut power to them in the next few minutes. Why do you even put wings on spacecraft? It’s not like they’re doing anything”

“We got used to how things handle in atmosphere and stuck with it for the last two thousand years, but now’s not the time for debates. Hitting turnaround in 3… 2… 1… mark.” Maneuvering in zero gravity is a funny thing. You don’t lose any speed naturally, so when you need to start slowing down you pretty much just have to flip the ship around and accelerate the other way. The transition is the kind of thing you want to be strapped in for. Thankfully also a brief one.

“Sir, the tethers will not be able to hit targets that small if fired from a safe distance. They will need to be attached directly.” Computer was still working on solutions.

Mariah shook her head. “The same hazards that make it dangerous for the ship to get close are going to apply. Whoever hooks those up… and that’s probably you with the pilot training, James… needs protection.”

Computer’s face couldn’t really show emotion, but it didn’t need to. “Oh, sir, this is the perfect time! Ride there inside of me and we can secure the tethers together!”

The silence that followed that particular proclamation was… awkward. And the heck of it is, I couldn’t think of any alternatives. Sani might be the engineer, but my training was much more practical and focused for this task. And I couldn’t think of any other way to stay safe doing it. A minute or two later, I relented. “Alright, we’ll do it your way. Ladies, I’m going to pull up a couple hundred meters behind their craft. Send them a message that we are doing so, no responses yet but they’re acting like they know we’re here. No sense asking for accidents. “

Both acknowledged and got to work. Sani got up and ran to the utility hold, preparing the strongest tethers we had available. Messages got sent, and I pulled us into position before matching velocity. They’d stabilized. Importantly, their engines had also cut out shortly after they did so. That meant it was time for the awkward part. Computer moved to the airlock much more quickly than her snakelike body looked like it could. Once velocity was synced up I didn’t need to do anything else. We might not be QUITE perfect, but the drift would not be significant over the course of thirty minutes.

A big part of pilot school was learning when “good enough” was actually good enough… and, more specifically, when it wasn’t.

By the time I got to the airlock myself, Computer was waiting. Her torso was hinged open, her arms out to the sides. Her face was also quite eager, a fact that I tried to ignore. “Okay, Computer, anything I need to know for controls?”

“No, sir, Sigma Four will help you interface. Just move your arms and my limbs will follow your intent.”

“Alright. Hold still as I climb in.” Her open chest compartment wasn’t exactly conveniently placed, being a bit too high for me to just step into, but it wasn’t all that much of a problem. I clambered up a bit awkwardly, got turned around so I could look out of the chest compartment, and let my feet drop in until they felt like they touched a floor of some kind. As I settled back into it, Computer’s insides seemed to press softly at my body, engulfing me. The chest compartment closed, and it was dark.

A second or two later, there was light once more as I could see forward. “Yes! Just like that, sir!” Computer’s tone was… not professional. I, again, resolved to ignore that for now.

I attempted to reach for the button to open the inner door of the airlock. My arm didn’t move. Hers did, and her large clawed hands hit the button cleanly. Neat. Creepy, but neat. I tried to walk to the airlock chamber, we slithered forward. The inner door cycled shut behind us. “Computer, is your pilot chamber vacuum proof?”

“Yes, sir. Especially with Sigma four helping. I would not suggest a course of action that would result in your death.”

“Got it. Alright, upon exit we are going to proceed to the front of the ship then launch towards target, holding tethers. Easy correction if we miss. We return along the lines for safety.”

“Yes sir.

As much to my surprise as anyone else’s, the initial steps of the plan went off without a hitch. We were about five hundred meters behind the target, so once I jumped I had a lot of time to quietly contemplate the situation. The engines had been cut, but not quite soon enough to keep me from roasting if I landed on them. I would be lightly tugging the ropes and flailing in hilarious-looking but CRUCIAL ways to adjust my trajectory towards the wing joints. They were maneuvers I’d practiced literally a thousand times. Just never executed in moments with “I could burn alive and take the hope for thousands of lives with me” as the stakes.

Any worries I had turned out to be unjustified. I was accurate to within a couple of meters of where I wanted to be. Or, well, one of the four places I wanted to be. One tether secured via a magnetic grapple, a short jump, another secure tether, then two more jumps. A pause to let some fine dust bounce off of the armor, and I was getting back to the ship. This time, with four guide lines, I had much less to worry about. Really, as long as NOT THINKING THOSE THOUGHTS THANK YOU!

Computer and I landed back on my ship, and it was a matter of only a moment to get back to the airlock to cycle inside. We walked forward together, and I could feel the insides of Computer’s inner chamber rhythmically pressing against my full body. It reminded me of something. Something that I also really didn’t want to think about. “Computer, open the chest hatch. I need to get out.”

“You can stay if you want to, sir.” Her inner surfaces clenched, almost possessively.

I found that I really did NOT want to. “No time for that. Let me out.”

“Yes, sir.” Much more slowly than when she had been inviting me to get in, the compartment opened again.

It took a bit more effort to climb my way out, and more after that to get used to how my legs worked again, but I was nothing if not adaptable to new situations. How I’d handle this one in the future, I’m not sure, but still. I walked into the cockpit and slid into my seat carefully, buckling back in. “Sani, the power we can apply is about a half-G of accel, right?”

“Yes, I’ll monitor the tethers.” Her blue brow was furrowed as she pulled up the readouts.

“Good. Kicking that on… now.” The feel of our weight shifted a bit as the gravity plates adapted. Half a gravity was well within their ability to negate completely. “Mariah, have you finished you own analysis?”

“Yes. The outbound trace is heading in the exact direction I thought it would. There is a planetary system a few light years away from here, a yellow star orbited by a few dead rocks and gas giants plus some more interesting features.”

“Hang on, I recognize that description. It’s out on one of the spiral arms, right?”

“Yes. Not much there from my side, it got stripped of just about everything remotely valuable and abandoned a long time ago.”

I thought hard. “One of the worlds there used to be habitable, it’s an object lesson of over-mining now. But what do they think they’re doing with a dead world that Humanity abandoned?”

Mariah shrugged. “I can’t even begin to guess, but if you are this determined to stop them then we’ll find out in about four and a half days.”