Hunting Dog Read online

  “Admiral,” the Archon said in his strangely deep voice, “I am rotating the ship to present our strongest shields to the ejection mass. There will be a forty-three percent increase in RAD exposure for most of the crew during the duration of the maneuver.”

  “Understood.” I tapped my comms for sickbay. “Lori, are you ready? I expect we will be seeing some radiation poisoning coming your way in the next few minutes.”

  “No,” was her immediate response. “But I don’t expect I ever will be so do what you need to do to save the ship, and I’ll clean up the mess down here.”

  I smiled. My wife was one of the most competent officers in the Medical Corps. I had no doubt my people, regardless of their planet of origin, were in the best hands possible.

  My biggest concern was for the J’ni engineers. The J’ni were the most sensitive to the increased radiation. I had previously ordered all of them to head towards medical. They had predictably resisted, but Whiskers joined me in reinforcing my orders. The med-bay had the best shielding on the ship. In addition, my wife would be able to address any medical needs that arose from their exposure that much quicker.

  The deck shifted under my feet, and I quickly pivoted to sit in my command chair.

  “Here we go,” Commander Shelby muttered from her station. “Shields will impact the leading edge of the ejection mass in… three… two…”

  WHHHHUMP!

  Everything went dark for a second as the ship’s AI attempted to shift power to the rear-facing shield. The emergency lights flared into life and a handful of panels overloaded, sending sparks everywhere. A small fire erupted near Shelby, but she activated the fire suppression systems with a professional efficiency; as if this was something she did every day.

  “Power out on all decks below E,” my First Officer reported as she patted out the last of the flames at her station. She shifted to the secondary helm station and quickly reconfigured it for her use.

  “We are being pushed out of the corona,” Mitty announced in what would be some of the only good news we would have for a while.

  Even the emergency lights began to flicker, and the gravity-plating began to fail. This last had the effect of slamming us hard into our seats. The inertia dampers and gravity-plating were essentially one and the same.

  “Divert environmental to the dampeners,” I groaned.

  Fortunately, Mitty had anticipated the order and was already rerouting power. It reduced the g-forces on us to about two, which was almost a walk in the park compared to the six or seven we had been faced with a few moments before.

  I hit the comms for engineering. I needed to know what we had left to work with. Two of our three power generation systems were on the engineering E deck. If we had lost that area of the ship, I doubt we would have survived long enough to wonder about it. As it was, I still wasn’t sure we had.

  2100.1289.8830 Galactic Normalized Time

  The UES Diaspora was finally complete. Her final fittings had occurred while she was on the run. Admiral Riker, the original, sat on a silent bridge. The main view screen was displaying a real-time feed being transmitted from the Sol system care of Captain Ming Xi and the Nimitz.

  In a way, it was fascinating. Humanity only had access to instantaneous FTL communications because of the Ancestors. The Ancestor AI, Arquat, seemed to have taken a personal interest in the well-being of the humans… at least to the extent of aiding their escape.

  The image on the view screen demonstrated in no uncertain terms that there were limits to that aid. Earth was an occupied world, and there did not seem to be much he or anybody else was going to be able to do about it.

  He ordered the recall of the Nimitz. As much as he hated it… it was time to follow his orders. It was time to find a new home

  Chapter 14: Surprised Dog…

  “Whiskers, how are we holding out?”

  “Ay, nah very good Admiral. Half our systems are out, and the others are barely holding the load. We could lose power to the shields at any moment.”

  “Options?”

  “A lot a prayer and more duct tape,” Whiskers answered with a frustrated sigh.

  I nodded. It was pretty much what I had expected to hear.

  “Do what you can, Engineer,” I said. “…and, don’t worry about sparing the duct tape.”

  The fact that we were still being pressed into our seats meant that the CME was still accelerating us. That was both good and bad.

  The faster we moved, the more likely we would be able to escape the sun’s grasp. It also meant it was going to be difficult for the engineering crew to move about and keep critical systems operational.

  In the end, they failed. Our last reactor scrammed, and we were reduced to emergency power. Kind of like running a small city with a car battery. The entire ship shuddered violently. The gravity plating failed. If I hadn’t been strapped into my command chair, there is a good chance, I would have been tossed out of it. Already I could see that Commander Shelby had been thrown from hers.

  “Shields going down!”

  I wasn’t sure who had yelled. I was too busy trying to breathe. I was crushed into my seat with enough force that my lungs purged themselves of air before I even knew what was happening. With the loss of main power, we lost all of our inertial dampening. What had been mildly uncomfortable G-forces suddenly became a life-threatening pressure that could break bones and crush organs.

  I was almost at the point of passing out when the Gilboa II’s forward acceleration petered out. The crushing pressure was replaced with weightlessness and a suddenly quiet bridge. I hadn’t noticed the screeching of tortured metal until it stopped. The only sound now was moaning and the occasional crackle of circuits that were still in the process of shorting out.

  “Status,” I croaked with a voice I barely recognized as my own.

  It took a few moments before I got a response. Shelby sounded about as bad as I felt. Given the way she was holding her arm, I suspected she had a dislocated shoulder.

  “The ship’s computer managed to bring a couple dozen RTGs online. They are not going to be enough for propulsion, but they will give us partial shielding and limited environ… uggg… mental.” She stopping speaking as her face twisted in agony.

  My First Officer gasped as gravity plating, was restored. Her arm was definitely dislocated. Fortunately for her, the RTGs, which were really just small thermoelectric generators powered by decay of some Plutonium-238, didn’t provide enough juice to fully energize the grav-plating.

  I unbuckled the safety strap that kept me in my command chair. I was guessing the effective gravity was no more than twenty percent Earth normal. It made moving around a lot easier but was still pretty light.

  I shuffled my way over to the Commander. Shuffling was the preferred method of walking in low-g environments.

  She turned to face me. Her face was tight. She was soldiering her way through the pain. While I applauded her grit, I also knew it was going to impact her efficiency. Right now, I figured we were going to need everybody at their best.

  “We need to fix that shoulder,” I said as kindly as I could. In all honesty, I sounded pretty rough myself. It would not surprise me to learn that I had some internal bleeding going on. I could taste blood in my mouth, and I suspect it might be coming from my lungs.

  Shelby set her teeth. “I understand sir. Let’s get this done.”

  The key to reseating a dislocated shoulder is to let a professional do it. Sadly, that was not always an option. In that situation, pulling slow and steady to apply traction to the arm generally allows the dislocation to slip back into place.

  Having undergone said procedure several times myself, I knew it was painful. I don’t know if Shelby had any prior experience with dislocations, but my guess was, she had already figured out that this was going to be unpleasant. She had placed a section of her seat harness in her mouth to bite down on.

  I set my knee gently against her side just below the shoulder and began to pull f
irmly.

  Her eyes widened, and tears began to flow, but a moment later there was a soft pop, and the shoulder moved into place. The relief on her face was immediate.

  Her arm was still tender and would be for a while, but still, she managed to offer a weak ‘thank you.’

  “No worries,” I said as I scanned the bridge. There seemed to be a few other bumps and bruises, but Shelby seemed to have gotten the worst of it. I pulled a neuro-block patch from an emergency med kit.

  Shelby unzipped her uniform top and pulled it down just enough for me to apply the patch.

  “Just because you aren’t feeling any pain in that shoulder doesn’t mean there isn’t tissue damage. Try not use it any more than you have to.”

  I scanned the bridge one more time. Most of the stations seemed to be dead, but that was to be expected. With so many systems out, I knew that our situation was not good. No power. No shields. I suspected that most of the crew had already taken a serious dose of radiation.

  “I need a systems status, people.”

  The news was every bit as bad as I had expected. Engineering was working to bring one of the reactors back online. The good news there was that they had all gone into automatic shutdown before they were seriously damaged. Bringing them back online was simply a matter of time. According to Whiskers, it would take his team a little longer than normal. Many of them were pretty banged up. Knowing what the bridge was like, I could only imagine what had happened on the engineering decks.

  Astrometrics confirmed we were moving away from the sun at a fast-enough clip that it was unlikely we would be pulled back in before we got our engines back online.

  Half of our sun-facing shield emitters and sensor bubbles were fried. I had the ship rotate so that we had better shielding facing the sun. It meant we would have a limited view of what was in front of us as again… half of our sensors on the now forward-facing side were toast.

  “Launch a pair of sensor drones,” I ordered. “Feed their telemetry into the ship’s data net. I’d hate to run into something unexpected while we are blind.”

  “Launching now,” Lieutenant Michaels reported from her station.

  “Sensor data coming in now,” Shelby confirmed.

  “We are clear of the sun’s corona,” Mitty added. “I’m working with Astrometrics to get a fix on our position.”

  I nodded. It would be good to know where we were, but I had more immediate concerns. The ship had taken a hell of a beating. While it was true that the Gilboa, especially this iteration, was quite capable of repairing itself even without access to a space dock, we would need both time and raw materials to complete the repairs.

  I had a sneaky feeling in the pit of my gut that one or both were going to be hard to come by.

  “Scan this system,” I ordered. “Are we alone? Do we have time to lick our wounds and make repairs?”

  Michaels worked his board for a few seconds before answering.

  “There are sixteen visible planet-size bodies out to sixty-five AU. The orbital motion of the three innermost worlds would suggest at least one Goldilocks planet on the far side of the sun.”

  “What about ion trails or signs of technological activity?”

  “Nothing yet, Admiral,” the Lieutenant answered.

  Mitty stepped down to my chair. To be honest, his organic shell looked terrible. I knew his cybernetic brain was likely fine, but I had never seen so much blood-matted fur… or whatever it was that covered his body.

  “Admiral, it will take several minutes for the sensors to construct a detailed scan of this system. I would recommend proceeding on the assumption that we are not alone until such a time as we can be sure.”

  “Way ahead of you, Mitty.” I looked him over once more. “Are you OK? You look like something the cat dragged in.”

  My friend made that curious twitching motion with his snout. Over the years, I had concluded that the nose-twitch thing had a variety of situationally significant meanings. In this particular case, the twitching may have been related to my reference to a cat, or the fact that I noticed something was wrong, or perhaps he was startled that I would comment on his appearance in the middle of a crisis. You could never really tell with little grey alien otter thingies… even cybernetic ones.

  “I hurt in more places than I previously knew existed,” he said finally. “However, I have blocked most of my pain receptors. I will function adequately until this body can be repaired.”

  Must be nice, I thought to myself. Normally, I would have responded with some witty retort, but my comm beeped before I could think of anything.

  I wasn’t near my command chair, so I tapped my wrist comm. This meant I didn’t have a display that showed me who I would be speaking with.

  “Riker here.”

  “JD, we have a problem. It’s serious.”

  The voice was that of the ship’s chief physician and my wife. When your chief medical officer calls and says ‘there is a problem, and it’s serious’… well, that’s just never a good sign. I love my wife dearly, but I had this horrible feeling she was about ruin my day by confirming my worst fears.

  I decided to play it chipper in the hopes that maybe things weren’t as bad as all that. I should have known better.

  “We have a number of serious problems,” I said into the arm of my command chair. “I’m guessing yours has to deal with the number of rads we’re eating right now.”

  “JD…,” she paused without continuing.

  I had one of those sinking feelings… like the ones you get when you mom tells you the dog died. “The news is bad… as in really bad,” I guessed out loud. “How long do we have to get the shields back online at full strength?”

  I heard a weak sob. For the record, that’s also one of those things that’s never a good sign.

  “It’s already too late. Yes, the ship’s hull is shielding us reasonably well right now, but for a few seconds… for a few seconds… the levels spiked well beyond sixteen-hundred rads,” my wife whispered.

  “How much of the ship was exposed to those levels?” I needed to know who was at risk.

  “JD, those were the levels in Sickbay.”

  Now the true impact of what she was saying hit home. Sickbay was the most heavily shielded section of the ship. Not even the bridge was as well protected.

  Bottom line… it seemed I had well and truly killed my entire crew.

  The good news was my good buddy Arty had a plan for that.

  2100.1289.8833 Galactic Normalized Time

  The AI known as Ish-Boshet watched in amazement as the Human vessel fought its way out of the sun’s embrace. How the vessel had located the Mahanaim homeworld and abode of both Ish-Boshet and Eshbaal was beyond its ability to calculate. Long-range sensors indicated the vessel was heavily damaged and the crew was dying from radiation exposure. A small recovery team would be sent out to drag the lifeless hull back to Mahanaim Prime. Perhaps some answers might be gleaned by a forensic analysis.

  Chapter 15: Dancing Dog…

  “Whiskers, what’s the good word, buddy?”

  It had been six hours since we emerged from the ship’s corona. Tests had confirmed that with the singular exception of the Taserite ambassadors, the entire crew had received a fatal dose of radiation. The slug-like race had two advantages going into our little adventure. Their quarters were heavily reinforced to accommodate the high atmospheric pressures that they called comfortable. Second, they had evolved in an environment that was exposed to much higher radiation levels than your average hairless ape.

  The reality was… given the amount of rads, we had taken and were still taking… Mitty and the Tas were the only ones walking away from this one.

  “A wee bit longer Admiral. Maybe five minutes.”

  “Understood. Riker out.”

  I closed the channel to engineering and opened one to the med-bay. The holographic image of my chief engineer was replaced with that of my wife. In my eyes, she would always be beautiful, but I had to
admit the image was distressing. Like most of the crew, her hair was beginning to shed, and she had tinges of blood dripping from her nose and the corners of her eyes.

  I knew I looked even worse. I had been exposed to considerably more radiation. Still, the bridge crew had not gotten the worst of it. Over the course of the first few hours, we had lost two J’ni and six human crew members.

  “Lori… Engineering will be ready to route power in about five minutes. How close is your team to being ready?” I said with a cough that splattered blood on the armrest of my command chair.

  “We’re ready JD. We had to pair up the smallest crew members to have enough space for everybody. I don’t know what we would have done if Arquat hadn’t installed the extra units.”

  Arquat, or Arty as I liked to call him, had been a no-show onboard the Gilboa II since we had left Lunar orbit. That didn’t mean the Jabesh AI had left us high and dry. A number of sealed chambers had been discovered throughout the resurrected Gilboa II.

  None would open, and they were shielded from scans. Normally, this would have been cause for serious concern, but I figured that if Arty had meant us ill… he would never have built the Gilboa II in the first place. Maybe it was some Ancestor sense of debt arising from the fact that he had engineered the destruction of the first Gilboa. Hard to say. It was always a tad dangerous to ascribe human patterns of thought to aliens… especially alien AIs.

  It turned out that many of those hidden alcoves contained advanced fabrication units. For the last several hours they had been churning out stasis pods.

  Lori had confirmed that that pods themselves would not repair the radiation damage done to a person’s DNA, but they would keep their occupants viable in stasis until such a time as something could be done. It was a longshot at best but, again, you clap because the dog dances… not because it dances well.

  There were barely enough pods to accommodate the entire crew… and that was only if about thirty percent of the crew doubled up. This was easy for the J’ni. It was more problematic for the Human, Saulite, Archon, and Roharian members of the crew.