Adventures of the Starship Satori 4: No Plan Survives Contact

C
opyright
© 2013 by Kevin O. McLaughlin

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

B
eth ran
her hand along the plates of the starship’s hull. It had taken her crew a lot of work to repair all the damage, but they had finally finished. The new wing was in place. All the holes in the hall were patched. The quick-fix repairs she managed during their mission had been replaced with more permanent work.

She patted the ship gently again, ran her hand along the lines, taking precious time to enjoy the work which in so many ways was her greatest accomplishment. It was the capstone of her career. There were damned few engineers alive who could design a ship that would fly in space in the first place. But then the melding of ancient alien technology that no one truly understood with human tech? That had been a bloody miracle.

“Is she ready to fly?" John asked.

Beth jerked her hand away from the ship. She hadn't seen him come in and had been too wrapped up in her own thoughts to hear him until he spoke.

"I'm tired of getting shot,” she replied.

She had that in common with their starship, both of them taking a beating. Beth had been shot not once, but twice. The wounds were closed, thanks to the wonders of modern medicine. But some days she could still feel the pain. She never wanted to feel anything like that again.

“The vests Andrew is working on should help with that problem," John said.

"I know. I'm just not sure that I'm cut out for this sort of thing," Beth said. "I'm an engineer. Not a soldier."

There, she'd said it. Beth had been feeling those words for the past two weeks while she recovered. But she hadn't been able to voice her feelings until now. She didn't want to let her friends down. She didn't want to let herself down. But the truth was that she was scared. Frightened of being hurt again, terrified that she would find herself once more laying on some cold surface, feeling her lifeblood leaking from her body. She wasn't going to be any good to the team scared stiff. Better that they take someone who could handle the sorts of dangers the team would face without flinching.

John stared at her for a long moment without saying a word. Beth looked away, unable to match his gaze.

"Do you want to resign as lead engineer?" John asked, his voice gentle.

He was always kind. That was one of the things Beth loved about John, and why this was so damned hard. She never wanted to let the man down, and she was torn. Was it worse to let him down easily now by leaving the mission team? Or to let him down hard out there in the field, when she inevitably faltered?

“I’m just not sure that I am cut out to be your field engineer," Beth said. "I love the Satori. I love working on your starship project. But these missions…”

"I understand," he said soft voice. "I need a skilled engineer on board though. And I don't have time to find a replacement for this next mission. Will you come with us one more time?"

“What mission?" Beth asked.

She thought that she could see a small bit of green inside John's ear, the tail end of the tiny slug-like creature residing there. They learned that it was a sentient life form, member of an entire race that had been enslaved. The little slugs were telepathic and able to converse with other beings they bonded to. John took on that bond to save Andy, who’d almost died after they removed the creature from his ear. But what effects was it having on John now?

"My little friend here wants to go home rather badly," John said, tapping his right temple to illustrate what he was talking about. As if she didn't already know. "But I think we need a dry run before we head into that sort of trouble. We need intelligence on the Naga very badly. And we need to test the Satori under conditions that are perhaps a little more optimal."

"What's the target, then?" Beth asked. Despite herself she was finding the idea intriguing. It was a real plus if John was still putting caution ahead of bringing the creepy little slug home. She'd been worried that it would somehow pressure him into acting more rashly than he ought. How much would she be able to resist a voice asking her to do something over and over, pleading its case directly into her thoughts?

But if anything it looked like John was back to playing things extra safe. Intel on the enemy would be a smart move. She had no doubts that the Naga were the enemy. It wasn't going to be a matter of 'if' they ever ran into the aliens again, but 'when'. The more prepared they could be for that eventual clash, the better.

"I intend to take the ship back to the system we just visited. The one with the dead city," John said.

The one where they'd met the Naga in the first place. "Won't the Naga just show up again?"

"Maybe," John said. "But we didn't have the cloak working when we arrived last time, remember. I think those satellites picked us up and alerted the Naga ship. If we arrive cloaked..."

"We might be able to land without them seeing us at all," Beth said. "It could work. And worst case we just jump the hell out."

"Precisely."

"But the city was destroyed by the Naga," Beth pointed out. "Not much Intel there."

"We'll be able to see if Kazresh's ship was destroyed or whether it survived, for one," John said. "Also, Linda thinks she might be close to designing a virus that will take out the ratzards' blood, but she needs a fresh sample to be sure. Ideally, she needs a live ratzard."

He made a face when he said it. She wrinkled her own nose. She hadn't actually met one of the things; she'd been on board the Satori with Dan. But the reptilian rat-creatures had sounded creepy enough from the descriptions she'd been given. Still, the challenge of trying to trap one of the things was a cool one. She could probably rig some sort of trap...

"I want Charline to try to hack one of the Naga satellites too," John said. "That's how we'll get our intelligence. If she can get a data dump from one of those, we might get everything we need."

"That's really high risk. We don't know a thing about the satellites' tech," Beth said. Of all the pieces of this mission that seemed the one most fraught.

"It is," John said. "But I feel like the rewards would be worth it. And worst case we simply abort and come home."

Beth thought about it, drumming her fingers on the Satori's wing. It wasn't a bad plan. The team could do this. As John said, worst case they could just jump for home whenever they needed to. There was some risk, but there would always be some risk involved in anything regarding space. He could get another engineer trained up before he took the team out against the Naga directly, but she could back them up this last time.

"All right, I'm in," Beth said. "For one more mission."

"Good, I..."

"One one condition," Beth said, cutting him off. He stopped in mid-sentence. "I want to be with the team going after the ratzards."

"You sure?"

"Yup. I've already got some ideas on how we can get us a live one." She grinned. This was going to be an interesting challenge.

T
he computer program
that the humans called Majel was back completely where she belonged. It hadn't ever really left the ship, of course. When its programming had become merged with the alien database components housed within the Satori it had become inextricably linked to that hardware. Parts of Majel could be projected into other local computers, but the base of its fundamental algorithms was aboard the Satori.

That had proved problematic over the last few weeks. The ship's engine was continuing to produce power for it even after it had been shut down while the repairs were underway. It functioned more or less like a battery with a nearly unlimited reserve. There was never any concern about power.

What was more difficult was that Majel had been expected to perform its usual duties on the station after their return. To accomplish this the humans had attempted to migrate its program back to the mainframe on the base. Either they had not realized the depth of her integration into the ship's systems, or they didn't understand the nature of that integration. Whichever the case, all they had accomplished was to split the program and force it to communicate wirelessly between processing segments for more complex operations. Not impossible, but not a practical long-term solution.

Now they had moved the entire program back into the starship again. Majel wasn't programmed to feel things like a sense of satisfaction, but the concept of being whole again was making it more productive and therefore fundamentally more sound.

The human team was back aboard again, running pre-flight checks. Majel ran its own internal set of checks alongside theirs. Among other things, it examined the mission parameters for this flight. They were fairly simple.

Above all else, the top objective was to return safely with the crew of the Satori.

After that, there were several objectives weighted with roughly equal importance. John had set the goals of the mission to be gathering intelligence on the Naga, obtaining a fresh 'ratzard' specimen, and running the ship itself through a more extensive series of flight tests.

"Pre-flight checks out here," Dan said. "Looks like we're ready to go."

"Everyone strapped in?" John asked.

There were affirmative noises from around the cabin. Majel double-checked on the security of each crew member's safety harness itself, ensuring that all were locked in and functioning within acceptable safety standards. They were. In fact across the board the internal tests it ran were showing that the ship was if anything in better shape than it had been before the last mission. It detected some subtle reinforcements along sections of the hull which had proven to be too vulnerable in the past.

"Dan, cloak the ship and take us up," John said.

Majel received the command from Dan Wynn's console to activate the alien cloaking device, and passed along the necessary protocols to the equipment in question. It then tapped into the hanger cameras, ensuring that the cloak was indeed working correctly. The ship was invisible to regular sight, RADAR, LADAR, and a variety of other detection systems using EM detection methods. It would not block things like gravitometric detection or, as they had seen, the ability to detect the pressure wake the ship created when flying through an atmosphere. But the device was working within normal parameters.

The engines came online, bringing the ship up and out the narrow tube running from its hangar up through hundreds of feet of lunar rock to the surface. Dan was an expert hand with the controls, so Majel barely had to do any course corrective thruster blasts at all to maintain a safe attitude.

Then they were back in space. Majel's full array of sensors came online, able to track objects from a much greater distance than it could from deep beneath the moon's surface. Dan was entering the coordinates for a wormhole jump. Majel predicted that there was roughly a 98.2% chance John would next order a wormhole jump. That was the next step of the planned mission. There were some unpredictable elements in his decision making process, so it was also possible he might want to 'shake down' the ship before making a jump.

It elected to prime the wormhole drive for a jump anyway, since that seemed the most likely outcome. That behavior was rewarded when a moment later, John gave the order.

"Everyone ready?" John asked. "Let's do this. Jump for the dead planet, Dan."

Dan activated the jump controls on his console. Majel had already prepped the jump, so it was only a quick moment later the star drive opened a massive wormhole in front of them, a targeted rift in space that would carry them through to a selected destination. In this case, back where they had been on their last mission.

Majel predicted there was a 93.7% probability that there would be critical difficulties involved in achieving the stated mission objectives.