Deep Space Endeavor (3 page)

They all looked at each other in amazement as Jesse replied.
“This is Colonel Jesse Marcos of the Earth ship
Endeavor
. We are currently lost due to a problem with our navigational computer. We will be out of your territory within a half-hour.”
Twelve minutes until weapons are on line,
he thought as Josiah ran to the storage area containing the portable shield generator.

The
reptilian creature was humanoid. It had no tail, but its sharp claws and its facial features reminded Jesse of an iguana. Beside him stood Bigfoot, or at least a creature that looked like Bigfoot. To his left, he saw what appeared to be a purple and yellow blob, with eye stalks sticking out of the top and tentacles coming from several directions. There were other species, too, but he didn’t get a good look at them. He did notice that they all seemed to be wearing black and red.

“Negative
, humansss, you are all prisionerssss of Garrinorasss now. Prepare to be boarded or prepare to die.” The lizard man replied.

“W
hat is a Garrinoras?” Jesse responded.

“
Colonel,” Suzy called. “Do you really think antagonizing the creature is the way to go here?”

“I’m only trying to buy u
s a little more time. I’m fairly certain the secondary shields can take another two, maybe three hits. I know the hull is good for a few more judging from the size of their armaments, which means, all we have to do is keep from getting hit more than five times until the portable fires up. After that we start taking damage.”

“
Humanssss, it strikesssss me as odd that you have never heard of the mighty Garrinorassss. He is the master of a fleet of privateer vesselssss that patrol this sector of space, and provide protection to those wise enough to pay for it. Everyone in the galaxy knowssss of Garrinorasss. This is your last warning, we know your ship isss damaged and your weaponsss are down. Surrender or die.”

“Pirates, r
eally?” Collin yelled in frustration. “A half-hour more and we’d be home free, but we have to run into pirates! What are the odds?”

“Calculating the odds would not be possible at this time
, Lieutenant Torrensede. There are too many unknown variables to give an accurate reply.”

“Thank you for that
, SAMMI, but I wasn’t actually asking.”

Jesse returned his attention to the lizard man. “Like I said, we are lost, and Garrinoras can’t possibly be that mighty if we’ve never h
eard of him. Maybe you should start referring to him as the regionally known Garrinoras, or the not-as-famous-as-he-wants-to-be Garrinoras. I’m just sayin.”

The result of
that last comment was six alien starfighters hitting their thrusters and vying to be the first to destroy
Endeavor
.

“Well done
, Colonel. It's nice to see you can still make friends,” came Suzy's sarcastic reply.

“I just bought
us another minute and a half, Suzy. Collin, continue evasive maneuvers to port on my mark. Lieutenant, hold the dive a little longer than usual so Kimi can get a couple good shots.”

“Yes,
Colonel.”

“Everyone ready
? Three… Two…. One…. Mark!” As Jesse yelled mark, the ship began an unexpected ninety degree dive with the port side facing the alien fighters. Kimi fired two shots at fighters not expecting functioning weaponry, vaporizing the first two fighters. The remaining four fighters peeled off to group into a new attack formation as another shot from the pirate ship rocked the secondary shields.

The alien fighters were of interesting design. It was like looking at an oblong disc with small cannons mounted along the bottom and no indication of a canopy that would allow the pilots to see out into space.

As
Endeavor
pulled out of its dive, an idea hit Jesse, and he wanted to kick himself for not thinking about it sooner. “SAMMI, what is the status of our shuttle?” Kimi stole a look at the Colonel, thinking she knew where he was going with this.

SAMMI
replied quickly, “The Assault Shuttle is fully operational, Colonel Marcos.”

“Including the cloak?”
He hoped even as he asked.

“That would fall under the category of fully operational
, Colonel.”

Wow
,
he thought,
SAMMI was certainly getting the hang of sarcasm.
Soon he was going to be having a talk with her about the proper way to address the ship’s commanding officer. For now, though, he simply said “Thank you, SAMMI, have her powered up and ready to go when I reach the landing bay.”

“Sir, powering up the shuttle will take a couple minutes.” Kimi grunted as she took out a third alien fighter.
At the very least, the pirates were going to leave here bruised.

“
I’m not going directly to the landing bay. It should work out just right.” With that, he was out the door.

As Collin continued to juke and jink
, trying to keep from getting hit by the pirate’s cannons, he looked over at her and asked, “Do you know what he’s doing?”

“I canno
t be sure, but I think he is planning on taking the shuttle out in stealth mode and launching one of our space mines to destroy the pirates.” She answered as her fingers flew deftly over the firing array controlling the lasers.

“It’s
pretty desperate, but it might work.” Collin admitted, wishing he’d thought of it.

“Let u
s pray that it does,” she grunted, as she watched the fourth alien fighter explode into a cloud of super-heated particles.

______

As Jesse reached the first container carrying space mines, he felt the ship rock again. SAMMI was alerting the crew that secondary shielding had failed, and he knew that
Endeavor
could only withstand a couple more hits before she started taking serious damage. His crew had been stellar to survive this long. This team was a well-oiled machine. A machine he vowed not to let down.

He loaded
one of the mines onto a hover-cart, then turned and started at a limp/run towards the landing bay. He was pleased to hear SAMMI’s update that the net had begun its power up sequence as he was entering the shuttle. They had survived seven minutes.
Now if we can only last two or three more until the shield generator fired up.
The net would take eight minutes to power up, but he was certain that Kimi would have destroyed the last two fighters by then. That wasn’t the problem though; the problem was taking out the pirate ship before it could hit
Endeavor
two more times.

The pirate ship was an oddity.
He wondered how it could even be flying, let alone fighting. Originally, it had a snail-shaped body. Although, with all the replacement plating on the hull and the weapons, which were seemingly welded in at random wherever they might fit. He wasn’t sure how it all stayed together. Some of those cannons were fairly powerful though, so he needed to stay out of their crosshairs.

“Collin, evasive
maneuvers to port in three… two… one… mark!”

This maneuver would put the landing bay
out of the pirate ship's line of sight so it could launch the shuttle without the pirates noticing. He knew he would have to cloak quickly, and he gave himself about a minute and a half before he could be in position to deploy the space mine. As the bay opened and the shuttle launched, he saw
Endeavor
get rocked by another blast. Collin was doing a great job flying, but this had to end soon or they would be history. He moved toward the pirate ship at best speed and was able to deploy and activate the mine inside a minute. “This had better work.” he whispered into the empty shuttle.

______

…..… Back on Polisia, Nina Romanov was speaking with Captain Ambrose of the
Polisian Hope
. “I just need to know if
Endeavor
made it into the event, Captain,” She said a little louder than she intended, frustration seeping into her voice. “It's not like I'm asking for classified intel.”

“I’m sorry
, ma’am, I can't release anything related to the battle without authority from Naval Command." He hated to give her the run around, he was sure that this would have been his last mission until
Endeavor
showed up and pulled their butts out of the fire. “That was some maneuver your brother pulled off to save our skins today. The navy could really use a few more like him. I wish he’d come back.” Ambrose offered, hoping he sounded as sincere as he felt.

“Thank you
, Captain, I really appreciate that. Could you send over your ships recording of the incident?” Nina was hoping against hope he would do it out of gratitude without involving Naval Command. That hope was crushed when the inevitable reply came back. "But the accident happened well after the battle, Captain, it wouldn't be battle footage," she argued.

“If the explosion was caused by undetonated ordinance, it would technically be considered battle related. The
footage is classified, ma’am. I’m going to have to ask my superiors before I can release classified material to a civilian, but I can ask Admiral Bliney. He loves your brother; he might be inclined to say yes.”

It said a lot
about how Captain Ambrose felt that he would even attempt to go around Admiral Natora to Admiral Bliney. Everyone in Naval Command knew how Natora felt about Jesse Marcos. “Thank you, Captain, I’m sure you’ll do your best,” was the best reply she could muster. She wished Vee Fleet were available, then she could have just gotten the footage from Ariel but Admiral Natora had intervened and Ariel was currently unavailable.

“I’ll call the Admiral at once
, ma’am.
Endeavor
and Vee Fleet did save our lives out there.” Captain Ambrose really wanted to help, and since his ship was closest to the phenomenon, he would have the most accurate data. The reality was, the best he could do for her was to ask Admiral Bliney, and face the possible reprimand if Admiral Natora found out about it.

As Nina signed off with the captain
she was more frustrated than she had been in years. Her husband Serge put his arms around her and whispered, “We will find out what happened to him, my love, just be patient.” Nina loved Serge’s slight Russian accent. He had been away from Earth for so long now that many people couldn’t hear it anymore, but she could. She had met her husband at university and as soon as she introduced him to Jesse they became fast friends. Serge was the other half of the brain child behind the technology of Sea Side Enterprises. Nina herself was the brains behind the business side, turning a start up tech company into the largest most influential company in the Coalition.

Unfortunately,
Jesse just had too much of an adventurous spirit to sit around living off his wealth. He had to be where the action was. He had been that way ever since he was a kid. He was even more so since leaving the military. Over the last ten years, Serge and Jesse had invented many new technologies together. They had actually started working together while Jesse was still in the military. Jesse would send ideas and designs to Serge to work on. Even then, Serge could see how intelligent Jesse was.
Endeavor
was their crowning achievement, and Nina needed to know if they survived the explosion, and made it into the event.

All Nina could think to say to her husband’s comforting words was
: “I hope you’re right, Serge. I hope you’re right.”

The next thing Serge said was compl
etely unexpected. “Come, Nina. I have prepared a shuttle with advanced sensors to go explore the wreckage.  Perhaps we can find some clues or proof as to what happened.”

Now we’re getting somewhere
,
she thought, thankful that her husband wasn’t one to sit around either. As she stood to go, Frost came bounding into the room. It always seemed as if Frost knew when her masters were about to leave and never wanted to miss a goodbye. Frost was a gift from Jesse, a Polisian mountain wolf, or snow wolf as they are more commonly known. Frost was pure white, with striking features and a playful attitude, but she would turn deadly instantly if Nina or Serge were threatened. Polisian snow wolves were the largest canine species in human occupied space.

Jesse had actually found a litter of three wolf cubs while hiking in the mountains. The mother had b
een killed by hunters, and he was advised to kill them because very few people have ever tamed a Polisian snow wolf. He only took that as a challenge, and after training all three, gave the female, Frost, to his sister. He gave Shadow, a beautiful dark-grey female, to Suzy, an avid big dog lover, and kept Commando, the male runt of the litter, for himself. Commando had fur that was patches of dark-grey, light-grey and white. It reminded him of camouflage, hence the name, Commando. Even though snow wolves were notoriously hard to train, once trained they were loyal companions and bodyguards. Not only were they very smart, but very tough as well.

The mountains were the wolves’ natural habitat, but they
adjusted well to any climate. However, it was only in the mountains of Polisia where the snow wolves would mate. Polisia was a strikingly beautiful planet that had only two climates. They endured winter in the mountains and they enjoyed summer in the valleys and beaches. Neither climate ever fluctuated very much. The mountains were always covered in fresh, white snow falling through deep, violet trees while the valleys were covered in golden grass and red berry bushes. It was a beautiful planet.