Scout Ship: Rise of the Empyrean Empire: Novel 01 Read online

  The alternative to the implants was so much worse…

  I just hoped during that brief moment of failure, if it did happen to me, I could stop myself from injuring or killing those around me before I died.

  It happened from time to time, a dying mind in pain and no longer suppressed tended to strike out blindly in panic. Fortunately, fatalities were relatively rare when implant failure happened, more often than not, it was just a little property damage, like a wall, or ceiling.

  Or maybe a ship’s A.I.? Damn.

  Another shiver went down my back as I opened the door, walked to the closest spoke corridor, and launched myself up the connecting tube toward the center ring of the ship…

  Chapter Two

  There was no obvious damage as I flew up the forty-yard-long corridor, but the ship was pretty large. There was also no loss in air pressure as far as I could tell, so that lent credence to Amy’s supposition of implant failure, if we’d ran into something decompression would be likely.

  Unless, that loud clang I’d heard on waking was one of the internal pressure doors closing. Still, it was far more likely that wasn’t the case.

  I caught myself against the wall at the end of the spoke corridor, and put my feet down on the deck. The center of the ship had a ring corridor, to the left and clockwise was the engineering deck. I was tempted to go straight there, but without internal communications being active, I turned to the right and walked around to the bridge entrance instead. I had to assume the captain already had a plan and it was being implemented, so it made sense to check in with her first.

  And if she was dead, well I needed to know that too. Cmdr. Samantha Kane, captain of the ship, was one of the two most likely if there was an implant failure, at over forty years old she was in the higher risk category. Captain Kane was in great shape, and worked out often, she hadn’t let herself go as many of the other captains I’d known had, once reaching the higher ranks. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a face that was still very attractive at forty-six. She was also no-nonsense and strictly professional, which was just as well in my opinion, she was a good commander and captain of the ship, and I’d learned a lot the last year about being an executive officer.

  I was fortunate to be on this ship, everyone aboard her was one of the best. Even the four ensign officer trainees on their first mission had graduated in the top ten of their class. As I’d indicated, the postings on this ship were highly sought after, everyone had wanted to be posted on a ship that finished an exploratory journey to a new star.

  I suppressed a sigh of relief, when the bridge door slid open, and I saw that the captain was alive and well in the center chair. I took a moment to scan the bridge.

  The bridge was spacious, with six chairs and stations. It was the shape of a circle bisected in half, the large view screen curved around the circular portion which everyone faced, the entry door was on the side, near the back wall which was flat.

  The captain’s chair was in the center toward the back of the room, and next to it was the first officer’s chair. Both chairs had identical command consoles which could monitor and even override the other bridge systems and consoles.

  There were four other console stations evenly spaced in a semi-circle in front of the command chairs.

  Lt. Cindy Shields sat at the navigation and offensive weapons console. Cindy was my age, had honey brown hair and brown eyes. She was professional, petite, and a pleasure to serve with. I’d never had any problems with her at all. Although, sometimes I wondered if she wasn’t in love with things that exploded.

  Even a scout ship of the UEDF had some weapons capability. Four missile launchers, and for closer range she had phased plasma arrays. Nothing close to what a cruiser or battleship could bring to bear, but besides exploration to the stars, scouts were often used for interdiction activities, or to deal with pirate Q-ships which quite often went after freighters. There were a number of solar systems in the UE that had to be patrolled for that sort of thing, even if we’d only found two worlds with life bearing planets in the Goldilocks’ zone.

  Just one ore freighter filled with ore could net them a whole lot of credits on the black market.

  Lt. George Sampson was at the counter measures, point defense, and external sensor array console. He was four years older than I was at thirty-one, and I got the idea he was pissed off that I outranked him at a younger age. He was mostly professional, and very good at his job, but at times he could be an ass. He had brown eyes, and his hair was just starting to turn salt and pepper.

  There wasn’t much to do for his job on this trip, but it was a required posting, and needed once we got to where we were going. It gave him and his assigned ensign plenty of time to run simulations though.

  The science, ops, and communications console was un-attended. Normally, during the captain’s shift it would be occupied by Lt. Katy Daniels. Katy had auburn hair, green eyes, and was quite attractive. That was a bit of an understatement, I’d entertained a fantasy or two in my mind, but as her superior officer I couldn’t act on it. With our implants that kind of thing couldn’t even be hidden in this day and age, and was treated as a court martial offense. It was the one thing that made serving on board a scout vessel a trial for the captain and first officer, there were no other lieutenant commanders aboard, and fraternization within the chain of command was way out of bounds.

  Katy was as professional as she needed to be to get by, and usually had a smile for everyone on board. She was so good at her job, the captain cut her some slack that way. A year cruise was long, and it didn’t hurt to have someone on board that could lighten things up on occasion.

  I wondered where she was.

  The fourth crew console was the piloting console. It wasn’t used in subspace at all, the A.I. flew the ship, but in normal space it was used to implement the corrections the navigator passed along, to bypass an object in our path. It was also used for manual piloting near a space station, or to land, and the controls to spin the ship for AG was on that console as well.

  Lt. Timothy Johnson was in the chair, only twenty-eight years old, just a year older than I was. He was at the academy with me, and we were good friends. When we’d first started this mission, there’d been a few rough spots as our friendship shifted a bit, as I’d gotten promoted above him, and as executive officer I was his commander. We’d gotten past the awkwardness of it though, he was an old friend, and a good one.

  He was also dead.

  The rictus of pain on his contorted face made it obvious it was implant failure, but he’d be taken down to sick bay later for an autopsy to confirm it. Of course, that wouldn’t happen either if we’d lost our A.I., who also happened to be the ship’s doctor. I’d miss him, but now was hardly the time to grieve, and I held onto military discipline to put it off.

  “Captain. Orders?”

  She turned to me and gestured to the seat next to her. I walked over and took a seat.

  Captain Kane said, “Katy is checking up in engineering, she’ll be back in a moment.”

  I frowned, usually the damage done by a failed implant was more local to where the person was, engineering was just on the other side of the wall behind us, but still, big wall there without a scratch of damage on it.

  “What happened, I mean how?”

  She replied, “He was putting in a required course correction as we closed with 61-Virginis, to specify a better insertion point. You know how Columbus and the other A.I.s love to be helpful.”

  The helpful had come out a little sarcastic. It was true enough, sometimes the ship disagreed with the navigator, and it was like jumping through hoops to get the A.I. to accept the human plotted course entries on the helm’s board.

  I sighed, “So he was arguing with Columbus when…” I trailed off.

  She nodded, “Exactly, he was clearly very annoyed with her. I’d guess knowing the exact location of her systems CPU when his implant failed was enough for him to destroy her in some way. I don’t know yet exactl
y what he did, but we’re dead in space, waiting for Katy to return with a damage report.”

  All the different systems were run by separate computers, which were slaved to the A.I. in charge of Columbus, so things like doors, lighting, and life support would still run, although overrides wouldn’t work without Columbus, but others were designed to automatically cut off if the A.I. was damaged, such as the engines and thrust, not to mention weapons.

  I wasn’t quite panicking yet, we had spares of everything on board, including CPUs, drives, and memory for Columbus if anything went wrong, plus backups. There was even one full spare chassis in case of critical failure on a large scale. The only question was if we’d be able to repair whatever damage Timothy had done in time to decelerate and enter 61-Virginis. We might have to pass by as we slowed down and then turn around, adding perhaps a month or two to our trip, assuming we weren’t ordered to run a scan and abort the mission in favor of another ship. That was doubtful, but possible once Earth command got our report of the incident. Right now, our only trained pilot was a very green ensign named John Crossman, sometimes crossing a solar system required quick action and good instincts on the part of the pilot.

  Chances were that they wouldn’t force us to abort, but it was possible if the repairs took too long. Fair or not, despite the fact a failed implant was a random and not an anticipatable event, it would also be a black mark on mine and the commander’s records, for a failed mission.

  I felt guilty about even worrying about that when my friend was dead, just five feet away.

  I looked over as the bridge door opened, and Katy walked in. She walked over to the console and entered in some numbers before she turned to report.

  Katy said, “Captain, the entire chassis for the A.I. was crushed, and then thrown across engineering to crash into a bulkhead. The good news is, it didn’t hit or break anything else. The bad news is it will take thirty-six hours for Chief Hanson to get the spare chassis installed and the backups loaded. All the connectors were warped, and she has to machine new ones. We should make insertion though, at a little under one point three Gravities of deceleration we should make up the difference. Also, a crewman will be by to collect Timothy’s body shortly, to put it in stasis until a post mortem is possible.”

  Captain Kane said, “Good, thank you lieutenant.”

  The captain turned to me, “Go get some rest if you can, I want you back up here in four hours to relieve me. There’s nothing we can do until Hanson and Jones get Columbus up and running anyway. I want you to focus on solar system insertion simulations for Mr. Crossman.”

  Marilyn Hanson was the other person aboard above forty, she was in charge of all the non-com personnel aboard ship, and if something could be fixed, I had no doubts Marilyn could fix it. Lt. Carl Jones was the officer in charge of engineering, he was only twenty-four but he was a genius, he was also smart enough to listen to Marilyn even if he was in charge over there. Between the two of them, I was sure they could get things up and running, and by the time they said it would be done at the latest.

  I wanted to help, but that wasn’t my job. I was second in command, my job was to act confident, pretend this was no big deal, and keep the crews’ morale and confidence up. I was also the executive officer, which meant scheduling training, disciplining when necessary short of court martial offenses, and giving the captain alternatives.

  She didn’t say it, but unless Crossman stepped up in a big way, we’d have to abort the mission and return to Sol. I don’t think anyone wanted that, but the captain wouldn’t risk our lives if Crossman wasn’t up to the job, and neither would I, so my only choice was to get him ready for it. In a week. I’d say it was a lost cause, but the kid was pretty good, already better than I was in truth, but then I’d come up the track in navigation and weapons, not piloting…

  Chapter Three

  I’d managed another three hours of sleep, this time when I left my quarters I was freshly showered and feeling a little more human. I was also hungry. I left my quarters, turned right and started to walk around the outer ring toward the mess. On the left side were rooms split up by the spoke corridors, on my right were other crew quarters.

  In the other configuration, when the ship spun the outer wall to the right became the floor, and the quarters had ladders to lead up to the doors, and more ladders up to reach the quarters on the other side, the doors literally led to a laddered passage that opened up in the floor of the inner ring of rooms.

  Honestly, it wasn’t a configuration that wasn’t used much if we could help it.

  I went into the mess hall, which was basically a small kitchen and two tables that each sat ten. I walked over and grabbed a coffee, in a sippy cup, weightlessness could be annoying at times.

  “Hey Cassie, what’s on the menu tonight?”

  Lt. Cassie Mendi smirked, “For you commander? Only the best.”

  Cassie was the chef, she also doubled as our purser to restock supplies. She was about five foot seven, and had light blonde hair and brown eyes. Of course, that second part of her job didn’t come up much in the void between stars. This room was rather informal as well, no one wanted to sit stiffly at attention while they ate on their break, or off-shift time. Not that they didn’t show respect, because they did, they just weren’t required to follow strict protocols in here, along with the R&R room, or the gym.

  I sighed in mock dismay, “Mac and cheese, again?”

  Cassie snorted, “What’s wrong with my mac and cheese?”

  I smiled, “Nothing, except I always eat too much of it.”

  Cassie raised an eyebrow, and then grabbed a sealed plastic pack and tossed it to me.

  “Then don’t come back for seconds, sir.”

  I shrugged, winked, and grabbed a spoon from the grip dispenser, and walked over to a table. I’d had to bite my tongue, I had to be more careful than most about bantering with the females on the crew. I still wasn’t used to that promotion, so more often than not I had to reign in my banter, it didn’t help that we’d been out here almost a year. That was a long time with no dates.

  I grabbed a chair across from John, who had the same idea to eat dinner before our bridge shift started.

  “Ensign. How are you?”

  John replied, “Commander. Holding it together sir, it’s kind of a shock. I know it happens, but Lt. Johnson… it’s hard to believe it happened.”

  “I know what you mean, the man was larger than life. I’m going to modify your training a bit tonight, you’re doing well but we’ll focus on piloting on insertions for the next week. Do you have any concerns about that?”

  I felt like I was threading asteroids myself right now, normally in the military we gave orders, and the crew made it happen. But… I wasn’t going to put all our lives in his hands if he wasn’t confident. On the other hand, I also couldn’t show any doubt which might make him think I wasn’t confident he could handle it. It wasn’t actually that hard, or at least it shouldn’t be, chances were that we’d point the ship and everything would be fine. Even in a solar system with meteors, comets, micro-meteors, planets and so on, there was also a whole lot more space. Chances greatly favored not hitting a thing, and our deflectors could handle micro-meteors. Still, we’d be moving quickly, shit happens sometimes, and any hesitation was deadly.

  At our standard insertion speed, it would take two weeks to cross the eight light hour diameter solar system, luckily, the captain did rise up the ranks on the pilot track, otherwise aborting would have been a foregone conclusion. No pilot no matter how good could sit at the helm for two weeks. I’d always thought it a little foolish not having three bridge crews for a standard three shift day on these training and exploratory cruises, but those decisions were way above my pay-grade. To be fair, as far as I knew, this didn’t happen very often, especially not at such a critical juncture.

  He shook his head, “No sir, I’m ready for it. Sir, when will the funeral be?”

  He’d sounded confident enough, and he did hav
e the ability, he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t. That didn’t mean he wasn’t nervous, it’d only been eight years ago when I was an ensign, and I remember that I’d have sooner slit my wrists than admit to the executive officer I had any doubts at all. But, it was the best I could do.

  Normally when someone died aboard ship, if not in battle, their post mortem would take a couple of hours, then there’d be a speech from the captain on the bridge, and we’d fire the dead into space. Past that, most grieving took place in private or was shared off-duty with fellow crew.

  “Until Columbus is restored it’s on hold, a couple of days most likely.”

  I opened the container, and ate my dinner, both of us quiet with our own thoughts. It wasn’t fine cuisine, but it tasted good, I’d swear she put at least five cheeses in the mix. Also, it was better to keep things simple with no gravity, and the cheese was marvelous for holding it all in one piece…

  The bridge was somber as I entered a few minutes early, and walked over to the first officer’s chair and sat down. I brought up my console and verified I’d be able to keep an eye on all four bridge crew trainees and what they were doing. The lieutenants were the ones who trained them, but ultimately it was my responsibility to see that they were doing well, and address any problems.

  Fortunately, we had the best on the Columbus, and outside of a few personality conflicts this year, my first stint as a first officer had been mostly smooth sailing.

  “Captain, I relieve you.”

  The captain smirked, “I stand relieved, but maybe I should stay until ensign Crossman takes the helm.”

  I suppressed a smile, “Perhaps that would be best maam.”

  She said, “Engineering is on schedule as of fifteen minutes ago, I have them sending updates every two hours. If for any reason there is a delay, spin the ship and change configuration. As it is, thirty-six hours without gravity is pushing regulations to near the limit.”