Humanity in the Deep

Roger did not know how long he had been out. All he knew was that when he woke up, he felt worse than after his week at five G’s.

He was dazed for a few seconds before remembering what happened; they must have been hit with a missile.

That would also explain why they are spinning rapidly.

With much difficulty, he stretched his hand out to where the jet controls were. With his hand feeling like it weighed a hundred kilo’s, he tried to stop the spin.

His first attempt only made things worse. Half of the jets were down, their buttons blinking at him. Some looked to be have been cut off by the safeties, the others the computer showed as dead.

He was able to slowly stop most of the spinning. The jets had to be used cold, wasting most of the gas.

He looked around and saw that Dianna and Thomas were still limp in their seats. That was when he noticed that there was no atmosphere in the cabin. Explaining why his helmet had locked.

Roger checked all three suits; they had no tears and were working properly. He shook them both while yelling into the radio.

Roger only had readings from about half the boat, and some of what he did have was sporadic, blinking in and out.

Thomas took a while to snap back. Dianna took one glance at the board and snapped awake.

After mumbling to herself for a while she said, “At least one missile must have hit just above the drive then blown a hole clean through the outer hull.”

“How are we alive?” Roger asked.

Dianna turned to look at him and said, “I don’t know. Maybe the armor we added did better than we thought it would.”

Roger heard a groan behind him, as Thomas said, “The strands must have caught the heat and dispersed it.

“They’re fraying now, of course, dumping the heat directly into the data lines and plumbing. We’re going to be dead in space before too long if we aren’t already.”

Roger looked at what few temperature sensors were still reporting, and they were all showing that Thomas was right; the temperature was increasing, spreading around.

Roger asked, “How long to get the Alice moving again? We have a fight to get back to.”

Thomas laughed.

He stopped laughing when he saw Roger was serious.

“We don’t have to fix everything. Just get moving. We can keep our helmets down and not worry about life support.” Roger said.

Dianna counted on her fingers, “We have three major problems. One: we can’t dump heat. Two: the data connections got melted or broken if they were near the strands, and most were. Even the backup radio links were there and are probably lumps of useless metal right now. Three: we’re down to near critical levels of reaction mass for the jets.”

With resolve, Roger said, “I can make do with what jets and reaction mass we have. Even cold, we have enough to go after the bastards.”

He hoped that was not a lie.

“For the sake of argument, we could lay down more cable, or just rig everything with radio’s, but we still have the heat problem,” Thomas added.

He was sadly right. Modern ships created a lot of heat, most of which was turned into electricity or radiated out. But that took the strands working. It took very little heat to cause serious damage to ship and crew.

Thomas looked up from his status board then at Roger, and sighed, saying, “I can deal with the heat problem. We might have a couple hours if we stay in the suits. That’s if we fire the drive in short bursts only.

“But please, think about it. They probably think we’re dead in space. We might be able to do repairs and sneak back before they can come after us.

“We have no way to repair the rail gun. We would just be relying on the laser and you saw how limited that can be.”

“There’s no one else, Thomas. It doesn’t matter how dangerous it is, because no one else can even try. The Erikson needs us. You’re a better man then you pretend to be, and you know we have to,” Roger said softly with a hand on his shoulder.

---

“Try it now.”

About half the jet controls on Roger’s board changed from black to green or orange.

“That got it. I have control of about two-thirds of them.”

From where he was standing on the hull of the bow, Thomas replied, “We have good connections to all the jets. If you’re not getting a signal, there’s nothing more I can do.”

Dianna looked up from the strand diagnostic she was pouring over to say, “Head to the laser. The computer says its fine, but I think it would be good to have eyes on it.”

“On my way. How’s the radio looking?”

Roger could see Thomas working his way slowly around the outside of the ship. The inner hull was too hot to squeeze into, so he was laying down cable along the outside.

“The radio’s working again, doing final adjustments now.” After a few moments, Dianna added,

“Got a signal.”

“...If you’re capable, disable them and get our people back. Repeat. Alice, if you are reading this, the locals have boarded. The diplomatic ship is carrying prisoners. The Horizon has been captured and has hostages on board. If you’re capable, disable them, and get our people back...”

There was also a data stream that had live information from the Erikson’s sensors.

It repeated a couple of times before Dianna turned the volume down.

Dianna said, “We can’t contact them. The locals probably think we’re dead. We should keep it that way as long as we can.”

Thomas’s voice came over the radio as he said, “The laser looks fine. We’re as good as we’re going to get.”

Roger said, “I take it we shouldn’t test it?”

“Uh no, that would be bad, it makes too much heat that we can’t move around now. We might melt it as is.”

“Get back in, we need to get moving.”

With all the hatches open to help with venting heat, Thomas made it back to the cockpit quickly.

Roger was halfway through what little pre-flight he could do when the background hum of the signal from the Erikson became a roar, then cut off.

Dianna cut the radio and pulled up the image of the Erikson.

It looked fine, until Roger noticed that it was twisting.

He blanched as Dianna turned the image back and played it.

The Erikson had its lights on and looked normal. A near blinding flash then erupted and the ship started to twist.

Thomas quietly asked, “Was that a nuke?”

Without thinking, Roger turned on the radio and broadcast, “This is the Alice. Are you receiving?”

“Are you insane? They could be listening!” Thomas all but screamed.

Ignoring him, Roger repeated, “This is the Alice. Are you receiving?”

He yelled into the mic, “Erikson! Are you there? IS anyone alive?!”

“Does it matter?” Dianna muttered.

Roger was dumbstruck as he looked at her.

“Either they are all dead, in which case, we are duty bound to rescue the hostages because no one else can. Or they are not, in which case, we should do the same.

“So stop radioing our position and get us moving. Given our handicaps, I suggest we go after the so-called diplomatic ship. We need to get to them before they get to where the quarantine ships were pulled back to.”

She was right. He had a duty to rescue the hostages.

The hostages were all that mattered right then. He would deal with the rest of the problems later.

---

The boat was rattling.

A lot.

Roger turned the drive off and they went into freefall again.

“Give it two minutes, Roger, we should be clear for you to do a quick pass then.”

Roger replied, “When we go cut the engines when they get too hot, don’t wait for my order.” Out of the corner of his eye, Roger could see the temperature rising between the inner and outer hull, unable to be blead away like normal.

“They have not changed course or acceleration, holding at point eight five G’s and approximately two kilometers apart,” Dianna said.

“How long do we have?” Thomas asked.

“Forty-five minutes, give or take twenty. Depending on how much dodging you want to do and what kind of missiles the fleet they are heading to has.”

Roger really hoped the Erikson was right about hostages only being on one of the ships.

While they were waiting, he turned the radio back on. Like everything else they did not absolutely need, the radio was turned off.

“I still think this is a bad idea,” Dianna repeated for the fifth time. “We should just do a fly by and do as much damage as we can to the escort.”

“Roger, they’ve declared war on us,” Thomas agreed.

Roger would be lying if part of him did not feel the same, but he had to at least give them a chance.

“I will not kill them in cold blood. I have to give them a chance.”

“They have shown no regard for our lives,” Dianna retorted

“She’s right, Roger. Mercy is only appreciated by the merciful.”

“I made the decision—, they get one chance,” he said curtly.

He opened a channel, turned on the translator, then said, “This is the Gunship Alice. You have hostages. You will return them, or we will destroy your escort vessel. Then, we will cripple the ship carrying the hostages and take our people back, and your ship, by force.”

Then in an even bigger lie, he said, “You have seen that we can take a missile. You have no way to harm us and we have every way to harm you.”

Both ships started to put out more radar and they increased their acceleration to one G.

“They’re responding,” Dianna said.

In the metallic voice of the translation program, he heard, “They are ours now. You will be fired on if you get any closer. I suggest you start to think about your future. If we’re allowed to board, and your vessel is turned over to us, I promise you a station of power and wealth.”

Roger steeled himself against what was coming. With a squeak in his voice, he said to Dianna, “Weapons Officer, you’re weapons-free as of now. Shoot at the point of closest approach.” He pushed the controls forward that would accelerate them to two G’s.

He had to eyeball it and adjust how much power each of the engines got to keep them going in the right direction. Between damage to the computer and to the engines, he was having to control more systems than he should have to. It felt like trying to paint on two canvases at once, one with each hand. He somehow did it, but he had no idea how.

The sensors showed both vessels, to port the larger ‘diplomatic’ one, to starboard the escort.

As a dozen missiles left the ships, Dianna said, “Laser in point defense mode.”

That time, they were ready. They were not mere kilometers away, and Roger didn’t have to worry about what was behind his targets.

For a brief time, the controls melted away. He was not controlling the boat, he was the boat.

What few missiles Dianna was not able to immediately destroy, he avoided long enough to give her a second or third chance to take out.

Suddenly Thomas yelled they were past the red line. They did not have long before he would have to shut everything down.

Roger got them a quarter klick from the escort and said, “Fire!”

Roger was so entranced that he failed to notice Thomas shutting the drive down.

The laser sliced into the escort, it’s engine cut off. He guessed the plasma drive was not dumped because then the back half of the ship exploded and what was left started spinning.

Roger said with just a bit of bile in his throat, trying not to think about what he had just done, “Now, hopefully they will listen.”

“We’re going to need at least ten minutes before we can fire up the drive again.” Thomas snapped. They were falling behind the diplomatic ship.

“Can we reduce that?”

Thomas said, “Absolutely not. We’re not made to vent heat just by unaided radiation and can’t do it well.”

An eternity later, Thomas said, “We’re good enough.”

Less than a second later, Roger had them back abeam of the local ship.

When they were close enough to attack, but not so close as to not be able to swat the missiles, Roger opened a channel.

“You are ordered to stop your acceleration and to surrender your vessel. If you resist in any way, we will start shooting holes in your main drive.”

They stopped accelerating. The Alice did the same.

“I can send you half the hostages.”

Roger growled, “I said all.” He cut off the audio and said, “Give them a low power graze. Just enough to make them feel it.”

She marked their hull with three long ugly marks.

After that, a voice came over the radio, someone speaking English directly.

“This is Lieutenant Commander Cowin. ID number 198-154. Half is better than none.”

Roger was hesitant, he was imagining the lieutenant with a gun to his head.

“Get these people home!”

Roger heard a smack before the line went dead.

Dianna said, “That was him. His ID number was correct. I think we should do as he says. We hardly have enough people to storm them, after all.”

Thomas said, “We’re lucky the Alice is working at all. I don’t know how many more jumps we can do.”

Roger turned the mic back on and said, “Fine, put half our people in suits outside for us to get, to be checked as they leave by Lieutenant Commander Corwin.”

“Agreed,” said the voice on the other end said as the transmission ended.

Less than five minutes later, small figures left their airlock. Each time, Corwin verified who they were and that they had enough oxygen.

They were not in real suits; they were in what looked like body bags.

Roger adjusted their thrust to get ready to pick them up when he saw his board showing them as almost out of reaction mass for the jets.

Thomas was suiting up to grab them when the local ship left to join it’s fleet.

At least in one respect, the aliens kept their word; all the crew recovered had enough oxygen. Even if they all did look worse for wear; several had broken bones.

It took more than an hour to limp back to the Erikson, all the while, hoping there was something to limp back to.

It wasn’t until they were practically on top that they received a radio transmission.

“Warning do not dock, our spin is not controlled. Send your umbilical to the docking ring and hold station. Warning do not dock, Our spin is not controlled. Send your umbilical to the docking ring and hold station...”

It was coming from a repair drone sitting off the ship.

“Ah, the ship is fine, well, considering,” Thomas said from the back.

Roger said, “By what definition of ‘fine’ is that?”

“The nuke went off behind the rear plate, off-center. That is what caused the spin. The EMP probably fried everything on the outside of the hull or that was touching the outside. Looks bad now, but not hard to fix. Could be much worse.”

Looking at the Erikson, everything finally hit Roger.

He felt sick.

“Take over, I’m going to check on the people in back,” Roger quickly said as he got up and rushed out of the cockpit.

---

Kat woke up with her head feeling fuzzy, and her stomach numb. She was in a small warehouse appearing room.

An indeterminate amount of time passed without her thinking of much at all. That was when she heard someone say, “I’m sorry this is going to hurt a lot.” Suddenly It felt like someone was rooting around in her gut with a trowel.

Eventually, she passed into blissful unconsciousness.