Tales of the "Pink Mist" Ch. 07

AUTHOR'S NOTE: One of the terrific things about writing fantasy or science fiction stories is that the laws of physics can be bent, stretched to the limit, or even broken. I'm not a physicist. I'm just me. Once again, I'd like to give special credit to those who helped me figure out certain phraseology. Thank you SO much for the comments and feedback, but PLEASE wait more than two days before asking when the next chapter is coming out. *giggle*

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The PINK MIST was still tumbling, although much slower as the torpedoes continued firing their engines in short spurts, when the crew had all regained consciousness. Several commented that the experience was worse than any drug trip they'd ever had. Exterior cameras had been turned completely off and viewports closed to prevent the nauseating view outside from causing anymore dizziness. The ship's artificial gravity and internal balance compensators could at least keep up now, allowing normal internal operations to resume. With the fusion reactor down for the count, folding space was out of the question.

Quillan and her senior crew sat in the secretive war room speaking to Charleen and her senior staff on a coded frequency; Charleen laying out in great detail the plan of hiding from the Mongan deathships, which would arrive in little over an hour and half.

One of the powered armor suits sacrificed its tiny fusion reactor which was tied in to the life support systems and a low power transmitter. Already taxed to the limits, if anyone were to turn on a light, the reactor would shut down.

"My turn," Quillan said, taking a sip of ginger ale to help settle her still-churning stomach. "Are you out of your fucking mind?"

"Quillan," Charleen spoke seriously, "Salli's run it through her simulations over one hundred thousand times and determined that there's an eighty eight percent chance that the tactic will work. I did simulations of practically the same thing when I tested for my captaincy."

"Eighty eight point four four four seven six two percent is a much better chance than point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero three," chimed in Salli. "That's the BEST percentage of survival if we try to run for it. We'd be toast."

"Thank you, Salli," said Charleen.

"Dogmeat."

Thank you, Salli..." Charleen repeated, a little more tersely.

"Vapored clouds on a Sunday aft..."

"THANK YOU, SALLI!" yelled Charleen.

"...ernoon..."

Charleen sighed.

Quillan glanced around the room at the faces present, settling on Alice.

"Well, Commander Nine? It IS your body we're talking about. You have the final say in the matter."

Alice's "glow" was gone. While still a marvelous woman to behold, it was evident that there was something wrong with her, her complexion wan and waxen, her usually cheerful demeanor was greatly subdued. Even her voice had taken on an odd undertone. Most terrifying, to Quillan anyway, was Alice's lack of smile. She appeared beaten.

"Captain Quillan," she asked, her usual purring voice almost one of desperation, "may I disconnect this transmission and confer with Salli for a moment? I have some questions to ask her."

Quillan cast a questioning eye at the translucent vision of Charleen which hovered over the table. Charleen shrugged and nodded.

"You may, Commander," replied Quillan. "Charleen, if you don't hear from us in five minutes..." She took a deep breath. "...assume that we are no longer able to make contact due to our power problem and carry out your plan. Before we go, how'd you do on your test simulations of this type of scenario?"

"Killed the crew, but the ship survived."

The connection was cut.

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Alice's network avatar, a multicolored fluorescent ball with feet, scampered into the systems of the EXETER. There waited Salli, her avatar that of a small, light brown Welsh Corgi dog. The pair greeted each other and passed into the simulator program, the dog running along to each of the individual parameters which had been input. The parameters had been altered slightly to allow for velocity, angle of descent, gravity, angle of impact, lack of maneuverability, and over a thousand other variables. Alice input and combined her own sets of variables with those of Salli's and ran one hundred thousand test simulations; the Alliance norm for computers to correlate the proper data.

With the outcome complete, they said their goodbyes and Alice traveled the short distance back to her cyborg body on the PINK MIST.

Four thousand, six hundred, seventy two milliseconds had elapsed. Just over four and a half seconds.

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"Captain Quillan," Alice's tone had perked up a little bit, "the crew's chances of survival have improved to ninety seven percent. Mine, however, are still eighty eight percent. Captain Wilkerson's plan is sound."

Quillan stood up, crooking a finger at Alice as she headed for the door. The pair crossed the hall and entered the captain's cabin.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Quillan.

"It's very simple, Captain," said Alice. "You and the rest of the crew transfer to the EXETER and I do my part. I'll be the only one aboard so, should something go wrong, I'll be the only one to suffer the consequences." Quillan shook her head.

"This is my vessel. You're my girlfriend. You're this vessel. I'm not leaving you by yourself."

"Quillan," Alice stepped closer, touching her forehead to Quillan's as they looked each other in the eye, "all the simulations I ran with biological forms aboard ended badly for the biologicals. There was zero survival in all cases."

A gleam appeared in Quillan's eye, as she tipped her head to lightly peck Alice on the lips.

"Did you run a simulation where the biological is ejected at the last second?" she asked, winking.

Alice giggled, a flat humorless sound.

"No," she said in reply, a tiny, almost imperceptible change in her tone, "I guess that's why you're the captain, huh?"

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With little more than hour left until the arrival of certain death, the PM flight, now including Quillan's former cargo ship, the HAWK'S WING, was busy ferrying atmo-suited crew members to the EXETER. The techbots, operating on their own battery power, had gone into high gear to efficiently pull the fusion reactors from all but one of the powered armor suits and tie them together in order to provide power for a one-shot defensive shield for the PINK MIST.

Salli had maneuvered the EXETER directly behind and slightly above the PINK MIST, calculating the best possible angle to apply pressure in order to shove the dreadnaught toward the planet below.

The different bots had been secured in their own niches. The weapons and other items gleaned from battle were shipped to the EXETER, as was a major portion of the processed scrap metal, the rest of the detritus was ejected to mix with the rest of the dead Mongan ships.

Once all crew had been transferred, Salli remotely piloted the empty HAWK'S WING back to the PINK MIST, where Quillan drove the power suit into an airlock aboard the cargo craft and secured it in place. Cyborg Alice and Quillan donned atmo-suits, climbed into the cargo craft, disengaged the container and flew the craft to the top of the dreadnaught. There, Quillan backed against the huge craft and used the docking clamps to grab hold of a large stress bar, thereby becoming part of the ship.

"Charleen," Quillan said over the communications channel, "if you don't get a signal from us in two weeks, make straight for Purgatory. The only words out of your mouth to ANYONE are, 'The Mayor of India has arrived.' They'll put you in touch with Infernus. Tell him who you are and that you need to ditch the stuff you've got. Like I've said before, he's an asshole and a crook, but he'll do right by you."

"Captain," Charleen replied, "we'll see you in a couple of weeks."

Quillan turned her head to look at Alice, clad in her atmo-suit, winked at the beauty and said into the headset, "Hit it."

Salli engaged her rear engines for a burn of five minutes, constantly altering her angle to keep the PINK MIST on its prescribed course toward the airless planet. Precisely three hundred seconds after she began pushing, she cut power by fifty percent, letting the monster dreadnaught drift away to begin spiraling downward. When the PINK MIST was a mile distant, the EXETER turned and engaged the lightspeed drive.

The laws of physics changed dramatically at one hundred eighty six thousand miles per second. When lightspeed had finally been achieved in the late twenty second century, it was quickly discovered that the theories taught in school were wrong. The most commonly taught mistake was that a faster-than-light vehicle could not activate its drive in a gravity well; in proximity to a planet, for example. Also taught was that all matter remained static; a brick remained a brick. Basic physics taught that one solid object could not pass through another solid object.

When lightspeed was attained, the vehicle in question became surrounded by a phase bubble allowing it to pass through solid objects. Hence, a ship could travel in a straight line without fear of taking damage from a pesky planet. Of course, there was still a danger, however slight, of colliding with another object which was also traveling at lightspeed...like a recently exploded star.

It was a short hop for the EXETER to get back into Alliance territory, but Charleen wanted to put as much distance between the ship and the battlespace as possible. Just after entering friendly space, they dropped from warp, ejected a passive listening drone, then re-entered warp. Their destination was Katham VIII and the offered help from that planet.

The passive drone was specifically keyed to Alice's operational signature. It would sit quietly, its pinhead-sized "dirty" fission nuclear reactor offline. When Alice sent an all-clear signal, the drone's reactor would "heat up," its directional antenna would home on the EXETER, squirt transmit the signal, then overload and self-destruct. Per Quillan's instructions, it also had a timer aboard which would cause the thing to detonate after sixteen days, signal or no signal.

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Gravity's pull on the PINK MIST steadily grew stronger, her forward momentum remaining constant. She circled the planet, getting lower and lower by the moment. Since the maneuvering jets were offline, she was the equivalent of a space rock.

Quillan and Alice leaned toward each other, gave a lingering kiss, then straightened in their seats and cinched their harnesses tightly. They lowered the faceplates on the atmo-suits and were rewarded with green lights on the translucent heads-up displays, signifying that the suits were sealed properly. Alice's body, being a constructed cybernetic organism, still required food, water, and most of all, air. Her body, although much tougher than any human, could still be injured and suffer the same ills. Lack of oxygen would be a bad thing.

The HAWK'S WING's locked position on the hull of the PINK MIST prevented the pair from seeing anything outside other than the stars above. Quillan's eyes dropped and fixed on the altimeter, watching it drop rapidly as the PINK MIST hurtled downward. A thousand questions ran through her mind. Foremost being...

If the ship didn't survive the impact, how would it affect Alice? Would her cyborg body die, too? Would her higher brain functions cease, leaving her a shell? Would she continue to operate, but at a greatly reduced capacity? She keyed her microphone.

"Alice," she said, "I love you."

Alice remained silent, but her glow increased.

The altimeter counted down faster and faster as the dreadnaught descended. At the prescribed altitude of fifty meters above the ground, the HAWK'S WING's computer fired the emergency explosive undocking clamps and the ventral thrusters simultaneously. HAWK'S WING was propelled into the air as the thrusters, "slammed on the brakes," bringing her lateral movement to a virtual standstill. The PINK MIST rocketed away, her own forward and ventral shields began glowing bright blue as the daisy chained miniature fusion reactors gasped their last breaths.

The immense dreadnaught's rear end hit the ground first, the shields casting aside all debris in a huge cloud. The deeply furrowed trail was easy enough for Quillan to follow as she nosed the HAWK'S WING over, triggered an active "watch" sensor, and pushed the acceleration lever to the stops to catch up with the now-grounded behemoth. Her own shields were at maximum, residual debris causing small blue winks as it rebounded from the energy field. A sudden thought came into her mind.

This was almost the exact scenario when she had first met Alice. Oh, boy. That hadn't ended quite the way she had intended. But, she reasoned, she didn't know exactly what to expect then; she hadn't been in control of the situation. Here, she was. She knew exactly what to do and when. She was glad to note that she hadn't gotten soft during her command; her fingers flew over the controls and twitched the joystick to avoid larger objects which had fallen back to the ground in their path. Her reflexes were as fast as ever.

Ahead, the dreadnaught had come to a complete stop, becoming buried under still-settling tons of dirt and rocks as Quillan tried to push the acceleration lever forward more. The throttle was already wide open. The HAWK'S WING screamed in low, the familiar collision alarms yelling and screaming. Quillan ignored them, flicking her eyes between the PINK MIST's rear end and the rapidly changing range indicator. She jerked the throttle to cut the rear thrusters, flipped a switch with her thumb to engage the forward thrusters, and slammed the throttle control to the stops once more, slowing the HAWK'S WING and sliding to a stop mere feet from the dreadnaught.

The dust and debris settled, closing over them, leaving them buried under tons of earth.

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"Debris. Survivors. All of it. Find me some humans. Now. The Empress will arrive shortly. I will not disappoint her." As much as I hate her, he added to himself.

Marking eight feet, four inches, Mongan Royal Fleet Master Denlom Ganastra stared out the viewport at the devastation surrounding his fleet, his orange-skinned face in a deep scowl.

"Fleet Master, all ships are on station and conducting a search. Our fighters have assumed global defense pattern. The MON-TALAJA reports the residual fallout from an impact on a planet just outside Alliance territory. Shall I send a search squad of that planet?" asked Communications Specialist Saldeth Agali.

Ganastra sat in his command seat, leaning his chin on his fist, elbow propped on the arm of his uncomfortable chair. Why must these seats be so damned small?

"Have them move as close as possible to the planet and perform their scans without breaching the border. Scan only. No landings. Warn them that if they break the line of demarcation, they will be destroyed," he replied, in a foul mood indeed.

Several hours later, he received word that the MON-VALMAJA, the ship belonging to Her Royal Imperial Highness Trissteen Valmaja, was approaching. His mood darkened. He hated that woman with every fiber of his being. She was what the humans called a, "micromanager," telling everyone within earshot what SHE wanted done and how to deploy during a battle. She knew nothing of combat. And the bitch used her ship as taxicab. If she would put it into action, this could all be over in weeks. If her father could see... Ganastra sighed.

The Man-O-War MON-VALMAJA could be seen with the naked eye almost as soon as it appeared on sensors. Four or five times larger than Infernus Purgatory and called the "flying hourglass" by many, it was wide at both ends and narrow in the middle; made up of seven individual sections like flat rings fitted together. It bristled with guns, antenna, and sensor suites. It carried an entire fleet of one thousand fighters. Virtually nothing could survive an encounter with it, if used properly.

The Royal Fleet Master's screen lit up without preamble and the beautiful orange-skinned Empress smiled predatorily, the multiple rows of her silver teeth gleaming. Attached to her breasts were two slaves, one male, the other female, sucking greedily and obscenely. Knelt before her between her legs was another slave with his face buried in her crotch, also making slurping noises. To either side of her stood two very fine male slaves, their double-penises standing erect as she languidly stroked them.

"Fleet Master," she greeted, then extended her tongues to lick the heads of a double-penis. "You have good news for me." It wasn't a question.

"Empress," he nodded a greeting in return, his face neutral, his insides churning at the sight before him. "It appears that our quarry has fled back into enemy space. We have dispatched a scout craft to the border. They detected a recent impact and were assigned to scan the area. We should have a report very shortly." Communications Specialist Agali interrupted.

"Fleet Master, the MON-TALAJA has found a very low power transmitter on the planet below. It's range will not allow it to transmit more than approximately fifty miles. There is also a long scar on the planet, indicative of a ship crash. They scanned the area and found only a large, many-chambered hole beneath the terrain, surrounded by metal. It's a ship, sir. There are no life signs, and a very weak fusion reactor in operation. Request instructions, Fleet Master."

"Fleet Master," said the Empress lightly, "kill that one for intruding upon our conversation."

"Yes, Empress," he replied, snapping his fingers. Two security members closed on the horrified communications officer and dragged him kicking and screaming from the bridge. Just before the doors swished shut, a gunshot was heard. Moments later, another communications officer arrived and took his place at the console, head down as he intently studied his panel and nothing else.

"Clean up this mess, salvage what you can and send the rest into a star," said the Empress, hissing slightly as she orgasmed from the licking she was receiving. "Kill any warrior that you find alive. Incompetence will not be tolerated. Once that is complete, return to your regular patrol stations. We'll just have to find another spot to spy on the Alliance."

"Of course, Empress," he said as he formally bowed his head.

She disappeared from the screen, the signal shut off.

Royal Fleet Master Denlom Ganastra did not get to be Royal Fleet Master by carelessly throwing away his troops. Yes, lives were lost in battle, but he sacrificed none. Especially for the whim of a slax-fire female as stupid as she. He had met many brave and cunning females in his day, but the Empress wasn't one of them.

"Communications Officer Agali," Ganastra said, "tell the MON-TALAJA to hold station and intense-scan the area. They are to do nothing else. If a bug crawls within that ship, I want to know about it. Afterward, I want you to report to the mess deck and tell the cook to prepare whatever you wish. That was a fine performance."

The first time the Empress had ordered an execution for incompetency, he had questioned her about it, then merely threw the offender off the bridge and called for someone to take his place. He discovered by trial and error that the Empress liked to hear an "execution" taking place, so he did what any devious Royal Fleet Master would do: he blatantly lied. The woman was too preoccupied with her sex slaves to realize that Communication Specialist Agali had been "killed" dozens of times.

How he would dearly love to go down to that planet, dig out that vessel and see what he could find. He tapped a finger on the arm of his chair, deep in thought as he stared at an image of the little airless planet.