15 Erbe 1117: Gashuumi System
I was woken up by a chiming from the ship’s computer. I sat up, swung my legs over the edge of the bunk, and coughed uncontrollably.
Percy floated over. “You need to rest, Captain Kodai.”
I shook my head. “No. I need to run my ship. Give me whatever you have that will kill this cough and let me wake up enough to run things.”
“I am sorry, Captain Kodai, but I am unable to comply. Your injuries are beyond what this unit can provide. Please, return to your bunk.”
The door slid open. “Percy? Override. I will take care of this.” Percy floated away without acknowledgment as Doctor Korvusar came over. “How are you feeling?”
“Terrible.” I coughed again. “Can you do something about this cough?”
She sighed, but looked through her bag, finally pulling out a canister and plugging it into the injector. “This will keep the worst of it down, but be aware that you will probably have even more problems due to drainage.”
“As long as I can get a complete sentence out.” I coughed again and stood up, then wobbled and sat back down.
“Can you do something to wake me up?”
She shook her head, and I saw a sadness in her eyes. “That’s… beyond what I can do with what I have on board.”
“Oh come on, you’ve got to have stims of some kind!”
“It isn’t chemical.” She sighed. “Look… Your injuries are worse than you want to accept. I realize that you are Captain, and I need you to be the Captain, but…”
“So, what are my injuries? My lungs are messed up. Fine. I can get new ones.”
She shook her head again. “Your coughing is only due to the corrosive agent that was used. That will be easy to correct once we are on Gashuumi. The problem was the neurotoxin that was released.”
“There’s something else?”
“Yes. The neurotoxin, whatever it was, breaks down electrical transfer between neurons. If you had been exposed to it long enough, your entire neural system would have shut down. Steward Tharis got a massive dose of it, and only by reducing her metabolism as much as I could am I able to keep her alive at all. Ms. Dradon is having perceptual problems, and you are suffering from reduced reaction time due to the slower signal transfer rate. All of you are suffering from fatigue. You need a full neural refresh, and that isn’t something I can do on this ship. All three of you need a full hospital.”
“Got it.” I groaned as I stood up again. “I just feel so tired.”
“And it will only get worse.” She sighed, then pulled out another injection canister.
“This is a metabolic booster,” she said as she injected me with it. “It should speed up your system enough to offset the neural damage. But, it will also cause the damage to your system to spread faster.” She shook her head as she stepped back. “I wouldn’t normally take the risk but, under the circumstances.”
“Got it,” I said. I was already heading for the door.
—-
Downstairs I stopped by my cabin long enough to get a jumpsuit, then headed for the Bridge. Do’rex and Saahna were already at their stations, and both looked back in surprise as I came in. Do’rex clicked, and Saahna slid her seat back to stand up.
“Derek, are you ok? Should you be…”
I cut her off. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s probably going to be a bad transition, so you need to be at your station.” I couldn’t tell if she was hurt or annoyed, but she turned back to her console as I pulled myself up to the Captain’s seat. It was more difficult than I had expected, and when I started pulling up my displays, I noticed for the first time that my hands were shaking and that my coordination was off. I wasn’t sure if that was due to the neurological damage or to the booster Doctor Korvusar had given me.
At least I wasn’t coughing, though the back of my throat was raw.
“Where is our expected tumble?” I asked.
Do’rex clicked, and I saw Saahna, who was in my field of view, wince. “We are approximately two hours behind schedule on our exit tumble,” said Do’rex in a subdued voice.
“I told all of you to wake me up before exit!” I said in irritation. Then the realization set in. “Wait… we’re two hours behind?”
“Yes.”
“Why the hells didn’t you wake me up and tell me!”
“What could you have done?” asked Saahna, looking up at me. “Yeah, we’ve got a problem, but all we can do right now is wait and hope we haven’t rutted ourselves too much.”
I sighed. “Yeah, got it.” I looked at my console. Varan was in the Gunnery Suite, and Jami was in Engineering. Karran Trisk was in Varan’s cabin, and everyone else was in their cabins upstairs.
“Who is looking after the passengers?”
“No one?” said Saahna, looking up and back at me again. “The Stetons are locked in their room, Ms. Dradon is almost as sick as you are, Shelly is unconscious, and Doctor Korvusar is trying to take care of all of you, even though some of you won’t listen to her!”
I glared at her. “This is still my ship. I’m responsible. If anything…”
The sudden Jump transition cut me off as we tumbled back into normal space. Jump transitions are always uncomfortable–the universe doesn’t like it when we break the laws of physics–but this was the worst I had ever experienced. I heard the groaning sound of stressed metal as the plasteel hull around us flexed, but that was cut off as my body rebelled and I emptied what little was in my stomach over the edge of my seat.
When I had control of myself again, I looked around. I felt as if I had been hit, repeatedly, with something heavy. Do’rex was wiping his console clear from where he had experienced stomach problems of his own. Saahna was looking around with the dazed expression of someone who had imbibed a few too many and didn’t know where they were.
I ignored the feeling in my stomach and the taste in my mouth and looked at my console. There were red lights on over half the displays, with priority comms coming in from all over the ship. I punched to open the channel to Engineering and managed to hit it on the second try. “Report!”
“Captain!” Jami said, surprise mixed with urgency. “That was rough. We’ve got problems.”
“I know. What’s our status?”
“Mostly on-line, but the Jump Drive is showing nothing but red. That was a bad one.”
“Are the Maneuver Drives on-line?”
“Yeah, but I want a full overhaul before we try to Jump again.”
“Got it. Are you ok?”
There was a pause. “No, but I’ll live. Where are we?”
I glanced at the nav display. “We’re in the right system, but it doesn’t look like we’re anywhere near anything. Let me look.”
“We’re about 18 gigameters from Gashuumi,” said Saahna in a strained voice. “I can’t give you anything more than that.”
“That’s enough. Jami, we’re assways out. I’ll get back to you when I have something more. Just make sure we’ve got maneuver.”
“Got it.” She clicked off.
I switched to the shipwide comms. “Yes, we’re here. More or less. Everyone report in.”
There was a pause, then Doctor Korvusar came on-line. “Steward Tharis is stable, and Passenger Dradon has left her cabin while the cleaning bots take care of it. I have not heard from either of the Stetons.”
I sighed. “They’re on lockdown. I’ll have to…” The comms panel suddenly lit up.
“Free Trader Grayswandir, this is Gashuumi Space Traffic Control. You are well outside of the arrival zone. Please advise as to your status?”
I tapped the console. “Gashuumi, this is the Grayswandir. We have a condition Red. GK. Mayday. Repeat, GK. Mayday. We have an emergency — several emergencies. We have multiple medical emergencies, damage incurred in Jumpspace, and damage from a bad Jump transition. We will be maneuvering in your direction as soon as we get sorted out. Requesting a medical team available as we land and a maintenance team on standby.”
At our distance, it was several minutes before the reply came back. “Understood, Grayswandir. Do you require an intercept or escort?”
I closed my eyes. I was feeling jittery, but I couldn’t tell from what. “Negative on an escort, but I’d like to land as soon as we can.”
Again there was a several minute delay. “Understood. We will give you priority access when you arrive. Are you sure you do not need an escort?”
“It’s been long enough that I don’t think a few hours will make a difference. We’re just requesting a priority approach when we get there, and a medical team on standby.”
There was that agonizing pause again. While I was waiting, I turned to the others. “What’s our status?”
“Maneuver drive is functioning,” said Do’rex, back to his usual matter-of-fact tone. “Navigator Denan has provided me with an approach. Unfortunately, it will take us about 30 hours to reach the planet due to our arrival distance and fuel constraints.”
I groaned and fought the cough it tried to bring up. It was getting hard to speak because of my sinuses draining, but at least I could get a complete sentence out.
“Fine. Do whatever you need to.” I glanced at my console again. “And someone check on Varan; he hasn’t reported in since the tumble.”
Saahna pushed her seat back. “Do’rex has my plot, and I’ve got access to the suite; I’ll check.”
“Good.” I let loose with a long series of hacking coughs, which I barely got under control before the reply from Gashuumi arrived.”
“Understood, Grayswandir. We’re dispatching the SDB Horizon Aura to match your vector in case your situation changes. ”
“Thank you, Gashuumi. I or someone on board will advise if our situation changes. Grayswandir out.”
Another few minutes went by. Saahna hadn’t returned, which couldn’t be a good sign. I pinged her. “Any problems?”
“Varan was unconscious. Sick too. Probably Jump Sickness. Doctor Korvusar is here looking at him.”
I closed my eyes. I felt terrible. I knew I needed to be making decisions, but my mind just wouldn’t work fast enough.
“Gasshumi is sending a ship out with some support. Do whatever you can.”
She cut off without saying anything else. A few seconds later, Gashuumi came back.
“Understood, Grayswandir. The Horizon Aura will have their medical team on standby if needed.”
“Thank you, Gashuumi.” I clicked off.
—-
A few minutes later, Saahna came back into the Bridge and dropped into her seat. “When are we meeting the ship from Gashuumi?”
“We aren’t. They’re escorting us in. How is Varan?”
She turned to me in surprise. “The Doctor says he just needs rest. But why aren’t we rendezvousing with their ship?”
“We’re both heading to Gashuumi anyway. They can’t be that much faster than us.”
She was looking at her console. “It’s an SDB. Those things can pull the gees. They look like they’re doing three right now. We could get all of you in several hours earlier than if you stay here.”
“Yeah, and we’d have to kill thrust while we maneuvered for docking. And, I have no idea what got Girar, or Tlianke for that matter, has told them about us. They screwed us up on departure then tried to kill us during our Jump. I’d just as soon not let them on board the ship, or give us ‘medical treatment’ while we’re way out here.”
She paused in thought, then pushed her seat back again. “Then maybe I better be in the gimbal when they get here.”
“Don’t deploy turrets or go to full power. We don’t want to give them an excuse for anything.”
“Got it.” She exited the Bridge.
I looked out the canopy. Gashuumi was presumably somewhere in front of us but, this far out, it was just a bright spot among other bright spots. I pulled up my nav console.
Saahna had plotted a basic course to intercept the planet, but it would require further refinement to get us into an orbit. I tried to work on the calculations myself, but my brain felt like it was moving through a braking field. I finally turned the calculations over to the Grayswandir, glanced at what it produced, then flicked it down to Do’rex. He clicked in acknowledgment but did not comment.
I leaned my seat back as far as it would go and stared at the ceiling. I wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep, but whatever Doctor Korvusar had given me was keeping me awake. Well, I had asked for it. I just let my brain unfocus and stared into nothing.
—-
I must have dozed off after all, because several hours had passed when the bridge door slid open again. I looked over to see Varan entering, and struggled to pull my seat back upright.
“Hey, you ok?” He nodded, though I could tell he wasn’t in the best shape.
“Yeah,” he said, dropping into the navigator’s seat. He didn’t slide forward to the console but instead turned to look up at me. “How about you?”
“Terrible, but I’m apparently going to live.”
“That’s good. Really. I… we were worried.” He glanced around. “Saahna was in the gunnery suite, so I just came up here. How are we doing?”
“How are you doing?”
He let out an embarrassed laugh. “Got sick at the transition and forgot the gimbal is in zero-g. I inhaled and nearly choked myself to death. Basic Zero-G training 101, and I forgot.”
“Well, I’m glad it wasn’t worse than that.”
“Me too. So, do you need me to take over from her?”
“No. Things are complicated.” I quickly told him what had happened since the transition.
“The Horizon Aura will meet with us in…” I glanced at the console. They were still accelerating towards us but were close to their turnover point.
“They’ll be here in about seven hours. We’ll still be fifteen to twenty out then. They say they’ll escort us in. As long as that is all they do…”
“And what happens when we’re down?”
“We’ll worry about that tomorrow.” I frowned. “No, you’re right. We need to get things worked out. Once we hit atmosphere, things will get complicated fast.’
I stopped to think. It was harder than I liked, as if I had had a few too many. But finally, I opened the shipwide comms.
“Ok, everyone, I’m sure everyone knows our status by now. We’re going to be intercepted by an SDB from Gashuumi in about six hours. I’d like for us to have some idea as to what we are going to tell them by then. The passenger lounge has the most space, so everyone there in 30 minutes. The Grayswandir can fly herself for a while. And I mean everyone, passengers too.”
Varan was looking at me. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“When we get down and report what has happened, they’re going to be questioning everyone. We need to make sure that everyone has all the facts.”
“Keeping our stories straight, you mean.”
“There’s no ‘story’ here. What happened, happened.”
He let out an audible sigh. “Yeah. I guess it did.”
I swung myself out of my seat and half-dropped/half-fell to the deck. I stumbled, then headed for the door to the lounge. “See everyone in thirty minutes.”
—-
I grabbed my comp from my cabin, then headed up to the passenger deck. Climbing the ladder was harder than I expected, adding to my worries about what had happened to me. I kept telling myself that I had to take care of things.
Once up, I grabbed a stim-stick and a flavored soda from the dispenser. I really wanted something stronger, but I knew I was already fuzzy and needed to stay alert for at least another hour or two.
Dr. Korvusar was in her usual seat and had been watching me. She said nothing until I dropped into the chair opposite her.
“How are you feeling, Captain Kodai?”
I shrugged as I took a bite from the stim-stick. “Fine,” I said through a full mouth. “I just need to get this over with before I fall over.”
“You have been badly injured, Captain. You really need just to trust your crew and rest instead of trying to do everything yourself.”
“I’ll live.” I took another bite of the stick, then took a swallow of the soda and winced. I had forgotten how horribly sweet those things were.
“And I think you should have accepted Gashuumi’s offer to transport you, Ms. Dradon, and Ms. Tharis planetside. Especially Ms. Tharis. She needs treatment as close to immediately as possible.”
“Yes. I get that. But, we don’t need them to finish what they started either.”
“I’ve heard your communications with Gashuumi, as has anyone in the system who might have been listening. If anything happened to you, or anyone, on the way back to the planet, or after they arrived, it would look incredibly suspicious. They would have expected everyone on board to be dead when we arrived. The fact that we are here must have ruined any plans they might have made.”
Her comment triggered a thought. Something wasn’t right. But… I was too tired to think.
I started looking through my comp, pulling up our records from the past week. I had missed too much of it and needed to know what I would be talking about.
Over the next minutes, people started filtering into the lounge. Varan was first up, with Karran, but the others soon followed. Do’rex was the last through the iris and just leaned back against the nearest bulkhead.
I looked around. “Are the Steton’s still locked in their cabin?”
“Well, yeah?” said Varan. “What else were we supposed to do?”
I sighed and glanced upward. “Gray? Unlock the Steton’s cabin and open their comms.”
“Confirm. Done.”
“Mr. and Ms. Steton? We’re meeting in the lounge. Please come join us.”
The door almost immediately slid open, and Ms. Steton rushed out. She looked as bad as I felt, as if she hadn’t slept for any of the time I’d been unconscious.
“Please, Captain!” she said, dropping to her knees in front of me. “Please! We had nothing to do with this! Please!”
Her husband had come up behind her and, taking her arm, pulled her to her feet and a few steps back. He looked tired as well, but in his case, it was more from resignation.
“Thank you for including us, Captain. Most of your crew doesn’t trust us.”
“I’m not sure who I trust right now,” I said, taking another swallow of my drink. I winced and sat it down. “Can someone grab me a beer?”
Saahna glanced at me in concern, but immediately jumped up and went to the dispenser. She returned a few seconds later and handed me a bottle.
“Thanks,” I said as I twisted the top off. It was surprisingly harder than it should have been, and I noticed that my hands were shaking as I did.
“Ok, we all know the situation. We’re in deep biowaste no matter what we do. We got on Tlianke’s naughty list. They had Girar do what they could to give us as many problems as possible before leaving, and then they decided just to kill us. And now we’re in another of their systems, and we have no choice but to land. The ship is damaged, both Ms. Dradon and I are injured, and Shelly can’t survive another Jump. So we’re walking directly into an Aslan’s dewclaw. So… how do we get out of this?”
There was silence as everyone looked at each other. Saahna finally spoke. “Great way to start the meeting on a positive note.”
“I’m barely aware of what I’m doing at this point. Getting neurotoxined is surprisingly like being drunk. The bad parts, anyway.” I laughed, but no one else joined in.
“Don’t worry about me, Derek,” said Reina. “I’ll be ok. It’s kind of exciting to have something happen instead of just another Jump.”
“I’d just as soon not have ‘excitement’ in Jumpspace.”
“Hey, I’m sorry,” said Jami, unusually subdued. “If I had known it would lead to this, I never would have asked you to meet with Kol’toti and Tahma.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said, then coughed. “No one knows what bolt might drop and start a Kessler Cascade. The gods know that I’ve dropped my share. We’re Travellers; we’ll deal with it.”
Karran laughed and shook her head. “Yeah, if this were a net-vid, everyone would complain about how unrealistic it was. ‘The evil government does everything they can to antagonize the hero, and then the hero misses the bomb they sneak on board?’ Reality is stranger than fiction.”
“They had worn us down, and we missed it,” I said, defensively. The Steton’s were,” I paused and nodded to them, “they were asked to give us a hard time about getting their cargo on board, and they did. They must have thought that we would be so concerned about satisfying them that we wouldn’t look at their cargo too closely.”
“And the sensors were altered in both airlocks and the cargo bay, remember?” added Jami.
“Yeah. They played us perfectly.”
“We all missed it,” said Saahna, intently. “None of us are to blame. A lot was going on, and we missed one thing. Unfortunately… it was the one thing we shouldn’t have missed.”
“But what would have happened if you had scanned it?” Doctor Korvusar was speaking again, and I could tell from her expression that she had an idea. “You would have called them on it, and the Steton’s would never have come on board. Or, you could have given in to their demands and not even carried them in the first place. Their actions towards you were intended for you to not Jump with them on board. So… why plant the neurotoxin?”
I could tell that she was onto something, but I couldn’t think fast enough to catch up. “In case we did anyway?”
“That was an unlikely outcome. I’ll confess that I was surprised that you worked that out. I doubt that anyone on Girar thought that we would be departing with the Stetons.”
“They must have thought…”
“No. They didn’t.” She was suddenly her confident self again. “The authorities on Girar, or Tlianke, didn’t plant the neurotoxin. Someone else did.” She turned to the Stetons. “Damaris? Kyris? Did you pack that crate?”
Demaris shook his head angrily. “No! I told you that…”
She cut him off. “So… if you wound up on another ship, that same crate would have gone with you?”
He was still angry. “It’s our household belongings! So yes, but we didn’t put anything in there! Hells, we were on the ship with it! Why would we risk our lives?”
“You might have received the antitoxin?” She held up a hand and shook her head as he stepped forward. “No, I know you didn’t. I checked everyone on board after the release, and you were no more protected than anyone else.” She turned to me. “Captain Kodai, this attack was not directed against us. It was directed against the Stetons.”
“What?”
“Sometimes conspiracies collide. Girar was trying to make your departure as painful as possible to cost you as much passenger revenue as possible. You found a loophole that allowed you to take one pair of passengers. But they must have expected them to remain on Girar. So, they didn’t plant the neurotoxin. But, someone did. And they wanted the Stetons to be their victims.”
I closed my eyes as I tried to think. It was… difficult. I heard more discussion, even argument in the lounge, but I forced it away.
“You’re right,” I said, looking up again. “The Tlianke people were trying to annoy us, not kill us. That’s why we still have our preferred trader status. They just wanted to remind us who was in charge. So, it was someone who fully expected the Stetons to be Jumping with us. And they messed with the sensors, so it has to be someone who had access to the Starport.” I sighed. “So they were either after the Stetons, and we were the collateral damage, or someone else is mad at us and used the Stetons to get to us.”
“Spoilsports?” asked Saahna grimly.
I shook my head. “The Fesaris showed up as we were leaving, remember? I’m not sure they knew we were here.” I paused. “Samone was unhappy about my using her bar as a meeting point, but the rest of Jestin’s people seem to be fine with us. I don’t know who else would be unhappy enough with us to try to kill us.”
“Spoilsports? The Fesaris? ‘Jestin’s’ people?” Karran shook her head. “You people do live exciting lives!”
I winced. I had forgotten that I wasn’t just talking to the crew. “It’s… complicated.”
Saahna stepped in. “Yeah, all of that makes sense.” She turned to Damis and Kyris. “So… we’re back to someone being after you. So, can you think of someone you might have annoyed enough to want to kill you?”
“No!” shouted Kyris. She was crying again. “We were fine. We were just living our life. Then, they… the Relocation Ministry said that we needed to go to Gashuumi. They said they needed us there. There was… nothing we could do! Tell them, Damaris! Tell them!”
He was staring at the floor and shaking his head. “We didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing to deserve this.”
None of this made sense. I tried to pick up my drink, but my hand was shaking so badly that I had to set it back down.
Saahna saw me. “Since we think it wasn’t them… maybe we should take them up on their offer to take you and the others in. Even if it is only a few hours, that may be important.”
“I agree,” added Doctor Korvusar. “If not for you, then for Steward Tharis.”
I took a deep breath that triggered a cough, then nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. When they match course, tell them we’ll do the transfer.”
“And if they want to send someone with us?” That was Varan.
“As the Doctor said, we’ve all talked too much over open channels. They can’t do anything to us at this point.”
I stood up, wobbled, then resumed. “We’ll let them on board. Tell them whatever you want about our deal with Kol’toti and Tahma. We sold that cargo. That’s all they need to know. The Spoilsports? They know we helped form the Hinterworlds Alliance, they may as well know who tried to kill the Boilingbrook Minister. Anything else? Does it matter?”
“And what about us?” Damaris looked up at me angrily.
“I don’t think you had anything to do with it. Setting off a neuroweapon that would most likely have killed you as well makes no sense. Unless both of you were suicidal to begin with, which I don’t think you were.” I staggered. I looked at the half-finished beer, but couldn’t coordinate myself enough to pick it up.
“So… we’re done. Anyone have anything else?”
“I will set up a rendezvous with the Gashuumi SDB,” said Do’rex, stepping onto the ladder. “Please take care of yourself, Captain.”
“I’ll go help,” said Saahna. She came over and gave me a surprisingly passionate kiss, given that we were in the lounge. “We’ll get you taken care of Derek. Trust me.”
“I do,” I said, somewhat taken aback. “That it?”
“Please tell them we didn’t do this!” Kyris was crying again. “Please!”
“I will.”
“We all will,” said Doctor Korvusar, looking at me with concern. “But, for now, the Captain needs his rest. Please… let’s get you back to bed.” She took my arm and started leading me toward the cabin they had set up as a clinic.
“That’s… it,” I said, leaning on her a bit more than I had planned. I heard movement behind me as we entered the cabin.
Doctor Korvusar helped me into the bunk. “Just rest, Captain. You will be fine.”
“Thanks,” I gasped. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I realized how tired I was. “Just… make sure everyone knows what we’re doing.” Whatever that was.
“I will, Captain. I will.”