The starship Gabriel’s bridge, non-system space
‘Are we at the agreed rendezvous yet?’ Ed asked Phil, as he stepped off the tube lift.
Phil opened his eyes and scratched his chin.
‘Not long now,’ he said. ‘One jump away. ‘I’m kinda leaving it to the last minute, just checking we’re not being tailed.
Ed slid into his couch and indicated the other empty seats.
‘Have you been on your own all day?’ he asked.
‘Ah, no, Callon was here keeping me company until I said she ought to get some sleep.’
‘No, I suppose we don’t all have to be here just to meet another friendly ship. Do we know who’s coming?’
‘Katadromiko 52, so I’m informed,’ said Phil, shrugging.
‘I didn’t know there was fifty-two of those monsters.’
‘It’s brand new apparently, only finished its trials a few days ago.’
‘Well, let’s hope one’s enough to sort this crap out. Do we know who the captain is?’
‘Grogun Whipper.’
Ed cocked his head to one side in thought.
‘I know that name, but I can’t picture him.’
‘It’s a her,’ said Phil. ‘You’re thinking of her father Gastion, a good friend of Bache’s.’
‘Yes, Gastion,’ blurted Ed, pointing at Phil. ‘I remember…came to Andy’s wedding with Bache.’
‘That’s the one.’
‘So…he has a successful daughter too?’
‘So it seems,’ said Phil, raising his eyebrows suggestively.
‘Hey, don’t go there…I already have Pol. You on the other hand?’
Phil rolled his eyes and adopted a downcast expression.
‘Human and Theo relationships don’t have a good rap,’ he admitted.
Ed looked across and was about to question that, but Phil spoke before him and swiftly changed the subject.
‘How’s Andy getting on now?’ he asked.
‘Good days and bad days,’ Ed replied. ‘But overall, he’s doing the only thing he can and keeping busy.’
‘Yeah, I saw the two old motorbikes he’s doing up down in the hangar. He has Cleo fabricating new parts for them.’
‘Good,’ said Ed. ‘It’s the best therapy for him.’
‘What is?’ said Andy, the tube lift depositing him in the room.
‘You, fixing bikes with Cleo,’ said Phil.
‘Not as straightforward as it might seem,’ Andy replied, his hands on his hips. ‘She’s the galactic expert on particle physics, but trying to teach her the intricacies of a seventies Kawasaki triple is a different matter.’
‘I don’t have to help you, you know,’ said Cleo, her voice booming around the bridge.
‘You love it really,’ chortled Andy, giving Ed a wink.
‘Oh, yes,’ she replied. ‘Having to vent the hangar every time you start up that eighty-year old smelly and overly loud two stroke.’
‘Sounds like a choir of angels,’ Andy replied.
‘A tin of ball bearings in a tumble drier, more like,’ Ed interjected, shaking his head.
‘You have no appreciation of classic engineering,’ Andy muttered under his breath, while adopting a phoney anguished expression.
‘Anyway, moving swiftly on,’ said Ed, glancing forlornly at Phil. ‘Do we have any evidence of a pursuit?’
‘No, boss, all clear.’
‘Okay, take us to the rendezvous point and uncloak so that monster doesn’t jump onto us by mistake.’
The three of them glanced up as the holomap reset post-jump. Ed had chosen the empty non-system location deliberately as there were no hiding places for the bugs and it was a single hundred light year jump back to the dead planet of Tessamaine and bug central.
‘Uncloaked,’ said Phil, leaning back and sliding his hands behind his head. ‘Now we wait.’
‘Keep an emergency jump icon primed,’ said Ed. ‘If anything other than the Katadromiko 52 jumps in nearby, hit it.’
They didn’t have too long to wait. Twenty-two minutes later a whole slab of stars vanished fifty kilometres away on their starboard side. The monstrous fourteen-kilometre cruiser had arrived. It remained uncloaked and after righting itself to be on the same plane as the Gabriel, approached slowly and stopped ten kilometres away.
‘Greetings, Captain Virr,’ said Grogun, her image appearing in mid-air above the three crew on the Gabriel’s bridge.
‘Captain Whipper, we’re very glad to see you and congratulations on your first command,’ said Ed, smiling. ‘I imagine your father’s very proud.’
‘Hmm,’ she grunted. ‘More overly paranoid and protective is nearer the mark. Probably why it’s taken me three times as long to achieve this than most and most likely now only because half the navy’s captains are dead, making them desperately short of senior officers.’
Ed noticed Andy give him a harried look that spoke volumes, to the fact he’d seemingly and unwittingly opened a large can of worms. He decided it would be prudent to quickly change the subject and talk about the operation. He was about to speak again when he saw Grogun’s head snap to her right. When she looked forward again, it was with a questioning expression.
‘Have you just initiated a localised jump?’ she asked.
Ed saw both Andy and Phil look at each other, then back at him and shake their heads in puzzlement.
‘Negative,’ said Ed. ‘Has your ship just detected something out of the ordinary?’
‘A faint jump signature, similar in structure to the reading we detected in the Sol system on the track that fake comet took.’
‘You’ve been to Earth?’ Ed asked, noticing Grogun was issuing commands and not really paying attention to what he was saying.
‘Have you any evidence the bugs have any cloaking technology?’ she asked, glancing back at Ed.
‘Err, well, no,’ said Ed, getting shrugs and head shakes from Andy and Phil.
‘Hmm,’ Grogun grunted again. The expression on her face was not one of contentment. ‘I don’t like enigmas,’ she said. ‘I’ve ordered a complete ship-wide search, which as you can imagine on a vessel this size is no small task. Perhaps you should do the same.’
Ed glanced up.
‘Cleo, can you scan for any anomalous signatures in and around the ship during the last few minutes?’
‘Already done,’ she said. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary detected.’
‘I’m transmitting the odd echo we found to you,’ said Grogun. ‘Try scanning for that. It’s faint and almost impossible to pinpoint, but we feel there’s too much there to ignore.’
There was momentary quietness on the bridge as Cleo inputted the data and analysed the ship using the new information. She appeared suddenly wearing her black ninja outfit, her arms crossed and a stern expression.
‘I concur, this is worrying,’ she said, her usual jovial attitude absent. ‘I’m afraid they’re correct…something I can’t quite get my holographic head around did occur on the Gabriel. It’s hardly there, but at the same time it is, or was. I think we might very likely have or have had a stowaway.’
‘Is there any way to improve on that?’ asked Ed. ‘Like—what, where and when?’
She shook her head and frowned.
‘It’s as frustrating as hell,’ she griped. ‘But that really is all I can confirm.’
Ed slumped in his seat and glanced at Andy and Phil opposite him.
‘There’s just not enough of us to search every corner of this ship,’ he grumbled, shrugging. ‘There must be a better way, Cleo?’
‘I’ve adjusted our internal detectors to warn of any fresh echos,’ she said, not sounding overly convinced. ‘But then again, if anything occurs now, I’m most likely going to know about it.’
‘Saying “most likely” isn’t very reassuring, Cleo,’ said Phil. ‘Especially for you?’
‘This tech, whatever it is, is new and clever. I need more than a faint unreadable echo to be able to assess and design a reliable detector and/or defence against it.’
Grogun, who’d been watching and listening to the conversation with interest, suddenly snapped her head to the right again.
‘What the Ancients was that?’ she demanded, before her image disappeared.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Andy, staring at his seat display and then up at the holomap.
‘What?’ asked Ed, following Andy’s gaze up to the map.
‘The K2 just shut down.’
‘Shut down what?’
‘Everything,’ said Cleo. ‘Propulsion, shields, environmental, lighting, artificial gravity…everything…it’s suddenly become a dead floating hulk.’
‘Oh, shit,’ said Andy, as the holomap lit up with thousands of rocks suddenly jumping in close by and converging on the Gabriel and the helpless Katadromiko at a frightening velocity.
‘Weapons and shields up,’ shouted Ed.
The holomap image changed suddenly. The Katadromiko and the thousands of rocks descending on them disappeared in an instant.