This is file #5 of 5
This file covers the re-emergence of the Alcyon.
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*** day 7 ***
- - ----------- Ship's Assembly, mid-afternoon ----------
Ger stands before the entire crew, not nearly so formal as during the
initial assemblies. 'Vouf and Zben have bandages on various parts of
their heads. 'Vouf's right leg is in a cast, and he is on crutches,
undoubtedly refusing to be seen on a grav-chair. AGNIS floats toward
the rear of the room, unobtrusively. Abuko, Werner, Silvmane, and
Wrinkley are exhausted, after putting in a second shift in engineering.
Ger addresses the crew.
"For your edification, we've synthesized the records made by the Paladin's
sensors, by AGNIS, and by the suit sensors used by the security team,
during the night. We have a short rundown of the engagement, so you
can think about what happened and use the lessons learned to some advantage
when we reach R-alpha."
He presses a button on his hand comp and the large holo tank comes alive,
with a view of engineering just as the door opens and 'Vouf walks in.
'Vouf looks at the robot and starts to speak.
"I have the sound turned down for obvious reasons." Ger says as he stops
the playback. He continues. "At this point, you can see three unprotected
engineers, on duty, starting to scramble for safety. Also at this point,
Leadfoot correctly recognizes a danger and dumps all available power to his
gravitics and laser." The playback starts again. "As leadfoot begins
to spin and move he completes his most significant offensive action,"
the playback slows to a crawl "one most of you didn't even know happened.
Here his microwave transmitter contacted the main computer on-board
high-speed communications interface, and transmitted a virus to the Alcyon.
... Here he does the same thing to AGNIS, and ... here he does it to
the command shuttle.
"Fortunately, Drs. Limner, Zar, and Thomas worked all day yesterday on ways
we could verify what was happening. We don't know what this virus was.
We re-booted everything and destroyed it. No, Adrian, we didn't wash
any data from AGNIS.
"At this point, Leadfoot kills the lights and signals the false decomp
warning. We probably would have done well to heed it and close all
the doors, anyway.
"Here, 'Vouf draws and fires. I didn't know he was *that* fast. You
can see here in the enhancement that most of the flechettes bounced off
tools and ricocheted all over engineering, causing minor damage. Three
rounds do get through, though and almost sever the laser welder.
"Now, Thule fires. His laser bolt penetrates the skull completely
and exits, after which it burns a hole in the secondary power cabling
insulation.
"And the real killer...Abdul fires. A fusion gun certainly is not my
first choice of on-board weapons, although it was certainly effective.
Notice that he fortunately hits leadfoot squarely in the body. The
blast, ... well, you know what the blast did."
At this point, Ger speeds up the playback for a few seconds as bodies
robots and equipment fly across the room.
"Now, 'Vouf decides to administer a coup de gras with his gloves. I
guess it worked." You can see 'Vouf attack the rising Leadfoot and
watch as his ears flex backward repeatedly from the awful sounds caused
by the tearing of the metal and the screeching of his gauntlets.
Suddenly, and with amazing clarity you can see the agonized expression
on the vargr's face as he loses his grip because of the snapping of
his tibia on the flat of the secondary bridge console.
The view shifts and you can see the IR tell-tale from Thule's sight
moving steadily with the advancing form, stayin dead on the joint
between the lower body and the upper articulations. A bright flash,
and the playback ends.
As the holo disappears, the room erupts in many small, almost
hushed, conversations. The CO waits a few moments for the
discussion to die down.
"Mainly, I wanted to make sure all of you saw exactly what happened
in there. I know a lot of us weren't aware of lwhat was happening,
and a lot of us have never before seen combat quite this personally.
That whole sequence took six seconds. It will take us almost six
days to repair the damage. I'll leave to each of you to decide if
it was worth it to remove a sabteur.
"Oh yes, we do have reason to believe that the virus was introduced
before we left, not after."
He pauses a few more seconds, looking around. He steps down off the
small rise he has traditionally used as a podium. He grabs an empty
chair from the front row, and sits backwards on it, leaning his elbows
on the back of the chair.
"Well, we'll be arriving shortly. We have now completed the *easy*
part of our mission. I have it on good authority our sabteur has
met his maker." He smiles wryly at Abuko.
"Now, we are about to visit a single world with the same habitable
surface area as all of the inhabited worlds in the Imperium put
together." He pauses to let that sink in. "There are fewer than
forty of us. We have to find the history of a long-dead race, find
an intelligent species, and prevent Imperial conflicts from destroying
this gem of an artifact.
"We are much better prepared for this part of our mission than we were
for sabotage, however. Look around you. We are scientists, we are
engineers, we are scouts. Only a few of us are trained killers." He
slows down just a little. "And all of us, _all_ .. _of_ .._us_, have
worked our whole lives for this moment. For this opportunity.
"You have demonstrated a teamwork on board these last few weeks.
You have demonstrated tenacity in adversity. And you have demonstrated
an ability to adapt. All of these are needed and will serve us in good
stead in our coming venture.
"When MY grandchildren ask me what it was like, I will proud to tell them
how wonderful it was to serve with the greatest collection of explorers
ever assembled.
"I salute each and every one of you.
...
After about three seconds, Ger stands, carefully replaces the chair and
steps pack up on the rise.
"We re-enter our universe shortly after evening mess. Make sure your
gear is properly stowed, and everything is ready for the transition.
After we arrive, crew of first away team will be posted.
"Dismissed".
Several hours later, almost at the preidicted moment, the jump warning
sounds, and the lights dim. Once again, everyone is subjected to that
annoying, nauseating, tumbling, feeling, and the pale blue glow on all
the outside monitors is replaced by starlight and sunlight.
Everyone hears, from just over her or his left shoulder a quiet, soothing,
alien, voice. In each person's native tounge comes the message:
"Welcome. We have been expecting you. An envoy will be up shortly
to show you where to dock. The peace of the cosmos be with you."
None of the typical intercept or probing signals appear on the ship's
sensors.
Looking out any viewport, you can see just how good a jump this was.
In an arc stretching from as far as you can see forward to as far as
you can see aft, and slightly below the Alcyon, is a wall of dark, gray,
metal, with sunlight shining off the edges. Far forward you can see
a second arc and far aft is a third. These two are tiny silvery bands
that begin well away from the vanishing points of the metal floor, and
extend around, behind, and above a shimmering greenish-yellow star.
These tiny bands almost connect above the star, giving the appearance
of a halo. Keen eyes detect a very slight fuzziness at the edges of
the "floor" near you.
Inward from the first ring, a second becomes visible. It is in a plane
with the first ring, but much smaller, and much darker.
The inside of the ring is visible fore and aft of Alcyon as the wall
arcs away from you. You can clearly see forests, seas, deserts, islands,
continets, and various signs of life - villages, smoke, roads. Motion
detectors tell of flying creatures as well.
The speed of rotation of the ring is much more than the speed of your
orbit. The breathtaking view literally flies by as sciences asks Christian
to have Lucan or Dulinor bring a couple more cases of holo-crystals
up to the lab.