The Falling Star, page 1
The Falling Star
Scott J. Young
Copyright © 2021 by Scott J. Young
Published by Reverie Company
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For permissions: hello@scottjyoung.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. But if you find a ship capable of faster than light travel, please let me know. I’d be very interested.
For my wife.
Te Iubesc
Contents
1. Halstaan
2. Ro
3. Halstaan
4. Ro
5. Halstaan
6. Ro
7. Halstaan
8. Ro
9. Halstaan
10. Ro
11. Halstaan
12. Ro
13. Halstaan
14. Ro
15. Halstaan
16. Halstaan
17. Halstaan
18. Ro
19. Halstaan
20. Ro
21. Halstaan
22. Ro
23. Halstaan
24. Ro
25. Ro
26. Halstaan
27. Ro
28. Halstaan
29. Ro
30. Halstaan
31. Ro
32. Halstaan
33. Ro
34. Halstaan
35. Ro
36. Halstaan
37. Ro
38. Halstaan
39. Ro
40. Halstaan
41. Ro
42. Halstaan
43. Ro
44. Halstaan
Epilogue
A sincere thank you
About the Author
1
Halstaan
A centimeter to his left and he would have been dead. Halstaan Cross heard his heart pounding in his ears, vibrating inside the deathly silence of his helmet. Adrenaline pulsed through his veins and time slowed. His vision narrowed. All he could see from his vantage point on the hull of the derelict ship was the business end of the blaster pointing at him.
Should’ve sent the new guy, Halstaan thought.
Someone once told a much younger Halstaan that space travel was a grand adventure filled with wonder and boundless wealth. They failed to mention it was also tedious and silent, briefly punctuated by moments of sheer terror and deadly consequence. Today alone, he had almost been killed twice. Before his shift began, the gravity paneling in his berthing failed and he nearly drowned while floating weightless in his shower. Now some cabbagehead had just sent a magnetically accelerated bolt of metal within a couple centimeters of his face.
After frantically waving his arms in front of him, Halstaan slowly placed his hands flat over his chest—the old kingdom sign for "I'm unarmed” or “peace." Ten meters toward the bow of the transport, a figure stood holding the blaster, visor on the helmet betraying nothing. Halstaan remained perfectly still. Without warning, a flood light activated, splashing across the ship's hull, illuminating the dark figure briefly. Halstaan got a better look at his assailant. The person was wearing a poorly maintained emergency vac suit. Whoever was inside it was clearly disturbed by the light, glancing up quickly before looking back at Halstaan and squeezing the trigger. A stream of bright blue flashes erupted from the end of the blaster and hit the hull just short of Halstaan. Sparks went tumbling on the hull across his feet.
“Whoa, whoa! Hold it!” Halstaan screamed over the comms, hoping desperately that the shooter could hear him.
Two hours ago, Odin's Lance found a small echo on sensors and came to investigate. This was a typical mission for the Lance. The Commerce Guild owned her and she was tasked with performing long-range rescue salvage along the galactic frontier. The frontier spanned from one end of Triumph to the other, dividing the inhabited third of the galaxy from the remainder. Travel along the frontier was dangerous and ships rarely attempted it, but when they did and inevitably got into trouble, the Odin’s Lance was there to pick up the pieces. It had been four months since their last mission and the captain was happy to stick his nose into something that might turn a profit. Anything to serve the bottom line.
Halstaan stared at the person who just tried to kill him and repeated the "peace" gesture frantically. The figure took a step forward but did not fire again. Halstaan was exposed out on the hull; standing on the belly of a transport ship in the middle of wild space without a single thing that he could use to defend himself or hide behind. He needed to find something to put between him and his attacker. Slowly raising his hands, he chanced a glance behind him. No floating debris, no antennae, not even landing struts. Nothing but the vacuum of space.
Turning his head back, Halstaan keyed his comms and hoped that the emergency suit had an open-frequency communicator.
"Listen, buddy, I'm not here to hurt you. We are a rescue team." Halstaan pointed at the red symbol on the right arm of his suit. "Rescue," he repeated slowly. Maybe this guy didn't speak Common, and this was all just gibberish to him, if he was hearing anything at all.
"Halstaan, you need some help out there?" said a voice over his helmet speaker. It was Philip Getu, Halstaan's apprentice engineer calling from Odin's Lance. "I'm about fifty meters above you."
"This guy has his blaster trained right on me. You might as well be a light-year away.” he responded, chuckling despite his circumstances.
“I'm going to retreat nice and slow, then try to maneuver back to the ship without getting plugged full of holes."
“You got it, boss. Holding here.”
Halstaan started moving back, his magnetized boots clicking as they locked and unlocked with each step. Provided he made it, this event would be added to the long list of stories he would never share with his wife. In fact, this one would probably go with him to the grave. If this guy didn’t kill him today, his wife surely would if she ever heard this story.
Nice and easy, he thought hopefully, and this will all be over soon.
Halstaan continued backing away, only occasionally looking down to check his footing. His retreat took him over a porthole positioned below him that gave him his first look into the ship. Warning lights flashed inside the compartment on the other side of the window. The ship had probably been running on emergency power for a long time—the warning lights were dangerously dim. That was bad news.
A hand appeared on the other side of the porthole. A small hand. And a small face just behind it. It belonged to a young boy, no older than ten, face dirty and gaunt, with sunken eyes and chapped lips. Halstaan keyed the comms.
"Odin's Lance, Cross. There are more people inside the ship. Children. I'm going to need some help once this guy stops pointing his blaster at me. Victoria, can you try communicating our intentions over all common frequencies and prep a medical team?"
"Affirmative," a deep feminine voice chimed.
Victoria was the flight duty officer and an excellent one at that. Halstaan breathed a little easier knowing she would get things done. He activated the light on the left arm of his suit and shined it into the porthole. The boy was floating inside the small room within. No functioning artificial gravity. Another figure could be seen in the beam of his flashlight; a girl, much younger, and equally malnourished.
"Ah shit, Odin’s Lance …"
Someone jumped in on the comms before he could finish.
“Halstaan, Lanish.” It was the captain of the Odin’s Lance, Jonathan Lanish. “That ship is registered as Salisian. Do those children look Salisian?”
Salisians all had ceremonial tattooing on their foreheads and neck. These children did not. “Negative, sir. But they are pretty bad off. We should float a rescue cache down here and once it’s mag-locked to the hull we can back off. Let them know we aren’t looking for a fight.” He kept an eye on the figure with the blaster, which was still menacingly trained on him.
"Hello?" a small voice squeaked in Halstaan's ear. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes. I can hear you," Halstaan looked down and saw the dirty face looking back at him. "My name is Halstaan. My ship is here too. We are a rescue ship. We're here to help."
"No!" a more mature voice yelled.
Another shower of bright blue bolts flew past Halstaan, skipping off the hull of the transport behind him. He froze. The figure moved towards Halstaan's position, quickly crossing the distance between them. Looking past the blaster, now held within centimeters of his visor, Halstaan could finally make out the face of his attacker. It was a boy, probably sixteen or seventeen.
"This is our ship. We claimed it, " the teenager said.
"Listen kid, we aren't trying to claim anything. But you are in bad shape and if you would just let me take a look maybe we could get you up and running. We'll happily leave you alone after that. Promise." Halstaan noticed a tattoo on this kid's cheek. A small black circle and four red arrows extending out of it forming an "X". He was a pirate.
Piracy in Triumph was rampant along the frontier. The pirates preyed on poorly protected ships too far away from inhabited systems to be able to call for help. They had been known to use their children to con thei
“I’m not a kid!” the pirate said.
“Of course, you’re not. You raided this ship. Probably just ran into an issue restarting the fusion core, right? Most transports like this have fail-safes to make it hard to salvage when they are attacked by pirates—”
“I’m not a pirate either. We are Freeholders. Just taking back what was always rightfully ours.”
“Exactly.” Halstaan nodded and smiled. “But sometimes you need an engineer to fix what’s yours. That’s why I’m here. Let me fix your drive and then we’ll be on our way.”
The blaster lowered. Halstaan looked deep into the eyes of this boy trying to be a man. In a place as harsh as Triumph, it was no wonder this kid had pulled a blaster on him. Halstaan couldn't help but see bits of himself in the boy. Defiance in the face of overwhelming odds. Determination to prove himself to a galaxy that was always working against you. In his youth, Halstaan had been just like this.
“Fire.”
The boy's eyes widened and his body seized. Thrown into a spin, he drifted lifelessly away, carried along by a flurry of escaping air and flying debris from the ship below. Blood streamed from a large hole in his suit, instantly forming deep crimson orbs that jettisoned away like escape craft as the dead boy rotated off into the void.
"Odin’s Lance, what happened?" he yelled out over the comms.
No response. Assessing the situation, two things became apparent. A kinetic weapon aboard the Lance had fired a projectile that killed the boy. Then, the same projectile proceeded to cut through several decks’ worth of the ship below him.
Atmosphere was now venting from the ship near where the boy had stood. Halstaan had to make a plan of action. The children inside had minutes before the breathable air vented completely. He took five seconds to catalog his surroundings, prioritize his tasks, and determine an order of operations. Seal the hull breach. Send the team. Get inside. Stabilize ship’s systems. Get those kids and anyone else to safety.
"Odin’s Lance, Cross. The kid is confirmed KIA. That round punched a good-sized cavity in the hull. I’m patching it now. Spool up the rescue team, we'll need them." He looked down at the kids trapped in the ship. They were clinging to a bulkhead as the atmo dumped out into space.
Halstaan wore what engineers called a "pineapple suit." Though the ancient fruit had long ago gone extinct, the shape, the compartments and station-keeping thrusters were a vague approximation of the fruit and therefore the name stuck. The suit was designed for efficiently and precisely making repairs to a ship in a vacuum, allowing for easy maneuvering and quick access to tools and equipment. The pineapple suit was Halstaan's mobile workshop. He pulled up a menu on his heads-up-display, his eyes darting over the long list of options and tools. He found Emergency Hull Patch and selected it. A mechanical whirr erupted from his midsection as a compartment rotated around to position his requested item in front of him. Halstaan grabbed the patch and edged himself closer to the perfectly circular puncture. The escaping air made it impossible to set the patch, pushing his hands away with such force that he would have been blown off the derelict if not for his mag boots. Halstaan engaged the maneuvering thrusters of his suit to compensate for his lack of strength. Goosing the thrusters, he pressed the patching kit in place and its magnetic seal engaged, snapping securely to the side of the ship. He cut his thrusters, then pulled the large red ring on the back of the patch and stepped back.
All around the perimeter of the patch, the metal began to glow bright red. An intense chemical reaction had just created a permanent bond between the patch and the ship's hull. Now to get inside.
"Odin’s Lance, Cross. I'm heading inside to get those kids. What's the ETA on the rescue team?"
The comms were silent.
“Odin’s Lance, Cross. Can you please confirm an ETA for the rescue team?”
"Halstaan, Lanish. Are you sure the rest of those on board that ship aren't armed?"
“They are children, Lanish. Send the team.”
“Affirmative Halstaan, we’ll send the team when you’ve confirmed there are no more hostiles.” The comms clicked off.
Coward! Halstaan thought, then yelled across comms, "There isn't time to wait, Lannish!"
In the ensuing silence Halstaan's mental checklist began again. Seal the hull breach. Send the team. Get inside. Stabilize ship’s systems. Get those kids and anyone else inside to safety.
The repetition helped him remain calm and on-mission. The hull breach was sealed, at least on this side. Lanish had stopped the team, but they were probably sitting in the airlock waiting for the all clear.
Get inside.
Halstaan moved slowly to the topside of the transport, mag boots clanking clumsily. It was unsafe to use his suits thrusters with the amount of debris floating around him. With his experience in ship design and engineering, he knew that there should be an airlock somewhere near the dorsal thruster. Rounding the edge of the transport the debris field cleared. Looking toward the thruster, he scanned the surface for the air lock. It took him a moment, but he finally saw it. A little further than he thought but still in the general area. Get inside. Get inside. The only thought in his mind was get inside and help. He powered off his mag boots, engaged the thrusters on his suit, and launched himself towards the airlock door.
"Victoria, any luck on comms?" he radioed, panting. Apparently Halstaan's exercise routine wasn't keeping him in the proper shape he needed to be for this type of work.
“Negative, Chief.”
“Who gave the order to slag that kid? Vic?”
“Odin’s Lance Actual, sir.”
"Copy."
What screwed-up series of events would have had transpire at Fleet Command that the Commerce Guild would see fit to install Jonathan Lanish as captain of a rescue boat like this?
Halstaan reached the airlock after what seemed like an hour, landing gracefully beside it. He grabbed the exterior control and pulled the door, which opened without issue. His micro thrusters helped him get into position and he shifted his hips to settle his pineapple suit into the airlock. Once inside, he found the interior control panel—the display was black. Halstaan tapped it a few times until it flickered to life. The screen was requesting an access code to permit the airlock to cycle. Halstaan pulled an interface connector from the chest rig of his suit and plugged it into the standard port near the control panel. The connector light turned green and Halstaan could see the airlock controls on his HUD.
"Vic. I'm at the airlock. I need the override code for this door. This ship probably set access points to fail-secure and it's not letting me in."
Most ships had airlocks set to fail-safe in the event of a major incident or reactor shut down to allow for rescue or good Samaritan ships to help. However, that policy changed when operating along the frontier. Pirates were known to slingshot themselves on an intercept course using only inertia and small puffs of pressurized propellant to get close enough to drop a small raiding party onto the hull of an unsuspecting ship. Once on the hull, they would tap into a comm connector just like this one and hack the ship's computer or comms system to simulate an emergency. Once the fail-safe triggered, they could come aboard with no one knowing and take the ship without much of a struggle.
“Roger that, Chief. Give me the registration for that boat and I’ll beam that to you now.”
Halstaan navigated to the appropriate menu on his HUD. "ISV Juctik, J-U-C-T-I-K. Flying out of Saxby. Registration number: 799-XAX-3301.”
