Chapter Thirteen – The Star Runner
Nick finished handing around the mugs of hot chocolate and sat back in his chair. He closed his eyes, savouring the first sip and sighed. Ever since his mum had let him have his first taste of chocolate, Nick had been addicted. Barely a day went by without some sort of chocolate intake. But his absolute favourite had to be a hot chocolate drink.
He peered over his mug. Holas seemed to be grimacing into his, even as he braved another sip. Zheen was staring into her mug, wide-eyed, a small smile playing about her lips. Alex, as usual, had abandoned his and had his head buried between a pad and his console. Nick sighed. A waste of good chocolate. Pete had disappeared into the rear storage bay some time ago.
“So it’s only when a ship passes through the boundary of the Bubble that their power’s drained?” Alex asked.
“Yes, that seems to be right,” Holas confirmed.
They’d been at it for over an hour. Alex and Holas had discussed every aspect of this Bubble that they were in in such great detail that Nick had switched off after ten minutes. From the little that he had paid attention to, it seemed that Holas had heard a lot about the Bubble over his many long years of space travel.
Nothing was left out of their talk. Probes sent into it at one time or another, near-misses various ships had had and the myths and legends that had sprung up about it. Even Zheen and Pete had joined in.
Nick though, was happy to just let the science-types do the thinking. When they’d finished and worked out a way out of this Bubble, he’d do the piloting. He smiled again, thinking of the piloting that he’d already gotten to do.
He looked up as Pete came back in to the main part of the cabin and plunked down on the deck, leaning up against the airlock.
“I was right,” Pete announced. “None of the generators or batteries are being drained at all.”
“That’s great, Pete,” Alexander replied, emerging from his readouts.
“What does that mean for us?” Zheen asked, her soft voice breaking the silence.
“It gives us time, my dear, to find a way out,” Holas told her.
“Why don’t we just fly out?” Nick asked innocently.
Four pairs of eyes stared at him. Nick looked around, wishing there was some place for him to hide.
“You know, he’s right,” Pete pointed out. “We’ve got full power and there’s nothing stopping us from flying straight out of this Bubble now.”
“But the instant we passed over the threshold, we’d be drained of power again,” Zheen told him.
“The active power sources would be, but we’ve got two generators that wouldn’t be affected at all,” Pete replied.
“And we could use them to jump-start our systems again,” said Alexander, half-rising out of his chair in excitement.
“Yes, yes,” said Holas calmly, “but what then? This little pod wouldn’t last long out in the depths of space.”
The excitement of the last few minutes was instantly dashed at the reality of Holas’ words. Nick continued to sip his hot chocolate, his gaze drawn automatically to the space beyond the viewport. He watched as the pod continued to drift through the weird dark blue space.
Ace felt one of the thrusters fire, slightly turning the pod. As space moved, another of the strange alien ships came into view. So far he’d counted nearly two dozen trapped in the Bubble with them and he was positive that there were a lot more.
“What if we didn’t escape the Bubble in the Pod?” Ace asked slowly. “What if we went in one of them?”
Nick felt the others staring at him again. He shrugged. “We got the pod working again. Why can’t we get one of those ships working and escape in that?”
Alexander stared. “That’s not a bad idea at all. Would it work?”
“In theory, Alex,” Pete replied, “but I’m not sure that we could do it. We’d have to find a ship that’s without too much damage. Then we’d need to find a way to hook up one of the generators to the alien technology. And then see if we could actually fly it.”
Nick noticed Holas fiddling with the gold ring on the middle finger of his left hand.
“I am not sure that this plan has much chance of working,” Holas said quietly, “but it does seem to be our best option if we wish to escape the Bubble.”
“It’s better than being captured by those Brenog pirates or spending the rest of our lives in here,” Zheen agreed.
“Nick, looks like we’ve got a new ship to find. Set us a course so that we can go take a look at what’s available,” Alexander ordered.
Ace swivelled around, carefully placing his mug in the cup holder at the top of his console. He took the station-keeping thrusters off-line and fired the main engines. Nick swung the pod around on a wide arc, back towards the main body of the ships that they’d first encountered. Looking down at the navigation display, Ace snorted in disgust. The thing still wasn’t working properly.
He steadied the pod on course more by feel and sight than anything else. Ace was particularly interested in getting a closer look at the strange ship with the wheel at the back. Unfortunately, that’d have to wait just a little longer; there were other ships in line before it. As the pod approached the first ship, Nick could feel Pete, Holas and Zheen crowding the cockpit, trying to get a good look out of the viewport.
A cursory look was all that was needed for the first ship; its engines having been completely blown away. The second and third ships both had massive gashes in their sides. The fourth ship, one of the five-pointed star designs, showed promise until they’d completed their circuit of it and found that one of the points had been separated from the rest of the ship.
The next one was the wheel design that Nick liked. He took his time circling it. It definitely seemed promising.
“What about this one?” Nick asked. “There’s hardly any damage at all.”
Holas shook his head. “This is an old Dorikeen ship. The outside might look in good shape, but I doubt that we’d be very comfortable inside it. Dorikeeni are an aquatic species.”
“Right. We keep looking then,” said Alexander.
The next four ships that they surveyed had all suffered too much damage to even be considered. The fifth ship, though, seemed very promising. It looked to be an old freighter, nearly half again larger than Lornicaan’s Gem.
Its bronze colouring made it stand out against the dark blue-grey space it was sitting in. Nick took the pod in for a much closer look. As they flew in under the wings, they could see five huge cargo pods. Two-thirds of the way up the back was a small shuttle bay.
Nick took the pod down along the far side before pulling up and around to take a look at the engines. Pete was able to point out the sub-light engines on the wings themselves and the hyper-light engines attached to the ends of each wing.
Ace flipped the pod over and sailed over the length of the ship upside down. He spun the ship around as they reached the bow and brought her in slowly. The very front of the ship was connected to the rest via a small neck. This front section tapered downwards to about two-thirds of the way down the main body of the ship.
Nick took her in slowly, firing the thrusters to drift across the side of the command module.
He brought the pod to a halt as they came level with the small space under the neck, but behind the command module. Nick eyed it off. He was sure that the pod would actually fit in there, but without his sensors working properly, he wasn’t game to try it.
“It’s a little boxy-looking, but it’ll do,” said Nick, giving his assessment.
“Looks okay to me, too,” added Alexander. “Pete?”
The engineer continued to squint at the ship. “I’d like to take another look at the end pod on the port side. I think I saw a small hull breach there.”
Ace fired the thrusters immediately, dropping the pod straight down before shooting along under the ship to the rear section that Pete
had identified. He carefully rotated the pod and inched her up the side.
“There! Stop there!” Pete shot his arm out beside Nick’s head.
He kicked in the station-keeping thrusters to let his brother have a decent look at the hole. It was only small, maybe a little less than half a metre in diameter, but more than big enough to be a worry when travelling through space.
“Well, Pete, what do you think?” Alexander asked.
“It’s not too bad,” Pete allowed. “It’s nothing that I can’t fix with the right materials and the Work Pod here to help me. But for now, as long as we stick to sub-light or minimal faster-than-light speeds, it shouldn’t be too much to worry about.”
“What do your engineering sensors show?” Alexander asked.
Pete peered at the screen beside him, playing the sensors over as much of the ship as they could reach.
“It’s the best that we’ve seen so far. There’s a bit of power being output and it looks as though there’s even some life-support functioning. I won’t be able to tell any more than that until I get aboard,” Pete reported.
Alexander nodded. “Holas? Zheen? Your thoughts?”
“It looks like a good ship, Alexander,” Holas allowed after a quick glance at his daughter.
“Looks like we’ve found our new ride. Nick, find us an airlock,” Alexander ordered.
Ace was ready for this. He’d been looking for the airlocks since they’d started circling the big ship. He’d identified five on each of the cargo pods – two on each side plus one on the bottom. There was also the shuttle bay, but without any way to trigger it, it was staying firmly closed. That just left a small airlock on the bottom of the command module.
Nick brought the ship along the side of the ship, straying slightly upwards to get another look at the ship they were about to board.
“Star Runner,” Zheen breathed unexpectedly.
“What was that, my dear,” Holas asked.
“Star Runner,” Zheen repeated. “The name of the ship. Look.”
Holas looked at the ship. “Why, so it is!”
“How do you know?” Nick asked.
“Do you see those markings there?” Zheen asked, pointing to a spot just behind the main viewport on the bronze ship. “It’s Gheyzhimum, a planet we traded with a couple of years back. It reads as ‘Star Runner’.”
“Star Runner,” Ace repeated trying the name out. “I like it. I like it a lot.”