Resurrection sf-1 Read online

  Resurrection

  ( Spinward Fringe - 1 )

  Randolph Lalonde

  Randolph Lalonde

  Resurrection

  Prologue

  It was a rebirth. Under the dim flickering lights of the cold, dark cargo hold two women played the roles of midwives. The tall one with the long brown hair entered the final combination on the small control panel built into the stasis pod. The shorter woman waited, standing close and ready with a breathing device in hand.

  The dark stasis pod opened at the bottom. Thick fluid burst forth, carrying an unconscious man out onto the deck. “Hurry, get the pump in,” said the taller of the two.

  Just as the man was beginning to gag, emitting only a deep gurgling sound, the older, the shorter of the two women bent down and expertly inserted the breathing apparatus. It turned on and began to extract the liquid in his lungs while she held it to his mouth, keeping him from spitting it out. The contents of his stomach came up as well, the same fluid he was breathing in stasis.

  His writhing and retching was an unconscious thing, a primal struggle for life that was so severe that he began to thrash. “Hold his hands Alice, we don't want him hurting himself, poor man.”

  At her counterpart's urging she did what was asked, kneeling down and taking firm grip of his wrists. “Good thing he's still sedated. This is no picnic.”

  “Was it like this for you?”

  “It was, only I was awake the entire time. The system used the emergency pump to help me expel some of the stasis fluid. I didn't understand how my body worked when the ejection system dropped me. He'll be better off.”

  “Do you think he'll remember anything from before they put him in?”

  “They wiped him, his memories of people and places are gone. His skills and what they programmed into him are all there though.”

  “What did they program him with? Did you get a chance to see?”

  “Combat skills, survival, medical treatment methods for all races, a huge object and location database, and some kind of persistent service and employment directive. It's like they wanted him to work for them, or anyone really. If it sticks he'll never be able to function unless he has some kind of employer.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Anything, from waste management to CEO to hit man. He'll go crazy if he's unemployed for long. The only way to break it is serious psychological trauma.”

  “He should fit right in then.”

  “Until we find a way to get back to him. They even changed his name.”

  “To what?”

  “Jacob Valance.”

  “That's awfully close to his real one.”

  “That's the point. He'll accept it more easily if it's near what he grew up with. I wish we had time to find out what they had planned for him, all this preparation had to be for something,” Alice said as she stood up. “He's clear, pull out the pump Bernice.”

  The mouthpiece was carefully removed and Alice put a blanket around him with great care. She knelt down and gently wiped the thick stasis fluid off his sleeping face. “I wish I could do more for you father. I wish I could stay and help you make sense of it all, remind you of what you're missing, where you should be but they're after me. They'll be after you too if we don't leave you here,” she whispered. “I promise I'll find a way to come back or find someone who can help you.”

  “We have to go dear, I'm so sorry,” Bernice said as she closed the doors to the stasis pod and activated the small anti-gravity drive on the bottom. It hovered up a few centimetres from the deck and she started leading it to the airlock.

  “I know,” Alice replied quietly as she stood and wiped away a tear. “God this is wrong, but it's the only way for him to be safe. If they find him with us they'll kill him or worse,” she slid a backpack off her shoulders and dropped it as she looked around the cargo bay, shaking her head.

  She followed behind Bernice and a moment later the airlock sealed. A few clicks and a shudder later the smaller ship that had delivered the slumbering man decoupled.

  The vessel carrying the two women away jettisoned the empty stasis chamber. It cracked and twisted in the near instant freeze of space before a bolt of plasma blew it into a million pieces. It would transmit the status of its contents no longer, and as the small, mantis like vessel escaped into hyperspace the larger, older ship left behind drifted just on the edge of an asteroid belt, waiting for her new Captain to awaken.

  Five Years Later

  Lacent III was its usual brooding self. Planets have moods, temperaments, and that one was always dark and cold. With grey black rolling clouds that barely yielded rain and the eleven degree temperature it was anything but comfortable for human habitation in the temperate zone. As the small crew of five made their way up the empty main street of Second Fall, a small port town with nothing but dry, hard packed ground for miles around, they shielded their faces and exposed skin against the fine sand whirling around. The air was grey, the ground was grey. The features of the steel buildings glinted in the minimal light, any paint or decorations had eroded away long ago under the constant abrasion of the coarse airborne particulates.

  The day was only a little brighter than night, but it was twenty degrees warmer. In the falling twilight the five crewmembers wanted to be indoors before nightfall. The Gallows Hall was the biggest, the best tavern on the planet, and it was the only place they wanted to be. It was six stories tall and provided lodgings for a price to travellers who wanted a little time away from their ships or were just too intoxicated to remember where they parked.

  “I can't wait to get inside and just crawl into a bottle of hot Michnikel,” one of the crew said, he was a shorter fellow who didn't bother with his vacsuit headgear, but tried to shield his face from the sand with his hands instead.

  “That stuff'll rot your brain. Besides, I don’t see the point in drinking something that causes memory loss more than seventy percent of the time. I'm here to make good memories, that's what leave's all about,” A young woman walking in front of him replied. She was one of the practical ones in the group who wore her headpiece.

  “You think we'll have a good time here? Have you seen where we landed?”

  “Now I understand why the Captain stayed aboard ship. There's nothing to get excited about,” said another fellow who shielded his face with his upraised arm.

  “He stayed aboard ship to finish the trade. We're lucky we got off, otherwise we'd be transporting pressurized phosphoric acid for a couple hours,” said the one at the rear, the other woman in the group, who wore her vacsuit headpiece as well. It had a transparent face and fit closely to her head.

  “Why would anyone want to pressurize that stuff anyway? It's bloody dangerous.”

  “They can squeeze a little over two percent more cargo into the space they have, that's why. Amounts to an awful lot when your hold is about three thousand square meters.”

  As they came within just a few meters of the paired doors leading into the tavern, a few patrons came stumbling out. They were in vacsuits, some close fitting, others looked more protective and utilitarian. They looked like a mixed bunch, but definitely from the same crew. They were stumbling about, a few of them leaning against each other. “Oh God, I hate this planet,” said one.

  “Is it supposed ta burn?” Said another gruff fellow with a thick accent as he stumbled a few steps, bottle in hand.

  “Let's get back to the ship.”

  The five on their way inside hesitated for a moment, waiting for the nine patrons to get out of the way. Without warning the stumbling, bottle toting patron staggered right towards them. “Hey, Captain doesn't let booze on board, want the rest o' this?” He asked, holding out the half full bottle as he fell into one of the appr
oaching crew.

  Two of them caught him and a third took the bottle. “Judging from what it's done to you, I think I'll pass,” she said, handling it by the neck with two fingers.

  “Back on your feet, guy,” the larger of the crew said as he walked the intoxicated fellow back to his friends, who were slowly starting to walk away from the door. A pair of them each took an arm and started guiding him down the street.

  They watched the ragtag crew make their way down the abandoned walkway for a moment then started through the doors. “Wait, where's Gillian?” Asked one of the women in the group.

  The other three looked around and didn't see the woman who was walking at the rear last they looked. “Gillian!” One of the men called out.

  “They must have taken her,” said another fellow, drawing his long pistol. He ran down the street to the nearest corner where he could see one of the patrons just walking out of sight.

  “Wait!” Said another man as he ran after his friend. He was several meters behind but close enough to see the flashes of light from the alleyway as his friend was shot several times. He stopped, unsure of himself. The two other crew members stopped behind him. “What do we do?”

  “We wait, then we pick up Curtis's corpse and bring it back to the ship,” the other fellow said, checking the crew status readout on his wrist. One light was out.

  “We didn't see them take her, whoever did it must be around here somewhere,” retorted the last remaining woman in the group.

  “If those folks were the distraction, I don't want to see the main event.”

  “What do you mean? We can't just-”

  “I mean whoever's got their hands on her's more dangerous and I don't want to cross them,” he replied to her insistently. That was the end of it.

  Across the street, behind a small building Gillian struggled with her wrist restraints. Her captor had come up from behind without making a sound while she stood watching the stumbling revellers. He pressed one hand down on her sidearm, jamming it into its holster. He held a weapon right up against her neck. It was some kind of injector mounted on his arm.

  “Don't say a word, don't move and you'll make it out of this alive,” he whispered, dragging her backwards across the street at a run. He was strong, fast, and he knew exactly what he was doing. As soon as they got around the corner he took her handgun out of its holster and put it inside his long coat. She grabbed his arm and tried to flip him, but he dropped to his knees and punched her in the stomach so hard it knocked all the wind out of her.

  He tripped her and she fell flat on her back. Before she knew it she was in wrist restraints. “My license number is Valance-433-11482-21-3, I represent the Carthis Port Authority.”

  “Bounty Hunter?” She asked, just catching her breath.

  “Yes, they have you down for one count of attempted starship hijacking and five counts of murder.”

  “Let me explain, that ship belonged to my brother, his crew wouldn't give it to me when he died.”

  The bounty hunter pulled something out of his black long coat and rolled it out on the ground beside her. “You'll get a trial.”

  Gillian watched him open a slit in the long bag and redoubled her efforts, trying to get on her feet. “What are you doing?”

  “It's a vacbag, it'll protect you until I can get you in stasis,” he said as he firmly planted a hand on her chest and unsealed her head piece.

  “Please, don't do this! They'll kill me! Just let me go, I'll give you everything I have, anything you want!” She pleaded as she looked up at his blackened transparesteel faceplate. He was in a sealed black vacsuit and black long coat, everything about him was unyielding and inhuman. He brought the device on his left forearm up to her throat again, only this time the metal injector touched bare skin and she winced in anticipation of whatever substance he was about to dose her with. There was a moment of hesitation. “I'm sorry, I'm under contract,” he said before she felt the injector's pinch. She slipped into unconsciousness as he put her headpiece back on and rolled her into the vacbag.

  Routine Maintenance

  The Samson hovered over the alleyway and opened the lower rear hatch. Captain Valance awaited below with a body in a vacbag over his shoulder. In all black he blended in perfectly with the darkness around him except for the glint of the thrusters reflected by his darkened face plate. Frost dropped a harness from the hatch and his Captain wrapped his free arm in it. “Haul me up,” he commanded.

  He activated the winch and pulled him up ten stories through the hatchway and into the lower airlock. “Captain's in and we're clear to move on to the second pick up, Ashley,” Frost reported.

  “Roger, moving on,” replied a female voice with a slight lisp so her s's and z's had a softer sound.

  “She cause much trouble?” Frost asked the Captain as he made sure the lower hatch was secure.

  “No more than I expected,” he replied as he stepped onto the small lift plate that would elevate him out of the airlock and into the interior of the ship. “I'm going to get her into stasis. Get the rest of the crew on board and set course for the Thadd System.”

  “Aye sir.”

  “Did you manage to replace anyone while I was landside?”

  “Aye sir. Three able crewmen signed on, all experienced and an engineer with three years schoolin'.”

  “Lucky, does he have any experience?”

  “Just a few months on an old ore hauler. He's only nineteen.”

  “Young. Well, take care of him. Make sure he has an opportunity to learn before we need him for anything important.”

  “Aye sir.”

  “Oh, and Frost; after this capture is in stasis I'll be in my quarters. No disturbances,” Captain Valance's voice had a dark seriousness that ended arguments and cleared rooms.

  “Aye, bad one sir?” Frost asked as he watched his Captain reach the top of the airlock and step out.

  He didn't reply.

  “We're at the pickup point Frost, they should be right below us,” Ashley reported through the communicator stud in his pierced ear.

  “Aye, I see 'em,” he replied, looking at the beat up monitor in the airlock wall. “Opening up. Get ready ta get outta here, we're headed straight on to Thadd.”

  “Really? We getting leave?” She asked.

  “Don't think so, pretty sure it's a job. Ask the Captain later, he's in a mood.”

  “He always gets that way when we pull off a bounty he has to track for a while.”

  “Yup.”

  “Know why?”

  “Nope,” Frost said as he opened the hatch and kicked both of the harnesses down to the crew members below. “We've got to get a better system for this,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head.

  Elsewhere on the ship Finn shook his head at a tiny compartment where several operating components were wedged in. It was like opening a bank vault. Every key component of the inertial dampener systems were locked up in some box, or sealed in some piping, or built right between two parallel bulkheads, like this one. It took Finnn half an hour of looking at how it was placed just to figure out his best route to access. He had seen well integrated systems before, but whoever had rebuilt that section of the dampeners had one thing in mind: it must not fail.

  Word was that they had just finished chasing down a bounty and it meant a payday for everyone. When and how much he hadn't asked yet, but since he had nothing to do with the capture, he wasn't expecting anything. His experience over the last couple days had been eventful, interesting, so he had no reason to complain as far as he was concerned.

  He had been hired on by Frost, the First Officer. What a character, with his accent, which was a little like a Coreworld British but more closer to the old Earth Irish accent he had seen in the movies. Hiring for the Samson wasn't exactly complicated. Frost checked for a criminal record, glimpsed at his educational transcript and he was assigned to a repair post aboard.

  His quarters consisted of a locker, a lower bunk, and a trunk at the e
nd of the bed. There were six bunks crammed into the small cabin and a man to each. He was thankful that the fellow who slept above him, a large man who smelled like engine degreaser, worked on the opposite shift. He had only met him the one time while he was settling in.

  Having served on an ore hauler, he was used to a noisy ship, so the quiet of the Samson was a little unnerving. It was an ugly, heavily modified ship that looked more like an insect with its engine pods, the maxjack grappler and cargo train hookups at the back. He couldn't believe how well maintained the ship was on the inside. It was all unpainted decking and grating everywhere with low lighting to save power, but mechanically he had never been on such a ship.

  The near silence in most areas was still unnerving. There were twenty eight aboard but he hadn't seen anyone for hours. Not since he had started servicing the starboard inertial dampening system. At first he didn't understand how he could work on them while they were in hyperspace, but then he took a look at the electrical diagram. There was a backup for the backups, so if he took something offline another part of the system would compensate seamlessly.

  He finally figured out how to move the core inertial director he was working on. It was a bulky, square component connected to secondary power in at least three ways. Half of its casing was removed already so there was room for the modifications that had been made. Finn shook his head and crawled between the bulkheads, laying on one side with his arms over his head so he could fit and reach the component. As he had seen, it looked like if he moved the whole director box up, then away from him, down and forward it should just pop right out.

  It took four tries. There was a latch behind that locked the whole component in place that he hadn't seen until he was under it. After that it came right out into the hallway. It took him several minutes to extract himself from the cramped space, then he just stood there looking at the part for a moment. "What the hell happened to this thing? There's a reserve capacitor and God knows what else," he muttered to himself.