Space Trippers Book 1: Trippin' (17 page)

"That's the only reason I know of that a Viper would make contact. You could ask them yourself if we had any communications." Tim replied calmly in his defense.

She seemed to think she knew what she was doing, but he knew Vipers never showed for no reason, and they never revealed themselves openly to a non-target either.

“Have you got the communications working yet?” she called quickly over to her Operations Commander, sounding a little more alarmed than she had wanted to reveal.

Sanic looked up from his taxing relay with the Twins down in Engineering.

“Not, yet.” he said quickly, not wanting to take any more time away from his project than he had too. “Give me a few more minutes.”

Captain Fairbanks smoothed back her red hair as she took in a deep calming breath. Of course it is not fixed yet, nothing is fixed, she thought to herself, this whole ship is a Virrilian design concocted just to upset me…….

Speaking of Virrilian, how was her work on the engines coming?

Fairbanks tapped the communicator in her ear, “Connect me to Ensign Valesque.” she ordered the on-ship communications computer.

There was a slight pause before the voice of the relaying computer was heard in her ear, “Cannot connect with specified communicator. Communicator may be off, malfunctioning or out of range.” it said politely.

“Captain!” Sanic exclaimed suddenly as one of his previously inert panels lit up.

“I think we are receiving incoming transmissions now.” he said excitedly, “It looks like the other ship has opened up communications with us.”

“Put it on the main screen.” she replied immediately as she turned back towards the two-storey screen as the Ensign redirected the feed.

“We can receive but not send.” her Operations Commander added as he linked the video to the main Control Deck view screen. “So we can see them but they can’t see or hear us.” he finished hurriedly, as a large video window opened and a sharply dressed I.P.F officer stood before them in mid-sentence.

"… the third and last attempt to contact you I.P.A Vortex." the strict young Captain of the Intergalactic Police repeated, "All note, the ship did not respond." he immediately followed, speaking to his crew, just before the transmission ended.

Captain Fairbanks looked a bit perturbed by this. For it looked as if he had never expected any answer; he certainly had not waited for one.

"They will charge up their weapons system now." Tim informed them all evenly. "They will want to take the ship out in one strike. Since it is such a large vessel they will have to charge their system for at least….. 30 seconds."

"Put us on a red alert.” the now deadly serious Captain ordered promptly.

“We need some options people.” she called out to her Control Crew. “Evasive maneuvers? Can we get the rest of those shields up?”

“Negative, Captain.” the crew watching over ship functions responded instantly as they rechecked their readings. “The main shields have not been put online.”

“I could try to shake them, Captain,” her Pilot called up to her from his position below as he checked and rechecked simulations. “But I need more power; we don’t have a chance of evading them at our current speed.” he concluded inevitably.

“We need to find that Engineer and get those engines up and some evasive maneuvers.” she stated, trying to sooth her increasingly alarmed nerves.

“Ensign, Sanic, see what you can do about getting more power into what shields we have. Lieutenant Baine, try to get us away from them, buy us as much time as you can.” she ordered briskly before turning back to her communicator one more time. “Ship board announcement.” she requested as the communications computer acknowledged her connection.

Seventeen floors below, Valesque was in the middle of her delicate operation.

She had managed to get a drain in place on the emergency power cable and had been slowly diverting the power to a return supply that the Space Tripper was not monitoring. She then had to wait impatiently until the power from the Emergency back-up line was completely diverted from the Tripper’s feeder and she could begin her risky task of removing the foot without setting off the device.

Just as she was easing her long nosed, angled pliers down over the Space Tripper's coupling she was startled by an unexpected announcement over the Ship’s intercom, coupled with a violent shudder of the ship itself and the blinking red alert light and intermittent alarm.

Something strange was definitely going on, she thought, as the Captain’s voice boomed over the speakers. “Ensign Valesque, please report immediately to the Control Deck. We need power from the engines now.” the voice overhead demanded sternly.

The Virrilian Engineer groaned in annoyance as she turned her attention back on her urgent project at hand, only to notice something even more distressing.

She didn’t know if it was because she had touched the wrong thing when the ship had suddenly lurched, or if a pre-programmed trigger had finally gone off…. but the Space Tripper was now active!

Busy lights flashed on its surface as it began to awaken, the perpetual droning sound it had been making in her frequency had shifted as well. Something bad was about to happen.

Valesque quickly reached her pliers into the wiring and ripped out the connecting wire in the cable she had diverted power from. She then hurriedly released her bypass on the emergency power.

There was no time for delicacy now.

She would have taken the Tripper’s feeders out of other systems as well, except that if she touched them she would more than likely receive a shock that would kill even her sturdy Virrilian body.

So instead, she simply gave the loathsome device one last anxious glance before rushing up to the Control Deck to see what was happening.

As Valesque raced into the Hydro-lift she ran one hand feverishly down to her hip pouch to retrieve her communicator; only to realize too late that she had left the pouch, her Vid-screen and everything else behind in the Med-room!

The Engineer switched gears and immediately typed an emergency command into the touch pad of the Hydro-lift then backed into the corner of the small metal box and braced herself on the handrails along the walls, as the elevator suddenly shot up the shaft at incredible speed, reaching the seventeenth floor up in just under two seconds.

Valesque scrambled back up from the jolting stop and forced her way out the automatic doors and down the hall to the Control Room.

She burst through the doors of the room and into a chaotic mess of people running and shouting amid ship systems starting to go haywire.

Lights began to flicker; control panels began to flash off and on randomly as the powerful drumming of the engines became louder and louder.

The readouts on the engine’s power were going off the charts before it suddenly went black and then all you could do was listen as they seemed to be revving up higher and higher, but not going anywhere.

The crew was panicked, a Viper ship was about to fire on them and their own ship was suddenly out of control, their destruction seemed imminent.

“Do we have power back to the engines?” the agitated Captain asked as soon as she caught sight of the mystified Engineer.

“Uh, not….really.” the Virrilian replied absently, trying to piece together the view of an I.P.F spacecraft on their screens coupled with their red alert flashing overhead.

“Are those the engines we are hearing?” came the wearisome reply from the increasingly rattled Captain. “It sounds like they have power, why are we not moving?” she demanded, trying to split her attention between her ship’s problems and the other ship targeting them.

Indeed, you could hear the sound of the engines increasing power yet the ship was staying at a standstill.

Valesque was not quite positive what was happening, but she assumed it must have something to do with the pre-programmed execution order in the Tripper.

All she could ascertain was, one or the other was about to happen, either the ship she was seeing was about to blow her ship to pieces, or the Tripper was about to send them all to who knows where as soon as it had gotten enough power into the engines.

On the Viper things were going smoothly.

Although they were a bit perplexed by the reaction of their target.

They had not responded to their calls, just as the General had said, but also as soon as they started to power up their weapons it seemed the other vessel had suddenly come to an abrupt stop, and was now just sitting there waiting to be destroyed.

“Weapons system fully charged.” one of the Viper’s flight crew announced.

The Captain gave a momentary pause, pondering the strangeness of this situation before replying.

“Execute kill strike.” he ordered resolutely, regaining his cold expression as he watched the burst of firepower explode from his ship towards their still target.

Valesque heard the engines switch as her ship shuddered, feeling as if it were preparing for an abrupt jump, just as the other vessel fired off its weapons.

Either way, there was only one thing to do.

“Brace yourself!” Valesque called out urgently to the people around her in the chaos, as she grabbed onto the rails that surrounded the outlook point over the flight crew.

The Viper watched as their shot made contact with the ship before them, completely obliterating it in a bright flash of light.

Nothing was left, not even a scrap of metal hull.

The serious young I.P.F Captain let out a small sigh; realizing then he had been holding his breath as he waited for the blast to hit. “Target destroyed. Kill Strike completed. Take us back to our assigned division, and then inform the General of mission success.” he ordered his crew briskly as the ship turned and headed home.

Valesque felt a bit ill, just as the other ship had fired, the Tripper had projected a space warp before them and, in a bright flash of light, threw them into it with a forceful lurch.

This situation was hard on the nerves, she thought dizzily, as the Vortex bucked

and reared beneath her.

Panic had struck the rest of the crew, for they had no idea the ship was jumping through a warp. They thought the ship was being blown apart by the enemy ship’s discharge.

They scrambled to hold onto any solid surface as they were tossed about by the constant stopping and starting of the ship, as it revved up its engines and launched itself forward then stopped with a jolt only to immediately jump forward again. All with a nausea inducing strobe light effect as each jump was coupled with a bright flash of light.

The ship’s interior lights flickered with each thrust and stop. Life support, shields, everything was starting to fail as the ship continued to rear.

As the systems started to shut down, giving all remaining power to the still accelerating engines, a shocked and worried look came over Valesque while she clung to the railing, as if all of a sudden remembering something vitally important.

The Engineer gave a quick look around the Control Room; it seemed everyone was busy fearing for their lives and would not notice as she quickly pushed herself from her support and rushed unsteadily out the failing automatic doors.

The bucking began to slow after the few seconds of intense flashing and rearing, calming down into a slower lurch, jump and flash pattern before the ship completely blacked out and groaned to a stop in a patch of empty space.

The startled crew picked themselves up from their crash positions and began to look around in wonder as they all seemed to still be alive, and the ship appeared to be intact.

All the control panels were blank and dead as they began to come to their senses and try to ascertain the damage.

Captain Fairbanks released her white knuckled grip on the metal railing before her, straightening out her uniform and smoothing back her hair as she began to take inventory in the darkness.

The ship pulsed, lights flashing on and then off again as the computer’s voice was heard over the ship’s communication system. “Switching to Emergency power.” it said as the panels powered on and off again, the computer shutting down all unnecessary systems.

“Emergency power engaged.” the computer voice affirmed as the ship hummed quietly back to life, with no sign of engine noise and only half the lights and controls active.

“Is everyone alright?” the Captain called out as she surveyed her battered crew. They appeared shocked and bruised but miraculously alive, as they gathered to their leader in the dim light.

Fairbanks looked around her Control Room confirming the presence of the crewmembers she remembered being on the deck before the ship was hit.

She wrinkled her brow as she discerned one conspicuously absent crewmember. “Where is Ensign Valesque?” she queried as she looked down from her vantage point to the Flight Deck below to see if the Engineer had been thrown down there during the violent upheaval.

But she was no where to be seen.

Captain Fairbanks smoothed back her hair again as she called up the ship’s computer. Valesque had not had her communicator on before the incident, so it was useless to try that approach again.

“Computer,” the Captain began a bit irritably, “locate Ensign Valesque.” she requested with an agitated sigh. That Science Engineer constantly had to do something to annoy her it seemed.