Space Trippers Book 1: Trippin' (24 page)

“That is better.” Valesque commended as she inspected the smaller, less noticeable injury. “The other one would tend to frighten people.”

“Wow, that is a pretty clever trick.” Sanic remarked, clearly impressed by her transformation abilities

Lola held her newly cut hand to her as she smiled demurely at her love interest.

“It is the same wound as the Lieutenant had when I first met him.” she cooed as she looked coquettishly up at the reluctant Pilot.

“And it looks just like it.” Valesque intruded quickly, coming between them before the Yorkie could say anything rude to her charge.

“Lola, we have to go into the break-room for a minute. You stay out here….and try not to scare any more patients.” she instructed; turning Lola back towards the exam tables where she was to wait.

Tim chuckled again when they were all in the break-room. “She is amusing; I will say that for her.” he laughed.

“Amusing?” Valesque repeated, “I suppose you could say that if you didn’t have to be her keeper.”

“But she is cute; she seems to look up to you like she is your pet.” Sanic added on to Tim’s comment.

“A pet that requires constant supervision.” she grumbled, as she took out her Vid-screen and opened the break-room’s access panel once again.

As the panel slid up and back Valesque approached the opening without fear. This time the device was dormant so she did not have to worry about getting a shock or setting it off.

Lieutenant Baine leaned back against the computer counter to keep out of the way of the other two; he was not that into technical things.

Ensign Sanic on the other hand crowded closer to the opening where Valesque was reaching in and starting to remove the Trippers feeder wires from the ship’s cabling with her pliers.

“It doesn’t look like much does it?” he mused as he caught sight of the unpretentious black box that sat in the middle of a confusing web of wires.

“It isn’t what it looks like as much as what it works like.” Valesque quoted to him from her University days.

“The bad thing is…” she continued as she began to remove the box itself from the panel, “this is not my original device.”

“It looks very much like it. But it isn’t the same one.” she said as she turned it upside down and on its sides to look at the entire exterior of the small black square.

“What does that mean?” Sanic asked a bit worried. Did that spell their not being able to study it to get the necessary information to return home?

“It means, someone has copied my design.” she informed him. “They seem to have copied it in great detail which makes me doubt they had much knowledge of the actual inner workings of the Tripper. But unfortunately…. it seems to work the same, except mine was made to self-destruct after it executed a warp jump so that there would be no chance to return. But this one still seems to be intact.” she said with a bit of a scowl as she gripped the culprit that had gotten her in so much trouble.

“Anyway, now that we got it out of there we can start the Light Core back up and begin charging the main batteries.” she concluded as she handed the despised contraption to Sanic who was eager to examine it.

“Why couldn’t you have just left it where it was since the Captain is hoping to use it again to jump home?” the non-technical Pilot asked as they gathered to leave the room.

“Because, Sanic wanted to examine it to see if it had a trace of the jump path, and besides it might have gone off again if it had gotten any power back.” she explained simply to the puzzled Yorkie.

After a quick goodbye to Lola, the three then made their way back up to Solar Deck 4 where the base of the light core was located.

In a few minutes, Sanic found himself crawling under the massive sphere towards its center as Valesque directed him in what to look for from the outer edge.

They had to manually switch the power to the core, from the main batteries to back-up power. This required someone to go under the huge metallic ball and switch it over by hand. Always the gentleman, Sanic had volunteered to do the dirty work.

As soon as the power source was reset and Sanic was on his way back out, Valesque called up the engineering controls on her Vid-screen and powered up the laser again.

“You seem to be able to control just about everything on this ship from that little computer.” Tim remarked as she flipped her Vid closed and put it back in its holder on her hip. “It is like you have a remote control for the entire ship.”

“Pretty much.” she laughed as she realized how strange it might look for one person to control just about everything on the ship from one little Vid-screen.

“I modified it and networked it with most of the ship’s main computers.” she explained. “When you are in charge of a project this big you can’t be everywhere at once, so it is helpful to be able to check different systems remotely.”

“Is it really going to take a whole week to get enough power to move the ship again?” Sanic asked as he crawled out from under the Light core. “I know I am going to sound like the Captain, but is it possible to get the engines back online any sooner?” he prompted, concerned that they would be drifting for an entire week in open space.

“It is possible to get power to the engines faster. But you would have to use up your emergency energy to do it.” she replied, not wishing to do anything so risky. “We have just about a full store of back-up power, which means if we can shut down most of the decks we should be able to keep life support, some shields and the food duplicators on the Star Deck working for about one and a half to two weeks.” she calculated.

“Right now we need to get the main shields finished and installed so we can start shutting down all the lower levels in order to conserve energy.” the Engineer suggested, turning from the room and going back to the Hydro-lifts with the two men obediently in tow.

Back down in Valesque’s lab the three of them got to work on finishing the large round shield emitters.

Tim may not have been very adept at electronic things but Valesque was surprised at how well he could follow instructions and how fast he was at completing his assignments.

The only thing really slowing him down was his occasional flirting with the pretty Virrilian.

Hours passed quickly as the small team worked on the daunting project. Normally it would have taken a team of six trained technicians to tackle anything this complex.

Tim was lying on the floor under one of the huge metal drums when he abruptly stopped moving and gestured for the others to keep quiet.

“I thought I heard something below us.” he whispered straining to listen for anything out of place.

Then came a slight jolt as if the ship had been nudged from outside.

“An asteroid?” Sanic suggested as all three of them stayed perfectly still and paid close attention for anything else unusual.

Valesque’s Vid-screen began to chirp loudly, startling the Engineer.

She quickly took it from its holder and checked the alarm.

“It’s not an asteroid.” she remarked as she read the warning, “Not unless they can force open the Space Deck’s pressure lock door.”

The alarm on the Vid-screen was to inform the Engineer that one of the Ship’s entries had been breached. She had set it up to warn her of intruders when they were having problems with General Gorbok attempting to infiltrate the construction site.

Valesque quickly accessed another ship function and shut it down.

“What are you doing?” Sanic queried nervously as he listened for more sounds from the trespasser and glanced at Valesque as she worked on her Vid with a furrowed brow.

“I am shutting down the Hydro-lifts.” she informed him. “If there is someone on the ship I would like to try to confine them to as few decks as possible.”

At this statement all three became a bit apprehensive, intruders on their powerless ship in the middle of uncharted space did not sound like a good thing to happen.

Tim and Sanic both put a hand to their ear as a call apparently came through on their communicators. Valesque had never put hers back on so she could not hear what was being said.

“It’s the Captain. She wanted to know if we did anything just now to cause the ship to shudder.” the Lieutenant informed her as he listened. “What should I tell her?”

Valesque thought a moment. “Tell her that we may have uninvited guests, they probably think this ship is deserted. So lets try to keep it that way until we can see who they are and what they are up to.” she told him. “Tell her the three of us will investigate and report back as soon as we can verify anything.”

Valesque turned off the lab lights and led the way to the emergency escape shafts hidden in the ship’s walls.

A very dim green bioluminescent light glowed in the vertical shaft, barely illuminating the metal ladder that was attached to the left side of the tunnel. The Engineer went first into the darkness and began to descend the steps with a low pinging sound from the toes of her boots touching on the metal rungs as she quickly made her way to the lower decks.

When she reached her destination she cautiously opened the access door just enough to peer out onto the deck.

The Space Deck was two decks high with the front half separated and pressure sealed from the back by a large, solid wall. The back part of the deck was a huge open hanger used for housing and launching the small Scuttle Craft vessels, sending and receiving transport bubbles, as well as an area for visiting smaller ships to land inside the Vortex.

The front portion where Valesque and the others were exiting was a two-storey life pod holding area.

This was the place Valesque had been in for three days after being hit with the taser on Saturna 3.

Valesque eased herself out of the shaft, staying low to the floor and hiding behind the life pods as the two men followed her out into the cool, dark room.

The life pod side of the deck seemed deserted and undisturbed.

To their far left was the wall that separated the life pod section from the Space Hanger. Along the top of the wall was a glass enclosed control room that overlooked the two layers of pods before it. Below this room and to the left on the wall there was a single manual door with a small clear window embedded in it. This door was their objective, if someone had breached the hanger door they were probably still in that room. Valesque gestured in the darkness to the other two that she was heading for the door.

Tim and Sanic hunched down as they cautiously followed the slim silhouette of the Virrilian as she slunk her way across the floor.

Valesque’s heart began to race as she sprinted low across the open area between the pods and the door. Virrilian’s may be good hunters, but as a peaceful scientist, she was not accustomed to being in such an intense situation.

She stayed crouched down, pressed herself flat against the wall next to the door, and waited until the others had safely joined her.

Motioning for them to stay down she slowly raised herself up and leaned over to peek in the window.

The small room between the two sides of the deck seemed to be empty as well.

Valesque put one slightly trembling hand on the cold, metal doorknob and gently pulled it open as she moved back against the wall with the others and waited a moment before slinking low though the now open door.

The three wary crewmates glanced around the dark room but did not see anything out of order.

To their left was a narrow metal stairwell leading up to the deck's control room, to the right was a double door that opened into a Hydro-Lift. Straight ahead was another small manual door with a window set into it, exactly like the one they had just come through.

The Engineer checked the light above the door to the hanger.

“Maybe there is no one here after all.” Valesque whispered a bit relieved as she pointed up at the green light above the door. “The hanger is still pressurized.”

Not letting down her guard just yet Valesque once again peeked carefully through the window on the second door and into the large room on the other side.

She gave her companions a puzzled look as she slowly opened the door and slipped out into the last remaining room.

The three tried to keep down, moving in a serpentine chain from one hiding place to another as they made their way farther into the room.

Valesque looked towards the back wall where the two huge hanger doors were located. Between the large main accesses doors was the small regular-sized door in the ship’s hull that her Vid-screen informed her had been released.

Instead of the pressure sealed hatchway that usually sealed this entrance, what she saw was an open area with what looked like a gangway lined with red glowing strips.

It seemed that the bump that had been felt earlier was from another ship docking against the back of the Vortex.

Tim put a silencing finger to his lips as he nodded his head to the left. They started to hear slight scuffing against the floor as well as some deep low grumbling sound that appeared to be a muffled conversation in a language none them could distinguish.

Sanic, Valesque and Tim cautiously peered out from behind a strapped down Scuttle Craft to see several large shadows moving cautiously around the deck.