Misadventures on Starship d'Artagnan

Excerpted from The Star Dancers by Jeffrey Caminsky, available directly from the Publisher, or from Amazon, or at a bookstore near you.

From Chapter 2

* * *

Three hours later, Jeremy Ashton found himself in front of the door to the Science Lab. Feeling very foolish, the ship’s executive officer stood and waited, summoning the resolve to enter.

Like every Academy graduate, he’d spent his share of time in a lab, but this one made him uneasy. Like the laboratory on any starship, it was as cramped as a storage compartment, less than half the size of a research lab at any respectable starbase. Yet what kept him on edge was not the spartan surroundings. He simply felt uneasy around the ship’s science officer, a dark and mysterious Valhallan named Hatfield, whose eyes bulged whenever he smiled. A research biologist, Hatfield seemed better suited as a character in a book of supernatural terror than to duty aboard a ship of the Cosmic Guard. Jeremy kept expecting to wake up one day to find the ship taken over by a resurrected fetal pig, or overrun by an army of freeze-dried rodents.

Not that he was prejudiced against biologists. In earlier days it was his favorite science. But shortly after they’d put out from IshCom, he ventured labside, looking for some spare wiring to fix a minor glitch in his computer console. There he’d seen Hatfield, alone in the lab, cutting into some pickled amphibian from New Babylon or elsewhere, his face a vision of rapturous delight. It made Jeremy’s skin crawl, and ever since he had avoided the lab and their science officer whenever possible. Cook said that Hatfield knew his field, and the captain seemed a keen judge of talent, but it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference to Jeremy. The young Valhallan made him nervous.

The door to the Science Department swooshed open and Jeremy stepped inside. His eyes, used to the brighter lights of the hallway, saw nothing but darkness. As his eyes adjusted, only the bubbling sounds of heating compounds rose to catch his ear.

Suddenly, a hand gripped Jeremy’s arm; he flinched convulsively, emitting a frightened yelp that was swallowed by the soundproofed walls.

“Sorry, Commander. I d-didn’t mean to startle you.”

It was Hatfield. His high-pitched voice burned with an eerie breathlessness, and he spoke with a stutter.

“That’s all right, Lieutenant. I’m looking for— ”

“The Skipper’s in C-cubicle Number T-t-two,” smiled the young Valhallan. “That’s straight down the hall, s-second room on the left.”

Jeremy strode directly to Cubicle Two, arriving to see Cook sitting on a stool and oblivious to the rest of creation, staring intently at a half-finished, makeshift gravity bell perched in the middle of a large black counter. Unlike the rest of the lab, the room was well lit and littered with bits of scientific junk. Cupboard doors and drawers were opened around the room, showing a scattered collection of beakers and tubes, wires and cutting instruments, in closets, on tables, and everywhere. More than anything, it looked as if Cook had gone into every corner of the room, looking for this and that, and had forgotten to close any of the drawers when he was through.

After waiting for a few moments, and shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other, Jeremy audibly cleared his throat. When it became clear that this would do no good, he knocked gently on the wall and entered the lab.

Cook looked up, a puzzled look crossing his face.

“You sent for me?”

“Right,” Cook nodded tentatively. He couldn’t quite remember why he’d sent for his executive officer, and it took a few moments to recapture the thread of his thinking.

“Oh, right!”

Cook motioned for Jeremy to take the empty stool across the counter, then handed his executive officer a pad of graph paper. The captain’s eyes brimmed with the pride of a schoolboy bringing home the best report card of his life.

Jeremy grimaced in befuddlement. The paper was filled with vector markers and lined with indecipherable hieroglyphics. Arrows pointed this way and that, and equations with no apparent meaning were scattered throughout. The only thing he recognized was a small disc-shaped object in the upper left quadrant. It was probably a starship, he concluded, though he wouldn’t have given odds on his chance of being right.

“What’s this?”

“A new maneuver,” grinned Cook, starting to lean back in the lab stool and catching himself just before falling to the floor. “Well, it’s not exactly new. It’s been noodling around in my head for quite some time, actually. I just needed some practical experience on a starship to get the ideas moving again. And I think I’ve finally solved the problem.”

“But what— ”

“You see, Jeremy, I never have been satisfied with the turning radius. On a starship, that is. Actually, on any ship, but especially a starship.”

“You mean, the parabola of change? But it’s— ”

“I mean, given the hull’s stress tolerance—and the raw power available for maneuvering...well, it’s bothered me since my days at the Academy. It’s just too narrow. Too damn constricting.”

“And what about the laws of physics?”

Cook waved his hand contemptuously. “Achh—details.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Wellll...physics is a dynamic science, Jeremy. I mean, after all, nothing really immutable about it. With each new advance in our understanding of the Universe, it’s constantly changing. It’s not some holy writ carved in stone on some moldy mountain in eons past.”

“Yes, but— ”

“Five hundred years ago, the laws of physics held it impossible to sail faster than light.”

“I know, Skipper, but— ”

His eyes filling with mischief, Cook wagged a pedantic finger at his second in command. “And five hundred years before that, scientists declared flight to be physically impossible.”

“But what does that have to do with— ”

“Besides,” Cook took the pad and nodded, his brow furrowing intently. “It works. At least it does on paper.”

“Uhhm—?” Jeremy took the pad, squinting in confusion.

“Well, it almost works. Close enough for now, anyway. Just a few minor bugs to iron out and then we should be set. Of course, we still have to think up a name for the damn thing.”

“But, Skipper— ”

“Besides, considering the bridge drills of the past few days, looks to me like we need something to capture everyone’s attention,” Cook shook his head gravely. “We’ve reached a plateau, Jeremy. And we need a reason to keep up the pace or everyone will get discouraged. Actually, I suppose I’d be the one getting discouraged, but then that’s rather beside the point.”

“Yes, but— ”

“So it’s settled.” Cook rapped the counter with his fist and gave a vigorous nod of his head.

“What is?”

“We start tomorrow. Well, maybe the next day. We’ll need to double-check the repair job on the Helm, first. And I want to have Van Horn give the engines the once-over. We don’t want to short circuit anything, now do we?”

“Oh no—this isn’t going to— ”

“Now just calm down, Jeremy. There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing can go wrong.”

“But— ”

“Well, nothing we can’t fix, anyway.”

“Skipper!”

“So it’s settled, then,” laughed Cook.

* * *

As their captain amused himself by running his executive officer around in circles, the junior officers of the Quarter Watch were waiting their turn at the simulators in the Computer Room Annex.

“I still think we should be spending more time on the bridge. Off hours I mean.”

“Why is that, Dexter?” Tom Gerlach winked a mischievous eye at Connie McKenzie, the apprentice navigator . She flashed a captivating grin in return, and they waited as patiently as they could while the chronometer pulsed along interminably. The room was large—forty feet across—divided into sections by three rows of domed simulators. The three of them stood next in line, and the hour was about to strike, freeing the simulators for the next shift. The furnishings were sparse and functional: no chairs or tables, just the simulators and the clock on the wall.

“Well,” said Dexter, pushing his thick glasses off the tip of his nose, “simulator practice is fine for basic skills, but it really gives us no feel for the ship itself. It’s like limiting small craft practice to class work, rather than taking the scouts into space ourselves.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Dexter,” said Connie. “We’ve made progress.”

“Ha!” snorted Gerlach. “Hardly enough to please the Skipper.”

“No,” she smiled at Gerlach. He’d had a particularly bad day with the captain, who couldn’t understand why the weapons station always seemed to develop so many technical problems whenever the apprentice weapons officer took over the seat. Only the navigator, it seemed, took more abuse than Gerlach. Of course, she thought, the captain could expect Talbert to know his job. After all, he’d been at it for quite a while.

“But our progress is pretty steady,” she continued. “In no time at all, I’ll bet, we’ll be ready to take anything he has to dish out.”

The hatch to Simulator Number Three swung open, and Roberta Blount walked out, shading her eyes to give them the chance to adjust to the stronger lights. Short and heavy-set, her dour face spoke a bitter disappointment over her first assignment, the ancillary guns in the ship’s weapons section. She felt a bitter coldness toward Gerlach for besting her for the post of weapons officer apprentice, and was still angry at the captain for telling her that she hadn’t even made the first cut after she protested her assignment. Without so much as a sideways glance, she ambled toward the hallway, her face wooden and humorless.

“Go ahead,” smiled Gerlach, motioning for Dexter to move ahead of his place in line.

“You sure?” said Dexter, his eyes widening as he looked up at his companions. Of all the new blueshirts, he was the only one who actually followed the captain’s directive to work with the simulator at least a cosmic hour each day. Even worse, he actually seemed to enjoy practicing. The trait had not endeared him to the rest of the ensigns.

“I mean, you guys were here first and all. It just doesn’t seem fair, to go and—well, you know— ”

“No, I insist,” Gerlach said, his brows furrowing jovially. “Besides, I’m not done talking to Connie. With the watch ending, another dome is sure to open up any time now.”

Dexter smiled broadly. “Gee, thanks Gerlach.” He turned and walked ahead to the simulator.

“Don’t mention it,” Gerlach said. He waited until Dexter disappeared behind the closed hatch and then motioned to the others in the room, a fiendish glint in his eye.

“Quiet,” he whispered, motioning for Bruno and Curtis, who were standing beside the storage closet door, to unfasten the latch and open the door.

“ ‘All right Mr. Underwood,’ ” a voice with a pitiable Isitian accent called from inside Simulator Number Three. Gerlach rolled his eyes and snorted derisively; Connie tried not to giggle. “ ‘Sound battle stations.’ ‘Aye, sir.’ ”

As Dexter added his peculiar sound effects to the simulation, Shrewsbury and Savich, two ensigns currently assigned to help supervise the security detail, entered the simulator room, pushing a broken robot cleaner that Gerlach had found in the hangar deck machine shop. They grunted mightily under the weight, groaning angrily for someone to help them. It was box-shaped, about three feet high, with a smashed electronic eye and a broken left wheel. Gerlach and the other men ran to help support one side of the cleaner, while Connie ran to stand by the entrance, to make sure no one was coming.

“‘Helm, slow to C-2. We’ve no need to be showing off just yet, Mendelson. Not till the rest of this group can handle the basic Level Four Simulations.’ ‘Aye-aye, sir.’”

Grunting under the strain, the five men wheeled the cleaner to Dexter’s simulator and, gently as possible, pushed it up against the hatch—which, for safety purposes, opened outward on all the simulators.

“‘Range, Mr. Dexter?’ Uh—just let me check, sir,” Dexter said from inside, in his own voice. “ ‘We haven’t got forever, Ensign. Enemies do tend to laugh at requests for more time, you know.’ Yes, sir. Range, fifty klicks and closing.”

Quietly, the conspirators tiptoed away. Everyone but Gerlach headed straight for the door.

“‘Palmer—full power to shields and prepare to charge the starboard guns.’”

“Hurry,” Connie called from just outside the door. Gerlach reached down, unplugged Number Three, and ran toward the door, joining his companions in a sprint down the hallway.

“Hey, guys—my machine just went dead. Could somebody check the plug?”

After a few seconds of silence, the hatch door started rattling on Simulator Number Three, soon followed by knocks from inside the practice station.

“Hey, guys? Whoops—boy, you want to hear something funny, guys? The door’s stuck. Again. What is that, the third time this week? Anyway, I may need some help getting out of here.” Dexter rapped loudly on the inside of the hatch.

“Okay, Guys?”

The knocking stopped.

“Guys?”

© 2009 by Jeffrey Caminsky