The Catalyst

-Chapter 38-


All in all, this cruiser was in better shape than the last one had been when we managed to capture it. The belly turret was still intact. The left side underneath the nose had a hole in it, but it wasn’t as big as the last gaping breach had been. Jolly Rodger had yawned open, having lost the entire front section of the hull. There was less internal damage as well, as the Macro crew hadn’t been able to put up as stiff of a fight.
I wished I could say the same for my marines. We were down to less than ten percent of the number we’d left Earth with. They celebrated in desperate relief when we took the ship, but it was almost a maniacal sort of celebration. They had no booze, but they leapt into the air, whooped and slapped at one another, the nanotized equivalent of a hard high-five. For a few minutes, they bounced off the walls like ping pong balls. This exuberance quickly passed and most of them slumped down on the deck plates, exhausted by so many long days of fear and stress. I knew they needed some time off, but I wasn’t sure I could give it to them.
I gathered my bridge crew in the engine room, as we had done aboard Jolly Rodger. Everyone was there except for Major Sarin, who was still recovering from Sandra’s love-tap, and Major Welter who had stayed at his post and piloted Jolly Rodger to the end. I put his name down for a posthumous commendation—if any of us survived long enough to give it to his family.
“We are in the home stretch now, people,” I told my crewmen.
They smiled wanly. Even Sandra seemed more relaxed now. Killing that Macro with a knife had really settled her down. I made a mental note to try not to piss her off in the future. I didn’t have much hope in that regard, however.
“I need a volunteer to work the control console on this engine. At least, I need someone to turn on the brakes.”
Gorski looked doubtful. “That won’t be easy, sir,” he said.
“Why not?”
“There isn’t just a simple on-off switch on this thing. You have to work all the controls at once. It is more like landing a helicopter. I think the Macros built the interface with their group-mind as a basic assumption. They expect a half-dozen interface points to be touched at once most of the time and any operation takes input from all of them in combination. They simply didn’t automate the process.”
“I know something about automation,” I said. “Explain this to me.”
“Well, the Macros aren’t humans, sir,”
“I’m well aware of that, Captain.”
“They are very inhuman. We build our interfaces for our own physiology. Eyes that focus on a single point of the screen. Hands that can touch two areas, plus separate fingers that are only capable of reaching so far. The Macro interface was built for creatures with a dozen eyes and hands, essentially. They seem complex to us, but to them it probably seemed quite simple.”
I shook my head, walking up to the screen. It wasn’t flat the way our touchscreens tended to be. It had slightly convex curvature to it. I reached my hand toward it, but hesitated. Right now, it was in a locked setting, which was blasting us along on a preset course. We didn’t know where that course would take us, but we had to have direct control.
“How did you figure out these details, Gorski?” I asked.
“I spent days in Jolly Rodger’s identical engine room while Major Welter poked around with the system. We both studied the autopilot with interest. What we really need is a new autopilot to fly this thing.”
“Captain,” I said, “we have to have control over this ship. We don’t even know where it’s going, and I want to turn around and pick up whoever we can back in the Helios system.”
Gorski became pale. “Back through the ring?” he asked. “That will be a lot harder than just putting on the brakes.”
“I know that. How long will it take you to figure it out?” I asked.
“Pardon me, sir?”
I looked at him squarely. “You have nominated yourself to figure out this interface and fly this thing. I’ll assist you.”
“Colonel?” Gorski sputtered. “Let’s just set up a new autopilot.”
“No can do. We lost our factories. I don’t have spare brainboxes floating around.”
Gorski’s shock changed on his face to an expression of near panic. “Major Welter was a gifted pilot. I flunked my first driver’s test in high school.”
“You are also the only one who watched him do it. And you understand machines.”
“But sir—”
“I bet you were a gamer back in college, before all this shit started, weren’t you?”
“Uh, yes sir, but—”
“You’ve played flight sims. You’ve figured out a hundred interfaces. This isn’t much worse than flying a helicopter, Gorski. We are in space, man! There’s nothing out here to hit, really. Besides, I’ll be helping you.”
Gorski nodded slowly. He looked terrified. I clapped him on the back and forced him to smile weakly. “Great sir,” he said.
“Good,” I said, “and thanks for volunteering. What do we tap first to get it to stop and turn around?”
Gorski and I worked on the screen for the next ten minutes. I decided at last we just had to go for it. We pressed a half-dozen surfaces at once. I had to wonder how Welter had managed to get anywhere alone. The man must have had his knees up to touch this screen. Gorski explained he had seen him working on multi-contact programs built into the interface.
“You mean it has configurable hot-keys?” I asked. “Can we set up our own?”
“It’s not that simple,” Gorski said. “We don’t even know the sequences. We have to get them down first before we can encode them.”
“Right,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
“I really am not sure this is the correct sequence.”
“I’m not going to sue you if you frig this up,” I assured him. “The firing squad is more my style.”
“Thanks a lot, sir.”
“Now, go!” I said. We reached out with both hands each and put them on the board. The ship lurched sickeningly under my feet.
“I think we are accelerating,” Gorski said. “The red disk sir—”
“I’m pressing the red disk!”
“No, press the bottom portion, along the rim.”
I moved my hand, and stumbled forward, almost putting my face into the control board. A hand snapped out and grabbed each of us from behind. I glanced back. It was Sandra. I would have stared in disbelief if I had had the time, but I didn’t. I thought to myself that if I ever got her back into the sack it was going to be—daunting.
The ship was braking now. A low, whirring sound came from the engines, which were thrumming with power. This ship seemed in better shape than the last one. I recalled we’d done some damage to the power systems in the last ship and had never gotten her up to full speed—which was one of the reasons the enemy cruisers had caught up with us.
“Should we try a turn?” I asked.
Gorski shook his head. His eyes were wide, and he strained with effort to keep his fingers pressing the big board in exactly the right configuration. “You can’t really turn in space, you can just curve. Let’s get her stopped, do a slow one-eighty and fly back. We might be able to hit the ring that way without having to replot our course. I don’t understand the course-setting controls yet. I only know how to aim the ship and apply thrust.”
I grunted unhappily at this news. I decided braking was taking too long. We stopped applying the forward brake-jets and instead managed to turn the ship around. This was a harsh moment, as it took us two full revolutions before we had ourselves aiming back the way we had come. I was heeling over, struggling to keep on my feet as we spun. I recalled doing things like this back in high school parking lots as a kid.
Finally, we got the ship’s main engines headed in the direction we wanted. We were able to apply maximum thrust and use the primary engines for braking. Every hour that passed, more of my marines were running out of air and heat back in the Helios system. I wanted to save every last man I could.
After braking for more than an hour, we began slowly heading the other way.
“How long do we have before we reach the ring?” I asked.
“At this acceleration rate,” said a female voice behind me, “I’d estimate we have just over ninety minutes to go, Colonel.”
I chanced a glance over my shoulder in surprise. There was Major Sarin. I recognized her voice, but hadn’t believed it for a moment. I saw she was glaring at me. Sandra was still there—she was glaring too.
“The magic of nanites!” I said, with a slightly nervous laugh. “Good to see you back on duty, Major.” I turned my back upon these two women only because I had to. I returned my attention to the impossible Macro control systems. I felt like I was playing twister while pissed off people stood behind me and contemplated kicking me in the rear.
“Good to be here,” Sarin said in a sour voice.
“Let’s lock this thing and take a break from the controls, Gorski,” I said.
He gave me a dirty grin. “Got somewhere else to be, Colonel?” he asked.
I knew right then that everyone on the ship knew the whole story. How could they not? They knew about the kiss—and the thumping Sandra had given Jasmine after the kiss—the whole thing. I felt a hot, embarrassed flush coming up my neck. Soon, my cheeks were burning. I’d never been in the middle of a scandal before. I didn’t like the sensation.