by

Yanick Champoux (38%)

Lee Watts (18%)

Josip Nað (17%)

Michel Lacombe (16%)

Dorian (4%)

goldkngt55 (3%)

Andrew Avila (2%)

Marten (1%)

Oliver (1%)

Part 40

Josip Nað (19/3/2002)

Sitting languidly in his chair, Sergei Visarionovich Godunov sipped on a glass of vodka. His eyes danced dreamily on the display in front of his eyes, never stopping on one detail and yet managing to encompass the whole. “It is the fate of all great Decados thinkers to be cursed with incompetent underlings.” he murmured to himself while he made the final adjustments to the lines of code than hung in front of him. “Therefore,” he muttered even while he started the compilation process, “if you want to do something right, you have to do it yourself.”

The computer chimed, showing him a cheerful “Compilation successful.” message. Baring his teeth in a wolfish grin, he accessed the back door that he had installed in the Engineering mainframe. He copied the program and started it.

“So, Chief Engineer, what is your evaluation?” asked Winthrop, sitting tensely at the edge of his chair, barely daring to breathe while he awaited the engineer’s verdict. He was, of course, pretending to be absolutely calm while he sat on his bridge, trying not to let it show that he was affected just as much as his crew was. How could a spacer, any spacer, not be affected by the darkness pierced only by the reddish glow of the emergency lights, by the dead silence broken up only by the soft swishing of the backup environmental fans. Their ship, his ship, was adrift; a powerless, uncontrollable hulk, drifting blindly on its last speed and course; the course that would soon take it beyond the fringe of the system and into the Dark Beyond the Stars. Still, if he pretended that everything was normal they had to pretend as well. So they sat at the darkened bridge, pretending not to be scared witless, pretending not to stare at their dead consoles, pretending that they weren’t living out every spacer’s worst nightmare. The Chief Engineer in front of him was probably even more scared than he was. Ever since he was a young boy he had lived among the machines, machines likes the ones that were now useless because there was no electricity to power them. The silence of the ship’s machines was probably even more eerie to him than it was to Winthrop. But, he was one of Winthrop’s officers, hand-picked for his ability, and his gaze met Winthrop’s steadily, with no sign of the fear that must have existed behind it.

“We will be able to repair the engineering computers, sir, but it won’t be easy” the engineer said. “I’d like to shake the hand of whoever sabotaged them, just before I pushed him out of the nearest airlock. That virus was a masterpiece, better than most of the engineers I know would be able to do. It had concealed itself as a routine file integrity check program, and then it started to erase our files, starting from backups and inactive programs first, so we only discovered it when it was almost too late. All we managed to save were parts of the reactor control protocols. Fortunately, they are also the most important. I’m certain that my engineers and I can cobble up a set of programs that will allow us to run the reactor and power the ship, but it won’t be easy and it won’t be quick. And after we’ve done that, we’ll have no option but to return to Very Cruz and have all our engineering software reinstalled in a shipyard.”

“How soon do you expect your software to be completed and the reactor running?”

“I don’t....”

“CAPTAIN!” the runner bellowed as he stormed onto the bridge, “Captain! We’ ve spotted a ship! Duxford spotted it from the 1st Class lounge on 5 Starboard! It was matching course and speed with us when I was sent...”

WHAM! The sound of the grappling hooks hitting the ship and marauders’ breaching charges blowing through the hull echoed through the Comet’s corridors.

“What was that?” someone yelled.

“Those, gentlemen,” stated Winthrop as he was getting up “are the first sounds of a boarding action underway.”

“NO! FOR THE LOVE OF PANCREATOR PLEASE N...” the priest screamed. Grinning like a madman behind his opaque faceplate, the marauder from Bolshoi Batiskii pulled the trigger. The assault rifle burped, stitching a line of red across the priest’s chest. He fell and the marauder continued onward, threading on the corpse as if it were a sack of flour.