Return To Bowman: Ares Crew Log

Chapter 1 Her name was Cinnamon. That is right , and she was gazing at Gevaudan with eyes holding more than interest. The Vargr female from the Julian Protectorate held his eyes but from Gevaudan’s peripheral vision he could see Nutmeg, a Julian Human behind her engaged in something other than himself and humming the chorus to one of the rock band’s chart-topping songs. But Gevaudan re-focused on Cinnamon. She was slowly undressing the supine, white fur of Gevaudan’s pelt. It was too slowly for his reluctant, yet rising desire. Cinnamon and Nutmeg were not the two females’ birthnames. Again correct. They were stage names. Gevaudan recalled that much as Cinnamon leaned close to lick his muzzle as Nutmeg poured the wine behind her. Cinnamon’s pelt was largely gray with brown flecks. To Gevaudan’s grasp, she felt course on her dorsal, darker parts. But with her off-white and very soft ventral fur and breasts, two primary, two secondary, gliding up his chest from his belly, he was trying to contain his rising urges. His clothes could not come off fast enough.  So, the Pilot-Astrogator of the Ares kicked off his ballistic cloth pants in insistent desire to help. Coming up from her licking him, Cinnamon tilted her head a little in an inquisitive stare at him. “What?” asked the male Vargr beneath Cinnamon. Cinnamon smiled and answered in a voice that was not hers, “Three hours until jumpspace precipitation.” “Excusing this one?” Gevaudan’s question was in Galanglic in response to the female voice that was not Cinnamon’s. Though fluent in the Imperium tongue, the Vargr from the Extents had yet to master speaking the widespread language. The odd voice answered though Cinnamon was licking his muzzle again. It spoke in Gvegh, the language of the Vargr in this part of Charted Space,  “Three hours until jumpspace precipitation.” Gevaudan was puzzled.  Cinnamon was of Irillitok Vargr ethnicity on the other end of the Vargr Extents.  When had she learned Gvegh?  He pulled her closer, his face now inquisitive too. In Zdant this time, the language of the Zhodani Humans, Gevaudan heard,  “Three hours until jumpspace precipitation.” He did not understand the words, but somehow knew their translation by some forgotten rote. And then Gevaudan started and woke up from the dream and swearing to himself, “Runetha’s nuts.” He had forgotten to set an alarm time and now the Ares main computer was repeating itself in Tezlod, the language of the Darrians. The computer went on repeating itself in various languages most of which Gevaudan did not understand. That was Charoux’s fault, the Darrian male’s attempt at making sure no one could claim they did not comprehend or hear ship-wide announcements. The now very alone Vargr opened his eyes and took in his stateroom. He was in the Captain’s Cabin bunk room on the Bridge deck. He breathed in, again regretting the interrupted interlude with his encounter with Cinnamon and Nutmeg a year and a half ago. He was shivering slightly, having kicked off the double size bed covers to the deck floor in his dream’s interpretation of his flight suit. Gevaudan sat up in bed, still rock-hard with fading and regretful desire and a maddening urge to go mark the fresher. He swung his legs over the side if the disheveled bed and felt the cold deck beneath his foot and toe pads. He got up both groggily and dizzily. That’s right, he remembered now. Dr. Simone had released him from the Medical Deck recovery room just yesterday evening after 36 hours of making sure his new, cybernetic neural networking and skillsoft interface was not giving the white Vargr complications. This was in addition to Gevaudan’s requested neural system upgrades that had cost Gevaudan in excess of 3.2 million credits back on Darrian. Since he had not been able to find an Augmentations surgeon among the Darrians, Gevaudan had secretly asked the ship’s doctor, an Imperium human of finestkind, to perform the cybernetic upgrades to his body. The meds were finally wearing off but lingering in his sense of balance. The Pilot-Astrogator and Captain of the Ares, Gevaudan, padded intently to the fresher. The ship’s computer voice had cycled through all the languages of the crew complement as Gevaudan checked his canine face in the mirror over the sink. He was a Gvegh Vargr of average size, not too small, not very large. White pelt, crystal blue eyes – very rare.  Gevaudan’s Charisma, his personal self-esteem, wouldn’t allow him to wallow in the rarity of his coloration like his elder sister had. He saw nothing special about the face in the mirror. He felt more sluggish than he looked in the reflection of dream aftermath. Two, bare strips of cybernetic, silver lines much like circuitry dipped below each eye. They were superficial signs that Gevaudan had undergone Augmentation. He checked his teeth and stretched, managing to shake off the dream and fully awaken to the last day in jumpspace from Flammarion system to Bowman. He yawned once. Time to make a do. “One hour until jumpspace precipitation,” announced the ship’s female computer. It caused Gevaudan to question why a starship, named after a male, Terran deity had a female voice. As the announcement continued to repeat in follow up languages, the Vargr plucked up his discarded cybernetic cord line from the end table next to the bed and jacked the thick connector into his wafer jack long since embedded in the back of his furry skull behind his right ear. He checked the time because something did not feel right. That is right . It has not been an hour yet, so why so soon the next benchmark warning? Then Gevaudan was fully awake and his heart pounded furiously to deal with the adrenaline rush. Looking about at the cybernetic panel boards only he could see, the Pilot-Astrogator checked the time on the virtual Astrogation board. The clock was ticking down its remaining jumpspace travel duration too fast. Way too fast. “Computer,” Gevaudan demanded, his teeth showing. “General Quarters!”

Chapter 2 Gevaudan was inside his Hostile Environment VaccSuit, or HEV, fast.  It was a trick that Scouts and especially Vargr taught each other in the event of an emergency, a decompression or some other dangerous occurrence that he used his digitigrade stance to hop up into the air and slide his HEV on as his legs slid downward and into their tread shoes.  Just as fast he had the seals buttoned up.  He looked up and saw ship-wide intercoms lighting up from all over the Ares , an 800-displacement ton Broadsword- class, Mercenary Cruiser.  Others had heard the alarm Gevaudan had initiated as the assigned Captain of the ship.  He checked his various weapons were in place, forgetting his backup weapons in the stateroom locker.  He had no time now to get them and belt them on his HEV.  Snatching his helmet from the bed with one gloved claw and activating his suit's life support system, Gevaudan loped fast out the door to the Captain's Cabin and down into the Command & Control pit, the C&C, on the ship's Bridge. Yanking his cybernetic cord out of the Cabin wall, Senior Scout Gevaudan "Gev" Cannagrrh hauled the plug to his gloved claw and re-inserted it into the Command chair, also called simply "the chair".  He was seated and again checking virtual boards when up from two hatches in the deck floor but just outside the pit came two fellow crew members.  The first to arrive was the Imperium Human, Gentleman Hane Meson.  The spacer-lawyer must have had some training in his past to don his own VaccSuit so quickly and arrive on deck.  Meson looked at Gevaudan, nodded once, and took a position at Astrogation in the upper deck on the greater Bridge.  Second to arrive was the younger of two Darrians aboard, the Gentleman, (Gevaudan called every Human who was not an Equal from his home polity - the Society of Equals - 'Gentleman'), Larzamonte Charoux.  Charoux was only slowed by the fact that he was not wearing a typical ship's VaccSuit, but his race's signature Guard Armor, an armored and very high-tech suit for everything from EVA, to Electronics interplay to combat.  Gentleman Charoux was taking no chances in arriving and sitting himself down at the Sensors chair and boards. Gevaudan tapped a virtual intercom button that only he could see and spoke, "All hands, Suit and Tie, if not already."  It was a jargon that the Scout had picked up from Vilani starship crews that he had traveled with in coming to this part of Charted Space - the Spinward Marches.   The command was for all crew and passengers were to don VaccSuits and have their helmets either on and sealed or tied to a belt and within quick reach.  He watched Charoux between the virtual boards of his cybernetic interface. "Sensors," the Vargr Scout queried aloud. "As usual," answered the Darrian Charoux, "the Ares  cannot sense anything beyond the jump field bubble.  All lights are Green and Sensors are working properly." "Twenty minutes until jumpspace precipitation," announced the ship's computer.   Twenty minutes, Runetha's tail! "Is something wrong with our jump?" asked a nervous Gentleman Hane.  "The clock's ticking down a third of its previous estimate every five minutes."  He was pointing to the jump clock that Gevaudan already knew was ticking down too fast. "Jump good," called back Gevaudan who was cycling virtual boards again to have a look at the Engineering board that was actually several decks below in Engineering Deck 1.  "All lights Green there too.  Jump field stable." "Then what is happening, Captain?" asked the elderly, other Darrian - one Gentleman Admiral Galen - who had just arrived through a hatch in the deck.  He was panting and had a challenging expression without words on his face.  Gevaudan didn't have an answer just yet.   Make a do, was his return expression to the former Navy commander of the Darrian Confederation.  At least the old man was in his VaccSuit and done up proper, yes? A call came over the intercom.  A face appeared on the main viewscreen that was formerly cloudy with various values of dark gray to misty white, the enigmatic view of the very edge of their reality - jumpspace.  "Crow here.  On station and everything seems in place," reported the Imperium Human, another Navy man, Captain Jacob Crow.  Crow was a typical Solomani-Vilani mix favoring the Terrans but his closely-cropped hair was a trim from the Vilani.  On the comm viewer from far below in Engineering, Crow was dressed in nothing but full, Imperial Battledress the frontline Naval and Star Marine armors of the day.  He was looking at various boards offscreen and again reported, "All Green down here.  Jumpdrive's doing its job." "Maybe there's something wrong with the computer," offered Larzamonte Charoux who was plugging in his own, Darrian handcomputer and running a superficial diagnostic.  "Were we hacked back at Flamarrion?"  His hands worked fast to produce various data wafers and jack their programs into the system.  Gevaudan hoped not, for he too was connected to the ship's computer via his cybernetic Ship Integration interface and he was no computer grinder like the Darrian about the same age as Gevaudan. Two minutes later, the unthinkable was announced.   "Six minutes until jumpspace precipitation," came the computer's voice.  It was ticking down even faster and the time between announcements was shortening along the same reduction.  Gevaudan did a quick numbers crunch. Two years past, Gevaudan - then just the Pilot-Astrogator for the Artemis Mercenary Corporation - was at the helm of the newly-launched Ares  when the ship dropped out, or precipitated as the computer favored, of jumpspace in the middle of a warzone.  It was the Fifth Frontier War and Sword Worlders were clashing with the Imperium Navy right at the vectored jump point one hundred diameters from the nearest astronomical body.  Though the ship was registered and transmitted a favorable IFF transponder signal, the ship arrived in realspace amid a starship combat, fleet in scope with escorts and fighters swarming each other's fleet.  Dodging the battle was the challenge then.  The difference this time was that instead of a surprise waiting for them on the far side of jumpspace, whatever was now messing with the jump clock was drawing or pulling  on the ship.  It was being interdicted, halted or yanked out of jumpspace quite too early.   Or was it? "Gev, talk to us," asked another face appearing on the intercom camera from Engineering Deck 1.  It was a gray-and-white Vargr.  Star Marine Kayleb "Runt" Grougth was suited up and helping Captain Crow ready the diversion of power from the Jumpdrive to the Maneuver Drive from Engineering at the signal from the Bridge. Gevaudan mentally clicked three switches on yet another virtual board in his field of view.  It was the Gunnery board.  He had just unlocked all three safeties for the eight weapons turrets that dotted the outer hull of the Ares.  Guns hot.   "Brace for-."  He was cut off by the computer voice.  It was only thirty or so seconds from its last announcement. "Two minutes until jumpspace precipitation."

Chapter 3 "Someone mind telling me what is going on?" came a second call on the main viewer.  It was the Human Dr. Simone.  Gevaudan, as familiar as he had let a non-Equal such as Simone get with his body, he'd never asked her if she had a family or pack name.  It was just Dr. Simone from the day she had stepped foot on board the Ares .  She had mouse black hair of medium length.  Gevaudan did not gauge whether or not a female Human had long or short mane.  Hers was just right in the Pilot-Astrogator's opinion.  Her image's background on the main viewscreen - and one of his virtual boards - told all that she was ready and waiting in the sickbay on the Medical Deck just inside the Air/raft bay and airlock. "Bad jump, I'm guessing," answered the gray-furred, Vargr Runt from his station in Engineering 1.  "We're exiting jumpspace too far ahead of time." Gevaudan did not get a chance to explain his suspicions when he went to open his mouth to speak. The jump duration estimates were already finestkind in his opinion, but....  Instead he was again cut off by the ship's female computer voice.  It had not been 15 seconds since the last benchmark announcement.  But this time the voice sounded more like an emergent warning that was confirmed, "Warning!  Gravity well.  Take evasive action." All the lights went from a General Quarters yellow to a battlestations red.  Gevaudan lept from the chair, vaulting over his station and dragging the long, coiled cybernetic cord to the seat still jacked in.  It was long enough to reach any station on the Bridge and it followed him like some black and yellow striped serpent intent on the back of the white Vargr's skull.  He touched down between the Helm station and its acceleration chair.  He sat in it quickly and strapped in. Then the entire ship groaned as the gravity plates fought against a new gravitational direction and lost.  Everyone belted into their acceleration chairs were flung forward in their harnesses as 'down' became straight toward the spherical nose of the Ares. "Whoaaaah!  Ohhhhh shiiiiit!" someone on the Bridge said.  It sounded like the last person to enter the C & C pit, the newest member of the crew of the Ares .  It was Sebastien Maddox Esquire, the new accountant and Broker for the Artemis Group.   He was suited up properly and had his robot assistant with him, helping him stay standing despite the change in gravity.  Thankfully his VaccSuit's magnetic boots held him to the floor.  He held tight to the Comms station and board as the ship tilted  toward the gravity well ahead of the ship's fading jumpfield bubble. Over his shoulder and for some odd Human reason, Gentleman Hane Meson at Astrogation could be seen peripherally from Gevaudan's view.  He had both his arms raised up over his head and parallel to each other as if he was responding to the change in gravitational attitude.  There was a perverse glee on his face that the Vargr Scout could not fathom.  Gevaudan then turned to place both his gloved claws on the actual, physical helm controls. Then the jumpfield sparked its last and flickered out in blotches as realspace black replaced the gaps between its receding gray.  Stars were out there, but much too closely was the source of the gravity well.  On the viewer were more free-floating, tumbling, colliding and wandering asteroids, planetoids and smaller rocks everywhere.  They were illuminated by the jump flash of the arriving ship.  The Ares  had fallen out of jumpspace in the middle of a meteor shower!  Not just meteors, but big ones too.  Gevaudan's heart sank to his stomach and he again adrenalized for the second time today.  He yanked on the controls to begin maneuvering.  Virtual boards around him spun to his view as he thought of them as he dodged the first big asteroid pock-marked by impacts of smaller space rocks.  The only thing the Vargr Captain of the Ares  could choke out of his mouth was, "Engineering!  More power to Maneuver Drive!" Down in Engineering, both Captain Jacob Crow and Force Commander Kayleb Groughtk worked in tandem to re-route power from the main Power plant to the Maneuver Drive, surging the fusion reactor for an extra boost in thrust output.  On the same deck, the Jumpdrive was cooling and still cycling down.  It would be hours before it could be charged again for jump.  Besides that, all boards showed that a jump of three parsecs had drained most of the liquid hydrogen, or L-hyd fuel from the spherical tanks encapsulating the living and working spaces of the various ship decks.  They were flying on very low fuel.  "That's all I can give you, Gev," called Crow.  Runt took off at a run signature of the Vargr race.  In two short strides he was to the deck hatch ladder and skittering up through the decks. From the Bridge, everyone there could hear the hammering fire from all the ship's turrets as lasers and particle accelerators provided point defense by shooting the medium and smaller rocks before they could get near the hull.  It still was not enough and Gevaudan knew it true.  "Take that!" came the call from Turret #2, manned by the Flammarion Human, a Solomani named Jeff Scardack.  Gentleman Jeff, as Gevaudan mentally called him, was firing faster than the coolants would normally allow.  He could see Turret #2 on a virtual board and already it was in the red.  Gentleman Jeff was firing as fast as he could pull the trigger.  The ship's Gunnery robots, seven as one was displaced by the Human, were more prudent and made every shot count in point defense.  But Gevaudan could spare no more attention to anything but the most harrowing piloting he'd ever performed in his life. As if the proximity alarms were not enough, the various psionic squealer  alarms all sounded off a high pitched, screeching warning.  They were designed to detect psi-waves, the mental energies put out by the mind of a psionics-trained sophont.  The 'squealers' had only a very minimal range of several meters and every last one of them aboard the Ares  erupted their warning simultaneously.  Everyone rushed to don psionic helmets, activate their integral suit psi protections, or pull psi-shield cowls over their heads.  It was a practiced, emergency drill that the previous Captain of the starship had infused into the crew until they were automatic, reflex reactions.  With so many of the alarms screeching their warnings, the entire vessel had to be bathed in a massive tsunami of psi-waves.  But not one sophont could do such coverage and everyone who had any psioncology instruction knew it.  Every thirty seconds or so, the psi-squealers sounded off again and then died off.  It was like slow waves of a gentle tide that did not bode for good surfing.  It was annoying, attention-grabbing, and unnerving to know that the entire ship was so engulfed in the unseen pulses. The ship had been upgraded by the ship's previous owner, the late Colonel Lloyd Robertson.  Embedded into the ship, just under the lanthanum jump web was the same layered shielding as an individual's psi-shield helmet or cowl-hood.  Gevaudan was happy that his HEV had room in the helmet for him to have pulled his cowl over his head just before sealing his helmet over it.  It was a standard operations procedure on the Ares  when donning armors, VaccSuits, HEV or Battledress.  The late owner had hammered the procedure into the crew mercilessly after the incident on Wypoc.  But Gevaudan put that story out of his mind as he continued to maneuver the ship. A large rock struck the ship despite the Pilot-Astrogator's best space acrobatics.  Its vibration shuddered the entire vessel's armored hull.  The Sensors board before Gentleman Charoux went static and senseless.  Charoux looked over at the Helm where Gevaudan was seated.  Blood drained from everyone's faces as the truth struck home.  Gevaudan now had to fly the ship with visual scopes alone.  The Sensors array had taken the brunt of the collision.  Only the virtual boards seen by the white Vargr were left.  Only he and the flight recorder onboard would be able to tell the tale of ten minutes of dodging and hull strikes that seemed to last for a hellish eternity. 

Chapter 4 "Not on my watch!" shouted the Darrian, Larzamonte Charoux.  He slapped the fast release of his web harness and lept up.  He grabbed a bag of high-tech goodies he never had far from him.  Without another word, Gevaudan saw the armored, Darrian man scramble up the deck ladders towards the next highest deck. The Equal Vargr from the Dzen Aeng Kho yanked hard on the yaw but the hull rattled with multitudes of tiny strikes hailing it.  But a huge THUD struck the ship and vibrated the spherical shell entirely. Runt shimmied up the deck ladder past the Bridge on his way up to the Gunnery Deck in the same hatch as Gentleman Charoux had taken.  "Gravity's out on the Mess Deck, Captain!" called the gray, Imperium Vargr as he passed upwards towards the domed nose of the Ares.   He was a fast climber, perhaps a tribute to his Star Marine training both on the ground and in space.  Gevaudan was too busy dodging a big one and had to accept the lesser of two evils; the scenario would play over and over again in this freakish meteor swarm.  A sputter of the Maneuver Drives and a section of his virtual boards went yellow.  The thrusters had taken a hit from smaller rocks as the ship slipped past that large asteroid.  Too much abuse and the sub-light thrust would fail, a fact not lost on everyone who saw the same, real board - a duplicate of the one in Engineering - change to yellow. "M-drive took a hit," called Captain Crow from Engineering Deck 1.  "Gev, whatever you're doing, get us outta here." From a personal comm connected to the ship's intercom came Gentleman Charoux's voice, "Another minute and I'll have this Odin's Eye adapted to be our eyes from Observation."  The Darrian man, a former Agent of the Darrian Confederation's Special Arm, was presumably fashioning a makeshift replacement to the lost Sensors array by mounting an unclaimed cybernetic eye to see out the transparent, polymer viewing dome over the Owner's Suite.  The Owner's Suite had been converted to house the two lady passenger Vargr, the Dame Qithka Cannagrrh, (Gevaudan's elder sister), and her attache Uthka Varzeekh.  From the Helm and through his cybernetic connection, the Pilot-Astrogator could see through the deck cameras that the two females were wearing VaccSuits and huddling together in fear of the grand vista above them. Just afterwards came a call from Turret #1.  Runt had arrived and evicted a Gunnery robot.  "Out out, robot!  Runt in number one on point defense."  From behind the calling Star Marine came the hammering sounds of the other Turrets on the Gunnery Deck.   That's good-thinking, thought Gevaudan as he saw an out of a situation ahead. Two large planetoids had just collided in the distance. They traded energies and began to separate from each other.  Gevaudan took the Ares  between the two big ones in hopes that the two would act as shields from further strikes.  However, the bright idea demanded payment in smaller hits from fragments that remained between the planetoids, rocks that had fractured off from each.  The ship was rocked by passing through that small cloud of space stone.  The Turrets rattled in the Gunnery deck above the Bridge level.  "Shite!" called Runt from #1.  "Deck gravity on Gunnery just failed, Gev!"  The hull had absorbed the brunt of the scrapes and impacts but in doing so, power to the grav plates in the deck malfunctioned.  Gevaudan hoped that everyone, robots and the living, were strapped down while firing the ship's weapons. The mainscreen came back online.  It was the Odin's Eye that Gentleman Charoux had been mounting.  Still, without the full Sensors array, the Ares had only what the cybernetic eye could see in its field of view.  Gevaudan heard a disheartened sigh from the the aged Admiral Galen who could now see the entire meteor swarm from the perspective of the Observation dome.  Rocks as far as the Eye could see tumbled and collided with each other.  To the elderly Darrian, it seemed the collective shower of rocks were travelling in a shared, general direction.  Others on the Bridge gasped at the sight ahead. It was a nightmare, the kind where one cannot move and yet bad things are happening.  The meteor swarm featured rocks of every shape and size up to planetoids.  Yet, Gevaudan was sure, by Runetha!   He was positive he had plotted the jump vector to the 100 Diameters jump point to Bowman a week ago.  The only thing he could fathom, as he listed to port to swing wide of some long rock shards, was that the asteroids had wandered somehow into the space of the jump point during the week the ship spent in jumpspace.   But how?   The viewscreen was treated to a close up view of the sharp and jagged-edged shards.  More rock hits, smaller than the long shards, rained down on the hull of the vessel. "Turret #3 is hit and a robot is flat-out!" called Runt from Turret #1.  More shots fired from the remaining weapons Turrets continued to sound off behind the Star Marine. The entire ship groaned a metal-bending, shrilling scraping sound as a major bulkhead suffered an internal hit.  The sound meant that the previous hits had exposed the inside of the ship and that one or more decks had penetrated the outer, armored hull and were doing damage to vital systems. Captain Crow in Engineering seemed riveted to the deck on the intercom viewer.  Perhaps he had magnetized his battledress boots and was still on station.  "M-drive just took another hit and were venting fuel slowly.  Get us out of here fast, Gev!"  Behind Crow, tools and spare parts were floating in mid-air.  The artificial gravity on that deck must have failed the same as on Mess and Gunnery decks.  The damage was indeed mounting. Onward Gevaudan dodged the ship, suffering hits every minute just to keep clear of any large space rocks that would no doubt have pulverized the Ares  instantly.  Every minute something new was damaged.  Then the damage appeared too close for comfort.  The wrenching structure and weaving of the ship caused the Sensors station's acceleration chair - the one just vacated by Gentleman Charoux - to rip loose from its bolts and fly across the C & C pit and land against the wall of the Ship's Locker and slide to the deck floor.  Immediately afterwards a medium-sized rock burst through hull, empty and partitioned fuel tankage, and ripped onto the Bridge deck.  Sparks flew as electronics and plating were chewed by the mass of the meteor.  Air would have depressurized the Bridge but for prior precautions set into place by the alarm of General Quarters.  Such was standard operations in such times.  Anything could cause a cabin breach.  The great space stone bounced against the ceiling and then bounced right where Charoux's chair had been second before.  Fragments the size of knives blasted from the rock and peppered Gevaudan at the Helm and tore through his HEV.  Pain lanced in three places were he was lacerated.  In a reflexive action, the Pilot-Astrogator tapped a switch on his belt-slung medikit linked to his suit.  The handcomputer-sized device immediately diagnosed him with foreign bodies and administered combat drug and pain medication.  He needed to stay awake!  A second later, a coagulant foam was sprayed at the lacerations, sealing them off from further blood loss.  Then the Vargr returned the free claw to the controls.  Already his HEV's self-sealing gel was resealing the rips in the suit.   In its momentum the meteor punched through an inner wall and destroyed the Captain's Cabin bunk room - where Gevaudan has awoken this morning.  The impact knocked several items loose inside the adjacent Ship's Locker and many items came clattering out of racks and onto the deck floor there.  Had Gentleman Charoux not left for the Observation dome in the Owner's Suite, he'd be dead, crushed flat.   Darrians have all the luck, thought Gevaudan as he began another maneuver to continue dodging. More damage was sustained in the last minutes as the Ares  struggled to be free of the meteor swarm.  Cargo hits spilled valuable speculatives into space.  Equipment, tools, spare parts; all were haphazardly lost to space.  The crew would later learn that the cargo boards on all three cargo decks had gone dark.  This meant that the computer had no idea of what was lost.  It would have to be visually inventoried.  A bouncing meteor ripped through Engineering Deck 1, forcing Crow to duck under his station desk to avoid being crushed.  The rock then destroyed the Jumpdrive as it became lodged between the drive and a bulkhead wall. "We're stuck in Bowman," called Jacob Crow.  "Jumpdrive is slagged."  Then klaxons rang out and radiation symbols appeared on every board that had not gone dark.  The Power plant's containment had breached open and the core was spilling deadly radiation on Engineering Deck 2.  On fail-safe protocols, the computer initiated automatic closures of all hatches to the deck.  The female, computer voice announced,  "Warning!  Radiation detected - Engineering Deck 2."   Thanks be to Runetha , thought Gevaudan, that none of the crew were on that deck and thus sealed in and irradiated.  He could see the yellow, highlighted system on his virtual boards.  Everywhere there was damage, a board demanded with more yellow.  Only the Jumpdrive was lit in historical red.  Without fuel and a functional Jumpdrive, the ship was stranded in Bowman system. Bowman system had no mainworld.  Gevaudan remembered such as he continued dodging asteroids.  It featured one of the largest recorded planetoid belts ever surveyed in Charted Space.  It had one gas giant named Bowman Prime.  Since there was no habitable mainworld, the system was named after the solar primary star, Bowman.  Several moons orbited the gas giant.  The Pilot-Astrogator recalled Garrison Starport in orbit over a minor moon named Alpha, after the Greek letter.  System geography would have to wait as the Vargr swerved past a large and jagged asteroid only to suffer more hits.  The intercom image of Dr. Simone on the Medical Deck went static then dark.  The Medical Deck had suffered hits and now was offline.  Out of the corner of his eye, the virtual board pertaining to Medical went red as a through penetration destroyed gravity, offlined the boards and killed power to all the doors.  Dr. Simone, if still alive, would not be able to monitor crew conditions, Gevaudan currently the worst off. And onward the Ares plowed toward the meteor swarm's leading edge.

Nice. :)

Chapter 5 One thing a pack member never asks that Gevaudan heard and regretted his good, canine ears.  "Can this get any worse?"  It was Captain Jacob Crow from Engineering.  He was initiating the computer-controlled repair drones on the main viewscreen intercom window.  "Fuel has to be saved first, Gev, or else we go nowhere.  Going to save what fuel we have left." Gevaudan was glad for a competent Engineer.  Crow may have glided through Imperial Navy having wanted to be a Marine - he confessed such way back on Laberv planet in the Darrian Confederation.  But the Imperium Human was a crack shot in Gunnery.  It was rumored that he'd never missed....ever. As much as the white Vargr wrestling with the Helm and slowly-dying Maneuver Drive valued the point defense help, Gevaudan was glad to have Crow down in Engineering and working Damage Control.  The Captain of Engineering, a territorial claim much like his own claim on the Bridge, called again, "Jeff can take over directing the repair drones once we're clear of the shower."  He could be seen working with tools and nabbing a new tool from the air as needed. A few hits later and the yellow infestation on the boards, virtual and actual, grew.  The Ares  was caught between dodging a big one near the leading edge of the swarm.  But in gliding around it, Gevaudan had put the ship between it and a multitude of incoming rocks that would have otherwise struck the planetoid.  Like a hammer against an anvil, the ship was pummeled again.  The Maneuver Drive sputtered and died as did the lights everywhere on the ship.  The Power plant had had all it could stand.  Fail-safes shut down the fusion reactor and backup batteries were initiated.  Thus, the Gunnery turrets fell silent.  No more point defense.  "Shite!" called Runt.  "Crap!" answered Jeff.  In the viewscreen the ship was spiraling out of control.  At least the clear edge of the swarm was visible, judged Gevaudan.  On the rear-view scopes, the ship's Captain could see through his cybernetic, Ship Integration.  The Ares was leaving a sizeable trail of cargo, debris, hull armor, and too many items to identify individually.  There had to be hull through penetrations all over the three Cargo decks. Senior Scout Gevaudan "Gev" Cannagrrh, was without a Maneuver Drive, the means to power it, no point defenses to shoot incoming rocks.  He let go of the Helm controls.  There was nothing to respond to them left. The Ares  was spinning out of control in a twirl that would have made anyone lose last night's meal in their helmets.  Last meal indeed. There are stories where a crack pilot, a maverick, or space ace saves the day.  His piloting is spot-on, the other enemy ships or fighters are but toys waiting to be toyed with to them.  Battle analysts describe these masters as zen-like warriors taking every shot, every maneuver, every second like they were individual eternities for which the master had forever to be perfect.  Many masters claim there was no mind at work, that they did only what came naturally next in a succession, a dance flowing from moment to moment.  Gevaudan was no master.  He felt none of those things.  He wasn't crack.  He was scared, and had anyone seen it, they would have known his frailty.  Right now, everyone else was struggling with the g-forces that wrenched them in their seats, against bulkheads, pinning them to walls or floors.  No one spoke.  Those that could not withstand the chaotic and erratic three gees persistent as they pushed or pulled fell out and into their internal blackness of unconsciousness.  Gevaudan - Gev - was no master.  He wasn't the best. But Gevaudan was not the worst either.  Tumbling in a spin, the Ares had only its backup batteries, a few hours duration at most.  Gevaudan searched his virtual boards, spinning them around him until he found an answer.   Thanks be to Runetha and Dr. Simone, he thought as he found an answer.  It would be difficult to initiate and apply, but the Pilot-Astrogator was out of options.  This could only be done by him, through his Ship Integration, such was the timing and coordination necessary. Unseen by the unconscious, regurgitating or otherwise traumatized crew, Gevaudan reached through the cybernetics to the two, fifty-tonne Cutters, the  Sword of Ares  and the Spear of Ares .  They were housed in their two tube-like bays.  Designed to fit inside the spherical Broadsword- class starship, the Cutters were multipurpose small craft incapable of jump but quite modular in their use and configurations.  Gevaudan found what he wanted on each of the Cutters and initiated their systems.  He held his abdomen and upper thigh.  The pain meds were fading.  It was going to hurt to breathe and move soon.  Through the cybernetics, the Pilot-Astrogator initiated the smaller Power plants, Maneuver Drives, and Life Support systems.  Then he ordered the onboard computers in each Cutter to sync to his commands, open the airlocks to their mother starship.  Locked in place as they were, the Cutters could not maneuver, but they could still provide some bit of thrust and power. A wave of nausea punctuated with hope washed over Gevaudan as he ordered the Cutters to begin pushing on the Ares.   Air flowed in from the Cutters and slowly - but surely - their gentle thrust bursts righted the trajectory of the 800dT starship and ceased its spin.  Through the haze of his pain, Gevaudan urged the ship to Alpha moon, to the first station he could see through the scopes.  It was not Garrison Starport, but another station in orbit, a Trojan Point, above the minor satellite of Bowman Prime.  As near as he could figure, (a saying Humans would voice), the Pilot-Astrogator using his 'gator laptop computer for help, vectored the devastated starship to the station.  It was many minutes or hours to reach the man-made satellite.  Gevaudan's focus on the destination did not allow him to look at the clock.  He was out of adrenaline and weary in the fatigue of his endocrine overdrive and his injuries.  Was he in shock?   Make a do. The station's name Gevaudan did not know or care.  It was safe harbour and had a large, external docking ring, two of them.  Fuel was low - the ship and its Cutters were on vapors of L-hyd.  With the last of his meds from their medikit, the white Vargr initiated docking and then lost consciousness himself.  A desire to return to Cinnamon and Nutmeg drew him into the darkness, welcoming him with smiles and chilling wine.   Finestkind.

I find I cannot continue the story from Gevaudan's point of view as he was KO'd until Dr. Simone arrived on the Bridge and performed First Aid on him.  She had suffered two Crew Hits on the Medical Deck, (not enough to put her down for sure), and was not wearing a VaccSuit according to Bob.  Would anyone else like to continue the story from the moment they came to their senses with the Ares docked at Prometheus Station?  I'd  favor Charoux', Crow's or Sebastien's POV, but anyone is welcome.  I can even help with grammar and punctuation editing.

Chapter 6 Gevaudan did not receive a rendezvous with Cinnamon and Nutmeg.   Unconsciousness does that to one , he complained to himself as he slowly rose up and out of the darkness.  His canine ears perked to hear talk.  People, Humans and Vargr, were talking around him.  Discussion and debate on priority of tasks and projects was in full swing without Gevaudan.  It was the first corporation meeting that Gevaudan had been left out of, he jokingly told himself as he risked opening his eyes.  He was on the Bridge and at the Helm station.   That's right. Above him and tending his wounds even though her broke nose was still dislocated and her Artemis Group  ship uniform was torn at the chest and exposing gleaming metal ribs -  Metal ribs ?  Dr. Simone was performing First Aid on the Pilot-Astrogator.  She did not smell like Human blood.  Gevaudan kept quiet even as he came to full consciousness.  One does not question the doctor working on them.  Dr. Simone had removed the dagger-like shards of rock from his leg and abdomen muscles.  Thankfully, Gevaudan's subdermal armor Augmentation had kept the shards from going much deeper.  She must have given him more pain medication as he felt dreamy still as he was being treated.  Then she stood up straight and closed her physician's jacket over her damaged torso, hiding the secret Gevaudan had no energy to pursue. Gentlemen Sebastien Maddox was across the Bridge having an argument with the two female Vargr on the Ares.   Gevaudan's Sister-Dame, Qithka was trying to calm the middle-aged female Uthka Varzeekh.  Uthka's attentions were on Gentleman Sebastian standing at the Comms boards.  She seemed to be interfering with the Imperium Human. "No, Gentleman Sebastien," she warned Uthka.  "You must not call for aid.  This one has Seen."  In one of her claws was one of her crystal tarot placards.  "Death and more destruction if you do!" Time and again the touched attache, Uthka, had been more than a little accurate as a fortune teller to the Artemis Group.   Though more than a little eccentric about how she evidenced her foresight, Gevaudan knew the truth behind her hysterics.  The Dame, still oblivious to the truth, put her own claw on the elder Vargr female's shoulder to calm her and hopefully draw her back from the Comms board and a confused Gentleman Sebastien.  Gevaudan watched as another tableau of Uthka's cover act to conceal that she was a precognition Psion.   She could 'See' the future and its forking paths of probability and what she Saw had her hysterically trying to deny the Ares Comms board to the noble, Imperium businessman. "Ma'am, I assure you," Sebastien tried to assuage the shorter, gray-furred Vargr in purple and orichalcum, (a gold-orange color).  "I have contacts with Ling Standard Products here in District 268 and they can help us with repairs." From Gevaudan's weakened point of view, he saw Uthka lift her I (heart) Tea, ceramic mug and by its handle, smash it on the console of the Comms board.  Its fragments skittered across the board and onto the deck floor.  "No!  You must do no such thing!" "Uthka!" exclaimed the Dame trying to assert her Charisma and authority over her assistant.  It did no good as the Vargr female had already donned her Unequal muzzle sash and had it tied over her nose and loosely knotted.  It meant that she would not obey the Equal Dame from the Dzen Aeng Kho. In having refused to take the test of Equality back home and thus denying herself full rights and privileges of an Equal of the Society of Equals, Uthka was one of the partially marginalized lower caste of Gevaudan and Qithka's home polity.  She had little upward mobility until she did take the test.  However, those Vargr of the Society that failed the test of Equality had their canines removed, often rather painfully.  Uthka, in protest of such barbarism in her eyes, refused taking the exams and was relegated to the Unequals - vagabonds and societally shunned.  Unequals were required, when in the Dzen Aeng Kho, to wear distinctive sash belts or a sash-like head harness over their canine muzzles.  It was by law that Unequals were to display their refusal to test.  It also branded them as lessers in rights and say.  The sashes were supposed to be gentle reminders of their place in the Society.  Now, outside the polity, Unequals turned the tables.  Using the apparel, Uthka was stating her belligerence and defiance to Dame Qithka Cannagrrh's authority, so certain was she that her Sight was clear on this matter.  In donning the sash muzzle back home it meant for her to keep her mouth shut and obey the Equals, her betters.  Here, it was a passive-aggressive means of showing that she would not obey and remain silent. Yet, Gevaudan knew somewhat about Uthka Varzeekh that she had kept hidden from his Sister-Dame.  Professor Isis, the Zhodani woman and Uthka Varzeekh had some months past joined social forces to secretly offer to test and train curious crew of the Ares  in psionics.  The Professor, a tall, black-haired and swarthy beauty - for a Zhodani - had the know-how to test and train students.  Uthka, while not truly a teacher, was a helpful assistant and filled in the gaps to teach psionics students how to cover their Talents with deceptive smoke and mirrors screens.  Gevaudan knew of this classwork on the ship because he had undertaken such training himself.  At his age of 34 at the time, four terms and two years of life, he was a bit late.  However the Senior Scout, even if he was just a Courier back home, was about exploring frontiers and opening his mind's potential, another such undiscovered horizon.  He had undertaken, in secret Don't Ask - Don't Tell meetings with the Zhodani woman and the Vargr fortune teller precog , to be tested for psionic potential.  He had the gift, albeit much lower power than Prof. Isis, trained from childhood, and the very-focused Vargr female who had received her own Vargr training back in Gvurrdon  Sector aboard a mobile, Psionic Institute named Sibiatl*.   The two females had aided, after funding them with instructors' fees, Gevaudan in unlocking his mediocre Talents of teleportation  and clairvoyance. Here and now, from his seated resting place at the Helm, Gevaudan watched as Uthka adamantly stood a guarding vigil over the Comms board, convinced from within that the crew abstain from signaling for aid further than the space station where they were docked or down to the surface of Alpha moon.  Any further than that and Uthka would throw another tantrum. Gentleman Sebastien gave Dame Qithka a pleading and placating look which was returned with an apologetic shrug.  The stalemate was broken by the Comms board itself.  Gevaudan guessed that before the argument, the business Broker had opened a comm channel to the station where the Ares  had come to dock.  Many voices within earshot of the hot microphone on the other end of the connection seemed, to Gevaudan anyway, to chant, "Puulllllll...."   It was like a religious, droning, group chant of at least two handfuls of Humans.  Everyone stopped at the sound and listened again. Gentleman Sebastien was visibly unnerved by what he heard.  Uktha's attention was briefly drawn to the speaker, but then she resumed her stalwart, guarding position.  To her, it seemed to be yet another detail of her foretelling Sight.  It was Gentleman Larzamonte Charoux, who had been listening to the protest the entire time, that silenced the Comms board and severing the call.  The chant had more than a little weirded Gevaudan too as he slowly rose from the Helm station's acceleration chair where he had been treated.  He hurt, but as the designated Captain of the Ares , he knew he had to get the vessel back under control. It was decided that, after looking over the station from external scopes and jury-rigged Sensors, that the Artemis Group  needed tools, spare parts, components and possibly replacement systems hopefully to be found aboard the strangely silent orbital platform they had learned was Prometheus Station, LSP LIC property.  From the spinally mounted tankage and given knowledge of every space station, (this one not being a full Highport), that at least the facility would have an Engineering department that could serve. But Gevaudan asked himself, what was that chant from the station all about?

Chapter 7 There was no welcoming staff from the station.  No calls.  No services - no nothing.  And it put everyone aboard the Ares  at an uneasy, silent alarm.  With the emergency batteries on the ship draining, the orbital facility's umbilical docking power needed to be connected from the docking ring to the vessel.  While Captain Crow in Engineering had, in Gevaudan's unconscious downtime, sealed the Power plant's containment and restored onboard power, at station docking standard operations meant powering down and giving Engineering Deck 1 a proper venting and scrubbing of its bath of radiation. Hane Meson called from outside the docking ring airlock to Prometheus Station.  The Imperium, grass-roots lawyer was in an EVA VaccSuit and accompanied by one of the detached, Ares  Turret robots for protection.  He let the Bridge crew on that no one was coming to open the airlock door.  He had, as Gevaudan was being treated, blasted with his laser rifle a huge meteor that had lodged itself in the ship's main airlock door, destroying it completely.  The secondary, inner door to the ship from the now-empty Air/raft bay was now the backup airlock door to the devastated Medical Deck. Gentleman Jacob Crow suggested as he arrived on the Bridge from decks below, "A team will have to suit up for anything and find what we need and get some answers inside the station." Many nodded their agreement, including Gevaudan.  Though he was the selected Captain of the Ares, the white Vargr was not in charge of corporate actions off-ship.  Added to that, Gevaudan's middling Charisma meant that he was not in the mood nor the health to assert himself.  Thus a team was parceled off from those of the crew who would remain and monitor via Comms and the high-tech, battleground computer housed in Darrian Gentleman Charoux's grav bike often used in such excursions for field networking. With his HEV damaged and the strangeness heard over the communication exchange, Gentleman Sebastien approached Gevaudan. "It's time you tried on your new Battledress, Gev," the Broker Human suggested.  Gevaudan's HEV was to be left in "the chair" as he used the Electronics Suite on the Bridge Deck to change into the new gear supplied by Gentleman Sebastien's most recent shopping trip back on Flammarion two weeks before the Artemis Group jumped to Bowman system. Gevaudan had never set foot into a suit of Battledress.  It was heavily armored and shaped, albeit without typical ego-stroking, Vargr decorations he had seen in military versions back home.  The Battledress was specifically sized for the Pilot-Astrogator and intended to have the same functionality as those back in the Society of Equals.  However, this model was forged and equipped by Ling Standandard Products and under direction of the Gentleman Sebastien after fitting.  Gevaudan did not have the requisite training in the finer points of moving and delicate handling needed to operate Battledress.  It was time to finally make use of the skillsoft packages, in small data wafers, and he jacked in the skill pertaining to Battledress into the pristine port next to his empty Ship Integration port behind his right ear.  The skills poured into his mind like a crash course held in seconds of real time.  Movement, fine motor handling, heads-up display, communications - all unpacked themselves into the consciousness of the Pilot-Astrogator.  Soon, the Imperium-made, Vargr Battledress was just another vehicle to the Senior Scout.  Though not untrained, Gevaudan was still no master of this new covering.  He carefully, gently stepped from the Electronics Suite, with his armored claws on the door frame. Marine Force Commander Kayleb "Runt" Grougthk removed his final cigarette, one of many he chain-smoked through the day, and whistled at the sight of Gevaudan emerging from his armored makeover.  He too was in another make-model of Battledress, the Logistics Armor.  Runt's Logistics Armor was meant for heavy lifting and supplemented with increased hydraulics and heavy joints for such labors.  Runt had claimed during his fitting back on Flammarion that he favored the heavier, stronger armor over the high-tech electronics of Battledress of the mainstream Imperium and the weird, elfin Guard Armor of the Darrian Confederation.  It was what the Imperium-born, Menorbian Vargr was used to during his terms of service in the opening moves of the Fifth Frontier War in Regina and Lanth subsectors of the Spinward Marches Sector of space. Captain Jacob Crow hefted his signature Laser Rifle from inside his Imperium Battledress.  The Marine washout-turned-Navyalman was on point as he led the other armors to the Medical Deck and its faulty doors and airlock.  Followed by Runt, a true Marine bristling with weapons, twin-pistoled Gentleman Agent Charoux, met by Gentleman Hane and his attached Ares robot, Gevaudan brought up the rear, (still sore from lacerations), in his new Vargr Battledress.  He had transferred his own weapons to the new armor as well. Gevaudan was far simpler than the other mercenaries of the Artemis Group.   He favored his stockless, police, assault Shotgun loaded with the semi-legal High-Explosive, Armor-Piercing - or HEAP - cartridges.  The weapon was unholy married to a mounted, single-shot Grenade Launcher for which Gevaudan had a belt of various effect, 40mm grenades.  Stun grenades, smoke grenades, aerosol grenades, fragmentation grenades, all allowed him some variety in how the Senior Scout could react to threats.  Belted to his thigh was a pilfered Svaerblaster  , a Sword Worlds-make .50 caliber officer's revolver housing only three massive rounds, the rest of the ammunition on the same thigh belt.  Also belted to his hip was the Zero-G Maneuvering rig that allowed Gevaudan to fly using its gravitics technology, especially in space.  Lastly, the melee weapons Gevaudan favored, one visible, the other hidden, were the Vargr-racial Serrated Bastard sword in its sheath at his rear hip and another, again pilfered, Zhodani Mindsaber - a Psion's weapon he had yet to ever ignite and focus with his meager psionics.  He didn't want that last weapon seen as Gevaudan had not come out with his secret that Prof. Isis and Uthka held in courteous confidentiality from the rest of the crew.  It was a covenant between Psions and their apprentices in the current-day Third Imperium, assured by his tuition back then. So armed and armored, the team exited the shattered Medical Deck, monitored by Gentleman Sebastien, Admiral Galen, Dame Qithka and Dr. Simone, (already actively repairing the Sensors module on the Ares ).  They crowded the external airlock and cycled that docking ring section to allow them entry to Prometheus Station.

Chapter 8 The sortie team entered the Upper, Eastern Arc Docking Ring by cycling its airlock. With weapons drawn and various low-light, infra-red and motion-sensing armor sensors, the sortie team entered the ring around the main body of Prometheus Station. Bringing up the rear and a little late to the scene was Gunner Jeff Scardack the Flammarion Navalman. He was dressed in simpler Combat Armour, essentially a military, armored VaccSuit, slightly less armored and power assisted than full, combat Battledress. In his hands he hefted his own Laser Rifle. Inside the dimly lit, circular corridor of the ring, the team spread out, each to have a field of view and fire-zone coverage. It was rarely practiced but effective. Each member was responsible for a zone and any enemies that might ambush. Gevaudan found himself in the middle of the group. He was still sore from his wounds and his Sister-Dame had insisted that he take Witness, her magazine’s field observation robot. Witness was a floating ball of titanium without any visible details. Gevaudan knew that Witness floated along passively recording the actions of people around it in all angles of view. Dame Qithka had explained that her employers, Kfan Uzangou , (White Fangs in Galanglic), hired her as a Charismatic field correspondent. Her camera was to be the sphere named Witness. She had told the Artemis Group upon purchasing a long-term, High Passage that she had caught up to her younger brother Gevaudan in order to record Imperium life and share in his adventures as a mercenary.  Witness would then transmit all that it had recorded to the local system networks, if any, for compressed messaging back to the White Fangs, an Imperium affiliate of the host magazine. The adventures were to be edited, dramatized and used for just about everything from current news, entertainment drama, to political propaganda as needed by the magazine. Then, just after she attached herself, her assistant Uthka Varzeekh and Witness to travel with  Artemis , the Fifth Frontier War broke in 1107, just two or more years before today. Since the team refused to allow the valuable passenger, Qithka to sortie with them, she ordered her younger brother to swap his personal drone, named Moon, with her higher-tech magazine robot, Witness. With Witness gliding over Gevaudan’s shoulder, he came back to the present and leveled his main weapon at his assigned zone as the team carefully picked its way around the Docking ring to the Prometheus Station, heavy valve door.  Before the door was a cargo drone robot. The cargo drone was a heavy-lift model, essentially a robot version of Runt’s Logistic Armor and able to receive commands to load and unload cargo containers for docked ships. With light beams, weapon target lasers and intelligent weapons aimed at the dormant drone, the team inspected it as they filed around on either side of the corridor. Simultaneously, Gentlemen Charoux and Jeff gave the quiet hand signal, a cutting motion across their throats, that the drone robot was either deactivated, depleted of battery power or offline for some other unseen reason. The team relaxed and moved on. Artemis Group had fought robots before then and wanted no reason to do so again. Zhodani Light and Medium Warbots were enough for a lifetime to deal with. With a relaxed pace the team moved onward. On a station advertisement board with a cracked viewer displayed a cycle of products and selling planks. The team largely ignored it until a corporate station Administrator cycled into the next important message for Prometheus Station. The Administrator was recorded wearing an expensive LSP business suit and tie. “Welcome to LSP Prometheus Station,” the Administrator announced. “LSP reminds all employees that everyone on Prometheus Station pulls their weight. Thank you for joining the team.” It was the word pull  that had stopped the team to turn their attentions temporarily to the cracked board on the wall of the corridor. With a breath to remind all to stay calm, the team moved on as the board cycled more advertisements. Gevaudan began to get nervous. A pattern was building and he had to resist the urge to tap his psionic Talent of clairvoyance to show him where enemies may hide. He did not do so just yet though. Using his secret too early might breach his secret that he’d only let slip once to Captain Crow back on Laberv Highport in the Darrian Confederation. Yet, even then, he had tried to deny being Talented to Crow. Yet another story, the white Vargr returned his attention to his fire-zone. Rounding a corner to a tubular corridor from the Docking Ring intersection towards the spine of the main superstructure of Prometheus Station, someone’s, (Gevaudan did not look to see whose), psi-squealer alarmed, sounding off. Its pitch was muted, being outside in the very low atmosphere of the Docking Ring but still audible from inside their armors. Psionic waves, or psi-waves , were issuing into their position. Everyone tensed again with weapons leveled at the heavy valve door. Then the Ares Turret robot slid by unseen forces along the grate deck floor, its metal feet making tiny sparks. The whole robot glided along the deck. It did not fall, being saved by its gyroscope balance servos, but slid a full six meters before the psionic alarms faded to quiet. To Gevaudan, and any others on the team or watching through the battle computer comm connection, the robot had been grasped by the invisible force of  telekinesis and drawn down the tube and towards the valve. Everyone, during the robot’s slide had crouched in hopes of resisting the unseen force lest they be grasped as well. For while their psionic shield helmets and cowls protected against telepathic intrusion, they did not shield against mind-over-matter movement. It was Captain Crow in the point position that made the fingerspelling sign of ‘P’ to Gentleman Hane Meson. The Imperium lawyer reached back to a large unit slung on him like a backpack. It was a  psi-disruptor , meant to dampen and hinder psi-waves that emanated from a Psion inside the six meter radius of the unit or reduce the effects of such forces that entered the field. But the unit could last only minutes and all knew it had to be used sparingly with backups carried by Gentlemen Charoux and Jeff who held theirs in reserve. So protected, the team approached the valve and Crow worked the manual release after equalizing the pressure on each side.  With a hiss the doors were opened. It was a Storage Deck, one of three the team later learned. It was wide open across the entire deck of Prometheus Station. In the center was the superstructure spine flanked by two cylindrical elevators. Around the perimeter of the round deck were cargo containers of various sizes and shape, many yellow in color and numbered. The lights were dimmed and the darkness punctured by sickly yellow, emergency lighting. A fog clinging to the floor at around hip height began to flow through the valve door. The team beheld people, all Human, moving about and dressed in Ling Standard Products station uniforms. They ambled about, mumbling in a confused drone as if talking to each other and themselves in unison. With horror in their eyes, malnutrition in their facial features and carrying large tools or merely empty-handed, the station employees mumbled in raspy, monotone voices, “Pull your weight.” “Hear something,”  said another. “Are we alone?” “The song calls. It is a mercy.” One of the randomly ambulating, uniformed employees looked at Captain Crow standing in the opened, valve door threshold and stated dumbly, “Not one of ussss.” Then to the team’s surprise, the entire crowd of – what could only be termed group idiots – rushed the team at the door, some with their power spanner, monkey wrench, momentum hammer, and de-powered reach grasper, or merely with hand clawed or fisted. The horde, as one momentum rushed the door while still babbling nonsense to Gevaudan’s ears.

Well. I've returned from my trip and I've got to wonder ... What the heck have you done? Seriously though, it sounds interesting. Dave

Chapter 9 Despite the appearance of a mob of fools to rush a unit of armed and armored mercenaries, Gevaudan could not help asking himself, what did Artemis do wrong? It was illogical and yet the LSP employees trudged forward as one from everywhere on the Storage Deck. The Senior Scout’s free hand came up to the trigger for the mounted Grenade Launcher. He had only a few seconds to thank himself to have chambered a 40mm stun grenade as the sortie team geared up to reconnoiter Prometheus Station. Captain Crow was having less mercy in mind. Instead of gunning down the rampaging and babbling idiots with his Laser Rifle, (thus not having to risk damaging the inside of the station), he waded into the front line of the mob with a Serrated Bastard sword the same make as Gevaudan’s and began cutting down the fools with strength-enhanced swings and chops. Since mob individuals had little in the way of melee skills in weapons fighting, Crow needed only the barest of finesse in getting past a parrying, improvised weapon. Marine Force Commander Runt had no issues of gunning down the idiots charging his position. Though more than one made loud clanking noises by hammering their tools on his armored Logistics Armor, he smiled a toothy smile as he used his favored and tricked-out Laser Pistol. It was when he had dropped one of the mobs that he was caught by surprise. His Logistics Armor was heavier than most models of Battledress and yet Gevaudan saw the Imperium Vargr shoved to the near wall by yet another unseen force pinning him to the wall.  Again the telekinesis had evidenced, this time with a pushing motion that jarred the gray Vargr even inside the heavy-lift armor. At the Marine’s unwanted pinning, the team’s psi-squealers again sounded. The unseen shove was psionic and the team was verbal in confirming such to their observation crew monitoring from the Bridge of the Ares . Gentleman Hane Meson crouched just below and in front of Gevaudan and took a shot around the corner of the valve door. A rushing, seemingly numb fool went down under the burning beam of his Laser Rifle. Trained in Medical skills, Gevaudan saw firsthand and up close that though the Human idiot had reacted with muscular reflexes, he seemingly had excellent control of his pain reactions - or he felt no pain at all! Each victim fool of the mob to fall before the fire-zones of the sortie team went down without complaint. Those that did not die from weapons fire or grievous sword wounds, lay choking in blood with nary a cry. The painlessness was unnatural to him and Gevaudan was revolted at the oncoming mobs still standing. He felt he should take out as many of them as possible with a single shot. The Senior Scout had already been warned not to use penetrating weaponry inside the space station, but the grenade would do no such damage.  Leaning around to the same side that Gentleman Hane had chosen, Gevaudan saw more enemies circumnavigating a huge, yellow, cargo container. With the container partially blocking the arc to the heavy valve door, the white Vargr pulled the trigger to his Grenade Launcher. The stun grenade flew in a short arc and impacted the deck plates beyond the cargo container. A spherical concussion charge accompanied by a ball-lightning shock sphere lit up the space partially blocked by the hard container. A handful or more of the gaunt employees went down, stunned into unconsciousness by the discharge of Gevaudan’s grenade.  Bodies flopped down onto the deck like large, dropped fish.  The Senior Scout then stepped back in response to a call from Captain Crow, “Fall back!"  Indeed there were more of the shambling Humans than could immediately be counted. “Runt!” called Crow. “Help me block the door with this cargo box!” In the next moment, as more exchanges dropped the attacking idiots some ringing the armors of Crow and Runt with weapons and fist punches to no effect; Gevaudan was amazed to see the combined strength of Battledress armors when the cargo container was pulled along the floor to block most of the heavy valve door. He continued to reload a second stun grenade into his mounted Grenade Launcher.  A crowd jammed the entrance being closed off by the container. Just before the door was fully blocked by the huge, otherwise immobile container, Gunner Jeff Scardack had an idea. He yanked one flailing fool through the last of the opening before it was impossible to do so.  All that were not involved in the cargo container’s shift wrestled the LSP employee to the floor. It was Gentleman Hane Meson, seeing the idea in the pinning of the babbling man, who produced a mantle and hood, a psi-shield cowl and slipped it over the wriggling man’s head. It should have shielded him from any sort of telepathic control or suggestion.  But the gaunt, malnourished man continued to struggle under the combined weight and grapple of Gevaudan and three other armors. “He’s not controlled,” diagnosed Dr. Simone from over the comm network funneled from the Ares to the team’s individual comm units. “He’s  infected somehow.” She had been monitoring the entire sortie as the team moved from the Ares and into Prometheus Station. It was the doctor that everyone had trusted to give objective insight on psionics even though she herself was no user of such Talents. It kept bias out of the analysis when otherwise Professor Isis, a partially-trusted Zhodani woman, would have been suspect by at least a few of the Artemis Group . Then the wrestle stopped. The man seemed to refocus his attention to a distant, unseen space and he muttered in a monotone echoed by the fools back inside the Storage Deck, “Puuullll…..” Again, after thirty seconds of fighting and retreating, the squealers sounded off again.  Yet nothing local happened that the team could sense. It was Gunner Jeff who put the wriggling employee out of his mercy with a Laser Rifle coup de grace shot at point-blank range. “And yet,” noted aloud the aged Darrian Admiral Galen standing on the Bridge of their starship, “despite being cut off from all telepathy the man and the entire group on the deck showed unison in their reactions and the strange ‘pulling’ they do.  And I timed it.  They seem to engage such ritual every thirty seconds or so."  The Admiral had observed the sortie and continued monitoring each armor’s holo-feed through the battle computer to their starship Bridge. "But they all shite-borked stupid or something," offered Runt over the comms link, "like they were zombies  I've seen in the very old, Terran holo-vids."  Gevaudan looked with a query at the Imperium Vargr.   Different than us Equals, he shortly mused to himself.  Runt did not notice him. “It was the same I heard over the initial call to the station Ops," declared Gentleman Sebastien in agreement with the Admiral.  He too watched the monitors as the sortie team retreated back through the Docking ring to the  Ares .  The team dragged along a long, thick and insulated power cable, the umbilical to be connected to the Broadsword -class starship docked to the ring.  Power was soon routed in from the station than the jury-rigged ship's Power plant.  “Pullers. They are pulling something. Something distant, perhaps far away since all of them are doing it together simultaneously.” Nods in agreement assented. “Are the ship Sensors back online yet?” asked Gentleman Charoux pulling off his helmet now that he had returned to the Ares , inside its psi-shielded hull.