“You’ve been around a bit I suspect, since I’ve never seen your species and yet you can speak my language. You’ll probably appreciate this ship. I’ve rarely seen the like of these cron medical rescue ships. If the cron were warlike, we’d all be in a lot of trouble.”
The ship was a modest size, nearly one hundred meters by forty meters in the main body, with delicate curving skeltal pylons holding a pair of engines at a distance from the ship. The pylons stretched another twenty meters to each side, giving the ship a roughly square footprint of some one hundred by eighty meters or so. The small winglet engines were equipped with atmospheric drag flaps that would be useful when transitioning between space and atmo flight regularly. The rear of the ship housed a massive engine similar to those used for heavy cargo ships, but built to a somewhat smaller scale. It stretched from side to side, with two massive nozzles currently in the fully constricted mode, and surrounded by six smaller nozzles that didn’t appear to have constrictive features. Kerek didn’t know enough to know if it was a normal ion drive or not, though the winglet engines were definitely ion drives. There were several externally visible pipes on the engine. The overall color of the slippery smooth hull was a shimmering purple that color shifted towards red or blue depending on the angle of the light. The pipes were a shiny chromed silver, and the nozzles were a deep black that absorbed all light. Three graceful skeletal legs stretched beneath the ship to the surface of the spaceport. There were a number of sealed ports around the body, the purpose of which was not immediately apparent. At the front the glossy tiles were visibly marked and pitted on the underside, even though they were completely clean. Above and set back from the nose was a broad and long spine covered with a smoked semi-transparent material. Likely sensors or something, Kerek assumed. He’d seen smaller versions here and there, but rarely quite that large.
Lairis touched their hand to an unmarked part of the exterior of the ship, and a faint joint in the skin became deeper as the hatch pulled in slightly then slid away into the frame. A delicate skeletanized set of steps hinged out from the hatch and rotated until they rested firmly on the ground.
“After you. Mind your head”, Lairis said, and gestured into the darkened portal.
Kerek cautiously climbed the steps, which held his weight much more comfortably than he expected given their delicate appearance - more air than metal. The lightweight filagree loved by the cron and used in every aspect of their architecture and design was clearly backed up with solid engineering. Lights and equipment came to life as he passed into the ship, the nearly silent whirring of hidden fans stirred the somewhat stale air and the airlock door ahead of him blazed a solid red around the perimeter. Moments later it turned green and then slid aside of its own accord.
He stepped through the airlock with its tidy storage for tools and space suits on either side and passed into the neck of the ship. To his right he could clearly see a closed bulkhead door with a small window in it, to his left he could see a short galley, probably with a bulkhead at the end. The ceiling was low for him, just above the top of his head. He instinctively reached up to check if there was room to stand here in a suit, and was pleased to note than there was a little more than a handsbreadth above his head. He’d fit in a suit… though just barely. The ship was about six meters tall, which meant that somewhere four meters were being used for either storage or equipment. He stepped fully in, and turned to wait for the cereb to join him.
“It’s probably a bit tight for you, sorry about that. You’ll get used to it soon I’m sure. Let me show you the bridge first, then I’ll show off the best part.”, Lairis said, and placed their hand on a slightly inset panel near the bridge bulkhead door. The door swung outward in two sections on nearly invisible hinges. It was thicker than Kerek’s leg and had large bolts barely visible in the tooth like mating section of the door. Clearly designed to stand up to quite a lot.
The bridge, or perhaps cockpit was a better term, was up a couple steps and slightly higher than the floor level of the body of the ship. There was a dark band all across the front of the bridge, and a single set of controls with a single seat at the very nose. The panels were mostly dark and free of the knobs, dials, and switches that cerebs adored. It resembled the therm designs in that respect, and Kerek was certain the operation was also similar. Perhaps differing in that the therms didn’t like to touch things that they might damage with their thick claws, and cron didn’t wish to bother with non-gestural controls. He could easily see that the footwell of the pilot’s seat had a full array of unmarked switches and a set of grippable controls. Very clearly they piloted with their feet holding onto the robust control sticks down there. A couple of the panels on the dash were showing small symbols, including one that showed a top down diagram of the ship with a flashing indicator pointing to the side door. Cron writing, as Kerek could judge it from the little he’d see, was very delicate and complex much like their architecture. He’d have to be sure to learn it as nothing in here seemed to be labeled in the galactic standard sets of languages.
There were two seats behind the pilot’s seat, and positioned at ninety degrees off. They faced consoles mounted into the respective side walls, both had a variety of screens were outfitted with control surfaces that seemed more adaptable, suited cron and non-cron alike. Neither console had any illuminated displays at the moment.
“Multi-purpose Quartermaster, Engineering and Tactical stations. Mostly for us. I run the engineering. We had someone on quartermaster and tactical, but they’ve moved off to other duties. You’ll be taking over that station.”
“I hope there’s some training first. I know how to move boxes around surely enough, especially in low-g. I don’t have the first idea how to do tactical or quartermastering. Aside from the loading and unloading part.”, Kere replied, a bit nervous.
“Do not worry. We’re unlikely to come under attack on this first run. There are training activities planned for you, however. The first is right now, let’s go review the basics of quartermastering.”
Kerek had to rely on his translator a bit for the rest of the day, as Lairis was going pretty fast and stumbled over their words a lot. Fortunately most of the cargo was labelled in every major language which helped. Three cygdays later, the ship was packed completely with food and medicine. Kerek had learned a lot about the basics, how to load so that the highest mass items were stored towards the center of mass and how loading things too far back would make the ship’s nose too twitchy, while loading them too far forward would make it too slow to move. The crucial balancing act to keep manueverability easy and predictable for the pilot required putting things in just the right spots. Fortunately, there was an excellent program on the quartermaster’s console and on Kerek’s quartermaster tablet that helped by telling him exactly what places were best suited to each cargo pallet. He just had to scan the pallet, put it where the app told him, and then confirm it was there. After that, just a matter of securing them.
He quickly learned what that extra space on the ship was for - the two meters above and below the crew deck were for storing cargo in very carefully engineered honeycomb structures that the cargo containers slotted into perfectly. Once they were in place, automated systems would pull them in to properly seat an array of connectors on the backs that drew whatever power or communication was required from the ship. As each one seated, the lights on the front would switch, indicating it was locked in place. It was fairly physically demanding work, but he was up to it. It was nothing compared to working with ice.
Loading the ship put a mild strain on him after recuperating, but it also did a wonderful job of helping him get comfortable with his body after the accident. He hardly limped at all now, and his ribs only hurt sometimes. When the time came that the loading was done, he was excited to log into the tactical simulator.
“Karek, attend to the tactical console. I will be running a simulation that requires piloting as well as tactical engagement. Your job is to engage the targets and disable or eliminate the threats while I attempt to flee them. It is preferential to disable them. If you destroy the targets, we may be required to mount rescue operations for their crews. Do you understand?”, the cron translation robot’s voice was clear over Karek’s headset.
“Understood”, he replied. There was a sharp click noise, which Karek realized was the cron captain’s beak snapping shut. This sometimes got various translations, but seemed to usually mean “right” or “ok”. This time it was translated as “Begin”.
The screens in front of Karek lit up, and the cron to his left began to move and manuever the controls. The ship was still parked and stationary, but as far as their stations were concerned, a number of hostile ships had just jumped into the immediate area. The display directly ahead of Karek showed the positions of twelve ships. Three were immedietly flagged as hostile, and were approaching. Karek had set the console to the cereb language, as it was the most understandable of the options it presented, and it was now suggesting various actions to him in that language. He quickly selected an option to activate the perimeter defense guns, and armed the chaff and flare guns. Moments later he brought the ion drive crippling missiles online.
The first pass of the hostile vessels the ship banked sharply away, and all of his firing solutions flipped from green to red, having lost their targets. The console scolded him, and showed him a brief video on how to lock a target to ensure it remained targeted. The next pass, the cron performed a wild flight manuever, but the weapons systems remained locked. Three more passes and three more extreme piloting manuevers and then suddenly there was a shrill tone and one of the hostiles had a set of smaller dots detach from it. They were identified as missiles, and the console directed him to launch chaff. The digital ball representing a real world mass of tiny reflective metal shards departed the center of his screen in the direction of the missiles. As the ball expanded into a little cloud that would hopefully confound a real missile’s sensors, he saw the missile dots blink briefly. They vanished, a threat averted. More missiles appeared, and one of them was cycling colors. The console alerted him that this was an EMP and would be resistent to decoy measures like chaff or flares. Regardless, he launched the flares at it, just for practice. The little representation of a ball of highly radioactive material headed towards the missile. In reality, this would emit so much radiation that finding a thermal or ion signature from a ship would be nearly impossible.
The EMP missile ignored it, just like the simulation was predicting it would, and on it came. As it got too close, the sound effect of the point defense guns filled his headphones, much like the real ones would sound. The captain wheeled the ship and rolled it around the EMP, using the point defense cannons to their best effect. The simulator screen flashed briefly and then a series of damage control numbers rolled across the screen. He quickly attempted to carry out the required functions as they were requested. Fire suppression on the ventral cargo hold, forward section. Power outages along the forward section of the port side, taking the port engine and sensor banks offline. He scrambled to disable the circuits in the impacted areas. The two ships peeled off, and a score was released.
Two of Five Stars, capture likely.
That was no good. He stretched his neck, and asked if they could try again. The captain assented, and a few minutes later, the simulation was running. The numbers slightly different this time.
Kerek began by launching chaff and flares together almost immediately when the captain began an evasive manuever, and the cron reacted by pulling a very high-g loop that dispersed the distracting countermeasures further, and then raced for the safety of a large object of some sort. Both ships were caught up in the countermeasures, and they eluded capture this time. The core flashed up.
Four of Five Stars, escape likely.
They re-ran various scenarios a dozen more times, and Kerek became much quicker on the controls. He felt like he had pretty fair odds if it was required of him now. They stayed at four or five stars on most of the last missions, especially when there were fewer than five pursuers.
The captain patted him on the shoulder with a wing, and the robot spoke up. “You did a good job. You are learning at an acceptable rate. You seem to have good instincts for this.”
Kerek didn’t feel quite as confident as the cron seemed to, but he bowed, and voiced his thanks. The robot briefly translated and the cron ducked its head and departed te ship.
The final cygday before departure arrived, and with it a uniform for Kerek. He now had his own rescue atmosphere suit. It was very well fitted, based on measurements taken earlier, and it was simultaneously body hugging and roomy enough for him to have a full range of motion. There were some gentle constant volume joints, but he hardly noticed them. Much less awkward than his prior space suit, now in shreds. The gift of the mustelans gotten him through a lot, and he hoped this gift would last a lot longer.