Black Desert Read online

  “I could live without having the blue oval on the outside,” muttered the Captain.

  “Dash it,” said Ogden. “We’re losing another camera now. This one is also a secondary front view.”

  “Diagnostics were fine, weren’t they,” said Stiers.

  “Yes. I don’t think this is a normal malfunction. The lenses on these cameras have a compound lens composite almost impervious to heat and impossible to scratch. They have enough lithium in them. I think this is the result of our collision or near collision. Whatever happened to us has affected the cameras in some way.”

  “Do we have spares?”

  “More than enough, Captain.”

  Ramirez butted in. “Are you sure you don’t want me to sound Gowan’s alarm in case either of us needs to go EVA?”

  “You just want to see her breasts again,” said Ogden.

  “Yeah?” Ramirez paused. “Don’t you?”

  Ogden busied himself at his controls. The Captain looked across at Ramirez and glowered. “Leave her be,” he commanded. “Unless things get really bad and we go part blind nobody is going outside till we’re on the ground again.”

  The ship swished a smooth path through the inky blackness lit on one side by the sun and ahead by the blue and white of Earth and the greys and shadows of the moon. The silence on board was broken by Ogden who said, “Have you given any consideration to where we might land, Captain? I mean if we have travelled back in time – or been pushed there against our will – we cannot merely put down in Parliament Square or the White House lawn and wave a white flag.”

  “I’m thinking about it, pard,” said Stiers. “We have the best part of three days before we have to make a decision. I’m kinda thinking we should keep a very low profile at first – just till we figure things out.”

  “They do have an Arctic Ice Cap in this time period,” said Ogden.

  “Not for me,” said the Captain. “I prefer somewhere warm.”

  “Me also,” said Ramirex. “Maybe one of the deserts. They’re quite remote and untravelled.”

  “You could be right,” agreed his boss. “We need to keep where they speak English which rules out the Gobi and maybe the Kalahari and the Atacama.”

  “There are none in England,” said Ogden. “Perhaps in Australia.”

  “Or the Mojave,” suggested the Captain. “Give it some thought, boys.”

  “Despite the diagnostics we appear to be losing some stability,” said Ramirez. “I hate to agree with Ogden but something isn’t correct. I can’t quite put my fingers on the problem but it is as if the craft is losing – well – cohesion.”

  “Disrupter leak,” said Stiers. “We don’t want the ship disappearing around us. I don’t like the idea of flying through space by the seat of my pants. Full inspection, physical and modular, of the disrupter devices. Suit up again, Ramirez.”

  “Should I warn Gowan?”

  “Leave her be. We can manage this. Ogden, put emergency monitoring and repairs into place.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Stiers and Ramirez climbed back into their recycled suits and took off to the systems under the main deck. They walked past pipes and metallic doors, each clutching a monitor gauge which sought stray radiation and disrupter particles. All was clear as they crept slowly around the passageways, hardly any of which were tall enough for a man to stand upright. Above them the second in command also monitored, which meant trying to track down any disrupter leakage which it might be possible to eject into space. The ejector mechanisms were hardened and toughened even more than the rest of the craft but disrupter beams at full blast could be a wild ride.

  His suspicions were that any leakage was from the front of the craft and was very slight; not that the Defender class had a front as such, being completely circular. However, the designers had specified a fore and an aft, and a starboard and larboard which was Americanised into left and right. He reported his suspicions and received a grunted reply from the Captain’s helmet.

  “Try the forward isolator valve,” Ogden suggested and opened nearby vents in an effort to eject anything unwanted.

  The disrupters were designed to eat metal and most plastics – and human and other flesh. Down below the Captain and Ramirez located the isolator valve while their gauges shrieked and ran a spectrum of colours.

  “We’ll block it off,” said Stiers.

  “That will leave us minus one forward weapon,” said Ramirez.

  “Do you want to watch as your cojones vaporise?”

  “No. I have the blocking patch here. I’ll set it to heat.”

  “Quick as you like.”

  Ramirez took the wrap from its packaging and pressed the button which enabled heating elements inside to cook the mostly glass mixture and burn themselves into oblivion. Using their heatproof gloves, Ramirez and the Captain wrapped the hot semi-liquid around the faulty valve, pressing it ever tighter as the stuff solidified.

  “Traces are diminishing,” said Ogden. “Almost all gone now.”

  The Captain and Ramirez backed away and completed checking the rest of that deck. The gauges remained silent and they sighed and made their way back above where they again stripped off and recycled their suits through the cleaning and repair equipment. Ogden was relaxed as they entered the main cabin.

  “A successful job,” he said. “Everything is quiet now.”

  “It is a temporary repair,” said Stiers. “We will have to replace the valve when we land.”

  “I would have expected better from the Swedes,” said the Captain, referring to the makers of the weaponry.

  “It has taken quite a bashing,” said Ogden. “The Swedish have a long history of building arms.”

  “You never heard of Colt or Smith and Wesson?”

  “Nor Enfield or Webley,” said Ogden.

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. The problem seems fixed for now.”

  “Before we land,” said the Captain, “I want to review all the recordings. Were they firing disrupters as they decloaked? That would indicate hostility and explain the overload in our own weapons.”

  “You are quite correct, Captain. We should make review a priority. We may be able to learn something regarding our own predicament.”

  “Stop the crap, we took a zap,” said Ramirez. “Now we’re in the middle of nowhere and no time and leaking disrupter beams. I’ll tell you, guys, I’ve been in much better situations.”

  “Enjoy the challenge, Ramirez,” said Stiers.

  “I signed up for a four month tour with you guys. I have no plans nor desire to make a marriage of it.”

  “You saw Gowan topless,” said Ogden.

  Ramirez thought about that. “That goes some way to compensation, but if thing goes on she is going to have to shed the rest of her uniform.”

  “Can I watch while you tell her that?” asked Ogden. “I would like to be a spectator to her reaction.”

  “There are no nails on the wall to hang his balls from,” said the Captain. “She’ll have to chuck them in the useless waste chute.”

  “The atoms will be recycled,” said Ogden. “You may be wearing them as part of your clean uniform.”

  “The thought depresses me,” said Stiers.

  “And me. Stop talking about it,” said Ramirez. “She’ll be back here in a few hours. Don’t give her any ideas.”

  “That is the time we should review the tapes,” said Ogden. “Between shifts.”

  “Okay, Ogden.” The captain looked at the screens. “It’s all a bit like a black desert this far from Earth. Have you calculated the longest we would have had to wait, assuming the Earth was furthest from us in its orbit round the sun.”

  “Six months less the time it took for us to travel that orbit in the other direction. Say about three or four months.”

  “Then I guess we should consider ourselves lucky it will only be three days.”

  “Less than that,” said Ogden.

  “You have revised the
calculations or are we moving faster.”

  “Our original assumption, erroneous I’m afraid, was that we would be chasing Earth. In fact that assumption was incorrect. Earth is actually heading towards us and we may have to dodge the Moon before organising our landing.”

  “So how long, Paunchy?” asked Ramirez.

  “The calculations were those of Gowan and yourself,” countered the Englishman. “An easy enough mistake to make in the circumstances and with everything else that was happening. We can be in orbit around Earth within eight hours. There are many preparations to make before that.”

  “That’s a simple mistake,” said Stiers. “About as simple as knowing which way a door opens.”

  “Understandable, Captain,” said Ogden, defending his juniors. “At the time we thought we had been out cold for a while, which we had not – merely minutes at a guess. We had become turned around in the close miss and Gowan and Ramirez assumed Earth had continued in its orbit and we had to catch it. In fact, we have arrived at a different time and the planet is in fact approaching us.”

  “So we need to start the roundup,” said the Captain.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “We need to get Gowan’s ass in gear,” said Ramirez.

  “Let her finish her off period,” said Stiers. “Then it will be all hands on deck till we land or are safely in orbit. Then we can all get some rest.”

  “Unless that big ugly alien ship is still there,” said Ramirez.

  “There is no sign of anything untoward on the sensors,” said Ogden.

  “Better start looking out there and listening in for any radio traffic,” said Stiers. “Let’s not have any more surprises.”

  “Sensors indicate communications satellites and a few other bits and pieces. I actually think it would be safer to land than to orbit. There is lots of small junk out there,” said Ogden.

  “The curse of the space traveller.”

  “I’m afraid so, yes.”

  “So we have hours and not days to find a landing spot?”

  “I do have one suggestion, Captain. About ten years ago – or is it several decades from now – there were large areas of the Mojave Desert, as you suggested, that were still wild and unhabited. Professor Titiana Lilleshenger used it for some experiments. That location where she disappeared is still in the computer files. I would suggest we could land there first, effect our repairs, then look for somewhere undercover.”

  “Find the co-ordinates,” instructed Stiers.

  “What is your plan, Captain?” asked Stiers.

  “We’ll orbit once – that will take us about 30 minutes – then we’ll begin a slow descent starting over Northern India to take us in over the Mojave and trying to miss places where we’ll excite them. We’ll go in radar invisible. I’d like to land at night to start figuring, Ogden.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  “Ramirez. Keep a close eye on those disrupters to make sure we have no more problems from there.

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “How long till Gowan starts her shift, Ramirez?”

  “Less than two hours, Captain.”

  “Okay. We’ll leave her be for now. I want you to grab an hour or two as soon as you have finished what you are doing. I want everybody as fresh as they can be. Meanwhile, refresh my memory on this Lilleshenger.”

  “Titiana Lillishenger was born in Austria, educated in England but came to the USA with her parents when she was older. She specialised in developing cloaking devices, initially for large, secret buildings. She is a professor and achieved very limited results. The military co-opted her to develop cloaking for military machinery and ships like these. During an experiment ten years ago in our time she was vaporised after an accident along with the latrine she was using and two others. It seems a piece of vital equipment was dislodged in the cloaking device which caused a massive overload. The military gave up after that.”

  “Which is why this ship doesn’t have a cloak,” said Stiers.

  “Yes, Captain. The spot I am suggesting we head for is the site of that experiment. It is deserted decades from now and is isolated. That should guarantee us some privacy for a time.”

  “Good thinking, Ogden. I’d give you a pay rise if we were home.”

  “I would swap that pay rise for just being home.”

  “Dig in your claws, it’s time to pause,” said Ramirez. “Do we have any long term plan or are we just going to sit out the rest of our lives looking at meerkats and scorpions?”

  “There are no meerkats in the Mojave Desert,” said Ogden. “I would suggest the Mojave Green snake would be more a worry.”

  “Snakes? I can’t abide snakes. I’ll stay onboard.”

  “What – for the rest of your life?” asked Stiers.

  “How long can that be?” muttered Ramirez.

  As the ship glided through a dark sky towards the approaching blue planet, each of its occupants – save the one who was enduring a fitful rest – continued their calculations. Ogden obeyed his commander and headed for his room where he also tossed fitfully, figures and options running through his great dome. Problems beset his brain. They could not use planet’s own automatic guidance system to land for that had not yet been invented. Entering Earth’s atmosphere manually was always fraught with problems – too shallow and you bounced off; too steep or too fast and you burned up. Ogden favoured a softly, softly approach preferring to spend more time circling the planet within its atmosphere and descending slowly. Their Defender craft would be immune to radar systems but still visual. Ogden calculated that to spectators they would seem like a flying saucer – a UFO.

  Although their ship was relatively small, it was still large by Earth standards and would stand out like a tarantula on a cheese sandwich. Isolation was their best bet until and if they ever figured a way back home to their own time. They had picked up enough radio broadcasts and other traffic to know the nightmare was real. They really were alone here, out of their own time. The lighting in his small room was dimmed and he commanded it to shut off altogether. The darkness did not help. His brain, once revered by others, had started that gentle slope to decline that comes with age, but Ogden was still sharp. He knew forward time travel was possible but not with what they had here and wondered how wise it would be anyway. Travelling forward to meet again with that great, hulking, alien monstrosity did not seem to be a wise choice. Perhaps the Captain was correct and their best duty would be to warn Earth of what to expect so they could prepare earlier and better.

  Two rooms away – just a few feet, slept Gowan and Ogden’s thoughts turned to her and her semi-naked brief appearance. Truth was she had stirred a part of him long forgotten for she was truly magnificent. Well. he thought, most women are if they take care of themselves. But Gowan had a slim, lithe figure with fullness in exactly the right quantities and in exactly the right places.

  He forced himself to calculate in his head Pi to the twelfth place. Trouble was, he had done this so often he knew the numbers by heart. On balance, he considered, it would be better to die fighting in his own time than to be alive and out of sync with everything around him.

  The time travel aspect worried him but he was responsible enough not to show it. They had experienced the impossible – a backwards move through time which rendered them out of place and in a position from which it would likely be impossible to return. When he finally closed his eyes and rested it seemed like less than an hour before he heard Gowan stirring and showering in a fluid that had been recycled countless times. Ogden rose too and they made their way onto the bridge together.

  “Don’t be tardy, it’s Laurel and Hardy,” said Ramirez.

  “We have a couple of hours before our first approach,” said the Captain.

  “First approach where?” asked Gowan.

  “While you were resting your pretty eyelids, we decided to go home,” said Ramirez.

  “Home? What to Earth?”

  “Sure. Big round ball in the heavens – blu
e and white with patches of brown and green. That’s home, isn’t it?”

  “Wow. How did we get there so fast?”

  “Somebody screwed up their calculations,” said Ramirez. “It may have been you. It seems instead of chasing Earth’s orbit it is coming right towards us and we have to dodge out of the way – or be crushed for the second time in a day.”

  “Or a century,” said Stiers. “Anyway, we all made the same mistake so none of us needs to get their britches snagged.” He thought for a moment. “Or all of us do.”

  “We’re that close to Earth?” queried Gowan.

  “Let’s come clean, look at the screen,” said Ramirez. “Can you see that huge thing filling a large part of it? That’s home – or as close as we can get.”

  “Where are we going to land?”

  “The Mojave Desert,” said the Captain.

  “Yeah,” said Ramirez. “Close to some place where some woman named Lilly Tittybanger disappeared a decade ago.”

  “Or more than a century,” said Stiers.

  “Lilly Tittybanger?” said Gowan.

  “Titiana Lillishenger,” explained Ogden. “She was a professor. I met her a couple of time when I was younger.” He glanced at the Captain. “Or older.”

  “You thinking she might be there?” asked Gowan as she and Ogden settled at their consoles.

  “No. She was vaporised in the years yet to come, but the area is isolated then and now,” said Ogden.

  “It’s getting hard to know what the heck everybody is talking about,” said Ramirez. “We need to standardise on some sort of time.”

  “Let’s focus on getting ready to land,” said the Captain. “I don’t want to bounce off any spacemen or space stations there may be floating about. Let’s dig into the memory banks and play this right. Remember we want to be as unexposed as we can.”

  “We’ll screw up,” said Ramirez. “Look at how good our luck has been so far.”

  “Don’t whine or I’ll put you outside,” said Gowan.

  “I’d like you to put yourself outside of me,” he replied.

  “I’d rather be probed by aliens.”

  “Not illegal aliens?”