Vaughn Heppner - The Lost Starship

“I knew they’d fall for it,” Keith whooped with delight. “Now, hang on. I’m going to hit the entrance faster than I should.”

“SWS Geronimo , comply with our orders. You must remain in the Solar System or face destruction.”

Maddox leaned low to the microphone. “Yes, Saint Petersburg , we agree. We’re shutting down our drive now.”

“Clever,” Keith said. “That should give us the seconds we need.”

“ Geronimo ,” the destroyer comm officer said, “your engine is still online. You must comply with our orders or face immediate destruction.”

“We’re shutting down now,” Maddox told her.

“This will be a little tricky,” Keith said, as he squinted at his controls. “We could miss the opening. According to procedures, we should do this gently.”

Despite the ship’s velocity, Keith flew them perfectly. The SWS Scout Geronimo entered the wormhole. That broke the targeting lock from Saint Petersburg. At the same time, a laser flashed. Since it lacked mass, the beam swept past the wormhole opening, missing the Geronimo . Because the scout had mass, it entered the wormhole and left the Solar System, heading along the tramline for the New Panama System.

Tramlines granted humanity faster than light travel. This meant that news spread at the speed of starships, no faster. Like the old colonial days of wooden sailing ships, packet liners brought information that might be days, weeks or even months old. That meant a fast ship could outdistance the news, at least for a while.

As the SWS Scout Geronimo accelerated through the empty Karakas System, heading for the next jump point, Ensign Keith Maker tried to focus on that.

He told himself his shakiness was a case of nerves. He clicked a reader, studying yet another scout function manual. His gaze roved over text, but he forgot the words the second he looked at the next one.

Lifting a hand, he watched it quiver.

I need a drink. There has to be something aboard this speedster I can guzzle.

Like the other two, Keith now wore a Star Watch uniform. The captain had insisted each of them don one. Maddox must believe the clothes made a person. What horse manure. Yet… Keith felt different wearing his regs. It reminded him of Tau Ceti, and that was both good and bad.

He recalled the duty rules. That he was in a military again. It also reminded him of Danny Maker, his younger brother.

I miss you, boyo. I wish…

Keith made a fist, wanting to smash the reader. His throat convulsed, it was so dry. He needed to oil it with a beer, or preferably, several shots of whiskey.

They were two days out from the Solar System, from Earth, and this was the first time the scout ran on automated, without someone in the control room. Maddox slept, and who knew what the pretty lass did. Valerie could read three times faster than he could and pored over the scout’s manuals. The woman was a stickler for rules, and it was obvious she felt better in uniform.

Each of them had already spent considerable time learning the scout’s functions. It made better sense to Keith how they had escaped the destroyer. The Geronimo could boost like the devil. There at the end of the confrontation, that’s exactly what they had done. Maybe even as important, the ship had an impressive cloaking device and was constructed of antisensor material. After Valerie explained how the device worked, he had finally started to believe they could sneak into the Loki System without the monitor detecting them and blasting them to atoms. It would be tricky, but with Maddox and him— Keith slapped the reader onto the table. He sat in the wardroom. It could comfortably hold six people, nine if everyone squeezed together. He’d forgotten how much he hated tight places. It was different in the cockpit of a strikefighter. Then it felt as if the universe was his home. He could go anywhere in the fighter. But sitting inside a vessel with the bulkheads squeezing around him, without a wide-angle view of the stars…

I definitely need a sip of something. How is a man supposed to live in this tin coffin? It’s not as if I’m on the clock. It’s downtime, matey.

He stood, cracked his knuckles and stepped to the hatch.

A short walk down the corridor into the storeroom, that’s all it will take. Then I can rummage me a beer maybe find a bottle of good Scotch. The captain can’t deny me that, can he? Ha! I remember him guzzling in my bar. The chap can drink with the best of them. He’ll understand .

Keith opened the hatch. The scout thrummed softly all around him, a smooth ship for its small size. Still, he could hear the air recycling through the vents. It was cooler than he liked and there were hints of something off in the ship’s atmosphere.

He took several steps down the main corridor. The captain’s hatch was closed and probably locked. Maddox didn’t seem trustful of anyone. Behind the engine-room hatch, Keith could hear Valerie testing machinery. Did the lieutenant think she could repair damage if it came to that?

A tremor washed across Keith’s shoulders. He looked around. In strikefighter combat, he used to feel the same thing when an enemy snuck up behind him. Checking all around, he failed to spy any cameras. Soon, he chuckled. No one watched him. Yet, he wondered why it felt as if someone did.

I know why. I need a drink worse than I realized .

He reached for the storeroom hatch, but hesitated. He ached to open the door. His hands trembled, and he wanted to taste beer. Even more, he wanted that numbing to his mind. He needed to feel the intoxication begin to take hold. Then everything would be better with the world. Just a good buzz was all he wanted. That wasn’t too much to ask a man.

I saved their arses back there from the destroyer. They owe it to me, this little throat-wetter .

His hand inched closer to the hatch, and he stopped it again. Keith wondered on the wisdom of a drink.

He was on the adventure of his life. This was greater than going to Tau Ceti. A terrible threat menaced humanity. Blokes with god-complexes with heightened abilities and racist theories of their superiority told regular Joes to surrender or die. The enemy acted with fierce arrogance, taking on entire battle groups with three warships, and winning those fights.

If I start drinking again, I might endanger the mission. I need to think this through .

Keith stood like that for ten seconds, then twenty, then thirty. He grimaced and made a fist. He wanted a drink, but he also wanted to escape the need for whiskey. He’d been falling into a deeper abyss for some time now. He remembered looking down at that hole when he’d still been standing on the ledge.

He would sit on the edge of his bed, holding a whiskey bottle, knowing that if he started drinking, things would only get worse. A few times, he had set the bottle on his nightstand and had gone and done something else. A different part of his brain had told him to pour the liquor down the sink, get rid of the stuff. He had done that once, watching the amber fluid drain away. Then he had berated himself for a week afterward about wasting good booze. That stuff cost money.

For a time, fear of the abyss, of going down into drunkenness, had halted his mad binges. Then a day came—he wasn’t sure of the exact date—when he’d finally given in and plunged into the abyss. He’d been falling ever since, wondering when he would hit rock bottom.

No, no, he told himself. I’m free of drink now. That’s why I left my pub. I have to save the Earth. To do that, I have to stay sober .

Keith closed his eyes and willed himself to leave. He wanted to walk away, but he stood there instead, battling against his better judgment. When he opened his eyes, he found that his hands were on the storeroom hatch.