Star League - The Last Zomban

SL-TLZ Chapter 4 Vicky

Vicky Oakraider pushes her brown pony tail inside the neck band of her military issue Environmental suit. She then checks the safety seals along the left side of her "e-suit", a habit she is glad to possess. She looks down at her younger son, who has his eyes glued to the thick window overlooking the salvage bay with the ever present awe of a four year old seeing something new and exciting.

“Helmet,” she says. He doesn’t budge from the spot he claims as his own. “Johnny-“

He starts and the helmet falls from his lap to the floor with a hollow thud. She scoops it up. Johnny looks worried. “Sorry mommy, I broked it.”

She smiles and pulls him into hug. “Of course you didn’t. This helmet is tough like those old rocks out there.” She inspects it inside and out and brushes a smudge from the shiny finish.

“That’s tough.” He flexes his tiny muscles. Vicky is impressed. She squeezes his still forming muscles. He smiles and deflates. “Can I go down to the ship with you?”

She presses his button nose. “No honey, this is work business. I want you to go up to the bridge now with your father." He looks at her with sad eyes that nearly breaks her heart. "You don't want to go with your father?"

Johnny sticks out his tongue. “No. He never lets me do anything. He lets James copilot because he’s seven. I’m almost five.” With his arms bent at the elbows, Johnny turns his palms up. “Why can’t I be copilot?”

"I'll ask him." she replies while trying to hide her amusement. "You can stay down here until I go in the air lock but then you have to go to the bridge." A two way communicator on her wrist beeps and Vicky is curious as to who would be calling her personal frequency. Text scrolls across the small display screen built into the left wrist of her shiny e-suit. Her face flushes. It isn’t good news. Johnny is quick to notice. Like her, he pays attention to detail, spotting things no one would usually notice.

“What’s wrong Mommy?” She flashes him a quick smile and turns to the pressure hatch. The oxygen gauge reads ninety five percent pressurized. The light is still red. She taps the dial too in case it is stuck and turns back to Johnny. “Almost time for mommy to go to work.”

“When I get big, I’m gonna have a work too.”

Vicky loves these innocent times. “Oh yeah? What do you want to be?”

“A ship builder like my daddy. He built this ship right?” His words are so strong she smiles, but her heart drops. If he sees the sadness in her eyes, he will prompt her for an answer. She doesn't want that life for him. He can be anything he wants to be. There is a galaxy full of other choices out there. Not that. She has many years to help him make a logical career choice for his life other than following his father’s.

Suddenly, a gut wrenching groan tears through the ship. The sound of metal scraping on metal has everyone in the waiting area terrified that this is their last moment aboard this death trap. As one, they snap their heads in the direction of the salvage bay wide eyed and breathless.

“Mommy, what was that?” Johnny clings to her leg.

“I don’t know sweetheart but you better get up to the bridge now.” She scoots him down the corridor. He turns and looks at her. “I love you,” she says and he runs around the corner.

Knowing only too well the history of this ship, Vicky isn’t surprized any more that something broke. In fact, eveytime she comes aboard, she wonders what quirky suprize the Scowl is going to throw at them. No...at her. She swears that the ship hates her as much as she hates it and the Scowl is just waiting for the chance to kill her. The Scowl is her husband's first love.

Her husband is a stubborn man. She curses him. She has to constantly argue that this ship should be taken out of service. It was old when she was young and now it's falling apart. When someone says that a ship is held together by tape and good intentions, they are referring to this one. it will eventually disintegrate and kill everyone on board. The way the metal sounds lately, it might be sooner rather than later. He swears up and down that this ship is fit for duty and will outlast every other ship in his fleet.

She also likes to point out that the technology held within is over a decade old if not older. She is getting angrier by the moment just thinking about this airlock rescued from a twenty year old Togorran freighter. She is amazed by the fact that it mates up with the lock on the salvage bay. She is afraid to use it because like the Torrog, it is slow to pressurize and she could run out of air waiting for it.

She impatiently hits on the dial on the wall ignoring the looks of the other crew members around her. The door chimes and the seal opens. Vicky fits the helmet over her head; it seals to the collar plate with a hiss; the cool air that tickles her face. She is the last to enter the lock behind three men in dirty white vac suits.

As the door closes, she is unaware of the little boy who runs back to his place in the window to watch closely the activity below.

****
The deep metallic groan pulls on Donnos’s last nerve. “Now what?”

Deke runs to the closing doors. “The starboard bay door is jammed!” He presses buttons on the panel box to his right while quickly looking at the mechanism below.  “Cut the pressure or we’ll burn out the servo motor!” When no one moves fast enough, the man of emotions roars his frustration and runs for the axe on a nearby wall and back and cuts the hydraulic line. They are splattered by blackish fluid. He yells for a bucket and someone to close the hydraulic valve while he climbs down into a maintenance hatch.

“What’s happening down there?” Jal calls for the tenth time.

Deke forces a breath. “The strut is bent. We can hammer it back in place now that the pressure is off! I’ll call you when I’m done!” He orders a person to replace the hydraulic line.

“Did you hear that Jal?” Donnos speaks to him like a child.

Jal’s reply is harsh. “Just remember whose ship you’re on!” Jal takes a sharp breath. “We’ll have to move out with the door open. It just means we won’t be able to go to light speed for a while.”

Deke is getting annoyed with the two of them. He steps closer to the edge of the bay door to close a sticky hydraulic valve but the handle snaps off. He grunts his frustration and orders Donnos and his crew out of the bay. He raises his axe and chops the hydraulic line in half above the valve with one swift swing and orders another bucket.

Donnos grabs Krag and goes to go to the air lock. The twins are already there waiting for the slow moving elevated air lock. The engines build up power and stall again.

“Jal if the engine doesn’t start are you gonna get out and push?”   

Jal is offended. “Show some respect! I built this ship piece by piece and she’s tougher than anything new coming off the line today.”

“I’ll make sure you are both buried together.”

“Hey you’re hurting my feelings.”

Donnos swings at the air. “I’m coming up there to hurt you!”

“Both of you stop it!” Vicky butts into their conversation. “This is not going to solve anything! Just get the damned ship started so we can get out of here. And Donnos, there will be no bloodshed in front of my boys.”

He finds her mom tone disturbing but he can’t stop the smile she always brings to his face. Already he feels some stress ease away. In another time she could make him happy.

The air lock beeps and the door opens. Three people in dirty white suits step out and boost away. A fourth person in a shiny black suit exits and looks Donnos in the eye. He feels suddenly uncomfortable.

“Are you absolutely sure?” she asks.

“Positive. The bay ejected itself from my ship with full shields until you got here. It injected a virus into my ship and that virus shut everything down.”

“Are you sure it was him? I don’t think he’s capable-“

“Oh he’s capable. Only a command code could’ve executed it. Krag confirmed the virus.”

“But why?”

“You know why. He hasn’t been himself lately.”

Vicky agrees and neither can blame him. Her husband has been more withdrawn than usual of late and even more so from Donnos. She is silent for a moment before she comes to her own conclusion.  She locks eyes with him, her gaze is stern. “I mean it. No bloodshed in front of my boys.” She holds his stare, shaking her head, then uses his shoulder to push herself up into the bay. She ignites her boosters and flies on top of the drift. He watches after her a second, filled with a sudden dread that he will never see her again. Krag pulls him by the arm into the airlock.

****
Vicky Oakraider was with Akledian Intelligence for ten years before she left to marry Jal Oakraider. Her superiors always said that she was the best spy in their network. She waved it off as just another day’s work. She lived every day relying on her gut instinct, listening to whatever her intuition had to tell her. Even after five years in retirement, her instincts are telling her to beware, that her husband tried to kill Donnos Zen.

It was all because of her. There was a nasty rumor going around the Junk World that she and Donnos were having an affair. She waved it off as complete rubbish. Jal confronted her about it knowing in his heart that nothing was going on but in his mind, everyone was guilty. She said that she waited for him to come home so they can have a nice evening together. She got a baby sitter for the boys but Jal didn’t show. He didn’t even call to say he was going to be late. Donnos came by to pick up some papers that were left for him, saw how down her spirits were, and took her out to dinner. They spent the whole night talking. That was it. Nothing else happened. She made it a point to tell him that it was his own fault. He was her husband and he should start paying more attention to her.

It wasn’t her intention for this to happen but it worked on getting Jal’s attention that his marriage was on thin ice. He started coming home on time. He brought her flowers. He took her out places. Things were looking good but she knew it won’t last much longer. All the while he is taking care of his wife, he is planning something big for his business partner. She is trained to read people, to study their body language, and his body language says that he is up to something. She just didn’t know he was planning to murder Donnos Zen.

Vicky is also furious with her husband for not updating these old ships. She is the one who made it possible for Jal to do so. She set up deals with her good contacts, put up with some people she didn’t like to obtain engine parts, cashed in a few favors to get new grabber beam emplacements. Then why wasn’t the work done? Where did all the parts go?

She cuts her boosters and lets the minimal gravity take hold, her magnetic boots locking down near the exact spot where Donnos guided the ship into the bay. Funny thing about the Magorr is that they can design new ships but the entries are left in the same place.

With the press of a button, the inside of her visor becomes a grid, a map of the technical data seen underneath the ships bark like hull surface, with the scan sensors in the palm of her black glove. The grid is bright enough to read but not enough to obscure her total vision of her surroundings. The latest design in military scanners made specifically for the Akledian Intelligence service.

She waves her gloved hand over a ridge in the hull, the lights from above reflect dully off the black leather of her year old e-suit. She maps out the wiring system and finds the entry hatch and access panel, cleverly concealed in the hull. The language is printed in Magorr as she already suspected. The buttons are huge, the Magorr are large creatures with large fingers.

Vicky removes a small device attached to the forearm of her e-suit and attaches it to the access pad. A small green light tells her it’s connected and ready for operation. She voice activates the device. Sixteen digits scroll on screen. She waits while the cracker searches for the correct code to open the door.