Contravention of Protocol 1 E-Book

Suzann Dodd

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Receiving the Message, ships are enroute to liasion with the Applewhyte which has been lost for twelve years.   Those aboard are unaware of the war, of the complete defeat of humans and the capture of all their planets, and the decision is to maintain that belief.

Leseprobe

Suzann Dodd

Contravention of Protocol 1

En route to the Applewhyte

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Personal Log

PERSONAL LOG

LT. DENYS TABORARCHIVISTTSF APPLEWHYTE

"We are enroute.

Take no action."

Supremo's coming to eyeball. A Dozen Earth standard years with no top shirt, now, we must defer and wait.The Supreme Military Command posts, telling us to handsit; good dog.

Supremo; link to the Real Real.

Dozen earth years gone, who was I? What ticked? How did the ciphers add, what was the data and how many files were open?

It's been Twelve years we've been out, but the Gautier's missed eighty two; nearly a Century. The Gautier; the last ship to kick a mudball and catch sky. 

The Gautier left Edwards Air Force Base on April 30, 2416. We've rolled the holos. Got the noise, the blast, the heat, the cutting of strato, and into the night. Mission; exploration, officially. Spying authentically.

They'd packed enough Phids on it to make it match a science expedition, but there was a lot of hardware--a lot of hardware--

I scan the data from the Applewhyte's computer. There was pack I didn't pen and that was an eighty two year old pack--

The Gautier slipped from our data catch on May 3rd. They started naming her Titanic.

Scoping the blurbers of the years 2416 - 17, the loss of the Gautier was major catastrophe. It was the last ship built on Earth to enter space. Four days into it's Maiden Voyage--

Now found. Found, eighty two years later--Not a relic, not a lost island. Found intact with its crew on a world they called Argale where aging wasn't in the O.S.

Maybe the Gaut crew can explain Contravention of the First Protocol. Maybe they can't.

Yet:

The image we have from our visit to Argale shows a Zee being zapped with the kind of stunner made illegal in 2435. A stunner, built by us in the hand of a humanoid species which we nicked, Pig people.

Someone gave Pig man that stunner. And to issue that weapon below rank of Lieutenant wasn't done in 2416.The Pig People used the stunner to enslave Zees. Used our tech to make a choker and pack it with stun. The water on that mudball matched Fountain of Youth--maybe it ate brain cells, maybe it reversed intellect--hope there's a real good explanation coming from the Gautier crew.

"We are enroute."

"Take no action."

It's Supremo's call. I can't know what grid they're using today since my motherboard was graded and my progs loaded twelve years ago.

I can hope it's been an evolution, but I can't do more than hope. What would be done on Argale in re Breach of P.1. was Supremo's call. The Applewhyte was small pie, a Class Ten TSF warboat gone to fly, sucked into the wake of the Qintellum, spending twelve years trying to get home.

We hadn't mutinied, hadn't flipped the switch, but weren't making it 2 + 2.

Supremo was coming, we had to slide into the queue tight and firm, head up, chin in, chest out, eyes straight, back straight, knees straight, weight on the balls of our feet, guide right, adjust spacing with the first squad--

"We are enroute."

"Take no action."

Stand and stare, spin and count.

New eyes to scan old faces and find fault with what is, for it wasn't what was. To be who I was, in relation to Supremo with penalties for straying beyond the pale--

"We are enroute."

"Take no action."

The burn is now, when I have to return to being saps and my best friend becomes a Zerk.

There was a time me and my batch had them as Great Apes with Shark's character, but that was then, before I'd breathed their exhale and they'd breathed mine.

When we got tossed by the Qints I didn't pen the groove would be the Zees. They were the last prog loaded. A btw footnote that we happened to have Five ZCF Observors.  Having five ZCF Observors who, after we found ourselves elsewhere, fit into our grid and made us sharper.

Our shakeknee, our wringhand at being lost in space was dele.

In this universe of the Applewhyte, this hermetically sealed world of decks and cabins, the Zees were the key progs, the prime minds, the warm hearts.

Whether a middie logged aboard as a rabid hater or a bland, didn't take two earth revs to printout the Zees were us, but a better version.

Kick it if you want, spit it if it bitters, but you don't do time on this boat and don't salute it. The ZerShaz, the Great Them, were us.

Us, without our doubts our weakness, our need to output and input, us, in best. They knew it, we knew it, and we worked it well, and it played right.

To lose the connection, to cut back to being 'us' and they 'them' was more turnback than first step from Mommy. The Five best Officers on this bucket were the five Zees.

Since the Kema screened, since the data rocked, they'd quitclosed. They filled duty but offed when it was off, not ease and word trade.

Grimmy had filled the spaces where duty and sleep didn't. It was a suck of atmosphere when he quitclose. Left me waiting for non-ness.  I've spent ten years plus in his spin. He was my family.

It was short watch and I was taking a lay in my cabin. My wife, Bari, was gone to her post. I got the dispi giving the mock brew we called beer.

I thought of Grimmy, oRain iGrimu, wondering why he'd locked me out.  Why had he pulled from me when learning about the Zees enslaved on Argale? Did he think I'd side with the humans who'd enabled the Pig People to enslave his folks?

There was a hook I had to him that I'd never felt before, not with my blood, my batchies, maybe with Bari, but I never could be sure where she was, what she was doing when my eye wasn't on her.

With Grimmy, I was sure.

If Grimmy said he'd do something, trivial or crucial, it was done. That caught my glom first. Then, knowing he was letting me move into his ambit made a tie. But when I checked he was onlining me as much, if not more than I was him, it played.

There wasn't eye peeping and mouth outputting, 'he's a Zerk!' cause everyone was moving in the same params.

I think the first drop was when they had to be ordered off duty, cause they'd never leave their posts. It was gigoing, but fact.

Tell a Zerk to guard a door, if you forget, two stands gone, he'll still be there.