By David C. Daoust
Noreen was not a fan of being cut off from the action. This was not something she knew about herself until that very moment. A moment in which she found herself pensively awaiting what came next. Under the circumstances, who wouldn’t be? Rosie, the space moose, moments before, charged into the station– threatening to kill someone. Yet Noreen was trapped within the constrictive confines of the small space-tanker, the Atlas. To any that may take notice, droids throughout her domain stopped what they were doing as the omnipresent AI, that controlled them, was suddenly way to preoccupied with this one off-the-wall situation. Of course, it could be argued that no one would actually notice if the droids suddenly stopped in their tracks. Maybe they’d notice. But they probably would not put much thought into the why of it, as they made their way around the erratic droids to carry on with whatever they may be doing.
The minutes seemed to drag on.
Suddenly the action returned to her front door. Her domain seemed to breathe again as all her droids got back to work.
Plowing through the air lock, the Crew of the Atlas returned… Noreen found a lot to unload there.
Noreen found the space moose dragged behind her, one of the arks former droids. A model of droid that was ultimately an ambulance sent out to retrieve the injured. It was a small capsule with the upper sections of normal droids attached to either end. This allowed her to easily load the capsule between like a stretcher and speed off to whatever medical facility was closest. Notably this vehicle normally hovered off the ground– this one was powered down. By the blackened scorch marks and erratic arcs of energy that suddenly leapt between exposed systems, Noreen would guess it was yet another victim of that modified Javelin.
“Get in here!” Rosie called back. “Climb over it if you have to. Just get that door sealed!”
“We might have to pull dad out of there,” Danny could be heard suggesting, yet still out of Noreen’s sight.
“It’ll fit, I’ll make it fit,” Rosie stated defiantly.
The moose, struggling to angle her own antlers through the much narrower inner doors, did just that, gripping the closest mechanical arm within her maw, she dragged the powerless machine all the way into the bowels of the Atlas.
“You think that guy is dead?” Danny asked, worried, as he made his way back into the ship.
“I hope he’s dead! I could have crushed him beneath my hooves!” Rosie raged, “…But I doubt it. I couldn’t…” With that she punched the lock with her nose, the inner doors sealed behind them. She added, “Let’s just get out of here.”
Danny, instead, fumbled with the access panel of the droid capsule. Sparks leapt as Danny tampered with the latching mechanism, suddenly the lid popped up and the boy found his father within. Thanks to the sensitivity of her systems, Noreen already knew the man’s heart was beating and he was breathing steadily. For the boy, however, he was tense through and through, there was only a moment of relief when he found his father still alive…
“I think, I think he’s okay!” Danny announced, fingers pressed to the man’s pulse, “Probably lucky that these droids managed to load him in before we got there,” Danny inadvertently revealed minor tidbits to Noreen, “Twice as lucky when that constable’s shot hit this contraption rather than you.”
“I wish I could have seen the look under his helm as I jumped over it, and plowed him like a truck,” Rosie revealed a bit more. “We need to get back on plan. If we don’t finish this thing– it was all for nothing.”
Danny left his father where he lay, comfortably within the depowered medical capsule, as the boy accessed the nearest terminal. He called up schematics of the station; where the alarms were tripped, and more importantly, where men were deployed… Noreen ate the information up, she got a glimpse of systems she was now locked out of.
As far as Noreen could tell, as chaotic as the heist had become, no one was the wiser of the small crew’s actual actions. She would conclude that Danny came to the same conclusion as the now ‘acting-captain’ carried out the rest of the plan without deviation.
“Well, you’re up Rosie,” Danny said simply, “Put in the navs… we got to make it into Consortium Space ASAP. If those Constables catch on to what’s going on, we’ll need the Trade Consortium’s ‘possession laws’ to keep control of the tank.”
“If they play along,” Rosie suggested ominously.
“Dad said they’ll go by the letter. He said he’d be more worried of Consortium Pirates…” Danny paraphrased as he climbed back into the pilot’s chair. “But he doubted pirates’ld be all that interested in trying to unload a tank.” Already punching away at the controls, the ship detached from the utility dock.
Rosie the Space Moose, disappeared into the back room once again, moments later her pod flew out to rejoin with the Atlas. Plunging into the terminal she latched back into the ships systems; There was small unspoken greeting between the two. Noreen witnessed as the complex mind of the Aspirant realigned the star-charts to match with a new trajectory. One she deftly calculated as Danny raised himself back up in the center of the dome.
The boy managed to maneuver the bulbous tank free of the loading arm. Blasting away, the small station sped off at its lower orbit. Seemingly, it fell away as the stations velocity carried it into the distance. The tanker should, technically, be hidden from the administration offices’ surveillance. That is, provided, whoever took over Noreen’s post played along with the boy’s virus. Adding the knowledge that it was the Adjutant’s eyes that had spotted the ship’s maneuvering at the start, Noreen was confident she would have access to the necessary resources to keep the moon, Umbrie, functioning, optimally, long before her current surplus was depleted.
Ultimately, that was all Noreen cared about.
As Danny met up with Rosie’s set departure point, he aligned the ship and fired all engines, sending the bulbous vehicle rocketing towards the Consortium moon, Olmsley.
Discussion ¬