As usual, Frazzle was sitting at the command station. He ran some computations, then entered a couple of commands, and we started to change orbital altitude while moving into a slow curve that would eventually place us in an overtaking orbit, where we’d come up on the station from behind.
The orbital station was not a happy place for the Sunnys, and now it was even worse than usual. The two resident Pug-bears had finally realized that we had dealt them some very severe blows. Some of the station Sunnys had locked themselves in their residence wing and were trying to avoid being mentally coerced to open the doors while the Pug-bears were rampaging around angrily in the hub area. The Pugs were staying out of the Pug-bears’ way. They might not be very smart, but they at least knew when to keep out of sight.
The Sunnys had a low-power comm unit in their residence that they used for local communication in the immediate vicinity of the station. It was often used to send messages to the crews working on the two FTL ships. There was an entire complement of Sunnys on both FTL ships, and they were apprehensive. They were afraid to go back to the station due to the rage of their Great Ones, and they were starting to run short of air. They were working entirely in hard vacuum due to the skeletal and incomplete stage of construction of the ships, and they were begging their compatriots on the station to send more air over to them.
We had about forty minutes before we would be closing on the station, and that seemed like it probably wouldn’t be enough. I asked Frazzle if he could hurry our approach. He ran some more calculations and then turned the EmDrive on again. It had been shut off, and we were coasting along in the right orbit. Turning it on increased our speed and boosted us to a higher orbital path. He ran the drive for a few minutes and then caused the ship to rotate around so we could approach the station tail first.
I complained about this since the bow gun wouldn’t be able to be used in this position if it came to shooting. He informed me that he’d brake as we got close, allowing us to drop into the correct orbit ahead of the station. Then, we’d be pointing directly at it. He thought the station would gradually coast up to us if he could slow us the exact amount needed. Of course that didn’t solve the problem for the construction crews.
When I raised that objection, he turned to me and raised one finger in a very human gesture of admonition, “I planned on dat, Dec. We got a shuttle on dis ship and Whistle be a good shuttle pilot.”
I suddenly remembered seeing the shuttle attached to the waist of the ship, opposite the attached cargo pod, “Can the shuttle carry air to the workers?”
“Yes, it’s no trouble,” was the reassuring answer.
That left me to worry about the main problem: the one that hadn’t changed since I’d decided that we needed to dock to get repaired. How would I deal with the two Pug-bears and the contingent of Pugs? The answer to the Pugs might be to simply shoot a hole in their residence. If I could do it without burning the entire wing off and damaging the station, it would give them enough of a problem to keep them busy. I hoped it would mean that they wouldn’t recover enough to bother us.
The main gun was too powerful to dissolve a little hole. It was more likely to destroy that whole arm of the structure, destabilizing the station and throwing its rotation off. That was precisely what I was afraid of. It would mean that our hopes of repair would probably vanish. As a result, I kept mulling the issue over in my mind, searching for a better solution.
Frazzle was a genuinely great pilot. He delivered exactly as he’d promised. In about twenty minutes, the ship was easing into orbit a few hundred kilometers in front of the oncoming station. That’s when the weak aspect of my plan showed up. I suddenly realized that the arms of the six-armed structure looked more or less the same; I mean the residence ones. The arms holding supplies and shuttles had numerous docks and extensible crane-like structures for loading and unloading and were easily distinguished. I noticed a connecting tube between two of the residence arms, but I was unsure what that was for.
In any event, I couldn’t distinguish Sunny’s habitat from the two arms preempted by the Pug-bears or the Pugs’ single arm. I looked around the bridge for help, but the only one there was Frazzle, and he was busy monitoring the navigation display and directing the ship. My fellow humans were off in the cafeteria, and I didn’t know where Whistle was at the moment.
I had to find a way to determine which was which. We were rapidly approaching the station, or rather, the station was rapidly approaching us. We’d slowed slightly and climbed into a higher orbit that would allow the station to pass within a kilometer below us. It was now about a hundred klicks away and coming up on our position. I was getting desperate. I couldn’t randomly shoot. Killing the Sunnys would be disastrous for us. We needed their repair expertise too severely.
I was hovering around behind Frazzle, mulling the problem over, when Whistle walked in and asked me what I was doing. I was so distracted that I’d completely missed his arrival. When I explained that I was trying to figure out how to determine which arm of the space station held the Pugs, he asked an obvious question—so obvious that I’d overlooked it.
“Why you not use mind talk? De Pugs think about fights all the time.”
Of course! That was it. I sank into a meditative trance, extending my perception outward as I did. I could sense the Sunnys and humans on the FTL ship, and then, at a distance, a mass of thoughts became slowly clear. I opened my eyes and focused on each successive arm as the station slowly rotated below us.
The two arms with the resident Pug-bears were obvious. There was hardly any mental activity other than a sense of intelligence overlaid with ferocity coming from each of the two. Their two habitats were side-by-side and linked on their outboard ends by a flimsy tube-like bridge that allowed them to privately visit back and forth without going through the station’s hub. The tube was something that I had noted, but I hadn’t realized what it meant. I could possibly kill both of the Pug-bears by simply dissolving the bridge unless it had air-locks.
My mental search next located the Sunnys’ habitat. The mental aura from it was entirely different; lighter and, considering their miserable situation, happier in some undefinable way. That meant the Pugs’ habitat was immediately to the spin-ward side of the Pug-bears.
Figuring out the target had been a piece of cake! I was embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of it myself. I mean, I’m the mental/Psi expert! I realized I still had much to learn about my mental gifts. I had an unfortunate tendency only to use them in familiar ways. It was as natural as anything to sense a herd of elk or other wildlife, but in the unfamiliar environment where I found myself, I was more likely to rely on the limited senses I had used since birth.
The space station would pass directly below us in about ten minutes. I sprinted for the transporter and hit the cargo dock, running for the racks of space suits. I’d previously placed a couple of the eraser rifles nearby with the idea of possibly having to repel borders.
The suit I’d worn to install the main gun was arranged and waiting for my next use. It took almost all the available time to get it on and sealed. I grabbed the rifle and activated the cargo port as soon as I could. Just as before, the atmosphere evacuated into a storage tank, and the port opened slowly. It seemed even slower than the last time I’d gone outside the ship, but perhaps that was just my nerves.
I climbed over the edge of the port and walked partway around the waist of the ship. The station was already a little past us, but the Pugs’ arm was just rotating upwards to its nearest orientation. I aimed carefully and then held the trigger down for a long burst. I was rewarded with the view of a jet of air and condensing moisture shooting out of a neat hole in the arm.
It was too far away to see how large the hole was, but I’d definitely holed the thing. I was able to make out the vapor of the exhausting gasses, and then I saw a few clumps of matter that flew out. I suddenly realized that these were Pug bodies. The hole was large enough for them to fly through. I shook my head, trying to get over the idea that I’d just massacred the whole mess of them. Then I remembered seeing the one in New York chewing on the bookstore owner’s throat. I didn’t feel so bad after that.
As an afterthought, I burned some holes in the Pug-bears’ residence wings. The result was about the same: a jet of gas and condensing water vapor. I hoped that the Pug-bears were having fun with that– I was struck with a wave of mental unease as the two of them unleashed their ferocity at the one who’d dared to destroy their habitat. It was paralyzing in its intensity. I’d previously fought off a single individual; now, two of them were engaging in a rare cooperative effort. I could barely think, but then my mental defenses kicked in.
It was like catching a disease. Your immune system remembers how to combat it and so did my mind. I parried their attack and waited, content in the knowledge that their air was going. Their attack became more intense and then almost frenzied. It reached a peak and then rapidly subsided and I knew with a certainty that they’d both expired.
I extended my senses to the space station again and found a sense of disorganization, confusion, and a few stray thoughts of violence. The Sunny crew was probably utterly shocked at the destruction of their enslavers. It would take them some time to reorganize and understand that they’d been freed. The violence? I couldn’t sense very well, but it appeared that some of the Pugs were scattered around outside of their habitat and had survived. We’d have to deal with these.
Right now, there were other more pressing problems. The Sunny FTL construction crews would soon be out of air, and that was the most urgent issue. I turned to head back into the cargo bay. As I did, I caught a glimpse of red glows on the station’s arms. The gas venting had destabilized the station, and the Sunnys were now firing attitude adjustment thrusters to smooth out the movement. They’d gotten organized quickly, then.
Once back in the ship and having returned to the bridge, I found the other humans watching the station through the large window. Erin turned to me with amazement and enthused, “It’s amazing! I haven’t felt like we were in space until I saw that rotating thing pass between us and the planet.”
“Yeah. It’s advanced over what we managed to build on Earth,” I said somewhat bitterly. I was feeling inadequate as if the human lack of advancement reflected poorly on me personally.
“What were those plumes of white fog that came out of the arms a while ago?” she asked.
“That was me. I shot holes in three of the arms to vent the atmosphere. That got rid of most of the enemies on board.”
“What! Where were you? You didn’t use the nose gun. We came in here, and Frazzle said you were gone somewhere to do something he didn’t know.”
“I went out on the hull and used one of the anti-matter rifles. It was the best thing I could come up with, but I think it will mean we can get our ship repaired without much fighting.”
“Oh, Dec! We could have helped,” she seemed concerned. “You took a huge chance going outside again.”
“Yeah,” added Ted. “I’d like to get a chance to go out myself.”
“You probably wouldn’t fit in any of the available spacesuits, big guy!” I hoped that he was becoming more friendly. He’d been very reserved, almost to the point of hostility, and this was the first sign of enthusiasm I’d seen him give.
Whistle interrupted, “We gots to get close to the ships dey building! Dey needs saving now! No times for shuttle.”
I looked at Frazzle, but he was already maneuvering our ship closer to the two skeletal structures. We were about five hundred meters from the nearest one and closing slowly. Across the gap, I could see a cluster of thirty or so Sunny-sized figures in suits hanging onto the naked ship skeleton. They were all on the side closest to us and were waiting until we got close enough. I realized that they were going to jump across the gap, and the cargo bay door needed to be opened again.
Whistle was already heading for the transporter to the cargo bay. I sent him an inquiring thought and received a blurred picture of him opening the port. As I said before, they were right on top of almost everything; violence was the only thing that set them back.
I could tell when he opened the bay door. The waiting Sunnys suddenly launched themselves directly towards us. I was worried that they’d just bounce off the hull and drift away, but I’d forgotten the gripping surface of their suits’ shoes. The ones that didn’t fly right into the open port landed on their feet, and we could see them walking to the port in a video display that Frazzle had belatedly turned on.
He was still busy maneuvering the ship around the FTL’s skeleton and towards the second, more nearly finished ship. It was drifting in orbit about another half-klick away. Having the two close together made transferring workers and equipment back and forth easy. They had a limited number of crew members and needed to make the best use of each worker’s skills with little downtime caused by remote job sites. It didn’t take too long before the second group of construction workers arrived, and the cargo bay door shut. Some were very short of air, and it was a big relief for all of the Sunnys to be aboard. The whole crowd suddenly started coming through the transporter onto the bridge.
They were a widely varied crew with pelts of different colors. The place practically filled up with them. The stadium seating was shortly filled, leaving about half of them standing in the space behind. The other three humans and I had retreated to the corner of the command station near the gun controller. The noise was incredible and I suddenly realized that the Sunnys had a funny smell. I hadn’t noticed it with the few we’d encountered before, but these guys had been in their suits for a long time, and their natural odor had built up. It wasn’t as bad as a comparable group of humans would have been, though. They smelled like a field of freshly cut alfalfa hay with a bit of fermentation added. Altogether, it was not unpleasant.
Whistle came forward to just behind Frazzle and took command. He made a series of whistling sounds and clicks. Once he had their attention, he launched into a lengthy speech, the import of which was that we were here to free all Sunnys from the Great Ones and the Chosen Ones, their soldiers. He told them about how we could use violence to accomplish things they could not and how we’d systematically destroyed the Pugs’ shuttle craft and gotten rid of the ones that were on the space station. He pointed out that our FTL drive was damaged and we needed the cooperation of all the workers to repair our ship.
There was some discussion during which some of them argued that they might be better off if they turned us over to the Great Ones. He quashed that idea quickly, pointing out that they would be far better off if they worked with us to free their species from the Great Ones’ domination. We’d already changed the humidity level of the planet below, rendering the Great Ones’ breeding grounds unusable, and we had suggested ways they could resist them.
It was a long discussion, but they eventually agreed that we were allies and they’d repair our ship. Frazzle moved us into an intercept with the station. He’d been communicating with the Sunnys on the station and had found that there were still some Pugs and a third Pug-bear that were locked in the cargo arm. They’d been taking inventory with a small group of Sunnys. When I’d holed the station, and it had realized that I’d killed most of its compatriots, the Pug-bear had attacked the Sunny inventory crew in a fury. Fortunately, two of them had been near the air-lock, had jumped through, and locked it from outside, trapping their enemies. Then they’d promptly gotten as far away from the lock as possible to avoid the Pug-bear’s mental control. It was a younger one and apparently didn’t have the range or depth of control that an older one would have.
We’d have to take care of the remaining Pugs and the Pug-bear. It looked like Frank, Ted, and I would shortly get a chance to fight.