Tiger- Enemy Mine Read online

  Tiger

  Enemy Mine

  By

  David P Smith

  This book is dedicated to my gorgeous wife, my family and my friends for their continuing support (and patience)

  It’s also dedicated to couch potatoes everywhere: Living the Dream!

  Contents

  Chapter 1 1

  Chapter 2 37

  Chapter 3 47

  Chapter 4 59

  Chapter 5 79

  Chapter 6 99

  Chapter 7 131

  Chapter 8 153

  Chapter 9 189

  Chapter 10 221

  Chapter 11 229

  Chapter 12 245

  Chapter 13 277

  Chapter 14 291

  Chapter 15 313

  Chapter 16 331

  Chapter 17 349

  Chapter 18 373

  Chapter 19 381

  Chapter 20 397

  Chapter 21 403

  Chapter 1

  USS Tiger hung in space, silently drifting towards the tiny mining colony her crew described as home. An external observer would probably never have noticed her. After a bizarre failure of her drive system had landed her in a remote interstellar dust-cloud, she’d been attacked by trillions of microscopic energy absorbing life-forms.

  The tiny energy vampires had threatened to overwhelm the ship and her crew and in desperation the crew of the Tiger had flown the ship through the photosphere of a small star to kill off the organic masses. This had caramelised the life-forms and glued them firmly to every external surface of the vessel, while still retaining a part of their energy-absorbing nature, leaving Tiger blacker then black.

  On Tiger’s Bridge, Commander Dave Hollins sat in the Captain's chair and listened to the looped message again:

  ‘This is the Commander of Fortress Hole. This space is the province of the Terran Empire. Any attempt to approach Hole will be met with force until the state of war that exists between the Terran Empire and the accursed Sha T’Al - Tana Pact is resolved by glorious victory for the Empire. Long Live the Empire!’

  ‘Yeah. Ok . . . ’ He paused and thought about the message. Nothing came to mind at all. ‘What the hell is going on??’

  The Bridge crew looked around at each other, but to Dave’s dismay all of the glances being shown around the Bridge were disconcertingly blank.

  For his own comfort he asked the question in a different format, breaking it down into more digestible chunks:

  ‘So we're still in the same place?’

  Lots of vaguely positive nods around the Bridge. The Navigator, Lieutenant Dolplop confirmed this in his artificially generated voice ‘All bearings to major navigation markers are as they were. We are still at the same galactic co-ordinates as we were before activating the warp-drive coils.’

  Dolplop was a Vosgeean, an alien life-form that had evolved on a gas super-giant planet with no solid surface. The Vosgeeans were essentially sentient gas-filled bladders that floated in the air and caught prey with long trailing tendrils loaded with stinger cells. Dolplop resembled a huge floating pumpkin and had no discernible facial features, but Dave could sense the alien was agitated by the way his tendrils twitched and curled.

  If the ship hadn’t moved spatially, why else might the universe have changed around them? Dave asked his next question with some anxiety ‘Can we confirm a time and date?’

  Eyes swivelled towards Lieutenant-Commander Aisling O'Mara, Tiger’s brilliant, if slightly eccentric Science Officer, sat at one of the science consoles.

  She ran a hand through her thick, tousled ginger curls as she checked readings on several instruments and said ‘Local pulsars are showing on the right bearings and are in step with the ship’s clock, sir. We haven't moved through time or space.’

  There was a deep and silent pause before Dave tried again.

  ‘So what the hell is going on???’

  More blank looks.

  ‘A prank maybe?’ ventured the ships Tactical Officer, Andre-Safrane Beauregard. ASBeau, as he was known, was noted for his passionate (if limited) adherence to his French-Canadian ancestry, his exceptional tactical abilities, and an extraordinary lack of restraint regarding weaponry.

  For several years, USS Tiger had been used as a dumping ground for many of the fleet’s unwanted or incapable personnel. Dave remembered that ASBeau was one of the ships longest serving officers, having commited a faux pas in his previous role as Relief Tactical Officer aboard USS Independence.

  The Captain of Independence had transported down to a Star-base to take ownership of a small private yacht, and sent it back up to his ship on auto-pilot. Unfortunately, he’d not set the yacht’s transponder codes before doing so, and the tiny craft showed up as an unidentified vessel on ASBeau’s tactical display.

  Deciding the ship was under attack, ASBeau’s response was predictable, and at a subsequent board of enquiry he admitted to having fired on the vessel ‘a few times.’

  The board members suggested that forty shots might be regarded as more than ‘a few’, but ASBeau was unrepentant, having ‘saved the ship’, and in defence of his actions he reminded them that he’d stopped firing as soon as the yacht had exploded.

  ASBeau was a master of tactical systems, but he was definitely not noted for his sense of humour or grasp of satire. ‘Maybe Colonel Sanders decided to try and . . . uh . . . actually I don’t know.’

  Colonel Sanders was the leader of Hole’s local contingent of Marines and was the official Federal Government representative for the tiny colony. Dave had reviewed the Colonel’s service record when he’d first arrived at Hole, and found that, like ASBeau he had a tendency to shoot first. That was about it, really. Questions were something of a rarity for the career Marine.

  It certainly sounded like the Colonel’s voice on the message, but Dave couldn’t imagine the rotund and slightly decrepit Colonel having the wit or the energy for any kind of practical joke.

  Nobody seemed willing to offer any further suggestions and there was a slightly awkward silence until the Comms Officer, Lieutenant Sharon Shearer, spoke up: ‘Ahm gettin’ sum vera odd comms traffic sir. Theres nuthin but that loopt message on Federation frequencies. An there’s norra peep o’civil comms at al. Naw coms, naw brawdcas, naw nuthin? But there soom sorta brawdcas on Sha T’Al frequencies, liek a vidjo signel’

  She put a copy of the signal feed up on the Bridge view-screen. A huge explosion was visible, and from amongst the flame and smoke a muscular, half-naked man appeared, firing a huge antique heavy projectile gun of some sort, while snarling in barely understandable English with a heavy American-Italian accent.

  They watched dumb-founded as mayhem and destruction unfolded before their eyes.

  ‘What the hell is this??’ asked Dave.

  ‘It looks kinda familiar . . . ‘ said Crash ‘ . . . Yeah . . . I think this is an old twentieth century motion picture?’

  ‘Motion picture? You mean this is some kind of entertainment??’ asked Dave incredulously.

  Shearer had been analysing the signal and agreed ‘Aye sir. The signel carries markaz that say this is propurty o’twentieeth sentery fox, liek. Apparenly, its fer persunel entah tainmen awnly?’

  Even after nine months on the Bridge with the stunning brunette from a place called Nook-a-sell, Dave struggled to understand what she was saying although, weirdly, the universal translator insisted she spoke English as he did. Fortunately some of the rest of the crew had been serving with her even longer and seemed to have a better understanding of her language.

  Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara seemed to have grasped her meaning ‘Why the hell would Hole be transmitting crap movies to the Sha T’Al?? I’d have thought that if we were to pick up any transmission from Hole, it should be
civil comms. If there’s no civil comms at all we need to get to Hole and check it out to make sure the civilian population are safe.’

  Hole was Tiger’s nominal base-port. The only significantly populated system in the whole of Sector 244, the main planet was home to a mining colony of just ten thousand souls, mostly hard-working miners and their families. It was hardly worthy of being called a colony, but it was still Tiger’s home-port, and when they’d left around six months ago nearly twenty of their ship-mates had stayed behind for various reasons.

  Unsure where to begin, Dave considered asking the Captain. Emmanuel LaCroix had been Captain of USS Tiger for many years, but in Dave’s time aboard Tiger, the skipper had never actually made it to the Bridge. His personal primary role was debriefing the ship’s complement of Yeomen, and his appetite for such liaisons were so great that when Dave had arrived, Tiger had been unique in the Fleet in having twenty Yeomen aboard rather than the more usual complement of one or two.

  Dave had done his best to keep the Captain informed of events aboard the ship, but the Captain was invariably too busy to read Dave’s status reports.

  The Captain hadn’t been involved in the crew’s heroic efforts to repair the ship after her trials and tribulations with the Sha T’Al and the Tana, or their triumph on the Arcturus Test Ranges where they’d proved their ship fit to rejoin the fleet.

  He hadn’t even surfaced when the ship had been thrown hundreds of light-years off course after the Ship’s unreliable computer had miscalculated the settings for the warp-drive. Or at any time that the ship had been lost in a huge dust cloud hundreds of light-years across, fending off the bizarre parasitic life-form that had drained virtually all forms of energy from the stranded Starship.

  Dave wasn’t even sure if the skipper knew where they were now. On reflection, Dave decided that he was being unfair to the skipper. Despite the reassurances from the Navigator and Science Officer, Dave wasn’t convinced he knew where they were either. As that was the case, it was unfair to expect the skipper to find a solution. Dave wasn’t entirely convinced the skipper could even find his way to the Bridge.

  ‘Ok, I don’t suppose we’ll get any useful input from the Captain, so I guess we proceed along the only sensible route. We get back to Hole and find out what’s happened there.’

  --------------------

  Dolplop had laid in a course for an orbit around Hole and the Helmsman, Lieutenant ‘Crash’ Stallworth, increased power to the reaction drive, pushing the ship towards the mining planet.

  ASBeau made sure the friend-or-foe identification systems were on line and transmitting, but prepped the ship’s weapons and shields just to be on the safe side.

  Dave watched the tactical display on the Bridge view-screen nervously, praying that the automated message still being broadcast from Hole was a bluff.

  They were only a couple of light-hours out, but approached cautiously at sub-light velocity, giving Dave time to think.

  ‘Any Comms from Hole yet, Lieutenant Shearer?’

  ‘Naw, sir. Apaht frum moor mooveez it’s as kwyet as the grave’ she replied, doing nothing to lessen Dave’s growing apprehension.

  ‘O’Mara, get your team to run up every sensor we’ve got. Look for anything out of the norm: we need clues.’

  ‘Aye sir’ she replied before calling her team in the various science labs dotted around the ship.

  Six hours later they’d discovered nothing of any value whatsoever and Crash took Tiger into a low orbit around the planet.

  O’Mara and her team scanned the surface, and she popped up a composite image on the Bridge view-screen. A downward camera angle showed the surface of the planet, while the ship’s computer overlaid scientific and tactical data.

  After a few moments of silence, O’Mara quietly said ‘Well that can’t be right . . . ‘

  ‘What’s up Aisling?’ Dave asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

  ‘Well, either this isn’t the Hole that we know, or they’ve been amazingly busy in the six months we’ve been away.’ She popped more data up on the screen and the computer high-lighted a multitude of unfamiliar structures on the surface of the planet.

  ‘There’s dozens of new structures all across the surface and below it. Accommodation, docking and repair facilities, dozens and dozens of defensive positions . . . the place is like . . . well . . . a fortress’ she said with a note of disbelief in her voice. ‘There’s no way they could have built all of this in the time we’ve been away.’

  Dave’s experience of construction workers in general was limited to a few unfortunate experiences with relatively minor works. Every job he’d ever paid for had been two weeks worth of work according to the builder involved, but none of them had ever been forthright enough to confess which two weeks they meant.

  Getting a leaking roof fixed one rainy January in Atlanta, the builder had said the job would take two weeks, but hadn’t qualified that by adding that one of the two weeks concerned was in April.

  As promised, Dave had posted a sodden cheque on Monday morning after the builder had finished, but made sure it was a Monday morning in July.

  ‘Well unless they’ve hired every builder in the Federation to work here, there’s no way that lot went up in six months, but that’s not so bad as long as it doesn’t threaten us . . . ‘ Dave began.

  ‘That’s not the worrying bit!’ O’Mara interrupted. ‘The worrying bit is that the whole planet is trashed!’

  She increased the magnification of the ship’s telescopes on specific areas and the computer flicked between them, posting a series of images on the view-screen.

  The destruction was distressingly obvious. What looked like stern and robust concrete and steel structures had been blasted into rubble and scrap from orbit.

  The pale regolith of the surface had been fused into huge glassy craters by unimaginable energy in dozens of places, and larger, deeper fissures indicated that underground structures had been collapsed by the ferocity of the bombardment.

  The only things that still seemed to be standing were a couple of transmitting arrays that Dave presumed were the source of the broadcast movies. The arrays were badly damaged and had clearly been repaired in some haste.

  Dave gawped silently at the devastation and realized he was unconsciously holding his breath. ‘Christ, what a mess . . . Life signs?’ he asked hopefully.

  O’Mara was still deeply absorbed in the display on the console in front of her. ‘None, Commander. Not so much as a microbe’ she replied quietly.

  Dave had a moment of near-panic as he wondered what had happened to the twenty ship-mates they’d left behind when they’d left the colony six months previously. He paused, but his Academy training kicked into gear and he took a breath and focused on the task in hand. ‘Can you tell if all of the underground structures have been compromised?’

  O’Mara changed the settings on a couple of sensors and after a brief pause said ‘There’s damage to some of the tunnels under the main surface structures, but there’s a hell of a lot more of them than I recall and by and large they seem to be intact, sir’

  Dave took a deeper breath and in that moment decided on a course of action. ‘Yellow Alert, shields to maximum, bring up all sensors and weapons. I want an away team on the surface in ten minutes. I want to know what happened to our people. I’ll lead, O’Mara, you’re with me too.’

  He pressed buttons on the arm of the Captain’s chair to call the Sick-bay. ‘Commander Mengele, there’s been some strange changes on Hole, and there are no signs of life. I need a medic for an away team in the Transporter Room immediately.’

  The Ship’s Doctor, Commander Katrin Mengele was renowned for her less-than-perfect bedside manner, but even she sounded worried by the absence of ten-thousand colonists and their twenty ship-mates. ‘I will attend myself. Mengele out.’

  That was three people of a standard six-man away team. Dave requested two personnel from the Chief of his Security team and then called Engineering.r />
  ‘Commander Romanov, we have a situation on Hole . . . ‘

  ‘I understand Commander, I’ve been monitoring the Science Officer’s findings. You might need to get doors, turbo-lifts and other infrastructure running so I’ve already asked Chief Deng to join you. She should be able to sort out any problems you’re likely to encounter’ replied the Engineer. The tiny Ukrainian was feisty and only rarely completely sober, but she was always on the ball.

  Happy that he had the team he needed, Dave headed to the turbo-lift at the rear of the Bridge. ‘ASBeau, you have the Bridge, I’ll check in when we’re down and every fifteen minutes after. If there’s any sign of trouble, you’re to leave orbit and come back for us only when it’s safe to do so. Is that understood?’

  Dave could see the brawny Canadian wasn’t happy with the instruction, but he knew the Tactical Officer was smart enough to understand the necessity of it and would carry it out without question or hesitation.

  ‘Aye sir’ ASBeau nodded.

  ‘Ok, O’Mara, let’s find out what the hell is going on.’

  --------------------

  Dave and O’Mara reached the Transporter Room to find the Transporter staff fussing around crewmen already dressed in full environmental suits. One was tall and elegant, whom Dave immediately recognized as Doctor Mengele, whilst another nearly as tall as the Doctor had broad shoulders, a very narrow waist and a bosom so big the Transporter team were having difficulty attaching the equipment that fitted on the front of the environmental suit. Dave didn’t need to look in through the suit’s face-plate to recognize his Security Chief, Barbie Belle.

  Chief Carstairs helpfully offered to hold the offending bosom in place while the technicians worked, but the withering glare from the Security Chief was obvious even through her mirror-finish sun-glasses.

  As Chief Belle moved, Dave spotted a third crewman stood behind the Chief and Doctor, completely over-shadowed. Less than 1.5m tall and only forty kilos wringing wet, it was easy to physically overlook the Chief of Engineering, Deng Wa. Fortunately for the whole crew, it wasn’t easy to overlook what she could do, which invariably involved miraculous repairs often affected with nothing more complex than cable-ties, duct tape and a ‘can-do’ attitude.