10: NO QUARTER

An uneventful month into the voyage and we were crossing core ward of Sidon space …

Then we were running on impulse, as the warp drive suffered a catastrophic failure. I was I the warp nacelle checking on the warp coils. This design had tandem coils in series and three nacelles. That meant 6 strings of warp coils, compared with the two of Federation starships. But Ben's ship was an Orion design with tandem warp coils in each engine. And checking the coils with the engines shut down, I found two shattered warp coils in the port nacelle.

Not good, I thought. We needed a work-around and soon! The Sidons would eventually find us and hunt us down when they figured out that we were humans. They still had a vendetta against us. Rearranging the warp coils in a tandem engine was more difficult than the single lines of a Fed warp engine. There were a couple of shattered coils in this engine which needed bypassing. The center engine had a completely shattered port coil set, while the starboard nacelle was completely intact. That last chase which had strained the engines had taken its toll. But at least we evaded the other family.

Two days later I had salvaged the center nacelle's coils and rebuilt the port nacelle. That gave me a balanced twin nacelle configuration with a cruising speed of warp 5 and a max of warp 7. There was still enough left of the center nacelle, that with a little tweaking, it could boost the speed a little. Now we needed to get underway without attracting attention to ourselves. Make no mistake that other ship was out there just waiting…

The first ship we encountered was a Sidon destroyer, not unlike the one I encountered 1200 years ago. However, the Narcissus was nowhere as powerful as the Faraway Quest. But we still had a firepower advantage, so with minor damage took him out. We still didn't know where the Worthingons went. Their ship was more powerful than the Narcissus, but not faster! It was out there…

A week later and we were still skirting Sidon space, with no contacts on the scanners. We all were getting edgy…

We were gathered in the cafeteria discussing our predicament over dinner. "I consider no contact as good news..." Sara mentioned.

"You don't know the Worthingtons," Ben replied. "They will give no quarter on this quest. They are the most ruthless of the searchers out there. The only thing that has kept them in check is the other families, with more powerful ships. The only reason we stayed in the game was to be quicker and smarter than the other families. They tended to club each other over discoveries, as opposed to quietly doing research."

"That means that they have NOT gone away," Jennifer added. "As soon as they pick up our trail they will be after us, and they will not relent! Being way out here they definitely know that we have a new discovery.

"Then we need to get the drop on them first. I bet they don't know about the Edison," I mentioned. "That little ship will come in handy, especially with its photon pack."

"Yeah, I know! Just how much firepower is in that little ship?"

"I thought it had almost the firepower of the 7th Sister packed into a smaller hull," Sara mentioned. "And you know what we managed to do with it!"

"But you destroyed it in the process…" I replied. "And Nergat won't be with you this time, just me."

"Then you better wear your skin suit!" Sara was serious.

"How about we don't lose the ship?"

"Works for me…"

I awoke to Sara's embrace. "You damn well wear that skin suit! I am NOT about to lose you…"

"You know, I don't have a death wish. You don't get to my age as a human by being reckless," I replied. "I plan on both of us living through this. You came back for me and I'm NOT going to leave you all alone in my mana-less universe."

We took another hour before we got ready for the day…

A skin suit was different from a normal space suit. A normal space suit was completely filled with your breathable atmosphere, and was engineered to allow flexibility and movement while under pressure. A hard suit was almost a wearable person-sized ship compared to a space suit. The skin suit went in the other direction. What if we don't have an atmosphere surrounding the wearer. The only pressurized part of a skin suit was the helmet, so the person could breath, and it contained the entire life support package. What the rest of the suit did was to create a counter pressure effect by actually squeezing the occupant. By squeezing all through the body at a pressure of 300 mllibars, the body didn't suffer any effects of being in a vacuum! And the elastic suit allowed for full mobility. Some advanced models, such as the Venus suit, allowed protection against extreme temperatures and corrosives, had self-sealing systems and a built in computer system, as well as monocrys armor!

We entered the bridge a little late for our designated shift. Ben gave me a knowing smile. He was definitely not about to piss off Sara. He had seen her sparring in the ships small gym, against holographic opponents. Her speed and reflexes actually convinced him that she could take out the entire crew if she so chose.

We checked our boards. There was a sporadic sensor blip to starboard.

"Do we want to check it out?" Sara asked.

"Why? I bet it can only bring trouble," Ben stated.

It was a few hours later when Sara noticed a flare on the sensors. "It looks like someone has detonated a gravitic mine."

"Really? And who out here has gravitic mines?"

I piped up. "The Dorcons certainly do, and since they have teamed up with the Sidons in the past, the Sidons could have them too."

"You have to be fucking kidding," Ben replied.

"John Carpenter's 'The Thing'. Where…" Sara started with.

"Who's that?" Jennifer asked.

"Never mind," Sara concluded.

"All right, we may as well get a closer look … but not too close, hear?"

"Can do," Jennifer replied.

Near the end of the day shift we had some intriguing data from the sensors. Apparently a large and powerful ship had detonated a gravitic mine, and was damaged. It still appeared operational as it was running from a squadron of Sidon destroyers, and it was keeping up. The Sidons were doggedly pursuing anyways. Their marginal speed advantage meant that they would catch the other ship in about two days. We could reach that spot, if we chose to…

Two days later, we had a full sensor log, and a decision to make…

"It looks like the Worthingtons have run afoul of the Sidons and are about to be hunted down," Sara concluded.

"Good! Serves them right!" Ben exclaimed.

"But aren't they humans like us? And don't the Sidons want us all dead?" Jennifer asked.

"Would they help us if the situation was reversed?" Ben asked.

"Maybe the answer would be 'yes'. By now all humans know what the Sidons think of us! They might regardless of our competition…" Jennifer trailed off.

"Besides the Sidons deserve a good beating, to remind them who not to fuck with!" Sara shocked me with that remark, until she gave me a knowing wink. But then again Sara spent her only time in a total vacuum after engaging the Sidons with the loss of the 7th sister.

"OK, lets take a time out and lets go kill some Sidons!" Ben finally exclaimed.

I plotted the course in and Jennifer swung the ship around. It would be a few hours still before we caught up with them.

The Worthington ship, another Orion design, was semi-crippled and running from a squadron of Sidon destroyers. We were closing on its position. The Sidons were pursuing. We would meet at about the same time. There were four Sidon ships pursuing the Worthingtons. They didn't see us until it was too late.

At this time Ben surrendered the center seat to me. "You probably have dealt with these Sidons before…"

I took over the captains' chair and started with the orders. We dropped in behind the Sidons and started to methodically take them out. It was over in about an hour, as we deep sixed the Sidons.

Now we had the Worthington's ship to deal with. They were a hurting unit after battling with the Sidons. And we were relatively fresh, as we picked off the Sidon destroyers one by one.

We hailed the Worthingtons. Their bridge was a mess when it appeared on the view screen. The other captain started with "Who are you and where's Ben?"

"I'm still here and the captain," Ben stated as he walked into camera range. "I just had my Sidon killing expert take over for the battle, Paul." I gave up the center seat ad returned to the navigation console.

"Well, Thank you for that. The Sidons still have a hate on for us humans, after all this time! We were toast if you didn't intervene. The Sidons are one thing even we would stop our competition for…"

Jennifer looked at Ben. "Well, the Sidons have been taken out."

"And we are in no shape to chase after you. If anybody got the artifact before we did, I'm glad it's going to be you. Your campaign was the most … intelligently run."

"Thank you. How badly damaged?"-

"We can make it back into human territory and make repairs. You just find that artifact…" Paul signed off and started back towards the general direction of Earth.

"Well, that takes care of the Worthingtons. They're finally knocked out of the race," I commented.

"That's if the artifact is actually at those co-ordinates," Jennifer replied.