Echo-1 The Whale

47: The Bigger Aftermath

The Brick headed back to the Banga. I couldn't help being afraid she might still explode. The engines were down and she was a colossal chunk of white metal drifting in space. 

We were a hundred kilometers behind when her engines lit up. They flickered bright white at first, giant suns coming to life. They sent pulse waves of energy gliding out into space like angels blowing smoke rings. Then the Banga's rockets burst forth their epic blue flame and filled our field of vision. Blunt pulled us to the side as we overtook them. A bright blue sky gave way to an endless wall of white. And against it, the cosmos expanded in the distance. 

We were met by two of our fighters. The Zero-G pilots waved. They guided us to the port hangar bay. The doors opened and we went inside. There were repair robots everywhere. The ship had come back to life. The clean up would be extensive.

Charlie was still in lockdown and monitoring systems, but as far as he knew, the ship was free of the Vedma virus. He was in the middle of a power transition that would keep all the cryo units operating. The 17 billion passengers slept through the whole thing and never knew what happened. The internal scanners as well as the external sensor array were back online and fully functioning. There were no signs of any Vedma intruders and all the battle robots were destroyed. 

My presence was requested immediately at the whale medical bay. We docked in the center of the hangar. 

Uzi woke up and we headed to the elevator, leaving Styx behind to mind the ship. The lift stopped at the lab floor. When the door opened we were assaulted by a pack of wild wolf pups. Nidi and Harrv walked on followed by the three yearling females moving nimbly behind them. 

"We'd like to go with you to see Jonas." 

At the end of so much death, it felt good to be surrounded by adorable fluffy little puppies. They ran circles around our feet. We went down to the cargo bay and activated all the robots we had in storage. The Silver Lutung Monkeys had climbed to the top of the packed in machinery. They screamed and jumped from vehicle to vehicle. Blunt herded them back into the trees with a hiss. 

We took a four-person vehicle out. Nidi and Harrv got in and rustled all the wolf pups aboard. Blunt went with them, whispering to the little wolves getting them to sit and stay together as a group. Even the yearlings seemed to lose their apprehension with Blunt around. Mox and Uzi took another vehicle with two navigation robots and the Sentinel. I was digging out my old Robo-a-gogo and Mox told me to take his. 

"Use the rust one or the diamond one, just in case." 

I looked over to X's pride and joy. It was parked right next to the Rust-a-gogo. It didn't feel right to ride her bike. I took the rusty bike and waking up Wingus and Dingus I brought them along. They attached to the outside, two shiny clean spots on the back of a junk heap. 

They all left ahead of me with a third vehicle full of robots following them. 

Ships communications had been restored, but everyone didn't know it yet. I was able to talk with Charlie, Veronica, and my current group. Dixon was offline. Our crew was seriously reduced. We had just ten Zero-G commandos left and that number included Uzi and myself. None of the grunt large size soldiers survived the battles with the Vedma. 

As soon as we had fighters available Charlie sent out three squads to patrol the ship. That's three squads made up of just two fighters each to defend a continental sized spacecraft. Which seems like a ridiculous idea, but with our technology back at our disposal and the new information we were able to obtain about detecting Vedma it was enough. 

If any other band of pirates had decided to come along at that time we'd have been in serious trouble. 

I don't know if the Vedma realized how defeated we were. It was their failure to get total control of the ship that really stopped them. We also realized the Vedma had attempted to make off with a transport stuffed to the gills with Banga maintenance and attendant droids. Unfortunately, that transport was destroyed. So we were operating on a much smaller than usual robot staff.