Errant Contact by Ford T Michael

Author:Ford, T Michael [Ford, T Michael]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2015-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

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Laree

I lay back on the couch in my room. It was deep into the evening after a long day. Part of me suggested a trip down to the mess hall to conjure up some of that potent alcohol mix of Kodo’s, but I knew even that wouldn’t shake this feeling of dread. I didn’t want to go back to the Jeff; there was still so much left here to see, so much to learn from these two. At the same time, I almost didn’t want to know what was going to happen when our military showed up.

I stayed curled up on the couch for a few minutes, just resting my eyes. But I noticed more lights and commotion than normal outside my window. Normally, even with the curtains open like they are, I only got small glimpses of light from the factory floor far below. Now, it looked like a full-blown lightning storm down there. Kalaya was cooking with gas on some project.

I got up and looked out the window to see what it was all about. For the past few days, the factory had been building drones and those wyvern drills as parts for the ship. Now it seemed that they were building something much larger. I watched for a time trying to discern what was actually taking shape, but so far, I could only tell that the automatons were constructing four of whatever it was. Suddenly, a long panel in the far wall opened up to reveal a long cylinder sliding out on heat-proof caissons, still red hot from the forge or whatever made it. Some of the worker drones sprayed oil on the metal to cool it down while one of the larger crane arms moved into position to latch onto to it. It was a long hollow pipe, but the more I thought about it, the more it resembled a…

“A gun,” I said aloud.

“Yes,” Kalaya murmured from behind me, her voice low and filled with sadness. She walked up to stand beside me as we both watched the work progress below “I don’t want to have to resort to these for many reasons, but we don’t have many options. The Aurora has minimal weapons of its own, and without at least something to buy us time, we could easily be overrun before we complete repairs.”

“Will you really use these on our people?” I asked, in a half-dream state of denial. Part of me didn’t want to know what she would say, but I still needed to know.

She was quiet for a minute as we just watched the cannon being assembled. “Laree, don’t take this the wrong way, but I have no problem with having to kill.” She what? “Calm down and let me finish,” she said with a stern look. Convinced I wasn’t going to freak out or something, she looked again through the window and started talking in a much quieter voice. “Killing in this age has become so second hand and remote that it no longer has the effect that one might think it has.

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