Galaxy Cruise: The Complete Series: Over 1,000 pages of humorous sci-fi adventure! by Marcus Alexander Hart

Author:Marcus Alexander Hart [Hart, Marcus Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-30T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

Leo paced the command bridge, eyeing the readouts on the glass of its augmented window. His crew were busy at their stations—Varlowe at MonCom to his left, Commander Burlock at EngTech to his right, and Swooch at helm to the front.

“Okay, gang. What can you tell me about that signal?”

Varlowe tapped her virtual console. “The sensor ping is a confirmed match for the Volatine wavelength, but it’s really faint. I can’t get a lock on its exact position.”

Swooch lounged in her seat, turning dials and flicking switches with her long, blue fingers. “Me neither. This thing is squirrely, bro.” She pulled a mechanism of sliding rulers over her screen, sketching out a three-dimensional triangulation. “But if I had to guess where it’s coming from, I’d put it over near that.”

She swiped on her panel and a box appeared on the glass, zooming in on an asteroid belt a few hundred thousand miles off the port beam. Leo nodded. “All right, set a course. Let’s go check it out.”

Burlock grunted in annoyance. “I would not advise that.”

“Why not?”

The commander tapped his console, pulling up a display of local starship traffic. The Americano Grande’s icon was among a steady stream of ships navigating a single, narrow band of space through the cosmos. “This region is totally uncharted wilderness. Do you think it’s wise to take a ship full of passengers out of the designated shipping lane to follow an unknown signal?”

“I think it would be crazy not to,” Leo said. “Finding the missing transporter parts is our only chance of getting home to the Four Prime Systems.”

“We don’t have to do it now, though,” Swooch noted. “We could come back after we drop off the Ahn’sahnt.”

“Yeah, okay. Good call.” Leo turned to Varlowe. “Stick a pin on the location of the signal and we’ll check it out later.”

“Sorry, no can do.” Varlowe said. “I’ve got the sensors focused on a full-power narrow beam and the signal is still weak to the point of intermittency. If we leave now, we’ll never find it again.”

“And we’ll be all the better for it,” Burlock growled. “The last thing we need is more infernal Volatine technology.”

“How can you say that?” Leo asked. “You know the transporter works. You’ve seen it. You were the one who initiated the jump.”

“And it boiled my innards and set the whole gahdamn ship on fire.”

“Uh, yeah. We all remember what happened,” Varlowe said. “Which is exactly why we need to find the missing modules. Once the machine is complete, it’ll function perfectly.”

“So you claim,” Burlock snuffed.

“It’s a claim I believe.” Leo leaned on Varlowe’s MonCom station. “The two of us have been burning the midnight oil researching the Volatine. History proves their transporters used to work.”

“The key words being ‘used to.’” Burlock’s eye ticked between the captain and the hologram disdainfully. “Their entire species disappeared without a trace eons ago. Did you ever work out what happened to them during your intimate little study dates?”

Leo frowned. “We, uh… we did not, actually.

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