Starship Freedom by Daniel Arenson

Author:Daniel Arenson [Arenson, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Moonclipse
Published: 2021-04-26T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Starship Freedom

High Earth Orbit

17:35 Christmas 2199

King walked through the winding corridors of his starship, heading toward the bridge.

Around him, the ship was in chaos.

Soldiers bustled back and forth. Yellow lights flashed along the bulkheads. Speakers kept announcing: "Yellow alert, yellow alert. All military personnel report to your stations, all civilians return to your bunks. Yellow alert, yellow alert …"

Back in the war, they could enter lockdown within moments. Now it took an afternoon. Seeing the ship's lackadaisical response to an emergency underscored how far they had fallen. Truly, the Freedom was no longer a warship.

As King walked the ship, soldiers stopped, pressed themselves against the bulkheads, and stood at attention. Once he walked by, they rushed onward. Tourists filled the corridors too, gawking.

"That's him!" whispered a tourist in a Hawaiian shirt. "There, that's Commander King!"

A few tourists took photos.

"Is there a problem, sir?" asked a woman. She held a plush Freedom the Frog doll; you could win them at the carnival on deck 31. "Sir! I paid good money for this trip. Why must we return to our bunks?"

"Oh, give it a rest, Karen," said her husband, a potbellied man with a bushy beard. "We're getting our money's worth here. A proper military drill! Just the way they used to do 'em." He gave King a brisk salute. "Wonderful show, sir! Wonderful."

King grunted. He had asked Darjeeling to send the tourists to their bunks. But it was a large ship. Thousands of tourists clogged the Freedom this Christmas. Darjeeling was facing a monumental task.

"Return to your bunks," King rasped at the tourists. "This is not a drill."

A helpful corporal happened to be walking by. Thankfully, the young soldier approached the tourists, soothed them with soft words, and began accompanying them to their bunks.

"I'll take care of this, sir," said the corporal.

King nodded. "Good man."

He kept walking. The metal labyrinth coiled onward. In a ship as large as the Freedom, it took a while to get anywhere.

It was both the blessing and bane of the ship—her sheer size. A commander couldn't simply pop down from the bridge to engineering. The two departments were a kilometer apart. That was assuming you could travel between them in a straight line. Which you could not. A labyrinth of corridors and shafts, twisting and turning, ran through the ship like ant burrows. It could take an hour to cross the ship by foot.

They had developed workarounds. The MindWeb let them talk anywhere on the ship. And there were seven Mimori units aboard, ready to help in different stations. In recent years, King had rarely left the prow. He didn't need to. Roaming these halls today reminded him of how massive the Freedom truly was.

And of how she had declined.

He passed by the Dinogolf. Ignoring the wailing alarms, teenagers were putting golf balls between the legs of animatronic dinosaurs. Two teenagers were making out under the brontosaurus. King walked by a Middle Eastern restaurant where androids were belly dancing on stage. One corridor with broad windows afforded a view of the wave pool.

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