Weathering Storms Read online

  So yea, things were moving along splendidly. The Most Holy Lord was living a fairly cushy life, he had control over a growing group of followers and plans to gain even more. They were doing their best not to kill any savages, for if they could convert them then they would have an army beyond reckoning. And so far it was working well.

  But there was something missing. Something that needed to be done. Something more than personally punishing the sinning women - and sometimes even the men - of his flock, something more than giving brides his most personal blessing on their wedding day before the ceremony was conducted, something more than circumcising the men on their sixteenth birthdays. These acts always made him feel so… so god-like, but it wasn’t enough.

  Whilst the City itself was so modern, so wonderful, its people were still struggling. The Most Holy Lord Reverend preached every night about the sins of the flesh, but God knew, the people still had trouble staying away from that. Sex was for procreation only, and the multi-family houses were specially built so occupants could hear what was going on in other rooms. All sins were dutifully reported to the house Monitors, trusted, Godly men who reported these sins to the Reverend. The six Headboroughs – most trusted Monitors - compiled lists and brought them to the Reverend every Saturday night. The Preacher would peruse the alleged misdeeds, question the sinners and decide punishments, which were carried out after Sunday services.

  The worst problem was keeping the women’s “times” in order. Whenever a woman entered her time of issue, she was put out of the camp as God ordered in the Old Testament. Before being allowed back in, she was ritually cleansed, and those days marked off. There were some days between these unclean times, the Reverend noticed, when the women complained of feeling hot more than usual and God had blessed him with the Revelation that this was the time of Conception. So during those few days, the husband was released from chores, prayer and Bible study to take his wife as many times as needed in hopes of conceiving. So far it worked wonderfully – there were quite a few children and babies now. But he began to think the women were catching on to this idea. Maybe even the men were too because complaints to the Monitor of being hot, or of the wife telling the husband she was hot were increasing.

  Of course, God’s weather was vera warm lately, as it was mid-summer. Who wouldn’t be hot? So the Reverend, the Most Holy Lord, called by God to lead his people to a Life of Purity, was allowing more times for conception. But looking at his lists, he began wondering if they weren’t falling prey to sin. Satan was a devouring Lion, God said. Always seeking victims to consume. So when he found one of the Devil’s victims, punishment was harsher than normal. He was determined that all his followers would be as pure as Jesus himself!

  Before this point, it had simply been a beating on the bare back for the couple. Tied to posts so they couldn’t move, a thorny stick was used to whip them. The beatings left welts, scratches and bloody gouges and the wounds were untreated to let the sinner suffer more. Now though, he had added onto the beating.

  After the backs were beaten, the ankles were tied and the sinners hoisted up so their genitalia were open to all, and it too was beaten. The Reverend usually did the women himself. It took special skill to hold their flesh apart and beat the center of their sin while bellowing, “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth!” over and over. His Bible nowhere stated sex was pleasurable, and by God, His People were going to obey the Word! So sex for multiplication was to be done in silence. That showed obedience to God and the Most Holy Lord. Anyone who heard groans from men or moans and sighs from women had to promptly report it or be punished as well. Sound meant the act was being enjoyed, and God had not commanded that!

  Not only that, but women had the center of sin within them. The scripture said they were the ones who sinned first by listening to the Serpent. The first woman coerced the first man, Adam, to sin, so women must be punished the worst. After all, God had given females the most horrible punishment as well, that of birth being painful. So females were the Devil’s direct agents, which meant it took more to drive the Devil from of a woman than from a man. If the man sinned, it was usually the fault of some woman. So if a man had to be punished, he made sure the woman to blame for the sin was discovered and penalized worse.

  It grieved the man. Not that his Parish still sinned so grievously, thus delaying the Missionary Journey and then the Ascent to the Holy City, but that the city was filling with children, and none of them were his. His wife Beulah, though obedient and godly, was barren. They were both in their forties, and while he was still able, she wasn’t – and had never been --fruitful. And the Reverend was sure that what he needed was a legitimate son to carry on the Work. It was how he was going to get that son that was going to be the hard part.

  But the Most Holy Lord Reverend knew God would come through. He always did. From somewhere, somehow, God would provide a woman of child-bearing years, an unusual woman, a wonderful woman, a woman with connections that would bring him more wealth and power than he had now or could ever dream of….

  4

  Sesha was truly pissed now. It took her quite a while – and a lot of pain and anguish - to force the doors open to the Med Bay. These were sliding doors, and in Hyper they were locked down. After ten minutes of struggling with her hands she trotted to the bridge and by great dint of finding backdoors in the programming that was working, managed to get the doors released, at least. All of them. But she still had to use her weight – which wasn’t very much – and fingertips and oh-so-painful shredded back to push it open finally. Then it stayed open, thankfully.

  Then Sesha found that not only was the auto-med off line but most of the supplies she needed were locked away. After prying open the unsecured locker all she could do was apply a minor injury stop-bleed spray down her back to mid buttocks and take a minor pain-relief inject after wrestling that cabinet open. Then she was able to move her shoulders enough to pull her hair into a tail and tie it in a knot to keep it mostly off her shredded back. Nothing could be done for her groin injury; that took the Healer and things she knew nothing about.

  Sitting down – carefully – in the dark room at the Healer’s console, Sesha tried to find some information about fixing the problem on the computer here. More of it was working than the other consoles she’d tried, but probably because Medical was vital. It had more and thicker veins coming in here. Despite the fact that the computer was so incredible, without people to take care of the ship and cargo, the computer wouldn’t be able to do much at all. Therefore the care of Beings was high on the Priority list.

  Sesha typed in her parameters and let it run, then started carefully expanding her search into other programs. They weren’t the common ones run from Medical, but this system was, thus far, running better than her console on the bridge.

  Luckily the program that had it came up, and Sesha locked it in so if this console started to fade it would be the last thing to go. Now it took time to run to the different cargo areas of the ship to collect all the parts she needed, and then go all the way back to the BrainPan. By then Sesha was starving, tired and in pain again, so she put everything down in the Pan room and went in search of nourishment and more meds.

  The dining area was shut down, of course. “Great,” she muttered as she tried to convince a food synthesizer to come on line and it wouldn’t. She wrestled open the door to the main kitchen, hurting her back again, and tried to access the main console there, but it was shut down totally as well. “I klatchet need to eat, you smebarten computer,” she yelled, angry. “What the eyanol am I supposed to do?” But it stayed down and only the continued sounds of her swearing echoed around the empty dining area.

  So she made the long walk to the food cargo area and broke – angrily smashed was more accurate – into one of the containers carrying exotic foodstuffs for a banquet. Even as Sesha broke the lock and lifted out the sealed delicacies she figured she’d be in debt the rest of her natural life to pay back the cost of just one snack.
/>   “Let’s see, Wrist-Gem,” she activated it, “this is Sularian Eyrot roast, sliced, 4 slices from the roast. How much is that?”

  One hundred thousand Phenjamian mini-cents, or 1/2th of your current salary for this trip.

  “This is Froya fruit from the High Orchards on the third Moon of Ocitak. How much is this? There’s… six pieces. Keep the amount in percentage of my salary, please.”

  One and one half times.

  “Great. How about this Mokian herb bread? Two single serving loaves.”

  One third.

  And so forth, and so on.

  The now ‘bankrupt’ Sesha figured she might as well take a bunch of the food with her so she wouldn’t have to keep coming back or pass out from hunger while she tried to save the ship and crew. And if she failed, well, it would be the shipping company owners who would take the loss. This little bit of food wouldn’t matter then. If she succeeded, maybe the theft would be forgiven considering the circumstances.

  While she munched on the rare delicacies, she followed the instructions for putting a temporary patch on a water tank. Since the instructions weren’t specifically for patching the BrainPan, it took a long time to get it just right and affix it without doing further damage to the tank, but she did it. Then Sesha was so exhausted that she laid down right there on a dead computer console and went to sleep for a while.

  Waking up though, was another matter. Her back and thighs were stiff at first and moving was excruciatingly painful for the first few moments, she was hungry and thirsty again, and on top of all that she needed to do some voiding herself. Luckily there was a body-function station every hundred feet apart on the ship so it was a matter of no consequence to anyone on relieving those needs no matter how it was performed. And whether in hyper or not, the stations were always in working order. So she climbed the stairs slower than she wanted to, in deference to her thighs, back and butt, but fast enough so she wouldn’t lose her water on the way. Voiding hurt like a bitch, though – not good. Nor was the color of her fluid. Hitting that chair hurt her internally too. Then she went back to Sickbay for more pain medication and went back to the Pan room to check her patch.

  During her third trip to Sickbay Sesha brought the painkiller back with her.

  “By all the god’s stupidest foes, I’m one of the worst,” she cursed at herself for not thinking of packing the supplies sooner, “but I’m sure not at my optimum either.” Now her brain – thanks to the Wrist-Gem – told her the less trips the better.

  You also need an Analyzer if you hope to find replacement fluid for the BrainPan, darling, her vocal unit, running in Logic Mode told her. Best get one while you’re still in Medical.

  That, Sesha was sure, wouldn’t be marked in a way that she, only a Pilot, would know what it was. Since the computer hadn’t listed any fluid by the name she guessed it might be, it would take physical work to find it. She’d typed in descriptions, called it everything the medical banks suggested, but nothing. So after a quick scan of what was on the floor, she’d be able to scan all coded, sealed fluid supply containers to find what she needed.

  It took another two whole days to look through every area with ship supplies to realize that there was no extra brain fluid aboard. Stunned, Sesha asked the Medical computer to recheck her work and found it was true. There was nothing for a contingency like this. Even asking the histories of the other ships with Brains showed there hadn’t been anything like this planned for, and it was therefore probable that none of the other ships had any spare fluid either.

  Not that there are any close enough to come to our rescue anyway….

  “But to be sure,” Sesha went to the Bridge and set up, then sent out a major distress call on every frequency.

  “Distress, distress, distress.. to all Intergalactic ships of the Phenjamian Alliance… we are the Inner Six with a major computer malfunction. All crew save one are trapped in TravelSleep; I am attempting repairs in hopes of getting the ship to a major traffic lane before I perish or go insane. We are twenty souls in need of assistance. Any ships receiving this, please come with haste to spatial coordinates…” she filled in the required numbers, then began the message over again. Always repeat at least once and send out on every channel there was, regular space or subspace or even hyperspace, which they’d discovered could carry signals. Sadly, not at the speed they traveled, but sometimes, sometimes, the signal got caught in a corridor and got to its destination faster.

  Now, even if a few years went by, someone might still be alive, some of the cargo worth salvaging, the ship worth fixing. She also sent out the technical details of the leak, the readouts of weakened ship shielding and subsequent computer malfunctions, including problems with her Wrist-Gem, since it ran on a similar system and was linked to the Brain. She’d noticed her computer was slower and not working so well. These last two days it was taking a whole second for her display to light up enough for her to read. And his sexy male voice dragged once. That wasn’t good. Without her Wrist-Gem she’d have problems shortly. There was no way to carry a working console and its veins with her as she tried to figure out this crisis. It would also be difficult to have to run from where ever back to Medical, use the computer and run back. Things were definitely on a downward trend.

  So as she sat sprawled in the Head’s chair looking out over a vast expanse of Null, Sesha spoke out loud in the silence of the empty Bridge.

  “Why in a Snart’s butt couldn’t you have woken up the Head instead of me, you stupid Brain?”

  Sesha spent the next day trying to pry crew out of the Travelsleep beds to no avail. The computer had them locked tight and when it shut down, it shut them even tighter, it seemed. Nothing she did or the computer suggested opened one, not even a crack. She even used a metal pick on the locking mechanism. Seated cross-legged on the floor at Jaxxim’s bed, she carefully inserted the end of the pick and worked it carefully up the seam. Her thought was if she could disrupt the tiny ion stream sealing the bed, it would unseal itself and she could help the Beharin man wake up. It seemed to be working, the purple seam flashed red briefly, and then she shoved the pick further in -- only to receive a horrendous shock to her arm that tumbled her over. It took several minutes to recover from that one as her heart was racing unsteadily, breathing was difficult , and then her arm stayed weak for hours afterwards. But she tried again using non-metallic instruments.

  After her latest attempt on the Head’s bed, she squatted on her heels, scratched her shapely lower posterior and sighed. “So what’s a second-rated pilot girl like me supposed to do, Head? I’m sure you’d have written me up a hundred times by now, but I wonder if a lass like you could’ve done any better if you were alone like this. After all, you’re the Head. All your training is for commanding us around. I don’t think you’ve ever done any of the stuff we’ve done, eh?” She then rose, blew a kiss at the sealed bed and walked off.

  The only place she knew to go to was the Bridge so back she went again, lugging her food and fluids along with all the other stuff she was using. Her blanket hung over one shoulder full of stuff and the other arm held the rest. Halfway there one of the boxes slipped and tagged her nipple between it and another box, making her stumble and yelp with pain. Dropping the boxes she gave one an angry, hearty kick – making her snarl with pain again from her toes. After peeling off some Ajjek curses, she discovered that she could shove the boxes a ways by giving them a shove with the side of her heel. So with nipple, toe, thighs and back throbbing, she limped along until she reached the bridge.

  “Okay, bridge computer,” she dropped her burden in the Head’s chair and sat down in Jaxxim’s seat, “I need some information.” The vocal unit wasn’t doing everything she wanted fast enough, so she started typing as well. “I need to find out where in the Universe we are in relation to where everything else is.” Maybe there was a chance of finding another space-going civilization that could help her out. “So get with the program, you dying piece of frenigian dung and tell me where th
e closest spacers are.” She had to wait much longer than normal, and more than once had to restart the query. So Sesha was on edge, in pain again and tired when the information came up.

  There was no luck awake with her. This was a little system with a young sun. Nine planets, only one habitable and there weren’t even any radio waves emanating from it. She spent hours performing scans that showed many primitive civilizations, but nothing that could help her – except –

  The oceans. Scanners indicated the waters of these oceans was a match for the Brain fluid. Maybe even better! Sesha rose from her chair with a whoop of sheer joy, throwing up an arm -- and her back promptly tore open in several places and gave her so much agony that she fell onto the floor where her body tried to curl backwards in an attempt to ease the pain. It took several minutes but the pain receded again and Sesha was able to get up slowly. Before she went back to the console she took another pain relief and used up the rest of the spray on her again bleeding back.

  This planet’s oceans had all the essential nutrients needed to run the damn thing, plus more. Rejoicing in a much calmer way, Sesha convinced the stuttering computer to save the file and went on with the scans. Now she began to think… somehow, if she could get enough aboard and get it into BrainPan then the systems would come back on, the crew would wake up and take over repairs – and they’d get back home. If Sesha could get enough water on board.

  She carefully got up, walked stiffly to the ship status station and checked on the shuttles. One of the six was ready to go, fully fueled and in optimal condition.

  “You my baby,” she smiled happily. “I fixed you just fine, didn’t I?”

  It also just happened to be Sesha’s favorite one to fly. She’d made some changes and had them in a file that only she knew about and could activate. She was just starting to feel a little hope when the Bridge computer section went down, and stayed down.