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Part V
41
Antifragile
Inner Van Allen radiation belt, September 11th, 2047
Xavier's feeling about this new alliance was in a constant state of flux. Towing around young Agent Reid had been a pain in the rear end, but then the annoying talkative brat did have agent training, and he had been comfortingly predictable. The ragtag alliance he now found himself in did bring a new perspective to a previously-impossible task, but both the task at hand and the new team made Xavier nervous.
The debrisphere mining ship looked way better on the inside than it did on the outside. In fact, from the outside, most people would not even have recognized what looked like a wildly unstructured pile of rubber tires and scrap metal as a spaceship unless they knew they were looking for a debrisphere mining ship. The inside had been surprisingly modern and high tech, lacking, though, most of the creature comfort that most people expect from their transportation facilities. Nothing in here was without function and none of those functions addressed human comforts or indulgences. The ship combined the minimalism of a military transport ship with the technological level and atmosphere of the autoimmune-disease wing of a modern day hospital. The wild ride through the debrisphere had left nothing needing an explanation about the scrap-metal-and-rubber-tire exterior of the ship. While the detachable compartments of basically garbage were no match for a HEOPS swarm, Pete and his skeleton crew had HEOPS trajectories and timing memorized to perfection.
Working in the debrisphere was a dangerous job, but knowing exactly when and where the next HEOPS swarm would hit made all the difference between life and death at debrisphere altitudes. Where HEOPS swarms were deadly, other than the cascading debris that made up most of the mass of the debrisphere, they were predictable. It was the unpredictable cascading debris where the scrap metal and other landfill-style elements of the ship's exterior proved their worth. When the ship was inadvertently hit by a larger piece of medium-speed debrisphere debris, a piece of the exterior would just break off and float away, absorbing the excess kinetic energy in the process, leaving the inner ship unscratched.
While Pete and his three-man skeleton crew had done wonders in the debrisphere, the ride had been an uneasy one, for Xavier but most of all for his partner John's cousin Rachella. In contrast, when the ship had just entered the Van Allen radiation belt, Pete had been the most nervous one of the bunch. The radiation belt had kept Pete and his crew quite on edge, while Rachella had been overly excited about her measurements. Apparently, the G-foil was working even better than expected. It was as if the readings from her equipment had made Rachella forget completely about being on a spaceship built for low-orbit debrisphere mining inside an area of space that could scare even roughneck debrisphere miners like Pete witless.
The conduit had been eerily calm and silent both through the whole debrisphere ordeal and now inside of the Van Allen radiation belt. The Strasbourg New Zion cell brigadier had insisted that Xavier would take a conduit with him on this mission for reasons Xavier couldn't quite grasp. Pete had been quite happy about the swapping out a young and energetic agent for what for all appearances was a frail, raggedy and mildly-tired-looking old lady. But oh, did appearances differ from reality. Conduits still made Xavier a bit jumpy ever since his first encounter with one during his agent training. Always mysterious, always that mischievous glance that Xavier knew could mean trouble. Never underestimate a conduit. These witches would mess with your mind, making your own instincts and reflexes into her weapons, not just with purpose, but more often than not just for the heck of it.
Suddenly the already-nervous crew of the ship started to get even more nervous. The crew spoke the weird mixture of English, Russian and Portuguese that had developed into its own language amongst debrisphere miners. Xavier could understand some Rogalish, as learning it had been of tactical importance given the number of debrisphere miners with New Order affiliation, but now while they acted skittishly and spoke quickly and nervously, Xavier lost track of what was going on.
"Pete, what's up?" Xavier asked.
Pete put up his hand, signaling Xavier to not interrupt the discussion between him and his men as they continued to speak nervously, and Xavier started to pick up on some of the words from Pete. Rogalish was a quite-flexible language as far as vocabulary was concerned. The language had an almost trivial grammar where the nouns from the three different parent languages often were interchangeable. Pete seemed to prefer using mostly English and Portuguese nouns, while his most talkative and most skittish crew mate seemed to shun English nouns completely, intermixing a set of predominantly Russian nouns with the rare Portuguese ones. There was a ship out there coming towards them. And judging from its size and speed, but more importantly, judging from the reaction of Pete's crew, this was clearly bad news.
"We are turning around, back to the debrisphere." Pete spoke looking intensely at Xavier.
"Is there anything we can do to help, Pete?" Xavier asked.
Pete's response told Xavier there wasn't, as Pete was now simply ignoring him while shouting commands at his crew. Then Pete looked at Xavier and the two women.
"Strap yourself in, it's going to be a rough ride!"
Just after tightening the four-point seat belt system, Xavier felt himself being pushed deep into his seat. This was going to be a rough ride indeed.
"Ne vous affalez pas! Ce n'est pas notre ennemi," The old lady spoke as she looked at Xavier in a strangely-comforting way.
"Not the enemy? What are you on about, silly woman?" Pete asked.
"You really don't want to insult her, Pete, please trust me on this. Dominique is much more than meets the eye."
"Cut it out, you guys! Big guy, you've really been hanging with my cousin for too long. Enough with the mysterious nonsense already. Somebody tell me what is out there. Pete, Xavier, Dominique, if you speak English, anyone, what is going on, guys?" Rachella spoke.
"Agent Bridgewater is in there, he is in whatever it is that is coming towards us, and so is a very powerful conduit if I'm not mistaken," the conduit said with a heavy French accent. "They are inside of the wolf! They are inside and they are not our enemy."
"Damn Xavier, I'm not going to risk my life and that of the crew, based on some silly old hag going Oracle of Delphi on us! Could you please make the crazy bitch shut up so I can get us out of here alive?" Xavier looked at Dominique. There was a glittering in her eye that Xavier knew all too well.
"Please, Dominique, not now!" Xavier whispered to the old lady. "It's not the time for a show of force, Dominique!"
A broad, reassuring smile formed on the conduit's face. Then there was a quick crackling sound. They were back in the debrisphere, no doubt about it. The large ship that now showed up, its general outline at least, on all the screens that surrounded them, was still too far away to have hit them with any kind of projectile, given the evasion skills Pete and his crew had shown earlier.
"This could get a bit rocky, guys, stay in your straps for now!" Pete said. "Guys, visual! This motherfucking radar-evading bastard is going to get a taste of HEOPS in a second. Get ready for some cascade."
"Not the enemy," the old lady said as she shook her head.
At that moment Xavier was struck with fear as he glanced at the monitor. A rain of white stripes intersected the sharp contours of a black wolf shape against the full-moon backdrop.
"It has grown!" Xavier whispered to himself.
"What the fuck? Xavier is right. Shit! We are fucking dead!" Pete spoke in an angry tone.
"Not the enemy!" the old lady repeated, this time more firmly as she looked at Pete with piercing eyes. "I assume tough Mister Pete here has a short-range radio on board. I think there is someone who wants to talk to us. 27.265 MHz if that rings a bell." Pete turned his chair around and looked Dominique straight in the eyes:
"Robert's frequency! Channel twenty-six!" And as he turned a knob on his armrest, a male voice came through the static.
"This is Corporal John William Bridgewater on board of the Fenrir spacecraft. Please respond!"
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