Read Alder's World Part One: Mass 17 for Free Online

the hull of the ship was breached. As the bow
wave passed, a new sound took over, the howling of the atmosphere
pouring out.
    Lights flared over the door. The
automatic pressure sensors had detected the breach and were about
to slam the bulkheads shut.
    Alder grasped a pipe on the wall and
reached for the woman. She had seen the light and was struggling
against the roaring wind to pull herself inside but the pulse of
air was stronger than she was and only a second later her arms were
pulled to full extension, her breasts perfectly outlined as the
wind pushed her thin shirt into her flesh. Their eyes met for an
infinite second. Alder could see a cold, fearless darkness inside
her. The bulkhead slammed down, forcing her fingers off their grip
and she was gone.
    Alder dropped to the deck as the
howling stopped. His ears were singing with pain. Mercifully, the
lights failed a few seconds later and he was left to sob in the
dark.

“Alone in the Dark”
    Captain
Pilton stood in the middle of the bridge with his hands on his hips
and scowled. He ’ d hated the
bridge when he ’ d first been
introduced to it. It looked like some kind of orchestra pit with
him in the middle. His five Lieutenant commanders sat in a ring
around him, their support staff in a ring outside of that. Who put
the captain in the lowest point? He had to look up to see the main
screens over his head and the actual ports out into space were
three levels above him. Where was the grandeur? How was he supposed
to tower over his crew issuing commands?
    After a few years, the genius of the
design began to sink in. The back side of every console, from his
Lieutenant commanders to the waste reprocessing manager two levels
up was a screen rolling data. The truth of space flight was that it
was seldom useful to actually look out into space but, being able
to see everything your bridge crew was working could save your
life.
    “But where is
Alder?” He asked gesturing at the empty
science bay chair. It and a few of the other science chairs were
the only empties in the otherwise busy room.
    “We
don ’ t know.” Tallen answered, tapping at the security
officer ’ s screen. All the
screens were lit, which was good. An hour before they had all been
dark. “ We only have about
half our tracking online. I show that Elana had authorized use of a
room on level nine of the environment dome about ten minutes before
the attack. ”
    Pilton shrugged off the
word ‘ attack ’ and glanced at
an external view of the environment dome. Like the rest of the ship
it appeared mostly intact except for some surface ruptures. There
were a few lights running, but none near the top. While Fisher
trying to take responsibility for the entire disaster, he deserved
a medal. With only seconds before the shock wave hit and no time to
bring the framing engine online, Fisher had pushed all the mobius
shields to full. The damage they ’ d taken was from their own shields flexing into the side of
the ship under the pressure wave. If they
hadn ’ t been on...well their
little space adventure would have come to an end.
    “Which side of the dome
was Alder in? ”
    “I ’ m sorry sir. It was
port cabin 11. ”
    While the damage reports
were sketchy, coming in one at a time as the computers rebooted,
one thing was clear, very few people in port side cabins had
survived. “ Okay. Do they have
power in the environment dome? Can anyone tell
me? ”
    Tallen interrupted, an
engineer ’ s response. “ Sir. We are fully enveloped in the
cloud. We must move the ship to a defensible
position... ”
    Pilton waved his
hand. “ I asked a question.
Does anyone know if they have power in the environment
dome? ”
    “Yes sir.” Engineer Rhye responded from her station. “ The inner hull has power and
pressure on all decks.
    “But
we ’ re out of contact.” Com Tech Reilly piped in from another level
up. “ There ’ s a primary
break. We ’ re getting backup
radio response only. ”
    Pilton cursed.