Read Pirates of the Thunder for Free Online

Finally it stopped.
    “Do I have communication?” the voice asked at last. It sounded a bit less than human, like a man’s voice played at a speed slightly too slow and irregular. The effect was eerie.
    “You have it,” China responded. “Is that you, Star Eagle?”
    “Star Eagle... Yes, I identify with that. It is... difficult. There is so much, so much at once. It keeps coming at me, but it is far too much to absorb. I am grown enormous! It is... difficult... to focus my primary consciousness, to limit it. Somehow this must be partitioned.”
    “We require entry to the bridge, then the establishment of power and life support there,” she told it. “Can you handle that?”
    “Proceed up to the bridge. It is essential that the capping locks be placed on my modules and then the hatch resealed before we can proceed. I can then activate the isolation circuitry that will keep the core bay suspended and vacuum insulated from shocks and vibrations.”
    “You heard the man, Chief,” Raven noted. “See what he’s talking about?”
    “Now I do,” Hawks responded. “We’ve been walking on it.”
    They had taken the one flatter area on the floor of the bubble as some sort of ramp. Now they stepped off it, then lifted it up and into place. “No fasteners, though,” Hawks added.
    “Stand back. I will activate the locking mechanism,” the ship told them. A series of clamps came up through the bolt holes and flatted out, then the entire metal surface seemed to buckle slightly inward. Hawks assumed it to be some sort of magnetic and vacuum seal.
    They made their way back out, then managed, not without difficulty, to get the round giant screw part of the way back in. Again the ship warned them to step aside, and the plate screwed itself in the rest of the way, sealing itself shut.
    “The topmost hatch,” China told them. “We must head for the bridge.”
    They had to walk through more corridor for a long way, then up railed ramps. Finally, though, they reached a ceiling hatch that led to an air lock, which opened onto the bridge.
    Star Eagle had turned on the bridge lights, but the resulting red glow was barely adequate to illuminate the room of gun-black metal. It was perhaps twenty by thirty meters, a big semicircular room with stations at instrument clusters lining the walls and more stations in three banks of boxy machinery front to back. The station chairs, of black metallic mesh, looked uncomfortable: They had swivels, but they were low-backed, armless, and were solidly fixed to the floor.
    “We’ll have to shift some of the more comfortable stuff from the old ship to here,” Cloud Dancer remarked. “This is not very comfortable.”
    “Most of ‘em’s pretty spare,” Reba Koll commented. “Big mother, but no privacy at all.”
    “I do not notice a kitchen or a bathroom,” Manka Warlock noted. “This will not be a pleasant place.”
    “I am going to pressurize the bridge,” Star Eagle informed them. “It will be very oxygen-rich and quite dry, but it will be serviceable. Until I can gain better mastery of what is here and how it all works, I will have to make do and so will you. Later on I can give more comfort. The transmuters here have enormous capabilities, I think, but they are huge. A more suitable interface to the bridge area will have to be arranged. I will order Maintenance to see to it. I am afraid the fare will not be very good right now, but I believe I can arrange some basic food and water needs. My food service programs are for the small transmuter aboard the old ship and won’t be much use here. Your suitmechanisms will take care of liquid wastes; I fear you must improvise on solid waste until something can be worked out. In all this ship, the only bathroom is the one back on the old ship.”
    “What did he mean by ‘transmuter’?” one of the Chows asked.
    “A ship this size needs spare parts always, and spare everything,” China explained. “Also, it could never carry