“Damn the limiters, order all passengers to emergency acceleration positions and bring the engines to one hundred and thirty percent!”

Dak stepped back from his captain in shock. He’d known humans were insane as a species, but he’d always found Captain Arthur to be supremely calm under stress. They’d fought off pirates together and the most the man had done was crack a toothy grin as he unlatched the weapons locker. When the engine room had suffered a decompression during a maintenance stop and he’d been the only human on board and so the only one capable of making the crossing between hatchways without any air pressure so he could rescue a trapped engineering crew… He’d merely straightened his hat and exhaled. His behaviour now was therefore unexpected and shocking.

“Sir. I understand the distress call is urgent, but the Carpathia’s engines are only rated for one hundred and twenty percent for anti-collision burst not for sustained…”

“I said damn the limiters, damn the book limits and damn you if you don’t pass my orders!” The normally pale skin of the humans’ face was flushed red and Dak could sense the radiant heat coming off the man. It made him want to wrap himself around the human to soak up the warmth, but he was able to wrestle down a million years of lizard instinct and salute.

“By your command sir. Sir, I must point out that this will be logged. Sorry sir but regulations say I have to say that.” As he spoke, he was tapping his claws on the computer console by his station. Alarms flashed into life throughout the large ship packed with holiday goers and migrants. Dozens of species in hundreds of rooms looked up at wall panels that flashed in colours appropriate for their vision or sounded jarringly in the ranges most likely to get their attention.

In a hundred languages the computer commanded sharply: “All passengers to crash positions. Alert. All passengers go to your designated crash position and remain there until the emergency has passed. This is not a drill. Risk of injury commences if you are not in crash position.”

They went. Not without complaints that set the cruise directors board alight, but they went back to their rooms and climbed into the bunks assigned to them. Where the sleeping mats could cushion them from jolts and emergency survival fields and air recyclers could sustain them for days should the ship be torn apart and tiny dense inertial dampening fields could stave off crushing gravity. Down in the engine rooms engineering crews looked up at the already whining engines as the shift chief pushed the advance lever from the danger zone where it had been resting for the last hour and into the black, above the limit of disaster and into the range of potential destruction.

“Engines at one hundred and thirty percent captain. We are now at the maximum acceleration the inertial compensators can handle. If we go any deeper into the black, we will be unable to crew the ship.” Dak said a little nervously. His captain was leaning over the half-width command console as if urging his ship to go faster.

The captain merely frowned. “What’s our ETA on the source of the distress call?”

Dak glanced at his own console. “We’ve cut three hours off our transit, we will reach them in five and a half hours at current acceleration, allowing for turnover and deceleration to match them, and deployment of the rescue drones.” He saw Captain Arthur frown, then bare his teeth. “And the estimate they gave us for the crash beds?”

Dak checked his notes again, glad he’d managed to think ahead of his captain and run the calculations in advance. “From first receipt of the distress call they had ninety-six hours in the beds with limited pockets of air throughout their hull. We lost contact with their radio room after twenty-eight and we believe they ran out of oxygen in that compartment. They are down to three hours and approximately fifty minutes of supply for the crash beds. Sir we did everything we could…”

“Less than two hours. We will get there to a ship full of corpses we could have saved if we could just have gone a little faster.” Captain Arthur was rubbing his forehead; Dak could see the frustration coming off him in the faint purplish waves that humans didn’t even know they produced. “Dak, how many of the crew are rated for high-g-force maneuvering?” Dak hadn’t seen that question coming so he had to run his claws across his console for several seconds as he compiled the little-used data. “Five, sir. Myself, and four of the engineering crew of my species.

“That’s convenient.” Remarked the captain with one of the more familiar toothy grins. “How high can you all go?”

“Two gravities over Terran standard and still function, any higher and we can no longer stand, at five we die of suffocation. Seated, of course.” Dak checked his screen and tapped. His eyes widened. “Sir, if you plan to…”

“I do, order all non-essential crew to crash beds, and when we approach one point five over Terran I want you and those engineers into couches. You have five minutes and then I’m taking the helm manually.” The human was already pushing aside his small panel console and pulling up the small metal deck plate to expose and deploy the emergency flight systems. Dak passed the orders and pulled the glowing fluorescent handle at the bottom of his chair to trigger the compensator field for himself.

The captain pulled on a set of belts over his torso and grasped the flight controls as if he was an aerospace pilot, not the captain of a civilian liner. Dak knew they had already reached the maximum possible allowance for the engines with a civilian inertial compensator, nullifying the crushing effects of two hundred and thirty-four Terran-gravities of acceleration but it wasn’t enough for them to reach the source of the distress call that had plunged them into this wild ride in time and so Captain Arthur was pushing the throttle even deeper into the black band above the red limit.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Dak felt the crushing forces as they passed three gravities. He prayed to his ancestors that the four others of his species in engineering had done as ordered, setting the computers to bridge override and getting into their own couches. Not as effective as the sleeping-bunks-turned-crash-beds but offering some protection. More than the human at the helm was receiving as they passed five gravities over the compensators limit of two hundred and thirty-four gravities. More than the ship could sustain as the cry of stressed hull echoed through the bones of the vessel. He lost consciousness at six gravities over the limit as the chair locked him in its fields.

When he opened his eyes, the horrific straining groan the ships superstructure had been making was gone. The bridge was still, the helm blinking softly with the throttle in the green of relative rest. Dak shook his head to clear the fuzzy pain of blood-recirculating and reached for his console as it swam into view from the grey circle in his vision. The ship was at rest relative to a slowly tumbling mass of metal a few hundred meters away. He tapped. Automated drones had deployed themselves when they got close enough, finding and linking to the emergency ports to supply the stricken ship with oxygen and power to sustain the trapped people within.

He lifted his head and looked around the bridge. His captain was slumped in his chair with several pinlights blinking red on the armrest. The flight controls had folded down automatically but had jammed partway, Dak could just see the crease in the metal frame where a weak spot had failed under the acceleration. He checked his controls, still unable to move more than his arm and head. For thirty seconds the ship had breached forty gravities over the compensator limit and for a second or two had passed a hundred. He sighed. While the captains desperate plan had worked and brought them to the rescue in barely enough time to save the other ships passengers, even a human would not have survived those crushing forces. His body would have been crushed beneath the weight of almost a thousand of himself.

Dak finally pulled himself from his chair, thanking all the gods that it had been built to keep his relatively weak form alive despite the pressure. The captain could have ridden out the run in the same way if he’d been willing to get there even a little late. Dak understood, humans had a need to rescue the helpless. It was innate. Even in the middle of the most brutal battlefields they would rush through fire and plasma to snatch a victim from the path of death. They risked everything to protect others even when it could mean their own deaths. For a moment he felt his world sway, not from the aftereffects of extreme gravity or the crash-chairs tiny but powerful compensator field but from understanding for a moment the drive of a pack-animal to protect his pack from anything. Even the Universe and the laws of physics themselves couldn’t stop humans when they got going.

He reached the captains chair, and tapped the controls, and collapsed in shock as the human slumped in defeat in the frame shuddered and rasped a deep breath that bubbled and crackled obscenely. Instinct baked in by training and discipline lifted Daks arm and he slammed his hand down on the disaster button. The chair took the captain, sealing him into medical stasis as Dak shook off the shock and horror of what he’d just seen.

“Medical personal to the bridge, priority one! Captain injured!” Crew would already be climbing from the crash-chairs, blinking off the aftereffects as he had. Passengers would be locked in their rooms until the emergency system was shut off, but they would be fine. The captain needed the medics and even though many would be rushing to get over to the damaged liner that they had arrived in time to save, Daks’ ship needed the human back in action.

He cleared one of the control boards while he waited for relief crews to arrive and took over directing the rescue drones while he waited.

+++ +++ +++ +++ +++

The station concourse bustled as medical crews offloaded life-support pods and stunned looking passengers walked slowly through customs. The Carpathia had docked with three times its allowed passenger limit, compatible species sleeping in shifts and sharing rations so the liner could bring them in safely. Every surviving being aboard the wrecked liner they had reached in defiance of Carpathia’s rated speed and range had been rescued and the Carpathia’s passengers had given up every luxury of the well appointed liner to make room and feed the hundreds of stranded people.

She’d made a more sedate run back to the nearest port, a trading station a few weeks away where the survivors could be checked and sent home. Her first officer, a reptilian called Dak, had explained as they approached that his captain had been exposed to extreme g-forces and needed better facilities than his ship could provide and the small group waiting by the dock watched as the stasis pod was rolled through.

“Friend Greg, how many gravities did they say he withstood?” The skinny, over tall being asked the shorter, slightly overweight dark skinned male human beside him.

The human known as Greg replied. “The ship hit over three hundred gees; the compensators aren’t rated anywhere close to that. He’s lucky his first officer was there.”

“That may be so, but I once again must re-evaluate human endurance. Also, it gives me an idea for a song.” The gangly figure was already fiddling with a datapad as he made notes.

+++ +++ +++ +++ +++

Dak had gone to the station medical bay the moment he heard his captain was awake. Even wrapped in life support machinery and puffy from injected fluids Captain Arthur looked impatient. “Officer Dak! Good to see you. How is everyone, and my ship?”

“All are well Captain, thanks to you. The ship requires an overhaul, but the station has offered to cover all expenses and a rework of the hull to deal with stress fractures. They say the rescue is unprecedented.” Dak paused and went on. “Captain, I think I understand why. Not fully. I felt something on the bridge right at the end and…”

“It was necessary, Dak. Those people needed our help. We were closest and we couldn’t fail them. We couldn’t be so close and fail, not again. Ships honour.” The human had closed his eyes.

“Ships honour, Sir?” Dak was curious but the captain was still recovering and already looked tired.

“Honour of her name Dak. This happened before. Back then she wasn’t fast enough. She saved so many but still too late. Not my Carpathia. The old one. The oldest one. We have her picture in the atrium.” Captain Arthur fell asleep as the machines beeped electronic annoyance at Dak.

Dak decided to look up the database later and let his captain sleep. He turned and padded out in thought. The name of an ancient ship that had no material connection to the one he served aboard was to humans somehow the same ship. Pack animals moving to protect people that weren’t their own. Humans were a strange and alien species, and he had a few weeks on this station while the liners owners got the paperwork straightened out and repairs were completed. He already had no doubt the captain would be back in his chair long before medical cleared him. He'd also heard this station hosted a musical group, and he was off duty, so he checked his route and headed for where they were supposed to be playing that evening.