Pirates of the Thunder Read Online Free Page A

Pirates of the Thunder
Book: Pirates of the Thunder Read Online Free
Author: Jack L. Chalker
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, adventure, Space Opera, Short Stories, High Tech, Science fiction; American
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polished and brass-colored, seemed etched into the sides and bottom of the box; there were a lot of them in numerous patterns. Hawks did his best to describe them to China.
    She nodded. “For now, put it back so that it can continue to draw on its emergency power reserves,” she instructed. “Now we must go into the big ship.”
    “Just what is that, lady?” Raven asked, irritated that this didn’t seem to have much point after all that work.
    “That is the command module—the brain—of Star Eagle,” she told them. “The other two are management modules. They can live far longer there than we can in these suits, so we must hurry. We need to discover the equivalent place on the big ship and check it out as well.”
    Hawks understood. “You’re thinking of moving Star Eagle from this ship into command of the big one. Is that possible? Surely the design of the command modules will be different for a massive interstellar craft than for an interplanetary freighter. The operations will be far more complex.”
    “Not really,” she told him. “Most of it appears standardized so that they can be reprogrammed easily at any point. Master System doesn’t want any computer too sophisticated running these things, and particularly not one that can’t be reprogrammed on the fly. There is no guarantee; the size might be right but the connectors different, for example.”
    “What if it is?” Hawks asked her. “What if it’s impossible? How do we fly this monster?”
    “The way the tech cult who discovered the plans for these intended to do it. Direct interface, human mind to machine. Or minds, in this case. I suspect it will take several to manage it.”
    “You know where this thing’s supposed to go in?” Raven asked.
    “Yes—more or less. It should be obvious once we’re there. The trouble is, I have no idea where we are in this ship except that we are on an outer deck.”
    “You realize how big this mother is?” Raven asked her. “It could take days, weeks, to find our way around, with nothing much working. There’s limited water in these suits, even more limited air, no food, and no road map. It’s impossible!”
    “So was getting this far,” Hawks snapped, trying to break the mood. “First, two of us go out and find out where we are—some landmark, something, that’ll give China a clue. Then we get her and Captain Koll up to that bridge to start doing things the hard way while others of us try and find the interface. I assume, China lady, that you have some sort of map of this thing in your head if we can find landmarks.”
    “I have a schematic imprinted there, the memory of which was further enhanced by Star Eagle, but it is not of the detail I would like. The bridge should be easy, and we’ll take it from there. At least if I can find the bridge and establish some sort of interconnect we ought to be able to get some life-support systems operating.”
    Hawks sighed. “Well, Crow—you feeling up to a walk in the dark with me?”
    “Anything to get moving,” Raven responded.
     
    There was something ironic about moving around in a strange, dark, eerie environment using a blind woman for eyes. The compartment they were in was enormous, far too large for their lights to illuminate even a wall. The freighter they had just left was close to three hundred meters in length and it didn’t even crowd the place. The first step, then, was finding a wall, and that took almost forty minutes.
    With gravity their task might have been impossible; there were few objects that could be used as ladders or footholds. In zero gee, however, they were able to explore more efficiently. Eventually they found hatchs on an inner wall and studied one. It was locked electronically, of course, but they found the manual override and opened it.
    They moved through the hatch and were startled when a small string of lights came on along both sides of the corridor near the floor.
    “Motion sensing,” China explained through
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