Contents
Title
The Can
A Moveable Feast
The Dreams of a Desperate Frog
96 Hours
Supplicant
Bullet in the Blue Sky
Duval
President
Hospital
Inquisition
Jail
Merthon
Flight
Jessica
Qualus
Gravity
Duval, Revisited
Father
Jamis
Alacyte
Run
The Man in Black
Corsair
What a Frog Doesn't Know Can't Kill Him
Trash Run
Leviathan
Falkowski
Attack on Montag
The Emperor
Home Again
The Lost Gunboat Captain
The Jolo Vargas Space Opera
Series Book 1
Copyright © 2017 by J.D.Oppenheim
All rights reserved.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for downloading The Lost Gunboat Captain. Please leave a review if you enjoy the book!
—J.D.Oppenheim
The Can
Deep space
The deafening roar tore through the man’s mind, vibrated through his body, down his legs, his hands instinctively covering his ears. His eyes popped open and he saw nothing but pitch black. Straps across his chest, waist and legs pinned him to a bed. Where am I? he thought. Sick bay capsule? Some sort of full-body scan? But then everything started shaking and he could feel motion. A turn. It got hotter inside and he started to think something was wrong. He put his fingers to his eyes so he knew they weren’t closed, and saw nothing but darkness. He reached out blindly: dense padding all around. A tight, confined tube. He pushed up hoping there was a hatch that would open, but nothing moved. He yelled, his voice lost in the roar, but then, above him, he saw a flash of light. And another. Small white sparks that finally gave him focus, gave him an anchor to hold him in place.
And it was then he realized he wasn’t in a sick bay scanner. The small bits of light were stars flashing past a porthole. And the sound was the roar of a thruster. It was like he was sitting on top of it. He was in some kind of probe or escape pod traveling through space. Where, he did not know.
He tried to remember how he ended up in the pod, but nothing came. His last memories were a blurry mix of bright lights at night and men screaming. Blue uniforms. Lying on a beach in the sand, a pain in his side so bad that death would have been a relief. Funny trees with three large leaves hanging over. He thought he was going to die there. But then another idea hit him: maybe he’ll die here with no memories at all. He started to scream but couldn’t hear his voice, so he screamed louder and he thought he could just hear himself over the thruster. He cried out until his throat hurt.
And then he just lay there in his own sweat taking deep breaths, trying to calm down. He started feeling around in the blackness with his hands. Sometimes he could get his fingers between the inner padding and feel the curve of the fuselage. Strapped in, his face was about a foot from the dense, square pads. His shirt had a collar and some kind of patch above a pocket. He wore pleated pants with a belt and then he felt a tube coming out of a hole of his right pants leg. It was taped to his skin. There was another, smaller tube taped to his arm which he figured was intravenous. In and out, he thought. Someone wants me alive. Meanwhile the noise had started to subside.
He got the chest belt off first, then the other two. It felt good to be able to move his body and legs. He tried to move his knees up to his chest, but his legs hit the inner wall, so he bent them as much as he could. He wiggled his toes. Rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck.
He accidentally yanked on the IV tube, so he settled down and reattached himself to his “bed” with the waist belt. He figured it’d be safe to let his legs and upper body float. Then he gently probed with his hand to the piece of tape holding the thin line that fed into the artery in his wrist. He felt around and decided it was dry. No blood. No leaks. That’s the food tube, he thought. Lose that and slowly starve to death.
He took a few deep breaths, enjoying the freedom of movement, trying to imagine he was in a larger space. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but he could feel a tug at the back of his mind: escape, break free. He had to maintain control and not go crazy in a space no larger than a coffin tube. Is this a coffin tube? They have thrusters, he thought. But in the end he decided to call the thing a probe. C-tubes weren’t meant for inter-stellar travel. This pod was going somewhere.
He looked out through the porthole into the blackness and decided a little assessment was in order.
So what’s the status, Captain? he said to himself.
Well, he replied, we are in a tin can flying through space. We must have just done a pretty good burn, but now have settled. We have food, sort of, but for how long, who knows? We have no idea where we are headed, or even if this little boat was designed to handle a drop through atmosphere and then glide us home or if it’s gonna try to find another ship to dock with. And we can’t see a thing and have no navigation.
So basically, we’re screwed.
Yeah, that’s it.
Oh, one more thing. I have no idea what my name is.
Excellent.
He fastened the chest belt and tried to rest. He opened and closed his eyes several times. He saw the same thing: black.
……
When he slept the man dreamed of a girl.
He saw her in his mind, passing him in the tight lower corridor of the gunboat. She saluted,
