My Other Car is a Spaceship (17 page)

All our friends, so many former crewmates, even some
past lovers. Gone. Any hope of rescue, gone with them. It’s all gone. It’s all over.

He should have been angry, furious; but
exhausted as he was, short of sleep and food, all he felt was drained—drained of energy, drained of hope, drained of the will to fight back. Penrod could have been lying, but Hal knew in his heart that the other man wasn’t. At that moment Harold “Mongoose” Nellis, former colonel in the United States Air Force, was a beaten man.

“Guards,” Penrod ordered, “take the prisoners to a holding cell while we decide what to do with them.”

He smiled
, and it was a cold, calculating smile, devoid of humor. “In the meantime, I hope you gentlemen won’t mind if we poke around the wrecks of your other ships to see if we can salvage any of
their
nukes.”

Nukes?
As they were led away, Kalen saw the same horror in Hal’s eyes that he knew was reflected in his own.

There
couldn’t
be any salvageable warheads in the other ships—could there?
The uncertainty of the answer chilled his soul.

What if they
do
find some? We’d be responsible for anyone who died as a result. No,
I’d
be responsible.

Hal seemed to read
Kalen’s mind. He shook his head. “There was nothing you could do. Even if we were absolutely, positively certain there were working nukes on the other ships, there was no way we could have gotten to them all, destroyed the controls and the warheads, and dispersed the plutonium in such a way that it couldn’t be retrieved and used to make new warheads. Not in the little time we had before the pirates arrived. And not as banged up as we all were. No matter how this turns out, you did everything that was humanly possible to do.”

Kalen’s eyes lost some of their haunted look.

“Hell, if you want to be picky about it,” Hal continued, “it was the fleet commissioner who authorized the use of nukes, not you. If anyone’s to blame—besides the pirates—it would be the commissioner.”

Now it was Kalen’s turn to disagree
. “No. As the squadron’s senior officer, the responsibility was mine. But you’re right—there was nothing else I could have done. Let’s just hope the blast did what we couldn’t and there’s nothing for the pirates to retrieve.”

Hours later, in Penrod’s office, Ishtawahl reviewed the results of the salvage operation to date.

“We have scoured the wreckage looking for radioactive material. As best we can tell, seven of the nine ships still had nuclear missiles aboard when the one nuke detonated. At the very least, we should be able to recover enough fissionable material from those ships for several sizable bombs of our own. With any luck, some of the warheads will be intact enough that we can repair them and use them as-is. If not, we will probably learn enough from the components to build our own. I have already
begun the search for scientists and engineers with the proper skills that we can hire or…
persuade
…to help us with that task. Best case, we could have one or more working warheads at our disposal within weeks. Worst case, it could be years. But getting the fissionable materials is the hard part. Governments are extremely hesitant about releasing any of it, lest it fall into the ‘wrong’ hands.” He snorted. “All we need to do is build a bomb to go around it. That is the relatively easy part. It is merely a matter of time and engineering skills.”

Penrod sat back in his comfy chair and flashed a smile, a very, very
satisfied smile. “Things just keep getting better and better, don’t they? Pretty soon, we’ll be able to get any planetary government to accede to our demands, lest we blow up one of their cities, or their passenger ships, or their frontier colonies. They can’t defend
everything
from us.”

“
I agree. This opens many doors for us.”

“Keep on it, Jern. We’ll need more than just one or two working warheads. We’ll need
at least one as a demonstration, and probably a second one, for anyone who doesn’t believe the news of the first one. It’s likely we’ll need a few more over time to teach some people a lesson about being stubborn. We wouldn’t want to run out of nukes, now, would we?”

“No, sir.
We know that two of the ships fired their nukes. Assuming that each of others still carried two nukes, that could give us up to twelve working weapons.”

Penrod nodded in thought.
“Twelve sounds just about perfect. We could do some serious damage with twelve nukes. Hell, we could topple a planetary government with less than half that many.” He smiled. “So what are you waiting for? Let’s make it happen.” He reached up and stroked his black beard, already deep in thought.

“Yes sir.
”

Whatever you say, sir! I sha
ll bow and crawl and do your every bidding, sir! For now, anyway. But not forever. No, not forever. Your day of reckoning is not far off, sir. And when it does, you will not see it coming.

Spelvin Mynax burst into his superior’s office. “Sir, the fleet has just returned with news of the battle!”

“Well, man, out with it! How did we fare?”
Commissioner of the Fleet Boutan’Mourn’Froul literally sat on the edge of his seat, holding his breath.

Mynax grimaced before delivering the verdict. “It was an unmitigated disaster, sir. Only four ships are returning. Two of them were so badly damaged that they won’t arrive for another two days. Only one of the four is in fighting condition:
Melnore Rising.
Her Captain, Jestheel Felpett, is coming in to brief us now. But the gist is that although we did heavy damage to the pirate fleet, we didn’t get the fortress.”

The commissioner slumped in his seat. “
No,” he whispered. “Four? Only
four
ships survived out of
128
?”

He shook his
head in the Chan’Yi manner of signifying disbelief. “You are correct. This is a disaster.” Then a thought occurred to him and he brightened. “How sure is this Felpett that we did
not
get the fortress?”

“We can
ask when she gets here, but my understanding is that ships’ sensors detected the twin detonations at the outer shield wall, and then several more
behind
the wall. That indicated the ships successfully breached the outer wall and were at least attempting to breach the inner wall. Later there was a single detonation that was much more muffled by the shield walls than the others. We believe that indicates they successfully breached both shield walls and had a shot at the asteroid.”

“That is
excellent
news! How do we know they were not successful in destroying the fortress?”

“Sir, we don’t, but from what we learned of the fortress before the assault, we can be pretty sure one nuke would be insufficient.
The fact that fourteen other ships from the two squadrons that assaulted the fortress had nukes to fire, and yet only one ship got off a single shot—that should give us some idea of how badly things went for us in there. Not only that, before the four ships retreated and jumped they caught fragments of unshielded transmissions between pirate ships. They were celebrating the fact that the fortress
wasn’t there at all
. It was all a
decoy
, a trap for the fleet.”

Boutan’Mourn’Froul’s face went a paler shade of blue. When he spoke, it was in a dull, dead whi
sper. “Prophet preserve us. All those ships—more than ten thousand people dead.” He shook his head in shock, the enormity of the catastrophe finally sinking in. “And by
my
order.”

“Sir, there was no way you could know. We went by the best intel we had.”

“Yes, I
know
that. Still, I could have waited, to be more certain of our facts!”

Mynax shook his head. “No sir, you couldn’t. We were under a time constraint. We had to act before they consolidated their power around that fortress. We really had no choice.”

The commissioner sighed. “Perhaps you are correct; perhaps not. Either way, nothing changes.” He cleared his voice and straightened his shoulders. “Show Captain Felpett in when she arrives. I have to think about how to break this news to the Unity board of directors.”

“Yes sir.”

“You realize what this means, Mynax? This is it, this is the end. The Merchants’ Unity is dead.” He closed his eyes. “Prophet protect us all from the pirates.”

Mynax nursed a drink in a darkened bar somewhere in the seedier part of town, a place where it was unlikely he’d run into anyone he knew. The last thing he wanted was any conversation, condolences—or, bizarrely, congratulations—indeed, companionship of any sort. He simply wanted to be left alone so he could get quietly, thoroughly, and asocially drunk.

If he hadn’t already been in shock from the news of the fleet’s decimation, the speed with which
the board of directors voted to dissolve the Unity might have done it. If not, then Commissioner Boutan’Mourn’Froul’s suicide hours later certainly would have been enough to put Mynax over the top.

The congratulatory notes and calls began arriving th
e next morning, as news of the suicide hit the airwaves and it was learned that one Spelvin Mynax was now the de facto commissioner of the Merchants’ Unity. He’d been drinking ever since. If it all hadn’t been so horrifying to him he might have found it funny in a macabre sort of way. Yes, he was now
Commissioner of the Fleet
Spelvin Mynax, the most powerful person in the Unity fleet—supervising the utter dissolution of that entity.

Thirty-odd Unity ships
—mostly those that hadn’t been part of the assault on the pirate fortress—remained of a fleet that once numbered over 160. (The exact number remaining depended on whether one counted the three wrecks that had limped home from the assault.) The ships were scattered across the sector doing what Unity ships had done for more than a century: defending those who couldn’t defend themselves from the depredations of cutthroat pirates. But that was about to end. As soon as all the remaining ship’s Captains could be notified to return to base, the ships would be decommissioned and sold off at auction. The proceeds from the sale would be returned to the member merchants who had funded the Unity all this time.

For seventeen years Mynax had worked his way up through the ranks of the Unity
fleet. He had hoped one day to ascend to the top post. That was something grand for a human and former pirate slave to aspire to. It would have been an accomplishment to be proud of. And now his dreams had been fulfilled. He was indeed the commissioner, top dog, master of all he surveyed. And what did he survey? The rotting carcass of a Unity that was already dead but still coasting along on inertia.

This was the legacy Boutan’Mourn’Froul had left him.

Big…freakin’…deal. Here’s to you, sir.

Mynax hoisted his glass and
almost
managed to keep from spilling any of his Velpaxian whiskey. It was expensive, the best in the sector. But today
anything
would have tasted like horse piss.

The bartender
clicked on the holoscreen and for the fiftieth time that day someone was talking about the appalling development of the Unity fleet’s destruction. And for the fiftieth time someone in the bar (actually, the fourth bar of the day) made a derogatory comment about the Unity and how it was about damned time someone did something about those bloodsucking thieves—meaning the Unity!—or words to that extent.

Mynax gingerly touched his
split lip with a finger. Every time he sipped his whiskey, the alcohol burned like lava, searing his soul and reminding him why he was drinking. The lip was courtesy of the last yahoo in the last bar who’d made such comments, right before Mynax sucker-punched him and then was set upon by said yahoo’s buddies.

He set his empty glass down and took a deep breath.
I guess it’s time to set another yahoo straight.
He stood and staggered across the bar.

“How much longer are they going to keep us in here?” Hal paced yet again in the holding pen where the four prisoners had been kept for the thirteen days since their capture.

They’d been fed and otherwise well cared for.
Aside from being questioned once or twice each about their skills and knowledge, they’d been left alone in a room large enough to hold a dozen prisoners. The room contained that many bunks, bolted to the floor, and nothing else but a sanitation facility near one corner of the room. After nearly two weeks of staring at the polished stone walls, they were all going stir crazy.

They’d tried playing word games to pass the time, but because of different native languages and cultures, that hadn’t worked out well. Neither had singing. Either no one knew the songs the others did, or their vocal chords couldn’t manage the same musical ranges. They had no cards, dice, selstrums, or plithits, so games of chance were out of the question. And it seemed every conversation eventually turned
into variations of “what’s going to happen to us?” or “we have to find a way out of here.” Consequently, the discussions tended to peter out rather quickly. No, mostly what the prisoners did to pass the time was sleep, eat, exercise, and stare at the walls.

At first, there was some talk of trying to overpower the guards that brought the food. But the food was always brought by four armed
and massive Melphim guards. For four unarmed prisoners, the odds weren’t good. Nor could they make weapons out of the dishware and utensils, because there
were
none. The food came wrapped in a paper-like substance that degraded into powder after a few minutes of contact with air. It was eat fast when the food arrived, or eat it off the floor later. And their only beverage was drinking water provided by the sanitation unit, recycled from liquid waste.

But at least they weren’t chained to the walls or each other. They were free to move about as needed. That made captivity almost tolerable.

As the only object in the room besides their bunks, the sanitation unit was an immediate point of interest. But after a brief inspection, even that lost its appeal. It was a rectangular box, approximately a meter tall, with an open bowl for bodily evacuation on one end, a presence-sensing spigot and basin at the other, and a small sliding door in the center. The central box served as washing machine, to launder their soiled clothing. Simply throw clothing in and after a short delay it washed and dried them automatically. This saved the pirates the bother of having to supply clothing of the right size and shape for multiple species of prisoners. By the time the single outfit the prisoners had on their backs wore out they’d be long gone, sold as slaves and someone else’s problem. The unit was designed so that nothing could be broken off and used as a weapon. And with a timer built in, even the spigot couldn’t be left on for more than a few seconds per minute, making it impossible to flood the chamber.

After
fourteen days of monotony something out of the ordinary happened. The guards unlocked the door when it
wasn’t
mealtime. This made the prisoners’ ears or auditory membranes perk up immediately. Not only was it a welcome change of routine, it might mean that at last they’d find out what was to become of them. No one expected death, however.
That
could have been accomplished at any time. Why feed them for two weeks only to kill them?

But many other outcomes were possible
, some less pleasant than others. Plenty of slaves were purchased to work in thrisium mines. Turnover was high, due to the mortality rate. Thrisium was highly volatile, and accidents were frequent. Even being careful, long-term exposure to thrisium was invariably fatal.

On frontier worlds, slaves were
often used to clear swamps and jungles for habitation. The slaves frequently were the first to discover the presence of parasites, viruses, and carnivorous life forms indigenous to those planets. The first such discoveries were often the last for the slaves.

On
other planets, war was a semi-permanent condition, with one country constantly battling a neighbor. As a result, there were many minefields along their common borders. Slaves were ideal for laying mines
and
for locating the enemy’s mines. Of course, sometimes the locating was accompanied by a rather loud bang.

Even when a slave’s life wasn’t dangerous, often it was excruciatingly tedious. F
or people of action, like Hal and Kalen, sweeping a minefield would be far preferable to forty years working an assembly line or mucking out a stable.

These and other
such thoughts had a fleeting presence in the minds of the prisoners as the door slid open with a hiss. The four guards entered in pairs, two stopping just left of the door, and two on the right, to give them an unimpeded field of fire—just in case.

Between them
strode Penrod as the door locked itself behind him with an electronic hum. “Good evening, gentlemen. I must apologize for the delay. Usually it doesn’t take this long to place our ‘guests’. But in this case, I must confess that I’ve been choosier than usual. With such valuable properties, I’ve been demanding a high level of compensation. Higher than many potential buyers are willing to pay. So the process is taking longer. But have no fear, we’ll get you all placed eventually.”

He smile
d, apparently enjoying his charade as the helpful ‘employment placement officer,’ even if his audience wasn’t having as much fun.

“
One client was trying to decide between an experienced ship’s Captain, a deadly ace of a fighter pilot, and a razor-sharp tactical officer. He wanted all three of you, but couldn’t afford my price. So he had to settle for only one. He was having a devil of a time deciding. I’d never dealt with his kind before—the Fillairians they call themselves—but apparently they don’t like making quick decisions. For them everything is a long, drawn out soul-searching process, involving much communing with the gods. I’m not sure they could decide whether to wear blue or green shoes today in less than a week.”

He flashed a boyish grin. “Forgive me for dragging this story out, but I thought you might find the process interesting.” The stony
responses belied that notion.