My Other Car is a Spaceship (28 page)

All right. Let’s see how this baby handles.

As with
Adventurer, Far Traveler
had an immersive training system with the pilot trainee seeing/hearing/feeling what an earlier pilot had experienced. The system was older, and with less fidelity, but not dissimilar in result. Unlike
Adventurer’s,
this “simulator” lacked excitement. Instead of the adrenaline rush of trading APCs and dodging quems, the drills included docking maneuvers and cargo loading procedures. The most exciting drill he’d had to practice was how to unstick a jammed cargo door.

There was nothing Hal couldn’t handle in his sleep after less than an hour of
training. Still, he practiced as if his life depended on it, as it very well might at some point.

He sighed.
If I can’t talk the captain into letting me go, or find some other way out of this situation, this is gonna be a lo-o-o-ng eight years.

Kalen pushed the cart up by the door. Sue pulled out the calibrator and worked on unlocking the door. Two minutes passed and still she worked on it.

“Any time, Sue,” Kalen whispered, even though there was no one else around to hear.

“I am going as quickly as I can,” she responded testily. “I told you they have made it harder to defeat the locks. At least this one is not yet encrypted. I just need one more…there!”

The lock clicked and the door hissed open.
Light flooded into the darkened holding pen.

A head rose from one
bunk, followed by another and then another. Soon, all twelve prisoners were sitting up.

“We’re here to free you,” Kalen announced softly. “Who wants to escape?”

Heads swiveled, looking from one prisoner to another. No one wanted to be the first to speak.

Kalen sweetened the pot. “
We have weapons. Who can fire a blaster?”

A
fter a moment’s hesitation, a Foren stood. “I can.”

He was followed by
four Thorians and a Chan’Yi.

“All you do is point and pull the trigger, right?”
a human asked.

“Pretty much,” Kalen agreed.

“Count me in,” the man said, standing. “I’m no slave.”

A
Sestran then stood. “Neither am I.” The other two Sestrans hesitated and looked at one another before standing as well.

The two Blens
ians remained silent.

“This is going to be dangerous,” Kalen warned.
“Some or all of us may die, but at least we’ll die free, instead of in a thrisium mine somewhere. If you’re still with me, come and collect your weapon.”

All
the standing prisoners approached the door. Kalen bent and opened the cabinet door in the cart. He pulled out two blasters and handed them to a Thorian and a Chan’Yi. He continued handing out the blasters until all the prisoners were armed.

“Good. Follow me. Keep your eyes open for guards, but don’t shoot unless someone raises a weapon. We’re better off flying under the radar than starting something we’re not prepared for. There are a lot more of them than there are of us. Right?”

The prisoners all indicated agreement.

“Good. Let’s go.”

Kalen, Sue, and the ten prisoners filed out of the cell. Sue triggered the door. It softly sighed shut on the two Blensians sitting on their bunks.

The
dozen armed escapees hefted their weapons and headed down the corridor, led by Captain Jeffries.

Before they
’d gotten a hundred meters from the cells, a loud WHOOP-WHOOP! sounded overhead.

“Crap! They’re on to us. Follow me!” Kalen took off at a run, followed by the others—some with worried
frowns on their faces and some with looks of determination.

“
Now
what?” Penrod demanded of his security Chief, down in the Pit.

“A security cam spotted what looks like an escape attempt
,” MekFensal replied. He displayed the recorded footage on the central holoscreen. It showed more than a dozen people, armed with blasters, marching down a corridor not far from the cells. They passed two unconscious guards at the nearest intersection.

“Of
course
it’s an escape attempt!” Penrod snarled. “They’re armed but they’re not wearing guard uniforms, are they?” Get a security detail there on the double!”

He turned
on Jern Ishtawahl, who’d come up behind him, with some heat. “Why the
hell
don’t we have a proper detention wing, with guards and multiple tiers of locked doors? The prisoners couldn’t escape this easily.”

Ishtawahl’s wanted nothing more than to bite off the head of the chairman—literally—but restrained himself. Too soon.

He took a deep breath before replying. “Have you forgotten the conversation we had six months ago, when we were deciding how to design the holding pens? I recommended just such an arrangement. You shot the idea down due to cost and complexity. You said, as I recall, ‘We’re not running a damn prison here. We’re merely processing livestock. Move ‘em in, move ‘em out as expeditiously as possible.’ You thought such security measures were overly complicated and a waste of money.”

Penrod opened his mouth to retort, and then stopped.
“Hmm. So I did.” His anger dissipated. “It looks like you were right and I was wrong. Fine. Once we get these prisoners taken care of, you have my authorization to do whatever it takes to correct the situation.”

He smiled crookedly at Ishtawahl. “Next fortress we build, I’ll let you design the detention wing.”

Kalen and the others rounded a corner and came face to face with two guards racing toward them.
Kalen and one of the guards raised their guns simultaneously and fired. The other guard was a split-second behind. All three missed. The shots left scorch marks on the walls behind Kalen.

Five prisoners fired and both guards went down in a heap.
The time for stun settings was over. People were going to die on both sides of this war, and the prisoners couldn’t afford to have guards waking up and getting a second shot at them.

Kalen and Sue picked up the dropped blasters
and the micro army began running again.

“You’re relieved, Sel,” Hal said to the Thorian on the mint-green shape-conforming pilot’s couch. “Get yourself something to eat. They’re serving carlod stew in the mess; it’s pretty good.”

Sel Groshu rose smoothly
, so Hal could take his place, and stretched. “Sounds good. The stew is always worth having.”

Similar exchanges occurred elsewhere on the bridge, as one cargo officer replaced another, environmental systems officer
s (ESOs) passed one another with a friendly wave, and the captain left for his quarters. In less than a minute, there were three people on the bridge, settling in for a ten-hour shift.

Hal opened his mind fully to the immensity of the ship’s systems. True, while aboard ship he wa
s never completely disconnected; but off-duty, the sensitivity was muted. It wouldn’t do for two pilots to have full control simultaneously—too much confusion that way. The data streaming into an off-duty pilot’s mind was more like the sound of a babbling brook in the background than the noisy conversation of active on-duty participation, as now.

Everything was operating smoothly, all systems were go. Hal looked over at the ESO sitting at his console.
It, like most of the furnishings on the bridge, was the same mint-green hue as the pilot’s couch—a color that clashed horribly with the Foren’s natural yellow-orange coloration. Of course, the Foren, being color-blind, didn’t notice. To them, everything was shades of gray.

“Are things always this quiet, Solanmar?”

The Foren looked over his shoulder and smiled. “You had better hope so. Excitement can only mean bad things on a cargo ship. Quiet is good. We like quiet.”

“If you say so.”

An hour passed and the ship continued to sail the calm seas of multidimensional hyperspace. This was only Hal’s second shift as pilot, and already he knew that eight years of this never-ending sameness would feel more like eighty.

H
e lay in his couch, half asleep, but still controlling the ship’s flight parameters with his subconscious mind. His eyes flew open.

OOO
WEEE-OOOWEEE-OOOWEEE!

“
Captain!” He called over the intercom. “Sensors have detected smoke in Cargo Hold 9. I’m dispatching a firebot to the area.”

“
Very good. Does it look serious?” Captain Perenfar asked.

“I’m still
— Whoa! Captain, I have a fire alert. I don’t know what happened, but it flared up suddenly. Sensors indicate that it’s still small but growing quickly. I don’t think the ‘bot can handle it alone. I’m dispatching the other ‘bot, but I think we’re going to need some people there to help.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Captain! It’s really spreading fast. You’d better get
everyone
down there, in suits, ASAP. I’ll take care of everything from here.”

“Good.” Perenfar opened the intercom to the shipwide channel. “This is the
captain. We have a fire; repeat, we have a fire in CH9. Everyone grab their suits and meet me there immediately. Move it!”

Solanmar and the cargo officer dashed off the bridge, leaving Hal alone.

Three minutes later, Hal watched on the interior holocams as the nine crewmembers burst into the hold. Prodigious quantities of black smoke pushed past them and out the door.

“Stay together
!” the captain bellowed over his EVA suit radio.

They all turned on their high-intensity suit lamps. The
lights barely penetrated the dense smoke. Two of the crew grabbed the fire-suppressant-foam hose nozzles by the door and began running toward the fire, which was visible to the infrared sensors built into the suit helmets. Two others picked up coils in the middle of the hose and followed the first two. Another pair turned on the foam from the wall panels. Then they and the remaining three grabbed shovels and took off after the first four.

The nine made their way through the murk to the source of the fire, well toward the back of the hold
where a sack of pseudowheat blazed. The sack was well segregated from the other grain, so there was no danger of the fire spreading.

It took only second
s to extinguish the blaze.

“Hal,” Perenfar
’s voice came over the radio, sounding confused. “I don’t understand. I thought the sensors reported a major fire. This is nothing one person couldn’t have put out. And where are the firebots?”

“I’m afraid I owe you an apology,
Captain. We’re making a little detour.”

“
Detour?
Stand down mister. You are relieved of duty. Sel, take over for Mr. Nellis. Gev, Por, please escort Hal to his quarters. He is to be confined there until I can sort this all out.”

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that,
Captain. I’m in a hurry. I think you’ll find that the cargo hold doors are malfunctioning. But don’t worry, your suits’ air supplies will last until the ventilators clear the smoke out of the hold. And I’ve left you plenty of food to last you until we arrive at Jorseen.”

“This is piracy!”
Captain Perenfar bellowed.

Hal chuckled at the irony. “I suggest you take it up with the
Merchants’ Unity when we arrive.”

“But
…you gave your word!”

“I promised not to act against the best interests of this ship and crew. The way I see it,
this
is
in the best interests of the ship and crew. You’ll come out ahead in the end, after you get paid by the Unity and the pirates are defeated.”

“That is self-serving rationalization!
We have contracts, deadlines! That long a delay will hurt our reputation as a dependable shipper!”

“I’m sorry about that, but this is too important. If the pirates go unchecked, no ship anywhere will be safe, including yours.
I’m looking at the bigger picture here. I’ll see if I can get you an official explanation or something from the Unity that you can show to your clients. Maybe a commendation for helping to fight the pirate threat, or something.”

“
This is unacceptable! Sel! Take control of ship’s systems. Cut him off!”

“That won’t work either,
Captain. Sel is currently limited to standby access. I also gimmicked the ship’s computer so you can’t override my authority. You really need to upgrade your system’s security protocols.”

“
He is correct, Captain,” Groshu confirmed. “I cannot open the door or affect the ship’s course.”

“
I’m truly sorry, Captain. You’ve been nothing but kind to me in my short time here, but I had no choice. I had to do this now. It couldn’t wait.”

He shrugged, even though the
captain couldn’t see him. “You might as well relax. You can have your ship back in a couple of days. Until then, think of this as enforced shore leave, but without the fun part.”