Ships of Valor 1: Persona Non Grata (9 page)

We knew finding the correct job wasn't going to be easy. The job board was actually a bit of a godsend in some ways, however. Although none of the first lists panned out, they did net us a solid batch of contacts, and we ended up getting a couple of quick trial runs from Ganymede to some of Jupiter's other moons. Nothing spectacular but enough to justify being in that area of the system by helping us build a little bit of credibility in the circuit while we tried to find the haul to take us to Terra.

Since
Heart
was a mid-sized ship, we weren’t in actual competition with the locals allowing us to establish a niche market. We could do things the smaller guys couldn't due to space while they could do things we couldn't far cheaper. It was very favoresque. We would get tips about someone needing a shipment moved, and if we could cover it at a good price, we would. If outside our wheelhouse, we'd point the job to someone else. The reverse was also true. We'd gotten at least a dozen calls over the last month from different referrals. 

Heart
was having a blast. Although we kept his nature private, he was publicly my partner and co-pilot. Something he found great amusement in. Being the copilot that is. I can't say I blamed him. His social group was expanding rapidly since he handled the communications system; he also started to cover our flight schedule. I think he liked the responsibility or he was bored to the point where he convinced himself he did.

After our initial dock fees expired, he went ahead and leased us a small platform of our own, and what was nominally an office. In reality, a garage with a barely working runabout and a functioning comm feed. Absolutely perfect. We plastered our logo on both. The concentric rings representative of our solar system combined with the CKG lettering. We had debated putting the logo on
Heart
himself and discarded the idea very quickly. Neither one of us wanted to mar his gorgeous hide.

I was in the process of restocking
Heart's
freezers when we got an actual lead. He had an extensive larder and an even better greenhouse, but even the best kitchen has gaps. I wasn't trying to complain, but there are some things I would start to crave when I couldn’t have them. Stupid things like lemons. I had gone five years without any lemons, but after having three of Schmiddy’s half-and-halves I was craving them constantly. Being on Ganymede gave me the perfect opportunity to expand our stores. It's not like we had a lack of storage space. “Ari, I think we have something. When you have the chance, can you make your way to the bridge?” I told him I would be up as soon as I finished the crate I was on.

I ducked out of the reefer and made my way up to the command deck.
Heart
announced me as soon as I walked in, and I shook my head. I asked what he had. “I think this may be the one we have been waiting for. It's a request for us to transfer a fairly large shipment of crystallic drone chips. There is a need for a ship with magnetic sealing capability.” I asked what the catch was. He was talking about high-end gear, and despite our recent successes, we were still rookies. “We need to pick the shipment up soon, and it needs to be delivered within three weeks. It will, however, give us a solid visa to enter Terra controlled space.” I told him to sign us up and get us prepped for the takeoff. I then stopped, and asked what he meant by a pickup. “The shipment is on Titan. I believe we have barely enough time to make it there. I would suggest buckling in. I need to turn the gravity down, or you will probably become extremely nauseous as we leave.” I had perhaps three seconds of Ganymede's gravity before we went null, and I felt the decel dampers kick to full. I grabbed my chair, quickly pulled on my harness, and watched the front viewport accelerating at what I guessed was close to unregulated speeds.

Our quick upward rise saw a shift from the light blue of a normal sky to the salted black of space in less than a minute. I felt gravity slowly return to normal “The conn is yours if you want it, Captain.” I told him he was fine, but a little warning next time would be great. He had us on course towards Saturn's moon Titan. Luckily, Jupiter and Saturn were relatively close in orbit at this point, so we weren't making a huge detour, but we did have to hit the far side of the planet to get to Titan.

Titan was the central hub of Saturn much like Ganymede was Jupiter's. The sheer number of moons the two planets had dictated each needed someplace to be. The planets couldn't because of both their size and composition, but the two moons made perfect choices. Rather than Terraform Titan like most of the rest of the system, we slowly modified the sub-surface to make it comparable to Terra, while leaving the moon's surface alone. It shared many similarities with Mars, but rather focused on mining, leaning towards manufacturing using the Saturn's moons, and the rings for raw product.

The drone chips were one of the products made on Titan. In almost every form of robotic that needed any form basic AI. Although manufactured anywhere, it was cheaper to make them and ship them from Titan. The same was true for other products. When I was a kid, I always thought it was funny my dad got Marsan made tools for the ranch at a fraction of what it would cost for the same things made on Terra. It wasn't until I was in the Legion and took a few economy classes that the idea actually sunk in. Still boggles the mind, but makes a little more sense.

Heart
had us on an extremely aggressive flight plan. We were well below his max acceleration, but fast enough to draw attention if anyone was looking. Luckily, it's a very big system, and we were a very small ship. I asked him what the rush was. “We have spent quite a lot of time in preparations, and this is the first real chance we have had. If the current market trends are any indication, Terra based shipments have slowed tremendously. I believe that if we miss this, there may not be another chance for quite some time.” His logic was sound. Leaving the Galactic Union had ramifications above and beyond the political. When a planet isn't playing nice politically, they generally aren't playing nice economically either. That did beg the question of whether this shipment was strictly legal. “As near as I can tell. It looks like a high priority request, which only FrenCorp could deliver on. I was not able to get more information than that. Their security is quite good, and I did not want to alert them.”

FrenCorp was a solid player on Titan. They were far from the largest industrial producers but were one of the oldest. The company dated back to the early days of angrav and were one of the leaders in developing the first functional models for Terra to Lunar transport. That, in turn, led to other advances, and even eventually to the galactic conglomeration. Although small in comparison to Luna Corp,
Heart
was correct not to mess with their security. If he wanted to, he probably had enough raw computing power to find out what he wanted, but not without them knowing, and not without making enemies. Something we didn’t want.

Heart
took the lead on the flight while I prepped the hold, and made sure the main bay was ready. The requirement for magnetic sealing wasn’t unusual but did hamper his ability to use drones down in cargo. His crew of robots wasn't sensitive enough to seal everything to standard, so I needed to do it personally. Most of it involved pulling sensors out of crates and affixing them in preset mounts so he could monitor. The sensors weren’t needed most of the time, and could be easily damaged, so it was safer to keep them locked away than permanently up.

It actually gave me a chance to explore. The funny thing about
Heart
was that I had forgotten how big he was. Designed as a hospital boat, he could easily fit a thousand extra people if he needed to, without using his holds. I had grown so used to going straight from my quarters to the bridge, around the corner I neglected the rest of him. He had fabrication bays, galleys, cargo holds, a hydroponics lab, and a greenhouse. When I found his library, I stood in awe for a good twenty minutes.

This, of course, continued until our arrival on Titan. The visit was short as possible. We didn’t even swap the reactors to standby. By the time we had landed, everything was already sitting on the platform waiting for us.
Heart’s
ramp was down less than a minute before I had a pad in front of me demanding an inspection thumbprint, and people ready to load. I’ll say one thing, they were efficient. After the crew loaded the six large containers, I felt like we were being deported.

Heart’s
exit from Titan was only slightly less madcap than the one from Ganymede. He actually gave me almost a minute to buckle my harness before taking off. It had never occurred to me computers, let alone ships could be impatient. Not that I hadn’t engaged in my fair share of animism, calling other ships she, or even treating gear as living things but merely this specific thought had never crossed my mind.

Heart
was a person. Far older than me in chronological terms, and he was far smarter than me as well. He was also far more limited than I was in many ways. He couldn’t get up and do things. Where I would devour books and media to kill time, this took him fractions of a second, and he lacked others to discuss what he found. Our traveling together was an adventure to him. The actual moving between planetoids, was fluff for him, like breathing was for me. Not something he had to actively think about. He had processes for it.

Since the holds were full, and we actually had a reason to make planet-fall on Terra, we began prepping the second part of the mission. Although we had always had a rough outline, our draft relied on all the moving pieces beforehand. The Titan shipment closed all those loopholes and allowed us to focus on the particulars.

We had an actual destination as opposed to only a general location like a planet. Terra is a big place. Unlike Luna and Ganymede, which only have one place to park each, landing at home could be almost anywhere. The shipment was scheduled for Oceania, on the research platform off the southwestern coast of the Southern Commonwealth States.

I’d never been there having been born and raised in the Northern Reaches, but they spoke the same dialect, and I was nominally a Citizen there. That didn’t really matter though since I was using a forged identity. Made it a hell of a lot easier to fit in and less likely to draw suspicion.

One interesting thing about space travel is it became almost impossible to actually track everyone. Identities became a very fluid concept. Immigration enforcement relied on what database each organization had access to. The falling out Terra had with the Galactic Union meant the Southern Commonwealth shouldn’t have access to any of the old databases, meaning I should be able to ghost myself into their systems using clever forgeries. Having access to high-level executives at Luna was a definite perk.

The major risk as we saw it was whether my original file existed. This was of minimal concern because of the amount of time that had gone by, and the amount of genemod I had gone through in the fifty years of my life. There was enough deviation I wouldn’t show up as myself unless I presented my own idents. The chances of that happening were exactly zero.

We also started putting together gear bags. Nothing too special, but a couple of changes of clothes, a few creds, and some light defensive weaponry. If I had more of the slugthrowers I would have shoved one in each bag.
Heart
offered to make as many as I wanted in one of his fabrication bays, and I seriously considered it, before finally realizing if someone did find my handy piece of hardware I would likely be in much larger trouble. So we stuck to a couple of ampknives and a kinetic energy displacer, generally legal everywhere. Worst thing with those is usually confiscation or a fine.

We also spent what felt like far too much time discussing how we were going to stay on Terra after the drop-off. Simplicity seemed the best solution, so we decided to duplicate the plan from Ganymede. Drop off our load, and head to Oceania and pick up and outbound shipment. If we rented dock space for a couple of months to conduct repairs, we hoped would work as a reasonable cover. We didn’t know how long it would take to actually gather the intel General Campbell wanted but figured the prep work would actually be longer than the mission. That had often been the case in my Legion days at least.

As I’ve mentioned, I love media. All types. I love seeing different renditions of the same story as well. One of my favorites is
The Wizard of Oz
. What’s great about it, is every couple of years someone does a new variation. A new twist. There was the book, then the movie, and the plays, and then books inspired by the movie or the play, and cartoons. Over the centuries, there’ve been hundreds of variations on the same theme. Looking at lots of other stories, there are similar trends. But
The Wizard of Oz
was in my head because “There’s no place like home.”

That was the thought I was having staring at the highly magnified view of Terra as we were approaching.
Heart
had slowed us down to a much more reasonable speed after we had gotten past the asteroid field between Jupiter and Mars. On the return trip, we went over instead of through. We were well within our arrival window for our shipment. We had checked, double-checked, and triple-checked our preparations, and talked our plan
ad nauseum
. All we could do was pull the proverbial trigger.

I was at the conn, but
Heart
called in our flight pattern. We received approval and began our slow approach towards Terra. Unlike everywhere else he and I had visited, Terra has a huge gravity well. About six times Titan’s, Ganymede’s, or the Moon’s. As such we couldn’t approach at speed. If we tried, we would bounce off the atmosphere at best or at worst burn up on entry. So we had to slow to a relative crawl as we made our way.

“Is everything alright Ari? Your biometrics are elevated outside normal” I told him I just had the jitters.
Heart
wasn’t worried about the approach since he was designed to do this kind of thing, but I’d been in some rather hairy planet jumps back when I was a young trooper. Once dirtside, we were relatively safe surrounded by a thousand buddies. In space, making planet-fall, surrounded by a tin can, everything wanted to kill us. “I am not sure I understand the reaction. You have done this multiple times before. Past experiences show this is a safe form of travel.”

I ended up talking about irrational fear. We were still several minutes out, but this actually took my mind off things. I pointed out simply because I know something, doesn’t mean I feel something. For a while, I thought he was satisfied with the answer, until probably a good two minutes later. “I think I understand. I occasionally find problems in where I know the correct or most correct answer, but those selections will not lead to the outcome I desire. It causes process backlogs, which I believe are analogous to your biometric responses.”

That presented a very interesting line of thought, I had not considered before. I knew he had emotions or, at least, parallels to human emotions. I’d caught hints of humor, and even anxiety previously. But could
Heart
feel actual fear? What about sadness or rage? We were forced to shelve the discussion once we got into Terran control space.

Heart
routed almost all direct communications over the bridge speakers as a courtesy, even if I didn’t actually need to be involved in them. I had given him permission to use my voice and name for anything routine, and I trusted his judgment, as much as I trusted him with my life while we were flying. The default challenge to entering Terra came over, and he answered with the pertinents. I know he could hold multiple conversations simultaneously, but speaking to him while he was talking to someone else wasn’t a skill I could master, so I found it disconcerting as hell to talk to him while he was talking to ground control, in my voice.

Once control cleared us, we began our slow descent. I could already feel the pull of gravity through the decel. A gentle reminder we were falling ever so slowly. As the screens shifted out of golden red of passing into the upper atmosphere, I felt a very hard drop and an immediate acceleration forward. The situation seemed off.

Rather than my controls lighting up with angrav, the sublights kicked to full. Before I could ask
Heart
what in the hell was going on, the incoming sirens were going off, and my hands started reacting of their own accord. “Anti-satellite missiles have been launched at us. I do not have offensive countermeasures. Attempting to outrun.” Normally there was a good amount of emotion in his voice but he had gone as cold as I had ever heard him.

Heart
was dropping a lot of power into his engines, according to my readout, and quickly passed a speed I considered unsafe. Not that I considered atmospheric entry speed safe to begin with, but there’s a difference going so fast surrounded by nothing and when falling to Terra at over Mach twenty-five. I brought our primary shields to full, from normal entry mode, and started to power up the ion cannons, while seeing if we had anything that might be useful in dealing with these.

It looked like four missiles had been launched, and one clipped us while we were blind during entry. We had good shields and we were able to take one. My gut told me maybe one more, but not at this speed. The thing about missiles and aircraft is it doesn’t take a lot of direct damage to destroy one. It’s not the explosive that does it, but the air ripping the ship apart while moving quickly. Designed to absorb and displace kinetic energy our shields could take flying rocks. An explosive, even a small one would temporarily overcome them, leaving us very vulnerable to further damage. A second missile would kill us at any speed, especially without that protection. We needed these things off our tail soon.

Heart
was bringing us as low as he could, skimming the Southern Ocean in an almost straight east line. I popped a few blasts from the ions, but to no avail, then tried a localized EMP managing to get one them to nose dive into the drink. My moment of happiness was cut short when
Heart
announced “We have six aircraft inbound. Coming fast.”

I glanced at the heads-up, looking at the missiles and the new aircraft. My subconscious ran the math before I had a chance to do so intentionally. Unless we could get these missiles off of us in seconds, the aircraft would tear us apart as soon as they arrived. Despite my confidence in
Heart’s
shields, I knew he could only absorb so much punishment before we would succumb.

Who the devil did we piss off? Who in the hell could have known we were coming down? I was trying to push these paranoid thoughts down when I felt the shudder from
Heart’s
tail section, heard the explosion over our speakers, and we hit the water at speed. Everything went black.