The Jovian Run: Sol Space Book One (14 page)

              The two men mused on this for a minute. Templeton finally spoke up. “So I don’t get it. Are you for or against the AI research bill?”

              “Oh, I’m against it,” she replied without hesitation. “I don’t think we should pursue AI at this point.” Templeton smiled in triumph and John frowned. “But not because I’m afraid of what they would do to us. I’m afraid of what we would do to them.” And with that, she stood up, dropped her spoon in the sink, placed her cup in the recycler, and went back to Thomas Kyd.

Day nine.

              In the captain’s chair of the cockpit, Clea Staples was brooding. Charis sat at her astrogation console. To her right sat Bethany, though as usual, the back of the pilot’s chair hid her from view. To Bethany’s right sat Yegor, and he was looking expectantly at his captain. Staples’ short blonde hair was pinned down with her barrettes in anticipation of weightlessness, and her slightly cleft chin sat in the palm of her hand, her elbow resting on the armrest of the chair. She wasn’t happy.

              “Are you absolutely sure we haven’t received any personal transmissions from Mars since we’ve left, Yegor?” Staples inquired, though she knew the answer already.

              “Afraid not, Captain. I checked the log three times. No message from Jordan Fecks, no message from anyone for you, or for anyone for that matter.” Yegor continued to regard her, and she continued to gaze through the window at nothing in particular.

              She tapped the fingers of her other hand several times, as if she were expecting the message to come through any minute. Finally, she spoke. “Okay. If I were going to hear from her, I would have heard by now. We’re due to stop thrusting and to drift for a few days in zero G. It’s as good a time as any to go dark. I assume the lack of gravity will be a help and not a hindrance to your work?”

              “
Da, Kapitan
. Some components of the coms system are heavy. It’s easier to get the new coms suite around the ship in zero G too. Besides, I’m used to working in zero G from my days with GTS.” Yegor sounded rather like a child eager for a new toy.

              “And there is no way to install the new suite without losing both coms and local radar?”

              Yegor shook his head. “Sorry, Captain. We’ll still be able to use our watches and shipboard coms, but nothing outside the ship will work.”

              “That’s all right. It’s not like anyone is talking to us anyway.” She sighed and looked out the window at the stars again. “And it’s not like there’s anything out here to see either. Let’s prep to cut thrust and then make our turn. We’ll resume thrust in… how long, Charis?”

              Charis’ fingers ran over her controls, and then she looked up. “We should start deceleration at point six G in three days. Best window is to start between ten and eleven. That should put us at the same orbital speed and altitude as Cronos Station in twelve days.  With any luck, we can dock in time for dinner.”

Day eleven.

              Staples floated down two decks in the elevator. It was always an odd sensation, feeling the metal box move around her.  If she hadn’t tucked her toes under a conveniently placed strap, she would have found herself pressed to the ceiling. Once out, she pushed herself with the various grab-bars situated in the hallway to the closed door of the ReC. Upon reaching it, she reoriented herself, taking hold of one of the nearby wall-mounted bars, turned the latch, and opened the heavy metal door. It swung open on well-oiled hinges, and the captain expertly slipped inside and used the wall as leverage to pull and secure the hatch behind her. Dinah was standing, more or less, at one of the control panels situated under the glass windows that overlooked the reactor, her feet wedged under the currently extended brace bars to keep her from floating away. She had a steadying hand on the control panel and was turned half around to regard her visitor. As was her custom, Dinah was wearing a grey tank top, dirty cargo pants, and leather combat boots. One eyebrow was arched in expectation.

              “Welcome to the ReC, sir,” she said. It was clear from her body language that she would prefer to continue with her work, but a well-instilled sense of protocol kept her facing her employer.

              “Hello, Dinah. Please,” she gestured at the panel, “continue. I wanted to see how things are with the engines.”

              Dinah turned her back to her, monitoring numbers on the surface built into the console and making minor adjustments to various sliders and knobs as the information in front of her changed. “You could just read my reports, sir.”

              “You know you are the only person on this ship who writes me reports, don’t you?” Staples asked. She pushed off from the wall and drifted over to a neighboring control panel, not too close to the engineer, and looked down through the window. “Everybody else just comes to talk to me in person.”

              Dinah replied without looking up from her work. “Would you like me to deliver my reports in person, sir?”

              Staples shook her head and a few stray blonde hairs waved back and forth as she did so. She considered, not for the first time, the other woman’s choice in hairstyles. “No, I want you to do it your way. But since I’m here, why don’t you tell me anyway?”

              Dinah let out a breath that might have been a sigh, gathered her thoughts, and then spoke. “We thrust consistently for seven days between Earth and Mars, including a fairly large strain when we went up to three Gs for a few hours. We didn’t have time to do anything but the most cursory of maintenance checks on Mars.” There was a pause as she entered some data. “Then we were under thrust for another nine days. The engines, the reactor, they’re rated for it, but then this ship isn’t brand new either. So now that we’re drifting for three days, I’m taking all of the reactor chambers but one offline to run diagnostics. There’s not enough time to clean them all, but three is a bit dirty, so John and I will be doing a wipe tomorrow before we begin thrust again.”

              “I appreciate that. I also think you’re being overly cautious. We’ve been under thrust, more or less constantly, for over a month at a time without going through all that.”

              “Better safe than sorry, sir.”

              “You could take the evening off,” she ventured. “It’s dinner shift now, but we’ve got a movie night planned in the mess hall.” She regarded the woman as she spoke. Her face made her glad she wasn’t inviting her to poker night.

              “Thank you, sir. I’ll consider it.” There was still no eye contact.

              A few moments passed while Dinah continued to work. Finally, Staples said, “Dinah.” She did so in such a way to cause the engineer to look up at her. “What are you doing here?”

              Dinah gestured back at her console. “As I said, sir, I am running a diagnostic on the reaction chambers and prepping them for…”

              Staples interrupted her. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. You’re one of the most talented engineers I’ve ever seen or heard of. You handled that dust up over the satellite masterfully. You’re a creative problem solver, a hard worker, and you’ve gotten us out of more than a few scrapes over the past two years.” The captain did not expect her deluge of compliments to move the woman any more than her invite to movie night had, and she was not disappointed, but that was not her intention. She pressed on. “You could easily land a larger commission on another ship. We both know I can’t afford to pay you what you’re worth.”

              Dinah finally did her the honor of pausing in her work and looking her full in the face. “Money is not the only reason people do things, sir. In fact, in my experience, it is one of the worst reasons people do things.”

              “Oh, I don’t know. The drive for profit has brought about some amazing inventions. We are currently living on one of them. Space ships are freedom incarnate, but they didn’t give this one to me for free.”

              “Space ships,” Dinah mused. “You can add to that list of profit-based inventions weapons, slavery, subjugation of the poor, armed occupations, and exploitation of countries. Shall I continue, sir?” She became more heated as she spoke, and it was clear to Staples that she had stepped into something she had not intended.

              “Fair points all.” She attempted to backpedal a bit. “Some would say that money is not evil; it’s what people do with it that defines them.”

              “Mostly rich people say that. Are you trying to fire me, sir?” Dinah raised her eyebrows.

              Staples tried and failed to stifle a laugh. “Certainly not. But I was in business long enough to know that when I’ve got an asset that I can’t afford, I should be planning to be without it sooner rather than later.”

              “And what business was that, sir?” Dinah was looking back at her panel, but she wasn’t working. It was surprising to hear her ask a personal question, but Staples guessed she couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Few of the crew knew what she had done before buying a space ship and heading out to Sol space, though she knew that they conjectured and traded rumors.

              “Sorry, with what battalion did you say you served, Ms. Hazra?” Staples countered. Her tone was playful, but she knew that she was treading on shaky ground.

              There was a moment of flat silence, and then the engineer grunted. “You don’t have to worry about me, sir. I’m not planning on going anywhere. If you want an answer as to why, then I’ll say this: you don’t care about money either, and that’s more than I can say about anyone else who ever gave me orders.” She resumed her work.

              Staples looked taken aback. “You don’t think I care about money?”

              “No, sir, I don’t.”

              “Then what
do
you think I care about?” she asked, quite curious for the answer.

              “If you’re going to compound chief engineer and tactical officer with duties as a psychologist, sir, I really may ask for a raise.”

Staples smiled broadly. “I guess I asked for that. Whatever I’m doing right, I am glad to hear it keeps you here. Everyone on this ship is better for it. Maybe we can bear our souls and pasts to each other some other time.”

              “I’ll look forward to that, sir.” The ironic tone of her reply was uncharacteristically devoid of equivocation.

              The captain pushed off from the control panel back to the door and let herself out of the ReC. She glided along the corridor, correcting herself with little pushes here and there, and turned right at the next junction. As she reached the hull of the ship, she kicked herself left again and began the push to the elevator that would carry her up to deck two and the mess hall beyond. She drifted past a porthole, and a hole in the stars caught her eye. She turned her head to look, but she was already past the window. She halted at the next one, grabbing on with her hands as her legs swung past her, and gazed out. There were no stars. It took her eyes a few seconds to adjust and her brain another second to process what she was seeing: another ship, painted jet black, right next to hers.

Chapter 8

There was only one type of crew that Staples knew of that would paint their ship black. She keyed her watch for simultaneous shipwide broadcast and nearly yelled into it.

              “Pirates!” Her voice rung out from the speakers and reverberated through the hall. “Pirates starboard side!  Security teams arm up, senior staff to the cockpit, everyone else get in your quarters and stay there.” She took a precious second to rekey her watch to the cockpit coms alone. “Bethany, evasive action!  Pull us away port side.” Without waiting for a reply, she began pushing herself down the hallway as fast as she dared.  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the dark shape grow even more in the portholes she passed. She wondered for a second how the hell they had managed to pull right up alongside
Gringolet
without them knowing when she suddenly remembered Yegor’s maintenance. She cursed loudly.

As she reached the elevator, a voice came through the speaker of her watch. It was Yegor’s. “No one’s here but me, Captain. Everyone went to dinner.” He sounded panicked and upset.

“Dammit,” she swore again as she maneuvered herself into the elevator. “Okay, Bethany and the others will be on the way. Can you pull the ship away?” She jammed her finger on the button for the appropriate deck and held it there impatiently. The elevator doors lazily slid closed.

“I don’t think… I used to fly small ships, Captain. I don’t know…”

“Try!” Staples shouted. Suddenly there was a jarring thunk that she felt in her bones. The entire ship seemed to shake for a moment around her. Fortunately, the elevator mechanism continued to rise smoothly. “Okay, Yegor? Don’t touch the controls. Either they’re throwing things at us, or they’ve just made a magnetic junction, probably with a boarding tube. If you pull away now, you’re likely to rip a hole in the side of the ship.”

Yegor’s voice came through again. “
Da, Kapitan
, but wouldn’t that be better than pirates on the ship? Pressure doors would seal, yes?”

“In theory, yes.” The elevator neared the end of its ponderous climb. “And we may have to do that, but we’re not there yet. I’ll be in the cockpit in one minute.” The doors slid open and she pushed off with her legs, moving rapidly down corridors to the spine of the ship and the cockpit beyond.

              As the other ship’s boarding tube magnetically sealed to the side of
Gringolet
, Dinah was closing and latching the door to the ReC. She pushed and pulled her way down the corridor, moving much faster than Staples had scarcely a minute before. She made the same turns, then brought herself to an abrupt halt at the first porthole she came to. By craning her neck, she was able to see where the boarding tube was attached, one deck down and several yards towards the stern of the ship. Upon reaching the elevator a few seconds later, she produced a screwdriver and struck the safety latch hidden at the top of the door, which promptly slid open. Grabbing the upper lip of the elevator portal, she swung her legs up and in, aimed herself down the shaft, relatively speaking, and fired herself off at the door below her. From inside the elevator shaft, it was a simple matter to trigger the door release mechanism and to propel herself out onto the lower deck.

              Another few twists and turns brought her face to face with Kojo Jang and his two new security personnel. Jang had evidently been near a weapons locker, because he was armed with a rifle, several clips of ammunition, and a pistol. Parsells and Quinn, rifles slung, were moving awkwardly behind him when Dinah came around the corner. When Jang stopped short, they nearly ran into him.

              “Corridor B17,” she said without preamble. “That’s where they’ll be coming through.” Jang only nodded silently and tossed her the pistol from his holster. It floated straight at her, and she caught it as she moved towards a branching hallway that would take them in the direction they needed to go. Jang and Dinah led, and the two other men followed, a small flotilla of armed crew members.

Dinah allowed Jang to surge ahead as they neared the door that led to the corridor where she had estimated the boarders would be cutting through. The large bald man grabbed the door handle roughly with his ebony hand and eased it open. They could immediately hear and smell the cutting, though they could not yet see it. The air was acrid with the scent of a focused laser cutting metal. The hallway in front of them branched left and right, and it was from the left that the sounds of hull breach were coming. Once the door was open, Jang eased his head around the corner and gazed down the hall.

The wall of the ship was perhaps six meters away, and another hallway that led towards the aftmost compartments of the ship branched off after half of that distance. The smoke and choking gasses released by the laser cutting through the hull were becoming worse, and it was clear that the pirates’ circular entryway was nearly finished. Jang checked his rifle, cocked it, and removed the safety. Dinah readied her pistol and gestured to Quinn to move up. Quinn did his best to push past the woman and placed himself in a sitting position by using his legs and back to brace himself against either side of the corridor they occupied. Jang floated above him, leaning out the best he could and training his rifle on the hole. It was a poor place for cover, but shooting a semi-automatic rifle in zero G was problematic at best. If the shooter was not secured, they could easily send themselves spinning out into the line of fire or accidentally aim a weapon at a friend.

Dinah tapped her watch and spoke into it. “Captain, I’m with Jang, Parsells, and Quinn. We’re at B17. They’re cutting through into the ship. We’re armed and ready to repel, but it’s not a very defensible position.”

Staples voice came through immediately. “Roger. They may just want fuel or cargo. Don’t put yourselves at risk for-” And then there was no time to talk because the circular disc of the hull had come loose. It moved purposefully into the corridor; someone was behind it, pushing it forward, using it as cover. Jang opened fire, and the sound was deafening in the enclosed space. Quinn was shooting as well, but there was very little of the aggressors to see. It was easy to hide behind cover when one could travel horizontally. Bullets thudded against the large metal disc, its sides still orange and glowing from the heat of the laser.

After a few moments of fire, Jang realized that it was pointless until he could find a clear shot. He ceased and yelled for Quinn to do the same. The large man fired a few more rounds, then complied with the order. Jang shook his head in dismay.

“How are they steering that thing?” Quinn asked.

“I don’t know. Probably magnetic grips on the other side,” Jang conjectured.

Dinah nodded. “If they’ve got jetpacks, they can push that piece of the hull all the way up here.”

              Jang leaned out again to look. “They’re not firing back. Perhaps we should approach and try-” his sentence cut off as his head snapped back and he was thrown violently across the narrow hallway and into Quinn, who swore and tried to move out of the way. Dinah and Parsells both braced a hand in the open doorway and pulled the limp body of the security chief back through the door. Quinn regained his bearings and leveled his rifle.

              “They’re shooting now!” he yelled, and fired off several shots which pinged harmlessly against the disc. This time he saw it: a hand with a weapon extended around the disc and fired. He jerked his head back just in time, and some large, slow moving projectile bounced off of the wall where his head had been half a second earlier.

              Dinah was holding the unmoving and unresponsive Jang in one arm, her other hand drum-tight around a grab bar on the wall. Parsells and Quinn’s features showed a mix of stress and fear as they stared at him. His eyes were closed. She examined the wound to his head and then noticed the blood on her hand. She looked up, wide eyed, at the two men, and then back down at her bloody hand.

              “Lock this door, now!” she barked. “Don’t open it for anyone or anything.” The woman did not wait for a reply, but swung herself around and launched herself back down the hall the way they had come, looking for all the world like a mouse scurrying away from a hungry cat.

              When the captain reached the cockpit, it was empty. Staples suffered a stunned moment of silence, then moved into action. She pushed herself over to the starboard cockpit window and was just able to make out the boarding tube latched onto her ship like the proboscis of some venomous insect. Even at only a few meters away, the other ship was difficult to see because of its black finish. She judged that it was smaller and faster than her vessel; perhaps an old style military interceptor. There had been little in the way of large scale space combat since space ships had become a fixture in the inner system, but that didn’t stop governments and corporations from preparing for it. This was just the type of vessel that was designed to do exactly what it was doing: board a larger, slower ship and steal cargo, take hostages, or commandeer the vessel.

              “Captain!” Charis shouted as she soared into the cockpit, accidently sending herself past the doorway and into the consoles at the front of the room. She worked to reorient herself in the air, and managed to save herself from anything more than a bruised shoulder. Though her blonde hair was in a ponytail, it threatened to obscure her vision as she righted herself.

              “I’m here, Charis,” Staples said as she turned herself around and pushed off for her captain’s chair.

              A minute later, Bethany and Templeton had joined them in the room.

              “What do we know?” Templeton asked as he clipped himself into his seat with his safety harness.

              “First, did anyone see Yegor? He was up here a minute ago,” Staples inquired.

              “I passed him,” came Bethany’s reedy voice.

              “Where was he going?” Staples struggled to retain control of her voice. She knew from experience that yelling at the girl would only cause her to shut down.

              “I don’t know. The back of the ship, I think. He didn’t say.” The pilot’s eyes were large with fear.

              “Okay, we’ll deal with that in a minute.”

              Charis said desperately, “Captain, can’t we just pull away?”

              Staples opened her mouth to answer, but then Dinah’s voice came out of the watch on her wrist. “Captain, I’m with Jang, Parsells, and Quinn. We’re at B17. They’re cutting through into the ship. We’re armed and ready to repel, but it’s not a very defensible position.”

She tapped her watch to reply. “Roger. They may just want fuel or cargo. Don’t put yourselves at risk for-” Suddenly there was the sound of gunfire and the line went dead. A half a second of silence followed. She forced herself to answer her navigator’s question. “Once they form a magnetic junction, that bond is tougher than steel. It has to be, or this wouldn’t work. If we pull away, we could well rip a hole in the side of the ship. We may have to do that, but we’ve got a security team down there fighting, and I don’t want to take the risk of blowing them out into space.”

“Can we shoot them?” Charis asked. Staples was reminded of her similar question two and a half weeks prior during their conflict with the
Doris Day
.

“We can,” Templeton said suggestively, though he knew what his captain’s answer would be.

“We’re too close. At this range, shrapnel and debris could tear us apart. Besides, they haven’t shot at us.” Templeton looked at her with wide-eyed frustration, though he would not contradict her in a crisis situation. She addressed his objection anyway. “I’m not saying they’re friendly. What I mean is this: they got the drop on us. Completely. If they wanted to destroy the ship and sift through the remains, they had every opportunity. They don’t want to kill us.”

“You mean they don’t want to destroy the ship,” Templeton countered.

“You’re right. It is very possible they want to kill us and take the ship. If it becomes clear that that is their intention, then we’ll do what we have to. I’ll tear this ship to pieces myself before I let them have it.” Charis and Bethany both looked at their captain. “But,” she said to calm them. “But, they may just be here for a smash and grab. Maybe they want fuel, maybe cargo, maybe parts. If that’s the case, I’m inclined to let them have them.”

“But Captain, if they take all of our fuel…” Charis’ question did not need finishing.

“Then we’ll drift here until a rescue ship comes for us. I can live with that, but I won’t trade lives for gas.”

“Well how do we know what they’re here for? Wait until they kill one of us?” Templeton inquired desperately.

“If Jang and Dinah and the others have them pinned at B17, the only areas they have access to are the engines and rear storage. As far as I know, no one is back there. Except…” Her voice drifted off. She punched another button on her watch. “Dinah, come in.” There was no response. Precious seconds ticked away. “Dinah!” Nothing. She hit another button. “Jang, are you there?” Silence. “Jang?”

A second later, Parsells’ voice came through loudly. “Jang is hit!” No sounds of gunfire or fighting echoed in the background. Parsells’ voice was oddly surrounded by silence.

“Is he dead?” Templeton asked.

“No, stunned. They hit him in the head with a stunner. He’s bleeding, but he’s just out cold.” Parsells’ reply was abrupt and tinged with doubt.