Spaceship Thrive (Thrive Space Colony Adventures Book 2)

by Ginger Booth

  “I don’t know. Figured I’d measure first, characterize the problem.”

  “Seitz?” Sass asked hopefully.

  “He’s measuring, too,” Copeland replied. “Doesn’t have a clue what to do either. But real handy with the meters.”

  “Awesome,” Sass breathed. “Gossamer? Maybe we consult their engineers, or Hell’s Bells.”

  “Thought I’d start with Benjy.” Copeland snorted. “Though brain-boy just got a C in Physics. Electricity and magnetism. His worst grade ever.”

  “That’s not like him,” Sass murmured. “Be nice.”

  “He’s my room-mate. I can rib him if I want. Kid needs to toughen up.”

  Sass’s lip quirked up in involuntary amusement. “True.”

  “Anyway. Characterize. Then try to make the problem interesting. You know, Kassidy’s pictures, the rocks, the wreckage. Give it a little flair. Then beam it to Mahina University.”

  Sass blinked. “What?”

  “They’ve got this Ask-an-Engineer program,” Copeland replied. “Public service. They get a ton of requests. So the trick is to make your problem sexy enough to attract some engineers willing to play. Otherwise, you know, the waiting list is long. If you’re lucky, a few beginners get stuck with your question for homework next semester.”

  Sass blinked again. That was fascinating, but not what she meant. “We can talk to Mahina University?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “I thought our only comms went through Mahina Actual Security.”

  “Cap, our comms are a radio tight-beam pointed at Mahina. From here, a tight beam covers the whole moon. Mahina U is in Mahina Actual. They just listen to a different band, headers, protocols. Benjy’s been sending his homework all along.” Copeland chuckled. “And getting crap grades back.”

  Sass nodded thoughtfully. “So it’s only MA who’s listening, is the problem. MA Security and the university. Nobody else minding their radios.” She wished she’d thought of this before they launched for the orbital.

  Copeland contradicted her. “Schuyler dispatch monitors radio 24/7, cap.” Schuyler was a modest town compared to MA, but the largest settler community. They sported several factories, an atmo tower, and more to the point, served as the settler goods distribution hub.

  “Do we know how to contact someone through Schuyler dispatch?”

  “Dunno about ‘we,’” Copeland said. “But I do. That operation is in Josiah’s back pocket.”

  The crime boss Josiah headquartered in Schuyler. Clay’s son Hunter put Sass in touch with him. At the time, Sass hoped to use him to bootstrap a settler nanite fabrication business. That hadn’t panned out, but she did break Copeland out of prison for him. And then hired Copeland herself.

  “We could talk to anyone on Mahina, then,” she mused.

  Copeland shrugged. “Talk all you want. Get someone to answer, that’s the trick. Anyway, you’re right. Gossamer would be the first to ask. After Benjy.”

  “Have I told you how much I love and appreciate you yet today, Copeland?” Sass asked. “Because I do. You’re awesome.”

  Copeland scrunched his face to convey his distaste for the mushy stuff. “I ought to get back to it.”

  Sass knocked first, but only as a courtesy. She stuck her head into Benjy and Copeland’s cabin. Abel relieved him for bridge watch half an hour ago.

  The youth was already dead to the world in VR. Strange, he didn’t wear his gauntlets and dance around smiting invisible opponents anymore. He used to get a great workout during his game breaks from studying. Now he lay motionless under a blanket, with a pillow across his midsection. Maybe it interfered with the headpiece.

  Sass wiggled his ankle, but that didn’t rouse him. So she yanked off his visor.

  Benjy shot up onto his arms like a rocket, turning beet red. “Don’t do that!” he gasped.

  Sass frowned and popped the visor on her own head.

  The label on the Hooker Feller Tio was entirely redundant. The vivid sensations shocked her. She quickly caught the gist of the background orgy of kinky-clad half nude bodies too. She could even smell the scene, familiar scents from prostitution raids during her cop days. Within seconds, she ripped the visor from her head and powered it off. She held it in her hands for a moment, trying to get her brain to think of a captain response, instead of her knee-jerk reactions as cop, woman, and mom. In slow motion, she placed the visor on his toy shelf, and powered off the main unit.

  “God,” Benjy breathed in horror.

  Sass normally would have perched on his daybed with him. Under the circumstances, she leaned against Copeland’s racks, since his bottom bunk was full of uncomfortably pointy equipment.

  Rewind, that’s the ticket, Sass decided. “I came to ask you, why the C? In Physics.”

  Benjy sat up cross-legged, clutching his pillow for protection. The kid was so completely mortified, he couldn’t respond.

  “I guess I have my answer,” Sass mused. “Too busy with your new porn addiction. Where did you get this game?” On Mahina, feelie VR was highly illegal.

  Benjy gulped. “Everyone plays it on the orbital. And – here. There’s a dozen player characters on the local net. I don’t know how many people.”

  Sass’s eyes narrowed. “This filth has spread among my crew?”

  “No! I don’t think so, anyway. I assume just the guards and Seitz. People have more than one character. Um.”

  “Role playing,” Sass supplied, since the kid was at a loss. “Let me guess. Male, female, and both. You have multiple characters for whatever sex you’re in the mood for. And being an adventurous young idiot, you try one of everything, and go back for seconds on your favorites.”

  Benjy hung his head in his hands. “No one’s supposed to know what roles you play. We keep it secret.”

  “Of course you do. Figured out why it’s illegal as hell yet?”

  He didn’t reply. She’d take that as a Yes.

  “Back to my question,” Sass decided. “You’re standing watch 8 hours a day on the bridge. How could you possibly not have time for homework?” A horrifying thought occurred to her. “Benjy, I swear, if you’ve been lost in VR while you’re guarding our safety –”

  “No!” That brought his head up to face her, eyes bugged out. “Never! Sass, I swear it! I wouldn’t do that!”

  “You would,” Sass said thoughtfully. “If you’re an addict. Much becomes clear now about MO.” She pressed her lips, reviewing what she’d experienced of the place, some casual comments now subject to radical reinterpretation. “The addiction progresses. Your judgment and ethics fall by the wayside.”

  He’s not Paul, Sass rebuked herself. Porn isn’t opiates. Benjy won’t die of this. ‘Mortal embarrassment’ is not fatal.

  But most of all, Benjy wasn’t Paul. He wasn’t her son, he was her crewman. And a little porn was a commonplace with guys this age. Testosterone-poisoned to age 25, most of them.

  “I’m not an addict,” Benjy attempted.

  “Maybe not yet,” Sass allowed. “But if you ever use VR on bridge watch. If you ever touch Jules, or anyone else the way you play sex games in VR. I swear to you, Benjy –”

  “I’m not! I wouldn’t! I’m not that person! Hell…”

  “You should be damned grateful it’s me who found this instead of Abel.”

  Benjy’s crumpled face showed clear skepticism on that point.

  Sass snorted. “Because I’m a girl? You think that makes me worse? No. I’m an ex-cop, Benjy. All too familiar with the depraved and stupid. I won’t have this filth on my ship. You hear me?”

  His eyes shot to his gaming gear in alarm.

  Sass considered him. “I’d have to confiscate the gear, wouldn’t I? Everyone’s.” She plucked up his game rig.

  He scrunched his eyes shut in agony at the thought. “Captain, please…”

  “A week off to start,” she ordered. “Then we talk after you detox.”

  “That’s not why I got a C in Physics,” h
e pleaded. “It’s just really hard. Electricity and magnetism, funky invisible fields. The calculus – I’ve barely mastered the math, and then I’m applying it to all this stuff I have no feel for. Captain, it’s a killer course. They use it to decide who’s a scientist, and who’s ‘just a tech.’ Guess I found out. I’m a hack, not a great mind.”

  “We could really use somebody this week who knows electricity and magnetism.”

  “Captain, over half the class flunked. I got a passing grade.”

  “Are you arguing for your VR gear back? So you can jack off with imaginary friends? Though if you’re playing with Wilder’s group, you’re abusing real people.”

  He eyed the equipment in her arms with loathing. “No.” He sighed.

  Sass fished out her pocket tablet. “Wilder to Acosta’s cabin.”

  The sergeant was in his own berthing. He stepped through the adjoining showers rather than respond by intercom. “Captain?” The word trailed off as he saw the VR gear in her arms.

  “Sergeant, I’d like all VR gear in the ship secured. Off limits.”

  Wilder hesitated. “That’s a problem.”

  “It is,” Sass agreed. “That’s why they need to get over it. You too, I suppose.”

  Wilder sighed and worried his lip. “Thing is, captain… I tried that already. That’s what led to the, um, live action role-playing incident a while back. I wasn’t doing too well without it myself.”

  “Withdrawal is survivable,” Sass asserted.

  “My people won’t cooperate, captain,” Wilder confessed. “Seitz especially. All their energy will be funneled into getting their VR back, instead of what they’re supposed to be doing. They’ll fight. Morale and discipline shot to hell. You don’t understand. We don’t live on MO. We live in that VR world. Leave the rack for crap food, abuse, lousy job, filthy corridors…”

  “You’re not in MO.”

  Wilder nodded a yes-and-no.

  Sass sighed. “Compromise. One hour a day rations. No equipment to exit your berth. None of my crew involved – ever. Discipline of the MO group is your job, sergeant. Can you do it under those conditions? And not contaminate my people?”

  “We didn’t do squat to your kid!”

  “Then who gave him –”

  “Mossman,” Benjy interrupted. “I worked with him during the plumbing job. Wilder’s crew didn’t turn me onto VR, captain. I did that to myself. And I was repulsed and disgusted, and I ran away. And I got home and – jacked in to explore.”

  “Of course you did. Alright, sergeant. Make it so.”

  The guard reached for Benjy’s gear in her arms. She narrowed her eyes at him dangerously. He withdrew his hands. “Two sessions, captain? Maybe half hour twice a day?”

  Sass searched his face. Wilder’s tough guy act frayed around the edges. He was scared. She judged him unsure of how to maintain his authority under the challenge. Sass couldn’t imagine a single one of her army sergeants back on Earth having that problem. But then, they wouldn’t have shown their doubts to her. To their officers? Perhaps. More likely to another noncom.

  “Do what you need to do, sergeant.” He turned to go in relief. “And sergeant? The auto-doc issues sedatives. If anyone needs them.”

  He nodded jerkily. “Thank you, captain.”

  “Can I –?” Benjy attempted.

  “You quit cold turkey,” Sass clarified for the young man. “You’ve only been on this crap, what, a week or two?”

  “Yeah,” he conceded.

  “And Wilder?” Sass said. “Two things. There’s probably a whole new menu of killer addictions at the next place. Think it through. I’d like a plan for how you’ll deal with that challenge at Hell’s Bells.”

  “Yes, sar,” Wilder agreed morosely. “Second thing?”

  “Don’t tell Abel,” Sass requested. “He’s pretty straight-laced. This crap would diminish you in his eyes.”

  “But not yours?”

  She shrugged. “Water under the bridge.”

  He frowned, puzzled. He’d never seen a bridge over water.

  “Means we can’t change the past, sergeant. But if it makes you feel better, I’m more concerned with your well-being than your bad habits. Which, to be clear, disgust me.”

  Her revulsion seemed to make him feel better. He could relate to that. He probably recoiled at his first exposure to MO’s VR. But for a soldier, the pressure to conform to the squad was overwhelming.

  “Dismissed, sergeant,” Sass said gently.

  “That’ll teach me to get a C in a hard subject,” Benjy quipped. Sass shot him a hairy eyeball. He added, “Er, sar.”

  “My original point, crewman.”

  “Yes, sar.”

  “Help Copeland. He’s trying to make sure our ESD field emitters weren’t damaged too badly by that flurry of rocks leaving MO. If your homework allows.”

  “I’m on break between semesters,” he replied. “Two weeks off. But I’m on the bridge 8 hours a day.”

  “You send your homework to MU?”

  He nodded. “Sure. Text messages with Dad, too.”

  “I had no idea we had a back door to talk to Mahina,” Sass confessed. “I might want some help with that.”

  “Any time. Um, captain – are we OK?”

  “We will be. My comments to Wilder apply to you as well. Don’t tell Abel. There will be no live action role-playing. At least not this week.”

  “Yes, sar.”

  26

  Most successful spaceships adopted quasi-military discipline and a firm chain of command.

  Sass caught up with her next quarry, Eli, dangling his legs from the catwalk, watching a gravity ball game in the hold. Kassidy and Jules versus Griffith and Cortez. The teams were surprisingly well matched. Griffith was big and strong but still awkward with his grav generator, and Jules simply clumsy.

  Thunk! Griffith slammed into the slide.

  Sass chuckled and slid into a seat beside the botanist. “He just never gets better at this, does he.”

  Eli smiled. “He is getting better at this.”

  “What is this, by the way?”

  “They’re calling it Quidditch,” Eli explained. “Literary reference. Everyone’s on a tether, and there are the guylines as obstacles. The goal is to catch one of Kassidy’s camera drones, and carry it through the goal hoop.” He pointed to some hoops of air tubing hung to starboard forward and port-side rear of the hold. “Gets fun when they foul themselves on the guylines or each other’s tethers and spin.”

  “How have I missed this sport?” Sass mused.

  “Too many hours stuck in the bridge, I imagine.”

  “Hey, I forgot to thank you. For the clover you added to the planter boxes. That was a lovely birthday present.”

  The botanist turned to her with a surprised smile. “Didn’t think you noticed.”

  “Well, I did. The clover smells great!” she assured him. “And the flowers are stunning. How did you get flowers to bloom so quickly? Is this some kind of scientific genetic mumbo jumbo progress?” She waggled her eyebrows.

  “No, monkey flowers just bloom fast,” Eli explained. “The long-term plantings are coming along.”

  “And the scrubber tree grafts?”

  “I left two with Bertram.” Eli’s voice trailed off, lost. But then he rallied. “I hope you can use the rest for goodwill gifts. Give them to the other ships, Sagamore. Not as good as 4 containers of protein printer stock. But we don’t need a dozen trees in the cargo hold.”

  “But they smell good.” Sass smiled encouragement. “Didn’t go well with Bertram, did it?”

  “I – no. He’s changed.”

  “People do. Last night, Benjy informed me that he is now Ben. Our little boy done grown up.”

  Eli snickered. “Started growing up, anyway.”

  “That,” Sass agreed. “I hear from everyone else, Eli. Not from you. So tell me. What’s happening in Eli’s world?”

  “I’m getting a report ready. I planned to
wait… Never mind. Layman’s summary. Your magic beanstalk effect, how fast the plants grow in the engine room. I found the genetic sequence, that allows the plants to get maximum mileage out of the star drive spectrum.”

  “You did it? Fantastic! Well done, Eli!”

  He tilted his head and looked at her sadly. “But there’s more. Mahina didn’t develop this gene splice. The Gannies did. I believe it was absent of malice.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  Eli sighed. “This splice was introduced into all the crop varieties approved on Mahina. Which is lovely. Except for two things. One, most of those crops grow in sunlight, not star drive.” Eli sighed audibly. “Two, it ruins the protein profile.”

  “Are we talking soybeans?”

  “Yes. The other grains include protein too. But we make protein printer stock from soy.”

  “How bad?”

  “The deficiency is enough to cause failure to thrive syndrome all by itself. If that’s the sole protein source.”

  “My God, Eli! You found it?” Sass threw an arm around his waist and squeezed. “But wait. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Not that simple. Do you remember buying the protein stock for MO? Those came from MA, bulk purchase, usually sold to settler towns. But the protein we’re eating, Abel bought in Schuyler, transit food stocks. Those serve MA, the mines, atmo plants, and our transport drivers. Two different protein profiles. As though one was field grown under the Aloha’s light, and the other grown under star drive light. The latter has a better protein profile. But it’s contaminated with heavy metals. And neither of them is ideal.”

  Sass nodded slowly. “They grow soy under star drive light on the dark side of the moon. Spent mines often have plenty of water, insulated by rock. They set the tunnels up to grow crops. Just add heat and light.”

  “And heavy metals.”

  Sass whispered, “But wouldn’t MA know that their food was bad? And our food.”

  Eli shrugged. “They’re both bad. In different ways. To say a city knows something… No. The city doesn’t know. Some person in the city ought to know. Who, I’m not sure.”

  “But they test the food supply for proteins, don’t they? I mean, it’s our protein stock.”