First Flight

by Claremont, Chris

  She felt a slight pressure up her arm as the dart's solid-fuel package ignited and the miniature rocket sped away; seconds later, a flash from the top of the gantry told her she'd scored a bull's-eye. An hour ago, she would have cheered. Instead she told Ciari to let go.

  He de-powered his boot magnaseals and pushed away from the CM hull. Next, he fired his thrusters, which pulled the line taut and sent them shooting outward from Rockhound in a great, sweeping curve. They had passed the apex and were beginning to swing back in towards the derelict before he gave Nicole the signal to release the tether. It separated without a glitch, leaving Rockhound going one way, while they tumbled the other. Nicole brought her right arm down and he pressed the EMERGENCY switch on her signals panel; then, she did the same on the opposite side for him. Only when they were both broadcasting at full power did they apply the thrust needed to stabilize their flight; and only after that did they get around to unloosing their harnesses.

  Nicole thought of asking where they were, then decided there was no point. Another telltale had shifted red—a steady and degrading pattern—which meant that her brilliant escape, at least insofar as she was concerned, looked to be an utterly wasted effort. She thought she would mind more than she did. All she felt, though, was sleepy. Adrenaline crash? More likely, lack of oxygen or carbon monoxide poisoning as her LifeSystems collapsed. She was even starting to see things—like stars suddenly rear up all big and bright and funny-colored right in front of her, when they should be a cool and unreachable part of the celestial background.

  "You planning on staying out there?" Ciari asked from the step of the Rover hatch. A hand reached out to her. "Or would you rather follow me inside, where there's air to breathe?"

  "I'll follow you anywhere, chum." But she missed with her first try and spun herself into a lazy circle, muttering: "Worse than grabbing the fucking brass ring on the fucking carousel," as she tried again. This time, he left nothing to chance but caught her harness and pulled her through the hatch. He used the EMERGENCY FLOOD as soon as the Rover was secure, the quickest way of establishing an atmosphere, and the moment he had adequate pressure, snapped the locking levers on Nicole's helmet and yanked it off her head. They'd both been floating in near absolute zero space and even though the Rover's internal heaters were full on, the air was bitterly cold, worse than the arctic in mid-winter. But it could be breathed and Nicole thought it wonderful. She hadn't realized how bad off she'd been; five minutes more, max, would have been too late.

  It was the better part of a day before Cat gathered the crew in the C-l wardroom for a conference. Nicole was half stretched out on one of the bulkhead benches, head back, eyes closed, a steaming cup of chicken soup cradled on her breast. Even with the shots Chagay had given her, she still ached from top to toe and she doubted she'd ever again be warm. There was a hollowness deep in her chest as well, made worse by ever-more frequent fits of coughing, which reminded her of how she'd felt after smoking, on a dare, a twenty-dollar Havana cigar.

  Noise from above prompted her to crease open one eye. When Nicole saw Paul and Hana clambering down the accessway from the DropShaft, she let the eye close. They'd been closeted with the Rockhound data packs ever since she and Ciari had returned, trying to decipher them. Judging by their expressions, they hadn't had much success.

  Once everyone was present, the Marshal led off the briefing.

  "I found Citizen Wolfe wearing a full pressure suit." he began, "except for gloves and helmet. I found one glove among a pile of debris at the base of the passage leading to the flight deck, and Lt. Shea found the helmet, wedged tight in a warped, partially closed interior hatch. Presumably, Rockhound suffered a massive explosive decompression and Wolfe was unable to seal his suit before his atmosphere blew away. Under the circumstances, death was probably instantaneous."

  "Any reason to doubt it was an accident?" Cat asked, taking longhand notes as a supplement to the automatic audio/video record the ship's computer was making for the log.

  "You could achieve the same results by tossing the body out an airlock without a helmet and then placing the corpse in Rockhound's Command Module. Or strapping him in his chair and blowing a hatch. There are, as you know, near-infinite possibilities. Unfortunately, all the things we might check to prove or disprove any such suppositions are either missing or heavily damaged. That in itself might indicate foul play, but thus far it would be no more than a circumstantial judgment. And a pretty thin one," he added.

  "Why would anyone go to such trouble?" Chagay asked. "Why would pirates leave a derelict, or even a corpse, when complete destruction would be so much easier, and safer for them? Most illogical."

  "No signs of violence on Phil's body?" Cat asked.

  Ciari shook his head. "I could only make a superficial examination, Cat. From what I saw, what I recorded for Chagay, no."

  She looked across the floor, up the curve, and Chagay replied: "Injuries appeared consistent with the extant situation."

  "What about the flight recorders?" she asked Paul.

  He snorted. "Junk," putting into that one word all a technologist's innate contempt for shoddy workmanship and second-rate material. "Firstly, they're cheap-shop units that barely make minimum NASA standards for a deep space vessel. In addition, there was substantial damage. Evidently, when Rockhound decompressed, some main panels short circuited. Tapes are either burned out or, where they're intact, the magnetic bubble memory fields are so scrambled that data retrieval is impossible."

  Nicole shoved herself up, wincing as phantom shards tore up her side, and tapped a command into the library console. She frowned. "You say the equipment was bad, Paolo?"

  "The pits."

  "Not unusual for a free-lance spacer," Ciari said. "Everything out this far is so expensive, and so scarce, that people buy as cheap as they can, as rarely as they can, and then jury-rig improvements."

  "I know that, Marshal, but it doesn't square with this purchase order."

  "What order, Nicole?" Cat asked.

  "While I was in sickbay, I had Paul query Ceres Base for all the data they had on Mr. Wolfe. According to their file, :when Rockhound docked at Ceres this last trip, Wolfe put her through a complete electronics refit; he had all his existing equipment removed and replaced."

  "Obviously with crap."

  "Not so, Paolo. At most, five years old, purchased from Air Force and NASA. Used, but top line all the way." That brought Paul over to her bench. He peered intently at her screen, then called for his compad. Hana passed it over.

  "Curiouser and curiouser," he muttered when he'd finished comparing notes. "The serial numbers aren't even close. There's been a switch."

  "NASA seconds are cheap compared to brand-new, mint condition hardware," Nicole said, "but we're still talking bucks."

  "A strike," Ciari said softly. "That's the only answer. A Belter upgrades his equipment when he has no choice, or when he's loaded."

  "The stuff Wolfe dumped was comparatively old and worn, nowhere near state of the art," Nicole told them, "but still functional. The refit was a matter of choice, not necessity." She pointed to her scanscreen. "According to Ceres, his bank balance was almost nil, so the purchase price had to be taken out of whatever Wolfe received for his cargo."

  "Which was?" Ciari asked.

  "One megagram canister—shielded—damn! Catch this: 'Contents bonded and secured.' Farallon Associates, licensed shippers. He also stocked up on fresh food."

  "That's the clincher." Ciari leaned over Nicole and tapped the screen. "He splurged, the bleeding asshole. Goddammit, after all these years, with a family at stake, you'd think the fool would know better."

  "So what are we talking about?" Paul wondered aloud. "Wolfe hit, what, a Mother Lode and got ambushed for his good fortune? Claim-jumped?"

  "Archaic terms, DaCuhna," Cat said, voice tinged with sadness and a suddenly pronounced West Texas twang, and indication of how deeply she was affected, "but appropriate. Hardly funny." Paul's grin faded and he mutte
red an apology. Nicole punched him softly in the shoulder. "The Belt," Cat went on, "is simply too by-God big, our forces stretched too thin. If we had a thousand times as many ships, plus the crews to fly them, it still wouldn't be enough. The profits to be made out here are too high, the risks to a hijack operation virtually non-existent. These raider outfits—pirates, bandits, buccaneers, wolf packs, call 'em what you will—keep tabs on the small independent miners, like Phil Wolfe and his Clan, and whenever someone hits it big, they move in, wipe everybody out, and loot the claim. We've tried to stop them. Might as well try to stop the turning of the Earth."

  "How far to Wolfe's asteroid?" Nicole asked Paul, who scribbled some quick equations before replying, preferring to figure the answer himself rather than ask the computer. He was showing off. Nicole let him.

  "Figure a week," he said, "if we light the torch full. Gonna play merry hell with our mission profile, though. We'll probably have to call for a refueling rendezvous at Cocytus."

  "One step at a time, Paolo. Alert goes out first—to them and Ceres both, copy to DaVinci." Nicole had already made up her own mind but this decision was properly Cat's. "Major?" she asked.

  Cat thumbed through her own notes, then looked at Ciari, who nodded fractionally, then back at Nicole.

  "Do it."

  Chapter Six

  The rock wasn't much to look at—a jagged, lopsided spheroid, roughly four kilometers in diameter. Nicole kept a twenty kilo-klick separation between Wanderer and the asteroid as they turned parallel to its orbital track; that way, they'd have time to react to any attack from the rock itself, and room to maneuver. They'd been trying to raise Wolfe Station for the previous two days and, from the moment they'd come within range, they'd begun scanning the asteroid with the cruiser's most powerful and sophisticated external sensors.

  Thus far, they'd determined that the station's habitat domes were intact, its powersystems operational, and that this was indeed one of the fabled "Mother Lode" strikes that all Belt miners dream of. But they'd found no sign of life—on a station supposedly inhabited by six men, seven women, four children, two cats and a parakeet.

  "Next move?" Nicole asked, slumped in her chair on Wanderer's flight deck. She was wearing the heaviest clothes she had, plus her leather flight jacket, yet she still felt cold, and only over the last day had her cough and sniffles finally begun to subside. The blast of icy air in the Rover may have saved her life, but the price was fifty hours flat on her back with a fever. Even now, well on the way to recovery, shot full of antibiotics, she felt utterly miserable.

  "There's no way we're going to learn any more sitting on our butts up here," Cat replied between bites as she finished her sandwich. Nicole kept her eyes on her own console; even the thought of food was more than she could bear. "We've got to go dirtside and eyeball the scene for ourselves."

  "That could be what they want."

  "True. But who are 'they?'"

  "Who flies this one?"

  "You volunteering?" Cat asked with a grin that prompted a smile back from Nicole. "You'd let me if I did?"

  "Not a chance. You're lucky I let you on this deck."

  "The Bear pronounced me fit for duty, Cat."

  "He has his standards, I have mine. Anyway, I'll run this jump."

  "You're Mission Commander."

  "Meaning I should stay behind and let others do the dirty work? Not my style, youngster. I'll take DaCuhna as pilot and Dr. Shomron, in case there are any casualties."

  Nicole tried one more time: "Couldn't Marshal Ciari... ?"

  "Of course. It's right up his proverbial alley. Except that, if there has been trouble, the Wolfes will blast a stranger on sight, regardless of his eye-dee. They know me, though; they'll talk before they shoot."

  "Fair enough." Nicole flipped an intercom switch. "Paolo, action stations. Prep Rover-Two for launch, combat mode; Major Garcia will be in command, with you flying right seat. Break out battle armor as well, three suits."

  "Copy, boss," Paul acknowledged.

  Nicole changed channels. "Bear, would you please meet Major Garcia in Shuttle Bay Two in ten minutes—full medikit."

  "On my way, Lieutenant."

  "I'll give a hand," Hana called from the level below, but Nicole cut her off, calling her back to her console. "If the hotshot needs help," she told her, "he can use Andrei or Cat. I want you on the scanners." Cat looked at Nicole quizzically as Hana obeyed, muttering darkly in Japanese under her breath. "Something?" she asked.

  Nicole shrugged, and sneezed violently. "An itch, that for all I know could be due to this bloody cold." She sighed, wiping a nose that felt raw and tender and big as Jupiter. "A... sense I'd rather be somewhere else."

  "I know what you mean. Keep your eyes open. If you spot anything, no matter how trivial..."

  "You'll be the first to know. Good luck, skipper."

  "Be seeing you, Shea."

  As Cat started down the DropShaft, Nicole called out: "Y'all come back safe, hear?"

  Cat smiled and waved, and was gone. Nicole sat in silence for a minute, gazing at nothing through the canopy, then buzzed Hanako. "Punch up the positions of those remote scanners we dumped during our approach. I want to see our 'eyes.'"

  "Flat screen or holo?"

  "In the tank. And don't worry, Hana, I'll give you a chance to say good-bye to Paul before he leaves." Nicole heard a wry sigh. "It means a lot to him."

  "What about you?"

  "Like I said, I like him. Here's your picture."

  Inside the hologram tank was a three-dimensional representation of their local space. Wanderer was a bright dot floating in the center of the transparent poly-crystal sphere, with Wolfe's asteroid outlined nearby. There were other rocks in the immediate vicinity, each labeled by the computer. They'd noted during their approach that this was an unusually crowded asteroid cluster; indeed, Wolfe had laid claim to the entire group. Tiny dots of color indicated the sensor packages scattered to augment the instruments aboard Wanderer herself.

  "What's our effective scanning range?" Nicole wondered aloud.

  "Depends," replied Hana. "You could say that our optical and radio research telescopes have an almost infinite range, especially with computer enhancement of their images."

  "Yes, but then I'm not a smart ass."

  A smile slipped into Hana's voice as she continued without pause: "In a more practical sense, figure a sphere roughly a half-million kilometers in radius around Wanderer."

  "Seems like a lot of room."

  "It isn't," Ben Ciari said, as he slid into the right-hand command chair, next to Nicole's. "A laser or particle beam can cross that distance in seconds."

  "Except that no one's built combat lasers or particle beams with that kind of power," Hana countered.

  "First time for everything. Also, a high-acceleration nuclear missile, pulling, say, a hundred-plus Gs, will be here almost as quickly."

  "Terrific. So it isn't such a great cushion," Nicole conceded with a shrug, "but it's the best we've got." She opened a line and picture to the shuttle bay. "Paolo, status?"

  "Nearly finished, Nicole. The Major and the Bear are already aboard, I'll be following shortly. So far, the gunship's preflight is nominal."

  "Nicole," came a whisper over her headset.

  "Andrei," she called, and when he acknowledged, "watch Hana's board, please. I want to hear about any bogies." Then, to Hana, "On your way back, swing by the galley and work up an order of munchies and drinks."

  "I thought you'd sworn off food."

  "Please, don't remind me. But we're likely to be on watch for quite a while and I'd rather we eat while things are still quiet rather than on the run."

  "No problem. Punch your orders into the computer so they'll be ready and waiting when I arrive. I shouldn't be long. Thanks, Nicole."

  "The team supreme sticks together. For my co-pilot, I do anything."

  "I'll remember that," Ciari said from Paul's place.

  "Don't push your luck, chum," she
growled back, and partly meant it.

  Nicole tapped her panel and a couple of scanscreens flickered to life—one showing a panoramic view of Bay Two; the other, telemetry relevant to the Rover. Nicole zoomed the camera in on the wedge-shaped gunship; through its clear canopy, she could see Cat and Dr. Shomron in the cockpit, stowing their equipment and finishing a pre-flight checklist. Cat looked up, saw the camera and waved. Nicole backed the image and swung the lens to find Paul. He was just beyond the interior airlock, with Hana trying her best to embrace him—not the easiest thing to do with him wearing full armor. Finally, since the Bay was zero-gravity, she pushed herself off the deck and wrapped herself around him. Nicole flushed slightly, uncomfortable at having caught her friends at such an intimate moment. Yet, she'd been perfectly aware of the possibility when she activated the camera, had she wanted to play voyeur? She re focused on the gunship. Seconds later, Paul came into view, tossing a jaunty wave towards the airlock before clambering aboard.

  "Mr. DaCuhna and Dr. Murai seem quite... involved with each other," Ciari said blandly. He might as well have been describing the weather.

  "So it would appear." Nicole matched his tone. "I want everyone in suits," she said, deliberately changing the subject. "Marshal, you first. Andrei, you go as soon as Hana returns. Then me." She buzzed Hana on remote and told her to don her own pressure suit before leaving the Bay.

  "Something on your mind, Lieutenant?" Ciari asked.

  "Quite a bit."

  "Don't be coy, it doesn't suit you."

  "This isn't the time, or the place..." She stopped, thinking, Maybe it is? And, Do I really need this shit? And, Why in hell can't anything ever be simple?!