Lovers and Lunatics (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 2)

by Jennifer Willis

  Instead of angry shouts and exploding pulse canons or whatever else Hannah expected, the cockpit was dead silent. Until Joey started laughing.

  “Shoot them down? Is that what you just said?” He’d turned away from his console to gape at her.

  Hannah made a sweeping gesture to encompass the workstations and all the blinking lights and video monitors that she didn’t understand. “Isn’t that what you were about to do? Give them a surprise?”

  Sid plucked Hannah’s camera out of the air and handed it back to her before he returned to his captain’s chair. “Barbie, I need an update on navigation. You know, like when you think we might be able to actually go someplace useful?”

  “Yeah, I’m on it.” Barbie smirked at Hannah before she bent over her keyboard, her fingers working busily.

  “You know this isn’t Star Trek or Space Marines or anything, right?” Joey was still facing Hannah, his mouth twisted in an expression somewhere between mirth and incredulity. “We don’t have any photon torpedoes or anything.” He chuckled. “We don’t even have a grappling hook.”

  “Okay, I get it.” Hannah brushed the tears out of her eyes and framed up her camera on the empty space outside the cockpit’s windows where the Earth turned slowly beneath them, unperturbed by Hannah’s little freakout. She would be sure to delete the last minute or so of audio before sending her footage back to The Ranch, and blame the loss on a transmission glitch.

  Joey turned back to his controls. “Hey, captain!” he called brightly. “Want me to fire up the star drive and set in a course for Alpha Centauri? Warp-27-X? There’s a Cylon base I’d like to blast out of the multi-verse with my shiny new neutron bazooka—”

  “That’s enough,” Sid said.

  “But what if I just set my phaser mortars to extra melty—”

  “Just get me my navigation back,” Sid replied with renewed exasperation. “How about that, all right?”

  Sid cleared his throat and opened up the Midden’s comms. “Dana? I know you can hear me, Dana.” He paused, waiting for a response that didn’t come. “I’d like to let you know that your little subterfuge worked, at least temporarily.”

  He glanced toward Barbie, silently asking for an update, but she just shrugged and went back to her keyboard.

  “Pretty clever, actually,” Sid continued. “Although I’d hoped our time together would have meant more to you than just another opportunity to screw me.”

  Dana’s laughter broke in over the comms channel. “Excellent choice of words, Captain Sturbin. I’m sure Barbie’ll get you sorted out in no time. You can’t fault us for wanting a head start. The thrill of the chase, you know.”

  Now Sid was chuckling, too, and Hannah boggled at this strange rivalry between salvage crews. They interfered in each other’s contracts, ransomed sensitive data for orbital booty calls, disabled each other’s ships—and laughed about it?

  “You also gave our passenger quite a scare.” Sid smiled at Hannah with a quick wink. “Thought we were about to start a galactic war over some prospected space ore.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah called from her seat at the back of the cabin, her voice sounding stronger than she felt. She couldn’t believe she was that much of an idiot. No one had told her the salvage ships weren’t armed—for all she knew, sci-fi-style weaponry could have been part of the deal Rufus made with both crews as a means of breathing new life into the already flagging Space Junkers show. Space pirates, and all that.

  Hannah held her camera steady and framed up the crew at work, when what she really wanted to do was go curl up in a ball in the dark somewhere. Gary would have heard the whole thing, and he was probably yukking it up with Manny and Brett right now. It didn’t help that Barbie was still giving her some nasty side-eye.

  “Stupid bitch,” Barbie muttered, just loud enough for Hannah to hear. “Like the captain would shoot down his own wife.”

  Hannah jolted against her restraints. His wife?

  Dana’s laughter filled the cabin again. “Well, honey, may the best captain win. See you at Klondike-3.”

  6

  They had been underway for nearly twelve hours, and Gary’s brain was practically numb. He’d kept to his seat in the back of the Churly Flint’s control cabin, staying out of everyone’s way and recording with the cameras Hannah had supplied. He hadn’t realized how much work was involved in hanging out in the background with production equipment. He had to be unobtrusive, a fly on the wall, but he also he had to ask the right questions at the right time to set the scene and to encourage the salvage crew to explain their actions in their own words for the benefit of an audience that was thousands of kilometers below on Earth.

  Shooting weather footage was easier. That wasn’t quite so simple as a pointing a camera at some clouds, hitting the record button, and then grabbing a sandwich, but it might as well have been. This work for Space Junkers was on a completely different scale—and not just because everything was happening in zero-g and his equipment kept floating away from him.

  And given that Hannah was stuck on the Midden—a ship that was still sorting out the bug Manny had dropped into the navigation system—it was up to Gary to shoot all of the Klondike-3 footage.

  “How long until intercept?” Gary asked the captain.

  “Intercept?”

  “Until we reach the prospector.”

  Dana smiled. “Not long at all.” She pointed at a bright, distant speck against a backdrop of stars outside the control cabin’s domed window. “See that?”

  “Klondike-3?” Gary leaned forward to squint at the tiny objet, then remembered the camera and tried to frame up the window. He hoped someone at The Ranch would be able to do an extreme zoom-in without too much loss of picture quality. A sliver of moon crept into view on the left edge of the ship’s window.

  “Doesn’t look like much from this far out, but the specs say the prospector is slightly larger than the Churly Flint. So we’re definitely going to have our hands full.”

  Gary brought the captain into frame while keeping the view out the window behind her. “And what happens after we capture it?”

  Dana’s expression dimmed. “Well, there’s a considerable amount of work just to get that far.” Worry lines deepened on her brow. “The Klondike-3 is still in motion, even as we approach. And since the prospector may yet run into some friction on its way we have to keep tabs on it and make our own course corrections as we go.”

  Gary smiled from behind the camera. There was every chance his next question—and the captain’s response—would end up in the digital trash, but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to offer his audience even a tiny bit of education. “Captain, would you explain that part about friction? In layman’s terms.”

  Dana visually checked in with Brett, who gave her a quick nod, and she seemed to relax a little. She rolled her shoulders back, looked into the camera, and tried another smile.

  “Space isn’t entirely devoid of matter.” Her tone was smooth and warm, and not condescending. She didn’t come across as the hyper know-it-all that always had Gary’s on-camera trivia drops getting cut. He gave her a thumbs-up.

  “If a craft that is moving through space encounters even tiny bits of matter—like dust, or little bits of rock—that can slow a spacecraft down and even alter its course,” she continued. “Most ships, like the Churly Flint, have computerized systems that detect this kind of interference and make automatic corrections through small, quick-firing engines located around the outside of the ship.”

  Dana looked over her shoulder at Klondike-3, still visible through the window. The bright speck had grown considerably larger in size. Nearly a quarter of the moon was visible through the ship’s window now and looming larger. Gary felt a startled thrill at how fast the ship was traveling—it was nothing like Star Trek but it was a far cry from the days of the Apollo program.

  “Klondike-3 is pretty much dead, so to speak,” she said. “There’s no computer guidance, no ability for course corre
ctions. No ability for remote engine fire, either.”

  “Adjusting course of interception,” Brett said from his station. “Still on track.”

  “So we need to keep a close watch on the prospector, to keep her in our sights,” Dana continued. “You can’t take anything for granted out here, not if you want to stay ahead of the game.” She paused, then looked beyond the camera lens to Gary. “Is that enough? I could try it again.”

  “No, that was really good.” Gary shifted Dana out of the camera’s frame and focused on the window, where Klondike-3 and the moon both were growing larger still. He could see the prospector’s slow spin as it turned about its central axis. “What’s your time estimate? And anything in particular you think would be interesting to viewers? I could go back down to the docking control bay, if you think that’s the place to be for the most exciting footage.”

  Gary had liked watching Manny work on Saakh-5, using the robotic arms to reinstall the purloined docking mechanism and then starting the data transfer before he wiped the satellite’s drives. But the Churly Flint had had to release the satellite before completing its salvage operation when the Klondike-3 contract came in. Now Saakh-5 was up for grabs, and the Churly Flint was closing in on new prey.

  Dana peered over Brett’s shoulder and frowned at something on one of his screens, then blew out a tiny sigh when Brett gestured toward another monitor and muttered something Gary couldn’t hear.

  Gary pointed the camera at Dana and Brett. He couldn’t get a clear shot of whatever was showing up on the screens at Brett’s station, so he pushed forward a little and found himself hovering to one side of the empty captain’s chair.

  Dana looked up and saw the camera on her, and she waved Gary back toward his passenger seat. “Actually, this could get a little bumpy, so you’ll probably want to strap yourself in. Just as a precaution.” Dana settled into her own seat and fastened her restraining harness. “That goes for everybody.”

  Gary returned to his chair at the back of the cabin and belted himself in, while also keeping the camera pointed at the crew and the forward window. It wasn’t easy, but it kept him from reading too much into Dana’s quiet apprehension.

  The captain’s unease would make for good television. Viewers could guess at whether it was the high stakes of the operation—money, contracts, and reputation—that had Dana nervous, or if it was the fact that she was in direct competition with a rival ship on a mini gold rush in space. Or maybe she was just anxious about being recorded for global broadcast.

  Gary had spent years in front of cameras. He’d become mostly accustomed to the many angles, the lighting, the retakes, the make-up, and all the rest. But he sometimes felt nervous about the constant exposure. It was relief to be behind the camera again.

  “Captain, we’re coming into range.” Brett’s voice snapped Gary back into focus, and he was stunned to see how quickly the prospector filled the domed window as they chased the craft down. The thing looked like two massive beer kegs strung together with a flag pole as a kebab. “KLONDIKE-3” was painted in bright yellow block letters on the pewter-colored surface. A pair of retractible solar arrays were only partially unfolded, stuck in a tight accordion shape that would provide little if any power to the prospector. It was close enough now to nearly block out the moon in the Churly Flint’s windows.

  The moon. Gary let that sink in for a moment. After all of those nights out on the grass in his Buzz Lightyear sleeping bag looking up at Perseus in the sky, he could practically touch the moon from where he sat.

  “I’m on it!” Manny went to work with the ship’s robotic arms. Beads of sweat floated off his brow into the cabin before being sucked in by the air recyclers.

  Gary felt a quick kick in the pants as Brett fired the ship’s thrusters to bring the Churly Flint in line with Klondike-3’s central axis. Then his stomach lurched with a new jolt from the left as Brett worked to match the prospector’s spin. The tiny bit of resulting gravity felt like being gently nudged in every direction at once.

  Gary patted his jumpsuit pocket for reassurance that he had at least one space sickness bag handy.

  “We’re nearly synchronous now,” Brett announced.

  Manny manipulated the arms to surround Klondike-3 in an open embrace before actually latching onto the craft.

  “Synchronous, or nearly so?” Dana’s voice was tight. Gary checked the control board app on his tablet and swiped through views from the cameras around the cabin. Gary felt his stomach tighten when he saw that Dana was sweating even more than Manny.

  “Close enough.” Brett glanced over his shoulder, wearing an unasked question. Manny also watched for the captain’s reply. Dana nodded curtly, then dug her fingers into the armrests.

  Why was everyone so nervous? Gary couldn’t figure out why the entire crew was on edge, and it had him feeling anxious, too. He didn’t have all the math and science to understand what went into capturing an object like Klondike-3. He’d thought it would be a simple operation, just another derelict satellite. But something was very different this time.

  “Initiating capture!” Manny shouted.

  Gary watched through the front window as Manny closed the robotic arms around Klondike-3 and felt a heavy, dragging jolt to the left and another stomach lurch as the Churly Flint made contact with the prospector and then grabbed on.

  “Close enough, Brett?” Dana straightened in her chair, her scowl visible through Gary’s production app.

  “We knew it was going to be rough!” Brett shouted back. “Operational specs gave this as the best approach. Starting the slow down now.”

  Manny grimaced at his monitors but kept a light grip on the joysticks at his station. “How long ’till this thing is stabilized? I’d really rather not get my arms ripped off here.”

  Gary wanted to home in on Brett and ask about the specs and the approach. Had Brett made these calculations and plans himself, or had they been provided to him? And now that they were spinning, how much fuel would they burn to bring the prospector, and themselves, to a stop?

  But for the time being he had to concentrate on holding onto his lunch. He watched the moon rise and set over and over in rapid succession in the domed window.

  “How much longer?” The tension in Dana’s voice bordered on yelling. “Do we have capture?”

  “We have capture, yes.” Manny lifted his hands away from his joysticks. “The best I can do it, anyway.”

  “Brett!” Dana called.

  “Working on it. We should be slowing . . . Slowing . . .” The pilot was as good as his word. The spin gradually eased, along with the ship’s temporary gravity. The moon stopped whipping around and came to a tranquil rest, filling the upper part of the view through the window.

  Gary blew out a long breath. He’d survived without using another space sickness bag.

  “Nice job, boys!” Dana exclaimed with genuine relief. “That was more fun than Space Mountain.”

  Brett and Manny erupted in laughter at what Gary guessed was a private joke.

  Dana unharnessed herself and moved in behind Manny. “What’s our status?”

  Gary pointed his camera at them and was unnerved by the look of astonishment on Dana’s face.

  “Any surprises, captain?” Gary asked.

  Dana took brief notice of the camera and gave a quick laugh. “All in a day’s work, right?” She patted Manny on the back.

  “Uh, sure,” Manny said. “It looks pretty good from here, though I’ll know more once I go below and get a better grip for towing.”

  Gary kept his camera pointed at Manny, who was working his joysticks again. “Tell me what you’re doing now?”

  “Just readjusting a bit.” He moved his joysticks in small, deliberate pulses that were echoed by the arms outside the ship. “That rodeo ride didn’t do us any favors, and the clamps are maybe a little loose.”

  The fingered grip on one of the arms opened an almost imperceptible amount, just enough for Manny to gain a more secure pur
chase on a large, open ring on the prospector’s side. The clamp squeezed closed again.

  And an explosion rocked the prospector.

  There was no sound as a massive fireball shot out from the side of Klondike-3 and splintered one of the robotic arms tethering it to the ship. When the shock hit the Churly Flint, Dana careened through the cabin and Gary felt his body tossed up toward the ceiling and then down again into his chair, even though his harness held him tight.

  “Report!” Dana shouted over the sudden blaring of alarms inside the control cabin.

  “We’re okay!” Brett called back. “No loss of cabin pressure, life support good. Checking external damage.”

  Manny was frantically shifting his joysticks, finally giving up on the left one when it was clear the corresponding appendage was damaged beyond operation. “I’m trying to hold it! Trying to hold on!”

  Cringing at the alarms, Gary fumbled with his camera and pointed it at the domed window. Klondike-3 looked to be swinging wildly from side to side, but Gary knew the Churly Flint was also in motion.

  “What’s happening?” Gary swallowed the bile creeping up his throat. “What went wrong?”

  “This is not how it’s supposed to happen!” Dana cursed as she clung to the seat of her captain’s chair, her forehead bleeding.

  “What’s not supposed to happen?” Gary shouted, but his voice was drowned out by a deep, shuddering groan that rattled the control cabin.

  “We’re losing this tug of war!” Manny had both hands wrapped around the single working joystick, and Gary could see through the window that the remaining robotic arm was no match for Klondike-3’s unstable mass. The prospector was whirling around on an asymmetrical axis, tumbling end over end like a wobbling spinning top toy and taking the Churly Flint with it.

  Another explosion erupted on Klondike-3. The Churly Flint’s domed window filled with fire and metallic debris. Gary let go of the camera and gripped his armrests, as though that could save him from the flaming chunks of Klondike-3 that sailed past the segmented window to strike the hull all around him. When the view cleared, he saw the blackened, twisted prospector drifting away into the darkness, the ship’s amputated arms still reaching for it.