“You could have killed us all. What did you use for jump coordinates?” Paul asked.
“Didn't have time to input any. Blind jump, lowest power setting.”
“You asshole,” Paul said.
“Says the guy pointing a gun at me.”
“It was my order. You want to be mad at someone, get mad at me,” John said. He was struggling back to his feet, hands still zip-tied together.
“Boys and their toy guns. We need to figure out what our status is,” said Charline. “Majel, where are we?”
“Proximate to Jupiter. Decaying orbit, entering upper atmosphere in three minutes,” replied the computer.
That wasn't good. Relieved as he felt that they'd come through the wormhole intact, Jupiter could make them just as dead. Dan turned back to his console to get the ship back under control before they were cooked or crushed by the gas giant. He heard a metallic clicking sound, and froze before his hands could touch anything. He lifted hands from the controls slowly, and turned his head to face Paul. The gun was still trained at his head, and Paul had just pulled the hammer back.
“Don't even think about touching those controls,” Paul said.
Dan tried to remain calm. Which was a difficult thing to manage while he was staring down the barrel of a pistol. He swallowed hard. “Paul... I need to stop our descent or we're toast.”
Warning lights began flashing across his console, and the ship shuddered a little. They were breaching the upper atmosphere. Dan felt sure the engines had enough power to get them out of this, but it was going to be tight if he couldn't get started right away. If Jupiter yanked them deep enough into its gravity well, did the Satori’s engines have enough strength to get them clear? He wasn’t sure, and this wasn’t a good time to test their engine strength.
“I'll do it. You can give me directions.” Paul switched to a one handed grip on the gun, reached into a pocket and withdrew another zip-tie. “Put these on.”
John knew he had to intervene. He had faith Dan could pilot the ship safely away, but Paul? It was a miracle they’d survived the blind jump. He wasn’t going to ask for a second one this soon. John took a step toward Paul, careful not to make any sudden moves. Even the small step got Paul’s immediate attention.
“You can't really expect Dan to talk you through this, can you? Have you ever flown a ship out of a gas giant before?” John asked.
Another step, and then Paul pivoted the pistol toward him instead.
“Neither has he,” Paul said.
“No one has. But Dan's about as good as they get, and he's our best shot. Tie him up, and we're all dead.”
“You're not in charge here anymore, John.” Paul locked eyes with John.
“The hell I'm not. Now cut Charline's cuffs so she can work with Majel to get us a course out of this mess.”
Paul's face grew red. “You're still not taking me seriously? Now? I think I need to show everyone who's really in charge.” His finger moved to the trigger. “Goodbye, John.”
John froze. He couldn't make himself move. All he he could see was the round hole at the business end of the pistol as Paul steadied his hand and aimed the weapon directly at his head. He felt Beth tense behind him, preparing to strike. She wouldn’t be able to throw the bullet off course, though. Even if the crew somehow overpowered Paul, it wasn’t going to save him. John knew he was about to die. He could see the certainty of his death in Paul’s eyes.
And then a hand sliced down into Paul's wrists, snapping the gun out of his fingers. It clattered heavily on the deck plates, but didn't go off. It was Andrew. John could see blood caking his hair where he'd been hit. Even injured, he was on his feet.
“I'm not very happy with you right now, Paul,” Andrew said. His voice was flat and cold as the weapon Paul had been holding a moment before.
Paul growled and took a swing at him. Andrew ducked inside, blocked the blow with a forearm, and thrust the heel of his palm into Paul's face. Without missing a beat, Andrew grabbed the other man's shoulders and pulled him forward, right knee rising to smash into his gut as it descended. Paul groaned as all his air huffed out.
Then Andrew glided sideways, still holding Paul's body as it continued its forward movement. His right arm slipped past Paul's head, and he brought that elbow crashing into the back of Paul's skull. In a handful of seconds the fight was over. Paul fell to the deck, unmoving.
“Thanks, Andrew,” John said. His voice had a little shake to it, but he was glad it wasn't too bad.
“That's why you pay me the big bucks, John,” Andrew replied. “Sorry. Can't believe I let him get the drop on me.” He produced a knife from somewhere and cut John's cuffs.
John wanted to tell Andrew that he was so much more than just an employee to him. But it wasn't the right time.
Somehow, it never seemed to be the right time for the things that were important.
Sixteen
As soon as Dan saw Paul was down, he dropped the zip-ties that he'd never put on and put his eyes back on his controls. The windows ahead showed nothing but stars. They were falling tail-first into Jupiter’s atmosphere, and accelerating as they dropped.
“How bad is it?” John asked, rubbing his wrists. The ship was beginning to shake more.
“Ask me again in a minute or so,” Dan replied.
Dan checked his scan readings, trying to get his bearings. The ship was starting to roll a little, nose turning as it was buffeted by high atmosphere winds. He quickly saw wisps of orange vapor streaming past. The ship shook hard as it was buffeted by one particularly strong blast of wind, and then before he knew it the ship was nose down toward Jupiter. The planet loomed, vast and overwhelming in the ship's front windows.
“That won't do,” Dan muttered.
Dan pulled up hard on the flight controls. Stars came back into the front window, and he engaged the engines, slowly adding more power. The engines thrummed in response, pushing the ship away from the planet below. They were making good headway. He plotted a course which would put them into a safe orbit around the gas giant.
Dan heaved a sign of relief. One problem solved. Remembering the other problems, he turned and looked around at the rest of the crew.
Andy and John were wrestling Paul's limp form over to the wall next to Paul's seat. Charline was bent over her console working on something – someone had cut her hands free – and Beth... Well, Beth was glaring at him.
“That was a hell of a risk!” she said. “You sent us into a blind wormhole? We could have ended up anywhere!”
“It was John's orders. That's what he meant when he said 'ad astra'. But we weren't totally blind.”
“Not totally,” said Charline. She punched some keys, calling up an image on her screen, then pressed another key to transmit the same image to Beth's console. “You knew Majel has managed to translate some of the database from the original ship's computer core. Working with Dan and Majel, I got coordinate locks for all these destinations.” The screen displayed scores of different symbol strings, in a variety of different colors.
“Majel managed to extrapolate some data about jumps in general from that mess,” Dan went on. “It's not much, but Charline and I wrote an emergency protocol in case we ever needed a fast and dirty jump to get out of Dodge quickly. The program powers up the smallest possible charge to the wormhole generator, so that we're popped straight forward a few AUs at most.”
He blinked. “Well, more like six AUs this time. Looks like the short wormhole was impacted by Jupiter's gravity well, maybe.” Who knew all those astrophysics classes from college would pay off?
“I did the coding, but I don't have Dan's background in astrophysics. Team effort,” Charline added.
Beth studied the screen for another moment. “Seems like you two have spent a lot of time together on this,” she said. “Planning to tell the engineer about it anytime soon?”
“It was all preliminary stuff, Beth,” Dan said. “I never dreamed we'd use it on the first flight.”
There was an uncomfortable pause. None of them had been expecting anything like this for their first trip out. The plan had been to take the ship out, do a shakedown cruise using the gravity engines only, and then return to go over the data. Testing the wormhole drive had never been on the agenda. Well, Paul’s actions had accelerated their agenda a lot.
“So, the million dollar question is – can we jump back?” Charline asked.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Beth said. “I don't pretend to know precisely how the wormholes work, but Dan might be on to something about the gravity well reshaping the wormhole. If it's true that the less power we put into the wormhole, the more it is affected by gravity – and we aim a low power wormhole inward toward the sun – then the sun's gravity will pull the wormhole a lot more than Jupiter did...”
“...and we might end up a crispy critter,” Dan finished for her. “Damn. I just realized – what if the nose of the ship had happened to be facing in-system instead of out when we jumped?”
“I don't even want to think about it,” John said.
“Makes the most sense to just use the regular drive, then,” Dan said. “It might make for a longer trip, but we’ll be more sure to get where we’re going.”
“One problem,” Charline said. Everyone looked over at her. “Isn’t the cloaking device still broken? If we just fly the ship from Jupiter back to Luna - I can’t believe I just said that sentence - won’t someone see us?”
“Probably,” Beth replied. “I’m going to bet that Paul did something to muck with the cloak. Whatever he did shouldn’t be too difficult to fix. I’ll get on that next.”
“And when Paul wakes up I can have a little chat with him. I’ll bet I can get him to consider telling you what he did, if you have problems,” Andy said, cracking his knuckles.
“So, we fix whatever Paul did to the cloak, then we cruise back to Luna. We've certainly given the ship a bigger shakedown than we'd intended. And we can get a good feel for how fast Satori can go on her gravity drive,” John said.
Dan saw Andy snatch the gun from the deck and stick it into a pocket, then grab a spare zip tie from the unconscious Paul and cuff him to a stanchion. He was starting to moan and come around again. Dan wondered what they should do with him now. What could they do with him, in the long run? He knew about the ship. Letting him go would mean exposing its existence to the world. They seemed to be in agreement that would be a bad plan. But locking him up with no trial, no timetable for release? That didn't seem just, either. Dan snapped the latches back into place, fastening his wheelchair to his console. He checked their present location and course, gently making a few adjustments. They could worry about what to do with Paul in the long term later. For now, getting the ship and crew home safely had to remain the top priority.
“Got us stabilized into a low orbit,” Dan said. “Soon as Beth gets the cloak fixed and Majel finishes calculating the course for home, we can be on our way.”
Seventeen
Paul came to, groggy at first. What had happened to him? He’d been struck. Knocked out by that big lout John kept around as muscle. Paul had never liked Andy. The man reminded him too much of the bullies he’d faced when he was younger. Now there was even more reason than before to feel that way about him. He groaned a little and then stifled the sound quickly. Better that the rest of the crew still thought he was out.
He was cuffed to the wall. With one of his own damned zip-ties, to add insult to injury. It wasn’t going to be quick or easy to get out of that. He listened to the murmur of conversation from his ship-mates. They were talking over how to get back home again. They figured it was over. They’d won, he was tied up and not going anywhere, and that was the end of the matter.
What were they going to do with him when they got back? He listened, but didn’t hear anyone mention their thoughts or plans about his future. They weren’t just going to hand him over to the authorities on Earth. They couldn’t do that. He knew too much. They would never let him go. The very best he could hope for was that they would stick him in some cell at the bottom of Caraway’s cursed base and leave him there to rot.
But even then he would be a security liability. No, the smart move would be to make him vanish. He’d be reported as lost, killed in some sort of accident. Maybe his body would be reported as ‘sucked out into space’ and unrecoverable. Or maybe his remains would be burned beyond recognition. Whatever the case was going to be, Paul was pretty sure he wasn’t going to live through this screwup. They couldn’t afford to keep him alive. John might talk the talk about his honor and doing the right thing. But at the end of the day he was just like everyone else. He’d look out for his own interests first.
How had things gone so badly? He had this plan. It should have worked perfectly. He knocked out the biggest physical threat, and then had the gun to deal with the others. If they’d tried to play tough, he had the explosives to fall back on. Paul hadn’t counted on Dan coming up with a crazy wormhole jump halfway across the solar system. That had been where things started to come unraveled. Anger surged, almost overwhelming him. He wanted to yank his hands, try to free himself, but Paul knew that wasn’t going to get him anywhere. No, he needed to play this smart. He had to out-think the others.
Besides, he still had the explosives in play. He rolled a little, the small movement not attracting any attention, but it let him get his bound hands close to his chest pocket. That’s where the trigger was. He fished the little thing free and palmed it. Time to take some action. Once the first bombs went off, they would know he was serious. If they wanted to avoid the others blowing up the entire ship, they would need to make a deal with him. Only he could disarm the rest of the explosives before they went off.
Paul risked a quick glance at the rest of the crew, just breaking up from their little conference. At first no one noticed him sitting there, watching them. Then Beth stood up from her console to head back toward her engines. She was so lost in thought that even she missed seeing he was awake. Paul laughed. He couldn’t help himself. This was going to work. He’d regain control of the situation, get them all tied up, and then they would return to Earth. He’d have his hero’s welcome after all. It was risky, but the alternative was either death or a lifetime locked in a private cell. Neither option was appealing. It was worth taking chances to avoid those fates.
Beth turned and looked at Paul. Andy had done a number on his face. He could feel it swelling, and it hurt like hell. He must appear awful, too, judging by the look on Beth’s face.Whatever; he didn’t need her approval anymore. She’d given him her last order. Paul leered at her from a shattered face with a hideous grin. Then her eyes widened. She’d seen what he was holding. Beth always was one of the brighter minds in this bunch. Too bad she was still too slow, and on the wrong side. He held the little pen-like device out where she could see it clearly.
“Did you really think all I had here was a gun?” Paul asked.
He lifted it upright in front of his face. Anyone looking at the thing would think it was just a pen, and it would even write in a pinch. Paul loved the irony of hiding something crucial in plain sight. He’d done so with the explosives, disguising them as bolts. And he’d done it with his detonator as well. An old spy film had given him the idea, featuring a clicking pen that exploded if clicked just right.
“Stop him!” Beth shouted.
Andy was up and moving before she finished speaking. Beth dashed across the bridge as she yelled, trying to get to Paul, but neither of them were going to reach him in time. His thumb pressed down hard on the button. The world seemed to roll by in slow motion.
Sparks flew from the console in front of Dan, arcs of electricity jumping from the controls, tossing his body against the back of his chair. The entire board blew out, blasting bits of smoldering plastic all around the room.
Then a larger explosion rocked the ship. The deck seemed to buck beneath Paul, surging from the blast. He cracked his head against the wall beside him. Stars danced i
n front of his eyes. He felt his ears pop as he slumped to the floor. That meant there was a pressure loss somewhere in the rear of the ship. Hatches snapped shut automatically, and cut off the air loss. Just as he had known they would. The artificial gravity failed next. Paul felt his body floating free from the floor and wall. Beth had been knocked across the room by the blast. Although Andy kept his feet under him, he was now drifting in the middle of the room, reaching out to try to grab any hand-hold he could find.
The main drive was down, and they were out of control. He saw Jupiter appear in the front windows again, and then slip away. They were starting to spin, which wasn't helping his aching head. Their pilot was out of commission, the engines were offline, and the blast must have caused them to break from the stable orbit Dan had just said he’d put them in. Sweat broke out on Paul’s forehead. He hadn’t planned on getting them all killed with this stunt! He wanted to recover control so he could stay alive, not wind up crushed into paste by Jupiter.
“Surrender or we’re all going to die,” Paul said, holding the detonator up where they could all see it.
Eighteen
Beth managed to grab hold of something to stop herself from bumping around. The ship was badly hurt. She could tell that without even checking. Something critical had been sabotaged by that blast. There were only so many places on the ship that one small explosive - she could tell that it was small because they were all still alive - would so completely knock out their systems. Repairing the problem might be difficult, but it shouldn’t be impossible. But Paul was brandishing that detonator like it was a weapon. That meant he had to have other bombs he could set off.
They had to stop him before he could blow the ship.
“Detonator in his hand!” Beth called out.
John was still strapped into his seat. He released his straps and held on to his chair with one hand while he grabbed Andy’s foot with the other, hauling him back toward the deck.
Adventures of the Starship Satori: Book 1-6 Complete Library Page 7
