Suicide Run

by Nathan Lowell

  “And no way to get into the engine room to repair it,” Natalya said.

  “You obviously got around that.”

  “Just before the Burleson fired, the lock closed. I was able to get some atmosphere reloaded and we almost had full pressure again,” Zoya said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “It was enough to get the engine room door open but by then we’d jumped.”

  “It took about three-quarters of the capacitor to jump just four BUs,” Natalya said. “I don’t know if we could have jumped more than six.”

  “So somebody knew the ship couldn’t jump as far as the yard claimed,” Panko said.

  “That’s what we figured too,” Natalya said.

  “Why there?” Panko asked.

  “Somebody wanted the ship,” Natalya said.

  “We got turned around just in time to see somebody coming in hot trying to intercept us before we could jump out,” Zoya said. “Good bread, by the way.”

  Panko grinned. “Thanks.”

  “I can’t figure out why somebody might want to steal that ship. It’s a hot mess,” Natalya said.

  “It’s not that bad,” Panko said. “It’s a pretty ship. A few upgrades and it would make an interesting yacht.”

  “But who’d want it? It’s such a novel design that it would stand out like a sore thumb,” Zoya asked. “Steal a Barbell and rename it. It looks like every other Barbell. That ship is unique as far as I know.”

  “That’s a good point,” Natalya said. “It would be pretty easy for High Tortuga to track it down anywhere in the Western Annex.”

  Panko pursed his lips and frowned. “How deep into the ship did you dig while you were doing your pre-flight?”

  “Not deep enough,” Zoya said. “I found a few of the sensors so I could reprogram the levels of atmosphere, water, and main thrusters. I never did find maneuvering fuel levels, gray water levels, or anything approaching heat sensors for hull or thrusters.”

  Panko’s frown deepened. “We need to get that ship back on-station and tear it apart.”

  “I can get behind that,” Zoya said. “I’ve wanted to take a laser cutter to it for the last week.”

  Panko snorted a short laugh. “I can only imagine.”

  “Why do you say that?” Natalya asked.

  “What? Tear it apart?” Panko asked.

  Natalya nodded.

  “I think you’re right. Stealing the ship doesn’t make much sense. What if it’s not the ship?” Panko asked.

  Natalya cocked her head to the side. “I don’t get it.”

  “I do,” Zoya said. “We even thought of it but we didn’t go far enough.”

  “We did?” Natalya’s brain wouldn’t latch on but she could almost feel the itch inside her head as if she should know and would kick herself once somebody enlightened her.

  “What if it’s not the ship, but something in the ship?” Zoya asked.

  “What could be in the ship?” Natalya asked. “We went through all the systems. There’s nothing there worth stealing. Especially not so elaborately.”

  “Chips,” Zoya said.

  Natalya felt her eyes widen. “Somebody’s smuggling credit chips?”

  Panko shrugged. “There are a lot of ways to get chips off the station. If you spent a lot of time amassing credits that you didn’t want anybody to know about, I can see where it might be tough to get them all out without raising questions.”

  Natalya frowned. “A few large-denomination chips? You could carry millions away in a small pocket.”

  Panko nodded. “True, but what if they’re not legitimate chips.”

  “What? Forgeries?” Zoya asked.

  “I think the word you’re looking for is counterfeit,” Panko said.

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” Natalya said.

  “You’re not supposed to be able to,” Panko said. “But what if somebody has figured out a way?”

  Zoya put the remains of her second sandwich down on her napkin and stared at Panko. “Chaos.”

  Panko nodded. “If word got out that chips couldn’t be trusted, the entire banking system would take a massive hit. Nobody would trust the chips and since they’re used extensively on transactions between the High Line and Toe-Hold space, that’s a major problem.”

  “Can they?” Natalya asked. “Be counterfeited, I mean?”

  Panko shrugged as a long beep sounded from his console. He glanced at the display. “We’re ready to jump.”

  “You think the chips might be hidden in that ship?” Zoya asked.

  Panko shrugged without looking back. “If it’s not the ship—and whoever did this clearly did not want the ship lost—then it’s something on or in the ship. I don’t know what else it could be.” He held one hand poised over the keyboard and glanced back. “Ready to jump?”

  They both nodded.

  Panko pushed the button.

  Chapter 40

  Ravaine

  2366, May 30

  PANKO SAT BACK FROM the console and nodded as if to himself. “All right then. We jumped a bit short but we’ll be docked by this time tomorrow.”

  “The extra mass?” Zoya asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I adjusted the base mass to account for it. We’re only a percentage point off.”

  “Time enough for everybody to get the news that we’re missing,” Natalya said. “Before we’re close enough for the station to get a good look.”

  “Yeah,” Panko said. “My thinking as well.” He spun around in the couch. “So, what do we do in the meantime?”

  “Run through the telemetry data?” Zoya asked. “I assume you were recording it.”

  He grinned. “Come see.” He stood from the couch and led them back to his office. “I’ve modeled the old design—your design. I wanted to see how much space I had to work with based on squaring up the hull a bit but keeping much of the floor plan.” He slipped into the chair in front of the drafting station and brought up a screen. It showed the egg-shaped design from each axis. “This is the original,” he said, then tapped a few keys.

  A gray, boxy shape surrounded the original. The new shape was almost exactly the same width, length, and height as the original. “The new hull gives us about twelve percent more interior, cuts the estimated production time by a week, and has lower material costs because there are fewer custom parts that need to be fabricated.”

  “Nice,” Natalya said. “What’s that do for the engineering space?”

  Panko tapped a few more keys, replacing the external hulls with the layout of components inside. “There’s more than enough room for another drive and the capacitors to drive it to full capacity. The new space gives us extra room to upgrade the fusactor. That should cut recharge time between jumps by about twenty percent.”

  Zoya nodded. “That’ll make up for any loss of leg. Taking smaller jumps faster will get the route done in less time.”

  He glanced back at her. “Even with the Gemini, she’s got so little mass that I think the reduction in jump range isn’t going to be much. My numbers say she’ll jump eighteen BUs instead of the twenty Downs claimed.”

  “Which was only about four or five as built,” Natalya said.

  “Yeah. There’s that small point,” Panko said. “Still—there was plenty of room for the extra capacitor and drive. It’s hard to believe they shorted that when the volume was already reserved for it.”

  “Focus on the cost per unit. Once they decided to make it as cheaply as possible,” Zoya said with a shrug.

  Something tugged at a corner of Natalya’s brain. “Can you show that space on the original design?”

  He frowned at her but nodded. A few keystrokes later, the original hull design displayed showing an oblong volume highlighted in green under the deck plates in engineering. “That’s the space that the larger capacitor would have taken up, along with the connections needed for a Gemini. The difference in volume for a full Gemini is too small to show at this scale.”

  Natal
ya leaned in to peer at the screen. “How much volume is that?”

  “Something over a cubic meter,” Panko said.

  “And it’s empty?” Natalya asked.

  “There’s nothing on the plans I have.”

  Natalya pulled up her tablet and looked at the plans she got from the yard. She flipped through the layers and zoomed in on the same area. “My copy shows that as being filled with capacitor.” She held the tablet over to show Panko.

  “Mine will show the same thing,” Zoya said. “We just copied the one we got from the yard.”

  “What’s the date on yours?” he asked.

  “Last update, December last year,” Natalya said checking the file’s metadata.

  He nodded and pulled open a small tab on his screen. “That’s probably the design. I got mine from the actual fabrication and construction unit from the yard. It’s dated last month.” He looked up at Natalya. “Something?”

  “They designed a larger capacitor but shorted it in construction to leave a cubic meter under the deck empty,” Natalya said.

  Panko’s eyes widened.

  “We wouldn’t have found it doing the pre-flight,” Zoya said. “Our plans show it as being filled with the capacitor. There wouldn’t have been anything to see if we pulled the deck plate. We already knew the capacitor was underpowered.”

  He nodded. “Wanna bet it’s not empty now?”

  “No bet,” Natalya said.

  “We’ve got a few stans,” Panko said. “Shall we go look?”

  The thought of suiting up and going back into the ship sent a chill down Natalya’s back. She glanced at Zoya, who gave her head the tiniest of shakes. “Let’s wait until we have it in the station,” Natalya said. “I’ve seen enough of that ship for the moment.”

  “I’d feel better about it if we were safely docked someplace myself,” Zoya said.

  He nodded. “I don’t blame you.” He pulled up another window. “Here’s the model animated by your telemetry.” He played several ticks of animation—pausing it when the thrusters started firing. “The acceleration was very good,” he said, pointing out the vectors painted on the screen. “I know the ship doesn’t have that much mass, but the kickers are more than up to the task.”

  Natalya nodded. “Maybe too much?”

  “How so?” Panko asked.

  “Well,” Natalya said. “If you’re looking to jump in and out again quickly, you don’t want too much way on the ship. Just enough to ride through the jump but not so much that you have to spend a day adjusting the vector to point to your next jump.”

  “Once you’ve made it out to jump range, going fast isn’t that much of an advantage,” Zoya said. “You have to burn more fuel to adjust your heading.”

  He frowned and looked back at the frozen monitor. “Good point. I hadn’t thought of that.” He grimaced. “I should have.” He started the animation again and they watched the small ship pull away. He paused it when the lock opened as a plume of atmosphere jetted from the open port. “That’s just an animation. There aren’t any sensors to show that. You were smart to wear your softsuits and stay harnessed in.”

  “We had everything locked down for the test run,” Zoya said. “With all the accidents around airlocks here, that was an easy one to guess.”

  “Even the head survived with just a few frozen pipes,” Natalya said.

  “We were able to have coffee, even. I was surprised the coffee maker survived the decompression without being knocked around,” Zoya said.

  Panko restarted the animation. After what seemed like a long time, the outer door closed and he stopped the replay again. “How’d you get the door closed? I’ve seen that manual override. It’s damn near impossible.”

  Natalya shrugged. “I didn’t. It closed on its own. Somebody with a lot of time on his hands had a field day programming that ship.”

  “We were lucky he’s not a spacer,” Zoya said.

  Panko and Natalya looked at her. “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  Zoya shrugged. “He wouldn’t have wasted time on evacuating the ship. Not for the shakedown. Any pilot worth his water is going in with a softsuit. Closing the door? Really? The ship didn’t need that door closed. It actually worked in our favor because we got enough atmosphere to get back into the engineering compartment. As a phase two plan, closing the door worked against him.”

  “Well, if the depressurization had worked as planned, you’d have been dead,” Panko said.

  Natalya’s brain twitched at that. “What if it wasn’t the plan? To kill the test pilot. To kill us.”

  Panko looked at her, his eyes squinted and his mouth screwed into a grimace. “It certainly looks like attempted murder. Complete with the cheesy warning message.”

  “What then?” Zoya asked.

  “What if it was just to scare us into abandoning the ship?” Natalya asked. “Somebody’s known for weeks that we’d be taking the ship out and that Ernst here was going to chase us.”

  “So we were supposed to dive out and Ernst would pick us up?”

  Natalya nodded. “Yeah. We considered it. Remember?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Zoya said.

  “Why didn’t you?” Ernst asked.

  “We worried that the drive would fire before you could get to us and we’d follow the ship through the hole,” Zoya said.

  Panko scrubbed a hand across his mouth and nodded. “Valid point.”

  “You weren’t close enough to follow us through the same hole, depending on when the drive kicked us. We tried to shut down the drive but we got the engineering door open just as we jumped. By then it was too late anyway,” Zoya said.

  “Serendipity, Pulaski Local. Over.”

  Panko stood and bolted for the cockpit. “Pulaski Local, Serendipity. Go ahead.”

  “Serendipity, Pulaski Local. Switch to channel alpha four for secure communications with the director please? Over.”

  “Pulaski Local, Serendipity. Roger, alpha four, secure comms. Out.” He fiddled with the communications gear for a moment until the signal locked. “Pulaski, Serendipity. Over.”

  “Serendipity, Pulaski. Stand by.”

  Panko looked over his shoulder at Natalya and Zoya. “I knew we wouldn’t be able to hide the ship.”

  “What will you tell her?” Natalya asked.

  “Depends on what she asks,” Panko said.

  “Serendipity, Pulaski. Over.” Alison Pittman’s voice sounded like she was in the next room.

  “Pulaski, Serendipity. Go ahead, Director. Over.”

  “Serendipity, Pulaski. Spill it, Ernst. What did you find? Over.”

  “Pulaski, Serendipity. I have the ship in tow. Nobody is aboard. Over.”

  His communication was met with a pause much longer than the time it took radio waves to travel all the way to the yard and back.

  “Serendipity, Pulaski. Roger that, Ernst. Bring it home and I’ll talk to you after you’ve secured the ship. Over.”

  “Pulaski, Serendipity. Roger. I’ll be back at the yard in a few stans. Serendipity, out.”

  “Pulaski, out.”

  Panko secured the communications equipment and turned to the women. “Think she bought it?”

  “More to the point, do you think the people overhearing us bought it?” Natalya asked.

  He blinked a couple of times. “That was a secure channel.”

  “Yes, but we overheard your conversation easily enough,” Natalya said.

  “Aren’t you being a bit paranoid?” he asked.

  Natalya shrugged. “Maybe, but somebody in Pittman’s crew is dirty. I don’t know who or how, but there are just too many weird things happening.”

  “You don’t think it’s Pittman herself, then?” Panko asked.

  Natalya looked at Zoya. They both shook their heads at the same time.

  “No,” Natalya said. “She’s the patsy. She’s going to take the fall for the failed program.”

  He frowned at each of them in turn. “You still t
hink it’s going to be a failed program?”

  “Yeah, but no fault of your design. There are enough people working against this project that I’m pretty sure somebody will make a move on Pittman and take over.”

  “You suspect Downs,” Panko said.

  Natalya saw Zoya chewing on her lower lip. “Zee?”

  Zoya looked at him and shrugged. “I think he’s the distraction. I think we’re supposed to pay attention to him instead of the real mover behind the scenes.”

  “We already know he’s skimming,” Panko said. “That’s why he’s been tossed off the station.”

  “Yes, but we don’t know how many people worked either for or with him. He was at the yard a long time,” Zoya said.

  He rubbed his mouth with the fingers of one hand and frowned. “Longer than I have, actually.”

  “So, what?” Natalya asked. “How many different factions do you think there are?”

  “Occam’s Razor,” Panko said.

  Zee pursed her lips and squinted. “If—and it’s a big if—somebody’s trying to get control of the project, we don’t know who they are or why they want to.”

  “Agreed,” Natalya said. “If there isn’t, then why pick Alison Pittman to be the project lead. Why kill the last one and dismiss the team?”

  Panko reached for his tablet. “Making a note to find out who dismissed the team.”

  “While you’re at it, who picked Alison?” Zoya asked.

  Panko nodded.

  “Downs has been on the payroll for a very long time. He’s been involved in a fairly large number of projects that put him in a position to skim—directly or indirectly—and acquire a significant number of credits,” Zoya said.

  He squinted at her before looking at Natalya. “Being put in the position doesn’t necessarily mean he did.”

  “We’ve got evidence that Downs hired some relative to provide the couches,” Natalya said.

  “As I recall, Alison knew about it,” Zoya said. “She chalked it up to small enough that it didn’t matter.”

  Natalya nodded. “At the time, she also thought she had it under control.”

  “What happened?” Panko asked.