by Mark Wandrey
If he’d found a single major system offline, he would have immediately returned to Tsukuyomi Brokers and shot the pompous prick between the eyes. He was already in a foul mood because of the general condition of the ship. However, everything was working, including the computer itself. In fact, the main computer was new—bonus. Life support, main reactor, secondary reactor, avionics, lift motors, control surface motors, and hyperdrive all reported as operational. He’d find out how operational later.
The reactor’s operations logs showed between 84 and 89 percent efficiency, which for a fusion powerplant was pathetic. The main torch reaction nozzle was 192 hours past its rated lifespan. Swell. But the best part was, the F11 reserves were empty, and the currently bunkered F11 was showing 77 percent saturation. These numbers were all based on logs he didn’t trust. Luckily the powerplant was on standby, so he brought it to life—and almost blew them to hell.
The automatic system stopped the power up sequence a millisecond before primary containment would have failed, turning the ship into a little mushroom cloud.
“Fucking hell, what was that?” Rick yelled through the intercom in engineering.
“I was just running a test,” he said, unwilling to tell Rick he’d almost been the first of many to die.
“Well, every alarm in the world went off, and a bunch of relays popped. What should I do?”
Sato set the reactor controls back to standby. “Reset the breakers and go back to what you were doing. It’s good.”
“Okay,” Rick replied. He didn’t sound convinced.
Sato returned to basics.
Two hours later, Rick had finished cleaning out the parts storage in engineering. He found the sole surviving pest, a strange reptile that tried to bite him on the neck. It got a mouthful of shattered teeth, and Rick crushed its head with his powered fist. A sweep with sensors showed nothing else bigger than a cockroach. Considering how dangerous cockroaches could be in the galaxy, Sato made a note to depressurize the entire ship once they got it into space.
Rick had done a good job in the parts room. Good enough that Sato could tell there wasn’t much to work with. He used his pinplants to access the computer manuals and note normal parts stores levels, confirming there was less than 10 percent nominal stores. He wrote a subroutine and turned it loose, ordering whatever was available on Earth, while going back to work.
He started by cannibalizing the backup fusion reactor for parts. He knew both models as they were installed on several Hussars ships. Of the 52 fusion core buffers, 6 of them were out. It was no wonder it had almost gone pop when Sato dumped reaction mass into the core. As luck would have it, no two malfunctioning buffers were next to each other. He was able to power down the backup and use six of its buffers to replace the main reactor’s damaged ones. After checking a few other minor issues, he returned to the bridge.
This time, the reactor powered up smoothly. One problem down, a hundred to go. By the end of the day, the ship was in much better shape. Another 1.3 million credits were paid by the mysterious account, and the ship’s stores were now at a healthier 52 percent of nominal. They’d even managed to find four extra compatible fusion buffers, so Sato brought the backup back online only missing three (one of its was also damaged). Crosslinking the two reactors, he used plasma from the main to bring the backup into standby. Now they had full power available.
The last thing he did before getting some sleep was to put in an order for F11. When he woke in the morning with only a few hours before their planned departure, his bot had yet to find any F11 for sale.
“The damned war,” he said. Rick had been checking every nook and cranny in the bridge looking for more of the nasty little lizards that had tried to eat him.
“What do we do if you can’t get more F11?”
“Leave and hope we find some soon.”
“How far can we get with what we have?”
“Possibly dozens of jumps.”
“Possibly?” Rick asked, looking up from an open panel. “What if it’s less?”
“F11 can be finicky, especially with an old reactor like this one. If it passes a saturation threshold, the heat or the radiation could be uncontrolled.” He made an exploding gesture with his hands.
“Okay, I get the point.”
“A few more hours, and we’ll get out of here.”
Sato set an alarm and watched as the time wound down. He spent the remaining hours checking all the systems he could, then going over them again. Rick confirmed the port lateral CID, close-in-defense, laser emitter was missing. The Tokyo Starport might have some repair parts available, but there wasn’t so much as a single bullet for sale. The war had seen to that. Still, he tried chasing every possible lead to get F11. Even 50 liters would allow a partial purge and give them more than enough range.
With only an hour left, he found F11 on a private computer listing. A few such listings for hard-to-find goods had been appearing and disappearing just as quickly. He’d set a bot to jump at the first one to appear, and this time the bot won. It was only a single 20-liter container, and they wanted 100,000 credits. Even for F11, that was an outrageous price. He offered cash and required delivery to his ship. The seller accepted.
The timing was working out perfectly. Sato was relatively certain the ship was space worthy. He’d run tests on the hull’s integrity and found it in surprisingly good shape, especially considering the slapdash appearance of the repairs. The reactors were functioning well, and simulations showed they would operate up to 95% of capacity, considerably better than the logs. Weapons were minimal, but he’d known that when he bought it. He hadn’t picked the ship for its guns; he’d picked it for its legs.
When the ship’s comms signaled a vehicle approaching their landing cradle, he tapped on Rick’s door. “F11 is here, come on down.”
“Be right there,” Rick said through the metallic door. Sato nodded and climbed down the ladder to the lower deck, where their boarding ramp was located. Since the vessel was a warship by design, it didn’t have a convenient cargo door. All stores had to be loaded from the personnel boarding ramp. It was a good thing it didn’t have missile tubes. Sato couldn’t imagine a crew trying to maneuver high explosives through the tight corners between decks.
Sato opened the door to the gangway and stepped out. The weather today was better. He wished it had been nicer the previous day so he wouldn’t have had to spend his time inspecting the hull in the rain. A small ground car was approaching. Of course, it wouldn’t take a truck to bring 20 liters of F11. He went to meet it.
The car stopped just inside the landing cradle when he was halfway there. The doors opened, and a tall Caucasian woman with long auburn hair tied back in a ponytail stepped out, as did a huge dark-skinned man. She smiled at him. “Hello again, Taiki.”
Sato stopped in his tracks, unable to decide on a course of action. “Adrianne,” he said.
“So you do remember my name. I was wondering.”
Sato slowly put a hand in his pocket for the little laser pistol stashed there.
“I wouldn’t do that,” the black man growled. He came around the end of the car. The pistol he held low wasn’t little, and he handled it like an extension of his arm.
Sato took a step backward, and Adrianne held up a hand. “Wait, I just want to talk.”
There was a high-pitched whine behind Sato and a woosh of air above him. “Lift that popgun and they’ll be finding parts of you for a year,” Rick warned the man.
“Where you find one, you find the other,” Adrianne said.
“Make the call, boss,” the man said.
“Stand down, Joey. We didn’t come here to test one war machine against another.” The man nodded and instantly returned the weapon to a shoulder holster under his jacket. “I’m not armed, Taiki.” She held up her hands. “I’m sure your Æsir friend can tell.”
Sato inclined his head to where Rick was hovering on his jets.
“I don’t detect enough metal for even a smal
l knife, or power to run a laser. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have some kind of weapon.”
“Surely you could handle me,” Adrianne said to Sato. “You want to strip search me?”
Sato felt his cheeks get hot. He shook his head and said, “No.”
“Why don’t your killer and mine stand just over there, neutral ground, while you and I talk?”
“I don’t know what I would have to say to you,” Sato said.
“How about if I offer you something for a few minutes of your time?” She glanced at the ship. “You want to be on your way, after all.” Adrianne walked to the rear of her car and opened the trunk. From inside she removed two COPVs, composite overwrapped pressure vessels, both with additional armor reinforcement. They both had the Union’s symbol for F11 on their sides.
Sato could clearly see the pressure gauges on the side reading full. The containers were standard in the Union, and of a clever design to avoid them being filled with anything except F11. The unusual isotope of fluorine was incredibly rare and valuable. A high incentive to forge such containers existed.
“I got you here offering 20 liters; this is 40. Surely it’s worth five minutes of your time?”
“Forget it, let’s get out of here,” Rick suggested.
For some reason, Sato wasn’t sure if the outcome would be guaranteed in a fight. “What do you want?” he asked her.
Adrianne walked closer, stopping less than a meter away. Her eyes scanned him carefully. “You look good,” she said.
“Thank you, but you’re wasting your five minutes.”
“Always the realist,” she said and gave him a wan smile. “What do you remember about me?”
“Your name, your face.” He shrugged. “I think maybe we worked together?”
“You could say that,” she said and shook her head. “Taiki, we met almost 60 years ago, when you were recruited into Section 51.”
“The secret Earth science and intel directive,” Sato said automatically, then blinked in confusion.
“Right,” she said. “Which is something only a few hundred people on this planet even know exists. I’m taking a hell of a risk being here right now. I have to say, you don’t look a year older.”
“And you don’t look like you’re 90, which is the minimum age you’d have to be to have known me 60 years ago.” Sato tried to play it as cool as he could. He’d already found out he was over a hundred, so something happening 60 years ago was no surprise. Yet, here was another Human who, like him, appeared to have found the fountain of youth.
“You should know, we helped perfect the treatment Ezekiel Avander invented. You brought it as proof of your ability to help Section 51.”
Sato shook his head. None of it sounded familiar. “I’m sorry.”
“So were we, because you copied all our files, nuked half our database, and disappeared. Now you turn up 60 years later acting like you have amnesia. What the fuck, Taiki?”
“Something happened to me,” he said helplessly. “I’m trying to find out what it was.”
“Those files you destroyed, they really hurt us,” she said, taking a step forward. She lowered her voice. “I had orders to kill you on that train when you showed up on our monitors. The fucking alien invasion, all the destruction, humanity on the brink of the abyss. God damn it, Taiki, we might have stopped it all if you hadn’t…”
“I don’t understand,” Sato said. “I-I’m sorry if I did something wrong.” He hung his head. “I don’t remember any of it.”
“Someone really screwed you up,” she said. “My pinplants have a basic lie detector feature, monitoring your bio-signs. You haven’t spoken single lie. You’re highly agitated, but I always had that effect on you.”
He gave a little laugh and felt his cheeks warm. “Were we ever…”
“Intimate? No. Not for lack of interest on my part. You had someone before, or maybe during. I don’t know, but whoever she was, she already had your heart.”
* * *
He held her in his arms, vainly attempting to stop the flow of bright red arterial blood from a gaping chest wound. “Ichika, no!”
* * *
“Ichika,” he said, then spat. “I don’t even really remember her, either.”
Adrianne’s face frowned. “You paid a price higher than I could extract.” She dropped a tiny needle to the concrete and stepped on it. “I’ll probably catch hell for this. Oh, well.” She reached into a pocket, and Rick moved. “Easy, Æsir,” she said, and pulled out a tiny cylinder.
“His name is Rick,” Sato explained.
“Rick Culper, Winged Hussars?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“I didn’t, and he’s supposed to be dead,” she replied.
“That’s going around a lot,” Sato said.
She laughed and nodded, holding out the cylinder. “This will allow you to find me again if you ever want to catch up on old times.”
Sato looked down and saw it was an ultra-secure data device. He put it in a pocket.
She gently touched his cheek. “I hope you find closure out there, old friend.” She turned and walked back toward her car.
“Hey!” Rick called from the side. Joey glared at him, but Adrianne looked his way.
“Yeah?”
“You’re some kinda super-secret squirrel. Can you help Jim Cartwright?”
“Why do you care about him?” she asked.
“He was my best friend growing up. I’d try to help him myself, but I have other commitments.”
She nodded slowly. “Funny you should say that. I’ll see what I can do.” She continued toward the car.
Joey, her big bodyguard, glared at Rick for a moment. “Some other time, tinman.”
“Anytime,” Rick replied.
Joey gave a single grunt, either an acknowledgment or a laugh; Sato couldn’t tell. Then he joined Adrianne in the car, and the two drove away, leaving the F11 cylinders behind.
“Let’s get these aboard and get the hell out of here,” Rick said.
Sato nodded, watching the car go. He felt a strange, sad sensation as it disappeared from view. He followed Rick inside, sealed the hatch, and raised the ramp.
“One thing you should know,” Rick said.
“Yes?”
“I don’t think the black guy was entirely Human.”
“You mean he was an alien?”
“No,” Rick said. “He radiated multiple energy signatures, and his skin was too dense for radar to penetrate.”
Sato stared at Rick, the culmination of the most advanced technology in the galaxy that he’d had access to and slowly blinked. Maybe there was more in Heaven and Earth than he’d dreamt of.
* * * * *
Chapter Three
Rick wished Sato had considered crewing the ship. It had originally been designed for a crew of 19, though after refitting from a corvette to a courier, the crew requirement was reduced to nine. There were only two of them.
“Crew positions are more of a suggestion than a rule,” Sato said as he settled into the pilot’s couch. They’d adjusted all the bridge position seats to Human ergonomic requirements. Once again, the Izlian universality aided them. The previous owners must have been at least partly humanoid.
“Suggestions?” Rick asked, glancing around the bridge. There were four seats for the pilot/captain, copilot/navigator, engineer/weapons officer, and comms/computer. The other five positions were elsewhere in the ship. “I think these four seats alone on the bridge says otherwise.”
“Sure, sure. But you forget, I’ve designed starships for a l
ong time. We’re not going to war.”
“You don’t think so?”
Sato shot him a look, and Rick chuckled in reply. “All we have to do is fly to orbit and set course for the stargate. Easy. As we go, I’ll write automation subroutines and a couple simple AIs.”
“I thought AIs were illegal,” Rick replied.
“It’s complicated.” Rick rolled his eyes and Sato continued, “We’ll get Dakkar to help on a station once we get into space.”
“When did he learn to run a starship?”
“He didn’t; Nemo did. A long time ago.”
Rick nodded. He wasn’t encouraged by the idea of the crazy Wrogul running anything more innocuous than a toaster. But since he was strapping into a spaceship preparing to fly to space, it might be too late to complain and get off.
“You’ve had basic flight training, right?”
“I did a few hours at shuttle controls and learned basic orbital navigation,” Rick said. Most of his training was for boarding actions with Mickey Finn. His memories with the Winged Hussars were only a few months into his time, well before he was killed in action. He didn’t know if he’d had more training in that time, and it didn’t matter anyway.
“Good enough; take the copilot position.”
“Roger that,” Rick said and settled into the couch to the right and behind Sato. The ship’s cockpit was covered with many small circular viewports, and one longer oblong one for direct piloting and probably rendezvous. It did remind Rick of a shuttle, a little. Only much bigger. Once he was strapped in, he gave Sato a thumbs up.
The alien had cleaned its room and even found some metal to weld and create an onboard living tank. He hadn’t set up life support for the aquatic environment yet. Sato planned to help after they were in space. Rick was fine with letting Sato deal with Dakkar, who he really wasn’t interested in interacting with.
