He gestured cut, and I ended the broadcast.
"How was that?" he said.
"Very dignified." Aurore moved across, put her arms around him, then kissed his head. "You hate this formal stuff, don't you?"
"You should play one of those Space Fleet captains on 3V." I laughed. "Captain Logan, Hero of the Seventh Galaxy!"
Logan growled, but a smile wasn't hidden too far below the surface.
Hernandez confirmed that the transponder had deployed then unstrapped himself. "I'm going to check on my team. We better get ready for escort duty."
He was gone before anyone could respond, and I turned to Logan. "Do you want that?"
"Unless something suspicious happens, I'd say we keep things low-key." Logan tapped his fingers on his armrest. "McDole should open the door for us."
A few seconds later, the comms system beeped. I opened the transmission, and a grizzled looking man appeared on the screen.
"Greetings, Captain Twofeathers. Flight Lieutenant Gavyn Moriaby here. A little surprised to see a scroffer ship, but I suppose I shouldn't be. We have limited facilities, but you're welcome to dock with us—subject to confirmation of Commander McDole's presence, of course. Have to keep everything by the book." Moriaby glanced down. "I note your position and am sending our designated traffic control paths. Use approach sixty-delta-one. Our outer traffic marker is at four-thousand kilometers. Approach freely until then. Oh, and welcome to Sirius."
"Not the friendliest of welcomes," muttered Aurore.
"Haven't you heard?" I said. "The most common Geneering in Atollers is to remove their courtesy genes."
I programmed the course and started the autopilot. Geller Station was situated on the edge of a vast asteroid belt over twenty-seven A.U. from Sirius and was a combined observation and processing station. Mostly, they were processing the belt for raw materials to resupply Atoll ships, and the station itself was relatively small, which was more than you could say about the huge storage bays floating near the station.
It would take a little over a day to get there. The extra Jump was a big time-saver, and I felt unreasonably elated. We'd made our first Jump—two, in fact—and now we were viewing a new star and other worlds. At least, telescopically. It was a dream I thought would never happen.
*
I was in the stores area. With the extra people onboard, I was nervous about how long we could stay out here—even with the extra supplies McDole had provided. Once past Sirius, there were only a few small research stations, and I doubted they'd have enough provisions to be of much help.
When Logan planned the mission, it was only going to be him, Aurore, and me. Now we had three times that number of people. The MilSec team had been thrown at us last minute, and our schedule hadn't allowed us time to take on the extra rations needed—bureaucrats simply didn't understand space travel. I'd finished the early counts and was doing the math inside my head based on an average of eight thousand kilojoules per day, and we were well short of being able to complete the entire journey.
Water was largely recyclable, and we had plenty of storage space, but we could hardly pull over to Billy Bob's Market and Wholesale to restock.
I was about to head upstairs when I heard a cough. It was Dan. I hadn't seen much of him since he came aboard. I imagined he was adapted to whatever schedule they'd used on Fardosh-Baird, and I worked standard time like the rest of the ship.
He stared at me with a strange look on his face then broke out in a sheepish grin. "Got a question, if you ain't too busy."
He'd cleaned himself up a bit. His remaining hair and beard had been trimmed, and he didn't look quite so much like The Prisoner of Zenda. His clean ship suit was a big improvement on the raggedy paper clothes he'd been wearing when we first saw him.
I couldn't quite place his expression—a look of hunger mixed with something else. Maybe it was due to the fact that he'd been locked up so long. "How can I help?"
"Been away so long, I lost touch with so much. Wondered if I could have access to the ship's information library. The 'Tollers never let me see more than garbage game shows and soaps. Be nice to exercise the brain a bit. Do some catch-up."
I felt bad. I'd already activated the console in McDole's room. "Sorry, I should have done that earlier."
"Hell, nothing to be sorry for, Joe." He grinned again, and I saw half his teeth were missing. "I'm your guest. It beats living with those stuck-up bastards on Fardosh-Baird."
"I'll set it up when I'm back at the controls." It was good to see he was trying to move on.
"Hey, that's something else." His dark eyes glistened like a pair of oily bearings. "D'ya think I could see the control room, when you have a bit of spare time? I mean, jeez, this is a starship. I thought both me and Earth would be dead before we saw this stuff."
"Sure. Give me a few minutes to finish here, and we can go up together." He reminded me so much of Charlie, both in appearance and speech, that it was hard to remember he wasn't the old friend I'd shared so much coffee with over the years.
"Sounds, great." He smiled, then a frown slipped over his features. "Listen, I owe you an apology, Joe. For when I first met ya. Ya know, saying how you got Charlie killed an' all."
I didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry it happened. He was a good friend, and he saved my life."
"I was talking with Logan a couple of days ago. He told me how it had all gone down. Those hired killers—never knew nothing about that."
An awkward silence fell, then Dan held out his hand. "I hope someday ya might call me a friend. Can we make a fresh start, huh?"
I hesitated only momentarily, then shook his hand. "Don't have a problem with that."
When we arrived, I logged the data I'd found while Dan marveled at the instruments.
"Jeez. This room is bigger than the ship I escaped in when the 'Tollers attacked Deimos." He laughed. "What happened to building 'em small?"
"No need with the new Casimir generators. And to keep the Jump transition smooth, bigger is better in some ways. Easier to generate the field or something."
"Sure is different from the firecrackers I got my wings on." He wandered over to Aurore's station and dragged his hand across the controls. The console was locked, so it didn't respond to him, but even the Access Denied messages made him grin.
"Firecracker" was an old term for a chemical rocket, whether solid-fuel or liquid propellant. It was true—they typically did get much higher acceleration with those systems, but they were pretty much one-shot—a single high-g burn and then you coasted. The Casimir generators allowed Shokasta, and other modern ships, the ability to sustain acceleration for days and weeks on end. Although the initial thrust was lower and less dramatic, over time the speeds achieved were much higher, and it also provided a workable pseudo-gravitational field.
"What happened when the Atolls attacked? If you don't mind me asking?"
Dan's forehead wrinkled. "You don't know?"
"Only what was released to the news agencies." I fiddled with the controls.
"Can I see?" Dan shuffled from one foot to another.
I pulled up a historical newscast. It didn't have any real footage—the Atolls had never released any—but it had a half-decent simulation of the attack that had been derived from a mix of remote observation and some dubious hypothesizing. More to the point, it included reports of no survivors.
Dan seemed mesmerized, seeing remotely what he'd somehow lived through. His appearance confused me. He was Charlie's twin brother, which made him about a century old, but he didn't look it and moved like someone several decades younger. Perhaps that could be chalked up to his years in space, but that typically aged people more than preserved them.
"The reports were right. Almost." He didn't look around. "I was working outside—re-calibrating the solar arrays. When the station blew, my Hopper was crunched up and tossed away like an old beer can. The circuits were fried. No thruster control. Tanks were shot. Figured I had maybe twenty minutes of oxygen.
/>
"Then that necking Toller cruiser come out of nowhere. I was sure they were gonna finish the job—no witnesses. But they dragged me onboard and made me a prisoner."
"You were lucky."
"Being held in a 'Toller cell for six years? Living with people who treated me like an animal? Nothing but a circus freak to frighten their children with." Dan looked back at me, and I caught the flash of anger in his eyes. "You have no idea what they put me through."
I wondered what they'd done to him but didn't want to push him anymore. His reaction went beyond simple anger at being locked up. The Atolls weren't known for their humane treatment of Earth people, but they weren't generally sadists. Then I thought about my plans for Paek. I wasn't usually so harsh, but some people simply deserve death.
Dan pulled a coffee tube out of his pocket and emptied half the tube in one long drink, then smacked his lips. "Neck, I waited six years for a coffee." He took another drink and pointed at the Atoll Cruiser on the news display. "They don't do it. According to the 'Tollers, it's a drug, illegal. They have something they call coffee, but it's Geneered chicory and barley shite. Not worth drinking."
I'd heard about the Atoll's fastidious reputation. Many of them had an extreme pure body-pure mind regime and eliminated many things us scroffers took for granted. I suppose it made sense from a scientific perspective, but life without coffee sounded too close to life-after-death. Although with the widespread destruction of coffee growing habitats, substitutes were gaining traction, even on Earth.
I opened the management console and activated the terminal in Dan's quarters. "Okay, you're all set."
Dan grinned and took another gulp of his coffee. "Thanks, Joe. Mighty nice of ya."
"All part of the Ballen Spaceways service."
"If it's okay, I'll go and check it out. Gotta start playing catch-up. I'm behind way too much." He headed for the doorway. I pulled up the provisions system and checked the projections based on the data I'd collected. What came up was worrying.
"Was Dan just here?" Aurore clambered in.
"I forgot to give him access to the information library. He didn't get to view much on Fardosh-Baird."
She swung into her seat and opened up a spectrographic analysis. "Is that what he said?"
"Nothing but garbage 3V, like game shows."
"Weird." Aurore leaned back in her chair. "McDole said he'd read his way through their entire library."
"Their entire scroffers-only library, perhaps. Though if he's anything like Charlie, he's probably getting a bit senile." I tapped the console. "Anyway, we have a bigger problem."
"Oh?"
"According to my estimates, we only have enough food to search each star system for two weeks."
"We can't do a thorough survey in that time." Aurore turned to her console and pulled up my data. "It's impossible."
I understood her reaction. Even with the enhanced detection equipment, it would be difficult to detect a ship unless it was actively broadcasting a signal. Thermal signatures would be detectable, but on a Casimir-powered ship, the generators produced much less heat than something like a fusion reactor. It wasn't impossible, but finding something that small in the available search window was unlikely.
"We could head back to Fardosh..."
I didn't finish the thought. I could well imagine the response from Earth if we turned back before we'd really started. Worse still would be the Atoll derision when they found out we'd not provisioned our ship properly for the journey ahead.
Chapter Thirteen
BRUCE was putting me through my fitness program, and my breathing was coming as fast as an aeromobile salesman's lies. The routines were grueling, but I was making progress and feeling less pain. My robotic sadist had driven me through a series of chin-ups and was pacing me as I did several rounds of squat thrusts. I wasn't even halfway done when Giotto walked in.
She stood by the door, watching me with her piercing blue eyes. When I finished my set, I slapped the pause button on BRUCE, grabbed my water bottle, and sat, leaning my back against the wall while I recovered.
"How are things?" I said, wiping my face with a towel then draping it over my shoulders in an attempt to hide the sweat matting my shirt. "Not much going on for you and the guys right now, huh?"
She didn't answer, but carried on staring, her strong jaw set like astrocrete.
"Okay, you're not happy about something—I get that." I swallowed more water. "I'll lend you the infamous Ballen ear of sympathy, if you want to talk."
"Let's see how well you're doing."
"What?"
Giotto crouched, raising her fists in a classic fighter's pose. "Show me what you've got."
I didn't have a chance against her, and we both knew it. She was a fully-trained soldier in her prime, with the benefit of MilSec Geneering. "I'm not crazy. I can't beat you. And don't want to either."
"I'll go easy on you, old man."
It was absurd, but the look on her face told me I wasn't going to easily walk away from this. Whatever was eating her must have really got her pissed. I dropped into a similar position, and we circled each other warily.
She threw a punch at my shoulder, and I dodged away. "Why'd you change your exercise schedule?"
I suddenly realized she was mad at me. We circled each other some more, exchanging a few tentative punches and fakes. "The old one interfered with the approach to Geller Station."
"You're lying." She spat the words out, slamming a right jab into my shoulder that deadened the feeling in that arm.
She was right. The approach wasn't a problem. The navigation system took care of the real work—I only told it what to do occasionally. The truth was, I didn't want any more encounters with Grant. "Would you believe me if I said BRUCE suggested the change would fit better with my biometric charts?"
"No."
I sighed. Sometimes you couldn't avoid things, no matter how you tried. I threw a punch, which she ducked easily. "You don't want to know."
As she came back up, her fist slammed into my stomach, winding me. "Try me."
I staggered back, gasping for air. "Are you trying to finish the job BRUCE started?"
She moved in again and threw another punch at my midriff. I blocked it, swinging my fist at her. Instead of connecting, she avoided the blow, turning to grab my arm and spin me around so my back was to her. She wrapped her muscular arms around my neck and squeezed, none too lightly. "You better tell me."
She let me go, and in between the next few exchanges, I told her about Grant's warning. Her face darkened.
"He has no right to interfere with anything I do off-duty." She slammed her forearm into the side of my neck, and my vision filled with sparks.
"So maybe you should beat the shit out of him instead?"
She spun around, her leg slicing under mine, and I dropped to the floor like a sack of machine parts. She jumped on top of me, straddling my midriff.
"Men are such bastards," she said.
I grunted as she pinned me down. "I'm not in a position to argue."
She jammed her hot lips against mine. After a minute, she pulled back, grinding her pelvis against me.
"I don't want a relationship with you," she said.
"Okay..."
She leaned over and kissed me once more. I felt myself getting warmer.
"I just want to have some fun on this dumb mission." She ripped my shirt open. "Nothing wrong with that, is there?"
"Well..."
"Goddamn regulations."
She moved lower and kissed my chest. My comfort zone felt like it had been vaporized in a nuclear attack, and it wasn't because Giotto was sitting on me. Well, not entirely.
"Giotto..."
"Call me Stacia."
I heard a click. "Joe? Logan said you'd be—"
I looked around. McDole was framed in the doorway, her face an icy mask. She turned abruptly and left.
Giotto stared at me. "You gotta be joking. The 'Toller bitch?"
She didn't resist as I pushed her away and rolled from under her.
"You've got it wrong." I grabbed my water and headed for the door. "I don't want McDole. And I don't want you either. Leave me the hell alone."
I left Giotto kneeling on the floor open-mouthed. There was only one woman I wanted. The problem was that she didn't want me, plus she was around nine light-years away. I still wanted to clear things up with McDole, though, and headed to her cabin.
"Go away, Joe," she called through the composite paneling.
"I know what it looked like. But sometimes appearances are deceptive."
"It's none of my business."
I took a breath. "You're right. But I want to explain anyway."
The door sounded like a gunshot when it hit the stop, and I edged inside. McDole stood with her back to me. "Giotto was looking to fool around on the trip. I didn't realize, and it got a little confused. I'm not choosing her over you. And I'm not choosing you over her, either. I don't want a relationship with anyone. I'm not sure I'll ever want one again, to be honest."
"I thought Earth-men only ever thought about sex?" Her words were sharp. Accusing.
"What?"
"Oh, never mind. One of those silly rumors—a cultural put-down, I suppose."
For the second time in thirty minutes, I was dumbfounded. "I don't have a clue what you're talking about."
McDole turned stiffly to face me."It's said that there are only two things on an Earth-man's mind—food and sex. Base animalistic urges. We're all prisoners of our culture sometimes, even me."
"You forgot one."
She frowned. "Sorry?"
"When we're not eating or fucking, we're getting drunk."
I turned and left before she could say another word.
*
I didn't get drunk. So far as I knew, the only booze on board was McDole's supply—and I guessed I'd be off her friends list now. The MilSec team might have had some stashed away, but I knew it wasn't the answer. Instead I'd gone to my quarters and sprawled on my bunk in the darkness, wondering what Dollie was doing and whether she missed me. Unlikely, if the party I'd witnessed last time I'd seen her was anything to go by. Hell, everything seemed so long ago, she probably didn't remember the good times we'd had.
Transformation Protocol Page 14
