by Blaze Ward
Javier watched his screens as his data banks slowly filled with interesting tidbits.
He turned to the Captain as he considered taking the time to pee.
“What are we looking for here, anyway?” he asked, in his ten–year–old backseat–whining voice. He was good at that one.
Captain Sokolov barely glanced over as he watched the screen. “Money.”
Okay. Yeah. The obvious answer. Translation: I have no clue what’s here, we’ll steal everything not nailed down, or anything that we can pry up.
Pirates and Philistines.
Still, it beat being dead. Or working as an agricultural slave on some forgotten, misbegotten backwater. At least the pirates had a sense of humor.
Centurion Djamila Sykora, Ship’s Dragoon, walked in.
Most of them.
Part Two
Zakhar had learned to watch what was going on in Aritza’s head by the way his hands moved when he typed things on the console. Usually, it was a lazy, one–handed motion, two fingers and a thumb roaming the whole face to find keys and buttons.
When he got excited, or nervous, he used both hands, striking with precision and all ten fingers. Concord Fleet Academy training. When Sykora was around, back to one hand, slowly banging things out, like he was driving nails with his fingers.
If they both weren’t so good, and, more importantly, so professional about it, he would have had to physically separate them a while ago. As it was, she was generally on his left and stayed away from the Science Officer on the right, with most of the width of the bridge between them.
Not that it would do him any good. Zakhar had seen how fast Djamila could move when she wanted to.
So Zakhar watched the Science Officer’s whole outlook change, just in the set of his hands, when she walked in. He doubted that anybody on this ship, excepting possibly Aritza, would even recognize a reference to Pavlov, but he couldn’t help himself. It was like a bell rang.
On the big projection, he watched the real time face of the planet slowly turn. They had already done something nobody had ever done. At least, that anybody had ever mentioned. If they could sneak in and out of here, he might have to bring back a bigger ship, maybe one of those monster cargo carriers, all hollow box, and see how much loot they could steal.
The old ships weren’t going to be worth much as salvage after this long, but there would be logs, and sentimental value in things like personal effects and ship’s crests, vintage fighters left alone on abandoned docks, etc.. That would be worth something to collectors, especially since he had the market cornered.
Hell, Javier might make enough off his Centurion’s share to buy his freedom, if it went really well. Maybe he could actually hire the man. He certainly wasn't about to just give back the trees, Javier would have to buy them. Tell him that later.
And then Javier’s back flexed. Zakhar couldn’t think of a better term to describe it. It he had been a cat, it would have been that moment when they arch their back and puff all the fur out.
It had that same feel to it.
He considered saying something, but he was afraid Aritza would realize that he was being watched so closely and clam up more. It wasn’t as though he wasn’t liked and respected. Javier was just a loose cannon on a pitching deck. A good Captain paid attention.
The profanity, only sort of quietly muttered over there, got attention from more people than just him. Several heads turned.
Javier repeated the word. Louder this time. He still hadn’t looked up from his screens.
Zakhar watched Javier’s head come up so that he was staring at the bulkhead beyond his station. Then it cocked to one side. Then it bent back down. Looking at the screen.
Javier repeated the word a third time, this one more of an incredulous whisper.
It was amazing how much of a conversation you could have, inflecting a single profanity different ways.
Javier turned, realized he had an entire audience.
“Captain,” he said mildly, “you won’t believe this…”
Zakhar agreed internally. Little that happened on this ship, especially when either of those two was involved, was believable to outsiders. And sometimes to crew.
He fixed Javier with his Command Eye. It made him feel like an evil wizard, eyeing his realm. And it usually worked, on the rest of the crew.
“Mister?” he replied, aloof, supernatural. The Captain.
“So A’Nacia has a single moon,” the Science Officer began, pitching his voice into storytelling mode.
That was never a good sign with Aritza.
“I’m aware of that,” Zakhar continued. Easier to just let Javier run.
“It’s not as big as the homeworld’s is, but it is still significant,” Javier kept up his patter. “And because it is there, there are LaGrange points. Nice, happy little pockets in the gravity web where something will stay put after you leave it.”
“Navigation 101, Aritza,” Sykora called from across the way. She was apparently feeling feisty today.
“And as a rule,” he continued, ignoring the agent provocateur, “I scan those as soon as possible, looking for things other people thought might be interesting enough to park there.”
“Go on,” Zakhar said. Javier had his own pace for this sort of thing.
“Most of the ships out here are just pieces or shells. Nothing that looks really valuable until we board some of them and take inventory. However, there is something interesting in the trailing LaGrange point.”
“Define interesting,” Zakhar’s bad feeling had nothing to do with horror movie results. Javier was too much a sarcastic jokester.
Javier’s smile probably would have chilled a lesser Captain to the core. He kept expecting the man to crack his knuckles ominously.
“Well, sir,” Javier’s smile grew, “there’s a ship over there. It’s an older model, but even the design is a century later than the battle that was fought here. After the minefield.”
“So somebody else did the same thing we did and got here earlier. And?” Zakhar felt like the straight man here, but anything else would just slow it down. Nothing was dangerous or shooting at them, or Javier would have been acting more professional.
“It has power,” Javier said simply.
“Oh.”
There really wasn’t much more to say at that point.
Part Three
“One of these days,” Javier ranted gloomily, “I’m going to learn to keep my big mouth shut.”
“Ooh, can I sell tickets to that?” Sykora smiled down at him sweetly. “I’d be rich.”
That woman had a knack. She just seemed to know instinctively where all his buttons were, and how far she could push them without making him do something about it.
He decided to talk to her boobs instead of her face. Craning his head back got old, anyway.
“For you, maybe never,” he said. “What would we do if you retired?”
“You’d do something stupid and get yourself dead inside a week,” she added a layer of sugar on top.
“Children,” Captain Sokolov said. Quiet. Firm. Commanding.
Javier refused to listen to that part of his lizard–brain that had been trained to salute even when he was dead asleep or falling down drunk. Bad precedent. The man might come to expect it. Then where would they be?
They were, right the moment, back down in the loading bay, waiting for the engineering crew to finish extending the boarding tunnel, mate it, and override the airlock on the other side so they could board. It felt like they were getting ready for a picnic. Kind of looked like it, too.
Captain Sokolov was there to see them off. Sykora and a smaller than normal group of her killers, armed for invading small planets. Javier’s occasional assistant and sometimes minder from engineering, Machinist’s Mate Ilan Yu.
Sykora’s two pathfinders for planetary work were also there, Sasha: the short brunette with the nice hips, and Hajna: the skinny blond with the long legs. Nice girls. Cut–throat c
ard sharps.
Javier took inventory. Since they were expecting power, heat, and hopefully air over there, at least after some repairs, everyone was only wearing skinsuits today instead of the big armoured suits like Sykora had used to kill the mine.
To various loops and belts Javier had attached bits and pieces he had rifled from his planet–side gear. The little bag with low tech stuff like a magnetic compass (currently useless), matches (no scrub to burn), paper and pencil (good for mapping), a small metal knife (it didn’t vibrate, or have a laser edge, or collapsed monomolecular edge, or anything cool), and his handy little hiking trinket that combined a very cheap magnetic compass, a thermometer, and the symbols you should make in the dirt in an emergency.
The only thing high–tech he was taking was Suvi.
Externally, she looked like a small gray grapefruit, covered with knobs and things. Externally, she was just his short–range autonomous sensor remote, with an extra surprise. When the pirates had taken his ship, Mielikki, he had managed to smuggle out the AI who ran it, and pour her into the remote. And kept her his little secret ever since.
Since then, he had upgraded her electronics about as far as he could without people asking suspicious questions. She didn’t have her original memory core, but all of her personality could fit now and she had pretty much all of her log files and enough books to keep her busy for a few years at least.
He looked around to make sure he had space and then tossed her into the air as he pulled out the matching portable computer. It would take her about thirty seconds to re–baseline the bay in visual, ultrasound, radar, and infrared, with a stack of dials and gauges giving him various readings on people and equipment.
There had been enough time to upload what he knew about the ship over there, plus some of the mission parameters, so she was at least as prepared as the rest of them. And probably smarter.
The engineering crew coming out of the boarding tube brought him out of his fugue with a jolt.
“We have a seal over there, sir,” the woman said, addressing herself to him instead of the Captain standing next to him or the Dragoon beyond that. When had he gotten put in charge?
Still, this was a technical task, and they were nerdy people. He at least spoke in a language they could follow, some of the time. Unlike little miss amazon killer here.
“That’s good,” he replied, absolutely at a loss for her name. “Status over there?”
“Didn’t get too deep into their diagnostic system, but we’re pretty close to level,” she said. “Gravplates are dialed down to about one quarter, so be careful or you’ll bonk your head. Air reports breathable and acceptable pressure, but stay prepared anyway. Temperature is only a few degrees above freezing water, so you’ll want to dial your suits up now.”
Javier glanced around. The people surrounding him were almost scary competent. Paying attention. No questions. No complaints. Already setting switches and dials, based on the word of an engineer they barely knew.
He put actions to thought and turned his temperature up to a balmy twenty–five degrees. A beach would be nice about now.
Javier checked all the gauges and dials on the remote’s control board, watched them adjust themselves for the environment over there and smiled to himself as he started typing.
Good morning. Ready to go? JA
Affirmative. Can we steal it so I have someplace nicer to live?
He suppressed a snort. If the pirates around him found out about Suvi, his life wouldn’t be worth warm spit. That was why she was hidden in the remote. They forgot about the device most of the time, and he could work on it without arousing suspicion.
Let’s wait for these chickens to actually hatch?
Yup, it was going to be one of those days.
He looked up to see Sykora watching him from across the way. She would be in charge as soon as they stepped onto the other ship. As well she should be. You never knew when you were going to find monsters out there.
Just because mankind had been exploring the galaxy for more than four millennia and not found anybody didn’t mean there was nobody to find. Just that we hadn’t gotten out far enough, or soon enough, or something. And not all monsters were aliens.
“Ready, mister?” she asked.
He looked at the heavily armed people in the party. “Can I have a sidearm, just in case we run into monsters?” he asked. It was mostly pro forma at this point.
“Aritza,” she smiled calmly down at him, “I’m the bogeyman.”
Part Four
Suvi watched the hatch grind slowly open, at least slowly to her, and directed her sensors into the other ship.
275 degrees Kelvin, so warm enough to keep water liquid and not rupture things. Atmospheric pressure at the low end, roughly two thousand meters equivalent elevation. Gravplates set to one quarter standard. Not as light as Homeworld’s famous moon, Luna, but she would have to hop across the gap in freefall and dial everything down so she didn’t mash into the ceiling.
Piece of cake.
She watched Sykora, the big woman Dragoon, the dragon lady, nod to Javier. He pushed a button on his little console that normally handled the flight controls. Now, it just displayed a happy face in her cockpit and started up mood music for flying.
Today, she was flying an early heavier–than–air aircraft known once upon a time as a helicopter. Hers wasn’t as loud as those primitive machines, although she had considered adding sound effects for verisimilitude.
Like the two pathfinder women, Suvi went in first.
It was a boring place. Industrial design heavy on gray, with square corners that actually looked welded instead of cast. How droll.
The hallway from the airlock was relatively short. The dimensions were human, 2.5 meters wide and tall. Coarse texture on the deck plating for traction under gravity. Boring walls.
The whole ship appeared to exist on a single deck, laid out long and narrow, pointy at one end and flared at the other, from the pictures Javier had uploaded.
Suvi flitted to the place where this little hall debauched out onto the longer hall that ran down the central axis of the ship. In her mind, she echoed Javier’s question. Why couldn’t we just bring it aboard the pirate ship to open it up?
She replayed Captain Sokolov’s comment: “Because I want it go boom outside the ship’s armoured hull.” He reminded her of her first Captain, Ayumu Ulfsson, back before the probe–cutter Mielikki even had a name, back when she was just a hull number scouting for Concord fleets during the Great War. Maybe it was the Academy training. It hadn’t stuck with Javier, but it had with Zakhar Sokolov. It brought back some of her earliest memories.
Suvi smiled.
From the long hallway, she could see more than two thirds of the ship. She added dimensions and schematics to the information she was displaying on Javier’s screen. To the right, the hatchway that probably led onto the bridge. At the rear, a huge, armoured bank–vault of a hatch. Obviously engineering. You wanted things going boom back there to stay back there.
Someone had painted a really strange logo onto the wall a little forward of the crossway. At first, Suvi had dismissed it as art, but from here, it looked official, and kinda important.
For fun, she locked her targeting brackets on the image and beeped Javier’s console extra loud. Through the tiny fish–eye lens he had installed on the control portable, she could see several people jump suddenly.
Suvi giggled.
She missed having access to Mielikki’s data banks. That thing looked like a symbol, but it was outside her current knowledge base. She would have to rely on the much–dumber computers running Storm Gauntlet to hopefully have an answer. Mielikki would have known instantly.
She missed being a starship.
A few moments passed. She watched the group consult. Guns came out. Javier apparently was arguing with them, but there was too much noise for the little microphone to wash it all out. And she didn’t want to listen to an argument
today.
Javier surprised everyone by walking away from the group and entering the boarding tube. She could hear him clomp up the walkway towards her, followed a few seconds later by the big woman, Sykora, and the rest. The profanities bouncing around in the cool air seemed interesting. She filed them away for future use. You never knew when they might be useful.
Suvi watched Javier enter the ship through one of her cameras. She put his picture on his screen to say hello while the rest of her attention scanned the hallway.
She could hear little radio emissions bouncing around the ether. Javier had never bothered to load cryptographic software onto the remote, so she couldn’t listen in to whatever conversation the strange ship was having with itself. It didn’t sound particularly exciting, from the strength and frequency of the transmissions.
And Storm Gauntlet was WAY too stupid to be able to do something like that all by itself.
How could humans get around the galaxy in a ship that didn’t think? I mean, sure, they had before good AI’s had come along. But still, she was way smarter and way faster, and rarely fat–fingered a control. Whatever.
Javier stopped beside her, looked her in the eye with a smile, and cracked open the faceplate to his skinsuit. He took a shallow sniff, cold air being detrimental to organic lungs, and nodded.
According to her readout, the air should smell acceptable. Boring, without all those complicated trace signatures that plants, and soil, and chickens gave off, but not lethal and not particularly uncomfortable. To someone accustomed to Storm Gauntlet, probably a breath of fresh air, literally.
Humans were weird. But, hey, it paid the bills.
“Aritza,” the big woman boomed, across the air and the radio, “what the hell do you think you are doing? This ship could be dangerous.”
“Nope,” Suvi heard him reply with a chippy glibness. “Not with that.”
