By the time we returned, Jenna had news.
"The bounty has been approved, and their security division will pick up the marks as soon as we dock. Apparently the bounty on record is just the tip of the iceberg. This ship has been preying on this area of space for a long time, and no-one was prepared to take them on. Even the system government is happy to see them taken out."
She looked at me.
"Before we dock the ship, you'll have to return the shuttles back to the way they were."
I nodded.
"When did we become official bounty hunters?"
"Two stations ago. I figured this was going to happen sometime, and wanted to be official when we survived it. It also provides us the database of bounties, so I’d know if destroy was a better option, or not. No point destroying, when we can make a profit off it. If they hadn't surprised us like that, I'd have told you to try and take them. But it took me too long to get the details on them."
She looked at both of us.
"Nicely done. I wish boarding operations were always that easy."
"Thorn's our secret weapon."
Even Jenna smiled at that.
Jess and I returned to the other ship as we closed on the station, once more armed, and just before we docked, I returned the shuttles back to how they'd been. Peeking inside, I found all of them sitting where they could, looking unhappy. Silently unhappy.
Jenna docked us first. When the airlock opened, there were a dozen large men there, all armed, and a big wheeled cage. Next to them was someone in station uniform.
Uniform waved the others in, and the leader motioned for us to lead the way. There was some confusion when we headed towards the shuttle bay, but they followed along behind us. Most of them had backpacks.
At the first shuttle, the leader opened an external panel, plugged something in, and held a pad to his mouth. He informed those on the ship they were under arrest, pursuant to a bounty warrant with a large number, and they'd be required to exit the ship one by one, starting with the captain. If they resisted, or refused to come out, they would be stunned.
One of the men opened the external hatch, and four of them entered the ship. While the first one forced the inner hatch, the other three stood waiting with guns raised.
The rest was an anti-climax. They came out one by one from both shuttles, were shackled, attached to a line, like I’d seen slaves before, and the whole group was led back to the cage, and put inside. They all left, except for the uniform.
"You're ship is docking at the next bay that way." He pointed. "I understand you claimed this one, so I'm assuming it will be yours. Station management is pleased with you, so docking fees are waived for the next week. If you sell the ship, they'll apply to the new owners from the date of sale. If you keep the ship, they'll apply to the next time it docks. For now, I suggest you lock the ship up, and wait for the decision. The station management thanks you, and good luck."
He left, we locked up the ship, and walked around to the next docking bay. For the first time, I was able to see a ship coming in to dock, from the station perspective. It was quite scary, seeing something so big, coming so close. But there was no doubt about Jenna's skill as a pilot. The ship kissed the station so lightly, it was as if there was no connection.
Jess was laughing at me.
"What?"
"The ship doesn’t actually touch the station. It just looks like it does. Both ship and station have docking clamps which latch each other in a grab motion. The station then attaches various pipes to the ship, and the airlocks extend to form a soft connection around a hard ramp."
"Airlocks?"
"Sure. The main people airlock is up here. The front cargo bay airlock connects to a pure cargo level below us, and where ships have side cargo airlocks, station arms adjust to fit to them as well."
"Fascinating."
She laughed again.
"You're proving you're new to space."
"I am."
Her laugh got louder.
The airlock opened, and Jenna poked her head out.
"Back in here, now."
"Why?"
"Don’t ask Jess. Move."
We moved, and Jenna closed the hatch behind us.
"Problem?"
"Media on the way." Jess winced. "Someone leaked about the bounty being collected, and every news service on this station will be wanting interviews."
She led us back into the ship.
As we walked, I pondered this. The last thing escaped slaves wanted was their faces plastered on every screen for multiple sectors. And I needed to keep a low profile as well, in case awkward questions were asked.
The girls tossed for who did the cargo work, and Jess started listing what we were selling on the station sales system. Jenna and I went to the room now being used as our intelligence computer room, and I concentrated for a bit, copied the station data drives to a waiting table, Jenna plugged them in to our growing computer, and started her search for her remaining crew mate.
The salvage decision came in the following day, in our favour. In the meantime, the possessions of the ex-crew were collected by authorities with me attending, and I'd done several station trips, without using the airlock to leave and return by.
With the ship now ours, we gathered to figure out what to do with it.
"We sell it," said Jenna.
"We bolt it on," said Jess.
I said nothing.
The girls looked at each other. Then looked at me.
"What?"
"If I tell you where," said Jess, "can you attach the ship the same as you did the others?"
"Sure."
"Why do we want to?" asked Jenna.
"I would have thought that was obvious."
"Jess, nothing about the situation we find ourselves in is obvious."
"Maybe so. But the ship will double our missile capacity, both firing and storage, add a good deal to our cargo capacity, and gives us extra living space if we ever need it. Not to mention the extra speed we can manage with another set of engines."
"Priority on speed."
"Of course."
Jenna sighed.
"Fine. As soon as the cargo is sold or brokered, we move out. I'll take us off the normal routes so we can do the connection unobserved."
"Can I make a suggestion?"
They both looked at me.
"If there's a shipyard here, why not purchase whatever bots they use for hull work, and internal work like changing the cargo system? When we turn up at another system with both ships combined, we can point to how it was done."
"Good thinking," said Jenna.
"I'm on it," added Jess.
Twenty Nine
The hardest part of the whole plan, was buying the two sets of bots. Together they cost much more than the ship had available to spend. Jess and I both transferred most of the cost of them to the ship's account, easy come, easy go, and we lost a few hours waiting for them to be delivered.
In the meantime, Jenna piloted our prize out beyond the range of curious eyes, and flew back in a shuttle. Her own ship had a shuttle bay, but had never had an actual shuttle. Now she had two.
Bots on board, we left the station, and moved to where the prize was.
Using a lot more power than last time, I carefully repeated the joining process, under Jess's supervision. It fit nicely on the underside this time, along the center axis, its top to our bottom. This preserved the gravity all in one direction once again.
Once the merge of hulls was done, I copied the hull bots three times, and all four sets went out to make all four ship merges look like a bot job. Once they were finished, Jenna put us back on course for where she thought Leanne was now.
Jess concentrated on getting the new set of engines mixed and balanced, with me supplying the joining cables, and relevant holes. It kept both of us occupied for the best part of a day, minus breaks for sleep and meals. I found the whole process both interesting, and boring at the same time.
&n
bsp; With the ship going faster with the extra engines, Jess had me copy the internal builder bots three times, and I watched her set up the needed parameters for merging all the major cargo bays into one system. To do it, she had to first create a single set of specs which defined the whole ship. Before the bots could begin, the relevant holes in hulls had to be made, since the bots were only designed for working with internal walling, and not hull material. Jess made sure I was very, very, precise with the holes.
With the bots working away to Jess's satisfaction, and Jenna haunting her bridge, I retreated to my space for sleep, and found too much noise going on to be able to. I dozed between major bangs, rose and ate, and started reading again.
We returned to something like our normal routine, and the days, and stations, went past in a blur. The only highlight was the testing of the new cargo system, which needed a little fine tuning after a couple of containers on the move, gouged some large holes, in the wrong places. Still, given the botch up job in the first place, and not totally accurate ship plans, the system moved containers and pallets around very efficiently in the end. It gave us a considerably higher cargo capacity now, and at the next station, finding plenty of freight heading to our next destination, we deliberately filled all of it.
In one of my star gazing sessions, I'd pondered the way Jenna was going about saving her crew mate. Instead of narrow focusing, and speeding after her, she was trading her way around. It slowed us down, especially time on stations, but it did give us a legitimacy which would lose us in the movement of ships all doing the same thing.
Unless of course someone was actively looking for us, and paying off those with the information of where we were, and heading. Jenna wasn’t talking, but us being tagged by the bounty hunters convinced me someone was actively tracking us.
I made sure I was awake for each new jump now, expecting to be attacked every time. We weren’t, but I sure would rather be wrong my way, than be in bed asleep when the missiles started hitting.
So I was sitting in my chair, on my bridge, for the last jump to the next destination. The jump went fine, nothing attacked us or challenged us, but the unexpected came from Jenna.
"Damnit!"
"What do you see?" asked Jess.
"The ship Leanne is on is not only in this system, but heading out already."
"Problem?" I asked.
"Yes."
I waited.
"Bloody ship is coming towards us."
I didn’t see the problem. And said so.
"Can you jump on board while both ships are moving towards each other?"
Thirty
In theory, jumping while moving, to something also moving, was possible. I'd never heard of it being done though. Nor could I think of a situation for a battle mage on the ground, to need to do it.
Actually, that’s not quite true. If a mage was on a piece of ground, which broke off on a bad slope, and threatened to kill the mage, I'm pretty sure a jump would be attempted. But the other end would be somewhere safe, and definitely not moving.
And even that wasn’t true, because in theory, a mage might try to rescue someone in that scenario, where the mage jumps to a moving person, and jumps both of them to safety. But in both jumps, one end is stable.
Still, it suggested a both ends moving jump was possible.
And then I remembered. I’d already done it. With containers and pallets. But with one key difference. I was in one place, moving something else, from a moving object, to another moving object, but where I was moving with it. So it was still a jump from movement to stable, even if both were moving. It was also with something which didn’t die if you got it wrong.
The girls were looking at me.
"In theory, yes."
They waited for me to go on.
"In practice, I don’t think so."
"Why not?" asked Jess. "We already did it."
Which was true. We had. My jaw fell open for a moment. When we boarded the bounty hunter ship, we'd done just that. And I hadn't even thought about how dangerous it was. But actually, it wasn’t the same, since the Bounty Hunter ship hadn't been moving at the time. We hadn't given them enough time to need to move, so they'd just thrown things at us from a distance.
This was different. The rate of change of the range between the ships was high, as they came toward each other very fast. Did I really want to risk my life betting on if I could do it or not?
"He's going white," said Jenna, matter of factly.
"We made a mistake," said Jess.
"Which one?"
"We gave him time to think."
Both of them chuckled, looking at my face. On Jenna, it made a huge difference to her normal expression. They could be right though, and I was just over thinking it.
"Okay," I said. "It's possible. But think it through."
"No," interrupted Jenna. "Let's not. As soon as you’re in range, jump over, grab Leanne, jump back."
"What if someone else is there?"
"So?"
"They'll see us vanish."
"No-one will believe them."
"All the same…"
"No. Keep it simple."
"Too simple might get someone killed," said Jess. "Why don’t we create a diversion?"
"How?" I asked.
Jess grinned.
"If a key component in the main engines was to stop working unexpectedly, depriving them of most power for a few minutes, you could get in and out without anyone seeing."
"Show me."
Jess pulled up specs for the ship in question, rapidly scrolled and zoomed in, and pointed.
"This. It’s a small black box, regulating power through a key junction. They get replaced regularly, since if it fails, the result is chaos until you replace it. You replace it by first switching to the primary backup. But the design is flawed. If the unit fails, the primary backup is unable to work, until the main unit is replaced. Which is why it's always replaced long before it could possibly fail."
"How long will it take to replace?"
"Usually a five minute job. In the dark, with possibly no gravity, longer."
"No gravity?"
"The junction supplies the gravity plating. While in theory, the plates will take a while after power loss to drop far enough people start floating around, but I’d give you maybe two minutes before it starts. Give or take."
Jess grinned again. I wasn’t quite sure why the horrified expression on my face was funny for her.
"Man up Thorn. Pull something in the black box, wait for the ship to stop, jump in next to Leanne, jump both of you out again. Easy."
"That’s easy for you to say."
"Of course it is. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it themselves."
I didn’t bother to reply. Instead, I turned away from both of them, and walked back to my bridge.
"I think we finally spooked the poor bugger," I heard behind me.
No, not spooked. Terrified!
Okay, so here's my thing. I had a handle on the jumps, since I had done similar before. I just needed to be very careful about it. But I was a ground boy. I needed gravity to feel safe. The thought of floating around with no control was terrifying.
The urge to get a drink, and generate some courage, was almost overwhelming. Instead, I sat and star gazed, trying not to think.
Jess came in a half hour later.
"Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that to you."
"It's ok. You'd think I’d have a handle on all this by now, but the learning curve keeps going up."
"What's the problem?"
"No gravity."
"You know, I forget you're not a spacer. Anyone who decides on a life in space is first put through zero gee training. If you puke, you usually choose another calling. If you don’t, the training continues. So those who live in space, are prepared for sudden loss of gravity. Often from a very early age. It's easy to forget you never had any of the training."
"Is it too late now?"
<
br /> "Probably. Nobody mucks around with the gravity plating. Testing is done in space suits outside airlocks, usually station ones, or at the least, when the ship is stopped. Jenna is not going to stop us now, and if she did like the idea of you going out the airlock, it would be a one way trip."
"Does she hate me that much?"
"Nothing to do with you. But I think she sees someone else whenever she looks at any man."
"Understandable."
"Perhaps. I'm not sure I heard the whole story. Any normal person would be more detached from the past by now."
"Not when men strip your clothes off, display you naked to hundreds of people, mainly men, and then sell you. I'd call it a solid reason for a relapse."
"Maybe so. But they did the same to me too, and I'm bouncing back from it."
I suddenly looked her in the eyes.
"Did they rape you? On that ship?"
"No, but it was getting closer all the time. It was why I was being tortured when you saved me. We had to give ourselves willingly. It was the end of the process of breaking us."
"What about Leanne?"
Jess looked concerned for a moment.
"I don’t know. She's strong, but in a different way to Jen and me. I think we'll either find her dead, beaten to a pulp, or silently enduring. She's waiting for us. She'll have no idea how long it will take us, but she knows one of us will have escaped, freed the other, and be coming for her next."
"You were that close?"
"All for one, one for all."
My eyes glazed over. She mentioned something about checking the medical facilities, since we had five of them now, and I didn’t notice her leave.
One good thing about the conversation, the terror was gone. I practiced looking into various parts of several ships we passed, including into small parts in power junctions. They were quite complex inside, mainly very small circuitry. It was probably doable, and if I was quick, there didn’t need to be any gravity complications.
Neither ship had any room looking like a slave barracks. But I was getting quicker with moving my sight around a big ship.
Yesterday's Spacemage Page 11
