The Kestral Voyages: My Life, After Berserker

by Steven Lyle Jordan

  Tirri stopped what she was doing, and she and Kestral stared at each other for two seconds. Then Kestral demanded, “Why the Hell not?”

  “Because I’ve done some checking of my own.”

  “Stand by.” Kestral muted the radio. “Tirri, go make sure Angel has all of his gear stowed.”

  Tirri swung about in her seat. “Angel? But—”

  “Just go,” Kestral ordered quietly. “I need the bridge.”

  Tirri stared at Kestral, debating challenging her new boss, but Kestral’s face did not seem to invite debate. So she stood up and left the ops station. Kestral remained silent while Tirri left the bridge. As Tirri continued on down the corridor, she heard Kestral resume speaking, but in such a low voice that Tirri could not hear what was said. She was tempted to hover, but decided instead to do as she was told.

  Tirri trotted down to the galley, and made a quick inquiry with Angel. “Sure, everything’s ready,” he said. “Why didn’t you just use the com?”

  Tirri waved a hand and smiled. “Just checking.” She turned and trotted back towards the bridge, leaving Angel staring after her in confusion.

  When she reached the bridge, Tirri saw Kestral sitting at the Captain’s station. The radio was silent. Kestral was also silent, and unmoving. Although Kestral’s back was turned to her, Tirri could see from her vantage point that her fist was clenched tightly, poised at the edge of the station.

  A number of seconds passed before Kestral seemed to realize someone was nearby. She spun around to see Tirri at the threshold to the bridge, regarding her silently. Kestral returned her stare, but did not speak.

  The silence was broken by Sarander, on the intercom. “Okay, we’re all charged up. What are we doing?”

  Kestral paused for barely a moment. “Tirri, request an immediate launch from the dockmaster.”

  “We don’t have a pilot,” she whispered.

  “We’ve got Sarander. Advise the dockmaster.” Tirri did not move immediately. “Do it, Tirri. We’ve got to go.”

  Tirri finally stepped forward and took the ops chair, her face dark with concern. “Calling dockmaster,” she replied curtly.

  Kestral keyed the intercom. “Sarander, get down here. You’re taking us up.”

  “What! I mean, what about our pilot?”

  “He’s not coming! You said this ship is ready to fly!”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then get down here and fly ‘er, boss!”

  When Sarander arrived on the bridge, he headed straight for the pilot’s station. “So,” he said as he passed Kestral, “should I ask why our pilot is a no-show?”

  “We’ll discuss it later,” Kestral told him. “Right now, we’ve got clearance. Let’s get airborne.”

  Sarander settled into the seat, and began working over the pilot’s controls. “We’ve got the dockmaster’s flight plan on the board… I have positive response on all thrusters, and all avionics.” He chanced a glance at Tirri, still at ops. She returned his glance silently, but her eyes were stern and alert. So he could only say, “We’re ready to go, Carolyn.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Sarander nodded and began working his helm controls. Tirri alternated watching him and the ops board in front of her. Kestral watched them both, while keeping an eye on the various monitors around the bridge. Outside, the main thrusters were slowly swiveling their noses into the air and tuning their exhaust manifolds to maximum liftoff thrust. As the engines rose in pitch, and the thrusters began to fire, none of the alert systems cried out for attention.

  And slowly, the Mary began to rise.

  There was little vibration… in fact, what little vibration Kestral could detect from the seat of her pants served as confirmation that the dampeners were working as designed. So, too, were the counter-sonic generators effectively muffling the engine noise behind them.

  Sarander seemed satisfied with the Mary’s responses so far, and he gave her an experimental quarter-turn in place. Then, nodding to himself, he tapped at the controls, and Kestral could feel her weight increasing as they rose into the sky.

  “Mary, is the drone outside?” Kestral called out.

  “Yes, maintaining station below and astern.”

  “Give me a visual of the ship, please. On channel one.”

  A moment later, the left bridge screen and Kestral’s station monitor came to life with a view of the Mary rising upward, its thrusters leaving twin columns of shimmering air trailing below. Sarander allowed the Mary to leisurely angle her thrusters forward, bringing the ship from vertical ascent to forward motion, a steep climb. As Kestral watched the monitor, the ship rapidly approached a cloud ceiling… and as the Mary slipped through the vapors, Kestral was sure she could feel the clouds sliding along the hull. Almost involuntarily, she smiled at the familiar sensation, allowing her senses to reach out and feel the ship and its motion, to feel as one with her ship.

  Soon, Kestral was aware of a lessening of the level of sound around her, and she knew what that meant. Sarander confirmed when he reported, “We’re non-atmospheric.”

  “How does she feel, boss?”

  “Mint perfect,” Sarander replied.

  “All right,” Kestral nodded. “Put us in our orbital plot, then put it on auto.” She stood up. “Tirri, let’s get started on our vacuum pressure checks. If they’re good, we’ll do a short C-hop.” Kestral left the bridge, as Tirri secured her station and got up. Tirri paused next to Sarander, and the couple locked eyes for a moment. But instead of replying to his unspoken question, she merely shook her head and followed after Kestral.

  Sarander watched her go, then turned back to his final maneuvers into their orbital plot. Sarander wasn’t the best of pilots… he found himself teasing the controls just a bit more than should have been necessary… but he was able to smoothly enter their orbital plot as specified. Once he had nailed the plot, he set the ship on autopilot, and secured the station.

  “This better be good,” he muttered as he left the bridge.

  ~

  Tirri caught up with Kestral at the port atmospheric station. She did not look at Tirri as she walked up to her, but she knew Tirri was there. “Tirri, check the station on the other side of that bulkhead. The calibration on this side doesn’t look right.”

  “Sure.” Tirri moved past her and into the next section, where another station resided on the wall. After a moment’s tapping at the station controls, she said, “I have a calibration setting of 14.3 at one standard atmosphere.”

  “Okay, I have 14.7,” Kestral responded. “Watch that one while I reset.”

  Kestral worked in silence. Tirri watched her, and watched the monitor in front of her. After a few seconds, Tirri finally asked, “What happened?”

  “I have 14.4,” Kestral stated. “What do you have?”

  Tirri looked at her monitor. “14.4.”

  “Okay. Let’s move on.”

  “What happened, Carolyn?” Tirri asked again.

  “We’ll discuss it when we’ve landed,” Kestral replied as she stepped past her and continued down the corridor.

  Tirri started after her. “With all due respect, Carolyn, don’t you think this is important enough to discuss now?”

  Kestral responded by stopping dead in her tracks and swinging back around to Tirri, who almost ran into her.

  “No,” Kestral stated in a calm but firm voice. “It will wait until we’ve landed, and everything’s checked out. Then we’ll all discuss it fully.” Tirri stared at her, clearly unsure what to do. “Trust me on this,” Kestral added. “If I thought there was any problem at all, we wouldn’t be here.”

  Tirri regarded Kestral for an extended moment, silently weighing the situation. Finally, she relented. “Let’s get to the next station.”

  “Okay,” Kestral nodded, turning and leading the way.

  As they moved out of that section of the corridor, they did not see Sarander step out of the shadows on the far end of the bulkhead. He paused to stare aft
er them and consider what he had heard, before he turned and headed for the engine compartments.

  ~

  Fefgren had returned to the column to watch the return of the Mary from her maiden voyage. She descended slowly, easily, her thrusters keeping her perfectly balanced as she eased back into the gantry. The column’s air scrubbers made more noise than the ship itself, as they recovered the exhaust gasses, filtered them, and vented them back upward and out of the column. Mary hovered in place, just half a meter above its gantry supports, for five seconds… then settled down in place, respectably close to its take-off position, and immediately began to cycle down the thrusters. Fefgren’s practiced eye scanned the outside of the ship for telltale signs of leaks or stresses and, detecting none, he smiled broadly.

  He approached the ship and tapped the announcer by the crew hatch. “Congratulations!” he bellowed out, almost loud enough to hear through the closed hatch. “A successful first run! Did you test the tessers, I hope?”

  He expected to see the hatch opened for him. Instead, he heard Kestral’s voice over the outside com panel. “Yes, we did, and everything went perfectly. Fefgren, please excuse us, but my crew and I have to have a conference. I’ll get back to you.”

  Fefgren started to protest, when he heard a click from the speaker that indicated that she’d closed the com. He stood there in confusion for a moment. Then muttering to himself, he shuffled away.

  Kestral set the radio to non-interruption mode, and settled back in her seat. At the pilot and ops stations, Sarander and Tirri regarded her and exchanged glances. Sarander finally said, “All right, can we now discuss what—”

  “Wait,” Kestral interrupted him, “until Angel gets here.”

  “I’m here,” came a voice behind Kestral. Angel stepped onto the bridge, stopped, and looked around the room. “Um… is our pilot invisible or something?”

  “Or something,” Sarander responded, staring at Kestral.

  “All right,” Kestral said, motioning Angel in and pointing him at a free chair. “Now it’s time to discuss, as Sarander almost said, ‘what the Hell is going on.’ Doshu May backed out on us… we have no pilot.”

  “Why did—” Tirri started to ask, but Kestral waved her question aside.

  “He had personal reasons… it’s not important. What’s important is, we have a job for tomorrow morning. Obviously, this isn’t what I intended for our first run. But the Mary just performed flawlessly on her maiden voyage. Right, boss?”

  “Uh…” Sarander shrugged. “Well, yeah…”

  “Okay. I feel completely confident that we can get this run accomplished, even without a permanent pilot. Sarander, you’ll fly her, and I’ll get a crash course in backing you up. And when we finish the run, we’ll get a permanent pilot.”

  Everyone looked at her dubiously, especially Sarander, who was now aware of how busy he’d be on their first run. Kestral smiled apologetically. “Look, I’m sorry, guys. But look at it this way: The sooner we get this job done, the sooner you all get paid. And without a fourth crewman, you’ll all get larger shares of the commission. Okay?”

  At first, no one moved. Then slowly, they all acquiesced with small voices and non-committal shrugs.

  “Good,” Kestral nodded to them all. “Then we’re go for tomorrow. Come on, let’s get everything locked down and get to sleep… we’ve got a busy day ahead of us.” She stood up, and stopped when she realized no one was moving after her. She reached over and slapped Angel, the nearest, on his shoulder. “Come on! It’ll be fine, trust me! There’s always a few bumps when you start something new. If this is our bump, everything after this will be easy!” She got an arm around Angel, pulled him up out of the chair, and the two of them headed off the bridge and down the corridor.

  Sarander and Tirri paused a moment longer, before they got up. Sarander made a wry face at his wife and whispered, “Yeah, this ought to be fun.” He followed Kestral and Angel off the bridge, leaving Tirri standing there with deep concern on her face.

  4: Pilot-less

  The Mary drifted downward over the warehousing column, and landed only slightly rougher than the manner in which it had returned to its gantry the night before. Gellen So stood at the opposite end of the column, on an elevator platform that held numerous identical crates, stacked three-high behind him.

  Instead of the crew hatch opening, the main cargo door on the port side began to descend in a song of motors, becoming a wide ramp into the cargo bay. Gellen So looked that way, and saw Carolyn Kestral riding the edge of the bay door. When it was almost down, she stepped lightly off and headed for the elevator.

  Gellen So met her halfway. “Right on time. Good morning.”

  “Morning, Mr. So,” Kestral greeted him. “Is this the entire cargo?”

  “This is it,” So confirmed.

  “All right,” Kestral motioned behind her, and two cargo loaders rolled out of the bay, Tirri and Angel each at the controls. Tirri expertly headed her loader straight for the closest pallet, while Angel ran his loader at a more inexperienced speed for the pallet beside it. “As soon as we’re loaded, we’ll be on the way to Terra212,” Kestral stated as her crew reached the pallets.

  “Excellent.” So reached into his pocket and produced a payment card. “Deposit receipt, already applied to your account. Balance gets paid at the other end. The coordinates are on the card.”

  “Thank you,” Kestral smiled, glancing over at Tirri and Angel as they gathered up the first crates and turned towards the cargo bay. “This shouldn’t take long...”

  Sarander walked up then, nodding to So and turning to Kestral. “We’ve got confirmation for departure from the dock, Captain.”

  “Okay,” Kestral replied. “Keep Mary warmed up. We’re gone in thirty.” Sarander nodded to them again and walked away. When Kestral turned back to So, he had a strange expression on his face. “What?”

  “Your ship is called Mary?” he asked.

  “After my niece,” Kestral replied.

  So smiled. “Mm.” He glanced at the loaders as they did their work. “Well. I’ll leave you to it. Thanks again, Captain.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Tirri and Angel had the Mary loaded, and the crates secured, in twenty minutes. Soon the bay was sealed, and Sarander confirmed all ship’s systems as go.

  “Then let’s get going,” Kestral suggested. “I’ll take ops.”

  Kestral and Sarander returned to the bridge, Kestral sitting at the console next to the pilot’s board. Sarander settled into the pilot’s seat, and in seconds, had the engines cycled up. They went through their takeoff checks quickly and efficiently, and a moment later, Sarander was coaxing the thruster controls alive. The Mary eased off the column, revolved a quarter-turn, and ascended smoothly into the air.

  Kestral glanced at Sarander and said, “You like those quarter-turns, don’t you?”

  Sarander grinned back. “Everyone ought to have a trademark.”

  ~

  From the safety of the elevator platform, Gellen So watched the Mary taking off. As he stood there, he was approached by another man. When the man reached So, he stopped and stood in a rigid military posture next to him. The man alternated watching So, and the ascending Mary, all the while remaining standing ramrod-straight. After a moment, So glanced at the other man.

  “She’s on her way,” So said. “Better call it in.”

  The man nodded. “There’s something else. Apparently, she has no pilot. Her boss is flying the ship.”

  Gellen So looked at him. “She spoke to a pilot.”

  “He’s not there now.”

  “Look into it,” So ordered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The man turned briskly and moved off, leaving So staring up after the Mary.

  ~

  On the bridge, Kestral and Sarander worked side by side at helm and ops. Sarander did most of the work, Kestral’s job consisting mostly of monitoring the operations console, and occasionally calling out a reading c
hange to Sarander. In some instances, Sarander would give her an instruction to alter an ops setting, never taking his eyes off his own station and the piloting he was doing. Kestral gave silent thanks that her ship’s boss had turned out to be a more than competent pilot.

  In minutes, the Mary was free of Kyxha’s atmosphere and gravitational influence, and Sarander swung her about in the direction of her deep-space course plot. When he was set, he turned to Kestral. “Ready for some C traveling?”

  “Kick it,” Kestral smiled.

  As he had the night before, Sarander worked over the console that controlled the tesser systems. When he was satisfied with the readings, he keyed the ship’s com. “Stand by: We’re going C.” Then he tapped a single activation stud.

  There was no sensation of a change of movement within the Mary. But outside, the dual power fields of the tesser system deployed, assuming their specified roles acting against each other, and squeezing the Mary through a narrow band of doubly-warped spacetime. Almost instantly, the Mary was covering distance faster than light itself.

  “We’re cruising at three-C,” Sarander confirmed. “On schedule for our fuel stop at High Amarillo in sixty-six hours.”

  “Good job,” Kestral nodded. “Lock it down and I’ll set the forward deflectors to max.” She smiled to Sarander. “Welcome to our first freight run.”

  “I’ll be here for awhile,” Sarander commented. “You think Angel has any of that coffee left from breakfast?”

  “If you want,” Kestral told him, “I’ll have him make you a fresh pot.”

  Sarander nodded gratefully. “We will be getting a pilot, right?”

  “I promise,” Kestral replied. “We’ll get a pilot. And in the meantime, give me another lesson in flying, so I can give you a break later.”

  “All right,” Sarander agreed. “Let me show you how the thrust balancers work...”

  ~

  “I found out what happened to Mary’s pilot.”

  Gellen So turned to the man who was walking up to him. “So she did have one.”

  “Kestral spoke to a pilot named Doshu May. We confirmed that,” the man said. “But May apparently contacted an acquaintance in the Rangers who knew Kestral’s history.”