Hunted (Space Rogue Book 2)

by Jay Toney

  "I suggest that the three of you use the showers in the decontamination chamber to wash up. I don't want the three of you stinking up the rest of the ship. Make sure you put everything you are wearing into biohazard bags before you put them into the disposal chute. There are clean coveralls inside of the decontamination chamber. Hurry, before I get sick!"

  The decontamination chamber was large enough to process twenty people at a time. It was an automated process that wouldn't allow us to skip any steps in the process. We weren't contaminated with any type of chemical agent, bacteria, or virus, just organic garbage. The computer and monitoring system didn't know that. Each of us was isolated briefly by forcefields. We were instructed to close our eyes and hold our breath while we were dusted with a powder that was designed to absorb and neutralize any liquid agent that might be present on our skin or clothing.

  When the forcefields released us, we entered a small room with benches. Ordinarily, a specialist trained in decontaminating chemical, biological, and radioactive substances would be there, dressed in protective equipment, to greet us. We were alone. The three of us removed our clothing. I removed three red bags from the only locker in the room. It had a black biohazard symbol and a yellow and black radiation hazard symbol on each bag. I handed one to Amber and Jewel. We bundled our clothing and stuffed them into the bags. Then we put the bags into the disposal chute.

  The next phase was the fun part if you could call decontamination fun. It was the showers. The instructions were to make sure every part of our bodies was washed clean, paying particular attention to our hair and under our nails. Brushes, soap, and shampoo were supplied. "I'll do your backs if you do mine," I joked. I didn't have a lot of goo from the garbage in my hair, but Amber and Jewel did. They both had to wash their hair three times before they were satisfied that their hair was clean. Spending time in the shower with them was usually fun, but scrubbing the stench from our bodies wasn't.

  When we were done showering, jets of warm air were used to dry our hair and bodies. Towels were a luxury that wasn't available in decon. Almost everything was filtered and recycled. The number of towels potentially needed for contaminated crew members was a luxury there wasn't room for.

  In the next room, we were scanned for contaminants. I didn't expect the sensors to find anything. If they did, we would be directed to shower again. If we failed a second time, our heads would be shaved, and other body hair would be removed using a depilatory gel.

  We passed the scans. I knew we would, but decontamination wasn't finished. The next room was a waiting room that could hold up to 100 people. There was only three of us, so we proceeded past this room into the last part of decontamination.

  It was possible that we were exposed to a biological agent that our sensors couldn't detect. Part of the decontamination procedure involved spending time in a room undergoing serialization with UV light. UV light was emitted from the floors, walls, and ceiling. It didn't matter if we stood, sat, or laid on the floor. All of our exposed skin would be bathed in UV light.

  Data from our last scan was used to set our exposure time in the UV chamber. It calculated our threat level as minimal. We would only have to spend 30 minutes in the room. We each put on a pair of disposable goggles and entered the room. The lamps glowed violet. Jewel and I would have a nice tan in a couple of days. Amber would probably burn. Her skin was a lot paler than ours. We all sat and waited for the process to finish. It seemed to take forever, and the room got hot and humid. Water vapor was added to the chamber to increase the effects of the light. It made waiting a lot more uncomfortable.

  The UV lamps finally stopped glowing and were replaced with standard lighting. The door leading out of the chamber unlocked, and we entered the last room. It was a dressing room. I took three coveralls from the shelf. There was no choice in color or size, they were all white, and one size fits all with adjustable ties. I passed a set to Amber and Jewel. We would have to use care wearing the coveralls. They were made of a disposable paper-like substance that was easy to recycle. There use was only supposed to be temporary.

  We spent two hours undergoing decontamination. A shower in my quarters would have only taken about 15 minutes. Mike was waiting for us when we came out of decon. "While you were in decontamination I took the liberty of recalling your crew and arranging departure clearance. You are scheduled to depart tomorrow morning 09:00 hours. It is best that we get you off of the space station until things cool down a little. Besides, Red is bugging me about getting the Hedgehog repainted. Someone borrowed his ship and brought it back with the hull scorched and the paint burned off. I need the hangar space to repaint it."

  Mike was in a hurry. His wife Rosie was cooking his favorite dinner. He wouldn't miss it for anything. He was only going to take the time to give us the short tour. We mussed the full tour while Beverly had us locked up aboard the Lucy. It would take months, maybe years to explore the whole ship. Most of the crew had been aboard for months training on the new systems. Amber, Tanya, and I were banned from the starship until the christening, to keep it a surprise. Wherever Tanya went, Natasha's avatar followed. She knew about the upgrades and changes done to the Persephone but was programmed to remain silent.

  The first place Mike took us was engineering. Jane and Kim were busy running a simulation and making last minute adjustments. Jane only took enough time away from the simulation to wave at us. Randolph was always tinkering with something. This time he had the reactor housing open and was halfway inside of it without a radiation suit. Jane noticed me staring in horror at him. "It's okay; there is no radiation. The reactor core is still closed and sealed. Randolph is just fine tuning the phase inducers for the antimatter."

  "We are getting ready to leave space dock."

  "He will be finished in an hour or two."

  "Make sure that he is." Randolph had a tendency to lose all track of time. If he were left alone, he would spend days crawling around the reactor core. Now wasn't the time for him to get stuck inside of the reactor housing.

  "Your ship and the Vengeance are the first two ships to be fitted with the new hyperdrive and navigation computers we got from the Iniguar. The ship is capable of making a thirty light year jump now. We haven't had a chance to test it, but it works in simulation."

  Next, Mike took us to the starboard nacelle. It was identical to the port side. Five Marauders and two cargo shuttles were parked on the ready line. That meant we had 10 marauders that we could use in combat. It left us with a shortage of skilled pilots. Including myself, we only had four pilots that could fly the Marauders in combat. One of the improvements he made was installing a series of forcefields in the launch and recovery tubes. That made it easier to launch our Marauders or shuttles without the need to depressurize the nacelles.

  The bridge was laid out using the same standard format that humans had been using for thousands of years. The major change was to the controls. There were no buttons to push or levers to pull. Everything was controlled using modern touchscreen technology.

  The last place Mike showed us was our quarters. He didn't bother going inside. He hurried off so he wouldn't be late for dinner. The door to Natasha's and Tanya's cabin was open. We could hear them inside rearranging the furnishings in their room, customizing it for their preferences.

  There was no mistaking Jewel's quarters. Crewmen were going in and out, still working on getting the room ready. I stopped one to see how long it would be before her room would be available. "Begging your pardon Captain, the room is ready, the problem is all of the laundry. It won't be finished until late." That explained all of the boxes in the corridor.

  Jewel turned bright red. "I'm sorry, I am not very good at keeping up with my laundry."

  "How do you know what is clean and what isn't?"

  "That's simple. I pick out what I want
to wear and give it the whiff test. If it smells okay, I wear it. If not I choose something else. Eventually, my outfits get cleaned. Sultan regularly checks to make sure my work clothes are clean. He sends me home to do laundry when he isn't satisfied with the cleanliness of my outfits, even when they are clean. He doesn't tolerate any body odor. I always make sure I wear perfume."

  Amber and I had a problem with keeping our quarters clean too. Twice a week, we had a cleaning crew come in and clean our cabin and do our laundry. If we didn't, it wouldn't take long before our floor would become impassable. I could tell already that similar arrangements would have to be made for Jewel's cabin. Tonight, she would be our first guest.

  The first thing we did was dispose of the coveralls we were wearing. They were uncomfortable and chaffed in tender areas. I had no intention of leaving our quarters, so I just slipped on a robe. Amber changed into a nighty and loaned Jewel one of my shirts to wear as a night shirt. "This room is just for the two of you? It's huge."

  It was a little larger than my old cabin and was modeled similarly. Instead of the Alliance made furnishings my old ship had, my suite was furnished with furniture made locally on San Paulos, except for my bed. The headboard and footboard of my bed were made from hand carved wood, that was alien to this world. It came from Invaldi. I recognized the figures carved into the wood, from my last visit to the Iniguar world.

  "Beverly used a couple of words I never heard before. I appreciate a good insult, but I like to know what the words mean. What are sneazles and thistlepops?"

  "I'm sorry, they are not words normally used in public because of their offensive nature. My sister should not have used such vulgar language. A sneazle is a woman who is a belligerent control freak, intrusive or aggressive, like my sister. We fought a lot growing up. That's what brothers and sisters do, but she never went this far. Something has changed in her."

  "But why call Jewel a sneazle? I don't get it."

  "She must think Jewel was involved in helping us arrange Beverly's and Sultans marriage."

  "And a thistlepop?" I reminded her.

  "I'm surprised that you haven't heard of them. They are gastropods."

  "What?"

  "Giant snails. They were bioengineered to be a food crop for new colonies. They mutated after they were released into the colonies. Thistlepops start life small but can grow to a few feet in size. While the thistlepops are still small, they commonly get past customs, and onto starships. Once they infest a starship, they are hard to get rid of."

  "Why not just vent them to the vacuum of space?"

  "That won't kill them, nor will gassing them. Thistlepops can seal themselves inside of their shells and survive for years. That's not the worse part. What makes them a nuisance is their secretion. Their slime smells so bad, it frequently causes vomiting."

  "So being called a thistlepop a way of saying that you smell bad enough to make people vomit."

  "That or being around you makes me want to puke."

  "From Chief Mikes reaction, we were close to smelling like thistlepops."

  "I guess we were," Amber laughed.

  "Jewel curled up on the couch and turned on the holovid, "Oh, look. You and Amber have been released, but you need to wear control collars and trackers for the next seven years while you two are on probation, and I've been sold." Jewel didn't say anything else. I looked at the holovid to see why. The mining company that bought her contract was using Jewel to reward the mine's overseers. "I would rather hammer rocks than what they are using me for," Jewel turned off the holovid.

  We got up early the next morning. Jewel was muddle-headed. She didn't remember me, know where she was or how she got here. Amber assured me, her head would clear and her memory would come back before breakfast was finished. When it did, she was anxious to see her new cabin.

  It was a standard cabin, as far as cabins for officer cabins went. It had a common room for entertaining, a separate galley and dining area, and a decent sized bedroom with a queen-sized bed. In addition to her closet, she had an armoire to store her clothing; she needed it. The walls of her bedroom were painted the same shade of pink as her old bedroom to make her surroundings familiar when she woke in the morning. The fresher was also much larger than she was used to.

  "It's so big, and its all mine?"

  "It's just for you," I assured her.

  Jewel took off the borrowed shirt, dropping it on the floor, and walked into her closet. When she came out, she was dressed in a utilitarian outfit. "This will have to do until I get my uniforms."

  She was in for another shock. We didn't wear uniforms. They reminded me too much of the Alliance. We headed to the bridge to begin Jewel's training and the shakedown cruise of my new ship.

  "Natty, begin departure preparations and plot a course for Nueva Zelanda.

  Tanya, send a message to Beverly, announcing Jewels promotion to lieutenant. Include a hologram with her dressed in a uniform. Make the uniform white."

  Tanya spent a few minutes working at a computer console. When she was satisfied with her work, she activated the hologram. A life-size image of Jewel dressed in a white uniform appeared. It was tailored in the same fashion as the uniforms worn by the Alliance military. It looked different though. It didn't have the dark aura that the black uniforms the Alliance military wore.

  "That's perfect. Make sure everyone in the Buenos Aires system gets a copy." I'd like to see how Beverly and the producers of Busted were going to deal with the new information, but I didn't have the time. We were scheduled to depart space dock in few minutes.

  Moon Base

  "Natasha, where in the hell is Tanya and your avatar? We were supposed to leave over two hours ago. I want to get out of here before we have any other problems."

  "They've been back for ten minutes."

  "Where are they?"

  "They are going through decontamination."

  "Why in the hell are they doing that? They will be in there for hours."

  "I do not know. My avatar has blocked that information from me. You will have to ask Tanya or Natasha when they get out of decon."

  "Jewel, take communications, you will have to start your training at that station today."

  I got out of the command chair and sat on the helm seat. I would have to take the ship out myself. The controls were new, more modern lacking the switches, knobs, buttons, and variable regulators I was used to using. Helm control was done with touch screens now.

  Touch screen technology had been around for thousands of years, but it wasn't commonly used in starships and never in warships. The controls couldn't be repaired, or rewired when they failed. The entire console needed replacing. With the more primitive systems, repairing or replacing circuit boards or even rewiring the system was a lot easier than replacing the whole console.

  "Captain, I am quite capable of taking us out of space dock and performing basic helm functions, even without my avatar. I've been doing it since long before you were born."

  "I'm sorry Natasha. I wasn't thinking in my haste to get out of here. Begin the undocking procedures and send Tanya and your avatar to me when they get out of decon."

  "You might want to have Randolph and Kim take a look at my avatar. She has been acting odd lately. She might be malfunctioning."

  "I'll do that.

  Jewel, contact the traffic controller for departure clearance. We missed our launch window."

  "I don't know how."

  "Just do as I tell you," Natasha instructed Jewel. "Put the headset on and enter your ID code..." Jewel listened to the rest of the instructions through her headset.

  "Captain, the station advises that we are clear to depart."
>
  "Natasha take us out, thrusters only."

  The Persephone rose on its repulsor lift, and slowly backed out of the hangar. As soon as we cleared the hangar, its doors began to close. Natasha rotated the ship on its yaw axis. "What course Captain?"

  "Set course for Nueva Zelanda."

  "I estimate our transit time to our nearest jump point as being 9 hours and 37 minutes at cruise speed," Natasha fired our main engines.

  I wasn't in a hurry to get to Nueva Zelanda. We were on a shakedown cruise to identify any problems. I was just in a hurry to get away from the space station and my wife's sister. Beverly sponsored a few episodes of a favorite holovid show, called Busted. In the show, she portrayed us as having stolen the credits her entertainers earned and attempting to steal one of her cargo shuttles to make our escape.

  The show had a record audience. Most of the viewers believed we were guilty of the crimes portrayed in the show. Natasha and Tanya rescued us from rioters pelting us with garbage. If it weren't for them, the riot would have escalated and Jewel, Amber, and I may have been injured, or worse. As it was, we had to use the showers in decon, dispose of the clothes we were wearing, and Amber's skin was already peeling from the UV radiation.

  "Captain, I hate to disturb your dreaming."

  "I wasn't dreaming."

  "Then what were you doing?"

  "I was deep in thought."

  "As I said, I hate to disturb your dreaming. My avatar and her companion are on the way to the bridge. Have you noticed that they are spending a lot more time together? Their attachment to each other exceeds programming parameters. If I didn't know better, I would think they are fond of each other. Perhaps they should both visit Kim for complete diagnostic testing."

  "Tanya is not a synthetic person. Any emotional attachment is real, not the result of programming in a personality construct."

  "You are right, of course. I should have come to the same conclusion. I will schedule a complete diagnostic evaluation for Tanya with Doc. She must be the one malfunctioning. The personality matrix in avatars is much more stable than that of humans, malfunctions and errors are rare."