by Martin Tays
“No. Not yet, Mister Grace.” The Governor leaned back, steepling his fingers. “I want them to make their move, first. Up to this point they’ve done nothing strictly illegal. When they do… well, then we’ll get them all at once. Until that point, I don’t want to tip my hand. Got it?”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.” Grace was furiously making notes on his pcomp. He looked up. “You’ll want to get everyone, I assume?”
“Everyone.” Valentine nodded. “Especially that ass Dunn, and his little reprobate friends.”
“Can I do that one myself, sir?”
Valentine smiled. “Of course. Who am I to deny a loyal assistant one of the simple pleasures in life?”
“Stuffed with extras and remastered from the original studio recordings, the Rolling Stones 400th Anniversary Collection is a remarkable journey back into the roots of modern classical music.
We reached the last surviving band member on Dunrollin, his palatial asteroid based estate orbiting Epsilon Eridani. Keith Richards, as I’m sure you all recall, is a multiple Grammy Award winner. He also has two Pulitzers, a fist full of daytime Emmy’s for his haunting portrayal of the doomed Doctor Larcus on the ever popular soap “The Sun Also Sets” and a Tony for his somewhat… unique… take on Fagin in the 2287 revival of “Oliver!” Keith had this to say:
‘Jesus H. Christ on casters, people… this shit is four hundred years old! Can’t any of you asshats get a life?!?’”
Rocelyn Rodriguez, on “Entertainment 4Ever!”
“So we’re seeing a number of firsts, here, Bob. The oldest person ever named by the Vatican Council to ascend to the Holy See, the first American chosen, and of course the biggest first of all ― the first female Pope, who has announced that she will be taking the appropriate name of Mary the Second.
A long journey for a material girl, eh?”
Alton Freidman, live, on WBC Evening News
“Because Death Sucks.”
Advertising slogan for Dick Clark Clinics, Inc.
Chapter 14
“You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.”
Michael Pritchard
“Is he there, yet?”
Moses sighed. Again. “No.”
“Okay. Fine. He’ll be fine. We’re okay. Everything’s okay.” There was a brief pause ― Moses managed to count up to ten, this time ― before Sher spoke again. “Is he there, yet?”
“Sher. Darling. Sweetie.” Moses looked back at the girl, who was literally hovering nervously in the microgravity of the shuttle bridge. “Please sit the fuck down. He’ll be fine.”
“I know, I know.” She was scrubbing her hands nervously. “I’m just, you know…”
“I know. Tell you what, let’s get an update.” He turned back toward the console and keyed the shielded voice-only line to Leo, leaning into the console as he spoke. “Gray Goose to Gosling Three. Hey, big guy. What’s your status?”
The speakers crackled. “About the same as it was the last time you asked, Moses. Just five minutes closer.”
“Check. That’s what I figured. But…”
“I understand.” Leo replied. He raised his voice a bit as he continued. “Sher? Darling? Sweetie?”
“I know, I know. Sit the fuck down.”
“Well, I was going to say that you’re sweet to worry so, but that works, too.” He laughed. “I’ll be fine, really. This’ll be fun.”
“Just remember…” Sher leaned forward toward the instrument panel. “You get yourself killed and there’ll be no sex for you tonight.”
“Isn’t that an old Roman motto?” Leo asked.
“If not, it should be.” She paused, then continued in a quiet tone of voice. “You be careful out there.”
“Always, babe. Always.”
A pressure suited Leo was at that moment working his way around the outside of the industrial hub station orbiting Haven. MedTech’s vast manufacturing and storage bay was right in front of him. And just coming into view was the medical unit they desperately needed for the Endeavour. He slowed just outside of sensor range and spoke. “Okay, Moses, I’m in place.”
Moses grinned at Sher and Ami, then turned back to the communications console in the small shuttle. “Outstanding, big guy. Okay, stand fast. Let’s see how the others are doing. Gray Goose to Gosling One. Gray Goose to Gosling One. Gosling Three is in place and ready to go.” There was no response. “Gosling One, are you there?”
A surly voice finally responded. “Moses, this is ridiculous.”
Moses smiled. “Oh, come on, Cath. Didn’t you ever play ‘spy at the airport’?”
“Sure, Mister Carlin, sir. When I was about twelve.”
“Ha! You’ve NEVER been twelve. You came out of the womb a cranky old woman.”
A new voice came over the speakers. “This is Gosling Two, in position and wondering if there’s any damn chance we can get this done sometime this century.”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Gosling One.” Moses replied sweetly. “Assuming she ever answers?”
“Fine, fine, whatever!” Cath growled. “This is Gosling One… I can’t believe I just said that… in position.”
“There. Now was that so hard?”
“Schmuck.”
“C’est moi. Gosling Three? Stand by to go. Remember, you’ve only got about ninety seconds before the backups kick in. Transponder first.”
“Go teach your grandma to suck eggs, Gray Goose.”
“No.” Moses replied. “If I can’t use farb, then you can’t use homey Texas colloquialisms.”
“Ah, but the difference is that I make it work.”
“You just keep telling yourself that, Gosling Three.” Moses turned in the cramped shuttle bridge and shared a look with the girls. This was the point of no return. Sher nodded, and Ami grinned and gave him a big thumbs up. He turned back to the console, took a deep breath, and gave the orders. “Okay, Gosling One? Go. Gosling Two? Go.”
Deep in the bowels of the station, Cath squared her shoulders, shared a look with Sandar, and keyed the prepackaged set of commands she’d carefully stacked into her pcomp. They were in a crowded access trunk, and the little personal unit, which she’d parasited into the data line, bleeped in reply as it overwrote the command structure of the environmental computer and replaced it with another.
And above them, the lights blinked once and went out.
Cath sighed and spoke in a conversational tone to the darkness. “I hate this shit.”
Meanwhile, Mattie was just curving her cargo shuttle in tight against the now dark quadrant of the station. She wheeled it at he last moment and brought it to a stop only a few meters from MedTech’s newly darkened storage area. “Gosling Two in position.”
“Great! Standby for delivery.” Moses immediately said. “Gosling Three? Go.”
“I’m already gone.”
Leo waved at the dark shape silhouetted in the accessway, even though he knew they probably couldn’t see him. He pulled himself over to the transponder attached to the outside of the medical pod. It was a wonder of modern idiot proof electronics: fully sealed, powered by a cell guaranteed to keep it operating for twenty years, and impossible to turn off.
It took Leo about twenty seconds to destroy it with a diamond tipped rock pick.
He immediately pushed off from the now destroyed transponder toward the docking mechanism, finding his way by feel in the darkness. When he reached it, he yanked off the cover of the emergency manual access and twisted the handle inside. He felt a thud from deep in the mechanism as it released the pod.
“Okay, Gosling Three, here. Almost done.”
Moses realized he was drumming his fingers against the console. He balled his hand into a fist and r
eplied. “Great, but don’t get cocky. Almost is only good in horseshoes and nuclear war, big guy.”
Leo had removed the small thruster unit from his belt and was quick-setting it to the far end of the med pod. He paused, briefly, then continued to work as he replied. “Moses, one of these days you’re going to have to tell me where you come up with these lines.”
“I subscribe to a service. How much longer?”
“Done. Triggering…” Leo reached down and pressed the firing stud. “Now. Gos-three? Incoming.”
“On target.” Mattie looked at her instruments and the video feed from the cargo bay, then adjusted the shuttle position slightly. The med pod slid straight and true into the shuttle and impacted the shock absorbent material prepositioned at the rear of the bay with a soundless thud that shook the tiny shuttle.
“Touchdown…” Leo quipped. “And the crowd goes wild.” He jetted over to slip in between the closing bay doors.
“Okay. You kids get out of there. We’re on.” Moses pushed over to the controls and brought the drive to life.
Sher, strapping herself into the co-pilot’s seat, looked confused. “Okay, now why is it we can’t just swap the modules straight off?”
“No time.” Ami spoke up from the flight engineer’s console. “We’d never have been able to get all of the alarms hooked back up again before the power came back on. And when the alarms went off, the MedTech security personnel would have been all over the pod. They’d have figured out it was a fake in about a minute. Now, they’ll never have the opportunity.”
“Okay.” She still looked confused. “And why is it they can’t see us or the other shuttle?”
Ami shrugged. “I’m… I’m not absolutely certain about that one, myself. Moses?”
Moses spoke over his shoulder as he piloted. “Radar. Or lack thereof. There’s just too damn much stuff in orbit to safely keep radar going full time. All that microwave radiation bouncing all over the place would screw up every bit of electronics in the area. Wouldn’t be particularly good for the people, either. So every ship, module, and assorted piece of crap in orbit has an active transponder sitting there going ‘Hi! I’m Joe’s spaceship!’ that everyone else can passively scan for. And we shielded our transponders.”
“That’s all?”
He grinned. “Yep. That’s all we did.”
Sher shook her head. “No, I mean that’s all that’s keeping us safe?”
“Well…” Moses shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“Ick.”
Ami leaned forward. “So we and Mattie’s shuttles are invisible?”
“For all intents and purposes. Well, not invisible… it’s more like a ‘Somebody Else’s Problem’ field.”
“Whatever. I’m with Sher, by the way.” She shuddered. “Ick.”
“Coming up on the hand off. Everyone wave.” Moses rolled the agile little shuttle on its back as they passed within a hundred meters of the other craft. Ami looked up and realized they were actually close enough to see into the cockpit. Mattie, No and a partially suited Leo waved back.
Mattie then rolled her shuttle and peeled off to take her precious cargo to the junkyard and the waiting spaceship. Moses nosed up a bit, aligning the flight path on a distant light. He then killed the engines and rotated the ship ass over teakettle on its thrusters, bringing the cargo bay doors to the front. He looked over at Ami. “Now.”
Ami keyed the doors, which dutifully opened wide to display the imitation medical pod. Moses checked the flight path one more time then said, in a somewhat strained voice, “Brace yourselves. This is going to be a bit rough.”
The small cargo shuttle’s drive came on full bore, pressing the three of them back into their seats and dumping massive amounts of delta v. The fake pod shot out of the bay like a rabbit from a cannon, arrowing off toward Haven as the thrust brought the shuttle to a shuddering halt.
“Yyyyyouuuu Kkknowww ssssommmme peeeepppleee wwwwoulddd pppaaaay gggggooddd mmmmonnneeey…” Moses cut the thrust and continued in a more normal voice. “… for a ride like this.”
“I… I think…”
Moses looked over at Sher, who had taken on a distinctly green pallor. “You think what?”
Sher turned toward him and, in response, vomited explosively. When she was done, she wiped her sleeve daintily across her mouth and replied. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Moses reached into the pocket of his shipsuit, pulled out a bandana and very carefully cleaned his face off before responding. “Ah. I see. Thanks.”
Ami grabbed a handful of Absorbenz from the locker beside her. She pushed off to start clearing the floating blobs of vomit, commenting cheerily as she went along. “So you’re the one who got the cherry pie… that’s… huh, I have no idea what that is… Hey!” She pointed, then turned back toward Sher. “When did you have peas?”
Moses looked over at Sher. “I hold her down, you beat her?”
“Deal.” They solemnly shook slime encrusted hands.
☼
“What the hell is that?!?”
It had been a boring day so far in the Orbital Traffic Control Center. With no incoming ships scheduled, the on duty technicians had been reduced to arguing about sports. As usual.
“I said that the Bayonne City Bombers can kick the Montressor Marquis’ butts.”
“No, you idiot.” The duty tech pointed to his console. “I meant what the hell is that?!?”
In the data tank above the console a new blip had appeared. The computer had noted its appearance, calculated its orbit, and a millisecond later screamed like a little girl. The blip pulsated a brilliant red, indicating a probable intercept course with another object in orbit.
And that’s never a pretty thing.
The tech leaned forward and quickly stripped the ID data from the object… data that had taken most of a day and a little bit of juice for Moses to obtain and then program into the fake pod’s transponder.
“It’s unpowered… It’s a module… it’s a medical module.” He looked over, confused. “What the hell? Where did it come from?”
“Who cares? The important question is: where is it going?”
“Intercept. It’s on an intercept course with… oh, crap.”
The other tech looked at the tank closely, then blanched. “Us?” She squeaked. “It’s going to hit us?!?”
“There’s only a twenty percent probability of impact.”
“Imagine my relief.” She looked over at her partner, wide eyed. “How long?”
“Just a bit over…” He checked his readouts. “Fourteen minutes.”
“Perhaps we should tell someone.”
“You think?” They both dove for the comm panel.
☼
Rafe jumped a bit as the comm sounded. The specially shielded comm that Valentine and his junkyard dog Grace didn’t know about. Hopefully. He keyed the privacy shield and accepted the incoming call.
A spikey haired and bedraggled Moses looked out from the vid window. “Okay, it’s done. You should be getting the call any second.”
Rafe ran his hand over his hair. “Moses, are you sure about the trajectory?”
“Positive.” He hesitated. “Well, mostly positive.”
“Great. Those are my people up there, you know.”
“They’ll be fine, Rafe. They’ve got, um, nine minutes or so to suit up, and there’s not enough mass in the pod to cause that much damage, anyway.”
Rafe jabbed his finger angrily at the display. “You understand, of course, that if something goes wrong I’m going to come up there, pop out your eyeball, and skull fuck you.”
“Fair enough.” Moses replied. “And that’s three.”
Rafe cocked his head, staring at the image of Moses in the window. “Out
of curiosity, what the hell’s that in your hair?”
“This? It’s a new style from Earth. Sher turned me on to it. You should try it sometime.”
“Um, sure. Right.” Beside him, the priority comm signal sounded. “Okay, that sounds like our witnesses, now.”
Moses waved. “Good luck. Oh, and Rafe? I sent you a present. Hope they fit.”
“Oh, crap.”
“Trust me. You’ll love it.” Moses cut the connection. Rafe shook his head and opened the incoming channel from the Traffic Control Center.
Two techs stared out at him, wide eyed. As the feed cleared, they both began talking at once.
“Sir! Medical pod! Ramming speed! It’s going to hit us!” Competed loudly with “We don’t know where it came from! It’s not fair! I don’t want to die!!!”
“Quiet!” Rafe ordered loudly. Amazingly, both techs stopped babbling. “Okay, one at a time.” He continued, pointing toward the tech on the left. “Barnhurst, right?” She nodded. “What the hell is going on?”
“Sir, about four minutes ago we suddenly saw an orbital object that wasn’t there before.” The white faced technician swallowed nervously. “It’s some sort of medical pod, and it’s on a collision course with us. With us!”
“Okay, that’s more understandable. Did you strip the transponder?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Where’s it from?”
She shook her head, still scared. “We said that, sir. We don’t know.”
“No.” Rafe replied patiently. “Who made the pod?”
“Oh. Sorry, sir. MedTech. It’s from MedTech.”
“I see. How long till impact?”
“About seven minutes, sir.”
Rafe nodded. “Okay, you two suit up. I’m going to have a quick chat with the MedTech people.” He left the video window up so the techs could hear the conversation and spoke out loud. “Call MedTech orbital facility, priority one.”
