Jada looked at the pooch, pouted for a second, then said, “Oh well, I’s got a brand new one in a box at the base. Carry on, tall, bright-white, and handsome.”
She let out a light gasp and a giggle as T lifted her gently and carried her to her bedroom.
Carl Schafer stood over Chico’s shoulder and observed the long-range scanner on the projector that stood in for the windshield. Gina sat in the co-pilot’s chair—a redundant device, since the ship’s computer was either pilot or co-pilot, depending on the circumstance. Besides powerful scopes for visual searches, The Innocent was equipped with the very best of target acquisition toys. They had let their prey play out enough line to be unsuspicious of being hooked. But hooked they were.
Shaffer said, “Let’s fall back another ten clicks, Cheeks. We don’t know what they’ve got under the hood on either of those ships.”
“Edge of range if we do that. If they suddenly speed up, we could lose ‘em. Patches ‘er useless out of range.”
“They’ve been going the same speed for two hours. I think they’ve got it dialed in. What’s the ETA for deep space?”
Gina said, “Another three hours.”
Schafer nodded. “I’m going to catch a nap. Pester the captain first if something changes. Otherwise, I’ll be back in time for the fun.”
Gina said, “Boyce and Jyme say the industrial bots have offered to add their abilities.”
“The captain can decide that. We’re pretty good at this stuff. Don’t know if we need to be experimenting right off.”
“Then why’d we buy ‘em?” asked Chico.
“Ask the captain.” Schafer stopped before stepping out of the cockpit. “I’ll tell you this. We had an interesting diversion down there with Dima. We show up with a disappearing ship and Pablo’s going to be a little less bothered by what we have to report.”
“What does that mean?” asked Gina.
“Means it’s better to be a messenger with a gift in hand.”
Schafer left the room without another word.
Chico glanced at Gina. She glanced back and shrugged. Both knew it was pointless to speculate. They’d find out soon enough. Clearly, the thing to do was keep their eye on the prize.
Hee Sook gently knocked on Caleb’s open cockpit door. He was strapped into his chair napping. His eyes fluttered open. “Hmm? What?”
“My apologies. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Well, you did. What do you need?”
“You asked me to report to you when I had finished cleaning. I can report that there were live bacteria on every surface of which fifteen strains were of varieties known to cause various human ailments. I was able to eradicate 99 percent of the bacteria in the aft portion. Unfortunately, some crevices were beyond my ability to reach. That said, regular maintenance should keep things under control.” She looked further into the cockpit. “That leaves this space… and you.” She held up a sponge of sorts. “I am quite familiar with giving sponge baths. I would suggest that you strip and allow me to wipe you down so that you don’t re-contaminate the aft area.”
Caleb spun his chair to look at her and his mouth hung open with a loss for words. She was naked. Or naked for a robot—her sexless body without clothes.
She tilted her head. “Do you have a question?”
“I, uh, I only asked you to clean the toilet.”
“Which I did. However, the toilet is primarily a self-cleaning device, and was already the cleanest space on this whole ship. In fact, this ship is more contaminated than any toilet I have ever cleaned.” Hee Sook held up her hand and splayed out her fingers. “As you may know, domestic personnel, such as my model, have sensors built into our fingertips for analyzing pathogens.”
Caleb glanced at her fingers as she flexed them, then glanced at his own.
She smiled and shrugged her shoulders in a gesture that said, shall we get on with it?
Caleb let out a long reluctant, “OK,” and unbuckled himself.
Hee Sook held out a rubber bag. “Laundry in here, please. Thankfully, the ultraviolet washer is in good working order. My database tells me you should be grateful for this device. For some reason, washers are not standard on most spaceships.” She glanced down at her clothes-less self. “I will of course sponge off as well before coming back aft and retrieving my cleaned garments.”
Caleb looked at the bag. “Ultraviolet washer?”
Hee Sook paused. “Yes, for your clothes.”
“I have that?”
“You do. Adjacent to the toilet cleaning cartridge, which I must report is nearly empty.”
“Is it?” he said, almost wistfully, his mind imagining all the other systems he still didn’t know how to operate. The deeply male side of him that refused to ask for directions, had also refused to go through the virtual manual that was no doubt available via the pilot’s helmet. What had Jen been up to all this time? He glanced at his feet. “Will it clean my boots?”
“The fabric of your boots is, of course, self-cleaning as far as general wear goes, but as to fungus, virus, and bacteria…yes.”
Caleb disrobed as quickly as zero G would allow him to without bashing into a sharp edge or two. He unabashedly pushed the elastoware into the rubber bag and moved to shove the boots in as well.
Hee Sook held up a hand. “I suggest we wait and do those second. The device may require additional focus as it is.” She smiled and tilted her head, the gesture intended to imply the desire not to offend.
“Uh, OK, sure, sure.” He looked at her twice. “If it wasn’t for the fact that you look like a giant white girl’s doll, I’d almost be fooled by how…alive you seem.”
Hee Sook held up the sponge. “Let’s start with your back.”
It was Jennifer who noticed their tail. She hadn’t been looking for anything in particular, just sitting in The Belle’s pilot chair binge watching an old TV series about a high school chemistry professor turned drug dealer. When she’d finished, she decided to focus on something in the present and thought about the view behind the ship. The helmet took the command and brought up the rear wide scope camera. The planet took up most of the view, but the display automatically threw up little moving triangles showing various vessels somewhere in the distance, each going in a different direction—except one, which the display indicated was on the identical trajectory to The Belle. She thought about it for a moment, then asked the ship’s computer to run a statistical probability that another ship was on their same course. In the vastness of space, with ships utilizing the gravity of various moons and the planet itself to propel themselves to their various destinations, the pilot’s helmet displayed a probability of .0000043%. The ship was at the very edge of The Belle’s ability to pick it up, which for Jennifer, only further confirmed her suspicion. They were being followed. Caleb’s ship had a far more powerful scanning array. She rang him up.
Without thinking about his current situation, Caleb pressed the receive button on the pilot chair control pad. Jennifer’s head popped up in the holograph display. Hee Sook had one of Caleb’s feet and was scrubbing it.
Jennifer took in the image of the naked robot and the naked man and the sponge, and said, “Really?”
Caleb glanced at Hee Sook and then back at Jen. “Hon, this ship is crawling with slime.”
Noting the situation before her, “I’ll say it is. Thought we left this kinda stuff to Spruck.”
“Huh? Oh.” He pulled his foot away from Hee Sook. “Hee…Sook, tell Jen about the slime.”
Hee Sook looked at the holograph. “Hello, Jennifer. Slime is the incorrect term to describe the conditions on this ship—“
Jennifer said, “Seems right to me.”
Hee Sook missed the sarcasm. “Feculence is perhaps a more appropriate term. I’m certain the level of parasitic microorganisms on this ship rivals the sewers of Soul.”
Caleb shrugged. “Like I said, slime. How is it that we didn’t know that there was an ultraviolet washer on this ship?”
<
br /> “A wha?”
“It’s next to the toilet cleaning cartridge. Cleans laundry. Seriously.”
“Hm, never saw that in the flight manual. Anyway, I’ve got something to tell you.”
In a lame effort to appear somewhat decorous, he floated himself behind the pilot’s chair, placing it between Jennifer and himself. “What’s up?”
“I think we have a tail.”
“Like, being followed? How you figure?”
“Bogie behind us is on an identical trajectory to ours. I saw it in the rearview and asked Belle. She says there’s a .0000043% chance of that.”
“That would make coincidence highly unlikely,” said Hee Sook helpfully.
“I get it,” said Caleb. He said to Jennifer, “So the question is, why?”
“My Spidey sense says it’s the people who were spying on us over the blast wall.”
Caleb smiled at a memory of explaining Spidey sense to Jen. “My Spidey sense concurs. What does Spruck think?”
“I haven’t told him yet. He, Nat and Saanvi are in a heated game of Dungeons and Dragons. You know the Dungeon Master hates to be interrupted.”
“I still can’t believe Saanvi goes for that.”
“She likes collecting the magic healing powers. Apparently doctoring’s in her DNA. Anyway, I’m sending over the coordinates now. Maybe we just keep an eye on it and don’t panic. It hasn’t closed distance. If it speeds up, we’ll have plenty of time to react.”
“Maybe I light them up with a spotting beam for now. Let ‘em know we know they’re there.”
“No. Let’s wait. No need for hostile warnings yet.” She smiled and blew him a kiss. “I’m going to take a nap.”
“We, uh, we could do a little helmet to helmet. Help you sleep.” Then he turned having forgotten that Hee Sook floated right behind them.
She said, “I am familiar with certain euphemisms. I have heard that one before. If you wish, I can give you some privacy.”
Jennifer laughed. “No, that’s sweet. You two keep fighting the germs and keep an eye out. I’ll let the others know what’s up. Have fun,” she winked, and was gone.
Hee Sook said, “Shall we continue detoxifying?”
He held up his foot. “Continue we shall.”
THE ART OF APPROPRIATION
CALEB WAS IN The Diamond’s main cabin, enjoying the feeling of putting on clean elastoware, when Spruck’s head popped up on the projector in the cockpit.
“Buddy! You there?”
Caleb hearing the urgency in Spruck’s voice, got his leg tangled in the garment as he tried to push off toward the cockpit. He jerked and struggled until a freshly dressed Hee Sook calmly tried to hold his leg. He slapped her hands away until he realized she was helping. She expertly guided the leg into the garment, then gently pushed him toward the cockpit door. He mouthed a thanks to her and said to Spruck, “What’s up?”
Spruck glanced over his shoulder. “They’re closing.”
“What? I didn’t get an alarm.”
“Me neither, but they’re closing.”
Caleb glanced around his ship accusingly. “How could I not get an alarm? Diamond? Where’s my alarm?”
The Diamond Girl said, “I show no change of course on the designated ship, Caleb.”
Spruck said, “Belle says the same, but I was just looking right at it through the rear porthole. I’m using the can, when I looked out and the ship’s a klick away, max. Big one. Faux grav hauler.”
“A click away? Diamond!”
The ship responded, “I’ve run a diagnostic, Caleb. I am finding a repeating blank line of code in the data from my outboard sensors. This would suggest some type of blocking device. I am unable to locate the source of the device.”
Spruck said, “Belle’s diagnostics are coming up with nothing.”
Caleb buckled himself in. “Whatever. We’ve got a big ship right on our asses.” As he pulled on his helmet, he could hear Natalie past Spruck saying, “Saanvi says they’re coming on fast, baby.”
Caleb said, “Strap yourselves in! Go stealth and split right. I’m gonna light ‘em up with weapons lock.” He looked over his shoulder at Hee Sook. “Strap in!”
As Hee Sook did so, she said, “I’ve been catching myself up with this ship’s quantum processor. The armaments listed show no ammunition. Additionally, I show the laser weapon is disabled.”
“Price of getting her back from Hanson PD. But I can still pretend like hell. Now sit down and shut up. And who said you could snoop inside my Diamond?”
“Forgive me. I—“
He waved her away like a bad smell. “Quiet and let me work. I’ll deal with you later.”
Hee Sook buckled herself in as Caleb spun his ship to face the oncoming foe.
Unlike most space ships—which for reasons of cost control and maintenance, forwent the trouble of big pieces of fancy polycarbonate—Caleb’s former police ship had an actual windshield. The oncoming ship was close enough so he could see the micro-meteor damage in its paint. It was big, with four arms that spun like a lazy fan, creating the false gravity for the compartments at each end. As he finished the maneuver, he saw The Belle’s coating blend in with the star field.
“Bold mother’s,” he said to himself. With the scrambler on, he voice texted Spruck. You maneuvering?
Yes, Breaking right.
Painting them now. Caleb locked his empty missile system on the oncoming ship. The oncoming ship broke left. “That’s right, assholes. Scared you shitless, huh?”
Spruck texted, They’re right on my ass. Maneuvering.
Caleb clocked his ship to track the opposition while painting it with his laser spotter. The ship altered course again. “That’s right. You run.”
Spruck texted, They’re closing. Following like they’re hooked to us.
“What?”
Hee Sook said, “I’ve studied the data blocks in this ship’s sensors. It’s more than the sensors.”
“Why are you interrupting? Can’t you see what’s going on?”
“I can. I’m trying to help.”
Spruck broke through with voice. “I did a burn and closed my engine cowl, man. Used retros to push and went full silent. They’re still bearing down hard. Like they’re staring right at us.”
Caleb watched in astonishment as a dish array deployed from the belly of the ship and pointed at a bit of space that seemed to be slightly warped. The lights in The Belle’s cockpit suddenly glowed bright and the rest of the ship was revealed. Caleb voice texted, Dude, I can see you! Nothing came back. He touched the on off button for the radio. “Spruck? Jen? You there?”
Only static.
Hee Sook said, “Mr. Day. I can only assume that both of our ships have alien devices attached to their communications array.”
Caleb glanced at her with irritation. “A what? Aliens?”
“A device not part of this ship,” she responded with frustration. She pointed at The Belle. “It must be assumed that The Belle has the same type of device attached to it. We have been tracked, our sensors hacked to give false information. Mr. Spruck has been removed from control of his ship.”
On The Belle, Saanvi and Natalie were climbing through the two exosuit ports, while Jennifer was suiting up next to the airlock door. In the cockpit, Spruck frantically tried to override his ship’s controls with a stowaway keyboard and joystick. He yelled over his shoulder, “It’s not working. Nothing’s working.”
As she touched the hatch button to close the suit behind her, Natalie yelled, “Spruck, honey, get your suit on. If they can control the ship, they can blow the airlock.”
“But I’ve overridden it.”
“Spruck!” yelled Jennifer, “They’ve taken over the whole ship! Get your freaking suit on!”
Spruck stared at his ship’s console as if the machine had betrayed him. “Belle?”
The ship didn’t respond. He was startled when Jennifer shoved the arm of a suit in front of his face. She said, “Put it on
! Now!”
Reluctantly, he took the suit from her. As she stepped back to put on her helmet, the airlock alarm blared. Jennifer turned to see Saanvi close her own exosuit hatch.
On The Diamond Girl, Caleb and Hee Sook watched helplessly, as three armed and suited-up people launched themselves out of an airlock on the big ship that was now floating a mere forty-meters from the stern of The Belle. The suits were armored and had jet actuators on the soles of the feet and front and back of the torso. They aimed themselves directly at The Belle’s airlock.
Jen had just locked off her helmet when she felt herself launch away from the cockpit door with a whoosh. In response to the sudden decompression, the cockpit door sensed Spruck with his helmet off and slammed shut to seal him in. Jennifer saw the door slam shut as Spruck turned in surprise, then, like she was being launched backward through a tunnel, she watched the walls of The Belle’s airlock zip by. In a blink, she was spinning outside the ship, her breath rapidly echoing in her head, her hands grasping at nothing. She’d been spaced.
Inside her exosuit, Natalie tried in vain to open the outer shell. She was blind to what was going on, all communication shut off. On the opposite side of the ship, Saanvi experienced the same.
Caleb yelled out as he watched Jennifer spinning away from both ships. She was wearing a dumb suit that had no mobility. The three raiders calmly grabbed on and guided themselves through The Belle’s airlock, disappearing into the ship.
Caleb tried to communicate with Jennifer, but nothing was working. Communication was shut down. He could see Spruck with his helmet on inside his cockpit. His friend turned and held up his hands in defense, then was pulled from sight. One invader took his place, buckled into the pilot’s seat, then removed her own helmet. Caleb recognized her. She was the oddly young looking woman who had been with the group who had bought up the rest of the sentient robots. She turned to look out the cockpit window at him, smiled, and flipped him the bird. Then she put on the pilot’s helmet. The Belle’s engine cowl opened and the engines fired.
Pirates of Saturn (The Saturn Series Book 2) Page 11
