“Cleared, Captain Dennir. Don’t ever do that again. Do you need a berth or are you going to be leeching off an exterior airlock?”
“I just need a berth to make a couple of repairs myself, two hours tops. Is Zorel running the show today?”
“Yeah, he’s here. Transmitting unlock code to you now, Captain. Do you need any help?”
“No, but thanks.” Her comm console pinged an incoming transmit, and she downloaded the authorization code to her system. Deck seventeen, berth 89B.
“After that stunt, you wouldn’t be likely to get any help anyway,” said the traffic controller. Brya grinned again, and he continued, “Proceed to your assigned berth, Captain.”
Brya guided the Rapture around a passenger vessel and a few other freighters to the designated airlock. “We’re here?” said a voice from behind her. She started in her seat and turned around to face Kai.
“Yeah.”
“There’s a problem with your communications?”
“Occasionally. Today was one of those occasions.”
“I’ll take a look when we’re docked,” Kai said. Brya opened her mouth to protest, but he continued, “It’s my job. Maybe Wethmore did something to it when that fuel was loaded.”
That thought had crossed Brya’s mind, too, but she didn’t want to think about it. “It’s happened before. We’ll be in dry dock for only a couple of hours,” she said. “Just long enough for me to patch that leak and get the hell out.”
“It won’t take me long to check out a ship this size.”
The Rapture glided into a landing bay, locking into place in a dock that could hold three freighters. It was one of the cheap docks that required ships’ crews to clear the area every time a ship came or went from the spaceport, and the ship parked next to hers had a crew waiting impatiently in the access corridor. As soon as the dock’s safety lights flashed from red to green, the corridor’s automatic doors unlocked and crew spilled back into the area to work on their ship.
“I’m going to check in and see Zorel,” Brya told Kai. “He practically owns the spaceport, and before you ask, I’ve dealt with him before. Nice guy, but I need you to stay here. He won’t want to be involved in this, and I don’t want him involved in this.”
“Are you going to be safe?”
He was worried about her. It had been a long time since anyone had been, and it touched her. “I’ll be fine,” she said. She opened a cabinet at the back of the cockpit and took out her toolbox.
“Do you want to take a weapon with you?”
She shook her head. “That won’t be necessary. Zorel would never speak to me again if I turned up in the dock office with a charged rifle, expecting two hours’ credit. You never want to piss off the people who help you when you’re in a tight spot, you know?” She entered a code on the console near the ramp’s exit. “Go hide.” She pressed her palm into the console and the entrance ramp unlocked with a hydraulic hiss. Kai nodded and headed through the living area’s doorway.
She was greeted with a rush of chilly air. She walked through the corridor outside the dock to the administration office.
Zorel was a big man, middle-aged, some odd mix of humanoid races. His orange-flecked green eyes spoke of an Outer Rims heritage. His skin was a deep bronze color, and the gods only knew how many places that could have come from. Ditto for his accent. He was gruff and his hands were always stained with oil, a testament to his willingness to help out a freighter captain in need of an extra body. Brya had done plenty of business at the Landen spaceport and had gone out drinking with him and his wife at the lone bar on the tenth deck, one of the only places in the Alliance where class and money weren’t issues. She liked this spaceport for that reason—pretensions had to be left on ships if anyone wanted cooperation from the people who ran it. He also didn’t ask any questions about cargo or demand to see manifests like other, larger spaceports. As long as his operation wasn’t in danger of exploding and the Fleet wasn’t on anyone’s tail, he didn’t care what customers got up to. A frisson of guilt threaded through Brya at the thought of hiding Kai from Zorel, but it was necessary.
This evening, her friend was sitting behind his desk in his fifteenth-deck office, fiddling with a miniature sensor array that was dwarfed in his big hands. “Zorel!” Brya said, genuine delight in her voice.
“Dennir! How the hell are you?” He set aside the sensors and walked around the desk to embrace her. “Been too long. Where have you been hiding?”
“Everywhere,” she said. “I’m only here for an hour or two. I have a fuel leak.”
“Well, shit. Is everyone okay?”
“Yeah, it isn’t too bad. I’m on a run to the Rims, so I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Don’t blame you. You paying upfront, or are you going to be making your way through Landen again in the next week or two?”
“I’ll see you in a few days,” she said. “I don’t know exactly how long I’ll be in the Rims, so I can’t say for sure.”
Zorel nodded, accepting her word. “I know you’re good for it. Want some help?”
“No, thanks.”
“Got time to stop for a beer? I’m buying.”
She shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m just in and out tonight.”
“Next time you’re here, then,” said Zorel, unperturbed. “Good to see you, as always.”
Brya said her thanks and goodbyes and returned to the Rapture. She decoded the exterior cargo bay doors and walked inside, purposefully avoiding looking at the starboard cargo bay door where the petrik was housed. The bay corridor was accessible from the interior of the ship, but she always kept that entrance locked as a safety precaution. There were two smaller portside bays, currently empty, and the boat’s maintenance access tunnel entrance beside that.
The door to the maintenance tunnel was only waist high, and she crouched down to open it. Her toolbox was right where she left it the last time something broke, locked to the deck behind the door. She removed a set of disposable coveralls from it and shook them out of their tiny packaging, then slipped them on, taking care to cover her face. If the leak was worse than she thought, she wouldn’t have to worry about burns or inhaling fumes. She shone a flashlight from her toolbox around the narrow space before crawling in on her hands and knees.
She ran a datacorder over the wall closest to the cargo bay. It beeped when it traced the fuel leak. She unscrewed a couple of tiles where the instrument indicated the leak, irritated at how easily they were removed. Was she going to have to replace the tunnels’ tiles and fastenings, too? It never rains but it pours…
There it was. A thick plume of yellow steam lazily crept toward her from a break in the fuel line pipe. It wasn’t a catastrophe, but it was definitely worse than the Rapture’s computers had indicated. Her eyes widened at the size of the leak. If she had ignored it and pressed on toward the Rim Worlds, they wouldn’t have made it more than three or four days before they were stranded in space or worse, the fuel ignited her illegal cargo.
She peered closer at the slim pipe. The break was clean and straight. Most breaks were irregular, veering off at odd angles and into tiny cracks, usually occurring when a ship was loaded with the incorrect grade of fuel or caused by wear and tear. But this was too tidy. She inspected the line, a sinking feeling in her stomach. It looked like it been made deliberately, with a laser.
She leaned back, thoughts whirling through her mind. Someone had done this on purpose. Wethmore had done this on purpose.
Her hands shook and she dropped the flashlight. Her thoughts went back to the dockhand at Karys, telling her about her pair of visitors while the Rapture was in dry dock. Why was he trying to kill her en route to the Rims? She didn’t doubt that violence would occur when she made the drop, but she hadn’t expected this.
It didn’t make sense to kill someone being blackmailed.
Brya steeled herself and collected her flashlight. She dug through her toolbox and came up with patches for the fuel line an
d expertly fused them to the pipe. They melted into it, disappearing at the edges until all that was left was a shiny spot where the new material had taken hold. When she ran a diagnostics on her datacorder, the patches proved to be effective. The leak was contained.
She crawled out of the maintenance tunnel and stripped off the coveralls, balling them up in her fist. She shoved the coveralls through a wall-mounted disposal unit with more force than necessary. Fury swept through her as she stalked through the cargo bay corridor, off her boat to seal the exterior doors, and back up the entrance ramp to the cockpit.
Back on the ship, she booted up a maintenance program and scanned the fuel lines. Like she expected, everything was reported to be running smoothly, but that didn’t take the edge off her bad mood. “Kai?” she called.
“Can I come out now?”
“Stay away from the viewports.”
The lounge door opened and he crawled to the cockpit on his hands and knees. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“No,” she replied curtly, and explained what she had found. He hauled himself to a sitting position on the floor, and listened.
“So it stands to reason there are other things wrong with your ship,” he surmised, and she nodded.
“You wouldn’t happen to have some kind of military-grade scan programs with you, would you?” she asked.
“Brya, I travel with spare sensors. I’m a little insulted that you think I wouldn’t have something as basic as a highly-invasive and only technically legal deep-scan program. As a matter of fact, I have two. I have a hard copy of a highly top-secret program in my duffel, and the coding for a blocker on my datapad. If you want me to, I can copy the data to a key and activate the program.”
She nodded. “I want to check everything out before we leave the spaceport.”
Kai started crawling back to the lounge, but Brya jumped to her feet. “You shouldn’t be moving like that in your condition,” she chided. He stopped and sat again.
“The program is on a datakey in the front pocket of my duffel,” he explained. “My datapad’s on the bed.”
She found them easily and brought them back to the lounge, along with a spare datakey for him to copy the second program to. “I’m really glad we haven’t gotten in touch with the Fleet yet,” she said. The Landen star lane was full of independent communications beacons, and Brya hadn’t been assured enough of the Fleet’s untraceable channels to check her transmits. She had worked for Wethmore long enough to know that nothing was truly untraceable.
“We really have to check in, you know,” Kai pointed out. “But yeah, your paranoia may have worked for the best.”
He and Brya went to the control closet off the engine room, where his program could be activated without slowing down the other functions of the ship. He hadn’t wanted to access the primaries from the cockpit, explaining he could do a more thorough job if he began at the roots of her controls.
“Now what?” Brya asked him.
“We go back abovedeck and wait for the program to finish,” he explained. “It won’t take too long.”
They retrieved coffee from the galley panel and their cups were nearly drained when a chime rang throughout the ship. Feeling guilty about the position they were in, Brya crawled on her hands and knees with Kai to the cockpit, where she pulled up the results from the scan. Her eyes widened in shock and a wave of nausea had her gripping the edge of the console.
“A Q-Bot!” The words came out in a panicked yelp.
“Holy shit,” said Kai, and rising on his knees, inspected the report marching across the screen.
“‘Holy shit’ doesn’t begin to cover this.” Tears sprang to her eyes and she swiped a hand across them. She was going to have to buy a whole new ship. “This is a disaster!”
“I’m sorry,” Kai said. Regret and anger laced his words. “If I could remove it, I would.”
“So the Fleet hasn’t figured out a way to clean a Q-Bot off a ship’s systems yet? Fuck!” Brya lay back in her seat and tried to delay the meltdown she knew she was going to have soon. A Q-Bot was the worst kind of malicious software, one that quietly monitored and logged all of an infected ship’s computer and communications systems to a remote controller. It was impossible to detect with civilian methods, which explained why it hadn’t been detected when she ran scans before they left Karys Station, nor could it be removed. “At least tell me this one isn’t rigged under Wethmore’s control and going to blow the Rapture out of the star lanes.”
Kai was still reading the report. “No,” he said. “This is a low-level Q-Bot. It just spies on all of your activity.”
“Thank the gods we haven’t contacted the Fleet yet,” said Brya.
“Exactly. But it would have recorded all of the repairs I’ve made to the ship. That’s what I’d be worried about—Wethmore figuring out if you have someone else on board. Do you know anything about the repairs I’ve made? Would Wethmore assume you made them?”
“I haven’t worked for him in a couple of years, and I’ve always been quick to learn new things. He could believe I know how to fix a replicator.” Brya thought quickly. “Can you deactivate the Q-Bot?”
“This kind, I probably could deactivate certain controls, but I couldn’t remove it entirely. I’d also have to do a little research first. I wouldn’t recommend deactivation anyway, because then Wethmore would know you’ve found it.”
Brya saw the wisdom in that, but it wasn’t a consolation. “Do you think we should just ditch the ship and contact someone in the Fleet to pick us up here?” Her heart lurched at the thought. All of her money, her hopes and dreams, were invested in this boat.
“That would be a wise course of action under normal circumstances, but the Fleet really wants to meet up with Wethmore.”
She stood up and paced the cockpit. “Couldn’t they just ambush him at the rendezvous point? I really wish someone had thought of that earlier.”
“Brya, I’ve been with the Fleet a long time. Like every business and organization, there are a lot of morons who haven’t been in the field in decades and don’t understand that things have changed. It would be safer if they just ambushed him, yes, but they have to actually catch him in the act of accepting illegal fuel. There’s also that deal you made with them.” She snorted, but he grabbed her leg as she tried to walk past. “They’re not going to keep you out of jail if you don’t go along with this. As much as it pains me and scares the shit out of me to say this, we have to stay on this ship. I know enough about Q-Bots to tell you that this one isn’t designed to kill us. It’s just monitoring your computer activities. There isn’t a recording device logging all spoken conversations. There isn’t an explosive built in. The ship is still space-worthy until we get to Ishka.”
“How are we going to get in touch with the Fleet then?” She hated the desperation in her voice.
“It’ll be a pain in the ass and I’ll have to bastardize my datapad, but I can probably rig a portable communication system on it and use the untraceable channels independently of your ship,” he said. “I’ve done it before. The signals will be a little off once we leave Alliance space, but it’ll still work.”
“What about my ship?” she said. “I can’t use this thing anymore once this mission is done.”
“The computer systems can be overhauled and replaced.”
“Do you think I have that kind of money? It’ll be cheaper to buy a new boat.” She sank into the captain’s chair, hands covering her face. “This just keeps getting worse and worse.”
“Brya, we don’t know what will happen when we meet up with the Fleet,” Kai said gently. “They might have to impound your ship anyway, because of the fuel.”
“But I would get her back eventually!” she said. “I know she’s not much, but she’s mine. This is my home and livelihood. It’s not easy, but I like what I do.” She lowered her hands, twisted them in her lap, and looked away. “I’ll have to pilot for a shipping company.” There went her dreams of independence.
Kai nodded, regret in his eyes. “If I could, I’d fix everything for you,” he said.
“No, you wouldn’t. I won’t let you.” She turned to the controls and keyed in a course for Ishka. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Eight
Kai and Brya traveled in peace for a couple of days, the Q-Bot never far from their minds. True to his word, Kai turned his datapad into a makeshift transmitter and was finally able to touch base with Captain Setroff on the Starspot. Datapad in hand, he perched on the side of the bed at the scratchy visual of his commanding officer.
The reception was spotty and there was a delay when they spoke, but Kai managed to convey to his commanding officer that their situation was direr than previously thought. “Brya has suggested that the Fleet simply take over,” he said when he finished. “She’s terrified of the Q-Bot.”
“The Fleet won’t look at it that way,” Setroff said. “Remember her deal.”
“Yeah, I reminded her of that, too.”
“It would be reasonable of them to take over the mission and work out a plea bargain, maybe spend a few months on a minimum-security prison colony instead. But we’re dealing with Admiral Falta.” Setroff paused for a moment, obviously trying to not let himself get worked up and go off on a tangent. Neither was sure how long their session could last on Kai’s datapad.
Kai shook his head. “I really don’t think she deserves prison. She’s done some stupid things, but a lot of them were under duress.”
“Duress isn’t always an acceptable defense in the Alliance, Lieutenant. You know that. And the Fleet is banking on the fact that we’ve used civilian bait in these situations before. Granted, the civilians were more experienced and working in crews, but they’re not looking at things like that. The admiral and Fleet want results as soon as possible. You know how black and white the military is.”
Kai knew.
“I’ll report the Q-Bot to Admiral Falta and get his opinion,” Setroff said.
“Private channel, Captain. You can tell me what you really think will happen.”
Rapture Page 8
