By Darkness Forged (Seeker's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Book 3)

by Nathan Lowell

  “What about Frankie?” I asked.

  Snake frowned. “I think he went aft. I haven’t seen him for a couple of days.”

  If there was ever anybody who needed firing for incompetence, it was Snake. None of his crew seemed to be a lot better. I wondered who had thought it a good idea to send them off unattended.

  A wash of cold fear streaked down my spine with the answer. “Nobody.”

  “What’s that?” Snake asked.

  I shook my head and increased my stride. I dreaded what I’d find aft.

  The chief looked up from her console when I stepped into the doorway of her office. “Everything going all right down here?”

  “Nice to see you venturing so far from the coffee pot,” the chief said. “Seems to be. I’ve had no complaints from the watchstanders. I’m keeping an eye on environmental. Penna’s people seem to know what they’re doing.”

  “We’ll give him a raise when we get him back aboard,” I said.

  “A raise?”

  “Sure. He’s trained his people to do their jobs even when he’s not here to supervise them. That’s about as good as we can hope for.”

  “Well, he should have designated a successor,” the chief said.

  I laughed. “Yeah, probably but I’d wager the senior engineman might be lording it up a bit.”

  “Actually, the star is Schulteis,” she said.

  “The wiper?”

  “Yeah. He’s been working on his spec-three and pushing the other two to work on their next ratings.”

  “Spec-three?”

  “Somebody told him he didn’t need to take all the tests in between,” the chief said.

  “I wonder who told him that,” I said.

  She grinned. “You haven’t lost your knack for motivating the crew.”

  “He on duty now?”

  She nodded. “Should be.”

  “Thanks. I’ll give him a pep talk.”

  She eyed Snake behind me and grinned.

  I backed out of her office and continued down the passageway, sticking my head into engineering main on the way by. The crew looked relatively unstressed until one barked, “Captain on deck.”

  “As you were,” I said. “Any problems?”

  Three heads shook.

  I glanced at the coffee mess, noting a stack of dirty mugs. I looked at Wallace. “You’re lead on this section?”

  “Yes, sar.”

  I cast a pointed look at the coffee mess before looking back at him with a raised eyebrow.

  He gave a little double-take and winced, his face coloring. He looked back at me and nodded.

  “Good man. Carry on.”

  Snake stuck his head in. “Isn’t Tim supposed to be here?”

  “He relieved the guy down in environmental,” Wallace said.

  I elbowed Snake out of the way and dropped down two ladders to get to the environmental section. “Mr. Schulteis, the chief tells me you’re working on your spec-three.”

  “I am, Captain. About a quarter of the way through.” He glanced at his tablet on the console. “It’s tough sledding in places. I’m keeping notes for when Mr. Penna gets back.”

  “We’ll be a while yet before that happens, Mr. Schulteis. If you get hung up, come see me. I was a spec-two in environmental in a prior life.”

  He grinned as if he thought I was kidding.

  “Mr. Nunya, how are you enjoying life aboard?” I asked.

  “It’s Tim,” Snake said. “Not Nunya.”

  I gave Snake a hairy-eyeball. “He asked to be called Nunya. I’m simply honoring his wishes.”

  Snake passed the sour look to his colleague.

  “It’s Tim, Captain.”

  “Well, Tim, how are you enjoying life aboard?”

  “Boring with a capital bore,” he said.

  I chuckled. “Cheer up. I have a feeling things are going to get pretty exciting here shortly.”

  Snake stiffened beside me and Tim’s eyes widened. “What do you mean, Captain?” Tim asked.

  “In a few days we’ll be at our destination. I’m not sure what that means for you, but Snake here says you’re going to be heading back to Dark Knight with us. You must be looking forward to that.”

  Tim scowled at Snake. “Yeah. Thrilled, Captain. Delirious.”

  I walked down into the main processing areas of environmental, between the scrubbers and around the gray water processing tanks. Snake and Tim both followed me. “Mr. Schulteis?”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Do you have any scheduled maintenance?”

  “Not this watch, Captain. We replaced some potable-water filters on the last watch. Scrubber two’s on the calendar for tomorrow.”

  I nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Schulteis.”

  “My pleasure, Skipper.”

  I tapped a few pipes, peered into a few corners, and turned back toward the watch station, waving Tim and Snake ahead of me.

  Tim wore one of the pouches. Snake didn’t.

  Something about the pouches bugged me. I’d seen them before but couldn’t remember where to save my life. To save my life.

  “Where’s your ringleader?” I asked, sure that I hadn’t seen the ringleader yet and a bit worried about the reason.

  “Davie? He’s asleep, I suspect,” Tim said, earning another stare from Snake. He leaned back against the bulkhead and his pouch made a hollow, rubbery sound that reminded me of where I’d seen the pouches before.

  I nodded and walked to the nearest emergency suit locker. I opened it and pulled out one of the suits, checking the tab.

  “We check those every three months, Captain.”

  I grinned. “I know you do, Mr. Schulteis. I get the reports. You know how to get into it?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Under thirty seconds.”

  “Remind Mr. Larson to practice. He was the dead man on our last exercise, wasn’t he?”

  Schulteis grinned. “He’s getting better. We’ve been working with him.”

  I nodded. “Good to hear.” I racked the suit back in the locker and closed the door. “Carry on, Mr. Schulteis.”

  Snake followed me out of environmental and up the ladder to engineering. I stuck my head into the chief’s office on the way by. “I figured it out.”

  She raised both eyebrows. “A puzzle?”

  “Something like that. You remember the fire drills at the academy? The ones where you had to put on those breathing masks in the smoke?”

  “Very well,” she said. “I hate those drills.”

  “I did, too. I hated it worse when—as an upper classman—I had to lead those drills with the first years.”

  She chuckled. “Leadership begins at home.”

  “You know what I hated more than the drill itself?”

  She shook her head.

  “Having to carry the breathing masks around all the time,” I said. “Not knowing when they’d spring a drill on us in the barracks or classroom.”

  She frowned for a moment before the credit registered. Her lips pressed into a line and she gave me the slightest of nods. “I can see that.”

  I started to leave and turned back. “Oh, I told Schulteis that if he got stuck on the spec-three course he could ask me. He seems pretty dedicated to improving his position.”

  “That was generous, Captain.”

  “He told me that Larson is working toward not being the dead man in our next hull breach drill.”

  The chief nodded again. “He was pretty embarrassed. Penna’s been working him hard, too.”

  “Thanks, Chief. See you at dinner.”

  “Good to see you, Skipper. Call again.”

  We headed back up the spine. Snake glanced at me. “What’s a dead man?”

  “The last person to put his suit on during a hull breach exercise.”

  “Hull breach?”

  I frowned at him. “Yeah. You know. When you get hit with a rock moving at some significant percentage of the speed of light and it punches right through the ship and anyb
ody in its way?”

  He stared at me for at least half a tick. “That happens?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I shrugged as if the prospect of having a ship with a rock-sized hole in it was an everyday, let’s-not-worry-about-it kind of thing. Judging from the look on his face, he was thinking more like asteroid-sized and not the typical thumbnail-sized pebble. I smiled and didn’t try to disabuse him of the notion. I was sure his own worst fears would work on him harder than anything I might describe.

  Chapter 35

  Telluride System: 2376, March 20

  I had to hand it to Mr. Reed, he led the ship a merry chase around the system before coming into range for the mega. When we got within hailing distance, I had Al try to raise them on voice. The chief joined us on the bridge, peering out at the ship.

  “Traffic Local, Chernyakova. Over.”

  “Chernyakova, Traffic Local. Stand by.”

  “They don’t seem too surprised,” Al said.

  “I would be surprised if they were,” I said. “We’ve been swanning around here for a week.”

  The chief’s tablet bipped. She pulled it out and read the message, then stuffed it back into the holster. She gave me one of her sideways grins and glanced at Snake standing in his usual spot at the back of the bridge.

  “Chernyakova, Traffic Local. Sending you approach vectors now. Hold at outer markers. Over.”

  “Traffic Local, Chernyakova. Roger, hold at outer markers. Out.” Al clipped the mic back onto her console. She opened a window, accepted the navigation instruction, and routed it to the helm. “Ms. Torkelson?”

  “I have it, sar. New course locked in. We’re on the beam.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Torkelson.”

  “How soon before we’re there?” Snake asked.

  “Ms. Torkelson?” I asked. “ETA?”

  “Looks like about ten stans, Skipper. We’ll be at whatever passes for outer markers here.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Torkelson.” I looked at Snake.

  He did not look like a man who was only hours from home after a long voyage. The sweat beaded on his bare scalp and he twitched almost nonstop.

  “Something wrong, Snake?”

  “No,” he said, way too quickly. “Just glad to be back.”

  “I bet,” I said. “Well, there’s no use our standing around up here and watching Ms. Torkelson steer. Al, set navigation stations when we’re half a stan out.”

  I joined the chief at the armorglass looking out over the bow. “Do I need to be worried?”

  “Always, dear boy,” she said. “But not about that.” She tilted her head at the monster ship floating in the void ahead of us.

  “We’re coming down to the wire,” I said. “It took me a long time to figure out what they wanted.”

  “Have to admit. It was clever to dangle the can that needed to be returned,” she said. “How long have you known?”

  “Couple of days. When I realized they weren’t planning on letting us leave.” I shook my head. “Just couldn’t figure out how this gaggle of giggles was going to pull it off. We could have had them all bundled up before we cleared Dark Knight.”

  The chief nodded. “It took me a day to figure out why we didn’t.”

  I nodded. “The guy in environmental is the only wild card.”

  “Davie? Yeah. He’s the real deal. I’ve seen softer hull plates.”

  I sighed. “Won’t be long now.”

  “Hull breach?” she asked.

  “Keep an eye on environmental. It’ll start there.”

  “What’ll start?” Snake asked.

  “We’re due for some scrubber maintenance,” I said. “You can tell because the ship starts getting a greasy sheen on the bulkheads.”

  The chief nodded. “It usually starts in environmental. It got ahead of us without Mr. Penna aboard, but we can deal with it once we’re moored.”

  “Come on, Snake. I’ve got reports to sign and I need a cup of coffee.” I led him off the bridge and down to the mess deck for a cup. I didn’t really need to go to the mess deck but I wanted to keep him distracted until the mysterious Davie tossed the gas cylinder into the atmosphere recycling system in environmental.

  I had Al set navigation stations half a stan before our projected ETA at the outer markers. As the ship eased into orbit with the mega, it became clear that the phrase “outer markers” did not actually mean what we were used to. There were no buoys. No physical representation at all. I pondered that as Ms. Torkelson brought the ship to zero delta-vee to the monster ship—our respective bows pointing at each other from a distance of a hundred meters. From the bow, the ship looked like a flower. Four cans locked around a central spine formed the petals. The bow nacelle formed the pistil, a ten-meter docking ring dead center.

  “Pip is going to be so pissed,” I said.

  “Traffic Local, Chernyakova. Holding at outer markers. Over.” Al released the talk button on the mic. “At least I think we’re at the outer markers. Hard to tell.”

  “Roger, Chernyakova. Stand by.”

  “Chernyakova, Traffic Local. Sending docking approach vector. Sorry, we haven’t got a tug. Over.”

  “Traffic Local, Chernyakova. Roger docking approach. Don’t worry about the tug. We’ll do our best not to scratch the paint. Out.” Al clipped the mic down and tapped a few keys. “Routing docking approach to helm.”

  Ms. Torkelson nodded. “Docking approach vectors locked, sar.”

  “Take us in, Ms. Torkelson,” I said.

  She tapped the maneuvering jets to give us the barest amount of forward way. At this distance we had no visual reference to see we were actually moving, but I could see the numbers on the helm console ticking down.

  At the seventy-five-meter mark I said, “Ms. Ross, pipe Mr. Bentley to the bridge, please.”

  Al looked at me, a question in her eyes but not her mouth.

  I cast a backward glance at Snake.

  “Mr. Bentley to the bridge. Mr. Bentley to the bridge.”

  The range to dock fell to fifty meters before Mr. Bentley trotted up the ladder and stopped. “Able Spacer Virgil Bentley reporting as ordered.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Bentley. Please take a seat at the engineering console,” I said.

  He frowned but complied. “Aye, aye, sar.”

  The approach lights on the mega’s docking ring blinked amber when we crossed the twenty-five-meter range.

  “Captain?” Mr. Bentley asked.

  “I know, Mr. Bentley. Bear with me for just a little while longer.”

  Al gave me an odd look.

  I glanced at an increasingly nervous Snake in his customary position behind my seat.

  At ten meters the docking ring blinked red and Ms. Torkelson brought our velocity down to a bare crawl.

  At five meters, the docking lights turned solid red, painting the bridge with a garish, bloody brush.

  Ms. Torkelson swallowed hard. “Docking in three, two, one.” She killed our velocity as the two rings mated with the familiar ka-chunk that could be felt the length of the ship.

  “Helm reports docking, Captain. Docking clamps are locked. Welcome to wherever this is.”

  I heard a hollow, rubbery sound that I knew too well—the sound of a breathing mask going on over a panicky person’s head.

  “This is not a drill, Al. Hull breach now.”

  She slapped the alarm panel and the wheep-wheep-wheep sound seemed to split the ship.

  I walked aft and pushed a hooded Snake out of the way, cracked open the suit locker, and grabbed the first suit. I continued past the locker to make way for the next person and let the old reflexes push me into the soft, flexible suit that was intended to save my life in the event of loss of pressure. Once sealed in, I turned back to the locker to hand out suits but everybody already had one.

  I realized that Snake was crouched in the corner of the bridge with his hands over his ears, yelling “What are you doing?” His breathing hood muffled the sounds.

  I crossed th
e bridge to him in three long strides and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. I keyed the suit speaker on. “Fun time’s over, Snake. Al, you have the bridge.”

  I dragged him down the ladder so fast he practically fell on the deck. I shifted my grip and frog-marched him double time down the spine. We met a suited Chief Stevens outside engineering main. She held one of the hijackers’ weapons.

  “Report, Chief?”

  “All of ours are suited up. I’ve secured the blowers so whatever he’s done down there is more or less contained for the moment. We can vent the ship on your order.”

  “Thank you, Chief.”

  She hefted the weapon. “Benny’s. You want it?”

  I shook my head and thrust Snake at her. “Hold this for me?”

  She grabbed him by his arm and dragged him into a crowded engineering main, thrusting him in the corner with two of his compatriots. “Where’s his weapon?”

  “On the deck of the bridge, I suspect. He was a little rattled.”

  “This isn’t over,” Snake said. “You’re docked now. We’ve got you.”

  The chief laughed.

  “How many are left down there?” I asked.

  The chief shrugged. “Coming and going. At least the Davie guy. Maybe one more. Larson hasn’t come up yet.”

  I sighed. “So, maybe hostage.” I looked around. “Who’s got a weapons rating here? Besides the chief.”

  Murawsky raised her hand. “I do, sar.”

  I nodded at the chief who handed the weapon to her.

  “You’re my backup. If I go down, you get out and tell the chief. Got it?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Run and tell, aye, aye, sar.”

  A flashing red warning on one of the terminals caught my eye. “Chief?” I nodded at the terminal.

  She tapped a few keys. “That’s cold,” she said. “The gas is sarin.”

  “The old nerve agent?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  I looked at the three hijackers in breathing hoods that wouldn’t protect them from the nerve agent. “Get them into emergency suits. Notify Al on the bridge. Find the other four. They never were the threat. Just the distraction.”

  “We could have just taken them all out and avoided this,” the chief said.

  “It’s the only way we could be sure they didn’t have a bomb aboard,” I said. “We’ll still need to run a sweep of the ship after they’re gone.”