Fragments sf-6

by Randolph Lalonde

  “If someone spotted you, or an over vigilant hunter with a DNA sniffer got you in his sights, you might have been able to fight your way free, or quietly put him down, but that would only draw the wrong kind of attention. The Carthans don't care that we're on their ball of dirt right now, but that could change if we end up getting into trouble in one of their secure zones.”

  "DNA sniffer? Who uses a portable DNA sniffer?” Stephanie recoiled before shaking the notion off. “Don't you think they would have done a better scan if they really cared? That customs bitch didn't seem like the type to leave loose ends behind. If she cared that we might be here, she would have gotten to us, no problem. Besides, I checked the bounty board again. What we learned before coming here is dead on; no one on this moon is interested in paying for anyone from the Samson, there's so much paying work and trouble here, well, there's no point."

  "Ayan was the best option. She doesn't have any warrants out for her, and she has more training than both of us combined in negotiations. That's exactly what we need, a new face who has a good head on her shoulders."

  "So it has nothing to do with the fact that you're bunking up? I mean, I don't blame you, but I wonder if you're thinking with-"

  "She got us what we needed," Jake interrupted. "If you’re not going to help on the bridge, then find another way to lend a hand. I'm sealing this ship up and lifting off before she completely destabilizes and falls into the mud one piece at a time."

  "So we're just going to side with people we don't know, maybe go into debt, inherit whichever enemies she’s made here, and end up working for her because no one else will have us? That's your solution?"

  "You’re being overdramatic, making assumptions. According to the message I got from Ayan, it looks like Patrizia is calming down, enjoying the good life. We're in a serious spot, in case you haven't noticed. Every issyrian on the crew is coming down with something they're getting from the toxic crap we landed on, and I'm pretty sure the rest of us aren't far behind. I'm starting to think the Carthans put us here so they could ignore us to death and, like it or not, Ayan and Laura just found us a better parking spot."

  "I can go see if I can do better, won't take long. Lord knows I have more experience with people like-"

  "We don't have time."

  "Listen, I don't know what's going on with you Jake, but something’s off. First, you're executing a slaver and his first mate, now you're just taking this deal at face value? When has that ever worked out for us in the past?" Stephanie snapped. “Not to mention, you just signed everything we have over to Ayan, who’s calling all the shots.”

  “Can it! We’re about to lose the Samson and you’re just standing there chewing sour grapes!” Jake snapped so viciously, Stephanie took a step back.

  The ship jerked suddenly and the engineering station began flashing red. Finn worked the controls frantically. "We just lost all the mid-ship inertial dampeners. I'm trying to cover with back ups from other areas, but the protection range isn't high enough."

  "Do whatever you have to, we're not going to let her fall apart because we landed on soft ground," Jake replied. "Use series T31."

  "They're burned out. Give me a minute, I'll try to equalize the stress."

  Stephanie looked at the pair for a moment. She was no engineer, and certainly no pilot, but she could see what could happen if they didn't manage to fix the problem. The Samson would rip apart in the middle before they could get the landing gear free of the muck that was holding her down. The ship had been her home for the better part of six years. She'd met and lost so many friends while aboard, suffered through great hardships and enjoyed some memorable times.

  Something on Finn's console caught her eye. "Is that the primary port side strut?" She asked, pointing.

  "Yup, it's still a meter underground. The other two aren't as bad."

  "What if I head aft and hit the manual release?"

  An ominous creaking of the hull drowned out Jake's first attempt at a response.

  "Keep us steady, Captain. We've got enough stress as it is," Finn said as he cringed.

  "The wind's picking up. Do you remember where the access panel for that pylon is, Steph?"

  "How could I forget?" Stephanie ran out of the cockpit and through the crew quarters as quickly as she could. Many of the deck plates had come partially undone and twisted. There wasn't much left holding the ship's middle together, and she was thankful to be armoured as she ran down the stairway leading to the lower aft section of the Samson. Several of the steel steps were unsteady, creaking and giving underfoot.

  The main hold's deck showed the damage more than anywhere else, it was twisted at one end so badly there was a slant across the entire floor. How the main power plant was still running, she would never know, but a rare bout of claustrophobia threatened to impede her as she passed down a narrow service passage between the larger components of the mass reactor. The thought of the supports beneath those heavy machines giving way, and her getting crushed between was terrifying, and thankfully fleeting.

  She came out at the absolute aft end of the Samson and pulled at one of the port side service hatches. The keypad beside it lit up. "Oh thank God something still works back here," she said to herself as she punched the security code in. The portal unlocked, she could hear the bolts retract, but something was wrong. “Spoke too soon.”

  The metal door frame had twisted just enough to trap the hatch. She activated the muscular enhancement systems in her armour, brought up her head piece and sealed it before gripping the handle firmly. With a yank and the scream of metal scraping against metal the door opened then promptly clattered to the deck beside her. “Sorry,” she said to no one in particular..

  Stephanie crawled into the small, dark space before losing her nerve and looked around carefully. She’d only been in that area of the ship once, over two years before when she had to climb up the landing strut to board during a very hasty retreat. "C'mon, you were only here for a minute, but you saw the big lever you weren't supposed to touch. Well, not until now, anyway." She stood in front of the landing gear, being careful not to fall out of the undercarriage door. The rain and muck had made the plating slick underfoot. Through the narrow space between the landing gear and the rest of the ship she could see how the strut had dug into the mud. The stuff was more trouble than they could have ever guessed, and she knew she wasn't the only one kicking herself for not seeing it coming when the rain started.

  "It's on the fore side of the strut. Or it should be," Finn told her.

  Stephanie recalled the lever, it had a red, rubber cover that couldn't have been more obvious. "Could it have fallen off?" She asked as she inspected that side of the landing gear.

  "How would-" Finn started. "Well, maybe. I hope not!"

  Stephanie shifted around the wavering strut and sighed with relief. "Found it! It was on the starboard side."

  "How'd it get there?" Finn remarked. "Whatever, we're coming apart. Hurry."

  There wasn't much space for her to squeeze into on the landing strut, not nearly enough for her to safely cling on without getting crushed when the ship lifted off. "Gimmie a minute."

  "Take your time, be safe," Jake advised. “But quickly”

  She stood there, looking at the narrow space between the landing strut and the edge of the undercarriage hatch for a moment. She leaned away from the strut as best as she could and reached out to he lever.

  "Stephanie?" asked Finn.

  "Gimmie a minute! I'm just finding a way to do this so I'm not half the woman I used to be when I'm done," she snapped.

  She stretched so her other hand was on the lip of the hatch leading into the ship and decided she’d dive for it when the mechanism released, just in case there were extra problems. "Okay, don't lift off too fast," she said as she steeled her resolve.

  Stephanie pulled the landing gar release slowly. It flipped suddenly, knocking her back. With a deafening shriek the strut separated and the Samson began to lift off. In a matter of
seconds the landing metal support disappeared from sight, and they were fifty meters off the ground. She slipped as she tried to pull herself out of the small undercarriage room, her feet dangled in the open air for a second before she pulled herself through the service hatchway and back inside the ship interior.

  “You all right Steph?” Asked Finn.

  “Fine, you’ll have to get someone down here to fix the door though, we’re open to atmosphere.”

  “I’ll put it on the list.”

  Chapter 28

  The Eye Of The Storm

  Zoe finished half her meal bar, drank most of a bottle of water and fell fast asleep in Ashley's arms. It was quiet, dark, and she couldn't help but feel a little selfish at the comfort that holding Zoe gave her. Attempts at finding out what was going on with the ship and crew on her command and control unit failed. The command network was absolutely dormant. She turned her attention to Zoe’s personal records and the first thing that caught her interest was surveillance footage of her in the Botanical Gallery. In the playback she was running through a finished park area that Ashley hadn’t seen before, it was maze like, with tall bushes and fruit trees everywhere. It was a playful chase between two of Iloona’s four or five year old children and Zoe, and the eighteen month old was having the time of her life until she tripped and fell into one of the ankle deep creeks that ran through the outer gallery. The pair of children picked her up right away, made sure she was all right and raised her spirits in moments by splashing around in the shallow water with her, turning it into a game. Ashley didn’t know how happy Iloona would be with two of her youngest children turning up soaking wet, but they were all having great fun.

  When she brought up the rest of Zoe’s profile she was surprised to discover that she had been adopted by a human, Vivian Lea, who had also adopted a young human boy and girl. She lived in the Botanical Gallery, and was a Pandem refugee.

  Just looking at Zoe sleeping peacefully in her arms reminded Ashley of her own childhood. She couldn’t understand why, because her upbringing was quite different. She was bred for slavery, and raised in a stock house, then sold at the age of four. She barely remembered the stock house, which she assumed was a mercy. They raised as many children as possible in a small space, and since they weren't clones, they were treated fairly well, but they were still only a product. Considering that she could have been a clone instead and subjected to painful accelerated growth treatments, even more crowded conditions and forced direct neural education, being brought into the world naturally and sold by her mother as a baby was the better option, where slavery was concerned.

  Zoe wouldn't find herself in such a situation. Everyone she knew despised slavery, and after holding the youngster for just a little while she couldn't bear to see anything happen to her. The holographic image of her playing with the other children, all of them older than her, was a relief. Zoe seemed to enjoy life in the Botanical Gallery, playing in the grass, splashing on the edge of the shallow creek there, and learning to climb with a little help from one of Iloona's older children. Only days before Ashley would have had to be reminded that there were hundreds of civilians working and living in the Botanical Gallery. Watching the playback of what life was like for the orphans there, and how survivors of Pandem had already moved right in was a shocking reminder.

  She'd moved herself into the life of a fighter pilot, even though she was the Master At The Helm. As a career it suited her exceptionally well. Ashley loved the study, technical demands, and the responsibility of the position, but after seeing Zoe in the Botanical Gallery and saving her in medical, she realized she needed something more. "How could I have forgotten all about it?" she asked herself in a whisper.

  The lawn she attended yoga classes at on most mornings seemed small. The place where Zoe and the rest of the children were taken to play was a corner of the Gallery she'd never seen. She doubted most of the busy crew of the Triton had seen most of the place, and she vowed to spend some time there, to relax, and to make sure Zoe was happy once things calmed down.

  "Well, this whole section is sealed again," Larry said as he came through the door. "The soldiers were called to the bridge, something big is going down there, but I couldn't tell you what. Oz and Jason have everything deactivated on the command deck."

  "Did you tell them that I'm ready to pilot this thing as soon as I find a console?" She whispered back.

  "No, you'll be doing that in a few minutes. The conference room just a few doors down is still intact. You can use a section of the table as a control board. Oh, and there's chatter of a Uriel fighter moving around at long range. I'm thinking Valance has come looking for his ship."

  "That's Captain Valance," Ashley corrected quietly as she slowly rose to her feet. Zoe was so tired she barely stirred.

  "Aye, aye," Larry led her to the conference room. The lights were still glowing a dim blue, on reserve power, and she could see where heavy bulkhead doors had been lowered, cutting off half of medical. If they were anything like the Botanical Gallery doors, they were a meter or more thick, made to withstand incredible forces. “You’ll be a welcome sight. You’ll be saving them the trouble of finding another pilot.”

  “Wouldn’t they just come and get me?”

  “I listed you as killed before Crewcast was silenced so anyone who managed to break into the system wouldn’t come looking for a Master At The Helm in a medically induced coma.”

  “Oh, well then I guess they’ll be really happy to see me.” The conference room was a more welcoming space. Larry had gathered a pile of nutrient bars, blankets, bottles of water, and had even brought in two portable gurneys. Ashley took a seat and transferred her ident from her comm unit to the table. The helm controls came up straight away, partially as a holographic projection and partially covering the surface itself. Around her console were live star charts, damage displays, a virtual communications panel, and a navigational assistant much like the navnet she was used to seeing.

  She tried to put Zoe into the chair beside her, but her hands reflexively tightened their grip on her hair. "Okay, looks like I have a new copilot," she chuckled, depositing her passenger in her lap. Her eyes half opened and she relaxed for a moment. Then, as though she just realized that she was in a different place, her pale blue eyes popped open and she stared at the holograms hovering above the table.

  "She's going to be a distraction, I should take her," Larry said as he stepped forward.

  Zoe retreated against Ashley, sending her a worried look. "It's okay, he's a friend," Ashley reassured as she tried to lift her out of her lap.

  Her protests came as a panicked squeal.

  Ashley hushed her, soothing Zoe with shushing sounds and stroking her face. "It's okay. You're just going to have to be really quiet and still, alright?" She soothed, knowing that there was little actual chance that her instructions would stick, regardless of how they were delivered.

  "That's it," Larry grumbled, bringing up a sub display on the conference table.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Checking game history. If she's anything like every kid old I've met, then she has a favourite," he searched Zoe's profile for a few seconds and activated a program that featured rounded, bouncing characters in the shape of letters and numbers. Their hyper, high pitched voices immediately caught Zoe's attention and her grip on Ashley's hair loosened.

  "What is it?" Ashley asked as she watched a nine chase a frantic one.

  "Bumper Muncher. I've never heard of it, but I think she knows it pretty well."

  Zoe looked up at Ashley, her eyes conveying a request for permission.

  "You wanna play?" She asked, feigning excitement and surprise.

  Zoe nodded emphatically.

  "Okay, here we go," Ashley said as she lifted her up and put her on the table across from her.

  The little girl made a gesture as though she were picking up the game display and it disappeared, sounds of muffled protests and comical panic seemed to come from her closed hand un
til she threw it into the air above the floor beside Ashley. The game image appeared there and Zoe got down from the table with Ashley’s help. Within minutes she settled in to play her game, changing the shape of the virtual walls so the characters, each in the form of a different number, so they collided into each other. The black numbers added together to become one larger number when the collided, and were reduced by red numbers. "She's really good with the computer," Ashley commented quietly as she watched the comically frantic numerical characters rush around the changing virtual space.

  "It's a Sol System model, completely intuitive. She doesn't know how inconvenient most computers are, so she assumes it works like the rest of the world."

  "I've only ever moved something from my comm unit to a display and back, never even tried what she's doing. Then, I s'pose you know all about what Triton can do," Ashley commented as she checked the status of the ship and started figuring out where they were.

  "I trained on this model for three years. The hardest part has been pretending I don't know much more than anyone else."

  "You're going to have to teach me a few things sometime."

  "Only if you show me more about Crewcast. I haven't been able to ask questions since its designer is also the best investigator on the ship. If I used it heavily I know he'd figure me out."

  "Really? How?"

  "Crewcast builds a behavioural profile of all its users. It's an intelligence man's wet dream. Most of the crew use it so much that it probably already knows who everyone knows, how long they've known them, what kind of relationships people typically have and anything else. Ever notice how the old Freeground crew don’t have complete public profiles? It's a trap. If you have nothing to hide, there's no problem, but if you do, it takes discipline not to reveal anything important."