“So, yes, Johannes, I understand what you are feeling. I’ve already lost everything. My friends, my partner, my colleagues, my job. Everything except the possibility that my work will mean something to others, though they will probably never even know my name.” She took a deep breath. “And, you know something?”
Johannes suddenly didn’t want to ask, but he did, nonetheless.
“And my partner would have been right. I don’t think that I can ever forgive myself, either. Why should I get to live when they don’t? What gives me the right to choose who lives and who dies? How can I live with myself? Why should I even live? After the Knowledge is out there, what use am I? A researcher without anything to research.”
He only realized that her hand had remained on his throughout her little speech when she removed it to pick up her utensils. He ordered his thoughts. Amazing that she had so nearly stated exactly what he had thought earlier, back on Earth.
“You should live because that is what we do. You should forgive yourself because the fault does not lie with you; you have not set nation against nation. We cannot save everyone. That we can save some, we should consider a blessing.” Even as he said that, he wondered if he believed it.
CHAPTER 12
FTL-1
Sunday 11 July
The chime woke Johannes from deep sleep. He fumbled his way out of bed, and hit the comm, wondering why they wouldn’t let him get just a few hours in.
“Johannes,” came Helen’s agitated voice. “I need you in Ops. Now!”
“On my way.”
Now what?
The light came on low at his command, and he dressed quickly, took a quick glance in the mirror at his unshaven face, and swore. “To hell with it.”
Seconds later, other station members watched him quizzically as he jogged down the hallways. He arrived in Ops to find Helen and Jill squaring off, ready to commit mayhem. Nothing new there.
“Oh, Johannes!” Helen gasped as he came to a halt, the door sliding shut behind him. “They’re going to catch them, kill them – and she won’t do anything about it.”
He shook his head trying to make sense of that. “Who’s going to catch who? And who won’t do anything about it?”
“Problem in Africa,” Jill said. “A mix-up. But we’re committed elsewhere. We can’t do anything about it.”
Which answered practically nothing. “For crying out loud, people, if it’s important enough to get me out of bed, it’s important enough to brief me properly.”
Helen, glaring at Jill, spoke. “Someone betrayed one of our families – researcher, husband, three children, ages ten, eight, and five. They got word to Connie, and she to me. Africa, yes. They’re headed for the Nigerian coast, where we arranged for a boat to pick them up and take them to Cameroon, where we can get them documents, and then get them onto a shuttle.”
Johannes nodded. “Got it so far. But something happened?”
“Last word – as of a couple of hours ago – someone betrayed the family, and they have hunters after them. The people we hired to pick them up have now refused to go, on the grounds that our family likely won’t make it to the beach. They say that even if they do, a patrol boat will surely intercept our boat either before or after it makes the pick-up. And we can’t get word to the family that the boat won’t be leaving. So, they’ll be waiting on the beach for a boat that will never come, even as the hunters close in on them.”
Jill took over. “Helen wants me to re-route a shuttle to pick them up. We have nothing ready that isn’t already committed to something else. We’d have to dump cargo and passengers. That isn’t happening.”
“They have data they haven’t been able to transmit. It’ll be lost forever. And lives are at risk,” Helen spit out.
“Answering this call would put other lives at risk,” Jill rebutted. “Your people take their chances. Besides, sending in a shuttle would call attention to us like nothing else could. And I’m not putting both the mission and the shuttle into jeopardy.”
“The shuttle? What jeopardy?”
Jill sneered at the distraught woman. “The shuttle could get shot down, White. Some of the African Nations countries don’t play gentle. And they guard their sovereignty jealously. Nigeria is one of those.”
While they argued, Johannes studied the boards.
“We have Shuttle-4 on station, now.”
“Under maintenance,” Jill said. “We’re abusing them as it is. And I’m not asking anyone to volunteer for a suicide mission.”
“You’d just let them die?” Helen asked.
“Yes.”
“Screw this. I’m tired of the pair of you arguing all the time.” Johannes strode towards the door. “I’ll get them myself. Have a packet of the necessary information ready for me to download when I call for it.”
And before either could say another word, he slipped through the door. He then jogged towards the lifts, dropped down to the dock level, and ran towards Dock 3.
“Captain Yrden?”
Johannes stopped, tried to place the face, and then remembered. “Pilot Pearson. I’m commandeering your shuttle.”
“The hell you say. Captain Bettina expects me back—”
“Life and death, pilot. Besides, I’m captain of Venture, Bettina is only acting captain while I’m here. Call Venture from the dock. Tell them the situation; have them send another shuttle across for you and your cargo.”
Pearson didn’t like it, Johannes could see. “I signed her out, I go with her. Besides, you said life or death. You’ll want a co-pilot.”
Johannes looked at him. “Chance that the shuttle won’t be coming back up, pilot. Not your job; not your problem.”
“Hell with that.” Pearson strode over to the longshoremen, who had just arrived with his cargo. “Back to the warehouse,” he ordered.
While he did that, Johannes made sure the cargo doors were shut and sealed. Then he went to the flight deck only to have Pearson appear right behind him before he could toggle the hatch closed.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Johannes told him.
“Then tell me ... on the way.” He checked his board. “Hatch sealed. Start the checklist, I’ll get us booted from the station.”
Ten minutes out, Pearson reported. “Incoming message – coded.”
“Good. Open it up so we can figure out where we’re going.”
Pearson’s eyebrows went up. “You haven’t filed a flight plan?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, joy.”
The shuttle came out of orbit heading for the Atlantic, not any landmass.
“We head for Douala, Cameroon. At the last moment we change course for our beach in Nigeria. We come in low, land on the beach, pick up our passengers, head back out over the Atlantic, and then back to orbit,” Johannes explained in answer to the question.
“Wastes a lot of fuel,” Pearson said.
“Better than meeting a missile-armed fighter after radar picks us up on the way down. Better than everyone knowing who the shuttle belongs to by following our track on the way up.”
“Smuggling? The Yrdens?”
“Picking up some friends. ‘Ben and Geri Smith’ and their family. Went for a picnic, got lost.”
Pearson threw back his head and laughed. “As you say, Captain. But, as co-pilot, I have to tell you that you look like shit. Put your head down. I’ll wake you up when we near Nigerian airspace.”
Johannes woke to the shake – and the shaking of the shuttle.
“Weather,” Pearson said. “Not the best, but possibly just what we want. Low clouds, rain, storm. Not many will be out and about, sightseeing.”
Johannes blinked the sleep from his eyes. “Nigerian airspace?”
“Ten minutes. How many passengers?”
“Five – if they make it.”
“If they make it?”
“Possibility they won’t.” Johannes took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. “If they don’t, it won’t
be our fault.”
* * *
The shuttle’s floodlights lit the beach, and the shuttle came in for a soft landing. Nothing moved.
“They expecting a shuttle?”
Pearson had a point. Johannes opened the hailer. “Ben and Geri! Vattune.”
“Vattune?” Pearson asked.
“ID code. Tells them that we’re friends.”
“Ah.”
They waited almost a minute. Johannes reached for the hailer again, but Pearson put his hand out to stop him. He pointed at the screen. “There. Your people?”
“Well, we’ll have to hope so, otherwise we might be in a spot of trouble. Get the engines started, I’m going out to bring them in. No time for the stairs.” He grabbed a porta-comm as he left.
Johannes opened the hatch, and jumped down to the sand, rain lashing him.
“They come! They come!” shouted the man, as he stumbled across the sand, one child in his arm, another by the hand.
“Kill the lights,” Johannes spoke into his radio. The beach went black, as Pearson obeyed his order.
Behind the man, another figure stumbled and fell in the sand. Johannes went running out to her, picked up the child who had dropped from her arms in the fall, and started running back. He saw that Pearson had left the shuttle, and was in the process of lifting the other children into the hatch.
“Get in, get in!” Johannes shouted, as he heard angry voices from behind them, carried on the wind.
Pearson jumped up, and stood in the hatch. Johannes almost threw the child to him, then went back with the man for the woman who limped slowly towards the shuttle, putting almost no weight on her left foot. One man on either side of her, they practically carried her, her uninjured foot only touching down every third or fourth step.
“Grab her!”
The two men lifted the woman, and Pearson took her. He disappeared, reappeared quickly and reached down, grasping the man’s hands. With Johannes pushing from behind, the man almost catapulted into the shuttle. Then Johannes leapt up, Pearson helping him in.
“Get them strapped in, and then strap in yourself. Don’t try to get to the deck, I’m taking off now!”
Johannes flung the hatch closed, dropped into the pilot’s seat, and gave the shuttle full power to lift off. On the screen, infrared showed people spilling out of the trees. A flash meant a shot fired. But by then the shuttle had begun to move, and in seconds left the pursuers out of range.
Pearson came in and took his seat.
“Got them all settled. Terrified bunch. Won’t talk to me. What now?”
“Now we go back to FTL-1. Once we get there, you don’t let them out of, or anyone else into, the passenger compartment. You get your cargo loaded, and take it back to Venture. By the time you get there, Bettina will know all about it, and what to do.” He paused. “Good work. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Who are they, really?”
“Yeah, about that: you don’t know anything about this little trip.”
“Me?” Pearson raised his eyebrows. “When I got to FTL-1, I decided to get a little kip time in. They woke me up after they loaded the shuttle. I found the passengers already in their seats.”
“That’s a good story,” Johannes said. “Stick to it.”
* * *
Weary unto death, Johannes stopped by Ops. Both women looked at him, and for once they weren’t arguing with each other.
“You look like shit, Yrden,” Jill said.
“I feel like shit.” He turned to Helen. “Tell Connie to stop worrying. All taken care of.” He rolled his head, trying to get the kinks out. “Now I’m going to get some sleep. About thirty types of hell are about to descend upon me for today’s little stunt, so I’d like to be fresh when I receive it. Good-day, ladies.”
He hadn’t reached the end of the hall when he heard footsteps. Helen White appeared beside him, put her arm about his waist, which he figured could only help, and walked with him to his quarters. Inside, she helped him out of his jacket.
“Thank you,” she said. “How was it – really?”
“Closer than I’d like to admit. And they radioed for air support. Fortunately we got out of their airspace and over international waters before that support came within missile range.”
She went pale. “But you’re okay?”
“I’m okay. Just exhausted.”
“And my family?”
“On their way to Venture. Scared, shaken, without anything but the clothes on their backs, but unhurt and safe – well pretty much. One sprained ankle.” He sat down on his bed, and pulled his boots off, letting each one fall to the floor in turn.
“They were bringing their data.”
Johannes looked up. “Oh, that. Yes.”
He reached into his pocket, and pulled two datasticks out. “They gave me this. Take charge of it, will you? I’m really too tired to worry about it right now.”
He bent to pull off his socks. When he, oh, so slowly unbent, he saw her watching him.
“Still here?”
Silently, without word or gesture, she leaned down and kissed him on the cheek – his unshaven, scruffy cheek. Then she equally silently padded to the door. One last look at him, and she disappeared.
He needed sleep. He would catch high holy hell when he awoke.
* * *
Monday 12 July
Johannes took a break. He felt like he had beaten his head against a wall, given the throbbing of his temples. Helen and Jill hadn’t exactly taken to each other, and that left him in the middle, trying to soothe jangled nerves, when his own fit the same description.
It hadn’t helped that Jill had been ready to leave the ‘Smiths’ to their fate.
“How’s it going?” Bill Tannon asked, as he stepped into the small lunchroom.
“Want to trade jobs?”
“That bad? What do you have so far?”
Johannes sighed. “Two warring parties, neither willing to give an inch, and me in the middle.” He brought up a grin. “Actually, we’ve made some progress. We’re bringing up three families from the European Treaty Organization to FTL-1 for a vacation. They won’t be going back down – we’re shipping them to New Brittain. The Nakamuras have one family and one lone researcher coming up from Japan for a research trip to Yamato – signed off on by the Japanese government. That leaves forty-four plus families. We’re working on getting a family from the Central African Republic to Liberia, from where we can lift them. Helen’s doing.”
He stretched to relieve some of the tension in his muscles.
“Other than that, we have only indefinite plans. Those in Australia, the USNA, the South American Union and China can come up in a final wave if necessary.”
Tannon raised his eyebrows. “A wave? Sounds dangerous.”
“That’s the last resort scenario. We have good access, and by the time the word spread it would be too late.” He shrugged. “Of course, that would uncover our mission, so, we’ll hold off on that until and unless we have no other choice.”
“But if we get the harder ones out early, then we’ll proceed on the same course with these.” Tannon nodded.
Johannes closed his eyes, and leaned back in his chair. “Got any good news for me?”
“Only bad.”
He opened his eyes again.
“USNA Space Force wants to station a full mission on FTL-1 to liaise with us over the pirating situation.”
“You didn’t agree, right? The Families didn’t agree?”
Tannon just looked at him steadily. “Matt didn’t feel we had a choice. If we turn them down, they’ll suspect something. Besides, we already have a couple here – a captain and his assistant.”
Johannes slapped his open hand on the table. “A couple and a mission are worlds apart. And what will they think when they see our researchers passing through? At least, until now, we didn’t have to worry that much about others finding out. Now? I’m going to talk to Matt.”
He felt a restraini
ng hand on his arm as he rose.
“Decision’s been made – a consensus decision.”
“What if they’d been aboard when I went down to pick up the ‘Smiths’? This will put a crimp in our operations.”
“Just be glad that everyone understands that bit of tom-foolery. What were you thinking, anyway?”
Johannes held the Station Supervisor in his gaze. Through half-closed eyes, he contemplated the man. “Putting out a fire. If we hadn’t done something, anything, Helen might have pulled the plug. What with Jill Paxton fighting her at every turn, she’d never have trusted us again. Might have withheld everything until we no longer could get it out. In that case, we might have lost it all.”
“And now she knows differently,” Tannon stated.
“Now she knows differently,” Johannes agreed. “Now, if I tell her it’s too risky to pick someone up, if I tell her that we’ve done our best, but it’s no-go, she’ll believe me.” He stretched again. Perhaps he should follow Jaswinder’s example and do yoga. “In fact, she has begun turning over the data to us as it comes up. She trusts us now.”
“I can accept that. I’ll pass it on to Haida Gwaii. Some there wanted to pull you. I guess if we do that now, we guarantee a difficult time with Preston and White.” He chuckled. “I’ll tell them the situation, and insist that anyone who wants you gone has to take your place separating the two warring parties.”
“You’re evil.”
Tannon laughed at that. “So, sorry. You’re stuck.”
Johannes groaned. “Any chance at all of having Jill replaced?”
Tannon shook his head. “None. She’s good, perhaps the best we have available. On top of that, if I were to pull her, the Paxtons – and their allies – would believe that you engineered it in order to favour Yrden interests.”
“Damn.” He felt his world spinning out of control. He glanced at the chrono. “I’d better get back in there before Jill and Helen find the station self-destruct switch, and decide to end their war for once and for all, taking us with them.”
Not With A Whimper: Preservers Page 14
