Joey, check the help readout, and tapped the screen readout. It did what it was programmed to do. At least Joey hoped it did.
Then he hoped it hadn’t.
“We’ve got a ship in system,” both of them said at the same time.
“And those reactors are like nothing in our database,” Joey added.
43
General Ray Longknife found Andy Anderson, retired captain from the Society of Humanity Navy and former commander of the 97th Defense Brigade, waiting for him in the vestibule of his office.
Ray had been none too happy to find Andy’s 97th Defense Brigade on that nameless moon during the war. Ray had been so sure his proud 2nd Guard Brigade could kick any Earthy scum right off the damn moon.
Instead, they’d beat Ray’s brigade back, broken his back and he would have bled out on that worthless moon if Rita hadn’t held long pass recall to lift him and the shattered wreckage of his brigade off the rock and back to safety.
Civilians wondered how Ray could get along so easily with men he’d tried to kill in the last war, and who had done their damnest to kill him. For Ray, it was simple. He liked the cut of Andy’s jib a lot more than he liked some civilians.
He knew he could trust the man. The man had honor.
And no, Ray couldn’t define honor, but, like beauty, he knew it when he saw it.
And he didn’t see it in a lot of civilians.
“What have you got for me,” Ray said even before they took a seat.
“How’s Rita?”
“Mother and baby are doing fine,” Ray said. “Though around oh dark early this morning I would not have counted on it. Damn, that was hard on Rita. Can I offer you a drink?”
“She’s a tough woman,” Andy said, “and I’ll take a wee bit of Scotch if you think the sun is below the yardarm.”
Ray poured from the cabinet beside his desk. “I would not be here if she wasn’t one tough woman. Your boys and girls were hard as nails on us.”
“No tougher than we had to be to stay alive. Your boys were no slackers,” Andy said, smiling at the old reference as he accepted the offered glass and took a sip.
“Enough talk of old times and of how the family is, Andy. Tell me what you know that I don’t know.”
“Not much, Ray, and it’s not for lack of trying.”
“Well, you have to know more than me.”
“Yes, but I wish it was more.”
“What happened to old Father Joseph and his boy David?”
“I don’t know. We sent two ships out, one the way you took, and one the way the insurance companies want us to take to Santa Maria. They’ve got this gadget. It’s got a name long enough to choke a horse, but I call it the space sniffer. If you can believe what the scientists claim, it can sniff the ship’s plasma exhaust trail. Tell that wee bit of space that is thicker than the natural background. Especially since there’s only been one ship along both routes, your Second Chance along the wild ride and the Can’t Believe I did That and the Prosperous Goose along the more sedate route.”
“And what did this fantastic new gizmo discover,” Ray said, trying to hold on to his temper. He wanted answers. He’d asked the old priest to bring his grandson into space. He’d known there were risks, but, damn it, to lose them on the trip back to human space! That was just wrong.
“Nothing. Nada. Zip. They say they picked up your exhaust and the Can’t Believe’s trail, but nothing else. They claim they can tell the difference between you two ships by the difference in your reaction mass.
“Can you believe it, Hellfrozeover keeps a record of just what is in the reaction mass they’re selling to each ship. The more water and methanes in the delivery, the more they charge. They know what was in all three of your tanks, and the sniffer didn’t find more or different stuff along the two trails.”
Ray frowned at his scotch as he slowly swirled the amber drink in his glass. “Are they saying that the Prosperous Goose and the old padre didn’t follow the course they were supposed to?”
“The skipper of the Goose filed a trip plan, right along the path of the Can’t Believe. If we can trust the sniffers, they didn’t sail that plan.”
“Then what plan did they sail. I’m assuming that the padre and David were on the Goose when it went missing. Am I right?”
“Sad to say, you are. Both the ships we sent to Santa Maria arrived. Both unloaded their cargo. And yes, we didn’t just send a scouting mission, we sent a load of cargo. We had to cut the rate we charged and pay more for insurance, what with the damn Goose missing, but we got there and even brought Rose back with her mother’s sister’s eldest girl. So we have two kids to go with our explorer ships.”
“Put Jon on the Second Chance and get her out there, checking out variations on the route the Goose might have taken.”
“Will do, and we have some idea what the Prosperous Goose may have gone off looking for.”
“We do?”
“I didn’t just have ships chasing the Goose. I posed a question to the spy and he found it an intriguing challenge.”
“He does like challenges,” Ray Longknife agreed. The spy probably had a name, but he didn’t use it and no one seemed to remember it. Spy was his game and spy was his name. He headed up Wardhaven’s Central Intelligence Bureau and what he got interested in usually got answered.
Unfortunately, Ray seemed to be raising all the interesting questions that the spy couldn’t answer.
“What did the spy find?” Ray asked.
“It seems that the skipper of the Goose took a retainer from a certain group of men interested in finding real estate to sell to the kind of folks that find life among the rim worlds tame.”
“God in heaven, not that,” Ray breathed.
“Yep. Find an inhabitable world and we’ll shower you with more money than you and your father and grandfather ever dreamed of. The Goose’s skipper paid to have his tanks topped off with the best reaction mass, and then pressurized them to the max his tanks would handle. We calculate he had enough for a good two dozen jumps.”
“And the tame route to Santa Maria is what, six jumps.”
“Six one way, half a dozen the other,” the retired captain said, and smiled at his own joke.
“So coming and going, he likely did ten or twelve jumps, looking for a nice planet with water and air.”
“Yep.”
“Do the fools who put that fool up to this have any idea where he went?”
Andy was shaking his head before Ray finished the question. “They say that they have no idea where he went, or even if he went. They just put him on retainer. That didn’t mean they were paying him to put his ship at risk.”
“In a pig’s eye,” Ray snapped. “Andy, this gold rush approach to space exploration is not going to turn out well. Ships are going to go missing. People are going to get killed in ships that should never have been rowed away from the pier. I tell you, Andy, it’s going to be a mess. Hell, we might even stumble onto something we’ll regret.”
“Such as?” Andy asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I don’t know. Some disease brought home by a ship that didn’t know how to sanitize its gear. Who knows, we might even run into something that doesn’t want to share space with us. Space is big, but not big enough for the both of us. It wasn’t big enough for Unity and the Society of Humanity.”
“And look how that turned out,” Andy said.
“If Urm hadn’t been offed when he was and that mad admiral had started rocking Wardhaven,” Ray Longknife said, and then paused.
“Is the spy keeping an eye on that Whitebred fellow? I hated leaving Savannah with that bastard still holding out in the yards and dock area of their space station.”
“He’s still there. He can’t touch Savannah from the station. We’ve got Marine guards at all the yard exits. He’s got armed thugs guarding them too. It’s a standoff.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” General Ray Longknife said.
“Ray, I’ve got the watch cover
ed here,” Andy said. “Now you know as little as I know. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep.”
“I can’t. I’ve got the watch tonight. I promised Rita a good night sleep. That I’d take care of little Al if he got fussy.”
“Well, you go be a good daddy and husband and let me mind the store. Trust me, that kid may be a tiny thing just now, but before you know it he’ll want the car keys and be heading off to college. Enjoy him while you can. And enjoy Rita while you can, too. I’ve give the world for a just another hour with my Betsy.”
Ray accepted the wisdom the old captain offered him. He took a moment to finish his drink. Another moment to glance through his computer at all the SOBs nipping at his hind quarters. Then he rose.
“Andy, keep an eye on Whitebred. Oh, and see if there’s anything you can do to stop any captain with way too much optimism from dashing off to who knows where and who knows what. There’s got to be something politicians can do about it. They’re all the time passing stupid laws. This might be the best law they ever passed.”
“Yes, Ray. I’ll see what I can do, Ray. Now go, Ray.”
And with that friendly encouragement, Ray left.
Lost Dawns: A Short Prequel Novel to the Lost Millinnium Trilogy Page 19
