Tanager's Fledglings (The Tanager Book 1)

by Cedar Sanderson

  “How many can you carry?” The man didn’t even blink at Jem’s assumption. “Scratch that. Can you carry ten? I know I can come up with ten I can trust. Might be more later. And then...” He took a quick breath. “Carry back the dead and wounded.”

  Jem blinked. “Ten is easy. I can do that in the receiving hold. I don’t have hospital facilities, just a single simple autodoc. No surgery options.”

  “Moskvin. Run for the doc.” Mags ordered the Altressa man without hesitation. “Jem, go warm up the Tanager. Barnes, grab MacTavish and send him here, then get your men.”

  The big miner nodded and headed for the door on Moskvin’s heels. Jem hesitated.

  “Mags?” He asked, “Could you keep an eye on someone for me?”

  “What?” Mags looked slightly confused. “Of course?”

  “I’ll bring him to you before I take off.” Jem, relieved, trotted for his ship. He didn’t want to slap the pup into stasis again, and besides, the little guy needed socialization. Jem was pretty sure he was going to be too busy. Something about the way Barnes had been very sure there would be casualties.

  The Tanager hadn’t been fully shut down, of course. Too many systems were necessary to keep environmental online for the beeves, the garden, and now the dog. Firing up the drives would take an hour or two... Jem hovered over the board watching the indicators. One hour. Good, it was still a bit warm from his arrival only that morning. He let out a long breath. It wasn’t even dinnertime yet and already the world had shaken. He grinned at the pup, who thumped his tail on the flooring.

  “Ok, little guy, let’s go meet people.”

  Jem carried the pup, who was almost too big for that, as he headed back for the Overeasy. It seemed like everyone who was in the habitat was in the corridor. He was stopped three times by people looking for news. He saw a distraught woman holding a small child and stopped to let the baby pat the puppy, which made the woman smile a little.

  He walked into the Overeasy, which was crowded again, but this time with people mostly sitting at the tables talking quietly. The effect was of walking into a beehive. Jem headed for the cluster of people standing by the end of the bar.

  “What is that?” Mags asked, looking at the pup. Since he’d put his nose under Jem’s arm, all that were really visible were wrinkles of brown and white fur and a very long ear covering one front paw.

  “This is a dog. He’s still young,” Jem started to explain.

  “I know what a dog is,” Mags interrupted. “I’ve just never seen one that looked like that.”

  “He’s a Basset Hound.” Jem handed him to Mags. “Thanks for looking after him.”

  “Sure, Kid.” Mags shifted the puppy easily to the crook of one arm, despite the pup’s wiggling and not being sure about this sudden transfer, and indicated the others with a now free hand. “This is the Doc, he’s going along. Turns out Moskvin has some medic training, he’ll be with you as well. Barnes’ crew is assembling by the Tanager, should be there when you get back to it. What does the dog eat, and does he have a name?”

  “Um, he’ll eat most anything. Vatmeat is fine, I add a little grain and cooked carrots. I call him Pup. He started out as cargo and I never got around to naming him.”

  “Started out as cargo?” Mags echoed. “Story for another time. Get going, kid. We still haven’t heard anything from the Lode.”

  With his free hand, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a datagem. “Freqs for the repeater. You’ll have to run the calcs for emplacement of the drone, Barnes can give you the coords for the Lode.”

  Mags turned away and left Jem with his unexpected passengers all looking at him. He squared his shoulders. “We can leave in less than an hour. Do you have everything you’ll need with you?”

  The doctor shook his head. He was a younger man, maybe a few years older than Jem himself, and roughly the same height. He kept his sandy brown hair short, and Jem could see the lines of tension around his mouth and eyes. “My nurse is bringing equipment to the docks.”

  “I’ve got my gear.” This was a new, subdued Moskvin Jem hadn’t met before. He was tightly focused and had dropped the joking. “Let’s be on our way.”

  Jem led the silent group back to the ship, noticing that the corridor was still busy, but now, people were stepping out of their way as they passed. He heard a few quiet well-wishes in his wake.

  Barnes was waiting with six men by the Tanager’s hatch. He held out his hand as Jem walked up. “Thanks for doing this.”

  Jem shrugged. “Needed doing. Let’s get you in and settled. How far is the Lode?”

  As they talked about coordinates and calculations, Jem kept thinking at the back of his brain that if he’d just do what he thought Walter would have done he’d be ok. Barnes’ men made sure the doctor’s equipment was aboard, and Jem suggested that if they could convert the now-empty hold where the woolies had been to a sick bay, that could be done once they were underway. He was glad he’d cleaned it in transition from Tassie to Flinders. It would be ready for them and not smell of sheep, much.

  The nurse, who was actually female, to Jem’s surprise, arrived with two other men in tow and all of them had float pallets. “I didn’t know what to bring...” She waved at the pallets.

  “We have room.” Jem assured her.

  Barnes looked out at the dock. There were people, but... He turned to Jem. “That’s all for now. I know there’s another one, but who knows when he’ll turn up. He was last seen at Lady Perky’s in an advanced state of inebriation.”

  Jem smiled in spite of his growing tension. “Then I’ll close hatch and get to the bridge. Moskvin?”

  The Altressa man nodded. “I’ll get the doc and his crew settled in, I know what to do.” He looked at the nurse, “if you’ll follow me...”

  Jem waved at the hold, a sweeping gesture. “Barnes, if you can leave your men a moment?”

  “They’ve got it. Securing gear for lift.” He raised his voice for that last part, and it cut through the general babble in the hold. Nine men could make a lot of noise.

  “Lead on, Captain.” Barnes grinned a little.

  Jem felt a little odd being called captain. Walter hadn’t held with formality - it was just the two of them, and Jem had come aboard young and dumb. He supposed it was correct, he just had to resist the urge to look around and say ‘who, where?’ when he heard it.

  Barnes took the navigator’s chair on the bridge once Jem pointed at it. Jem lit his board. “Do you know how...” Jem cut himself off. Barnes was already tapping coordinates in.

  “It’s a lot like my old ship. I wasn’t a pilot, mind, but the Captain believed in cross training for everyone, just in case.” Barnes explained without looking up from his board. His fingers raced over the screen inputting numbers.

  “Good to have you.” Jem was relieved. He’d been drilled in using the drone for long-range array, but not as a comm repeater. He knew it could be done, and he had the manual, but that would take time. Now, Barnes had it set up. Jem paid more attention to getting them slowly and safely away from the Flinders dock. He’d add speed once they were out of collision range. He flipped a long-unused switch. “All hands,” He spoke into the intercom. “All hands, prepare for possible collision. You will not feel acceleration, unless we hit something.”

  Barnes chuckled. “You don’t make announcements often, do you?”

  “No, usually it’s just me and the dog.”

  “You have a dog?” Barnes looked around.

  Jem was silent for a minute, focused on the last adjustments. He was shaving a few corners closer than the normal takeoff route. Once he was on track for the first set of coords Barnes had entered - where they’d emplace the drone - he answered. “Left him with Mags.”

  “Makes sense. Don’t want an animal underfoot.”

  Jem shook his head, then asked. “What is the Lode like?”

  Now it was Barnes’ turn to be quiet a little. “It was a collection of temp-bubbles, you know w
hat they are?”

  Jem nodded. Small sealable tents, of a sort, that could be filled with air mixture and allowed for men to get out of a suit for a while. He imagined most at the Lode were bigger than the two-man set up Walter kept in the emergency kit.

  “Yeah, and probably a few sealed rock-houses. We do that when we’ve got a claim that is playing out. Moving ore in a suit is awkward. Sealing a section of split means you can work faster, more efficient. When we really get going, we break out the big machines and exoskeletons to manipulate the heavy stuff. The Lode wasn’t there yet.”

  Barnes rubbed a hand over his short hair and grimaced. “It’s going to be a mess, kid. Flinders is small enough that if we felt that shake, the Lode will have been rattled like a nut in a shell. I don’t know what we’ll find, but I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  Jem nodded. His gut was heavy. He knew he ought to eat, but he wasn’t hungry. He checked the board. An hour to the drone emplacement, and then another to the Lode. Travel on the surface of Flinders, in suits, and assuming new splits hadn’t opened, would have taken a day or more. He switched over to programming the drone. It would be launched from here. Walter had traveled alone before Jem, and had set more operations to be completed from the bridge than most ships of her class.

  The planetoid had an erratic orbit around a distant sun that looked star-like from this range, and because of the other asteroids and meteors in the near space, setting up an orbit for the drone around the irregular surface wasn’t easy. Jem wanted it to stay in what would, on a planet, be a geosynchronous orbit. He really didn’t want to replace the drone, especially after the way Mags had reacted about it. He was suspecting that might not be possible. The math for calculating the dipping and weaving pattern kept his mind and hands busy until just before they reached the chosen emplacement point. Jem used the scanners to ping off the surface of the planetoid below them - close enough to see, were he at his porthole window, but the bridge’s screens gave both men a clear view of what lay below.

  Barnes let a low whistle escape him. “Damn... Kid. You didn’t see that. You don’t talk about it, ok?”

  Startled, Jem looked at the other man. “What?”

  “Captain, sorry.” Barnes bared his teeth in what was nearly a smile. “That is a split, if you haven’t seen one before, and furthermore, it’s a virgin split.”

  “Um.” Jem really didn’t care, but he’d gathered that Barnes wanted to be the first one to explore it. “You know that sounds really bad.”

  Barnes was visibly taken aback, then he started laughing. “Just... Just launch the drone, captain.” He shook his head, chuckling. “Sounds terrible. I’ve been away from polite society for far too long. Heh. Kid, you stay quiet about this, I’ll cut you in.”

  Jem shot him an irritated look. “Who am I going to tell? Besides, I’m losing time and money looking for your friends. Just keep me on the right track for that.”

  Barnes sobered up and looked back to his board. Jem had pushed the drone out gently with as little thrust as possible and it swam in space just to stern, looking like nothing more than a small silvery fish against the Tanager’s battered red side. The whale to the drone’s minnow.

  “Getting back underway.” Jem announced over the ship’s intercom. The lack of inertia meant no one would have known they stopped, but it felt right to keep them up to date as they drew nearer to the Lode and the unknown that awaited them there.

  Chapter 11: Flinders Lode

  Jem raised his head from the board and inhaled. Something smelled... good. Barnes got up. “Smells like dinner.”

  Jem’s stomach growled. Barnes laughed. “Go on, kid. I’ll sit the board, you eat, then I will.”

  Jem hesitated. “No, you go. This is my job.”

  Barnes looked him in the eye for a second, then nodded. “Aye, aye, Cap’n.”

  Jem looked back at the board. He wondered whether they had brought food onboard, or raided his pantry. It didn’t matter, but someone knew how to make good smells. He could have left the board, but with the uncertainty about what waited for them, he didn’t want to seem uncaring. And there was the possibility of small objects enroute.

  Barnes was back quickly, holding a handful of strawberries gently. “Damn, man, you eat good on this ship!”

  Jem realized someone had raided not only the pantry but the garden, too. There was more than enough for him, he didn’t know how long it would last the extra people. In the galley, the doctor was standing at the cooker. He waved Jem over.

  “Sorry to take advantage of your garden, Captain.”

  “No, no, it needed harvesting.” Jem accepted the plate from him, “but this isn’t vatmeat.”

  The Doc laughed. “Mags sent a cooler of steaks. He said we might as well eat tonight, we’re likely to be busy after.”

  Jem did a double-take. He knew what that much steak would be worth on Flinders. Then he decided not to make a fuss over it, and simply told the doctor how long he had to finish dinner. “We’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”

  He sat to eat, only peripherally aware that he was being complimented on the greens by the men around him. By his count, there were sixteen on board, so they must have eaten in two shifts, the galley only sat eight at a time. He thought the good dinner was a fine idea. The closer they got, the more the comm silence bothered him. They’d already had test responses from the habitat. Nothing at all from the Lode.

  He returned his plate to one of the men who had been assigned dishes, and waved off the strawberries when the Doc offered them. “I get them almost daily.”

  One of the other men, plate in hand, caught his attention. “Can I have them? Man, you have no idea how long it’s been since I had fresh fruit. Years. I’m not kidding here, years!”

  “Of course you can have them.” Jem watched the man cup them in his palm like precious jewels, and was reminded of how Barnes had carried them into the bridge. As Jem walked back to the bridge, he mused that Misha, with her greengrocery, would no doubt find a ripe market here on Flinders.

  Back at the bridge, Jem could see on Barnes’ face that there had been no contact. “ETA?”

  “Five minutes. Did you even chew?”

  “And swallowed.” Jem strapped in, something he rarely did. He wasn’t even really sure why, but when he looked over at Barnes, who was laughing, he saw the other man was, as well.

  Nerves. It was the uncertainty of what was coming next. It most likely wouldn’t be a direct threat to the ship, but that was all they had control over, so they strapped in and held on. Jem toggled the comm.

  “This is the Scarlet Tanager, calling the Flinders Lode. Come in, Lode. Over.”

  There was nothing there, not even a crackle. Just dead space. Jem didn’t look at Barnes this time. They were directly overhead the mining camp now. Jem started a high resolution scan. It would take a few extra moments to complete, but he wanted to know exactly what was down there. He then overrode the settings, so they could see the screen paint as the data came in, rather than waiting for the whole set to be complete.

  Jem didn’t know what he was looking at. The surface below was rumpled like a badly made bed, with the sharp shadows of a near-airless world. But there wasn’t a lot of light, with the sun so distant. He peered at the shadows, looking for traces of man’s work. Barnes, so close to his screen he was almost touching it, swore under his breath as they passed the 25% mark on the scan.

  “What is it?” Jem asked. He still hadn’t seen anything he could identify.

  “The split... it’s closed.” Barnes pointed at the big screen. “See there?”

  Jem could see it, the seam of the surface looking like the edges of a puckered scar. “Does this mean...” he stopped. He could see a tent.

  “I can set down there.” He pointed at the screen. “I don’t see debris. And I have landing lights.”

  “I’ll get the men ready.” Barnes stood up. “I don’t think we’ll need them all. Gods, what a mess.”

  Jem could
hear him all but running as he left the bridge. He focused on the board. He’d landed the Tanager before. He’d just never done it solo. On uncertain ground, he couldn’t simply program it in and let the autopilot take over. All the landing legs registered green, indicating they had fully unfolded and locked into place. He set her down.

  There was no sensation. The gravitics kept her smooth as a house. One light flickered orange, then green again. Jem made a note to check that leg for metal stress. It might have just been a bounce, but he’d rather check than have it fail on another landing. He kept watching the board, fingers hovering over buttons that would take her up again if there was seismic activity. All was quiet.

  Jem toggled the intercom. “All hands. We are on the surface. Prepare to disembark.”

  He shut the intercom off and flipped another switch. Once more on the comm, “Flinder’s Lode, this is the Scarlet Tanager. We have landed at the northwest end of the split and will now commence search and rescue operations. Call out. Over.”

  Jem unhooked the earbud that would keep him connected to the comm when he left the bridge, and tucked it into his right ear. He hadn’t used it since the last stop while Walter was alive, when the old man was bedridden and Jem wanted to be able to keep in touch... Jem tucked his stray thoughts away firmly and headed for the impromptu sick bay.

  They had managed an astonishing transformation in such a short time. Cots, machines, and tables all neatly lined up. The doctor, nurse, and the two men were setting out supplies, but Moskvin was suiting up.

  “You’re going out?” Jem asked him.

  “I don’t want the Doc to risk himself, and I can do triage out there.” The agent explained. “I’ve got a mobile emergency habitat - a really big tent, and enough air to blow it up. We can use it to stage survivors to the Tanager from where they are. If we find any.”

  Jem nodded, “then you need this.” He handed a datagem to Moskvin. “The scans of the area, from a kilometer up. Scale will show up on the left-hand side of the screen. Part of the split is...” Jem swallowed hard and kept talking, “closed up, but the central area is still open, I don’t know how much changed there. Barnes’ men will know. I have to get the information to them.”