Aces

by Alanson, Craig

  “The shuttle uses the same fuel as our thrusters, right?” Valjean snapped.

  Becker answered. “Yeah, yeah it does. We can drain thruster fuel, we’ve got plenty. And it’s not like we need it here.”

  “How long to fix the shuttle, and refuel?” Valjean demanded of Dooley.

  “Uh, I, uh, well, there’s say, three or four hours to fix the shuttle engine, the damaged part is hard to get at, I’ll have to work outside, and remove the engine cowling. Then I patch the fuel tank, and start transferring fuel.” Dooley looked like he’d just volunteered to kiss a cobra. Transfer highly volatile thruster fuel? With what? He would think of something. While he fixed the engine.

  Valjean shook his head. “No, you’ll patch the fuel tank first, and transfer fuel while you work on the engine.”

  Dooley’s face went white. Becker spoke up for him. “Whoa, whoa, hold it, boss. Dooley’s right on this one. This fuel is nasty stuff. You do not want to be working on the engines while you’re transferring fuel. One spark, and we could lose the shuttle, and this ship.”

  Valjean was a realist. He scowled at Becker, then nodded. “All right, damn it. How long until the shuttle is ready?”

  Dooley swallowed hard. He was, right at that moment, truly regretting his chosen line of work. “Six hours, maybe more? Boss, I know! I can’t go any faster without making it worse.”

  “Then you’d better get your ass moving! Becker, we still have functioning thrusters on this ship, right? And plenty of fuel for them, right?”

  “Yeah.” Becker admitted. “Even if we fill the shuttle’s tank, we’ve got plenty.” What was the boss getting at?

  “Then burn the thrusters, and keep us from drifting further away!” Valjean ordered. Did no one else among his crew have an ounce of imagination or initiative? “I don’t want that damned freighter getting out of our sight.”

  Becker opened his mouth to argue, then thought better about it. Man wants to waste thruster fuel, that’s his business. The retro thrusters in the nose were undamaged, Becker got the ship pointed in the right direction, then fired the thrusters. “That’ll take time. I’ll have to fire them in bursts, let them cool down. They’re not designed for continuous use. And Dooley, I’ll let you know when I’m firing thrusters, so as you can hang on tight. What next?”

  “What next is I’m thinking about it!” Valjean knew that indecision was not a useful leadership trait, especially not in the leader of a criminal gang. Indecision was weakness. Weakness could be fatal. “Bring us to within a kilometer, and hold us there.”

  “What if they try to ram us again, Boss?” Dooley asked. The idea of being outside, working on the engines, while Becker flew the ship backwards by nose thrusters, had him just about wetting his pants.

  “They won’t! Use your head for a change. If they could fire their main engines, they would have already. One klick is a safe distance, if they try to move that big tub again with thrusters, we’ll have plenty of time to get out of the way.” Valjean pulled out his gun, extracted the powercell, checked the energy charge, and slapped it back together. “We’ll use our shuttle to get aboard, it’s faster and more agile, so if they fire their thrusters again, we’ll be ready.”

  That made sense to Becker. Nightengale’s shuttle was a spaceplane-type shuttle, small, light and highly maneuverable. “We can do that. I can clamp on with the shuttle easier than I could flying this thing. Ten klicks is a short flight for the shuttle.” He suggested.

  “Bring us within one kilometer anyway, I want to be close, in case of trouble.”

  “Jen, Jen, wake up!” Manny whispered, while gently tugging on the woman’s hand. He turned to his older sister for comfort, something he would never have done before the pirates attacked. “Kaylee, is she going to be all right?”

  Kaylee frowned. After the collision, Jen had not responded to Kaylee’s calls on the radio. The children had hurried back to sickbay, where they found Jen unresponsive. They figured she had just been asleep. That was hours ago. Kaylee lifted the woman’s right arm and let it flop back on the bed. Jen groaned and her eyelids fluttered, as if she were dreaming. “She’s just asleep, see. This stabilizer thingy may have drugged her.”

  “What do we do now?”

  Kaylee wasn’t sure she liked being in charge, liked her normally annoying little brother looking up to her. “Jen will wake up soon. We can wait here, if we’re quiet.”

  “But Kaylee, what if the pirates come back?”

  Kaylee had no idea what to do if that happened. “Jen will know what to do. You’ll see. She’ll wake up, and she’ll know what to do.”

  It was pitch black, dark as the inside of a barrel. Ares didn’t have a moon to reflect starlight, as soon as the red sun dropped below the horizon, they were on their own, with only Rick’s small light to guide them. The thin atmosphere didn’t have many clouds, so they did have starlight above them, it made for nice night scenery, but was useless for determining where to put their feet. Night time also brought rapidly dropping temperatures, which created dust storms, requiring the three men to huddle in the shelter of a large rock for over an hour, until the atmosphere settled down for the night.

  When they resumed walking, Rick led the way, with Nelson to his left and Sam to the right. Rick held the light high above his head, pointing it down to illuminate as wide an area as possible. The beam of light made for interesting shadows, they carefully stepped over rocks that didn’t exist, and stumbled over real rocks they didn’t see. Nelson reported hopefully that, at their northern latitude, and time of Ares’ year, the night was less than six hours long.

  What the little light did not do was allow them to see far enough ahead to avoid serious obstacles. They came to the lip of a crater or canyon, and had no idea whether they should go down, or go around. Twice they walked down into a canyon, only to find it deep and steep enough that they turned around, walked back up, and made their way around. After four hours of night walking, they gave up. They had reached a canyon that was too steep to walk down, and apparently, too wide, with too many connecting canyons, to walk around. Nelson called a halt for the remainder of the night. They lay down in the dust as best they could, got comfortable, and tried to rest. Nobody slept. Other than the brief message blip they’d received hours ago, there had been no word from Ace. Nelson pointed out that they weren’t picking up any radio transmissions at all, not even from the bad guys, which he took to mean that the bad guys were still jamming all signals. Which meant Ace was still up there, with people aboard, and still posed somewhat of a threat to the bad guys.

  Rick was feeling pessimistic, sitting there in the dark, breathing many-times recycled air. No radio signals could also mean, he didn’t say aloud, that Ace was in shattered pieces, and the bad guys had gotten what they wanted and were lightyears away by now. Why the hell had he dragged his family all the way out here? His own selfish reasons? His need to poke around in the ruins of ancient alien cities? Kaylee hadn’t wanted to go, Manny was too young to understand what he was giving up, what the risks were. Now the risk-

  No. That kind of thinking wasn’t useful to anyone. Going to Valhalla would have been great for the family, great for the children, even Kaylee. It wasn’t supposed to be risky! The Atlas Challenger had been operating for thirty years with no incidents. There had not been a fatality on a civilian starship in decades. If anything, travel between the stars was boring, not risky. Driving in L.A. was more dangerous.

  “That last pass slowed us down another 287 kph, Captain. The nav system says the next orbit, and we’re going on in.” Seth reported gloomily.

  “Ninety minutes, then.” Schroeder said impassively. How could he act as Captain for an unpowered ship?

  “Captain?” Gina inquired, her voice uncertain.

  “I wish there were something we could do.” Schroeder said, shaking his head.

  “What about the thrusters? Can’t we use them?” Joy asked.

  Schroeder opened his mouth, then quickly shut it. Clear
ly, he was surprised by such an ignorant question. Also clearly, he refrained from saying so. His lone passenger looked mildly ridiculous, hanging from the wall with her feet tucked under a handhold, her blonde hair in the zero gravity floating all around her face. Trying not to let a condescending tone creep into his voice, he responded “No. These thrusters we have are just canisters of compressed gas, with a very limited supply. Seth used up most of that supply in stabilizing our spin. We simply don’t have any propulsion in the command section, nothing strong enough to lift our orbit.”

  Joy nodded, looked down at the deck, then abruptly raised her head said “Wait, sure we do. You just said it. Compressed gas.”

  Schroeder was torn between being irritated at the conversation, and realizing he didn’t have anything important to be doing at the moment. He was the captain, he had gotten his passengers into this situation. He could at least lend Joy a sympathetic ear for her questions. “How so?” He asked curtly, with one eye looking out the porthole.

  “You said we have plenty of air, over a week’s supply, right? We can vent some of that air overboard.” Before Schroeder could protest, Joy took out a black marker and drew a diagram on the blank bulkhead wall. “We drill a hole through the hull of the command section, someplace along our center of gravity, and we cement a pipe into that hole, a pipe with a cap on the inner end. Then we pump up the air pressure in that compartment, and release the cap. The air will vent out the pipe, then we cap it again, pump up the air, and do it again, and again, until we boost our orbit.” She stared at her diagram. “That should work. But- will it be enough?” She asked, to herself.

  “I’m not sure-“ Schroeder started to say, before Seth interrupted.

  “Captain, that might work!” Seth said excitedly. “We don’t need a huge delta Vee to stop us from falling out of orbit, the right push, at the right time, may be just enough. At least it will buy us some time before we fall. I’ll need to figure in the diameter of the pipe, the volume of the compartment, the max pressure we can get the compartment up to, let’s see, the thrust will decrease as the air vents out…” Seth pulled himself down into his chair and buckled his seat belt in order to get to work.

  “Captain Schroeder?” Joy said, waiting expectantly.

  It was a good idea. The only one they had, and Schroeder knew it as soon as he saw Joy’s diagram. He turned abruptly to his crew. “Seth, modify your navigation program for this, we can input the variables later. I will determine where to install the pipe, and calculate how much air we can afford to lose. Gina, help Joy find the supplies we need, a pipe, something to drill a hole with, and something we can use as a sealant, all that. Well? Let’s get moving, mach schnell! We are supposed to be a starship crew, we can’t have our passengers do all the thinking for us, eh?”

  CHAPTER 10

  Jen did wake up, after five hours. The children helped her walk unsteadily over to the bathroom, then got her a glass of orange juice when she managed to stumble back into the bed. Manny found several boxes of candy bars in a cabinet, Jen tried to eat one, but didn’t have the energy to eat. She fell back asleep. Although she was once again unconscious, Manny now had confidence the woman would be all right eventually. Having smacked the pirate ship aside, Jen was now his hero twice over.

  Manny kept his vigil while sitting on the floor next to Jen’s bed. Kaylee was laying atop blankets on the floor, trying to rest, and not sleeping a wink. “Kaylee, are you awake?” He whispered.

  “Yeah.” She answered quietly.

  “I put a box of candy bars in your back pack.”

  “Thanks, Manny.” She rolled over on her front and turned to face her brother.

  “Do you wish we never left Earth?” Kaylee asked, after a long pause.

  “Kinda.”

  “Me too.”

  “Mom and Dad really wanted to go. I guess I, I’m glad we went with them. That they didn’t stay on Earth just because of us.”

  “I guess.”

  “Kaylee, I’m sorry I was mean to you. About your music, and stuff.”

  “It’s OK. It’s just music. I’m sorry I treated you like, you know, a little kid sometimes.”

  Manny shrugged. “It’s OK. I know sometimes I’m a bonehead.”

  That brought a laugh from Kaylee. “I wish we knew where the pirate ship is. Or, I wish we could talk to Mom or Dad.” During the brief time Jen had been awake, she had checked the radio, it was still being jammed. So the pirate ship was still out there, somewhere.

  “We’re down to one oxygen bottle left, captain.” Seth reported. “Specifically, 58% of one canister.”

  “The orbit?” Schroeder inquired.

  Seth looked at his navigation board. “A lot better than it was. We have over four hours, now. That’s an estimate.”

  “Of course. In that case, that’s enough. Excellent work, everyone. And Ms. Sanchez, we are in your debt.” He tried, and failed, to stifle a yawn. Everyone was exhausted from the hours of intense work..

  Joy’s basic idea to boost their orbit had worked, with modifications by the crew. They drilled a hole through a compartment, and stuck a pipe through the hull. Instead of pressurizing the entire compartment, the crew had connected the pipe to the oxygen supply directly. Seth had argued that change in plans would allow them to control the flow of ‘propellant’, making it work like a real rocket.

  Using their new ‘rocket engine’ had been slow and cumbersome, and Seth had been forced to use up almost all of their thruster fuel supply to keep the command section from spinning out of control.

  There was no celebration in the command section after they’d boosted their orbit. Everyone inside knew that, unless the Navy came to rescue them, soon, they would still fall into the atmosphere soon.

  Sam shook Rick’s shoulder. “Hey, Rick, sun’s coming up. Time to go, man.”

  “Great,” Rick responded as he rode to his feet, “what’s for breakfast?” It was still mostly dark, with a pink line on the horizon, just enough to see by.

  “Lukewarm water and glucose solution, if you’ve got any left in your helmet tube, professor.” Nelson said. The sky was completely clear, no clouds at all. As the three men stood and stretched cramped muscles, the dull red disk of Ares’ star rose quickly above the horizon. “Oh, for cryin’ out loud!” Nelson exploded. “Will you look at that?”

  The canyon, which they had struggled for so long to walk around during the night, ended less than a half kilometer to the south. And, on the other rim, there was a man-made structure, a small, white and silver hut.

  “The promised land!” Sam shouted.

  “The promised land?” Rick asked. “You’ve got small dreams there, Sam.”

  “Hey, having low standards is what gets me through life. Right now, any place that has sweet Oh Two to breathe is paradise for me.” Sam had the binos. “Looks like a standalone structure, maybe a shelter where survey teams can take a break?”

  Nelson looked skeptical. “I don’t know, Sam, that looks too small to be a shelter, and the miners usually take R&R inside their crawlers. We’ll check it out. Ready, Rick?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be. We pick up any radio signals last night?”

  “Negative, nothing. Must be still jamming us.” Nelson looked to the sky for an answer. “Where the hell is the damned Navy, anyhow?”

  “What was that?” Kaylee asked as she scrambled to her feet. She hadn’t realized that she’d fallen asleep.

  “I don’t know.” Manny answered, rubbing sleep from his eyes. They had both heard a faint, far-away, clanging sound. A sound transmitted through the hull. There it was again. Then, silence.

  “Jen?” Kaylee said, as the woman stirred in her sickbay bed.

  “I heard it too.” Jen said in a slurred voice. “I’m sorry, kids, I think the pirates may be back.” She picked up her remote console and activated it. There was nothing on the radar. Radio signals were still being jammed. She couldn’t see any-

  There it was. Someone had accessed an ai
rlock, gotten into the ship. And they were now plugged into Ace’s computer, searching the cargo manifest database, searching for something.

  “They’re aboard the ship.” Jen said quietly. “I can see they’re accessing the computer, the cargo manifest records. Huh...” Her head nodded, and her eyes became unfocused.

  “Jen, Jen, wake up.” Kaylee said gently, shaking the woman’s shoulder.

  “Oh, I’m so tired. Where was I? Oh, the manifest.” Briefly, Jen was able to concentrate, the medical monitor was still pumping drugs into her blood, having decided on its own that resting was best for her. What computer records were the pirates accessing? “Hey, kids, I know that the pirates are looking for. It’s one of those boxes of alien stuff we took aboard at Oceania. Cargo pod 1, deck 3, section D, bin number 14F.” She read the data off automatically, mentally picturing where that was in the cavernous cargo pod. “The pirates have a long way to walk, they docked on almost the opposite side of the ship, cargo pod 3.”

  “Can we stop them?” Manny asked. “Cut the gravity, or let the air out?”

  Jen shook her head just the tiniest bit. “Not with the ship’s AI down, everything like that has reverted to local controls, and the pirates are bypassing those.” She could see the pirates had already opened one of the bulkhead doors which led into cargo pod 3. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes rolled back and her head flopped on the pillow.

  “Jen, Jen.” Kayle prodded again, this time it took much longer to get Jen’s attention.