by Lewis Dually
Terran Patrol, Book One
Empty Casket Conspiracy
By Lewis Dually
Text copyright © 2017 Louis S Caldwell
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Definitions.
CHAPTER 1: Kiss A Dead Moose.
CHAPTER 2: Operation Shade.
CHAPTER 3 Doctor Shaw.
CHAPTER 4: The Junkyard Dog.
CHAPTER 5: The Dawn Rising.
CHAPTER 6: Déjà vu.
CHAPTER 7: A Passionate Embrace.
CHAPTER 8: Alien Bullets.
CHAPTER 9: The Croiddan.
CHAPTER 10: What or Who are the Krueg?
CHAPTER 11: The Space Turd.
CHAPTER 12: Stalemate Busted.
CHAPTER 13: A Friendly Looking Ship.
CHAPTER 14: Hero’s Welcome.
CHAPTER 15: You Can’t Fix Stupid!
CHAPTER 16: An Amazon Warrior.
CHAPTER 17: J. T. Has Left The Building!
CHAPTER 18: Ranger Merle Baca.
CHAPTER 19: Alien Antibody Farm.
CHAPTER 20: Operation Wooden Horse.
CHAPTER 21: Plausible Deniability.
CHAPTER 22: Easy Time.
CHAPTER 23: Watching the Krueg.
CHAPTER 24: The Hot Rock.
CHAPTER 25: Back in the Fight.
CHAPTER 26: Ships Log, Final Entry.
CHAPTER 27: Space Ranger?
Definitions.
Terran System: Name of the solar system comprised of Earth, its sun and the planetoids protected by that sun’s gravitational field. Adopted as the system’s official designation by the United Earth Alliance on January 1st, 2032.
PDA: Planetary Defense Agency. Established on January 1st, 2032 as a coalition of intelligence agencies dedicated to the safety and security of the Terran system. Comprised of segments and personnel form the American CIA, British MI6, Russian FSB and the Chinese Security Agency.
Colonization: The act of expanding a race or civilization into new lands. Often driven by overcrowding and shortages of food, water and shelter. Colonization pushes out less developed or weaker populations in favor of the invaders.
Genocide: The act of purposely killing an entire race, ethnic group or species.
GUT Mass. The combination of Leptons, Quarks, and Protons into a single mass known as GUTM. GUTM and its anti-matter cohort GUTM-A power the newest GUTM reactors. Rather than producing heat used to drive steam turbine generators, GUTM reactors produce electricity directly, greatly reducing the size of the reactor system. These new reactors generate enough electricity to enable mankind’s drive to explore the galaxy by creating predictable sustainable worm holes through subspace.
SWAFS: Spatial Warp Awareness and Functionality Syndrome. A condition first identified on the third test flight of the U-E-S Journey Three on June 6th, 2053. A neural condition in which the patient, while traveling through a subspace warp bubble, also known as a worm hole, falls into varying states of unconsciousness and suffers from prolonged paralyses that can effect part or all of the body and last from a few days to a few weeks. Only one point six percent of the world population is immune to SWAFS, greatly reducing the number of available candidates for deep space travel.
CHAPTER 1: Kiss A Dead Moose.
Hurry up and wait. The last few weeks had been the most agonizing of my career, if not my life. I’d spent the past three years commanding The Dawn Rising, United Earth Space Ship 178, an outer planetary guard cruiser with a crew of forty six. We patrolled the mining sectors along the asteroid belt and we stayed busy with search and rescues taking up most of our time. Most of those involved mining accidents or disabled ships. There are over six hundred mining operations scattered along the belt, everything from trillion dollar corporate conglomerates to small independents trying to make a living mining Mercury, Platinum, Methane, Helium, Metallic Hydrogen, Gold and pretty much anything else that pays. There are also bootleggers, gambling ships, card sharks and working girls. Just like the gold rush, where there’s money to spend, there’s sin to spend it on. Most of our activities involved mining accidents or disabled ships. Whatever the call, it was always something different and always life or death. I left the Dawn Rising and all that excitement to sit the co-pilot seat on a heavy hauler running the supply lines from Earth to the Belt. In the words of my six year old niece, “I’d rather kiss a dead moose’s butt”. I wasn’t sure if this was punishment or reprieve. One thing was for sure, I had lots of time to think about the actions that landed me here, and after five weeks of thinking I was convinced I had made the right call. I just hope the Navy see’s it that way.
The AM radio squelch crackled and I heard part of a distant conversation break the silence. “we ain’t going to have any…….” The static filled transmission was distant and I turned up the volume but the voice faded into the background noise.
The worst parts of transport duty are the boredom and the lack of perceivable motion. Along the belt there’s lots of movement outside. Running close to the asteroids, and sometimes amongst them, you can see things passing buy at a fairly quick pace. It gives you a definite sense of movement. Out here in empty space there’s nothing to see, nothing to do. We might be moving at a respectable ninety thousand miles per second but it feels like we’re sitting still. The stars slug across the windows at about an inch an hour and it’s only when you get near Earth or another ship that you feel like you’re going somewhere.
“United Earth One approach control to heavy one niner seven niner, do you copy, over.”
The sharp crack of the coms brought me out of a daze and I nearly dropped my spit bottle. Reaching down to the pitch control stick I squeezed the coms transmit button and replied, “One niner seven niner go ahead.”
“One niner seven niner, your offload is on delay until further notice. Hold at outer markers for further instruction.”
“Ten four U E One. What’s the holdup?”
“Tornado warnings in Omaha have the drop pads shutdown. It’s a good size storm system so you’re looking at about six hours before we can bring you in.”
“Wonderful!” I replied, “Well at least I can watch the world go around.”
“Copy that. United Earth One out.” The flight controller replied and I imagined I could see a smile on his face.
The only good thing about transport duty was the opportunity to get down to Earth every week but thanks to the storms I was now losing six hours of R&R. “Well crap” I muttered. I reached in my shirt pocket, pulled out my last can of snuff and shook it. “One…maybe two left, maybe it’s time to quit…..next week.” I said to the empty cockpit. I slid my finger across the touch screen of the command and control console and initiated an outer marker parking command. The computer took control putting the helm over 36 degrees to port, pulling back our speed and closing us in on outer marker number nine for a slow lazy station keeping circle. The forty inch wide touch screen control station was great but I missed the tactile feel of the actual hard wired switches on the Dawn Rising. Sure it was a breeze to operate with an unlimited number of command functions all crammed into one convenient panel. The drawback was you actually had to look at the screen to make sure you were touching the right virtual button. With hard wired switches you could simply feel the buttons and know which one it was and what position it was in. An experienced operator could fly the ship blindfolded. Also hard wired switches were much less susceptible to electromagnetic pulses given off by solar flares and nuclear or GUTM explosions. The only down side was the sheer number of buttons, switches, dials and knobs needed to control the ship. This cargo transport could be op
erated by only one pilot although it did have two pilots rotating out on twelve hour shifts. On the Dawn Rising it took six people on the bridge and another ten in engineering to operate under normal conditions. Toss in an emergency situation and another ten souls were needed to man the various emergency systems. With a twelve hour shift rotation and a few people pulling double duty when needed it took a crew of forty six to keep her aloft. If we had these kinds of controls we could probably get by with ten or twelve people but the old style controls were more reliable and, call me old fashioned, I like the buttons.
The high pitch static of the AM transceiver shattered the silence of the cockpit. This time the voice was much closer and much louder.
“WHO’S THAT IN NINETEEN SEVENTY NINE?” The voice blasted over the speaker. I turned the volume down on the vintage Cobra CB and grabbed the mic.
“Lieutenant Commander Allen Paul.” I replied.
“I knew it, I’d recognize that hillbilly draw anywhere. How you doing Allen?”
I recognized the caller’s voice and loud bravado too. “Not bad, I could be worse.” I answered, “I’m stuck here for six hours and only have two pouches of snuff left. How have you been Ray?”
“Ah, you know,” he bellowed back as I turned the volume down a bit more. “Just waitin for the twisters to blow out. We’ve been here about…. two hours. I got twenty seven hundred tons of Borax from the Coehan number six mine.”
Coehan Number six wasn’t actually a mine, it was a dredger. Very few asteroids are large enough to accommodate a real mine. The dredgers just grab the asteroids and start chewing them up, keeping anything of value and spitting the tailings out the back. They keep grinding away until the asteroid is gone and the only thing left is a field of gravel floating off in every direction. It was one of fifteen dredges owned by Coehan Industries and number six would be close to earth this time of the solar cycle. The dredges usually stock pile their diggings until Earth comes around to its closest alignment and then they ship everything at once.
Ray continued. “I heard you was pulling transport duty but I didn’t believe it. I figured you’d be on the station by now or maybe pulling duty on the Constellation. Why are you piloting a transport?”
“Oh it’s worse than that Ray. I’m the co-pilot.”
“WHAT? You serious?”
“Yes. I be in the penalty box so to speak. “I said. “Anytime you lose a crewman there’s an investigation initiated, standard operating procedure. I’m on administrative leave pending the results of the inquiry. I couldn’t stand sitting in Houston waiting for the Navy review board to make a decision and sense there is a shortage of transport pilots I signed up for some temp work while I waited.”
“OH…. I see.” Ray said. “I sure was sorry to hear about Shelton. He was a good guy. He helped me wire a new forward array in this rust bucket last year and I got to know him pretty good. Real nice guy. Did you make it to his service?”
“Yes.”
“The boys on the Wimberley sure are singing yall’s praise. They said you were pushing them out of the grinder when you took a hit on your belly? Is that how you lost Shelton?”
The Grinder. An expansive section of the asteroid belt with a huge concentration of gravel left over from the dredges. It was like a giant sandblaster in there with a few larger rocks mixed in for added punch. All the gravity wells keep the area agitated like a washing machine but that doesn’t keep the mine shuttles out. Going around the grinder takes one day. Going through it takes two hours, if you make it that is. The Wimberley didn’t make it. We got there three hours after they lost propulsion. They were losing atmosphere and only had twenty minutes of air left so I ordered us in and we pushed them out with the Dawn Rising. Normally we would have a crewman spacewalk a tow cable to the downed ship and pull them out but it takes about an hour for a crewman to suit up in our heavily armored Mercury suites. With all that gravel flying around a spacewalker wouldn’t stand a chance in a standard issue suite and we didn’t have enough time to get him in the Mercury suite so we just pushed them out. We saved seventeen miners and two shuttle pilots but I lost Specialist Granger Shelton in the process. The structural strain of pushing another ship combined with multiple impacts from the surrounding rocks caused a cooling line break in engineering and Shelton got sprayed by the negative two hundred degree highly toxic cooling agent. He stayed at his post and stopped the leak but didn’t make it out. He is the only crewman I have ever lost. I escorted his body back to Tyler Texas, spent three days with his parents and then reported to Houston for my inquiry. Seven days later I signed up for transport duty as co-pilot on heavy one nine seven nine. For five weeks I’ve been waiting for the inquiry to finish. Part of me wants to be cleared and assigned back to Belt patrol. Part of me wants to quit and never command anything again. I know I did everything right but I can’t stop wondering what I could have done different.
“Yes,” I said to answer Ray’s question. “He was in the starboard engine room when the collision broke a neonite cooling line.”
Ray didn’t reply for almost a minute. Then he said, “Well, I’m glad you had his body to take back to his folks. That’s better than an empty casket. Too many empty caskets coming from the belt these days.”
His reference to empty caskets fired a synapse somewhere in the depths of my nicotine addicted brain. Too many empty caskets, I thought, too many missing persons? An issue I had put some thought into over the last five weeks. I had first been made aware of the empty caskets while transferring Shelton’s casket from the shuttle to the tarmac at George Bush International in Houston. While waiting for the hearse to take us on to Tyler, I noticed three other caskets setting on the tarmac. They weren’t draped in flags so I knew they were miners and not military. But when only two dock workers picked up one of the caskets I took a double take. Shelton’s casket must have weighed three hundred pounds. How did the two of them pick one up like it was nothing? That’s when I learned about the practice of shipping the personal effects of missing miners in caskets instead of shipping containers. One might think it was a sentimental gesture but after working with the mining companies for three years I had learned there was no such thing as sentiment with them. It was all about the bottom line. Shipping containers were cheap. Caskets were not. The more I thought about it, the more it bugged me. Something just seems odd about the whole situation.
“Too many caskets period.” I replied to Ray. “Are you going to get any down time in Omaha or are you going to turn and burn?”
“We’re going down to San Antonio for an engine upgrade and then back to sector six. We got that new forward array last year and now we’re going to get some go fast. Can’t go fast if you can’t see far.”
“Well you could,” I said, “but I wouldn’t recommend it. Sure would suck to fly into something before you can see it. If I’m going to hit something I at least want to know what it is I’m hitting. How fast do you want to go in that rust bucket?”
“We’re hoping for point five, right now I can hit point three seven so I’m looking at a twenty five percent decrease in transit times.”
I heard the cockpit door slide open behind me.
“Who you talk to?” Pilot Yoshi Yen asked in that choppy broken English common to many who speak it as a second language.
“Ray Bishop.” I said, “He’s a transport operator I know from the belt. He’s waiting to offload in Omaha. We’re in a holding pattern around marker nine. They shut down the drop pads due to bad weather in the area. Are you up?”
“Yes, I am up” Yoshi grumbled. “If I were not up I would not be speaking with you now. You have a message on mail link. Now I go to sleep again and I will not be up.”
Yoshi turned and stomped back to the bunk room. He and I didn’t quite mesh yet and I doubt we ever will. I punched in my access code for mail link and sure enough, I got a message.
FROM:
United Earth Space Command, Admiral S. Albright, Planetary Defense Opps.
TO:
Lieutenant Commander Allen Paul, service number SB17752004Z
Report immediately to Armstrong building, United Earth Space Command, Houston TX. For final disposition of inquiry.
“Well here goes.” I grabbed the mic again. “Hey Ray, could I hitch a ride to San Antonio with you? I just received orders to report to Houston.”
“Sure,” came the quick reply over the radio. “Glad to do it.”
“Ok. Thanks. I’ll start packing my duffle and see you on the pad.”
CHAPTER 2: Operation Shade.
Houston was a bit nippy. The early spring cold front that brought tornados and freezing rain to the plains had turned Houston into an ice box with temperatures hovering around forty degrees. Ray dropped me at George Bush International and saved me a shuttle jump from San Antonio. I enjoyed our time together. He was one of my favorite people. The endless stories of his truck driving days and the ten years he spent as a Navy Seal were always a welcome distraction and I was still thinking about one of his trucker stories as I paid the cabby and watched him pull away. Then I turned around only to find The Neal Armstrong Service Center and adjoining museum to be in the midst of a face lift with the front entrance closed. “Well that’s just great, nothing like a brisk stroll in an ice box.” I mumbled and headed for the south entrance. By the time I reached the south entrance my bear arms were covered in goose pimples and I was wishing I had worn a jacket. I entered the warmth of the glass incased atrium and soon found myself at the duty officer’s desk with orders in hand.
“Lieutenant Commander Paul to see Admiral Albright.” I said and handed the duty officer my ID and orders.
“Yes Sir, he’s expecting you, Ensign Walters will escort you to the Admirals office.”
Ensign Walters reached for my duffle. “This way Sir. I’ve been assigned as your aide while you’re with us.”
An aide? Why do I need an aide? I thought as I followed the young Ensign down the hall. She looked to be in her early twenties, was fairly tall and somewhat lanky and had red hair wound tightly in a Navy regulation bun. Combined with her pale complexion and scattering of freckles she looked to be of Scottish or maybe Irish descent. She escorted me down the corridor to the express elevators, lifted a key from her lanyard and put it in the secure key slot. She turned the key and punched the button for the eighteenth floor. Then she handed the key to me along with a new security badge with my name, picture, service number and rank. Except my rank was wrong, it no longer read Lieutenant Commander but just Commander. “Well I guess the inquiry went well.” I said under my breath.
