Back From the Dead

by Rolf Nelson

  Kaminski inhales deeply and smiles broadly. “Now THIS … is a BARBECUE!”

  “So there we were, with an unknown ship looking to board us,” Helton says. He’s seated at a long table covered with a vast spread of barbecued meats, with Harbin, Kaushik, Bipasha, and Jorge Alvarez on one side and a crowd of attentive and ethnically diverse young men — fit, clean cut, and sharply dressed — on the other. The men across the table are eating it up: real war stories from guys who were there, and flying the old ship to prove it.

  “We had a pair of marginal drives, a company of crippled veterans missing a platoon of body parts, minimal weapons and hardly any ammo, a couple squads of recruits so green you could plant ‘em under a light if you were short of oxygen, some civilians, and only three trained and able-bodied soldiers.”

  The audience laughs. Kaushik continues as Helton takes a drink of iced tea. “It was bad enough I had a flashback to one of the First Sergeant’s famously ego-killing officer-candidate field exercises.”

  “You don’t think I just make those up, do you?” Harbin says. “This will make a good one in the future.”

  “You are a cruel man!” Alvarez jokes.

  “The hotter the fire, the deeper the temper, as you will someday learn.”

  Kaushik picks up the story again. “So then the First Sergeant says very seriously ‘we have axes,’ and we all look at him like he’s finally cracked!”

  Stenson and a couple of his crew sit with the Alvarez family and friends at a table, talking and savoring the BBQ. In the background, a group of folks play cornhole, tossing bean bags at a board with holes cut in it. Cooper walks past with a comely young woman on each arm, looking dashing, having a grand time.

  “You have no idea how good it feels to sit down for a little while and not worry about some new brand of strange cropping up and having to be dealt with RIGHT NOW.” Stenson says. “No one trying to board us, run into us, shake us down, or open us up like a tin can. And this is really good!” He waves a rib. “I mean, I’ve seen more action in the last two flights as a civilian than I did in my last five deployments in uniform. Crazy, but fun! Pass the cornbread, please.”

  The range is informal, but well-made and often-used. Two shooters stand at low ready, a man in his thirties, and a woman in her early twenties. Behind them stands a crowd of onlookers, including Allonia and Kaminski. A Range Officer runs the match, standing between and slightly behind the shooters. About ten yards downrange are two tables with five bowling pins each.

  “Shooters ready?” They both nod. “GO!”

  They bring their guns up and start shooting as fast as they can. Wood chips fly, the pins are nicked and rolling around on the tables. Both shooters have to reload before the man finally clears the table, to scattered laughter and polite applause, just barely faster than the woman.

  “Trying to shoot too fast,” Kaminski says to Allonia. “Remember, you can’t miss fast enough to win. As fast as you can, get a good sight picture. Aim centered on the lower bulge. Hitting high will tip them but not knock them off the table. You’ll do fine. Just like shooting bulls-eyes. No pressure now, only a few dozen people watching. Likely be more than a hundred to watch the final shoot-off.” Allonia looks askance at him. “Be safe, hit the pins, let what happens happen.”

  As the Range Officer clears the tables of debris and sets up new pins, Allonia steps up to the shooting line. Her opponent is a well-dressed middle aged man, who eyes her carefully and politely asks, “Ever shot pins before?”

  Allonia shakes her head. The gentleman looks at Kaminski questioningly while Allonia gets herself comfortable on the line, holding her arms out, taking a good shooting stance, eyeing down her index finger, rehearsing the targets, one pin to the next. “New shooter, but she’s got the basics down pretty well,” Kaminski says. “Bring your best game.” Her opponent nods.

  The range is cleared. They draw their guns, check magazines, chambers, eye protection, and safeties. Allonia’s gun is extensively engraved, brightly polished, with gold inlay in traditional leafy scrollwork patterns spelling out res ipsa loquitur. Suddenly, Allonia pauses, seeing her opponent’s suppressed pistol. “Oh, drat! Forgot the can.” There is a rustle, and from the crowd about a dozen arms extend holding out various kinds of suppressors for her to borrow. She looks around sheepishly and holsters her gun. “Ten millimeter?”

  Two thirds of the suppressors are withdrawn, and there is a murmur of appreciation from the crowd; not a normal lady’s caliber. She nods thanks to one elderly gent offering his, turns around to the line, draws, screws it on, keeping it carefully pointed away from the crowd. Then she sights down it towards the pins, rehearsing the targets again with the can on the barrel. She takes a low ready position and nods. “Shooters ready?” asks the Range Officer. “GO!”

  The guns come up quickly. Allonia doesn’t rush. She squeezes off five aimed shots, each well-placed, and the pins move off the table in fine fashion, each falling in one shot. Two of them roll over the edge, but the other three were hit square and clear the table promptly. Her opponent shoots faster but not as accurately, and some of his pins are knocked over but not off the table. Her last pin falls over the edge while he’s still finishing off the last two rolling around on his table, one spinning madly. Allonia comes back to a low ready and looks over at her opponent’s table, then smiles broadly. Scattered clapping from the crowd. Her opponent sees he’s lost, flicks his safety on, and holsters. He takes a step over to her as she unscrews the can to return to the lender and holsters her pistol. He waits for her to finish, sticks out his hand with a wry smile and a slight bow.

  “Very well done! Especially for a first timer. Sorry I’m out, but,” he shrugs, “I can’t argue losing to a more lovely competitor! Best of luck to you.”

  “Thank you! I have a good teacher.”

  At a corral fence, a wide-eyed Quinn and a couple of other kids watch cattle, and cowboys riding horses separating them out for later events. Real cows, real cowboys. Quinn’s got BBQ sauce on his face, and is no longer quite so clean and polished as when he came down the ramp.

  Later, he leads a small posse of kids to show them around his kingdom, starting with the cargo bay. “This is where we load the BIG stuff, and where Mr. Ski and the rest of them train a lot. Not as big as your barn, but it goes a LOT faster!”

  His new friends look around, impressed.

  “Sides of beef are okay,” says Kwon, “but boned would be better; less waste, pack tighter.” He and Sar and Bipasha are at another of the many well-supplied tables, talking business with seven men and two women.

  A middle-aged ranger replies, “We’re not really set up for processing beyond the most basic. Sides or quarters are easy. Cut up more than that…”

  Another agrees. “Really not looking at much more than sample quantities.”

  “Anything we can get aboard and store puts us ahead of where we are now,” Bipasha says.

  “As you said, bags of dry goods can go anywhere,” says one of the ladies at the table.

  “It’s just a room issue,” Sar objects. “The hold is totally full.”

  An older man glances at the ship and frowns. “Looks empty to me.”

  “We have a full hold’s worth of … cargo … in orbital storage,” Bipasha replies. “Wanted to take it easy on the drives coming down. It also gives us access to places that needed work.”

  “If we had more room, we’d take more.” Kwon explains. “Either use it ourselves, or sell at NewOz. And the barrels of salted or pickled herring would be good too.”

  Another seller perks up his ears. “We can pack that in any of a dozen different sizes, from a one-liter box to a five-hundred-liter barrel or a fifty-thousand-liter cargo container. As much as you’d like. Still trying to expand the market, so I’d be happy to put together a lot of smaller packs for easier distribution.”

  “That would help. We have a lot of small nooks and crannies.”

  “We are not really set up for anything
other than bulk,” the eldest of the sellers says. “But didn’t one of the Brenneke kids plan on putting a bagger on his grav hauler for doing smaller jobs? I’m sure they’d be happy to go around and collect a few hundred kilos from each of us if the price was right, or maybe even for free if they saw a long-term opportunity for regular business.”

  Quinn and his new friends crouch in a cramped space with a small hatch on one side. “Ship is really, really old, and has all kinds of secret hatches and rooms and stuff.” He lowers his voice, and speaks mysteriously. “Like this. It looks like it goes to the outside hull … but there’s no hatch outside.”

  “So where’s it go?”

  “Dunno. Ship won’t say.”

  The green light on the hatchway lock lights up.

  “Should we open it up?” asks one of the urchins.

  Quinn’s eyes light up. “Yeah!” He pushes the lighted button on the lock pad, then turns the locking handle. He pulls, but it doesn’t move. All three of the kids grab and pull as hard as they can. The hatch clicks and swings up and aside. It is twenty centimeters thick, like a small bank-vault door, and the opening is wide enough an adult man could go through.

  Quinn sticks his head through the hatch. It’s dark. “Lights,” he calls. Nothing happens, but his voice echoes like he’s in a big can. They all crawl inside. “What’s here, Ship?”

  “Heavy armor storage,” the Ship AI says quietly.

  “Any lights in here?”

  “Only from the outside. Shall I open it for you?”

  “SURE!”

  The chamber is filled with the sound of shifting metal and whining machinery. The dark is pierced by a thin line of light, as if they are sitting inside a great hollowed-out pumpkin and the carved lid is being slowly lifted, first up, then sliding aside. They are sitting in a depression on the top angled side of the ship, about six meters long, four wide, and more than a meter deep. The giant hatch slides mostly out of the way, revealing the BBQ spread out before them.

  Stenson and Helton walk with new friends among the crowd, and the kids and the dogs running by, and the sounds of another shooting match. They stop at a grill and start to look the items over. The griller holds up a wonderful-looking portion of meat, tempting them. “Best pork short ribs you’ll get here, guaranteed! Better than any ship rations you EVER had!”

  Helton pats his nearly full stomach in apology. “Looks good all right, but you’ve not had Kwon’s cooking.”

  “Kwon? Little old Asian guy, asking lots of recipe questions?”

  Helton laughs, and Stenson bobs his head. “Yes, that sounds like him!” Stenson says. “Always looking for something new.”

  “I hadn’t thought about ginger, but he might be right. Have to give it a try. Glad you folks came by. Best BBQ we’ve had in a while. Having a good time, I hope?”

  “Yes, very.”

  “Huh,” the griller says, looking over Helton’s shoulder at Tajemnica. “Didn’t notice that hatch earlier.”

  “Just the loading ramp,” Helton says, without looking.

  “No, that big one on the top.”

  Stenson and Helton freeze for a fraction of a second, then spin around. Sure enough, there is a large, oblong octagonal hatch open on Tajemnica’s top angled side, about a quarter of the way back from the front. At the bottom edge of the opening are three small, grubby faces with big smiles.

  Then a series of similar shapes appear, outlined in dark shadows under the dust; four hatches on each side angle, both top and bottom. The shadow outlines grow and shift, sliding forward. Great slabs of armor unlock and shift up and out, then forward. Something similar is happening on the top of the ship as well. Within a few seconds they can see eight side hatches, and more on top, slightly offset.

  “What?” Helton says, incredulously.

  “One day,” Stenson murmurs to himself. “Just one day, with no new weirdness. Is that really so much to ask?”

  Helton, Lag, Harbin, Stenson, and Quinn stand atop Tajemnica looking at the open hatches. At the bottom of each is a small hatch like Quinn opened from the inside. Each armor door is massive, with huge locking lugs all around and obscure objects on the underside. The sides of the opening are angled, with holes for the lugs to be inserted, and a bit more than two meters deep. Stenson examines them closely.

  “Grav-tanks. These holes should fit the lower hull of a grav-tank perfectly. They nestle down in, get partially covered by the hatch pulling back. Two dozen grav-tanks. That’s a lot of firepower if they were all filled.”

  Quinn is impressed. “Cooooool. Tanks and cowboys.”

  “Explains how they’d land heavy and do so much damage.” Helton says. “Hadn’t really considered the details of transporting a whole tank company. Little hatch to get aboard before hitting the LZ.”

  Stenson points out a feature on the side. “Power-feed hookups. You could either power the tank from ship power, or feed tank power into the ship.”

  “Simplify some hull repairs, too. Just swap out a damaged hatch,” Harbin says.

  “And, for now, this opens up a whole bunch of unused cubes. Access from inside’s a bitch for storage. Load from the outside, close the hatch, leave it cold until arrival, open to unload. Maybe not wholesale, but more than sample quantities.”

  “Why now?” Stenson wonders.

  “Maybe Tajemnica forgot about them?” Lag offers.

  “Not forgotten,” the Ship AI says through Lag’s personal wrist com in a bland male voice. “They did not need repair, and access was not needed. Now you need more room for cargo. They are unused.”

  Lag looks at his com unit for a moment in surprise, then at the rest of them. “How did you hear that?”

  “I monitor the environment. All sounds picked up by communications devices are broadcast.”

  “But they only broadcast when we send. And what about encryption?”

  “They broadcast on a frequency I can detect, if they are properly asked to do so. All forms of encryption observed so far have been primitive and of negligible effect.” Lag and Stenson look at each another in dismay. Lag points to his wrist com with a question on his face. “Two point four seconds when you first came aboard. Information is only utilized for the efficient operation of the ship. It is likely secure from outside. An upgrade is recommended for security and encryption protocols.”

  “Um, yes, that would seem to be called for,” Stenson says dryly. “Thank you for the advice. And that explains Nerona’s broadcast.”

  The Ship AI speaks through all their com units. “Affirmative.”

  “So, can you tell us what anyone here is saying?” Helton asks cautiously.

  Only through Helton’s com unit: “Negative.”

  “But you just said–”

  The Ship AI interrupts Lag, speaking only through his com unit. “That would violate their privacy.”

  “But you can hear them?” Helton asks. Silence. “Guess I didn’t ask exactly the right question after Nerona left.”

  This is all over Quinn’s head. “Can we get some tanks?” he asks.

  Helton chuckles and grins at him, ruffling his hair. “Not right now. A hundred tons apiece, plus the ammo, would be a very heavy load. Maybe later, if we find some on sale.”

  The crew of Tajemnica sit on the crowded veranda at the Alvarez ranch, in the fading red light of sunset, relaxing after a long day.

  “You should have been there.” Kaminski says. “She just barely lost to the guy who came in third. But still, ninth in a field of almost a hundred on her very first pin shoot is outstanding.”

  Victor Alvarez rocks comfortably in his chair. “Yes, I heard about it. She made quite an impression on a lot of folks, especially the young men. She’s got a home here for sure if she wanted to move. Even managed to make friends with some of the younger ladies, who are normally a bit, ah, defensive, around competition.”

  “I heard nothing but good things about her,” Mrs. Alvarez agrees. “About any of you.”

  “I fo
llowed Kat’s three rules, and didn’t have any problems. Just being myself, really. I had an excellent teacher, and the Saint Browning is really easy to shoot.”

  “Well, keep being yourself, please!” Helton says.

  “Lots of good recruit material here, and interest, too.” Harbin sips from his glass. “Smart, fit, confident, eager to learn. Also discovered the heavy grav-tank attachments. A very useful stop to make.”

  “Supplies for onboard, profitable goods we can easily move, contacts for future supplies and possible cargo. And,” Bipasha teases Kaushik, “some very handsome young men.” He raises an eyebrow and gives her a sidelong look of disapproval.

  Mr. Alvarez smiles. “Word will spread. If you come back, expect to be swamped with even more volunteers than you have now, and more suppliers. Seeing Jorge from time to time would be good.”

  Helton tips back in his chair. “We might just do that. We might just.” He takes a sip, and stares off into the brilliant colors of the sunset, enjoying the silence, the companionship, and the view.

  TRANSPORTATION JOB

  Reunion

  Allonia and Helton chat in the garden room. The light panels are bright, and there are many racks of trays full of lush deep green plants: lettuce, melons, tomatoes, a few compact blueberry bushes, and a lot of less easily identifiable greenery. Some trays are hydroponic, others are filled with dirt.

  “I don’t know what that one is,” Allonia says. “The container only had a picture, but no other label. Seems to grow very fast, so I assume it is mostly for scrubbing carbon dioxide.”

  “And that?”

  “Have a smell.”

  Helton picks a leaf, rubs it between his fingers, and inhales deeply. “Ah, mint. Where are all these from?”

  “Big cabinet over in the corner full of trays full of seed. Most aren’t labeled. Some are obvious, others I don’t have a clue what they are. It was locked when I moved in last year, and then it clicked open three months ago.”