Space Cowboy Survival Guide

by Long, Heather

  He nodded, she took a step toward the engineer and accepted his grip. “Tika Anderson. It's nice to meet you.”

  “Same here, exquisite one. Tell me, does your captain have any openings for more crew members?”

  Kestral slapped a hand against the side of his head. His headache was just about to get worse.

  “I have no idea, but if you really want a job, you should probably finish what he hired you to do.”

  Vega grinned. “Good point. Want to give me a hand?”

  “No, she doesn't,” Kestral answered for her. Shaw had just bequeathed the ship to her in the event that they were unable to retrieve him. No way was he letting her get friendly with the strange engineer that there were going to ditch as soon as they picked up Shaw. “She has a patient to take care of. You get to work; you go back upstairs.”

  Kestral wanted a beer.

  He also wanted a raise.

  An hour later, nearly to the second, Shaw transmitted the go signal. Tika took her place at the controls while Kestral secured the cockpit hatch. He also locked 9-A back into her room. Keeping the engineer with him, he descended to the hold.

  “We’re set down here,” he told Tika via the comm station.

  “Zed’s begun our descent,” she told him unnecessarily. Adjustments to altitude were visceral once the ship re-entered the atmosphere. “We’re doing an emergency drop so hang on.”

  “Emergency drop?” The engineer’s question seemed to hang in there when they went from descent to rapid fall. “Watch the stress on the hull if you don’t engage those thrusters.” His voice rose as the roar outside the ship increased. Kestral hadn’t enjoyed the storm tossed take off when he’d first boarded the Gilly and had hidden in the hold.

  He enjoyed this experience even less.

  “Gilly, this is Shaw.” The captain’s voice rang across the comms. “Zed, do not touch down at the landing pad, hover. I’m coming in hot.”

  “Got it,” Kestral answered before the computer could. “You,” he pointed to Vega. “Get by that control.” He motioned him toward the landing ramp.

  “We’re going to be in position in thirty seconds,” Tika warned.

  Grabbing one of the container tie downs, Kestral looped it around his waist, then hooked it to one of the hooks on the secured containers. Securing his blaster, he swung the rifle of his back then checked the charge. It offered him three grenades, one EMP pulse, and about twenty plasma shots.

  He’d make them count.

  “Ten seconds,” Tika kept count for them, and nervous anxiety edged her tone.

  “Keep the engines running and start cycling the Rosen Engine,” Kestral warned. “As soon as Shaw is on board, we’re out of here.”

  “Wait,” Vega began, but Kestral cut him off by pointing his blaster at him. The engineer raised his hands, palms forward.

  The reverse thrusters kicked in. “Hold onto something,” he ordered the engineer. “And open the ramp.”

  Fortunately, for Vega’s health, he listened. The ramp lowered on what looked like one of the circles of hell. Black smoke poured from various fires burning along the shell of buildings. The standard disc shaped landing platforms were riddled with debris—including the burnt out husks of former ships.

  It took a moment for Kestral to find Shaw amidst the disaster. The captain’s duster flowed as he ran. From the dense smog behind him, armed figures poured out. Blasts hit the hull of the Gilly, and another impacted on the ceiling above Kestral’s head. Rising, letting the heat and wind buffet him, Kestral opened fire.

  He sent a grenade arcing behind the captain and the detonation slowed his pursuers. Those unlucky few quick enough to rise and continue after him, he took out one at a time. Plasma blasts burned like a bitch and hit like a sledgehammer.

  To his surprise, Vega made it to the edge of the ramp and caught Shaw’s arm as the captain made the jump onto the ship. Kestral laid out suppression fire.

  “Captain’s on board,” he called.

  “Warning, hold ramp still deployed.” Zed warned them, but fired thrusters to get them climbing once more. Kestral gritted his teeth against the force, then the ramp began to close and the sucking wind ceased.

  “Zed, get us out of this system,” Shaw ordered as he stripped off his hat, and mopped away some blood on his face. With a glance at Kestral he nodded. “Thanks for the assist.”

  “No problem,” Kestral checked his rifle. “I’ll put it on the tab. And before we get too far, we should probably do something about him.”

  The engineer had stood silent throughout the exchange. Shaw glanced at him, and said, “Hopefully, you got your gear on board. Returning isn’t an option.”

  “I’m good to go. Didn’t think the job would be this interesting.” With that, Vega headed for the ladder to the crew deck.

  After the other man disappeared, Kestral stared at Shaw. “Job?”

  “Yeah, he’s our latest crew member—and he came with a resume.” The challenge hit the floor between them and Kestral scowled.

  “I’m not watching his ass, I’ve already got my work cut out for me protecting the princess.”

  “Didn’t ask you to. He can take care of himself.”

  Then Shaw climbed the ladder and left Kestral to glare at the hold walls. The ship was not big enough for this crap.

  7

  Rule #11: Everyone lies. To you. To themselves. It’s all the same.

  Shaw Sullivan

  The star burning the brightest will fade the fastest. Shaw leaned back in his chair, booted feet on the control panel. His gaze rested steadily on the scanner readouts. Taking a sip of his coffee, he waited patiently. At the three-minute mark, the tiny blip appeared then vanished again. When the Rosen Engine was engaged, they made a jump and to what experts at home called subspace. Not quite a wormhole, and not quite real space, subspace allowed ships to travel faster than light and trimmed the travel time between solar systems. To the best of his knowledge it hadn’t been used to leap galaxies yet, but the sheer number of planets they'd found inhabitable since the development of the Rosen Engine allowed colonization to spread.

  So that blip shouldn't be there. One perk of subspace was that once the ship entered it, it was alone. A fleet of ships engaging the Rosen Engines at the same time heading to the exact same coordinates shouldn't be able to pick each other up once they made the jump. It was also, as far as Shaw knew, completely beyond the scope of scanners to track a ship in subspace.

  So what the hell was the blip?

  He tossed his hat on to the top of the control panel and he turned his gaze from the scanners to the hat them back again. The old black Stetson seemed as out of place as Shaw on the space vessel. Hard to believe less than two years prior, the farthest he'd ever been was Dallas. He liked his ranch. Liked his work. He didn't like people.

  But his work cost money, and the downturn of the economy on Earth Prime had left a glutton of cattle on the market. So the price of beef went down. The MorningStar Ranch relied on their income from cattle sales and animal training. But Shaw hadn't focused so much on the animal training, at least not for others. With a bioscience degree in his back pocket, he'd actually been working on designing horses that could live and breed on other planets.

  One tale they'd heard come back to them time and time again was that domestic animals transported to colony worlds didn't usually survive past one generation if they survived at all. Animals needed a certain balance to their habitats. What made humans so great and so dangerous was their ability to adapt without generational shifts in evolution. Domesticated animals weren't so lucky.

  Maybe they bred out of them the necessary genetics for adaptation, but Shaw saw potential. Unfortunately, it was expensive work, expensive research, and it had consumed him. Consumed him until he had no other options. The blip appeared on the screen again.

  “Zed, have you identified the anomaly?”

  “No, Captain. The anomaly’s appearance may simply be electrical feedback within our da
maged systems.”

  Electrical feedback my ass. It was late on the Gilly, and his nearly full ship was sleeping. The job the government bestowed upon him had been designed to allow him to man a mission to count the populations, resources, and defenses of the various colonial worlds. They wanted to update their records. If his last stop was any indication, Earth Prime had no idea what was going on out here. Not that they had much say.

  During the initial colonial space rush named after John Corbin, the man who discovered the first inhabitable world, they sent government representatives with each colony ship. The point of the reps was to allow them contact with Earth Prime, to advise burgeoning governments, and to continue to enforce the laws as seen on Earth Prime.

  That worked about as well as anyone could have expected who ever paid attention to human beings. Greed. Independence. Arrogance. They all played a part.

  He hadn't intended to give anyone a ride. And, as much as she annoyed him initially, he’d found Tika to be a pleasant companion. Kestral forced his way on board, but Shaw saw something in him. Something he didn’t think the man had discovered about himself. Shaw attempted to note his discovery in his logs, but the words wouldn't come. There was no mistaking the man was a hard ass and had likely possessed a difficult past. He talked a good game, and he certainly didn't want to be there…

  Yet at the same time he accepted the charge protecting Tika rather than returning her to her parents for the promise of a fee. Now, it could be the man simply skated along, waiting for a better opportunity, but he was really doing his job. And he really didn't like the arrival of Vega Storm as part of the crew.

  Shaw hired the engineer not only for his skill, but also his knowledge. The Gilly kept getting damaged. Maybe the government had given him the Gilly to do a job, but it was his ship now. Like his ranch, he would do exactly what he needed to do in order to protect her. Vega was a good investment. The man knew a lot, too— about this side of the galaxy and the settled and unsettled worlds. When he was ready to share, Shaw would be listening.

  That left the last member of his erstwhile crew, someone who he wasn't even sure he could call a member. 9-A or Nina as Tika insisted on calling her. The woman said very little. In fact, she only seemed to speak to Tika. Whenever Shaw, Kestral, or Vega appeared, she shut down.

  Shaw didn't like the implications. That alone would've been enough to let her stay on board, but her story seemed far bleaker. Shaw flicked a glance at the scanner right on cue the blip appeared then vanished again. Coffee in hand, he adjusted the scanner depth and focus, hoping for a better look. Unfortunately some of their sensor arrays had been damaged in escaping the world with the mega city. A world the locals knew as Purgatory. What a charming name. Unfortunately Shaw would need to return, as the he hadn’t finished his work before they had to withdraw. In the meanwhile, they also need to touch down somewhere, hopefully somewhere quiet with good equipment for sale so Vega could finish the repairs.

  The engineer was down in the hold, and Shaw granted him access to the engine room. He said they didn't have any trouble staying on course and the Rosen Engine would sustain them, but they would need fuel soon and, more, they needed to get a true assessment of what damage had been done to the Gilly. He also had some ideas about how to modify the engine to minimize what fuel consumption the Gilly required. Shaw liked good ideas. At the three-minute mark, when the blip appeared it resolved into the image of a small ship before vanishing again.

  “Zed did you catch that?”

  “It appears to be a reflection, Captain. As though our own image is being bounced back to us.”

  “So the anomaly is a reflection? Concern?”

  “Undetermined.” Yeah, Zed's lack of commitment to that did not make Shaw happy.

  Keeping the ship’s main sensors focused on the area of the anomaly, he switched screens on his console’s viewer. He could access any of the systems from the cockpit, and often did. The Gilly’s data banks were full of information, information they gathered and information they received. He had a packet for each world he visited, both with the Earth Prime’s general information and his annotations updating them. At each stop, he was to upload and return information via Jo at the Titan’s Deep Space Observation post. He’d missed one check in now, which meant Jo would be pissed with him.

  He could take the heat, especially when he didn't know how he wanted to handle the next report. Jo knew about Tika, but she would cover his ass. The operator had given him hell, then teased him about rescuing the girl. But he had failed to mention the other passengers. Zed’s logs recorded their presence, but wouldn't be transmitted until his mission was complete. He had another good three years at least before he had to explain why he taken on all these people on a confidential mission.

  Nina—9-A, she'd been reduced to a serial number. That stuck in his craw. Not as much as her bio scans did though. Accessing them, he began to study the MRI scans and CT Zed performed. Her musculoskeletal form showed signs of a long-standing pattern of abuse. Breaks and re-heals, bones broken again. More it also showed disturbing glitches in her brain activity. And another anomaly, a little white mark located in her hippocampus.

  “Zed, what do we have in our data files for the Order of the IV?”

  The name sounded weird. Who would name an order after a plant? Kestral hadn't been very specific about the order other than to say there were fanatics and should be avoided at all costs. For a man who seemed fairly fearless, his urging of caution bore taking note.

  “Researching. Very little is known of the Order of the IV. Launched from Earth Prime during the Corbin Space Rush, one small sect of secular scientists joined with a group of monks to explore the farthest reaches of the inhabitable worlds. Goals in initial application detail the spread of faith as well as learning about the worlds beyond our own. Direct quote pulled from Order of the IV founder Orion Austin.”

  Well, wasn’t that just special? Any order promoting proselytizing usually ended badly for those who didn't want to be proselytized to.

  “Any information gathered from previous stops on the Order of the IV?” While the Gilly served as a repository, and a gatherer of a great deal of information including downloads from local libraries media news outlets at each planetary visit. They didn't always have all of it integrated into primary database, a design flaw as far as Shaw was concerned. What was the point of gathering information if he didn't have it readily at his fingertips?

  “Captain, that information is restricted for download upon return to Earth Prime. Your clearance is not enough.”

  “Zed, who is the captain of the Gilly?”

  “Sullivan, Shaw. Transfer of captaincy 8.7 standard solar months prior, all rights and detailing listed under Sullivan, Shaw. Captain.”

  “So, in other words, I own the whole ship, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “That means I also own you?”

  “Also correct. All licensing and ownership for the use of the Zed Compu Scan system transferred to Sullivan, Shaw upon receiving the Gilly.”

  “So, if I own the ship, and I own you, that means I also own the data that stored aboard. Is this a logical assumption?”

  “Please stand by. Processing.”

  Shaw allowed himself a small smile. Zed could be difficult, between his clipped British accent and his strict adherence the protocol, the ship did seem to have a natural the ability to learn. Not entirely negative, if one took into account all of the entertainment vids involving computers rising up to wipe out humanity… Sometimes he thought humanity deserved to be wiped out, especially when it employed the stupid gene. Still, if one presented a logical argument or pointed out a fallacy within the ship’s own coding, Zed would account for and correct it.

  “Captain, the logical assumption is valid. Accessing data.”

  Amused, Shaw took a drink of his coffee. The hushed swoosh of a bare feet against metal deck drew his attention. Shaw swiveled his seat to sit find 9-A staring at him from the open hatchway.
Shaw hadn't sealed it, wanting more to keep an ear out for the crew then to maintain privacy. Currently, he wasn't reviewing any information he didn't want the rest of them to see.

  Zed also wouldn’t let anyone on the cockpit deck who didn't have authorization, which meant only Tika and now Kestral would be able to get to him if he sealed the hatch. Although, he was pretty sure he hadn’t mentioned to Kestral he’d give him access.

  “Captain?” There was a hesitancy in the woman's voice. It didn't help that she looked like the survivor of a holocaust, half wasted away deep hollows in her cheeks, her eyes looked huge in the dark shadows beneath them enhanced by her very pale skin. When was the last time this child had seen sunlight? Although he didn't make the mistake of thinking her so young, in fact, he would gamble she was nearer his age than Tika’s. There was cunning in those eyes far older then her appearance suggested. The lightness and smallness of her stature seemed more to do with lack of nutrition and ill health rather than age.

  “9-A? Or do you prefer to be called Nina?”

  “I kind of like Nina, but 9-A is my designation.”

  Well, if she liked Nina he was gonna call her Nina. Why make a big fuss? “What can I do for you, Nina?”

  “I thought it fair to come speak to you, since you did not grant me permission to board your ship.”

  Very true. He hadn't granted her permission. Tika, feeling the need to take care of her, had conned Kestral into bringing her aboard. More amusing than Tika’s need to protect and take care of others was Kestral's display of compassion. The other man probably didn't see it that way, but Shaw knew if that man hadn't wanted to help… It wouldn't have mattered what Tika wanted.

  “Welcome aboard the Gilly. Shaw Sullivan.”

  “Thank you, Captain Sullivan. I understand my presence has been disturbing. I feel like you should know…” She swallowed and wavered on her feet. Yeah, if she collapsed right there she could probably get hurt.