by M. D. Cooper
Cara shook her head, thinking of what she was going to say. She unmuted the channel. “This is the Worry’s End. Are you picking up our dog?”
“Dog?” the border agent asked. “You have a dog?”
“We have a dog. I think if you check the heartrate you’ll see it matches.”
“Dogs are bad luck on ships,” the agent said.
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Fran said.
“It appears to check out,” the agent said. “However, the aberration requires personal inspection. Worry’s End, you’ve been flagged for boarding. Proceed on current vector and await further instructions.”
Cara kicked her console and cursed. She had hoped she might convince them not to board. She had hoped she could keep her dad safe.
“Copy, Ceres Control,” Cara said. “Out.” She looked up, feeling miserable, to find Fran grinning at her.
“What?” Cara asked.
“You kicked the console,” Fran said. “I like these little outbursts. It proves to me you’re not a robot like your dad.”
“What are we going to do?” Cara asked, feeling overwhelmed.
“We’re going to continue with the plan and get that crate moved up to the safe room. Then you should get something to eat and try to sleep for a little while. We’ve still got two hours before we reach Ceres.”
“How can you sleep?”
Fran shrugged. “You can sleep just about anywhere when you’re tired enough. You should try it.” She nodded toward Em. “Or try playing with the dog. He might relax you.”
“I’m going to scan him so I’ll stop worrying every time somebody says he’s bad luck.”
“What are you going to do if you find a tracker?” Fran asked.
“I’ll use the autodoc.”
“Does the autodoc have a veterinarian setting? That costs extra.”
“I don’t know,” Cara said, frustration getting the best of her. “I’ll figure that out when I get to it.”
Fran slapped her on the back. “There you go, girl. You’re learning how to adult like the rest of us. Now come help me with this crate. You can say hi to your dad.”
Cara grimaced. “Fine,” she said.
CHAPTER THIRTY
STELLAR DATE: 09.21.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Insi Ring, Ceres, Anderson Collective, InnerSol
After delivering the crate, Cara begged off, leaving Andy and Fran staring at the container from either side of the narrow safe room. She looked around the bare alloy walls and craned her neck to take in the vid screen behind her shoulder.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” she said.
“I found it when I was trying to figure out why the sensor on the outside tank was malfunctioning,” he said. “We nearly ran out of water on a run from Europa to Rhea because I thought the sensor was faulty and figured the volume based on the size of the outside tank. That was a good time. I think we recycled the same water about a hundred times. Luckily the kids were too small to know or care.”
“You say the sweetest things,” Fran said with a disgusted look.
He gave her a smirk. “I try.” Andy tapped the crate. “Should we open it?”
“You’re the captain, right? You can open anything you want on your ship.”
“I didn’t agree not to.”
“Should we open it, is the question,” Fran said. She switched to her Link.
“Makes sense,” Fran said.
“You ever heard of this Fugia Wong?” Andy asked.
“I heard of somebody named Fug Wong, who used to hack the Crash games on Cruithne.”
“What kind of game is called Crash? Is it a wrecking derby?” Andy asked.
“It’s a local thing. You’d have to be there to appreciate it.”
“You think Fug and Fugia are the same person? Should we be worried about that?”
“I don’t know. I never heard anything bad. Just that she was a hacker who ripped off a couple of the syndicates who were big operators at the time and then got off Cruithne. Starl and Zanda knew her.”
“So the likelihood of this thing being full of poison gas is low?”
Fran shrugged. “People change. Who knows.”
Andy turned the crate until its control mechanism faced him. He ran his finger over the black panel and started the unlock sequence.
“It’s not locked,” he said. “I guess she knew we’d try to get inside.”
“Like I said, you’re the captain.”
The lid rose a few millimeters. Fran moved to sit beside Andy as he opened the crate. Inside were a series of soft trays tooled to hold cylindrical objects. Most were empty except for three silver cylinders.
“They have numbers on them,” Andy said. He reached into the crate to carefully pull one of the cylinders out of its tray. A tiny line of silver numerals ran the length of the object. “I don’t see a pattern,” he said.
Andy passed the cylinder to Fran. She held it close to her face and then at arms-length, her augmented green eyes flashing.
“I’m not picking up anything,” she said. “If they’d been radioactive Alice would have picked it up down in the bay. I’m picking up standard alloy with silicon and other heavy metals. It’s some kind of computer.”
“Or a storage device. What she said they were.”
“How do we log in?”
“One extra AI is enough for me, thanks.”
Lyssa said.
Andy said.
Fran slid the cylinder back in its tray and closed the lid. The lock engaged automatically, sealing the lid in place.
“Your kid’s doing a good job,” Fran said. “She’s all right.”
“You think she’s doing all right? I can’t spend this whole trip hiding in a safe room. I’m the one who accepted this deal.”
Fran pushed her arm against his in a playful move. “You can’t carry the whole world.”
“Thank you, Fran,” Andy said, voice abruptly serious.
“I’m just in this for the sex,” she said, giving him a crooked smile. “And you haven’t been putting out enough, lately.”
“I’ve been busy,” Andy said.
“Next you’ll be telling me you’ve got a headache.”
“I do have an AI embedded in my brain.”
Andy laughed.
<‘Spent time with’, huh?> Fran said.
Andy said.
Fran blurted out.
The AI laughed, a sort of trilling emotion that filled Andy with a flavor of amusement he hadn’t felt before.
“I think we’re alone,” Andy said.
“That takes some getting used to.”
“We’re lucky she’s not actually very social.”
“That means she unders
tands boundaries. Very important when you’re sharing a skull with someone.”
“I imagine,” Andy said.
Fran searched his face. “No, you don’t. Don’t start getting serious on me.”
“What?” Andy asked.
Fran grabbed the collar of his shipsuit and lay back on the bench, pulling him on top of her for a kiss.
“Break time is over,” she said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
STELLAR DATE: 09.21.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Insi Ring, Ceres, Anderson Collective, InnerSol
Andy felt a deep sense of relief as the fuel levels finally reached green. He glanced at Fran who was sitting at the pilot’s console and gave her a thumbs up. “Fuel’s full,” he announced.
“How about the rest?”
“Nearly topped off on water and the first drone shipment looks like it was the filters and protein supplements you ordered.”
“This is how you do it,” Fran said. “Don’t need to go haggle for anything. You place the order and it appears.”
Andy looked at Cara. “Don’t listen to her.”
Em barked from the other side of the room where Tim had him rolling over in a circle around him.
“You’re going to make him dizzy,” Cara said.
“He’s so good at it.”
“It’s not exactly hard.”
“I’m getting him to understand human, Cara. Of course, that’s hard.”
Andy walked over to a cabinet to pull out a used canister filter with a flat end. He set the canister next to Em.
“Get him to jump up and sit on that, Tim. When he figures out one thing, add another trick.”
“Can’t I just enjoy the trick he knows?” Tim complained. “Why do I have to keep adding things.”
“Because he’s obviously smart. He’s just like you. He’ll get bored doing the same thing over and over again, and then he’ll chew up your toys.”
“He already did,” Cara said.
“Cara!” Tim shouted, looking abashed. “You weren’t supposed to say.”
“What did he chew up?” Andy asked.
“Three of Tim’s ships while the border agents were on board.”
“He was a good little dog,” Fran said. “He only barked at one of them—the one who looked at him like he was some kind of alien. I think he helped get them off the ship faster.”
“One of them kept sneezing,” Cara said.
Andy held out his hand for Em and scratched him behind the ears when he trotted over.
“It’s so funny how his fuzzy butt wiggles when he walks,” Tim said.
“He can’t help that he’s fluffy,” Cara said.
“You scan him yet?” Andy asked.
Cara frowned. “Fran said the autodoc won’t scan dogs.”
“It’ll look for foreign objects.” He stood with Em in his arms. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
“Hey!” Tim said. “We were practicing.”
“I need something to take my mind off waiting,” Andy said. “Sitting around here watching supply levels go up isn’t helping.”
“What’s going to happen? What’s our distraction supposed to be?” Cara said.
“We don’t know,” Fran said. “That’s the problem. I’m guessing an explosion of some kind.”
“How is Fugia going to know that we have fuel?” Cara asked.
“Another excellent question,” Andy said. He adjusted his hold on the wiggling dog, who redirected his energy into licking Andy’s face. “Hey there,” he said. “Calm down.”
Andy took a step toward the door when a shudder ran through the deck and several warning alarms blared from the consoles. He froze as Em who, terrified by the sound, scratched frantically at Andy’s neck and chest in an attempt to get down. Andy let him go and the Corgi immediately sprinted for Tim.
“What is it?” Andy said.
“Explosion in a terminal umbilical one bay over,” Fran said. “That’s all the station feed is giving me right now. Emergency crews are responding. All ships are directed to maintain position.”
“What are all the other ships doing?”
“I show five berths in line with us.” She looked at Andy. “They’re all disconnecting.”
“Then we should too.”
“I need to get to the engines,” Fran said. “You’ve got the pilot console?”
“At this point I guess it doesn’t matter if they figure out I’m on board.”
Fran stood and went to the door. “I’ll send status on what kind of thrust we can maintain,” she said. “I’m starting to think we want to go anywhere but Callisto. Someplace with nobody but a traffic beacon for company—hell, actually going to Kalyke would probably throw people off our trail.”
“Yeah,” Andy said, sliding into the pilot’s seat. He adjusted the holodisplay and placed Sunny Skies in relation to the Ceres’ Insi Ring. Yellow points flickered all over the display as ships moved away from the green-blue planetoid.
That didn’t make any sense, whatever was happening was bigger than just another nearby ship’s umbilical blowing.
“Cara,” he said. “Will you silence those alarms. They aren’t helping anything.”
Cara nodded and focused on her console.
While Cara chased alarms, Andy switched to his Link.
Andy snorted.
“Dad!” Cara shouted. “The audio channel from before is live.”
“Captain Sykes,” Fugia Wong said calmly. “Did you see my sign?”
“All our proximity alarms went off at once and it appears that every ship with a working engine is exiting Ceres at the same time. But, no. We have no idea what actually happened. Did something go drastically wrong with the terraforming project?”
“Almost,” Wong said. “A large section of the secondary ring that is still under construction is on its way to the surface.”
“Damn,” Andy said.
“It’s regrettable, but that’s what happens with gravity wells,” Wong said. “Are you ready to depart for Callisto?”
“I’m ready. How are you getting here?”
“The same craft as before. I’ll have a few more people with me.”
Andy shook his head. “Whatever. When?”
“Approximately seven minutes,” Wong said.
“Good. We’re getting ready to burn. I’ll put the ship on an outbound vector.”
“Start your burn as soon as you can. We’ll be in stasis fields so we can take the g-forces.”
“Stasis fields?” Andy said.
“Don’t worry about us. We’ll match your velocity. Are my packages safe?”
“As safe as we are. They’re stowed away right now.”
“Thank you. I will see you shortly.”
The line went dead. Andy passed the information to Fran.
Andy pulled up the engine diagnostic systems and ran initial velocity calculations using the new fuel reserves. With full fuel tanks, the boundaries of his astrogation planning system expanded all the way to Neptune. He zoomed in on Proteus and the system automatically estimated two months travel time with slingshots around both Jupiter and Saturn, with a transfer orbit at Uranus—handy that the outer planets were almost in alignment. It was lovely to imagine for a sec
ond until he chose Callisto instead and all the numbers went to crap, showing them expending half as much fuel to burn to Jupiter and brake to match orbits with Callisto just 2 AU away as it would take to fly the 32 AU to Neptune.
The estimate utilized an engine economy of seventy percent, which was probably too conservative. He bumped the allowance up to eighty but the numbers only got slightly better. Nothing got around the fact that they were fighting gravity to get out of Ceres then fighting it again to slow their arrival at Jupiter.
Andy tapped the console, moving the image in the holodisplay around. He switched back to Ceres real-time and blinked at the confetti of light covering the planetoid’s ring. From Sunny Skies position on the inside of the Insi ring, he could now make out portions of the outer Impo ring falling past, toward the planet, glowing brightly as they began to enter the atmosphere.
Andy realized he was thinking out loud but Lyssa didn’t respond. Maybe she didn’t have the capacity to understand.
Andy stood and expanded the holodisplay to cover most of the central area of the command deck, pulling an external view of the planet from a navigation satellite. Ceres hung green and blue in the middle of the room with its main ring an intricate silver structure in geosynchronous orbit over the planetoid’s equator. The secondary ring hung in orbit just above the first. It was anchored to the inside ring in several places, and those sections were holding, but another section was twisted, as many pieces flying off into space from the ring’s angular momentum as were falling to the planet below. The yellow dots—what Andy assumed were responding emergency craft—closed with and encircled the wound.
