by J. S. Morin
Mission Pack 3
Missions 9 - 12.5 of the Black Ocean Series
by J.S. Morin
Adventure Capital
Mission 9 of the Black Ocean Series
by J.S. Morin
Adventure Capital
Mission 9 of: Black Ocean
Copyright © 2016 Magical Scrivener Press
The game was called Rodek’s Revenge, and half the syndicate was addicted. It combined the acrobatic kung fu of Four Fists, No Fear with the brutality of zero-G cagefighting, all trapped inside a slowly rotating cubic arena. It was shamelessly gratuitous, cartoonishly violent, and biologically impossible. Roddy had outdone himself with the programming, to the point where it was getting in the way of organizational readiness. It sucked key personnel out of hangar bays, left hover-cruisers without pilots, and threatened sentry rotation schedules.
Carl was dying to play. Sure it was an amateur product, nothing like Runelords of Athos, Kainan’s Sword, or even an old-fashioned Typhoon simulator, but it tickled a part of the brain just right. The low detail of the fighting arena and gaudy colors of the fighters’ uniforms left the focus where it belonged: on up to eight players trying to vicariously bash in each other’s skulls via little holographic avatars. Roddy’s key bit of brilliance was forgoing the typical input devices and using biometric scanners to let players control their fighters with hand gestures.
Standing in the doorway of the briefing room, Carl watched the bout in progress. The match was a full eight-player free-for-all. By his quick count, he was short the services of a medical tech, three hangar crew, two gunners, a quartermaster, and a cook. Plus Roddy. The laaku watched from behind the players, pacing as he sucked down gulps from an oversized permatherm mug.
Before Carl managed to tear his attention away from the melee, Dr. Akerman startled him by placing a hand on Carl’s shoulder. She whispered in his ear. “A word, sir?”
Carl followed the doctor out of the briefing room and into an adjoining office. “What’s up? Who needs a hug this time?” Trisha Akerman had been a combat psychologist aboard the Odysseus, and she was filling a similar role in Carl’s new syndicate. But now instead of post-traumatic stress, she was dealing with crises of conscience, homesickness, and troubles acclimating back to modern life.
“I hear you’re shipping out tomorrow,” Dr. Akerman replied. She handed him a datapad. “I’d like your signoff to ground one Rodek of Kethlet.”
Carl handed the datapad right back. “I know he’s going through a rough patch, but Roddy’s a pro. Plus, he knows the Mobius better than anyone. I’ll bring a backup if that makes you feel any better, but Roddy’s on the team for this mission.”
“It’s not the mission I’m worried about,” Dr. Akerman snapped before composing herself and resuming in a stern, measured tone. “That laaku’s blood is half coffee right now. He’s got himself immersed in a hobby. I’m counseling him daily. He’s got a support network in place here. Do you see any of the players in there with alcohol? And that’s a designated rec area. Rodek has been sober for almost a month. The last thing he needs is a ride on the party barge.”
Carl smirked and stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. “Well, that’s a new one. Heard the Mobius called a tub, a heap, a mule, a turtle…”
“Ramsey, if you’re his friend, you’ll assign him to headquarters until he can handle that sort of environment without relapse.”
Meekly accepting the datapad once again, Carl looked at the medical clearance form. It was an Earth Navy standard document. Main computers on the Odysseus were smashed to atoms in the crash, but someone had dredged up medical forms. Not juicy personal correspondence from senior officers that might still have blackmail value. Not classified intel. But the cogs of the bureaucratic machine were fine and dandy.
“We’re not Earth Navy anymore,” Carl protested, but he couldn’t even convince himself.
“He needs you to stop enabling his alcoholism and help him take back control. Put your damn thumbprint on this order. Show Roddy that you’re with him on this.”
I don’t want to be with him on this. I want to relax on my own ship with my best buddy, throwing back beers and watching holovids. Hell, we got a huge haul of holovids from the Odysseus. Carl sighed and pressed his thumb to the box marked “commanding officer.”
“Thank you, sir.” Dr. Akerman gave a curt, official nod and strode off. For some reason, it seemed that people got really polite and efficient once they’d browbeaten Carl into getting their way. Was the crew trying to train him or something? They were going to have to try harder if they thought a few salutes and sirs would get them on his good side.
“Shit,” Carl muttered as he moped down the corridor in the opposite direction of the briefing room. The cheers of players and brutal fleshy noises from the game faded as he went. “Who am I gonna bring to replace him?”
# # #
The briefing room looked different without the raucous gaming. That had been part of the plan. It wasn’t often that Carl felt the need for an official briefing, but it had been the best way to ensure the attention of all his underlings—or at least most of them. Not everyone in the Ramsey Syndicate needed to be involved in the planning phase of their next big job.
Carl thumbed a button on the remote, and the holo-projector flared to life. A sector of space appeared in map form, with stars and orbiting planets scattered around in relative location, but horrifically out of scale. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Eyndar/ARGO Demilitarized Zone, which I’m now officially shortening to EADZ, for—ahem—EADZ of use. Anyway, welcome to our new stomping grounds. Out here, we’re technically closer to Eyndar space than ARGO, so we’re ideally positioned to access it from the Eyndar side. There are no stable governments, and ARGO forces are forbidden entry per terms of the treaty. Lucky for us, same goes for the Eyndar navy.”
Jean Niang, former typhoon mechanic, former jungle work detail boss, and current leading candidate for Roddy’s replacement, raised a hand. “If there’s nobody there, what’s the job? We going for salvage, mining… what’s the game here?”
Carl grinned. He couldn’t have planted a better question in the audience. Niang was kissing his ass for sure. “No one said this region was uninhabited. Plenty of real estate speculators got in while the war was still hot, hoping to turn a huge profit once their side won. Plus, some loners, freaks, and outlaws had been there long before that. There’re little colonies scattered all over. Some of them are just trying to scrape by. Others are turning a tidy little profit on mineral resources and black market transactions.”
Amy shouted a question from the back. “So, we’re going into the black market business?” Now that question he had planted.
“Nah, that’d be too much like honest work. You see… we’re going to rob the black market.”
The briefing room lingered in quiet. This was the sort of bold, high-paying job that got the juices riled up in an outlaw crew. At least, that was the idea. They should have been cheering.
Something must not have come across clearly enough. “You see, there’s a lot of contraband getting bought and sold, often for big money. Commerce is moving goods from point A to point B for an agreed-upon price. We’re going to be removing goods from point A-and-a-half, then making the people at point B think they got ripped off.”
“What if they’re not idiots?” someone in the back of the room called out—someone who didn’t make himself easily identified.
With a press of a button on the remote, the view zoomed in until a single system hung in mid-air in the middle of the briefing room. “Well, lucky for us, they are. Thi
s here is the RG386 system. Locals call the third planet Hawthorne’s Bazaar. It’s a low-cash environment. Most of their business is barter. There are a few scattered population centers, but for the most part, commerce is conducted elsewhere on the surface. Atmosphere is non-toxic, but low oxygen makes carrying your own a priority. We’ll be arranging a small number of transactions designed to put merchandise in the wrong hands and cause enough confusion for us to get away with our choice of contraband.”
Another voice rose from the back of the room. “This all sounds great, but who’s going?” Carl was really going to have to learn the voices of his new underlings.
“Great question. As you know, I’ve been at this sort of thing for years, so I’ve got some specialists who’ll be vital to making this job run smoothly. First off, Amy Charlton, known to many of you as Scarecrow, will be doing the flying. This shouldn’t be a scramble-type job, but if things hit the waste reclaim, we’ll have one of the best pilots around to keep us in one piece until we make astral. Next up is Yomin Dranoel, formerly a cyber ops technician, second class. She’s been promoted to the A team for this one. Yomin is going to be faking our ship ID and intercepting encrypted transmissions between the would-be buyers and sellers at Hawthorne’s. You all know Mriy. She’ll be on the ground to keep the face-to-face portion of negotiations civil.”
“She won’t, sir,” one of the techs reported. “Said she’s staying out with the hunting parties, and that you’ve got enough… well, she used a word I didn’t know, sir. But I think she meant you’ve got enough hands that can hold a blaster.”
Carl nodded, accepting the information in stride. Not a hint showed on his face, but he was ready to string up the insubordinate azrin by the ears. “Probably right. She’s a better hunter than a soldier. I’ll check the duty roster for a replacement. Someone who’s been pulling a little extra weight on the sentry patrols deserves a shot at some offworld excitement. Anyhoo, our good buddy Roddy’s going to be sitting this one out, so Jean Niang will be taking time away from building Typhoons out of spare parts to keep the Mobius in one piece.”
He could feel the eyes on him. Glancing at the back of the room, he saw Roddy glaring. Once they made eye contact, the laaku snorted and stomped out of the briefing room. But a thirty-kilo laaku could only stomp so heavily to back it up. Hardly anyone seemed to notice him go.
Carl continued as if his pause had been for effect and not consternation. “And last but not least, our aces in the hole: Wizards Esper and Mort.”
“Just me,” Esper called out from somewhere in the back.
Why was this the first Carl was hearing of Mort bailing? Since when did that cantankerous old wizard pass up an opportunity to prove how goddamn irreplaceable he was? But this was a briefing, and half the syndicate was watching. He couldn’t look like someone was pulling a fast one on him. “Care to clarify that remark?”
The attendees parted for Esper to come forward. It was weird in a way. The Mobius had picked her up as a stray, a priestess trying to save a boy who—it turned out—damn well didn’t need or want saving. Enthusiastic, well-meaning, and ever hoping to be helpful, she’d nonetheless been just the near side of useless. Now? Half the syndicate didn’t see a difference between her and Mort—looks aside. Both were wizards. Said and done.
“He recorded a message,” Esper said. She held aloft a rock the size of her palm, with purposeful-looking facets at odd angles and all the edges smooth as driftwood.
A familiar, crotchety voice emanated from the rock. “Now just hold it still and… what’s that? Stop waving your hands and spit it out… Oh, it’s already going? Ahem, well then… To our esteemed potentate Carl Ramsey, I send my regards and regrets. I will, unfortunately, be unable to join your expedition to parts barely known for profits barely earned. Things out here in the jungle demand my attention in ways that are—I must say—far more pressing than hoodwinking the rubes and doorknob lickers in contested space. Since I know you’ve gotten used to manual astral drops, I will, of course, have no objection to Esper tagging along to fill in for me. Oh, quit glaring at me like that… Um, that said, I’m sure that once I’ve pinned down Devraa’s lair and committed a bit of deicide, we can get back to business as usual. Ta-ta… that was the end. There isn’t a button. Just press your palm to one side and think it off. Right, there you—”
Esper cleared her throat. “Sorry. Never used a rock to record voice messages before. Mort was a bit lax on explaining it before we started, and he didn’t want to re-record it.”
Running his fingers through his hair, Carl seethed out a sigh. “So… nutshell: no Mort. Well, that just moves Esper up the list to ship’s wizard, and we’ve got an opening for an apprentice. Any volunteers?”
One tentative hand rose from the middle of the room.
“Ayers, are you serious about taking up magic or looking for an excuse to get to know Esper?”
The hand beat a hasty retreat.
Carl spread his hands. “No problem. We’ve got the personnel now to absorb these kinds of schedule conflicts. Mobius will be taking Amy, Niang, Yomin, Esper, and myself for this run. Um, I guess that’ll leave us one spare bunk. I’ll get back to you on who’s getting it. We’re hitting orbit at 1500 hours, which…” He searched the wall for a chronometer. “Looks like about three hours from now. Damn, no wonder I’m hungry. Let’s break for lunch, folks.”
In the wake of a generally respectful silence that had prevailed throughout the briefing, a dozen conversations broke out. Syndicate personnel stood and separated into cliques as they filtered through the exits. When the rush abated, Carl was left alone with Amy, who had hung back.
“Did that sound anything like the briefings we used to get from NAV-OPS?” Carl asked.
Before she said a word, Amy kissed him, sapping the tension from his muscles and reminding him that someone around here was paying attention to him. “Nope. Not in the least. But hey, Roddy didn’t throw anything, and Mort’s always been kind of a flake. I’m sure the mood will improve once we don’t have a jungle full of marines serving an alien god.”
She turned her back on Carl and strode out of the briefing room. He had three hours left on Ithaca and a million tasks to arrange for his absence. All of them were in the other direction, but he followed Amy out the briefing room anyway.
# # #
Roddy hefted his guitar. The fact that it was located in Carl’s quarters was beside the point. It was the last of his personal belongings on board the Mobius. That felt… final. He’d never expected it to come to this. Carl had given him enough free passes that it seemed like he was vaccinated against consequences. But that bastard had finally done it; Roddy had been replaced. He slung the strap for the guitar over one shoulder and sighed.
As he moped out the common room door and into the cargo bay, he caught Niang exiting the engine room. His replacement was carrying a tool kit in one hand and a coffee mug in the other. “Hey, Roddy. Nothin’ to worry about. I’ll take good care of her.”
Him, Roddy corrected mentally. But this wasn’t the time to get into Carl’s philosophy on ship genders. “Yeah, whatever. Typhoon, Squall, Turtledove, Pandora… all the same shit, amirite? You’ll do fine, Jean.”
Niang raised his coffee mug in salute. “Just remember, anything not offloaded by 1500 is coming with us for the ride.”
The ride. Fuck the ride. The ride had never left without him before. “Sure thing. Just gotta… take care of a couple more things, then I’ll be out of your fur.”
Niang headed for the cargo ramp, and Roddy ducked back inside the common room. He waited with the door cracked just enough to hear clearly. The footsteps faded. Roddy counted to ten, taking a sip of his coffee to still his nerves. It didn’t do the trick the way beer did.
Scurrying down the stairs in the now-vacant ship, Roddy slipped into the engine room and shut the door behind him. So damn clean. Most of the new parts were scavenged and retrofit from maintenance stores on the Odysseus. Basic systems were fairly univ
ersal—close enough for a competent mechanic to cobble together, anyway. The place had been steam-cleaned, sterilized, and scrubbed. ARGO standard safety advisory stickers highlighted the various hazards present in the engine room—which was pretty much everything. Anyone who didn’t have a deep-seated understanding of that simple fact didn’t belong in a fucking engine room, and no sticker could fix that.
How easily everything went together when there was a parts fabricator in the maintenance bay. How tidy and neat things looked when a ship just sat still and waited until you were done fixing it. You could put a bow on the bypass relays the wires were routed so pretty. Wouldn’t be so easy if those labeled tags were wrong. If someone crossed the wires and swapped the corresponding labels, the Mobius would be in deep space before anyone noticed… not until they needed power to the shields.
And what about all those coolant and fluid lines? Roddy grabbed the waste processing return line and shook it. There was little give. Too rigid. Loosen a few couplings and it would be more flexible if this ship took a hit—ship-to-ship collision, meteorite, plasma blast, you name it. A limber ship didn’t have half its plumbing crack in the middle of combat.
The engine diagnostics were screwy, too. Fuel intake ratio was off. Too rich for the type of hotdog flying that Amy and Carl preferred. He had half a mind to leave everything just as it was. What Roddy should have done was drop the mix ratio and recalibrate the fuel-monitoring sensor to match. That way it would look fine during pre-flight checks, and the Mobius would mysteriously handle the way it always did. Underappreciated. That’s what Roddy was. It took a lot of finagling to keep things looking and feeling the same from the pilot’s chair as the guts of the ship evolved from one overhaul to the next.
With a snort, Roddy turned and stomped out of the engine room and out the cargo bay. As he was setting foot onto the hangar bay floor of the Odysseus, Carl and Amy approached, carrying a footlocker between them. “We out of grav sleds?” he asked as he stepped aside to let them pass.
