Greg’s communicator buzzed. After he acknowledged it, the ship’s computer informed him that two ships had broken orbit and were headed his way.
“Timmy, Helen, Myra, Katherine, Blondie stay here. Everyone else, please take our new arrivals to get food.”
When the others had left, Greg turned to his small force standing in front of the pirate ship. “Helen, does that answer your question? The one you asked me on the ship?”
“Does killing always feel that bad? I mean, I felt the bones crunch when I hit him. Did you see the looks on their faces? I mean, they knew they were going to die.” She shuddered and tears started in her eyes.
“Yes, sometimes it’s worse,” Greg said.
Myra silently nodded in agreement. Helen turned away and threw up in the grass.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that again,” Helen said through her tears.
Greg took her hands gently. “If you need to you will. Try not to think about it.”
She sniffled and said, “If you say so.”
“Folks, we have two more ships coming. I suspect one is their cargo hauler and the other is a scout. Myra, go to your ship, and stay there this time. You could have gotten us killed. Do what I tell you. It’s not about revenge. Pierre’s dead. I killed him. It’s over.”
Myra nodded slowly, downcast.
Greg continued, “If either ship attempts to lift off, you will stop it. We want the ships intact, but if you have to nail one, do it! Stay put this time.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go quickly.”
When Myra had gone, Greg turned to Timmy. “Timmy, can we stampede the animals through this valley?”
“I think so. Why?”
“The cargo ship should have a crew of two, and the scout should have a crew of one. If the animals get between the crew and their ship, we can slip in and commandeer the ships. We should be able to take these two ships without bloodshed.”
“It would be easier if I had a gun or something to make a loud noise.” Timmy said. Greg pulled a pistol from the back of his belt and handed it to Timmy. Timmy said, “Sweet!” before running off in the direction of the horses.
The two ships landed on either side of the pirate destroyer. The cargo ship’s crew promptly exited their craft and headed toward their command ship. They warily approached with their laser weapons drawn. The scout ship remained closed. Greg swore softly. They heard Timmy’s gun firing followed by the sound of pounding hooves. The stampede bore directly down on the two pirates. Rather than run across the path of the animals, they ran directly away. The horses rapidly caught up with them trampling them underfoot. From where they were, Greg and company could hear the men scream as the horses crushed them to death.
Even as they shuddered in horror at that their misjudgment had caused the deaths of two men they had wanted to capture, Greg realized the horses were headed for the settlement and would likely not stop before they caused serious damage.
“Head them off!” Greg yelled, “We have to head them off!”
Greg ran down the hill firing his gun into the air in an attempt to turn the horses around. Helen, Katherine and Blondie ran down the hill right behind him firing their weapons into the air, and the horses turned out toward the lake. They turned again once they reached the water and headed back through the valley and out to the pastures beyond.
Once the dust cleared, they looked at the lone scout ship with its solitary occupant closed up tighter than a drum. Myra’s P I ship was more heavily armed than the pirate ship, but whichever ship tried to leave first would expose their vulnerable back side. The area around the propulsion systems was not as well protected as other areas due to the open space the propulsion systems needed to function properly. If either ship moved, the other would shoot it down. Stalemate! Greg sat on the top of the hill and wondered what to do next.
HOMESTEAD - CHAPTER NINE
GREG CAMPED ON THE RIDGE where he could watch the ships. He sat there for five days. Monique and Angelina became more like comrades than captives. Brownie and Sam had taken the women with them onto the destroyer and the cargo ship and prepared flight readiness assessments. Brownie was distraught over their condition. Severely in need of maintenance, the ships would have been considered unsafe to travel at a safety inspection at any legitimate port. Brownie prepared detailed repair schedules in an effort to remedy as much as they could with what they had on hand. Myra dutifully stayed in her ship. She had learned her lesson about disobeying Greg’s orders. Katherine and Blondie took turns standing watch so Myra could sleep. The scout sat silent. Periodically Myra hailed the lone holdout on an open frequency but there was no answer.
Helen was a regular visitor. She brought Greg food and kept him company. Gaston, her captive, spent his days working in the gardens and seemed resigned to his fate. She described the funeral service Mark had conducted for the pirates. The men had been Catholic so Mark had read last rites and conducted as close to a traditional Catholic service as he could. Monique and Angelina had been impressed with the fact that a funeral was conducted at all and especially that a small group like this would give full military honors to vanquished enemies. Mark gave a thoughtful and reverential sermon about honoring one’s adversaries and respecting them in death.
Helen was glad Dr. Turner and Lonnie had taken care of the corpses so she did not have to look at them again. The thought of looking into the faces of the men she killed was more than she wanted to handle. Lonnie had interned as an aide at a retirement home and had helped prepare other people for their final rest.
Mark was helping Gaston with the transition from pirate to farmer.
Helen was settling back to normal, but her normal was not the same as it had been, and Greg hoped it was for the better. The profound shock of actually doing what she had practiced for so long finally wore off. The knowledge that he had killed in anger caused sudden and dramatic changes. Much of her unresolved hostility was gone. She had a new awareness of why her strength was both welcomed and intimidating. She had come to accept that she was always going to be different from the others and why it was important for her to remain so. She understood why the power she held so frightened the others that they set her apart. She acknowledged her power and accepted it for the blessing and curse it was. For the first time, she was comfortable with herself.
Dr. Miller wandered by periodically to keep Greg company.
“Did any of our new arrivals tell you who is on that scout?” Greg asked on the fifth day.
“They know, but they aren’t telling. I think they hope if somehow the stalemate breaks in their favor they may be rescued.”
“Rescued to what? A life of being a fugitive? Of not trusting anyone you meet? A life where being ready to kill is a survival skill? What kind of life is that?”
“The same one you’ve been living since you left the Space Force. You have the opportunity to change all that, but I don’t see you doing it. Besides, these women grew up in pirate families. It’s all they know.”
“That sucks,” Greg replied.
“Yup.” Dr. Miller ambled off to tend the animals.
Brownie wandered by about an hour later.
“Has Myra been trying to contact the scout ship?” she asked.
“Yes, why?”
“It didn’t come through to the other ships. Their radios don’t work properly. Some of the antennas are damaged. Maybe you should try a different frequency.”
Greg called Myra from his communicator and relayed the message.
An hour later Myra called back. “He answered. His name is Albert. He thinks of himself as something of a pirate prince. Sounds young. Maybe mid twenties. He’s scared, but he’s hard core. Everyone needs to go away. He needs to see you go away.”
Greg stood and waved. He turned and walked away.
Greg continued to scan the radio bands for communication between the ships. From his new vantage point, he looked at the seven white crosses in a neat row on the hill and wond
ered if they would soon be adding another. With a cemetery already started in a community this young, Greg wondered how many new graves would be dug how quickly.
Brownie wandered by to update him on their progress with the other ships and to give him a list of parts she would like to have if he ever got off planet. She looked at the scout and said, “You know those old Valiant Industries Model 86 are simple to maintain if you can get the covers off. Blondie and I trained on these. If that ship is in as tough shape as these were, it must stink pretty bad in there. Then again, it’s a guy in that can. Maybe he doesn’t notice. Do you have a set of maintenance manuals for the other ships? The ones they left behind are trashed.” She smiled and left.
Greg mulled over her request and called his ship. As it turned out, electronic copies of the maintenance manuals were stored in the data vault, but there was no way to create hard copies, and they did not have a reader on the surface. He thought for a while on the problem and asked if there was an external reactor shut off switch for the Valiant 86.
There had to be a way for maintenance personnel to shut the ship down from the outside in case of an emergency. The answer came quickly. In the 86 Models A through F the reactor shut off switch was behind a panel about four meters off the ground. In later models the panel was above and behind the pilot’s view-port. The panel was held in place by four screws. The screws used a six point star bit. The only thing behind that panel was the switch. If it had not been wired out, it should shut down the reactor. The ship’s internal batteries would last a week or so, and the ship would shut down. Even with its reactor off, the ship’s missiles could still be fired until the batteries actually died, so they could not move any of the other craft, but the end of the siege was in sight. Restarting the reactor would be an exercise in attention to detail, but he hoped that Brownie would be up to the task.
Cyrus and Doug built a ladder for the purpose. Under the cover of darkness they sneaked up to the scout ship. Three of the four screws were the six point star that Greg expected. The fourth was a square inset. Not trusting the pirates’ maintenance abilities, Greg had brought a kit with a variety of bits. Greg removed three of the screws with a battery powered screw gun. The square head was not only a different head, it was cross threaded. He was able to loosen it a little but not enough to pop the panel. Cyrus tossed a pair of pliers up to Greg and with as much strength as he could muster standing on top of the ladder, he twisted the screw head. Slowly he made progress until the recessed edges of the panel cover cleared the ship’s hull. He spun open the panel and flipped the switch. The reaction was immediate. Greg could hear the motors whine separating the components of the nuclear pile to shut down the reaction. It was only a matter of a few hours before the thick layers of piezoelectric crystals cooled enough to stop generating electricity and the system shut down.
Once they had retreated to the far side of the valley out of sight of the ship, Cyrus asked, “How did you know we could walk up to the ship without being seen?”
“Myra, Blondie and Katherine kept waking our buddy Prince Albert in the can up by talking to him, so we hoped he would be asleep by this time. That appeared to have worked. If it hadn’t, he still had nothing to shoot at us with. Ships like this are designed to defend themselves against other ships in space and not against people on the ground. That is why the first thing a ship’s crew will do when attacked is lift off. He couldn’t because if he lifted off, Myra would have fired a missile and brought him down. All we have to do is wait.” Three days later, Albert, sporting a week old beard, staggered out of the crew hatch and fell to the ground. Lonnie helped him to his feet. Dr. Turner joined her, and they took him to be cared for.
Sam, Brownie, Blondie and Katherine, having given up on Blondie’s shuttle, readied the captured ships for flight with Monique and Angelina assisting. The scout stank as badly as Brownie thought it might. They joked about using their EVA suits inside the cabin because of the stench. The reactor restart procedure went smoothly under Brownie’s deft touch. Unlike the more docile Gaston, Albert turned out to be difficult to deal with and questions were asked about what to do with him.
Greg resumed the process of retrieving the empty cargo containers. Dr. Miller often went with him to check the other herds. He was thrilled with what he saw. He was particularly gratified at how much territory the animals covered. They spread out and moved regularly so that they did not deplete their food supply in any one place. He noticed their coats growing longer and shaggier indicating a cold winter. He was less concerned for the animals than for the humans.
Myra left. Periodically Greg returned to his ship to check it and the status of the ships they had captured. He had noticed that there was a distinct difference between the “landed” settlers and the flight crews. At its most basic, the twenty-four refugees had homes, and the seven of them did not. The six women, Brownie, Sam, Blondie, Katherine, Monique and Angelina worked well together. They had set up housekeeping in the empty cargo bay of Katherine’s shuttle, but that could hardly be considered commodious. When Greg was on the surface he stayed with them.
One evening as a cold misting rain fell around them, Greg said, “Folks, you know this really sucks. We don’t belong here. We belong up there. I have enough comfortable space on my ship. We can work on our ships in weightlessness and fix them properly.”
“But we are missing so many parts,” Brownie observed.
“I have parts we may be able to adapt. It’s worth a try. Look at it this way, we each get our own room which is more than we have here.”
The settlement was in the center of the planet’s temperate zone, but winter was clearly on the way. Snow was falling to the north of them when Greg and the women left taking everything fit to fly. Once they arrived at Greg’s cargo ship, they inventoried the ship’s stores and developed solutions to the more pressing maintenance issues on the commandeered pirate vessels.
Albert continued to be a problem. The council decided since he had no intention of merging into the society and since they could not let him go, they would set him loose on the far side of the planet. He would be placed near one of the existing herds at a location where Greg had not yet retrieved the containers. He would be provided enough food to last the winter. There was enough edible small game and plant life in the area that he would not die if left alone.
Timmy showed Albert how to train a horse for riding. Cyrus showed him how to make a bow and arrows for hunting. Dr. Harrison gave him a copy of a text on subsistence farming. Julie explained to him how to make aspirin from the bark of a tree. Four days after the council’s decision was announced, Greg returned to the surface, bundled Albert up and hauled him away. Sullen the whole trip, Albert showed no remorse as Greg departed.
As winter approached, the settlers foraged through the forest for edible fruits and tubers which they stockpiled in the empty shipping containers. Theoretically they had brought enough food to last the winter, but fresh food was a welcome addition to their diet.
While winter settled in on the small community on the ground, the flight crews labored in the perpetual winter of space. By the end of the second month they had gone as far as they could with the parts they had. None of the former pirate ships was back to full capacity, but the major functions were within acceptable limits, and only minor ones still needed attention. Over dinner one night they were discussing the capabilities of the pirate’s cargo ship which they had finally finished repairing when Blondie asked, “Monique, if your cargo ship was empty, could it lift one of the shuttles back into space?”
Monique finished chewing what she had in her mouth before answering, “I doubt it. We could certainly bring your wings down if that would help.”
“It might,” Blondie thought out loud.
“Could you lift one of the shuttles and move it on the surface?” Brownie asked.
“Probably, but not so far,” Monique replied. “It would be dangerous.”
“I wonder if any of the lakes freeze all the way to th
e bottom,” Brownie thought out loud.
“Or whether David’s welding skills are good enough to build giant ice skates,” Katherine added.
Suddenly the mood changed to a free for all of ideas that could lead to the eventual return of the shuttles to regular duty. They needed to calculate the necessary thickness of the ice to support the weight of the shuttle and the design of the skids so that when the gear retracted, the skids would fall away cleanly so the landing gear could be closed. They needed to attach the wings without the use of the heavy construction cranes normally used to lift them. Hundreds of seemingly insurmountable challenges fell away one at a time under the combined assault of seven motivated humans and one well programmed computer.
Then there were the issues related to the damaged undercarriage on Blondie’s shuttle. After considerable debate, they decided if they got Katherine’s transport secured to Greg’s orbiting cargo ship, they could take the parts they needed from it long enough to get Blondie’s to orbit. Of course, the next question after having accomplished that was whether they could safely go somewhere to buy the parts they needed to return Blondie’s shuttle to full operation. The first step would be finding what were not especially common parts. The second would be finding somewhere safe to buy them. The third would be having the money to buy them with.
For two days, seven people and the computer hammered at the details. The plan was dangerous, but they were confident it would work. They loaded the wings for Katherine’s shuttle into the pirate cargo ship and prepared to head for the surface. They decided to execute the entire operation on Katherine’s ship before attempting to do anything with Blondie’s ship.
The operation was delayed two days by a snow storm, a situation only Greg found humorous. On a bright cold day with moderate winds, seven spacefarers descended to the surface in two ships. About five hundred kilometers north of the settlement, they had found a lake large enough and frozen solid enough for their purposes. They rolled the wings out the cargo door. Greg picked them up with his tug one at a time and set them gently on the ground.
Solomon Family Warriors II Page 10
