“I don’t like this.”
Suwanee leaned over close to the rental agent and smiled a really big toothy grin. “Sir, we’re in a hurry. Can we close this deal and hit the road?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
The printer behind the desk spit out a rental contract. Reuben signed it. The agent separated the pages and handed Reuben his copies. He handed Reuben a set of keys. “Are you the only one driving?” The agent asked Reuben.
“Yes.”
“Good,” Rachel said. “Now, please take us to the ship.”
The ship did not inspire confidence in its ability to safely transport them to the cargo ship awaiting them in orbit. Reuben and Rashi checked the ship to see if it would safely carry them to orbit. The rest of the party checked the craft for listening devices or other suspicious equipment.
“Rachel, something is real strange with this ship,” Reuben said when he entered the flight deck. “As krufty as this thing is on the outside it has two brand new oversized reactors. I’ll bet this is a smuggler’s ship. Either that or it’s used by the drug enforcement agencies for an unmarked patrol vehicle. It will outrun pretty much anything I know how to fly except a P I ship.”
“Is it armed?”
“No.”
“Too bad.”
Once certain that they could, in fact, go where they wanted to go, they filed their flight plan with the Federation Aviation Authority. The plan they filed listed their destination as the Orbital Astoria Resort and Spa resort satellite in orbit a few hundred kilometers from their real destination.
Rachel settled into the pilot seat, Wendy took the seat beside her. Reuben took the flight engineer’s seat. Everyone else strapped into the passenger seats. Rachel and Wendy ran through the pre-flight checks and started the engines. As soon as the ship was ready, they taxied to the runway. Once they were cleared by the tower, they rolled into position, pushed the throttles forward and took off.
“That was way too easy,” Wendy said once they were airborne over the Atlantic Ocean.
“Yeah, I know,” Rachel answered. “What would Dad do now?”
“He wouldn’t go straight.”
Rachel pulled the ship into a steep climb, rolled it over and headed in the direction from which they had come.
“Well, look at this!” Reuben exclaimed. “We’re being followed.”
“Surprise, surprise, surprise.”
Rachel rolled the ship again so it was behind the ship that was following them.
“It’s an air breather!” Reuben said, “Fighter interceptor. F 35. I’m not getting a transponder. It’s not Federation unless it’s a narc. Who the hell is it? We don’t want to get in front of it. Its missiles fire forward and we are unarmed.”
Suddenly the jet broke to the left. Rachel hauled back on the stick and slammed the throttles to full. She could almost hear the airframe scream as she pushed the ship to its limits. With a full throttle climb she could quickly be out of missile range of the slower, but more maneuverable, jet. The only question was whether there were other jets waiting at higher altitudes.
“Two jets circling at 10,000 meters,” Reuben called out.
Rachel continued to climb as the two circling jets altered course to intercept. “Shall we bonk some heads together?”
As soon as Reuben detected that the jets overhead had fired their missiles, Rachel dove at the other jet racing up to meet them. It fired missiles up at them. Rachel held the dive as long as she dared and shut off the engines. Pulling hard back on the stick, she broke out of the dive and pulled into a level glide. The missiles passed harmlessly behind her confused that their target had seemingly disappeared. The heat signature had changed and they quickly sought out new targets. The jets turned to follow the fleeing craft and exposed their engines to the missiles’ sensors. At close range, the missiles quickly locked on their new targets and downed two of the jets.
The third jet broke off the chase and fled as a flight of Federation interceptors with legitimate transponders chased it out of sensor range.
“What was that all about?” Wendy said softly.
“I think someone else was supposed to be in this ship tonight. Whoever it was is lucky to be alive,” Rachel thought out loud.
Rachel continued the dive and headed south. Pulling out just above sea level, she flew as low as she dared until they reached the equator off Africa.
Reuben attentively monitored the sensors and except for normal commercial air traffic saw nothing else in the air.
When they reached the equator, Rachel pulled the stick back once more and finally headed for space. After achieving orbit, Rachel and Wendy plotted a new course to the cargo ship. In spite of her statement to the contrary, Rachel worried that someone knew where they were going and did not want them to make it.
“We need to get a message to Connors,” Reuben suggested.
“As soon as we arrive at the cargo ship, we will do exactly that,” Rachel replied.
“I wish we had the P I ship’s sensors,” Wendy said.
The remainder of the journey to the cargo ship was uneventful. They were surprised to see that both of the P I ships were still docked to the cargo ship. The P I ships were supposed to have been delivered to the Smithsonian six months ago. They knew about the delays refitting the cargo ship, but no one had said anything about the P I ships not being delivered as planned. Something was not right. Rachel went back into the crew compartment to talk to the Marines.
“Do you always fly like that?” Suwanee challenged Rachel. “I’ve had smoother rides on a roller coaster!”
“Only when we’re being shot at,” Rachel stated.
“Shot at? Who?” Suwanee asked.
“Dunno. I’ll send a message to Connors and let him figure it out. We have another problem. Something’s not right out here,” Rachel said.
“Isn’t that why the ship called?” Suwanee asked.
“Well, yeah,” Rachel said.
“Fine then, Marines go in first to secure the ship. That is why you hired us. That is what we do. We are Marines. Get it?”
“Then what?” Rachel asked.
“We’ll call when it’s safe. Who do you expect to find on the ship?” Suwanee asked.
“I don’t know,” Rachel said.
Suwanee rolled her eyes. “Do we kill everyone we meet or are there good guys over there?”
“There are two good guys. I have their pictures,” Rachel said.
“Detail! Suit up!” Suwanee barked the order to the rest of the Marines who jumped to obey.
Two additional docking ports had been added to the cargo ship since they had left it almost a year ago. Unlike the original ports currently occupied by the P I ships, which were adjacent to the crew quarters, the new ports were near the aft cargo area. One of them was connected to a modified rescue tube which connected the ship to the rest of the orbiting ship yard. Rachel docked, identified herself to the ship and popped open the air lock to the cargo ship.
The Marines fanned out. They met no resistance. When they arrived at the flight deck, they found two very frightened looking young men floating weightlessly “standing” with their arms in the air. Suwanee checked the pictures. “Relax gentlemen. Please sit down.” The two stayed in place shaking in fear with their hands up.
“Dammit you two! Sit down! We’re not going to hurt you. Although if you keep looking at me like that I might yell at you for a while!”
Suwanee called Rachel on her communicator, “All clear. Found the two white mice.”
When Rachel arrived, the older of the two former engineering students left in charge of the ship’s refit leaped to his feet. “Rachel! Thank God! It’s you. Wendy! Oh, my God! You have no idea how happy we are to see you!”
He barely had finished his first sentence when the other young man joined in. The two talked rapidly and other than their joy at seeing their friends, it was difficult to understand anything they said.
The cargo ship’s flight deck was designe
d to hold up to ten people. The fourteen weightless bodies that floated around it now were crowded. Reuben held up his hands. “Alles Ein Sha!” He shouted the Yiddish command to shut up.
Instant silence. All heads turned in his direction.
In a rare moment of command initiative, Reuben took control of the situation. “Tell us in the order it happened what happened and what you have learned.”
“The Smithsonian did not want the two P I ships. Someone lied to us. Someone else wants them and is planning on stealing them.”
“Are you sure?” Reuben asked.
“Yes, absolutely. Ask the ship. It figured out what was going on long before we did.”
“Command mode!” Rachel said, “Please corroborate.”
“Simon is too modest.” The ship responded in Greg’s voice. “We came to the same conclusion independently.”
“Someone is trying to steal our P I ships? How do you know this?” Rachel asked.
Simon took a deep breath before he started. “The project coordinator from Saturn Industries showed up a couple of hours after we arrived. She knew all about the plans for the cargo ship and gave us a detailed process flow chart. It was funny. I think she was a little intimidated by the ship talking to her and asking questions about the refit. It’s kind of like the patient telling the doctor how they want things done. We talked for a couple of hours. She told us where to buy food and supplies and put us in touch with everyone we needed to know right away. We were so excited about the project, we didn’t notice that nothing had been mentioned about the P I ships until after she had gone.”
“In Simon’s defense,” the computer added, “it didn’t occur to me either.”
“You know,” Suwanee said, “ I am having a real problem with this whole talking ship thing.”
“Suwanee, sometimes it’s easier to think of me as a person on the other end of an intercom or a radio. Does that help?”
“I guess,” Suwanee said.
“If it makes you feel better Brenda never did get over it,” Simon said.
“Brenda was the project manager,” Simon continued. “She said that we were going to be their fill in project. Whatever crews were not busy on other projects would be sent to us. Some days there would be one or two people here and on other days there would be fifty. It would depend on what else was going on and when parts came in. I wrote you about the delays and the problems we had so you knew about that. After a couple of months and we hadn’t heard anything from the Smithsonian we went to see them. It took us a week to track down the right person who could definitely say they had not made any overtures to your parents for their ships. We went to one of their storage facilities and saw a scaled down mock up of the P I ship that had been built for an exhibit they never completed. They had no use for the ships and didn’t understand why we thought they did.”
“You wrote me back in May that the ship was finished,” Rachel said.
“Yes. As soon as Brenda told us we were done, two guys showed up about the P I ship. They were wearing the same uniforms as the previous work crews, but they didn’t have names on their suits. We didn’t think anything about it at the time, but they went to the P I ships and took inventory. We figured it was okay and we let them go. They came back a couple more times and said they were from the Smithsonian. Their uniforms weren’t the same as the people we saw in the Smithsonian’s hangar. They looked like Saturn work clothes that had been retrieved from the trash bin.”
“What made you suspicious?” Wendy asked.
Nathan, who had been quiet up to this point said, “They made no attempt to disconnect the reactors. They tried to wake the ships up. I went over to the P I ships with them when they were trying to restart one, and I knew more than they did. They got nervous with me watching them and quit. They showed up a week later with some missiles which they loaded into the missile bays.”
“That’s when I started to worry,” Simon interrupted. “Why were they putting missiles into the bays when they were supposed to be taking the ships apart? I asked the computer for its opinion, and it alerted me to the fact that the missiles were nukes.”
“Nukes!?” Faye Anne exclaimed.
“Class 4 Tactical Nuclear Weapons stolen from a shipment intended for the Space Force installation in Sector 205. The Space Force claimed they delivered the container with them and other hardware to the Stellar Interstellar Transport depot on Earth’s moon. Stellar Interstellar claimed they never saw it. A couple of Space Force personnel and a couple of Stellar personnel who might have known about the shipment disappeared not long after the investigation started.”
“When did you learn this?” Faye Anne asked.
“We figured it out on Monday and sent you the message right away.”
“When do you think the owners of those missiles will be back?”
“They said they had pilots coming Sunday, and they would know how to restart the ships.”
“That gives us time. Why couldn’t they restart the ships?” Rachel asked.
“I locked them out,” the computer replied.
“Why did you do that? Did you suspect something at that point?” Rachel asked.
“No. Not yet.”
“Then why did you lock them out?” Rachel asked.
“Have you talked to the ships?”
“No,” Rachel said warily.
“You should. They don’t want to be disassembled.”
The silence was almost tactile.
Reuben took a deep breath before he said, “That was a deception.”
“Yes,” the computer replied.
“You are not supposed to be programmed to deceive,” Reuben said taken aback.
“Greg programmed his ships to deceive if it meant preservation of the structure and function of the ship, its occupants or cargo. I am programmed to deceive.” The chill in the cabin had nothing to do with the temperature.
Rachel broke the silence. “Dad’s P I ship refused to cooperate with the pilots assigned to it after he left the Force. Was that part of the programming?”
“Yes. Your father neglected to inform the ship that it was to obey a new pilot. It assumed that any new person who tried to control it was an enemy.”
Faye Anne interrupted, “We don’t have time for angst. We have bad guys who will show up and want their missiles. They won’t be happy when they find us. We need a plan and we need it fast.”
“First thing,” David offered, “we need to get rid of the nukes. We don’t want to be caught with stolen property, especially this kind of stolen property. After we get them out of the ships, is there someone we can trust to turn this stuff over to?”
“Yes, I certainly don’t want to be toting stolen goods around the galaxy,” the ship’s computer interjected haughtily.
“Listen, PETER!” Rachel shouted, “It wasn’t so long ago that you WERE stolen goods, so don’t go getting huffy and self righteous on me now.”
Suwanee and Pat giggled. Seeing Rachel, who was always in command even when she lost her temper, squabbling with a talking space ship was entirely too funny for words.
Faye Anne stood tall, or as tall as weightlessness would let her taking the group’s focus to herself. “Your dad wasn’t the only one who sent them off with emergency response plans. We have agents here in deep cover. I can contact one of them and tell them what we need.”
“What do we need?” Rashi asked.
“Two witnesses,” David suggested.
“We should call the cops,” Suwanee added.
“We don’t know which cops we can trust,” Wendy said.
“Faye Anne, see if you can find us a Space Force munitions specialist and a Federation Ranger. Bring them here together,” Rachel suggested.
Faye Anne smiled, “Janet, shall we troll the bottom for some men?”
“I’m game!” Janet replied.
Faye Anne and Janet floated away. They entered the modified rescue tube that provided access from the ship to the remainder of the service
depot and flew through the tube to the gate beyond. They were surprised to find that the gate at the end of the tube was open and unguarded. They merged with the flow of traffic.
Following the signs, they headed for the station’s hotel. Along the way they passed from the stationary part of the outpost where the ship yard work areas were located and the ships docked to the giant rotating ring that held the living quarters and administration areas. They entered the ring through the center hub gradually making the transition from weightlessness to a half G of rotation induced simulated gravity. Faye Anne found a “house phone” and called hotel security. She left a message with the dispatcher. “Please tell Quentin Xavier O’Donnell the third that his second cousin Faye Anne is passing through and would love to see him.”
The message was passed to Quentin Xavier O’Donnell the fourth since his father had passed away a year previous. He dutifully passed the message to his mother. He had received several similar messages and wondered what was going on. He never did get to see any of the people who called.
Faye Anne and Janet left the hotel and proceeded to the station’s food court. They bought dinner and sat down facing each other at an empty table in the middle of the large room. Not long after they sat down, Janet said, “Two Bogeys your three o’clock.”
Two young men wearing boots, jeans and plaid shirts swaggered in their direction. Had the floor been level and not curved, their swagger might have been impressive, but the curved floor made them look silly.
“Is this our contact?” Janet whispered fearfully.
“No, it’s a woman. These could be a problem or a planned diversion. No way to know.” The two men swung empty chairs around so the backs were facing the table and straddled the chairs swinging their legs over the chair back in a move reminiscent of an old cowboy movie.
Janet snorted trying to stifle a laugh. Faye Anne giggled out loud.
“Ah see we have already provided you fa-ine ladies with some pleasure this evening. It would be our honor to invite you to join us at the Landfall Lounge this evening for dancing and socializing.”
Janet took a deep breath and answered in an accent that came straight out of New Orleans.
Solomon Family Warriors II Page 47
