The A T F agent echoed the Captain saying, “We just don’t have the people. We’re a spread too thin. We need the Space Force to help us instead of running off making trouble were no trouble needs to be made. We need your help. We need you on our side and we don’t see that.”
The other agent quietly said, “We’re doing all we can and we know it’s not enough. Maybe when you graduate from the Academy, you can convince them that we need help. I don’t see it happening. As long as they continue to make wars we don’t need, we will be left without the resources we need to keep the people safe.”
Rachel looked around at the men and said, “We are five pilots all of whom were trained in hand-to-hand combat. I have five Special Forces Marines and theoretically nobody knows we’re here. I also have two engineers who are not trained in combat of any kind. People do know for sure they’re here. Whoever is coming for these missiles will come expecting to see two nice but defenseless engineers unless your people tell them otherwise. If we remove the missiles now, we run the risk of springing an information leak and having our intended prey flee. So, we will leave the missiles here for now. That way there are no leaks. But when they come and I call for you, I want you and your people to come and put these people under arrest and take them away and take the missiles with you when you do.”
The captain nodded and said, “We can do that. After you capture them we will take them away and see that justice is done.”
Rachel continued, “After we capture them and you take them away, you need to fix the leaks in your system that allowed this to happen. I think someone on your staff knows that something is going on and isn’t saying anything to you. You need to fix that.”
The Captain nodded. He was not used to being called to account by an Academy student even if that student had more time in combat and more combat kills than he did. “We will address it.”
Changing her tone, Rachel said, “I think you need to go and let us prepare for our visitors.”
Rachel picked up the wiring harnesses and handed them to the munitions specialist said, “You take these. I want no accidents.”
The mission specialist smiled and said, “Yes ma’am. I completely understand. No accidents. Thank you.”
Rachel smiled back and said, “I’ll call you when it’s done.”
The four men and Mrs. O’Donnell prepared to leave. The man had been gone about ten minutes when Mrs. O’Donnell returned to the ship. “I think you pushed them too far,” she said to Rachel.
“I may have,” Rachel replied. “But my father says sometimes you have to push bureaucrats pretty hard to make them do anything and the fact that I could get on to the station and for Faye Anne to get onto the station is easily as we all did means there’s a problem and I think somebody needs to know about it.”
“You have no idea how much damage you have done! This is a stop on the path for refugee women leaving abusive husbands. You have closed that door. How many women will die at the hands of their supposed loved ones because you have blocked their escape?”
Rachel stood with her mouth open.
“You mean you run a kind of underground railroad for abused women?” Suwanee asked.
Mrs. O’Donnell turned to face her. “This is one step on the way. New St. Louis is the next. When this ship left it was going to take a load of refugees with it, but that’s ruined now.”
Suwanee looked pensive. “If my mother had known about this, my dad might not have killed her. If he hadn’t killed her, I wouldn’t have killed him. If I hadn’t killed my dad, I damn sure wouldn’t have joined the Marines. If I hadn’t joined the Marines and tried to kill every man that laid a hand on me, I wouldn’t have been assigned to Rachel. If I hadn’t been assigned to Rachel, I wouldn’t be trying to figure out how to save an organization that could have saved my mother’s life.”
“You killed your father?”
“Judge ruled self defense, but it wasn’t. Made me join the Marines instead of sending me to jail. Smart guy. Even he doesn’t know how smart. Maybe some day I’ll tell him.”
“Maybe it’s not ruined,” Wendy said, changing the subject.
Everyone turned to look at her. “Dad knows about the railroad. We’ve carried enough refugees from New St. Louis. He understands. There has to be a way to tighten things up enough that nukes can’t be smuggled through here, but people can.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Faye Anne challenged.
“I don’t know, but I’ll bet your dad does,” Wendy said thoughtfully.
“Do you think he would come?” Faye Anne asked.
“If Mrs. O’Donnell asks him to, I think he would,” Wendy suggested.
“Yes, he probably would come if I asked him.”
“We now have two immediate problems to deal with,” Rachel said. “We have a cargo container with nukes to dispose of and a boatload of refugees to evacuate. Not to mention two whiny fussy P I ships who want to go home.”
“Rachel,” Reuben interrupted softly, “I know strategy is your department, but I have an idea. Right now there is only one cargo container attached to the ship. The nukes are in it. As soon as whoever is coming for the P I ships realizes that the nukes have been removed, they will know exactly where to look. If they have accomplices in EVA suits, it would be a simple matter to blast open the cargo container and remove the nukes to a back up vessel. The refugee shipping transports look like regular cargo containers for obvious reasons. If we have a fully loaded ship, they don’t know which one has the nukes and it becomes a shell game. Also if we start loading like we are leaving, maybe we can pressure them into moving before they’re ready and catch them off guard with a smaller force.”
“Good plan!” Mrs. O’Donnell enthused. “I’ll get the refugees moving.” She was almost out the door when a young woman in a Saturn Industries work uniform appeared that the air lock.
“Brenda! How nice to see you. I understand you did a first class job on the refit of this ship.”
“Uh, Mrs. O’Donnell, uh, why are you here?” Brenda asked.
“Simon’s mother was a family friend, and I have been meaning to visit for a long time. Since I heard he was leaving soon, I figured I should come before he left,” Mrs. O’Donnell replied.
Brenda’s face went white. “You can’t leave yet.” She went directly to Simon. “Simon we have a problem. Your ship may be in danger if you leave.” She had been so focused on reaching Simon that she did not realize that there were other people in the cabin with him. She looked around. She trembled, frightened. “Who are these people, Simon? Are you in danger? What’s happening?” She saw the Marines and backed away against the wall.
Rachel extended her hand and said, “Hello Brenda, I am Rachel Solomon. Simon told us you took good care of him and the ship.”
Wendy extended her hand and said, “Hi Brenda, I’m Wendy Solomon. You are safe with us.”
Brenda opened her eyes wide and said, “Greg and Avi Solomon?”
Wendy smiled and said, “They are our parents.”
“Oh, my god! Then you own this ship!” Brenda exclaimed.
“Yes, we do,” Rachel said.
“Oh, my god! You are in so much danger!” Brenda said.
Wendy smiled and said, “Danger has a way of finding us, and we have a way of finding it. What kind of danger are we in that we don’t already know about?”
Brenda blinked at Wendy’s calm response. She reached into her pocket and said, “Look at these bolts. When you look at the bolts they look the same. What if I told you if you scrape those two bolts together the coating will come off to come off the one in your left hand?”
Wendy scraped the bolts together and the coating came off the one in her left hand.
“I discovered these in one of my worker’s tool-kits. The one in your right hand is the properly specified bolt to use on this and all the other ships we service. The other one is a counterfeit made to look like the real ones. If you put a wrench on the fake ones the coating
will come right off. So whoever is putting these on the ships knows they’re not the right ones. Someone on my staff is using the wrong bolts, and they know it, and some of these bolts may be on your ship! God! Simon if you left and something happened because I didn’t see it! I couldn’t live with myself!”
Reuben gently took the bolts from Wendy. He carefully scraped them with his fingernail. More coating came off the one that the coating had come off before. He examined it carefully for a minute and then handed them to Rashi who repeated the examination as everybody watched in silence. Rashi said, “If these bolts were used in critical places, the ship could come apart in the transition to hyper drive. How many ships do you think have these bolts?”
“I don’t know,” Brenda said. “I spotted them today. I don’t know how long this has been going on.”
Wendy took a deep breath and said, “I think we let the captain go too early.”
“Maybe,” Rachel said, “and maybe not. Maybe he knows what’s going on. It’s possible he has this under investigation and this is the break he needs.”
“Do you believe that?” Faye Anne asked.
“I am more inclined to believe the whole thing has slipped by him unobserved,” Rachel said.
“That’s a frightening thought,” Suwanee observed.
“Brenda, have there been any unexplained accidents recently?” Rachel asked.
“There are accidents out here all the time. It is an unforgiving environment,” Brenda replied.
“That’s for sure,” Simon agreed.
“It’s strange though,” Brenda thought out loud. “For the last few months, people with long perfect safety records have died in bizarre accidents. We’ve had so many reactor accidents that evacuations are as common as a hurricane in the Caribbean. It’s been getting progressively worse.”
“Brenda,” Suwanee asked, “how many people know you found this bolt?”
“Two of my men,” Brenda said.
“And one of the men is the one who’s toolbox you found these bolts in?” Suwanee said.
“Yes,” Brenda replied.
Suwanee pursed her lips and said, “Then we can assume that the man whose box you found the bolts in is one of the bad guys, and they know you know. They’re not gonna be happy about that.”
Mrs. O’Donnell said, “Brenda, you are in a lot of danger.”
Brenda paled as Suwanee said, “Is there any way we can get her out of here?”
Brenda clung to Simon. “Where would I go? I have no family. All I have is my daughter.”
“What about your husband?” Mrs. O’Donnell asked.
“That worthless piece of garbage left me two years ago. I haven’t heard from him since.”
Simon said, “Brenda, if I’d known your husband wasn’t around, I’d have told you this sooner. I have loved you almost since the day I met you.”
“That’s the truth,” the ship’s computer interjected.
“PETER! Stay out of this!” Rachel shouted.
“Just trying to help,” the computer replied.
“Really?” Brenda asked.
“Yes, really,” Simon said. “Collect little Kelly and bring her here. We can start a life together somewhere else. I am sure good shipwrights can always find work.”
“What about your parents? I’m not Jewish,” Brenda said.
“They’ll be fine. Neither is my mother,” Simon replied.
“You can’t go alone,” Suwanee said. “We’ll give you an escort.”
“Are you sure?” Brenda asked.
“We’re Marines. It’s what we do. You fix space ships. We do this,” Suwanee grinned.
“Thank you.”
Suwanee said, “Detail!”
The other Marines came to attention.
Suwanee said, “Get ready to move out. Pat and I will lead, the rest of you follow.”
“Ready!” they replied.
Suwanee handed Brenda a miniature communicator that fit over her ear. “I don’t care if it looks stupid, you keep talking to us. You give us directions how to get to your place, and let us know if there’s anything suspicious going on. Got it?”
Brenda smiled weakly. “Got it.”
“When we get to your quarters we’ll get your daughter, and we need to get you back to the ship as fast as we can. We can protect you here. We can’t protect you there. Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Move out.”
Mrs. O’Donnell looked at them ready to leave and said, “I have a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it. I need to leave.”
Suwanee said, “Do you need protection?”
Mrs. O’Donnell said, “No, thank you. I can take care of myself, but Brenda needs protection. Take good care of her and her little girl.”
Simon and Nathan immediately climbed into their E V A suits and began inspecting the bolts that had been installed during the recent modifications to the ship.
Reuben and Rashi went to the crew quarters to rest. When Simon and Nathan were too tired to continue they would take over and alternate shifts for as long as it took to find the improper bolts.
Rachel, Wendy and Faye Anne went to the flight deck to work with the computer to develop strategies for dealing with the multitude of possible scenarios that lay before them. Some of the scenarios involved attacks by or pursuit of other space craft so they decided to wake up the P I ships.
“I told you so,” Rachel’s ship chided her.
“Play dead. If someone you don’t know tries to start anything, don’t let them. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“If Reuben, Rashi, Faye Anne or any of our Marine escorts tells you to take them away, you do it. Even if it means leaving me behind. If Brenda or her little girl hides here, you protect them. You hide them. If anything goes wrong, you jump into hyper as fast as you can. Send a courier to Dad before you jump and get to New St. Louis as fast as you can.”
“New St. Louis? Not Eretz?”
“No. Contact Ellie Mae or Elvira and call for help.”
“I knew it was a bad idea to take me apart.”
“You were right. Now be a good little warship and do what I told you.”
“Yes, Rachel.”
“Oh, and alert me of approaching ships.”
“Yes, Rachel. You’ll be glad you decided to keep us.”
“ARGHHH”
ACADEMY - CHAPTER FOUR
DARIUS AND LIONEL RETURNED before the others carrying a large covered plastic trash can between them. Strange noises emanated from the can. They dragged the can to the common area in the cargo bay where so long ago, the first load of refugees had congregated and become the beginnings of a community. Other refugees had followed, but the first group had left an indelible mark on the ship and its operators. Faye Anne met them at the airlock and followed them to the hold.
“Weightlessness is your friend!” Darius shouted.
“This much dead weight would be a bitch on earth,” Lionel agreed.
“Even if he is alive!” Darius shouted into the barrel, “for now!”
The contents of the barrel squirmed desperately.
Rachel and Wendy arrived.
“What’s going on?” Rachel asked.
“We got us a backstabber,” Darius gloated.
“Well, a wannabee backstabber,” Lionel corrected.
They pulled a man out of the trash can and tied him to the cargo tie points on the walls. They tied him off the floor spreadeagled in the center of the common area. Had they been in gravity, the position would have been extremely painful. In weightlessness, it merely rendered him immobile.
“He tried to stab Brenda in the back with this tiny pig sticker. If we’d been five feet further back, he would have gotten her,” Darius said.
“Which is why we weren’t five feet further back and why having Marines around is a good idea,” Lionel said.
“Now you watch Paddy here till we get back. We have to go collect the ladies.”
“Paddy?” Fa
ye Anne asked.
“After a cop I used to know,” Lionel said.
Lionel floated away first. Darius was not far behind him.
Rachel immediately called the Space Force Captain and told him what had happened. Within a few minutes the ATF agent showed up with two officers. Rachel lead them back to the cargo hold.
The agent looked the trussed up prisoner in the face and said, “Hello Dubya.” He turned to Rachel and said, “You won’t get much out of him. Common criminal, petty thief, drug addict, small time enforcer. He probably doesn’t know who hired him.”
He pulled the gag from the man’s mouth. The man screamed that he was being mistreated and held against his will and he didn’t do anything and they should let him go before he called his lawyer.
The agent leaned over and smelled the man’s breath. “Whew! Where do you get that stuff? It’s nasty. At least if you had to do drugs you could use something that didn’t stink so much.”
He turned to Rachel again. “What do you want me to do with him?”
“Take him away, but you can’t charge him with attempted murder because that will alert whoever hired him that we know what is going on. Can you hold him on a lesser charge?”
“Public intoxication will hold him for 48 hours,” the agent said as he stuffed the gag back in the man’s mouth.
“Gentlemen, take Dubya to the brig on the charge of public intoxication.” The two officers untied the man and hauled him away.
“Thank you,” Rachel said, “I am sorry I was so hard on you before.”
“We’re doing the best we can with what we have.”
He quietly left through the air lock.
Simon and Nathan inspected every inch of the ship they had worked on since they had arrived almost a year ago. They started with the most recent installations and worked their way back. They found a few of the suspect bolts and quickly replaced them. They determined based on where they found the bolts that the bolts had started appearing in early April. All bolts on all work done before April were the correct bolts. After April some of the bolts were the wrong bolts. The ship had been finished in May so only a limited amount of the ship had the potential for having the wrong bolts. After four hours of inspecting the ship, Nathan and Simon returned to the flight deck.
Solomon Family Warriors II Page 49
