A Sudden Departure (April Book 9)

by Mackey Chandler

  The dessert beat Lindsey to the door. The courier, Eric Pennington, was actually Lindsey's brother, but if he knew who was going to enjoy the dessert he didn't let on. The two didn't have a lot of overlap in their interests just like she and Lindsey, but he was much younger and didn't share her artistic talent. When she peeked it was baked apples, still warm, with a cup of caramel sauce to top them.

  Lindsey might be a little bit of a pain in the butt, but her work was worth it. April was wowed. Rather than roll the proof up and weigh the corners down on her table Lindsey brought a full sized print on a foam board she could tack on the wall with a sticky blob. April could just see her wrestling that along the crowded corridor and into the elevator. But it was magnificent. April liked it even better than the first drawing. The lighting was more dramatic.

  Chuck Fenton was turned the opposite direction from the first drawing, to show the pin-up on the other side of his helmet. Happy had just finished tacking a hull plate in place and still had the torch in his hand. He was full face on to show his own helmet a bit different than the other drawing. There was a plate number and orientation marks handwritten on the corner of the plate with a vacuum marker.

  "I got the writing on the plate corner from a historic photo," Lindsey said, "so I'm sure about that. The scooter in the background is accurate to within a few months. I don't think they changed the working models fast enough to make it out of period."

  April was impressed she rendered the scooter from the rear with all the complex piping of the engine in full view instead of the relatively simple cab. She told Lindsey so.

  "Oh, that end is much more interesting," she gushed. "I got really interested and had to find the engineering drawing files and find out what all those tubes and shapes did."

  That actually impressed April even more. She excused herself to get them tea. She preferred coffee, but would drink tea with Lindsey. When it was made strong, the way Lindsey liked it, it wasn't half bad. April didn't ask if she wanted dessert, just heated it briefly and put it in front of her so she couldn't politely decline. She also had a squeeze bottle of honey kept just for Lindsey. She wondered if the girl had any idea what it cost now?

  Lindsey mentioned she'd tried to find Happy in the com directory and he had no listing. When April offered to forward a file she wondered why she couldn't show the art to Happy? She teased and asked if he was becoming a hermit? It was a perfectly reasonable question, but April hated to reveal he was on his way to Mars. She wasn't sure why, it wasn't a secret, so April reluctantly admitted he was away from Home for an extended period.

  But Lindsey persisted and asked a series of questions that reminded April why she hesitated to let Lindsey get a foot in the door. She was really nosy. It would have offended April to be reminded how many people felt the same about her. Pretty soon April was sure she was fishing for material for her big history book project too. That seemed like a good idea, in theory. In reality April didn't want a lot of the stupid things she'd done to be public knowledge, and recorded for posterity, until she was safely dead. A long time in the future she hoped.

  Once Lindsey finished her baked apple, eating the core and wastefully leaving the pastry, she took her sweet time with a second cup of tea. When she showed signs of slowing down April pleaded mostly fictitious work to wrap it up and see her out the door. She realized then Lindsey had left the proof print. She hadn't explicitly said that was April's until the original came, but April wasn't about to call and try to catch her still nearby to ask about it. It would just give her an excuse to come back.

  April poured the last of the tea and got over a half cup, leaned back and regarded the print on the wall. She decided it was so nice, it was well worth straining to be briefly gracious.

  * * *

  "The Chariot will dock again in four days," Jeff told April. "I'm not making anybody happy, but I insisted we have the use of her for five days. The drone is refitted with a navigational camera, better software and a much more powerful pulse generating radio. We're going to find out how it does with small progressive increases in field intensity, and we're going to point it at a few distant masses like Saturn and Neptune. Also we intend to find out what happens when it is aimed slightly off dead on to a large mass."

  "Are you aiming it at the mass, or where the light from it says it is?" April asked.

  Jeff looked a little surprised. "Planets go slower the further they are from the sun. Even at a few light hours I doubt we are that far off the center of mass to just aim optically."

  "Could be," April agreed. "It was just something that popped into my head."

  "But you raise an interesting question for stars," Jeff said. "They are much further away, but some of them have relatively high velocities. I'll have to calculate their motion over years, and how far you need to lead them for their current position."

  "You guys go ahead. I don't think I'd find that sort of detail work interesting, and I don't think I'd have much to contribute," April said.

  "But who will make coffee and serve sandwiches?" Jeff asked.

  April said nothing, just started pecking away at her pad.

  "What are you doing?" Jeff asked.

  "I'm looking for the video I took when you had too much to drink and couldn't get your pad out of your pocket because you pulled your pants on backwards."

  "OK, it was a snarky thing to say but totally meant in jest. If you post that to the gossip boards it will just humiliate me."

  "I wasn't going to post it to the gossip boards," April assured him.

  "Oh good, thank you."

  "I thought it would go on a humor site much better. You were tottering a little and looked so befuddled when your hand couldn't find the opening. It was really cute."

  "You're going to make me grovel aren't you?" Jeff realized.

  "No, just make amends," April said. "Wholeheartedly."

  * * *

  The second file caught up with Happy and he spent some time examining it in his cabin. He had a fairly good sized screen and sat on his bunk looking at it. As far as he could remember it was accurate. After a few years, things like when a particular welding torch hand-piece changed models sort of blurred together.

  If anything was not absolutely true she got the feel of it dead on. The pose was believable and the lighting true to life. Most artists couldn't get the stark contrasts and sharp shadows right. The colors were true too, both the helmets and construction materials.

  After texting his approval he had to decide which to leave on the screen. He liked them both. After going back and forth between them a few times he finally decided to just have it switch them every night while he slept.

  * * *

  "Barak sent a text while you were doing trials," April told Jeff. "He knew you weren't here but said to share it when you got back."

  "Well yeah, he lives with my pilot, so he'd know," Jeff agreed.

  "He apologized for not getting back to us. He said the next day Mo sent him a text and begged him to cut short his stay if he wasn't needed any more. Did you tell Mo he was sneaking a few days off in while he had the chance?" April asked.

  "Not exactly. I didn't call Mo up and volunteer it, to spoil his break. Mo tracked me down and wanted to verify if I was done with Barak for now, because he wanted him back. I wasn't going to lie and say I still needed him," Jeff said. He scrunched up his nose and had a sudden thought. "Mo called me late the next day, so I have no idea how long Barak intended to stay."

  "I see. I guess he forgot all about breakfast at the very least. I certainly wouldn't expect you to lie to Mo for Barak. Down that road is trouble for both of you," April said. "I guess the constant work with little break was getting to Barak, but leaving Mo shorthanded was irresponsible. I think we just have to accept that Barak is still a bit immature and we better allow for the possibility he'll be that way when we use him."

  That conclusion surprised Jeff so much he didn't know how to react. April condemned what Barak did without rejecting him totally.
Her flexibility never failed to amaze him. He had to think fast to be as gracious, because he didn't want to compete with Barak. There was certainly trouble for both of them down that road too. He even needed Barak as an asset.

  "When he had to, on the Yuki-onna, he rose to the occasion," Jeff reminded her. "It was a life or death situation. But it doesn't surprise me he has a hard time maintaining the same urgency day after day on the moon. It can't possibly feel so urgent after some time."

  "So you'd still consider him for crew?" April asked.

  "Unless you somehow envision him not staying focused in that environment, yes."

  April didn't answer quickly. "No," she answered after a pause. "I think he would be better on a ship. It's very structured. Not constantly changing like working for Mo, getting bounced from this to that and loaned out to other bosses. But we need to watch him," April concluded.

  "We have time to do that before the Hringhorni launches," Jeff said.

  "Ah, you do love your mythology," April said.

  "That's the name I'm considering right now. Better than the Pedro Escobar."

  "Far less political, fictional and safely in the past, to not irritate people," April agreed.

  * * *

  Happy was spending more time than necessary, more time than he really wanted to in his cabin. He was just tired of his two shipmates finding thin excuses to start a conversation, and then steer it around to politics. They didn't use that word, but that's what it amounted to.

  The last time he'd been cornered by the fellow with the military faction the fellow had intimated he should identify with them, which he took to mean join-up, because the people in the construction gang were heavily ex-military. He branded it a matter of safety to be surrounded by your allies.

  Maybe he took it wrong, but it sounded like a veiled threat. Happy dug out his duffle from the bottom of his locker and took his spare computer from the bottom of the stuff he hadn't unpacked to use every day. He lifted the screen and powered it up. Inside the case it did have a small computer, but not as powerful as usually fit in a full sized unit with a hinged screen.

  It also had two passwords. One to start the computer operating and another that unlocked the keyboard so it could be raised. Happy entered the second password, raised the keyboard and looked at the interior to reassure himself nobody had been into it.

  The functioning computer occupied a quarter of the inside to the left and back corner. The other L shaped space had a foam liner and the lightest current model of laser pistol Singh Industries sold. There was even room for a very thin light holster. This was the fourth one he'd owned, April always got him an upgrade when they brought out a new model.

  Happy didn't put it out under his pillow, though he considered it. He just brought it up to the top of all the stuff in the bag where it was accessible. He left the top opening loose, not cinching the draw cord or closing the seal beneath it. On second thought he took it back out of the bag, relocked it, and enter the password again except for the last symbol. That way he could open it and press one key to retrieve it. He didn't think he'd need it, but he didn't get old and experienced working in lethal vacuum by failing to provide for every contingency.

  * * *

  "We'll refine it I'm sure, but we have a rough map of how low strength gravitational modulations produce micro-jumps," Jeff said. "Enough so we can navigate around the solar system without materializing in the core of Jupiter."

  "I'm not sure that would do Jupiter any good either," April said.

  "Jupiter is huge," Jeff said, shaking his head no. "I doubt it would even produce the Jovian equivalent of an earthquake. But it would certainly ruin your day. We did get a longer jump when aimed at Saturn. I was afraid to try it with Jupiter. But we got some good data aiming to miss Jupiter. The jump does curve to follow the shape of space and come out offset towards any big mass. I have a rough model to put in the computer, but you don't want to try to use it to jump so you emerge on an atmosphere grazing tangent. It's far from that accurate yet."

  "I have something I want you to do then," April said right away.

  "Certainly, if I can," Jeff offered.

  "You can run to the outer system so much easier with this tech. I want you to design some small drive units you can grapple on an asteroid and nudge it back towards the moon. It doesn't have to get here quickly, because nobody will be riding it. We should pick fairly small rocks that won't be seen by the sky watch until we are ready to run out and finish guiding them in. You can put a transponder on them coded to just our ping to activate them. In three or four years as they start coming in range we'll make some decent money grabbing them and selling the materials."

  "That would work," Jeff said. "It would make missions like Barak did, going out and riding huge rocks or snowballs back, obsolete." He stopped and had that deep thoughtful look he got occasionally.

  "Having second thoughts on it?" April asked.

  "Not second thoughts, different thoughts," Jeff said, scrunching up his eyebrows.

  "How small would something need to be, and how close, to be caught up in the field and dragged along with the ship? I mean bring the whole thing back instead of just starting it coming back slowly. How much mass and how big a volume can be made to jump? Some of these asteroids are little more than a gravel pile. If you subject them to tidal forces they'll fall apart. It's complicated. I'll have to think on it a bit before I'd even have any idea how to test it. And we want to be sure we can control them. If we brought a rock into the Earth-Moon system and accidently dropped it on Earth they would be rightly peeved."

  "Any way to make your field bigger or shaped differently near the ship?" April asked.

  Yeah. . . I can think of one way, but I'd need a lot more of my Mum's fluid," Jeff said. "That goes on the someday list. Right now I just want to swap the drive back to the framework I can grapple on the Chariot again, not start altering it."

  "If you are going to keep switching it back and forth you should have Dave put on a manually operated grapple and a post on the drone, so it's not such a big deal to swap them out," April said.

  "We could do that, but it would have to be a non-standard very low mass grapple post." Jeff said. "You know, you're very practical."

  "That's not grammatical, but I take your meaning. Thank you."

  Chapter 24

  Jonathan was sitting by the stove, sharpening his ax. It was warm now, almost too warm, because he'd been able to cut some limbs and deadfall finally to feed the stove extravagantly. The snow was receding around the chalet and the slope behind them. It was still deep in the shadows and on the north side of the hill across from them.

  In the last three days he'd felled seven trees and trimmed the limbs from two of them. Six of them he got to fall pretty much up-slope and he hoped to drag them down most of the way to the cabin with a cable and a come-along. The one that didn't fall right was slotted between standing timber, and he might just leave it for now until warm weather and cut it up in place.

  The ragged snarl of the vuvuzela actually made him jump, but then smile. He still looked downhill carefully with the binoculars from further back in the living room, not showing himself at the window. There were three horses down at the bottom of their meadow, it would never be a lawn again he suspected. He'd emptied an old washtub that had been used as a flower pot, but the bottom was rusted through so he hung it as a gong. However, Victor Foy was smart to use the horn. That told him they had visitors and who.

  Jonathan was concerned with the size of the party until he looked closer. The second horse held a thin man with a beard. But the third horse held a woman and young girl, which helped him relax. Then with a start he focused the binoculars with extra care. It was their daughter.

  Looking back at the bearded man he decided that it could be his son-in-law. But bearded and forty of fifty pounds lighter he sure looked different. The fellow had already started on a middle aged paunch early the last time he'd seen him. He had a pistol stuck in his pants on o
ne side and a pair of bulky tan gloves on the other. Jon doubted he'd ever touched a pistol before the day, and he was too dainty back then to do anything that needed gloves. Both horses had some baggage lashed on across their rump , and when his horse got nervous and side stepped a little Jon saw the thin man had a small backpack.

  "It's Cindy," Jon confirmed to his wife Jenny who'd joined him in the living room. "I think it'd be safe to walk down with me if you want."

  "Why don't you just wave them to come on up?" Jenny asked.

  "Sure, that makes sense," Jonathan said, embarrassed he'd grow so cautious.

  Victor might have been of a like mind, because he had Cindy, with their daughter Eileen sitting in front of her, lead the way up the gentle slope to the chalet. They tied the horses up on the porch railing and Vic took the precaution of hobbling them in case they pulled that loose.

  Jenny hugged the woman and girl, too overcome with emotion to speak.

  "There's hot water on the stove if you'd like a cup to warm you up," Jonathan offered. "We don't have any coffee or tea left."

  "I doubt if anybody in the county does," Victor said.

  "No, we saved something for this special occasion," Barney the bearded son-in-law said. He held out small plastic jar of instant coffee.

  "Are you sure?" Victor asked. "That might buy you a set of digging tools or a saw or even a calf or chickens when we start trading in the summer."

  Jonathan looked concerned, and then agreed. "The man's right. As much as I'd love to have a cup, save it to trade to some rich person later on."

  Barney laughed. "Our definition of rich has changed, hasn't it?"

  "Just so you know. The other horses are borrowed from neighbors," Vic said. "They'd be owed if something happened to them. I'm not personally that rich."