The Long Black (The Black Chronicles Book 1)

by J. M. Anjewierden

  “Mary,” she said, linking back in to her sister.

  “You get the girl?”

  “That would be a no. How quickly can you finish up over there?”

  "At least an hour, and then however long the ore loading takes.”

  “Try and hurry up.”

  “Sis?”

  Helga closed her eyes and winced.

  “You ever figure out how the girl got into the bay in the first place?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. She couldn’t have used the door. . . Oh. Are you saying?”

  “It looks like the girl is in the Pale Moonlight’s crawlways.”

  “Well, shit.”

  For once Helga didn’t remind her sister to watch her language.

  ***

  She was going to kill her.

  It was that simple. The choice made perfect sense.

  They’d spent the last four hours tearing through the ship looking for one tiny girl. How she continued to elude the crew, the newest of which had lived onboard for several years, was as infuriating as it was baffling.

  The girl did have a few things going for her, of course. The bulk of the crew was still handling the loading procedures, or the critical systems. Making the manpower issues even worse was the fact that she had to station a goodly number of the crew at key points, to make sure the girl didn’t accidentally get into the really vital stuff. Modern, well-maintained ships would also have had motion and IR sensors in every compartment, but when you had to choose between fixing the internal sensors or the air scrubbers. . . well, priorities.

  At least the sensors near the outer hull worked, since they were the first warning if something hit them hard enough to pierce the fairly thin armor the freighter had, but by luck or design the girl hadn’t headed that way.

  At the moment Helga was searching one of the less-used storage bays, making no attempt to be quiet. She doubted she was fast enough to actually catch the girl given their relative ages, so she was serving as a ‘beater’ to try and force the girl towards the waiting crew who were still young and quick on their feet.

  Her helmet was retracted to keep from interfering with her hearing, and she’d pulled the earpiece attachment off her uplink so she could more easily keep abreast of what the crew was doing.

  Presently the quiet squawk of the all crew circuit sounded, and Helga stopped to listen.

  “She’s been in the aft mess hall.” It was Heather, the ship’s medic. Cooped up in the tiny medical wing of the central crew quarters she probably knew the crawlways least of any of the crew, so she had taken it on herself to keep an eye on the common areas.

  “You see her?” Helga asked, whispering into the tiny mic hanging off of the earpiece.

  “Not as such. But she was definitely here. Last five, ten minutes maybe?”

  “Right, she still has to be in the core somewhere. Seal off everything leading to the forward and rear sections, use the magnetic locks.” Helga waited until everyone confirmed the orders, and then added, “How do you know, Heather?”

  “Girl has a lot of moxie. Stole my blasted meal right off the table.”

  They really needed to find this girl, or at least get undocked. Something was going to blow up in their faces – probably literally, given the types of systems you could get at in the crawlways – and they’d find themselves explaining things to the station. Best case, the girl was turned over, and got whatever punishment attempted runaways got. Helga tried very hard not to speculate about what those would be. Worst case though? Worst case they assumed the crew was in on it and arrested some or all of them, or impounded the ship. Sure, eventually the crew’s home port would investigate, but there was no guarantee they’d intervene, and it would take months at least.

  Well, if the girl had been in the aft mess hall ten minutes ago, there was no way she was in this part of the ship. Helga took a moment to seal the scattered hatches in the room before exiting and sealing the door too.

  It was really going to be a hassle to go back through and unseal every single one of these hatches and doors. By their very nature they couldn’t be overridden remotely, nor all at once. Normally the mag locks were only used in cases of damage to a section required it be evacuated, especially when dealing with decompression.

  They could also be used against boarders – or cheeky stowaways – which had bumped them up the maintenance queue enough that they all reliably worked, at least so far. They had never before been used in that capacity, thank the gods. As with so many defensive measures it was always better to have them and not need them, than need them and not have them.

  “I think I saw something.” The voice cut in suddenly, scattering Helga’s thoughts. It sounded like Peter, where had she told him to look? Hadn’t he been in the hydroponics bay? She was moving fast.

  “John, Melly, you’re closest. Seal your doors and get over there to help him.”

  “I’ve got a hold of her,” Peter said after a moment, grunting with effort, “Stop fighting girl, we’re not going to hurt you.”

  “Almost there,” Melly chimed in, breathing heavily. Not the wisest thing to do, running through the corridors, given the number of low hanging conduits and patch jobs. They needed to get this over with, before someone got hurt.

  A loud thud came through the line, accompanied by some grumbling.

  “She’s headed your way,” Peter muttered after a moment, “I managed to get the crawlways sealed before she bolted.”

  “What happened?” Helga asked, “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m fine. Just stumbled. I am also the proud new owner of one really ratty sleeve.”

  Despite herself, Helga snorted in amusement.

  John laughed too, before adding in, “Really Peter, she’s half your size.”

  “In height, almost. Not in weight. And she’s stronger than she looks.”

  “Don’t forget, everyone, she’s from a heavy gravity world. Probably been doing a lot of manual labor to boot. Now stop yapping and nab her.” Helga sighed. She had made good time herself, and was almost to that section of the ship. It had been sealed off, of course, but she had the override codex in her uplink.

  Mary’s voice cut in as Helga entered the aft port crew section.

  “We’re all done here. You guys want to let us back in so we can shove off?”

  Helga groaned internally. She had gotten so wrapped up in the search that she had forgotten to keep someone on hand to let the last of the loading crew back in.

  “You can shove off; we’re running ourselves ragged here.” Helga couldn’t tell who said it, the com line was open to everyone at the moment, and he had pitched his voice lower, probably as much from annoyance as a desire to keep out from under Helga’s wrath.

  “Enough.” Helga said, her voice level and quiet.

  “Gloria, you’re closest to them. Get the door unsealed, quick. We don’t want anyone wondering why our people are loitering around outside with the job done.” She waited for Gloria’s affirmative before continuing, “Captain, the ship will be ready to undock as soon as the last of the crew is on board. I would advise we do so posthaste. Most of the crew spaces are in lockdown, but the engineers aren’t hindered in any way. We’ll have at least three hours before we get to the planetary gate to catch her.”

  “Is that enough time?” The captain’s voice didn’t betray any emotion, but then it never did. After all this time Helga could read him easily enough regardless. That was as blunt a criticism as he would offer her in front of the crew, but it was still a criticism.

  “With the crew section sealed off we could recheck every compartment twice in that time, especially once Mary gets over her with her team to help. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “Very well. All hands, be ready to undock.”

  Helga, meanwhile, rounded the corner and found herself looking at Peter, Melly, and John. . . and no girl. Calmly, slowly, Helga muted the pickup on her mic before talking.

  “How could you have possibly lo
st her?” Her voice had raised at least ten decibels from sheer exasperation. “There isn’t anywhere she could have gone without running into one of you.”

  “Are we sure she’s not a gremlin sent to torment us?” Peter wasn’t joking, at least not completely. “She got out of the compartment less than ten seconds ahead of me, and Melly and John weren’t far off. The crawlways are sealed. We’ve got nothing.”

  “Just. . .” Helga paused, trying to figure out what they could even do. “Just retrace your steps back to the last sealed door, and then recheck everything. The door behind is sealed, and I’ll wait here to make sure she doesn’t try to get out of this section. Hurry.” She turned her mic back on. “Everyone, stay alert. This girl is very determined to stay hidden. She’s undoubtedly scared and isn’t used to trusting anyone.”

  “We’re good to go boss,” Mary cut in, her yawn transmitting over the line for a moment before the program recognized the sound and cut out automatically. “Can we leave this dump, please?”

  “Gladly,” Asad said, mere moments later. He switched lines, calling up station control. Helga’s unit patched her in to the new line automatically. Too many problems dealing with corrupt or criminal outfits had taught them the wisdom of having someone listening for subtle clues they were about to be swindled while the other talked. “We’ve finished our loading, Hill Station. We request permission to undock so we don’t waste any of your valuable time.”

  The station had to have been expecting the call, but it was still half a minute before they responded.

  “We show delivery in full on both ends, Pale Moonlight. Docking clamps will release in fifteen seconds.”

  Helga didn’t think he sounded worried or harried at all. They couldn’t have realized the girl had gotten on board the station, let alone her ship. The last time they suspected a stowaway they’d demanded to search the whole ship.

  Twenty seconds later Helga felt the slight shudder as the clamps released, followed by the stronger nudge of the ship’s thrusters pushing them away from the station.

  “Main drive engaging in one minute,” the chief engineer said, over the speaker system rather than the suit coms.

  Once the speakers cut off Helga got back on the suit com. “Okay people. We’re underway. We should be safe from Hillman, but we have to find the girl. It’s unlikely, but if they discover her missing they may try and search us when we reach one of the gates. We have to have her in hand in case we need to hide her. Be thorough, be. . .” Helga paused to brace herself as the main drive kicked on. It wasn’t a particularly powerful kick, but could be startling if you weren’t expecting it. . .

  . . .Which the stowaway apparently hadn’t been, as she jolted off of the pipes snaking along the top of the corridor. The girl tried to correct her slide, but just ended up tumbling to the floor in an ungainly pile in front of Helga. She looked up, blue eyes wide in an incredibly dirty face.

  “Um. . . hello?” the girl said, her Hillman accent thick and unmistakable. Helga thought she sounded young, maybe even ten or twelve. The part of her brain analyzing that was quite small, however, overwhelmed by the part that wanted to cheerfully throttle this girl who’d been hiding right in front of her.

  “Get over here!” Helga growled, not noticing the chorus of winces as her shouting transmitted to the entire crew. Her hand darted out, grabbing a big handful of the front of the girls’ tattered outfit. She ignored the sounds of tearing fabric and the girl’s surprised and probably terrified squeak as Helga pulled her upright with brute strength, assisted by the lighter gravity of the ship.

  Before she could start chewing the girl out for wasting all of their time, and probably causing untold hours of maintenance and repairs, the speaker came back on, and this time it was Asad.

  “Welcome onboard, young lady. You’ve been something of a bother, hiding from us like that. You will not be a problem any longer, or you will regret it. Now go with Helga, quietly. Everyone else, get us secured from lockdown. I want everything back to normal before we hit the first gate.”

  Helga dropped the girl, who slumped down into a sitting position.

  “He sounds nice,” the girl said hesitantly. Helga couldn’t help laughing.

  “Trust me. Of the two of us, I’m the nice one. Now get up. You’re cutting into my beauty sleep.”

  CHAPTER 06

  Everyone forgets that for every large freighter company, there are hundreds of single ships running the margins. Without them the galactic economy would collapse. For all the talk of taxing the profits of the large houses let us remember that it is the independents that will suffer the consequences the most.

  - Senator Andy McGivin, addressing the Zion congress on the repeal of tariff measure 234b.

  MORGAN FOUND HERSELF deposited in yet another sparsely-furnished metal room. There was a table in one corner, a bed in another, a couple chairs, a door leading to another room, and what looked to be storage space in the walls. The only decoration was a painted starmap marked with different colored lines on one wall and a portrait on the other wall of a smiling family. It was unsettling somehow to see such a large picture of a family, almost all the videos and images back home had been about Sam Hill or the world he had founded. They had especially been about the duties of the people to unite together and work hard for everyone’s benefit.

  Morgan’s own sad little picture would have been confiscated and destroyed if a Tinny had ever found it, she only had it at all because Daddy had ‘borrowed’ the camera after using it to in his work.

  Back home. Funny how Morgan was already thinking of it that way, never mind that she wouldn’t ever go back there, even if she could have.

  “Sit there,” the rather frightening woman growled, pointing to a bare metal bench attached to a bare metal table. The woman didn’t wait to see if Morgan complied, instead throwing herself into a cushioned chair opposite the table.

  Morgan sat down straddling the bench so she could keep her back to the wall while also watching both the woman and the door. She absently ran her hands along the surface of the table. It was going to take some time to get used to everything being so smooth, and so clean.

  And so sharp-edged, as well. Morgan frowned as she ran a finger along the edge of the table. She would hate to see what kind of damage a fall against the table would cause.

  Morgan’s attention was brought back to the woman, Helga, apparently, as she took several deep, rhythmic breaths, visibly trying to calm herself down.

  “You aren’t the first stowaway we’ve had from Hillman, so I won’t bother asking why you wanted to leave. I do want to know why you tried so hard to stay away from us.”

  “That was my daddy’s idea. You’d be less likely to turn me over if you didn’t get me until after your ship left the space station.”

  “That’s a lot of mistrust for people who haven’t even met.”

  Morgan raised her eyebrows. “You just said you know why people leave my planet.”

  “Right, of course you don’t trust anyone.” The woman looked Morgan up and down. “Still, you could have easily gotten yourself killed, mucking about in the crawlways. You also needlessly annoyed the people whose goodwill you are relying on.”

  “They’re not that different than the tunnels back home.” Morgan knew she was right, that she had risked angering these people, but since she wasn’t sure how best to apologize yet, she fixated on the other part of the woman’s comment.

  “A tunnel rat, then?” Helga must have seen the look on Morgan’s face, as she added, “Oh, I know all about tunnel rats. They’re the ones most likely to try and run, after all. The risk of death or capture is too high for most of the people in safer jobs to seriously consider.

  “You need to realize that aside from basic shape, the crawlways and your tunnels are nothing alike. In the tunnels you’re dealing with solid rock. Here you have all kinds of machines and computers running through the walls, plus things like the power lines, coolant pipes, and so forth. We’re flying thr
ough empty space in a metal wrapped bubble of air. Dangerous doesn’t begin to describe it.”

  Morgan knew she was right. Hadn’t she taken advantage of that very fact to get the panel off in the, what had she called them? Crawlways? She had firsthand experience of what the woman was saying.

  “You’re right. We didn’t think of that. Daddy wouldn’t want me to harm anyone, especially the people he was counting on to help. I’m sorry.”

  “Keep this in mind, girl. I’m helping you because I wouldn’t want to leave anyone on that awful planet, and I like being able to sleep at night. You have not made a good first impression. Make sure your second impression is better.”

  It was odd. For all her anger and raised voice, Helga reminded Morgan of the few elderly women in town that had helped care for the little children, though she looked both older and younger than them. She was round and rosy skinned, with hair that was almost pure white. Despite the white hair, she wasn’t nearly as wrinkled as the town grandmothers. The way she talked, and the look in her eye, suggested to her that this woman was quite old indeed. She did have the same sternness as the town grandmothers, though.

  Before either could resume the conversation, the door opened and a woman stepped in. Morgan couldn’t see anything about her beyond gender, since she was in the head to toe skintight outfit she’d observed in the loading bay with the helmet up. She was carrying a box in both hands. She stepped over to Helga, her helmet folding up over her head and into the collar. “I found the box you were talking about, sis. It was near the back of the storage space.”

  “Ah, good,” Helga said, gesturing for the crewwoman to put it onto the table next to Morgan.

  “Rude or not to say, girl, but it is a fact you stink to high heaven. Best empty your pockets of anything you wish to keep. Those clothes are going into the fire as soon as we can get you cleaned up and changed.”

  The new woman turned from Morgan and opened the box, which apparently held clothes of various types and sizes. “You are pretty small, even for someone from a heavy world. I don’t suppose you know what standard size you are?”