A12 Who Can Own the Stars?

by Mackey Chandler

  “Hush your mouth,” Diana said. “I like being able to come and go as I please and not answer my phone if I’m not in the mood. Eric is the perfect partner who is happy if I let him run it and just provide money and suggestions when asked. I have the lotto and other things going to where I certainly don’t need the money. Why would I want a job?”

  “You could secure your place in history and serve the public,” Nick teased her in a put-on smug voice. He made similar noble noises when she harassed him about his job.

  “History will have to muddle along without me,” Diana said firmly.

  * * *

  Vic sent Cal a text message. “You told us how Alaskans pick up without landing. If you will risk gas to do the same here, we will give you goods likely to stop your rationing. We’d expect a higher priority and an ambulance flight if needed if it works.”

  It sounded stilted, like some old telegram messages he’d read, but it was the third try composing it and every time he added or removed words it sounded worse. It all hinged on how much Cal trusted him and his judgment.”

  It took Cal several hours to think about it before he sent a text.

  “Yes, will fly to O’Neil’s Sat. if the weather holds. Will do a bucket drop by my passenger.”

  Vic hadn’t thought about that. The planes in Alaska were high winged. Cal would have a hard time doing it from his plane. Given how short he was and the way he used a booster seat, even more so.

  * * *

  “The Constitution has undocked. We are uncertain if there is any crew aboard. I’d send your sensor package past it quickly if I were you,” Chen said. He copied Jeff’s triad and Walter.

  “Proceed?” Walter double-checked with Jeff.

  “Go ahead,” Jeff said. “The additional equipment that Tetsuo suggested will be installed in a few hours. Deloris is ready with Johnson as second in Hringhorni. April will be flying with me. Mackay and Otis will be with us in Dionysus’ Chariot, and are waiting on standby, ready to go.”

  “It’s in motion,” Walter told them.

  * * *

  April disposed of a lot of messages unread. If she hadn’t corresponded with the person before, it was hard to write a subject line that would make her do a security scan and open it. News articles and blog posts were even worse. She saw the keywords and mostly didn’t even bother to read the full title. She did have other people listed in her searches, however. Lindsey Pennington-museum-collection as key words did pique her interest. The more so because it was an Earth site and translated from Italian. Lindsey didn’t advertise for Earth business. For that matter, she only had a low-key site on Homenet to show her work that didn’t beat her drum for Home business very hard. But when April had guests in and they saw Lindsey’s work on her walls most recognized it without getting close and examining the signature. April thought she’d like to see the article and called her to share the news.

  “Did you know an art museum in Italy added some of your work to their collection?” April asked.

  “No,” Lindsey said, looking puzzled. “If they bought it in their name I’d have noticed. Maybe it was contributed, or they hide behind a buyer. Some people would hold out for a better price if they thought they were selling to a well-endowed institution.”

  “I didn’t read it,” April admitted, “but I just put the link on the bottom of your screen.”

  “I’ll look,” Lindsey said. April thought she meant later, but her eyes said she’d split the screen and was reading it now. Her face slowly went unhappy and she looked up at April dismayed.

  “They put it in their collection of primitive and folk art,” she finally said.

  “I take it from your expression that’s bad?” April asked.

  “I find it insulting,” Linsey said. “It was one of my fashion drawings. It isn’t even accurate to consider it primitive or folk art. It was advertising so it’s more accurately commercial illustration. The implication is that it isn’t fine art and displays a lesser level of training and skill.”

  “I messed up,” April said. “I assumed it was a good thing for any art institute to display your stuff. I’m so sorry. I meant no harm or to make you unhappy.”

  ‘That’s OK. I can see that.”

  “I guess they’d think the same of my tapa,” April said, hooking a thumb at the big Tongan mat on the wall behind her. “It’s a national treasure I couldn’t even buy or export now.”

  “Oh definitely,” Lindsey agreed, “That would even be closer to the truth. You know what? You just made me feel better. They’re idiots, and I’m not going to worry about it now.”

  * * *

  “The radiation sources are definitely on the ship now,” Walter reported. “I think they are all close together. I could only see one source that’s bigger than the individual sources that appeared in the station. I think that is two of them close together and the third is hidden behind them.”

  “Now we know they intend to break the L1 weapon limit,” Jeff said.

  “But you might as well stand down and do something else. They aren’t going to bring a crew up for a couple of days,” Chen informed them.

  “You have somebody inside that deep?” Walter asked. He was impressed.

  “No, I looked at the weather report. They have a tropical storm coming in on Florida. That’s where the supply flight came from. Nobody in their right mind would try to lift through it.”

  “I’ve kind of stopped thinking about weather,” Walter admitted.

  “There’s a group now in Africa, who blame us for deliberately causing bad weather on Earth,” Chen said. “It spans several countries and some prominent politicians endorsed the theory after they had a drought. They needed somebody to blame. People won’t believe things just happen. There is always a cause. They used to start looking for witches whenever anything bad happened. We’re much easier to blame because nobody’s grandma gets hurt.”

  Walter looked at him in disbelief. “Do they have any idea how much energy it would take to alter a weather system?”

  “Oh, they don’t think we do it by brute force,” Chen explained. “We supposedly understand the weather so well we can just shine a laser in the clouds over around Cape Verde at just the right spot and it sucks all the water out of Africa so that a couple of weeks later we have a hurricane rolling through the Caribbean.”

  “Out of Africa? Not off the warm ocean?” Walter demanded. “I’m impressed they think we are that smart. What is the payback for all the computer modeling time and hiding these secret weather control satellites? It has to cost a fortune,” Walter said.

  “We’re all rich but we’ll just do it for spite, because we hate Earthies,” Chen assured him.”

  “People have believed far stranger things,” Jeff said.

  Walter looked upset but didn’t argue. He knew it was true.

  Chen got an odd expression looking at Jeff. “You could snatch it now pretty easily before the crew arrives.”

  “That supposes any reasonable person would see they intend to break the L1 limit. As we were just discussing, people in the composite aren’t very reasonable. Besides that, now that I know how these X-head missiles work I want copies of the x-ray focusing cones. If we just steal them without any overt act and refuse to give them back it looks much, much worse. If we keep them after the weapons are directly involved in violating our law it makes more sense to their leaders, if not the mob.”

  * * *

  Vic put the wind flag out for Cal with the highly visible tarp and blanket spread on the lawn even though he’d been to their place before. He had a GPS and it should still be functioning. He’d also taken down the power lines to the house and the second pole from the house. It seemed unlikely they’d be getting service any time soon and it was one thing less for him to get his bucket tangled on and need to drop his rope.

  They all sat on the porch after breakfast, waiting without any discussion. Saturdays were normally working days but this was a special occasion. The gold he was g
iving Cal was an ounce. He included two of the rings he’d made, and the rest in dust and tiny flakes. It represented a great deal of labor so he wanted to make sure it didn’t get lost even if somehow dropped. Vic put it all in a plastic pill bottle, the bottle inside a ratty old orange hunting hat for visibility and the whole in one of their few plastic bags that didn’t appear to have any holes. He’d tied a lanyard around that with a clip on the end he could fasten over whatever sort of bail Cal’s bucket had. There was a note suggesting he start low and not use it all up in one bribe.

  Pearl and Tommy joined them in about an hour and informed them her dad wouldn’t be coming. He said he’d seen an airplane before, and would probably see this one just fine from his house. He had things to do and reminded Pearl not to overdo it in “her condition”.

  They heard the plane before they saw it. Vic was surprised at how high he stayed. He did a lazy orbit also wider than Vic had pictured and a white plastic bucket dropped from behind the wing on the passenger side. It followed the plane around so closely Vic was having doubts the whole thing was going to work, but the lower it dropped the smaller the circle became. In the end, it was swinging back and forth as much as around but so slowly it wasn’t any problem to grab it.

  Tommy ran down to it with him and stood behind him to make sure the rope didn’t drop behind him and get wrapped around him. Cal dropped low enough to allow some rope to drop on the ground but it was across the bucket from him. Vic had an unexpected package removed, and the gold clipped on the bail and in the bucket before the rope had time to swirl in a circle twice.

  Vic and Tommy ran back away from the bucket so Cal’s handler would see they were done. The plane made a couple more turns as the bucket was hauled up, and then turned to the east and left before the bucket was fully retrieved.

  “That was interesting. He had the bucket weighed down with some gravel in the bottom,” Vic told them. “That stabilized it when it got lower.

  “Did you ask him to buy some stuff for us?” Eileen asked, nodding at the package.

  “No, I didn’t think there was time to order things off the satellite phone sent to Cal. He said last time it can take a month now for things to arrive.” Vic was opening it as he spoke.

  There were six boxes of canning lids, a bottle of aspirin, a bottle of dishwashing detergent, a banded pack of white washcloths, and a restaurant size plastic container of peppercorns.

  “Wow, the pepper alone must have cost him several hundred bucks,” Eileen said.

  “Easily,” Vic agreed, unfolding a note which he read aloud.

  The local stores had these things in good supply, so I could buy a few extra without looking greedy. I figure it’s all stuff you can use or trade easily. The lids will be gone quickly, so I got them now.

  “Pearl, there’s a little plastic bullion jar with a red screw-on lid in the jar and container box. Would you find that for me, please? When she returned Vic poured off a sample of peppercorns.

  That’s for your dad,” Vic said, handing it to her. Both of them thanked him profusely and took that as a good time to leave.

  “They don’t know what we put back in the bucket, do they?” Eileen asked after they left.

  “They don’t know,” Vic emphasized. “But they can probably guess. Her dad does know he should dig in the corner of the barn if we should get killed or the house burns down, as does Mr. Mast. People seem to be going back to minding their own business as the social norm more than before The Day. There are always a few folks who are natural busybodies, but when snooping on your business isn’t government policy they stand out. I’m fine with that change.”

  * * *

  “We have a vehicle lifting from the Cape,” Chen informed them. I’d bet it’s the crew for the Constitution. I find it hard to believe they’d give anything else priority to lift.”

  “It will take them a day to alter orbits and burn again for the geosynchronous level,” Jeff said. “I’ll tell everybody they have twelve hours and then they will be on call to board with an hour’s notice. I’m going to meet with Otis and Mackay to familiarize them with a temporary weapons system installed on Dionysus’ Chariot.”

  “It’s irritating when you are needlessly secretive,” Walter said. “Is there any real operational reason to not tell us what you cooked up?”

  “Show me how smart you are,” Jeff challenged. “Why wouldn’t our normal weapons serve?”

  “The same reason as theirs shouldn’t work. They aren’t designed to shoot at something fifty meters away. Although I’ve been thinking about that. They might launch one of those weapons and have it turn and target you from fifty kilometers away. If they trust it to be accurate enough and not take them out too. Did you borrow a heavy machinegun again, like Easy and April used in the Happy Lewis, back in the rebellion?”

  “You got the nature of the problem right away. That was a pretty good guess on the machinegun. I just don’t trust it to be as immediately disabling as I’d like. I’m more concerned they may refuse to stand to or try to ram us than shoot at us. Even just changing their vector and making us chase them all over to rematch would be an unacceptable hazard.

  “We know fairly accurately where those X-heads are in the ship, but all the other systems we only have a vague idea where they have to be. I borrowed a 57mm Bofors from Heather. I’m confident one round through the engineering spaces and they won’t be taking that ship anywhere under its own power.”

  Walter looked so dismayed he couldn’t speak. He opened his mouth a couple of times and then just shut it after an obvious struggle to articulate, and just looked at Jeff.

  “Oh come on. It’s not that radical,” Jeff objected. “What’s the big deal?”

  “I don’t know where to even start. The recoil first, I guess. You need an ocean-going boat with hundreds of tons displacement to mount a Mark 4. I can’t believe you can mount it to your ship safely. It’ll bend your ship in the middle. If you did fire on the North American ship just fifty meters away, you’d be in danger of the shrapnel damaging you too.”

  “We already have it mounted,” Jeff said. “It’s one of the reproduction guns Heather copied off the one she bought. It’s stripped down and lightened extensively. We mounted it to the hold deck on a rail with gas shock absorbers, It’s the second strongest bulkhead in the ship. Besides it being able to support two-ton at nine g on the thrust line, we reinforced it to transfer force better to the outer hull too. It’s not such a crazy idea. The North Americans have used a 105mm howitzer from a cargo plane before. It was harder mounting acceleration couches in the hold than the gun.

  “Don’t forget, Heather mounted her original gun on a rover and used it quite successfully. We cut the barrel off short. We can get the hatch closed with a centimeter to spare, and reduced the powder load by two-thirds. As far as the explosive shells, we took the fuze off two dozen factory rounds. They are effectively inert. It has forty degrees of transverse to aim it and a simple optical sight.

  “Otis and Mackay will both be shown how to aim and control it firing single rounds. Just in case they need them, we’ll have four rounds with the fuze still mounted if they should need to shoot from further away. It can’t be too far because it isn’t slaved to our radar and is only bore-sighted.”

  “What about the muzzle blast?” Walter insisted. “You are shooting from inside the hold.”

  “We have the traverse limited to twenty degrees in any direction. That’s nowhere near the edge of the hatch. The muzzle brake was cut off, of course, so you won’t get any blow-back from that. It’s just going to dissipate in vacuum,” Jeff insisted.

  “I’m so glad I’m not coming along,” Walter said, unconvinced.

  “Us too,” Jeff said. He meant it as a rebuke, but Walter didn’t seem to get that.

  Chapter 25

  Ting-ting-ting, told Vic there was a text message on the satellite phone. It was from Cal. Vic suddenly realized he hadn’t received a single wrong number or spam call like he used to wit
h a cell phone.

  Your trade goods VERY well received. The tank truck driver is pushing to get more. He says there is a market for it on the coast. Will try to find out more safely without revealing anything.

  That both excited and worried Vic. They would eventually need to trade their gold for a currency that could buy a lift ticket or go somewhere gold was legal. Traveling any distance would be difficult right now. They could only hope it got easier. He wanted to think about it before he made any reply to Cal. He showed the message to Eileen and asked what she thought.

  “How would anybody delivering fuel to Nevada have any connections to the coast?” she asked.

  “You don’t think Reno gets gas from Oregon or Washington?” Vic asked her.

  “Show me a map. I assumed it was from back east, through Salt Lake City maybe.”

  “Ok, it could come down 395,” Eileen agreed looking at the map, “but I don’t think they’d send a tanker down any of the lesser roads I see here. There’s not much that runs north-south either side of 395. Towards the coast gets iffy. I don’t know how far south Oregon is secure to North America right now.”

  “A connection to the coast, not to the west of us but further north, anywhere from Eugene to Seattle is plausible,” Vic said.

  “I’d tell him to reveal little and not make a target of himself whatever he does,” Eileen said. “We have what we need right now. Things are changing. You have no idea who those scouts were that you saw. We could end up back under North American law or become part of Texas before we’re ready to go anywhere. It may be easier to travel in a couple of years with less chance of being robbed or arrested. I say we should just be patient.”

  “I agree,” Vic said, nodding. “We may be able to go to Cuba if travel to Texas opens up, or we may might be able to get to Hawaii if Seattle becomes accessible. I’ll tell Cal to be extra careful.”