After a pause, Geena added, “About the leadership issue. I’ll drop the ‘trainee’ business. You’re in charge. You seem to know when to take advice, which is good. And I reserve the right to offer it as I deem appropriate. Yesterday afternoon, when you were shot, you took command without warning. That’s dangerous for all of us. I don’t want that situation to come up again. Understood?”
Lexi searched the older woman’s face. “Thank you. I’ll try to be worthy. I didn’t want to take anything from you.”
“I know,” Geena agreed, reaching out and stroking Lexi’s cheek. “It was all circumstantial. You didn’t take anything from me, I ceded it, whatever it may be, to you. I’m starting to have the impression you’re a born leader, Lexi. You can’t help it. Just try not to get us killed while you’re learning the ropes. I’ll back you up.”
“As will I, Lexi,” Urania said.
***
Urania parked in n-space, sufficiently outside the approach and departure routes of the planet that no one bothered to question why she was parked in n-space. From that height the GPS pings were barely perceptible, even to Urania’s sensor array. They would be useless once the two ships were both truly in space and even more so upon entry into hyper.
Urania, however, was originally a Vankovian scout, perfectly capable of tracking a ship through hyper while remaining outside the detection range of most other ships. The Vankovian’s had been quite adept at that technology, one of the several reasons that Ron’s parents bid on Urania when they found her up for auction. Of course, she wasn’t named Urania back then. It was unlikely that the crew of the kidnappers’ freighter would know they were being followed.
Urania already had full access to the Port Authority datanet, her intrusion established almost as soon as they landed. Once the GPS signals merged with a ship below her, she downloaded all of the port’s data concerning the freighter, ranging from it’s capacity, to its prior ports of call, to its owners. The data didn’t appear very enlightening, but maybe Geena would be able to make something of it.
It was two-and-a-half days before the freighter finished loading and lifted from its own berth. The comm-gear continued to report. Based on their vital signs, Ron and Jis remained unconscious during that time.
Chapter 21
Distractions
The ship they wound up following was comparatively slow. It was, after all, a freighter. Like most freighters, it was kind of clunky. This one, identified as B98-AK89834021-6VE, flew under the registry of an Accord non-member world. Basically, that meant nothing.
They eventually wound up spending forty-eight excruciatingly long days in hyper. It was by far the longest stint Lexi experienced during her short career as a space-threading insurance investigator. She spent some of that time thinking about the technological improvements she kept on her mental to do list.
Thanks to her unusual tolerance for the Wraixain educator, she possessed a deep, unique even, cross-discipline scientific knowledge. Combined with genius-level intelligence, she saw many gaps in the state-of-the-art technology used by the space-threading civilization she recently made herself a part of.
Her to-do list ranged from the trivial to the ground-breaking. They all wore ridiculous socks to keep their feet on the floor, allowing them to walk more or less normally while the gravity generators were disabled in hyperspace. It should be relatively simple to weave that technology into something sexy. She was thinking black lace stockings for the women. However, replacing the ugly socks just didn’t seem worth even that small bit of effort with Ron not around.
The information Urania got concerning the Port Authority’s life-scanners was interesting. It seemed that it could truly tell the difference between an alive animal and anything else that might be in luggage, including an animal that wasn’t alive. Definitely interesting, but not actually something she felt she could concentrate on just now.
What she did work on, almost exclusively, was a hand-held ray-gun. Sure, scaled-down gravity pads would be more useful, but space aliens, in her opinion, just had to have ray-guns. That had almost become her mantra. Too much Star Trek? Yeah, maybe that was it. And really, what was wrong with a good old Earth-made Glock? Right? Besides, she made a promise to Ron to build him ray-guns.
Even before delivering the Rose of Light to Cardin’s Paradise, she already delved into the project to the point where she understood why no one wielded ray-guns. They weren’t really possible. The task of miniaturizing a power source to the degree necessary was phenomenal. Toting a fusion reactor around on one’s back didn’t even approach being practical. Miniaturizing a significantly powerful power supply was also damn risky. Get it wrong, and boom, experiment over, student gets an F for the course.
Starships used helium three fueled fusion reactors to power their large-scale beam weapons, as well as pretty much everything else. For a handgun, you wanted an equally stable power source that was good for more than a single blast, didn’t overheat and subsequently deform the gun, and most importantly, didn’t explode. Venting noxious gases or poisonous radiation were also way up there on the list of things you wouldn’t want to catch your handgun doing.
She though about it a lot, off and on. The beam needed to be focused so that it didn’t touch the physical components of the gun itself or it would vaporize its own barrel. It shouldn’t really need a barrel, but it would be useful to have that as a visual cue of what you were aiming at. A holographic barrel might work, but it would also be more likely to fall out of a holster than one with a physical barrel. That meant she needed a force field of a sort in there, something akin to an inverted starship shield, or at least extreme focusing controls.
That led her to thinking about what Earth science knew, or at least hypothesized, about zero-point energy, dark-energy and quintessential-energy. The contradictions in what the Accord thought they understood about those exotic concepts was worse than what she got from the studying she did on Earth. Plus her Earth-based knowledge wasn’t really comprehensive, being based solely on reading she had done over the years of her academic career. As she pondered it, she got to wondering if there was any way to purge incorrect knowledge from her memory. This project alone was bringing her to the realization that a lot of it, whether from studying done on Earth or from the rubrics of the Accord, was garbage.
She carried the white board she purchased while on Cardin’s Paradise to her small lab and asked Geena to help her install it. She had to glue small magnets to her markers to keep them from drifting around when she wasn’t using them. She had to chase her eraser across the room before realizing it needed a magnet too. Urania signed up to archive anything she put one it. Why didn’t I get interactive boards? I’ll do that when we rebuild the lab as part of the remodel.
Three weeks later, after she had the power supply issue licked, she started working on how to take all of that power and turn it into a coherent cutting ray. That tied her up for another two-and-a-half weeks. Geena left her alone several hours a day while she buried herself in the lab.
By then, she was getting really used to working with Urania. She wasn’t sure where Urania was finding the knowledge to follow calculations largely beyond anything the Accord would comprehend, but she did find they worked well together.. Urania kept her grounded when she sailed off on a flight of unsubstantiated fancy.
Of course, once she built the ray-gun, the next big problem she faced was that she couldn’t test it inside the ship. I’m going to need to come up with a technology to attenuate the ray after a certain distance. While the need is obvious, that’s a fascinating problem. This thing is true line of sight. Shooting the guy next to me, even with a microsecond burst, and burning through a few neighboring buildings and dozens of innocent bystanders would definitely not be cool. No wonder there are no ray-guns other than the primaries mounted on starships.
Both her shipmates listened to her when she explained her progress and her problems. Considering it was over both their heads, figuratively, Lexi was ple
ased that they listened to her and didn’t fall asleep while she was discussing what she learned. Of course, Urania couldn’t fall asleep regardless. Geena was truly a trooper. She didn’t really understand Lexi’s fascination with ray-guns, but if the research helped the girl to cope with her loneliness and worry, she was all for it, whether it turned out to be practical or not.
Geena, it turned out, was less affected by Ron’s absence than Lexi was. Over the years, she and her son were often separated for extended periods during their investigations. Lexi, on the other hand, was still freshly in love and missed him terribly.
Early on, Geena saw the problem and suggested that as soon as Lexi’s shoulder was sufficiently healed they begin gutting Urania’s interior as a project they could work on together that would also keep them occupied. She pointed out that it needed to be done eventually and that the debris could be secured in the hold, alongside the pallets and pallets of hull plating they had perhaps prematurely purchased on Cardin. Their hold wasn’t all that big, but there was still quite a bit of space left in there alongside the eight pigeon launchers.
Geena did most of the heavy work while Lexi’s shoulder continued to heal. Both women wore disposable hazmat suits, gauntlets, dust masks and eye protection while doing the work. Geena still left Lexi time to work on her pet ray-gun project despite not being convinced that ray-guns would prove superior to the Glocks they already owned. Despite Lexi’s enthusiasm, she just didn’t see how they could be powerful enough to be more than a fancy flashlight.
While they were having dinner one evening, Lexi asked, “What do you think we should do with the refinery, Geena?” The refinery was a device the team designed, built and installed when they were stranded in Earth’s solar system without reactor fuel. It was still in place aft between the ramjet intakes and the helium three fuel tank. It was the size of one of their cabins. When they were done with it, Geena and Ron took it out of the circuit and restored the normal configuration, without which they would lack the atmospheric drives.
“Having it saved us from a lot of expense and embarrassment, Lexi. I think we should keep it. You guys should be able to work out a way to have it available without disabling the atmospheric thrusters, right?”
“Well, yes. It’ll take up some of the room we gain by the remodel, but that’s a good idea. If we rebuild it, we can get it down to about half of its current size. What I was asking, though, and I got to thinking about it working on the ray-guns, is should we sell the technology. It’s not civilization shattering. Frankly, lots of firms could design something like it once they got the idea of doing it. We could license a firm on Cardin to build and install them.”
“What do you think about that, Urania? You know more about ships than I do.”
Urania chuckled. “Is that you being racist?” She thought a minute. “No, it’s a dangerous device. Overall, I’m smaller and much sturdier than most ships. Diving into an atmosphere like Saturn’s to acquire He3 would shake most ships apart. Most ships travel from one Level-Three civilization to the next. Refined helium might be expensive but it is readily available. I can only come up with two types of ships it would benefit.
“The first are the explorers, like Ron’s grandparents, who routinely are out beyond the fringes of the Accord. It’s not a big market. There just aren’t that many willing to take that much risk. Those ships are usually on the decrepit side. Crane inherited his father’s ship, which I believe I remember someone describing as a rust bucket. It wouldn’t have survived a dive into Saturn’s atmosphere.
“The second are Vankovians. Their scout fleet routinely goes the distance. Most of the time when those ships finally return it is to refuel. Part of that might be that they don’t want to lose track of their ships. Part could be humanitarian. I’m not sure what the matching word for a Vankovian is. I doubt it’s Vankovitarian. Most people, and that includes Vankovians, aren’t interested in spending more than four to six years in space with only the same seven people to talk to. That’s why my helium tank is larger than most. They could make use of the technology, but I don’t think they would use it.”
Geena nodded her understanding. “Well reasoned, darling.”
“Thank you. Run it by Jis when you have the chance.”
Chapter 22
Hepca
By the time their quarry finally dropped out of hyper in an unmapped solar system, Geena and Lexi had the demolition work practically done. The interior of the ship looked ghastly but at least was still fully functional in every area that counted. It also went from looking cramped and ugly to cavernous and even uglier. The project did fairly successfully serve to keep Lexi’s mind from dwelling on Ron to a large extent. Urania kept any comments she may have had about the mess to herself. She was looking forward to her eventual remodel as much as her live-in crew was.
Urania likewise dropped back into normal space at what she and Lexi calculated would be a safe distance outside of the probable sensor range of the other ship. The freighter held a direct course for the primary’s second planet, an arid-looking world so close to the primary that it was barely in the Goldilocks zone, and landed on its surface. Urania settled into an asteroid belt that would have been about where a third planet could be expected to be if one had formed during this planetary system’s formative years.
From this distance, even if the comm-gear worn by either Ron or Jis was active, it would take over seventeen minutes for a transmission to reach them. In reality, the equipment’s range was far less than interplanetary distances. The planet itself was also beyond the range at which they could get much detail on their scanners. So they waited.
When they eventually arrived at the planet, they did not want to find their two friends still interred on the freighter. They needed to give the kidnappers time to move them to wherever the E’Krets were being held. That is, if their assumptions were valid and this was the same group that had taken the E’Krets.
It seemed unlikely that a second group would be operating in the same city on the same planet with the same MO. Besides, Marn’s comment about the “rock woman” as he and Gurk were loading their unconscious captives into boxes at the boutique almost guaranteed that being the case. Urania pointed out that the freighter might be stopping here for reasons other than dropping off kidnap victims. None of them were thrilled by that thought.
Still, if this was not the final destination for the victims, Urania had plenty of fuel to continue the pursuit. They would know as soon as they were on the ground and able to contact their people.
They waited for a planetary day-and-a-half. It was not easy sitting and doing nothing. Especially now that they were this close. Not knowing what was happening to Jis and Ron. They reasoned that if either was to be killed, they wouldn’t have been transported here in the first place.
***
When Urania finally headed in toward the planet, she began tumbling the ship as soon as they exited the asteroid belt. At the same time, she began broadcasting a low volume fluctuating stream of static. They were almost in the planet’s atmosphere before someone dirt-side finally noticed them. That was fine with all three of them.
A gruff voice came over the communications console. “Attention unknown ship on approach to my planet. This is Hepca Control. Hepca is private property. Please alter your course and be on your way. You do not have permission to land. You will not be granted permission to land. Trespassers will be dealt with severely.”
Lexi, with a quick glance and getting a nod from Geena, replied, “Sorry, Hepca. This is Captain Lexi Stevens on the exploration vessel Discovery One. We didn’t expect to find anyone way out here. We have no choice but to land. We experienced a hyper-drive failure seven days ago. Currently, our control of our ship is shaky at best. We can fix the damn thing without assistance, but we need to ground to effect those repairs.”
“Stand by, Discovery,” replied the gruff voice.
While they were waiting, after checking that the console pickup was muted, Geena re
marked, “You made up a name for the ship. It would have been better not to give your real name either.”
Lexi looked at her and nodded. Geena was right. Trainee. The voice came back after several minutes. “Very well, Discovery. You have permission to set down, stand by to receive landing coordinates. Try not to crash. We have no emergency equipment if you do.” He chuckled. “Or for that matter, if you don’t. Regardless, you don’t look so good. Make your repairs and get out of here. Keep us updated on your situation. I’ll expect to hear from you every twelve hours starting at six tomorrow morning. When you’re down, I’ll ping you a time token. Sync with my clock. Got me? Hepca control out.”
Urania continued the tumble as they entered the atmosphere, gradually stabilizing with the atmospheric thrusters as they neared the ground. Considering the advertised seriousness of their situation, she set down relatively smoothly, coming in at a shallow angle and skidding no more than a quarter of a mile. The coordinates they were given were within a few miles of where the freighter was still grounded.
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