“We should be able to shut off our running lights and cover the observation areas so that no sign of life shows on the ship,” Nance said. “We could hide here among the abandoned ships for a long time.”
“Any of those old hulks could be our contact,” Kim said.
“Let’s get settled in,” Ben said. “We’re off Torrent Four, but there’s still plenty of work to be done.”
Kim brought the Echo down into the low orbit along with the wrecked ships that floated there. Nance ran a battery of tests on every system in the ship, while Ben helped Magnum move to his quarters.
“I have a feeling there are a lot of supplies left on those old ships,” Ben said. “I’ve got to go EVA to repair the heat shield anyway. I think the payoff might be worth the reward.”
Magnum didn’t say anything, but Ben could see the conflict in his eyes. The big man was in a lot of pain, but he didn’t want Ben going off without him.
“You need to rest,” Ben said. “If you aren’t careful, you’ll tear your stitches and start bleeding again.”
Ben helped Magnum down onto the narrow bunk.
“Your room looks good,” Ben said, turning and walking over to the workbench Magnum had set up. The canister of gun powder and bag of spent brass had floated off the table and ended up on the floor. He picked them up and set them down next to the reloader, which was attached to the workbench.
“I might even find some bins to keep your supplies in,” he continued. “Once we get resupplied with Zexum, we’ll keep the artificial gravity running so you won’t have to clean things up every time we break atmo.”
When he turned around, Magnum was propped on his good arm. Ben waited for the big man to speak.
“Get the rifle,” he said, his voice pitched a bit higher from the pain in his shoulder. “Charge the power pack.”
“It has a laser,” Ben said, remembering the fight on Torrent Four. “I had no idea.”
Magnum nodded.
“I’ll be careful. You rest.”
The big man slid back, resting on his back. Tension seemed to drain from his face and he closed his eyes.
The next few hours were busy. Ben found the assault rifle and got the battery pack charging. He also checked his hard-vacuum suit. The ship seemed to be functioning perfectly. The life-support system was mixing oxygen with air warmed from the fusion reaction before pumping it through the ship. They had water and food, with just half of the small canister of Zexum gas left to keep the ship powered.
“Auxiliary batteries are fully charged,” Nance said.
“How long will the fuel we have left last us?” Ben asked.
“We aren’t using the main drives or exterior lights,” Nance said. “We could keep this up for a week before running out of fuel.”
“Good, that should give us plenty of time,” Ben said.
“Time for what?” Nance asked.
“To make some repairs and hopefully make contact with Liam’s people.”
“And what happens if they don’t show up?” Nance asked. “Have you considered that?”
She was angry, but he didn’t know why. They had done what they set out to do. Torrent Four was behind them, as long as they could get more fuel.
“Of course I have,” Ben said.
“Well?”
“Well what? Without fuel, we’re dead. It’s as simple as that.”
“We should have had a contingency plan before we uncovered the ship,” she argued.
“Maybe, but I don’t know what it would have been. We barely got away with the tiny canister of Zexum gas as it was.”
“So here we are, without any hope, and Magnum is seriously hurt.”
“We do have hope, and Magnum’s wound isn’t serious.”
“It isn’t serious yet, but if an infection sets in, we have no way to get him the help he needs.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Ben said. “I’m guessing there are medical supplies on some of the ships around here.”
“Are you kidding me? We’re not the first people to come here, you know. Anything of value will have been taken long ago.”
“Maybe, but finding things we can use is my specialty,” Ben said with a smile. “If worse comes to worst, we can use the power in the batteries to get back down to the planet.”
“We’ll lose the ship down there,” Nance stated.
“That’s a possibility. I’m not a fool. We’re in a tight spot here. But I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure it doesn’t come to that.”
“And you’ll do what it takes to make sure Magnum is okay?”
“He has saved our lives multiple times,” Ben said. “There’s no way we don’t do everything in our power to save him.”
“Okay,” Nance said. “Things just haven’t worked out the way I imagined.”
“What? Did you imagine that we could fly off scot-free and live happily ever after?”
“Something like that,” she confessed.
“Yeah, I sort of did too. But we’re here, away from Torrent Four.”
“I never thought I would miss it, but I’m worried.”
“We always found what we needed on the ground,” Ben said. “I’ll find what we need up here too.”
They ran tests on the hard-vacuum suit until they were certain it was safe. Kim watched without saying much. The tension seemed to be rising with every minute they waited. None of them could get their dwindling supply of Zexum off their minds.
“How much fuel would it take to jump to another system?” Kim finally asked.
“Too much,” Nance said.
“We could do it,” Ben said. “But we’d probably be on auxiliary power by the time we dropped out of hyperspace.”
“And that’s supposing we could get to a system that wasn’t under the Royal Imperium’s control,” Nance added. “We still haven’t updated the nav system.”
“The bigger problem is we don’t have anything to trade,” Ben said.
“Isn’t that what the cabins upstairs are for? We can charge passengers a fee, buy fuel, keep flying.”
“Sure,” Ben said. “If we were a registered ship with a license to transport passengers.”
“So what is the plan?” Kim asked, sounding angry. “I’m not going back to Torrent Four.”
“No, we aren’t,” Ben said, giving Nance a knowing look. “Look, we’re operating outside the government’s control. That means we need contacts who operate off the grid. Every planet has a black market. Every planet has needs that can only be met by people brave enough to bend a few rules. We just need a little help. That’s where the Confederacy comes in.”
“You know they aren’t going to just give us the gas for free,” Kim said.
“I don’t know that,” Ben insisted. “Magnum said they gave him that reloader and spent brass for free.”
“There’s a difference, Ben, and you know it,” Kim said.
“If they come,” Nance said, “they’ll have plans for us. That’s no surprise. The real question is, can we stay alive long enough to learn what we need to know to make it on our own?”
“This thing is ready,” Ben said, stepping into the space suit.
“You know, it’s not as glamorous as I thought,” Kim said.
“Just give it time,” Ben said. “We won’t be stuck here on half power for long. Soon we’ll have Zexum to burn and plenty of adventure for everyone.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Nance said.
“Hey, Ben, don’t die out there,” Kim said.
He gave them a thumbs up, then snapped the seals on his helmet. The gauge on his wrist showed a single hour of oxygen. He would have to work fast.
Chapter 29
Ben felt the pressure even before he stepped into the air lock. The old Kestrel class ship was built to land on the worlds it visited and only had one small air lock. Ben guessed it was for crew members to go out and make repairs, which was exactly what he was doing.
The first prior
ity was to replace the hull-mounted cameras. They needed to be able to see in every direction, as well as visually inspect the outer hull in case of an emergency. Ben had a hip pack with nearly a dozen spare cameras he had salvaged over the years. His tools were tucked into special pouches on the space suit.
“Alright, I’m ready,” he said over the com-link. “Evacuating atmo.”
“Roger that,” Nance said, she was back at her console, overseeing everything she could with her computer systems, including his suit’s oxygen levels.
Ben reached out and hit the button that pumped the air out of the air lock. It was a small chamber, the size of a small escape pod. A red light came on, and Ben watched it until it changed to green.
“Vacuum achieved,” he said. “Opening outer doors.”
He pushed another button, and the outer door slid open. Torrent Four was bright beneath him, and above him were dozens of ships floating peacefully in the silence of space.
“Dialing back artificial gravity,” Nance announced. “Standby.”
Ben waited and suddenly his stomach seemed to flip inside him. The artificial gravity sphere had been compacted, so that it covered the center of the ship only. The ship and even space seemed to shift around him. There was no sense of movement, but everything was moving. Ben pulled himself out of the air lock and hooked his tether onto a safety cleat.
“I’m outside and locked onto the hull,” Ben said.
“How’s the view out there?” Kim asked.
“I’m staying focused on the ship,” Ben said. He felt as if he might go floating away and be lost forever, even though he knew he was tethered to the Echo. Light from the sun reflected off the planet, and Ben saw his precious ship, free of the junk that had hidden it, for the first time. He couldn’t help but marvel at the beauty of the spacecraft. It was long and lean, slightly bulbous in the center, but still a great design. Kestrels were birds of prey, small falcons that could hover in the air. They weren’t native to Torrent Four, and Ben had never seen one, but he knew the Kestrel class ships were so named because of their size and the ability to rise straight up into the air. The big Imperium ships weren’t as nimble as the Echo, nor as versatile.
Still, as wonderful as the ship was, without fuel she was no different than the other wrecks floating around him. The pressure returned twice as strong. The need to get fuel and get moving seemed to bear down on him, even though it was completely out of his hands. His crew was depending on him, which only put more pressure on Ben.
He came to the first camera. It was smashed and most of the components were missing. He used a power screwdriver to unbolt the small device and sent it spinning away from the ship. The replacement camera plugged right in, and Nance acknowledged that it worked.
“Looking good,” Nance said, before Ben screwed the camera housing into place.
“One down,” he said.
“Nine more to go,” Kim said. “Don’t waste oxygen talking.”
He frowned, but he knew she was right. Once he ran out of air, he would have go back inside while pure oxygen from the fusion reactor was pumped back into the tank. It would take hours to fill and he wouldn’t be able to continue working until it did.
Replacing the cameras was simple enough, and Ben managed to get them all up and working despite one of the replacements being defective and before running out of oxygen. Over the next two days, they fell into a routine.
Ben could only work outside of the ship for an hour at a time. Refilling the oxygen tank took three hours. When he wasn’t napping between EVA, he visited with Magnum or went over data with Nance. Replacing the heat shielding was much more difficult than fixing the camera. Each piece of the shield had to be mounted, which was difficult enough, but also tested.
It took three days before Ben felt confident enough to head over to the abandoned ships that floated around the southern pole of Torrent Four.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Kim asked.
“Anything of value to us,” Nick said. “Medical supplies, tools, spare parts.”
“How about gas?” Kim said. “We’re down to a quarter tank here. I’m starting to get antsy.”
“I doubt I’ll find anything like that,” Ben said.
“Well if you do, go ahead and bring it right on over, would ya?”
“Sure thing,” he said with a chuckle.
“Don’t forget, the drive shaft secondary cam is weak,” Nance said, referring to the diagnostic they had run on the main drive system. “And we need more insulation to cover the electronics grid.”
“I’ve got it,” Ben said. “I won’t forget.”
“Yeah, well, do us a favor and stay in com range,” Kim said.
“Thirty minutes out,” Nance said. “Then you come back, no matter what you find or what you’re doing.”
Ben gave them a thumbs up and headed out again. If anything, the pressure was worse. They had been at the rendezvous for three days and nights, yet there was no sign of their contact. Twice, Fleet vessels had flown past and Ben was certain they had run a scan of the abandoned ships. Fortunately, the Echo blended in and wasn’t detected or they would have been in serious trouble. But with their gas reserve dwindling, Ben knew their time was running out.
He passed through the air lock like every other time, only he didn’t tether to the ship. Instead, he kicked off the hull and sailed through space toward a large ship with a gaping hole in the side. He couldn’t help wonder what type of weapon had blasted through the thick armor plating of the starship’s hull. He waited until he was inside before turning on the lights mounted to his helmet.
“I’m in,” he said over the com-link.
“In...sane?” Kim teased.
“How’s it look?” Nance asked.
“Like you’d expect,” he replied. “Lots of floating wreckage.”
It took longer than Ben liked to make his way through the ship. Most of it was completely ruined. The engineering bay was simply gone, blasted out of existence. The bridge and recreation areas were damaged. He found some old entertainment programs that he thought the Echo’s binary computer system might be able to read. In the ship’s sick bay, he hit the jackpot. The medications were all decades past their use-by date, but there were bandages, slings, and splits that were salvageable. He also found replacement LED bulbs, some tools, and a roll of insulation. When his time ran out, he had a large bag full of goodies to bring back.
Over the next two days, Ben made as many trips to the old ships as possible. Sometimes he was forced to come back to the Echo with nothing to show for his efforts. Other times, he found invaluable items. The most popular were old entertainment programs on small disks. The Echo’s computer read them, and they spent hours watching dramas and action programs from long ago, before the Royal Imperium had brought all the nearby systems under their control.
Ben found replacement parts that could be used in the Kestrel class ship. Clothing was also a popular find, as well as bedding and decor. They replaced everything in the crew lounge that was beside the bridge on the opposite side from the sick bay. As the tension mounted and their fuel levels dwindled, the Echo became more and more like home.
With nothing else to focus on, Ben continued to go out on scavenging trips. He was about to step into the air lock when Nance stopped him.
“Ben, wait,” she said over the com-link. “We have contact on radar.”
“Is it another Imperium flyby?” Kim asked.
“No,” Nance said. “It’s a ship, has to be, but it isn’t transmitting an identification code. Not that we can pick up anyway. We need a new radar program.”
“Should we transmit our code?” Kim asked.
“Wait, I’m coming up,” Ben said.
There was no time to take off the space suit. The best he could do was to pull off the helmet and bound up the stairs in their diminished gravity.
Kim and Magnum were looking over Nance’s shoulder at the screens in her workstation. Magnum had been back on his feet
for a couple of days, but he kept his wounded arm in a sling that Ben had found on one of the derelict space vessels.
“Do we have a visual?” Ben asked.
“It’s still pretty far out,” Nance said. “But I’ll try to bring it up.”
“Put it on the big screen,” Ben said, walking down to stand beside the pilot seat at the front of the bridge.
“It’s a ship,” Kim said.
“It might just be another floater,” Nance said. “Maybe on a longer orbit.”
“Or it could be the ship we’ve been waiting for,” Ben said. “I think we should transmit our identification code.”
“If it’s an Imperium ship, will be spotted, perhaps even attacked,” Nance cautioned.
“We’ve got maybe one full day of Zexum gas left,” Ben said. “If that isn’t our contact, we’re screwed either way.”
“I don’t like that,” Kim said. “I don’t like being forced to do anything.”
“We aren’t being forced,” Ben said. “We’re taking advantage of an opportunity. The only opportunity we’ve had so far.”
“Transmitting,” Nance said. “Cross your fingers.”
Ben didn’t cross his fingers, but he said a silent prayer that the approaching ship was their contact. If they had to make an emergency landing back on Torrent Four, he could only hope they had enough power to get clear of the frigid polar area.
“We’re being hailed,” Nance said, the relief evident in her voice as she sat back in her seat.
Ben noticed that Magnum put a hand on her shoulder in a familiar way, and he wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before. There was even a slight pang of jealousy. He didn’t have romantic feelings for Nancy, but she had been his closest companion for many years. It seemed as if he was being replaced in that regard, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it.
Ben sat at his station and Nance put the incoming transmission on the speakers so that everyone could hear it.
Modulus Echo, this is Confederate cruiser Dixie Storm. Do you read us? Over.
Ben hit the transmit button on his console. “Dixie Storm, this is Modulus Echo. We read you loud and clear. Over.”
Kestrel Class Page 14
