
A Stardrifter Novel

#  Motherload

####  David Collins-Rivera

for Debbie 

##  one

* * *

Normally, the sitting and the waiting are bad. This time, they were brutal.

I mean there are always things to do on an old Bechel if you want the boat to keep running, but that's usually just maintenance stuff. It all falls into a routine pretty fast, and no matter how anal or conscientious you are, pretty soon you end up with time on your hands.

It was for exactly this reason that Sally caught a flux in the reactor's mag bottle that first month out. It was a little thing; diagnostics didn't even flag it. She was already so bored, she decided to run a sim based on the fluctuation's wave frequency and fractal quality. She was surprised at the result, and ran it again since she still didn't have anything to do. When it came back the same way, she called a crew meeting, and all four of us sat down in the common room for the bad news.

"Eighty, maybe a hundred hours, tops, at fifty percent throttle. Less at more, more at less."

"What'll happen, exactly? Will we explode?" Bayern asked. _Captain_ Bayern when he was pissed-off or just wanted attention.

Sally looked at him like he smelled.

"No, we're not going to _explode_. That doesn't happen when the magnetics go. The reactor will shut down cold. We'll be on batteries then, but they'll drain out before we're even half way back to Deegman. We'll either cruise through its orbital plane at a dead coast if our aim is good, or we'll impact it hard, at a dead coast, if our aim is _too_ good. Either way, we would never know, because our life support will have given out, oh, say, fifteen days before either of those scenarios."

"So you're saying we should turn around now, and head back?"

Sally looked at Genness and me for help – but what could we do?

"We _can't_ turn back now, is what I'm saying! We did a two hundred and twenty-six hour burn on our way out before we even made the first course correction, and then we ran it eleven days straight after that."

Bayern frowned at her tone, but was much too conscious of the fact that we could see he didn't quite grasp the situation to immediately comment.

"Can you repair it?" Genness asked, stepping in, his soft voice putting the tension a little further off. He was forever calming things down between Sally and and the captain, who clashed like orange on blue. She didn't suffer fools gladly, while Bayern had no choice, being one himself. The fact that he was, at least nominally, the boss, only made it worse for her, and Gen seemed to understand this.

"Yeah, I can fix it. But I have to shut the power plant down while I'm working. That means batteries for a couple of days, if the problem is what I think it is. If not, we'll have to play it by ear."

"But you'll be able to start it up again? The reactor I mean."

Bayern had a forced grimness to his tone, trying hard to seem like he was on top of this now.

"Why would I shut the flaming thing down if I didn't think I could bring it online again?!"

"Hey, watch the attitude! We have a serious situation, and as captain, I need everyone at his or her best. Now, what we need is for you, Sally, to get right on those repairs. Do you want help? Who has tech experience here?"

"You _know_ I'm Secondary Engineer," I said, with a look not far behind any of Sally's.

This was getting on my nerves too: there were only four of us on the dang boat, including him, and he was supposed to be in charge. He'd had weeks to go over our backgrounds and should've known our secondary assignments before he even stepped aboard. For crying out loud, we might have only been a slapped-together crew, but he could at least have read the mission package the company had put together for our run. That had included an itemized breakdown of all our anticipated shipboard duties for four months time, out past the gravity shadow of the system's orange star – out where inbound ships would arrive from starjump; backgrounds and basic info on the hired crew; an overview of DAME MINNIE, and highlights from its forty-eight year career; an explicit overview of our primary responsibility: namely, to screen any and all inbounds, and meet and repel suspected corsairs; and finally, tips on how to make nice-nice with each other until our run was over. I wished Bayern had read this last part most of all.

"Good. You help out in Engineering, Ejoq, and I'll cover Gunnery duties until the crisis is over. Any questions?"

There were several, but they didn't amount to much: was Sally sure we had enough life support to get us through the situation? (Yes, batteries should last for weeks on standard power rations.) Were there any expected escorts out, or challenges coming in, during our anticipated downtime? (A small Free Trader named POCKY or PONTE or something was outbound from Deegman right now, but we would most likely be up and running again before it reached the system starjump point.) Would our bosses back on Deegman give us crap over all this? (Probably.)

I was hungry, so I heated up a frozen meal after the meeting broke up and followed Sally down to Engineering with it. Her domain was a cramped space of pipes, cables and creepy shadows; not to mention a nagging _bang-BANG-zap-hiss_ from the small atmosphere exchange unit, underscored by a discordant two-toned hum that set my teeth on edge from both the drive system (on idle right now) and the power plant in question. I bumped my head painfully on a projecting bolt while climbing over a plasma duct to get to Sally's desk, and swore blue thunder.

I hated this job, truth be told. Oh, not the temporary reassignment to Engineering so much: I had minored in Ship Systems in higher-ed, and had maintained a partial interest in Civilian-Class defense boats – of which our tiny DAME MINNIE was one. And not because I'd be helping Sally out: true, I preferred working alone on my Primary assignment, but then we all did – Sally with her engines and systems; Genness monitoring and maintaining comm and computers; Bayern with whatever it was he did all shift (no one was quite sure, even him); and me, with my defensive systems and combat sims. Besides, even though Sally had at least ten years on me, she was in really great shape, had a sexy potty-mouth when she was pissed-off, and a good brain at all times. I didn't expect anything to come out of that, because she and Genness had been together since about a week after we left Deegman, and he was young, handsome, quiet, and in great shape himself; while I was short, kind of fat, and prone to complaining when I was bored – which happens a lot on extended picket duty.

And this was exactly what irked me the most about this job. Three months before, the big corporate container ship I'd been signed to was hauling Fleet supplies, and it had just arrived on Deegman when the news caught up with us that its parent company had been bought out. They have SOP's for these sorts of things, one of which is to immediately downsize the crew. I got a good reference, a crappy severance, and the axe. My luck running to type, the piracy problem in Rilltule started getting bad right about then, and the big outfits just stopped coming. Traffic from privately owned ships was up for a while, but even that started tapering off. I was left sitting on my ever-widening posterior, watching vids, running scenarios on my tiny wristcomp, and filling my face with the spicy fried food the locals seemed to love. Deegman imports almost everything it needs, which means almost everything it has to offer is at robbery prices. Six weeks and my savings started getting tight. By ten weeks I was facing homelessness – which is one harsh prospect on a vacuum-wrapped planet, believe me.

An acquaintance of an acquaintance tipped me to the fact that the mining interests on Deegman had gotten together in secret and bought a used Bechel, which they wanted to crew and launch in the next couple of months. As a privately owned vessel, it fell outside the boundaries and direct control of Deegman Security Corps, which was more police force than military body, anyway. SecCorps had Deegman and the other inner-system settlements covered nicely with a moderate collection of mismatched orbiters and transports, and they did a respectable job of keeping the peace. They had nothing for command and control of Rilltule's jump point on the outer edge of the small system, though – exactly where pirates had been hitting. One old Bechel wasn't much of an improvement on that situation, but they had to start somewhere, I guess.

I wasted no time and applied, and while I might not be much to look at, my resume is a killer. I was hired on the spot. Sally said later that she had quit her previous position on a medium-size freighter a couple weeks before this, over advancement issues, and had already been signed to DAME MINNIE's first run by the time I showed up. Genness told me he'd been knocking around town for some time, and had been on big couriers before that. Bayern flew a transport for one of the mining outfits, and was the Company Man on board. He was a last minute replacement, but, to be fair, he was a great pilot and never dumped a lot of _rah-rah go-company_ crap on us – which is not to say he was easy to work for. In his own way, though, he seemed as bored and miserable as we were, and he even told me once, about three weeks out, that he missed his little shuttle job dreadfully.

Ostensibly, we were pacing Deegman in a solar orbit of our own around Rilltule – out beyond where that small queasy orange star's gravity shadow extended into extra-dimensional space – and thus where ships traveling to or from Deegman via starjump had to show up before continuing on. The fact that there was nothing else of any interest here besides the mining town on Deegman that had hired us, plus a few settlements on space stations that strolled along in lazy solar orbits further out from there, made our present general locale the only area worth guarding. Of course, we'd had to weave in and out of many orbital trajectories in the weeks we'd been out here, so as to (sort of) keep pace with Deegman, half-a-billion kilometers closer in-system, but all outbound vessels were told to rendezvous with us first before making starjump. That meant any "unconfirmed contacts" (read that: pirates) would have to go through us in order to pick off one of the little merchanters with their small but extremely valuable cargoes. Since Free Traders had to buy their loads outright instead of getting anything on spec, and Bechels like DAME MINNIE had no starjump capabilities whatsoever, everyone was kept fairly honest.

Actually, in my free time that month, I'd developed a scenario wherein a gunboat like ours, doing our job, could waylay the cargo ship it was intended to protect, board it, coldwalk the crew, and then take off with it to parts unknown. This was just professional speculation, of course: you'd need conspiring crewmates without any morals; some rather specific training in shipboard combat techniques; and all the command codes needed to override the target ship's computer. This last was the hardest of all to manage, which was why my little scenario, or any variation thereof, virtually never occurred. Oh, people _had_ tried it before, but only a legendary few had ever succeeded. Studying this sort of thing was my bag, and, lustful fantasies of my shipmates aside, I knew the difference between speculation and reality.

"He's a bleeding pile."

Sally didn't elaborate because she knew I understood. Instead, she motioned with her hand to wait for something, so I waited.

"There... _that's_ what I'm talking about. See what I mean?"

"Not a clue."

"You didn't feel that? The mags were spiking. It's like a wave passing through you."

I shook my head.

"Sorry. It must be one of those educated palate things. You said that even the computer didn't pick it up."

"No, it does register, it's just that diagnostics doesn't rate it highly enough to consider it a problem. Even a well-balanced mag bottle has a range of variance that includes occasional peaks and valleys – small ones, anyway. If we were involved in combat, or training maneuvers, or really anything at all that could have been a distraction, I doubt I'd have pursued it myself. Most variances are due to outside causes, like power draws elsewhere in the vessel, or even solar flair activity, if you're close enough – which we're not. This flux is from the magnetic field propagation array, which is in the early stages of failure. Now, with the big boys, like those solid state Kategils or Magnars that Fleet uses, this would never be a problem. Even their small gunboats use Vlassingweil magnetics – which do have arrays, but..."

My eyes must have been glazing over, because she frowned and then waved at the fusion plant.

"Anyway, these cheap Value Power jobs aren't really made to be fixed by the user. You're supposed to sign a service contract with the dealer, and then pay through the colon whenever something goes wrong, because, of course, nothing that's likely to go wrong is ever covered. That's not an option for us. DAME MINNIE's almost fifty years old. She's gone through a lot of hands, but this power plant is the original unit. It doesn't owe anybody anything, I guess, but that still leaves us with a big stripdown and reassembly."

"Where do we start?" I asked, finishing up my dinner.

"I want to do a full service test on the entire battery bank, so we don't have any nasty surprises when we shut down the plant," she answered, leading the way.

" _Each_ battery? Can't you just run diagnostics? It'd be a lot faster."

"Oh, I already did that, and they look fine. But the battery monitor subroutine is some homegrown thing one of the previous owners wrote, and I just don't want to trust some yo-yo's tollhouse cookie program on something this vital. Don't know what they did with the factory-issued routine, anyway – it comes with the package."

I didn't have any answer to that, of course. 

##  two

* * *

"Those god-fisting, mother-mating swindlers!! What the flying fornication are we supposed to do _now_?!"

I didn't have any answer to that either.

One battery at 57%, another at 31%, a third at 18%, and the remaining seven all flatlined. Meanwhile, diagnostics said there wasn't one battery in the entire bank under 94%. At least now we knew why they'd installed their own routine: to sell an old Bechel to a bunch of rubes without having to replace the emergency standby batteries. Replacing an entire bank would've taken a deep bite out of any profits, while a fake diag program might not have cost anything.

Sally seemed madder at herself than anyone else. "I should've done this check before we left Deegman, but I was going crazy getting the main drive ready." She cursed steadily for several minutes, before tapering off to a mutter.

"Can we still do the repairs if we work fast?" I asked her. "How long will the power from those three last?"

"Not long enough. If we shut down now, we'd normally have a week or more with this much juice. But these will drain out a lot faster than normal – they've been undercharged for so long they won't be able to hold what little they've got. Heck, I'll be needing to use heavy tools too: the bench drill and the laze on the emitters that we take out of the power plant – that'll eat a lot of juice right there. Then we have to reinstall, run a diag of the whole magnetics system with the installed package for the power plant – which I hope to Crawling Savior we can trust – and then take them out again and fine-tune the work. And we'll probably have to do all this several times to get it right."

"Then we'll just have to be extra careful the first time, right?"

She shook her head as if I were vexing her on purpose.

 "No, Ejoq. We don't have precision tools onboard. If this works at all, it'll be a process of elimination. Nip and tuck _here_ , check it; nip and tuck _there_ , check it; until we get it exactly, precisely right. This old tub isn't much, but it's still a far cry from some broken-down aircar you could tinker with in your back yard. The fusion reactor won't work at all if the mag bottle isn't right, and the bottle won't form until the emitters are right."

"In other words, it'll take as long as it takes, no matter what our battery problems are," I translated for myself.

 She just grunted, and turned back to the bank.

After a moment, she said, "If we cut the dead units out of the system, we'll probably gain a few kilowatt hours from the resistance we'll save. That's better than nothing."

"That doesn't solve the problem, Sal."

"I know what the fornicating _problem_ is, Ejoq! Don't ride me like some low rent Bayern! I need your help in this, and right now you can help me most of all by shutting up. I have to think."

She went to her desk and began to check some numbers, adding and subtracting on a calculator program to one side of the screen, while she studied a schematic of the power plant. She mumbled, swore to herself, and even punched the flat screen at one point and spat, " _Oh, you son-of-a-mutt_!" I went and got coffee for us both, but she let hers get cold by her elbow as she worked.

Finally, after nearly an hour of concentration, she turned back a little calmer than before.

"Okay, here's what we do...we shut everything off – and I mean everything – except heat, air, and the computer's core functions. We rewire a few of the backup power packs for specific systems into the main trunk line, to help feed that crappy battery bank. You and I work without break until the job is done, and we just might make it."

"Now, don't yell Sally, but...wouldn't just shutting off AG be enough? That's a big draw right there."

She sighed, but kept her temper.

"Artificial Gravity uses a lot of power, yes, which is why we'll shut it down too; but we're probably going to eat up most of anything we save there by running the power tools – they weren't designed to conserve energy, keep in mind. If we have to use them three or four times before we get it right, then we sure-as-defecation better have the power we need."

"What about the restart?" I asked her. "We'll need a couple of megawatts to bring the system back up to critical."

"Only as a surge at the beginning, to stabilize the waveform. We'll run a jumper outside to one of your charpacs. Weapons-grade accelerators use capacitors for instant power for the first round. What do you call it? _Chamber_ something...?"

" _Keeping one in the chamber_. It allows us to get one shot off at all times, without the need to charge weapons. It's standard procedure for these kind of guns."

She nodded, and pointed to an area she'd highlighted on the schematic.

"Well, that works out well for us now. We'll just insert a line right there. Then, when we're ready to start, you fire the thing off, and the surge goes directly to the power plant down here, instead of running through the weapon. I'll just have to monkey-up a regulator of some kind to rectify the gun surge with the power plant's needs.

"Should we tell the others?"

"Probably, but I can't deal with Bayern right now. You run and give them the basics, while I disconnect the dead batteries. And tell them not to bother me for a while. This will be hard enough without an idiot's questions."

And she gave _me_ a hard look.

It was actually easier dealing with the captain than I expected, because I kept the conversation on the technical side and he just nodded sagely and acted like he understood and approved. Genness, on the other hand, who, as an apparent matter of personality, had been unstressed by anything since we'd launched, now seemed genuinely disturbed.

"We have to at least keep emergency comm open," he protested, "in case we can't fix this problem."

"Who are we going to call, Gen?" I responded with a shake of my head. "We're too far out for anybody to come get us in time. The _only_ shot we have here is for this to work, and it can only work if we have all available power. Besides, we can always scrape together some juice for comm, if it comes down to that. We'll want to tell Deegman what's happening before we shut down, of course, and what we're going to do about it. Once the power plant is back up, we'll have to return to port ASAP: without a decent set of emergency backup batteries, we don't want to meet up with any bad guys out here."

"Can't we have passives up, at least? They hardly pull any juice on their own. I realize we'll be keeping computers down to minimum levels, which means no sensor analyses, but I can handle those myself if I have a little time. I mean, if we _do_ get visitors, we ought to know about it."

That seemed reasonable to me, but Sally had to think it over once I relayed the request. Sensors on a Bechel are bundled together in two preinstalled packages, with passives and actives sprinkled rather equally along the port and starboard sides. If you cut power, they both go. She ruminated for a bit, then said she could run a shunt to passives through comp, since we'd be keeping low levels there active anyway. This way, we could still tap the tiny backup power cells in the sensor suite (actually located in a bulkhead amidships), while still keeping one eye open. This was a good idea, but I couldn't help but be a little irritated: if anyone but Genness had asked her for this, she'd have dismissed it out of hand and spat rivets.

Disconnecting dead batteries is just a matter of rerouting a few cable connections, so what was left of the bank was ready for the shutdown at this stage. We set everything up for manual deactivations, made sure everybody onboard had a flashlight or headlamp, had some water and ration bars handy, had gone to the fresher recently (we would have to use emergency biowaste bags until this was done), and then started pulling plugs.

It really takes longer than you'd think to shut down systems that were never meant to be shut down while in flight. There were virtual and physical fail-safes to bypass; checks and double-checks to make of each system's own backup power supplies (if applicable); and, in two particular cases, replacement of small, though vital, components that were failing, but which had yet to show up on diagnostics. In a few hours, we were floating in Zero-G, draped in darkness, and smothered in silence. Actually the other two guys aboard were smothered in silence – Engineering was still subject to the _bang/hiss_ of the atmosphere exchanger.

The inner core of the power plant had an emergency vent to the exterior, so as to blow plasma or super-hot vapors out to vacuum should it ever be necessary. Sally used it this time, however, to simply cool off the core – now shut off, but still searing. When that looked good, she took a cordless vibrosaw and began cutting through the reactor housing.

She wasn't kidding about Value Powers!

As she worked, periodically having me hold or fetch something, she explained how the small reactor would normally have been serviced and rebuilt in the factory: giant automated prying tools would pop off the housing case; other tools would extract each integrated component and test it; the faulty emitters would be replaced; and the whole thing would have been reassembled in a matter of minutes. An easy process, apparently, for a robotic factory. _Not_ so easy for people who were in the dark, weightless, using hand tools, and with the clock ticking.

Despite our best intentions, we did end up taking a ration bar break after a few hours. We'd made coffee before the shutdown, and had insulated Z-G cups of hot joe to wash the dry, tasteless things down. A little-enough reward, maybe, but it picked up my spirits some.

Bayern had popped in periodically over the previous few hours, always saying something inane meant to bolster our morale, and then withering fast under Sally's sarcastic responses. He chose this moment to float in again for an update.

"We've opened the array. Now we have to start working on the emitters themselves," I told him.

"Well, that's pretty good," he replied, pleased. "Sounds like we'll be up and running soon."

"This was the easy part," Sally corrected, burning her tongue on the coffee. " _Ouch_! We have days of hand-machining and testing ahead of us yet, so just hold your water. We'll be done when we're done, and not _'til_ we're done, savvy?"

"You know, Sally," he said, trying to sound like a concerned manager, "we would all get along better if we could just be a little more polite to each other."

"What's this _we_ , Bayern – you have multiple personalities? If so, do you have one that's _not_ an idiot?"

"See, now that's what I'm talking about..."

"If everybody in this tub just did their fornicating jobs, and let everybody else do _their_ fornicating jobs, we'd all get along just fine! Keep bothering us down here, and none of us – not one person – will have to worry about getting along with anybody ever again! Is that polite enough for you, Captain Bligh?"

Bayern looked at me, but I just held up my hands. As he turned to go, he motioned me to follow him out to the companionway.

"I'm concerned about Sally," he stated grimly, once we were alone, still in manager mode. "Do you think she's up to this?"

"Look, don't take it personally," I replied, steadying myself in the weightlessness, "you just get under her skin."

"It's not her engineering skills that are in question here," he went on, as if I hadn't spoken, "it's her ability to work under pressure. Can she handle the stress of our current situation, or should I be thinking of change?"

"Think whatever you _want_. Our lives are riding on Sally right now, because nobody else aboard – myself included – can hand-machine those spheres without ruining them. Just give her some space, Bayern, and she'll get us home."

He chewed it over like he had a choice, then shook his head with a sigh.

"Okay, Ejoq. But I want you to watch her closely. If she starts to crack, we have to be ready to take action."

He shoved off and floated down the companionway until he had to take a corner, then smacked right into the bulkhead with a painful _oomph_. After that, he sort-of floundered off out of sight.

I'd known bigger fools in my time – even ones who were ostensibly in charge – but this was an emergency. If he kept bugging Sally, we'd have to tie him up and gag him.

She was still fuming when I returned to Engineering.

"Is Bayern talking _fecals_ about me, Ejoq?! I'll _space_ him, I swear it!"

"Sally, please don't sweat the guy. Yes, he's a moron, no argument -- and he's certainly not helping any now. But you seemed to hate him from day one. Why does he bug you so much?"

She grumbled inarticulately, and turned away to the exposed magnetics. I thought that that would be her only reply, but after nearly a minute of silence, she spoke again without turning around. Her voice was quiet and sounded fatigued, as if she'd been running a marathon.

"Every time I look at Bayern, I see my first husband. He was shorter, maybe, and with dark hair instead of fair, but I'm telling you, they could be brothers.

She paused then, and shook her head, remembering a past she'd left both years and lightyears behind.

"I come from a gravity well named Waverley. I met Binn when I was fresh out of school and still a kid. How's that song go? _Stars in her eyes and vac in her head..._  That was me all over. Binn was born in jumpspace, and had never lived on a planet in his life. He was everything I wanted to be – _if_ you could overlook a few flaws. Seems he had a taste for _graino_ – you know, that nasty rotgut from Barlow that they distill from used cooking oil – and he was a mean drunk. It might surprise you to hear it, but I wasn't always the kind of person I am now. He bounced me off the bulkheads for three solid years. His family owned the ship we were on – HASTER, it was called – and he was being groomed to take the center chair someday. Naturally, then, it had to be his lazy groundpounder of a wife's fault every night, right? Even _I_ believed it. I wanted to be a spacer so _badly_ , Ejoq, you can't imagine! I wisened-up eventually, but it took cultured bone grafts in my jaw and right cheek to do it. Each time Bayern says something stupid, I just want to lay Binn's head open with a tube bender."

"Sounds like unfinished business," I said quietly.

She turned back to me at that, now with a sad grin. "I jumped ship at SANDLEWOOD STATION, over in Manyas System, and showed my purple face to a local magistrate. She annulled the marriage on the spot. She tried to have him arrested too, but under the Alliance treaty, a Free Trader is considered a sovereign power, and no reason short of direct military, commercial or civil threat from said can justify violating sovereign territory...etc., etc. He agreed to the divorce, and promised to leave me be, so...they couldn't go in after him. She was so pissed-off, she pulled some strings and had HASTER's contract with the local trade commission pulled. A minor thing, on the surface of it, but Sandlewood was part of their annual route back then. I figure the loss adds up to a couple of million by now, so maybe there's some justice in space after all."

"If there was," I replied, "you wouldn't still want to beat the guy to the floor, via Bayern. Looks aside, don't let our current boss get to you, Sally – he's pretty close to useless and he knows it. He asks a lot of questions and gets under our feet so he can pretend like he's contributing. If you just tell him to shut-up and leave it at that, we won't have to mutiny. I don't want to lose my bonus."

She laughed and gave me a quick hug. "I'll do my best, Ejoq. Just do _your_ best, and keep him out of here. And pass me that microspec over there. I need a close look at this crap."

She spent the next hour or two examining the surface of the fist-sized emitter spheres, cursing twice on the third one, which she put aside before continuing on. None of the other fifteen seemed to offend her, so she put them back inside the housing carefully. She then held up the flawed sphere as if I could see what was wrong from two meters away.

"They sure don't make 'em like they used to...especially at _Value Power_! What a piece of trash! Look at this thing: instead of a composite shell of iron carbide and titanium-tungsteel crystal – which is the very _minimum_ that Alliance construction regs allow for, by the way – we have what looks like a hollow aluminum shell, coated with a thin layer of iron in a polymer base. There are two scratches in this paint job: _here_ , and _here_. I figure a couple of specks of this cheap paint must have come off under the influence of the power plant's magnetic field, and they, in turn, gouged away even more of it. Doesn't seem like much damage, does it? If the paint kept eroding, which would be inevitable in my view, the mag field would have deformed and been unable to maintain the fusion reaction. No reaction, no power. And worse yet, in the milliseconds between the drop of the mag field and the end of the controlled reaction, the hot plasma would have flashed out to the inner edge of the frame holding the spheres."

"And...?"

"Well, in a _quality_ power plant, nothing: the magnetics fail, there's a flash inside the casing that nobody sees, and the system switches to standby batteries with maybe, at most, a flicker of the lights to show that it happened. Nothing inside a good unit could be hurt, and whoever services it after that finds everything fine and dandy – except for the original problem, of course, whatever it was. With _this_ piece of bowel business, though, we'd have a flash, and the distinct smell of burning plastic, and maybe even some visible smoke. Open it up, and you'd find sixteen blackened and stinking spheres, good for absolutely nothing now that their polymer coatings have been charred off by the plasma."

"In other words," I commented, "there'd be no way to fix them at that stage. I suppose I can take it as a given that there isn't a bucket of this paint just lying around in stowage somewhere?"

She chuckled mirthlessly.

"No, and it wouldn't work that way anyway. That polymer would have to be applied by a computer that could spread a uniform depth, with a uniform distribution of iron atoms over the entire surface. We couldn't hope to match that here, even if we could whip up a batch of the stuff – which we can't."

"Can't? We _can't_ fix those scratches?"

"Well...I don't know yet... lemme think..."

That was Sally-speak for "Don't bug me for a while", so I took the opportunity to update the others. I found them both in the little cockpit that stood in for a bridge on DAME MINNIE, and I hung out in the hatchway while I talked. Bayern clucked and fretted, wondering aloud if he should step in and handle things personally. Both Genness and I ignored him, and I think he ignored himself too.

I was about to leave when I noticed a flashing light on Genness' board. It was a proximity alert.

"What's that?"

He looked over and _humphed_ , then jumped screens a few times.

"Hello..." he muttered, "...and where's my audible tone...gone with the power-down? How long was this flashing, Ejoq?"

"I just noticed it now. I take it it's new?"

"Maybe," he replied, while focusing the boat's full suite of passives on the coordinates.

"What's wrong?" Bayern asked, confused.

"What was the trigger?" I wanted to know. "What's _prox-sen 5_ set to? Infrared?"

His brow furrowed uncharacteristically as he pulled up the sensor datalog on one side of his screen. "Graviton," he replied.

We had company from outside the star system.

Bayern appeared grim and focused, which meant he couldn't follow this at all.

"A ship," I told him, by way of explanation.

"A pirate...?" And suddenly, he looked anything _but_ grim and focused. "Do we have missiles active yet?"

"We can't open the hatches on the any of the bays without power. It's way too early to fret over, anyway – we don't have any idea who this is. What's their transponder say, Genness?"

He had a deep frown on his face that I didn't like.

"I'm not getting a transponder. A quick diag says...no, we're good. They just don't want anybody to know they're here. No active sensors from them either." He shook his head slightly, and turned to Bayern at last, saying, "I don't like this. These guys are acting shady. This might be the real thing after all."

Bayern looked like someone told him nine months after a really bad bender that he was a father; and I, anyway, felt like I'd been punched in the stomach.

"We're in a _bad_ way right now," I said, knowing even then just how unhelpful that was. "Genness, what's our EM output?"

"...uh, I don't know. How do I...?"

"Set your general passives all the way up and key a full-spectrum run, but zero-out the bogey."

He played with the keyboard for a while.

"Um...okay...I read 7.85% of normal. I assume that's us, but...?"

"No output...or dang little output, anyway. Bechels have an average of 7 centimeters of polynium alloy for the hull and another 5 in composite armor – all the wrong stuff for a stealth vessel, since none of it will mask a signature too well, but I'm betting that it's plenty thick enough to scatter our output right now...especially if they're only running on passives..."

But then I thought of something scary, and turned to kick off down the companionway, back to Engineering. Bayern grabbed my calf, and stopped me.

"What's going on, Ejoq?" He looked genuinely scared and perplexed.

"They don't want anyone to know they're here, right? Well, neither do _we_!"

I was gone from there before he could reply, hoping against hope that I'd be on time.

Sally was just switching on the laze when I came in, the errant emitter sitting under it like a diseased grapefruit. The cramped space hampered my movement, so all I could do immediately was scream at her to shut it down, which she did with a startled jump.

"Ejoq, what the _flux_...?!"

"Pirate! Inbound. He probably hasn't made us yet because of our power-down, but any big draw might flag us."

Her eyes were big and very serious then, as she looked around at the gutted mess that Engineering had become.

"How far off?"

"Not far enough. Maybe two light seconds it looked like – counterclock/thirty degrees off-plane. Tell me you can work magic, Sally..."

"In my _bunk_ , maybe! If they catch wind of us now, we're out of luck, Ejoq, and no mistake!"

A graceless bump and an _oomph_ at the open hatch behind me announced Bayern, who'd followed me down.

"We need power, Sally!"

"I know, Bayern..."

"No, I'm not kidding around! We've got a hostile out there, and we need power right now!"

"Get him out of here, Ejoq."

"Didn't you hear what I said?! It's a pirate!"

" _Now_ , Ejoq, or I'll kill him!"

"We need weapons! We need engines! We're sitting ducks here!"

Sally snatched up a chem torch and began to go around the ducts and draping cables with a scary sort of blankness on her face. I was closer though, so I brachiated my way through the intervening space, and hustled Bayern back out into the companionway.

"If you mess up Sally's concentration now," I told him with a hard grip on his earlobe, "I'll glue your hands and feet together and dump you in your cabin. Get out and stay out...or better yet, do something _useful_ , like running vector sims: use the realtime data from Genness' passives, and you'll be ready for trouble."

He slapped away my hands, and canted backwards out of my immediate reach, anchoring himself to one of the handholds – a look of stark terror and fury written plainly on his broad face.

"Who...who do you think you _are_?! I'm the captain of this boat..!"

"Then you better bleeding act like it from now on, or there's a field demotion by popular demand in your future!"

"That's _mutiny_ , Ejoq – don't you dare threaten me!"

I grabbed his shirt and drew him close again, eye to eye. He must have seen something there he didn't like, because _his_ bulged in sudden apprehension.

"I'm not going to die out here because of your stupid crap, _Captain_ Bayern, sir. Stay calm. Sally knows what needs to be done; and if it _can_ be done, she'll do it. But, if you continue to be a liability on this cruise, I'll load up a tube and throw _you_ at the pirate...savvy?"

"You...you're _crazy_ , Ejoq," he whispered in horror, "absolutely crazy!"

He turned too quickly to escape my insane clutches, and did an impressive pirouette until he got himself under control. He flailed his way forward, muttering that we (presumably Sally and I) were going to get everyone killed. I remember hanging there, musing that if he kept on thinking like that, and especially, if he'd finally developed a strong opinion as to who we were going to start with, then he might just give us the space we needed to work.

Not that I had any idea what work there was to do at this point – with no engines, no weapons, no communications, restricted sensor systems, and what would probably have been an impossible repair job even if we _didn't_ have a raider on our doorstep.

"I better not see him again," was all Sally had to say when I came back in. She was already back at the work bench, hovering over the sphere. I came up beside her and said nothing for a long time, but my thoughts must have been loud, because she looked over at me at length, and said, simply, "What?"

"We _can't_ fix it. Am I right?"

"Yup. It's plain impossible here – especially without the laze. Maybe even with it. I was going to try electroplating it with superconductive nanotubes: did that by hand once, back in school as part of a demo of the basic principle – works decently for magnetic propagation, too. I just don't know what to do now..."

"What about rearranging the order of the emitters, leaving the bad one out? We could overlap the field influences so that the entire reaction area is covered. Then we run it underpowered, maybe, and..."

She shook her head, and pointed to the casing that held all the other emitter spheres in place.

"That was computer designed, computer constructed, and computer installed. If we're off by so much as a millimeter – which would be an impossibly good error factor, by hand – the magnetic bottle will fail. Besides, firing up the reactor, whether to bring it online, or just to test the work, will light us up like a spotlight to the sensors of any nearby ships."

She looked up with a bleak stare that convinced me at last, and that's when I _really_ got scared.

"Can't we just put this one back in, then, and run the power plant until it fails?"

She had a sour face as she replied.

"The flaws in the magnetic coating are direction-specific – we'd never be able to put the sphere back inside the unit in exactly the way it was installed. The scratches would be off from where they were before, which would deform the field immediately. It would fail simply because of the unbalance there. I mean, it should have failed some time ago."

"Okay, um...what about shielding the laze for EM leakage? I mean, we could use it if there was no detectable energy signature, right? There's all that trash EM wrapping that the dock crew left aboard, back at Deegman – remember, I had to find a place to stow it all, and I was honked-off? We could wrap the laze with that stuff and..."

"The laze isn't the only problem, Ejoq. Even if you could shield it completely, the batteries emit an EM field when they're used – the bigger the draw, the bigger the field. The wiring in the bulkheads have one too when electricity runs through them. There's a voltage regulator, and a small junction redirect, and..."

"Okay, okay, I get it." I hesitated to keep brainstorming, partly out of fear of exasperating Sally, and partly out of fear of where my thoughts were headed. She kept staring at me, though, knowing somehow that I wasn't done talking. "That leaves us with only one option...we fight."

"We _fight_? How? You'd get one burst from the charpacs and then the capacitors would be drained – and you'd need more than that just to get a bead on their ship. Am I right?"

"We'll use missiles only," I countered. "There must be some way to get the tubes open; if we take that bogey completely by surprise, we might not need more than a single well-placed shot. And the tubes only need a tiny bit of juice to autoprep and launch."

"A sneak attack? That's iffy, at best, Ejoq. If we don't take them out with the first salvo, we're _dead_ , since we can't do much to get out of the way of any return fire. We'd have a few minutes at most, doing evasive maneuvers, before that rotten battery bank went completely ghost. And just how sure are you that this isn't somebody in the kind of situation _we're_ in, with weird system failures? Maybe they can't call out, for some reason. How would you justify firing on a ship unprovoked? I'm not comfortable with that, Ejoq."

I held up my hand to ward off her disapproval.

"You shouldn't be, Sally. I'm only listing options. The other idea is to send a team over; surveil the ship for illegal activity, or intended illegal activity. If they're legit, we ask for help. But, if they're raiders, we board and take possession."

She stared blankly for a moment, as if waiting for the punchline. But there wasn't one. I was serious.

"Are you serious?"

"I'm serious."

"You're crazy."

"Ah-ah, careful, you're sounding like Bayern."

"Ejoq, there are only _four_ of us. We could all be Fleetmarines, with powered combat armor and deep-action weapons, and we'd still be out of luck. Four people can't take a pirate vessel by force."

"I disagree."

She shook her head, rummaged through a stowbox, and came up with a biowaste bag.

"I presume you have a plan of some kind?" She then floated off towards the fresher.

"Actually, yes. Want to hear it?"

"Want to give me a procreating _minute_ here?!"

During that minute, Genness appeared at the door. He looked around carefully, then asked me, "Is it safe to come in? I hear tell you're a bunch of loonies."

"You hear right. What's the latest?"

"They're using reaction thrusters to take a new heading...slowly, though: they plan to do some work in this neighborhood, for sure. I calculated their course and projected it. At present speed, they'll intercept that free trader, PONTE, that's outbound from Deegman right now, in about, oh, seventy-seven hours. This raider has a stealth rig of some kind – but not a good one; I can still track it since I know where to look. If PONTE goes off on an oblique angle now – or really soon, anyway – it'll make starjump safely. They'll need a heads-up, though, otherwise they won't see these guys coming until it's way too late."

"Can we use a tight beam? We can't let the bogey know we're sitting here behind him."

"Truth. Lasercom it has to be. Um, I'll need some power for that, of course."

That wasn't much of a problem, I didn't think, and, when she came out, Sally agreed that a short message wouldn't draw too badly.

We did a few reconnects in Engineering and up on the bridge, and started to leave Genness to it. Bayern wanted him to be sure to make the point that PONTE couldn't rely on us for any more help than this; and, most especially, that _none_ of this was our fault. Then he started to dictate the message itself, but I could see a growing flash in Genness' eyes of what Sally and I had already displayed, so in the end we had to bar the Captain from his own bridge. When he was finally left on his own, Genness finished up quickly, then called us to say we could pull the plug again. He hadn't waited for a reply from PONTE, he reported, though he had received automated acknowledgment of the message. We had done what we could, anyway.

Everyone was pretty punchy by this point, and we'd been up for nearly three shifts straight. We'd gotten distracted from the pirate fighting question, but now I was too tired to sell the idea to anybody, so I just tethered myself to the corner of my bunk and was dead to the galaxy for several hours.

Sally hadn't acted like she was going to go to sleep at all, and maybe she didn't, because she and Genness where floating at a suggestive angle and giggling like school kids when I finally drifted back down to the engine room. The dark rings were gone from under her eyes, anyway, as was the pressed look of strain. I ducked out again and went to the galleyette for a couple of cups of coffee (thank God for insulated carafes), hoping they'd take the hint. They did, and Genness passed me in the companionway with a friendly smile.

"Any changes out there?" I asked.

"Nothing. The bogey hasn't made any changes. Neither has PONTE. Either they didn't understand the message, or they didn't believe us. I even had Sally power us up about an hour ago, so I could send it again. This time I waited for a reply, but all I got was the same automated acknowledgment of the communication. Honestly, I just don't get it."

I refrained from remarking that he was the only guy on this tub who _was_ getting it, and, instead, floated back to Engineering.

Sally took one of the coffees gratefully, then checked systems. That took all of two minutes with nothing running, and then she turned to me.

"So...what's the plan? After reflection, I still think you're crazy, but let's have it."

"Well...I have a few items I didn't put on the personal manifest when I came aboard. Shape charges, two assault rifles, and a fair amount of ship-rated ammo." I held up my hand to stave off her commentary, though her face spoke volumes. "I just didn't want any SecCorps johnnies finding them in a random locker check while I was out here...I never declared any of it when I first landed – they'd have impounded it all, and maybe fined me to boot."

"Where in purgatory did you _get_ those things? Don't tell me they're from your previous job...?"

"Actually, yeah. I...all right, I was really pissed about being laid off, so I helped myself to a few items. There was this Corporatespace Security container; the cargobot had banged it up, and the back was busted open.  Don't look at me like that!  I just grabbed what I could reach. I was about to sell it all for emergency cash, anyway, but this job came through."

"Ejoq...! Why you little thief!"

"I won't deny it, and I won't justify it.  I did what I did.  I was angry.  I'm a _child_. But these things'll come in handy now if we pursue this idea. And we _have_ to pursue it if we can't do the repairs. You see that, don't you, Sally?"

"We have life support for another couple of weeks if we stay powered down – other ships might come by in that time. We could even put in a distress call to Deegman, and have them send out a tetherboat. Might take some time, true, but..."

"And what about PONTE?" I asked. "For some reason, they don't believe us. I don't know why: our codes are valid, and they know enough to expect us out here. But either way, they don't deserve to get picked off. Some really rough characters have been playing out this way. You've read the reports, Sally: cargoes waylayed; crews tortured and spaced; ships blown when it's all over. We might not be much – especially now – but we're all that PONTE's got."

She shook her head, but let me go on.

"Okay, here it is...we strip off the armor and insulation around the feed lines to the main drive output – that'll precool the waste exhaust enough that it probably won't be detectable if we're careful to face ourselves perpendicular to the bogey. We keep it below, say, forty percent power and do a short burn up to .1 G; we'll get to within a hundred kilometers of them in ten hours if they stay on course, undetected..."

" _If_ they continue to lay off their active sensors," she injected. "And this'll kill the battery bank."

"Which means we just have to win fast. We can cut away one or two missile tube hatches while we're outside working on the main drive – that'll give us our big stick if we need it."

"And then what?"

"When we're close enough, we go over quietly and set the charges on the bogey's drives or something, and then we talk to them."

Once again, she floated there waiting for a funny line I didn't have. At length she just shook her head.

"I'll tell you what, Ejoq. You go explain it to the others, and if they agree – if _Genness_ agrees to that lunatic plan – well... _ahhh_..."

And she waved me away. 

##  three

* * *

It was an incredibly tense couple of shifts. Sally and I did a hasty EVA to rip off the housing around the feed lines to the plasma exhaust. We used hydraulic grippers and vibrosaws that the others said had made a heck of a racket inside. The job, once done, was really messy. It would be a costly repair for the consortium that owned DAME MINNIE, but I figured we weren't going to be hired again anyway, so whatever.

The missile tube hatches proved much easier to deal with, since they were designed to be removed for maintenance. The dorsal and ventral bow tubes seemed to be the most useful and convenient under the circumstances, and we were even able to save the hatches themselves and stow them aboard. All of that took six hours, and Sally and I were exhausted when we were done. I wanted to rest, but time was racing. We killed the coffee in the next few hours, because we still had to reconnect the drives to the battery bank and restore juice to some higher function comp systems. We powered nothing else up, least of all artificial grav and inertials (same system), so we had to strap down carefully when we gave Bayern the go-ahead to fire it up.

He had actually been a much easier sell on the whole idea than Genness, who proved to be strangely adamant. Bayern seemed relieved to be taking any kind of action at all, and even inflated a bit when we let him give us some minor orders; but Genness called it a fool's errand, and wouldn't endorse it on any level. Sally had come along for the meeting, and didn't comment at first; she grumbled heartily when Genness finally asked for her opinion pointblank, but it was plain she deeply loathed the idea of standing off and doing nothing while a pirate took a ship we were supposed to be protecting. Since our command structure had, by now, deteriorated into a democracy, Genness was outvoted. At length, he agreed to help, but made it well known we were doomed – an opinion I think we all shared.

The run towards the bogey's track was edgy to say the least. I dug out my goody bag from deep stowage. Bayern had almost as much EVA time as Sally and I, but I didn't trust him with either firearms or explosives; and anyway, he was Secondary Gunner on this cruise, and someone had to be in a position to fire on these guys at all times. Just to keep ol' Sureshot on a leash, though, I tied the arming controls for the defense suite into my suitcomp; and while I could theoretically do some rough targeting remotely as well, there was actually an interface problem with DAME MINNIE's sensor software, so I'd be shooting almost blind. I figured I'd let Bayern get first crack at it anyway.

Sally and I went over placement ideas for the charges, but a hardcore plan would have to wait until we got a visual, since we still didn't know what we were up against. I guess that was the scariest aspect of the whole thing for me. There weren't many really big pirates out and about, since Fleet would hunt down anybody with enough firepower and lawlessness to be a threat. And I'd never actually heard of a full-time pirate anyway, except for a few that carried letters of marque during wartime (though it was always wartime somewhere); pretty much all of them just did it on the side, when things otherwise got tight (though things were always tight somewhere). But even a small ship could drop an entire world full of hurt on us if it got the chance. Should our intruder turn out to be better armored than was, shall we say, statistically _likely_ , then my charges wouldn't be enough. I only had three of them. Placement was vital, and I couldn't plan that part in advance.

The year before, a story was all over the newsnets about how Fleet had bagged GONDOLA, a huge Hamilton class Far Trader that had been beefed up with a big externally mounted maser. They had used it to knock out starjump, comm, and main drives on nearly a dozen merchanters that had had the misfortune to cross their path. GONDOLA was a nasty customer, and was actually able to put a battle cruiser out of action that was in the hunting pack formed to go after it – just before a salvo from the other ships turned it into glowing vapor. If our bogey followed GONDOLA's model, we were wasting our time and our lives. The mere fact that these guys were running with even a cheap-charlie stealth suite opened us up to the possibility of more surprises.

And I hated surprises.

At an odd moment, when I should have been grabbing more sleep, I went over Genness' data from the passive sensors. There wasn't much to it, but with some old formulas I still had in my wristcomp from Gunnery class, I was able to roughly calculate the bogey's size based on the reaction mass they used to adjust course – just a few quick puffs from their attitude thrusters here and there, but it was enough to get an impression of a ship that was roughly half again as massive as DAME MINNIE.

That was doable. Maybe.

We had to perform a one-eighty before we crossed their trail, then we held our breaths and braked hard, hoping for all we were worth that the drive exhaust, now facing away from the bogey in the other direction, was precooled enough to go unnoticed as it spread. I had them on a missile lock the entire way, based on the nearly ghostlike data from our passives, and finally picked them up on light amplified opticals as we crossed by. I didn't know the type, but it vaguely matched the profile in DAME MINNIE's database of an old Churchspace trader called a Maccarri. It was listed as having a moderately large cargo bay for vessels of its mass, but this had to have been a different model, because the Maccarri wasn't supposed to have a dorsal docking platform – a dock currently hosting a tiny vessel I couldn't resolve well enough to really see, but which was more diminutive than any useful cargo shuttle I'd ever heard of. There were other differences, too, but they seemed more like upgrades: the stealth suite, of course; port and starboard external pods, which suspiciously resembled fighter-style weapon bays; a bigger starjump array than I would have expected – implying an extended FTL range; and a ramped-up sensor suite, including what could only have been a military-class tracking dish in the bow. If they popped on their active sensors, we'd never be able to shake them.

As pirates went, she was small – but she looked mean as a hornet.

To give him his due, Bayern handled our Bechel like he was born to it. The man really had talent after all. We were approximately eighty-five kilometers ahead, and twenty or so below the Maccarri, and we were matched in velocity. Our two bow tubes were facing them, and I took the liberty to return power to my targeting comps, which were tied into the sensor feed. If those pods held energy weapons, we'd never know about it in time to do anything, but missiles would give us a heads-up of about twelve seconds.

I had a pretty good autofiring program on a datacube I owned – something a real comphead I worked under, several jobs before, had written. I'd never had any need to use it, but it simmed well. I plugged it in now, debugged the interface, and let it run. If they fired first, we'd at least be able to retaliate in kind. That could be important if they missed for some reason. It could also be set to fire at a specified time, or if they brought up main drives, or really, any trigger at all. I put in a short list of behaviors that would seem threatening under the circumstances, just to give us a little attack redundancy. If both Bayern and I failed to act, DAME MINNIE would still get her two shots in. What can I say? I'm a sore loser.

After an hour it seemed likely that we hadn't been noticed. We held another meeting just to make sure we all understood our jobs. We let Bayern give us a pep talk, which boosted _his_ morale anyway, and then got started. Sally and I suited up again and clipped into a couple of scoots. I carried the shape charges, while Sally brought along a bag with a variety of tools; and we each had a rifle secured carefully to the tops of our environmental packs. Extra ammo we carried in belt pouches.

We had nearly a hundred kilometers of open space to cross. Scoots are meant for bopping around the outside hull, not for actually travelling anywhere. They'd be capable of it, certainly, since we wouldn't be running under constant acceleration, but they were hardly luxurious: just a foldable tube frame that you buckled yourself into, with a little digital control on the front, and a main thruster on the back. There were other, tiny nozzles all over the frame, too. Scoots weren't fast, or even especially safe, but they were agile.

We'd reconnected comm for Genness, who would be monitoring us the whole time, and said goodbye to any Plan-B that might have been lurking in the background – along with the last of our power. We shifted to a channel Genness said wasn't likely to be monitored, even by an auto-system: he set up comm going back and forth in one rotating modulation, while piping realtime data to us from the boat's sensors on another. Then we waved to our shipmates, stepped into the port airlock, and cycled. In three minutes we were in open space.

"What are the odds, Ejoq, that they'll have proximity sensors or external cameras running?" Sally asked almost immediately, sounding like she'd only thought of it now and was suddenly terrified.

"Well, if they're really intent on ambushing PONTE," I answered, "they won't have any actives running at all, even prox. We're not hot enough to show up on passives until we're really close, and we'll be coming up on their aft, directly through their thruster exhaust trail, so we might not register at all. As for cameras...well, those are usually just used for docking purposes: pretty much only the pilot on duty during berthing sequences ever looks at them, and then only to make sure the ship is coming in straight. No one would be watching now."

She was silent for a moment.

"You have no idea, in other words."

"Not a one."

More silence.

"You're a _sphincter_ , Ejoq!"

"Okay, I guess so, but I'm also right."

"How do you know? How do you _know_ you're right?! How many times have you done this, before? Wait, I'll tell you...zero! Nobody's _ever_ done this before! You know why? BECAUSE IT CAN'T BE DONE!!!"

"If you want my opinion..." Genness chimed in.

"I already _know_ your opinion," I shot, maybe more harshly than I should have. "Let us work this out."

I could hear Sally breathing hard for long moments, then I finally ventured, "Feel better?"

"Yeah....yeah, I think so. This is beyond crazy Ejoq."

"We can always go back inside, Sally. You call it."

"Oh, now it's _my_ decision?! It's _your_ maternal-mating plan! Are you saying it won't work now?"

"No, I still think it'll work, but not if you aren't committed to it. I _need_ you, Sal. I need everyone. And PONTE needs us. For crying out loud, we're just a bunch of losers! We're in a remote corner of a bleak system, in a broken-down boat, and not one of us is getting paid what we're worth. But PONTE's going to get hit if we don't do something. We're losers, but we have a job here; whether or not DAME MINNIE is up to the challenge, _we_ have to be. This might not work – okay, it probably _won't_ work – but I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror if I sat on the sidelines now. We signed up to fight off pirates. If we're not going to do our jobs, then why do we even have them? Why did we even apply?"

"Because we all needed the work, Ejoq. But we don't need to die."

"Dying is sometimes part of our work. Okay, it's corny, but we put ourselves in harm's way for a living. If you wanted it safe, you'd have moved planetside somewhere long ago, doing whatever...fixing aircars or waiting tables. We _all_ would have. We fight pirates and we save ships – not always our own; that's our job."

"You really believe that, don't you?" Her voice was strained, harsh. "You have a soldier complex, Ejoq: you want to be a fragging _hero_ , and you want us to go along for the ride!"

This was getting on my nerves. What I really wanted was to concentrate on the situation ahead, and this was not helping.

"Why are we having this conversation now, Sally?"

"Because I'm floating in deep space on a scoot! Because I'm not a Fleetmarine, but I'm part of an attack team! Because that attack team consists of just _two_ people! Because I very much believe I'm going to die a very violent death very soon!"

"The fact that no one would ever try this," I countered, starting to lose my cool, "is exactly _why_ it can work! If you're really not up to it, tell me now, before we get someplace where I'll need to rely on you."

"Now _that's_ not fair, Ejoq! None of us signed on for this – including you. Everything we're doing here is purely optional. Considering the circumstances, nobody would ever ask us why we didn't challenge that bogey."

" _I_ would ask!" I shouted at last. "Every day of my life, I would ask _why_! Why I turned and ran. Why I didn't want to do my job. Why PONTE was dead! You're wrong, Sally: I don't want to be a hero...I just want to sleep at night."

We were both silent for a while after this.

"Sooo...what's it going to be, folks?" Genness eventually asked, more to fill the radio void, I thought, than anything else.

"I guess we're coming in," I replied curtly, and started to key the airlock..

"No," Sally cut in, "we're going on."

Genness sounded upset when he replied. "Are you sure, Sal? You know this is crazy, there's no way the two of you can possibly..."

"I'm well aware of what we're doing here, Genness," she said, a real tone of finality in her voice. "We're going to take this thing down."

"Sally...you...why...?" he responded faintly, with exasperation.

"Just keep this channel open, and the chatter down, okay?"

"Yeah...yeah, okay." I could hear sadness in his smooth tone, and I was sure she did as well.

"Thanks, Sally..."

"You too, Ejoq. Let's just do this."

In ten minutes, we picked it up on suit lightamps: a bulky shape, seen from behind, with three main engine nozzles and a spidery jump array spanning out like a net of weird plumbing. The pods stretched out angrily, and the mysterious little vehicle mounted on top was just as mysterious from even this proximity.

We both keyed our suitcams, now that there was something to see, and I zoomed in on the piggybacker.

"You getting this Genness?"

"Yeah...that auxiliary boat there. Any ideas?"

"I was hoping you'd seen one before."

"No, sorry, I...what? Um, hold on a second...Bayern...uh, Bayern says – _okay!_ – Bayern says that's an automated probe...a mining probe, maybe, or general science. He says he's hauled them out to the asteroid belt for the company prospectors before, but that this one looks modified."

"Modified how? Put him on." There was a pause, and some inarticulate conversation as the channel went live on the pilot station.

"Captain Bayern, here."

"No stool, you muttonhead!"

"Sally, please. How is this thing different, Bayern? What do you think these guys use it for?"

"Well...uh...hmmm...the RM tank is missing, for one. No reaction mass, no mobility."

"Anything else?"

"Not that I can see...wait! Can you beef up your contrast, both of you? More. Yes, good. Now, Ejoq, zoom into that box on the back of the probe...no, the small one. A little closer...okay, yes. _Ah-hah_."

"What is it? What's it for?"

"Oh, I don't know."

Sally cursed, and shouted at him for a while, then added some funny, though improbable things about his sexual proclivities.

"Could it be an explosive of some kind, Bayern?" I asked when she took a breath.

"A bomb...? Oh, I doubt it. No one would buy a probe like this, just to blow it up: they're too expensive. Even the cheapest mining probes go for as much as a decent boat – you could buy a brand new Bechel for what one of these cost."

"What if they stole it from somewhere? Would it be worth blowing up then? What do probes go for, used?"

"Well...probes can really take a beating out here. I've never seen a used one for sale, now that you mention it."

"In other words, there's no market for them used. Let's err on the side of caution then, and assume they stole it but couldn't find a buyer, so they turned it into some kind of weapon. These things have AI's installed, right?"

"The ones I've seen do, yes. Special AI's, dedicated only to one job. You can't have real conversations with probes, but they know an awful lot about their prime function. What difference does it make, though? Missiles cost a _fraction_ of the price of one of these – and they're much faster than any probe. And I don't think this one can move on its own, anyway."

"Would the AI be active right now?" I asked.

"Um...well, when they ship them out from the factory, they're not activated. They don't even have prime-function software installed – it's a separate purchase, and it's up to the buyer to program the thing however it's needed. "

"Hmm...Sally, what do you think?"

She was quiet for so long I thought at first she hadn't heard. Finally, she said, "You can't just turn an AI on and off whenever you want. They break down fast like that. By the same token...once they're on, they can be dangerous to leave sitting idle, because they're likely to implement their programming when it's inconvenient, or even dangerous. If I were _these_ guys...I'd put it into some kind of nonrepeating simulation mode. That way it would keep busy doing what it wants to do, without causing any trouble; you could store it like so much baggage, and yet you could use it at a moment's notice."

"It wouldn't be running it's own sensors then, or be getting a live feed from the ship?" I tried to clarify.

"In the scenario I just described, no. But I might be wrong, Ejoq. I'm _probably_ wrong. There are too many variables here, too much we don't know. "

"Let's assume you're right...would it be able to detect us if we started messing with it?"

"Hmm...well...darn – Bayern – does this thing look like a _Shinjozo Smartdrone_ to you? I've read about them, but I've never seen one."

"I haven't heard of a Sandrino Smartjozo, or whatever you said. I transported Gratch & Kheys, Storrins, and GP's – this is a GP."

"You're sure?"

"Yes," he replied confidently.

"You're really sure?" Sally pressed.

"Yes, I am."

"You're really, _really_ sure?"

"Sally!"

"All right, Ejoq, I just hate trusting him. Probes aren't my bag. If he _is_ right, then we should be able to do some limited tinkering without rousing it. The Shinjozos supposedly have some sort of super diagnostics systems installed that alert them to any change in optimum status whatsoever, no matter what was being done at the time. Or so I've read. The article made a point of stating that no other manufacturer in the Sector could make that claim. We could probably place one of your charges on it, if that's what you've got in mind."

"No," I replied, giving my scoot a puff of acceleration, "I don't have one to spare."

I couldn't see Sally behind me, but I heard her curse quietly, which I figured she'd only do if she'd decided to follow. I eased over the rear dorsal bulkhead of the pirate, and jetted slowly to the probe, which was anchored there by four large clamps.

"Where's the AI on this thing? Sally? Bayern?"

"Probably deep inside, in a reinforced casing," and "Hmmm...I have no idea," came the two answers, simultaneously and respectively.

"No external ports, and we don't have the time to mess with it wirelessly, so counter-programming is out. Okay, let's make this easy. Bayern, you say this thing won't fly. Sally, do you concur?"

She scooted around the machine slowly, studying it, then simply said yes.

"Good. Genness, any changes...any sign they've noticed us yet?"

"Nope. It's like they're dead. I really hate this whole predator/prey thing."

"You and me both," I agreed, helping Sally maneuver back around the probe with an extra hand, that, in turn, set me to wobbling. I had to drift out a bit to get the room to stabilize, and then I scooted over to the starboard weapon pod. It was an irregular mass of metal and plastic points and cables, two or three meters across, extending out on a long triangular spar. A forward facing missile five-pack and a stubby particle beam stood out sharply in the lightamp of the suit's optics. The missiles were an unknown quantity until they were used, but the p-beam was of a pretty common civilian type I'd studied and simmed before. It was strictly a close range item; DAME MINNIE could be hurt by it where it was parked – maybe – but PONTE would be safe until it got much closer.

I took out one of the dinner plate sized shape charges from the box I was carrying, peeled off the plastic sheet from its adhesive backing, and stuck it to the spar. That was one down.

Sally came floating up into my view. "Want me to set one on the other side?"

"Have you ever done that before?" I asked.

"No."

"It's not so easy."

"Really? Looks like you just peel it off and stick it on...or is there an important step I'm missing?"

I handed her a charge. "Yeah...don't bang it into anything."

She scooted over the dorsal ridge of the ship, while I went under and towards the back. I found a sealed hood that looked like a main drive access panel. Trying to open that would kick on their automated anti-intruder systems for sure. I figured though, that it was a reasonable assumption that a maintenance hatch would be located in a spot where maintenance was needed; and, that nothing that needed a lot of maintenance would be built into a ship to begin with unless it was really important. This close to the main drives, the hatch had to open on a juncture of some sort in the piping for the fuel.

As good a spot as any.

Another charge went there, right over the seam of the hatch and the hull, where the extra armor would be weakest.

"Think that bump-thing up front is the bridge?" I asked Sally as I worked.

"Either that or a fueling dock."

"Fueling dock?"

"Yeah...they use 'em in the Papal Territories. They have a union or guild or something that does nothing but refuel ships. Most boats and ships built over there have a dock installed just for that – makes the mass transfer go smoothly, or so I've heard. This looks kind of like one of those, but these guys are a long way from home, if that's the case."

"Aren't we all," Genness added, quietly.

"Status, Gen?"

"No change, Ejoq. I'll let you know."

"Sally, does a fueling dock have a valve or something in it?"

"Yeah, and manual controls for the onboard fuel transfer pump."

"Manual? As in, physical on/off switches? That's idiotic. Are you sure?"

"Who am I – _Bayern_? Yes, I'm sure."

"Come on, I'm right here," Bayern said in a hurt voice.

"You mean to say that there's a way to access the fuel line?"

"Maybe. The guildies over there don't let anything become automated that might take control away from their little monopolies. Least ways, I've seen manual valve controls on their ships before. Let's take a look."

So we did. Sure enough, we found a small access panel on the bump in the armor, which Sally stated for sure was a fueling dock. Would high temperatures right there do anything for us?

"No," Sally replied, "there are safeguards against fires and explosions during refueling. You couldn't ignite the fuel tank aboard, anyway. There's no oxygen, for one thing."

"I'm thinking more along the lines of _simulating_ a fire so as to trigger a fire suppressant sequence in their systems. That'd lock 'em up for a bit if they don't have weapons running hot already. It could be a good distraction for getting inside. I mean, we're in agreement here, right? These guys _aren't_ legit?"

"No they're crooked, all right. I just don't see how you think we can get inside fast enough to surprise them. We could cut through a hatch pretty quickly and gain access to an airlock, but we couldn't use it to enter without depressurizing the ship – which'll cause an emergency lockdown inside and...ah, okay, I get it now."

"Get what?" Bayern and Genness asked together.

"You open a ship up to hard vacuum," I explained, "and it closes off all emergency iris valves and pressure hatches inside, effectively cutting off the crew from us and each other. That can be overridden easily by the captain, though. Not so with fire-suppressant sequences – they have to be verified false, and zee'd out individually. Layer the two, and they'll be wasting a lot of time just figuring out what's going on. Meanwhile, you guys call them and tell them to stand down or else. If they're surprised – which we're counting on – they'll lose even more time trying to confirm everything. While they do all this, we cut through to the next section – hopefully a central companionway, which will prevent overrides of the lockdown, since the comp won't allow anybody to open a hatch onto vac without inputting a suit's clearance code first."

"They might be in suits already," Genness observed, "or have them ready."

"If we were trying to do this closer to PONTE's interception time, I'd agree with you, since an experienced crew going into a potential battle might take those kinds of precautions..."

"Hey, that's a good idea!" Bayern injected.

"But these guys won't have them handy yet, I'm thinking. The suits will be in stowage somewhere, as isolated from the crew as the crew will be from the rest of the ship."

"But what do we do then? They won't be able to open any doors for us, even if they want to."

"We can put temporary patches on all the holes we make, if it looks like we're getting somewhere with them, but we won't repressurize right away. Their internal sensors will register that they still have an air loss, and we can negotiate a surrender. If they think that a bunch of us have gotten inside, and that we're willing to open them up to space, they'll have to give it up."

"And what happens when they learn it's only the two of us?"

"We'll have them disarmed and locked up by then, hopefully. It's mostly bluff. Just act mean, Sally."

" _That_ won't be hard," Bayern muttered.

"Their internal sensors – cameras or whatever – will show that it's just the two of us. It's hard to bluff somebody who knows what cards you're holding."

"We tell them that the rest of our people are still outside – doesn't make any sense, I know, but they'll be upset, and maybe not thinking logically. They'll be checking sensors and looking to confirm what we're saying. It's a timing thing: we work fast, act tough, and lie through our teeth; by the time they realize what's going on, we'll have them. Think it'll work?"

"Not a prayer. Let's get started."

Sally brought her oxytorch out and got ready to go at the fuel intake. I scooted over to the side hatch – a standard looking airlock – and hefted my big plasma saw. We 1-2-3'd it, then started cutting. I really wasn't sure what Sally had in mind for the fuel duct, and, to be honest, that part worried me; she acted with confidence, though, which was more than I could manage.

I cut through the locking mechanism for the external hatch, knowing sensors were probably tripping like crazy inside there. I imagined a crew of unwashed desperadoes scrambling now for vacsuits, weapons, sensors, etc., and I worked faster than ever.

"Pop on actives, Genness, if you have the power. Tell me what's happening."

"I'm on it..."

"And call them on standard channels and order a stand-down. We're going in!"

Cutting through a polynium door mechanism doesn't take long if you know where to put the hole. I was done in less than a minute, and had the lock itself exposed. A twist here and spin there with a Z-G ratchet, and the heavy airlock door popped open, easy as you please.

"Sally, I'm in! You ready?"

"Yeah, yeah...heat sensors will be registering a fireball at the intake valve – they're closing up in there right now – feel those vibrations? An emergency lockdown's in progress, hatches and valves shutting, everything. It's working!"

Not surprisingly, I couldn't feel anything. As I waited for her to scoot over, I asked Genness, "What's the word? They panicky yet?"

"Um...hold on..."

"There's no _time_ , Gen! What are they saying?"

"I'm not sure...I'm getting something weird here..."

"Patch us in," I told him, and, after a moment, there was a sudden, ponderously calm woman's voice speaking in completely unimpressive tones.

"...emergency attack sequence challenge...negative...full sensors engaged...one contact registered..."

"They just hit actives, people!" said Genness. "We're in the spotlight now!"

"...no further vessels detected within standard weapons ranges...conclusion: vessel previously detected 115.22 coreward subjective, 17.35% of ecliptic potential, has initiated attack...weapons coming online...target lock confirmed..."

"Sally! Stay clear! I'm blowing the pods!"

"Hold it – I'm exposed...!

"...final missile diagnostic 100%...firing in five standard seconds..."

"Okay, I'm clear!" She cruised down from dorsal, and grabbed at a handhold near me.

"Blow 'em! Blow 'em!" Bayern shouted, and for once I obeyed him.

There was a yellow flash on our side of the ship, and then nothing more. The one pod we could see from our point-of-view cartwheeled off into the blackness, and was invisible almost immediately. The calm, strangely resonant voice continued without pause, no hint of surprise evident whatsoever.

"...all weapons offline...running diagnostics...particle beam loss port and starboard confirmed...missile loss port and starboard confirmed...calculating tactical information...87.5% chance of successful undetected strike upon this vessel..."

"That's a _machine_ , Ejoq!" Sally said. "The AI is in charge!"

"...all systems on standby...external opticals confirm two personnel contacts at starboard airlock...loading anti-hijack programming...programming loaded and implemented...lockdown redundancy due to fire-suppressant protocols...standing by..."

I'll admit, I was at a complete loss for a minute.

"Where are all the people?!" I yelled. "This thing didn't jump in on its own, did it?"

"Maybe they've let the AI take over while they're getting ready?"

"That doesn't make any sense, Sal – they're pirates, aren't they? Nobody who boards and takes ships and cargoes would let a machine call the shots. That couldn't be its function, could it?"

"There's no reaction mass on the probe," Bayern reminded me, his relevance surprising.

"Yeah, and that small box on its back... _not_ a bomb, but a bypass or circuit shunt or something. Let's search this thing."

Getting into the airlock took some doing, since we couldn't fit the scoots in, even after they were folded, and, exasperatingly, we had no easy way to tether them – I mean, I couldn't think of _everything_ , right? In the end, we actually glued them to the bogey's hull with vacgap filler from our tool pouches. We both had grip/scrape tools that could break the hold when it was time to go, so we just left them near the airlock, and proceeded inside.

We opened the main door in the same manner in which we had opened the outer airlock hatch, and a fast, almost explosive rush of crystallizing atmosphere buzzed out for a few seconds as soon as a hole had been made. Other than a few aftermarket lockout doohickeys, which were designed to curb break-ins when the ship was docked, there wasn't anything unusual here to slow us down.

Under normal docking or spaceport circumstances, a klaxon and computer alert to the yokel badges would eat up all the time it would reasonably take to do the work – long, dirty cutting work without the right tools. We were in space, though, where plasma saws capable of sundering matter (along with, literally, igniting breathable atmo) are the right tools. In fact, this ship had easier doors to open than even our crummy Bechel did, and that wasn't uncommon. My "plan" had counted on this – though it was now beginning to look like a lot of planning for nothing. We unslung our rifles anyway, and had them ready.

"Hatch open," I announced as we swung the rounded rectangular door inward. "No internal lights...hmm...amplification isn't worth much in here. Switching on suit floods – how much of this are you guys getting?"

"Looks good," Genness replied, "Is this a central companionway? Are those hatches on the sides?"

"No we're in a connecting companionway," Sally answered. "Looks like it right-angles with the ship's core. Got another door to go through on the far end. Artificial gravity is off...typical anti-hijack protocol. These narrow hatches on the sides look like equipment stowage...and...yeah, they're locked. They're not pressure-capable, though, and not big enough for somebody in a suit to hide in. Moving on."

The internal door proved to be even easier to open, taking thirty seconds to crack. Another sparkling hiss of escaping atmosphere preceded the swing open, this time lasting a minute or so, after which we were greeted by more blackness. A few tiny unit lights of varying colors peeped and blinked here and there along the walls on various switches and controls, but nothing more. Floods revealed a wide central companionway that looked like it had been either designed for, or converted to, rec room use. Things were packed neatly away, game sticks and smackballs in convenient racks on one bulkhead, a dark, mute entertainment center mounted along the other. Cushioned seats that locked in place on floor tracks sat off to the sides, leaving the central way clear.

"Compulsive neat freaks?" I muttered.

"Yeah," Sally agreed, "it's awfully clean in here for a sudden emergency lockdown. But why would they send this thing into starjump empty? What good's a pirate ship without any pirates?"

The vessel's logo was on the wall, near what looked like a beverage dispenser. It was a word I didn't recognize, in a stylish font.

"Gen, look this up in the ship registry database – it's not in Ingliss. What is that...Latin?"

"Lowspeak," Bayern injected. "It says, DAAF'QA. It means, _Preparedness_ or _State of Readiness_."

"You can speak another language?!" Sally was flabbergasted

"Some. You guys aren't from around here. Deegman gets a lot of traffic from over the border. We have to deal with guildies all the time."

I caught a glimpse of Sally's expression through her helmet, and she seemed amazed and maybe (just a little) impressed.

"I've got a DAAF'QA listed here as...ship type just says it's a Far Trader," Genness said. "It looks like...ah...okay, it says it was built by the _Most Honorable Spacial Mercantile Collective of the Beneficent Hyrondua State of Rhykertov Within Far Reach And..._ it goes on and on – just a shipyard in Churchspace....it was built for a transport company owned by a noble family...in service for ten years...ah, looks like it changed hands two more times. Pretty typical, over all. It's currently owned by an investment consortium in the Corporate Territories."

"When was that listing updated?" I asked. "Legit corporations don't go in for piracy. This thing must be stolen."

"No, it's current – last update was 74 hours ago. Just before our little problems started."

"Well, still..."

"Ejoq," Sally said, "the mods on this ship would've taken weeks at a shipyard, or even longer if they did it on the sly. And they're expensive, too. No pirate outfit could afford it. If that listing is up to date, then this thing – as is – belongs to that company."

"Oh, man...then it's _Corporate_ trouble...that's all we need! Let's do a fast sweep through the ship, Sal, then check their Engineering for something we can use on DAME MINNIE. I don't want be here now even _more_ than I didn't want to be here before."

A quick look around revealed a ship perfectly packed up, as if awaiting it's first crew. Not a soul to be found. We didn't have time to try to crack the computer, which would've been futile anyway (military-grade decryption was usually required for that sort of thing – as opposed to outmoded, second-hand civilian-class gunboat decryption).

"Bring the boat over, Bayern. Park as close as you can."

"That will be it for the engines, then," he replied. "There won't be enough power to fire up after that."

"Doesn't matter. We have nowhere else to go. I'm counting on a miracle on this end, so just get close."

Engineering was significantly cleaner and more spacious than on DAME MINNIE, and Sally located their battery bank easily.

"Wow...oh, _wow_!" she exclaimed, after opening the bank casing. "Skartcher Nova Cerampacks! Fully charged, yet! See? They each have their own diag panel! Oh, man, this is sweet!"

"Are these standard on a ship like this?" I asked.

"These aren't standard anywhere! These are the latest thing! I read about 'em only a month ago. We could run DAME MINNIE all the way back to Deegman on only _two_ of these – with normal gravity for the whole trip, and juice left over for a party!"

"They're a lot bigger than our own power cells," I pointed out. "Heavier too, I'll bet."

"Not in Z-G, they aren't. Just gotta watch the mass when we're moving them around. They can be programmed for just about any power and waveform output up to their max, so I wouldn't even need to jury-rig a converter. We just have to get them over there, strap 'em down somewhere, and we're back in the saddle again."

"They're expensive, I take it?"

"Oh, mama, yes! They're marketed to elite Corporate security, ritzy private yacht owners, intelligence organizations – you know, customers with deep pockets."

"How are they going to fit out the side airlock?" Bayern asked.

"What are you talking...?!" Sally started to bite off his head, but then looked at the square, bulky things again with a critical eye. "Hmmm...yeah, all right. We'll have to use the cargo doors."

"Aren't those on the bottom?" Genness now pursued.

"Yeah. So? What of it?"

"How do you get them down there? I didn't see anything like a floor hatch or big elevator in your video feed, just that little spiral staircase."

"Well, they got the copulating things _in_ here somehow!"

"They might have removed the whole airlock frame from the side of the ship during the big refit," I commented. "That's SOP in shipyards, isn't it?"

This seemed to curb her enthusiasm a bit.

"You mean, we found the perfect power solution, but we can't get them out? I'm not ready to give up yet, Ejoq."

"Neither am I, Sally. We _have_ to get these things. The question is how."

"Okay, we're outside now," Bayern announced. "Ten meters off starboard and holding. And I had a thought: can't you just cut a hole in the side of the ship and bring them out that way?"

Sally was getting stressed, so her tolerance level was low.

"With _what_ , you ash hole?! You think we brought a whole shipyard of equipment with us out here? Cutting a few centimeters off an airlock isn't like chopping a two-meter-wide hole through armored hull casing!"

"Wait, wait, wait," I said, because their bickering was a distraction. "We're set up for it already."

"What are you talking...? Ah, don't _tell_ me, Ejoq, they'll be wrecked!"

"No, look, Sally – see? The starjump engines are in the way. They'll act as cover...I think."

"It doesn't look that way to me. Where's the ejecta point on this side?"

"Probably right there, along that bulkhead."

"How can you be sure?"

"Well, _that's_ the main fuel conduit, right? And there's the branch point for it...and that's the primary fuel pump for the line. So that's got to be the spot."

"What are you two plotting?" Genness asked in his smooth tone. "Clue in your loyal crewmates, pray."

"We're gonna blow a hole through the bulkhead, right here in Engineering."

"Fabulous!" Bayern shouted, and then, "Um, I mean, good idea people."

"Oh... _Ejoq_ ," Genness muttered, but that was it.

"We could reset it in here," Sally observed. "Then the blast would be mostly carried outside."

"That'd be true if we didn't have those feed lines right there: they're real high pressure, and could actually turn enough of the blast away that it might not cut through the hull. Blow it from the other side, and we're gold."

"Then what about a hole somewhere else, where the feeds won't be an issue? If the batteries get damaged, then all of this would have been for nothing."

"Hmm...okay, yeah. Good point. Let's look for a spot out in the main companionway..."

"Uh, guys," Genness interrupted then, "you might want to hear this...it's the AI again."

And then the carefully measured voice of the computer came through like before.

"...approaching at 14.72 gravities, mark, constant acceleration...spectral analysis of heat trail complete...cross-referencing with Industrial Specification Database For Commercial Propellants and Thrust Materials...comparison complete...match found: Klein-Pretorious Manufacturing product number 1107.975b/e55r...installed warhead Motherload Mark VII Tactical Nuclear Defensive Device...yield rating: .35 megatons...approximate constant acceleration range: 250,000 kilometers...standing by..."

Needless to say, we'd been in motion from the words  _heat trail_.

"Where's it coming from, Gen?!"

"I dunno, I dunno! Nothing on scans yet... _wait_! Oh, no! It's PONTE!"

" _What_?! Get them on the horn! Tell 'em to abort!"

"It's offline, remember?!"

"Hook it back up!"

"How?!"

"For crying out loud!" Sally shouted as we made it back through the connecting companionway to the airlock, "Tertiary Power Channel 14, Standby, Off, On, Full, Go, Zero Delay – hold it down two seconds, then Commit!"

"What? _Wait_! Where's that?" Gen was starting to sound worried, and it was almost scaring yesterday's ration bars out of me.

"Oh, _I_ know where that is," Bayern put in, with a confident tone, which actually did make me lose 'em. Thank the Powers for in-suit biowaste bags!

" _No_!" Sally and I both shouted.

"Forget about calling PONTE! How much time, Genness?"

"Looks like...oh, man, just over thirteen minutes! Get out of there you two!"

"On our way...no, wait...we still need the batteries!"

Sally looked at me through her helmet with wide eyes.

"There's no time, Ejoq! We have to go!"

I tripped the shape charge with my suit comp. There was a hard shudder in the bulkhead under my gloved hand, but that was all.

"We go _with_ the batteries. C'mon!"

"But, the missile...!" she spluttered, following.

Engineering looked really different now: large and small particles of hull material, gaseous fuel, fire-suppressant foam (instantly freeze dried in the vac conditions), and various machine parts floated in the wide compartment like murky water. A wickedly jagged, but prettily saw-edged hole, just about three meters across, gaped menacingly inward. Stars and DAME MINNIE's bow were plainly visible beyond.

"Sally! Ejoq! Can you hear me?! Are you all right?!"

"Shaddap, Bayern!" Sally barked. Then to me, "One...two...ah, _six_ of these batteries are toast. _That_ one's leaking something yellow that's probably super-toxic, so watch the vapor – we can't do a decent decon out here."

She said all this as we unhooked the two that were best sheltered from the blast by the (now totally wrecked) jump engine.

"I turn it _this_ way? Okay, I can do them both now. Get back to the boat, Sally; run us a power jump to the supply bay, and get it open! Move it – I can push these over there myself! And watch out for the loose stuff!"

" _You_ watch out!" and then she was gone.

"Ten minutes, people!" said, Genness. "This is crazy, Ejoq! We can still clear off in time on docking thrusters..."

"And die slowly when the power finally fades?"

"PONTE's coming," he argued. "She can help us out."

"PONTE's trying to kill us! Or she doesn't care if we die. Either way, she's poison. Now shut up, and let me do this!"

It wasn't hard to disconnect them; they were as sweet and sensibly designed as Sally had observed, and every bit as massive as they looked. I heaved hard, with a grunting weightlifter's shout that had everybody screaming my name, and set the first of them into slow motion. It bumped a few pieces of floating junk out of its way, but didn't change direction or slow down. I hopped up so as to pace it, and heaved again off a spar to do a course correction. It was a sublime moment, and the battery snailed out through the new hole like it was made to do it.

"I see it on monitors," Bayern said. "Sally, get that hatch open!"

"It's opening now! I, uh, I'll try to snag it with a freight strut!"

" _Negative_!" Bayern commanded with more authority than anything else I'd ever heard him say. "Open the hatch and clear out of the way! I can catch it."

"Oh, Bayern," I said, because the thought of him doing something important without screwing it up seemed like a wild fantasy, but I went back for the other battery.

"Slower, knothead!"

"Bring it up, Bayern! Up, up!" Gen was plainly scared.

"C'mon, Captain Crunch! Axial spin...now yaw, _yaw_!"

Sally and Genness suddenly screamed in a pitch of fear, followed by a second of silence that made my heart stop.

"Well I'll be a...you _did_ it! Bayern, you really did it! Not a scratch on the thing! Never seen anything like it...hold on, it's bounding up a little, but... _GRUNT_...okay, snagged it...and, ahh...it's strapped down."

I was pushing the second battery up at this point, but it started cartwheeling immediately. I swore loudly, and tried to steady it, but I had no leverage, and started spinning, myself.

"Five minutes!"

I took a precious moment to fume, looking at the huge battery rotating slowly as it knocked small bits of flotsam around like a clumsy whale.

"I can't get the other one over in time," I announced as I maneuvered myself around it. "I'm coming out the hole and jumping over. Don't move, Bayern."

"Take the scoot, Ejoq!" Sally warned, but she well knew there was no time.

"Use your strut if my aim is off," I replied, pulling myself carefully through the maw of the hole. I tapped _off_ the floods, and _on_ the helmet lightamp, and spied Sally holding onto the battery inside the supply bay – only about ten meters away, but looking very far to me now. She had it secured with cargo straps, and held the freight tool in one hand. I jumped, and started to spin like the battery I'd just left behind.

"Oh, for the love of...! Hold on, Ejoq! Hold on! Stop flailing!"

I didn't realize I was flailing because I was too busy panicking.

"Get me! Sally, catch me!"

"Already done..." she said with a heave, and I felt something pull at my tool belt. In a moment, I was holding on to a cargo ring, my head at Sally's floating feet.

I was hyperventilating, but I moved carefully to orient myself to her, keeping a nearby handhold in a death grip.

"Take _this_ ," she ordered, looking me decisively in the eye, and handing me the jumper connect. It was the right thing to say, because it gave me something simple but vital to do with at least one hand while she turned to the input panel on the battery.

"Close the bay, Bayern. Oh, man, this thing is _sweet_! Hand me that connect now, Ejoq. Good...okay, here goes...1...2...3..."

"Two minutes!" Genness was as panicked as me.

"And...main breaker is... _on_!"

We saw no difference down in the bay, because we'd pulled so many system controls – but we'd put Main Drive and inertial dampener shunts in place before we'd left, which is all that mattered.

"Now, Bayern! Full on!" she screamed, but we were moving even before the bay doors were closed.

There was a big bleed-over from inertials – a couple of G's, and we both went flying. If I hadn't had a helmet on, I'd have fractured my skull against the bulkhead, and as it was, I was seeing so many stars I thought I was still outside. Sally hit off a corner of the battery, then slammed into a storage rack so hard she yelped like a puppy.

Waiting for a nuke to blow has a weird way of simultaneously slowing time to a crawl and accelerating it to light speed; a hideous subjective/objective relativistic melding, with abject terror as an added spice.

There was a sudden shudder that I recognized immediately.

"What the..." Bayern said, and then, "...oh, no! It wasn't _me_ , I didn't fire, I swear it!"

"I know, I know," I assured him. "The incoming has crossed a threshold I listed as one of my autofiring criteria. Our missiles will be tracking back along that one's heat trail – they're heading out to PONTE. What's the ETA on those?"

"Looks like...eleven...no, twelve minutes," Genness replied. "Our toys are a little faster, it seems. Just forty seconds until their one arrives – still on target for DAAF'QA."

"Oh, man. Bayern?"

"Drive's at full acceleration..it'll be close. I just want to say that it has been a pleasure and a privilege to be your commanding officer, and that if we don't make it out of here..."

"Bayern," I warned, "better shut up with that crap, 'cause we might just live, and then I'd have to beat you with a power cable!"

"Uh...um...right..."

"Fifteen seconds," Genness whispered.

"Ten..."

"Five..."

" _Impact_."

There was a stiff jarring, and the acceleration dropped off immediately.

I waited for something nastier to happen. We _all_ did, because in an atmosphere, we'd have been blown apart like a porcelain jar in a gale; the efficacy of nuclear weapons in vacuum is of a magnitude smaller, though – and therefore much more dependent upon accuracy.

"Engines are off," Bayern said at last. "I'm getting an EMP warning."

"Oh, yeah...no engine casings," I replied, after a low groan. "The computer will run a hard reset on them automatically. Should just be a few minutes."

"Sensors will be up again, too, but right now we're blind," Genness put in. "If PONTE's still moving along the same trajectory, at the same speed, I think our missiles have an ETA of eight minutes."

"Oh, PONTE's on the move, all right. Gen, get sensors up and running ASAP. Sally and I will bring weapons back online."

Sally's lack of comment made me turn and look. She floated at a weird angle in front of the rack she'd hit, and was unmoving except for a slow drift. I swore and turned her over. Her eyes were rolled back, and she looked gray. I keyed the air cycle for the supply bay, but that was going to take minutes.

"Sally's hurt! I'll need help down here as soon as we're pressurized!"

"How is she?" Genness asked with tense urgency.

"I can't tell yet...unconscious...maybe a seizure. She hit hard at takeoff. Have the shock kit handy, okay?"

"Taking proper hold during movement is a basic responsibility of each crew member," Bayern stated. "Um...who's the Primary Medic?"

" _Sally_!" Genness and I both shouted, and I added a few expletives about his management skills that I thought she would appreciate. "I'm Secondary Med, and Genness is Tertiary. Genness, we still have four minutes 'til you can get in here – reset what you can with the sensors, and get those actives up. Bayern, cover sensors and comm when he leaves, and keep your weather eye open for heat trails."

A few long moments crawled by in silence.

"I...I have actives," Genness finally announced. "You're right, PONTE's accelerating, and... _no_! Those dirty backstabbers! I count two...check that, _three_ inbound heat trails...and they have a lock on us already."

"What?! _Already_?! That's impossible! Get down here, Gen! Thirty seconds until the pressure cycle is done, and I need to reconnect the weapon power nodules as soon as I can get inside!"

Half a minute, and it crawled.

Sally's breathing seemed labored; mine _certainly_ was. Gen, headset on and wired for sound, was at the window in the airlock door, looking almost as pained as Sally did, while Bayern was acting way too _take-charge_ for comfort. The moment the pressure indicator showed green, I tore open the door and pushed passed Genness. I popped my face shield as I swam through the main companionway to the correct maintenance hatch, then popped that, too, and sent the plastic covering sailing down the main companionway like a discus. I heard Bayern yelp and swear through the open hatchway to the bridge, so my aim was good, anyway. I only hoped that it would hold.

"How's Sally?" I asked as I worked.

"I don't know. She doesn't look good, Ejoq. I gave her something for shock, but there might be other problems. I need help here."

"We _all_ need help here. Do what you can. Where are those incomings right now, Bayern?"

"Uh...ETA...looks like six minutes. They're moving really fast, and still gaining. Can you shoot them down?"

"I'm gonna try, but our ordinance isn't rated for antimissile defense. That's what the charpacs are for, and they're offline. These may be nukes too, in which case they'll blow when they're within 100 meters. Plus, they'll be going so fast by then, they'll be able to splatter us, with or without a warhead. What's PONTE doing?"

"Looks like they've changed course a little, and are outward bound under full drive power. Their flight path...er..."

"What is it? Don't waste time!"

"Well...if I didn't know better, I'd say PONTE was getting ready for _starjump_. That doesn't make sense, though – they're still inside the gravity shadow. There's a good chance of a misjump if they go now."

"They want out of here in a big way. This whole thing's a setup!"

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind. How are engines?"

"Looks like...yes! Online! Do we run for it?"

"Negative! The incomings are too fast. Just watch the sensors, and power up. Be ready for evasives on my call!"

I'd been talking as I brought up my tactical boards and fire control interface, and began running them through a quickie diag. The gloves were in the way, so I spent a full minute disconnecting them and sending them off; by this point we had so much unsecured stuff floating around, I didn't care about it. I was acting and reacting, but I had no illusions.

Not anymore.

I tweaked one of our two outgoings towards a point I thought PONTE might want to reach before risking her jump. The other one I throttled back for ten seconds, then brought up it's propellant burn again, along with a tiny course correction. That put the first missile in front of PONTE's projected path, and the other one right on target but delayed just enough to give them time to make a rash decision: if the risk of a misjump was higher further in, then that's exactly where I wanted them to try it.

"Ejoq...I'm reading a graviton discharge from PONTE," Bayern said. "They're jumping. I just don't get it...it's way too early."

"They don't have a choice. What are the odds of a misjump from there?"

"I have no idea but...okay, here's the spike. Good jump or bad, they're gone."

So that was that.

I spared the vindictive space of a heartbeat hoping PONTE and her crew had been torn apart at the molecular level and scattered across years of time and parsecs of space, as was theorized to happen in catastrophic misjumps. Then I had the incomings on a hard lock, and was gratified to see a close formation, even after all that distance. I rotated DAME MINNIE's forward missile packs in both tubes, and fired simultaneously. I held my breath for a count of eleven, then hit the auto destruct. They disappeared as tight contact points from my screens, and became widening clouds.

"Oh, Ejoq! I'm gunning it!"

Bayern had just seen our only defensive weapons blow up on sensors, and had a terrified echo in his voice, like a scared bird singing for its life.

"Wait for it!"

"But..."

"I said _wait_!"

And then two of the three incomings on the tacboard winked out when they hit my impromptu debris field. The third one, though, slipped through it like a ghostly thing, and I shouted hard.

" _Now, now, now_!"

I was slammed against my harness, the low-quality inertials once again bleeding shamelessly, then I felt my stomach get tossed to the side, up, down, and over.

"Bayern!"

"Hold on!"

Then my spleen and eyeballs alike joined in, and tried to jump out of my body – and I could only hope that Genness had secured Sally well.

A serene, agonizing silence followed for several seconds, wherein I fully expected to become part of a rapidly expanding ball of plasma, but I finally let out a sigh when it stretched on. The tacboard showed a small mass of debris on the missile's former track, moving out obliquely in a messy wave of scrap.

"What happened to it? Bayern...?"

"I'm not sure...I was dodging, but it kept compensating, so I pulled a tighter angle. It altered course again on a tight arc, and then just fell apart."

"Ha! _Gee-strain_! Fantastic job, Bayern!"

He coughed in shock and, I think, appreciation, and then immediately launched into a sermon about teamwork. Genness cut him off before I could.

"All clear? If so, get down here, Ejoq. Sally's not looking good, and med's not my bailiwick."

It wasn't mine either, but I'd had some training. I couldn't do much for her while I was still in the suit, so I spared the time to climb out of it, telling Genness to do the same for her before I got back down to the big stowage bay. She was in her skivvies by the time I did arrive, and pale, though her breathing was more regular. She moaned, but wasn't quite conscious.

"Watch the right arm," Gen said. "She cried out when I took the suit off. I think it might be broken."

The funny angle she held it at spoke of volumes of pain.

"It's dislocated," I said, but I checked for breaks anyway. Finding none, I told Genness to hold her tight.

I grabbed her arm and pulled, and she screamed and seemed almost to come to, spitting my name and cursing soundly. She was out cold for sure after that, and Gen and I moved her back to her cabin. I gave her a shot for pain, mixed with a sedative, and we left her bungeed to her bunk, fully asleep at last. 

##  four

* * *

There was a lot of work to do before any of us could take the time to stand vigil. I drafted Genness because I needed an extra pair of hands in a couple of places. We worked in silence for the most part, except when I gave him instructions on what to hold, or press, or lift.

My intention was that with just one of these batteries aboard, we'd return artificial gravity to only half normal. That was still a big draw, though, and I wanted all our basics online first, before pressing for convenience. Plumbing and general power access had to come next.

The water lines all had electronic control valves, so Sally and I had physically disconnected the tanks, in case anything failed out when the power was cut (drowning in zero gravity is no joke). That had gone fast and easy. Reconnecting them now, though, without her experience and expertise available, was proving less so.

And Gen was still quiet.

"Are you mad at me?" I asked at last.

He replied quickly, and with conviction, though he didn't look at me at all.

"I said that we shouldn't do this from the start, and now Sally's been seriously injured. Don't be silly, Ejoq, of course I'm mad at you."

"You ought to know...I'd never intentionally hurt her," I countered with embarrassment, because I found myself choking up suddenly. "We _needed_ that battery, Gen. What choice did we have? Besides, _you,_ of all people, have no right to complain about putting others at risk!"

I hadn't meant to say it here...I'd wanted to wait until we'd gotten back to Deegman – and then, only to the proper authorities.

He stopped holding and stared at me for a long moment.

"Do you want to qualify that?" he asked, very low and very evenly – almost flat.

I didn't, but now I had to.

"PONTE knew DAAF'QA's location well enough to target it. Their missile had a lock from the start. With DAAF'QA's stealth suite, and as powered down as we were, they'd have needed military-grade scanning equipment to detect either one of us – especially at that distance. But I did a quality analysis of their sensor wash; those guys were just using off-the-shelf stuff. No matter what kind of enhancement algorithms they might have had running, it wouldn't have been enough for combat purposes on the fly. Not unless they knew _exactly_ where to look."

"They could have been tracking our personnel comm signals," he replied in the same dead voice. "And we'd contacted them directly several times as it was."

"Tight beams only, which are easy enough to draw a bead on, but we changed directions after that. PONTE didn't have a basis for triangulating our signal, and they didn't have our comm frequency anyway. Or _did_ they...?"

"There are a dozen ways to figure out a spacecraft's location that I can think of just off the top of my head. You're talking nonsense."

"Probably, in which case you have my apologies. But if I'm not, Genness, then I only have one question...why did your partners on PONTE double-cross you?"

Dead.

Silence.

Easygoing Genness suddenly wasn't easy or going. He gathered there like a storm cloud: dark, patient, quiet but for a distant rumble.

"I don't know what you're talking about Ejoq."

"I think you do. PONTE may not have had a great sensor suite installed, but DAAF'QA sure did, along with a bona fide AI to analyze the readings. Even powered down like we were, it should have picked us up on its passive systems immediately. I'm guessing that it actually did, but had been instructed not to bother us unless we bothered it. We bothered it, so it tried to fire on us. But _you_ run the sensors. _You_ run comp systems. If I hadn't spotted that proximity alert by accident, DAAF'QA would have slipped in completely unnoticed, and could have met up with PONTE without the rest of us ever knowing about it until we got back to Deegman. I _did_ notice it though, and you knew I would have followed it up if you'd tried to play it off as a ghost contact or a glitch, so you had no choice but to treat it as seriously as I did."

I took a breath to gauge his reaction. He still had none. That bothered me, but I went on.

"If it all went well for you, it would have been a big knock against the fledgling Deegman defense program, and _we_ would have been in the center of the crap storm. Some of us, anyway – my thinking is that you have another identity ready to step into back there, but whatever. The point is, the pirate attack was a _fake_ : DAAF'QA jumps in on its own, and PONTE purposely meets up with it. They send out bogus distress calls to Deegman. Then they shift their cargo to the other ship, and the crew messes up the interior to make it look like a struggle occurred. Maybe they concoct some internal data records to imply that the pirates got inside; or perhaps the crew donates a couple of cc's of blood each, and splatter it around for good effect – stuff like that. p

"However it gets rigged, PONTE is emptied out, the crew shifts to DAAF'QA, and they jump away, easy as you please. I'm willing to bet that most, if not all, the attacks have been scams since the beginning. A campaign like this must have been planned a long time in advance, so you guys probably had to think of something fast once it was made public that a Bechel was being outfitted for anti-piracy. Maybe DAAF'QA couldn't be reprogrammed in time, or maybe you were worried about it getting damaged in a real engagement with DAME MINNIE. Why bother with violence at all, though, if you could pull your scam again and discredit the defense program at the same time? I figure that that's where _you_ came in, Gen: your job was to make sure this went off without any interference from us."

"Why would anyone go to the great expense and trouble of staging a fake attack?"

I shrugged. It started me drifting, and I steadied myself.

" _Business_ , of course. A campaign like this just might be part of some company's long term strategy. I haven't had time to research the corporation that owns – or, rather, _owned_ – DAAF'QA, but I'll bet they're in a sweet position to profit from the fear produced by all the so-called pirate attacks here. Maybe they sell private security services; maybe they sell gunboats or insurance. Any way you cut it, scared, desperate people are willing to spend freely for peace of mind, and Deegman's economy is starting to dive because of this climate of fear."

"That's all wild conjecture, Ejoq," he responded, no more life in him than before, and I've got to admit, his deadpan was starting to get creepy. "You can't prove a word of it."

It was a challenge, a thrust.

He was studying my defences, looking at what I had, or thought I had. Revealing everything now would be a stupid mistake.

But I do stupid things when I'm pissed off – like tell the truth.

"No? Well, weapons weren't the only toys I had in my duffel, Gen. I jacked a bunch of in-line _microcorders_ into the comm system all over the boat back when we were still doing the outbound shakedown. See, I thought they'd be a good insurance policy for us poor working slobs, in case the owners tried to withhold our bonuses or other compensations, by claiming that we hadn't been doing our jobs. It's happened to me before, and I needed proof to give to my union. Well, when Deegman admin downloads DAME MINNIE's records, the recorders will dump _their_ data, too, as a single backup file. Any discrepancies between the computer logs entered by the crew and that backup data will get flagged and displayed first thing. And since portside always downloads a vessel's mission data during it's final approach, Deegman Security Corps would likely be waiting for us with warrants when we docked."

He seemed to be thinking about it very, very carefully. Then, slowly and deliberately, as he floated silently in the companionway, he took out a short serrated knife from a sleeve pocket of his jumper. It might have been small, but it looked sharp and cruel to me, as did Genness now.

"And where are all those microcorders?"

His soft tone held a sector of menace in it, even though he hadn't changed or modulated it in any way.

Even so, I smiled.

Not because I was feeling cocky or thought the situation was especially funny, but because I was _relieved_ : until that moment, I really had no idea if I was right. I'd felt guilty for thinking ill of him, half-believing that it was jealousy over his relationship with Sally.

"Put the knife down, Genness. DAME MINNIE needs a crew, and we're still a long way from home."

"I'm rated for more skills than my CV would have you believe," he replied, "Running this boat by myself would not be impossible – merely difficult. And, truthfully, killing _you_ wouldn't even be that. But if we can come to an agreement, we can avoid unpleasantries. You're very resourceful, Ejoq...I have to say I'm quite impressed. Your skills and ingenuity, to say nothing of your leadership capabilities, could fetch an impressive pay rate in the right circles, and I can make those kinds of introductions."

" _If_ I keep my mouth shut, you mean. I'm not a pirate, Genness. _Is_ it Genness, by the way?"

"No, of course not. This isn't piracy – that's rarely profitable, and certainly inelegant. For now, let's just say we're contractors who specialize in...situations requiring finesse."

"And you think of tactical nuclear weapons as tools of _finesse_?!"

He gave a sigh and a slight shake of his handsome head.

"For the record, PONTE was piloted by it's original crew, not colleagues of mine. They were in trouble with their finance company, and amenable to a deal. Recruiting them like we did was a _service_ to Deegman, really: PONTE had done its share of real piracy in the past to make ends meet, and I believe they came to Rilltule for that purpose from the onset. But civilians – corrupt ones especially – are unreliable. I signaled them to sit tight and wait for my All Clear, but they must have panicked. My employers don't care for loose ends, so if PONTE somehow survived that jump, it will be tracked and confronted in due course."

I laughed, and actually started working on the water pipe again. "And you really think I'd make a good merc?"

"Part of the rank and file? No. But that would be a horrid waste of your talents. You positively excel at the unexpected, and that's a rare gift. Now, I won't lie to you...about this anyway...my mission is a flop precisely because of _you_. But there's still a little hope for some personal profit: we get a recruitment bonus for bringing good people into the company. It's a really progressive outfit. We have competitive pay rates, full life and medical coverage, profit sharing, and a lot of little incentives like this recruitment thing. People like you and me, we'd be on our own most of the time. Good teams even form their own tactical approaches to the company's strategies. It can be a nice life, Ejoq."

The knife he still held at the ready had a another thing to add about the advantages of signing on.

"You'll be wanting the microcorders, of course," I responded, at last.

"Yes, that's certainly a condition. But I can even get you a quick ride off Deegman, once we get back...a company transport is in dock now – not that anyone knows it as such – and it'll be leaving soon after DAME MINNIE docks, whenever that turns out to be. Top accommodations, with a cabin of your own; _Associate_ status, which entitles you to a pay differential for the trip out, regardless of whether or not you get hired; and, believe it or not, some halfway decent ship food."

I have to say, that sounded sweet.

A good gig that tapped my skills and respected my abilities? One with a career track? One that would get me out of Rilltule system for good, and with some change in my pocket?

"What about the others? Even assuming we actually get our Deegman bonuses for this cruise, money doesn't last long there."

"Well, Bayern's a fine pilot," he replied with a shake of his head, "but I mean, really! The man could exasperate a corpse without trying – or even _knowing_ it. This is a company of people, and he's just about the worst people person I've ever met. Anyway, he has ties here...an active career and such."

"Okay then, what about Sally? She's really good, and she'll need the work."

He didn't respond right away, and even sighed again quietly.

"I was going to approach her about it when we were on our way back to Deegman. Honestly! I've grown quite fond of her these last couple of weeks...and I have nothing but respect for her skills and courage. But now that she's been hurt...well, I don't know. The company won't hire someone who's wounded. It's a policy. I mean, in this line of work, we're always on the move. No company can afford to bring someone in who can't pull a profit right away. I mean, they just wouldn't go for it."

"It's only a dislocation, I think. Well, maybe a slight concussion too. She can be up and running in no time."

"Ejoq, if it were _my_ call, there'd be no question. But I don't do the hiring, and, ah...there's this secrecy policy in place. If I bring someone in who can't possibly be hired, well..."

He let the finality of that statement hang, and I let it go too.

"That's not the only reason, is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"C'mon! You're a good looking guy, half her age. You don't bunk _alone_ when you're back with the company fleet, am I right?"

At least he had the decency to blush a little.

"Ejoq...this job isn't always easy. I mean, you have to see that. Yes, there is...someone. But a domestic partnership among professionals is always a challenge."

"So Sally gets left behind on a rock simply because she'd make you feel _uncomfortable_? Are you really that much of a heel?!"

"Please, I intend to put some money into her account so she can book passage elsewhere...it's not like she'd be a vagrant or something."

"That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it."

"I know you're in love with her yourself, Ejoq. But you can't let that cloud your objectivity. You could have a stellar career with us, but the plain fact is that everything has a cost. Honestly, I don't understand the implied point, and this shouldn't be a hard decision for you. A professional does what needs to be done. But it takes more than skill and ingenuity to be one. You have to _think_ like one."

I kept working for a long time, running through the plumbing resets, and doing diags, and I didn't even stop working when I finally answered.

"No I don't. In fact, I _won't_. Kill me, and you'll never find all the recorders, no matter how hard you try. That's a guarantee. And you'll have to kill Sally and Bayern too, because there's no way to hide my death. You say you can fly the boat alone? Well, super for you. You can't stop an inquiry without _me_. And either way, you'd miss your flight out...and I'm guessing there wouldn't be another."

He pursed his lips in a sour face, and thought for a bit.

"What do you want?"

"Sally and Bayern get ten times their DAME MINNIE sign-on pays deposited in their accounts before we dock."

"Oh, be serious! I don't have that kind of money..."

"Then _make_ it happen! You steal it, get an advance from these great employers of yours, or sell your soul – whatever it takes. They deserve it, and you're going to give it to them. Bayern's a numbskull, but he came through for us when the heat was on. And Sally is good people – the _best_ , in fact...even if she has rotten taste in men."

"And what do _you_ want? Blackmail is a bad way to apply for a job."

"You make it sound like an exclusive club," I replied tightly, "but if they'd hire _you_ , then they're just a bunch of pirates after all. Do this for Sally and Bayern, and you get the recorders. Nothing more out of you, nothing less out of me."

His frown held for long moments, but at last he slid his little knife back into his sleeve.

"This will nearly wipe me out, Ejoq. No mission bonus, no recruitment bonus, and most of my savings. Plus, we're sure to lose the contract with the investment consortium who hired us. It puts me in a tight corner. You're not being fair."

That did it.

"Don't you _dare_ try to play the morality card here! I don't offend easily, but that would really push it! You've been playing everybody for a patsy from the very beginning: from those mining jamokes back on Deegman, all the way up to the woman you've been sleeping with – and whose life your actions imperiled! You have _no_ high ground here to argue from; so just drop it, and let's get some bleeding work done! That water line needs adjusting or it'll burst when the pressure comes up – hold your end higher. _Higher_ , I said! Use both hands, and keep it steady..."

He was looking very unhappy, even sulky. But he'd put away his weapon, and he held the line like I told him to...and, overall, seemed a lot less menacing.

I picked up a medium spanner and tested it's size on the water line. It was too big for that job, but not the one I _really_ needed it for.

I smacked "Genness" in the left temple as hard as I could manage, but he had the kind of reflexes I could only dream about, and was able to pull back from most of the blow. He rebounded off the bulkhead, and I hit him again across the back, though I started spinning. I steadied myself with my free hand, and he struggled to do the same. He was groggy, but he sure had experience, because his knife was out again already.

He swung wildly, and I was able to push him away with the spanner. But he was getting his full senses back fast, which was bad news for me.

"That was _stupid_ , Ejoq, but cunning. My...compliments. I take it you actually _don't_ like the idea of a deal."

He lunged for me, but I retreated.

"I could live with one, if you'd let me. You can't afford to do that, though. Your company doesn't like loose ends. Sure, we'd make port – but sooner or later, I'd get a knife in the back. Maybe Sally and Bayern, too. Go ahead and tell me I'm wrong."

I had kept moving slowly, but we were at the main companionway now, and he had a lot more room to move. Blood streamed off his head, and clung to his thick, tangled hair before detaching itself and floating away in heavy red globules, like misshapen berries. His face was pale, and deader than deadpan.

"No sense in that. We have trust issues, you and I."

Then he slid at me through the air like weightless oil, and I batted at him like a dying willow in a stiff breeze. He didn't go for the kill immediately, so I thought he was wary of the spanner. But I was watching the knife as he moved, and I didn't see his free hand until it sort of blurred in front of me, flipping the spanner out of my white-knuckled grip as if we'd rehearsed it. It clattered against a bulkhead, and cartwheeled away – and as I watched it go, I felt a cold thing at my throat.

"Ah...yes! Well, you got me! _Haha_! Sorry about that, but I had to try, right?"

"No, you didn't, though I'll admit your reasoning was sound. So...it's sooner rather than later for you? Just as well..."

No twitch or change in his expression. No sneer or angry smile. The small cold thing he held under my left ear became a point of absolute and total concentration, and it went from being simply cold, to being hot and edged in a millisecond.

And then there was a loud, crackly snap from behind us, and the man before me just dropped back with clenched eyes, like a stressed rag doll. He drifted at an angle, but didn't otherwise move a muscle. Further down the companionway, Bayern sidled out from the cover of the hatchway to the bridge. He held a small stunner in a classic one-arm-out-supported-by-the-other pose, made famous by an age of adventure vids. His face was drawn, and he didn't waver a centimeter in his aim at the man who called himself Genness. He moved closer, coming up behind and touching his target gently with one foot, stunner still set to fire. There was no reaction. The knife drifted freely nearby, and he caught it deftly, pocketing it. He then took out some tapecuffs from a leg pocket, and cinched the stunned man's hands and feet together. He glanced at me a few times while he worked, but didn't say anything. The silence was deafening, and I was exhausted.

"So, you really _do_ have multiple personalities. You're, what... a secret agent?"

"Deegman Security Corps. We had intelligence that indicated there was a piratical agent aboard this cruise, but we didn't know who. _His_ background checked out, just the same as yours and Sally's, so the only thing to do was to put someone in undercover."

"How long did you suspect him?"

"I didn't. I suspected _you_. I heard raised voices, and came to look...and listen. When did you figure him out?"

"When PONTE opened fire, I knew he must have been talking to them."

"That could have been _me_ , perhaps...you'd have had no way to know."

"Yeah, well, no offense, but the dumb guy act was pretty convincing."

He smiled, but declined to comment, and instead, asked if I'd swap cabins with Genness (or whatever his name was) in case he had any nasty surprises hidden away in his room somewhere. That sounded prudent, so I agreed, and I shifted my stuff. Later on, we did a thorough search of my new berth for hidden weapons or comm devices, and we found several of each. At this point, though, I was dead on my feet, and figured DAME MINNIE could wait a sleep shift or two before throwing any more surprises at me.

I looked in on Sally before racking out. She lay strapped to her bunk, sleeping almost serenely, unmoved from the last time I'd seen her except for a glob of spittle that hovered near her slack jaw.

I left in a hurry when I realized that the bad guy had been right.

##  five

* * *

I expected to hear a lot of flak over all the damage to the boat, once we started making reports back to Deegman, but we got just the _opposite_ reaction. We began sending updates as soon as we had all the basic systems online. I didn't want to risk draining the battery by putting AG back on, since I didn't really understand it too well, but Sally did some number crunching, and decided that we could run at half-gee and still have a safety margin.

She was up and at 'em again within two shifts, despite her injuries – which is good, because I slept for three straight. I let Bayern fill her in on what had happened when she got up, at least the broad strokes. I wondered what her reaction to a competent and intelligent Bayern would be. I wondered what _mine_ would be, since we still had weeks ahead of us together.

It turned out that he was a pilot in SecCorps' investigative branch, and had gone up against smugglers and pirates closer in. This was his first assignment so far out, but not his first undercover operation. He had a dry sense of humor, and an appreciation for the delicacy of the relationships involved. In other words, he was a completely different guy, and I liked him.

Bayern had used a Captain's Code I never knew about to lock Genness in his new cabin. The two of us then delivered his meals and took his dirty linens for the rest of the cruise. He was well behaved, but sang his job offer tune a couple more times, to no effect. Sally never saw or spoke with him again, that I know of.

She did think of him, though, I'm sure. We all had time to think. That is, until we got closer in, and the time lag in communications with Deegman shortened to a reasonable level. Then we had more and more live reports to file. We were actually debriefed a half-dozen times before docking, and it was just the beginning.

But it wasn't the only one.

Bayern made a point of apologizing to Sally for his asinine behavior on the way out. She didn't believe him at first, and continued to treat him like an annoying bug, but eventually she saw a different guy in place of her ex-husband's foolish lookalike. By the time we docked, they were inseparable.

We got paid our contract fees, plus an _extra_ bonus for cracking the so-called pirate ring. We were actually minor celebrities for a while; you know, the avengers of Deegman, saviors of the spacelanes, _blah-blah-blah_. They put the guy who'd called himself Genness in an isolation cell so fast that I'm not sure he ever got a trial – nobody asked _me_ to testify, anyway.

They wanted to send the rest of us back out as soon as DAME MINNIE got all its repairs completed (along with some much needed upgrades), but our contracts were for one cruise only, and I'd had more than enough. So did the others, it seemed, because the owners ended up recruiting a whole bevy of eager beavers from which they could crew DAME MINNIE indefinitely – local talent all, and, I guess, bona fide patriots.

The companies on Deegman announced their intention to buy a couple more "quality seasoned defense boats" (that is, old junks) and build themselves up a real fleet. They were certainly overdue for a more serious view on the issue of self-protection; and a victory – even a shabby little one like this – seemed to be just what they needed to fan the limp spark of national pride.

Whatever.

It was still a backwater to me, and I wanted a ticket to civilization. It wasn't long at all before shipping got up to speed again, and I scored myself a position on a corporate superliner (helped considerably by a frothing reference from Deegman).

I called Sally before I left. I figured she might want a job, and I thought I could probably get her something on the same ship. Bayern was there with her when she picked up, though, and he had her laughing about something, so I just turned it into a goodbye call. Seems he'd already gotten her a really good spot with SecCorps Maintenance – a steady, permanent position watching over the contracted civvie schnooks who did all the upkeep on their vessels. They wished me the very best, and begged me to come back for a visit someday. I promised that I would, and we all smiled at the lie.

The superliner didn't seem to really need me, truth be told. I was given the title of _Third Assistant Defensive Officer_ , or some nonsense like that, and I did little more each work shift than show up and run simulations. I used the gym regularly, and lost some weight. I sat and let the days, and then the weeks, and then the months pass.

I don't know why, but this time, the waiting wasn't so bad.

## AUTHOR

David Collins-Rivera makes his home in the high desert of Arizona, USA.

Visit his site at <http://www.cavalcadeaudio.com/>

Send feedback to lostnbronx@cavalcadeaudio.com

Third Assistant Defensive Officer

## Street Candles

#### A Spacer's Rules For Success

  1. _Never be desperate                                                                                                   
_
  2. _Never do more than your job description                                                                              
_
  3. _Never, **ever** go down the well_

Ejoq needs work. The tramp starship GRIZZELDA needs a gunner. But what starts as a last-minute personnel replacement soon turns into something far more, with a non-functional duty station, his predecessor's emotional fallout, and a deeply buried secret that will change the course of nations.

An epic adventure of intrigue, revolution, and battles among the stars!

Better take a _deep_ breath...

Available now at Amazon.com!

### Please enjoy the following preview of _Street Candles_!

##  one

* * *

The interview had gone well.

I was a little worried, because all I'd had to wear on short notice was a rumpled flight suit and a pair of cheap softshoes, but they weren't looking at my feet. My CV was impressive, even if I say so myself, and I could at least act like a professional when there was a need.

OASIS hadn't seemed so bad, as colony stations went. Better than some I'd been to, even though the crime rate was way up – but like all such places, it was expensive.

My total assets were limited to a few bags of personal effects, and the severance from my last job. This would change when a ship with fresh data from out Kontas way pulled in. That could be in a day or two – or in a week or two. The difference was critical to my wallet and survival. I had a fair amount of savings, but lag time between system contacts is the bane of everyone. Data moved no faster than the ships that carried it, and it only traveled where and when they did.

A headhunter had succeeded in snatching me up for a long-term training gig three months before on Tantra, way over in Corporate Territory. I'd made all the preparations to break my contract with the Reformed Mormonites who ran the ship I was signed to at the time, so I could work on-planet for a while. I'd never lived under a sky before, and it sounded like a real change of pace. The preparations for this were quite involved, including switching my floating accounts to a local banking institution. But the gig fell through at the very last minute, and I decided to stay with the ship.

It turned out that restoring my financial details was as time consuming as changing them in the first place, and we had to leave the system before I could get it straightened out. That left me with very light pockets. In an effort to curb stopover vice among crew members on leave, they would only pay a small percentage of your wages in hard credit on that ship. The bulk of it went into your banking and investment accounts for long-term growth – and mine were still locked up on Tantra.

The whole thing was a non-event, but one that had hit me hard. I was parked on OASIS with an increasingly desperate eye on all the new ships arriving in-system, very impatient for a more current dataload. We had been on a direct run into AINspace, well ahead of any data from the ports in our wake. And now the ship was gone again, while I was still here, worried about the future.

This unease set in especially hard whenever I bought a sandwich or drink over on "Ptomaine Lane", where all the cheaper automats were located. If a bag of greasy chipchunks set me back half-a-shift's typical pay, then it seemed certain I had to find a new job fast, and just let the data creek along at its own pace.

So I scoured the boards and hit the union offices.

Shipboard Weapons Technologists were not exactly ubiquitous. This might make you think there was a great demand for them. Indeed, some outfits wanted trained, experienced gunners – especially the larger company fleets – but sadly, most of the smaller operators just on-the-jobbed somebody already aboard, adding Ship Defense to their long list of other duties. A professional like myself could easily argue that a vessel got what it paid for, and I _had_ on several occasions, but it never seemed to get me the job, so I stopped doing it after a while.

Eight days of biting my nails and watching the grid for new data dumps to the local nets.

I stayed in my cramped rental cube most of the time, and just eyed the stream on my wristcomp and retinal displays. There wasn't much more to do without money, anyway.

Station violence was on the rise, with a bloody tavern shootout somewhere down on the lower decks locking up local headlines for days. Gunrunners! Gangsters! Hitmen! Hour after hour of shocking vid, juicy soundbites, and _Stern Statements_ from the local badges. Residents were worried, investigators were grim, and outlanders like me, with problems of their own, were bored.

I was doing laundry down the street when my wristcomp buzzed and my retinals flashed to alert me to an opening that was just posted. Details, as always, were sketchy, but it seemed like it was up my alley, so I called right there and then and got an invite. The ship's Owners/Officers were discussing the gunnery issue over a working lunch. Could I pop by right now for a quick interview?

Um... _yeah_!

I waited for my underwear to finish, then dumped it off at the cube, combed my hair, and found an elevator. I thought a couple creeps who got on at the next stop were going to jump me; but they were just tired working guys, and I realized I'd been watching too much of the news for my own good. The Offs were gathered at a cheap bistro called " _Le Vivre_ " or something, but it was certainly better than any place _I'd_ been patronizing here, so I didn't fault them for the choice.

The captain was a tall, dark woman in her early sixties, named Carmichael Maynard – Carmie by her fellow owners there at the table, and, as I later learned, by the rest of the crew. She had long, graying dreadlocks tied strikingly but sensibly high on her head, and sharp brown eyes that seemed friendly but assessing. She intro'd the two others: Pas E'lareda, Chief Pilot – a rail-thin fellow with light brown hair, who could have been anywhere between twenty-five and fifty; and Gasto bin Ragenston, Chief Engineer – squat, paunchy, and in his fifties; he had wild black hair with a beard to match, streaked silver here and there, along with a thick Lowspeak accent (out of Noblespace as it turned out).

"Ejoq Dosantos," I said with a nod. "Pleasure to meet you all."

"Likewise," Carmie said for the others, who likewise nodded and muttered greetings. They didn't seem cowed or even especially deferential to her; E'lareda, for one, didn't say a another word during the whole interview, surfing the local network with a digital ring and mirrored display glasses. He might have been doing a background check on me, or he might have been shopping for souvenirs.

Bin Ragenston was quiet too, but it was clear he followed the whole conversation closely. His small, dark eyes peaked out from under a ledge-like brow with tangled black and gray foliage. It would have been easy for him to look severe, but he kept on a neutral face and let the captain do all the talking.

Before anybody asked, I touched the IDent they had out on the table. This way, they could match my DNA, and the capillary pattern of my hand, to both the identifying information referenced by my posted résumé, and an independent look-up of my registered profile in the union database aboard the station. That may have seemed too eager, but I was never one to play interview mind games. No red lights appeared, I guess, because we kept talking.

"We were a little surprised and pleased to see that a Ship Defense Spesh with your qualifications was looking for a new contract, Mr. Dosantos."

"Yeah, it's a lucky convergence out here," I replied, "though I've been watching the listings for about a week now. My last ship, TEMPLE HILL, was heading back to its home port in Churchspace for a major overhaul. Those of us from elsewhere were allowed a contract release. Can I ask the name of your ship?"

"We're the co-owners and officers of GRIZZELDA. Berth 4-J. We need a gunner and we leave tonight."

"Wow! Okay, I can check the public registry for specifics when we're done here, but can you give me a quick rundown?"

"Sure. It's a modified Pelican class Route Trader. Standard crew is twelve, but we tend to double up on other duties. If hired, you would make us ten, which we count as normal. We have just over 40,000 cubic meters of compartmentalized cargo space, and a full load at the moment of non-perishables on spec – the last of which should be onloading even as we speak. Our safe freight mass and acceleration are _not_ to standard Pelican specifications. We treat those details as a trade secret, so you'll have to sign an NDA if you come aboard. We got in from Tyree about eighty hours ago, and we're currently on a chartered cruise to Barlow, one-stop over in Chorryl System. We have five passengers, and they're all awake. No cold passages, as per our charter contract. That's a dozen freeze tubes flying empty, but we've been compensated for it."

That seemed like a weird stipulation – but private charters were rare, so who knew? I hadn't even been signed to a ship before that was running under one. I must have raised my eyebrows or something, because she quickly pressed on.

"So, as I said, we...lost our gunner. The contract calls for an experienced SDS in place, and we need someone new immediately. This Barlow seems to be having some political issues, so, the charter aside, I want someone at the trigger for safety's sake alone."

A rollarbot with a carafe of coffee came to the table just then, giving us all a few moments of (likely welcome) distraction. As it was the real thing, instead of the fake powdered stuff I usually lived on, I accepted a cup gratefully, and tried not to look ecstatic as I sipped.

"The defensive specs of registered commercial vessels are net-accessible to licensed gunners," I informed them after a moment. "Again, I'll do my homework when we're done here, but can you give me an idea of what kind of equipment I'd be in charge of?"

"Sure," Carmie replied with a smile. "To start, we're running with some aftermarket armorfoam over the basic polynium carapace..."

"Lapsic Hardcoat, perhaps?" I interrupted.

"No," she responded a bit sheepishly, "it's a product we picked up in barter out in Corporatespace. _Plastron_? Something like that."

"That's a spray-on armor, right? Yeah, I've read about that stuff."

"Good or bad?" she asked. "We've never been shot at, so I can't talk with authority."

I hedged visibly, because I didn't want to out-and-out criticize the ship, but I wanted them to know that I'd speak plainly.

"Well...neutral, I guess. Plastron exceeds the basic requirements for that kind of armor, but I've heard some anecdotes from the field that have been somewhat less-than-ideal. Explosive reactivity to high-speed impacts seems uneven. And there was one account of a resonance amplification issue from a maser attack, which is...disturbing."

Bin Ragenston humphed in agreement, looking at Carmie in a way I couldn't read, while E'lareda touched at his ring, confirming that he was, indeed, listening closely and double-checking at least some of my statements on the nets. That was sensible and efficient, since they didn't have time to mess around, but the guy's poker face was starting to irritate me.

"On the other hand," I continued, hoping to sugar the lemon a bit, "lab and independent tests for the whole Cheloney line – Plastron's the brand name – well, they've been quite good. I think they rate pretty high when it comes to insurance matters. If you specify the brand name on your policy, instead of just the generic type, you can usually get a discount."

This seemed to get their attention – even E'lareda looked up for a moment, which felt like a triumph.

"That's...good to know," the Captain responded, seemingly pleased. "We'll definitely look into the insurance aspect, thank you. As for GRIZZELDA's weaponry, we have extensible Melcotch Mark II heavy lantern guns, and twin Feldercorp light missile packs, fore and aft. Those have been modified with twelve-count cylinders instead of the usual eight."

"Twelves? On a _Route Trader_? That's unusual."

She nodded in agreement. "In addition to standard rocket loads, we have four units of some specialized ordinance in each cylinder that we picked up a while ago – impossible to replace in AINspace, but good to have anyway, I think you'll agree. Assuming this works out, of course."

"Of course," I agreed. Then I hit them with the scary part. "You reviewed my pay rate, I presume? I'm afraid that's non-negotiable."

Desperate as I was, I couldn't afford to take a step back now. The industry was stagnant just then, and if I started signing lesser contracts, I'd get a rep for that. Employers were able to add their own comments to employee public profiles, and getting something that hurt my future negotiating strength would be problem that could chase me for years.

"It seems fine," she replied, letting me sigh inwardly with relief, though the engineer frowned. "As a policy, though, we don't carry dockside med insurance. If you need medical help, you get seen to aboard ship, or you pay for it yourself. I imagine your union covers you for emergencies, though?"

"Yeah, that's no problem, my dues are current."

"Good," she said, then thought a bit. "Let's see...hmmm. Ah. The crew all have separate cabins on GRIZZELDA. No barracks, no double bunks. Your berth would be tiny, but private."

"Well now, _that's_ attractive," I replied sincerely. "I'm used to communal bunking, but I can't say I like it. Um, now on a different note...just what kind of political issues are we talking about on Barlow?"

They sort of looked at each other for what I took to be support, but the answer was banal.

"Only what we're seeing in the news. Seems like some sort of radical neo-socialism is starting to take root. It's just a single government on-planet. The current system is a democratic one, I think – they have a president, anyway, for what that's worth. Looks like there are corporate influences in the government, but that's true everywhere."

She shrugged.

"I don't know, really. The highdock in orbit is quiet, by all accounts, but none of us have ever been to Barlow before. You?"

"No. I've heard the name, but that's about all. Can I ask about the cruise? The nature of the charter, perhaps?"

"Sorry, no details until you're signed aboard – that's a clause in the charter, and it's GRIZZELDA S.O.P. anyway."

They could keep confidences, then. That was a good sign.

"What would be my contract duration?"

"Well, we normally insist on a six-month commitment, subjective time. Considering our deadline, though, that's on the table. We'll sign you for this charter only, if it's all you can see your way to."

"No, no, six months is fine," I replied, trying to hide my excitement. "I'd like a steady position, if I can find one."

"Good. Would you tell us about your previous work, then, Mr. Dosantos?"

So...I launched into the usual mix of bull and bravado. I did my best not to seem like a drifter, but long-term gigs were always hard to come by. Big corporate freighters are usually the soul of job security, but between my poor luck (and sometimes worse attitude, if I'm going to be honest), there was a fair amount of down time in my job history. I'd generally used it as best I could to get a fairly wide spectrum of industry-recognized degrees and certifications, so I spun all that unemployment as _periods of continuing education_.

I smiled a lot, too.

The engineer squinted in concentration at my résumé while I spoke, but finally injected a question when I took a breath.

"You have actually seen combat, _jeah_? Pirates?"

"Yes, that's right. Rilltule system, two years ago. Pirates of a sort, anyway; merc-sponsored, as it turned out. Missiles exchanged. The official reports are all open. I have the AIN File Key listed there under Past Employment. It's in the public record now, I think."

"Any private charter work before?" the captain asked. "You'll have to second-up on steward duties. I see you have the certification for passenger service, but what about actual hands-on? Dispensing drinks and snacks before and after freeze tube transits is quite a bit different from serving waking passengers for weeks at a time. Duties aboard GRIZZELDA include laundry service and frozen meal prep for both passengers and crew, plus general gofer status."

I nodded when she was done, and said, "I spent six months subjective on the starliner GOWERBELLE, about five years ago now. I performed steward duties almost exclusively. We had the Classin-Sandov route. Lots of traffic, no trouble. They had to have a gunner by law, but they sure never needed one. Rich clientele, too. Hailey Gardette was a passenger, once."

"The singer? Really! I've always loved her voice. What was she like?"

"Well, she had an entourage that took care of her, mostly. I only spoke with her once – got her some tea as I recall. Seemed nice."

I shrugged and smiled. The captain smiled back.

"We're chit-chatting," I said at last.

"Yes, I guess we are. Give us a chance to talk this over. Say, an hour?"

I stood up.

"I'll wait for your call," I said, shaking hands. And then I was on my way back down to my roomcube.

The moment I was back, I did a search on GRIZZELDA in all the public records, and on all the professional listings I had the certification to access. The ship had, indeed, docked only three days before, and had no outstanding fines or charges against it that I could see. A quick look at the current _AIN Proscribed Space Vehicle_ listings didn't have a ship by that name, or any other vessel of that class, so it wasn't stolen (had to be sure). A final cross-check through my union's ship analysis service, though, flagged GRIZZELDA as a "Code 17". Based on my rough translation of the financialese, this indicated a few late payments to the ship's build-bond with the current set of owners.

So it was money troubles.

Nothing unusual there. Even big Corporate-owned ships usually had a history of slow or broken payment strings – if for no better reason than company policies. But GRIZZELDA was privately-owned, and experience had taught me that, with a ship pulling scant profits, desperate choices could follow behind like hungry dogs. Six months could be a long, risky time on a ship with an eye toward the bill collector. Still, they were in the middle of a contracted run, and that meant things would be okay for at least a little while.

I hemmed and hawed to myself for a few minutes, mostly to maintain the delusion of control, I guess. The choice wasn't hard, though – deep debts or no, GRIZZELDA was the only game in town.

An hour to the minute, Captain Maynard called to offer me the job, and I accepted with what was probably obvious gratitude. With my underwear clean and dry, I had no more business on OASIS. I checked out of my roomcube, submitted to a too-friendly bag search and pat-down by the Customs cops, then hit my locker rental up on the docks to retrieve a roller case that contained what amounted to pretty-much all my worldly possessions.

Everywhere I looked, I had pop-up adverts appearing before me, as well as safety notices, sale updates, traffic directions, and much more. The display receptor implants in my corneas augmented the normal information of the environment, overlaying my path, and all else, with real-time adjunctive data. If I was actually interested in buying any more crap on this station, I could have called up mini vid windows, or other applications, to superimpose themselves on my point-of-view. The wristcomp acted as input, gateway, and processor all in one, allowing for on-the-fly purchasing, or direct interaction with network-based interests (commercial or otherwise). I could access these apps, or any stored data, through head and hand gestures, voice input, subjective eye focus, or even direct physical use of the wristcomp's tiny keyboard and mini pop-up holo-display.

Yep, I could have stopped and played the good little consumer, if I had the money and inclination. But I surely didn't: OASIS was fairly vibrant – a place lots of people called home; but shabby, too, and now clearly violent according to the news, so I was happy to show it my backside.

I had to take a passing streetcar to GRIZZELDA's berth, as it was nearly four kilometers away, counterclock, but I didn't mind _that_ fee. It was the last thing I hoped to spend money on in the place, which almost made it pleasurable. When I came to the numbered berth I'd been given, I signaled for a stop. The cargo and personnel lifts for GRIZZELDA were clearly marked, with the ship's abstract cat logo displayed prominently over both, on big signs in bright digital colors.

There was a tall, stoutish woman wearing a safety helmet and the GRIZZELDA cat on her stylish pink jumpsuit. Though she didn't have a model's figure, exactly, her clothes looked crisp and elegant, like something out of a spacer supply catalog. She was at the cargo lift, on-loading a pallet of mixed stuff with a rental drivejack. She saw me watching, I guess, because she stopped and waved.

"You the new gunner?"

She had a surprisingly soft, high voice, considering she was bigger than me all over. She looked to be in her mid-thirties or so, had auburn hair that peeked out in short curls from under her matching pink helmet, and pale, pale skin, highlighted along the cheeks and chin with freckles. She had large brown eyes that were bloodshot and ringed darkly, and there were sad frowns at the corners of her mouth. Her smile seemed genuine, but it looked like it had been a while since the last one.

"That's me. Ejoq Dosantos. Nice to meet you. Need a hand?"

"No, thanks. This is it. The containers are all in now – I'm only filling space with a loose load we just snagged. I'm Cassandra Helburn, but call me Candy. Um, Cargo Chief. Actually...do me a favor and return this jack to the lockbar over there? This is the last load, and I need to verify the manifest. You can ride up to the hold with me, and I'll show you your locker aboard."

I felt like a knucklehead, because the drivejack didn't want to fit back under the lockbar, and I fought with it long enough for the big woman to finish her digital paperwork, and come over and see how useless the new guy was.

"Here, let me...there's a trick to it," she said. Taking the jack in hand, and guiding it out and then in again in a quick, smooth movement, Candy clicked it into place. She verified on the lockbar's display that a receipt for the rental had been posted to the ship's account, ticked it off on her own datapad, and then smiled shyly. "Takes practice."

She double-checked that the receipt had gone through, then double-checked her strapdowns on all the pallets, crates, and drums in the lift. I _was_ able to help there, anyway, without wasting time, since all the ties were perfect. She keyed the lift gate down, and then up we went on the elevator itself, losing weight by the meter.

She held her helmet on with one hand while gripping a railing to keep in place. I bounced up in the reduced, then zero gravity, but this part wasn't new, and I was able to keep both myself and my case close to the floor. When we reached the station hub (just a ring of anchor clamps for cargo vessels of small-to-medium size – a chintzy port structure for a chintzy station), Candy floated down the wide accordion-style load tube that led to GRIZZELDA's cargo hold. The pallet was set into a track on the tube's floor, and it followed along automatically.

"I have room in the back for this stuff," she muttered to me, as if I needed to know – but I smiled and nodded, following the pallet, my hard case and flight bag floating along with me. When we reached GRIZZELDA proper, Candy stepped across the open hatch, and landed easily on her feet.

"We're at one-quarter gee down here in Cargo while berthed, so watch your step."

I did, but I still tripped when the case hit the artificial gravity field and clunked lightly to the floor. She steadied me with one hand, and I smiled in gratitude and embarrassment. I'd done this countless times before, including the stumble, so I didn't feel too badly. First impressions were never my strong suit.

A young woman, short and lean in direct contrast to Candy's size, and dark in opposition to her color, was on the other side of the spacious hold, double-checking tiedowns on a roller rack of what looked like machine parts. She also wore the pink suit, and it looked for the moment like that might have been standard uniform – though the Offs, at the interview, had all worn different things.

"That's Reena," Candy explained quietly, like it was a secret. "She's the other steward aboard. She doubles down here, helping me. She'll show you the ropes."

"Reena," she then called, "this is Ejoq, the replacement gunner. Can you get his case stowed away for him, then take him up to Del so he can get his paperwork straightened out? After that, please come back down – I'll need some help with the stuff I just brought up...it's the last of it."

Reena waved me over, and introduced herself with a mumble so low that I wouldn't have caught any of it if I hadn't already known her first name. Her pink helmet covered a black buzz cut and angular face, and she had the same rimmed sadness around her dark eyes, as if that, too, was part of the uniform. Maybe more so, in fact, because it was plain she'd been weeping silently when the Cargo Chief had called to her. She wiped away her tears none-too-carefully, before leading me over to a bank of lockers near a short lift set into the bulkhead.

There was a little door marked with the name "B. HAMM" that was open and empty, though a plastic crate next to it was filled with an assortment of clothes and personal items.

"I'll get your name on it, soon as I can."

"That's okay, no rush. Did the last guy leave all his stuff?"

She looked at me with real pain and hardness, and I saw that I'd stumbled again – though I wasn't sure just how. I decided to leave my foot in my mouth for a while to avoid any other landmines. I'd been signed to a lot of vessels up to that point; the "Hello/How Are You/Personal Property Stowage" ritual was nearly always the same. And it was was no different this time...yet it was. I just put my case away, entered a new code on the locker's tiny keypad, and shut up.

Reena waved me to follow her, and we took the lift up one level to GRIZZELDA's main companionway, where we were at a full gee. A tall man of middle years, with thinning brown hair and – yes, again – sad eyes, was walking past the lift with a memory core and associated cables in his hands. He wore dark pants and a tan shirt, implying at last that there was no particular uniform aboard, which I rather preferred.

"Who's this?" he asked easily.

"Sorry, what was your name again?" Reena asked me.

"Ejoq Dosantos. Ship Defense. Pleased to meet you."

"Ah..." he said with a wry nod. "Ira Helburn. Comp and Communications. You might have met my wife already. Candy?"

"Yeah, she brought me aboard. I think I embarrassed myself trying to lend a hand down at the dock, but she was nice about it."

"Oh, I'm sure she appreciated it. Good to have you aboard, Ejoq."

"Thanks."

But he was already walking off.

We went the way he'd come, and stopped by an open hatchway marked: "DELMON FFOLKES, LEGAL SPECIALIST" in the same plain block font as the lockers. For that matter, all the doors were marked, as were all the access panels, maintenance closets, and all the important – as well as relatively unimportant – systems controls. I saw a light switch as we had walked down the companionway marked, apparently without irony, "LIGHT SWITCH".

Ffolkes was sitting at a low desk interface, engrossed in forms, both digital and hard copy. He had intelligent features under manicured, sandy hair, and steel gray eyes that flicked up to us as we stepped in.

"Ah, the new recruit. Mr. Dosantos, is it? Pleasure to make your acquaintance."

He offered a firm grip and gave me a quick, tight, but apparently sincere smile. He had the oddest Ingliss accent I'd ever heard, drawing out his "A's" and flattening his "R's" to the point that I initially thought he had a speech impediment. I thanked Reena and she almost smiled, though not really, and left without saying a word.

"I'm afraid we have a few hours worth of forms to fill out," ffolkes said with mock grimness, " so you and I had best be comfortable. Can I get you something?"

"Um, coffee, please. Powdered's fine. Black."

"Right. Back in a jiff. No...actually, follow me, and I'll show you the galley. You'll be spending time there, after all."

We passed through a wide intersection, with plainly marked signs at the corners pointing toward "ENGINEERING", the "BRIDGE", a "COMMON ROOM", and a section marked "EMPLOYEES ONLY", which I took to be crew quarters. Ffolkes saw me looking at all the signs and smiled.

"Candy is in charge of those. She likes to be thorough."

"Thorough is good," I replied, and the other man nodded.

"We're just short of six hours until launch," he then mentioned, as we walked. "Plenty of time to get the legalities out of the way. With passengers aboard, I'm afraid you'll have to hit the deck running, Mr. Dosantos."

"Ejoq. Please. No problem with that. Hopefully, I'll also have a chance to get familiar with the defensive systems, at least before we actually make starjump."

"Of course. Carmie intends to go over all that with you before launch, I believe...security codes, and such."

We were at the galley by this point, closed and locked (but properly labeled, of course) and ffolkes swiped us in with a ring key on his finger. It was fairly spacious as such things went – deep, and wide enough for two to pass without getting in each other's way. It could have been a full-service kitchen had they wanted it to be, but it wasn't geared up for much more than basic prefab meal prep. It needed a good cleaning (my job now), but the powdered coffee seemed safe, and the mugs, which bore the ubiquitous cat logo, were generous.

"Our passengers are back aboard as of last shift. Newsvid crew out of Tyree, traveling to cover the Barlow unrest."

He stirred in the coffee for me while he spoke, and then handed it over. It was bland and bitter, just like it should be. Just like it always was. A thing to count on, among the countless stars.

"They stayed at a hotel, on-station, while we've been docked. A party crowd, given the opportunity – benders every night while here, I think. And they must be masters of padding their expense account – re-boarded GRIZZELDA last shift with new clothes all 'round, more luggage, souvenirs, and some rather severe hangovers. Still sleeping it off, I dare say. Had seventeen days with them already. We've fifteen more to go, subjective. At Barlow, it's ten days in orbital dock while they complete their work on-planet. Then we get to do the whole thing over again in reverse. As passengers go, though, they've been friendly and easy to please."

"Well, I'll drink to that," I replied, and lifted my mug. He followed suit with his tea and we returned to his office.

The legal, insurance-related, and ship-specific forms and notices were tedious, but only because we had to get through them all before the ship departed. Without such a tight deadline, this sort of thing would normally have been spread out over several days, allowing the bureaucrats of OASIS to get back to GRIZZELDA with whatever "yeas" or "nays" such people have the power to decree; ffolkes told me he'd send off my forms during the ship's countdown, and they could stuff any "nays" at that point.

During that intensive red tape dump, ffolkes came across as a man who knew his stuff inside and out, including what was important to the powers-that-be and what was merely formality. He also seemed to appreciate levity, without ever really being witty himself. He took two calls from the dockmaster's office while we worked, concerning some picayune details about their cargo load, and one from Carmie, about me, I think. He seemed competent, business-like, and quiet, but not at all uptight. A total mystery, in other words.

This proved especially true when, during one of those calls, I got up to look closely at a series of short vid clips playing on a small framed display mounted on the bulkhead. It depicted a younger version of this composed man under a bright blue sky, within some gravity well or other. The clip only ran a few seconds, showing him dash across some grass and dirt, throwing a dark ball roughly the size of his fist. The imagery jumped to what I assumed was an opposing player – a fellow holding a bizarre flat stick, like an old-time boat's oar. This player missed the ball, which then struck upon and broke some tiny contraption on the ground behind. The sequence just looped over and over, but it never became less odd, or any more clear what I was looking at.

"Those glorious days of youth," the man said quietly from his desk, watching me watching him on the wall.

"Is that a game?"

"Yes. Cricket."

"...I'm sorry?"

He repeated it, quite composed, but quite amused.

"Like the insect?"

"The words are _spelled_ the same, yes, but are not the same."

"What are you doing in this clip?"

"Bowling."

"You're...I'm _sorry_...?"

"Also not the same."

It was impossible to know if he was putting me on, and I didn't want to fall any deeper into the gag in case he was, so I just smiled weakly and sat back down. Without a beat, he called up another form, and we continued along as if I wasn't bent on being a fool.

Nearly an hour later, he declared us to finally be in the bureaucratic clear. He excused himself from the nickel tour, citing a pile of customs verifications that he needed to cross-check with the OASIS mercantile library before we left. As a world with an agricultural-based economy, he told me, Barlow was primarily known for the production of high-quality hydrocarbon analogues, from a massive chemurgy industry that worked hand-in-hand with equally massive farming corporations. The Offs took a chance on Barlow, and invested in computer tech and machine parts, hoping to score some refined agro-chem products in trade. Compostable ballistics-grade plastics, for instance, were high on the wish list, since a return trip to Tyree with a hold full of that stuff would fetch a tidy profit indeed.

There were other things, too, but I didn't really pay attention. He might have picked up on that, because he called Carmie eventually to say we were done. She told him to send me forward to the bridge, so I thanked ffolkes for his time, then followed his simple directions.

The Command compartment was to the fore, and up a small flight of steps that terminated in a large emergency iris valve/swingdoor combination that looked like it could keep the bridge crew reasonably safe in almost any situation. It was currently (and usually, as it turned out) open. The bridge had something of a non-standard layout, with all stations, including the captain's, sitting side by side. Each display desk was more involved and complex than ffolkes', but not dissimilar in layout.

These were the duty stations for Carmie, E'lareda, Ira, and a slim blond woman in her early thirties. Ira was currently on the floor with a mess of cables and a memory core – this one of a different make than the one I'd seen him with earlier. The cables ran from under a particular display desk, into an open access panel in the floor. The woman I hadn't yet met sat at a station marked (by the ever-diligent Candy, no doubt) "NAVIGATION"; she had tightly bunned hair, set features, and strangely impassive eyes that she cast at me when I walked in, before returning them to her board.

"I'm not yelling, Ira, I just don't understand what was wrong with the old backup core," Carmie was saying, a touch of testiness in her voice. "We're down to the wire here."

"A .4% block failure is not trivial, Carmie," he replied easily, as if he'd had similar conversations before, and knew how they all turned out. "Yes, it was working fine, but my choice was to either change it now as an option, or change it later as an emergency. This new one has a different cable layout, but it's not a big deal. It's already up and running, with the old backup's file environment cloned in. I'm just looking to see if we can do without some of these extra lines. It's a bit of mess at the moment, but I'll have it cleaned up before launch. Comp is ready."

"Okay, fine," she conceded, sighing. Then she noticed me and rose.

"Mr. Dosantos. All set with Del?"

"Call me Ejoq. Yeah, but he had some more work to do before launch, so he sent me on alone. Are one of these stations Gunnery?"

She joined me at the door, but turned back to the room.

"No. Gunnery was an afterthought on this class of ship, I'm afraid. The Pelican was originally designed for flexibility, with every system interchangeable. Though we've assigned regular duty stations, in a pinch, any of them can be called up and utilized from almost any display on the ship."

"God, I hate those things!" I said without thinking.

"It's come in handy a few times, actually," E'lareda put in. He'd been watching us, and his tone was schooling.

"Oh. Sorry."

"No problem," Carmie assured me. "The previous owners must have hated them too, because they remodeled one of the maintenance closets amidships into a dedicated gunnery station. None of the equipment in it is designed for use with the ship's installed control software, though. It has lots of interface issues because of that. Our last gunner felt more confident of the original fire control software."

"Really? Can I get a chance to work with it before we leave? I might be able to pull it fully online if I have access to my union's local resources."

"Well, we leave in three hours, and we're not budgeted for any upgrades."

"You may not need any. And if you do, it might actually be quite cheap. Interface problems can sometimes be as simple as giving ship's systems, and Gunnery, a place to sit and chat, so to speak. It's called a _conpipe_. It's the size of my thumb, and costs almost nothing. It gets wired to one of the inputs at the Gunnery station. We then run some brand-specific dialog software that installs there, interfacing all the systems that need to work with fire control. I can download the software for free from my union's library so long as we're still in-system. Debugging it can be tedious work, but its quite doable and...if I can say, inexpensive. I built a Gunnery station from the deck-up once. I can't imagine that this would be harder than that."

"You haven't even seen any of the hardware yet."

I smiled simply and tried not to sound cocky. "I'll bet I have."

Carmie's dark eyes showing puzzlement. The others were watching with similar faces.

"Okay. Um, this way then."

We stepped back down the companionway, and stopped at a nondescript door – not a real pressurized hatch, mind – marked simply, "STORAGE".

She nodded her head at the sign and remarked, "We don't want to make paying passengers nervous. If they knew this to be Gunnery, they'd get jittery every time someone went inside." Then she waved her ring key over the door's input pad. "We'll get you set up with your own codes as soon as we're done here. Alliance law states we have to talk about GRIZZELDA's combat protocol, so we'll set up a time after we're under way for that. We follow standard AIN guidelines for civilian-class transports in most respects, but Pelicans have a few details you need to know about."

She had the door open, and was talking as I studied the contents.

She hadn't been kidding when she called it a former closet: former _broom_ closet, to be accurate. About 1.5 meters in depth, and maybe 2 meters in length. Tactical displays of a familiar style and layout perched atop a homemade desk set inside an old slop sink (plumbing fixtures capped-off, thankfully). They were all so close-fitting, it was obvious they'd been assembled inside this space. Carmie pulled back a small ergonomic seat, which was attached to a makeshift track, and motioned for me to take a look.

This was definitely a home-cooked system, with different kinds and brands of operating and tracking equipment that were never designed to work together. There were also some redundancies I couldn't account for at first. As I had suspected, there wasn't any equipment here I hadn't seen before – but I'd never seen or heard of a set up like this.

"So?" She asked after a full minute of me poking around the displays and interface devices.

"Get me set up with those codes, and I'll play with this stuff for a few minutes. A conpipe looks like a good candidate here. You know, these systems shouldn't be able to work without a hardware interface. There must be some serious software hoo-doo going on just to make them network with each other at all – let alone with the rest of the ship."

"Yeah, Ben spent many weeks coding and patching. He hated it, I think."

"Ben?"

"Our former gunner. He died here on OASIS two days ago. We're still shaken up over it."

"I...didn't know. I'm so sorry. Was it sudden?"

"Sudden and violent," she replied with a hard set to her mouth. "He was in a bar when a gun fight broke out. Wrong place, wrong time. He got hit with a stray shot. Several others died there as well."

"Oh, man. Yeah, I heard about that. They haven't caught anybody yet, have they?"

"Not that I know of. Looks like a gang thing...some kind of arms deal that went bad. I wish we could stay to see some justice done, but we simply don't have the option. Look, Ejoq, I'm not going to mince words: Bennett Hamm was like family. It's a small crew. We're very close. You're here because we need a new gunner, and you're stepping into a big shadow. It might be uncomfortable for a while."

"Understood. Ben was probably a great defense spesh. But I'm not him. If I think I can improve things, I want to try. If this system, as it stands, is unreliable, then it's really just so much junk. I think I can fix what's wrong. Ben, maybe, never knew how. I'm not knocking the guy, that's just how it is. I don't want to add any to your grief, honestly – but I do want to do my job."

"This is only _part_ of your job."

"Again, understood. But if you want to go to that, the galley needs a good scrub down, which I intend to tackle as soon as possible. Looks like it's been a while."

Her face started to cloud over, so I rushed on.

"It's just a bad situation. You folks lost your man, you have a contract to meet, and time is short. I'll do everything I can to fit in here...but please don't fault me for wanting to work hard."

"I don't. But don't fault _us_ for wishing that Ben was still here instead of you. It's not personal."

I just nodded.

"So...do I have your go-ahead to work on this? If I can at least bring up tactical and do a diagnostic, I can let that run while I dash to the supply house. It's on this level of the station, but I'll need a half-hour or so. And, I'll tell you what," I added, because I'm the Big Wheeler-Dealer, "I'll do the purchase out-of-pocket. If you don't see any results you like, I'll eat the cost."

She seemed opposed to it on principle alone, as if allowing me to do this violated some unwritten familial contract with Bennett Hamm's ghost. But she nodded tightly anyway, and fished out a keystick from a sleeve pocket, which she handed to me before walking off.

I knew I'd like her then: not because she let me have my way, but because she could feel loss and grief, and uncertainly over an new element, and yet still do the right thing for the ship.

"Mind our launch time, Ejoq," she called over her shoulder. "If we have to hold for you, I'm going to be really, really, really pissed." 
Motherload

© 2014 David Collins-Rivera

2nd Edition

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0

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This story is a work of fiction, and is not based upon nor meant to portray any person, living or dead, nor any particular place or situation.

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