Torchship Pilot Page 4

  Schwartzenberger looked a bit hot and thirsty himself right then.

  “It’s a proud name for a ship,” said Michigan.

  “I thought so.”

  She looked at the paintbot, now working on the “S.” “How are you paying for this?”

  He smiled. “We’re under charter to the DCC now. They have to cover our maintenance expenses.”

  She shook her head. He’d probably wanted to put this name on this ship since he first came aboard and refused to spend the money. Mitchie started up the ladder. A quarter of the way up she stopped. “Sir! Where are the Eden containers?”

  “In the Brinks Secure Storage warehouse. Address and access codes are waiting for you in the galley. I didn’t want to haul that stuff with us if we get ordered someplace dangerous in a hurry.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  ***

  Admiral Chu wanted their cover secured before starting the mission. Billy returned from his leave to find they all had paid-for rooms in a hotel on the civilian side of Redondo Field. Captain Schwartzenberger began talking to brokers. Few producers were willing to ship goods into a Fusion that might not pay for them. Competition from idle analog ships had driven shipping prices in the Disconnect to the lowest ever recorded. The captain was glad he’d gotten the charter signed before checking the market.

  The call came at three in the morning local time. Mitchie and Guo found the captain and first mate in the hotel lobby when they came down. An autocar was waiting to take them to their landing pad.

  Captain Schwartzenberger said, “Long, Billy isn’t answering. We’re going to get the ship ready to lift. You wake him up and follow us in a cab.”

  “Aye-aye.” She took advantage of their civilian cover to give Guo a kiss and headed back to the elevators.

  She’d pinged Billy from her datasheet. No answer. When she reached his room she pounded on the door with both fists. “Hey, spacer! Arching skies are calling!”

  Muffled curses came through the door. Billy yanked it open and snarled, “What the fuck?” as a wave of pheromones spilled into the hallway.

  Mitchie looked past the towel-clad deckhand. A generously proportioned blonde was pulling the sheet over herself. “We’re lifting. Grab a suit and stuff your duffle.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Lapis, I think. It doesn’t matter where. Get dressed.”

  “We don’t have a cargo.”

  “So what?” Mitchie didn’t want to argue with him. If she did have to argue with Billy she wanted him wearing a lot more than that towel.

  “So what’s the damn hurry if we don’t even have a cargo?”

  She wished he’d found a bigger towel. The blonde was watching them, which ruled out telling the truth about the mission. “Look, the captain gives an order, we obey the orders. That’s how the job works.”

  “Yeah.” Billy scratched his head. The towel shifted dangerously in the one-handed grip. “I don’t think so. I quit.”

  “You can’t just quit!”

  “Sure I can. I won’t starve. Hell, I can retire.” He stepped back to close the door. “Sugarpie, you’re good with words. Want to help me write a resignation letter?”

  As the door shut Mitchie thought, Crap. I’m going to be stuck cleaning out the damn hydroponics screens.

  ***

  When Mitchie reached the Joshua Chamberlain the crane was hauling up a container. An idling truck held another. Her cab had just passed an empty truck leaving the pad. Apparently they would have cargo after all.

  The captain had received Billy’s letter before Mitchie could break the news to him. He didn’t look upset. “A couple of techs came with those boxes. Take charge of them and get them settled.”

  “Aye-aye.”

  A man and a woman in brand-new olive drab coveralls were fussing over a container of electronic gear by the open cargo hold doors. Bing and Guo were busy stacking the other new containers in the back of the hold. The techs ignored Mitchie until she snapped, “Front and center!”

  It took them a moment to realize the order was real. The pair dropped their tools and came to attention in front of Mitchie. “Observer’s Mate First Class Hector reporting with party of one, ma’am!” said the male.

  Mitchie returned their salutes. “At ease. Who’s your party?”

  “Ma’am, this is Observer’s Mate Second Class Jackson,” said Hector.

  “Welcome aboard, both of you. I’m Lieutenant Long. I’m your supervisor on this ship. The captain is Commander Schwartzenberger. The first mate is a civilian, Shi Bingrong. Any orders she gives are relayed from the captain. The mechanic, Chief Kwan, normally won’t be involved in your operations but any orders from him are for the safety of the ship and must be obeyed. Any questions on the chain of command?”

  Two headshakes. Well, it was simple for them.

  “This isn’t a two-hundred crew cruiser, so everyone has to pitch in on chores. Either of you a decent cook?”

  Both nodded.

  “Good,” continued Mitchie. “We’ll give you a break from dishwashing. Once we’re on a steady accel vector I’ll show you how to clean the life support system.” Jackson grimaced. “Yeah, nobody likes the job but we all use the oxygen. The first mate posts the chore schedules in the galley.”

  Mitchie turned to face the open door of the electronics container. “What’s the cover story for this?”

  “Surplus electronics bought on Pintoy as scrap,” said Hector. “Manifest shows it didn’t find a buyer on Bonaventure and was just left in the hold.”

  “Which breaks their import regs.”

  “Yes, but it’s a minor infraction if it’s scrap. So we rigged it to trash itself on a remote command.”

  “Good.” The boxes in the container were packed randomly enough to fit the story. “That’s a better cover than you two have. At shift change report to the converter room. Get some oil stains and steam burns on those outfits. Hector, no more shaving. You need to look like merchies. Clear?”

  A pair of unhappy “yes, ma’ams” sounded.

  “The good news is you have plenty of choice for bunks. There’s four open cabins on the main deck and two passenger dorms in here.” She pointed at the souvenirs of their trip to Old Earth. “So look around and take your pick.”

  “Does this ship take a lot of passengers?” asked Jackson. “I thought it was strictly a cargo-hauler.”

  “She’s supposed to be. But lately we’ve been picking up a lot of strays.”

  Lapis System, acceleration 0 m/s2

  The jump to Lapis was low-stress for Mitchie. Instead of a busy line of freighters heading for the gate Joshua Chamberlain went through alone. No watching out for other ships’ plumes, no constraints on max or min speed to stay clear of them. Once their ship was in the groove Mitchie had nothing to do but take sights.

  When Lapis’ sun appeared in the center of the bridge dome her pulse went up. A couple of weeks ago they’d come through here as normal merchant traffic. Now they were just pretending. If the stand-off slid into war they might become a target even if they were innocent.

  Radar showed no ships in the way of their intended course. The jump had landed them almost in the center of the entry zone. Yulin was on the near side of the system. Mitchie took position sightings while the captain reported in to Traffic Control. Their entry was close enough to their preliminary course that Mitchie started them accelerating down it before recalculating the exact trajectory they’d need.

  Control had only offered “Acknowledged, stand by.” They might get to do the mission just as planned.

  After burning for six hours they let the ship coast. The course fit a low-budget, short on fuel tramp freighter like Joshua Chamberlain had once been. They’d have over a week each way for the techs to scan the system. Captain Schwartzenberger released Mitchie to supervise the sensor crew.

  The techs were still suiting up when Mitchie entered the hold. Hector was reading off a checklist as they helped each other don th
e gear. She took her pressure suit from the locker by the airlock and had it on before they finished. After the last step (“29: Confirm helmet ring seal integrity”) PO Hector reported, “Ready to depressurize hold, ma’am.”

  Mitchie had trained on that same checklist. She’d also had hundreds of hours of vacuum time. “Inspection first. Jackson, got your feet braced?”

  “Um, yes’m?”

  “Good.” Mitchie was ten meters away from the tech’s post by their sensor container. One kick sent her headfirst across the deck. She grabbed Jackson’s ankles to stop, forcing a squeak out of the startled tech. “Inspection—boot seals. Left good. Right cuff has a bulge. That’s a folded-over edge on the inner overlap. So you only have one good seal instead of two.”

  After both had looked at the flaw she showed Jackson how to fix it without completely removing the boot. Then she resumed the inspection, seal by seal. One of the oxygen tank lines had been inserted crooked. “That’s not as bad as the other,” explained Mitchie. “It’d hiss loud enough you’d notice it before you lost much oxy.”

  Hector’s suit had similar problems along with a helmet seal compromised by a bit of grit. “Now that can kill you,” said Mitchie. “Don’t focus on the checklist, focus on the hardware.” She ordered them to remove helmets and gloves for a quick lesson on checking the helmet ring for damage and debris.

  Once the techs were regeared and reinspected they were trained in operating the airlock, deck hatches, and main door. Then Mitchie asked Guo to pump out the air in the hold.

  As the big doors parted Jackson exclaimed, “Now that’s a view.”

  Mitchie looked at the starfield, automatically picking out the constellations she used to locate planets for position sights. Trying to enjoy the sight made her think back to when she’d first been in space. A long time ago now. “You’re clear to start operations,” she said.

  Not knowing anything about how the sensors worked, she kept her mouth shut as the techs booted the system up. They’d clearly had lots of practice with it. All of it in normal gravity. Everything they could do strapped to a console went quickly. Moving about led to multiple attempts as they bounced around their container.

  Opening the container doors and deploying the antennas took far longer than Hector expected, judging by the cursing he was doing on a channel he’d set up for private talk with Jackson. Mitchie didn’t interrupt, though she was tempted to offer some training in zero-g maneuvering.

  The officer did shift her safety line to a ring by the open cargo doors. She’d chosen the longest line in the locker but only paid out ten meters of it. If one of her techs managed to break their own lines and float out the door she’d want the whole length.

  She left the maneuvering pack in the locker. It would look like she expected them to go dutchman if she put that on.

  Two hours of vacuum time later Hector reported they were collecting data. The captain had faced the hold doors toward Lapis. Mitchie entered the container. Stretching out along the ceiling let her look over their shoulders without getting in their way.

  Multiple screens scrolled incoming data too fast to read. The techs exchanged terse jargon as they steered the antennas. The center screen switched to a vector map showing ships near Lapis. Mitchie studied it without finding any headed toward the planet.

  Watching the system process the sensor readings Mitchie’s thoughts drifted to how the Fusion would react if they saw it. The military implications wouldn’t be noticed. Finding unsupervised software in their territory would produce pure panic. The code police would destroy every processor and memory unit with fire. They wouldn’t care how much damage they’d do to the ship either. Landing on Yulin’s moon felt riskier than when they’d first proposed the plan.

  Captain Schwartzenberger interrupted her brooding. “Long, we’ve got an abort. Traffic Control ordered us out of the system.”

  “Aye-aye,” she replied. “Hector, how fast can you secure for acceleration?”

  “Ma’am?” said the confused tech.

  “We need to boost. How much time do you need to get ready?”

  “Oh. Half an hour? What’s going—”

  “Get started,” she ordered. Mitchie switched back to the captain’s channel. “Should be able to boost in half an hour, sir.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I told them I had to hand-calculate the course change. We could probably get away with coasting through tomorrow.”

  ***

  Once Joshua Chamberlain was coasting for the Bonaventure gate the techs set up their sensors again. They took half the time as before. A little practice in freefall went a long way. Mitchie tasked Jackson with explaining the readouts to her while Hector managed the system.

  “This one is a destroyer,” explained the junior tech. “On a converging course with us, so headed for the gate. Running hot, overdue for some time with radiators out. Decelerating to stop short of the gate. That makes their rendezvous point . . . here. Would be useful to turn the ship to look at that, ma’am.”

  “Too risky,” answered Mitchie. “We don’t want to behave out of the ordinary.”

  Hector snorted. Mitchie didn’t ask his opinion of the decision.

  “And coming into view,” continued Jackson, “another destroyer. Same condition.” Some typing put a magnified view of the new target’s plume on a monitor. “With some irregularities in its torch plume.” More typing. “Found a match. This is FNS Kai-Shek, normally based in Sukhoi.

  Mitchie grunted in surprise. “They’re pulling ships out of front-line units? They are pissed at us.”

  The next few hours revealed a denser concentration of warships, some parked well away from the gate. Mitchie contemplated the number of military-grade sensors looking back at them. “Seal it up,” she ordered.

  “Ma’am?” asked Hector. “We’re getting great data here.”

  “Yes, but sooner or later someone’s going to notice our doors hanging open and wonder why. Shut it down.”

  The PO complied. Mitchie noticed he turned his microphone off for a few minutes. Once the antennas were retracted she closed the cargo doors.

  “Sensors cold, ma’am,” Hector reported.

  “Good. We have a few hours until we reach the gate. You’re off duty until then. Be suited up and back here at ten minutes to jump.”

  “Aye-aye.” The senior PO saluted.

  Mitchie returned the salute and pushed out of the container. She kicked off the deck to the ceiling hatch. The captain needed to know what they’d seen.

  Bonaventure System, acceleration 0 m/s2

  The captain’s voice crackled in the suit radios. “Okay, we’re through. Looking around for company.”

  “That’s creepy,” muttered Hector. “You ought to feel something when you travel seven light-years. Not just get told ‘hey, we’re there now.’”

  Mitchie checked that the observer was transmitting on the local freq. He was. Only the three of them in the hold had heard the remark, so she ignored it.

  The captain spoke on the PA freq again. “No other ships within a hundred klicks. We landed at the edge of the entry zone. We’ll boost to antispinward to get clear of the zone.”

  That would be as good a viewing position as they could hope for.

  Boosting, coasting, and decelerating ate half an hour. At last Schwartzenberger announced, “In position. Clear to start observations.”

  “Let’s get it open,” said Mitchie. She held down the open button on the door console as the observers wrestled with the panels in the side of their shipping container. The two ten-meter wide cargo hold doors were fully open before the sensors were ready. The techs were still fiddling with their gear.

  Mitchie floated to between the sensor container and the open door. A couple of kicks to the deck popped up tie-down rings that she could hook her boots onto. The newbies still hadn’t gotten the hang of moving masses in free-fall. Sure enough, they pushed the antenna out too fast again. As it swung into position she looped her safety line o
ver a handhold and pulled, slowing it so it wouldn’t slam against the stops.

  Jackson was still connecting cables. Mitchie moved into the container and looked over the status lights. Everything was working, just had to be turned on manually. Don’t micromanage, she repeated to herself.

  It only took a few more minutes for Hector to report, “Online, ma’am. Data is coming in. All systems nominal.”

  “Thank you. Good work, you two.” Mitchie switched frequencies. “Sir, we’re ready for the scanning roll.”

  Schwartzenberger didn’t reply directly. He announced, “All hands, brace for spin,” over the PA.

  It wasn’t much spin—one hand was all it took to keep Mitchie from falling into the outer wall—but the sensors now could sweep almost the whole sky. “Spotted a relay buoy,” said Jackson. “Transmitting our data from Lapis on tightbeam.”

  “Roger,” said Mitchie.

  A few ship icons appeared in the monitors. Their Fusion counterparts, watching the blockade force from far out in the system. As the ship turned further the blockaders came into view.

  “They’ve moved back,” said Jackson.

  “Just following Bonaventure in its orbit,” explained Mitchie. “They’re staying between the planet and the gate.”

  “Signal from the Flag, ma’am. Decrypting . . . ‘Hold in place. Report emergences.’”

  “Thank you.” Mitchie relayed the message to Captain Schwartzenberger. He acknowledged it politely.

  Staring at the Fusion scouts lacked excitement. Mitchie had the observation techs start training her on the sensors. If she could cover the assistant position the POs could take turns getting naps.

  Hector was a surprisingly good instructor. Jackson wasn’t surprised, judging by her smirk at some of the simulations he picked. Five hours into the impromptu class the display switched from an elaborate sim to a single unlabeled blip—real world data.