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By midday the following day, we were in a position to make the Jump to Sirius, which at nine light-years was close to our theoretical maximum. I wished we'd had enough time to put together some of my RoboPony relays. It would have been reassuring to leave a communication chain behind us to keep us in touch with what was happening on Earth. But we had our orders.
The last piece of interesting news was coverage of a meeting between Porter Seckinger and Fan Hua Song, the PAC Minister for Deep Space Development. The broadcast was my twisted idea of entertainment while I ate lunch in the wardroom. Seckinger was his usual toadsome self, but Song kept her cards well hidden, despite her outwardly enthusiastic manner. Whatever their politics and personalities, they were both selling the All-Parties Conference like it was the first squirt from the fountain of youth.
"We have communicated with the various governments of Earth, the Archipelago Directorate, and the Corporate Executive, and we have agreed on a tentative meeting to discuss strategic development of deep space." Song spoke with her usual measured tone. "This will take place in August at Lunar Free State and will provide an opportunity to determine best practices for all peoples to effectively use the new resources we now have access to."
Seckinger stepped forward and put his arm around Song's shoulders. He dominated her by several inches and gave her an overly familiar squeeze that made her wince. "Thank you, Minister Song. The USP looks forward to meeting with everyone and laying the groundwork for peaceful co-existence as we move into the future."
"Those assholes."
I looked around to see Grant. He must have slipped in while I was eating. He sat a few tables away, which struck me as a little unfriendly, but the tough-as-steel corporal didn't seem the most affable of people at the best of times.
"Don't you believe in avoiding conflict?" I said.
"War's inevitable. Everyone's after the same shit, and from what I see there ain't a lot of it to go around."
"You mean habitable planets?" I gathered up my garbage and pushed it into the recycler. "We'll find them eventually."
"You may be right." Grant chewed on his sandwich. "But no one wants to share. It's all words. You'll see."
I looked back at the screen. Seckinger was shaking hands vigorously with the diminutive Song, who looked as though she was expecting her arm to fall off any minute. Behind them, slightly out of focus, was the hulking figure of General Mkandla. She looked happy with the proceedings, but her t-shirt had the saying "All I need is some quiet time" over the image of a silenced pistol.
"I'm hoping sense will prevail."
"Didn't realize you were an optimist." He took another bite. "You and Giotto been spending time together. Something I should know there?"
I'd done several sessions with BRUCE, and she'd come along to make sure I didn't get hurt again, or maybe she was making sure I didn't mess around with the robot's programming. It was entirely innocent and even if it wasn't, it was none of his business. But I got the feeling it was more than idle curiosity. "She's helping me with an exercise routine."
Grant raised his eyebrows. "That what they call it these days?"
"I'm not sure it's any of your concern, but that's all it is." My fingers clenched. "If that isn't enough, feel free to check with her."
"She's part of the team." Grant leaned back, his chair creaking under the weight of all that Geneered muscle. "I don't like it when my people get messed up. By anyone."
And I didn't like threats, no matter how veiled. But we had a long time together ahead of us, so I swallowed my anger. Without saying anything else, I headed for the control room. It was empty, and I was glad to have some time to let my temper cool. Grant's attitude was as welcome as leeches on a hemophiliac, especially on a journey like this. It reminded me why I hated having anything to do with the military.
As the ship approached our planned Jump point, Logan and Aurore came in and strapped themselves into their seats. I'd suggested everyone be secured for the Jump, remembering how disconcerting it had been the first time I'd experienced it. From what I'd read, the nausea we'd experienced heading back to Earth was due to the fact that we were Jumping into a gravity well from a position where space-time curvature was flatter. Theoretically, our distance from any large mass, plus the fact that we were Jumping to the outer regions of the Sirius system, would limit any bad effects, but I wasn't taking any chances.
"Everything okay, Joe?" said Logan.
"We're on track."
"Not what I meant." He was staring at me. "You're on edge."
I cursed silently. Logan always seemed to look inside me and see what was going on. "Private matter—tell you later."
"I'll remind you."
A message flashed up, indicating we were at the safe Jump point, and I looked over at Logan. "Your call, Captain."
He grimaced at the title. "When you're ready."
I was about to broadcast a warning when Hernandez hurried in. He shrugged apologetically. "I felt I should be here, even though there's nothing for me to do."
"There still won't be any green-skinned dancing girls." I pointed to a spare seat. "But pull up a log."
As he fastened himself in, I opened a comm channel. "All hands. Secure for Jump in two minutes."
Logan brought up a front view and piped it throughout the ship. The on-screen counter ticked down. At thirty seconds, I engaged the Jump sequence and let the system follow its programmed directions. There was no turning back now.
"Hang on to your hats, everybody," I called.
The counter hit one, and the Jump drive power readouts shot to maximum. My stomach did flip-flops as though I was going to vomit, and I wasn't sure if that was the effect of the drive or adrenaline. The main screen dissolved into a chaotic polychromatic swirl of patterns, and I had to look away. Then, almost before the sensation was born, it vanished. I blinked hard, and floating whirls filled my sight as if I'd rubbed my eyes too hard. The effect didn't last long, certainly less time than when I'd last tried this.
I scanned the display, but the view seemed unchanged. Not too surprising—nine light-years might be a long way in human terms, but astronomically-speaking we'd hardly moved.
"It didn't work?" Hernandez sounded confused.
I reached for the controls and turned the ship, bringing the nose around to line up with what the instruments told me was the center of the system. I held my breath as the brilliant light of a bloated star drifted onto the screen, the display automatically adjusting to prevent glare. Then, as the sun centered, a second much smaller one appeared, nestled onto the glow of the first.
"That's beautiful," whispered Aurore.
I nodded in agreement. "We made it alright."
Sirius was bigger and hotter than our sun, and its blue-white light was visible even with the image filtering. For all its glory, though, the system itself was sparse from a human perspective. There was one planet close into the main star, named "Tabor" by Atoll scientists, but it was almost as uninhabitable as Mercury. If I remembered correctly, the surface temperature averaged over a hundred and seventy degrees Celsius—a sun worshipper's paradise, for maybe ten seconds.
The proximity of the white dwarf companion made other planetary formations impossible, leaving a number of small planetoids and an extensive asteroid belt at a considerable distance from the two stars. It was one of the first star systems visited but only because it was relatively close to our own. Geller Station was nothing more than a scientific and resupply base—other than the potential for asteroid mining, the system had little of interest.
I checked our local coordinates. "We're about a hundred-million kilometers from the station. Comms lag is eleven minutes round-trip. Hang on, though." The power reserves were at thirty-five percent. "Looks like we have enough juice to get closer."
"What about the one A.U. limit.?" said Aurore.
"We'd be well outside that distance from Sirius. Presumably the station is small enough not to have to worry about it so much."
Logan rubbed his chin, his eyes fixed on the screen. "How about shooting for ten-million klicks?"
I fed the numbers into the navigation system. It was close energy-wise but looked possible. "I think we're okay." I started programming the Jump into the system.
"What do you think?" Logan looked over at Aurore.
She was running the numbers, making sure I hadn't missed anything. "Looks okay, but it would be safer to go in on the regular drive."
Logan mulled it over for several minutes. "Okay. Go ahead, Joe. Try not to drop us inside a star."
I broadcast another warning and executed the Jump. There was a moment of discomfort but nothing compared to the big Jump. Once the room stopped spinning, I rechecked the distance to Geller.
"We're eight-million kilometers away from the station. Comms lag about thirty seconds."
"Thanks." Logan straightened his shirt. "I guess I better do this."
I set up a transmission and nodded to him.
"Geller Station. This is Captain Twofeathers of the USN Shokasta. We're on a search-and-rescue mission, investigating the late arrival of the USN Sacagawea. We have several people onboard including ADF Commander McDole and would like to rendezvous with your station. Please advise on your approach requirements."
He gestured cut, and I ended the broadcast.
"How was that?" he said.
"Very dignified." Aurore moved across, put her arms around him, then kissed his head. "You hate this formal stuff, don't you?"
"You should play one of those Space Fleet captains on 3V." I laughed. "Captain Logan, Hero of the Seventh Galaxy!"
Logan growled, but a smile wasn't hidden too far below the surface.
Hernandez confirmed that the transponder had deployed then unstrapped himself. "I'm going to check on my team. We better get ready for escort duty."
He was gone before anyone could respond, and I turned to Logan. "Do you want that?"
"Unless something suspicious happens, I'd say we keep things low-key." Logan tapped his fingers on his armrest. "McDole should open the door for us."
A few seconds later, the comms system beeped. I opened the transmission, and a grizzled looking man appeared on the screen.
"Greetings, Captain Twofeathers. Flight Lieutenant Gavyn Moriaby here. A little surprised to see a scroffer ship, but I suppose I shouldn't be. We have limited facilities, but you're welcome to dock with us—subject to confirmation of Commander McDole's presence, of course. Have to keep everything by the book." Moriaby glanced down. "I note your position and am sending our designated traffic control paths. Use approach sixty-delta-one. Our outer traffic marker is at four-thousand kilometers. Approach freely until then. Oh, and welcome to Sirius."
"Not the friendliest of welcomes," muttered Aurore.
"Haven't you heard?" I said. "The most common Geneering in Atollers is to remove their courtesy genes."
I programmed the course and started the autopilot. Geller Station was situated on the edge of a vast asteroid belt over twenty-seven A.U. from Sirius and was a combined observation and processing station. Mostly, they were processing the belt for raw materials to resupply Atoll ships, and the station itself was relatively small, which was more than you could say about the huge storage bays floating near the station.
It would take a little over a day to get there. The extra Jump was a big time-saver, and I felt unreasonably elated. We'd made our first Jump—two, in fact—and now we were viewing a new star and other worlds. At least, telescopically. It was a dream I thought would never happen.
*
I was in the stores area. With the extra people onboard, I was nervous about how long we could stay out here—even with the extra supplies McDole had provided. Once past Sirius, there were only a few small research stations, and I doubted they'd have enough provisions to be of much help.
When Logan planned the mission, it was only going to be him, Aurore, and me. Now we had three times that number of people. The MilSec team had been thrown at us last minute, and our schedule hadn't allowed us time to take on the extra rations needed—bureaucrats simply didn't understand space travel. I'd finished the early counts and was doing the math inside my head based on an average of eight thousand kilojoules per day, and we were well short of being able to complete the entire journey.
Water was largely recyclable, and we had plenty of storage space, but we could hardly pull over to Billy Bob's Market and Wholesale to restock.
I was about to head upstairs when I heard a cough. It was Dan. I hadn't seen much of him since he came aboard. I imagined he was adapted to whatever schedule they'd used on Fardosh-Baird, and I worked standard time like the rest of the ship.
He stared at me with a strange look on his face then broke out in a sheepish grin. "Got a question, if you ain't too busy."
He'd cleaned himself up a bit. His remaining hair and beard had been trimmed, and he didn't look quite so much like The Prisoner of Zenda. His clean ship suit was a big improvement on the raggedy paper clothes he'd been wearing when we first saw him.
I couldn't quite place his expression—a look of hunger mixed with something else. Maybe it was due to the fact that he'd been locked up so long. "How can I help?"
"Been away so long, I lost touch with so much. Wondered if I could have access to the ship's information library. The 'Tollers never let me see more than garbage game shows and soaps. Be nice to exercise the brain a bit. Do some catch-up."
I felt bad. I'd already activated the console in McDole's room. "Sorry, I should have done that earlier."
"Hell, nothing to be sorry for, Joe." He grinned again, and I saw half his teeth were missing. "I'm your guest. It beats living with those stuck-up bastards on Fardosh-Baird."
"I'll set it up when I'm back at the controls." It was good to see he was trying to move on.
"Hey, that's something else." His dark eyes glistened like a pair of oily bearings. "D'ya think I could see the control room, when you have a bit of spare time? I mean, jeez, this is a starship. I thought both me and Earth would be dead before we saw this stuff."
"Sure. Give me a few minutes to finish here, and we can go up together." He reminded me so much of Charlie, both in appearance and speech, that it was hard to remember he wasn't the old friend I'd shared so much coffee with over the years.
"Sounds, great." He smiled, then a frown slipped over his features. "Listen, I owe you an apology, Joe. For when I first met ya. Ya know, saying how you got Charlie killed an' all."
I didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry it happened. He was a good friend, and he saved my life."
"I was talking with Logan a couple of days ago. He told me how it had all gone down. Those hired killers—never knew nothing about that."
An awkward silence fell, then Dan held out his hand. "I hope someday ya might call me a friend. Can we make a fresh start, huh?"
I hesitated only momentarily, then shook his hand. "Don't have a problem with that."
When we arrived, I logged the data I'd found while Dan marveled at the instruments.
"Jeez. This room is bigger than the ship I escaped in when the 'Tollers attacked Deimos." He laughed. "What happened to building 'em small?"
"No need with the new Casimir generators. And to keep the Jump transition smooth, bigger is better in some ways. Easier to generate the field or something."
"Sure is different from the firecrackers I got my wings on." He wandered over to Aurore's station and dragged his hand across the controls. The console was locked, so it didn't respond to him, but even the Access Denied messages made him grin.
"Firecracker" was an old term for a chemical rocket, whether solid-fuel or liquid propellant. It was true—they typically did get much higher acceleration with those systems, but they were pretty much one-shot—a single high-g burn and then you coasted. The Casimir generators allowed Shokasta, and other modern ships, the ability to sustain acceleration for days and weeks on end. Although the initial thrust was lower and less dramatic, over time the speeds achieved were much higher, and it also provided a workable pseudo-gravitational field.
"What happened when the Atolls attacked? If you don't mind me asking?"
Dan's forehead wrinkled. "You don't know?"
"Only what was released to the news agencies." I fiddled with the controls.
"Can I see?" Dan shuffled from one foot to another.
I pulled up a historical newscast. It didn't have any real footage—the Atolls had never released any—but it had a half-decent simulation of the attack that had been derived from a mix of remote observation and some dubious hypothesizing. More to the point, it included reports of no survivors.
Dan seemed mesmerized, seeing remotely what he'd somehow lived through. His appearance confused me. He was Charlie's twin brother, which made him about a century old, but he didn't look it and moved like someone several decades younger. Perhaps that could be chalked up to his years in space, but that typically aged people more than preserved them.
"The reports were right. Almost." He didn't look around. "I was working outside—re-calibrating the solar arrays. When the station blew, my Hopper was crunched up and tossed away like an old beer can. The circuits were fried. No thruster control. Tanks were shot. Figured I had maybe twenty minutes of oxygen.
"Then that necking Toller cruiser come out of nowhere. I was sure they were gonna finish the job—no witnesses. But they dragged me onboard and made me a prisoner."
"You were lucky."
"Being held in a 'Toller cell for six years? Living with people who treated me like an animal? Nothing but a circus freak to frighten their children with." Dan looked back at me, and I caught the flash of anger in his eyes. "You have no idea what they put me through."
I wondered what they'd done to him but didn't want to push him anymore. His reaction went beyond simple anger at being locked up. The Atolls weren't known for their humane treatment of Earth people, but they weren't generally sadists. Then I thought about my plans for Paek. I wasn't usually so harsh, but some people simply deserve death.
Dan pulled a coffee tube out of his pocket and emptied half the tube in one long drink, then smacked his lips. "Neck, I waited six years for a coffee." He took another drink and pointed at the Atoll Cruiser on the news display. "They don't do it. According to the 'Tollers, it's a drug, illegal. They have something they call coffee, but it's Geneered chicory and barley shite. Not worth drinking."
I'd heard about the Atoll's fastidious reputation. Many of them had an extreme pure body-pure mind regime and eliminated many things us scroffers took for granted. I suppose it made sense from a scientific perspective, but life without coffee sounded too close to life-after-death. Although with the widespread destruction of coffee growing habitats, substitutes were gaining traction, even on Earth.
I opened the management console and activated the terminal in Dan's quarters. "Okay, you're all set."
Dan grinned and took another gulp of his coffee. "Thanks, Joe. Mighty nice of ya."
"All part of the Ballen Spaceways service."
"If it's okay, I'll go and check it out. Gotta start playing catch-up. I'm behind way too much." He headed for the doorway. I pulled up the provisions system and checked the projections based on the data I'd collected. What came up was worrying.
"Was Dan just here?" Aurore clambered in.
"I forgot to give him access to the information library. He didn't get to view much on Fardosh-Baird."
She swung into her seat and opened up a spectrographic analysis. "Is that what he said?"
"Nothing but garbage 3V, like game shows."
"Weird." Aurore leaned back in her chair. "McDole said he'd read his way through their entire library."
"Their entire scroffers-only library, perhaps. Though if he's anything like Charlie, he's probably getting a bit senile." I tapped the console. "Anyway, we have a bigger problem."
"Oh?"
"According to my estimates, we only have enough food to search each star system for two weeks."
"We can't do a thorough survey in that time." Aurore turned to her console and pulled up my data. "It's impossible."
I understood her reaction. Even with the enhanced detection equipment, it would be difficult to detect a ship unless it was actively broadcasting a signal. Thermal signatures would be detectable, but on a Casimir-powered ship, the generators produced much less heat than something like a fusion reactor. It wasn't impossible, but finding something that small in the available search window was unlikely.
"We could head back to Fardosh..."
I didn't finish the thought. I could well imagine the response from Earth if we turned back before we'd really started. Worse still would be the Atoll derision when they found out we'd not provisioned our ship properly for the journey ahead.