“I have to assume you want to keep the ship but lose the debt,” Om said.
Electra nodded. “Do you know a Gromphra that sells something to remove lien tethers?”
“For a seventy-nine-billion-unit lien, I don’t think there is such a thing,” Om said. “The creditors will find someone to connect that debt to and they already know who you are and what you’re flying. You could always let someone else steal the ship and the debt, since I’m assuming that’s how you came by both.”
“Don’t judge me.” Electra groaned. “She owed me money and I was drunk. There has to be another way to keep the ship. They don’t make them anymore, and this one is practically perfect in every way.”
“It’s pink, isn’t it?”
“So very, very pink.”
Again, Om seemed to consult the thousands of advanced societies within the stones of their body. “Have you heard of Bi-MARP?”
Electra shook her head.
“It’s a Chamber project, all on the up-and-up, and there are some treasure-hunting jobs attached to it that pay big units.”
“How big?”
“The one I’ve held on to for the right friend—getting a Bort Pod off a derelict ship in the California Nebula—pays a decent sized mountain of units,” Om said. “The wreck is only scan-able for another week or so before it floats back into the Persei illumination field, so you’d have to act fast.”
“What’s a Bort Pod?”
“No clue, but it’s worth twenty billion.”
Electra almost took a sip of coffee just to perform a perfect spit take. If she took the job while still wearing the lien tether, the payout would be due to the preferred creditors, no matter what. If she let someone else steal the ship, she could be fabulously wealthy, but all she’d really want to buy would be a pink Cadillux Dorado 1959, and she probably had the only one left in existence, not to mention that she’d need a ship to get the Bort Pod and turn it in. Discharging the debt would be an enormous undertaking, but the Embarker in her thrilled at the prospect of tackling such a monumental job.
“Okay, give me the details,” Electra said. “I’m doing this thing. Real work, no fun, no sex, minimal booze… My parents would be so proud.”
Chapter Three
Details on the job didn’t elaborate beyond one, thin line—find the Bort Pod on a derelict ship in the California Nebula, right near where San Diego would be. The last part of the job posting was supposed to be a joke. Electra was pretty sure about that, although she didn’t get it—California and San Diego were Earthling references and she was an Embarker. A hop, skip and a jump through six wormhole relays later, she was on the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy, zipping through the nebula toward the provided coordinates.
The Cadillux 1959 ran like a dream at five times the speed of light. Over such large distances and such great speeds, the ship’s onboard computer compressed the two into a workable display that allowed most species to grasp the enormity of interstellar travel by scaling it to a level comprehendible by organic cognition. What the computer displayed on the cockpit window was a projection of a vastly slowed down and miniaturized version of what was actually occurring, adjusted to match reality by compressing the distance. To top it all off, the Cadillux handled so smoothly that Electra almost couldn’t tell the ship was even moving, were it not for the display. The vessels in the Embarker fleet made almost constant noise when sitting idle and a cacophony of creaks, groans, pops, screeches and hisses when flying at any sort of faster than light speed.
Electra leaned back in the white leather captain’s chair, letting Ivy and the navigation computer guide the sleek pink-and-chrome vessel toward the blip on the screen. Flying, the only job on the Embarker fleet Electra had wanted to learn, was ninety-nine percent working with a navigation computer program to find the best possible numbers. The excitement of the hands-on one percent made the rest of the tedium bearable.
The derelict ship was almost two thousand years old, according to the hull signatures, and not easy to find until it passed out of the illumination field created by Persei IX star cluster. Electra tabbed through various scope settings on the long-range scanners. Aside from a few pockets, the nebula was almost impenetrable when the local star’s radiation hit it. If she lost the floating wreckage in the dust, she wouldn’t be able to find it again until after it circled back around to that same point. She had no idea how long that would take, but she assumed it wouldn’t be in her lifetime.
“Find me an entry point, Ivy,” Electra said when the ship came into view on the long-range scans. It looked like a silver edamame bean pod with a short tower on what Electra guessed to be the stern. For its age, the old girl didn’t look too bad. “The nebula must have prevented a lot of bombardment from asteroids and space debris.”
“The cargo hold doors are open a crack on the prow, Miss Electra.”
“A big enough crack for us to slip through?”
“Barely, Miss Electra.”
“Turn down the repulse engines so we don’t knock all the crap off the shelves once we’re through, and make sure you don’t scratch the paint,” Electra said. “I’ll go suit up.”
Electra headed down to the airlock elevator. Trying to run out the gangplank in the cargo hold might be impossible, depending on the clutter. The elevator could stop and let her off if the floor wasn’t clear enough to make a complete drop, then she could float the rest of the way. She slid into the armored bio-suit she’d printed from Station 51’s public fabricator terminal and locked down the fishbowl helmet. The ship had its own terminals to create items from recycled molecules, but they weren’t nearly as fast at big jobs like an armored spacesuit.
“Do you require the lien tether?” Letterman asked.
“Nope, you’re coming with me.” Electra snagged the elevator control off the wall and guided the enforcement bot toward a red square on the floor of the airlock. “Take a deep breath and think happy thoughts.” Before Letterman could reply, she hit the evacuate button on chute three and dropped him out of the bottom of the ship. A series of red flashes from terminals told her the ship was in lockdown and couldn’t be moved until Letterman was back on board. The little ruse had been worth a try to see if Letterman was telling the truth about being able to lock her out of the ship’s systems.
She considered the globauncher on the wall. It was more of a tool than a weapon, meant to launch balls of quick-expanding gel that would seal breaches with ten-foot by ten-foot bricks of glob. She’d heard it could also capture dangerous space junk and creepy-crawlies in a pinch. Every Embarker was trained in the use of one practically at birth, so any citizen of the flotilla could prevent a catastrophic hull breach wherever and whenever one occurred. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, she decided.
Armed with her globauncher tube, she hopped onto the airlock elevator and descended into the derelict ship. She anticipated the sense of weightlessness when she passed out of the artificial gravity field created by the Cadillux, but the gravity never turned off. Letterman had landed a dozen feet away, creating a massive hole in the floor where she’d dropped him. He’d apparently had to climb out and she was a little sorry she’d missed seeing it. Letterman was her jailer, her warden and taskmaster in repayment of a debt that they both knew wasn’t actually hers, and he didn’t even have the manners to be apologetic for the lousy position she was in. His slavish devotion to enforcement etiquette and her inborn Embarker discomfort with owing combined to create a healthy disdain in Electra for the enforcement bot.
“Ivy, why am I not floating?”
“Sixty-seven percent of the derelict ship’s gravitational cores are still functioning at better than eighty percent, Miss Electra,” Ivy replied through the com in Electra’s helmet. “You should have at least partial gravity through most of the ship.”
“Bummer… I was looking forward to some floating,” Electra said. “Come on, Letterman. Stop waxing the floors with your face. We have work to do.”
“Are you damaged?”
“No.”
“Then shut up.”
Electra crept forward slowly through the derelict ship’s cargo hold. She’d expected a ton of scrap and random junk floating around, but the whole place was picked clean. Some dust and crumbs floated through the beam of her flashlight in the warehouse-esque room, but nothing bigger than a fingernail. A green dot illuminated on the heads-up display of her helmet, provided by the link from Ivy and the scans done by the Cadillux’s powerful scopes.
“That is most likely the Bort Pod, Miss Electra,” Ivy said. “A faint electrical signature is coming from a metal-and-glass container at that location, and it is the only item of significant size in any unshielded room.”
It would be great news if Ivy were correct, and Electra wouldn’t have to do personal reconnaissance of the un-scan-able sections—poking around shielded rooms on a derelict ship was a great way to get radiation poisoning or, in rare instances, eaten by a hidden galactic beastie. Electra walked to the nearest wall and followed it to the right until she found a hallway that led in the vague direction of the glowing dot. Many of the panels on the walls had been removed, either by catastrophic decompression or an exceptionally deft salvaging team.
“I wonder what they were doing out here?” Electra mused.
“The predominant theory on galactic net deep space salvaging forums is that this was a colonizing ship from Mars sent to populate the Andromeda Galaxy, Miss Electra,” Ivy said.
“Wait! This hunk of junk is an ancient human vessel?” Electra asked. “I thought we could do better than this.” Humans had fallen a long way to become Embarkers in fleets of rust-bucket ships, but this was supposed to be from the pinnacle of human space exploration. It was a little disheartening to learn her species had never been particularly good at spacefaring.
Room after room, corridor after corridor turned up empty. Ivy wasn’t kidding about the Bort Pod being the only item of significant size. It may have been the only item of any size. Judging from the torch burns in some places and pried metal in others, Electra decided it was an oft-picked-over husk that scavengers worked on whenever it floated into the scan-able range of the illumination field. Her initial hopes that there might be other valuables to grab beside the Bort Pod were dashed. She was way too late to the scavenge party for easy gains.
They entered a long room with low ceilings and several vacant mountings lined up along the floor. Letterman’s light flashed over a lone pod left in the row and the green light on her heads-up display faded away. The mythical Bort Pod, twenty billion units, looked like a seven-foot long metal crate mounted onto a table.
“Okay, do your thing, Letterman.”
“What is ‘my thing’, exactly?”
“Assist in the earning of money to pay the debt,” Electra said. “Figure out how to get the Bort Pod off that table and carry it back to the ship so your preferred creditors can get their units and get off my back for another hundred and fifty hours. Why did you think I brought you?”
Letterman brushed past her to scan the Bort Pod, rolled to the other side, scanned some more and eventually tapped at a few points with a prodding arm. “There is a dedicated power source. It has kept the contents ‘fresh’, for lack of a better term, and maintained the mag-locks securing the pod to the bulkhead.”
Electra wandered over and gave the table a light kick. “Must be why nobody was able to swipe it.” Cutting out a chunk of bulkhead was well beyond what even the best-equipped salvagers could do. She chewed the inside of her cheek while she thought. “We can’t just burn out the power supply, since I’m guessing what’s inside needs to be in mint condition when I turn it over or there’s no payout. Can you reroute the power for the freshness protocols to your own supply then cut the mag-locks off from the dedicated source?”
“It will take time,” Letterman said.
“I guess I’ll amuse myself staring at the walls while you work,” Electra said.
“I have recorded you as the laziest Embarker in existence,” Letterman said.
“I’m the only Embarker currently in existence, so I’m also the hardest working.” Electra stuck her tongue out at him, accidentally licking the front of her fishbowl helmet in the process.
“A fleet of ten vessels is inbound, Miss Electra,” Ivy said.
“What kinds of ships?”
“Raider signature, three brigs and seven skiffs, Miss Electra.”
“Work fast, Letterman,” Electra said. “I’ll see what I can do about our visitors.”
Electra walked the room quickly to count the doorways. Six in all, including the one they’d come through. At the opposite end from their entry point, and the farthest from the Bort Pod, she hit a low gravity zone and floated down toward the hallway. She righted herself by grabbing the door frame and pulling herself back into the room before she could get too far.
“Ivy, I need a layout,” Electra said. “Are they boarding from the front or back?”
“Front, Miss Electra.”
Electra thought for a moment. “Okay, I guess I don’t know which end is the front. The one with the tower or the one we came in through?”
“The end with the tower, Miss Electra.”
“Which doorway is the fastest route to where we are now from where they’re coming in?”
“Illuminating it for you now.”
Electra walked to the side door marked by the green dot on her Head-up Display and fired a glob into the black void. At the threshold for the door, the ball expanded into a large orange block of semi-solid gel.
“Okay, and which is the fastest way back to the Cadillux?”
“The one you came in through, Miss Electra.”
“I’m lucky or good,” Electra murmured. “Either way, I’ll take it.” She wandered among the rest of the doors, globbing them up one by one until she returned to the doorway with the gravitational dead zone. She decided against blocking it, but headed back to the doorway they’d entered through and blocked up that one. She could reopen the doors using the other end of the applicator tube. Flip the thing around, the glob ammo turned green and the shots dissolved the orange blocks into goop. She could only hope that whoever was on their way to swipe her salvage didn’t have the foresight to bring their own launcher to take down her barriers. “Where are we on the Bort Pod, Letterman?”
“I have the power transfer complete,” Letterman said. “Cutting the pod free now.”
“Sweet, sweet, sweet,” Electra chanted as she paced between her defenses, finally coming to stop before the blocked-off door Ivy had said was the fastest route for the boarding party. Lights flashed down the hallway, killing the weak hope Electra had that the scavengers weren’t after the same prize she was. It had been a preposterous hope anyway. Ten ships wouldn’t come all the way out the edge of the galaxy to chop up an old hull. That was the kind of fleet assembled to grab a twenty-billion-unit prize.
Question-mark-shaped reptilian aliens toddled down the hallway toward the glob block. Their bottom ends contained four toes pointed in four different directions to walk along while the opposite end contained the face with a wide mouth and tiny eyes. Splotchy gray skin with blue dots covered the rest, while belts bristling with weapons and tools were cinched in several places. Glott pirates… She’d heard of them from newsreels on the galactic net but had never actually met one. Glotts were common enough, but most of them were decent, industrious farmers and miners. The ones that turned pirate were peculiar, even in Glott society, and not often found in civilized space.
The Glott pirates gathered at the glob block in the doorway and poked at it while glaring at her. A large, almost albino Glott moved to the front of the group and bonked the orange block of gel several times with his head. Each smack sent a ripple through the su
rface.
“I am Sempa, Glott Raider Captain and Scourge of…” the large, albino Glott began.
“I’m Electra. Nice to meet you, Sempa. The Bort Pod is mine. Have a nice day!”
“I think I will have a nice day. Counteroffer, Electra,” Sempa said. “Give me your ship, the Bort Pod, your money, become a pirate slave and we’ll let you live.”
“Wow, tempting, but I’m going to pass,” Electra said. “A tip for future negotiations… Offer at least one outrageous thing the other side can say ‘no’ to easily, not a whole list of them.”
“Find a way in, boys. Don’t bother being gentle once you’ve got her.” Sempa’s men turned to begin searching other corridors while the Glott leader continued to glare at her through the gel. “I can see a doorway open from here, girl. Run out of glob?”
“I had enough to get the job done.” Electra grinned when she saw Letterman loading the Bort Pod into his armored body cavity and sealing himself back up. “Gotta go. Lovely talking with you.”
“My boys have the open door covered,” Sempa said.
Electra turned back to the blocked door she’d come in through, turned the globauncher around and fired a green orb at it. The orange block immediately dissolved into murky, gray liquid and sloshed across the floor. “That should be fun for them.”
She jogged ahead of Letterman and slipped in the gray sludge left by the dissolved glob, spoiling her otherwise slick-as-zero-friction-lube exit. Letterman scooped her off the floor and set her on her feet with one of his tentacle arms. When she glanced back before entering the hallway, she spotted the Glott pirates rushing blindly into the gravity dead zone. Without hands or a door frame to grab hold of, the pirates floated aimlessly, bouncing off one another until all their weapons started firing in waves.
“Whoops,” Electra said, ducking behind Letterman when the bullets, missiles, lasers and flame bursts filled the room. “Are you damaged by any of that small-arms fire, Letterman?”
Electra Rex Page 3