Star Runners

by Clayton J Callahan

  The bad luck came with the timing. Boss128A’s sixth planet was indeed a dark and frozen waste, but under that icy surface, tectonic pressures were hard at work. The planet had a history of volcanic activity, and to the Vagabond’s bad fortune, it was about to blow one of its stacks. As Kilroy steered his ship into orbit on the light side, the dark side experienced a massive eruption. Millions of tons of rock went skyward in a cataclysmic display of raw geological power.

  And as the Vagabond came about, it ran smack into the galaxies newest asteroid field.

  “Shit!” Kilroy shouted when he saw the rocks in his path. There was no way to avoid them, and he knew this was going to be a hell of a bumpy ride. He looked to his left and saw that Deirdre wasn’t strapped into her safety harness. Damn newb! He cursed in his head. Fast as lightning, he unbuckled his harness and leaped over to where the teenager sat. Kilroy grabbed the harness and buckled her in as quickly as he could, and he had no time to be gentle about it either.

  ***

  “Stop! Uncle Kilroy, you’re hurting me!” Deirdre cried in alarm. She had no idea what was happening but soon learned. With a loud crash and a slam as the Vagabond hit the first of the many rocks in its path. Fortunately, the ship’s hull was made of military grade alloys designed to resist the rigors of combat but that didn’t mean it was invincible. Another crash and the lights went out, leaving Deirdre in total darkness. She began to panic as the emergency lanterns suddenly flickered on.

  The dim light, however, only served to illuminate her injured friend. Kilroy lay on the deck in front of her chair. He wasn’t moving, and blood trickled out of a gash on his forehead. She screamed at the sight but couldn’t do anything about it.

  For minute after uncounted minute, the rocks continued to bombard the Vagabond. At last, they passed through the other side of it, and Deirdre looked around. Control panels were smashed and sparks flew from random places. She sat there for a moment, regaining her breath, then the comm unit crackled by her ear. “Kilroy, what the hell just happened? Kilroy! What is going on up there? Can you hear me, Kilroy? Kilroy…”

  Tears ran down her face as she keyed the comm. “Uncle Burt, he’s hurt. I don’t know what to do.”

  “You just stay put, sweetheart; I’m coming.”

  In seconds Burt was there. Kilroy was breathing, but he wasn’t his usual talkative self by a long shot. Burt searched for the first aid unit, but couldn’t find it in its usual place on the bulkhead. Instead, it was found smashed into the nav-comp. He grabbed it and began checking Kilroy’s vitals.

  ***

  Burt hoped that the first aid he remembered from his navy days would be all Kilroy required. He saw the injured forehead—a three-centimeter gash went from Kilroy’s temple to just above his right eye. The big man dressed the wound. Then carefully picked up his skinny shipmate, took the captain of the Vagabond to his stateroom, and placed him comfortably on the bunk. There really wasn’t anything else Burt could do.

  Deirdre never left the bridge. In fact, she was still strapped into her seat when Burt returned. “I didn’t touch anything, honest. Is Kilroy going to be all right?”

  “Kiddo, you couldn’t have done that much damage if you tried. As for Kilroy, I just don’t know. He’s comfortable, and he’s breathing. After that,” Burt paused, “it depends on how fast we can get him to a real doctor, I suppose.”

  Burt surveyed the damage. The coffee maker would never brew again, and the lighting needed rerouting, but the worst damage was definitely the nav-comp. Burt could easily replace it with another onboard computer. But he couldn’t replace the lost memory. Specifically, the course Kilroy had plotted was gone and wouldn’t be coming back. Burt remembered back to his days as a new spacer on his first ship. He’d spent an hour or more with a geeky bridge guy learning the basics of navigation, and then he got his comp scanned for his astronaut wings. That was a long time ago, and he couldn't even remember where he’d put his astronaut wings since then, let alone the things he’d done to earn them.

  “Kiddo,” Burt asked, “did Kilroy ever teach you anything about navigating?” He suspected he already knew the answer.

  “Was he supposed to?” she asked.

  “It would’ve been nice,” Burt said as he plopped into Liddy’s old chair. He took a few moments to explain the problem to the teenager. No point in hiding bad news, he figured. “Deirdre, without a course plotted we’re lost in space.”

  “Aren’t we on a free return trajectory?” she asked. “That should like, mean we’re going in the right direction. Aren’t we?”

  “The right general direction, yes, but if we’re off by just a few degrees, we could go millions of kilometers off course. Navigators always have to make adjustments after a slingshot. I know because it’s reflected in the fuel consumption of the engines,” Burt answered.

  “Can’t we call for help? Maybe some other ship’s navigator could plot a course for us?”

  “I wish it were that easy. If we were in the Sol system that’s exactly what we’d do. But we ain’t in Sol. There are no other ships in this part of the system, and since the new tran-sat net isn’t up yet, our comm will only carry a wave so far. Our long-range antenna hasn’t worked in a long while, I’m afraid. We’ve been using the short range one exclusively, which is against Confed shipping regs, but we didn’t have much of a choice these past few years. Yell on the comm all you want, kiddo, but there ain’t nobody to talk to ‘round here.”

  Burt let a moment pass while he considered the situation for himself. “I’m gonna get to work fixing what I can…which is almost everything,” he said with a grin. “Whatever happens next, I want the Vagabond to be ready for it. Starting now, Spacer Third Class, you’re checking on Kilroy every half hour. If he gets better or worse in any way, I want you to come running to fetch me. You got that?”

  She nodded, and said, “Aye aye, Sir.”

  “Good.”

  He left the bridge to get his tools. The good news was that Vagabond had passed above the volcano at a high enough altitude to avoid the really big rocks leaving the damage at a manageable level. It was nothing Burt couldn’t handle, and in twenty-four hours, the systems were all up and running again. Burt, however, had exhausted himself in the effort. So he went into Kilroy’s stateroom to nap in a chair by his best friend.

  * * *

  Deirdre sat in the co-pilot’s seat for hours, rocking back and forth trying to think of what to do. She could fly the ship. She was sure she could. All she needed was a course, and she could follow it. Trying to remember what Kilroy did when he plotted a course was useless. It was just too complicated, and he’d never explained that part to her anyway. It would be all guesswork if she even tried. They had plenty of food and water on board, and sooner or later, they would be reported missing. Help would come, but she feared it might come too late for Kilroy.

  And all she needed was a lousy course.

  Then she saw red, something red out of the corner of her eye. A man sat in a pilot’s seat, but not the actual one. His seat was a phantom thing to the left and forward of the real, physical one. At first, she thought he was a holo-projection, but he lacked that techno-color glow. Also, he seemed somewhat translucent, his image fading in and out without rhythm or pattern.

  He smiled at her. She smiled back, wondering if she was sleeping. Maybe she was, but she didn’t much mind.

  The man’s red flight suit looked like some sort of uniform, and he was handsome, with wavy brown hair and twinkling eyes. The apparition winked at her. Then, he reached for the comm unit, again—not the actual one—but a phantom unit near his phantom chair. He spoke, but she couldn’t understand him. His Common English was muffled, his words running together.

  She heard a response. More garbled words coming from the not-there comm unit. When he’d finished his conversation, the specter turned back to smile at her. Deirdre smiled back again, why not; this was probably a dream anyway, right?

  For a while, nothing happened. She and th
e man in red just sat there sharing the bridge. Then, a flash and a shimmer of light could be seen out of the canopy as a jump point opened. It was a ship, a very old ship. So old in fact that it had a rotating section to provide artificial gravity for its crew.

  She knew that no one had flown in a ship like it since back before the Azanti War. Deirdre looked to her red uniformed companion. He was pointing at the old ship as if to say, “That way, stupid,” and then he vanished.

  Deirdre powered up her control panel. Easing up the stick, she carefully guided the Vagabond in the direction of the ghost ship. She tried to make out details, but the ship was far away. Like the man in red, it kept fading in and out—adding to her confusion.

  No matter, she wasn’t going to take her eyes off it!

  After several hours, it occurred to her that this might be the wrong thing to do. What if she was taking them farther away from Tarkan, not closer? She had no idea, but the man in red seemed sincere, and she didn’t know what else to do. And doing nothing just wasn’t in her nature. All that night she followed the strange vessel, and its course never varied.

  Just before dawn, ship time, the mysterious craft vanished.

  * * *

  When Burt woke up, it was to the sound of Kilroy babbling. “Kilroy, you old son-of-a-bitch!” he shouted with glee.

  But his friend’s eyes were unfocused, and one pupil seemed larger than the other. The old spacer was awake, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. Kilroy was talking, of course, but he wasn’t coherent. Burt tried to get him to drink water and take some modo-aspirins. Then, he laid his buddy back down to let him rest. Kilroy fell asleep a moment later, and Burt went to the bridge to tell the kid the good news.

  But when he got there he was in for some news himself. “Holy shit! What the hell are you doing?”

  She was steering the ship with a powered-up joystick, that’s what! Burt thought the kid had more sense than to attempt such a foolhardy thing. There’d be no telling where the hell they were now.

  “Like, I’m following the course that the other ship showed me,” she answered.

  “What other ship?” Burt demanded to know.

  Deirdre didn’t seem to want to say too much about that other ship just then. “You know, we aren’t the only ship. Like, I saw this ship going into the system, and I followed it.”

  Burt pressed her. “What did the ship look like?”

  “Like, you know, a ship.”

  He wondered how long she could keep this up.

  “What did it look like, Dierdre?” he demanded.

  And then she started describing the Yang-He; the old explorer class ship that had been lost for a century or more. Rumors had spread of occasional sightings of Captain VanDer’s lost vessel, but Burt never really believed them. He checked the new nav-comp he’d installed the day before. Not knowing a course from a longhorn steer, he could only guess. But they seemed to be going deeper into the system.

  Turning back to Deirdre, he suddenly saw a man standing behind her chair. He wore the distinctive red uniform of the Mars Self-Defense Force, and he was giving Burt a thumbs-up.

  Burt’s eyes grew wide. He wanted to be sure he wasn’t the only one seeing this guy. So he cast his eyes to Deirdre who was intent on her flying. When he glanced back behind her seat—the apparition had vanished.

  * * *

  Kilroy seemed to get better the next day. He was coherent for a while but nauseous and complaining of a massive headache. Then he went downhill, passing out intermittently and slurring his words. By the second day, he was bedridden again and slipping.

  Burt and Deirdre could only hope and worry.

  Thankfully, three days later a tanker called the MJS Strumpet popped out of jump just off the Vagabond’s starboard bow.

  “Good to hear you too, Strumpet!” Burt said over the radio. “We have an injured man aboard. Can you render assistance?”

  “I copy, Vagabond. Wait one.” The silence seemed to stretch into hours but Burt knew it was likely only a minute or two.

  “Vagabond, we have a nurse onboard and can be in docking range of you in two hours. Keep your injured man safe and we’ll see what we can do.”

  Deirdre shouted, “Hurray!” and gave Burt a big hug which he gladly returned.

  Within two hours, Burt and Deirdre heard the clicks and bangs of grapples going home, and then the thump of the airlock. The tanker’s nurse found Kilroy slipping into a coma, due to a swelling of fluid around his brain. Fortunately, the nurse had the right medicines to reverse the swelling and was in time to use them.

  A few days later, Kilroy was sitting up in his bed as Burt spoon-feed him some rice soup. Burt and Deirdre couldn’t thank the nurse enough. Kilroy just nodded, looked at the nurse and said, “That’s nice.”

  As much of a natural as Deirdre might have been, she wasn’t a licensed pilot yet. So the Strumpet’s co-pilot came aboard to help. And as the nurse looked after the patient, the co-pilot flew the Vagabond back to Tarkan.

  To no one’s surprise, the business manager of the Strumpet didn’t charge them for these services. There would never be a bill, only an understanding.

  Space is a dark and dangerous place, and no one knows when they’ll need help out there. So people on the frontier take care of each other; it only makes sense. Although unspoken and certainly unwritten, this singular code is held dear by all spacers.

  So dear in fact, that some of them seem to cling to it even after death.

  The End

  Beer Today Gone Tomorrow

  Once the production costs associated with the jump drive were significantly reduced by Khalil Al Haji’s new fabrication methods, smaller and more versatile commercial craft were constructed for every conceivable economic purpose.

  Excerpt from Gordon’s History of The Spacelanes

  ***

  Jack couldn’t help falling in love every time he looked at her, this thing of absolute beauty. She had nice curves, sleek design and he even liked the color, a luscious cherry red. Better still, she was almost paid off.

  He’d borrowed thousands of credits and pawned everything he owned to buy the Sundancer, a Valkyrie Class light star freighter. He’d gotten her second hand, at one of the Confederation Customs Agency’s auctions of confiscated craft. She’d gone up for auction just as he was walking away from the navy; fifteen years of fighting other people’s wars and he was ready to look out for himself for a while. This made the Sundancer a kind of ‘rebound’ relationship for him, and it was love at first flight.

  As he climbed up the gangway on a bright sunny morning, and felt the warmth of her exhaust vents mixing with the spice-scented air of the planet Tortuga. The hatch recognized him instantly, sliding open as he approached.

  “Honey, I’m home,” he called, as he stepped aboard. Of course, the empty ship gave him no reply.

  Captain Jack Galloway liked being his own boss. He made his own plans and minded his own business. He could fly the ship in his bathrobe if he pleased; but he preferred his old, black leather jacket with the logo of a New Vegas bordello on the back. Jack didn’t recall exactly how he acquired the jacket; much of that night would always be a blur to him. He did seem to recall seeing the bordello’s bouncer wearing it as he entered the place. However, he wasn’t so sure about when or how he left. It could have been through the door or the window? Anyway, the Sundancer didn’t have a crew to comment on his fashion sense. The ship’s numerous automated features made her a one-man starship.

  Just the way he liked it.

  Striding through the curved, modern passageways, he felt the cool air circulating through her internal vents. He took his seat behind the controls. With Sundancer’s state of the art console; he only had to look at the access control for a moment for the software to scan his eye contact and automatically pull up the gangway. He never installed the autopilot protocols however; he enjoyed flying. Lovingly, he took hold of the control stick and focused his eyes on the commo unit. The ‘transmit’ light came o
n a half second later.

  In a clear voice, he announced, “This is MJS Sundancer to Tortuga Control, request permission to depart.”

  “Sundancer, you free to go, mon. Have a safe trip and be back soon,” came the usual response.

  “Tortuga Control, you know I can’t stay away,” he smiled. “See you in two weeks.” Jack loved Tortuga, a warm and pleasant world with manners as relaxed as its laws. Of course, it was a sharp contrast to the planet he was going to, but them’s the breaks.

  The Sundancer’s thrusters flared, as Jack gave her full power. Like an angel ascending on wings of fire, she swiftly reached escape velocity and broke free of the planet’s gravity well. The auto-nav plotted the fastest course possible to the planet Isis, in the Alpha Centauri System. In the ship’s hold, she carried 20,000 stuffed panda toys. In her plumbing, she carried 10,000 liters of very fine beer. The toys were legal, the beer...not so much.

  * * *

  Having pipes filled with beer, of course, had certain disadvantages. All he needed to do was turn on a facet to pour himself a cold one, but taking a shower in beer was not a good idea, and using the toilet would just flush away profits. So, for the next six days, Jack drank and bathed with bottled water. The empty bottles also had a use and relieved him of the need to use the ship’s toilet for the most part. Unfortunately, this uncomfortable arrangement was completely necessary to get his illicit cargo past the Isis Public Protectors.

  Beer wasn’t exactly illegal on Isis. The planet even operated a small, state-run, brewery. Unfortunately, that brewery produced some of the most God-awful, crap-tastic beer in the known universe. The label on this vile brew called it ‘Isis Nectar.’ Everybody who tried it called it ‘Isis Piss.’ Jack tried a sip of it once, and it instantly reminded him of the time he passed by a bad ammonia leak from a recycling system. Still, the state that produced this sudsy abomination intended to sell it. So, how did they get folks to choose their crap beer over the competition? Simple—they taxed the living hell out of all imported brews, until most folks had little choice but to choke it down or go through life sober...and who would want to do that?