by T. R. Harris
“Three days!” Copernicus exclaimed. “That’s asking a lot.”
Adam smiled and placed a hand on the shoulder of the starship repairman-slash-deep cover spy. “Hey, I have the best crew money can buy. We’ll get it done.”
“Did I miss something?” Jym asked. “I cannot remember the last time I was paid for helping you.”
“I’m holding your credits in escrow to keep you from spending them wildly. But just think you’ll have a really nice retirement when all this is done.”
“If I live long enough to collect.”
It turned out that sixty percent of the internal compartments were air-tight and able to withstand pressurization. This included the galley and nineteen crew compartments. It seemed that in its prime, the freighter had only one- or two-person berthing compartments for the crew, not counting the officer’s quarters. It also had a top-of-the-line food processing system or at least top-of-the-line for when the ship was operational. In its day, it would have been borderline luxurious to crew the freighter. But the ship was seventy standard years old, and according to the last log entry, hadn’t been in service for the last twenty. After spending five years on a planet just collecting dust and rust, she’d been forced into orbit and moved here. Fortunately, the deterioration ended once she reached the vacuum of space; however, the vessel had suffered the occasional micro-meteorite bombardment over the years that poked tiny holes in the hull. Forty of these punctures could be repaired, which would bring the structural integrity of the ship up to seventy-five percent. Adam was okay with that. None of the remaining twenty-five percent contained any mission-critical compartments.
By the end of the first day, internal gravity was active in the forward half of the ship, leaving only micro-effects reaching aft and to the engine compartments. Coop and Kaylor had found what appeared to be an operational NX-41 gravity generator in one of the nearby derelicts. They discovered that the problem wouldn’t be installing the huge piece of machinery within the freighter; rather, it would be getting it out of its current location. It was embedded within the hull of an old military vessel, with added structural support beams to handle the ship’s mission parameters. It was also the reason grav-gens were less likely to fall into the hands of pirates and scavengers. They were just too damn big to move.
Jym had the operational generator aboard the freighter humming in less than five hours, at which point he moved to his next challenge.
Riyad and Adam stood in the starboard engine room, staring up at the towering bulk in front of them.
“The old generator has to be removed to make room for the new one,” said Jym, stating the obvious.
“And how exactly do we do that?” Adam asked.
“There are release bolts on the outside hull—about ninety of them,” Riyad answered, much to Adam’s surprise. He looked at his friend with a frown.
Riyad shrugged. “Flashbacks to my pirating days,” he said with his trademark smile. “We had to know how to grab what we could as fast as we could. Even still, generators were low on our list.”
“He is right,” Jym said. “The tie-down nuts must be removed and salvaged. I have located several tools left aboard that can accomplish the task, but it will involve all of us aboard to remove the outer panel in a reasonable time.”
“Coop and Kaylor are working on getting us a new generator,” Adam pointed out. “The five of us will have to do the job.”
Twenty minutes later, the five remaining team members were dressed in environment suits, with tethers attached to locking rings on the hull, a reciprocating wrench held by each—even Arieel. Sherri could handle herself around a spaceship, but this was all new to the Formilian. Adam got the impression she didn’t even know what a wrench was used for. And why would she? She’d spent her entire life in the care of the Temple priests, never having to get her hands dirty.
Adam stepped up to her, his body held to the hull by the magnets in his boots.
“Place the female part over the male nut and bolt,” he instructed her.
“Yes, I understand the concept, but why the gender designations…oh, I see.”
“Yeah, it makes sense, at least for most species.”
Arieel matched Adam’s smile through the lens of the helmet.
“The wrench will secure itself around the nut automatically. When the light turns yellow, press the button. There are weights inside that will counter the inertia of the motor. Just don’t change the angle of the wrench while it’s—”
Arieel already had the wrench cap over the bolt, with the yellow light glowing on the control handle. Then she tried to manually turn the unit using the handlebars. The internal counterweights were thrown off, and the tool spun out of control. Arieel was thrown off the hull, the force strong enough to break the magnetics in her boots. Adam reached out to grab her but missed. She flew into space until the tether hooked to her utility belt stopped her from tumbling more than fifty feet from the ship.
Adam heard a deep-throated grunt as the cord pulled on her body.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes…I think,” was Arieel’s muted response. Then: “That was exciting!”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it, but next time remember to keep the tool in place as the nut is removed. You could have hurt yourself.”
“Something I will endeavor to prevent in the future.”
Adam smiled. “Good girl. That’s the spirit.”
“Could you now pull me back in? I’m not as adept at spacewalking as are the others—although I am anxious to learn.”
Adam obliged, and within minutes, he felt the vibration through the hull as the five of them began to remove the securing nuts. There were ninety-two in total, and two hours later, they’d them removed.
Riyad then piloted the Juirean ET ship from the docking bay and attached strong metal cables to the huge hull panel over the generator. Using air propellant rather than the more powerful chem drive, he slowly pulled the section away, exposing the top of the dead generator. Jym had already removed the deck bolts to the generator, and after the cables were attached to the unit, Riyad pulled it from the ship.
He towed the fifty-foot tall mass of gray metal out a fair distance from the freighter and set it adrift, eventually fated to crash to the surface of the ice-covered moon below.
“All right, Kaylor, the opening’s been made.” Adam relayed through his ATD.
Copernicus and the alien were a hundred miles away, using the turbo-tractors to do a less than aesthetic operation on the hull of the other derelict warship. Huge sections of the hull were being pulled back as securing bolts still attached to interior beams were being ripped through the metal sheets.
“Almost there. Give us another hour, and we’ll be heading back.”
“Excellent. The first round of drinks is on me.”
“Are there intoxicants aboard?” Kaylor asked, his interest piqued. “That would be excellent if that were true.”
It was.
As would be on the shopping list of any good merchant marine, there were indeed intoxicants programmed into the ship’s food processor. Another benefit of spending years in the cold and vacuum of space was that food stock and liquids didn’t spoil. Instead, they froze solid, waiting for the time when they would be called upon again. Therefore, the huge freighter had a fully stocked food locker and ample refreshments for the weary crew by the time they knocked off for the day.
The second gravity generator hovered outside the ship five hundred yards away, and after some rest and relaxation, the crew would nudge the unit into place and secure the outer hull panel.
As Adam sampled the unnamed alcoholic concoction in his hand, he acknowledged his satisfaction with the day’s work. They were ahead of schedule, and if Coop and his two alien companions could get the new generator installed and running by the end of the next day, they could be off on their search for the elusive Klin.
Six hours later, they were at it again—in spite of the mild hangovers. Riyad was
back in the ET, this time gently pushing the NX-41 generator through the narrow opening within the rusted hull of the freighter.
Adam had grown tired of calling the ship the freighter or the ship, and named it the Nautilus, for no other reason than he always liked the word. Nautilus…it just rolled off his tongue.
He received a little flak from Kaylor and Jym, who wanted to call it by its hull-designation, LK-23221. Since the bulk of the galaxy didn’t name their ships, that was understandable. But as the leader of the team, Adam insisted they keep the name. He enjoyed his subtle jabs at alien culture and tradition whenever he got the chance.
With Riyad in the ET, the other six team members dressed in environmental suits manning guide cables attached to pulleys, slowly tugging the generator into place. Gravity had been cut to the entire ship, making the task halfway manageable. But still, the unit was big and bulky. Although he couldn’t hear the scrapping of metal-on-metal through the vacuum of space, Adam did sense the vibration through the deck. It was a tight fit.
The NX-41 generator was fifty feet long by forty feet wide and with a rounded top. There was a ten-foot square cycling unit attached to the forward end of the generator, which linked the unit to the starboard focusing rings. Jym had tested the existing cycling unit and found it be operational. That saved the time and hassle of having to find another one within the hundreds of forgotten starships in the yard. Once both units were in place, it would be Kaylor’s job to align the focusing rings. That was his specialty.
The base of the generator made contact with the deck. The large anchoring bolts missed the corresponding brackets on the machine, requiring a secondary set of cables to be attached perpendicular to the alignment to ease the unit into place. Once aligned, Arieel was the first to go to work, locking down the foot-wide nuts onto the protruding bolts, spreading her legs with gusto, the auto-wrench between them and baring down with all her strength, although it wasn’t necessary in zero-g. Adam could hear grunts coming through the comm in his helmet as the Formilian Speaker reveled in the joy of physical labor.
She was just too damn cute, Adam thought, treating many mundane events in life with passion and wonder.
“Good job, everyone,” Adam announced through the comm system. “Arieel, Coop, finish locking down the generator. The rest of us will go outside and replace the hull sheet. Lining up ninety-two bolts won’t be easy, so the sooner we get to it, the better.”
Adam’s prediction was prophetic. It had been a cinch removing the nuts from the bolts but getting them lined up again with the holes in the hull plate proved to be a bear. Either from the process of removing the panel or the natural flexibility of the steel, the team ended up needing to drill twenty additional holes in the metal sheet to get it back in place, adding another two hours to the job. All-in-all, it took twice as long to replace the plate as it did to remove it.
By the time the engine compartment was resealed and pressurized, the team was exhausted and in dire need of some liquid painkiller. Five hours later, they were back at it again.
“The problem is the coupling between the cycling unit and the generator,” Jym was saying. “I will need this side wall removed to make room, and there is a structural member running through the middle of it. I have not been able to locate any charged cutting tools onboard.”
It was only a two-inch variance, but it was enough to prevent the two units from aligning.
“Maybe we could unlock the generator and move it some?” Riyad offered.
Kaylor shook his head. “The generator is where it belongs. It cannot be moved. The problem is the cycling unit. It is a newer model, and the NX-41 is slightly older.”
“They are compatible, operationally, I mean?” Adam asked, thinking this was a fine time to disclose this information to him. Could all their efforts have been for naught?
“They are compatible,” Kaylor answered. “Only the housing changed, which is at the root of our problem.”
“And no cutting torches aboard?”
“None with fuel.”
Adam looked at Copernicus. “Do you think we can find any fuel or charged cutters within the shipyard?”
“Probably,” he answered. “Kaylor and I can take the tractors out and start looking. We’ll have to enter every ship and search for something small. It’s not like looking for a hulking generator. It’ll take time.”
“I don’t think we have an option.”
“Roger that.”
Adam looked around at the rest of the team. There wasn’t much they could do until the generator was linked with the focusing rings. He shrugged. It looked as if another session of painkillers was in order, whether they needed it or not.
6
Adam Cain was about to make an executive decision, that of banning alcohol from the Nautilus. The former crew of the freighter had been connoisseurs of the stuff and only stocked the best. Throughout the years, Adam had never acquired a taste for alien spirits, but he was in the process of overcoming that handicap. But the team had a mission to accomplish and walking around with perpetual hangovers wasn’t helping. So, either he could ban the evil substance, or they could simply consume it all before the mission officially got underway.
Who said command decisions were easy?
It was through the fog of inebriation that he sensed the objects moving outside the ship. At first, he thought they were just echoing within his ATD until he realized he’d never experienced echoes within his ATD. There was something in space outside the ship—several somethings—and they were giving off energy signals.
Adam was sure none of the others detected the objects; his heightened awareness was beyond their capabilities. He focused on the objects, now numbering nineteen and coming toward the stern of the Nautilus. Their courses corrected, indicating intelligent control, after which it didn’t take long for him to identify the objects: individual gas-reaction space pods, with living beings inside—and each armed with charged energy weapons.
He wasn’t worried. The nineteen space pirates were about to go up against five ATD-equipped adversaries—Kaylor and Coop were still out looking for a cutting tool. He hadn’t received any warning from them concerning pirates in the vicinity, so he assumed they were safe.
With a groan and tired reluctance, Adam lifted himself off the old cloth-covered couch in the huge common room aboard the Nautilus. Earlier, gravity was restored throughout the ship—fortunately at a level compatible to the aliens aboard—but still it was a struggle to get his body moving. Yes: An alcohol ban was definitely in order.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” he said to the near-comatose occupants of the room, “but it looks like we have to go back to work.”
“Did bay blind a fucking tool?” Jym asked, slurring the words in his native language so badly that the translation program mangled the sentence.
“That’s not it,” Adam said. He was now in a standing position, even as the force of gravity played tricks with his balance. One would think that with a colony of mutant brain cells in his head, he would be immune to intoxication. Not so. In fact, he seemed to react even quicker to the drinks, probably a result of this body converting the alcohol at a more efficient rate. “There’s a group of pirates about to board the ship. We may have to do something about that.”
A few bloodshot eyes looked over at him. “Can’t you handle it yourself?” Sherri moaned. “I think if I move, I might vomit.”
“Just cut their life support systems,” Riyad offered, followed by a loud alcohol-scented burp.
“I would, but I’m thinking their weapons might come in handy. We have something like four MK’s between the seven of us.”
“Perhaps we should have resupplied before leaving Formil,” Arieel said. Of all the team members, she had the least experience with intoxicants, yet with her new-found sense of adventure, she had jumped at the chance to make up for lost time. Adam was surprised she was still conscious.
“I will go bit you, Atom Cain,” Jym slurred. “I shall
be anxious to confront an opponent with my nude brain….” His voice trailed off.
Although the new ATD recipients had been training on how to disarm a flash weapon with their minds, Adam wasn’t sure Jym had the necessary skill. Probing around inside an MK could be dangerous.
“There are nineteen of them,” Adam reported.
“So?” Sherri moaned. “Not enough of a challenge?”
“C’mon. We just got this tub put back together. I don’t want a bunch of scavengers picking her apart again.”
Riyad began to stir, as did Jym. Arieel had finally passed out, and Sherri did vomit when she tried to move from the couch.
Adam looked at his two male companions—one alien, one Human. “Well, boys, it looks like it’s up to us to repel boarders. The pirates are about to enter the aft cargo hold.”
The trio stepped into the long spine corridor of the freighter, cursing now at the long length of the ship. Adam tracked the movement of the pirates through their weapon’s energy signatures. They had consolidated at the rear of the ship. They would make a sweep of the interior, eliminating any resistance, before stripping the ship of its valuables. Adam had located the mothership; it was six hundred miles away, lost in the cluster of broken starships. Apparently, the pirates had been watching the team’s rehab progress and were now ready to take what they could. The pickings would be slim, but in these austere times, anything was better than nothing.
“The pirate ship,” Jym began, “could we not take that for our mission to find the Klin?” He had sobered up some, at least to the point where his sentences were translating properly.
Adam had already done a quick ATD scan of the pirate ship; something Jym hadn’t learned to do. “It’s a short-range vessel, not much more than a tow truck with a couple of 60’s flash cannon. It wouldn’t get us far.”