Project Charon 1
Page 20
Tina looked over her shoulder. Rasa sat strapped in her seat, pale-faced, with the other four geese around her.
“Restrain those animals. We’ll soon need to pick up some speed. I don’t want them flailing about the cabin.”
“Feed them some pellets,” Rasa said. “They will come.”
She handed a box to Rex, who drifted, shaking the box, to the back of the cabin. The geese half-walked, half-flew after him.
Tina studied the dock’s structures, in between little bursts of power from the engine that kept them up to speed with the rotating station. They could move only slowly. Finn warned her of nearby dangers.
A proximity alarm started blaring.
They were too close to another docking tube. The ship that was attached to it was positively ancient, and had been ancient even when it had last been used. The surface was scarred and pitted. Another bulky ship lay on the other side, a walkway below them, and arrays of cables hanging off the exterior hull.
“Straight up,” Finn said.
Tina looked. “I don’t have much room to turn.”
But she made the turn anyway.
In between another walkway and the lift tube was a narrow gap. The curve of the planet was visible in between all the docking installations.
“That’s not going to fit,” Tina said.
“Turn ninety degrees.”
Tina found a point to fix on to keep the ship’s speed the same as the station’s rotating speed and then turned the ship on its side.
“Hey!” Rex protested.
“If it bothers you, keep your eyes shut,” Tina said.
“I don’t feel so good,” Rasa said.
“Rex, make sure that if anyone spews, they do it in one of the bags that are in the armrests.”
Tina increased the engine power.
The ship moved forward.
But then…
A massive shape blocked the view of the planet through the opening. It was a ship, but not the blocky and functional shape of the SS Stavanger.
“What is that thing? It’s massive.”
Tina killed the process that ramped up the engine, staring at the behemoth coming past.
The grey surface kept coming and coming. Hatches, missile firing turrets, external pipe work.
“It’s a pirate ship,” Finn said.
“That? I thought pirates operated in small bands.”
“They did, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. They got together. They occupied stations and sectors of space.”
The ship still drifted forward through the gap. At this rate, they were going to emerge right into the pirate’s ship’s view. She didn’t know what their shielding would be like, but she had no desire to test it.
They drifted past another opening.
Here, she could see the planet, too, but the view was much less clear, barred by the intricate structure of antennas and wiring of the station’s communication array.
Tina hit the power.
Finn gasped. “What are you doing?”
The ship shot forward and then into the opening.
“Hold on!” Tina said.
And the next moment a sharp thwack indicated the first impact.
Tina steered the ship to the side. It missed a main beam but cut a swathe through a forest of small antennas. The proximity alarm blared constantly.
“Mum, what are you doing? You’re going to damage the ship.”
“This is a pretty tough old boat.” Tina pressed her lips together, navigating between the more solid structures as best she could. She turned off the alarms. Better do some minor damage than running foul of that behemoth.
Then they were free.
“That ship’s going to come after us?” Rex said.
“No, it’s not,” Finn said. “Look, that’s the SS Stavanger getting ready to engage it.”
Tina enlarged the view on the main screen and saw he was right. The SS Stavanger was moving out of dock as the pirate ship glided into safety by putting the station in between the two ships.
She blew out a breath. “I don’t know how that’s going to end, but it seems a good place not to be at the moment.”
For once, luck was with Tina, and the Federacy Force did what it was meant to do, while Tina pulled away from the station into the darkness of space.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was all backwards.
Normally, you did inventories and checks before departure.
Now, Tina needed to do the checks after she was sure they had escaped safely.
The ship had enough fuel but they were a bit short on food for the journey to Olympus with one extra person and a few geese.
Once they were well away from the station, Tina could give the command to unfold the habitat arms and set them into motion so that passengers could move in there and experience a semblance of gravity.
That brought the necessity of a new round of cleaning by Rex and Finn, while she stabilised the ship and checked the autopilot. The level of dust in the habitats was not as high as in the control cabin because they had been stowed for all the time the ship was in dock. The smell, however, was something different altogether.
The geese were not happy in the weightless cargo hold, so they would have to reserve a cabin in the habitat, and somehow wrestle them down there.
Rasa herself had retreated to the back of the ship. She clung onto the back wall with her blanket, shying away from anyone who came near, especially Finn. Neither Finn nor Rex could convince her to move.
When the autopilot was stable, Tina abandoned the controls and went to her, trying to unloop her arms from her knees, but she hung there, shivering, in a tightly-held ball. The tang of vomit hung around her.
“Come on, it’s safe now.”
“I don’t want to leave anymore,” Rasa said.
“It’s too late. You’re stuck with us, so we might as well make you part of the crew.”
“I don’t feel well.”
“Go down into the habitat. You won’t feel so bad there. Do you still want to find your brother?”
Rasa nodded. Her eyes were wide.
“Then come with me.”
Tina managed to pry her loose and guided her towards the opening to the passage that led to the habitat. She pulled herself down the passage until the artificial gravity started pulling at her and climbed the rest of the way down the ladder.
Finn and Rex had cleaned up the habitat and, with its comfy couches and warm lighting, it looked much friendlier than the cabin. Currently, the walls displayed a forest, so it looked like a cabin in the woods. Tina gave Rasa one of her shirts and a pair of trousers, which were much too wide, but also found a belt to hold them up.
They’d be unlikely to make it to Olympus in one trip, and if they stopped somewhere, new clothes for Rasa would be on the shopping list.
Rasa looked a bit more comfortable now. “You said you’d help me find my brother?”
“If we can. What do you know about him?”
She opened a heart-shaped locker she wore around her neck and pulled out a tiny stained card with a picture of a young man. In a Federacy Force uniform. Great.
Tina went in search of the food supplies, sorted them into breakfasts, lunches and dinners. “Just so that you don’t think I’ll provide all the catering, I’ll show you how the food preparation works, so you can do it yourself. I’m going to divide the food up into daily rations, because we’ll be short, and I have no idea what’s going to be facing us. Do we have any news on Kelso yet, Finn?”
Finn picked up the control module from the table, and changed the display on the walls from showing a tranquil forest to showing Kelso Space Station.
“Whatever is happening, there is no external sign of damage.”
“Where are the two ships?”
“Circling each other. See? There’s the SS Stavanger.”
Yes, Tina saw it.
Finn said, “If they’re going to play that game, the Stavanger has a lot of o
nboard supplies. I’m sure it can keep going for a year.”
“I don’t know. Everything about that pirate ship says to me to never underestimate them.” Tina could see in Finn’s eyes that he knew that. “Looks like you stepped out just in time.”
“It’s a rotten thing to do to your mates,” he said, looking at his hands.
Tina knew that feeling. She also knew that there should be more news about the attack on Kelso, but it was likely that the news was being suppressed by the station authorities under the influence of Jake.
“How many stations do the pirates control?” she asked.
Finn said, “It’s a battle for each individual station. We don’t always hear the results, especially if the pirates win.”
Up until now, Tina hadn’t realised how desperate the situation was.
She asked, “What do the pirates want with the stations they’ve taken?”
“Good question. To control the communication, resupply and docking, I guess.”
Tina wondered if cactuses was another reason. But answering that question would be for later.
First they needed to get to Olympus safely.
The first thing was to start training Rex as a full-fledged crewmember. He was still awkward in his new harness, and Tina wanted him to be able to help Finn with tasks that were just so much easier with more than one person, like configuring the ship. He would also need some weapons training and hand-to-hand combat training in case they were boarded or needed to enter another ship or station.
Then she would have to find some way of making Rasa useful.
What they would do when they got to Olympus was a question that would be answered later. For one, no one knew if the world was still solidly in Federacy hands. But if it was possible, Tina would deliver the material she had left in the box fifteen years ago, as well as the letter by Vasily, to the assembly. Then the decision about the next step in fighting the menace would no longer be in her hands.
If it was up to her, she’d try to isolate the pirates and find out how the alien infection spread, and then what to do about it. She would head that project if they asked her, as long as they didn’t ask her to re-enlist in the Federacy Force. But a civilian scientific organisation? Totally.
She had no guarantee, though, that the Federacy Assembly would see things her way. If Tina knew one thing, it was that governments worked in strange ways.
The story continues with book 2, Originator, in which Tina and her crew are forced to get supplies on Aurora Station, and find a big surprise waiting for them.
Buy Originator on the author’s website, pattyjansen.com
About the Author
Patty Jansen lives in Sydney, Australia, where she spends most of her time writing Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Her story This Peaceful State of War placed first in the second quarter of the Writers of the Future contest and was published in their 27th anthology. She has also sold fiction to genre magazines such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Redstone SF and Aurealis.
Patty has written over thirty novels in both Science Fiction and Fantasy, including the Icefire Trilogy and the Ambassador series.
pattyjansen.com
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The Necromancer’s Daughter
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The Bastard Prince
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ICEFIRE TRILOGY
Fire & Ice
Dust & Rain
Blood & Tears
The Icefire Trilogy Omnibus
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MOONFIRE TRILOGY
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Self-publishing (Non-fiction)
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