Home Run (Smuggler's Tales From the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Book 3)

by Nathan Lowell

  She adjusted the comms and tried to remember what bravo-four-four was. It wasn’t the frequency they’d been using in Toe-Hold space but it tickled something in her brain. She just couldn’t bring it forward.

  “Lumineux Local, Peregrine. Transferring from Port Lumineux, over.”

  “Roger, Peregrine, Lumineux Local. You are cleared for transit. Hold at inner markers. Lumineux Local, out.”

  “Lumineux Local, Peregrine. Roger, cleared for transit. Hold at inner markers. Peregrine, out.”

  Not for the first time she wondered what kind of place she’d jumped into. She’d jumped into CPJCT stations that were looser than this one. She shrugged, kicked up the main engines, and started to thread the needle through the markers toward the station.

  Transit didn’t take all that long, but it was a weird path of horizontal zig-zags and up and down passages. In relatively short order she killed her vector again and waited at the marker.

  “Peregrine, Lumineux Local. Proceed to dock two-niner. Hold at ten meters for access. Over.”

  “Lumineux Local, Peregrine. Roger, dock two-niner. Hold at ten meters for access. Peregrine, out.”

  “Lumineux Local, out.”

  She spotted the door with a big two and nine stenciled on it right in front of her. A red light glowed above it. She lined up the ship and zeroed the delta-v at precisely ten meters.

  Within a few seconds, the red light above the door began blinking and, very shortly thereafter, turned green. The access door sank and she flew into the lock. The inner door stayed closed for a few moments before the red access light started blinking. The lock gained pressure quickly and the red strobe turned to a solid green. The inner door opened and she scooted out of the lock. A green circle flashed on the deck of an otherwise empty bay.

  “Don’t get many visitors, huh? Imagine that.”

  She settled the Peregrine in the center of the circle.

  “Peregrine, Lumineux Local. Secure all engines. Open your outer lock and prepare for boarding. Over.”

  “Lumineux Local, Peregrine. Roger. Securing all engines. Opening outer door. Over.”

  She clicked through the shutdown checklist, securing the main engine and setting the safety before turning off the navigational thrusters. After double-checking her work she stood up from her couch.

  The thought of changing into a clean shipsuit floated briefly in her brain before she discarded it as a dumb idea. As unfriendly as this group had been, she saw no reason to antagonize them by making them wait at the lock.

  She wiped her palms against the sides of her legs and marched herself to the lock, peering out through the port.

  A slender woman with scarlet hair that couldn’t have been natural peered back. She held up a badge that identified her as Rachel Carstairs, Station Security. She pulled the badge away and arched an eyebrow.

  Zoya keyed the lock open.

  “Thank you, skipper,” the woman said. “Would you accompany me, please? We need to sweep your ship and we would like to chat with you about your emergency soonest.”

  “Of course.”

  Carstairs stepped backward out of the lock and down the ramp before ushering her toward an open airtight door in the bulkhead. “This way, please.”

  A team of people all wearing the same uniform as Carstairs stood at parade rest at the foot of the ramp. “Snappy dressers,” Zoya said.

  Carstairs tossed her a laugh. “We try to keep up appearances. I assure you nothing aboard will be harmed. Now, if you’d just come this way. You’ve probably got questions. We probably have the answers that match.”

  Zoya eyed the leader of the inspection team, a young man with three chevrons on his collar. The only one with insignia of any kind. “Be gentle,” she said. “And you’re never going to get all those people aboard at the same time.”

  He grinned. “We will, sar. Not all of them need to.”

  Zoya fell in with Carstairs, who took her out of the dock and to an office directly across the passageway and waved her in.

  An older woman, bald as an egg and somewhat rounder than the normal spacer, looked up from behind a desk as she entered.

  Zoya heard the door click shut behind her.

  The woman frowned for a moment and tilted her head in a birdlike movement. “I wasn’t expecting you, Ms. Usoko.” She waved at the chair beside the desk. “Have a seat. Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Tea? Water?”

  Chapter 24

  Port Lumineux:

  2368, February 9

  Zoya blinked a couple of times trying to catch up. “Coffee would be nice. Do I know you?”

  The woman smiled and waved her into the chair. “Please sit. We have a lot to talk about.” She tapped a couple of times on the tablet in the center of her pristine desk. “Coffee will be along shortly.”

  Zoya sat, glancing around the blankly nondescript room. She looked at the woman again and the tickle of recognition blossomed as the smiling face across the desk shifted into the picture she’d seen a million times at the academy. “I do know you. You’re Dr. Stevens. You wrote the engineering text.”

  The woman extended a hand. “Well done. Yes. I’m Dr. Margaret Stevens. You’re Zoya Usoko and hold the rank of third mate but haven’t worked as a mate since you left the Melbourne Maru. You and Natalya Regyri left Port Newmar on graduation day and you’ve been having adventures for the last five stanyers.”

  The door opened and a uniformed steward carried in a tray with two solid-looking mugs and a carafe. He left the tray on the desk and stepped back.

  “Thank you, Milton. That will be all.”

  “Yes, sar.” He gave a small nod and exited.

  Stevens slid the tray between them and poured two cups. She took one for herself and angled the handle on the other toward Zoya. Settling back in her chair, she crossed one leg over the other and cradled her mug in both hands. “So, tell me, Ms. Usoko. How have you found Toe-Hold space?”

  “Confusing at first,” she said, picking up the mug and taking a sniff. It smelled divine. “Natalya was a patient guide but it took me a long time to get used to the culture.”

  “I dare say. How would you compare the two? High Line and Toe-Hold?”

  “High Line is predictable. Toe-Hold is surprising,” Zoya said.

  Stevens sipped her coffee and raised her eyebrows. “That was a quick response. Is this a question you’ve considered?”

  “Not as such, no, but the dichotomy is something Natalya and I discuss frequently.” Zoya took a sip. “Excuse my lack of protocol, but should I be calling you sar? Doctor?”

  Stevens shook her head. “You’re not on my chain of command and it’s not a title I use much outside of my teaching. We’re just two new friends getting to know each other. Please call me Maggie.”

  “So you were expecting Natalya but not me?”

  “Yes, frankly. I was somewhat surprised to learn only one person was aboard and it is her ship.”

  “She stayed behind to manage the recovery.”

  Stevens nodded. “I saw your report to Konstantin. Slick use of the buoy, by the way. The courier picked it up about half a stan ago. If you’d have waited until you docked, you’d have missed him.”

  “We picked up a trick or two from HTHC.”

  “And some nice new toys for that ship, I wager,” Stevens said, smiling around the mug in her hands. “What happened at UM17?”

  “Natalya and I were visiting my grandparents,” Zoya said. In a few ticks she’d outlined the situation as they knew it, repeating much of what was already in Stevens’s hands if she had the message.

  Stevens listened without interruption. “The damaged Barbell is still there?”

  “It was when I left. It can maneuver a bit, but without a bridge and missing half the bow, I can’t see how they could jump.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “We haven’t gotten that far, to be honest,” Zoya said. “We’ve got to figure out a way to provide logistical supp
ort for the ships still in system while we work out how to deal with the loss of the main station.”

  “You didn’t happen to check to see what can they had on that ship, did you?”

  Zoya shook her head. “I don’t know if Natalya has looked into it yet. She was working with the only survivor from the station to see about maybe scavenging some of the cargo cans to make some shelters for the returning barge crews.”

  “A sole survivor?”

  “Cargo transfer supervisor named Kimberley Ahokas. We found her at the marshaling yard office, deep in shock.”

  “Shock?”

  “She watched her entire crew get vaporized when the can blew. That had to be pretty shocking, to watch people you’ve worked with for stanyers die.”

  Stevens leaned forward, peering with laser-sharp eyes. “That’s what she said?”

  Zoya sat back in her chair and replayed the conversation in her head as best as she could. “No, not exactly.” She took a breath to relax and let the previous day play out in her mind. “‘I watched the whole crew incinerated in the fireball. Can and all. When the fireball died down everything was gone. Even the Mindanao lost half the ship.’ It was something like that.”

  “You’re sure?” Stevens asked.

  “Not a hundred percent, no. There was a lot happening and memory can be tricky.” Zoya shook her head. “I didn’t make that connection before.”

  “The Mindanao? Are you sure of that?”

  “Yes. We looked through the shipping records to see what ships might be coming in. Mindanao was the last one in and showed on the cargo transfer log. Delivered a can of frozen food and picked up a can of metal ingots. When we jumped in there was one other Barbell inbound, but it jumped out before we could reach out to it. Pride of Paisley. The next one isn’t due for something like three weeks. A tractor, but I don’t remember the name.”

  Stevens pulled her tablet over and started tapping keys. After a moment she sat back with a grunt. “The only Mindanao registered is a fast packet out of Tellicheri.”

  Zoya shrugged and took a slug of coffee. “I haven’t been around Toe-Hold space that long but I’m pretty sure the Melbourne Maru wasn’t always the Melbourne Maru.”

  Stevens raised her mug in salute. “Not much gets by you, does it?”

  Zoya shrugged again. “If it got by me, I wouldn’t know, would I?”

  Stevens chuckled. “No, probably not.” She bit her lip for a moment, her gaze focused somewhere else. She nodded once and rapped the table with her fingers. “How can we help?”

  Chapter 25

  Port Lumineux:

  2368, February 10

  Zoya woke in her stateroom for the first time in what felt like ages. She’d been sleeping on her couch so long, she didn’t recognize where she was at first.

  She rolled out, checked her messages—even knowing it was too soon for a reply. That tender wouldn’t be back to the buoy for at least another day. She did have a message from Stevens offering some power and environmental support out to the site. That was pretty remarkable given they’d only talked about it the day before. Clearly the woman was not what she appeared.

  Zoya made a pot of coffee, glad they’d stocked up in Margary before leaving. She stared out the armorglass and wondered what, exactly, Port Lumineux was. Nobody mentioned the AHOY episode. She knew that ship had been there. What she didn’t know was whether it hadn’t seen her flashing lights or just couldn’t read them. The coffee finished brewing so she poured a cup before slipping into a shipsuit and settling in at her console. Stevens had authorized station net access, but it hadn’t gone through before she’d crashed.

  The console booted up and the network icon lit up. It only took her a few ticks to realize that she had guest access, could send and receive messages, but anything about the station stayed off-limits. Based on what she’d seen, she had to grant they had a lot to be secretive about.

  “What would Natalya do?” she asked the air. She sipped her coffee and stared straight ahead. She’d probably start tinkering with the ship. Seemed like she was always tearing something down, putting something back together. Poking about here and there. Zoya smiled. Natalya was like Zoya’s grandfather in that way. Neither of them could sit still for long.

  She slotted her cup into the holder and started typing. While there was nothing else to do, she might as well make a few notes about what Smelter Seventeen could become.

  The sound of the lock opening behind her startled her. She craned her neck and looked to see an older man with long hair swept back from his forehead step onto the ship. “Hey!”

  She clambered out of her couch and ran at the man. “What do you think you’re doing. You can’t just waltz aboard like you owned the place.” She stopped about halfway down the passageway as the guy froze and turned toward her. “How did you get on board? That’s not supposed to happen.” She felt a little frisson of alarm tickle down her back, but she felt more curious than afraid.

  “Who are you and where’s my daughter?”

  The man didn’t shout or otherwise threaten her but the menace in his voice chilled her. His words and his piercing eyes tipped the scale.

  “You’re Demetri Regyri.”

  He froze for a moment, his head ticking a few points to the side. “You said it right. You know me?”

  “No, but I know Natalya. She speaks of you often.”

  “Where is she and how did you get this ship?”

  “Last I saw her she was riding herd on a crisis. She loaned it to me so I could try to get our comms repaired.”

  “Here?” he asked. “At Lumineux?”

  “It was the closest station we found that seemed likely to have net access.”

  “What crisis? I haven’t heard of any crisis.” He looked like he might want to believe her.

  “Look, Mr. Regyri. Come on in and have some coffee. I’ll answer all your questions.”

  He thrust his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Thanks.” He shambled down the passageway and stopped at the galley entrance. “Sorry I didn’t knock.”

  Zoya shrugged. “It’s your ship, after all.”

  He shook his head, his long hair cascading around his ears. “Hers now. I signed it over when she went to the academy.”

  “Yes but it was yours. I understand. I’m just glad I was dressed and didn’t have a weapon to hand or I might have killed you.” She grabbed a cup and poured it for him. “Here. Come sit up front and you can tell me embarrassing stories about when she was young.”

  He chuckled and took his coffee. “You two an item?”

  “No, we were roommates at the academy. We’ve been traveling around ever since. Come,” she said. “Sit. I’m waiting for my grandfather to write back and tell me what he wants to do about his station.”

  “You never did tell me your name,” he said.

  “Oh, sorry.” She held out a hand. “I’m Zoya Usoko.”

  Regyri’s eyes widened just slightly as he shook her hand. “Your grandfather’s Konstantin?”

  Zoya settled on her couch. “Yeah. I didn’t realize what a high-profile name I had. I figured there’d be lots of Usokos out here.”

  Regyri perched on the edge of the pilot’s couch, his eyes scanning across the consoles as if seeing a grown child for the first time in ages. “There are, but not a lot of Zoyas.” He finished his survey and looked at Zoya over the rim of his mug. “Trouble at the smelter?” he asked.

  “It’s gone,” she said.

  His eyes practically bugged out of his head and he swallowed his coffee wrong. “Gone?”

  “About ten, twelve days ago. Looks like the fusactor blew. Nothing left but dust and debris in an ever expanding cloud.”

  He paled and settled onto the couch like a bridge falling into a river, one piece at a time until the whole thing splashed and sank. “I was just there a couple weeks back.”

  “You know the place then?”

  He nodded. “I’ve got a little holding two stars over. We joked ab
out being next-door neighbors.”

  “It’s not on the charts,” Zoya said.

  He shrugged and looked into his mug.

  “We met Inky,” Zoya said.

  He glanced at her from under his eyebrows without lifting his head. “Zat so?”

  “Nice woman. Nats and I both like her a lot. Very talented.”

  He nodded. “She is.” He sipped. “How’d it happen?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Zoya said. “We were visiting my grandparents in Margary when the news came. We flew out as soon as we could.”

  “You guys need any help?” he asked.

  “We’re still trying to figure out what to do about it,” Zoya said. “We’ve got a bunch of barges out in the belts. A couple of haulers who have no place to unload—or refuel. My biggest concerns are food, water, and air. Even if the crews aren’t working, we need to keep them alive.”

  Regyri’s eyes focused far away and he seemed to be stiffening up after his collapse. “Yeah. Sure. Makes sense. Survey crew tagged some water ice in the belt there. Don’t remember which belt but if you’ve got the barge crews, they may remember. That’ll solve the water problem even if you can only get one barge working ice.”

  “Good to know.” Zoya settled back and gave Regyri room. “Water gives us the oxygen we need but we’ve still got a food problem. And scrubber cartridges.”

  “Yeah. Nothing to be done about food but to get a couple cans from somebody. Felder usually has a can or two laying around at the Ranch. Not just the meat, but he’s started a frozen veg operation in the last couple of stanyers. He’s been looking for markets.”

  “I’ve asked my grandfather about what he wants to do about the system.”

  Regyri looked up at that. “He’ll rebuild. That system’s a gold mine.”

  “Literally?” Zoya asked.

  “Oh, no. Sorry, just really rich. There’s some gold, no big pieces that they’ve found yet. Mostly iron, tin, a surprising amount of copper. A lot of trace minerals and rare earths, too. Micah showed me some of the survey—” His voice caught in his throat. “I saw some of the survey data. Your grandfather may be a lot of things but stupid he’s not.”