The Gold Engine (The Gold Chronicles)

by D. Girard Watson

  "Wait!" said David. His mind was racing. "I've got an idea. Is there anything on board that could act life a lifeboat?"

  "No," said Lara. "There aren't lifeboats. Remember the Captain's story?"

  "But is there something like a lifeboat? Something that could hold all of us?"

  Silence.

  "There are food containers in the galley," said Harriet. "Those are huge, and they could just fit the three of us."

  David nodded. He dashed towards Jeb, pulled off his leather apron, and threw it over his head to ward of the flaying hoses and the jets of steam pouring from around the engine. He climbed.

  David was not a brave man. Far from it. Seeing the bravery of the hands, the men in the engine room, and the other officers shamed him, for he knew he would never be that courageous. He would never have the kind of bravery that made Harriet willing to go on a suicide mission onto the upper deck. The kind that his father had displayed all his life. In his heart, he knew he didn't have it in him. It was this cowardice that propelled him forward into the fire of the Engine, pushing away blazing hot metal, accepting burns from the steam, ignoring the cables whipping his legs. Fear of death propelled him forward. This was their only chance for survival.

  He eventually saw what he was looking for. It was an iron orb, sitting on a fibrous metal scaffolding. The containment chamber could not be nailed down because of how the machine was designed, so he knew that he should be able to just yank it from its settings. The protoplasm should stay alive without the protein drip for at least a week.

  There was danger. He was unsure what the effects of cutting the power to the chamber would be. In his father's day, the containment chamber was powered directly by the engine. This meant that shutting off the power would immediately dissolve the gold's quantum field. This had saved his father's life. Of course, this was a horrible design. It meant that any failure in the power system could potentially kill the entire crew. Modern systems had a fail safe. Auxiliary power to the gold could be delivered by the protoplasm itself. The newer strains of cells produced an enormous amount of energy to the gold rods in case power from the Engine was interrupted.

  Unfortunately, he was unsure how long the protoplasm could keep the field going, especially without the protein drip. It was something he'd never learned from old Jeb. A quick mental calculation suggested that it could be a few days maybe, but he wasn't sure on the numbers. They were based on a lot of assumptions.

  He yanked the chamber from its settings. It was glowing a sickly green. Looking at it too long made him feel nauseated. He made his way back to the others.

  They looked at him in horror. Even Harriet look mortified.

  "That could kill us," said Lara. It was true. Gold was a highly volatile material.

  "So could staying aboard," said David. "Lets find the food containers."

  They headed back into the corridor. The shouting on the upper deck had died down. There was no more gunfire.

  "They'll be doing a sweep of the ship," said Harriet. "We should be able to make it to the galley before they find us."

  She was right. They moved quickly to the galley, pausing at each turn, freezing when they heard voices, but they never encountered any of the Spanish. They arrived unmolested.

  "Open the docking door," ordered Harriet. David and Lara immediately complied.

  The food containers were large. They were all made of wood, and one of them could easily fit the three of them inside. Each had a door for easy access to the canned food and water bottles inside. Unfortunately, they were all too big to move.

  "Here's one on a wheel bed," shouted Lara. This was the most emotive David had ever seen her.

  David opened the container door to check inside. There was food and water and enough room for all of them. He felt like weeping with joy. He gently set the containment chamber on the floor. Its artificial atmosphere would keep them alive.

  "Wait," said Harriet. "If we leave in that thing, won't that take the atmosphere with us? What about the rest of the crew?"

  "Don't worry," said David. "The Spanish frigate's quantum field is large enough to contain both ships. If there's any of our crew left aboard, they should be fine."

  They heard Spanish in the distance.

  "They're coming," said Harriet, "Everyone get in. I'll push."

  "How will you get aboard?" asked David.

  "Get in," said Harriet. "That's an order."

  "But..."

  "That's an order, David!"

  David and Lara rushed in.

  They sat on boxes of food. They heard rustling. Something had been thrown over the container. They felt movement and the squeak of rusty wheels. Acceleration, a sudden twist in their stomachs as if they were falling. The world righted itself in a jolt.

  "Goddammit!" yelled David. He was holding back tears. He started punching the side of the container.

  "Hey," said Lara, trying to comfort him. "She did what she thought she had to do. She saved our lives"

  David shrugged her off and continued to hit the wood. His knuckles were a bloody mess, but he kept punching, hammering his anger into the wood. Finally, he sat, exhausted. He shuddered. His body was racked with sobs. Lara left him alone. It was more than just the loss of Harriet. It was everything.

  A muffled shout: "Open the doors!"

  Lara jolted, ran to the door, and opened it. Harriet swung in.

  Her eyes were aflame.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Harriet sat in the office of the Rear Admiral in New Boston, New Boston.

  She was nervous. Sweating. The formal uniform, which she hated, didn't help. The glass of iced tea she had been given was no match for the tropical heat of New Boston. The capital of the New Boston territories was located near the equator in the northern hemisphere. She suspected the Massachusetts explorers who first discovered the planet must have decided to start a colony as far from their native home's climate as possible.

  The Admiral's secretary came in occasionally to offer more tea. Every time he did, he apologized for the wait, but didn't offer any explanations. It had been an hour.

  She had not been looking forward to this meeting. There are very few ways one can report the loss of a ship, one's crew, and the loss of a world famous natural philosopher without loss of face. She knew she had made the best of the circumstances, but in the end, the results mattered.

  She hated these formal meetings. She was much more comfortable on a quarterdeck, giving commands, but she knew that much of a officer's success in the Navy depended on navigating situations likes these: talking to one's superiors competently and putting the best possible light on things. She had never been any good at that sort of thing. The truth was that any time she talked with an admiral, she felt as though she was in the headmaster's office.

  "The admiral can see you now, Lieutenant."

  She got up and followed the secretary into Admiral Harding's office.

  The man was sitting at his desk, eating what looked to be a lunch of the local mollusk and was refilling his glass from a large carafe of wine. He was young for an admiral, about fifty, ruddy faced, with a well kept beard and mustache. His paunch was not as large as it could be.

  "Lieutenant, welcome, welcome. Sit down. Glass of wine?"

  "Thank you, sir."

  "I hope white's alright. It helps with the heat." He was sweating profusely, his uniform was completely pitted out. "Now," he said, settling into his chair. "It looks like you and your officers are celebrities." He chuckled.

  "Um, yes, sir, it looks that way."

  "I've read the accounts in the papers of course, but do you have the official report for me."

  "Yes, sir, here it is." She handed him a report, which he put amongst a stack of similar papers on his desk. "And I can give you the shorter version now, if you'd like, sir."

  "Excellent." He sat back expectantly.

  She told him about the attack by the frigates and the capture of the Boggle.

  "Well done," he said, light
ing a pipe. "Two frigates destroyed! That's nice work. Stop looking so goddamned morose, Milton. Really, you need to learn how to dress these things up. Put a positive spin on things."

  So true.

  "Shame about Gibson. He was one of our best. Losing Waterhouse and the Boggle are the real problem though. The higher-ups have been screaming bloody murder for the past week. It might be both our asses eventually."

  "Yes, sir," said Milton.

  "But while your story is on the front pages, they won't bring out the irons quite yet." He grinned. "Great publicity for the War Office.

  "Are the stories of your escape mostly true?" asked the Admiral. They both new that reports of military affairs in the papers only had a passing relationship with reality.

  "Mostly, sir. We did escape in a food container. It was Midshipman Marr's idea to take the containment chamber with us. Once everyone was in, I threw some netting over it, pushed it out the loading bay, and jumped aboard, using the netting to hold on.

  "We were afraid the Spanish would see us, but they didn't. They must have assumed the container was either garbage, or if it was someone making a dash for it, we were just skipping the wind. Once we knew that we were home free, we were able to take turns keeping watch on top of the container to look for ships. Our situation wasn't quite hopeless, but it was close to it. We had food and water in the container to last us a month, but we weren't sure how long the gold rods would last. I don't exactly understand the mechanics of it, but Marr thought we had at least a few days. Maybe two weeks at most. We knew that the chances of someone finding us out there were slim to none and the clock was ticking."

  "Not a pleasant thing to think about, I imagine," said Harding

  "No, sir, it wasn't. Morale was low. On the fifth day, we knew we were entering the danger zone, so to speak. Marr said that he had an idea that might work theoretically, but would be extremely dangerous. At that point we were open to anything.

  "He said that it might be possible to rig a propulsion system. Apparently, without external stimulation, the protoplasm generates random surges of electrical fluid. He said if he could control the surges, he might be able to move us towards New Boston. Marr thought it might be possible to do this by taking one of the gold bars out of the containment chamber and using it to control the electrical fluid. My understanding about this part is murky, but the electrical fluid in the protoplasm can propel the quantum field created by gold bars, but gold can itself also influence the field of the electrical fluid. By using one of the bars to...um...steer the electrical fluid, he thought he could construct a makeshift engine."

  Her understanding of David's idea was actually quite good, but she knew that Admirals did not liked to be one-upped, and from what she had heard of Harding, it was unlikely that he cared about the physics of the engine.

  "Lord!" exclaimed the Admiral. "I hadn't realized that's how your people did it. That was extremely dangerous." They both knew that contact with gold could be deadly, for it might propel the person in contact with it, or part of the person, across the galaxy.

  "Yes, sir, it was. Marr thought that putting the gold in one of the water bottles would help stabilize the field, but he said it was still risky."

  "Jesus."

  "The riskiest part was getting it out of the containment chamber. Naturally, once I heard the plan, I knew it was our only chance. I told the others that I would do it...

  "It was at this point that Midshipman Suarez pointed out that I was probably the only one who could successfully navigate us back to New Boston, so I couldn't be risked." she shifted uncomfortably at the memory and how she had argued, knowing all the while that Lara was right. "Marr couldn't be risked because he was the only one who could rig the engine. That left Suarez. She volunteered immediately.

  "Admirable," said the Admiral, nodding.

  "Yes, sir. After that, it was straightforward. She had to stick her hand in the chamber, take out one rod, and then place it in a water bottle. Marr seemed to think that the chances of anything, er, going wrong were quite low. He said that stories of people blinking out of existence or arms disintegrating were blown out of proportion. That sort of thing did happen occasionally, but gold only rarely shifted quantum states on its own. The stories describing horrific incidents spread only because of the horribleness of the event rather than because of its frequency.

  "Still though. It was nerve racking to watch. I have to hand it to Suarez," said Harriet. "She was incredibly cool under pressure. She looked completely unmoved." Harriet shuddered. She remembered Lara's emotionless expression, as she steeled herself to stick her hand into that containment chamber.

  "So I assume all went well?" asked the admiral.

  "Yes, sir, it did. Once it was in the water bottle, Marr worked on constructing a platform out of some of the food crates. He said that the bottle had to remain absolutely stable to generate a usable electrical fluid field.

  "I had no instruments, but once he was able to rig a platform, I was able to guess our position roughly from the stars. I knew, again roughly, the direction of New Boston. Marr was able to get the ship going, and I checked our position every few hours. I knew if we could last for a few more days, we could get to the shipping lanes right outside the star system."

  Harriet didn't go into the celebration within their lifeboat once the gold had been extracted without Lara losing a limb or the container exploding. She also spared him the jubilation that accompanied the actual movement of their makeshift space raft. Relative movement was difficult to determine without the sensation of acceleration, but after checking their position every few hours, she knew that they were moving and moving fast. David's mini-engine had worked.

  "As for the rest," continued Harriet, "the papers tell the whole of it. We arrived outside the star system and were picked up by a merchant ship." They had been sweating bullets the entire four days to New Boston. The quantum field could have given out at any moment. They saw a ship outside of the New Boston star system that was closing in within a flew klicks of their position. David had quickly taken his shirt off and lit it on fire to use as a signal. They were spotted. Even Lara had looked close to tears when they were finally on board and among the amazed crew of the trader ship.

  "Amazing story, Milton," said the admiral. "Truly amazing. I'm glad to see that you made it."

  "As am I, sir."

  "Well," said the Admiral with a smile, "so is the Naval office. You're being promoted to Commander."

  Harriet was stunned.

  "Don't worry," continued the Admiral, "your people will also be taken care of. It's all here." He gave Harriet a Naval communication. Lara were being promoted to Lieutenant. David was now a full Master Engineer.

  "Thank you, sir," stammered, Harriet.

  "It isn't all good news, I'm afraid," said Harding. "A commander must have a ship to command, and I'm afraid there's a shortage of sloops at the moment given the large number of commanders in line to go on active duty. But who knows, something may turn up. There is a war on after all."

  He stood up. "I hope to be in touch with you soon, Commander Milton."

  "Yes, sir" she stood up and saluted. Despite herself, she beamed from ear to ear.

  Despite her hangover, despite the blazing heat, despite having woken up in the bushes behind a tavern, and despite the acrid taste of too many cigarettes from the night before, Harriet was in a capital mood.

  The reason? She was alive. Plain and simple. Every second that she was breathing and walking felt like a revelation. Her experience on the Dakota and her time adrift in the food container had touched her in ways she hadn't known possible. She had had some dark moments while floating out there in the food container. New Boston, its people, food, drink, everything, it all felt luscious and overwhelmingly alive to her.

  Thus, she was a bit put out by David's mood.

  They were walking through the sandy streets of New Boston. Over sixty years of American ingenuity had done little to civilize the city. It was the h
ome of almost a million Americans, and had expanded rapidly after the first colonists had arrived. Part of the ease of construction was due to the local flora. One of the local vine species could be coaxed into patterns that could form livable structure, taking only about a month to grow if given the right conditions and framed correctly. The town had initially been founded by corporations and speculators who wanted quick and easy camps from which to strike forth and look for gold. The gold deposits on New Boston did turn out to be quite large, but one of the largest contributions the settlement made to American culture was the Tweely vine, which almost every building was made out of. Aside from being fire proof, water proof, an excellent insulator, and heat reflective, the vine cost almost nothing.

  Because housing and land were so cheap, New Boston was a mixture of old and new. The city was organized in a grid as specified by its original corporate masters, but the homes and businesses were a hodgepodge of different styles and architectures. Colorful Tweely vines were molded into Victorian, neo-Roman, craftsmen, and colonial homes. A port city for both space and the sea, it was home to visitors from all over the planet and all over the galaxy, creating a hodgepodge of cuisines, cultures, smells, and sounds. It was home to one of the best universities in the known worlds, Miskatonic University, and was a hub of science and research. Artists, bohemians, and eccentrics were attracted to this great city. It was the new center of the American empire.

  Harriet was, in many ways, a woman of simple tastes. She had traveled the universe, but didn't know much about it. Before joining the Navy she'd never been outside of Maryland, and even while in the Navy, she hadn't had much interest in foreign worlds. Only with her recent escape from death did the outside world hold any interest for her. When they had first stepped off that trade ship, the first thing she had wanted to do was kiss the ground. The second thing she wanted to do was ...well, she knew that celebration would be involved.

  David was an excellent companion when it came to making the most of life. He was a master of excess. He knew how to really have a good time, even if it killed you. Their brush with death had, if anything, only increased David's propensity for hard living. The past few nights had been spent in taverns, playing cards, eating, and drinking on the beach. David was in his element and Harriet enjoyed the ride.