"Too long," said Harriet as she took her orders out from a drawer in her desk. "Lets get down to business. I was told not to open these orders until we were twenty-four hours out of New Boston. They're meant to be top secret. We're to pursue the Spanish transport ship Merced into the New Madrid system. Waterhouse is on board." She gave David a significant look, "We're to get him back."
David grinned. His old mentor's kidnapping had weighed heavily on him. Not only would the old man be rescued, but he would be a part of it. He couldn't wait.
"They've got a head start on us by about two weeks," continued Harriet. "At full speed, we might be able to intercept them."
She went to the atlas sitting on a large table by a port window. It was a beautiful book that covered almost the entire surface. It was thick, for it mapped out all of known human space and had to convey three dimensional information two dimensionally. She traced their route.
"As you can see, the route would bring us close to a star going supernova, but it's the fastest way. Even still, we'll only catch her if we have absolutely perfect travel conditions." She paused, "And if the Merced doesn't."
"It's foolish for the higher ups to think that we could accomplish this," said Lara.
Harriet shrugged, "We'll do our best. If we fail, we're to return to New Boston."
"Why did they choose us?" asked David.
"The Calista is one of the fastest ships in the fleet," said Harriet, "and it was the only one that was close to being ready for a journey like this. It's a gamble, but the Spanish are gambling too. The transport is completely unguarded."
"So if we do make it," said Lara, "It'll be easy pickings."
"If we make it," said David.
Harriet nodded.
"You know," he said, "my new engine might be able to help." He looked thoughtful. "Based on my calculations, it'd increase our speed by about twenty percent. That's huge. We would definitely be able to reach her before she made it to New Madrid."
This gave Harriet pause. Any new engine design would be risky, but that increase in speed could mean a successful mission. Otherwise, they'd almost certainly fail.
"OK," she nodded, "but I want it fully tested before it goes on-line. Keep me updated every step of the way. Nothing happens without my approval."
"Aye Aye, Ma'am," grinned David.
David threw himself into the task of constructing the new engine.
He was excited. Not only had the captain approved of his new engine design, he had made wonderful progress over the first several days in getting it up and running. His men had removed two of the gold bars in the containment chamber, and inserted them in a second chamber. Every ship had a backup, and it had come in handy. David had constructed a stand and a motorized arm that could move the secondary chamber three hundred and sixty degrees around the primary. They had a dry run with Harriet present and everything had worked beautifully.
On the day that David finally demonstrated that the engine could work, a Spanish ship was sighted.
They were a week into their voyage. They took the old engine off-line for an hour to position the secondary containment unit and bring the new system on-line. When they had finally finished, David was given the order to bring her up to half speed.
He was nervous. He knew his calculations were right, but even so, there was always the quantum field effect: anything that can go wrong probably will. He brought the engine up to half speed. It took about half an hour to fix their relative position and calculate their speed. They were moving forty percent faster than standard speeds given the coal they were consuming. He brought the engine to full speed on Hilary's order. They were getting a thirty five percent improvement. It was even better than he had hoped.
"Lets run her for an hour," said Harriet. She was speaking to him through the speaking tube. After that, do a full maintenance check. Make sure she's not about to blow."
"She's always about to blow up," said David. His grin must have been audible through the tube.
"Well done, David."
"Thank you."
A half hour into the test run a ship was sighted. Harriet pointed her glass in the direction of the lookout's hail. She saw a small speck moving rapidly against the starry background of the milky way, about two degrees off the ship's bow.
"Steady as she goes," she called.
The ship was moving in the same direction as they were. She studied the ship closely for fifteen minutes. It was getting bigger. They were overtaking her. She watched for a bit longer, waiting patiently. Once they started pushing against the end of the engine test, she called for Suarez
"Tell Marr to keep the new engine online until further orders."
What to do?
There were very few circumstances under which engaging with this ship would comply with her orders. If it was a Spanish fighting ship, she should avoid an engagement at all costs. The Calista was the only ship in the fleet that had even a prayer of heading off Waterhouse's transport before it arrived in New Madrid. If she were lost in battle or even slightly damaged, it would jeopardize the mission.
If it was a civilian ship, she couldn't afford to take the time to take her. Time was of the essence. Of course, if the ship was headed in the same direction as they were, the ship would make a very nice prize. That is, if it were a Spanish ship at all.
Of course, it had to be a Spanish ship. Only the Americans and Spanish traveled anywhere along this route, and she knew of no friendlies that would be in this area of space. A prize with the right cargo could make her very wealthy. She did not have a piratical nature, but she also wasn't one to pass up the opportunity for wealth. She could sense the crew tensing. The hands around her were watching very closely. They knew the possibilities. They wanted her to go after the ship. They wanted it with all their hearts.
Suarez knew better than to interrupt the captain's mental calculations.
Harriet waited. Another half hour went by. The ship must have seen the Calista by this point, and they didn't appear to be approaching. Another hour. They were running away but the Calista was rapidly gaining. It was not a warship and it was definitely Spanish. That much was certain.
After another half hour, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was a supply ship traveling alone.
This was tempting. She felt the excitement on board increase exponentially. This would be the very definition of easy pickings. The only risk was losing time, but even that would be unlikely. They would make up lost time with the new engine and this ship was directly on their route.
"Jenkins," she said, "ready the guns."
"Yes, Ma'am!" said Jenkins.
The tension dissipated. The crew was relieved. They were going to engage.
She checked her watch. They'd have the ship by the time the evening meal ended.
Harriet turned out to be too conservative. They captured the supply ship just before the evening meal bell. She surrendered to the Calista immediately. Her captain and first officer were ferried aboard and amiably, if a little reluctantly, surrendered command of the vessel.
The ship was carrying supplies for the Spanish naval bases on New Madrid. She held cotton, barrels of rum, salted beef, and fifty tons of salt and other spices. This alone would have been worth quite a bit to a newly made commander, but when Suarez returned from inspecting the ship, Harriet could tell from the gait of the normally even tempered first lieutenant that there was something else.
"Ma'am, there are at least two tons of gold rods aboard!" said Suarez. "It's all in stasis so it should be perfectly safe," she added.
This was wholly unexpected.
News was spreading fast on the ship. They were all rich. Very rich.
She had never heard of that much gold being captured at once. According to Harriet's calculations, her share at two-eights would equal roughly $400,000. She might now be one of the wealthiest captains in the fleet. She was dumbstruck. Why would the Spanish move so much gold at one time?
Cheers broke out aboard the ship.
Jenkins was the most expendable officer and he had some degree of experience in command. She was hoping that he made it home without too much excitement. Her now considerable fortune, along with the crew's, depended on it. None of this had to be explained to Jenkins. He knew just how precious the cargo was. "No need to worry, Ma'am. We'll get her home safe and sound."
The officers of the supply ship were to stay with Calista, but the crew stayed on board as hands. Almost none but the officers were Spanish in nationality. There were a fair number of Danes, Greeks, and Africans, and they were more than willing to sign on for a new commander if the pay was fair, which it was. The few Spanish hands were kept as prisoner along with the officers aboard the Calista.
The whole operation had taken a day. Harriet hoped that the new engine would make up for lost time. She would be reprimanded if capturing the supply ship prevented her from rescuing Waterhouse, although she mused over how serious of a reprimand it would be given that Admiral Harding's share came to an eighth of the prize, about $200,000.
Running under the power of David's new engine, they continued to make decent headway. Harriet told him that they would be able to beat the transport to the perimeter of New Madrid. There they would lie in wait, patrolling the area right outside of the star system. She estimated that they were only several days behind.
David lay in his bunk, thinking. His share of the prize money was close to $50,000, more money than he had ever dreamed of. More money than his father had ever dreamed of. The prize was a once in a lifetime catch, and he could not believe his good luck. He could return to Illinois after the war, continue his studies without worrying about how to eat, maybe buy a nice home for himself. He could actually live like a real human being.
His door opened.
He tensed, then relaxed. Ever since their escapades in New Boston, he had been on edge. Intellectually, he knew that there was no one on the ship who wanted to see him dead, but he couldn't help himself. But who was it? There was no one who would enter without knocking.
He squinted. The only light in the room came from the stars shining through the port window. It was Lara.
She stepped into the room, disrobed, joined him on the bunk, and kissed him.
To David, Lara frequently appeared to be dispassionate and aloof, but before, during, and after their lovemaking, it occurred to David that he might be wrong.
"That was unexpected," said David, wiping the perspiration from his upper lip. "I got the distinct sense that you disliked me."
"What makes you think I still don't?"
"The moaning."
She laughed. It was one of the few times he'd ever seen even a smile on her face.
"Don't take it personally."
She sat up, noticing a water bottle next to the cot. She reached for it.
"Don't drink it!" shouted David.
Her hand froze.
"It's water with gold powder in it," he said calming down. "I'm working on a handheld orientation device. The gold powder rotates in a direction perpendicular to the flow of the quantum field. Theoretically, you could use something like that to figure out which direction the ship is moving and how quickly. The water is there to put the gold in suspension ... and for protection."
Sure enough, the gold flecks were moving slowly in a circle, suspended in the water.
"Isn't this dangerous to have lying around?" she asked.
"Oh, it's not so dangerous. You just wouldn't want to shake it up or anything. You might cause an accident."
"What would happen? An explosion?"
"No, nothing that exciting," said David thoughtfully. "I'm not sure what it would look like visually, but it would be bad for whoever was nearby. The problem would be gold particle collisions. After a few seconds, they'd switch quantum states, and..."
"It'd be bad," she finished. She looked thoughtful. He didn't like the look in her eye.
"Could this be used as a weapon?"
"I suppose so. You'd have to work out some design problems, but it wouldn't be too difficult."
She picked up the bottle gingerly.
"Careful," he said.
She gave him a look. He felt sweat dripping down his lower back. She looked as though she wanted to test her weapon idea. She made him nervous. He wasn't sure why she had all of a sudden decided to sleep with him, but he was hesitant to look a gift horse in the mouth. It unnerved him to think that her attitude had changed so quickly. It was made worse by the way she looked at him with that cold, calculating stare. She looked like she was mentally weighing a side of beef.
He couldn't explain it, but he didn't feel safe around her.
"Lara, why did you all of a sudden..."
Suddenly, they felt a shaking. Nausea overtook him. David felt as if he'd been spinning around for hours and then finally stopped to lie on the floor, except the feeling was much worse than that. He fell back onto the pillow and groaned.
"Dear God, what's going on?" he sputtered.
"Uh oh," said Lara, "I better get on deck." She got out of bed slowly and got dressed even more slowly. She was clearly feeling the effects too.
"What is it?"
"It's a particle storm," she said.
He knew that these were theoretically possible. A large mass, probably heavy in gold, was close by and disrupting the quantum field being generated by the Gold Engine. These storms were extremely dangerous. They could quite literally tear the ship apart, opening up holes in the field.
"It should make you feel a little sick and disoriented," she said. "Some people get hit harder than others."
He moaned again. He had never really understood what it meant to pray for death until now.
The ship was in the clutches of the storm for five days. They never did figure out what caused it. Maybe a nearby black hole, or an uncharted star going supernova. It didn't really matter in the end, for there was little to do but ride it out.
During particle storms, it is impossible to control the gold engine, and so the ship sat adrift in space for those five days while the transport moved further and further away. This galled Harriet, although she did not let it show to her crew. They were so close, and now it was all but inevitable that there mission would fail.
During the storm, much of the crew was laid up with disorientation sickness. She'd had enough years in space to be relatively immune to it, but experience didn't always count for anything. Some of her most seasoned hands were laid up in their hammock, and Marcus the surgeon had his sickbay full with those who needed escape from the continual nausea and vomiting. She guessed that only one out of three hands would be of any use in an emergency.
And there were plenty of emergencies. The particle storm loosened rivets, created holes in the atmospheric field that created gusts of air moving to and fro, filling newly made vacuums. What navigation instruments she had were rendered useless, and several spots on the hull were disintegrating. The biggest danger was that the particle storm would render their gold rods inert, destroying their quantum properties, and instantly killing everyone on the ship. She had known of several ships that had met their demise in this way, and she tried not to think about it.
David was of little help. He was groggy from both the sickness and from the laudanum that he was taking to cure it. She went to his cabin to ask him what the likelihood was of the rods being rendered inert. He looked horrible. He was in and out of consciousness, and mumbling about Waterhouse, quantum fields, and his father. His
assistant Tong had been caring for him for the past several days, and although he respected the captain, he clearly disapproved of her questions. She soon realized getting anything out of Marr would be impossible.
By the time the storm was over, they were severely in need of repairs. There were large gaping holes in the deck, and the engine had been hit hard. The gold bars were still active, otherwise they'd be dead, but the mechanical systems had fallen apart without David's supervision. Most of the repairs could be completed while they were adrift. Metallurgists were working on repairing the holes in the deck and the hands were checking rivets and casings to fix anything that might have gotten loosened in the storm.
The engine, however, posed a greater problem. They needed more protoplasm for the containment chamber. Much of it had died because the systems responsible for the biological drip had failed. They could still navigate, but had to move slowly. They couldn't get more protoplasm out in space. They would have to dock for the repairs. At their current speed New Madrid was about two months away.
However, everyone knew that there was one other possibility: Atlantis.
Atlantis was an extremely large asteroid. It had escaped from whatever star system it was born in, which must have happened billions of years ago, and it only moved a few thousand miles each year. It was a neutral port, run by a Dutch trading company. Harriet was extremely reluctant to dock there. For one thing it would take them even further away from New Madrid and the transport. It was unlikely that they would catch her now, but she hated to take actions that further decreased her small likelihood of success.
The second problem was that as a neutral port, all American and Spanish ships had been banned. There had been several past incidents in which the Americans and Spanish had not respected the rules of neutrality, resulting in deaths and, more importantly, the loss of Dutch property. Consequently, no ships of warring powers were allowed to dock unless it was an extreme emergency. Her ship's current state probably counted, but it was the Dutch Governor's call. He could easily turn them away if he thought they could make it somewhere else on their own.
The Gold Engine (The Gold Chronicles) Page 13