“I do.”
“Minding my own business sir.”
The two hours passed quietly but that didn't bother Finn. He was busy commanding an army of nanobots. They marched from one job site to another, insulating and restructuring microcircuitry to cut down the emissions and increase efficiency. The work took place over a few centimetres but on the microscopic scale it may as well have been miles.
He could tell just after the first thirty minutes that he was working on some kind of field generating system and that the emissions he was minimizing were harmful radiation. If the board was turned on as is, it wouldn't be long before anyone within a meter of it might start feeling the initial onset of radiation poisoning. Maybe a couple hours, maybe a day, either way, if this was just part of a bigger whole, then he hoped that the other parts didn't emit radiation as well.
Captain Valance was running identification match software across billions of people while he worked on various components. The database must have been huge. The ship computer could run recognition software across a database of a million people within ten minutes but billions, that was another story.
Finn finished optimizing the flexible circuit board and the nanobots that weren't absorbed by the material or used to create small components inside were returned. He took off the goggles and sighed. “Finished.”
“Good work, thank you Finn. You saved me a lot of time. You'll see a bonus on your next pay.”
“Thank you sir,” Finn turned around and just looked at the three small holographic displays on the Captain's workbench. As they flipped through so many faces per second that they blended together the Captain was working on something else, an armoured glove. He was finely tuning some kind of control mechanism on the inside. “I know, it's a primitive way to do it, but I can't use nerve sensors.”
“However it works, I'm sure it'll be more than good enough.”
Jake laughed and shook his head. “You have a lot of faith in me for someone who just came aboard.”
“I've seen what you do sir, and you've given me a lot of opportunities in a short amount of time.”
“There's a method to my madness. Just keep up the good work and you'll be close to everything going on around here. There'll be times when you don't want to be though, you'll see.”
Finn watched him work quietly for a few moments longer. It didn't seem to bother him at all, and he was seeing his Captain in a completely new light. He seemed at ease somehow, working on some minor detail. There was no way he could see what he was doing, just looking down at the glove, fishing at some fine detail with two small tools in one hand like chopsticks and holding the glove with the other. There was always a kind of discipline to the man, his back was always straight, and when he walked somewhere it was with a certainty. He knew exactly where he was going.
“Sir, before I go, can I ask who you're searching for?”
“Got it,” Captain Valance said as something inside the glove clicked. He put it on his left hand and flexed it. “What's that Finn?”
“I'm just wondering, who are you looking for?”
“My daughter,” came the answer nonchalantly.
It was unexpected, everything about the Captain had been so secretive, he never told anyone more than they needed to know. “Oh, I didn't know you had one.”
“I don't talk about her much, don't know much about her really. She saved me once, I've been looking for her ever since,” he pulled the glove off and put it on the bench. “Finally got that working.” He said to himself. He pressed a button on his arm control unit and a frozen picture of a young woman's face was projected. The background was the Samson's main cargo hold. “Her name is Alice.”
“She looks nice.”
“I know she was in trouble when we last saw each other. Still haven't found out what kind of trouble or where she went. I keep hoping I find a bounty posted on her. It would be the fastest way for me to pick up a lead. So I search for her while we go from job to job.”
“Now it'll be something I'll do,” Finn said with a note of determination.
“Thank you Finn, now go get some rack time.”
“Yes sir.”
Hyperspace Day 2
“Frost, what are we doing out here?” Asked Carl Burke as he walked into the stasis compartment. There was one rack of six medical stasis tubes on one side and on the other there were a dozen emergency tubes. They looked completely different. The medical tubes were older by a decade but were far more reliable and provided more information about the occupants. When a bounty was captured, those were the ones the Captain liked to use.
The emergency tubes, which Frost was looking over, were racked up at forty five degree angles and lowered into the deck when they were full or in storage. He had them drawn all the way out so he could make sure the repair team had done their job and repaired the seals on two of them. They were right above his bunk. “I'm makin' sure these things aren't goin' ta bust open and leak stasis fluid all over my face while I'm sleepin', what're you doing here?”
“That's just it, I have no idea,” Burke replied in an agitated whisper. “Captain has us chasing down a ship that's eight times our mass and can slag us in seconds. Is he really driftin' over to her? What's he been drinkin'?”
“Plan's changed, we're lockin' onta her now.”
“What? What do you mean locking on?”
“We're comin' right up from behind an' then we're going to follow her cargo train inta the blind spot an' latch on right as we're gettin' to the ship proper.”
“Now I know everyone's lost their minds. What are we going to do then? Punch a hole in their hull and try to board her? They've got at least two hundred souls aboard.”
“Nope, we're goin' ta stay an' make trouble from the outside. The plan is to distract 'em.”
“What? That doesn't even make sense.”
Frost nodded to himself, satisfied that the pods had been repaired and activated the control that would put them back into storage. “We've been runnin' together what now, eight years?”
“Yup, a little more.”
“This is the craziest thing I've done, hell, I haven't heard of anything more spun.”
“Then why the hell are we doing it?”
“Ye've been out boarding with Captain before, haven't ye?”
“I have, but that was different. Different like not crazy. I understand why Ashley is going along with this, Captain bought her outright and set her loose on his ship to get her out of trouble, and her friends, which is half the ship, and even Silver who's sharin' her bunk, but why the hell are you goin' along?”
“Because he's never let me down. Even when he screws everythin' up an' we're about ta get wrecked or shot inta nothin' he manages ta turn it around or at least give us a runnin' chance. We don't always make it out with the guys we go in with, but that's the biz.”
“That doesn't mean this is the right way to go about this, hell, why are we going after this at all?”
“Someone's doin' wrong to thousands of people and we're gettin' paid to fix it.”
“Oh, so we're all fixin to be heroes now! What does it matter all the way out here? They could build a God damned statue you could see from orbit on whatever colony you like after we save their dirt turnin' asses. Won't change the fact that it'll just be in the ground after a few hundred years, maybe sooner. Just like us. We get good while we're here and being here is all there is until we're not here anymore. I don't plan on dyin any time soon and no way am I changin' that plan for someone else. I'll live longer than I have a right to if I can. This kind of gamble isn't my way.”
“So what, mutiny? Is that what you're askin me to join in on?”
“Why not? I'm sick and tired of him stalkin' around the ship, givin' orders and not telling us much of anythin' like he's better than us.”
“I am better than you Carl,” the Captain's voice echoed up the metal grating stairs.
Carl Burke turned around slowly, his hand resting on his sidearm, his face t
urning red.
Captain Valance didn't make a sound as he continued to the top step. He was dressed in an armoured black vacsuit no one had seen before. It was covered in thin strips of overlapping flexible plating and obviously had sound dampeners built in. Over top he wore his black long coat and he didn't say anything until he stepped out of the stairway and onto the deck. His expression was as neutral and as hard as granite. “Going to shoot me now Carl?” He asked calmly.
Carl's hand twitched away from his weapon. “Just sayin' maybe we deserve to know more about what's going on, why this is so important. Aside from the pay, I mean.”
Frost didn't move, he just watched from a couple meters away as Captain Valance slowly closed the distance between him and Carl Burke. “That's not what I heard. You said I thought I was better than everyone on this ship. Now, I can't answer to being better than everyone, but I know I'm better than you. Head and shoulders, balls to bones better than you.”
Carl stared into Jake Valance's eyes, willing himself not to look anywhere else. Just into those cool, unflinching hard eyes. He was the older of the two by at least twenty years. Somehow Jake's eyes had a century more.
“What are we going to do about that?” Jake asked quietly.
Carl Burke felt a drop of sweat run down his upper spine. He shivered and got angry enough to open his dry mouth. “Where the hell are you from? You decide for us all, where to go, what jobs to take and we don't know you from nowhere. I looked, no record, just that security vid of you getn' hatched from some stasis pod.”
Jake's expression darkened. “That's a secure file.”
“From a trained comms man? I can crack anythin' on this ship.”
“You're out of line. Next port, you're off,” Jake said quietly.
“Can't take someone findin' somethin' out on ya?”
There was a long pause as the two men just looked at each other. “Do you have anything to protect other than yourself in this life?” Jake asked quietly.
“What?” Carl's voice cracked a little.
Jake took a step forward, forcing Carl to take two steps back. “Is there anything, anyone you'd give your life to protect?” He asked, starting to raise his voice.
Carl just stared at him uneasily, at a loss for words.
“I do!” Jake shouted. He was furious. “Every God damned member of this crew thinks they've signed on for an adventure, or to work a hard life for bigger pay. They're really here because they were desperate enough to accept a job offer in a pub or from a port bulletin from someone who promises that it'll be hard but there will be cash. I take chances with everyone here. Some don't make it. The Samson wastes people. They burn out, they get grey fifty years younger than they should. If they live long enough, if they stay long enough and can't afford to retire. In just five years I've crewed two haulers four times over with people who just couldn't do what we do anymore.
Now we're taking risks, big ones because some of the crew are starting to burn out again. So I give myself the hardest job, to clear the worst of the hazards before I bring anyone else close enough to get slagged. Maybe a few of the crew will retire after this take, but it's dangerous. Oh it's more dangerous than anyone here can imagine! But I'm better than you remember?” Jake snatched the collar of Carl's vacsuit and twisted the thick fabric into his balled fist, pulling him up off his feet. “Oh, you have no idea how much better than you I am and that's why this is going to work,” Jake said in a clear, loud, measured tone.
He knew other people had come to watch. Through the grating that separated the stasis area from the forward hold, from the staircase where Ashley and Stephanie had come up to see why the Captain was shouting for the first time in years.
He activated a control in his left glove with a twitch of his hand and disappeared completely. Everyone stared on in astonishment as Carl Burke was held up in the air by an unseen hand. His eyes went wide in disbelief.
“You're relieved Burke. You won't see anything from this trip. Someone put his ass in the brig until we can dump him off at the next port,” Jakes disembodied voice ordered as Carl was dropped back down to his feet.
Hyperspace Day 3
It was a puzzle and he wasn't interested in asking for the answer. He had to find it on his own. There was a listing on the weapons systems panel called Big Surprise. There were no operational details, no specifications, but there was a location. That's why Finn found himself in the bowels of the ship, right under the port side capacitor series and long term energy storage. The room was built with a long eight meter door, was just a little shorter than a meter and a half, and reported full by internal sensors. He put his vacsuit helmet and gloves on and walked into the room, sealing the hatch behind him.
What he saw took him completely by surprise. A frame had been built right on top of the door. It housed hundreds of ancient capacitors, quick discharge battery units and the most simple control circuitry he had seen since primary school. He chuckled to himself. “What am I seeing?”
The bay doors were three meters across and the whole machine was made to be pushed through by three very basic piston arms. He walked around it with a flat scanning pad he had tuned himself for electronics. “There's enough power here to run the ship for two days.”
He looked at it again, inspecting it a little closer. There were a few capacitors that weighed a few hundred kilograms at the centre, but most were smaller. They had been screwed, welded, and glued on randomly, a few were even affixed with tape, a lot of tape. Quick release cables were attached to a panel above, leading to the main port capacitors where a great deal of the ship's energy was stored. “It must be another redundant system,” he said to himself, scratching his head.
The inner door opened and one of the maintenance crew members walked in. His vacsuit was sealed as well. “What are you doing in here?”
“I saw something on the weapons control station I wanted to check out, it lead me here.”
“Ah, the Big Surprise. I've never seen anyone track it down before. They usually just ask about it.” He crossed over to Finn and shook hands with him. “I'm Agameg Price, maintenance and occasional boarding. I'm usually down here during hyperspace. I like to make sure our emitters are in good shape. I get paranoid when we're moving past the speed of light. I hear the Captain's grooming you to be his new Chief.”
“Not that I've heard.”
“Well, the rumours are making the rounds.”
“I hope not, everyone here has more experience.”
“Well, I remember my old Staff Sergeant used to say he'd rather train a grunt to be an officer than train an officer to be a better officer. I think the Captain might just be training you to do things his way. I hear you graduated from an engineering program.”
“I did, but I don't talk about it. Some of the crew don't seem happy about me getting time on the bridge after being on board for less than a month.”
“Some of them are pretty petty. A few don't understand what kind of training someone who finishes an engineering program has. They can maintain most of these systems, sure, but you're trained to build them.”
“Did you go to school for this?”
“Yup, two years accelerated training then straight into the military. I did damage control on a big Galta Battle Cruiser.”
“Wow, I've only seen those in the news.”
“They're bigger up close, trust me. Three kilometres of guns, drop ships, and stasis bays for infantry. One of those things make it into orbit and they have twenty five thousand troops and fifteen armoured divisions on the ground in thirty minutes. Every fleet needs one.”
“So how did you end up here?”
“The war ended, open conflict was over. I could have gone back home but I didn't get to see much of the galaxy while I was in the service, so here I am.”
“Couldn't you have gotten onto an exploration vessel or something? I mean, this isn't the safest way to see the galaxy,” Finn whispered. If it weren't for his vacsuit's proximity radio Agameg would
n't have heard him.
Agameg laughed and clapped Finn on the shoulder. His touch, despite being quick, was very light. “The issyrian Home Systems don't send survey ships out anymore, not since we ran into humans two hundred forty or so years ago.”
“You're issyrian?”
“I am, I just hold human form because it makes everyone else more comfortable. I've gotten used to it too.”
“I'm sorry, I've never met any of your people before.”
“This is your first time out in space?”
“Outside my system. That obvious huh?”
“To the people here, sure. We've been out here a while. For most of us this isn't our first ship. I know at least one of us was hired right out of an escape shuttle.”
“Really?”
“Yup, Mara, I call her Hitcher when she's in a bad mood. It reminds her things could be worse.”
“She's a gunner, isn't she?”
“She is, keeps to herself though. Likes those sims a bit too much I think.”
“Oh, I used to play, but now I just use them for practice unless someone else invites me into one.”
“We'll have to play Embargo Five sometime. I can't find many people who are any good.”
“Sounds good, though I've never played.”
“It's a strategic game, lots of diplomacy involved. You'd probably do very well. I have to inspect the emitters soon, so I should be going, but before I do, let me introduce you to the Big Surprise,” Agameg said, gesturing to the long, messy machine in the middle of the cramped room.
“Well, I know I was surprised when I first saw it, but I'm still not sure I know why it's on the weapons station.”
“It's an Electromagnetic Pulse Bomb.”
“Whoa,” Finn exclaimed quietly, stepping back. “There's got to be enough power there to fry someone at this range. I'm guessing you build one of these and drop it through the doors.”
“Exactly, only this one's been used twice.”
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