Six Bits

by Laurence Dahners

  Of course, you know that's where we found the alien craft.

  I didn't know what the hell was goin' on at first. Just that Sander had stopped us cold and was hangin' there in his acceleration web with a blank look on his face. So I looked where he was lookin’.

  There on one roughhewn black face of the crevice, fixed in the center of the sharply outlined area lit by our work lights, I saw the aliens’ boat. Now, you know it didn't look much like one of the little craft that traveled the belt. I don’t even think I recognized it as a boat right away.

  But I could tell it was something manufactured.

  It didn’t take long for me to figure out it hadn’t been made by humans.

  By its streamlined shape you could tell that it was meant for atmospheric flight. On that basis alone you knew it wasn't human. No reason to have streamlined shapes out in the belt; ergo there wasn't anything human and streamlined in the belt.

  I remember the sweat breakin' out on my forehead and the ringing in my ears. My own voice sounded real distant as it trailed off on whatever trivial question I had been jabberin' about at the time.

  To some extent, I was filled with wonder and awe over the secrets that might be held by such an artifact. Partly I was considering the possibility that there might be live aliens aboard training some kind of “blaster” on us, though even at that moment, I think I knew that the artifact had been long abandoned, maybe even hundreds of millennia ago.

  Mostly, though, I was terrified of Sander. Even though I'd been worshiping the air he hung in a minute ago, my mind had already snapped around 180° with the awful and certain realization of what this kind of discovery could do to a man. At that time, you may know, anything you found in the belt was your exclusive property unless someone could prove that they had visited it first, marked it, and laid claim to it at Ceres. It was the kind of discovery that could have had brothers at each other’s throats, much less a man and a kid he barely knew.

  If you found it while working for someone else it belonged to them.

  My sphincters were twitching. I knew immediately that I was the only thing that stood between Sander and unimaginable wealth, or at least probable wealth assuming that even a few technical secrets were hidden in yon artifact! Space me, move the alien boat, blow up the 'roid.

  Come back with a sad story about how I got caught in the explosion somehow.

  Then all he’d have to do is quit his job, wait a while, then come back and "find" the artifact. He’d be rich beyond anyone’s dreams.

  I could hear the blood roaring in my ears and I'd been staring at Sander with eyes that hadn't blinked for a minute when he slowly turned to me. "Well kid," he said. "It looks like you and your folks have really struck it big this time."

  I wanted to believe him. Make that, “I did believe him.” Yet somehow I couldn’t.

  For the next six hours, while we were detaching that thing from the 'roid and loading it onto the freight boom of our boat, my heart shot up and down my throat in irregular cycles. We didn't want to damage the alien ship, but it was firmly anchored to the 'roid. We finally used some small torches to cut the rock away from the anchor points rather than cut the anchors. Seems kind of silly now, the discussion we had about whether or not to cut the anchors. Course, at the time, we had no way of knowing that there wasn't a tool in the solar system that would cut those damn anchors!

  Anyway, we were having trouble cutting the rock away with the 'bots and so Sander suggested that we suit up and "get a closer look." A couple of dozen scenarios involving torches "accidentally" cuttin' me in half went through my mind, but I managed to follow him out there and sure enough, with the additional perspective that being there gives you, we had the alien boat loose in no time.

  From pictures of the alien boat, you know that it was kind of a flattened ovoid with a fin toward one end and anchor points on the underside. There weren't any kind of regular attachment points of course. We had to use cable to lash it to the freight boom.

  Then believe it or not we drilled and blew the 'roid. It seems silly in retrospect, but we figured the alien boat might not pan out and there may never be another carbonaceous 'roid this close. We picked out a likely 3X104 kg fragment already travelling somewhat our way, attached to it, stopped its rotation and started accelerating it into a transfer orbit to the Rock.

  We looked the artifact over with 'bots, but of course didn't suit up and look at it in person while under acceleration. We lost one 'bot for the duration of the trip by sending it into the alien airlock. That’s how we figured out that we couldn't communicate with a ‘bot through the walls of the artifact.

  During that time all my dreams were nightmares. Sometimes about slimy aliens, but usually in those dreams I had Sander chasing me on, and on, and on... He’d be accompanied by a couple of 'bots with lasers and I wouldn’t feel like I had a chance in hell.

  I wanted to radio ahead to tell my folks what we’d found, but Sander said we needed to keep radio silence about the artifact. That made me even more uneasy.

  To my amazement, I was still in one piece when we arrived back at the Rock. At first I was moved to worship again by Sander's selflessness, but shortly thereafter started worrying about what he might do to my whole family.

  Well when my folks saw the artifact, I got to see them go through the same kind of awe/wonder/fear/panic thing I’d gone through a few days before. Their approach to it was to immediately offer Sander a quarter share in any profits. The profits looked to be astronomical anyway so it seemed a smart thing to do.

  Then they did the stupid thing.

  They filed a "description of claim" with Ceres by laser. Figured that with the claim published and Sander staked to a quarter, he'd be crazy to backstab us. He'd never be able to turn in an individual claim if something bad happened to all of us. There’d be a hell of an inquiry.

  I was heading to my room that night when I heard them talking. Sander said, “You filed a claim with Ceres?!”

  My mother said, “Yes! With the claim published in all of our names, we don’t have to worry about…” here, she probably realized she was about to say, you jumping the claim, so she stumbled a little, “um, someone trying to jump the claim.”

  “My God!” Sander said, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “You don’t know… no, I guess you don’t,” he said sadly.

  “Don’t know what.”

  “The claims office at Ceres, it leaks like a sieve. There are people there who probably called their pirate contacts before they even finished filing your claim,” he said, sounding kind of sad.

  As expected, we were receiving almost constant laser traffic within six hours of the filing. It took a while for word to get around the solar system, even at the speed of light, but there are a lot of programs out there that search message traffic for things that might be of financial/technical/scientific use and they ALL came down on an alien artifact. We were working with our lawyer, sorting offers. Let me tell you he was one happy son.

  In all the excitement, I slacked my chores and so it was 36 hours before I checked the household 'puter and found out we had an unannounced visitor burning in, due in 18 hours! Whoever it was, they were pulling high Gs.

  We back figured their orbit to try to find out where they were from. They hadn’t originated from any of the known belt communities. We searched our incoming message traffic and no one had contacted us to say they were coming.

  Even before we did that, there wasn't much hope.

  That inbound boat had to be pirates.

  Sander took the news with a look of grim resignation on his face. He didn’t say, “I told you so,” though he certainly could have. In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious that he knew what kind of trouble the claim submission would bring us.

  My parents tried to send me away while they talked about what to do, but I raised hell until they finally gave in and let me listen. An obvious strategy would have been to hide the alien boat, but it was too big to fit into any of our existing tun
nels. We couldn't enlarge one enough in the time we had. Looked like we had two choices: One, hide ourselves and let them take the artifact. Two, stay out and fight.

  If we chose the first, we could try to trace the pirates and hope we could convince one of the belt communities to help us go out and take the artifact back. Theoretically, the pirates would be easy to trace because they couldn't change direction without using their thrusters and thrusters generate a megahertz signal that’s easy to track. In reality they could match with a small 'roid and attach to it with a cable. Then they’d use thrusters to build up angular acceleration around the rock. After turning off the thrusters they could release the cable and fly off going any direction. If they coasted for a few weeks before they fired up their thrusters again, nobody’d know it was them.

  Besides, most of the belt communities weren't going to go chasing pirates on our behalf.

  Option two wasn't very appealing either. We had two mining torches and the construction lasers that made pretty good weapons, but we were going to be working against some people who presumably really did know how to fight, had real armaments and only had to make us keep our heads down until they’d applied boost to the artifact.

  You know the saying about, "Either go in with your head up and fight like hell (if you think you can win) or put your tail between your legs and run like hell (if you think you'll lose).”

  Of course, we decided on a crappy combination of the two.

  Dad enlarged the mouth of one of our tunnels. We laid the alien boat into it and Mom covered it with some foam steel. Then she put on a layer of slag that kind of looked like the surface of the Rock and was supposed to act as camouflage. That took her most of the 18 hours.

  Dad set us up down in a deep tunnel. He set up hard wired connections to the surface so we could remote control our "weapons" from down in our hidey hole. Sander generally helped out everywhere. I remember thinking that his suggestions for laser placement were downright scary 'cause they suggested he'd been through this kinda stuff before.

  We’d generally agreed that the artifact wasn't worth losing a life over so we were going to fight a remote battle even though we wouldn't have very good control. We sent out messages to the belt communities asking for help and got a few "wish we coulds.” This was even when we promised big money from the artifact for help. No one thought we had any chance in hell of keeping it, so to them it would be a bleak investment.

  When zero hour arrived, we all clambered down into our hide, deep inside the 'roid and got ready to man our "battle stations" on the remotes. Sander ran up to his room at the last minute to "get something he'd forgotten".

  I was worried about my hero and so I monitored his room sensor to be sure he got there and started back in time. On the monitor he arrived, pulled a flat case out of his locker, opened it and pulled out a vest. When he put it on I recognized it as a "power jacket" by the flat 'puter compartments on the front and the single large disk of a fusion generator on the back. A generator like that was probably capable of producing something like 10-20 megawatts. He hooked up its output leads to the front compartments and then pulled out a ring interfacer. He slipped the ring onto the back of his head and plugged it into the front compartments of the jacket. I'd never seen a skull ring interfacer before, but knew what it was right away. Invented by an evil genius pirate known only as “the Sandman,” a ring interfacer allowed 'puter interface by brain wave monitoring, and required intense concentration to control superfluous wave formation. Everyone dreamed of being able to use them, but supposedly only 20 to 30 people had ever proved to have that kind of control. Even most of them could only do it as kind of a party trick, not as something really effective.

  Dad musta heard me suck in my breath 'cause I heard him start swearing softly. I turned and saw him staring at my screen.

  Sander pulled out a final piece of equipment and headed for the lock. He grabbed his suit, snapped out the standard HUD (Heads Up Display) and put in the one he'd just brought from his room. He was in that suit and out the lock faster than anyone I've ever seen suit up, before or since.

  Sure enough 30 seconds later not a single one of our remotes controlled a thing. I'd seen power jackets before and seen people run equipment with them. I'd even heard of people with enough computer and broadcast power to take over other peoples 'bots. It was supposedly a favorite pirate trick—especially the Sandman's—to turn your own equipment against you, but it's supposed to take time and hypothetically it’s impossible against hardwired equipment. We’d hardwired everything and instructed the 'bots to ignore broadcast signals.

  At the time I assumed that he must have sabotaged our hard wires and our "ignore broadcasts," so he could access our system. With what I know now, I doubt it. I think he just used those megawatts to induce currents in our hardwires, currents that overrode our own commands.

  Well his equipment was obviously pirate equipment and all our misgivings about his past were no longer uncertain. We were, however, mystified about why he bothered to call in his buddies when he could easily have done the dirty work himself and used our own boat to push his prize wherever he wanted it. Dad was still swearing softly and pounding his fist on his console. Mom had tears welling up and breaking off the ends of her lashes when she blinked. Gen was pale as a ghost and probably would’ve been screaming if she could have got her breath.

  For some reason I wasn't scared this time. I think at that point I was only feeling betrayed and depressed.

  The same guy I’d been admiring and looking up to, he’d just been confirmed as a malevolent criminal. Sure, I’d been worried about him when we’d discovered the artifact, but at that time there’d only been the possibility that even a nice guy like him might kill us all in order to take the alien spaceship for himself.

  The pirate shut down thrusters, made a few small correction pushes and tight beamed us. "Cooperate and live. Fight and die! What’s it gonna be?"

  Their boat was a skeletal frame of foam steel beams in the shape of a cube. At each of the eight corners were big, gimbal mounted thrusters so that four or five of them could push simultaneously in any chosen direction. This allowed sudden course deflections, useful for fighting, but not for much else. There were life modules scattered throughout the frame as well as laser modules around the periphery and load points for the attachment of prizes and booty. I know now that each module was set up to be completely self-contained and able to work independently. In theory, you could shoot out all but one thruster, one life module, and one laser and that ship could still kill you and take your valuables, though it’d be slow moving with only one thruster.

  The ugly thing started to drift toward the Rock with all of the big lasers that could train on us—even some from the other side, aiming through gaps in the open frame—pointed our way. It was hard to see the details of its structure because it had a good light and radar absorptive coat on it to make it hard to track. I had no doubt there was a good laser reflective coat right under the absorptive one.

  I was wondering how long it would take them to burn the artifact out of Mom's hiding place. I figured only an hour or so with Sander to show them where to cut. There really wasn't much we could do. We wouldn't even be able to try to track them since Sander would surely destroy all our tracking equipment. They’d probably take our boat. It’d keep us from chasing them and provide a little more prize money, a win-win for them.

  Then we’d need a rescue, something we’d have to pay through the nose for. In a period of just a few days we’d gone from moderately well-off, to unbelievably wealthy, and now down to dirt poor.

  Sander's voice came on the radio. "That you Jonesy? Looks like your piece of crap boat. This is Sandman."

  There was a period of silence, then a suspicious tone "Sandman?! How did you get here?!” There was a little pause, then, “And where the hell have you been?"

  "I turned respectable. I'm a miner. This is where I work now."

  The guy on the other end chortled, "Sure Sandman
. Well I'll tell you what. I'll let you in for a standard cut even if you did piss out on us."

  Sander's voice sounded like large bubble foam-steel grating against a 'roid. "Maybe you didn't hear me. I turned respectable. My cut of the artifact is 25%, which is, I must point out, a hell of a lot bigger than your ‘standard’ cut." Sarcasm was dripping by the end of the sentence.

  "Standard cut’s a lot bigger than 25% of nothing."

  "I've got my 'caster.”

  "Shit!"

  Sander said, “You boys need to shove off ‘fore you get hurt."

  I was stunned, there’d been a tremor in the pirate’s voice.

  Sander's voice took on a kind of hopeful tone. "Go on home. No hard feelings."

  The pirate's lasers opened up… At least some of them did. My screen went blank indicating that the laser I was supposedly controlling had just been burned out.

  One second later the battle was over. Not only did all of our lasers discharge, but about two thirds of the pirates’ lasers pivoted and fired on the ones that Sander didn't already have in his control. The thrusters on the pirate gimbaled over and opened up. A few minutes later the pirate was spinning at hundreds of RPM. A few modules tore loose and flew off into space and the ship itself began to drift away.

  My brain was spinning at the same speed as the pirate ship. The Sandman?!?!

  To me the Sandman was the ultimate tale of genius gone bad. The only 'roid pirate whose name was a household word. He supposedly could control ten 'puters simultaneously by age five. He’d practically invented power-casters himself and, after inventing the skull ring interfacer, became an irresistible menace. Tales of piracy, plunder, fast living and loose morals were abundant.

  Maybe you’re thinking that a name like “Sander” should have been a tipoff, but I would never even have considered the Sandman and the quiet little man who'd been living with us in the same frame of reference.