Drifter

by Shane Griffin

Drifter

  By

  Shane Griffin

  Smash Words Edition Published by Poupichou Press

  Copyright Shane Griffin 1998

  #

  Guntha pushed his podgy body back into his anti-grav seat, took a relaxed breath and rubbed his short spiky hair. It was always tedious bringing his massive asteroid scoop, Saint Helen, into perfect orbit for a scoop run, but he had done it.

  “OK Carl, load up the data for comp-control and I’ll initiate the scoop run,” said Guntha as he swivelled in his chair to look at his techie, a thin lanky fellow with short dark hair.

  “Doing it now,” replied Carl, not looking up from his computer screen. “OK, done.”

  “Good, then I’ll start the scoo…” Guntha was interrupted by loud beeping from the flight console. “What the hell?”

  “There’s something wrong Gunth,” said Carl typing madly on his keyboard. “We have something in our scoop run path. Something big!”

  “But we scanned this belt months ago and didn’t pick up any major dramas.”

  “I’m going to run a close-up scan just to check the computer isn’t glitching again.”

  “OK, but make it quick because we only have another ten minutes before we have to orbit again to get back into position,” cursed Guntha. Carl just nodded and kept working, he had a tendency not to say much. This suited Guntha because, by his own admission, he talked enough for the pair of them.

  Several minutes passed and all that could be heard was the tinny clacking of Carl typing on his computer and Guntha fidgeting impatiently. Guntha tried to think of something else and relax because he knew it annoyed Carl and didn’t help him work. Then suddenly there was silence, Carl had stopped typing.

  “What is it?” asked Guntha unable to control himself any longer.

  “Well if this read out is right you can forget the scoop run,” replied Carl astonished.

  “Damn! What is it, a planetoid?”

  “No.”

  More silence.

  “What then?”

  “You’re not going to believe it, but it’s a ship and it’s a bloody big one!”

  Carl was right, Guntha didn’t believe it. Not at least until he brought Saint Helen into matching orbit with the monstrous ship. Saint Helen was an almost one mile long asteroid miner with the capacity to carry several hundred thousand tonnes of rock, but it was dwarfed by the ship they were now along side.

  “Hell, this thing must be over ten miles long,” said Carl looking at the image of the ship on a view screen.

  “I’ve seen pictures of ships like this one in history books,” replied Guntha in awe. “It’s an Ark ship, built for interstellar colonisation during the first Great Push around 2850.”

  “No way, that would make it over a thousand years old!”

  “Exactly. That means it’s a drifter.”

  “A what?” asked Carl, not convinced that Guntha wasn’t just having a lend of him.

  “A drifter. Back around 2800 the invention of the semi light drive triggered the first Great Push. For about the next hundred years thousands of huge interstellar ships like this one were built and sent out along colonisation arcs across the galaxy. The only problem was that many of them had malfunctions on the way and have been drifters ever since.

  We better report this, there’s a special mob that deals with drifters and if they don’t take too long to get here they may even move the ship so we can still do the scoop run.”

  #

  Captain Tom Carney walked along the huge passenger storage area of the Alpha Centauri, a drifter from 2879. He took one last look around him at the thousands of people in suspended animation, like larvae in a bee hive, and turned on his wrist communicator.

  “OK Suzie, I’ve just finished the security inspection. It looks pretty standard for an alpha 30 class. The semi-light drives malfunctioned about twenty five years into the jag, the computer shut them off and just waited for the nearest gravity well to orbit around before it sent off the distress call. As usual the software running the safety system crashed during the distress call program and it has been sitting here ever since.”

  “Aye, aye Captain. What is your recommendation then?” asked Suzie.

  “Well, the passengers and crew are all okay so they’re going to need to be shipped to the Interstellar Trauma Centre for debriefing and relocation. We may as well just take the whole ship back to base for the full inspection. Have Bui bring Southern Cross into position and attach the grapples for towing. Jimmy, Tumbar and I will be back via the shuttle in about half an hour.”

  “Aye Captain, see you soon.”

  Tom switched off his communicator again and headed for the flight control room to get Jimmy and Tumbar. He had just walked into the flight room when his communicator sprang to life again with Suzie’s voice.

  “Captain, sorry to bother you, but we just received a message from Base. Apparently a couple of asteroid miners found a drifter near the belt around Concorde Five.”

  “Hmm. That’s in the Janpa system isn’t it?”

  “That is correct sir.”

  “What’s the situation?”

  “Base wants us to attend the drifter as soon as possible. It seems that the ship is blocking the miner’s scoop run and they want it moved.”

  “Well they can want all they like because that ships going nowhere until I’m happy its safe. Tell Bui to continue with the grappling. When we get back we will detach the search module and head for Concorde Five. When you get Alpha Centauri back to Base park it and then meet us around Concorde Five with the tow module ASAP.”

  “Aye Captain.”

  Tom sat down slowly on one of the dust coated anti-grav flight seats and thought carefully. Jimmy and Tumbar, who had been quietly working and minding their own business throughout the conversation, now looked at their Captain. He looked unusually perplexed.

  “Sir, if you don’t mind my asking, but did you say we were headed to Concorde Five to inspect a drifter?” asked Jimmy, the youngest of Tom’s crew.

  “Yes that’s right,” replied Tom after a thoughtful pause.

  “I didn’t know that Concorde Five was along any of the colonisation arcs during any of the Great Pushes.”

  “That’s because it’s not,” replied Tom shaking his head. “The question is; how did it get there?”

  #

  Tumbar guided the search module to dock with Saint Helen, somewhat less carefully than normal. He did not look at his captain when the two ships came together too hard. Even without the harsh flying Tom could tell he was upset by the way his otherwise black cheeks had taken on a deep red glow.

  As Tom unstrapped himself from his anti-grav chair he decided that perhaps he should have waited until they had docked before telling Tumbar that Jimmy was going down to the drifter with him for the security check.

  “Tumbar,” said Tom as he floated up behind him and gripped his shoulder tightly, more for anchorage than anything else. “I know that you and I always do the security check. I know that security is your specialty, but I’m only going to be around for another couple of years before I hit a desk job back at base. Jimmy’s only young and he has to learn the trade properly. He’s a bright kid and he will make a good captain one day, so he has to learn the whole deal.”

  Tumbar’s only response was to exhale deeply.

  “C’mon Tumbar, I’ll make you a deal. You let Jimmy go this time and I’ll let you lead the security check on the next job. If you two go well together we’ll make it permanent.”

  Tumbar turned and smiled.

  “Aye Captain!”

  “Good, now all I have to do is explain to the miners why we docked so hard.”

  Tumbar went red again, but Tom did not see because he was already floating down the tunnel-w
ay to the airlock, where Jimmy was eagerly awaiting him.

  “OK Jimmy, if the seal is good, open her up.”

  Jimmy opened the lock with the excitement of a child opening a Christmas present and they were greeted by a somewhat flustered form on the other side.

  “Listen mate, this thing here is no thousand year old scrap pile you’re docking with! It’s a four year old asteroid scoop that I still have six payments to make on!”

  “Alright calm down. Don’t give yourself a heart attack just give me a report on any damage we have done and I’ll have it paid for.”

  This seemed to diffuse the anger from podgy fellow, but he still seemed very flustered and fidgety.

  “I take it you want to know when we are going to move the ship for you.”

  “That’s right, because if I don’t make this scoop run I’ll not only be out of a job, they’ll repossess my ship!”

  “Damage to your ship I can do, but those types of problems are beyond my control. However, I can assure you that if there are no unforseen problems then we’ll have the ship moved in three days, which is when my lifter arrives.” The podgy man exploded.

  “Three days!”

  “You want to make it longer then keep arguing,” replied Tom calmly. The podgy fellow bit his lip and was silent, all be it with great effort. Tom fought the urge to smile and continued seriously. “Good, now if you will let us onto your ship then I can start my job by having a little talk with you and your crew.”

  #

  “What I want to know first is; why you gentlemen didn’t report the drifter when you did your preliminary scan? It’s a legal requirement you know.”

  “That’s because it wasn’t there then,” replied Carl.

  “You sure you did the scan at all.”

  “Listen mate what sort of miners do you think we are. I don’t want to get killed in an unstable belt,” snapped Guntha rubbing his spiky hair. Tom was silent for a few seconds as he looked over the two miners. They were a bit rough, miners always were, but they looked to be genuine.

  “Fair enough. When did you do the preliminary then?”

  “I don’t know, a couple of months back. Carl?”

  Carl clacked away at his keyboard for a few seconds.

  “Three months twelve days,” he said quietly.

  “Well that leaves only two alternatives then. Either you botched the initial scan...”

  “Not likely!” interrupted Carl.

  “Or the ship wasn’t here three months ago.”

  “What?!” said Guntha.

  “But Captain the ship is a drifter. Are you suggesting that someone flew the ship here on purpose?” asked Jimmy in shock.

  “We will never know unless we get on board will we?”

  “You’re going to try and dock and board that ship so close to an asteroid belt. You’re crazy!” said Guntha in disbelief.

  “There may well be ten thousand lives in danger on that ship so I think it’s worth the risk. I don’t expect you to come down there with us, but I’ll need your help though.”

  “I’m not taking this baby any closer to that ship or that belt until that thing’s gone,” mumbled Guntha stubbornly.

  “You don’t have to. What I want from you is to do a complete orbital scan of the ship from here.”

  “Hey mate this is no Class 1 explorer we don’t have that kind of gear on board,” complained Carl.

  “That’s easily fixed,” said Jimmy eagerly. “If you give me half an hour I can show you how to rig up your asteroid scanner to do what we need.”

  “I like the sound of that,” said Carl with a smile, rubbing his hands together.

  “OK Jimmy, you get to work on the scanner and I will go prepare for the security check, but just remember you have half an hour so keep the shop talk down to a minimum,” said Tom.

  “Aye, aye Captain,” replied Jimmy grudgingly. Sometimes the Captain really knew how to take the fun out of things. Still, he had the security check to look forward to.

  #

  Tom floated in through the inner door of an external airlock and into the interior of the drifter. From outside it had looked to be a standard Gamma 10 bulk coloniser from the 2890’s, but the inside didn’t feel quite right. The lights on the helmet of his security suit crossed with the beam from the torch in his hands to illuminate vague grey shapes in the distance. It was so dark inside that he felt cold. Tom hated security checks almost as much as Tumbar loved them and he now started to regret not letting Tumbar bring Jimmy down himself.

  Tom waited in the darkness until Jimmy had also entered and was floating close beside him. The last thing he wanted to do was lose him on his first time down.

  “OK Jimmy, first we find the floor and then we switch on our mag-boots so we can walk around safely. Go ahead have a go.”

  Within a few minutes Jimmy had found the floor and the two were walking with slow, methodical steps along the ships gantries in search of the flight control room so they could power up the ship. It took them almost an hour of searching in the dark before they finally found it.

  Tom stopped at the internal door to the flight control room and withdrew a small box with an iridescent yellow readout on the face.

  “Before you even open a flight control room you must always run a power scan. What we are looking for with this is any extraneous power sources that are running even when the ship is dead, because that usually means that pirates or looters have gotten here first and left behind booby traps.”

  The scan was negative and they both entered the flight room slowly. Once inside Tom located the ship’s power management computer and hooked up his own small diagnostic computer to test the ship’s systems for any dangerous problems. In a few minutes Tom’s diagnostic completed its check and beeped in approval.

  “Good, the circuitry in this old crate is working so you can fire up the life support and lighting,” said Tom relieved that he wouldn’t be doing this whole job in the dark.

  Soon lights flashed on and the life support system sprang to life with its familiar whirring. Tom waited for his eyes to adjust to the bright lights of the ship and then unhooked his diagnostic from the life support system to take it to the navigational computer.

  “Once I have this thing hooked up we can figure out just how this baby got here. Meanwhile how about you start the viri-scanner and check if there is anything nasty in the air. With any luck it will be clean and we can get rid of these security suits!”

  Jimmy obeyed with a groan, viri-scans were always long and tedious. Tom shook his head slightly, that kid was going to have to toughen up soon. Just as Tom had finished hooking up to the navigational computer his wrist communicator crackled to life with Tumbar’s baritone voice.

  “Yes Tumbar,” he said as he hit the start key on his diagnostic.

  “Sir, it’s not good news,” replied Tumbar grimly.

  “It never usually is when I get messages over the communicator. How bad?”

  “The techie on the mining scoop just finished the orbital scan. The drifter is in a degrading orbit.”

  “Just great,” groaned Tom. “How long do we have?”

  “Not long enough for the lifter to get here. Even if they jump full range and run minimum cool down time on the vortex drives between jumps, they will take 51 hours and the techie assures me the ship has a maximum of 41 hours 26 minutes before it dives into the asteroid belt.”

  “Where it’s certain to get hull breached in the first half hour,” finished Tom. Tom rubbed his chin slowly as he took a few moments to contemplate his options. “Send a message to Bui to get the lifter here as quick as possible then get down here and help me see if we can fire up the engines on this crate.”

  “Aye Captain...there is something else.”

  “What?”

  “The exterior structural probe didn’t pick up any markings on the ship. There are also some non-standard modifications to the ship’s hull.”

  No markings, that was strange. He had no valid exp
lanation for anything they had found so far and with each passing moment he was growing to dislike this mission more and more.

  #

  Tom brought his gloved fist down hard onto the engine control panel. “Damn! What a pain in the ass!” cried Tom. “It’s no good Tumbar, the whole control panel has burnt out!”

  “But I don’t understand Captain, we checked the circuits twice with my diagnostic,” replied Tumbar.

  “I know and we should have unplugged it before we started because I think it’s had it too.”

  Tumbar unscrewed the cover and removed it from the panel to look at the circuitry inside.

  “Hmm, pretty thoroughly burnt out. A little too thoroughly I think.”

  Tom took a look himself.

  “You think it had an anti-tamper device on it?”

  “Have you seen any other signs of someone having been here before us?” asked Tumbar.

  “No, but this whole ship seems a bit strange to me. I haven’t been through even one tenth of this thing yet, but for a Gamma 10 coloniser there is a lot of normal hardware missing and some extra stuff where it shouldn’t be,” replied Tom looking worried. “That will all be irrelevant though unless we can get this powered up. I still have my diagnostic up in the flight control room. I’ll go get the ships specs from it so I can download the proper drive initiation program. You rig everything up here so I can hook up my diagnostic straight to the engine power regulators.”

  #

  Tom stared at his diagnostic computer in silence.

  “Jimmy where are you?” There was a moment’s silence. “Jimmy!”

  “Aye Captain. Sorry about that, I’m in the lower decks. You must have a sixth sense Captain because I was just about to call in.”

  “You found something?” asked Tom impatiently.

  “Aye Captain. I’ve been wandering through this ship with the viri-scanner for about four hours and I haven’t picked up a single pathogen, but I did locate the passengers and...”

  Tom interrupted.

  “Just make sure you’re walking while you’re talking because I want you up here in the flight control room pronto. The whole flight system is classified and coded so I need you to hack into it.”