Victim of Circumstance (The Time Stone Trilogy Book 3)

by Robert F Hays

  “Ida,” Colin said. “What did you give Jaol?”

  “Draconimol,” Ida sighed.

  “Damn,” Colin said. “Keep fingers crossed.”

  “Looks like we’ll spend weeks in decontamination,” Ken said. “Just one strand of that virus gets to Pellan and the whole planet’ll go blind.”

  “No,” Ida said. “Only a day. The draconimol is keeping our insides clear. It’s our skin and cloths that’d have to be decontaminated. Looks like we’ll have to enter the ship picking us up naked and straight into a decon bath for a few hours.”

  “And our shuttle?” Ken said.

  “They’ll probably incinerate that in orbit.”

  “What’s an Alpha, November?” Yuri asked.

  “Alpha,” Ida said. “It only affects humans. November means it can live outside the body for up to a week. To catch it, all you have to do is walk into a room where an infected person has been and take a deep breath.”

  “Ouch,” Ken said.

  “One good thing,” Ida said. “We know draconimol works, we’re not blind.”

  “Are we immune?” Ken said.

  “No. Antivirals just temporarily clear the blood of the virus. For the body to protect itself, it takes other means.”

  Colin turned and noticed Malia staring at the device in his hand.

  “Is there a little man in that?” Malia said.

  “No, it’s uh… it’s a… The man isn’t here, he’s a long way away.”

  “How does his voice get here?”

  “Well, it’s uh… it’s a…”

  “Ok Col,” Yuri said. “I’d like to hear you explain that. And using the term magic is cheating.”

  “It’s magic?” Malia said.

  “No it isn’t. Yuri’s just making a joke. Would you be satisfied if I told you it was just science?”

  Malia reluctantly nodded.

  “Malia,” Ida said. “May I take a drop of your blood? What you have in your body may cure your people.”

  “You’re going to cut me?”

  “No, you won’t even feel it.” Ida took a device from her medical bag and put it against Malia’s arm. A second later she pulled it away. “Done,” she said. “Later we’ll have to take bone marrow and lymph node samples, but that’ll have to wait until we get her to the scout ship.”

  Colin grasped Ida by the shoulder. “Looks like you’re getting dumped on with all the work,” he said. “We should’ve brought two medical specialists. Yuri’s ecology and cartography and Ken’s a small arms and explosives technician. We can’t help.”

  Ida shrugged. “It gives me experience,” she said. “I want to go to medical school.”

  Colin turned to Malia. “Go home,” he said, “and don’t mention this to anyone.”

  “I won’t,” Malia replied.

  Chapter 8

  Jim’s body half floated in the warm water of the Lydia’s hot tub. He turned slightly to watch the stars through the large window of the small room at the rear of the recreation deck. From high Earth orbit, clouds of bright specks filled the window. The delicate, therapeutic vibrations in the water lulled him into a reflective mood as he tried to make sense of the star patterns.

  “Computer, atmosphere simulation filter.”

  The transparent wall darkened slightly and most of the bright points of light disappeared. Jim finally connected the dots and recognized the Big Dipper. The stars viewed from Casia had also been correlated into their various patterns and given the names of Earth constellations, but, there was always a difference, a star missing or out of place.

  Jim reached for a glass of ice water and smiled to himself. The sudden desire to cool his insides seemed paradoxical. He floated only meters away from the outside environment, which would almost instantly freeze his entire, naked body.

  “V Phone call from Batalavia,” the computer announced. “Caller, Amy Harrington.”

  “Put her through,” Jim said. “Voice only.”

  “Connecting.”

  “Amy,” Jim said with a grin as he greeted his business manager. “Excuse no picture; I’m naked and in the hot tub.”

  “No problem,” Amy said. “I just called to see what you could do to bypass those idiot wartime agencies the government just created. We have three space freighters ready to leave Ploschard and they are tied up in red tape.”

  Jim grimaced. “What red tape this time?”

  “It’s the cargo. No one told us about the new regulations before we loaded. They all have beer on board from your brewery, so it comes under the luxuries committee. They have raspberries, so it comes under the secondary staples committee and they have turnips so it also comes under the primary staples committee. All the rationing control agencies involved want them distributed to different planets. To make matters worse, the ships are classified as part of the reserve fleet, so the Commonwealth Defense Reserve wants control over where they go.”

  “Oh ffffish,” Jim said while slapping the water. “I voted against dividing the agencies at the last Commonwealth Council meeting. Got shouted down by a bunch of idiots. They claimed that it needed specialists in each field to handle the stuff. Nothing I can do Amy.”

  “Well it looks like they’ll just have to stay in orbit. We can not unload. Planetary Defense will not give us a corridor. The ships are in the outgoing geostationary orbital sector.”

  “What about moving them to the incoming sector, unload, then move them to the outgoing, rearrange the cargo and load them again?”

  “I suggested that, but planetary orbits are now under Commonwealth Civil Defense, due to the war time powers act, and they’ll not give me a movement permit. They say that it’s the responsibility of Planetary Defense as it’s a loading, unloading operation and not an interplanetary movement. From the planet’s surface to the ships is under one authority, but moving the ships themselves while in orbit is under another. What complicates that is the fact that the head of Planetary Defense is Spanish, and the local sector head of Commonwealth Defense is Basque; they hate each other.”

  “So, the trucks are in the loading bay, and, due to bureaucratic bullshit, can’t be moved to the unloading bay.”

  “Ah, I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but it seems you have the picture.”

  “What about just pulling the stuff out of the ships and swapping things around in orbit.”

  “Can not do that. For a start, the beer cans would freeze and explode in open space, and the vegetable containers would rupture due to the pressure difference. If we did that, then there would be clouds of frozen beer droplets mixed with turnips and raspberries floating around in orbit, a total gourmet delight.”

  “Ah,” Jim said, shaking his head and slapping the water again. “What about sending the ships to all the planets they have to go to and unloading a partial cargo at each.”

  “Negative, the fuel and energies committee will not authorize that long a transit for a cargo ship. There’s only one way of doing it, but I need your authorization.”

  “You got it; just don’t tell me what it is. I don’t want to know.”

  “I thought you’d want to know. It’s rather clever, Jenny Hamsen thought of it.”

  “Ok, ok, what is it?”

  “Well, we take on extra cargo for the outpost on Hellas, one of the planet’s moons. Then take on cargo at the moon outpost bound for the planet. That way we’ll get to the incoming sector, unload there, then move to outgoing to load again after the cargo’s rearranged.”

  “More cargo?” Jim said in surprise. “I thought the ships were all full.”

  “The cargo is not that large. I have a friend on Hellas that wants a pizza. There are no pizza places at the outpost. Two of his friends also want pizzas, and, as they’re ordering separately, it’ll take three carriers. That way we can get authorization from the Commonwealth as we are carrying cargo for that moon. Cargo going from a planet to one of its own moons is not under the Commonwealth rationing committees; it’s under the planet
ary councils. The one on Ploschard is so screwed up they would not know, or care, what we’re carrying.”

  “Just a second, the ship is under one authority, and the cargo is under another from a different government?”

  “Correct.”

  “And the cargo for the return trip?”

  “The empty pizza containers are reusable, and, by the conservation laws, they have to be returned to the store.”

  “But won’t they get bent out of shape about the size of the cargo?”

  “They’re all bureaucratic database jockeys. All they’ll see is the serial numbers on the sales documents. They won’t even look at the price, weight or size.”

  Jim exhaled heavily then sank up to his neck in the hot tub. “How can you unload the whole cargo when you have paperwork for only one small pizza box?”

  “Simple, the customers just sold us back the cargo and will buy it again once it’s on the planet’s surface. We can baffle the different rationing committees by...”

  “Do it, do it,” Jim said. “It’s stupid, but just do it.”

  “Will do,” Amy replied.

  “Just between you and me, if I was ruler of the galaxy, I would actually create a new department. The counter bullshit department. It would be the most powerful department in the government. If they caught anyone indulging in government bullshit like this they would have authorization for immediate executions, and very painful ones at that.”

  Jim heard Amy laugh.

  “Good luck with that one, I’d vote for it. Is there anything else?”

  “Nope.”

  “End transmission.”

  Jim returned his attention to the stars. “Thought this future shit would be more efficient,” he said. “Same old shit, different time.”

  Jim’s mind reminisced on a sequence of events that had befallen a friend of his on Earth two thousand years before. The man had left the army and joined a security company as well as the National Guard in California. For the security job, he needed his fingerprints registered with the Justice Department. He was then trained as an armed security officer, for that, his fingerprints had to be registered with the state. Fed up with the low pay, he quit and became a taxi driver, where he had to register his fingerprints with the city police. To conduct his business at the airport, which was outside the city and in the county, he had to register fingerprints with the Sheriff’s office.

  One would think that the fingerprints necessary for military service, registered with the army, the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the National Guard would suffice. It didn’t. Neither did the ones taken in Florida during his one drunk driving offence.

  The Commonwealth government was drowning in a bureaucratic mess. Each small part demanded its own rights and freedoms to act as it saw fit, and to hell with the rest. A heightened ethnic sensitivity and a growing fraternity of incompetence further complicated things.

  Jim considered many of the political and bureaucratic groups as moronocracys. Morons had gained power, and to keep their jobs, stepped on any competent person climbing the ladder before they gained sufficient power to expose them for their own ineptitude.

  If Jim did take power, he knew that there would be tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of fat bureaucrats looking for other employment.

  “Ship approaching,” the Lydia’s Captain said over the communications system.

  “Who are they, Captain?”

  “Don’t know, no registry beacon. Could be military. They are thirty five thousand kilometers away and closing fast.”

  “You didn’t see them before now?”

  “They must have come out of parallel space on the other side of Earth...”

  The Captain was interrupted by a violent thump. The deck moved and Jim was flung against the side of the hot tub. A great wave of water splashed out and toward a bulkhead. After striking the wall in a swirling shower of spray it didn’t return to the deck. It flowed in streams and globs up the wall and splashed against the ceiling, breaking up into numerous, amorphous blobs of varying sizes.

  Jim floated from the tub, flailing arms and legs occasionally striking the traveling bodies of water. Due to the shock, it took him some moments to realize that the artificial gravity no longer functioned.

  “Shit!”

  The subdued lighting that illuminated the hot tub room was no longer on. By the light of the stars Jim frantically grabbed for the upper edge of the tub.

  “Hell!” Jim gasped as he inhaled a blob of water then broke into an uncontrolled fit of coughing. He brushed at the growing swarm of water droplets around his face, but every time he pushed some away more took their place.

  As he inhaled more of the water, he felt a wave of panic; a distinct fear of drowning gripped him.

  His foot touched a wet and slippery bulkhead, so he instantly kicked off, launching himself toward the door to the recreation room. In the dim starlight he ripped off the cover to the emergency door controls and pushed on the lever inside. The door slowly slid open as he floated away from the opening, propelled by the action of pushing at the lever.

  “Shit!” he said again, looking around for a solid object within reach. None was available as he was close to the center of the room.

  The cloud of water globs was now dissipating as they slowly connected with then coated the bulkheads, but they were still a hazard to breathing. Jim carefully breathed in pants through pursed lips; either swallowing any that entered his mouth or blew them away before they did.

  He was slowly drifting toward the rear bulkhead. He debated whether to wait until he made contact and push off again or try air swimming toward the door. The latter was a slow and arduous task that involved pulling at handfuls of air to propel himself. It usually produced very little result so he decided to combine the two options and started to swim backward toward the bulkhead.

  After a minute, his feet again connected with the wall. A spray of water floated forward with him as he kicked off. On reaching the door, he grabbed hold both sides and aimed himself toward the stairwell leading to the lower decks and the cabins. His concern was for his wife and daughter below.

  As he launched himself, he instantly raised a hand to brush aside a floating basketball just the other side of the door. In the dim light he could see several towels likewise floating nearby. He didn’t care that he was still naked and wet; his prime concern was his family.

  “Halt right there!” a voice called in a non-English accent.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Jim replied as he continued toward the stairs.

  “Halt!” called a second voice to his right.

  Jim lost his temper. “If you want me to halt, dick head, then you have to halt me! Without gravity, I’ve got no control over the halt function right now!”

  The ship’s interior lighting suddenly returned and Jim arced toward the deck. He felt his weight again as he knelt and looked over his shoulder, attracted by the sound of rushing water. A wave rushed out of the hot tub room and across the recreation room’s deck.

  He looked around him and noted the ripples in the familiar scene. They were Ranger suits and he counted three. There were probably more that he couldn’t detect.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “You, and everyone aboard, are quite safe Mr. Young,” announced an authoritative female voice to his right.

  “That’s not what I asked!” Jim yelled. “I said, who the fuck are you? What didn’t you understand, the word who, the word fuck or the word you.”

  “We are friends, Mr. Young,” the voice said.

  “Hey,” Jim said while slowly raising himself to his feet. “A friend doesn’t turn a guy’s gravity off while he’s in the hot tub! And standing around talking when I can’t see you ain’t too friendly either!”

  Moments later, eight suited figures suddenly sprang into view spread out around the recreation room deck.

  “And my robe would be handy,” Jim said pointing to where it had fallen when the gravity returned. “I’m not used to
being in a crowd of ‘friends’ when I’m naked.”

  The closest figure picked up the robe and walked toward Jim holding it out.

  “And my family?” Jim said, reaching for the robe and putting it on. “Before another friendly word’s spoken I want to be assured that they are ok.”

  “I’m fine dad,” said Suzanne over the ships communication system. One at a time, all except Peter, reported their status.

  “One missing?” asked the female to Jim’s right.

  “No,” Jim stated firmly.

  “You paused as if you were waiting for one more voice over the system.”

  “Must have miscounted,” Jim said, trying to cover up his error. “So, what’s this all about?”

  The female took a pace forward. “We have to account for everyone first,” she said. “Three of my people are un-accounted for as well.”

  “Look,” Jim said. “I don’t care how many of your idiot troops got lost. I want the rest of you off my ship as well.”

  The woman removed the cowl of her Ranger suit to reveal a handsome, dark skinned face with long black hair. The thing that Jim found curious was the broad smile.

  The woman pressed a finger to her ear. She was obviously listening to a communications device. “I have found my three missing troops,” she said as she walked forward and stood directly in front of Jim. “I can assure your friend, the one you did not hear from, that you are all quite safe. He will not find it necessary to slowly dismember my troops so that we can all hear their screams over our communication system. He is quite bloodthirsty. I did not know that you had friends like him.”

  “Once again,” Jim said slowly. “Who are you?”

  “Colonel Nazari, commander of the fifty third squadron, Tahan Home Guard. Does that answer your question?”

  Jim let go an uncontrollable laugh. “The Arab league, attacking me here, in orbit around Earth. Your own people will tear you to pieces for such an act. Earth’s orbit is sacred. They tolerate only archeologists here...”

  “No,” Nazari said, still displaying a smile. “If you do not say anything, we will keep quiet. We are going to let you go anyway.”