The Jovian Run: Sol Space Book One

by James Wilks

  The blue eyes flashed up at her, the brows raised. “Then why did you hire them?”

  “I was in a rush, and Don pushed for them.”

  “Ah, Templeton. Still the softie. I know you like to keep someone on your right hand who actually likes people more than books, Clea, but don’t you think you would be better off with someone who displayed some guile? Some subtlety?”

  “I’ve had enough of guile. If I wanted to be surrounded by backstabbing vipers, I would have stayed at my old job. Don is a friend, and even better, what you see is what you get with him.” She felt herself blush a little bit as she defended her first mate.

  Jordan seemed unfazed by her response. “Suit yourself.” She took a sip of her water, and Staples drank several swallows of her beer, which was not nearly as cold as she would have liked. “So anyway, you and Don hired these new crew members, you don’t like them, and you want me to look into them. That should be easy enough.”

  Staples pushed the envelope over to her friend. “Harrison Quinn and Dean Parsells. They were friends before the hire, came as a pair, and apparently they were security guards at a prison up until two months ago. Their résumés are in the envelope along with pictures and background check information. Their references are good and their records are clear.”

  Jordan nearly spoke over her last word. “But you don’t like them. So fire them. What did you hire them for?”

  “Security.”

  “So fire them. Clea, there are plenty of security personnel on Mars hungry for work.” She sat back and smiled a bit. “I could even recommend a few.”

  Staples smiled a bit nervously in response. “I don’t think I want to hire anyone who has worked with you.”

  Her interlocutor feigned righteous indignation. “Why Clea Staples! Are you implying that I keep unsavory company? I’ll remind you who I am sitting across from at the moment.”

  “No offense,” Staples responded, not quite sure whether the woman was genuinely offended under her somewhat comic veneer. “Most of the people you’ve introduced me to have frightened me.”

  The woman’s response was a thin-lipped grin. “I always thought you were smart, Clea. But you still haven’t answered the question. Why not just fire them?”

  Staples leaned forward, her chin jutting out a bit. “Because they haven’t done anything wrong. Because I can hardly hire them on Earth and fire them on Mars. Because I could be wrong, and I don’t want to fire good men just because they rub me the wrong way.”

  Jordan sighed through her small nose. “Oh Clea. That need to do the right thing is going to get you in trouble one of these days. Again.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Anyway, please look into it. We’re leaving in two days.”

  “It’s unlikely I can turn anything up by then. If I can’t, I’ll just transmit the report to you once you’re en route. Along with my bill, of course.”

  Staples drained the last few sips of her beer. “I’d appreciate that.”

  “Grand. Anything else?”

  “Yes, actually. Have you ever found a paper bag with one hundred thousand dollars on the sidewalk in front of you?”

  Jordan considered for a minute, as if perhaps the situation had come up a time or two. “I can’t say that I have. One does live in hope, however.”

  “Neither have I. There’s a serial number off a satellite on a slip of paper in there. See what you can find out about it?”

  “As you wish. If there’s nothing else, I need to get going. I have an appointment with a man I am dying to meet, and I don’t want to be late.”

  “No, that’s all. Thank you, Jordan.” She made herself say the name.

  As she left the bar alone, Staples suppressed a shudder, wondering what sorry man had made himself deserving of the attentions of the woman now known as Jordan Fecks.

  In another bar in an entirely different part of Tranquility, a small man sat by himself. He was young, scarcely into his third decade, and he had greasy dark hair that fell uncombed and unkempt around his face. Several years of personal neglect and the low Martian gravity had left him thin and under-muscled, and though his appearance was disheveled, his eyes were sharp and bright. He wore a long black duster over his everyday street clothes, and he slouched in the dimmest corner of the darkest bar he could find. This establishment, The Redbar, was not far from Beeftown, and no small part of its profits came from the sale of things that were not on the menu. However, the man was interested in the bar for its seclusion, not its illegal drug selection. There was no mid-afternoon rush, and people did not come here to eat.

  The man produced his surface, logged into a secure server using a password, thumb print, and retinal scan, and began to type.

  Received your last update. Gringolet has arrived a day later than expected. It is set to depart in two days. Read over files of crew you provided. Tried contacting crew member you specified. Success. Crew member will meet me here at Redbar. Price is still to be negotiated, but if money is good, subject has agreed to our terms. I have the virus drive to give the subject as well as the ampoule if necessary. Wish me luck.

  Once the message was sent, the man slouched down again to wait. He ordered another soda to be polite and, he hoped, to avoid attracting attention. The soda came, and he took a sip. He thought about passing the time by watching a broadcast on his surface, but then decided against it; it might look as if he wasn’t serious about the negotiation. He fidgeted nervously. A shadow fell across him, and he looked up, smiling to see exactly whom he had hoped to see.

  Chapter 6

  Martian days were just over twenty-four hours and thirty minutes long, though the years were nearly twice the length as Earth’s. Communication and commerce were so regular between the burgeoning cities and Earth that the Martian citizens had decided to keep Earth hours, lest scheduling, and especially calendar reconciliation, become a problem. From the perspective of Martian residents and visitors, day was the hours when stores were open and people worked, and night was when partying, clandestine meetings, and sleep occurred. They had decided on Greenwich Mean Time, and sometimes this matched up to the actual cycle of light and dark on their smaller red world and sometimes it did not. For most inhabitants, it did not matter. The vast majority of people lived, worked, slept, ate, and died in metal housing with a few windows. No one stood in the sun of the Martian noon without an EVA suit on.

  Captain Staples and her first mate stood side by side at the entrance to the tubeway that led to their ship. The digital clocks placed at regular intervals over the stretch of the concourse indicated that it was nearly seventeen hundred hours. Their passengers, the two computer engineers who had been hired and paid considerable amounts of money to move out to a mining station orbiting Saturn, were due at five for a tour of the ship. Staples and Templeton both wore their flight jackets and slacks. The crew had no uniforms per se, but they had matching jackets, and it was unofficial ship policy to wear them when meeting potential clients, passengers, and the like. Staples’ blonde hair was parted on the left, and it hung to her chin, covering a bit of her right cheek. Templeton’s graying dirty blonde hair was mostly tucked under a cap with a bill, which made him look a bit older than his fifty-four years.

  “Do you know what they look like?” Templeton asked.

  “No I do not,” Staples replied without looking at him. Her brown eyes scanned the crowds moving back and forth, alighting briefly on any group of two if it consisted of a man and a woman, and finally relinquishing her expectations the pair when said couple walked by them without a glance. “If they’re late, they’re late.”

  Seventeen came and went. At five minutes past the hour, Staples spied a likely pair. The man was large, about two meters tall, and looked to be in his mid-thirties. The short brown hair on his head became shorter as it approached his ears and neck. He had a strong, broad nose, blue eyes, and a wide cleft chin. A fairly traditional light grey suit and blue tie covered what was evidently a robust physique. He would have been an intimida
ting specimen had he not carried himself with a light positivity, perhaps due to the Martian gravity, that made him seem to be in a very good mood. Next to him walked a shorter woman, perhaps in her early thirties and only a few centimeters taller than Staples, with long red hair that flowed past her shoulders. Her eyes were a rich brown, and her heart-shaped face was accented by a smattering of freckles that climbed from one cheek to the other via her nose. Her lips were full and sumptuous, and her body was lithe and appealing in a light maroon chemise sweater and black business slacks. The man was good-looking, but the woman was gorgeous.

  As they weaved through the crowd, it became evident by their behavior that they were looking for a particular docking tubeway. Staples looked over at Templeton and saw that his mouth was hanging slightly open. She nudged him lightly with her elbow, and he shook his head and clamped his jaw shut. Finally, they approached, each wearing a welcoming smile. Staples did her best to return it; it did not always come as easily to her as it did to her friend.

  Templeton was the first to speak. He held out his hand to the man, grinning broadly. “I’m Donovan Templeton. I’m first mate on Gringolet. You must be Doctor Henry Bauer.”

  The tall man shook his hand with some enthusiasm and said, “Henry, please. Herc, actually.”

  “Herc. Don.” He turned his attention, not reluctantly, to the woman. “Don,” he said again, extending his hand to her.

  “Evelyn,” she replied in a slightly deeper voice than Staples had expected.

  “This,” Don said with obvious pride, turning to his employer, “is Captain Clea Staples. Gringolet,” he gestured back to the tubeway and the ship beyond, “is hers.”

  “I’m very glad to meet both of you.” She shook hands with the pair of them, noting the way the man’s hand dwarfed hers and the woman’s was soft and uncallused. Staples suddenly felt a bit like a frumpy country bumpkin in her flight clothes next to the well-educated woman in front of her. A brief pause helped her restore her composure, and she continued. “It’s my pleasure to show you around my ship today. Though you won’t be awake for it, you’ll be spending three weeks on him, and I insist on all stasis passengers getting a tour.”

  “Him?” Evelyn asked. “Aren’t ships traditionally female?”

  “Aren’t captains traditionally male?” Staples countered in what she hoped was a friendly tone.

  The woman laughed briefly, a charming and husky affair. “True, true. If I had a ship, I’d want him to be a boy as well.” She raised her eyebrows as she said it, and Staples actually found herself thinking that the woman’s smile was sexy.

  “Well I’ve been excited for this all week,” Herc Bauer cut in. “I love spaceships. If I hadn’t gotten into computers, I think I might have liked to be a pilot. Is the pilot on board?”

  Templeton answered. “Yup. You can meet her if you like, though she’s a trifle shy. We got a few crew members on board, but most are out enjoying the city. There’s a long trip ahead of us, and we don’t get to sleep through it.” He spoke with a twinge of good-natured jealousy.

  “‘Scuse us!” A voice sounded from behind the crew members, and they looked behind them. Parsells and Quinn were wheeling a flatbed cart burdened with a large item covered in a tarp down the tubeway and out into the concourse. Parsells was guiding from the front, and Quinn was pushing from the rear.

  “Fellas!” Templeton nearly yelled, his agitation showing. “I said that we’d take that over later.”

  The two men stopped, and the cart squeaked to a halt. “You said at seventeen,” Parsells objected.

  Templeton tried to keep his voice diplomatic for the sake of appearances. “I said we had an appointment at seventeen, and that we’d take it over after that.”

  Parsells looked petulant, perhaps even hurt. Quinn’s face was expressionless. “You want us to take it back?”

  Templeton looked at their two guests. Herc was politely attempting to look elsewhere while they conducted ship business, but Evelyn looked on, seemingly rapt. He looked over at Staples.

  She made the decision. “No, it’s fine. Don, why don’t you go with them. Take it now, that way it’s done. I can certainly handle the tour.” In truth, she was a bit nervous about talking with two strangers on her ship, but that was no reason to make things more difficult than they had to be.

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely.” They all stood aside as Parsells and Quinn manhandled the cart through the tubeway and into the main hall. The captain indicated the now-vacant metal tube that led to her ship, and said, “Shall we, doctors?”

  “This is Reactor Control,” the captain said as they walked into the room that overlooked the nuclear reactor nestled in the back of the ship. “We call it the ReC for short.” The room was currently empty, and Staples and her two attendees crossed the room to the control panels on the wall. Bauer leaned over the controls and looked down through the angled windows onto the reactor. The large engine which drove the ship and supplied power took up the majority of the room below, stretching five meters across, four deep, and over three high.

  “Nuclear power, huh? Fusion?”

  “So they tell me,” Staples replied. “I’m not the expert. I’m sorry that Dinah couldn’t be here, but she and much of the crew are off ship on shore leave. She’s our resident engineer,” she looked down into the reactor room herself, then added, “and tactical officer. I’m actually less sure of what she can’t do. She could tell you about this reactor all day.”

  “I’d like that,” Herc replied with some enthusiasm, his eyes pouring over the reactor. “I wish we could wait to go into stasis until a few days into the journey.”

  “I’ve no doubt that our crew could show you a good time around the ship, but I’m afraid we just aren’t qualified to handle the procedure of putting people under and waking them up. We actually don’t have any stasis tubes of our own on the ship.” She stepped away from the window and looked at the pair. Evelyn was standing near the door regarding her with some trepidation. “Don’t worry,” she tried to reassure her, “we’ve got lots of experience transporting them. We’ve got a cargo bay that’s been specifically set up to house them. Think of it like this: we’ve got a safe car with a well-made back seat… we just don’t own any infant car seats ourselves.” Evelyn’s look of ease returned, and her concerns seemed somewhat assuaged.

  Herc either hadn’t been concerned or had been so intent on the nuclear engine that he hadn’t noticed the shift in topic at all. “I’m surprised you don’t have holographic controls here.” He was looking at the control panel. “This ship is only, what… thirty years old?”

  Staples nodded. “About that. I did get him used. There were actually holographic controls in here when I bought the ship, but Dinah removed them when she came onboard.” Herc looked at her quizzically. “Dinah has…” she paused, searching for the right words, “been on ships for a long time, and in some delicate, even dangerous situations. She’s a big proponent of Murphy’s Law: if something can go wrong, it probably will. With machinery, that translates to: the more complex it is, the more things that can go wrong with it. Holographics don’t work if the power’s on the fritz, but switches, buttons, and knobs? Analog has its advantages. There are surfaces, of course,” she gestured with an open palm to the blank black screens set into the control panels, “but when you’re in space, redundancy and safety are the name of the game.”

  Herc nodded, seeming to understand. “It’s like this reactor.” He said. “Nuclear power is over a hundred and fifty years old, but it still works, and we’ve nearly perfected it at this point. Cars used some form of the combustion engine for nearly that long. Sure, we refined it over the years, but at the end of day, it’s still a combustion engine. If it ain’t broke…” He let the platitude trail off.

  Staples laughed. “You sound like my first mate.”

  “Don. Seemed like a good man. Honest. I can see why you’d want someone like that working with you.”

  “He is,” Sta
ples ruminated as she spoke, staring at nothing. “He is a good man. I’m lucky to have him.”

  “Well, we’ve just met,” the other woman interjected, “but I think he admires you a lot. It might not be luck. You might deserve him.” There was a hint of provocation in her voice, but also the warmth of a well-intended compliment.

  The captain demurred. “I can only…” she broke off as Evelyn’s eyes fluttered up in her head and her knees seemed to grow weak. She stumbled a step to the side, putting her hand against the wall, and it looked as though she would collapse to the ground. Bauer rushed forward and did his best to catch her and support her head at the same time. Unsure of how to help, Staples looked on anxiously.

  “Are you all right?” she asked instinctively, though it was obvious that the woman was not. The large man had no problem holding her up, but her head was lolling to the side, and her eyelids were fluttering fiercely. Staples moved forward to help Herc support her on the other side, pinging her watch as she did so. “Doctor, are you aboard?” she spoke into the device on her wrist, then said, “Should we lay her down?” She looked with some concern at the cold metallic floor.

  “I am here, Captain.” Jabir Iqbal’s accented voice emanated from the captain’s watch as she placed one of Evelyn’s arms around her shoulders. The woman’s eyes were beginning to open, and they could feel strength returning to her limbs.

  “We need you in ReC. One of our guests has fainted,” she said after awkwardly tapping her watch again.

  Just as his reply, “I’ll be right there,” came, Evelyn murmured, “No, I’m all right.” She was finding her balance again, placing her feet flatly on the floor and taking her own weight. Staples and Herc slowly released her, but he kept his hands out, prepared to steady or catch her if necessary.

  She blinked in the light and looked at both of them. “I’m all right, really. I just got dizzy for a moment. Please tell the doctor I’m alright. He doesn’t need to come.”