Aces

by Alanson, Craig

  Captain Schroeder was in his office adjacent to the bridge, playing chess against the ship’s Artificial Intellgence computer. There was, of course, no possibility that he could win, what Hans wanted was to see at what dumbed-down setting of the AI he had a chance. He was contemplating his next move, trying to determine not only what to do, but how the AI would respond. A mug of tea sat next to the chessboard, he picked it up and sipped it. Tea was a habit he had picked up while serving under a British captain, early in his career. Such a civilized habit, Hans thought. In the midafternoon, a hot cup of tea, a light snack. Same time every afternoon. It was orderly, predictable. Hans liked predictable, it made his job so much easier. Then the intercom beeped. “Captain, we’re picking up a distress call.”

  Schroeder didn’t look up from the chess board. “Yes, Ms. Olivetti. From where?” There were no registered starships in the area, he had checked the navigation logs only an hour ago. Military vessels, of course, didn’t show on the registry. Could it be a warship in trouble? That would be interesting.

  “Mining colony, Sir. On Ares.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Schroeder paused the chess game, and walked through the door to the bridge. Seth was at the navigation station, with Gina Olivetti monitoring communications. “Ares?”

  Gina nodded. “Beta Leonis III, it’s about the size of Earth, but the atmosphere is thin like Mars, and it’s covered with red oxide dust. No indigenous life.”

  “I’m familiar with that world, Ms. Olivetti, I didn’t realize there was a colony there.” Schroeder vaguely remembered swinging by that world, years ago when he had been a mere ensign in the Navy. “What are they mining?”

  Gina checked the data screen. “It doesn’t say, Captain. Should I ask them?”

  Schroeder shook his head curtly. “No. I don’t actually care what they’re digging out of the ground. Play the message.”

  “The signal is weak, Sir, here it is.” It came across the hyperwave faint and distorted, with bursts of static. “This is the mining concession on Ares, calling all ships in the area. We have suffered an accident, we’ve lost primary life support. The remaining oxygen will last us only another two days, uh, fifty hours maximum. Please help us. Repeat, this is-“ Gina cut off the speaker.

  “Fifty hours is their entire oxygen supply, including reserves? That is inexcusably bad planning.” Schroeder scratched his beard. “Have any ships responded yet?” Diverting a big, lumbering freighter like the Ace was impractical. Surely the military had ships somewhere close by. Or not? This area of the Orion Arm of the galaxy was the boondocks.

  “Not yet, Sir.”

  “Mister Putri?” He asked the ship’s navigator.

  “They’re in luck, because we’re close, Captain, our present course takes us within a lightyear.” Seth consulted his navigation computer. “If we diverted, we could be there in, let’s see… add time to swing into a low orbit, say another four hours for the shuttle to line up an approach and drop to the surface… uh, we could have a rescue team on the surface in thirty two hours. That’s cutting it close.”

  “We don’t have a rescue team, Mister Putri.” Schroeder chided gently. “This is a freighter. And someone will have to pay for the fuel the shuttle uses, and the discounts the company will have to pay to our customers if our deliveries are delayed. Diverting this ship is no small matter.” Despite his bluster, Schroeder knew that interstellar law, and his moral responsibility as a ship captain, would require him to respond to the miners’ need, if the Ace was the only ship that could get there in time.

  “Ms. Olivetti, open a channel to Ares, I want to speak to-“

  But Gina held up her right hand, and pressed the earpiece to her left ear with her other hand. “One moment, Captain, priority message coming in for us.” After a few seconds, she explained. “It’s military.”

  Schroeder straightened his uniform jacket and stood to face the communications station. “Let’s see it.”

  The screen in front of Gina displayed first the symbol of the Colonial Protective Forces, otherwise known as the Navy, gold on a blue background, then the symbol was replaced by a woman wearing the white uniform of the Navy, with four gold stripes, and a silver eagle designating her rank as a Captain in the service. She had short, dark hair and piercing dark eyes, and spoke with a lilting accent from the Indian subcontinent. “This is Captain Gante of the Colonial frigate Tigershark, calling the Universal Transport vessel Atlas Challenger. Respond, please.”

  “What’s the time lag for the transmission?” Schroeder asked.

  Gina checked the time code embedded in the message. “Seven minutes, Sir. They’re nowhere near Ares.”

  Schroeder nodded curtly. He had been hoping Tigershark’s message would be that the frigate was responding to the distress call, and Atlas Challenger could continue on its way. Now it seemed possible the Ace would have to rescue the miners. He pressed the transmit button. “Tigershark, this is Captain Schroeder of the Atlas Challenger, we are standing by to render assistance as needed.” He sighed. “Mister Putri, there's no sense waiting for official word from the Navy; plot a course to put us in a parking orbit around Ares with all possible speed, and engage when you are ready.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Having a conversation with a seven minute time lag was awkward, but Captains Gante and Schroeder managed to communicate that Tigershark was busy with its own rescue mission, and so the Navy would greatly appreciate it if Ace would help the miners on Ares, until a real rescue ship could arrive. ‘Greatly appreciate’ was a polite way of the Navy giving a direct order to a commercial vessel, an order Schroeder was bound by law to obey. By the time Gante signed off, the Ace had altered course for Ares, and increased speed as much as the awkward, lumbering ship could.

  With that settled, Schroeder turned to the next issue. “Open a channel to Ares, let’s put their minds at ease. Ready? This is the Universal Transport ship Atlas Challenger, we are responding to your distress call, estimated time of arrival for our shuttle on the surface is thirty two hours. Do you have people injured? Over.”

  Although Ares was much closer than the Navy frigate, there was still an annoying time lag for the hyperwave signal. The reply came back audio only, and the sound quality was poor. “Atlas Challenger, thank God you are here! We were afraid we were all alone out here. No injuries, just a lot of people needing oxygen.”

  Schroeder shook his head. He clicked the mute button and said aloud to himself and the bridge crew “Who is in charge of this mining outfit? They sound like complete amateurs.” He toggled the switch back from mute to transmit and replied “How many people do you have there, Ares?” Schroeder was thinking of the limited passenger capacity of his single shuttle. While the landing vehicle was large for carrying cargo, it didn’t have many seats.

  “Twen-“ There was a burst of static. “-even people. All gathered here at our primary site.”

  “Did you say twenty seven, Ares, we missed part of your transmission.”

  “Twenty seven, correct, repeat, two seven. We’re run-“ there was another burst of static “limited backup power. The hyperwave takes a lot of power.”

  “Understood, Ares, you can shut down your hyperwave to conserve power. We will contact you every six hours on the hour. Over.”

  “Every six hours, acknowledged. Thank you. Ares out.”

  “Good luck to you until we arrive. Atlas Challenger out.”

  Schroeder rubbed his temples. There were extra people on the bridge, more than needed to cover the duty stations, people had filed in when the ship had changed course. Everyone aboard was excited and wondering what was going on. A rescue mission? It was the first in the almost thirty year history of the ship, and the first for anyone aboard, possibly the first in the history of the company. Schroeder cleared his throat. Anything out of the ordinary aboard the freighter was an occasion for excitement. The whole point of Universal Transport’s service was not that their ships were fast, but that they were as regular
as clockwork, as dependable as a sunrise. The Ace-series ships lumbered slowly from star to star, regularly, predictably Now Atlas Challenger was probably going to be delayed arriving at Valhalla, which would cause a cascade effect of making subsequent stops late. The crew knew this was a very big deal. In addition, of course, to being majorly cool. A rescue? A freighter on a rescue mission? This was sure to make the news. For many of the crew, it was the first even vaguely exciting thing to happen in their entire careers. Captain Schoeder grimaced at the thought that, if anything went wrong, it would be his responsibility. “Mister Putri, you have the conn, I will be in my office. I will address the crew shortly, in the meantime, I need to compose a message for company headquarters. I’m certain they will be just absolutely thrilled about this little adventure.” The company lawyers could fight with the mining company lawyers, to be compensated for Universal Transport’s expenses on the rescue mission. Schroeder expected he would be long retired, possibly dead, before the case was settled in court. “Carry on.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The Colonial Protective Forces frigate Tigershark dropped out of hyperspace well above the ecliptic, the plane where planets of the star system orbited. And well distant from the source of the distress call. If there was a navigational hazard, Captain Gante didn’t want her ship popping into normal space right in the middle of it. Better to stand off a bit, and scan the area with the ship’s sensors.

  Navy records on this particular star system were thin; it was a nothing special red dwarf star, the most common type of star system in the Milky Way. Incapable, in every case humanity knew about, of supporting planetary life, dim red dwarf stars were a dime a dozen in the Milky Way galaxy, and survey ships had stopped visiting them years ago. The only records about this system were nearly seventy years old, and that was just a quick flyby, all that such a common and uninteresting star system warranted. One small, rocky planet orbiting close to the wimpy dull red star. One cold gas giant, orbiting far enough away, that the star’s light was a dim bulb in the sky. And in between, a rather extensive asteroid field.

  As a frigate, Tigershark was not heavily armed, and she did not have powerful shields like the big cruisers of the Fleet. Frigates, however, made up fifty percent of the fleet’s ships. They were much less expensive to build and operate. They did not require a large crew. They could patrol vast areas with minimal support, and keep track of everything that went on in their patrol area. As the eyes and ears of the fleet, the strength of frigates was their sensors, not their weapons. As soon as Gante’s crew completed checking that every system on the ship came through the transition from hyperspace in good condition, she ordered the ship to minimal power, and extended the antennas of the passive sensor array. The array was eight ultrathin wires that could be pushed out to form a circle two kilometers in diameter. When the wires were energized, they formed a single massive, sensitive antenna. And, this time, they heard nothing. Gante ordered the antennas retracted, and moved her ship in closer.

  Four hours later, Tigershark had reached the outer limits of the asteroid field that had been the source of the distress call the frigate was responding to, a private survey ship that had suffered an explosion related to the ship’s fusion reactor. The hypercomm message had been very brief, several dead and injured on the ship, situation desperate, then the message cut off. The registration code attached to the message said the ship was the Isaac Newton, and Registry records confirmed that ship had been in the area.

  Captain Gante stood behind her executive officer, who was running the scanner. “Captain, we can’t pinpoint the ship’s location from that brief message. There’s so much junk floating around in this asteroid field, it might take us months to find the ship, unless they signal us.”

  “There’s no radiation at all?”

  “No, ma’am, we’ve got nothing. Normal background radiation from the star. Some EMR from the gas giant, magnetic storms there. No transponder, no running lights, no radiation from the reactor, I looked in infrared for a heat signature, nothing.”

  Gante paused and looked at the large viewscreen at the forward bulkhead of her bridge. It was filled with spinning rocks of the asteroid field. Big rocks, gigantic rocks, small rocks, pebbles, dust. All dangerous, if the frigate ran into any of them. “What were they doing out here? It’s suicide to take a ship into that asteroid field. Even with our shields, we would get squashed like a bug.”

  “Captain, I can’t even imagine why they were in this star system in the first place. There is absolutely nothing here worth looking at. If they wanted a red dwarf, there’s plenty of them, a lot closer to Earth.”

  Gante also couldn’t think of a good reason why a commercial ship would be here. Any ship. “Still, they were here, so we need to find them.” She looked at the radar map of merely a nearby slice of the asteroid field. Millions of rocks. A ship could be anywhere in there. “I’m open to suggestions, if you have any, XO.”

  “I could try scanning for residual radiation on the asteroids themselves, Ma’am. If the ship exploded, the asteroids nearby would have been bathed in radiation.”

  “That sounds like a one in a million shot, XO. I think we’d have better luck looking for disturbances in the asteroids’ orbits. An explosion would have thrown them out of their previous orbit. Start scanning with radar, and you can look for your residual radiation, also, those are two different setiing on the antenna.”

  The XO looked at the map of the nearby section of the asteroid field. “Whew!" He let out a long breath. "It’s going to take days just to scan the local section of the field, Ma’am.”

  “I don’t see that we have any choice.”

  Tigershark maneuvered into position, then shut down her engines, extended the antennas again, and activated her powerful and sensitive radar. The antennas projected outward far to either side of the ship, making it look like the frigate had grown a cluster of whiskers. Appropriate for a cat, maybe, but not for a shark. One of Gante’s first actions, when she had taken over from the previous captain, was to have the spacedock workers paint a gaping shark’s mouth and eyes on the nose of the ship. It made the frigate look mean. And the crew liked it. Now, for all her military power and authority, Tigershark at the moment was nothing more than a listening device, hoping to find a missing, silent ship in the incredible clutter of an asteriod field, circling a lonely red dwarf star.

  It was dinnertime. Rick figured he would find Schroeder in the main galley. The Captain appeared to have a lot on his mind, the man picked up a sandwich and a mug of coffee, and was about to walk back out, when Rick stopped him. “Do you have a minute, Captain?”

  “Actually, Mister...” Rick’s name escaped him momentarily, “Sanchez, I am rather busy.” He moved to walk past, not before Rick positioned himself in the doorway.

  “With the rescue, yes, you must be very busy. Did the miners say what type of life support system they have?”

  “I don’t... they didn’t say.” Schroeder, beginning to grow annoyed at Rick’s rude behavior, gestured the passenger to clear the doorway.

  Rick spoke quickly, knowing his time was short. “I ask, because I have some experience maintaining and repairing life support systems. And if the miners’ system can be fixed, then we can be on our way.”

  And potentially keep to Ace’s schedule, without paying penalties. That got Schroeder’s attention. “You are an engineer?” Schroeder asked, surprised. When they had dined at the Captain’s table during the first week of the voyage from Earth, Schroeder had received the impression that Ricardo Sanchez was an academic, devoting his life to digging up the long-abandoned ruins of an alien civilization.

  “No, I’m not, not by profession. One of my fieldwork experiences was on Sahara, the planet Sahara, and, to tell you the truth, I was a very junior exoarcheologist back then. Instead of assisting with the excavation, I spent a lot of the time running errands, and keeping our balky life support system running. It was a standard Culcorp Tradewinds 11A model, and I know that type o
f unit was purchased by a lot of these mining concessions.”

  “The unit broke down frequently?”

  “It was a second or third hand system, we were on a real tight budget, so everything was patched together. I don’t know about Ares, but Sahara for sure is a harsh place for machinery.” Sahara, a long time ago, was a moderately populated alien colony world, until the star it orbited had a violent hiccup that blew away part of Sahara’s atmosphere, and left the surface a scorched, gritty desert. Some people speculated that the stellar incident was an alien experiment that had caused the star to go haywire, that the aliens had killed their own planet. Rick didn’t see any hard evidence for that theory, what he had seen on Sahara was a harsh environment, and a planet rich in ruins that had not been fully explored.

  “So I have heard.” Schroeder acknowledged. He had once orbited Sahara, a decade or so in the past. What he remembered was looking down on a forbidding landscape of exposed rock, blowing sand, and a thin little atmosphere. “You really think you could fix their system?”

  “Captain, I don’t know. I don’t know if they have a Tradewinds model, or what’s wrong with it. But I think I am more familiar with that type of system than your crew is. Sam handles life support here, right?”

  “Specialist First Class Sam Winters, yes.” Schroeder had already planned to send Sam down in the first shuttle run, hoping that the life support systems specialist could fix the miners’ equipment quickly, and get Ace back on her way with minimal delay. “All right then, Mr. Sanchez, I would like you to speak with Sam. If he is satisfied that you may be of assistance to him, then you need to be on our next call to Ares, which is in,” he checked his watch, “two hours, twenty three minutes. You can ask the miners whatever questions you need then.” In the meantime, Schroeder would be contacting company HQ to see about the propriety of including a passenger on a rescue mission. Rick, and Schroeder, would probably need to sign a waiver of some sort. Paperwork. It was the bane of his existence.