Aces

by Alanson, Craig

  Sam shook his head no. “Nuh-uh! Or they could come out here and shoot us. If they faked a distress call and attacked the ship, I’m thinking they ain’t exactly friendly.”

  “I don’t see we have much choice, do we?” Rick asked impatiently. “For all we know, whoever attacked the ship took over the mining camp first, maybe the miners are just caught up in this like we are. You’re right, Sam, at least one person in that mining camp isn’t friendly. Maybe there’s an outlying building with nobody in it, a place we can rest for the night. Some place with oxygen would be nice.” He slung his bag over his shoulder and looked off to the southwest. Everything, the ground, the sky, even his companions, had a reddish tint. The color of the sky was unnerving, pink toward the horizon, almost black straight overhead. It was daytime, and stars could be seen directly above. The dull light from the red giant star didn’t help things look comforting. “That way, you say? Let’s get going, huh?”

  Nelson and Sam exchanged a glance, then followed the archeologist, their boots leaving sharply outlined prints in the bone dry red soil. The chill wind in the thin air barely disturbed the clouds of dust kicked up by their boots. Looking at the lazily swirling dust clouds behind the archeologist, Sam thought he had never seen such a desolate place.

  CHAPTER 7

  Kaylee had not been able to contact anyone over the ship’s phone system, and no one had come to check on them. The phone didn't even respond.

  “The lights are on, and the gravity, that means we have power.” Manny’s eyes narrowed, he looked thoughtful. “Jen says the gravity takes lots of power, it can’t run off batteries the way the emergency lights do, remember, Kaylee?”

  Jen! “Jen will know what to do.” Kaylee tucked the phone into her waistband. “Let’s find her.”

  “Kaylee,” Manny responded, uncertainty in his voice, “in an emergency, passengers are supposed to stay in their cabins, until the crew comes to get us, or they tell us where to go over the intercom.” Emergency drills had been conducted every Thursday morning. Sometimes the passengers were instructed to stay where they were, sometimes they were escorted to the shuttle bay, sometimes they were escorted to the lifeboat pods. Always, they were escorted, and instructed to stay in the cabins until the crew came to get them. “Mom will come looking for us here.”

  Kaylee pointed to the phone on her hip. “The phone isn’t working, Mom can't call us. We’ll just go out into the hallway, if anyone is looking for us, they can find us there, right?”

  Manny considered that for a moment. “Okay.” If they heard someone coming, they could step back into the cabin. Gingerly, keeping close to the walls so they had something to hang onto in case the ship moved again, they walked out of their parent’s bedroom, across the main compartment, and to the door leading into the hallway. The door didn’t slide open when Kaylee pressed the button. “Try the handle?” Manny asked uncertainly.

  Kaylee pressed the button again repeatedly, then gave up. She flipped aside the access door, grasped the manual handle, and pulled down on it. The door cracked open a couple centimeters, enough to get a grip on. She looked out into the hallway, it looked like the hallway always did, bland, pastel colored, and empty. Brother and sister held onto the edges of the door and pushed it aside. “Hello?” Kaylee called out. Her voice echoed off the walls. No one answered.

  Manny stepped into the hallway. “I don’t hear anybody. Hello!” He shouted.

  Kaylee stepped cautiously into the hallway to join her brother. It was quiet in the ship, except for the faint creaking sounds that seemed to be coming from the walls. “Hold my hand.”

  Manny frowned. He was over the initial wave of fear. Whatever had happened, the huge ship wasn’t going to fall apart. He put his hands down by his side. “I’m not a baby, Kaylee, you don’t need to hold my hand.” He protested. “I’m going to the observation porthole.”

  “No! We need to stay here, in case someone comes looking for us.”

  “Kaylee, it’s right down the hall.” Manny pointed down the corridor toward the opening which lead to the observation room. “Maybe I can see what happened. I promise I’ll be right back, okay? You stay here in case someone come by.”

  Kaylee had clasped her hands in front of her and was rubbing them together the way she did when she was anxious. “All right, but you come right back here.”

  “I will.” Manny was still at the age when he seldom walked anywhere if he could run. Why adults were so incredibly slow, he couldn’t understand. He ran full speed down the corridor, turned to the right, and ran down the short hallway ending at a clear bubble that stuck out from the side of the ship. From the bubble, he could see to starboard, and a bit forward. At first he saw nothing unusual, then he craned his neck to see forward.

  He gasped in shock. The familiar rear of the command section's curving saucer no longer blocked his view forward. Instead, there was empty space. He could see torn struts, pipes and wires from the access tube that previously connected the command section to the rest of the ship. Now that he was looking for it, he saw many pieces of debris floating around the ship, and-

  The command section itself, rotating slowly end over end. It was already far enough away that we could no longer read the symbols painted on the surface. “Kaylee!” He shouted, his voice strained. “Kaylee! Come quick!”

  His sister came running. “What is it?” She asked breathlessly. Manny silently pointed out the porthole, unable to speak. She looked out, and a sudden intake of air almost made her choke. “Mommy!” She screamed.

  The walking was slow going for the three men stranded on the surface, over the rough terrain. The surface was dotted with rocks and craters, big and small. The big rocks they had to detour around, the small rocks they had to avoid tripping over. Nelson warned the others not to walk down into the bigger craters, because loose sand and dust had collected there, and made for treacherous footing. Walking down hills was the worst, they slid and skidded on pebbles, until they called a halt, and began using safety lines. It was taking too long. The sun was edging toward the horizon, and their oxygen supply was limited. Sam looked up, as the bulging disk of the star touched the horizon. It was going to be a long night.

  “Kaylee,” Manny said with a sniff as he wiped away tears with the sleeve of his shirt. He was coming to his senses again, after he and his sister spent a minute holding onto each other, screaming and crying. This is not what his parents would do in a crisis. “I can see lights coming from the command section. See? There’s lights coming through those portholes. They have power, maybe they can call us on the radio. We should go back to the cabin, maybe?”

  Kaylee avoided looking out the porthole, knowing it would make her cry again. “No. We need to find Jen. She’ll know what to do. Maybe we can help.”

  “Help do what? We’re kids.” Manny pointed out.

  “Do, do anything Jen needs us to do! All the other crew are with Mom. Or Dad. Jen’s the only one here with us.

  “Okay.” Manny agreed. “Where do we look?”

  Kaylee pursed her lips and thought. She wiped away her own tears with the back of her hand. “Jen’s office is on the deck below us, where she keep her tools and fixes the robots. We’ll look there.”

  “Wait, let’s leave a note for her, in case she comes looking for us.”

  They went back to the cabin, found a marker, and wrote a note on the corridor wall next to the door. Manny then went to stuff the marker in his pocket, when he had a better idea, and they both got their backpacks and slung them over their shoulders, in case they needed to carry anything. The elevator between decks wasn’t working, so they had to crank open a door, climb down a ladder, and open another door at the bottom. It seemed like an awfully long way, in the empty, silent ship.

  Captain Gante returned to check on her executive officer’s search progress, but the communications technician waved to her first. “I was just about to call you, Captain, I can’t contact the Atlas Challenger. I’ve hailed them repeatedly. No response
, Ma’am.”

  If Gante was startled by the freighter’s silence, she didn’t show it. She turned to the first officer. “XO?”

  Ross shook his head, and suppressed a yawn caused by the insufferable boredom of watching the scanner. “Nothing yet. Still scanning.”

  She pursed her lips, and walked over to stand behind her XO so they could speak quietly. “No sign there was ever a ship in distress here?” She asked.

  “No sign there was ever a ship here at all, Ma’am.” Something in his captain’s tone of voice caught his attention. “What are you thinking?”

  “It’s not-“ her voice trailed off.

  He lowered his own voice to a whisper. “Kim, we’ve worked together for almost a year now, I know when there’s something going on in that head of yours.”

  Gante allowed herself a tight smile. “They say there’s no sound in space, XO. There’s not supposed to be any smells, either, but I smell a rat.”

  “Diversion?”

  “Exactly. The Isaac Newton was never here, somebody wanted to lure us away from Ares. Somebody who knows we are the only Navy ship patrolling this sector.”

  “And lure us away from the freighter?”

  Gante raised an eyebrow. “I hadn’t considered that, I thought maybe there is something on Ares that the mining company doesn’t want the Navy to see. But you may be right, the freighter could be the target, although I can’t imagine why. It’s just a transport ship.”

  “What do you want to do? Abandon the search? Captain, if we abandon the search, and we’re wrong, and there are survivors aboard the Isaac Newton…”

  “I know. I also know for a fact that there are people aboard that freighter, and people on Ares. No, I’m not wasting any more time here.” She straightened up, and raised her voice. “XO, retract the antennas, charge the Jump engines, and plot a course to Ares, maximum speed.”

  The communications technician looked at her quizzically. “Shall I inform Fleet HQ, Ma’am?”

  Gante and her XO exchanged a glance. “No, we will not inform the Fleet at this time. Keep sending that message to Atlas Challenger, but I want you to modify the message a bit-“

  On Ace’s bridge, they had opened a medical kit, splinted Gina’s arm, and given her painkillers. For Vassily, there wasn’t as much they could do. The ship’s second in command had lapsed into unconsciousness from a blow to the head. Seth and Joy brought him to his cabin, strapped him to his bed, made him comfortable, then hurried back to the bridge. As Schroeder had pointed out, their priority had to be to get control of their own situation first.

  Joy’s face was looking pale, her eyes were slightly crossed. “I think I’m going to be sick.” She wasn’t dealing well with the zero gravity, on top of the emotional shock.

  Schroeder himself took a dose of anti-nausea medicine from the medical kit, brought it over to Joy, and told her to rub it into the skin on the inside of her wrist. “This acts fast. And don’t be embarrassed, I’ve been on spaceships for over thirty years, and I still get queasy in zero Gee sometimes. That’s why we invented artificial gravity.”

  Joy held onto the back of a chair, and concentrated on breathing, in and out, in and out, until the nausea passed. “I’m better now, thank you.” The ache in her heart remained.

  “Why?” Gina turned to Schroeder and asked the simple question that had been on all their minds. “Captain? Why attack us?”

  Seth spoke first. “Maybe there’s something on Ares they don’t want anyone to see.”

  Schroeder shook his head with a frown. “No. If they had something to hide, they wouldn’t have sent a distress call, no matter how bad their situation was. The Tigershark said they were responding to another distress call, I think that was also a fake, to draw the Navy away from here. And to make sure we were the only ship that could respond in time. No, for some reason, they wanted this ship here, and they set this whole thing up to get us here.”

  “But, why didn’t… why didn’t they just intercept us in hyperspace, when we were in the middle of nowhere?” Seth sputtered.

  Schroeder’s brow furrowed as he thought back to his own Navy service days, years ago. “I suspect it is because, while rocket-powered missiles can be purchased on the black market, hyperspeed-capable missiles are much harder to get. They needed to get us out of hyperspace, so they faked a distress call. Now, thanks to us saying we could handle this rescue on our own, the only Navy ship in the sector is lightyears away, and we have no way to contact them. Somebody put a lot of effort into planning this operation.” He said in disgust, as if he should have anticipated the attack on his defenseless ship. He added, in a low tone that may have been intended only for himself. “What I can’t answer is, what we have onboard that could possibly be worth that effort, worth the risk, and the expense, to steal it?”

  The bridge speakers crackled, and Gina exchanged a look with Schroeder. He nodded.

  “Audio only.” Gina said, and gave her captain an OK sign when the channel was open.

  It was the now-familiar voice of ‘Ted Miller’, the innocuous looking captain of the supposed medical research ship he had insultingly called Nightengale. “Atlas Challenger, or should I say Ace, like you do?” Miller began, showing off how well he knew his prey. “You have something I want, and I have-“

  Schroeder interrupted indignantly. “You have attacked a civilian vessel, and tried to kill my crew! I will-“

  ”You will shut your mouth and listen, Captain! I do the talking, you listen.” The voice of ‘Ted Miller’ was not so sweet this time. “I hold all the cards here, in case you haven’t figured that out yet, mein kapitan. Do not insult me, or I will fire another missile at your command section, and blow you all into dust. Are you listening now? A simple yes or no, please. You can do that, right? You open your mouth, and you say ‘Yes’, like a good little boy.”

  Schroeder fumed inside. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw the people whose lives he was responsible for. He swallowed his pride and growled “Yes.”

  “Very good! That wasn’t so hard, was it? Aboard your ship, or in one of the cargo bays in what is left of your ship, there is something I want very much. Enough to kill for it. My crew and I are coming aboard, we are going to take what we want, and then we will depart, and leave you alone. The Navy will be here eventually, and I do not intend to be in this star system when the Navy arrives. In case you are thinking the Tigershark is on its way soon, it’s not. That ship is busily engaged in searching for a ghost, and they will be there for quite some time. This is what I want: you instruct whatever crew you have aboard your ship not to interfere with us when we come aboard. I could simply shoot them, but I would prefer not to make a mess in your fine ship.” The pirate laughed. “You will have a short time to consider, and then I want your answer. Nightengale out.”

  There was silence on Ace’s bridge as everyone came to terms with the situation. Finally, Seth spoke. “Captain, you were right. They wanted us here, and they decoyed that frigate. I wish we knew what the hell they wanted.”

  Schroeder had been wracking his brain, trying to think what cargo could be worth killing over. More important, what cargo could be worth what had to be a very considerable expense on the part of the pirates. “I wish I did, too. Nothing aboard this ship is worth anyone’s life!”

  “I have some good news.” Gina said hopefully. “While the Nightengale was talking, they had to drop their radio jamming. I picked up a faint signal from the surface.” She played the recording, and Nelson’s voice boomed out. “Ace, this is Nelson, we got out of the shuttle in time, thanks for the warning. What the hell is going on, over? Ace, do you read? This is Nelson, respond, please.”

  “They’re alive!” Joy shouted, and would have fallen to her knees if the artificial gravity had been on. “Call them back!”

  “I can't, the message is a recording, Nelson must have set it to repeat until we responded. Next time they drop the jamming, I’ll try to get through.” Gina said, not taking her eyes off the
instruments.

  Not for the first time, Schroeder was extraordinarily proud of his crew. There were Navy warships that didn’t have people as resourceful or experienced as his lowly freighter. “You do that. Were you able to locate the signal?”

  Seth answered. “Checking now. It’s hard to say, because the signal is weak, and we’re no longer line of sight to the source, but they’re real close to the mining camp.”

  Schroeder turned to Joy. “Your husband has a very good chance, Ms. Sanchez. Nelson and Sam will get him to safety,” he said soothingly, not knowing that it was Rick who was leading the surface party, “and they should have plenty of oxygen, enough to get to the mining camp.” He didn’t express his own fears about the mining camp being hostile.

  Joy nodded, letting out a long breath. She was over her initial shock, and was now able to think clearly again. “Call me Joy, please, I don’t think this is the time for be formal. Is there any way we can contact the cargo section, find out what is going on there?”

  Schroeder turned to Gina, who held up her hands. “Ms.-, Joy, with the radio jamming, we can’t talk to anyone aboard the cargo section, or establish a link with the computer there. Ms. Olivetti, did you pick up any radio signals from the cargo sec- let’s just call it the ship, shall we?”

  “No, nothing from the ship.” She added, “Sorry, Joy.”

  Schroeder floated over to look out the viewport. They were drifting further away from the ship. “We do know the rest of the ship is intact, I can see her running lights are on, and she stabilized her spin. That means she has power, and thrusters, and at least enough computer function to control the thrusters. I didn’t see any signs of air venting, so while your children may be frightened, they have air, heat, and light. And Jen will be taking care of them. Our own situation hereis far more serious.”

  “How serious?” Joy asked.

  Schroeder saw that, whereas before she had hugged her arms tightly around her and looked scared, now she looked focused and determined. Tough lady, he thought. He glided over to his console and pointed to the display. “The command section we’re in has no independent power generator, no propulsion, and only emergency life support. We received main power, propulsion and life support from the ship we were attached to,” he said without a trace of irony in his voice, “and now we’re on our own. What we do have is four powercells, one of them isn’t online, but that could simply be a loose connection. Some of the aft compartments have lost air, they are sealed off. We have an emergency oxygen supply, and filters to remove carbon dioxide, I estimate we have enough breathable air for eight days.” Schroeder paused, when he continued he seemed to be summarizing the situation to himself. “What else? Let’s see. It will start getting cold, as our heat slowly radiates out into space. The heaters drain a lot of power, so we will be running them at a low level. No artificial gravity. No weapons. No radar, and no other external sensors, other than looking out a window with our own eyes.” Schroeder paused a minute to scratch his head and think. “We can stabilize the spin with thrusters, eventually, that will help.”