Confidence Game

by Britt Ringel

  “Roger, Mercer.”

  Earlier in the morning, Brooke had spent several minutes confirming the tunnel drive was in an engineer-induced coma. She had no desire to have energy flow to the drive and accidentally shunted out of its vents while she was floating in front of them. She looked at Lochlain and shrugged, the movement barely perceptible inside her bulky pressure suit. “I’m off then.” She walked toward the outer doors.

  Lochlain, garbed in the second pressure suit but with gloves and helmet off, moved behind the markings on the deck that defined where the hangar containment field would erect. He activated the hangar controls and brought the containment field to life. A hazy red barrier now separated the pair. “Wyatt, can you confirm that navigation has been locked out?”

  “Locked tight.” The answer came only half a beat after the question.

  “Permission to remove the hangar’s atmosphere, Mercer?”

  There was a brief pause. “Suit holding steady,” Brooke announced after a final check. “I’m ready. Do it, Reece.”

  Lochlain could hear the air escaping into space. He monitored the control panel as pressure and temperature left the unprotected portion of the hangar. “You’re in a vacuum now, Mercer. I’m opening the hangar doors.”

  “Roger.”

  The large alloy doors parted quickly to reveal infinite, black space. The view was as astounding as it was dizzying.

  “Doors are open and locked,” Lochlain announced. A rapid input followed his statement and the controls that would close the doors were locked out. “Removing gravity.”

  Moments later, Lochlain saw Brooke’s tether begin to lift off the deck. She remained rooted however, her magnetic boots keeping her in place.

  “You are cleared to begin your walk, Mercer.”

  “Roger,” Brooke replied and walked the final steps to the end of the hangar. She peered over the edge timidly. As she suspected, there were no guides along Zanshin’s exterior to assist her trip to the vents. She sighed and demagnetized her boots. “I’m going to have to float to them.”

  She lifted off the deck gently and nudged a small joystick near her left hand forward. A small puff exited the back of her EMU, pushing her forward. Several, delicate taps later, she reoriented, turning to face Zanshin and descend along the stern of the ship.

  “Visual inspection of the rear hull looks good,” Brooke chattered absent-mindedly. “No scorch marks around the Deltic.” A vent slowly rose into her view and she nulled her momentum. A peek to her upper right in the helmet offered a readout of her suit’s condition. She had nearly six hours of oxygen and ten hours of heat remaining. Her EMU’s charge was ninety-nine percent.

  She reached out and grasped the exterior of the tunnel drive. “There’s no good spot to put my feet,” she complained. “I’m just going to have to tether and float.” She pulled a leash that coiled out from her EMU belt and magnetically attached it to an empty spot on the drive. Ensuring it was secure, she wound the leash until there was enough room to work but no more.

  Brooke consulted the maintenance pages and began a careful inspection and service of the tunnel drive’s first vent. Thirty-five minutes later, she pronounced the vent fully operational. After disconnecting her leash, she carefully floated to the next vent in the chain. Once she arrived, the process began anew.

  * * *

  Four and a half hours later, Brooke felt artificial gravity take hold of her once again. Even through the thick pressure suit and her helmet, she could hear the hangar refill with atmosphere. The noise was just a wheeze at first but rapidly became a loud hiss. When she saw Lochlain’s containment field collapse, she removed her helmet.

  Her brown hair was plastered to her sweat-soaked head. Brooke quickly removed a glove and scratched her face as she spoke. “I’ve had that itch for the last two hours. It was mostly Vent Five,” she summarized needlessly. “Six was partially stuck but Five was badly warped. I had to manually bend it back into place.” She smirked. “Do you know how hard that is to accomplish without gravity? I’m almost certain that’s what caused the backlash during our dive.”

  Lochlain handed Brooke a towel that she used immediately to wipe her face. “That’s good news,” he said. “A busted vent is a heck of a lot better than a busted drive. How fixed is it?”

  Brooke reached to her right shoulder and began to release the suit’s bindings. “Fixed enough where the problem won’t repeat, I hope.” With the right shoulder unfastened, she let the suit drop to the deck. Her thin t-shirt and leggings were thoroughly drenched. “I’m going to shower and then I’ll come back up here to help you move all this back to the cargo master’s room for cleaning.”

  Lochlain offered a hand to help her step out of her suit. “I’ll get Huseman to move your suit and EMU. He can also clean it.” He shot her an irritated look. “That should’ve been him out there.”

  Brooke frowned with guilt. “He didn’t sound very confident and if Zanshin needs serious repairs, I want to be doing them.” She looked back to the deck and grinned. “But you are right about one thing. He can clean and tag my suit. I’m going to bed.”

  * * *

  The following morning Brooke stared curiously at her screen in Zanshin’s largest compartment. “Uh, Wyatt?” she called from in front of the console.

  Huseman, busy performing a final spot inspection of the power core mounts, looked back at her. “Yes?”

  “Did you get around to deleting all that old data yesterday?”

  Huseman returned his attention to Bolt 4-A of the Number 7 Mounting. “Yeah, it took forever. Was that stuff related to the monitoring programs installed on Zanshin? Is that why the storage banks were nearly full?”

  Brooke ignored the question and typed on the panel to bring up a second screen. She glanced between the two readouts. “Then why is the data still here?”

  “What?” Huseman walked back to join her. He stared at the screen before scratching his chin. “I know I deleted the data, Mercer. It took almost a full hour.” He looked between Brooke and the panel before asking, “May I?” She stepped aside and he inputted commands to scan Zanshin’s logs for the previous twenty-four hours. “I can’t find my delete commands.”

  Brooke crossed her arms.

  “I swear I did it, Mercer,” he insisted.

  “Maybe you did it wrong?” she suggested.

  “It’s basic computer skills but it would appear that I did screw it up,” he admitted unhappily. “I’ll do it again today. I promise.” In a sedate voice he added, “I hope this doesn’t reflect too negatively on my grade.”

  Brooke patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about your grade, Wyatt. You’re doing great so far.”

  Huseman waved a spanner playfully. “Let me finish looking over the mounts and I’ll delete the data after we dive into Ancera, okay?”

  “I’ll delete it now. Don’t worry about it.” She forced a smile to her face. “Let’s just be sure the dive out of tunnel space goes better than the one into it.”

  * * *

  Qiang entered the bridge at precisely 14:00. As he walked into the small compartment, he greeted the pair already on duty, “Good afternoon, Captain… Elease.”

  “Hello,” they responded in unison while sorting command lines at their respective consoles.

  Lochlain looked to the students and asked, “Everyone ready for this?”

  Zanshin was rapidly approaching her window to exit the tunnel. In under an hour, the freighter would pass a gravity-well induced weakened region where her tunnel drive could punch an exit from the compressed space. As was standard procedure, Lochlain had ordered his entire bridge crew to duty. The directive resulted in interrupted sleep patterns for his deck officers that manifested in a yawning Li Qiang but regulations and ordinary common sense demanded a full bridge crew for the event.

  “I had Elease prep each station during her shift, Li, and I’m almost done double-checking her work,” Lochlain stated while sorting commands on his screen. “You’l
l want to check the sensor section on your own, of course.” He glanced at the ship’s chronometer. Despite Brooke’s best efforts, it was still running fast. She believed the error was buried in the main computer and would require either a specialist or divine inspiration on her part to find and fix the problem. For now, Zanshin continued to update the time each hour from Brooke’s datapad.

  “Time until dive, Navigator?” Lochlain asked.

  “Thirty-six minutes, Captain,” Lingenfelter responded. She brought both hands up and swept them through her long, blonde hair. “Tunnel drive is idle and venting properly.”

  Ignoring the faulty chronometer, the time seemed to pass slowly now that the crew had assembled. Each bridge officer was well prepared for the forthcoming event and there was little more to do than mark each of the thirty-six minutes as it passed. Lochlain refrained from guiding the students through their diving procedures. For the most part, each student hit the milestones in their checklists leaving him free to maintain watch over the entire process.

  Absent a space traffic controller to give permission to dive, Lingenfelter merely counted down to zero, activated the ship’s dive bell and entered the command to activate the tunnel drive. The expected disorientation washed over the whole of Zanshin and seconds later Lochlain watched the system plot on the wall screen begin to update.

  Qiang swallowed deliberately before reporting. “Um, we’ve dived into Ancera, Captain. The beacon near the Svea tunnel point is green.”

  “All systems functioning, sir,” Lingenfelter interjected as Qiang swallowed again and again to help clear his head and settle his stomach. “We’re in the green.”

  “Tunnel point control is contacting us,” Qiang announced. He played the hail.

  “CSV Zanshin, Svea Tunnel Point Control, welcome to Ancera. You are cleared to exit the tunnel point up to the middle marker.”

  Lochlain gave a final look at his ship’s status board before addressing his communications officer. “Go ahead and answer, Li. You know what you’re doing.” Lingenfelter was already firing Zanshin’s thrusters to orient the ship’s bulk toward the navigation markers that would take it away from the immediate area of the tunnel point.

  Qiang smiled with delight at Lochlain’s compliment but quickly regained a more subdued countenance. “Svea Control, this is Zanshin, cleared to the middle marker, heading in-system for Nimiset.” Closing the channel, he appended, “You’re cleared, Elease.”

  Zanshin covered 30ls before receiving clearance to proceed to the system’s primary planet. The small planet was tidally locked to the primary star, an M4 main sequence star, in the binary system. The striking result of Nimiset’s fixated dance with the star was a baked, red and brown badlands on the dayside and a darkened, frozen wasteland on the nightside. Only the planet’s perimeter running from each pole and separating the two sides offered a dusky, habitable region for humanity. The perpetual twilight in the narrow belt limited the meager resources available to the tiny world but it nonetheless offered a terrestrial waystation inside the Federation provincial system closest to the CCZ.

  Once Zanshin had achieved her course and speed, a smiling Lingenfelter turned to face her captain and reported, “ETA to the primary orbital at Nimiset is five hours and thirteen minutes at point-one-five-C.”

  Lochlain eased back into his chair. “Well done, everyone. I have to admit that I’m going to miss you two.”

  “We still have the return trip,” Lingenfelter pointed out.

  “Yeah.” Lochlain avoided eye contact by examining the fully updated system plot.

  Unlike Svea, Ancera was a provincial star system of the Solarian Federation and enjoyed the resources of its major government sponsor. The system served not only as a strategic crossroads for nearly a dozen Federation systems, including the recently burgeoning Carinae system, but also as a central trading hub for half of the corporations inside the Coreward Corporate Zone. Despite Nimiset’s paltry natural resources, Ancera’s location alone made her a vital junction for the Federation’s entire coreward sector.

  The traffic inside the system was astounding despite Ancera’s deficiencies. Most of the ships in motion split between two of the system’s five Type-A tunnel points. The Crucis tunnel point offered access not only to Kett, the Federation’s coreward main district system, but also entry to the second half of the CCZ. The second most popular tunnel point inside Ancera was the one most recently exited by Zanshin. Twenty light-seconds off her port bow, a long queue of vessels patiently waited for their turn at the anomaly in space. Of the remaining three tunnel points in the system, only the Vulsia tunnel point, 73lm from Zanshin’s current position, had anything near the congestion of the stepping-off points to Crucis and Svea. That distant tunnel point was pivotal to a tunnel chain leading to the Carinae star system.

  Newly colonized, Carinae seemed destined to become the new Kett of the Federation’s coreward sector. It possessed a veritable superearth and a healthy number of tunnel points, including two of the priceless Type-B versions that allowed instantaneous travel between systems at either end. Of equal importance, the Carinae star system was recently discovered to complete a loop of two tunnel chains originating from Kett. Carinae’s only drawback was its unfortunate position inside the Izari Nebula. The dangerous nebula, home to an exceptionally potent pulsar, was a significant hazard to navigation both in and out of tunnel space and made for a treacherous trip to the outlying star system.

  “Figuring about thirty minutes for the Nimiset orbital to park us, that puts us moored to the station around 20:30,” Lochlain estimated. He set to work requesting a slip at the commercial orbital above the planet. “Hey, Li, why don’t you head down to your quarters and get some sleep? Nothing is going to happen until we get closer to the station.”

  Qiang stifled another yawn. “Thank you, Captain. This caught me right in the middle of my sleep cycle.”

  “It’s the life of a small freighter deck officer, I’m afraid.” Lochlain jerked a thumb toward the bridge portal. “Get some rest. I’m going to need you semi-lucid tonight so you can stand duty as a watchman in the docking bay.”

  Chapter 13

  Zanshin rested, safely moored to Docking Bay Twenty-two at the Nimiset commercial orbital. As a small Handy-sized freighter, her comparatively diminutive proportions had opened several smaller docking bays to her that would not have accommodated On Margin. This fact helped reduce the cargo ship’s waiting time for a berth while also lowering her docking fees.

  The ship was slumbering now, feeding from shore power and operating in berthing mode. Conversely, Lochlain could tell his makeshift crew was just gearing up. Twenty minutes after confirming the docking ring was secure to Zanshin, he looked across the beaten and chipped chartroom table to unanimously happy faces. The crew had not only arrived safely at their destination but could look forward to some time away from the freighter’s confined compartments.

  “Mercer and I will stay aboard the ship but I want each of you off Zanshin by 12:00 tomorrow,” he ordered. “A service crew from the school is coming aboard and I don’t need you underfoot. They’ll be performing routine maintenance on the monitoring systems so it’s nothing pertaining to a normal cargo vessel’s operations anyway.”

  “What about the watchman duties?” Lingenfelter asked. “I don’t mind volunteering for some extra shifts.”

  “The school is providing temps for the next three days,” Lochlain answered. “We only need to cover it until noon tomorrow.” He pointed at her. “You’ll take over for Li at 06:00 just like we’ve been doing on the bridge and then I’ll relieve you at noon until the paid temps arrive.”

  “Do you all have plans during your downtime?” Brooke asked.

  Huseman nodded eagerly. “I’ve rented a room down on the surface. My family took a couple vacations here so I know just where to go.” He looked excitedly at Qiang and Lingenfelter. “The three of us are having dinner at The Troubadour inside the capital city tomorrow night.”

&
nbsp; “It’s so expensive,” Lingenfelter groused softly.

  “Live a little, Elease,” Huseman insisted. He looked to Qiang and nodded when he was given a thumbs up.

  “Well, as long as each of you has plans,” Brooke stated. The muscles in her jaws clenched before she reluctantly added, “Use this time to recharge your batteries. Don’t even think about Zanshin for the next seventy-two hours.” Her mouth became a thin line and she cast a rueful glance toward Lochlain.

  “Don’t forget to take your gear with you,” Lochlain reminded them. “Due to the proprietary nature of the monitoring equipment, the ASA will not let you on the ship while they’re here. In fact, not even Mercer and I are allowed in the hold where the equipment is during their maintenance. They may even pull the ship out of the slip to test things.” He looked around expectantly. “Any questions?”

  None came and the students were dismissed to pack their belongings. They scrambled away eagerly and Brooke closed the chartroom portal behind them.

  She looked penitently at Lochlain. “I hate what we’re doing to them,” she confessed for the fifth time in twenty-four hours.

  Lochlain threw a casual hand up to bat away the passive accusation. “It’s not like we’re stranding them on a deserted planet, Mercer. They’ll be just fine.” His thoughts turned to Lingenfelter and her confession in the ship’s mess but he forced his mind to push past the troubles she might have paying for a new course. “Besides, I think they’re growing a little suspicious of the whole, magical ship monitoring thing.”

  Brooke shrugged. “This still leaves us with the problem of finding a permanent crew. You need two deck officers and with all the maintenance I have to perform, I’d really like a second engineer.” She rapped a knuckle on the chartroom table. “I love this old girl but she’s turning into quite a handful.”

  “I’ll ask Cindi who’s looking for work when I see her tonight,” Lochlain promised.

  “Do you want me to go with you as backup?”

  “No, Cindi hates Larsson so there won’t be any trouble,” Lochlain responded. “It’s probably better if I show up without you.”