Inadvertent Adventures
Page 1
Inadvertent Adventures
By Loren K. Jones
Twilight Times Books
Kingsport Tennessee
Inadvertent Adventures
This is a work of fiction. All concepts, characters and events portrayed in this book are used fictitiously and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Loren K. Jones. Expanded and revised from a previous electronic edition published by e-Quill Publishing, Brisbane, Australia 2013 with title “Inadvertent Adventures.”
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the permission of the publisher and copyright owner.
Twilight Times Books
P O Box 3340
Kingsport, TN 37664
www.twilighttimesbooks.com/
Revised Electronic Edition: February 2016. Author’s preferred version.
Published in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Prelude
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Prelude
STERLING STEVENSON OPENED HIS EYES AND GROANED. He hurt everywhere. He looked around, but he was in a dark room and couldn’t see much. Light began flooding the room through a clear portion of the floor, quickly building to blinding intensity, then just as quickly fading to once again plunge the room into near-total darkness. Sterling struggled to crawl toward the place where the light had come from, feeling his way as he tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness. He had almost made it when the light came again, quickly building until he had to cover his eyes or go blind, then once again fading away and leaving him blinking in the darkness as his dazzled eyes struggled to adjust.
“It’s a star. I’m in orbit. The station is rotating,” he said aloud just to hear the sound of his own voice. He hadn’t heard any other voices, nor had he seen anyone in the room with him before the light became too intense to see. “How long?” he asked, then rolled onto his back.
His back hurt like hell. That made sense if the memories that were finally crowding to the surface of his mind were correct. He’d been grabbed by enforcers from the Flaming ‘O’ Lounge and beaten for his transgressions. I should have known that winning in the casino and leaving with the money wasn’t going to sit well with someone he thought. He felt his face and winced in pain, then felt his pockets as well. They were empty. They had robbed him in addition to beating him, not that it’d do them much good. His credit chip was life-locked, and had to have his bioscan, his live bioscan, to be opened. They were never going to get their money back.
The light was building again and he held up his hand. When the light hit the tips of his fingers he closed his eyes and started counting, “One one-thousand, two one-thousand,” as light burned outside his eyelids. When the darkness came again he opened his eyes and continued counting. He’d only reached three-hundred seventy-six before the light began to build again. He again raised his hand and waited as he continued to count. He said, “Three hundred ninety-seven,” just as the light touched his fingers.
He closed his eyes and began trying to figure it out. “Three hundred ninety-seven seconds is six and a half minutes. A six point five minute rotation generating about,” he lifted his hand and tried to gage the apparent gravity, “point seven five G gives me—my head hurts too much for this. This place is small to be rotating this fast and not making more than one G.” There weren’t many habitable satellites that small. Maybe he was near the central hub of one of the smaller stations. He rolled over and looked out the darkened window, but there wasn’t a lot to see.
No planet swung into view, but that didn’t mean much. The planet could be above or below him and he wouldn’t see it until the gyroscopic rotation of the station and its orbit turned the window toward it again. He laid back and tried to take stock of his situation.
He didn’t think anything was broken, but his ribs were sore. He’d been beaten on the back with something hard, and maybe kicked in the kidneys. His head hurt, and he felt a matted section of his hair that proved that he’d been bleeding at some point. A few teeth were loose, but none missing. All in all, it wasn’t the worst beating he’d ever received.
He was still trying to determine his condition when a generic female computer voice said, “Prepare for acceleration. All personnel prepare for acceleration in one minute.” Acceleration? On a—It’s a ship, not a station! That thought sent his mind sliding into gibbering panic. He was on a ship bound for who-knew-where, beaten and broke, and alone. The light was building again and he climbed to his feet as he desperately searched for the arrow that would tell him which way was ship-up. He was still looking when Newton’s Law pulled the floor out from under his feet. His head smacked the floor and darkness engulfed him again, but this time it was the darkness of unconsciousness.
Chapter 1
A GRUFF VOICE SAID “GET UP!”
Sterling felt a boot nudge his ribs.
“You’re alive and awake, so get up,” the voice snarled and the boot pushed into his ribs again.
A woman’s voice snapped, “Don’t hurt him, Olaf. He may have broken ribs.”
Sterling heard the boots retreat a step.
“Open your eyes,” the woman’s voice commanded and he complied, squinting against the light behind her head. He managed to keep one eye open and held his hand out to block the worst of the light that was ripping at his dark-adjusted retinas.
“Where?” he asked in a barely audible croak.
“You are on the privately owned cargo ship Jolly Jane. I am Captain Denise Stabenow. You will address me as Captain Denise, Captain, or Ma’am from this point forward. Is that understood?” she asked as she glared down at him.
“Yes, Captain,” Sterling answered automatically, his Navy training overriding everything else as his befuddled mind tried to catch up.
“You learn fast. Good. Your situation is this: you’ve been shanghaied. You pissed off some very powerful people back in Hobson’s Planet orbit, and they wanted you dead, or at least out of their sphere of influence. Pahna Mah of the Flaming ‘O’ was in favor of dead. He took a sample of your DNA to culture a wad of flesh to prove that you ‘died’ in an airfoil accident, and took your credit chip to collect the damages since you lacked the forethought to buy insurance before you went flying.”
Sterling blinked and rolled over, struggling to sit up, and a strong hand g
rabbed his shoulder to help. He looked up at the face of the man named Olaf but didn’t smile. Thanking someone who had just kicked you in the ribs really wasn’t reasonable. “Why am I here, Ma’am?” he asked as he looked up at Captain Denise.
“A records search showed that you hold a Stellar Navy navigator’s certificate, as well as a current SN captain’s certificate. You were also sharp enough to beat Pahna Mah’s crooked games and smart enough to leave while you were ahead. Well, maybe that wasn’t so smart, but you didn’t know that at the time.”
She smiled and he finally noticed that she was an attractive woman when she wasn’t scowling. She was a redhead, like Annâhe stopped that thought. Remembering his ex-wife was a quick path to depression.
She continued by saying, “I need a smart hand with your experience, so I paid the local—entrepreneurs—for you. You cost me a thousand Confederate Credits.”
Sterling was surprised by that. “That’s all?” he asked, then hastily added, “Captain?”
“That’s quite a bit in these situations. The fee was for the disappointment Pahna Mah felt from not getting to see you placed in an airlock and having the air slowly pumped out.” She paused as he digested that thought for a moment. “What’s your name?”
“Sterling Albert Stevenson, from New Kashmir, Ma’am,” he answered as the vision of slowly suffocating ran through his mind.
“Not anymore,” Captain Denise said with a slight smile. “Sterling Albert Stevenson is dead, and no one will ever believe that you are really him. My name wasn’t originally Denise, and this lump’s name wasn’t Olaf either. Most of the crew came aboard like you did. Some did so voluntarily. None of us use our real names. Since your name was Sterling, we’ll call you Silver from now on. Got it?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Sterling said as he worked his way to his feet. “I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do about it, is there?”
“Unless you have a better name in mind, no,” she replied with a slight smile.
“I meant, I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do about being shanghaied. Ma’am.”
Olaf drew his attention by placing his hand on an old-fashioned contact stunner that was tucked into his belt. “There’s always the airlock.”
“That’s murder,” Sterling hissed.
“You’re already dead,” Captain Denise said in a gentle tone. “Even if you went back, you’d be accused of being a clone after the late Mister Stevenson’s money. Now, are you going to be Mister Silver, my new navigator, or are we going to cycle the lock and ship out short-handed?”
Sterling took a deep breath to calm himself then answered, “No, Ma’am. I wasnât all that fond of my old life, anyway, so a fresh start may be what I needed.” He shifted his position to ease the pain in his back. “As for the name, Sterling Silver is an old nickname of mine from—it doesn’t matter. Why do you need me as a navigator?”
Captain Denise shrugged. “I do our navigating, but I need a backup. That backup has to be a real navigator, since getting lost in hyper or hitting a star isn’t how I want to die. That’s why you’re still alive. What condition are you in?”
“There’s nothing broken as far as I can tell, Captain. I hurt like hell, though,” Silver replied as he held his ribs.
The captain scowled at Olaf for a second, then turned back to Sterling. “Good. Olaf will show you to your quarters. You’re about the same size as Varin was, so you should be able to wear her clothes. Our uniform, such as it is,” she said with a smile, “is ship’s coveralls with your new name and position on the breast. Olaf will get you the patches. Varin’s environmental suit is in your quarters, and there is a conversion kit to switch the plumbing connections. It’s standard Navy issue, so you shouldn’t have any trouble.”
“Yes, Captain,” Sterling said automatically as he considered the puzzle of a civilian ship having Navy-issue space suits. She turned away and left Sterling and Olaf standing in the little room. “And your position is?” he asked as he looked at the man.
Olaf looked him straight in the eye as he replied, “First Mate—in all the connotations of the term. Follow me.” He turned away and led Sterling toward the bow, rotating clockwise around the hull three times to reach all of the access ways.
They finally stopped at a pressure hatch and Olaf opened it. “All of the cabins are independently pressurized. This tub is too old to have a self-sealing hull. If the hull is breached outside your quarters, you have airlock controls inside the door. If it’s breached inside, you’ll find out what happened to Varin.” He pulled open the door and waved Sterling through. “It’s clean, and her suit wasn’t touched. You’re actually a bit smaller than she was, so other than the cut of the uniform, everything should fit. There’s a sewing kit in the bulkhead locker if you want to alter your coveralls. Suit’s in the rack. The plumbing kit’s beside it.”
Sterling nodded and turned to face him. “Aye, aye, Mate. If I’m not going to get beaten for asking, what business is the captain in?”
“Private enterprise. Legitimate hauling, mostly, with occasional forays into the black market and smuggling. She doesn’t deal with drugs, though. Hates them.”
“And our crew?”
“Captain, First Mate, Navigator, Chief Engineer, and Load Master.”
Sterling looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Five of us? That’s it?”
“Yep,” Olaf replied, then he gave Sterling a lopsided grin and shrugged. “The Jolly Jane is a small ship. I hope you can cook. The four junior officers take turns. Varin was a great cook,” he finished in a soft tone with a trace of real sadness in his voice.
“I haven’t poisoned myself yet,” Sterling replied.
“Change your suit’s plumbing first, then change your clothes,” Olaf commanded. “You can store those if you want, but it’ll be a long time before you wear them again. Will, the Chief Engineer, will craft up a set of identity papers for you with the proper name and stamps for a merchant spacer. He’ll make you a Navigator’s Certificate with your new name as well. Itâll be a real University of New Switzerland certificate, signed by the dean. We transported thirty cases for them once and a case was ‘destroyed’ by a sanitary tank leak.”
“Uck!” Sterling said as he looked at Olaf.
“Not really, you dolt,” Olaf replied with a laugh. “We just delivered a box of waste paper soaked in brown water and sealed in a plastic container. They didn’t open it to check and we paid the penalty without question.”
Sterling shook his head slowly. “And what is my last name? Or has the captain decided yet?”
“You choose, just don’t choose your old one.”
Sterling considered his options for a moment, then sighed. “Mom’s maiden name was Garand. Dad’s name was Llewellyn. Silver Llewellyn Garand. Lords of Space, what a moniker.”
“Not as bad as some, Silver,” Olaf said with a laugh. “Not as bad as some.” Then he left and closed the hatch.
Sterling sat on the bunk and stared at nothingness for a few moments before going to the suit rack and checking out his environment suit. It was indeed Navy issue, old but serviceable, and it was a matter of uncoupling two quick disconnects and plugging in the male attachments to make the plumbing change. He stripped down and tried on the suit and coupled himself up, remembering the training that had been drilled into him unmercifully twenty-eight years in the past by a CSS Marine drill instructor. He adjusted the straps and tanks for comfort, then stripped out. A set of ship’s coveralls with Navigator on the right breast was laid out on the bunk and he squirmed into them.
Varin, it turned out, had had a big butt and what must have been an impressive chest. She had also been at least five centimeters taller than Sterling’s one hundred and seventy-nine centimeters. The coveralls hung on him like a sack.
Sighing, he pinched the fabric at the waist and chest. Take this in, pull this up, tighten it a bit here his thoughts rambled as he tried to make the coveralls fit. He finally gave up, grabbed a cargo s
trap that was meant to secure items to the bulkhead and wrapped it around his waist as a belt, then folded the cloth under his arms and tied it down. He cuffed his legs up six centimeters and checked himself in the mirror. I look like a little kid in his dad’s clothes he silently complained, then opened the hatch and stepped out.
“Turn left and go up one deck,” a voice said and he turned to find himself facing a small man in a nicely tailored set of coveralls. “I’m called Jeremiah, Silver. Load Master, in accordance with requirements of the Confederate Government. Will is already up in control with the captain and mate.”
Sterling turned and started walking, with Jeremiah right on his heels. “Are you a voluntary crewmember, or like me?” Sterling asked without turning.
“Oh, like you, I suppose. Some people wanted me dead on New Portugal a while back and old Captain Jim took me off their hands. It’s been ten Confederate Standard years since then. You’re the first new face Captain Denise has brought aboard. She was Navigator when I came in.”
“And Captain Jim?”
“Lost a bar-fight on Roma Gratia. Captain Erin was after him. Lost her mind to synthetic heroin. That’s why Captain Denise hates drugs so much. It’s only been three CS years since then. Hurry up. It doesn’t do to keep the captain waiting.” Jeremiah motioned for Sterling to hurry and they climbed up the stairs at a near run.