by Britt Ringel
The freighter captain shrugged helplessly, “We took on what we had room for in our holds but this tiny station isn’t the only stop we made. We were full when we departed Novyah Dom.” He placed his hands on his hips and cocked his head to one side. “If you want a full load maybe you can tell Renard to pay us more to carry supplies to you. If not for the money I’ll make on the return trip, I wouldn’t even bother coming out here. Skathi is two dives away from the normal shipping lanes.”
The grey-haired manager sighed in resignation, “Well, I can’t help things out of my control but I guess I can’t blame you for optimizing your profits.” He quickly checked his desk console. “It looks like your ship will be full in next hour. I’ll enter your disembarking clearance for any time up to Oh-nine hundred. If you’re still here after that, contact station tower and they can update. See you on next run, Captain.” The men shook hands and the freighter captain left.
After taking a few more moments with his desk console, he looked up and said, “Captain Heskan, I presume?”
Heskan stepped forward and shook the station manager’s hand. “That’s correct. Please call me Garrett, Mister…?”
“Demyen Timofei but call me Demyen. We are pleased to welcome you to Skathi. Station crew will relax now that you are here,” Timofei said. After a slight pause, he asked, “Where is other ship? I was told two ships were coming?”
Heskan suppressed a frown and said, “My station commander informed me that matters had changed in Narvi and he required the other ship to stay in that system. I’m afraid we’re all you’ve got.”
A scowl appeared on the stout man and the stress lines on his face deepened. “Your ship can do everything that is required here?” Timofei asked dubiously.
Heskan sighed as he shook his head. “Probably not, Demyen, but we’ll do our best. I figure the best position for Anelace is shepherding the freighters between the Narvi tunnel point and this station. When there aren’t any freighters, we’ll stay close to the Beta Field so we can keep an eye on your ore extractors and help out if they run into trouble.”
The station manager nodded, “Da. We notice you have replaced navigation buoy at tunnel point. This is a good thing. Our mineral storage and refining capacity here is good but our communications ability limited. Buoy gives us much clearer transmission—” he paused once more as he searched for the correct word—“ah, capability.”
Seeing the Russian descendent struggle for English words, Heskan commented, “Your English is excellent, Demyen. Are the others on your station fluent as well?”
“All who work for Renard Enterprises must be fluent. So job descriptions say.” He smiled. “Reality is different. Station crew is mostly from Novyah Zemya and use Russian. As result, they lose their English words. Crew in station tower speaks very good English. This is a problem?”
The station tower acted in a fashion similar to any of the space and air traffic control centers at planet-side airports. They directed traffic in and out of the station traffic lanes. Heskan thought for a moment and replied, “I don’t think it will be. Worst case scenario is we use onboard translators.” I wonder if Ensign Truesworth speaks Russian.
* * *
Anelace spent the day docked to the RALF. Her crew off-loaded supplies and began to settle in for the six-month deployment. In the mess hall, Heskan loaded up his tray with flat strands of pasta bathed in a thick, red sauce before walking up to Chief Brown.
“Boats,” Heskan said, using the typical moniker for a boatswain. “Mind if I join you?” Always a good idea to show some deference to the ship’s senior enlisted man, Heskan thought.
“Of course, Skipper,” the chief replied easily. “What’s on your mind?”
Use tact, Heskan thought. “Chief, I’ve been impressed with Operations since we started out from Narvi and I know that you guys are stretched thin with everything you do on Anelace.” Nearly six years ago, Heskan had started a similar conversation with his problem petty officer second class but used the words “for Fearless” instead of “on Fearless.” The PO2 had then gone behind his back and up the chain of command to complain about how Heskan was intentionally driving the morale down in her section by implying that her people weren’t truly part of the Fearless crew. The ridiculous distortion was just one of many footnotes in a long list of slights the petty officer had compiled against Heskan. Since then, Heskan tried to parse his words more carefully even though he thought it ludicrous that military officers had to worry about such things. It was a simple truth that the Brevic military, like all militaries, mirrored its society.
Brown shoveled his dinner of pasta into his mouth and grunted.
“However, I have to put a little more on your plate.” This drew a glance from the greying enlisted man. “At some point, I think we’re going to have to board some of the incoming and outgoing freighters. Whether it’s an emergency on an ore hauler or just a routine inspection, I’m going to want to put some navy folks on those freighters. I know your guys have their hands full…” Brown waved him off.
“No problem, Capt’n. Operations traditionally acts as marines on these ‘vettes. I keep everyone trained up fer boardin’ operations an’ once a month we do exercise inspections in the shuttle bay.”
Heskan sighed with visible relief. God, I love senior chiefs.
Brown continued, “I go over with ‘em sometimes though, Capt’n. Our last skipper didn’t like that but I can’t ask my folks to do what I’m not willin’ to do myself.” Brown looked up from his tray at Heskan before adding, “I hope you can understand that.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less, Chief. Plus, I don’t plan on inspecting every freighter that enters the system. In fact, I want to wait a bit so word gets out Anelace isn’t conducting inspections. Once the freighter captains get back into a routine, then I want to surprise them. I doubt we’ll find anything but, if we’re out here, we might as well be useful.” Heskan took the first bites of his food and was pleasantly surprised. The pasta was quite good and the sauce had just enough zest to keep it interesting.
“What about inspectin’ the RALF itself, Skipper?”
Heskan thought about that. “Not right away. I don’t want Mr. Timofei getting the wrong impression. He’s already lost some station crew in ore extractor accidents and we’re here to help him, not police him. However, once we get to know each other a little better, I’d like to conduct a base inspection at some point with his blessing.”
The chief looked off into the bulkhead for a few seconds. “You could just make ‘em. There are regulations that’ll allow fer that.”
Heskan agreed, “Yes, but I think we won’t have to resort to that. If I get proof that there’s something on that station that is hurting his mining operations, I’d bet Demyen would request a surprise inspection himself. I hope I haven’t misread him but I think he’s on our side.”
Navy ship captains were powerful animals. Even the captains of tiny corvettes had far-reaching leeway with naval regulations that afforded them a substantial amount of power. The navy, back when Bree was still part of the Solarian Federation, had learned that restricting ship captains who were hundreds of light-years and weeks away from higher authority was a recipe for disaster. Ship captains were often expected to act boldly and handcuffing them with regulations and strict oversight prevented that. Consequently, regulations had been carefully crafted to give a ship captain as much flexibility as possible when dealing with “situations.” They were designed to help bolster the image that a ship captain always had the authority to do what was needed, at least in front of the captain’s subordinates. The crew of any ship depended on believing that their captain had the moral high ground and the law on his side. Uncertainty around the crew could harm morale as badly as an enemy’s broadside.
That doesn’t necessarily apply in front of your boatswain, Heskan thought. This man has almost thirty years in service, which is nearly three times as much as I have. He knows this is my first command and he’s probab
ly more surprised that I’m willing to confide some doubt with him rather than acting as if I already have all the answers. I hope that’s the case, at least.
The silence while the two men ate was not an uncomfortable one. The conversation had ended and neither man felt the need to fill the gap with meaningless chatter. As Heskan was finishing up, second shift ended and Ensign Selvaggio walked up to the table with a tray full of some kind of fish. “May I join you gentlemen?” she asked.
“Of course,” Heskan smiled. The raven-haired woman sat across the table from Heskan and reached for one of the most precious of all naval provisions, the salt. “Diane, Anelace detaches from the RALF in about an hour. After we clear her, I’d like to travel over to the Skoll tunnel point to see if we can locate and inspect that other buoy. It still hasn’t responded to any of our pings”
Selvaggio smiled, pointed at her full mouth and chewed quickly. After a dramatic swallow she said, “Yes, sir. I have Navigator Second Class Ball calculating the course, which I’ll check after supper.”
She took a long drink from her glass before adding, “I think Jack has his sensor crew sweeping the tunnel point for the buoy but he’s having no luck locating it this far out.”
“That’s understandable, given the buoy ain’t emittin’ an’ we’re five an’ a half light-hours away,” the chief added. Selvaggio nodded and opened her mouth to speak but a chime sounded on Heskan’s datapad.
The sound of a young man’s voice asked, “Captain Heskan?” Heskan reached over to his datapad and answered the comm query from the bridge to see Sensorman Third Class Deveraux’s face.
“Sir, we have a tunnel drive disturbance at the Narvi point and now we’re receiving a freighter’s beacon thirty-five light-minutes distant. Her beacon is green and IDs her as an ore hauler named Nomad. Sensors confirm a ship but we’re too far out to make the type,” he said.
“Very well, Deveraux.” Heskan punched the connection closed and looked up to Selvaggio and Brown. “Our first customer. Let’s scrap the plans about Skoll and move out to escort Nomad to the station. Once it’s docked, we can then press on to the Skoll tunnel point and find that buoy.”
Heskan excused himself and proceeded to his cabin. It was spacious compared to any of the other quarters but still cramped. There was room for little more than a bed and a desk with a chair, although the cabin also had a small, attached bathroom with a sanitary shower. The sanitary shower was a dry shower that used ultrasonic waves to kill the bacteria on his body. While a person was technically clean after a sani-shower, he still did not feel clean because none of the sweat or bacteria was removed. The ship also had two water showers, which were used extensively. Adjacent to Heskan’s private bathroom was a smaller closet he used to store his clothes and other personal items. The small quarters didn’t bother Heskan, who was used to living a spartan lifestyle. He had no pictures on his desk, no military plaques from other assignments adorning his walls or anything that could be considered the “I love me” walls officers typically displayed in their offices.
He supposed that at some point in his career he would have one, even if he didn’t display all the medals he had been awarded—one in particular came to mind. For now, all he cared about was the lessons he learned during his past assignments, not the physical possessions he had garnered from them. That’s all that matters, he thought, learn from the mistakes, like on Derringer, and pray that they aren’t repeated.
“Captain, we’re pulling out from the RALF and Ana will come to an intercept course for Nomad in a couple minutes. Time to intercept is three hours, ten minutes.” The voice of his first officer from his datapad shook him from the past. Heskan, whose next shift was in eight hours, acknowledged Riedel and set his datapad to wake himself in three.
The sleek corvette moved away from the mining station. It slipped through the Beta Field and, once past the distortion generated by the asteroid field, made positive identification of the HandyMax-sized bulk freighter. The two ships met just 1lm from the outside edge of the Beta Field, with Anelace moving twice as fast as the freighter and covering more than her share of the distance between them. Once pleasantries were exchanged via voice and video communications and each ship’s standard data was synched, Anelace gracefully pivoted one hundred eighty degrees and settled beside the enormous freighter 10ls (light-seconds) to starboard. Naval ship formations had ship stations much closer to each other but, with civilian traffic, most naval ships were reluctant to crowd a non-military navigator.
As both ships reached the Beta Field, Anelace shifted her position to directly in front of the freighter, slowed to .05c and led the ship through the field of shifting asteroids ranging in size from small hover cars to massive, mountain-sized rocks. The two ships treaded carefully as the distortion inside the field limited even Anelace’s powerful sensors. They must sail practically blind in here, Heskan thought. Those freighter pilots are braver than I give them credit.
Once clear of the belt, the two ships accelerated again to .1c and reoriented themselves toward the distant refining station. Two and a half hours later, Nomad received clearance to dock with the RALF and Anelace set her course for the Skoll tunnel point.
The actual route Anelace took to the tunnel point was far from direct. After his three experiences with the Beta Field, Heskan had no desire to travel through the far denser and exponentially more dangerous Alpha Field. Instead of traveling through it, he took the ship out-system and around it and only then set a direct course for the tunnel point. It added over five hours of travel time but the increase in safety was well worth the time spent. Once Anelace reached the Skoll tunnel point, she was 3.25lh from the RALF.
Two hours into Anelace’s search for the Skoll buoy, Nomad pulled free of the mining station and began her journey to the Narvi tunnel point unescorted. Heskan did not like the freighter traveling through the Beta Field without a shepherd but he could not blame the freighter captain for not wanting to sit docked, waiting on Anelace’s return. The universal constant of “Time is Money” prevailed over all else in economic ventures.
In the end, the freighter captain’s decision to travel without an escort proved to be a wise one. Nomad traversed the Beta Field without incident and dove into tunnel space one hour before Anelace discovered the location of the Skoll buoy. Heskan breathed a soft sigh of relief when the signal of Nomad’s safe departure from the Narvi navigation buoy reached Anelace, nearly four hours after it happened. He understood that Lieutenant Durmont might not look favorably upon him “leaving” his duties to find this buoy and, considering the state of his professional relationship with the arrogant bastard, he did not need to give him any reason to send off a bad report to higher command.
The sensor section crew recovered the dead buoy without mishap and Heskan ordered another “buoy autopsy.” Ensign Truesworth’s report on the first buoy had been definitive. The buoy had ceased to function as the result of a collision with debris approximately 0.1 meters in width. Even though collisions in the dead of space were extremely rare, they were not entirely unheard of. When Truesworth had estimated the chance of the occurrence at less than one percent given the buoy’s position and the time it had been in operation, the number concerned Heskan but there was not much left to pursue. The buoy was hit by a space rock and that’s that, he thought.
Truesworth’s men set to work on analyzing the second buoy as Anelace returned to the other side of the star system. Heskan had not ordered a replacement buoy deployed at the Skoll tunnel point because no ships came out this far. More importantly, he told himself, I want to hold on to my last buoy in case the galaxy rolls another one percent on the cosmic dice and destroys my Narvi buoy. Anelace had maneuvered around the Alpha Field and was sailing past the RALF en route to the section of the Beta Field that Renard ore extractors were exploiting when Heskan’s cabin chime sounded.
“Enter.”
The door slid open silently and Ensign Truesworth came in. “Sir, we’ve finished looking at the Skol
l buoy. You’ll receive a full report tomorrow but I can give you a preliminary one now if you want.”
Heskan placed his datapad on his desktop and arched his back as he stretched. “Go ahead, Jack. What’d you find?”
The junior officer glanced at his own datapad before speaking. “This one looks like a good old-fashioned malfunction. The buoy’s casing was clean with no penetrations so we broke her apart.” Truesworth walked over to Heskan and showed him the information on his datapad. “As you can see, the power relays have fused themselves shut. It happens, especially in high rad environments.”
“Nothing sinister, then?” Heskan asked.
“No, sir. This is a common malfunction. I haven’t run the numbers, and I will if you want them, but this is probably one of the most common reasons for a buoy to cease functioning.” Truesworth waited for his captain to ask any questions and then resumed when Heskan stayed silent. “I guess it’s a little unusual to fuse after just a few years of operation but with the radiation coming out from the star plus the Beta Field, plus the Alpha Field, it’s understandable.”
“Then I guess that’s that,” Heskan mused. Why do I get this nagging feeling that we’re missing something? We’ve done diagnostics and we’ve done our due diligence but I just don’t like these results and I’m not sure why. “Can you recommend any further action, Ensign?”
Truesworth was taken slightly aback at this. He considered carefully and then responded, “Well, sir, I’m not sure what’s left to do. We can run another analysis to see if we come up with something else but the malfunction is pretty apparent.”