Pandora’s Crew (StarWings Book 1)

by Gorg Huff

  “In fact, Captain Gold, it would be perfectly reasonable for us to have flung a lot more grain at the pirate than we did,” said George Stuart. “Say . . . enough to fill the rest of your hold.”

  “And where would we have gotten that grain?” Danny asked.

  “Why, you bought it, Captain,” Allen piped up. “At Hudson, where the bumper harvest meant the prices were low. Normally it wouldn’t be a profitable cargo for a ship your size, but any cargo is better than none and it was really cheap.”

  “We don’t have much in the way of cargo haulers,” Danny explained. “We only have the one ship’s boat, and it’s pretty small. I think we will need to shut down our drives and scuttle up to each other if we are going to do this.”

  “No. We’ll use ours,” Davis said. “They’re made to double as transfer shuttles when we need to ship to some of the smaller stations. The problem’s going to be once we get docked to your Pan. They are five ton drums.”

  “We’ll manage, Captain. Between Pan’s servos and . . . well, we’ll manage.”

  And they did. For the next two days, as the two ships made slow progress toward the next jump point, Danny, in helmet and gloves but no suit, and servos run by John and Jenny, unloaded five-ton drums of vacuum dried wheat from the Sicily’s ships boats to the Pan. Filling the Pan barely made a dent in the Sicily’s cargo.

  Location: the Pandora

  Standard Date: 05 03 630

  “There is the question of who owns the wheat, Captain,” Checkgok pointed out. “The ship or Clan Zheck.”

  “It was given to the ship,” Pan said. “More precisely, to Captain Gold.”

  “The wheat was provided in recompense for actions taken by the ship while on the business of Clan Zheck,” Checkgok corrected. “Further, Clan Zheck’s goods were placed in considerable jeopardy. Whether it wanted to or not, Clan Zheck took part in the risk. It should also take part in any profit that has accrued from that risk.”

  “It’s got a point, Pan.” Danny grinned. “But if that’s the case, then the loss of the ship’s boat becomes a legitimate running expense and the responsibility of Clan Zheck.”

  “That seems reasonable,” Checkgok agreed.

  “While I agree that the ship’s boat must be managed as part of the running expenses, that was only part of the payment to the ship for its use,” Pan insisted. “It doesn’t imply that everything the ship does is done strictly for Clan Zheck. It wasn’t just Clan Zheck but also the ship and crew who were put in danger. Ship and crew should receive some part of any reward gained. And it was the captain’s decision to involve the ship in the first place, so there are captain’s shares to consider.”

  “I don’t see that, Pan,” Danny said. “Seems to me that, if anything, there ought to be a penalty to me for putting the crew at risk without consulting them.”

  “But you did consult us, Captain,” Jenny said. “You gave us a chance to talk you out of it, and we agreed that it had to be done.”

  “Okay,” Danny said, “but that doesn’t mean captain’s shares. Like you said, everyone agreed. Mostly.”

  Eventually they determined that Clan Zheck would get half the grain. The rest would go into ship’s funds, minus a bonus for crew. The bonus was more money than Jenny had ever even seen, much less owned.

  Location: Brass Ass, en route to Donnybrook

  Quinton Williams grabbed the stanchion and regretted—yet again—supporting Rosalyn’s mutiny. It had proven true—yet again—that men only had enough blood to operate one head at a time, and too often—even when they thought they were using the one above their shoulders—it was the other head that was actually running things. Rosalyn was sexy as hell, but the woman was bat shit crazy.

  Even now, Quinton couldn’t quite bring himself to try to mutiny against her. And he wasn’t sure whether that was because he didn’t have the skills needed to run the bridge or because he was still enamored of her. Instead he worked with the damage control crew to try to get the wings back up. Joe Downing was still locked up awaiting trial, and Quinton was under quarters arrest when not on duty. The only reason that Rosalyn hadn’t flushed them both out of an airlock was because she was afraid of the reaction of his exspatios.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  John Boyle had had enough. The stupid bitch just had to go after the grainer. And a grainer like that wouldn’t have much in the way of rutters, whatever paranoid delusions Rosalyn’s flash-soaked brain came up with. He looked over at Loly, who was directing the repair crews from her station, and he suddenly realized that she was in danger now.

  Rosalyn would need someone to blame for the condition of the ship and she couldn’t blame herself or her decisions. The blame would fall on the repair crew, and especially on Loly, as the newly appointed third and damage control officer.

  That meant that he couldn’t involve Loly in the mutiny.

  He looked over at the controls and his eyes fell on the course plot. They were on course to a gray route jump. It led off the main Hudson-Morland route, but it connected up with a gray route to Donnybrook. And the whole route to Donnybrook was in the ship systems. That was important. Rosy was nuts on security and usually she erased the coordinates of all the jumps except the one they were going to next.

  It didn’t occur to John to wonder why she didn’t this time.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  In the hours since the battle, Rosalyn had had a stick of flash and realized that there was a good chance of mutiny. She intentionally left the course to Donnybrook on the comp. Not the real course, but one that looked real enough. Rosalyn knew she might die in the mutiny she was inviting, but that didn’t worry her.

  That was the fun of it, after all. The knowing that she might die in a few minutes.

  She looked around the bridge wondering who it might be. Her guess was Quinton. He wanted her. She knew that. But he was such an upright sort. He didn’t like the way she was running things. He didn’t respect fun. Not her sort of fun.

  John got up from his seat. She looked at him and lifted an eyebrow.

  “Need to go to the head, Skipper. Too much coffee.”

  Maybe. Or maybe he was getting ready to start the mutiny. She nodded, not showing her suspicion.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Three minutes later, Daniel Watters stepped through the hatch, carrying a slate. He approached the captain’s chair and Rosalyn spun the chair around.

  He dropped the slate. Hidden behind it was a pistol.

  He started to point it, but Rosalyn was faster and she was ready for him. In fact, she was expecting him. She knew the attacker would be Joe Downing if it was Quinton, or Dannyboy if it was John Boyle.

  She fired, and so did he. But she was a fraction quicker and her shot jerked him so that his shot hit a corner of the main display screen. She jabbed the comm button even as she used her interface to call up ship’s communications. “Quinton, arrest John Boyle.”

  “I can’t, Captain,” came the immediate response. “I am still under quarters arrest.”

  Using her interface she called up his location. He was down ship. There was no way he was involved. There wasn’t time. And with him under arrest, the ship would have recorded any comm he made. It was even recording anything he said. She called up his comments for the last few minutes. He hadn’t talked to anyone other than the damage control crew he was working with. “Oh, you still love me,” Rosalyn said in a little girl voice, then giggled.

  “I rule you not guilty for the good of the service and restore you to full rank and status. Now go find John and—”

  The hatch opened again and John Boyle came in, gun in hand. He fired before he was through the hatch and his bullet took out a console that was over her left shoulder. He was followed by three other crew, armed with wrenches and piping. Weapons were restricted on the Brass Ass, just as they had been when it was under Drake Colors.

  Rosalyn fired back. She got John and two of his followers, then she was out of ammunition. These weren’t the exspatio mag rifl
es. They were old-fashioned chem weapons.

  She threw the pistol at Spacer Flint and went after him.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  John was thrown back against the bulkhead by the bullets. He sank to the deck and saw Loly start to rise. He knew that something had gone wrong, that the bitch had somehow been ready. He waved Loly down. It was a small gesture because he was dying, but also because he didn’t want Rosalyn to see.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Loly let herself sink back in the chair and watched her man die. It was all that merchant ship’s fault. There was a part of Loly’s mind that knew that was so unjust as to border on insanity, but it was a small part. And that small part was swamped by the sure and certain knowledge that if she blamed Captain Rosalyn Flatt she would end up doing something that would get her killed. And Loly had a strong desire for self-preservation.

  Loly looked over, saw the little woman drive two thumbs into Flint’s eyes, and heard him scream while she laughed. Loly turned her head away and looked at the damaged screen. It didn’t show anything now, not the route to Donnybrook or the merchantman and grain hauler they were sailing away from.

  Chapter 10

  Humans in the Pamplona sector do not, for the most part, live on planetary surfaces. Even in systems that have habitable or semi-habitable planets, a large percentage of the population lives in space stations. While the long term expense of terraforming a world is less per square foot of living space than building a space station, the initial cost is much lower for a space station because the space station can be as small or as large as needed for the initial population.

  This makes individuals harder to hide, but groups large enough to go out to the asteroid belts or Oort clouds of systems can hide whole cities, making taxation and political control more difficult.

  Cordoba Census Bureau Report, Standard Year 512

  Location: Cordoba Space Morland System

  Standard Date: 05 04 630

  Radio communication between Morland and the Pandora didn’t take long, but Commander Ferdinand Ardmore of the Cordoba patrol ship Grenadier wanted to get personal reports from everyone involved. Captain Virginia Delangen of the Morland Defense Force was insisting that since they were in Morland space now, they were under Morland law, and no, Ardmore could not interview the little girl without an advocate.

  “I think,” Pan told Danny, “that we have wandered into another conflict between the local and interstellar authorities.”

  “No doubt,” Danny agreed as they listened to Commander Ardmore and Captain Delangen arguing. “And I think Ardmore may suspect where we got the wheat.”

  A few moments later Danny activated his mike with a thought. “Jenny is a member of our crew, and her guardian is Spacer John Gabriel. You can ask her anything you want, Commander, but her guardian and the Pan are going to be present and recording while you do. I have a responsibility to my crew.”

  The commander, a monumental jerk, spent several hours interviewing everyone on the Pandora and the Sicily. Some seven hours later, he finally left, offering the Cordoba Combine’s thanks and the strong impression that he’d really rather be arresting them all on suspicion of being human.

  Captain Delangen grinned at them once the commander was off the line and suggested, “You’ll get a better price if you sell your grain on Haulaway Station. It’s a mining and manufacturing center located on the largest rock in the asteroid belt. If you sell on world, it will mean extra shipping and transfer fees. Tell Tommy Frinch I sent you.” Captain Delangen sent an in system jump route. They were, as it happened, jumps Pan already had in her rutters, being in the public rutters for the system, but the route turned a two-week normal space trip into a series of jumps that could be made in a day and a half. As well, it saved them a few hundred kilograms of hydrogen.

  “Thanks, Captain. We’ll do that.”

  Location: Pandora, off Haulaway Station, Morland System

  Standard Date: 05 07 630

  “Captain, we have a chance to buy a suit bot,” Pandora said.

  Danny looked up from the game of planets he was playing with Jenny, then nodded. “Makes sense.” There were two sorts of space suits, the relatively cheap heavy suits that were the next best thing to tiny spaceships—big, heavy, hard to work in, and uncomfortable. Then there were the flexsuits, much more expensive because they had to be fitted to the wearer with a level of exactitude that would be difficult to achieve if they were made of cloth. But they weren’t made of cloth. They were made of carbon fiber rings a few microns across, interlaced with micro circuits and magnetic coils. They kept the body from expanding in zero pressure, and helped the wearer to breathe by pressing the chest and stomach on the exhale and releasing the pressure on the inhale. It was an amazing feat of engineering placed into a pseudo fabric no thicker than a sheet of silk. Flexsuits fit like a second skin and were worth a heavy suit’s weight in gold to anyone who had to do much work in space. They were made by specialized robots called suit bots. “This would be the place for one. But why is it for sale?”

  “It’s broken,” Pan admitted. “But the seller, one Hirum Outis, insists that it’s fixable.”

  Danny was about to say no, then he looked into Jenny’s eyes and changed his mind. Jenny had no suit at all, which meant she was restricted to indoors at all times. And besides, there was Checkgok. Danny wasn’t at all sure that the bug could wear a suit, not with its spiky fur and weird shape. But living in space without a suit wasn’t safe, not unless you were designed for it. “Okay, Pan. We’ll have a look at it. What about a new ship’s boat?”

  “None that we can afford, Captain.”

  “Parts? A couple of junkers we could tear down and rebuild? We’re going to be leaving here light, assuming Checkgok can sell the wheat locally.”

  “About that, Captain. Checkgok doesn’t think we should sell that much of the wheat here. It’s too close to Hudson. It thinks we’ll get a better price farther away. That is especially true if we can cross back to Drake space before we sell it.”

  “I don’t know. That’s a fair amount of mass to accelerate through normal space, and even more volume in the holds that grain is taking up.”

  Location: Haulaway Station, Morland System

  Standard Date: 05 07 630

  Hirum Outis was an old guy in a filthy flexsuit. “It was working fine just a couple of years ago, then Jodee Foster got drunk and busted up the shop, and I ain’t been able to get it to work since.”

  Danny looked at the suit-bot. On the outside, it looked good. Hirum had obviously spent a lot more care on the bot than he had on his flexsuit or his own hygiene. “Mind if I run a scan on it?” Danny asked.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  Danny pulled out the diagnostic unit that was linked to Pan and plugged it into the control port of the suit-bot and waited.

  “We should buy it, Captain,” Pan said over his personal frequency.

  “You think you can fix it?” Danny sent back.

  “No, Captain. But the suit-bot’s brain has been damaged.”

  “How bad?”

  “That is difficult to say, but it has been unable to perform its function for two years and . . .”

  “I understand, Pan,” Danny sent, and he did. Artificial brains came in a variety of sizes and functions. Even the simplest were at least moderately expensive, and while most of them didn’t have anything like human intelligence, they did feel. By design, they wanted—needed—to perform the function that they were designed to perform. To deny an artificial brain the chance to work was cruel. Pan could not avoid empathizing with the simple creature that was the suit-bot. “How bright is it?”

  “About as bright as a cocker spaniel,” Pan sent. She didn’t have to explain that the suit bot’s intelligence was strictly focused on the making of flexsuits.

  “Get in touch with Checkgok and see how much we can pay for it. Better yet, get it over here so it can do the negotiations.”

  Danny listened to Hirum and tried not to inha
le too deeply. Among the other tweaks, Danny had an acute sense of smell. And he figured Hirum had not entirely removed his flexsuit for years. Flexsuits had limited waste removal capabilities, but they weren’t designed to be permanent wear. Most flexsuits had a changeable container for urine and a trapdoor in the back for the rest. But it was expected that they would be taken off at least once a day, so that both suit and wearer could be cleaned.

  Standard Date: 05 08 630

  Checkgok, after discussion with the old human, was almost convinced that the suit bot could make suits for Parthians—given the parameters and some chance to experiment. In the meantime, the old human was in need. Checkgok thought about Jenny Starchild’s comments about the moral obligations of humans toward other humans and the way that the humans seemed to make clans out of disparate individuals. Also about Danny Gold’s need for his clan to replace his missing empathy.

  Hirum was explaining how he wouldn’t even be considering selling the suit-bot, but he was behind on his rent and they were going to come take it anyway in a few more weeks. “I swear, I don’t know what I’m gonna do then. Probably end up on the row with the druggies.”

  Location: The Pandora

  “You what?” Danny asked the Parthian when it arrived back at the Pan with the suit-bot and Hirum Outis in tow.

  “I invited Hirum to join our clan, bringing his suit-bot as his adoption fee.”

  “And just what made you think that you—”

  Pan butted in then. “Captain Gold, one of the functions of a trader in a Parthian clan is the adoption of new members.”

  Danny closed his mouth and counted backwards from one hundred by square roots to seven decimal places. Then said, “Make him bathe,” turned on his heel, and headed back to the bridge.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Pandora was chatting with the suit-bot. The poor thing only had Hirum to talk to for years and Hirum was, in Pan’s opinion, more than a little touched. Also, there was damage to the central processor group of the suit-bot, not just the interface. However, the neural net design of the multiprocessor core meant that the bad spots could be worked around, given enough time and equipment. As it stood at the moment, the suit-bot was like a cocker spaniel with a broken back. It could still bark and still drag itself around on its front legs, but its back legs didn’t work. In the suit-bot, that meant it could still make the suit design and it could make the carbon nanotube links, but the interwoven electromagnetic muscles were on the wrong side of the damaged sectors, and so were the temperature shunts. It knew what to put where, but the information couldn’t get through to the servos. Pan could act as a sort of link.