Pandora’s Crew (StarWings Book 1)

by Gorg Huff

  Well, she could have . . . if she hadn’t a ship to run. Building a flexsuit was exacting work where each of a million microwires had to be in just the right place. It was something that the suit-bot had been designed for and did, in essence, by instinct. Pan hadn’t been built for it, and she would spend as much time operating the micro-servos of the suit-bot as she spent running the servos that kept the ship operating. She couldn’t do both.

  She gave the suit-bot the equivalent of a good petting and set it to coming up with designs for new suits for Captain Gold, John, Jenny, and Hirum. Then she had it try to come up with a suit design that would work on Checkgok.

  It would give the bot something to chew on, just like a chew toy for a dog. But she didn’t expect much in the way of results. For humans, the suits mostly didn’t fit tight over the head, and human body hair wasn’t usually very dense, though humans with heavy body hair were encouraged to use a depilatory before getting fitted or wearing their suits. Parthians had spines, but they had tough hides too. From discussions with Checkgok, Parthians did their spacewalks much like Danny Gold. They had shells, and the cartilage of those shells could be fitted with studs. Spacers had the studs and used them to attach what amounted to space helmets to the front of their bodies where the mouth, eye stalks, and the nose were. However, if it could avoid it, Checkgok would much prefer not to be disfigured in that way.

  Apparently, Parthians disapproved of the practice, except for spacers.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Hirum was not at all sure that he made the right choice in hiring on with these . . . Hirum stopped searching for the right word, because the crew of the Pandora weren’t rightly human, at least not all of ‘em. John and the kid were all right. He didn’t even mind the bug so much. It was an alien, and Hirum wasn’t overly prejudiced. But if he’d known that the captain was one of them artificials from Cybrant Five! That was just deviant. And from everything he’d heard, Cybrants were all megalomaniacs. It was designed into them.

  Location: Pandora’s Galley off Haulaway Station

  Standard Date: 05 10 630

  Danny pulled a bulb of coffee from the fridge and stuck it in the micro, then went looking for one of John’s lemon cookies. The galley was looking quite a bit better now. The new drones spread coating and John had the bulkheads set to a pleasant light yellow. The decking was resealed in a slate gray. “What’s the word on your pet, Pan?”

  “I have the suit-bot designing suits and looking into the possibility of making a suit for Checkgok. And the designs should be good, if not particularly original. The problem will come at the construction phase.” At that point, Pan switched to neural interface and gave Danny three-dimensional images of where the damage was and what effect it had.

  Danny considered the image for a moment, then said, “Have it make basic suits without the electronics or the heat-dumping capability for everyone, Pan. I know that isn’t the same as a real flexsuit, but it’s better than nothing. At least it will probably keep the crew alive in an emergency, even if it won’t let them work in space worth a damn. Then see if you can come up with an artificial respirator. A belt or something that will push on their stomachs to help them exhale.”

  Danny was concerned about the fact that with a helmet on, the pressure in the lungs was going to be a lot more than the zero pressure of space, meaning that it took work to compensate for the pressure differential. It wasn’t a problem for Danny. He had the muscles for it and, besides, he could go a long time on chemically-stored oxygen. But for someone like Jenny, because she was a kid, or Hirum, because he was old and not in great shape, forcing the air out of their lungs so they could take another breath would get to be torture after just a few minutes. Every breath a sit-up. Hour after hour. Even without the belt the suit would be better than nothing, but if there was an extended need to be out of the ship, the belt could be a matter of life and death.

  “It won’t like it,” Pan told Danny. “It doesn’t want to put out ineffective suits. That’s the problem Hirum had with it. He expected it to make full suits and the pay for the sort of half-suit you’re talking about is only a fraction of what you get for the real thing.”

  “I want it to make good suits too, Pan. But it can’t. So these are better than nothing. Heck, Pan, even just a place to attach a helmet is better than nothing.”

  The suit-bot didn’t have a name. Hirum just called it Bot. Bot argued with Pan for over a week before it started construction on the suit for Jenny.

  Meanwhile, Checkgok bought this and sold that in the Morland system, and he insisted that after Morland they should take the quickest route to Parthia, a trip that would take three months and have them stopping at four occupied systems.

  That route, however, didn’t include Danworth.

  Pan really wanted to go to Danworth.

  Location: Pandora’s Lounge, off Haulaway Station,

  Standard Date: 05 18 630

  The lounge, too, was in better shape. John was using an extruder drone to make new frames for couches and some of the fabric they picked up on Bonks to cover them. He also made a special pad for Checkgok.

  Danny slouched on a new couch and said, “Your route doesn’t include Danworth.”

  “Danworth?” Checkgok asked. “Why Danworth? I grant that it is among the richest of the Cordoba worlds and the home of a major branch of the Cordoba family. Even that it is a center of trade, where we will be able to buy a great variety. But almost none of what we can buy there is going to be available at the sort of price we would like to pay.”

  “No,” Pan agreed. “However, quite a bit of our cargo should fetch premium prices.”

  “Perhaps. But Danworth is in almost exactly the wrong direction. So why?”

  “To get the suit-bot fixed,” Pandora told him.

  “If the issue is that urgent, it would probably be cheaper to simply buy new suits for the humans. And we still haven’t discovered how to make a suit that would fit me.”

  “You’re missing the point, Checkgok,” Danny said. “It’s the suit-bot that Pan is concerned with. It’s an artificial brain system like Pan, and even though it’s not nearly as intelligent as she, it is her kind in a way. And it’s suffering because it can’t do its job.”

  The eyestalks stopped moving, which only happened when Checkgok was shocked. It surprised Danny, because he didn’t feel anything he’d said was all that shocking. He looked around the lounge. Everyone else was looking shocked too.

  After a short pause, Checkgok asked, “Are you saying that the suit-bot is a member of the crew? A part of your clan?”

  Jenny’s mouth fell open. She was listening to the conversation because she was now comfortable around Checkgok and spent a considerable part of her day following it around to learn how to be a master of trade. Jenny recently decided that she wanted to be a master of trade when she grew up.

  Danny’s mouth didn’t fall open, but that was only partly because he had a better poker face than the kid. Mostly it was because the issue was an obvious one that they had ignored. Pan was Pan, his ship and his friend. The suit-bot was, so far as Danny was concerned, her pet. He was willing to go to Danworth because he didn’t really care where he went, and Pan wanted to. But he hadn’t considered any obligation he might have to the suit-bot.

  Danny looked around. John was as gobsmacked as Jenny but hiding it better, and Hirum was like a maiden aunt caught between shocked outrage and being thrilled with a juicy bit of gossip. By now, Danny was familiar with the old bastard’s prejudices, and he was willing enough to put up with them as long as they didn’t interfere with his work. So far, they hadn’t. Hirum could handle the servos and the drones that did the maintenance on the Pan quite well. And, when necessary, he could even swing a hammer or turn a wrench on his own. But he didn’t like Danny, and he wasn’t overly fond of Pan. In Hirum’s worldview, artificial brains should never be much smarter than the suit-bot.

  Danny looked at the old guy’s expression and hid a smile. Hirum did c
are about the suit bot, and as much as he wanted to disapprove of the notion of a bot—any sort of artificial brain—as a part of the crew, he still wanted the bot fixed.

  Danny looked back at Checkgok. “Yes. I guess the suit-bot is a member of the crew in the same sense that a ship’s cat would be, if we had one. More perhaps, because the suit-bot contributes to the welfare of us all.”

  Now John and Jenny were looking at Danny in something close to shock, and Hirum was looking . . . was “satisfied disgust” an expression? Danny guessed it was, because it was on Hirum’s face right now.

  But by now Checkgok had had time to consider. “Very well. As agent for Clan Zheck, I am still opposed, but as a member of the crew of the Pandora and an adopted member of the Danny Gold Clan, it is clear that the welfare of a clan member must take precedence, as long as it doesn’t damage the clan or clan honor. However, the change in route will also make necessary a change in cargo.” Checkgok started typing furiously, calling up manifests and cargo jobs from all over the system.

  One Hour Later

  “We will need to go to the planet, Captain,” Checkgok said.

  “Why?”

  “Because if we are going to Danworth we need a different cargo set than we want for Parthia. For Parthia, we will want mostly manufactured goods, computer cores, servos, heavy equipment machines and construction equipment that can be adapted to Parthians. But Danworth is a manufacturer and science center. For Danworth we want biologicals and natural goods. Foods, textiles, native handicrafts. Taking machines to Danworth would—”

  “I get it. It would be like taking coal to Newcastle.”

  “Where’s Newcastle?” asked Jenny.

  “It was on Terra,” Danny told her. “Look it up and give Pan a report on why you wouldn’t want to take coal there.”

  Jenny made a face but accessed her interface.

  While Jenny was researching Newcastle and grumbling about the idiotic things that grownups wanted you to learn, Pan was heading for the planet Morland.

  Location: Morland Orbital One, Morland Orbit

  Standard Date: 05 20 630

  John Gabriel walked through the grocery in Morland Orbital One. It was a large chamber in the outer ring of the station, almost a click from the station center, and used centrifugal force to simulate gravity. There were robot hoses spraying down the crates of fruits and vegetables. And AR emitters that gave John the vitamin and nutritional content. A quick flick of his implants and John got recipes for the foods on offer. Unfortunately, he also got ads for all the other ingredients of each recipe, and almost every recipe was padded with extra ingredients. He killed the zucchini bread recipe that included fresta zest and cumin. It looked disgusting.

  This was the place to get samples of the local produce of the planet Morland, unless you wanted to go down to the planet, and John didn’t. He’d never been on a planet that was half-terraformed, and he didn’t want to start now. But here the fruits, vegetables, and meats from the planet were available.

  He picked a wide selection of foods and bought some recipe files. For the next several days he fed everyone, even Checkgok, the foods.

  Location: Pandora, Morland orbit, Cordoba Space

  Standard Date: 05 23 630

  Jenny lifted the cover from the eggs and bison bacon and sniffed tentatively. It smelled good, but just a little different. The eggs were scrambled and more orange than Jenny was used to, and the bison bacon was crispy like she liked. There was a white cheese sauce with flecks of green that smelled of peppers.

  She took a scoop of eggs, poured some sauce on them, grabbed two slices of the bacon, then sat at the table. She took a small bite, swallowed. Then grabbed her orange juice. The cheese sauce was spiced with jalapenos, but with the eggs, it worked. She had some bacon and gave John a thumbs up.

  Checkgok was eating a salad of peppers and fruits and a kind of bread John made for it.

  Jenny mostly enjoyed the culinary experimentation. She liked the Morland bison meat, and the Morland sweet tomatoes were really good too. But the Morland watermelon, with its purple interior, was just wrong. And it had a funny something in the flavor that Jenny didn’t like. The bananas were just bananas, no different from the ones from the ship’s garden, even if they were genetically distinct.

  The rest of the crew were mostly in agreement with Jenny. They sold circuits created in zero-g and vacuum, and raw iron and aluminum, and then bought beef and tomatoes.

  Chapter 11

  Danworth is one of the main systems of Cordoba Space. It is the home of the Alexander Cordoba Cybernetic Research Center and had been an excellent place to buy or have repaired artificial brains over the years.

  However, by Standard Year 620, the political situation had changed and the administration of the Alexander Cordoba Cybernetic Research was placed under increasing pressure to abandon research on artificial brains, and—especially—the production of large artificial brains.

  The History of the Artificial Brain, Chapter 15, by Professor Hirum Outis III, Canova University Press,

  Standard Date 715

  Location: Big Dark, Cordoba Space

  Standard Date: 06 10 630

  Jenny lay in an accel couch, jacked into the Pan, and felt the space. She tried to feel what the captain was doing, and she could almost do it. While some of Jenny’s ancestors were modified in some ways, she was mostly unmodified. Oh, she had the standards. She would never get diabetes, or Alzheimer’s, or about half the cancers that completely unmodified humans were subject to. But she wasn’t tweaked the way the captain was. She had to plug into the jack to interface directly with Pan, and she was still out of practice. It felt creepy to use the interface again. The sense of the ship’s sails pushing against space felt like it was a breeze against her skin. At the same time, she knew that it wasn’t on her skin.

  They decided to make the best time they could to Danworth, skipping stops at systems in between. It was a little bit risky, but it would get them to Danworth sooner and it would give the captain the chance to take less-traveled jump routes and get a feel for the space. It was also pretty boring. They had been in space over a month now and had never so much as seen another ship.

  “Feel that, Jenny?” The captain’s thought whispered to her through the link, and he indicated a sensation sort of like a swirl of wind over her elbow.

  “Maybe,” Jenny answered. “What does it mean?”

  “I’m not sure, but there is a good chance that there is a rock or a small planetoid ten or fifteen light minutes off that way.” A point in the virtual space lit up.

  “Why does that matter?”

  “I don’t know that it does, but it might mean that it’s more likely we will find a jump point off that way.” A different area in the virtual space took on a sort of glow.

  It seemed to Jenny that there were an awful lot of mights in those statements. “Are we going to go look?” she asked.

  “Not this trip, but we might on our way back. For now, it will just go into Pan’s rutters as a possible.”

  Jenny felt good. It made her feel safe for the captain to teach her about the ship and the way space felt.

  Location: Cordoba Space Danworth Outsystem,

  Standard Date: 06 16 630

  Danny sat in the galley with a mug of coffee in one hand and a bison bacon sandwich in the other when the call came in. Pan threw it up on the screen, and the customs agent took his time before looking up at Danny through the screen.

  “Why didn’t you stop at Prenger?” asked the agent.

  Ah, Danny thought, he’s reading the data we sent them. “I don’t have a clue. You’ll have to ask our ship’s merchant.” Danny turned away from the screen and waved to Checkgok with the hand holding the bacon sandwich. “Tell me again, Checkgok, why didn’t we stop at Prenger?”

  “As I told you from the beginning, Captain,” Checkgok said, “when we decided to come to Danworth, we determined that it would be best to take the goods we had bought at Morland and
before and bring them directly here.”

  Danny looked back to the comm, put on his dumbest expression, and shrugged. “I don’t understand trade.”

  The customs man gave Danny a disgusted look, then asked, “Why did you decide to come to Danworth?”

  “We have a used suit-bot that we want to have repaired.”

  It was apparent that the customs agent’s assessment of Danny’s intellect had passed the basement and was on its way to the sub-basement. Which was pretty much what Danny was trying for, but was still annoying. In fact, the whole situation was annoying and Danny was having to work hard at keeping his mouth shut and not telling this officious little twit that it was none of his fucking business. The only thing that was keeping his lip buttoned was the fact that the little twit could have his ship taken apart in a customs search if Danny told him to stuff it.

  “It would have been cheaper to just buy a new one,” the twit said.

  “This one has sentimental value.”

  “Is it one of those artificial brain bots they used to make?” There was disgust in the agent’s voice now, and that surprised Danny.

  “I thought this was a center of research into artificial brains.”

  “Those things are dangerous,” the agent said. “And even the Alexander Cordoba Cybernetic Research Center is going to have to recognize that.”

  Danny did his best wide-eyed hick expression and said, “Yes, sir. I’ll tell them you said so.” The interview came to an end then, except for the obligatory “we’ll be watching you” comments.