Jumper's Hope: Central Galactic Concordance Book 4

by Carol Van Natta

  “Okay, I’ll bite. Why? They’re supposed to decoy scanners and projectile AIs, not lead them to us.”

  “If we wear those nets, it’ll look like shields to routine scans. I’m hoping it’ll make the MO-2 corvette hold off with their cutters until they can get close enough to punch through our shields. By which time, I hope we’re gone.”

  Ritanjali had never heard of that trick, but she guessed it wouldn’t hurt. She liked Kane, and she trusted her new confidence. “As long as they don’t muddy our sensors.”

  “The nets will burn off by the time we go transit.”

  “Uhm, okay, then.”

  Cadroy’s voice came online. “Flux line is clean and green go.” Smart of him not to try to yell over the engine noise. The vagaries of the Faraón’s glitchy communications system gave him an almost Arabic accent. The company really needed to get the system fixed.

  “Bhatta,” said Kane, “as soon as we hit the displacement nets, ramp-up fast to max velocity and hold this vector. I hope it fools the jacker. It’s tricky judging the speed of an oncoming object.”

  “Acknowledged,” Ritanjali replied. The incoming data from the pilot systems was starting to make sense, and now she could see the holes. They’d lost some sensors with the hull damage, but that didn’t worry her nearly as much as the complete lack of control over the external docking and positioning jets that gave them maneuverability in realspace.

  The moment she felt the displacement nets hit the Faraón’s hull, she gave the acceleration command, and felt the ship respond. The engine noise raised in pitch. No wonder Yarsulic had to periodically be treated for hearing loss.

  The pilot training manual said she should be forward scanning every two minutes before transit, but training manuals didn’t cover scenarios that involved playing “made you blink” with an oncoming jacker corvette that wanted the ship’s cargo and probably didn’t care if the crew lived or died. Besides, the standard scans would tell the corvette they were headed for transit, and all they’d tell her was that a big corvette was in her path.

  She felt the launch of more displacement nets, this time to the side, toward the slower MO-3 corvette that was staying out of it for now. Something tickled one of the ship’s systems, but she couldn’t trace it. “Cadroy,” she subvocalized in a private ping to him and Kane, “I think Liao is up to something with the analog systems, but I can’t tell what. It feels like something to do with comms.” A large burst of data nearly swamped her. How the hell did Malámselah and Kreutz handle all this input and have time to joke with her when they were on duty?

  “Bhatta, is that you piloting?”

  It was Liao’s voice, but with no tone indicator, meaning she was on the analog system. Ritanjali waved to get Cadroy’s attention and pointed to her earwire. She mouthed Liao’s name. He nodded quickly and pointed to his own earwire, which she took to mean he heard Liao, too.

  “Bhatta, I know you can hear me, and I know you’re in the engine pod. It’s just you and me left. You’re in way over your head. Yarsulic is no pilot, and Kane is barely out of nav school. You’re going to get us all killed.”

  “Not all of us,” Ritanjali snapped. “You already took care of Tanniffer, Kreutz, and Malámselah.”

  “Kreutz reneged on our deal. You can have his share if you keep us in realspace for our payoff. I’ll even…”

  The engine pod vibrated. Ritanjali frantically buffered Liao’s comms and checked the data streams. She private-pinged Kane and Cadroy. “Liao launched an emergency comm buoy. I can’t tell what she programmed it to say or do.”

  “How many does the ship have?” asked Kane.

  “Five more,” replied Ritanjali. “They’re independent, like the analog wired systems, in case we get boarded by jackers.” The black humor of the situation made her roll her eyes. She checked the countdown. Their velocity, still increasing, put them at transit entrance in nine minutes, which was plenty of time for Liao to wreak havoc. “Liao is right. I’m in over my head.”

  “She wishes,” said Kane. “You’re good. Let the shipcomp track the data stream, so you can watch the anomalies. Stall Liao. We’ll see what we can do about the buoys and her access.”

  Ritanjali unpaused Liao’s comms and listened to the buffered recording of the rest of what she had to say, something about giving her a cut of Moon’s share, since he’d dropped off the net.

  “I’m listening,” was all Ritanjali could think of to reply. More politic than “eat hot death.”

  It was all well and good for Kane to tell her to watch for anomalies, but how was she supposed to know what was unusual and what wasn’t? And she still needed to queue up the nav solution for wherever they were going once they made transit. Not another packet drop, which left the three space stations.

  “Bhatta, tell me what you need to make our deal happen. I don’t want the passengers and crew to be casualties of your lack of experience. Training simulators are nothing like the real thing.”

  Now Liao’s uncharacteristic sociability at dinner yesterday made sense, especially her interest in Ritanjali’s career goals and piloting experience. She’d been evaluating threats to her plan.

  Ritanjali felt another analog system twitch, and another displacement net launch. The shipcomp reported success on sealing the damaged cargo hold. She accessed the data on the hull damage. The ship had incalloy infrastructure in the hold areas, meaning it could go transit even with a few holes. “For a start, you could guarantee you won’t kill me like you did Kreutz.”

  “I won’t, as long as you keep to our deal. Is Yarsulic watching you?”

  “Sometimes,” Ritanjali answered, happy to let Liao continue to think Yarsulic was in charge of their mad scheme.

  Updated scans said the two competing jackers made the first pass at one another, but no indication on whether or not either took a hit.

  “Okay, here’s what you do. Trip the transit sensor diagnostic routine.” Like Cadroy said, Liao was clever. It would look like a rookie mistake and delay the entrance to transit until the routine was done.

  Ritanjali felt another analog tickle. “Why did you launch an emergency comm buoy?” she asked suspiciously, and hoped Liao would think she hadn’t noticed the first one.

  “Insurance. If this all goes chaotic, I wanted Space Div to know what happened and exactly who was responsible.”

  Ah, the teeth in Liao’s deal. Ritanjali would bet half her company profit share that Liao’s fictional version of events featured prominently in the emergency message, with the names Bhatta and Kane added as co-conspirators in the captain’s supposed plot.

  Cadroy pinged her privately. “I can send a regular comm packet with the truth.”

  “God, no,” said Ritanjali hastily. “I’ll get arrested for piloting, or at least terminated. If we live through this, we can set the record straight then. I can’t stall her for much longer, though. She’s chattering to distract me from noticing she’s meddling with other analog systems. Five minutes to transit, and uh, the captain should warn the crew and passengers.”

  “Copy,” said Kane. “I think our best destination is Mabingion. Longer transit time from here, but the heavy military presence should deter any new players.”

  Ritanjali felt the weapons AI release a double-shot energy torpedo toward the sidelined MO-3 ship, presumably as a distraction. “It’ll piss off the passen… oh farkin’ ark, Liao is triggering the nav pod emergency eject sequence!” Ritanjali frantically sent a flood of cancel and counter commands, but too many analog systems ignored her, even though she had captain’s authority. “It’ll rip the ship apart!”

  The engine pod shuddered and shrieked. Ritanjali powered on her exosuit, even as she told Kane and Cadroy to do the same. No time for protocol. She switched on the all-ship comms. “This is Navigator Bhatta. Seal your exosuits now. This is not an exercise. Strap yourself into the emergency jump seats in your quarters, or whatever you can find. Do it now. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.” She told the shipcomp to
repeat the message and play the obnoxious alert tones until she told it to stop. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cadroy race toward the pile of bags along one wall and grab the large orange one, then take off around the engine core in Kane’s direction.

  Sealing the headpiece of her exosuit brought blessed silence to her ears, but now she knew what a chew toy felt like when a dog shook it back and forth. She grabbed the Mabingion nav solution and gave it to the shipcomp, with an extra encryption key that would make it harder for Liao to erase. Every ship alert flooded her input. She felt the ship’s bones cracking when the nav pod fired up one of its docking jets, and all she could do was hope it didn’t take out the adjacent engine pod. “Ninety seconds to transit. Engaging transit drive,” she announced to the whole ship. She hoped she didn’t sound as scared shitless as she felt.

  Ritanjali felt the nav pod tear through passenger berths and Cargo Seven, but the docking jet sputtered out right as the nav pod reached the hull. The ship’s transit engines burned flux and created the field that slid them into transit space. She shut down to the system drive and transit enveloped them. The engine pod vibration subsided to almost unnoticeable. She drew a ragged breath.

  According to the shipcomp monitors, they’d probably lost half the passengers and two thirds of the crew. They had barely enough flux left to make it to Mabingion, and five interstellar days for the weirdness that was transit space to eat at the non-incalloy parts of the ship’s interior. And that didn’t count the extra problem of having a rogue nav pod infesting the ship like a burrowing parasite.

  Her stomach was about ten seconds from rebellion at the thought of how many had died. Be the ship, her great uncle used to tell her. Be human later. She rode the inputs. The ship and crew were completely and royally screwed, but they were alive.

  “Bhatta, how are you holding up?” asked Kane. Her warm and caring voice helped Ritanjali focus on the moment. One hornet’s nest at a time, as her great uncle used to say.

  “I’m good,” Ritanjali said, pleased that her voice didn’t crack. “I just wish I was wearing more than an exosuit and pajamas.”

  CHAPTER 15

  * Interstellar: “Faraón Azul” Ship Day 10 * GDAT: 3242.014 *

  JESS STUMBLED, ALMOST dizzy with exhaustion, into the little observation deck that he’d commandeered as executive sleep quarters. He’d forgotten what it felt like not to have a bleedover headache. If he wasn’t playing Cadroy Joffalk, the gambler-slash-computer-wizard, he was Jess-the-engineer, trying to keep the Faraon’s damaged engines going, with advice and direction from the too-stubborn-to-die Yarsulic. Or he was Jess-the-medic, making hard choices about who should have priority for an autodoc. Jess-the-bomber had strong opinions about his and Kerzanna’s security, and begrudgingly, the rest of the ship.

  The ship’s main engine core survived Liao’s desperate escape attempt, but flux had leaked out via one of the compromised cargo holds until they’d found and patched the hole. He and the remaining crew had rigged a few makeshift connections to the rogue nav pod’s systems to check its status, but Liao hadn’t once responded. Moon died because he’d been tied up and couldn’t seal his exosuit when the supply closet they’d locked him in ripped open to the void in the entrance to transit. He might have died anyway, but Kerzanna blamed herself for his death. What was left of the cargo hold monitors said the waves of transit space were eroding any non-incalloy materials. Jess-the-engineer suspected this was the last voyage of the Faraón Azul.

  Counting Bhatta, Kerzanna, and Yarsulic, nine crew were functional, and they were as exhausted as he was. The three working autodocs were running out of supplies to treat the injured. They’d crammed twenty-one surviving passengers into the twelve intact staterooms, and the crew slept wherever they could. They’d converted Cargo Seven, the smallest of the holds, into a morgue for the bodies they could find. Jess mourned the tragic loss on the second day of practical, genial Hunter with a high-level empath talent and a gift for calm, who’d been trying to stop the hateful Dowyer woman from pushing her teenage daughter out an airlock for the unforgivable sin of using her healing talent to help another passenger, thereby exposing herself as a minder. None of them survived, and the breached airlock devastated the hydroponics section.

  Focusing on the smaller miracles made the disheartening losses easier to swallow. For reasons known only to Liao, she’d shoved Malámselah’s and Tanniffer’s bodies out into the hall before Jess had sealed her in the nav pod. Tanniffer was dead, but Malámselah still clung to a thread of life in one of the autodocs. Two crew members and seven passengers had holed up in the passenger gym and thereby avoided the obliteration of their quarters by the nav pod jet. Several of the passengers and crew with minder talents put them to good use, healing the injured, or using telekinetic skills to help with temporary repairs. Navigator Bhatta rose to every challenge thrown at her, and if the ordeal didn’t put her off interstellar travel for good, she’d make an excellent captain some day soon.

  Another smaller miracle, or more accurately, two of them, woke and meowed a greeting to him as he kneeled next to one of the three sleeping pads he’d dragged in. He’d carried the cats’ bulky orange habitat bag into the room, but they preferred sleeping with him, Kerzanna, or Bhatta when they could. Saving the cats had been one of the best choices he’d made. They offered quiet, soothing companionship, even when the people were scared, hungry, or hurting.

  He eyed the supply of mealpacks in the corner, trying to talk himself into eating one so he wouldn’t wake up famished later. With the loss of the dining hall and hydroponics section, the emergency mealpacks were the only available food. Fortunately, the Faraón was generously stocked, so no one would starve. Instituting extreme water conservation measures ensured they’d have enough to last the five days, especially since they’d discovered one of the intact cargo pallets carried hundreds of expensive, transit-stable wines. A few of the passengers hadn’t been sober since.

  The cargo master had determinedly cracked every single accessible cargo container to look for something that would have attracted two jack crews to fight over it. Jess could have told him the answer was in the comm archives.

  At the Faraon’s first packet drop after Branimir, Liao had received a ludicrously high bounty offer on the ship’s cargo, which was supposedly protected by extra guards masquerading as passengers. At their next stop, Winn-Prox Station, Liao had sent acceptance and supplied the ship’s schedule along with a suggested attack point. She’d brought her cousin, Moon, in on the plot, and crudely rigged the system engine to shut down if the engine pod was sealed. That was just insurance for her primary method, which was simply to stall in the chosen packet drop area and let company policy of giving up cargo take its course. She hadn’t counted on the captain ordering her to switch shifts with Malámselah so he could oversee Kane’s spin-exit nav solution. Liao also hadn’t counted on the glitched comm system that didn’t purge her damning trail of messages like it should have.

  Cargo bounties weren’t unheard of for specific high-value targets, such as untraceable luxury items, illegal chems, or a passenger worth kidnapping. Shippers lied on cargo manifests all the time to deter thefts, skip taxes, or avoid ownership questions. Smart cargo masters scanned and measured the cargo carefully, but shippers continually developed new smuggling methods.

  Jess-the-bomber believed the high bounty was one last attempt to kill Kerzanna. If her pursuers thought she’d left Branimir, the best way to target all possible departing ships would be to post a high bounty for a supposedly precious cargo leaving the planet, and let jackers do what they did best. Kerzanna hadn’t agreed with his opinion, but she hadn’t disagreed, either. He suspected she’d moved it off her survival priority list for the time being, since she was the real captain behind the scenes, despite the crew and passengers having crowned Bhatta as the hero.

  Just as the least-objectionable mealpack he’d selected warmed in his hands, his earwire pinged a private message from Kerzanna. They’d had
even less private time together than before the attack, and he missed her. Luckily, the shipcomp’s AI successfully rerouted itself around missing nodes and stayed functional, or they’d have been well and truly lost.

  K: Yarsulic suspects you know more about his engines than he does.

  Jess subvocalized his reply between bites of pasteboard protein in gluey sauce. LZ, the orange cat, watched him attentively.

  J: Only because the Faraón’s flux drive is older than he is.

  Jess suspected the engineer personality overlay had been created using the memories from a military engineer who’d been around for the birth of the Central Galactic Concordance two hundred years ago.

  J: What’s he unhappy about now?

  He spooned a bit of pale-as-snow chicken into a small plate and set it in front of LZ. In the interest of galactic peace, he did the same for Igandea, who’d been pretending disinterest, but would happily steal from LZ, who took umbrage.

  K: He found the siphon you and the crew installed on the nav pod to reroute its flux supply to the main.

  That has been Jess-the-bomber using Jess-the-engineer’s skills to save the flux for the main ship, and to make sure Liao, if she was still alive, wasn’t going anywhere. The ensuing headache had nearly blinded him for several hours.

  J: He’ll forget once we exit transit. I don’t know the system drive at all. How are you feeling?

  She’d been using her illegal ramp-up system to keep herself awake and functional for long hours, like she would have done back in her active Jumper days. Jumpers refueled with concentrated nutrient streams and metabolism stim drugs. All she could do was eat mealpacks and sleep, and the continued high stress wasn’t doing her waster’s disease any favors. She was delaying a crash-and-burn, but it was coming. He planned to keep her safe when it did.

  K: Malámselah died ten minutes ago. I need a nap before we exit from transit. Are we okay to be there together?