by Ginger Booth
Clay took over the hammer, wondering how he would know if the metal was sound. It wasn’t as though he could hear anything. Then his next blow went straight through. Surprised, Clay lost hold of the hammer, which flew away into the stars.
Darren touched his shoulder to request he get out of the way. The engineer applied another batch of cutting goo around his new hole. With another lobe added to the clean hole, Darren handed Clay another hammer.
The next time it went through the hull, Clay managed to hold onto the tool. They continued, him hammering and Darren cutting, until they thought only sound hull remained.
“Bubble test,” Remi decreed, and tossed Clay a couple Sagamore bubble kits.
Sass glanced up from her tablet. She’d finished clearing debris. Clay wasn’t sure what she was up to now. “Could we burn the engines –?”
“Ha! No,” Remi replied. “Engine plasma turns bubbles to dust. Clay, attach the first bubble where the welds will go. Then bubble yourself in with it, your end of the room. Then release some of your air. Check if it holds or leaks.”
Darren marveled, “Brilliant, Remi! I never would have thought of it!”
“Experience,” Remi acknowledged. “At Hell’s Bells, we fix holes all the time.”
“Leaks,” Clay reported a few minutes later.
Remi windmilled his gauntleted hand. “Pop the smoke, find the leak…”
Right. Clay knew how to find and fix small leaks. In moments, he found the pin-hole and dabbed sealant into it. Rinse and repeat. Remi made Darren patch one of the pinholes with steel for easy practice. It was easier to comprehend the cold weld task without struggling with an oversized plate.
Finally they reshaped the plate to the hull curvature in its final orientation. Only then could they clean all surfaces and stick them together. The steel welded itself while they held it in place.
“Clay,” Remi directed. “Bubble up, find the leaks.”
These were prodigious, his popped smoke streaming into the plate seemingly from every direction. Clay was glad Remi seem unconcerned, because Sass kept checking the time more anxiously the longer this took. Clay dutifully marked the seepage. It wasn’t quite as extensive as he first thought.
Remi prompted, “Now Darren. Curve the plate to connect where Clay marked.” He directed them to begin with the tricky edge that nosed into the other cabin.
Darren took his turn, then Clay’s smoke again, both of them inside the bubble chamber now. The tricky edge quit leaking altogether. A handspan along the top and a few leaks at the bottom remained.
“Don’t get anxious,” Remi advised. “Just work steadily, get it right. And again.”
Sure enough, they managed a good seal on the next try.
Then they had to do it all over again in the other cabin.
Then they tried to pressurize the hold – at 1%. This failed, but they quickly tracked another pinhole in Remi’s cabin, and sealed it.
“Captain, we are air-tight!” Clay finally reported in triumph. And he’d been useful after all, he realized in satisfaction. For a lifelong desk jockey, he did OK.
“Mon capitan.” Remi lay spread-eagled on his own bed now, nursing his headache. “Decelerate at will.”
“Third officer. To the bridge.” Sass smirked, and offered him a hand up.
“Cap, what have you been working on all this time?” Clay finally asked.
“That ship, the one that shot at us. It exceeded max velocity by twelve percent.”
Remi hissed. “Insane!”
At Clay’s puzzled look, Sass said, “Talk later. We need to decelerate. Well done, crew. Very impressed, Mr. Rocha.” She smiled at him warmly, as captain, not lover.
He almost dismissed the compliment. But no, he earned it.
107
An hour and a half later, Sass and Remi finished their freshly recalculated braking burns. Due to the delay, they elected to gravity-brake around the planet instead of a standard orbit to arrival. This added a half day to their trip, but Sass figured that was just as well.
She hailed her first officer. “Clay, are you free yet?” His current task was to settle the surviving crew – put their one body away and keep Joey distracted from his lost girlfriend.
“Still need room assignments for tonight,” he replied.
“Report to the bridge.”
When Clay arrived, Remi suggested, “I sleep in my own bed. Corky won’t mind sharing her door. But Joey shouldn’t be alone. So maybe Joey in my cabin with me?”
“But that’s not a pressure-tight compartment,” Clay argued.
Remi shot him a withering raised eyebrow. “And where would you place the bubble?”
“Right, sorry.”
“I start fixing the pressure bulkheads tomorrow, but.”
Sass interrupted, “We have more pressing concerns, gentlemen. We were shot at. We need to speak to a human being on the surface immediately. Or retaliate. I’m thinking a 30 minute warning.”
“But Sass…” Clay’s voice trailed off as she glared at him in steely resolve.
“I agree,” Remi noted for the record. “Clay, that ship that fires on us? She exploded.” Remi mimed a ka-boom and swept his fingers to indicate the vague direction of its demise. “Gone.”
Clay recoiled. “Self-destruct?”
“We suspect idiocy,” Sass explained. “Reading the drive trails, it began decelerating the moment after it fired at us. But not soon enough. It exceeded the rated speed limit for a JO-3. And paid the ultimate price. Good riddance.”
Clay still looked puzzled, so Remi explained. “At this speed, a speck of space dust can destroy a ship. The ESD, she has no reaction time. This is why we don’t fly faster.”
Sass growled, “Couldn’t happen to a nicer ship. Bastards. Let’s choose a target. Say five klicks from the nearest structure? Land shot, I think. I don’t want to muck up the water supply. It’s pitiful enough already.”
“Maybe the second shot,” Remi suggested.
Their visuals on the planet were good now. Sass proposed a demonstration target site. Remi simulated a visualization of how the pyrotechnics would appear from the colony proper, and the debris field radius, give or take. Sass wasn’t averse to some wayward gravel pelting the colony dome and scratching the windows. Based on his projections, she decided to shift the target inward to 3.5 klicks, to demolish a scenic outcrop of rocks.
In Remi’s mockup – and the ex-miner had ample experience – that hill would make for an unforgettable show with about 8 seconds of loving attention from their main guns. Based on the surface colors, he hoped for some purple and pink flames from strontium and lithium. Though they might be overpowered by a burning geyser of golden sodium.
“I love rock explosions!” Remi noted in rapture.
“Sass, devil’s advocate,” Clay cautioned. “Some steps are unforgivable. Maybe one more round of talks is in order before issuing threats.”
Sass pressed her lips in rage. “Seven deaths, Clay. You’re right. Some acts are unforgivable and must be answered in kind.”
“Another drive trail comes from the asteroid belt,” Remi updated him. “Nanomage class, ETA five days.”
“And no hails,” Sass gritted out, each word lashing out separately, accompanied by a rap on the dashboard. “When you play devil’s advocate, Clay…”
“Careful not to sound like the devil,” Remi happily completed the thought.
Clay held up his hands in surrender. “Agreed.”
Sass was too angry to bother pre-recording. She just flipped on her comms channel to the colony and began speaking live, her words irreclaimable. “Sanctuary Colony, this is Captain Sassafras Collier of the starship Thrive, Mahina Colony, Aloha Star System. Your attack on my ship was an act of war, resulting in the deaths of seven of my crew. Our retaliatory strike will be in precisely 30 minutes.”
She rattled off the coordinates. Remi set the timer with relish.
“I suggest you relocate all personnel away from the vicini
ty. And I demand to speak to a human in charge immediately. Thrive out.”
Her comms lit up almost instantly. Little lag time remained to the planet now, a mere 4 second round trip.
The second avatar appeared on Sass’s dashboard. She tossed his feed up onto the window in front of her for Clay’s viewing convenience. She scowled. His face had aged, and his body language was more credible. But Remi shook his head to confirm – zero reaction time. They’d reached the damned answering machine again.
“Thrive! This is Mayor Zeb Tharsis of New Hellas Colony on Sanctuary. The attack on your ship is complete news to us. Please hold your fire while we straighten this out.” He gave her a smarmy smile.
“Sanctuary Control, be advised. Our first strike is non-negotiable,” Sass barked back. “Our second strike remains open to discussion. That one goes in your damned lake. I have been talking to your rego-damned answering machine for months! And you? Are another instance of her. Have a nice day, AI!”
She clicked off the comms in disgust and turned to Remi. “Can we identify yet where exactly that computer is located?”
“Sass, don’t,” Clay cautioned. “That’s a true act of war.”
Remi pointed to the map. “This is a nice island, two klicks from town. Lovely shock wave and tsunami. Billowing water vapor, kilometers into the air. The winds will spread it in a tail to the southwest. I hope Alkali Lake means calcium. Burns such a lovely shade of red.”
“Perfect, I like it!” Sass agreed with enthusiasm. “That strike will damage the colony?”
“Almost certainly,” Remi agreed. “Waterworks. Repairable.”
Clay growled, “You two are enjoying this too much. We’re trying to avoid war.”
“Are we, Clay?” Sass countered. “They fired on us, without warning. My crew is dead!”
Remi observed, “She is a very big lake. We don’t need these people. If there are people. All we know so far is the AI.”
Sass pursed her lips as the next hail arrived, fully minutes after the last. Remi bobbed his head so-so beside her. It was possible a human was calling.
But no. The same face came on the screen. His outfit had changed, to a shade of pale brick, wrinkling more credibly around the joints. His face bore credible wrinkles and pores, too. His breast patch carried his putative name, Col. Tharsis, and the old astrology glyph for Mars.
“Thrive! Colonel Zeb Tharsis of New Hellas Colony. Stand down and walk me through this! Who are you? Who fired at you? What on Earth is going on?”
“On Earth?” Clay mused. “He looks real.”
Sass flicked on her comms and explained who she was and why she was here. “Colonel Tharsis, your system answering machine is a medieval torture chamber. We will fire on the coordinates given. Our first strike is non-negotiable. You killed seven of my crew, and I am very pissed off.”
“Captain Collier, I don’t know what to say. My people killed no one. We didn’t fire at you. We don’t have guns capable of that. Our system AI monitors communications. I wasn’t aware a visitor was inbound. Now I know, and I will confer with other community leaders.”
Sass was unimpressed. “Who fired at us? It was a PO-3 skyship. Or JO-3, I suppose.”
“I don’t know. I will get you that answer,” Tharsis attempted.
“Colonel Tharsis, I suggest you get that answer quickly,” Sass replied. “The coordinates of our second strike are…” She rattled off the location of Remi’s choice of island. “That will land 30 minutes after the first strike. Unless I am convinced that you’ve muzzled whatever morons murdered my crew! And colonel, that will take some convincing. Because there’s a second ship headed straight for us!”
“Understood,” Tharsis acknowledged grimly, and terminated the call.
“I think he’s human,” Clay suggested. “The AI gave us a counterfeit avatar of him before, but this copy is real. Sass, picture this. It’s an ordinary morning. You’re a mayor, sipping coffee over paperwork in a placid small town. And suddenly you’re threatened with a space attack. Never happened before. Shouldn’t happen at all. Because space warfare makes no sense, and you live in a secret star system. Give the guy a minute to adjust.”
“I gave him 60 minutes to adjust. Before we do any real damage,” Sass countered. “What’s our next move? Park Thrive in the middle of their colony domes and train the guns on them? Or find a nice stretch of empty lakefront at the far end?”
“I like a hostage dome,” Remi voted. “Preferably with hostages on the ship.”
“Give peace a chance,” Clay growled. “We aren’t here to start a stellar war. Because why in rego hell would anyone do that? It serves no purpose! Our species is already going extinct. Sass, they have more ships than we do. We can only lose. Chill out!”
“Point,” she allowed grumpily. “Good argument for carrying out both those strikes before we make nice, though. Get their attention. You heard him! There’s still only one person on this rego-forsaken planet who knows we’re here! I say we make sure everyone knows we’re here. Make an entrance with a bang!” Literally.
“I’m with her,” Remi voted. “Love a good explosion. Ten minutes.”
“Oh, good.” Sass opened a channel again. “Rego-forgotten planet Sanctuary, this is Thrive Actual. You have nine minutes remaining before we fire a demonstration shot. Please confirm your people are outta there. Thrive out.”
An old woman responded this time. Based on loose wattles which wagged as she spoke, wide eyes and flaring nostrils, she also appeared real. “Thrive, this is Nova Tycho Colony, Major Petunia Ling! We have joyriders out, not responding to hails!”
“Where?” Sass asked.
“Well, that’s the point! We don’t know where they are!” Her face calmed and took on an abstracted expression. “We made the ultimate sacrifice and now enjoy our leisure.” She shook off her fugue and grimaced straight into the camera again. “Children frolicking outdoors. If you harm them –!”
“Major Ling, your people killed seven of mine. Get back to work figuring that out. Our first strike will commence on time in three minutes. Thrive out.”
“Children, Sass?” Clay needled her.
“I don’t believe her,” Sass claimed. She did have a nagging feeling, but it wasn’t about that. “‘We made the ultimate sacrifice.’ What was that? I have a bad feeling about this.”
“As well you should! You could be about to fire on children!”
Sass scowled and waved a hand. “I doubt that. What she said. That was creepy.”
“One minute,” Remi noted. “May I? Or you, mon capitan?”
A call light came in. Sass took vicious satisfaction in letting the answering machine take it. “Be my guest, Mr. Roy. Don’t miss.”
“I never miss.” The engineer punched a ‘record’ button and took aim. On the dot, he initiated a max power burn at the promised location with their biggest gun.
Sass and Clay watched on the big screen. “Oh, that is a pretty purple flame, Remi! And so much orange!” Alas, the view was occluded almost instantly by billowing rock dust.
“Do we have a location on to whom are we speaking?” Sass mused.
“We did,” Remi allowed. “But since then we’ve had transmissions from two other places, Tharsis and Ling. Not far apart, but spanning the colony. And I think the first one was a transmission tower at the top of the hill.”
No joy finding the computer of her discontent then, Sass concluded. “That’s a shame.”
She flicked the comms to hear what the natives had to say. Her latest correspondent wore familiar pearl-gray Ganymede uniform and bald head, a man in his late prime. He left a message only seconds before the gun strike. “Thrive? Are you really from Aloha? Have you ever heard of a man named Belker?”
At last! Someone worth talking to!
108
Sass skimmed the later protestations of outrage from New Hellas and Nova Tycho. Then she hailed her Nuevo Ganymede contact, or whatever their section of town was called. From here, she could
only see one colony on that lake.
Thus she aimed her transmission at all three of them. “Sanctuary, yes, we are aware of Belker. His ship, the Nanomage, provided the warp drive to reach you. Since the Gannies left Aloha, we didn’t have warp capability to open a dialogue with any other star systems. Or, we didn’t know we had it. Then about five years ago subjective, Thrive found Nanomage on the sea floor on the planet Denali. Its database also contained the location of Sanctuary. I decided to come and renew our acquaintance. You seem surprisingly well, given how few settlers you had. Our worlds have struggled. We were concerned for your welfare.”
The three talking heads shared the screen on the next response, with the bald guy speaking. “I am Scholar Hugo Silva of Ganymede Too. Call me Hugo or Scholar Silva, as you wish. Did you bring any other equipment from Nanomage?”
“Good to meet you, Hugo! I’m Captain Sassafras Collier of Mahina. Call me Sass. We brought a copy of Belker’s database, including his journals. And we can tell you what became of him.”
Zeb Tharsis and Petunia Ling appeared to be sputtering mad at this side conversation when Sass just blasted a chunk of their planet. Sass considered this good reason to continue chatting with the Ganny. She understood Gannies. Not that he was one. Hugo was likely only the descendant of Gannies.
“But none of his other equipment? Or his cache?”
Sass traded glances with Clay and Remi, who both shrugged. “Never heard of a cache. Equipment – everyone on this ship bears nanites influenced by Belker’s work. Two of us probably met the man, seventy-odd years ago subjective. Including myself. My nanites were pure Belker. Other than that, maybe not. We restored Nanomage to working condition and left it on the planet Denali.”
Hugo’s smooth face progressed through disappointment to joy, puzzlement to consternation, all on a 4-second lag from Sass’s words. She made a mental note to mention only one or two things at a time so she could remember which reaction mapped to which content.