“Of course,” the captain said. “Ignore it.”
“And damage to station facilities,” it added.
“Sure, that too,” he said, shaking his head. “How long until we’re over the threshold?”
Nuko checked their position on her screen. “Under a minute,” she said.
“Then do not respond,” he said. “Once we’re unlocked from the stanchion, they’ve got no legal jurisdiction. Unless it’s coming in under a FleetCom ident-code, they can’t order us to do frak.”
“They will know you are ignoring them,” Marti said.
“I know, but with me having no legal rights, I don’t think it’s smart for me to submit to an interrogation. We’ll be at least a month before we get back to X-04, and I hope my application will have had time to work its way through the system.”
“They could hold off processing,” Nuko pointed out.
Ethan thought about it as he watched the engine power readings climb toward transition. “Alright, let them know we’re on a schedule and that I’ll report in after we complete this run.”
“Yes, Captain,” Marti said.
“I just think I’m better off chancing it,” he said as the indicator icons turned green and he sighed. “Let’s make feet.”
The stars in front of them shifted from bright white to blue and then disappeared into ultraviolet as the Olympus Dawn pushed across the barrier and went superluminal. The faint red glow of the trailing photons bled out across the center of the view as the collar of angularly distorted stars formed up around them.
“Bring us around and set our course for Escabosa,” he said, after several seconds watching the light show.
“Escabosa?” Nuko asked. “You mean we get a vacation? I always wanted to hit the mineral pools there.”
“Don’t you wish,” he said, grinning.
“I didn’t know there were archaeologists working there,” she said.
“There may be, but the plan is to pick up another scientist,” he said. “She has the final location.”
“You mean we have another leg to go?” she asked. “It’s a good thing they pay us by the parsec.”
He nodded. “Unfortunately, paranoia outweighs practicality. And economics.”
She shrugged and punched in the course. The collar of stars rotated around them as the field coils changed their direction of travel before the ship reoriented itself to the new heading. “How hard do you want to push?”
“Eighty percent,” he said.
She nodded and watched the readouts. “That puts it 157 hours and twenty minutes to the Escabosa threshold. Plus, standard approach makes it a week to planetfall.”
“I’ll pass the word,” he said, standing up and heading for the door. “The deck’s yours.”
His command comm chirped in his ear as he stepped into the lift cage. “Boss, have you got a minute?” Rene asked.
“Sure, what’s swinging?” he said.
“I’m in engineering,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you in private if you can.”
“I’m on my way,” he said punching the security code into the lift control.
The engine room covered the aft third of all four decks of the ship. It was the most secure section of the ship since anything that could break lived there. No one could access any portion of engineering without special authorization and in fact, the only unsecured area behind the lift shaft was the small access corridor that ran from the mid-deck through to the gangway to the exterior cargo containers. The entire area was Rene’s domain and even though the captain also knew how most of the equipment worked, there was no need for him to get in the way unless there was an emergency.
When the back door of the lift opened, Ethan couldn’t see the engineer. “Where are you hiding?” he yelled. The thrumming of the engine coil power feed caused the air in the massive room to vibrate.
“Reactor-2 control station,” Rene hollered back.
“Is there a problem?” he asked as he walked up and looked at the readouts on the control console.
The engineer turned and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the edge of the panel. After staring at the captain for several seconds he looked down at the deck plating and shook his head. “Your face looks fragging hammered.”
After almost a day while they boosted from X-04 he’d not seen himself in a mirror, but it probably looked worse than it felt. And it felt bad enough to make him less than interested in small talk. He would have smiled, but it hurt to rearrange his face into anything but a grimace. “Close, but insulting my appearance isn’t what’s on your mind is it?”
He shook his head. “Do you know what we’re carrying?”
“Science gear and passengers, I assume,” Walker said. “I don’t know what kinds of things xenoarchaeologist use, but I haven’t looked over the lading file since I am sure it’s pretty meaningless to me. Why?”
“I overheard some of the passengers talking as they came aboard. They’re an interesting group.”
“Look, I have a brainache and the noise in here isn’t helping it much,” the captain said. “Can we just get to where you’re going?”
Rene nodded. “You know what they are?”
“Security,” Ethan said.
“Yah, special security,” the engineer said. “They’re a Rapid Deployment Artillery team.”
“What?” He blinked in surprise. “Why would Makhbar need one of those?”
“I don’t know, but you might want to read over the manifest docs for the cargo,” he said.
The light came on. “Frak me.”
The engineer pulled a thinpad out of his pocket and handed it to the captain. There were pictures and specifications on the screen. “The cargo was unsealed when we brought it aboard, so I went in and looked. Both containers are crammed with planetary defense weapons. There are at least six particle beam turrets and a pair of ion guns that I saw.”
“Seriously?” Ethan settled back against the railing behind him and thumbed through the screens. “This looks like enough stuff to start a war.”
“Yah. From what I can tell it’s all high end gear too,” he said. “Everything is mobile mounted and modular, and none of it looks to be used.”
“I hope Makhbar’s got the licenses for these things.”
“Supposedly, he’s got more money than god,” Rene said. “I don’t think he’d risk it if he didn’t.”
“Risk… that’s a troubling point,” Ethan said.
“I thought you might want to have words with our new load broker about that,” he said.
He slipped the engineer’s thinpad into the front of his coverall and nodded. “Thanks.”
As soon as he hit the door back to the lift, he tapped into his commlink. “Ammo, I want you in my office in zero seconds.”
“Cando. Should I get dressed first?” she asked. Her tone gave no clue if she heard his frustration. It should have been clear.
She was dressed for the most part and standing outside his door as he opened the liftgate on the crewdeck. He jerked his head toward his room, and she followed him in.
“How much did you know about this load when you talked me into it?” he asked as she pulled the door closed behind her.
“It’s not illegal,” she said, shrugging as she dropped into the chair just inside his office.
“So, you know what we’re carrying,” he challenged. He leaned against the front of his desk and crossed his arms. He tried to glare, but it hurt his face so instead he growled.
She shrugged. “Security equipment for Makhbar’s dig.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“Yes,” she said, leaning forward and studying him.
“Frak me,” he hissed. “You don’t think it’s important that I know what’s back there? Especially since it paints a target on us.”
“Just breathe a minute,” she said. “When you were hauling corporate cargo did you always know what CSL loaded in the boxes you hauled?”
“No, but it wasn’t
“You’re still not exposed,” she said. “With one exception, the only people that know what we’re carrying are aboard the ship with us.”
“One exception? Makhbar knows. Who else on his team would know?”
“Well, yah,” she said, shrugging. “I wasn’t talking about anyone on the dig with him. The only other person that knows is my contact, and she’s the one we’re picking up in Escabosa. Everyone else is inside the box with us.”
“I don’t feel fuzzy about this,” he said, shaking his head. “You should’ve let me know and I would have posted for a couple more handlers. I’d feel a lot better if we had more security.”
“You don’t think the squad of troops we’re carrying can protect their own asses?” she asked.
“It’s not their asses I’m worried about. It’s the ship.”
Chapter Eight
It had been one of the longest seven day runs of Ethan’s career. Stress dripped from him as he sat on the ConDeck trying to look in every direction at once. Nuko and he had both agreed that one or the other of them would always sit the watch. They’d run the long range sensors in continuous spherical sweeps and every time a ship passed within the half-light-year range of their scans he stared at it until it dropped off their screens. If any of them had so much as twitched, they’d have been ready to run.
The truth was, now that they were on final approach to the Escabosa Geostation they weren’t at any less of a risk, but at least there were some semblances of civilization around and that gave the illusion of safety. The planet itself was a resort colony where the richest of human civilization came to relax and party. Several private yachts hung in low orbit and more than one cruise liner floated near the low orbit station.
Fortunately, where the wealthy congregated there were always security patrols to provide a sense of security.
Ethan stood up and stretched as they maneuvered through the traffic toward the top of the massive space elevator that served as the business terminal for the colony below. With two cargo containers behind them, the Olympus Dawn wasn’t as nimble as most of the other ships in the pattern, but Nuko slid the ship through the traffic with a minimum of swearing and only a few near misses as local shuttles and private skiffs darted across their path.
He might have been tempted to park the containers further out and only bring the ship itself in, but Ethan felt the need to keep the load close to hand. That meant they needed to drive their train through rush hour traffic. It wasn’t a pleasant experience and he was sure that as they lumbered into position, the swearing was mutual.
“We’re cleared to tie off at mooring stanchion-three,” Nuko said. “One minute to the Automated Landing Control hand off.”
“Marti, tell Ammo she needs to be ready to go get our passenger,” Ethan said.
“She is standing by,” it said. “She says they are supposed to meet at the lower end of the elevator.”
“Frak. I wanted to get in and out without a layover,” he said. “If she’s got to go down, that will be a minimum of four hours.”
“Can I go with her?” Nuko asked, grinning. “I’ve never been to Escabosa and I’d love to play tourist.”
“I don’t think people like us can even afford the air,” Rene said. He sat at the ConDeck engineering station and stared out the window at the surface of the planet.
“I know, but it might do me good to snatch a lungful of air that isn’t reprocessed.” The hopeful look on her face was almost comical.
“Ask Ammo if she’s willing to take you down with her,” Ethan said, shaking his head. “Maybe you can go outside for a few minutes and look around while she’s finding our passenger.”
“A few minutes?” She looked heartbroken but nodded.
“We’re pulling out as soon as she snags her.”
“Breathe fast.” Rene said.
As soon as the ALC took over, she jumped up and disappeared.
“Let’s hope this goes smooth,” Ethan said as he slid into the pilot’s station and leaned back. “The longer we’re here the less comfortable I am.”
“You haven’t been comfortable since we left X-04,” the engineer said, slipping into the seat beside him.
“Truth,” he said. “What I’m worried about is that anybody who gets a good scan of our cargo will know what we’re sitting on.”
“It should be possible to detect penetrating EM and GI sensor scans,” Marti said. “It is not standard procedure to watch for these types of radiation in a passive sense, but we can reconfigure the long range navigational sensors to detect unwanted sensor intrusion.”
“That’s a good idea for while we’re here,” Ethan said. “How long will it take to set it up?”
Marti opened a screen in front of the engineer with the proposed modifications and he looked at it for several seconds. Finally, he nodded. “This is damned clever. It will give us a lot better sensors than I’ve ever seen in a commercial ship. When did you come up with this idea?”
“After we were unable to scan for life forms at Starlight Colony, I began to research advanced sensor fundamentals,” it said.
“So how long?” the captain repeated.
“At least two hours, depending on how much help I can get,” Rene said. “We’ll have to restore the hardware to normal before we go back to cruise since it will take the deep field sensors offline.”
“We should only be here for four to six hours,” he said. “Is it worth the effort?”
“Six hours plus the time back to the threshold, so what’s that, maybe a day?” the engineer said. He was still staring at the schematic of the proposed change. “I might also be able to make a fast rerouting bypass so we can switch between standard nav-sensors and this new HD passive configuration in the future. That might be worth doing even if we never have a cargo like this again.”
“As long as you’re sure it won’t be something we’ll regret later,” Ethan said.
“Absolutely,” Rene said, grinning. “We never need active sensors in a system, and the increased definition and wide spectrum capability would have been helpful if we’d had it when we were trying to figure out what happened on Starlight.”
“Then do it,” Walker said. “Get Angel and Quinn to give you a hand if you need it.”
The engineer jumped up and almost plowed into Kaycee who was coming through the door as he left. Fortunately, she had good reflexes and jumped to the side as he blew past.
“So where are we?” she asked as she stepped up beside his chair and looked out the window.
“Escabosa,” he said, not turning to look at her. His attention was on the proximity alert and airlock seal indicators. It was silly to be counting seconds, but he felt like the longer they stayed attached to the docking stanchion the more danger they were in. The light turned green as he watched.
“Seriously? Escabosa?” she said. “Obviously Alaran Makhbar pays his people well. I visited here once when I was on break and it cost me more than my college tuition to stay for a week.”
“Yah, xenoarchaeology does pay well with all those finder’s fees and such.”
“I heard that Makhbar’s the highest earning archaeologist in the Coalition, too,” she said.
Why the small talk? He nodded.
“You’re bored, aren’t you?” he asked. “Hauling freight is boring work most of the time. Especially for a doctor.”
She chuckled. “At least Quinn has given me a couple sprains to work on.”
“He’s hurt himself? What did he do?”
“No not him. The security guys. Seems they like to play rough and he’s had to bounce a couple of them off the ceiling.”
“You mean he’s breaking the passengers?” Ethan almost laughed except that it might be a serious problem.
“It’s nothing major and they learned pretty quick not to screw around. At least not when he’s within arm’s reach. He’s—”
“Boss, we might have a problem, out here,” Nuko said over his command comm.
“Frak. What’s wrong?” he said, holding up a finger to cut Kaycee off.
“Security was waiting for us at the boarding ramp,” she said.
Her tone materialized a ball of razor wire in the pit of his stomach and he squeezed his eyes shut. “Is it over the problem at X-04?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “They’re talking to Ammo right now.”
“It’s the payload? We’re legal. We better be legal,” he said.
“They’re asking to see our manifest and contracts, but it doesn’t look like that’s the issue either,” she said. “It sounds like our passenger is missing.”
“Nojo?” The razor wire in his stomach cut deeper as a pile of bricks settled into his gut with it. He glanced at Kaycee who could only hear his side of the conversation. She looked confused and he shrugged.
“Yah,” she said. “Apparently it stinks funny and they’re trying to figure out what happened.”
“Boss,” Ammo said, cutting in on the link. “Security is looking for Dr. Westmore. The housekeeping staff at the resort where she’s staying reported her as missing yesterday morning. They found our contact info in her belongings, so they’ve been waiting for us to get here to ask what we know.”
“Without her we don’t know where we’re going,” he said, slamming his hand on the arm of his chair. This was getting more twisty by the minute.
“We’ll have to work that out later,” she said. “Right now, they don’t know where she is, but they’ve got surveillance video of her buying a ticket for a short range shuttle two days ago. It was one of those day trip tours out to the ringworld to take in the sights. Problem is the flight crew says she never boarded.”
“So now what?”
“They want to come aboard and interview our other passengers to see if they can spill some light onto her whereabouts,” she said.
“We’ve been in transit for a week. What do they think anybody here could tell them?”
“Dono, but they seem pretty determined,” she said. “The way they pitched this to me was that we could let them aboard, or they could ground lock us until we let the passengers disembark.”
“Does that mean we’re suspects?”
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