Myra,: The start of a galactic adventure. (Dave Travise Book 1)

by Richard Dee

  “Okay then,” I told him, “if you might need me, put the pistol away and I’ll forget it.”

  He returned it to its holster and stretched out his empty hand. “Give me a hand up; I think I’ve twisted my ankle.”

  As I leant over, he whipped his legs round, tripping me up. Before I knew it I was flat on my back and he was astride my chest, my arms pinned down by his lower legs. He drew the pistol again and put it close to my forehead.

  His face cracked into a grin and rocking back, he rose to his feet. “I think I won that one,” he said, still laughing. “Didn’t expect you to fall for that. Come on then, let’s get airborne.”

  I was seething as I walked back to my cabin, perhaps I was a fool but the thought that I had been used to make a point made me very concerned, even if Rixon felt justified. It was all very well to think that nothing about my identity could be proved, and I guess that the realisation that I was now on the fringe of the law hadn’t really sunk in. At least they hadn’t known my real name, just who I wasn’t. And the look of disappointment that Vlad had tried to hide, was that something to do with my predecessor? And what was on the drive? Had I got involved in more than just a bit of trading?

  I realised that I had to get to the bridge, there was departure and plotting the course to wherever we were going, although not a big job, it was what I was on board for, so with a sigh I headed topside. My hands shook as I opened and shut my cabin door. I took several deep breaths and headed for the wheelhouse.

  As the door opened there was an argument going on in the forward part of the wheelhouse, out of my sight. Neither of the two involved had noticed my arrival, so intense was their shouting, and anyway, they were both out on the port side, facing the bow, so may not have heard the door. I moved closer.

  Myra was screaming at Rixon, “Are you crazy, why expose Dave to Vlad like that, you know he’s not stupid. I’ll bet Vlad knows all about what happened on Basilan, maybe even on Oonal; what were you trying to prove?” She stopped for breath. “And what about poor Dave? His confidence in you must be shot to bits.”

  Rixon sounded embarrassed. “First of all, you don’t talk to me like that, second, I couldn’t warn him what I was going to do, but it proves that I was right about the other Dave, I saw it in Vlad’s eyes. Your concern is touching, you falling for him?”

  Her neck went red. “Keep your nose out,” she said forcefully, “you might be my big brother and the captain here, but you’re not my guardian; who I get involved with is my business.”

  That stopped me in my tracks, I hadn’t realised that; I had thought that they were an item, not brother and sister. That changed things quite a bit.

  They must have noticed me at that point. Rixon turned to me, “What did you hear of that?” he demanded.

  “Nothing much, I was just coming up to get ready to lift off and as I came through the doorway I heard shouting, didn’t get the drift of it all.” Hopefully they would believe me.

  Rixon looked relieved. “I need to talk to you; to explain,” he paused and glanced at Myra, “I’ve been told my actions were… inappropriate. Myra, get down to the engine room and fire up the drive as soon as the ramp shuts. Give me a call when you’re ready to hand over control.” She left and he turned back to me, holding out his hand.

  “Dave, I’m sorry, I couldn’t warn you that was going to happen, you might have given the game away. I needed to know something. People like Vlad and Van, they have ears everywhere, and they’re always looking for an advantage, same as we all are. Like I said, Vlad is the mastermind. Van likes to think he’s clever but he’s too slapdash. You know I had my suspicions about your namesake. Well, I thought that he was passing information about my business to them. Judging by the way things worked out I was right.”

  I couldn’t argue with the logic of that, but even though I could understand, I still felt used. Rixon carried on talking, “What you have to remember is that underneath it all they’re like us, only not quite such good people.”

  That was probably fair enough, I was getting a quick introduction to a whole new world.

  “Forget it then.” I changed the subject. “You said there were things I didn’t know, is that why you want to kill him?”

  “It’s a long story, let’s just say we have history, I’ll tell you later.”

  The intercom buzzed. “I’m back on board, closing the ramp,” it was Griff, and he waved into the camera at the stern, he was carrying a large bundle, it must have been heavy but he handled it with ease. “Got a treat for tonight’s meal, Skipper,” he called. “Local delicacy.”

  There was a tremor as the ramp sealed; a light flashed on the console. The interlocks that stopped engine start-up until the hull was secure were released and the whine built as power was brought online. More lights changed colour until Myra’s voice frostily announced, “You have control.” I turned to the Nav controls on the panel and selected manual before Nancy could talk me out of it.

  “Tower, this is Orca, we are ready to depart.”

  “Thank you, Orca, you are clear to proceed, follow the line to 50,000 and call again.”

  This time it was easier to handle the Orca, and my hands moved over the controls as we lifted, spun and rose, along the laser flightpath. Even heavily loaded the ship was responsive and there was power to spare. Calling again at 50,000 metres, I was released from tower control and was free to go where I wanted. “Nancy,” I called, cancelling manual control, “Take us to orbit.”

  “Nice lift off, Dave,” she replied. “It’s good to work with an expert. Orbit in four minutes, I have control.”

  As we passed the edge of atmosphere, a message arrived, with coordinates. It was way out on the Rim, I’d never heard of the place but Nancy seemed happy and I left it to her to set up the voyage. My work was done, ignoring Rixon I went to my cabin. I needed to think about what had happened.

  Griff buzzed the door about an hour later. “Food,” he boomed. I went to the mess room, the ‘local delicacy’ was an enormous fish that had been wrapped in foil and steamed. It was delicious; flaky flesh that just fell off the bones, served with some small potatoes and a salad.

  “How did you get that in the galley stove?” I asked. “And who’s the genius chef?”

  “I’m the chef,” Griff answered, “and it didn’t go in the stove.”

  “Heat exchanger on the generator,” added Myra. “Don’t worry, I gave it a wipe out first.”

  It hadn’t affected the taste, but there was little conversation over the meal, everyone was waiting to see what the fallout between Rixon and me would be. I didn’t know how to handle it; I was going to keep my head down for a while.

  At full speed it was going to take us quite a few days to get to our destination, and I spent the time keeping out of Rixon’s way and trying to get to know the rest of the crew a bit better. It was not an easy job; they all must have known what happened between me and Vlad and perhaps it made them uncomfortable around me. Or maybe they were annoyed that I had questioned Rixon, who they all seemed to regard as some sort of deity. I was the new boy, I felt like I was on trial.

  Tan, I only saw at watch handover. She was very good at her job, friendly enough but I found that she was always ready to mock the Navy way I did things. The more I talked to her I realised that I just wasn’t her type. Actually, men were not her type at all, as Mitch made clear to me when I accidentally caught the two of them together.

  Stu and Ardullah were straightforward enough, very good at what they did, but as long as they were fed and had heavy weights to lift or simple tasks to perform they were happy enough. They saw their time on the Orca as a means to enjoy themselves and seemed to have no ambitions after that. They both spent a lot of time in a spare cabin which had been converted to a gymnasium. There were racks of weights and top class exercise machines which they drove to destruction in intense circuits. I tried to join in for a while but found that I was unable to keep up, which slowed them down. On night watches I would g
o in at all hours and sweat out my frustrations, with the remote alarm box by my side, desperately trying to get to a level where I could compete with them.

  Griff was an enigma, big and bluff, but I suspected it hid a myriad of things under all the booming. He was always really easy to talk to, and seemed to have been everywhere and knew all the important things and people. As I said before, he had no role on the ship but had enough knowledge to help out with anything that was going on. True to his word, a big box had been waiting in my cabin after Wishart; it had everything I had asked for, and a few other things that I hadn’t. They were a nice touch and showed that he had done his homework. But I still had no answer about how he had got the ship. I asked him straight out and all he would say was, “Someone owed me a favour.”

  Rixon, after our difference of opinion, had become a bit distant. I suspected he had realised that I wasn’t a pushover or maybe he thought that he had overplayed his hand. Whatever, I wanted to know more about the things he had said.

  Particularly, I wanted to know what he had meant about Vlad Chenko, and why he had said what he did.

  That left Myra, and the knowledge that she was available made the pursuit worth it. Leonie was a memory, and I had never really got anywhere with her before the shambles at Oonal, and before that I had had a few relationships, but never anything serious.

  I thought that it would be best to play it cautious, but in the close proximity on board it was inevitable that we would be together a lot, especially as we had shared duties.

  Every evening, she would come up to the bridge for her checks before leaving the machinery for the night and switching the alarms over. I usually tried to be there, in theory I was doing the same thing, checks before turning in, and I hoped it wasn’t too obvious that I was always there. Before I knew it though, she made it clear that she could see what I was up to, and it turned out that she was doing the same, which made us both laugh.

  I was still telling Myra the story of how I had ended up here and now I came almost up to date.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Then

  “There’s one thing that bothers me,” I was talking to Eric on the way to Basilan. “And that’s how you’re getting me to onto the planet. We will have to go through customs in orbit and they’ll read my chip, I shouldn’t be on a commercial transport. I shouldn’t even be alive. I presume you have a cover story.”

  “That’s alright,” Eric was triumphant. “Where you’ll be, they won’t be able to read your chip, you’re going to be a casualty.” I understood what he meant immediately.

  The Dragonfly class were long-range scouts and were often used as medevac ships; this one had a medic-bay containing two of the latest in automatic surgery pods. The priest, whose name I still didn’t know, was in one pod, where his shattered knee had been receiving micro-surgery since we had left Oonal.

  Eric informed me that I would be going in the other before we got to the customs post in orbit above Basilan.

  “I’m afraid you’ll be unconscious,” he explained. “But if the customs see you in there they won’t question it. Plus, you can’t scan the pod. It has a shield so they won’t be suspicious; the ship is a known medevac anyway. And we will be coming in on a transfer from a mining station that Dolmen uses as a front. We have a fake ID that I can show them. Don’t worry, I’ve done this before.”

  We arrived in orbit and approached the customs post hovering above the arrival spiral, the queue of ships waiting to descend to the surface. I had never seen the Basilan spiral and wanted to get a closer look but Eric made me get into the pod while it was still a line of dots in the distance. The lid hissed shut, there was a smell like onions and I was asleep.

  Basilan was the busiest planet in the Federation, and probably in the Galaxy. The arrival spiral was its answer to congestion. All arriving traffic was held in a circular stack, stretching from five kilometres right up into the orbital plane. The spiral was geo-stationary over the large ocean, and after customs clearance, you were allocated a number and position in the stack. In sequence you dropped from the stack into a spiral descent pattern, from the side it looked rather like a rotating DNA helix, position and rate of descent were controlled by the ground, your ship remote piloted.

  At first, pilots had been allowed to drive themselves, but so many got dizzy and disorientated that central control by computer was introduced. Ships that had no auto landing system were boarded by specialist spiral pilots, who were used to the descent.

  There were actually four interlocking queues of craft, so arranged to reach five kilometres altitude at ninety degree separation, and then proceed to their destination. It was the most efficient way of handling incoming traffic, one of the sights of the Federation, and I missed it.

  I woke with a sore head and a raging thirst. As the lid lifted I could see that the other pod was empty; the priest must have already gone. I would have liked to have thanked him for his kindness. Eric came in with coffee. “I see you’re awake, that’s good. Get up and dressed, I’ll take you to Wannatown, get you set up.” Wannatown was famous for all the wrong reasons and I didn’t fancy being left in a bar on my own. Eric must have seen my look. “Don’t worry,” he said with a grin. “You’re expected.” Before we left he bandaged my arm. “This is a special bandage,” he explained. “It generates static, enough to confuse a casual chip reader but appear innocent. Just in case.”

  Eric took me as far as the bar in a hover car that was stowed in the Dragonfly’s hold; we passed belching chimneys and open furnaces, the whole planet was a hive of frantic activity and had none of the environmental controls that newer worlds have. No safety fences or machine guards. “It’s not very safe here,” Eric gestured at a line of injured men and women, queueing for a snack stand. “But there is so much money made that everyone takes the risk.”

  “What about the government? Don’t they enforce protection?”

  Eric laughed. “Government! They’re the biggest crooks of the lot, they own all the factories that you can see; would cows vote for burgers?” A fair point I suppose. We pulled to a halt outside a run-down brick building in a narrow, deserted lane. Piles of rubbish flowed together like a frozen river. The building had red lights at the windows and a faded sign that read ‘Paradise Bar’. It looked about as far away from paradise as you could get but it seemed to be my destination. Eric opened the door, the smell of hot metal and greasy food overwhelmed me as I clambered out of the seat and stood feeling conspicuous.

  “You’re on your own now,” he shouted through the window as the door closed behind me. “Go in there and ask for Rick, if you tell him that Dolmen sent you, you’ll be alright.” I thanked him and he drove away.

  This part of the planet was dingy, with close buildings and rubbish strewn streets, I had the feeling I was safe from a police scanner here; they probably never ventured this far into the slums. I couldn’t blame them. And I had the bandage.

  I pushed the door open and moved inside, it was gloomy and I could barely make out the few people huddled over drinks. They all appeared to be desperately avoiding eye contact with each other. Trying to appear both tough and inconspicuous, I strode nervously up to the bar, my feet alternately sticking and splashing in wet and dry sawdust. The bar was old and chipped with a large blotched mirror on the wall behind it, various half empty bottles arranged on a shelf and beer taps in front of me.

  The bartender was a rough-looking man with three days’ stubble that you could strike matches on. He gave me the once over. “Wad’all’it’be, boy?” was the nearest I could get to what he said; his accent was thick and hardly understandable, except for the sneering ‘boy’ which I found unsettling.

  “Just give me a beer,” I snapped. It came in a fairly clean glass and I sipped it slowly. The bartender was eyeing me, and I expect he was trying to figure out a way to part me from any money I might have.

  “I’m looking for Rick,” I said, after a bout of out-staring had gone my way. He raised an eyebrow, in a
‘heard that one before’ way. “Dolmen sent me,” I tried again.

  He jerked his head towards a corner, where silhouetted against a stained window I could make out what looked like a bear sitting behind a table. Seeing me look, the man waved me over. I picked up my glass and squelched towards him.

  Close up, he was even bigger, with wild hair and eyes and a big bushy beard. I sat opposite him and put my glass on the table. Before I could speak, he stuck out his hand and boomed, “I hear you’re looking for Rick, my name’s Griff. I know just about everyone around here, I can take you to Rick, he owes me a favour. We’ll do that later; for now just sit yourself down and tell me your story.”

  I shook his hand; his grip was like a trap. His face, behind all the hair, was kind and though I didn’t really feel like spilling my life story to someone that I had never met before I gave him a rough re-edited version of events. He must have had some sort of telepathic connection with the bartender because bottles of beer kept appearing, brought by an old man who insisted on wiping the table every time, doing nothing but moving the beer stains about.

  I hadn’t intended to tell him about the Moth, but under the influence of the beer and his stare it all came out. I admitted that I was on the run from the Navy and that I had been delivered here with the promise of a new identity. I mentioned Dolmen and the fact that he had sent me here. All the time I was telling him, he nodded; as if he knew. I said that I had been told that it had been arranged for me to see Rick. I got the impression that I was merely confirming who I was; Rick’s name must have convinced him he had the right man because he suddenly shouted across at the barman for a round of spirit chasers to go with our beers.