Mama Loves Mambo
Deep space, near the Arcon 7 jump point
Jolo fired a quick message off to his father:
Marco. Come to the Arcon 7 jump point and rescue my crew. I hope to be there. If not, thank you for everything. Take care of Katy.
He typed Jolo to end the message and wondered if he should put something else. Then he checked the screen again as the BG boat hauled in the black box, debris from the cargo ship all around, bouncing off their ship. Some were large, whole containers that survived the blast, others had torn open, spilling their contents into space. Once the box was secure and the warriors were back onboard Jolo watched as the ship turned, and pointed the bow straight at the Argossy. Jolo took a deep breath.
Then he typed: Your son, Jolo. And hit send.
Jolo shut off the last vid screen on the bridge then lay down on the floor and wedged himself in under one of the heater cores, the residual heat masking his presence. He knew Hurley was up under one of the engines for the same reason.
He figured the BG would scan the ship first at a distance, then move in if they wanted to investigate. With the Argossy’s guns tucked in, the BG thought she was just an old disabled transport, and certainly didn’t think Jolo Vargas was on board. So Jolo gave it a few minutes, then crawled out and checked the screen again. The BG boat was right on top of the them, but moving slow and deliberate.
He contemplated taking a shot right then, but his instincts said no. The Argossy had taken three blasts from a huge ion cannon, a gun so large that only a freighter could carry it, and the ship was still in one piece. Still had a kicker. Could keep them alive. The BG figured the Argossy was dead. No ship could withstand that.
The black ship glided straight over the Argossy exposing her poorly shielded underside. They wouldn’t do that unless they were convinced the old boat was truly gone. After a few more seconds the BG boat turned and jumped out of the system. Jolo lay there for a moment in the utter silence, just breathing. His mistake put everyone in danger. Maybe it was time to retire from a life of piracy, he thought. But what could he do?
“Hurley,” he yelled, listening to his voice bouncing off the metal hull. He enjoyed the sound. A smile broke out on his face. The old man didn’t respond but Jolo knew he’d gotten the message because he heard the little kicker come on again and soon the lights were on in the ship. He brought the Argossy around slowly and picked up his crew, who’d been hiding in a pile of Fortinbras debris. They’d found George, who was shaken, but in one piece.
Once everyone was back on board Jolo sent another message to Marco: Sorry for the alarm. Don’t come. We’re okay now. —JV
“Hurley, can we make it back down to Duval? We need to make a delivery to Jaxxon.” said Jolo.
“Yeah, we can make it, but she ain’t gone handle too well in atmo with the kicker,” said Hurley.
Katy gave a thumbs up. “I can bring us home,” she said quietly.
Jolo looked over his crew. Hurley had a bandage on his face and there was blood on his neck. Katy was still shaking. Koba was gripping the console and taking deep breaths. George was being tended to by the med bots. Only wild-eyed Greeley, clutching his sawed-off shotgun, Betsy, looked ready.
“I’m gonna leave this one up to y’all. We need those Fed rations, but if y’all ain’t up to it, then we tuck tail and run,” said Jolo.
“Let’s suit up and git the grub,” said Greeley. Jolo looked at Katy and the rest.
“I don’t wanna steal nothing from the dead,” said Katy. “It ain’t right. You all know how we do it. We take it fair and square and no one dies. That’s the rule,” she said.
“Yeah, but we didn’t kill nobody,” said Greeley. “BG done that.”
“The question is why did the BG attack UFP?” said George, back from the med bay.
“I’m thinking the same thing, but that’ll have to wait,” said Jolo. “Katy, there’s food on that dead boat. Food that’ll keep us, and Bertha’s people, alive. I don’t know when the next freighter is gonna pass through with Fed rations. People died on that boat, that’s true. And that’s a sad thing. But I don’t want the little ones on Jaxxon to suffer three months down the road because we didn’t do a difficult thing right now.”
Katy nodded, yes. And so did Hurley and Koba.
“Alright, let’s get the groceries and git gone,” said Jolo. “Katy, move us in close.”
The freighter was torn in half like a can ripped open right in the middle. White Federation issue boxes floated in space just outside the black hole in the side of the long ship. One crewman wearing the thin clothing designed for the climate-controlled, pressurized compartments floated in space with the debris. It was as if he was defending the ship, his chest sticking out and arms extended. One leg had broken off and was hovering upside down a few meters off. Katy moved the Argossy closer and Jolo and crew could see his face on the main vid screen, ashen gray, black holes where his eyes once were.
"Hey, George, got two freeze-dried arms here if you want one. Maybe the frog-man could sew one on for you," said Greeley. George didn't take the bait. Katy looked at the thickly-muscled Greeley and just shook her head.
“Greeley, shut it,” said Jolo.
Jolo urged Katy forward but she stopped, afraid of bumping into the stiff corpse wearing the yellow UFP Freight Lines jumpsuit. Jolo put his hand on her shoulder. "He died instantly.”
"Technically, about fifteen seconds," said George. "In an oxygen depleted environ--" But Jolo gave him a look and he stopped.
Jolo and Greeley jet-packed across the thirty meters or so between the Argossy and the freighter untethered, aiming for the big hole in the center. They wouldn’t have to cut their way in this time, the BG boat had done the work for them. Jolo knew Katy was keeping a sharp eye on them in case one of the jet packs failed, and George was on standby with an extra suit. They had two hours of air and enough fuel to fly half-way back to Duval.
As Jolo got closer the big ship just got larger--silent and gray, UFP Freight Lines written on the sides in bold, white letters. They entered through the blast hole into a dark storage bay. Their helmet lights illuminated shiny bits of metallic debris, several chairs, a standard Fed shipping container torn in half, a single shoe, and shiny white shards of dinner ware all hanging in space as if strung up by invisible lines from the ceiling.
The tricky part about entering a ship uninvited is dealing with the air pressure. Usually Greeley would put a charge on a sealed door and get the hell out of the way as everything inside got sucked out into space, which worked fine in a pinch, but they got lucky and found an air lock door and were able to get in to the pressurized section of the ship. Once they got an oxygen reading they could take off the clumsy, heavy suits and search unencumbered.
Most freighters were set up with engines in the back; ops, comms and the bridge in the front; then quarters; then everything in between for storage. The cavernous storage sections could hold enough food and supplies to keep a settlement well fed and housed for 12 to 18 months. Jolo knew he had to get as much as he could and get out before either another BG boat came or UFP Freight sent their scouts. Either of whom would be obliged to shoot first if they came upon the Argossy in the middle of a transaction, as Jolo and crew were fond of calling their excursions.
A typical freighter runs a small crew, maybe a dozen or so, and judging by the damage to engineering and the bridge, and the blown out storage section, Jolo wondered if anyone beyond one heat sig in quarters that Katy had picked up, was alive inside. He and Greeley entered the air lock room, sealed the door and pressed the large red button to repressurize. Jolo kept an eye on the thick round window that led into the dark hallway, storage bays on either side, but saw no movement. Jolo watched the oxygen levels on his helmet display slowly rise and after a few minutes the room was ready and they climbed out of their suits and checked their weapons. You never know who’d be waiting on the other side.
Air rushed in when Greeley pushed the heavy door
open. Betsy was the first in.
“Stale air,” said Greeley.
“Life support is down. We’re breathing whats left.”
“Katy, what we got on the monitor?” said Jolo into the comm.
“No boats in the sector. And I got you in the second compartment, no other heat sigs there, but I do still have a strong reading in the forward compartment behind the bridge. Probably quarters. There may be a few people there.”
“Ain’t here to help the Fed,” said Jolo.
“Roger that, Captain, but it ain’t like they’re military.”
Freighters usually did not use psuedo grav and inertial dampeners in the storage compartments and this boat was no exception, so Jolo and Greeley floated along, checking each compartment for the light-blue colored Fed ration crates. Red was for misc non-military hardware, green for live biological, and a bunch of other colors that Greeley and Jolo hadn’t sussed out yet. It didn’t take long to find the blue food boxes that looked sort of cream colored in the low light.
Each compartment had a large door that opened from the inside to make loading and unloading easier. You couldn’t get into a freighter from the outside unless you blew it open with an ion cannon and destroyed valuable cargo, but if you could get inside it was just a matter of hitting a switch and then overriding the safety sensors. The doors rarely opened into space. So once they’d found the compartment, Greeley suited up again and got the side doors opened. Then Katy moved the Argossy closer, aiming the storage bay at the open door, and George suited up and assisted Greeley moving the boxes into the Argossy.
Twenty minutes later the Argossy had four of the huge twenty-by crates in her hold and half another. Early on they would just grab the four and bolt. But then Jolo and Greeley had started blowing a fifth box open and filling the ship to capacity. Greeley had gotten especially good at blasting crates open without doing too much damage. So the last bit of storage capacity was filled with half a crate of Federation Seafood Deluxe #3 Mealpacks, the remaining packs floated away, each on their own slow trajectory out into space.
That was the best thing about Fed rations: they lasted, even in deep space. There were never contamination issues, so you didn’t have to worry about people getting sick from eating them.
Bertha, down on Jaxxon, had recently lost her crops. Most of the work crew Jolo rescued six months back depended on the kale, collard greens and potatoes that Bertha and her crew worked. But most of the crop was destroyed when a BG boat decided to build a listening station on top of the plants. All of the time spent hauling good dirt and irrigating that dry rock was wasted.
“Anything in the sector I need to worry about?” said Jolo on the comm.
“Still clear, Captain.”
They were making excellent time, so Jolo decided to take a risk. He wanted to know why a BG would attack a Fed ship, a ship it was supposed to protect, and steal a black box. What was in the black box? he wondered. “Okay, against my better judgment, me and Greeley are gonna check out your heat sig in the forward compartment.”
“Roger that, Captain,” said Katy. “George says he votes NO on you guys going to the forward compartment.”
“Good thing this ain’t a democracy,” said Jolo.
So he waited for Greeley to come back through the airlock, and then they both floated through the long, dark hallway down the center of the freighter past the storage area and into quarters. There were handholds along the way and they pulled themselves through what was essentially a long, black hole. They used just enough light to see the next handhold.
They started to hear something a few minutes down.
“You hear that?” Greeley whispered, pitch black behind and more darkness ahead.
“Yep. Keep going.”
Pretty soon the sound became a little clearer, echoing off the metal walls of the long hallway. It wasn’t a constant mechanical drone like an air mover slowly winding down because the power had shut off. This sound had rhythm.
Five minutes later the they could make out singing. It was a man’s voice: “…goes left. She goes right. Papa is looking for mama but mama is nowhere in sight.” And then the horns kicked in and, “Papa loves mambo. Mama loves mambo.”
Computer, Jolo thought, who sang Papa Loves Mambo?
“Papa Loves Mambo” was a popular song on old Earth, first sung and recorded by Perry Como on August 31, 1954. Later covered by Dean Martin.
Then Katy came through on the comm: “You’re close.”
“Yeah, they’ve got music playing and there’s light ahead,” said Jolo, pulling out the Colt.
They made it to a door with a round window, light streaming out into the hallway. Jolo went under the window and eased closer for a look.
“Are they closest to the hallway or the hull?” whispered Jolo into the comm. Meanwhile Perry sang: “They’re having a fling again, younger than spring again…”
“The hull,” said Katy. “About ten meters from your position.”
So Jolo popped his head up and took a nice long peek into the cabin. There were two people dancing: a crewman with a energy rifle slung over his shoulder and a woman wearing a blue dress. They twirled around the gravitized room on a raised dance floor. All around were chairs and tables that might actually be made of wood, not the typical bolted-down metal crap, and a sofa with some kind of covering that might pass for leather. The lady had long hair and jewelry. Typical Fed extravagance, thought Jolo. He put his head down and he and Greeley huddled under the window.
“Let’s say Hi,” said Jolo. Then he got on the comm. “Katy, who looks more friendly and trustworthy, me or Greeley?”
“I’d say you, Captain. Just remember to smile and not be so serious. Greeley’s a bit roguish and he smells.”
“You know I can hear that,” said Greeley, lip starting to poke out again.
“George votes Yes for the captain. Koba votes Yes for let’s get the hell out of here and Hurley is eating a seafood pack that he claims ain’t half bad.”
“Well thank you for the update. We’re going in,” said Jolo.
“Y’all please be careful,” said Katy.
Jolo tapped on the window with the butt of the Colt and stared into the room intently. At first the dancers didn’t hear so Jolo tapped again louder and then they both stopped dancing and spun around to face the door as if they’d heard a gun go off.
There was a brief pause as the three people considered each other, and then the man snapped out of it and suddenly pushed the girl aside and tried to swing the energy rifle up into firing position but the strap got caught and the gun started to fall, but he grabbed it and pulled it up like he was going to fire, but then the strap was covering the trigger so he just held it there with an expression of anguish and fear, Como still singing Papa loves mambo, Mama loves mambo… in the background. At this point Jolo remembered he’d forgotten Katy’s advice so he smiled real big, but that did not seem to change the man’s panicky look or the woman’s cold gaze. The man stepped back and the woman turned off the music.
Jolo pressed the door comm, “May we enter?”
The man seemed to gain some composure, and pressed a comm link on the back wall. “You here to rescue us or steal cargo?”
“Well, rescue, of course, would be our primary concern at this particular juncture,” said Greeley in the most politest Federation lingo he could muster.
“Rescuers generally don’t carry weapons,” the man said, the end of his weapon now pointed down.
“Why’d the BG ship attack? What was in the black box?” said Jolo.
“I’m not at liberty to divulge the particulars until you show me your ID.”
“You mean like, uh, Fed papers and all?” said Greeley, a shade less polite than before.
“Yes, like that,” the man said.
Greeley gave Jolo a questioning look, and Jolo shrugged and nodded okay.
“Here’s my papers right here,” said Greeley and blasted a hole where the door lock was. Jolo slid the door op
en, the air inside clean and cool.
Jolo and Greeley stepped into the room with the sweet smelling air and were instantly pulled down by the gravity generator. Jolo found his feet and nearly stumbled and Greeley fell down but kept Betsy on the man with the weapon the whole time.
The man stepped backwards, holding his arm out to move the lady behind him protectively. Not a military man, thought Jolo, putting the girl in harms way, he should have pushed her to the side, though his heart was in the right place. For a moment the man just stared at Jolo.
And then his face turned sour.
“I know who you are. You are the synth, Jolo Vargas. I've seen the wave reports,” his fear slightly buffered by anger. “You, Sir, are an affront to humanity. An abomination. I'm gonna tell you right now you are not Jolo Vargas. He was our hero. Bad enough you being a synth. But you took a dead man's body. He was a great man. You're just a frakkin synth. Nothing more." He spat in Jolo's direction, his eyes darting back and forth like a cornered animal.
“Well that ain’t too dang nice. Not nice at all. Seeing how we come all this way to perform a rescue operation,” said Greeley.
The crewman suddenly raised his weapon, the strap clear of the trigger. Jolo shot the weapon out of the man’s hands and it fell to the ground. The man rubbed his right hand in pain. “You could’ve killed me,” he yelled, visibly shaken.
“Nope, if he’d’ve wanted you dead, you’d be dead. He don’t miss,” said Greeley. And then he got back to the point: “What was in the black box?”
“We didn’t have a black box,” said the man.
“And what y’all dancin’ for?” said Greeley. The man looked at the woman as if she was going to explain, but she ignored him.
“You are lying about the box,” said Jolo. And then Jolo and Greeley went into their well-rehearsed bit to scare info out of freighter crew.
The Jolo Vargas Space Opera Series Box Set Page 21