Winter peeled out of the envirosuit and disappeared briefly into her quarters. She emerged a minute later carrying her ship suit and boots. She yanked the suit on as she walked, and by the time she got to the flight deck she was only one boot away from being dressed. She took a wipe from her suit pocket and began roughly removing the makeup from her face.
“So, this is your handiwork?” I gestured at the slowly irising space dock doors.
“No. They’ve been gimped. Their internal systems are shorting out.” She took her seat at her navigation station and strapped herself in.
“You don’t think it went as far as to affect their rotation or Oberonae save us, the orbit?”
Winter shook her head. “I don’t know. I expect they’ll have a general evacuation order soon. It should override whatever it is they are doing about the robbery.”
“Robbery?” I frowned.
“Yeah, the casino was robbed. I presume it is the reason for the hold order. They are trying to prevent the thieves from getting away.”
She glanced down at her panel. “When we get clear of here, I’ve heard of a job, but we need to discuss it, and now is not the time.”
I nodded.
“Fred engines to forty percent, and maneuver us toward the exit.” Winter brought up the schematics of the station on her comm panel. “They’ve got station cannons and standard electropulse batteries along the central ring. Our deflectors can probably handle it, but the vanes are delicate and don’t like pulse weapons. So, we are going to have to jump the second we exit. Think you can handle the torque?”
“Don’t know until I try,” Fred replied. He fired the thrusters and we passed the Corvair. “I’m extending vanes and started the spin. We should be ready for a singularity jump as soon as we clear the doors.
I felt more than heard the deep rumble of the jump engines as the vibration carried up through the floor and directly into my teeth.
“KNJ9385 Fred, what in the seven hells are you doing?” The human station master sounded stressed.
“Leaving.” Winter’s reply left the station master sputtering.
“You’ve no legal right to hold up freight traffic. We’re all on jump timelines that require us to deliver on time or pay station penalties.” I chimed in.
“But the Accords of Navarran clearly state…”
“And don’t apply to freight traffic, as our jump schedule doesn’t allow for it. If you consulted your legal department before making the order, then you’d understand that. The way I see it, you’re going to let us go, else I will be filing a disruption of service claim against Fairelawn, and all the docking penalties, berthing fees, and any additional legal problems we incur because of this will be billed to you. You sure you want to go through with this? Our next stop is Altamira and you know how they are on punctuality.” Winter activated the video feedback to the station and stared at the station master.
“Captain Oran, you have our sincerest apologies, but…”
“Fred, bring all mains online, and brace for departure,” Winter spoke calmly and held eye contact with the station master.
“You’d blow a hole in us, just to get some trinkets to Altamira?” The station master sounded incredulous.
“I just got my ship ledgers back in the black. I don’t intend to incur more debt, while we sit here and wait for you to figure out your problems.” Winter folded her arms across her chest. A station aide came up to the master and whispered something in his ear. He visibly paled.
Winter cut the audio feed and turned her back to the lenses. “My bet is they just figured out they have a more serious problem.”
I shrugged. “I’ve not heard of a station gimped in a long time. I thought they’d managed to stop the last cartel of gimpers.”
Winter shook her head. “Someone’s found a way around their security protocols. Bound to happen sooner or later.”
She turned around and spoke to Fred. “How’s their iris, can we fit through?”
“They are at sixty percent dilation. We should make it to the end of the tube by the time they hit seventy-five. We will fit through, but barely.”
“Try not to scrape anything on the way out” Winter sat down at the navicomp position and began programming the ship for jump.
I watched the coordinates scroll across my screens. I ducked down so the lens wouldn’t pick up my lips moving. “That’s not Altamira.”
“No, it’s not.” Came the serene reply. “Fred, bring vane spin to full.”
The station master sent a flag that played across both our screens. “You can’t jump inside a station its…”
Winter opened the audio and cut him off mid-harangue. “I’ve no desire to blow the arm of the station. But we are leaving, and that is final.”
I looked at the aft screens. “The Corvair and the other freighters are in line behind us.”
“The captain of the Corvair is insane. They will be fired on. Diplomatic privilege doesn’t extend that far.” Winter shook her head.
“Sounds more like desperation to me,” I muttered.
“Right now, station security is trying to figure out how they were gimped. That means that Corvair is a prime suspect.”
I pulled the additional jump straps across my chest and plugged them in. I took a deep breath, just to make sure I still could. The straps adjusted which was a relief. I wiggled around trying to get comfortable before my seat automatically reclined.
“You think so?”
Winter ticked her ideas off on her fingers. “First, the last gimp cartel was from Navarran. They used Navarrani ships to smuggle their gimper krewes on and off stations. Second, some of the ships claimed ambassadorship, which prevented them from standard search. Third, that Corvair has some non-standard modifications. Look at its engines.”
My screens tilted to follow the motion of my seat. I glanced at the aft cameras. “I don’t see anything.”
“Magnify and look at their vanes, you’ll see accelerant chambers feeding into the engines.”
“Huh. I thought they only used those on racing ships” I ran my fingers over my magnification controls.
“That Corvair is designed for racing. I expect it will blow past us before we can create our singularity. It will have to outrun their guns, and any fighters they send after it.”
“So, you think a new krewe is on that ship?”
Winter tilted her chair back and adjusted her screens. She directed her chair to swing around parallel to mine so she could look over at me.
“No. I think the krewe is on one of those freighters still in dock. They’ll wait while all the drama plays out and quietly leave with the general evac order. I think the Corvair is probably somebody with no desire to get involved in any of this. The Navarrani ident is likely a forgery.”
“Gods above and below what a mess.”
Winter just nodded and frowned at her screen. “Almost there. Gently, Fred.”
I switched my screens from aft to the forward projection. In front of us, the station’s docking tube was slowly opening out into space. Orange flashers indicated it was not fully open.
“Seventy-two percent irised should have greenway any moment,” Fred reported.
Winter connected her halo to the mainframe and grimaced. I tried piloting the Fred one time and the flow of data was difficult to parse. I had a tremendous headache for days afterward. I had no idea how Winter managed it except there is a distinct difference in our biology.
The flashers went to yellow, indicating the doors were nearly wide enough to permit small craft to pass. The Fred isn’t exactly little. Fred is a heavily modified Hermeion class light freighter with an aerodynamic design that allows us to make planetfall, unlike most freighters. The Hermeion class was retired from service more than 150 standard cerens ago. Before that, they’d been quirky at best. Most of their AI’s achieved sentience, dumped their crews, and left for parts unknown. Fred, while sentient, was certainly affable. I got the impression Winter may have altered some of his base programming before he became self-aware. In the ten cerens I’ve been on the ship, we’ve rebuilt the engines twice, replaced the sublight alternators, changed the vanes to a premium brand, and countless other small modifications. Winter has been on the ship twice as long as I have, and I got the impression she and our “late” captain made many more modifications that I’m not aware of.
“Seventy-four” Fred intoned. The countdown to jump flashed across my screen. “I’m reading lots of small craft converging on the exterior,” I said.
“Oh, so they are going to fight us. Shields up, Fred.”
“Shall I bring weapons online?
“Yeah, plot a firing solution for a line of sight only. I really don’t want to have to shoot someone down.” Winter tapped a control and our attitude shifted slightly.
I pulled the targeting visor down over my head and took up the stick in front of me. Fred fed me targeting solutions for multiple inbound craft.
“Seventy-five, greenway, captain.”
“Project and fire if anything gets in the way.”
We veered up sharply as we exited the tube, our vanes punching a hole into subspace in front of us. We dove through the hole as fighters converged on us. Winter snapped the cutoff and the hole promptly collapsed behind us. My teeth rattled for a few minutes as Fred whipped us through the fabric of space. We came out a chrono or so later just beyond the Fairelawn system heliopause.
I blinked and brushed sweat off my temple. “Well, that was interesting. What are we doing out here?”
Winter tiled her chair and screens down and unstrapped herself. “We’re waiting. Give it an hour and we can see if Fairelawn blew up or not.”
I nodded. The strange part of subspace time dilation means we can watch the battle we were briefly in, but not in real-time. Whatever happened back there at Fairelawn would have to catch up to us.
“Fred, find the DS buoy and attach us to a sixty-degree tether.” Winter yawned. “I need a shower.” She walked off toward her quarters. “Call me if it gets exciting.”
I waved my hand at her and settled down with a book tab to wait.
An hour and a half later, the main antennae started filling our screens from other DS buoys and some closer in that got a good look at the battle. I watched as Fred burst from the docking tube and disappeared. The Corvair dove sharply and ran for the station’s central axis, broadcasting a distress call all the way. The freighters lumbered out of the docks and were fired on. The Halcyon freighter took some damage and blew up a couple of their fighters. They generated a singularity too close to the right arm of the station and took part of it with them when they jumped. The Yeltsin ore hauler moved away from the station, but by then it was obvious that the station’s rotation had stopped. Multiple blisters broke away from the ship as life pods were jettisoned from the failing station. The ore hauler moved back and started picking up pods. A large superliner and ancillary ships appeared in real space and the Corvair was fired upon and hit. It limped to the superliner and was tractored aboard. The superliner, instead of offering aid, promptly generated a singularity and vanished into the black.
“Well, that was nice of them,” Winter commented. She was still toweling her platinum hair dry.
“What happened to the pink?” I gestured toward her hair.
“Eh, was temporary. Did you get a good look at that superliner?” She pointed a finger at the screen.
“The one that picked up the Corvair? I couldn’t see the registry numbers.”
“Fred, go back and magnify.”
Fred dialed back to the appearance of the liner. “Hmm. No registry that I can see either. Just that odd symbol on the hull. Do you see it?”
I squinted at it. “I thought that ship was registered to Navarran. Not sure what picked them up though. I don’t recognize it.
“Hmm.”
We watched in silence as the station evacuated. At the one-hour mark, other ships began appearing, in response to Fairelawn’s distress call which was all over the comm channels. We watched for another hour as the station was pulled to orbital safety by multiple tractor beams from the larger ships.
“Looks like the gimp wasn’t entirely successful. They got their reactors back online.” Winter commented.
I sighed. “Surely we aren’t sitting out here in the great cold and dark just to watch the show.”
Winter tilted her head, and smiled with just her lips, never showing teeth. “We are waiting for a package. It should be almost here. Fred, magnetize the hull.”
I raised my eyebrows but said nothing. Winter returned to her chair and brought up a system schematic I’d never seen before. The fact that I’d never seen it before wasn’t new. There are hundreds, if not thousands of systems in our arm of the galaxy, not counting Furian’s Maze. I know most of the stars of the official trade routes, and common transit points, plus a few that are off the new navigational charts, but this one was a trinary system just outside of a gas cloud.
“Why are we looking at…” I had to glance down at the nav panel on my left. “MX 997265 K14?”
Winter looked up and smiled that same closed-lip smile. When I think about it, she always does that, smiles without teeth, I mean.
“This is K’Pix.” She pointed to the holo on the mesa top. “It is one of the nearer stars of a constellation known as M’anitanth, among my people. It translates to the Nomad in standard. There’s a rendezvous of all ships interested in a campaign led by L’Marchonese. Narellian said he heard it was going to be a big gathering for an enterprise that has the potential to be very lucrative.”
“Really? He did? Usually, Narellian keeps his bigger scores to himself.” I snorted. I should point out that Narellian was a businessman slash bounty hunter slash sometimes gun runner we dealt with on occasion. He is also from Hashtaal, which is why Winter talks to him. He’s one of the other races from the planet. He’s humanoid, but with amphibian characteristics.
Winter has not said a lot about her home planet, but from offhand remarks, I gather that there was a hierarchy and strict caste system on Hashtaal. Narellian would have been from one of the upper classes. Amphibianoids like Narellian apparently were the most common of the races inhabiting the planet.
In case you aren’t familiar with the legends about Hashtaal, let me tell you what I know. I know that it was an ice planet with deep water oceans teeming with life. I know the Amphibianoid and Orcanoid races inhabited huge underwater cities. They were the ones that developed spaceflight. Winter’s people were considered the bottom caste. They were tribal surface dwellers who lived on the polar landmasses. They interacted with their aquatic counterparts, but I get the impression there was a lot of isolationism.
I know that Narellian can be snobbish, and secretive, so his telling Winter about L’Marchonese and his sallie was a bit unusual.
“So, why did Narellian tell you? Is he hoping we’ll try to find out more and pass it along to him?”
Winter shrugged. “Probably. He’s too chuksa to go himself because he owes L’Marchonese money. But, he wants to know what’s going on because it sounds like a big venture. If it pans out, he wants us to pay him a finder’s fee.”
I laughed. “Not in seven hells would I pay that sojoni chuksa a red centavo.”
Winter nodded. “Me either. I suspect it’s dangerous though and probably illegal. We can investigate it further if you want, or we can head for Ualune and see if we can find a decent freight job.”
“What are the odds it’s genuine?” I idly used the antennae to scan the nearer space around us. The DS buoy continued to transmit Fairelawn coordinates and shipping lane information. I couldn’t hear any ship traffic.
Winter pursed her lips and appeared to mull the question over before responding. “L’Marchonese has a reputation of bringing in big hauls. He doesn’t go for anything with unnecessary risk which is why this could be worth it. We could go to the rendezvous and hear him out. Chances are he’s just trying to drum up support for a venture.”
I nodded. “That’s fair enough.”
“Okay, we’ll go listen to what he has to say.” Winter no more got the words out of her mouth when a loud thunk caused the ship to vibrate.
“What in seven hells…” I brought up the outside monitors and started examining our hull.
“That’s probably our package.” Winter was up and moving down the starboard passage before I could say anything.
“Fred, did that dent the hull?”
“According to my calculations, the object was not moving with enough speed to critically impact the hull.” Fred sounded calm.
I scanned the hull for microfractures anyway. Winter manhandled the object, which resembled an ovoid life pod, only smaller, into our holding section using the freight crane. She shut the outside bay doors and I felt the pressure increase in my ears.
She came back to the bridge a few minutes later and reseated herself in the navigation chair.
“So, K’Pix?”
Winter nodded and I braced for jump.
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