Escape (8 page)

She laughed at that and looped her arm through his, subtly tugging him toward the Wayfarer's Bar and Grill.

“Let's go celebrate.”

“Sounds good to me.”

* * *

The journey from Outpost 110 to the uncharted belt where Kieran had discovered the rock that was going to make his fortune was anything but direct. Outpost 110 lay along Corucal East, a particularly long spacelane at the furthest edge of Frontier Space, from which a lot of tetrillium-rich belts could be readily accessed. The uncharted belt wasn't one of them. Without the starmap his father had purchased, Kieran never would have known to find the uncharted belt. And random exploration was a luxury that not many prospectors could afford
—
better to leave that to UBER (the Union Bureau of Exploration and Reconnaissance).

Shortly after disappearing through the West-bound side of Corucal East, Kieran's navcomp dropped him out of trispace and the autopilot began turning his ship northward, onto IF-55. Directions were relative in space, so the selection of north, east, south, and west (with respect to the ecliptic plane) had been arbitrary, determined during the early days of space exploration. Now that arbitrary selection had become Union standard, with most of Union space located in the
south eastern
quadrant of the galaxy. Frontier space, where most tetrillium mining occurred, was located along the northern edge of that quadrant
—
closer to the galactic core. Due to vast interstellar distances, and the enormous expense of paving the way for explorers with TLS gates, over three quarters of the galaxy was still unexplored
—
dead space
.

Occasionally, a colony ship, cruise ship, or some rich, eccentric would venture beyond the space lanes
—
the appeal of the unknown too tantalizing to resist. Such voyages were typically anti-climatic, having found nothing to justify the expense. A few colonies had been established, cut off from the lanes, fending for themselves with only occasional contact with and support from the Union. If those colonies had proved anything, it was that the grass definitely wasn't any greener, bluer, or in any way more colorful outside civilized space.

To the disappointment of every UBER officer to ever join the bureau, intelligent life had so far eluded discovery. Alien life had been found in mind-boggling diversity, but as yet, humans were the only truly intelligent race known to themselves. The nearest second, a race of four-legged, pack-hunting barbarians known as the Wolveri, was barely capable of linguistic expression, let alone comprehending abstract concepts like reading and mathematics.

With so much of the galaxy left unexplored, there was still a fair chance that UBER would someday discover intelligent life. Based on government spending, however, intelligent life would be more likely to discover
them
first.

Kieran blinked as his flitter was disconcertingly swallowed by the next swirling, multicolored wormhole of light
—
the #8 gate on the IF-55. Half an hour later, Kieran was woken from a pleasant dream in which Jilly had been playing an unlikely role, by the not-so-gentle jolt which accompanied the transition from trispace to normal space. Now the autopilot was turning him further north, off the IF-55, and toward one of the gates on the IF-57. As its name suggested, trilinear space, or
trispace
, only allowed a ship to travel in a straight line. To change directions one had to transition to normal space and reenter trispace with a new heading.

Kieran smiled and reached absently for the water bottle beside his flight chair, watching as the #5 gate along the IF-57 (short for Interstellar Frontier #57) grew closer and larger. The IF-57 was an exceptionally long spacelane, running due north into dead space. It was a union-funded attempt to reach its greedy paws into the unknown. The IF-57 was continually growing longer, presently ending with gate #97. Few people actually had a good reason to use the lane, since there was precious little civilization along its length, and nothing had yet been found to justify the expense of creating it.

Well, all that's about to change, isn't it?
Kieran took a long swig from his water bottle, and then set it in the holder beside his flight chair.
The discovery of a previously unknown belt with rich tetrillium deposits will give people ample reason to use the IF-57.
There was just one thing bothering him. Why had no one discovered the belt? It wasn't that far from the lane. Engineers and cartographers should have discovered it when they were constructing the gates. So why was this particular belt uncharted?

Kieran frowned.
The belts are always in motion. Maybe it wasn't there when they were constructing the gates?
Shaking his head, Kieran reached beneath his seat and triggered the release for his chair. He slid it back along the rails to give himself more leg room; then, feeling along the side of his armrest, he pulled a lever, letting out a foot rest. Reclining his chair as far as it would go, Kieran settled in for another, longer nap. In his business, he had to catch sleep wherever he could.

The autopilot would wake him if any unusual situations arose. Closing his eyes slowly, lazily, Kieran summoned an image of Jilly to mind, hoping they could continue where they'd left off.

* * *

The
Fat Chance
emerged from trispace, for the umpteenth time, at gate #26 along the IF-57. Kieran's destination.

“Finally!” Kieran sighed and slid his chair forward, popping his foot rest back in.

Instead of sleeping, for the past hour he'd been staring at the blinking green and blue lights on the ceiling of his flitter, his mind going in circles, from Jilly, to his brother, to the mystery of the uncharted belt he was about to claim
—
and back to Jilly again.

In hindsight, sleep would have been more productive, but the IF-57 was a very winding spacelane, and he'd given up on sleep after the first five gates. From gate #5 to #26, that was 42 sleep-disrupting jolts into and out of trispace. Somehow in his sleepy brain, he hadn’t found the sense to crank up the inertial dampeners. By the time it had occurred to him, he was thoroughly sick of trying to catch up on sleep.

Kieran snapped off the autopilot and guided his flitter toward the distant, western edge of the modest sphere of surrounding space which his sensors could illuminate. That sphere was entirely empty. The number 26 gate was nothing but a random bend in the greater spacelane. Bringing up his father's starmap, Kieran set a waypoint where the belt was supposed to be, and nosed up by 15 degrees until the glowing green HUD overlay of that waypoint was dead center in his ship's targeting reticle. The belt was invisible to the naked eye and sensors alike.

Bracing himself, Kieran set acceleration to maximum
—
110 µA/s
2
. Compared to a Navy interceptor, that was nothing, but it still pinned Kieran mercilessly to the back of his flight chair
—
Kieran kept his initial dampeners dialed to 90%, so that he could still feel some of the effects. A little g-force was helpful to keep a pilot oriented in space.

After a handful of seconds at maximum thrust, Kieran killed his engines and let his flitter drift. No point wasting more fuel than he had to. He'd waited all night and half the morning for his brother to get around to sending him the money he needed for the trip; he could wait another few minutes to tag his claim.

Kieran spent those idle moments of waiting appreciating the bold, starry beauty of space. Without even the glare of a nearby sun to diminish those stars, they were brilliant, and so numerous that it was suddenly hard to imagine how much empty space there was in the galaxy. Countless thousands
—
tens of thousands!
—
of bright pinpricks of light. And those were just the stars he could see, never mind the billions he couldn't. Kieran watched the stars winking at him, flickering on and off, on and off, in random succession
—
and frowned.
Stars don't suddenly stop shining.

A quick look at his sensors revealed that he was in visual range of the asteroid belt. The stars weren't randomly winking on and off, asteroids were randomly drifting in front of them, blocking the light.

Kieran smiled in greedy anticipation and brought up a holographic representation of the belt. Using hand gestures to manipulate the rendering, Kieran panned, zoomed, and swiveled those rocks around until he found the moon-sized rock he'd discovered yesterday. It was still there. That would be a good place to start. He set another waypoint and waved the hologram away. A short roll to port brought his new waypoint into line. 1.85 astroms and counting down. With his current velocity of 1.78 mAps (milé-astroms per second) he would close to tagging range in about 16 minutes.

He had a full complement of buoys
—
purchased this morning with the extra 500 tokens his brother had loaned him
—
and this time he'd double and triple checked to make sure they were all functioning perfectly. And so were his flitter's launch tubes. There would be no mistakes this time. Nothing to stand between him and his ticket to fortune and freedom.

As the moon-sized asteroid swelled in his viewport, Kieran had a sudden sense of foreboding. What if Cardian had snuck out during the night cycle? What if he'd already tagged everything? Kieran had gotten up early and spent a few hours turning his flitter upside down, looking everywhere for the tracking device that Cardian must have planted. In the end, he hadn't found it, but it was too late to worry about, anyway. Either Cardian had jumped his claim, or he hadn't.
There's one sure way to find out.
Kieran toggled through channels on his comm until he reached the one reserved for beacons
—
like mining buoys.

Kieran's eyes widened, and he blinked at his blank comm screen. There were no beacons broadcasting in the area. He breathed a sigh of relief. No one had tagged anything yet. Not Cardian, not another prospector
—
no one. Maybe his not-so-subtle threats last night had actually scared Cardian off.

Whatever the case
 
.
 
.
 
.
Kieran armed his buoys and waited for the rangefinder to tick down below 100 milé-astroms. Buoys could be dumb-fired from incredible distances, but this time Kieran wanted to follow it in, to see it impact on the surface with his own eyes. Ninety-seven milé-astroms. Kieran tightened his finger on the trigger, and the buoy jetted out on a long, blue streamer of vapor. Kieran fired his thrusters at maximum, catching up to the buoy shortly after its blue contrail sputtered out. Now rendered invisible to the naked eye, Kieran targeted the buoy to keep from accidentally running into it. At 50 milé-astroms away, and counting down, the mountain of rock appeared almost like a planet, with a sharply-dropping horizon, and an almost imperceptible tug of gravity. Proximity alarms began to blare inside Kieran's flitter, warning him to pull up. His current velocity was 4.76 mAps and climbing. A number began blinking in red on the rangefinder inside his cockpit. He was now 28 milé-astroms from the asteroid
—
that distance was dropping by almost 5 mA per second
—
and based on current acceleration and velocity, his navcomp had computed that 16.2 milé-astroms from the asteroid was the point of no return. If he didn't pull up before that, he wouldn't be able to.

19 mA.

Kieran wrenched his flight yoke back, pulling out of his dive toward the asteroid, letting his buoy go on alone. He wasn't going to follow it its collision with the dark and lumpy surface below. He wanted to see the buoy impact, but he didn't want that to be the last thing he ever saw. It would suffice to watch the impact on the targeting cameras. Freeing one hand from the flight yoke, Kieran keyed one of his external cameras to track the buoy. He kept half an eye on the display as he continued pulling out of his dive. The buoy was seconds from impact.

Two, one
—

The buoy disappeared.

Kieran blinked. It didn't burrow into the surface like it should have. There were no debris from the impact. Nothing. One moment it was there, speeding toward the surface of the asteroid, and the next it was simply gone, as if it had been nothing more than a hologram. Kieran shook his head. It didn't make any sense. Maybe he'd missed the impact. He fiddled with the camera controls for a second, panning and zooming around the surface of the asteroid, looking for a rapidly-spreading cloud of dust and broken rocks.

But there was nothing. Not a trace of an impact anywhere. Unable to believe it, Kieran brought his flitter around in a hard turn and dived in closer to the asteroid, making a close pass over the area where his buoy should have impacted.

There was still no sign of it.

A soft chime issued from his comm. Kieran's eyes flicked to the display. A glowing green one-liner had appeared:

Mining Buoy
—
Kieran Hawker
—
Loc: 28-76-33