Guardians of the Galactic Sentinel 1: The Deimos Artifact (6 page)

"What happened here, Cliff?" asked Taggert.

"I'm not really sure. I was workin' down here, doin' a rebalance on the hyperdrive module. I heard a commotion behind me and got a nasty shock. The next thing I know, the three of you are wakin' me up."

"So you didn't see two men in ski masks?" asked Taggert.

"Nope, I didn't see a damned thing."

"Are you okay," asked Beth.

"I...I think so," replied the engineer, "You ever been stunned?"

"I haven't had the pleasure," replied Beth as Zack shook his head.

"You've got a bruise on your forehead," said Zack, "You must have hit something on the way down."

"Good thing I've got a hard head then," said Cliff.

Zack and Beth helped the engineer get to his feet and they guided him forward through two compartments to the galley where they helped him into a chair. Cliff seemed to get more and more coherent as they encouraged him to work his body. Zack got him a bulb of water.

"Looks like I'm done here," said Taggert, "I can find my own way out. You might want to take a look around and see if they damaged anything. Let us know if you find anything. Come on down to the station when you get a chance, we'll need a statement."

"Thank you, officer Taggert."

"Just doin' my job," said the officer.

Taggert made his way out to the loading dock, collecting the illegal stun rod on the way, and he and his fellow officer drove off towards security headquarters with the two thugs.

Back on the ship, Cliff appeared to be almost back to normal.

"So you're the new owner," said the engineer, after he'd downed about half of the water, "You must be Marv's nephew."

"That's right," said Zack.

"And who is this pretty lady?"

"I'm Beth Howell," responded the pilot, blushing slightly.

"So let's start over," said Zack, "What were you doing on this ship?"

Cliff looked at Zack.

"Nobody told you about me?"

"Ah...no."

"Your uncle Marv was a good friend and...he was a man with a big heart. The
Capri
is my home, I live here. I have for the last five years. I came on shortly after Marv took over the ship when his wife died and I've been here ever since."

It took a moment for the old man's announcement to sink in. Seeing Zack's somewhat dazed look, Cliff added, "It's not a bad arrangement; I got a decent place to live and, all braggin' aside, Marv was gettin' a pretty good deal himself. You can't let just anybody work on one of these old girls. Every one of them has got their own little quirks. Not only that, this one's had a few modifications, especially over the last couple of years."

"So you knew my uncle pretty well?"

"I sure did!"

"Can you tell me exactly what he was into?"

Cliff looked back and forth between his new acquaintances. "How much do you know?"

"Only that he was dealing in antiquities and other old valuables," replied Zack.

"That's right," said Cliff, "He was dealin' in old stuff." The engineer glanced at Beth and back at Zack again. "Look, my job was to take care of the ship. I don't really know exactly what all was goin' on. I just know that Marv came across somethin' that he thought was really big just a couple of months ago."

"Do you know what it was?"

"No. It must have been somethin' a little different from his normal stuff though, 'cause he was usually pretty up front with me. Did he leave you any information about it?"

Zack looked at the two other people in the compartment and wondered if he should take a chance on them. True, they were nearly complete strangers, but he couldn't think of a good reason not to trust them. Meanwhile, Uncle Marv's project seemed to be getting more and more complicated by the minute.

"There was a letter, but it didn't say much." Zack hesitated before he continued, knowing that once he crossed this next bridge, there would be no going back. He made a decision, "There was also a memory chip."

"What was on it?" asked Beth. Cliff was also looking at him expectantly.

"I don't know. It's encoded and I haven't really had time to take a good look at it. I only got it yesterday."

"Well," said Cliff, "I have to say that whatever it was that he'd gotten into, I didn't much like it. It was all way too cloak and dagger to me. More than once I had a feelin' that Marv was in way over his head on this one." The engineer paused and thought a bit before continuing, as if he was reluctant go on. Finally he said, "They say Marv died in a freak aircar accident, but I'm not sure I believe that's the whole truth."

"You mean...?"

"I mean that I think he might have been murdered."

The mess area of the
Capri
was silent for a long moment as the three occupants attempted to come to grips with Cliff's revelation.

"Maybe I'd better take a hard look at that memory chip," said Zack.

"Are we still taking this ship into the Central Planets?" asked Beth.

"I don't see that we have much choice," said Zack. "I don't have the resources to maintain her here and I need to be getting back to my unit before too long."

With the revelation that the engineer considered the old ship to be his home, Zack was reluctant to bring up the fact that he was planning to sell the ship at the other end of their journey. Might be best if they broke the news to Cliff gently, sometime on route.

Zack decided he wasn't looking forward to that conversation.

Chapter 6.
Outfitting and Departure.

Haven Orbital Station, July 5, 2676.

Beth left for the bridge to get herself familiarized with the layout of the control systems on the
Capri
. Upon arriving there, she decided to run a full diagnostic on all systems to both get a feel for the ship and to be absolutely certain that the two intruders hadn't sabotaged the old vessel in some way that wasn't immediately visible. Zack and Cliff, meanwhile, went to see about getting the ship supplied with reaction fluid and to consult with the Orbital Station authorities about their pending departure. Zack had also agreed to give the station security authorities a statement about the invasion of his ship.

"What all do we need before we can get out of here?" asked Zack, as he and Cliff took the five-minute walk to facility headquarters.

"With only three crew members, we got food and water enough for a month or more," replied the engineer. "We ran real low on fluid for our reaction drives on our way out here, though. Low enough to make me pretty nervous. We need to top off the reaction fuel tanks."

Zack didn't want to spend any more of his limited finances than he had to on a ship he fully intended to sell. He found himself reluctant to load up the reaction fluid reservoirs in the
Capri
only to sell her to someone with three-quarters of a load of relatively expensive reaction fluid left in her tanks. He also didn't want to broach the subject of a possible sale of the ship with Cliff just yet.

"I'm pretty short of cash and credit, Cliff," said Zack. "What's the minimum amount that you'd be comfortable with?"

"For a trip to Central?" asked Cliff. The little engineer did some quick mental calculations and said, "I think if the tanks were half full, we'd still have a safe margin."

"Half full it is then."

Cliff stopped walking and Zack took a couple of steps before turning back to the engineer.

"What is it, Cliff?"

"You've never owned a ship before have you, Zack?"

"That should be pretty obvious. What is it that's bothering you?"

"Never leave port without the reaction fluid tanks completely topped off," said Cliff, "On the outside, this looks like a routine trip, but out in deep space anythin' can happen. It might seem like a waste of money to buy more reaction fluid than you think you're gonna need, but to me it's cheap insurance. I'll bet you a hundred credits that your new pilot will back me up on this."

"It's okay, Cliff, you've made your point. We fill 'em completely to the top."

The two of them arrived at the headquarters for the Orbital Platform. Inside they were waited on by a polite female attendant who had Zack electronically sign off on the contract for berth forty-six. Zack then paid for the immediate delivery of twenty-five tons of reaction fluid, which Cliff said would fill the tanks to the top. The bill for the reaction fluid cost Zack just over a third of the ten thousand credit reserve his uncle had left him. Without the reserve, Zack would almost certainly have been forced to sell the ship at a steep discount to Honest Henri or someone else out here in Haven. Zack was discovering that owning a spaceship was not the best way to get by on a limited budget.

With the ship cleared for departure, Zack wanted to take care of one last thing before they left. "I need to talk to the Station Security about the break in."

"For all the good it will do," said Cliff.

"What do you mean?"

"Whoever those guys were, you can bet that the people they were workin' for either paid off the cops or they already had some of them in their pocket. I'll bet you another hundred credits that there ain't any video feed for our part of the docks while those guys were anywhere near our ship neither."

Zack insisted that they try anyway and they went down the main corridor a few doors deeper into the orbital headquarters facility to the office of Port Security.

After their interaction with the police, Zack was glad he hadn't taken Cliff's bet. The security officer on duty seemed bored and indifferent. He asked Zack and Cliff a few short, routine questions and took some perfunctory notes before promising that Security would get back to them if they found out anything. They were looking into the security video recordings but seemed to be having some trouble retrieving them. It also seemed that someone had posted bail and the two men had been released almost immediately after they had been brought in.

"Told you so," said Cliff as the two of them headed back to the
Capri
.

Zack was more convinced than ever that getting away from Haven as soon as possible was their best course of action. He and Cliff made their way back to berth forty-six and boarded the old yacht. While Cliff headed back down to engineering, Zack went up to join Beth on the bridge.

He found her at the pilot's station in an acceleration chair located a meter or so behind the transparent, triangular pane of the portside viewport. There was an identical chair behind the starboard viewport. To provide the appropriate elevation for the two stations, both chairs were mounted on a two-meter wide platform at the forward end of the bridge that was two steps up from the rest of the compartment. She was just completing a long list of mandatory preflight procedures in preparation for their departure.

As soon as the two men were settled, Beth called the port authority and requested that the docking tube be disconnected and retracted. Within ten minutes, the old ship was only being held in place by her magnetic docking clamps.

"I know it's a little late to be asking, but do we have enough crew to fly this thing?" asked Zack.

"Yeah, we should be alright," replied Beth. "Even on these older ships, most of the systems are pretty much automated. It wouldn't hurt if we had a couple more people, but flying a civilian ship like this one isn't anything like operating a military craft. Navy regulations demand multiple redundancies and a minimum number of crew members on duty at any one time. Rules for private craft are a lot more lax. Besides, this old boat isn't nearly as complicated as a warship. We have thrusters, reaction drive and sublight drive systems, plus life support. We only use the hyperdrive system when we get to a jump zone. It doesn't get more basic than that."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I don't know for sure," she replied, "Do you know how to cook?"

Zack gave her a questioning look.

"Sorry, bad joke. Actually, it wouldn't hurt if you had some training in the basic functions of this ship, just in case something happens to me."

"But we're only going to go to the Central Planets to sell the ship. Won't that just be a waste of time?"

"Space travel has become so commonplace that most people take it for granted," said Beth. "Make no mistake, Zack, what we're about to do is still pretty dangerous when you think about it. Any redundancy in our individual skills is just that much more of a safety margin."

"I can't argue with that."

"I wouldn't be surprised if old Cliff has at least some notion of how to operate this ship in an emergency.'

"We'll have to ask him."

"I will. Have a seat at the first officer's station over here by me," she said, indicating the station right next to hers. "That way you can watch me. I'll try to give you a running commentary on what I'm doing and why."

Zack took the two steps up to the slightly elevated platform and took a seat in the first officer's chair. From there he watched carefully as Beth went down the preflight checklist. He tried to take a few notes on his tablet but found he couldn't keep up with everything that she was doing and gave up after a few minutes. She paused at one point and called down to engineering. Even though civilian regulations were rather more relaxed than military, there were still some set protocols that were generally followed when it came to ship operations. Beth instinctively fell into the proper communication protocol.

"Engineering? This is the bridge."

"Engineering here. What can I do for you, Cap'n?"

In an operating spaceship, be it military or civilian, the chief officer of the ship was always referred to as "Captain." On a small ship like the Capri, with a limited number of crew, this honor usually fell upon the pilot. Onboard ship, whether in deep space or at the docking facilities, Beth was considered to be in command of the ship even if one of the other crew members was, like Zack, the actual owner of said ship. Strict adherence to a proper chain of command was another holdover from ancient times, long before spaceships even existed, but one that had proven its worth time and time again.

"I'm getting readouts on the power output that are quite a bit higher than I expected for this type of ship. Do you know anything about that?"

"Yes, Ma'am, the power plant was upgraded to Mark IV specs about a month ago. She's got about twenty-five percent more power than a standard Mark II."

"Thanks, Cliff. You'll have to give me the details when we get the chance. One more thing, have you ever piloted this ship?"

"Once or twice, but it's been a couple years since I spent any time on the bridge. Marv had a pilot's license and we usually had at least one more crew member along who could fly her in a pinch."

"Thanks, engineering."

"You're welcome, Cap'n."

Beth checked off a few more items and finally completed the list. She then used the ship's radio to request permission to depart.

"Haven Orbital Control? This is
Capri
, berth forty-six, requesting permission to depart."

"Haven Orbital here. You are cleared for departure, Capri."

"Roger, Orbital Control," said Beth. She reached for a lever on her command console. "Docking clamps will release in three...two...one...release!"

She pulled the lever at the end of her countdown and a slight vibration shuddered gently through the ship as the docking clamps let go. Zack watched diligently as Beth deftly worked a joystick and a set of foot-operated thruster controls at her command station to nudge the ship back out of her berth. Once free of the docking facilities, she operated the same controls to swing the bow around and point the ship towards empty space.

A few minutes moving forward using only thrusters drove the ship clear enough of the Orbital Station facilities for Beth to activate the
Capri's
reaction drives. Zack watched the entire operation with interest and found that he was favorably impressed with the abilities of his attractive new pilot. Apparently, the Federation Navy had taught her well. It was almost hard to believe that she had only been allowed to pilot cargo ships. He could also see where his experience operating a military hovercraft might actually come in handy; the controls appeared to be remarkably similar.

"Engineering? We're clear of the station. Are you prepared to engage reaction drives?"

"Aye, Aye, Cap'n"

"Reaction thrust all ahead one-quarter, if you please, Cliff."

"Aye, Cap'n, reaction thrust all ahead one quarter. Engagin' reaction drives...now."

Zack could feel a gentle push in the middle of his back as the reaction drives came online and the ship began to pull away from the Haven Orbital Facilities in earnest. Beth spent perhaps five more minutes checking over systems before she asked Cliff for three-quarters thrust, which was the usual maximum employed for most ships. Cliff responded and the push in Zack's back became more urgent. Beth hovered over the controls for a few more minutes to make sure that everything was nominal before she finally leaned back from the pilot's console.

"There," she said, "I've got the autopilot engaged. We have a good two hours or so before we get far away enough from Haven to shift over to our sublight drive. Unfortunately, for our safety and my own piece of mind, I'm going to have to stay on the bridge or pretty close by. Why don't you head down to engineering and find out if Cliff needs anything. It wouldn't hurt if you took a look around down there too."

"Sounds like a good idea," replied Zack. As he left the bridge he added, "By the way, I actually am a pretty decent cook!"

He was reminded again that he really liked her smile.

After leaving the bridge, he worked his way aft and down through the ship to the engineering section. He entered through the hatch and found the engineer intently monitoring one of his control consoles.

"Everything okay down here?" asked Zack.

"As well as can be expected," replied Cliff.

Cliff couldn't miss Zack's mildly worried look.

"Nothing to panic about," said Cliff, "These old ships can get real finicky even if you keep up on everything. If you have one system that's a little out of whack, you can usually compensate for it and not have much of a problem. When you get to the point where just about all of the systems have somethin' a little off, you find yourself havin' to make almost constant adjustments."

"Are we going to be alright?"

"Oh yeah, no problem. I'm kind of used to the old girl's quirks by now."

"You about ready for something to eat?" asked Zack, "The Captain has sort of designated me as the chief cook."

"Yeah, I could go for somethin'," replied the engineer. He looked over the console in front of him one more time, punched a button and then got up and went around to inspect several others. "Looks like things are pretty well stable for the time bein'. It should be okay down here for an hour or two. I just have to get back here and double check the sublight drive systems before we try an' use 'em. Let's go see how good a cook you are!"