Her Brother's Keeper - eARC (23 page)

“Believe it. You oughta see what she did to that other kid. Fractured her skull and broke her jaw. It was either this or she was going to juvenile detention for a year.”

“Aye,” Halifax said, “but this other lass poisoned your girl’s horse, didn’t she? At her age, I’d have killed anyone what took from me what that little sodding wretch took from your daughter.”

“It was Red Eye,” Marcus said. “The other girl, Victoria, she was hopped up on Red Eye. Makes you do crazy things.”

Devree shook her head. “Red Eye made the rounds on Mandalay when I was a patrol cop there. One time a bad batch went around the slums. It was making people go insane, like violently insane, attacking others and trying to bite their faces off. By beating the shit out of that girl, your daughter probably saved her life, Marcus. She’ll get the help she needs now, before that poison kills her.”

“I think it worked out pretty well, all things considered. I’m just worried about her mom. She’s at home, alone, pregnant, and her little girl is light-years away and can’t communicate. I know it’s hard on her.” Marcus sounded guiltier than he would’ve liked.

“Ellie’s tough,” Wade said. “You know she’ll be fine. When you get home, you’re going to have a son to meet.”

“You’re expecting a son?” Devree asked.

“Not exactly,” Marcus admitted. “It was too early to tell when we left. I’m just…well, you know, a father hopes.”

“I don’t know what you’re hoping for,” Wade said. “Annie’s just like you. She’s a little female clone of you. If anything, your boy’s as likely as not to take after his mom.”

Marcus sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “You know, that wouldn’t be bad. This trip notwithstanding, mining is the family business now. It’d be nice if we had someone to take it over down the road.”

“See?” Wade asked. “Everything’s going to be fine. Quit worrying.”

* * *

Devree had been right about one thing, Annie thought to herself: Chief Engineer Indira Nair was a hardass. The job that Annie and Tech Daye were tasked to do was fairly straightforward; the life-support system on the engineering deck had been acting up ever since the last translation, leaving it unpleasantly warm down there. A systems check had revealed that one of the computer subsystems was “fried” (as Daye had described it) and needed to be replaced.

“It shouldn’t take too long,” Daye explained to Annie as they arrived on in engineering. “The ship’s internal systems are all modular, and components can be swapped out on the fly.”

“Do you have to replace them often?” Annie asked.

“It depends, really,” Daye said. “Some translations are harder on the systems than others. Transit shock is impossible to predict. Usually the hardware is unaffected, but sometimes the software gets so buggered up that the whole thing locks up. Sometimes we can run diagnostics and unbugger it, but other times it’s easier to swap it out with a spare from our supply, and work on getting the problem component running again later. Once in a while transit shock is bad enough that critical components like cooling fans or voltage regulators stop working, and it causes actual physical damage to the component. That’s what I think happened here.”

Annie thought for a moment. “What happens when the spares in our supply get messed up, too?”

Daye shook his head. “Then you’re in for a fun day. It doesn’t happen often. Usually components that are powered down are less likely to be affected, but not always. I’ve swapped out components before, only to find the replacement is just as nonfunctional as the original. It’s a headache.”

“How is it we’ve been traveling in space for fifteen hundred years and we still haven’t figured this out?”

Daye shrugged. “Chaos theory. It’s impossible to predict because there are too many variables, and some of the variables happen in the quantum space-time shunt and can’t be measured, because the shunt takes an immeasurably small amount of time. That’s one theory, anyway. There’s a lot about translating between systems that isn’t well understood, even though we do it on a routine basis. In ancient times, it was thought that such modes of travel would be impossible. It conflicted with their understanding of the universe. But even today, there are contradictory theories about what goes on during a translation. It’s all above my level. I tried reading some of the texts about it in school and it gave me a nosebleed. There is a lot they can’t explain yet.”

“Like what?”

“Like if one ship translates right after another, the one that went second might arrive first. Or, there might be a long delay between when the first and second ship arrives, even if they departed within minutes of each other. Sometimes, very rarely I mean, but it does happen, ships just disappear. The theory is it’s some kind of extreme time distortion, but that’s just a theory.”

Annie blinked hard. “You’re right, it does give you a headache.”

Someone else spoke up then. “Hello. We ran every diagnostic subroutine available and the system is still nonresponsive.” It was Assistant Engineer Delacroix. Annie remembered her from the boarding of the
Agamemnon.
The assistant engineer looked at her and smiled. “Hello, Annie. It’s good to see you again.”

Annie smiled back. She loved the woman’s Classical French accent. It made her sound so sophisticated and cultured. “We’ll get it running again in no time, ma’am,” she said, doing her best to sound confident. She looked at Daye. “Uh, won’t we?”

Daye nodded as he began to remove an access panel from the bulkhead. “I think so. The sooner the better. It’s damned hot in here.”

“It’s insufferable!” It was Chief Engineer Indira Nair. Delacroix quietly stepped away as the chief engineer stood over Annie and Day, hand on her hips. She was sweating through her flight suit and was in a foul mood. “We can’t work like this.”

Daye, crouched down on the deck, removing the panel, looked up at the engineer. “Understood, ma’am. We’ll have it up and running shortly.”

Engineer Nair glanced at her transparent eyepiece, and didn’t look at Daye when she spoke to him. “Keep me updated.” Without another word, she walked away, climbing into her acceleration seat and workstation.

The engineering deck was not large, so Annie had to talk quietly to ensure the engineer wouldn’t overheard. “What the hell is her problem?”

Daye glanced over at Nair, then back at Annie. “She just likes things nice and ordered. Every really good engineer has a case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, they say.”

“She’s so antisocial and bitchy!” Annie whispered, helping Daye remove the troublesome computer subsystem from the wall.

“She’s an engineer,” Daye said simply.

“I’m serious,” Annie said. “Even the XO isn’t that tight-assed. I’ve seen her around the ship. She barely talks to anybody, even in her down time. When the captain took me down here during my orientation, she didn’t say a word to me.”

“I’m serious, too,” Daye insisted. “She’s an engineer, and a good one. That’s just how they act. I know it looks like everything pretty much runs itself down here, but this is the heart of the ship. A small problem here can turn into a big disaster for everyone if it’s not caught and corrected right away. Mechanically, the ship’s fusion motor is a fairly simple system. There are very few moving parts and very little to go wrong. It doesn’t require complex programming or sophisticated computers to keep it operational, so it’s not as likely to be affected by transit shock. If something does go wrong, though, it can be catastrophic. If containment fails, the fusion reaction can’t be controlled, and that’s the end of us. If there’s a radiation leak, the engineering deck will get the worst of it. Basically, any serious problem down here will probably see Ms. Delacroix being promoted to chief engineer shortly thereafter. Most shipboard engineers tend to be neurotic about keeping things in top condition. Everybody’s life depends on it.”

As she helped Daye replace install the new components, Annie glanced over at the chief engineer, sitting in her workstation, monitoring the reactor and the propulsion system. She listened to the rumble of the engines as the accelerated the
Andromeda
through the void and thought about the incredible forces that had to not only contained, but controlled to make that possible. It left her in awe.

“Hey!” Daye said, interrupting her daydreaming. “Focus, kid. Hand me that fastener.”

“Oh, right,” Annie said, embarrassed. “Where to next?”

Daye looked at his eyepiece and frowned. “Upper level latrine is backed up. Ugh.”

“Shit,” Annie said. Daye laughed.

* * *

Using a bit of aerobraking to slow to descent speed, the
Andromeda
circled the little blue planet of Opal one last time before retracting her primary radiators and plunging, tail-first, into the atmosphere. While there was no shortage of terrestrial planets in explored space, worlds with fully developed ecosystems were rare. This sometimes caused them to be ruled out as candidates for colonization, due to the difficulties in getting Earth life to adapt. Opal was an exception to this rule, though its colony of determined settlers was small and isolated.

Scans from the
Andromeda
’s sensors showed a world teeming with life. The poles were buried under massive ice caps, and three-quarters of the surface was covered in shallow oceans and warm seas. Opal seemed to lack the frighteningly deep oceans of Earth and Avalon, but nonetheless supported an abundance of marine life. The dense atmosphere easily slowed the ship to a safe landing speed high over the trading post’s tiny spaceport. In a spectacular cloud of smoke and flame, the
Andromeda
lowered herself onto one of the spaceport’s two launch pads, and settled onto her landing jacks with a deep, metallic groan.

The nameless human colony on Opal was some twenty kilometers away from the traders’ spaceport, a tiny outcropping of civilization in a clearing of the extremely dense flora. It was surrounded on all sides by a tangled jungle of plant life that resembled terrestrial trees, save for their bluish tint and odd bioluminescence. Puffy white clouds filled an intensely blue sky, as the world basked in the yellow-orange light of the system’s star. The only paved road on the entire planet connected the lonely colony to the trading post, and no traffic could be seen on it.

The colony itself was a crowded, sprawling cluster of boxy, prefabricated buildings that had been added onto over the years, repainted, or rebuilt completely. The largest structures by far were the domed greenhouses in which the colonists raised their staple crops of soy, wheat, barley, rice, and beans. Its common areas appeared neat and clean on telemetry, with residents going to and fro on their daily business. Every building’s door seemed to function as a sort of airlock, keeping climate-controlled, filtered air inside so humans could live more comfortably.

Outside the small city, partially covered in vines and plants, was the towering, skeletal hulk of the ship which had brought the colonists to Opal more than a century before. It had been stripped for building materials and supplies over the years, but its primary spaceframe remained. Standing some eighty meters tall, it towered ominously over the settlement, and was now home to native flora and fauna of many types. The thick, humid atmosphere of Opal had long since rusted the exposed metals that were vulnerable to corrosion, but the primary spherical structure of the ship remained largely intact. Her main hull was a great metal ball, fifty meters in diameter, sitting on top of a large cluster of engines, fins, landing jacks, and support structures. A large flock of flying creatures were frightened out of the stripped vessel as the
Andromeda
set down at the spaceport.

The arriving privateer ship wasn’t the only vessel presently at the spaceport. Five hundred meters away, on the other landing pad, stood a mid-sized free trader with a pointed nose and a bulbous hull. Her transponder listed her as the Armed Merchant Cutter
Ascalon,
registered out of the Llewellyn Freehold. Catherine sent the
Ascalon
’s skipper a courtesy message. She kept the details of her mission to herself, but discretely inquired as to whether the merchant cutter had been to Zanzibar.

A few moments after sending her greeting, as her ship was being spun down, she received a brief text message from the
Ascalon.
It was an invitation to her captain’s cabin for dinner. It was customary for ship’s officers to have dinners with one another, but this usually included the first officers at least. This invitation, on the other hand, was for the captain alone, and was to be a private affair with the
Ascalon
’s skipper. Before sending a reply, Catherine consulted her first officer via text message, not wanting the junior officers on the command deck to overhear.

Wolfram von Spandau replied quickly, in his usual terse style:
I do not like this. If you meet with him, I wish to go with you.

Catherine replied:
That’s not what he’s asking. He wants to have a private dinner with me.

Perhaps he imagines himself irresistible to women?
Wolfram typed.
He will be disappointed, if that is the case.

Catherine chuckled to herself.
I don’t actually know if their captain is a man. It could be a woman. I could meet the love of my life over there.

The executive officer was less optimistic.
Or you could be held for ransom. Such things are not unheard of out here on the frontier. This so-called merchantman could easily be a pirate.

Catherine grinned widely as she typed, her command crew oblivious to the nature of her conversation.
My goodness, captured and ravaged by a pirate queen! I believe I’ve seen that video before. Do you suppose I’ll be tied up as well? I think I might fancy that.
She could almost feel Wolfram blushing through the text interface. Sparing her XO the effort of coming up with an awkward response, she continued:
In all seriousness, how about this: I will go over there and meet with him. Instead of wearing my frilliest space damsel dress, I’ll wear my regular flight suit. I’ll take a sidearm, as that’s customary anyway. Perhaps their captain isn’t a presumptuous lecher—perhaps he just wants to share some information, and doesn’t want his crew to hear too much. Not all spacers are as reliable as mine.