Still Falling: Book 1: Solstice 31 Saga (41 page)

“Is it good?” Po asked.

“This may be the finest luxury yacht I have ever seen. It's old, but it is beautiful in its antiquity. Like this, it will never hold up to FTL, but it will fly. I think. It will take a few hours for the reactors to warm up. There are some command codes I need for that. Where is Ulric?”

The blast shields were sliding back, letting in light and showing the desolate view as she said, “He must be on the middle level.”

They went to the elevator and went down. They did not expect to see what they did when the door opened.

It was a beautiful salon.

The entire front of the room was floor to ceiling windows that looked out on the bleak landscape as if it were a beautiful painting. The rest was made of panels in deep rich teak and oak with beautifully crafted inlays. The furniture looked decadent and built in. Thirty people could be entertained in here easily. There was even a fireplace - a fireplace on a spaceship! There were paintings and even books, all secured as if it was an ancient sailing vessel. Po stood speechless before the wall of books.

Barcus went up to stand next to Ulric as he stared out the window.

“Slaves?” Barcus asked in a neutral tone.

“It was a group of colony prostitutes, 65 of them, all women, contract ownership only. The contracts were for seven years with an option to renew. Guaranteed passage back to Earth, food and longevity treatments was the hook. Most knew they might never be free again, and they didn't care. It was worth gambling seven years for an extra 100 years. Only one survived. She was with me when we were hit. We were inside the Karazim, a Cobalt Class Destroyer when it achieved orbit. It managed to take out one orbital platform before being burned from the sky.”

“They were in the forward...barracks,” Barcus said.

Ulric emptied the cut crystal tumbler. Barcus could smell the bourbon.

“Can I interest you in a well-aged bourbon?” He moved to the bar.

“What I really need is the command code.”

“JulietteBravoZeusArthur, no spaces, no biometrics, no special characters...no escape.” He refilled his glass and started to run his hand along the wooden rail. His back was to them.

Barcus moved to the elevator and went back down to engineering with Po in tow.

The door closed and Barcus asked, “Do you think you could fly the shuttle all the way back to The Abbey by yourself?”

“If I auto-ascend and descend and then just follow Stu's map, I could. It's easier than steering a two-horse cart, really.”

“If I can get this off the ground, we should take it with us. It has...weapons.”

Po wasn't going to press him. He was intent on his tasks again at the console. He entered the command code and obtained access to everything. The yacht was very heavily modified. Unfortunately, many of the weapons systems showed damage. No missiles were left. It looked like they were jettisoned, explosive bolts had been activated. The engines themselves were not original spec. It took him a few minutes with Em’s help to find the new schematics. The initiation sequence was there in detail. He began warming up the reactors.

Em now had access to every file and began ingesting and analyzing it. “Barcus, I can see why they were trying to repair it. The three FTL drives could have gotten them back into regular shipping lanes, and they could have been rescued. It was a good plan.”

“What went wrong?” Barcus asked.

“Hull breach in ship stores. Reclamation systems damaged beyond repair. They ran out of water, even with rationing. They modified the ship’s cargo loading tractor and took it overland. The logs end there.”

“Can you control these systems now that you have access?” Barcus asked.

“No. I have only read-only access to files. There are no AI interfaces,” Em replied.

***

Po and Barcus went to check on Ulric, and he was face down on a massive bed in the main stateroom. There was an empty bottle next to him.

Barcus said to Po, “Em has found why the Grav-plating won't come up. I need your help to reroute some power cables. It should not take long if you don't mind crawlways.”

Po didn't mind. In fact, she helped Barcus to run new cables to all the Grav-plates.

“We have a couple hours before the reactors are ready. Let's do a pre-flight check on the PT-137 Quad and get you some flying practice,” Barcus suggested.

They did a lot of manual flying for the next hour. Po was very intent on learning.

“Has there ever been a woman pilot?” Barcus asked as they auto-landed.

“No. It's forbidden,” she said, as she took off the helmet.

“You are in so much trouble now,” Barcus smiled.

He looked at her, and she wasn't smiling. “Barcus, what are we doing?”

The question confused him.

“If it were just you and me, we could defy the anvil every day and I'd laugh about it. I had a long talk with Smith. He's worried.”

She tried to look at him but found it difficult.

“It's not just you and me and Olias trying to survive the winter. There are hundreds of people depending on you. All of them as weak as Ansel.”

“What are we doing?” Barcus repeated. “What am I doing?”

Suddenly his look became intense.

“I am going to kill the High Keeper and bring down the Citadel block by block.”

“But what about us?” she asked.

“You will become mighty.” He looked at her. “Freedom.” He said plainly.

“What if they don't want to be free?” she asked.

Barcus had no answer.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

The Sedna is Salvaged

“There was an agenda being run and everyone including Barcus followed without question.”

--Solstice 31 Incident Investigation Testimony Transcript: Emergency Module Digital Forensics Report. Independent Tech Analysis Team.

<<<>>>

Ulric never moved a muscle while they were gone. He was passed out drunk in the master stateroom.

As the reactors came on-line, Barcus could see the engineer’s dismay in the logs prior to this event. The main reactor fuel was down to 6%. It explained why they were catching a ride with the Karazim. While that fuel would last for years here, it was nowhere near enough to get this back to Earth even if the FTL structural integrity wasn't compromised. Em had done a full analysis, and the Sedna would not see any interstellar flight without a full dry dock refit.

Barcus was ready to fly it. He was in the command chair. The main pilot seat. All systems were up, and the reactors were ready.

Unlike the STU, Renalo Class yachts had fixed position Grav-plates for takeoff and atmospheric flight. The reactors powered up the newly powered Plates, and the struts retracted. The Sedna drifted slowly out of the ruin and across the desolate plain on manual thrusters.

The controls were as smooth as butter, to Barcus. The interior of the ship had advanced inertial dampeners that Barcus did not realize were available on a ship this small. Aft cameras showed the dust blowing off the ship as it gained speed.

“Po, we are good to go,” he said. A window in his HUD showed what she could see, and she had a small window with his face in it, thanks to Em.

“Auto-ascent initiated,” Po said awkwardly from the pilot seat of the PT-137.

“You're doing fine, Po. Stick to the flight plan, and I will follow you,” Barcus said over the comms.

He could see the small shuttle spiraling up in the aft display. It reached altitude, and soon it passed the larger ship. Barcus had never flown a ship this big with actual windows. Windows were not used in spaceships anymore. They were too easily damaged.

“Barcus, you can really see the damage from out here in the sun,” Po said. “Lots of the...hull is ripped open with long gashes. And it looks like one of the...skids is still partially down. The center front one.” Her words were gaining confidence.

“That is excellent information. The system shows all green lights.” Po now knew what a green light meant. But now she knew it wasn't always right.

“Barcus?” It was Em this time on the open channel so Po could hear. “All the comms are down on this ship. None work. The main dish is gone, even though the display shows it stowed for FTL. I am concerned about all the false green status indicators.”

“Barcus.” It was Po.

“This is the best day of my life,” She said. He was looking at her now. He couldn't see her face with the visor down, but he saw her wipe her cheeks from beneath the visor with her left hand.

“Magic, all of it. Do you believe me yet?” Her mouth was all he could see and her smile was wide.

***

The return trip was faster. The Sedna had very advanced navigation and sensor arrays. Once they were out over the water, they could move fast, without worries about being observed. When darkness fell, it auto-activated the night vision features of Po's helmet. Stu continued to monitor comms traffic easily because it wasn't really used very much.

Barcus noticed something odd on one of the status displays. “Em, do you see this?”

“Yes. Proximity to the Sedna has activated Ulric's HUD implant, once you brought everything up. He may be confused when he wakes up. He really should have gotten some sleep last night.”

“Ulric has a HUD implant? What version? He must have been wealthy to get one back then. Can you integrate it with the EmNet?”

“Yes,” A minute later, “Done. Software upgrades in place. We will test it when he wakes.”

The autopilot on the Sedna was not an autonomous AI like Stu, but it functioned well. It allowed Barcus and Em to go over system after system manually to discover why everything was indicating there were no problems. They found the reason why the board was always green, eventually.

The ship status board was driven by a continuous, verbose, system log, that was constantly monitored by another subsystem that drove the status board. It was being fed a historic log file in a continuous loop. It was easy enough to remedy by redirecting the subsystem to the correct log.

The moment the change was made, a full third of the status board went red, a klaxon began to howl, red emergency lighting engaged and the inertial dampeners went off-line with a lurch that almost tossed Barcus out of his chair.

“Barcus, what's wrong? The ship is drifting off course radically! You're falling!” Po said.

“I have just figured out what is wrong with the ship. Please stand by.”

The autopilot had instantly disengaged when the log was redirected. With one hand on the flight controls, he started redirecting it back to the looped log file with the other.

Suddenly, the bridge door opened and Ulric tumbled into the room and yelled over the klaxon, “What the hell are you doing?”

Barcus didn't answer but simply pressed “enter” and the klaxon stopped, the lights all went green, the autopilot indicated it was available. He engaged it just as they were about to reach the shore. He had lost 2,000 feet in altitude.

“Barcus. Answer me!” Po demanded.

“We are sorted out now, Po. That was a very creative engineer you had there, Ulric.”

Ulric was sitting at the center engineering console in front, saying, “What the hell do you think you're doing? You can't just fly this thing without someone watching the logs! All the safety protocols have been disabled! You could be about to have a reactor core breach and you'd never know!”

Ulric was rapidly accessing unfamiliar control systems. Finally, he brought up a custom status panel that had the real status of the system, but no klaxons or overrides.

“Well?” Barcus said.

“The inertial dampener is overheating. We need to take it off-line. Nineteen percent of the Grav-panels are not functioning, but it looks like Wujcik rearranged them so all the failed ones are at the center. Fucking fuel is at 6%. DAMMIT! Six compartments have hull breaches, all comms are down and one of the skids is not retracted all the way.”

“I saw the skid earlier. It's up most of the way,” Po said.

Ulric's head spun around to look at Barcus. “What?”

“It's okay. The skid is up,” Barcus repeated.

“The comms are down. Where is Po?” Ulric asked, incredulous.

“She is flying the shuttle back,” Barcus replied.

“The fucking comms are not just down?! CORRECTION. They. Are. Gone!” Ulric shouted.

“Oh, your HUD is back on-line. All our comms are via the HUD now,” Barcus said as if it was self-evident.

“My HUD works?” Ulric said.

“Yes. Makes a lot of things easier,” Barcus said.

“Yes. Yes, it does. Fuck. What is our ETA?” Ulric said.

“We should be back at The Abbey in about 70 minutes. Stu thinks we should land in the quarry. It will keep travelers from seeing it from a distance, and it will still be hidden from the SATs there,” Barcus said.

“Barcus, excuse me. You have been detected.” Stu played a transmission. It was in common tongue.

“A: Yes?

B: Anderson Wharf reporting, my Lord.

A: Yes.

B: Think it was a big one, sir. Kinda white in the moonlight. Sounded like a small though. Odd one that.

A: Will arrive in one hour. Out.”

“I believe that the Keeper in Anderson Wharf was under orders to report any coastal sightings. The transmission originated 400 kilometers off the coast. There is nothing there, and no SAT coverage.”

“We will proceed north and turn in as planned. There is no population there,” Barcus said for everyone’s benefit.

“Got it,” Po added.

***

Just over an hour later, they landed the Sedna in the quarry and shut all the systems down after Stu backed up all the critical files for analysis. The reactors would take time to cool but would do it unattended. The generators were shut down as the battery systems from the four-hour flight were now fully charged. As the ramp closed behind them, Ulric seemed just to realize that he had to walk up out of the quarry along the donkey path in the dark.

Barcus had a flashlight, and they made their way out in less than fifteen minutes.

Po had landed in the center of the road and was waiting for them. Barcus didn’t mention the manual landing.

“Now what?” Po asked.

“Home. And I am hungry,” Barcus said.

“And I need a drink,” Ulric added.

“Let Smith know we will be back in a few minutes,” Barcus said.

“Already did,” Po replied as they climbed in.

Po auto-landed the shuttle as neat as could be in the pylon garden. Smith was there to meet them. Ansel was there as well, with a candle lantern. They moved up the stairs in the tower to the tavern.

“Everything go as planned?” Smith asked Barcus. He looked at Ulric to answer. He nodded an affirmative as Rose poured him a large mug of Hermitage.

“I would like to organize a cleaning crew to help me tomorrow. A crew that isn't squeamish,” he said. Ulric was a bit abashed by this request.

“Would ten be enough? They all want to see the new ship. The third in our fleet,” Smith said as he looked at Barcus.

They all sat in the booth. The light on the table showed the wince Barcus tried to hide.

“Is it in the quarry then?” Smith asked, and Ulric nodded again.

“Did you see the four Trackers I had watching for you? One of them beat you here by a few minutes. As long as it's there, they will ensure that no one approaches the quarry edge,” Smith said.

“Well done. Ulric will issue them all Plates. We will not wait for runners again,” Barcus said. Smith nodded and moved off.

Rose brought stew with bread and cheese for the three of them, with a smile. Ulric noticed that Saay and Kia were lurking across the way, until Ulric nodded to them and raised his mug. They drifted out and Ulric tucked into his meal.

They ate in silence.

Ulric soaked up the remains of his gravy with the last of his bread then stood. He left without another word.

Barcus stood slowly. Carefully.

“It's the bath for you,” Po stated.

He knew better than to argue.

No one else ever used this room to bathe. Barcus had given up talking about it. Yet there always seemed to be fresh towels and tunics for him there. The fire was well tended and the bath the perfect temperature. The wing was repaired, and what was once the dangerous ledge was now a bright carpeted hall.

Po helped him undress and step into the tub before joining him.

“So. I hear you're a pilot. That must be exciting,” Barcus teased.

“When can we go again?” Po was obviously trying not to sound eager.

“We need to check how Olias is doing in the morning. I need to have a closer look at Ulric's ship. But the day after tomorrow is fourth day. We could fly to Foxden.”

As Barcus soaked in the tub with his eyes closed, Em provided priority reports, silently.

Par and Ash were now twelve days away from The Abbey. No more indications that mercenaries remained above the gorge. Em sought and received permission for a night pickup by the STU at 0300. They would return to Whitehall, then the STU could take some more people to the Mining Redoubt to help Olias in the morning.

“
Barcus, I have been examining the Sedna's sensor data,
” stated Em. “
I have been trying to determine the gaps in SAT coverage in a more precise fashion. But the sensors have captured the SAT itself. It's damaged but still there.

“How much nuclear material, and of what types do you think is contained in the warheads on the weapons platforms around this planet?
” The question hung there. “
Also, I believe Ash could fit inside the lift on the Sedna.”

Status report after status report was detailed. One of the projects scanned by quickly, and Barcus paused it.

“Stu, the Map Fidelity project. Does it have Anderson Wharf?” Barcus asked out loud, sitting up. “What is off the coast there? Anything?” Barcus asked.

“
Nothing at all,
” Stu replied.

“I want you to overlay transmission data from that area. You should be able to triangulate from the comm-sats that have line of sight even though they are not responsible for the imagery in that area. Include historic data if available.”

The image of the map had Plate transmission locations scattered all over the coast. But they were also concentrated in a single place off the coast, an island.

Zooming out, he saw there were vast empty areas to the west. No RF transmissions of any kind anywhere. For thousands of kilometers.