The Jovian Run: Sol Space Book One (26 page)

              “Both,” Staples muttered. Evelyn stood up behind her and looked at the first mate.

              “What?” he asked, confused by her response.

              “Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “Damn.”

              “Some problems take care of themselves?” Templeton ventured.

              “I suppose. I…” she turned and looked at Evelyn, then back at Templeton. “I’m fairly sure I hated the man, but I didn’t want this.”

              “Maybe he did.” the woman behind her said. She was standing very erect, and she spoke seriously in her deep voice. “Maybe he thought he could do something good.”

              “Maybe I guess.” Templeton shook his head. “To hang yourself in four-tenths Earth gravity. Can’t have been pleasant or easy.”

              Staples rubbed her face and her eyes with her hands for several seconds, and her skin was flushed when she took them away. “Well, I guess we had better go deal with this. Is Jabir there?”

              “Yeah, he’s there. I called him first. Wanted to come tell you in person.”

              “Thanks for that, Don.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “I cannot wait to get to Cronos and for this whole job to be over.”

Chapter 15

As
Gringolet
approached the sixth planet from Sol, many of the crew set aside a few minutes to climb down to the rear observation decks at the stern of the ship. The brownish-yellow planet and its seemingly perfectly formed rings grew until they nearly filled the windows, and even those who had been on a Jovian run before found an excuse to take some time gazing at them. Saturn was nine times the size of earth, nearly one hundred times more massive, and its burnished surface was illuminated in part by the distant sun. In additions to the rings, dozens and dozens of moons orbited the planet, the most well known of which was Titan.

Titan’s surface consisted mostly of ice and rock; that composition, along with its size, made it the ideal location for an outlying Jovian base. Titan Prime was a settlement that made use of rock to expand and build, water ice to provide sustenance, and the methane, ethane, and propane naturally occurring in the atmosphere to provide power. Over the past thirty years, it had become nearly self-sufficient. Though semi-regular shipments brought in people, luxuries, and supplies as needed, the continually expanding community had nearly obtained an ecological balance between their population, hydroponics, and small animal farms. What had started as a facility had burgeoned into a small town housing over five thousand residents. Titan Prime had a strong manufacturing base, and though it was largely financially independent at this point, it had begun as a joint venture funded by energy companies and several Earth governments. Now it provided workers to local mining stations such as
Gringolet’s
destination. It also functioned as a staging ground for further expansion in to the Jovian sector, a launch place for interstellar probes, and was the planned launch site of future interstellar missions to neighboring stars.

In the cockpit, Staples sat in her seat with her crew around her. John Park had been pulling extra shifts for the past few days, mostly with Evelyn, to learn the coms systems well enough to operate them when she left the ship. She had offered to handle the coms during the approach, but John wanted the practice, and despite all they had been through, Staples wanted to make a show of finishing the job with her crew in place. John sat in what Staples still thought of as Yegor’s seat, corresponding with the station to plan their final approach. Charis had done her job well, and they were a scant five hundred kilometers out from the station when she cut thrust and left them adrift. In front of them, the now tiny star at the center of the system twinkled only marginally brighter than all of the other points of light in the unending darkness, and Staples could barely imagine the small blue dot where they had begun this job. It spun on nearly a billion kilometers away, and as happy as she was to be safely to their destination, she would be much happier when they were headed back home.

“Captain, we’re ready to approach,” Charis said, looking over her shoulder, her hair floating up above her in the zero G environment.

Her husband glanced over at her, and then back at his captain and nodded as well. “Cronos Station says they are ready to receive us.”

Templeton leaned over a bit towards Staples. “I recommend we go in at about a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, nice and slow. That’ll give the crew plenty of time to rearrange their rooms and get strapped down again for final approach.”

“That will get us docked in, what, three and a half, four hours?” John said.

“‘Bout that,” Templeton replied.

“I can’t wait to get off this ship,” Charis said with a sigh. She looked around again and added, “No offense, Captain.”

“None taken,” Staples said, and she meant it. They had had a rough time of it, no question, and smaller things had made the larger difficulties of this journey even more stressful. It wasn’t just that they were grieving for a lost crew member, overcoming the trauma of a lost passenger, dealing with feelings of betrayal from a traitor, and fearful of a second attack from a ship that never came. They each had been forced to take on extra duties to cover those of crew members they had lost or incarcerated. People had had to cook their own meals, a practice most were unused to onboard, or else make do with snack food like granola bars or cheese and crackers. That extra time took away from their grieving and coping processes, and most found themselves busier just when they wanted more time to themselves. They could all use a break, and their captain intended to give them one. “Bethany, please turn us over.”

“Yes, Captain.” Perhaps it was Staples’ imagination or the lack of sleep, but she thought that the pilot’s voice carried a bit more confidence than usual.

As the ship pitched upwards from their perspective, Templeton picked a spot on the floor to root his eyes to, and Sol slid down and away from their view. A minute later, the enormity of Saturn loomed in front of them, dwarfing the tiny ship and filling nearly all of the windows arrayed around the cockpit. The rings floated above them, and Staples regarded them through the skylight on the ceiling. In front of them hung Cronos Station, owned and operated by Libom Pangalactic. Like most Jovian orbital mining stations, it was cylindrical in shape, and it spun along its axis to provide gravity for its workers.

“Bethany, bring us in at one hundred and fifty KPH relative to the station,” Staples said. She felt the light pull of gravity pushing her into her seat for a moment as they accelerated up to speed, and then her safety harness was the only thing holding her in place again. She looked over at her first mate and nodded for him to take over.

“All right people, you’ve got one hour to get your rooms in shape and get back up here. This may have been a tough run, but let’s end it right.” Nearly everyone undid their belts and headed towards the exit, and after Bethany locked her controls, she joined them.

              As usual, Bethany brought them into docking seamlessly. Cronos Station offered a number of docking tubes that extended at various points from its curved outer surface. The ship, in turn, was equipped with docking ports in several places. The dorsal port was ideal for connecting with a cylindrical spinning station, as it allowed
Gringolet
to take advantage of the spin of the station to maintain Earth normal gravity during their visit. Matching up the ship with the spin of the station was a tricky maneuver. It first required steering the ship as though it were flying circles inside a very large drainpipe. Once that was achieved and the velocity of the ship matched the spin of the station, the docking tube and port had to be lined up. Bethany had only John’s information from the station’s coms and the data on her surface and console to guide her, but after ten minutes of micro adjustments, a number considered small by those in the profession, they were sealed tight.

              Once the docking procedure was completed, the crew stood under near Earth normal gravity for the first time in several weeks and walked or rode elevators up to the top deck. Staples wanted to take a small delegation with her when they disembarked, and she had chosen Charis, Dinah, Templeton, and Jabir to escort Evelyn off the ship. After they had made their introductions and Staples had explained the situation, she planned to allow everyone else a chance to take advantage of whatever shore leave Cronos had to offer, which she assumed was not much. The group assembled in the dorsal airlock, and once the security checks had been passed, they climbed up through the open shaft and into the station proper.

              There were four people waiting for them as they climbed through the hatch and stood on the inside of the cylinder. The first thing that struck Staples as she emerged was the smell. It was a scorched scent, one of heated metal, oil, and machinery. The temperature was the next factor to greet her; it was perhaps five to seven degrees cooler than she liked to keep her ship, though the lowered temperature made sense for an environment where men and women were constantly working. She had encountered the same thing in other high-energy environments, including many restaurants. It was a choice that made it clear that those in charge favored the comfort of their workers over that of their guests, and small wonder, as Cronos Station received few of the latter.

As the first out of the hatch, Staples had climbed up into a receiving room. While the rest of her chosen crew lifted themselves up and into the chamber, she examined the people arrayed in front of her. A man, assumedly the one in charge, stood in front. He looked to be in his early sixties and was tall and slim. His hair was a smattering of white and grey, and his skin was lined and burnished. Hard green eyes looked out from his face, and they regarded Staples with cold detachment. Those eyes were set deep in a long, thin, unfriendly face. Staples assumed this was Gordon Laplace, the commander of the station.

Next to and slightly behind Laplace stood a shorter portly man, also white, with brown hair that was graying at his temples. Unlike his commander, he greeted the emerging crew with a warm smile that touched his blue eyes. His face was round with heavy jowls, and his teeth were crooked. Standing behind these two were security personnel, one man and one woman. Though they were armed, their pistols remained holstered, and they stood at ease with their hands behind their backs. They were there, Staples assumed, not because her crew constituted a threat, but as a formality of greeting. Or, she thought, Laplace just liked to have an entourage. Staples and Templeton stood awkwardly facing this group until everyone had clambered up and to their feet. The captain could hear her first mate breathing heavily beside her. They stood in a room perhaps seven meters square. Chairs lined one side, and the plaster walls were painted a soothing but sterile beige.

Once Jabir, the last out, had gained his feet, Staples stepped forward and extended her hand. “Are you the station commander?” she asked.

“Gordon Laplace, yes.” He did not step forward to meet her hand, but received it where he stood. “You must be Clea Staples.” She nodded in return, and then made introductions all around.

Laplace identified the man next to him as Davis Ducard, his second in command. He did not bother introducing the security officers. His handshakes were curt and quiet, but Ducard smiled and murmured “hellos” and “good to meet yous” as he made his way from person to person.

“Where is Mr. Bauer?” Laplace asked.

Staples had been hoping to put this off, but there really was no way around it. “I’m afraid he’s dead.” Laplace’s eyes widened, and Ducard’s jaw dropped. “We communicated to you that we had been attacked by a pirate vessel. For security reasons, both yours and ours, we did not communicate the full extent of our losses. We have reason to believe that another ship was following us, and we didn’t want to risk giving them any information that might provide them with a tactical advantage over us.”

The commander seemed to think this over for a minute before nodding and answering. “That seems to make sense, though it is clearly a great loss.” His voice was rough but not unpleasant. “Did you suffer losses as well?”

Staples unconsciously looked at the floor for a moment as she answered. “Yes. Our coms officer, Yegor Durin. He was killed fighting our attackers. Several other crew members were injured, one permanently.”

“I see. I am sorry. I trust you have Mr. Bauer’s remains, as well as a report to submit?”

“Of course.” The man’s steely demeanor unnerved her a bit. She produced a small surface from a clip on the side of her belt. Ducard stepped forward, his smile now tinged with sympathy, and produced his own surface. With a gesture, the file she had prepared was transferred, and she returned the surface to its place at her side.

The report was one she had put together in the past few days over several cups of coffee and much internal debate. She had considered being fully forthcoming with the commander, but in the end she had decided to give them an edited account of their journey. This was aided by Evelyn’s insistence that she not report Parsells and Quinn’s attack on her; she said that it would reflect badly on Staples and the crew, and it was her determination that her new employers understand that the crew of
Gringolet
had done their very best to see her safely to Cronos. The final report omitted not only the attempted sexual assault, but the altercation with the
Doris Day
over the satellite, Jordan’s report, and Piotr’s betrayal. It was not stretching the truth to write that the replacement of the coms system had rendered the ship vulnerable to the pirate assault. Piotr, as far as Staples was concerned, was a matter of internal ship business, as was the suicide of Parsells. She had related that Quinn had been exposed to vacuum, which was true enough, but she had bent the truth in stating that it had happened as a result of the pirate attack. This painted him in a more heroic light than she would have liked, but in the end she decided it didn’t matter.

Laplace nodded. “I’ll look that over as soon as I have a chance. I am eager to hear how an armed escort failed to safely conduct its passengers to this station.” Though the statement was made without emotion, Templeton bristled, ready to come to his captain’s defense, and Ducard looked with embarrassment at his Commander.

Before anyone could speak, Evelyn stepped forward. “Commander Laplace, I am very excited to be here.” He turned his icy gaze to regard her. “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work here with you, and I don’t want us to get off on the wrong foot, but I have to object. Clea – Captain Staples and her crew did everything they could. They were attacked by professionals who were trying to kidnap Herc and me. If they hadn’t been so good at their job, I wouldn’t be standing here. Please, you have to believe me: none of this is their fault.”