The Jovian Run: Sol Space Book One (4 page)

“If anyone can. What’s that mean, anyway?”

Iqbal raised his eyebrows. “What, ‘
ibn il-Homaar
?’”

“Yeah.”

“Son of a donkey.”

“Nice,” Templeton said, and swiveled back around.

Twenty minutes after the captain patched herself into the shipwide coms to outline her plan to the crew, but still thirty minutes out from the satellite,
Gringolet’s
thrust diminished. Had anyone been looking, the satellite itself would be clearly visible through the aft observation windows that peeked up above and below the engine housing at the back of the ship.

When they were only four minutes from the satellite, the already depressurized shuttle bay door opened and a utility vehicle the size of a 20
th
-century minivan was launched violently out of the portal. The UteV, as they were commonly called, was fired from a jury-rigged launcher that pushed it up to nearly three Gs of thrust in the opposite direction. This was enough to counteract the speed it acquired from the larger ship, which meant that, relatively speaking, it was not moving. Almost immediately Dinah Hazra, the UteV’s sole occupant, began thrusting the small vehicle towards the satellite. Manipulator arms unfolded from the front of the craft, which was comprised primarily of a hemispherical glass viewport.

An additional two minutes later,
Gringolet’s
engines flared significantly brighter, pushing well over three Gs for fifty-two seconds, and the ship came to a full stop. As it did, Bethany immediately took over attitude control from Charis, and the vessel pitched one hundred and eighty degrees, nose over end, to face the oncoming rival ship. As it did so, the cockpit realigned, tilting up ninety degrees and recreating the characteristic conical shape that her captain had recently admired on the beach. The doctor hastily flung away his safety belt and pushed himself off the bridge and down towards medical. The
Doris Day
was now plainly visible to the crew in the cockpit, as well as anyone else who cared to look from a forward viewing port.

Captain Vey’s
Doris Day
had been top-of-the-line when he acquired her, and that was none too long ago. The ship shared the roughly cone shaped outline with
Gringolet
, but it was a bit smaller. Because it was newer, its engines were also smaller, giving the ship an overall slimmer profile from the rear, which was exactly the view that the crew was treated to as they watched the other ship approach. Bethany made some slight adjustments based on her data readouts and visual stimuli, and
Gringolet
placed itself rather precisely between the oncoming ship and the satellite. The hair tie normally found round her wrist was holding her hair back, and though it floated freely, not a strand of it strayed in front of her face.

“How long until she reaches us, Charis?” Staples inquired tensely.

“At current thrust… twelve minutes. She’s coming in awfully fast, Captain. My numbers show she’ll stop before she hits us, but not more than a thousand kilometers.” Charis did not try to disguise the fear in her voice.

Templeton’s hands tightened on his armrests. “That’s real close. All she has to do is let off thrust for a few seconds and-“

“She won’t.” His captain cut him off. “Vey won’t do that. He could burn us, but getting that close would risk his pretty new ship. He’s just trying to show off and intimidate us.”

“It might be working,” Yegor muttered.

“You’re sure, Captain?” Templeton asked.

“If this be error and upon me proved…” she replied distractedly, leaning forward, her eyes pinned to the approaching engine flair in the window. Her first mate, well familiar with his captain’s proclivity for quoting classics, especially in tense situations, took that to mean that she was sure.

Instead of questioning her further, he turned to his panel and spoke into his microphone. “Dinah, how you doing out there?”

Dinah’s slightly broken voice came through almost immediately. “Just fine, sir. How are you?”

“Nervous. How close are you?”

“About eleven minutes away from the satellite. That was a tricky maneuver, launching me while under thrust, but you put me in a good position, sir.” She neglected to mention that the UteV launching mechanism was both her idea and invention.

“I don’t suppose you could speed things up?” Templeton asked.

“I promise not to get there any sooner or later than I can get there, sir.” In spite of himself, he smiled at her response, knowing he should leave her alone. The woman was an expert.

Ten minutes later, as the
Doris Day
was approaching zero speed, a dark disc came flying up and around its engines. The drone immediately began moving under its own thrust towards the ventral side of
Gringolet
. Charis picked it up right away. Rather than report to her captain, she patched herself through to Dinah in the UteV. “Dinah, I’ve got something headed towards us. Looks like a probe or a drone. Probably a drone. It’s using the ‘Day’s’ speed to fly past us. Suspect it’s coming right to you.”

“I can try to block it,” Bethany said in her reedy voice, “but then we’ll be out of position to block the
Doris Day
.” She sounded regretful, as if the physics of the situation were her fault.

“Hold position,” Templeton ordered.

“Can we shoot it?” Charis asked.

The first mate shook his head. “It’s too maneuverable for slugs at this range. It’d just move out of the way. A tac missile could catch it-“

“No,” Staples interrupted him. “No weapons. I don’t want this to escalate, and I certainly don’t want to give Vey the opportunity to say he opened fire on us to defend his property. Whether the satellite is his is debatable at this point. That the drone is his isn’t. Let it go. Dinah will have to handle it.”

As if to put their fears to rest, the chief engineer’s voice came through the speakers. “I’ve got it. Locked on.” Templeton blew out a breath of relief, and Yegor’s face lit up.

Once she had grabbed two support bars on the satellite with the UteV’s capture arms, Dinah began to thrust backwards towards the ship. The four small jets that surrounded the rounded viewing port in front of her propelled her steadily. The EVA gloves made her hands no less dexterous on the controls, and she maneuvered the craft with deft confidence. A few seconds after she had begun to gain speed, she looked up through the top viewing port and saw the sun reflect off the shiny black drone as it came flying around
Gringolet
, changed vectors, and headed straight for her. Its capture claws extended menacingly. She was sure the drone was being controlled by someone aboard the other ship. Not putting a person in it gave it distinct advantages; it was capable of thrusts and vector alterations that would pulp a human occupant.  The drone was the kind of high-tech luxury her crew couldn’t afford.
It isn’t fair
, she thought for a second, and then shook her head to clear it. Fair was irrelevant; the situation was as it was.

Back in the cockpit of her ship, Templeton tensed. “That thing’ll tear her UteV apart.” His voice was little more than a strained mutter.

“No,” came Staples’ quiet but tense reply. “He won’t risk killing her. He’ll figure she’s wearing a suit, but still, something could go wrong. He won’t risk it.”

“Then what’s he planning?”

“We’re about to find out, I think.”

The drone descended on Dinah’s UteV like a hawk on a rabbit. At the last minute, it fired retro thrusters and stopped short of colliding with her. Its capture claws grabbed hold of the two support bars on the opposite side of the distressed satellite, and it began to pull. Dinah looked at the thing, a jet black disc that resembled nothing so much as a giant metallic Go piece with a single red sensor eye facing her. It was a scant five meters from her craft, silently blowing thrust in the face of her vehicle, and winning the tug-of-war. She increased the thrust of the UteV to maximum, and the drone responded in kind. The support bars warped under the strain, and emergency lights on her console began to flash, but nothing had given way yet.

Dinah began to fire her dorsal jets, rotating the three connected objects in space. Then she spoke through the open com channel. “Bethany, listen to me…”

On board the
Doris Day
, Captain Vey looked across his bridge expectantly at his Second Mate. Beyond the window in front of them,
Gringolet
faced them nose-to-nose, maneuvering to keep itself between their ship and the satellite.  Vey was a large man, once a very intimidating physical specimen, and though his stomach had grown in recent years and his muscle had lessened, he still possessed a formidable physique. He had fair skin and close cropped curly hair, which he ran his hands through often as if to retard its recession.

“Well?” he asked; his deep voice carried, as it often did, a hint of threat.

The second mate, a dark-skinned woman in her early thirties, was wearing a VR helmet and haptic control gloves. Her hands were clamped firmly around an invisible object, and she was gesturing towards herself with them. “She’s not letting go, but that UteV doesn’t have the thrust the drone does. If she doesn’t want to let go, I’ll just bring her along.”

The captain replied irritably, “That’s like to take more time than I’d-“

Suddenly his pilot, who had been trying and failing to outmaneuver Bethany and get around the other vessel, interrupted him with a loud exclamation. “What the hell?”
Gringolet’s
VTOL thrusters had turned to face them, and the ship was thrusting violently away.

Just as the structure of the Yoo-lin mark VII satellite was starting to buckle from the opposing forces, and just as the drone was achieving maximum thrust, Dinah let go.

The drone rocketed away at what she estimated must be six Gs of thrust. At the same time, the
Gringolet
grew immeasurably closer in her forward view, blotting out the stars as Bethany brought it thrusting back. Just as they had planned, the drone flew squarely into the rear of the ship before the drone’s pilot on the Doris Day knew what was happening. The drone was crushed between the satellite and the engine housing, and small pieces of it and the satellite itself broke off and floated in various directions. Dinah worked the controls to reverse her movement away from the ship and her prize.

She allowed herself a dignified grin, and said, “Exactly as planned, sir. The drone looks to be non-functional and the package is mostly intact. If you could move free of the area, I’ll reacquire in just a few minutes. And please thank Bethany for not crushing me too.”

“Copy that,” her captain’s voice came through her EVA earpiece. “We’re moving.” Dinah began pushing the UteV back towards the satellite, using the capture claws to push aside the larger stray pieces of debris.

Suddenly, Templeton’s voice came through the earpiece. “Dinah, we’ve got two more drones headed your way!  We can’t stop them. Tell me you have another amazing plan.”

She considered for a moment before replying. “Will a crazy one do, sir?”

A minute later, the two drones flew silently around
Gringolet
, one above, one below, and barreled towards her small metal can. She had just secured another hold on the satellite, but the safety of her home ship was now two hundred kilometers away. There was no way she would make it before the drones pried the satellite away from her. Dinah double-checked her craft’s hold on the target and looked quickly up and down at the incoming drones. She doubted they would play as nice this time. She looked over her calculations on the screen in front of her and the flashing execute button. She shook her head to clear it, wishing she could wipe sweat off her brow in an EVA suit, and then took a deep breath. Her eyes closed for a second, then opened.

“Now, sir,” she said, and pressed the button. Responding exactly as programmed, the UteV redirected all of its available thrust through the forward ventral and rear dorsal thrusters. Safety lights immediately blazed and klaxons sounded, but she silenced them with the flip of a switch. The craft quickly began spinning end over end like a runaway Ferris wheel, and Dinah Hazra was subjected to upwards of seven Gs. The sensation was one of falling forward and down, perhaps curving unceasingly around the outside loop of a roller coaster, but much, much more unpleasant.

Black motes flooded her vision and the sounds in the craft grew distant. She knew that she was close to passing out. The UteV was spinning end over end, taking the satellite with it. The drones paused, their retro jets firing and their pilots unsure of what to do with the situation they faced. At the precise moment she had programmed the computer to do so, knowing that she was incapable of the split-second timing necessary to aim precisely, the capture claws released and the satellite went careening off towards her home ship. The drones, once their pilots had finally grasped what had happened, gave pursuit, but it was too late. Bethany was already bringing the ship around, and Templeton was opening the shuttle bay door. The small pilot, her eyes darting back and forth from her control panel to the window, aligned the ship, and the satellite flew into the bay and crunched against the back wall.