“You’re a mushroom manager!” Judge replied. “Fed me shit and kept me in the dark! You think you’re all pretty and righteous, you and Cope. You rego frills! But you’re no different from Vultures. Just bankrupt cuz you’re fools. All starry-eyed idealists.” His voice assumed a falsetto. “‘Save the settlers! Be like Sass Collier!’ Well, you’re not, are you!”

  “You know, I’m getting damned sick of being called a frill!”

  “Ben,” Cope growled.

  “WE’RE NOT REGO FRILLS!” Ben reached the tie-down he wanted and latched on, by the skiff’s excuse for a bridge. He automatically played out the range he wanted on the line, then hopped upward. “Sophie is a frill. I see gay guys in bars. Some are frills. I’M NOT A FRILL!”

  “Cuz that’s what’s important here,” Cope muttered. “Watch out, Ben, his thrusters are live.”

  Wilder finally noticed where his captain was. “Cap! Get down from there!” ‘Down’ wasn’t too specific. They were in zero-g, with the skiff’s ‘up’ inverted from the ship’s, and ‘forward’ reversed as well.

  Ben was too ticked off to listen. He already had a grip on a hand-hold by the window, peering in at Judge in the skiff’s lonely seat. These toy ships were death traps. He splayed himself across the window and pounded on it, feeling it give under his gauntlet. “Hey, asshole! I’m talking to you!”

  The p-suited Judge shook his head in disgust. “Get off, Ben. I don’t want to hurt you. The money’s just too good.”

  “What are you trying to do?” Ben demanded. “This is a rego skiff! An eggshell with pretensions of grandeur. Prosper is the only real ship out here!”

  “I got transponders and extra air,” Judge returned defensively. Indeed, Ben could see a pile of air tanks hovering in the upper corners of the bridge, out of the way. “Gorky will get me when the time is right.”

  “Not before I blow you out of the sky!”

  “You ain’t gonna do that. You care too much about this next-gen star drive. You still think you can claim ownership, the patent, even if the Vultures got it. Difference is, if I give it to them, they’ll reward me, see? I’m not doing you any harm. You won’t kill me.”

  “I’ll happily kill you,” Wilder cut in on the channel.

  Zan offered, “You’ll never see me coming.”

  “Get off this channel,” Ben growled. “I’m negotiating.”

  “Bang-up job of it, too,” Cope commented from on their secure back channel. “Buddy, I’m begging you. Get off that skiff. Wilder, Zan, you better be secured to Prosper.”

  “I have a plan, Ben,” Teke offered urgently. “Retreat. For the sake of the kids.”

  Ben emphatically resented being reminded of his children right now. “Judge! Vultures will take our work, and throw you under the bus. You know them. You’re a criminal for stealing. Their claim comes from buying out Thrive Spaceways, not your theft. Think, man. Don’t do this.”

  He knew he’d hit a nerve by Judge’s tone. “You’ve got three seconds to get off this skiff, cap! They won’t screw me over. Move before I toss you to Pono! You should have put Wilder in the shuttle!”

  Grimacing, Ben was just thinking the same thing. The shuttle had grapplers, too. He flipped channels. “Wilder –”

  “On it, cap!”

  He flipped back. “Judge, last chance.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you!” Judge flipped him the bird. He reached for the thrusters.

  Ben launched himself perpendicular, trusting his lines to pivot him, to slam against the hull. Ow. He took a hand hold to the gut, and maybe screwed up his air flow. Or maybe he just got the wind knocked out of him. He checked a gauge. No, he’d sprung an internal air leak. He started scrabbling for the trapdoor as fast as he could go, abandoning one of his tethers to go faster.

  With no transponder squawking at this juncture, Judge and the skiff had vanished within seconds into the void.

  “Any joy, Wilder?” he demanded.

  “Haven’t got there yet,” Wilder reported sadly.

  “Can we find him, Cope?” Ben asked.

  “Not until he calls for Gorky.”

  “I did mention I had a plan,” Teke noted peevishly. “Everybody inside first.”

  “What kind of plan?” Ben asked, with a sinking feeling. He could only think of one option. His fingers missed their next hand-hold as Zan suddenly jerked on his line to haul him in, without warning. “Zan? There are courtesies.”

  “Waste of time,” the hunter opined. “You’re last in.”

  “Wilder, abort on the shuttle,” Teke ordered the security chief.

  “Teke, you do not give orders!” Ben barked. “I do! Wilder, shuttle.”

  “More protection in the ship,” Teke differed.

  Wilder complained, “What are we doing?”

  “Teke, stop. You’ll kill him,” Ben pleaded.

  “I’m good with that,” Teke countered. “In fact…”

  “Kill the bastard,” Zan voted.

  “Cope?” Ben appealed, regretting for the umpteenth time that with this crew, he got no respect. “DAMMIT! I am the captain of this ship! I give the orders!”

  He climbed into gravity inside the trapdoor compartment in the cargo floor. As soon as he was in and braced, the external doors contracted beneath him. Zan hit the override to simultaneously dilate the matching doors above them.

  The president of Spaceways prudently elected to respond to the appeal. “Teke, you can’t act without the captain’s orders. Or it’s mutiny, just like Judge. Ben – captain – I agree with Teke’s plan, sar.”

  Deft, Ben acknowledged grudgingly. His lover began by reminding him that Judge’s life was already forfeit, and didn’t factor into this. “Can I hail Judge?” He clambered out of the trapdoor, and closed it behind him. The air in the cargo hold was now up to a whopping 5% of breathable.

  “Channel 5,” Cope allowed.

  “Six minutes, Ben,” Teke interrupted.

  Sighing heavily, Ben switched back to their private channel. He noted from his seat on the floor that the physicist was no longer with Cope. Wilder, way ahead of him, pounded on the galley door. Zan was headed that way, too. “Leave off, Wilder. OK, I’ll bite, Teke, why six minutes?”

  “Optimal trade off. Far enough so we won’t get sucked into the warp. Close enough to reach with a strong signal. Now five minutes.”

  No pressure. “Give me one-minute notices,” he instructed, then switched to hail the wayward skiff. “Judge, last chance. We will commence the test, even with you on board. Best guess? It’ll kill you. This is pure experimental technology, advanced physics.”

  Judge scoffed. “Ben, it’s a star drive. You think I’m an idiot?”

  “The third gen star drive only powers the real device,” Ben explained.

  “Four minutes,” Teke supplied.

  “Oh, yeah?” Judge challenged Ben. “What’s the real device, huh?”

  “Not telling you that. For all I know, you’re broadcasting in the clear to Vultures.”

  Cope clarified, “Cap, you’re both broadcasting in the clear, full spherical.”

  Right. Ben resolved to be less forthcoming with the trade secretes. “You’ll die, Judge.”

  “Three minutes. Cap, please give me the order,” Teke pressed.

  Judge spoke at the same time. “I don’t believe you. Ben, there’s no way back from here. Die is cast. Judge out.”

  Resenting the necessity, Ben switched back to the private channel and clambered off the floor. “Teke, initiate test when ready.” He switched channel again. “All hands, this is the captain. Stand by for immediate execution of the skiff test in…”

  “Now 58, 57, 56…” Teke supplied on cue.

  “In 54 seconds. Captain out.”

  “Come watch, Ben,” Cope invited from the podium, holding out a gauntleted hand.

  Without thinking, Ben rubbed his wedding ring. The gold band still embraced his finger inside his p-suit, where he should never wear it. He paused a moment to shoot Cope a hard look, but then accepted his hand. They knocked their helmets together to watch the small screen Teke fed them from the galley. The physicist monitored his test from the nearly wall-sized display above the foot of the dining table.

  43

  “All hands, test initiated,” Teke announced. “Please watch channel 3.”

  Cope swallowed, and squeezed Ben’s hand again. He didn’t squeeze back.

  “Discussion channel is 2,” the captain said coldly, and switched to it. “Kassidy, are you recording?”

  “You bet your cute little ass, I’m recording!” she confirmed. “But, um, how to say politely…”

  “Nothing’s happening,” Hunter completed her thought.

  “I’ll take it, Teke,” Cope offered. “In this phase, we’ve turned on the instruments. They’re warming up and taking baseline readings. Just another minute or two. The star drive is also powering up. This device is an energy hog.”

  Ben tapped the drive telltale on their screen, the last of the warm-up sequence to complete. One sensor was dead. Maybe Judge flicked it off, by mistake or design.

  Cope continued his explanation. “When we have the baseline data, the micro warp will automatically engage. It’s programmed to jump twelve hundred seventeen kilometers dead ahead. No idea what this will look like.”

  “Should be awesome,” Teke differed. “Fractal colors across the sky bleeding off excess power.”

  “That’s one theory,” Cope allowed. He didn’t care. What mattered to him was that Ben stiffened as he recognized the number. Their wedding anniversary was 12/17. Cope was the one who hard-coded the jump sequence.

  “Micro warp?” Willow asked.

  No one deigned to respond. Least of all the engineer, who bent now to watch the power begin to feed his newest baby, the dragon’s tooth, son of a moose-bot, housed in a strange metal alloy invented under the rays of a distant star.

  From there, in a fraction of a second the display exploded into a maelstrom of fractal patterns, greens and blues and purples and electric white, beautiful and other-worldly. Vast loops subdivided into smaller loops like soap bubbles. Tendrils stretched across the sky, dissipating into infinity. Leave it to a Denali physicist to draw their disturbing botany across the heavens.

  Judge let out an ear-splitting scream, cut off in an anguished gargle.

  Teke exulted. “Got a bead on it! Cope, we did it! Twelve-seventeen klicks, only 18 meters slop!”

  “My God,” Cope breathed.

  “You had a bead on that skiff all along!” Ben accused.

  “Not until we turned on the test,” Cope attempted. Ben was already running for the shuttle. “Ben! The test turned on the transponder. For retrieval!”

  “And I’m retrieving!” Ben barked at him. “Wilder, Zan, on me!”

  “I’m going too!” Cope demanded, pelting after him.

  “Chief, you stay and protect my ship! That’s an order, damn you!”

  Cope’s space boots shuffled to a stop as armed guards beat him to the shuttle ladder.

  Chief, Cope suddenly realized. His footsteps pounded again as he returned to the engineering console, swinging on the poor podium to brake his momentum. He kicked himself for not watching what effect that colossal light show and pocket catastrophe had on the Prosper.

  What kind of sorry excuse for a life support engineer are you? Idiot! His self-harangue didn’t end until he found a real problem to chew on. That didn’t take long.

  Ben aimed the shuttle’s powerful headlights at the broken wreckage that was the skiff. The skeleton of the crappy little eggshell was all too apparent now, a flimsy cage. One loop of steel – an elongated egg shape, squared at the engine end – ran around the craft’s mid-line. A similar loop, but narrower, ran along belly and top. Only four flattened barrel hoops fitted over them along the way. They held the broken pieces together.

  Ben recognized the black coating the metal, spreading from aft, not quite reaching the front. Something caught fire.

  “Chief,” he hailed his ship. “I could broadcast back what I’m seeing. But the world would see it. Get me a tight beam?”

  “Tight beam…now, captain,” Cope replied. “I suggest you give the world a quick look-see, then cut over.”

  In thoughtful slow motion, Ben did so, but only for 10 seconds. Judge might still be alive in there.

  Grapples, he thought, trying to figure out how to pick up this broken egg without squirting its guts out. He nudged the shuttle, already close to zero relative velocity, to peek at the bottom more closely. Yes, that cross beam appeared to be glued on a little better than most. It was also directly beneath the star drive and warp device, probably the most crucial piece of this ruin to retrieve.

  He reached for the grappler, hung poised with his fingers over the control, then decided against it. “Zan, hold our position. Keep a light on the subject. Wilder, we’re going over there.”

  “Aye, cap,” they acknowledged thoughtfully.

  No need to play pressure games. All three remained suited from when they dove out the trapdoor. Which seemed like an eternity ago – probably under 30 minutes.

  Wilder opened the airlock, both doors, and hurled a couple magnet lines across to the skiff’s hull. On a test yank, one piece of hull flew back at them. It missed Ben in the airlock door by centimeters. The other line seemed sound.

  “Go,” Ben directed, latching on to both the shuttle and their one line. With fluent ease, first Wilder, then Ben landed on their bit of sound hull. Finding the airlock would be redundant. Careful of sharp edges, Ben grasped a barrel hoop rib and slipped inside.

  “Captain,” Cope murmured. “Request helmet video feed, you and Wilder.”

  Ben complied without comment, making room for Wilder to swing in. He pointed out several jagged hazards to beware. But the truth was, in the sharp black shadows cast by the shuttle’s headlamp filtering through broken hull, it was hard to interpret anything. Their headlamps cast too narrow a beam, the two roving spots of illumination tending to inspire motion sickness.

  He hunted through his tool belt, with no real recall of what he’d last stowed in it. Wilder found a flare first and stuck it on a beam above. That helped enormously, although its cherry-red interacted with the white beams in a weird plaid effect.

  “Judge first.” Ben drifted forward to the tiny bridge. He had to pause a couple times to un-foul his line. Strangely the bridge window was intact. In a couple meters, the clawing fingers of fire black turned to gray and disappeared.

  He reached the chair, and swallowed saliva, dreading to look. In ultra-slow motion, he flipped above Judge to brake himself delicately on the console.

  Wow, that’s one cooked human, he thought as he peered into the helmet. Judge’s skin had practically melted off, and no maybe about the eyes. He looked away and breathed through his mouth a moment to keep from vomiting. “I don’t recommend looking at his face,” he quipped, then swallowed more saliva gagging him.

  There were procedures, forms to be obeyed. That’s the only reason he checked the life signs readout. “Cryo! He’s alive!”

  Of course he was. That automatic cryo on the p-suit was a miner’s best hope. Judge Frampton was a skiff boss. The man invested in his suit.

  “I could kill him for you,” Wilder offered.

  Ben shot him a glare. “We transfer this man to the shuttle, sergeant. We revive him. He has Yang-Yangs, same as us.”

  “Sar,” the security chief granted reluctantly. “You realize that’s a pain in the ass.”

  “Next target,” Ben growled. “There was a box, sergeant. Galley.”

  Cope murmured, “Captain, Spaceways would be grateful if you put a high priority on our device.”

  “I intend high priority on the device and the star drive, chief. Top priority is living things before they’re dead.” Ben blew out again, then softened his approach. “Cope, my problem is how to grapple this thing without collapsing it. Are you bringing Prosper around?”

  “Not at the moment, cap. Issues.”

  Ben froze to inquire, “Issues?”

  “Propulsion is offline. Working on it.”

  “Outstanding. Keep me apprised, chief.” Ben thoughtfully snagged a couple of the air bottles drifting around, and snapped them onto the rack on his back.

  The ‘galley’ was notional at this point, its aft bulkhead caved into it. Ben selected a bit of broken door frame and wrenched it free. This served as a crowbar to pry the bent bulkhead out of his way. Eli’s test module was remarkably scorched, more so than its surroundings. But aside from one caved-in corner, it remained about the same shape as when last they met. The light button didn’t work. He tucked his chin to aim his headlamp and peer into its little window. The interior was full of floating globules. Then he saw one droplet float away from its broken corner. He slapped a patch on to seal the whole, but didn’t have high hopes. Seeds were tough, at least. He imagined the frog embryos and mustard plant were goners.

  “What are you up to, sergeant?” he asked.

  “Figuring out how to lug an asshole across to the shuttle, cap.”

  “Excellent, keep it up. I have this box. Would attaching the box to Judge be convenient?”

  After a pause, Wilder said, “Not really.”

  “OK. Careful of the box.” He left that hanging in the hallway behind him. Crowbar in hand, Ben drifted back to the engine…space. The engine nozzles were simply gone, leaving the aft wall wide open. Stars and the alarming face of the gas giant winked at him through fractures in the hull. This provided good light, since they were on the sunny side of golden Pono at the moment.

  He checked radiation readings from his suit, but they were typical of this region of space – extremely unhealthy without Yang-Yangs to busily repair his DNA. Normal.

  He checked the star drive first. It seemed intact. He found the fuel cutoff, but it crumbled in his hand, along with the fuel pipe. “I found the fire,” he noted in passing. And the micro warp…there. Its cage was still pretty well married to the same bunch of steel he was thinking of grabbing with the grapplers.

 

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