The derelict duty 1, p.1
The Derelict Duty 1, page 1
part #1 of The Duty Trilogy Series
Contents
Prologue:
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
Other books by James Haddock
The Duty trilogy
Book one: The Derelict Duty
By: James A. Haddock III
Websites
Jameshaddock.us
Haddockpublishing.com
Copyright © 2019 all rights reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Prologue:
The Blaring klaxon jolted me out of a sound sleep. I threw my covers off and was halfway to my Vac-suit locker before I was fully awake. It felt like I had just fallen to sleep, having just finished a long EVA shift. It would be just like Dad to have an emergency drill after an EVA shift to see if I had recharged my suit. I had, I always did. Both Mom and Dad were hard taskmasters when it came to ship, and personal safety. Vac-suit recharging was top of the personal safety list. If you can't breathe, you die. Easy to remember.
Donning a Vac-suit was second nature for me, after 16 years of drills and practice exercises. I had been doing this, literally been doing this all my life. I loved life on our Rock-Tug. I was reaching for the comms when I felt the ship shutter. “That can't be good.”
Mom's voice came over ship-wide, "This is not a drill, this is not a drill, meteor strike, hull breach in Engineering." Mom's voice was just as calm as if she was asking what's for lunch. This was a way of life for us, we trained and practiced so that when the reality of working in "The Belt" happened you didn't panic, you did your job. You didn't have to think, you knew what you needed to do, and you did it.
I keyed my comms, "Roger, hull breach in Engineering, where do you need me Mom?"
"Get to Engineering and help your Father, I'm on the Bridge trying to get us in the shadow of a bigger rock for some protection," Mom answered. My adrenalin was spiking, but Mom's calm voice helped to keep me calm.
I sealed my helmet and left my cabin, heading for Engineering. The klaxon had faded into the background. My breathing was louder than the alarm.
I kept telling myself, “stay calm, just do your job, stay calm."
I had just reached Engineering, when the Tug was rocked by a succession of impacts, each one harder that the last. The hatch to Engineering was closed, and the indicator light was flashing red. That told me there was hard vacuum on the other side.
I switched my comms to voice activated, "Dad? I'm at the hatch to Engineering it's in lockdown. I can't override it from here. Dad? Dad? Dad respond! Mom, Dad is not answering, and Engineering is sealed, you will have to evac the air from the rest of the ship, so I can open the hatch."
Mom's steady voice replied, "Understood emergency air evac in 10 seconds."
Those were the longest 10 seconds of my short life. The hatch indicator light finally turned green and the hatch door opened. The Engineering compartment was clear. No smoke, no fire, some sparks, but lots of blinking red lights. I looked over to the Engineering station console, there sat Dad. He had not had his Vac-suit on when the ship's hull was breached.
Hard Vacuum does terrible things to the human body. I suddenly realized that I had not heard Dad on comms the whole time, just Mom. She probably knew what had happened, but was sending help hoping Dad was all right and that maybe the comms were down.
I heard Mom in the background declaring an emergency and calling on the radio for help.
Her voice still calm somehow, "Mayday, mayday, this is the Rock Tug Taurus, mayday. We have taken multiple meteor strikes. We have multiple hull breaches, please respond."
"Come on Nic, think! What do I need to do?" I asked myself. I closed the hatch to Engineering, to seal the vacuum from the rest of the ship. I turned and started back toward the bridge. There was an impact, a light flared, and sparks; time seemed to slow, there was no sound, we were still in a vacuum. I felt shuttering vibrations and saw sparks. Holes seemed to appear in the overhead and then the deck. It was so surreal.
The meteors were punching holes through our ship like a machine punching holes through metal on an assembly line.
"Meteor storm" I thought. I lay there looking at the overhead, thinking it would take a lot of work to fix all these holes. I then realized I was lying on the deck, I tried to sit up. Something was wrong. My left arm was not working.
I looked to my left and saw why, “No wonder it's not working, it's over by the wall.” Sweat was stinging my eyes, I looked down at my body and saw my right leg was missing too. "Mom!" I shouted, something crashed into the left side of my helmet!
I sat bolt upright in my seat, straining my seatbelts.
"Whoa, easy there Belter, that was just the station clamping on to the ship. Sometimes they are a bit rough,” the man next to me said.
"Yeah, thanks." I said, trying to play off the nightmare I was waking up from. You would think after 10 years the nightmares would ease up, but every so often I would be back on the Taurus, torn apart and helpless.
CHAPTER 1
Everyone seemed to be trying to get off the ship at the same time. The aisles were full of standing people bustling like they needed to get to the bathroom right now. I turned to look out the window, I couldn't see much, just the side of the station. They all look the same, some patched more than others. Some painted, some not, no rust in space, so why waste the money. Nobody looked at the outside, anyway.
I "blinked" up my comm screen, I figured I might as well run my diagnostics while I waited for the rush to clear. I read through the list, vision setting normal spectrum 20/20. Hearing normal. Noise canceling ON, Comms inactive. Right leg reaction 50%, tactile sensitivity 50%. Left arm reaction 50%, tactile sensitivity 50%. All systems normal operation, all systems nominal.
I reset my arm and leg to 100%; I had dialed them back to 50% because of the sleeping tab I had taken. Good thing too. Being jolted out of sleep by the nightmare might have caused me to break something or someone. That was one thing you learned to live with when you had cybernetic limbs.
Vision settings were ok, I turned my internal comms on and noise canceling off. I had my P-comm, but it was easier to just "blink" comms up through my cyber-optic implants. The vision and hearing upgrade had cost a lot of creds, but they were worth it.
I turned my P-comm on; it was a redundancy, but I kept it to keep people from asking about my eye. I don't know why. I'm not vain, I guess. I don't advertise how cybernetically enhanced I am. I didn't want people to call me "Cy". Being called "Nac" is all the nickname I need.
I had gotten the nickname because everyone said I had "the knack" to fix anything, well almost anything. So "Nac" had stuck, even though my name is "Nic".
The crowd had thinned out, so I grabbed my bag from the overhead and moved toward the exit. Moving down the gangway, I enjoyed the cold fresh air. It felt good on my face after 36 hours stuffed in that tin can of a passenger ship. It felt good to have a fresh lung full.
I followed the crowd and the signs to Security and Operations. The line at security move fairly fast, shortly I was standing in front of a bored looking security man. He took my ID card and scanned me into the system.
He pointed at the floor, "Stand on the yellow line, and look into the camera". I moved to the line and looked into the camera. He handed my card back, "Welcome to Conclave Station. Next".
I shouldered my bag and followed the signs toward Operations. I moved to the next available service window and handed the attendant my card. A nice-looking lady with short red hair scanned my card.
"How can I help you, Mr. Haydock?"
She handed my card back, "I'm just arriving, and I wanted to check to ensure that the systems in my Hab-hanger had been initialized. And everything was in order for me to take up residence," I said, returning her smile.
"Let's see." her fingers clicked over the keyboard. "HH-AA12, Wow that's one of the original hanger-habs."
Nodding my head, "Yeah, my family has been out here from the beginning. They helped open the belt and mine this asteroid out and later put in habs."
I was proud of my family heritage; we had a proud history of opening the belt and helping other belters.
Out here that was a given, as my Granddad used to say, "When a belter sent out ‘the call’ everyone came running throttles to the firewall.” I don't remember it, but they told me that's the way it was the day Mom had set out "the call". Every Rock Jockey in the sector dropped their loads and did a “Turn and Burn". 26 minutes later I was in a stasis pod on the way to Conclave Station's Trauma Center.
The attendant snapping fingers in front of
"Oh, there you are. There is someone home after all," she said.
I could feel my face turning red, "I am so sorry, I don't think the sleeping tab has completely worn off."
"I know what you mean," she chuckled. "I hate those things, but how else could you stand being strapped in one place for all those hours."
“Exactly,” I replied.
She looked back at her screen, "Now as I was saying," she cut her eyes at me and smiled. "We got your e-forms and deposits. We have initialized the systems. Air, water and power are on, you can move in right away. I'll make a note in the file you checked in with Ops and you are moving in. You are moving in, correct?"
"Yes ma'am, as soon as I leave here, I'm going there. I also had containers shipped, have they arrived?"
"Hmm, yep, they are ready for delivery, would 1300 tomorrow be all right?"
“That would be fine.” I answered.
"Is there anything else I can do for you? Set-up comms? Notifications? Cup of coffee?" It took a couple seconds for the “cup of coffee” to register. I'm sure I had a confused look on my face. She patted my hand chuckling, "That's ok, you go get some sleep, when it finally registers, you comm me."
I laughed, "deal, I promise I'm not usually this thick headed, or at least no one has said anything if I am."
“We'll see Nicholas Haydock.”
“Just Nic,” I said as I turned toward the doors marked Main Habitat/Promenade.
***
I followed the signs toward the S-Tube. Things had changed in the 10 years I had been gone. I didn't come over to the Port of Entry much even back then. We own a hanger-hab and were residents. I had to admit things had grown. There seemed to be more people here now. Going in and out of the shops, buying and selling, doing what people do.
I kept following the signs down two levels to the S-Tube terminal and found the tube I needed to get out to the Alpha spoke of Alpha Ring, or AA. Looking at the map I realized how much Conclave Station had grown. The original miners had built their habs in circles like a ring with spokes and a center hub. They isolated each ring from the others for safety. No one failure could cause a catastrophic failure to all.
They were all inter-connected by S-tubes, but these had redundant safety systems in them. As far as I remember, there were only 12 rings on the hab when I left. Now there were 15 and 3 more were under construction. I guess business is good with all this growth. I noticed that 2 of the main lines went out to the Industrial Zone. One was to the refinery smelter factory. The other went over to the shipyard. Both had grown according to the map.
My P-Comm was getting pinged with all kinds of ads. I had about an hour of travel before I got to Alpha ring so; I brought up some to the local news feeds. It was mostly stuff about the refinery and shipyard expansions and how much it would help the local economy.
There was opposition to the expansion saying it would open the door for more immigrants taking jobs away from the locals and forcing out smaller locally owned companies. A lot of those small companies were family owned and operated and had been for generations.
For all the growing business expansions and prosperity, I noticed crime was up. Some feared with these new expansions, organized crime would expand too.
The sports page was kind of sparse, mostly fights of one kind or another. Boxing, wrestling, all kinds of mixed martial arts and MMA. Good, I can keep up with my training, I had an MMA Instructor's Comm contact. I had started MMA 5 or 6 years ago, the therapist said it would help with the coordination and balance of my cyber-limbs.
I had trouble at first ever finding an instructor to work with me because of the cyber-limbs. We finally found an MMA gym run by a former Space Legion Marine who himself had a cyber-arm. The therapist was right, it really helped me with my coordination and balance, but also my self-esteem. I'd never be an MMA champ, but I can take care of myself.
There were help wanted ads, owner operator ads for rock tug drivers. For cargo ship jobs you had to belong to “The Union" to get those jobs. That looked kinda suspicious, I guess the organized crime worry might have some basis in fact.
It looked like lots of “Big" money was moving into the Conclave and bringing both good and bad with it. The Van Dam shipyard was still in business. Mom and Dad did a lot of business with them, they had a few job openings too. I would check on that once I get settled.
“Next stop, Alpha hub,” the overhead speaker said. I glanced over to the blinking light on the S-tube map. The car wasn't crowded, but I let everyone move to the exit before I got up. I threw my bag over my shoulder and stepped off the car. I was almost overwhelmed with the feeling of nostalgia.
A lot had changed, new paint, new kiosks and booths, but the underlying sights, sounds, and smells were still there. It said “Home". I moved up the wide staircase to the main floor, taking it all in.
Looking at the storefronts that were new, and the old ones I recognized. That place where we used to eat, and that place where we used to shop. I'm sure I looked like an “Outbacker" that was on his first visit to the Hab. There was the fresh smell of “green" in the air. The Hab used wall ivy as part of the air cleaning system, and the sound of water splashing was soothing.
A disturbance from a sidewalk café shattered the peace. It looked like a big fight had broken out. People, tables, and chairs were being thrown around. I moved over to the wall to stay out of the way. But I must admit I was curious about what was going on. There was a large man in a nice suit on his back, both his legs were out stiff and kicking everything he got close to. My first thought was convulsions, but no, he was yelling and cursing a blue streak.
I leaped over the café railing and yelled, “does he have cyber-limbs?” As I broke through the crowd.
“Yes,” one man who was trying to hold him yelled. I grabbed and turned over a trash can, grabbing all the foil I could reach, I then grabbed a metal plate off the table scattering food all over the place.
They were all looking at me like I had lost it. “Flip him on his stomach!” they stared at me while the man kept kicking. “Flip him now, I need to get to the control module on his back!”
Flipping the big man over was no easy task. It looked like the main event at a Wrestling Royale. We finally got him over enough I could slap the foil and metal plate over the cyber control module. As soon as I did, he stopped kicking and lay still.
I looked around and pointed to a maintenance cart by the wall.
“See if there's any rigger's tape in that maintenance box over there.” There was, and they threw it to me. I was holding the plate and foil firmly in place.
“Okay sir, I need you to get up onto your hands and knees but move slowly so I can keep the CCU covered.”
The big man nodded, gritting his teeth as he slowly raised to his hands and knees. “Here, wrap this tape around him so it will keep the plate in place.” Nodding, a man took it and we wrapped the tape around the big man several times.
I sat back, “ok sir, let's get you into the chair, but no sudden moves.” He nodded, and they got him up into the chair.
The big man shook his head, “Son, that was worse than riding in a rock tug with a flaring thruster, with a max load in front of ya.”
Everyone was smiling, and a few chuckled.
“This happens sometimes, but this was by far the worst it has ever been. How'd you know what it was?” He asked.
I smiled and rapped on my left arm, “Had something similar happen once, but nowhere near this bad. Your RF shielding must be weak or there's a crack in the CCU casing. It caused an overload, and off you went. That foil and plate will hold until you can get to the Med-Center and get it fixed.” His men were clearing the way for the EMTs to get to him.
“I'll not forget this; I remember those who do right by me. If you need anything, come see me. Ask for ‘Jocko', everyone knows me.”
“No worries sir, glad I could help.”
“Nac?” I turned to see who had called out.
“Jazz?” She came over and hugged me, “You can't help yourself, can you? You just got here, and you are already fixing things,” she laughed.
Jocko watched the exchange as the EMTs moved him toward medical. He leaned over to one of his man.
