Summer's End, page 27
“Umm, I’m missing something here, aren’t I?”
“Everything looks like you got hit by a rail gun . . . well, the decks do, I’m sure the hull does, the catwalks especially . . . ”
It dawned on me and my jaw dropped for a moment. The blast on the top of the grav drive was up, but all the rest of it was down. The charge, now that I thought about it, had been placed under one of the inspection plates. If anybody were to see it, they’d know.
“You know what, Bea? You’re right. Why would I want to waste energy hauling that hunk of steel around? Probably cost us more shipping it than we’d make scrapping it. Thanks for the tip.”
She gave me a nice big friendly smile then. “Just trying to help, David. It’s always nice to see a young couple working hard to make a better life for themselves.”
“And for our friends, too,” I added with a smile. “Can’t forget about your friends, right?”
“No,” she said with a chuckle, “no, we can’t.”
NINETEEN
Iowa Hill —Deep Space
Changing out the wrecked Muller drive for the new one took a little bit longer than I’d expected. About two days longer.
I started off by taking lots of pictures of all the settings, the fittings, even the damn bolts holding it to the keel. Bolts that took me, Hank, and Chaz, along with a lot of swearing and the eventual help of a blue-tip wrench, to get off. This was after half a day of disconnecting every single line attached to it.
Then we hoisted it up a centimeter and spent the next hour making sure that everything was disconnected and that it would clear all the lines when we pulled it out. This was more because if we broke any of the lines that connected to it, we didn’t have the equipment to repair them.
So a lot of care was necessary.
After that, hoisting it out, setting it by the cargo door for its eventual ejection into space, and putting the replacement on the hoist was pretty trivial.
Lowering the new one into position was not, however.
It turned out that the bottom footing plate on the replacement was a different shape from the plate on the old one. Those plates are cast into the unit’s casing and we did not have the ability, or the skill, to swap said casings.
So out came the blue-tip wrench to cut the new one into the shape of the old one. Then Hank, Chaz, and I took turns drilling a dozen four-centimeter-wide holes through a two and a half centimeter thick piece of steel.
Much more swearing ensued, as it was a long, tiring, and difficult job that required the drill bits (we had two) to be constantly resharpened. Also, the amount of oil we used to keep them cutting also made quite a mess, which contributed to even more cursing.
When we finally got the holes all cut, we all decided that a good meal and eight hours of sleep would probably be wise, before attempting to install it a second time.
Next morning at the table in the mess, Chris came in while the rest of us were eating.
“Dave?”
“Yes?”
“Are you aware that we don’t have a lifeboat?”
I almost hit my forehead on the table in front of me. The only thing that stopped me was I didn’t want a face full of omelet.
“Shit,” I swore. “I forgot about that.”
“Damn, we all did,” Hank agreed.
“So, what do we do about it?” Chaz asked.
“Is the Norse Star still out there?” I asked.
“Yes, Edgar has agreed to stay a couple of days,” Chris told us.
“Okay, my vote is anyone who’s not comfortable with this, can fly back with them. I think we’re okay, I don’t think it’s an issue —though I do intend to get a replacement as soon as possible. However, I don’t think anyone should take the risk if they’re not comfortable with it. We can always take ’em back on board when we get to Ceres.”
“What if I’m not comfortable with it?” Chris asked.
“Well, I guess I’ll ask you to program the route in to Ceres before you left and I’ll take my chances,” I said with a shrug. “At this point I’m kinda committed and unless I find anything that makes me think we’re not safe flying without it, I’m not going to worry about it.”
“Why don’t we see if we can borrow one from Edgar?” Chaz asked.
“It’s going to be months before we get back to Ceres, I don’t know if he’d want to be without one for that long.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Hank said. “If we can’t borrow one, maybe he’ll sell one to us. He’s got three and normally, even with passengers, he only needs two.”
“But what if we can’t get one?” Chaz asked.
“The girls go back on the Norse Star,” Chris said. “Either or both of you can stay if you want to, your call. But if our engineer is willing to trust his life to the ship, so am I.”
“Before anyone says anything,” I interrupted, “everyone is now crew and gets paid regardless of if they’re going back with us or with Captain Hanson on the Norse Star.”
“Let’s wait and see what happens,” Hank said, digging back into his breakfast, “before we make any decisions.”
“Good idea,” I agreed. “As soon as I’m done here, I’m going back down into the hold and see about getting that drive put back in place. Chaz, you can help while Hank is talking to Edgar. If he gives us a boat, you and Hank can deal with it. Hooking up the lines is pretty much a one-man job anyway.”
“Got it,” Chaz said, and Hank just nodded.
“Keep me informed,” Chris said, and left to go back to the bridge.
* * *
It took about an hour to get the drive into place, then another half or so to get it all bolted down. Chaz left at some point, so I guessed that they worked something out with Captain Hanson. I spent the next six hours carefully hooking each of the lines back up to the drive. Thankfully, all the fittings were in standardized locations, so I didn’t have to fight with anything there, but each of them took a lot of care and special handling. Then I had to carefully seal each one, and test it. Several of them I had to detach, clean, reattach, and test again, until they worked properly. It was very much a painstakingly slow job, but it had to be done just right, and I was glad I understood it from all of the work I’d done on the panels.
That done, I called for Chaz to come help me if he had some free time and I finally replaced that panel with the big hole in it. Fixing it was going to require some very tricky welding to the case; the rest of it wouldn’t be too much trouble. Thankfully, Chaz was a very talented welder, so I left him to it while I went and found Chris.
“What’s up, Dave?”
“We can do a drive and panel test whenever you want. Just warn Chaz, he’s back in the shop welding something for me.”
“Sure thing.”
“So, did we get a lifeboat?”
“Yup. Hank’s still running checks on it and studying the manual for it. We rented it for six months.”
“How much?” I asked with a grimace. Lifeboats weren’t cheap.
“Hundred grand.”
I nodded. “Guess I need to talk to Kacey.”
“She’s the one who approved it, so she already knows. Let’s do a quick inspection, then we’ll run the tests. The sooner we can get underway, the better. We’re not making any money sitting out here, right?”
I smiled and gave a nod. “Right.”
* * *
It was late. All of the tests had been run, and everything had passed. We’d even done a short flight for thirty minutes, flipped the ship, and then decelerated back to our original velocity. The Norse Star was now heading off back to Ceres as we’d just radioed our thanks. We were all sitting on the bridge, Kacey and I having called for a meeting.
“Okay, everyone,” Kacey said starting off. “As you may have heard either Dave or me saying, we have two options. First is to go back to Ceres, which means we show up there without any cargo, so we don’t make any money on this trip.”
“Well, we got the ship, isn’t that enough?” Emil asked.
“If we were planning on selling her, it would be. But we’re not. Dave and I have decided to start a cargo hauling company. So it would be a lot better, financially, if we could show back up at Ceres with a cargo.”
“But there’s a small problem with the cargo we’re thinking of hauling,” I said.
“And that problem is?” Chris asked.
“I know where the place is that I was held ‘prisoner’ for six months,” I said, making air quotes. “I also know that they’re sitting on a lot of processed ore that they’d really like to be able to trade.”
“You want to trade with pirates?” Emil asked, giving me a look like I’d lost all sense.
“They’re not really pirates,” I said with a sigh. “They’re refugees. They’re in hiding because they’re not strong enough to defend themselves. The only reason they’ve had to resort to piracy is because they’re broke.”
“So why aren’t they trading, then?”
“Because they can’t afford to have the people they’re hiding from find out where they are. They can’t use their own ships, because someone might recognize them, and sell them out. But I’m not going to rat them out. They were nice to me, they helped me and my crewmate out. They kept their word.
“As far as I’m concerned, they’re good people who got a shitty deal and are trying to make the best of it. So we show up, offer to help them out with their trading.”
“This way,” Kacey said, picking it back up, “not only do we put an end to their piracy in the area, but we make a profit to boot. Win-win. Everybody’s happy.”
“Okay, but why are you asking us?”
“Because this has to be kept secret,” I told her, and looked around the room at everyone else. “Right now, I’m the only one who knows where this place is. I’ll share that information with Chris, if he’s okay with knowing it, but not with any of the rest of you. You can’t share what you don’t know, but going even further, I don’t want any of you even telling where we got this shipment from. Anyone asks, it was a dark hab, you never set foot off the ship, you never met anyone, I wouldn’t let you. That’s the line everyone here is going to have, if anybody asks, okay?”
“And if you’re uncomfortable with any of this, you have to say something, now,” Kacey added. “We’ll happily confine you to your cabin once we get there, we’ll even put it in the log, so if anyone ‘official’ looks into it, they’ll see you have no idea where we were, or who you were dealing with. Is everyone okay with that?”
Emil looked over at Chris. “Are you okay with this?”
Chris nodded. “Dave, Kacey, and I talked about this before we left. We agreed to do a few things to keep the knowledge just to Dave.”
“If I may?” Hank asked.
Chris and I both nodded.
“Okay, on the record, if we all tell everyone what we’re told to say, they’ll leave you alone, should there ever be a problem. I’d also suggest that you enter into the log that all crew were confined to their cabins from the time we entered the space of where we’re going, until we’ve left it. That’ll give us a nice legal backing. These things have happened before, and being totally honest, unless you actively try to find out where we’re going, you’re not going to be able to figure it out.
“Off the record,” he said, and looked around the room at everybody. “And I mean this is off the record. This isn’t something you want to talk about, because you’ll get in trouble, but off the record, I’m fairly certain that Ceres’s government, Mars’s government, probably all of the groups around Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, know about these people and what’s going on. They’re also most likely covertly supporting them, or at least looking the other way. So if they ask, stick to the story. If anybody else starts asking, you tell us. If they start pushing, tell the enforcers, maybe even the people in charge.”
“Why?” Emil asked.
“’Cause everybody hates the folks that they’re running from and are worried that one day there’s going to be a war. Having a large population of people from the region who not only fit in, but know how everything works there is the kind of resource you protect, even if you’re completely lacking in scruples,” Hank said with a shrug. “These folks got a raw deal and are coping best they can. So if we help them, all those folks out there ‘looking the other way’ just may one day help you out when you expect it the least and need it the most.”
“Okay, that makes sense, but I think I will ask to stay in my cabin when I’m not working in the mess. Like you said, I can’t talk about what I don’t know.”
“So,” Kacey asked. “Nobody has any problems with this?”
I looked around the room, as everyone said they were okay with it. Chris, Kacey, and I had all agreed that we’d tell the lie that only I knew where it was. Though even Chris didn’t know that I’d told Kacey. Chris could simply say that I did the navigation myself and didn’t share it with anyone. I don’t know if people would believe that, but once we got underway, one thing we would be doing is covering all of the windows on the bridge with screens that couldn’t be looked through. All of the cameras that looked outside were also being password locked for the duration. Because Eris had a moon, and anyone seeing that would quickly figure out just where we were.
“Well, Dave and I are going to set up the first leg of the course,” Chris said. “Once we get there, we’ll load in Dave’s course and we’ll be on our way. So if you’ll all clear the bridge, we can get started.”
“Oh, and everyone make sure you’ve got nothing of any value loose down in the cargo hold,” I said. “We’re going to pump it down and eject that old drive. It’s not worth the price of scrap to haul it around and take up cargo space.”
* * *
“Well, we’re on our way now,” Kacey said to me, later that night when were snuggling in bed. “We’ve got our own ship, and we’re off to get our first cargo.”
“I just hope they don’t shoot us.” I sighed.
“I wonder if they know we’re coming.”
“How would they?”
“Well, both you and Hank seem to think that Captain Hanson and his wife were both in the know, on what’s going on.”
I snorted. “Yeah, looking back on it, it was one hell of a coincidence that they just ‘happened’ to know we were looking for a ride and that they just ‘happened’ to have the time off to take us out here. But, I don’t know if they realize where we’re going next. I mean, I’m not supposed to know where they are.”
“Do you think the Ceres government knows where they are?”
I gave my head a slight shake. “Not a clue. Settling on Eris is a pretty ballsy move, so no one expects it, I’m sure.”
“What do you think is going to happen when we show up?”
“I think they’ll try to play dumb at first. I’ve given a lot of thought to what I want to say.”
“Have you thought about asking them to supply us with an engineer or maybe a couple of mates?”
“Why would they agree to that?”
“Because it lets them keep an eye on us, so they know we’re not going to sell them out.”
“And why would we agree to it?”
Kacey grinned at me. “Because we don’t have to pay them.”
I laughed. “I’m gonna remember that! But you’re right, we could just give them a stipend so they’d have a little money to spend, but that would do a lot for our bottom line.”
“We might even be able to get them to give us another lifeboat, so we don’t have to buy our own when we return the Norse Star’s.”
“And what do we offer them for that?”
“Free passage for any refugees?” Kacey said with a shrug and then yawned. “I’m sure they’ve got contacts and spies all over the solar system at this point. We’re just a regular small shipping company; no one’s going to connect us to them. I’m sure we’ll be able to do them a favor, here and there, to help them out.”
“It does bear thinking about,” I agreed. “Now, let’s go to sleep, my little capitalist. We’ve got a lot of work to do now that we’re underway.”
“Yeah, I promised Emil I’d help clean the insides of those refrigerators,” Kacey said, and stuck out her tongue. “Bleah, those things are a mess!”
“Yes,” I agreed with a chuckle. “Yes, they are.”
* * *
It was three weeks to get to Eris. In the last seven months, the Iowa Hill’s ballistic trajectory had diverged a great deal from where we wanted to go. I was pretty happy with how well the new 1500 was performing and everything else was well under control. The regular maintenance that Dot had always insisted on was paying off now that it was just me doing the work. I did my best to keep up with her old schedule as well, because Eris was starting to pass Pluto’s orbit and over time these trips would be to more and more isolated parts of the system.
Not any place where you’d want to have to deal with an emergency of any kind.
When we finally started to draw close to Eris, it was just Chris and me on the bridge. We were keeping the door locked and I had everyone in their pressure suits, just in case there was a misunderstanding.
“Eris Science Station, this is the Iowa Hill calling,” I broadcast over the radio. I’d done this three times already, each about five minutes apart. I wanted to be sure they knew we were coming and give them lots of warning. I had no idea what kinds of early warning equipment they had, I just didn’t want to suddenly show up and surprise them.
Not that we probably weren’t already a surprise.
“Iowa Hill, this is Eris Science Station. What, may I ask, are you doing out here? We haven’t received any notification from our sponsors that they were sending out any kind of shipment.”
“Eris Science Station, this is Dave Walker, the owner of the Iowa Hill. I was given to understand by Marcus that you might have a cargo you need someone to haul to market for you? Perhaps I could talk to him about it.”
