Summer's End, page 37
“Gas him with what? This is a cargo ship, Ben.”
“Oh, I’m sure I could whip something up.”
I pondered that. The problem with the suicider vests was they had heart monitors in them. If the wearer died, they went off.
“That might work,” I said thoughtfully.
“You could just give him an air bottle full of the stuff when you check on him.”
I shook my head. “I’m not opening those doors back up. Last thing I need is for him to come running out to hijack the ship.”
“Yeah, he’s asshole enough to do it too. Let me go through the ship’s tools and supplies. I’ll see what I can make based on what you’ve got.”
“Sure. It’s going to be a while before we can do anything anyway.”
“You know, I have to ask: are all your days always this interesting?” Ben asked and then laughed at me as I swore.
“And to think, I gave up an aspiring career as a cold-blooded killer for all of this!” I grumbled as I threw my hands up in the air and left him laughing even harder as I went to check on Nik and the reactors.
* * *
We actually got off the ground a half hour past one o’clock. The shipment had come with its own cargo loaders and they must have been getting paid extra as they all busted ass to get done as quickly as they could. Surprisingly, the union guys at the spaceport didn’t say a word or get in the way, or even get anywhere near the ship during loading.
Which made me wonder just how many people were looking the other way tonight. My grandfather had clearly stated that this was a weapons system, and I suddenly wondered just how many missiles were in those TEUs that had been loaded.
And if any of their warheads were nuclear.
Chris took it up and out slowly. He was just starting to increase the throttle as we cleared regular traffic a few hours later when suddenly he started to cut it back. He commed me from the bridge immediately.
“Dave! We’ve got an Earth Guard Navy ship coming up behind us fast, advising us to cut thrust and prepare for boarding!”
“What?”
“They want to inspect us.”
“Find out what for!” I then hit the all hands. “Ben, Jarvis, get down to Engineering!”
Ben was in almost immediately.
“What’s happening?” Ben asked.
“We’re about to get searched. There’s only two things they can be after, and one of them is you.”
Jarvis slid to a stop in the hatchway.
“They can’t be here about the weapons,” he said.
“Oh? And how do you know that?”
“Because your grandfather’s son-in-law is a senator and he personally approved this shipment. If they open up any of those special containers I sealed they’ll spend the rest of their careers cleaning toilets with their tongues!” he said with a frown.
“Great,” I said, shaking my head. “We need to hide Ben, and we need to put him someplace they won’t look.”
I thought a moment, mind racing, and then thought about the other problem I had hiding aboard ship.
“Can we have Ben hide in one of your containers? If they know about them, then they won’t search them, right? The only problem is how do we fake the seal?”
“I’ve still got the seal device in my cabin. Remember, I had to inspect them and re-seal each one personally.”
“Great! Get it and meet us up on the top cargo deck.”
I hit the comm to Chris. “Stall as much as you can!”
I then ran to my cabin, grabbed my pressure suit, tossed Ben the helmet and the backpack, and ran up to the cargo deck with him hot on my heels.
When we got there, Jarvis called out and waved us over to a unit that he’d opened.
“Do you know how to wear one of these?” I asked Ben.
“I’ve read the instructions, but that’s about it,” he said.
“Well, that should be fine. Work your way to the back, get into it, the air turns on when you seal the helmet. Turn your tablet off and don’t make a sound.”
“Got it,” he said as I thrust the suit into his hands, then watched as Jarvis hauled the door far enough open for Ben to get in.
Sure enough, it was full of missiles.
“Go down to the other end, there’s enough space to hide in front of them,” he said.
Just then I heard the clang of magnet grapples on the back of the ship.
“Go!” I said and I helped Jarvis seal the doorway. Then watched as he put a new seal on it that matched the one he’d removed, right down to the time, date, and random number.
“They’re entering the airlock,” came over the all hands comm. “Everyone report to the mess!”
I followed Jarvis out of the hold, hitting the switch to kill the lights in the cargo bay.
When we got to the mess, everyone was there, except for Chris, who was still on the bridge.
“Now what?” Emil asked.
“We wait, and no one volunteers anything,” Paul said. “We have no idea why they’re here, and we have no idea what’s in the cargo.”
“What Paul said,” I said, looking around the room. “No matter what happens, nobody says anything.”
Everyone nodded and we all just sat there.
* * *
Two minutes later, a large party of men wearing Earth Guard Marine space suits stopped outside the mess, though one was in an Earth Guard Navy suit. He was wearing senior grade lieutenant’s bars, so I figured he was the one in charge. The marines were all carrying sidearms, and a few had some hand held scanners. They all had radios.
“Is this the entire crew?” the navy officer asked. His nametag identified him as Lieutenant Stewart.
“The captain is still on the bridge, as per regs,” I said.
“Who are you?”
“Dave Doyle, Chief Engineer.”
He frowned and looked at me. “Aren’t you a little young to be a chief engineer?”
“My certs are on the wall down in Engineering and I can show you my guild ID if you need to see it. I’m a certified third engineer, which is enough to be chief here.” I then added, “Sir.”
He turned to the marine lieutenant, who he obviously ranked. “Lieutenant, secure the crew. You two” —he pointed to a pair of marines —“come with me to the bridge.”
“Okay,” said the marine lieutenant, “if anybody has any weapons on them, now would be a good time to tell us. We’re not after any of you, but we are going to search the ship. We will be searching you for weapons. Nothing else. Now, any weapons?”
Yuri and Kei both were armed, surprisingly, Kei with a rather large pistol and Yuri with a knife as long as her forearm. After they’d set those aside, they had us each come up one at a time, and they checked us over with a wand. The only things that turned up on anybody was the mechanical pencil, grease marker, and folding tool in my pockets and the pens in Jarvis’s.
“Okay, I have a manifest here from Lieutenant Stewart,” he said, looking at his tablet. “Please sound off when I call your name.”
He went down the list then. When he got to my parents and Dianne he looked at them. “What are you all doing here? I don’t see you on the crew list.”
“Lieutenant, if I may?” I asked.
“I take it you can shed some light on this?”
“My last name used to be Walker; I changed it when I married my wife and joined the Doyle clan on Ceres.”
He gave me a funny look then. “Does that mean they’re related to you?”
“Yes, that’s my father, mother, and younger sister. They’re coming with us to Ceres to meet my in-laws.”
“Oh, are they now?” he asked, giving me a suspicious look.
“As I already mentioned, my wife’s name is Doyle —you know, the same as in Doyle Shipping, the company that owns the Iowa Hill.”
“And that would be me, sir,” Kacey said with a wave of her hand.
The lieutenant sighed and then came to the bottom of his list. “Which one of you is Jarvis?”
Jarvis raised his hand.
“And just why are you here? You’re not an in-law too, are you?”
“No, I’m the buyer’s rep for some of the cargo that was purchased on Earth.”
“And which cargo is that?”
“The white TEUs with the StayCo markings on them.”
“I see. And just what’s inside those containers?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Oh? Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind if we inspected them?”
“You might want to talk to your superiors about that,” Jarvis said with a faint smile on his face.
“And why would I want to do that?”
About that time the navy lieutenant came back, minus the two men who had gone with him.
“Why would you want to do what, Lieutenant?”
“Jarvis here is the buyer’s rep for the cargo in the StayCo cans and he won’t tell me what that cargo is.”
“We’re not here to inspect cargo, Lieutenant Jones. Now take your team and start the search.”
“But, sir!”
“Our orders were quite clear, Lieutenant. Opening any of the sealed containers on the cargo deck without proof that our man is inside will be a career-ending move. After a very long stretch sweeping floors and cleaning toilets on Darkside Station. Understood?”
“Yes sir!” the marine lieutenant said and saluted.
“Now, take the first team and start on the bottom deck. Sergeant Hobbs, take the second team to the back of the ship and start on the bottom as well. Once that’s done, search the cargo decks with both teams from top to bottom.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said and saluted.
Lieutenant Stewart sighed and shook his head. After they’d left he pulled out a picture of Ben in his wheelchair.
“Have any of you seen this man?”
Everyone shook their head no.
“This boat ain’t exactly wheelchair friendly, Lieutenant,” Hank spoke up.
“How long is this going to take?” Kacey asked.
“Why?”
“Because if we’re going to miss our shipping deadline, I want to send a message out before we get too far away from the Moon to have it relayed back to my parents,” she said with a shrug. “I’m in charge of scheduling. I’ve never been on a ship that got searched before.”
“They’ll be done with the crew spaces and the engineering spaces in short order. Not a lot of places for a man in a wheelchair to hide onboard one of these old General Ships Argon Sixes. The cargo deck, however . . . that could take a couple of hours.”
“Sir, I demand to be on the cargo deck when they are searching, to ensure that none of my containers are opened,” Jarvis said from where he was sitting.
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll be okay.”
“I must insist, Lieutenant. If not, well, I’m sure it will be mentioned in my report to my superiors.”
I watched the pained expression that passed over Lieutenant Stewart’s face and wondered what he would do.
The lieutenant triggered his mic and spoke into it. “Lieutenant Jones, when you’re ready to start searching the cargo hold, please detail one of your men to come to the mess. The buyer’s representative is going to watch to make sure that none of his containers are disturbed.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Jarvis said with a relieved sigh.
“Understand that if any of those containers have had their seal broken, that will be grounds to look inside,” Lieutenant Stewart warned.
“If any of their seals have been broken, I will most certainly want to inspect them, Lieutenant. I do not need some sort of criminal destroying sensitive gear!”
Over the next ten minutes, Lieutenant Stewart had several short conversations over his radio, though I couldn’t hear what he was hearing, as he had an earpiece. From the responses he was giving, it sounded like each of the floors was being cleared and nothing had been found.
When one of the Earth Guard enlisted men showed up and escorted Jarvis out of the mess, it was obvious that they were now searching the cargo hold and Lieutenant Stewart must have gotten a call from one of his superiors, because there were a lot of “yes, ma’am,” “no, ma’am,” and “I understand, ma’am” replies from him into his microphone. But the most telling one was when he said, “I’ve told them not to open up any of the StayCo containers without first getting clearance from you, ma’am!”
“If we’re going to be here a while, is it okay if I make everyone some food?” Emil asked when he was finished.
“Sure, knock yourself out,” Lieutenant Stewart said with a wave of his hand. “Hopefully we’ll be out of your hair in an hour or two.”
Over the next hour I could tell the lieutenant was getting more and more annoyed. It sounded like his bosses were checking in with him every ten minutes to know if he was done yet.
Then he got a call from what I guess was someone on the search team, as his whole demeanor changed and he immediately called his superior.
“Captain, they found a container with a broken seal. No, ma’am, it’s not one of the StayCo containers. They’re looking through the manifest right now. Yes, ma’am.”
A few conversations later and I heard him reporting to his boss again. By now Jarvis had been escorted back to the mess and was looking concerned. I knew which container it was and I was starting to be worried as well.
“Ma’am, the container is marked as foodstuffs. Yes, ma’am, my thoughts exactly. I’ll direct Lieutenant Jones to inspect it, ma’am.”
A minute later Lieutenant Stewart’s face blanched. “What? A bomb? Corporal Vanek! Order the captain to fire-evac the cargo hold! Immediately!”
A moment later the fire alarm sounded, followed immediately by the sounds of something like gunfire, but which I knew where eight explosive bolts.
“What’s happening?” Emil asked, looking at me.
“They’re blowing the bolts in the safety interlocks on the cargo doors; it’s in case of a fire on the cargo decks. The doors will be pushed open by the air pressure on the cargo deck and all of the air will evacuate in seconds.”
“Why?”
A soft thud vibrated through the deck plates.
“Because bombs do less damage in a vacuum,” Lieutenant Stewart said. “I think we may have found our missing person.”
Mom gasped and Dad suddenly looked concerned.
“Do you know something, Mrs. Walker?” Lieutenant Stewart asked, looking at her.
I swore to myself. The last thing I needed was for my mom to be questioned. While she didn’t know about Donde or where Ben was, she knew more than enough that she might say something to arouse suspicions. The didn’t want to see her in trouble —or worse yet, arrested and hauled off for “further questioning.” Then there were the ship’s internal chat logs —if they searched those, they’d see I was the one who’d called for that container.
Like it or not, this one was on me, and I had to do something to protect my mom.
“Lieutenant,” I said standing up. “He showed up outside while we were loading. He was high on drugs, quite irrational, and was wearing what he claimed was an explosive vest. He threatened to kill me if I didn’t take him with us.”
“Oh? Is that so?” he said, frowning at me.
“Sir, could we please have this conversation somewhere else?” I said and gave a slight nod to my mother, who was starting to quietly cry.
He looked at her, then back at me. “Sergeant Hobbs, keep an eye on everybody. Mr. Doyle, let’s go to the bridge. You can lead.”
Sighing, I left the room and walked down the hall to the bridge and starting thinking about just what I was facing. I knew that getting an ID off of someone who used one of those vests was difficult. Someone who’d just undergone explosive decompression would undoubtedly make it even more difficult. Not impossible, just difficult. What I needed was to get them off the ship, and to get the ship back on its way. Both Ben and Marcus were counting on me to do that and right now all I had going for me was the ability to think under pressure and a general suspicion that there were a lot of powerful people who didn’t want this ship delayed and were making life uncomfortable for the lieutenant and his superiors.
When we got to the bridge, Chris looked at me and I noticed the warning lights for the cargo deck were all flashing. Hopefully we’d only lost the atmosphere.
“So, Mr. Doyle, it seems you have a story to tell?” Lieutenant Stewart said.
I nodded. “First off, did any of your people get hurt?”
“Thankfully, no. When they opened the doors to that container, they saw a man matching the description of who we were looking for. They saw the vest immediately and he started screaming your name, and how he was going to get even with you for betraying him and kill everyone onboard.”
I sighed again. “I’d honestly hoped that whatever it was he was on would have been out of his system when I came to check on him. That he’d be more reasonable.”
“Oh? Is that so? Well, perhaps you’d like to tell me why you didn’t warn me about a man with a suicide vest who was obviously irrational?” he said rather angrily.
“And have you go in there with guns blazing? I grew up on Earth, Lieutenant, I know all about how the marines just love to shoot people! I’d been hoping that he’d be passed out and unconscious from lack of air and you’d be able to go in there and just take him wherever he needed to go —and yeah, of course I didn’t want to admit to any part in this. It’s not like I did it willingly.”
“Why don’t you tell us what happened from the start?” Chris asked. Lieutenant Stewart shot him a look, but didn’t say anything.
“I went outside to check on how the loading was going. The reactors were still being brought up and I wanted to get an idea of when I’d need to start warming up the gravity drive.” I looked over at Lieutenant Stewart. “On a ship this old, thermal shocks cause problems, so we like to bring things up slow to cut down on maintenance.
“Anyway, he shows up, dressed as one of the cargo movers. Starts accosting me, yelling at me. Says I’m taking everything he loved away from him, stuff like that.”
“Why would he say that?” Lieutenant Stewart asked.
“I’ve made no secret of wanting to find my dad a better job —it’s part of why I want him to come out and see what Ceres is like, because I want him to emigrate, which would mean my stepmom and sister going as well.” I shook my head. “I don’t know, he was going on about how he wouldn’t be able to see her if she left and all that kinda thing and then he started going on about how they wanted him to do things that he couldn’t and they were gonna find out he was a fraud and wasn’t going to solve this big problem everyone wanted him to solve.” I shrugged and looked back at Lieutenant Stewart. “I know he was a little strange at times, but I figured that was because his real father had died when he was a little kid and all that.”
