Authors: Craig Alanson
“Yeah. Yeah, good
idea, Rick.” Sam looked at the plate covering the hinge. “Let
’
s
see what kind of tools you have in that bag, huh?”
Sam had to
improvise with Rick
’
s small kit of tools, so the task took
him fifteen minutes to get the door open far enough that they could look
inside. Sam shone Rick
’
s light around. “Nada. Damn! It
’
s just a cover protecting the top of a survey well they drilled.
No life support at all.”
“At least we know
what direction the main camp is.” Nelson said as he helped Sam stand up and
brush the dirt off his suit. “Look at all those crawler tracks, they all go in
one direction.”
“The Yellow Brick
Road.” Rick said quietly.
“Huh?”
“It
’
s
a story, a video, a real old one, that my daughter used to like. There was a
road lined with bricks made out of gold, it led to, well, kind of your promised
land, Sam.”
“
Then
let
’
s get walking, man, we don
’
t have all day. This here is more like the Red Dust Road.”
“This says it
’
s section D.” Manny pointed to the large orange letter painted
on the bulkhead door in front of them. The paint was discolored and scratched,
it probably had not been repainted in the thirty years since the ship was put
into service.
Kaylee opened her
mouth to make a smart remark to her brother, something along the lines of what
a genius he was, that he could read a two-meter high letter painted on a door.
She looked at him instead. Two years younger than her, shorter, smaller. A pain
in the neck. They had little in common, other than having the same parents and
living in the same house. She remembered back when he was cute, toddling around
the house, happy to play tea party with his big sister. Then he developed his
own personality, and became a general pain in the neck. Now she was responsible
for him. “Section D.” She said simply. “Let
’
s
get this door open.
” She inserted the card, then glanced up at the
status panel to make sure the other side of the door was pressurized,
remembering Jen
’
s safety lecture. With Jen
’
s
code entered, the door cracked open and slid aside.
Jen had only once
taken them to this particular area of the ship, it looked like any other cargo
compartment, a tall, dimly lighted space lined with grey cabinets on both
sides, with a wide center aisle. Cargo that wasn
’
t in its
own storage container was held in compartments like this.
“
No
pirates.
” Manny whispered.
“What?” Kaylee
whispered back nervously.
“We got here
first, the pirates aren
’
t here.”
“Oh, right. Let
’
s find the thing.” Kaylee walked down the right side, Manny
took the left, until they realized the even numbered cabinets were on the
right. Manny ran ahead, and pointed to 14D. “Here, Kaylee!” he shouted
excitedly.
“Shhh! Don
’
t shout. The pirates could be right behind us.” The small
cabinet wasn
’
t locked, she pulled it open. Inside was an
unimpressive, dull metallic silver box. Kaylee pulled it out, and set it down
on the deck. She was about to close the cabinet, when Manny stopped her. “No,
Kaylee! Take a box out of another cabinet, and put it in there. The pirates
will think they found what they want, and give us time to hide somewhere.”
Kaylee
’
s mouth dropped open. A smart idea from her little brother?
“Good idea, Manny.” She looked through three other cabinets, until she found a
similar box, put that box into cabinet 14D, then closed all the cabinet doors.
“Let
’
s go.”
Manny looked at
her, puzzled. “You don
’
t want to open the box, see what it
is?”
“No, let
’
s find someplace to hide, then we can open it.” She added it to
her backpack, it made a square bulge. Moving quickly, they walked back through
the bulkhead door, and Kaylee closed it behind them. Where to next? The pirate
shuttle was, Jen said, docked on pod 3. They would go to pod 2. They had been
there before with Jen. “I know where to go, follow me.”
The three men
tramped along the road, trying to stay in the crawler tracks, where the soil
was compressed, and kicked up less dust when they stepped on it. Their legs
were all red, above the knees, their e-suits were pink.
Sam brushed dust
off the face of the clock on his left wrist. It smeared, obscuring the numbers.
“Damn this soil!”
“Regolith.” Rick
said.
“Huh?”
“Regolith. Soil
has organisms living in it, this doesn
’
t, so it
’
s called regolith. Like the surface of the moon.”
“Oh. I didn
’
t know that.” Sam shrugged.
“It
’
s
completely useless trivia.”
Rick sighed.
“I
’
ve
got a million of them. Still, I wonder why this planet doesn
’
t
have any life? It
’
s almost the same size as Earth, and
this star isn
’
t that much hotter than the sun.”
“I actually know
the answer to that one.” Nelson answered, without enthusiasm. One foot in front
of the other, left foot, right foot, all the way to the mining camp, unseen
somewhere ahead of them. How far? “I read somewhere, another star passed
through this system, something like two billion years ago. Boiled off the water
here before oceans could form, stripped off most of the atmosphere, disrupted
the orbits, left this red, dusty rock.” He checked his oxygen supply and
frowned. “That
’
s my useless fact for the day. What I
really want to know is, how far to the mining camp?”
“Section D!”
Dooley shouted, gesturing with his gun.
“Keep your voice
down.” Valjean barked. “D, really? You must be a genius. Did you figure that
out all on your own, or did your tinman help you? Get the door open.”
Dooley stifled a
reply. He walked up to the access panel, flipped it up, inserted his card, and
plugged a cable from his notepad over the protruding end of the card. “Just a
minute, Boss.” The notepad cracked the simple security code quickly, and the
bulkhead door slid open. “Transport ship,” Dooley said disapprovingly, “their
security sucks.” He ducked his head in, then gestured for Rocko to enter first.
The compartment was empty. “There
’
s 14D.” He pointed, and
hurried ahead.
“
Wait!
”
Valjean shouted. “Nobody touches it.” Holstering his gun, he pulled the cabinet
open, and extracted the box. He turned it over, checking that the Customs seal
attached at Oceania was still intact. It was. He tore the seal, opened the box,
and extracted the object.
It didn
’
t look like much, encased in a plastic bag, it was a dark
green, corroded piece of what looked like a circuit board with a small,
metallic cylinder attached to one end. Valjean held it up to the light, smiled,
and let it drop to the deck. He crushed it under his foot.
“Boss!” Taney
exclaimed. “What are you doing?”
“This isn
’
t it, you idiot!” Valjean snarled. “Somebody got here first,
and switched containers. Look at the serial number on the box, this isn
’
t the one we want!”
The three pirates
frantically tore open cabinets, looking for the right box, scattering boxes on
the deck. When half the cabinets had been searched, Dooley paused, his right
hand on the handle of a cabinet.
“What are doing,
sleeping? Keep looking!”
Valjean ordered angrily.
“I will, Boss,
there
’
s a better way to do this. This ship is mostly
automated, right? She
’
s only got a crew of seven. To load
and unload the cargo, they use robot pallets. Those pallets can only work if
each box has a radio ID tag, so the pallets know where everything is supposed
to go.”
“
Your
point?
” Valjean asked impatiently.
“As long as the
thing we want is still in the box, I can find it, track the box
’
s
radio ID tag through the ship
’
s computer.”
Valjean rolled
his eyes, and snapped “Why didn
’
t you say that before? Get
on it!”
“Yes, Boss.”
Dooley grinned, and walked over to plug his handheld notepad computer into the
wall panel. Valjean occupied himself by kicking boxes open and stomping on the
contents, until Dooley shouted “Got it! It
’
s in cargo pod
2, deck 1, section A. No, now it
’
s in section B. Must be
moving.”
“How much control
do you have over ship functions with that gizmo? Can you turn off power and
gravity to that section, let the air out?” Valjean suggested. They were already
way behind schedule. Eventually, that Navy frigate would get suspicious and
come to investigate.
“
No,
I don’
t have the codes for higher-level functions like that, this tub
does have some security. If I had enough time, I could probably crack the
codes, but we
’
re talking days, not minutes.”
The trek to the
hut, and the effort to open the door, had been, the three shuttle survivors
thought, useless for them, but that
’
s all. They were
wrong. It had been useful to someone. Forcing the door open had set off an
alarm at the main settlement, an alarm being monitored by the one man the
pirates had left behind after they took over the mining camp. His name was
Seamus MacGonagal. Nobody called him Seamus anymore, not if they wanted to keep
all their teeth. They called him Mac. Tall, broad-shouldered, with crew-cut red
hair and pale grey eyes, he was hard man and looked it. Nobody messed with Mac,
was his own personal motto. In truth, he was a small time criminal, a punk,
mostly burglary, sometimes he worked as muscle for shakedowns and extortion,
but he preferred to work on his own. Valjean and he went back aways, had done
time in the same prison, later Mac had worked with his current boss on an
electronics theft that turned out to be just as profitable as Valjean said it
was. So when Valjean called on short notice for this job, a big score, Mac had
said yes. They had arrived at the mining camp, claiming to be company
inspectors, and had quickly seized control and shut down communications. It was
Mac
’
s voice that was heard on the distress call, that is,
a digitally altered version of Mac
’
s voice. Then the other
pirates had got back into their shuttle and flown away, leaving Mac behind to
mind the store, was the way Valjean had said it.
Now Mac was
worried. Things had not gone according to plan. That was not how working with
Valjean was supposed to be. The
Nightengale
had
been damaged. The freighter
’
s shuttle had been shot down,
but the crew apparently survived. That crew must have walked through the night,
because they had just broken into a hut only a few kilometers from the mining
base.
Mac
’
s
problem was that the base was scattered all over the plateau they were on, with
dozens of buildings. The miners were held prisoner in three of the buildings,
although the only thing keeping the miners locked up was that the pirates had
taken away their environment suits, so they had no way to go outside. And the
pirates had used laser cutters to slice through the walkway tubes which
connected the buildings, letting the air out. The shuttle crew could still
cause trouble, they could get into any of the buildings, arm themselves with
equipment like laser cutters, they could commandeer a crawler, they might even
manage to free some of the miners, and then all hell would break loose. Mac
needed to prevent that from happening. He knew that if the miners were free,
Valjean would not be dropping down in a shuttle to pick up Mac before the
Nightengale
departed.
When Mac got the
warning signal from the hut, he knew Valjean would expect him to handle the
situation by himself; Mac would go outside, find the shuttle crew, and finish
the job the missile had started. Mac checked the map, there was a route, almost
a road, between the dome and the camp, it was frequently traveled by crawlers.
The shuttle crew would, logically, be walking down that road. Mac debated, in
his slow way, whether to go out in a crawler himself, until he decided that
would just raise a cloud of red dust, and alert the shuttle crew that he was
coming. He would go out on foot. Go out hunting.
“
Here.
”
Kaylee announced as they entered a cavernous cargo bay, lined on both sides
twenty meters high with large boxes and crates, and stretching back, Kaylee
didn
’
t know how far. Longer than a soccer field, she
thought. Much longer. “This where we will hide, there
’
s
plenty of places to hide in here.”
“Yeah, but,
Kaylee, there
’
s only two ways in or out, the two big doors
at the ends.” Manny protested. “We could be trapped here.”
Kaylee
’
s lips curled up in a sly smile. “No, there are other ways to
escape from here if we need to. Remember when we came here with Jen, and she
had a problem with a sensor-“
Manny nodded. “An
oxygen sensor, I remember! She had to go into a maintenance tube, and she said
they go sideways between sections. Yeah, Kaylee.” He looked admiringly at his
big sister.
Kaylee was pretty
proud of herself. She had this all thought through, the whole plan. “Lock that
big door behind us, then run ahead and lock the other one. I
’
ll
find the hatches that lead to the maintenance tubes.”
By the time Manny
came back to report that he had locked both doors as best he could, Kaylee had
located both access tube hatches. She decided not to open either hatch, in case
that would set off some sort of alarm, she remembered Jen saying something like
that. So that they could find the hatches quickly if they needed to, she
borrowed Manny
’
s black marker and drew an 'X' on the
crates near the hatches. She was quite proud of herself for thinking ahead like
that. The pirates wouldn
’
t know what the 'X' was for.
“Now what do we
do”? Manny asked as he tucked the marker away in his backpack.
“Now, we
negotiate.” She had seen this in a video. That story had worked out well for
the hero. Except for all the shooting.
“Isn
’
t there a faster way to get there?” Valjean asked angrily, as
Dooley stopped to plug his keycard into an access panel to force yet another
door open. It was slow, too slow. Every door they came to was locked with a
code, Dooley had to crack the encryption before he could control the door.
“Boss, I told
you, we only have rough schematics of this ship, a lot of the time I have to
guess how to get from one section to another. These cargo pods get modified all
the time, those plans you bought are really old,” he added accusingly.
Valjean
didn
’
t like excuses, even if Dooley was right. The schematics
of
Atlas Challenger
that Valjean had bought were public documents, there
was nothing underhanded about it. To get a more recent plan of the ship would
have required breaking into Universal Transport
’
s
computers, or, more likely, bribing someone in the company to do it for him.
There hadn
’
t been time before they left Earth, and Valjean
had not wanted to risk drawing any attention to the little-noticed transport
ship. It was a risk, he knew, and that fact that he was unhappy with his
decision didn
’
t mean he couldn
’
t make
Dooley pay for it anyway. Before Valjean could insult Dooley again, the pirate
computer expert shouted triumphantly as the door cracked open and slid aside.
Dooley took a quick glance into the next compartment, grinned, and said “Looks
clear, boss.”
Valjean shot a
look of annoyance at Dooley
’
s back as the pirate company
jogged the length of the compartment, where they again stopped for Dooley to
work on opening yet another door. Without Dooley, they wouldn
’
t
even have gotten the ship
’
s airlock open. He needed
Dooley.
For now.
At the end of
that compartment, the pirates halted again for Dooley to work his magic and
open the door. “Hey, boss, I think we
’
re in luck.” Dooley
called out while his notepad worked to override the door controls. “They
’
ve stopped moving, whoever has the box. It
’
s
been in the same place now for ten minutes.”
“How far?”
Valjean asked.
“Another three
doors after this one, they
’
re on this deck.”
“You
’
re sure you know which compartment they
’
re
in?” Valjean
’
s question included a veiled threat of bad
consequences for Dooley if he was wrong.
Dooley hesitated.
“I know which compartment the
box
is in. Somebody brought the box there.
I can
’
t tell if people are still with the box, or how many
people, boss.” He answered defensively. He didn
’
t add
or
if the thing we want is still in the box
. With Valjean, Dooley had learned
not to push his luck.
“We
’
re
going to hit that compartment from both ends, at the same time.”
Valjean
decided.
“
I don’
t want them running out the other
door as we come in.” He looked at the door controls. “Can you unlock the door,
but not open it? And without people inside knowing?”
Dooley considered
that for a moment. “Unlock, sure, once it
’
s unlocked
anybody can open the door by pressing this button.” He pointed to a large
button on the door panel. “When it
’
s unlocked, though, the
status light changes from red to green, on both sides of the door, I can't
change that. If anyone
’
s watching, they
’
ll
know I unlocked it.”
That response
didn
’
t please Valjean.
“I know what you
’
re thinking, boss. I unlock one door, you wait there while I
unlock the door at the other end, then we both go in at the same time? The
problem is, to get to the other door, I
’
ll need to go
through the compartment next to the one we want, and that means I
’
ll
need to unlock both of those doors. That takes time.”
Dooley
’
s voice took on a pleading tone. “I
’
m
doing the best I can, boss, I don
’
t think anybody else
could do this faster.” As he spoke, his notepad unlocked the door they were
standing in front of. Perfect timing.
“
Wait!
”
Valjean hissed. The pirates took up positions on either side of the door;
Dooley and Rocko to the left, Valjean and Taney to the right, weapons ready, in
a maneuver they
’
d done at each door. At a silent signal
from Valjean, Dooley pressed the button to open the door. As it slid open,
Rocko walked stiffly forward, into the next compartment. He wasn
’
t
met with a hail of weapons fire. The robot scanned the compartment with
infrared sensors. “The compartment is clear.” It announced.
The pirates moved
forward warily, Rocko could only see line-of-sight, if a person were hiding
behind a crate, the robot couldn
’
t see them. They made
their way slowly down the long, gloomy and silent compartment, until the
reached the large door at the opposite end, where Dooley silently went back to
work on unlocking it.
Valjean had used
the time to think up a plan. “Here
’
s what we
’
re
going to do. When we get to the compartment, we go through the compartment next
to it, then Taney will wait there with me. You and your tinman go back and
unlock the door on this end, and you send your robot in. Whoever has the box
will come out the other door, where I
’
ll be waiting for
them.”
“That
’
s a good plan.
” Dooley said, without
needing to add any flattery. That, he thought, is why Valjean is the Boss.
“Damn right.”
Valjean said, a smirk of satisfaction on his face. He checked his watch. Way
behind the original schedule, still plenty of time. The Navy wasn
’
t
showing up any time soon. “Don
’
t just stand there, get that
door open!”
There was an odd
metallic, crackling sound, loud, followed by a screech. The three humans
crouched down, backs to the bulkhead or a crate, with the combat robot standing
tall and sweeping the compartment with its sensors. “What the hell was that?”
Dooley whispered.
Valjean made a
chopping motion with his free hand, for Dooley to keep his mouth shut. They
waited.
The sound
repeated, and all four of them looked up at the speaker, high on the bulkhead.
“-this thing on?” They heard. It sounded like a girl
’
s
voice.
There were
scratching sounds, like something bumping into and dragging across a
microphone, then more confusing voices. “-me that, Kaylee. I can fix-“ This
voice sounded like a child, a young boy or girl.
Dooley looked at
Valjean and saw the same total astonishment on his boss
’
s
face. Valjean angrily motioned for silence again.
“SCREEEECH- OK,
OK, I
’
ve got it. Here.” The boy
’
s
voice boomed out of the speaker, echoing in the compartment.
Someone cleared
their throat over the intercom, then, “Attention, pirates! This is-“ there was
whispering, then, “none of your business who this is. You listen to me. We
’
ve got the thing, the thing you want. We got it first! If you
don
’
t do what I say, we
’
ll smash it,
I swear I will!”
Taney, not
normally a talkative man, couldn
’
t control his reaction.
“What the hell?” He blurted out.
“Children?”
Dooley added.
“
Shut
up!
” Valjean snarled, although he sounded as surprised as his two
minions. A passenger manifest! He should have made the effort to get the ship
’
s passenger manifest! Valjean mentally kicked himself for being
uncharacteristically sloppy. The beauty of his plan, to board the freighter
between Oceania and Valhalla, was that Oceania was the last scheduled stop for
passengers! Who the hell was still aboard the ship? He didn
’
t
know. Valjean swallowed hard. For all he knew, the ship was bringing a company
security team to Valhalla, former Colonial Marines. Unlikely, but possible, and
if so, he was screwed. No way was his team going to tangle with Marines.
The voice, the
voice that Valjean had figured to belong to a young girl, continued. “You need
to bring my, the crew people, you need to bring the people in the shuttle, the
people that were in the shuttle, and the people in the-“ there was more
unintelligible whispering in the background, “the command section, them also,
you need to bring all those people here, safely. If you do that, we
’
ll give you this thing. I don
’
t care about
the thing, you can have it.” There was a pause, at the end of the message, the
speaker had appeared to run out of breath. “I
’
ll give you,
two hours, two hours, to bring all those people on board this ship, safe, or I
smash the thing. And don
’
t try to fool us! Use the
intercom, and tell me yes, or no.”
Kaylee pressed
the microphone to her stomach to muffle it, her heart was racing so fast she
could feel it pounding in her ears. “Is it off?” She whispered.
Manny showed her
the switch, in the Off position. “Yes. That was good, Kaylee.”
Kaylee set the
microphone down on top of a crate. “I hope so.” To herself, she
’
d
sounded like an idiot. But she
’
d gotten her message
across. She would smash the thing, whatever it was.
“You think they
’
ll call us back?” Manny asked.
Kaylee slumped
down until she was sitting on the floor, she pulled her knees up to her chest.
Right then, she felt a lot closer to being a scared little girl than a
confident
young woman.
“
I don’
t know.
Manny.”
Valjean held up
his hand for silence, his mind racing. Was it a trap? If there were only a few,
one or two, adults aboard, they would need some sort of advantage, if they
intended to capture of kill his pirate crew. Making Valjean think he was
dealing only with a pair of frightened children would be an effective lure.
There might not even be any children, it could be an adult speaking through a
filter, to make the voice sound like a young girl. If it was a trap, he had to
admire whoever was planning it. It was something he would do, were he in that situation.
It didn
’
t sound like that. If adults were planning a trap, they would
have given the girl a better script to read. She had sounded genuinely like a
scared adolescent, and genuinely fighting with the boy. The boy was younger? A
brother, perhaps? It sounded like a squabble between siblings. Hard to fake
something like that. Children. It was children. What they were doing aboard,
and how they
’
d gotten the item he wanted, he couldn
’
t imagine, yet, they were here, and probably had the item. Were
they children of the crew? Captain Hans Schroeder had a daughter, but she was
25 years old. The rest of the crew he didn
’
t know about.
The voice had insisted on rescuing people from both the command section, and
the surface. That made Valjean think her parents were ship
’
s
crew, one in the command section, the other parent had been in the shuttle. But
crew records hadn't listed any married couples.