AGU SCI 1: The Star Brotherhood (9 page)

"I sort of like that latter idea," Byers said. "They're nothing but animals anyway. The GA should just isolate them completely."

"I'm sure the GA Senate won't approve that for just this one incidence, but if the problem grows, it might be something they'll consider."

"But putting out a contract such as this means you couldn't even be safe on Earth," Brenda said.

"We're SCI. Being safe wasn't part of the package when we signed on."

"Neither was playing target for every assassin hard up for cash," Nelligen said. "This is the third assassination attempt in a week. There must be a way to stop it."

"I'm open to suggestions. The first attack was by a fool who picked the wrong target, but that seems to have made me enough of a celebrity that my name got passed around and someone discovered the Tsgardi contract. Who knows how long that's been hanging around without anyone knowing who Trader Vyx was."

"The genie's out of the bottle now," Brenda said.

"We'll be gone tomorrow, so we should have six months of peace and quiet."

"Maybe," Kathryn said," but I don't like not knowing what we're carrying or where we're going."

"I don't either, but I also don't like having a bull's-eye painted on my back. I need time to think about this."

"In the meantime," Nelligen said, "we'd better check the cargo bay doors and prepare the space."

"Good idea. We haven't opened the bay doors wide enough for a full cargo container in a couple of years."

"I'm beat," Byers wheezed, as he flopped onto a pile of cargo blankets in the cargo bay.

"Come on, Albert," Vyx said. "We almost have it. We just need to clean and lubricate this last set of gears so the bay doors will open to their maximum size."

"Just give me ten minutes to rest."

"Move your fat behind and you'll lose some of that lard you're carrying around," Nelligen said.

"Whatever."

"Let him rest, Vyx. When he's too tired to argue, he's telling the truth."

"Come on, Nels, help me get this gear cover off."

An hour later the maintenance work was done, and the doors opened to their full measure when tested. They would now be able to load the cargo containers that were expected in the morning. The last task was to check all of the locking clamp motors. All tests were positive.

"Okay, guys," Vyx said, "let's get some rest. The cargo will be here in a few hours."

"What time?" Byers asked, looking at his chronopatch.

"I'm not sure."

"I ask because it's after 0600 local time."

Vyx pulled back his sleeve and checked his own chronopatch. "Damn, we'll have to stay ready for the delivery. Blaswetta said the shipper was afraid of an attack by one of the crime organizations who might want to grab the cargo."

"Add that to another possible attack on you, and it could be a busy morning," Nelligen said.

"I don't expect anyone to attack me here at the ship."

"Why not? It might be their last chance to get you for a while."

"True, but anyone coming here will know there's a crew aboard."

"So I guess it depends how desperate they are and how big the price on your head is."

"I don't really expect anyone to attack, but— let's stay alert."

"That's easy for you say," Byers said, stifling a yawn. "I can barely keep my eyes open. We haven't slept in almost twenty-four hours."

"Go grab whatever sleep you can. I'm going to take a shower and then hop in the sack until the cargo gets here. The women can alert us if anything happens outside."

~ July 2
^nd
, 2288 ~

Vyx only got an hour of sleep before Brenda notified him that tugs were dropping off cargo containers. He jumped out of bed and yanked his clothes on, then strapped his pistol belt around his waist. Before running out the door, he checked that the charge in the weapon was at full.

Owing to its large size, the
Scorpion
was parked in a part of the spaceport that saw little traffic, so it should be easy to see a ground assault coming. The delivery tugs, their oh-gee engines straining, were setting their cargo down gently. There was a person on the ground communicating with the tug jockeys to position them properly to assist in loading. Once a cargo container was down, the tug released the load and bounced back up into the sky.

When Vyx arrived outside, three of the four tugs were already gone and the fourth was about ready to detach from its load. Within a minute it was gone as well.

As Vyx stepped down from the ship, the doors of a private vehicle, parked well off to the side of the ship's landing pad, opened. At first glance, the vehicle looked like an ordinary limousine, but a closer looked showed it to be constructed like an armored personnel carrier. Vyx was instantly alert and didn't begin to relax until Ker Blaswetta emerged from the vehicle. When the doors closed, Vyx was able to relax fully.

"Good morning, Trader," Blaswetta said as he approached.

"Hello, Ker. Nice car."

"Thanks, Trader. I always feel perfectly safe once I'm inside. I had it specially built for me when my business began to take off."

"A wise investment."

"As promised, here are the four quarter-size containers."

"Yes, I see that. We'll begin the loading process immediately. But first let's check the seals— together. Do you have the codes?"

"Yes, I do," Blaswetta said, producing a reading device from a side pocket of his cloak. The special device could guarantee that the seals had not been tampered with in any way.

After checking all access points on the containers, Blaswetta announced that everything was as it should be. Vyx had watched carefully and verified the information at each reading.

"And here is the encryption code we'll use for our communications," Blaswetta said. "As soon as you're ready to leave orbit, contact me and I'll give you the specifics of the delivery. My contact information is also on the wafer."

"Okay, Ker," Vyx said as he accepted the data wafer from the Wolkerron. "We'll be in touch soon."

Blaswetta nodded, bowed slightly, then turned and left.

"Are we ready to load?" Nelligen asked from the ship's cargo bay as the doors opened fully to expose a good portion of the ship's interior. The ship, with a beam of fifty meters, had been constructed around the cargo section, and with the doors open on each side of the ship, it almost seemed as if there was nothing else. The cargo bay was fifteen meters from deck to overhead, so quarter containers could fit in the upright position or on their sides. Larger containers had to be loaded on their sides.

"Let's load it and head out," Vyx said.

As the men began attaching oh-gee blocks to the first container, the women took up protected positions on either side of the ship. Both were armed with a pistol and rifle. If anyone tried to approach the ship, they would first be challenged and then fired upon if they didn't stop. Both Brenda and Kathryn were expert marksmen.

After attaching the set of oh-gee blocks to the first container, Vyx operated the remote control to lift it to the right height so it could slide into the hold. All was going well until one of the eight blocks began to fail. As the container started to tip, the seven good blocks began to bleat a warning that they were out of level.

The situation was tense and got worse as an oh-gee vehicle with the doors open came racing towards the
Scorpion
. Vyx had to remain on the controls or risk having the first container come crashing down. They would probably lose the container, and the ship could be severely damaged.

As lattice rounds began bouncing off the ship and container, Brenda opened fire on the oh-gee vehicle. Kathryn joined her and they poured a continuing stream of laser pulses into the car. Nelligen and Byers pulled their pistols and joined the fight as Vyx continued working to regain control of the first container. Although the laser pistol fire wasn't as powerful as the that of the laser rifles, it was still deadly.

Someone must have hit the driver because the vehicle suddenly flipped over, crashed to the ground on its roof, and rolled a dozen times. Brenda and Kathryn ran to the car and fired repeatedly into the vehicle until all movement inside stopped. Nelligen and Byers were both up in the cargo bay and couldn't get down in time to make a difference, so they were forced to stand by and watch. When the women lowered their weapons, everyone knew this attack was over.

Vyx, meanwhile, was applying more power to the blocks on the side where the failing unit was located and managed to get it level enough to quiet the blocks. Nelligen, still standing inside the ship, reached out and immediately began to pull the floating container towards himself while Byers used a pole with a hook to pull on the other side. As the leading edge of the container entered the ship, the oh-gee blocks tried to raise it and the bleating began again. Nelligen grabbed ahold of a tie-down holder and jumped onto the container in an effort to counter the effect of the lead oh-gee blocks until Vyx could adjust the power and again level the container. It took all the skill of the three men to get the container positioned inside the hold. Vyx slowly reduced the power to lower it gently onto the deck in the hold as Nelligen and Byers guided it down.

Vyx looked towards the attack vehicle in time to see Brenda crawl out, then toss something back in. She and Kathryn began running, and then dropped after three seconds. A second later, an explosion rocked the upturned vehicle and a fire flared briefly before being extinguished by the automatic fire suppression system built into the frame. The women stood, picked up their gear, and returned to their posts at the
Scorpion
.

As the last of the containers was lowered to the deck and fully secured in place, Nelligen said to Vyx, "I'm glad you're better with a gun than a freight loader's control. I thought we were going to lose that first container."

"Next time you can handle the controls," Vyx said.

"No thanks. I don't honestly think I could have done any better."

"It's nice to see Nelly tease someone else for a change," Byers said as he sat down on the deck with his back against the last container. "I need a few more hours' sleep."

"You'll be able to sleep for three months once we're underway," Vyx said. "Let's get the bay doors closed and get off this miserable planet before someone else comes looking for my hide."

"The ship is lifting off now," the Uthlaran said from an office inside the spaceport's control building. There was no planetary approach, departure, or orbit control, but each spaceport tried to coordinate operations to prevent collisions over populated areas.

"Roger, we'll take it from here," the com chief aboard the spaceship in orbit said. "Report the liftoff to HQ.
Namossel
out."

Vyx, with Nelligen flying right seat, applied power to the oh-gee engines and the nose of the
Scorpion
lifted off the pad. "Wow, she's heavy," he commented.

"You ain't kidding. The lift ratio of applied power to rate of ascent is almost off the scale. What the hell is in those containers?"

"I don't know. That's part of the deal. But I knew they were heavy as soon as I tried to load them. That's probably why one of the oh-gee blocks failed with the first container. I guess it was stressed beyond its capacity. That can happen when you try to lift a heavy container a little too fast. I slowed down with the rest."

"Maybe we should set it back down," Byers said from one the jump seats on the bridge. Brenda and Kathryn were occupying seats there as well.

"No. We're off the ground now and I don't want to have to put the engines through that initial strain again. We'll make it. As we climb, the strain will lessen."

The
Scorpion
continued to climb steadily through the atmosphere on its established track. With each meter of height, the stress on the engines was reduced slightly.

When the spaceship reached the apex of the sensible atmosphere, Vyx engaged the sub-light engines and disengaged the oh-gee engines. Both he and Nelligen breathed a sigh of relief as the ship surged ahead and left the vicinity of the planet.

"For a while there," Nelligen said, "down by the surface, I thought we might not even make it through the troposphere."

"I was never worried about that. I was worried we might do some damage to the oh-gee engines. But the operating temperature never entered the danger range, so they should be okay. They shut down normally."

"What now?" Kathryn asked.

"I guess it's time to contact Blaswetta," Vyx said as he slid the data wafer into the com unit in front of him. When the file list popped up, he selected the contact info and the system opened the com line.

"Greetings, Trader," the image of Ker Blaswetta said.

"We're ready to head out, Ker. What're the destination coordinates?"

"It's all on the data wafer in the file marked 'goto.' I'm sending the encryption code required to read that file."

A second later the code popped up on the
Scorpion's
screen. When Vyx called up the 'goto' file and entered the code, the information unscrambled immediately.

"Got it, Ker. See you in six months."

"Safe trip, Trader," Blaswetta said just before the screen went dark.

Vyx keyed the information into the navigation computer. "Okay, guys, here we go."

As Vyx was about to activate the new course, Nelligen said, "Uh, Vyx, look at this." He pointed to the DeTect monitor where an indicator light was blinking. "What is that?"

"It means the system is seeing a possible collision."

"We'd better not key in the course then."

Vyx pushed a few buttons and the monitor image changed. "There's no chance of a collision. The other ship is behind us."

"But it's directly behind us," Brenda said.

"Uh, yes, that's true. I wonder why."

"What?" Byers asked. "Is that significant?"

"It means that the other ship is on the same course as us," Vyx said, "or close enough that it appears to be on the same course."

"Why would someone be on the same course as us?" Kathryn asked.