Crystal Deception (17 page)

“We are about to dock with the
Lucky Lady
,” Criss
said. “Please prepare for a bump.” He started a countdown for them. “In three…two…one.”
They both heard and felt a jolt as the docking rings touched.

“Uh-oh,” said Criss.

“Wow,” said Juice. “Those are words I never expected to hear
from a four-gen.”

“What’s the problem?” asked Sid.

“The docking rings did not lock. I am going to back us away
and try more force.” A few seconds later, Criss said, “Please brace. Put your
heads all the way back and press against the support so your necks will not
take any of the shock.”

Criss perceived worry in Juice’s expression as she followed
his instructions, and her fingers were white as she gripped the arms of her seat.
They both followed his advice and put their heads back when Criss began his
second countdown.

“In three…two…one.” The sound and jolt were both
significantly more abrupt as the docking rings collided. After a moment Criss
said, “The docking-ring lock mechanism is not activating. We will not be able
to connect securely.”

Chapter 23

Juice wondered how this would impact
the rescue mission, but Sid was the one to ask the question.

“What does this mean for our game plan?”

“The ships need to lock if we are to use the space racer’s
engines to adjust our course. At the moment we do not need this capability. But
without a firm docking connection, we have lost the option. Also, there is a
slight increase in risk when moving equipment between ships that are not firmly
docked.”

Sid went to his cabin, telling them he’d be right back. When
he returned, Juice watched as he stuck something just above his eyebrow. His
hand pulled away, and she saw what looked like a faint mole. He reached out and
pressed a matching dot above her eyebrow.

“Say something,” he said.

She hesitated for a moment, realizing she heard Sid as she normally
did through the air, and also in a more direct fashion, as if his voice were wired
to her auditory nerve. “What should I say?”

“Criss, can you see and hear us?” asked Sid.

“I can see and hear through your dot, Juice.” She heard
Criss inside her head in the same direct fashion she had heard Sid moments
before.

Like a speck, a dot only transmitted the sound of the person
speaking. It was designed this way after early users had reported problems with
information overload when they could hear everything from two locations at once.
Unlike a speck, it also transmitted and displayed visual information.

Juice spent a few minutes practicing with her dot. It didn’t
take her long to learn how to toggle it to see her normal field of vision, to split
the view so she had her normal vision while also seeing a separate small image of
what Sid was seeing, or to see Sid’s dot projection fully as if she were
watching life through his eyes.

It also didn’t take her long to realize that when she was watching
in full-Sid mode, it was best to be seated, or at least standing still and
holding on to something. Otherwise, she would find herself walking into walls
or stumbling on steps that she couldn’t currently see but that still very much existed
in the world around her.

She stayed on the bridge and watched through Sid’s dot as he
opened a pressure door and stepped into a small room that, much like on the
Alliance
,
had an access hatch in the bottom of the hull. He closed and sealed the pressure
door, donned space coveralls, evacuated the air from the room so it matched the
emptiness of the space he was about to enter, and lifted the hatch. The
experience was so vivid that Juice’s heart pounded from anticipation.

When Sid lifted the hatch, he was looking directly into the
cockpit of the space racer. Juice thought it looked like a cluttered electronics
closet crammed full of random equipment.

Kneeling at the edge of the hatch, he leaned down and shifted
his attention to the docking ring connecting the two ships, examining the
mechanism from all angles. “The seal looks tight. Could it be a bad sensor?”

“We have a good connection,” Criss responded, “but we are
stuck together like a cork in a bottle. It’s just friction keeping us joined. A
latch was supposed to slide that would mechanically secure the two ships together.”

“Hold on.” He lifted his head back into the scout, looked
around the small room, and zeroed in on a mallet with a hard rubber head stuck
to one wall amid a collection of tools. He grabbed it, poked his head back into
the hatch, and scanned the docking ring.

“What are you planning?” said Criss, the concern clear in
his tone.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try a bigger hammer.” Sid
swung the mallet and hit a small tab poking out along the edge of the docking
ring. It shifted. He smacked it again, and a tiny green indicator lit up.

“We are locked,” said Criss.

“Woohoo,” said Juice, relieved. “Way to go, Sid.”

She watched him drift down into the
Luck Lady
,
unstrap the equipment, and move it piece by piece from the racer up into the scout.
Toggling her dot back and forth between Sid’s view and her own view, she carefully
worked her way from the bridge and stood outside the door of the pressurized
hatch room. When Sid finished his chores and opened the door, she helped him move
everything to the tech shop.

They spread all of the pieces out on the work table. Some of
the larger items were stacked on the floor. “What’s all this for?” Juice asked.

“Uh-oh,” said Criss.

“Geez, Criss,” she said. “That’s twice in one day. I’m
starting to lose confidence here.”

“I requisitioned parts to help us in three areas. One was for
cloaking the scout. I can see the items I requested and believe they are
sufficient to build a satisfactory ship cloaking unit. The second was a stealth
communications link. Once we get close, we need to be able to communicate with
the crew of the
Alliance
in a fashion that is difficult for the Kardish
to detect. I can see those parts as well.

“What I do not see are the parts for the third area. We will
need the ability to firmly attach to the Kardish vessel in some fashion. If we do
not physically latch on when we approach, we will drift away. We will have to
use our maneuvering engines to remain close. That will draw their attention to
us.

“I have reviewed the record of Sid unloading the equipment.
It does not appear that any items were left behind. It is possible that the lunar
workers chose to stow cargo behind or underneath something to maximize space. Sid,
without the ability to connect to the Kardish vessel, our options are reduced.
Would you be willing to return to the racer and take a second look?”

Sid complied without hesitation. He hustled from the tech
shop down to the hatch, closed the pressure door, and as he slipped into the
space coveralls, asked, “So what am I looking for?”

“We are looking for four identical items, each about the
size of your arm. It seems that if they were loaded onto the racer, we would
have seen them. But perhaps the workers wedged them someplace we did not look.”

With preparations complete, Sid drifted down inside the
cockpit of the racer. Juice switched back to full-Sid mode and was caught up for
a moment by her fascination with the technology. She put both hands on the tech
shop worktable to maintain her balance. As Sid looked around the inside the
racer, she noticed a wall plate that wasn’t properly seated.

“There,” she said.

Sid stopped moving his head, put his arm out straight, and
held it in place. She understood immediately. “Left. Left some more. Stop.”

Sid’s hand was pointing right at the plate, and now he saw
it, too. He leaned forward, grabbed it by an edge, and pulled it off. There was
nothing behind it.

“Damn,” she said.

He spent another twenty minutes searching the cabin in a
methodical sweep but didn’t find the missing parts. Someone somewhere screwed
up. The items they sought hadn’t made it on board.

Still floating in the cockpit, Sid asked, “How were these
things supposed to work?”

“They were to be connected to the struts on the scout’s underside
and act as landing legs. The tip of each leg was to have a reactive pad designed
to fuse with the material covering the Kardish vessel. In theory, once one
touched, it would attach and hold us.”

“So what are our options based on your, um, multiple
alternate timelines,” Sid asked.

“I recommend we build and install the cloak and
communications units while I evaluate our options.”

Criss suggested Sid return to the scout, and then he began working
with Juice on assembly of the devices. Finding Sid’s input distracting, she toggled
her dot to switch off his visual input. She needed her full faculties to concentrate.

Criss helped her identify the pieces for the ship’s cloaking
unit and guided her as she organized the parts in order on the worktable. They
discussed how the items would be assembled, housed, and connected to the scout.
The cloak would require significant power, and Criss explained the methods that
would let her integrate and activate the device.

Juice wasn’t aware that cloaking devices didn’t exist on any
ship, private or military, in the Union. Criss was guiding her as they invented
a wholly new technology for humanity.

They worked together like teammates, Criss patiently explaining
goals and methods and asking the scientist for her thoughts and ideas. As they
solved new technology puzzles, Juice was thankful for the temporary escape from
her recent trauma and what seemed like a cold and dangerous future.

* * *

Ignoring Criss’s repeated requests that
he return to the safety of the scout, Sid took his time and poked around behind
the racer’s cockpit where the life support equipment had once been. He wasn’t looking
for anything in particular, just keeping an open mind. A largish access cover
drew his attention, and he leaned forward to study it.

“That cover leads outside the ship,” said Criss. “I am certain
the leg attachments are not out there.”

“I think I’m going to take a look. I want to see what we
have to work with on the bottom of the scout. Maybe I can help with an idea.”

“I can show you most of the underside of the scout through
your dot.”

Sid started seeing images of the scout from different
angles. In his usual bullheaded fashion, he toggled his dot to normal vision,
overriding Criss’s input, and resumed studying the access cover. He reached up,
put his hands on the two handles of the cover, turned them, pushed, and watched
the cover float away, end over end, into the emptiness of space.

“Oops,” he said as he peered out through the opening and into
the darkness.

“If you return to the ship, I can project detailed images of
the scout’s exterior for you to study.” When it was clear that Sid wouldn’t be deterred,
Criss said, “There is a safety reel next to the access opening. Would you please
tether yourself if you are going outside?”

Sid was bullheaded, but not stupid. He grabbed the business
end of the tether and snapped it to a loop on his space coveralls designed for
that purpose. “Here we go,” he said as he pulled himself outside the
Lady
.

Sid was glad he’d made the decision to evaluate the
situation from outside the ship. As he studied the scout and racer together, he
realized the sizes and proportions he was seeing didn’t match his mental
picture. When he’d visited Fleet’s Blackworks hangar, the scout had appeared
tiny. But that perception was formed relative to the other craft in the hangar.
Looking at it now, he realized the scout was the size of a family home. It was
hard to imagine sneaking up on the Kardish in something so big.

He pulled himself hand-over-hand and took a tour of the
scout’s underside. He began at the bow of the ship and studied the layout and
construction as he moved back. It became clear that, given their size, a device
to grab and hold the scout to the Kardish vessel would need to be a substantial
mechanism.

The space racer was docked in the middle of the scout’s
underside, and he had to maneuver around it during his inspection of the
scout’s struts, skids, and other features. He realized that, though small
relative to the scout, it too was larger than he imagined. As he pulled himself
around it, he came to a realization. “We’ll have to jettison the racer before
we approach the Kardish.”

“Yes.”

“Are there pieces we can cannibalize from it to create a
gripping unit?”

“The struts and skids on the racer are similar to those on
the scout. They provide extra material for us to use, but there is nothing
unique about them.”

Criss must have already considered this idea, Sid realized, pleased
that his thought process was at least within the realm of what the crystal was
thinking.

“What do we know about the material on the outside of the
Kardish vessel?” he asked. “I remember looking at their ship through a scope and
seeing that the exterior surface was smooth and unbroken. Yet we all saw it
open up when it ate the
Alliance
. How do we reconcile those two things?”

“Fleet has been collecting scope images of the Kardish
vessel since its arrival in Earth orbit,” Criss said. “I have viewed all two
decades of their image record. Every time one of their small craft has entered
or exited the vessel, a hatch opens. The exterior surface repairs itself after
the hatch closes.”

“Would you say that the outer layer is hard like metal, or
gooey like rubber?”

“It is more malleable like rubber,” said Criss. “In my
review of the Fleet image record, on three occasions I have watched as a floating
object hit their vessel. On each occasion, the outer layer absorbed the impact,
and a ripple rolled out on the surface like a wave on water. The objects did
not shatter or ricochet off the way one would expect if the surface were rigid.”

“Suppose we fashion a pointed hook and attach it under the
front of the scout?” Sid asked. “As we approach the Kardish, the pointed end pierces
and snags their vessel’s surface material and holds us in place.”

“The idea is plausible, but the scout would flip over if the
hook were mounted to the front. A variation of that idea is to put two hooks on
the scout’s rear skids.”

“Okay, let’s put that on the list and keep brainstorming.”

Sid pushed down off the scout and grabbed onto a strut on
the bottom of the
Lucky Lady
. He started a survey of the racer to see
what they might scavenge. As he pulled himself along, he pictured what sort of
hook he might fashion from the different pieces he saw. Nearing the rear of the
Lady
, his attention was captured by the grapple unit Kyle had attached
to the racer just the day before.

“Bingo.”

* * *

Criss could not reconcile the discovery
of the grapple with his knowledge record. He spent a few moments seeking
details of its capability and specifications, tracing its origin, and examining
how he had failed to know of its existence. His best guess—and it was just that—was
that the source of the grapple was Kyle’s friend, a Fleet maintenance tech, who
had visited Earth while on leave.