This Corner of the Universe (9 page)

“Heck,
Captain, even Anelace can’t go without logistical support for several months. 
We’re stopping by the RALF every week or so,” Riedel noted.

Heskan
nodded in grim understanding.  “This is bigger than a single sloop.  The sloop
is just a tool that’s being used.  The question is, to what end?”

“To
keep us blind, that’s what the sloop is doing,” Riedel stated.  “Someone didn’t
want Renard to see what they were doing.  Nor us, now that we’re here.”

“If
you’re a criminal enterprise, what do you do in a remote system with two high
emissions asteroid fields?” Heskan asked.

“You
hide something in it,” Vernay answered.  “Then when the Republic has the
audacity to come here and buoys are positioned in the system, you ‘encourage’ them
to malfunction—”

Selvaggio
interrupted, “And when Renard comes here, accidents are ‘encouraged’ to happen in
a system where it’s already insane to attempt mining operations.”

Vernay
flashed back to her theory. “Sure, Joe Miner in his excavator is just minding
his own business, he’s not even looking for other ships let alone a stealth one
and then boom, he’s hit by the railgun and that’s that.”

Riedel
considered the possibilities.  “That makes sense but some of the ships Renard
has lost have been a lot bigger than excavators.  We’re talking surveyor ships
and a bulk cargo carrier and it would take a lot more than one tiny railgun to
destroy those and still stay unseen.”

“There’s
got to be more than a sloop out here,” Heskan said.  “Jack, bring up a system
chart of all the ships that have been lost in this system.”  Heskan waited for
the information to appear on the conference table.  “Look, every ship larger
than an excavator has been lost in an asteroid belt.  We know civilian ships
can barely see in the fields and without a functional buoy to transmit data,
they’re down to, what—a couple light-seconds’ worth of detection radius?”

Truesworth
agreed, “About that.”

“How
long would it take to kill a blind, unsuspecting freighter with an average
pirate ship, Mike?”

The
first officer thought for a few seconds before answering, “A pirate ship the
size of a ketch, roughly our size?  Not long.  They could cripple them before
they even know what hit them and once their communications go out, it doesn’t
matter how slowly they die.”

“A
ketch would also have more cargo space fer supplies but they’d still need to be
replenished.  How’s that happenin’?” Brown asked.

Inspiration
hit Heskan.  “Same way they killed those freighters, Boats.” Heskan zoomed the
system view on the screen to the Beta Field.  “Any freighter that travels
in-system has to go through the Beta Field and unless we’re escorting it, we
don’t see it clearly again until it comes out the other side.  They simply
rendezvous and off-load supplies inside the Beta Field.  They have to slow down
to a crawl while in the field anyway giving them all the time they need.”

Heskan
rocked back in realization as another piece fit into the puzzle.  “The RALF
base manager confirms this!  The day I met him he had a freighter captain in
his office and he was complaining about why the freighter was coming in with less
than a full load.  I’d bet two ensigns that it did arrive in-system with a full
load—”

“But
off-loaded supplies to our mystery pirate ketch in the Beta Field,” Riedel
finished the thought for him.  “Damn, that fits together nicely but it still doesn’t
explain why they’re going through all this trouble.”

“What
if the asteroid fields aren’t just fer hidin’?” Brown said.  “There are some
drugs that require high radiation environments to cultivate.  This system is a
pharmacologist’s dream in that respect.”

Heskan
agreed, “That’s possible, Chief.  It’s hard to hide an illegal drug facility
that’s emitting lots of radiation to create those drugs, that’s one of the
reasons they’re so expensive.  System police can easily locate such a facility,
and there are so few places in a normal system where there’s enough background
radiation to hide in that those locations can be routinely monitored.  Skathi,
on the other hand, is perfect because it has two complete asteroid fields to put
a facility in.”

“Whatever
the contraband, it could also be loaded as a product onto freighters leaving
the system in the Beta Field and we’d be none the wiser,” Riedel noted.  “We
haven’t been inspecting out-going freighters; there was never a reason to do
it.”

“Agreed
but that changes today, Mike.  We need to update our inspection schedule. 
Jack, I also want you to get me data on that freighter at the RALF the first day
we docked,” Heskan ordered.  He leaned back in his chair. 
Damn, I hate
meetings because they’re usually just a colossal waste of time but this one has
been highly productive.  Maybe I need to re-evaluate the value of staff
meetings
, he thought.

“Okay,
to summarize: we think we have one pirate ketch and a sloop with stealth
capabilities plus a possible drug production facility in one of the asteroid
fields.  If this is the case, this is bigger than any drug operation I’ve heard
of.  With that kind of money at stake, it wouldn’t surprise me if there is more
than one ketch out here to protect these pirates’ interests.” 

“I’ll
start working on some combat simulations with Anelace encountering pirate
ketches in the Beta Field, sir,” Vernay volunteered.

“Good
thinking, Stacy.  Is there anything else?” Heskan asked the group.  When no one
spoke up, Heskan adjourned the meeting and watched as his officers and senior
chief filtered out of the room.  Riedel stayed seated at the table with Heskan.

Once
the others had left the conference room, Heskan said, “Mike, if we’re right
about all this, it’s going to end badly.”

The
first officer assented, “Yup, they’re trapped here like us.  They won’t abandon
the facility and run, and we can’t go to Narvi and return with overwhelming
force.  Neither of us has any good options.”  Riedel paused in contemplation. 
“So, how do we find them?”

“It
won’t be necessary, Mike.  When we start interrupting their outbound drug
shipments, they’ll find us.”

“Captain
Heskan, we have a tunnel drive disturbance at the Narvi point.  Signal is from
a HandySize bulk carrier.  She IDs as the cargo freighter Orphan but her beacon
is red, sir!” 

Heskan
shook his head
, there’s no freighter coming in-system today on the schedule.

It
had been a slow two weeks since the staff meeting.  Heskan had taken
Anelace
to the RALF to resupply and to talk once again to the station manager. 
Together, they had compiled a list of all of the freighters that had come in
carrying less than eighty percent of their standard cargo loads.  Heskan had
then started to match these ships to their travel itineraries.  Initially, that
had proven fruitless as there were no correlations.  However, when Heskan
looked at their future stops, a pattern emerged. 

Without
exception, every ship that docked at the RALF with less than an eighty percent
load would find its way to the Erriapius system within two months of departing
Skathi.  Erriapius was another frontier system that connected to Narvi.  Erriapius-2,
also known as Baradis, was a good agricultural planet and generated a fair
amount of freighter traffic as the planet began to boom.  With freighters
entering and exiting the system daily and with the planet undergoing a sort of
population explosion, the local law enforcement was stretched thin.  Erriapius
had just one corvette and several smaller patrol craft to regulate system
commerce and although Brevic headquarters had promised more support in the
future, nothing had materialized to date.  The sad truth was that Bree was
expanding its coreward or “northern” border faster than the republic could
safely regulate.  However, to restrict expansion would be, in essence, forfeiting
many systems outright to the Hollaran Commonwealth, which showed no signs of
slowing their own ever-expanding coreward border.  As a result, the frontier
systems were increasingly on their own. 
Erriapius is the perfect place to
distribute contraband from a large freighter to smaller ships and beyond
,
Heskan thought.

With
the dots starting to connect, Heskan was now in the process of targeting ships
he thought were connected to the hypothesized pirate activity and were
scheduled to come in-system within the next month.  Of the three freighters
making their way to Skathi, one of the freighters, a HandyMax-sized freighter
named
Paragon
, fit the profile.  She was privately owned and
self-insured, with a scheduled port of call after Skathi at Narvi itself and
then a stop in Erriapius.  She had also docked at the RALF six months ago with
just sixty-five percent of her maximum cargo, citing a faulty cargo retention
barrier field generator as the reason she couldn’t carry to her full capacity. 
Heskan would find out in a little over two weeks if
Paragon
had fixed
her barrier field generator.

Petty
Officer Davis spoke excitedly in a slightly higher pitched voice than normal,
“Confirmed red, sir.  We’re getting a comm message from them; it’s been tagged with
emergency priority.”

“Let’s
hear it, Sensorman,” Heskan spoke coolly. 
Keep things under control,
Heskan, everyone on the bridge is looking to you for calm and confidence
,
he thought.

The
front wall screen blinked once and replaced the system tactical view with a
screen of transmission snow.  No discernible image could be made out and the
audio was nearly as bad.  The message was date-stamped thirty hours ago and set
to play on a continuous loop.  Between the static and noise, Heskan could make
out the panicked voice of
Orphan’s
captain.  They had experienced some
kind of tunnel drive failure three days into their dive to Skathi.  It had
cascaded into a general power plant failure causing major radiation spikes
inside the ship.  How this had happened,
Orphan’s
captain didn’t say.  His
voice was soon obscured by tremendous static as he cited the freighter crew’s
casualties.  The static cleared up as the captain pleaded for any help
available.  He had set the forward starboard docking collar to auto-accept in
case the crew was unresponsive when help arrived.  The message ended with
another plea for help before looping back to the beginning.

“Status
of the freighter, Davis?” Riedel asked the second shift sensorman.

“Umm…”
Davis hesitated.  “With the Beta Field between us, it’s difficult to tell but
there’s a lot of radiation emanating from her, sir.  Lethal amounts.”

“Immediately
lethal or deadly over long term?” Heskan queried.

“Not
immediately lethal, Captain, but anyone inside there will need a lot of
anti-radiation therapy.  I’m no doctor but I’m not sure normal anti-rad medical
procedures would do much good for their long term health,” Davis answered.

Heskan
exhaled not realizing he had been holding his breath.  “Crew complement of
Orphan, Davis?”

“Twenty-four
according to her specs, Captain,” the answer came back immediately.

“PO
Ball,” he turned to face the navigator.  “Lay in an intercept course and bring
us up to our best speed.  ETA?”

The
young petty officer’s hands flew over the console.  “Two hours, sixteen
minutes, Captain.”

“Thank
you, Ball.”  Heskan turned to his first officer.  “Mike, get the staff together
in ten minutes.  We need a game plan.”

The
staff meeting started two minutes early.  Riedel briefly outlined the situation
and then played the audio of the message from
Orphan
.  The system
tactical view was displayed in the center of the briefing table.  When
Orphan
dove out of the tunnel point,
Anelace
had been 31
lm
from its
location.  The corvette was now travelling at the blistering pace of .3
c
but would have to slow down to .1
c
as it traversed the Beta Field.  Once
clear of the asteroid field, she would resume .3
c
all the way to the
distressed freighter. 

Lieutenant
Riedel finished his briefing, “We don’t have much to go on but we’ll know more
once we get clear of the Beta Field and get a better picture of Orphan.  I
expect a standard evacuation procedure in a high radiation environment.  Some
or all of the crew may not be ambulatory and may need assistance off their
ship.”

Heskan
questioned, “Have we seen any lifeboats from the freighter yet?”

The
sensorman replied, “Not yet, Captain.  We can’t see much because of the Beta
Field but the nav buoy at the tunnel point hasn’t sent us any lifeboat distress
signals, so there probably aren’t any yet.”

“Isn’t
that strange?  If you were on a highly contaminated ship, wouldn’t you abandon
ship as soon as you left tunnel space?” Heskan asked. 

Truesworth
said nothing and then, after a moment, he realized the question wasn’t
rhetorical.  “Heck yes.  The instant we dove out, I’d have my crew in the boats
and launching.  I guess it’s possible they ejected while in tunnel space but
that’s a death sentence.” 

Lieutenant
Vernay agreed.  “I don’t see much point in ejecting from a ship if it’s in
t-space since lifeboats can’t generate the tunnel effect to safely dive out.”

“So
it’s likely the crew can no longer self-rescue,” Heskan concluded. 

This
comment brought forth a consensus of head nodding around the table.  Vernay
then broke the silence. “Captain, why wouldn’t they just hang out in a lifeboat
and set the ship’s computer to eject them when the ship entered Skathi?”

Heskan
paused.  “I don’t know, Stacy.  Maybe there wasn’t time or maybe the captain
didn’t think of that.” 
Still, that’s a good question
, Heskan thought. 
But
it’s not really fair to be second-guessing a ship captain who’s under
considerable duress and might even be dead by now.

“It’s
possible that the lifeboats can’t provide as good protection from the radiation
as somewhere else on the ship,” Riedel offered.  “We should be thankful that
they had the presence of mind to set one of their docking collars to
auto-accept.  That will make boarding her much easier than trying to override
the computer from the outside.”

Vernay
pursed her lips.  “I suppose, sir.  I guess not everything is a conspiracy out
here.  This system is making me paranoid.”

“Chief
Brown, how many people will you need to affect rescue,” Heskan asked to bring
the meeting back on point.

The
chief leaned back and thought.  “Three, includin’ myself—”

“You
aren’t going, Chief,” Heskan cut him off. 

The
chief raised his hand in protest but Heskan cut him off again.  “Sorry, Chief,
but I only want people under thirty going and I want them fully inoculated with
anti-rad before they leave Anelace.”

The
chief frowned but offered no further complaint.  “Four people.  I can use one
of my teams, three spacemen an’ a petty officer leadin’ ‘em.  They can shuttle
across, dock an’ evacuate the civilians.  We can do it in one trip though it’s
goin’ to be very tight inside the shuttle on the return trip.”

“I
want volunteers, Chief.  They’re going to be taking a massive dose of radiation. 
I want just one trip and I want minimum exposure to our team.  Just grab the
people and get out,” Heskan stated.

“They
already volunteered, Capt’n,” Brown stated flatly.  “They volunteered when they
took their oath back at Basic Training.”

Heskan
was not sure he agreed with that but said nothing.

“What
if some of the crew are deceased, Captain?” Riedel questioned.

All
eyes turned to Heskan. 
Crap
, he thought
.  I’d say leave them because
there isn’t any point in ordering my crew to risk radiation sickness for a
bunch of corpses
.  Heskan opened his mouth to answer and then shut it
again. 
On the other hand, we don’t leave people behind and ordering my crew
to do so will hurt morale
.  “Recover if practical but minimize risk of
exposure to the living.  Ultimately, it will be the team leader’s call based on
their current situation.  I’ll support it either way.” 
There, hopefully we
all can live with that.

Heskan
stood up and looked at his staff.  “Chief, get your crew prepared.  We’ll go to
action stations five minutes before we break clear of the Beta Field and then
modify our plan based on what we see.”

Heskan looked at the tactical
plot. 
Anelace
would clear the asteroid field in thirteen minutes. 
Orphan
appeared to be drifting at .02
c
laterally to
Anelace’s
position
from the tunnel point.  He pointed to the stricken ship.  “This is why we’re
here, folks.  We have a chance to save twenty-four lives, people with
families.  Let’s get over to them and do what we’re paid to do.”

*  *  *

Anelace’s
Allison T-22 drives powered her to
.3
c
upon clearing the navigation hazards of the Beta Field.  Her
inertial compensators strained to keep life sustainable on board while the
stresses of her movements tried to tear her apart.

All of
the bridge officers were present and the remaining operations crewmembers were at
their assigned stations to act as medics or damage controlmen as necessary. 
Brown’s rescue team, consisting of Spacemen Cook, Wagner and Diaz and led by
Petty Officer Second Class Lincoln, were in
Anelace’s
shuttle, waiting
for clearance to launch.

As
soon as
Anelace’s
sensors could burn through the interference,
Truesworth started relaying information about
Orphan
to Heskan. 
“Orphan’s leaking large amounts of radiation.  It’s definitely some type of
power plant breach.  Levels are steady though, no wild fluctuations.”

“Life
signs?” Heskan asked hopefully.

“I
think so, Captain.  We’re not exactly a science ship and the radiation is
making it hard to see but I think I’m picking up life aboard her.”

They
were still eighty-six minutes from rendezvous.  “Keep monitoring, Ensign.  Let
me know if anything changes,” Heskan ordered.  “Opinion, Mike?”

The
first officer stepped away from a side station and walked up to the captain’s
chair.  He spoke in a low voice, “Pretty much what we expected.  I’d stick with
the plan.”

Heskan
nodded in agreement and then called down to his engineering officer.  “Brandon,
you see what we have up here?”

Lieutenant
Jackamore’s voice came over the comm unit, “I do, Captain.  My first guess is
that radiation containment barriers failed around the core.  The power plant
seems to be operational although it’s leaking a lot of radiation.”

“Brandon,
is it safe to approach?”  Heskan noted a long pause before he got his answer.

“Sir,
with the limited information available to me, I would say Orphan’s power plant
is in no imminent danger of overload.  I’d point out the obvious hazards of the
containment leak and would advise very short exposure to anyone going aboard.”

“Thank
you, Lieutenant.  Heskan out.”

Heskan
cleared his throat.  “Maintain course, Ensign Selvaggio.  Bring us right up on
her so our rescue party has the maximum amount of time protected by Anelace’s
shield.  Ensign Truesworth, raise our shield.”