Aces (4 page)

“Aye, aye,
Captain.”

Having a
conversation with a seven minute time lag was awkward, but Captains Gante and
Schroeder managed to communicate that
Tigershark
was busy with its own
rescue mission, and so the Navy would greatly appreciate it if
Ace
would
help the miners on Ares, until a real rescue ship could arrive. ‘Greatly
appreciate
’
was a polite way of the Navy giving a direct
order to a commercial vessel, an order Schroeder was bound by law to obey. By
the time Gante signed off, the
Ace
had altered course for Ares, and
increased speed as much as the awkward, lumbering ship could.

With that
settled, Schroeder turned to the next issue. “Open a channel to Ares, let
’
s put their minds at ease. Ready? This is the Universal
Transport ship
Atlas
Challenger
, we are responding to your
distress call, estimated time of arrival for our shuttle on the surface is
thirty two hours. Do you have people injured? Over.”

Although Ares was
much closer than the Navy frigate, there was still an annoying time lag for the
hyperwave signal.  The reply came back audio only, and the sound quality
was poor. “
Atlas Challenger
, thank God you are here! We were afraid we
were all alone out here. No injuries, just a lot of people needing oxygen.”

Schroeder shook
his head. He clicked the mute button and said aloud to himself and the bridge
crew “Who is in charge of this mining outfit? They sound like complete
amateurs.” He toggled the switch back from mute to transmit and replied “How
many people do you have there, Ares?” Schroeder was thinking of the limited
passenger capacity of his single shuttle. While the landing vehicle was large
for carrying cargo, it didn
’
t have many seats.

“
Twen-
“
There was a burst of static. “-even people. All gathered here at our primary
site.”

“Did you say
twenty seven, Ares, we missed part of your transmission.”

“Twenty seven,
correct, repeat, two seven. We
’
re run-“ there was another
burst of static “limited backup power. The hyperwave takes a lot of power.”

 “Understood,
Ares, you can shut down your hyperwave to conserve power. We will contact you
every six hours on the hour. Over.”

“Every six hours,
acknowledged. Thank you. Ares out.”

“Good luck to you
until we arrive.
Atlas Challenger
out.
”

Schroeder rubbed
his temples. There were extra people on the bridge, more than needed to cover
the duty stations, people had filed in when the ship had changed course.
Everyone aboard was excited and wondering what was going on. A rescue mission?
It was the first in the almost thirty year history of the ship, and the first
for anyone aboard, possibly the first in the history of the company. Schroeder
cleared his throat. Anything out of the ordinary aboard the freighter was an
occasion for excitement. The whole point of Universal Transport
’
s
service was not that their ships were fast, but that they were as regular as
clockwork, as dependable as a sunrise. The
Ace
-series ships lumbered
slowly from star to star, regularly, predictably Now
Atlas Challenger
was probably going to be delayed arriving at Valhalla, which would cause a
cascade effect of making subsequent stops late. The crew knew this was a very
big deal. In addition, of course, to being majorly cool. A rescue? A freighter
on a rescue mission? This was sure to make the news.  For many of the
crew, it was the first even vaguely exciting thing to happen in their entire
careers. Captain Schoeder grimaced at the thought that, if anything went wrong,
it would be his responsibility. “Mister Putri, you have the conn, I will be in
my office. I will address the crew shortly, in the meantime, I need to compose
a message for company headquarters. I
’
m certain they will
be just absolutely thrilled about this little adventure.” The company lawyers could
fight with the mining company lawyers, to be compensated for Universal
Transport
’
s expenses on the rescue mission. Schroeder
expected he would be long retired, possibly dead, before the case was settled
in court. “Carry on.”

The Colonial
Protective Forces frigate
Tigershark
dropped out of hyperspace well
above the ecliptic, the plane where planets of the star system orbited.
And
well distant from the source of the distress call. If there was a navigational
hazard, Captain Gante didn
’
t want her ship popping into
normal space right in the middle of it.
Better to stand off a bit, and
scan the area with the ship
’
s sensors.

Navy records on
this particular star system were thin; it was a nothing special red dwarf star,
the most common type of star system in the Milky Way
.
Incapable, in
every case humanity knew about, of supporting planetary life, dim red dwarf
stars were a dime a dozen in the Milky Way galaxy, and survey ships had stopped
visiting them years ago. The only records about this system were nearly seventy
years old, and that was just a quick flyby, all that such a common and
uninteresting star system warranted. One small, rocky planet orbiting close to
the wimpy dull red star. One cold gas giant, orbiting far enough away, that the
star
’
s light was a dim bulb in the sky. And in between, a
rather extensive asteroid field
.

As a
frigate,
Tigershark
was not heavily armed, and
she did not have powerful shields
like the big cruisers of the Fleet.
Frigates, however, made up fifty percent of the fleet
’
s
ships. They were much less expensive to build and operate. They did not require
a large crew. They could patrol vast areas with minimal support, and keep track
of everything that went on in their patrol area. As the eyes and ears of the
fleet, the strength of frigates was their sensors, not their weapons
.
As
soon as Gante
’
s crew completed checking that every system
on the ship came through the transition from hyperspace in good condition, she
ordered the ship to minimal power, and extended the antennas of the passive
sensor array. The array was eight ultrathin wires that could be pushed out to
form a circle two kilometers in diameter. When the wires were energized, they
formed a single massive, sensitive antenna. And, this time, they heard nothing.
Gante ordered the antennas retracted, and moved her ship in closer.

Four
hours later,
Tigershark
had reached the outer
limits of the asteroid field that had been the source of the distress call the
frigate was responding to, a private survey ship that had suffered an explosion
related to the ship
’
s fusion reactor. The hypercomm
message had been very brief, several dead and injured on the ship, situation
desperate, then the message cut off. The registration code attached to the
message said the ship was the
Isaac Newton
, and Registry records
confirmed that ship had been in the area.

Captain Gante
stood behind her executive officer, who was running the scanner. “
Captain, we can
’
t pinpoint the ship
’
s location from that brief message. There
’
s
so much junk floating around in this asteroid field, it might take us months to
find the ship, unless they signal us.”

“There
’
s no radiation at all?”

“No, ma
’
am, we
’
ve got
nothing. Normal background radiation from the star. Some EMR from the gas
giant, magnetic storms there. No transponder, no running lights, no radiation
from the reactor, I looked in infrared for a heat signature, nothing.”

Gante paused and
looked at the large viewscreen at the forward bulkhead of her bridge. It was
filled with spinning rocks of the asteroid field. Big rocks, gigantic rocks,
small rocks, pebbles, dust. All dangerous, if the frigate ran into any of
them.  “What were they doing out here? It
’
s suicide
to take a ship into that asteroid field. Even with our shields, we would get
squashed like a bug.”

“Captain, I can
’
t even imagine why they were in this star system in the first
place. There is absolutely nothing here worth looking at. If they wanted a red
dwarf, there
’
s plenty of them, a lot closer to Earth.”

Gante also couldn
’
t think of a good reason why a commercial ship would be here.
Any ship. “Still, they were here, so we need to find them.” She looked at the
radar map of merely a nearby slice of the asteroid field. Millions of rocks. A
ship could be anywhere in there. “I
’
m open to suggestions,
if you have any, XO.”

“I could try
scanning for residual radiation on the asteroids themselves, Ma
’
am.
If the ship exploded, the asteroids nearby would have been bathed in
radiation.”

“That sounds like
a one in a million shot, XO. I think we
’
d have better luck
looking for disturbances in the asteroids
’
orbits. An
explosion would have thrown them out of their previous orbit. Start scanning
with radar, and you can look for your residual radiation, also, those are two
different setiing on the antenna.”

The XO looked at
the map of the nearby section of the asteroid field. “Whew!" He let out a
long breath. "It
’
s going to take days just to scan
the local section of the field, Ma
’
am.”

“
I
don’
t see that we have any choice.”

Tigershark
maneuvered into position, then shut down her engines, extended the antennas
again, and activated her powerful and sensitive radar. The antennas projected
outward far to either side of the ship, making it look like the frigate had
grown a cluster of whiskers. Appropriate for a cat, maybe, but not for a shark.
One of Gante
’
s first actions, when she had taken over from
the previous captain, was to have the spacedock workers paint a gaping shark
’
s mouth and eyes on the nose of the ship. It made the frigate
look mean. And the crew liked it. Now, for all her military power and
authority,
Tigershark
at the moment was nothing more than a listening
device, hoping to find a missing, silent ship in the incredible clutter of an
asteriod field, circling a lonely red dwarf star. 

It was
dinnertime. Rick figured he would find Schroeder in the main galley. The
Captain appeared to have a lot on his mind, the man picked up a sandwich and a
mug of coffee, and was about to walk back out, when Rick stopped him. “Do you
have a minute, Captain?”

“Actually,
Mister...” Rick
’
s name escaped him momentarily, “Sanchez,
I am rather busy.” He moved to walk past, not before Rick positioned himself in
the doorway.

“With the rescue,
yes, you must be very busy. Did the miners say what type of life support system
they have?”

“
I
don’
t... they didn
’
t say.” Schroeder, beginning to
grow annoyed at Rick
’
s rude behavior, gestured the
passenger to clear the doorway.

Rick spoke
quickly, knowing his time was short. “I ask, because I have some experience
maintaining and repairing life support systems. And if the miners
’
system can be fixed, then we can be on our way.”

And potentially
keep to
Ace
’
s schedule, without paying penalties.
That got Schroeder
’
s attention. “You are an engineer?”
Schroeder asked, surprised. When they had dined at the Captain
’
s
table during the first week of the voyage from Earth, Schroeder had received
the impression that Ricardo Sanchez was an academic, devoting his life to
digging up the long-abandoned ruins of an alien civilization.

“No, I
’
m not, not by profession. One of my fieldwork experiences was
on Sahara, the planet Sahara, and, to tell you the truth, I was a very junior
exoarcheologist back then. Instead of assisting with the excavation, I spent a
lot of the time running errands, and keeping our balky life support system
running. It was a standard Culcorp Tradewinds 11A model, and I know that type
of unit was purchased by a lot of these mining concessions.”

“The unit broke
down frequently?”

“It was a second
or third hand system, we were on a real tight budget, so everything was patched
together. I don
’
t know about Ares, but Sahara for sure is
a harsh place for machinery.” Sahara, a long time ago, was a moderately
populated alien colony world, until the star it orbited had a violent hiccup
that blew away part of Sahara
’
s atmosphere, and left the
surface a scorched, gritty desert. Some people speculated that the stellar
incident was an alien experiment that had caused the star to go haywire, that
the aliens had killed their own planet. Rick didn
’
t see
any hard evidence for that theory, what he had seen on Sahara was a harsh
environment, and a planet rich in ruins that had not been fully explored.

“So I have
heard.” Schroeder acknowledged. He had once orbited Sahara, a decade or so in
the past. What he remembered was looking down on a forbidding landscape of
exposed rock, blowing sand, and a thin little atmosphere. “You really think you
could fix their system?”

“
Captain,
I don’
t know. I don
’
t know if they have a
Tradewinds model, or what
’
s wrong with it. But I think I
am more familiar with that type of system than your crew is. Sam handles life
support here, right?”

“Specialist First
Class Sam Winters, yes.” Schroeder had already planned to send Sam down in the
first shuttle run, hoping that the life support systems specialist could fix
the miners
’ equipment quickly, and get
Ace
back on
her way with minimal delay. “All right then, Mr. Sanchez, I would like you to
speak with Sam. If he is satisfied that you may be of assistance to him, then
you need to be on our next call to Ares, which is in,” he checked his watch,
“two hours, twenty three minutes. You can ask the miners whatever questions you
need then.” In the meantime, Schroeder would be contacting company HQ to see
about the propriety of including a passenger on a rescue mission. Rick, and
Schroeder, would probably need to sign a waiver of some sort. Paperwork. It was
the bane of his existence.

“Honey, I need to
discuss something with you.” Rick said as the family sat down to dinner in the
ship
’
s galley. The compartment was empty, except for the
Sanchezes and the ship
’
s first officer Vassily Yurchenko,
who was sitting alone in a corner, reading a report and picking at something on
his plate. Rick figured having the children and a stranger present would
moderate his wife
’
s reaction, if she was going to get
upset.

Joy put down her
fork. She knew this tactic, Rick used it often enough. One day, she was going
to throw caution and good manners to wind and throw a big scene, regardless of
the audience. That would teach him.

But not today.

She placed her
hands on her lap, sat up straight, as prim and proper as she could, gave her
husband an overly sweet smile, and responded. “Yes, Ricardo, what is it?”

Kaylee and Manny
caught the look exchanged by their parents, and huddled over their plates,
suddenly intent on their food. Kaylee couldn
’
t manage to
hide a quick smile. She perked her ears up. This was going to be good, she
knew, it usually was. Mommy never referred to Daddy as ‘Ricardo
’
unless
she was mad about something. Sometimes her parents talked privately by calling
each other through their bComms, but it was easy to see when they were doing
that, as their eyes took on a faraway, glassy look.

“Captain
Schroeder invited me to the bridge a few hours ago, I listened to their call
with the miners on Ares.”

“Oh.” Joy said in
surprise, a tiny bit deflated. Perhaps Rick simply wanted to brag in front of
the children that he had been on the starship
’
s bridge.
“That was nice of the captain. What did the miners have to say?”

“Oh, just,
nothing new.” Rick
’
s throat was dry, he took a sip of iced
tea.

That put Joy on
alert again. Her husband was nervous. She had been right the first time, he was
up to something, something he thought she wouldn
’
t like. Her
eyes narrowed suspiciously.

Rick continued.
“They
’
re stretching their oxygen supply, some of the
miners are living in the crawler tractors, which have their own oxygen
supplies. The crawlers can only reprocess air, though, not truly recycle it,
they need to be resupplied every so often. And there isn
’
t
much space in their crawlers for more than a few people.”

“Interesting.
Anything else?” She continued their verbal chess game.

“Uh, yes, in
fact. Their life support system is a Culcorp Tradewinds model 11A.”

“Fascinating.
Imagine that!” Joy had no idea where Rick was going with this. Unless- “Wait.
Are you going to tell me that
’
s the same type you kept
working on Sahara?”