Merkiaari Wars: 03 - Operation Oracle (35 page)

 “Yeah. We went down using an elevator shaft, but it would be easier if you cleared the stairwell from directly above it.”

Liz nodded.

The hours passed and Gina spent all her time transporting equipment from
Hobbs
in her shuttle. Eric was doing the same. The heaviest items had been dealt with by the end of that day, and she moved onto transporting the pieces needed to build up the walls of the habitat domes. The weather worsened and it was decided to halt further operations. High winds made the cranes unsafe to use, and Liz decided not to risk it. Work upon the walls was abandoned, and everyone retreated to the shuttles to wait.

The second day dawned bright and clear. Liz took advantage by pulling everyone off the other dome’s supports to quickly clad the main residential dome. The idea was to complete it quickly so that everyone could move in and sleep comfortably instead of in the shuttles and APCs. They hadn’t enjoyed the experience the night before.

Gina watched in amusement as Liz’s people went into high gear. She guessed the promise of a warm place to live and sleep without their suits was a spur to action. She could understand that. Her suit was getting a little ripe, and she imagined hers wasn’t the only one.

The marvellously designed panels that impressed Liz so much quickly covered the skeleton of the dome, and stabilised it. It didn’t take too long either. Men and woman clambered all over the thing, guiding the panels being lowered by the cranes and snapping them into place. The more that were added, the stronger it became. Liz directed the entire scene like a conductor with an orchestra. As the dome was buttoned up with the last few panels still going in, her people poured inside with equipment, generators, crates, god knows what else, and began building the interior partitions to separate common areas and sleeping compartments. Wiring for lights and heating units was the first order of business however, quickly followed by plumbing and the air filtration needed to pressurise the dome. Positive atmospheric pressure was a must to keep contaminants out. The showers were particularly important in the air lock. Contamination could enter the dome on their suits. They had to decontaminate the suits before entering the dome proper. There would be other showers and toilet facilities inside as well of course. The main dome was for people to live in and would have all the conveniences. The other domes had different uses. One would garage the heavy equipment like the cranes and dozers so they could be maintained and protected from the weather. The third and last dome was to house supplies and the main generator to power the entire base. The portable generators would work in a pinch as a backup, but they were low capacity, meant for powering tools not buildings.

At the end of the second day, everyone ate a meal together in the main dome in relative comfort. Bare wires and pipes were everywhere. Tables, chairs, and beds were scattered all over amid crates and tools. Generators whirred supplying power to autochefs some still in their crates, but everyone sat together laughing and chatting, amid the remains of their meals on the tables. Their suits hung in the completed airlock, where they dripped dry from the decontamination cycle. Everyone was upbeat and happy with progress. They were warm and protected from the elements and no longer confined in smelly suits.

All was well.

It took the rest of that week to completely finish work on the base camp. The weather had quickly turned from unpredictable to solidly bad for three days straight. During that time, with winds howling outside and snow building up to half bury one side of the dome, Liz’s people worked inside finishing their new home in record time. Finally the storm blew itself out and the engineers emerged blinking into brilliant sunshine like bears after a long winter. Everything was clean and white. Snow had been blown clear of the ice and built into drifts against the cranes and dozers. The foundations of the unfinished domes were uncovered, something that seemed to satisfy Liz, though she scowled at the need to dig out her machines and the supply crates.

The week passed and the base camp was completed, allowing Liz to shift focus and labour to the prize she had come for. Gina had warned her a number of times that they didn’t know what was under that rubble. Don’t get your hopes up, she warned, but Liz ignored the pessimism determined to be optimistic. She didn’t believe the A.I was down there, she said, but it was obvious she hoped it was. Gina could see the passion and hope in the woman’s eyes and prepared herself to console her when the inevitable failure came to pass.

Alpha site looked a lot different from her first visit, Gina thought now, standing to one side of the main event. The stub of the stairwell had been demolished level to the ground leaving a square plascrete lined hole leading down into the foundations. A crane lifted a huge bucket full of rubble and freshly cut steel sections out of the hole as she watched, and swung it away. A few moments later, she flinched a little at the thunderous crash of the bucket emptying itself onto the growing pile in the street. As soon as the crane lowered the bucket back, the engineer’s drills and hammers started up again.

Liz had agreed with Eric regarding the need to clear the stairwell after she surveyed things. To Gina’s surprise, the elevator was in fact at the bottom of its shaft, not stuck part way as she had thought, and there was nothing to be gained by using it as an access point to the stairs. It would have made clearing the rubble harder. Using the crane down the stairwell itself was the obvious and most efficient choice, though it took more work to clear in the initial stages. Once it was open all the way to the bottom, it would give the engineers a fast way down using the crane as a makeshift elevator. The old stairs were being left in place to save time and effort, and could be used by those who didn’t mind a workout, but the suits were confining and made everything more tiring. Gina doubted anyone would choose the stairs.

“Bored?” Eric said wandering over.

Gina shrugged. “Nothing to do here. Security? Don’t make me laugh. We’re the only living things on the entire damn planet. I could have left my rifle home for all the target practice I’m going to get.”

Eric chuckled.

“Seriously, Eric, what are we doing here?”

“Nothing much. That’s why I came to find you. I think our time is better spent identifying and surveying other sites. This one is promising I grant you, but we should have at least one backup.
Hobbs
did identify a few other places for us to visit.”

Gina nodded, it made sense. “Sounds good. You take the first ten on the list. I’ll take the next ten. Okay?”

Eric nodded and they bumped knuckles to seal the deal.

Eric was the first to mount up and leave in his APC. Gina went to find Liz to inform her of the plan, and to tell her to shout over the comm if she needed viper help. Liz agreed absently and waved her away. She was distracted with work. Gina trotted off already reviewing her list of sites and creating her flight plan so that she didn’t waste time backtracking. The less time spent in the air the better.

* * *

Aboard Archer’s Gift, Kushiel System

Leon Adler, captain of the Kalmar registered ship
Archer’s
Gift
glared at the information his sensors reported to him. Was it a warship or just a freighter as his sensors seemed to suggest? It couldn’t be a simple freighter. There was nothing in the system to trade and no station to trade with.

Nothing here to interest a trader, not a legit trader at least.

Who were the bastards? What were they doing here? A trap laid for him, or a competitor? He hammered a fist on the consol, and his exec eyed him warily. He ignored the man. Haliwell was a new hire after Andrea left him at their last port. He missed her steadiness, but not her bitching. She hadn’t agreed with his salvage run to Kushiel and had left the ship the moment they’d docked after their initial run, not even waiting for her pay. Not that he could have paid her anyway. Maybe she had known that, maybe not, but a good dozen of the crew had left with her. That meant half his crew was new and most of them were scum. He didn’t dare walk his own ship’s deck unarmed anymore.

Andrea had gutted the ship when she left and took the best half of his crew with her. It had nearly broken him to watch them go. They had been together a long time—years of legitimate trading, good years all, but a few bad trades had lead him inexorably toward others in an effort to dig himself out of the hole. It hadn’t worked out, and he’d slipped deeper and deeper into trouble. Now he was the captain of an armed merchant vessel trading around the edges of civilisation, desperate to reverse his past mistakes.

It wasn’t too late he swore. He just needed one good break and he could reverse all the ill fortune. He wasn’t beyond redemption. He hadn’t killed anyone, his deals might be a little dirty, but he wasn’t an outright pirate. He wasn’t a raider either, despite appearances. Kushiel was a dead world after all. It wasn’t the same thing, no matter what Andrea had said to him on the docks the day she finally left. It wasn’t! Taking what he needed from Kushiel wasn’t like raiding a colony, and he was desperate. This was his last chance.

He glared at that innocent seeming icon on sensors. He should pull out, come back next month and see what this ship, these poachers, had left him. That was the safe thing to do, but he couldn’t afford to play it safe! His creditors were howling despite the down payments on the debt he owed each of them. His last trip here had barely paid the interest on his loans. If he put into any legit port with his holds empty, he could kiss his ship goodbye. They would take it and sell it out from under him, and he would still owe them afterward. He was in so deep, he needed two ships of
Archer’s
type to pay the debt. She was old and worth little more than scrap value to anyone but him. Goddamnit! This run had been his way out.

Haliwell refined the sensor data. “Definitely a trader. I think you’re right, Captain, someone must have talked. They’re poachers.”

Leon nodded and tried to keep the rage off his face. He couldn’t let them take his last chance away from him. Inside he wailed that he wasn’t a killer, and that was true, but that final line was about to be crossed. He prepared to sacrifice the last shreds of his honour and felt sick. He had no choice! They had left him none. He couldn’t just leave them to take what was his. He doubted he would still be the captain when they next docked if he tried. He’d made the crew some promises, and Haliwell was already looking at him oddly.

He rubbed his forehead feeling a stress headache pending. “All right. This is what we’re going to do...”

Aboard Hobbs in orbit of Kushiel

Captain Gibson sat in his command chair drinking coffee and reading reports. It was the middle of the watch, and things were quiet aboard. No emergencies or rush to load or unload cargo. All that had been completed two days ago. His crew were on maintenance watch now. Nothing urgent required attention.

As for the salvage operation, reports indicated things were progressing well. Base camp was complete and attention had shifted to alpha site. That was the name given to the first, and hopefully, the only salvage site on the planet. The entire mission didn’t sit well with him. Grave robbing, that’s what it amounted to. The sooner they left Kushiel the better.

“Sir?” Heather Watson,
Hobbs’
scan tech said. “That ship is still coming.”

Gibson rose to join her and had a look at her data. “Well, they did ask permission to approach. An engineering casualty like they described isn’t anything to fool with.”

“Yes, sir, but they’ve missed turnover.”

Gibson frowned. The term “turnover” harked back centuries to a time when ships used old style reaction drives without anti-grav compensators. It was applied to the point in a journey when ships literally had to about face and apply thrust in the direction of motion to slow down. These days, deceleration was a matter of the correct application of anti-grav, but the term was still used for the point at which a ship starts decelerating to make a rendezvous.

“Their course?”

“Unchanged,” Watson said worriedly.

That couldn’t be right. If they’d missed turnover for whatever reason, they would need to change course if they still wanted to rendezvous with
Hobbs
in orbit. If they didn’t change course, they would miss the rendezvous entirely and fly right past. They would have to slingshot around the planet and try again. Leon wasted a few minutes checking the data and reluctantly decided she was right.

“Hail them,” he snapped heading back to his station.

“Aye, sir,” Noel at communications said.

Leon waited for a response wondering if perhaps
Archer’s
Gift
had suffered another malfunction and lost comm. That ship was a piece of junk and...

“Contact! Multiple contacts incoming. Missiles! They’ve fired on us!” Heather cried in shock.

Leon gaped at her, unable to move or understand. Fired? Missiles? Fired missiles at him? His brain gibbered at him, but his voice didn’t betray him. He was snapping orders, and only afterward did he realise they were the right ones.

“...ound collision!” he cried and the gong gong gong of the collision alarm sounded throughout the ship sending the crew to emergency stations, and causing blast doors and other internal partitions to lock down. “Point defence free!”