Project Sail (15 page)

Two rectangular windows looked out from the bridge into space. A young man wearing a gray dress shirt and an old-fashioned navy-blue captain’s hat enjoyed the view, eyeing the bundle of rocks his ship approached, guided by thrusters.

His eyes diverted from the path ahead to a monitor at his fingertips that displayed rows of stable lines. Suddenly, those lines changed from calm to a series of waves that nearly topped the screen, and then returned to normal.

Two people shared the small bridge with him. The first, a dangerously skinny thirty-year-old woman with black hair that sat atop a square head like an eraser sat at the end of an old-fashioned pencil. The second, a chubby man with a shaved scalp who wore a sleeveless shirt to show off his body art.

The young captain stepped closer to the latter and whispered, “Hey Sketch, what is this again?”

Much to his chagrin, his sister overheard, bound over, and spoke to him in the same degrading tone she used since they set out on this trip.

“Great, Mason, we have had this bucket for over a year and you still don’t know what everything does.”

“Denise that is Captain to you.”

“Well,
Captain,
that is a gaussmeter, one of the few pieces of equipment still functioning on this tub. I thought you had crack engineers who could keep this bucket of crap running. ‘Don’t worry,’ you said. ‘My friends will chip in and we’ll make a killing!’”

“Shut up. This readout just bounced around like a handball in zero-g but now it flat-lined again.”

“Uh, um, Captain,” Sketch tread lightly, “I think this measures magnetic fields. Maybe we’re close to another find?”

“It does not mean anything like that,” Denise answered for her younger brother. “Probably malfunctioning.”

Mason—Captain Mason—returned to the navigation station under the front windows. They remained on course, returning to a cluster of asteroids they visited a month ago. He hoped the augers they left behind found something.

Sketch shared his view and said, “Amazing that we are in the middle of the asteroid belt but there doesn’t seem to be many asteroids.”

For probably the tenth time, Mason explained, “Most of the shit out here is dust. The bigger rocks are few and far between.”

“Yeah, but, you know.”

That was Sketch’s response to most concepts he struggled to comprehend. If the man had put as much effort into his education as he did his skin art he would be a genius.

Yeah, well he knew about the gaussmeter, didn’t he?

Mason mentally told his dead dad’s voice to shut the hell up.

Nonetheless, he had to admit that Sketch’s skin art could be mesmerizing, such as the nano-tat on his left bicep. It started as a Jolly Roger but then the lines moved—seemingly crawling on his skin—and formed the shape of a woman with an eye patch brandishing a sword. Seconds later, the Jolly Roger returned.

While called tattoos, nanobots--not needles--did the painting. Sketch could buy and program in new designs, changing his tattoo as often as he could afford the download fees.

Sketch’s current theme—pirates—made Mason wonder again how he could best describe his money-making scheme to his former schoolmates on Mars. He liked to think they were pirates, but they had neither the armaments nor guts to attack shipping, although he sometimes considered intercepting a robotic barge.

No, Mason’s plan to raise money to buy and run a party cruise ship relied on mining territory ignored by the major powers, such as sections of the asteroid belt.

Guess that makes you more like a forty-niner panning for gold. Glad to see that expensive degree was worth the investment.

Their typical run involved finding an asteroid, softening it up with demolition charges, and then dragging a magnetic rake across the surface to suck up metals such as cobalt and nickel. Sometimes, they would deploy a scoop instead of the magnet to grab silver, gold, and copper, materials dwindling in supply on Earth.

Last month they spotted an asteroid family of five big rocks and a hundred smaller ones that did not appear on any charts. Their survey indicated concentrations of antimony and indium, the Earthly sources of which were nearly exhausted.

Instead of a rake or scoop, this time they had left behind automated mining equipment designed to find and extract the targeted resources without attracting attention. Those machines spent the last four weeks working autonomously, and now he hoped to find their coffers filled with bounty.

Captain Mason allowed the navigation computer to do the work, moving the ship among the asteroids and while those rocks were separated by hundreds of kilometers, it felt as if they entered a cave.

Mason thumbed an intercom and called down to the other three members of his crew: “Hey, get your asses over to collection and prepare to receive. I’ve locked on to the augers and we will pull them up in a minute.”

A grunt that sounded like “okay” replied. Mason felt they should have said, “Yes, captain” or “aye, aye.” After all, he was in command and a little respect would be nice.

You have to earn respect, son and you don’t do that by throwing your trust fund money around and thinking you are a captain just because you bought a hat.

Thrusters slowed the ship’s momentum until it hovered over a large rock where a dozen landers waited, each surrounded by full bins. At the heart of each lander sat an egg-shaped vessel housing the auger that drilled into the rock, analyzed samples, and then filled the collection bins.

These models were smaller than the ones operated by the energy companies because they were designed for stealth mining, thanks to an energy-masking system and a smaller impact footprint that made the gear difficult to spot from orbit. The mobster who had sold Mason this system claimed he drilled within a hundred meters of the corporate mines on Io without detection.

The pirate-augers were one of the pieces of equipment Mason (
you mean your sister
) had paid top dollar for and they were worth more than his used spaceship.

Pods along the spine of the mother ship opened and coded transmissions sought out the augers. Those egg-shaped vessels then blasted off the planetoid’s surface one by one.

Sketch read from a screen, “At least a thousand tons of stuff in those bins.”

Mason understood their payday depended on the contents, not weight.

A ton of shit is still shit.

Once onboard, they would analyze what they had found and then either haul the bounty up from the surface to the ship or dump the contents and move on.

Denise, of course, did not celebrate.

“About time; payment was due on your engines last week.”

He waved a dismissive hand at her and looked out the front windows. The surface of the asteroid dominated the lower half of his view, a sky full of rocks—large and small—the upper half.

Mason felt a sense of accomplishment at having successfully mined this asteroid for the last month. Well, it had been his robots mining for the last month.

Always getting someone else to do your work for you.

He closed his eyes tight and when he reopened them, he studied the rest of the asteroid family outside the window, wondering if the other rocks held—

What is that?

It appeared as if a hole had been cut in the wall of asteroids about ten kilometers from his ship.

No, wait, not a hole, a silhouette.

“Look at this,” he said and Sketch and Denise nearly pushed him out of the window.

Slowly his eyes adjusted, taking the fuzzy outline of the shape and sharpening it until he realized they looked at a ship, a very large ship, sitting silent among the rocks.

“Holy shit,” Sketch said, “that thing is huge!”

Mason mentally measured from the left side of the shadow to the right and guessed, “Probably five hundred meters.”

Denise corrected, “Six hundred.”

Her corrections and contradictions were as much a part of their conversations as “hello” and “goodbye.”

For a moment, he thought that shadow nestled among the rocks resembled a giant spider at the center of a web, waiting for a fly to wander too close.

In that low light details were difficult to make out but still, he saw a sharp bow that included two concave openings that made him think of giant headlights. He had never before seen anything like them.

He also noticed tubes, bulging compartments, and fin-like extensions along the lower half of either side resembling wings or flaps. A topside sphere might be a covered cargo bay or a special compartment, but certainly not a bridge.

Can’t see a bridge, can you Mason? So what do you think that means?

“It’s a military ship.”

“No it is not,” Denise shot.

“Commercial and civilian ships have conning towers but warships build their bridges deep inside.
That
is military.”

Sketch cried out, “Jimmy Christmas, they must have found our miners. Shit, we are going to jail!”

Denise said, “No lights, no movement, so maybe it is a derelict.”

For three seconds, Mason’s mind grabbed at the fantasy that they had come across the salvage of a lifetime; a huge empty ship they could strip down and sell to earn a fortune. He could already see himself orbiting Venus in his cruise ship surrounded by women and jealous classmates.

The fantasy faded and realization hit him like a wave of ice-cold water. His skin erupted into a rash of goose bumps and Mason’s heart accelerated to full open throttle, pounding in his chest.

“No…no…oh shit, no! They didn’t stumble on our miners!”

A giant man-of-war hidden in a cluster of rocks, one that was not there a month ago when they had planted the augers; augers designed to avoid detection. No, the warship hovering off their port bow did not know about the covert mining operation.

Mason nearly screamed, “We stumbled on them!”

You found a giant warship that wants to remain hidden in a cluster of uncharted asteroids. What do you think is going to happen next?

He reached for the navigation console but was blinded by an explosion of light so bright and intense that he grunted in pain. The silent vessel hidden in the rocks came to life with a dozen spotlights aimed at the pirate ship, flooding the bridge in brilliant luminance.

“We have to get out of here!” Mason shouted.

“It’s too late,” Denise enjoyed correcting him. “Just turn yourself in, Mason, you will never outrun it.”

She doesn’t understand, does she, son? For the first time, you are a little swifter on the uptake than your sister.

“You stupid twit, they aren’t going to arrest us!”

Mason shielded his eyes with one hand and fumbled for the navigation computer.

Sketch pointed into the brilliant blast of light and shouted, “Look at that!”

A wall of crackling blue energy traveled from an array on the enemy ship, enveloped the mining vessel, and everything went dark. Screens, lights, buttons, and displays turned off and the sharp smell of fried electronic equipment joined the stale aroma of recycled air.

While Denise wobbled at the knees and nearly fell over, Mason threw open a compartment labeled EMERGENCY and grabbed a thick glow stick, which he whacked off the console and then shook, creating a soft green glimmer that was now the only source of internal light onboard.

“Sketch, take this down to engineering as fast as you can. Tell them to pop the seal on the replacement boards.”

“The what?”

“The replacement boards in the engineering cabinet should have been safe from the EMP. Swap them with the dead boards along the primary power conduit.”

Sketch did not understand but it was Denise who asked, “What are you talking about?”

He shoved Sketch toward the ladder at the rear of the bridge.

“Tell them to replace the boards and run navigation from down there. Sketch, run or we are dead!”

While he did not grasp what was happening, Sketch followed the order. Mason only hoped that his engineering pals would understand and work quickly. If the warship meant to board them, they might have time to plug-in the replacement boards and fire up the engines.

Mason took satisfaction in hearing his sister break down and plead, “What did you send him to do? What is happening, Mason? Tell me!”

“We just had our electronics knocked out by an electromagnetic pulse, including circuit boards in eight or nine critical control hubs. There are replacement boards in a protected locker in engineering made to swap out at those critical junctions so we can get the engines and environmental controls running again.”

In a rare victory for Mason, his voice came across calm and in control, a stark contrast to his snooty sister who devolved into a blubbering mess. He wished dad were here to see.

The spotlights from the other craft switched off and the bridge went dark except for a soft red glow reflecting in from outside.

At that point, Mason realized the enemy had no interest in boarding his ship. The glow came from a thin red beam: a cutting laser, directed at the spherical forward compartment of his vessel.

“Call them, Mason! Tell them we surrender!”

“They knocked out our communications with the EMP! They aren’t interested in our surrender. The only thing we can do…grab a suit before we lose hull integrity!”

He stumbled in the dark toward the space suit locker, but then that thin red beam was inside the bridge, crossing overhead and hitting an interior bulkhead with a sharp sizzle.

The upper half of the compartment lifted off, like a brain surgeon removing the top of a skull to get at the important parts inside. In this case, those parts were Mason and his sister, both of whom were violently ejected from the bridge into the vacuum.

Mason felt his spine twist and snap, a distant pain compared to the oxygen in his lungs exploding out and his right eye sucked from its socket.

His sister bounced off debris as she spun into space, smashing her skull and bringing her life to a swift end.

Mason, however, remained conscious long enough to take account of his murderer with his remaining eye.

Yes, it was a battleship, and clearly a new design. On the hull, he saw markings and as the life faded from his eyes, Mason knew his killer.