Ep.#1 - "Escalation" (The Frontiers Saga: Rogue Castes) (3 page)

“It’s still not enough,” the sergeant mentioned as they left the office and headed down the hallway.

“It’s a start,” Jessica said.

“Hey, I saw a glopsy cart on the corner when we came in. Can we stop and get something to eat? I’m starving.”

“You like that shit?”

“Are you kidding? Have you tried it with the sweet and sour sauce?”

“Fine, as long as we’re off this world and jumping our way back to Sherma in ten minutes.”

* * *

The limousine rolled across the tarmac, passing by several private shuttles before finally arriving at its destination. It
pulled up next to a shuttle that was not the largest on the line at the spaceport, but was impressive nonetheless. It had clean lines, a black hull with gold trim, and the logo for Ranni Enterprises next to the boarding hatch. Unlike most of the other corporate shuttles, this ship was not a conversion. She was built from the ground up as a corporate jump shuttle.

Loki stood proudly at the boarding hatch. He had been serving as the sole pilot for this shuttle since it began its service life five years ago, and he loved every minute of it. The ship was a joy to operate, with more automation and safety features than one could imagine. For something to go wrong with this ship, you had to
make
it go wrong.

The ship was small, with a passenger capacity of only four, plus the two seats in the cockpit. Although it was comfortable, it was still cramped inside. However, their trips were always short, lasting no more than thirty minutes to an hour at the most. All in all, it was an easy, low-stress job that paid well, and allowed him to be home every night with his wife and daughter. It wasn’t exciting by any stretch of the imagination, but it
was
safe. And he was doing what he loved to do. He was a pilot.

The limousine door opened, and Deliza and her assistant Biarra stepped out.

“Miss Ta’Akar,” Loki greeted.

Deliza smiled. After all these years, Loki still insisted on playing the role of a polite, corporate shuttle pilot. She had told him time and again that he didn’t need to be so formal, as they had been friends for nearly a decade, ever since Loki and Josh had rescued her and her family from Haven. But Loki insisted on the formalities, at least in public. “Everything ready to go?” she asked as she approached.

“Yes, ma’am. We already have our departure clearance, and can be wheels up in five minutes.”

“Excellent. I’m starving.”

“We should be on the ground at Aitkenna in thirty minutes,” Loki assured her. “I trust your negotiations went well?”

“Well enough,” Deliza replied as she stepped up into the shuttle, and disappeared through the hatch.

“She was amazing,” Biarra whispered as she followed Deliza.

Loki smiled as he followed them inside and closed the hatch. Biarra had only been serving as Deliza’s personal assistant for a few months now, and this was her fourth business trip with her. Yet she was still amazed by everything Deliza Ta’Akar did.

Loki turned aft to make sure that the ladies were in their seats, then stepped forward between the seats, and slid down into the pilot’s seat on the left of the cockpit. He tapped the auto-start button and watched the primary display screen on his console as the ship’s computers cycled through all the pre-start checks. Thirty seconds later, the shuttle’s engines began to spin up, and thirty seconds after that, the ship’s flight control computer showed they were ready for departure.

“Dobson Control, Ranni One,” Loki called over his comm-set. “At pad one four, with India. Ready for departure.”

“
Ranni One, Dobson Control. Cleared for liftoff. On wheels up, fly heading one four five to one zero thousand, then proceed as filed and jump at two zero thousand to transition Alpha Sierra seven four.
”

“Cleared for liftoff on one four, heading one four five to one zero thousand, as filed and jump to Alpha Sierra seven four at two zero thousand, for Ranni One.”

“
Ranni One, read back correct. Safe flight.
”

Loki pressed the intercom button. “Prepare for liftoff,” he announced. He double-checked the flight profile in the auto-flight computer one last time, and then pressed the execute button. The whine of the shuttle’s engines increased in pitch and intensity, and a few seconds later, the shuttle rose smoothly from the pad, climbing at a slow, yet constant rate as its nose rotated around to its first course heading.

The landing gear lights switched from green to red, then went out as the gear door lights lit up green. The ship began to accelerate forward, and its climb rate increased as its engines went to full power. In a few minutes, they would reach their assigned jump point and the ship would auto-jump to the assigned transition zone well beyond the standard orbits of Dobson. All Loki had to do was sit back and monitor the shuttle’s progress.

Yup, Josh would hate this
, Loki mused.

* * *

Captain Tuplo walked across the tarmac toward his ship, only protected from the pouring Palean rain by his long, black trench coat and
its oversized hood.

Marcus stood at the top of the ramp, just inside the Seiiki’s cargo bay, watching as his employer approached. Most people ran from cover to cover when it was raining this hard, but not his captain. Connor Tuplo walked, unaffected by the downpour. Marcus had often wondered if there was some special tech installed in the captain’s jacket, something that reduced or negated the bitter cold that the storms of this world carried. In the five years that Marcus and Josh had been in Captain Tuplo’s employ, he could not remember ever seeing the captain leave the Seiiki without that coat. And when he wasn’t wearing it, it was locked away in his cabin.

“Captain,” Marcus greeted as Captain Tuplo walked up the boarding ramp.

Captain Tuplo pushed back his hood and looked around the tightly packed cargo bay. “Looks like you squeezed in everything you could. Nicely done, Marcus.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I trust we’re about ready?” the captain asked as he continued forward, making his way to the aft, portside ladder.

“Last of the passengers are boarding now, Cap’n.”

“Let’s close her up then,” the captain instructed as he climbed the ladder. “Tell Josh to start the departure prep. I’ll be up after I dry off and change.”

“Yes, sir,” Marcus replied, twisting the cargo ramp control lever to retract the ramp and close the cargo bay doors.

Captain Tuplo ascended the short ladder, stepped onto the port landing, and moved through the hatch into the corridor.

“Captain,” Dalen called from the forward end of the corridor. “He did it again.”

“Did what again, Voss?” the captain asked as he headed toward him down the narrow corridor.

“Marcus packed so much shit into the cargo hold that I couldn’t get to the engineering crawl spaces if I wanted to. How the fuck am I supposed to fix something if it breaks in flight?”

“I thought your job was to make sure things
didn’t
break in flight,” Captain Tuplo remarked as he reached the door to his cabin.

“Of course, but…”

“I’ll make sure Marcus shifts the load around to keep the crawl space hatches clear once we off-load some of the cargo on Paradar.”

“Thank you, Captain, but can you tell him not to…”

“You know, Dalen, you are an adult. You can tell him yourself, you know.”

“He doesn’t listen to me, Cap’n. He only listens to you.”

Captain Tuplo sighed. Dalen Voss was a gifted mechanic, but he was a kid, barely old enough to leave home. Because of that, Dalen felt uncomfortable standing up to Marcus, who was old enough to be his father. And Marcus saw little reason to listen to anything Dalen had to say, regardless of how skilled the young man was at keeping the ship’s systems in proper working order. “I’ll speak to Marcus,” he promised as he disappeared into his cabin.

Captain Tuplo closed the door, removed his overcoat and hung it up on the hook on the wall next to his gun belt. Although runs in the more prosperous regions of the Pentaurus sector did not pay as well, especially after the higher port fees and propellant costs, at least he didn’t have to carry a weapon at all times.

He slipped off his foul-weather boots and heavy trousers, replacing them with black pants, deck shoes, and his captain’s shirt. They were carrying passengers on this trip, and he would have to pass through the forward cabin to get to the flight deck. If the good side of plying the inner Pentaurus sector was not having to carry a gun, the bad side was always having to play the part of captain in front of passengers.

Captain Tuplo quickly shook the water from his thick beard and smoothed it down with his hand. He then placed the traditional captain’s hat on his head and exited his cabin.

A few steps forward and Captain Tuplo was through the forward hatch and in the forward passenger cabin. Between this cabin and the one above the cargo bay, the Seiiki could comfortably carry fifty paying passengers. It had been a big financial gamble for the captain to invest in the conversion of those spaces to carry passengers, but it had increased their earning potential significantly, especially after the idea of traveling by jump drive became more commonplace. Whenever possible, Captain Tuplo had chosen to sell the seats directly, and at a lower price than the passenger-only carriers, hoping to attract people who normally could not afford the high cost of interstellar travel. It had worked, at least for a while. But eventually, other carriers had realized the potential of that same market, trading higher per-seat prices for volume instead. These days, the only advantage the Seiiki had was the fact that they had not tried to cram too many seats into too small a space.

As usual, the captain earned more than a few worried glances from passengers. With his thick beard and wavy brown hair sticking out at odd angles from under his cap, Connor Tuplo did not exactly engender confidence in those who laid eyes on him, at least not at first. It usually took a few minutes of conversation with the rather quiet captain, and a bit of solid eye contact, to overcome the initial negative reaction to his appearance. But sooner or later, his blue eyes and his polite manner would win a person over.

However, today he was running late, and he avoided the passengers by moving quickly forward. Moments later, he was passing Neli, who was securing the forward hatch.

“Full load?” the captain asked.

“Yes, sir,” Neli replied. “Both cabins.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” he replied as turned the corner and ascended the steps up onto the flight deck.

The cockpit of the Seiiki was where Captain Tuplo felt most at home. She was not the newest, nor the most modern of ships. Like most other jump ships navigating the Pentaurus sector, her jump drive had been added on shortly after the Karuzari and their leader, posing as the mythical savior Na-Tan from the ancient legends of Origin, liberated the Pentaurus cluster. But unlike many converted FTL ships, she still had her FTL drives. For some reason, the previous owners had opted for both systems, which had cut into their cargo space. When the decision to carry passengers had been made, all plans to remove the old FTL systems and regain that lost cargo space were abandoned. That had been a decision that Marcus vehemently opposed. ‘Passengers just complicate everything’, had been his primary argument. Of course, he had been correct to some extent. But financially speaking, it had gotten them a lot more paying runs and was rapidly approaching the point where it would finally pay for itself.

“How are we looking?” Captain Tuplo asked Josh as he climbed into the left seat.

“Pressure on the starboard propellant pump is bouncing around again,” Josh replied. “I’m running the backup just to be safe.”

“I thought Dalen fixed that?”

“I keep telling everyone that Dalen isn’t as great as you all think he is, Cap’n.”

“It’s not Dalen’s fault, Josh,” Captain Tuplo defended. “He asked for a new pump and I told him to keep the old one going for a few more hops. The budget is tight enough as it is.”

“Why don’t you just have him swap the primary with the backup, then?”

“The secondary takes twice as long to remove,” the captain explained. “We’d be down for a couple days. Primary only takes a day to swap out.”

“We gonna make enough from this run to replace it?”

“If we don’t get shafted on fees again,” the captain replied. “Did you file?”

“Yup. Got our departure clearance a few minutes ago. It’s good until twenty-two twenty local, which gives us about four minutes to get off the ground.”

“Then let’s get going,” the captain said as he donned his comm-set. “Palee Ground, Seiiki, ready for rollback.”

“
Seiiki, Palee Ground. Cleared for rollback. Once clear, taxi via bravo delta foxtrot to departure pad six left and contact tower.
”

“Seiiki cleared for rollback,” Captain Tuplo replied over the comms. “Bravo delta foxtrot to d-pad six left and go to tower.” Captain Tuplo nodded at Josh, who activated the Seiiki’s four, powered main gear, sending the ship rolling slowly away from the terminal building. The captain watched the various exterior camera views on the display screens, while keeping an eye on the proximity alert system. Although there was plenty of room for them to maneuver, even in the crowded spaceport complex, one never knew when some idiot in a ground vehicle was going to suddenly dart across your path, mistakenly believing he could make it across safely.

Once clear, the Seiiki stopped, its gear rotated, and the ship pivoted to port until its nose was pointed toward the entrance to Bravo taxiway. In a few minutes, they would be on the departure pad and would lift off into the rainy night skies of Palee, climbing to their jump altitude.

* * *

Yanni Hiller sat in his office, studying a set of technical drawings he had copied from the Corinairan version of the Earth’s Data Ark. There were still so many techno
logies from Earth’s past, before the bio-digital plague, that had yet to be developed. At times, he felt guilty for the unrestricted access he had to the Ark’s data files. The people of the Darvano and Savoy systems, the last two systems in the cluster that were still active members of the Sol-Pentaurus Alliance, were still being fed the technologies contained within the data files at a measured pace, so as not to upset the economies of the sector. Although most of the technologies contained within were inferior to their own, there were still many areas of study, and many ideas that they had not yet explored. A few of those had been exploited by Ranni Enterprises, as well as Deliza’s late father, Prince Casimir Ta’Akar, in order to not only fund the Alliance’s defense against the Jung empire back in the Sol sector, but also by Deliza and her company, in order to give them a running start at continued success. It was a decision that had not sat well with either of them. But at the time, Deliza had nearly exhausted her late father’s fortune funding the Alliance’s efforts back in the Sol sector, as well as helping with the recovery of the Earth itself.