Stories of the Confederated Star Systems (19 page)

“Thruster seven test now,” the captain’s voice replied and I watched as a cone of brown ice was ejected from the thruster. “Thruster seven test satisfactory. Get your butt back inside and prepare for maneuvering thrusters.”

I dropped the welder and raced for the lock. Once I was in the cavity I yanked on my tether and brought the hook in as it snaked inside. The outer door closed and I said, “Onboard and secure.”

A giant sat on my chest and my air pack tried to push through my back to my front as the captain used the thrusters to reorient the ship and lit off the main drive. The side of the ship turned toward the star and the lock was filled with intolerably bright light. Somewhere along the way I felt a jolt and realized that the heat from the star must have melted the Waste Module free and centrifugal force had sent it away from the ship. We were close enough to the star that there was only one place it could go.

The acceleration finally eased and I got up. The interior of the ship was still depressurized, so I cycled the inner door open and stepped through. “Did the cargo survive?” I asked.

“We made it with about a minute to spare” she replied. “It’s just a good thing that all of those containers are shielded against radiation and heat. How are you holding up?”

“The floor of the airlock isn’t an acceleration couch, but I’ll live. Give me a minute and I’ll go seal the Starboard H.I. Tank.”

The captain snorted. “Why do men always make such a big deal about taking out the trash?” she asked.

I glared at her back. If she wasn’t my wife, the mother of my children, and the majority owner of the
Long Haul
, I’d...oh, never mind.

The End

“Long Haul Shipping” © 2007

A U. S. Navy veteran, Loren K. Jones served as a nuclear reactor operator on attack submarines for six years before his honorable discharge in 1986. Loren makes his living as an instrumentation and controls technician, and writes because the stories won’t leave him alone until he does.

Stavin Dragon-Blessed fantasy series
(forthcoming 2017)

All that Glitters

Traders and Traitors

The Andarian Affair

Other novels by Loren

Inadvertent Adventures
– SF (2016)

Sterling Albert Stevenson was a man adrift in the Confederated Star Systems. Ex-Navy, divorced and alone, he takes a vacation at a resort casino satellite and makes his fortune. Unfortunately, the owners of the casino take a dim view of people who win and leave. Beaten and robbed, Sterling ends up shanghaied by the captain of cargo ship
Jolly Jane
.

Sterling gets renamed Silver Llewellyn Garand, and reinvents himself. The
Jolly Jane
is a small ship, and he finds himself integrating into the crew easily. After making their first trip, he is made a full crewmember, and earns the gratitude of one multi-system conglomerate and the enmity of another.

After nearly getting killed when raiders destroy the
Jolly Jane
, Sterling remarries his ex-wife and buys a new ship. The captain and first mate of the Jane join them, and the
Admiral Ann’s Revenge
takes to the spaceways.

Through the accident of taking a passenger as an apprentice spacer, the captain and crew of the
Admiral Ann’s Revenge
become entangled in the internal machinations of Dresden Agro-Commerce Collective. It is on a trip for DA-CC that the crew of the
Admiral Ann’s Revenge
has their greatest adventure.

A hyper-space drive malfunction throws them more than a hundred light-years off course, and into a star system that has that most valuable of finds: a habitable planet. Luck is with them when the engineers manage to fix their drive and allow them to return to the Confederated Star Systems.

The return of the
Revenge
and the news they bring sends shockwaves through the Confederacy, and brings fame and fortune beyond their wildest dreams to Sterling Silver Stevenson and their crew. But it's not going to be easy—or boring.

S
TERLING STEVENSON OPENED HIS EYES AND GROANED
. He hurt everywhere. He looked around, but he was in a dark room and couldn't see much. Light began flooding the room through a clear portion of the floor, quickly building to blinding intensity, then just as quickly fading to once again plunge the room into near-total darkness. Sterling struggled to crawl toward the place where the light had come from, feeling his way as he tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness. He had almost made it when the light came again, quickly building until he had to cover his eyes or go blind, then once again fading away and leaving him blinking in the darkness as his dazzled eyes struggled to adjust.

"It's a star. I'm in orbit. The station is rotating," he said aloud just to hear the sound of his own voice. He hadn't heard any other voices, nor had he seen anyone in the room with him before the light became too intense to see. "How long?" he asked, then rolled onto his back.

His back hurt like hell. That made sense if the memories that were finally crowding to the surface of his mind were correct. He'd been grabbed by enforcers from the Flaming 'O' Lounge and beaten for his transgressions.
I should have known that winning in the casino and leaving with the money wasn't going to sit well with someone
he thought. He felt his face and winced in pain, then felt his pockets as well. They were empty. They had robbed him in addition to beating him, not that it'd do them much good. His credit chip was life-locked, and had to have his bioscan, his
live
bioscan, to be opened. They were never going to get their money back.

The light was building again and he held up his hand. When the light hit the tips of his fingers he closed his eyes and started counting, "One one-thousand, two one-thousand," as light burned outside his eyelids. When the darkness came again he opened his eyes and continued counting. He'd only reached three-hundred seventy-six before the light began to build again. He again raised his hand and waited as he continued to count. He said, "Three hundred ninety-seven," just as the light touched his fingers.

He closed his eyes and began trying to figure it out. "Three hundred ninety-seven seconds is six and a half minutes. A six point five minute rotation generating about," he lifted his hand and tried to gage the apparent gravity, "point seven five G gives me--my head hurts too much for this. This place is small to be rotating this fast and not making more than one G." There weren't many habitable satellites that small. Maybe he was near the central hub of one of the smaller stations. He rolled over and looked out the darkened window, but there wasn't a lot to see.

No planet swung into view, but that didn't mean much. The planet could be above or below him and he wouldn't see it until the gyroscopic rotation of the station and its orbit turned the window toward it again. He laid back and tried to take stock of his situation.

He didn't think anything was broken, but his ribs were sore. He'd been beaten on the back with something hard, and maybe kicked in the kidneys. His head hurt, and he felt a matted section of his hair that proved that he'd been bleeding at some point. A few teeth were loose, but none missing. All in all, it wasn't the worst beating he'd ever received.

He was still trying to determine his condition when a generic female computer voice said, "Prepare for acceleration. All personnel prepare for acceleration in one minute."
Acceleration? On a--It's a ship, not a station!
That thought sent his mind sliding into gibbering panic. He was on a ship bound for who-knew-where, beaten and broke, and alone. The light was building again and he climbed to his feet as he desperately searched for the arrow that would tell him which way was ship-up. He was still looking when Newton's Law pulled the floor out from under his feet. His head smacked the floor and darkness engulfed him again, but this time it was the darkness of unconsciousness.

A
GRUFF VOICE SAID "GET UP!
"

Sterling felt a boot nudge his ribs.

"You're alive and awake, so get up," the voice snarled and the boot pushed into his ribs again.

A woman's voice snapped, "Don't hurt him, Olaf. He may have broken ribs."

Sterling heard the boots retreat a step.

"Open your eyes," the woman's voice commanded and he complied, squinting against the light behind her head. He managed to keep one eye open and held his hand out to block the worst of the light that was ripping at his dark-adjusted retinas.

"Where?" he asked in a barely audible croak.

"You are on the privately owned cargo ship
Jolly Jane
. I am Captain Denise Stabenow. You will address me as Captain Denise, Captain, or Ma'am from this point forward. Is that understood?" she asked as she glared down at him.

"Yes, Captain," Sterling answered automatically, his Navy training overriding everything else as his befuddled mind tried to catch up.

"You learn fast. Good. Your situation is this: you've been shanghaied. You pissed off some very powerful people back in Hobson's Planet orbit, and they wanted you dead, or at least out of their sphere of influence. Pahna Mah of the Flaming 'O' was in favor of dead. He took a sample of your DNA to culture a wad of flesh to prove that you 'died' in an airfoil accident, and took your credit chip to collect the damages since you lacked the forethought to buy insurance before you went flying."

Sterling blinked and rolled over, struggling to sit up, and a strong hand grabbed his shoulder to help. He looked up at the face of the man named Olaf but didn't smile. Thanking someone who had just kicked you in the ribs really wasn't reasonable. "Why am I here, Ma'am?" he asked as he looked up at Captain Denise.

"A records search showed that you hold a Stellar Navy navigator's certificate, as well as a current SN captain's certificate. You were also sharp enough to beat Pahna Mah's crooked games and smart enough to leave while you were ahead. Well, maybe that wasn't so smart, but you didn't know that at the time."

She smiled and he finally noticed that she was an attractive woman when she wasn't scowling. She was a redhead, like Ann—he stopped that thought. Remembering his ex-wife was a quick path to depression.

She continued by saying, "I need a smart hand with your experience, so I paid the local--entrepreneurs--for you. You cost me a thousand Confederate Credits."

Sterling was surprised by that. "That's all?" he asked, then hastily added, "Captain?"

"That's quite a bit in these situations. The fee was for the disappointment Pahna Mah felt from not getting to see you placed in an airlock and having the air slowly pumped out." She paused as he digested that thought for a moment. "What's your name?"

"Sterling Albert Stevenson, from New Kashmir, Ma'am," he answered as the vision of slowly suffocating ran through his mind.

"Not anymore," Captain Denise said with a slight smile. "Sterling Albert Stevenson is dead, and no one will ever believe that you are really him. My name wasn't originally Denise, and this lump's name wasn't Olaf either. Most of the crew came aboard like you did. Some did so voluntarily. None of us use our real names. Since your name was Sterling, we'll call you Silver from now on. Got it?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Sterling said as he worked his way to his feet. "I don't suppose there's anything I can do about it, is there?"

"Unless you have a better name in mind, no," she replied with a slight smile.

"I meant, I don't suppose there's anything I can do about being shanghaied. Ma'am."

Olaf drew his attention by placing his hand on an old-fashioned contact stunner that was tucked into his belt. "There's always the airlock."

"That's murder," Sterling hissed.

"You're already dead," Captain Denise said in a gentle tone. "Even if you went back, you'd be accused of being a clone after the late Mister Stevenson's money. Now, are you going to be Mister Silver, my new navigator, or are we going to cycle the lock and ship out short-handed?"

Sterling took a deep breath to calm himself then answered, "No, Ma'am. I wasn’t all that fond of my old life, anyway, so a fresh start may be what I needed." He shifted his position to ease the pain in his back. "As for the name, Sterling Silver is an old nickname of mine from--it doesn't matter. Why do you need me as a navigator?"

Captain Denise shrugged. "I do our navigating, but I need a backup. That backup has to be a real navigator, since getting lost in hyper or hitting a star isn't how I want to die. That's why you're still alive. What condition are you in?"

"There's nothing broken as far as I can tell, Captain. I hurt like hell, though," Silver replied as he held his ribs.

The captain scowled at Olaf for a second, then turned back to Sterling. "Good. Olaf will show you to your quarters. You're about the same size as Varin was, so you should be able to wear her clothes. Our uniform, such as it is," she said with a smile, "is ship's coveralls with your new name and position on the breast. Olaf will get you the patches. Varin's environmental suit is in your quarters, and there is a conversion kit to switch the plumbing connections. It's standard Navy issue, so you shouldn't have any trouble."

"Yes, Captain," Sterling said automatically as he considered the puzzle of a civilian ship having Navy-issue space suits. She turned away and left Sterling and Olaf standing in the little room. "And your position is?" he asked as he looked at the man.

Olaf looked him straight in the eye as he replied, "First Mate--in all the connotations of the term. Follow me." He turned away and led Sterling toward the bow, rotating clockwise around the hull three times to reach all of the access ways.

They finally stopped at a pressure hatch and Olaf opened it. "All of the cabins are independently pressurized. This tub is too old to have a self-sealing hull. If the hull is breached outside your quarters, you have airlock controls inside the door. If it's breached inside, you'll find out what happened to Varin." He pulled open the door and waved Sterling through. "It's clean, and her suit wasn't touched. You're actually a bit smaller than she was, so other than the cut of the uniform, everything should fit. There's a sewing kit in the bulkhead locker if you want to alter your coveralls. Suit's in the rack. The plumbing kit's beside it."