Dubious Heroes: a novel Read online

  To one side there was a separate conference room, (excuse me, the starboard side, Eng insisted, although how anyone tells left from right in a round module is beyond me), called the ready-room. On the port side of the Bridge deck was a small office, which even had its own porthole. To further confuse me, it was square, not round.

  Eng said this was the Captain’s office, and I wasn’t about to argue with him. Not long after leaving Babylonia, I entered my new office to find that some wit had hung a small flag on one of the bulkheads; a black standard bearing a white skull and crossbones. The Jolly Roger, symbol of pirates throughout the ages. I never figured out if it was intended as a joke, or someone was trying to make a more serious point; no one would admit to putting it there, and they’d apparently sworn Angie to secrecy, as well. Regardless, I kind of liked it, and left it alone. If nothing else, it covered up a blank spot on the wall.

  Climbing the ladder from the Bridge, you entered a smaller circular room, with a domed ceiling. Several comfortable lounge chairs were scattered around the room. It seemed nice enough, though not terribly interesting. Until you hit he button and all the shields retracted, revealing plasteel windows everywhere except the deck. With the shields aside, it felt as though you were standing among the stars.

  I’d never even heard of anything like our observation deck, except on luxury liners. Unlimited budgets or not, someone had been very sneaky and creative in getting this feature by the UP bean counters.

  All-in-all, the Revenge was a stunning ship, with capabilities which might well take us years to discover. Angie, Eng and Kyra were still trying to figure out how to operate all the weapons and defensive systems, although some of it was standard stuff they were familiar with. As far as we knew, we had the usual gamma ray and laser batteries, useful for knocking out sensors and engines, but not much else. There was also something called a plasma cannon, which was really just an overgrown blaster, according to Kyra. We also had about four dozen missiles of varying size and capability, all of which could be guided from the Revenge by Angie, or the Weapons Officer, aka, Kyra. I had a hunch that the cannon and missiles could do a little more than knock out a few sensors.

  In addition to what she’d come with, Cozi had been hard at work coming up with a few surprises for any UP ship we ran across in the future. While Cozi wasn’t a weapons designer, he was still about the smartest guy I’d ever known, so I took his caveat that they ought to work, with a grain of salt. Cozi just didn’t build things that didn’t work.

  There was one highly annoying thing about the Revenge; the UP had utilized metric, rather than English measures, in every single system. After a couple of days of Angie doing conversions on the fly, we succumbed to the inevitable, and switched to metric. It was as good a reason as any not to go around swiping UP ships, in the future.

  While we puttered around the ship, working on this and that, our new Medical Officer continued being their self. Before we left Babylonia, I’d outfitted the crew with new uniforms; the same black jumpsuits as before, but with a different crest, and the name Revenge on them. Doctor Smith had thanked me for the uniforms, and then kept on wearing their white ensemble, replete with cape.

  After a few weeks of this intentional flouting of my orders, I decided it was time the doctor and I had a meeting. I wasn’t trying to be a hard-ass, but I wanted to see a little more effort to fit in, and so far, I was seeing none. The doctor entered my office, and sat down across the desk from me. We sat quietly, regarding each other for a moment.

  “So, how are things down in MedLab?”

  “Peachy.”

  “And life support?”

  “Haven’t you been getting my weekly reports?” Smith asked.

  “Well… yeah”, I said. “I just didn’t know if there were any concerns that might not warrant inclusion in to your reports.” I’d spent most of my adult life working for a corporation; I could bullshit my way through a meeting with the best of them.

  “If it wasn’t important enough to note”, Smith said, “Then why do you care?”

  I shifted in my chair. I didn’t have an answer for that one.

  “Never mind”, I said. “There was one small thing I’ve noticed. Maybe you can help me with it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The rest of the crew wear our ship uniforms. I don’t ever see you in one.”

  “This is true”, Smith said.

  “Can we do something about that?”

  “I’ll certainly consider it”, the doctor said.

  “I’d appreciate that”, I said.

  “Is that it?”

  “Pretty much”, I said.

  “It was a pleasure”, Smith said, rising from the chair. I thought the meeting was over, when the doctor stopped in the doorway, and turned back to face me, Pod in hand.

  “I almost forgot”, Smith said, tapping at his screen. “Check your Pod.”

  I did so, looking at the data just transferred over.

  “What is this?”

  “New exercise regimen”, the doctor said. “Some of you are showing bone and muscle loss. Can’t have that, you know.”

  “How is that even possible?” I asked. “Christ, we’re at one gee. That’s five times the gravity I grew up with.”

  “It isn’t serious, yet”, Smith said. “It can be rectified pretty easily, if you follow the plan I’ve made. Please make sure everyone follows it. Doctor’s orders, you know.”

  I scowled at the Pod, and when I looked back up, saw that Smith was gone. Technically, the Medical Officer was the only one aboard who could give me orders, at least as far as health issues were concerned. Of course, the doctor was also well are of this, and that was clearly the point behind the new Draconian fitness plan. Nevertheless, I was not about to cave, and negotiate.

  Instead, I headed for the gym.

  It was after two weeks of grueling workouts, before I finally said fuck it, and went back to my usual regimen. Bone loss, my ass. I decided it was time I ignored the doctor’s orders, much the same as the doctor was ignoring my dictum about uniforms. I imagined that was the point of the whole thing.

  Round one to the doctor.

  Upon leaving New London, we’d acquired something of an entourage. The Queen, under the guise of helping our cause, had dispatched one of her ships to accompany us. The ship was the Defender of the Crown, or, as she was usually called, just the Defender. She was captained by a prickly Russian named Vassily Vostock, who was the same Vostock I’d shared a drink with at a New London casino, some months earlier. I noted that at the time, he’d neglected to tell me the full name of his ship, not that I could blame him. The full name made it rather obvious who they worked for.

  At the time, I’d been looking for information on what were known as water runs to the planet below. Given how damn near everything else around us had been manipulated, it wasn’t much of a surprise to find that he was in the employ of Director Hawkins, aka Queen Deirdre. In retrospect, it seemed that everyone on New London knew what we were doing, even better than we did.

  The Defender was a modified cargo ship, much as the Enigma had been. Kyra and I didn’t doubt that she was equipped with a variety of specialized gear and weaponry, however, short of asking them, we couldn’t really tell. We discussed doing a millimeter-wave scan of their ship, but that wasn’t something you did to a friendly vessel. People generally objected to being irradiated for the sake of curiosity. So, we had the Defender following along, theoretically there to render assistance, though more likely just hanging around so the Queen would know what we were up to.

  Also tailing us, like the galaxy’s largest puppy, was Winifred, in the Princess of Arabia. She no longer cared to work for TGS, particularly since she figured they’d likely terminate her in a very permanent way, given the chance. I suspected she was right, in that regard. Hell, they’d do the same to me, if they could catch me. Still, we had no idea what to do with her, and she’d insisted on coming along, so there she was.

  Th
e whole situation struck me as a bit ridiculous. Here we were, cruising around space in a ship that was largely invisible, escorted by not one, but two ships, one of which was large enough to be seen from the surface of a planet, when she was in orbit. It could really put a crimp in our doing anything even remotely sneaky.

  I’d chosen the Vega system as our destination from Tau Ceti, for a couple of reasons. First, it was a heavily populated area, second only to Sol, our home system. It was also reputed to be the nexus for a lot of illegal activity, which was precisely what I was looking for. We were also looking for somewhere that we could keep at least a modicum of a low profile. We’d gained a certain amount of notoriety in Tau Ceti Three, and while this was admittedly a problem of our own creation, I felt we needed to be someplace where we were a tad less well-known.

  We’d fully stocked the Revenge on Babylonia, and wouldn’t have to make port again for months, unless we wanted to. I was beginning to find that our new ship had one distinct shortcoming. To say that it stuck out like a sore thumb was an understatement. When we docked on Babylonia, so many people showed up to get a look at us and our shiny ship, we could have sold tickets. Alas, there was no turning back; we’d crossed that bridge, and burned it. Our days of roaming around anonymously in a nondescript cargo ship were over, at least when we had to make port.

  Vega was around twenty-five light years from Earth, and required two transits to reach, unless you were feeling frosty, and went for it in one. I had no idea how far Vega was from Tau Ceti, nor did I care. I did know that it would take just under three months, and two transits to get there, if we kept up a one gee acceleration. Once you grew accustomed to space travel, you tended to not pay attention to how far away someplace was, since all the numbers were insanely huge, and essentially meaningless to anyone besides AIs, anyway.

  Instead, you looked at what really mattered, particularly to humans, which was how long it would take for you to get there. When I asked Eng how far it was to Vega, his answer was ‘two transits, and about three months, depending on how much of a hurry you’re in’. Likewise, when you asked someone how far it was from Luna to Earth, it was rare to hear them say ‘two hundred and forty thousand miles’. Instead, they’d say ‘six hours, more or less’, unless you were talking to an AI.

  Naturally, this intentional lack of precision annoyed the hell out of AIs, and people like Cozi. Nevertheless, this was what people were comfortable with, and so it would be.

  The three month voyage was still a pain, diversions notwithstanding. I could have done without the transits, too. I suspected I was having quite a few more of the dark dreams than were normal, but there wasn’t anyone I was comfortable discussing them with, including Angie. The last thing I needed was my crew thinking I was nuts.

  The primary planet in the Vega system was called Sagan, named for one of the old astronomers. It didn’t have a moon, but, aside from a gee and a half of gravity, was supposed to be a nice place to live; hospitable terrain, pleasant weather, and plentiful natural resources. About thirty million people seemed to like it just fine. Since Sagan had no natural satellites, the residents had built a number of large orbital platforms, where space-only vessels could dock, be serviced, transfer cargo, and so on.

  The largest of these was called Skydome, and with ten thousand residents, it was easily the size of many rock colonies. The chief attraction was the big dome the place was built around; almost a kilometer in diameter, it housed both the hydroponics for the station, as well as a big nature preserve, featuring the flora and fauna of the planet below.

  The entire station was at zero gee, since the designers hadn’t made any part of it rotate, which would’ve given it a bit of gravity from centrifugal force. The people living there didn’t seem to mind, and anyone who bitched about it was invited to shut up, or go live on a rock.

  The zero gee did make docking easier, but I still hated it, because you had to wear sticky shoes everywhere. Regardless, the Revenge wouldn’t be docking there, or anywhere near it.

  The plan was for us to keep our presence under wraps, and that meant parking the Revenge somewhere, and hitching a ride to port with Vassily aboard the Defender. It also meant that someone would have to stay aboard, which I thought might be an issue, and then turned out not to be the case. First, Cozi had volunteered to stay, then Lola said she’d be staying aboard also, to ‘give Cozi and hand’. Cozi didn’t object, so that was that. I wondered if this indicated there was something going on between the two, but given my own ineptitude in that department, I tried something unusual, and kept my mouth shut.

  The Vega system had half-a-dozen planets, with Sagan being the second from the sun. The third planet was smallish rock about the size of Mercury, with a lovely atmosphere of mostly methane. It was named Providence, by someone who had a great sense of humor, was an eternal optimist, or really missed their hometown a lot. While it would never be a vacation hotspot, there was an extensive mining operation, as well as methane and helium collection. Earth had used up most of its helium a long time ago, doing what with it, I didn’t know, but now imported a lot of the stuff. Sagan got most of their metals from Providence, preferring not to mine their own planet. With all this trading, there was a constant flow of traffic between the two.

  One thing that complicated the trading was a band of rocky debris situated smack in the middle of the two planets, on the Plane of the Elliptic. It was supposed to be the remnants of a planet, which either got slammed by another large object, or, as local mythology told it, had been the home of an intelligent race who’d managed to blow themselves up. Given my knowledge of people, I was going with the latter of the two as being the most likely.

  Regardless of how the rocks got there, it was officially known as the Gamma Delta Asteroid Belt. In reality, this was just the polite rendition of what everyone really called it; the Goddamn Asteroid Belt.

  There were enough chunks of rock to make a direct, straight-line passage through it impossible. You could get through it, just not with any speed, and space travel ought to be fast, if nothing else. Instead, you had to mosey along, dodging rocks that ranged in size from ground cars to small moons.

  The alternative was to go around it, either above or below the Plane of the Elliptic, in a big rainbow-like arcing course. Unfortunately, this was where physics reared its ugly head.

  Someplace with gravity, an arc is easy to do; you simply boost enough to reach the high point, or apex, of the arc, then you let gravity pull you back down on the other side.

  Since there’s no gravity in deep space, if you wanted to arc over or under something, you had to make a bunch of little course corrections, which burned a lot of fuel, pretty much the same as if you’d just taken the shorter route, weaving in and out of the asteroids. On the plus side, you could leave most of the work to your AI, it wasn’t too much longer of a trip, and you avoided a bad neighborhood.

  Either way, getting through or around the Goddamn Asteroids was an unmitigated pain-in-the-ass. On the other hand, it was marvelous for hiding stuff, particularly stuff like ships. Also, it wasn’t uncommon for antisocial types with the means and skills, to find themselves a fair-sized rock, and set up housekeeping on it. This was what we did, more or less.

  First, we found a big asteroid, landed the Revenge, and tethered her to the surface. We also left the Princess a good distance away, since nothing attracts attention quite like a six-mile wide spaceship.

  I’d have loved to use the Avalon for the trip to Skydome, but the little lander was just too small, and the trip, at nearly a week long, was just too far. I couldn’t see any of us being happy crammed into a confined space like that for a week. So, that left us hitching a ride with Vassily.

  The Queen had said the Defender of the Crown would be ‘at our disposal’, which I took to mean that if I needed the ship for something, I could count on Vostock to comply, at least within reason. I decided to put that relationship to the test, and came up with a plan involving the Defender. While Vassily didn
’t say no, he did call New London first, his call routed from the ship, to the Speedlink on Skydome, then eventually to their home back in Tau Ceti Three. Anyway, I wished I could have eavesdropped on that conversation.

  We already knew there was a lot of illegal activity in the area, enough so that the general consensus was that there had to be one or more organizations running things. We weren’t apt to find them hanging around in bars on Skydome, since we didn’t know anyone there, and they didn’t know us. This meant that if we wanted to find some pirates, we needed to catch them in the act, then see where they went and what they did. The UPDF had been trying this tactic for years, with next to no success, but I felt we had a better chance at it than them, since we were smarter, and willing to take more chances, although the two did seem to be sort of contradictory.

  The plan was simple; we were going to use the Defender as bait, and the Revenge as the trap. Not exactly original; we’d done much the same with the Princess of Arabia, and the Montreal. Nevertheless, this had the potential to be extraordinarily dangerous, as the people we were trying to meet had no idea that we were looking for friends, and not just trying to bust them. Plus, the UPDF had rules they generally followed; pirates, not so much.

  With all this in mind, the Defender would take on a cargo at Skydome which would have a high probability of attracting the right (or wrong) kind of attention; mining explosives, and high-grade pharmaceuticals. Once they loaded up, they’d chart a course through the asteroid belt, heading for Providence. Our sincere hope was that someone would take the opportunity to waylay them.

  Of course, once they were amid the asteroids, we’d be shadowing them in the Revenge, doing our level best to keep an eye on the Defender, while not spooking any potential quarry. Once someone went after the Defender, we’d follow them to wherever they went. Assuming they didn’t lose us, eventually, we’d be able to, as Kyra put it, make their acquaintance.