Stars in the Sand Read online

   “Maybe. I don’t know any more. I just know that I don’t want to lose you again.”

   “You won’t. I’m coming home, all of us are, and then we can go back to Mars with our heads held high, our mission accomplished. Now come on. The two of us are going to follow Caine’s orders and enjoy this damn party.”

  Chapter 10

   The painkillers were barely suppressing Cooper’s hangover. He couldn’t remember much about the night before, only that by the time he’d got to the dispensary they were all out of anti-drunk. Zero-gravity helped in one sense, though his stomach was churning; usually he prided himself on his iron constitution, but today he’d decided to skip breakfast and lunch, not wanting to send butterflies flying across the mess.

   He drifted out onto the bridge, and the Captain waved him to a vacant couch in the corner, over by the life support systems. It was strange to see everyone wearing civilian clothes, and obvious who had been forced to fabricate them in a hurry. Orlova looked right at home in a battered old flight jacket that had obviously seen better days, poking controls into the helm, but Weitzman was wearing his jumpsuit as though it was a uniform.

   “We’re cleared for departure, skipper,” he said, looking across at the Captain.

  “Thank you, Otto,” he said with an obvious effort. It was going to be hard to get used to this, though he suspected that it was going to get even more difficult to switch back to formality again later on. Alamo was drifting past the viewscreen, and he looked over its battered lines; it felt like he was leaving home, even to the extent that he was feeling a little homesick.

   “Cooper,” the Captain said. “Want to give the order. This is your charter.”

   He looked around the bridge, then mustered up, “Take us out, Maggie.”

   “Aye,” she replied, working a series of controls and turning the engines to full. “I want to see what she can do, run her all the way to maximum acceleration.”

  The force of two full gravities – six times the Martian norm they adopted on Alamo, pushed him back into his seat. The pressure crushed him down for a moment, before he slowly began to adapt, but he didn’t want to get up. After a moment, Orlova started to swear, and she cranked the acceleration down.

   “Wilson, what’s going on down there?” she said into the communicator. “I just lost half my maneuvering thrusters.”

   “I think we’re riding her too hard, Maggie,” a disembodied voice replied. “We haven’t got the processing power to handle running the engines at full and make course changes as well.”

   “Are you trying to tell me that someone fitted a full-speed engine without bothering to make the computer upgrades?”

   “Hell, we got her for a discount price, Maggie,” Marshall said. “You’d have to expect some teething troubles.”

   “Teething troubles my...what can I run her at without everything going out?”

   “One-third, until I can put something together to fix it.”

   Shaking her head, she adjusted the controls, turned back to Marshall, then said, “Stepping up to two Mars gravities.”

   “Don’t worry, Maggie, we’ll get there soon enough.”

   “I wanted a baseline for handling performance.” With a snorted laugh, she continued, “Actually, I suppose I got it.”

   “Better we find out now than when we have a Cabal cruiser at our back,” Weitzman said.

   “Don’t joke,” Cooper replied.

   “Who’s joking?”

   “Thirty-one minutes to the hendecaspace point,” she said. “Assuming that works at the first try. I’ve got the first leg set up in the navicomputer.”

   The time passed slowly, Alamo and the station first shrinking into nothingness, then the planet itself visibly receding into the distance. Cooper silently watched while the rest worked around him, watched as the countdown slowly ticked down the minutes and seconds until they would be heading of into the unknown. He’d wanted this, he’d fought for it, but now, as they were on the threshold of launching his mission, all he felt was a strange feeling of dread. At one point, he caught a glimpse of Marshall’s face and knew that despite the show he was putting on, the Captain felt it as well.

   “Coming up to the egress point,” Orlova finally said.

   “You have the call, Maggie.”

   “Fifteen seconds.” She threw a trio of switches, then shook her head and tapped a button by the side, and a mess of numbers and symbols flashed down the screen, letters in a text he couldn’t read.

   “Damn. Language banks have re-set.”

   “Do we need to abort?” Marshall asked, leaning forward.

   “No, no, I can do it by eye. Two. One. Now.”

   A familiar blue flash enveloped the ship, but Cooper felt a strange, grinding sensation, as though some invisible force was attempting to tear him apart. He shook his head to clear it, his eyes briefly seeing double.

   “That has to be the worst transition I’ve ever experienced,” Marshall said.

   Shaking her head, Orlova replied, “The dimensional compensators are on their last legs. They’ll get us there and back, probably.”

   “Probably?”

   “Might be worth investing any profits we get in an upgrade. We didn’t have the Cabal components to do the job back at Hydra; apparently they keep a tight hold on hendecaspace equipment.”

   “Which means we’re going to have to go through that again every time we jump.”

   “It might be a little easier when we emerge.”

   Cooper rose from his chair, his head swimming. “May I head back to my quarters, sir. After that…”

   “I’d head down to the sickbay, if I were you. I made sure they stocked up properly before we left. Don’t hit it too hard, though; we don’t have a medical fabricator on board to make new pills.”

   “Thanks, Skipper.”

   He unbuckled his straps, kicking around to float down the corridor. He drifted past Manning, who was busy damaging some of his repair work to make it look like the rest of the wall, and swung into an elevator. It proceeded in fits and starts, slowly grinding down a deck – so slowly that he made a mental note to just use one of the shafts in future. Compared to Alamo, this ship was tiny, barely a hundred meters long. Floating around it would be a fast business.

   Garland was waiting for him at the dispensary, a pair of pills in hand and a smile on his face. He tossed them across the room to Cooper, then gestured at a bulb of water hanging from a strap by the side of the room.

   “One for the hangover, one for the jump,” he said. “Bon appetit.”

   “You’ve been hanging around with Duquesne for too long.”

   Cantrell dived in, almost crashing into him, her arm flailing around. “Got another one of those, Roger? I think I left my stomach back on Alamo.”

   Shaking his head, Grogan reached into a drawer for the bottle, saying, “Don’t get used to this. I haven’t got that many of them until we get a chance to resupply. There usually isn’t much call for them on Alamo.”

   “Say, did you see the Mule talking to the Captain at the party,” she said. “Bet they were talking about me.”

   “The Mule?”

   “Mulenga.”

   “You probably need to watch that,” Grogan said. “What makes you think they were talking about you.”

   “He thinks I’m a personnel problem. That I don’t pay enough attention, or something like that.”

   “Cheer me up and tell me we have someone other than you tuning the sensors,” Grogan said with a sigh. “This trip is getting worse by the minute.”

   “Well, do you have a problem?” Cooper said.

   “I don’t like being bored.”

   “Cantrell, space travel is long periods of boredom interspersed with periods of sheer, unadulterated terror,” Grogan said. “Take it from a med-tech on his fourth tour with Alamo. Savor the boredom, relish every moment
if it. When it isn’t around, you’ll find you miss it. Put in for a transfer to medical if you want some real fun.”

   “Come on,” she replied, “why did you even sign up for this anyway?”

   “Because Ouroboros needed a med-tech, and no-one else from my department had signed up. I’m filling a needed role, and it’ll look good the next time I go up before a promotions board. You never know, the Captain might even give me a battlefield bump. He’s done it before.”

   “This is just a job to you?”

   “Eight hours a day, seven days a week, twenty-eight days of paid leave a year and good pension benefits, Spaceman. Plus I get to serve my country, which is a nice bonus, and they pay for all of my training. In a few years I can sign up with any one of a dozen hospitals at a nice job and settle down. Don’t you have a plan? What about you, Cooper?”

   “Hell, I am...was, doing exactly what I wanted. Still, I figured that I’d end up with a corporate security outfit at some point. Deep space experience would look good.” He sighed, shaking his head, “Though I thought that would happen in fifteen, twenty years, not now.”

   “Scuttlebutt said you were transferring to the Fleet,” Cantrell said.

   “The deck telegraph got it wrong. It was offered, I said no.”

   “Aren’t we good enough for you, Cooper?” ask Grogan with a mock-frown.

   “It just...I’m not trained for it. I don’t have any experience, and almost all the enlisted are one sort of technician or another. All I have to do to break something is look at it the wrong way.”

   “Quinn’d take you on,” Cantrell said. “He loves fixing stuff.”

   “No, I’m out, I think, after this mission,” Cooper said. “Don’t know what I’ll do. I guess I’ll think of something.”

   “I’d think hard about that,” another voice said. Caine drifted into the room, and she continued, “After all, the reason all of us are out here is because of what you came up with. You prepared the mission profile, got all of the ducks in a row. That’s something to be proud of.”

   “I will be,” he replied, “once we get my friends back and we get them safely back to Alamo.”

   “Not Mars?” Caine replied.

   “That’s the Captain’s job. My work is done when we’re back on a friendly deck again.”

   “Are you here for some pills as well?” Grogan asked with a sigh.

   “I’m afraid so, and I’m not the last. I think most of the crew are down with it.”

   “Smart of you to be at the head of the line, anyway.” He grabbed the bottle, then said, “I’d better go around the key areas and start delivering. Too many people are reluctant to get ‘em when they need ‘em.”

   “Does he always grumble like that?,” Cantrell said to his departing back.

   “He had a rough fortnight,” Caine said. “I think Duquesne pitched this to him as a bit of a holiday. We aren’t likely to give him much business, at least, I hope not.”

   “Me too,” Cooper said, looking at his hand. The plastoskin looked strange, wrong; Duquesne had cobbled it together out of specifications in the database at Hydra Station, and evidently the Cabal were behind in bionics. Either that, or they didn’t care to hide it.

   “Got a job for you, by the way.”

   “A job?”

   “Captain wants you to give everyone a run down in small-arms training. We’re not expecting to use it, but from the reports, we’ll be in some rough places. Unarmed combat might be a good idea, as well.”

   “I’m not sure I…”

   “If not you, then who’s going to do it?”

   “I’m with Cooper,” Cantrell said. “I had enough training in Basic to last a lifetime.”

   “I doubt you trained with someone who came top of his class for marksmanship.”

   “Second,” he replied.

   “The winner didn’t graduate, though.”

   “Winning by default isn’t winning.” He glanced across at Cantrell, “What the hell, it should relieve the tension a bit. This include officers?”

   “It certainly does. I’m looking forward to getting some zero-g practice again. It’s been much too long.”

   Kicking away towards the corridor, he said, “I’d better head down to one of the cargo decks, see about outfitting it as a firing range. I wonder if we have any laser targeters in stock.”

   “I doubt it. You’ll need to cobble something together.”

   “I’ll give you a hand,” Cantrell said. “Sensors are supposed to be my specialty, after all.”

   With a smile, Caine replied, “I’m sure that Mr. Mulenga will be very pleased to hear that.”

  Chapter 11

   Marshall lay in the command couch, tugging at his borrowed flight jacket. Despite five days’ work, it still didn’t fit quite right, and at this rate he somehow doubted it ever would. Looking around the bridge, he barely managed to suppress a laugh at the motley appearance of his crew; they looked like a collection of actors waiting to perform ‘Pirates of Cydonia’ rather than spacehands. Orlova, lingering near the rear, was the only one who had managed to pull it off, drawing on her own experience; he was rather afraid to ask what he looked like.

   “Coming up on emergence in ten seconds, Skipper,” Nelyubov said at the helm. “That should put us just fifteen minutes from Sinbad Outpost; the egress point is really well positioned in this system.”

   “I’m surprised it isn’t better used.”

   “Nothing much here,” Orlova said. “Just some pretty decent Euxenite deposits, but if it wasn’t easy to get to, no-one would be here. And ice, of course, so we can top up.”

   “Emergence,” Nelyubov said, and everyone hung on to their couches – and their stomachs. Despite round-the-clock work on the dimensional compensators, it was still like a visit to the galaxy’s most sadistic dentist, and Marshall shook his head in an attempt to clear his vision as they slid back into reality.

   Tapping a button, he said, “Wilson, if you don’t fix that you’re walking home!”

   “I’ll see what I can do, skipper,” his voice replied, tinny over the antiquated microphone. “No guarantees, though, not with garbage this out of date.”

   Snapping the channel closed, he turned to Spinelli, “Get me the dockmaster.”

   “Trying, s...skipper. All I’m getting is some loud music.”

   “Music?”

   “Wait, oh, hell. I must have broken into a commercial frequency.” He glanced up at his board, “Lots of small ships in the vicinity. Dozens, mostly singleships, all civilian. Couple of tankers and support craft. I’d say we’re the only hendecaspace-capable ship in the system.”

   “That’s good news, anyway.”

   “Got him!” he said. “Dockmaster coming on now.”

   “Who is he?” Marshall said, quietly, turning to Orlova, who was glancing at a datapad.

   “Zaid Karim,” she whispered.

   “Basil, what are you doing back here already?” a voice boomed from the speaker. “I thought you were going to lay over at Hydra and fix that ship of yours.”

   Taking a deep breath, Marshall replied, “This isn’t Basil, I’m afraid. My name is Daniel Trent, and as of a week ago, I’m the owner-operator of this ship.” Most of the crew were going under their own names, the Cabal unlikely to pick up on them, but Marshall’s profile was high enough that Bailey had insisted on providing him with a pseudonym.

   The voice was growing soft, suspicious, “Basil sold up? Why?”

   “All I know is that he was selling a ship, and I had the money to buy it.”

   “And how come I’ve never heard of you before?”

   Orlova looked at him, and Marshall nodded, “Because I’m new to the area. We got ran out of Sol System when the Triplanetary Confederation broke up Cornucopia, and my crew and I managed to make some money selling our ship to the Fleet.”

   �
��You have proof of this, naturally.”

   “Boss,” Nelyubov said, “three missile tubes just opened.”

   “They’re working on a firing solution,” Spinelli said.

   “Don’t do anything yet,” he said quietly, then pulled the microphone back to his mouth, “I can transmit all the documentation to you right now.”

   “I think you should do just that,” the voice replied.

   Tapping a series of controls on his console, Marshall sent the entire package across to the station. Bailey’s security team had worked for days to get it perfect, taking advice from the Hydra Station security contingent, but if there was one mistake, this party would end right there and now. He glanced up at the standby course plotted into the helm, taking them on a merry chase deep into the system to a distant hendecaspace point.

   Looking at the tactical plot, they would almost certainly get away from the station without any trouble; three missiles would not be a real deterrent, and they could easily swing around and away, but the mission would be over even before it had begun, and it would be a depressing two weeks as they slowly cruised through the system. This was part of the point, though. If their story wasn’t going to hold up, then it would be a lot better to find that out now, rather than waiting until they reached the heart of Cabal territory.

   This was taking too long. The seconds crept around, and Ouroboros slowly drifted in towards the outpost, still on an interception course for docking. It looked remarkably like Spitfire Station, actually – a cluster of modules strapped to a central core, though this one had been set spinning; the Cabal liked their artificial gravity. That, or the tours of duty on this station were longer than the six months recommended for zero-gravity exposure.

   The microphone crackled again, “Everything seems to be in order, Mr. Trent. You can dock at Bay 2; I’ll have refueling facilities standing by. What cargo are you carrying?”

   “Exotic foodstuffs from Hydra Station.”