Ships of My Fathers Page 22

  He popped out a section of the wall from the floor to his chest and slid it to the side. It was dark on the other side, and he considered that good news. No one should be staffing the storage closet at night. When he had enough room to move through, he stooped down and through.

  It would have been nice, of course, to have the survival bags on a shelf right next to him, but he was happy to spend his luck elsewhere. As it was, he came out behind a stack of pillows, and when one went crashing to the floor, it barely made any noise at all. Taking advantage of the opening, he slid through the gap on the shelf and stepped into the room proper.

  He moved past the bedding and uniforms over to where the environment suits were. He did not see many. In fact, mostly it was only parts of the suits, and they looked very odd to him. While most environment suits are fairly light and supple, the chest piece he saw was heavy and bulky. Even for a thruster suit, it looked over-engineered. His curiosity called to him, but he pushed it away. He needed the survival bag, and with another minute of searching, he found it.

  Here he counted himself lucky. Survival bags are packed in one of two ways. More often than not, they come in a box, about half a meter cubed. It had a pull cord that began an inflation of structural members. The idea was that it would turn itself into a nice sphere for you to step into through the open seam and then seal it up behind you, using the rest of the oxygen tank to keep you breathing. He had been worried about only finding those, because he was not so sure he would have been able to fit them through the gaps between the decks.

  Fortunately, all of the Jaguar’s bags were of the other variety. They were packaged in longer tubes, about a meter and a half, with a carrying strap as well as a couple of hooks. The idea behind these was that a suited rescuer could carry several of these strapped to himself to give to any trapped survivors he found. They did not have as long of an air supply, but they would easily fit through the space he had to move through tonight. He took one, moved back to the open wall, put the pillows back in place, and slipped quietly back into the wall, closing it up behind him.

  Moving down was much easier, even with a load, but he forced himself to go as slow as before. Josie had warned him that day they had gone climbing the mountains. “Going down is much more dangerous than going up. It feels so easy, you get sloppy, and the next thing you know you’ve busted your pretty little ankle.”

  So he was lowering himself into the access space on deck two very carefully when he heard the thump of the water slamming into the air gap in the pipes above the sink. Someone had just used it. He froze, knowing that someone was close by on the other side of the partition. After several seconds, he dared to shift into a more comfortable position, still halfway down to the floor.

  And that was when he heard Jimmy Anders laugh.

  Cautiously, he pressed his ear to the wall and listened.

  “It’s not funny,” Elsa said. “There are warrants out for that name.”

  Anders shrugged. “Yeah, old warrants, from back in the war. I don’t see why they scare you so much.”

  She shook her head. She was amazed someone as careless as Anders had survived this long. “Some of Elsa’s so-called crimes have no statute of limitations. War or not, few judges would be lenient. So hear me on this. Elsa Watkins died in the war, and if you don’t want to end up in her empty grave, you’ll leave that name alone from here on out.”

  He frowned but nodded. “I guess Malcolm’s not the only one with secrets.”

  “Yes, but hopefully Malcolm’s secrets will die with him. Or at least they’ll die with his computer.”

  “Die?” He looked her cautiously. “I thought we were going to extract the data.”

  “Sure, I’m going to make a copy, but once I get it out of there, I’m wiping that core, wiping it again, and then slagging the whole thing before blasting it apart.” She slammed back her vodka, and slid the empty glass back towards Anders. “And after, if I’m feeling generous, I’ll let you have portions of it.”

  “If you feel generous? Aren’t you forgetting that I’m the one who brought you this little deal?”

  “This deal? This headache, you mean.”

  “What headache? He’s asking a few questions, that’s all.”

  She pointed to the bottle, and Anders poured her another vodka. She sipped it more slowly this time. “It’s not the questions. He’s an unchecked security risk on my ship. My ship, my business, does not like security risks.”

  “But you said he’s staying in his quarters.”

  “That’s not the point. Maya’s getting a bad vibe off him. The kid’s suspicious, and that makes him a risk. Bishop agrees.” She shook her head. “I wanted to see how much of his father he had in him. Well, he’s got too much for my taste, and now we’re heading into Arvin with him.”

  “Keeping him on board again?”

  “Damn straight,” she replied. “This is the last place I’d want to let him loose. We’ll see how he handles another restricted liberty, but I lay you odds that he’ll be in Mr. Bishop’s brig before we’re done.” She took another sip.

  “Hell, El-, er, Jana, if you’re that worried, why are we even going to Arvin?”

  She shook her head. “Believe me, if I had a choice, I wouldn’t be, but orders are orders.”

  “Orders? Ha! Who in the universe does the Winged Lady take orders from?”

  She chuckled. “If you can believe it, Father Chessman.”

  He leaned in against the table. “You’re kidding. You know Father Chessman?”

  “Of course not,” she replied. “No one knows Father Chessman.” She saw him open his mouth, but she cut him off. “No one knows him. That’s what they say. Supposedly it’s all dead drops and encoded orders, but when you get an order from him, you follow it or you start looking over your shoulder for the rest of your very short life.”

  “Okay, I get it,” he said. “He’s not interested in the boy, is he?”

  She shook her head and took another sip. “I doubt he ever knew Malcolm even had a son. No, this is about cargo, plain and simple. He’s got something special for me to pick up and deliver.”

  “What is it?”

  She finished off her vodka and set the glass down on the table between them. “Now you’re starting to ask too many questions, Jimmy. Do I need to put you in your quarters for the rest of the trip?”

  “No, Captain. That won’t be necessary.”

  Michael lay stretched out on the floor of his quarters, the survival bag beside him. The final climb had done him in. At least that was what he told himself. The climb was what was making his heart race.

  It had nothing to do with the talk of security risks, of slagging computers, or of a brig. He thought about the hard metal wall next to the quartermaster storage, Mr. Bishop, and his ominous brig.

  He had to get off the ship, and it had to be at Arvin. There was no question about that.

  No, the only question he had was this: Who the hell was Father Chessman?

  Chapter 23

  “They say that a prisoner’s first obligation is to escape, and I suppose they’re right. But if it’s at all practical, do try to piss in the jailer’s coffee on the way out.” — Malcolm Fletcher

  MICHAEL DID HIS BEST TO look surprised by the news. “Again? Just how long am I supposed to stay cooped up in my cabin?” He pushed his lunch back in unfeigned anger.

  Anders glanced around the galley, but no one else was sitting that close to them. “Look, Michael, I understand. For that matter, I’m not that keen on staying on board either. It’s Arvin, after all, and I could do a little business here, touch base with a few friends... maybe even check in on a lady friend or two,” he said with a wink. “But each captain has her own way of doing things, and Lewis runs a tight schedule.”

  “Yeah, I bet her schedule isn’t the only thing that’s tight.”

  “Come on, Michael, show a little respect,” came Anders’ rebuke, but Michael noticed hints of a grin.

  Ultimately,
he shrugged it off. “Whatever. All I know is that this isn’t how I’m going to run things when I’m back on Sophie.”

  Anders nodded. “Well, it’ll be your choice then. For now…”

  “Yeah, for now I’ll be a good little boy and wait it out.”

  “I could come by for a visit, maybe teach you a new card game?”

  Michael shook his head with feigned sulkiness. “Maybe tomorrow. I’m gonna grab a sandwich or two for my dinner. I won’t be good company tonight.”

  He took his tray back to the counter and fished through the sandwich bin for some turkey or ham. On his way out, he grabbed a water bottle and nodded to Maya who followed him from a discreet distance. She at least let him get back into his quarters without watching him the entire way, but once he was into his own corridor, he knew he was on Mr. Bishop’s monitors.

  He still had about two hours before they dropped from tach, so he packed methodically, then unpacked and packed it again, trying to squeeze in a little more. He could not take much, and the truth of the matter was, very little mattered. He had Malcolm’s old utility knife, some food, a bottle of water, and every scrap of cash he had down to the last half-credit.

  His timing was little more than an estimate, but he figured his best chance to get into the cargo bay was in the minutes after the down-tach, during the pre-docking maneuvers. It was a hectic time, and while the artificial gravity did a good job at compensating for their various thrust changes, most crew sat out the jerkier moments belted into a locked chair.

  “Prepare for down-tach,” came the announcement over the speakers. “Stage one in ninety.”

  That was his signal. He tossed together some dirty laundry and a pillow to simulate a body under the covers. He did not know how much time that would actually buy him if they came looking for him, but that was what they always did in the movies. He figured it could not hurt.

  He was popping the panel out from the under the sink when the first down-tach hit. It was smooth, but he could hear it, a subtle change in the background hum of the Jaguar. He pushed his bag through and laid it next to the survival bag. He had stored that in there almost from the beginning. After all, how would he explain it if someone saw it in his closet?

  He was halfway through the wall himself when the next announcement came. “Down-tach, stage two in sixty.”

  He squirmed his legs through and pulled the panel back snug against the brackets. He was not going back through, and he wanted to leave no trace of how he escaped. Then he went to work on the floor grate. He had refastened it with only two of the nuts, so it was quick work. He had finished setting it aside when he felt the next down-tach. This one had a bit of a thump that rocked him back and forth in the tiny access space, but he did not care. He was probably as secure as he would be belted into a chair.

  The Jaguar had only a three stage down-tach, so he knew the next one would be the last. He stood and balanced himself over the missing grate, one foot on either side. He held his bag and the survival gear dangling in front of him, ready to drop them down onto the top of the algae tank below.

  “Down-tach, reentry in thirty… mark.”

  He took a deep breath and started counting it down in his head. What he was about to try was crazy, but he knew that staying was even crazier. He suddenly remembered some of his early pilot training in Sophie’s little flyer with Malcolm along as co-pilot. “Don’t be scared of the landing,” Malcolm had said. “Visualize your path, commit to it, and keep your stick on it.”

  They had been in flight at the time, with the ocean-front runway coming up. Even with what must have been a low-angle approach, he had felt like a falling rock. “But what if I come down too hard?”

  “Better too hard than too late,” Malcolm had said, looking out towards the sea beyond. “If you worry yourself into waiting too long, you’ll miss the runway, and this flyer can’t swim.”

  Back aboard the Jaguar, he felt the transition and dropped the bags. They hit softly and slid off. He went next, landing feet first and then sliding down on his backside towards the edge of the tank. By the time the call for status reports went out, he was already on the deck with a bag slung over each shoulder.

  He shuffled across the metal grates briskly, worried more about the time than about making noise. The environmental techs would not be nearly as busy as the engineers were, but they would still be checking their displays. He made his way port, then aft, then port again before turning aft once more.

  He could see his goal from there, a straight shot twenty meters back, a hatch that led into the bottom of the cargo hold. It was not a proper airlock, just a pressure door. According to the ship schematic, the Jaguar had three pressure hatches into cargo but only one airlock. In practice, the pressure hatches were almost as safe, since they could not be pulled open with a vacuum on the other side, but he had felt safer on the Heinrich where no potential atmospheric boundary was crossed with anything short of double-safety airlock.

  But here on the Jaguar, it was his salvation. They ran with a pressurized cargo hold here which meant that until they docked to unload, those pressure hatches could be opened. In fact, he had even seen one left standing open, back when he still had the run of the ship. He recalled Zane’s warning going through the core airlocks back on Heinrich. “If both doors are open, it signals an alarm on the bridge.” Despite the menacing Mr. Bishop guarding whatever it was up on deck one, hatch security was clearly much more lax on the Jaguar.

  The only problem was that between him and that hatch was the environmental control station. It was not directly in the path, fortunately, but it was immediately to starboard. Three stations were arranged in a horseshoe bay, the open end facing out into the path Michael had to traverse. All three of the watch standers sat at the controls there. He could hear them, and with a careful peek over a scrubber unit, he could see the tops of their heads.

  He thought about throwing something in the opposite direction to distract them, but the last thing he wanted was for one of them to get up and start investigating. This would have been so much better if they had down-tached on an off-shift. Seconds ticked away.

  Fuck it. If they see me, they see me. Commit to it.

  He stayed low and dashed aft crossing the gap as quickly as he could. He did not pause at the other side to see if they had reacted. He did not know what he would have done if they had, so it was wise that he did not stay near to find out. In another fifteen paces, he made it to the hatch. It was closed, but not secured. With a simple tug on the handle, it opened up.

  He stepped through and closed it behind him.

  Now for the easy part, he thought. All he had to do was find a container that was going to be unloaded at Arvin and climb inside. Easy, right?

  The Jaguar did not carry nearly as much cargo as the Heinrich, but it carried enough. She had five cargo decks, spaced evenly across the vertical space of the four crew decks. The central spine corridor ran the length of it back towards the engineering section, but otherwise, it was simply a large array of containers on sliding tracks.

  They could be emptied out to the sides, which was more efficient than Sophie’s smaller rear-loading cargo bay, but it was still not as efficient as Heinrich’s radial pattern, mostly because the radial loaders could unload as well as rotate and resort. On Heinrich, it meant that the cargo to be offloaded was almost always positioned out and forward. On the Jaguar, he had no idea how they optimized their cargo load.

  So he started down the length of the deck and promptly lost his footing. Of course, like the Heinrich, the long cargo section of the ship was without gravity. He shifted closer to the side and floated back along the handrails, looking for labels. Most were marked with square holo-codes. They did him no good without a scanner and a copy of the manifest. A few had business names on them, but he did not recognize any of them as belonging on Arvin. They could very well be, but his only memory of Arvin station had been running wildly through the corridors and lifts, ferrying packets from one office to a
nother.

  He heard a muted announcement, but he could not tell what it was. It was not the kind of alarm he would expect if they had discovered his absence, or worse, if they were about to vent the cargo hold.

  Determined, he drifted up to the second cargo deck and started working his way back forward. Again, it was mostly holo-codes. He found one labeled for Marius Mills. He could remember a Marius Mills, but he could not remember where it had been. For all he knew, it could have been all the way back on Taschin.

  He was almost back to the forward end when he missed the next handrail, almost as though it had moved away from him. He reached further forward to grab it, but it was still moving.

  Grasping at empty air, he realized what was happening. They were decelerating, only he was not. He started to fall. It was almost a hundred meters to the back end of the bay. Even at half a gravity, such a fall would be fatal. He panicked, but a life on ships had left him with good reflexes. As soon as you start to fall, grab at the take-holds, and in an emergency, any take-hold will do.

  In this case, he had grabbed onto the hatch handle of one of the containers. He had grabbed it with his left hand, while his right flailed pointlessly at open air. He swung around to take it with both hands, but in the process, his carrying bag slipped off his right arm and fell bouncing down the long cargo deck. He knew better than to try to go after it now, so he grabbed onto that handle with both hands as gravity built up. He still had the survival bag, and that was what mattered most.

  He wedged one foot against a railing as the deceleration increased past one gravity, and rapidly built up towards two. Back in the crew areas, he was sure they were not feeling this at all, but there was no acceleration compensation in cargo. If he could have spared the motion, he would have kicked himself. He should have been expecting the deceleration problem, what with Heinrich’s long zero-gravity core shaft, but he had not.