Assault on Ambrose Station: A Seth Donovan Novel (2 page)

“I won’t, I just wanted to tell you that if I could, I’d fight alongside you. I’m no soldier.”

“And it’s for that reason that we’d rather you stuck to doing what you do best. An untrained gunman on our side in a fight is more a liability than an asset.”

“Fel is thinker, warrior is doer.” offered Crege.

“Yeah, what he said. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to stalk my woman and pester her a bit before I get some shuteye, before this command meeting tonight.”

3.

I sat at Maxine’s small conference table, admiring the bright pink nightgown she wore while nursing a coffee. She sat at her writing desk and stared out her fake porthole. Although it looks exactly like a real one, it is actually high definition hologram depicting the outside of the ship. She could program it to show absolutely anything, from deep space to nebulae. I even once saw her gazing out at a scene that showed us underwater. This time she had the real sensors on the ship relaying her the images of Jump Space. The light from the myriad patterns and colours lit her face up and painted it all manner of shades.

“Don’t stare for too long, you’ll go blind.” I said.

“Bull shit.” That was Max, blunt and cutting through the crap.

“Just a rumour, is all.”

“It’s beautiful. I could stare at it all day.”

“Is that why you’re cross eyed?”

She laughed and threw a pencil at me, “Arsehole.”

“Thought I’d pop up a bit early before the meeting. See how things are going.”

“How’s your pilot training with Crege?”

I grunted.

“That good, huh?”

“’Sokay.”

“We shift into Gossamer in forty two hours. You going to be fit for duty then?”

“I should be. Leg’s healing well enough. Zoe tells me the nanites are almost done, but they itch like hell.”

“You big baby. Itching is good. Don’t let her catch you scratching at that nanite patch.”

I pulled my hand away from my thigh, where I had been subconsciously scratching at it. “What’s with all the meetings? Not happy with the plan?”

“There’s too many variables, too many what ifs. We’re running low on just about everything; food, manoeuvring fuel, spare parts, polycrete foam, credits. Most of all credits. We need some ideas on how to cash up for the repairs we sorely need. Any more damage and we run the risk of being labelled a Junker. Your grandfather will never let me live it down.”

A Junker was a derogatory term for a ship that gains a reputation for poor maintenance. The shit boxes of the galaxy. Once a ship gains that kind of notoriety, it’s very hard to get rid of it. Finding good crew to run a Junker was next to impossible, but many low skilled space farers can sign on to Junker ships. You didn’t need a good reputation or a great resume to be hired on one of those. It was a vicious cycle.

“Old Hieron would understand. He already approves of you, it’s not like he can take the ship off you anyway.”

Hieron Donovan was the longest serving Captain to ever own the Dreaming of Atmosphere. He held the job for over seventy years, and helped build the business and the reputation that the ship had in the Network. She was known as a reliable courier and hardworking ship, a model that all Captains since had worked to maintain. My grandfather was a somewhat eccentric Eridanian who retired many years ago and lives in seclusion on the tropical water world of Oceania in the Votus II System.

“Ha, don’t think for a moment that he wouldn’t fly out here just to chastise me for letting his ship fall into disrepute. He might even give it to someone else just to teach me a lesson.”

“Now that you mention it, he probably would. He’d probably relish the idea of coming out of retirement and being Captain one more time to finish the job.”

“If he does, he’s more than welcome to it.”

“Not a chance, his current wife would skin him alive.”

“Which one is his current wife? Elinda?”

“No, she left him about six years ago. Madeline is his seventh and current wife. Last time he wrote me though, he was having troubles again. He calls it his wandering eye.”

“He’s a dirty old man, is what he is. He needs to settle down with a woman his own age.”

“Ha, I don’t think anyone is his age. Let alone a woman who’d put up with this craziness.”

We both enjoyed a laugh, which died down to a comfortable silence, as we were both lost in thoughts of family and friends.

Max broke the silence first, “We should pay him a visit, when all this is over. Take a much-needed holiday. He’d want to know about Eric, and he should find out in person.”

“Agreed. He might even be able to find us a nice paying job as well. Votus II isn’t a bad system to work if you know people.”

“There’s something we need to talk about though.”

“Zoe?”

“Yeah.”

I sighed. I knew the score. “Have you talked to her yet?”

“No, I wanted to talk to you about her first. I want what’s best for both of you.”

“Okay. What do you want to know?”

“You’ve been together a couple of months now. Sorry if it’s being a little personal, but I need to know your intentions towards her.”

“Haven’t given it much thought, to be honest. Been taking it day by day. I love her, she loves me, and so far that’s been enough for both of us.”

“You know, and she knows, that she has a place here with us permanently if she wants it. We haven’t had a medical officer like her for a long time. Nevertheless, I know she has other commitments. Finishing her studies, for one. Her mother on Kanto Prime is another. She was hired under the pretence that this was an internship, I doubt her university would accept it if we just stole her from them.”

“What can they do?”

“They can sue, for one.”

“Under what grievance?”

“Loss of prestige. She is a rising star in cybernetics and biological augmentation. Universities like to pimp out their star pupils and alumni to big research initiatives and Corporations. They can sue for loss of prestige, which for them means less research grants and funding from governments.”

I thought hard. What should I do? I did not want to let her go, but I didn’t want to get in the way of her career. If she went back to studying, it would effectively mean the end of our relationship. There was no way I could ask her to wait for me, not when every time I go through a Jump Gate I lose three months of her life, six months if I want to come back. Alternatively, I also didn’t want her to be in danger as much as we had. Not all our jobs were as life threatening as this one, but they certainly weren’t always easy courier jobs. Even standard courier work can be dangerous. Space, to use a cliché, was dangerous by definition.

“I don’t know what to say. It can’t be my decision. That much I know.”

“You need to talk with her. Soon. Her year is already up; by rights we should already have had this chat with her a month ago.”

“Alright, I’ll try and bring it up with her sometime.”

“Soon.”

I nodded, “Soon.”

There was a knock on the hatch and it opened to reveal Crege and Fel at the entrance. Max waved them in, and she joined us at the conference table.

“Tac, are you listening in? I may want your input at some point.”

I am receiving audio, clearly. Please proceed.

“We shift into Gossamer at oh-eight-hundred day after tomorrow, and we need to work on contingencies.” declared Max.

“Of what nature?” inquired Fel.

“Financial. We’ve compiled a list of supplies that we absolutely need, there’s not a lot of supplies on the list that we only
mostly
need. Problem is we simply do not have the credits to get it all. I have Mal doing up a priority repair report, and Tac has a report of supply priorities but I want you all going through it and giving your own recommendations by this time tomorrow.”

“Is there any cargo we can trade?” asked Crege.

“Not officially,” I added, “Eridani Station isn’t like most Jump Stations. It’s more militarised than most. It’s more of a forward outpost than a trade station. There is some possibilities, though.”

“Like what?” asked Max.

“The station officers are Eridanian, most likely. They’ll have interests back home and they have to muster out on rotation. If they can pocket some profits while they’re stuck on the blockade, they might jump at the opportunity.”

“So…offer bribes in the form of cargo to get some supplies misappropriated or ‘lost’ and have them turn up on our dock?”

“Something like that.”

“How risky is that?” asked Fel.

“Don’t know. Depends on the station personnel. If they’re anything like the depots I’ve visited in the past, there’s always something shifty going on below decks.”

“Shifty?”

“Yeah, like gambling, black markets, smuggling, and illegal stills.”

“On military establishments?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Wouldn’t command find out?”

“Ha, nope. The senior non-coms usually run them like crime bosses. Find yourself a Chief or Warrant Officer stuck on a shitty rotation and you can guarantee he’ll be in the thick of some scheme to make himself some credits.”

“Alright, Donny,” said Max, “Go down to the cargo holds and go through our stuff. Tag anything you think some bored station official might be interested in for a trade or bribe. You seem to know you way around a military depot, so you’re on black market detail. Find us credits or goods. We’ll have to make do with the rest of what we have the official way. I’ll get those priority reports to you before we dock and work out what we can barter for and what we can afford to pay for.”

“Art has offered to help out with our other problem as well.” I offered.

“Which problem would that be?” I could tell Max was not impressed. She rarely was when Artemis was concerned; they had come to blows a few times.

“If they turn us away from entering the system.”

“What does the bitch want, now?”

“Nothing. She’s on our side, as far as this is concerned.”

“So what can she do? Sleep with the station commander?”

“No…although she could probably pull that off. She offered to do some snooping and track down a patrol schedule for the system. If we knew where the Protectorate patrols would be, we can avoid them and improve our chances of slipping through.”

Protectorate security systems are top of the line. Unless she has been hiding some unknown talent for hacking, I do not believe Ms. Derris can break into their computers to obtain such knowledge.

“I agree.” said Max, “She’s bullshitting you.”

“Say what you will about Artemis,” said Fel, “She doesn’t brag. If she says she can do this, I believe
she
believes she can help.”

“And if she happens to get herself shoved out an air lock while she tries, all the better.”

“Hating her isn’t going to get this job over with any quicker,” I said, “We might as well include her in the team, since she kind of already is.”

“You’re starting to sound a lot like
him
.” said Max as she pointed at Fel. He just grinned at me.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I said.

“As will I.” said Fel.

“Are we still going to shoot through?” asked Crege. He was referring to our plan to just burn full thrust into the system after we disembark. He was rather proud of it, actually, since he had said it first. For once, it was our best bet to get in-system. The Protectorate had blockaded the system going out, but it was an exclusion zone going in. You could only enter on humanitarian missions and were limited in what weapons you could take in. With trouble brewing in the Eridani System behind us, though, the Protectorate was likely to come down hard on
any
incursions to the system. We couldn’t afford the risk, if we were turned around and sent back Jenner would blow the bombs he had smuggled on board.

“Yeah, we’re not even going to wait for approval or anything. Cover story is that Corporates chased us here, which is true. We need repairs and supplies. If they don’t ask our destination we don’t have to lie, but if they do all we say is we’re scouting for a run into Gossamer. If they stomp on us about that we’ll just nod and smile. Play nice. Gun it for the debris field that Seth says is there.”

“It is. The Protectorate Fleet can’t afford to follow us in, they’ll just write us off as lost. Everyone who goes in during quieter times would just have to sign a waiver saying they recognise that the Fleet can’t rescue them. If we can avoid their patrols, they can’t force us to turn around.”

“Is there any chance they would fire on us?” asked Max.

“The Protectorate wouldn’t order it, but an individual patrol captain might just do it anyway. They’d rather disable us and tow us back to the station, but if they accidentally blow us up…well, the Gossamer System is dangerous. Easily able to write off the loss as just a Ghantri attack.”

“Same goes for us and them.” said Crege.

“I disagree.” I said, “There’s a huge difference between a Corporate wanker trying to catch us and a Protectorate ship trying to turn us back. Those crew are good men and women.”

“We won’t be firing on Protectorate forces, Crege.” commanded Max, “That will instantly put us on their shit list, or the nearest bounty board.”

“What do we do if it comes to that? If they do disable us or manage to board us?” asked Fel.

“Tac, anything you can do there?” asked Max.

I would need some time, but I believe I should be able to gain access to a Protectorate ship that docks with us to board. I will be unable to do anything about their physical presence on board the Dreaming of Atmosphere, but I can possibly create enough mayhem for you to take advantage of.