He Who Dares: Book Three (3 page)

“Sierra-Whisky-Gulf 893, this is the Supervisor for Harbor Center, please confirm the name of Master of record for the
Prometheus
.”

“That would be, Captain Andrew Tregallion, but at the moment, I am in command, Captain Michael Gray.”

“Mike?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I have your captain’s ticket on file, but no record of you being the skipper of the
Prometheus
.”

“Please check with the Certification Board for an updated
Change-of-Command
notice.” The seconds ticked by as someone obviously went to check. It was there; Gramps had made sure of that. It was a question of whether the computer updated the
Prometheus
’ registration log in time.

“I have it, Sierra-Whisky-Gulf 893. Is Captain Tregallion on board?”

“He is, and acting as chief engineer.”

“That could be a problem, Sierra-Whisky-Gulf 893.”

“How so!” Mike snapped back, getting irritated. “Gramps is a licensed nuclear power plant engineer, and if you check, you will see his engineering ticket isn’t under suspension.” Again, the interminable delay, but expected. It didn’t make the waiting easier. Harbor Center could still deny them clearance out of spite after their last stunt.

“I have the record, Sierra-Whisky-Gulf 893, handing you back to the traffic controller. Good luck,
Prometheus
.”

“Thanks.” Mike couldn’t blame them, they had to go by the regulations in this case after the stink of their fly-by stunt. On other things, like his age, they turned a blind eye.

“Sierra-Whisky-Gulf 893, you are cleared to maneuver out of the harbor. Hold at point Tango for outbound traffic.”

Mike cut his undocking time in half, and as it was late at night, there was little or no traffic in the harbor to worry about, not that he didn’t take care. He skimmed the
Old Lady
across the still water a point or two above the legal limit. If the Harbor Patrol saw him, they didn’t squawk him or light up the night with flashing blue lights. Mike suspected they wouldn’t, not with the urgency at hand.

“Shit!” He muttered to himself.

“What?” Gramps asked, looking up from the control board at his screen in the engine room.

“I can see the
Titan, Samson
, and the
Lady Penelope
taking off ahead of us.”

“Yeah, I expected that once the news got out.” Across the dark waters of Christchurch harbor, Mile could see the white water, and navigation lights of the three tugs all heading into orbit ahead of him.

“Maybe we should break off, Gramps. There's no way we can get ahead of them.”

“Luck favors the bold, my son. Never say die.”

“I know, ‘it’s not over till the fat lady sings’,” hearing Gramps chuckle.

They reached point Tango and waited for their clearance, and the moment they got it, Mike piled on the power. They were airborne in a matter of seconds, climbing as hard as he could push her, and leaving the AG footprint rooster tail far behind. Even Gramps looked up from his board, but said nothing.

“Orbital Center, this is Sierra-Whisky-Gulf 893 requesting clearance for an orbital insertion.”

“Sierra-Whisky-Gulf 893, be advised, I have heavy traffic in the pattern at the moment. Remain at present altitude and heading.”

“Copy that, Orbital Center.” Mike tapped his board, opening up the search volume around the
Prometheus
to the max. In all he counted eight tugs heading into orbit as a high rate of knots.

“Looks like a bloody tug convention up here.” Gramps said, nodding at his repeater screen in the engine room.

“Sierra-Whisky-Gulf 893, I have an orbital insertion vector for you, stand by for download.”

“Copy, Orbital Center, standing by for download now.”

In moments their course for insertion and flight path heading out to the gas giant appeared on his board. Mike’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead realizing this was an even bigger emergency than they were letting on. From the look of the data from Orbital Center, they wanted every deep space tug on the scene as soon as possible. Boosting up and out into the black, Mike took the
Old Lady
out of the atmosphere and into orbit in less than half a rotation.

“Sierra-Whisky-Gulf 893, be advised, all inbound traffic is now diverted from your and the other tugs’ flight paths. You have a clear run, and no speed restrictions to your destination.”

“Thank you, Orbital Center. I copy that.”

Mike spooled up the inertial compensators up to max, hearing them climb up to a deep rumble. He could feel the massive generator through the soles of his space boots, making him feel at home. Setting the rad and micrometer shield to 90%, he pushed the power bar to its stops and watched the gravities climb upward. They reached fifty G’s, but it did nothing to close the gap between them and the other tugs racing outward.

“Want to bet some of those buggers will turn back before we are half way there?”

“No bet, Gramps, I know they will, the
Titan
is just too fast.” He sighed. “The question is, why did we bother coming?”

“You can never tell, son, we might just be needed to haul in some life pods, or something.”

“Damn all credits in that, just a lot of good will.” He muttered to himself.

“One day you might just be thankful that an old tug like this was around to haul your sorry ass in if you found yourself adrift in a life pod!” The old man snorted.

“Didn’t mean it like that, Gramps.” He said in his defense.

“I know you didn’t, son, and I didn’t miss the situation that prompted it either.”

Mike kept his silence after that. He hadn’t meant Gramps to overhear what he’d muttered, but even in the engine-room environment Gramps still had good hearing with his headset on. They trailed after the others, still hearing the distress call on the high-band receiver. By this time, everyone in-system had heard it; those in the know, shivering in horror. One of those impossible strings of misfortunes had overtaken the luxury liner
Queen Ann
on her inbound course. Unlike many regular passenger liners, she had the clearance to go just about anywhere she wanted on the whim of the captain or one of his very rich passengers. They’d even received permission to pass through the
Rift
and visit Christchurch. In this case all their misfortunes met at the same juncture. The captain thought it would a good idea to let his human, and non-human, passengers see the spectacular Christchurch system, especially the Jovian gas giant, up close. At the same time many of the previously mentioned passengers wanted a close look, a very close look. It could be said in the captain of the
Queen Ann’s
defense, that he let the pride in his vessel, and the prompting of his rich clientele to override his natural caution. This led him to descend further into the Jovian atmosphere than he would have otherwise. Multiple storm eyes dotted the surface, and it was toward one of the smaller ones that the
Queen Ann
was headed when her main electrical buss blew.

That caused a cascading power failure throughout the ship and the fusion reactor to
SCRAM.
That in turn brought down her main drive. When the electrical buss blew, it killed a number of her main engineering crew, and with the AG generator off-line, even for a short while before the emergency generator kicked in, the 530,000-ton luxury liner sank deeper into the gas giant’s embrace. By the time they restored partial power to the bridge, the captain realized to his horror that they were below the maximum safe limit he could launch the life pods. These were designed to safely put the pods out into space and down on the surface of an M Class planet not pull the life pod out of the gravity well of even a one G planet, let alone that of a 2.5 G gas giant.

Two hours ago, his first “Mayday” lit up the screen of Orbital Approach and was immediately passed to Orbital Center, but there was little they could do. A quick check verified there were no vessels within immediate range to aid the stricken liner. The call went out to all deep space tugs as the authorities tried to mount some kind of rescue mission. Many suspected it was already too late, but they had to try. The captain and crew of the
Queen Ann
worked desperately to get the main engines back on line, but other than stabilizing their sink rate by diverting power to the Ag system, nothing worked.

For ten long hours, Mike flew the
Prometheus
outward, using two of them for breaking. It was a rough twelve hours, even with the compensators working at max against the fifty G inertia. Even so, their rate of approach was still high for a zero/zero intercept with the gas giant.

“You tuned into the commercial frequency, Mike?”

“Sure am.”

“Anything?”

“Oh yes, the
Titan
and
Samson
are sitting back while the
Lady Penelope
haggles with the shipping agent.”

“Trying to get round the standard Lloyds’ salvage contract, I bet.”

“Right, but the agent is sticking to her guns. Standard, or nothing.”

“Sheesh! You’d think that something else besides money would come into play at a time like this, like rescuing the bloody passengers!” Gramps was definitely irritated. “You have the
Queen Ann
on screen?”

“Just about. It’s a little murky down there, but I’ve got an active ping back from her.”

“Good. So what’s your plan? We come to a standstill and dicker like the rest?”

“Hell no! We go straight in, Gramps.”

“You’d better think about that, Mike. I’m not sure the
Old Lady
can take that kind of pressure.”

“She’ll take it, Gramps. We don’t have to go all the way down, just far enough to get a tractor beam on her.” Mike expected his grandfather’s support, hearing silence instead. He looked at the screen, seeing the worried look on Gramps’ face. “You think we shouldn’t?”

“I’m not saying that, but it’s a hell of a risk.”

“We can do it, Gramps, honest. We drop down, get a line on her, and haul her butt back up.”

“Hmm, that’s going to strain the old girl to the limit.”

“Come on, Gramps, you know we can do it.” Excitement got the better of him, and he steamrolled over every objection Gramps came up with. In the end, the old man reluctantly agreed, but he didn’t sound happy about it.

“YES!” Mike yelled at last, immediately backing off on the breaking thrust, hearing Gramps chuckle in the background.

“Thought you’d like that.”

“Rad, and meteor shield to max, Gramps. Here we go!”

*  *  *  *  *  *

Captain Jenkins sat on the Bridge couch of the
Titan
sipping coffee, a frown on his face; his eyes were locked on his Doppler radar. What it told him he didn’t like. The
Queen Ann
was now so deep into the atmosphere it was questionable whether he could get down to her. He knew the limitations of his tug better than anyone, and risking her down that deep made him break out in a sweat just thinking about it. The liner had stabilized her downward drift so she wasn’t sinking any deeper, at least for the moment. How long she could maintain her altitude was anyone’s guess if they didn’t get their fusion reactor back online. The
Titan’
s fuel was another concern, and extracting pure hydrogen out of that soup down there was questionable. He listened to the
Lady Penelope
haggling with the shipping agent and getting nowhere. It was clear she was in contact with the captain of the
Queen Ann
on a private company channel, encrypted of course. He would have loved to be able to listen in on that conversation, but he didn’t have the equipment to do it. His best guess was that the
Penny
wouldn’t take a standard towing contract, nor would the
Sammy
, that left him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to take it either.

“Captain!” The helmsman Rock Hanson called.

“What?” He asked, looking up.

“We’ve got a ship coming in awfully fast here.” Charlie Jenkins stood up, walked over to the console, studying it for a while.

“Who the hell would be coming in that fast…” He stopped. “Shit! I bet that’s the
Prometheus
.”

“The
Prometheus
! What’s that pile of rust doing here?”

“Damn it! She’s not slowing for a zero/zero either!” Charlie Jenkins muttered.

“Then what the hell is she doing?” Jenkins grabbed the portable mike and keyed the contact.

“
Prometheus
, this is the
Titan
, do you copy?”

“We copy you,
Titan
. How’s the weather down there?” Mike’s voice came back.

“Warm and sunny with a chance of rain! What the hell do you think it's like, boy!”