Rocketship Patrol (5 page)

“I wouldn’t have it any other way. And of course, we’ll drop you off. It’d be my pleasure.” Hackenthrush swung off the ladder and snapped his fingers at the ceiling. “8724, chart us a course for the Drantini Outer Waystation–”

“Excuse me, sir,” Loy interrupted, coming up behind him, “but shouldn’t we check out the accident site first?”

“Seen one accident site, seen ’em all, rookie. Really, they’re not all that interesting to look at.” Hackenthrush pointed down the corridor. “My cabin’s just down this way, Miss Swartzbaum. After you.”

“I meant, there will be debris” Loy said, following them. “It’s a navigation hazard. We have to set up warning beacons.”

“We do?” Hackenthrush asked as they reached the oval hatch to his cabin and stopped. “Says who?”

“It is–” Loy began.

Hackenthrush lifted a warning finger. “Don’t say it.”

“–Standard operating protocol,” Loy finished.

“You know, if I wanted to be constantly reminded about all the things I’m not doing…” Hackenthrush turned to Rikki. “Remind me again, who’s the senior officer here?”

“8724?” Rikki guessed.

Hackenthrush grunted. “No… me.
I am
.”

“Seriously?” Rikki extended a paw. “Well, congrats, I guess.”

“Thank you,” Hackenthrush shook Rikki’s paw then smirked at Loy. “And as senior officer, I have damn well near absolute say on what course of action we take, protocol be damned. I shouldn’t have to remind you of that, Junior Officer Five-Percent-Top-Of-My-Class.”

Loy sighed. “If we check out the accident site, it’ll give you more time to get to know Miss Swartzbaum.”

“Duty calls, I’m afraid, Miss Swartzbaum,” Hackenthrush said, opening the hatch of his cabin for Cortez. His cabin was bathed in soft red mood light from an artificial candle that pumped cheap musk into the air. “It won’t take long, I assure you.”

“Let’s hope not,” Cortez said, her smile fading. She stepped into the cabin, her nose twitching with displeasure as the musk hit her.

“Let me just show you where everything is,” Hackenthrush said, attempting to follow her in.

Cortez put a hand on his chest to stop him on the threshold. “I think I can figure things out. Call me when lunch is ready.” She gave Hackenthrush a solid push and closed the hatch in his face, squashing his nose.

Rikki stared at the closed door, his ear-tips flicking, agitated. “I bet she’s getting naked in there...”

“Damn it,” Hackenthrush said, “I knew I shouldn’t have moved the surveillance cameras to rookie’s cabin.”

“What did you say?” Loy asked.

Hackenthrush squinted at her. “What did you
hear
?”

Loy sighed. “Never mind. Anybody else think there’s something wrong here?”

“Yeah,” Hackenthrush said, rubbing his nose. “I’m on the wrong side of this door.”

“I mean with her,” Loy said. “She just lost a ship. A new ship. But she didn’t even ask about getting the black box. Insurance company won’t pay out without it.”

“She’s probably in shock,” Rikki said.

Loy shook her head. “The med scans didn’t show anything. And how do you accidentally blow up a ship by pressing the wrong button? There are safeguards. Even if there was a single button that could do it, the Ship’s Brain would never allow it without several layers of verbal authentication. Right, 8724?”

“I know I wouldn’t,” 8724 said.

“I’m telling you, it doesn’t add up.”

“No, doesn’t add up at all,” Hackenthrush said. He slapped his hands together. “Oh, well, what you gonna do? I’m gonna go make her some lunch.”

“Maybe a Cobb salad?” Rikki suggested.

“With a nice rare steak.” Hackenthrush started down the corridor, back towards the ladder. “I think we’ve got some New Hirenk strips in the freezer.”

Rikki caught up with him. “I have the perfect wine. Fortified.”

Loy watched the pair disappear down the ladder. “It’s too soon to mutiny, isn’t it, 8724?”

“It is only your first day.”

FOUR

“Gas. It’s all gas.”

The rusting bulk of the
Exalted Refuse
drifted below the wide expanse of debris field, spotlight shafts spearing up from her dented forward probe into the cloud of sparkling dust and slowly dissipating gas.

“Just like I told you it would be when you spotted the explosion,” Vei continued. The Halgorian was four foot tall, hunched over under a glistening, ridged dome of a shell. Her bulging eyes were fixed on the holotank set in the rim of her majority shareholder’s nest-station, which showed an image of the debris field displayed relayed from an external camera on the
Refuse
’s broad back. “Something that intense doesn’t leave anything behind.”

Her fellow Halgorian and
Exalted Refuse
’s junior minority shareholder, Dag, was crouched next to Vei’s nest-station. “We can tank the gas,” he suggested optimistically.

“And we will.” Vei scratched at one of the hairy tufts of green-yellow mold growing at the edge of her shell just above the base of her neck. “But it’s all trace nobles, now. All the good stuff was either burnt off in the explosion or has already dispersed. What’s left is barely worth sucking in – not enough left to pay for half the fuel it took to get out here.”

“I’m sorry, boss,” Dag said, his head bowing with shame. “I was sure we’d find something.”

“We all wanted to find something – that’s why I let you talk me into checking it out. But optimism doesn’t pay the bills. It doesn’t send money back home. And it certainly doesn’t repair the air exchanger’s humidifier or cure the shell rot.”

“Nope, no it doesn’t.” Dag absently scratched away at one of his own tufts of shell-rot mold, an irregular patch over his crotch. “Still, had to take the chance and check it out, didn’t we?”

Vei let out a bleating sigh, her wattle swaying. “What choice did we have?”

“Hold on.” Dag stabbed a sucker-tipped finger into the holotank. “What’s this here? That’s not gas.”

“No, it’s not.” Vei worked a foot pedal to zoom the camera in on a knobby, slowly spinning sphere drifting in the gas. She leaned her sloped head in and her wide lips slowly curled into a cautious smile. “Looks like a ship’s data core.”

“A data core?” Feh,
Exalted Refuse
’s senior minority shareholder, asked over the intercom from his engineering nest-station, all the way in the back of the ship’s cavernous hold. A field of hundreds of junk piles, some seventy feet high and scraping the hold’s ceiling, separated Feh’s nest-station from Vei’s.

“Could be,” Vei said. “That or an extremely lucky beach ball.”

“It’s got to be a data core,” Dag said. He stared at the sphere in the holotank and licked his lips with a flat gray tongue. “I knew we’d find something. That’ll cover fuel costs and more.”

Vei croaked out a grunt. “If it’s not intact.”

“What do you mean?” Dag asked.

“Can’t salvage it if its Brain is still alive,” Vei said. “Sentient being laws. If it is alive, once we bring it aboard, we’re legally responsible for making sure it gets someplace safe. More trouble than it’s worth.”

“Well,” Dag said, leaning close to Vei and lowering his voice, “we can always erase the Brain if it’s there. Nobody will know the difference.”

Vei bobbed her head in agreement. “Bring it aboard, Feh.”

“Well?” Vei asked.

The five foot wide sphere of data core sat on the floor of
Exalted Refuse’s
hold on the cargo receiving pad next to the engineering block, towers of junk looming behind it. Knobs–data and power connection points–studded the outside of the sphere. Most had been bent and twisted in the explosion, some having been sheered completely off, and all showed signs of charring. But the sphere’s casing itself appeared, at least visibly, intact.

“So, is it dead?” Dag asked.

“We’ll know soon enough,” Feh said, dragging a coiled power cord up to the data core and clamping it to one of the least bent and charred knobs, just below the core’s manual interface panel. He glanced back over his shell. “Vei, hit the juice, will you?”

Crouched next to the engineering nest-station, Vei reached over the rim and gave the power feed bulb a squeeze.

A small speaker in the data core’s interface panel emitted three short beeps, then a burst of static.

“That sounds promising,” Vei said.

“Hello?” Dag knocked on the side of the data core with a crowbar. “Anyone home?”

The static went away. “Who turned out the lights?” Igon asked in the rent-a-speedship’s sexless voice. “Gladys, is that you! You came back for me! I knew you would!”

“Damn,” Vei said. She scratched at her neck mold. “Somebody’s home.”

“Not for long.” Feh waddled back to his nest-station and hopped inside. He pulled at a pair of control tubes. High above them, hydraulic servos hissed and gears screamed as a massive, softly humming electromagnet crane descended from the hold’s ceiling. “This will erase it good.”

“Erase?” Igon asked in a panic. “Wait a second... I’m too pretty to die—”

Feh swung the electromagnet down towards the data core. It clanked against the sphere’s top.

“Hey!” Igon protested.

“Careful,” Vei said. “We just want the personality erased – don’t damage the matrix.”

“I know what I’m doing.” Feh yanked a tube and the electromagnet rose to hang a foot above the data core. He twisted a bulb and the hum from the electromagnet intensified. “Stand back,” Feh said, and slapped his fleshy palm against a pressure-sensitive nodule.

The magnet pulsed, a booming crack of a sound that echoed through the hold.

“Ack!” Igon squealed. “Hey, that tickles...”

“Give it another,” Dag said.

Feh hit the nodule again. The magnet pulsed. The data core shuddered.

Igon broke into song. “
Daisy, Daisy, give me an answer
…” The magnet pulsed again. Igon shrieked, his voice warbling. “Who is Daisy? And what the hell is a bicycle?”

“One last one should do it,” Feh said, and twisted the power bulb up five notches. The electromagnet’s hum became a roar. Dag covered his ear-slits with his hands. Feh reached for the pulse nodule.

“You guys are blowing a huge opportunity!” Igon yelled. “I can
pay
you!”

Vei grabbed Feh’s wrist just as he was bringing it down on the nodule. “Hold it, Feh. –What do you mean,
pay us
?” she asked the data core.

“Get me a body,” Igon said, “and I’ll explain.”

Vei croaked a grunt. “Dag, where’d that utility robot get to?”

“The one you shot for breaking the air exchanger’s humidifier?”

“That one.”

“Pile 17, I think.”

“Patch it up and bring it here.”

Feh disconnected the transfer cable from the data core and waddled back to his engineering nest, where Vei and Dag waited, crouching. Dag had a bent-barreled autorifle on his lap, one hand covering the hilt to hide the fact it didn’t have a powercell.