Starhawk (2 page)

Tuesday, November 3, 2195

THE
COPPERHEAD
WAS
floating through the fogs of transdimensional space, somewhere between Fomalhaut and Serenity Station, which is to say it was well off the more traveled routes. Priscilla Hutchins, the acting captain, was half-asleep in the pilot's seat. The actual senior officer, Jake Loomis, had gone back to the passenger cabin, where he might have drifted off, or was maybe playing chess with Benny, the AI. Soft music drifted through the ship. The Three Kings doing “Heartbreak.”

Priscilla was vaguely aware of the humming and beeping of the electronics and the quiet flow of air through the vents. Then, suddenly, she wasn't. The lights had gone out. And the ship bounced hard, as if it had been dropped into a storm-tossed sea. The displays were off, and the warning klaxon sounded. Power down.

“System failure,” said Benny, using the slightly modified tone that suggested he'd also suffered a cutback.

Emergency lights blinked on and cast an eerie glow across the bridge. The ship rocked and slowed and accelerated and rocked again. Then, within seconds, all sense of motion stopped. “Did we jump back out, Benny?” she asked.

“Affirmative.”

Jake's voice came loud and subtly amused from the cabin: “Priscilla, what happened?”

She knew exactly what had happened. This was one more test on her qualification flight. There was no danger to the
Copperhead
. Nobody was at risk other than herself.

“Engines have shut down,” said Benny.

“Engines off,” she told Jake. “Power outage.”

The navigational display flickered back to life, and the stars blinked on. She couldn't see anything through the ports, of course. They were all blocked by the heavy shielding that protected the
Copperhead
against radiation. They'd used it for Priscilla's certification flight because the mission had included a visit to Palomus, which was located in the Wolf 359 system. Wolf 359 was a flare star. The shielding covered every piece of Plexiglas in the ship. The lander was also shielded.

Jake appeared at the hatch. “You okay, Priscilla?”

“I'm fine.” The misty transdimensional universe that provided shortcuts across the cosmos had vanished, replaced by the vast sweep of the Milky Way. “We're back outside.” That would have been automatic. During a power failure, the drive unit was designed to return the vehicle to normal space. Otherwise, the ship risked being lost forever, with no chance of rescue. “Benny, is there an imminent threat?”

“Negative, Priscilla. Ship is secure.”

“Very good.” She turned to Jake, who was buckling down beside her. He was middle-aged, low-key, competent. His voice never showed emotion. Forbearance sometimes. Tolerance. But that was all. “You want me to send out a distress call?”

“Where would you send it, Priscilla?”

“Serenity is closest.” It would, of course, be a hyperspace transmission. The station would know within a few hours that they were in trouble.

“Good. No. Don't send. Let's assume you've done that. What's next?”

 * * * 

THERE WASN'T ACTUALLY
that much else to do. She asked Benny for details on the damage and was told where the problems lay and what needed to be done before restarting the engines. The electronics had gone out because the main feeding line had ruptured. She went down into the cargo hold, opened the access hatch, and explained to Jake how she would have managed the repairs. He asked a few questions, seemed satisfied with her replies, and they started back topside.

They were just emerging from the connecting shaft when Benny came back on the circuit. “Priscilla, we're receiving a radio signal. Artificial.”

She looked at Jake. And smiled.

“No,” he said. “It's not part of the exercise.”

That was hard to believe. But even though the ground rules allowed him to make stuff up, he was not permitted to lie about whether a given occurrence was a drill. “What's it say, Benny?”

“I have not been able to make a determination. The signal, I suspect, is greatly weakened.”

It made no sense. There wouldn't be anybody out here. They were light-years from everything.

While she hesitated, Jake took over. “Benny, can you get a fix on it?”

“Within limits, yes.”

“Where's it coming from?”

“The nearest star in that direction, Captain, is Capua. But Capua is more than two hundred light-years away. It certainly did not originate there. Moreover, I believe the transmission is a broadcast signal. Not directional.”

“Okay,” said Jake. “What do you make of it, Priscilla?”

“No way an artificial radio signal's going to travel two hundred light-years. Especially a broadcast.”

“Therefore—?”

“It's a distress call. Somebody actually did what we've been rehearsing. Broke down and got thrown out into normal space.”

“So what do we do?”

“If the signal's so deteriorated that we can't read it—”

“—Yes?—”

“They've been out here a while and are probably beyond help.”

“Very good, Priscilla. Shall we make that assumption?”

She straightened her shoulders. “No, sir.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“Benny,” said Priscilla, “is the signal still coming in?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Any chance if we sit tight you'd be able to get a clear enough reading to tell us what it says?”

“Negative.”

Jake looked at her. “What do we do?”

“Find the source.”

 * * * 

TO DO THAT,
they had to move. Get another angle. “Benny,” she said, “start engines. Prep for a jump. We want a seventy-degree angle on the transmission. Set for eighty million kilometers.”

“Starting engines, Priscilla.”

The drive unit would require about forty minutes before they could actually do the transdimensional insertion. So she sat back to wait. “You ever run into anything like this before?” she asked Jake.

“Once,” he said. “But it was an automated vehicle. No life-and-death issue. I've never seen one where there were actually people involved. I hope that's not the case here.”

She brought up the signal. They could hear nothing but static. The routine racket produced by stars. With 1 or 2 percent left over from the Big Bang. That always blew her mind. “I wouldn't want to get stuck out here,” she said.

“No, Priscilla, me neither.”

There had been a few ships that had vanished over the years. Vehicles that simply went out somewhere and were never heard from again. It was, she supposed, inevitable. If you were going to travel to seriously remote places, you took your chances.

 * * * 

JUMP TECHNOLOGY WAS
notoriously inexact. They jumped three more times to get readings on the signals.

Benny put a chart on the navigation display. He marked their initial position and drew a line from it indicating the direction from which the transmission had come. He showed their current location.

Jake brought some coffee back from the dispenser. “You want some?” he asked.

“No, thanks.”

“Sorry it's taking so long,” said Benny. “It's difficult to sort everything.”

“It's okay, Benny. No hurry.”

“I think we have it now.”

Priscilla kept her eyes on the screen. They were able to establish the course and velocity of the radio source during a period of about six weeks during which it had been actively transmitting signals. After that, there was nothing. The system had shut down.

“Range,” said Benny, “is slightly more than nine light-years. Continue the vector for the balance of the nine years, and the source should presently be—”

He showed them.

 * * * 

“MAYBE SOMEBODY GOT
to them,” said Jake. “Let's hope.”

“So what do we do?”

“You're the captain, Priscilla. Call it.”

She wondered momentarily if, despite Jake's denial, the signal was a plant. Part of the exercise. Maybe they were testing her judgment. “Benny,” she said, “do we have a record of any lost ships nine years ago?”

“The
Forscher
,” he said. “It was last reported at Talios in the spring of '86. Carrying an exobiologist and an actor. Started home and was never heard from again.”

An actor? Priscilla's heart rate began to pick up. “Jake, that would be Dave Simmons.” The ultimate action-hero vid star turned explorer. Simmons had turned out to be even bigger than the characters he portrayed. He'd financed scientific missions, founded schools in remote places, once famously challenged the African dictator Kali Anka to have it out man-to-man. Anka had declined and been driven from the country a year later.

“The exobiologist was Paul Trelawney,” said Benny. Trelawney had won the Cassimir Award the year before. “And, of course, there would also have been a pilot.”

The ship had sent a movement report when it left Talios. A long search had yielded nothing. “Why would they send a radio transmission?” she asked, before answering her own question: “The hypercomm must have gone down.”

Jake nodded.

It was hard to imagine the tall, lantern-jawed Simmons dead. The guy had been the epitome of the leading man, in charge, indestructible, always one step ahead of events. One entertainment commentator had remarked that his loss had “reminded us all of our mortality.”

“So what are we going to do?” she asked.

“Make the call, Priscilla.”

“Okay. We make a report, and then head for Caliban, right? We can't do anything for the
Forscher
, so we just give the Wheel what we have and continue the mission.”

He nodded. “That's by the book.”

She read disapproval in his eyes. Maybe another test of her judgment. “Jake, there's no possibility here of anyone's life being endangered. So we report what we've found and get back to what we're supposed to be doing.”

“On the other hand—” he said.

“On the other hand, what?”

“We're close. And our mission isn't under time constraints. We can go have a look and send back additional details.”

“Do we really want to do that?” Priscilla was thinking about the shape the
Forscher
's captain and passengers would be in after nine years.

He straightened and looked down at her. “There's a code, Priscilla. We owe it to them.”

“Okay.”

“We don't leave people adrift out here if we can help it. It doesn't matter what the book says. We go over to the
Forscher
and take a look at the situation.”

 * * * 

WHEN THEY ARRIVED
in the vicinity of the radio source, they did not find the ship. What they saw instead was a lander. It was a Voltar II, a later model of which rested inside the
Copperhead
's own launch bay. “I wonder what happened?” asked Priscilla.

Jake shrugged and looked at the scattered stars on the display. “It explains why they used a radio.”

“They had to abandon ship.” The lander didn't have a hypercomm.

It looked undamaged. Its registry number, VC112, brightened when the
Copperhead
's navigation lights fell on it. Its ports were dark although there was still enough power to cause a flicker in the fore and aft warning lamps as they drew near. Priscilla turned her forward lights on the vehicle.

The pilot's seat was occupied.

Jake climbed out of his harness and opened the storage bin. He took out a set of air tanks, the Flickinger gear, and a jet pack. Then he looked at her.

She had an obligation to go with him. It shouldn't have been a problem. She'd done EVAs in training. But she wasn't excited about what they were going to find in the shuttle's cabin. “I'm coming,” she said.

 * * * 

FLICKINGER FIELDS HAD
long since replaced the cumbersome pressure suits. The generator provided an electronic shield against the vacuum. A passerby, had there been one, would have seen nothing like the astronauts of an earlier era. Rather, there were only two people wearing blue-and-silver uniforms.

They crossed to the shuttle and looked in through the ports. Only one body was visible. It was in the pilot's seat. It appeared in much better condition than Priscilla would have expected after nine years. “The environment,” Jake explained. “In a case like this, you don't get all the microbes and whatever else is involved in decomposition. A corpse is more likely to look a bit mummified.”

He opened the hatch, climbed into the air lock, and made room for her. She squeezed in beside him. She noticed he'd brought a laser. “Just in case,” he said. “You're going aboard a vehicle that has very little power. You wouldn't want to get trapped in the air lock.” He touched the control pad, and the outer hatch closed. Next, it should have begun to fill with air. But nothing happened.

“See what I mean?” He used the laser to cut a hole in the inner hatch. There was air pressure inside, and it quickly equalized. Then the hatch opened, and they floated into the cabin.

They turned on their wrist lamps. Jake went up front. Priscilla sniffed the air, told herself it was no problem, and joined him. She recognized the body immediately.

“Simmons,” they said simultaneously.

Priscilla stared. Somehow, even now, he was sprawled beneath the restraints in that easy charge-the-hill manner she knew so well. Good-bye, Dave, she thought. Growing up, she'd loved the guy. “What do you think happened?”

“We'll have to wait for somebody to find the
Forscher
to be sure,” he said. “But whatever the breakdown was, it probably killed Kobayashi and Trelawney.” Fudoki Kobayashi had been the pilot. Jake shook his head. “Poor son of a bitch. Die out here, like this.”