Part 1 (2/2)
Matt's first call was to engineering. ”Ivan, your engines having a bad day?” Matt's understatement brought a hint of smile to faces d.a.m.n close to panic.
”Looks that way, skipper. Engines maxed when ordered to stabilize for the jump. We got another problem, Matt. Before the computer shut down, it opened the s.p.a.cec.o.c.ks on all the fuel tanks. We slowed down because we ran out of fuel.”
Two ways to die! Matt took in a deep breath-and went on. ”Sandy, where are we?”
”Thirty thousand light-years from home, halfway across the galaxy.”
”At least it's somewhere we've been before,” Matt quipped.
”Not really, sir. We're halfway around the other side of the galaxy this time.” Ray suppressed a s.h.i.+ver; he was a long way from Rita and the baby in a s.h.i.+p sabotaged to keep him there.
Matt rubbed his chin. ”Any records on how we got here?” That was why Ray had hired this crew. In three hundred years of bad jumps, they were the first to come back. They had figured out the combination of power and s.h.i.+p's spin that made the jumps yield all kinds of results, not just the single target that mankind had settled for before. But to repeat a jump, you had to put the s.h.i.+p through it exactly the way you did before.
”We went through deaf, dumb, and blind, sir,” Sandy answered. When Sandy started ”siring” Matt, they were in deep trouble. They were a long way from home, had no record of how they'd gotten here, fuel tanks empty, and headed away from the nearest fuel source too d.a.m.n fast. Whoever planned this really wanted them dead. d.a.m.n that somebody to h.e.l.l, Ray snarled to himself, but kept his face poker straight. He'd commanded in tough situations before; he would not juggle Matt's elbow.
”Ivan, how bad is our plasma situation?”
”In six hours, Matt, I'm gonna start tapping the sewage plant for reaction ma.s.s.” Not good. Life support could last a long time, but not if their water went into the reactors. Matt rubbed his short-cropped scalp briskly with both hands. He stopped suddenly. ”Damage Control, we use reaction ma.s.s in battle to patch slashes in our ice armor.”
”Yes, sir.”
”Anybody ever melted armor to fill reaction tanks?”
”Now would be a great time to start,” was his answer.
”Helm, plot a course for a gas bag. Mary, get the marines ready to peel armor.”
”You bet, sir,” came quickly.
Ray'd had enough of pa.s.senger status. ”Got a spare suit for an old soldier?” he asked, breaking his silence.
”You want to cut ice?” Matt frowned in surprise.
Ray took a deep breath. ”I know s.p.a.ce. Don't know s.h.i.+p driving. Captain Rodrigo, mind a broken-down civilian helping?”
”No problem, Colonel,” came quickly.
Matt eyed him, doubt and concern balanced against Ray's confused status as pa.s.senger and boss, then turned back to his commlink. ”All right, crew. Let's start hacking armor.”
Ray blessed Mary for letting him work; exhausted, each night he fell into dreamless sleep. By the time the ice armor was down to frost, Matt had answers. ”We've sliced and diced our net's code and found a present left over from the war.”
”I knew you'd p.i.s.sed some folks off when I hired you, but this, bad?”
”Apparently Admiral Whitebred was gunning for us before we didn't annihilate your planet. He installed a bug to make sure we didn't survive our first jump without him. So this whole mess wasn't aimed at you.”
”Unless the guys setting up this meeting knew about this little add-on to your netware. If Whitebred told somebody who told somebody...” Ray trailed off. ”I want to talk to that guy.”
”You're last in a very long line, Mr. Minister.” Whoops! When Matt started Mr. Ministering Ray, he wanted something. ”Right now I need a call from you as owner. As a general rule, all s.h.i.+ps answer all distress calls. This one is three hundred years old. It could be argued it can wait a bit. We need to find a way home. Still, a base in this system could help us. You've got the pregnant wife. Which do we do?”
”My wife was a s.h.i.+p driver, Matt. She'd never ignore a distress signal. h.e.l.l, she was sending one a few months back.”
”Then, Mr. Minister, we head insystem.”
After which we'll find the way home, Ray promised himself. Home before the baby came.
TWO.
NIKKI MULRONEY WAS hot and off balance helping Daga lug the heavy box she'd found. She had been their leader for as long as Nikki could remember. Daga was the adventurous one, the girl who had found more ways to get them all into trouble than the rest combined. She found stuff in the caves under the hills. Most of her finds were small, different-colored s.h.i.+ny things, that glowed in the dark. Daga had taken to stringing them on necklaces or wristbands and giving them to boys. Daga was a lot of fun...until recently.
The box Nikki and Daga now carried wasn't s.h.i.+ny, and it did not look like it would glow in the dark. It was heavy. Three feet long and maybe a foot and a half square on its ends, its covering felt like ceramics. Orange, it had been cold; now it warmed in the summer morning sun.
Nikki had no idea what it was; that was what they were here to find out. They struggled to the crest of a small hill, far from the tended fields of Hazel Dell. It was time for Emma and Willow to take their turn with the box.
”This is far enough. Put it down,” Daga ordered. She was really bossy lately. But Nikki did what she was told, taking the moment to stretch her aching muscles and look back. You could see the houses of Hazel Dell, tiny in the distance. Women and men were at work, just specks, their tools invisible. The girls should have worked today. But last night Daga had whispered she'd found something new, something really big, and the four of them had slipped away before dawn and set out on this adventure.
As soon as Nikki got home tonight, her da would have something to say about her absence. Her ma would remind him that young girls had just as much right to see what was on the other side of a mountain as boys. ”You're sounding like a big-city grump, dear. Nikki is thirteen. She'll plow many a row when she has kids of her own. Let her have her summers now.” Which always left Nikki wondering what Ma had done when her three children were only a distant question mark. When asked, Ma always smiled and said, ”Nothing you haven't done, dear.”
Nikki turned back to her friends. Daga was feeling around the box. Emma and Willow stood aside as they usually did, waiting to see what Daga had gotten them into. Nikki knelt beside the box and started her own exploration. An area near the bottom sank under her pressure. A crack appeared around the middle of the box, hardly wide enough for a fingernail.
”Oh,” came from all four girls. Daga inserted a thumbnail to force the box open; the nail bent. Nikki rummaged in her pouch for her knife, found it, and wedged it in the crack. The ceramic blade bent alarmingly; the crack did not widen. Even with all four girls' knives leveraging together, the crack stayed a crack.
”Must be a second catch,” Daga said, feeling around the box again. ”Where was that spot?” Nikki showed her.
They pressed it again. Nothing. They felt around. Nothing. They tried the same spot at each corner. The opposite far corner depressed when they tried it. ”I did that before,” Daga scowled as the crack widened to a half inch.
”Probably have to be pressed in order,” Willow suggested. She was the logical one.
”Well, let's all lift a corner. Together, on my count,” Daga said, and the others followed. At their pull, the box unfolded like a flower, struts and accordion parts expanding smoothly and fully. The girls stepped back.
”Think it's from the Landers?” Emma asked timidly.
”No,” Daga insisted, rubbing her temples. Was she getting another of her headaches? ”In school, the townies are all the time telling us how the Landers used everything they brought from the stars and we shouldn't be spreading out and messing up the whole planet. Why would they put something like this way out here?”
”It's from the little people,” Emma breathed. Her grandda, the village storyteller, told wonderful tales of the ”wee ones.” Nikki was never sure whether they were about the little people of old Ireland on Earth or under the hills beyond Hazel Dell. Both were nothing but stories, Da insisted. Still, Daga kept finding things, and somebody had to make them. Da's answer to that was a snort and a ”They're made that way.” Ma's answer was a shrug. Nikki wondered what her folks would say about this find.
As usual, Daga recovered first from the surprise. ”Hey, look.” A thin square, about a foot on each side and a half inch thick, had risen from the box on two spinly legs. The square went from black to gray to crystal clear on one side in the s.p.a.ce of a breath. The other side stayed flat black.
”That's weird,” Willow said.
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