Chapter Eight
Kelly read through the intelligence reports from the Rigel-Aldebaran trade route, not that they were much help. Ships left port and simply were never seen again. Kelly was amazed that none of the ships, crews, or cargoes appeared on any of the normal lowlife worlds that pirates and marauders frequented and used to move their ill-gotten gain.
What could they be doing with the ships, people, and goods? It didn’t make sense. Pirates always needed credits. Ships needed repair and maintenance, especially ships that couldn’t pull into just any port and shipyard. Pirate ships always had special modifications and configurations that wouldn’t pass normal port scrutiny. How did they replenish their stocks? Crews needed diversions. None of those came cheap. If they weren’t selling their goods, how were they coming up with credits?
If the missing ships were destroyed, there would be debris. Kelly had seen the effect of catastrophic kills on space ships. There was always an immense amount of debris. What of this report from Alistair, who said the container ship simply disappeared from his screens. How do you make a 300,000 metric ton ship disappear?
Kelly put the Reporting Officer’s sensor plot up on his holographic viewer and rotated it to see it from all angles. He called up the astrospatial data layer of all known pirate-friendly worlds and saw no obvious connections. He noted how close the K’Rang frontier was to the area in question and wondered if they might be up to some mischief.
He plotted out the ion trail that the Reporting Officer had followed and saw it peter out at the edge of the Pleiades Star Cluster. He could see why Alastair had turned back. The gravimetric flows in the star field would rip all but a reinforced warship apart. If the gravity pressure didn’t crush a ship, the gravity eddies could trap it and never let it out.
Kelly pulled up all Galactic Republic surveys of the star field and found them unusually deficient. There were very few surveys into the star field’s depths. Most surveys covered the outer asteroid fields, and none of the few surveys into the field were earlier than five years old. Even the Fleet Intel long-range observation posts’ sensor scans into the field gave little information. The gases and dusts swirling through that part of space obscured all but close range scans. It made for a good buffer between the Galactic Republic space and K’Rang space, but was not good for much else.
Kelly shut his holographic viewer down and made a note to Chief Blankenship to have diagnostics run on all sensors to make sure they were all at peak efficiency. He didn’t want to be blind going in to solve this mystery. He also made a note to requisition a few extra sensor pods. You can never have too much knowledge.
Sally arrived at the spaceport just in time to make the shuttle up to the space station. Pete had gotten her a pass, with the help of Steven Maynard, which allowed her access to the station for just such forays as these. She used the flight time to go through her pantry list and organize what she would need off this container ship.
She had storage at the restaurant for quite a few months worth of foodstuffs. She also pulled up her wine cellar list to see which wines she needed. Maybe this ship would have a few containers of food she could rummage through. Pete had only bid and won on the ship’s larder, but if no one was looking and there were good quality stores in a cargo container, who would know that they weren’t part of the ship’s food stores. She tried to pull up a ship’s manifest to see what the cargo was.
The shuttle entered the station and Sally craned her neck to peer out the port, to see if she could make out the ship. It must have been on the other side. She couldn’t see anything but ships in the process of dismantling and reconfiguration.
The shuttle docked, and Sally got up with the rest of the passengers to debark. This was Sally’s tenth time to the station and she no longer marveled at the facility inside the hollow metal moon of Barataria. She just plodded her way around the outer ring tunnel until she came to dock C27. She notified space station control that she had authorization to inventory and remove the food stocks and requested two grav sleds for what she would be removing. The airlock cycled, opening the way for her, and she was notified that her sleds were on the way.
Sally entered and proceeded to the galley. Most modern ships were all laid out similarly, so she had no trouble finding her way. In moments, she was standing in the galley. She inspected the ready storage and plugged her pocket tablet into the galley terminal to read out what was in the long-term storage.
Jackpot! The Andromeda Clipper was at the beginning of its cruise and was fully stocked. A quick survey of the ready stores locker showed that the inventory from the galley terminal was correct. She notified station control to send two more grav sleds. Wonder of wonders, they also had a full store of spices. She was in heaven. She sent a message to Pete to enquire about the Andromeda Clipper’s cook. She could always use an extra hand.
Sally wandered down a passageway and found the long-term storage compartment, opened the hatch and made a quick tour inside. Again the galley inventory and what Sally found inside matched. The captain ran a taut ship. She normally found a degree of pilfering, but everything here was exactly as it should be.
She was just about to turn and leave when she heard a scraping sound. Her first thought was that there was some creature in the compartment, but spaceships didn’t have vermin like the sailing vessels of old. She listened and heard it again. It seemed to be coming from above. She backed out of the compartment and sealed the hatch behind her. As she turned to move back to the galley, a vent grate dropped from the ceiling in front of her.
A pair of legs dropped down followed by hips and a waist. A well-built young black man dropped down and hung from his hands. He saw her and his eyes went wide. He tried to scramble back up in the grate opening, but lost his grip. He fell off-center and landed squarely on his back. He lay there gasping for air, the wind knocked out of him.
Sally walked over to the gasping Russell Obwobwo, looked down, and said, “You must be the missing crewman. I’d heard there was a discrepancy in the crew log. Don’t try to get up. You’ll get your breath back in a few minutes.”
He looked up at her and just continued gasping for air like a fish out of water. As she said, his breath slowly came back to him.
He slowly sat up, rubbing his back and ribs.
She asked, “Is anything broken?”
He looked up at her and said, “No, just bruised, I think. Aren’t you going to turn me in?”
She smiled. “Of course. You can’t hide here forever. They’re going to unload everything that’s useable and then dismantle her for parts. You’ll only have life support for another week, and then they open her up to space. I wouldn’t be doing you any favors leaving you here.”
She pulled out her pocket terminal and he said, “Wait, just give me a chance to sneak out of here.”
“You can’t. You haven’t got a chip. We all have chips implanted in our necks, right here.” The somewhat pleasant looking woman pointed at where her Adam’s apple would be, if she had one. “You wouldn’t get past the next dock before the alarms went off. The guards would be on you in a flash and they’d be none too gentle with you. Let me call them and you surrender real peaceful like. It’s the best thing for you.”
His shoulders slumped and he asked, “What’ll happen to me? Will they kill me?”
“No, young man, they probably won’t kill you. They have need of strong young men such as you. They’ll probably put you to work in one of the mines or factories. If you have a useful skill, they might use you somewhere else.”