In fact, if Joshua had met him in the flesh back down on Lalonde’s spaceport he probably wouldn’t have accepted him as a passenger no matter how much money was stashed in his credit disk. Too late now. Although, thankfully, Dexter had spent most of his time alone in his cabin down in capsule C, venturing out only for meals and the bathroom.
That was one of his more rational quirks. After he’d come on board, he had given the compact bulkheads a quick suspicious look, and said: “I’d forgotten how much mechanization there is on a starship.”
Forgotten? Joshua couldn’t work that one out at all. How could you forget the way a starship looked?
Yet the oddest thing of all was how inept Dexter was at free-fall manoeuvring. Had he been asked, Joshua would have said that the man had never been in space before. Which was ridiculous, because he was a travelling sales manager. One who didn’t have neural nanonics. And one who wore a frightened expression the whole time. There had even been occasions when Joshua had caught him flinching from some sudden metallic sound rattling out of the capsule systems, or the creak of the stress structure as they were under acceleration.
Of course, given Lady Mac ’s performance during the voyage, that part of Dexter’s behaviour was almost understandable. Joshua had experienced enough nasty moments on the flight himself. It seemed like there wasn’t a system on board that hadn’t suffered from some kind of glitch since they boosted out of Lalonde’s orbit. What should have been a simple four-day trip had stretched out to nearly a week as the crew tackled power surges, data drop-outs, actuator failures, and dozens of smaller niggling malfunctions. Joshua hated to think what was going to happen when he handed over the maintenance log to the Confederation Astronautics Board’s inspectors, they’d probably insist on a complete overhaul. At least the jump nodes had functioned, though he’d even begun to have his doubts about them.
He datavised the flight computer to unfold the thermo-dump panels and extend the sensor booms. Fault alerts jangled in his mind; one of the thermo-dump panels refused to open past halfway, and three booms were jammed in their recesses.
“Jesus!” he snarled.
There were mutters from the rest of the crew strapped into their bridge couches on either side of him.
“I thought you fixed that fucking panel,” Joshua shouted at Warlow.
“I did!” the answer thumped back. “If you think you can do any better, put on a suit and get out there yourself.”
Joshua ran a hand over his brow. “See what you can do,” he said sullenly. Warlow grunted something unintelligible, and ordered the couch’s straps to release him. He pushed himself towards the open hatchway. Ashly Hanson freed himself, too, and went after the cosmonik to help.
Sensor data was coming in from the booms which were functional. The flight computer started tracking nearby stars to produce an accurate astrogration fix. Norfolk with its divergent illumination looked unusually small for a terracompatible planet. Joshua didn’t have time to puzzle that, the sensors reported laser radar pulses were bouncing off the hull, and a voidhawk distortion field had locked on.
“Jesus, now what?” Joshua asked even as the astrogration fix slipped into his mind. Lady Mac had translated two hundred and ninety thousand kilometres above Norfolk, way outside the planet’s designated emergence zone. He groaned out loud and hurriedly datavised the communication dish to transmit their identification code. The Confederation Navy ships patrolling Norfolk would start using Lady Mac for target practice soon.
Norfolk was almost unique among the Confederation’s terracompatible planets in that it didn’t have a strategic-defence network. There was no high-technology industry, no asteroid settlements in orbit, and consequently there was nothing worth stealing. Protection from mercenaries and pirate ships wasn’t needed; except for the two weeks every season when the starships came to collect their cargoes of Norfolk Tears.
As the planet moved towards midsummer a squadron from the Confederation Navy’s 6th Fleet was assigned to protection duties, paid for by the planetary government. It was a popular duty with the crews; after the cargo starships departed they were allowed shore leave, where they were entertained in grand style, and all the crews were presented with a special half-sized bottle of Norfolk Tears by the grateful government.
The Lady Macbeth ’s main communication dish servos spun round once, then packed up. Power-loss signals appeared across the schematic the flight computer was datavising into Joshua’s brain. “I don’t fucking believe it. Sarha, get that bastard dish sorted out!” Out of the corner of his eye he saw her activate the console by her couch. He routed the Lady Mac ’s identification code through her omnidirectional antenna.
An inter-ship radio channel came alive, and the communication console routed the datavise into Joshua’s neural nanonics. “Starship Lady Macbeth , this is Confederation Navy ship Pestravka . You have emerged outside this planet’s designated starship emergence zones, are you in trouble?”
“Thank you, Pestravka ,” Joshua datavised in reply. “We’ve been having some system malfunctions, my apologies for causing any panic.”
“What is the nature of your malfunction?”
“Sensor error.”
“That’s simple enough to sort out; you should know better than to jump insystem with inaccurate guidance information.”
“Up yours,” Melvin Ducharme grumbled from his couch.
“The error percentage has only just become apparent,” Joshua said. “We’re updating now.”
“What’s wrong with your main communications dish?”
“Overloaded servo, it’s scheduled for replacement.”
“Well, activate your back-up.”
Sarha let out an indignant snort. “I’ll point one of the masers at him if he likes. They’ll receive that blast loud and bloody clear.”
“Complying now, Pestravka .” Joshua glared at Sarha.
He launched a quiet prayer as the ribbed silver pencil of the second dish slid out of Lady Macbeth ’s dark silicon hull, and opened like a flower. It tracked round to point at the Pestravka .
“I’m datavising a copy of this incident to the Confederation Astronautics Board office on Norfolk,” the Pestravka ’s officer continued. “And I’ll add a strong recommendation that they inspect your spaceworthiness certificate.”
“Thank you so much, Pestravka . Are we now cleared to contact civil flight control for an approach vector? I’d hate to be shot at for not asking your permission first.”
“Don’t push your luck, Calvert. I can easily take a fortnight searching your cargo holds.”
“Looks like your reputation’s preceding you, Joshua,” Dahybi Yadev said after the Pestravka cut the link.
“Let’s hope it hasn’t reached the planet’s surface yet,” Sarha said.
Joshua aligned the secondary dish on the civil flight control’s communication satellite, and received permission to enter a parking orbit. Lady Mac ’s three fusion tubes came alive, sending out long rivers of hazy plasma, and the starship accelerated in towards the gaudy planet at a tenth of a gee.
Chinks of light were glinting down into Quinn Dexter’s vacant world, accompanied by faint scratchy sounds. It was like intermittent squalls of luminous rain falling through fissures from an external universe. Some beams of light flickered in the far distance, others splashed across him. When they did, he saw the images they carried.