“Biggest risk we've ever seen. If the Vesuvius gets more than one or two clear shots at us, we're done.” Commented Burke. “She's so far out of our class we may as well be runnin' in a shuttle.”
“We'd take at least three shots, give us some credit now,” added Frost.
“They won't get a clear shot. I want to see this go down right,” Ashley said. “Whatever the Captain needs to make it happen I'll give. This isn't just cash.”
“I think we can all agree on that.”
“Speak for yourselves, my cut is enough, I don't need glory,” Ramirez said with a wide grin. “I could live on Flora Main for ten years with that kind of money.”
“Yeah, but who the hell would want to? Nine billion people on one E Class moon? It's so packed you can't sneeze without bumping into a dozen people,” Silver commented.
Ramirez shrugged and smiled at him. “Hey, I'm a people person, what can I say?”
“Finn, to my quarters please.” Said the Captain's voice through the ship intercom.
“Looks like Captain's bringin' someone else into his plannin'.” Frost commented. “Get up there kid, this could be bonus time.”
Finn made his way to the Captains quarters as quickly as he could. The hallways were completely clear, anyone that wasn't in the cargo hold or on watch were sleeping. He stopped in front of the hatchway leading into the Captain's quarters and pressed the call button. The heavy hatch door clicked and creaked open. It was a simple pressure door, probably one of the oldest parts of the ship. He stepped through and closed it behind him.
The Captain's quarters had been stripped down. The regular amenities had been removed ages ago, leaving a bed and a couple of chairs instead of the things he expected. Like a table or desk and a sofa. Instead there were two work benches and cupboards. It was a fine tools workroom. There was also an escape hatch overhead leading into a cramped airlock for one. Finn didn't remember seeing it on the outside of the ship.
“You're one of three people aboard who have seen the inside of this room, don't say a word about it,” Captain Valance said. He was looking at three holographic displays on one of the work tables. They were set side by side and were scanning through thousands of faces per minute.
“Yes sir.”
“I thought I could finish a project I was working on in time, but I was wrong. I need your help. There's pay in it for you,” he turned in his seat and pointed to the other work bench. There was a section of flat microcircuitry right in the middle. Goggles hung over a small control panel right beside it. “I need you to tune the power levels on that so it's emitting as little as possible when that system is running. It might take you a few hours, so if you have other plans you should cancel them now.”
“I don't have any plans sir. I was just in the cargo hold watching the news.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Not really. The Blue Hares won in their Pongo Ball division.”
“Well, better being in here making a few hundred credits than out there then.”
Finn sat down at the other bench and started putting the control goggles on. “A few hundred credits?”
“I'll pay you two hundred an hour, fair?”
“Yes sir,” Finn said with a smile. He turned on the control panel and brought the nano bots and micro tool arm online. The work that had to be done was so fine that no human hand or held tool could manage it. “Do you mind if I ask what this is for?”
“I do.”
“Minding my own business sir.”
The two hours passed quietly but that didn't bother Finn. He was busy commanding an army of nanobots. They marched from one job site to another, insulating and restructuring microcircuitry to cut down the emissions and increase efficiency. The work took place over a few centimetres but on the microscopic scale it may as well have been miles.
He could tell just after the first thirty minutes that he was working on some kind of field generating system and that the emissions he was minimizing were harmful radiation. If the board was turned on as is, it wouldn't be long before anyone within a meter of it might start feeling the initial onset of radiation poisoning. Maybe a couple hours, maybe a day, either way, if this was just part of a bigger whole, then he hoped that the other parts didn't emit radiation as well.
Captain Valance was running identification match software across billions of people while he worked on various components. The database must have been huge. The ship computer could run recognition software across a database of a million people within ten minutes but billions, that was another story.
Finn finished optimizing the flexible circuit board and the nanobots that weren't absorbed by the material or used to create small components inside were returned. He took off the goggles and sighed. “Finished.”
“Good work, thank you Finn. You saved me a lot of time. You'll see a bonus on your next pay.”
“Thank you sir,” Finn turned around and just looked at the three small holographic displays on the Captain's workbench. As they flipped through so many faces per second that they blended together the Captain was working on something else, an armoured glove. He was finely tuning some kind of control mechanism on the inside. “I know, it's a primitive way to do it, but I can't use nerve sensors.”
“However it works, I'm sure it'll be more than good enough.”
Jake laughed and shook his head. “You have a lot of faith in me for someone who just came aboard.”
“I've seen what you do sir, and you've given me a lot of opportunities in a short amount of time.”
“There's a method to my madness. Just keep up the good work and you'll be close to everything going on around here. There'll be times when you don't want to be though, you'll see.”
Finn watched him work quietly for a few moments longer. It didn't seem to bother him at all, and he was seeing his Captain in a completely new light. He seemed at ease somehow, working on some minor detail. There was no way he could see what he was doing, just looking down at the glove, fishing at some fine detail with two small tools in one hand like chopsticks and holding the glove with the other. There was always a kind of discipline to the man, his back was always straight, and when he walked somewhere it was with a certainty. He knew exactly where he was going.
“Sir, before I go, can I ask who you're searching for?”
“Got it,” Captain Valance said as something inside the glove clicked. He put it on his left hand and flexed it. “What's that Finn?”
“I'm just wondering, who are you looking for?”
“My daughter,” came the answer nonchalantly.
It was unexpected, everything about the Captain had been so secretive, he never told anyone more than they needed to know. “Oh, I didn't know you had one.”
“I don't talk about her much, don't know much about her really. She saved me once, I've been looking for her ever since,” he pulled the glove off and put it on the bench. “Finally got that working.” He said to himself. He pressed a button on his arm control unit and a frozen picture of a young woman's face was projected. The background was the Samson's main cargo hold. “Her name is Alice.”
“She looks nice.”
“I know she was in trouble when we last saw each other. Still haven't found out what kind of trouble or where she went. I keep hoping I find a bounty posted on her. It would be the fastest way for me to pick up a lead. So I search for her while we go from job to job.”
“Now it'll be something I'll do,” Finn said with a note of determination.
“Thank you Finn, now go get some rack time.”
“Yes sir.”
Hyperspace Day 2
“Frost, what are we doing out here?” Asked Carl Burke as he walked into the stasis compartment. There was one rack of six medical stasis tubes on one side and on the other there were a dozen emergency tubes. They looked completely different. The medical tubes were older by a decade but were far more reliable and provided more information about the occupants. When a bounty was captured, those were the ones the Captain liked to use.