The Lunar Gambit: Starship Fairfax Book 1 - The Kuiper Chronicles Read online

  “Yeah, the smart one. With the red hair?” Caspar gestured to her own head, though she kept her own brown hair trimmed short.

  “Mulligan?” He grimaced. Caspar shrugged.

  “Figured she was your better half.”

  “You’re teasing me.” He pouted.

  “Welcome to the club.” Lucas raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Decompression complete,” Sock chirped. “Bay doors opening in ten, nine, eight…”

  “Lock your mag-boots, everyone.” Lucas locked his own and tightened his grip around the sail. “Hold on tight to this thing. When we move, we move together.”

  The bay doors slid open. Outside was a perfect panorama, stars in every direction, and perfectly still, perfectly silent—the only sound the heavy breathing of the first-timers. Lucas smiled for them. “Alright,” he said into the comm. “Let’s head out. Slowly.”

  One halting step at a time, they moved, everyone carrying part of the sail. It stretched out more than thirty meters, rolled like one enormous burrito. Lucas’ first steps outside were disorienting, as the floor became the wall and vice versa. A few steps out, he turned and watched as the burrito continued to be piped out from the hangar bay. He wondered idly if, from a distance, it looked like a giant space-worm was crawling out of the belly of the Fairfax.

  Once everyone was out, they trotted the sail over to engineering. Lucas grimaced when he saw the outer hull damage.

  “Adams, you there?” He commed the engineer.

  “Aye, Sir. Ready when you are.”

  “Right.” He took a deep breath.

  Slowly, carefully, they unfurled the sown sail, until it covered the outer engineering deck like a giant bandage. Lucas knelt and attached one end of a hose-enclosed wire to an electrode sown onto the edge of the sail. Then he unwound the hose until he stood once more at the door to the decompression chamber. Hose after hose was attached and unwound. Soon they all stood at the door once more, the hoses following them like veins.

  Lucas was about to have Sock open the door when his comm overloaded with a man’s scream. He whipped around to the sight of one of his men flying away from the Fairfax, a jet of air venting beneath him.

  “Who is that?” Lucas yelled.

  “It’s Tompkins, Sir!” Several of the engineers were heading back to the sail as quickly as their mag-boots would take them in order to pull him in by the other end of his hose.

  “What happened to his mag-boots?”

  “Turned them off so he could reach the sail, Sir.” A private was already there, his voice high and panicky. “Didn’t think anything would go wrong—I—I was spotting him. But that vent—”

  “Pull gently, private!” Lucas cut him off with the order as the man wrapped his hands around the hose. He saw some of the tension leave the man’s shoulders before he began to pull it in.

  Then Tompkins reached the end of his tether. The whole length of the hose went visibly taut, then lax again as it whiplashed back against the hull. Tompkins had broken free and was sailing out into open space, nothing but his suit between him and the void.

  Lucas cursed. “Secure the other end of my hose!” He tied as tight a knot as he dared with the end in his hand around his utility belt, shut his mag-boots off, and kicked away, hard. He could only hope he would reach the kid before he, too, ran out of length.

  “Tompkins!” he shouted, his own body arrowing toward the floating private. “I’m gonna get you. You awake?”

  Tompkins’ slow rotation brought him face-to-face with Lucas just before they met. His eyes were closed, his mouth hung open. Lucas reached a hand out. He was almost there—just a few more feet…

  He lurched forward in his suit, held tight at the waist. That was it. His tether was up. Tompkins’ feet swirled slowly through space, mere inches from Lucas’ fingers. He stretched and grunted. It was almost enough. He reached for his belt with his other hand. Maybe if he untied the knot and just held on, it would give him what he needed.

  Just as he let the knot loose, he felt a violent tug from the other end of his hose. The men. They thought he had Tompkins.

  “What are you doing?” he screamed. Too late. The hose was gone. He floated out the remaining few feet and grabbed onto the private, but now they were just two lost shipmates heading into open space.

  Chapter 5

  “Strange time to go for a swim, Sir.” Mulligan’s voice was chipper over the com. Lucas turned and saw why. She was sitting in the cockpit of the comet-hopper, the short-ranged maintenance flyer housed in the belly of the Fairfax. He breathed a shaky sigh.

  “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you, Private, but what are you doing out here?”

  “Been moonlighting for Adams, sir. Not much work for the security detail when the personage in need of securing is, ah, no longer on board. And what about you, Sir?”

  “Well, you know. Trying to teach the kid a few things.”

  “That’s what you call it these days, is it?” Caspar’s voice cut in over the com. “Gunner, I like your girlfriend.”

  Tompkins was still unconscious, but Lucas heard a choking sound over the com, as if Mulligan were swallowing a gasp. Or a laugh. She brought the hopper around and fired back-thrusters, slowing her momentum and angling so that she would make a close pass. “Got your mag-boots, Sir?”

  “Ready and willing.” He turned them on. Tompkins’ eyes fluttered open. “Tompkins, how you feeling?”

  “Tompkins, Sir?” The private muttered.

  “You’re confused, kid. That’s you, not me.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just…” He smiled. “You remembered my name.”

  Lucas snorted. “Don’t feel too special—doesn’t mean I’m going to call you in the morning. Now flip your boots on.”

  —

  Rigging the newly minted transducers to the copper cables through an open hangar bay presented an entirely new set of challenges, as did feeding the power from the transducers to the engine. But they managed to stretch out their copper supply to get the job done, and within twelve hours of ejecting their core, they were ready to throw the switch and see if the new system would work well enough to get them back on a useful trajectory.

  The engine room was tense. Adams wiped sweat from his forehead, pacing and hovering over his people by turns. Lucas had been helping Caspar check the last of the wired connections. Everything looked as ready as it could—though a part of him fully expected nothing but sparks and a blackout when they finally turned it on.

  “You think we’ve got a prayer?” he asked the engineer.

  “Me?” Adams laughed mirthlessly. “All due respect, Sir, but this is your baby. I never thought this thing had feet to begin with.” He shuffled off to harry another of his crewmen.

  “Thanks,” Lucas muttered.

  “More than a prayer.” Caspar was behind him. He lurched a little, startled. He needed a nap. Thirteen hours hard duty with no break was… more than enough. She laughed quietly. “And anyway,” she said, “so what if it doesn’t work—what have we lost, really?”

  “Almost lost your second gunner,” he said.

  She quirked her lips and shrugged. “He’s expendable.”

  “I heard that!” Tompkins was jogging past, a bundle of insulating hose over his shoulder. The kid was tireless, Lucas had to give him that.

  He turned back and caught Caspar out of the corner of his eye. She was almost as tall as him, with strength in her frame and confidence to match. He had known of her at the academy, though she had been a couple of years ahead of him. She was brilliant, everyone knew that, and could have easily secured a command for herself if she’d had any interest in it. Rumor was, she loathed the chain of command. Munitions suited her personality better. But she had the talent to lead.

  “Where do you think they took him?” she asked.

  “Hmm?” He knitted his eyebrows together. “Oh, Taurius? I’ve been wondering. I want to get a lead on him sooner than later, but I suppose we’ll have to pu
t in someplace to get something a little more permanent done for our engines first.”

  “And to re-up the armory, don’t forget.”

  He smiled. “You would never let me forget.”

  “They’re probably on Ceres. That’s nearby this time in the sol, right? Goodness knows it’s enough of a pirate-infested scum-hole.”

  “That it is.” He bit his lip, considering how they could lure Taurius’ captors away from Ceres if that was their base. Between the Old Earth Empire, the local mafia, and the pirates who had all made it their home, it wasn’t the sort of place a Kuiper Fleet starship visited on a whim. He put it out of his mind for now. One crisis at a time. “Glad I could steal you away from your missiles to help put this together,” he said.

  “Me, help? Odin, I’m glad you’ve helped me. I mean, let’s just call it what it is. This was all my idea.” She circled the engineering deck with a finger in the air. Lucas lifted his eyebrows.

  “Alright, Lieutenant.” He eyed the transducers. “I’ll let you claim credit—if it fails.”

  “So generous.” She walked away to check a few more wires. He caught himself absentmindedly watching, and shook his head.

  —

  In the end it was all on him, and no amount of joking could make it any other way. Everything had been fastened, tightened, and checked twice over. The sail had been soaking up heat for hours. Lucas lined up a crewman at every transducer, took a deep breath, and gave the order.

  And nothing happened.

  Adams nodded. “They run awful quiet, don’t they?”

  “Shut up, Adams.” Caspar shot him a dirty look.

  Lucas was fed up with failure. He was tired beyond reason, and he didn’t really care anymore what his crew thought of him. He cursed and aimed a kick at the nearest transducer, which he immediately regretted. He winced, nearly certain he’d broken a toe.

  The transducer hummed to life.

  One by one they all came online, spinning up with energy drawn from the silica sail. Adams ran a hand over his butch-cut and spit on the deck. “Guess I was wrong, Captain. And I don’t mind saying so, this time.”

  “Let’s save our amends until after we’ve hauled ourselves out of the depths of the void.” Lucas limped over to a console to monitor the engine. They had effectively replaced their chief power source—the core, which fueled wireless power to the engines at all times—with a few blankets. It wasn’t likely to give them anywhere near as much juice. But they only needed enough to get the engines warm, so they could nudge the Fairfax in the right direction. Now Lucas watched as the console came online, showing extremely low but feasible power in the first engine. A grin spread over his face.

  “On second thought, Adams,” he limped back to the engineer. “You can tell me more about how you were wrong. I sort of liked it.”

  That got a smirk from Caspar. Lucas stood a little taller.

  “Helm,” he commed the bridge. “Lay in that course to the nearest port. We’ve got repairs to make and an ambassador to track down.”

  “Course layed in, Captain. Sir?”

  “What is it, Randall?”

  There was a pause. “It’s on Ceres. Thought you should know.”

  The day was only getting better.

  Chapter 6

  Lucas woke slowly this time, his body heavy, hungry for more sleep. No time. He’d grabbed four hours after the first half of his bridge crew took their four, and that would have to suffice for them all. He splashed cold water on his face, scrubbed his short hair clean with handsoap over the sink, and pulled on a clean uniform. A luxury they would soon have to do without, but if it got them back on the road to civilization, he could make the sacrifice.

  Everyone on the bridge looked much the same—deflated, road-weary, but awake enough to get to work.

  “Captain on the bridge,” Sock announced. His crew stood and saluted Captain Odin for the first time. He returned it.

  “As you were.”

  The chair had changed, somehow. Or he wanted to think it had. That it wouldn’t be possessed of his father’s ghost leering at his many failures. It felt like a trap. Like the moment he gave in and relaxed into it, iron jaws would snap shut and pull him down into the belly of the ship. He paced the deck instead.

  “Helm, report.”

  “We’re on course, Sir.” Randall gave a cautious smile. “And making better time than our estimates. The sail is working.”

  Lucas nodded, letting one or two of the demons go. “Good. ETA to Ceres?”

  “One hour, twenty-two minutes, Sir.”

  That was good time. “Are we sure we can’t move on to another port? Since she’s flying so well, I mean?”

  Randall’s smile fell. “Mr. Adams assures me that once we pass into the shadow of the belt, the sail will cool and the engines will rapidly lose power. We’ll be coasting the last half-hour as it is, Sir.”

  Lucas sighed. “I’ll take that as a ‘no.’ Had to ask.”

  “Sir.” Caspar faced him. “I strongly advise we explore all other options before putting in to port on Ceres.”

  “We certainly can’t fly right down to the icy surface and expect a warm welcome.” Lucas rubbed his chin. “Helm, what other rocks are dancing around the pirate cove this time in the sol? Maybe we can snuggle up behind something and send an exploratory crew down in the hopper, see if we can find what we need.”

  “You mean a core?” Caspar’s eyebrows raised. “Send down a small team onto that flytrap and try to roll out with a new core?”

  “I’m open to hearing any other suggestions,” Lucas said. “But in the meantime, Randall, what have we got? Vesta nearby?”

  “Negative, sir. But Pallas may do.”

  “On-screen.”

  Randall punched in some commands for Sock, and the viewscreen displayed approximated trajectories for Ceres and Pallas. They would be near enough to each other for a mission in the comet-hopper. That was luck in and of itself; Pallas’ orbit took it almost to the Kuiper Belt on either end of its ellipsis.

  Lucas knew he would have to lead the team; it was the burden of command. His stomach flipped. Why hadn’t he gone into game design, like his childhood friends? How any captain in the fleet survived their first year without incapacitating ulcers, he couldn’t guess.

  “Look.” He sat on the edge of the chair and spoke informally. “I don’t like this any more than the rest of you. I’m serious when I say I’m hoping to hear some other ideas.” He waited a moment, looking around. Eyes avoided his own. He shrugged. “Then I guess, helm, let’s alter slightly and shoot for Pallas. We can camp out in Ceres’ blindspot, hope no one gets too curious while we’re there.”

  Caspar sniffed. It might have been incredulity. Or it might have just been an itchy nose.

  —

  Pallas was round but imperfect, not quite massive enough to form a full sphere. It looked like a dried-up sponge, the surface lumpy and pock-marked, a desolate spinning rock. The only reason it didn’t harbor a station of its own was the large orbit; sometimes it was in the inner belt, sometimes the outer, and that came with an extreme variety in heat and light exposure. It was more than large enough to hide the Fairfax from sight. Whether or not they would be lucky enough to evade any sensor sweeps? That remained to be seen.

  Lucas brought Caspar, of course. He valued her council—that was the reason he gave himself. And Adams had insisted on coming along, afraid the young captain mightn’t find what they needed, apparently. He brought Mulligan, who brought Kwon, another security private. And a volunteer—Tompkins—rounded out the team.

  “You sure you want to come?” Lucas had ribbed him. “You’ve seen a lot of excitement these past twenty-four hours. For a private, I mean. No one would bat an eye if you took up cleaning duty and followed with a long nap.”

  “Tempting, Sir. But then I’d miss the party. And…” He lowered his voice so only Lucas could hear, and nodded less subtly than he thought toward Caspar. “I can’t have my girlfriend running
off without me.”

  Lucas frowned. “Your commanding officer, I think you mean. Don’t forget that she’s a lieutenant, Private.”

  “Ah, right, Sir.”

  Unlike Pallas, Ceres was just big enough to be spherical, a minor planet. It was orbited by a large station with multiple docks—easy in, easy out. Lucas wished they could have pulled the Fairfax in, gotten what they needed, and put the inner belt behind them as quickly as possible. But they weren’t so fortunate. The station belonged to the Old Earth Empire, which, though ostensibly observing peace with the Kuiper Colonies in preparation for the Summit, nevertheless was no friend to the Fleet or the Council. The peace was tenuous. Lucas had no intention of testing it by flying a warship into their docks—with or without nukes.

  That left Ceres itself. It was a strange world. The surface was an icy wasteland, but a few meters beneath rolled an enormous freshwater ocean. It was there in the dark that humanity had long ago built a new home for themselves—one of many—against all odds.

  “Anyone been here before?” Lucas asked. They were all huddled in the cab of the hopper, Caspar at the helm. The cargo bay had been refitted for safe transport of the core.

  “I have,” Mulligan said. She scratched an itch on the side of her nose. “Once.”

  “Really?” Tompkins guffawed. “Care to tell the tale?”

  Mulligan shrugged. “Not much to tell. But I know someone who might know people in the tubes.”

  “Someone who might know ‘nuclear core on the black market’ kind of people?” Adams lifted an eyebrow.

  “Maybe. On the south side. There, Lieutenant.” She pointed at a blinking white beacon on the surface. “That’ll get us there.”

  Caspar looked to Lucas. He shrugged. “Alright,” she said, sounding dubious. She fired back-thrusters to decelerate as the hopper came in to hug the surface. There wasn’t an atmosphere to speak of; the void met the horizon here, bathed in the cold light of the distant sun. Soon they were skimming along a few meters above the solid ice.