Pachinko to Pisces

Mark A. Mandel, © 2000

Something was covering my face. I tried to brush it away, but my arms were in restraints.

I pulled free of the blanket, moved the thing aside, and put it right back over my eyes. "Who turned on the light?"

"Forty minutes." It was Deb, our captain.

"I'll be there." I opened my eyes by degrees and lifted the papers off my face: the Navigator's Manifest for our next arc. I'm the navigator.

CONSIGNMENT #1

Pickup: Pachinko Station, Pachinko orbit, 07/218.1200-1500
Delivery: Pisces Base, Fatso IX, 07/223.1200-2400
Mass: 24.7 tons +/- 50 kg

We were en route to Pachinko Station; Pisces Base is the research and terraforming colony on a big moon of a gas giant, and evidently our next stop. I left the rest for after breakfast.

In the galley Suni and Marja were swapping ghost ship stories. Mel was reading a book and demolishing a pepper bun. He lifted his tengalin and wiped his brow. "Get me a jecky, will you?" I picked a blue-green fruit out of the cooler and cocked my arm to throw. "Hey!" He ducked. Ripe jeckies are soft and very sticky. This lot was a bit overripe.

"Just testing your reflexes." I put it on a plate plus two for myself, filled a mug, and sat down. "What'cha reading?"

He answered between spoonfuls of fruit. "Ship records from the war, just declassified. I looked up the one that attacked us. Eighteen days later..."

I should have known better; Mel has a bee in his bonnet about military history. I let it drone on and studied my mug. The imprint was worn but still legible:

ISS Manatee
Sanders Freight & Factors
Aldebaran K:82:47

She had come limping into the system late in the war, jump drive crippled and lifesystems half gone. Olympus Shipping bought her, repaired her, refitted her, and renamed her, but they saw no need to replace the utensils.

Nor the crew, but after twenty-two years only two remained. Rebels and renegades hadn't taken away Deb's first command, and the last bureaucrat to try had retired early with a nervous breakdown. Mel was the Dream's second mate now, but he still sat Engineer on second shift.

His tone became distant, almost longing. "There's one case in particular I've always wished I knew the end of. It's a strange one, and I feel connected to it even though--"

The intercom burped and a quiet voice spoke. "Dausen, would you please help me out at Secondary? Mod 5's developed a waver, and I'd like to clean it up before we dock."

He grimaced, threw his dishes in the cleaner, and hurried off. I studied the Pisces manifest: construction supplies, precious metals for circuits and catalysts, radioactives for power. The other consignments were Pachinko's regular loads for the habitable planets Kiribati and Vermont and two of the asteroid bases. I started roughing out the Pisces arc in my head.

On the bridge I took over Nav/Helm from Darz, the 'prentice helm. Amor was at Engineer, muttering over his headset to Mel down in Secondary. Rico was handing off Monitor to Marja, and Deb was at Command. "Right on the plot," I told her, and "Good work" to Darz. "Nineteen minutes to initial decel."

Deb grunted, but she was pleased. Pachinko is the closest planet to our sun and loaded with ores. The station's orbit around it varies with gravitational irregularities, magnetic anomalies, solar flares, and deliberate adjustments, and the approach is never routine.

Half an hour later Amor announced loudly that Mod 5 was running clean, that he was going to his quarters the minute Mel came up to relieve him, and that he was not to be disturbed for anything short of Emergency Red. I looked at Deb; she signaled "Wait a bit". When he was gone she murmured, "Parvati says he was running back and forth to Secondary for six hours. Didn't want to bother Mel on his off-shift." I nodded; that was Amor, all right.

Pachinko Station came up on augmented visual with its usual bustle of ships and shuttles. As we came into close range their superimposed symbols acquired the violet or deep blue sheen of low-level shielding, protection from orbital trash and dockside accidents. The rest would be pure piloting. I gave Deb the conn and started plotting the arc.

As the dock clamps took hold of us I logged our outbound plan and passed her a note. She grinned and keyed the all-ship intercom. "I am pleased to inform you that Nav has plotted, and Station Ops has accepted, a departure time pending final check of fifteen-oh-six on the two-one-nine. That's twenty-six hours of layover, folks." Mel and Marja cheered and so did the intercom. Any chair-warmer who challenges me on a schedule like that gets a detailed explanation of how it works and how much we save the line by departing at just that moment instead of ten or fifteen hours earlier, and any navigator will back me on it. It even happens to be true.

Deb dismissed us and handed off to Parvati, the first mate, who immediately asked Mel for a briefing on the Mod 5 situation, though I knew he was itching to get out to Hank's Saloon or one of the other music bars. Deb would meet up with her friend from Station Supply to shuttle down to Watney Port for an opera or symphony -- as far away from Mel's singing as possible. Me, I headed for the chess club to try out a new variation on the apGhali Helical Offense.

* * *

Twenty-four hours later I was on the point of arguing with Parvati, which I never do. "Look at this listing for hold 6-B, it can't be right. Five hundred fifty kilos of precious metals?"

She answered in her careful way. "It is most unusual, and I questioned it myself. But the labels and packaging are all in accord, and the factor confirmed the description."

"Who?" Some of the factors and agents at Pachinko... let's just say I wouldn't deal with them for anything critical to my health.

"The precious metals consignment is from Random. I spoke with Mary herself. She escorted the delivery in person and armed."

"Armed?" I blinked. "Well, if Mary says it, it's so. But why so much?"

"Do you remember the machinery and circuit elements we carried to Pisces Base all last year? They have completed their construction robots and are ready to set them to building terraforming installations and rovers. It is a very large project." That's why I don't argue with Parvati: she's always right.

Deb came back from layover humming the umpire's aria from La Maledizione del Bambino, and not even Mel's crooning "Tumbling Tumbleweed" down the corridor bothered her. Amor had bought a teddymorph for his daughter back on Kiribati, my Helical variant had moved me up 18 points in the systemwide rankings, and Darz and Marja were glowing from the station's zero-g flight gym, and probably less formal exercises as well. Even Parvati was cheerful in spite of layover duty. Mod 5 had checked out nominal and traffic was light. We had four days to cross the K-V orbit and cut through the Inner Jumble to Fatso IX.

Deb handles approaches, I do departures. Traffic Control had okayed my schedule and I eased us out on the tick. Once away from the station I spent an hour walking Darz through my calculations.

"What's so vital about that very second?" he grumbled. "How could one minute be so important?"

"You saw me nurse the drive and directionals. Would you believe that we entered the segment within one second, 5 meters, 10 cm per second, and 15 arc-seconds of the plot?"

"Well..." I watched him estimate, by remembered feel as much as by calculation; good. "Y-y-yes, I'd believe it."

"Fine. Calculate transit time and fuel consumption, with error bars, from undock to Nine orbit, assuming Class 1-A piloting all the way. Then work it again departing one minute later and one minute sooner."

"But that'll take my whole rec shift!" I won't let him use the nav computer for exercises till he knows each step in his sleep.

"Then you must need the practice. G'wan, get started!"

At shift change he reappeared with a rumpled sheaf of papers and a rumpled look. "I didn't believe my answers, so I checked them by Bassière's method. You were right."

"M-hm. How much sleep did you get?"

"Uh--"

"Boards are all green, and we won't really hit the Jumble till midwatch. You be here at four."

He sighed with relief and left. I turned back to my screen, the arc, and my game with Mel, who had handed off to Amor and moved to a foldout bench near my station. The game was as much a public service as recreation for me. When not otherwise occupied, Mel liked to find a convenient space in a pressurized hold with what he called "good acoustics" for his compositions. The air ducts would carry the sound all over the ship. We each did our part to minimize the nuisance.

* * *

So I stayed on duty into the asteroids and the second watch of the arc, keeping half an eye on the long-range sensors while I played go with Mel and improvised limericks and tanka with Parvati. Amor practiced his Acehnese with Suni. Crossing the K-V orbit I could have looked down on the White Mountains if Vermont hadn't been 118° away, eternally chasing Kiribati around the sun. We entered the tail of Comet Chola and Suni raised the shield to blue-green.

Darz showed up at 0400. I handed off and watched him check in.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing into the holoscreen. One rock was on an eccentric path, almost parallel to ours.

"Probably a chunk of comet. Or sometimes a collision, or a near pass with Fatso or a bigger asteroid, will throw a rock into an anomalous orbit."

"There's another!" he said, just as the intership radio chimed. A male voice said, "Hailing Hera's Dream. Hera's Dream, please reply." We all sat up. Custom and law both require the hailing party to name itself first. Parvati keyed the mike. "This is IPS Hera's Dream, of Olympus Systemwide Shipping. Who is hailing us? Please identify yourself."

"You are englobed and under our weapons. Maintain course. Do not attempt to maneuver. Lower your shields and stand by to be boarded."

Suni gasped. Mel swore. Parvati keyed Deb's channel. "Emergency Red, Captain. We seem to have encountered pirates." And she hit the all-ship alarm.

"What does he mean, englobed?" Darz asked me. The pirates must have had their shields off for the ambush, but now his two rocks and two others showed as green dart shapes, massing about like small destroyers. I gave him a rueful nod, then looked closer. The kid was beginning to tremble.

"Here," I said, "I'll show you." He started to get up. "Always hand off!" He froze, staring blankly at the console, then made a running handoff: three command taps and a thumbprint. "Better," I said, sliding into the seat and finishing the sequence. "Now, watch how I do this."

I entered the commands one by one so he could follow them. A geometry lesson took form: dashed lines linking the green darts in a regular tetrahedron, inscribed in a transparent sphere and centered on us. "Look at their view." Showing him the commands, I rotated the image to display the formation as it would look from the enemy ships in turn. "Each of them sees the other three forming a big triangle around us. They've all got a clear line of fire."

"A classic maneuver," Mel growled behind us. "Any way we go, we can't evade fire or pursuit. And even if we could run, they'd be faster." He glared at the screen as though will power could change it. "We're pinned. No options at all!" He didn't see my warning glance, but Darz was totally focused on the screen.

"Show me the bastards!" Deb stalked onto the bridge, with the rest of the off-shift crew close behind. She wore her old bar-hopping jumpsuit, and the way it wrinkled told me she had her knife in the concealed sheath on one side and her shockclub on the other. Rico had his hunting knife, and Zulya was passing out sharp objects from the galley. Amor had gotten out a meter-long wrench and was tightening his heavy boots. Marja handed Mel the Bowie knife he keeps on his wall, and I wrapped my belt around my fist with the big buckle outermost. And that was all our weaponry. No, not quite: Suni had handed off to Marja, folded up the benches, and started her martial arts warmup.

Parvati had the Command display slaved to mine. From one of the green darts a blue speck was crawling toward us. I announced, "ETA that shuttle about five minutes."

Darz cried, "There's another!" At the top of the display a dim white dart was approaching from solar south.

"Huh? What's out there?" Deb asked. The new ship was much further away than the others, coming in straight and fast and decelerating hard. I killed the collision alarm before it could sound.

"Nothing but dust from here to Pepin," I said. "She could've been lying off, waiting for a signal."

"Navy?" Zulya asked hopefully. "No way," said Mel. I explained, "The symbol's too dim. A Navy here-I-am would be as bright as our own marker."

"Give me tightbeam!"

Marja worked a moment. "You're on, Cap."

"Mayday, mayday! This is IPS Hera's Dream, an unarmed freighter, Debra Emery commanding. We are englobed by four pirate vessels, with a boarding party --" She looked toward me; I raised three fingers. "-- three minutes away. Help us if you can!"

The intership remained silent, but four white lines from the green darts tracked the newcomer. Mel swore again. "Four beams on one! She's doomed."

The stranger's symbol flickered across the spectrum as she came close enough for her shield to register: violet, blue, green, yellow-green, changing almost too fast to see. Yellow, then orange ("Navy!": Zulya), and finally a deep cherry-red. Mel drew a slow breath. "Sweet... Mother... Cat! A superdreadnought shield! Where's she getting the power?" I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

Whatever she was, the new ship massed smaller than us, smaller than our enemies. But she answered them with a single beam direct at the shuttle, so bright I blinked. When I could see clearly again, the blue speck was gone. There was a moment's vibration. "Several minor impacts," Marja reported. "No damage. Probably debris."

The geometry lesson twisted and faded away as the raiders swooped to surround their attacker, two of them firing broadside with fore, aft, and midship cannon simultaneously. The stranger veered and passed perilously close to one, raking with her own brilliant fore and aft beams. The green shield vanished and the pirate ship burst open.

The others were all firing full broadside. Contemptuously the stranger repeated her maneuver, this time with both forward cannon and both aft, four beams clawing across the second pirate's hull. Someone blurted "That's im--" and swallowed, as it fell apart in shards of metal and puffs of condensing air. Parvati whispered, "Wagha sarkha maarat ahe!"

"Tricky," Mel said slowly. "A couple degrees off, or the other guy is better or luckier, you miss and you're the target, at close range. But they're as fast and as synched..."

Two pirates remained. One launched a projectile; a thin beam exploded it as soon as it appeared. Then the bright beams struck again, and there was more debris. A fragment passed us at twenty meters. I was glad we couldn't see the face.

The last pirate was driving away, full thrust into the heart of the Jumble. Instead of pursuing, the stranger tracked her with two beams. I boosted the magnification. The beams converged at the raider's tail. I whistled. "They are good."

Amor said, "If they can hold their aim, they might fuse her drive cones.... Yep." The green dart became a blazing nova, then an expanding silver-grey cloud as antiglare cut in.

Deb hailed again. "Unknown ship, Hera's Dream thanks you, whoever you are! Please identify yourself!"

Instead of answering, she came alongside a klick to sunward. Even this close, her heavy shield concealed all details. Then the red glow blinked off.

We gasped. Sunlight shone through dozens of rents. A long strip was torn off her side, as if peeled by a sidelong impact. Rico murmured, "They died to save us," and started to pray.

I tapped for infrared. Then I tapped the command again, watching my fingers to be sure of it. I stared at the screen while my heartbeat sounded in my head. "No, they didn't," I said at last. "They died a long time ago. That ship is cold."

I focused near the bow. Most of the markings there had been obliterated along with part of the hull, but... "There's something ending in 'I A N'."

Someone moaned behind me and I turned to look. Mel was staring at the screen, his face grey. "4L-2190", he said in a monotone. "Look for 4L-2190."

Marja threw a switch and the hulk lit up. Space glowed faintly as the light scattered off the dust of the Jumble and the comet, and maybe four ships' breathing air. I zoomed in on an intact section:

4L-2190
SLDF CHRISTIAN

The letters seemed to be losing definition. I started adjusting the focus till I realized that the hull was going transparent. Then it was gone and the engines, decks, and bulkheads were fading in their turn, as if the ship were evaporating layer by layer.

And there were the crew at their stations, stripped to the core like the ship herself: skeletons, sitting like the living. Then they too faded, and we were alone with the dust and the debris.

* * *

"SLDF Christian 4L-2190. Missing in action. Tgu-class corvette, commissioned 78/013. -- Mmm, assignments and skirmishes. -- 82/334: Assigned to Sector 7, Jayme Dawson commanding. -- Various encounters and commendations. Here we go.

"84/116: Dispatched to patrol Barber's Sun. 84/122.1106: Reports ambush by three enemy ships and urgently requests immediate support. No further communication received. 1133: Fleet 7-Blue arrives at Christian's last known coordinates. 1138-2200: Search identifies wreckage indicative of three enemy light cruisers destroyed by Tgu-class weaponry. No other indication of Christian found within 40-kiloklick radius." He wasn't looking at the book or anything else we could see.

"Absent any evidence of nuclear or antimatter explosion, tentative conclusion is that Christian succeeded in destroying her attackers but was herself rendered unmaneuverable and incommunicado and/or all personnel killed or incapacitated, and exited the volume at high velocity in an unknown direction due to maneuvers, enemy action, or a combination thereof. Crew and vessel posthumously awarded Gold Spiral with Supernova for extraordinary courage and skill in the face of superior forces."

He blinked and looked at me. "That's the one. Dawson's Christian. The ship I started telling you about."

"No one will ever believe us," Amor said.

"But we have the recordings!" said Rico.

"Of what?" Suni countered. "We all viewed them. Pirates threaten us, englobe us, and send a shuttle. Then what? We hail a ship that isn't there. The pirates fire on an empty point. The shuttle goes to pieces by itself. The pirates break formation to engage nothing. Three are carved up by nothing, the fourth flees from nothing and explodes. No phantom ship, no super-shield, no high-power beams, no ruined hulk, no skeleton crew." Nobody smiled.

"If I was a bureaucrat," said Deb, shuddering at the thought, "I'd bury the story in the files and try to shut us up."

"But pirates are news, bad news," said Zulya. "They'll have to warn the whole sector and call the Navy in to patrol."

"Or at least examine the wreckage," said Suni. "I didn't recognize the accent. Where did they come from? Are we in for another Time of Wolves?"

"Right," Deb sighed, "we'll have to report. But they'll never want to believe it, and seventeen to six they'll 'request that we not discuss the incident.'"

"Anyway," said Mel, "I can write a song about it."

Three jeckies on convergent vectors made simultaneous impact. Somewhere in the turquoise goop a bubble popped stickily.

"Well, maybe not."

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks most of all to Duane Elms and Debra Sanders, creators of the filk songs "Dawson's Christian" and "The Good Ship Manatee" respectively.

Thanks also to Steve Lowe, Patri ("Lord Patri") Pugliese, and Ashwin Rao for advice on astronomy, naval terminology, and Marathi, and to my family and Gary McGath for critical readings of early drafts and helpful comments on them. Any mistakes or misuse of their advice are of course my fault alone (but there are none, so there! ;-)\ ).

Apologies to all persons whom I have included or alluded to in the story in one way or another, generally by name only; I hope no one takes offense.

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