Pachinko to Pisces Mark A. Mandel, Copyright 2000-2002 last edited 2002.3.05 Something was covering my face. I tried to brush it away, but my arms were in restraints. I pulled free of the blanket, pushed the thing away, and put it right back again. "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, a research and terraforming colony on a big moon of a gas giant, was 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. He yelled and ducked; ripe jeckies are soft and very sticky, and this lot was a bit overripe. "Just testing your reflexes," I said, putting it on a plate plus two for myself. I 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 buzz 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 voice was faraway, almost longing. "There's one of those they never solved I wish I knew the end of. 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. At Engineer Amor was 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. "Nineteen minutes to initial decel. Nice work, Darz." He grinned and ducked his head. 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: typical Amor. Pachinko Station came up on augmented visual with its usual swarm of ships and shuttles. As we came into close range their superimposed symbols acquired the violet or deep blue sheen of low-level shielding against orbital trash and dockside accidents. The rest would be pure piloting. I gave Deb the conn and started plotting the Pisces arc. As the dock clamps took hold I logged our outbound plan and passed her a message. 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. I grinned back at Deb. Any chairwarmer questions my arcs and scheduling, he gets a very thorough explanation of how, why, and how much we save by it. It's even true. Deb dismissed us and handed off to Parvati, the first mate, who immediately asked Mel to brief her 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 and 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 waving a printout and almost shouting at 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 is it?" Some of the factors and agents at Pachinko... well, I wouldn't trust them to sell me cough drops. "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 so, that's what it is. 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 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 station traffic was light. We had four days to cross the K-V orbit and cut through the inner asteroids 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 on Darz's training, walking him through my calculations. "What's so vital about that very second?" he grumbled. "How could one minute be so important?" "You saw me nursing the drive and directionals, and you should've been watching the readouts. Would you believe that we entered the segment within one second, five meters, 10 centimeters per second, and 15 arc-seconds of the plot?" "Well..." I watched him estimate, by feel as much as memory and calculation; good. "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 Bassiere'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 asteroids 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, playing go with Mel, and improvising 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 degrees away, eternally chasing Kiribati around the sun. As we entered the tail of Comet Chola 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," I answered, "or a rock thrown into an anomalous orbit by a near pass with Fatso or another rock." "There's another!" he said, just as the intership 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. 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 and saw that he was trembling. "Here," I said, "I'll show you." He started to get up. "Always hand off!" He froze, staring at the console, then made a running handoff: three command taps and a thumbprint. "Better," I said, finishing the sequence. "Now watch." I built up a geometry lesson: a tetrahedron linking the raiders' darts, inscribed in a transparent sphere and centered on our own symbol. "Look at their views." I rotated the image to show the formation as seen from each of the attacking ships. "Each of them sees the others forming a big triangle around us, leaving a clear field of fire." "A classic maneuver," Mel growled behind us. "We're surrounded in three dimensions. No way to evade, even if we had the legs." He glared at the screen as though will power could change it. "No choices!" He didn't see my warning look, 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 her knife was 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 a meter-long wrench and was tightening his heavy boots. Marja handed Mel the Bowie knife that hangs 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 slaved the Command display 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 and answered. "Nothing but dust from here to Pepin. 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 beams from the green darts tracked the newcomer. Mel swore again. 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 follow. Yellow, then orange ("Navy!"-- Zulya), and finally a deep cherry-red. Mel drew a slow breath. "Sweet... Mother... Cat! Where's she getting the power for _that_?" 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 from Monitor. "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!" "Tric-ky," 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 at full thrust into the heart of the asteroids. Instead of pursuing, the stranger tracked her with two beams. I boosted the magnification. The beams converged precisely at the raider's tail. I whistled. Amor said, "If they can hold that focus, 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, the ship matched course with us 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 into 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 in 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. It was Mel, his eyes fixed on the screen and his face grey. "4L-2190... Look for 4L-2190." Marja threw a switch and the hulk lit up. Space glowed faintly as light scattered off the dust of the asteroid belt and the comet, and maybe four ships' breathing air. I focused 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. * * * An hour later the whole second shift was gathered in the galley. Zulya was assembling the first-shift midmeal, but like us he was listening to Mel reading aloud. So was the rest of the crew, by intercom. "SLDF _Christian_ 4L-2190. Missing in action. _Tgu_-class corvette, commissioned 78/013. ... 82/334: Assigned to Sector 7, Jayme Dawson commanding. ... Battles, commendations... Here we go. "84/116: Dispatched to Barber's Sun. 84/122.1106: Reports ambush by three enemy 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 sign 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 launch a shuttle toward us. Then what? We hail a ship that isn't there. The pirates fire on an empty point. The shuttle goes to pieces. The pirates break formation to engage nothing. Three are carved up by nothing, the fourth runs 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 respectively of the filk songs "Dawson's _Christian_" and "The Good Ship _Manatee_", and to Leslie Fish, who wrote the music for the latter and whose recording I learned it from. Thanks also to Steve Lowe, "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. Any mistakes or misuse of their advice are of course my fault alone [but there are none, so there! ;-)\ ]. To all persons mentioned or alluded to in the story, no offense is intended, and I hope none is taken.