Homecoming - Day 10

Madeline. How could these guys, whoever they were, have found out about him and his ship quickly enough to catch him en route? It had to have been Madeline Sobol. She’d helped him out of a jam, but the cost he’d had to pay had shown him very clearly that she was a shady character at best.

“Aru,” he said, then stopped. Aru belonged to her. His stomach sank as a tendril of doubt wrapped itself around his mind. When he’d first met Aru, he hadn’t had much use for bots, but their experiences since then had transformed distrust into friendship. Irrational friendship, he’d occasionally thought. Maybe ill-advised friendship.

He needed information, and Aru was his only link. He’d have to risk it. “Aru,” he said again, spotting the “Yes?” the bot had displayed on his tablet while he’d paused. “Has there been any tampering with the ship’s systems?”

“Negative, with the exception of the repairs I conducted.”

“Has the ship tried to establish any kind of datalink with us?”

“It is not yet within range.”

“When they’re within range, can you send a request for information to their computer?”

The bot seemed to hesitate. “Affirmative. But risky.”

“How much more at risk can we be?” He couldn’t ask Aru directly if Sobol was manipulating or controlling him in some way, but maybe he could find something in these people’s files about how they’d learned where the Night Star was going to be.

“What information do you want to request?”

“Well, not request, as such …” He was falling back on the lingo he used at Tau Ceti. Keep it together, they haven’t got me yet. They were unnervingly close though, to judge by the sounds of searching out in the cargo bay. “Sorry, Aru. Can you access their communication logs for the past couple of weeks?”

“I will do my best.”

Homecoming - Day 8 & 9

I wrote a bit yesterday but it wasn't enough to post, so I've merged it with this into a slightly longer post for today.

Every instinct screamed at him to move slowly and carefully, to avoid making noise. He forced himself to ignore that instinct; there were few things life as an office researcher could teach about stealthy movement, but one of those few things is that people ignore the familiar and expected. Please, please assume I’m one of you, he thought to himself as he approached the cargo bay hatch. Or better still, don’t hear me at all. That’d work for me, too.

He had his hand on the hatch lever when he heard the sound of boots nearby; someone was coming. He panicked, jammed the lever down and bolted into the cargo bay, then silently cursed himself as the muffled sound of voices reached him.

He was frozen with indecision; if he ran for the hiding space, his supplies would be sure to make noise. On the other hand, noise was the least of his problems if they saw him because he was too slow.

Must move, now! he thought, and raced for the hidden compartment. He hurled himself inside and wrestled the door closed; it made far more sound than he had in his rush, but once it closed with a satisfying thump, he breathed a sigh of relief anyway.

He double-checked that the hatch was secure; it closed and locked fast, and was heavy enough that it wouldn’t sound any more hollow than any other bulkhead on board. He was just settling back to choose something to eat out of his supplies.

“Maybe they heard me, Aru; I’ll be shocked if they didn’t, but they’ll have a hell of a time finding me.”

“They will have help shortly. The larger ship is still on course.”

“Wonderful, thanks for that,” he sighed. He felt better in the hidden compartment, but couldn’t stay there for long. “Aru, what do we know about these guys so far?” He realized he currently knew very little. He didn’t even know their motives, he’d just instinctively, almost intuitively thought they were hostile.

“They’re being very methodical in their search of the ship,” the bot responded. “I’ve overheard several conversations concerning the location of several specific objects they’re seeking.”

That caught his attention; the researcher in him pounced on the obvious questions. “Specific objects? Why would they be searching this ship for them? What could they know about the ship? How could they have found out?”

A wash of new sound caught his attention; the boarders were in the cargo bay. “Why’d they wait so long to search the bay?” he whispered.

“Unknown. One of the intruders is of the opinion that the items they’re looking for are more likely to be found in personal quarters than in the cargo bay. Several of the others disagree, but went along with it.”

They were methodical in their search of the bay, as well. There was little Corwin could deduce from the sounds; the bulkhead hatch was too thick to hear any detail, but Aru fed him updates from the maintenance chassis parked outside. As the only visible piece of cargo on the ship, they were giving it a great deal of attention.

He ate his meal—some sort of dehydrated pasta dish, not dissimilar from the cafeteria foods he ate at work, he reflected—and thought about what Aru had told him, mostly to keep himself calm. If they were looking for something specific, they knew the ship and how to find it. That meant they knew it should have someone on board. They’d be watching for him.

Cold sweat ran down his back as he realized just how lucky he’d been with his gambit to reach the cargo bay.

Homecoming - Day 7

“Where are the boarders?”

“I can’t help you with that, I’m afraid. This craft has no internal sensors that would help me locate them.”

Corwin fought down a rising tide of panic. He grabbed his supplies and peeked out into the central corridor of the ship. Nothing moved, but a loud metallic clang reached him, followed by voices and footsteps from further down. They were on board.

He ducked back inside. It was too far to rush to the cargo bay; he was stuck. His mind flashed around for a solution to the problem. There were two ways into the galley; via the corridor and through the small space that passed as a dining room or mess hall. Places to hide were few and far between. He wouldn’t fit into the cupboards so he had to make do with ducking behind the island counter that separated the two rooms.

“I’m stuck in the galley, Aru,” he whispered under his breath, hoping the tablet’s audio pickup would catch his words. He hurriedly set about turning the display’s brightness way down. “I’m going to have to hope they head for the front of the ship quickly.”

Footsteps rang down the corridor, and to his relief, they were moving pretty fast. He held still as a statue when the door slid open. He held his breath for several long seconds, then heard the footsteps move on further into the ship. He kept low and moved to the doorway in time to see the backs of the boarders disappear into the cockpit. He glanced back further down; another several figures were moving into various parts of the ship. He didn’t see anyone by the hatch to the cargo bay; at least not yet.

“Ah hell, I’m caught anyway,” he said, and marched out into the corridor. He moved with a purpose, footfalls ringing in the passage just like those of the boarders.

Homecoming - Day 6

When he had gathered enough to last several days, he paused and grabbed several other containers that he could seal; he’d noticed that there were no bathroom facilities in the compartment. Then he grabbed the tablet and blanched.

“Alert! Advance boarding craft detected! ETA 5 minutes!” Aru had been trying to get his attention—for 6 minutes.

“Alert! Corwin, get to your compartment! They’re cutting through the hull!”

“Where are they coming through?”

“Crew bunks.”

“Oh s—” he started to say and growled with frustration and hesitation. That would put them right between him and the safety of the cargo bay and its hidden compartment. “ETA for the bigger ship to arrive?”

“12 standard minutes.”

Homecoming - Day 5

He took his eyes off the tablet and focused on sprinting through the ship, charging through the hatch into the forward storage compartment less than a minute later. Inside were various bits and pieces stacked neatly by Aru’s various repair chassis. He grabbed an air cannister and looked around for a mask.

“Aru? I’m not finding a mask.”

“I’m afraid there aren’t any on board.”

He sputtered a bit and swallowed, throat suddenly a bit dry. “None?”

“Confirmed: None.”

Straight from the hose then. He glanced at the time; 18 minutes, at best. Food and water, then. He had no idea how long he might have to spend in there.

“Remind me to refit this bucket of bolts with an escape pod, Aru,” he said. It would take up to two, but unfortunately they were missing. He backtracked to the ship’s galley and grabbed a deep pan, tossing the air cannister into it. He set the tablet on a counter and began grabbing every container he could lay hands on that would seal and started filling them with water, or with food grabbed from the ship’s stores.

Homecoming - Day 4

Corwin’s mind raced with all the thoughts a novice pilot’s brain immediately latches onto and won’t let go of when faced with an unknown ship in the middle of nowhere approaching quickly. He had visions of being boarded by a heavily armed pirate crew and spaced, or having his ship blown out from under him before he had a chance to do anything about it. The Night Star was in bad enough shape that he half-expected the latter to happen even without help from an outside force, so he quickly found himself fighting down the urge to panic.

A quick inspection turned up no sign of what he was looking for. No great shock, he thought. If a quick inspection was all it took to uncover smuggling compartments, they’d be worthless.

“I told you,” his portable display read. “There were no hidden compartments detected.”

“I wouldn’t expect them to,” he said.

A more careful inspection showed exactly what he’d hoped to find, based on his study of the ship class’ history; a series of tiny physical latches all down a rounded corner bulkhead’s edge. The physical nature of the latches made electronic detection impossible, there being no electronics to detect, and the latches themselves were so fine they looked like nothing so much as random scratches from collisions with cargo being loaded and unloaded.

You’d never find them if you didn’t know where to look, and these days not many did. There were precious few law enforcement types around who’d ever seen one of these in operation; Corwin himself would never have known without his access to the archives of the Tau Ceti Institute of Galactic History.

The panel popped open after a few moments of manipulation, but stuck. With a grunt fueled by intense relief, he shoved it open with an ear-rending shriek of protest from the rusty metal.

“Gotcha,” he said, partly to the compartment hatch and partly to Aru.

A sensor package mounted on Aru’s large chassis swiveled toward the compartment. The text updated moments later. “That compartment may not be safe.”

“What’d your scan pick up?”

“Very little. It needs a full diagnostic inspection. The total lack of electronic feedback systems leaves me little I can tell you. It’s literally just a hole in the wall. It may not be environmentally sealed. A hull breach could be fatal, and if the inner door isn’t air tight, it would not have to be a breach of the compartment itself.”

“So I’m probably okay as long as we maintain our air?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“But that’s what’s going to matter if our visitors are hostile.”

The bot had little he could say to that.

“Speaking of our visitors—”

“Their trajectory and speed are both changing. It’s too early to say with certainty, but—”

“But they could be angling in for boarding maneuvers.”

“Yes.”

“Is there any extra air on board?”

“Some, but it’s for emergency use.”

Corwin stared blankly at the tablet for a moment. “Aru, what do you think this is?”

“… of course. Forward storage compartment.”

He wasted no time in sprinting for the forward compartment. “How long until they intercept?”

“Since I don’t know that that’s what they intend to do, I can’t say precisely. If they continue as they are now, no more than 20 standard minutes.”