Chapter One
I am a peanut.
Ethereal in nature and infinitely pliable. The universe is my playground and all is revealed unto me. I traverse time and space, with stars as my footstools and a myriad of wondrous planets as my pillow. The heavens obey my whims and all bow to my desires. For I am both infinite and immortal.
Slowly, he became aware of his surroundings. The quiet hum of the ventilation fans. The hiss of the air moving through ducts. The soft drone of the computers munching on their numbers.
It was always a little surreal to rise out of the grip of the sleepers and return once more to the land of the living. If you could call a small metal cylinder coasting through space "land". There was always that little nagging feeling at the back of the mind. A dream barely remembered, a half-heard message that you could never really tell if you wanted to remember or not.
After taking a few moments to mull over his sluggish thoughts, Johnny decided that he had better get up. Looking around the small compartment, he could see the other crew slowly coming round. Since everyone was being awakened normally, it was obviously not an emergency. There was time to grab a snack before starting his shift. Quietly, so as to not attract undue attention, Johnny sauntered off to the mess.
Elsewhere on the Celiker, Guiora was trying to shake the cobwebs from his head. Navigation was fun and all, but he needed to be able to think clearly to do it. Pulling on some comfy shoes, he moved down the central hallway to the navroom where the main displays were showing their current position. They were about two days out from their destination, Balga.
"How are we looking?" asked Powell.
"Pretty good, Captain," replied Guiora. "We're two days out, right in the pipe with no obstacles to be seen. Two contacts, one thirty forward and the other eighty aft. Plenty of clearance."
"Excellent" said Powell. Turning to his second, he continued. "Isacus, set the first watch and send the lads round on an inspection. If there are any holes, I want to know about them. Have Papo make sure all our invoices are in order for when we unload. Oh, and make sure that Mari has something to do."
"Yessir!" replied Isacus. Fortunately for him, there would be plenty of time to get adjusted to the shipboard routine before they docked at Balga. On some trips, the distance between the set emergence point and the destination was pretty short and it always made him grumpy to have to go without enough sleep.
Watching Isacus leave, Powell considered how lucky he was to have him as a Second. There was always a delicate balance for the Second to maintain between being commandeering enough to keep everyone else in line but subordinate enough to follow the Captains orders when given. There were precious few people capable of consistently maintaining that balance.
Most guys (or gals now that he thought about it) were too busy pushing themselves forward for their own command or too apathetic as they fell from their previous command. The pushers who wanted to be captains would spend too much time making sure the Captain knew how good they were - and if they didn't get the recommendations, they'd move on to another ship. Those on the fall from having previously been a captain but having lost their ship or been demoted for whatever reason where normally quite good at the job since they already knew what to do but also dragged down the moral of the rest of the crew.
And they were also exceptionally rare, since a captain who lost his ship would normally go with it. Be it lost in the void, blown to bits of orbiting rubble or lost to poor maintenance, the Captain would invariably go with the ship. Not out of some long forgotten sense of duty but from the simple reason that when a ship fails, it fails quickly. And spectacularly, should there be anyone around to see.
A chance comment by his navigator snapped his attention back to present.
"What was that?"
"I was just wondering if Kasia was going to be at the Frantelle Bar still" mused Guiora. "She was certainly a very fine lady, if you know what I mean."
"Actually, no" replied Powell with a quiet smirk on his face. "I wouldn't know what you mean. After all, I'm not Voislaving, am I?"
There was a quite laugh amongst the other crew present. The captain was talking about a small legal curiosity on the planet Paaveli that required a man perform a long and bizarre ritual prior to engaging in sexual acts with their partner. In practice, nobody actually performed said ritual but it was a convenient loophole to catch those who decided to take their amorous adventures out in public. There was a lengthy debate to remove that law after a group of University students performed a "protest" in the streets that conformed to the law exactly but like all contentious issues, the politicians of the day put it to a committee until the public lost interest.
Meanwhile, down in the engineering spaces of the ship, two of the four mechanics that maintained the ship were busy suiting up a third. One person could actually suit themselves up with relative ease, but three were always required when there was a standard EVA action. The two main reasons being that nobody wanted to discover they had neglected to do a catch or seal when the airlock depressurized (or worse, after they'd stepped outside) and the company made it a requirement because it was cheaper to expend some labour triple-checking than to buy a new suit. Since nobody wanted to wear a suit that a fellow crew member had exploded in.
(And even that was a misnomer since several studies of dubious nature with notorious criminals had conclusively proven that an exposed body did not 'explode' in hard vacuum. But the myth persists.)
"Looking good?" asked Kyomori.
"Looking good" said Michael. "You're all set Deva."
"About time" said Deva, her voice muffled from inside the suit. "You know how damned stuffy it gets in here before the scrubbers kick in."
"Yeah, yeah" said Kyomori. "You know we don't want you to lose a seal while you're out there."
"Yeah" chipped in Michael. "We like to be thorough."
"I'll give you thorough, you two. And next time you try to cop a feel, I'm dragging you out there with me," she said.
The two guys laughed as Deva moved into the airlock. Watching the displays as the atmosphere cycled, Michael called Deva on the comm.
"You all good in there?"
"All greens, good to go."
"Copy that, all green. You confirm, Kyo?"
"Yup, confirm. Pop the cork Mike."
"Right, opening the outer door."
Silently, the external door slid to one side. Deva always anticipated hearing the door actuators, or the rush of air, or something when the outer door opened. Even after all her years of going out of ships, it still seemed weird. And the silence always got to her. Normally she would have had her player going on in the background with whatever had been popular at the last stop, but that had been put to a stop after some loon on another ship didn't notice that his payload had come adrift and didn't hear the other crewmembers yelling at him down the comm.
The view was a spectacular letdown. This far out from the nearest primary, the starlight was insufficient to actually illuminate anything. Even with her polarized visor up, there were just the stars in the infinite distance and the blackness of where the stars weren't to tell her where the ship was.
With a quiet sigh, she dropped her maintenance overlay visor into place and turned on her suit's lights. Moving out from the airlock, Deva attached the safety line to a locking pin. Her maneuvering suit had enough energy stored in it to move her to the nearest planet, but company policy was that all external walkers needed a line. Most walkers just assumed that it was so that the expensive maneuvering pack could be recovered if the walker fell unconscious or died whilst on a walk, though the company reps would never admit to it.
Carefully, she made her way to the nose of the ship. Celiker was not the most elegant or streamlined ship in the company fleet, but then again - she didn't need to be. There isn't much point in making a ship streamlined if there isn't any wind to push against, and there's no point spending money on making it look pretty when nobody was ever going to look at it.
Except Deva. She saw Celiker at least two or three times on each flight. The outside was fairly drab, with lots of little marks everywhere where everything from micrometeorites to inattentive load handlers had scuffed the hull. She was intimately familiar with what it looked like.
Having reached what passed for a nose, she started her scan. The main task on a scan was to look for leaks. The shipboard computers could sense the smallest pressure shifts, but sometimes it would constantly adjust for a small leak until the low oxygen alarms started screaming. Since the crews tended to be fond of their oxygen, frequent external checks were required. That, and it gave the crew something to do. There were no freeloaders on a company ship.
"Hmm, that's some good Fogey" said Johnny. He was in the mess "helping" the ships cook and the two kitchen hands, though in reality it was an excuse to appear busy and at the same time snag a bit of free grub.
"I don't know why the Captain sent yer down here" said Skourpa. "Yer never too good at helpin' and yer always swipin' me foods."
"I never steal food!" exclaimed Johnny as he chewed on some more Fogey. "I'm insulted. 'Sides, what the Captain says, Johnny does. It's that simple."
"Well, maybe I best be having a little chatty with the ole' Captain then, shan't I?"
"Oh - well if I'm bugging you that much, then I'd best be off to make some mischief elsewhere, shouldn't I.?"
"Yar, that would be grand."
"And then when the 'ole Captain as you say finds out, he'll be reaching for the nearest bit of cable for a good old flogging of the dear old Cook, aye Steppy?"
"Gnyah - maybe yer can stay a little longer. There's a nice bag of potato's that needs peelin' right behind yer." Skourpa was always a little miffed when the other crewmembers called him 'Steppy'. His last name was Stepanov, and it irked him that they couldn't be bothered to get his name right. On the other hand, there were worse nicknames to get lumped with. Some of the crew called still Johnny "little stinky" after a notorious incident with the head.
"Potato peeling? If you wanted me out of here that badly you should have just said so!" Johnny sauntered out of the mess, looking for a new place to lie low until he was needed. He actually had a very important role aboard the ship. He was the qualified PD rod technician, which meant that if the PD rods that the ship needed to make its trips possible needed adjusting or repair then he was the man to do it.
As these things turn out, the PD rods almost never needed adjusting. On average, Johnny needed to actually work only once during any five trips and that was mainly preventative maintenance. As a result, he appeared to spend most of his time loafing around doing nothing. So the other crewmembers were always trying to palm off odd jobs onto him. It was frustrating that he was seen to be a lazy lay about when in reality, if the rods failed and needed repair then he would be the only one aboard who knew enough to get them going again.
And since it was such a specialized job (not to mention an important one) he had had to spend an inordinate amount of time studying and learning the craft. He even ended up spending most of his shore leave catching up and running exercises in order to keep his skills up. But that was the lot of a PD Rod Technician.
As Johnny left, Paxton and Doris looked up at him. They were the two kitchen hands on this trip. It was normal for the kitchen hands to have fairly short spans on a given ship. Since there had to be three or four meals prepped every day, round the clock, the role of kitchen hand was a demanding one. And since they normally only saw four or five rooms in the entire ship during a trip, kitchen hands tended to have fairly short careers. Most tended to be young people looking for a spot of quick cash and / or a ride to another planet.
As it happened, on this trip both Paxton and Doris were new to the crew. And as these things happened (and since they normally only saw just each other and Steppy) they had fallen in love. Nobody else knew (or cared so long as the food was ready on time), but they were happy on this trip, even if they were a little tired during their shifts on occasion.
Of course, any ship could use prepackaged meals as food for the crew, but they tended to be cheap and nasty, tasting mainly of cardboard and stainless steel. And a grumpy crew was an unproductive crew, so most companies sprang for the cost of some proper cooks. Some things may change, but nobody ever liked the triple lie.
Down in the holds, Papo Rodriguez was carefully going over all the invoices and checking them off against the actual cargo. Annoyingly, the vast majority ended up in the category "miscellaneous". It had all been checked carefully prior to loading, and then checked again after loading. Re-checking and triple checking were par for the course, and there was always the chance that a crewmember might have been tempted to swipe something but that hardly ever happened. For starters, the crew was asleep for most of the trip. And on this trip, most of the goods they carried were too big to put into a pocket. Too big to put into a Runabout come to that.
But if there was one thing the company didn't like, it was people not doing anything. So Papo went about his rounds, checking everything for the umpteenth time and marking off all the right boxes so that when the manifest was handed over to customs and the invoices thumbed off to the receivers at Balga, nobody would complain that he hadn't done his job.
Technically, he could have done his job from his office in about seven and a half seconds with a simple cut and paste operation, but since his name was on the line he figured he would do his job properly. Plus, it's not like there was anything else to do. A two day approach meant that he could either do his day's worth of work and stretch it out into two days, or he could sit around bored for a day.
What was this? A missing box! Papo carefully looked over his notes. Box HBF-32145, then HBF-32147 but no HBF-32146 between them. Not even a gap. Every box on either side had been shifted over slightly so that from a glance it looked like all the boxes where in position.
This was bad.
This was very bad.
Balga Station. Or as it should be properly known: Maantus Primary Station Balga. But that was too long, and too clumsy to say. Balga Station was short and rolled off the tongue with ease. And of course, just Balga was even shorter.
Balga was named (as large structures often are) after a person of note from a time long forgotten. But since nobody remembered them, even fewer knew what they had done. It had probably been one of the people that discovered Maantus. Maantus of course, was the name of the local star. That wasn't the original name. The original name was a long assortment of letters and numbers that meant nothing to nobody, except maybe a filing clerk in the astronomy office.
But once people decided to settle on one of the planets (as tends to happen when a terra compatible planet is found) then people decided that the local star needed a nice, easy to pronounce name. Thus, it was named "Maantus". Obviously, these people were idiots, or had perpetual colds.
The planets were "named" (as planets often are) in ascending numerical order, starting from the one closest to the star. So the nearest planet was named Maantus One, the next one Maantus Two and so on all the way up to Maantus Five (a small, piddly little planetoid only barely capable of being ascribed as a planet).
But since the afore mentioned people where reluctant to name things by numbers, they re-named Maantus Two (where they lived) as Maantus Prime. Because (as everyone knows), naming something "Prime" makes it sound important, and less likely to be on the receiving end of an orbital bombardment (or more likely, depending on who you speak to). And nobody enjoys those. Unless they're on the giving end, in which case the pretty lights make for a marvelous display to watch whilst you dine.
And this is where Balga comes into the picture. Many long tales ago, an unfriendly chap from a neighboring system decided that Maantus would make an excellent principality and wedding gift for his son. An invasion force was dully organized and the stalwart men (and women) marched in and made all sorts of silly demands.
To this, the proud, non-number-naming people of Maantus Prime replied by building Balga, a military defense station with which to block the invading fleet. And since everyone (else) knows that building static fortifications in space is a stupid idea, the invading fleet promptly went around Balga and reduced the presidential palace to softly glowing lava.
The fifth person down in the chain of command (having been excluded from the planning meeting because he was not important enough, since the meeting with the first through fourth people in command was to be held at the governors palace) decided that discretion was the better part of valor and sent the lawyers in to negotiate.
One quick treaty later and a taxation system was imposed and everyone was happy.
Skip forwards a few hundred years and Balga has been converted from a military defense station to one of many orbiting receiving stations. Goods, materials, people and information flow through these stations, either on their way down to Maantus Prime or off to other places in the known universe. Orbital factories convert and process, produce and distribute goods off all shapes and types since they are easier on the eyes and leave the countryside free to do it's beauty tricks. Not to mention allowing the planet to be relatively free of the nasty by-products that primary manufacturing leaves behind.
It is to this scene that the space ship Celiker gently coasts towards.
"Define 'missing'" said Powell.
"Well," said Papo, visibly shaken. "It was there when we were docked at Condell. Then it was there when we loaded it onto the ship. It was still there during the recount after the second jump. And … it's not there now."
A deep furrow creased the old captains brow. Box HBF-32146 did not appear to have anything important in it. Hell, most of what it contained was the second half of box HBF-32145! There didn't seem to be any practical reason for one of the crew to want to steal it. And for all the other boxes to have been moved, some several feet, some a few inches to cover the hole implied a lot of effort.
"Have you told anyone else?"
"No," replied Papo. "I have told nobody, only yourself. I checked the door logs, and nobody is listed as having gone into any of the cargo areas after the loading was finished, except myself during the second jump recount."
"Could the logs have been altered?"
"Only yourself, myself and possibly Guiora would have the necessary clearance to alter the logs without leaving any records. And I checked the change logs as well. No changes listed, and you need the master passkeys to alter those. This is the first time I've ever heard of anything like this happening."
"Damn!" cursed Powell. "There isn't a whole lot that we can do about it from here if it's missing. If it's still on this ship, then I want it found. Top priority goes to this,"
Even though they tried to keep it quiet, it was pretty hard to run a ship wide search without everyone finding out about what was going on. The ship wasn't that large, and the crew totaled at twenty.
Every deck was searched, doors opened, ducts crawled into and every possible nook and cranny was poked into. But of the box, nary a sign was to be seen. It was as if it had disappeared into thin air.
This made everyone unhappy. Not because they suspected each other or because it would cut into their profits come payday. But the company tended to want to make examples of ships that lost cargo in order to discourage discrepancies. And nobody wanted to be made into an example, since an example normally entailed adding lots of energy into an entity that was not designed to hold such energy, said entity being the offending ship and said energy usually being in the form of anti-matter missiles.
The only person who was not aware of the unfortunate proceedings was Deva, who was just finishing up the external check of the ship's hull.
"Why the long face chaps?" she asked as she emerged from the airlock.
"Got a missing bit of cargo," replied Kyomori. "You didn't happen to see it strapped to the hull, did you?"
"Damn. What's the Captain going to do?"
"He hasn't said anything yet" chipped in Michael. "Officially, nobody is meant to know about it. But Isacus and Papo are tearing the ship apart looking for it and not being too subtle about it."
A dreary silence descended on the trio as they unsuited Deva.
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