Rockhoppers Ch 01

Panspermia (Greek: (pas/pan) "all" and (sperma) "seed") is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by meteoroids, asteroids, comets and planetoids.

*****

"Lights are green and the soft-dock fees aren't getting any cheaper, Grubs. Where's the kid?"

The intercom crackles briefly as Nomi removes her thumb. She can almost sense the irritable engineer stumping over to his console before the little speaker blares with his reply.

"The hell should I know? Let's go, I don't want some brat dogging my heels anyway."

Nomi rolls her eyes and replies "You know we can't undock without a third, Grubber. Insurance and the bank would be so far up my ass when we got back we might never fly again. Now you

said

the kid is family, certified, and needs work, and I'm sure as hell not going begging for whatever dregs are hanging around the union office on

this

mountain of scrap."

"Then you shoulda kept that other little shit. She talked too much but she stayed the hell out of the engine room."

"She stayed the hell out of everything! I caught her asleep on dog watch half a dozen times, she whined whenever we hit two gees and she kept puking in microgravity! The bridge

still

stinks!"

Noise erupts from the intercom that has Nomi thinking it's broken again, until she realizes it's Grubs' labored laugh. It takes him a solid minute to recover.

"Hee hee ha

wheeze

hee hee hoo... oh fine, I'll go track him down. My nephew's kid, I think. Haven't seen him in fifteen years, but he's been station hopping his entire life, so he probably won't upchuck on your precious helm. Gimme thirty minutes to find him."

A few moments later Nomi can hear the personnel airlock dogs releasing, followed by a pressure hiss and faint cursing. She keeps the

Rockhopper

at point eight atmospheres at station and during cruise to get more out of the scrubbers, but the station holds steady at one even. Generally not enough of a differential to worry about, but it does make the manual airlock harder to manage, and Grubber likes to point out he's not getting any younger. Nomi isn't convinced she'll outlive him.

By now he's making his way through the pressurized umbilical they use for soft-docking (as opposed to a stabler but more expensive direct airlock to airlock hard-dock). Nomi sighs and starts to run through preflight again, absent anything else to do, when the console chimes on the station commerce channel.

"

Rockhopper

, you there? Pick up, Gnome."

Nomi grins and flips up the vid. "I thought I saw you on approach, Bill. You finally ready to come and do some

real

work? I gotta warn you, my uniforms ain't near as pretty."

The image resolves to a handsome fortyish U.N.S. officer in full dress reds.

"Yeah, that's right, Gnome, bite the hand that's trying to feed you."

"It's not your hand I'm interested in biting..." she counters, complete with a arched eyebrow and a salacious wink.

"Keep it in your pants. I've only got a minute. Gimme dump access, I've got something you need to see."

"Hang on... Okay. Alpha six niner zed, repeat."

"Alpha six niner zed, confirm. That posting isn't going to go live on miner nets for three more sols. Put your bid in for the amount I highlighted and register with the U.N.S. office here if you're interested."

Nomi whistles, looking over the contract. "This is enormous, it would take us fifty years to push this much iron."

"You won't be alone. You heard of the New Pangea project?"

"This is that? Wow. Hey, thanks, Bill, this is going to set us up for a long time."

"Don't thank me yet, Gnome, look at the required locus."

"The

Kuiper Belt

?! The hell, asteroid belt iron isn't good enough for them?"

"It's a logistics thing. They don't want to use tug mining, they want to use accelerators, and no one wants thirty metric ton iron bullets careening around the inner system."

"I don't have a goddamned mass accelerator!

I'm a tug

."

"That's what you think. Check the second attachment."

A wide smile creases his features.

As Nomi looks over the second document, her jaw drops. "How in the stars did you pull

this

off?"

On her console is a preauthorized requisition form with the U.N.S. deployment and mining platform

Galileo

, orbiting Jupiter. In addition to full outfitting and fuel, it authorizes replacement of her modular cargo hold with a class two mass accelerator, refinement smelter, and automated robotics manufactory. Once installed, the

Rockhopper

would be capable of latching onto an appropriate nickel-iron planetoid, mech-mining it for metals, and smelting them into two meter diameter slugs which it would fire at precalculated coordinates. Years (literally years!) later they would slam into the large asteroid serving as the foundation for the New Pangea project, providing extra spin and orbital acceleration in addition to raw metals.

"The other downside is you have to be out three years at a time, with travel, to make the whole thing time efficient. The manufactory can produce new mechs when you lose some, and you

will

lose some, they estimate about 80% attrition, so study up on that thing once you've got it on board. Eventually about fifty converted tugs are going to be out there doing the same thing you are."

"Mmm. Should be doable, I still have the suspension rigs this thing came with originally. I'll have to get them recertified, but we should be able to spend most of the time in stasis, barring interludes for mech repairs and maintenance. Under these terms,

one trip

would net me enough to pay off this tug and retire."

Bill glances to one side and nods to someone off-view.

"I gotta go, Gnome. If you decide to do it, take care. Buy me a drink when you get back inside the belt, and tell the old man I said hurry up and die."

"You know it. Thanks again, buddy. I'm glad to know that stiff collar hasn't cut off all the blood to your head."

The U.N.S. officer signs off with a snort.

----

Nomi is still going through the details of the contract and the requisition when she hears the airlock cycle again. She frowns at the lack of accompanying profanity, and it reaching for the intercom when the speaker crackles to life.

"Captain, I found our boy, and, uh, something else. I need another thirty minutes, then we need to see you in the mess."

"What? Are you okay, Grubs?"

"Yeah, yeah, fine. Just do me the favor, wouldja?"

"All right, I got something to talk over with you and the kid anyway, our plans for the trip may have changed."

"Aye, Cap, see you in thirty."

----

Nomi rounds the corner into the crew mess to be greeted by the sight of Grubs in his stained, faded coveralls, a tall, skinny youth in newer, cleaner version of the same, and a young, dark-skinned girl with a large black eye wrapped in a set of the ship's bedding.

"Ooookay," Nomi said, after looking things over for a moment, "you first, Grubs. Short version."

"The kid is my grandnephew. The girl's his 'friend', I dunno what that means these days. Shaddap till I'm done talking, kid. Anyway, I find the kid's hostel through the station directory, he's in his room with her. Her clothes are filthy and tore He won't leave without her, so I bring em both. She's got some more bruises and scrapes under the blanket. I told her to shower and I tossed her clothes, so we at least owe her a new set. I'll leave it to you to extract the particulars from them."

Nomi glances at the boy. "You keep your mouth sealed shut until I ask you a direct question, got it?"

To his credit, he gives her a silent nod.

Nomi turns to the girl. "What's your name, kid?"

"...Faith."

"He do this to you, Faith?"

Again to his credit, the kid doesn't speak, although the look on his face is pained. The girl shakes her head. "No ma'am."

"Stranger? Father? Boyfriend?"

Faith nods at that last. Nomi sighs. "He gonna come looking?"

A fierce glint comes to her eye. "Not likely. He's in the infirmary another two weeks. I just couldn't stay at his place," she gestures at her eye "and they don't have any open billets for a while, so I was sleeping where I could till Josh found me and let me stay with him, we got to his place right before he did." This with a nod at Grubs.

Nomi shares a glance with her engineer. "Faith, I know how stations like this work, and I know going to the cops won't fix it, but we're not headed to another station or a gravity well, we're outbound. Maybe

way

outbound, this trip. I can't claim you as a passenger without filing a destination, and I'm not going anywhere it's legal to carry passengers. I doubt any of the ships that dock here regularly are."

Faith opens her mouth, then closes it.

"Speak up, kid, tell me something I can use to help you."

"Well... I have my astrogator cert."

"You

what

?"

"I have my astrogator certification. I... it's how I got here. I got it so I could crew on my boyfriend's ship, and we did a couple of runs, but the bank seized it from the owner and... and now he's like he is. He drinks. He never hit me before, though."

"You're telling me you have full U.N.S. astrogation certification? You look sixteen!"

"I'm twenty-two. I can work, I'll do anything, you don't have to let me helm, but the certification means you can take me, right?"

Nomi stares at the girl silently for a moment before turning to the boy.

"Name, kid?"

"Joshua."

"This a stunt to get in her pants?"

"No, skipper. She waits tables at the Drogue. She's... I hadn't seen her in a couple of days and so I asked the owner, and he said she'd missed her last two shifts. He gave me her node number but she wasn't there. Her neighbor told me the story, so I had to find her. They already got my billet slotted for someone else. I know I was late reporting, but..."

"Cargo cert?"

"Yeah, couple of years now. Got environmental a couple months back."

Nomi nods. "Environmental on a boat this small is keeping the scrubbers clear, usually, but we may have other things crop up on this next trip. You capable?"

"Yes, skipper."

"All right, Joshua, pull one of my coveralls out of the port utility closet for your friend here. It'll be too long for her, but she'll live until I can get her some of her own, I'll call ahead to our next stop. We're gonna be in dock a few sols longer than I expected, Grubs. I sent a couple documents to your console, standard lock. They come compliments of your son. Look 'em over then find me, we need to do some serious talk. As for you, Faith, sit tight. I gotta do some thinking, and it's possible you're gonna need to do some thinking when I'm done. You're welcome to eat, have the autodoc check you over afterwards. After you get some sleep just hang out until I call you up and we see how you are with the helm."

"Yes, ma'am."

"God, anything but ma'am."

"Uh... yes, Captain."

"All right. Grubs, I'll be on helm when you're ready."

----

"Eh, rock's a rock, Nomi. I don't know about all this stasis, though. You know I hate that infernal machine."

"It's better than playing solitaire for nine-tenths of the next three years, Grubber."

"Debatable. What are you, subjective, now, thirty?"

"Thirty-four Sol-standard. Thirty-seven objective."

"You ready to double that gap? The years build up, believe me. Sometimes it gets hard to cross back."

Nomi doesn't respond beyond a sardonic glance.

"Fine, fine, ice queen. Well, good credits in it. I'll go along. What are you gonna do about the kids?"

"You know what I'm going to do. You know how I got this boat. I'm not leaving her here."

The grizzled engineer nods. "I thought not. I checked, cert's real, couple thousand standard hours helm already."

"Christ, the kid started early. For a trip this long, we'll have to skip the partial shares. They'll both get full crew if they decide to come. Not retirement money, but a hell of a good nut to start a career with. Maybe enough to borrow against for a tug of their own. Not bad for a few months subjective. You and me could both retire."

A grunt. "Who'd want to leave the glamour behind?" A waggle of salt-and-pepper eyebrows. "Not me."

Laughing, Nomi reaches to punch the intercom to summon their two newest crew members.

----

"... so that's the deal. More than you signed up for, Joshua, so you can back out and no hard feelings. For you, Faith, I got fewer options. I called around to the other captains at dock but..."

"I want to go."

"You sure, kid? Three years is a long time at your age."

"I'm not leaving behind anything I'll miss, not anymore. My family is earthside, I haven't been down there since I was fifteen. I can let them know what's happening."

"Josh?"

"Are you kidding? I won't get a better slot than this."

"All right then, here are the articles. Read them, put your thumbs here and state your full names."

A few moments pass as the two young spacers page through the

Rockhopper's

articles of incorporation.

Josh finishes first and presses his thumb to the sampler, which wicks away a drop of his blood. "Joshua Derek Grubenski."

A few moments later, but with no hesitation, Faith follows suit. "Faith Charlotte Adeyemi."

Nomi's face splits into a grin. "Welcome aboard the

Rockhopper

."

----

A couple of days of resupply to accommodate their suddenly expanded crew followed by a couple of weeks of uncomfortable levels of gee find the

Rockhopper

on final approach to U.N.S. orbital deployment platform

Galileo

. It's the largest artificial object in the solar system, at least until the completion of New Pangea.

Galileo

serves as a home to about fifteen thousand personnel, mostly in the science division of the Navy with the balance made up by the families of the crews of enormous Jovian gas mining ships.

Faith is on helm, with Nomi looking over her virtual shoulder from the screen in the mess while finishing the bank paperwork for the long trip. Josh is flat on his back under the engineering decking, calling out serial numbers from maintenance fittings as Grubber checks them off on a list. The

Rockhopper

has to get certified by a U.N.S. inspector before it can participate in the government contract, and that means that the chief engineer has to demonstrate that all of the replaceable components in the ship are still within their official service life, and that spares are available for any part with fewer than five years until mean time to failure.

"Kid, have you got us a slot yet?"

"Yes Captain,

Galileo

just assigned us. We're to go around planet darkside and approach leeward, bay 30."

"Huh. ETA?"

"The approach will take 20 hours."

"All right, that puts you back on watch for docking, you up to it?"

"I've never done a gravity dock, Captain, except in the little drone during certification. I think I'm up to it, but I'd like you up here with me."

"Fair enough. Grubs, you hear all that? I doubt the inspector will be waiting for us when we pop the locks, but it won't be long."

A few seconds later the intercom crackles back to life with the engineer's gravelly voice.

"Yeah, it's gone pretty smooth with the kid to do all the crawling for me. We need a couple dozen more filters and we got a few parts on the edge of their end-of-life, but I already got in touch with requisitions. We'll have some crates waiting for us at dock."

"All right, everyone."

the Captain resumes,

"A stasis tech is gonna look over our rigs while we're here, I'm gonna try to get them here sooner rather than later. It's gonna take about a week between that and the accelerator refit, so if you have any in-system business that needs taking care of, you need to get it done. We're gonna be out in the deep dark for a long time, and there aren't any relays out there. Faith, you're on leave after we get docked. Josh, you can go when Grubs cuts you loose. Also, eat big for the next few meals. I wanna use up the rest of the stores before we raid requisitions. The U.N.S. has that good soybeef I like."

----

Faith steps into the cramped bridge holding a couple of kaff bulbs at the beginning of her next shift. "I'm here, Captain."

"All right, kid." Nomi unstraps and awkwardly steps over the console and into the copilot's chair. Faith hands her a bulb and slides in to take her place at the helm.

"Muh." The captain's nose wrinkles as she sips the hot beverage. "Remind me to see if they have anything better than this while we're here."

"Yes, Captain." replies Faith absently as she looks over the ship's telemetry. "Captain... did we change slots?"

"Yeah, they pushed us up one. You've still got half an hour before anything exciting happens. You ready?"

"I hope so, Captain. With the empty hold we don't mass what we could but I've never even soft-docked this much metal, especially under gravity."

"You'll be fine, unless you scratch the paint on my ship."

"Uh, yes, Captain."

Nomi grins at the back of the young astrogator's head. "Calm down, kid, I'll be right here if it gets hairy."

Faith releases a puff of breath and spins to face Nomi. "Thanks, Captain. I really do think I can handle it."

"You did fine with the soft undock. Hard docking still uses umbilicals, you just have to get a lot closer before the togs will engage. It's not actually any harder.

This

will mostly be harder because

Galileo

is under gee. You don't have to worry about umbilicals at all, just get us through the bay doors and plonk us down in the highlighted square."

"Yes, Captain." Faith turn back and begins running through the pre-pre-pre-docking checklists, cycling simulated airlocks and firing virtual securing cables into a variety of different docking configurations. Overall Nomi is impressed as hell with the kid's diligence. She had yet to shown up late for a shift, and more importantly, she had yet to yack in microgravity.

Flipping up the copilot's console, she keys the intercom. "Grubs, you and Josh better secure. We're a half hour out, probably going to start maneuvers in ten minutes or so."

"Aye, we're just buttoning down. Ready for the inspector, requisitions claims my crates are waiting. Also, I don't know if you looked at the station roster, but the

Kraken

put in three days ago, so I imagine that useless son of mine will be darkening our doorstep soon."

Nomi raises her eyebrows as she kills the intercom and brings up the roster. Sure enough, the U.N.S.

Kraken

is registered in one of the bays reserved for Naval ships. "Well well well, they must have lit out right after he sent us the contract. I may have to go over and give our nice handsome Naval patron a proper thank you in person, right, kid?"

"Um..."

Nomi is pretty sure if the kid's complexion was lighter she'd be blushing. She cackles as she unstraps and makes her way off the bridge for a quick shower before maneuvers.

----

With a final clang that rings throughout the entire frame of the

Rockhopper

, Faith settles the ship into their docking slot, and station umbilicals to provide power, water, and waste recycling snake out and attach the the standard ports on the underbelly of the tug.

"Off with yeh," the engineer wags a hand at Josh, "no dock watches for engineering this pass, and I can handle the inspection. Go have a little fun before the deep dark."

"Thanks!" Josh launches himself towards the main engineering hatch, snagging a toehold to bring himself up just short.

"Kid! If you gotta, keep a weather eye on your friend, but if you'll take an old salt's advice, let her have some distance. I know you guys been getting close on the trip here, but we're all gonna be cooped up in this can for a while. This station is as safe as it gets out here."