Chaos in the Night 7

Chapter 7

Milo had a health problem. He was as unlucky as one could get, and up to his eyeballs in IOU's. The only thing that stopped Newtonius' thugs from dropping him in a chute and throwing the switch was his uncanny ability to stopgap in deep sleep. A star cruiser was pretty good at functioning on its own, and there was always a half crew awake throughout the whole voyage. Each ship had 6 crews which included four pilots, two technicians, one physician, and a custodial staff. Averaging a voyage to 24.3 years, that meant each member of crew was out of deep sleep for approximately 2 years of every one way trip. A shift generally lasted one year, unless something malfunctioned and more crew had to be awoken. A rogue micrometeorite storm swept into the path of an early starship and peppered the entire aft life support corridor. Only five years into the trip, that half crew had to complete the entire journey out of deep sleep. Stopping and turning back would have saved only two years, so it was the Company's decision to push on to Titan. Too bad, the remaining crew went mad and even the investigators couldn't piece together the puzzle of the missing Delivery's crew.

Milo wasn't actually a crew member, he was contracted, sort of a seer. Under a deep deep sleep, a seer would project his dreams light years ahead of the ship, and if something dire crossed their path, in a dream, then the computer would record the moment and shake the seer awake. Once awake, the seer would make his report, and calamity could be avoided. Generally this system worked pretty well. Most disasters were spotted by the ship's computers, but a few squirrely ones would pop up during the course of a voyage. A seer could be woken up as many as ten to fifty times in a trip, and once awake it was unsafe to go back into a deep sleep too quickly. In Milo's case, he preferred to stay alert for a week or two. And in that space of time, Milo loved to play games. You'd think being a seer would give a gambler the advantage; not so much for Milo. He had some fairly large amounts owed him from good luck bets, but most went the other direction. The dice just didn't roll the way he saw them do, and the cards changed their dots every time they laid down on the table.

Everyone knew he was a vital component in getting to Titan in one piece, so his debts got to ride along for free. Until the ride ended, then who knew how things would end up for Milo. He didn't, and that was worrisome.

–

Stephen moved ahead of the team, almost naked but for the filthy shorts and concussion charges he had on a cord around his neck. The other men lay in shambles on the tunnel floor, propped up by loose scrabble. Draybeck was sipping on the last of his rations, and they still had several hours left in the shift. Stephen saw the light going out in his friend's eyes. This might be the last day for him, thought Stephen. He dug a hole into the tunnel head and plucked a charge from the cord. The bombs were small, and their job wasn't to blow huge holes in rock, rather to agitate it gently, forming fissures and rifts, so that the drills could do their work easier. The mine foremen had no intention of giving anything more powerful into the mine slave's hands. Stephen moved back fifty yards and sat with the others while the concussion charge did its work. It didn't make a lot of noise when it exploded, but they all felt a wave move down the walls and then the trickle of a fore mini avalanche.

“Up you sluggards,” came the call from behind. The foreman was behind a plexiglass wall shield sitting on a cooler. His stun-laz was holstered, but not fastened.

Stephen pulled Draybeck up and they shuffled to the front, dragging the screws in the loose shale, ducking around crags that haphazardly poked out of walls, ceiling and floor. A finishing crew was following these men, chipping and grinding at the tunnel work, and more were drilling offshoots that would eventually become offices and apartments for the growing Titan population.

Draybeck dropped his hose nozzle and rolled onto the curved wall, settling into the dust. “Get up, Dray, come on, bud.” Stephen tried to gather the equipment and Draybeck, but his waning strength didn't allow the extra load. The foreman unclasped his weapon and unhinged the glass partition.

“Maggots. Move it along, your work ain't done today.” Then above the foreman's head a trickle of pebbles came loose and turned into a rain of rock and dust which pelted him into the floor before he had the chance to dive away. A screw point descended, then retreated, leaving a wide borehole behind.

The tunnel crew watched dumbfounded as a lightly armored man dropped onto the tunnel floor, He rolled with a flash laz held out, then seeing the guard was down, he secured his laser and stood. A harness fell down the hole when he looked into the recess and gave a thumbs up.

“Which one of you is Draybeck?”

–

“Has anyone ever seen one,” Annie asked. She had taken the simple polished broach into the jeweler under the pretext that the clasp was broken. Elena Consuelos had no reason to be suspicious.

The jeweler swept a cloth over the necklace and Annie spun and lifted her hair for him to attach the piece. “The submersibles they send down can't pick up a good image; the ocean is too murky.”

“Oh?”

“But, they do have pictures of their insides.” It seems that the creatures are big enough to swallow the unmanned drones. Scientists named the undersea creatures 'whales', but nobody really knew what they were, or even if they produced the Titan ambergris. The necklace Annie wore contained a good sized, refined and polished piece of the ambergris. It lent a jaunty air to the vicinity, and kept her in high spirits whenever she wore it. Now it contained a tiny beacon that would warn Annie when the time came to fly. “Years ago a poet, born in the Outermost – I think an old junker moon in the Jupiter system – wrote an epic poem. Maybe you've heard of it; Space Iliad?”

“I think I've seen murals...” She would have, now that she traveled in the upper echelon of Titan society. As a tunnel rat in her youth she would not have been privy to anything so literary.

“The crew of this galactic long boat jumps from rock to rock, running up against fantastic creatures and weird civilizations. They eventually claim what they set out for, but the return journey is 'fraught with peril', yada yada, and all that. Generations pass, fortunes came and went, and finally the great hero and a crew member or two make it back home, and nobody remembers them or even cares about their diamond space needle.”

“Did you like it?”

“The jeweler laughed. “Ha. Not really; you know, just something they make everybody read. It's just general knowledge.”

Annie fingered the polished ambergris and a faint scent traveled to her nose. She could see it was affecting the jeweler too, and he eyed her. Annie left for her residence, wondering when the bauble would speak to her, and when her Iliad would begin anew.