A Planet For Emily

CHAPTER SEVEN

It took the crew of the James Clerk Maxwell the rest of the night and part of the next day to attend to all the post-jacking details. Suzanne got Holly, with a nasty lump on the head, and Oscar, whose convulsions had fortunately eased, to the sick bay scanner. Rods started the long process of rebooting Max and got the life support back on just as the passengers were beginning to notice that it was getting stuffy. Suzanne used the public-address system for the first time to announce that an attempt to jack the ship had been unsuccessful. The crew was still in control. The ship would dock at its next destination as planned. The route would be maintained. Breakfast would be at the usual time. For security reasons no other details would be given. The rest of the trip should be uneventful. Thank you for travelling with us.

Back at the sick bay scanner Oscar’s blood samples analysis showed a trace compound that was dissipating. Holly’s lump was treated and both mother and son were sent back to bed, with pain killers. By the time breakfast had been served, Rods had restored Igor to operation and had time for the jackers. Chris was moved from where he had been left, handcuffed and lying face down on the crew quarter’s companion way, to be installed in a makeshift brig under the ladder/stairs on the engineering level. Rods then felt free to put ice on his arm and put it into a sling.

Suzanne clucked over it, which Rods found comforting.

“The real frightening part was Igor going down as well. I’ve only had to reboot Max once before, but Igor didn’t go down then. That jacking script was powerful stuff. Check the bunks of all three jackers. They’d have some luggage. I want to look at everything, especially anything digital. Take Igor.”

“Maybe we should leave it until the passengers go?”

Rods shook his head. “Do it now, before the passengers realise who is missing and look for themselves.” Then he said, “I’m glad you grabbed that gun.”

She smiled. “I’m just glad I didn’t have to fire it.”

“I caught a glimpse of your face when you had it. You looked determined. I knew that sweet, girl next door routine of yours was just a front. You can be a tough egg when you want to be.”

“Why Rods,” she said, crossing her arms. “Sometimes you can be almost charming.”

The fight with the hackers proved to be a turning point in Suzanne’s dealings with Rods and The Max. She was given access to all parts of the ship, even the sacred engine room – not that she wanted to go there much, especially as Rods was likely to be singing along to the ship’s music - and to most of Max’s systems. She was accepted and that meant a lot to her.

Before either Rods or Suzanne could put the stressful jacking incident behind them, there was the small matter of the third and least dangerous of the jackers in The Max’s tiny brig. This cell had been created by simply welding plate steel on one side of the under-ladder space on the engineering level, and bars in front. One section had been made to swing out in a basic door. Plumbing was a bucket with a lid and a bottle of water. A mattress and bedding judged too tattered for paying passengers made up the cell’s furnishings. When Rods returned to this makeshift brig, right arm in a sling, the jacker was lying on the mattress, asleep. The spaceman banged on the cell bars with the cattle prod brought from the upper decks for the occasion.

“Wakey, wakey!”

Chris, looking all of a fresh faced 18, got up. There was just enough head room for him to stand right up close to the bars. He had been made to strip down to his shorts.

“I want a lawyer.”

Rods touched the prod on Chris’s hand. The jacker yelled and jerked back, only to bang his head on the cell ceiling.

“What did you say?”

“I said I wanted a lawyer,” said Chris, holding his head.

“That’s what I thought you said. There are no lawyers out here, Chris, just degrees of pain. My little cattle prod toy here, incidentally, is on its lowest setting and it has an impressive energy source.”

“You can’t do this to me.”

“On the contrary, I can do whatever I damn well please. This is the rim, and you’ve just tried jacking my ship.” Rods unfolded a seat attached to the bulkhead for just such sessions and sat down in front of the cell, holding the probe so that the bare end rested on the bars within poking distance of the jacker who eyed it nervously. “Your identity card says Christopher and the long-haired man called you Chris, so that’s the name we’ll use?”

Chris nodded.

“It’s not a good idea to know the name of people you may be pushing out an airlock real soon, but it’s done now.”

“You – you wouldn’t push me out of an airlock?”

Rods banged the bars again.

“Chris, focus. We’re not in controlled space here. This ship is not registered, insured or in any way regulated. Out here each port has its own peace officers, such as they are, but they haven’t any jurisdiction over spaceships on a trip and a lot of people depend on The Max maintaining its routes. They’re not going to inquire about missing jackers. In the unlikely event of them doing so, they’d accept any story I told them. Digital records will confirm my story when I decide what that story will be. So, a lot depends on your answers. If your answers are truthful, I could drop you off at one of the less reputable mining colonies where you will live – you won’t like your life, but you will live – or, if you are un-cooperative, I could stop over at one of the lesser star systems and open the airlock with you in it. Are we clear here?”

“Clear,” said Chris nervously.

“Good.”

Igor walked up. “I have finished.” This meant he had finished putting the bodies of the two remaining jackers near the port airlock door.

“He’s an old colony model isn’t he?” said Chris. Zap! “Ow! Stop doing that!”

The would-be jacker sat down and tried to curl up, away from Rods’ prod but his cell was too small.

“Chris, the information flow here is one way – I ask questions, you answer. Anything else aside from an answer to a question – such as questions of your own, observations, conversational gambits, asides, curses or remarks of any kind – will be dealt with. Are we also clear on that point?”

“Cl - clear.”

“Good. Now, how did you get into your happy band of jackers?”

“They sent me messages through a friend. I was on Bryson Three, stuck in a cubicle maintaining software for big mining systems with everything going to the Zards.”

“Your ticket out?”

“No one I knew had anything. We were running as hard as we could to stand still, and if you lost your job or had any sort of trouble you were shipped out. Never heard from again. They wanted me to run the jacking script for them.”

“They didn’t have anyone before you? This wasn’t their first time.”

“They’d done it a couple of times before – maybe – just once with a major ship, but I also knew the guy they’d worked with before and he died on the last one.”

“He died, so you took his place? You were living dangerously?”

“Yeah, well, like I said, any slip meant being shipped out and they told me about this El Dorado deal – a place where you could go outside…”

Rods suddenly became considerably more interested in the conversation, but he was careful not to show it. Instead, he yawned.

“… you just had to wear hats, no fancy suits, and just once I’d like to feel the wind on my face. They said one more time and they’d have a good place to live and live like lords in some community with machines to do the work. And I wouldn’t have had to do anything else – didn’t have anything else.” Chris’ voice trailed away.

“Walking around on a surface around here?” said Rods. “The El Dorado thing is a local myth and you fell for it.”

“No, no – at least, that’s what they told me, and they said they’d been there. El Dorado. Paradise. You could walk on the surface and the Zards weren’t there. Some sort of terra-formed valley.”

“I see. None of this is helping me very much Chris – El Dorado is still a legend – and you want to help me, you really do. You want to give me some details. Did these guys happen to mention the name of the ship they jacked – the one where your friend died?”

“If they weren’t dead you could have asked them.”

Zap!

“Ow! Hey, I was answering your question!”

“You were making a suggestion. Admittedly suggestions were not on my list of don’ts but now you know they are. Do I have to repeat the question?”

“They told me the name, but I don’t remember it; something Trader, I think.”

“The Dawn Treader?”

“Sounds right. Remember thinking it was a funny name.”

“These guys jacked the Dawn Treader then they need my ship? Why didn’t they sell the Treader and go? Sell it and set up far away from here.”

“They didn’t sell it. It’s still sitting there; something wrong with the engines.”

“You can’t leave a ship around here without crew, and I haven’t heard of it on the market, busted engines or not. Start making sense.”

“There’s some other dude they’ve left with it.”

“A fourth jacker? Chris this is getting alarming. I thought once I spaced you or dumped you at a mining colony that would be the end of your happy little band, but it seems not.”

“The other guy’s not a jacker, he’s a colonist. He was one of the ones still on the ship when they jacked it.”

Rods banged the cell bars.

“Chris I’m a man of limited attention span and low boredom threshold. How come the jackers were fighting the colonists and how come they won? There were more than fifty colonists on that ship, and the crew knew what they were doing.”

“I dunno exactly, but the other guys told me a bit about it. They were part of the expedition. Most of the others had gotten off the ship; were setting up camp. Then my guys started the jacking script. Those still on board who weren’t jackers put up a fight.”

“That’s when your friend got killed?”

“Guess.”

“The survivor was left in this ship and, what, he can’t use the comms to call for help?”

“Don’t think he has control over the ship, so he just sits there. Like a prison except that someone’s on the ship, so no salvage.”

“A technicality out here Chris, there must be something more. But you don’t know where this ship prison is?”

A calculating look flitted across Chris’s face. “No, but I could get you on it easily, with my device.”

“You mean this?”

Rods put down his probe and used his one good arm to take the jacking device that had just caused him so much trouble out of one of Igor’s body compartments. Previous generations would have mistaken it for a large calculator with an unusual keypad.

“Sure, it’s the same system – the key to it, in fact. You get me to the ship, I do the interface, a couple of commands and we switch to voice control.”

“Hmmm!” Rods looked at the device. He could always take a chance that Max could work it out.

“Your AI’d be pretty old,” said Chris, as if he knew what Rods was thinking. “And this is state of the art – even if the box doesn’t look it.”

“I wouldn’t call Max old while aboard ship. AIs that have been around a while develop a personality, and she may decide that there is a problem with life support on engineering deck.”

“The life support systems on engineering deck have always been a problem,” said Max. She had been listening to the conversation all along, just as she did many other tasks simultaneously. “We have discussed the difficulties before.”

“I remember. Shame if they should suddenly fail, leaving me with just a few seconds to get to a hatch. No time to unlock cell doors.”

“Safety procedures would forbid it.”

“All right, all right,” said Chris. “This ship is a fi...” He stopped short as Rods put down the device and slid his prod through the bars, to almost touch Chris’s bare flesh. Rods put the prod down and picked up the device again without a word. “Okay, what is it worth?” said Chris after a long silence.

“You’re asking questions again, Chris,” said Rods, picking up the prod. “But I’ll indulge this one question. What is what worth?”

“Being able to get you into the Dawn Trader.”

“It’s Treader, as in heavy tread, and your co-operation is worth a more comfortable post-jacking experience. Maybe if you impress me with your zeal, I’ll call in a favor and drop you off at one of the better mining colonies – one where the supervisors are neglectful, rather than actively sadistic.”

“That’s not enough. I want guarantees of a decent crib.”

“Or I could drop you off at that colony with the mad doctor who does experiments by exposing people to hard vacuums – how long it takes them to die, the damage to human tissue caused and so on. Last I heard he was exposing individual limbs with the people still attached to see what would happen.” (Rods had heard of such a doctor but thought his base was back in Zard-controlled space.) “If you can get me into the Treader, assuming we can find it, I will have some interest in your welfare. Not much interest, but I will keep you alive. Afterwards I may not give you to the vacuum doctor.”

“That’s not enough…”

Rods reached for his prod again, and Chris fell silent.

“Rods, near planet fall,” said Max.

“Where I get off,” said Chris.

Rods hung the prod on a specially fitted bracket on the wall. “We have a monitor on you. I’ll be back to finish our chat in a few hours. If you have to go the bathroom remember to use the bucket and close the lid.”

“You can’t leave me like this,” Chris called after him.

Rods did not bother to reply.

When Suzanne had waved off the passengers and finished chatting with a handful she had come to know, only to drop them into a very uncertain future, she came back on board to find Rods waiting for her at the wardroom table.

“Are you going to let me look at that arm?”

Rods could have done with a little more comforting, but instead he said, “sit down”.

Suzanne sat down, thinking that Rods abrupt tone meant she was in trouble.

“There is at least a chance your sister is alive.”

“You know this how?” she said sharply, now very intent on the conversation.

“The surviving jacker downstairs has an interesting story.” Rods then told her what Chris had said.

“The Dawn Treader got to wherever it was going, and the colonists got off onto the surface. Could they have survived this long?”

Rods shrugged. “Maybe. They were setting up camp, he says, so they must have off loaded some equipment, some food, and he said they could walk on the surface. All this is second hand but it adds up to a chance they’ve survived. But now we have to find it. I didn’t believe in an El Dorado out here because I was thinking of a whole planet. A terra-formed rift valley deep enough, and it’d have to be real deep to keep its atmosphere, might work. It’s still like finding that dragons exist, but it might work.”

“What’s the first step?” said Suzanne. This was a new, excited Rods she had not seen before.

“We find the Dawn Treader. It must be at the Oid planet.”

“The planet you said we shouldn’t go to.”

“We can visit. It’s just not a good idea to go out onto the port or the settlement without serious backup, and you don’t go out at all. The Oids are always asking to buy earth women.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, ‘oh’. No one knows what for, and no one has been desperate or callous enough to do it – yet.”

“But there are so many people coming through, and everyone is broke.”

“True. We don’t know of it happening yet, but let’s not have you out in the dome when you go there.”

“Okay… we’re going there?”

“Only place where the ship could be docked and left alone around here, so these guys must have done a deal with one of the clans. The planet is basically a lawless refuge of the Oids race, but it’s still got a lot of different clans who don’t want to mess with one another. If the Treader is still around here it’s docked out the port there out of the way, under the protection of one of the clans.”

“We go there and get it?”

“First, we go through all the stuff our two late and unlamented jackers left behind for clues as to what deal they had done and with which clan, and then I think we’ll need Chris to co-operate on our terms. Maybe you can help with that.”

Chris had finally drifted off to sleep to dream of women pleased to see him in a place far away from his cell on the James Clerk Maxwell when Rods banged on the bars of the cell. He sat up to see both the captain and the cruise director of the Max seated opposite, with Igor standing to one side in what was now a crowded area of the Maxwell. Rods and his electric prod were only too familiar to Chris, but the cruise director he remembered as being all smiles and charm for him as a paying passenger. As his fellow jackers in the bar had noted, she was also “a looker”. He tried a smile. Suzanne glared back.

“So, it’s this one,” she said, in her best stern voice, leaning back in a chair that had been brought in from engineering. “Tell me again why he’s still alive.”

Chris’s smile died away.

“It’s this colony ship business, Cruise.”

“Oh yes, still around, he’s saying.”

“You’ve got a financial interest in the medico on the colony ship.”

“Bitch owes me thirty Cs.”

“You said twenty.” They had previously agreed on 20.

“Interest,” she said, without taking her eyes off Chris.

“Thirty it is. So, Chris, you will be pleased to learn we can spare a few moments to discuss your future. Ships with busted engines are not of much use to us, but some idea of where the colonists are would bring you a longer, less miserable life.”

“But I don’t know anything about where they are,” whimpered Chris.

“You must know something, Chris. Everyone knows something, even if they don’t know that they know it. A chance remark; a comment.”

“If I tell you all I know, you’ll kill me.”

Rods banged the cell bars and brought the tip of the prod to the point of almost touching Chris’s shrinking body. “That wasn’t an answer to a question, Chris!”

Suzanne sighed. “Look, we’ve got enough from the digital stuff we took from the other two. We’re only after confirmation and this bunny is useless. Why don’t we get Igor to just snap this guy’s neck and stick him in the air lock.”

“Why kill him first?” Rods leaned back, leaving the prod to rest on the cross bars, within easy poking distance of the captive’s flesh. “It’s more fun if we space him alive.”

Suzanne rolled her eyes. “More fun for you. I have to clean up, and it’s so messy if they hang on and blow up while still in the lock.”

“Ira cleans up; why not let me have some fun.”

“Sure Ira cleans up, but I supervise. There’s always stuff left over – some icky bit that I have to point out. It’s horrible. Snapped neck and a nice, clean disposal or find yourself another cruise director, mister.”

“Then what about wrap in clear plastic with duct tape, so I can see his expression when he’s sucked out?”

Suzanne shook her head. “Had to throw out the last lot of clear plastic; too much blood on it, and we’ve used all the duct tape.”

“We have?” Rods let his eyes wander from Chris, who had an expression of sick horror on his face, to his cruise director, wondering if they really had used all the duct tape, as he did occasionally need some.

She folded her arms and glared at him. “You and your games. Makes me sick.”

Rods shrugged. “Oh alright, snap his neck then, see if I care.”

“Igor!” said Suzanne. Igor moved forward.

“Wait,” shrieked Chris who had been watching the exchange with growing horror.

“I like to see necks snapped Chris,” said Suzanne, putting on an evil grin. “Slow motion is better. Fun to watch.”

“I can still be useful,” Chris whimpered, on his knees, hands on the bars.

“If you’re not going to let me have any fun, then let the man speak.”

“Oh, very well! It’s always about you men and your obsessions. Igor: hold.” The robot’s extendable arms had almost reached the jacker’s throat. “And in what way could you be useful?”

“If we go to the Oid planet I can take you to the Dawn Treader.”

“You do know where it is?” said Rods.

“I’ve never been there, and never seen the ship but the others gave me the dock number and contact details for the clan. It’s in my PA somewhere in notes; subject heading ‘ship’.”

“We’ll check it out. If there are problems we’ll be back, and we won’t be as nice as we’ve been this time.”

“Should snap his neck anyway,” said Suzanne.

“I can open up the ship for you,” whimpered Chris, “I think I know how to do it from the device.”

“Think?” said Rods. “You want to do more than just think, Chris. Cruise let’s not dispose of him just yet. He may be of use.”

Suzanne glared at Rods then at Chris. “Oh, alright,” she said standing up. “My fun can wait. But if you’re going to torture him, keep the hatches closed. The screaming is irritating.”

“You were always so nice,” whispered Chris, aware that Rods was hanging up the prod.

“I’m nice to all the passengers,” said Suzanne, “I get better tips.”

Suzanne and Rods waited until they got back to the crew quarters, closing the hatches behind them, before bursting out laughing – Rods’ barking easily drowning out Suzanne’s giggles.

“Arf! Arf! Arf! You… you and your games make me sick! Arf! Arf! Arf! Too… too much blood on the plastic. Arf! Arf! Arf!”

They fell with their backs against the forward crew quarter hatch and slid down until they were seated. Their faces turned in and were almost touching and Suzanne knew she should turn away, but she didn’t. Instead, Rods did. He stood up and shook himself, smiling now rather than laughing.

“Interrogations with you are fun!” he said and walked off.

Suzanne thought it was the best compliment he had ever given her before recollecting, with a start, that she had a fiancé.