The docking and undocking took about fifteen minutes.
The trio in the box returned to their respective stations, but no one
seemed to truly relax. Their destination at Fjorgynn was only another
few hours away. During the trip, Maitland proved to be a decent, if
self-absorbed conversationalist. He also enjoyed Rudy's scotch
with alacrity. Rudy tried several different approaches to get Maitland
to discuss the company, but his efforts were always skillfully deflected.
About the only thing Rudy succeeded at was to excuse himself long enough
to check in with Janeane, still sitting and waiting in a spacesuit
that stank. For someone who tended to be volatile, she was showing
remarkable restraint. She only swore at Rudy about seven times during
his brief communication with her. He was able to assure her that this
would all be over soon, but that he needed her there and quiet until
he was convinced there was no danger. She indicated that she understood.
At least a part of her was enjoying the cat-and-mouse aspect of this.
Roland Knopf took it upon himself to inspect the
ship while the others worked. Terry sent Arne to escort the ASC man,
and managed to get a warning off to Janeane to hide before they reached
the forward section of the ship. As Knopf was returning to the bridge,
Terry's workstation chimed, alerting him that a discrepancy analysis
of the contract was complete. He continued to read through the original
document for the second time, while listening to Arne's report
on Mr. Knopf's tour over the comm. There didn't seem to
be any real purpose to Knopf's inspection: he ignored important
parts of the ship, and neglected to ask certain obvious questions.
He seemed particularly interested in some of the modifications Rudy
had made over the years, and in the crew comforts they had added to
their accommodations, but otherwise Knopf seemed to be wasting time.
Two more reads through the contract offered no
evidence of the specific clause to which Maitland had referred, which
disturbed Terry. The basics were still there, but all other clauses
only pertained to ships carrying ASC cargo, or an ASC brokered load.
The fine print just didn't reveal anything new. He decided to
examine the computer's discrepancy analysis while he pondered
this, when he noticed that the analysis was still running. The computer
alert he'd heard had been for something else. Terry quickly started
to query the source of the alarm, but realized that Knopf would be
walking onto the bridge within moments. He had only a few minutes to
investigate this problem before Knopf's footsteps could be heard
approaching the bridge from the command deck main corridor. He had
just enough time to code an alert to Rudy and Janeane, and was in the
middle of sending a text message to Marney's station when he
saw Roland Knopf standing over him. He hit 'send' as he
looked up, and asked the newcomer about his impression of the vessel.
Unfortunately Knopf saw enough to become concerned.
"What exactly are you doing?" He asked.
"My job." Terry replied, turning back
to change the information on his workstation screens. Marney stood
up from her workstation at that point, and started walking toward the
exit. Terry hoped she'd gotten the gist of his message, and was
heading for the safety of the box.
"And what about you, pilot? Why are you leaving
your post?"
Before Marney could answer, Terry stood and glared
at Knopf. "Because that's what I instructed her to do.
I thought Maitland brought you here to help out, not question our every
move. She's leaving the bridge on ship duty, ordered by me."
Terry continued to stare at Knopf, but then spoke to Marney. "Pilot,
follow your orders, and get me those load redistribution charts."
Marney was almost past Knopf, when he reached out
and grabbed her arm with a steel grip, never taking his eyes off the
first officer. "I'm here as an advisor, and right now,
I advise you both to sit back down at your stations and stay there."
Terry nodded to Marney to comply, but remained
on his feet while she shrank back into her seat. They both heard the
hurried footsteps in the corridor approaching, but held each other's
gaze for another few moments.
Rudy was first to reach the bridge. He saw the
tension between his first officer and Knopf, and wanted the focus shifted
elsewhere. "What's going on here, gentlemen? Terry? Report."
Before Terry could start, Mr. Maitland emerged
onto the bridge as well, and demanded a similar report from his assistant.
"Roly, what have we got?"
Knopf replied by removing a very lethal-looking
gun from his breast pocket and aiming it squarely at Terry's
chest. No one else was expecting this particular response, except perhaps
Maitland. The crew of the MYLENE B. were stunned into temporary silence.
Knopf broke that silence. "The first officer,
here, has been looking very hard at your contract, Mr. Maitland. It
seems he suddenly decided to start sending secret messages to the pilot,
who was just about to go somewhere. I'd very much like to know
the contents of that message. Wouldn't you, Mr. Maitland?"
Maitland seemed to be tired. He sighed, and wearily
shook his head when he spoke. "Probably not, but let's
have it."
Rudy's gut feeling was full-blown fear, now.
His heart pounded and he felt the tingling sharpness of adrenaline
jolt his entire system into alertness. He managed to assess the situation
quickly and spoke out before anything else was said. "Whoa. Whoa.
Whoa. What the hell is this guy doing with a gun pointed at my first
officer's chest. If you wanted me to trust you Maitland, do you
really think this'll help? Mr. Knopf, put the gun down and I
assure you we'll get this cleared up."
Maitland answered with that same tired voice, and
even rubbed his forehead with one hand while he spoke. "Oh we'll
get things clear, alright, but we're past assurances and trust,
don't you think?"
Terry took advantage of the pause to announce his
finding. "Rudy, these guys are up to some bad Shit. The contract
he gave me to examine is pretty much the same as the one we always
had, but it had a virus embedded in it, which seems to explain why
he was eager for me to download it from his pad. I haven't had
time to analyze it, yet. But based on what it was aimed at, my guess
is it would give them the keys to the ship."
Rudy looked at Maitland for a moment before speaking.
The first words he managed to utter were: "Maitland, you lying
sack of Shit!"
Terry continued, "The fact that you locked
it out before they arrived meant that it hasn't penetrated anything
vital yet, and it won't now that I've done a purge. But
it would have gone to work the second you opened the NAV command functions
to input their new coordinates. They were just killing time until then."
"Maitland, call off your thug, and get off
my bridge. Marney, bring us out of LDS. Start sending out an….."
Maitland looked down and raised his hand as if
to calm the room, "Now, now. Let's not get all upset. I
guess this does merit a bit of an explanation." He then looked
up at his assistant and spoke clearly and in a business-like tone.
"But first things first. Roly, that one." And he raised
his chin to point in Terry's direction.
The gun discharged once with a surprisingly quiet
cough, but the impact sent Terry sprawling awkwardly back against the
wall beside his seat. He hit it with a grunt, and began to slide downward
as if in slow motion, into a slouched sitting position. The look in
his eyes was of complete surprise as he made a small final sighing
sound. His head slumped forward, as if he were trying to find the right
word, and his eyes didn't close completely. It was very clear
though, from the gore on the wall, the growing pool of blood on the
deck, and his complete stillness, that Terry was quite dead.
Maitland's eyes narrowed as they examined
Terry's body for a moment before shifting to fall on Marney.
As if it were linked to his gaze, the gun in Knopf's hand swung
around to point at the trembling pilot. "You might want to wait
before you do anything, there, pilot." He then turned his attention
to Rudy, but the gun remained steadily aimed at Marney's chest.
"Captain Rudnicki. It seems you have an opening in your crew
roster." Maitland's chuckle sent a chill down Rudy's
spine. "Care to make it two? Three? More?"
He continued in the face of the others' shocked
silence, as he began a slow stroll around the workstations on the bridge.
He gestured to Terry's body slumped on the floor. "For
a guy that didn't talk much, he sure as hell didn't know
when to shut up. I was getting tired of you bunch of sad sacks, anyway.
OK, here's the deal. And what a sweet deal it is, I must add.
This is just business we're doing here. Do you understand me?
Just business. You see, we've been in the business of blowing
ships, and taking their stuff for a long time. Some call it piracy.
We like to think of it as a family business in creating opportunity.
"But this business can be a risky one. In
fact, piracy is downright dangerous, and danger is not good for business.
People start arming ships and hiring escorts, so we get more arms and
things get nasty. People die, we take some losses, and our profit margins
go down. This is, after all, about making money. So we decided to branch
out and try a few new things to help reduce the risks. Angelion Shipping
Company is what you might call a subsidiary of our family business;
a legitimate corporate face. In fact it's pretty lucrative in
its own right." He spun around to face Rudy directly. "Did
you know that we broker shipping contracts in every system in the Badlands,
now? It's wonderful: we set up cargo shipping runs, then arrange
to have a percentage of them hit by our own people? We just hand it
over to ourselves, and report it to the insurers. No shots, no damage,
and everyone involved gets a cut. By the way, our insurers are another
subsidiary. As I said, it's a very sweet deal. Going corporate
was about the best thing we could have ever done.
"Anyway, we hit the independents a lot as
well as the League and everyone else in the biz, all the while promising
safe delivery for our customers. And much of the time we do just that.
But lately we've run into a small snag: keeping up with the demand.
We've been looking to expand our fleet and personnel. Getting
ships isn't so hard. In fact, we've got a whole shipyard
full of ships and ship parts. We'll get yours, too, one way or
another. The trick, it seems, is to recruit good people. Do you have
any idea how hard it is to find good help, these days? I'm sure
you do." Maitland continued his discourse, and pointed to Terry's
body slumped against the wall.
"Now, I'm also sure our dead friend
sitting there had loads of valuable experience, and would have been
a great asset to any shipping crew, and bla bla bla…. But he
just pissed me off, and I needed to make an important point to the
rest of you. So, in case you haven't understood it, in all the
powerful emotions of the moment, here it is: I have no problem killing
you all, so don't FUCK with me! Do as I say, and we may all end
up getting along just fine." The intensity and ferocity of these
last statements left no room for misinterpretation of Maitland's
message.
"As you can probably tell already, I'm
really more accustomed to the old ways." He continued. "You
know, we kill everyone, and strip the ship of every little thing we
value. But one of my jobs for the family business is in Human Resources.
I don't particularly like that part of my job." He leaned
in close to whisper to Rudy, "Personally I prefer the killing."
He then returned to the dramatic monologue he was clearly enjoying
delivering. "But we all have our crosses to bear, don't
we. Anyway, I'm a recruiter; a 'headhunter' of sorts.
You are my new job candidates. So let me make you our standard job
offer. It involves all the usual incentive packages: we hold someone
dear to you hostage, under threat of death until you're so deep
in with us that there's no real way out. It's simple and
very old, but very effective. We also split you up so you serve with
other crews on other ships on continually rotating bases. It actually
works pretty well once you get into it, but every once in awhile someone
wants to leave the fold, so we have to make an example of them for
the benefit of the others.
"Take Ms. Firth here. Do you mind if I call
you Marney? No? Marney has a couple of boys being looked after by her
sister and brother-in-law in Mwari. We know exactly where they are
at all times. If she continues to make us happy, here at ASC, then
they get to grow up, and not suffer any horrible accidents or diseases.
The best part of this deal is that Marney will actually get to make
some decent money doing these gigs. No bull, the pay is excellent.
Everybody wins."
"Unfortunately, the retirement plan leaves
a lot to be desired, so don't even ..."
At that moment, a groaning sound could be heard
from deep within the ship, followed by four sharp, rapid, metallic
banging noises. An alarm sounded on the audio as red lights started
showing up on a number of the control stations. The ship dropped out
of LDS drive, and came to a full stop. They were in the middle of nowhere.
"Captain, if you are trying anything funny,
you picked a very bad moment for it, for Marney's sake."
He gestured toward the pilot, and nodded to his assistant. "Roly…."
"No, wait" Rudy blurted out desperately.
"Don't shoot her. You've been watching both of us
the whole time. We haven't moved. We didn't do anything.
This is an old ship, and we have breakdowns. This kind of thing is
pretty common." He lied. "Especially in Firefrost. Don't
shoot anyone, else, please. You'll need us if you want to get
this ship running again. OK?!"
Maitland nodded his head slightly to the side,
and Knopf eased back on the trigger finger and relaxed his grip on
the gun again. The gun's muzzle remained aimed at Marney's
chest, though. "Very well. But I get even a hint of a whiff of
something funny, you've got more job openings in your crew, and
more mess to clean up."
"Understood. Can I communicate with our engineers?"
"Over here, at this console." Maitland
gestured, before adding, "Roly, watch her closely."
Rudy moved carefully, with his hands held open
and wide, as he approached the console Maitland had indicated. He reached
down with equal care and touched a single button. "Arne? Jukka?
What's going on? Did we lose the tuning of the port field generator
again?"
"Uh, Rudy." He heard Jukka finally
reply over the ship intercom. "We're still not sure what
happened just now. It wasn't an LDSi field. I'm still working
on what caused it, but those banging noises didn't sound good."
"Alright, Jukka. Let me know as soon as you've
got something. Rudy out." He then turned to Maitland and said,
"We may get moving faster if I can go down there and help."
"Not a chance." Maitland countered.
"We've been doing this kind of thing for generations, and
know pretty much every trick in the book. You will be too busy giving
me access to the ship's computer, anyway. Ms. Firth remains where
she is, at the business end of Roly's gun, to ensure your cooperation."
He turned to his henchman. "Watch them while the captain, here,
unlocks his ship computer. I'm going to his office just down
the hall here to send some messages."
He then turned back to Rudy before exiting the
bridge and said, "Don't worry Captain, we won't be
stuck for long. We've got friends waiting for us, and they'll
be along shortly to repair or tow this tub to our base. Just get busy
opening things up for us."
There was a silent moment after Maitland left when
Rudy looked at their captor, then at Marney. Knopf raised his gun hand,
pointing the weapon at Marney's head, while looking at Rudy with
an eyebrow raised. No words were needed, and Rudy knew there was nothing
else he could do, so he sat at his command station, and began entering
codes. He took his time about it, though, and made a few errors along
the way in a seemingly vain attempt to stall for time. He tried one
other small act of defiance, which was to enter a one-word message
to the main engineering console, embedded in the other codes he was
entering. He hoped that Arne would think to look up at the console
for the brief moment that the word "BOX" would appear on
their screen.
