The Long Black (The Black Chronicles Book 1) Page 6

  There was nothing left but to see if her desperate plan would work. Getting the spanner on in reverse was trivial, even by feel. At first it bucked in her hand, the bolt’s grip on the metal stronger than her grip on the tool, but soon enough it started turning normally.

  Morgan wasn’t sure how she’d know when the bolt was all the way out; she was sort of hoping to just hear the sound of the bolt hitting the floor.

  It took her ten seconds or so of the spanner turning without extending the tip any for her to realize that, no, she wouldn’t hear the bolt falling, because it was still magnetically attached to the spanner.

  Sighing Morgan thumbed the switch for the magnet. Now she faintly heard the tink of metal on metal as the bolt fell.

  One down, fifteen to go. This should be easy enough.

  ***

  Tired, sweaty, panting, and as scraped and cut up as she ever was after a normal day in the mines, Morgan had slogged her way through fourteen more bolts. She also had several painful burns to add to the list, an all-new kind of fun for her to experience. Some of the pipes were staggeringly hot, even through the thick insulation around them. Aside from burning her arms Morgan had even accidentally shorted out a couple wires when she incidentally pushed them too close to their heated neighbors. She hoped she hadn’t done anything to draw attention to herself, but there was no way to know right up until and if someone came out here to fix whatever she had broken.

  She was almost starting to hope for that eventuality, because fifteen bolts down and she was still stuck in here.

  She could not reach the last bolt. It was the bottommost one on the right side, and no matter how she twisted and turned her arm she couldn’t reach it. To buy herself time to think Morgan had replaced all the panel covers except for the bottom one on the right, but nothing had come to her.

  The fact that it hadn’t even budged with 15 bolts removed was maddening as well. She had tried just rotating it around so it was hanging from the one bolt, but the hatch was inset into the wall as well as bolted in place, so she couldn’t get it out far enough to swing.

  The chances of her being discovered grew by the moment. Even if she could find another hatch in the right area, she couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t have the same problem. She’d still have to find her way back here to take care of the bolts lying on the floor below.

  Morgan made one final effort to reach the bolt, wedging her shoulder against the floor as hard as she could, ignoring the pain as the edge pinched under her arm.

  She had to be close, given where the others were.

  Her fingertip brushed something that could have been the bolt. Excited she pushed even harder, trying to get just a little more reach, and her hand slipped. It snagged against something else, her arm jerking back as the pain hit, tearing her hand along the edge of whatever it was.

  Morgan rolled onto her stomach, cradling the injured hand in the other one, blood already welling from what looked to be a fairly deep cut across her palm.

  Sitting there trying to keep the blood off her clothes, while also trying to tear off a strip to stop the bleeding, used up the last bit of calm Morgan had left. In sheer frustration she kicked the hatch as hard as she could, not caring for the moment that someone might hear. At least then she could get out of this blasted tunnel.

  The kick was unaimed, hitting around the middle of the hatch, but was delivered with a goodly percentage of her heavy-gravity-bred strength. The clang was louder than she had expected, but not by a wide margin. What was surprising was the grating of the hatch against its mounting as it moved forward a few millimeters.

  She stared at it in incomprehension for a few seconds before she realized what had happened. Once she did she kicked it again, harder. This time, she kicked in the corner opposite the last bolt, and was rewarded with the hatch actually bending out a bit as the lone bolt buckled under the strain. The wave of air that rushed in to balance out the slight pressure difference between the room beyond and the crawl space was just as recycled and sterile as the air already inside, but to Morgan it tasted as good as breathing the surface air after a shift in the mines.

  A third kick broke the bolt entirely, the hatch thumping down onto the floor below. Morgan was halfway out before she thought of the panel still open inside. Muttering to herself, she hastily replaced it. It was a sloppy job, but she couldn’t bring herself to stay in there any longer.

  There wasn’t much to see beyond the hatch, luckily. A meter or so in front of the hatch was a row of crates, stacked nearly to the ceiling, easily three or four times Morgan’s total height. The row extended nearly to corners of the room to her left and right, blocking out most of the light from whatever lights were mounted on the ceiling of the room.

  Once out she took a moment to clasp her hands together before stretching her arms up, delighted to simply be upright again. That done, she shoved the hatch back on and replaced the bolts as quickly as she could. As a souvenir, and to avoid any evidence, she pocketed the now-broken sixteenth.

  After a few last moments cleaning up any blood drops on the floor as best she could, she picked a direction – right – and slowly made her way towards the corner.

  Peeking through showed Morgan only more crates, but this time they didn’t extend all the way to the opposite wall. Creeping up to the edge, Morgan found herself looking at a busy loading operation, some ten or twelve people busily moving crates around by hand and with some small wheeled machines, as well as a couple people who seemed to be keeping track of what went and what came.

  They clearly aren’t from Hillman, given how tall they are, Morgan thought to herself. No, clearly they were the freighter crew, seemingly working unsupervised.

  Once she’d processed the obvious height differences – she’d guess most of them were at least a third again as tall as she was, and even the shortest probably beat her by thirty centimeters or more – she paused to wonder at their clothing. They all wore the same thing, thick-looking white or grey fabric, a couple with different colors that clearly had been patched together piecemeal. It covered them from toes to the top of the neck, seemingly skin tight, with some buttons and monitors in a couple places. There was also what looked superficially like an air tank on the back. At least that was Morgan’s guess, based on the bulky and heavy tanks she’d used before for especially long repair jobs in the mines. There weren’t any hoses or anything that would confirm this, but she couldn’t imagine what else it could be.

  There was a helmet too, of course, with a clear faceplate that was divided into four horizontal sections. Morgan couldn’t figure out why it was designed that way – surely the parts that overlapped and even the thin opaque edge around each section interfered with vision? More curious for Morgan was the fact that she couldn’t tell how the helmet attached to the rest, it seemed to link in seamlessly with the neck of the suit.

  It was hard to tell with their odd suits, but they also seemed far too skinny to Morgan. No wonder the gravity of the station didn’t match the gravity of the planet below, if the visitors were this spindly.

  Slipping back from the edge Morgan moved her attention over to the large door leading to the other ship. There was movement back and forth, but not constantly. If she timed it well she should be able to slip onto the ship without being noticed.

  Assuming, of course, that no one was watching on the other side. Not that there was anything she could do about that one way or the other.

  Minutes went by as she watched. Efficient lot, but oddly quiet. Could the suits be connected? It would be hard to talk to each other with the helmets, otherwise, and she couldn’t see how they could coordinate the loading without at least some chatter.

  Morgan caught some movement in the corner of her eye and turned to look. One of the workers who seemed to be keeping track of everything was motioning for the worker closest to Morgan to come over. There was her opening. Morgan gave him a ten count to head over and then dashed forward, trying to stay as low as she could. Not hard really,
given her background.

  If she had dared glance back as she disappeared down the mostly dark corridor, she would have seen the worker who had gestured to the other looking directly at her before shaking her head and resuming her task. She didn’t, however, and so missed it.

  CHAPTER 05

  Space is deadly. You’ve all learned this. There are many kinds of ways it can kill you. So you had better listen to me when I say that these dangers are miniscule compared to the dangers of someone wandering around a spaceship who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Watch them, carefully.

  - Sergeant William Ted, Aegis Company, before assigning privates to escort duty.

  HELGA

  HELGA ALLRED had long-since adapted to the necessities of living and working in space. She didn’t even remember a time when she wasn’t a light sleeper. Within a couple seconds of her bedside intercom chiming she had woken, sat up, and answered the call.

  “The cargo transfer?” She mumbled, already assuming something had gone wrong.

  “No, that’s going fine.”

  It was her sister, Mary. She was supposed to be working documentation in the station’s cargo loading area. If there wasn’t a problem why was she calling?

  “You did have a reason for waking me?” Helga said when Mary didn’t say anything further.

  “Sorry, I was responding to one of the loaders. Multitasking is such a pain in my ass.”

  Helga snorted in amusement. “Careful Asad doesn’t hear you talking like that.”

  “Yeah, yeah. My esteemed brother-in-law Captain can get in line to bite me,” Mary said, chuckling herself. “I almost didn’t believe my own eyes, but it looks like we got a potential stowaway here. She’s trying to stay hidden, and doing a pretty good job of it. Without my helmet’s built in low-light I wouldn’t have seen her.”

  “A runner? Here? How in the galaxy did she get up to the station?” Helga didn’t, of course, bother to ask why someone would be trying to escape Hillman. Just because they had to take jobs from anyone and everyone to keep the engines running didn’t mean she liked what a lot of them did.

  “No idea how she got up here. She didn’t walk through the door, unless she did it before we got here. Definitely not from the station though. Her clothes are arguing whether they’re mostly holes or patches. She doesn’t quite look like the miners we’ve helped in the past though.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’ve seen them, practically albinos. She’d pass for Milatan, assuming her hair really is dark blonde and not just dirty. She’s got enough scars for a miner though. Anyway, miner or not, what do you want me to do?”

  “Don’t spook her. Last thing we want is for her to run from us and get caught. Or worse, get us caught helping her. What’s she doing?”

  “She’s just watching us. Probably waiting for a good chance to dart onboard without getting nicked.”

  “You want to give her a chance?”

  “Of course I do. But can we afford another mouth to feed? Next stop is Breimley. No way could we offload anyone there, let alone a little girl. It’s at least a month before we get to Parlon. Probably longer, given the bureaucracies of Breimley.”

  Helga blew her breath out as she thought. Could they handle at least a month feeding someone from a heavy gravity world? Growing kids needed plenty of food all on their own, even without the extra muscles to account for.

  No. Helga knew she was asking herself the wrong question. As much as she tried to play it gruff and stern the question was a simple one. Could she sleep, knowing she’d sent a little girl back down there?

  “Yeah, give her an opening. Just don’t let on that you’ve see her. Pull whoever’s close to the door over to ‘talk’ with you.

  “And when she gets into our cargo bay? There’s no one in there right now.”

  “Seriously? Where are they all?”

  “Uh, in here with me? We’re still unloading the third batch.”

  “We can’t risk her wandering around the ship. Can you get someone back in there, make up some pretext.”

  “Yeah, I could, but it’ll be hard to ‘not see her’ as they go past. Plus she might decide to wait until they come back, to keep us from catching her the moment she gets on Old Beamy.”

  Helga grumbled automatically at the hated nickname of her ship before responding. “Let me think,” she said, running one hand through her sleep-messed hair. Not for the first time she wondered if she should give up and just cut it short like most of the women on board. “Everyone’s either asleep, on duty, or working the cargo transfer right now, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay. Go ahead and give her an opening. I’m going to head down there myself and snag her before she can get into trouble. Don’t let the others know. They’re good people, but, well, you’ve seen them play poker. Most of them couldn’t lie their way out of a paper bag.”

  “It is one of their more endearing qualities.”

  “For you, maybe.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll start listening to you after I can stop buying spare parts with my poker money. Get down here quick. We’re all risking trouble the longer she stays on the station side of the airlock.”

  Grumbling a bit at creaky joints and aching muscles Helga rolled out of bed. Tossing her robe aside she started shoving feet into her skinsuit where it lay unceremoniously on the floor.

  She was getting old. Old and fat. It was becoming harder to get the suit on; she’d have to stop putting off getting it adjusted. Next time they were in a civilized system, she promised herself. And once she had the money, of course.

  In the meantime, she’d been doing pretty well at avoiding the engineering parts of the ship where she needed the protection of the suit instead of her normal ship’s jumpsuit, but something always seemed to come up. Like this latest wrinkle.

  Years back they’d had a system in place for dealing with stowaways, even budgeted for extra food when they stopped at places like Hillman. She’d thought the centralization along with the station being finished had put a stop to the poor souls trying, but here they were.

  Tight squeeze or no, Helga had the suit on in short order, another of the necessary skills when living in space. She’d never had to deal with a hull breach; much less one where she was caught outside her suit, but waiting until it did happen was a poor time to start practicing.

  With practiced eyes she checked the indicator lights of her suit in the mirror before slapping her uplink unit onto the left wrist of the suit. It automatically tied into the suit’s systems and was already tied into the ship’s.

  Heading for the door, Helga decided to leave her helmet retracted into the collar of the suit. She would probably frighten the girl less that way. If the girl was as pungent as some of the other stowaways they’d had years past, it might even help her find her.

  The captain’s quarters were close to the bridge, right near the center of the ship. The Pale Moonlight wasn’t a large ship, as freighters went, but she still had several hundred meters of corridor to wind her way through to get to the cargo bays.

  The corridors were, unsurprisingly, empty. Every crewman they could spare (and a couple they couldn’t) was busting their butts getting the cargo unloaded so they could take on ore and get out of this utterly depressing system. There’d be some downtime once they hit subspace, but as the ancient saying went, time is money.

  As she approached the main cargo bay she quietly triggered the voice commands for her uplink, connecting back to Mary.

  “Is it done?”

  “Yeah, she headed down the gantry tube a couple minutes ago. You aren’t in there yet?”

  Helga ignored the question and picked up her pace. A few simple whispered commands and she’d tied into the ship’s controls, locking down the hatches into the cargo bay, starting with the hatch leading to the airlock.

  Stopping at the end of the corridor Helga opened the hatch into the bay, closing it as soon as she was through. A quick glance around di
d not show her the stowaway, unsurprisingly.

  “You might as well come out,” she called out loudly. “We know you’re in here, the ship has you on her sensors.” This was a lie, the internal sensors were spotty at best, but the stowaway had no way of knowing that. Helga gave the girl a full minute to respond, the only movement the display on her uplink.

  No response.

  Helga waited a minute more, then called out again.

  “You’re safe now. We aren’t going to give you back to them. Come out, please.”

  Still nothing.

  Well, nothing for it. Time to flush her out.

  Helga walked around the few crates still in the room, circling towards the airlock. As she moved she tapped the two buttons that controlled her suit’s helmet. The segmented fabric slid up under its own power, sealed in less than two seconds. The equally segmented clear visor wasn’t the easiest to look through, but having the helmet always at hand was well worth the drawbacks.

  Plus it had features like low light amplification and infrared in addition to the heads up display. It was the later she triggered, bathing the room in shades of red and yellow, with some cooler blues and purples in places.

  Helga turned about slowly. Hmm. Not good. She couldn’t see the girl anywhere. Even if she was behind a crate she should have at least seen a slight spike in temperature levels. She looked around again – there was an odd heat patch against the wall opposite of her. Turning the infrared off she walked over.

  It was an access panel into the service crawlways.

  It was closed, and looked normal. Stooping down Helga looked closer at it, then switched infrared back on.

  There was a faint heat increase around the edges, like someone had held onto it. Helga grabbed the edge of the panel and tugged. It came away easily in her hand.

  Oh. That wasn’t good.