Web Published Fiction Writer's Call The Captain's Last Orders by Lazette Gifford A few words about Lazette Gifford http://www.lazette.net "Introducing me... First, above everything else, I am a writer. There is nothing I enjoy more than creating stories, and I haven't missed a single day of writing for more than a decade. In fact, I've written over half a million words a year in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. I made my first fiction sale to Jackhammer E-zine in July, 1999 and in the following thirty months, I placed another thirty-four fiction manuscripts to ezines and epublishers. Not content with driving poor, unsuspecting 'net surfers crazy with just stories, I have also created and maintain several web sites. These include ones for the city and county where I live, as well as for SF/Fantasy writers eluki bes shahar/Rosemary Edghill (they are the same person!) and Esther Friesner. I also maintain Sff.net's E-stand (http://www.sff.net/estand) to help better promote epublications. I am a Moderator for Holly Lisle's Forward Motion Writing Community where I run activities such as the writing dares, convincing ever increasing numbers of poor fools -- umm, excited writers -- that these things are all kinds of fun. I also started the daily writing exercises, and taught classes in short story writing for the site. I am also the managing editor and web designer for the site's free ezine, Holly Lisle's Vision: A Resource for Writers (http://lazette.net/vision ). Vision is available in html, pdf and palm-readable format. And what do I do in my free time? (Sleep? Nah...) I love digital photography and have even been known to abandon my computer and the Internet for whole hours at a time to go and take pictures. (http://www.sscdc.net/zpics ) In real life, I live in a small town in Nebraska with a wonderful husband, one dog, far too many cats and a book collection the library would envy. I will not speak of the video collection. And now it's time to go write…" The Captain's Last Orders Growing up the daughter of a port commander, I often heard stories about the first slide ships and their crews' adventures. I loved the tales as a child, and cried every time a ship left without me. When I was old enough, I joined the IWC Forces to follow my dream. Ten years later I had a full engineer's rank and headed out for my own adventures. I never expected to become the reluctant engineer on a smuggler's ship. I took ill on Daniels, and my ship went on without me, though Captain Lowe said she would reinstate me if I caught up with them. When I recovered, I posted a port ad looking for work on a ship heading toward Astrakhan. In retrospect, that was my worst mistake. I should never have said where I wanted to go. The next day I learned The Ezekiel needed an engineer, with Astrakhan two slides away on their itinerary. I eagerly met with Captian Monso and went to see the ship. The Ezekiel was an older slide ship, like the ones I'd loved as a child. It dwarfed the little shuttles from the huge ships that couldn't make landfall. I fell in love with it. We toured the ship: The tools were in excellent shape, replacement parts in good supply, and everything exceptionally clean. Monso showed me the bay, engineering, crew's lounge and control deck. What I didn't see was the crew. "I let them go portside," he said and smiled. I signed and sealed a contract for one jump with options. Monso helped me gather my belongings, and escorted me back to the ship. As we stepped through the airlock, I felt his hand on my shoulder -- and a little bite of pain. I knew the ship was already in slide before I opened my eyes. Someone sat by the door. I didn't ask who he was or why he was there. I leapt from the cot and charged him. "You bastards!" I swung, but he blocked the blow and shoved me back. I hit my head on the wall with a sound like a bell ringing. "Stay where you are," he said. "And don't swing until you find out who your enemies are. Most of the crew aren't here by choice either, you know." Neither his words nor the banging against the wall made this any better. "Hell," I said and sat up. "What's going on?" "Our engineer died. Killed himself. Captain Monso wasn't about to make a run with only a couple low-grade techs. I'm Parson, comp tech." "Ensa, engineer. Obviously." I started to panic. "How many more of us are there?" "And why haven't we mutinied?" he said, finishing my thoughts. He'd no doubt heard it before. "There are eight crew members. Three are the Captain's men, and have weapons and codes to control the rest of us." "What about the pilot?" I asked, the one possible person with power to help. "Is he ours or theirs?" "The pilot is... crazy." He paused, clearly troubled. "Ashley is in a sync collar. Know those?" "I've heard of them," I said. What I'd heard wasn't good. Electrodes in the collars produced agony at the flick of a switch. "I suppose you're going to tell me you have a plan to get us out of all this, right?" Parson said. "I'm not that stupid." "Good. Roth, our last engineer, was stupid. He nearly got everyone killed the first day. It finally took the deaths of four others before he gave up trying to free us -- and killed himself instead. If you're another Roth, I'd just as soon know now so I can kill you, and not have to worry about that kind of stupidity in the future." He didn't smile as he made the joke. Neither did I. He nodded. "How long has Monso held you?" I asked. "I came with the ship, seven years ago, earth standard." That was a damn long time. "How many of the original crew are left?" His eyes looked away. I was sorry I had asked. "There's only one other left now," he said. "And that would be the crazy pilot, right?" "Right." I took several deep breaths, looking Parson over. Tall and too thin. A short chain bound his ankles. When I looked down I found the same, though my chain appeared to be longer. "What the hell --" "The chains ensure we can't outrun them, and they're synced like the pilot's collar. The pain will paralyze you. If you continue to be recalcitrant, they'll remove links, making it hard for you to even walk." "And you have been recalcitrant," I said. "I don't recommend it. You can survive without making trouble." "Surviving isn't everything." "Not surviving is a worse option." Parson leaned forward and his voice dropped. "Choose your time carefully." I nodded. There were problems with the engines. Roth had obviously stopped caring toward the end. This wasn't good since I had trouble caring from the start. And Captain Monso didn't trust me. Only when the relays didn't kick in, and the ship lost life support, did he finally let me work. Parson monitored the comp readouts while I did the tweaking. "Damned lucky I know what I'm doing," I mumbled from under a control console. My fingers moved across the surface of some odd comp relays. I frowned, making little sounds to whatever Parson was saying, but it was apparent I wasn't really listening. "What's wrong?" he asked, looking in. "Something wrong -- a relay to the control deck. I want to know what it does." I left Parson and headed up ship, stopping before I made the mistake of stepping over the sync line again. I shoved the communit button, feeling like a damn peasant asking for permission to enter the castle. I didn't like it. "Yes?" Torben asked, growling the word as though I had stepped on his foot. I'd already annoyed him by turning down a chance to be his woman. I suspected he was going to take the decision out of my hands, and it made me uneasy whenever I had to deal with him. "I need to check a link on the control deck," I said, keeping as calm as I could. "It's important." "File it with the Captain. No one goes up without his permission." "Fine. If we lose power you tell him why." Torben cursed. "Stay there." As he came down the hall, I compared his portly figure to Parson's thinness, and could guess where the computer tech's food went. I explained the situation, trying to ignore that he was more interested in my breasts then what I was saying. By luck, Captain Monso happened along and listened as I explained yet again. "This better not be a trick," Monso said. "Look, I want to know what that damn suicidal man did with those relays. My guess is he decided to die and make sure the rest of you didn't survive either." "He wouldn't kill the crew," Monso said. "He liked them." "Liked being the proper tense. And he wouldn't be here to see them die, would he? Shall we stand around waiting for the fireworks when Roth's handiwork kicks in?" Monso took me to the control deck. I hadn't met Ashley. He was as tall and thin as Parson, and I suspected a blood relationship. He never looked at me, even as I knelt to work under the boards beside him. "New Engineer, Ashley," Monso said, jabbing at the pilot. "Don't bother her." Ashley blinked. The fingers of one hand worked across the boards, while the other tapped against the plastic in a nervous gesture that almost unsettled me. Crazy, Parson had said. Tap, tap, tap. "Roth do much work up here before he killed himself?" I asked, trying to sound calm. "Yeah," Monso said. Tap, tap, tap-tap. "And you didn't find that strange?" Tap. Tap. "We had problems. He fixed them." "He made the problems to get access here." Tap tap tap -- My breath caught. It was a code used on older ships when communications equipment went out. It could be banged against any metal platting, relaying info. Not many bothered to learn it anymore, since new craft used self-contained commlinks. However, on a ship this old even the handheld units drew power from relays within the system. My childhood obsession with old ships paid off. Tap, tap, tap-tap. I took a deep breath and tapped under the board. Understood. I pulled my head back out and dared a look at him. His hand was still. "We have a serious problem here," I said. "Roth must have planned this for a long time. It's going to take me days to find and remove all the relays." "Days?" Monso said. "Do we have days? Otherwise, we might as well party and go in style." He didn't like my sense of humor. His hand moved toward his belt and the link that activated the sync collars. "Go ahead. Maybe I'd rather end up like Roth than like Ashley. Give me a reason to save us." Ashley began to tap again. Careful. Careful. I tried to moderate my own reactions. "I have a lot of work, and I don't know how long --" "Four days," Monso said. "I had better get to work." I leaned under the board and tapped out a message. Understand. Roth know code? No. Is danger? Yes. Roth speak? Say sorry. Work. Talk later. I looked back at him. Except for a twitch at the corner of his right eye, he looked very calm. It took a day just to understand Roth's elegant and effective plan. Relays would take the order to transition to normal space and kick in both slide and normal space engines at the same time. Then random relays would cycle that order until both engines overloaded. We wouldn't survive if I didn't remove all the relays. Monso gave me full comp access to the ship's files and engineering plans to learn what adaptations had been made. This also gave me access to the original crew records that he'd hidden behind his false history of the ship. They could not be erased from the comp, but they could be hidden. Monso had taken the ship with the help of the cargo master, who hadn't survived. Ashley and Parson were brothers, and their mother had been the Captain. The Captain's last entry was posted an hour before records showed her death. Monso had been the only person to access it before me. Her last order had been simple: Win back the ship or destroy it. She didn't mention her sons. I went back to work with system printouts and culled more relays -- but my mind echoed with the Captain's Last Orders. Save the ship, or destroy it. I was doing neither. I'd had little sleep since I came aboard, and that made me daring when I should have been careful. Parson and I had worked feverishly in engineering, always with Monso watching. I didn't dare attempt to learn if Parson understood the code. Before we went off slide, Monso locked the rest of the crew in quarters, and I saw Parson put in his spartan room. He wished me luck, but I wasn't sure he wanted me to save them. Monso and his men gathered in the control deck just before transition from slide. "This is it," I said aloud, but my fingers said something else to Ashley. One chance. I watched the countdown as the last seconds slipped away. Ashley's fingers tapped. Do? Do, I answered. He took us off slide. The ship went dead and dark. There is nothing quite like being in a suddenly dead ship. Gravity fails, lights go, and even the sound of life support disappears. You are suddenly aware that this is just a fancy can. I drifted upward, pulling out a cube light for some illumination. "Well, that's done," I said cheerily. Monso stared, his face beaded with sweat. "What -- the hell --" "I decided Roth was right. And I read the Captain's last orders." "Destroy the ship?" Monso whispered, frightened. "I'll give you half the credits!" Torben shoved Monso aside. "Get the ship working!" "The ship is dead," I told him. I still grinned. "I considered letting it go in a fiery blast like Roth wanted, but the crew deserves a last chance at you before the end." Ashley floated up. "No!" Monso pulled his link and jabbed at it. Old ship -- the power was gone. I grabbed his laser pistol. If he'd pulled the weapon first, rather than trying to torture someone, he might have won. Ashley took my arm, tapping lightly. Ship dead? No. Prepare. He smiled. Monso kicked me in the head and everything went dark. They escaped, heading down toward the bay and the emergency pods. I took hold of Ashley and tapped, afraid to speak with them still so near. Let go. Need off ship. Capture. "Monso has his codes in place," I whispered. "He can override anything. We don't want him aboard when we power up again." But the bastards lingered in the bay while I worried what the rest of the crew thought had happened. I couldn't even use the comm yet. "What the hell are they doing!" I demanded, holding tight to Ashley's chair. "Cargo," he said softly. "Credits." "If they think we aren't after them, they'll realize I want them to go. I need to get down there." Careful, he tapped out. The ship had drifted, dead, for about twenty minutes. The halls were cold and frost already formed on the handholds. I rushed past quarters, to the one I knew held Parson and forced the door open. "I need your help! We have to get Monso off the ship now! I don't dare power up until he's gone. Codes." "Oh. Hell." Parson kicked off from the wall, sailing with the grace of someone who'd spent time in freefall. "Ashley --" "He's holding down the control deck. Monso and his men are in the bay. If we don't scare them into thinking we really want to have our hands on them --" "We should kill them," Parson said. "If they take the pods, they aren't going far. I want the officials to round them up and put them on trial." He said nothing. "Careful," I said as we reached the last curve. "Don't make me regret this. I don't want to tell Ashley I got you killed." That one had finally struck home. "Ashley's really alive?" "Waiting for me to kick these bastards off the ship so we can power back up. And we sure as hell better hurry. The rest of the crew will be running short of air." "Oh hell." Hood was standing guard. He saw Parson and me, and I fired and yelled for the others to join us. The scare worked. Before we reached the opening, I felt a slight breeze as the first pod launched, the bay doors opening with the release of a lever that activated as the pods moved. Then I saw what had delayed them. They'd rigged the inner door so it couldn't be shut. I grabbed Parson and the closest wall as precious atmosphere escaped, a howling wind around us. Pods launched -- one, two. I couldn't breathe and Parson went limp. Three. If I let go, he would sail out with the pods. If I didn't, I couldn't hope to manually close the door. Forth pod! No more time! Power! Gravity, lights -- the bay door slammed down. I hit the floor, Parson atop me. The air was still too thin.... "Hey." Parson stood over me, with Ashley beside him, his neck bandaged, the collar gone. So was my chain. "Hey," I repeated the word. Med unit, I realized. "How'd we do?" "Fine." Parson smiled. "Ashley powered up when the last pod launched, and saved everyone. The others are celebrating, but we came to discuss what to do about Monso and his men." My head pounded as I tried for reasonable, sane thoughts. "You're a computer tech. Can you negate their codes before collecting the pods?" "I can't guarantee it. I haven't had my hands on the core computer in seven years." "We could blow the hell out of them," I said. "But we could never go back to the IWC worlds," Parson admitted. "Monso bought an illegal comp registration as Captain. We show up without a good record of what happened to him --" "Let him go," Ashley said softly. "Let him go. Let us be ourselves again." Sometimes I think there is a God. We were still getting the ship in order when a local scout ship arrived. If we'd blown the hell out of those pods, they'd probably have blown the hell out of us. As it was, we had a hard time explaining why we ignored the distress calls. Captain Baver came aboard, his five men armed and ready for trouble. Parson and I met them. Baver's eyes lingering on Parson who still looked crazed and half-starved. "I want to see your records," the man said. "No problem," I answered. "Monso controlled the comps," Parson whispered, despair in his voice. "He locked the real files away." "He gave me full access and never had time to cancel it. I can get past his lies." Parson finally laughed. After reading a few entries, Baver picked up the pods. Monso and his men stood, stunned, as Parson, Ashley and I swore out reports and promised to follow the ship back to port. After the trial, Parson and Ashley asked me to take the Captain's position. I accepted. And we're heading for the Fringe after all. There's good money out there for Free Traders. The End © 2000 Lazette Gifford

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