Grayson Sontang in Space Ch. 04

"Material is highly reflective and will pick up star shine. I can enhance depth of field, if you wish."

"Let's do without for now." She took a deep breath. "Deploy, Hal."

"It was a long moment before their eyes adjusted sufficiently to see the faint sparkle of what looked like a fine thread slowly reeling out behind them, though of course, it appeared to be in front of them, given they were looking at the fore of the ship and at the main screen in the front of the room. Grayson tapped a couple of buttons to get a sim of the same event on one of her command monitors. It took almost half an hour to reach the near end of the entire net, and, as it was traveling at the same speed as the ship, it floated looped and coiled behind them like a tangled, silvery thread. Grayson was trying not to hold her breath. It looked for all the world like it would end up in a thousand knots. Impossibly slowly, what looked like a single thread began to untwist into many threads at the point where it extruded from the nose of the ship. Equally slowly the entire length began to straighten, like a fishing line caught in the gentlest of currents.

When it became evident that, at least until it began to unfurl, it wasn't going to effect the smooth ride of the ship, Hendon ordered more coffee and brought some to Grayson, leaning over her shoulder to watch the simulation on her monitor. The sim was showing more detail then the camera could reveal of the fine gossamer as it was beginning to unfurl. "It's like a spider web," Grayson said softly, more to herself than the men in the room. "So delicate and yet so strong."

"A what?" Hendon asked.

"Spider. Eight-legged Earth atrocity."

"I'm reading hydrogen," Evans said.

Grayson scowled at the back of his head. "Of course you are. It's all around us."

"No, I mean moving into the fuel cells. Barely measurable, but still."

"Already?" Hendon asked.

Evans nodded enthusiastically. "We did it!"

"Don't count your eggs until they're unfurled," Grayson muttered, but she was staring at the main screen. The men exchanged puzzled frowns, but left it at that.

It took another hour for the net to fully unfurl. When Hal opened the iris to release the unwanted hydrogen compounds, there was a brief tugging sensation, but then the ship quickly settled back into its usual thrust versus grav pattern, wearying but tolerable. From Hal's camera they could see the entire net as a mirror-like reflection of the stars in front of them, as well as see the brighter stars behind it, shining through the microscopic mesh. Hendon asked Hal to display the image on the screens in the cargo hold. Then he asked the computer to cook Grayson a steak. She was still staring at the main monitor, like she was waiting for something to go wrong.

"You did it," he told her. She shook her head but didn't respond. "Sometimes things don't go wrong," he pointed out.

"Tell me that when we're off-loading at Sirius." She glanced at him. "You should take a rest break. Go on. Use my bed again, since you've filled up all the gee chairs. Just don't clean anything." He gave her that grin again, and she knew he was going down there to pick up all the books she'd thrown. She swore under her breath, but she was too tired to fight him about it. Piloting a ship, as well as waging a mental - and physical - war with a Fed was just more than a body should have to deal with. As soon as he was out of the room, she reclined her chair and 'rested her eyes' for the rest of the engine burn. Evans glanced at her, then typed a command to Hal to keep her steak warm until later.

****

Ten days later, they were coasting toward the destination wormhole. They were still going too fast for Grayson's tastes, but she had not been to the El Rehla system before and white giant suns were about her least favorite. She had opted to conserve what was left of their collected hydrogen for in-system maneuvering. Evans had backed her up when she told Hendon her plan. Besides, it had gotten them to the wormhole a little earlier than original projections.

The next tricky part was reeling in the net. Grayson had Hal turn the exhaust burners to each side of the net back on to be available for use and they'd put together a contingency plan for if the net either didn't reel in, or the normal safeguards didn't cut it loose and blast it away from the ship. That was the biggest concern, because if it wasn't safely dispensed with, it would follow them through the wormhole and then, potentially, drape itself over the ship as they began to decelerate into the El Rehla system. In theory, any remaining hydrogen held in the net would self destruct with only minor encouragement, like a certain zeppelin back on Earth ages ago. Grayson just wasn't very fond of statements that began with 'in theory.'

She had contributed some of the meat in her freezer hold to the passengers' food stores - at double the cost - and she hadn't heard much in the way of complaints, though the Confeds might have been shielding her from the worst of that. Still, she was plotting various rapid approaches to the system and Prime planet in particular to save as much time as possible. She had found a small time trader only a few systems away, willing to divert from his route to meet her at El Rehla with the parts she needed, for a very handsome fee courtesy of the Siriuns. She'd gone over installation protocols with Sip and Het. She'd also laid in orders for the supplies they would need.

Their injured passenger was another matter. Grayson was insisting he be dropped at El Rehla for medical attention. Bogart and the pediatrician felt they'd accomplished sufficient repairs for him to make it to Sirius. The passenger himself, now awake, was also insisting on going home for treatment. Had it been anyone but Goldstone, Grayson probably would not have cared. Unfortunately, she knew if she put up too much of a stink, it would only raise suspicions and there were enough of those going around as it was.

Hendon had totally dropped his inquiry into which child might be her son, so she assumed that he had figured it out. What that meant for her, she had no idea and he wasn't handing out any clues. In fact, he seemed to be avoiding her most of the time, spending more time down with the cargo. Perhaps he had deduced her half-formed scheme to seduce him into a more pliable antagonist. On the other hand, if he was avoiding her, maybe it's because he was worried she just might succeed. And they were still a long way from home, after all. He did appear back on the bridge when it came time to test the retrieval mechanism for the net. Het and Sip showed up, too. There wasn't really anything they could do if the mechanism failed. The only vacuum suit Grayson had on board was one her size and there was no way either of the native Siriuns could fit in it. Plus they had opted to keep the net deployed as long as possible. As they neared the short jump to El Rehla, there was more loose hydrogen to be had, and more was always better. But it didn't really leave any time to try to fix a malfunction.

Grayson took one last look at the camera shot of the huge net. It was now distinctly reflecting El Rehla and the not too distant Hadir brightly, along with the rest of the beautiful, lush star field. In space, one seldom had the time or inclination to admire the pale colorings of stars and nebula against the intense blackness, but there was something about the fact that the scene was being reflected upon fabric which was part of her beautiful Breathless Dragon that made it special. She was dearly hoping that the retraction worked, because she wanted very much to see it again some time, especially when there was not a life or death matter weighing on her mind.

"Okay, Hal, reel it in." The process was slow, as the net was both twisted into a tight thread and drawn inside to coil against the upper, outer shell of the craft. Grayson smiled to herself as she watched Het and Sip staring at the screen and rumbling softly in their native language. She knew they were eager to go up into the crawl space and insure the net had survived and would be available for use again. Their sparkly toy was working beautifully. In fact, there was only one small glitch at the end, where the iris had possibly malfunctioned slightly when Hal had closed it, but Het seemed sure it was easily fixable and wanted to try even before the jump. Grayson nixed that. There were too many sensitive electronics in the crawl space that could be damaged if anything went wrong on the jump. She'd even had Evans on supralight with the Feds several times over checking on the status of the wormhole and the space on either side. They were coming in at one and a half AU/D above the rating for the jump and that was justification enough for some nerves on the bridge. It wasn't an often-used jump, because they'd been thrown so far out of the main ship routes, but it had been used in the last week, and since Grayson worked the fringe so much, seldom used jumps were second nature to her. Het and Sip went back to the holds to help with the passengers and Hendon settled in on the bridge as they neared the wormhole. When they passed the point at which they could have veered off, Grayson started holding her breath.

They were still moving ass backwards, ready to begin deceleration immediately when they broke free of the jump. Hal had a sim up on the screen looking down on their approach to the jump. Grayson was mostly studying her monitors though, checking on various ship systems.

"Mass detection," Hal announced, but even before he finished the words, Grayson had looked up at the screen just in time to see a simulation of a ship, about their size, zoom by and disappear in the wormhole.

"What the fuck, Hal?" she screamed.

"Please rephrase question," the computer replied.

"What was that?"

"Energy aura and emmissions suggest small transport or trader ship."

"No beacon? No visible ID? Can you show me a still?"

"No cameras were operating at sufficient frames per second to capture discernable shape." He flashed a still in the corner of the screen that only showed a blur of faint light obscuring stars behind it.

"Someone trying to blow up this wormhole," Hendon asked.

Grayson shook her head. "He's long gone out the other side. I don't know anything that could blow fast enough at that speed to take out a wormhole, especially a short one like this. Most of the explosion would have been on one side or the other. Evans?"

He was staring at the screen, too. "Uh, yeah," he agreed, obviously distracted.

"Someone aiming for us, then?" Hendon asked.

Grayson snorted. "The odds of hitting another ship, traveling at speed, in the middle of space? You'd have to match trajectory, speed. Damn near impossible. That thing was going, what, forty, fifty AU/D?"

"At least," Evans said. "It would have needed, maybe, sixty-three AU/D with its conversion engines pointed eighty-seven degrees starboard to have a hope of escaping El Rehla. And one hell of a fast burn on those engines even at that."

Grayson glanced at him. He'd apparently been doing some calculations, in case they hadn't been able to get down to speed for the wormhole. Her admiration for him grew yet again.

"Thirty seconds to jump," Hal said in his ship-wide voice. Grayson clutched her chair arms. She couldn't help it. Even though there was no physical sensation associated with jumping, there was one hell of a mental one, at least for her. The idea of being someplace, in physical form, yet where no dimension existed, was almost as hard to swallow as the fact that the wormhole actually spat you out the other side because you were so unpalatable to it.

"As soon as we're through, Hal, I want to know where that ship went." They entered the wormhole and the simulation blinked to blackness.

"Understood," the computer replied, and just that fast they were through. Grayson started breathing again. El Rehla was a small but very bright sun in the center of the screen, even from this far out.

"Commence hydrogen burn, twenty gees for one hour, ten gees for the next hour," Grayson commanded. "Any sign of our company?"

"Mass detection out of range. Nearest beacons are emanating from the outer asteroid belt, indications are mining ships and robots. I am detecting probable hydrogen exhaust two degrees starboard. I can project a possible trail with further readings."

"Stay on it, Hal. I want to know if he's going for escape velocity or an elliptic orbit."

"There may be insufficient readings to determine projections."

"Do your best."

"I'm on supralight with ground control. They are aware of our situation and have approved our fast track to orbit," Evans told her.

"Thank you. I'm beginning to suspect a Confed pilot gets far more cooperation than a mere trader," she said wryly.

"You, ma'am, are no mere trader," he replied with a smile.

Grayson smiled back, beginning to relax for the first time since picking up her strange cargo. Even though they were many parsecs, and jumps, from Sirius, it was beginning to feel like the last leg of an Odyssean adventure. "Okay, Hal, let me see system data, orbit protocols, all that good stuff." She sat back and began to study her monitors.

"How about something to eat instead?" Hendon asked. Grayson jumped. She had forgotten he was still on the bridge. In fact, had actually been enjoying the past days when he seemed bent on avoiding her. "I'll cook. Be in the mess in thirty minutes." He turned and left.

Grayson watched him go. She hated to admit it, but his cooking was definitely better than the combined efforts of Hal and the kitchen bot. She would never tell Hal that. Or Hendon. But the thought of a properly cooked steak was making her mouth water. When she looked back toward her monitors, Evans was grinning at her. "Go," he said. "I'll review the information and save you some reading. You've done everything you can before our arrival, so take some downtime now. You'll have plenty to do when we get planetside."

She took a last glance at the system they were racing into and shrugged. "Okay, I guess." Then she threw a scowl at Evans when his grin widened, before trying to appear reluctant as she left the bridge. She headed for her quarters. If she had thirty minutes, she was going to shower and change into a wrap-around sarong. She told herself firmly that she had no ego invested in the battle of wills between her and Hendon, but it didn't hurt to keep doors of opportunity open and if she could bend the lawman to her will - just a little bit - it sure couldn't hurt.

When she entered the mess a little later, Hendon and the food had not appeared yet. Grayson looked around. It wasn't a room she spent a lot of time in, or any, if you wanted to get technical. There was a small monitor, so she asked Hal to put up a view of the system they were headed into. There was a counter that contained things like condiments, creamers, utensils and napkins. She didn't want to know how old some of the foodstuffs were. They might have been there since she originally took possession of the shell some years ago. But then, it wasn't like they were real food. She was examining a packet of something that was supposed to be a butter-like substitute when Hendon entered with two plates of food.

He had, it seemed, finally allowed himself to take advantage of her food stores, which admittedly were only slightly better than the emergency food stores the passengers came aboard with, but it constituted a degree of concession on his part that she hadn't expected. From somewhere, he also produced a bottle of wine. Grayson figured he must have finagled it off a passenger, since she didn't carry any, to the best of her knowledge, and doubted it was considered an emergency food supply from the yacht. She watched in amazement as he went to the cabinet and easily found two wine glasses. She definitely needed to do an inventory of what she had aboard.

"Sit," he commanded, when she was still standing, watching him with a puzzled frown. Then he added, "Please." She sat.

"What are we celebrating?" she asked as he filled the wine glasses.

"You got your wish," he explained.

"Great!" she exclaimed, lifting her glass in toast. "What wish?"

"The Siriun Monarchy is sending a transport to meet us at Wazn."

"Wazn? Why the hell would we go there?"

"Because that is where the transport is meeting us?"

"But it's all asteroids and shit that it stole from another star."

"Exactly. Heavy metals, precious gems, rare earth elements. Lots of mining, lots of traffic, lots of security. Lots of what we need to blend in, move our passengers and be on our way."

"Why on Earth would we want to hang around in that system waiting for a transport to show up? We could be at Sirius in the time that would take." She paused, her brow furrowed. "Wait. What do you mean 'our passengers' and 'our way?'"

"Eat your steak before it gets cold."

"Hendon, answer me."

"The transport is en route and will be there about the same time as us. It was dispatched the day after the wormhole accident."

"That was no accident. And why didn't you tell me this if you knew it that long ago?"

"You needed to concentrate on our problem at hand. Your steak is getting cold."

"Fuck my steak. Why are we going in-system here if we're just going as far as Wazn?"

"Evans tells me it's still two jumps, maybe four, five, six days. That would be cutting it too close without additional supplies and hydrogen."

She had to concede that point. It was closer to Sirius, but certainly not on a straight line and she wasn't familiar enough with the jump points in the immediate area of space to hazard a guess at the timeline. She took a bite of the meat, closing her eyes as she savored the juices running over her tongue. When she opened her eyes again, Hendon was watching her closely, sipping his wine. She chewed slowly then swallowed and cut another bite of the steak, raising it slowly to her lips, inserting it gently, precisely on her tongue, slowly closing her mouth around the succulent morsel. She swore his pupils dilated. Who knew he was one of those who got off on food fetishes? She swallowed and tucked the fork between her lips, sucking it clean. Now she was sure he was struggling to keep his eyes glued to hers.

She lifted the glass of wine and swirled it, then raised it slowly, breathing deep of the aroma, letting her eyes drop to follow the pattern of the wine as it clung and draped along the inside of the glass. Then she ever so slowly brought the edge of the glass to her lips and tilted, sucking the rich red liquid into her mouth, savoring it before swallowing. When she raised her eyes again, she was sure his respiration rate had increased. She held his gaze as she set the wine glass down and picked up knife and fork to cut another bite. Then she suddenly had one of those palm-of-the-hand-smacking-forehead moments. She stared at him.

"You said 'our' passengers. Be on 'our' way. What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

It was definitely a mood breaker. He suddenly became intensely interested in his own steak. "Most of the passengers," he said without elaboration.

"No, no, no! Whatever you're alluding to, no!" She hefted her wine, thought about throwing it at him, then decided it was too good to waste. She took a big drink. He sighed and opened his mouth to explain, but she threw up her hand, palm toward him, and snapped. "I don't want to hear it, whatever it is." He shrugged and turned back to his food. After a moment, she did, also, and they ate in silence. She drained her wine, and as he poured her more, she swore, "God, damn you, Hendon!"

"Ready to listen?" he asked.

She picked up her steak knife, even though she'd finished with her meat, and tested the edge, then threw it back down in disgust. "Hal, have the steak knives sharpened." Then she glared at Hendon. The computer didn't respond, apparently too perplexed by the command to figure out how to ask for clarification.