The Universe — or Nothing, Meyer Moldeven [best color ebook reader txt] 📗

"Yes, Zolan, I am familiar with your background." Shifting to Hodak, "Yours, too." His glance widened to include the others, "as I am with the backgrounds of you all."

In response, the prisoners silently glared defiance.

"Zolan's observation is correct and on point," Xindral said, ignoring their disdain. "We're not fooling one another. Simply stated, you have much in common. You are professional space men and space women, and highly qualified at that. Your skills and resourcefulness remain with you and I am aware of them."

Slouchers straightened. Hodak and Adari looked around and their faces broke into grins, which were returned. Tension remained, but subtly altered.

"A couple of points," said Xindral. "First, you are all from sunside of the Belt and you are not known, as far as my sources can determine, where I don't want you to be. Second, together, you represent a cross-section of space professions and experience vital to the success of an important and urgent task. What you are going to be asked to do will place your lives at risk. You will need to rely on each other, personally and professionally, under difficult circumstances."

Brad had enough.

"Now let's just wait a minute!"

Brad was on his feet, instantly joined by the others.

Xindral, head cocked slightly to one side, sat and listened.

"Zolan said it first," said Brad. "None of us speaks for the others, so what I say is for myself. Who are you to force me — us — into a life-risk situation?"

The words, tightened in long-suppressed rage, spewed forth.

"You just counted off a couple of 'points'." Brad raised his hand, index finger raised. "Now here's one for you. I'm here because I was convicted of a so-called offense against society. No way do I consider myself a criminal; furthermore, I don't know if these others," motioning in their direction, "consider themselves criminals or not. Again, I say, not my business. I'm here to serve a prison sentence, and that doesn't include doing odd jobs where my life goes on the line."

Brad and Xindral faced each other across tension-charged space. The momentary confrontation passed, Brad, obviously fed up with Xindral's evasions, crossed his arms across his chest and waited. The tall man studied him.

"Your point is well made," he said. "You have forced the issue forward, and your challenge must be answered before we go much further. Here are a few of the pieces. Think about them."

He stepped back on to the platform and took his seat.

"You were selected only after a searching investigation into your backgrounds," he said. "We considered your records, personalities, and your capabilities: phys and psy, professional skills, job performance, resiliency, whatever the task I assign to you will likely call for.

"You are now a UIPS task group, for want of a better designation. One of you will be appointed Commander. You will be given a job to do. You will depend on each other in most difficult circumstances: your records for reliability under stress were among the selection criteria. You were acceptable.

"As to your appointment, that was made by an authority outside this station, actually, outside the Correctional Service of which this penal institution is a part. From the time you were moved into the holding cells for transfer here, you came under the jurisdiction of a Ministry that is involved with the most vital interests of the UIPS. The specifics of your mission will be covered in our next session."

"The hell you say." Hodak bounced again. "You're still dangling us on a string. Lay the whole bit out. Now!"

Nods and grunts followed Hodak's demand.

"Very well," Xindral said, after a short pause. "Actually, there's no reason to delay your marching orders."

His voice flattened.

"By direction of the President of the United Inner
Planetary System you are appointed to the Strategic
Penetrations Detachment of the Ministry of
Intelligence. Your unit identifier is 'Sentinels'.
Your unit commander is Brad Curtin, present.

"Copies of your orders are in a secured file in the Ministry of Intelligence. A copy is temporarily posted in your core compartment. When you read it, note that all requests for release or reassignment are denied."

Xindral folded back into his normal, slightly bowed posture. His audience, frozen, stared at him blankly.

"That's it for now." Xindral ordered, the flatness gone. "Return to your compartment and report back here in an hour. Brad, please stand by."

His jaws clamped tight, eyes glaring, Brad sensed his companions rise to their feet around him. Kumiko first, stood and wordlessly glided to the closed passage portal. Her back to the others, she waited for the panel to clear. Zolan, on his feet, mouth agape, stared at Xindral.

Adari, still seated, gawked in bewildered disbelief from Xindral to Brad to Hodak. Hodak glowered, gestured rudely and cursed furiously and loudly. Myra stood, silent behind an icy mask. Xindral, perched on his stool, arms in his lap, impassively observed their reactions.

The scene held for several seconds. Xindral broke the silence.

"Your formal orientation and training begins when you return. First I must speak with your Commander. Please excuse us."

He turned and touched a disk on the bulkhead. The entryway cleared and Jenkins appeared.

"Escort our friends back to their compartment,
Jenks. Commander Curtin will remain with me.
Return the group in an hour."

"Yes, sir."

Myra, Adari, Hodak and Zolan milled about for a moment, then joined Kumiko at the portal. Passing through, they spoke and gestured animatedly to each other. The portal clouded over.

Xindral hefted his stool forward, placed it alongside Brad, and folded his long frame onto it facing the view tank.

"Just so you know, Brad," he said gently, bridging the silence between them, "those of us who work in Strategic Penetrations carry no formal rank. If we did, yours would be the equivalent of a Lieutenant Commander in the United Inner Planetary System Space Force. Mine would be a notch or so above."

He shifted his frame about and bent a long leg to bring his foot up to the lower rung. His tone shifted into neutral. Cool.

"My friends call me Ram. OK?"

Brad nodded, eyeing him. Ram drew back a bit and contemplated the control in his grasp. After a moment he stroked the keys. A rainbow of colors swirled and drifted off, replaced by an ash-gray sphere. Planet Pluto spread across half the tank with its flat stretches of methane frost broken by low, jagged chasms, hillocks and craters. Charon and the Slingshot Logistics Depot hung off near the edge of the tank's flattened top.

Brad glanced at the scene, and back to Ram.

"Brad," Ram spoke slowly, quietly, "a trite expression, repeated all too often during our history, is 'humankind now faces its greatest crisis'. The statement has been declared so often across the ages that it's lost meaning, obviously because it changes in context and perception from one event, century or millennium to the next. I suppose those who said it, believed it. Nevertheless, even if the term 'crisis' never really applied in the past, it does in these times for humankind's destiny.

"The deficits in our nonrenewable assets, and the many other natural substances we depend on, if not resolved within the next few centuries, could force us back into caves, and I don't use that word 'figuratively'. Ceramics, composites, and other substitutes are fine as far as they go, but they do only a tiny part of the job.

"We'll soon be running short of substitutes for our substitutes. Building bigger and better colonies in space over the past thousand years or so has consumed far more of our resources than expected. Earth is almost barren and many space colonies in both regions can no longer meet existing needs fromtheir regions, let alone those of the future.

"In short, our dispersed civilizations must have access to sources for minerals and other industrial substances, not only now but in perpetuity, in order to survive and evolve. Our species isn't built to accept inactivity or slipping backward. If we don't move on to something new and challenging, then we'll drift into extinction. You've heard this all dozens of times; I won't dwell on it further."

Ram stood, paced, and turned his head to keep Brad in sight as he paced and reversed direction. Brad's eyes fixed on the view tank and stayed there. There was nothing new in Ram's words, so far.

"Slingshot schedules are in their most critical phase. We have a launch window for the Extractor. It's not much of a window. If we miss it, Slingshot fails. It's that simple. The launch cannot be aborted; there'll be no second chance. People across the system, by the millions, are committed to the schedule. You, and your crew now serve in that legion."

"What's going on here?" Brad cut in. "Are you telling me we've been pressed into this job with no choice of our own?"

His anger showing, Brad thumbed over his shoulder toward the entryway, then at his chest.

"Tell me, Ram," Brad demanded, "how did it happen that we six, three men and three women, are here at this time for this purpose?"

"We'll get to that in time." Ram said, "I've reviewed your trial record, but I'd like to hear it from you — straight. What happened?"

Brad stared at Ram for several seconds, obviously making up his mind. Finally, he shrugged, and contemplated his hands.

"Well, then you know I was Captain of a space freighter," he began. "My job was to transport high-mass mining equipment, ores and refined stuff between Mercury, Venus and Luna.

"When this mess happened, we were Luna-bound with a full load of worn out track-layers, rock-crushers, drill robots, filters and other tools in the forward and aft storage bays, and ingots well-secured in stress-certified compartments. The ship was at capacity, but within legal limits. Mass and balance had been certified by Space Traffic Control before they cleared us from Venus orbit. The ship was in order.

"We were only about twenty-million kay from the Luna Space Traffic Control Zone, but still in max drive. Plenty of time to kick-in vector and deceleration programs."

Brad paused, shifted position, rubbed his jaws, sighed deeply, glanced sideways at Xindral and, his voice tighter, continued.

"That's when that strung-out jock in a space-buggy took us on for a game of 'chicken'.

"The buggy was a single-seater, tiny, barely ten meters bow to stern, but the way she whipped around us, it was plain to my duty officer that she was charged by a micro deep space drive. My duty officer hit the alarm; I got to the bridge within ten seconds after the buggy's first pass.

"I checked our status and proximity-to-mass in vicinity; then my ship's scope analyses of the buggy's thrust and gyrations. She was obviously overpowered for mass, especially in the confined lanes plowed by slow freighters like mine.

"My three-hundred-meter freighter with all storage bays packed bulkhead to bulkhead with high mass, is barely maneuverable under the best of circumstances. Evasive action against some hot shot in a souped up space-buggy was out of the question.

"It got worse. Not only did the jock ignore my warnings; he lined up alongside my bridge and danced on his thrusters. He flipped from relative vertical to horizontal, then corkscrewed us lengthwise fore to aft and back. To add insult, he whirled his buggy on its tail like a damn dervish, right alongside where I stood on my bridge and then cut across my bow. That hotshot was one good pilot, I'll grant him that.

"After a minute or so of that, the buggy circled my ship, close. The pilot probably liked what he saw, because he surface-snaked us again bow to stern. That must have been boring; he peeled away, tore ahead a quarter-million kay, skewed around, and came straight at my bow, curdling space. When collision was just about unavoidable, he did an up and over. In doing that, he cut us much too close, snapped off a dozen masts, sensors and nav guides.

"The jock must have gone berserk; he took us on for full 'chicken'. He shot ahead about a million kay, flip-flopped, and came at us head-to-head, taunting us with his collision signals. Our computer showed him as boosting all the way."

Another long pause. Brad looked directly at Xindral.

"We collided, head on," he said. "That brightly colored, beautiful little flitter buried itself deep in our forward cargo bay. My rescue team went in, but we knew ahead of time what we'd find. It was there: chunks of metal, shards of bone, and scraps of flesh splattered on mining gear, rock-crushers, and other odd pieces of equipment.

"The Space Guard hearings were followed by a quick trial. The jock was the son of a politician, so here I am."

Brad looked away, then back at Ram.

"Your turn," he said. "What's the story on how we became the 'chosen'?"

"The selection was certainly not random," Ram stood and stretched to his full height as he spoke. "Despite the billions of citizens in the UIPS, we're all tagged and catalogued. It's a simple job for the computers to correlate