Lost in Transit Read online

  Lost in Transit

  by Jerry Boyd

  This book is a work of fiction. All the people, events, and organizations in this book are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to anything in the real world is purely coincidental

  Copyright©2019 Jerry Boyd

  All rights reserved.

  This book may not be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, whole or in part, by any means whatsoever without prior written consent of the author and publisher.

  Dedicated to my long suffering wife, Donna, and my beta readers, Mary, Bernard, Karen, and James.

  A note about commas, and editing. My beta readers work hard to keep me on the straight and narrow. Anything wrong is probably due to my hard-headedness in not taking their advice. Extra commas you may find scattered through the dialogue, are a blatant attempt at mind control. It’s my way of making the characters sound the same way in your head, that they do in mine.

  Nikki flew us around the planet, and I put out the sensor platforms Taz had printed. Once we had enough in orbit to keep track of all the marooned saucers, she headed to the outer system to put out some more, to warn of anyone jumping into the system. As I put the last one out, I realized something. We had left Topper’s saucer on the planet, in our rush to get going. I commed him. “Hey, Boss.”

  “Hi, Topper. I screwed up. I didn’t get your saucer aboard before we left. Can you wait a week or two till Dingus brings his load out to get it back?”

  “Really, Boss, it’s not like I did anything special to that one. You just told me to grab the saucer in the best condition, and I did. Maybe I’ll do something special later, but right now, one saucer is as good as another.”

  “Thanks for being understanding. This vacation was supposed to let me calm down and get a better handle on things. So far, it hasn’t really worked out that way.”

  “Mr. Sloan says you’re buying a bunch more bots that you’re going to take the limiters off of. That means a lot more to me than one particular saucer.”

  “Glad you see it that way. We’ve finished putting out the sensor platforms that Taz printed, so we’ll be starting home now. This ship isn’t as fast as the one we came out in, and we have to make a stop at Patrol headquarters, so I’m guessing about three days, more or less.”

  “See you then, Boss.”

  “See ya.”

  I wandered up to the bridge. Nikki said, “Strap in, Caveman, I’m about to take us to FTL.”

  I found a seat and got buckled in. The transition was rougher than the ship we brought out. Nikki said, “The bots have their work cut out for them, bringing this crate up to our level of maintenance.”

  “What’s that rough transition a symptom of?”

  “Mostly, just techs who didn’t take the time to tune the drive as well as it could be. There are a couple of non-standard parts in there as well, that probably aren’t helping anything. I do like this autopilot, though. It’s not as good as having Ruth on the console, but it is good enough to let it fly without supervision, as long as I set it to alert me if it sees something odd.”

  “I need to train on the behavior of hull metal under heat and stress, so I can understand what happened with that chain the other day, and then I think I’m ready for bed.”

  Nikki helped me get started. The training machine on this ship was attached to a dedicated chair, and the chair had belts, just like the chairs on the bridge. I guess it was force of habit, but I buckled up when I sat down. When I came out of the fog of training, Nikki was lying in a heap, on the floor, moaning. I unstrapped and went to her. “What happened, Space Cadet?”

  “We came out of FTL with no warning. I got thrown around. My arm is broken, and I was out for a little bit.”

  “Autodoc for you, then.”

  “But I need to see what’s wrong with the ship.”

  “Maintenance is my department, and I’m qualified to fly, as long as we’re in normal space. Worse comes to worst, I can wait four hours, and take the FTL course.”

  I got her in the box, and looked at the control panel. It showed her with a slight concussion in addition to the broken arm, and also showed the babies had a few issues, that it might as well fix while she was in the box. I couldn’t see any reason not to, so I told it to go ahead. Then I went to the bridge to find out what the heck had happened. I ran a diagnostic, and it said one of those non-standard parts Nikki had mentioned had shut down suddenly, dropping us out of FTL. I had a bad feeling, and ran a scan. Sure enough, it was putting out a tracking signal. I got my uniform on, and went outside to pull the panel I needed, to get to the part in question. Good thing I had taken the zero gee operations course on the way out. I got the part out, complete with its tracking beacon. The dollop of DK on it did nothing to calm my nerves, but I got it out without detonating it. I was suddenly thankful for my habit of always carrying my Ruger, even outside the ship. I held firm to the ship with one hand, and tossed the bad valve as hard as I could with my other hand, Once it was what I judged to be a safe distance, I shot it, detonating the DK. My uniform’s comm confirmed the beacon had gone silent. I checked inventory, but there was no replacement on hand, so I sent the specs for a standard replacement to the printer. It told me it would take two hours to print, and made me go through an authorization procedure to access that particular file. Taz had been over this ship, but apparently, he hadn’t looked in all the nooks and crannies. I decided, since I had a little time, I would check the other non-standard pieces, to see if they had nasty surprises in store, too. All of them were, as near as I could tell, just parts off something else, that someone had used to keep the ship flying, when the correct parts weren’t available. By the time I finished checking, the part was out of the printer, and I went in to get it. Once I had us ready to fly again, I went to check on Nikki and the kids. The ‘doc said they needed another hour, so I went up to the bridge, and scanned the local area. I didn’t find anything, but I was still worried that the beacon may have drawn company we didn’t want. I set a course in the direction we had been traveling, as fast as I dared. It wouldn’t get us where we were going any faster, but we wouldn’t be exactly where the beacon had gone off. It might give me a little time to decide how to respond. Either I actually was paranoid, or they had a long way to come to answer the beacon, because Nikki was out of the box, and we were back in FTL, without seeing anyone jump in. I said, “I’m taking that FTL course now. I don’t want to be in that situation again.”

  Nikki replied, “I think I’ll strap in while you do that, just in case.” Nothing happened that time, and I texted Taz the images and scans of the device I had found, so he would recognize the next one he saw. We went off to bed. The rest of the night passed without incident. I guess Snitz didn’t see any need to check out the ship, because he didn’t wake me. When I did wake up, I got up and started coffee. There was a text from Taz on my comm. “Sorry, Boss. Are you guys alright?”

  I commed him. “Morning, Boss. I guess you got it all taken care of?”

  “I hope so. I fixed what I found. How did we miss that?”

  “It had its own operating system. The only connection it had to ship’s systems was a message interface. It looks like there was a passcode that needed to be entered before you went to FTL. No passcode, you get stranded between stars, and the little booger starts calling for help.”

  “Nobody showed up, so that’s a plus, at least. Any ideas what else I should be scanning for?”

  “You might ask Mrs. Wilson to see if any other parts of the ship have unexplained message interfaces. That’s the only way I can think of to find something like this.”

  “I’ll ask her when she gets up. Thanks Taz.”

  “Thank you. I messed up, and you didn’t come down on me.”

/>   “What good would that do? I know you scan for everything you can think of. Now you know something else to scan for.”

  “Fly safe, Boss. We couldn’t find another Boss like you.”

  “Take care of yourself. See you in a couple of weeks. Oh, I probably found you a project. Remember Willum?”

  “The guy who wouldn’t fly his saucer after we fixed it up, ‘cause it was too nice for his cover? Yes, I remember.”

  “I told him that you could fix him up a saucer that scanned as junk, but was in perfect working order. You might want to be thinking how to make that happen.”

  “Thanks, Boss. Things are so slow around here, I need something to occupy my time.”

  “Glad to be of service.”

  “Bye, Boss.”

  “Bye, Taz.”

  Snitz came wandering in, and I filled his bowls. Nikki came in about then. “Caveman, we have a problem.”

  “What’s that, Space Cadet?”

  “The prisoner in that saucer, one of his wounds is going septic. If we don’t get him in the autodoc, he’ll probably die before we get to the Patrol.”

  “Okay, you cover him, and I’ll put him in. Where’s the problem?”

  “His autodoc has some oddball programming. He may be able to get out of it, once he’s strong enough.”

  I thought for a minute. “I think I have a cure for that. Let’s eat first, though.”

  We had breakfast, and headed back to the cargo bay. I stopped at a locker, and grabbed a ratchet strap. Nikki gave me a funny look, but we went on to the saucer. She popped her external lock, and ran the door open. He was looking pretty rough. I threaded the strap around the ‘doc, and put him in. He never had gotten dressed when he came out before, so I didn’t have to mess with undressing him. I asked Nikki, “If I leave the nighty-night on, what happens?”

  “The box will refuse to start until you take it off.”

  “That’s not great. Be sure you’ve got him covered, then.”

  I pulled the badge off him, and slammed the lid before he could wake up. I tightened the strap enough that the lid wouldn’t open, and then I programmed the ‘doc to fix his legs. He struggled with the lid for a few seconds before the box knocked him out. I asked Nikki, “Do you think that will work, or do I need more straps?”

  “Unless he’s freaky strong, that should do fine.”

  “Put the external lock back on, just in case.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The rest of the trip to the Patrol was uneventful. We hung out, watched movies, I caught up on training, and late on the third day, we arrived. We called ahead for a landing spot, and Major Rottum met us with a well-armed squad. I said, “You do know he’s stunner resistant, don’t you?”

  A couple of the troopers went a little pale, but they stood firm. Major Rottum spoke up. “What do you suggest?”

  “I don’t know what you have available. A projectile weapon fired into the lower part of the leg usually settles them right down, but I don’t know of anything else that’s reliable.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In this saucer, in the autodoc.”

  “Are you certain he’s still in the ‘doc?”

  “Fairly so. Hold on.”

  I turned to Nikki. She fiddled with her watch. She said, “Unless he has a way to make the autodoc deliver a false status report, he’s still in it.”

  I asked, “Could you pop the lock, please?”

  She pulled her external lock, and then opened the door. The strap was still around the autodoc, and our prisoner was still inside. He was, however, awake, and more than a little aggravated. Apparently ratchet straps aren’t considered fair play in his circles. I said, “He seems to be well contained. I would be willing to part with the autodoc, and the strap, if you would rather just move him in the box.”

  “I like that idea. Private, go find us a temporary power supply, to move this autodoc with.”

  He came back with a power pack, and we freed up the box from its mounting clamps. They carried him away. Major Rottum asked, “Why the strap?”

  “He came at me from out of the box when we first recovered the saucer, so I knew he had some kind of control over its opening. I didn’t want to be surprised.”

  “Wise precaution, it would seem, since he was awake.” He fiddled with his comm. “There you go. Please don’t find any more bounties before the end of the month. My budget is shot.”

  “We always try to be safe and boring. We’re just not very good at it.”

  “If this is you being safe and boring, I don’t want to think about you looking for trouble.”

  “Thanks, Major. Come by and see us sometime.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be there soon, Mr. Wilson.”

  I raised the ramp, and headed up to the bridge. Nikki had already eased us away from headquarters by the time I strapped in. Once we were far enough away, she took us into FTL for a short hop towards home. We emerged behind the Moon, and I commed Topper. “Morning, Boss. You about home?”

  “We are. Just came out of FTL behind the Moon. Is there room in the barn to park this heap?”

  “We cleared you out a space. Our reworked saucers are selling well. We’re going to have to buy some junkers to fix up soon.”

  “We’ve got one aboard you can go over. Anything special I should be aware of?”

  “Not that I know about. Mr. Sloan took off two days ago, he wasn’t sure how long he would be gone.”

  “We’ll be down in a few minutes, then.” Nikki brought us home, smooth as silk. Topper and Ozzie were waiting for us when we came down the ramp. Nikki said, “Hi, fellas! Did you miss us?”

  Topper said, “Mr Sloan and Mr. Branham did their best to keep us busy. We also helped Mr. Bailey with the new recreation facilities.”

  I said, “So, no time to finish the Audi, then?”

  Ozzie produced the keys. “Oh, no, Boss. It’s ready to rock!” He handed the keys to Nikki. “Drive her hard, Ma’am.”

  Nikki replied, “I intend to, Ozzie. I intend to.”

  I said, “Go over this ship thoroughly, it already gave us one nasty surprise, I don’t want any more.”

  “Yes, Boss. Anything else?”

  “Be thinking about names for these freighters. We can’t keep calling them this one, and that one.”

  We left the barn and headed for the house. Nikki’s Audi was sitting in the driveway. She said,”They finished it. Topper had fun with the paint, didn’t he?” I looked closer. What I had first thought was just a beautiful black paint job, was much more complex. He had laid down lacy ghost flames in different shades of very dark gray. As we walked closer, I could see how much detail went into the paint. I got the feeling I would be noticing new details for years. I called out, “Topper, could you step out here a moment?”

  He had been working on his camo while we were gone. A stereotypical French street artist, complete with cigarette dangling from his lips, came out of the barn and asked, “Oui, Monsieur?”

  For the first time, I was grateful for that year of French I took in high school. “C’est magnifique, Pierre!”

  “Merci, Boss. You don’t think it’s too subtle?”

  “I could stand here finding cool stuff all day. But I’m not the one who has to drive it, am I?”

  Nikki snapped out of the daze she was in. “What? Oh, Topper, this is magnificent! It’s so beautiful, but unless you take the time to look at it, you could look right over it. It’s just right.”

  “We made a training file for all the special features. You probably want to take that before you drive it.”

  Nikki looked puzzled. “Special features?”

  “We left in all the Secret Squirrel stuff, with some upgrades, and put in some of our own goodies. Ozzie says that with Mr. Johnson’s new emitters, it’s the fastest thing on the planet. Mrs. Sloan was nice enough to give us some advice about secret compartments, and Taz did some fine work on that before he left. Last, but not least, Ruth did the interior. W
e really hope you like it, Ma’am.” Topper handed her the keys.

  Nikki asked, “This training course you were talking about? Is it on the machine in the house?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Nikki took off for the house. I told Topper, “You folks did a whale of a job on this. Was John able to get rid of the other one without too much trouble?”

  “Mr. Branham said his contact was overjoyed with it. He gave us a standing offer for any other exotics we build.”

  “Has anyone driven it yet?”

  “Mrs. Sloan test drove it. She made us put in an option to turn off our roadholding package. She couldn’t get it sideways.”

  “How did you get it to stick so well?”

  “We use the drive to push the tires into the pavement, keep them from slipping. Taz calculated it should be good for about two and a half lateral gees.”

  “I can see why Dee had trouble getting any sideways. I better put these bags in the house. Nikki is going to want to test drive it as soon as she comes out of training.”

  “You might want to take the one that has clean undies in it with you, Boss. This thing is HOT!”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Topper. Thanks for all the hard work.”

  “Any time, Boss. It’s good to have you back.”

  “Good to be back.”

  I took the bags in the house, but Snitz thought we needed to make sure nobody had messed with his yard while he was gone. By the time we got back, Nikki was ready to go for a drive. I took Snitz out to the barn, and asked Topper if he and Ozzie could take care of him for a while. Topper said, “We would be happy to, Boss. We have missed the canine.”

  I heard the Audi revving in the driveway, and figured if I didn’t get out there, I was about to get left.

  I jumped in the passenger seat and buckled up. Nikki said, “Hang on, Caveman. If this is anything like they claim in the training course, it’s a heck of a ride.” Topper had forgotten to mention the grav plates under the seats, that kept you from feeling all those lateral gees. It was like being inside a video game. Nikki got a feel for it, then she eased up a little. “I’m hungry. Want to meet John at Julie’s for supper?”