Home Run by Nathan Lowell
“I’m in.” She pushed her helmet back a little and sniffed. “Smells a bit, but nothing too bad. Gym-socks level.”
“Better than eau d’corpse,” Zoya said.
“I’ll take your word for that,” Natalya said. “Heading for the mess deck. I don’t hear anything other than the blowers running. There’s gravity and lights in here.”
Natalya made her way into the ship, pausing every so often to listen. She made the turn to the mess deck and peeked around the door frame. “Mess deck could use a good swab, but there’s nothing obviously out of place.”
“Roger that.”
Feeling more confident, Natalya made her way deeper into the ship and swung through the wardroom on her way to the ladder up to officer country. She stuck her head in the medical bay. “Auto-doc is still online.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Zoya said.
“I hadn’t either. Heading up to officer country to see if the spine is open.” She climbed the ladder and found the airtight hatch blocking the final few meters. “The hatch is closed.”
“Drop back down to the main deck,” Zoya said. “Follow it aft toward crew berthing. There’s a maintenance passage just before the aft bulkhead. It’s just a single hatch and ladder.”
“I know the one you’re talking about. Heading there now.” She made her way along the passage, stopping to peek into both deck and engineering berthing areas. “Berthing areas are messy but clear.”
“Roger.”
The access port to the upper deck was locked open. Peering up through the opening, she saw light above the upper opening. “Access port looks clear and open to the spine.”
“Roger that. I’m thinking we’ve got a viable ship here.”
“Don’t jinx us,” Natalya said, pulling herself up the ladder and into the spine proper. “Airtight door at the forward end of the spine is closed and dogged.”
“That’s what I would have expected based on what we saw.”
“Heading aft along the spine.” The spine seemed undamaged other than a couple of missing overhead lighting panels. “Almost at engineering.”
“Roger.”
“Whoever fumigated this house seems to have done a great job.”
At the end of the spine, Natalya paused and waited. The air coming down the spine smelled a little mucky, like the scrubbers needed service again but hadn’t stunk up the whole ship yet. The normal noises in this part of the ship were always louder than the forward nacelle, so it was hard to tell if anybody waited for her in the area. She ducked into the aft passageway, peering into the engineering office on her way past. Watch-station consoles lit up the next compartment but nobody sat at them. A quick check of the status screens showed the ship’s condition to be stable. “Air quality is a little whiffy,” she said. “Fuel is good. Gases are good. Water is almost full. Scrubbers need some attention.”
“All good,” Zoya said.
“Making a swing down and through environmental before heading back to the bow.”
“Roger.”
She made her way down the ladder to the main engineering floor and checked behind and around the major blocks of machinery. Some of the paint had been chipped off the fusactor cowling and she noticed telltale glints of glass on the deck. She shrugged and made a note to sweep and swab the decks throughout the ship before turning anybody loose in it.
Natalya finished her inspection of the main engineering space and made a fast pass through environmental. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Did you check the spares closet?”
“No. I’ll do that now.” She made her way back to main engineering and did a quick survey of the spares closet. “Nothing unusual here,” she said. “Normal numbers of things I’d expect to see on a working Barbell.” She walked to the end and checked the suit closets. “Lots of softsuits.”
“Roger that. We should get back to let the others know what we found.”
“Coming into the spine now. See you soon.”
Chapter 30
Smelter Seventeen:
2368, February 14
Natalya looked over Bean’s shoulder at the three-dimensional model rotating on his screen. “This is just a preliminary sketch,” he said.
Zoya patted his shoulder. “Great job. That looks like it’ll be just the ticket.”
“Thanks,” Bean said.
“There’s one problem,” Zoya said. “We need something to anchor it on. We’re going to need to build that first. If we don’t, we’ll need to build all the housing and other support for the workers into this.”
“How many are we talking about?” he asked.
“Four or five per operation,” she said. “There are three major modules for production, plus the power generation—so twenty—plus three managers per shift, that’s eight more. Twenty-eight. Multiply that by the number of production stacks. Plus maintenance workers, support personnel like cooks.”
“Supervisory personnel responsible for the whole station,” Natalya said.
Bean stared at the rendering for several long ticks. “Can we use a similar method?” he asked, taking up his stylus.
“Modular?” Zoya asked.
“Yeah. Start with a basic structural block.” He sketched a square on his drafting table. “Put in a raised deck to run the utilities in. Put connectors in the middle of each side so we can attach them together in any order. Do the same thing with each bulkhead except the connectors are airtight doors.”
“Make them cubes?” Natalya asked.
Bean paused, stylus raised. “We could but how big a footprint are we talking about?”
“Ah, I get it,” Zoya said. “It’ll depend on how much height these units need.”
“Exactly,” Bean said. “We’ll want to find a size that’s economically reasonable.” He glanced around. “So this compartment has something like a three-meter wall height, but its footprint is too small for more than a few tiny apartments. Add a subfloor a meter down and we’re looking at a ten-meter height. What’s a usable size? A cube would give you a hundred square meters, which sounds bigger than it is.”
Zoya stared at his sketch for a moment before looking at Natalya. “How big is your stateroom on the Peregrine?”
“Same size as yours. Roughly three by four, I suppose.”
“That’s what I’d estimate as well,” Zoya said. “Assume a ten by ten and we’re going to split the area with two-meter passageways. That leaves a four-by-four-meter living area.” She shook her head. “That’s going to take seven of these just to cover one stack.”
“What kind of housing did you have at Grinder Eight, Rob?” Natalya asked.
“I had a single, but the regular crew had doubles and quads.”
Natalya looked at Zoya. “The Barbells have quads in the berthing areas.”
Zoya nodded. “We lived in a double for a very long time.”
“We can always ask for help,” Bean said.
“That’s the second time I’ve heard that this week,” Zoya said. “What did you have in mind?”
“We need staff but we have nowhere to put them. To get staff we’ll need somewhere for them to live and something for them to do.”
“Go on,” Zoya said. “We’ve got space for a couple dozen people. One of them needs to be a cook. Probably a couple need to be helpers.”
“We do?” he asked.
“The Mindanao is empty now,” Zoya said. “We can move in any time. We need a shuttle.”
Natalya looked at her. “A shuttle? We have a shuttle.”
“An operational shuttle?” Zoya asked.
“Have a little faith. I just needed my tools from the Peregrine.”
“Is it small enough to fit in the boat dock?” Zoya asked.
“Oh, yeah. We could park two of those if we had them,” Natalya said.
“Fuel could be a problem,” Zoya said.
Natalya cast a sidelong glance at Zoya. “Not as long as we have the Peregrine. Which reminds me, we should loo
“We’re not going to be able to supply all the fuel for the barges and haulers with the Peregrine, are we?” Zoya asked.
“No,” Natalya said. “But it’ll keep the shuttle flying until we can get a tanker out here.”
“And fuel storage,” Bean said.
Zoya asked, “You need a hand getting that shuttle spaceworthy?”
“You may wish you hadn’t offered,” Natalya said.
“I got nothing else to do at the moment. We can’t do much until the buoy is reactivated and we have a terminal to connect to it.” Zoya paused. “We should also see about rigging a comms monitor. They’re not going to know to contact us here.”
“Done,” Natalya said. “While you were gone, I changed the comms to listen on the standard hailing frequency.” She pointed to the speaker mounted on the bulkhead. “They already had a repeater set up down here. If somebody calls, we’ll hear it.”
“Weren’t you the go-getter,” Zoya said with a grin.
Natalya shrugged. “I was bored.”
“Did you check out the cargo handling equipment?”
“Yeah. It looks up to snuff. Even has an ore hopper so we can unload the haulers when they get here, assuming there’s a can to fill. Kim was right. There’s not a lot of transient storage down there so we’re going to have to watch how much we unload until we can get some trade going.”
Zoya sighed. “Well, let’s see if we can get that shuttle running. Not much else to do at the moment.”
Natalya grinned and headed for the Peregrine to fetch her tools.
Chapter 31
Smelter Seventeen:
2368, February 15
Natalya grunted as she tightened down the last bolt. “That was harder than I thought it would be.”
Zoya rubbed the side of her face with the inside of her left wrist, smudging the grease that was already there across her cheekbone. She grabbed a rag from her pocket and tried to wipe the residue off her wrist. “Think she’ll run?”
Natalya sighed and surveyed the small craft. “She needs some time to charge up the power cells, but we should be able to see if her electrical system is still alive.” She arched her back to try to stretch out the muscles. “I’m going to be sore tomorrow.”
“Today, actually,” Zoya said. “It’s after midnight.”
A huge yawn took Natalya as if summoned. “We’ve been at this a long time.”
“Let’s get some sleep and let it charge up. We can check it in the morning.”
Natalya wiped her wrench down with a rag and dropped it into the tool chest. The clank echoed in the nearly empty dock. “I can get behind that idea.”
“Smelter Seventeen, HT Rover, over.”
Zoya’s eyes went wide and she bolted for the common room and the stairwell beyond, Natalya on her heels.
“Smelter Seventeen, HT Rover, over.”
Zoya grabbed the mic from its clip and took a deep breath before keying it. “HT Rover, Smelter Seventeen, over.”
“Smelter Seventeen, HT Rover. We’ve got a work order to reinstall a terminal that was damaged? Over.”
“Roger that, HT Rover. You’ll need to install it at the marshaling yard. Over.”
“Smelter Seventeen, HT Rover. The marshaling yard? This order is for the station. Over.”
“HT Rover, Smelter Seventeen. Do you see a station here? Over.”
“Smelter Seventeen, HT Rover. No. We thought we’d been given the wrong location. Over.”
“HT Rover, Smelter Seventeen. The station doesn’t exist anymore. We’re starting the process of rebuilding but need the comms link to be re-established. Over.”
The pause was long enough that Zoya looked at Natalya, who shrugged.
“Smelter Seventeen, HT Rover. Roger that. We have you on short range and should be there in about six stans. Over.”
“Thank you, HT Rover. We’ll leave a light in the window. Smelter Seventeen, out.”
“We really should see about changing the name,” Natalya said.
“We’re already registered as Usoko Mining Station Seventeen,” Zoya said. “Smelter Seventeen is just the nickname that everybody uses.”
“Makes sense. Smelter Seventeen implies there are sixteen other smelters somewhere,” Natalya said.
“And that only Usoko Mining has any,” Zoya added.
Natalya nodded. “We should probably get some rack time. Looks like tomorrow will be a full day.”
Zoya clipped the mic back onto the communications station and nodded. “I’m getting used to sleeping on the couch.”
“Well, with any luck, we can move to the Mindanao tomorrow. If only for sleeping.” Natalya headed down the stairs.
Zoya nodded. “We can at least see if there’s as much there as we think.”
“I wonder if Kim can cook,” Natalya said.
“Well, I can cook if push comes to shove,” Zoya said.
Natalya shook her head. “I know, but you’re going to be busy as head-of-station before very much longer.”
“We can hope,” Zoya said with a sigh. “Those crews out there need a place to dock and I’m afraid they’re going to be bottled up for a long time.”
Chapter 32
Smelter Seventeen:
2368, February 16
Natalya and Zoya watched the HT Rover nudge into the docking ring from the dock’s observation port.
“Smooth,” Zoya said. “Gotta give him that. Unwin Eights are small ships but still, that was well done.”
Natalya nodded. “Now if he just has the technicians and parts we need.”
“He should. My note to Dorion spelled out that the buoy was there but the terminal wasn’t.”
The lock cycled and a youngish looking officer with a spacer cut so cropped it was only barely covering his scalp looked up. “One of you Usoko?”
Zoya stepped forward and held out a hand. “That’s me. I’m really glad to see you.”
He looked at the hand for a moment as if deciding whether or not to shake it before giving it the briefest of shakes. “I got a terminal for you. Where d’ya want it?”
“Main deck.” She nodded at the ceiling.
He eyed the stairway. “Got a lift?”
“Of course,” Zoya said. “Just around the corner. Do you want to see where it’s going first?”
He shook his head. “Gimme a minute.” He clomped back to the ship and returned a few moments later, hauling a grav pallet with a crate on it. “This’ll need power, you know.”
“Figured,” Zoya said. “Natalya here will get you set up. Assuming we have the right fittings.”
He glanced at Natalya for a moment before looking at Zoya again. “What happened to the station? This would make a lot more sense if it got installed there.”
“Did you notice that debris cloud as you were coming in?” Zoya asked.
He frowned. “Yeah. Nothing hit us but that was a surprise.”
“That was the station.”
His eyes grew round.
“We need to rebuild it from scratch, hence the need for comms, which is why you need to install it here. It’s the only base we have in this system at the moment.”
His look of surprise became one of incredulity. “You two are going to rebuild a smelter?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, yes,” Zoya said. “Natalya here is a dab hand with a welder and I’m going to pound the plates out with my fists.” She shook her head. “I realize this game of twenty questions has run a little short, but if you wouldn’t mind? We’d really like to get on with it.”
He sighed. “All right. Sheesh. Where’s this lift?”
Natalya and Zoya took him around the stairwell to a small freight lift on the back side. He slipped his grav pallet into the cage and they all rode up to the main deck. Bean and Ahokas both looked up and stared as the tech hauled the crate into the room.
“In here?” he asked.
“This will do,” Zoya said. “Did you find the power a
“Yeah. Come on. I’ll show you where we want it and you can tell me where it needs to go instead.” Natalya crossed to one of the bulkheads.
The tech sighed and followed.
It took the better part of two stans but they got the terminal bolted down, booted up, and synced with the buoy.
“You realize that it’s going to be a few days before things get flushed through, right?” he asked.
“We know how it works,” Zoya said.
He snorted and shook his head. He grabbed the grav pallet’s handle and headed for the lift. “Fine. Good luck with your project.”
“You want to go see him out?” Zoya asked.
Natalya shrugged. “Sure. Why not? He can’t be any more insulting that he has been already.” She followed him to the lift, jogging to catch up with him before the gate closed.
He tapped his toe impatiently, the sour look on his face taking on everything but a suck-the-lemon pucker.
Natalya latched the gate and looked at him. “Is there something the matter? Did we not shower or something?”
He shrugged and glared at her. “Some prissy rich kid gets her panties in a twist and her High Line fat-cat grandpappy lights a fire under my boss so I have to fly out here to install this thing? For the love of Maude, there’s not even a station here.”
Natalya felt her eyebrows crawling up her forehead. “You do realize there was one here, right?”
“All I see is a cargo transfer station and four people. I have no idea what the hell might have been here before. You say there was a station but it’s not here anymore.” He shook his head.
“It’s here. Whatever parts of it that weren’t vaporized in the explosion. You flew through their remains on the way here. A couple hundred people’s atoms are part of that expanding debris cloud. Some of them were people she probably knew. There are still mining barges and ore haulers out there in the Dark somewhere with no place to dock, refuel, or replenish their food stocks. I’m sorry if installing our lifeline to try to save the people who’ve survived has eaten into your vacation time.”