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  We made preparations to move out-system and jump to the starting point of our search in the Centaurus arm of the galaxy.

  8 Shots Fired

  We jumped from the Caspar system, well beyond any expected sensor range. Once we were past the proscribed in-system transit lanes, we gradually went to full power. Then we used our cloak to slowly fade out at the end of the run before we jumped.

  We named the starting point of our search, Point Bingo. Ranger put us on a heading down the search lane for the first sweep. We would be jumping frequently down our path, like a porpoise on holiday. Without jumping, traveling the search lane in normal space would have taken over twenty-three thousand years to reach the endpoint.

  At each jump emergence, we would coast for about half an hour to allow the twins to take readings. With the frequencies we were jumping, I wanted someone on or near the bridge at all times, so I set up a rotating six-hour bridge watch rotation.

  During one of my watches, Mica stopped by. “So, have you actually tested the weapon systems yet?”

  I had run a few weapons simulations back in the Exeter system when I'd played with those two military frigates but no hot shots yet. We hadn't been anywhere safe enough from prying eyes to do any real shooting. I scheduled a test shoot for the next time all three of us were awake. I told Ranger to terminate one of our jumps into an area with some asteroid fields we could use as targets.

  As soon as we dropped into normal space, Mica asked for first crack at the weapons station. Ranger assured us that neither our cloak, deflector, or shield would affect our outgoing weapons capability.

  Ranger set us up for a fairly fast attack fly-by on a mid-sized asteroid. Mica activated the pinhole quanta-plasma streamer and not only hit the target but began to surgically slice off selected portions of it as we flew by. Even on a fast run-by, the QPS held steady on the target. We all took turns putting that asteroid through our blender.

  Time to unlimber the big gun. We found another good primordial rock relatively close by. It approximated the mass of a battle cruiser. We began a long-range approach. At 500K klicks, Mica pulled the trigger on the compression force wave weapon. There was an instantaneous reaction. In less than a second, we saw it crumple into itself, then dissipate into a gas cloud.

  “Roger, how far away can sensors pick up that effect?”

  “That depends on the mass of the target. A full power wave application on a mass that size would be able to be picked up as an emerging gaseous anomaly from 12,000 klicks by a good set of human scanners. While scanner records would reveal the gas cloud before it disbursed, most scanner systems automatically filter out low density gas pockets and ghost signals to prevent overloading the human operators with non-essential information. The power of the weapon can also be dialed down and focused to affect just a specific section of a target. At lower power, the detection range is shortened by the inverse square of the distance.”

  We hopped around local space to find more targets and took turns testing the compression wave for the full shift. Mica suggested we call it “Thumper.” For the next few days we all ran weapons training simulations during our respective bridge watches. I hoped we never had need to unleash these beasts.

  ♦♦♦

  We spent an uneventful week doing pop-in, pop-out searches until the Twins asked us to do a very wide and slow circular sweep that would take three days to complete.

  This gave us the opportunity to build and test some drones. I set Sandy to the task of inputting several designs into the fabricators. We wanted to keep the Nano-compiler feed stocks available for future needs.

  Mica and I stood port and starboard bridge watches while she tackled that. Sandy had ten drones of various capabilities ready in two days. Most of that time was consumed with design and programming. Our fabricators proved to be very fast. The next problem I saw was one of deployment. Sandy came up with a simple plan. She had designed the drones to fit through a pressurized ejection chute designed for expelling unwanted gas and liquids from the ship. The drones performed perfectly.

  Each one had cloaking ability and an array of sensors, as well as Q-Com receivers and transmitters. Recovery was a bit clunky. We had to bring them in through an airlock, or they could just attach themselves to a purpose-built hull bracket we installed when they returned. We stowed half of them in the port side cargo hold and the other five on the hull. Mica programmed our mid-sized bots to collect the stored drones and place them in the closest ejection chute if we needed to launch them quickly.

  ♦♦♦

  The part of the Centaurus spiral arm we were searching was in the fringes of the extreme outer band. The outer two-thirds of the galaxy was much more sparsely populated with stars.

  Not many corporations were interested in pushing sponsored colonization out this far. So far, only a half-dozen system had been found to have worlds that were safe for immediate shirt sleeve human habitation, but then, there had been very little serious planet hunting in this sector. The corporations had sold colonization packages and licenses for these few systems to well-funded groups that wanted to strike out on their own or wanted to create a culturally specific enclave. Humans never were, and never will be, all one big happy family.

  The most stable and densely settled area of the galaxy is the middle third of the disc. This was the galaxy's Goldilocks Zone. The inner third was more difficult to colonize. There were high interstellar rad levels and a denser population of unstable stars. Humans also avoided the gas nebulae. The density of energetic gas molecules there played havoc with communications and navigation but, more importantly, Jump-Drive operation was sketchy in those areas. Nebulae are generally explored only by long-range observation with infrequent visits by science vessels doing outer edge skimming for data collection.

  ♦♦♦

  I asked Ranger why we didn't keep our defensive shields up at all times. Like all ships, we keep our deflector shields in operation to push away interstellar gases and the very small bits and pieces of debris. Space is not empty. The ship’s navigation and sensor systems worked together to automatically make course changes to avoid bigger clumps of matter.

  “Sir, the defensive shields use a very high-power projection which can be detected from 2000 kilometers, even when we are cloaked. The deflector has a much lower power emission, which quickly degrades to below background levels. Unless another ship is within three kilometers, it’s not detectable.”

  Three kilometers was snuggle-close for space vessels. I realized that during my chats with Ranger was generating some nice to know information. I knew that Mica and Sandy also talked with Ranger during their bridge watches. I started an addendum to the bridge log. I'd have Mica and Sandy add their comments as well.

  9 Roger Doger

  Nothing wakes me faster than, “Captain to the Bridge!”

  Two hours ago, I'd settled into a nice dream-free sleep. Bouncing up and launching myself through the hatch to the bridge, I saw Sandy moving her hands over the controls.

  “Captain, we've got a catastrophic coolant release in forward engineering. I've got it isolated, but we lost ninety percent of our grav-plate coolant up there. I'm using the aft coolant tanks to supply the systems. Looks like an external rupture from a port services hookup. We still have air in the people tank.” Leave it to an engineer to call the ships hab sections a people tank.

  The grav-plate system uses a gas mixture of argon and nitrogen to carry away waste heat. Grav-plates don't work well when overheated, if they shut off, we’d be weightless. As part of the ships inertial damper system, they also protect us from excess Gee-forces during acceleration and rapid maneuvering.

  The grav-plate the system is a fine web woven into a thin flexible polymer coating on the inner hull. The term grav-plate is a hold-over from more than a thousand years ago when they were actually plates. Over five-thousand years ago, acceleration or rotation had been the only way to simulate gravity in space.

  “Did we lose hull integrity in any section
s?”

  She turned toward me, looking me up and down. “Captain, you should dress before you come on the bridge.”

  I was wearing my skin suit. They’re called skin suits for a reason. We wear them constantly, as under garments, to save time if we had an emergency that called for us to get into environmental suits.

  “Yeah, well you shouldn't wake a guy like that and expect a tuxedo to answer your call.”

  Mica bumped into me as he entered the bridge with a pale and frantic look. He'd been sleeping. “Are we OK?” was all he could get out.

  I brought Mica up to speed on events. “Looks like we need to have the hull-bots do an EVA to check the rupture site.” Mica sat down at the navigation station and started the EVA preps.

  He released the nearest bot. Its camera feed showed a deformed and cracked coolant hull-fitting used for connection to station services. Sandy zoomed in closer. “Looks like it was bent and fatigued by an angular retrieval of a services hose. Their coupling must not have released properly. Bet they had to replace that hose after we left. We can fix it here the deep, but since we need to drop in somewhere for a coolant refill, I suggest we do a plug-patch now and do a final repair at a station or on the ground, if we go dirt-side.”

  Sandy supervised and monitored the hull-bots performing the temporary repair, while Mica and I looked through the navigation database to decide which of the nearest systems were best suited for our needs. We didn’t need a close star system, every place in the universe was close with our S-drive. But we didn’t want records to show us popping in somewhere we couldn’t be since small ships were not interstellar capable.

  We were looking for someplace politically stable and welcoming to visitors. Someplace with a Q-Com system so we could access our bank funds. Sandy asked for “someplace warm and sunny.” She’d had her fill of crap planets from her time spent in the Marines.

  We found a group of settled systems that were unexpectedly close to each other. Each system had its own government, but were closely aligned according to the records. Lots of trade back and forth and, surprisingly, they shared a space navy. That was a rare situation.

  We plotted a course that dropped us in at the edge of the Tanner system.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Being so far off the beaten path, we were bound to be questioned about how we got there since a ship of our size would should not have interstellar capabilities. We concocted a story, which Ranger backed up in our ship records and logs. We had piggybacked on a corporate deep space research and exploration ship from a minor system.

  They had dropped us off in the out-there zone but close enough for our normal ship drive to have easily make it to Tanner in a month at full acceleration. Our story was that we were relocating to do prospecting and intra-system shipping as well as provide station-to-ground service for passengers and freight. According to our story, most of the systems in the galactic interior were becoming crowded with too many independent small-boy freight and prospecting companies, which was making profit margins thinner and thinner. And that was not too far from the truth.

  Ranger's chime sounded. “Captain, I have a request and suggestion to implement before we reach Tanner. I would like to use the Auto-Docs to modify Jack and Joan to make them more useful in the event they are required off-ship during our stay.”

  “What kind of changes?”

  “I'd like to make them look younger and beef them up a bit. I've been monitoring Q-Coms from the Tanner system, and while it generally appears safe, their planetary news feeds show there’s an inordinate amount of space capable mercenary groups in the area and there has been a slow steady rise in criminal underworld growth during the last few years. It's well below the cultural surface level and does not seem to affect the general population to any significant degree.”

  “Just what do you mean by beef them up?”

  “Just a change of their appearance and general mass. Something to match a mercenary’s appearance so they can have a more deterrent look for bodyguards and ship's security should the need arise.”

  “You can do that with the Auto-Doc?”

  “Yes, Captain. The Auto-Docs have many non-standard Surron features. One of which allow us to integrate them with the Nano-compilers.”

  “So, they would look and act like —”

  “Like bad ass spacers who know their way around prospecting.”

  “OK, go ahead, do your Doctor Frankenstein bit. Now, that covers your request, what is your suggestion?”

  “Sir, small arms weapons carry, specifically hand weapons are acceptable in most civilian areas on Tanner. About fifteen percent of adults have carry registrations. Most civilians use them for dangerous animal control in the rural areas, but there is still a significant number of permits issued to residents in towns and cities. I suggest we manufacture small sidearms for the crew. We can conduct weapons training in the starboard cargo bay.

  “When we land, you can apply for carry permits. They are quickly granted if you grease the wheels with cash. There’s a large tourist industry that draws the hyper-wealthy. Those people expect their bodyguards to be allowed to, as your culture puts it, pack heat. The authorities like the revenue.”

  “I'm not too sure about the idea of us carrying weapons in public, but let's see what you can come up with.”

  Perhaps I should have asked more questions. This mission had the potential to become all slippery-slope with no hand holds.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Three days later, Ranger asked us to gather in the starboard cargo hold. Without cargo, it was the big-empty on this ship. After Sandy, Mica, and I were in the hold, Ranger announced dramatically, “Officers of the Ranger, may I present Roger and Dodger.” With that, two of the biggest humans I have ever seen emerged from around a corner in the back of the bay.

  Their faces held very obvious don't screw with me or mine looks. Their ship coveralls were the same as ours but much darker, almost black, and a lot more filled out from the inside. I could see black skin suits peeking out of their collar necklines. Both of the seven-foot tall humans had a tool belt around their waist that looked like it could serve double duty as military gear. I'd seen Space Marines with similar rigs.

  They approached us in lock step. I felt Sandy and Mica pull back a bit. Roger and Dodger stopped twenty feet away. They looked at each other, then started a very animated and merry jig. Round and round they went, with wide grins on their faces. Quite a spectacle. Sandy collapsed in rolling laughter.

  The twins stopped their dance with a dramatic and coordinated 'TA DA!' with arms spread wide open. Then they stood at ease. Well, that was a distinct departure from Jack and Joan. When Sandy recovered, she boldly walked up the them, reached up, and gave them both a solid fist thump to the chest. Turning, she half-seriously said, “Ranger can you make one for me?” And that's how Roger and Dodger became part of the team.

  I demoted them from science officers to roustabouts. Didn't seem to bother them much. After all, the pay was the same.

  Introductions over, Ranger had one of the maintenance bots present us with a box full of newly minted handguns and holster rigs. He gave us the rundown on all the specs. We did some target shooting, at low power, using a large sheet of thick plate steel as our target.

  I really liked the setting we called microwave. That would scramble a person's motor cortex for a few minutes, leaving them nauseous and very weak for several hours. We spent a few hours each day on individual and group tactical training using practice weapons.

  The weapons had no recoil or boom. Just a slight vibration in the hand grip and a soft sizzle in the air to let you know you'd fired the weapon. We selected a model that best fit us.

  Unlike every other energy-based hand weapon I had ever seen in the military, ours didn't need battery changes or recharging. That was a nice trick and would be worth billions if that tech was released to the corporations.

  Ranger had bio-linked and Q-linked the weapons to us. Any of us could use each other's weap
ons, but no one outside the crew could use them for anything more than a bad hammer. Ranger told us not to worry about them falling into the wrong hands. We could use a Q-Com signal that would make then dissolve into microscopic, inert Nano-material, leaving nothing to reverse engineer.

  Roger and Dodger joined us for the group training. They worked together like a very fast, well-oiled machine. If I hadn't known that Ranger had cooked them up in the Auto-Doc a few days ago, I would have been fooled into believing I was watching two well-trained and experienced special forces operators.

  Being spacers, we all had cranial Q-Com implants. Ranger used a non-invasive procedure with the Auto-Doc to bring my implants back to military standards and a bit beyond. When I left the Space Force, the medicos simply turned off the military features. Supposedly, they couldn't be turned back on. But then, they had never met Ranger.

  Before landing, Ranger gave a brief on the local political, military, and cultural oddities, as well as a list of things visitors shouldn’t do and places they shouldn't go. The list was shorter than I had expected.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We were contacted by Tanner Control when we passed the outer system markers. I was mildly surprised there was a human on the other side of the conversation. Normally, you conversed with a system control AI. I transmitted our certifications, registration, cargo status, purpose for visiting, and list of souls onboard. I had to come up with a last name for Roger and Dodger. I chose Zee.

  The controller told us we would have to land ground side at their main trading port since the orbital station served only military ships, freighters, and passenger liners. Solo small-boys had to either link up to a larger ship or land dirt-side.

  At the Tanner Space Port, we could rent a landing pad or an enclosed single ship hangar. I paid six month's rent for a hangar. We wouldn't need it anywhere near that long, but there was no need to let other people know that. Sandy would appreciate the enclosed hangar for repairs to the damaged hook-up and other hull inspections and maintenance. Every hull penetration needed to be checked for inclusions and micro-fractures.