Scout Pilot Of the Free Union (Space Scout Book 1) Read online

  “Only if the engines quit. I’m aiming for a shuttle approach and have a flightpath engaged on the Flight Computer.”

  “Keep coming Speedbird, good luck.”

  That Flight Controller might be based in enemy territory in the Imperium, but that was actually the nicest thing anyone had said to me personally for a very long time.

  Several alarms went off on the flight console, and I turned them off. There were now no alternative actions I could take or systems that I could engage and so the alarms were just a distraction I didn’t need.

  “Speedbird,” advised the Flight Controller, “you are below the optimum approach path.”

  I reached out and with some trepidation engaged the visual flight approach on the vidscreen. The display blurred and then cleared, showing a series of rectangles rotating across the image of the planet which represented the approach path. I was at the lower edge of the rectangles, but almost within them. The planet spun below me and the Speedbird continued to lose height.

  “Speedbird, watch your approach speed. You seem a little fast. Five minutes to run.”

  Five minutes. Five minutes to live or die, I thought. “I’m aware of the speed. I’m keeping it in reserve in case I lose more height and need to correct,” I told the Controller. He thought about this, then nodded. “Good idea, Speedbird. Be advised the runway is now clear of traffic. Emergency vehicles standing by.”

  I watched the vidscreen and tried not to think about anything. The rectangles on the screen stopped rotating and steadied into a converging shape centered on the end of the runway. I could see a series of vehicles lined up along the concrete landing pad. The Speedbird just kept flying and the number of rectangles reduced and reduced as the ground came closer and closer.

  The flight computer flashed a number of readouts that were, frankly, irrelevant right now. The nose of the Speedbird rose and the approach speed began to fall.

  “Two minutes to run,” remarked the Flight Controller. I risked a glance at the commscreen and was surprised to see a bead of sweat running down his cheek. “Speedbird, do you intend to touch down without landing gear? I need to notify the Emergency Ground Controller.”

  There’s always something you forget, isn’t there? I slapped the small lever that would drop the landing gear. It was stuck, of course. The hard landing gear was not needed at Star Base so it had not been used for a while. I hit it harder, and the lever finally moved. Beside it on the flight console, three small lights lit up confirming that the landing gear was in place and safe to use.

  “Gear down,” I told the Controller. He was pleased about that. Having a scout ship smash into his landing pad and put it out of use for days or weeks was not on his ‘to do’ list today.

  The dark grey concrete filled the vidscreen, and I began to think I was going to survive this. Then I saw it. My nemesis and possibly my assassin. At the very end of the landing pad was a low wall, probably only four feet high and designed to keep the local fauna off the concrete. The Speedbird was going to touch down about two feet from the base of the wall.

  One unused corner of the flight console held the manual over-ride of the flight computer. I shut down all the power to the manoeuvring jets, and raised the nose. The Speedbird, almost now at the airspeed at which she would land vertically without assistance (or in other words, plummet) shuddered again, climbed over the wall and fell onto the landing gear from about three feet up.

  The sound of the crash echoed through the ship and the force threw me to the floor as the pilot’s chair collapsed. On the way down my chin hit the flight console, and the world went black.

  *

  The shock of the landing impact caused the large green plant in the living quarters to fall over. Plants can feel pain and can broadcast alarm: but it helps if there is a sentient or near sentient entity in reach to respond to their distress. This plant, both sentient and self-aware, was also aware of the limitations of the only being in easy reach. It had resisted the need to feed on the being’s intelligence, since the plant’s rather superior intellect had reached the conclusion that feeding too deeply on the pilot’s brain waves might not be in its own best interests. Now, a proper source of intelligence was needed for the plant to feed deeply and start to grow.

  When the entry hatch opened and other beings came into the tin can, the plant was relieved. It took very little effort to encourage them to rescue the plant and to take it to their leader…

  *

  I woke up. This was a good thing, and raised my spirits considerably. Also, I was in a reasonably soft bed and that was another positive. I have only once been incarcerated, and my memory of the bed I had occupied there was nothing like this one. Perhaps therefore it would be safe to open an eye? I did so.

  And screamed in terror. There was a huge silver disc leering at my face from less than six inches.

  “Oh, sorry!”

  The disc withdrew, and my field of vision expanded to see a Terran doctor with a light and a mirror on his forehead.

  “You appear to have survived the experience of your crash with nothing more than a headache and a chipped tooth,” he said to me in Standard.

  I didn’t feel up to replying, so I nodded and winced at the pain that shot through my head.

  “The Base CEO will be here in a few minutes. I’m sure that he will have some questions for you.” The doctor smiled amicably, and left.

  I used the opportunity to look around. I was clearly in a first aid post rather than a proper hospital, so the fact that I had not been really injured in the landing – I refused to call my arrival a crash – was a bonus. I checked them: all my limbs seemed to work fine and I wasn’t restrained or tied to the bed, so that was good too. I even still had my own clothes on. Now all I needed was to try and outwit the Base CEO and get my ship fixed. Hum. The time of my thought, I speculated, might indeed be mine own to spend; but others might have a different agenda. My musings were interrupted by the arrival of an orderly with a wheelchair.

  “The CEO would like a word,” the orderly said. He bustled about, readying the wheelchair for occupancy. It seemed churlish not to accept his help, so I let the orderly lift me into the chair. He chatted cheerfully to me as he pushed me along the corridor towards the offices. It was clear at once that although this was a freighter maintenance base, they were not over busy or overworked. The orderly stopped the chair beside a long window that gave a view into a large workshop. The Speedbird sat there in a cradle, with several mechanics inspecting it in a manner I found all too familiar from my occasional visits to Mike and the mechanics at Star Base. That is, they were standing around with mugs of tea, making what were clearly disparaging noises about my vessel.

  “You got away with that one,” the orderly said. “I made a month’s wages out of you. I bet you’d get down in one piece; most of the lads reckoned you were a dead cert – to be certainly dead.”

  “Oh. Glad I could help out.”

  “It’s a bit slow here, so we relish any entertainment we can get. But don’t worry, the mechanics probably won’t hold it against you.”

  That was encouraging. Sort of. The orderly stopped outside a nondescript office door. There had been a name plate on it once, but clearly it had fallen off and no one had bothered to replace it. This was not a good sign in a maintenance base, I suspected. The orderly knocked, and then entered without waiting for a reply. The CEO was sitting at the desk, studying papers with a distracted air, and paid me little attention until the orderly had stopped my wheelchair in front of the desk. Then he gave me a hard look, and when an annoyed Vegan gives you a hard stare, you know about it.

  “Who are you?” he demanded. “And why did you try to close this facility by crashing your ship into the landing pad?”

  The hard questions first, then. “I had an inflight emergency, and had no choice other than to get down on the ground – it wasn’t an attempt to commit suicide on your concrete!”

  The CEO unbent a little. “Sorry, that came out a little
harsher than I intended. A fine bit of flying, by the way. I made some cash from the maintenance crew who thought you’d never make it after that first emergency call.”

  I looked a little more closely at the CEO. He was wearing a flight suit with pilot’s wings stitched on one side. Although he filled the suit rather uncomfortably and had clearly not flown a ship for some time (he looked too healthy), perhaps there was some empathy there – for me to exploit.

  “Well, it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good,” I told him. “As to who I am, well we’ll leave that for now, if you don’t mind. As I said, I’m on a classified mission. In fact, if you could get my electrical problem fixed, then I’ll just be on my way.”

  “I’ve got a damage report here on your Speedbird. You had an electrical fire, right? You’ve burnt out part of the wiring loom, and we don’t carry spare parts for that series of Space Scout, although I could order them in. In fact, as Speedbirds are not in service in the Imperium, I’d like to know what you are doing here in one?”

  I swallowed. This was the big risk. “Classified mission. You won’t find the Speedbird registered here, it belongs to The Free Union. But Colonel Starker has an interest in this.”

  The CEO looked very thoughtful at that. Colonel Starker was the commander of the Imperium’s Black Ops unit, and not a person to cross. In fact, most people preferred not even to speak his name and to avoid getting near one of his operations; it was better for their personal safety.

  “So, you are infiltrating The Free Union for Colonel Starker?” asked the CEO. As we were close to the border, it was a reasonable supposition on his part.

  “As I said, it is classified.” I stared at the CEO.

  He thought about it, and quickly decided not to think about it any further. “If you are on a classified mission for Colonel Starker, then it is my duty to assist you,” he told me.

  “It’s also quite important that this kept very quiet,” I insisted.

  “Do you need to report in? As you know, the Black Ops unit has a base on the planet. They could be here in a couple of hours or so.”

  I did my best to keep my face still and not panic. This wasn’t easy. Then I saw my plant, my plant from my Speedbird, placed near the CEO’s desk! I looked at it and had a sudden inspiration. “Thanks, but I can’t do that. Colonel Starker insists on a lot of compartmentalisation, and they will know nothing of me or this mission.”

  The CEO looked dubious and unconvinced.

  “You could always call his office though,” I suggested.

  “Call Colonel Starker?” The CEO was clearly unhappy at that idea, and I relaxed a bit.

  “Look, I don’t need a great deal of help from you. You can’t provide me a new wiring loom: it would have Imperium stock control codes all over it and that will give me away when I reach my objective. It’s better if your lads could patch up the electrics with some spare wiring that I could claim as a running repair I’ve done myself when I’m on the other side of the border.”

  The CEO looked at the damage report. “The wiring from the flight console to the main engine is the worst damage. Two of the flight control units have burnt out, but we can work around that by swapping the thrusters from an old freighter that’s been here years. Can’t guarantee how long they will work, mind. The other damage is not critical.”

  “What other damage?” I asked.

  “Mostly internal. It wouldn’t impact on your life support systems. In fact,” the CEO started warming to the thought, “it would give you an uncomfortable ride into the Union that would support the idea you had fixed the fire damage yourself.”

  “That would be good,” I lied. “Anything that helps give the right appearance in hostile territory is a good thing,” I added, more truthfully.

  The CEO pressed a button on his desk intercom. “Jared! Jared, to my office, please.”

  He sat back and looked at me. “This plant was found in your living quarters, and I took a fancy to it. Do you mind?”

  I shook my head. “Welcome to it.” We both looked at the plant.

  The fronds shook a little. Before I could comment on that, as there seemed to be no draft, the door opened and a Betelgeusian mechanic looked through the door. “You called, Boss?” he asked.

  “Jared, this is…” the CEO looked at me.

  “Captain Richards,” I said. Another untruth, but worth the risk in the circumstances, I thought. As I had declined to give the CEO my name, he must have realised that this was a false name but said nothing.

  “He works for Colonel Starker,” The CEO did say.

  It was clear from his reaction that Jared found this news unfavourable. He looked at me as if I’d slithered out from under a stone – but had a set of seriously poisonous fangs. He just nodded at me.

  “We are going to make his ship flyable, but only just, as if he had carried out an emergency repair. Can you do that?”

  Jared nodded his agreement. “Don’t have the parts anyway,” he said.

  The orderly appeared too. Presumably he had been listening from the corridor.

  “Perhaps you could take Captain Richards to the maintenance bay, and discuss this with him there? He would like to be able to lift off in a few hours.”

  Jared the mechanic looked incredulous. “We can’t do a decent job and a safety inspection in that time!”

  “You aren’t expected to,” the CEO said. I understood that he was putting down a marker to get rid of a very unwelcome visitor. “Just get the Speedbird airborne.”

  A number of expressions fled across Jared’s face, ending up with a combination of doubt and mistrust. “Who’s going to take the can back for this if it goes wrong?” he asked.

  “No names. No paperwork. No audit trail, in fact nothing at all to link me here.” I tried to make it sound threatening, rather than pleading. Perhaps I succeeded.

  The CEO shoved the damage report into Jared’s hands and waved us all out of his office. Looking back as the door closed behind me, I could see him stroking the leaves of the plant I had brought away from the strange planet I had last visited.

  “Tell me exactly what you want me to do,” the mechanic asked.

  “First, keep your mouth shut. I’m on a highly classified mission into enemy territory, and if you talk about this, there will be consequences.” I had been told that the first rule of misleading the enemy was to tell the truth as far as possible, and there wasn’t a word of a lie in that statement. “Next: if I’d landed the Speedbird on a planet with almost no technical resources, how would I get it back off the ground?”

  Jared looked at the damage report. “Well, your main issue is the control cables from the flight console to the main drive. That’s where it all went wrong for you. But I don’t know what started the fire, so I don’t know if it will happen again.”

  That was not a cheerful thought, but I put on a brave and courageous face. Or maybe I looked stupid. There isn’t a lot of difference in my experience. “I’ll take the risk. It’s part of the job. In fact, as long as I can get this to the Union’s base facility in any state, I’ll be happy. And then they will be distracted from my mission, with any luck.”

  Jared just looked at me. Then he shook his head and walked off. The orderly pushed me after the retreating mechanic. “He’s not too bad when you get to know him.” Jared headed down a flight of stairs. The orderly shoved me past the stairs to a lift. By the time we reached the ground floor, Jared was vanishing into the Speedbird. I looked around the maintenance facility. My scout ship took up a quarter of the space, and it was the only ship inside

  “You always this busy?” I asked the orderly.

  He shrugged. “Pretty much now. We only do commercial work, and the trade routes have changed. We do get some stuff in for regular servicing and Certificates. There are two outside now that are ready to leave once the owners pay the fees.”

  We reached the Speedbird. The orderly helped me out of the wheelchair, and into the hatch. I looked at the spiral staircase goin
g up to the living quarters and sighed. It was undignified, but there was no alternative and I went up slowly, boosting my bum from step to step. At the top, I was weary, but surprised at the sight of the living quarters. For a start, they were clean! Cleaner than I had ever seen them, to be honest. One elderly mechanic was just cleaning the kitchen area, and he grinned at me. “We’ve rerouted a minor power supply and got the kitchen and the bathroom working for you, Captain.”

  For a moment I was delighted. Then I realised that in character, I should be concerned. “Is that something I’d have been able to do?” I asked.

  “Sure. Simple job. Come here Captain, and I’ll show you the connection box.”

  I peered under the counter as the mechanic reeled off a lot of jargon about switching cables, and looked as if I understood. Jared looked out of the engine bay and beckoned me over. I looked around the door cautiously. The wires that had been on fire were all separated out and labelled. There was an ominous gap between them.

  “Given this a bit of thought on the way here,” said Jared. “You need most of these connecting, see.”

  I nodded and tried to look as though I was following every word.

  “Now, we need to think where you would get the spare wires for the repair. The answer is the landing gear.”

  “The landing gear?”

  “Yes. We’ll leave it down, and you go like that. The launch will rip it off, of course, but that won’t matter if you are going back to a fleet repair base in space.”

  That made a lot of sense.

  “And it’s the only place we can get spare wiring from your ship. Otherwise, you’ve got wiring repaired by a maintenance base in Imperium territory – and the Free Union will never believe that, will they?” Jared laughed loudly. I thought it best to join in. “While we are at it, we’ll get the pilot’s seat fixed.”