Third Moon Chemicals

  Third Moon Chemicals

  Adventures of a Jump Space Accountant

  Book 3

  Andrew Moriarty

  Copyright © 2019 Andrew Moriarty

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  “What’s our status?” Jake asked.

  “We are tumbling through space, and our main engines are out. One thruster is leaking, forcing a clockwise roll. The roll is increasing steadily and will soon hit 4 g’s,” Riley said.

  “Life support?”

  “Life support is offline. Breathable air for about twenty minutes until CO2 increase causes unconsciousness. There is a small fire in the engine room. One engineering airlock’s outer hatch is open to space. Uncertain why.”

  Jake frowned at the screen in front of him. First, he needed to stop the roll. But before he did that, was he going to collide with anything?

  “What’s in front of us?”

  “There is a group of asteroids ahead. We may impact them, we may not. Unsure. Details on your pilot’s console,” Riley said.

  Jake looked at his console. Should he change course? How far away were they from the asteroids? Not that far. But the roll kept increasing—if he didn’t fix it soon, centrifugal force would pin them in their seats. Nonetheless, firing the thrusters would complicate things for engineering. What should he do? He had to do something.

  “Firing thrusters two and five.” Jake toggled the power. The roll stopped increasing, slowed, stopped, then reversed. Too fast. He dropped the power of the thrusters until the roll was barely decreasing. Time enough to fix it later.

  Now, to fix the pitch. He fired a combo of thrusters again, which lessened the pitching. He spun the ship so that it pointed in the direction of travel, rolling slowly and with a bit of yaw. Now, get out of the way of the inbound asteroids, or deal with the fire.

  “Main engine?” Jake asked.

  “Still offline. No response from engineering on repairs,” Riley said. “Fire in engineering increasing. It may damage lock integrity. Should I vent the atmo?”

  “How many crew are back there?”

  “Several. They report being trapped behind the fire.”

  “Are they in skinsuits?”

  “Not all of them.”

  The collision alarm bonged again. They were headed straight for the asteroids, and their ship rolled slowly in a full circle perhaps once every twenty seconds.

  The fuel button lit on his screen. Jake smelled hot plastic. Then he saw smoke. Crap.

  What now, Jake Stewart?

  No main engine. The fuel leaking from the damage acted like an extra maneuvering thruster, pushing the ship off-course. But in what direction? Out of danger or into it?

  The collision gong bonged again.

  “Time to impact?”

  “Computer says two minutes on this course,” Riley said. “Engineering fire is still out of control.” Sweat was starting to run down her face, and her long red hair had become unscrewed from her bun.

  “Right. Firing four and five,” Jake said, stabbing the thruster controls. Four stopped the roll. Five stopped the yaw. They were now floating dead in space. He eyed the fuel gauge. They were burning fuel holding this aspect. Jake waited.

  They were thrusting backward.

  Backward didn’t matter. What mattered was that they’d generated a vector at a right angle to their current course. Now they should miss the upcoming asteroids. He touched the yaw controls so that the ship spun a bit. Now, the leaking fuel was propelling them sideways.

  “How long to impact?”

  “One minute. The fire in engineering is spreading. We need to vent atmo.”

  Jake looked at her. “We’ll kill them all back there.”

  “If thruster control goes, we’ll lose the whole ship,” Riley said. The cabin reeked of hot plastic. The collision alarm bonged again. The smoke thickened. Jake could see it. He coughed and wiped sweat off his face.

  The fuel light started flashing faster. Jake killed the thruster that canceled the roll. Without the offsetting counter-thruster, the leaking fuel rolled them faster and faster. Jake felt himself slide to the side of his seat as the roll increased. It was approaching a 2-g roll. He wanted to stop it, but he needed the fuel to spill out to give him the necessary variance in their course to avoid crashing into an asteroid. The vector generated by the leaking fuel was the only thing stopping them from crashing into a rock.

  “Thirty seconds to impact.”

  “Will we clear it?”

  “Not yet. A few more seconds of side thrust.”

  Jake slid into one side of his chair and felt himself straining against the straps that secured him to his seat. Their spin passed 3 g’s and was on its way to 4. Jake felt himself pressed into the corner of his seat. He loaded up the roll and began typing a series of commands onto the screen, but he kept his hands away from the execute button.

  “Fifteen seconds to impact….”

  “Will we clear?” Jake said, glancing to the side.

  “Uncertain,” Riley said. She sounded cool and relaxed, but her face was plastered with sweat. “It will be close. We’ll know shortly.”

  Jake felt the urge to be afraid, but had no time for that. He had a splitting headache, his knees hurt from being crammed together, and he could barely move his hands. His vision began to go. He pushed his arm out toward the thruster control on the console in front of him. He couldn’t quite reach it. He strained as hard as he could. The roll was still increasing and would soon hit 5 g’s, at which point he wouldn’t be able to move at all. Again, he stretched out his arm, and this time, Jake felt his hand reach the console. He tried to pulse his finger up and down on the thrusters, but he couldn’t. His finger was locked on the screen. He needed to stop the roll.

  His vision was rimmed with black. It was like he was looking down a tunnel that was darkening. He couldn’t see his hands at all, just what was in front of him. With a convulsive heave, he threw his hands up as high as he could and let them flop back down. As high as he could was probably a quarter inch, but it was enough. One of his fingers hit the ‘engage’ button on its descent.

  The pre-programmed counter-roll thruster fired at full throttle. The rolling stopped increasing and then began to slow. Jake had programmed it to dump maximum thrust out right from the start. He needed that roll to be canceled.

  “The fire has reached the fuel lines, next to the damaged airlock,” Riley said. “It will—”

  BANG.

  Jake felt a whoosh as air and smoke began to stream out of the cabin. The explosion must have blown the airlock open, and the ship was venting. In thirty seconds he would pass out from lack of oxygen. Jake tried to reach up to close his helmet, but the g-force was too strong. The roll was increasing again. He pushed the thruster button, but nothing happened. He realized the control runs must be severed.

  I wonder which will knock me out first, Jake thought. The increasing g-spin or the lack of air.

  He was still pondering this when he passed out.

  “Simulation ended,” the lieutenant announced after the blowers removed the smoke and the room stopped spinning. “Everybody back to the classroom.”

  The sixteen students in TGI pilot training returned to their assigned seats and then reviewed the results of each simulation as a class.

  Just under half of the students had died nobly—not quite managing to get things together before impacting the asteroids—distracted by the fires they were fighting o
r while fixing something else. Most of the others had missed the asteroids, but they had either passed out due to the increasing roll or when the smoke or oxygen deprivation got them. Four of the students, not including Jake, had solved all the problems and finished with a functioning, not-on-fire spaceship at the end of the test.

  “So, some of you need to practice more, obviously. Those that crashed out, pay attention to the decisions others made. Especially in the rings, your course can get you in trouble pretty quickly. Oxygen is a problem as well, but most of the crew usually wear a skinsuit in flight, and they can survive without room O for a quite a while. And fire is bad. But easy to fix—no oxygen, no fire.”

  Everybody got up and trooped out of the classroom. Jake paused to collect his comm. He dawdled a bit, shuffling things. There were five women in the class. At least four were about his age, and he planned to involve some of them in his new ‘Jake-needs-a-girlfriend’ project. He had already ascertained that two of them were married, and the other two were not. One of the two unmarried girls was his cockpit partner, Riley. The other was Chantelle, a tall brown-haired girl in braids. He slipped between them as they walked out.

  Chantelle stomped toward the door.

  “How did you do?” Jake asked.

  “Screwed the pooch. Hugely. Total canine copulation.”

  “Oh.” Jake didn’t know what to say to that.

  “I spent too much time on the fire, fired the thrusters in reverse order, and passed out with the g-forces. Impacted the asteroids like a comet.”

  “Sorry.”

  “They said the largest piece of me would have fit in a bucket. I’m so angry with myself. I feel like hitting somebody.” She narrowed her eyes and looked Jake up and down, as though she was measuring him for a beating. “I’ll go and beat up a punching bag for a while. That will make me feel better. And it doesn’t matter that much to me.”

  “It doesn’t?” Jake asked.

  “No, I’m in security. Pilot was for secondary training. As long as I’m willing to hit people, I’ll still have a job. What about you?”

  “Crashed. Burned.”

  “This is your second simulation, isn’t it?”

  “Third.”

  “So, you failed?”

  “Probably.”

  “You work for one of those orbitals—TGI, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not good. Lose your job then?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  “I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Chantelle said. She stomped off.

  Jake turned his head. “Riley, can I ask you a question?”

  Riley had stopped at the side of the corridor and was looking into a viewport. She reached into her pocket and produced a hair elastic with a jewel in the center, then unwound her hair bun and rolled it into the elastic. She patted it down and examined her reflection in the viewport.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “How did you fix everything without venting the compartment?”

  “Oh, I did vent the compartment. I did it right away. But I wanted to make sure the fire was out, so I kept it vented for five minutes.”

  “Wouldn’t that kill everybody?”

  “Sure, but the ship would have been safe. Besides, that’s why you wear skinsuits and keep your helmet with you.”

  Jake took a good look at her. Like him, she wore a practical skinsuit. It had fittings for hard gloves and boots, a collar for a helmet, and an emergency pack with a collapsible helmet strapped to her shoulder. She wouldn’t be hurt in a blowout.

  Unlike Jake’s, Riley’s skinsuit had tailored coveralls with an elaborate FREE TRADER patch over it. She sported patterned slippers, and a green scarf and matching headband. With that getup she wouldn’t be out of place at a party.

  “Seems a little … harsh, don’t you think?” Jake said.

  “It is. But that’s life in a small ship.”

  “You have a ship?”

  “My family.”

  “That’s interesting. Maybe I can buy you a beer sometime, and you can tell me about it.”

  Riley looked at Jake, then gave his outfit the once-over, noticing the scuffed hard suit Jake wore. She frowned, and shook her head. “Maybe not today. My dad is waiting to drop as soon as I get back. Ships in dock aren’t making money. Free trades, Jake.”

  “Free trades,” Jake said as she walked away. He sighed. Well, that didn’t work. As usual. And now he had to tell his boss that he had failed his exam.

  Chapter 2

  The monorail station waiting room was still on fire when Salvatore Mascellon arrived for the council meeting. He had stopped outside the office container on the square. He shook his head.

  “Henk,” Sal yelled through the door. “What are you doing about this?”

  A short bald man appeared. “About what? The station?”

  “Yes, Henk. Emperor’s balls. The station is still on fire. Why aren’t we putting it out?”

  “We don’t have enough water.”

  Sal turned around and looked at the other side of the square. Beyond a single row of office containers, a concrete bank ran down to a huge reservoir filled with water. He turned back to Henk and jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  “What’s that over there? Ice cream?”

  “I meant pressure. We don’t have enough water pressure for three hoses. Sorry, I’ve been up all night.” Henk wiped his face, and his hand came away smeared with ash. He was covered with gray grit. “The pump isn’t powerful enough.”

  “Sorry, I’m tired too,” Sal said. “And I shouldn’t shout at you. You’re the emergency coordinator, and you’re doing a damn fine job of it.”

  “Thanks. That’s praise I could have done without.”

  “Henk, where are the kids?”

  “What kids?”

  “The ones that started the riot. The ones that started the fire. The ones that I have to do something about.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Henk said.

  “I left them chained to a heating pipe in the council office. They’re gone now.”

  “Oh, those kids. My fire crew clipped the chains. We were worried that the fire might spread and they would be caught in it.”

  “Henk, the fire wasn’t anywhere close to the council room.”

  Henk shrugged. They both turned to look as a ‘pop’ sounded from the train station, and a group of sparks shot up into the air. The smoke puffed briefly, and then settled down. Henk sniffed the air. “Doesn’t smell as bad as it did before. More like burned wood than stinking plastic.”

  Sal slumped against the door. “Where are the kids?”

  “GG security wants to shoot those kids, Sal,” Henk said.

  “I’d like to myself, especially Ross’s eldest boy. I’ve never met a kid more in need of an ass-kicking than him.”

  “Sal, I’m not kidding. And I’m not being figurative either. If we hand them over to their security department, they might not come back.” Henk rubbed both hands on his face. They came away covered with gray ash. He began to wipe his palms on his coveralls. “We can’t let GG shoot them, Sal. They were bored and angry.”

  “I’m bored and angry, Henk. But I didn’t set fire to the company store.”

  “It was an accident. They’re angry about the pay cuts, and the store price increases. They weren’t trying to burn the place down. It was an electrical short.”

  “An electrical short after they ripped the cooler from the wall,” Sal said.

  “It was just a bunch of kids being kids,” Henk said.

  “It was a riot. GG wants prisoners. And they won’t rebuild until we pay for the whole store we burned down.” Sal pointed at a group of smoldering containers up the road.

  “We don’t need GG. We can open our own store,” Henk said. His voice had gotten louder.

  “Not while they own the monorail, we can’t.”

  “We’ll take our business to the other corps.”

  “I’
m sure they will be happy to take on mighty Galactic Growing over perceived unfairness to tiny Land and Ocean Enterprises.” Sal sat down and leaned against the wall. Henk sat down beside him. They watched the station burn.

  “What are you going to do?” Henk asked.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m the emergency coordinator. You’re the council chair. Negotiate. Pay them off.”

  “With what? Buttons? My hidden stash of inter-company credit tokens?”

  “You’ll figure it out, Sal. Everybody trusts you to do the right thing.”

  “Gee, thanks. Just what I need—more pressure.” Something popped from the waiting room, and flames roared up. Sal watched a piece of burning paper rise up on the hot air, then it drifted down to land in the square in front of them.

  “What’s our status then?” asked Sal.

  “No injuries at all, luckily. No serious damage to the plant production lines. We’ve got both water lines hosing down the warehouse annex. It burned. There was paint in there, so everything burned hot, and it’s still smoldering. The smoke is toxic. I’m worried that it might flare up, and if the wind changes and the smoke gets into the plant….”

  “Right. The production line will fail quality checks. No sales for us.”

  Henk nodded. “I made an executive decision. That waiting room is isolated, so it can burn. It’s just an empty container. We have lots of those. But there is more bad news. Production isn’t affected, but we lost two containers of ready-to-go food trays, and one of shop supplies.”

  “What type of shop supplies?”

  “Shari says supplies we need for maintenance.”

  Sal rubbed his head. “Shari would know. We can defer maintenance. Again. But we need to get production back online. How long till we can restart the plant?”

  “A month.”

  “A month? We can’t wait a week. We need the money. You have to get it up and working now. Why a month?”

  “Maybe sooner. But we’ll have to do a structural survey to see if the heat damaged any of the frames.”