Some older stuff, from RayGun Revival in 2011.

Stars by Law Forbidden

By Michael Ehart

Weldingmy cabin door shut had only held them up for a few minutes. Right now, theywere burning a hole in the composite fiber bulkhead. I had managed to avoidtheir notice for over ten months, but I had slipped up, gotten a little toocute, and now they knew I was there. And they were angry.

Itwas hard to blame them. I had done my best to keep them distracted andquarreling with each other. But there was a limit to that, and I had steppedover. Now the three of them were shouting curses at me over the intercom. Someof their threats seemed a little outlandish, but at this point I was inclinedto trust their sincerity.

Bynow I knew them pretty well. Hendricks, the leader, had a brutal temper. Rightnow he was venting it on the bulkhead, chanting a steady stream of fantasies ofwhat he was going to do to me when he got his hands on me as he wielded themassive cutter that they had used to burn their way in to the Arabella. Ngyuenwas a much smaller man, but far more frightening. Both Hendricks and Laver werecareful not to cross him. I had used that to my advantage in keeping thetension high during the long passage out.

Butnow the tension and anger were directed at me. And in a very short time theywould be through the bulkhead. The closest thing I had to a weapon was thesmall flash welder I had used to seal myself in. Not much for a 115 pound womanto defend herself with against three angry men.

Notmuch at all.

Elevenmonths earlier:

Againstthe velvet backdrop of the deep black, the splash of stars glowed unblinking. Ireached through the projection to tap on the firmscreen behind. For a moment mywrist was neatly braceleted by the globular cluster of M22. “View rear northcable five,” I muttered. The projection shifted from its default view ahead tothe last open cargo slot on the Arabella. The cable clamp stood out at aperfect right angle to the fuselage tube, the jaws at its end open and ready.

Atug was bringing the last cargo sphere out from the Quito Ladder. The tug was shapedlike a squared-off donut, or a very thick washer. It had been designedspecifically for moving cargo spheres, and so the hole in the middle was onlyslightly bigger than the silvery sphere it contained. Together they kind oflooked like a fat, chunky Saturn.

Twojets flared white for a moment, hard to see against the white composite of thetug. And then one more quick correction as the tug, the sphere and the clampall negotiated the capture.  Somewhere inradio space the AI in each were furiously chattering at each other, making tinycorrections in the path and speed of the tug, the length of the cable and theangle of the clamp.

Thesphere snapped into place. Simultaneously, the AI in the sphere and the AI inthe clamp verified the attachment, the sphere by an audio clip of applause andthe clamp by an icon of a hand clasp displayed on the firmscreen.

Iwas looking at twenty-two months of blessed solitude. Full up now. Next stopAgora Station in the belt. Two years of watching what I want, when I want,eating what I want, and plenty of bunk time broken only by the minimal needs ofthe Arabella.

Twoyears of smelling my own farts, endless night, and unlimited moping aboutJesse.

Jesse,who last turnaround had made me promise that it would be the last. Who told methis time that he couldn’t wait. He needed me, not a shaky transmission with a thirtyminute lag, but me in the flesh. I tried to tell him that I needed him too, butthe words hadn’t come out right.

“Onelast time out and back,” I pleaded to the empty recycled air of the controlcabin. “Arabella missed her berth for the refit, and needs a captain onelast time.” But the cabin didn’t answer, and Jesse wasn’t there.

Intruth Arabella probably didn’t need me even now. The AI aboard was morethan capable of handling nearly anything I could handle. But the insurancecompanies wouldn’t underwrite a crewless vessel unless it was controlled by thenew bubble-logic AI, which integrated all shipboard functions, includingnavigation and power control, in a dynamic three-dimensional control matrix.,self-maintaining, self-repairing and perfectly stable.

Iwatched as the AI did a final recalculation of mass. Course, fuel and burnduration corrections flashed across the projection, while the firmscreen behindit started a countdown sequence.

“Burnin thirty seconds, Susan,” Arabella reminded me in her warm, throatyvoice. It was as close as I was able to get to my mother’s voice, taken fromthe recorded messages saved through the years.

Itapped a couple of control panels, shutting down the interface. The defaultscreen came up, and I drifted back to the acceleration couch, pulled myself intoits soft embrace, and lightly tagged the strap across my lap. Nothing excitingwas going to happen here, just the first cargo adjustment burn, but there wasnothing else for me to do, anyway.

Thejets burped and I sunk briefly into my seat. On the default screen I could seethe spheres on the end of their cables stir, and slowly seem to creep back tothe stern of the tubular fuselage. At rest the loaded Arabella lookedlike a bathroom bowl brush. At speed, with the cables adjusted in and a fullload of 128 cargo spheres she looked like a knobby Christmas tree.

Thehull vibrated as the winches adjusted the length of each cable to balance theload. By making each tether longer or shorter, the ship could be trimmed to aperfect mass symmetry.

Tenminutes of adjustments and the task was done, ship trim and ready for her firstsixteen hour burn to escape Earth orbit. Arabella waited my command. Wehad a pretty wide window this trip. There was time for one last call to Jesse.One last plea for him to wait, to tell him how much he meant to me.

Iblinked away tears. “Go,” I commanded.

Thegradual thrust pushed me back into my chair once more. Well trimmed, Arabellahad very little vibration, and her burn was smooth. After half an hour I got upand dragged my way down the ladder aft to my bunk.

PerhapsI was needed this trip, after all. For some reason, one of the cargo sphereshad bonded to the fuselage, and wouldn’t budge. Normally the spheres danced aglacial pavane against the hull as the trim was adjusted to compensate for fuelconsumption and minuscule shifts in the cargo. After six days out, in themiddle of our long slow transit burn, Arabella had finally asked forhelp.

Smallerrors accumulate, and when traveling over millions of miles can accumulatedisastrously. What the AI in Arabella couldn’t do was a “good enough”correction. Humans, and presumably the new bubble AI, could let go ofperfection enough for a compromise that worked. Arabella’s AI could not.In her attempt for perfection Arabella would burn all of her fuel oncorrections well before we reached Agora Station on Eos.

Soevery few hours I would go to the pilot’s console, tap a few controls, overridethe six burns an hour that Arabella would schedule otherwise, andrecalculate exactly what corrections were absolutely needed to make certainthat we got to where we were going with enough fuel to get us home. It was themost piloting I had done in over a decade.

Itwas fitting in a way, for the last cargo vessel captain on the last crewedcargo vessel. All the others had been re-fitted. Arabella was the last,and only a scheduling error had kept her from getting her upgrade. And me fromhappily-ever-after with Jesse.

Wehad two blissful months together dirtside before the company called me backwith the offer of an extension. Had I found employment? Would I accept doublepayment?  I accepted without thinking,without asking Jesse first.

Perhapsthe bliss had not been entire. We were in Central London when the call came, ata small hotel near the British Museum. I used to love walking the streets ofLondon, but this time I stayed in mostly. I hated the rain, the traffic made medizzy, and I often found myself flinching away at the approach of strangers.And since nearly everyone but Jesse was a stranger to me, I did a lot offlinching.

Ithurt to think of Jesse’s face when I told him. It was hard to make the image goaway. Having something to do seemed to help. Between piloting sessions Irattled around Arabella’s crew and passenger quarters. She had sixcabins. Originally she had boasted a crew of four. Twenty years earlier, shehad needed that many to keep track of all her systems and sub-systems. And fora while, during the construction of Agora Station, there had been passengers toreplace the diminished crew as more of her systems were automated. When Isigned on as mate sixteen years ago, I was half the crew. Four years and twoturnarounds later I was promoted to captain. And sole crewmember.

Sometimesthere had been passengers. The last two times there were not. Most peoplepreferred the three-month transit time of the high-burn shuttles. I grew crankyin my solitude, satisfied with my loneliness. The dream of Jesse had filledwhatever gaps I had in my heart.

Thistrip I filled my time cleaning the ship’s cabins, ignored and empty for years.I found interesting detritus in them; misplaced socks, food wrappers, anunexpectedly adventurous porn disk in the player of the cabin last occupied bya grandmotherly engineer.  When each wascleaned and inspected, I took a last look around then sealed its cabin doorwith a flash welder. The doors were composite fiber, but the edges and frameswere metal and so bonded nicely.

Iwas just finishing the weld on the fourth cabin when Arabellainterrupted me with my mother’s calm tones. “We seem to have a breach in thecentral fuselage, 80 meters aft.”

Nogreat emergency, as we kept only a minimal amount of gas pressure there,primarily as an indicator of exactly this sort of event. At first I thought wehad been holed by a meteorite. Then the significance of the location sunk in.

Thesticking sphere was eighty meters aft. Could it have rubbed its way through thefuselage? Eighty meters would be a long climb down and back. Arabella’s engineswere mounted outside the tube of her fuselage, all the way aft. Their thrustprovided gravity when they were burning, but most of the time they were idle.Going all the way back to the breach would mean putting on a v-suit, depressurizingthe central cabin and shaft, weaving back under near-zero g through the orderlytangle of cable reels and servos, patching the hole, then weaving back to thecabin and pressurizing it again. Say an hour each way, an hour for the patch. Along time to be in a v-suit.

Betterto see what was causing the trouble before planning any dances in the vacuum.“Show me,” I said. “Pilot’s screen.” I hooked the ladder and made my way up,flash welder forgotten in my hand.

Thefirmscreen forward flickered to life. It took me a moment to reconcile theshadowed shoulders of the cable reels and curve of the fuselage. The internalplacement of the camera was fortuitous; it could just see past the nearestservo to the growing blackened spot on the inside of the hull.

Thiswas not caused by friction, or impact. Something or someone was burning theirway through. I could see the beginnings of a circular cut. It was nearly athird complete.For a moment I was annoyed. How could they schedule amaintenance while we were underway? But this made no sense. Then an archaic,romantic thrill fluttered up my breast, instantly replaced by fear as Irealized what this might be. Just because it had never happened before didn’tmean that it wasn’t so.

Pirates!

Theyhad shipped themselves in a cargo sphere. By waiting this long, they knew thatany watcher or off-board monitor would have relinquished control to the AI. Thenew, bubble-logic AI, which would be running the ship on its maiden voyage asan un-crewed vessel. Except Arabella didn’t have the new bubble-logicAI. She had missed her berth for re-fit. Arabella had me.

Ispent the next few minutes in frantic calculation. Arabella was farenough out that there was nothing likely to be able to affect an interventionor rescue. We were out of tug range. Departures of longer range ships wereseparated by weeks, sometimes months at a time. Calling for help might make mefeel safer, but there wasn’t much available in the way of rescue. I was on myown.

“Jesse,”I wailed to myself. “Why didn’t you beg me to stay?” But it wasn’t Jesse’sfault. No one could have known that someone would use this ship and thispassage for the first ever attempt at space piracy. Or was it hijacking? Iwasn’t clear on the distinction.

Itdidn’t matter, anyway. I could see that they were almost through. The circlecompleted, and the burnt-edged disk of composite was pushed away from theinside. It slammed back quickly in the near vacuum and flew out of view. Thehelmet of a v-suit poked out and looked around. Apparently satisfied, the bodyattached followed, and was joined in the crowded space by two others. Anydaydream I might have entertained about somehow overpowering a lone stow-awayvanished. One maybe, if I were lucky and with the advantage of surprise. Threewas just impossible. Should I call for help, when help could not possibly comeuntil we reached Eos?

No.Calling for help would just put me in an escape-proof tube with three desperatefelons expecting arrest at the end of our eleven-month shared confinement. Theurge for retribution would just be to strong. Since the governor on Eos had thepower of “high justice” but no budget or room for such things as prisons, thepossible penalties for any serious crime was a simple choice betweendeportation and defenestration. The governor was paid a share of the bottomline. Deportation was expensive and cut into profits. Tossing a miscreant outof an airlock was free, and saved embalming costs.

Ihad to make myself scarce, and quick. If they found me here they might kill me.Or worse. It might take them an hour to make their way to the control cabin. Maybea little more; they seemed fairly loaded down with gear, which would maketraveling the fuselage shaft awkward. They wouldn’t have to cut their way in;the hatch was openly accessible. Of course it wouldn’t open if this side waspressurized, but that would be a small obstacle. They wouldn’t even have toburn it open, just make an easily-patched finger-sized hole and let thepressure equalize enough to release the safety locks. 

Myfirst idea was to seal myself in my cabin, using the flash welder. From there Icould survive on the recycler and food server. The cabins were close to beingself-contained. A passenger could spend an entire passage without exiting. If Isealed the cabin door, like I had all but one of the others, it would look likeit had been done during the supposed re-fit.

First,though, I had to remove any signs of my being aboard Arabella. It took adepressingly short time to clear my belongings from everywhere but my cabin. Iwas in the number two; I had started there as mate and it had just seemed toomuch trouble to move after I was promoted to captain. The only difference wasthe secondary command interface, which was largely virtual and had been easierto move than my few belongings would have been. That it was also one of themain things that would have been noticeably different if the refit had actuallytaken place. The main controls in the pilot’s deck would stay the same, formaintenance purposes, but the secondary controls would most likely be removedas superfluous.

Theother thing would be the AI interface having any sort of a personality. I gave Arabellaa few short sets of instructions, and commanded the re-routing of severallogical circuits. From now on any auditory responses would use the genericdefault voice used by most AI’s that had only infrequent contact with people.

Thesound part was easy. What made me sweat was setting up a secondary system thatwas blind to my presence. Arabella easily copied her AI; in fact shekept a regularly updated copy of herself for back-up purposes. What wasdifficult was thinking up an algorithm that would allow her to lie to hersoon-to-be new masters. I was no fly coder, but I had spent enough yearsworking with the AI that the new logic loops I shoveled into her systems wouldmost likely hold up. She would still see me, and respond to my commands, butshe would retain no memory or log of the actual interactions. Hopefully thiswould not interfere with her ability to run the ship. There was simply no timeto test my work.

Outof time! Out of time! The firmscreen showed that they were more than two-thirdsof the way to the crew space. I powered down the firmscreen, then had a finalinspiration. I hustled back to a spares locker, rummaged around and found apair of fixable sensors. I flew back to the empty captain’s cabin, found acouple of good hiding places for them, and powered them up. The feed I directedto the secondary control center in my cabin. No time to adjust the view,whatever I could see would have to do.

Ishoved my v-suit into my cabin and pulled it shut behind me. It was the work ofa moment to seal it using the flash welder. It wasn’t airtight, but I had mysuit. I struggled into it as I muttered my last few commands to Arabella.I pressed the suit seals together and gave the order for Arabella tovent the crew space. My suit expanded as the air hissed out through theventilation system into space. Things grew very quiet. All I could hear was myharsh breathing, my own heart hammering against my ribs, and the rustle of suitfabric when I shifted to get a better view of the command projection thathovered six inches in front of the curve of the outer bulkhead.

Onit I could see the stow-aways were almost to the hatch. I checked the pressureindicator on the heads-up display of my suit helmet. One-third pressure, orabout 300 millibars, and dropping at about 80 millibars/min. Four minutes orso. Too close!

Ineeded something to slow them down. What could I do without revealing my presence?A burn would take too long to set up, and while it would be dangerous for themto be caught in the central shaft when the engines fired, it might be a littletoo obvious. Any suspicion on their part was too much. I was pretty close tohiding in plain sight.

Itoggled the keypad on the firmscreen in my cabin. They were too close to riskverbal commands on my suit comm. I tapped a set of instructions, and the hullvibrated slightly as two offset cargo spheres were adjusted. The three suitedfigures froze for the full ninety seconds as the cables moved on their reels,thirty meters aft. Close enough to inspire caution, not so close as to invitesuspicion.

Iglanced at the heads-up. 120 millibars. Good enough. Even if there was a littleresidual pressure when they opened the hatch, it wouldn’t be enough to preventthe safety locks from releasing.

Itwas only moments and they were in. The smallest of the three moved forward tothe command deck. The other two began stowing gear in the lone remaining opencabin. Whoever their pilot was knew his stuff; he had the systems live and thepressure building in not much more time than it would have taken me. Withintwenty minutes I was able to remove my suit, and quietly creep to my bunk. Isnapped the webbing over me, plugged in the earbud, and started to watch,learn, and subvert.

“Ioutta rip off your head and shit down your neck!” The veins in Hendricksforehead stood out like an angry roadmap. His face was the same orange as hishair. Laver had his hands up, ready if Hendricks launched himself across thecabin at him. It probably would have done no good; Hendricks was adirtside-dweller, solid muscle kept up by a religious devotion to exercise.Laver had the typical belter build, skinny to the point of being cadaverous. Hewas fit, but dwelling in a low-gravity environment required far less musclemass.

Ihad always planned to retire to the great gravity-well of Earth, and so hadworked hard to keep some mass. Even so, my visits between passages had alwaysstarted out rough. For Laver it would be impossible. As would any sort ofcombat with Hendricks, who out-massed him by at least 25 kilos.

“What’dI do?” Laver whined.

“What’dyou do? You double-crossing stick-man! First the backdoor dealing with yourpals at the ladder, and now you are playing with the manifest. You think Iwouldn’t catch it?  I ain’t an accountantlike you, but I can add two and two.”

Itapped my fingertips on the firmscreen, moved the cabin temperature up anotherthree degrees. The timing here was crucial. I had to keep them making enough distractingnoise that Ngyuen didn’t notice the slight lags and specious entries as heprepared Arabella for the final burn that would leave her dead in space,awaiting rendezvous with the other half of their crew.  I had already sweated through the countercalculations when he swung her about. He was clearly unhappy with hissolutions, and we had all been tossed around a bit when I miscalculated thepull of an approaching mass that I had managed to prevent Arabella fromregistering on his screens. 

Iwas watching Ngyuen now on split display, trying to monitor his actions whilekeeping the other two loud.

“Ididn’t do anything with the manifest!” Because everything Laver said soundedlike a question, even I was having trouble believing him, and I was the one whohad clumsily doctored the books and left the screen open for Hendricks to find.Just as I had slightly doctored the messages from the member of the dockingcrew who had been paid to provide them access to the cargo sphere to make itlook like Laver had gotten a kick-back from their bribe.

Ngyuenmade some minor corrections. I calculated furiously for a few moments, thendecided that they could stand. I didn’t want to overplay. All it would take wasthe suspicion that there might be someone there, and I was done. It would onlytake Ngyuen a few seconds to uncover my overlay, once he realized it was there.I had laid in a second layer of subterfuge in the systems, but it was tissuethin.

Hendricksmade a growling sound and shook his head. Beads of sweat flew from his hair andfloated around him. “You lying bastard! Who else could’ve?”

“Idon’t know. I don’t understand it,” Laver whined.

“Youdon’t? Well you are going to get a little understanding, bub. If we didn’t needyou for your connections in the Belt, I’d have twisted your arms off already.”

“Bothof you shut up,” Ngyuen hissed. He was head down, tapping and frowning at thefirmscreen. Good. I just needed to keep him distracted for a few more minutes.

“Tiedown. Burn in thirty.”

Hendricksgrowled again, but pushed back through the hole they had cut into the numberfour cabin bulkhead and so disappeared from my view. I hadn’t thought theywould do that and it had given me a few very bad minutes when they haddiscussed which they would open. Laver twisted and launched himself at thecaptain’s bunk, his narrow face twitching in anger.

Thecounter reached zero. Seventeen minutes later we were back to weightless, the Arabellano longer moving under her own volition.

Laverhad spent the whole burn muttering to himself. The moment the engines weresilent he was up. “Ngyuen, it had to be Hendricks!” he shouted. “He’s trying tocut me out!”

“Shutup,” Ngyuen said. “It wasn’t Hendricks, and it wasn’t you.”

Bothof their heads snapped around to stare at him as he pulled himself aft alongthe ladder.

“Wehave a stow-away.” He barked a laugh.

Theyboth stared at him in disbelief.

“Ichecked the last burn against my personal heads up. The ship’s counter saidfourteen minutes. My heads up said seventeen. Someone’s been tinkering with theAI.”

Hendricksshook his head. “Sure it isn’t just a malf? It isn’t like this trip has beenseamless.”

“Nope.Everything the ship is telling me is consistent, but none of it adds up. Prettyclever, but not perfect. Chances are, all the petty annoying shit we have hadto deal with has come from whoever it is.”

“Wherethe hell would someone hide?” Hendricks said.

Ngyuenpointed at each of the four remaining sealed cabins. “One of them. Give me aminute. I’ll check the power mapping and I’ll know which one.” He raised hisvoice, “I’ve got you, you bastard.”

Hendrickscompleted the circular cut, and shoved the disk through into the cabin. Hewaved the other two back, and cautiously thrust his head in. He saw only me,armed with the diminutive flash welder. He grinned when he saw me. “It’s awoman,” he said over his shoulder.

Thecrowded into the cabin. Hendricks lunged across and grabbed my arm, twisted thetorch away and flung it spinning into the corner. He twisted my wrist up behindmy back. “Got you, bitch.”

Iblinked away tears of pain. My gasp fogged the faceplate of my V-suit. I triedto speak, but fear made my throat close, and all I managed was a squeak.

Oneof the hit me in the stomach, hard. I would have doubled over, but Hendrickshad my arm. Bile filled my throat, and my guts felt like they were slammedclear to my spine. I gagged, managed to choke it back.

“Why’sshe wearing a suit?” Laver asked.

“Doesn’tmatter. It ain’t gonna save her,” Hendricks snarled.

Ngyuenopened the folding knife he carried, and drifted toward me.

Imanaged finally to clear my throat. “Now would be a good time,” I croaked.

“Oh,it’s going to be a good time,” said Ngyuen. “Just not for you.”

“Done,”whispered a voice in my ear.

TheArabella rang like a bell as the docking clamps of the tug outsideseized her nose. Nanoseconds later, she shuddered at the chunk as a two-foothole blasted through her forward hull. Laver, Ngyuen and Hendricks forgot aboutme entirely as their whole existence suddenly centered around trying to taketheir next breath. We were all pulled by the escaping air toward the hole inthe cabin bulkhead and formed a human log jam there, three of us gasping andturning blue.

“Iget how you overrode the AI so that you came here to Eos rather than theirrendezvous point.” The doctor put the finishing touches on my spray cast. Thatbastard Hendricks had broken my arm. “But how could they not know?”

“Iset up a mirrored system. The first thing their pilot did was plug in hiscourse numbers. From there what I had to do was make sure that what he saw onhis screens was what he expected.”

Sheshook her head. “It seems to me that would be pretty easy to catch.”

“Yah.That is why I had to keep finding things to distract them. Bad cargo shifts,personal messages left open, quirks in the life support. It helped that theystarted out mistrusting each other. All I had to do was feed it, and keep themoff balance and uncomfortable.” I was in no hurry to leave the clinic. Thehollowed out common space here on Eos was unsettling after eleven months ofbeing locked in my cabin.

“Well,you came out okay, I guess. No heavy lifting or acrobatics for a couple ofweeks.” She started putting her instruments away. “The council voted you abonus, by the way. The governor tried to veto it, the cheap bastard, but theyweren’t having it.”

Igot up from the table and reluctantly headed for the door. The irony of beingagoraphobic in Agora Station was less amusing than might be expected.

“Oh,I almost forgot, I was supposed to tell you that Station Control has a messagewaiting for you from Earth. Someone named Jesse.”

“Jessewho?” I asked, and smiled for the first time in almost a year.

The End