Empty jesters, p.1
Empty Jesters, page 1
EMPTY JESTERS
MISSION 5
BLACK OCEAN: PASSAGE OF TIME
J.S. MORIN
Copyright © 2024 J.S. Morin
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J.S. Morin — First Edition
EMPTY JESTERS
MISSION 5
Captain Jessie Ramsey reclined in her command chair. Her booster seat didn’t lend her any sense of gravitas, but the seat had been meant for a haathee ass and could have fit three of hers across. The backrest wasn’t within the length of her legs of the edge. Naturally, video comms didn’t tend to portray her in a serious light.
She was alone on the bridge of the Toofoe. These past two months, the name hadn’t grown on her. But it was the name they’d gotten the vessel’s owner, Grosstet, to agree to. And as the captain, alone, without needing to feel self-conscious in front of her crew, she continued with a little experiment.
“Captain’s log. May 14, 2591. The Toofoe is responding to a distress call from the cargo vessel Cambria in unaligned space. Pirates have caught on to yet another of the shortcuts used by shipping companies to avoid paying for properly armed escorts. Luckily for the Cambria’s crew, we were in the neighborhood.”
Jessie closed the recording and opened a hailing frequency.
On her tactical readout, she spotted the Cambria, dead in space, as a Martian-made planetary patrol ship with no running ID backed away from it.
“Unidentified vessel, we’re responding to a distress call from the ship you just violated. Power down and surrender.”
The response came back with a vocal scrambler so thick she couldn’t tell whether the speaker was even human. “You have no jurisdiction here. Stay clear or we’ll destroy you.”
Jessie laughed out loud with her comm channel still open. “Buddy, I don’t pretend to understand the weapons on this ship, but my tactical computer registers you as a minor navigational hazard, on par with an asteroid your size, not a combat threat. If I have to fire on you, I don’t know that I have a setting that won’t vaporize your whole vessel.”
“You’re bluffing. That thing’s no warship.”
Jessie didn’t need to take shit from this no-name pirate scum. She fired the Toofoe’s thrusters. A zero-point reaction beyond her understanding of physics rocketed the vessel forward and, at her command, stopped it again, just as quickly.
The pirate vessel appeared just a handful of meters from her viewscreen. The captain could see out his forward window onto her bridge.
Maybe Jessie looked like a toddler sitting for a family photo in her booster chair, but commanding a ship with ten thousand times the mass of her target, she’d snapped a quick-brake maneuver that would have flattened the pirate vessel if her reflexes had been a tenth of a second too late.
“I’m not sure if it matters that we’re an understaffed diplomatic exploration vessel. You’re a fucking rowboat. And you have five minutes to get your people into escape pods. Alternatively, you can do something stupid and save me the five-minute wait. What’ll it be?”
“What guarantee do I have that you won’t fire on the pods?”
“None. Just take your chances that I’m not a psychopath like yourself.”
An escape pod launched from the nameless pirate vessel. Then another. By the look of the hull, it was a variant of the Lusitania class. That meant four pods.
Within her five-minute ultimatum, the final two pods ejected from the ship.
Jessie switched comms. “Cambria, this is the Toofoe. I don’t read active engines over there. Do you have life support?”
The last thing she wanted was passengers, but she couldn’t leave the dumb fucks to die out here, either. Just because their parent company was a bunch of cheapskates didn’t mean these guys had to pay with their lives.
When the reply came back, it was nearly as garbled as the pirates’ signal. “Thank you, Toofoe. We’ll be fine. Our engineer powered down the engines to repair a coolant leak. We should be up and running within the half hour.”
“Fine. Don’t mind us, then. We don’t expect payment for the rescue, but we do claim right of salvage of the abandoned vessel.”
Out here, in territory claimed by both Mars and Earth but controlled by neither, rules were flexible. By most traditional definitions, Jessie and her crew were pirates. They’d forced a crew to abandon their vessel and weren’t rendering aid. It wouldn’t look good at trial, if they were ever arrested. But the whole point of being here was that the region was rife with pirate activity, thanks to the deafening power vacuum.
“Hey, not like we’d be in any position to stop you, but that’s fine by us. If you wouldn’t mind, though, could you leave us the cargo they stole?”
OK. There was a fine line between robbing pirates and taking secondhand plunder while the victims were literally on comms asking for it back. “Sounds fair. How will we know what’s yours?”
“It’s all marked. Eris Pharmaceutical. Anything with that logo was in our hold an hour ago.”
“Eris Pharma? What the hell are you guys doing hauling aphrodisiacs through a war zone for?”
“Making a living, ma’am. Talk to the customers if you want to get deep into philosophy. We’ve just got a delivery to make.”
“Understood. Toofoe out.” She cut the comm. “Dumb fuckers.” No one was going to catch Jessie hauling nonessentials through pirate-infested space for whatever those guys were probably getting paid.
Of course, she was the one who was about to walk through a kilometer of corridors on a ship she barely understood to go raid the refrigerators of a bunch of pirates. The last vessel they’d raided had been nearly a week ago, and their own stores were running low.
“Those corporate fucks probably think the same about us.”
The wall itself spoke. “Drascz, it’s Jessie. Meet me in the hangar in five.”
Drascz flicked off her plasma torch and lifted her goggles. Springing three steps to the panel, she slapped it and made her reply. “I can’t get to the hangar in five minutes. Unless you mean hours, I’ll be late. And what’s in the hangar, anyway? Do I need to bring anything?”
“Your standard field salvage kit and your EV suit. We’re scoping out a pirate ship. Lusitania class.”
She snarled in the back of her throat before replying. “Should that mean something to me? How big is it?”
“2.2 kilotons displacement. Lightly armed. Possibly booby-trapped.”
Fine. Now that was useful information. “Wonderful. If it’s trapped, why go aboard? Why not just leave it be?”
“Get here ASAP. We’ve got a job to do.”
Drascz glanced back. The steel frame she was welding together wasn’t a job? Was she making furnishings for a disparate crew of seven different species, only one of which could comfortably eat, sleep, and relax on the furniture provided… for fun? Granted, it was an interesting challenge at times, and some of the projects allowed for a little creativity. But mostly it was work.
Hanging her goggles on a hook she’d welded beside the door, Drascz tucked her plasma torch into the sack of tools she’d gathered for odd jobs and set off to join her captain.
It was a strange notion, having a captain, and one that hadn’t sunk all the way into her skin just yet. She’d had her birth parents—whom she barely remembered—her adoptive parents, teachers, coaches, professors, and eventually a principal. The concept of authority figures didn’t bother her at all. In fact, the relatively unfettered freedom on Phabian had left her adrift. But she’d never considered any sort of military service.
She’d also never enlisted, wasn’t commissioned. All Jessie Ramsey’s authority was bluster and bravado.
Drascz could tell her to stuff it.
A pair of lift doors opened after an extended jaunt.
“Hangar.”
The hum and whir of alien technology told her the lift car was moving. No sensation of motion gave any hint, though a readout on the wall in plain English marked her progress on the multi-stage trip through the ship’s omni-direction lift system.
Yes, she could do anything she liked. When Drascz got to the hangar, she and this so-called captain were going to have it out. Either she was an artist working on some charity bedroom sets for her fellow castaways, or she was a commando engineer, venturing onto booby-trapped pirate ships. Not both. And she was going to have a say which of the remaining options suited her skills best.
The lift deposited Drascz on the hangar level. Jessie was outside the doors, already in her EV suit with the helmet tucked under one arm. “ There you are. I found your suit by the shuttle we poached last week. You should be more careful where you leave it.” Jessie pressed the azrin-fit EV suit, which was brown versus Jessie’s blue suit, into Drascz’s hands, taking momentary custody of the tool kit so Drascz could slip into it.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Drascz told the captain. “It seemed convenient to leave it near where we all enter and leave the vessel.”
Jessie nodded at the logic of that. “I know you’ve got a lot on your plate. Once things die down, maybe we rig up a changing station or locker room here.”
Once things died down? How were they going to die down if all they did was pick fights and crisscross pirate-infested space? Plus, she still had a backlog of crew requests for welding projects.
“A good idea. I can do that.” Drascz looked around. “Just us?”
“It’s a small enough ship. Figured we could clear it. Trebla’s trying to install a haathee power relay he put together. Mindy’s still nursing that broken ankle. And Grosstet’s babysitting Eric. We can handle this.”
Trebla’s science experiments were hardly pressing.
Mindy was acting like a weakling for sympathy. Even Chik-ta wasn’t so incompetent that her injury hadn’t healed by now.
Grosstet was not looking after Eric. The two of them were having a holovid marathon.
Jessie was right, however, when she neglected to mention the rest of their crew. Chik-ta was unsuited to heavy labor, and his role as a doctor—even an egg doctor—made him too valuable to risk over here. Uom’pe was wise and clever and circumspect, but she was also elderly, glacial, and fragile. The ratatoret were liable to pilfer more than they’d admit to finding, and they’d have to maneuver heavy loading equipment to aid in hauling.
“Of course. Not a problem.”
Drascz slipped on her EV suit. She donned the helm and grimaced for the few seconds her ears were mashed down before twisting the helmet into the locked position lined up her ears with the ears of the helmet. Then, the soft, springy flesh popped back into proper shape.
Jessie led the way aboard Grosstet’s shuttle. She was the only member of the crew with clearance to access it, i.e. she was the only one the haathee really trusted.
Drascz didn’t bother taking a seat for the short flight. Within seconds of the hangar’s floor opening up for them, they arrived at the pirate vessel.
Eric’s beanbag chair was a surprisingly comfortable mixture of an inflatable crash-safety bag, foam boot insoles, and a fuzzy spray used by azrin to treat premature fur loss. Wide enough to fit four humans—maybe six or eight who were on especially friendly terms—Eric had it to himself. His viewing companion for the afternoon had his own seating, and for two reasons. One, he’d have taken up more room than remained on the beanbag. And two, this ship had come with chairs sized just right for him.
“A FASCINATING STORY,” Grosstet declared as he swiped at the controls with his trunk, returning the holo-projector to its main menu, currently in English. “I AM GLAD CANDIDE SURVIVED. WAS EARTH REALLY SUCH A PLACE, ONCE?”
Eric twisted up his lips and thought for a moment. “Well, yes and no. I’m pretty sure almost all of those places existed—except El Dorado.”
“THE ONLY ONE I LIKED…” Grosstet grumbled.
“Most of the events were overly dramatized and compressed. Pretty much only fictional characters get into and out of that much trouble in one lifetime.”
“HA!” Grosstet scoffed. “I HAVE HAD FAR MORE ADVENTURES THAN CANDIDE AND COME OUT BETTER FOR THEM.”
Eric frowned thoughtfully. “You know, now that you mention it, you do seem implausibly well traveled.”
The toot of a trumpet preceded the haathee’s laughter. “MANY OF MY OWN PEOPLE HOLD THE SAME OPINION. THE ENJOYMENT OF DISTANT TRAVEL AND UNFAMILIAR THINGS IS RARE. I AM CONSIDERED… ODD.”
“That I can relate to. But more importantly, were you able to keep up with the subtitles? Enjoying the story is nice, and you get to see some of Earth’s culture. But really, we’re working on your reading comprehension here.”
“I WAS PICKING UP ON MUCH OF IT. BUT THE WORD SOUNDS ARE… WHAT IS A GOOD DESCRIPTION? …THEY MIX LIKE PAINT THAT GETS TOO CLOSE TO THE NEXT COLOR.”
“You’re trying to get better at reading English, not learn French.”
“I CAN DO BOTH!”
Eric sighed. How did that old saying go? If you give a man a fish, he’ll claim he’s an herbivore. If you teach a man to fish, he’s going to study oceanonomy.
“Well, if you were trying to figure out French from the English subtitles, I’m going to give you a passing grade on the reading, then.”
“TELL ME, ERIC, WERE HUMANS SO CRUDE TO ONE ANOTHER?’ He flicked his trunk toward the holo-projector, still referring to Candide.
“I wouldn’t even use the past tense. That story’s like 800 years old. The species really hasn’t had time to evolve since then.”
“IF YOU DO EVOLVE, CONSIDER A TRUNK. I EXPERIENCE GREAT VICARIOUS SADNESS FOR YOUR LACK OF ONE, MY SMALL FRIEND.”
The door to the holotheater room slid open. Trebla backed in, guiding a grav sled that beeped as it reversed. “There you are. I’ve got a question for you.”
“ASK YOUR QUESTION. I WILL ANSWER ANYTHING I AM ABLE.”
“Good. Because I want to know. What in the Gallery of Life wore this thing?”
Trebla flung an upper hand toward a curious contraption that resembled pre-spaceflight humans’ ideas of what a flying saucer from other planets would look like. It had a silvery donut over a meter and a half wide—not the kind of donut with a hole in the middle, but one with a jelly or cream filling. Except instead of one hole that a baker might have used to squirt blueberry jelly into the middle, it had several holes spaced around the outside edge, each large enough to stick an arm inside to feel around.
The laaku scientist swatted Eric’s hand away for trying.
There was also a glass-domed top, further evoking the more whimsical flying saucer depictions.
“Please don’t tell me these things visited Earth hundreds of years ago,” Trebla added.
Grosstet ran a trunk along the metal. “A TROPHY FROM AN OLD BATTLE. THE ARMOR OF AN OLD FOE. OUR WORD FOR THEM WAS WUUGON, BUT THAT IS MERELY AN ATTEMPT TO PRONOUNCE THEIR OWN NAME FOR THEMSELVES.”
“What were they?” the laaku asked, staring wide eyed at the device.
Rather than answer immediately, Grosstet ventured back over to the holo-projector. He spoke a few words in his own language, which Eric hadn’t quite mastered yet. The display shifted from English back to haathee, and he interacted deftly and surely with a combination of finger and trunk gestures.
In the holo field, creatures flashed past. It was like visiting a holographic zoo on fast forward. The image stopped. A few more flicks, and the readouts changed from haathee back to English.
Octopus.
A rather dignified and angry-looking octopus wore what looked kind of like a wet suit but, considering they were already aquatic, was more likely a dry suit.
“OUR GREATEST FOE.”
“Your people fight octopi?”
“Octopuses,” Eric corrected. “Don’t English bad in front of the non-Englisher.”
“Both are acceptable,” Trebla protested quietly.
Grosstet was adept enough now with the language to chuckle at the jest. “WE DID. WE DO STILL, I SUPPOSE. I HAVE NOT BEEN HOME IN SO LONG, BUT I CANNOT IMAGINE PEACE. RATHER, I AM ALL TOO AWARE THAT THEY CANNOT IMAGINE IT.”
“You’d have peace with them if they’d agree?” Eric inquired.
“WE WOULD HAVE PEACE WITH ANYONE OR ANYTHING WHO WOULD HAVE IT WITH US. THE WUUGON WISH ALL NON-WUUGON DEATH. THEIR VICTORY WOULD LOOK LIKE A GALAXY WITH NO OTHER SPECIES.”
Trebla grunted. “Plenty of his kind feel the same.” He hooked a gloved lower thumb in Eric’s direction. “Dumb as mud, some of my people would board that ship, thinking we’d get a pass.”
Eric lost himself in thought, staring at the details of this alien artifact. “What would it look like if the haathee won?”
“THE WUUGON WOULD BE UNABLE TO BUILD SHIPS TO LEAVE THEIR WORLD. WE WOULD SHRINK THEIR GALAXY TO THE SIZE OF ONE WORLD. IF YOU LOOK CAREFULLY, YOU WILL SEE A HOLE IN THE AIR SUIT. I CLOSED THE PLACE WHERE MY OWN TUSK BROKE THROUGH.”
