The Outer Routes, Episode 1: The Last Honest Run by ShamanSquirrel < Submission

Keywords male 1311329, female 1193227, fox 270474, human 113027, squirrel 33487, alien 26218, space 8704, sci-fi 5074, pirate 3371, piracy 36, iskret 20

The Last Honest Run

An Outer Routes Story — About 20 Years Before Silvania

~ I ~
The drive coupling cracked eleven days out from Corvel Station. Tessik heard it before the alarms did. By the time the Halvren Carrier 417 reached the station, she was running at a quarter thrust, and the drive bay smelled like hot metal.
Corvel was a mining relay at the edge of a red dwarf system. Halvren Extraction had pulled out six years earlier, when the ore ran thin. The docking arms still worked. Most of the lights did not.
Raskon had brought them in. He was the ship's navigator, twenty-four years old, three years with Halvren. He had recalculated the course to Corvel nine times since the coupling cracked, once for every drop in thrust. He was proud of the last one. They had arrived with four hours of margin.
The message came over the relay an hour after they docked. Captain Teo Russet read it to the crew in the mess. Russet was a fox, fifty-two, with a gray muzzle and a red coat gone pale at the edges. He had captained Halvren ships for nineteen years. He did not sit down.
"The 417 has been declared a constructive loss," he said. "Repair costs exceed the value of the vessel. A crew transport will arrive in thirty hours. All personnel will board it. Back wages are held pending a loss review."
Nobody said anything. Twenty-three crew, and nobody said anything.
"How many months?" Sathe said. He was the cook, and at sixty-one the oldest Iskret aboard. He still had a ladle in one hand.
"Four," Russet said.
"Pending review," Keldan said. He was the second officer. "That means never."
"It means pending review," Russet said.
Raskon said, "Who decided the repairs cost more than the ship?"
"Halvren did."
"Did anybody ask Tessik?"
Russet folded the message and put it in his pocket. "It isn't my call, Raskon," he said. He left.
~ II ~
Tessik was in the drive bay with her arm inside the coupling housing up to the shoulder. Her tail was wrapped around a strut to hold her in place. She was Iskret, thirty, and the best engineer Raskon had ever served with. There had only been two others.
"Three days," she said, before he asked.
"To fix it?"
"To replace it. You can't fix a cracked coupling. You replace it." She pulled her arm out. There was a burn across the back of her hand. She did not look at it. "If I had a coupling, three days."
"Do you have a coupling?"
"No." She wiped her hand on her coveralls. "But Corvel had a tug dock. The ore tugs ran a Series 4, same as ours. If they left a tug behind when they pulled out, they left a coupling in it."
"And if they didn't?"
"Then the review is right," Tessik said, "and she's a loss."
Raskon went to his quarters and opened the ship's registry file. A navigator filed routes, and routes went into the same file as everything else. The file held the insurance policy. He had never read it before. It took him forty minutes.
Keldan found him there. Keldan was forty-one. He had been with Halvren for sixteen years, and he had argued with every captain he had served under. He leaned in the doorway.
"You missed dinner," he said.
"The insurer pays two point four million credits if the 417 is a constructive loss," Raskon said. "A yard would replace that coupling for eighty thousand. Tessik can do it for nothing."
"So?"
"So Halvren makes more money losing her than fixing her. And they keep four months of our wages while they lose her."
Keldan was quiet for a moment. "That's how companies work," he said.
"Then it can work for us."
Keldan looked at him for a long time. "Say it plain," he said.
"We fix her. We fly her out."
"That's theft."
"They abandoned her. That's salvage."
"That's exactly what thieves call it," Keldan said.
"Then help me find a better word," Raskon said.
Keldan didn't. But he didn't leave, either.
~ III ~
Raskon crossed to the station with Tessik and Borrik six hours later. The station's gravity ran at a little under standard. Borrik said so twice before they reached the end of the docking arm.
Borrik was Hadruni, from Hadrun, where the gravity was two point four times standard. He was two point three meters tall and had to turn sideways in most of the ship's hatches. He had loaded ore for Halvren for five years. He thought everything outside of Hadrun was built for weaklings, and he said so often.
"Low-gravity station," he said. "Low-gravity crew. Low-gravity company."
"You work for the company," Tessik said.
"Not after tomorrow," Borrik said. He seemed pleased about it.
The tug dock was on the far side of the station, four hundred meters away. The lifts were dead. Most of the corridors were dark. Raskon navigated by the old station plan on his handheld and was wrong twice.
The third corridor had lights.
Someone had patched the power in that section. There was a heater running, and a bedroll in the old crew lounge, and a stack of ration packs against the wall. A thin human man stood in the lounge door. He was holding a medical kit in front of him like it was a weapon.
"You're Halvren," he said.
"Not for much longer," Raskon said. "Who are you?"
"Hollis Grant." He lowered the kit a little. "I live here."
"For how long?"
"Seven months."
"Why?"
"It's quiet," Hollis said. He didn't say anything else about it, and Raskon didn't ask again. Then Hollis looked at Tessik's hand. "That's a drive burn. Second degree. You should have treated it six hours ago."
"I was busy," Tessik said.
"Sit down," Hollis said.
She sat. He cleaned the burn and dressed it in four minutes. His hands were steady. Whatever he was doing on a dead station, he had been a medic somewhere first.
"We're looking for the tug dock," Raskon said.
"There's one tug left," Hollis said. "Somebody stripped the seats and the comm. I don't think they took the drive." He closed his kit. "I'll show you, if you take me with you when you go."
"We don't know where we're going yet."
"That's fine," Hollis said. "I'm not particular."
The tug still had its coupling. It took Tessik two hours to free it, and Hollis held the light for all of them. The coupling weighed three hundred and forty kilos. Borrik lifted it onto his shoulder and carried it four hundred meters through the dark without stopping.
"Three of you couldn't lift this," he said when he set it down in the drive bay.
"Four," Tessik said.
"Four weaklings," Borrik agreed.
~ IV ~
Raskon told the crew in the mess at hour twenty-six. He told them the numbers first, and then what he meant to do. It took nine minutes. Russet was not there. Raskon had made sure of that.
At hour thirty, the transport docked.
The crew gathered at the airlock with their bags. Russet stood by the hatch with a list. He checked names. When he reached Raskon, he stopped.
"You're not carrying a bag," he said.
"No," Raskon said.
Russet looked at the others who weren't carrying bags. There were six of them.
"You know I have to report this," he said.
"I know."
"They'll list her stolen."
"They'll list her lost first," Raskon said. "They can't have it both ways."
"They can," Russet said. "They have lawyers." He looked at the list for a while. Then he looked back at Raskon. "Four months," he said. "I know. It isn't right." He boarded the transport.
Fifteen crew went with him. Raskon watched them go and counted the six who stayed. He had expected two.
Ishva had stayed because nobody else could fly the ship short-handed. She was Swambazi, from Swamba, with dark olive scales and a long, steady face. She had flown for Halvren for eight years. "A ship of this class needs a pilot and two helm crew," she had said plainly. "With so few aboard, it needs a pilot who does not require helm crew. That is me."
Borrik had stayed because somebody had to carry things.
Sathe had stayed because the galley was his. "Twenty-two years I've cooked in that galley," he said. "I'm not leaving it to salvagers."
Zethik had stayed for other reasons. The young Iskret worked ship security, and he was quick at it, sometimes too quick. "What's she worth?" he had asked Raskon. "Stripped, I mean." "We're not stripping her," Raskon had said. Zethik had shrugged and put his bag back in his locker.
Tessik had never considered leaving. The coupling was already on the bay floor.
Keldan stayed last. He stood at the hatch until Russet was aboard. Then he turned around.
"Somebody needs to tell you no," he said to Raskon.
"You've been telling me no since yesterday."
"And you haven't listened yet. That's why I need to stay."
The transport undocked at hour thirty-one. Seven crew were left on a ship built for twenty-three. Hollis came over from the station that night with his bedroll and his kit, and then there were eight.
~ V ~
Tessik had started the repair at hour eleven, before anyone had decided anything. Russet had not stopped her. Fixing a ship broke no rule he knew of. Now she had Borrik full time, lifting whatever she pointed at. Raskon and Keldan learned how to be helm crew from Ishva. Sathe cooked for twenty-three out of habit, then started cooking for eight.
At hour forty-four, a salvage tug came into the system.
It was called the Lucky Margin. Its captain was a human woman named Orla Dace. She hailed them from two thousand kilometers out.
"Halvren hull, registry four-one-seven," she said. "Listed as a constructive loss. I'm filing a salvage claim. I have six crew. Clear the ship, and nobody gets hurt."
Zethik was at the airlock with a rifle from the security locker. Raskon had not given it to him.
"Let them come," Zethik said. "There's a corridor past the lock. Six people, one corridor. I can hold it."
"No," Raskon said.
"They're the ones threatening us."
"Put it back," Raskon said. Zethik didn't. Raskon opened the comm.
"Captain Dace," he said. "This vessel isn't abandoned. It's crewed, and it's under repair. Salvage law needs abandoned."
"Halvren says it's a loss," Dace said.
"Halvren says it's a loss so they can collect two point four million credits from their insurer," Raskon said. "If you file a salvage claim, you file a record. The record says you found her intact, crewed and under repair. The insurer reads your record, and Halvren loses its payout."
Dace didn't answer.
"Then Halvren wants to know who cost them two point four million credits," Raskon said. "That's your name on the claim. Not mine."
The comm was quiet for thirty seconds.
"You're very sure of yourself, Halvren," Dace said.
"I'm a navigator," Raskon said. "I'm sure of numbers."
The Lucky Margin turned around at hour forty-five. Raskon watched it go on the plot until it reached the system's edge.
Zethik was still holding the rifle. "We could have taken their tug," he said.
"We don't need their tug."
"We might."
"Put the rifle back," Raskon said again. This time Zethik did. Keldan watched him do it and said nothing. Raskon noticed that too.
At hour fifty-eight, the navigation system locked.
The screen in Raskon's station went gray. One line of text sat in the middle of it: ACCESS REVOKED — HALVREN ASSET RECOVERY. Russet had made his report. Halvren had sent the lock over the relay. The ship could still fly. It could not plot a course.
Tessik looked at it and shook her head. "That's not an engineering problem," she said. "That's a systems lock. I can't break it. I'd need someone who does that for a living."
"Then we don't use it," Raskon said.
"You can't navigate without the nav system," Zethik said.
"Navigators did it before there were nav systems," Raskon said. "They had charts and beacons and arithmetic. I have charts and beacons and arithmetic."
It took him nine hours. He plotted from the relay beacon positions, the old route tables in the ship's archive, and the red dwarf's known drift. He checked every leg twice. Keldan checked them a third time and found one error. Raskon fixed it and thanked him.
"Will it work?" Keldan said.
"It will get us to the next beacon," Raskon said. "Then I'll do it again."
Ishva read the plot and nodded. "I can fly anything you can point at," she said.
~ VI ~
Tessik closed the coupling housing at hour seventy-one. Hollis checked her hand again and said it was healing. Borrik said the new coupling was lighter than the old one, which was not true.
They undocked from Corvel at hour seventy-three. Ishva took them out at half thrust, then three-quarters, then full. The drive held. Tessik stood in the bay and listened to it for an hour before she came up to the bridge.
The relay broadcast caught them at the edge of the system. It was a standard Halvren notice, sent to every port in the sector. Halvren Carrier 417 had been stolen from Corvel Station by members of her former crew. Halvren Extraction would pay a reward for information leading to her recovery.
"Yesterday she was worth nothing," Sathe said.
"Yesterday she was worth two point four million," Raskon said. "Today she's worth a reward. She's had a busy week."
"She needs a name," Sathe said. "I won't cook on a ship called four-one-seven."
Everyone looked at Raskon.
"Drizola," he said.
"Who's Drizola?" Keldan said.
"Somebody," Raskon said.
Nobody asked again. Sathe said it twice, testing it. Then he went down to the galley.
"We need a captain," Keldan said.
Everyone looked at Keldan.
"No," Keldan said. "I argue with captains. I don't want to be one."
"I fly," Ishva said. "I do not decide where."
"I fix things," Tessik said.
"I carry things," Borrik said. “And smash things.”
"I just got here," Hollis said.
Sathe called up from the galley that he was too old. Nobody looked at Zethik. Raskon noticed that as well.
That left Raskon.
"Fine," he said.
"So we're pirates now," Zethik said.
"Privateers," Raskon said.
"A privateer carries a letter from somebody," Keldan said. "A government. A company. Somebody who says it's all right."
"I have a letter from Halvren," Raskon said. "It says we're a loss."
Borrik laughed so hard the deck shook. Even Ishva made a sound that might have been a laugh. Keldan didn't laugh. He sat down at the helm station Ishva had taught him to work, and he looked at the plot.
"Four months of wages for a whole freighter," he said, quietly enough that only Raskon heard. "That isn't even."
"No," Raskon said. "It isn't."
"Just so you know it."
"I know it."
Keldan nodded. Then he checked the next leg of the course. He found no errors in it.
They had eleven days to the next beacon and two hundred credits between the eight of them. They had no papers, no port that would take a Halvren hull, and no job. Raskon had a course plotted by hand, and a ship that held together, and a new name that wasn't painted on her yet.
It was enough to start with. He did not know yet how much it would add up to.

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