Ship Chip Read online

  SHIP CHIP

  DOOMSDAY SHIP #5

  BARBARA LUND

  LUND PUBLISHING

  For the Desolate fans -

  This one’s been a long time coming.

  (Thanks, Pandemic.)

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Ship Chip

  About the Author

  Also by Barbara Lund

  Copyright © 2022 Barbara Lund

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictionally. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  © Text Copyright 2022 Barbara Lund

  © Cover Copyright 2021 Katharina Kolata, Independent Bookworm with:

  Space Station by OpenClipart-Vectors, Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/de/vectors/raumstation-iss-161807/)

  Universe Background by Chil Vera, Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/de/illustrations/das-universum-raum-astronomie-4605236/)

  * * *

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for brief quotations in a book review.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2022

  ISBN: 978-1-944127-38-1

  www.barbaralund.com

  Created with Vellum

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Adrien Raigne for The Desolate (ship art).

  * * *

  Thanks to K.V. Moffet, Offworld Press for editing.

  http://www.offworldpress.com

  * * *

  Thanks to Katharina Kolata, Independant Bookworm for the cover.

  Any mistakes left are mine.

  SHIP CHIP

  Despite the beauty of the Azeron Nebula, I was getting damned tired of the Bob system.

  I’d heard all the Bob-the-Spacer jokes I’d ever wanted to hear—and some I couldn’t bleach out of my brain—from the miners who had helped us rescue Cara, I’d eaten delicacies from each of the fifteen planets in the system while buying, bargaining for, and outright begging for the parts to repair the Desolate—currently masquerading as the Ruina.

  And for the Cara Mia, the Revenge, and Hunk of Junk.

  At least enough to get us all out of the system before the residents of those fifteen worlds, associated space stations, and ships decided to encourage us out.

  Which was why I was out here, in the black, jumping toward the damaged Pirate Song.

  The pirates who had tried to kill us should have all died a week ago or more, with their engines jettisoned and life support dead. I’d waited this long in case some of them had gotten into spacesuits. It was a long, horrible way to die, but I hadn’t been inclined to rescue them after they’d tried to kill me, and no one else had seemed interested either.

  The litany of things we’d already repaired or fabricated—engines, sensors, and enough hull skins to maintain ship integrity—or bought on credit—escape pods, interior wiring, and ship bots—didn’t make me feel any better about everything we still needed to repair or buy—crane repairs, new particle accelerators, new bombs, countermeasures, more escape pods, and spare graphene skins for the hulls.

  A normal scavenger ship wouldn’t need some of the above, but we’d never been normal and were becoming less so every day. I don’t go into space anymore without backups for my backups—it’s too damned dangerous.

  Josue had a buyer lined up if I could bring in the Pirate Song. The money from the salvaged ship should clear our debt and maybe buy parts for the crane.

  The damaged crane was why I was towing heavy lines behind me. Not the tethers I used when spacewalking. Heavy lines attached to the crane Josue and I would normally have used to snag the ship.

  Which was why I was going slow.

  One snag, one tangle, one anything and—

  Well, there was a reason the miners weren’t doing this and I was. Thinking about it too much kicked my heart rate up.

  “Tal?” Josue’s voice sounded tinny in my cochlear implant. “You’re heart rate—”

  “I know,” I grumbled, breathing slow and telling myself to calm down. “Everything looking good on your end?”

  “All the lines are feeding smoothly. You’re right on target.” He sounded distracted. But he sounded that way a lot recently.

  Josue was having the time of his life, chatting at high speed at all hours with Cara, Rev, and Hunk, running his old bots all over himself for repairs and programming his new bots to do what he wanted. Sometimes—when they didn’t quite follow his commands correctly—they took exciting to a whole new level. After all, exciting on a space ship tends to sound more like dangerous.

  Or dead.

  Maddy was tight-lipped and pale, spending all her time plugged into the computers in an effort to reassure herself she hadn’t made the wrong decision in helping rescue us from total destruction… and in making sure Josue, Cara, Rev, and Hunk weren’t going to go off and kill all the humans any second.

  She really didn’t like the idea of AIs without rules, the number one rule being never harm a human.

  I… I missed Josue’s company and Maddy’s cooking and the freedom to go where I chose when I chose. And the ability to salvage some derelicts so I could get paid. We really need more money to buy all the things. I needed the Desolate—excuse me, the Ruina—fixed up.

  Soon.

  The Pirate Song grew in my vision until it blotted out the space around it and I used my suit thrusters to slow almost to a stop before I touched it. Nifty gymnastics tempted me—a flip to set my feet on the hull and then activate my grav boots at just the right microsecond—but the heavy lines wouldn’t be forgiving. I’d seen a man lose an arm to space and a tangled line once. Conservative was safer.

  I set the clip—as large as my hand—against the ring on the hull. “Josue?”

  The clip-mouth gaped inward. Holding onto the ring so I wouldn’t push myself away, I pushed the clip forward and watched as the mouth closed. One line down.

  The Pirate Song was an insystem ship only; no AI, and her crew had ejected her engines during the battle. That action had bought them time—a long, lingering death instead of a fast, explosive one—since their life support had failed too. Now, between no engines, no AI, and dead bodies inside, the thing was worth nothing more than scrap.

  I let the second line float, then carefully avoiding it, maneuvered my boots next to the hull and activated them. The engineers on various space stations swore the boots didn’t click when activated so maybe it was my own brain playing tricks on me, but I heard the click and felt them grip the hull. I grabbed the hook for the second line then played slow tug-of-war with it, moving across the stern of the ship to the port side where the next useable clip was. Step, tug, step, tug, all the while making sure I didn’t pull myself away from the hull nor catch the line on anything that would damage me or it.

  It was exhausting, boring work punctuated by brief moments of terror and I was glad when a com-call came through to my implant.

  “Chai, a party whom you’ve worked for before, wishes to make contact with a new job proposal,” the automated pre-call said. “Do you accept the call?”

  Chai, who knew me as Tal, second in command of the Diebstahl, a ship similar to but legally completely different from the Ruina and the Desolate, even though they were technically all the same ship—but he shouldn’t know that.

  “Charges?”

  “Paid by the other party.”

  I set my feet on the hull, kept one hand on the line in case there was any motion I hadn’t accounted for and sa
id, “I accept.” We needed the money.

  “Hold please.”

  Sooner than I would have expected, since I’d met Chai way they hell out on the Balastasia Space Station, his face, neck and a boring gray business-suit collar appeared in the left lens of my eye, giving me the illusion he had appeared in front of me, floating between me and the Desolate.

  When I’d met him in person, his charisma had made his forgettable face memorable; neither had changed. Spacer-short graying brown hair, brown eyes, medium brown skin: all forgettable until he smiled. Then he became downright handsome.

  Not that handsome was hard to do with the medics we had. It was even a legal mod, most places.

  I waited for Chai’s grin to fade, my face schooled into confusion.

  After a moment, he scowled. “Tal? Is there a problem with this com line? I need to hire you again.”

  He also shouldn’t recognize me, since I’d been wearing gold irises, long blue nails, blue lips, and a nose prosthesis when he’d met me the first time, and I wasn’t wearing any of that now.

  “Cómo? Quien es Tal?” I made the A sound flat like in cat. “Soy Talon Bosche.” The A in Talon was soft, like in ball. When in doubt, use a language other than Standard.

  The man opened his mouth, looked around suspiciously, then leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I need to meet you,” he said softly. “I’ve been travelling for weeks. I’ll pay you just to meet, then you can tell me no and I won’t bother you anymore. Please.”

  It was the please that did me in last time, and it was the please combined with that way of looking into my eyes like there was no one else more important in all the worlds in all the galaxies that made me hesitate this time.

  Well, that and we needed crane repairs.

  “Bueno. Ya sabes dónde encontrarme?”

  “Yes, I know where to find you.” He relaxed. “Thanks, Tal… Talon. See you soon.”

  I killed the connection, then checked and double-checked to make sure it was really dead before warning the others. “We’re going to have company,” I explained, as I hooked the last line onto the derelict.

  Silence rang in my ears.

  I stared at the Pirate Song for three deep breaths, then decided to leave the inside clean up to someone else. I’d get a better price for her if I jettisoned the corpses, but it sounded like I had a client on his way to us now.

  And we needed to figure out what and how he knew about us.

  Maddy spoke in my ear. “It’s a trap.”

  “Of course it’s a trap.” I turned off my grav-boots, grabbed the line, and started pulling myself back to my ship, hand over hand, to save suit booster fuel. “That’s not the question.”

  “What is?” Her voice quavered.

  “Is it a trap for you?” I raised one eyebrow before I remembered we were on voice only. “Or for me?”

  “Oh.” She gulped. “Good question.”

  Josue interrupted, “Or both of you?” He paused, then said quietly, “Or me?”

  I tinted my hair emerald and my irises jade because even if we didn’t take the job I wasn't going to take chances with my identity, then put on my most intimidating guns and leather while Josue guided Chai’s ship-to-ship runabout into one of our functional bays. Need be, we could flush him and his ship back out into space.

  Through the airlock window and the wider view from the holo display, I watched the runabout set down on the deck. A big man in a plain spacesuit made his way from the ship to the airlock, the plainness of his suit belied by all the gadgets in it Josue was noticing and tagging for me.

  “Graphene armor in the suit. Your ceramic projectiles aren’t going through that.”

  “I’ll shoot for the head then, if it comes to that.”

  He didn’t even chuckle. “Full spectrum scans, as broad a range as I’ve got. I wonder how they compacted that down far enough to fit in a suit?” Josue muttered, sounding jealous. “Bio-scan kit, too. A good one and illegal in all but three systems. Wish we could get that for you, Tal. So long as he’s wearing it he’ll be able to pick out all my holos.”

  “Keep them tucked away then.”

  “Stunner in the left glove, ceramic projectile in the right. Extendable knives in his boots. Don’t let him kick you.”

  “Got it.” If he had knives in his boots, his suit was flexible enough to kick me, which said volumes about how much that ‘plainness’ had cost.

  The man closed the airlock between him and his ship and waited for the air to cycle then took off his helmet. Same mutt features that could pass on almost any planet, same cynical, weary eyes, same smile creases around his eyes and mouth.

  “Want me to flush the airlock?” Josue asked. “He’s got more than the usual bio-enhancements…”

  “Not yet,” I said, letting Chai stare right back at me through the absurdly large—for an airlock—window. He met my gaze fiercely, as if he could will me to believe in him.

  Dangerous man.

  Maddie waited in one of the nearby passenger rooms, close enough to come at a run if needed but far enough away Chai should have no idea she was there. I had Josue to help me if things went sideways. It would be fine.

  “He’s got lenses in both eyes that connect to his helmet,” Josue said in my cochlear implant. “Probably how he knew Amazon and Weasel were just holos back on Balastasia. Enhanced aural sensors too. Definitely illegal. I should have known…”

  “You couldn’t have known without airlock sensors,” I reassured him. Sometimes Josue forgot he wasn’t all-powerful.

  “He might be able to eavesdrop on conversations right through the airlock.”

  “Which is why you switched to the implant,” I replied subvocally, my gaze still stubbornly fixed on his. The Desolate was my ship, no matter what name she flew under and he was going to acknowledge that or he wouldn’t be coming aboard. “Just keep changing your encryption.”

  “Teach your grandma to suck ones and zeros past my security.”

  Chai nodded slightly and dropped his eyes.

  With a quirk of lips for Josue’s words and Chai’s actions, I nodded and opened the airlock. “Déjalo allí,” I said, pointing with my lips to his helmet. “Los guantes tambien.”

  Chai hid a smirk, but not fast enough I didn’t see it. He set down his helmet and gloves like I’d ordered, then asked, “Permission to come aboard?”

  “Sí.” I made no move to take him to any other part of the ship. Bad host, good captain. Instead I blocked access to the corridor and lifted one eyebrow.

  Stepping forward over the threshold, Chai eased against one bulkhead to avoid looming over me and said, “Thank you, Captain… Talibethia Eamona Marquez.”

  My heart spasmed. Adrenaline slammed into me and I found both guns in hand, pressing up into Chai’s chin. My vision narrowed until all I could see were the muzzles of those guns and the skin whitening around them and my fingers slowly squeezing the triggers.

  In that funny way time has, eternities passed. The triggers were so hard to pull. Eventually I heard voices in my ear.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Maddy was saying from just behind me.

  “Think about this, Tal.” Josue sounded calmer, but only just. “Brains all over the bulkheads aren’t a good look.”

  “He said my name,” I growled. My vision started to come back, opening up until I could see Chai’s eyes wide and startled, his hands clamped on my arms.

  “I’m on it, Tal. I’ll find out everything about him down to the size of his underwear,” Josue promised. “Maddy can strip his accounts faster than he can bleed out. Just… It would be easier to get rid of him if you did it in his ship, not ours.”

  “I can if you want me to.” Maddy swallowed. “But maybe we could take his money legitimately? So I don’t have to spend so much time hiding the theft?”

  Theft. That cooled me down. I had stolen before—when I’d been desperate—but I was trying to avoid stealing now. I preferred the moral highground when possible. Shaking, I eased my
fingers off the triggers and pulled the muzzles back so they weren’t digging into the man’s throat.

  “Don’t move or I will shoot you.”

  “May I speak?” he croaked.

  “Talk fast. I still haven’t decided to let you live.”

  “No one knows but me and all I had was a guess.” His grip loosened on my arms but didn’t leave them. “Your ah… reaction… convinced me I was right, but I didn’t document it anywhere. I swear. You can check my ship, follow my backtrail—”

  “Oh, I am,” Josue said from a speaker in the corridor. He sounded grimly cheerful. “As will the others in our crew.”

  Maddy startled in my peripheral vision. Smiling guiltily, she took a step back and turned to flee.

  “You’re looking well, Madelene Cove—”

  She spun back, her mouth wide, but my guns pressed into Chai’s throat again. “You just don’t learn, do you?” How could a man be so stupid twice in such a short time?

  He swallowed, shifting the barrels of my guns. “Much healthier,” he ground out. “Away from that bastard of a husband. Who also has no idea where you are or what you’re doing. And I’m not going to tell him.”

  By the end of his little speech, I realized my guns had eased back again and I wasn’t planning on killing him anymore, so I took a moment to figure out why.

  I was close enough to kick but he hadn’t used the knives in his boots against me. Nor had he pried my arms away, which he could have done by sheer muscle. Not that prying at my arms would have been the healthy choice because I’d have just shot him, but someone with that much tech in him probably had the training to go with it. He might have done some fancy move that ended up with me on my ass looking down the barrels of my own guns. The risk there was that I’d have been faster than him, but I wasn’t so sure.