This choice: Continue reading "Double Double" • Go Back...Chapter #32Double Double (7) by: Seuzz   Chapter 7
CAPTAIN WILHELM GRUNDFEST of the S.S. Rheingold pressed his prodigious gut against the edge of the communications console as he hovered over it. With his most delicate touch he adjusted the finicky communications relays. Unfortunately, even with his most delicate touch, it took him several seconds to clarify the signal.
And when he did, it leapt onto the overhead speakers with a squawk that stung the ears.
The helmsman turned with a frown. "That's a priority seven distress signal," he said.
Grundfest glared back at him.
"I know what a priority-seven signal sounds like, mister," he growled in an accent freighted with the antique German he had grown up speaking. "Keep your mind on your work, and I'll keep mine on the important stuff."
Meisner scowled and turned back to his controls.
Behind his back, Grundfest smiled to himself. A priority seven distress signal, he thought. Well, well. And out here in the fringes of nothingness? Well, well, well. He groped with sausage-like fingers to get a fix on its direction.
There were no private companies of shippers operating here on the ragged edges of populated space, for there was not enough steady money to be made between frontier colonies to tempt any but the boldest and most reckless traders: those like Wilhelm Grundfest, who could scrape together enough capital to buy, refurbish, and outfit an old ore freighter like the Rheingold (formerly, the Copernicus).
But though trading opportunities and hence traders were scarce out here, there were enough that they kept in contact with each other, and had evolved a set of private signals. A "priority seven distress signal" was an official communication, but it was the least significant priority you could give one. Officially, it meant little more than "If anyone is around and you've got time, could you please look in on us?" Unofficially, though, to a trader like Wilhelm Grundfest ...
"Bring us fifty-seven degrees to port," the captain ordered his helmsman. "Warp two."
"We're at warp two."
"Then warp three." Grundfest scowled at the look of skepticism Meisner flashed him. "It's a priority seven, mister. And I doubt we're the first who's picked it up."
"Aye, sir," Meisner said. "But Zimmerman—"
"I'll handle Zimmerman," Grundfest said. "A priority seven," he repeated.
Because a "priority seven," to a trader like Grundfest, meant opportunity. Possibly big opportunity. Sometimes it was a legitimate call for assistance, but that was only if the captain sending it was too green to know that you sent a priority six for those. No, a priority seven is what a freighter sent when it needed help with a cargo. So chances were this was a freighter carrying more than it could handle: either an excess picked up by a skipper whose greed had got the better of him, to the detriment of his ship. Or—and this is what Grundfest was hoping for—it was something that the skipper had decided he didn't want to risk being caught carrying, and was looking to unload at a sharp discount to a braver man. It was just such a shipment of Romulan ale that had enabled the Rheingold's captain to upgrade his engines so that warp three was a possibility (if not a very safe or steady one).
So when the chief engineer called up to yell about the strain to his engines, Grundfest yelled back. "There's a bonus in it for you if you get us there before anyone else!" he shouted into the intercom.
"Before who? The bonus'll be that we get there at all!" Zimmerman hollered back. "I've got three rogue vibrations to handle, and if any two of them go harmonic—"
"Kill the thrusters if it looks serious," the captain ordered. "But it has to be serious!" he emphasized. "Keep a watch on the monitors."
"What do you think I'm keeping a watch on, you—"
Grundfest cut the intercom off before Zimmerman could foul the circuits with an obscenity. But he took the engineer's warning seriously enough that he patched the communications station in to the helmsman's controls while he went back to help oversee the power drives. The Rheingold wasn't a starship—she was a bridge and crew quarters at one end, an engine room and thrusters at the other, and a skeleton in between, into which modular, detachable container units could be plugged. Simple as her design was, though, she was still supposed to have a crew of twelve. But financial returns being what they were, Grundfest scraped along with only five, including himself. Zimmerman and his mate had to double as their own assistants; cargo and life support were both handled by Zhironovsky instead of a crew of three; and Grundfest and Meisner ran every station on the bridge.
The captain found his swart-haired engineer squatting in the center of the engine room like a spider in a web, swiveling to keep track of five stations with only two eyes. Grundfest pushed a spare chair next to Zimmerman and took command of two.
"What's the pick-up worth?" Zimmerman asked. His back was to the captain, and his eyes darted between three monitors whose fluctuating readouts threatened at any time to synchronize with disastrous results.
"Damned if I know," Grundfest snarled. "You think I'm going to open a channel and ask, where every freebooter between Rigel and Orion can listen in?"
He felt Zimmerman bump him with his shoulder. "You mean we could be risking a core breach for nothing?"
"We could also be risking it for a bloody fortune."
"There's no fortunes out in this part of the arm."
Grundfest stretched over one of the consoles to adjust the feed into the matter/anti-matter mixing chamber.
"Not with an attitude like that, there's not," he retorted. "Besides, it's not far."
"How far?"
"Not far," Grundfest repeated, for in fact he had no idea. The signal wasn't strong, but his hunch was that it was within a few light-years. Still, it could be a decayed echo from the other side of Sol.
So it was with real relief (which he muffled in front of Zimmerman) that he received the update from Meisner, requesting permission to adjust course as the source's signal began to diverge from their first guess at a heading. And when four hours after that he received news of another course change, he gave the red-faced engineer permission to drop back to warp two, while he himself returned to the bridge. In the catwalk between modules, he ran into Zhironovsky.
"There's a short in the comms link between my station and the engine room," he panted at the captain. "I've been begging Zimmerman and Siemens to cut power. Number Three pod has been shaking loose. I can't believe we haven't lost her already!"
"Why didn't you call the bridge?"
"I tried! I said there's the short in the comms!"
"Well, the pod held, didn't it?" Grundfest said. "Besides, we're chasing a priority seven."
Zhironovksy, a pimply-faced twenty-year-old washout from Starfleet, stopped short. "A priority seven?" he repeated.
"Aye." Grundfest suppressed a sneer as he anticipated the crewman's next question.
"Dividend for the rest of us?"
"Sixty percent of the profits for the crew. Ten percent of that is yours."
"Six percent of the bag?" Zhironovsky looked disgusted. "That's not much."
"Six percent of nothing is nothing. Six percent of a million is ..." Grundfest let the novice cargo master do the math.
His eyes went wide. Sixty-thousand was enough to buy three freighters like the Rheingold!
"Could it be that much?" Zhironovsky asked in an awestruck whisper.
"You never know."
Zhironovsky grabbed the captain's arm as he tried to pass. "Do you know what the bag is?"
"Mister, I don't even know that there is a bag. But in this business," he continued as disappointment and anger flashed onto the crewman's face, "you don't try looking in the bag before grabbing it. Now then." He pried the other man's fingers off his grimy uniform. "See to those connectors on Number Three pod. It'll be more than your cut is worth if we have to jettison it!"
* * * * *
To continue investigating the room: "Disposing of Lucy"    indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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