Inside the central administrative complex, Del Kellum studied summary screens for his shipyard operations. He seemed inordinately pleased with himself. Zhett watched angelfish swimming around in their tanks, knowing that her father was about to launch into one of his lectures or rants. He was always amusing when he worked himself into a furor over some subject or other, and this time she was not disappointed.
“We salvaged one hundred and twenty-three Soldier compies from the Eddie battleships. One hundred twenty-three! They’ve all had their memories erased along with most of their old programming. Then we installed new basic programming, so now they’re perfectly happy to work for us. Model helpers.” He shook his large, squarish head. “If only we could get those thirty-two deadbeat soldiers to work a tenth as much.”
Zhett urged her father into a chair, so that she could knead the tense muscles in his broad shoulders. “Compies are designed to be hard workers, Dad, and Roamers are brought up to pull together and get the job done. But those Eddies had pampered childhoods that left them pretty much helpless. They barely know how to pour their own coffee or dress themselves in the morning.”
“So I expect too much from them?” Kellum grumbled. “By damn, if only they weren’t so ornery! They complain constantly that they’re bored and resentful . . . yet they refuse to participate. If our gravity wasn’t so low, they’d probably all have hemorrhoids from sitting on their butts doing nothing.”
Zhett snickered. “Then they’d really be cranky.”
The big schematic on the wall near his fish tank was a tangled map of orbital lines designating the permanent facilities. Bright dots marked the positions of hundreds of ships and artificial constructions. The screens showed a microcosm of shipbuilding activities ranging from ore-mappers and prospectors to interior refurbishers and decorators who put the finishing touches on completed spacecraft.
The reprogrammed Soldier compies were primarily assigned to hard labor out in the shipyards, hauling metal-rich rubble closer to the big smelters. Others had mapped the rings’ gravitational fields in detail, marking safe zones for portable factories and pinpointing new stable orbits for construction frames.
“We left a bit of their EDF recon programming intact—just the parts we thought might be useful—so those Soldier compies excel at high-risk exploration. I assigned forty of them to spread out in the densest ring concentrations, places where I’ve never had the guts to fly before. Too crowded and too dangerous. With their reaction times, they’re the best fliers I’ve ever seen, even in our clunky old grappler pods.”
“Not better than I am, Dad.”
“I’d rather not put it to the test, my sweet. Let compies take the stupid risks. And if they happen to get damaged . . . well, we can always use their components for scrap.” Kellum expanded a segment of the display where the orbiting rubble was so dense that the pinpoints looked like a swarm of gnats.
“Down close to the planet itself, the rubble’s so thick that nobody’s dared to fly there before, but it must be rich in resources. The surprise is that I expected to lose half of the compy scouts, but so far they keep sending back readings.” A waterfall of numbers and symbols flowed down columns. “By damn, look at all those metals. A handful of those Soldier compies could put our old prospectors out of business.”
“Most of the prospectors wouldn’t mind, Dad. They complain as much as our Eddy guests do.”
Kellum wasn’t listening as he concentrated on the data. He tapped at a glaringly anomalous reading. “What the hell is that?”
Zhett looked closer, as if the numbers might mean something. “With all the sensors you installed in the recon grappler pods, how could you forget to include optical relays?”
“They were compies. I didn’t figure they’d need to do any sightseeing.” Kellum shrugged and ran his finger along the data charts. “But look here. Whatever that is, it clearly doesn’t belong with the rest of the material.”
“Maybe it’s more EDF wreckage,” Zhett suggested. “It could have drifted in toward the planet.”
“But the signature’s all wrong.”
She lifted her chin. “Well, are you going to stare at a computer screen all day long, or are we going to go have a look at it?”
He grinned at her. “By damn, let’s go.”
“Just so you know, I’m flying, Dad. No arguments.” Kellum knew better than to disagree.
Cruising along at a speed that made her father uncomfortable, Zhett spiraled into the densest inner ring. Some of the reprogrammed Soldier compies accompanied their scout vessel as outflyers, plotting a safe course and issuing preliminary warnings of dangerous debris. To distract himself from his nervousness, her father talked . . . and talked.
“I’ve noticed you spending quite a bit of time with that young Eddy commander Fitzpatrick.”
She shrugged to cover her flush of embarrassment. “I torment him mercilessly, but it’s hard not to. His very personality demands that I push his buttons, and he never disappoints me with his response.”
“Well, see if you can push a different button and get him to do some work for a change. Do you think they’re adjusting to their new life here?”
Zhett snorted. “Not at all.”
“Well then, I don’t know what to do with them. It’s time they learned to be useful. After all, they’re adopted family members now, not prisoners.”
Zhett dodged three crisscrossing meteoroids. “I doubt they’ll ever think of themselves that way, Dad. So far, the thing they’re best at is being pains in the ass.”
“Not a particularly useful skill. So what do you think of that young man? He’s handsome, and your age, and—”
“Dad, have you noticed the debris field I’m flying through? Please let me concentrate.”
“Of course.” The slight upturn of his lips was maddening, but her cutting him off had not just been an excuse. She did need to focus on her piloting.
Now the outflyer Soldier compies zipped in, flanking her, guiding her on the safest path. She jerked the altitude-control thrusters right and left, hardly daring to blink. Beside her, her father went pale and gripped his seat. The compy ships took a heavier toll; their hulls got damaged and battered, but Zhett’s vessel suffered only minor dents, and a small star-shaped impact on the thick viewport.
Kellum calmed himself by studying the scan readings on a small console screen. “We’re getting close now.”
Zhett gestured with her chin. “Up there. Something’s a lot more reflective than the rest of the rocks.”
Sparkling with reflected light from the clouds of Osquivel, one object shone like a diamond in a pile of gravel. Rocks formed a thick, protective coterie of obstacles around the valuable treasure. The compy outflyers circled, dove in, and indicated a safe course for Zhett to follow.
The object’s distinctive geometrical shape made it stand out as much as its shining hull had. The sphere, studded with spiky protrusions, drifted alone, abandoned in the dense minefield of rocky debris.
“It’s a drogue ship,” Zhett whispered. “Look at it.”
Kellum bit his lower lip. “One of the smaller ones, not a full-blown warglobe.”
She maneuvered closer, then jumped in her seat as a rock hammered the hull of their ship with a sound like a sledgehammer hitting an anvil. Zhett steadied them, all the while concentrating on the round alien globe. “I bet it was killed during the battle, Dad. The Eddies did cause some damage.”
“I’m not picking up any power readings or life signs . . . though I wouldn’t know what the hell to look for. Back off a minute and let the compies get closer. See how it reacts.”
The outflyers approached the small alien sphere, but the hydrogue vessel did not respond. “Shizz, it’s probably been drifting out here all this time. The drogues certainly haven’t missed it.”
Her father grinned hugely. “Well, in that case—it’s finders keepers for us.”
Zhett’s scout ship suffered several more impacts—including one that would require minor repairs—as she cautiously pulled away from the densest cluster of debris, while Kellum sent instructions to the robotic outflyers.
Working together, the reprogrammed Soldier compies rigged tractor beams to the slick surface of the dead alien ship and pulled it slowly out of its nest of broken rocks and into a safer zone. Several meteoroids ricocheted off the sphere’s hull, but left not so much as a scratch. The compy grappler pods looked, on the other hand, as if they’d been used as punching bags.
Her father was already full of ideas about the relic. “Could be the biggest treasure in this whole battleground. Imagine it, my sweet, our very own drogue ship! Roamer engineers can figure out how it ticks, then maybe we’ll incorporate some of those techniques into our own vessels.”
The gas planet Osquivel loomed in front of them like a skeptical eye watching everything they did.
“That’s why, as soon as we get back to the main complex, I’m going to track down Kotto Okiah. If anybody can decipher the thing, he can.”