Read Moron's Guide to Surviving the Space Race Page 8
The next morning, after a sweet and very tender send off from Marissa, I made my way to the docks. A package was delivered in the middle of the night with the finalized papers of ownership for the spaceship. Thankfully it was delivered to the hotel’s main desk or Marissa and I might have ripped the heads off of anyone knocking on the door. She might have laughed, but I at least know that I would not have been very pleasant.
When Jim called it a tub, he really meant that. And the scariest part was he was flying the thing alone. When I reviewed the dockmaster’s log, it clearly stated there was only one passenger that disembarked and all scans of the ship showed no life forms present. Either they snuck off, or he was managing somehow to keep this thing going by himself. You hear about those people. They sorta treat the ships like their homes and don’t want anyone else coming onboard.
I entertained the thought that someone might have tried to get onboard, given the relationship between Mark and Jim. This was immediately dismissed when I discovered the security system. Jim vented the atmosphere of the ship whenever it was docked. Someone sneaking onboard would have to come in full protective gear because only the owner’s ring allowed the system to be deactivated. Not to mention the internal defense system weapons. I could tell Jim was paranoid because those mounted pulse canons were the newest things onboard. And there were a lot of other things that needed work. Some of them BADLY needed work.
Like the navigation terminal, it was half degraded. And the central computer system which was horribly out of date. Let’s not even mention the power plant. Perhaps better that you don’t constantly remain confused about how Jim actually stayed alive onboard this thing. It was bad enough that to this day I still don’t understand it. This craft needed work but besides repairs of the most life threatening damage to a ship, the space station’s maintenance bay wouldn’t be capable of taking care of it. I didn’t really want to have Mark’s goons walking all over the place without constant supervision either.
I turned on the power to the navigation terminal and was greeted by a picture of Gabby. To say I was surprised would be putting it mildly. When I stopped and looked closer, I found it was a picture of her when she was in school. We were all at a museum that day. I tried to understand why he had a picture of her and my mind wasn’t coughing up any type of information for me.
The picture was soon replaced with the actual nav screen, detailing obstacles and pathways through the blackness of space. I debated with myself over pulling the ship out of dock due to the condition it was in. I was a gambler, but the thought of the ship venting atmosphere in the middle of space was enough to make me think twice. The concept of Mark becoming all buddy buddy with me was what finally broke my hesitance. Better to take my chances in space than roll the dice with the kinda guy who wouldn’t think twice about putting a bullet in someone plus had the brains to set it up so it looked like an accident.
The docking thrusters were nowhere near as smooth as Fred’s. I nearly ripped the docking clamps apart by running into them before I realigned the ship to leave. It took a few extra minutes to wrap my mind around the chaos inherent in the control systems, but when I finally pulled the ship into space I had a clear run to the Jump gate. Recently having flown out here, I had a solid idea of where I needed to go to get back to Earth. When the course was laid in, I fired up the main propulsion systems.
I sat back and watched the power spikes flutter across the engineering display. The ship would accelerate to somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety-nine point eight percent of light speed. What took me a couple weeks or so to get to Aurora, was going to take me over a month to get back to Earth. I checked the food stores, hoping I wasn’t going to have to stop along the way even though I probably deserved it with not even looking at something so basic before I left.
The freezer was packed. I mean packed so full I didn’t know how he got all of this in here. Dry goods and refrigeration were also fully stocked. Jim had no intention of getting supplies at Aurora. I checked back with the navigation system. Even though I had a beeper that would inform me if there were any immediate problems, I wasn’t completely sure the thing would even work given the state of the rest of this heap.
I found schematics that were so old that they didn’t even have half of the ship’s spaces or equipment listed. Originally this had been a deep space exploration ship. Most of the living and working spaces had been added later on top of the very simple and clean design of the original vessel. It had been built for long term deep space runs but since had been converted to a hauler, then to a fighting ship, and then finally to a smuggling vessel.
A quick trip through the living area left me wondering if Jim had ever even actually lived in them. A few haphazard quarters contained piles of trash and junk that I ignored. Then I found Jim’s room. And two more pictures of Gabby. Both were of her happy and laughing or smiling. Pictures taken of her at her best before her life had been consumed by drugs. Neither of them could be classified as risqué by any stretch of the imagination.
I found this odd, but went ahead and began digging through his old belongings. I felt a little uncomfortable digging through a dead man’s things. Not knowing if I was disrespecting him or not. I decided that when I got back to Earth I was going to have his things sent to whomever was his next of kin. The more pictures I found of Gabby left me wondering if it was her. I swept the room with my eyes, trying to see if anything stuck out.
A blinking light on a comms panel caught my attention. There was a message waiting in the que. The ship had already downloaded it and it was ready to play. When I brought up the message, an encryption system asked for a password. Not knowing what else to do I typed in Gabriella. I felt a swell of pride when the system decrypted the message and it started to play.
“Jim, Kyle here. When she was placed into rehab by the court, she broke out like a day later. Hasn’t been seen since. That worthless low life Steve is with her now from what I can tell. Jim, I’m your friend and you know this. Look, I know how much you want that little girl out of that life but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Seeing your daughter wrapped up with those kinda people is hard Jim, but I’m worried that she may be way too far gone man!
“Look, I got your back, and I’m still working on this. I just want you to think about what’s happening man. These little pinprick attacks aimed at this Mark guy isn’t going to solve the problem of getting your daughter out of this mess, Jim. He’s a seriously dangerous and careful man and I’m just worried that you will get yourself killed one day. Call me Jim, talk to me.” Kyle’s face faded out.
His daughter? Gabby was his daughter? I sat back on the unmade bed reeling from the news this guy Kyle just casually laid on me. Jim was attacking Mark because of Gabby being hooked on Moondust. I scrambled around the room, frantically digging through everything I could lay my hands on. It didn’t take me long until I found Jim’s personal journals of his life. The first entry in the electronic journal talked about how Jim had found out that he had a daughter with his ex. She had left the baby at an orphanage in the middle of the night because she didn’t feel she could handle taking care of the child.
Jim went into more detail about things that had happened that lead up to the birth of the little girl but there were no journal entries prior to him finding out about Gabby. At the time he found out, he was hooked on a few chemicals himself and was running guns for the Chinese Triad. Over the course of that next year, he cleaned his life up. The pictures I had found were taken during that year. Jim was just about to introduce himself to Gabby when Steve came into the picture.
Steve was this hotshot business owner that appeared at first to be legit and really good for Gabby. That was until Jim did a little bit of asking around and discovered all the stuff that Steve was into. By the time he worked up the courage to talk to his daughter, Gabby had already been introduced to the seedier side of her boyfriend’s life. She was well on her way to be
ing a serious dust head and had started being used by Steve to pick up drifters for his human trafficking business.
Jim was heart broken, and began doing all sorts of research on the operation that Steve was running. He was realistic enough to understand that he may not be able to win his daughter away from the lowlife and figured the best way was to destroy the operation that was keeping Steve in money and drugs. Turns out that Mark was the one behind the Moondust mining operation and had contracted Steve to provide his labor pool.
Thus began two long years of Jim’s life being dedicated to doing his best to take down Mark. Great and noble idea. Very unrealistic however. There were massive amounts of information about Mark’s holdings. His businesses, contracts, illegal activities, and his network of business associates. When I say this guy was huge in the drug trade, I mean he was huge in the drug trade. He had fingers in a lot of different pies. The sad part was none of this information was usable in court and with how careful Mark was about keeping his dirt swept under the rug I saw no possible way for any law enforcement to touch him.
Mark was a genius when it came to organized crime. The whole entire operation was extremely well hidden and well run. I mean if I was going to build a criminal empire, this is how I would do it. Great, not only had I gotten a relatively decent guy killed for what basically amounted to an axe murdering psychopath, I also discovered that the reason behind the feud was Jim’s love of his daughter. Let’s just say I didn’t figure I was winning any brownie points for this one.