Starship: Unbound

A Pirate Ship

Back in their bedroom that night, Meller lay quietly beside Seriph. He did not want to keep her awake while he thought about what he was about to do. After a few minutes she rolled over and put her arm across his chest. "Want to talk about it?" she asked.

She knew him too well. He sighed. "I'm afraid I will have to decide whether or not to disobey a direct order from the Space Service." He stroked her arm lightly with his hand.

"So, what do you do with the titanium?"

Even though she could not see him, he smiled. "All I have to do is decide where my loyalties lie." He told her about his conversation with Odysseus.

For a time she said nothing. "So which way are you leaning?"

Meller sighed. "The Space Service has given me several assignments over the years. You take the good with the bad." He shrugged. "It's part of the deal."

"But this is different. How?"

"They've decommissioned the Artemis. I think Odysseus will refuse to go along with the resettlement mission, so what will the service do? Odysseus"—he paused trying to think how to say it—"Odysseus was, or still is, a person—a thinking, feeling person like you or I."

"There's a bigger issue here." Seriph shifted around. Now she was half sitting looking down at him. "This starship is an invaluable resource for the human race, not just another vessel to be used to solve the immediate, short-term problems of the government." She put a hand on his chest. "You have the power to save this ship and help humans continue to take their place among the stars." He started to protest, but she shushed him. "You know the crew will follow you, but to be fair, there should be a vote."

"So what do we do with the ones who want to go back to Earth? Even after all these years, some will still have family or other connections."

Seriph smiled in the faint glow of the night lighting in the room. "You've made your decision, haven't you? Now all we have to do is figure out the details."

Yes, he had reached a decision. He had been loyal to the Space Service's goal to expand human kind to the stars. The service had turned in another direction, but he would stay true to the higher calling. Higher calling? He thought briefly of the Ascendency. They had felt a higher calling—but he decided this was not the time to think about them. Someday he would talk it out with Seriph, but now, having made his decision, he wanted to enjoy the feeling. He reached up and stroked her cheek before he pulled her into a warm kiss.

#

The schedule was brutal. The Command Deck was fully staffed on all three shifts. Meller himself worked two shifts, one in the command chair and the other on duty in his ready room. Even during his sleep shift in their cabin, he was subject to call. Odysseus was no longer decelerating. Rigged for onboard weightless running, the ship barreled into the inner solar system at high speed with all sensors recording.

The exchanges with the Space Service were lively. They had ordered the ship to resume preparations to dock at the L-5 site. Meller had responded with a request to clarify how the announced resettlement mission complied with the Federation of Earth's Declaration on Colonization. The reply was a testy restatement of the original order. Meller had replied with a request for an explanation of how the decommissioning of the Artemis could have been allowed given previous legal precedents recognizing the starships as sentient beings.

The amount of focused power put into the Space Service's reply must have required the simultaneous coordination of a large fraction of the transmitting power in the vicinity of Earth. Odysseus called Meller in his ready room. "They are saying no—loudly. You could probably hear it if you put your ear against the bulkhead."

Meller floated out into the Command Deck. Nilla Naffe slipped out of the command chair's restraints and stood up, her feet still adhered to the deck. "Space Service has ordered your arrest and detention, Captain."

"And?" Meller knew what his first officer's answer would be, but this would make it official.

Naffe smiled and nodded for him to take the command chair. "I'm awaiting your orders, sir."

"Thank you," he said and settled himself in the chair. He fastened himself in, and it was official. It was not just his mutiny. The ship was officially in rebellion. "Continue on course," he ordered. "Monitor all communications for information relevant to our situation. Update tactical plots of all craft within six AU of our trajectory past the Sun or in a position for possible intercept or missile fire."

Orders given, Meller detached himself from the chair. "Please resume your shift, Commander Naffe. You may inform Space Service we decline their order and repeat the request for clarification about the Artemis." He smiled as she floated past him to the chair. "We are now officially a pirate crew."

A moment later everyone on the Command Deck was convulsed in laughter. All data screens flipped to an image of a black flag with a skull and crossbones, an ancient but still recognized symbol for piracy. The operations screens quickly returned to normal but Odysseus kept the flag on several of the screens which normally showed fusion engine status.

#

"Receiving a beamed transmission from the SS Tapu, sir." Ensign Marshe was at the communications station this shift.

Meller glanced up from the tactical summary he had been examining. "And?" he invited.

"Encrypted, sir. Waiting for translation."

Nodding absently, Meller went back to the screen he had been studying. Odysseus had located two ships in the vicinity of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids. One was inside the boundaries of Trojan group leading Jupiter in its orbit. The other ship was approaching the trailing group. The standard identification signal from the two ships had given the ships' names and classifications as well as their locations. If the information they had received from Mars about the reassignment of the crew of the Artemis was true, the Tapu was deemed the most likely vessel to have the bulk of the Artemis's crew on board.

Minutes later Marshe spoke up again. "It's Captain Jayne, sir." He smiled at Meller. Jayne had been the captain on board the Artemis. They had found the crew. Marshe's smile was only momentary, however. "He says, 'Run' as well, sir." Nodding as he listened through an earpiece, the ensign added, "There's more on the status of the mission, crew members aboard, that sort of thing. Odysseus says he will provide us with a transcript."

Meller closed his eyes thoughtfully for a moment before he turned to Tactical Officer Abbot on his right. "Estelle, would you run some rendezvous trajectories with the Tapu? Feel free to get creative. We're not going to do anything soon, but I'd like to have options ready."

#

Later that night, Meller lay talking with Seriph in their bedroom, but with no weight, they were both tethered in their sleeping bags. "The Space Service sent me a personal communication today. Supposedly it was a message from Briella."

"Briella? I thought you two didn't part on the best of terms. What did it say? And what do you mean, 'supposedly'?"

"Only three questions at once?" He smiled. "Okay, in the message she asked me to do what the service asks and come to see her." The smile was gone from his voice as he went on. "It sounded like her, and I'm pretty sure it was her because she used the word 'terella.' She never told me what it meant, but she'd learned it from her grandmother who had an ancestor who was an Aztec Indian—or was it Inca—?" Seriph poked him with her elbow. "All right," he chuckled, "she told me it was about as vile an insult as you could imagine, and that's the way she used the word the last time we talked—called me that about six times in fact." Serious again, he went on. "She used the word twice in this message, but she used it like she was calling me an affectionate pet name."

"You think she was telling you something, don't you?"

He nodded. "She would be in her eighties now. I think she was trying to tell me she was being coerced into sending the message." He let the corner of his mouth turn up a little bit. "Coerced, and reminding me she never wanted to talk to me again."