Anton's Odyssey Page 14

  “Couldn’t they just steal the food?” Cotton asked.

  “Or just use food from their own plates?” I added.

  “Well, the goons didn’t exactly comprise a demographic ambitious enough to go hungry. And yes, Cotton, they would have stolen food if they could, but the Packard ran a twenty-four hour mess hall so there was always a cook or steward near the pantry.”

  “Why didn’t they just bribe them?” Cotton asked.

  Having never been much of a juvenile delinquent himself, Allen failed to understand the importance of the question and became impatient and snapped, “Look! Do you guys want to hear the story or not!”

  Sheepishly, we nodded.

  “Then just let me tell the story. I’ll simplify the science as best I can, but please, no more questions or interruptions.”

  “Sorry!” we said in unison.

  Allen was silent for a while and continued. “The hoodlums couldn’t get to the ship’s food, and the cryogens were well guarded as well.”

  I opened my mouth to ask how somebody could make liquor out of a person, but snapped it shut when Allen glared at me.

  “Cryogens feed through an NG tube… err… a tube that goes up through your nose and into your stomach, and the goons could have made liquor from that food, which is in the form of a paste.

  “The only thing the goons could easily steal was the seed. Nobody had use for it in the far reaches of space, so it wasn’t guarded. Now the seed was impregnated with an organic alkyl mercury fungicide, which would never be allowed back on Earth because it’s so toxic. Regulations do allow for alkyl mercury on prolonged space flights where long acting preservatives would be necessary to prevent spoilage. The seed can only be a small amount, an experimental quantity really, and not in bulk for agriculture. Now, I can anticipate your next question: ‘Allen, how can they ferment seed that is impregnated with a fungicide when yeast is a fungus?’ which is a good question I might add.”

  Evidently it was a good question because neither Cotton nor I had thought of it.

  “And the answer is that there was no fermentation. The goons saw bubbles, which they thought was fermentation, but the bubbles weren’t carbon dioxide… er… if alcohol is yeast pee, carbon dioxide would be like a yeast fart that shows that fermentation was happening.” Alas, Allen had finally managed to break science down into a language Cotton and I could actually understand.

  “The bubbles they saw would have been a gaseous preservative, a type of anti-ethylene that was dissolved in the seeds’ lipids. The water — they would have needed water as a solvent for the fermentation process — reacted with the preservative and caused it to come out of solution and fizz.

  “Now don’t ask me why they didn’t test the liquor themselves after they fermented and distilled it because I don’t know the exact answer. Some think the goons managed to smuggle aboard some of the hooch they made on Neo-Salyut 27. Lonelistar seized most of it and even had the audacity to sell the swill in their own cantina, which is way illegal, but the goons probably managed to hold on to some of it, so they had no need to drink from the batch they made on the Packard. What we do know for certain is that they sold their first batch to twenty-three crewmembers who worked the engine room, and that the organic mercury quickly made them sick. Organic mercury is a potent neurotoxin. First they had tremors… err… their hands would shake… and then they became encephalopathic… err… obtunded… er… comatose… er…”

  “We know what a coma is.” I said, insulted.

  “Oh you do, good!” Allen said, forgetting that I had just interrupted him. “To make a long story short, within a few weeks, all but one of the sick crewmembers died, and the guy that lived was in a persistent vegetative state. That left the Packard’s engines desperately short handed. They tried running twenty-twenty-tens – do you know what those are?”

  “Yes,” we said. Hammond had told us about the rather brutal shift structure that pushed workers beyond the limits of endurance.

  “Oh good! At first they were okay, but they quickly realized that the plan wasn’t sustainable in the long run. People started making small mistakes, perhaps using the wrong tool here, a miscalculation there, and it was only a matter of time before exhaustion would have caused a major disaster that would leave all of them dead. They invoked interstellar common law to draft the hoodlums into their crew, rating them ordinary starmen. Needless to say, the goons were not happy how their lives of lethargy and leisure had transformed to a labor of toil and tears. A few actually did okay, but most became passive aggressive and deliberately screwed things up with hopes the captain would confine them to quarters instead of forcing them to work. If the captain had any sense, he would have flogged them.”

  “You can do that?” I shrieked. Disbelief had caused me to forget I wasn’t supposed to ask any questions. Realizing my mistake, I covered my mouth with my hands.

  “No, that’s okay. Flogging is so rare that I can appreciate that it would shock you. Interstellar common law allows the captain to take any action, no matter how severe, to rectify an extreme situation that endangers the lives of one or more crewmembers. If he wanted to, the captain could have shot one of the goons in a face, which, as things turned out, wouldn’t have been a bad idea.

  “With the best of intentions, the captain moved the goons that seemed to bungle their work duties to the galley and mess hall. The idea was if that they screwed up kitchen work, the consequences would be minimal compared to a mistake in an air lock or the engine room. Of course, the captain turned out to be wrong, but he had no way of knowing it at the time.”

  I raised my hand. There was a detail that needed clarification, but I didn’t want Allen to get angry again. “Yes,” he asked, smiling. He seemed to enjoy the control his story had over us.

  “So did the captain ever figure out what killed his men?”

  “No, not really, or at least not while in space. The medical officer had only limited training in neuro-toxicology, and no one really noticed the seed was missing because they had no use for it on the ship. They thought the guys came down with some variant of radiation poisoning because of the encephalopathy. All of the guys who died worked the engine room and there was some faulty shielding there. Monitors showed that gamma ray levels never got high enough to actually cause acute illness, so the crew figured the radiation monitors were faulty as well. None of the dead guys had any of the other symptoms of radiations sickness like sores in their mouths, severe nausea, or hair loss, but the truth was the crew was so overwhelmed with new work duties that they were never able to perform a proper epidemiologic investigation. They just replaced the radiation shielding and monitors, and when no one else got sick, they figured the problem was solved.

  “The goons were smart enough to figure out their first batch of hooch was tainted, and a few who briefly worked in the engine room dumped the hooch in a coolant reservoir, which was very fortunate. Had they dumped it down the toilet, the black water recycler wouldn’t have been able to remove the mercury and pretty much everyone would have gotten sick and died.

  “As I said before, most of the goons ended up in the galley. They stole a lot of food to make more hooch, which sold well because morale was low and people wanted to drown their sorrows. A couple guys went to work in the engine room drunk and got macerated to death, which increased the workload for everyone else even more.

  “Even in the galley, which was relatively cush in regards to work load and safety hazards, the goons continued to go out of their way to do a half-assed job. They didn’t properly secure the pantry, leftovers spoiled in the fridge, and they were terrible at cleaning. There was garbage everywhere and the galley and mess hall stank. The stink attracted the starving rats that were hiding in the small nooks and crannies on the ship.

  “The rats, with their modified genes, got fat quickly and really began to multiply. Soon giant rats were seen out in the open in the middle of the mess hall. Of course the goons were too lazy to do anything about them, and m
ost crewmembers were too preoccupied with keeping up the ship’s systems and figured the stewards and galley staff would take care of the problem. Eventually the rats were everywhere, even in the engine room getting caught in machinery and causing stuff to break. There were even rat-related injuries, people tripping over rats and falling down hatches and stuff. By the time the officers finally got around to inspecting the galley, the situation was grim. Much of their provisions had been consumed by the rats, and most of what was left was contaminated by rat turds, which the goons would cook into the food for crewmembers they didn’t like.”

  “Wow, that’s really gross!” Cotton blurted out.

  Allen grinned, momentarily forgetting he had asked us not to interrupt. “Yes, it is. I told you this was a good story. You guys like it so far?”

  We nodded, and Allen continued. “They disposed of the contaminated food by blasting it out the airlock. The officers ran a few calculations. They were closer to their destination than any space station or inhabited planet, so diverting the ship would have been counterproductive. They still had many months to go, however. They figured if they instituted a system of rationing, limiting each crewmember to one thousand kilocalories a day, they would go hungry and lose weight, but they wouldn’t suffer from outright starvation.

  “The captain assigned a few of his more loyal crewmembers the additional task of supervising the galley. The galley became much cleaner, but because the inspectors spent most of their time elsewhere on the ship, they couldn’t stop the goons from stealing food for themselves. While most of the Packards were drawing their belts in a few notches, the goons were actually gaining weight. Eventually, the other crewmembers figured out what the goons were doing, so they kicked them out of the galley and locked them into the gym. The brig wasn’t large enough for all of them. They searched the goons’ quarters and recovered the food they were hording, but even at quarter rations, less than five hundred kilocalories a day, they completely ran out of food. They resorted to hunting rats, which kept them fed for a while, but eventually the rats figured out how to stay out of sight and avoid capture.”

  Cotton had a hungry look in his eye, and his mouth began to water. I hoped he had burnt through his pudding packs, and that it wasn’t the thought of eating rats that had stimulated his appetite.

  “Crewmembers got so hungry they couldn’t sleep. They spent their free time wandering the ship looking for rats to kill. The goons, who hadn’t been starving as long as everyone else, easily over powered their guards and broke out. They immediately started ransacking the ship, knocking down every door looking for food. The captain sent out an armed party to take the hoodlums down, but the squad was a bit disorganized. Two guys got separated from the group, and the goons ambushed them, beat them unconscious, and stole their guns. The rest of the squad realized their two friends were missing and started calling out, which gave away their position. The goons organized another ambush, wiped out the squad, and seized even more weapons.

  “The captain eventually figured out his men got slaughtered. To make sure he could maintain control of the ship, he reinforced the entryway to the engine room and the bridge, removing crewmembers from all other positions. With free reign over the rest of the ship, the goons eventually beat down the doors to the modified cargo hold and found the cryogens. They pulled out the NG tubes and start sucking down the cryogens’ liquefied food. Of course they didn’t ration the food at all, so it only lasted them a week.

  “About this time, the ship doc had an epiphany and realized that some of the dry goods and farm machinery are packed in biodegradable pellets made from a complex carbohydrate. He takes an armed contingent out and retrieves almost all of it. Of course, after they did this, the cargo was no longer secure and risked getting damaged by a hard landing, but, fighting for their lives, none of the crewmembers really cared about that. There’s no protein in the packaging material, and the doc figured some of the crew will get kwashiorkor but they should survive the remainder of their trip.

  “A few days later, the crew, less preoccupied with starvation, finally brought up the security feed to try to find out what the goons were up to. What they saw was the worst kind of horror imaginable.” Allen paused for effect.

  The suspense was too much for my brother. Cotton couldn’t contain himself. “What did they see?” he cried. “What did they see?”

  “As the camera came into focus, they see three goons pull a thin figure out of a cryochamber. Deprived of his NG tube, he was emaciated, and his normally tight fitting blue bib hung loosely. They take out knives and started carving him up like a Christmas turkey. The guy sort of wakes up too. I mean he never became completely lucid, but he was definitely feeling things, groaning as they cut into him. The goons didn’t even cook the guy. They just started chewing on his flesh right then and there. They completely skeletonized him. They even ate his dong!”

  “No way!” I cried with disbelief. “You lie!”

  Allen grinned. “Yeah, I lie. I just threw in that last part about eating his dong to see if I could get a reaction.” Even Cotton, who would pretty much eat anything, looked disgusted.

  “The doctor, who was ultimately responsible for the cryogens, asks the captain if he can go negotiate with the goons, but the captain wisely says no. Against orders, the doctor tries to leave the bridge. A couple officers attempt to restrain him but he manages to throw a sucker punch, break loose, and take off down the passageway. The captain tells the officers not to pursue him because it’s too dangerous. A few minutes later, they see the doctor on the security feed, but before he can tell the goons about the carbohydrate in the packing pellets, they over power him, gag him, and tie his hands behind his back.

  “Back on the bridge, the crew hears a goon say something like, ‘Hey the doctor sure does have meaty thighs,’ and this one big goon takes out a really big knife. Then the first goon says something like, ‘The meat won’t really spoil if we keep him alive,’ so they tie tourniquets around the tops of his legs so he won’t bleed to death. The crew watches helplessly as the goons take both the doctors legs off a few centimeters below the hip. The doctor can’t scream, but the crewmembers can see the pain and terror in his face. Eventually he passes out.

  “At this point, the captain is pretty much losing it. He doesn’t know what to do. The doctor is still alive and is pretty popular on the ship, even among the one officer guy he punched in the face. The captain is too afraid to organize a rescue party after seeing the savagery of the goons on the vid screen. He doesn’t want to die, and he doesn’t want anyone else in his crew to die either. He also knows he will be in big trouble if he allows the remaining cryogens to get eaten.

  “His confidence is completely wavering, but then this one able starman stands up in the middle of the bridge and says something cheesy like, ‘I served my country in the Space Marines, I can rescue the doctor before they eat his arms.’ And this other guy gets inspired and says something like, ‘I was never a space marine, but my daddy was a police officer and taught me how to shoot.’

  “Which was Jim Boldergat?” Cotton asked. “Was he the space marine?”

  Allen smiled. “Actually, Jim Boldergat was neither. He was just some steward, an ordinary starman whom the captain made a miscellaneous deck hand when he switched everyone’s job duties around. Apparently even the younger Jim Boldergat was a bit of a porker, though not nearly as bad as he is now. Of course, at that point in the voyage, he had lost a lot of weight, but because he was so much fatter than everyone else at embarkation, he maintained much of his strength. To complicate things, he was best friends with the guy whose daddy was a cop. His friend begs and pleads with him to come and help out, but Jim is afraid. Eventually the friend convinces him just to come and run ammo, telling him he wouldn’t have to break cover or do any actual fighting.

  “The captain is pretty desperate at this point and decides he will allow the three men to go as long as they voice an understanding that once they leave, the rest of the crew p
robably won’t be able to help them and that they will likely die. They give the marine guy and Jim’s friend their two remaining guns. Jim carries the extra ammunition and a couple of stun grenades.”

  “The captain remotely unlocks a security door to the cargo hold and the three guys sneak in. The marine guy is pretty smart and crawls over to a tactical, easily defendable position up top a stack of unused cryochambers. The guy whose daddy is a cop is a complete moron, though, and watched way too many war movies. He just runs out to the nearest bunch of goons and starts shooting, Jim trailing right behind him. Fortunately, the guy was telling the truth when he said his daddy taught him how to shoot. He hits the first goon in the forehead, right between the eyes with an expanding round, and the goon’s eyeballs fly out the back of his head. Another goon picks up an autocarbine, but Jim’s friend shoots before the goon can shoulder his weapon, hitting him in the chest through the heart and both lungs. The goon probably died before he even hit the floor. Jim goes over and picks up the autocarbine and sees three goons running toward him with knives. In a panic, Jim high tails it in the opposite direction. Jim’s friend takes a knee and kills two of the goons but runs out of ammo. The third guts him with a knife, and he bleeds out and dies. Jim doesn’t know what to do, so he runs back to where the marine was hiding. The marine takes the autocarbine, all of the ammo, and tells Jim to hide behind the nearest cryochamber, which was about ten meters away. Setting his gun to full auto, the marine mows down about a half dozen goons standing out in the open. The goons eventually figure out his position. They lay down cover fire and a group of about four goons maneuver to flank him. Shooting wildly, the marine is able to take down three of the advancing goons before he runs out of ammo. The fourth unloads his magazine in the back of the marine’s head, killing him.

  “Jim cowers behind the cryochamber wondering what to do. The remainder of the goons, about five or so, come over and starts discussing whether or not they’ve killed off the entire assault team. One of the goons says something like, ‘I think there’s something over there,’ which spooks Jim. In a panic, he pulls the pin from a stun grenade, which is normally a non-lethal weapon, and tosses it wildly. Jim’s trajectory was way off, but as luck would have it, the grenade bounces off the far wall, bounces again off a cryochamber and explodes a centimeter from the left temple of the big goon who cut the legs off the doctor. The small concussion was sufficient to create a small depressed skull fracture which severs the goon’s middle meningeal artery. The high pressure bleeding compresses his brain, and he falls. Now, this big goon more or less served as the goon leader, so the remaining four goons are a bit startled and duck behind the nearest door to regroup. Jim, possessed by an unusually high level of mental clarity, realizes the goons have retreated into an airlock. He charges the door, slams it shut, and locks it. The crewmembers on the bridge watching the events unfold on the security vid take over. They remotely vent the airlock and dump the remaining goons into space. And that’s how Jim Boldergat became a hero, which was more from luck than from any sort of warrior prowess if you ask me.”